THE VOYAGE.

When I awoke from the long, sound sleep which succeeded my last adventure, I had some difficulty in remembering where I was or how I had come there. From my narrow berth I looked out upon the now empty cabin, and at length some misty and confused sense of my situation crept slowly over me. I opened the little shutter beside me and looked out. The bold headlands of the southern coast were frowning in sullen and dark masses about a couple of miles distant, and I perceived that we were going fast through the water, which was beautifully calm and still. I now looked at my watch; it was past eight o’clock; and as it must evidently be evening, from the appearance of the sky, I felt that I had slept soundly for above twelve hours.

In the hurry of departure the cabin had not been set to rights, and there lay every species of lumber and luggage in all imaginable confusion. Trunks, gun-cases, baskets of eggs, umbrellas, hampers of sea-store, cloaks, foraging-caps, maps, and sword-belts were scattered on every side,—while the dÉbris of a dinner, not over-remarkable for its propriety in table equipage, added to the ludicrous effect. The heavy tramp of a foot overhead denoted the step of some one taking his short walk of exercise; while the rough voice of the skipper, as he gave the word to “Go about!” all convinced me that we were at last under way, and off to “the wars.”

The confusion our last evening on shore produced in my brain was such that every effort I made to remember anything about it only increased my difficulty, and I felt myself in a web so tangled and inextricable that all endeavor to escape free was impossible. Sometimes I thought that I had really married Matilda Dalrymple; then, I supposed that the father had called me out, and wounded me in a duel; and finally, I had some confused notion about a quarrel with Sparks, but what for, when, and how it ended, I knew not. How tremendously tipsy I must have been! was the only conclusion I could draw from all these conflicting doubts; and after all, it was the only thing like fact that beamed upon my mind. How I had come on board and reached my berth was a matter I reserved for future inquiry, resolving that about the real history of my last night on shore I would ask no questions, if others were equally disposed to let it pass in silence.

I next began to wonder if Mike had looked after all my luggage, trunks, etc., and whether he himself had been forgotten in our hasty departure. About this latter point I was not destined for much doubt; for a well-known voice, from the foot of the companion-ladder, at once proclaimed my faithful follower, and evidenced his feelings at his departure from his home and country.

Mr. Free was, at the time I mention, gathered up like a ball opposite a small, low window that looked upon the bluff headlands now fast becoming dim and misty as the night approached. He was apparently in low spirits, and hummed in a species of low, droning voice, the following ballad, at the end of each verse of which came an Irish chorus which, to the erudite in such matters, will suggest the air of Moddirederoo:—

“I say, Mike, stop that confounded keen, and tell me where are we?”

“Off the ould head of Kinsale, sir.”

“Where is Captain Power?”

“Smoking a cigar on deck, with the captain, sir.”

“And Mr. Sparks?”

“Mighty sick in his own state-room. Oh, but it’s himself has enough of glory—bad luck to it!—by this time. He’d make your heart break to look at him.”

“Who have you got on board besides?”

“The adjutant’s here, sir; and an old gentleman they call the major.”

“Not Major Dalrymple?” said I, starting up with terror at the thought, “eh, Mike?”

“No, sir, another major; his name is Mulroon, or Mundoon, or something like that.”

“Monsoon, you son of a lumper potato,” cried out a surly, gruff voice from a berth opposite. “Monsoon. Who’s at the other side?”

“Mr. O’Malley, 14th,” said I, by way of introduction.

“My service to you, then,” said the voice. “Going to join your regiment?”

“Yes; and you, are you bound on a similar errand?”

“No, Heaven be praised! I’m attached to the commissariat, and only going to Lisbon. Have you had any dinner?”

“Not a morsel; have you?”

“No more than yourself; but I always lie by for three or four days this way, till I get used to the confounded rocking and pitching, and with a little grog and some sleep, get over the time gayly enough. Steward, another tumbler like the last; there—very good—that will do. Your good health, Mr.—what was it you said?”

“O’Malley.”

“O’Malley—your good health! Good-night.” And so ended our brief colloquy, and in a few minutes more, a very decisive snore pronounced my friend to be fulfilling his precept for killing the hours.

I now made the effort to emancipate myself from my crib, and at last succeeded in getting on the floor, where, after one chassez at a small looking-glass opposite, followed by a very impetuous rush at a little brass stove, in which I was interrupted by a trunk and laid prostrate, I finally got my clothes on, and made my way to the deck. Little attuned as was my mind at the moment to admire anything like scenery, it was impossible to be unmoved by the magnificent prospect before me. It was a beautiful evening in summer; the sun had set above an hour before, leaving behind him in the west one vast arch of rich and burnished gold, stretching along the whole horizon, and tipping all the summits of the heavy rolling sea, as it rolled on, unbroken by foam or ripple, in vast moving mountains, from the far coast of Labrador. We were already in blue water, though the bold cliffs that were to form our departing point were but a few miles to leeward. There lay the lofty bluff of Old Kinsale, whose crest, overhanging, peered from a summit of some hundred feet into the deep water that swept its rocky base, many a tangled lichen and straggling bough trailing in the flood beneath. Here and there upon the coast a twinkling gleam proclaimed the hut of the fisherman, whose swift hookers had more than once shot by us and disappeared in a moment. The wind, which began to fall at sunset, freshened as the moon rose; and the good ship, bending to the breeze, lay gently over, and rushed through the waters with a sound of gladness. I was alone upon the deck. Power and the captain, whom I expected to have found, had disappeared somehow, and I was, after all, not sorry to be left to my own reflections uninterrupted.

My thoughts turned once more to my home,—to my first, my best, earliest friend, whose hearth I had rendered lonely and desolate, and my heart sank within me as I remembered it. How deeply I reproached myself for the selfish impetuosity with which I had ever followed any rising fancy, any new and sudden desire, and never thought of him whose every hope was in, whose every wish was for me. Alas! alas, my poor uncle! how gladly would I resign every prospect my soldier’s life may hold out, with all its glittering promise, and all the flattery of success, to be once more beside you; to feel your warm and manly grasp; to see your smile; to hear your voice; to be again where all our best feelings are born and nurtured, our cares assuaged, our joys more joyed in, and our griefs more wept,—at home! These very words have more music to my ears than all the softest strains that ever siren sung. They bring us back to all we have loved, by ties that are never felt but through such simple associations. And in the earlier memories called up, our childish feelings come back once more to visit us like better spirits, as we walk amidst the dreary desolation that years of care and uneasiness have spread around us.

Wretched must he be who ne’er has felt such bliss; and thrice happy he who, feeling it, knows that still there lives for him that same early home, with all its loved inmates, its every dear and devoted object waiting his coming and longing for his approach.

Such were my thoughts as I stood gazing at the bold line of coast now gradually growing more and more dim while evening fell, and we continued to stand farther out to sea. So absorbed was I all this time in my reflections, that I never heard the voices which now suddenly burst upon my ears quite close beside me. I turned, and saw for the first time that at the end of the quarter-deck stood what is called a roundhouse, a small cabin, from which the sounds in question proceeded. I walked gently forward and peeped in, and certainly anything more in contrast with my late revery need not be conceived. There sat the skipper, a bluff, round-faced, jolly-looking little tar, mixing a bowl of punch at a table, at which sat my friend Power, the adjutant, and a tall, meagre-looking Scotchman, whom I once met in Cork, and heard that he was the doctor of some infantry regiment. Two or three black bottles, a paper of cigars, and a tallow candle were all the table equipage; but certainly the party seemed not to want for spirits and fun, to judge from the hearty bursts of laughing that every moment pealed forth, and shook the little building that held them. Power, as usual with him, seemed to be taking the lead, and was evidently amusing himself with the peculiarities of his companions.

“Come, Adjutant, fill up; here’s to the campaign before us. We, at least, have nothing but pleasure in the anticipation; no lovely wife behind; no charming babes to fret and be fretted for, eh?”

“Vara true,” said the doctor, who was mated with a tartar, “ye maun have less regrets at leaving hame; but a married man is no’ entirely denied his ain consolations.”

“Good sense in that,” said the skipper; “a wide berth and plenty of sea room are not bad things now and then.”

“Is that your experience also?” said Power, with a knowing look. “Come, come, Adjutant, we’re not so ill off, you see; but, by Jove, I can’t imagine how it is a man ever comes to thirty without having at least one wife,—without counting his colonial possessions of course.”

“Yes,” said the adjutant, with a sigh, as he drained his glass to the bottom. “It is devilish strange,—woman, lovely woman!” Here he filled and drank again, as though he had been proposing a toast for his own peculiar drinking.

“I say, now,” resumed Power, catching at once that there was something working in his mind,—“I say, now, how happened it that you, a right good-looking, soldier-like fellow, that always made his way among the fair ones, with that confounded roguish eye and slippery tongue,—how the deuce did it come to pass that you never married?”

“I’ve been more than once on the verge of it,” said the adjutant, smiling blandly at the flattery.

“And nae bad notion yours just to stay there,” said the doctor, with a very peculiar contortion of countenance.

“No pleasing you, no contenting a fellow like you,” said Power, returning to the charge; “that’s the thing; you get a certain ascendancy; you have a kind of success that renders you, as the French say, tÉte montÉe, and you think no woman rich enough or good-looking enough or big enough.”

“No; by Jove you’re wrong,” said the adjutant, swallowing the bait, hook and all,—“quite wrong there; for some how, all my life, I was decidedly susceptible. Not that I cared much for your blushing sixteen, or budding beauties in white muslin, fresh from a back-board and a governess; no, my taste inclined rather to the more sober charms of two or three-and-thirty, the embonpoint, a good foot and ankle, a sensible breadth about the shoulders—”

“Somewhat Dutch-like, I take it,” said the skipper, puffing out a volume of smoke; “a little bluff in the bows, and great stowage, eh?”

“You leaned then towards the widows?” said Power.

“Exactly; I confess, a widow always was my weakness. There was something I ever liked in the notion of a woman who had got over all the awkward girlishness of early years, and had that self-possession which habit and knowledge of the world confer, and knew enough of herself to understand what she really wished, and where she would really go.”

“Like the trade winds,” puffed the skipper.

“Then, as regards fortune, they have a decided superiority over the spinster class. I defy any man breathing,—let him be half police-magistrate, half chancellor,—to find out the figure of a young lady’s dower. On your first introduction to the house, some kind friend whispers, ‘Go it, old boy; forty thousand, not a penny less.’ A few weeks later, as the siege progresses, a maiden aunt, disposed to puffing, comes down to twenty; this diminishes again one half, but then ‘the money is in bank stock, hard Three-and-a-Half.’ You go a little farther, and as you sit one day over your wine with papa, he certainly promulgates the fact that his daughter has five thousand pounds, two of which turn out to be in Mexican bonds, and three in an Irish mortgage.”

“Happy for you,” interrupted Power, “that it be not in Galway, where a proposal to foreclose, would be a signal for your being called out and shot without benefit of clergy.”

“Bad luck to it, for Galway,” said the adjutant. “I was nearly taken in there once to marry a girl that her brother-in-law swore had eight hundred a year; and it came out afterwards that so she had, but it was for one year only; and he challenged me for doubting his word too.”

“There’s an old formula for finding out an Irish fortune,” says Power, “worth, all the algebra they ever taught in Trinity. Take the half of the assumed sum, and divide it by three; the quotient will be a flattering representative of the figure sought for.”

“Not in the north,” said the adjutant, firmly,—“not in the north, Power. They are all well off there. There’s a race of canny, thrifty, half-Scotch niggers,—your pardon, Doctor, they are all Irish,—linen-weaving, Presbyterian, yarn-factoring, long-nosed, hard-drinking fellows, that lay by rather a snug thing now and then. Do you know, I was very near it once in the north. I’ve half a mind to tell you the story; though, perhaps, you’ll laugh at me.”

The whole party at once protested that nothing could induce them to deviate so widely from the line of propriety; and the skipper having mixed a fresh bowl and filled all the glasses round, the cigars were lighted, and the adjutant began.