The Jolly Roger Tales: 60+ Pirate Novels, Treasure-Hunt Tales & Sea Adventures. Лаймен Фрэнк БаумЧитать онлайн книгу.
of one mind — as well write verses upon a mill-pond. It is your tides and your roosts, and your currents and eddies, that come and go, and ebb and flow, (by Heaven! I run into rhyme when I so much as think upon them,) that smile one day, rage the next, flatter and devour, delight and ruin us, and so forth — it is these that give the real soul of poetry. Did you never hear my Adieu to the Lass of Northmaven — that was poor Bet Stimbister, whom I call Mary for the sound’s sake, as I call myself Hacon after my great ancestor Hacon Goldemund, or Haco with the golden mouth, who came to the island with Harold Harfager, and was his chief Scald? — Well, but where was I — O ay — poor Bet Stimbister, she, and partly some debt, was the cause of my leaving the isles of Hialtland, (better so called than Shetland, or Zedand even,) and taking to the broad world. I. have had a tramp of it since that time — I have battled my way through the world, Captain, as a man of mold may, that has a light head, a light purse, and a heart as light as them both — fought my way, and paid my way — that is, either with money or wit — have seen kings changed and deposed, as you would turn a tenant out of a scat-hold — knew all the wits of the age, and especially the glorious John Dryden — what man in the islands can say as much, barring lying — I had a pinch out of his own snuffbox — I will tell you how I came by such promotion.”
“But the song, Mr Halcro,” said Captain Cleveland.
“The song?” answered Halcro, seizing the Captain by the button, — for he was too much accustomed to have his audience escape from him during recitation, not to put in practice all the usual means of prevention — ” The song? Why I gave a copy of it, with fifteen others, to the immortal John. You shall hear it — you shall hear them all, if you will but stand still a moment; and you too, my dear boy, Mordaunt Mertoun, I have scarce heard a word from your mouth these six months, and now you are running away from me.” So saying, he secured him with his other hand.
“Nay, now he has got us both in tow,” said the seaman; “ there is nothing for it but hearing him out, though he spins as tough a yarn as ever an old man-of-warVman twisted on the watch at midnight.”
“Nay, now be silent, be silent, and let one of us speak at once,” said the poet, imperatively; while Cleveland and Mordaunt, looking at each other with a ludicrous expression of resignation to their fate, waited in submission for the wellknown and inevitable tale. “ I will tell you all about it,”“ continued Halcro. “ I was knocked about the world like other young fellows, doing this, that, and t’other for a livelihood; for, thank God, I could turn my hand to any thing — but loving still the Muses as much as if the ungrateful jades had found me, like so many blockheads, in my own coach and six. However, I held out till my cousin, old Laurence Link-lutter, died, and left me the bit of an island yonder; although, by the way, dultmalindie was as near to him as I was; but Lawrence loved wit, though he had little of his own. Well, he left me the wee bit island — it is as barren as Parnassus itself. What then — I have a penny to spend, a penny to keep my purse, a penny to give to the poor — ay, and a bed and a bottle for a friend, as you shall know, boys, if you will go back with me when this merriment is over. — But where was I in my story?”
“Near port, I hope,” answered Cleveland; but Halcro was too determined a narrator to be interrupted by the broadest hint. - “ O ay,” he resumed, with the self-satisfied air of one who has recovered the thread Of a story, “ I was in my old lodgings in Russel-street, with old Timothy Thimblethwaite, the Master Fashioner, then the best known man about town. He made for all the wits, and for the dull boobies of fortune besides, and made the one pay for the other. He never denied a wit credit save in jest, or for the sake of getting a repartee; and he was in correspondence with all that was worth knowing about town. He had letters from Crowne, and Tate, and Prior, and Tom Brown, and all the famous fellows of the time, with such pellets of wit, that there was no reading them without laughing ready to die, and all ending with craving a further term for payment.”
“I should have thought the tailor would have found that jest rather serious,” said Mordaunt.
“Not a bit — not a bit — Tim Thimblethwaite (he was a Cumberland-man by birth,)” replied his eulogist, “ had the soul of a prince — ay, and died with the fortune of one; for woe betide the custard-gorged alderman that came under Tim’s goose, after he had got one of these letters — egad, he was sure to pay the kain. Why, Thimblethwaite was thought to be the original of little Tom Bibber, in glorious John’s comedy of the Wild Gallant; and I know that he has trusted, ay, and lent John money to boot out of his own pocket, at a time when all his fine court friends blew cold enough. He trusted me too, and I have been two months on the score at a time for my upper-room. To be sure, I was obliging in his way — not that I exactly could shape or sew, nor would that have been decorous for a gentleman of good descent; but I — eh, eh — I drew bills — summed up the books”
“Carried home the clothes of the wits and aldermen, and got lodging for your labour,” interrupted Cleveland.
“No, no — damn it, no,” replied Halcro; “ no such thing — you put me out in my story — where was I?”
“Nay, the devil help you to the latitude,” said the Captain, extricating his button from the gripe of the unmerciful bard’s finger and thumb, “ for I have no time to make an observation.” So saying, he bolted from the room.
“A silly illbred conceited fool,” said Halcro, looking after him; “ with as little manners as wit in his empty coxcomb. I wonder what Magnus and these silly wenches can see in him — he tells such damnable long-winded stories, too, about his adventures and sea-fights — every, second word a lie, I doubt not. Mordaunt, my dear boy, take example by that man — that is, take warning by him — never tell long stories about yourself. You are sometimes given to talk too much about your own exploits on craigs and skerries, and the like, which only breaks conversation, and prevents other folks from being heard. Now I see you are impatient to hear out what I was saying — Stop, where about was I?”
“I fear we must put it off, Mr Halcro, until after dinner,” said Mordaunt, who also meditated his escape, though desirous of effecting it with more delicacy towards his old acquaintance than Captain Cleveland had thought it necessary to use.
“Nay, my dear boy,” said Halcro, seeing himself about to be utterly deserted; “ do not you leave me too — never take so bad an example as to set light by old acquaintance, Mordaunt. I have wandered many a weary step in my day; but they were always lightened when I could get hold of the arm of an old friend like yourself.”
So saying, he quitted the youth’s coat, and, sliding his hand gently under his arm, grappled him more effectually, to which Mordaunt submitted, a little moved by the poet’s observation upon the unkindness of old acquaintances, under which he himself was an immediate sufferer. But when Halcro renewed his formidable question, “ Whereabouts was I?” Mordaunt, preferring his poetry to his prose, reminded him of the song which he said he had written upon his first leaving Zetland, — a song to which, indeed, the inquirer was no stranger, but which, as it must be new to the reader, we shall here insert as a favourable specimen of the poetical powers of this tuneful descendant of Haco the Golden-mouthed; for, in the opinion of many tolerable judges, he held a respectable rank among the inditers of madrigals of the period, and was as well qualified to give immortality to his Nancies of the hills or dales, as many a gentle sonnetteer of wit and pleasure about town. He was something of a musician also, and on the present occasion seized upon a sort of lute, and, quitting his victim, prepared the instrument for an accompaniment, speaking all the while that he might lose no time.
“I learned the lute,” he said, “ from the same man who taught honest Shadwell — plump Tom, as they used to call him — somewhat roughly treated by the glorious John, you remember — Mordaunt, you remember —
‘Methinks I spe the new Arion sail, The lute still trembling underneath thy nail; At thy well sharpen’d thumb, from shore to shore, The trebles squeak for fear, the basses roar.’
Come, I am indifferently in tune now — what was it to be? — ay, I remember — nay, The Lass of Northmaven is the ditty — poor Bet Stimbister! I have called her Mary in the verses. Betsy does well for an English song; but Mary is more natural here.” So saying,