DOMBEY & SON (Illustrated). Charles Dickens
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first mate, first lieutenant, two seamen, and a lady, in a leaky boat) going to work to stave the casks, got drunk and died drunk, singing “Rule Britannia”, when she settled and went down, and ending with one awful scream in chorus.’
‘But when the George the Second drove ashore, Uncle, on the coast of Cornwall, in a dismal gale, two hours before daybreak, on the fourth of March, ‘seventy-one, she had near two hundred horses aboard; and the horses breaking loose down below, early in the gale, and tearing to and fro, and trampling each other to death, made such noises, and set up such human cries, that the crew believing the ship to be full of devils, some of the best men, losing heart and head, went overboard in despair, and only two were left alive, at last, to tell the tale.’
‘And when,’ said old Sol, ‘when the Polyphemus—’
‘Private West India Trader, burden three hundred and fifty tons, Captain, John Brown of Deptford. Owners, Wiggs and Co.,’ cried Walter.
‘The same,’ said Sol; ‘when she took fire, four days’ sail with a fair wind out of Jamaica Harbour, in the night—’
‘There were two brothers on board,’ interposed his nephew, speaking very fast and loud, ‘and there not being room for both of them in the only boat that wasn’t swamped, neither of them would consent to go, until the elder took the younger by the waist, and flung him in. And then the younger, rising in the boat, cried out, “Dear Edward, think of your promised wife at home. I’m only a boy. No one waits at home for me. Leap down into my place!” and flung himself in the sea!’
The kindling eye and heightened colour of the boy, who had risen from his seat in the earnestness of what he said and felt, seemed to remind old Sol of something he had forgotten, or that his encircling mist had hitherto shut out. Instead of proceeding with any more anecdotes, as he had evidently intended but a moment before, he gave a short dry cough, and said, ‘Well! suppose we change the subject.’
The truth was, that the simple-minded Uncle in his secret attraction towards the marvellous and adventurous—of which he was, in some sort, a distant relation, by his trade—had greatly encouraged the same attraction in the nephew; and that everything that had ever been put before the boy to deter him from a life of adventure, had had the usual unaccountable effect of sharpening his taste for it. This is invariable. It would seem as if there never was a book written, or a story told, expressly with the object of keeping boys on shore, which did not lure and charm them to the ocean, as a matter of course.
But an addition to the little party now made its appearance, in the shape of a gentleman in a wide suit of blue, with a hook instead of a hand attached to his right wrist; very bushy black eyebrows; and a thick stick in his left hand, covered all over (like his nose) with knobs. He wore a loose black silk handkerchief round his neck, and such a very large coarse shirt collar, that it looked like a small sail. He was evidently the person for whom the spare wine-glass was intended, and evidently knew it; for having taken off his rough outer coat, and hung up, on a particular peg behind the door, such a hard glazed hat as a sympathetic person’s head might ache at the sight of, and which left a red rim round his own forehead as if he had been wearing a tight basin, he brought a chair to where the clean glass was, and sat himself down behind it. He was usually addressed as Captain, this visitor; and had been a pilot, or a skipper, or a privateersman, or all three perhaps; and was a very salt-looking man indeed.
His face, remarkable for a brown solidity, brightened as he shook hands with Uncle and nephew; but he seemed to be of a laconic disposition, and merely said:
‘How goes it?’
‘All well,’ said Mr Gills, pushing the bottle towards him.
He took it up, and having surveyed and smelt it, said with extraordinary expression:
‘The?’
‘The,’ returned the Instrument-maker.
Upon that he whistled as he filled his glass, and seemed to think they were making holiday indeed.
‘Wal’r!’ he said, arranging his hair (which was thin) with his hook, and then pointing it at the Instrument-maker, ‘Look at him! Love! Honour! And Obey! Overhaul your catechism till you find that passage, and when found turn the leaf down. Success, my boy!’
He was so perfectly satisfied both with his quotation and his reference to it, that he could not help repeating the words again in a low voice, and saying he had forgotten ‘em these forty year.
‘But I never wanted two or three words in my life that I didn’t know where to lay my hand upon ‘em, Gills,’ he observed. ‘It comes of not wasting language as some do.’
The reflection perhaps reminded him that he had better, like young Norval’s father, “increase his store.” At any rate he became silent, and remained so, until old Sol went out into the shop to light it up, when he turned to Walter, and said, without any introductory remark:—
‘I suppose he could make a clock if he tried?’
‘I shouldn’t wonder, Captain Cuttle,’ returned the boy.
‘And it would go!’ said Captain Cuttle, making a species of serpent in the air with his hook. ‘Lord, how that clock would go!’
For a moment or two he seemed quite lost in contemplating the pace of this ideal timepiece, and sat looking at the boy as if his face were the dial.
‘But he’s chock-full of science,’ he observed, waving his hook towards the stock-in-trade. ‘Look’ye here! Here’s a collection of ‘em. Earth, air, or water. It’s all one. Only say where you’ll have it. Up in a balloon? There you are. Down in a bell? There you are. D’ye want to put the North Star in a pair of scales and weigh it? He’ll do it for you.’
It may be gathered from these remarks that Captain Cuttle’s reverence for the stock of instruments was profound, and that his philosophy knew little or no distinction between trading in it and inventing it.
‘Ah!’ he said, with a sigh, ‘it’s a fine thing to understand ‘em. And yet it’s a fine thing not to understand ‘em. I hardly know which is best. It’s so comfortable to sit here and feel that you might be weighed, measured, magnified, electrified, polarized, played the very devil with: and never know how.’
Nothing short of the wonderful Madeira, combined with the occasion (which rendered it desirable to improve and expand Walter’s mind), could have ever loosened his tongue to the extent of giving utterance to this prodigious oration. He seemed quite amazed himself at the manner in which it opened up to view the sources of the taciturn delight he had had in eating Sunday dinners in that parlour for ten years. Becoming a sadder and a wiser man, he mused and held his peace.
‘Come!’ cried the subject of this admiration, returning. ‘Before you have your glass of grog, Ned, we must finish the bottle.’
‘Stand by!’ said Ned, filling his glass. ‘Give the boy some more.’
‘No more, thank’e, Uncle!’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Sol, ‘a little more. We’ll finish the bottle, to the House, Ned—Walter’s House. Why it may be his House one of these days, in part. Who knows? Sir Richard Whittington married his master’s daughter.’
‘“Turn again Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, and when you are old you will never depart from it,”’ interposed the Captain. ‘Wal’r! Overhaul the book, my lad.’
‘And although Mr Dombey hasn’t a daughter,’ Sol began.
‘Yes, yes, he has, Uncle,’ said the boy, reddening and laughing.
‘Has he?’ cried the old man. ‘Indeed I think he has too.’
‘Oh! I know he has,’ said the boy. ‘Some of ‘em were talking about it in the office today. And they do say, Uncle and Captain Cuttle,’ lowering his voice, ‘that he’s taken a dislike to her, and that she’s left, unnoticed, among the servants, and that his mind’s so set all the while upon having his son in the House, that