An Old Sailor's Yarns

CHAPTER IV

Parolles. My lord, I am a man whom fortune hath cruelly scratched.

Lafeu. Well, what would you have me to do? 'tis too late to pare her nails now.

There never was yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

Julia Effingham was the only child of a rich merchant, who, like many others in these latter days, when scheming and speculation have superseded the good, old-fashioned habits of steady industry and unmoveable perseverance in the art of acquiring wealth, was dazzled by the one thousand and one bubbles that the South American revolution set afloat. He dipped pretty largely into Mexican mines, and was bit; he undertook to improve the breed of horses in Peru, and was bit; he attempted to establish steam cotton-factories in Colombia, and was bit; he bought largely into a Chilian Steam-boat Company, and was bit; till, finally, he resolved to visit South America himself, "to see," as he expressed it, "where the devil his fifty thousand pounds had gone to." He could obtain no tidings of a single farthing on the Atlantic side of that continent; but he learned one thing most thoroughly and satisfactorily, as thousands have done besides him, that if he had gone there in the first place, and seen the nakedness of the land, and the deplorable and remediless ignorance and superstition of the people, his fifty thousand pounds would have snugly remained in the three per cents. and India bonds. He was determined, however, now that he was fairly afloat, to "go the whole figure," and see the worst, if there was any thing worse to come. Accordingly he took passage for Valparaiso, where he found how, why, and wherefore his steam-boat concern had become a decided take-in; it is not very profitable running a boat of that kind in a country where wood sells at three cents per pound on the beach, and where the people have no idea of travelling except in the saddle.

Chili, then under the directorship of O'Higgins, was the only South American province that seemed to have changed for the better, by renouncing its allegiance to "Ferdinand the Beloved." Its ports were thrown open to foreign commerce; its navy was respectable, for the ships, the officers, and the seamen were English or Americans; its inhabitants had become quite civilized and tame, for the murdered foreigners in the streets of Valparaiso did not average much more than one or two per night; which, compared with Havana and Buenos Ayres, gave Chili a preponderance of refinement scarcely credible. Mr. Effingham was highly delighted with the country; and indeed Chili, setting aside the inhabitants, for the salubrity and mildness of its climate, the fertility of its soil, and the variety and delicacy of its fruits and vegetables, is certainly one of the finest countries in the world. He found many Englishmen established in various sections of the country, and the better sort of inhabitants very much disposed to treat them with kindness and urbanity.

He had been about eighteen months in St. Jago when he sent for his daughter, who now constituted the whole of his family; his English business he knew was safe in the management of his partner, and he sat himself down with the determination of making a magnificent fortune very much at his ease. Poor man! he little dreamed that the whole of South America is as infamous for revolutions as it is for earthquakes.

Having said thus much concerning the father of Julia Effingham, it is but fair to give the reader some idea of the lady herself. Indeed, in strict gallantry, I suspect that I ought to have introduced her first, but she has already been upon the stage, and "made her obedience," as sailors call it, to the audience; and, besides, age has claims that ought to be attended to.

In person, then, Julia was not remarkably tall, (I don't like tall women; "a man never ought to look up to his wife for a kiss or for advice;") her form had all that graceful and delicate roundness and fullness of outline so irresistibly pleasing to the eye. "Man," says an elegant writer upon natural history, contrasting the two sexes, "man is most angular, woman most round." Euclid himself could not have detected any thing angular in the faultless form of Julia Effingham; nothing resembling his "Asses' Bridge," or his "Windmill" problems, in the fall of her shoulders, the bend of her snowy neck, the delicate round of her chin, the delicious fulness of her ripe lip, the easy turn of her rosy cheeks, the graceful curve of her brow. Her nose was indeed a straight Grecian one, but not geometrically straight.

It must be admitted, by the way, that there are more decidedly good noses among women than among men. The latter are aquiline, Roman, parrot, pug, snub, thick, thin, long, short, peaked, bottle – some with a bump in the middle, some with a cleft, or fissure, and some with a button, or knob, at the end, like that on a man-of-war's boat-hook. In short, to describe all the various kinds of noses masculine, it would be necessary for philologians to create a new batch of adjectives, as the king of England does occasionally of peers.

I have already said, or meant to be understood to say, that Miss Effingham was somewhat inclined to embonpoint. I do not pretend to know the reason of this: perhaps leanness and emaciation were not considered genteel when she happened to be educated, as they are unfortunately by too many of my fair countrywomen; perhaps she never thought much about it; for I have always observed that very beautiful women, who prefer revolving in the quiet circle of domestic happiness and usefulness, are seldom or never very anxiously solicitous about their beauty; and the consequence is, that they are more beautiful, and stand the attacks of time far better, than those who choose a life of fashionable display, and court public admiration. Ladies may lace tight, eat pickles, and drink vinegar, to make them genteel; but it is free exercise in the open air, and simplicity of diet, provided it is nutritious, that confer gentility and grace, and preserve beauty. Will any man, married or single, and in the possession of his senses, say that he likes the looks of a horse whose ribs are visible and countable at half a mile's distance? I am confident the answer will be, no.

Still there is a wonderful resemblance between a lean woman and a lean horse, in more points than one; the lady does not, indeed, go upon all fours, but I can never see a very genteel female, laced into the shape of an hour-glass, without wishing, from the bottom of my heart, that she had an extra pair of le – ahem! – ancles, to support her feeble and tottering frame.

As I am growing old, and am, moreover, somewhat peculiarly circumstanced, I suppose that I must put up with such a wife as it pleases God to send me; but were I ten or fifteen years younger, and "well to do," I would accept of no descendant of mother Eve, as a helpmate and partner for life, who did not cut at least two inches on the ribs. The Turks, who are practical men of taste in these things; the Chinese, who pretend to the highest antiquity in civilization; the naked Africans and South Sea Islanders, beyond dispute the most unsophisticated of all father Adam's children, and who, like Job, "retain their integrity" pretty stiffly, considering the missionaries, the "march of intellect," and other untoward circumstances, are all of them most decidedly in favor of something substantial in wedlock; no man of taste, in either of these nations, ever dreams of comfort and happiness in matrimony, unless he clasps to his bosom an armful of wife. They choose their wives as we do lobsters – the heaviest are the best.

I am a firm believer in the maxim that mind and matter exert a mutual influence upon each other, and one of the most obvious deductions from that datum that occurs to my mind is, that the acidities of the disposition are not only neutralized but absolutely shut up by the embonpoint of the body. People blessed with healthy plumpness are indolent as well as good-natured, and it is a laborious piece of business for such folks to get in a passion.

The wealth and fondness of Julia's father, and her own natural good sense, had made her mistress of all those elegant and fashionable accomplishments that constitute the education of a lady of fortune; and she had a grace and sweetness in every thing she did that reminded the beholder of that exquisitely beautiful line in Ariosto:

"She walked – she spoke – she sang – and heaven was there."

This description may not be according to certain received axioms concerning female beauty; but I never could bear to contemplate a fair face and graceful form as painters do, who measure woman's loveliness by certain fixed and arbitrary rules, as surveyors of lumber do boards. Nothing makes me more fidgetty than to hear a man compare every beautiful face he sees with a certain standard, even if that standard is the Venus de Medicis herself; this face is not good, for it is not exactly oval; that nose is altogether wrong, for it is not Grecian; a chin is not this, or a mouth is not that, &c. Portrait painters are much addicted to this kind of criticism; and whenever I find myself in company with one of these two-foot-rule critics, I make my escape from him as I would from a plague hospital.

At the time of our narrative, Julia's father had been absent somewhat more than two years. He had sent for her to join him at Valparaiso, a summons that she prepared to obey with no small trepidation. "The course of true love," which is somewhat notorious for "never running smooth," seemed at this moment about to encounter a "head sea." Her absence from England she knew must be a long one, perhaps an eternal one; the separation from Allerton weighed much heavier upon her spirits than she was willing to admit, and altogether her prospects of happiness seemed darkened for ever.

The same conveyance that brought Julia's letters also brought instructions to the other partners of the house to fit out two vessels for the Pacific, one of which was to be entrusted to the command of Captain Allerton; but Mr. Effingham omitted to designate which of the two was to be honored by being for some months the floating home of his fair daughter; either intending it should be left to her option, or taking it for granted that his partner, well aware of the intimacy of Allerton's standing in her father's family, would of course place Julia on board the ship commanded by George. But that partner was a crafty old fox, who had long since seen the growing affection of the two young people, and, with all that eagerness to destroy happiness, that they are past enjoying, that characterizes the majority of old people, decided that Miss Julia should, for a time, entrust her person and fortunes to the fatherly care of Captain Burton, a sedate old Cornish man of sixty years of age, who had no more idea of love than he had of the Chaldee language.

CHAPTER V

Should a man full of talk be justified? O that ye would altogether hold your peace; and it should be your wisdom.

Voyages across the Atlantic are now performed every day by old and young women and children, and described by them so much more elegantly and scientifically, and with so much more correct knowledge of the technicalities necessary for such descriptions, than it is possible that seafaring men can ever attain, that if one of the latter, in a moment of mental hallucination, was to undertake to convey an idea of the element that has been his home for years, he would be hissed off the stage as another Munchausen. For this reason nautical men, who have laid aside the marlinspike and taken up the pen, very prudently avoid that portion of the literary arena, leaving Daddy Neptune's dominions to be explored and described by landsmen.

It is in obedience to public opinion in this respect, I suppose, that our Secretaries of the Navy are almost uniformly chosen from the "mass of the people," at the greatest possible distance from high-water mark; men who have never seen a piece of water that they could not jump across, or a ship, except in the newspaper, till they came to Washington. "Let the sea make a noise, and the fulness thereof; let the floods clap their hands" for joy, that the Cooks and the Falconers, the Ansons and the Byrons, of olden time, are at length banished from the department of nautical literature, and no oceanic description will be listened to unless said or sung by a ci-devant midshipman or a half-boy, half-woman poet, who lies in his berth, and sees, through the four-inch-plank deadlight of a packet, the full moon rising in the west. James Fenimore Cooper, Esq. – I give the man his entire name and title, as he seems to insist upon it upon all occasions – the "American Walter Scott," is undisputably at the very head of his trade at the present day for nautical descriptions; his terrestrial admirers have pronounced him "a practical seaman;" and, of course, the only man in these United States that can give any, even an approximate idea of the sea, and "those that go down in ships." I have at my pen's end six or eight very desperate "cases" of his knowledge of "practical seamanship" and maritime affairs, which may be found in the "Red Rover" and "Water Witch" passim; but those animals, vulgarly called critics, but more politely and properly at present, reviewers, whom the New York Mirror defines to be "great dogs, that go about unchained and growl at every thing they do not comprehend," these dogs have dragged the lion's hide partly off, and ascertained, what every man, to whom the Almighty has vouchsafed an ordinary share of common sense, had all along suspected, that it covered an ass. James Fenimore Cooper, Esquire's "Letter to his Countrymen" was an explosion of folly and absurdity that has blown his name up so high, that there is little or no chance of its coming down again "this king's reign." Whether he was or was not hired to write it to support the present administration, as some folks suspect, is not my affair. I will, therefore, resume the thread of my discourse, which was only "belayed" for a few minutes, to indulge in the rare pleasure of grumbling a little at seeing

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

Julia Effingham was embarked on board the large, burthensome, and not alarmingly fast sailing brig Avon – John Burton, master; while the ship under the command of Captain Allerton was called the Hyperion. Both vessels were nearly of the same tonnage, though there was much difference in their rates of sailing, the Hyperion having been built as near the model of a swift American ship as the English naval architect's conscience would let him, which, however, did not allow him any greater latitude than such as made a very obvious difference in their appearance and rate of speed. Miss Effingham was accompanied by her maid, Miss Dolly, alias Dorothea, Hastings. Nothing material occurred for the first six weeks of their voyage, by which time they had nearly reached the equator, except that Allerton improved every opportunity afforded by light breezes and calms to visit the Avon; which visits Captain Burton, honest man! supposed were intended for himself.

But at this period – that is, six weeks after leaving the Lizard Point, and while the two ships were in that peculiarly disagreeable strip of salt water that lies between the southern limits of the northeast trade-wind and the northern edge of the south-east, and is affected by neither – there came on one night one of those very black and threatening squalls, that look as though they would blow the ocean out of its bed, and frequently do not blow at all. Captain Burton, who thought a squall was a squall all over the world, and who was better acquainted with the Grand Banks and the Bay of Biscay than with the tropics, took in all sail, while the Hyperion, with topgallant-sails lowered, ran gallantly before it, and made upwards of fifty miles before the breeze left her. The Avon was in her turn shortly after favored with a fine breeze, but the two ships did not meet again till they had passed Cape Horn.

In the mean time, Mr. Effingham began to discover that Chili was not paradise, nor its inhabitants saints; many thefts, robberies, and frauds, were practised upon him, for which he could obtain no redress from the contemptible magistrates; an earthquake, that did a great deal of damage, was followed by a sweeping epidemic, which, as it affected only the natives, was imputed by the priests to magic art and diabolical witchcraft on the part of the heretical foreign residents. A riot was the consequence, and the foreigners were only able to secure their lives and property by a combination of their numbers, and the most determined firmness of purpose. In short, the harassed merchant found out at last that he had blundered into one of those self-styled republics, so many of which have sprung up and passed away since the commencement of the nineteenth century, where infant Liberty is nursed by mother Mob.

These vexatious circumstances, and the prospect of an approaching revolution, that threatened to be a bloody one, completely changed his sentiments with regard to all South American governments, and he bitterly regretted having sent for his daughter to join him.

It was too late now to remedy that mis-step; but he determined, as soon as she arrived, to re-embark for England as soon as possible, and in consequence he lost no time in disposing of his merchandize, and transmitting his funds to the coast, and thence to the spirit-room of a British frigate. Having thus "set his house in order," and adjusted his Chilian books, he left St. Jago, and took up his abode for the time being in Valparaiso, waiting impatiently for the arrival of the Hyperion and Avon, that were now daily expected.

CHAPTER VI

Finally, my dear hearers.

Nothing material occurred to the good brig Avon after parting company, as aforesaid, with her consort, the Hyperion; a circumstance that I regret not a little, as it deprives me of my only chance for describing a storm at sea. They only experienced one tornado, and fifteen gales of wind, before joining the other ship. The tornado was no great things after all – the brig ran merrily before it, under a reefed foresail and close-reefed main-topsail. The crew were all on deck during the whole night it lasted, in case of their services being required. But the females below had by far the worst of it – they were "turned in" to berths that the ship-joiner had built with reference rather to the accommodation of an able-bodied man, than a delicate young lady; and in consequence, poor Julia was dashed first against the vessel's side, and then against the front berth-board, as the brig rolled gunwales under at every motion, till she began to think with the Frenchman, that she "should get some sleeps, no, not never." In this dilemma she thought of taking her maid, Miss Dorothea Hastings, into the berth with her, where the two females, operating mutually as "checks" to each other, eventually made out a very passable night's rest. As for the gales of wind, they were the merest flea-bites in creation, though one of them borrowed the brig's fore-topmast, and another walked away with her jib-boom.

During this period, Benavidas had been taken a second time; and as his captors did not choose to risk shooting him again, which they had already practised upon him once without success, they hanged him. His gang were nearly all killed or taken at the same time, and the prisoners summarily dealt with.

Longford and about thirty more made their escape in a small schooner; and as they well knew that they would experience no other mercy, if taken, than a high gallows and short halter, they shaped a course for the island of Masafuero, which they determined to make their head-quarters, and to commit depredations upon all vessels that passed which were not too well armed. They effected a landing with some difficulty, and found, as they expected, considerable quantities of provisions and stores, that had been deposited among the deep fissures of the rocks by Benavidas some time previous, when his affairs on the continent began to assume a smoky appearance. Here the scattered but desperate remnant of his lawless followers found a temporary respite from the harassing pursuit of the Chilenos, that resulted every day in the capture and immediate execution of some of their number.