The Lonely Island - Robert Michael Ballantyne (free novel 24 .TXT) 📗

and looked at Sally.

"Well, father," said May Christian, quickly, "about Rob who?"

"Ahem! eh? well, yes, about Rob--ha, but we won't talk about him just now, dear. Sally and I were havin' some private conversation just now about Rob, though that isn't the whole of his name neither, but we won't make it public at present. You'll hear about him time enough--eh, Sall?"

The girls were so little accustomed to anything approaching to mystery or secrecy in John Adams, that they looked at him in silent wonder. Then they glanced at Sally, whose suppressed smile and downcast eyes told eloquently that there was, as Adams would have said, "something in the wind," and they tried to get her to reveal the secret, but Sall was immovable. She would not add a single syllable to the information given inadvertently by Adams, but she and he laughed a good deal in a quiet way, and made frequent references to Rob in the course of the walk.

Of course, when the mysterious word was pronounced in the village in the evening, and what had been said and hinted about it was repeated, curiosity was kindled into a violent flame; and when the entire colony was invited to a feast that night, the excitement was intense. From the oldest to the youngest, excluding the more recently arrived sprawlers, every eye was fixed on John Adams during the whole course of supper, except at the commencement, when the customary blessing was asked, at which point every eye was tightly closed.

Adams, conscious of increased importance, spoke little during the meal, and maintained an air of profounder gravity than usual until the dishes were cleared away. Then he looked round the assembled circle, and said, "Women an' child'n, I'm goin' to tell 'ee a story."


CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.


THE PITCAIRNERS HAVE A NIGHT OF IT.

Although John Adams had often, in the course of his residence on Pitcairn, jested and chatted and taken his share in relating many an anecdote, he had never up till that time resolved to "go in," as he said, "for a regular story, like a book."

"Women an' child'n," he began, "it may be that I'm goin' to attempt more than I'm fit to carry out in this business, for my memory's none o' the best. However, that won't matter much, for I tell 'ee, fair an' aboveboard at the beginnin', that when I come to gaps that I can't fill up from memory, I'll just bridge 'em over from imagination, d'ye see?"

"What's imagination?" demanded Dan McCoy, whose tendency to pert interruption and reply nothing yet discovered could restrain.

"It's a puzzler," said Otaheitan Sally, in a low tone, which called forth a laugh from the others.

It did not take much to make these people laugh, as the observant reader will have perceived.

"Well, it _is_ a puzzler," said Adams, with a quiet smile and a perplexed look. "I may say, Dan McCoy, in an off-hand rough-an'-ready sort o' way, that imagination is that power o' the mind which enables a man to tell lies."

There was a general opening of juvenile eyes at this, as if recent biblical instruction had led them to believe that the use of such a power must be naughty.

"You see," explained Adams, "when a man, usin' his imagination, tells what's not true, just to deceive people an' mislead 'em, we call it lyin', but when his imagination invents what's not true merely for the fun o' the thing, an' tells it as a joke, never pretendin' that it's true, he ain't lyin', he's only tellin' a story, or a anecdote, or a parable. Now, Dan, put that in your pipe an' smoke it. Likewise shut your potato-trap, and let me go on wi' my story, which is, (he looked impressively round, while every eye gazed, and ear listened, and mouth opened in breathless attention), the Adventure of Robinson Crusoe an' his man Friday!"

All eyes were turned, as if by magic, on Thursday,--as if there must be some strange connection here. Toc suddenly shut his mouth and hung his head in confusion at this unexpected concentration of attention on himself.

"You've no need to be ashamed, Thursday," said Adams, with a laugh. "You've got the advantage of Friday, anyhow, bein' a day in advance of him. Well, as I was about to say, boys an' girls, this Robinson Crusoe was a seafarin' man, just like myself; an' he went to sea, an' was shipwrecked on a desolate island just like this, but there was nobody whatever on that island, not even a woman or a babby. Poor Robinson was all alone, an' it wasn't till a consid'rable time after he had gone ashore that he discovered Friday, (who was a black savage), through seein' his footprint in the sand."

Adams having burst thus suddenly into the very marrow of his story, had no reason thereafter to complain either of interruption or inattention. Neither had he reason to find fault with the wealth of his prolific imagination. It would have done the soul of a painter good to have watched the faces of that rapt, eager, breathless audience, and it would have afforded much material for reflection to a student of mind, had he, knowing the original story of Robinson Crusoe, been permitted to trace the ingenious sinuosities and astounding creations by which Adams wove his meagre amount of original matter into a magnificent tale, which not only thrilled his audience, but amazed himself.

In short, he quite justified the assurance formerly given to Sally, that the story of Robinson Crusoe would make the hair of his hearers stand on end, their sides almost split open, and the very marrow in their spines wriggle. Indeed, his version of the tale might have caused similar results in Robinson Crusoe himself, had he been there to hear it, besides causing his eyebrows to rise and vanish evermore among the hair of his head with astonishment.

It was the same with the Pilgrim's Progress, which he often told to them afterwards. Simple justice to Adams, however, requires us to state that he was particularly careful to impress on his hearers that the Pilgrim's Progress was a religious tale.

"It's a allegory, you must know," he said, on first introducing it, "which means a story intended to teach some good lesson--a story which says one thing and means another."

He looked pointedly at Dan McCoy here, as if to say, "That's an exhaustive explanation, which takes the wind out o' _your_ sails, young man," but Dan was not to be so easily silenced.

"What's the use, father," he asked, with an air of affected simplicity, "of a story sayin' one thing an' meanin' another? Wouldn't it be more honest like if it said what it meant at once, straight off?"

"P'r'aps it would," returned Adams, who secretly enjoyed Dan's irrepressible impudence; "but, then, if it did, Dan, it would take away your chance of askin' questions, d'ye see? Anyhow, _this_ story don't say what it means straight off, an' that gives me a chance to expound it."

Now, it was in the expounding of the Pilgrim's Progress that John Adams's peculiar talents shone out brilliantly, for not only did he "misremember," jumble, and confuse the whole allegory, but he so misapprehended its meaning in many points, that the lessons taught and the morals drawn were very wide of the mark indeed. In regard to some particular points, too, he felt himself at liberty to let his genius have free untrammelled scope, as, for instance, in the celebrated battle between Christian and Apollyon. Arguing with himself that it was not possible for any man to overdo a fight with the devil, Adams made up his mind to "go well in" for that incident, and spent a whole evening over it, keeping his audience glaring and on the rack of expectation the whole time. Taking, perhaps, an unfair advantage of his minute knowledge as a man-of-war's-man of cutlass-drill and of fighting in general, from pugilistic encounters to great-gun exercise, including all the intermediate performances with rapiers, swords, muskets, pistols, blunderbusses, and other weapons for "general scrimmaging," he so wrought upon the nerves of his hearers that they quivered with emotion, and when at last he drove Apollyon discomfited from the field, like chaff before the wind, there burst forth a united cheer of triumph and relief, Dan McCoy, in particular, jumping up with tumbled yellow locks and glittering eyes in a perfect yell of exultation.

But, to return from this digression to the story of Robinson Crusoe. It must not be supposed that Adams exhausted that tale in one night. No; soon discovering that he had struck an intellectual vein, so to speak, he resolved to work it out economically, and with that end in view, devoted the first evening to a minute dissection of Crusoe's character as a man and a seaman, to the supposed fitting out and provisioning of his ship, to the imaginary cause of the disaster to the ship, which, (with Bligh, no doubt, in memory), he referred to the incompetence and wickedness of the skipper, and to the terrible incidents of the wreck, winding up with the landing of his hero, half-dead and alone, on the uninhabited island.

"Now, child'n," he concluded, "that'll do for one night; and as it's of no manner of use sending you all to bed to dream of bein' shipwrecked and drownded, we'll finish off with a game of blind-man's-buff."

Need we say that the disappointment at the cutting short of the story was fully compensated by the game? Leaping up with another cheer, taught them by the best authorities, and given with true British fervour, they scattered about the room.

Otaheitan Sally was, as a matter of course, the first to be blindfolded.

And really, reader, it was wonderful how like that game, as played at Pitcairn, was to the same as performed in England. To justify this remark, let us describe it, and see whether there were any points of material difference.

The apartment, let it be understood, was a pretty large one, lighted by two nut-candles in brackets on the walls. There was little furniture in it, only a few stools and two small tables, which were quickly thrust into a corner. Then Sally was taken to the centre of the room by Adams, and there blindfolded with a snuff-coloured silken bandana handkerchief, which had seen much service on board of the _Bounty_.

"Now, Sall, can you see?" asks Adams.

"No, not one bit."

"Oh, yes you can," from Charlie Christian, who hovers round her like the moth round the candle.

"No, really, I can't."

"Yes you can," from Dan McCoy, who is on the alert; "I see your piercin' black eyes comin' right through the hankitchif."

"Get along, then," cries Adams, twirling Sally round, and skipping out of the way.

It is not the first time the women have played at that game, and their short garments, reaching little below the knees, seem admirably adapted to it, while they glide about with motions little less easy and agile than those of the children, and cause the roof to ring with laughter at the various misadventures that occur.

Mrs Adams, however, does not join. Besides being considerably older than her husband, that good woman has become prematurely short-sighted and deaf. This being so, she sits in a corner, not inappropriately, to act the part of grandmother to the players, and to serve as an occasional