“Hum! Another ‘tail,’ I suppose. Come in.”
If the new-comer was a “tail,” he was decidedly a long one, being six feet three in his stockings at the very least.
“You wants a cook, I b’lieve?” said the man, pulling off his hat.
“I do. Are you one?”
“Yes, I jist guess I am. Bin a cook for fifteen year.”
“Been to sea as a cook?” inquired the captain.
“I jist have. Once to the South Seas, twice to the North, an’ once round the world. Cook all the time. I’ve roasted, and stewed, and grilled, and fried, and biled, right round the ’arth, I have.”
Being apparently satisfied with the man’s account of himself, Captain Dunning put to him the question—“Do you drink?”
“Ay, like a fish; for I drinks nothin’ but water, I don’t. Bin born and raised in the State of Maine, d’ye see, an’ never tasted a drop all my life.”
“Very good,” said the captain, who plumed himself on being a clever physiognomist, and had already formed a good opinion of the man. “Do you ever swear?”
“Never, but when I can’t help it.”
“And when’s that?”
“When I’m fit to bu’st.”
“Then,” replied the captain, “you must learn to bu’st without swearin’, ’cause I don’t allow it aboard my ship.”
The man evidently regarded his questioner as a very extraordinary and eccentric individual; but he merely replied, “I’ll try;” and after a little further conversation an agreement was come to; the man was sent away with orders to repair on board immediately, as everything was in readiness to “up anchor and away next morning.”
Having thus satisfactorily and effectually disposed of the “tail,” Captain Dunning put on his hat very much on the back of his head, knit his brows, and pursed his lips firmly, as if he had still some important duty to perform; then, quitting the hotel, he traversed the streets of the town with rapid strides.
CHAPTER TWO.
Important Personages are Introduced to the Reader—The Captain makes Insane Resolutions, Fights a Battle, and Conquers.
In the centre of the town whose name we have declined to communicate, there stood a house—a small house—so small that it might have been more appropriately, perhaps, styled a cottage. This house had a yellow-painted face, with a green door in the middle, which might have been regarded as its nose, and a window on each side thereof, which might have been considered its eyes. Its nose was, as we have said, painted green, and its eyes had green Venetian eyelids, which were half shut at the moment Captain Dunning walked up to it as if it were calmly contemplating that seaman’s general appearance.
There was a small garden in front of the house, surrounded on three sides by a low fence. Captain Dunning pushed open the little gate, walked up to the nose of the house, and hit it several severe blows with his knuckles. The result was that the nose opened, and a servant-girl appeared in the gap.
“Is your mistress at home?” inquired the captain.
“Guess she is—both of ’em!” replied the girl.
“Tell both of ’em I’m here, then,” said the captain, stepping into the little parlour without further ceremony; “and is my little girl in?”
“Yes, she’s in.”
“Then send her here too, an’ look alive, lass.” So saying, Captain Dunning sat down on the sofa, and began to beat the floor with his right foot somewhat impatiently.
In another second a merry little voice was heard in the passage, the door burst open, a fair-haired girl of about ten years of age sprang into the room, and immediately commenced to strangle her father in a series of violent embraces.
“Why, Ailie, my darling, one would think you had not seen me for fifty years at least,” said the captain, holding his daughter at arm’s-length, in order the more satisfactorily to see her.
“It’s a whole week, papa, since you last came to see me,” replied the little one, striving to get at her father’s neck again, “and I’m sure it seems to me like a hundred years at least.”
As the child said this she threw her little arms round her father, and kissed his large, weather-beaten visage all over—eyes, mouth, nose, chin, whiskers, and, in fact, every attainable spot. She did it so vigorously, too, that an observer would have been justified in expecting that her soft, delicate cheeks would be lacerated by the rough contact; but they were not. The result was a heightening of the colour, nothing more. Having concluded this operation, she laid her cheek on the captain’s and endeavoured to clasp her hands at the back of his neck, but this was no easy matter. The captain’s neck was a remarkably thick one, and the garments about that region were voluminous; however, by dint of determination, she got the small fingers intertwined, and then gave him a squeeze that ought to have choked him, but it didn’t: many a strong man had tried that in his day, and had failed signally.
“You’ll stay a long time with me before you go away to sea again, won’t you, dear papa?” asked the child earnestly, after she had given up the futile effort to strangle him.
“How like!” murmured the captain, as if to himself, and totally unmindful of the question, while he parted the fair curls and kissed Ailie’s forehead.
“Like what, papa?”
“Like your mother—your beloved mother,” replied the captain, in a low, sad voice.
The child became instantly grave, and she looked up in her father’s face with an expression of awe, while he dropped his eyes on the floor.
Poor Alice had never known a mother’s love. Her mother died when she was a few weeks old, and she had been confided to the care of two maiden aunts—excellent ladies, both of them; good beyond expression; correct almost to a fault; but prim, starched, and extremely self-possessed and judicious, so much so that they were injudicious enough to repress some of the best impulses of their natures, under the impression that a certain amount of dignified formality was essential to good breeding and good morals in every relation of life.
Dear, good, starched Misses Dunning! if they had had their way, boys would have played cricket and football with polite urbanity, and girls would have kissed their playmates with gentle solemnity. They did their best to subdue little Alice, but that was impossible. The child would rush about the house at all unexpected and often inopportune seasons, like a furiously insane kitten and she would disarrange their collars too violently every evening when she bade them good-night.
Alice was intensely sympathetic. It was quite enough for her to see any one in tears, to cause her to open up the flood-gates of her eyes and weep—she knew not and she cared not why. She threw her arms round her father’s neck again, and hugged him, while bright tears trickled like diamonds from her eyes. No diamonds are half so precious or so difficult to obtain as tears of genuine sympathy!
“How would you like to go with me to the whale-fishery?” inquired Captain Dunning, somewhat abruptly as he disengaged the child’s arms and set her on his knee.
The tears stopped in an instant, as Alice leaped, with the happy facility of childhood, totally out of one idea and thoroughly into another.
“Oh, I should like it so much!”
“And how much is ‘so’ much, Ailie?” inquired the captain.
Ailie pursed her mouth, and looked at her father earnestly, while