Effects of the Race--Suppers and their effects--The stuff that
Dreams are made of--A Scrape in the Typa--Again at Whampoa.
Some suppers had to be ordered, and somebody had to eat them. Suppers
are _spiritless_ affairs without wine--nay! I deny the soft
impeachment,--no _pun is meant_! And wine came forth at the bidding.
Some one observes,
"You _can call_ spirits from the vasty deep!
But _will_ they come?"
Let him but whisper the name of one "familiar" of any shade, complexion,
or color within the corridors of Francisco Diaz's mansion for thirsty
men, in Macào; and lo! it appears!
His house is haunted; there are _bottle imps_ therein. Suppers were
eaten at which epicures had not lingered; wine gulped down which would
_not_ have inspired Anacreon, and segars smoked that Sir Walter Raleigh
_might have_ relished! Apropos of segars--I should have said
cheroots--Manillas scent the Indian air, Havanas have few lips to greet
them in the East. Cheroots, then; who is there amongst the masculine
dwellers of the land of "_musquitoes_ and myrtle," that affects not the
gentle cheroot? soft in its fragrance as the sigh of love! cheering in
its effects as the presence of woman in the hour of pain! seducing in
its influence as the eye of beauty! And whence gains the cheroot its
magical properties? Look back, if you please, to chapter twelfth of this
moving tale, and there you have it fully explained. It comes from the
_hand_ of woman! the same that presented the apple to Adam, and the
pitcher to Abraham, who in falling or fainting, in laughing or weeping,
still infuses the sweetness and acidity that makes the lemonade of life,
and in mixing the ingredients "gives it all its flavor!"
"Let the toast be dear woman!" "Hallo, old fellow, thought you were
asleep. Had something of a nightmare, eh? Been mumbling away as if the
supper didn't agree with you." "Well, your toast, with all the honors,
and then to bed." "Agreed."
"Let us go on board ship," proposed a seasoned mate, "the fast boat
shoves off at ten." "Agreed, agreed again," was chorused round the
table, and "one bottle more" of sparkling champagne being called for,
"success to the launch" was drank, and then a majority of the party
sought the boat, gained the ship, and turned in. "Let the toast be dear
woman," danced through my brain upon sparkling beams of champagne, and
the vibration of the nettles in the clews of my hammock plainly said or
sung--
"The wine that is mellowed by woman's bright eye,
Outrivals the nectar of Jove."
And I had a dream, which _was_ "all a dream." With Byron in his waking
"Dream," "I saw two beings in the hue of youth," and like his lovers,
they _were_ "standing upon a hill," and "both were young, and one was
_beautiful_." I do not know how in fitting words to tell my dream. But
as it was similar to his, oh that I could with his language, without
the imputation of plagiarism, set down what crossed my sleeping mind.
Besides, I have a dread of offending some readers in these
transcendental times, when lectures on mysterious subjects are given to
married ladies _only_, whose faces would tingle at the mere mention of
one of those English classics, from whose fount flowed "the well of
English undefiled." But to my dream. It was the age of early manhood,
boyhood still lingering on the face of a being who filled my mind until
it formed a part of myself. The being described as _beautiful_, oh
beautiful as an angel was she! was by his side. Love, full, passionate
love, brimmed over in her dark black eye, darker, more dazzling than the
gazelle's, which was reflected back from his dark orbs, which took their
brightest brilliancy from hers. Over her cheek the rosy god had spread
his crimson mantle, and in the dimples of her chin the mischievous boy
had found a lurking-place. They walked and talked, and in what phrase?
Truly they knew not themselves! and yet each word, each glance, each
touch, had a meaning perfectly intelligible. Time passed, but what was
time to them, they saw nothing of his beard, heard not the rustling of
his ancient wings, his scythe was hidden. The heavens are overcast,
thunder rolls above them, and the lightning's glare makes the black
fringes of the heavy cloud more funereal. A shadow, heavy, dense,
_material_, interposes, and the boy seeks for his fair companion--but
she is gone: "Got to see the hammocks up! six bells, come turn out,"
"rouse and bitt," "show a leg in a purser's stocking." "Zounds, how he
sleeps," "where, where, oh where is my hammock boy?" who appeared at my
call, and whom I wished at the gangway, that I might have slept on. But
turn out I must now--and so turned out my dream.
Other races were upon the _tapis_. The launchers, like brave old Taylor,
would not stay beaten, and demanded another trial; they offered to
oppose any thing, from the Captain's gig, down to the dingui--they even
wanted to challenge the boats of the whole squadron, and old A., the
coxswain, in the true spirit of Rhoderick Dhu, exclaimed, "Come one,
come all," but the regatta was put a stop to, by orders to get out of
the Typa, and the men commenced "mud-larking," as they termed it. The
Typa is filling up so rapidly that we never could get out _now_ without
a _scrape_, and the senior officer perhaps thought it better we should
move before we had formed a bar with our beef bones.
So out of the Typa again we got, poised our wings in the outer harbor,
and took flight for Whampoa again, and settled down in our old resting
place in the "Reach," on the 11th of October. From here I took another
trip to Canton, made a few purchases, as I then supposed it would be our
last opportunity. Heard there of an extensive fire which had raged near
the factories, in which over five hundred houses had been destroyed. A
fire in Canton is a serious affair, and from the ideas of fatalism
which the Chinese entertain, is much dreaded by foreign residents.
Our stay at Whampoa was not marked by any incidents worth noticing, and
it is only to keep up the chronological character of my journal, that
the trip is introduced.