AN ANTICIPATED DINNER--ALL THE ENJOYMENT SPOILED BY THE FIRST CUT--A
SUIT OF CLOTHES ILL-SUITED FOR WEARING--AND JOSHUA DAUNTON TRYING ON A
PAIR OF IRON LEGGINGS--MORE EASILY PUT ON THAN SHAKEN OFF.
This imp, this Flibbertygibbet, was killing us by inches. At length,
one of the master's mates, no longer being able to starve quietly and
philosophically, as became a man of courage, was again determined, by
one last effort, to dine, and breakfast, and sup, in the captain's cabin
and ward-room as often as he could. So, finding that there was enough
new blue cloth on board, with buttons, etcetera, to make him a complete
suit, he purchased them at an enormous price, _on credit_; and set the
ship's tailors to work incontinently. By this time, we were, with our
homeward-bound convoy, on the banks of Newfoundland. It was misty and
cold--and we were chilly and ragged. In such a conjuncture of
circumstances, even the well-clothed may understand what a blessing a
new suit of warm blue must be--that suit bearing in its suite a long
line of substantial breakfasts, dinners, and suppers. All this was
about to be Mr Pigtop's, our kind messmate, and respectable mate of the
orlop deck. He had already begun to protest upon the unreasonableness
of rotatory coats, or of having a quarter-deck pair of trousers, like
the wives of the ancient Britons, common to the sept. The ungrateful
rogue! He had on, at the very time, the only quarter-deck-going coat
among us, which was mine, and which he had just borrowed to enable him
to go on deck, and report everything right below.
"Captain Reud's compliments to Mr Pigtop, and would be glad of his
company to dinner."
Angelic words, when the invited reefer has a clean shirt, or collar, and
a decent uniform.
"`Mr Pigtop's compliments to Captain Reud, and will be most happy to
wait on him.' There, you dogs," said the elated Pigtop, "I say no more
lending of clothes. Here, you, Josh, jump forward, and tell the tailor
I must have my uniform by four bells."
Josh jumped forward with a very intelligent grin upon his
tallow-complexioned but handsome countenance.
Now, the captain and ward-room officers all knew very well of the
unaccountable destruction of our clothes, which, they affected to
believe, was not unaccountable to them. They said it arose from very
natural causes; a little of which was to be ascribed to dampness, a
little to the cockroaches, and a great, a very great deal to our
proverbial carelessness. Well. A midshipman careless! But some people
_may_ libel with impunity. Whatever they thought, they enjoyed our
dilemmas, both of food and of clothing.
An hour before the captain's dinner was ready, the much envied suit was
brought aft, and duly displayed on Mr Pigtop's chest. The ward-room
officers, or at least those of them with whom he could take that
liberty, were invited out to view it. It was pronounced, for
ship-tailoring, excellent.
Pigtop's elation was great. So was Josh Daunton's; but all in a quiet,
submissive way. Our envy was proportionate. Josh was an excellent
barber, and he volunteered to shave the happy diner-out--the offer was
accepted. Then came the turn of fate--then commenced the long series of
the poor mate's miseries. It was no fault of Daunton's, certainly--but
all the razors were like saws. The blood came out over the black visage
of Mr Pigtop; but the hair stayed most pertinaciously on. The sufferer
swore--how horribly he swore! The time was fast elapsing. After a most
tremendous oath from the sufferer, which would have almost split an oak
plank, Joshua said, in his lowly and insinuating voice, "Mr Pigtop,
pray do--do, do, sir, try the razors yourself. My heart bleeds, sir,
more than your face--do try, sir, for I think the captain's servant is
now coming down the hatchway to tell you dinner is ready."
In despair, the hungry depilator seized the razors: and, being
exasperated with hurry, he made a worse job of it than Joshua. Where
Josh had made notches, Pigtop made gashes. The ship's barber was then
sent for, and he positively refused to go over the bloody surface.
But Joshua Daunton was the true friend, the friend in need. With Mr
Pigtop's permission, he would go and borrow one of Dr Thompson's
razors. The offer was gratefully accepted. In the meantime, dinner was
actually announced. It is just about as wise to attempt to keep the
hungry tiger from his newly-slaughtered prey, as for a mid to make the
captain of a man-of-war wait dinner. Reud did not wait.
However, the fresh razor did its work admirably, in the adroit hand of
Joshua. The hitherto intractable beard flew off rapidly, and Joshua's
tongue moved more glibly even than his razor. Barbers in the act of
office have, like the House of Commons, the privilege of speech. They
are not amenable afterwards for what they say. In the act they are
omnipotent, for who would quarrel with a man who is slipping a razor
over your carotid artery? Not, certainly, Mr Pigtop. Thus spoke
Joshua, amid the eloquent flourishes of his instrument:--
"Mr Pigtop, I've a great respect for you--a very great respect indeed,
sir. If you have not been a good friend to me yet, you will--I know it,
sir; you are not like the other flighty young gentlemen. I have a
respect for years, sir--a great respect for years, and honour a
middle-aged gentleman. Indeed, sir, it must be a great condescension in
you to permit yourself to be only a master's--mate of a frigate, seeing
that you are quite an elderly gentleman--"
"Da--!"
"There!--that was very imprudent indeed, sir, of you to open your mouth.
It was not my fault, you know, that the brush went into it: indeed,
some people like the taste of soapsuds--wholesome, I assure you--very.
A stubble of your growth, sir, always requires a double lathering--don't
speak. Oh, sir, you are a happy man--exceeding. Your face will be as
smooth as a man's borrowing money. You, boy, just run up the
after-hatchway, and tell the captain's steward that Mr Pigtop will be
in the cabin in the flourish of a razor, or before a white horse can
turn grey. Permit me to take you by the nose; the true handle of the
face, sir: it gives the man, as it were, a sort of a command, sir, of
the whole head; he can box the compass with it. Happy indeed you are,
sir, and much to be envied. There was one of the captain's turtles
killed yesterday--Jumbo is a cook, a most excellent cook--a spoonful of
the soup to-day will be worth a king's ransom--a peck of March dust!
pooh!--I wouldn't give a spoonful of that soup for a hundred bushels of
it. Take my advice, sir, and have soup twice, sir. As it was carried
along the main-deck, I'm dishonest, if the young gentlemen didn't follow
it, with the water running down in streams from the corners of their
mouths, and their tongues entreatingly lolling out, like a parcel of
hungry dogs in Cripplegate, following the catsmeat-man's barrow. One
more rasp over your upper lip, and you are as smooth as the new-born
babe--talking of lips, as the first spoonful of that turtle-soup glides
over them--the devil! I'll take God to witness, it was an accident--the
roll of the ship!"
Joshua Daunton was on his knees before Mr Pigtop, who was in an agony
of pain, holding on his upper lip, which was nearly severed from his
face, whilst the blood was streaming through his fingers.
Doctor Thompson with diachylon and black sticking-plaster was soon on
the spot to the assistance of the almost dislipped master's-mate. After
the best was done for it, the poor fellow cut but a sorry appearance;
still his extreme hunger, made almost furious by the vision of the
turtle-soup, so artfully conjured up by the malicious Joshua, got the
better of his sense of pain; and with a great band of black plaster
reaching transversely from the right nostril to the left corner of his
mouth, the grim-looking Mr Pigtop made haste to don the new uniform.
In the meantime, the protestations and tears of Joshua had convinced
everybody that the horrible gash was merely the effect of accident, for
the ship was rolling a great deal at the moment. What the captain and
his guests were doing in the cabin above with the turtle-soup, it is
needless for me to state, for that same soup was never fated to gladden
the wounded lip of Mr Pigtop.
The hasty and famishing gentleman, in his very first attempt to draw on
his new trousers, to the astonishment of all his messmates, who had now
gathered round him, found them separated in the middle of each of his
legs. He might as well have attempted to clothe himself with cobweb
continuations; they came to pieces almost with a shake. The waistcoat
and coat were in the same predicament; they had not the principle of
continuity in them. Everybody was lost in amazement, except Mr Pigtop,
whose amazement, quite as great as ours, was lost in his still greater
rage. It was extremely unfortunate for Joshua Daunton that he had cut
the lip that day. The kind doctor was still by during the apparelling,
or the attempt at it. He examined the rotten clothes, and he soon
discovered that they had been saturated in different parts by some
corrosive liquid, that, instead of impairing, really improved the
brilliancy of the cloth.
During these proceedings, Captain Reud and his guests had eaten up the
dinner; but the captain, not being pleased to be pleasantly humoured
that day, sent word to Mr Pigtop to go to the mast-head till midnight
for disrespect in not attending to the invitation that he had accepted.
There was no appeal, and aloft went the wounded, ragged, famished hoper
of devouring turtle-soup. Joshua looked very demure and very unhappy;
but Dr Thompson set on foot an inquiry, and the truth of the
destruction of the clothes was soon ascertained. The loblolly-boy, that
is, the young man who had charge of the laboratory where all the
medicines were kept, confessed, after a little hesitation, that for
certain glasses of grog he had given this pernicious liquid to Daunton.
So, while one of his masters was contemplating the stars from the
mast-head, the destroyer of reefers' kits had nothing else to do but to
contemplate the beauty of his own feet, placed, with a judicious
exactitude, in a very handsome pair of bilboes under the half deck.