"'Stand by to ease off his tow-lines, then,' said Tom—'now look sharp with the shiners there, my lads—ownly a guinea!' 'No, no!' murmured the townspeople, 'send for the constable—we'll all be scalped and murdered in our beds!—no, no, for God's sake, mister sailors!' A grocer ran out of his door to beg the tars wouldn't think of such a thing, and the village constable came shoving himself in with the beadle. 'Come, come,' said the constable, in a soothing style, while the beadle tried to look big and blustering, 'you mustn't do it, my good men—not on no desideration, here—in his majesty's name. Take un on to the next parish—I horder all good subjects to resist me!' 'What!' growled the foretopman, with an air of supreme disgust, 'han't ye no feelin's for liberty hereaway? Parish be blowed! Bill, my lad, let go his moorings, and give the poor wretch his nat'ral freedom!' 'I'm right down ashamed on my country,' said Bill. 'Hullo, shipmates, cast off at once, an' never mind the loss—I hasn't slept easy myself sin' he wor cotched!' 'Nor me either,' said another; 'but I'm feared he'll play old Harry when he's loose, mate.'
"I had been watching the affair all this time from inside, a good deal amused, in those days, at the trick—especially so well carried out as it was by the sailors. 'Here, my fine fellows,' said I at last, 'bring him in, if you please, and let me have a look at him.' Next minute in came the whole party, and supposing from my plain clothes I was merely some longshore traveller, they put their savage through his dance with great vigour. 'Wonderfully tame he's got, your honour!' said the topman; 'it's nothing to what he does if you freshens his nip.' 'What does he eat? 'I asked, pretending not to understand the hint. 'Why, nought to speak on, sir,' said he; 'but we wonst lost a boy doorin' the cruise, nobody know'd how—though 'twas thought he went o'board, some on us had our doubts.' 'Curiously tatooed, too,' I said; 'I should like to examine his arm.' 'A bit obstropolous he is, your honour, if you handles him.' 'Never mind,' said I, getting up and seizing the wrist of the Andaman islander, in spite of his grins; and my suspicions were immediately fulfilled by seeing a whole range of familiar devices marked in blue on the fellow's arm—amongst them an anchor with a heart transfixed by a harpoon, on one side the word 'Sal,' and on the other 'M. O., 1811.' 'Where did you steal this top-maul, you rascal?' said I, coolly looking in his face; while I noticed one of the men overhauling me suspiciously out of his weather-eye, and sliding to the door. 'I didn't stale it at all,' exclaimed the savage, giving his red head a scratch, ''twas Bill Green there—by japers! whack pillalew, mates, I'm done!' 'Lor! oh lor!' said Bill himself, quite crestfallen, 'if I didn't think 'twas him. We're all pressed again, mate, it's the leftenant.' 'Pressed, bo'?' said Tom; 'more luck, I wish we was—but they wouldn't take ye now for a bounty, you know.' Here I was fain to slack down and give a hearty laugh, particularly at recognising Bill, who had been a shipmate of Jacobs and myself in the old Pandora, and was nicknamed 'Green'—I believe from a small adventure of ours—so I gave the men half-a-guinea a piece to carry them on. 'Long life to your honour,' said they; and said Tom, 'If I might make so bould, sir, if your honour has got a ship yet, we all knows ye, sir, and we'd enter, if 'twas for the North Pole itself.' 'No, my lad,' said I, 'I'm sorry to say I have not got so far yet. Dykes, my man, can you tell me where your old messmate Jacobs has got to?' 'Why, sir,' replied Bill, 'I did hear he was livin' at Wapping with his wife, where we means to give him a call too, sir.' 'Good day, your honour,' said all of them, as they put on their hats to go, and covered their curiosity again with his tarpaulin. 'I'm blessed, Bill,' said Tom, 'but we'll knock off this here carrivanning now, and put before the wind for Blackwall,' 'Won't you give your savage his freedom, then?' I asked. 'Sartinly, your honour,' replied the roguish foretopman, his eye twinkling as he saw that I enjoyed the joke. 'Now, Mick, my lad, ye must run like the devil so soon as we casts ye off.' 'Oh, by the powers, thry me!' said the Irishman; 'I'm sick tired o' this cannible minnatchery. By the holy Moses, though, I must have a dhrop o' dew in me, or I'll fall!' Mick accordingly swigged off a noggin of gin, and declared himself ready to start. 'Head due nor'-east from the sun, Mick, and we'll pick you up in the woods, and rig you out all square again,' said the captain of the gang, before presenting himself to the mob outside. 'Now, gemmen and ladies all,' said the sailor coolly, 'ye see we're bent on givin' this here poor unfort'nate his liberty—an' bein' tould we've got the law on our side, why, we means to do it. More by token, there's a leftenant in the Roy'l Navy aboard there, as has made up the little salvage-money, bein' poor men, orderin' us for to do it—so look out. If ye only gives him a clear offing, he'll not do no harm. Steady, Bill—slack off the starboard sheet, Jack—let go—all!' 'Oh! oh!—no! no!—for God's sake!' screamed the bystanders, as they scuttled off to both hands—'shame, shame—knock un down, catch un—tipstaff, beadle!' 'Hurrah!' roared the boys, and off went Mick O'Hooney in fine style, flourishing his top-maul, with a wild 'hullaloo,' right away over a fence, into a garden, and across a field towards the nearest wood. Everybody fell out of his way as he dashed on; then some running after him, dogs barking, and the whole of the seamen giving chase with their tarpaulins in their hands, as if to drive him far enough into the country. The whole thing was extremely rich, seen through the open air from the tavern window, where I sat laughing till the tears came into my eyes, at Jack-tars' roguishness and the stupefied Kent rustics, as they looked to each other; then at the sailors rolling away full speed along the edge of the plantation where the outlandish creature had disappeared; and, lastly, at the canvas cover which lay on the spot where he had stood. They were actually consulting how to guard against possible inroads from the savage at night, since he might be lurking near, when I mounted and rode off; I daresay even their hearing that I was a live and real lieutenant would cap the whole story.
"Croydon used to be a pretty, retired little town, you know, so quiet and old-fashioned that I enjoyed the unusual rest of it, and the very look of the canal, the market-place, the old English trees and people—by comparison with even the Iris's white decks, and her circumference of a prospect, so different every morning or hour of the day. My mother and my sister Jane were so kind—they petted me so, and were so happy to have me down to breakfast and out walking, even to feel the smell of my cigar—that I hardly knew where I was. I gave them an account of the places I had seen, with a few tremendous storms and a frigate-fight or two, instead of the horse-marine stories about mermaids and flying Dutchmen I used to pass upon them when a conceited youngster. Jane, the little gipsy, would listen with her ear to a large shell, when we were upon sea matters, and shut her eyes, saying she could fancy the things so well that way. Or was it about India, there was a painted sandal-wood fan carved in open-work like the finest lace, which she would spread over her face, because the seeing through it, and its scent, made her feel as if she were in the tropics. As for my mother, good simple woman, she was always between astonishment and horror, never having believed that lieutenants would be so heartless as to mast-head a midshipman for the drunkenness of a boat's crew, nor being able to understand why, with a gale brewing to seaward, a captain tried to get his ship as far as he could from land. The idea of my going to sea again never entered her head, the terrible war being over, and the rank I had gained being invariably explained to visitors as at least equal to that of a captain amongst soldiers. To the present day, this is the point with respect to seafaring matters on which my venerated and worthy parent is clearest: she will take off her gold spectacles, smoothing down her silver hair with the other hand, and lay down the law as to reform in naval titles, showing that my captain's commission puts me on a level with a military colonel. However, as usual, I got tired by little and little of this sort of thing; I fancy there's some peculiar disease gets into a sailor's brain that makes him uneasy with a firm floor and no offing beyond; certainly the country about Croydon was to my mind, at that time, the worst possible—all shut in, narrow lanes, high hedges and orchards, no sky except overhead, and no horizon. If I could only have got a hill, there would have been some relief in having a look-out from it. Money I had no want of; and as for fame or rank, I neither had the ambition, nor did I ever fancy myself intended for an admiral or a Nelson; all my wish was to be up and driving about, on account of something that was in me. I always enjoyed a good breeze as some do champagne; and the very perfection of glory, to my thinking, was to be the soul of a gallant ship in a regular Atlantic howler: or to play at long bowls with one's match to leeward, off the ridges of a sea, with both weather and the enemy to manage. Accordingly, I wasn't at all inclined to go jogging along in one of your easy merchantmen, where you have nothing new to find out; and I only waited to hear, from some friends who were bestirring themselves with the Board, of a ship where there might be something to do. These were my notions in those days, before getting sobered down, which I tell you for the sake of not seeming such a fool in this said adventure.
CHAPTER III
"Well, one evening my sister Jane and I went to a race-ball at Epsom, where, of course, we saw all the 'beauty and fashion,' as they say, of the country round, with plenty of the army men, who were in all their glory, with Waterloo and all that; we two or three poor nauticals being quite looked down upon in comparison, since Nelson was dead, and we had left ourselves nothing at the end to fight with. I even heard one belle ask a dragoon 'what uniform that was—was it the horse-artillery corps?' 'Haw!' said the dragoon, squinting at me through an eyeglass, and then looking with one eye at his spurs, and with the other at his partner, 'not at all sure! I do think, after all, Miss——, 'tis the—the marine body—a sort of amphibious animals! They weren't with us, though, you know—couldn't be, indeed, though it was Waterloo! Haw! haw! you'll excuse the joke, Miss——?' 'Ha! ha! how extremely witty, Captain——!' said the young lady, and they whirled away towards the other end of the hall. I never felt more inclined to pull a fellow's nose, till all of a sudden my head turned, and I forgot there was such a thing as a dragoon in the world, for I saw what I thought the loveliest young creature ever crossed my eyes, coming out of the refreshment-room with two ladies, an old and an elderly one. The first was finely dressed out, and I set her down for an aunt, she was so unlike; the other for a governess. The young lady was near sixteen to appearance, all in white. There were many beauties in the ball-room you would have called handsomer; but there was something about her altogether I could compare to nothing else but the white figure-head of the Iris, sliding gently along in the first curl of a breeze, with the morning sky far out on the bow—curious as you may think it, ladies! Her hair was brown, and her complexion remarkably pale notwithstanding; while her eyes were as dark blue, too, as—as the ocean near the line, that sometimes, in a clear calm, gets to melt till you scarcely know it from the sky. 'Look, Edward!' whispered my sister, 'what a pretty creature! She can't be English, she looks so different from everybody in the room. And such pearls in her hair! such a beautifully large diamond in that brooch! Who can she be, I wonder?' I was so taken up, however, that I never recollected at all what Jane said till at night, in thinking the matter over; and then a whole breeze of whisperings seemingly came from every corner of the cloakroom, of 'Who is she?' 'Who can she be?' 'Who's her father?' and so on, which I remembered to have heard. I only noticed at the time that somebody said she was the daughter of some rich East India nabob or other, just come home. A post-captain who was present—one of Collingwood's flag-lieutenants—went up to the old chaperon, whom he seemed to know, and got into talk with her: I found afterwards she was an admiral's widow. In a little I saw him introduced to the young lady, and ask her to dance; I fancied she hung back for a moment, but the next she bowed, gave a slight smile to the captain's gallant sea-fashion of deep respect to the sex, and they were soon swimming away in the first set. Her dancing was more like walking with spread wings upon air than upon planks with one's arms out, as the captain did. I'd have given my eyes, not to speak of my commission and chances to come, to have gone through that figure with her. When the captain had handed her to her seat again, two or three of the dragoons sauntered up to Lady Somers's sofa: it was plain they were taken; and after conversing with the old lady, one of them, Lord Somebody, as I understood, got introduced, in his turn, to the young beauty. As may be supposed, I kept a look-out for his asking her to dance, seeing that, if she had done so with one of the embroidered crew, and their clattering gear, I'd have gone out that instant, found out the Waterloo fellow next day, and, if not shot myself, have drilled him with an anchor button for a bullet, and run off in the first craft I could get. The cool, easy, impertinent way this second man made his request, though—just as if he couldn't be refused, and didn't care about it—it was as different from the captain of the Diomede's as red from blue! My heart went like the main-tack blocks thrashing when you luff too much; so you may guess what I felt to see the young lady, who was leaning back on the sofa, give her head a pettish sort of turn to the old one, without a word, as much as to say she didn't want to. 'My love!' I heard the old lady say, 'I fear you are tired! My Lord, your lordship must excuse Miss Hyde on this occasion, as she is in delicate health!' The dragoon was a polite nobleman, according to his cloth; so he kept on talking and smiling, till he could walk off without seeming as if he'd got his sabre betwixt his feet; but I fancied him a little down by the head when he did go. All the time the young beauty was sitting with her face as quiet and indifferent as may be, only there was a sparkle in her blue eyes, and in nothing else but the pearls in her hair, as she looked on at the dancing; and, to my eye, there was a touch of the rose came out on her pale cheek, clear though it was before the dragoon spoke to her. Not long after, an oldish gentleman came out with a grey-haired old general from the refreshment-room: a thin yellow-complexioned man he was, with no whiskers and bald forehead, and a bilious eye, but handsome, and his face as pompous and solemn-looking as if he'd been First Lord, or had got a whole court-martial on his shoulders for next day. I should have known him from a thousand for a man that had lived in the East, were it nothing but the quick way he looked over his shoulder for a servant or two, when he wanted his carriage called—no doubt just as one feels when he forgets he's ashore, like I did every now and then, looking up out to windward, and getting a garden-wall or a wood slap into one's eyesight, as 'twere. I laid down the old gentleman at once for this said nabob; in fact, as soon as a footman told him his carriage was waiting, he walked up to the young lady and her companions, and went off with them, a steward and a lady patroness convoying them to the break of the steps. The only notion that ran in my head, on the way home that night with my sister, was, 'By heavens! I might just as well be in love with the bit of sky at the end of the flying-jibboom!' and all the while the confounded wheels kept droning it into me, till I was as dizzy as the first time I looked over the fore-royal-yard. The whole night long I dreamt I was mad after the figure-head of the Iris, and asked her to dance with me, on which she turned round with a look as cold as water, or plain 'No.' At last I caught firm hold of her and jumped overboard; and next moment we were heaving on the blue swell in sight of the black old Guinea coast—when round turned the figure and changed into Miss Hyde; and the old nabob hauled us ashore upon a beautiful island, where I woke and thought I was wanted on deck, although it was only my mother calling me.
"All I had found out about them was, that Sir Charles Hyde was the name of the East Indian, and how he was a Bengal judge newly come home; where they lived, nobody at the ball seemed to know. At home, of course, it was so absurd to think of getting acquainted with a rich Indian judge and his daughter, that I said no more of the matter; although I looked so foolish and care-about-nothing, I suppose, that my mother said to Jane she was sure I wanted to go to sea again, and even urged me to 'take a trip to the Downs, perhaps.' As for going to sea, however, I felt I could no more stir, then, from where I was, than with a best bower down, and all hands drunk but the captain. There was a favourite lazy spot of mine near the house, where I used to lie after dinner, and puff away amongst the grass, at the back of a high garden-wall with two doors in it, and a plank across a little brook running close under them. All round was a green paddock for cows; there was a tall tree at hand, which I climbed now and then half-mast high, to get a look down a long lane that ran level to the sky, and gave you a sharp gush of blue from the far end. Being a luxurious dog in those days, like the cloth in general when hung up ashore, I used to call it 'The Idler's Walk,' and 'The Lazy Watch,' where I did duty somewhat like the famous bo'sun that told his boy to call him every night and say the captain wanted him, when he turned over with a polite message, and no good to the old tyrant's eyes.
"Well, one afternoon I was stretched on the softest bit of this retreat, feeling unhappy all over, and trying to think of nothing in particular, as I looked at the wall and smoked my cheroot. Excuse me if I think that, so far as I remember, there is nothing so consolatory, though it can't of course cure one, as a fine Manilla for the 'green sickness,' as our foremast fellows would say. My main idea was that nothing on earth could turn up to get me out of this scrape, but I should stick eternally, with my head sails shivering aback, or flapping in a sickening dead calm. It was a beautiful hot summer afternoon, as quiet as possible, and I was weary to death of seeing that shadow of the branch lying against the white wall, down to the keyhole of the nearest door. All of a sudden I heard the sweetest voice imaginable, coming down the garden as it were, singing a verse of a Hindostanee song I had heard the Bengal girls chant with their pitchers on their heads at the well, of an evening:
La li ta la, ta perisi,
La na comalay ah sahm-rè,