Marmaduke Merry: A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days

by William Henry Giles Kingston

“Miss Susan, you donkey, you have spoilt all. We are found out,” I exclaimed. “Macquoid saw your sign to me.”

Spellman declared that did not signify; that he would explain how it happened to Macquoid, and assure him that the gesture was one which he frequently made when suffering from a paroxysm of pain.

I told him that he had better say nothing of the sort, and that he would only make matters worse, but he persisted that he knew better than I did, and told me to hold my tongue. Of course it was very wrong to sham to be worse than I was, but I persuaded myself that it was not like actual malingering, as I had a foundation for my assertion, and really did not feel as if I could walk. Still I may as well say here, that though I have ever been through life merry by nature, as well as by name, and have loved joking as much as any man, I have learned to hate and detest falsehood. It is un-Christian like in the first place, and thoroughly low and ungentlemanly in the second. I say this, lest in consequence of my having introduced the wonderful adventures of my shipmate, Mr Johnson, it may be considered that I think lightly of the importance of speaking the truth. To do Jonathan justice he took ample care that his yarns should never for a moment deceive the most simple-minded or credulous of his hearers. At that time, however, I did not see things as clearly as I did when I grew older, and I was vexed at having tried to deceive Macquoid, more from the fear of being found out than from any refined sense of shame. He, however, when he came again in the evening, treated us exactly as if we were still very weak, and when Spellman persisted in talking of the odd position into which his hands twisted themselves when he was in pain, he seemed to take it all in, and agreed with him, that such was a very natural and common occurrence. I had my doubts, however, of Macquoid’s sincerity, and having had some experience of his mode of treatment on a former occasion, resolved to be very much better the next visit he paid us. I said nothing to Spellman, whose spirits rose immediately.

“I told you so,” he exclaimed, when Macquoid was gone. “I told you I should humbug Johnny Sawbones.”

“Now if we could but get the boatswain to come to us, and to go on with his yarns, we should be all right and jolly,” observed Grey.

I agreed with him, and soon afterwards Toby Bluff coming to see me, which the faithful fellow did as often as he could during the day, I sent him to invite Mr Johnson to pay us a visit, as he would have more leisure then than at any other time of the day. Nothing loth, the boatswain soon made his appearance.

“And so, young gentlemen, you want to hear more of my wonderful, not to say veracious, narratives,” he observed, while a pleasant smile irradiated his features. “Well, I hold that the use of a man’s legs is to move about the world, the use of his eyes is to see all that is to be seen, as he does move about, and the use of his tongue to describe all that he has seen, and so I’ll use mine to good purpose, and indulge you, but, as I’ve said before, I say again, I will have no one doubt my word. If there’s any cavilling, I’ll shut up as close as an oyster when he’s had his dinner, and, having made this preliminary observation, here goes. Let me recollect, where had I got to?” Mr Johnson said this while taking his usual seat on a bucket, between our hammocks, his huge legs stretched out along the deck, and his big head sticking up, so that his eagle eyes could glance round above them.

“I remember,—I was taking a walk to the North Pole. I did not think that I could be many days’ journey from it. But that did not matter. The air was so bracing that I could take any amount of exercise without fatigue, and was therefore able to walk all day, sitting down merely for convenience sake when I was enjoying my dinner off the preserved bear. I of course could not cut the flesh with my knife, as it was frozen as hard as a rock. I was therefore obliged to chop it into mouthfuls with my hatchet, and even when between my teeth it was some time before it would thaw, but then you see, as I had nobody to talk to, I had plenty of time for mastication, and it was undoubtedly partly to this circumstance that I kept my health all the time. There is nothing so bad as bolting one’s food, except going without it. By the way, I have had to do that more than once for several weeks together. Once for a whole month I had nothing to eat but some round-shot and bullet moulds, and an old jackass, which was washed up on the beach, after being well pickled by the salt water, but that has nothing to do with my present story. I wish that I had kept a diary of my proceedings during my northern ramble. It would have proved highly interesting to Sir Joseph Banks, and other scientific people, but, as it happens, I have my memory alone to which I can trust, though that, however, never deceives me. Well, after leaving my flagstaff I travelled on, neither turning to the right hand nor to the left, and it is wonderful what a straight course I kept, considering the difficulty there is in finding one’s way over a trackless plain without a compass. If I had had too much grog aboard, I could not have done it, and it’s a strong argument in favour of keeping sober on all occasions, but more especially when any work is to be done. I slept at night, as before, in a hole in the snow, but never suffered from cold; this was partly on account of the quantity of bear’s grease I swallowed, which served to keep the lamp of life alive, and also because every mile I advanced I found the atmosphere growing warmer, and the Northern Lights brighter and brighter. There could be no doubt about it; those lights were the cause of the unexpected warmth I encountered; so warm, indeed, did the air become, that I am certain many a man would have turned back for fear of being roasted alive, but I was not to be daunted. Onward I went till I got within less than a mile of one of the biggest fires I ever saw. The effect was grand and beautiful in the extreme. You might suppose yourself looking at a city fifty times as large as London, and every house in it as big as Saint Paul’s, and every part of it blazing away at the same time, and even then you would have no conception of the magnificence of the scene which met my view, as I beheld the source of those far-famed Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis, as the learned people call them.

“The flames, you must know, were not of that bright hot colour which issue from a furnace, but were of a delicate pale red, flickering and playing about in the most curious way imaginable, sometimes blazing up to the height of a mile or so, and then sinking down to a few hundred feet. The heat at the distance I was then from it was rather pleasant than oppressive; it had not even melted the snow on the ground, but of course that was so hard frozen, that it would have required a very warm fire to have made any impression on it. Well, as I advanced I began to lick my chops at the thoughts of the hot dinner I intended to enjoy—for, after all, however philosophical a man may be, his appetite, if he is hungry, must be satisfied before he is fit for anything—when I beheld a number of moving objects, scarcely distinguishable from the snow, encircling the fire. I could not make out at first what they were, but on approaching still nearer, I discovered the truth, though I could scarcely believe my eyes, for there, sitting up on their hams, were countless thousands of polar bears, warming their paws before the aurora borealis. It is a fact as true as anything I have been telling you, and at once fully accounted to my mind for the disappearance of bears from the arctic regions during the winter months, and fully refutes the popular idea, that they sit moping by themselves in caverns, employing their time in sucking their paws.

“Not liking the idea of losing my hot dinner, not to speak of the disappointment of not being able to say that I had been chock up to the North Pole, I determined to venture among them.”