PAUL JONES IN A REVERIE.
“‘God helps them that help themselves.’ That’s a clincher. That’s been
my experience. But I never saw it in words before. What pamphlet is
this? ‘Poor Richard,’ hey!”
Upon entering Israel’s room, Captain Paul, stepping towards the table
and spying the open pamphlet there, had taken it up, his eye being
immediately attracted to the passage previously marked by our
adventurer.
“A rare old gentleman is ‘Poor Richard,’” said Israel in response to
Paul’s observations.
“So he seems, so he seems,” answered Paul, his eye still running over
the pamphlet again; “why, ‘Poor Richard’ reads very much as Doctor
Franklin speaks.”
“He wrote it,” said Israel.
“Aye? Good. So it is, so it is; it’s the wise man all over. I must get
me a copy of this and wear it around my neck for a charm. And now about
our quarters for the night. I am not going to deprive you of your bed,
my man. Do you go to bed and I will doze in the chair here. It’s good
dozing in the crosstrees.”
“Why not sleep together?” said Israel; “see, it is a big bed. Or
perhaps you don’t fancy your bed-fellow. Captain?”
“When, before the mast, I first sailed out of Whitehaven to Norway,”
said Paul, coolly, “I had for hammock-mate a full-blooded Congo. We had
a white blanket spread in our hammock. Every time I turned in I found
the Congo’s black wool worked in with the white worsted. By the end of
the voyage the blanket was of a pepper-and-salt look, like an old man’s
turning head. So it’s not because I am notional at all, but because I
don’t care to, my lad. Turn in and go to sleep. Let the lamp burn. I’ll
see to it. There, go to sleep.”
Complying with what seemed as much a command as a request, Israel,
though in bed, could not fall into slumber for thinking of the little
circumstance that this strange swarthy man, flaming with wild
enterprises, sat in full suit in the chair. He felt an uneasy misgiving
sensation, as if he had retired, not only without covering up the fire,
but leaving it fiercely burning with spitting fagots of hemlock.
But his natural complaisance induced him at least to feign himself
asleep; whereupon. Paul, laying down “Poor Richard,” rose from his
chair, and, withdrawing his boots, began walking rapidly but
noiselessly to and fro, in his stockings, in the spacious room, wrapped
in Indian meditations. Israel furtively eyed him from beneath the
coverlid, and was anew struck by his aspect, now that Paul thought
himself unwatched. Stern relentless purposes, to be pursued to the
points of adverse bayonets and the muzzles of hostile cannon, were
expressed in the now rigid lines of his brow. His ruffled right hand
was clutched by his side, as if grasping a cutlass. He paced the room
as if advancing upon a fortification. Meantime a confused buzz of
discussion came from the neighboring chamber. All else was profound
midnight tranquillity. Presently, passing the large mirror over the
mantel, Paul caught a glimpse of his person. He paused, grimly
regarding it, while a dash of pleased coxcombry seemed to mingle with
the otherwise savage satisfaction expressed in his face. But the latter
predominated. Soon, rolling up his sleeve, with a queer wild smile,
Paul lifted his right arm, and stood thus for an interval, eyeing its
image in the glass. From where he lay, Israel could not see that side
of the arm presented to the mirror, but he saw its reflection, and
started at perceiving there, framed in the carved and gilded wood,
certain large intertwisted ciphers covering the whole inside of the
arm, so far as exposed, with mysterious tattooings. The design was
wholly unlike the fanciful figures of anchors, hearts, and cables,
sometimes decorating small portions of seamen’s bodies. It was a sort
of tattooing such as is seen only on thoroughbred savages—deep blue,
elaborate, labyrinthine, cabalistic. Israel remembered having beheld,
on one of his early voyages, something similar on the arm of a New
Zealand warrior, once met, fresh from battle, in his native village. He
concluded that on some similar early voyage Paul must have undergone
the manipulations of some pagan artist. Covering his arm again with his
laced coat-sleeve, Paul glanced ironically at the hand of the same arm,
now again half muffled in ruffles, and ornamented with several Parisian
rings. He then resumed his walking with a prowling air, like one
haunting an ambuscade; while a gleam of the consciousness of possessing
a character as yet un-fathomed, and hidden power to back unsuspected
projects, irradiated his cold white brow, which, owing to the shade of
his hat in equatorial climates, had been left surmounting his swarthy
face, like the snow topping the Andes.
So at midnight, the heart of the metropolis of modern civilization was
secretly trod by this jaunty barbarian in broadcloth; a sort of
prophetical ghost, glimmering in anticipation upon the advent of those
tragic scenes of the French Revolution which levelled the exquisite
refinement of Paris with the bloodthirsty ferocity of Borneo; showing
that broaches and finger-rings, not less than nose-rings and tattooing,
are tokens of the primeval savageness which ever slumbers in human
kind, civilized or uncivilized.
Israel slept not a wink that night. The troubled spirit of Paul paced
the chamber till morning; when, copiously bathing himself at the
wash-stand, Paul looked care-free and fresh as a daybreak hawk. After a
closeted consultation with Doctor Franklin, he left the place with a
light and dandified air, switching his gold-headed cane, and throwing a
passing arm round all the pretty chambermaids he encountered, kissing
them resoundingly, as if saluting a frigate. All barbarians are rakes.