Holiday Romance - Charles Dickens (novels to read txt) 📗

little bride, with a wreath of orange-flowers and a silver veil. After that, the kitchen dresser changed of itself into a wardrobe, made of beautiful woods and gold and looking glass, which was full of dresses of all sorts, all for her and all exactly fitting her. After that, the angelic baby came in, running alone, with his face and eye not a bit the worse, but much the better. Then Grandmarina begged to be introduced to the duchess; and, when the duchess was brought down, many compliments passed between them.

A little whispering took place between the fairy and the duchess; and then the fairy said out loud, ‘Yes, I thought she would have told you.’ Grandmarina then turned to the king and queen, and said, ‘We are going in search of Prince Certainpersonio. The pleasure of your company is requested at church in half an hour precisely.’ So she and the Princess Alicia got into the carriage; and Mr. Pickles’s boy handed in the duchess, who sat by herself on the opposite seat; and then Mr. Pickles’s boy put up the steps and got up behind, and the peacocks flew away with their tails behind.

Prince Certainpersonio was sitting by himself, eating barley-sugar, and waiting to be ninety. When he saw the peacocks, followed by the carriage, coming in at the window it immediately occurred to him that something uncommon was going to happen.

‘Prince,’ said Grandmarina, ‘I bring you your bride.’ The moment the fairy said those words, Prince Certainpersonio’s face left off being sticky, and his jacket and corduroys changed to peach-bloom velvet, and his hair curled, and a cap and feather flew in like a bird and settled on his head. He got into the carriage by the fairy’s invitation; and there he renewed his acquaintance with the duchess, whom he had seen before.

In the church were the prince’s relations and friends, and the Princess Alicia’s relations and friends, and the seventeen princes and princesses, and the baby, and a crowd of the neighbours. The marriage was beautiful beyond expression. The duchess was bridesmaid, and beheld the ceremony from the pulpit, where she was supported by the cushion of the desk.

Grandmarina gave a magnificent wedding-feast afterwards, in which there was everything and more to eat, and everything and more to drink. The wedding-cake was delicately ornamented with white satin ribbons, frosted silver, and white lilies, and was forty-two yards round.

When Grandmarina had drunk her love to the young couple, and Prince Certainpersonio had made a speech, and everybody had cried, Hip, hip, hip, hurrah! Grandmarina announced to the king and queen that in future there would be eight quarter-days in every year, except in leap-year, when there would be ten. She then turned to Certainpersonio and Alicia, and said, ‘My dears, you will have thirty-five children, and they will all be good and beautiful. Seventeen of your children will be boys, and eighteen will be girls. The hair of the whole of your children will curl naturally. They will never have the measles, and will have recovered from the whooping-cough before being born.’

On hearing such good news, everybody cried out ‘Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!’ again.

‘It only remains,’ said Grandmarina in conclusion, ‘to make an end of the fish-bone.’

So she took it from the hand of the Princess Alicia, and it instantly flew down the throat of the dreadful little snapping pug-dog, next door, and choked him, and he expired in convulsions.

 

PART III. - ROMANCE. FROM THE PEN OF LIEUT.-COL. ROBIN REDFORTH (Aged nine.)

 

THE subject of our present narrative would appear to have devoted himself to the pirate profession at a comparatively early age. We find him in command of a splendid schooner of one hundred guns loaded to the muzzle, ere yet he had had a party in honour of his tenth birthday.

It seems that our hero, considering himself spited by a Latin-grammar master, demanded the satisfaction due from one man of honour to another. - Not getting it, he privately withdrew his haughty spirit from such low company, bought a second-hand pocket-pistol, folded up some sandwiches in a paper bag, made a bottle of Spanish liquorice-water, and entered on a career of valour.

It were tedious to follow Boldheart (for such was his name) through the commencing stages of his story. Suffice it, that we find him bearing the rank of Capt. Boldheart, reclining in full uniform on a crimson hearth-rug spread out upon the quarter-deck of his schooner ‘The Beauty,’ in the China seas. It was a lovely evening; and, as his crew lay grouped about him, he favoured them with the following melody:

 

O landsmen are folly! O pirates are jolly! O diddleum Dolly, Di! CHORUS. - Heave yo.

 

The soothing effect of these animated sounds floating over the waters, as the common sailors united their rough voices to take up the rich tones of Boldheart, may be more easily conceived than described.

It was under these circumstances that the look-out at the masthead gave the word, ‘Whales!’

All was now activity.

‘Where away?’ cried Capt. Boldheart, starting up.

‘On the larboard bow, sir,’ replied the fellow at the masthead, touching his hat. For such was the height of discipline on board of ‘The Beauty,’ that, even at that height, he was obliged to mind it, or be shot through the head.

‘This adventure belongs to me,’ said Boldheart. ‘Boy, my harpoon. Let no man follow;’ and leaping alone into his boat, the captain rowed with admirable dexterity in the direction of the monster.

All was now excitement.

‘He nears him!’ said an elderly seaman, following the captain through his spy-glass.

‘He strikes him!’ said another seaman, a mere stripling, but also with a spy-glass.

‘He tows him towards us!’ said another seaman, a man in the full vigour of life, but also with a spy-glass.

In fact, the captain was seen approaching, with the huge bulk following. We will not dwell on the deafening cries of ‘Boldheart! Boldheart!’ with which he was received, when, carelessly leaping on the quarter-deck, he presented his prize to his men. They afterwards made two thousand four hundred and seventeen pound ten and sixpence by it.

Ordering the sail to be braced up, the captain now stood W.N.W. ‘The Beauty’ flew rather than floated over the dark blue waters. Nothing particular occurred for a fortnight, except taking, with considerable slaughter, four Spanish galleons, and a snow from South America, all richly laden. Inaction began to tell upon the spirits of the men. Capt. Boldheart called all hands aft, and said, ‘My lads, I hear there are discontented ones among ye. Let any such stand forth.’

After some murmuring, in which the expressions, ‘Ay, ay, sir!’ ‘Union Jack,’ ‘Avast,’ ‘Starboard,’ ‘Port,’ ‘Bowsprit,’ and similar indications of a mutinous undercurrent, though subdued, were audible, Bill Boozey, captain of the foretop, came out from the rest. His form was that of a giant, but he quailed under the captain’s eye.

‘What are your wrongs?’ said the captain.

‘Why, d’ye see, Capt. Boldheart,’ replied the towering manner, ‘I’ve sailed, man and boy, for many a year, but I never yet know’d the milk served out for the ship’s company’s teas to be so sour as ‘tis aboard this craft.’

At this moment the thrilling cry, ‘Man overboard!’ announced to the astonished crew that Boozey, in stepping back, as the captain (in mere thoughtfulness) laid his hand upon the faithful pocket-pistol which he wore in his belt, had lost his balance, and was struggling with the foaming tide.

All was now stupefaction.

But with Capt. Boldheart, to throw off his uniform coat, regardless of the various rich orders with which it was decorated, and to plunge into the sea after the drowning giant, was the work of a moment. Maddening was the excitement when boats were lowered; intense the joy when the captain was seen holding up the drowning man with his teeth; deafening the cheering when both were restored to the main deck of ‘The Beauty.’ And, from the instant of his changing his wet clothes for dry ones, Capt. Boldheart had no such devoted though humble friend as William Boozey.

Boldheart now pointed to the horizon, and called the attention of his crew to the taper spars of a ship lying snug in harbour under the guns of a fort.

‘She shall be ours at sunrise,’ said he. ‘Serve out a double allowance of grog, and prepare for action.’

All was now preparation.

When morning dawned, after a sleepless night, it was seen that the stranger was crowding on all sail to come out of the harbour and offer battle. As the two ships came nearer to each other, the stranger fired a gun and hoisted Roman colours. Boldheart then perceived her to be the Latin-grammar master’s bark. Such indeed she was, and had been tacking about the world in unavailing pursuit, from the time of his first taking to a roving life.

Boldheart now addressed his men, promising to blow them up if he should feel convinced that their reputation required it, and giving orders that the Latin-grammar master should be taken alive. He then dismissed them to their quarters, and the fight began with a broadside from ‘The Beauty.’ She then veered around, and poured in another. ‘The Scorpion’ (so was the bark of the Latin-grammar master appropriately called) was not slow to return her fire; and a terrific cannonading ensued, in which the guns of ‘The Beauty’ did tremendous execution.

The Latin-grammar master was seen upon the poop, in the midst of the smoke and fire, encouraging his men. To do him justice, he was no craven, though his white hat, his short gray trousers, and his long snuff-coloured surtout reaching to his heels (the self-same coat in which he had spited Boldheart), contrasted most unfavourably with the brilliant uniform of the latter. At this moment, Boldheart, seizing a pike and putting himself at the head of his men, gave the word to board.

A desperate conflict ensued in the hammock-nettings, - or somewhere in about that direction, - until the Latin-grammar master, having all his masts gone, his hull and rigging shot through, and seeing Boldheart slashing a path towards him, hauled down his flag himself, gave up his sword to Boldheart, and asked for quarter. Scarce had he been put into the captain’s boat, ere ‘The Scorpion’ went down with all on board.

On Capt. Boldheart’s now assembling his men, a circumstance occurred. He found it necessary with one blow of his cutlass to kill the cook, who, having lost his brother in the late action, was making at the Latin-grammar master in an infuriated state, intent on his destruction with a carving-knife.

Capt. Boldheart then turned to the Latin-grammar master, severely reproaching him with his perfidy, and put it to his crew what they considered that a master who spited a boy deserved.

They answered with one voice, ‘Death.’

‘It may be so,’ said the captain; ‘but it shall never be said that Boldheart stained his hour of triumph with the blood of his enemy. Prepare the cutter.’

The cutter was immediately prepared.

‘Without taking your life,’ said the captain, ‘I must yet for ever deprive you of the power of spiting other boys. I shall turn you adrift in this boat. You will find in her two oars, a compass, a bottle of rum, a small cask of water, a piece of pork, a bag of biscuit, and my Latin grammar. Go! and spite the natives, if you can find any.’

Deeply conscious of this bitter sarcasm, the unhappy wretch was put into the cutter, and was soon left far behind. He made no effort to row, but was seen lying on his back with his legs up, when last made out by the ship’s telescopes.

A stiff breeze now beginning to blow, Capt. Boldheart gave orders to keep