In the meantime, the protestations and tears of Joshua had convinced everybody that the horrible gash was merely the effect of accident, for the ship was rolling a great deal at the moment. What the captain and his guests were doing in the cabin above with the turtle-soup, it is needless for me to state, for that same soup was never fated to gladden the wounded lip of Mr Pigtop.
The hasty and famishing gentleman, in his very first attempt to draw on his new trousers, to the astonishment of all his messmates, who had now gathered round him, found them separated in the middle of each of his legs. He might as well have attempted to clothe himself with cobweb continuations; they came to pieces almost with a shake. The waistcoat and coat were in the same predicament; they had not the principle of continuity in them. Everybody was lost in amazement, except Mr Pigtop, whose amazement, quite as great as ours, was lost in his still greater rage. It was extremely unfortunate for Joshua Daunton that he had cut the lip that day. The kind doctor was still by during the apparelling, or the attempt at it. He examined the rotten clothes, and he soon discovered that they had been saturated in different parts by some corrosive liquid, that, instead of impairing, really improved the brilliancy of the cloth.
During these proceedings, Captain Reud and his guests had eaten up the dinner; but the captain, not being pleased to be pleasantly humoured that day, sent word to Mr Pigtop to go to the mast-head till midnight for disrespect in not attending to the invitation that he had accepted. There was no appeal, and aloft went the wounded, ragged, famished hoper of devouring turtle-soup. Joshua looked very demure and very unhappy; but Dr Thompson set on foot an inquiry, and the truth of the destruction of the clothes was soon ascertained. The loblolly-boy, that is, the young man who had charge of the laboratory where all the medicines were kept, confessed, after a little hesitation, that for certain glasses of grog he had given this pernicious liquid to Daunton. So, while one of his masters was contemplating the stars from the mast-head, the destroyer of reefers’ kits had nothing else to do but to contemplate the beauty of his own feet, placed, with a judicious exactitude, in a very handsome pair of bilboes under the half deck.
Chapter Fifty Seven.
The cat-of-nine-tails begets a tale the most annoying to Ralph—the story of the three crows beaten hollow—Seven’s the main and a losing cast—A promised treatise on ornithology put an end to rather abruptly by the biplumal resolving themselves into the mere bipedal.
When fully secured, the poor wretch sent for me. He was in a paroxysm of fear: he protested his innocence over and over again: he declared that he should die under the first lash; that it was for love of me only that he had come on board of a man-of-war; he conjured me by the fellowship of our boyish days, by all that I loved and that was sacred to us, to save him from the gangway. The easiness of my nature was worked upon, and I promised to use my influence to procure for him a pardon. I went to Mr Farmer, but all my efforts were unavailing. The culprit passed a sleepless night in the intolerable agony of lear. Before he was brought up to be flogged, Mr Pigtop had been fully avenged.
The gratings are rigged, the hands are turned up, and Joshua Daunton is supported by two ship’s corporals in a nearly fainting state, and stripped by another—he is too much paralysed to do it himself. The officers are mustered on the break of the quarter-deck, and the marines are drawn up, under arms, on the gangway. Captain Reud looks fierce and forbidding, and Mr Farmer, for his generally impassible features, really quite savage. I come forward shudderingly and look down. The wandering and restless eyes of the frightened young man meet, in an instant, what, most probably, they are seeking—my own.
“Ralph Rattlin, speak for me to the captain.” The words were in themselves simple, but they were uttered in a tone of the most touching pathos. They made me start: I thought that I knew the voice, not as the voice of Joshua Daunton, the mischievous imp that had tormented us all so scientifically, but of some dear and long-forgotten friend. “Ralph Rattlin, speak for me to the captain—this must not be.”