Part 34 (1/2)
”Quite a pa.s.sage of arms,” said Edward.
”Yes,” said Mrs. Dodd, ”and of bludgeons and things, rather than the polished rapier. What expressions to fall from two highly educated gentlemen! Slope--Potato-trap--Sawbones--Catlap--_je n'en finirais pas._”
She then let them know that she meditated a ”dictionary of jargon;” in hopes that its bulk might strike terror into honest citizens, and excite an anti-jargon league to save the English language, now on the verge of dissolution.
Sampson was pleased with this threat. ”Now, that is odd,” said he.
”Why, I am compilin' a vocabulary myself. I call 't th' a.s.s-a.s.s-ins'
d.i.c.ks.h.i.+nary; showing how, by the use of mealy-mouthed and d'exotic phrases, knaves can lead fools by th' ear a vilent dith. F'r instance; if one was to say to John Bull, 'Now I'll cut a great gash in your arm and let your blood run till ye drop down senseless,' he'd take fright and say, 'Call another time!' So the profissional a.s.s-a.s.s-in words it thus: 'I'll bleed you from a large orifice till the occurrence of syncope.' All right sis John: he's bled from a lar j'orifice and dies three days after of th' a.s.sa.s.sin's knife hid in a sheath o' goose grease. But I'll bloe the gaff with my dictionary.”
”Meantime _there_ is another contribution to mine,” said Mrs. Dodd.
And they agreed in the gaiety of their hearts to compare their rival Lexicons.
CHAPTER XIII
THE subsiding sea was now a liquid Paradise: its great pellucid braes and hillocks shone with the sparkle and the hues of all the jewels in an emperor's crown. Imagine--after three days of inky sea, and pitchy sky, and Death's deep jaws snapping and barely missing--ten thousand great slopes of emerald, aquamarine, amethyst and topaz, liquid, alive, and dancing jocundly beneath a gorgeous sun: and you will have a faint idea of what met the eyes and hearts of the rescued looking out of that battered, jagged s.h.i.+p, upon ocean smiling back to smiling Heaven.
Yet one man felt no buoyancy, nor gush of joy. He leaned against a fragment of the broken bulwark, confused between the sweetness of life preserved and the bitterness of treasure lost--his wife's and children's treasured treasure; benumbed at heart, and almost weary of the existence he had battled for so stoutly. He looked so moody, and answered so grimly and unlike himself, that they all held aloof from him; heavy heart among so many joyful ones, he was in true solitude; the body in a crowd, the soul alone. And he was sore as well as heavy; for of all the lubberly acts he had ever known, the way he had lost his dear ones'
fortune seemed to him the worst.
A voice sounded in his ear: ”Poor thing! she has s foundered.”
It was Fullalove scanning the horizon with his famous gla.s.s.
”Foundered? Who?” said Dodd; though he did not care much who sank, who swam. Then he remembered the vessel, whose flas.h.i.+ng guns had shed a human ray on the unearthly horror of the black hurricane. He looked all round.
Blank.
Ay, she had perished with all hands. The sea had swallowed her, and spared him--ungrateful.
This turned his mind sharply. Suppose the _Agra_ had gone down, the money would be lost as now, and his life into the bargain--a life dearer to all at home than millions of gold: he prayed inwardly to Heaven for grat.i.tude and goodness to feel its mercy. This softened him a little; and his heart swelled so, he wished he was a woman to cry over his children's loss for an hour, and then shake all off and go through his duty somehow; for now he was paralysed, and all seemed ended. Next, nautical superst.i.tion fastened on him. That pocket-book of his was Jonah: it had to go or else the s.h.i.+p; the moment it did go, the storm had broken as by magic.
Now Superst.i.tion is generally stronger than rational Religion, whether they lie apart or together in one mind; and this superst.i.tious notion did something toward steeling the poor man. ”Come,” said he to himself ”my loss has saved all these poor souls on board this s.h.i.+p. So be it!
Heaven's will be done! I must bustle, or else go mad.”
He turned to and worked like a horse: and with his own hands helped the men to rig parallel ropes--a subst.i.tute for bulwarks--till the perspiration ran down him.
Bayliss now reported the well nearly dry, and Dodd was about to bear up and make sail again, when one of the s.h.i.+p-boys, a little fellow with a bright eye and a chin like a monkey's, came up to him and said--
”Please, captain!” Then glared with awe at what he had done, and broke down.
”Well, my little man?” said Dodd gently.
Thus encouraged, the boy gave a great gulp, and burst in in a brogue, ”Och your arnr, sure there's no rudder on her at all barrin the tiller.”
”What d'ye mean?”