The Red Eric, Robert Michael Ballantyne [free ebook novel txt] 📗

with a rope's-end once till they wos fit to bust, and all for nothin' but skylarkin'? They'll all go in the same boat with me, 'cept perhaps the cook, who is named Baldwin. He's a cross-grained critter, an'll stan' by the cap'en through thick an thin, an' so will the carpenter--Box they call him--he's dead agin us; but that's all."

"Then I'll do it at once," cried Captain Dunning, rising and putting on his hat firmly, as a man does when he has made a great resolve, which he more than half suspects will get him into a world of difficulties and trouble.

"I s'pose I may set here till ye come back?" inquired Dick Jones, who now wore a dim mysterious aspect, in consequence of the cloud of smoke in which he had enveloped himself.

"You may sit there till they turn you out; but come and take breakfast with me at the same hour to-morrow, will ye?"

"Won't I?"

"Then good-day."

So saying, the captain left the coffee-house, and hurried to his sisters' cottage, where he rightly conjectured he should find Glynn Proctor. Without telling his sisters the result of the interview with the "rude seaman," he took Glynn's arm and sallied forth in search of Tim Rokens and Mr Millons, both of whom they discovered enjoying their pipes, after a hearty breakfast, in a small, unpretending, but excellent and comfortable "sailors' home," in the dirty little street before referred to.

The greater part of the crew of the late _Red Eric_ (now "sticks and stivers") were found in the same place, engaged in much the same occupation, and to these, in solemn conclave assembled, Captain Dunning announced his intention of opening a law-suit against the captain of the _Termagant_ for the unlawful appropriation of the whale harpooned by Glynn. The men highly approved of what they called a "shore-going scrimmage," and advised the captain to go and have the captain and crew of the _Termagant_ "put in limbo right off."

Thus advised and encouraged, Captain Dunning went to a lawyer, who, after hearing the case, stated it as his opinion that it was a good one, and forthwith set about taking the needful preliminary steps to commencing the action.

Thereafter Captain Dunning walked rapidly home, wiping his hot brow as he went, and entering the parlour of the cottage--the yellow-faced cottage--flung himself on the sofa with a reckless air, and said, "I've done it!"

"Horror!" cried Aunt Martha.

"Misery!" gasped Aunt Jane, who happened to be fondling Ailie at the time of her brother's entrance.

"Is he dead?"

"_Quite_ dead?" added Martha.

"Is _who_ dead?" inquired the captain, in surprise.

"The man--the rude sailor!"

"Dead! No."

"You said just now that you had done it."

"So I have. I've done the deed. I've gone to law."

Had the captain said that he had gone to "sticks and stivers," his sisters could not have been more startled and horrified. They dreaded the law, and hated it with a great and intense hatred, and not without reason; for their father had been ruined in a law-suit, and his father had broken the law, in some political manner they could never clearly understand, and had been condemned by the law to perpetual banishment.

"Will it do you much harm, dear, papa?" inquired Ailie, in great concern.

"Harm? Of course not. I hope it'll do me, and you too, a great deal of good."

"I'm _so_ glad to hear that; for I've heard people say that when you once go into it you never get out of it again."

"So have I," said Aunt Martha, with a deep sigh.

"And so have I," added Aunt Jane, with a deeper sigh, "and I believe it's true."

"It's false!" cried the captain, laughing, "and you are all silly geese; the law is--"

"A bright and glorious institution! A desirable investment for the talents of able men! A machine for justice usually--injustice occasionally--and, like all other good things, often misused, abused, and spoken against!" said Glynn Proctor, at that moment entering the room, and throwing his hat on one chair, and himself on another. "I've had enough of the sea, captain, and have come to resign my situation, and beg for dinner."

"You shall have it immediately, dear Glynn," said Martha, whose heart warmed at the sight of one who had been so kind to her little niece.

"Nay, I'm in no hurry," said Glynn, quickly; "I did but jest, dear madam, as Shakespeare has it. Perhaps it was Milton who said it; one can't be sure; but whenever a truly grand remark escapes you, you're safe to clap it down to Shakespeare."

At this point the servant-girl announced dinner. At the same instant a heavy foot was heard in the passage, and Tim Rokens announced himself, saying that he had just seen the captain's lawyer, and had been sent to say that he wished to see Captain Dunning in the course of the evening.

"Then let him go on wishing till I'm ready to go to him. Meanwhile do you come and dine with us, Rokens, my lad."

Rokens looked awkward, and shuffled a little with his feet, and shook his head.

"Why, what's the matter, man?"

Rokens looked as if he wished to speak, but hesitated.

"If ye please, cap'en, I'd raither not, axin' the ladies' parding. I'd like a word with you in the passage."

"By all means," replied the captain, going out of the room with the sailor. "Now, what's wrong?"

"My flippers, cap'en," said Rokens, thrusting out his hard, thick, enormous hands, which were stained all over with sundry streaks of tar, and were very red as well as extremely clumsy to look at--"I've bin an' washed 'em with hot water and rubbed 'em with grease till I a'most took the skin off, but they won't come clean, and I'm not fit to sit down with ladies."

To this speech the captain replied by seizing Tim Rokens by the collar and dragging him fairly into the parlour.

"Here's a man," cried the captain enthusiastically, presenting him to Martha, "who's sailed with me for nigh thirty years, and is the best harpooner I ever had, and has stuck to me through thick and thin, in fair weather and foul, in heat and cold, and was kinder to Ailie during the last voyage than all the other men put together, exceptin' Glynn, and who tells me his hands are covered with tar, and that he can't wash 'em clean nohow, and isn't fit to dine with ladies; so you will oblige me, Martha, by ordering him to leave the house."

"I will, brother, with pleasure. I order you, Mr Rokens, to leave this house _at your peril_! And I invite you to partake of our dinner, which is now on the table in the next room."

Saying this, Aunt Martha grasped one of the great tar-stained "flippers" in both of her own delicate hands, and shook it with a degree of vigour that Tim Rokens afterwards said he could not have believed possible had he not felt it.

Seeing this, Aunt Jane turned aside and blew her nose violently. Tim Rokens attempted to make a bow, failed, and grinned. The captain cried--"Now, then, heave ahead!" Glynn, in the exuberance of his spirits, uttered a miniature cheer. Ailie gave vent to a laugh, that sounded as sweet as a good song; and the whole party adjourned to the dining-room, where the servant-girl was found in the sulks because dinner was getting rapidly cold, and the cat was found:--


"Prowling round the festal board
On thievish deeds intent."


[See Milton's _Paradise Regained_, latest edition.]


CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.


THE LAW-SUIT--THE BATTLE, AND THE VICTORY.

The great case of Dunning _versus_ Dixon came on at last.

On that day Captain Dunning was in a fever; Glynn Proctor was in a fever; Tim Rokens was in a fever; the Misses Dunning were in two separate fevers--everybody, in fact, on the Dunning side of the case was in a fever of nervous anxiety and mental confusion. As witnesses in the case, they had been precognosced to such an extent by the lawyers that their intellects were almost overturned. On being told that he was to be precognosced. Tim Rokens said stoutly, "He'd like to see the man as 'ud do it"; under the impression that that was the legal term for being kicked, or otherwise maltreated; and on being informed that the word signified merely an examination as to the extent of his knowledge of the facts of the case, he said quietly, "Fire away!" Before they had done firing away, the gallant harpooner was so confused that he began to regard the whole case as already hopeless.

The other men were much in the same condition; but in a private meeting held among themselves the day before the trial, Rokens made the following speech, which comforted them not a little.

"Messmates and shipmates," said Tim, "I'll tell ye wot it is. I'm no lawyer--that's a fact--but I'm a man; an' wot's a man?--it ain't a bundle o' flesh an' bones on two legs, with a turnip a-top o't, is it?"

"Be no manes," murmured Briant, with an approving nod.

"Cer'nly not," remarked Dick Barnes. "I second that motion."

"Good," continued Rokens. "Then, bein' a man, I've got brains enough to see that, if we don't want to contredick one another, we must stick to the truth."

"You don't suppose I'd go fur to tell lies, do you?" said Tarquin quickly.

"In coorse not. But what I mean to say is, that we must stick to what we _knows_ to be the truth, and not be goin' for to guess at it, or _think_ that we knows it, and then swear to it as if we wos certain sure."

"Hear! hear!" from the assembled company.

"In fact," observed Glynn, "let what we say be absolutely true, and say just as little as we can. That's how to manage a good case."

"An', be all manes," added Briant, "don't let any of ye try for to improve matters be volunteerin' yer opinion. Volunteerin' opinions is stuff. Volunteerin' is altogether a bad look-out. I know'd a feller, I did--a strappin' young feller he was, too, more betoken--as volunteered himself to death, he did. To be sure, his wos a case o' volunteerin' into the Louth Militia, and he wos shot, he wos, in a pop'lar riot, as the noosepapers said--a scrimmage, I calls it--so don't let any o' us be goin' for to volunteer opinions w'en nobody axes 'em--no, nor wants 'em."

Briant looked so pointedly at Gurney while delivering this advice that that obese individual felt constrained to look indignant, and inquire whether "them 'ere imperent remarks wos meant for him." To which Briant replied that "they wos meant for him, as well as for ivery man then present." Whereupon Gurney started up and shook his fist across the table at Briant, and Briant made a face at Gurney, at which the assembled company of mariners laughed, and immediately thereafter the meeting was broken up.

Next day the trial came on, and as the case was expected to be more than usually interesting, the house was filled to overflowing long before the hour.

The trial lasted all that day, and all