They soon came alongside the bladder, and the coxswain grabbed it. “Hallo! here's something lashed to it: a bottle!”
“Give it me!” gasped Dodd in a voice choked with agitation. “Give it me! Back to the ship! Fly! fly! Cut her off, or she'll give us the slip now.”
He never spoke a word more, but sat in a stupor of joyful wonder.
They soon caught the ship; he got into his cabin, he scarce knew how: broke the bottle to atoms, and found the indomitable Cash uninjured. With trembling hands he restored it to its old place in his bosom, and sewed it tighter than ever.
Until he felt it there once more, he could hardly realise a stroke of good fortune that seemed miraculous—though, in reality, it was less strange than the way he had lost it;* but now, laid bodily on his heart, it set his bosom on fire. Oh, the bright eye, the bounding pulse, the buoyant foot, the reckless joy! He slapped Sharpe on the back a little vulgarly for him:—
“Jonah is on board again, old fellow: look out for squalls.”
*The Agra, being much larger than the bottle, had drifted
faster to leeward in the storm.
He uttered this foreboding in a tone of triumph, and with a gay elastic recklessness, which harmonised so well with his makeshift rudder, that Sharpe groaned aloud, and wished himself under any captain in the world but this, and in any other ship. He looked round to make sure he was not watched, and then tapped his forehead significantly. This somewhat relieved him, and he did his duty smartly for a man going to the bottom with his eyes open.
But ill luck is not to be bespoken any more than good: the Agra's seemed to have blown itself out; the wind veered to the south-west, and breathed steadily in that quarter for ten days. The topgallant sails were never lowered nor shifted day nor night all that time, and not a single danger occurred between this and the Cape, except to a monkey, which I fear I must relate, on account of its remoter consequences. One fine afternoon, everybody was on deck amusing themselves as they could: Mrs. Beresford, to wit, was being flattered under the Poop awning by Kenealy. The feud between her and Dodd continued, but under a false impression. The lady had one advantage over the gentler specimens of her sex; she was never deterred from a kind action by want of pluck, as they are. Pluck? Aquilina was brimful of it. When she found Dodd was wounded, she cast her wrongs to the wind, and offered to go and nurse him. Her message came at an unlucky moment, and by an unlucky messenger: the surgeon said hastily, “I can't have him bothered.” The stupid servant reported, “He can't be worried;” and Mrs. Beresford, thinking Dodd had a hand in this answer, was bitterly mortified; and with some reason. She would have forgiven him, though, if he had died; but, as he lived, she thought she had a right to detest him, and did; and showed her sentiments like a lady, by never speaking to him, nor looking at him, but ignoring him with frigid magnificence on his own quarter-deck.
Now, among the crew of this ship was a favourite goat, good-tempered, affectionate, and playful; but a single vice counterbalanced all his virtues: he took a drop. A year or two ago some light-hearted tempter taught him to sip grog; he took to it kindly, and was now arrived at such a pitch that at grog-time he used to butt his way in among the sailors, and get close to the canteen; and, by arrangement, an allowance was always served out to him. On imbibing it, he passed with quadrupedal rapidity through three stages, the absurd, the choleric, the sleepy; and was never his own goat again until he awoke from the latter. Now Master Fred Beresford encountered him in the second stage of inebriety, and, being a rough playfellow, tapped his nose with a battledore. Instantly Billy butted at him; mischievous Fred screamed and jumped on the bulwarks. Pot-angry Billy went at him there; whereupon the young gentleman, with all eldrich screech, and a comparative estimate of perils that smacked of inexperience, fled into the sea, at the very moment when his anxious mother was rushing to save him. She uttered a scream of agony, and would actually have followed him, but was held back, uttering shriek after shriek, that pierced every heart within hearing.