Robert Michael Ballantyne
The Lonely Island: The Refuge of the Mutineers
Chapter Twenty One
The Last Man
One morning John Adams, instead of going to work in his garden, as was his wont, took down his musket from its accustomed pegs above the door, and sallied forth into the woods behind the village. He had not gone far when he heard a rustling of the leaves, and looking back, beheld the graceful form of Sally bounding towards him.
“Are you going to shoot, father?” she said, on coming up.
The young people of the village had by this time got into the habit of calling Adams “father,” and regarded him as the head of the community; not because of his age, for at this time he was only between thirty and forty years, but because of his sedate, quiet character, and a certain air of elderly wisdom which distinguished him. Even Edward Young, who was about the same age, but more juvenile both in feeling and appearance, felt the influence of his solid, unpretending temperament, and laughingly acknowledged him King of Pitcairn.
“No, dear, I’m not goin’ to shoot,” said Adams, in reply, “I’m only going up to Christian’s outlook to try if I can find somethin’ there, an’ I always like to have the old blunderbuss with me. It feels sort of company, you know, an’ minds me of old times; but you’ll not understand what I mean, Sall.”
“No, because I’ve no old times to mind about,” said Sally, with a peculiar smile. “May I go with you, father?”
“Of course you may. Come along, lass.”
Adams held out his strong hand. Sally put her peculiarly small one into it, and the two went slowly up the mountain-track together.
On reaching the top of a little knoll or plateau, they stopped, and turned to look back. They could see over the tops of the palm-groves from that place. The track by which they had ascended was visible here and there, winding among the flowering shrubs and trees. The village lay far below, like a gem in a setting of bright green, which contrasted pleasantly with the warm clouds and the blue sea beyond. The sun was bright and the air was calm—so calm that the voices of the children at play came up to them distinctly in silvery ripples.
“How comes it, Sall, that you’ve deserted your post to-day?”
“Because the guard has been relieved; same as you say they do on board a man-of-war. I left the sprawlers in charge of Bessy Mills, and the staggerers are shut into the green. You see, I’m feeling a little tired to-day, and thought I would like to have a quiet walk in the woods.”
She finished this explanation with a little sigh.
“Dear, dear me!” exclaimed Adams, with a look of amused surprise, “you’re not becomin’ sentimental are you, Sally?”
“What is sentimental, father!”
“Why, it’s a—it’s a sort of a feelin’—a sensation, you know, a kind of all-overishness, that—d’ye see—”
He stopped short and stared with a perplexed air at the girl, who burst into a merry laugh.
“That’s one of your puzzlers, I think,” she said, looking up slyly from the corners of her eyes.
“Well, Sall, that is a puzzler,” returned Adams, with a self-condemning shake of the head. “I never before felt so powerfully the want o’ dictionary knowledge. I’ll be shot if I can tell you what sentimental is, though I know what it is as well as I know what six-water grog or plum-duff is. We must ask Mr Young to explain it. He’s bin to school, you know, an’ that’s more than I have—more’s the pity.”
“Well,” said Sally, as they proceeded on their way, “whatever senti—senti—”
“Mental,” said Adams.
“Whatever sentimental is, I’m not that, because I’m just the same as ever I was, for I often want to be quiet and alone, and I often am quiet and alone in the bush.”
“And what do you think about, Sall, when you’re alone in the bush?” said the seaman, looking down with more interest than usual at the innocent face beside him.
“Oh, about heaps and heaps of things. I couldn’t tell you in a month all I think about; but one thing I think most about is a man-of-war.”
“A man-of-war, Sall?”
“Yes; I would give anything to see a man-of-war, what you’ve so often told us about, with all its masts and sails, and bunks and guns and anchors, and officers and men. I often wonder so much what new faces would be like. You see I’m so used to the faces of yourself and Mr Young, and Mainmast and Susannah, and Toc and Matt and Dan and—”
“Just say the rest o’ the youngsters, dear,” interrupted Adams. “There’s no use in goin’ over ’em all by name.”
“Well, I’m so used to them that I can’t fancy how any other faces can be different, and yet I heard Mr Young say the other day that there’s no two faces in the world exactly alike, and you know there must be hundreds and hundreds of faces in the world.”
“Ay, there’s thousands and thousands—for the matter o’ that, there’s millions and millions of ’em—an it’s quite true that you can’t ever pick out two that would fit into the same mould. Of course,” continued Adams, in an argumentative tone, “I’m not goin’ for to say but that you could find a dozen men any day with hook noses an’ black eyes an’ lanky hair, just as you can find another dozen with turn-up noses an’ grey eyes an’ carroty hair; but what I mean to say is, that you won’t find no two of ’em that han’t got a difference of some sort somewheres. It’s very odd, but it’s a fact.”
“Another puzzler,” said Sally, with a laugh.
“Just so. But what else do you think about, Sall?”
“Sometimes I think about those fine ladies you’ve told us of, who drive about in grand carriages with horses. Oh, these horses; what I would give to see horses! Have they got tails, father?”
“Tails!” cried Adams, with a laugh, “of course they have; long hairy ones, and manes too; that’s hair down the back o’ their necks, dear. See here, fetch me that bit of red stone and I’ll draw you a horse.”
Sally brought the piece of red stone, and her companion, sitting down beside a smooth rock, from which he wiped the dust with the sleeve of his shirt, began, slowly and with compressed lips, frowning eyebrows, and many a hard-drawn sigh, to draw the portrait of a horse.
Adams was not an artist. The drawing might have served almost equally well for an ass, or even for a cow, but Sally watched it with intense interest.
“You see, dear,” said the artist, commenting as the work proceeded, “this is his head, with a turn-up—there—like that, for his nose. A little too bluff, no doubt, but no matter. Then comes the ears, two of ’em, somewhat longish—so, not exactly fore an’ aft, as I’ve made ’em, but ath’ort ships, so to speak, only I never could understand how painters manage to make one thing look as if it was behind another. I can’t get behind the one ear to put on the other one nohow.”
“A puzzler!” ejaculated Sally.
“Just so. Well, you have them both, anyhow, only fore an’ aft, as I said before. Well, then comes his back with a hollow—so, for people to sit in when they go cruisin’ about on shore; then here’s his legs—somethin’ like that, the fore ones straight an’ the aft ones crooked.”
“Has he only two legs,” asked Sally, in surprise, “one before an’ one behind?”
“No, dear, he’s got four, but I’ve the same difficulty wi’ them that I had wi’ the ears—one behind the other, you know. However, there you have ’em—so, in the fore-an’-aft style. Then he’s got hoofs at the end o’ the legs, like the goats, you know, only not split up the middle, though why they’re not split is more than I can tell; an’ there’s a sort o’ curl behind, a little above it—the fetlock I think they call it, but that’s far beyond my powers o’ drawin’.”
“But you’ve forgot the tail,” said Sally.
“So I have; think o’ that now, to forget his tail! He’d never do that himself if he was alive. It sticks out from hereabouts. There you have it, flowin’ quite graceful down a’most to his heels. Now, Sally, that’s a horse, an’ not much to boast of after all in the way of a likeness, though I say it that shouldn’t.”
“How I should like to see a real one!” said the girl, gazing intently at the wild caricature, while her instructor looked on with a benignant smile.
“Then I often think of the poor people Mr Young is so fond of telling us stories about,” continued Sally, as they resumed their upward path, “though I’m much puzzled about them. Why are they poor? Why are they not rich like other people?”
“There’s a many reasons why, dear,” continued Adams, whose knowledge of political economy was limited; “some of ’em don’t work, an’ some of ’em won’t work, and some of ’em can’t work, an’ what between one thing an’ another, there’s a powerful lot of ’em everywhere.”
Sally, whose thirst for knowledge was great, continued to ply poor John Adams with questions regarding the poor, until he became so involved in “puzzlers” that he was fain to change the subject, and for a time they talked pleasantly on many themes. Then they came to the steep parts of the mountains, and relapsed into silence. On reaching another plateau or flat knoll, where they turned to survey the magnificent panorama spread out before them, Sally said, slowly—
“Sometimes when I’m alone in the bush I think of God. Mr Young has been talking to me about Him lately, and I am wondering and wanting to know more about Him. Do you know anything about Him, father?”
John Adams had looked at his simple interrogator with surprise and not a little perplexity.
“Well, to tell you the honest truth,” said he, “I can’t say that I do know much about Him, more shame to me; an’ some talks I’ve had lately with Mr Young have made me see that I know even less than I thought I did. But we’ll ask Mr Young to explain these matters to us when we return home. As it happens. I’ve come up here to search for the very book that tells us about God—His own book, the Bible. Mr Christian used to read it, an’ kept it in his cave.”
Soon afterwards the man and child reached the cave referred to. On entering, they were surprised to find Young himself there before them. He was reading the Bible, and Adams could not help recalling his previous visit, when he had found poor Fletcher Christian similarly occupied.
“I didn’t know you was here, Mr Young, else I wouldn’t have disturbed you,” said Adams. “I just came up to see if I could find the book, for it seems to me that if you agree to carry out your notion of turnin’ schoolmaster, it would be as well to have the school-book down beside us.”
“My notion of turning schoolmaster,” said Young, with a faint smile; “it was your notion, Adams. However, I’ve no objection to fall in with it, and I quite agree about carrying the Bible home with us, for, to say truth, I don’t feel the climbing of the mountain as easy as I used to.”
Again the faint smile played on the midshipman’s lips for a moment or two.
“I’m sorry to hear you say that, sir,” said Adams, with a look of concern.
“And it can’t be age, you know,” continued Young, in a tone of pleasantry, “for I’m not much above thirty. I suspect it’s that asthmatic affection that has troubled me of late. However,” he added, in a heartier tone, “it won’t do to get downhearted about that. Come, what say you to begin school at once? We’ll put you at the bottom of the class, being so stupid, and we’ll put Sally at the top. Will you join, Sall?”
We need scarcely say that Sally, who was always ready for anything, whether agreeable to her or otherwise, assented heartily to the proposition, and then and there began to learn to read out of the Bible, with John Adams for a class-fellow.
Of course it was uphill work at first. It was found that Adams could blunder on pretty well with the small words, but made sad havoc among the long ones. Still his condition was pronounced hopeful. As to Sally, she seemed to take up the letters at the first sitting, and even began to form some correct notion of the power of syllables. After a short trial, Young said that that was quite enough for the first day, and then went on to read a passage or two from the Bible himself.
And now, for the first time, Otaheitan Sally heard the old, old story of the love of God to man in the gift of Jesus Christ. The name of Jesus was, indeed, not quite unfamiliar to her; but it was chiefly as an oath that her associations presented it to her. Now she learned that it was the name of Immanuel, God with us, the Just One, who died that sinful man might be justified and saved from the power of sin.
She did not, indeed, learn all this at that time; but she had her receptive mind opened to the first lessons of the glorious truth on than summer evening on the mountain-top.
From this date forward, Edward Young became a real schoolmaster; for he not only taught Adams to read better than he had ever yet read, but he daily assembled all the children, except the very little ones, and gave them instruction in reading out of the Word of God. In all this John Adams gave him hearty assistance, and, when not acting as a pupil, did good service in teaching the smaller children their letters.
But Young went a step further.
“John Adams,” said he, one morning, “it has been much on my mind of late that God has spared you and me in order that we may teach these women and children the way of salvation through Jesus Christ.”
“It may be as you say, sir,” returned Adams, “but I can’t exactly feel that I’m fit to say much to ’em about that. I can only give the little uns their A B C, an’ p’r’aps a little figurin’. But I’ll go in with you, Mr Young, an’ do my best.”
“Thank you, Adams, thank you. I feel sure that you will do well, and that God will bless our efforts. Do you know, John, I think my difficulties about the way are somewhat cleared up. It’s simpler than I thought. The whole work of our salvation is already accomplished by our blessed Lord Jesus. All we have got to do is, not to refuse it. You see, whatever I know about it is got from the Bible, an’ you can judge of that as well as I. Besides the passages that I have already shown you about believing, I find this, ‘Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest;’ and this, ‘Whosoever will, let him come;’ and this, ‘Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die.’ So you see there’s no doubt the offer is made to every one who will; and then it is written that the Holy Spirit is able to make us willing. If God entreats us to ‘come,’ and provides the ‘way,’ what is it that hinders but unwillingness? Indeed, the Word says as much, for I find it written, ‘Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.’”
“What you say seems very true, sir,” replied Adams, knitting his brows and shaking his head dubiously; “but then, sir, do you mean to say a man’s good behaviour has nothin’ to do with his salvation at all?”
“Nothing whatever, John, as far as I can make out from the Bible—at least, not in the matter of procuring his salvation. As a consequence of salvation, yes. Why, is it not said by the Lord, ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments?’ What could be plainer or stronger than that? If I won’t behave myself because of love to my Lord, I’ll not do it on any lower ground.”
Still John Adams shook his head. He admitted that the arguments of his friend did seem unanswerable, but,—in short, he became an illustration of the truth of the proverb, ‘A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.’ He had promised, however, to render all the aid in his power, and he was not the man to draw back from his word. When, therefore, Edward Young proposed to read daily prayers out of the Church of England Prayer-book, which had been taken from the Bounty with the Bible and Carteret’s Voyages, he made no objection; and he was similarly ‘agreeable,’ as he expressed it, when Young further proposed to have service forenoon and afternoon on Sundays.
For some months these various occupations and duties were carried on with great vigour, much to the interest of all concerned, the native women being quite as tractable scholars as the children.
We cannot tell now whether it was the extra labour thus undertaken by Young, or some other cause, that threw him into bad health; but certain it is, that a very few months later, he began to feel his strength give way, and a severe attack of his old complaint, asthma, at last obliged him to give up the work for a time. It is equally certain that at this important period in the history of the lonely island, the ‘good seed’ was sown in ‘good ground,’ for Young had laboured in the name of the Lord Jesus, and the promise regarding such work is sure: “Your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
“I must knock under for a time, John,” he said, with a wearied look, on the occasion of his ceasing to work. He had of late taken to calling Adams by his Christian name, and the latter had been made unaccountably uneasy thereby.
“Never mind, sir,” said the bluff seaman, in an encouraging tone. “You just rest yourself for a bit, an’ I’ll carry on the school business, Sunday services an’ all. I ain’t much of a parson, no doubt, but I’ll do my best, and a man can’t do no more.”
“All right, John, I hand it over to you. A short time of loafing about and taking it easy will set me all to rights again, and I’ll resume office as fresh as ever.”
Alas! poor Edward Young’s day of labour was ended. He never more resumed office on earth.
Shortly after the above conversation he had another and extremely violent attack of asthma. It prostrated him completely, so that for several days he could not speak. Afterwards he became a little better, but it was evident to every one that he was dying, and it was touching to see the earnest way in which the tearful women, who were so fond of him, vied with each other in seeking to relieve his sufferings.
John Adams sat by his bedside almost continually at last. He seemed to require neither food nor rest, but kept watching on hour after hour, sometimes moistening the patient’s lips with water, sometimes reading a few verses out of the Bible to him.
“John,” said the poor invalid one afternoon, faintly, “your hand. I’m going—John—to be—for ever with the Lord—the dear Lord!”
There was a long pause, then—
“You’ll—carry on—the work, John; not in your own strength, John—in His?”
Adams promised earnestly in a choking voice, and the sick man seemed to sink to rest with a smile on his lips. He never spoke again. Next day he was buried under the palm-trees, far from the home of his childhood, from the land which had condemned him as a heartless mutineer.
Chapter Twenty Two
John Adams longs for a Chum and becomes a Story-Teller
Faithful to his promise, John Adams, after the death of Young, did his best to carry on the good work that had been begun.
But at first his spirit was very heavy. It had not before occurred to him that there was a solitude far more profound and overwhelming than anything he had hitherto experienced. The difference between ten companions and one companion is not very great, but the difference between one and none is immeasurable. Of course we refer to that companionship which is capable of intelligent sympathy. The solitary seaman still had his Otaheitan wife and the bright children of the mutineers around him, and the death of Young had drawn out his heart more powerfully than ever towards these, but they could not in any degree fill the place of one who could talk intelligently of home, of Old England, of British battles fought and won, of ships and men, and things that might have belonged, as far as the women and children were concerned, to another world. They could only in a slight degree appreciate the nautical phraseology in which he had been wont to convey some of his strongest sentiments, and they could not in any degree enter into his feelings when, forgetting for a moment his circumstances, he came out with a pithy forecastle allusion to the politics or the Government of his native land.
“Oh, you meek-faced brute, if you could only speak!” he exclaimed one day, dropping his eyes from the sea, on which he had been gazing, to the eyes of a pet goat that had been looking up in his face. “What’s the use of having a tongue in your head if you can’t use it!”
As may be imagined, the goat made no reply to this remark, but continued its gaze with somewhat of the solemnity of the man himself.
For want of a companion, poor Adams at this time took to talking frequently in a quiet undertone to himself. He also fell a good deal into Fletcher Christian’s habit of retiring to the cave on the mountain-top, but he did not read the Bible while there. He merely communed with his own spirit, meditated sadly on the past, and wondered a good deal as to the probable future.
“It’s not that I ain’t happy enough here,” he muttered softly to himself one evening, while he gazed wistfully at the horizon as Christian had been wont to gaze. “I’m happy enough—more so than what I deserve to be, God knows—with them good—natured women an’ jolly bit things of child’n, but—but I’m awful hard up for a chum! I do believe that if Bill McCoy, or even Matt Quintal, was here, I’d get along pretty well with either of ’em. Ah, poor Quintal! I feel as if I’d never git over that. If it wasn’t murder, it feels awful like it; an’ yet I can’t see that they could call it murder. If we hadn’t done it he would certainly have killed both me an’ Mr Young, for Matt never threatened without performin’, and then he’d have gone mad an’ done for the women an’ child’n as well. No, it wasn’t murder. It was necessity.”
He remained silent for some time, and then his thoughts appeared to revert to the former channel.
“If only a ship would come an’ be wrecked here, now, we could start fresh once more with a new lot maybe, but I’m not so sure about that either. P’r’aps we’d quarrel an’ fight an’ go through the bloody business all over again. No, it’s better as it is. But a ship might touch in passin’, an’ we could prevail on two or three of the crew, or even one, to stop with us. What would I not give to hear a man’s voice once more, a good growlin’ bass. I wouldn’t be partickler as to sentiments or grammar, not I, if it was only gruff, an’ well spiced with sea-lingo an’ smelt o’ baccy. Not that I cares for baccy myself now, or grog either. Humph! it do make me a’most laugh to think o’ the times I’ve said, ay, and thought, that I couldn’t git along nohow without my pipe an’ my glass. Why, I wouldn’t give a chip of a brass farden for a pipe now, an’ as to grog, after what I’ve seen of its cursed natur’, I wouldn’t taste a drop even if they was to offer to make me Lord High Admiral o’ the British fleet for so doin’. But I would like once more to see a bearded man; even an unbearded one would be better than nothin’. Ah, well, it’s no manner o’ use sighin’, any more than cryin’, over spilt milk. Here I am, an’ I suppose here I shall be to the end o’ the chapter.”
Again he was silent for a long time, while his eyes remained fixed, as usual, on the horizon. Suddenly the gaze became intent, and, leaning forward with an eager expression, he shaded his eyes with his hand.
“It’s not creditable,” he murmured, as he fell back again into his former listless attitude, “it’s not creditable for an old salt like me to go mistakin’ sea-gulls for sails, as I’ve bin doin’ so often of late. I’m out o’ practice, that’s where it is.”
“Come, John Adams,” he added, after another pause, and jumping up smartly, “this will never do. Rouse yourself, John, an’ give up this mumble-bumble style o’ thing. Why, it’ll kill you in the long-run if you don’t. Besides, you promised Mr Young to carry on the work, and you must keep your promise, old boy.”
“Yes,” rang out a clear sweet voice from the inner end of the cave, “and you promised to give up coming here to mope; so you must keep your promise to me as well, father.”
Otaheitan Sally tripped into the cave, and seating herself on the stone ledge opposite, beamed up in the sailor’s face.
“You’re a good girl, Sall, an’ I’ll keep my promise to you from this day forth; see if I don’t. I’ll make a note of it in the log.”
The log to which Adams here referred was a journal or register, which Edward Young had begun to keep, and in which were inserted the incidents of chief interest, including the births and deaths, that took place on the island from the day of landing. After Young’s death, John Adams continued to post it up from time to time.
The promise to Sally was faithfully kept. From that time forward, Adams gave up going to the outlook, except now and then when anything unusual appeared on the sea, but never again to mope. He also devoted himself with increased assiduity to the instruction of the women and children in Bible truths, although still himself not very clear in his own mind as to the great central truth of all. In this work he was ably assisted by Sally, and also by Young’s widow, Susannah.
We have mentioned this woman as being one of the youngest of the Otaheitans. She was also one of the most graceful, and, strange to say, though it was she who killed Tetaheite, she was by nature one of the gentlest of them all.
The school never became a prison-house to these islanders, either women or children. Adams had wisdom enough at first to start it as a sort of play, and never fell into the civilised error of giving the pupils too much to do at a time. All the children answered the daily summons to school with equal alacrity, though it cannot be said that their performances there were equally creditable. Some were quick and intelligent, others were slow and stupid, while a few were slow but by no means stupid. Charlie Christian was among these last.
“Oh, Charlie, you are such a booby!” one day exclaimed Otaheitan Sally, who, being advanced to the dignity of monitor, devoted much of her time to the instruction of her old favourite. “What can be the matter with your brains?”
The innocent gaze of blank wonder with which the “Challie” of infancy had been wont to receive his companion’s laughing questions, had not quite departed; but it was chastened by this time with a slight puckering of the mouth and a faint twinkle of the eyes that were suggestive.
Sitting modestly on the low bench, with his hands clasped before him, this strapping pupil looked at his teacher, and said that really he did not know what was wrong with his brains.
“Perhaps,” he added, looking thoughtfully into the girl’s upturned orbs, “perhaps I haven’t got any brains at all.”
“O yes, you have,” cried Sall, with a laugh; “you have got plenty, if you’d only use them.”
“Ah!” sighed Charlie, stretching out one of his strong muscular arms and hands, “if brains were only things that one could lay hold of like an oar, or an axe, or a sledge-hammer, I’d soon let you see me use them; but bein’ only a soft kind o’ stuff in one’s skull, you know—”
A burst of laughter from Sally not only cut short the sentence, but stopped the general hum of the school, and drew the attention of the master.
“Hallo, Sall, I say, you know,” said Adams, in remonstrative tone, “you forget that you’re a monitor. If you go on like that we’ll have to make a school-girl of you again.”
“Please, father, I couldn’t help it,” said Sally, while her cheeks flushed crimson, “Charlie is such a—”
She stopped short, covered her face with both hands, and bending forward till she hid her confusion on her knees, went into an uncontrollable giggle, the only evidences of which, however, were the convulsive movements of her shoulders and an occasional squeak in the region of her little nose.
“Come now, child’n,” cried Adams, seating himself on an inverted tea-box, which formed his official chair, “time’s up, so we’ll have a slap at Carteret before dismissing. Thursday October Christian will bring the book.”
There was a general hum of satisfaction when this was said, for Carteret’s Voyages, which, with the Bible and Prayer-book, formed the only class-books of that singular school, were highly appreciated by young and old alike, especially as read to them by Adams, who accompanied his reading with a free running commentary of explanation, which infused great additional interest into that old writer’s book. TOC rose with alacrity, displaying in the act the immense relative difference between his very long legs and his ordinary body, in regard to which Adams used to console him by saying, “Never mind, Toc, your legs’ll stop growin’ at last, and when they do, your body will come out like a telescope. You’ll be a six-footer yet. Why, you’re taller than I am already by two inches.”
In process of time Carteret was finished; it was then begun a second time, and once more read through. After that Adams felt a chill feeling of helplessness steal over him, for Carteret could not be read over and over again like the Bible, and he could not quite see his way to reading the Church of England prayers by way of recreation. In his extremity he had recourse to Sally for advice. Indeed, now that Sall was approaching young womanhood, not only the children but all the grown people of the island, including their chief or “father,” found themselves when in trouble gravitating, as if by instinct, to the sympathetic heart and the ready hand.
“I’ll tell you what to do,” said Sally, when appealed to, as she took the seaman’s rough hand and fondled it; “just try to invent stories, and tell them to us as if you was readin’ a book. You might even turn Carteret upside down and pretend that you was readin’.”
Adams shook his head.
“I never could invent anything, Sall, ’xcept w’en I was tellin’ lies, an’ that’s a long while ago now—a long, long while. No; I doubt that I couldn’t invent, but I’ll tell ’ee what; I’ll try to remember some old yarns, and spin them off as well as I can.”
The new idea broke on Adams’s mind so suddenly that his eyes sparkled, and he bestowed a nautical slap on his thigh.
“The very thing!” cried Sally, whose eyes sparkled fully more than those of the sailor, while she clapped her hands; “nothing could be better. What will you begin with?”
“Let me see,” said Adams, seating himself on a tree-stump, and knitting his brows with a severe strain of memory. “There’s Cinderella; an’ there’s Ally Babby or the fifty thieves—if it wasn’t forty—I’m not rightly sure which, but it don’t much matter; an’ there’s Jack the Giant-killer, an’ Jack and the Pea-stalk—no; let me see; it was a beanstalk, I think—anyhow, it was the stalk of a vegetable o’ some sort. Why, I wonder it never struck me before to tell you all about them tales.”
