The Lonely Island: The Refuge of the Mutineers, R. M. Ballantyne [books successful people read TXT] 📗

Jack at once gave him the desired information, told him on the way up all he knew about the fate of the mutineers who had remained at Otaheite, and received in exchange a brief outline of the history of the nine mutineers who had landed on Pitcairn.

The excitement of the two men and their interest in each other increased every moment; the one being full of the idea of having made a wonderful discovery of, as it were, a lost community, the other being equally full of the delight of once more talking to a man—a seaman—a messmate, he might soon say, for he meant to feed him like a prince.

“Get a pig cooked, Molly,” he said, during a brief interval in the conversation, “an’ do it as fast as you can.”

“There’s one a’most ready-baked now,” replied Mrs Adams.

“All right, send the girls for fruit, and make a glorious spread—outside; he’ll like it better than in the house—under the banyan-tree. Sit down, sit down, messmate.” Turning to the sailor, “Man, what a time it is since I’ve used that blessed word! Sit down and have a glass.”

Jack Brace smacked his lips in anticipation, thanked Adams in advance, and drew his sleeve across his mouth in preparation, while his host set a cocoa-nut-cup filled with a whitish substance before him.

“That’s a noo sort of a glass, John Adams,” remarked the man, as he raised and smelt it; “also a strange kind o’ tipple.”

He sipped, and seemed disappointed. Then he sipped again, and seemed pleased.

“What is it, may I ax?”

“It’s milk of the cocoa-nut,” answered Adams.

“Milk o’ the ko-ko-nut, eh? Well, now, that is queer. If you’d ’a called it the milk o’ the cow-cow-nut, I could have believed it. Hows’ever, it ain’t bad, tho’ raither wishy-washy. Got no stronger tipple than that?”

“Nothin’ stronger than that, ’xcept water,” said John, with one of his sly glances; “but it’s a toss up which is the strongest.”

“Well, it’ll be a toss down with me whichever is the strongest,” said the accommodating tar, as he once more raised the cup to his lips, and drained it.

“But, I say, you unhung mutineer, do you mean for to tell me that all them good-lookin’ boys an’ girls are yours?”

He looked round on the crowd of open-mouthed young people, who, from six-foot Toc down to the youngest staggerer, gazed at him solemnly, all eyes and ears.

“No, they ain’t,” answered Adams, with a laugh. “What makes you ask?”

“’Cause they all calls you father.”

“Oh!” replied his host, “that’s only a way they have; but there’s only four of ’em mine, three girls an’ a boy. The rest are the descendants of my eight comrades, who are now dead and gone.”

“Well, now, d’ye know, John Adams, alias Smith, mutineer, as ought to have bin hung but wasn’t, an’ as nobody would have the heart to hang now, even if they had the chance, this here adventur is out o’ sight one o’ the most extraor’nar circumstances as ever did happen to me since I was the length of a marlinspike.”

As Mainmast here entered to announce that the pig was ready for consumption, the amazed mariner was led to a rich repast under the neighbouring banyan-tree. Here he was bereft of speech for a considerable time, whether owing to the application of his jaws to food, or increased astonishment, it is difficult to say.

Before the repast began, Adams, according to custom, stood up, removed his hat, and briefly asked a blessing. To which all assembled, with clasped hands and closed eyes, responded Amen.

This, no doubt, was another source of profound wonder to Jack Brace, but he made no remark at the time. Neither did he remark on the fact that the women did not sit down to eat with the males of the party, but stood behind and served them, conversing pleasantly the while.

After dinner was concluded, and thanks had been returned, Jack Brace leaned his back against one of the descending branches of the banyan-tree, and with a look of supreme satisfaction drew forth a short black pipe.

At sight of this the countenance of Adams flushed, and his eyes almost sparkled.

“There it is again,” he murmured; “the old pipe once more! Let me look at it, Jack Brace; it’s not the first by a long way that I’ve handled.”

Jack handed over the pipe, a good deal amused at the manner of his host, who took the implement of fumigation and examined it carefully, handling it with tender care, as if it were a living and delicate creature. Then he smelt it, then put it in his mouth and gave it a gentle draw, while an expression of pathetic satisfaction passed over his somewhat care-worn countenance.

“The old taste, not a bit changed,” he murmured, shutting his eyes. “Brings back the old ships, and the old messmates, and the old times, and Old England.”

“Come, old feller,” said Jack Brace, “if it’s so powerful, why not light it and have a real good pull, for old acquaintance sake?”

He drew from his pocket flint and tinder, matches being unknown in those days, and began to strike a light, when Adams took the pipe hastily from his mouth and handed it back.

“No, no,” he said, with decision, “it’s only the old associations that it calls up, that’s all. As for baccy, I’ve bin so long without it now, that I don’t want it; and it would only be foolish in me to rouse up the old cravin’. There, you light it, Jack. I’ll content myself wi’ the smell of it.”

“Well, John Adams, have your way. You are king here, you know; nobody to contradict you. So I’ll smoke instead of you, if these young ladies won’t object.”

The young ladies referred to were so far from objecting, that they were burning with impatience to see a real smoker go to work, for the tobacco of the mutineers had been exhausted, and all the pipes broken or lost, before most of them were born.

“And let me tell you, John Adams,” continued the sailor, when the pipe was fairly alight, “I’ve not smoked a pipe in such koorious circumstances since I lit one, an’ had my right fore-finger shot off when I was stuffin’ down the baccy, in the main-top o’ the Victory at the battle o’ Trafalgar. But it was against all rules to smoke in action, an’ served me right. Hows’ever, it got me my discharge, and that’s how I come to be in a Yankee merchantman this good day.”

At the mention of battle and being wounded in action, the old professional sympathies of John Adams were awakened.

“What battle might that have been?” he asked.

“Which?” said Jack.

“Traflegar,” said the other.

Jack Brace took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at Adams, as though he had asked where Adam and Eve had been born. For some time he could not make up his mind how to reply.

“You don’t mean to tell me,” he said at length, “that you’ve never heard of the—battle—of—Trafalgar?”

“Never,” answered Adams, with a faint smile.

“Nor of the great Lord Nelson?”

“Never heard his name till to-day. You forget, Jack, that I’ve not seen a mortal man from Old England, or any other part o’ the civilised world, since the 28th day of April 1789, and that’s full nineteen years ago.”

“That’s true, John; that’s true,” said the seaman, slowly, as if endeavouring to obtain some comprehension of what depths of ignorance the fact implied. “So, I suppose you’ve never heerd tell of—hold on; let me rake up my brain-pan a bit.”

He tilted his straw hat, and scratched his head for a few minutes, puffing the while immense clouds of smoke, to the inexpressible delight of the open-mouthed youngsters around him.

“You—you’ve never heerd tell of Lord Howe, who licked the French off Ushant, somewheres about sixteen years gone by?”

“Never.”

“Nor of the great victories gained in the ’95 by Sir Edward Pellew, an’ Admiral Hotham, an’ Admiral Cornwallis, an’ Lord Bridgeport?”

“No, of coorse ye couldn’t; nor yet of Admiral Duncan, who, in the ’97, (I think it was), beat the Dutch fleet near Camperdown all to sticks. Nor yet of that tremendous fight off Cape Saint Vincent in the same year, when Sir John Jervis, with nothin’ more than fifteen sail o’ the Mediterranean fleet, attacked the Spaniards wi’ their twenty-seven ships o’ the line—line-o’-battle ships, you’ll observe, John Adams—an’ took four of ’em, knocked half of the remainder into universal smash, an’ sunk all the rest?”

“That was splendid!” exclaimed Adams, his martial spirit rising, while the eyes of the young listeners around kept pace with their mouths in dilating.

“Splendid? Pooh!” said Jack Brace, delivering puffs between sentences that resembled the shots of miniature seventy-fours, “that was nothin’ to what followed. Nelson was in that fight, he was, an’ Nelson began to shove out his horns a bit soon after that, I tell you. Well, well,” continued the British tar with a resigned look, “to think of meetin’ a man out of Bedlam who hasn’t heerd of Nelson and the Nile, w’ich, of coorse, ye haven’t. It’s worth while comin’ all this way to see you.”

Adams smiled and said, “Let’s hear all about it.”

“All about it, John? Why, it would take me all night to tell you all about it,” (there was an audible gasp of delight among the listeners), “and I haven’t time for that; but you must know that Lord Nelson, bein’ Sir Horatio Nelson at that time, chased the French fleet, under Admiral Brueys, into Aboukir Bay, (that’s on the coast of Egypt), sailed in after ’em, anchored alongside of ’em, opened on ’em wi’ both broadsides at once, an’ blew them all to bits.”

“You don’t say that, Jack Brace!”

“Yes, I do, John Adams; an’ nine French line-o’-battle ships was took, two was burnt, two escaped, and the biggest o’ the lot, the great three-decker, the Orient, was blowed up, an’ sent to the bottom. It was a thorough-goin’ piece o’ business that, I tell you, an’ Nelson meant it to be, for w’en he gave the signal to go into close action, he shouted, ‘Victory or Westminster Abbey.’”

“What did he mean by that?” asked Adams.

“Why, don’t you see, Westminster Abbey is the old church in London where they bury the great nobs o’ the nation in; there’s none but great nobs there, you know—snobs not allowed on no account whatever. So he meant, of coorse, victory or death, d’ye see? After which he’d be put into Westminster Abbey. An’ death it was to many a good man that day. Why, if you take even the Orient alone, w’en she was blowed up, Admiral Brueys himself an’ a thousand men went up along with her, an’ never came down again, so far as we know.”

“It must have bin bloody work,” said Adams.

“I believe you, my boy,” continued the sailor, “it was bloody work. There was some of our chaps that was always for reasonin’ about things, an’ would never take anything on trust, ’xcept their own inventions, who used to argufy that it was an awful waste o’ human life, to say nothin’ o’ treasure, (as they called it), all for nothin’. I used to wonder sometimes why them reasoners jined the sarvice at all, but to be sure most of ’em had been pressed. To my thinkin’, war wouldn’t be worth a brass farthin’ if there wasn’t a deal o’ blood and thunder about it; an’, of coorse, if we’re goin’ to have that sort o’ thing we must pay for it. Then, we didn’t do it for nothin’. Is it nothin’ to have the honour an’ glory of lickin’ the Mounseers an’ bein’ able to sing ‘Britannia rules the waves?’”

John Adams, who was not fond of argument, and did not agree with some of Jack’s reasoning, said, “P’r’aps;” and then, drawing closer to his new friend with deepening interest, said, “Well, Jack, what more has happened?”

“What more? Why, I’ll have to start a fresh pipe before I can