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

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СКАЧАТЬ like her kept a quiet household.”

      “And, since that unfortunate repulse, you have kept yourself altogether out of the hands of matrimony?”

      “Ay, ay; since, your Honour,” returned Fid, giving his Commander another of those droll looks, in which a peculiar cunning struggled with a more direct and straight-going honesty, “since, as you say rightly, sir; though they talked of a small matter of a bargain that I had made with another woman, myself; but, in overhauling the affair, they found, that, as the shipping articles with poor Kate wouldn’t hold together, why, they could make nothing at all of me; so I was white-washed like a queen’s parlour and sent adrift.”

      “And all this occurred after your acquaintance with Mr Wilder?”

      “Afore, your Honour; afore. I was but a younker in the time of it, seeing that it is four-and-twenty years, come May next, since I have been towing at the stern of master Harry. But then, as I have had a sort of family of my own, since that day, why, the less need, you know, to be birthing myself again in any other man’s hammock.”

      “You were saying, it is four-and-twenty years,” interrupted Mrs Wyllys, “since you made the acquaintance of Mr Wilder?”

      “Acquaintance! Lord, my Lady, little did he know of acquaintances at that time; though, bless him! the lad has had occasion to remember it often enough since.”

      “The meeting of two men, of so singular merit, must have been somewhat remarkable,” observed the Rover.

      “It was, for that matter, remarkable enough, your Honour; though, as to the merit, notwithstanding master Harry is often for overhauling that part of the account, I’ve set it down for just nothing at all.”

      “I confess, that, in a case where two men, both of whom are so well qualified to judge, are of different opinions, I feel at a loss to know which can have the right. Perhaps, by the aid of the facts, I might form a truer judgment.”

      “Your Honour forgets the Guinea, who is altogether of my mind in the matter, seeing no great merit in the thing either. But, as you are saying, sir, reading the log is the only true way to know how fast a ship can go; and so, if this Lady and your Honour have a mind to come at the truth of the affair why, you have only to say as much, and I will put it all before you in creditable language.”

      “Ah! there is reason in your proposition,” returned the Rover, motioning to his companion to follow to a part of the poop where they were less exposed to the observations of inquisitive eyes. “Now, place the whole clearly before us; and then you may consider the merits of the question disposed of definitively.”

      Fid was far from discovering the smallest reluctance to enter on the required detail; and, by the time he had cleared his throat, freshened his supply of the weed, and otherwise disposed himself to proceed Mrs Wyllys had so far conquered her reluctance to pry clandestinely into the secrets of others, as to yield to a curiosity which she found unconquerable and to take the seat to which her companion invited her by a gesture of his hand.

      “I was sent early to sea, your Honour, by my father,” commenced Fid, after these little preliminaries had been duly observed, “who was, like myself, a man that passed more of his time on the water than on dry ground; though, as he was nothing more than a fisherman, he generally kept the land aboard which is, after all, little better than living on it altogether Howsomever, when I went, I made a broad offing at once, fetching up on the other side of the Horn, the very first passage I made; which was no small journey for a new beginner; but then, as I was only eight years old”——

      “Eight! you are now speaking of yourself,” interrupted the disappointed governess.

      “Certain, Madam; and, though genteeler people might be talked of, it would be hard to turn the conversation on any man who knows better how to rig or how to strip a ship. I was beginning at the right end of my story; but, as I fancied your Ladyship might not choose to waste time in hearing concerning my father and mother, I cut the matter short, by striking in at eight years old, overlooking all about my birth and name, and such other matters as are usually logged, in a fashion out of all reason, in your everyday sort of narratives.”

      “Proceed,” she rejoined, with a species of compelled resignation.

      “My mind is pretty much like a ship that is about to slip off its ways,” resumed Fid. “If she makes a fair start, and there is neither jam nor dry-rub, smack see goes into the water, like a sail let run in a calm; but, if she once brings up, a good deal of labour is to be gone through to set her in motion again. Now, in order to wedge up my ideas, and to get the story slushed, so that I can slip through it with ease, it is needful to overrun the part which I have just let go; which is, how my father was a fisherman, and how I doubled the Horn—Ah! here I have it again, clear of kinks, fake above fake, like a well-coiled cable; so that I can pay it out as easily as the boatswain’s yeoman can lay his hand on a bit of ratling stuff. Well, I doubled the Horn, as I was saying, and might have been the matter of four years cruising about among the islands and seas of those parts, which were none of the best known then, or for that matter, now. After this, I served in his Majesty’s fleet a whole war, and got as much honour as I could stow beneath hatches. Well, then, I fell in with the Guinea—the black, my Lady, that you see turning in a new clue-garnet-block for the starboard clue of the fore-course.”

      “Ay; then you fell in with the African,” said the Rover.

      “Then we made our acquaintance; and, although his colour is no whiter than the back of a whale, I care not who knows it, after master Harry, there is no man living who has an honester way with him, or in whose company I take greater satisfaction. To be sure, your Honour, the fellow is something contradictory and has a great opinion of his strength and thinks his equal is not to be found at a weather-earing or in the bunt of a topsail; but then he is no better than a black, and one is not to be too particular in looking into the faults of such as are not actually his fellow creatures.”

      “No, no; that would be uncharitable in the extreme.”

      “The very words the chaplain used to let fly aboard the ‘Brunswick!’ It is a great thing to have schooling, your Honour; since, if it does nothing else, it fits a man for a boatswain, and puts him in the track of steering the shortest course to heaven. But, as I was saying, there was I and Guinea shipmates and in a reasonable way friends, for five years more; and then the time arrived when we met with the mishap of the wreck in the West-Indies.”

      “What wreck?” demanded his officer.

      “I beg your Honour’s pardon; I never swing my head-yards till I’m sure the ship won’t luff back into the wind; and, before I tell the particulars of the wreck, I will overrun my ideas, to see that nothing is forgotten that should of right be first mentioned.”

      The Rover, who saw, by the uneasy glances that she cast aside, and by the expression of her countenance how impatient his companion was becoming for a sequel that approached so tardily, and how much she dreaded an interruption, made a significant sign to her to permit the straight-going tar to take his own course, as the best means of coming at the facts they both longed so much to hear. Left to himself, Fid soon took the necessary review of the transactions, in his own quaint manner; and, having happily found that nothing which he considered as germain to the present relation was omitted, he proceeded at once to the more material, and what was to his auditors by far the most interesting, portion of his narrative.

      “Well, as I was telling your Honour,” he continued, “Guinea was then a maintopman, and I was stationed in the same place aboard the ‘Proserpine,’ a quick-going two-and-thirty, when we fell in with a bit of a smuggler, СКАЧАТЬ