The Red Rover & Other Sea Adventures – 3 Novels in One Volume. Джеймс Фенимор Купер
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jealous vigilance. On the contrary his manner, for the moment, was cold and abstracted he appeared to mingle in their discourse, much more from a sense of the obligations of hospitality than from any satisfaction that he might have been thought to derive from the intercourse. Still, his deportment was kind, and his voice bland as the airs that were wafted from the healthful islands in view.
“There is a sight”—he said, pointing towards the low blue ridges of the land—“that forms the lands-man’s delight, and the seaman’s terror.”
“Are, then, seamen thus averse to the view of regions where so many millions of their fellow creatures find pleasure in dwelling?” demanded Gertrude, (to whom he more particularly addressed his words), with a frankness that would, in itself, have sufficiently proved no glimmerings of his real character had ever dawned on her own spotless and unsuspicious mind.
“Miss Grayson included,” he returned, with a slight bow, and a smile, in which, perhaps, irony was concealed by playfulness. “After the risk you have so lately run, even I, confirmed and obstinate sea-monster as I am, have no reason to complain of your distaste for our element. And yet, you see, it is not entirely without its charms. No lake, that lies within the limits of yon Continent, can be more calm and sweet than is this bit of ocean. Were we a few degrees more southward, I would show you landscapes of rock and mountain—of bays, and hillsides sprinkled with verdure—of tumbling whales, and lazy fishermen, and distant cottages, and lagging sails—such as would make a figure even in pages that the bright eye of lady might love to read.”
“And yet for most of this would you be indebted to the land. In return for your picture, I would take you north, and show you black and threatening clouds—a green and angry sea—shipwrecks and shoals—cottages, hillsides, and mountains, in the imagination only of the drowning man—and sails bleached by waters that contain the voracious shark, or the disgusting polypus.”
Gertrude had answered in his own vein; but it was too evident, by her pale cheek, and a slight tremour about her full, rich lip, that memory was also busy with its frightful images. The quick-searching eye of the Rover was not slow to detect the change. As though he would banish every recollection that might give her pain, he artfully, but delicately, gave a new direction to the discourse.
“There are people who think the sea has no amusements,” he said. “To a pining, home-sick, sea-sick miserable, this may well be true; but the man who has spirit enough to keep down the qualms of the animal may tell a different tale. We have our balls regularly, for instance; and there are artists on board this ship, who, though they cannot, perhaps, make as accurate a right angle with their legs as the first dancer of a leaping ballet, can go through their figures in a gale of wind; which is more than can be said of the highest jumper of them all on shore.”
“A ball, without females, would, at least, be thought an unsocial amusement, with us uninstructed people of terra firma.”
“Hum! It might be better for a lady or two Then, have we our theatre: Farce, comedy, and the buskin, take their turns to help along the time. You fellow, that you see lying on the fore-topsail-yard like an indolent serpent basking on the branch of a tree, will ‘roar you as gently as any sucking dove!’ And here is a votary of Momus, who would raise a smile on the lips of a sea-sick friar: I believe I can say no more in his commendation.”
“All this is well in the description,” returned Mrs Wyllys; “but something is due to the merit of the—poet, or, painter shall I term you?”
“Neither, but a grave and veritable chronologer. However, since you doubt, and since you are so new to the ocean”—
“Pardon me!” the lady gravely interrupted, “I am, on the contrary, one who has seen much of it.”
The Rover, who had rather suffered his unsettled glances to wander over the youthful countenance of Gertrude than towards her companion, now bent his eyes on the last speaker, where he kept them fastened so long as to create some little embarrassment in the subject of his gaze.
“You seem surprised that the time of a female should have been thus employed,” she observed, with a view to arouse his attention to the impropriety of his observation.
“We were speaking of the sea, if I remember,” he continued, like a man that was suddenly awakened from a deep reverie. “Ay, I know it was of the sea; for I had grown boastful in my panegyrics: I had told you that this ship was faster than”—
“Nothing!” exclaimed Gertrude, laughing at his blunder. “You were playing Master of Ceremonies at a nautical ball!”
“Will you figure in a minuet? Shall I honour my boards with the graces of your person?”
“Me, sir? and with whom? the gentleman who knows so well the manner of keeping his feet in a gale?”
“You were about to relieve any doubts we might have concerning the amusements of seamen,” said the governess, reproving the too playful spirit of her pupil, by a glance of her own grave eye.
“Ay, it was the humour of the moment, nor will I balk it.”
He then turned towards Wilder, who had posted himself within ear-shot of what was passing, and continued,—
“These ladies doubt our gaiety, Mr Wilder. Let the boatswain give the magical wind of his call, and pass the word ‘To mischief’ among the people.”
Our adventurer bowed his acquiescence, and issued the necessary order. In a few moments, the precise individual who has already made acquaintance with the reader, in the bar-room of the “Foul Anchor,” appeared in the centre of the vessel, near the main hatchway, decorated, as before, with his silver chain and whistle, and accompanied by two mates who were humbler scholars of the same gruff school. Then rose a long, shrill whistle from the instrument of Nightingale, who, when the sound had died away on the ear, uttered, in his deepest and least sonorous tones,—
“All hands to mischief, ahoy!”
We have before had occasion to liken these sounds to the muttering of a bull, nor shall we at present see fit to disturb the comparison, since no other similitude so apt, presents itself. The example of the boatswain was followed by each of his mates in turn, and then the summons was deemed sufficient. However unintelligible and grum the call might sound in the musical ears of Gertrude, they produced no unpleasant effects on the organs of a majority of those who heard them. When the first swelling and protracted note of the call mounted on the still air, each idle and extended young seaman, as he lay stretched upon a spar, or hung dangling from a ratling lifted his head, to catch the words that were to follow, as an obedient spaniel pricks his ears to catch the tones of his master. But no sooner had the emphatic word, which preceded the long-drawn and customary exclamation with which Nightingale closed his summons, been pronounced, than the low murmur of voices, which had so long been maintained among the men, broke out in a simultaneous and common shout. In an instant, every symptom of lethargy disappeared in a general and extraordinary activity. The young and nimble topmen bounded like leaping animals, into the rigging of their respective masts, and were seen ascending the shaking ladders of ropes as so many squirrels would hasten to their holes at the signal of alarm. The graver and heavier seamen of the forecastle, the still more important quarter-gunners and quarter-masters, the less instructed and half-startled waisters, and the raw and actually alarmed after-guard, all hurried, by a sort of instinct, to their several points; the more practised to plot mischief against their shipmates, and the less intelligent to concert their means of defence.
In an instant, the tops and yards were ringing with laughter and loudly-uttered jokes, as each exulting mariner aloft proclaimed his device to his fellows, or urged his own inventions, at the expense of some less ingenious mode of annoyance. On the other hand, the distrustful and often repeated glances that were thrown upward, from the men who had clustered on the quarter-deck and around the foot of the mainmast sufficiently proclaimed the diffidence with which the novices on deck were about to enter into the contest of practical wit that was about to commence. The steady and more earnest seamen forward, however, maintained their places, with a species of stern resolution which manifestly proved the reliance they had on their physical force, and their long