The Red Eric

The sisters were on their knees, stuffing various articles into a large trunk, and Ailie was looking on, by way of helping, with very red and swollen eyes, and the girl was still absent in quest of eggs, when a succession of sounding blows were administered to the green door, and a number of gruff voices were heard conversing without.

“There!” cried Martha and Jane, with bitter emphasis, looking in each other’s faces as if to say, “We knew it. Before that girl was sent away for these eggs, we each separately and privately prophesied that they would arrive, and that we should have to open the door. And you see, so it has happened, and we are not ready!”

But there was no time for remark. The case was desperate. Both sisters felt it to be so, and acted accordingly, while Ailie, having been forbidden to open the door, sat down on her trunk, and looked on in surprise. They sprang up, washed their hands simultaneously in the same basin, with the same piece of soap broken in two; dried them with the same towel, darted to the mirror, put on two identically similar clean tall caps, leaped down-stairs, opened the door with slow dignity of demeanour, and received their visitors in the hall with a calmness and urbanity of manner that contrasted rather strangely with their flushed countenances and heaving bosoms.

“Hallo! Ailie!” exclaimed the captain, as his daughter pulled down his head to be kissed. “Why, you take a fellow all aback, like a white squall. Are you ready, my pet? Kit stowed and anchor tripped? Come this way, and let us talk about it. Dear me, Martha, you and Jane—look as if you had been running a race, eh? Here are my messmates come to talk a bit with you. My sisters, Martha and Jane—Dr Hopley.” (Dr Hopley bowed politely.) “My first mate, Mr Millons” (Mr Millons also bowed, somewhat loosely); “and Rokens—Tim Rokens, my chief harpooner.” (Mr Rokens pulled his forelock, and threw back his left leg, apparently to counterbalance the bend in his body.) “He didn’t want to come; said he warn’t accustomed to ladies’ society; but I told him you warn’t ladies—a—I don’t mean that—not ladies o’ the high-flyin’ fashionable sort, that give themselves airs, you know. Come along, Ailie.”

While the captain ran on in this strain, hung up his hat, kissed Ailie, and ran his fingers through his shaggy locks, the Misses Dunning performed a mingled bow and courtsey to each guest as his name was mentioned, and shook hands with him, after which the whole party entered the parlour, where the cat was discovered enjoying a preliminary meal of its own at one of the pats of butter. A united shriek from Martha and Jane, a nautical howl from the guests, and a rolled-up pocket-handkerchief from Rokens sent that animal from the table as if it had received a galvanic shock.

“I ax yer parding, ladies,” said Mr Rokens, whose aim had been so perfect that his handkerchief not only accelerated the flight of the cat, but carried away the violated pat of butter along with it. “I ax yer parding, but them brutes is sich thieves—I could roast ’em alive, so I could.”

The harpooner unrolled his handkerchief, and picking the pat of butter from its folds with his fingers, threw it into the fire. Thereafter he smoothed down his hair, and seated himself on the extreme edge of a chair, as near the door as possible. Not that he had any intention whatever of taking to flight, but he deemed that position to be more suited to his condition than any other.

In a few minutes the servant-girl returned with the eggs. While she is engaged in boiling them, we shall introduce Captain Dunning’s friends and messmates to the reader.

Dr Hopley was a surgeon, and a particular friend of the captain’s. He was an American by birth, but had travelled so much about the world that he had ceased to “guess” and “calculate,” and to speak through his nose. He was a man about forty, tall, big-boned, and muscular, though not fat; and besides being a gentlemanly man, was a good-natured, quiet creature, and a clever enough fellow besides, but he preferred to laugh at and enjoy the jokes and witticisms of others rather than to perpetrate any himself. Dr Hopley was intensely fond of travelling, and being possessed of a small independence, he indulged his passion to the utmost. He had agreed to go with Captain Dunning as the ship’s doctor, simply for the sake of seeing the whale-fishery of the South Seas, having already, in a similar capacity, encountered the dangers of the North.

Dr Hopley had few weaknesses. His chief one was an extravagant belief in phrenology. We would not be understood to imply that phrenology is extravagant; but we assert that the doctor’s belief in it was extravagant, assigning, as he did, to every real and ideal facility of the human mind “a local habitation and a name” in the cranium, with a corresponding depression or elevation of the surface to mark its whereabouts. In other respects he was a commonplace sort of a man.

Mr Millons, the first mate, was a short, hale, thick-set man, without any particularly strong points of character. He was about thirty-five, and possessed a superabundance of fair hair and whiskers, with a large, broad chin, a firm mouth, rather fierce-looking eyes, and a hasty, but by no means a bad temper. He was a trustworthy, matter-of-fact seaman, and a good officer, but not bright intellectually. Like most men of his class, his look implied that he did not under-estimate his own importance, and his tones were those of a man accustomed to command.

Tim Rokens was an old salt; a bluff, strong, cast-iron man, of about forty-five years of age, who had been at sea since he was a little boy, and would not have consented to live on dry land, though he had been “offered command of a seaport town all to himself,” as he was wont to affirm emphatically. His visage was scarred and knotty, as if it had been long used to being pelted by storms—as indeed it had. There was a scar over his left eye and down his cheek, which had been caused by a slash from the cutlass of a pirate in the China Seas; but although it added to the rugged effect of his countenance, it did not detract from the frank, kindly expression that invariably rested there. Tim Rokens had never been caught out of temper in his life. Men were wont say he had no temper to lose. Whether this was true or no, we cannot presume to say, but certainly he never lost it. He was the best and boldest harpooner in Captain Dunning’s ship, and a sententious deliverer of his private opinion on all occasions whatsoever. When we say that he wore a rough blue pilot-cloth suit, and had a large black beard, with a sprinkling of silver hairs in it, we have completed his portrait.

“What’s come of Glynn?” inquired Captain Dunning, as he accepted a large cup of smoking tea with one hand, and with the other handed a plate of buttered toast to Dr Hopley, who sat next him.

“I really cannot imagine,” replied Miss Martha.

“No, cannot imagine,” whispered Miss Jane.

“He promised to come, and to be punctual,” continued Miss Martha (“Punctual,” whispered Miss J), “but something seems to have detained him. Perhaps—”

Here Miss Martha was brought to an abrupt pause by observing that Mr Rokens was about to commence to eat his egg with a teaspoon.

“Allow me, Mr Rokens,” she said, handing that individual an ivory eggspoon.

“Oh, cer’nly, ma’am. By all means,” replied Rokens, taking the spoon and handing it to Miss Jane, under the impression that it was intended for her.

“I beg pardon, it is for yourself, Mr Rokens,” said Martha and Jane together.

“Thank’ee, ma’am,” replied Rokens, growing red, as he began to perceive he was a little “off his course” somehow. “I’ve no occasion for two, an’ this one suits me oncommon.”

“Ah! you prefer big spoons to little ones, my man, don’t you?” said Captain Dunning, coming to the rescue. “Let him alone, Martha, he’s used to take care of himself. Doctor, can you tell me now, which is the easiest of digestion—a hard egg or a soft one?”

Thus appealed to, Dr Hopley paused a moment and frowned at the teapot, as though he were about to tax his brain to the utmost in the solution of an abstruse question in medical science.

“Well now,” he replied, stirring his tea gently, and speaking with much deliberation, “that depends very much upon circumstances. Some digestions can manage a hard egg best, others find a soft one more tractable. And then the state of the stomach at the time of eating has to be taken into account. I should say now, that my little friend Ailie, here, to judge from the rosy colour of her cheeks, could manage hard or soft eggs equally well; couldn’t you, eh?”

Ailie laughed, as she replied, “I’m sure I don’t know, Doctor Hopley; but I like soft ones best.”

To this, Captain Dunning said, “Of course you do, my sensible little pet;” although it would be difficult to show wherein lay the sensibility of the preference, and then added—“There’s Rokens, now; wouldn’t you, doctor—judging from his rosy, not to say purple cheeks—conclude that he wasn’t able to manage even two eggs of any kind?”

“Wot, me!” exclaimed Mr Rokens, looking up in surprise, as indeed he well might, having just concluded his fourth, and being about to commence his fifth egg, to the no small anxiety of Martha and Jane, into whose limited and innocent minds the possibility of such a feat had never entered. “Wot, me! Why, capting, if they was biled as hard as the head of a marline-spike—”

The expanding grin on the captain’s face, and a sudden laugh from the mate, apprised the bold harpooner at this point of his reply that the captain was jesting, so he felt a little confused, and sought relief by devoting himself assiduously to egg Number 5.

It fared ill with Tim Rokens that evening that he had rashly entered into ladies’ society, for he was a nervous man in refined company, though cool and firm as a grounded iceberg when in the society of his messmates, or when towing with the speed of a steamboat in the wake of a sperm-whale.

Egg Number 5 proved to be a bad one. Worse than that, egg Number 5 happened to belong to that peculiar class of bad eggs which “go off” with a little crack when hit with a spoon, and sputter their unsavoury contents around them. Thus it happened, that when Mr Rokens, feeling confused, and seeking relief in attention to the business then in hand, hit egg Number 5 a smart blow on the top, a large portion of its contents spurted over the fair white tablecloth, a small portion fell on Mr Rokens’ vest, and a minute yellow globule thereof alighted on the fair Martha’s hand, eliciting from that lady a scream, and as a matter of course, an echo from Jane in the shape of a screamlet.

Mr Rokens flushed a deep Indian-red, and his nose assumed a warm blue colour instantly.

“Oh! ma’am, I ax yer parding.”

“Pray don’t mention it—a mere accident. I’m so sorry you have got a bad— Oh!”

The little scream with which Miss Martha interrupted her remark was caused by Mr Rokens (who had just observed the little yellow globule above referred to) seizing her hand, and wiping away the speck with the identical handkerchief that had floored the cat and swept away the pat of butter. Immediately thereafter, feeling heated, he wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and unwittingly transferred the spot thereto in the form of a yellow streak, whereat Ailie and the first mate burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Even Miss Martha smiled, although she rather objected to jesting, as being a dangerous amusement, and never laughed at the weaknesses or misfortunes of others, however ludicrous they might be, when she could help it.

“How can you, brother?” she said, reproachfully, shaking her head at the captain, who was winking at the doctor with one eye in a most obstreperous manner. “Do try another egg, Mr Rokens; the others, I am sure, are fresh. I cannot imagine how a bad one came to be amongst them.”

“Ah, try another, my lad,” echoed the captain. “Pass ’em up this way, Mr Millons.”

“By no manner o’ means; I’ll eat this ’un!” replied the harpooner, commencing to eat the bad egg with apparent relish. “I like ’em this way—better than nothin’, anyhow. Bless ye, marm, ye’ve no notion wot sort o’ things I’ve lived on aboard ship—”

Rokens came to an abrupt pause in consequence of the servant-girl, at a sign from her mistresses (for she always received duplicate orders), seizing his plate and carrying it off bodily. It was immediately replaced by a clean one and a fresh egg. While Rokens somewhat nervously tapped the head of Number 6, Miss Martha, in order to divert attention from him, asked Mr Millons if sea-fare was always salt junk and hard biscuit?

“Oh, no, madam,” answered the first mate. “We’ve sometimes salt pork, and vegetables now and agin; and pea-soup, and plum-duff—”

“Plum-duff, Ailie,” interrupted the captain, in order to explain, “is just a puddin’ with few plums and fewer spices in it. Something like a white-painted cannon-shot, with brown spots on it here and there.”

“Is it good?” inquired Ailie.

“Oh, ain’t it!” remarked Mr Rokens, who had just concluded Number 6, and felt his self-possession somewhat restored. “Yes, miss, it is; but it ain’t equal to whale’s-brain fritters, it ain’t; them’s first-chop.”

“Have whales got brains?” inquired Miss Martha, in surprise.

“Brains!” echoed Miss Jane, in amazement.

“Yes, madam, they ’ave,” answered the first mate, who had hitherto maintained silence, but having finished tea was now ready for any amount of talk; “and what’s more remarkable still, they’ve got several barrels of oil in their skulls besides.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed the sisters.

“Yes, ladies, capital oil it is, too; fetches a ’igher price hin the markit than the other sort.”

“By the bye, Millons, didn’t you once fall into a whale’s skull, and get nearly drowned in oil?” inquired the doctor.

“I did,” answered the first mate, with the air of a man who regarded such an event as a mere trifle, that, upon consideration, might almost be considered as rather a pleasant incident than otherwise in one’s history.

“Nearly drowned in oil!” exclaimed the sisters, while Ailie opened her eyes in amazement, and Mr Rokens became alarmingly purple in the face with suppressed chuckling.

“It’s true,” remarked Rokens, in a hoarse whisper to Miss Martha, putting his hand up to his mouth, the better to convey the sound to her ears; “I seed him tumble in, and helped to haul him out.”

“Let’s have the story, Millons,” cried the captain, pushing forward his cup to be replenished; “It’s so long since I heard it, that I’ve almost forgotten it. Another cup o’ tea, Martha, my dear—not quite so strong as the last, and three times as sweet. I’ll drink ‘Success to the cup that cheers, but don’t inebriate.’ Go ahead, Millons.”

Nothing rejoiced the heart of Mr Millons more than being asked to tell a story. Like most men who are excessively addicted to the habit, his stories were usually very long and very dry; but he had a bluff good-natured way of telling them, that rendered his yarns endurable on shore, and positively desirable at sea. Fortunately for the reader, the story he was now requested to relate was not a long one.

“It ain’t quite a story,” he began—and in beginning he cleared his throat with emphasis, thrust his thumbs into the arm-holes of his vest, and tilted his chair on its hind-legs—“it ain’t quite a story; it’s a hanecdote, a sort of hincident, so to speak, and this is ’ow it ’appened:—

“Many years ago, w’en I was a very young man, or a big boy, I was on a voyage to the South Seas after whales. Tim Rokens was my messmate then, and has bin so almost ever since, off, and on.” (Mr Rokens nodded assent to this statement.) “Well, we came up with a big whale, and fixed an iron cleverly in him at the first throw—”

“An iron?” inquired Miss Martha, to whose mind flat and Italian irons naturally occurred.

“Yes, madam, an iron; we call the ’arpoons irons. Well, away went the fish, like all alive! not down, but straight for’ard, takin’ out the line at a rate that nearly set the boat on fire, and away we went along with it. It was a chase, that. For six hours, off and on, we stuck to that whale, and pitched into ’im with ’arpoons and lances; but he seemed to have the lives of a cat—nothin’ would kill ’im. At last the ’arpooner gave him a thrust in the life, an’ up went the blood and water, and the fish went into the flurries, and came nigh capsizin’ the boat with its tail as it lashed the water into foam. At last it gave in, and we had a four hours’ pull after that, to tow the carcase to the ship, for there wasn’t a cat’s-paw of wind on the water.

“W’en we came alongside, we got out the tackles, and before beginning to flense (that means, ma’am, to strip off the blubber), we cut a hole in the top o’ the skull to get out the oil that was there; for you must know that the sperm-whale has got a sort of ’ollow or big cavern in its ’ead, w’ich is full o’ the best oil, quite pure, that don’t need to be cleared, but is all ready to be baled out and stowed away in casks. Well, w’en the ’ole was cut in its skull I went down on my knees on the edge of it to peep in, when my knees they slipped on the blubber, and in I went ’ead-foremost, souse into the whale’s skull, and began to swim for life in the oil.

“Of course I began to roar for ’elp like a bull, and Rokens there, ’oo ’appened to be near, ’e let down the hend of a rope, but my ’ands was so slippy with oil I couldn’t ketch ’old of it; so ’e ’auls it up agin, and lets down a rope with a ’ook at the hend, and I got ’old of this and stuck it into the waistband o’ my trousers, and gave the word, ‘’Eave away, my ’earties;’ and sure enough so they did, and pulled me out in a trice. And that’s ’ow it was; and I lost a suit o’ clo’s, for nothing on ’arth would take the oil out, and I didn’t need to use pomatum for six months after.”

“No more you did,” cried Rokens, who had listened to the narrative with suppressed delight; “no more you did. I never see sich a glazed rat as you wos when you comed out o’ that hole, in all my life; an’ he wos jist like a eel; it wos all we could do to keep ’old on ’im, marm, he was so slippery.”

While the captain was laughing at the incident, and Rokens was narrating some of the minute details in the half-unwilling yet half-willing ears of the sisters, the door opened, and a young man entered hastily and apologised for being late.

“The fact is, Miss Dunning, had I not promised faithfully to come, I should not have made my appearance at all to-night.”

“Why, Glynn, what has kept you, lad?” interrupted the captain. “I thought you were a man of your word.”

“Ay, that’s the question, capting,” said Rokens, who evidently regarded the new arrival with no favourable feelings; “it’s always the way with them gentlemen sailors till they’re got into blue water and brought to their bearin’s.”

Mr Rokens had wisdom enough to give forth the last part of his speech in a muttered tone, for the youth was evidently a favourite with the captain, as was shown by the hearty manner in which he shook him by the hand.

“Messmates, this is Glynn Proctor, a friend o’ mine,” said Captain Dunning, in explanation: “he is going with us this voyage before the mast, so you’ll have to make the most of him as an equal to-night, for I intend to keep him in his proper place when afloat. He chooses to go as an ordinary seaman, against my advice, the scamp; so I’ll make him keep his head as low as the rest when aboard. You’ll to keep your time better, too, than you have done to-night, lad,” continued the captain, giving his young friend a slap on the shoulder. “What has detained you, eh?”

“Necessity, captain,” replied the youth, with a smile, as he sat down to table with an off-hand easy air that savoured of recklessness; “and I am prepared to state, upon oath if need be, that necessity is not ‘the mother of invention.’ If she had been, she would have enabled me to invent a way of escape from my persecutors in time to keep my promise to Miss Dunning.”

“Persecutors, Glynn!” exclaimed Martha; “to whom do you refer?”

“To the police of this good city.”

“Police!” echoed the captain, regarding his young friend seriously, while the doctor and the first mate and Tim Rokens listened in some surprise.

“Why, the fact is,” said Glynn, “that I have just escaped from the hands of the police, and if it had not been that I was obliged to make a very wide détour, in order to reach this house without being observed, I should have been here long ago.”

“Boy, boy, your hasty disposition will bring you into serious trouble one of these days,” said the captain, shaking his head. “What mischief have you been about?”

“Ay, there you go—it’s my usual fate,” cried Glynn, laughing. “If I chance to get into a scrape, you never think of inquiring whether it was my fault or my misfortune. This time, however, it was my misfortune, and if Miss Dunning will oblige me with a cup of tea, I’ll explain how it happened.

“Little more than two hours ago I left the ship to come here to tea, as I had promised to do. Nikel Sling, the long-legged cook you engaged this morning, went ashore with me. As we walked up the street together, I observed a big porter passing along with a heavy deal plank on his shoulder. The street was somewhat narrow and crowded at that part, and Sling had turned to look in at a shop-window just as the big fellow came up. The man shouted to my shipmate to get out o’ the way, but the noise in the street prevented him from hearing. Before I could turn to touch the cook’s arm, the fellow uttered an oath and ran the end of the plank against his head. Poor Sling was down in an instant. Before I well knew what I was about, I hit the porter between the eyes and down he went with a clatter, and the plank above him. In a moment three policemen had me by the collar. I tried to explain, but they wouldn’t listen. As I was being hurried away to the lock-up, it flashed across me that I should not only lose my tea and your pleasant society this evening, but be prevented from sailing to-morrow, so I gave a sudden twist, tripped up the man on my left, overturned the one on my right, and bolted.”

“They ran well, the rascals, and shouted like maniacs, but I got the start of ’em, dived down one street, up another, into a by-lane, over a back-garden wall, in at the back-door of a house and out at the front, took a round of two or three miles, and came in here from the west; and whatever other objections there may be to the whole proceeding, I cannot say that it has spoiled my appetite.”

“And so, sir,” said Captain Dunning, “you call this your ‘misfortune?’”

“Surely, captain,” said Glynn, putting down his cup and looking up in some surprise—“surely, you cannot blame me for punishing the rascal who behaved so brutally, without the slightest provocation, to my shipmate!”

“Hear, hear!” cried Rokens involuntarily.

“I do blame you, lad,” replied the captain seriously. “In the first place, you had no right to take the law into your own hands. In the second place, your knocking down the man did no good whatever to your shipmate; and in the third place, you’ve got yourself and me and the ship into a very unsatisfactory scrape.”

Rokens’ face, which had hitherto expressed approval of Glynn’s conduct, began to elongate as the captain went on in this strain; and the youth’s recklessness of manner altogether disappeared as inquired, “How so, captain? I have escaped, as you see; and poor Sling, of course, was not to blame, so he’ll be all safe aboard, and well, I hope, by this time.”

“There you’re mistaken, boy. They will have secured Sling and made him tell the name of his ship, and also the name of his pugnacious comrade.”

“And do you think he’d be so mean as to tell?” asked Glynn indignantly.

“You forget that the first act in this nice little melodrama was the knocking down of Sling, so that he could not know what happened after, and the police would not be so soft as to tell him why they wanted such information until after they had got it.”

Poor Glynn looked aghast, and Rokens was overwhelmed.

“It seems to me, I’d better go and see about this,” said Millons, rising and buttoning his coat with the air of a man who had business to transact and meant to transact it.

“Right, Millons,” answered the captain. “I’m sorry to break up our evening so soon, but we must get this man aboard by hook or crook as speedily as possible. You had better go too, doctor. Rokens and I will take care of this young scamp, who must be made a nigger of in order to be got on board, for his face, once seen by these sharp limbs of justice, is not likely soon to be forgotten.”