The owner of the tiger threatened old Bunk with the law, and asked for a hundred guineas. Bunk started William's mother upon him for compensation for the loss of her boy, and shortly afterwards the showman went broke.
A Midnight Visitor.
"There are more terrors at sea than shipwreck and fire, more frights and horrors, mateys, than famine, blindness, and cholera," said the old seaman with a slow motion of his eyes round upon the little company of sailors. "I remember a line of poetry—'a thing of beauty is a joy for ever.' Can any man here tell me who wrote that? Well, I suppose it is a joy so long as it remains a beauty, but d'ye see it's got to remain, and that's the job.
"Yet, mates, if there is a thing of beauty that should be a joy to every heart, it is a full-rigged ship, clothed in white, asleep in the light of the moon, on a pale and silent breast of ocean that waves in splendour under the planet over the flying jib-boom end. Have I got such a ship as that in my mind? Ay. And was it a sheet calm but ne'er a moon? Ay, again. There was ne'er a moon that night. The ship rose faint and hushed to the stars. It was one bell in the morning watch. Scarce air enough moved to give life to the topmost canvas; as the ship bowed upon the light swell the sails swung in and swung out with a rushing sound of many wings up in the gloom. Yet the vessel had steerage way in that hour. Shall I tell you why? Because I know!
"And ere that full-rigged ship alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean came to a dead halt, life sinking in her with the failing of the wind in a sort of dying shudder from royal to course, this was how her decks showed: a man was at the wheel, the chief mate leaned against the rail in the thickness made by the mizzen rigging, and with folded arms seemed to doze in the shadow; a 'young gentleman,' as they used to call the 'brass-bounders,' loafed sleepily near the main shrouds where the break of the poop came. That youngster watched the stars trembling between the squares of the starboard rigging. He was new to the sea, and emotion and sentiment were still sweet—they were not salt in him. He was the son of a gentleman—he had a clever eye for what was picturesque and romantic, for what was tender and affecting in all he beheld, whether by day or night, whether he looked aloft or whether upon the mighty breast of brine—he should have done well: he oughter ha' done well."
The grey-haired respectable seaman closed his eyes in a silence filled with significance, and after a short smoke thus proceeded:
"Some of the watch on deck sprawled about in the shadow out of sight, curled up, asleep; only one figure was upright forward. 'Twas the shape of the man on the look-out. For all the world he postured like the mate aft, as though he copied the officer for a life or death bet: head sunk, arms folded—the forecastle break brought that raised deck well aft, and the look-out had the shadow of the starboard fore-rigging upon him.
"This man thus standing, by no means asleep, yet with his head sunk and no doubt his eyes closed, was suddenly struck on the side of the face by something hairy, damp, and cold. He sprang into the air as though he had been shot through the heart. O heavens! What was it? A naked figure, shaggy as Peter Sarrano, wild with hair, furious with a grin, terrible with the red gleams the starlight flung upon his little eyes. The sailor shrieked like a midnight cat and fell in a heap down upon the deck in a fit.
"The ship was in commotion in an instant. Such a yell as that was worse than the smell of fire.
"'What's the matter?' bawled the mate from the break of the poop.