The Pirate
Thimblethwaite, through the midst of them, as bold as a lion, and I
followed with a small parcel under my arm, which I had taken up partly
to oblige my landlord, as the shop porter was not in the way, and partly
that I might be thought to have something to do there, for you are to
think there was no admittance at the Wits' for strangers who had no
business there.--I have heard that Sir Charles Sedley said a good thing
about that"----
"Nay, but you forget glorious John," said Mordaunt.
"Ay, glorious you may well call him. They talk of their Blackmore, and
Shadwell, and such like,--not fit to tie the latchets of John's
shoes--'Well,' he said to my landlord, 'what have you got there?' and
he, bowing, I warrant, lower than he would to a duke, said he had made
bold to come and show him the stuff which Lady Elizabeth had chose for
her nightgown.--'And which of your geese is that, Tim, who has got it
tucked under his wing?'--'He is an Orkney goose, if it please you, Mr.
Dryden,' said Tim, who had wit at will, 'and he hath brought you a copy
of verses for your honour to look at.'--'Is he amphibious?' said
glorious John, taking the paper,--and methought I could rather have
faced a battery of cannon than the crackle it gave as it opened, though
he did not speak in a way to dash one neither;--and then he looked at
the verses, and he was pleased to say, in a very encouraging way indeed,
with a sort of good-humoured smile on his face, and certainly for a fat
elderly gentleman,--for I would not compare it to Minna's smile, or
Brenda's,--he had the pleasantest smile I ever saw,--'Why, Tim,' he
said, 'this goose of yours will prove a swan on your hands.' With that
he smiled a little, and they all laughed, and none louder than those who
stood too far off to hear the jest; for every one knew when he smiled
there was something worth laughing at, and so took it upon trust; and
the word passed through among the young Templars, and the wits, and the
smarts, and there was nothing but question on question who we were; and
one French fellow was trying to tell them it was only Monsieur Tim
Thimblethwaite; but he made such work with his Dumbletate and
Timbletate, that I thought his explanation would have lasted"----
"As long as your own story," thought Mordaunt; but the narrative was at
length finally cut short, by the strong and decided voice of the
Udaller.
"I will hear no more on it, Mr. Factor!" he exclaimed.
"At least let me say something about the breed of horses," said
Yellowley, in rather a cry-mercy tone of voice. "Your horses, my dear
sir, resemble cats in size, and tigers in devilry!"
"For their size," said Magnus, "they are the easier for us to get off
and on them--[as Triptolemus experienced this morning, thought Mordaunt
to himself]--and, as for their devilry, let no one mount them that
cannot manage them."
A twinge of self-conviction, on the part of the agriculturist, prevented
him from reply. He darted a deprecatory glance at Mordaunt, as if for
the purpose of imploring secrecy respecting his tumble; and the Udaller,
who saw his advantage, although he was not aware of the cause, pursued
it with the high and stern tone proper to one who had all his life been
unaccustomed to meet with, and unapt to endure, opposition.
"By the blood of Saint Magnus the Martyr," he said, "but you are a fine
fellow, Master Factor Yellowley! You come to us from a strange land,
understanding neither our laws, nor our manners, nor our language, and
you propose to become governor of the country, and that we should all be
your slaves!"
"My pupils, worthy sir, my pupils!" said Yellowley, "and that only for
your own proper advantage."
"We are too old to go to school," said the Zetlander. "I tell you once
more, we will sow and reap our grain as our fathers did--we will eat
what God sends us, with our doors open to the stranger, even as theirs
were open. If there is aught imperfect in our practice, we will amend it
in time and season; but the blessed Baptist's holyday was made for light
hearts and quick heels. He that speaks a word more of reason, as you
call it, or any thing that looks like it, shall swallow a pint of
sea-water--he shall, by this hand!--and so fill up the good ship, the
Jolly Mariner of Canton, once more, for the benefit of those that will
stick by her; and let the rest have a fling with the fiddlers, who have
been summoning us this hour. I will warrant every wench is on tiptoe by
this time. Come, Mr. Yellowley, no unkindness, man--why, man, thou
feelest the rolling of the Jolly Mariner still"--(for, in truth, honest
Triptolemus showed a little unsteadiness of motion, as he rose to attend
his host)--"but never mind, we shall have thee find thy land-legs to
reel it with yonder bonny belles. Come along, Triptolemus--let me
grapple thee fast, lest thou _trip_, old Triptolemus--ha, ha, ha!"
So saying, the portly though weatherbeaten hulk of the Udaller sailed
off like a man-of-war that had braved a hundred gales, having his guest
in tow like a recent prize. The greater part of the revellers followed
their leader with loud jubilee, although there were several stanch
topers, who, taking the option left them by the Udaller, remained behind
to relieve the Jolly Mariner of a fresh cargo, amidst many a pledge to
the health of their absent landlord, and to the prosperity of his
roof-tree, with whatsoever other wishes of kindness could be devised, as
an apology for another pint-bumper of noble punch.
The rest soon thronged the dancing-room, an apartment which partook of
the simplicity of the time and of the country. Drawing-rooms and saloons
were then unknown in Scotland, save in the houses of the nobility, and
of course absolutely so in Zetland; but a long, low, anomalous
store-room, sometimes used for the depositation of merchandise,
sometimes for putting aside lumber, and a thousand other purposes, was
well known to all the youth of Dunrossness, and of many a district
besides, as the scene of the merry dance, which was sustained with so
much glee when Magnus Troil gave his frequent feasts.
The first appearance of this ball-room might have shocked a fashionable
party, assembled for the quadrille or the waltz. Low as we have stated
the apartment to be, it was but imperfectly illuminated by lamps,
candles, ship-lanterns, and a variety of other _candelabra_, which
served to throw a dusky light upon the floor, and upon the heaps of
merchandise and miscellaneous articles which were piled around; some of
them stores for the winter; some, goods destined for exportation; some,
the tribute of Neptune, paid at the expense of shipwrecked vessels,
whose owners were unknown; some, articles of barter received by the
proprietor, who, like most others at the period, was somewhat of a
merchant as well as a landholder, in exchange for the fish, and other
articles, the produce of his estate. All these, with the chests, boxes,
casks, &c., which contained them, had been drawn aside, and piled one
above the other, in order to give room for the dancers, who, light and
lively as if they had occupied the most splendid saloon in the parish of
St. James's, executed their national dances with equal grace and
activity.
The group of old men who looked on, bore no inconsiderable resemblance
to a party of aged tritons, engaged in beholding the sports of the
sea-nymphs; so hard a look had most of them acquired by contending with
the elements, and so much did the shaggy hair and beards, which many of
them cultivated after the ancient Norwegian fashion, give their heads
the character of these supposed natives of the deep. The young people,
on the other hand, were uncommonly handsome, tall, well-made, and
shapely; the men with long fair hair, and, until broken by the weather,
a fresh ruddy complexion, which, in the females, was softened into a
bloom of infinite delicacy. Their natural good ear for music qualified
them to second to the utmost the exertions of a band, whose strains were
by no means contemptible; while the elders, who stood around or sat
quiet upon the old sea-chests, which served for chairs, criticised the
dancers, as they compared their execution with their own exertions in
former days; or, warmed by the cup and flagon, which continued to
circulate among them, snapped their fingers, and beat time with their
feet to the music.
Mordaunt looked upon this scene of universal mirth with the painful
recollection, that he, thrust aside from his pre-eminence, no longer
exercised the important duties of chief of the dancers, or office of
leader of the revels, which had been assigned to the stranger Cleveland.
Anxious, however, to suppress the feelings of his own disappointment,
which he felt it was neither wise to entertain nor manly to display, he
approached his fair neighbours, to whom he had been so acceptable at
table, with the purpose of inviting one of them to become his partner in
the dance. But the awfully ancient old lady, even the Lady Glowrowrum,
who had only tolerated the exuberance of her nieces' mirth during the
time of dinner, because her situation rendered it then impossible for
her to interfere, was not disposed to permit the apprehended renewal of
the intimacy implied in Mertoun's invitation. She therefore took upon
herself, in the name of her two nieces, who sat pouting beside her in
displeased silence, to inform Mordaunt, after thanking him for his
civility, that the hands of her nieces were engaged for that evening;
and, as he continued to watch the party at a little distance, he had an
opportunity of being convinced that the alleged engagement was a mere
apology to get rid of him, when he saw the two good-humoured sisters
join the dance, under the auspices of the next young men who asked their
hands. Incensed at so marked a slight, and unwilling to expose himself
to another, Mordaunt Mertoun drew back from the circle of dancers,
shrouded himself amongst the mass of inferior persons who crowded into
the bottom of the room as spectators, and there, concealed from the
observation of others, digested his own mortification as well as he
could--that is to say, very ill--and with all the philosophy of his
age--that is to say, with none at all.
CHAPTER XV.
A torch for me--let wantons, light of heart,
Tickle the useless rushes with their heels:
For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase--
I'll be a candle-holder, and look on.
_Romeo and Juliet._
The youth, says the moralist Johnson, cares not for the boy's
hobbyhorse, nor the man for the youth's mistress; and therefore the
distress of Mordaunt Mertoun, when excluded from the merry dance, may
seem trifling to many of my readers, who would, nevertheless, think they
did well to be angry if deposed from their usual place in an assembly of
a different kind. There lacked not amusement, however, for those whom
the dance did not suit, or who were not happy enough to find partners to
their liking. Halcro, now completely in his element, had assembled round
him an audience, to whom he was declaiming his poetry with all the
enthusiasm of glorious John himself, and receiving in return the usual
degree of applause allowed to minstrels who recite their own rhymes--so
long at least as the author is within hearing of the criticism. Halcro's
poetry might indeed have interested the antiquary as well as the admirer
of the Muses, for several of his pieces were translations or imitations
from the Scaldic sagas, which continued to be sung by the fishermen of
those islands even until a very late period; insomuch, that when Gray's
poems first found their way to Orkney, the old people recognised at
once, in the ode of the "Fatal Sisters," the Runic rhymes which had