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the merit, notwithstanding master Harry is often for overhauling that part
of the account, I've set it down for just nothing at all."
"I confess, that, in a case where two men, both of whom are so well
qualified to judge, are of different opinions, I feel at a loss to know
which can have the right. Perhaps, by the aid of the facts, I might form a
truer judgment."
"Your Honour forgets the Guinea, who is altogether of my mind in the
matter, seeing no great merit in the thing either. But, as you are saying,
sir, reading the log is the only true way to know how fast a ship can go;
and so, if this Lady and your Honour have a mind to come at the truth of
the affair why, you have only to say as much, and I will put it all before
you in creditable language."
"Ah! there is reason in your proposition," returned the Rover, motioning
to his companion to follow to a part of the poop where they were less
exposed to the observations of inquisitive eyes. "Now, place the whole
clearly before us; and then you may consider the merits of the question
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disposed of definitively."
Fid was far from discovering the smallest reluctance to enter on the
required detail; and, by the time he had cleared his throat, freshened his
supply of the weed, and otherwise disposed himself to proceed Mrs Wyllys
had so far conquered her reluctance to pry clandestinely into the secrets
of others, as to yield to a curiosity which she found unconquerable and to
take the seat to which her companion invited her by a gesture of his hand.
"I was sent early to sea, your Honour, by my father," commenced Fid, after
these little preliminaries had been duly observed, "who was, like myself,
a man that passed more of his time on the water than on dry ground;
though, as he was nothing more than a fisherman, he generally kept the
land aboard which is, after all, little better than living on it
altogether Howsomever, when I went, I made a broad offing at once,
fetching up on the other side of the Horn, the very first passage I made;
which was no small journey for a new beginner; but then, as I was only
eight years old"----
"Eight! you are now speaking of yourself," interrupted the disappointed
governess.
"Certain, Madam; and, though genteeler people might be talked of, it would
be hard to turn the conversation on any man who knows better how to rig or
how to strip a ship. I was beginning at the right end of my story; but, as
I fancied your Ladyship might not choose to waste time in hearing
concerning my father and mother, I cut the matter short, by striking in at
eight years old, overlooking all about my birth and name, and such other
matters as are usually logged, in a fashion out of all reason, in your
everyday sort of narratives."
"Proceed," she rejoined, with a species of compelled resignation.
"My mind is pretty much like a ship that is about to slip off its ways,"
resumed Fid. "If she makes a fair start, and there is neither jam nor
dry-rub, smack see goes into the water, like a sail let run in a calm;
but, if she once brings up, a good deal of labour is to be gone through to
set her in motion again. Now, in order to wedge up my ideas, and to get
the story slushed, so that I can slip through it with ease, it is needful
to overrun the part which I have just let go; which is, how my father was
a fisherman, and how I doubled the Horn--Ah! here I have it again, clear
of kinks, fake above fake, like a well-coiled cable; so that I can pay it
out as easily as the boatswain's yeoman can lay his hand on a bit of
ratling stuff. Well, I doubled the Horn, as I was saying, and might have
been the matter of four years cruising about among the islands and seas of
those parts, which were none of the best known then, or for that matter,
now. After this, I served in his Majesty's fleet a whole war, and got as
much honour as I could stow beneath hatches. Well, then, I fell in with
the Guinea--the black, my Lady, that you see turning in a new
clue-garnet-block for the starboard clue of the fore-course."
"Ay; then you fell in with the African," said the Rover.
"Then we made our acquaintance; and, although his colour is no whiter than
the back of a whale, I care not who knows it, after master Harry, there is
no man living who has an honester way with him, or in whose company I take
greater satisfaction. To be sure, your Honour, the fellow is something
contradictory and has a great opinion of his strength and thinks his equal
is not to be found at a weather-earing or in the bunt of a topsail; but
then he is no better than a black, and one is not to be too particular in
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looking into the faults of such as are not actually his fellow creatures."
"No, no; that would be uncharitable in the extreme."
"The very words the chaplain used to let fly aboard the 'Brunswick!' It is
a great thing to have schooling, your Honour; since, if it does nothing
else, it fits a man for a boatswain, and puts him in the track of steering
the shortest course to heaven. But, as I was saying, there was I and
Guinea shipmates and in a reasonable way friends, for five years more; and
then the time arrived when we met with the mishap of the wreck in the
West-Indies."
"What wreck?" demanded his officer.
"I beg your Honour's pardon; I never swing my head-yards till I'm sure
the ship won't luff back into the wind; and, before I tell the particulars
of the wreck, I will overrun my ideas, to see that nothing is forgotten
that should of right be first mentioned."
The Rover, who saw, by the uneasy glances that she cast aside, and by the
expression of her countenance how impatient his companion was becoming for
a sequel that approached so tardily, and how much she dreaded an
interruption, made a significant sign to her to permit the straight-going
tar to take his own course, as the best means of coming at the facts they
both longed so much to hear. Left to himself, Fid soon took the necessary
review of the transactions, in his own quaint manner; and, having happily
found that nothing which he considered as germain to the present relation
was omitted, he proceeded at once to the more material, and what was to
his auditors by far the most interesting, portion of his narrative.
"Well, as I was telling your Honour," he continued, "Guinea was then a
maintopman, and I was stationed in the same place aboard the 'Proserpine,'
a quick-going two-and-thirty, when we fell in with a bit of a smuggler,
between the islands and the Spanish Main; and so the Captain made a prize
of her, and ordered her into port; for which I have always supposed, as he
was a sensible man, he had his orders. But this is neither here nor there,
seeing that the craft had got to the end of her rope, and foundered in a
heavy hurricane that came over us, mayhap a couple of days' run to leeward
of our haven. Well, she was a small boat; and, as she took it into her
mind to roll over on her side before she went to sleep, the master's mate [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]