Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 398, December 1848
Both the principals, however, in this singular duel, were destined to experience difficulties from the friends they had fixed upon to second them. Captain Carcassonne, who himself cared no more for a duel than an English prizefighter does for a round with the gloves, and who never slept a wink the fewer, or ate a mouthful less breakfast before going out to fight one, was seized with a sudden trepidation when he learned that his friend, whom he well knew to be unskilled in fence and fire, was to enter the field with a man reputed expert in both. At first he would not hear of the meeting taking place, swearing, in direct opposition to what he had just before said, that he should not think of fighting for such a trifle. When this plea was overruled, a bright idea struck him. He would pick a quarrel with Steinfeld, and wing him with a pistol-shot, or spoil his beauty with a sabre-cut, just as Fatello chose; ay, would kill him outright, if nothing less would satisfy his vindictive friend. But Fatello, whose morbid desire of revenge had assumed the character of a monomania, rejected all the captain's plans; and Carcassonne, whose affection and deference for his old companion and benefactor were unbounded, ceased to make objections, and fixed his thoughts solely upon the necessary preliminaries. As to Fatello's announcement of the danger his life was in from lurking disease, (a danger more remote, but also more certain than that he would incur upon the morrow,) it would deeply have grieved the worthy captain had he attached the least credit to it; but his contempt for doctors and their prognostications prevented his dwelling on it longer than to give a smile to the credulity of his friend. Meanwhile Steinfeld had some trouble with de Mellay. It not being the fashion in France for newly-married couples to escape from the place of their wedding as fast as four posters can carry them, the baron had taken his bride to his house in the Rue St Lazare, which a little arrangement had adapted for their residence during the few days that were to elapse before their departure for Germany. There, upon the evening of his wedding-day, he had a conference with the viscount, who, startled, like Carcassonne, at the news of the projected duel, insisted on full explanations before consenting to render Steinfeld the service required of him. These explanations Steinfeld was compelled to give; and although he spread over them a varnish favourable to himself, de Mellay plainly saw that the part the Austrian had played in the whole affair did him no credit, and that Fatello's extraordinary vindictiveness, if not justified, was in some degree extenuated, by his adversary's perfidious manœuvres and gross breach of hospitality. He at first insisted on attempting a reconciliation, but Steinfeld having convinced him of its impossibility, he would not refuse to stand by an intimate friend and companion, who had more than once gone upon the ground with him. He suggested, however – almost, indeed, made it a condition – that the baron should fire wide, or not at all the first time, in doing which he ran little risk, for Fatello was known to be unskilled with the pistol. De Mellay resolved to place the duellists as far apart as possible, and to make them fire together. He made sure Fatello would miss the first shot, and that then, if Steinfeld had not fired, the affair could easily be made up.
It was three in the afternoon, and the snow lay thick upon the ground, when Steinfeld and his second entered a small door in the paling of the banker's park, at a short distance from which they had dismissed their hackney coach. Fatello, Carcassonne, and Dr Pilori, had preceded them in the banker's carriage. The five men met upon a bowling-green surrounded by trees, which, although leafless, were so thickly planted as to form an impervious screen. More for form's sake and the satisfaction of conscience, than with hope of success, the seconds essayed a reconciliation. The attempt was rendered fruitless by Fatello's firm determination; and after a brief conference between the viscount and Carcassonne, the combatants were placed at twenty paces. It was agreed they were to fire together, when six had been counted. The seconds stepped aside. Carcassonne counted. When he came to "six" a single report followed. Steinfeld staggered. De Mellay ran to him.
"Nothing," said the baron. "My dear brother-in-law shoots better than I thought, that is all." And he showed a rent made by Fatello's bullet in the front of his tightly-buttoned surtout, near the waist. A button had been cut away, and the ball had grazed the skin, but without drawing blood.
"This shall not avail you, sir," cried Fatello, in a tone of indescribable exasperation. "We came to fight, not to play. Fire, sir!" And he stood sideways, expecting his adversary's bullet.
Steinfeld smiled bitterly. Then raising his pistol, he took aim at a red-breast, which, scared from the bough by Fatello's fire, had again settled, tamed by cold and hunger, upon a sapling five-and-twenty paces off. Bark and feathers flew at the same time, and the unlucky little bird lay disembowelled upon the snow. Carcassonne and de Mellay exchanged a word or two, and advanced towards Fatello.
"Enough done, my dear Sigismund," said the captain. "After the baron's forbearance, this can go no farther."
Fatello's reply was a torrent of imprecations. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks pale as death: he was insane with passion. The captain in vain endeavoured to soothe and calm him. He raged and stormed like a madman.
"Monsieur Fatello," said de Mellay, with surprise – almost with disgust – "for heaven's sake compose yourself. This persistence is unworthy of you. What injury have you received to justify such malignity? Neither your second nor myself can let this affair proceed, otherwise than to a reconciliation."
There was a decision in the young man's tone and manner that seemed to strike Fatello and check his fury. For a moment or two he gazed silently at the viscount, as if recalled to reason by his remonstrance. It was the trick of the maniac, to put the keeper off his guard. Suddenly pushing Carcassonne aside, he reached, in two bounds, a pistol-case that lay open at a short distance, and, seizing one of the weapons, levelled it at Steinfeld. With a cry of horror, de Mellay and Carcassonne threw themselves before the baron.
"This is murder!" exclaimed the viscount.
"Stop!" said Steinfeld, pale, but quite calm. "Wait a moment, sir, and you shall be satisfied. There is no alternative, my dear de Mellay. Monsieur Fatello insists. Give me the other pistol."
De Mellay hesitated, and looked at the captain.
"Ma foi!" said Carcassonne, shrugging his shoulders, as if he thought a bullet more or less hardly worth so much discussion – "if they will have it!" The principals resumed their ground, and the word was again given. This time both pistols were discharged. Steinfeld stirred not, but Fatello fell to the ground and lay there without motion. Dr Pilori ran forward, and, kneeling beside him, unbuttoned his coat. There was a small blue spot on the breast, from which oozed a drop or two of blood. The doctor seized the wrist of the fallen man. Steinfeld and the seconds gazed anxiously in his face, awaiting his verdict.
"I aimed at his arm," said Steinfeld gloomily, "but the cold made my hand shake."
Carcassonne seemed not to hear the remark. De Mellay glanced at the baron, and then at the bird that lay upon the blood-sprinkled snow more than twenty yards off.
"Quite dead," said Pilori, letting the arm fall. "It is a painful thing to kill a man," added the materialist doctor to Steinfeld, who stood regarding his victim with a moody and regretful gaze. "It may be satisfactory to you to know that he could not have lived six months longer."
In France, a few years ago, duels, even when fatal in result, did not necessarily entail strict judicial investigation, unless such investigation was provoked by the friends of the fallen man. In the instance here recorded, no one thought proper to take vindictive steps. Fatello's coachman was instructed, and largely bribed, to say that his master had been struck with apoplexy in his carriage, and that, on discovering his condition, he had at once driven him to Dr Pilori. The physician's arrival at the house, in company with the corpse, and the absence of hemorrhage from the wound, rendered it easy to conceal the latter, and gave plausibility to the story, which found general credit. It was not till several days afterwards that a report spread of the real cause of the banker's death. Even then it attained little publicity, and by many was looked upon as a malicious fabrication. Before it got wind, however, the survivors of the domestic drama we have narrated, were far from its scene. By a will made a month before his death, Fatello had left the whole of his great riches, with the exception of some munificent donations to public charities, and of an ample legacy to Captain Carcassonne, to a cousin of his own name in Alsace. But he could not alienate his wife's fortune, or deprive her of the splendid jointure secured to her by her father's cautious greediness; and these constituted very large wealth, with which his widow, shortly after his death, left Paris for her native country. Her Parisian friends and acquaintances were edified, in the highest degree, by the grief she displayed at Fatello's decease. She was disconsolate; and, for at least a day and a half, "cette pauvre Madame Fatello" was the prevailing topic of conversation, and the object of universal sympathy. Hen-pecked husbands held her up as a model of conjugal affection; and wicked wives secretly wondered at the poignant regret shown by such a young, rich, and handsome widow, for so ugly, unprepossessing, and morose a man. But it occurred to no one to seek the cause of her excessive grief in a bridal wreath instead of in a funeral shroud; to trace the source of her sorrow to the loss of an expected husband whom she passionately loved, not to that of a departed one, whom she never regretted.
Although little apprehensive of persecution, many motives concurred to render Paris an undesirable residence for the survivor of the duel in which Fatello met his death. The day after the fatal meeting, a travelling carriage left Paris by the road to Brussels. It contained Ernest von Steinfeld and his bride. In spite of some practice in duelling, and of the triple armour of selfishness in which he was habitually cased, there was a cloud upon the baron's brow which change of scene and the caresses of his young wife did not always suffice to dissipate. And, although sensible to his bride's beauty and fascination, and grateful, as far as it was in his nature to be so, for the passionate affection she showed him, it may be doubted whether he would not have repulsed her endearments, and spurned her from him, had he detected a secret that lay buried in the innermost recesses of her heart – had he recognised, in Sebastiana Gonfalon, the writer of the two anonymous letters that tended so materially to bring about her marriage, and the violent death of Sigismund Fatello.
As it was, the Baroness von Steinfeld had not long to congratulate herself on the success of her culpable manœuvres, whose sole extenuation was to be found in the fiery passions of her race, and in a moral education totally neglected. Doubtless, when planning and carrying out her guilty scheme, the possibility of so terrible a result never occurred to her; and it were attributing improbable depravity to one so young to doubt that she felt remorse at the catastrophe. She did not long await her punishment. Bright as were her hopes of happiness when led to the altar by the man she adored, she soon was bitterly convinced, that no true or permanent felicity could be the consequence of a union achieved by guilty artifice, and sealed with a brother's blood. A few months were sufficient to darken her destiny and blight her joys. Her fortune swallowed up by Steinfeld's debts and extravagance, her person speedily became indifferent to the sated and cold-hearted voluptuary; and whilst her reckless husband, faithful to nothing but to his hatred of matrimonial ties, again galloped upon the road to ruin, in the most dissipated circles of the Austrian capital, she saw herself condemned to solitude and unavailing regrets, in the very castle where she had anticipated an existence of unalloyed bliss.
THE "GREEN HAND."
A "SHORT" YARN
13 "Come, old ship, give us a yarn!" said the younger forecastle-men to an old one, on board of an Indiaman then swiftly cleaving the waves of the western Atlantic before the trade-wind, and outward-bound, with a hearty crew and a number of passengers. It was the second of the two dog-watches; and, the ship being still in the region of evening twilights, her men, in a good humour, and with leisure, were then usually disposed, as on this occasion, to make fast their roaming thoughts by help of a good yarn, when it could be got. There were plenty of individuals, amongst a crew of forty, calculated by their experience, or else by their flow of spirits and fancy, to spin it. Each watch into which they were divided had its especial story-teller, with whose merits it twitted the other, and on opportunity of a general reunion, they were pitted against one another like two fighting-cocks, or a couple of rival novelists in more polished literary society at home. The one was a grave, solemn, old North-Sea whaler with one eye, who professed to look down with contempt upon all raw head-work, on navigation compared with seamanship, and fiction against fact. As for himself, he rested all his fame upon actual experience, and told long dry narratives of old shipmates, of his voyages and adventures, and sometimes of the most incredible incidents, with a genuine briny gusto which pleased the veteran stagers beyond expression. They were full of points of seamanship – expedients for nice emergencies, tacks, knots, and splices; he gave the very conversation of his characters, with all the "says he" and "says I;" and one long recital of the old fellow's turned upon the question between himself and a newfangled second-mate about the right way to set up back-stays, in which he, the sailor, was proved correct by the loss of the ship. The other story-teller, again, was a Wapping man; a lively, impudent young Cockney, who had the most miraculous faculty of telling lies – not only palpable lies, but lies absolutely impossible: yet they were so sublimely told often, and he contrived to lug into them such a quantity of gorgeous tinsel ornament, as, in his happier efforts, decidedly to carry the day against his opponent. The London hand had seen life too, of which, with respect to what is called the world, his competitor was as ignorant as a child. He had his sentimental vein, accordingly, in which he took the last love-tale out of some "Penny Story-Teller" or fashionable novel he had spelled over below, and turned it over into a parody that would have thrown its unfortunate author into convulsions of horror, and his critics into shrieks of laughter. The fine language of lords and ladies, of romantic heroines, or of foreign counts and bandits, was gravely retailed and gravely listened to by a throng of admiring jack-tars; while the old whaler smoked his pipe sulkily apart, gave now and then a scornful glance out of his weather-eye, and called it "all high-dic' and soger's gammon."
On this occasion, however, the group forward did not solicit the services of either candidate, as they happened to have present among them a shipmate who, by general confession, "took the shine" out of both, although it was rarely they could get hold of him. "Old Jack," the captain's private steward, was the oldest seaman on board, and having known the captain when the latter went to sea, had sailed with him almost ever since he commanded a ship, as well as lived in his house on shore. He did not now keep his watch, nor take his "trick at the helm," except when he chose, and was altogether a privileged sort of person, or one of "the idlers." His name was Jacobs, which afforded a pretext for calling him "Old Jack," with the sailor's fondness for that Christian cognomen, which it is difficult to account for, unless because Jonah and St John were seafaring characters, and the Roman Catholic holy clerk St Nicholas was baptised "Davy Jones," with sundry other reasons good at sea. But Old Jack was, at any rate, the best hand for a yarn in the Gloucester Indiaman, and had been once or twice called upon to spin one to the ladies and gentlemen in the cuddy. It was partly because of his inexhaustible fund of good-humour, and partly from that love of the sea which looked out through all that the old tar had seen and undergone, and which made him still follow the bowsprit, although able to live comfortably ashore. In his blue jacket, white canvass trousers edged with blue, and glazed hat, coming forward to the galley to light his pipe, after serving the captain's tea of an evening, Old Jack looked out over the bulwarks, sniffed the sharp sea-air, and stood with his shirt-sleeve fluttering as he put his finger in his pipe, the very embodiment of the scene – the model of a prime old salt who had ceased to "rough it," but could do so yet if needful.
"Come, old ship!" said the men near the windlass as soon as Old Jack came forward, "give us a yarn, will ye?" "Yarn!" said Jack, smiling – "what yarn, mates? 'Tis a fine night, though, for that same – the clouds flies high, and she's balling off a good ten knots sin' eight bells." "That she is, bo' – so give us a yarn now, like a reg'lar old A. 1. as you are!" said one. "'Vast there, mate," said a man-o'-war's-man, winking to the rest, – "you're always a-cargo-puddling, Bill! D'ye think Old Jack answers to any other hail nor the Queen's? I say, old three-decker in or'nary, we all wants one o' your close-laid yarns this good night. Whaling Jim here rubs his down with a thought overmuch o' the tar, an' young Joe dips 'em in yallow varnish, – so if you says Nay, why, we'll all save our grog, and get drunk as soon as may-be." "Well, well, mates," said Jack, endeavouring to conceal his flattered feelings, "what's it to be, though?" "Let's see," said the man-o'-war's-man – "ay, give us the Green Hand!" "Ay, ay, the Green Hand!" exclaimed one and all. This "Green Hand" was a story Old Jack had already related several times, but always with such amusing variations, that it seemed on each repetition a new one – the listeners testifying their satisfaction by growls of rough laughter, and by the emphatic way in which, during a pause, they squirted their tobacco-juice on the deck. What gave additional zest to this particular yarn, too, was the fact of its hero being no less than the captain himself, who was at this moment on the poop quarter-deck of the ship, pointing out something to a group of ladies by the round-house – a tall handsome-looking man of about forty, with all the mingled gravity and frank good-humour of a sailor in his firm weather-tinted countenance. To have the power of secretly contrasting his present position and manners with those delineated by Old Jack's episode from the "skipper's" previous biography, was the acme of comic delight to these rude sons of Neptune, and the narrator just hit this point.
"Ye see," began he, "'tis about six-an'-twenty year gone since I was an able seaman before the mast, in a small Indyman they called the Chester Castle, lying at that time behind the Isle of Dogs in sight of Grenidge Hospital. She was full laden, but there was a strong breeze blowing up that wouldn't let us get underweigh; and, besides, we waited for the most part of our hands. I had sailed with the same ship two voyages before; so, says the captain to me one day, "Jacobs, there's a lady over at Greenwich yonder wants to send her boy to sea in the ship – for a sickening I s'pose. I'm a going up to town myself," says he, "so take the quarter-boat, and two of the boys, and go ashore with this letter, and see the young fool. From what I've heard," says the skipper, "he's a jackanapes as will give us more trouble than thanks. However, if you find the lady's bent on it, why, she may send him aboard to-morrow if she likes. Only we don't carry no young gentlemen, and if he slings his hammock here, you must lick him into shape. I'll make a sailor of him, or a cabin-boy." "Ay, ay, sir," says I, shoving the letter into my hat; so in half an hour's time I knocks at the door of the lady's house, rigged out in my best, and hands over the screed to a fat fellow with red breeches and yallow swabs on his shoulders, like a captain of marines, that looked frightened at my hail, for I thou't he'd been deaf by the long spell he took before he opened the door. In five minutes I heard a woman's v'ice ask at the footman if there was a sailor awaiting below. "Yes, marm," says he; and "show him up," says she. Well, I gives a scrape with my larboard foot, and a tug to my hair, when I gets to the door of such a fine room above decks, all full o' tables, an' chairs, an' sofers, an' piangers, an' them sort o' highflying consarns. There was a lady all in silks and satins on one of the sofers, dressed out like a widow, with a pretty little girl as was playing music out of a large book – and a picter of a man upon the wall, which I at once logged it down for him she'd parted company from. "Sarvint, ma'am," says I. "Come in, my good man," says the lady. "You're a sailor?" says she – asking, like, to be sure if I warn't the cook's mate in dish-guise, I fancy. "Well, marm," I raps out, "I make bould to say as I hopes I am!" – an' I catches a sight o' myself in a big looking-glass behind the lady, as large as our sky-sail, – and, being a young fellow in them days, thinks I, "Blow me, if Betsy Brown asked me that now, I'd ask her if she was a woman!" "Well," says she, "Captain Steel tells me, in this here letter, he's agoing to take my son. Now," says she, "I'm sore against it – couldn't you say some'at to turn his mind?" "The best way for that, yer ladyship," says I, "is to let him go, if was only the length of the Nore. The sea'll turn his stomach for him, marm," I says, "an' then we can send him home by a pilot." "He wanted for to go into the navy," says the lady again, "but I couldn't think on that for a moment, on account of this fearful war; an', after all, he'll be safer in sailing at sea nor in the army or navy – don't you think so, my good man?" "It's all you knows about it," thinks I; hows'ever, I said there wasn't a doubt on it. "Is Captain Steel a rash man?" says she. "How so, marm?" says I, some'at taken aback. "I hope he does not sail at night, or in storms, like too many of his profession, I'm afeard," says she; "I hope he always weighs the anchor in such cases, very careful." "Oh, in course," says I, not knowin', for the life of me, what she meant. I didn't like to come the rig over the poor lady, seein' her so anxious like; but it was no use, we was on such different tacks, ye see. "Oh yes, marm," I says, "Captain Steel al'ays reefs taups'ls at sight of a squall brewing to wind'rd; and we're as safe as a church, then, ye know, with a man at the wheel as knows his duty." "This relieves my mind," the lady says, "very much;" but I couldn't think why she kept sniffing all the time at her smelling bottle, as she wor agoin' to faint. "Don't take it to heart so, yer ladyship," I says at last; "I'll look after the young gentleman till he finds his sea-legs." "Thank you," says she; "but, I beg your pardon, would ye be kind enough for to open the winder, and look out if you see Edward? I think he's in the garding. – I feel sich a smell of pitch and tar!" I hears her say to the girl; and says she to me again, "Do you see Edward there? – call to him, please." Accordingly, I couldn't miss sight of three or four young slips alongside, for they made plenty of noise – one of 'em on top of a water-barrel smoking a segar; another singing out inside of it for mercy; and the rest roaring round about it, like so many Bedlamites. "No wonder the young scamp wants to sea," thinks I, "he's got nothin' arthly to do but mischief." "Which is the young gentleman, marm?" says I, lookin' back into the room – "Is it him with the segar and the red skull-cap?" "Yes," says the lady – "call him up, please." "Hallo!" I sings out, and all runs off but him on the barrel, and "Hallo!" says he. "You're wanted on deck, sir," I says; and in five minutes in comes my young gemman, as grave as you please. "Edward," says the mother, "this is one of Captain Steel's men." "Is he going to take me?" says the young fellow, with his hands in his pockets. "Well, sir," I says, "'tis a very bad look-out, is the sea, for them as don't like it. You'll be sorry ten times over you've left sich a berth as this here, afore you're down Channel." The young chap looks me all over from clue to earing, and says he, "My mother told you to say that!" "No, sir," says I, "I says it on my own hook." "Why did you go yourself, then?" says he. "I couldn't help it," answers I. "Oh," says the impertinent little devil, "but you're only one of the common sailors, ain't you?" "Split me, you little beggar!" thinks I, "if I doesn't show you the odds betwixt a common sailor, as ye call it, and a lubber of a boy, before long!" But I wasn't goin' to let him take the jaw out o' me, so I only laughed, an' says I, "Why, I'm captain of the foretop at sea, any how." "Where's your huniform, then?" says the boy, lowering his tone a bit. "Oh," I says, "we doesn't al'ays wear huniform, ye know, sir. This here's what we call ondress." "I'm sorry, sir," says the lady, "I didn't ax you to sit down." "No offence at all, marm," I says, but I took a couple o' glasses of brandy as was brought in. I saw 'twas no use goin' against the young chap; so, when he asked what he'd have to do aboard, I told him nothing to speak of, except count the sails now and then, look over the bows to see how the ship went, and go aloft with a spy-glass. "Oh," says his mother at this, "I hope Captain Steel won't never allow Edward to go up those dangerous ladders! It is my pertic'lar request he should be punished if he does." "Sartainly, marm, I'll mention it to the captain," I says, "an' no doubt he'll give them orders as you speak on." "The captain desired me to say the young gentleman could come aboard as soon as he likes," says I, before goin' out of the door. "Very well, sir," says the lady, "I shall see the tailor this same arternoon, and get his clothes, if so be it must." The last word I said was, putting my head half in again to tell 'em, "There was no use gettin' any huniforms at present, seein' the ship's sailmaker could do all as was wanted arterwards, when we got to sea."
Well, two or three days after, the captain sent word to say the ship would drop down with the morning tide, and Master Collins had better be aboard by six o'clock. I went ashore with the boat, but the young gemman's clothes warn't ready yet; so it was made up he was to come on board from Gravesend the day after. But his mother and an old lady, a friend of theirs, would have it they'd go and see his bed-room, and take a look at the ship. There was a bit of a breeze with the tide, and the old Indiaman bobbed up and down on it in the cold morning; you could hear the wash of water poppling on to her rudder, with her running gear blown out in a bend; and Missus Collins thought they'd never get up the dirty black sides of the vessel, as she called 'em. The other said her husband had been a captain, an' she laid claim to a snatch of knowledge. "Sailor," says she to me, as we got under the quarter, "that there tall mast is the main-bowsprit, ain't it? and that other is the gallant bowling you call it, don't you?" says she. "No doubt, marm," says I, winking to the boys not to laugh. "It's all right," I says. Howsoever, as to the bed-room, the captain showed 'em over the cabin, and put 'em off by saying the ship was so out of order he couldn't say which rooms was to be which yet, though they needn't fear Master Ned would get all comfortable; so ashore the poor woman went, pretty well pleased, considerin' her heart was against the whole consarn.
Well, the next afternoon, lying off Gravesend, out comes a wherry with young master. One of the men said there was a midshipman in it. "Midshipman, be blowed!" says I; "did ye ever see a reefer in a wherry, or sitting out o' the starn-sheets? It's neither more nor less nor the greenhorn we've got." "Why don't the bo'sun pipe to man side-ropes for him!" says th' other; "but, my eye, Bob," says he to me, "what a sight of traps the chap's got in the boat! – 'twill be enough to heel the Chester Castle to the side he berths upon, on an even keel. Do he mean to have the captain's cabin, I wonder!" Up the side he scrambles, with the help of a side-ladder, all togged out to the nines in a span-new blue jacket and anchor buttons, a cap with a gould band, and white ducks made to fit – as jemmy-jessamy a looking fellow as you'd see of a cruise along London parks, with the watermen singing out alongside to send down a tackle for the dunnage, which it took a pair of purchase-blocks to hoist them out on board. "What's all this?" says the mate, coming for'ard from the quarter-deck. "'Tis the young gemman's traps, sir," I says. "What the devil!" says the mate, "d'ye think we've room to stow all this lumber? Strike it down into the forehold, Jacobs – but get out a blue shirt or two, and a Scotch cap, for the young whelp first, if he wants to save that smooth toggery of his for his mammy. You're as green as cabbage, I'm feared, my lad!" says he. By this time the boy was struck all of a heap, an' didn't know what to say when he saw the boat pulling for shore, except he wanted to have a sight of his bed-room. "Jacobs," says the mate, laughing like an old bear, "take him below, and show him his bed-room, as he calls it!" So down we went to the half-deck, where the carpenter, bo'sun, and three or four of the 'prentices, had their hammocks slung. There I left him to overhaul his big donkey of a chest, which his mother had stowed it with clothes enough for a lord ambassador, but not a blessed thing fit to use – I wouldn't 'a given my bit of a black box for the whole on it, ten times over. There was another choke-full of gingerbread, pots o' presarves, pickles, and bottles; and, thinks I, "The old lady didn't know what shares is at sea, I reckon. 'Twill all be gone for footing, my boy, before you've seen blue water, or I'm a Dutchman."