"Well, well, Donovan," said I, "come on board with me, and buried you shall be comfortably from the frigate."
"Well, I will go. This cursed sailmaker of ours has twice this morning refused to lash me up in the hammock, because he chose to say I was not dead; so go with you I will."
The instant the poor fellow addressed himself to enter the boat, he shrank back like a rabid dog at water. "I cannot—I cannot. Sailmaker, bring the shot aft, and do lash me up in my hammock, and heave me comfortably overboard at once."
The poor sailmaker, who was standing close to, caught my eye, and my ear also. "What shall I do, sir?" said he.
I knew the man to be a steady, trustworthy person. "Why, humour him, Warren; humour him. Fetch the shot, and lash him up; but sling him round the waist by a strong three-inch rope, do you hear."
The man touched his forehead, and slunk away. Presently he returned with the cannon-balls slung in a canvass bag, the usual receptacle of his needles, palms, and thread, and deliberately fastened them round Mr. Donovan's legs. He then lashed him up in the hammock, coaxing his arms under the swathing, so that, while I held him in play, he regularly sewed him up into a most substantial strait waistcoat. It would have been laughable enough, if risibility had been pardonable under such melancholy circumstances, to look at the poor fellow as he now stood stiff and upright, like a bolt of canvass on end, swaying about, and balancing himself, as the vessel rolled about on the heave of the sea; but by this time the sail-maker had fastened the rope securely round his waist, one end of which was in the clutch of three strong fellows, with plenty of the slack coiled down and at hand, had it proved necessary to pay out, and give him scope.
"Now, Donovan, dear, come into the boat; do, and let us get on board, will ye."
"Benjamin Brail—I expected kindlier thing's at your hands, Benjie. How can I go on board of the old Gazelle, seeing it has gone seven bells" (although it was in reality five in the afternoon), "and I'm to be hove overboard at twelve o'clock?"
I saw there was nothing else for it, so I whispered little Binnacle to strike eight bells. At the first chime, poor Donovan pricked up his ear; at the second, he began to settle himself on deck; and before the last struck, he was stretched out on a grating with his eyes closed, and really as still and motionless as if he had been actually dead. I jumped on board, muttered a sentence or two, from recollection, of the funeral service, and tipping the wink, we hove him bodily, stoop and roop, overboard, where he sank for a couple of fathoms, when we hauled him up again. When he sank, he was much excited, and flushed and feverish to look at; but when he was now got into the boat, he was still enough, God knows, and very blue and ghastly; his features were sharp and pinched, and he could only utter a low moaning noise when we had stretched him along the bottom of the boat. "Mercy!" said I, "surely my experiment has not killed him?" However, our best plan now was to get back to the frigate as soon as might be, so Lanyard, who had purposely kept in the background, now gave the word to shove off, and in a minute we were all on the Gazelle's quarterdeck; poor Donovan having been hoisted up, lashed into an accommodation chair. He was instantly taken care of, and, in our excellent surgeon's hands, I am glad to say that he recovered, and lived to be an ornament to the service, and a credit to all connected with him for many a long day afterwards.
The first thing little Binnacle did was to explain to Sir Oliver that he had been ill for three days with brain fever, having had a stroke of the sun; but aware of the heavy responsibility of taking forcibly the command of a vessel from one's superior officer, he was allowed to have it all his own way until the Gazelle hove in sight.
"Pray, Mr. Binnacle," said the commodore, "have you brought me the letters and the English newspapers?"
"Yes, Sir Oliver; here they are, sir; and here is a memorandum of several vessels expected on this part of the coast that we got from the Cerberus, sir."
"Oh, let me see."
After a long pause, the commodore again spoke.
"Why, Mr. Binnacle, I have no tidings of the vessels you speak of; but I suppose we must stand in for the point indicated, and take our chance of falling in with them. But where got you all these men? Did the Cerberus man you?"
"No, sir, she did not. Ten of the men were landed at Cape Coast, out of the Tobin, Liverpool trader. They are no great things, sir, certainly; they had been mutinous, so the merchantman who unshipped them chose to make the run home with five free negroes instead. But if they be bad, there is not much of them, for they are the smallest men I ever saw."
The chap who spoke—little Binnacle, viz.—was not quite a giant himself. He was a dapper little bluejacket, about five feet two. His boat's, or rather his canoe's crew, were all very little men, but still evidently full-grown, and not boys. Every thing about the craft he had come from was diminutive, except her late commander. The midshipman was small—the men were all pigmies. The vessel herself could not have carried one of the pyramids of Egypt. The very bandy-legged cur that yelped and scampered along her deck was a small cock-tailed affair that a large Newfoundland canis might easily have swallowed for his breakfast.
After Binnacle had made his report to Sir Oliver, he, with an arch smile, handed me the following letter, open, which I have preserved to this hour for the satisfaction of the curious. Many a time have I since laughed and almost cried over this production of poor Donovan's heated brain:—
"MY DEAR BRAIL—When you receive this, I shall be at rest far down amongst the tangleweed and coral branches at the bottom of the deep green sea, another sacrifice to the insatiable demon of this evil climate—another melancholy addition to the long list of braver and better men who have gone before me. Heaven knows, and I know, and lament with much bitterness therefor, that I am ill prepared to die, but I trust to the mercy of the Almighty for pardon and forgiveness.
"It is now a week since I was struck by a flash of lightning at noonday, when there was not a speck of cloud in the blue sky, that glanced like a fiery dart right down from the fierce sun, and not having my red woollen nightcap on, that I purchased three years ago from old Jabos of Belfast, the Jew who kept a stall near the quay, it pierced through the skull just in the centre of the bald spot, and set my brain a-boiling and poppling ever since, making a noise for all the world like a buzzing bee-hive. I therefore intend to depart this life at three bells in the middle watch this very night, wind and weather permitting. Alas, alas! who shall tell this to my dear old mother, Widow Donovan, who lives at No. 1050, in Sackville Street, Dublin, the widest thoroughfare in Europe?—or to poor Cathleen O'Haggarty? You know Cathleen, Benjie; but you must never know that she has a glass eye—Ah, yes, poor thing, she had only one eye, but that was a beauty; the other was a quaker;[2] but then she had five thousand good sterling pounds, all in old Peter Macshane's bank at the back of the Exchange; and so her one eye was a blessing to me; for where is the girl with two eyes, and five thousand pounds, all lodged in Peter Macshane's bank at the back of the Exchange, who would have looked at Dennis Donovan, a friendless, penniless lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and son of Widow Donovan, who lives at 1050, Sackville Street, Dublin, the widest thoroughfare in Europe?—Ah, how Cathleen will pipe her real eye—I wonder if she will weep with the false one—I am sure my story might bring tears from a stone, far more a piece of glass—Oh, when she hears I am gone, she will be after breaking her tender little heart—Oh, murder for the notion of it—that's the thought that I can't bear—that is the blow that kills Ned! The last words of Dennis Donovan, who has nothing on earth to brag of beside a mighty pretty person and a brave soul—that's a good one. Adieu, adieu. God bless the King and the Royal Family entirely.
"DENNIS DONOVAN,
"Lieutenant, R.N., and son of Widow Donovan, who lives at 1050, Sackville Street, Dublin, the widest thoroughfare in Europe."
To return.
"And pray," said the commodore, "what captures may you have made in this redoubtable man-of-war of yours—in his Britannic Majesty's felucca, Midge?"
"Why, none, sir," said wee Middy, blushing; "but I hope you will soon put us in the way of having a brush, sir."