Will Weatherhelm: The Yarn of an Old Sailor

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Margaret, however, was never weary of replying to all the inquiries made. I never saw two people suit each other so well as my aunt and wife,—the one so hearty, full of life and spirits, and brimming over with the milk of human kindness,—the other so tranquil, so sensible, and sweet-tempered.

My uncle and I also got on capitally together. I admired his jovial, frank, hearty, and kind disposition, his thorough uprightness and hatred of deceit, while he found in me enough good qualities to like, and was pleased because I admired him and was able to talk with him frankly and openly on all subjects. That is, I believe, the great secret of friendship. Mutual esteem and perfect confidence is the only foundation on which it can be built up and made perfect. Both parties to the bond must feel that they appreciate each other’s motives and objects, and that every allowance will be made for what they say, and the best possible construction put on their words. When two people meet between whom such qualifications exist, their friendship is lasting.

My uncle told me, that as he knew I should not wish to be idle, he had obtained a situation for me, which he thought I should like, as suitable to my former habits.

“It is in a private dockyard, where, if you are steady and attentive you will, I am certain, obtain a still more lucrative employment,” he remarked; “had it been war time I should have tried to obtain an appointment in the Royal Dockyard, because you would then have had protection from the pressgang; but now you need have no fear of that.”

Two days after that, war again broke out with France! It was arranged to our mutual satisfaction that Margaret and I should permanently take up our abode with our relatives. They had a couple of spare rooms, which they had at times let to lodgers, so that we in no way incommoded them.

Never was there a more happy family party. We were not over-refined; we did not set up for people of that sort, it must be remembered, or call ourselves gentlemen and ladies. Nor did our guests. They were, however, always well-behaved, civil people, who would on no account have committed any real solecism in good manners.

Old Jerry Vincent used to look in, as before, very frequently, with a budget of his funny stories, to which other neighbours gladly came to listen. There was invariably much laughter, and no small amount of tea and tobacco consumed, not to speak occasionally of some more potent compound; but my uncle took good care that none of his guests should pass the limits of sobriety, though he had at times some little difficulty in keeping old Jerry in order. I should remark that old Jerry was an exception to the general character of our guests, who were as a rule of a much higher rank in the social scale. I remember especially one of the old man’s stories which is worth recording.

“You must know, mates,” said he, “once upon a time I belonged to a brig of war on the Newfoundland station. It isn’t just the place, in my opinion, that a man would wish to spend his life in. Too much frost and fog, and wind and rain, to be pleasant. But bad as it was, I thought there was a worse place to be in, and that was aboard my own ship. We never know when we are well off. I don’t think I was right, do ye see; but rather, I am very well convinced, that I was a fool. Young men sometimes don’t find that out till it’s too late. Howsomedever, I found another fool as big as myself, which is never very difficult when you look for him, and he and I agreed to run from the ship. Now, before I go on with my story, I’ll just ask one or two of you young men, have any of you ever seen the biggest fool in the world? Well, I thought not; you can’t say that you have, and, what’s more, you never will. If you think that you have got hold of him, you may be sure that you’ll fall in with a bigger before long somewhere else. That is my philosophy, and I am not far wrong, depend on it.

“Well, where was I? Oh, I know. My mate’s name—t’other fool, I mean—was Abraham Coxe. The ship had put into Saint John’s, Newfoundland. He and I belonged to the same boat’s crew. Soon after we got there we were sent on shore to water. After some time, as the rest of our party were rolling the casks down to the beach, we managed to slip away, and made a run of it for a mile or more, till we could stow ourselves snug inside the walls of an old cottage. As soon as it was dark we came out, and set off as hard as we could go right into the country. We thought some one was following us, but we were wrong. The officers knew better than we did what sort of a place we had got into, and calculated that we shouldn’t be long before wishing ourselves back again.

“At night we reached a cottage, where the good people treated us kindly, for, do ye see, we spun them a long yarn, which hadn’t a word of truth in it, about our being sent away up there to look after a shipmate who had lost his senses. So, after we had eaten and drunken and taken a good snooze, we set off again towards the mountains, for we had a notion that we should find our way somehow or other into America. We expected to fall in with another village, but we were mistaken, and by dinner-time we began to feel very peckish. There was no use standing still, so we walked on and on till we got further up among the mountains, and as the sun was hid by clouds, and there was no wind, we very soon lost our way.