The Red Rover & Other Sea Adventures – 3 Novels in One Volume. Джеймс Фенимор Купер
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occurred as threatened to deprive him of it for ever.
There has existed but one occasion for introducing to the reader the mate who filled the station in the ship next to that of Earing. He was called Nighthead; a name that was, in some measure, indicative of a certain misty obscurity that beset his superior member. The qualities of his mind may be appreciated by the few reflections he saw fit to make on the escape of the old mariner whom Wilder had intended to visit with a portion of his indignation. This individual, as he was but one degree removed from the common men in situation, so was he every way qualified to maintain that association with the crew which was, in some measure, necessary between them. His influence among them was commensurate to his opportunities of intercourse, and his sentiments were very generally received with a portion of that deference which is thought to be due to the opinions of an oracle.
After the ship had been worn, and during the time that Wilder, with a view to lose sight of his unwelcome neighbour, was endeavouring to urge her through the seas in the manner already described, this stubborn and mystified tar remained in the waist of the vessel, surrounded by a few of the older and more experienced seamen, holding converse on the remarkable appearance of the phantom to leeward, and of the extraordinary manner in which their unknown officer saw fit to attest the enduring qualities of their own vessel. We shall commence our relation of the dialogue at a point where Nighthead saw fit to discontinue his distant inuendos, in order to deal more directly with the subject he had under discussion.
“I have heard it said, by older sea-faring men than any in this ship,” he continued, “that the devil has been known to send one of his mates aboard a lawful trader, to lead her astray among shoals and quicksands, in order that he might make a wreck, and get his share of the salvage, among the souls of the people. What man can say who gets into the cabin, when an unknown name stands first in the shipping list of a vessel?”
“The stranger is shut in by a cloud!” exclaimed one of the mariners, who, while he listened to the philosophy of his officer, still kept an eye riveted on the mysterious object to leeward.
“Ay, ay; it would occasion no surprise to see that craft steering into the moon! Luck is like a fly-block and its yard: when one goes up, the other comes down. They say the red-coats ashore have had their turn of fortune, and it is time we honest seamen look out for our squalls. I have doubled the Horn, brothers, in a King’s ship, and I have seen the bright cloud that never sets, and have held a living corposant in my own hand: But these are things which any man may look on, who will go upon a yard in a gale, or ship aboard a Southseaman: Still, I pronounce it uncommon for a vessel to see her shadow in the haze, as we have ours at this moment for there it comes again!—hereaway, between the after-shroud and the backstay—or for a trader to carry sail in a fashion that would make every knee in a bomb-ketch work like a tooth-brush fiddling across a passenger’s mouth, after he had had a smart bout with the sea sickness.”
“And yet the lad holds the ship in hand,” said the oldest of all the seamen, who kept his gaze fastened on the proceedings of Wilder; “he is driving her through it in a mad manner, I will allow; but yet, so far, he has not parted a yarn.”
“Yarns!” repeated the mate, in a tone of strong contempt; “what signify yarns, when the whole cable is to snap, and in such a fashion as to leave no hope for the anchor, except in a buoy rope? Hark ye, old Bill; the devil never finishes his jobs by halves: What is to happen will happen bodily; and no easing-off, as if you were lowering the Captain’s lady into a boat, and he on deck to see fair play.”
“Mr Nighthead knows how to keep a ship’s reckoning in all weathers!” said another, whose manner sufficiently announced the dependance he himself placed on the capacity of the second mate.
“And no credit to me for the same. I have seen all services, and handled every rig, from a lugger to a double-decker! Few men can say more in their own favour than myself; for the little I know has been got by much hardship, and small schooling. But what matters information, or even seamanship against witchcraft, or the workings of one whom I don’t choose to name, seeing that there is no use in offending any gentleman unnecessarily? I say, brothers that this ship is packed upon in a fashion that no prudent seaman ought to, or would, allow.”
A general murmur announced that most, if not all, of his hearers accorded in his opinion.
“Let us examine calmly and reasonably, and in a manner becoming enlightened Englishmen, into the whole state of the case,” the mate continued, casting an eye obliquely over his shoulder, perhaps to make sure that the individual, of whose displeasure he stood in such salutary awe, was not actually at his elbow. “We are all of us, to a man, native-born islanders, without a drop of foreign blood among us; not so much as a Scotchman or an Irishman in the ship. Let us therefore look into the philosophy of this affair, with that sort of judgment which becomes our breeding. In the first place, here is honest Nicholas Nichols slips from this here water-cask, and breaks me a leg! Now, brothers, I’ve known men to fall from tops and yards, and lighter damage done. But what matters it, to a certain person, how far he throws his man, since he has only to lift a finger to get us all hanged? Then, comes me aboard here a stranger, with a look of the colonies about him, and none of your plain-dealing, out-and-out, smooth English faces, such as a man can cover with the flat of his hand.”—
“The lad is well enough to the eye,” interrupted the old mariner.
“Ay, therein lies the whole deviltry of this matter! He is good-looking, I grant ye; but it is not such good-looking as an Englishman loves. There is a meaning about him that I don’t like; for I never likes too much meaning in a man’s countenance, seeing that it is not always easy to understand what he would be doing. Then, this stranger gets to be Master of the ship, or, what is the same thing, next to Master; while he who should be on deck giving his orders, in a time like this, is lying in his birth unable to tack himself, much less to put the vessel about; and yet no man can say how the thing came to pass.”
“He drove a bargain with the consignee for the station, and right glad did the cunning merchant seem to get so tight a youth to take charge of the ‘Caroline.’”
“Ah! a merchant is, like the rest of us, made of nothing better than clay; and, what is worse, it is seldom that, in putting him together, he is dampened with salt water. Many is the trader that has douzed his spectacles, and shut his account-books, to step aside to over-reach his neighbour, and then come back to find that he has over-reached himself. Mr Bale, no doubt, thought he was doing the clever thing for the owners, when he shipped this Mr Wilder; but then, perhaps, he did not know that the vessel was sold to ——— It becomes a plain-going seaman to have a respect for all he sails under; so I will not, unnecessarily, name the person who, I believe, has got, whether he came by it in a fair purchase or not, no small right in this vessel.”
“I have never seen a ship got out of irons more handsomely than he handled the ‘Caroline’ this very morning.”
Nighthead now indulged in a low, but what to his listeners appeared to be an exceedingly meaning, laugh.
“When a ship has a certain sort of Captain, one is not to be surprised at any thing,” he answered the instant his significant merriment had ceased. “For my own part, I shipped to go from Bristol to the Carolinas and Jamaica, touching at Newport out and home; and I will say, boldly, I have no wish to go any where else. As to backing the ‘Caroline’ from her awkward birth alongside the slaver, why it was well done; most too well for so young a manner. Had I done the thing myself, it could not have been much better. But what think you, brothers of the old man in the skiff? There was a chase, and an escape, such as few old sea-dogs have the fortune to behold! I have heard of a smuggler that was chased a hundred times by his Majesty’s cutters, in the chops of the Channel, and which always had a fog handy to run into, but out of which no man could truly say he ever saw her come again! This skiff may have plied between the land and that Guernseyman, for any thing I know to the contrary; but it is not a boat I wish to pull a scull in.”
“That was a remarkable flight!” exclaimed the elder seaman, whose faith in the character of our adventurer began to give way gradually, before such an accumulation of testimony.
“I call it so; though