Homeward Bound - James Fenimore Cooper (free e books to read .txt) 📗

accompanied by Mademoiselle Viefville and most of her male companions, walked the deck by the bright starlight, until fatigued with pacing their narrow bounds.

The song and the laugh rose frequently from the forecastle, where the crew were occupied with their Saturday night; and occasionally a rude sentiment in the way of a toast was heard. But weariness soon got the better of merriment forward, and the hard-worked mariners, who had the watch below, soon went down to their berths, leaving those whose duty it was to remain to doze away the long hours in such places as they could find on deck.

"A white squall," said Captain Truck, looking up at the uncouth sails that hardly impelled the vessel a mile in the hour through the water, "would soon furl all our canvas for us, and we are in the very place for such an interlude."

"And what would then become of us?" asked Mademoiselle Viefville quickly.

"You had better ask what would become of that apology for a topsail, mam'selle, and yonder stun'sail, which looks like an American in London without straps to his pantaloons. The canvas would play kite, and we should be left to renew our inventions. A ship could scarcely be in better plight than we are at this moment, to meet with one of these African flurries."

"In which case, captain," observed Mr. Monday, who stood by the skylight watching the preparations below, "we can go to our Saturday-night without fear; for I see the steward has everything ready, and the punch looks very inviting, to say nothing of the champaigne."

"Gentlemen, we will not forget our duty," returned the captain; "we are but a small family, and so much the greater need that we should prove a jolly one. Mr. Effingham, I hope we are to have the honour of your company at 'sweethearts and wives.'"

Mr. Effingham had no wife, and the invitation coming under such peculiar circumstances, produced a pang that Eve, who felt his arm tremble, well understood. She mildly intimated her intention to go below however; the whole party followed, and lucky it was for the captain's entertainment that she quitted the deck, as few would otherwise have been present at it. By pressing the passengers to favour him with their company, he succeeded in the course of a few minutes in getting all the gentlemen seated at the cabin-table, with a glass of delicious punch before each man.

"Mr. Saunders may not be a conjuror or a mathematician, gentlemen," cried Captain Truck, as he ladled out the beverage; "but he understands the philosophy of sweet and sour, strong and weak; and I will venture to praise his liquor without tasting it. Well, gentlemen, there are better-rigged ships on the ocean than this of ours; but there are few with more comfortable cabins, or stouter hulls, or better company. Please God we can get a few sticks aloft again, now that we are quit of our troublesome shadow, I think I may flatter myself with a reasonable hope of landing you, that do me the honour to stand by me, in New York, in less time than a common drogger would make the passage, with his legs and arms. Let our first toast be, if you please: A happy end to that which has had a disastrous beginning.'"

Captain Truck's hard face twitched a little while he was making this address, and as he swallowed the punch, his eyes glistened in spite of himself. Mr. Dodge, Sir George, and Mr. Monday repeated the sentiment sonorously, word for word, while the other gentlemen bowed, and drank it in silence.

The commencement of a regular scene of merriment is usually dull and formal, and it was some time before Captain Truck could bring any of his companions up to the point where he wished to see them; for though a perfectly sober man, he loved a social glass, and particularly at those times and seasons which conformed to the practice of his calling. Although Eve and her governess had declined taking their seats at the table, they consented to place themselves where they might be seen, and where they might share occasionally in the conversation.

"Here have I been drinking sweethearts and wives of a Saturday-night, my dear young lady, these forty years and more," said Captain Truck, after the party had sipped their liquor for a minute or two, "without ever falling into luck's latitude, or furnishing myself with either; but, though so negligent of my own interests and happiness, I make it an invariable rule to advise all my young friends to get spliced before they are thirty. Many is the man who has come aboard my ship a determined bachelor in his notions, who has left it at the end of the passage ready to marry the first pretty young woman he fell in with."

As Eve had too much of the self-respect of a lady, and of the true dignity of her sex, to permit jokes concerning matrimony, or a treatise on love, to make a part of her conversation, and all the gentlemen of her party understood her character too well, to say nothing of their own habits, to second this attempt of the captain's, after a vapid remark or two from the others, this rally of the honest mariner produced no suites .

"Are we not unusually low, Captain Truck," inquired Paul Blunt, with a view to change the discourse, "not to have fallen in with the trades? I have commonly met with those winds on this coast as high as twenty-six or twenty seven, and I believe you observed to-day, in twenty-four."

Captain Truck looked hard at the speaker, and when he had done, he nodded his head in approbation.

"You have travelled this road before, Mr. Blunt, I perceive. I have suspected you of being a brother chip, from the moment I saw you first put your foot on the side-cleets in getting out of the boat. You did not come aboard parrot-toed, like a country-girl waltzing; but set the ball of the foot firmly on the wood, and swung off the length of your arms, like a man who knows how to humour the muscles. Your present remark, too, shows you understand where a ship ought to be, in order to be in her right place. As for the trades, they are a little uncertain, like a lady's mind when she has more than one good offer; for I've known them to blow as high as thirty, and then again, to fail a vessel as low as twenty-three, or even lower. It is my private opinion, gentlemen, and I gladly take this opportunity to make it public, that we are on the edge of the trades, or in those light baffling winds which prevail along their margin, as eddies play near the track of strong steady currents in the ocean. If we can force the ship fairly out of this trimming region--that is the word, I believe, Mr. Dodge--we shall do well enough; for a north-east, or an east wind, would soon send us up with the islands, even under the rags we carry. We are very near the coast, certainly--much nearer than I could wish; but when we do get the good breeze, it will be all the better for us, as it will find us well to windward."

"But these trades, Captain Truck?" asked Eve: "if they always blow in the same direction, how is it possible that the late gale should drive a ship into the quarter of the ocean where they prevail?"

"Always, means sometimes, my dear young lady. Although light winds prevail near the edge of the trades, gales and tremendous fellows too, sometimes blow there also, as we have just seen. I think we shall now have settled weather, and that our chance of a safe arrival, more particularly in some southern American port, is almost certain, though our chance for a speedy arrival be not quite as good I hope before twenty-four hours are passed, to see our decks white with sand.

"Is that a phenomenon seen here?" asked the father.

"Often, Mr. Effingham, when ships are close in with Africa, and are fairly in the steady winds. To say the truth, the country abreast of us, some twenty or thirty miles distant, is not the most inviting; and though it may not be easy to say where the garden of Eden is, it is no hazardous to say it is not there."

"If we are so very near the coast, why do we not see it?"

"Perhaps we might from aloft, if we had any aloft just now. We are to the southward of the mountains, however, and off a part of the country where the Great Desert makes from the coast. And now, gentlemen, I perceive Mr. Monday finds all this sand arid, and I ask permission to give you, one and all, 'Sweethearts and wives.'"

Most of the company drank the usual toast with spirit, though both the Effinghams scarce wetted their lips. Eve stole a timid glance at her father, and her own eyes were filled with tears as she withdrew them; for she knew that every allusion of this nature revived in him mournful recollections. As for her cousin Jack, he was so confirmed a bachelor that she thought nothing of his want of sympathy with such a sentiment.

"You must have a care for your heart, in America, Sir George Templemore," cried Mr. Dodge, whose tongue loosened with the liquor he drank. "Our ladies are celebrated for their beauty, and are immensely popular, I can assure you."

Sir George looked pleased, and it is quite probable his thoughts ran on the one particular vestment of the six-and-thirty, in which he ought to make his first appearance in such a society.

"I allow the American ladies to be handsome," said Mr. Monday; "but I think no Englishman need be in any particular danger of his heart from such a cause, after having been accustomed to the beauty of his own island. Captain Truck, I have the honour to drink your health."

"Fairly said," cried the captain, bowing to the compliment; "and I ascribe my own hard fortune to the fact that I have been kept sailing between two countries so much favoured in this particular, that I have never been able to make up my mind which to prefer. I have wished a thousand times there was but one handsome woman in the world, when a man would have nothing to do but fall in love with her; and make up his mind to get married at once, or to hang himself."

"That is a cruel wish to us men," returned Sir George, "as we should be certain to quarrel for the beauty."

"In such a case," resumed Mr. Monday, "we common men would have to give way to the claims of the nobility and gentry, and satisfy ourselves with plainer companions; though an Englishman loves his independence, and might rebel. I have the honour to drink your health and happiness, Sir George."

"I protest against your principle, Mr. Monday," said Mr. Dodge, "which is an invasion on human rights. Perfect freedom of action is to be maintained in this matter as in all others. I acknowledge that the English ladies are extremely beautiful, but I shall always maintain the supremacy of the American fair."

"We will drink their healths, sir. I am far from denying their beauty, Mr. Dodge, but I think you must admit that they fade earlier than our British ladies. God bless them both, however, and I empty this glass to the two entire nations, with all my heart and soul."

"Perfectly polite, Mr.