Chapter Thirty Nine.
Ralph regenerateth himself and becometh good, for half-an-hour—Singeth one verse of a hymn, escheweth telling one lie, and getteth his reward in being asked to breakfast.
What a nice, varied, sentimental, joyous, lachrymose, objurgatory, laudatory, reflective volume might be made, entitled, “Meditations at the Mast-head!”
When I found myself comfortably established in my aëry domicile, I first looked down on the vessel below with a feeling nearly akin to pity, then around me with a positive feeling of rapture, and at length above me with a heart-warming glow of adoration. Perched up at a height so great, the decks of the frigate looked extremely long and narrow; and the foreshortened view one has of those upon it makes them look but little bigger or more important than so many puppets. Beneath me I saw the discontented author of my elevation, and of “A Tour up and down the Rio de la Plate,” skipping actively here and there to avoid the splashing necessary in washing the decks. I could not help comparing the annoyance of this involuntary dance with the after-guard, this croissez with clattering buckets, and dos à dosing with wet swabs, with my comfortable and commanding recumbency upon the cross-trees. I looked down upon Lieutenant Silva, and pitied him. I looked around me, and my heart was exceeding glad. The upper rim of the sun was dallying with a crimson cloud, whilst the greater part of his disc was still below the well-defined deep-blue horizon. All above him to the zenith was chequered with small vapours, layer over layer, like the scales of a breastplate of burnished gold. The little waves were mantling, dimpling, and seemed playfully striving to emulate the intenser glories of the heavens above. They now flashed into living light, now assumed the blushing hue of a rosebud, and here and there wreathed up into a diminutive foam, mocking the smile of youth when she shows her white teeth between her beauty-breathing lips. As I swung aloft, with a motion gentle as that of the cradled infant, and looked out upon the splendours beneath and around me, my bosom swelled with the most rapturous emotions. Everywhere, as far as my eye could reach, the transparent and beryl-dyed waters were speckled with white sails, actually “blushing rosy red” with the morning beams. Far, far astern, hull down, were the huge dull sailers, spreading all their studding-sails to the wind, reminding me of frightened swans with expanded wings. Conspicuous among these were the two men-of-war brigs, obliquely sailing now here and then there, and ever and anon firing a gun, whose mimic thunder came with melodious resonance over the waters, whilst the many-coloured signals were continually flying and shifting. They were the hawks among the covey of the larger white-plumed birds.
At this moment our gallant frigate, like a youthful and a regal giant, more majestic from the lightness of her dress, walked in conscious superiority in the midst of all. She had, as I before mentioned, just set her top-gallant sails, in order to take her proud station in the van. We now passed vessel after vessel, each with a different quantity of canvas set, according to her powers of sailing. It was altogether a glorious sight, and to my feelings, excelled in quiet and cheerful sublimity any review, however splendid might be the troops, or imposing their numbers. Then the breeze came so freshly and kissingly on my cheek, whispering such pleasant things to my excited fancy, and invigorating so joyously the fibres of my heart—I looked around me, and was glad.
When the soul is big with all good and pure feelings, gratitude will be there; and, at her smiling invitation, piety will come cheerfully and clasp her hand. Surely not that sectarian piety, which metes out wrath instead of mercy to an erring world; not that piety, dealing “damnation round the land,” daily making the pale, within which the only few to be saved are folded, more and more circumscribed; nor even that bigotted, sensuous piety, which floats on the frankincense that eddies round the marble altar, and which, if unassisted by the vista of the dark aisle, the dimly-seen procession, the choral hymn, the banner, and the relic, faints, and sees no God: no, none of these will be the piety of a heart exulting in the beneficence of the All-Good. Then and there, why should I have wished to have crept and grovelled under piled and sordid stone? Since first the aspiring architect spanned the arch at Thebes, which is not everlasting, and lifted the column at Rome, which is not immortal, was there ever dome like that which glowed over my head imagined by the brain of man? “Fretted with golden fires,” and studded with such glorious clouds, that it were almost sinful not to believe that each veiled an angel; the vast concave, based all around upon the sapphire horizon, sprang upwards, terminating above me in that deep, deep, immeasurable blue, the best type of eternity;—was not this a fitting temple for worship? What frankincense was ever equal to that which nature then spread over the wave and through the air? All this I saw—all this I felt. I looked upwards, and I was at once enraptured and humbled. Perhaps then, for the first time since I had left my schoolboy’s haunts, I bethought me that there was a God. Too, too often I had heard his awful presence wantonly invoked, his sacred name taken in vain. Lately, I had not shuddered at this habitual profanation. The work of demoralisation had commenced. I knew it then, and with this knowledge, the first pang of guilty shame entered my bosom. I stood up with reverence upon the cross-trees. I took off my hat, and though I did not even whisper the prayers we had used at school, mentally I went through the whole of them. When I said to myself, “I have done those things that I ought not to have done, and have left undone those things that I ought to have done,” I was startled at the measure of sin that I had confessed. I think that I was contrite. I resolved to amend. I gradually flung off the hardness that my late life of recklessness had been encrusting upon my heart. I softened towards all who had ever shown me kindness; and, in my mind, I faithfully retraced the last time that I had ever walked to church with her whom I had been fond to deem my mother. These silent devotions, and these home-harmonised thoughts, first chastened, and then made me very, very happy. At last, I felt the spirit of blissful serenity so strong upon me, that, forgetting for a moment to what ridicule I might subject myself; I began to sing aloud that morning hymn that I had never omitted, for so many years, until I had joined the service—
“Awake, my soul, and with the sun.”
And I confess that I sang the whole of the first verse.
I am sure that no one will sneer at all this. The good will not—the wicked dare not. The worst of us, even if his sin have put on the armour of infidelity, must remember the time when he believed in a God of love, and loved to believe it. For the sake of that period of happiness, he will not, cannot condemn the expression of feelings, and the manifestation of a bliss that he has himself voluntarily, and, if he would ask his own heart, and record the answer, miserably, cast away.
However, it will be long before I again trouble the reader with anything so outré as that which I have just written. Many were the days of error, and the nights of sin, that passed before I again even looked into my own heart. The feelings with which I made my mast-head orisons are gone and for ever. How often, and with what bitterness of spirit, have I said, “Would that I had then died!” If there is mercy in heaven—I say it with reverence—I feel assured that then to have passed away, would have been but the closing of the eyes on earth to awaken immediately in the lap of a blissful immortality. Since then the world’s foot has been upon my breast, and I have writhed under the opprobrious weight; and, with sinful pride and self-trust, have, though grovelling in the dust, returned scorn for scorn, and injury for injury—even wrong for wrong.
I have been a sad dog, and that’s the truth; but—
I have been forced to hunt, and to house, and to howl with dogs much worse than myself; and that’s equally true.
“Maintopmast-head there,” squeaked out the very disagreeable treble of Captain Reud, who had then come on deck, as I was trolling, “Shake off dull sloth, and early rise.”
“Mr Rattlin, what do you say?”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“Ay, ay, sir! what were you saying? How many sails are there in sight?”
“I can’t make out, sir.”
“Why not? Have you counted them?”
Now, as I before stated, I had taken off my hat, and was standing up in a fit of natural devotion; and the captain, no doubt, thought that I was bareheaded, and shading my eyes, the better to reckon the convoy. To lie would have been so easy, and I was tempted to reply to the question, that I had. But my better feelings predominated; so, at the risk of a reprimand, I answered, “Not yet, sir.”
At this moment Mr Silva, the lieutenant of the watch, placed the mast-head look-outs, and sent the signal-man up to assist me in counting the convoy; and, at the same time, the latter bore me a quiet message, that when the number was ascertained I might come down.
I came on deck, and gave the report.
“I am very glad, Mr Rattlin,” said the captain, approvingly, “to see you so attentive to your duty. No doubt you went up of your own accord to count the convoy?”
“Indeed, sir,” said I, with a great deal of humility, “I did not.”
“What—how? I thought when I came on deck I heard you singing out.”
“I was mast-headed, sir.”
“Mast-headed! How—for what?”
At this question, revenge, with her insidious breath, came whispering her venom into my ear; but a voice, to the warnings of which I have too seldom attended, seemed to reverberate in the recesses of my heart, and say, “Be generous.” If I had told the truth maliciously, I should have assuredly have drawn ridicule, and perhaps anger, on the head of the lieutenant, and approbation to myself. I therefore briefly replied, “For impertinence to Mr Silva, sir.”
And I was amply repaid by the eloquent look that, with eyes actually moistened, my late persecutor cast upon me. I read the look aright, and knew, from that moment, that he was deserving of better things than a continued persecution for having unfortunately misapplied an expression. I immediately made a vow that I would read the “Tour up and down the Rio de la Plate,” with exemplary assiduity.
“I am glad,” said the captain, “that you candidly acknowledge your offence, instead of disrespectfully endeavouring to justify it. I hope, Mr Silva, that it is not of that extent to preclude me from asking him to breakfast with us this morning?”
“By no means,” said Silva, his features sparkling with delight; “he is a good lad: I have reason to say, a very good lad.”
I understood him; and though no explanations ever took place between us, we were, till he was driven from the ship, the most perfect friends.
“Well,” said the captain, as he turned go down the quarter-deck ladder, “you will, at the usual time, both of you, pave your way into the cabin. I am sure, Mr Silva, you won’t object to that, though I have not yet made up my mind as to the propriety of the expression, so we’ll have the purser, and talk it over in a friendly, good-humoured way.” And saying this, he disappeared, with a look of merry malignancy that no features but his own could so adequately express.
The scene at the breakfast-table was of the usual description. Authority, masking ill-nature under the guise of quizzing, on the one hand, and literary obstinacy fast resolving itself into deep personal hostility on the other.