The Red Eric by R. M. Ballantyne (web ebook reader txt) 📕
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- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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“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.
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
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