The Red Rover & Other Sea Adventures – 3 Novels in One Volume. Джеймс Фенимор Купер
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live in!” returned the good-man; “nor can any one tell at what moment his life is to be taken from him. Five bloody and cruel wars have I lived to see in safety and yet am I reserved to meet this disgraceful and profane end at last.”
“Well, since you’ve had your luck in the wars, you’ve the less reason to grumble at the bit of a surge you may have felt in your garments, as they run you up to this here yard-arm. I say, brother, I’ve known stouter fellows take the same ride, who never knew when or how they got down again.”
Homespun, who did not more than half comprehend the allusion of Fid, now regarded him in a way that announced some little desire for an explanation, mingled with great admiration of the unconcern with which his companion maintained his position, without the smallest aid from any thing but his self-balancing powers.
“I say, brother,” resumed Fid, “that many a stout seaman has been whipt up to the end of a yard, who has started by the signal of a gun, and who has staid there just as long as the president of a court-martial was pleased to believe might be necessary to improve his honesty!”
“It would be a fearful and frightful trifling with Providence, in the least offending and conscientious mariner, to take such awful punishments in vain, by acting them in his sports; but doubly so do I pronounce it in the crew of a ship on which no man can say at what hour retribution and compunction are to alight. It seems to me unwise to tempt Providence by such provocating exhibitions.”
Fid cast a glance of far more than usual significance at the good-man, and even postponed his reply, until he had freshened his ideas by an ample addition to the morsel of weed which he had kept all along thrust into one of his cheeks. Then, casting his eyes about him, in order to see that none of his noisy and riotous companions, of the top, were within ear-shot, he fastened a still more meaning look on the countenance of the tailor, as he responded,—
“Hark ye, brother; whatever may be the other good points of Richard Fid, his friends cannot say he is much of a scholar. This being the case, he has not seen fit to ask a look at the sailing orders, on coming aboard this wholesome vessel. I suppose, howsomever, that they can be forthcoming at need, and that no honest man need be ashamed to be found cruising under the same.”
“Ah! Heaven protect such unoffending innocents as serve here against their will, when the allotted time of the cruiser shall be filled!” returned Homespun. “I take it, however, that you, as a sea-faring and understanding man, have not entered into this enterprise without receiving the bounty, and knowing the whole nature of the service.”
“The devil a bit have I entered at all, either in the ‘Enterprise’ or in the ‘Dolphin,’ as they call this same craft. There is master Harry, the lad on the poop there, he who hails a yard as soft as a bull-whale roars; I follow his signals, d’ye see; and it is seldom that I bother him with questions as to what tack he means to lay his boat on next.”
“What! would you sell your soul in this manner to Beelzebub; and that, too, without a price?”
“I say, friend, it may be as well to overhaul your ideas, before you let them slip, in this no-man’s fashion, from your tongue. I would wish to treat a gentleman, who has come aloft to pay me a visit, with such civility as may do credit to my top, though the crew be at mischief, d’ye see. But an officer like him I follow has a name of his own, without stopping to borrow one of the person you’ve just seen fit to name. I scorn such a pitiful thing as a threat, but a man of your years needn’t be told, that it is just as easy to go down from this here spar as it was to come up to it.”
The tailor cast a glance beneath him into the brine, and hastened to do away the unfavourable impression which his last unfortunate interrogation had so evidently left on the mind of his brawny associate.
“Heaven forbid that I should call any one but by their given and family names, as the law commands,” he said; “I meant merely to inquire, if you would follow the gentleman you serve to so unseemly and pernicious a place as a gibbet?”
Fid ruminated some little time, before he saw fit to reply to so sweeping a query. During this unusual process, he agitated the weed, with which his mouth was nearly gorged, with great industry; and then, terminating both processes, by casting a jet of the juice nearly to the sprit-sail-yard, he said, in a very decided tone,—
“If I wouldn’t, may I be d—d! After sailing in company for four-and-twenty years, I should be no better than a sneak, to part company, because such a trifle as a gallows hove in sight.”
“The pay of such a service should be both generous and punctual, and the cheer of the most encouraging character,” the good-man observed, in a way that manifested he should not be displeased were he to receive a reply. Fid was in no disposition to balk his curiosity, but rather deemed himself bound, since he had once entered on the subject, to leave no part of it in obscurity.
“As for the pay, d’ye see,” he said, “it is seaman’s wages. I should despise myself to take less than falls to the share of the best foremast-hand in a ship, since it would be all the same as owning that I got my deserts. But master Harry has a way of his own in rating men’s services; and if his ideas get jamm’d in an affair of this sort, it is no marling-spike that I handle which can loosen them. I once just named the propriety of getting me a quarter-master’s birth; but devil the bit would he be doing the thing, seeing, as he says himself, that I have a fashion of getting a little hazy at times, which would only be putting me in danger of disgrace; since every body knows that the higher a monkey climbs in the rigging of a ship, the easier every body on deck can see that he has a tail. Then, as to cheer, it is sea man’s fare; sometimes a cut to spare for a friend and sometimes a hungry stomach.”
“But then there are often divisions of the—a—a—the-prize-money, in this successful cruiser?” demanded the good-man, averting his face as he spoke, perhaps from a consciousness that it might betray an unseemly interest in the answer. “I dare say, you receive amends for all your sufferings, when the purser gives forth the spoils.”
“Hark ye, brother,” said Fid, again assuming a look of significance, “can you tell me where the Admiralty Court sits which condemns her prizes?”
The good-man returned the glance, with interest; but an extraordinary uproar, in another part of the vessel, cut short the dialogue, just as there was a rational probability it might lead to some consolatory explanations between the parties.
As the action of the tale is shortly to be set in motion again, we shall refer the cause of the commotion to the opening of the succeeding chapter.
Chapter XX
“Come, and get thee a sword, though made of a lath:
They have been up these two days.”
—King Henry VI
While the little by-play that we have just related was enacting on the fore-yard-arm of the Rover scenes, that partook equally of the nature of tragedy and farce, were in the process of exhibition elsewhere. The contest between the possessors of the deck and those active tenants of the top, so often named, was far from having reached its termination. Blows had, in more than one instance, succeeded to angry words; and, as the former was a part of the sports in which the marines and waisters were on an equality with their more ingenious tormentors, the war was beginning to be waged with some appearances of a very doubtful success. Nightingale, however, was always ready to recall the combatants to their sense of propriety, with his well-known wind of the call, and his murmuring voice. A long, shrill whistle, with the words, “Good humour, ahoy!” had hitherto served to keep down the rising tempers of the different parties, when the joke bore too hard on the high-spirited soldier, or the revengeful, though perhaps less mettlesome, member of the after-guard. But an oversight on the part of him who in common kept so vigilant an eye on the movements of all beneath his orders, had nearly led to results of a far more serious nature.
No sooner had the crew commenced the different