The Greatest Works of Herman Melville - 27 Novels & Short Stories; With 140+ Poems & Essays. Herman Melville

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СКАЧАТЬ again, he is set about all the vilest work. Is there a heavy job at tarring to be done, he is pitched neck and shoulders into a tar-barrel, and set to work at it. Moreover, he is made to fetch and carry like a dog. Like as not, if the mate sends him after his quadrant, on the way he is met by the captain, who orders him to pick some oakum; and while he is hunting up a bit of rope, a sailor comes along and wants to know what the deuce he's after, and bids him be off to the forecastle.

      "Obey the last order," is a precept inviolable at sea. So the land-lubber, afraid to refuse to do anything, rushes about distracted, and does nothing: in the end receiving a shower of kicks and cuffs from all quarters.

      Added to his other hardships, he is seldom permitted to open his mouth unless spoken to; and then, he might better keep silent. Alas for him! if he should happen to be anything of a droll; for in an evil hour should he perpetrate a joke, he would never know the last of it.

      The witticisms of others, however, upon himself, must be received in the greatest good-humour.

      Woe be unto him, if at meal-times he so much as look sideways at the beef-kid before the rest are helped.

      Then he is obliged to plead guilty to every piece of mischief which the real perpetrator refuses to acknowledge; thus taking the place of that sneaking rascal nobody, ashore. In short, there is no end to his tribulations.

      The land-lubber's spirits often sink, and the first result of his being moody and miserable is naturally enough an utter neglect of his toilet.

      The sailors perhaps ought to make allowances; but heartless as they are, they do not. No sooner is his cleanliness questioned than they rise upon him like a mob of the Middle Ages upon a Jew; drag him into the lee-scuppers, and strip him to the buff. In vain he bawls for mercy; in vain calls upon the captain to save him.

      Alas! I say again, for the land-lubber at sea. He is the veriest wretch the watery world over. And such was Bope Tarn; of all landlubbers, the most lubberly and most miserable. A forlorn, stunted, hook-visaged mortal he was too; one of those whom you know at a glance to have been tried hard and long in the furnace of affliction. His face was an absolute puzzle; though sharp and sallow, it had neither the wrinkles of age nor the smoothness of youth; so that for the soul of me, I could hardly tell whether he was twenty-five or fifty.

      But to his history. In his better days, it seems he had been a journeyman baker in London, somewhere about Holborn; and on Sundays wore a Hue coat and metal buttons, and spent his afternoons in a tavern, smoking his pipe and drinking his ale like a free and easy journeyman baker that he was. But this did not last long; for an intermeddling old fool was the ruin of him. He was told that London might do very well for elderly gentlemen and invalids; but for a lad of spirit, Australia was the Land of Promise. In a dark day Ropey wound up his affairs and embarked.

      Arriving in Sydney with a small capital, and after a while waxing snug and comfortable by dint of hard kneading, he took unto himself a wife; and so far as she was concerned, might then have gone into the country and retired; for she effectually did his business. In short, the lady worked him woe in heart and pocket; and in the end, ran off with his till and his foreman. Ropey went to the sign of the Pipe and Tankard; got fuddled; and over his fifth pot meditated suicide—an intention carried out; for the next day he shipped as landsman aboard the Julia, South Seaman.

      The ex-baker would have fared far better, had it not been for his heart, which was soft and underdone. A kind word made a fool of him; and hence most of the scrapes he got into. Two or three wags, aware of his infirmity, used to "draw him out" in conversation whenever the most crabbed and choleric old seamen were present.

      To give an instance. The watch below, just waked from their sleep, are all at breakfast; and Ropey, in one corner, is disconsolately partaking of its delicacies. "Now, sailors newly waked are no cherubs; and therefore not a word is spoken, everybody munching his biscuit, grim and unshaven. At this juncture an affable-looking scamp—Flash Jack—crosses the forecastle, tin can in hand, and seats himself beside the land-lubber.

      "Hard fare this, Ropey," he begins; "hard enough, too, for them that's known better and lived in Lun'nun. I say now, Ropey, s'posing you were back to Holborn this morning, what would you have for breakfast, eh?"

      "Have for breakfast!" cried Ropey in a rapture. "Don't speak of it!"

      "What ails that fellow?" here growled an old sea-bear, turning round savagely.

      "Oh, nothing, nothing," said Jack; and then, leaning over to Rope Yarn, he bade him go on, but speak lower.

      "Well, then," said he, in a smuggled tone, his eyes lighting up like two lanterns, "well, then, I'd go to Mother Moll's that makes the great muffins: I'd go there, you know, and cock my foot on the 'ob, and call for a noggin o' somethink to begin with."

      "What then, Ropey?"

      "Why then, Flashy," continued the poor victim, unconsciously warming with his theme: "why then, I'd draw my chair up and call for Betty, the gal wot tends to customers. Betty, my dear, says I, you looks charmin' this mornin'; give me a nice rasher of bacon and h'eggs, Betty my love; and I wants a pint of h'ale, and three nice h'ot muffins and butter—and a slice of Cheshire; and Betty, I wants—"

      "A shark-steak, and be hanged to you!" roared Black Dan, with an oath. Whereupon, dragged over the chests, the ill-starred fellow is pummelled on deck.

      I always made a point of befriending poor Ropey when I could; and, for this reason, was a great favourite of his.

CHAPTER 15

      CHIPS AND BUNGS

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      Bound into port, Chips and Bungs increased their devotion to the bottle; and, to the unspeakable envy of the rest, these jolly companions—or "the Partners," as the men called them—rolled about deck, day after day, in the merriest mood imaginable.

      But jolly as they were in the main, two more discreet tipplers it would be hard to find. No one ever saw them take anything, except when the regular allowance was served out by the steward; and to make them quite sober and sensible, you had only to ask them how they contrived to keep otherwise. Some time after, however, their secret leaked out.

      The casks of Pisco were kept down the after-hatchway, which, for this reason, was secured with bar and padlock. The cooper, nevertheless, from time to time, effected a burglarious entry, by descending into the fore-hold; and then, at the risk of being jammed to death, crawling along over a thousand obstructions, to where the casks were stowed.

      On the first expedition, the only one to be got at lay among others, upon its bilge with the bung-hole well over. With a bit of iron hoop, suitably bent, and a good deal of prying and punching, the bung was forced in; and then the cooper's neck-handkerchief, attached to the end of the hoop, was drawn in and out—the absorbed liquor being deliberately squeezed into a small bucket.

      Bungs was a man after a barkeeper's own heart. Drinking steadily, until just manageably tipsy, he contrived to continue so; getting neither more nor less inebriated, but, to use his own phrase, remaining "just about right." When in this interesting state, he had a free lurch in his gait, a queer way of hitching up his waistbands, looked unnecessarily steady at you when speaking, and for the rest, was in very tolerable spirits. At these times, moreover, he was exceedingly patriotic; and in a most amusing way, frequently showed his patriotism whenever he happened to encounter Dunk, a good-natured, square-faced Dane, aboard.

      It must СКАЧАТЬ