The Red Rover & Other Sea Adventures – 3 Novels in One Volume. Джеймс Фенимор Купер

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СКАЧАТЬ retired corner of the birth-deck, to the ladder of the forward hatch, where, with a body half above the combings, a skein of strong coarse thread around his neck, a piece of bees-wax in one hand, and a needle in the other, he stood staring about him, with just that sort of bewildered air that a Chinese mandarin would manifest, were he to be suddenly initiated in the mysteries of the ballet. On this object the eye of Scipio fell. Stretching out an arm, he cast him upon his shoulder; and, before the startled subject of his attack knew into whose hands he had fallen, a hook was passed beneath the waistband of his trowsers, and he was half way between the water and the spar, on his way to join the considerate Fid.

      “Have a care lest you let the man fall into the sea!” cried Wilder sternly, from his stand on the distant poop.

      “He’m tailor, masser Harry,” returned the black, without altering a muscle; “if a clothes no ‘trong, he nobody blame but heself.”

      During this brief parlance, the good-man Homespun had safely arrived at the termination of his lofty flight. Here he was suitably received by Fid, who raised him to his side; and, having placed him comfortably between the yard and the boom, he proceeded to secure him by a lashing that would give the tailor the proper disposition of his hands.

      “Bouse a bit on this waister!” called Richard, when he had properly secured the good-man; “so; belay all that.”

      He then put one foot on the neck of his prisoner, and, seizing his lower member as it swung uppermost, he coolly placed it in the lap of the awe-struck tailor.

      “There, friend,” he said, “handle your needle and palm now, as if you were at job-work. Your knowing handicraft always begins with the foundation wherein he makes sure that his upper gear will stand.”

      “The Lord protect me, and all other sinful mortals, from an untimely end!” exclaimed Homespun, gazing at the vacant view from his giddy elevation, with a sensation a little resembling that with which the aeronaut, in his first experiment, regards the prospect beneath.

      “Settle away this waister,” again called Fid; “he interrupts rational conversation by his noise; and, as his gear is condemned by this here tailor, why, you may turn him over to the purser for a new outfit.”

      The real motive, however, for getting rid of his pendant companion was a twinkling of humanity, that still glimmered through the rough humour of the tar, who well knew that his prisoner must hang where he did, at some little expense of bodily ease. As soon as his request was complied with, he turned to the good-man, to renew the discourse, with just as much composure as though they were both seated on the deck, or as if a dozen practical jokes, of the same character, were not in the process of enactment, in as many different parts of the vessel.

      “What makes you open your eyes, brother, in this port-hole fashion?” commenced the topman. “This is all water that you see about you, except that hommoc of blue in the eastern board, which is a morsel of upland in the Bahamas, d’ye see.”

      “A sinful and presuming world is this we 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 СКАЧАТЬ