THE VOYAGE CONTINUED.
Ugh, what a miserable thing is a voyage! Here we are now eight days at sea,
the eternal sameness of all around growing every hour less supportable.
Sea and sky are beautiful things when seen from the dark woods and waving
meadows on shore; but their picturesque effect is sadly marred from want
of contrast. Besides that, the “_toujours_ pork,” with crystals of salt as
long as your wife’s fingers; the potatoes that seemed varnished in French
polish; the tea seasoned with geological specimens from the basin of
London, ycleped maple sugar; and the butter--ye gods, the butter! But why
enumerate these smaller features of discomfort and omit the more glaring
ones?--the utter selfishness which blue water suggests, as inevitably as
the cold fit follows the ague. The good fellow that shares his knapsack
or his last guinea on land, here forages out the best corner to hang his
hammock; jockeys you into a comfortless crib, where the uncalked deck-butt
filters every rain from heaven on your head; votes you the corner
at dinner, not only that he may place you with your back to the
thorough-draught of the gangway ladder, but that he may eat, drink, and lie
down before you have even begun to feel the qualmishness that the dinner of
a troop-ship is well calculated to suggest; cuts his pencil with your best
razor; wears your shirts, as washing is scarce; and winds up all by having
a good story of you every evening for the edification of the other “sharp
gentlemen,” who, being too wide awake to be humbugged themselves, enjoy his
success prodigiously. This, gentle reader, is neither confession nor avowal
of mine. The passage I have here presented to you I have taken from
the journal of my brother officer, Mr. Sparks, who, when not otherwise
occupied, usually employed his time in committing to paper his thoughts
upon men, manners, and things at sea in general; though, sooth to say, his
was not an idle life. Being voted by unanimous consent “a junior,” he was
condemned to offices that the veriest fag in Eton or Harrow had rebelled
against. In the morning, under the pseudonym of _Mrs_. Sparks, he presided
at breakfast, having previously made tea, coffee, and chocolate for the
whole cabin, besides boiling about twenty eggs at various degrees of
hardness; he was under heavy recognizances to provide a plate of buttered
toast of very alarming magnitude, fried ham, kidneys, etc., to no end.
Later on, when others sauntered about the deck, vainly endeavoring to fix
their attention upon a novel or a review, the poor cornet might be seen
with a white apron tucked gracefully round his spare proportions, whipping
eggs for pancakes, or, with upturned shirt-sleeves, fashioning dough for
a pudding. As the day waned, the cook’s galley became his haunt, where,
exposed to a roasting fire, he inspected the details of a _cuisine_; for
which, whatever his demerits, he was sure of an ample remuneration in abuse
at dinner. Then came the dinner itself, that dread ordeal, where nothing
was praised and everything censured. This was followed by the punch-making,
where the tastes of six different and differing individuals were to be
exclusively consulted in the self-same beverage; and lastly, the supper at
night, when Sparkie, as he was familiarly called, towards evening grown
quite exhausted, became the subject of unmitigated wrath and most
unmeasured reprobation.
“I say, Sparks, it’s getting late. The spatch-cock, old boy. Don’t be
slumbering.”
“By-the-bye, Sparkie, what a mess you made of that pea-soup to-day! By
Jove, I never felt so ill in my life!”
“Na, na; it was na the soup. It was something he pit in the punch, that’s
burning me ever since I tuk it. Ou, man, but ye’re an awfu’ creture wi’
vittals!”
“He’ll improve, Doctor; he’ll improve. Don’t discourage him; the boy’s
young. Be alive now, there. Where’s the toast?--confound you, where’s the
toast?”
“There, Sparks, you like a drumstick, I know. Mustn’t muzzle the ox, eh?
Scripture for you, old boy. Eat away; hang the expense. Hand him over the
jug. Empty--eh, Charley? Come, Sparkie, bear a hand; the liquor’s out.”
“But won’t you let me eat?”
“Eat! Heavens, what a fellow for eating! By George, such an appetite is
clean against the articles of war! Come, man, it’s drink we’re thinking of.
There’s the rum, sugar, limes; see to the hot water. Well, Skipper, how are
we getting on?”
“Lying our course; eight knots off the log. Pass the rum. Why, Mister
Sparks!”
“Eh, Sparks, what’s this?”
“Sparks, my man, confound it!”
And then, _omnes_ chorussing “Sparks!” in every key of the gamut, the
luckless fellow would be obliged to jump up from his meagre fare and set to
work at a fresh brewage of punch for the others. The bowl and the glasses
filled, by some little management on Power’s part our friend the cornet
would be _drawn out_, as the phrase is, into some confession of his
early years, which seemed to have been exclusively spent in
love-making,--devotion to the fair being as integral a portion of his
character as tippling was of the worthy major’s.
Like most men who pass their lives in over-studious efforts to
please,--however ungallant the confession be,--the amiable Sparks had
had little success. His love, if not, as it generally happened, totally
unrequited, was invariably the source of some awkward catastrophe, there
being no imaginable error he had not at some time or other fallen into, nor
any conceivable mischance to which he had not been exposed. Inconsolable
widows, attached wives, fond mothers, newly-married brides, engaged
young ladies were by some _contretemps_ continually the subject of his
attachments; and the least mishap which followed the avowal of his passion
was to be heartily laughed at and obliged to leave the neighborhood.
Duels, apologies, actions at law, compensations, etc., were of every-day
occurrence, and to such an extent, too, that any man blessed with a smaller
bump upon the occiput would eventually have long since abandoned the
pursuit, and taken to some less expensive pleasure. But poor Sparks, in the
true spirit of a martyr, only gloried the more, the more he suffered; and
like the worthy man who continued to purchase tickets in the lottery for
thirty years, with nothing but a succession of blanks, he ever imagined
that Fortune was only trying his patience, and had some cool forty thousand
pounds of happiness waiting his perseverance in the end. Whether this prize
ever did turn up in the course of years, I am unable to say; but certainly,
up to the period of his history I now speak of, all had been as gloomy
and unrequiting as need be. Power, who knew something of every man’s
adventures, was aware of so much of poor Sparks’s career, and usually
contrived to lay a trap for a confession that generally served to amuse us
during an evening,--as much, I acknowledge, from the manner of the recital
as anything contained in the story. There was a species of serious
matter-of-fact simplicity in his detail of the most ridiculous scenes that
left you convinced that his bearing upon the affair in question must have
greatly heightened the absurdity,--nothing, however comic or droll in
itself, ever exciting in him the least approach to a smile. He sat with his
large light-blue eyes, light hair, long upper lip, and retreating chin,
lisping out an account of an adventure, with a look of Listen about him
that was inconceivably amusing.
“Come, Sparks,” said Power, “I claim a promise you made me the other night,
on condition we let you off making the oyster-patties at ten o’clock; you
can’t forget what I mean.” Here the captain knowingly touched the tip of
his ear, at which signal the cornet colored slightly, and drank off his
wine in a hurried, confused way. “He promised to tell us, Major, how
he lost the tip of his left ear. I have myself heard hints of the
circumstance, but would much rather hear Sparks’s own version of it.”
“Another love story,” said the doctor, with a grin, “I’ll be bound.”
“Shot off in a duel?” said I, inquiringly. “Close work, too.”
“No such thing,” replied Power; “but Sparks will enlighten you. It is,
without exception, the most touching and beautiful thing I ever heard. As a
simple story, it beats the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ to sticks.”
“You don’t say so?” said poor Sparks, blushing.
“Ay, that I do; and maintain it, too. I’d rather be the hero of that little
adventure, and be able to recount it as you do,--for, mark me, that’s no
small part of the effect,--than I’d be full colonel of the regiment. Well,
I am sure I always thought it affecting. But, somehow, my dear friend, you
don’t know your powers; you have that within you would make the fortune of
half the periodicals going. Ask Monsoon or O’Malley there if I did not say
so at breakfast, when you were grilling the old hen,--which, by-the-bye,
let me remark, was not one of your _chefs-d’oeuvre_.”
“A tougher beastie I never put a tooth in.”
“But the story, the story,” said I.
“Yes,” said Power, with a tone of command, “the story, Sparks.”
“Well, if you really think it worth telling, as I have always felt it a
very remarkable incident, here goes.”