Chapter Fifty Nine.
listeners seldom hear good things of themselves—Ralph at a dreadful discount with his messmates, but contrives to settle his accounts with his principal debtor.
I left him, with a strong foreboding that he would work me some direful mischief.
For the long day I sat, with my head buried in my hands on the sordid table of our berth. I ate not, I spoke not. The ribaldry of my coarse associates moved me not; their boisterous and vulgar mirth aroused me not. They thought me, owing to my arrest, and my anticipations of its consequences, torpid with fear. They were deceived. I was never more alive. My existence was—if I may so speak—glowing and fiery hot; my sense of being was intense with various misery.
Towards evening, another piece of intelligence reached me, that alarmed and astounded me. Since the laying on of the one lash on the back of Joshua Daunton, our old servant had descended from the mizzen-top, again to wait upon us. He was, in his way, an insatiate news-gatherer; but he was as liberal in dispensing it as he was eager in acquiring it.
The midshipmen were drinking, out of the still unbroken cups and two or three tin pannikins, their grog at eight o’clock in the evening, when our unshod and dirty attendant spoke thus:
“Oh, Mr Pigtop!—such news!—such strange news! You’ll be so very sorry to hear it, sir, and so will all the young gentlemen.”
“What, has the ship tumbled overboard, or the pig-ballast mutinied for arrears of pay?”
“Oh, sir, ten thousand times worse than that! That thief of the world, sir, Joshua Daunton, is not to have his six dozen, after all, though he did corrupt all the midshipmen’s clothes, sir. Dr Thompson has taken him into his own cabin, and nothing is now too good for him.”
“But hanging,” said the indignant and scarred master’s mate. “If he’s not flogged, I’ll have the life out of him yet, though he should turn out to be the only son of Lord Dunknow-Who.” Pigtop was a wit, in a small midshipman-like way. “He’s turned out to be some great man they say, however—in clog or so, I think they call it; though, for my part, I remembers him in irons well enough not more than a fortnight aback—and he’s had a taste of the girl with nine tails, however—that’s one comfort, to me, whatever he may turn out.”
The vulgar have strange sources from which to derive comfort.
“But are you sure of all this, Bill?” said Mr Staines. “Because, if he should turn out to be somebody, I’ll make him pay me for my traps; that’s as certain now as that he’ll be sent to Old Davy.”
“Certain sure. He showed the doctor papers enough to set up a lawyer’s shop. But that’s not the best of it—hum—ha! Do you think, Mr Pigtop, that Mr Rattlin’s caulking?” (i.e., asleep).
“He has not moved these three hours. I owe Rattlin one for bringing this blackguard on board. There may be something in this, after all. He claimed Rattlin as his brother at the gangway, or something of the sort. Now, that makes me comfortable. It will take our proud messmate down a peg or two, I’m calculating—with his smooth face, and his little bits of Latin and Greek, and his parleyvooing. Oh, oh! but it’s as good as a bottle of rum to me. With all his dollars, and his bills, and his airs, I never had a brother seized up at the gangway. And the captain and the officers once made such a fuss about him! Damn his smooth face!—I’ve a great mind to wake him, and hit him a wipe across the chaps. He knocked me down with the davit-block, for twitting him about that girl of his, that was drowned swimming after him. I’ll have satisfaction for that. The captain ordered me to leave the ship for being knocked down. Well—we shall see who’ll be ordered to leave the ship now. I never caused a girl’s death by desarting her. Upon my soul, I’ve a great mind to rouse him, and hit him a slap of the chaps. I hate smooth faces.”
“Well,” said Staines, “you may depend upon it Rattlin is asleep, or he would have wopped you, Pigtop, for your compliments.”
“He! I should very much like to see it—the spooney.”
“If Mr Rattlin is caulking,” said our valet-de-chambre, “there can’t be no harm done whatsomever. But they do say, in the sick-bay, as how Mr Rattlin isn’t himself, but that Joshua Daunton is he, and that he is nobody at all whatsomever; though Gibbons says, and he’s a cute one, that if Mr Rattlin is not Mr Rattlin, seeing as how Joshua Daunton is Mr Rattlin, Mr Rattlin must be somebody else—and as a secret, he told me, as like as not, he must be Joshua Daunton.”
“Well, here’s comfort again. If Mr Rattlin—Mr indeed!—turns out to be a swindler, as I’m sure he will, it wouldn’t be lawful, nor right, nor proper in me to pay him the money I owe him,” said the conscientious Mr Pigtop. “Damn his smooth face!—I should like to have the spoiling of it.”
Here was important information for me to ruminate upon. I was determined to remain still as long as I could gain any intelligence. But the conversation—if conversation we must term the gibberish of my associates—having taken another turn, I slowly lifted up my smooth face, and, confronting Mr Pigtop’s rough one, I said to him, very coolly, “Mr Pigtop, I am going to do what you would very much like to see—I am going to wop you.”
“Wop me!—no, no, it’s not come to that yet. I have heard something—I’ve a character to support—I must not demean myself.”
“There is my smooth face, right before you—I dare you to strike it—you dare not! Then, thus, base rascal, I beat you to the earth!” And Pigtop toppled down.
Now, all this was very wrong on my part, and very imprudent; for I must confess that he had before beaten me in a regular fistic encounter. But it was really a great relief to me. I longed for some vent to my angry and exasperated feelings. We were soon out in the steerage. Oh! the wolfishness of human nature! That low and brutal fight was a great luxury to me. Positively, at the time I did not feel his blows. At every murderous lunge that I made at him, I shouted, “Take that Daunton;” or, “Was that well planted, brother?”
Had we fought either with sword or pistol, the enjoyment would have been infinitely less to me. There was a stern rapture in pounding him beneath me—in dashing my hands in his blood—in disfiguring his face piecemeal. In our evil passions we are sad brutes. Pigtop had the pluck natural to Englishmen—he would rather not have fought just then; but, having once begun, he seemed resolved to see it out manfully. The consequence was—to use a common and expressive phrase—I beat him to within an inch of his life, and then cried with vexation, because he could no longer stand up to be beaten out of the little that my fury had left him.
When the fray was over, my sturdy opponent had no reason to be envious of my smooth face.
Rather inflamed than satiated with the result of my encounter, whilst my opponent turned into his hammock, and there lay moaning, I, with both my eyes dreadfully blackened, and my countenance puffed up, threw myself upon the lockers, and there sleeplessly passed the whole night, devouring my own heart. If, for a moment, I happened to doze, I was tearing, in my imagination, Joshua Daunton piecemeal, hurling him down precipices, or crushing him beneath the jagged fragments of stupendous rocks. It was a night of agony.