The Red Eric by Robert Michael Ballantyne (cat reading book txt) 📕

why he used to _smell_ o' drink very bad sometimes. There wos a young widdy in that town, o' the name o' Morgan, as kep' a cow, an' owned a small cabin, an' a patch o' tater-ground about the size o' the starn sheets of our owld long-boat. She wos a great deal run after, wos this widdy--not that the young lads had an eye to the cow, or the cabin, or the tater-estate, by no manes--but she wos greatly admired, she wos. I admired her meself, and wint to see her pretty fraquent. Well, wan evenin' I wint to see her, an' says I, `Mrs Morgan, did ye iver hear the bit song called the Widdy Machree?' `Sure I niver did,' says she. `Would ye like to hear it, darlint?' says I. So she says she would, an' I gave it to her right off; an' when I'd done, says I, `Now, Widdy Morgan, ochone! will ye take _me_?' But she shook her head, and looked melancholy. `Ye ain't a-goin' to take spasms?' said I, for I got frightened at her looks. `No,' says she; `but there's a sacret about me; an' I like ye too well, Phil, to decaive ye; if ye only know'd the sacret, ye wouldn't have me at any price.'

"`Wouldn't I?' says I; `try me, cushla, and see av I won't.'

"`Phil Briant,' says she, awful solemn like, `I'm haunted.'

"`Haunted!' says I; `'av coorse ye are, bliss yer purty face; don't I know that ivery boy in the parish is after ye?'

"`It's not that I mane. It's a ghost as haunts me. It haunts me cabin, and me cow, and me tater-estate; an' it drinks.'

"`Now, darlint,' says I, `everybody knows yer aisy frightened about ghosts. I don't belave in one meself, an' I don't mind 'em a farden dip; but av all the ghosts in Ireland haunted ye, I'd niver give ye up.'

"`Will ye come an' see it this night?' says she.

"`Av coorse I will,' says I. An' that same night I wint to her cabin, and she let me in, and put a candle on the table, an' hid me behind a great clock, in a corner jist close by the cupboard, where the brandy-bottle lived. Then she lay down on her bed with her clo's on, and pulled the coverlid over her, and pretinded to go to slape. In less nor half-an-hour I hears a fut on the doorstep; then a tap at the door, which opened, it seemed to me, of its own accord, and in walks the ghost, sure enough! It was covered all over from head to fut in a white sheet, and I seed by the way it walked that it wos the worse of drink. I wos in a mortal fright, ye may be sure, an' me knees shuk to that extint ye might have heard them rattle. The ghost walks straight up to the cupboard, takes out the brandy-bottle, and fills out a whole tumbler quite full, and drinks it off; it did, the baste, ivery dhrop. I seed it with me two eyes, as sure as I'm a-standin' here. It came into the house drunk, an' it wint out drunker nor it came in."

"Is that all?" exclaimed several of Briant's auditors.

"All! av coorse it is. Wot more would ye have? Didn't I say that I'd tell ye a story as would prove to ye that ghosts drink, more especially Irish ghosts? To be sure it turned out afterwards that the ghost was the sexton o' the parish as took advantage o' the poor widdy's fears; but I can tell ye, boys, that ghost niver came back after the widdy became Mrs Briant."

"Oh! then ye married the widder, did ye?" said Jim Scroggles.

"I did; an' she's alive and hearty this day av she's not--"

Briant was interrupted by a sudden roar of laughter from the men, who at that moment caught sight of Jacko, the small monkey, in a condition of mind and body that, to say the least of it, did him no credit. We are sorry to be compelled to state that Jacko was evidently and undoubtedly tipsy. Gurney said he was "as drunk as a fiddler."

We cannot take upon ourself to say whether he was or was not as drunk as that. We are rather inclined to think that fiddlers, as a class, are maligned, and that they are no worse than their neighbours in this respect, perhaps not so bad. Certainly, if any fiddler really deserves the imputation, it must be a violoncello player, because he is, properly speaking, a base-fiddler.

Be this, however, as it may, Jacko was unmistakably drunk--in a maudlin state of intoxication--drunker, probably, than ever a monkey was before or since. He appeared, as he came slowly staggering forward to the place where the men were at work on the boat, to have just wakened out of his first drunken sleep, for his eyes were blinking like the orbs of an owl in the sunshine, and in his walk he placed his right foot where his left should have gone, and his left foot where his right should have gone, occasionally making a little run forward to save himself from tumbling on his nose, and then pulling suddenly up, and throwing up his arms in order to avoid falling on his back. Sometimes he halted altogether,--and swayed to and fro, gazing, meanwhile, pensively at the ground, as if he were wondering why it had taken to rolling and earthquaking in that preposterous manner; or were thinking on the bald-headed mother he had left behind him in the African wilderness. When the loud laugh of the men saluted his ears, Jacko looked up as quickly and steadily as he could, and grinned a ghastly smile--or something like it--as if to say, "What are you laughing at, villains?"

It is commonly observed that, among men, the ruling passion comes out strongly when they are under the influence of strong drink. So it is with monkeys. Jacko's ruling passion was thieving; but having, at that time, no particular inducement to steal, he indulged his next ruling passion--that of affection--by holding out both arms, and staggering towards Phil Briant to be taken up.

A renewed burst of laughter greeted this movement. "It knows ye, Phil," cried Jim Scroggles.

"Ah! then, so it should, for it's meself as is good to it. Come to its uncle, then. O good luck to yer purty little yaller face. So it wos you stole the brandy, wos it? Musha! but ye might have know'd ye belonged to a timp'rance ship, so ye might."

Jacko spread his arms on Briant's broad chest--they were too short to go round his neck--laid his head thereon, and sighed. Perhaps he felt penitent on account of his wickedness; but it is more probable that he felt uneasy in body rather than in mind.

"I say, Briant," cried Gurney.

"That's me," answered the other.

"If you are Jacko's self-appointed uncle, and Miss Ailie is his adopted mother, wot relation is Miss Ailie to you?"

"You never does nothin' right, Gurney," interposed Nikel Sling; "you can't even preepound a pruposition. Here's how you oughter to ha' put it. If Phil Briant be Jacko's uncle, and Miss Ailie his adopted mother--all three bein' related in a sorter way by bein' shipmates, an' all on us together bein' closely connected in vartue of our bein' messmates--wot relation is Gurney to a donkey?"

"That's a puzzler," said Gurney, affecting to consider the question deeply.

"Here's a puzzler wot'll beat it, though," observed Tim Rokens; "suppose we all go on talkin' stuff till doomsday, w'en'll the boat be finished?"

"That's true," cried Dick Barnes, resuming work with redoubled energy; "take that young thief to his mother, Phil, and tell her to rope's-end him. I'm right glad to find, though, that he _is_ the thief arter all, and not one o' us."

On examination being made, it was found that the broken and empty brandy-bottle lay on the floor of the monkey's nest, and it was conjectured, from the position in which it was discovered, that that dissipated little creature, having broken off the neck in order to get at the brandy, had used the body of the bottle as a pillow whereon to lay its drunken little head. Luckily for its own sake, it had spilt the greater part of the liquid, with which everything in its private residence was saturated and perfumed.

On having ocular demonstration of the depravity of her pet, Ailie at first wept, then, on beholding its eccentric movements, she laughed in spite of herself.

After that, she wept again, and spoke to it reproachfully, but failed to make the slightest impression on its hardened little heart. Then she put it to bed, and wrapped it up carefully in its sailcloth blanket.

With this piece of unmerited kindness Jacko seemed touched, for he said, "Oo-oo--oo-oo--ooee-ee!" once or twice in a peculiarly soft and penitential tone, after which he dropped into a calm, untroubled slumber.


CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.


THE BOAT FINISHED--FAREWELL TO FAIRYLAND--ONCE MORE AT SEA.

At last the boat was finished. It had two masts and two lug-sails, and pulled eight oars. There was just sufficient room in it to enable the men to move about freely, but it required a little management to enable them to stow themselves away when they went to sleep, and had they possessed the proper quantity of provisions for their contemplated voyage, there is no doubt that they would have found themselves considerably cramped. The boat was named the _Maid of the Isle_, in memory of the sandbank on which she had been built, and although in her general outline and details she was rather a clumsy craft, she was serviceable and strongly put together.

Had she been decked, or even half-decked, the voyage which now began would not have been so desperate an undertaking; but having been only covered in part with a frail tarpaulin, she was not at all fitted to face the terrible storms that sometimes sweep the southern seas. Each man, as he gazed at her, felt that his chance of ultimate escape was very small indeed. Still, the men had now been so long contemplating the voyage and preparing for it, and they had become so accustomed to risk their lives upon the sea, that they set out upon this voyage at last in cheerful spirits, and even jested about the anticipated dangers and trials which they knew full well awaited them.

It was a lovely morning, that on which the wrecked crew of the whaler bade adieu to "Fairyland," as the islet had been named by Ailie--a name that was highly, though laughingly, approved of by the men. The ocean and sky presented that mysterious co-mingling of their gorgeous elements that irresistibly call forth the wonder and admiration of even the most unromantic and matter-of-fact men. It was one of Ailie's peculiarly beloved skies. You could not, without much consideration, have decided as to where was the exact line at which the glassy ocean met the clear sky, and it was almost impossible to tell, when gazing at the horizon, which were the real clouds and which the reflections.

The bright blue vault above was laden with clouds of the most gorgeous description, in which all the shades of pearly-grey and yellow were mingled