hat-box, where he went when the weatherwas rough. He was tame, loving, and winning in all his ways, and alwaysscrupulously white and clean.
The first place we ran into was Delagoa Bay. How sweetly pretty, howEnglish-like, is the scenery all around! The gently undulating hills,clothed in clouds of green; the trees growing down almost to the water'sedge; the white houses nestling among the foliage, the fruit, theflowers, the blue marbled sky, and the wavelets breaking musically onthe silvery sands--what a watering-place it would make, and what a pitywe can't import it body bulk! The houses are all built on the sand, sothat the beach is the only carpet. In the Portuguese governor's house,where we spent such a jolly evening, it was just the same; thechair-legs sank in the soft white sand, the table was off the plane, andthe piano all awry; and a dog belonging to one of the officers, amonster boarhound, with eyes like needles, and tusks that would havemade umbrella handles, scraped a hole at one end of the room, and nearlyburied himself. That dog, his owner told me, would kill a jackal withone blow of his paw; but he likewise caught mice like winking, andkilled a cockroach wherever he saw one. His owner wrote this down forme, and I afterwards translated it.
Next morning, at eleven, the governor and his officers came off, arrayedin scarlet, blue, and burnished gold, cocked-hats and swords, all sogay, and we had tiffin in the captain's cabin; Carlo, the dog, came too,of course, and seated himself thoughtfully at one end, abaft the messtable. There we were, then, just six of us--the captain, a fierylooking, wee, red man, but not half a bad fellow; the governor, bald inpate, round-faced, jolly, but incapable of getting very close to thetable because of the rotundity of his body; his _aide-de-camp_, a littlethin man, as bright and as merry as moonshine; his lieutenant, a jollyold fellow, with eyes like an Ulmer hound, and nose like a kidneypotato; myself, and Carlo.
Our conversation during tiffin was probably not very edifying, but itwas very spirited. You see, our captain couldn't speak a word ofPortuguese, and the poor Portuguese hadn't a word of English. I myselfpossessed a smattering of Spanish, and a little French, and I soondiscovered that by mixing the two together, throwing in an occasionalEnglish word and a sprinkling of Latin, I could manufacture very decentPortuguese. At least, the foreigners themselves seemed to understandme, or pretended to for politeness sake. To be sure they didn't alwaysgive me the answer I expected, but that was all the funnier, and keptthe laugh up. I really believe each one of us knew exactly what hehimself meant, but I'm sure couldn't for the life of him have told whathis neighbour was driving at. And so we got a little mixed somehow, buteverybody knew the road to his mouth, and that was something. We gotinto an argument upon a very interesting topic indeed, and kept it upfor nearly an hour, and were getting quite excited over it, when somehowor other it came out, that the Portuguese had all the while beenargle-bargling about the rights of the Pope, while we Englishmen hadbeen deep in the mystery of the prices of yams and sucking pig, in thedifferent villages of the coast. Then we all laughed and shook hands,and shrugged our shoulders, and turned up our palms, and laughed again.
Presently I observed the captain trying to draw my attention unobserved:he was squinting down towards the cruet stand, and I soon perceived thecause. An immense cockroach had got into a bottle of cayenne, andfeeling uncomfortably warm, was standing on his hind-legs andfrantically waving his long feelers as a signal of distress. I was justwondering how I could get the bottle away without letting the governorsee me, when some one else spotted that unhappy cockroach, and that wasCarlo.
Now Carlo was a dog who acted on the spur of the moment, so as soon ashe saw the beast in the bottle he flew straight at it. That springwould have taken him over a six-barred gate. And, woe is me for theresult! Down rolled the table, crockery and all; down rolled thegovernor, with his bald pate and rotundity of body; down went the merrylittle thin man; over rolled the fellow with the nose like a kidneypotato. The captain fell, and I fell, and there was an end to the wholefeast.
When we all got up, Carlo was intent upon his cockroach, and looking asunconcerned as if nothing out of the common had occurred.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
BLUE-JACKETS' PETS.
"Hard is the heart that loveth nought."
Shelley.
"All love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever."
Idem.
Blue-jackets, as Her Majesty's sailors are sometimes styled, arepassionately fond of pets. They must have something to love, if it bebut a woolly-headed nigger-boy or a cockroach in a 'baccy-box. Littlenigger-boys, indeed, may often be found on board a man-o'-war, thereigning pets. Young niggers are very precocious. You can teach themall they will ever learn in the short space of six months. Of this kindwas one I remember, little Freezing-powders, as black as midnight, andshining all over like a billiard ball, with his round curly head andpleasant dimply face. Freezing-powders soon became a general favouriteboth fore and aft. His master, our marine officer, picked him upsomewhere on the West coast; and although only nine years of age, beforehe was four months in the ship, he could speak good English, was aperfect little gymnast, and knew as many tricks and capers as the cookand the monkey. Snowball was another I knew; but Snowball grew bad atan early age, lost caste, became dissipated, and a gambler, and finallyfled to his native jungle.
Jock of ours was a seal of tender years, who for many months retainedthe affection of all hands, until washed overboard in a gale of wind.This creature's time on board was fully occupied in a daily round ofduty, pleasure, and labour. His duty consisted in eating seven meals aday, and bathing in a tub after each; his pleasure, to lie on his sideon the quarter-deck and be scratched and petted; while his labourconsisted of earnestly endeavouring to enlarge a large scupper-holesufficiently to permit his escape to his native ocean. Howindefatigably he used to work day by day, and hour after hour, scrapingon the iron first with one flipper, then with another, then poking hisnose in to measure the result with his whiskered face! He kept the holebright and clear, but did not sensibly enlarge it, at least to humanken. Jock's successor on that ship was a youthful bear of Arcticnativity. He wasn't a nice pet. He took all you gave him, and wantedto eat your hand as well, but he never said "Thank you," and permittedno familiarity. When he took his walks abroad, which he did everymorning, although he never went out of his road for a row, he walkedstraight ahead with his nose downwards growling, and gnawed and toreeverything that touched him--not at all a pet worth being troubled with.
Did the reader ever hear of the sailor who tamed a cockroach? Well,this man I was "shipmates" with. He built a little cage, with a littlekennel in the corner of it, expressly for his unsavoury pet, and hecalled the creature "Idzky"--"which he named himself, sir," he explainedto me. Idzky was a giant of his race. His length was fully fourinches, his breadth one inch, while each of his waving feelers measuredsix. This monster knew his name and his master's voice, hurrying outfrom his kennel when called upon, and emitting the strange sound whichgained for him the cognomen Idzky. The boatswain, his master, was asproud of him as he might have been of a prize pug, and never tired ofexhibiting his eccentricities.
I met the boatswain the other day at the Cape, and inquired for his pet.
"Oh, sir," he said, with genuine feeling, "he's gone, sir. Shortlyafter you left the ship, poor Idzky took to taking rather much liquor,and that don't do for any of us, you know, sir; I think it was that, forI never had the heart to pat him on allowance; and he went raving mad,had regular fits of delirium, and did nothing at all but run round hiscage and bark, and wouldn't look at anything in the way of food. Well,one day I was coming off the forenoon watch, when, what should I see buta double line of them `P' ants working in and out of the little place:twenty or so were carrying a wing, and a dozen a leg, and half a scorerunning off with a feeler, just like men carrying a stowed mainsail; andthat, says I, is poor Idzky's funeral; and so it was, and I didn'tdisturb them. Poor Idzky!"
Peter
was a pet mongoose of mine, a kindly, cosy little fellow, whoslept around my neck at night, and kept me clear of cockroaches, as wellas my implacable enemies, the rats. I was good to Peter, and fed himwell, and used to take him on shore at the Cape, among the snakes. Thesnakes were for Peter to fight; and the way my wary wee friend dodgedand closed with, and finally throttled and killed a cobra was a cautionto that subtlest of all the beasts of the field. The presiding Malayused to clap his brown hands with joy as he exclaimed--"Ah! sauve goodmongoose, sar, proper mongoose to kill de snake."
"You don't object, do you," I modestly asked my captain one day, whilestrolling on the quarter-deck after tiffin--"you don't object, I hope,to the somewhat curious pets I at times bring on board?"
"Object?" he replied. "Well,