Kitobni o'qish: «Philosopher Jack»

Chapter One
Treats of our Hero and Others

If the entire circuit of a friend’s conversation were comprised in the words “Don’t” and “Do,”—it might perhaps be taken for granted that his advice was not of much value; nevertheless, it is a fact that Philosopher Jack’s most intimate and valuable—if not valued—friend never said anything to him beyond these two words. Nor did he ever condescend to reason. He listened, however, with unwearied patience to reasoning, but when Jack had finished reasoning and had stated his proposed course of action, he merely said to him, “Don’t,” or “Do.”

“For what end was I created?” said the philosopher, gloomily.

Wise and momentous question when seriously put, but foolish remark, if not worse, when flung out in bitterness of soul!

Jack, whose other name was Edwin, and his age nineteen, was a student. Being of an argumentative turn of mind, his college companions had dubbed him Philosopher. Tall, strong, active, kindly, hilarious, earnest, reckless, and impulsive, he was a strange compound, with a handsome face, a brown fluff on either cheek, and a moustache like a lady’s eyebrow. Moreover, he was a general favourite, yet this favoured youth, sitting at his table in his own room, sternly repeated the question—in varied form and with increased bitterness—“Why was I born at all?”

Deep wrinkles of perplexity sat on his youthful brow. Evidently he could not answer his own question, though in early life his father had carefully taught him the “Shorter Catechism with proofs,” while his good old mother had enforced and exemplified the same. His taciturn friend was equally unable, or unwilling, to give a reply.

After prolonged meditation, Jack relieved his breast of a deep sigh and re-read a letter which lay open on his desk. Having read it a third time with knitted brows, he rose, went to the window, and gazed pathetically on the cat’s parade, as he styled his prospect of slates and chimney cans.

“So,” said he at last, “my dreams are over; prospects gone; hopes collapsed—all vanished like the baseless fabric of a vision.”

He turned from the cat’s parade, on which the shades of evening were descending, to the less romantic contemplation of his empty fire-grate.

“Now,” said he, re-seating himself at his table and stretching his long legs under it, “the question is, What am I to do? shall I kick at fate, throw care, like physic, to the dogs, cut the whole concern, and go to sea?”

“Don’t,” said his taciturn friend, speaking distinctly for the first time.

“Or,” continued Jack, “shall I meekly bow to circumstances, and struggle with my difficulties as best I may?”

“Do,” replied his friend, whose name, by the way, was Conscience.

For a long time the student sat gazing at the open letter in silence. It was from his father, and ran thus:—

“Dear Teddie,—It’s a long time now that I’ve been thinkin’ to write you, and couldn’t a-bear to give you such a heavy disappointment but can’t putt it off no longer, and, as your mother, poor soul, says, it’s the Lord’s will and can’t be helped—which, of course, it shouldn’t be helped if that’s true—but—well, howsomever, it’s of no use beatin’ about the bush no longer. The seasons have been bad for some years past, and it’s all I’ve been able to do to make the two ends meet, with your mother slavin’ like a nigger patchin’ up the child’n’s old rags till they’re like Joseph’s coat after the wild beast had done its worst on it—though we are given to understand that the only wild beasts as had to do with that coat was Joseph’s own brothers. Almost since ever I left the North of England—a small boy—and began to herd cattle on the Border hills, I’ve had a strange wish to be a learned man, and ever since I took to small farmin’, and perceived that such was not to be my lot in life, I’ve had a powerful desire to see my eldest son—that’s you, dear boy—trained in scientific pursoots, all the more that you seemed to have a natural thirst that way yourself. Your mother, good soul, in her own broad tongue—which I’ve picked up somethin’ of myself through livin’ twenty year with her—was used to say she ‘wad raither see her laddie trained in ways o’ wisdom than o’ book-learnin’,’ which I’m agreed to myself, though it seems to me the two are more or less mixed up. Howsomever, it’s all up now, my boy; you’ll have to fight your own battle and pay your own way, for I’ve not got one shillin’ to rub on another, except what’ll pay the rent; and, what with the grey mare breakin’ her leg an’ the turnips failin’, the look-out ahead is darkish at the best.”

The letter finished with some good advice and a blessing.

To be left thus without resources, just when the golden gates of knowledge were opening, and a few dazzling gleams of the glory had pierced his soul, was a crushing blow to the poor student. If he had been a true philosopher, he would have sought counsel on his knees, but his philosophy was limited; he only took counsel with himself and the immediate results were disastrous.

“Yes,” said he, with an impulsive gush, “I’ll go to sea.”

“Don’t,” said his quiet friend.

But, regardless of this advice, Edwin Jack smote the table with his clenched fist so violently that his pen leapt out of its ink-bottle and wrote its own signature on one of his books. He rose in haste and rang the bell.

“Mrs Niven,” he said to his landlady, “let me know how much I owe you. I’m about to leave town—and—and won’t return.”

“Ech! Maister Jack; what for?” exclaimed the astonished landlady.

“Because I’m a beggar,” replied the youth, with a bitter smile, “and I mean to go to sea.”

“Hoots! Maister Jack, ye’re jokin’.”

“Indeed I am very far from joking, Mrs Niven; I have no money, and no source of income. As I don’t suppose you would give me board and lodging for nothing, I mean to leave.”

“Toots! ye’re haverin’,” persisted Mrs Niven, who was wont to treat her “young men” with motherly familiarity. “Tak’ time to think o’t, an’ ye’ll be in anither mind the morn’s mornin’. Nae doot ye’re—”

“Now, my good woman,” interrupted Jack, firmly but kindly, “don’t bother me with objections or advice, but do what I bid you—there’s a good soul; be off.”

Mrs Niven saw that she had no chance of impressing her lodger in his present mood; she therefore retired, while Jack put on a rough pilot-cloth coat and round straw hat in which he was wont at times to go boating. Thus clad, he went off to the docks of the city in which he dwelt; the name of which city it is not important that the reader should know.

In a humble abode near the said docks a bulky sea-captain lay stretched in his hammock, growling. The prevailing odours of the neighbourhood were tar, oil, fish, and marine-stores. The sea-captain’s room partook largely of the same odours, and was crowded with more than an average share of the stores. It was a particularly small room, with charts, telescopes, speaking-trumpets, log-lines, sextants, portraits of ships, sou’-westers, oil-cloth coats and leggings on the walls; model ships suspended from the beams overhead; sea-boots, coils of rope, kegs, and handspikes on the floor; and great shells, earthenware ornaments, pagodas, and Chinese idols on the mantel-piece. In one corner stood a child’s crib. The hammock swung across the room like a heavy cloud about to descend and overwhelm the whole. This simile was further borne out by the dense volumes of tobacco smoke in which the captain enveloped himself, and through which his red visage loomed over the edge of the hammock like a lurid setting sun.

For a few minutes the clouds continued to multiply and thicken. No sound broke the calm that prevailed, save a stertorous breathing, with an occasional hitch in it. Suddenly there was a convulsion in the clouds, and one of the hitches developed into a tremendous cough. There was something almost awe-inspiring in the cough. The captain was a huge and rugged man. His cough was a terrible compound of a choke, a gasp, a rend, and a roar. Only lungs of sole-leather could have weathered it. Each paroxysm suggested the idea that the man’s vitals were being torn asunder; but not content with that, the exasperated mariner made matters worse by keeping up a continual growl of indignant remonstrance in a thunderous undertone.

“Hah! that was a splitter. A few more hug—sh! ha! like that will burst the biler entirety. Polly—hallo!”

The lurid sun appeared to listen for a moment, then opening its mouth it shouted, “Polly—ahoy!” as if it were hailing the maintop of a seventy-four.

Immediately there was a slight movement in one corner of the room, and straightway from out a mass of marine-stores there emerged a fairy! At least, the little girl, of twelve or thereabouts, who suddenly appeared, with rich brown tumbling hair, pretty blue eyes, faultless figure, and ineffable sweetness in every lineament of her little face, might easily have passed for a fairy or an angel.

“What! caught you napping?” growled the captain in the midst of a paroxysm.

“Only a minute, father; I couldn’t help it,” replied Polly, with a little laugh, as she ran to the fireplace and took up a saucepan that simmered there.

“Here, look alive! shove along! hand it up! I’m chokin’!”

The child held the saucepan as high as she could towards the hammock. The captain, reaching down one of his great arms, caught it and took a steaming draught. It seemed to relieve him greatly.

“You’re a trump for gruel, Polly,” he growled, returning the saucepan. “Now then, up with the pyramid, and give us a nor’-wester.”

The child returned the saucepan to the fireplace, and then actively placed a chair nearly underneath the hammock. Upon the chair she set a stool, and on the top she perched herself. Thus she was enabled to grasp the lurid sun by two enormous whiskers, and, putting her lips out, gave it a charming “nor’-wester,” which was returned with hyperborean violence. Immediately after, Polly ducked her head, and thus escaped being blown away, like a Hindoo mutineer from a cannon’s mouth, as the captain went off in another fit.

“Oh! father,” said Polly, quite solemnly, as she descended and looked up from a comparatively safe distance, “isn’t it awful?”

“Yes, Poll, it’s about the wust ’un I’ve had since I came from Barbadoes; but the last panful has mollified it, I think, and your nor’-wester has Pollyfied it, so, turn into your bunk, old girl, an’ take a nap. You’ve much need of it, poor thing.”

“No, father, if I get into my crib I’ll sleep so heavy that you won’t be able to wake me. I’ll just lie down where I was before.”

“Well, well—among the rubbish if ye prefer it; no matter s’long as you have a snooze,” growled the captain as he turned over, while the fairy disappeared into the dark recess from which she had risen.

Just then a tap was heard at the door. “Come in,” roared the captain. A tall, broad-shouldered, nautical-looking man entered, took off his hat, and stood before the hammock, whence the captain gave him a stern, searching glance, and opened fire on him with his pipe.

“Forgive me if I intrude, Captain Samson,” said the stranger; “I know you, although you don’t know me. You start to-morrow or next day, I understand, for Melbourne?”

“Wind and weather permittin’,” growled the captain. “Well, what then?”

“Have you completed your crew?” asked the stranger.

“Nearly. What then?” replied the captain with a touch of ferocity, for he felt sensations of an approaching paroxysm.

“Will you engage me?” asked Philosopher Jack, for it was he.

“In what capacity?” demanded the captain somewhat sarcastically.

“As an ordinary seaman—or a boy if you will,” replied Edwin, with a smile.

“No,” growled Samson, decisively, “I won’t engage you; men with kid gloves and white hands don’t suit me.”

From the mere force of habit the young student had pulled on his gloves on leaving his lodging, and had only removed that of the right hand on entering the captain’s dwelling. He now inserted a finger at the wrist of the left-hand glove, ripped it off, and flung it with its fellow under the grate. Thereafter he gathered some ashes and soot from the fireplace, with which he put his hands on a footing with those of a coal-heaver.

“Will you take me now, captain?” he said, returning to the hammock, and spreading out his hands.

The captain gave vent to a short laugh, which brought on a tremendous fit, at the conclusion of which he gasped, “Yes, my lad, p’r’aps I will; but first I must know something about you.”

“Certainly,” said the philosopher, and at once gave the captain a brief outline of his circumstances.

“Well, you know your own affairs best” said Captain Samson when he had finished; “I’m no judge of such a case, but as you’re willin’ to ship, I’m willin’ to ship you. Come here before ten to-morrow. Good night. There, it’s a-comin’—hash—k—!”

In the midst of another furious paroxysm Edwin Jack retired.

Not long after, the captain raised himself on one elbow, listened intently for a few seconds, and, having satisfied himself that Polly was asleep, slipped from his hammock—as only seamen know how—and proceeded to dress with the utmost caution. He was evidently afraid of the little sleeper among the rubbish. It was quite interesting to observe the quiet speed with which he thrust his great limbs into his ample garments, gazing anxiously all the time at Polly’s corner.

Issuing from his own door with the step of an elephantine mouse, the captain went rapidly through several streets to the house of an intimate friend, whom he found at supper with his wife and family.

“Evenin’, Bailie Trench; how are ’ee, Mrs T? how’s everybody?” said the captain, in a hearty rasping voice, as he shook hands right and left, while one of his huge legs was taken possession of, and embraced, by the bailie’s only daughter, a pretty little girl of six.

“Why, Samson,” exclaimed the bailie, after quiet had been restored, and his friend had been thrust into a chair with little Susan on his knee, “I thought you were laid up with influenza—eh?”

“So I was, bailie, an’ so I am,” replied the captain; “leastwise I’m still on the sick-list, and was in my hammock till about half an hour ago, but I’m gettin’ round fast. The night air seems to do me a world o’ good—contrariwise to doctor’s expectations.”

“Have some supper?” said Mrs Trench, who was a weakish lady with watery eyes.

“No supper, Mrs T, thank ’ee; the fact is, I’ve come on business. I should be on my beam-ends by rights. I’m absent without leave, an’ have only a few minutes to spare. The passenger I spoke of has changed his mind and his berth is free, so I’m glad to be able to take your son Ben after all. But he’ll have to get ready quick, for the Lively Poll sails the day after to-morrow or next day—all bein’ well.”

The eyes of young Benjamin Trench sparkled. He was a tall, thin, rather quiet lad of eighteen.

“I can be ready to-night if you wish it, Captain Samson,” he said, with a flush on his usually pale face.

Beside Mrs Trench there sat a sturdy little boy. He was the bosom friend of Ben—a bright ruddy fellow of fourteen, overflowing with animal spirits, and with energy enough for three lads of his size. This youth’s countenance fell so visibly when Ben spoke of going away, that Mrs Trench could not help noticing it.

“Why, what’s the matter, Wilkins?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing!” returned the boy, “only I don’t like to hear Ben speak of leaving us all and going to Australia. And I would give all the world to go with him. Won’t you take me as a cabin boy, Captain Samson?”

“Sorry I can’t, lad,” said the captain, with a grin, “got a cabin boy already.”

“Besides, your father would not let you,” said Mrs Trench, “and it would never do to go without his leave. Only misfortune could come of that.”

“Humph! it’s very hard,” pouted the boy. “I wanted him to get me into the navy, and he wouldn’t; and now I want him to get me into the merchant service, and he won’t. But I’ll go in spite of him.”

“No, you won’t, Watty,” said Ben, laying his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“Yes, Ben, I will,” returned little Wilkins, with such an air of determination that every one except Ben laughed.

“Now, bailie,” said the captain, rising, “I’m off. The truth is, I wouldn’t have come if it had not been important to let you know at once to get your boy ready; but I had no one to send except Polly, and I wouldn’t send her out at night by herself for all the wealth of Indy. Moreover, she wouldn’t have let me out to-night for any consideration whatever. She’s very strict with me, is my little keeper. I wouldn’t for the world she should wake and find me gone. So, good-night all.”

Ten minutes more, and the guilty man entered his dwelling on tiptoe. In order to get into his hammock with extreme caution he forsook his ancient method of a spring, and mounted on an empty cask. The cask was not equal to the emergency. He went through the head of it with a hideous crash! Spurning it from him, he had just time to plunge into his place of repose and haul the clothes over him, when Polly emerged from her lair with wondering eyes.

“What ever was that, father?”

“Nothin’, my dear, nothin’ in partickler—only a cask I kicked over. Now, then, Poll, since you’re keepin’ me awake in this fashion, it’s your dooty to soothe me with an extra panful, and another nor’-wester—so, up wi’ the pyramid; and after you’ve done it you must turn into your crib. I’ll not want you again to-night; the cough’s much better. There—thank ’ee. Pollyfy me now—that’s right. Good-night.”

Oh, base mariner! little did you merit such a pleasant termination to your evening’s work; but you are not the only wicked man in this world who receives more than he deserves.

Two days after the incidents just related a noble ship spread her canvas to a favouring breeze, and bowing farewell to her port of departure, commenced the long long voyage to the Antipodes.

She was not a passenger ship, but a trader; nevertheless there were a few passengers on her quarter-deck, and among these towered the colossal figure of Captain Samson. Beside him, holding his hand, stood a fairy-like little creature with brown curls and pretty blue eyes. Not far from her, leaning over the bulwarks, Benjamin Trench frantically waved a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. The signal was responded to, with equal feeling, by the bailie, his wife, and little Susan. A good number of people, young and old, assembled at the pier-head, among whom many waved handkerchiefs, and hands, and scarfs, and hats to the crew.

Among the sailors who gazed wistfully towards the pier was one who made no farewell signal, and received no parting wave. Philosopher Jack had concealed his intention of going to sea from all his college chums, and a bitter feeling of loneliness oppressed his heart as he thought of his old father and mother, and the lowly cottage on the Border hills. He had not, indeed, acted in direct opposition to the wishes of his parents, but he had disobeyed the well-known Scripture command to do them “honour,” for he had resolved on his course of action without consulting them, or asking their advice. He felt that he had very selfishly forsaken them in their old age; in the hour of their sore distress, and at a time when they stood woefully in need of his strong muscles, buoyant spirit, and energetic brain. In short, Edwin Jack began to feel that he required all his philosophy, and something more, to enable him to face the future with the unflinching courage of a man.

So the ship moved slowly on, revealing on her stern the “Lively Poll” in letters of burnished gold—past the pier-head, down the broad river, out upon the widening firth, beyond lighthouse, buoy, and beacon, until at last the fresh Atlantic breezes filled her snowy sails.

And ever as she rose and sank upon the rolling waves, their swish and thud fell strangely on the ear of one who lay deep down in the recesses of the hull, where—among barrels of pork, and casks of tar, and cans of oil, and coils of rope, and other unsavoury stores—he consorted with rats and mice and an uneasy conscience, in thick darkness. This was a “stowaway.” He was a sturdy, bright, ruddy little fellow of fourteen. Down in that unwholesome place, with a few ship-biscuits and a bottle of water to keep him alive, he would have looked like a doubled-up overgrown hedgehog if there had been light enough to reveal him.

Thus, with its little world of hopes and fears, its cares and pleasures, and its brave, trembling, trusting, sorrowing, joyful, anxious, reckless hearts, the good ship passed from the shores of Britain, until her sails quivered like a petrel’s wings on the horizon, and then vanished into the boundless bosom of the mighty sea.