At length, Dr. Reasono, who, philosopher as he was, and much as he loved science, had not given himself all this trouble without a view to what are called ulterior considerations, came out with a frank expose of his wishes. Accident had apparently combined all the means for gratifying the burning desire I betrayed to be let into further details of the monikin polity, morals, philosophy, and all the other great social interests of the part of the world they inhabit. I was wealthy beyond bounds, and the equipment of a proper vessel would be an expenditure of no moment; both the Doctor and Lord Chatterino were good practical geographers, after they were once within the parallel of 77 degrees south, and Captain Poke, according to his own account of himself, had passed half his life in poking about among the sterile and uninhabited islands of the frozen ocean. What was there to prevent the most earnest wishes of all present from being gratified? The captain was out of employment, and no doubt would be glad to get the command of a good tight sea-boat; the strangers pined for home, and it was my most ardent wish to increase my stake in society, by taking a further interest in monikins.
On this hint, I frankly made a proposal to the old sealer to undertake the task of restoring these amiable and enlightened strangers to their own firesides and families. The Captain soon began to discover a little of his Stunin’tun propensity; for the more I pressed the matter on him, the more readily he found objections. The several motives he urged for declining the proposal, may be succinctly given as follows:—
It was true that he wanted employment, but then he wanted to see Stunin’tun too; he doubted whether monkeys would make good sailors; it was no joke to run in among the ice, and it might be still less of one to find our way back again; he had seen the bodies of dead seals and bears that were frozen as hard as stone, and which might, for anything he knew, have lain in that state a hundred years, and, for his part, he should like to be buried when he was good for nothing else. How did he know these monikins might not catch the men, when they had once fairly got them in their country, and strip them, and make them throw summersets, as the Savoyards had compelled the Doctor, and even the Lady Chatterissa to do?—he knew he should break his neck the very first flap-jack; if he were ten years younger, perhaps he should like the frolic; he did not believe the right sort of craft could be found in England, and for his part, he liked sailing under the stars and stripes; he didn’t know but he might go if he had a crew of Stunin’tunners; he always knew how to get along with such people; he could scare one by threatening to tell his marm how he behaved, and bring another to reason by hinting that the gals would shy him if he wasn’t more accommodating; then there might be no such place as Leaphigh, after all; or, if there was, he might never find it; as for wearing a bison-skin under the equator, it was quite out of the question, a human skin being a heavy load to carry in the calm latitudes; and finally that he didn’t exactly see what he was to get by it.
These objections were met, one by one, reversing the order in which they were made, and commencing with the last.
I offered a thousand pounds sterling as the reward. This proposal brought a gleam of satisfaction into Noah’s eyes, though he shook his head, as if he thought it very little. It was then suggested that there was no doubt we should discover certain islands that were well stored with seals, and that I would waive all claims as owner, and that hereafter he might turn these discoveries to his own private account. At this bait he nibbled, and, at one time, I thought he was about to suffer himself to be caught. But he remained obstinate. After trying all our united rhetoric, and doubling the amount of the pecuniary offer, Dr. Reasono luckily bethought him of the universal engine of human weakness, and the old sealer, who had resisted money—an influence of known efficacy at Stunin’tun—ambition, the secret of new sealing grounds, and all the ordinary inducements that might be thought to have weight with men of his class, was, in the end, hooked by his own vanity!
The philosopher cunningly expatiated on the pleasure there would be in reading a paper before the Academy of Leaphigh, on the subject of the captain’s peculiar views touching the earth’s annual revolution, and of the virtue of sailing planets, with their helms lashed hard aport, when all the dogmatical old navigator’s scruples melted away like snow in a thaw.
CHAPTER XIII.
A CHAPTER OF PREPARATIONS—DISCRIMINATION IN CHARACTER—A TIGHT FIT, AND OTHER CONVENIENCES, WITH SOME JUDGMENT.
I shall pass lightly over the events of the succeeding month. During this time, the whole party were transferred to England, a proper ship had been bought and equipped, the family of strangers were put in quiet possession of their cabins, and I had made all ray arrangements for being absent from England for the next two years. The vessel was a stout-built, comfortable ship of about three hundred tons burden, and had been properly constructed to encounter the dangers of the ice. Her accommodations were suitably arranged to meet all the exigencies of both monikin and human wants, the apartments of the ladies being very properly separated from those of the gentlemen, and otherwise rendered decorous and commodious. The Lady Chatterissa very pleasantly called their private room the gynecee, which, as I afterwards ascertained, was a term for the women’s apartment, obtained from the Greek, the monikins being quite as much addicted as we are ourselves, to showing their acquirements by the introduction of words from foreign tongues.
Noah showed great care in the selection of the ship’s company, the service being known to be arduous, and the duties of a very responsible character. For this purpose, he made a journey expressly to Liverpool (the ship lying in the Greenland Dock at London), where he was fortunate enough to engage five Yankees, as many Englishmen, two Norwegians, and a Swede, all of whom had been accustomed to cruising as near the poles as ordinary men ever succeeded in reaching. He was also well suited in his cook and mates; but I observed that he had great difficulty in finding a cabin-boy to his mind. More than twenty applicants were rejected, some for the want of one qualification, and some for the want of another. As I was present at several examinations of different candidates for the office, I got a little insight into his manner of ascertaining their respective merits.
The invariable practice was, first, to place a bottle of rum and a pitcher of water before the lad, and to order him to try his hand at mixing a glass of grog. Four applicants were incontinently rejected for manifesting a natural inaptitude at hitting the juste milieu, in this important part of the duty of a cabin-boy. Most of the candidates, however, were reasonably expert in the art; and the captain soon came to the next requisite, which was, to say “Sir,” in a tone, as Noah expressed it, somewhere between the snap of a steel-trap and the mendicant whine of a beggar. Fourteen were rejected for deficiencies on this score, the captain remarking that most of them “were the sa’ciest blackguards” he had ever fallen in with. When he had, at length, found one who could mix a tumbler of grog, and answer “Sir,” to his liking, he proceeded to make experiments on their abilities in carrying a soup-tureen over a slushed plank; in wiping plates without a napkin, and without using their shirt-sleeves; in snuffing candles with their fingers; in making a soft bed with few materials besides boards; in mixing the various compounds of burgoo, lobscouse, and dough, (which he affectedly pronounced duff); in fattening pigs on beef-bones, and ducks on the sweepings of the deck; in looking at molasses without licking his lips; and in various other similar accomplishments, which he maintained were as familiar to the children of Stunin’tun, as their singing-books and the ten commandments. The nineteenth candidate, to my uninstructed eyes, seemed perfect; but Noah rejected him for the want of a quality that he declared was indispensable to the quiet of the ship. It appeared that he was too bony about an essential part of his anatomy, a peculiarity that was very dangerous to a captain, as he himself was once so unfortunate as to put his great toe out of joint, by kicking one of those ill-formed youngsters with unpremeditated violence; a thing that was very apt to happen to a man in a hurry. Luckily, No. twenty passed, and was immediately promoted to the vacant berth. The very next day the ship put to sea, in good condition, and with every prospect of a fortunate voyage.