Homeward Bound, James Fenimore Cooper [ebook reader for pc .TXT] 📗

his old musty name, or to honour dry bones."

"Served him right, sir, and like men of spirit! If he wants a place called after himself, let him live, like other people. A dead man has no occasion for a name, and there should be a law passed, that when a man slips his cables, he should bequeath his name to some honest fellow who has a worse one. It might be well to compel all great men in particular, to leave their renown to those who cannot get any for themselves."

"I will venture to suggest an improvement on the name, if Mr. Dodge will permit me," said Mr. Sharp, who had been an amused listener to the short dialogue. "Dodgeople is a little short, and may be offensive by its brusquerie . By inserting a single letter, it will become Dodge-people; or, there is the alternative of Dodge-adrianople, which will be a truly sonorous and republican title. Adrian was an emperor, and even Mr. Dodge might not disdain the conjunction."

By this time, the editor of the Active Inquirer began to be extremely elevated--for this was assailing him on his weakest side--and he laughed and rubbed his hands as if he thought the joke particularly pleasant. This person had also a peculiarity of judgment that was singularly in opposition to all his open professions, a peculiarity, however, that belongs rather to his class than to the individual member of it. Ultra as a democrat and an American, Mr. Dodge had a sneaking predilection in favour of foreign opinions. Although practice had made him intimately acquainted with all the frauds, deceptions, and vileness of the ordinary arts of paragraph-making, he never failed to believe religiously in the veracity, judgment, good faith, honesty and talents of anything that was imported in the form of types. He had been weekly, for years, accusing his nearest brother of the craft, of lying, and he could not be altogether ignorant of his own propensity in the same way; but, notwithstanding all this experience in the secrets of the trade, whatever reached him from a European journal, he implicitely swallowed whole. One, who knew little of the man, might have supposed he feigned credulity to answer his own purposes; but this would be doing injustice to his faith, which was perfect, being based on that provincial admiration, and provincial ignorance, that caused the countryman, who went to London for the first time, to express his astonishment at finding the king a man. As was due to his colonial origin, his secret awe and reverence for an Englishman was in proportion to his protestations of love for the people, and his deference for rank was graduated on a scale suited to the heart-burning and jealousies he entertained for all whom he felt to be his superiors. Indeed, one was the cause of the other; for they who really are indifferent to their own social position, are usually equally indifferent to that of others, so long as they are not made to feel the difference by direct assumptions of superiority.

When Mr. Sharp, whom even Mr. Dodge had discovered to be a gentleman,--and an English gentleman of course,--entered into the trifling of the moment, therefore, so far from detecting the mystification, the latter was disposed to believe himself a subject of interest with this person, against whose exclusiveness and haughty reserve, notwithstanding, he had been making side-hits ever since the ship had sailed. But the avidity with which the Americans of Mr. Dodge's temperament are apt to swallow the crumbs of flattery that fall from the Englishman's table, is matter of history, and the editor himself was never so happy as when he could lay hold of a paragraph to republish, in which a few words of comfort were doled out by the condescending mother to the never-dying faith of the daughter. So far, therefore, from taking umbrage at what had been said, he continued the subject long after the captain had gone to his duty, and with so much perseverance that Paul Blunt, as soon as Mr. Sharp escaped, took an occasion to compliment that gentleman on his growing intimacy with the refined and single-minded champion of the people. The other admitted his indiscretion; and if the affair had no other consequences, it afforded these two fine young men a moment's merriment, at a time when anxiety had been fast getting the ascendency over their more cheerful feelings. When they endeavoured to make Miss Effingham share in the amusement, however, that young lady heard them with gravity; for the meanness of the act discovered by Nanny Sidley, had indisposed her to treat the subject of their comments with the familiarity of even ridicule. Perceiving this, though unable to account for it, the gentlemen changed the discourse, and soon became sufficiently grave by Contemplating their own condition.

The situation of the Montauk was now certainly one to excite uneasiness in those who were little acquainted with the sea, as well as in those who were. It was very much like that for which Miss Effingham's nurse had pined, having many rocks and sands in sight, with the land at no great distance. In order that the reader may understand it more clearly, we shall describe it with greater minuteness.

To the westward of the ship lay the ocean, broad, smooth, glittering, but, heaving and setting, with its eternal breathings, which always resemble the respiration of some huge monster. Between the vessel and this waste of water, and within three hundred feet of the first, stretched an irregular line of ripple, dotted here and there with the heads of low naked rocks, marking the presence and direction of the reef.

This was all that would interpose between the basin and the raging billows, should another storm occur; but Captain Truck thought this would suffice so far to break the waves as to render the anchorage sufficiently secure. Astern of the ship, however, a rounded ridge of sand began to appear as the tide fell, within forty fathoms of the vessel, and as the bottom was hard, and difficult to get an anchor into it, there was the risk of dragging on this bank. We say that the bottom was hard, for the reader should know that it is not the weight of the anchor that secures the ship, but the hold its pointed fluke and broad palm get of the ground. The coast itself was distant less than a mile, and the entire basin within the reef was fast presenting spits of sand, as the water fell on the ebb. Still there were many channels, and it would have been possible, for one who knew their windings, to have sailed a ship several leagues among them, without passing the inlet; these channels forming a sort of intricate net-work, in every direction from the vessel.

When Captain Truck had coolly studied all the peculiarities of his position, he set about the duty of securing his ship, in good earnest. The two light boats were brought under the bows, and the stream anchor was lowered, and fastened to a spar that lay across both. This anchor was carried to the bank astern, and, by dint of sheer strength, was laid over its summit with a fluke buried to the shank in the hard sand. By means of a hawser, and a purchase applied to its end, the men on the banks next roused the chain out, and shackled it to the ring. The bight was hove-in, and the ship secured astern, so as to prevent a shift of wind, off the land, from forcing her on the reef. As no sea could come from this quarter, the single anchor and chain were deemed sufficient for this purpose. As soon as the boats were at liberty, and before the chain had been got ashore, two kedges were carried to the reef, and laid among the rocks, in such a way that their flukes and stocks equally got hold of the projections. To these kedges lighter chains were secured; and when all the bights were hove-in, to as equal a strain as possible. Captain Truck pronounced his ship in readiness to ride out any gale that would be likely to blow. So far as the winds and waves might affect her, the Montauk was, in truth, reasonably safe; for on the side where danger was most to be apprehended, she had two bowers down, and four parts of smaller chain were attached to the two kedges. Nor had Captain Truck fallen into the common error of supposing he had so much additional strength in his fastenings, by simply running the chains through the rings, but he had caused each to be separately fastened, both in-board and to the kedges, by which means each length of the chain formed a distinct and independent fastening of itself.

So absolute is the sovereignty of a ship, that no one had presumed to question the master as to his motives for all this extraordinary precaution, though it was the common impression that he intended to remain where they were until the wind became favourable, or at least, until all danger of being thrown upon the coast, from the currents and the ground-swell, should have ceased, Paul Blunt observed, that he fancied it was the intention to take advantage of the smooth water within the reef, to get up a better and a more efficient set of jury-masts. But Captain Truck soon removed all doubts by letting the truth be known. While on board the Danish wreck, he had critically examined her spars, sails, and rigging, and, though adapted for a ship two hundred tons smaller than the Montauk, he was of opinion they might be fitted to the latter vessel, and made to answer all the necessary purposes for crossing the ocean, provided the Mussulmans and the weather would permit the transfer.

"We have smooth water and light airs," he said, when concluding his explanation, "and the current sets southwardly along this coast; by means of all our force, hard working, a kind Providence, and our own enterprise, I hope yet to see the Montauk enter the port of New York, with royals set, and ready to carry sail on a wind. The seaman who cannot rig his ship with sticks and ropes and blocks enough, might as well stay ashore, Mr. Dodge, and publish an hebdomadal. And so, my dear young lady, by looking along the land, the day after to-morrow, in the northern board here, you may expect to see a raft booming down upon you that will cheer your heart, and once more raise the hope of a Christmas dinner in New York, in all lovers of good fare."


Chapter XVIII


Here, in the sands. Thee I'll rake up--

LEAR


His mind made up, his intentions announced, and his ship in readiness, Captain Truck gave his orders to proceed with promptitude and clearness. The ladies remaining behind, he observed that the two Messrs. Effingham, as a matter of course, would stay with them as protectors, though little could harm them where they were.

"I propose to leave the ship in the care of Mr. Blunt," he said, "for I perceive something about that gentleman which denotes a nautical instinct. If Mr. Sharp choose to remain also, your society will be the more agreeable, and in exchange, gentlemen, I ask the favour of the strong arms of all your servants. Mr. Monday is my man in fair or foul, and so, I flatter myself, will be Sir George Templemore; and as for Mr. Dodge, if he stay behind, why the Active Inquirer will miss a notable paragraph, for there shall be no historian to the expedition, but one of my own appointing. Mr. Saunders shall have the honour of cooking