My father’s education had been neglected. He could neither write nor read; but although he did not exactly, like Cadmus, invent letters, he had accustomed himself to certain hieroglyphics, generally speaking sufficient for his purposes, and which might be considered as an artificial memory. “I can’t write nor read, Jacob,” he would say; “I wish I could; but look, boy, I means this mark for three quarters of a bushel. Mind you recollects it when I axes you, or I’ll be blowed if I don’t wallop you.” But it was only a case of peculiar difficulty which would require a new hieroglyphic, or extract such a long speech from my father. I was well acquainted with his usual scratches and dots, and having a good memory, could put him right when he was puzzled with some misshapen x or z, representing some unknown quantity, like the same letters in algebra.
I have said that I was heir-apparent, but I did not say that I was the only child born to my father in his wedlock. My honoured mother had had two more children; but the first, who was a girl, had been provided for by a fit of the measles; and the second, my elder brother, by stumbling over the stern of the lighter when he was three years old. At the time of the accident my mother had retired to her bed, a little the worse for liquor; my father was on deck forward, leaning against the windlass, soberly smoking his evening pipe. “What was that?” exclaimed my father, taking his pipe out of his mouth, and listening; “I shouldn’t wonder if that wasn’t Joe.” And my father put in his pipe again, and smoked away as before.
My father was correct in his surmises. It was Joe who had made the splash which roused him from his meditations, for the next morning Joe was nowhere to be found. He was, however, found some days afterwards; but, as the newspapers say, and as may well be imagined, the vital spark was extinct; and, moreover, the eels and chubs had eaten off his nose and a portion of his chubby face, so that, as my father said, “he was of no use to nobody.” The morning after the accident my father was up early, and had missed poor little Joe. He went into the cabin, smoked his pipe, and said nothing. As my brother did not appear as usual for his breakfast, my mother called out for him in a harsh voice; but Joe was out of hearing, and as mute as a fish. Joe opened not his mouth in reply, neither did my father. My mother then quitted the cabin, and walked round the lighter, looked into the dog-kennel to ascertain if he was asleep with the great mastiff—but Joe was nowhere to be found.
“Why, what can have become of Joe?” cried my mother, with maternal alarm in her countenance, appealing to my father, as she hastened back to the cabin. My father spoke not, but taking the pipe out of his mouth, dropped the bowl of it in a perpendicular direction till it landed softly on the deck, then put it into his mouth again, and puffed mournfully. “Why, you don’t mean to say he is overboard?” screamed my mother.
My father nodded his head, and puffed away at an accumulated rate. A torrent of tears, exclamations, and revilings succeeded to this characteristic announcement. My father allowed my mother to exhaust herself. By the time when she had finished, so was his pipe; he then knocked out the ashes, and quietly observed, “It’s no use crying; what’s done can’t be helped,” and proceeded to refill the bowl.
“Can’t be helped!” cried my mother; “but it might have been helped.”
“Take it coolly,” replied my father.
“Take it coolly!” replied my mother in a rage—“take it coolly! Yes, you’re for taking everything coolly: I presume, if I fell overboard you would be taking it coolly.”
“You would be taking it coolly, at all events,” replied my imperturbable father.
“O dear! O dear!” cried my poor mother; “two poor children, and lost them both!”