"Hard is the heart that loveth nought."
Shelley.
"All love is sweet,
Given or returned.
Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever."
Idem.
Blue-jackets, as Her Majesty's sailors are sometimes styled, are
passionately fond of pets. They must have something to love, if it be
but a woolly-headed nigger-boy or a cockroach in a 'baccy-box. Little
nigger-boys, indeed, may often be found on board a man-o'-war, the
reigning pets. Young niggers are very precocious. You can teach them
all they will ever learn in the short space of six months. Of this kind
was one I remember, little Freezing-powders, as black as midnight, and
shining all over like a billiard ball, with his round curly head and
pleasant dimply face. Freezing-powders soon became a general favourite
both fore and aft. His master, our marine officer, picked him up
somewhere on the West coast; and although only nine years of age, before
he was four months in the ship, he could speak good English, was a
perfect little gymnast, and knew as many tricks and capers as the cook
and the monkey. Snowball was another I knew; but Snowball grew bad at
an early age, lost caste, became dissipated, and a gambler, and finally
fled to his native jungle.
Jock of ours was a seal of tender years, who for many months retained
the affection of all hands, until washed overboard in a gale of wind.
This creature's time on board was fully occupied in a daily round of
duty, pleasure, and labour. His duty consisted in eating seven meals a
day, and bathing in a tub after each; his pleasure, to lie on his side
on the quarter-deck and be scratched and petted; while his labour
consisted of earnestly endeavouring to enlarge a large scupper-hole
sufficiently to permit his escape to his native ocean. How
indefatigably he used to work day by day, and hour after hour, scraping
on the iron first with one flipper, then with another, then poking his
nose in to measure the result with his whiskered face! He kept the hole
bright and clear, but did not sensibly enlarge it, at least to human
ken. Jock's successor on that ship was a youthful bear of Arctic
nativity. He wasn't a nice pet. He took all you gave him, and wanted
to eat your hand as well, but he never said "Thank you," and permitted
no familiarity. When he took his walks abroad, which he did every
morning, although he never went out of his road for a row, he walked
straight ahead with his nose downwards growling, and gnawed and tore
everything that touched him--not at all a pet worth being troubled with.
Did the reader ever hear of the sailor who tamed a cockroach? Well,
this man I was "shipmates" with. He built a little cage, with a little
kennel in the corner of it, expressly for his unsavoury pet, and he
called the creature "Idzky"--"which he named himself, sir," he explained
to me. Idzky was a giant of his race. His length was fully four
inches, his breadth one inch, while each of his waving feelers measured
six. This monster knew his name and his master's voice, hurrying out
from his kennel when called upon, and emitting the strange sound which
gained for him the cognomen Idzky. The boatswain, his master, was as
proud of him as he might have been of a prize pug, and never tired of
exhibiting his eccentricities.