Afloat and Ashore, James Fenimore Cooper [romantic story to read TXT] 📗

asking."

"Thank'ee, my dear boys--thank'ee, with all my heart and soul," returned the honest fellow, dashing the moisture from his eyes, with the back of his hand. "I believe you would, boys; I do believe you would, one or both. I am glad, Miles, you came up into this bloody top, for I wouldn't like to let your reg'lar 'long-shore harpies see a man of my time of life, and one that has been to sea, now, man and boy, close on to forty years, with as much blubber about him, as one of your right whales. Well--and now for the log; for I suppose you'll insist on overhauling it, lads?"

"That we shall; and see you miss no leaf of it. Be as particular as if it were overhauled in an insurance case."

"Ay; they're bloody knaves, sometimes, them underwriters; und a fellow need be careful to get his dues out of them--that is to say, some ; others, ag'in, are gentlemen, down to their shoe-buckles, and no sooner see a poor shipwrecked devil, than they open their tills, and begin to count out, before he has opened his mouth."

"Well, but your own adventures, my old friend; you forget we are dying with curiosity."

"Ay--your cur'osity's a troublesome inmate, and will never be quiet as long as one tries to keep it under hatches; especially female cur'osity. Well, I must gratify you; and so I'll make no more bones about it, though its giving an account of my own obstinacy and folly. I reckon, now, my boys, you missed me the day the ship sailed from the island?"

"That we did, and supposed you had got tired of your experiment before it began," I answered, "so were off, before we were ourselves."

"You had reason for so thinking; though you were out in your reckoning, too. No; it happened in this fashion. After you left me, I began to generalize over my sitiation, and I says to myself, says I, 'Moses Marble, them lads will never consent to sail and leave you here, on this island, alone like a bloody hermit,' says I. 'If you want to hold on,' says I, 'and try your hand at a hermitage,' says I, 'or to play Robinson Crusoe,' says I, 'you must be out, of the way when the Crisis, sails'--boys, what's become of the old ship? Not a word have I heard about her, yet!"

"She was loading for London, when we sailed, her owners intending to send her the same voyage over again."

"And they refused to let you have her, Miles, on account of your youth, notwithstanding all you did for them?"

"Not so; they pressed me to keep her, but I preferred a ship of my own. The Dawn is my property, Master Moses!"

"Thank God! then there is one honest chap among the owners. And how did she behave? Had you any trouble with the pirates?"

Perceiving the utter uselessness of attempting to hear his own story before I rendered an account of the Crisis, and her exploits, I gave Marble a history of our voyage, from the time we parted down to the day we reached New York.

"And that scaramouch of a schooner that the Frenchman gave us, in his charity?"

"The Pretty Poll! She got home safe, was sold, and is now in the West-India trade. There is a handsome balance, amounting to some fourteen hundred dollars, in the owners' hands, coming to you from prize-money and wages."

It is not in nature, for any man to be sorry he has money. I saw by Marble's eyes, that this sum, so unusually large for him to possess, formed a new tie to the world, and that he fancied himself a much happier man in possessing it. He looked at me earnestly, for quite a minute, and then remarked, I make no doubt with sincere regret--

"Miles, if I had a mother living, now, that money might make her old age comfortable! It seems that they who have no mothers, have money, and they who have no money, have mothers."

I waited a moment for Marble to recover his self-command, and then urged him to continue his story.

"I was telling you how I generalized over my sitiation," resumed the ex-mate, "as soon as I found myself alone in the hut. I came to the conclusion that I should be carried off by force, if I remained till next day; and so I got into the launch, carried her out of the lagoon, taking care to give the ship a berth, went through the reef, and kept turning to windward, until day-break. By that time, the island was quite out of sight, though I saw the upper sails of the ship, as soon as you got her under way. I kept the top-gallant-sails in sight, until I made the island, again; and as you went off, I ran in, and took possession of my dominions, with no one to dispute my will, or to try to reason me out of my consait."

"I am glad to hear you term that notion a conceit, for, certainly, it was not reason. You soon discovered your mistake, my old mess-mate, and began to think of home."

"I soon discovered, Miles, that if I had neither father, nor mother, brother nor sister, that I had a country and friends. The bit of marble on which I was found in the stone-cutter's yard, then seemed as dear to me as a gold cradle is to a king's son; and I thought of you, and all the rest of you--nay, I yearned after you, as a mother would yearn for her children."

"Poor fellow, you were solitary enough, I dare say--had you no amusement with your pigs and poultry?"

"For a day or two, they kept me pretty busy. But, by the end of a week, I discovered that pigs and poultry were not made to keep company with man. I had consaited that I could pass the rest of my days in the bosom of my own family, like any other man who had made, his fortune and retired; but, I found my household too small for such a life as that. My great mistake was in supposing that the Marble family could be happy in its own circle."

This was said bitterly, though it was said drolly, and, while it made

Talcott and myself laugh, it also made us sorry.

"I fell into another mistake, however, boys," Marble continued, "and it might as well be owned. I took it into my head that I should be all alone on the island, but I found to my cost, that the devil insisted on having his share. I'll tell you how it is, Miles; a man must either look ahead, or look astarn; there is no such thing as satisfying himself with the present moorings. Now, this was my misfortune; for, ahead I had nothing to look forward to; and astarn, what comfort had I in overhauling past sins!"

"I think I can understand your difficulties, my friend; how did you manage to get rid of them?"

"I left the island. You had put the Frenchman's launch in capital condition, and all I had to do was to fill up the breakers with fresh water, kill a hog and salt him away, put on board a quantity of biscuit, and be off. As for eatables, you know there was no scarcity on the island, and I took my choice. I make no doubt there are twenty hogsheads of undamaged sugars, at this very moment, in the hold of that wreck, and on the beach of the island. I fed my poultry on it, the whole time I staid."

"And so you abandoned Marble Land to the pig's and the fowls?"

"I did, indeed, Miles; and I hope the poor creaturs will have a comfortable time of it. I gave 'em what the lawyers call a quit-claim, and sailed two months to a day after you went off in the Crisis."

"I should think, old shipmate, that your voyage must have been as solitary and desperate as your life ashore."

"I'm amazed to hear, you say that. I'm never solitary at sea, one has so much to do in taking care of his craft; and then he can always look forward to the day he'll get in. But this generalizing, night and day, without any port ahead, and little comfort in looking astarn, will soon fit a man for Bedlam. I just: weathered Cape Crazy, I can tell you, lads; and that, too, in the white water! As for my v'y'ge being desperate, what was there to make it so, I should like to know?"

"You must have been twelve or fifteen hundred miles from any island where you could look forward to anything like safety; and that is a distance one would rather not travel all alone on the high seas."

"Pshaw! all consait. You're getting notional, Miles, now you're a master and owner. What's a run of a thousand or fifteen hundred miles, in a tight boat, and with plenty of grub and water? It was the easiest matter in the world; and if it warn't for that bloody Cape Horn, I should have made as straight a wake for Coenties' Slip, as the trending of the land would have allowed. As it was, I turned to windward, for I knew the savages to leeward weren't to be trusted. You see, it was as easy as working out a day's work. I kept the boat on a wind all day, and long bits of the night, too, until I wanted sleep; and then I hove her to, under a reefed mainsail, and slept as sound as a lord. I hadn't an uncomfortable moment, after I got outside of the reef again; and the happiest hour of my life was that in which I saw the tree-tops of the island dip."

"And how long were you navigating in this manner, and what land did you first make?"

"Seven weeks, though I made half a dozen islands, every one of them just such a looking object as that I had left. You weren't about to catch me ashore again in any of them miserable places! I gave the old boat a slap, and promised to stick by her as long as she would stick by me, and I kept my word. I saw savages, moreover, on one or two of the islands, and gave them a berth, having no fancy for being barbacued."

"And where did you finally make your land-fall?"

"Nowhere, so; far as the launch was concerned. I fell in with a Manilla ship, bound to Valparaiso, and got on board her; and sorry enough was I for the change, when I came to find out how they lived. The captain took me in, however, and I worked my passage into port. Finding no ship likely to sail soon, I entered with a native who was about to cross the Andes, bound over on this side, for the east coast. Don't you remember, Miles, monsters of mountains that we could see, a bit inland, and covered with snow, all along the west side of South America? You must remember the chaps I mean?"

"Certainly--they are much too plain, and objects much too striking, ever to be forgotten, when once seen."

"Well them's the Andes; and rough customers they be, let me tell you, boys. You know there is little amusement in a sailor's walking on the levellest 'arth and handsomest highways, on account of the bloody ups and downs a fellow meets with; and so