THE CHINESE JUGGLERS, AND THE ENGLISHMAN'S HANDS.
(Founded on Fact.)
Cousin Peregrine had never been away quite so long before. He had been in the East, and the latter part of his absence from home had been spent not only in a foreign country, but in parts of it where Englishmen had seldom been before, and amid the miserable scenes of war.
However, he was at home at last, very much to the satisfaction of his young cousins, and also to his own. They had been assured by him, in a highly illustrated letter, that his arms were safe and sound in his coat-sleeves, that he had no wooden legs, and that they might feel him all over for wounds as hard as they liked. Only Maggie, the eldest, could even fancy she remembered Cousin Peregrine, but they all seemed to know him by his letters, even before he arrived. At last he came.
Cousin Peregrine was dressed like other people, much to the disappointment of his young relatives, who when they burst (with more or less attention to etiquette) into the dining-room with the dessert, were in full expectation of seeing him in his uniform, or at least with his latest medal pinned to his dress-coat.
Perhaps it was because Cousin Peregrine was so very seldom troubled by chubby English children with a claim on his good nature that he was particularly indulgent to his young cousins. However this may be, they soon stood in no awe of him, and a chorus cried around him—
"Where's your new medal, Cousin? What's it about? What's on it?"
"Taku Forts," said Cousin Peregrine, smiling grimly.
"What's Tar—Koo?" inquired the young people.
"Taku is the name of a place in China, and you know I've just come from China," said Cousin Peregrine.
On which six voices cried—
"Did you drink nothing but tea?"
"Did you buy lots of old China dragons?"
"Did you see any ladies with half their feet cut off?"
"Did you live in a house with bells hanging from the roof?"
"Are the Chinese like the people on Mamma's fan?"
"Did you wear a pigtail?"
Cousin Peregrine's hair was so very short that the last question raised a roar of laughter, after which the chorus spoke with one voice—
"Do tell us all about China!"
At which he put on a serio-comic countenance, and answered with much gravity—
"Oh, certainly, with all my heart. It will be rather a long story, but never mind. By the way, I am afraid I can hardly begin much before the birth of Confucius, but as that happened in or about the year 550 b.c., you will still have to hear about two thousand four hundred years of its history or so, which will keep us going for a few months".
"Confucius—whose real name was Kwang-Foo-Tsz (and if you can pronounce that last word properly you can do more than many eminent Chinese scholars can)—was born in the province of Kan Tang——.
"Oh, not about Confuse-us!" pleaded a little maid on Cousin Peregrine's knee. "Tell us what you did."
"But tell us wonderful things," stipulated a young gentleman, fresh from The Boy Hunters and kindred works.
If young bachelors have a weak point when they are kind to children, it is that they are apt to puzzle them with paradoxes. Even Cousin Peregrine did "sometimes tease," so his cousins said.
On this occasion he began a long rambling speech, in which he pretended not to know what things are and what are not wonderful. The Boy Hunters young gentleman fell headlong into the quagmire of definitions, but the oldest sister, who had her own ideas about things, said firmly—
"Wonderful things are things which surprise you very much, and which you never saw before, and which you don't understand. Like as if you saw a lot of giants coming out of a hole in the road. At least that's what we mean by wonderful."
"Upon my word, Maggie," said Cousin Peregrine, "your definition is most admirable. I cannot say that I have met with giants in China, even in the north, where the men are taller than in the south. But I can tell you of something I saw in China which surprised me very much, which I had never seen before, and which, I give you my word, I don't understand to this hour, but which I have no doubt was not in the least wonderful to the poor half-naked Chinaman who did it in my courtyard. And then, if you like, I will tell you something else which surprised some Chinese country-folk very much, which they never saw before, and which they certainly did not understand when they did see it. Will that do?"
"Oh yes, yes! Thank you, yes!" cried the chorus, and Maggie said—
"First all about the thing you thought wonderful, you know."
"Well, the thing I thought wonderful was a conjuring trick done by a Chinese juggler."
"Did he only do one trick?" said the little maid on Cousin Peregrine's knee.
"Oh, he did lots of tricks," said Cousin Peregrine, "many of them common Eastern ones, which are now familiar in England, but which he certainly performed in a wonderful way: because, you see, he had not the advantage of doing his tricks on a stage fitted up by himself, he did them in the street, or in my courtyard, with very little apparatus, and naked to the waist. For instance, the common trick of bringing a glass bowl full of water and fish out of a seemingly empty shawl is not so marvellous if the conjurer has a well-draped table near him from behind which he can get such things, or even good wide sleeves to hide them in. But my poor conjurer was almost naked, and the bit of carpet, about the size of this hearthrug, which he carried with him, did not seem capable of holding glass bowls of water, most certainly. Besides which he shook it, and spread it on the ground close by me, after which he threw himself down and rolled on it. And yet from underneath this he drew out a glass bowl of water with gold-fish swimming in it. But that trick and many others one can see very well done in London now, though not so utterly without apparatus. The trick which he did so particularly well, and which puzzled me so much, I have never seen in Europe. This is the one I am going to describe to you."
"Describe the conjurer a bit more first, Cousin Peregrine."
"There is nothing more to describe. He was not at all a grand conjurer, he was only a poor common juggler, exhibiting his tricks in the public streets many times in the day for the few small coins which the bystanders chose to give him. He was a very merry fellow, and all the time he was about his performance he kept making fun and jokes; and these amused the audience so much that you may believe that I was sorry my ignorance of his language hindered me from understanding them.
"All sorts of people used to stop and look at the juggler: brawny porters, with loads of merchandise, or boxes of tea, or bars of silver, which they carried in boxes or baskets slung on bamboo poles over their shoulders."
"Like the pictures on the tea-boxes," whispered little Bessy.
"There's a figure of it in the grocer's window," said her brother, who had seen more of the world than Bessy; "not a picture, a figure dressed in silk; and they're square boxes, not baskets, that he's got—wooden panniers I call them."
"Who else used to stop, Cousin Peregrine?" asked Maggie.
"Street confectioners, Maggie, with small movable sweetmeat stalls, which they carry on their backs. Men with portable stoves too, who always have a cup of tea ready for you for a small coin worth about the twentieth part of a penny. Tiny-footed women toddling awkwardly along, with children—also cramp-footed—toddling awkwardly after them, dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, and with their poor little arms stuck out at right angles with their bodies, to help them to keep their balance. Even the blind beggars, who go along striking on a bell to let people know that they are blind, as otherwise they might be knocked over, even they used to stop and listen to my juggler's jokes, though they could not see his tricks.
"All this was in the street; but sometimes I got him to come into my own courtyard to do his tricks there, that I might watch him more carefully. But watch as I might, I could never see how he did this particular feat. He used to do it with no clothes on except a pair of short trousers, for in the hot season, you must know, the lower classes of Chinese go about naked to the waist. Indeed, hot as it is, they don't wear hats. The juggler possessed both a hat and a jacket, as it happened, but he took them off when he did his trick."
"And what was the trick?" asked several impatient voices. "What did he do?"
"He used to swallow ten or twelve needles one after the other, and 'wash them down' with a ball of thread, which he swallowed next, and by and by he used to draw the thread slowly out of his mouth, yard after yard, and it had all the needles threaded on it."
"Oh, Cousin Peregrine!"
"He used to come quite close to me, Maggie, as close as I am to you now, and take each needle—one after the other—between the finger and thumb of his right hand—keeping all the other fingers away from it, stick the point of it for a moment into his other palm, to show that it was sharp, and then to all appearance swallow it bodily before your eyes. In this way he seemed to swallow successively all the twelve needles. Then he opened his mouth, that you might ascertain that they were not there, and you certainly could not see them. He next swallowed a little ball of thread, not much bigger than a pea. This being done, he seemed to be very uneasy (as well he might be!), and he made fearful faces and violent gestures, and stamped on the ground, and muttered incantations, and threw up his hands and eyes to the sky; and presently the end of a thread was to be seen coming out between his teeth, upon which he took hold of this end, and carefully drew out the thread with all the needles threaded on it. Then there was always much applause, and the small coins used to be put pretty liberally into the hat which he handed round to receive them."
"Was that all?" asked the young gentleman of the adventure books.
"All what, Fred?"
"All that you thought wonderful."
"Yes," said Cousin Peregrine. "Don't you think it curious?"
"Oh, very, Cousin, and I like it very much indeed, only if that's all you thought wonderful, now I want you to tell us what you did that the Chinese thought wonderful."
"It's not very easy to surprise a town-bred Chinaman," said Cousin Peregrine. "What I am going to tell you about now happened in the country. It was up in the north, and in a part where Europeans had very rarely been seen."
"How came you to be there, Cousin Peregrine?"
"I was not on duty. I had got leave for a few days to go up and see Pekin. Therefore I was not in uniform, remember, but in plain clothes.
"On this particular occasion I was on the river Peiho, in one of the clumsy Chinese river-boats. If the wind were favourable, we sailed; if we went with the stream—well and good. If neither stream nor wind were in our favour, the boat was towed."
"Like a barge—with a horse—Cousin Peregrine?"
"Like a barge, Maggie, but not with a horse. One or two of the Chinamen put the rope round them and pulled us along. It was not a quick way of travelling, as you may believe, and when the Peiho was slow and winding, I got out and walked by the paths among the fields."
"Paths and fields—like ours?"
"Yes. Very like some bits of the agricultural parts of England. But no pretty meadows. Every scrap of land seemed to be cultivated for crops. You know the population of China is enormous, and the Chinese are very economical in using their land to produce food, and as they are not great meat-eaters—as we are—their fields are mostly ploughed and sown, so I walked along among rice-fields and cotton-fields, and with little villages here and there, where the cottages are built of mud or stone with tile roofs."
"Did you see any of the villagers?"
"Most certainly I did. You must know that the inhospitable way in which the Chinese and Japanese have for many long years received strangers has come from misunderstandings, and ignorance, and suspicion, and perhaps from some other reasons; but the Chinese and Japanese villagers who see strangers for the first time, and have lived quiet country lives out of the way of politics, are often very hospitable and friendly. I am bound, however, to except the women; not because they wished us ill, but they are afraid of strangers, and they kept well out of our way."
"Do the village Chinese women have those funny smashed-up feet, Cousin Peregrine?"
"In the north of China they have. In the south only ladies deform themselves in this fashion; and the Tartar women always leave their own beautiful little feet uninjured. Well, the men came out of their cottages and fields, and pressed eagerly but good-naturedly round me."
"Do the village men wear pigtails?"
"Every Chinaman wears a pigtail. A Chinaman without a pigtail would be as great a rarity as a Manx cat, or rather, I ought to say, he would be like the tailless fox in the fable; only you would never catch a Chinaman trying to persuade his friends that it was creditable to have no tail! For I must tell you that pigtails are sometimes cut off—as a degradation—when a man has committed some crime. But as soon as he can, he gets the barber to put him on a false pigtail, as a closely-cropped convict might wear a wig. They roll them up when they are at work if they are in the way, but if a servant came into your room with his tail tucked up you would be very angry with him. It would be like a housemaid coming in with her sleeves and skirt tucked up for house-cleaning—most disrespectful!"
"Were these the men you showed something to that they thought wonderful?"
"Yes, Fred. And now I'll tell you what it was. You must know that I could speak no Chinese, and my new friends could speak no English, so they chattered like magpies to each other, and laughed like children or Chinamen—for the Chinese are very fond of a joke. When they laughed I laughed, and we bowed and shook hands, and they turned me round and felt me all over, and felt my hands."
"What about your hands, Cousin?"
"I had on dog-skin gloves, yellow ones. Now when all the male population of the hamlet had stroked these very carefully, I perceived that they had never seen gloves before, and that they believed themselves to be testing the feel of a barbarian's skin."
"Barbarian?"
"Certainly, Bessie. They give us the same polite name that we feel ourselves more justified in applying to them. Well, when they had laughed, and I had laughed, and we had shaken hands afresh, laughing heartily as we did so, and I began to feel it was time to go on and catch up my boat, which was floating sluggishly down the winding stream of the Peiho, I resolved on one final effect, like the last scene of a dramatic performance. Making vigorous signs and noises, to intimate that something was coming, and they must look out sharp, and feeling very much like a conjurer who has requested his audience to keep their eyes on him and 'see how it's done'—I slyly unbuttoned my gloves, and then with much parade began to draw one off by the finger-tips.
"'Eyah! Eyah!' cried the Chinamen on all the notes of the gamut, as they fell back over each other. They thought I was skinning my hands. I 'smiled superior,' as I took the gloves off, and made an effect almost as great by putting them on again."
"Oh, Cousin Peregrine, weren't they astonished?"
"They were, Maggie, And unless they are more familiar with Europeans now, the mystery is probably to this day as unsolved to them as the trick of the ball of thread and the twelve needles still is to me. By this time, however, my boat was
'Far off, a blot upon the stream,'
and I had to hasten away as fast as I could to catch it up. I parted on the most friendly terms from my narrow-eyed acquaintance, but when I had nearly regained my boat I could still see them in their blue-cotton dresses and long pigtails, gazing open-mouthed at my vanishing figure across the rice-fields."
After a few seconds' silence, during which Maggie had sat with her eyes thoughtfully fixed on the fire, she said, "Cousin Peregrine, you said in your letters that it was very cold in the north of China. If Chinamen know nothing about gloves, how can they keep their hands warm?" Maggie had a little the air of regarding this question as a poser, but Cousin Peregrine was not disconcerted.
"My dear Maggie, your question reminds me of another occasion, when I astonished a most respectable old China gentleman by my gloves. I will tell you about it, as it will show you how the Chinese keep their hands warm.
"It was on this very same expedition. We were at Tung-Chow, about eight miles from Pekin. At this place we had to leave the river, and take to our Tartar ponies, which our Chinese horse-boys had ridden up to this point to meet us. We had hired a little cart to convey our baggage, and I was sitting on my pony watching the lading up of the cart, when a dear old Chinaman, dressed in blue wadded silk, handsomely lined with fur, came up to me, and with that air of gentlemanly courtesy which is by no means confined to Europe, began to explain and expound in his own language for my benefit."
"What was he talking about? Could you tell?"
"I soon guessed. The fact is I am not very apt to wear gloves when I can help it, especially if I am working at anything. At the moment the old Chinese gentleman came up I was holding the reins of my pony with bare hands (my gloves being in my pocket), and as the morning was cold, my fingers looked rather blue. Having ascertained by feeling that my coat-sleeves would not turn down any lower than my wrists, he touched my hands softly, and made courteous signs, indicating that he was about to do me a good turn. Having signalled a polite disapprobation of the imperfect nature of my sleeves, he drew my attention to his own deep wide ones. Turning them back so as to expose the hands, the fine fur lining lay like a rich trimming above his wrists. Then with a glance of infinite triumph he bespoke my close attention as, shivering, to express cold, he turned the long sleeves, each a quarter of a yard, over his hands, and stuffing each hand into the opposite sleeve they were warm and comfortable, as it were in a muff, which was a part of his coat. More sensible than our muffs too, the fur was inside instead of out.
"He was the very pink of politeness, but at this point his pride of superior intelligence could not be restrained, and he broke into fits of delighted laughter, in which the horse-boys, the spectators, my friends, and (as is customary in China) everybody within sight and hearing joined.
"I took good care to laugh heartily too. After which I made signs the counterpart of his. He looked anxious. I put my hand in my pocket, and drew out my gloves. He stared. I put them on, and nodded, to show that that was the way we barbarians did it.
"'Eyah!' cried the silk-robed old gentleman.
"'Eyah!' echoed the horse-boys and the crowd.
"Then I laughed, and the horse-boys laughed loudly, and the crowd louder still, and finally the old gentleman doubled himself up in his blue silk fur-lined robe in fits of laughter.
"An Asiatic only relishes one thing better than being outwitted—that is to outwit.
"'Eyah! Eyah! Ha! ha! ha!' they cried as we rode away.
"'Ha! ha! ha!' replied I, waving a well-gloved hand, on my road to Pekin."
WAVES OF THE GREAT SOUTH SEAS.
(Founded on Fact.)
"Very likely the man who drew it had been nearly drowned by one himself."
"Very likely nothing of the sort!"
"How could he draw it if he hadn't seen it?"
"Why, they always do. Look at Uncle Alfred, he drew a splendid picture of a shipwreck. Don't you remember his doing it at the dining-room table, and James coming in to lay the cloth, and he would have a bit of the table left clear for him, because he was in the middle of putting in the drowning men, and wanted to get them in before luncheon? And Uncle Herbert wrote a beautiful poem to it, and they were both put into a real magazine. And Uncle Alfred and Uncle Herbert never were in shipwrecks. So there!"
"Well, Uncle Alfred drew it very well, and he made very big waves. So there!"
"Ah, but he didn't make waves like a great wall. He did it very naturally, and he draws a great deal better than those rubbishy old pictures in Father's Robinson Crusoe."
"Well, I don't care. The Bible says that when the Children of Israel went through the Red Sea the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. And I believe they were great waves like the wave in Robinson Crusoe, only they weren't allowed to fall down till Pharaoh and his host came, and then they washed them all away."
"But that's a miracle. I don't believe there are waves like that now."
"I believe there are in other countries. Uncle Alfred's shipwreck was only an English shipwreck, with waves like the waves at the seaside."
"Let's ask Cousin Peregrine. He's been in foreign countries, and he's been at sea."
The point in dispute between Maggie and her brother was this:—The nursery copy of Robinson Crusoe was an old one which had belonged to their father, with very rough old wood-cuts, one of which represented Robinson Crusoe cowering under a huge wave, which towered far above his head, and threatened to overwhelm him. This wave Maggie had declared to be unnatural and impossible, whilst the adventure-book young gentleman clung to and defended an illustration which had helped him so vividly to realize the sea-perils of his hero.
It was the day following that of Cousin Peregrine's arrival, and when evening arrived the two children carried the book down with them to dessert, and attacked Cousin Peregrine simultaneously.
"Cousin Peregrine, you've been at sea: isn't that an impossible wave?"
"Cousin Peregrine, you've been at sea: aren't there sometimes waves like that in foreign places?"
"It's not very cleverly drawn," said Cousin Peregrine, examining the wood-cut; "but making allowance for that, I have seen waves not at all unlike this one."
"There!" cried the young gentleman triumphantly. "Maggie laughed at it, and said it was like a wall."
"Some waves are very like walls, but those are surf-waves, as they are called, that is, waves which break upon a shore. The waves I am thinking of just now are more like mountains—translucent blackish-blue mountains—mountains that look as if they were made of bottle-green glass, like the glass mountain in the fairy tale, or shining mountains of phosphorescent light—meeting you as if, they would overwhelm you, passing under you, and tossing you like the old woman in the blanket, and then running away behind you as you go to meet another. Every wave with a little running white crest on its ridge; though not quite such a curling frill as this one has which is engulfing poor Robinson Crusoe. But his is a surf-wave, of course. Those I am speaking of are waves in mid-ocean."
"Not as tall as a man, Cousin Peregrine?"
"As tall as many men piled one upon another, Maggie."
"It certainly is very funny that the children should choose this subject to tease you about tonight, Peregrine," said Mamma.
We are all apt to speak inaccurately. Mamma did not mean that the subject was a comical one, but that it was remarkable that the children should have started it at dessert, when the grown-up people had been discussing it at dinner.
They had not been talking about Robinson Crusoe's wave, but about the loss of an Australian vessel, in sad circumstances which were in every one's mouth. A few people only had been saved. They had spent many days in an open boat in great suffering, and the particular question discussed at dinner was, whether the captain of a certain vessel which had passed without rescuing them had been so inhuman as to see and yet to leave them.
"How could he help seeing them?" Mamma had indignantly asked. "It was daylight, and of course somebody was on the deck, even if the captain was still in bed. Don't talk to me, Peregrine! You would say black is white for the sake of argument, especially if it was to defend somebody. But little as I know about the sea, I know that it's flat."
"And that's flat!" interposed Papa.
"It's all very well making fun of me," Mamma had continued with good-humoured vehemence, "but there were no Welsh hills and valleys to block the view of castaway fellow-creatures not a mile off, and it was daylight, and he must have seen them."
"I'm not quite sure about the hills and valleys," Cousin Peregrine had replied; "and hills of water are quite as troublesome to see through as hills of earth."
At this moment the dining-room door had opened to admit the children, Maggie coming first, and making her courtesy in the doorway, with the old fat, brown-calf-bound Robinson Crusoe under her arm. It opened without the slightest difficulty at the picture of the big wave, and the children appealed to Cousin Peregrine as has been related.
Maggie was a little taken aback by a decision which was in favour of her brother's judgment. She was apt to think rather highly of her own, and even now she pondered, and then put another question—
"But if the waves were so very, very big, Cousin, they would swallow up the ships!"
"No, Maggie, not if the sailors manage their ship properly, and turn her about so that she meets the wave in the right way. Then she rides over it instead of being buried under it."
"It would be dreadful if they didn't!" said Maggie.
"I remember being in a ship that didn't meet one of these waves in the right way," said Cousin Peregrine.
"Tell us all about it," said Fred, settling himself with two or three severe fidgets into the seat of his chair.
"I was going to have protested against the children asking you for another story so soon, Peregrine," said Mamma, "but now I feel selfish, for your wave-story will be quite as much for me as for the little ones."
"Where was it, Cousin Peregrine?"
"Where was the wave, do you mean? It was in the great South Seas. As to where I was, I was in a sailing-vessel bound for South Australia. To begin at the beginning, I must explain to you that this vessel was one of those whose captains accepted the instruments offered by the Board of Trade to any ship that would keep a meteorological log. I was fond of such matters, and I took the trouble off the captain's hands, by keeping his meteorological log for him."
"What is a meteorological log, Cousin?"
"A kind of diary, in which you put down the temperature of the sea and air, how cold or hot they are—the way the wind blows, how the barometer is, and anything special and interesting about the weather overhead or the currents in the sea. Now I must tell you that there had been a good deal of talk about currents of warm water in the Southern Ocean, like the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic, which keeps the west coasts of Great Britain so warm. But these South Sea currents had not been very accurately observed, and information on the subject was desired. Well, one day we got right into a warm current."
"How did you know, Cousin?"
"By drawing up a bucket of water out of the sea, and putting the thermometer into it. But I ought to tell you what a thermometer is—"
"We know quite well," said Maggie. "Nurse always put it into Baby's bath when he had fits, to see if the water was the right warmth."
"Very good, Maggie. Then let me tell you that the water of the sea got nearly thirty degrees warmer on that day between noon and midnight."
"How did you know about midnight?" Maggie inquired doubtfully; "weren't you in bed?"
"No, I was not, I was very busy all day 'taking observations' every hour or two, and it was at twelve o'clock this very night that the 'comber' broke on deck."
"What is a 'comber'?"
"A 'comber' is the name for a large wave with a comb or crest of foam, a sort of wave over which our ship ought to have ridden; but I must tell you that it was no easy matter to meet them on this occasion, because (owing to the cross currents) the waves did not all go one way, but came at us from various points. The sea was very heavy, and the night was very dark. I tried the heat of the water for the last time that evening, and having bade good-night to the officer whose watch was just over, I stayed for a few minutes to talk to the officer whose watch was just beginning, before going below to go to bed. We were standing aft, and, fortunately for us, near one of the masts, when through the darkness we saw the sloping sides of a great South Sea wave coming at the fore part of the ship, but sideways. 'The rigging!' shouted the officer of the watch, and as we both clung to the ropes the wave broke on our bows, smashed the jib-boom, and swept the decks from stem to stern."
"And if you hadn't held on by the rigging you would have been washed away?"
"I am afraid we should, Fred, for every loose thing on deck was swept off in less than a minute. The bull kept his feet, by the bye; but then he had four, and I have only two."
"The bull! what bull?"
"We were taking some cattle out to Australia. There was a bull who lived in a stable that had been made for him on deck. When this comber broke over us it tore up the bull's house, and carried it overboard, but I met the bull himself taking a walk at large as I went below to change my clothes and get some sleep."
"Were you wet?"
"Drenched, my dear Maggie; but when I got to my cabin I found that there was no hope of rest for some hours. The wave had flooded the cabins, broken in doors, and washed everything and everybody about. So we all had to set to work to bale out water, and mop up our bed-rooms; and as the wave had also put out what lights there were, we had to work in the dark, and very uncomfortable work it was! What the women and children did, and the poor people who were sea-sick, I hardly know. Of course we who could keep our feet did the work."
"Weren't you ever sea-sick?"
"Never, I am thankful to say."
"Not when it's very, very rough?"
"Not in a gale. I have once or twice on that voyage been the captain's only companion at dinner, tied to the mast to keep myself steady, and with the sherry in one pocket and my wine-glass in another to keep them steady, and quite ashamed of my appetite, for if the sea doesn't make you feel very ill it makes you feel very well."
"I had no idea there were such very big waves really," said Maggie, thoughtfully.
"I see that they are quite big enough to shelter the captain's character, Peregrine," said Mamma, smiling, "and I am much obliged to you for correcting my ignorance. I don't wish to believe that any English sailor would pass a boat in distress without giving help, if he saw it."
"I am quite sure no English sailor would, and very few real sailors of any nation, I think. A real seaman knows too well what sea-perils are, and that what is another man's case one day may be his the next; and cowardice and cold-heartedness are the last sins that can be laid at Jack Tar's door as a rule. But I will finish my story by telling the children what happened next morning, as it goes to illustrate both my statements, that it is not easy to see an open boat in a heavy sea, and that sailors are very ready to risk their lives for each other."
"You're like Captain Marryat, Cousin Peregrine," said Fred.
"He's not a sailor captain, he's a soldier captain," said Maggie. "Go on, Cousin."
"As I told you, we had two or three hours of very disagreeable work before our cabins were even tolerably comfortable; but it made us more tired than ever, and when I did turn in I slept like a top, and the rolling of the ship only rocked me to sounder slumbers. I was awakened at seven o'clock next morning by a fellow-passenger, who popped in to cry, 'There's a man overboard!' 'Who?' shouted I as I jumped up. 'Giovanni,' he replied as he vanished, leaving me to follow him on deck as quickly as possible. Now, Fred, picture to yourself a grey morning, the damp deck of our vessel being rapidly crowded with everybody on board, and all eyes strained towards a heavy sea, with big blue-black mountains of water running at us, and under us, and away from us all along; every wave had a white crest: but there were some other patches of snowy white hovering over the dark sea, on which all the experienced eyes were soon fixed!"
"What were they?" whispered Fred.
"Albatross," said Cousin Peregrine. "They had been following us for days, hovering, swooping, and whirling those great white wings of theirs, which sometimes measure nine feet from tip to tip."
"What did they follow you for?"
"They came to pick up anything that may be thrown overboard, and they came now, as we knew, after poor Giovanni, whose curly black head kept ducking out of their way as he swam with desperate courage in our wake."
"Oh, Cousin Peregrine! Didn't the captain stop the ship?"
"Certainly, Maggie, though, quickly as it was done, it left the poor fellow far away behind. And heavy as the sea was, they were lowering a boat when I got on deck, and the captain had called for volunteers among the sailors to man it."
"Oh, I hope he got them!"
"I hope you won't insult a noble and gallant profession by having any doubt about it, Maggie. He might have had the ship's crew bodily if he had wanted them, and if the waves had run twice as high."
"Spare me!" said Mamma.
"As it was the few men needed were soon ready. The boat was launched without being upset, and the men got in without mishap. Then they laid themselves to their oars, we gave them a parting cheer, and they vanished from our sight."
"Drowned, Cousin Peregrine?"
"No, no. Though I can tell you we were as anxious for them as for Giovanni now. But when they had crossed the first water-mountains, and gone down into the water-valleys beyond, they were quite out of sight of the crowd on the deck of the ship, daylight though it was."
"I retract everything I ever said," cried Mamma impetuously.
"And not only could we not see them, but they could not see the man they were risking their lives to save. Those crested mountains which hid them from us hid him from them."
"What did you do?"
"Men were sent up the masts to look out from such a height that they could look over the waves. They could see both Giovanni and the boat, and as they were so high up the men in the boat could see them. So the men on the masts kept their eyes on Giovanni, and the men in the boat kept their eyes on the men on the masts, and steered their course according to the signals from the look-out."
"And they saved him?"
"Yes, they brought him back; and if we cheered when they went away, you may believe we cheered when they got safe to the ship's side again."
"And who was Giovanni? and did he get all right?"
"Giovanni was one of the sailors, an Italian. He was a fine young fellow, and appeared to think nothing whatever of his adventure. I remember he resolutely refused to go below and change his clothes till he had helped to haul up the boat. With his white teeth shining through a broad grin, he told us in his broken English that he had been overboard every voyage he had taken. He said he didn't mind anything except the swooping and pecking of the albatross. They obliged him to dive so constantly, to keep his eyes from their beaks."
"Was it a comber washed him overboard?"
"No. He was mending the jib-boom, and lost his hold and fell into the sea. He really had a very narrow escape. A less active swimmer might easily have been drowned. I always think, too, that he had an advantage in the fact that the water was warm."
"I am so glad the nasty albatross were disappointed."
"The nasty albatross were probably disappointed when they found that Giovanni was not a piece of spoilt pork. However, they set their beautiful wings, and went their way, and we set our sails, and went our way, which was to Adelaide, South Australia."