The Red Eric

Chapter One.

The Tale Begins with the Engaging of a “Tail”—and the Captain Delivers his Opinions on Various Subjects

Captain Dunning stood with his back to the fireplace in the back-parlour of a temperance coffee-house in a certain town on the eastern seaboard of America.

The name of that town is unimportant, and, for reasons with which the reader has nothing to do, we do not mean to disclose it.

Captain Dunning, besides being the owner and commander of a South Sea whale-ship, was the owner of a large burly body, a pair of broad shoulders, a pair of immense red whiskers that met under his chin, a short, red little nose, a large firm mouth, and a pair of light-blue eyes, which, according to their owner’s mood, could flash like those of a tiger or twinkle sweetly like the eyes of a laughing child. But his eyes seldom flashed; they more frequently twinkled, for the captain was the very soul of kindliness and good-humour. Yet he was abrupt and sharp in his manner, so that superficial observers sometimes said he was hasty.

Captain Dunning was, so to speak, a sample of three primary colours—red, blue, and yellow—a walking fragment, as it were, of the rainbow. His hair and face, especially the nose, were red; his eyes, coat, and pantaloons were blue, and his waistcoat was yellow.

At the time we introduce him to the reader he was standing, as we have said, with his back to the fireplace, although there was no fire, the weather being mild, and with his hands in his breeches pockets. Having worked with the said hands for many long years before the mast, until he had at last worked himself behind the mast, in other words, on to the quarterdeck and into possession of his own ship, the worthy captain conceived that he had earned the right to give his hands a long rest; accordingly he stowed them away in his pockets and kept them there at all times, save when necessity compelled him to draw them forth.

“Very odd,” remarked Captain Dunning, looking at his black straw hat which lay on the table before him, as if the remark were addressed to it—“very odd if, having swallowed the cow, I should now be compelled to worry at the tail.”

As the black straw hat made no reply, the captain looked up at the ceiling, but not meeting with any response from that quarter, he looked out at the window and encountered the gaze of a seaman flattening his nose on a pane of glass, and looking in.

The captain smiled. “Ah! here’s a tail at last,” he said, as the seaman disappeared, and in another moment reappeared at the door with his hat in his hand.

It may be necessary, perhaps, to explain that Captain Dunning had just succeeded in engaging a first-rate crew for his next whaling voyage (which was the “cow” he professed to have swallowed), with the exception of a cook (which was the “tail,” at which he feared he might be compelled to worry).

“You’re a cook, are you?” he asked, as the man entered and nodded.

“Yes, sir,” answered the “tail,” pulling his forelock.

“And an uncommonly ill-favoured rascally-looking cook you are,” thought the captain; but he did not say so, for he was not utterly regardless of men’s feelings. He merely said, “Ah!” and then followed it up with the abrupt question—

“Do you drink?”

“Yes, sir, and smoke too,” replied the “tail,” in some surprise.

“Very good; then you can go,” said the captain, shortly.

“Eh!” exclaimed the man:

“You can go,” repeated the captain. “You won’t suit. My ship is a temperance ship, and all the hands are teetotalers. I have found from experience that men work better, and speak better, and in every way act better, on tea and coffee than on spirits. I don’t object to their smoking; but I don’t allow drinkin’ aboard my ship; so you won’t do, my man. Good-morning.”

The “tail” gazed at the captain in mute amazement.

“Ah! you may look,” observed the captain, replying to the gaze; “but you may also mark my words, if you will. I’ve not sailed the ocean for thirty years for nothing. I’ve seen men in hot seas and in cold—on grog, and on tea—and I know that coffee and tea carry men through the hardest work better than grog. I also know that there’s a set o’ men in this world who look upon teetotalers as very soft chaps—old wives, in fact. Very good,” (here the captain waxed emphatic, and struck his fist on the table.) “Now look here, young man, I’m an old wife, and my ship’s manned by similar old ladies; so you won’t suit.”

To this the seaman made no reply, but feeling doubtless, as he regarded the masculine specimen before him, that he would be quite out of his element among such a crew of females, he thrust a quid of tobacco into his cheek, put on his hat, turned on his heel and left the room, shutting the door after him with a bang.

He had scarcely left when a tap at the door announced a second visitor.

“Hum! Another ‘tail,’ I suppose. Come in.”

If the new-comer was a “tail,” he was decidedly a long one, being six feet three in his stockings at the very least.

“You wants a cook, I b’lieve?” said the man, pulling off his hat.

“I do. Are you one?”

“Yes, I jist guess I am. Bin a cook for fifteen year.”

“Been to sea as a cook?” inquired the captain.

“I jist have. Once to the South Seas, twice to the North, an’ once round the world. Cook all the time. I’ve roasted, and stewed, and grilled, and fried, and biled, right round the ’arth, I have.”

Being apparently satisfied with the man’s account of himself, Captain Dunning put to him the question—“Do you drink?”

“Ay, like a fish; for I drinks nothin’ but water, I don’t. Bin born and raised in the State of Maine, d’ye see, an’ never tasted a drop all my life.”

“Very good,” said the captain, who plumed himself on being a clever physiognomist, and had already formed a good opinion of the man. “Do you ever swear?”

“Never, but when I can’t help it.”

“And when’s that?”

“When I’m fit to bu’st.”

“Then,” replied the captain, “you must learn to bu’st without swearin’, ’cause I don’t allow it aboard my ship.”

The man evidently regarded his questioner as a very extraordinary and eccentric individual; but he merely replied, “I’ll try;” and after a little further conversation an agreement was come to; the man was sent away with orders to repair on board immediately, as everything was in readiness to “up anchor and away next morning.”

Having thus satisfactorily and effectually disposed of the “tail,” Captain Dunning put on his hat very much on the back of his head, knit his brows, and pursed his lips firmly, as if he had still some important duty to perform; then, quitting the hotel, he traversed the streets of the town with rapid strides.

Chapter Two.

Important Personages are Introduced to the Reader—The Captain makes Insane Resolutions, Fights a Battle, and Conquers

In the centre of the town whose name we have declined to communicate, there stood a house—a small house—so small that it might have been more appropriately, perhaps, styled a cottage. This house had a yellow-painted face, with a green door in the middle, which might have been regarded as its nose, and a window on each side thereof, which might have been considered its eyes. Its nose was, as we have said, painted green, and its eyes had green Venetian eyelids, which were half shut at the moment Captain Dunning walked up to it as if it were calmly contemplating that seaman’s general appearance.

There was a small garden in front of the house, surrounded on three sides by a low fence. Captain Dunning pushed open the little gate, walked up to the nose of the house, and hit it several severe blows with his knuckles. The result was that the nose opened, and a servant-girl appeared in the gap.

“Is your mistress at home?” inquired the captain.

“Guess she is—both of ’em!” replied the girl.

“Tell both of ’em I’m here, then,” said the captain, stepping into the little parlour without further ceremony; “and is my little girl in?”

“Yes, she’s in.”

“Then send her here too, an’ look alive, lass.” So saying, Captain Dunning sat down on the sofa, and began to beat the floor with his right foot somewhat impatiently.

In another second a merry little voice was heard in the passage, the door burst open, a fair-haired girl of about ten years of age sprang into the room, and immediately commenced to strangle her father in a series of violent embraces.

“Why, Ailie, my darling, one would think you had not seen me for fifty years at least,” said the captain, holding his daughter at arm’s-length, in order the more satisfactorily to see her.

“It’s a whole week, papa, since you last came to see me,” replied the little one, striving to get at her father’s neck again, “and I’m sure it seems to me like a hundred years at least.”

As the child said this she threw her little arms round her father, and kissed his large, weather-beaten visage all over—eyes, mouth, nose, chin, whiskers, and, in fact, every attainable spot. She did it so vigorously, too, that an observer would have been justified in expecting that her soft, delicate cheeks would be lacerated by the rough contact; but they were not. The result was a heightening of the colour, nothing more. Having concluded this operation, she laid her cheek on the captain’s and endeavoured to clasp her hands at the back of his neck, but this was no easy matter. The captain’s neck was a remarkably thick one, and the garments about that region were voluminous; however, by dint of determination, she got the small fingers intertwined, and then gave him a squeeze that ought to have choked him, but it didn’t: many a strong man had tried that in his day, and had failed signally.

“You’ll stay a long time with me before you go away to sea again, won’t you, dear papa?” asked the child earnestly, after she had given up the futile effort to strangle him.

“How like!” murmured the captain, as if to himself, and totally unmindful of the question, while he parted the fair curls and kissed Ailie’s forehead.

“Like what, papa?”

“Like your mother—your beloved mother,” replied the captain, in a low, sad voice.

The child became instantly grave, and she looked up in her father’s face with an expression of awe, while he dropped his eyes on the floor.

Poor Alice had never known a mother’s love. Her mother died when she was a few weeks old, and she had been confided to the care of two maiden aunts—excellent ladies, both of them; good beyond expression; correct almost to a fault; but prim, starched, and extremely self-possessed and judicious, so much so that they were injudicious enough to repress some of the best impulses of their natures, under the impression that a certain amount of dignified formality was essential to good breeding and good morals in every relation of life.

Dear, good, starched Misses Dunning! if they had had their way, boys would have played cricket and football with polite urbanity, and girls would have kissed their playmates with gentle solemnity. They did their best to subdue little Alice, but that was impossible. The child would rush about the house at all unexpected and often inopportune seasons, like a furiously insane kitten and she would disarrange their collars too violently every evening when she bade them good-night.

Alice was intensely sympathetic. It was quite enough for her to see any one in tears, to cause her to open up the flood-gates of her eyes and weep—she knew not and she cared not why. She threw her arms round her father’s neck again, and hugged him, while bright tears trickled like diamonds from her eyes. No diamonds are half so precious or so difficult to obtain as tears of genuine sympathy!

“How would you like to go with me to the whale-fishery?” inquired Captain Dunning, somewhat abruptly as he disengaged the child’s arms and set her on his knee.

The tears stopped in an instant, as Alice leaped, with the happy facility of childhood, totally out of one idea and thoroughly into another.

“Oh, I should like it so much!”

“And how much is ‘so’ much, Ailie?” inquired the captain.

Ailie pursed her mouth, and looked at her father earnestly, while she seemed to struggle to give utterance to some fleeting idea.

“Think,” she said quickly, “think something good as much as ever you can. Have you thought?”

“Yes,” answered the captain, smiling.

“Then,” continued Ailie, “its twenty thousand million times as much as that, and a great deal more!”

The laugh with which Captain Dunning received this curious explanation of how much his little daughter wished to go with him to the whale-fishery, was interrupted by the entrance of his sisters, whose sense of propriety induced them to keep all visitors waiting at least a quarter of an hour before they appeared, lest they should be charged with unbecoming precipitancy.

“Here you are, lassies; how are ye?” cried the captain as he rose and kissed each lady on the cheek heartily.

The sisters did not remonstrate. They knew that their brother was past hope in this respect, and they loved him, so they suffered it meekly.

Having admitted that they were well—as well, at least, as could be expected, considering the cataract of “trials” that perpetually descended upon their devoted heads—they sat down as primly as if their visitor were a perfect stranger, and entered into a somewhat lengthened conversation as to the intended voyage, commencing, of course, with the weather.

“And now,” said the captain, rubbing the crown of his straw hat in a circular manner, as if it were a beaver, “I’m coming to the point.”

Both ladies exclaimed, “What point, George?” simultaneously, and regarded the captain with a look of anxious surprise.

“The point,” replied the captain, “about which I’ve come here to-day. It ain’t a point o’ the compass; nevertheless, I’ve been steerin’ it in my mind’s eye for a considerable time past. The fact is” (here the captain hesitated), “I—I’ve made up my mind to take my little Alice along with me this voyage.”

The Misses Dunning wore unusually tall caps, and their countenances were by nature uncommonly long, but the length to which they grew on hearing this announcement was something preternaturally awful.

“Take Ailie to sea!” exclaimed Miss Martha Dunning, in horror.

“To fish for whales!” added Miss Jane Dunning, in consternation.

“Brother, you’re mad!” they exclaimed together, after a breathless pause; “and you’ll do nothing of the kind,” they added firmly.

Now, the manner in which the Misses Dunning received this intelligence greatly relieved their eccentric brother. He had fully anticipated, and very much dreaded, that they would at once burst into tears, and being a tender-hearted man he knew that he could not resist that without a hard struggle. A flood of woman’s tears, he was wont to say, was the only sort of salt water storm he hadn’t the heart to face. But abrupt opposition was a species of challenge which the captain always accepted at once—off-hand. No human power could force him to any course of action.

In this latter quality Captain Dunning was neither eccentric nor singular.

“I’m sorry you don’t like my proposal, my dear sisters,” said he; “but I’m resolved.”

“You won’t!” said Martha.

“You shan’t!” cried Jane.

“I will!” replied the captain.

There was a pause here of considerable length, during which the captain observed that Martha’s nostrils began to twitch nervously. Jane, observing the fact, became similarly affected. To the captain’s practised eye these symptoms were as good as a barometer. He knew that the storm was coming, and took in all sail at once (mentally) to be ready for it.

It came! Martha and Jane Dunning were for once driven from the shelter of their wonted propriety—they burst simultaneously into tears, and buried their respective faces in their respective pocket-handkerchiefs, which were immaculately clean and had to be hastily unfolded for the purpose.

“Now, now, my dear girls,” cried the captain, starting up and patting their shoulders, while poor little Ailie clasped her hands, sat down on a footstool, looked up in their faces—or, rather, at the backs of the hands which covered their faces—and wept quietly.

“It’s very cruel, George—indeed it is,” sobbed Martha; “you know how we love her.”

“Very true,” remarked the obdurate captain; “but you don’t know how I love her, and how sad it makes me to see so little of her, and to think that she may be learning to forget me—or, at least,” added the captain, correcting himself as Ailie looked at him reproachfully through her tears—“at least to do without me. I can’t bear the thought. She’s all I have left to me, and—”

“Brother,” interrupted Martha, looking hastily up, “did you ever before hear of such a thing as taking a little girl on a voyage to the whale-fishing?”

“No, never,” replied the captain; “what has that got to do with it?”

Both ladies held up their hands and looked aghast. The idea of any man venturing to do what no one ever thought of doing before was so utterly subversive of all their ideas of propriety—such a desperate piece of profane originality—that they remained speechless.

“George,” said Martha, drying her eyes, and speaking in tones of deep solemnity, “did you ever read Robinson Crusoe?”

“Yes, I did, when I was a boy; an’ that wasn’t yesterday.”

“And did you,” continued the lady in the same sepulchral tone, “did you note how that man—that beacon, if I may use the expression, set up as a warning to deter all wilful boys and men from reckless, and wicked, and wandering, and obstreperous courses—did you note, I say, how that man, that beacon, was shipwrecked, and spent a dreary existence on an uninhabited and dreadful island, in company with a low, dissolute, black, unclothed companion called Friday?”

“Yes,” answered the captain, seeing that she paused for a reply.

“And all,” continued Martha, “in consequence of his resolutely and obstinately, and wilfully and wickedly going to sea?”

“Well, it couldn’t have happened if he hadn’t gone to sea, no doubt.”

“Then,” argued Martha, “will you, can you, George, contemplate the possibility of your only daughter coming to the same dreadful end?”

George, not exactly seeing the connection, rubbed his nose with his forefinger, and replied—“Certainly not.”

“Then you are bound,” continued Martha, in triumph, “by all that is upright and honourable, by all the laws of humanity and propriety, to give up this wild intention—and you must!”

“There!” cried Miss Jane emphatically, as if the argument were unanswerable—as indeed it was, being incomprehensible.

The last words were unfortunate. They merely riveted the captain’s determination.

“You talk a great deal of nonsense, Martha,” he said, rising to depart. “I’ve fixed to take her, so the sooner you make up your minds to it the better.”

The sisters knew their brother’s character too well to waste more time in vain efforts; but Martha took him by the arm, and said earnestly—“Will you promise me, my dear George, that when she comes back from this voyage, you will never take her on another?”

“Yes, dear sister,” replied the captain, somewhat melted, “I promise that.”

Without another word Martha sat down and held out her arms to Ailie, who incontinently rushed into them. Propriety fled for the nonce, discomfited. Miss Martha’s curls were disarranged beyond repair, and Miss Martha’s collar was crushed to such an extent that the very laundress who had washed and starched and ironed it would have utterly failed to recognise it. Miss Jane looked on at these improprieties in perfect indifference—nay, when, after her sister had had enough, the child was handed over to her, she submitted to the same violent treatment without a murmur. For once Nature was allowed to have her way, and all three had a good hearty satisfactory cry; in the midst of which Captain Dunning left them, and, proceeding on board his ship, hastened the preparations for his voyage to the Southern Seas.

Chapter Three.

The Tea-Party—Accidents and Incidents of a Minor Kind—Glynn Proctor gets into Trouble

On the evening of the day in which the foregoing scenes were enacted, the Misses Dunning prepared a repast for their brother and one or two of his officers, who were to spend the last evening in port there, and discuss various important and unimportant matters in a sort of semi-convivio-business way.

An event of this kind was always of the deepest interest and productive of the most intense anxiety to the amiable though starched sisters; first, because it was of rare occurrence; and second, because they were never quite certain that it would pass without some unhappy accident, such as the upsetting of a tea-cup or a kettle, or the scalding of the cat, not to mention visitors’ legs. They seemed to regard a tea-party in the light of a firearm—a species of blunderbuss—a thing which, it was to be hoped, would “go off well”; and, certainly, if loading the table until it groaned had anything to do with the manner of its “going off,” there was every prospect of its doing so with pre-eminent success upon that occasion.

But besides the anxieties inseparable from the details of the pending festivities, the Misses Dunning were overwhelmed and weighed down with additional duties consequent upon their brother’s sudden and unexpected determination. Little Ailie had to be got ready for sea by the following morning! It was absolute and utter insanity! No one save a madman or a sea-captain could have conceived such a thing, much less have carried it into effect tyrannically.

The Misses Dunning could not attempt any piece of duty or work separately. They always acted together, when possible; and might, in fact, without much inconvenience, have been born Siamese twins. Whatever Martha did, Jane attempted to do or to mend; wherever Jane went, Martha followed. Not, by any means, that one thought she could improve upon the work of the other; their conduct was simply the result of a desire to assist each other mutually. When Martha spoke, Jane echoed or corroborated; and when Jane spoke, Martha repeated her sentences word for word in a scarcely audible whisper—not after the other had finished, but during the course of the remarks.

With such dispositions and propensities, it is not a matter to be wondered at that the good ladies, while arranging the tea-table, should suddenly remember some forgotten article of Ailie’s wardrobe, and rush simultaneously into the child’s bedroom to rectify the omission; or, when thus engaged, be filled with horror at the thought of having left the buttered toast too near the fire in the parlour.

“It is really quite perplexing,” said Martha, sitting down with a sigh, and regarding the tea-table with a critical gaze; “quite perplexing. I’m sure I don’t know how I shall bear it. It is too bad of George—darling Ailie—(dear me, Jane, how crookedly you have placed the urn)—it is really too bad.”

“Too bad, indeed; yes, isn’t it?” echoed Jane, in reference to the captain’s conduct, while she assisted Martha, who had risen to readjust the urn.

“Oh!” exclaimed Martha, with a look of horror.

“What?” cried Jane, who looked and felt equally horrified, although she knew not yet the cause.

“The eggs!”

“The eggs?”

“Yes, the eggs. You know every one of the last dozen we got was bad, and we’ve forgot to send for more,” said Martha.

“For more; so we have!” cried Jane; and both ladies rushed into the kitchen, gave simultaneous and hurried orders to the servant-girl, and sent her out of the house impressed with an undefined feeling that life or death depended on the instant procuring of two dozen fresh eggs.

It may be as well to remark here, that the Misses Dunning, although stiff, and starched, and formal, had the power of speeding nimbly from room to room, when alone and when occasion required, without in the least degree losing any of their stiffness or formality, so that we do not use the terms “rush,” “rushed,” or “rushing” inappropriately. Nevertheless, it may also be remarked that they never acted in a rapid or impulsive way in company, however small in numbers or unceremonious in character the company might be—always excepting the servant-girl and the cat, to whose company, from long habit, they had become used, and therefore indifferent.