第34章 THE VOYAGE(22)

Not that I would be understood to insinuate that the nephew endeavored to shake off or disown his uncle,or indeed to keep him at any distance.On the contrary,he treated him with the utmost familiarity,often calling him Dick,and dear Dick,and old Dick,and frequently beginning an oration with D--n me,Dick.

All this condescension on the part of the young man was received with suitable marks of complaisance and obligation by the old one;especially when it was attended with evidences of the same familiarity with general officers and other persons of rank;one of whom,in particular,I know to have the pride and insolence of the devil himself,and who,without some strong bias of interest,is no more liable to converse familiarly with a lieutenant than of being mistaken in his judgment of a fool;which was not,perhaps,so certainly the case of the worthy lieutenant,who,in declaring to us the qualifications which recommended men to his countenance and conversation,as well as what effectually set a bar to all hopes of that honor,exclaimed,"No,sir,by the d--Ihate all fools--No,d--n me,excuse me for that.That's a little too much,old Dick.There are two or three officers of our regiment whom I know to be fools;but d--n me if I am ever seen in their company.If a man hath a fool of a relation,Dick,you know he can't help that,old boy."Such jokes as these the old man not only tools in good part,but glibly gulped down the whole narrative of his nephew;nor did he,I am convinced,in the least doubt of our as readily swallowing the same.This made him so charmed with the lieutenant,that it is probable we should have been pestered with him the whole evening,had not the north wind,dearer to our sea-captain even than this glory of his family,sprung suddenly up,and called aloud to him to weigh his anchor.While this ceremony was performing,the sea-captain ordered out his boat to row the land-captain to shore;not indeed on an uninhabited island,but one which,in this part,looked but little better,not presenting us the view of a single house.

Indeed,our old friend,when his boat returned on shore,perhaps being no longer able to stifle his envy of the superiority of his nephew,told us with a smile that the young man had a good five mile to walk before he could be accommodated with a passage to Portsmouth.

It appeared now that the captain had been only mistaken in the date of his prediction,by placing the event a day earlier than it happened;for the wind which now arose was not only favorable but brisk,and was no sooner in reach of our sails than it swept us away by the back of the Isle of Wight,and,having in the night carried us by Christchurch and Peveral-point,brought us the next noon,Saturday,July 25,oft the island of Portland,so famous for the smallness and sweetness of its mutton,of which a leg seldom weighs four pounds.We would have bought a sheep,but our captain would not permit it;though he needed not have been in such a hurry,for presently the wind,I will not positively assert in resentment of his surliness,showed him a dog's trick,and slyly slipped back again to his summer-house in the south-west.

The captain now grew outrageous,and,declaring open war with the wind,took a resolution,rather more bold than wise,of sailing in defiance of it,and in its teeth.He swore he would let go his anchor no more,but would beat the sea while he had either yard or sail left.He accordingly stood from the shore,and made so large a tack that before night,though he seemed to advance but little on his way,he was got out of sight of land.

Towards evening the wind began,in the captain's own language,and indeed it freshened so much,that before ten it blew a perfect hurricane.The captain having got,as he supposed,to a safe distance,tacked again towards the English shore;and now the wind veered a point only in his favor,and continued to blow with such violence,that the ship ran above eight knots or miles an hour during this whole day and tempestuous night till bed-time.I was obliged to betake myself once more to my solitude,for my women were again all down in their sea-sickness,and the captain was busy on deck;for he began to grow uneasy,chiefly,I believe,because he did not well know where he was,and would,I am convinced,have been very glad to have been in Portland-road,eating some sheep's-head broth.

Having contracted no great degree of good-humor by living a whole day alone,without a single soul to converse with,I took but ill physic to purge it off,by a bed-conversation with the captain,who,amongst many bitter lamentations of his fate,and protesting he had more patience than a Job,frequently intermixed summons to the commanding officer on the deck,who now happened to be one Morrison,a carpenter,the only fellow that had either common sense or common civility in the ship.Of Morrison he inquired every quarter of an hour concerning the state of affairs:the wind,the care of the ship,and other matters of navigation.The frequency of these summons,as well as the solicitude with which they were made,sufficiently testified the state of the captain's mind;he endeavored to conceal it,and would have given no small alarm to a man who had either not learned what it is to die,or known what it is to be miserable.And my dear wife and child must pardon me,if what I did not conceive to be any great evil to myself I was not much terrified with the thoughts of happening to them;in truth,I have often thought they are both too good and too gentle to be trusted to the power of any man I know,to whom they could possibly be so trusted.

Can I say then I had no fear?indeed I cannot.Reader,I was afraid for thee,lest thou shouldst have been deprived of that pleasure thou art now enjoying;and that I should not live to draw out on paper that military character which thou didst peruse in the journal of yesterday.