THE VOYAGE.
When I awoke from the long, sound sleep which succeeded my last adventure,
I had some difficulty in remembering where I was or how I had come there.
From my narrow berth I looked out upon the now empty cabin, and at length
some misty and confused sense of my situation crept slowly over me. I
opened the little shutter beside me and looked out. The bold headlands of
the southern coast were frowning in sullen and dark masses about a couple
of miles distant, and I perceived that we were going fast through the
water, which was beautifully calm and still. I now looked at my watch;
it was past eight o’clock; and as it must evidently be evening, from the
appearance of the sky, I felt that I had slept soundly for above twelve
hours.
In the hurry of departure the cabin had not been set to rights, and there
lay every species of lumber and luggage in all imaginable confusion.
Trunks, gun-cases, baskets of eggs, umbrellas, hampers of sea-store,
cloaks, foraging-caps, maps, and sword-belts were scattered on every
side,--while the _débris_ of a dinner, not over-remarkable for its
propriety in table equipage, added to the ludicrous effect. The heavy tramp
of a foot overhead denoted the step of some one taking his short walk of
exercise; while the rough voice of the skipper, as he gave the word to “Go
about!” all convinced me that we were at last under way, and off to “the
wars.”
The confusion our last evening on shore produced in my brain was such
that every effort I made to remember anything about it only increased my
difficulty, and I felt myself in a web so tangled and inextricable that
all endeavor to escape free was impossible. Sometimes I thought that I had
really married Matilda Dalrymple; then, I supposed that the father had
called me out, and wounded me in a duel; and finally, I had some confused
notion about a quarrel with Sparks, but what for, when, and how it ended, I
knew not. How tremendously tipsy I must have been! was the only conclusion
I could draw from all these conflicting doubts; and after all, it was the
only thing like fact that beamed upon my mind. How I had come on board and
reached my berth was a matter I reserved for future inquiry, resolving that
about the real history of my last night on shore I would ask no questions,
if others were equally disposed to let it pass in silence.
I next began to wonder if Mike had looked after all my luggage, trunks,
etc., and whether he himself had been forgotten in our hasty departure.
About this latter point I was not destined for much doubt; for a well-known
voice, from the foot of the companion-ladder, at once proclaimed my
faithful follower, and evidenced his feelings at his departure from his
home and country.
Mr. Free was, at the time I mention, gathered up like a ball opposite a
small, low window that looked upon the bluff headlands now fast becoming
dim and misty as the night approached. He was apparently in low spirits,
and hummed in a species of low, droning voice, the following ballad, at the
end of each verse of which came an Irish chorus which, to the erudite in
such matters, will suggest the air of Moddirederoo:--
MICKEY FREE’S LAMENT.
Then fare ye well, ould Erin dear;
To part, my heart does ache well:
From Carrickfergus to Cape Clear,
I’ll never see your equal.
And though to foreign parts we’re bound,
Where cannibals may ate us,
We’ll ne’er forget the holy ground
Of potteen and potatoes.
Moddirederoo aroo, aroo, etc.
When good Saint Patrick banished frogs,
And shook them from his garment,
He never thought we’d go abroad,
To live upon such varmint;
Nor quit the land where whiskey grew
To wear King George’s button,
Take vinegar for mountain dew,
And toads for mountain mutton.
Moddirederoo aroo, aroo, etc.
“I say, Mike, stop that confounded keen, and tell me where are we?”
“Off the ould head of Kinsale, sir.”
“Where is Captain Power?”
“Smoking a cigar on deck, with the captain, sir.”
“And Mr. Sparks?”
“Mighty sick in his own state-room. Oh, but it’s himself has enough of
glory--bad luck to it!--by this time. He’d make your heart break to look at
him.”
“Who have you got on board besides?”
“The adjutant’s here, sir; and an old gentleman they call the major.”
“Not Major Dalrymple?” said I, starting up with terror at the thought, “eh,
Mike?”
“No, sir, another major; his name is Mulroon, or Mundoon, or something like
that.”
“Monsoon, you son of a lumper potato,” cried out a surly, gruff voice from
a berth opposite. “Monsoon. Who’s at the other side?”
“Mr. O’Malley, 14th,” said I, by way of introduction.
“My service to you, then,” said the voice. “Going to join your regiment?”
“Yes; and you, are you bound on a similar errand?”
“No, Heaven be praised! I’m attached to the commissariat, and only going to
Lisbon. Have you had any dinner?”
“Not a morsel; have you?”
“No more than yourself; but I always lie by for three or four days this
way, till I get used to the confounded rocking and pitching, and with
a little grog and some sleep, get over the time gayly enough. Steward,
another tumbler like the last; there--very good--that will do. Your good
health, Mr.--what was it you said?”
“O’Malley.”
“O’Malley--your good health! Good-night.” And so ended our brief colloquy,
and in a few minutes more, a very decisive snore pronounced my friend to be
fulfilling his precept for killing the hours.
I now made the effort to emancipate myself from my crib, and at last
succeeded in getting on the floor, where, after one _chassez_ at a small
looking-glass opposite, followed by a very impetuous rush at a little brass
stove, in which I was interrupted by a trunk and laid prostrate, I finally
got my clothes on, and made my way to the deck. Little attuned as was my
mind at the moment to admire anything like scenery, it was impossible to be
unmoved by the magnificent prospect before me. It was a beautiful evening
in summer; the sun had set above an hour before, leaving behind him in the
west one vast arch of rich and burnished gold, stretching along the whole
horizon, and tipping all the summits of the heavy rolling sea, as it rolled
on, unbroken by foam or ripple, in vast moving mountains, from the far
coast of Labrador. We were already in blue water, though the bold cliffs
that were to form our departing point were but a few miles to leeward.
There lay the lofty bluff of Old Kinsale, whose crest, overhanging, peered
from a summit of some hundred feet into the deep water that swept its rocky
base, many a tangled lichen and straggling bough trailing in the flood
beneath. Here and there upon the coast a twinkling gleam proclaimed the hut
of the fisherman, whose swift hookers had more than once shot by us and
disappeared in a moment. The wind, which began to fall at sunset, freshened
as the moon rose; and the good ship, bending to the breeze, lay gently
over, and rushed through the waters with a sound of gladness. I was alone
upon the deck. Power and the captain, whom I expected to have found, had
disappeared somehow, and I was, after all, not sorry to be left to my own
reflections uninterrupted.
My thoughts turned once more to my home,--to my first, my best, earliest
friend, whose hearth I had rendered lonely and desolate, and my heart
sank within me as I remembered it. How deeply I reproached myself for the
selfish impetuosity with which I had ever followed any rising fancy, any
new and sudden desire, and never thought of him whose every hope was in,
whose every wish was for me. Alas! alas, my poor uncle! how gladly would
I resign every prospect my soldier’s life may hold out, with all its
glittering promise, and all the flattery of success, to be once more beside
you; to feel your warm and manly grasp; to see your smile; to hear your
voice; to be again where all our best feelings are born and nurtured, our
cares assuaged, our joys more joyed in, and our griefs more wept,--at home!
These very words have more music to my ears than all the softest strains
that ever siren sung. They bring us back to all we have loved, by ties that
are never felt but through such simple associations. And in the earlier
memories called up, our childish feelings come back once more to visit us
like better spirits, as we walk amidst the dreary desolation that years of
care and uneasiness have spread around us.
Wretched must he be who ne’er has felt such bliss; and thrice happy he who,
feeling it, knows that still there lives for him that same early home, with
all its loved inmates, its every dear and devoted object waiting his coming
and longing for his approach.
Such were my thoughts as I stood gazing at the bold line of coast now
gradually growing more and more dim while evening fell, and we continued
to stand farther out to sea. So absorbed was I all this time in my
reflections, that I never heard the voices which now suddenly burst upon my
ears quite close beside me. I turned, and saw for the first time that at
the end of the quarter-deck stood what is called a roundhouse, a small
cabin, from which the sounds in question proceeded. I walked gently forward
and peeped in, and certainly anything more in contrast with my late revery
need not be conceived. There sat the skipper, a bluff, round-faced,
jolly-looking little tar, mixing a bowl of punch at a table, at which sat
my friend Power, the adjutant, and a tall, meagre-looking Scotchman, whom
I once met in Cork, and heard that he was the doctor of some infantry
regiment. Two or three black bottles, a paper of cigars, and a tallow
candle were all the table equipage; but certainly the party seemed not to
want for spirits and fun, to judge from the hearty bursts of laughing that
every moment pealed forth, and shook the little building that held them.
Power, as usual with him, seemed to be taking the lead, and was evidently
amusing himself with the peculiarities of his companions.
“Come, Adjutant, fill up; here’s to the campaign before us. We, at least,
have nothing but pleasure in the anticipation; no lovely wife behind; no
charming babes to fret and be fretted for, eh?”
“Vara true,” said the doctor, who was mated with a _tartar_, “ye maun have
less regrets at leaving hame; but a married man is no’ entirely denied his
ain consolations.”
“Good sense in that,” said the skipper; “a wide berth and plenty of sea
room are not bad things now and then.”
“Is that your experience also?” said Power, with a knowing look. “Come,
come, Adjutant, we’re not so ill off, you see; but, by Jove, I can’t
imagine how it is a man ever comes to thirty without having at least one
wife,--without counting his colonial possessions of course.”
“Yes,” said the adjutant, with a sigh, as he drained his glass to the
bottom. “It is devilish strange,--woman, lovely woman!” Here he filled and
drank again, as though he had been proposing a toast for his own peculiar
drinking.
“I say, now,” resumed Power, catching at once that there was something
working in his mind,--“I say, now, how happened it that you, a right
good-looking, soldier-like fellow, that always made his way among the fair
ones, with that confounded roguish eye and slippery tongue,--how the deuce
did it come to pass that you never married?”
“I’ve been more than once on the verge of it,” said the adjutant, smiling
blandly at the flattery.
“And nae bad notion yours just to stay there,” said the doctor, with a very
peculiar contortion of countenance.
“No pleasing you, no contenting a fellow like you,” said Power, returning
to the charge; “that’s the thing; you get a certain ascendancy; you have a
kind of success that renders you, as the French say, _téte montée_, and you
think no woman rich enough or good-looking enough or big enough.”
“No; by Jove you’re wrong,” said the adjutant, swallowing the bait, hook
and all,--“quite wrong there; for some how, all my life, I was decidedly
susceptible. Not that I cared much for your blushing sixteen, or budding
beauties in white muslin, fresh from a back-board and a governess; no, my
taste inclined rather to the more sober charms of two or three-and-thirty,
the _embonpoint_, a good foot and ankle, a sensible breadth about the
shoulders--”
“Somewhat Dutch-like, I take it,” said the skipper, puffing out a volume of
smoke; “a little bluff in the bows, and great stowage, eh?”
“You leaned then towards the widows?” said Power.
“Exactly; I confess, a widow always was my weakness. There was something
I ever liked in the notion of a woman who had got over all the awkward
girlishness of early years, and had that self-possession which habit and
knowledge of the world confer, and knew enough of herself to understand
what she really wished, and where she would really go.”
“Like the trade winds,” puffed the skipper.
“Then, as regards fortune, they have a decided superiority over
the spinster class. I defy any man breathing,--let him be half
police-magistrate, half chancellor,--to find out the figure of a young
lady’s dower. On your first introduction to the house, some kind friend
whispers, ‘Go it, old boy; forty thousand, not a penny less.’ A few weeks
later, as the siege progresses, a maiden aunt, disposed to puffing, comes
down to twenty; this diminishes again one half, but then ‘the money is in
bank stock, hard Three-and-a-Half.’ You go a little farther, and as you sit
one day over your wine with papa, he certainly promulgates the fact that
his daughter has five thousand pounds, two of which turn out to be in
Mexican bonds, and three in an Irish mortgage.”
“Happy for you,” interrupted Power, “that it be not in Galway, where a
proposal to foreclose, would be a signal for your being called out and shot
without benefit of clergy.”
“Bad luck to it, for Galway,” said the adjutant. “I was nearly taken in
there once to marry a girl that her brother-in-law swore had eight hundred
a year; and it came out afterwards that so she had, but it was for one year
only; and he challenged me for doubting his word too.”
“There’s an old formula for finding out an Irish fortune,” says Power,
“worth, all the algebra they ever taught in Trinity. Take the half of the
assumed sum, and divide it by three; the quotient will be a flattering
representative of the figure sought for.”
“Not in the north,” said the adjutant, firmly,--“not in the north, Power.
They are all well off there. There’s a race of canny, thrifty, half-Scotch
niggers,--your pardon, Doctor, they are all Irish,--linen-weaving,
Presbyterian, yarn-factoring, long-nosed, hard-drinking fellows, that lay
by rather a snug thing now and then. Do you know, I was very near it once
in the north. I’ve half a mind to tell you the story; though, perhaps,
you’ll laugh at me.”
The whole party at once protested that nothing could induce them to deviate
so widely from the line of propriety; and the skipper having mixed a fresh
bowl and filled all the glasses round, the cigars were lighted, and the
adjutant began.