An ably conducted French periodical, which acquired considerable

weight under Louis Philippe, from the circumstance that its closing

article expressed, every fifteen days, the views and opinions of the

government, and which, since it ceased to be official, has shown a

strong Orleanist leaning, put forth in a recent number a glowing

statement of the immense advantages to be derived by Spain from the

newly promulgated tariff bill.[12] Prepared by a previous article

in the same review, which had taken for its base, and accepted as

incontrovertible, a tissue of scurrilous and mendacious statements

strung together by a Salamanquino doctor, and notoriously instigated by

a Spanish minister and ambassador, with reference to the suspension of

relations between England and Spain, we were no way surprised to find,

in the discussion of the internal situation of the latter country,

implicit reliance placed on the figures and assumptions of Spanish

financiers, and a most _naïve_ conviction that their showy theories

and projects would be honestly and effectually put in practice. Under

the ingenious one-sidedness and apparent good faith of the writer, it

was not difficult to discern an inspiration derived from Claremont

or the Hotel Sotomayor. The object of the article was to prove that

Spain, relieved from the incubus of English influence, and blessed

with an enlightened and honest government, is rapidly emerging from

her political, social, and financial difficulties; nay, that this

astounding progress is half accomplished, and that the despised land

has already risen many cubits in the European scale. "We ask," says

the writer, after summing up at great length the benefits conferred on

Spain by the Narvaez cabinet--benefits which, for the most part, have

got no further than their project upon paper--"We ask, is not Spain

sufficiently revenged for thirty years of disdain? Would not this Job

of the nations have a right, in its turn, to drop insult upon the

bloody dunghill whereon display themselves these haughty civilisations

of yesterday's date?" Having given this brief specimen of style, we

will now confine ourselves to figures, for most of which the writer in

the _Revue_ appears to be indebted to Mr Mon. The result of his very

plausible calculations is an immediate annual benefit of thirty-four

million francs to the consumers of foreign manufactures, ninety-two

millions to the country at large, in the shape of increased production,

and a clear gain of sixty-three millions to the public treasury. We

heartily desire, for the sake both of Spain and of her creditors, that

this glorious prospect may be realised. If this is to be the result of

what the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ admits to be but a timid step from

the prohibitive to the protective system, what prosperity may not be

prophesied to Spain from further progress in the same path? Nor are

these a tithe of the benefits foretold, and which we refuse ourselves

the pleasure of citing, in order to make room for a few remarks as

to the probable realisation of those already referred to. And first,

we repeat our previous assertion, that in Spain the real benefit of

such a measure as the new tariff can never be rightly estimated till

the law has been for some time in force. There is so much tampering

and corruption in such cases, so many interests and persons must be

satisfied and get their share of the gain, that such reforms, when they

come, often prove very illusory. With respect to the tariff, we will

take no heed of the statements of the Spanish opposition, who denounce

it as a most defective and bungling measure, from which little is to

be expected. In Spain, as much as in any country, the men out of power

will admit little good to be done by those who are in. Neither do we

profess to have digested and formed our own opinion upon the probable

working of a tariff which comprises 1500 articles, (about twice and

a half as many as the British tariff,) and whose complications and

conditions are anything but favourable to its easy comprehension and

appreciation. We can argue, therefore, only from analogy and precedent;

the latter, especially, no unsafe guide with a people so wedded as

the Spaniards to old habits and institutions. The pacific manner in

which the great army of Spanish smugglers have received the tariff,

is a strong argument against its practical value. The _Revue des Deux

Mondes_ estimates the number of smugglers in Spain at sixty thousand.

This is far under the mark; and it is the first time we have known

the Spanish smugglers to be reckoned at less than one hundred and

twenty thousand men, whereas we have seen them rated as high as four

hundred thousand, which, however, could only be explained by including

all those persons in the country who are directly or indirectly

connected with the contraband trade. But the figure is not important.

The principal point, and that which none will dispute, is that the

Peninsular smugglers form a powerful army, including the finest men

in the country, and capable, as we fully believe, if assembled and

with the advantage of a little drill, of soundly thrashing an equal

number of Spanish soldiers, detachments of whom they not unfrequently

do grievously ill-treat. Now how is it, we ask, that this formidable

and generally turbulent body have submitted without an indication of

revolt to the passing of a law which, if the _Revue des Deux Mondes_

is right, will entirely take away their occupation? The self-styled

manufacturers of Catalonia, most of whom are extensive smugglers,

are as acute judges of their own interests as any men in Spain. In

Andalusia, on the Portuguese frontier, in nearly every frontier

province in short, men of wealth, ability, and consideration are at the

head of the contraband traffic. It is not to be supposed that all these

have their eyes shut to the meditated destruction of their interests,

or that they thus tranquilly receive a blow which they believe will be

fatal. It will be remembered by many that when first the new tariff

was seriously brought forward, and appeared likely to become the law

of the land, the Catalan newspapers and other organs of the smuggling

interest were furious in their denunciation of it: alarming rumours

were set abroad, insurrections were talked of, and there seemed a very

pretty chance of a _pronunciamiento_ in favour of prohibitive duties

and contraband trade. But suddenly modifications were talked of, the

publication of the bill was postponed, the storm was allayed and has

not again arisen. There was something so remarkable in this sudden

stilling of the troubled waters, that persons, who are either very

malicious or better versed than their neighbours in the ways of Spain,

did not scruple to assert that there had been buying and selling,

that weighty arguments had been advanced and had prevailed, and that

the result was to be the emasculation of the tariff bill. No trifling

consideration would suffice to clench such a bargain, and doubtless the

concession, if obtained, was well paid for; but what of that? The trade

of a smuggler is the most profitable in Spain, excepting, perhaps, that

of a cabinet minister; and it was worth a sacrifice to retain a traffic

whose profits, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ assures us, range from 60

to 90 per cent on the value of the cotton tissues introduced, and a

lower percentage on silks, woollens, and other goods, of greater value

in proportion to their bulk, weight, and difficulty of transport. For

this percentage, the master-smuggler receives the goods without the

frontier, and delivers them within, supporting all charges, and running

all risks: it is a premium of insurance, as regularly fixed as that

of any marine risk at Lloyd's. But does the _Revue_ suppose that the

present very high charge for passage will not be materially reduced,

sooner than altogether relinquished? Spanish smuggling requires

capital and stability, on the part of those undertaking it on a large

scale, and is a sort of monopoly in the hands of a certain number of

individuals and companies. These pay the working smugglers (the men

who lift the bales, and drive the mules, and fight the custom-house

officers) a few reals a-day, a few dollars a _run_, and pocket enormous

profits. Amongst themselves, they are leagued to maintain the high

rates of insurance. But now that the custom-house steps into the

field as a competitor, removing prohibition and lowering duties, we

may be well assured the smugglers have lowered theirs; and an inquiry

at Perpignan, Oléron, Mauléon, on the Five Cantons at Bayonne, or

in any other smuggling depot on the Pyrenean frontier, would, we

doubt not, satisfy the _Revue_ of the fact. The Spanish custom-house

must cut lower yet to beat the smuggler. The _Revue_ admits that,

on certain articles of great consumption, (silk,) the difference is

still in favour of the contrabandist, even at the duty of thirty to

forty-five per cent _ad valorem_, fixed by the tariff bill, and at

the old high premium of smuggling insurance. But whilst we insist and

are confident that the latter will be reduced, (and therein find one

reason of the tranquil indifference with which the tariff has been

received by the smuggling population of the Peninsula,) we are by no

means certain that the former has not been considerably raised by the

alterations and modifications that took place in the tariff, between

the date of its passing the chambers and that of its publication by the

government; alterations by which the _ad valorem_ duties imposed on

several important classes of merchandise have been converted into fixed

duties. This change, which may very well prove a juggle brought about

by the golden wand of the smuggling fraternity, at once invalidates

the calculations of the _Revue_, which are all based upon the _ad

valorem_ percentage originally prescribed by the tariff law, and upon

the assumption that the high contraband premiums are immutable and

unreducible.

[12] _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1^{er} Août 1849.

Setting aside the mere financial consideration of the tariff question;

losing sight, for a while, of the great accession of revenue it is

universally admitted that Spain would derive from an honest and

effectual reduction of her import-duties on manufactures, which

she herself can produce only of inferior quality and at exorbitant

rates; losing sight, also, of the moral obligation there is upon her

to adopt all such measures, not injurious to any great class of the

community,[13] as shall enable her to pay her way, and acquit her

debts to home and foreign creditors,--temporarily averting our view,

we say, from these considerations, we fix it upon others whose weight

none will deny. What are the chief causes to which the major part of

the crime, misery, and degradation prevalent amongst the lower classes

in Spain, is attributed, by all impartial observers of her social

condition? They are three in number. The demoralisation produced

by smuggling; the burdens upon agriculture, and impediments to its

progress; the high prices the peasant is compelled to pay for the

most necessary manufactures. Upon the evil of smuggling we need not

dwell, nor dilate upon the ease of the transition from defrauding the

government to robbing upon the highway, and from shooting a _douanier_

to murdering the traveller who may be so rash as to defend his purse.

By the lower classes in Spain the smuggler is admired and respected,

and his calling is deemed gallant and honourable; by the classes

above him he is tolerated, and often employed. His random, perilous,

fly-by-night manner of life, made up of alternate periods of violent

exertion and excitement, and perfect idleness and relaxation, exactly

suits his taste and temperament: it will be hard to wean him from his

illicit pursuits, though they should so decline in profit as only to

yield him bread, garlic, and tobacco. You must find him occupation

profitable and to his taste before you can reclaim him; for he will not

dig, and would rather rob than beg. Whenever such import-duties are

adopted in Spain as will really stop smuggling, there will undoubtedly

be a great increase of crimes against property, innumerable bands of

robbers will spring up, and probably there will also be risings under

political banners. The present moment is by no means unpropitious for

the experiment. The government of Spain has perhaps the power, but we

doubt that it has the will. We have shown cause for believing that the

recent change will prove delusive, and of small benefit. If we are

mistaken--and it is very difficult to decide beforehand of the result

of Spanish measures--we shall sincerely rejoice.

[13] At the first hint of a project of reform in the tariff, the cry in

Spain, and especially in Catalonia, has invariably been,--"Protection

for our manufactures!" So loud was the clamour, that it might have

been imagined millions of mouths were dependent for bread on the

fabrication of Spanish calicoes. Now, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_

estimates the total number of hands employed in these much-vaunted

cotton manufactures at thirty-one thousand; and even this number we

are induced to believe considerably over-estimated, from minute and

interesting information on the subject we have recently obtained from

an intelligent Spaniard, long resident in Catalonia. And amongst the

manufacturers are a number of Frenchmen, and other foreigners; for, in

fact, Spaniards have little taste for mechanical occupations, and have

too fine a climate not to love the open air. So the "protection," so

violently insisted upon, is for this handful of operatives, who make

bad calicoes at exorbitant prices; or rather, if the truth be told, it

is for the master-manufacturers, most of whom are also master-smugglers.

We have already observed that, whilst the brunt of taxation is borne

in Spain by agriculture, that interest obtains in return scarcely any

of the facilities and encouragements to which it is fairly entitled.

Spain is the rash child that would run before it can walk, and

consequently falls upon its face. She dashes headlong at the greatest

and most costly improvements realised by other countries; forgetting

that she has stood still whilst they moved onwards, and that a wise

man gets a bed to lie upon before troubling himself about a silken

coverlet. In all the arts of life Spain is immeasurably inferior to

most other European nations. In agricultural implements, in carts

and other vehicles of transport, in her methods of elaborating her

products, and her means of carrying them, she is centuries behind

all the world. Vast tracts of her territory are desolate for want of

that irrigation for which modern ingenuity and invention have devised

such great facilities: the broad waters of her mighty rivers, which

in other countries would be alive with traffic and bordered with

villages, are choked and desolate. "The Guadalquivir, navigable in the

time of the Romans as far as Cordova, is now scarcely practicable for

sailing vessels of a moderate size up to Seville."[14] Few are the

boats, scanty the dwellings, upon the green waves and flower-grown

shores of Tagus and Ebro. When these glorious natural arteries are

thus neglected, we need not expect artificial ones. Canals are sadly

wanted, and have been often planned, but they have got no farther than

the want and the project. As to roads, the main lines are good, but

they are few, diverging from the capital to the various frontiers; and

the cross-roads (where there are any,) and the country tracks, are

mostly execrable, and often impassable for wheels. But all this, we are

informed by the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, is on the eve of a thorough

change. "Labour, like credit," says that periodical, in its article on

Spain, "has received a beneficial impulse. The roads are repaired, the

means of water-conveyance are being improved or terminated, railroads

are begun. The creation of a vast system (_ensemble_) of adjacent roads

will soon connect all parts of the territory with these vivifying

arteries." We scarcely know which is most admirable; the cleverness

that contrives to condense so many misstatements into so few words,

or this tone of candour, conviction, and philanthropical exultation.

As regards the impulse given to Spanish credit, it is but a few days

since we read, with some astonishment at the barbarity and impudence of

the plan (emanating though it does from a Spanish finance minister),

the arrangement by which Mr Bravo Murillo, in order to diminish the

acknowledged deficit in the budget for the year 1850, mulcts the army

and state functionaries of a month's pay, and pensioners and half-pay

men of two months' means of subsistence, besides wiping out, in a still

more unceremonious manner, other pressing claims upon the treasury.

The budget itself is a truly curious document. The customs' revenue

is swollen by the supposed profits of the new tariff; the expenses

of the war department are boldly set down at a reduction which must

accord rather with Mr Murillo's wish than with his expectations.

On the debit side figure also the claims of the public creditor,

for much less than is due, certainly, but for far more than will be

paid. The result of the estimate is, as usual, most satisfactory,

or would be so, at least, if there were the slightest chance of its

justification by the actual receipts and expenditure of the year for

which it is made. To return, however, to the improvements and public

works announced by the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. We certainly find in

the budget a sum of about three hundred thousand pounds--something

more than half the involuntary contribution wrung from the unhappy

_employés_ and pensioners--set down to roads, railways, and canals.

Is this magnificent sum to complete the valuable water-communications

and the network of roads promised to expectant Spain? Hardly, even if

applied as appropriated, which little enough of it ever will be. As

to railways, they are certainly _begun_, but that is as much as can

be said. There is a thirty mile railroad open between Barcelona and

Mataro, upon which accidents seem of pretty frequent occurrence; and

that said, we have said all. A good many others have been planned,

involving the most magnificent projects of tunnels through chains

of mountains, viaducts over great rivers, cuttings through dense

forests, and the like; and at some of these there may be attempts at

work, enough to justify demands for funds; but their termination is

altogether another matter in a country where, according to its national

proverb, things are begun late, and never finished. Doubtless it is a

satisfaction to Spanish pride, when it sees other European countries

veined with iron tracks, to be able to talk of Spanish railroads as

things that are not only projected, but begun. A great country like

Spain must not lag behind in the race of improvement, and its natives

would deem themselves humiliated if they did not attempt to have what

England, France, and Germany enjoy. Nothing can escape these ambitious

hidalgos. They have heard of the electric telegraph, and it is easy to

discern, by newspaper paragraphs, that they are agog for the novelty,

although the country has just been put to considerable expense by the

completion and improvement of the aërial semaphores. These work very

well, the _Diario Mercantil_ of Valencia told us the other day; but

fogs are a great nuisance, the electric plan is much better and surer,

and a German company has offered to lay any length of wires at the rate

of two hundred pounds sterling per league; and the _Diario_ trusts the

government will keep the matter in view, and adopt the new system, if

it can be done without obstacles arising from political disturbances,

and from the ignorance and malevolence of the people. If the electric

telegraph were to await the completion of the "vivifying arteries" of

railroad promised by the more sanguine friends of Spain, the German

company would do well to offer its services elsewhere; but evidently

there is some notion of carrying the posts and wires across country,

over sierras and _despoblados_, with boards, no doubt, affixed here

and there, requesting the public, to "protect the telegraph." How long

the posts would stand--how long the wires might escape injury from the

superstitious peasantry, or from robbers and smugglers, interested in

retarding the transmission of their misdeeds, is another question.

Really, to use a popular comparison, the establishment of electric

telegraphs on Spanish soil seems to us about as necessary and sensible

as to affix a gilt handle to the door of a pig-stye. Not that we would,

in any way, assimilate to the unclean beast our friends the Spaniards,

whom we greatly esteem, and desire to see more prosperous: but thus it

is with them ever. They would fain pass over the rudiments, and attain

at a bound that height of civilisation which other nations have reached

only by a toilsome and patient progress.

[14] FORD, p. 26.

The dearness of most manufactured goods in Spain, and especially of the

commonest and, as Englishmen would consider, most essential articles

of clothing, is, we are fully convinced, a grave impediment to the

moral and physical progress of the lower classes of Spaniards. If,

quitting certain frontier districts, where smuggling gains diffuse a

fallacious appearance of prosperity, we penetrate into the interior

of the country, we behold a rural population sunk in filth and sloth,

wrapped in squalid woollen rags, basking listlessly in the sun,

dwelling oftentimes in community with their domestic animals. Yet, give

him but the means, and no man more than this self-same Spanish peasant

loves clean linen and neat attire. If he is dirty and shirtless, and

afflicted with vermin and impurities, it is because he has never had

the means of being otherwise. How can he, out of his scanty earnings,

supply himself with the calico shirt and clean jacket of jean or

flannel which, in the countries of their manufacture, are within the

reach of the poorest labourer, but whose price is trebled, before they

reach him in Spain, by exorbitant smuggling premiums or import-duty,

and by an expensive and defective system of transport. We cannot

agree with those who assert the Spaniard of the lower class to be a

born idler, who will never willingly do more work than procures him

the day's frugal meal. We have too great faith in his natural good

qualities to receive this opinion otherwise than as a calumny. At any

rate, before deciding thus harshly, give him a chance, which he has

never yet had; show him the possibility, which he has never yet seen,

of attaining, by his own exertions, to comfort and respectability; put

the necessaries of life within his reach, which they have never yet

been, and spur him, with his own pride, to cleanliness and industry.

Teach him, in short, self-respect, which he can hardly feel in his

present sunken condition, and, rely upon it, he will make an effort and

take a start.

It is not our intention to dwell upon the recent temporary displacement

of the Narvaez ministry, at the very moment when its stability and

power seemed most assured, when the exultation of its partisans was the

loudest, and the subjection of the nation most complete. The singular

manner of the change, the ignoble agents by whom it was immediately

effected, the obscurity and inaptitude of the individuals who for a

moment made their apparition at the helm, to be at the next thrown

overboard; the strangely heedless and inconsistent conduct of the

young Queen, and the ambiguous attitude of her mother, have found

abundant commentators, and the whole episode has been wittily and not

unjustly compared to one of those old Spanish comedies based on a

palace intrigue. We cannot, however, admit that the entire glory of the

curious and abortive plot belongs to the apostolical _camarilla_ which

is alleged to exist in the palace, and to consist, amongst others,

of the feeble and bigoted king-consort, of a fanatical confessor, a

hysterical nun, a jesuitical secretary, and others of similar stamp.

Time will probably dissipate part of the mystery that now envelops

the affair; but, even now, those accustomed to watch the show will

have shrewd suspicious whose are the hands that pulled the wires and

made the dull puppets dance. The hands showed little skill, it will

perhaps be urged, in the selection and manoeuvring of the dolls.

This objection will hardly stand. When a juggler misses his trick, it

is still something if he hides his arm from his audience. And as to

the incapacity of the agents, they were probably not employed until

others, abler but less docile, had refused to act. We entertain little

doubt in what quarter the attempt was fostered--perhaps concerted.

Notwithstanding the outward cordiality of the French and Spanish

governments, it is notorious that the old alliance between Queen

Christina and a lately deposed monarch still exists, for the attainment

of objects dear to both their hearts. In what manner these objects were

to be advanced by the recent shuffle of the Spanish political cards,

is not at first sight apparent. But we entertain scarcely the shadow

of a doubt, that the arch-plotter whose influence has more than once

wrought evil to Spain, had a hand in the game. We would be the last to

press hardly upon the fallen. Did we feel tempted so to do, we should

truly feel ourselves rebuked by the noble example of that illustrious

Lady, who has forgotten the treachery of the king in the sorrows of

the exile, and has extended that sympathy and kindness to the dweller

in the English cottage, which she could not have been expected again

to show to the inmate of the French palace. We are guarded, then, in

the expression of our regret, that one who, by the pursuit of purely

personal objects, has been the cause of great calamities to his native

land, should still indulge his dynastic ambition at the expense of the

tranquillity of another country, previously indebted to him for much

discord and misery. And we deem it a painful sight when a man whose

years already exceed the average span of human existence is still

engrossed by plans of unscrupulous aggrandisement, still busied with

Machiavelian intrigues, still absorbed in the baser things of earth,

instead of addressing himself to considerations of higher import,

earning by his virtues in adversity that respect refused to his conduct

in prosperity, and passing the last days of his life--the posthumous

ones of his royalty--resigned, revered, and beloved, like one who

preceded him on his throne and in his banishment, and whose name was on

his lips in the hour of his fall.

THE GREEN HAND.

A "SHORT" YARN.--PART VI.

"Well, ma'am," continued the naval man, on again resuming his

narrative, "as I told you, the sudden hail of 'Land!' brought us all

on deck in a twinkling, in the midst of my ticklish conversation with

the Judge." "Hallo! you aloft!" shouted the chief officer himself, "d'ye

hear, sirrah! use your eyes before hailing the deck!" "Land, sir!" came

falling down again out of the sunlight; "land it is, sir,--broad away

on our larboard bow, sir."

By this time it was about half-past nine, or ten o'clock, of the

morning. Heading nearly due south-east, as we now were, the Indiaman's

bowsprit ran up into the full white blaze of light, in which her flying

jib-boom seemed to quiver and writhe far away from her like an eel in

water; while the spread of her sails against it loomed twice as large

as ordinary, from the sort of hazy double-edged look they had, with

a twinkling thread of sun drawing all round them like a frame, as

if one saw through a wrong-screwed glass. You'd have thought by the

glance under the fore-course, over the ship's head-gratings, she was

travelling off quietly into some no-man's-land or other, where it would

be so bright we should all have to wear green spectacles: the light

breeze being almost direct from nor'west, and so fairly in her favour,

with the help of her studding-sails she was making wonderful progress

for such a mere breath--about four knots to the hour, as I reckoned.

The air aloft appeared in the mean time to be steadying and sucking,

though the water kept smooth, and her bows scarce made a noise in it:

the wide soft swells of the sea just floated up of a pale blue, and

lifted her on, till she went seething gently down into it again; only,

if you put your head over the starboard side, and listened, you thought

you heard a sort of dull poppling ripple coming along the bends from

round her counter. As for the line of horizon on one bow or the other,

'twas hardly to be made out at all, with a streaky white haze overlying

it, up in the sky as it were, on both sides, behind the dazzle of

light. However, the passengers were fancying all kinds of fine tropical

matters lay hidden thereaway; and in fact, what with the notion of land

after a long voyage, and what with the faint specks of bright cloud

that seemed to be melting far off in the glare--to anyone last from

Gravesend, that had never seen anything stranger than Richmond Hill

of a Sunday, the whole thing ahead of the ship would have rather an

enchanted sort of a look. At length the third mate was seen to shove

his spy-glass together in the top-gallant cross-trees, and came slowly

down the rigging. "Well, Mr Rickett?" said the chief officer, meeting

him as he landed on deck. "Well, sir," said Rickett, "it _is_ land

after all, Mr Finch!" The mate rapped out an oath, and took another

turn: Macleod screwed his mouth as if he were going to whistle, then

pulled his red whiskers instead, and looked queer at Rickett; while

Rickett stood peering into his spy-glass as he would have done into his

hat, had he still been a foremast-man. The mate's eye met his, then

turned to the passengers leaning over the poop-railing; and they all

three walked to the capstan, where they began to overhaul the charts,

and laid their heads together out of earshot.

Now, whether this said land just made out on the north-east, trended

away back to south-east, as the clearer look of the horizon to

starboard made one think, it was hard to say--though in _that_ way of

it, there were _seemingly_ two plans for widening her distance. Either

Finch might think it better to keep hold of a fair wind, and just

edge her off enough to drop the point on her weather quarter--when,

of course, if things stood as they were, we should soon set a good

stretch of water betwixt us and the coast; or else they might brace

direct round on the other tack, and head right south-west'ard, out to

sea again: though if we were still _in_ it, the current would set us

every bit as much in its own direction as ever. Accordingly I sidled

nearer to the capstan, and watched anxiously for what the third mate

had to propose, after humming and hawing a little, and scratching his

head under his cap for half a minute. "At any rate, Mr Finch, sir,"

said he, "more especially the captain being off charge, I may say, why,

I'd advise ye, sir, to ----." Here he dropped his voice; but Finch

apparently agreed to what he said.

"Ready about ship there!" said the second mate aloud to the boatswain

forward; and in ten minutes afterwards the Seringapatam was fairly

round, as I had expected, heading at a right angle to her former

course, with the breeze before her starboard beam, and the sun blazing

on the other. I walked forward to the bows, and actually started to

hear how loud and clear the ripple had got under them of a sudden;

meeting her with a plash, as if she were making six or seven knots

headway, while the canvass seemed to draw so much stiffer aloft, you'd

have supposed the breeze had freshened as soon as the helm was put

down. The mates looked over the side and aloft, rubbing their hands

and smiling to each other, as much as to say how fast she was hauling

off the bad neighbourhood she was in, though the heat was as great as

ever, and you didn't feel a breath more air below, nor see the water

ruffle. To _my_ notion, in fact, it was just the set of the current

against her that seemingly freshened her way, the ship being now direct

in its teeth; so that, of course, it would keep bearing her up all the

time away north-eastward, with her own leeway to help it; and the less

could any one notice the difference betwixt the water going past her

side, and _her_ passing the water. This tack of hers, which Rickett, no

doubt, thought such a safe plan, might be the very one to put her in a

really dangerous way yet; for when they did discover this under-tow,

how were they to take her out of it, after all? Probably by trying to

stand fair across the stream of it to southward, which, without three

times the wind we had, would at best take us out many miles nearer the

land it set upon, or leave us perhaps becalmed in the midst of it.

The truth was, that although I hadn't seen what like the land was, and

couldn't have said, by the chart, _where_ we were, I began to have a

faint notion of whereabouts we possibly soon might be, from what I

remembered hearing an old quartermaster in the Iris say, a couple of

years before, regarding a particular spot on the south-west coast,

where the currents at some seasons, as he phrased it, made a regular

race-course meeting. The old fellow gave me also, at the time, some

bearings of the nearest coast, with the landmarks at the mouth of a

river a little farther north--which, he said, he would know if you

set him down there of a dark night, though he had been in his bed at

Gosport the minute before, if there was just a right streak of sky to

the eastward--namely, a big black rock like two steps, and a block at

the foot of them, somewhat the shape of a chipped holy-stone, running

down on one side out of a high headland, like an admiral's cocked

hat, with six mop-headed trees upon the root of the rock, for all the

world like hairs on a wart. Here I recollected how my worthy authority

pointed modestly for example to a case of the kind on his own nose.

The opposite shore of its mouth was flat, with a heavy white surf; but

it shut in so far upon the other, he said, that, steering from the

south'ard, one would never know there was a river there at all. The

Bambar he called it; but if he meant the Bembarooghe, we could scarcely

be near _it_, or that much toward being abreast of St Helena. For all I

saw, indeed, we might have nothing to eastward of us save a hard coast,

or else the sandy coast farther down, shoaling out of sight of land! At

any rate I knew we must have got into the tail of the great sea-stream

from round the Cape of Good Hope, which would, no doubt, split out at

sea on Viana's Bank, and turn partly to north-eastward thereabouts; so

that it wasn't a very bad guess to suppose we were getting up somewhere

near Cape Frio, the likeliest place in the world to find old Bob

Martin's "maze," which we used to joke about so in the Iris.

What was done, though, required to be done quickly, and I looked

about for Tom Westwood, till I saw him on the poop amongst the rest,

talking again to Miss Hyde, as they all crowded towards the lee-quarter

to watch the land-haze seemingly dropping stern. My heart swelled

as it were into my throat, however, at such an appearance of good

understanding betwixt the two,--whereas there was _she_, an hour ago

that very morning, would scarce favour me with a look or a word!--and,

for the life of me, I couldn't have spoken to Westwood at the time,

much less gone hand in hand; for that matter, he didn't seem to be

suspecting aught wrong to trouble himself about. What to say or do,

either, I couldn't think; since the more he cut me out, and the less

friendly I felt to him, the less could I risk the chance of showing

us both up for what we _were_,--which, of course, would bring him in

for the worst of it; as if _I_, by Jove, were, going to serve him

some low trick for the sake of shoving _him_ out with the young lady.

Meantime I kept fidgeting about, as if the deck were too hot for me,

snatching a glance now and then, in spite of myself, at Violet Hyde's

fairy-like figure; so different from the rest of them, as she stretched

eagerly from below the awning over the ship's quarter-gallery, trying

to make out where the land lay,--now putting her little hand over her

eyes to see better, then covering them altogether from the dazzle,

as she drew in her head again and shook her bright brown hair in the

shadow, answering Westwood--confound him! The Indian servant each time

carefully poking out the red and yellow punkah-fringe for a cover over

her, while the passengers were one and all ready to cry at not seeing

the land, and leaving it behind. The Judge himself was the only man

that seemed to have a dim notion of something queer in the whole case;

for every few minutes he walked quietly to the break of the poop, where

I noticed him cast a doubtful look down upon the "chief officer;" and

when the surgeon came up, he asked anxiously how Captain Williamson

was, and if he couldn't be seen below. However, the surgeon told him

the captain had just fallen for the first time into a good sleep, and

there was no admittance, but he was likely to be much better soon.

By this time there was no standing out from under the awnings, and the

quarterdeck and poop had to be well swabbed to keep them at all cool,

the steam of it rising inside with a pitchy hempen sort of smell you

never feel save in the Tropics; the Seringapatam still feeling the

breeze aloft, and lifting on the water with a ripple forward, although

her big courses went lapping fore and aft every time she swung. The

long white haze on the horizon began to melt as the sun heightened,

clearing from under the wake of the light, till now you could fairly

see the sky to eastward. Near noon, in fact, we had almost dropped the

haze altogether on the ship's quarter; and at first I was glad to see

how much way she had made in the two hours, when, on second thoughts,

and by noticing some marks in the loom of it, I had no doubt but though

she might be farther off, why it was only while she set more up to

north-eastward,--so that we were actually, so to speak, leaving it by

getting nearer! However, as the men were at dinner, and most of the

passengers gone off the poop, down to "tiffin," I made up my mind to

try what I could do in a quiet way towards making the mate think of it

more seriously.

"Ah," said I, in a would-be brisk and confidential kind of way, "glad

we're leaving that--a--you know, that land, Mr Finch." "Indeed, sir,"

said he indifferently. "Oh, you know," said I, "it's all very well

for the _passengers_ there to talk fine about land--land--but you and

I, Mr Finch, don't need to be told that it's always dangerous at sea,

you know." The mate lifted his head and eyed me for a moment or two,

between the disgust a sailor feels at seeing a fellow pretend to aught

like seamanship, and a particular sort of spite toward me which I'd

noticed growing in him for the last few days,--though I daresay my

breakfasting that morning in Sir Charles's cabin might have brought it

to a height.

"Land dangerous, sir!" answered he carelessly, as he went on wiping

his quadrant again; "who put _that_ into your head?" "Oh, well,"

returned I, just as carelessly, "if it's to leeward of course,--or with

a current taking you towards it,--only then. But I've no doubt, Mr

Finch, if this wind _were_ to--ah--you know, heave more abaft, that's

to say, get stronger, the craft would at least stand still, till you

got her--" "What on earth _are_ you talking about, Mr Ford--Collins,

I mean?" asked he sharply. "Really, sir, I've got something more to

attend to at present, than such trash about a current, and the devil

knows what else!" "How, why, Mr Finch!" said I, seemingly surprised in

my turn, "_are_ we not in a current just now, then?" "Current!" replied

Finch, almost laughing outright, "what _does_ the man mean?" "Why every

one thinks so, in the cuddy," said I, as if rather taken aback, and

venturing what you fair ladies call a 'fib,'--"ever since we picked up

the bottle last night." This, by the bye, had got spread through some

of the men to the passengers, though, of course, nobody knew what had

been in it yet. "_There_, I declare now," continued I, pointing to our

lee-bow, where I'd had my eyes fixed during the five minutes we spoke,

"we can try it again; do you see that bird yonder on the water?" The

mate turned his head impatiently, and "Look, watch him, sir," said I.

This was a tired man-o'-war bird afloat about twenty fathoms off, with

its sharp white wings stretched just clear of the water, and its black

eye sparkling in the sunlight, as it came dipping on the long smooth

hot-blue swell into the lee of the ship's lofty hull, till you saw its

very shadow in the glitter below it. The Indiaman seemed to pass him as

if he rode there at anchor; only the curious thing was, that the bird

apparently neared her up from leeward, crossing her larboard quarter

within a fathom or two, when all of a sudden he got becalmed, as it

were, in the wake right astern, and by the time either of us could walk

to the ship's taffrail, she was close over him; as if, whenever her

hull was end-on, it took his surface-drift away from him, and, what

was more, as if the _ship_ kept hold of it--her eighteen feet or so to

his little inch of a draught--for it couldn't be owing to the wind.

However, the man-o'-war bird took offer of the next swell to get air in

his wings, and rose off the heave of it with a sharp bit of a scream,

away after some black boobies diving for fish, which no doubt he would

catch, as they dropped them at sight of him.

The mate upon this started and looked round, then aloft. "Confound

it!" said he to himself, "if this breeze would only freshen! There

_is_ a sort of set on the surface just now," continued he to me,

coolly enough, "though how you idlers happened to have an idea of it,

puzzles me, unless because you've nothing else to do but watch the

water. Currents are pretty frequent hereabouts, however." "Dear me!"

said I, "but if we should should--" "Stuff, sir!" said he quickly,

"the coast here must be steep-to enough, I should think, since if it

weren't for the haze, we'd have sighted it thirty miles off! What we

want is wind--wind, to let's cross it." "But then a calm, Mr Finch,"

I said; "I'm hanged afraid of those calms!" "Well, well, sir," said

he, not liking just to shake me off at once, after my proving less

of a ninny in sea matters than he had supposed, "these long currents

never set right ashore: even if we lose the wind, as we may soon, why,

she'll take off into the eddy seaward, sir, if you _must_ know,--the

dead-water in-shore, and the ebb-tide, always give it a safe turn!" All

this, of course, was as much to satisfy himself as me. "Well, that's

delightful!" said I, as if quite contented, and Mr Finch walked away

hastily down one of the poop-ladders, no doubt glad to get rid of me

in a decent manner, though I saw him next minute glancing in at the

compass-boxes. "Keep her up to her course, sirrah; luff, d'ye hear!"

said he to Jacobs, who was, perhaps, the best helmsman aboard. "She

falls off tremendous bad, sir," answered Jacobs, with another whirl

of the spokes; her want of actual headway making the Indiaman _sag_

dead away to leeward, as she shoved into the force of the sea-stream,

running more and more direct upon her starboard bow. One minute the

courses would sink in with a long sighing fall to the lower-masts,

the next her topsails would flutter almost aback, and the heat even

in the shadow of her awnings was extreme, yet she still seemed to

have a breeze through the white glare aloft. I was determined to

bring things to a point somehow or another, so I followed the mate

down the steps. "Oh, by the bye, Mr Finch!" said I eagerly, "suppose

one of those dreadful--what do you call 'em--ah, tornadoes--were to

come on! I understand this is just the way, near Africa--baffling

breeze--heat suffocating--hazy atmosphere--long swell--and current

rising to the surface!" At this Finch stood up in a perfect fury. "What

the devil d'ye mean, sir," said he, "by dodging me about the decks

in this fashion, with these infernally foolish questions of yours?"

"Oh, my fine fellow," thought I, "you shall settle with me for that."

"Tornadoes never blow hereabouts, except off-shore, if you _must_ know,

sir!" he rapped out, sticking his hands in his jacket-pockets as he

said so, and taking a turn on the quarterdeck. "That's quite a mistake,

I assure you, sir!" said I, carried away with the spirit of the thing:

"I've seen the contrary fifty times over, and, from the look of the

sky aloft just now, I'd bet"----here I stopped, recollected myself,

put the top of my cane in my mouth, and peered under the awning at the

sea with my eyes half-shut, as sleepily as usual with my messmates the

cadets. The chief officer, however, stepped back in surprise, eyed me

sharply, and seemed struck with a sudden thought. "Why, sir," said he

rather anxiously, "who may--what can _you_ know of the matter?" "Pooh!"

replied I, seeing some of the passengers were coming on deck, "I'm only

of an inquiring turn of mind! You seafaring persons, Mr Finch, think

we can't get any of that kind of knowledge on land; but if you look

into Johnson's Dictionary, why, you'll find the whole thing under the

word Tornado: 'twas one of the pieces I'd to get by heart before they'd

admit me into our yacht-club--along with Falconer's _Shipwreck_, you

know!" "Indeed!" said the mate, slowly, with a curl of his lip, and

overhauling me from head to foot and up again; "ah, indeed! That was

the way, was it, sir?" I saw 'twas no use. I dare say he caught the

twinkle in my eye; while Jacob's face, behind him, was like the knocker

on a door with trying to screw it tight over his quid, and stuffing the

knot of his neckerchief in his mouth.

"Of course, sir," answered I, letting my voice fall; "and the long

and the short of it is, Mr Finch, the sooner you get your ship out of

this current the better! And what's more, sir, I daresay I could tell

you _how_!" Whether he was waiting for what I'd to say, or thinking of

something just occurred to him, but Finch still gazed steadily at me,

without saying a word; so I went on. "You must know I had an old uncle

who was long in his Majesty's royal navy, and if there was one point

he was crazy upon, 'twas just this very matter of currents--though,

for my part, Mr Finch, I really never understood what he meant till

I made a voyage. He used to tell my mother, poor woman,--who always

fancied they had somewhat to do with puddings,--that he'd seen no less

than half-a-dozen ships go on shore, owing to currents. Now, Jane,

he'd say, when you're fairly in a current, never you try to cross out

of it, as folks often do, _against_ the run of it, for in that case,

unless the wind's strong enough, why, instead of striking the eddy to

take your craft right off-shore, it'll just set you over and over to

the _inside_. You'll cross, in the end, no doubt--but ten to one it's

exactly where the water begins to shoal; whereas, the right plan's

as simple as daylight, and that's why so few know it! Look ye, he'd

say, always you cross _with_ the stream--no matter though your head

seems to make landward; why, the fact is, it'll just set you outside

of itself, clear into its own bight, when you can run off to seaward

with the eddy, if ye choose. _That's_ the way to cross a current, my

uncle used to say, provided you've but a light wind for handling her

with! Now, Mr Finch," added I, coolly, and still mouthing my stick as

before--for I couldn't help wishing to give the conceited fellow a

rub, while I lent him a hint--"for my own part, I can't know much of

these things, but it _does_ seem to me as if my uncle's notions pretty

well suited the case in hand!" Finch was too much of a fair seaman

not to catch my drift at once, but in too great a passion to own it

at the time. "D'ye think, sir," said he, with a face like fire, "so

much sense as there is in this long rigmarole of yours, that I'm such

a--that's to say, that I didn't know it before, sir? But what I've

got to do with _you_, Mr Collinson, or whatever your name may be--you

may have been at sea twenty years, for aught I care--but I'd like to

know _why_ you come aboard here, and give yourself out for as raw a

greenhorn as ever touched ropes with a kid glove?" "Well, Mr Finch,"

said I, "and what's that to you, if I choose to be as green as the

North Sea whaling-ground?" "Why, sir," said Finch, working himself up,

"you're devilish cunning, no doubt, but perhaps you're not aware that a

passenger under a false rig, in an Indiaman, may be clapped in limbo,

if the captain thinks fit? Who and what are you, I ask?--some runaway

master's mate, I suppose, unless you've got something deeper in hand!

Perhaps," ended he, with a sneer, "a pickpocket in disguise?" "Sir,"

said I, getting up off the bulwark I'd been leaning upon, "at _present_

I choose to be a cadet, but, at any rate, you shall make an apology for

what you said just now, sir!" "Apology!" said the mate, turning on his

heel, "I shan't do anything of the sort! You may be thankful, in the

mean time, if I don't have you locked up below, that's all! Perhaps, by

the bye, sir, all you wanted was to show off your seamanship before the

young lady in the round-house there?" Here the glance the fellow gave

me was enough to show he knew pretty well, all the while, what we were

matched against each other for.

I could stand this no longer, of course; but, seeing that one or two

of the passengers were noticing us from the poop, I looked as polite

as possible to do when you've lost your temper; and, in fact, the

whole disappointment of this hair-brained cruise of mine--not to speak

of a few things one had to stand--carried me away at the moment.

There was no scheme I wouldn't rather have been suspected of, by this

time, than the real one--namely, having gone in chase of Violet Hyde.

I took a card out of my pocket, and handed it quietly to Mr Finch.

"You don't seem able to name me, sir," said I: "however, I give you

my word, you may trust that bit of pasteboard for it; and as I take

you to be a gentleman by your place in this ship, why, I shall expect

the satisfaction one gentleman should give another, the first time we

get ashore, although it _should_ be to-morrow morning!" And by Jove!

thought I, I hope I'm done with the cursedest foolish trick ever a

fellow played himself! The man that ventures to call me _green_ again,

or look at me as if he wanted to cool his eyes, hang me if he shan't

answer for it! As for a woman, thought I--but oh, those two blue eyes

yonder--confound it! as I caught sight of a white muslin skirt in

the shade of the poop-awning above. I must say, for Finch, he took

my last move coolly enough, turning round to give me another look,

after glancing at the card. "Indeed!" said he, as if rather surprised;

"well, sir, I'm your man for _that_, though it can't be just so soon

as to-morrow morning! A Company's officer may meet a lieutenant in the

navy any time--ay, and take his ship of the land too, I hope, sir!"

and with that he walked of forward. Lieutenant! said I to myself;

how did he give me my commission so pat, I wonder? and I pulled out

another card, when I found, to my great annoyance, that, in my hurry

that morning, I had happened to put on a coat of Westwood's by mistake,

and, instead of plain "Mr Collins," they were all "Lieutenant Westwood,

R.N." Here's another confounded mess! thought I, and all will be blown

in the end! However, on second thoughts, the notion struck me, that,

by sticking to the name, as I must do _now_ at any rate, why, I should

keep Westwood clear of all scrapes, which, in _his_ case, might be

disagreeable enough; whereas, at present, he was known only as the

Reverend Mr Thomas--and, as for _his_ either shamming the griffin, or

giving hints how to work the ship, he was one of those men you'd scarce

know for a sailor, by aught in his manner, at least; and, indeed, Tom

Westwood always seemed to need a whole frigate's ways about him, with

perhaps somewhat of a stir, to show what he really was.

Five minutes or so after this, it didn't certainly surprise me much

to see the Indiaman laid on the opposite tack, with her head actually

north-by-east, or within a few points of where the light haze faded

into the sky; the mate seeming by this time to see the matter clearly,

and quietly making his own of it. The ship began to stand over towards

the outer set of the current, which could now be seen rippling along

here and there to the surface, as the breeze fell slowly: you heard

nothing save the faint plash of it astern under one counter, the

wafting and rustling of her large main-course above the awnings, for

she was covered over like a caravan,--the slight flap of her jibs far

ahead on the bowsprit startled you now and then as distinctly as if

you got a fillip on your own nose; the stunsail, high up beside the

weather-leech of her fore-topsail, hung slack over the boom, and one

felt each useless jolt of the wheel like a foot-slip in loose sand

when you want to run,--all betwixt the lazy, listless voices of the

passengers, dropping and dropping as separate as the last sands in an

hour-glass. Still every minute of air aloft helped her nearer to where

you saw the water winding about the horizon in long swathes, as it

were, bluer than the rest, and swelling brim-full, so to speak, out

of a line of light; with the long dents and bits of ripple here and

there creeping towards it, till the whole round of the surface, as

far as you could see, came out into the smooth, like the wrinkles on

a nutmeg. Four bells of the afternoon watch had struck--two o'clock

that is--when Rickett the third mate, and one or two men, went out to

the arm of the spritsail-yard across the bowsprit, where they lowered

away a heavy pitch-pot with a long strip of yellow bunting made fast to

it, and weighted a little at the loose end, to mark the _set_ of the

current: and as the pot sank away out on her larboard bow, one could

see the bright-coloured rag deep down through the clear blue-water,

streaming almost fairly _north_. She appeared to be nearing the turn

of the eddy, and the chief officer's spirits began to rise: Rickett

screwed one eye close, and looked out under his horny palm with the

other, doubtful, as he said, that we should "sight the land off-deck

before that. As for this trifle of an air aloft, sir," said he, "I'm

afraid we won't"--"Hoot, Mr Reckett," put in Macleod, stepping one of

his long trowser-legs down from over the quarterdeck awning, like an

ostrich that had been aloft, "ye're aye afraid; but it's not easy to

see, aloft, Mr Fench, sir." "How does the land lie _now_, Mr Macleod?"

asked the first officer. "Well, I wouldn't wonder but we soon dropped

it, sir--that's to _east'ard_, I mean," replied he; "though it's what

we call a bit mountainous, in Scotland--not that unlike the Grampians,

Mr Fench, ye know!" "Hang your Grampians, man!--what's _ahead_ of us,

eh?" said the mate hastily. "Why, sir," said the Scotchman, "there _is_

some more of it on the nor'east, lower a good deal--it's just flush

with the water from here, at present, Mr Fench--with a peak or two,

trending away too'ard north; but the light yonder on our starboard bow

makes them hard for to see, I may say."

In fact, some of the men forward were making it out already on the

starboard bow, where you soon could see the faint ragged shape of a

headland coming out, as it were, of the dazzle beyond the water, which

lay flickering and heaving between, from deep-blue far away into pale;

while almost at the same time, on her starboard quarter, where there

was less of the light, another outline was to be seen looming like

pretty high land, though still fainter than the first. As for the space

betwixt them, for aught one could distinguish as yet, there might be

nothing _there_ except air and water over against the ship's side.

"Well," said the mate briskly, after a little, "we're pretty sure,

_now_, to have the land-breeze to give us sea-room, before two or three

hours are over,--by which time, I hope, we'll be in the eddy of this

infernal current, at any rate!" However, I was scarce sure he didn't

begin to doubt the plan I'd given him; whereas had he known the whole

case in time, and done the thing _then_, it was certain enough,--and

the best thing he could do, even as it was: but what troubled me now,

why, suppose anything happened to the ship, mightn't he turn the tables

on me after all, and say I had some bad design in it? I loitered about

with my arms folded, saying never a word, but watching the whole affair

keener than I ever did one of Shakspeare's plays in the theatre after

a dull cruise; not a thing in sea, sky, or Indiaman, from the ripples

far off on the water to ugly Harry hauling taut the jib-sheet with his

chums, but somehow or other they seemed all to sink _into_ me at the

time, as if they'd all got to come _out_ again strong. You hardly knew

_when_ the ship lost the last breath of air aloft, till, from stealing

through the smooth water, she came apparently to a stand-still,

everything spread broad out, not even a flap in the canvass, almost, it

had fallen a dead calm so gradually.

However _my_ troubles weren't seemingly over yet, for just then up came

the Judge's dark kitmagar to the gangway where I was, and, from the sly

impudence of the fellow's manner, I at once fancied there was something

particular in the wind, as if he'd been seeking me about-decks.

"S'laam, mistree!" said he, with but a slight duck of his flat brown

turban, "Judge sahib i-send Culley Mistree his chupprass,"--_message_,

forsooth!--"sah'b inquire the flavour of gentlyman's Ees-Inchee

Coompanee, two-three moment!" "The flavour of my East-India company,

you rascal!" said I laughing, yet inclined to kick him aft again for

his impertinent look; "speak for yourself, if you please!" In fact

the whiff of cocoa-nut oil, and other dark perfumes about him, came

out in a hot calm at sea, when everything sickens one, so as to need

no inquiry about the matter: however, I walked straight aft to the

round-house, and in at the open door, through which Sir Charles was to

be seen pacing from one side of his cabin to the other, like a Bengal

tiger in a cage. "Harkye, young man," said he sternly, turning as soon

as I came in, with my hat in my hand, "since I had the honour of your

company here this morning, I have recollected--indeed I find that one

of my servants had done the same--that you are the person who molested

my family by various annoyances beside my garden at Croydon, sir!"

"Indeed, Sir Charles!" said I coolly, for the bitter feeling I had

made me cool: "they must have been unintentional then, sir! But I was

certainly at Croydon, seeing my mother's house happens to be there."

"You must have had some design in entering this vessel, sir!" continued

the Judge, in a passion; "'gad sir, the coincidence is too curious!

Tell me what it is at once, or by --" "My design was to go to India,

sir," answered I, as quietly as before. "In what capacity?--who are

you?--what--who--what do you want _there_, eh?" rapped out the Judge.

"I'm not aware, sir," said I, "what right you've got to, question me;

but I--in fact I'll tell _so_ much to any man--why, I'm an officer in

the navy." Sir Charles brought short up in his pacing and stamping, and

stared at me. "An officer in the navy!" repeated he; "but yes--why--now

I think, I do, remember something in your dress, sir,--though it was

the _face_ that struck me! In short then, sir, this makes, the case

worse: you are here on false pretences--affecting the very reverse,

sir--setting yourself up for a model of simplicity,--a laughing-stock

indeed!" "I had reasons for not wishing my profession to be known, Sir

Charles," said I; "most special reasons. They're now over, however,

and I don't care _who_ knows it!" "May I ask what these were?" said

the Judge. "_That_ I'll never tell to any man breathing!" I said,

determinedly. The Judge walked two or three times fore and aft; then

a thought seemed to strike him--he looked out as if at the decks and

through below the awnings, then shut the door and came back to me

again. "By the way," said he seriously, and changing his tone, "since

this extraordinary acknowledgment of yours, sir, something occurs to

me which makes me almost think your presence in the vessel, in one

sense, opportune. I have reason to entertain a high opinion of naval

officers as technical men, professionally educated in his Majesty's

regular service, and--you look rather a _young_ man--but have you had

much experience, may I ask?" "I have been nine or ten years at sea,

sir," replied I, a little taken aback, "in various parts of the world!"

"I have some suspicion lately," he went on, "that this vessel is not

navigated in a--in short, that at present, probably, we may be in

some danger,--do _you_ think so, sir?" "No, Sir Charles," I said, "I

don't think she _is_, as matters stand,--only in a troublesome sort of

quarter, which the sooner she's out of, the better." "The commander

is, I find, dangerously unwell," continued he, "and of the young

man who seems to have the chief care of the vessel, I have no very

high--well--_that_, of course I-- Now sir," said he, looking intently

at me, "are _you_ capable of--in short of managing this Company's

vessel, should any emergency arise? I have seen such, myself,--and in

the circumstances I feel considerable alarm--uneasiness, at least!--Eh,

sir?" "Depend upon it, Sir Charles," I said, stepping toward the door,

"in any matter of the kind I'll do my best for this ship! But none

knows so well as a seaman, there are cases enough where your very best

can't do much!" The Judge seemed rather startled by my manner--for I

_did_ feel a little misgiving, from something in the weather on the

whole; at any rate I fancied there was a cold-bloodedness in every

sharp corner of his face, bilious though his temper was, that would

have let him see _me_ go to the bottom a thousand times over, had I

even had a chance with his daughter herself, ere he'd have yielded me

the tip of her little finger: accordingly 'twas a satisfaction to me,

at the moment, just to make him see he wasn't altogether in his nabob's

chair in Bengal yet, on an elephant's back!

"Ah, though!" said he, raising his voice to call me back, "to return

for an instant--there is one thing I must positively require,

sir--which you will see, in the circumstances, to be unavoidable. As

a mere simple cadet, observe sir, there was nothing to be objected to

in a slight passing acquaintance--but, especially in the--in short

equivocal--sir, I must request of you that you will on no account

attempt to hold any communication with my daughter, Miss Hyde--beyond

a mere bow, of course! 'Twill be disagreeable, I assure you. Indeed, I

shall--" "Sir," said I, all the blood in my body going to my face, "of

all things in the world, _that_ is the very thing where your views and

mine happen to square!" and I bowed. The man's coolness disgusted me,

sticking such a thing in my teeth, after just reckoning on my services

with the very same breath,--and all when it wasn't required, too! And

by heaven! thought I, had _she_ shown me favour, all the old nabobs

in Christendom, and the whole world to boot, shouldn't hinder me from

speaking to her! What I said apparently puzzled him, but he gave me a

grand bow in his turn, and I had my hand on the door, when he said,

"I suppose, sir, as a naval officer, you have no objection to give me

your name and rank? I forget what--" Here I remembered my mistake with

the mate, and on the whole I saw I must stick by it till I was clear

of the whole concern,--as for _saying_ my name was Westwood, that I

couldn't have done at the time for worlds, but I quietly handed him

another card; meaning, of course, to give Westwood the cue as shortly

as possible, for his own safety. The Judge started on seeing the card,

gave me one of his sharp glances, and made a sudden step towards me.

"Have you any relation in India, Mr Westwood?" said he, slowly; to

which I gave only a nod. "What is he, if I may inquire?" asked he

again. "A councillor or something, I believe," said I carelessly.

"_Thomas_ Westwood?" said Sir Charles. "Ah," said I, wearied of the

thing, and anxious to go. "An uncle, probably, from the age?" he still

put in. "Exactly, that's it!" I said. "Why--what!--why did you not

mention this at first?" he broke out suddenly, coming close up; "why,

Councillor Westwood is my very oldest friend in India, my dear sir!

This alters the matter. I should have welcomed a nephew of his in my

house, to the utmost! Why, how strange, Mr Westwood, that the fact

should emerge in this curious manner!"--and with that he held out

his hand. "Of course," said he, "no such restriction as I mentioned

could for a moment apply to a nephew of Councillor Westwood!" I stared

at him for a moment, and then--"Sir," said I, coolly, "it seems the

whole matter goes by names; but if my name were the devil, or the

apostle Paul, I don't see how it can make a bit of difference in

_me_: what's more, sir," said I, setting my teeth, "what_ever_ my name

may be, depend upon it, I shall never claim acquaintance either with

you or--or--Miss Hyde!" With that I flung straight out of the cabin,

leaving the old gentleman bolt upright on the floor, and as dumb as a

stock-fish, whether with rage or amazement I never stopped to think.

I went right forward on the Indiaman's forecastle, clear of all the

awnings, dropped over her head out of sight of the men, and sat with my

legs amongst the open wood-work beneath the bowsprit, looking at the

calm,--nobody in sight but the Hindoo figure, who seemed to be doing

the same. _Westwood!_ thought I bitterly; then in a short time, when

the mistake's found out, and he got safe past the Cape, perhaps,--it'll

be nothing but Westwood! He'll have a clear stage, and all favour; but

at any rate, how_ever_ it may be, _I_'ll not be here, by heaven! to see

it. That cursed councillor of his, I suppose, is another nabob,--and

no doubt he'll marry her, all smooth! Uncles be-- I little thought, by

Jove! when I knocked off that yarn to the mate about _my_ uncle--but,

after all, it's strange how often a fellow's paid back in his own

coin! The heat at the time was unbearable,--_heat_, indeed! 'twasn't

only heat,--but a heavy, close, stifling sort of a feeling, like in a

hot-house, as if you'd got a weight on your head and every other bit of

you: the water one time so dead-blue and glassy between the windings

of it, that the sky seemed to vanish, and the ship looked floating up

into where _it_ was,--then again you scarce knew sea from air, except

by the wrinkles and eddies running across each other between, toward a

sullen blue ring at the horizon,--like seeing through a big, twisted

sieve, or into a round looking-glass all over cracks. I heard them clue

up every thing aloft, except the topsails,--and _they_ fell slapping

back and forward to the masts, every now and then, with a _thud_ like a

thousand spades clapped down at once over a hollow bit of ground--till

all seemed as still between as if they'd buried something. I wished to

heaven it were what I _felt_ at the time, and the thought of Violet

Hyde, that I might be as if I never had seen her,--when on glancing up,

betwixt the figure-head and the ship's stern, it struck me to notice

how much the land on her starboard bow and beam seemed to have risen,

even during the last hour, and that without wind; partly on account of

its clearing in that quarter, perhaps; but the nearest points looked

here and there almost as if you could see into them, roughening barer

out through the hue of the distance, like purple blotches spreading in

it. Whereas, far away astern of us, when I crossed over her headworks,

there were two or three thin white streaks of haze to be seen just on

the horizon, one upon another, above which you made out somewhat like a

dim range of peaked land, trending one couldn't say how far back--all

showing how fairly the coast was shutting her in upon the south-east,

as she set farther in-shore, even while the run of the current bade

fair to take her well clear of it ahead; which was of course all we

need care for at present. Her want of steerage-way, however, let the

Indiaman sheer hither and thither, till at times one was apt to get

confused, and suppose her more in with the land-loom than she really

was. Accordingly the mate proved his good judgment by having a couple

of boats lowered with a tow-line, to keep her at least stern-on to the

current,--although the trouble of getting out the launch would have

more served his purpose, and the deeper loaded the better, since in

fact there were _two_ favourable drifts instead of one, between every

stroke of the oars. The men pulled away rather sulkily, their straw

hats over their noses, the dip of the hawser scarce tautening at each

strain, as they squinted up at the Seringapatam's idle figure-head. For

my part I had thought it better to leave him by himself, and go below.

When I went into the cuddy, more for relief's sake than to dine, the

passengers were chattering and talking away round the tables, hot and

choking though it was, in high glee because the land was in sight from

the starboard port-window, and they fancied the officers had changed

their mind as to "touching" there. Every now and then a cadet or two

would start up, with their silver forks in their hands, and put their

heads out; some asked whether the anchor had been seen getting ready

or not; others disputed about the colour of tropical trees, if they

were actually green like English ones, or perhaps all over blossoms

and fruit together--the whole of them evidently expecting bands of

negroes to line the shore as we came in. One young fellow had taken a

particular fancy to have an earthworm, with earth enough to feed it

all the rest of the voyage, otherwise he couldn't stand it; and little

Tommy's mother almost went into hysterics again, when she said, if

she could just eat a lettuce salad once more, she'd die contented;

the missionary looking up through his spectacles, in surprise that

she wasn't _more_ interested about the slave-trade, whereof he'd been

talking to her. As for Westwood, he joined quietly in the fun, with a

glance now and then across to me; however, I pretended to be too busy

with the salt beef, and was merely looking up again for a moment, when

my eye chanced to catch on the swinging barometer that hung in the

raised skylight, right over the midst of our noise. By George! ma'am,

what was my horror when I saw the quicksilver had sunk so far below the

mark, probably fixed there that morning, as to be almost shrunk in the

ball! Whatever the merchant service might know about the instrument in

those days, the African coast was the place to teach its right use to

us in the old Iris. I laid down my knife and fork as carelessly as I

could, and went straight on deck.

Here I sought out the mate, who was forward, watching the land--and at

once took him aside to tell him the fact. "Well, sir," said he coolly,

"and what of that? A sign of wind, certainly, before very long; but in

the meantime we're _sure_ to have it off the land." "That's one of the

very reasons," said I, "for thinking _this_ will be from seaward--since

towards evening the land'll have plenty of air without it! But more

than that, sir," said I, "I tell you, Mr Finch, I know the west coast

of Africa pretty well--and so far south as this, the glass falling

so low as _twenty-seven_, is always the sign of a nor'westerly blow!

If you're a wise man, sir, you'll not only get your upper spars down

on deck, but you'll see your anchors clear!" Finch had plainly got

furious at my meddling again, and said he, "Instead of that, sir, I

shall hold on _everything_ aloft, to stand out when I get the breeze!"

"D'ye really think, then," said I, pointing to the farthest-off streak

of land, trending away by this time astern of us, faint as it was;

"_do_ you think you could ever weather that point, with anything like

a strong nor'-wester, besides a current heading you in, as you got

fair hold of it again?" "Perhaps not," said he, wincing a little as

he glanced at it, "but you happen always to suppose what there's a

thousand to one against, sir! Why, sir, you might as well take the

command at once! But, by G----! sir, if it _did_ come to that, I'd

rather--I'd rather see the ship _lost_--I'd rather go to the bottom

with all in her, after handling her as I know well how, than I'd see

the chance given to _you_!" The young fellow fairly shouted this last

word into my very ear--he was in a regular furious passion. "You'd

_better_ let me alone, that's all I've got to say to you, sir!" growled

he as he turned away; so I thought it no use to say more, and leant

over the bulwarks, resolved to see it out.

The fact was, the farther we got off the land _now_, the worse--seeing

that if what I dreaded should prove true, why, we were probably in

thirty or forty fathoms water, where no anchor could hold for ten

minutes' time--if it ever caught ground. My way would have been, to

get every boat out at once, and tow in till you could see the colour

of some shoal or other from aloft, then take my chance there to ride

out whatever might come, to the last cable aboard of us. Accordingly

I wasn't sorry to see that by this time the whole bight of the coast

was slowly rising off our beam, betwixt the high land far astern and

the broad bluffs upon her starboard bow; which last came out already

of a sandy reddish tint, and the lower part of a clear blue, as the

sun got westward on our other side. What struck me was, that the face

of the water, which was all over wrinkles and winding lines, with here

and there a quick ripple, when I went below, had got on a sudden

quite smooth as far as you could see, as if they'd sunk down like

so many eels; a long uneasy ground-swell was beginning to heave in

from seaward, on which the ship rose; once or twice I fancied I could

observe the colour different away towards the land, like the muddy

chocolate spreading out near a river mouth at ebb-tide,--then again it

was green, rather; and as for the look of the coast, I had no knowledge

of it. I thought again, certainly, of the old quartermaster's account

in the Iris, but there was neither anything like it to be seen, nor any

sign of a break in the coast at all, though high headlands enough.

The ship might have been about twelve or fourteen miles from the

north-east point upon her starboard bow, a high rocky range of

bluffs,--and rather less from the nearest of what lay away off her

beam,--but after this you could mark nothing more, except it were that

she edged farther from the point, by the way its bearings shifted or

got blurred together: either she stood still, or she'd caught some eddy

or under-drift, and the mate walked about quite lively once more. The

matter was, how to breathe, or bear your clothes--when all of a sudden

I heard the second mate sing out from the forecastle--"Stand by the

braces, there! Look out for the topes'l hawl-yairds!" He came shuffling

aft next moment as fast as his foundered old shanks could carry him,

and told Mr Finch there was a squall coming off the land. The mate

sprang up on the bulwarks, and so did I--catching a glance from him

as much as to say--There's your gale from seaward, you pretentious

lubber! The lowest streak of coast bore at present before our starboard

quarter, betwixt east and south-east'ard, with some pretty high land

running away up from it, and a sort of dim blue haze hanging beyond,

as 'twere. Just as Macleod spoke, I could see a dusky dark vapour

thickening and spreading in the haze, till it rose black along the

flat, out of the sky behind it; whitened and then darkened again, like

a heavy smoke floating up into the air. All was confusion on deck for

a minute or two--off went all the awnings--and every hand was ready at

his station, fisting the ropes; when I looked again at the cloud, then

at the mates, then at it again. "_By_ George!" said I, noticing a pale

wreath of it go curling on the pale clear sky over it, as if to a puff

of air,--"it _is_ smoke! Some niggers, as they so often do, burning

the bush!" So it was; and as soon as Finch gave in, all hands quietly

coiled up the ropes. It was scarce five minutes after, that Jacobs,

who was coiling up a rope beside me, gave me a quiet touch with one

finger--"Mr Collins, sir," said he in a low voice, looking almost right

up, high over toward the ship's larboard bow, which he couldn't have

done before, for the awnings so lately above us,--"look, sir--there's

an _ox-eye_!" I followed his gaze, but it wasn't for a few seconds that

I found what it pointed to, in the hot far-off-like blue dimness of the

sky overhead, compared with the white glare of which to westward our

canvass aloft was but dirty gray and yellow.

'Twas what none but a seaman would have observed, and many a seaman

wouldn't have done, so,--but a man-o'-war's-man is used to look out

at all hours, in all latitudes,--and to a man that knew its meaning,

_this_ would have been no joke, even out of sight of land: as it was,

the thing gave me a perfect thrill of dread. High aloft in the heavens

northward, where they were freest from the sun--now standing over

the open horizon amidst a wide bright pool of light,--you managed to

discern a small silvery speck, growing slowly as it were out of the

faint blue hollow, like a star in the day-time, till you felt as if

it _looked_ at you, from God-knows what distance away. One eye after

another amongst the mates and crew joined Jacobs's and mine, with the

same sort of dumb fellowship to be seen when a man in London streets

watches the top of a steeple; and however hard to make out at first,

ere long none of them could miss seeing it, as it got slowly larger,

sinking by degrees till the sky close about it seemed to thicken like a

dusky ring round the white, and the sunlight upon our seaward quarter

blazed out doubly strong--as if it came dazzling off a brass bell,

with the bright tongue swinging in it far off to one side, where

the hush made you think of a stroke back upon us, with some terrific

sound to boot. The glassy water by this time was beginning to rise

under the ship with a struggling kind of unequal heave, as if a giant

you couldn't see kept shoving it down here and there with both hands,

and it came swelling up elsewhere. To north-westward or thereabouts,

betwixt the sun and this ill-boding token aloft, the far line of open

sea still lay shining motionless and smooth; next time you looked,

it had got even brighter than before, seeming to leave the horizon

visibly; then the streak of air just above it had grown gray, and a

long edge of hazy vapour was creeping as it were over from beyond,--the

white speck all the while travelling down towards it slantwise from

nor'ard, and spreading its dark ring slowly out into a circle of cloud,

till the keen eye of it at last sank in, and below, as well as aloft,

the whole north-western quarter got blurred together in one gloomy

mass. If there was a question at first whether the wind mightn't come

from so far nor'ard as to give her a chance of running out to sea

before it, there was none now,--our sole recourse lay either in getting

nearer the land meanwhile, to let go our anchors ere it came on, with

her head _to_ it,--or we might make a desperate trial to weather the

lee-point now far astern. The fact was, we were going to have a regular

tornado, and that of the worst kind, which wouldn't soon blow itself

out; though near an hour's notice would probably pass ere it was on.

The three mates laid their heads gravely together over the capstan for

a minute or two, after which Finch seemed to perceive that the first

of the two ways was the safest; though of course the nearer we should

get to the land, the less chance there was of clearing it afterwards,

should her cables part, or the anchors drag. The two boats still

alongside, and two others dropped from the davits, were manned at

once and set to towing the Indiaman ahead, in-shore; while the bower

and sheet anchors were got out to the cat-heads ready for letting go,

cables overhauled, ranged, and clinched as quickly as possible, and the

deep-sea lead passed along to take soundings every few minutes.

On we crept, slow as death, and almost as still, except the jerk of

the oars from the heaving water at her bows, and the loud flap of the

big topsails now and then, everything aloft save them and the brailed

foresail being already close furled; the clouds all the while rising

away along our larboard beam nor'west and north, over the gray bank on

the horizon, till once more you could scarce say which point the wind

would come from, unless by the huge purple heap of vapour in the midst.

The sun had got low, and he shivered his dazzling spokes of light

behind one edge of it, as if 'twere a mountain you saw over some coast

or other: indeed, you'd have thought the ship almost shut in by land

on both sides of her, which was what seemed to terrify the passengers

most, as they gathered about the poop-stairs and watched it,--_which_

was the true land and which the clouds, 'twas hard to say,--and the sea

gloomed writhing between them like a huge lake in the mountains. I saw

Sir Charles Hyde walk out of the round-house and in again, glancing

uneasily about: his daughter was standing with another young lady,

gazing at the land; and at sight of her sweet, curious face, I'd have

given worlds to be able to do something that might save it from the

chance, possibly, of being that very night dashed amongst the breakers

on a lee-shore in the dark--or at best, suppose the Almighty favoured

any of us so far, perhaps landed in the wilds of Africa. Had there been

aught man could do more, why, though I never should get a smile for it,

I'd have compassed it, mate or no mate; but all was done that could be

done and I had nothing to say. Westwood came near her, too, apparently

seeing our bad case at last to some extent, and both trying to break it

to her and to assure her mind; so I folded my arms again, and kept my

eyes hard fixed upon the bank of cloud, as some new weather-mark stole

out in it, and the sea stretched breathless away below, like new-melted

lead. The air was like to choke you--or rather there was none--as if

water, sky, and everything else wanted _life_, and one would fain have

caught the first rush of the tornado into his mouth--the men emptying

the dipper on deck from the cask, from sheer loathing. As for the land,

it seemed to draw nearer of itself, till every point and wrinkle in the

headland off our bow came out in a red coppery gleam--one saw the white

line of surf round it, and some blue country beyond like indigo; then

back it darkened again, and all aloft was getting livid-like over the

bare royal mast-heads.

Suddenly a faint air was felt to flutter from landward; it half lifted

the top-sails, and a heavy earthy swell came into your nostrils--the

first of the land-breeze, at last; but by this time it was no more

than a sort of mockery, while a minute after you might catch a low,

sullen, moaning sound far of through the emptiness, from the strong

surf the Atlantic sends in upon the West Coast before a squall. If

ever landsmen found out what land on the wrong side is, the passengers

of the Seringapatam did, that moment; the shudder of the top-sails

aloft seemed to pass into every one's shoulders, and a few quietly

walked below, as if they were safe in their cabins. I saw Violet Hyde

look round and round with a startled expression, and from one face to

another, till her eye lighted on me, and I fancied for a moment it

was like putting some question to me. I couldn't bear it!--'twas the

first time I'd felt powerless to offer anything; though the thought ran

through me again till I almost felt myself buffeting among the breakers

with her in my arms. I looked to the land, where the smoke we had seen

three-quarters of an hour ago rose again with the puff of air, a slight

flicker of flame in it, as it wreathed off the low ground toward the

higher point,--when all at once I gave a start, for something in the

shape of the whole struck me as if I'd seen it before. Next moment I

was thinking of old Bob Martin's particular landmarks at the river

mouth he spoke of, and the notion of its possibly being hereabouts

glanced on me like a god-send. In the unsure dusky sight I had of it,

certainly, it wore somewhat of that look, and it lay fair to leeward of

the weather; while, as for the dead shut-in appearance of it, old Bob

had specially said you'd never think it was a river; but then again it

was more like a desperate fancy owing to our hard case, and to run the

ship straight for it would be the trick of a bedlamite. At any rate a

quick cry from aft turned me round, and I saw a blue flare of lightning

streak out betwixt the bank of gray haze and the cloud that hung over

it--then another, and the clouds were beginning to rise slowly in the

midst, leaving a white glare between, as if you could see through it

towards what was coming. The men could pull no longer, but ahead of the

ship there was now only about eight or ten fathoms water, with a soft

bottom. The boats were hoisted in, and the men had begun to clue up

and hand the topsails, which were lowered on the caps, when, just in

the midst of the hubbub and confusion, as I stood listening to every

order the mate gave, the steward came up hastily from below to tell him

that the captain had woke up, and, being, much better, wanted to see

him immediately. Mr Finch looked surprised, but he turned at once, and

hurried down the hatchway.

The sight which all of us who weren't busy gazed upon, over the

larboard bulwarks, was terrible to see: 'twas half dark, though the

sun, dropping behind the haze-bank, made it glimmer and redden. The

dark heap of clouds had first lengthened out blacker and blacker, and

was rising slowly in the sky like a mighty arch, till you saw their

white edges below, and a ghastly white space behind, out of which the

mist and scud began to fly. Next minute a long sigh came into her jib

and foresail, then the black bow of cloud partly sank again, and a

blaze of lightning came out all round her, showing you every face on

deck, the inside of the round-house aft, with the Indian Judge standing

in it, his hand to his eyes,--and the land far away, to the very swell

rolling in to it. Then the thunder broke overhead in the gloom, in one

fearful sudden crack, that you seemed to hear through every corner of

cabins and forecastle below,--and the wet back-fins of twenty sharks

or so, that had risen out of the inky surface, vanished as suddenly.

The Indiaman had sheered almost broadside on to the clouds, her jib

was still up, and I knew the next time the clouds _rose_ we should

fairly have it. Flash after flash came, and clap after clap of thunder,

_such_ as you hear before a tornado--yet the chief officer wasn't to

be seen, and the others seemed uncertain what to do first; while every

one began to wonder and pass along questions where he could be. In

fact, he had disappeared. For my part, I thought it very strange he

staid so long; but there wasn't a moment to lose. I jumped down off

the poop-stairs, walked forward on the quarterdeck, and said coolly

to the men nearest me, "Run and haul down that jib yonder--set the

spanker here, aft. You'll have her taken slap on her beam: quick, my

lads!" The men did so at once. Macleod was calling out anxiously for

Mr Finch. "Stand by the anchors there!" I sang out, "to let go the

starboard one, the _moment_ she swings head to wind!" The Scotch mate

turned his head; but Rickett's face, by the next flash, showed he saw

the good of it, and there was no leisure for arguing, especially as

I spoke in a way to be heard. I walked to the wheel, and got hold of

Jacobs to take the weather-helm. We were all standing ready, at the

pitch of expecting it. Westwood, too, having appeared again by this

time beside me, I whispered to him to run forward and look after the

anchors--when some one came hastily up the after-hatchway, with a

glazed hat and pilot-coat on, stepped straight to the binnacle, looked

in behind me, then at the black bank of cloud, then aloft. Of course

I supposed it was the mate again, but didn't trouble myself to glance

at him farther--when "Hold on with the anchors!" he sang out in a loud

voice--"hold on there for your lives!" Heavens! it was the captain

himself!

At this, of course, I stood aside at once; and he shouted again, "Hoist

the jib and fore-topmast-staysail--stand by to set fore-course!" By

Jove! this was the way to pay the ship _head_ off, instead of stern

off, from the blast when it came--and to let her drive before it at no

trifle of a rate, wherever _that_ might take her! "_Down_ with that

spanker, Mr Macleod, d'ye hear!" roared Captain Williamson again; and

certainly I did wonder what he meant to do with the ship. But his

manner was so decided, and 'twas so natural for the captain to strain

a point to come on deck in the circumstances, that I saw he must have

some trick of seamanship above _me_, or some special knowledge of

the coast,--and I waited in a state of the greatest excitement for

the first stroke of the tornado. He waved the second and third mates

forward to their posts--the Indiaman sheering and backing, like a

frightened horse, to the long slight swell and the faint flaw of the

land air. The black arch to windward began to rise again, showing a

terrible white stare reaching deep in, and a blue dart of lightning

actually ran zig-zag down before our glaring fore-to'gallant-mast.

Suddenly the captain had looked at me, and we faced each other by the

gleam; and quiet, easy-going man as he was commonly, it just flashed

across me there was something extraordinarily wild and _raised_ in his

pale visage, strange as the air about us made every one appear. He

gave a stride towards me, shouting "Who are--" when the thunder-clap

took the words out of his tongue, and next moment the tornado burst

upon us, fierce as the wind from a cannon's month. For one minute the

Seringapatam heeled over to her starboard streak, almost broadside on,

and her spars toward the land,--all on her beam was a long ragged white

gush of light and mist pouring out under the black brow of the clouds,

with a trampling eddying roar up into the sky. The swell plunged over

her weather-side like the first break of a dam, and as we scrambled

up to the bulwarks, to hold on for bare life, you saw a roller, fit

to swamp us, coming on out of the sheet of foam--when crash went

mizen-topmast and main-to'gallant-mast: the ship payed swiftly off by

help of her head-sails, and, with a leap like a harpooned whale, off

she drove fair before the tremendous sweep of the blast.

The least yaw in her course, and she'd have never risen, unless every

stick went out of her. I laid my shoulder to the wheel with Jacobs, and

Captain Williamson screamed through his trumpet into the men's ears,

and waved his hands to ride down the fore-sheets as far as they'd go;

which kept her right before it, though the sail could be but half-set,

and she rather flew than ran--the sea one breadth of white foam back

to the gushes of mist, not having power to rise higher yet. Had the

foresail been stretched, 'twould have blown off like a cloud. I looked

at the captain: he was standing in the lee of the round-house, straight

upright, though now and then peering eagerly forward, his lips firm,

one hand on a belaying-pin, the other in his breast--nothing but

determination in his manner; yet once or twice he started, and glanced

fiercely to the after-hatchway near, as if something from below might

chance to thwart him. I can't express my contrary feelings, betwixt a

sort of hope and sheer horror. We were driving right towards the land,

at thirteen or fourteen knots to the hour,--yet _could_ there actually

be some harbourage hereaway, or that said river the quarter-master

of the Iris mentioned, and Captain Williamson know of it? Something

struck me as wonderfully strange in the whole matter, and puzzling to

desperation,--still I trusted to the captain's experience. The coast

was scarce to be seen ahead of us, lying black against an uneven streak

of glimmer, as she rushed like fury before the deafening howl of wind;

and right away before our lee-beam I could see the light blowing, as

it were, across beyond the headland I had noticed, where the smoke in

the bush seemed to be still curling, half-smothered, along the flat in

the lee of the hills, as if in green wood, or sheltered as yet from

seaward, though once or twice a quick flicker burst up in it. All at

once the gust of the tornado was seen to pour on it, like a long blast

from some huge bellows, and up it flashed--the yellow flame blazed into

the smoke, spread away behind the point, and the ruddy brown smoke

blew whitening off over it:--when, Almighty power! what did I see as

it lengthened in, but part after part of old Bob's landmarks creep out

ink-black before the flare and the streak of sky together--first the

low line of ground, then the notch in the block, the two rocks like

steps, and the sugar-loaf shape of the headland, to the very mop-headed

knot of trees on its rise! No doubt Captain Williamson was steering for

it; but it was far too much on our starboard bow--and in half an hour

at this rate we should drive right into the surf you saw running along

to the coast ahead--so I signed to Jacobs for god-sake to edge her off

as nicely as was possible. Captain Williamson caught my motion. "Port!

port, sirrah!" he sang out sternly; "_back_ with the helm, d'ye hear!"

and, pulling out a pistol, he levelled it at me with one hand, while

he held a second in the other. "Land!--land, by G--d!" shouted he,

and from the lee of the round-house it came more like a shriek than a

shout--"I'll be there though a thousand mutineers--" His eye was like

a wild beast's. That moment the truth glanced across me--this was the

_green leaf_, no doubt, the Scotch mate talked so mysteriously of.

The man was mad! The land-fever was upon him, as I'd seen it before

in men long off the African coast; and he stood eyeing me with one

foot hard stamped before him. 'Twas no use trying to be heard, and the

desperation of the moment gave me a thought of the sole thing to do.

I took off my hat in the light of the binnacle, bowed, and looked him

straight in the face with a smile--when his eye wavered, he slowly

lowered his pistol, then _laughed_, waving his hand towards the land

to leeward, as if, but for the gale, you'd have heard him cheer. At

the instant I sprang behind him with the slack of a rope, and grappled

his arms fast, though he'd got the furious power of a madman, and,

during half a minute, 'twas wrestle for life with me. But the line was

round him, arm and leg, and I made it fast, throwing him heavily on the

deck, just as one of the mates, with some of the crew, were struggling

aft, by help of the belaying-pins, against the hurricane, having

caught a glimpse of the thing by the binnacle-light. They looked from

me to the captain. The ugly top-man made a sign, as much as to say,

knock the fellow down; but the whole lot hung back before the couple

of pistol-barrels I handled. The Scotch mate seemed awfully puzzled;

and others of the men, who knew from Jacobs what I was, came shoving

along, evidently aware what a case we were in. A word to Jacobs served

to keep him steering her anxiously, so as to head two or three points

more south-east in the _end_, furiously as the wheel jolted. So there

we stood, the tornado sweeping sharp as a knife from astern over the

poop-deck, with a force that threw any one back if he left go his hold

to get near me, and going up like thunder aloft in the sky. Now and

then a weaker flare of lightning glittered across the scud; and, black

as it was overhead, the horizon to windward was but one jagged white

glare, gushing full of broad shifting streaks through the drift of foam

and the spray that strove to rise. Our fore-course still held; and I

took the helm from Jacobs, that he might go and manage to get a pull

taken on the starboard brace, which would not only _slant_ the sail

more to the blasts, but give her the better chance to make the sole

point of salvation, by helping her steerage when most needed. Jacobs

and Westwood together got this done; and all the time I was keeping

my eyes fixed anxiously as man can fancy, on the last gleams of the

fire ashore, as her head made a fairer line with it; but, by little

and little, it went quite out, and all was black--though I had taken

its bearings by the compass--and I kept her to that for bare life,

trembling at every shiver in the foresail's edge, lest either it or the

mast should go.

Suddenly we began to get into a fearful swell--the Indiaman plunged

and shook in every spar left her. I could see nothing ahead, from the

wheel, and in the dark: we were getting close in with the land, and the

time was coming; but still I held south-east-by-east to the mark of

her head in the compass box, as nearly as might and main could do if,

for the heaves that made me think once or twice she was to strike next

moment. If she went ashore in my hands! why, it was like to drive one

mad with fear; and I waited for Jacobs to come back, with a brain ready

to turn, almost as if I'd have left the wheel to the other helmsman,

and run forward into the bows to look out. The captain lay raving,

and shouting behind me, though no one else could either have heard or

seen him; and where the chief officer was all this time, surprised me,

unless the madman had made away with him, or locked him in his own

cabin, in return for being shut up himself,--which in fact proved to

be the case, cunning as it was to send for him so quietly. At length

Jacobs struggled aft to me again, and charging him, for heaven's sake,

to steer exactly the course I gave, I drove before the full strength of

the squall along-decks to the bowsprit, where I held on and peered out.

Dead ahead of us was the high line of coast in the dark--not a mile of

swell between the ship and it. By this time the low boom of the surf

came under the wind, and you saw the breakers lifting all along,--not

a single opening in them! I had lost sight of my landmarks, and my

heart gulped into my mouth--what I felt 'twould be vain to say,--till I

thought I _did_ make out one short patch of sheer black in the range of

foam, scarce so far on our bow as I'd reckoned the fire to have been:

indeed, instead of that, it was rather on her weather than her lee

bow; and the more I watched it, and the nearer we drove in that five

minutes, the broader it was. "By all that's good!" I thought, "if a

river there is, that must be the mouth of it!" But, by heavens! on our

present course, the ship would run just right upon the point,--and, to

strike the clear water, her fore-yard would require to be braced up,

able or not, though the force of the tornado would come fearfully on

her quarter, then. There was the chance of taking all the masts out of

her; but let them stand ten minutes, and the thing was done, when we

opened into the lee of the points--otherwise all was over!

I sprang to the fore-braces and besought the men near me, for God's

sake, to drag upon the lee one--and that as if their life hung upon

it--when Westwood caught me by the arm. I merely shouted through my

hands into his ear to go aft to Jacobs and tell him to keep her head a

_single point_ up, whatever might happen, to the last,--then I pulled

with the men at the brace till it was fast, and scrambled up again to

the bowsprit heel. Jove! how she surged to it: the little canvass we

had strained like to burst; the masts trembled, and the spars aloft

bent like whip-shafts, everything below groaning again; while the

swell and the blast together made you dizzy, as you watched the white

eddies rising and boiling out of the dark--her cutwater shearing

through it and the foam, as if you were going under it. The sound of

the hurricane and the surf seemed to be growing together into one

awful roar,--my very brain began to turn with the pitch I was wrought

up to--and it appeared next moment we should heave far up into the

savage hubbub of breakers. I was wearying for the crash and the wild

confusion that would follow--when all of a sudden, still catching the

fierce rush of the gale athwart her quarter into the fore-course,

which steadied her though she shuddered to it--all on a sudden the

dark mass of the land seemed as it were parting ahead of her, and a

gleam of pale sky opened below the dusk into my very face. I no more

knew what I was doing, by this time, nor where we were, than the spar

before me,--till again, the light broadened, glimmering low betwixt the

high land and a lump of rising level on the other bow. I hurried aft

past the confused knots of men holding on to the lee of the bulwarks,

and seized a spoke of the wheel. "Tom," shouted I to Westwood, "run

and let free the spanker on the poop! Down with the helm--down with

it, Jacobs, my lad!" I sang out; "never mind spars or canvass!" Down

went the helm--the spanker helped to luff her to the strength of the

gust--and away she went up to port, the heavy swells rolling her in,

while the rush into her staysail and forecourse came in one terrible

flash of roaring wind,--tearing first one and then the other clear out

of the belt-ropes, though the loose spanker abaft was in less danger,

and the way she had from both was enough to take her careening round

the point into its lee. By heavens! there were the streaks of soft haze

low over the rising moon, under the broken clouds, beyond a far line

of dim fringy woods, she herself just tipping the hollow behind, big

and red--when right down from over the cloud above us came a spout of

rain, then a sheet of it lifting to the blast as it howled across the

point. "Stand by to let go the larboard anchor!" I sang out through

the trumpet; and Jacobs put the helm fully down at the moment, till

she was coming head to wind, when I made forward to the mates and men.

"Let--go!" I shouted: not a look turned against me, and away thundered

the cable through the hawse-hole; she shook to it, sheered astern, and

brought up with her anchor fast. By that time the rain was plashing

down in a perfect deluge--you couldn't see a yard from you--all was

one white pour of it; although it soon began to drive again over the

headland, as the tornado gathered new food out of it. Another anchor

was let go, cable payed out, and the ship soon began to swing the other

way to the tide, pitching all the while on the short swell.

The gale still whistled through her spars for two or three hours,

during which it began by degrees to lull. About eleven o'clock

it was clear moonlight to leeward, the air fresh and cool: a

delicious watch it was, too. I was walking the poop by myself, two

or three men lounging sleepily about the forecastle, and Rickett

below on the quarterdeck, when I saw the chief officer himself

rush up from below, staring wildly round him, as if he thought we

were in some dream or other. I fancied at first the mate would

have struck Rickett, from the way he went on, but I kept aft

where I was. The eddies ran past the Indiaman's side, and you

heard the fast ebb of the tide rushing and rippling sweetly on

her taut cables ahead, plashing about the bows and bends. We were

in old Bob Martin's _river_, whatever that might be.

THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH.

[The reader is to understand this present paper, in its two sections

of _The Vision_, &c., and _The Dream-Fugue_, as connected with a

previous paper on _The English Mail-Coach_, published in the Magazine

for October. The ultimate object was the Dream-Fugue, as an attempt to

wrestle with the utmost efforts of music in dealing with a colossal

form of impassioned horror. The Vision of Sudden Death contains the

mail-coach incident, which did really occur, and did really suggest

the variations of the Dream, here taken up by the Fugue, as well as

other variations not now recorded. Confluent with these impressions,

from the terrific experience on the Manchester and Glasgow mail, were

other and more general impressions, derived from long familiarity with

the English mail, as developed in the former paper; impressions, for

instance, of animal beauty and power, of rapid motion, at that time

unprecedented, of connexion with the government and public business

of a great nation, but, above all, of connexion with the national

victories at an unexampled crisis,--the mail being the privileged organ

for publishing and dispersing all news of that kind. From this function

of the mail, arises naturally the introduction of Waterloo into the

fourth variation of the Fugue; for the mail itself having been carried

into the dreams by the incident in the Vision, naturally all the

accessory circumstances of pomp and grandeur investing this national

carriage followed in the train of the principal image.]

What is to be thought of sudden death? It is remarkable that, in

different conditions of society, it has been variously regarded, as

the consummation of an earthly career most fervently to be desired,

and, on the other hand, as that consummation which is most of all to

be deprecated. Cæsar the Dictator, at his last dinner party, (_cæna_,)

and the very evening before his assassination, being questioned as

to the mode of death which, in _his_ opinion, might seem the most

eligible, replied--"That which should be most sudden." On the other

hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, when breathing forth

supplications, as if in some representative character for the whole

human race prostrate before God, places such a death in the very van

of horrors. "From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence,

and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death,--_Good

Lord, deliver us_." Sudden death is here made to crown the climax in

a grand ascent of calamities; it is the last of curses; and yet, by

the noblest of Romans, it was treated as the first of blessings. In

that difference, most readers will see little more than the difference

between Christianity and Paganism. But there I hesitate. The Christian

church may be right in its estimate of sudden death; and it is a

natural feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm one, to

wish for a quiet dismissal from life--as that which _seems_ most

reconcilable with meditation, with penitential retrospects, and with

the humilities of farewell prayer. There does not, however, occur to me

any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest petition of the English

Litany. It seems rather a petition indulged to human infirmity, than

exacted from human piety. And, however _that_ may be, two remarks

suggest themselves as prudent restraints upon a doctrine, which else

_may_ wander, and _has_ wandered, into an uncharitable superstition.

The first is this: that many people are likely to exaggerate the

horror of a sudden death, (I mean the _objective_ horror to him who

contemplates such a death, not the _subjective_ horror to him who

suffers it) from the false disposition to lay a stress upon words or

acts, simply because by an accident they have become words or acts.

If a man dies, for instance, by some sudden death when he happens

to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely regarded with peculiar

horror; as though the intoxication were suddenly exalted into a

blasphemy. But _that_ is unphilosophic. The man was, or he was not,

_habitually_ a drunkard. If not, if his intoxication were a solitary

accident, there can be no reason at all for allowing special emphasis

to this act, simply because through misfortune it became his final

act. Nor, on the other hand, if it were no accident, but one of his

_habitual_ transgressions, will it be the more habitual or the more a

transgression, because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused

this habitual transgression to be also a final one? Could the man

have had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there

would have been a new feature in his act of intemperance--a feature of

presumption and irreverence, as in one that by possibility felt himself

drawing near to the presence of God. But this is no part of the case

supposed. And the only new element in the man's act is not any element

of extra immorality, but simply of extra misfortune.

The other remark has reference to the meaning of the word _sudden_.

And it is a strong illustration of the duty which for ever calls us

to the stern valuation of words--that very possibly Cæsar and the

Christian church do not differ in the way supposed; that is, do not

differ by any difference of doctrine as between Pagan and Christian

views of the moral temper appropriate to death, but that they are

contemplating different cases. Both contemplate a violent death; a

[Greek: Biathanatos]--death that is [Greek: Biaios]: but the difference

is--that the Roman by the word "sudden" means an _unlingering_ death:

whereas the Christian litany by "sudden" means a death _without

warning_, consequently without any available summons to religious

preparation. The poor mutineer, who kneels down to gather into his

heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pitying comrades, dies

by a most sudden death in Cæsar's sense: one shock, one mighty spasm,

one (possibly _not_ one) groan, and all is over. But, in the sense

of the Litany, his death is far from sudden; his offence originally,

his imprisonment, his trial, the interval between his sentence and

its execution, having all furnished him with separate warnings of his

fate--having all summoned him to meet it with solemn preparation.

Meantime, whatever may be thought of a sudden death as a mere variety

in the modes of dying, where death in some shape is inevitable--a

question which, equally in the Roman and the Christian sense,

will be variously answered according to each man's variety of

temperament--certainly, upon one aspect of sudden death there can be

no opening for doubt, that of all agonies incident to man it is the

most frightful, that of all martyrdoms it is the most freezing to human

sensibilities--namely, where it surprises a man under circumstances

which offer (or which seem to offer) some hurried and inappreciable

chance of evading it. Any effort, by which such an evasion can be

accomplished, must be as sudden as the danger which it affronts.

Even _that_, even the sickening necessity for hurrying in extremity

where all hurry seems destined to be vain, self-baffled, and where

the dreadful knell of _too late_ is already sounding in the ears by

anticipation--even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation

in one particular case, namely, where the agonising appeal is made

not exclusively to the instinct of self-preservation, but to the

conscience, on behalf of another life besides your own, accidentally

cast upon _your_ protection. To fail, to collapse in a service merely

your own, might seem comparatively venial; though, in fact, it is far

from venial. But to fail in a case where Providence has suddenly thrown

into your hands the final interests of another--of a fellow-creature

shuddering between the gates of life and death; this, to a man of

apprehensive conscience, would mingle the misery of an atrocious

criminality with the misery of a bloody calamity. The man is called

upon, too probably, to die; but to die at the very moment when, by any

momentary collapse, he is self-denounced as a murderer. He had but

the twinkling of an eye for his effort, and that effort might, at the

best, have been unavailing; but from this shadow of a chance, small or

great, how if he has recoiled by a treasonable _lâcheté_? The effort

_might_ have been without hope; but to have risen to the level of that

effort--would have rescued him, though not from dying, yet from dying

as a traitor to his duties.

The situation here contemplated exposes a dreadful ulcer, lurking far

down in the depths of human nature. It is not that men generally are

summoned to face such awful trials. But potentially, and in shadowy

outline, such a trial is moving subterraneously in perhaps all men's

natures--muttering under ground in one world, to be realised perhaps

in some other. Upon the secret mirror of our dreams such a trial is

darkly projected at intervals, perhaps, to every one of us. That dream,

so familiar to childhood, of meeting a lion, and, from languishing

prostration in hope and vital energy, that constant sequel of lying

down before him, publishes the secret frailty of human nature--reveals

its deep-seated Pariah falsehood to itself--records its abysmal

treachery. Perhaps not one of us escapes that dream; perhaps, as by

some sorrowful doom of man, that dream repeats for every one of us,

through every generation, the original temptation in Eden. Every one

of us, in this dream, has a bait offered to the infirm places of his

own individual will; once again a snare is made ready for leading him

into captivity to a luxury of ruin; again, as in aboriginal Paradise,

the man falls from innocence; once again, by infinite iteration,

the ancient Earth groans to God, through her secret caves, over the

weakness of her child; "Nature from her seat, sighing through all

her works," again "gives signs of woe that all is lost;" and again

the counter sigh is repeated to the sorrowing heavens of the endless

rebellion against God. Many people think that one man, the patriarch

of our race, could not in his single person execute this rebellion for

all his race. Perhaps they are wrong. But, even if not, perhaps in the

world of dreams every one of us ratifies for himself the original act.

Our English rite of "Confirmation," by which, in years of awakened

reason, we take upon us the engagements contracted for us in our

slumbering infancy,--how sublime a rite is that! The little postern

gate, through which the baby in its cradle had been silently placed

for a time within the glory of God's countenance, suddenly rises to

the clouds as a triumphal arch, through which, with banners displayed

and martial pomps, we make our second entry as crusading soldiers

militant for God, by personal choice and by sacramental oath. Each man

says in effect--"Lo! I rebaptise myself; and that which once was sworn

on my behalf, now I swear for myself." Even so in dreams, perhaps,

under some secret conflict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to the

consciousness at the time, but darkened to the memory as soon as all

is finished, each several child of our mysterious race completes for

himself the aboriginal fall.

As I drew near to the Manchester post-office, I found that it was

considerably past midnight; but to my great relief, as it was important

for me to be in Westmorland by the morning, I saw by the huge saucer

eyes of the mail, blazing through the gloom of overhanging houses,

that my chance was not yet lost. Past the time it was; but by some

luck, very unusual in my experience, the mail was not even yet ready

to start. I ascended to my seat on the box, where my cloak was still

lying as it had lain at the Bridgewater Arms. I had left it there

in imitation of a nautical discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunting

on the shore of his discovery, by way of warning off the ground the

whole human race, and signalising to the Christian and the heathen

worlds, with his best compliments, that he has planted his throne for

ever upon that virgin soil; henceforward claiming the _jus dominii_

to the top of the atmosphere above it, and also the right of driving

shafts to the centre of the earth below it; so that all people found

after this warning, either aloft in the atmosphere, or in the shafts,

or squatting on the soil, will be treated as trespassers--that is,

decapitated by their very faithful and obedient servant, the owner of

the said bunting. Possibly my cloak might not have been respected, and

the _jus gentium_ might have been cruelly violated in my person--for,

in the dark, people commit deeds of darkness, gas being a great

ally of morality--but it so happened that, on this night, there was

no other outside passenger; and the crime, which else was but too

probable, missed fire for want of a criminal. By the way, I may as well

mention at this point, since a circumstantial accuracy is essential

to the effect of my narrative, that there was no other person of any

description whatever about the mail--the guard, the coachman, and

myself being allowed for--except only one--a horrid creature of the

class known to the world as insiders, but whom young Oxford called

sometimes "Trojans," in opposition to our Grecian selves, and sometimes

"vermin." A Turkish Effendi, who piques himself on good-breeding, will

never mention by name a pig. Yet it is but too often that he has reason

to mention this animal; since constantly, in the streets of Stamboul,

he has his trousers deranged or polluted by this vile creature running

between his legs. But under any excess of hurry he is always careful,

out of respect to the company he is dining with, to suppress the odious

name, and to call the wretch "that other creature," as though all

animal life beside formed one group, and this odious beast (to whom,

as Chrysippus observed, salt serves as an apology for a soul) formed

another and alien group on the outside of creation. Now I, who am an

English Effendi, that think myself to understand good-breeding as well

as any son of Othman, beg my reader's pardon for having mentioned an

insider by his gross natural name. I shall do so no more: and, if I

should have occasion to glance at so painful a subject, I shall always

call him "that other creature." Let us hope, however, that no such

distressing occasion will arise. But, by the way, an occasion arises

at this moment; for the reader will be sure to ask, when we come to

the story, "Was this other creature present?" He was _not_; or more

correctly, perhaps, _it_ was not. We dropped the creature--or the

creature, by natural imbecility, dropped itself--within the first ten

miles from Manchester. In the latter case, I wish to make a philosophic

remark of a moral tendency. When I die, or when the reader dies, and

by repute suppose of fever, it will never be known whether we died in

reality of the fever or of the doctor. But this other creature, in the

ease of dropping out of the coach, will enjoy a coroner's inquest;

consequently he will enjoy an epitaph. For I insist upon it, that the

verdict of a coroner's jury makes the best of epitaphs. It is brief,

so that the public all find time to read it; it is pithy, so that

the surviving friends (if any _can_ survive such a loss) remember it

without fatigue; it is upon oath, so that rascals and Dr Johnsons

cannot pick holes in it. "Died through the visitation of intense

stupidity, by impinging on a moonlight night against the off hind wheel

of the Glasgow mail! Deodand upon the said wheel--two-pence." What a

simple lapidary inscription! Nobody much in the wrong but an off-wheel;

and with few acquaintances; and if it were but rendered into choice

Latin, though there would be a little bother in finding a Ciceronian

word for "off-wheel," Marcellus himself, that great master of

sepulchral eloquence, could not show a better. Why I call this little

remark _moral_, is, from the compensation it points out. Here, by the

supposition, is that other creature on the one side, the beast of the

world; and he (or it) gets an epitaph. You and I, on the contrary, the

pride of our friends, get none.

But why linger on the subject of vermin? Having mounted the box, I took

a small quantity of laudanum, having already travelled two hundred

and fifty miles--viz., from a point seventy miles beyond London,

upon a simple breakfast. In the taking of laudanum there was nothing

extraordinary. But by accident it drew upon me the special attention of

my assessor on the box, the coachman. And in _that_ there was nothing

extraordinary. But by accident, and with great delight, it drew my

attention to the fact that this coachman was a monster in point of

size, and that he had but one eye. In fact he had been foretold by

Virgil as--

"Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum."

He answered in every point--a monster he was--dreadful, shapeless,

huge, who had lost an eye. But why should _that_ delight me? Had he

been one of the Calendars in the Arabian Nights, and had paid down

his eye as the price of his criminal curiosity, what right had _I_

to exult in his misfortune? I did _not_ exult: I delighted in no

man's punishment, though it were even merited. But these personal

distinctions identified in an instant an old friend of mine, whom

I had known in the south for some years as the most masterly of

mail-coachmen. He was the man in all Europe that could best have

undertaken to drive six-in-hand full gallop over _Al Sirat_--that

famous bridge of Mahomet across the bottomless gulf, backing himself

against the Prophet and twenty such fellows. I used to call him

_Cyclops mastigophorus_, Cyclops the whip-bearer, until I observed

that his skill made whips useless, except to fetch off an impertinent

fly from a leader's head; upon which I changed his Grecian name to

Cyclops _diphrélates_ (Cyclops the charioteer.) I, and others known

to me, studied under him the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word

too elegant to be pedantic. And also take this remark from me, as a

_gage d'amitié_--that no word ever was or _can_ be pedantic which, by

supporting a distinction, supports the accuracy of logic; or which

fills up a chasm for the understanding. As a pupil, though I paid extra

fees, I cannot say that I stood high in his esteem. It showed his

dogged honesty, (though, observe, not his discernment,) that he could

not see my merits. Perhaps we ought to excuse his absurdity in this

particular by remembering his want of an eye. _That_ made him blind to

my merits. Irritating as this blindness was, (surely it could not be

envy?) he always courted my conversation, in which art I certainly had

the whip-hand of him. On this occasion, great joy was at our meeting.

But what was Cyclops doing here? Had the medical men recommended

northern air, or how? I collected, from such explanations as he

volunteered, that he had an interest at stake in a suit-at-law pending

at Lancaster; so that probably he had got himself transferred to this

station, for the purpose of connecting with his professional pursuits

an instant readiness for the calls of his law-suit.

Meantime, what are we stopping for? Surely we've been waiting long

enough. Oh, this procrastinating mail, and oh this procrastinating

post-office! Can't they take a lesson upon that subject from _me_?

Some people have called _me_ procrastinating. Now you are witness,

reader, that I was in time for _them_. But can _they_ lay their hands

on their hearts, and say that they were in time for me? I, during my

life, have often had to wait for the post-office: the post-office

never waited a minute for me. What are they about? The guard tells me

that there is a large extra accumulation of foreign mails this night,

owing to irregularities caused by war and by the packet-service,

when as yet nothing is done by steam. For an _extra_ hour, it seems,

the post-office has been engaged in threshing out the pure wheaten

correspondence of Glasgow, and winnowing it from the chaff of all

baser intermediate towns. We can hear the flails going at this moment.

But at last all is finished. Sound your horn, guard. Manchester, good

bye; we've lost an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office:

which, however, though I do not mean to part with a serviceable ground

of complaint, and one which really _is_ such for the horses, to me

secretly is an advantage, since it compels us to recover this last hour

amongst the next eight or nine. Off we are at last, and at eleven miles

an hour: and at first I detect no changes in the energy or in the of

Cyclops.

From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually (though not in law) is the

capital of Westmoreland, were at this time seven stages of eleven miles

each. The first five of these, dated from Manchester, terminated in

Lancaster, which was therefore fifty-five miles north of Manchester,

and the same distance exactly from Liverpool. The first three

terminated in Preston (called, by way of distinction from other towns

of that name, _proud_ Preston,) at which place it was that the separate

roads from Liverpool and from Manchester to the north became confluent.

Within these first three stages lay the foundation, the progress, and

termination of our night's adventure. During the first stage, I found

out that Cyclops was mortal: he was liable to the shocking affection

of sleep--a thing which I had never previously suspected. If a man is

addicted to the vicious habit of sleeping, all the skill in aurigation

of Apollo himself, with the horses of Aurora to execute the motions of

his will, avail him nothing. "Oh, Cyclops!" I exclaimed more than once,

"Cyclops, my friend; thou art mortal. Thou snorest." Through this first

eleven miles, however, he betrayed his infirmity--which I grieve to say

he shared with the whole Pagan Pantheon--only by short stretches. On

waking up, he made an apology for himself, which, instead of mending

the matter, laid an ominous foundation for coming disasters. The summer

assizes were now proceeding at Lancaster: in consequence of which, for

three nights and three days, he had not lain down in a bed. During

the day, he was waiting for his uncertain summons as a witness on the

trial in which he was interested; or he was drinking with the other

witnesses, under the vigilant surveillance of the attorneys. During

the night, or that part of it when the least temptations existed to

conviviality, he was driving. Throughout the second stage he grew more

and more drowsy. In the second mile of the third stage, he surrendered

himself finally and without a struggle to his perilous temptation.

All his past resistance had but deepened the weight of this final

oppression. Seven atmospheres of sleep seemed resting upon him; and,

to consummate the case, our worthy guard, after singing "Love amongst

the Roses," for the fiftieth or sixtieth time, without any invitation

from Cyclops or myself, and without applause for his poor labours,

had moodily resigned himself to slumber--not so deep doubtless as the

coachman's, but deep enough for mischief; and having, probably, no

similar excuse. And thus at last, about ten miles from Preston, I found

myself left in charge of his Majesty's London and Glasgow mail then

running about eleven miles an hour.

What made this negligence less criminal than else it must have been

thought, was the condition of the roads at night during the assizes. At

that time all the law business of populous Liverpool, and of populous

Manchester, with its vast cincture of populous rural districts, was

called up by ancient usage to the tribunal of Lilliputian Lancaster. To

break up this old traditional usage required a conflict with powerful

established interests, a large system of new arrangements, and a new

parliamentary statute. As things were at present, twice in the year so

vast a body of business rolled northwards, from the southern quarter of

the county, that a fortnight at least occupied the severe exertions of

two judges for its despatch. The consequence of this was--that every

horse available for such a service, along the whole line of road, was

exhausted in carrying down the multitudes of people who were parties to

the different suits. By sunset, therefore, it usually happened that,

through utter exhaustion amongst men and horses, the roads were all

silent. Except exhaustion in the vast adjacent county of York from a

contested election, nothing like it was ordinarily witnessed in England.