Philosopher Jack, R. M. Ballantyne [mobi reader android TXT] 📗
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
Book online «Philosopher Jack, R. M. Ballantyne [mobi reader android TXT] 📗». Author R. M. Ballantyne
Baldwin Burr and Buckley convoyed them a day’s journey on the way.
“I’m sorry you’re goin’, Miss Polly,” said Baldwin, riding up alongside of our little heroine, who ambled along on a glossy black mule.
“I am not sorry that we’re going,” replied Polly, “but I’m sorry—very sorry—that we are leaving you behind us, Baldwin. You’re such a dear old goose, and I’m so fond of teaching you. I don’t know how I shall be able to get on without you.”
“Yes, that’s it, Miss Polly,” returned the bluff seaman, with a look of perplexity. “You’re so cram full of knowledge, an’ I’m sitch an empty cask, that it’s bin quite a pleasure to let you run over into me, so to speak.”
“Come, Baldwin, don’t joke,” said Polly, with a quick glance.
“I’m far from jokin’, Miss Polly,” returned the seaman; “I’m in downright earnest. An’ then, to lose Philosopher Jack on the selfsame day. It comes hard on an old salt. The way that young man has strove to drive jogriffy, an’ ’rithmetic, an navigation into my head is wonderful; an’ all in vain too! It’s a’most broke his heart—to say nothin’ of my own. It’s quite clear that I’ll never make a good seaman. Howsever, it’s a comfort to know that I’ve got edication enough for a landsman—ain’t it, Miss Polly?”
Polly laughed, and admitted that that was indeed a consoling reflection.
While these two were conversing thus, Jack and Jacob Buckley were riding together in the rear of the party. They had been talking as if under some sort of restraint. At last Jack turned to his companion with a kind, straightforward look.
“It’s of no use, Buckley, my beating about the bush longer. This is likely to be the last time that you and I shall meet on earth, and I can’t part without saying how anxious I am that you should persevere in the course of temperance which you have begun.”
“Thank you, Jack, thank you,” said the miner heartily, “for the interest you take in me. I do intend to persevere.”
“I know that, Jacob, I know it; but I want you to believe that you have no chance of success unless you first become a follower of Jesus Christ. He is the only Saviour from sin. Your resolutions, without Him, cannot succeed. I have found that out, and I want you to believe it, Jacob.”
“I do believe it,” said the miner earnestly. “Dear Dan used to tell me that—often—often. Dear Dan!”
“Now,” added Jack, “we shall have to part soon. There is another thing I want to mention. There is a bag of gold with my name on it, worth some few hundred pounds, more or less. I want you to accept it, for I know that you have not been so successful as we have during our short—”
“But I won’t take it, Jack,” interrupted Buckley.
“Yes you will, Jacob, from an old friend and comrade. It may tide you over a difficulty, who knows? Luck does not always last, as the saying goes.”
Still Buckley shook his head.
“Well, then,” continued Jack, “you can’t help yourself, for I’ve left the bag under your own pillow in the tent!”
Buckley’s reply was checked by a shout from Captain Samson. They had reached the parting point—a clump of trees on an eminence that overlooked a long stretch of undulating park-like region. Here they dismounted to shake hands and say farewell. Little was said at the time, but moistened eyes and the long grasp of hard muscular hands told something of feelings to which the lips could give no utterance.
The party could see that knoll for miles after leaving it, and whenever Polly reined up and looked back, she saw the sturdy forms of Baldwin Burr and Jacob Buckley waving a kerchief or a hat, standing side by side and gazing after them. At last they appeared like mere specks on the landscape, and the knoll itself finally faded from their view.
At San Francisco they found their vessel, the Rainbow, a large full-rigged ship, ready for sea. Embarking with their boxes of gold-dust they bade farewell to the golden shore, where so many young and vigorous men have landed in hopeful enthusiasm, to meet, too often, with disappointment, if not with death.
Our friends, being among the fortunate few, left it with joy.
The Rainbow shook out her sails to a favouring breeze, and, sweeping out upon the great Pacific, was soon bowling along the western coast of South America, in the direction of Cape Horn.
The fair wind that swept the good ship Rainbow away from California’s golden shores carried her quickly into a fresh and purer atmosphere, moral as well as physical. It seemed to most, if not all, of the gold-finders as if their brains had been cleared of golden cobwebs. They felt like convalescents from whom a low fever had suddenly departed, leaving them subdued, restful, calm, and happy.
“It’s more like a dream than a reality,” observed Ben Trench one day, as he and Polly sat on the after part of the vessel, gazing out upon the tranquil sea.
“What seems like a dream?” asked Philosopher Jack, coming aft at the moment with Watty Wilkins, and sitting down beside them.
“Our recent life in California,” replied Ben. “There was such constant bustle and toil, and restless, feverish activity, both of mind and body; and now everything is so calm and peaceful, and we are so delightfully idle. I can hardly persuade myself that it is not all a dream.”
“Perhaps it is,” said Philosopher Jack. “There are men, you know, who hold that everything is a dream; that matter is a mere fancy or conception, and that there is nothing real or actually in existence but mind.”
“Bah!” exclaimed Watty with contempt; “what would these philosophers say if matter, in the shape of a fist, were to hit them on their ridiculous noses?”
“They’d say that they only imagined a fist and fancied a blow, I suppose,” returned Jack.
“And would they say that the pain and the blood were imagination also?”
“I suppose they would.”
“But what if I were to come on them slily behind and hit them on their pates before they had a chance to see or to exert their terribly real and powerful minds?” demanded Watty.
“You must ask one of themselves, Watty, for I don’t know much about their views; indeed, I’m not sure that I have represented them correctly, though it’s very likely I have, for there is no species of nonsense under the sun that men have not been found to hold and defend with more or less vigour.”
“Would you not call that a proof of the Creator’s intention that man should exercise the investigative powers of his mind?” asked Ben.
“I would call it a proof of man’s depravity,” said Wilkins.
“What does Polly think?” asked Jack, with an amused look at the child, whose fair brow wore an anxious little frown as she tried to understand.
“I think it’s a proof of both,” replied Polly, with a blush and a laugh; “we have got the power to think and speak and reason, and we are sometimes very naughty.”
“Well said, Polly; we must call you the philosopher in future,” cried Watty. “But Jack,” he added, with a perplexed air, “it seems to me that we live in such a world of confusion, both as to the limited amount of our knowledge, and the extent of our differences of opinion, while presumptuous incapacity attempts to teach us on the one hand, and designing iniquity, or pure prejudice, seeks to mislead us on the other, and misconception of one’s meaning and motives all round makes such a muddle of the whole that—that—it seems to me the search after truth is almost hopeless, at least to ordinary minds.”
“I admit it to be a great difficulty,” replied Jack, “but it is by no means hopeless. We must not forget that the world is well supplied with extraordinary minds to keep the ordinary minds right.”
“True, but when the extraordinary minds differ, what are the poor ordinary ones to do?” asked Watty.
“Use their brains, Watty, use their brains,” said Captain Samson, who had come aft, and been listening to the conversation. “Your brains, whether good or bad, were given to be used, not to be sold. The power to reason is a gift that is not bestowed only on extraordinary minds. The unlearned are sometimes better reasoners than the learned, though, of course, they haven’t got so many tools to work with. Still, they are sufficiently furnished with all that’s needful to run the race that is set before them. God has given to every man—civilised and savage—a brain to think with, a heart to feel with, a frame to work with, a conscience to guide him, and a world, with all its wonderful stores, in which to do what he will. Conscience—which, I think, is well named the voice of God in man—tells him to do right, and forbids him to do wrong; his heart glows with a certain degree of pleasure when he does well, and sinks, more or less, when he does ill; his reason tells him, more or less correctly, what is right, and what is wrong. The Word of God is the great chart given to enlighten our understandings and guide us heavenward. As my reason tells me to go to my charts for safe direction at sea, so every man’s reason will tell him to go to God’s revealed Word, when he believes he has got it. There he will find that Jesus Christ is the centre of the Word, the sum and substance of it, that he cannot believe in or accept the Saviour except by the power of the Holy Spirit. He will also find the blessed truth that God has promised the Spirit to those who simply ‘ask’ for Him. There is no difficulty in all this. The great and numberless difficulties by which we are undoubtedly surrounded are difficulties of detail, which we may be more or less successful in solving, according to our powers of mind, coupled with our submission to the revealed will of God. To some extent we fail and get into trouble because we lazily, or carelessly, let other men think for us, instead of making use of other men’s thoughts to help us to think for ourselves. Depend upon it, Watty, we won’t be able to justify ourselves at the judgment day by saying that things were too deep for us, that things seemed to be in such a muddle that it was of no use trying to clear ’em up. Why, what would you say of the mainspring of a watch if it were suddenly to exclaim, ‘I’ll give up trying! Here am I—so powerful and energetic, and so well able to spin round—checked, and hindered, and harassed by wheels and pinions and levers, some going this way, and some going that way, all at sixes and sevens, and all for no good end that I can see, buried as I am in this dark hole and scarcely allowed to move at all?’ Would it be right or reasonable to charge the watchmaker with having made the watch in vain, or made it wrong? Of this I at least am convinced, that God is perfect, and that all things are working towards a good end, God’s sovereignty, our mysterious free-will and personal responsibility being among these ‘all things.’”
While Captain Samson was discoursing on these important subjects, the look-out on the forecastle reported a sail on the weather-bow.
“She’s a whaler, I do believe, and
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