THE VOYAGE, A DRAMATICLE. SCENE.-A Castle-hall. CREDULAR and MENDES, at Table. Cred. Nine hundred fathom, didst thou say? what, nine! Prythee, again; that I may glut mine ears With admiration. Hundred! Stars above! A wave nine hundred fathom high! Men. Ay, from the base to the brow. Cred. O lowly hills! what are ye all to this! Cred. Bubble! bubble! what a throat has he Men. Lord, sir!-the sea was then Scarce in its merry mood. This was a time As far above their cope, Cred. O! wondrous! O, what it is to be a voyager! Let's have these miracles. Come, sir! a glass of wine; Wine helps the tongue, the memory, and the wit; I pledge you, sir. Now for your storms and waves! We cavaliers o' the quarter-deck, we knights o' the mast, Cred. No whit more true in fact than choice in phrase Spent by us fireside men. Come, sir! the Voyage, from the snout to the tail. Men. Sir, you shall hear. We sailed from Genoa; summer-sweet the morn; Men. The amorous breeze sigh'd in our galley's sail, Cred. Aha! the winds can woo: How liked your bark this soft persuasion? Men. On flew the sea-bird; fair, and fast, and free; Men. It is not time for tempest yet, sir; here was a calm. And green-tail'd Tritons too; and water-nymphs, Whilst the bluff sea-god blew his shrill-shell horn. Cred. 'Tis vouch'd by the ancients, mermaids have been seen; And dolphins too; and men with horns Men. O! commonly. Cred. Well, signior Argonaut. Men. What shall be said o' the sun? shall he shine in peace? Shall's thrust him by? shall's leave him out o' the bill? Cred. Leave out the sun! in broad day light! impossible! Past twilight, signior, and the sun must shine Whether we will or no. Men. True. The heavens look'd like a dome of turquoise stone, With golden shell, emburnish'd till it blazed; This was the sun. Cred. Good, good; go on. Men. Now, mark! Scarce had this sun-like snail, or snail-like sun, Paused at the viewless boundary of morn Where noon begins and ends, when-mark me, signior- Cred. I do, sir; slit mine ears! Men. When the swol'n storm, recovering all its rage, Nay, trebly fraught with elemental rack, Burst in a rattling hurricane around! Cred. O excellent! well Men. The blustering, bellowing, brimstone-breathing Hist, (Whipt by some fiend broke loose from Erebus) First struck the surly ocean; ocean roared. Cred. O! well done, ocean! brave ocean! Men. Another blow. Cred. O excellent! Well, sir Men. Well, sir, you must think, The sea, provoked by this assault, grew angry. Cred. Why, if 'twere made of milk 'twould rage at th's. Cred. O! excellent! O, what a man might do in a tub! translate himself! More o' the storm, signior, more o' the storm, if you love me. Men. The groaning sky hurl'd down wing'd thunder-bolts, Thick as it erst rain'd quails on Israel; The clouds dropt fire, fast as you'd boulter gold Ta'en from the Tagus' bed; while th' hair-brain'd storm Mingled the roaring billows with the clouds; And daub'd the face of heaven with filthy sand Cred. O excellent! A little more villainy, signior. Men. The hell-black heav'ns grew neighbour to the waves And cloak'd us in the utter pall of night. Lightning our only day; and every flash Lit a grim scene: like Pelions lost in clouds Stood the tall billows, and the rueful waste Look'd like a mountain-field of wintry snow, So beaten into foam and yeasty, they. Cred. O! excellent! O! excellent! Men. Here were a time indeed to cry, O hills! Men. Under the great toe; just as it might be here; Cred. Good lack! what wondrous sights these travellers see! Cred. Ha! Have you any more miracles? Men. Good sir, you take the height of possible By the span of a small experience; coop'd here Between two neighbouring hills, which lave their feet You mete your earth, your ocean, and your air, By an unequal measure. Cred. l' faith, 'tis so. Men. But we, who are men o' the world, who've walk'd the waves On two-inch boards, who've seen the fiends o' the storm Unmanacled, we know something. Cred. True as th' Apocrypha, true as th' Apocrypha. Ay-at th' Antipodes. Did the bark bide buffet? Mark, sir; we'd clear'd the gulf; the dying storm Cred. What! in one whiff! Men. Mark, sir; I'd one hand on the gunwale thus; With t'other I had hoodwink'd thus mine eyes, Wrapt in mine own profundity; the wind Sobb'd heavily; I woke, and saw our Christian hills Before me; shut mine eyes in peace; the blast Roar'd! I look'd up-and lo! as I stand here, Afric seem'd wedded to our continent! A Pagan bay shelter'd our Catholic bark. Cred. Holy Virgin! Would you swear 'twas Pagan? I pull'd the Dey of Tunis by the beard, Look! here are some o' the hairs! Cred. As God's alive, it is a proof! "Tis plain You could not pluck a beard in Africa And you in Italy; 'tis a proof, a proof. Well-and what next? saw you no monsters? Men. Frequent as figs. Sir, I've a monstrous tale For every notch upon the dial; how We fought with griffins, grappled with green dragons, Cred. I thought your fairy-tales were only lies! Of Gasco Mendes !-then, I shall lie doubly. Cred. The doom's too horrible.-Whew! the brass sings clear! We'll hear these miracles another time. [Horn without. Good night, good signior.-Well-truth's truth-that's plain As my own nose ;-yet still I can but cry, Good lack! what wondrous sights these travellers see! [Exeunt. THE OLD SEAMAN, A SKETCH FROM NATURE. I LIKE a sailor. He is the oldest boy that wears a jacket ;-frank, generous, playful, and somewhat pug, nacious. Not that he will fight for nothing: but he will battle for glory, for that is like a ship's name; or, if men wear wooden shoes, he will drub them for it, though he should get a leg made of the same leather. Talk of "our Wives and Liberties," -he will fight for "Doll of Wapping," and get into a French prison. But for laurel or wreaths of it, he would rather win rolls of pigtail; and as for palms-" Palmam qui meruit ferat," he has lost his hand and the palm with it. Immortality is not his aim: but he is a Dryad up to the knees; and, so far, he will not die like "all flesh." Gout, or cramp, or rheumatism, what are they to him?-he is a Stoic as far as the timber goes. Wooded,-but not watered, for he hates grog, except for the liquor that is in it. He looks like a human peg-top: you might spin him with a coil of cable. Talk of your improved rollers, and drilling machines, and sowing machines,he is the best dibble for potatoes but that will soon enough be discovered of him when he comes to his parish. One of his arms too is a fin: and he has lost an eye. It is the starboard one, and looks as if it had the wind in it--but it was blown out with gunpowder. He was in the Spitfire, off Cape Cod, when she took fire in the gun-room, and flew up like a rocket! He went aloft almost to his cherub, and when he came down again he was half dead and half blind one window, as he said, was as dark as night ;—but he makes light of it. All his bereavements eye-arm-leg-are trifles to him: one, indeed, is a standing jest. He often takes off his wooden leg. Diogenes was nothing to him as a philosopher: he is proud even of his misfortunes. Whilst others bewail their scratches, and plaister their razor cuts, he throws open his blue jacket, and shows the deep furrowed scars, and exclaims, "Talk not to me of seams!" To see an old seaman is to see a man. An old soldier, in the comparison, looks like an old woman-perhaps, because his uniform is red like her cloak. But a sailor has fought with more adversaries-the fire of the foe-the ice of the North Polethe struggle of the winds-and the assault of the wild waters. The elements are his playmates, and his home is the wide sea. "He is," says Sir T. Overbury-" a pitcht peece of reason calckt and tackled, and onely studied to dispute with tempests.' He has encountered shrieking hurricanes billows, like mountains with the white sheep atop and rocks, like the door-posts of death! He has circumvented the quicksand, and been too cunning for the deep! Wind, wave, rock,showers of shot,-bayonet and cutlas, he has withstood them all, either by force or skill.-What a fine flesh and blood trophy-(and some wood too)-is he of various victory! The roaring sea, the howling gale, the thundering cannon,-his old adversaries,-sing his triumph over them. What has he not braved and endured? We "love him for the dangers he has passed;" as the gentle Desdemona loved her husband, the Moor, the more he recounted of his perils. He can talk too ofRough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heav'n And of the cannibals that each other eat, A good lie, to do him justice, is no labour to him: but on the other hand he is as freely credulous, It was he who saw the man hunted by devils into Vesuvius - or. Ætna-as it is written and witnessed upon oath in his log-book. Tell him that sparrows may be caught with salt upon their tails, and he will believe you; for he knows that cod-fish are so taken. He has a great faith in the Kraken. If you will credit him, he has hooked one larger than the sea's bottom, with the best bower anchor; and he has seen the Sea-Serpent and the Mermaid. Some at least of his wonders he can show you: he has a flying fish in his chest, and a young dolphin-besides cockroaches, which eat up one's linen in the West Indies; but the blue shark he has given to a friend. The green parrot too he has parted with, but with more kindness than discretion; for he sent it to an old aunt, and she was pleased at the gift; but the bird, it turned out, blasphemed, and she was still more shocked at the giver. It is worth one ear to listen to him when, with these marvels, he talks over his voyages, his engagements, his adventures, and, above all, his residence amongst the savages; and how he made Christians of them-and some of them, as he says, dd good ones too! On this matter he is frequent; won to it, perhaps, by the remembrance of the flattering court paid him by the great king, Eea Tooa, and the pearly smiles of the black Princesses. Only on one subject is he more eloquent:-HIS SHIP! There he luxuriates: there he talks poetry! It is a doubt whether he could describe his mistress better. She sits upon the spray-speaking pastorally like a bird. She is the fleetest of the fleet. Tacking, or close-hauled, or under bare poles, there is none can compare with her. To see her in full dress skyscrapers, and royals, and stud-sails, is to fancy one of those lady-ships, who from Trojan galleys were changed into seanymphs; She walks the waters like a thing of life, And seems to dare the elements to strife. For all that he has endured, our mariner has only been made a gunner's mate; but "one man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and another with a wooden ladle." Poor Bill was not a spoon-bill. He was brought up to the sea; for he was born on board ship, cradled on the ocean, schooled in the fleet, and should have married a mermaid; but, as the tale goes, she jilted him, and he took up with Nancy Dawson, with whom he fell in love because she was so like the ship's figure-head. At twelve years old he was wrecked in the Agamemnon: at fourteen he was taken in the Vengeur; and at thirty he was blown up in the Spitfire. What a sea-fortune! But he never quarrelled with his profession, nor-as his good mother sometimes advised him-threw up the sea. He was never sick of it. At last, in the engagement off Trafalgar, under the immortal Nelson, he lost his arm by a shot; but, binding it up, he persisted in remaining upon deck, if it were only, as he said, to have satisfaction for it-the next broadside carried away both his legs. He was then grafted. Now he is ancient and uite grey; but he will not confess age: it is through going to the North Pole," he says, "for there the hares turn white in winter." Such a fragment as he would be a fit inmate of the noble hospital at Greenwichbut he is an out-pensioner, and wan ders through the country; he preferred it. It was at a farmhouse in Berkshire that I met with him, and learned these snatches of his history. The dogs barked, as they will do at a beggar; the people of the house said "There comes old Bill!" and in came this Auncient Marinere, thrusting a fistful of ballads before him. He stumped in with a fine smiling assurance, and heaving his old glazed hat into the middle of the floor, took possession of a low elbow-chair by the fire. His old bronzed forehead was rugged and weather-beaten like a rock, and the white hair sprinkled over it like the foam of his own ocean. A lean puckered eyelid seemed to squeeze the light out again from one little grey twinkling eye; but the other was blind and blank. His face was red, and cured by the salt sea air, and warranted" to keep in any climate," but his cheeks were thin, and his nose and chin sharp and prominent. Still he smiled, and seemed to wear a happy heart that had never been among breakers; and he sang one of his old sea songs with a firm jolly voice. He only wanted more rum and tobacco to set the world at defiance; and he thought it hard he could not have them. "Have you no parish?" asked the farmer, who was himself an overseer." Parish!-aye to be sure I have," said the old tar, "every man has his parish-but no one likes to go to it that has got his limbs, thank God, and can go about picking up where he pleases." "But they will relieve you."-" Aye, aye, I know that," said the sailor, shaking his head; "they offered me as good as eight shilling a week if I would give 'em up my pension, and go into their House of Correction-but I liked my liberties better." "But you would at least have a house over you; and as much soup and gruel"-"Soup and gruel," said the old man, with a brisk volley of oaths; "soup and gruel!-what! a man here that has fought for his king and country, and lost his precious limbs, and has ate beef and biscuit, to be fed upon pap and spoon-victuals! No damme but come, hand us over a drop of that beer to sop my crust in." T. |