THE FOX AND FIDDLE
Three dirty children with blue eyes, fair locks, and round, chubby
faces, deepened by a warm peach-like tint beneath the skin, such as are
to be seen in plenty along our southern seaboard, were busily engaged
building a grotto of shells opposite their home, at the exact spot where
its construction was most in the way of pedestrians passing through
the narrow ill-paved street. Their shrill cries and blooming looks
denoted the salubrious influence of sea air, while their nationality was
sufficiently attested by the vigour with which the eldest, a young lady
less than ten years of age, called out “Frenchie! Frenchie! Froggie!
Froggie!” after a foreign-looking man with a pale face and dark eyes,
who stepped over the low half-door that restrained her infant brothers
and sisters from rolling out into the gutter, as if he was habitually
a resident in the house. He appeared, indeed, a favourite with the
children, for while they recalled him to assist their labours, which he
did with a good-nature and address peculiarly winning to architects of
that age, they chanted in his praise, and obviously with the intention
of doing him high honour, a ditty of no particular tune, detailing the
matrimonial adventures of an amphibious animal, supposed in the last
century to bear close affinity to all Frenchmen, as related with a
remarkable chorus by one Anthony Rowley; and the obliging foreigner,
suspecting neither sarcasm nor insult, but only suffering torture from an
utter absence of tune, hummed lustily in accompaniment.
Over the heads of these urchins hung their paternal sign-board, creaking
and swinging in the breeze now freshening with an incoming tide. Its
representation of a fox playing the fiddle was familiar to seafaring men
as indicating a favourite house of call for the consumption of beer,
tobacco, and that seductive compound known to several generations by the
popular name of punch.
The cheerful fire, the red curtains, the sanded floor, the wooden chairs,
and liberal measures of their jovial haunt, had been present to the
mind’s eye of many an honest tar clinging wet and cold to a slippery
yard, reefing topsails in a nor’-wester, or eating maggoty biscuit and
sipping six-water grog, on half rations, homeward bound with a headwind,
but probably none of them had ever speculated on the origin of the sign
they knew so well and thought of so often. Why a fox and fiddle should
be found together in a seaport town, what a fox had to do with a fiddle,
or, however appropriate to their ideas of jollity the instrument might
appear, wherefore its player should be represented as the cunning animal
whom destiny had already condemned to be hunted by English country
gentlemen, was a speculation on which they had no wish to embark. Neither
have I. It is enough to know that the Fox and Fiddle sold loaded beer,
strong tobacco, and scalding punch, to an extent not even limited by the
consumer’s purse; for when Jack had spent all his _rhino_, the landlord’s
liberality enabled him to run up a score, hereafter to be liquidated from
the wages of a future voyage. The infatuated debtor, paying something
like two hundred _per cent._ on every mouthful for this accommodation,
by a farther arrangement, that he should engage with any skipper of
the landlord’s providing, literally sold himself, body and soul, for a
nipperkin of rum and half-a-pound of tobacco.
Nevertheless, several score of the boldest hearts and readiest hands in
England were to be bought at this low price, and Butter-faced Bob, as
his rough-spoken customers called the owner of the Fox and Fiddle, would
furnish as many of them at a reasonable tariff, merchant and man-of-war’s
men, as the captain wanted or the owners could afford to buy. It was no
wonder his children had strong lungs, and round, well-fed cheeks.
“That’s a good chap!” observed a deep hoarse voice, which made the
youngest grotto-builder start and shrink behind its sister, while a broad
elderly figure rolled and lurched after the obliging foreigner into the
house. It would have been as impossible to mistake the new-comer for
a landsman as Butter-faced Bob himself for anything but a publican.
His gait on the pavement was that of one who had so thoroughly got his
_sea-legs_ that he was, to the last degree, incommoded by the uneven
though stable surface of the shore; and while he trod the passage, as
being planked, with more confidence, he nevertheless ran his hand, like a
blind man, along tables and other articles of furniture while he passed
them, seeming, in every gesture, to be more ready with his arms than his
legs.
Broad-faced, broad-shouldered, broad-handed, he looked a powerful, and at
the same time a strong-constitutioned man, but grizzled hair and shaggy
eyebrows denoted he was past his prime; while a reddened neck and tanned
face, with innumerable little wrinkles round the eyes, suggested constant
watchfulness and exposure in hard weather afloat, no less than swollen
features and marked lines told of deep drinking and riotous living ashore.
The seamen of that period, though possessing an undoubted claim to
the title, were far more than to-day a class distinct and apart from
their fellow-countrymen. The standing army, an institution of which our
parliaments had for generations shown themselves so jealous, could boast,
indeed, a consolidation and discipline under Marlborough which made them,
as the Musketeers of the French king allowed, second to no troops in
Europe. But their triumphs, their organisation, even their existence,
was comparatively of recent date. The navy, on the other hand, had been
a recognised and constitutional force for more than a century, and had
enjoyed, from the dispersion of the Spanish Armada downwards, a series of
successes almost uninterrupted. It is true that the cannonade of a Dutch
fleet had been heard in the Thames, but few of the lowest seamen were so
ignorant as to attribute this national disgrace to want of courage in
their officers or incapacity in themselves.
Their leaders, indeed, were usually more remarkable for valour than
discretion, nor was this surprising under the system by which captains
were appointed to their ships.
A regiment and a three-decker were considered by the Government
equivalent and convertible commands. The cavalry officer of to-day might
find himself directing the manœuvres of a fleet to-morrow. The relics of
so untoward an arrangement may be detected in certain technical phrases
not yet out of use. The word “squadron” is even now applied alike to a
handful of horse and a powerful fleet, numbering perhaps a dozen sail of
the line. Raleigh, himself, began his fighting career as a soldier, and
Rupert finished his as a sailor.
With such want of seamanship, therefore, amongst its commanders, our
navy must have possessed in its construction some great preponderating
influence to account for its efficiency. This compensating power was to
be found in its masters, its petty-officers, and its seamen.
The last were thoroughly impregnated with the briny element on which they
passed their lives. They boasted themselves a race apart. “Land-lubber”
was for them a term conveying the utmost amount of derision and contempt.
To be an “old salt” was the ideal perfection at which alone it was worth
while for humanity to aim. The seaman, exulting in his profession, was
never more a seaman than when rolling about on shore, swearing strange
oaths, using nautical phrases, consuming vast quantities of beer and
tobacco, above all, flinging his money here and there with a profuse and
injudicious liberality especially distinctive of his kind.
The popularity of such characters amongst the lower classes may be
readily imagined; for, with the uneducated and unreflecting, a reckless
bearing very generally passes for courage; a tendency to dissipation
for manliness; and a boastful expenditure for true generosity of heart.
Perhaps, to the erroneous impressions thus disseminated amongst the
young, should be attributed the inclination shown towards a service of
which the duties entailed continual danger, excessive hardship, and daily
privation. Certainly at a period when the worst provision was made, both
physical and moral, for the welfare of men before the mast, there never
seems to have been found a difficulty in keeping up the full complement
of the British navy.
They were, indeed, a race apart, not only in their manners, their
habits, their quaint expressions, their simple modes of thought, but in
their superstitions and even their religious belief. They cultivated a
rough, honest kind of piety, well illustrated in later years by Dibdin,
himself a landsman, when he sang of
“The sweet little cherub that sits up aloft
To take care of the life of poor Jack.”
But it was overloaded and interspersed with a thousand strange fancies
not more incongruous than unreasonable and far-fetched.
No power would induce them to clear out of port, or, indeed, commence
any important undertaking on a Friday. Mother Carey’s chickens were
implicitly believed to be messengers sent express from another world
to warn the mariner of impending storm, and bid him shorten sail ere
it began to blow. Carlmilhan, the famous pirate, who, rather than be
taken alive, had in default of gunpowder scuttled his own ship and gone
down with it, all standing, was still to be heard giving notice in deep
unearthly tones from under her very keel when the ship approached shoal
water, shifting sands, or treacherous coral reefs in the glittering seas
beneath the tropics. That phantom Dutchman, who had been provoked by
baffling winds about the Cape to speak “unadvisedly with his lips,” was
still to be seen in those tempestuous latitudes careering through the
storm-drift under a press of sail, when the best craft that swam hardly
dared show a stitch of canvas. The speaking-trumpet was still to be
heard from her deck, shouting her captain’s despairing request to take
his letters home, and the magic ship still disappeared at half-a-cable’s
length and melted into air, while the wind blew fiercer and the sea rose
higher, and sheets of rain came flashing down from the black squall
lowering overhead.
Nor was it only in the wonders of this world that the tar professed his
unaccountable belief. His credulity ran riot in regions beyond the grave,
or, to use his own words, after he had “gone to Davy Jones.” A mystical
spot which he called Fiddler’s Green was for him both the Tartarus and
Elysium of the ancients—a land flowing, not indeed with milk and honey,
but with rum and limejuice; a land of perpetual music, mirth, dancing,
drinking, and tobacco; a land in which his weary soul was to find an
intervening spell of enjoyment and repose, ere she put out again for her
final voyage into eternity.
In the meantime, the new arrival at the Fox and Fiddle, seating himself
at a small table in the public room, or tap as it would now be called,
ordered a quart of ale and half-a-pint of rum. These fluids he mingled
with great care, and sipped his beverage in a succession of liberal
mouthfuls, dwelling on each with an approving smack as a man drinks a
good bottle of claret. Butter-faced Bob, who waited on him, remarked that
he pulled out but one gold piece in payment, and knowing the ways of his
patrons, concluded it was his last, or he would have selected it from a
handful. The landlord remembered he had a customer in the parlour who
wanted just such articles as this burly broad-shouldered seaman, with
pockets at low water.
The man did not, however, count his change when it was brought him, but
shovelled it into his seal-skin tobacco pouch, a coin or two short,
without looking at it. He then filled carefully, drank, and pondered with
an air of grave and imposing reflection. Long before his measure was
finished a second guest entered the tap-room, whose manners, gait, and
gestures were an exact counterpart of the first. He was taller, however,
and thinner, altogether less robust and prosperous-looking, showing a
sallow face and withered skin, that denoted he had spent much of his life
in hot climates. Though he looked younger than the other, his bearing was
more staid and solemn, nor did he at once vociferate for something to
drink. Beer seemed his weakness less than ’baccy, for he placed a small
copper coin on a box ingeniously constructed so that, opening only by
such means, it produced exactly the money’s worth of the fragrant weed,
and loading a pipe with a much-tattooed hand, proceeded to puff volumes
of smoke through the apartment.
Butter-faced Bob, entering, cheerfully proffered all kinds of liquids as
a matter of course, but was received with surly negatives, and retired to
speculate on the extreme of wealth or poverty denoted by this abstinence.
A man, he thought, to be proof against such temptations must be either so
rich, and consequently so full of liquor that he was unable to drink any
more, or so poor that he couldn’t afford to be thirsty.
So the last comer smoked in silence at a little table of his own, which
he had drawn into a corner, and his predecessor drank at _his_ table,
looking wiser and wiser, while each glanced furtively at the other
without opening his lips. Presently the eyes of the elder man twinkled:
he had got an idea—nay, he actually launched it. Filling his glass, and
politely handing it to the smoker, but reserving the jug to drink from
himself, he proposed the following comprehensive toast—
“All ships at sea!”
They both drank it gravely and without farther comment. It was a social
challenge, and felt to be such; the smoker pondered, put out the glass
he had drained to be refilled, and holding it on a level with his eyes,
enunciated solemnly—
“All ships in port!”
When equal justice had been done to this kindred sentiment, and the
navies of the world were thus exhausted, they came to a dead-lock and
relapsed into silence once more.
This calm might have remained unbroken for a considerable time but for
the entrance of a third seaman, much younger than either of the former,
whose appearance in the passage had been received by a round of applause
from the children, a hearty greeting from the landlady—though that portly
woman, with her handsome face, would not have left her arm-chair to
welcome an admiral—and a “good-morrow,” louder, but not more sincere,
from Bob himself. It appeared that this guest was well known and also
trusted at the Fox and Fiddle, for, entering the public room with a
sea-bow and a scrape of his foot on its sanded floor, he called lustily
for a quart of strong ale and a pipe, while he produced an empty purse,
and shook it in the landlord’s face with a laugh of derision that would
have become the wealthiest nobleman in Great Britain.
“Ay, lad,” said Bob, shaking his head, but setting before his customer
the beer and tobacco as desired. “’Tis well enough to begin a fresh score
when the old one’s wiped out; but I saw that purse, with my own eyes,
half full of broad pieces at the ebb. See now; you’ve gone and cleared it
out—not a blessed groat left—and it’s scarce high-water yet!”
“What o’ that, old shiney?” laughed the other. “Isn’t there plenty more
to be yarned when them’s all gone? Slack water be hanged! I tell you I’ll
have a doubloon for every one of these here rain-drops afore a month’s
out. I know where they grows, old man; I know where they grows. My
sarvice to ye, mates! Here’s ‘Outward bound and an even keel!’”
While he spoke he whirled the rain-drops off his shining hat upon the
floor, and nodding to the others, took a long pull at his ale, which
nearly emptied the jug; then he filled a pipe, winked at the retiring
landlord, and smoked in silence. The others scanned him attentively. He
was an active, well-built young fellow of two or three-and-twenty, with
foretopman written on every feature of his reckless, saucy, good-looking
face—in every gesture of his wiry, loose, athletic limbs. He was very
good-looking; his eyes sparkled with fun and his teeth were as white as a
lady’s; his hair too might have been the envy of many a woman, clustering
as it did in a profusion of curls over a pair of real gold earrings—a
fashion now beginning to find considerable favour amongst the rising
generation of seamen, though regarded with horror by their seniors as a
new and monstrous affectation, proving, if indeed proof were needed for
so self-evident a fact, that, as in all previous and subsequent ages,
“the service was going to the devil.”
Even his joviality, however, seemed damped by the taciturnity of his
comrades. He too smoked in silence and gave himself up to meditation. The
rain pattered outside, and gusts of wind dashed it fitfully against the
window-pane. The tide moaned sullenly, and a house-dog, chained in the
back-yard, lifted up his voice to howl in unison. The three seamen smoked
and drank and brooded, each occasionally removing his pipe from his mouth
as if about to break the silence, on which the others looked in his face
expectant, and for a time this was the whole extent of the conversation.