The Pirate
twice about after the anchor was a-peak--on shore it is another thing;
and I will laugh, sing, dance, and make love, if they like it, with
twenty girls, were they but half so pretty as those who have left us,
and make them heartily welcome to change their course in the sound of a
boatswain's whistle. It will be odds but I wear as fast as they can."
A patient is seldom pleased with that sort of consolation which is
founded on holding light the malady of which he complains; and Mordaunt
felt disposed to be offended with Captain Cleveland, both for taking
notice of his embarrassment, and intruding upon him his own opinion; and
he replied, therefore, somewhat sharply, "that Captain Cleveland's
sentiments were only suited to such as had the art to become universal
favourites wherever chance happened to throw them, and who could not
lose in one place more than their merit was sure to gain for them in
another."
This was spoken ironically; but there was, to confess the truth, a
superior knowledge of the world, and a consciousness of external merit
at least, about the man, which rendered his interference doubly
disagreeable. As Sir Lucius O'Trigger says, there was an air of success
about Captain Cleveland which was mighty provoking. Young, handsome, and
well assured, his air of nautical bluntness sat naturally and easily
upon him, and was perhaps particularly well fitted to the simple manners
of the remote country in which he found himself; and where, even in the
best families, a greater degree of refinement might have rendered his
conversation rather less acceptable. He was contented, in the present
instance, to smile good-humouredly at the obvious discontent of Mordaunt
Mertoun, and replied, "You are angry with me, my good friend, but you
cannot make me angry with you. The fair hands of all the pretty women I
ever saw in my life would never have fished me up out of the Roost of
Sumburgh. So, pray, do not quarrel with me; for here is Mr. Halcro
witness that I have struck both jack and topsail, and should you fire a
broadside into me, cannot return a single shot."
"Ay, ay," said Halcro, "you must be friends with Captain Cleveland,
Mordaunt. Never quarrel with your friend, because a woman is whimsical.
Why, man, if they kept one humour, how the devil could we make so many
songs on them as we do? Even old Dryden himself, glorious old John,
could have said little about a girl that was always of one mind--as well
write verses upon a mill-pond. It is your tides and your roosts, and
your currents and eddies, that come and go, and ebb and flow, (by
Heaven! I run into rhyme when I so much as think upon them,) that smile
one day, rage the next, flatter and devour, delight and ruin us, and so
forth--it is these that give the real soul of poetry. Did you never hear
my Adieu to the Lass of Northmaven--that was poor Bet Stimbister, whom I
call Mary for the sound's sake, as I call myself Hacon after my great
ancestor Hacon Goldemund, or Haco with the golden mouth, who came to the
island with Harold Harfager, and was his chief Scald?--Well, but where
was I?--O ay--poor Bet Stimbister, she (and partly some debt) was the
cause of my leaving the isles of Hialtland, (better so called than
Shetland, or Zetland even,) and taking to the broad world. I have had a
tramp of it since that time--I have battled my way through the world,
Captain, as a man of mold may, that has a light head, a light purse, and
a heart as light as them both--fought my way, and paid my way--that is,
either with money or wit--have seen kings changed and deposed as you
would turn a tenant out of a scathold--knew all the wits of the age, and
especially the glorious John Dryden--what man in the islands can say as
much, barring lying?--I had a pinch out of his own snuff-box--I will
tell you how I came by such promotion."
"But the song, Mr. Halcro," said Captain Cleveland.
"The song?" answered Halcro, seizing the Captain by the button,--for he
was too much accustomed to have his audience escape from him during
recitation, not to put in practice all the usual means of
prevention,--"The song? Why I gave a copy of it, with fifteen others, to
the immortal John. You shall hear it--you shall hear them all, if you
will but stand still a moment; and you too, my dear boy, Mordaunt
Mertoun, I have scarce heard a word from your mouth these six months,
and now you are running away from me." So saying, he secured him with
his other hand.
"Nay, now he has got us both in tow," said the seaman, "there is nothing
for it but hearing him out, though he spins as tough a yarn as ever an
old man-of-war's-man twisted on the watch at midnight."
"Nay, now, be silent, be silent, and let one of us speak at once," said
the poet, imperatively; while Cleveland and Mordaunt, looking at each
other with a ludicrous expression of resignation to their fate, waited
in submission for the well-known and inevitable tale. "I will tell you
all about it," continued Halcro. "I was knocked about the world like
other young fellows, doing this, that, and t'other for a livelihood;
for, thank God, I could turn my hand to any thing--but loving still the
Muses as much as if the ungrateful jades had found me, like so many
blockheads, in my own coach and six. However, I held out till my cousin,
old Lawrence Linkletter, died, and left me the bit of an island yonder;
although, by the way, Cultmalindie was as near to him as I was; but
Lawrence loved wit, though he had little of his own. Well, he left me
the wee bit island--it is as barren as Parnassus itself. What then?--I
have a penny to spend, a penny to keep my purse, a penny to give to the
poor--ay, and a bed and a bottle for a friend, as you shall know, boys,
if you will go back with me when this merriment is over.--But where was
I in my story?"
"Near port, I hope," answered Cleveland; but Halcro was too determined a
narrator to be interrupted by the broadest hint.
"O ay," he resumed, with the self-satisfied air of one who has recovered
the thread of a story, "I was in my old lodgings in Russel Street, with
old Timothy Thimblethwaite, the Master Fashioner, then the best-known
man about town. He made for all the wits, and for the dull boobies of
fortune besides, and made the one pay for the other. He never denied a
wit credit save in jest, or for the sake of getting a repartee; and he
was in correspondence with all that was worth knowing about town. He had
letters from Crowne, and Tate, and Prior, and Tom Brown, and all the
famous fellows of the time, with such pellets of wit, that there was no
reading them without laughing ready to die, and all ending with craving
a further term for payment."
"I should have thought the tailor would have found that jest rather
serious," said Mordaunt.
"Not a bit--not a bit," replied his eulogist, "Tim Thimblethwaite (he
was a Cumberland-man by birth) had the soul of a prince--ay, and died
with the fortune of one; for woe betide the custard-gorged alderman that
came under Tim's goose, after he had got one of those letters--egad, he
was sure to pay the kain! Why, Thimblethwaite was thought to be the
original of little Tom Bibber, in glorious John's comedy of the Wild
Gallant; and I know that he has trusted, ay, and lent John money to boot
out of his own pocket, at a time when all his fine court friends blew
cold enough. He trusted me too, and I have been two months on the score
at a time for my upper room. To be sure, I was obliging in his way--not
that I exactly could shape or sew, nor would that have been decorous for
a gentleman of good descent; but I--eh, eh--I drew bills--summed up the
books"----
"Carried home the clothes of the wits and aldermen, and got lodging for
your labour?" interrupted Cleveland.
"No, no--damn it, no," replied Halcro; "no such thing--you put me out in
my story--where was I?"
"Nay, the devil help you to the latitude," said the Captain, extricating
his button from the gripe of the unmerciful bard's finger and thumb,
"for I have no time to take an observation." So saying, he bolted from
the room.
"A silly, ill-bred, conceited fool," said Halcro, looking after him;
"with as little manners as wit in his empty coxcomb. I wonder what
Magnus and these silly wenches can see in him--he tells such damnable
long-winded stories, too, about his adventures and sea-fights--every
second word a lie, I doubt not. Mordaunt, my dear boy, take example by
that man--that is, take warning by him--never tell long stories about
yourself. You are sometimes given to talk too much about your own
exploits on crags and skerries, and the like, which only breaks
conversation, and prevents other folk from being heard. Now I see you
are impatient to hear out what I was saying--Stop, whereabouts was I?"
"I fear we must put it off, Mr. Halcro, until after dinner," said
Mordaunt, who also meditated his escape, though desirous of effecting it
with more delicacy towards his old acquaintance than Captain Cleveland
had thought it necessary to use.
"Nay, my dear boy," said Halcro, seeing himself about to be utterly
deserted, "do not you leave me too--never take so bad an example as to
set light by old acquaintance, Mordaunt. I have wandered many a weary
step in my day; but they were always lightened when I could get hold of
the arm of an old friend like yourself."
So saying, he quitted the youth's coat, and sliding his hand gently
under his arm, grappled him more effectually; to which Mordaunt
submitted, a little moved by the poet's observation upon the unkindness
of old acquaintances, under which he himself was an immediate sufferer.
But when Halcro renewed his formidable question, "Whereabouts was I?"
Mordaunt, preferring his poetry to his prose, reminded him of the song
which he said he had written upon his first leaving Zetland,--a song to
which, indeed, the enquirer was no stranger, but which, as it must be
new to the reader, we shall here insert as a favourable specimen of the
poetical powers of this tuneful descendant of Haco the Golden-mouthed;
for, in the opinion of many tolerable judges, he held a respectable rank
among the inditers of madrigals of the period, and was as well qualified
to give immortality to his Nancies of the hills or dales, as many a
gentle sonnetteer of wit and pleasure about town. He was something of a
musician also, and on the present occasion seized upon a sort of lute,
and, quitting his victim, prepared the instrument for an accompaniment,
speaking all the while that he might lose no time.
"I learned the lute," he said, "from the same man who taught honest
Shadwell--plump Tom, as they used to call him--somewhat roughly treated
by the glorious John, you remember--Mordaunt, you remember--
'Methinks I see the new Arion sail,
The lute still trembling underneath thy nail;
At thy well sharpen'd thumb, from shore to shore,
The trebles squeak for fear, the basses roar.'
Come, I am indifferently in tune now--what was it to be?--ay, I
remember--nay, The Lass of Northmaven is the ditty--poor Bet Stimbister!
I have called her Mary in the verses. Betsy does well for an English
song; but Mary is more natural here." So saying, after a short prelude,
he sung, with a tolerable voice and some taste, the following verses:
MARY.
Farewell to Northmaven,
Grey Hillswicke, farewell!
To the calms of thy haven,
The storms on thy fell--
To each breeze that can vary
The mood of thy main,
And to thee, bonny Mary!
We meet not again.
Farewell the wild ferry,
Which Hacon could brave,
When the peaks of the Skerry
Were white in the wave.
There's a maid may look over
These wild waves in vain--
For the skiff of her lover--
He comes not again.
The vows thou hast broke,
On the wild currents fling them;