WE CONDUCT SEVERAL LEARNED ARGUMENTS WITH THE CAPTAIN OF THE PRISCILLA
Captain Welsh soon conquered us. The latest meal we had eaten was on
the frosty common under the fir-trees. After a tremendous fast, with
sea-sickness supervening, the eggs and bacon, and pleasant
benevolent-smelling tea on the captain's table were things not to be
resisted by two healthy boys who had previously stripped and faced
buckets of maddening ice-cold salt-water, dashed at us by a jolly
sailor. An open mind for new impressions came with the warmth of our
clothes. We ate, bearing within us the souls of injured innocents;
nevertheless, we were thankful, and, to the captain's grace, a long
one, we bowed heads decently. It was a glorious breakfast, for which
land and sea had prepared us in about equal degrees: I confess, my
feelings when I jumped out of the cabin were almost those of one born
afresh to life and understanding. Temple and I took counsel. We agreed
that sulking would be ridiculous, unmanly, ungentlemanly. The captain
had us fast, as if we were under a lion's paw; he was evidently a
well-meaning man, a fanatic deluded concerning our characters: the
barque Priscilla was bound for a German port, and should arrive there
in a few days,—why not run the voyage merrily since we were treated
with kindness? Neither the squire nor Temple's father could complain of
our conduct; we were simply victims of an error that was assisting us
to a knowledge of the world, a youth's proper ambition. 'And we're not
going to be starved,' said Temple.
I smiled, thinking I perceived the reason why I had failed in my
oration over-night; so I determined that on no future occasion would I
let pride stand in the way of provender. Breakfast had completely
transformed us We held it due to ourselves that we should demand
explanations from Joseph Double, the mate, and then, after hearing him,
furnish them with a cordial alacrity to which we might have attached
unlimited credence had he not protested against our dreaming him to
have supplied hot rum-and-water on board, we wrote our names and
addresses in the captain's log-book, and immediately asked permission
to go to the mast-head.
He laughed. Out of his cabin there was no smack of the preacher in him.
His men said he was a stout seaman, mad on the subject of grog and
girls. Why, it was on account of grog and girls that he was giving us
this dish of salt-water to purify us! Grog and girls! cried we. We
vowed upon our honour as gentlemen we had tasted grog for the first
time in our lives on board the Priscilla. How about the girls? they
asked. We informed them we knew none but girls who were ladies.
Thereupon one sailor nodded, one sent up a crow, one said the
misfortune of the case lay in all girls being such precious fine
ladies; and one spoke in dreadfully blank language, he accused us of
treating the Priscilla as a tavern for the entertainment of bad
company, stating that he had helped to row me and my associates from
the shore to the ship.
'Poor Mr. Double!' says he; 'there was only one way for him to jump you
two young gentlemen out o' that snapdragon bowl you was in—or
quashmire, call it; so he 'ticed you on board wi' the bait you was
swallowing, which was making the devil serve the Lord's turn. And I'll
remember that night, for I yielded to swearing, and drank too!' The
other sailors roared with laughter.
I tipped them, not to appear offended by their suspicions. We thought
them all hypocrites, and were as much in error as if we had thought
them all honest.
Things went fairly well with the exception of the lessons in Scripture.
Our work was mere playing at sailoring, helping furl sails, haul ropes,
study charts, carry messages, and such like. Temple made his voice
shrewdly emphatic to explain to the captain that we liked the work, but
that such lessons as these out of Scripture were what the eeriest
youngsters were crammed with.
'Such lessons as these, maybe, don't have the meaning on land they get
to have on the high seas,' replied the captain: 'and those youngsters
you talk of were not called in to throw a light on passages: for I may
teach you ship's business aboard my barque, but we're all children
inside the Book.'
He groaned heartily to hear that our learning lay in the direction of
Pagan Gods and Goddesses, and heathen historians and poets; adding, it
was not new to him, and perhaps that was why the world was as it was.
Nor did he wonder, he said, at our running from studies of those filthy
writings loose upon London; it was as natural as dunghill steam. Temple
pretended he was forced by the captain's undue severity to defend
Venus; he said, I thought rather wittily, 'Sailors ought to have a
respect for her, for she was born in the middle of the sea, and she
steered straight for land, so she must have had a pretty good idea of
navigation.'
But the captain answered none the less keenly, 'She had her idea of
navigating, as the devil of mischief always has, in the direction where
there's most to corrupt; and, my lad, she teaches the navigation that
leads to the bottom beneath us.'
He might be right, still our mien was evil in reciting the lessons from
Scripture; and though Captain Welsh had intelligence we could not draw
into it the how and the why of the indignity we experienced. We had
rather he had been a savage captain, to have braced our spirits to
sturdy resistance, instead of a mild, good-humoured man of kind
intentions, who lent us his linen to wear, fed us at his table, and
taxed our most gentlemanly feelings to find excuses for him. Our way of
revenging ourselves becomingly was to laud the heroes of antiquity, as
if they had possession of our souls and touched the fountain of
worship. Whenever Captain Welsh exclaimed, 'Well done,' or the
equivalent, 'That's an idea,' we referred him to Plutarch for our great
exemplar. It was Alcibiades gracefully consuming his black broth that
won the captain's thanks for theological acuteness, or the young
Telemachus suiting his temper to the dolphin's moods, since he must
somehow get on shore on the dolphin's back. Captain Welsh could not
perceive in Temple the personifier of Alcibiades, nor Telemachus in me;
but he was aware of an obstinate obstruction behind our compliance.
This he called the devil coiled like a snake in its winter sleep. He
hurled texts at it openly, or slyly dropped a particularly heavy one,
in the hope of surprising it with a death-blow. We beheld him poring
over his Bible for texts that should be sovereign medicines for us,
deadly for the devil within us. Consequently, we were on the defensive:
bits of Cicero, bits of Seneca, soundly and nobly moral, did service on
behalf of Paganism; we remembered them certainly almost as if an imp
had brought them from afar. Nor had we any desire to be in opposition
to the cause he supported. What we were opposed to was the dogmatic
arrogance of a just but ignorant man, who had his one specific for
everything, and saw mortal sickness in all other remedies or
recreations. Temple said to him,
'If the Archbishop of Canterbury were to tell me Greek and Latin
authors are bad for me, I should listen to his remarks, because he's a
scholar: he knows the languages and knows what they contain.'
Captain Welsh replied,
'If the Archbishop o' Canterbury sailed the sea, and lived in Foul
Alley, Waterside, when on shore, and so felt what it is to toss on top
of the waves o' perdition, he'd understand the value of a big, clean,
well-manned, well-provisioned ship, instead o' your galliots wi' gaudy
sails, your barges that can't rise to a sea, your yachts that run to
port like mother's pets at first pipe o' the storm, your trim-built
wherries.'
'So you'd have only one sort of vessel afloat!' said I. 'There's the
difference of a man who's a scholar.'
'I'd have,' said the captain, 'every lad like you, my lad, trained in
the big ship, and he wouldn't capsize, and be found betrayed by his
light timbers as I found you. Serve your apprenticeship in the Lord's
three-decker; then to command what you may.'
'No, no, Captain Welsh,' says Temple: 'you must grind at Latin and
Greek when you're a chick, or you won't ever master the rudiments. Upon
my honour, I declare it's the truth, you must. If you'd like to try,
and are of a mind for a go at Greek, we'll do our best to help you
through the aorists. It looks harder than Latin, but after a start it's
easier. Only, I'm afraid your three-decker's apprenticeship 'll stand
in your way.'
'Greek 's to be done for me; I can pay clever gentlemen for doing Greek
for me,' said the captain. 'The knowledge and the love of virtue I must
do for myself; and not to be wrecked, I must do it early.'
'Well, that's neither learning nor human nature,' said I.
'It's the knowledge o' the right rules for human nature, my lad.'
'Would you kidnap youngsters to serve in your ship, captain?'
'I'd bless the wind that blew them there, foul or not, my lad.'
'And there they'd stick when you had them, captain?'
'I'd think it was the Lord's will they should stick there awhile, my
lad—yes.'
'And what of their parents?'
'Youngsters out like gossamers on a wind, their parents are where they
sow themselves, my lad.'
'I call that hard on the real parents, Captain Welsh,' said Temple.
'It's harder on Providence when parents breed that kind o' light
creature, my lad.'
We were all getting excited, talking our best, such as it was; the
captain leaning over his side of the table, clasping his hands
unintentionally preacher-like; we on our side supporting our chins on
our fists, quick to be at him. Temple was brilliant; he wanted to
convert the captain, and avowed it.
'For,' said he, 'you're not like one of those tract-fellows. You're a
man we can respect, a good seaman, master of your ship, and hearty, and
no mewing sanctimoniousness, and we can see and excuse your mistake as
to us two; but now, there's my father at home—he's a good man, but he's
a man of the world, and reads his classics and his Bible. He's none the
worse for it, I assure you.'
'Where was his son the night of the fog?' said the captain.
'Well, he happened to be out in it.'
'Where'd he be now but for one o' my men?'
'Who can answer that, Captain Welsh?'
'I can, my lad—stewing in an ante-room of hell-gates, I verily
believe.'
Temple sighed at the captain's infatuation, and said, 'I'll tell you of
a fellow at our school named Drew; he was old Rippenger's best
theological scholar—always got the prize for theology. Well, he was a
confirmed sneak. I've taken him into a corner and described the
torments of dying to him, and his look was disgusting—he broke out in a
clammy sweat. “Don't, don't!” he'd cry. “You're just the fellow to
suffer intensely,” I told him. And what was his idea of escaping it?
Why, by learning the whole of Deuteronomy and the Acts of the Apostles
by heart! His idea of Judgement Day was old Rippenger's half-yearly
examination. These are facts, you know, Captain Welsh.'
I testified to them briefly.
The captain said a curious thing: 'I'll make an appointment with you in
leviathan's jaws the night of a storm, my lad.'
'With pleasure,' said Temple.
'The Lord send it!' exclaimed the captain.
His head was bent forward, and he was gazing up into his eyebrows.
Before we knew that anything was coming, he was out on a narrative of a
scholar of one of the Universities. Our ears were indifferent to the
young man's career from the heights of fortune to delirium tremens down
the cataract of brandy, until the captain spoke of a dark night on the
Pool of the Thames; and here his voice struggled, and we tried hard to
catch the thread of the tale. Two men and a girl were in the boat. The
men fought, the girl shrieked, the boat was upset, the three were
drowned.
All this came so suddenly that nothing but the captain's heavy thump of
his fist on the table kept us from laughing.
He was quite unable to relate the tale, and we had to gather it from
his exclamations. One of the men was mate of a vessel lying in the
Pool, having only cast anchor that evening; the girl was his
sweetheart; the other man had once been a fine young University
gentleman, and had become an outfitter's drunken agent. The brave
sailor had nourished him often when on shore, and he, with the fluent
tongue which his college had trimmed for him, had led the girl to sin
during her lover's absence. Howsoever, they put off together to welcome
him on his arrival, never suspecting that their secret had been
whispered to Robert Welsh beforehand. Howsoever, Robert gave them
hearty greeting, and down to the cabin they went, and there sat
drinking up to midnight.
'Three lost souls!' said the captain.
'See how they run,' Temple sang, half audibly, and flushed hot, ashamed
of himself.
''Twas I had to bear the news to his mother,' the captain pursued; 'and
it was a task, my lads, for I was then little more than your age, and
the glass was Robert's only fault, and he was my only brother.'
I offered my hand to the captain. He grasped it powerfully. 'That crew
in a boat, and wouldn't you know the devil'd be coxswain?' he called
loudly, and buried his face.
'No,' he said, looking up at us, 'I pray for no storm, but, by the
Lord's mercy, for a way to your hearts through fire or water. And now
on deck, my lads, while your beds are made up. Three blind things we
verily are.'
Captain Welsh showed he was sharp of hearing. His allusion to the
humming of the tune of the mice gave Temple a fit of remorse, and he
apologized.
'Ay,' said the captain, 'it is so; own it: frivolity's the fruit of
that training that's all for the flesh. But dip you into some o' my
books on my shelves here, and learn to see living man half skeleton,
like life and shadow, and never to living man need you pray
forgiveness, my lad.'
By sheer force of character he gained the command of our respect.
Though we agreed on deck that he had bungled his story, it impressed
us; we felt less able to cope with him, and less willing to encounter a
storm.
'We shall have one, of course,' Temple said, affecting resignation,
with a glance aloft.
I was superstitiously of the same opinion, and praised the vessel.
'Oh, Priscilla's the very name of a ship that founders with all hands
and sends a bottle on shore,' said Temple.
'There isn't a bottle on board,' said I; and this piece of nonsense
helped us to sleep off our gloom.