Before he gave himself up to that trance, however, there was much to be done and much to be observed. When the Old Sailor lifted him into the hammock and arranged him comfortably-Dan was surprised that those great strong hands could be so light and tender-he said to the Old Sailor, "Thank you, sir;" and the Old Sailor replied, "Ay, ay, my lad," just as he had read of, and in just the kind of tone he imagined a sailor would use.
The next thing the Old Sailor did was to rest his hand upon Ellen's head. Thereupon Joshua said, "You don't mind, Mr. Praiseworthy, do you?" referring to the liberty they had taken in bringing Ellen without an invitation. "Mind!" the Old Sailor exclaimed. "A pretty little lass like this!" and he stooped and kissed her. And Ellen did not even blush, but seemed to like it. The Old Sailor seemed to like it too. There was something wonderfully charming in his manner of saying "Pretty little lass;" none but a downright thoroughbred old tar could have said it in such a way. And there was something wonderfully charming in the rough grace with which he accepted the bunch of flowers from Ellen. His first intention was to stick them in the bosom of his shirt; but second consideration led him to reflect that their circumference rendered such a resting-place inappropriate. So he placed them in a large tin mug, and sprinkled them with water, which glistened on their leaves as freshly as the dew-kisses which glisten in the early morning wherever Nature makes holiday. Then Dan took the cage containing the bullfinches, and asked the Old Sailor to accept the birds as a present from him and Joshua; and the Old Sailor thanked him in such cordial terms, that his heart was stirred with a fresh delight. Truth to tell, the Old Sailor was mightily gratified with the birds; but, at the same time, he was mightily puzzled as to what he was to do with them. Prettier little things he had never seen; but, small and beautiful as they were, they were a responsibility for which he was not prepared. He stood with his legs wide apart, regarding the birds with a perplexed expression on his face; and Dan divining what was in his mind, opened the door of the cage and out hopped the bullfinches looking about them with an air of having been accustomed to the water all their lives. As if impelled by a sudden desire to fly away and join their mates in distant woodlands, they took wing and fluttered around the hammock in which Dan lay; now coming tantalizingly near, and now sailing away with an independent air, as much as to say, "We're off!" But when Dan held out his forefinger, they came and perched upon it contentedly. The Old Sailor gazed on the little comedy in admiration. His admiration was increased a hundred fold when Dan, taking his hand, transferred the birds on to his forefinger. He looked at the birds timorously; the birds looked at him confidently. He was afraid to move lest some mischief should happen to the delicate creatures.
"Put them in the cage, sir," said Dan. The Old Sailor did so. "Now," continued Dan, "I will send you food for them regularly; and it will not be too much trouble for you to fill this well with fresh water every morning, will it, sir?"
"No," said the Old Sailor. "But how will the birds get at the water, my lad? It is out of their reach."
"Ah! you think so, sir. But have you ever been in want of water?"
"Of fresh water, I have, my lad; not of salt. Was for three days on a raft, with not a drop of fresh water among thirty-seven of us. Two drank salt water, and went raving mad; one threw himself into the sea."
"And the others, sir?" inquired Dan, immensely interested.
"The others, my lad, waited and suffered, and prayed for rain. And it came, my lad, and we were saved, by the mercy of God. It was awful suffering; our very eyeballs were blazing with thirst. It would have been a relief to us if we could have cried."
"But the heavens cried for you, sir," said Dan tenderly.
"Ay, ay, my lad," said the Old Sailor; "that's well said. The heavens cried for us; and we lay on our backs with our mouths open to catch the blessed drops. The salt water that was death to us dashed up from below; and the fresh water that was life to us came down from above. In five minutes we were soaked with the rain; and we sucked at our clothes. We caught enough rain-water to last us until we were picked up by a merchantman, homeward bound from the Indies."
"That was good," said Dan, feeling as if he had known the Old Sailor all his life. "Now, supposing you were wrecked, sir, on a high rock. Here is the rock," pointing to the perch on which the bullfinches were standing.
"Here is the rock," repeated the Old Sailor, chiming in readily with Dan's fancy.
"And here you are, sir, with another sailor," identifying Praiseworthy Meddler and the other sailor with the two bullfinches.
"And here am I, with another sailor," said the Old Sailor attentively, nodding familiarly at his new shipmate in the cage, who, making much too light of the calamity which had befallen them, winked saucily in return.
"And you are very thirsty."
"And I am very thirsty," said the Old Sailor, smacking his parched lips.
"And here, out of your reach, is the water," indicating the well, "you want to drink."
"And here, out of my reach, is the water I want to drink," said the Old Sailor, growing more parched.
"Now, then," said Dan, "you can't get at the water with your beak-I mean your mouth-and you can't reach it with your claws-I mean your hands. Now what do you do?"
"Ah what do I do?" repeated the Old Sailor, not seeing his way out of the difficulty.
"Why," exclaimed Dan enthusiastically, "you get a rope-or, if you haven't got one, you make one out of some strong grass, or out of strips of your clothes; and you get a bucket-or you make one out of a cocoanut," in his enthusiasm Dan took the cocoanut for granted; and the Old Sailor accepted its existence on the rock with most implicit faith-"and you attach the cocoanut to the rope, and you lower it into the water, and draw it up full. Here you are, doing it."
And, obedient to Dan's signal, the bullfinches lowered their tiny bucket into the well, and drew it up full, and dipped their beaks into the water, as if they were shipwrecked bullfinches, and were nearly dead with raging thirst.
A thoughtful expression stole into the Old Sailor's face.
"They are wise little creatures," he said. "I have seen a might of strange things and pretty things; but this is as pretty as any thing I have seen."
"You can learn them any thing almost, sir," said Dan, who was bent upon making the Old Sailor love the birds.
"To climb ropes like a sailor?"
"In a week they could. If I had a little ship, with two or three sails and a rope-ladder, I could teach them to climb the ladder and set the sails."
"I dare say, my lad, I dare say."
"Did you ever see a mermaid, sir?"
This was one of the questions Dan had made up his mind to ask the Old Sailor directly they grew familiar.
"Yes," answered the Old Sailor. "I wasn't very near her; and I was laughed at for saying I had seen her. But I saw her, for all that."
"Where was it that you saw her, sir?"
"In the South Pacific, where there are the ugliest images of men and women, and the most wonderful birds and flowers and trees, in the world. I have walked for miles through forests of wild flowers and strange trees, while thousands of parrots were flying about, with their feathers all blue and gold and scarlet and silver."
"Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed Dan, twining his fingers together. "And they're there now, sir?"
"Surely. Your land-lubbers don't know any thing of the world."
"Those men and women, sir-are they very ugly?"
"As ugly as sin can make 'em-brown and copper-colored and nearly black; cannibals they are."
"That's very dreadful!" said Dan with a shiver. "What else have you seen, sir?"
"What would you say to gardens in the sea?" asked the Old Sailor enthusiastically. "What would you say to fields in the sky?"
"No!" said Dan in wonder.
"Yes, my lad. Gardens in the sea, with the flowers growing and blooming. I only saw land in the sky once; but it was a sight that can't be forgot. We were thousands of miles away from land; but there in the sky was the country, with fields and forests and mountains. We saw it for near an hour; then it melted away. What would you say to flying fish-showers of 'em. I heard of a talking fish; but I never saw it. I shouldn't wonder, now, if these pretty little birds could talk."
"No, sir," said Dan; "they can't talk, but they can sing."
With that he whistled the first stave of "Rule, Britannia;" and the bullfinches piped the patriotic song so spiritedly, that the Old Sailor roared out in a hoarse voice, "Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the waves!" and then stopped, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and exclaimed, "Lord, Lord!" with rapturous bewilderment. But when Dan whistled "And have you not heard of a jolly young waterman?" and the birds answered, "Oh, yes! we have heard of a jolly young waterman," and proceeded to narrate where that jolly young waterman plied, and how dexterously that jolly young waterman feathered his oars, the Old Sailor was fairly dumfoundered, and sat down in silence, and watched and listened, while Dan put the birds through the whole of their performances.
Ah, what a happy day was that-never, never to be forgotten! As he lay in his hammock, with a delicious sense of rest upon him, he saw pleasure-boats and barges floating down with the tide, with a happy indolence in keeping with every thing about him. What else? Bright visions in the clouds; not for himself, but for his friend, his brother Joshua; bright visions of beautiful lands and beautiful seas. What did the Old Sailor say? Gardens in the sea, with the flowers growing and blooming! He saw them in the clouds; and each flower was bright with beauty, and each petal was rimmed with light. Fields in the skies! There they were, stretching far, far away; and some one was walking through forests of wild flowers and strange trees. Who was it? Joshua! And there were the parrots that the Old Sailor had spoken of; with their feathers of blue and gold and scarlet and silver. But Dan happened to turn his eyes from the clouds to the water, and dreamland faded. Joshua was rowing on the river.
Bravo, Joshua! How strong he looked, with his shirt-sleeves tucked up to his shoulders; and how well he managed his oars! Not that Dan was much of a judge; but he knew what grace was, and surely he saw that before him when he saw Joshua rowing. Joshua looked at Dan, and smiled and nodded; and Dan clapped his hands. And Joshua, to show how clever he was, made a great sweep with the oars, and fell backwards in the boat, in a most ridiculous position, with his heels in the air. But he was up again like lightning, and recovered his oars, and made so light of it, that Dan, who had caught his breath for an instant, laughed merrily at the mishap, and thought it was good fun. His laugh was echoed by Ellen, who was sitting by his side, and who had also been a little alarmed at first. The industrious maid was making holiday in her own peculiar way. She was not accustomed to sit idly down with her hands in her lap. By some mysterious means she had obtained possession of two of the Old Sailor's shirts which required mending; and there she was stitching away at them, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to do when she came out for a holiday. Did she have a design upon the Old Sailor? It really looked suspiciously like it, if one might judge from the demure glances she cast upon him every now and then, and from the admiring manner in which he returned her artful glances. One thing was certain: she had fairly captivated him; and there is no telling what might have occurred, if he had been thirty years younger.
What more beautiful phase of human nature can be seen than that of an old man with a young heart? Place, side by side, two pictures of old manhood: one, with crafty face; with cautious eyes that never rove; with compressed lips that keep guard on every word; with puckered forehead and eyebrows, from every ugly crevice in which the spirit of "You can't take me in" peeps out, as if the essence of a fox were in hiding there; – the other, with open face, which says, "Read me; I am not afraid;" with eyes that, be they large or small, enjoy what they see; with full-fleshed wrinkles on forehead and eyebrows; with lips that smile when others smile.
No younger heart ever beat in the breast of an old man than that which beat in the breast of Praiseworthy Meddler. He had never mingled with children; yet here he was, at nearly seventy years of age, a hale and hearty old man, with a nature as simple as a child's. What was it that made him so? Was it because he had lived his youth and manhood away from cities, where the tricky webs of trade teach men to trick as their brethren do, or where the anxiety how to live, and with many, alas, how to get to-morrow's bread, stops the generous flow of a generous nature, and robs life's summer of its brightness? Or did he inherit it? If so, how deserving of pity are those children who are born of crafty parents! There are human mysteries which science has not dared to probe, and there are inherited ills and calamities which philanthropists, up to the present time, have not tried to get to the root of.
Anyhow, here was Praiseworthy Meddler sitting upon the deck of his barge by the side of Ellen, showing her, in the intervals of stitching, how to splice a broken rope, and initiating her into the mysteries a short-splice, long-splice, and eye-splice. Dan, looking on, begged some rope, and proved himself a wonderfully-apt scholar, which caused the Old Sailor to remark, -
"You ought to be a sailor, my lad;" forgetting for the moment that Dan's legs were useless.
"I should have to work in a hammock, sir," said Dan cheerfully.
The Old Sailor blushed.
"I forgot," he said in a gentle voice.
"There's the sailor for you, if you like," said Dan, pointing to Joshua, who, a couple of hundred yards away, was pulling lazily towards the barge.
"Ay, ay, my lad; Joshua has the right stuff in him. He will be a fine strong man."
"He is better than strong, sir," said Dan; "he is noble and tender-hearted. If you knew, sir, how good he has been to me, you would admire and love him more. If you knew how gentle he has been to me-how tender, and how self-sacrificing-you would think even better of him than you do. We have been together all our lives; every day he has come to me as regularly as the sun, and has been to me what the sun is to the day. I look back now that he is going away, and I cannot remember that he has ever given me a cross word or a cross look. And I have been very troublesome sometimes, and very peevish; but he has borne with it all. Look, sir," and Dan drew the Old Sailor's attention to two pieces of rope, one thin and one thick, the strands of which he had been interweaving, "this thin rope is me; this thick rope is Joshua. Now we are spliced, and you can't pull us apart. Joshua and me are friends for ever and ever!"
The Old Sailor listened attentively, and nodded his head occasionally, to show that he was following Dan's words, and understood them. Ellen, having mended the Old Sailor's shirts, sat with her hands folded in her lap, indorsing every word that Dan uttered.
Just then Joshua reached the barge, and having secured the boat, climbed on to the deck. As he did so, eight bells struck.
"Eight bells," said the Old Sailor. "Dinner."
With that, he lifted Dan out of the hammock, and carried him to where dinner was laid on a table which extended fore and aft down the centre of what it would be the wildest extravagance of courtesy to call a saloon, and where every thing was prepared in expectation of a storm. Joshua and Ellen followed, and the four of them made a very merry party. Lobscouse and sea-pie were the only dishes, and they were brought in by a Lascar with rings in his ears, whom the Old Sailor called a "lubberly swab," because he was unmistakably drunk; and who in return, notwithstanding his drunken condition, cast upon the Old Sailor an evil look, which flashed from his eyes like a dagger-stroke. This Lascar was the man who had struck eight bells, and who cooked for the Old Sailor, and did odd work about the barge, in return for which he got his victuals and a bunk to sleep in. A lazy, indolent rogue, who would do any thing, never mind what, for rum and tobacco; a cringing, submissive, treacherous rogue, ripe for the execution of any villainy on the promise of rum and tobacco; a rogue who would fawn, and lie, and stab, and humble himself and play Bombastes for rum and tobacco. They were all he seemed to live for; they were his Thirty-nine Articles, and he was ready to sell himself for them any day. Of what quality might be the work proposed to him to do, so as to earn the reward, was of the very smallest consequence to him. He gave Ellen such an ugly look of wicked admiration that she was glad when he was gone.
Dinner over, they returned to the deck, and the Old Sailor told them stories of the sea-stories so enthralling, that the afternoon glided by like a dream; and the setting sun was tinged with the glories of the distant lands whither it was wending. They had tea on deck-a delicious tea, of shrimps, water-creases, and bread-and-butter. The task of preparing the tea was performed by Ellen and the Old Sailor; and during the performance of this task, it may be confidently stated that the conquest of the Old Sailor was completed, and that he was from that moment, and ever afterwards, her devoted slave. Then they went down, and sat two and two on each side of the table, Joshua and Dan being on one side, and Ellen and the Old Sailor on the other; and they had more sea-stories, and were altogether in a state of supreme happiness.
During the latter part of the evening the conversation turned upon Joshua's approaching voyage.
"Always bear in mind the sailor's watchword, my lad," said the Old Sailor. "Along the line the signal ran: 'England expects that every man this day will do his duty.' That's meant not for this day alone, but for always. What a sailor's got to do is to obey. Many a voyage has had a bad ending because of a sailor's forgetting his watchword. Don't you forget it, Josh."
"I won't, sir."
"The 'Merry Andrew,' that you're going to make your first voyage in, is a fine ship; the skipper is a fine skipper-a man he is, and that's what a ship wants-a man and not an image." The Old Sailor said this in a tone of exasperation, inspired, possibly, by some tantalizing remembrance of a ship commanded by an image instead of a man. "So stick to your watchword, my lad. It wouldn't be a bad thing now if we were to drink to it."
The cunning old rascal was only too glad of a chance to get at his grog.
"Bravo!" exclaimed Dan, clapping his hands.
No sooner said than done. Hot water, lemon, sugar, rum, compounded with the skill of an artist. A glass for Joshua, a glass for Dan, a glass for the Old Sailor, and a small glass for Ellen. Not one of them seemed afraid of it-not even Ellen.
"Now then," said the Old Sailor, smiling as the steam rose to his nostrils. "Now, then; the sailor's watchword-Duty, and may Joshua never forget it!"
"Duty, Jo," said Dan, nodding over his glass to Joshua.
"Duty, Dan," said Joshua, nodding to Dan.
Ellen said nothing aloud, but whispered something into her glass. Then they drank and sipped their grog, and resumed the conversation.
"Have you been to New Holland, sir?" asked Dan. The "Merry Andrew" was bound for New Holland.
"I was there when I was a youngster," replied the Old Sailor, mixing a second glass of grog for himself. "It was a wild country then; I am told it is growing into a wonderful country now. We were six months going out. We had nearly four hundred convicts aboard, most of them in irons. A miserable lot of desperate wretches they were! They were not well treated, and they knew it. We had to keep close watch over them; if they could have set themselves free by any means-they talked of it many a time among themselves-they would have captured the ship, and flung us overboard, or something worse. We landed them at Port Phillip, where the British Government wanted to form a settlement."
"Why New Holland, sir?" asked Dan, always eager for information.
"Discovered by the Dutch in about 1600," replied the Old Sailor oratorically. "Victoria was discovered by Capt. Cook; let us drink to him." They took a sip-all but the Old Sailor, who scorned sips. "Discovered by Capt. Cook in 1770, after he had discovered New Zealand."
"Any savages, sir?"
"Swarms. We were out in a boat exploring, and when we were close in shore, two or three hundred savages came whooping down upon us. We weren't afraid of them; we pulled in to shore, and they stopped short about twenty yards from us, jabbering like a lot of black monkeys. They soon got courage enough to come closer to us, and we gave them some grog; but the ignorant lubbers spit it out of their mouths at first. Then they began to steal things from the boat; and when we gave them to understand that what was ours wasn't theirs, they grew saucy. A black fellow caught up the master's-mate, and ran away with him."
"What did they want with him, sir?"
"To eat him, of course. We fired over their heads, and they dropped the master's-mate, who ran back to us, glad enough to get free, for he didn't relish the idea of being made a meal of. But when the savages found that the guns didn't hurt them, they came whooping up to us again, flourishing their spears. Their faces were painted, and they had swans' feathers sticking out of their heads. Some of them had skin cloaks on, painted all over with figures of naked men, and some of them had bones stuck through their nostrils. On they came, yelling and leaping like so many devils, thinking what a fine roast the fattest of us would make. Then we fired and killed one of them. Directly they saw him fall, they scampered off like madmen."
When the conversation flagged, they had music and singing. Joshua played, and Dan sang a song, and the Old Sailor sang a good many. The best of the Old Sailor's songs was, that they were all about the sea, and that every one of them had a chorus in which the company could join. Of course he sang "Heave the Lead," and "Yeo, heave, ho! To the windlass let us go, with yo, heave ho!" and "Saturday Night at Sea;" and when "Saturday night did come, my boys, to drink to Poll and Bess," he flourished his glass, and drank to those young ladies with a will. The number of lovely ladies with whom the Old Sailor made them acquainted was something astonishing. Poor Jack had his Poll, whom he addressed in a not very dignified manner, when he said to her, -
"What argufies sniv'ling and piping your eye? Why what a-(
hem!
) fool you must be!"
Out of respect for Ellen, the Old Sailor coughed over a good many words in the songs he sang; for it must be confessed that there was more swearing in them than was absolutely necessary. Poor Jack, however, who called his Poll a something fool, made up for it in the end by declaring that "his heart was his Poll's" (a very pretty though somewhat trite sentiment), and "his rhino's his friend's" (a very unwise and foolish sentiment, as the world goes). Then there was a Polly whom the lads called so pretty, and who entreated her sweetheart, before he sailed in the good ship the "Kitty" to be