The Red Rover & Other Sea Adventures – 3 Novels in One Volume. Джеймс Фенимор Купер
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for the moment, seemed suddenly to subside. The gay and cheerful air that he had maintained in his dialogue with his female guests (or prisoners, whichever he might be disposed to consider them) had disappeared, in a thoughtful and clouded brow. His eye no longer lighted with those glimmerings of wayward and sarcastic humour in which he much loved to indulge, but its expression became painfully settled and austere. It was evident that his mind had relapsed into one of those brooding reveries that so often obscured his playful and vivacious mien, as a shadow darkens the golden tints of the field of ripe and waving corn.
While most of those who were not actors in the noisy and humorous achievements of the crew steadily regarded the same, some with wonder, others with distrust, and all with more or less of the humour of the hour, the Rover, to all appearance, was quite unconscious of all that was going on before his face. It is true, that at times he raised his eyes to the active beings who clung like squirrels to the ropes, or suffered them to fall on the duller movements of the men below; but it was always with a vacancy which proved that the image they carried to the brain was dim and illusory. The looks he cast, from time to time, on Mrs Wyllys and her fail and deeply interested pupil, betrayed the workings of the temper of the inward man. It was only in these brief but comprehensive glances that the feelings by which he was governed might have been, in any manner, traced to their origin. Still would the nicest observer have been puzzled, if not baffled, in endeavouring to pronounce on the entire character of the emotions uppermost in his mind. At instants, it might have been fancied that some unholy and licentious passion was getting the ascendancy; and then, as his eye ran rapidly over the chaste and matronly, though still attractive, countenance of the governess, no imagination was necessary to read the look of doubt, as well as respect, with which he gazed.
It was while thus occupied that the sports proceeded sometimes humorous, and forcing smiles even from the lips of the half-terrified Gertrude, but always tending to that violence, and outbreaking of anger, which might, at any moment, set at naught the discipline of a vessel in which no other means to enforce authority existed, than such as its officers could, on the instant, command. Water had been so lavishly expended, that the decks were running with the fluid, even more than one flight of spray having invaded the privileged precincts of the poop. Every ordinary device of similar scenes had been resorted to, by the men aloft, to annoy their less advantageously posted shipmates beneath; and such means of retaliation had been adopted as use or facility rendered obvious. Here, a hog and a waister were seen swinging against each other, pendant beneath a top; there, a marine, lashed in the rigging, was obliged to suffer the manipulation of a pet monkey, which drilled to the duty, and armed with a comb, was posted on his shoulder, with an air as grave, and an eye as observant, as though he had been regularly educated in the art of the perruquier; and, every where, some coarse and practical joke proclaimed the licentious liberty which had been momentarily accorded to a set of beings who were, in common, kept in that restraint which comfort, no less than safety, requires for the well-ordering of an armed ship.
In the midst of the noise and turbulence, a voice was heard, apparently issuing from the ocean, hailing the vessel by name, with the aid of a speaking-trumpet that had been applied to the outer circumference of a hawse hole.
“Who speaks the ‘Dolphin?’” demanded Wilder in reply, when he perceived that the summons had fallen on the dull ears of his Commander, without recalling him to the recollection of what was in action.
“Father Neptune is under your fore-foot.”
“What wills’ the God?”
“He has heard that certain strangers have come into his dominions, and he wishes leave to come aboard the saucy ‘Dolphin,’ to inquire into their errands, and to overhaul the log-book of their characters.”
“He is welcome. Show the old man aboard through the head; he is too experienced a sailor to wish to come in by the cabin windows.”
Here the parlance ceased; for Wilder turned upon his heel, as though he were already disgusted with his part of the mummery.
An athletic seaman soon appeared, seemingly issuing from the element whose deity he aspired to personate. Mops, dripping with brine, supplied the place of hoary locks; gulf-weed, of which acres were floating within a league of the ship, composed a sort of negligent mantle; and in his hand he bore a trident made of three marling-spikes properly arranged and borne on the staff of a half-pike. Thus accoutred, the God of the Ocean, who was no less a personage than the captain of the forecastle, advanced with a suitable air of dignity, along the deck attended by a train of bearded water-nymphs and naïades, in a costume no less grotesque than his own. Arrived on the quarter-deck, in front of the position occupied by the officers, the principal personage saluted the groupe with a wave of his sceptre, and resumed the discourse as follows; Wilder, from the continued abstraction of his Commander, finding himself under the necessity of maintaining one portion of the dialogue.
“A wholesome and prettily-rigged boat have you come out in this time, my son; and one well tilled with a noble set of my children. How long might it be since you left the land?”
“Some eight days ago.”
“Hardly time enough to give the green ones the use of their sea legs. I shall be able to find them, by the manner in which they hold on in a calm.” (Here the General, who was standing with a scornful and averted eye, let go his hold of a mizzen-shroud, which he had grasped for no other visible reason than to render his person utterly immoveable; Neptune smiled, and continued.) “I sha’n’t ask concerning the port you are last from, seeing that the Newport soundings are still hanging about the flukes of your anchors. I hope you haven’t brought out many fresh hands with you, for I smell the stock-fish aboard a Baltic-man, who is coming down with the trades, and who can’t be more than a hundred leagues from this; I shall therefore have but little time to overhaul your people, in order to give them their papers.”
“You see them all before you. So skilful a mariner as Neptune needs no advice when or how to tell a seaman.”
“I shall then begin with this gentleman,” continued the waggish head of the forecastle, turning towards the still motionless chief of the marines. “There is a strong look of the land about him; and I should like to know how many hours it is since he first floated over blue water.”
“I believe he has made many voyages; and I dare say has long since paid the proper tribute to your Majesty.”
“Well, well; the thing is like enough, tho’f I will say I have known scholars make better use of their time, if he has been so long on the water as you pretend. How is it with these ladies?”
“Both have been at sea before, and have a right to pass without a question,” resumed Wilder, a little hastily.
“The youngest is comely enough to have been born in my dominions,” said the gallant Sovereign of the Sea; “but no one can refuse to answer a hail that comes straight from the mouth of Old Neptune; so, if it makes no great difference in your Honour’s reckoning, I will just beg the young woman to do her own talking.” Then, without paying the least attention to the angry glance that shot from the eye of Wilder, the sturdy representative of the God addressed himself directly to Gertrude. “If, as report goes of you, my pretty damsel, you have seen blue water before this passage, you may be able to recollect the name of the vessel, and some other small particulars of the run?”
The face of our heroine changed its colour from red to pale, as rapidly, and as glowingly, as the evening sky flushes, and returns to its pearl-like loveliness; but she kept down her feelings sufficiently to answer, with an air of entire self-possession,—
“Were I to enter into all these little particulars, it would detain you from more worthy subjects. Perhaps this certificate will convince you that I am no novice on the sea.” As she spoke, a guinea fell from her white hand into the broad and extended palm of her interrogator.
“I can only account for my not remembering your Ladyship, by the great extent and heavy nature of my business,” returned the audacious freebooter bowing with an air of rude politeness as he pocketed the offering. “Had I looked into my books before I came aboard this here ship, I should have seen through the mistake at once; for I now remember that I