“Pluck?” suggested the Captain.
“Yes, Pluck! you did not know when you were beaten at Waterloo, and so you won the battle; Wellington would have got an army of Englishmen out of the scrape of Moscow, if he had ever been ass enough to get them into it.”
“I think,” said the Parson, “that this may be traced to a national peculiarity of ours—love of adventure. Other men will undergo hardships and incur dangers, in search of gain, or even in the pursuit of some definite object, but the Englishman seeks his hardships for the pleasure of undergoing them,—courts his dangers for the pleasure of surmounting them, and follows out his adventure for adventure’s sake.”
“In fact,” said the Captain, “he does just what we are all doing now.”
“Well,” said Birger, “and let no one say—what is the use of it?—what is the Englishman the better for diving into mines, and scaling mountains, and crossing deserts?—what has he to show for it? He has this to show for it,—a manliness of character,—a spirit to encounter the dangers of life, and a heart to overcome its difficulties. Depend upon it, while your aristocracy—men brought up and nourished in the very lap of luxury and ease—seek their pleasures in the dangers of the wild ocean, or the hardships of the stormy mountain-side, you will see no symptoms of degeneracy in the hardihood and manliness of your national character. Pluck is a genuine English word, slang though it be.”
“I think you may translate it into Swedish,” said the Captain, “for our English blood has a cross of Scandinavian in it, and there really is as great a similarity in our national characteristics as there is in the structure of our languages.”
“I think,” said the Parson, “your word ‘Mod’ implies pluck, with a dash of fierceness in it. When it is said of some grand berserkar, ‘har oprist syn mod,’ it means that he has summoned his pluck, with the full intention of making his enemies aware of that fact. Still, however, it is a fair rendering of our more peaceable word, and you have a right to it; but I am quite sure you cannot translate that expression into any other language under the sun, without losing some part of its force.”
“Whether any foreigners can translate the word into their own language,” said the Captain, “is more than I will undertake to say, but they perfectly understand and appreciate this peculiarity of our English character. Last year I was arranging with one of the Chamouny guides an expedition into the higher Alps; I had with me a jolly talking little French marquis, whom I had picked up at St. Gervais. He was an ambitious little fellow, and volunteered—Heaven help him!—to be my companion. My guide—(you recollect old Couttet, Parson?)—looked rather blank at this, and taking me aside, said in a low voice, ‘absolument je n’irais pas avec ce Monsieur lá.’ ‘Why?’ said I, rather astonished at the man refusing that which would certainly have put some additional francs into his pocket. ‘Je connais bien ces Francais,’ said he—‘an Englishman is fearful enough in the valleys, always saying he will not do this, and he cannot do that, because in truth he is so proud that he does not like to take anything in hand and be beat in it; but once get him on the mountain, and fairly in for it, and be the danger what it may, he faces it, and be the fatigue what it may, he keeps up a good heart, and in the end gets through it all as well as we do ourselves. Your Frenchman is as bold as brass in the valleys, and does not do badly for a spurt if he thinks people are admiring him, but he gets cowed when danger comes and no one to see him, and sits down and dies when he is tired.’”
“Mr. Couttet was a sensible fellow, and knew his man,” said Birger, who, descended from the old aristocracy of Sweden, hated and despised the French party most cordially; “and how did you get rid of your travelling companion?”
“O! Couttet took the management of that upon his own hands; he made the poor little marquis’s hair stand on end, with all sorts of stories about snow storms, and whirlwinds, and frozen travellers; which no doubt were true enough, for there is not a pass in the High Alps without its well-authenticated tale of death; so the little fellow came to me heartily ashamed of himself, and looking like a dog that was going to be whipped, with his ‘mille excuses,’ and so forth, and in fact, we then and there parted company, and I have not seen him from that time to this. He certainly was rather an ambitious Tom Thumb for the Col du Géant.—Hallo! there is something on foot there,” said he, interrupting himself, “hark to that! there goes another.” And in fact, three or four shots not very distant from them were distinctly heard, though they came, not sharp and ringing as such sounds generally strike upon the ear through the clear air of the north, but deadened by the mist, as if, so to speak, the sound had been smothered by a feather-bed. “There goes another! and another!” then came a whole platoon—“O, by George! I must go and visit my sentries.”