“None whatever. I’d say, Make yourself at home, Sir, if it were not that this humble house of mine is so little like a home.”
“It will look jollier in the evening, when there’s a good fire on the hearth, and a strong brew of that pleasant spirit smokin’ afore us;” and Mr. Dodge vouchsafed a strange sort of grin, which was the nearest approach he could make to a laugh, and Luttrell, stung by the notion that another was assuming to do the honours of his house, and to himself too, retired hastily without speaking.
CHAPTER XIX. THE LAWYER “ABROAD.”
To reach the “store-room” where Mr. M’Kinlay lay—for of course it is needless to inform our readers he was the much-terrified voyager alluded to—Luttrell was obliged to pass through the kitchen, and in so doing, beheld a scene which had never before presented itself to his eyes in that spot. Molly Ryan, feeling all the importance of the occasion, and well knowing that her master would never remember to give her any orders on the subject, had issued a general requisition for supplies all over the island, which was so quickly, and well responded to, that the place looked less like a room in a dwelling-house than a great mart for all sorts of provisions.
Great baskets of fish stood on every side—fish of the strangest and most uncouth forms, many of them, and with names as uncouth. There were varieties of ugliness among them to gratify the most ‘exacting naturalist, flat-headed, many-toothed, monsters, with bony projections all over them, and dorsal fins like hand-saws. Even the cognate creatures wore an especial wildness in that wild spot, and lobsters looked fiercer, and crabs more crabbed, while oysters, least aggressive of all floating things, had a ragged and rocky exterior that seemed to defy all attempt at penetration. Besides, there were hampers of eggs, and “creels” of potatoes, and such other garden produce as the simple cultivation permitted. While, meekly in one corner, and awaiting his fate with that air of conscious martyrdom which distinguishes the race, stood a very lean sheep, fastened by a hay-rope to the leg of a dresser.
But the object which more than others attracted Luttrell’s attention, was a pale, sallow-faced man, who sat next the fire on a low seat, all propped up by pillows, and his legs enveloped in a blanket; his wan and singular appearance being considerably heightened by the feathers of a goose having lighted on him, giving him half the look of some enormous fowl in the act of being plucked. This addition to his picturesqueness was contributed by Harry, who, engaged in plucking a goose at the opposite side of the fire, sent all the down and feathers in that direction. Harry himself, without shoes or stockings, indeed with nothing but a flannel shirt and trousers, was entertaining the stranger? and giving him, so far as he could, an insight into the life and habits of the islanders.
It is perhaps fortunate for me that it is not part of my task to record the contributions to history which Harry Luttrell afforded the stranger; they were not, possibly, divested of a little aid from that fancy which narrators are sometimes led to indulge in, and certainly Mr. M’Kinlay felt on hearing them, that terrible as were the perils of the voyage, the dangers that beset his place of refuge seemed infinitely more terrible. A few traditionary maxims were all that they knew of law, of religion they knew still less; in a word, the stranger learned that he was in the midst of a people who cared no more for British rule than they did for the sway of the Grand Llama; and in a place where, if it were very difficult to live, few things were so easy as to get rid of life.