No one knew, or pretended to know, who he was, or from whence he came. He had been smuggled on board by the women folk. It was their secret, and, though it must have been known to many of them, they kept it well.
No luggage had he to encumber the hold, not a copper in his pockets, not a change of raiment for his back; the clothes he wore, being of the lightest and cheapest description. A checked shirt and coarse white canvass jacket and trowsers, comprised his whole wardrobe. He had laid in no provisions for the voyage, but lived upon the contributions of the poor emigrants, with whom he was the most popular man on board, and no one was better fed, or seemed to enjoy better health or spirits. The latter commodity appeared perfectly inexhaustible. He laughed and sung, told long yarns, and made love to all the young women, whose especial darling and idol he seemed to be. The first on deck, and the last to leave, he was a living embodiment of the long-sought-for principle of perpetual motion: his legs and tongue never seemed to tire, and his loud, clear voice and joyous peals of laughter, rang unceasingly through the ship. When not singing, whistling, shouting, or making fun for all around him, he danced hornpipes, making his fingers keep time with his feet, by a continual snapping, which resembled the strokes of the tambourine or castanets. A more mercurial jovial fellow never set old Time at defiance, or laughed in the grisly face of Care.
Tall and lithe of limb, his complexion was what the Scotch term sandy; his short curling hair and whiskers resembling the tint of red gravel, profuse in quantity, fine in quality, and clustering round his high, white forehead with most artistic grace. His features were both regular and well-cut, his large bright blue eyes overflowing with mirth and reckless audacity. When he laughed, which was every other minute, he showed a dazzling set of snow-white teeth, and looked so happy and free from care, that every one laughed with him, and echoed the droll sayings which fell from his lips.
Stephen Corrie was one whom the world generally calls an "excellent-hearted fellow, an enemy to no one but himself."
We must confess that our faith in this class of excellent fellows is very small;—these men who are always sinning, and tempting others to sin, in the most amiable manner. There are few individuals who do more mischief in their day and generation than these good-hearted young men, these sworn enemies to temperance and morality. Like phosphoric wood, they only shine in the dark, concealing under a gay, brilliant exterior, the hollowness and corruption that festers within. Stephen Corrie was one of those men, whose heart is always proclaimed to be in the right place, whose bad deeds men excuse, and women adore.
The day he made his first appearance upon the deck, the captain flew into a towering passion, and marching up to him, demanded with a great oath "How the devil he came on board, and what money he had to pay his passage?"
Stephen showed his white teeth, and replied with a provoking smile—
"Not as the fair Cleopatra did to the great Cæsar, rolled up in a feather-bed; but under cover of a woman's petticoat, most noble Captain."
"Have done with your d——d fooling! Who was the bold hussy that dared to smuggle you on board?"
"I never betray a woman's secret," returned the audacious youth, bowing very low, with an air of mock gravity. "God bless the dear sex, it has befriended me ever since I could run alone! Women have been my weakness from the hour that I had discrimination enough to know the difference between a smooth cheek and a hairy one."