We held our course, after parting with our friends in the boat, and
were soon at the harbour's mouth. The breeze continued to freshen, and
the swell to increase. Our little Wilhelmina now began to give us a
specimen of her qualities as a sea-boat. Labouring through the curled
and crested seas, creaking, groaning, vibrating from stem to stern; now
balancing, with her keel half bare, on the summit of a lofty surge,
now deep in a liquid trough; now kicking up behind, now running her
nose bang into a bank of water; now pointing skywards, as if bound to
the moon, and not to Lisbon; now pitching, now jig-jigging it, she
simulated the paces of a Spanish genet--a great deal of action, very
little progress.
By the time we were clear of the harbour, and in comparatively smooth
water, the wind had shifted to the north-west; our course lay south,
and, being sheltered by the land, we soon exchanged the jig-jigging
of our exit from port for a far more agreeable, because more equable
motion, as we drove over ocean's swell. It had already become palpably
evident that none of our military friends were good sailors. Now,
however, they were all able to stand without holding--all, I should
say, but one unhappy individual, and that was Mr Commissary Capsicum,
who had been reduced to a miserable state of disorder by the active
movements of the brig, and whose actual symptoms were by no means those
of convalescence.
Night closed in. It was past twilight, yet not wholly dark--in short,
that interval between twilight and perfect night, for which in English
we have no word, but which the richer language of Burns expressively
designates as "the gloaming." Little more than enough of it to fill
the sails and give the vessel way, the wind was soft, and at times
scarcely perceptible. The waves heaved lazily; the ship surmounted them
with measured rise and fall; and, though the heavens were overcast,
a light, different from that of day, clear but faint, was equably
diffused on all sides. The tremulous surface of the ocean, dark, but
distinguishable to the horizon, was there sharply outlined against the
pale but still luminous sky.
Since we left port in the morning, what with showers and spray, wind
and sunshine, I had been more than once wet through and dry again. The
consequences were now perceptible. I shivered inwardly. My mind, too,
was ill at ease. After much reflection, and some self-examination, I
came to this conclusion: that something was requisite, something was
indispensable, in my actual condition both of mind and body. What
that something was, did not instantly occur to me. I asked myself
the question point-blank--I answered it. The problem was solved: I
wanted--a nightcap. Down I rushed into the cabin. "Steward, bring me
some hot water and a little brandy."--"Yes, sir; a glass of hot brandy
and water, sir; coming directly, sir."--"No, no, steward; that's not
what I called for. Bring the brandy and the hot water separate. I'll
mix for myself."
"Quite right," growled a feeble voice. It was poor, unhappy,
still-very-far-from-perfectly-recovered Mr Capsicum's. The falling
of the wind had so far abated the ship's movements, that his worst
symptoms were now relieved. Still, however, he was far, very far, from
well. Most of the passengers had turned in; but there, by lamplight,
sat poor Capsicum at the cabin table, from sheer listlessness,
destitute of sufficient energies to put himself to bed, a lamentable
spectacle.
"Suppose you join me, then," said I. "Do you good."
"Can't, can't," said he, plaintively. "Couldn't get it down, if I knew
it would make me well this instant. Wish I could. I'll see you take
yours, though. That'll be some comfort, anyhow."
The steward now brought hot water, half a lemon, lump-sugar, tumbler
half full of capital brandy.--"Here, steward, you may take the lemon
away with you. Don't want it."
"Quite right," grunted Capsicum, who thought himself a connoisseur in
all things eatable and drinkable. "Quite right; no rum, no lemon."
Spite of his pitiful plight, he now, _con amore_, set himself to watch
my operations critically; as if, from the brewing, he would form an
estimate of my judgment, capabilities, taste, character, and general
attainments.
With the silver tongs I extracted a lump of crystal sugar, the largest
in the basin. The present "without" system was not then in vogue, nor
have I adopted it yet. But now there was a hitch--how to melt the
sugar. In the tumbler it must not go--there was the brandy: that had
been an infringement of all the laws of potatory combination. I felt
that I was under observation, and that my character was at stake. I
placed the sugar in the spoon. "Quite right," said Capsicum.
Yet neither, according to the modern practice, did I wash the sugar,
half melted, from the spoon into the tumbler, with a stream of hot
water. That, I submit, is an approximation to the error of immersing
the sugar in the unmixed brandy. No, no. Holding the spoon over
the tumbler, I carefully dropped upon the sugar three drops of the
boiling water. It was enough. The sugar gradually subsided into a
pellucid liquid, which filled the spoon. Capsicum, who, sick as he
was, still watched my proceedings with the deepest interest, and with
a patronising air of mild benignity, repeated his testimonial--"Quite
right."
Waiting till the sugar was wholly dissolved, I then at length infused
sufficient hot water to scald the raw spirits, then added the sugar.
Two or three stirs sufficed; not a bead floated on the surface. The
mixture was made--tumbler about half an inch from full--a "stiff un."
Capsicum raised himself from the table on which he had been leaning,
with folded arms, like a cat watching a mouse, and gave a snort of
approbation.
"You and that white fellow old acquaintance?" said Capsicum.
"Our acquaintance," replied I, "commenced at Falmouth about a week ago."
"Oh! thought perhaps he was some family connexion," said Capsicum.
"The connexion is quite recent, as I tell you," said I; "but I
certainly don't mean to cut it. Hope to dine with him at headquarters,
every day I'm disengaged."
"Dine with him at headquarters?" replied Capsicum. "You'll do nothing
of the kind, I can tell you that, sir. That is, you'll dine with him
at my table; pretty often, too, I trust. Hope I shall frequently have
the pleasure of seeing you both. But at his own table, if you're twenty
years at headquarters, you won't dine with him once; take my word for
that. John Barrymore wouldn't suffer it." Here was a blow!
"Well, but that's a thing I can't understand," said I.
"Well then, I must make you understand it," replied Capsicum. "You are
going out on an appointment as clerk in John Barrymore's Department.
Isn't it so?" I bowed assent.
"Very well. That white chap does business in commissariat bills.
When he gets a bill, he's dying to get the cash. Your Department
pays the cash. Don't you see, my dear sir? It wouldn't do. It would
be utterly at variance with all the rules of propriety, for any man
in your Department to be on terms of intimacy with any man who does
business in bills. Besides, it would be contrary to headquarters
etiquette; everybody would talk about it. Now," added Capsicum, with a
self-approving air, "now I've done my duty by John Barrymore. Noticed
you were very thick. Thought I'd tell you, the first opportunity. Oh
me! oh me!" (sighing, panting, gasping, pressing his hands on his
stomach, and swaying his head from side to side,) "how very ill I do,
feel! Such a horrid sensation! a don't-know-howishness--a sort of a
come-overishness! The exertion of talking has made me quite bad again.
Here, steward! steward! I must go on deck this instant." He turned
ghastly green.
"Yet," said I, hoping he would soon be better, "Mr Gingham, it seems,
can dine with _you_, without any breach of propriety."
"Yes, yes, to be sure he can," said Capsicum; "and so can you. Our
Department don't finger the cash. Don't you see? That makes all the
difference. Hope you'll both dine with me often."
"Shall be very happy," replied I: "much obliged for your kind
invitation. But still I can't understand. Mr Gingham has been at
headquarters before, and knows headquarters. He also knows, I suppose,
that your humble servant is a clerk of the military chest. Yet it
was he himself who made the proposal that he and I should campaign
together."
"Can't explain that," said Capsicum; "must leave him to explain that as
he can. Oh! here he comes."
Gingham, before he turned in, had been on deck, to take a last look
at the weather, to commune with the silent night, to scrutinise the
horizon, to soliloquise with the clouds, and perhaps for some better
and more solemn purposes: for Gingham, with all his oddities, was a man
of religious principle, and of devotional feeling, and cared not who
knew it. He now approached, and seated himself with us at the cabin
table.
"Saw you at Cadiz," said Capsicum. "Think I saw you at Madrid."
"I saw you at Canton," coolly replied Gingham. Capsicum looked a little
queer.
"At Canton?" said Capsicum. "Saw me at Canton? Did you, though? Come,
come, now you're joking, you know. Did you though, really? How was I
dressed?"
"You were dressed like what you were; not exactly as you are dressed
now. You had a long, taper pigtail, reaching down to your heels; no
hair on your head besides. You had slippers, scarlet and gold, turned
up at the toes. You carried a fan; and didn't I once or twice see you
followed by a fellow who carried a parasol over your head at the top of
a long pole? You had--"
"I'll tell you what," said Capsicum precipitately; "I'm a Christian for
all that, and my father was an Englishman. True, I was bred at Canton;
but I wasn't born there. Born at Macao. My mother--"
Here, in a voice which ran through all the notes of the gamut,
not however in due order, but like the cat's minuet, high and low
alternately, Gingham struck up a strange outlandish sort of utterance,
whether talking or singing I could not tell; but, if singing, it was
the rummest song I ever heard--a jumping, dissonant compound of bass
and treble. Capsicum responded in a similar fugue. The two funny
rogues were speaking Chinese! The discovery of Capsicum's semi-gentile
extraction tickled my fancy not a little.
"So," said Capsicum to Gingham, "you and Johnny intend to make a joint
concern of it at headquarters."
"That's how we've settled it," replied Gingham.
"Can't be," said Capsicum. "Thought you knew all headquarters' rules,
regulations, and observances."
"Thought I did know something about them," replied Gingham.
"Well, then," replied Capsicum, "don't you know what department young
Johnny here belongs to?"
"_Your_ department, the commissariat department, I always understood,"
replied Gingham; "saw his name put down so in the list of passengers
per packet at Falmouth. If Mr Y-- will oblige me by referring to a
document, which I had the honour of handing him before dinner, he will
find himself there designated accordingly."
Sure enough, so it was: "G. Y--, Esq., Commissary-General's Department,
in A. C., with Gingham Gingham."
"But didn't you happen to know that Mr Y--, as you call him," said
Capsicum, "was John Barrymore's own nephew?"
"Of that circumstance I was not cognisant," replied Gingham, "till
I happened to become aware of it by the conversation during dinner.
Still I retained my former impression, that Mr Y-- belonged to your
department, not to the military chest."
"The long and the short of it," said I to Gingham, "is this. Shirty
here, I am sorry to say, gives me to understand that, at headquarters,
as I am attached to the military chest, and not to the commissariat, I
cannot have the pleasure of stretching my legs under your table, when
you give a spread. My regret is undissembled and profound."
"Nor," said Gingham, "while we both retain our present positions, can
we be more than common acquaintance."
The shock of this _dénouement_ was diverted by Capsicum. Spite of his
sea-sickness he had purpled up; his eyes flashed and twinkled beneath
his massive and contracted brows; he growled, he grunted, he wheezed,
he snorted, he puffed; for a time he could not articulate. Either he
performed admirably, or he was regularly riled. At length, recovering
his breath, not once looking at me, but leaning over to Gingham on the
table, he whispered hurriedly, "What does he mean by that? Shirty?
Who's Shirty?" Again he turned very green, and sat back in his chair,
panting, and swaying his head, like a man ready to faint.
I was sorry to see him so ill, and begged to apologise. He with the
greatest propriety might call me "Johnny Newcome," yet it ill became me
to call him "Shirty." The name was casually suggested by his profusion
of frill, &c. &c. &c.
"I'll tell you what, Mr Johnny," said Capsicum, "it's well for you I'm
so bad as I am: wish I was better, for your sake. Wouldn't I pitch into
you at once, and give you a precious good hiding? Oh dear! oh me! I am
so very bad!" Then, rallying again: "Ah, I wish you did belong to my
department! Wouldn't I detach you on outpost duty? Wouldn't I make you
ride till you had no leather left? Wouldn't I send you bullock-hunting
over the sierras? Oh, dreadful! dreadful! What a horrid sensation this
sea-sickness is! Well, good night. I suppose I shall be called Shirty
as long as I live." He tottled off to his berth.
"Yes, you may say that," said Joey, from behind his curtain. Joey was
right. Ten years after, I heard an old Peninsular speak of Capsicum by
the name of Shirty.
There is certainly something very adhesive in a sobriquet; that is, if
it happens to stick when first applied. A lubberly big boy once gave
me a thrashing at school; and I gave him the only redress in my power,
as we were not allowed to throw stones--the name of "Buttons." He had
cheated me at the game; and he had many on his jacket. "Buttons" was
his name, to his dying day.
Gingham and I remained at the table. "Mr Capsicum is quite right,"
said Gingham. "Very proper it should be so. Not the less sorry on that
account. At Lisbon, you will, in fact, have joined. From the time
we land, then, our communications must be limited to the ordinary
civilities of social life: until," he added, with a confidential look,
"having digested my grand financial project, with Lisbon as the basis
of my operations, I am prepared to promulgate it, as authorised, at the
headquarters of the British army. Then," said he, proudly, "I shall
take such an entirely different footing, so high above the vulgar
imputations which always attach to a dealer in bills, that, without
exposing either you or myself to criticism, I may again permit myself
the pleasure of cultivating your acquaintance, on our present terms of
friendship--I may say, intimacy. At any rate, while we remain on board
the packet, that intimacy, I trust, will experience no diminution. Good
night, sir."
We shook hands: his manner, I thought, a little stiff.
Left alone in the cabin, leaning on the table, the night-lamp shedding
a dim and dubious light, my small modicum of brandy-and-water expended,
and the time gone by for brewing another, as the steward had turned
in, I sat and ruminated. Gingham, watching his opportunity, had
benevolently endeavoured to make me sensible, that, as a clerk on
actual service, I should soon be engaged in duties which could not be
performed to my own credit, without care and circumspection; and that I
might find myself, ere long, in some responsible situation, demanding
the utmost caution and energy, to compensate my inexperience. Since
the morning, for we had been much together during the day, through his
friendly suggestions, I had, in a measure, become conscious of all
this: I was beginning to feel the value of such a monitor; and now, it
appeared, he was lost to me in that character! Then there were other
considerations of a deeper kind. I remembered the dinner at the hotel;
I remembered the breakfast; I thought of the travelling store-closet.
To have lost such a companion of my first campaign--it was, indeed, a
loss! Had I never dined with him, I could have better borne it!
At length I came to this conclusion; that, as all the other passengers
had retired to rest, I--had better do the same. I was about to put my
decision in execution, when my attention was arrested by a lamentable
cry, which issued from the berth of poor Mr Commissary Capsicum. "I
can't--I can't--I'm stuck!--weak as a rat! Oh, I am so very bad! Here,
steward! steward!--ah! oh!" Having heard his monody to the end, and
waited in vain for a second stave, I flew to his assistance.
Poor Mr Commissary Capsicum had contrived to divest himself of his
diurnal habiliments; and was now embellished with a red _bonnet de
nuit_; and an elegant night-shirt, which fitted--as if it had been made
for him. I found him--in what an attitude! One leg he had contrived
to hoist into his berth. _Quoad_ that leg, he was kneeling on the
mattress. The other leg was stretched towards the floor, which he
barely touched with his extended and agonised toe. In this painful
position, he was clawing with both hands at the board intended to keep
him in bed, equally unable to advance and to recede. Something--either
the wooden tester--or the proximity of his shake-down to the deck
above--or what else, I cannot pretend to say--prevented his further
movements. He wanted strength; there he was, literally, as he
expressed it, stuck. I expressed the deepest sympathy.
Joey whipped on his drawers and dressing-gown, and was with us in a
twinkling. Joey, seeing all other expedients vain, brought his shoulder
to bear, and commenced a series of well-directed _hoists_, each hoist
accompanied with a musical "Yeo-heave-ho." I laughed; Joey laughed;
poor Capsicum himself caught the infection: his whining and whimpering
gradually glided into a deep pectoral chuckle. The object was at length
effected. Capsicum was stowed for the night; but not without vigorous
and long-continued efforts, both on Joey's part and mine. "Can't
imagine what caused the obstruction," said I; "it's prodigious; it's
incredible." "Incredible, but true," replied Joey; "suppose we call
it 'A tail founded on facts.'" "Good night. Good night, Mr Capsicum."
"Good night, Mr Capsicum; good night." "Good night; ah! oh! what
_shall_ I do? Suppose I should be taken bad again before morning! Thank
you both. Goodnight. Two impudent, unfeeling young hounds. Good night."
So terminated our first day afloat.