Philosopher Jack. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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if it had not been important to let you know at once to get your boy ready; but I had no one to send except Polly, and I wouldn’t send her out at night by herself for all the wealth of Indy. Moreover, she wouldn’t have let me out to-night for any consideration whatever. She’s very strict with me, is my little keeper. I wouldn’t for the world she should wake and find me gone. So, good-night all.”
Ten minutes more, and the guilty man entered his dwelling on tiptoe. In order to get into his hammock with extreme caution he forsook his ancient method of a spring, and mounted on an empty cask. The cask was not equal to the emergency. He went through the head of it with a hideous crash! Spurning it from him, he had just time to plunge into his place of repose and haul the clothes over him, when Polly emerged from her lair with wondering eyes.
“What ever was that, father?”
“Nothin’, my dear, nothin’ in partickler—only a cask I kicked over. Now, then, Poll, since you’re keepin’ me awake in this fashion, it’s your dooty to soothe me with an extra panful, and another nor’-wester—so, up wi’ the pyramid; and after you’ve done it you must turn into your crib. I’ll not want you again to-night; the cough’s much better. There—thank ’ee. Pollyfy me now—that’s right. Good-night.”
Oh, base mariner! little did you merit such a pleasant termination to your evening’s work; but you are not the only wicked man in this world who receives more than he deserves.
Two days after the incidents just related a noble ship spread her canvas to a favouring breeze, and bowing farewell to her port of departure, commenced the long long voyage to the Antipodes.
She was not a passenger ship, but a trader; nevertheless there were a few passengers on her quarter-deck, and among these towered the colossal figure of Captain Samson. Beside him, holding his hand, stood a fairy-like little creature with brown curls and pretty blue eyes. Not far from her, leaning over the bulwarks, Benjamin Trench frantically waved a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. The signal was responded to, with equal feeling, by the bailie, his wife, and little Susan. A good number of people, young and old, assembled at the pier-head, among whom many waved handkerchiefs, and hands, and scarfs, and hats to the crew.
Among the sailors who gazed wistfully towards the pier was one who made no farewell signal, and received no parting wave. Philosopher Jack had concealed his intention of going to sea from all his college chums, and a bitter feeling of loneliness oppressed his heart as he thought of his old father and mother, and the lowly cottage on the Border hills. He had not, indeed, acted in direct opposition to the wishes of his parents, but he had disobeyed the well-known Scripture command to do them “honour,” for he had resolved on his course of action without consulting them, or asking their advice. He felt that he had very selfishly forsaken them in their old age; in the hour of their sore distress, and at a time when they stood woefully in need of his strong muscles, buoyant spirit, and energetic brain. In short, Edwin Jack began to feel that he required all his philosophy, and something more, to enable him to face the future with the unflinching courage of a man.
So the ship moved slowly on, revealing on her stern the “Lively Poll” in letters of burnished gold—past the pier-head, down the broad river, out upon the widening firth, beyond lighthouse, buoy, and beacon, until at last the fresh Atlantic breezes filled her snowy sails.
And ever as she rose and sank upon the rolling waves, their swish and thud fell strangely on the ear of one who lay deep down in the recesses of the hull, where—among barrels of pork, and casks of tar, and cans of oil, and coils of rope, and other unsavoury stores—he consorted with rats and mice and an uneasy conscience, in thick darkness. This was a “stowaway.” He was a sturdy, bright, ruddy little fellow of fourteen. Down in that unwholesome place, with a few ship-biscuits and a bottle of water to keep him alive, he would have looked like a doubled-up overgrown hedgehog if there had been light enough to reveal him.
Thus, with its little world of hopes and fears, its cares and pleasures, and its brave, trembling, trusting, sorrowing, joyful, anxious, reckless hearts, the good ship passed from the shores of Britain, until her sails quivered like a petrel’s wings on the horizon, and then vanished into the boundless bosom of the mighty sea.
Chapter Two
Tells of a Ghost and an Overwhelming Disaster
It may seem strange, nevertheless it is true, that ignorance is a misfortune which now and then results in good. Of course we do not make this remark in commendation of ignorance, but if Baldwin Burr had not been ignorant and densely stupid, Philosopher Jack would not have had the pleasure of instructing him, and the seaman himself would not have enjoyed that close intimacy which frequently subsists between teacher and pupil. Even Polly Samson derived benefit from Baldwin’s want of knowledge, for, being remarkably intelligent for her years, and having been well taught, she took great pleasure in enlightening his darkness.
“How is it,” she asked one day, while sitting on the cabin skylight and looking up in the man’s rugged countenance, “how is it that you are so stupid?”
Burr, who was steering, gave the wheel a turn, looked up at the mast-head, then round the horizon, then down at his questioner with a bland smile, and said—
“Well now, Miss Polly, d’ee know, that’s wot I can’t exactly tell. P’r’aps it’s ’cause of a nat’ral want of brains, or, maybe, ’cause the brains is too much imbedded in fat—for I’m a fleshy man, as you see—or, p’r’aps it’s ’cause I never went to school, my parients bein’ poor, uncommon poor, though remarkably honest. I’ve sometimes thought, w’en meditatin’ on the subject, that my havin’ bin born of a Friday may have had somethin’ to do with it.”
“Oh, Baldwin,” said Polly with a little laugh, “surely you can’t believe that. Father says it’s all nonsense about Friday being an unlucky day.”
“P’r’aps it is, an’ p’r’aps it ain’t,” returned the cautious seaman. “I regard your father, my dear, as a deeply learned man, and would give in, if I could, to wotever he says, but facts is facts, and opinions is opinions, you can’t change that, nohow you fix it. Wot’s the cap’n’s opinions, now, as to ghosts?”
“He don’t believe in ’em at all,” was Polly’s prompt answer. “No more do I, for father knows everything, and he’s always right.”
“He’s a lucky man to have you, Polly, and there’s a lucky boy knockin’ about the world somewheres lookin’ out for you. A good daughter, it’s said, inwariably makes a good wife; which you don’t understand just now, but you’ll come to in course of time. Hows’ever, as I wos observin’, I’ve been of the same opinion as your father till two nights ago, when I heard a ghost right under the deck, it seemed to me, blow my hammock, where there’s nothin’ but ship’s stores and rats.”
“Heard a ghost!” exclaimed Polly, with opening eyes.
“Ay, an’ seed ’im too,” said Burr. “Night before yesterday I heer’d ’im as plain as I hear myself. He wos groanin’, an’ it’s quite impossible that a tar-barrel, or a cask, or a rat, could groan. The only thing that puzzled me wos that he seemed to snore; more than that he sneezed once or twice. Now, I never heard it said that a ghost could sleep or catch cold. Did you, Polly?”
Polly laughed and said that she never did, and asked eagerly what the ghost was like.
“It was wery much like an or’nary man of small size,” said the seaman, “but it were too dark to make out its face. I know the figure of every soul in the ship by this time, an’ I could swear before a maginstrate, or a bench of bishops, that the ghost is neither one of the crew nor a passenger.”
“Why didn’t you speak to it?” asked Polly.
“So I did speak to it, but it wouldn’t answer; then I made a grab at it, but it was as active as a kitten, dodged round the mainmast, flew for’ed on inwisible wings, and went slap down the fore-scuttle, head first, with a crash that would have broke the neck of anything but a ghost.”
At this interesting point the conversation was interrupted by Edwin Jack, whose turn it was to relieve the man