"Sence the little la.s.s and I got spliced!" roared Sailor Ben. "There"s another coincydunce for you!"
On hearing this we all clapped hands, and the Captain, with a degree of ceremony that was almost painful, drank a b.u.mper to the health and happiness of the bride and bridegroom.
It was a pleasant sight to see the two old lovers sitting side by side, in spite of all, drinking from the same little cup--a battered zinc dipper which Sailor Ben had unslung from a strap round his waist. I think I never saw him without this dipper and a sheath-knife suspended just back of his hip, ready for any convivial occasion.
We had a merry time of it. The Captain was in great force this evening, and not only related his famous exploit in the War of 1812, but regaled the company with a dashing sea-song from Mr. Shakespeare"s play of The Tempest. He had a mellow tenor voice (not Shakespeare, but the Captain), and rolled out the verse with a will:
"The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I, The gunner, and his mate, Lov"d Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery, But none of us car"d for Kate."
"A very good song, and very well sung," says Sailor Ben; "but some of us does care for Kate. Is this Mr. Shawkspear a seafarin" man, sir?"
"Not at present," replied the Captain, with a monstrous twinkle in his eye.
The clock was striking ten when the party broke up. The Captain walked to the "Mariner"s Home" with his guest, in order to question him regarding his future movements.
"Well, sir," said he, "I ain"t as young as I was, an" I don"t cal"ulate to go to sea no more. I proposes to drop anchor here, an" hug the land until the old hulk goes to pieces. I"ve got two or three thousand dollars in the locker, an" expects to get on uncommon comfortable without askin" no odds from the a.s.sylum for Decayed Mariners."
My grandfather indorsed the plan warmly, and Sailor Ben did drop anchor in Rivermouth, where he speedily became one of the inst.i.tutions of the town.
His first step was to buy a small one-story cottage located at the head of the wharf, within gun-shot of the Nutter House. To the great amus.e.m.e.nt of my grandfather, Sailor Ben painted the cottage a light sky-blue, and ran a broad black stripe around it just under the eaves.
In this stripe he painted white port-holes, at regular distances, making his residence look as much like a man-of-war as possible. With a short flag-staff projecting over the door like a bowsprit, the effect was quite magical. My description of the exterior of this palatial residence is complete when I add that the proprietor nailed a horseshoe against the front door to keep off the witches--a very necessary precaution in these lat.i.tudes.
The inside of Sailor Ben"s abode was not less striking than the outside.
The cottage contained two rooms; the one opening on the wharf he called his cabin; here he ate and slept. His few tumblers and a frugal collection of crockery were set in a rack suspended over the table, which had a cleat of wood nailed round the edge to prevent the dishes from sliding off in case of a heavy sea. Hanging against the walls were three or four highly colored prints of celebrated frigates, and a lithograph picture of a rosy young woman insufficiently clad in the American flag. This was labelled "Kitty," though I"m sure it looked no more like her than I did. A walrus-tooth with an Esquimaux engraved on it, a shark"s jaw, and the blade of a sword-fish were among the enviable decorations of this apartment. In one corner stood his bunk, or bed, and in the other his well-worn sea-chest, a perfect Pandora"s box of mysteries. You would have thought yourself in the cabin of a real ship.
The little room aft, separated from the cabin by a sliding door, was the caboose. It held a cooking-stove, pots, pans, and groceries; also a lot of fishing-lines and coils of tarred twine, which made the place smell like a forecastle, and a delightful smell it is--to those who fancy it.
Kitty didn"t leave our service, but played housekeeper for both establishments, returning at night to Sailor Ben"s. He shortly added a wherry to his worldly goods, and in the fishing season made a very handsome income. During the winter he employed himself manufacturing crab-nets, for which he found no lack of customers.
His popularity among the boys was immense. A jackknife in his expert hand was a whole chest of tools. He could whittle out anything from a wooden chain to a Chinese paG.o.da, or a full-rigged seventy-four a foot long. To own a ship of Sailor Ben"s building was to be exalted above your fellow-creatures. He didn"t carve many, and those he refused to sell, choosing to present them to his young friends, of whom Tom Bailey, you may be sure, was one.
How delightful it was of winter nights to sit in his cosey cabin, close to the ship"s stove (he wouldn"t hear of having a fireplace), and listen to Sailor Ben"s yarns! In the early summer twilights, when he sat on the door-step splicing a rope or mending a net, he always had a bevy of blooming young faces alongside.
The dear old fellow! How tenderly the years touched him after this--all the more tenderly, it seemed, for having roughed him so cruelly in other days!
Chapter Seventeen--How We Astonished the Rivermouthians
Sailor Ben"s arrival partly drove the New Orleans project from my brain.
Besides, there was just then a certain movement on foot by the Centipede Club which helped to engross my attention.
Pepper Whitcomb took the Captain"s veto philosophically, observing that he thought from the first the governor wouldn"t let me go. I don"t think Pepper was quite honest in that.
But to the subject in hand.
Among the few changes that have taken place in Rivermouth during the past twenty years there is one which I regret. I lament the removal of all those varnished iron cannon which used to do duty as posts at the corners of streets leading from the river. They were quaintly ornamental, each set upon end with a solid shot soldered into its mouth, and gave to that part of the town a picturesqueness very poorly atoned for by the conventional wooden stakes that have deposed them.
These guns ("old sogers" the boys called them) had their story, like everything else in Rivermouth. When that everlasting last war--the War of 1812, I mean--came to an end, all the brigs, schooners, and barks fitted out at this port as privateers were as eager to get rid of their useless twelve-pounders and swivels as they had previously been to obtain them.
Many of the pieces had cost large sums, and now they were little better than so much crude iron--not so good, in fact, for they were clumsy things to break up and melt over. The government didn"t want them; private citizens didn"t want them; they were a drug in the market.
But there was one man, ridiculous beyond his generation, who got it into his head that a fortune was to be made out of these same guns. To buy them all, to hold on to them until war was declared again (as he had no doubt it would be in a few months), and then sell out at fabulous prices--this was the daring idea that addled the pate of Silas Trefethen, "Dealer in E. & W. I. Goods and Groceries," as the faded sign over his shop-door informed the public.
Silas went shrewdly to work, buying up every old cannon he could lay hands on. His back-yard was soon crowded with broken-down gun-carriages, and his barn with guns, like an a.r.s.enal. When Silas"s purpose got wind it was astonishing how valuable that thing became which just now was worth nothing at all.
"Ha, ha!" thought Silas. "Somebody else is tryin" hi git control of the market. But I guess I"ve got the start of him."
So he went on buying and buying, oftentimes paying double the original price of the article. People in the neighboring towns collected all the worthless ordnance they could find, and sent it by the cart-load to Rivermouth.
When his barn was full, Silas began piling the rubbish in his cellar, then in his parlor. He mortgaged the stock of his grocery store, mortgaged his house, his barn, his horse, and would have mortgaged himself, if anyone would have taken him as security, in order to carry on the grand speculation. He was a ruined man, and as happy as a lark.
Surely poor Silas was cracked, like the majority of his own cannon. More or less crazy he must have been always. Years before this he purchased an elegant rosewood coffin, and kept it in one of the spare rooms in his residence. He even had his name engraved on the silver-plate, leaving a blank after the word "Died."
The blank was filled up in due time, and well it was for Silas that he secured so stylish a coffin in his opulent days, for when he died his worldly wealth would not have bought him a pine box, to say nothing of rosewood. He never gave up expecting a war with Great Britain. Hopeful and radiant to the last, his dying words were, England--war--few days--great profits!
It was that sweet old lady, Dame Jocelyn, who told me the story of Silas Trefethen; for these things happened long before my day. Silas died in 1817.
At Trefethen"s death his unique collection came under the auctioneer"s hammer. Some of the larger guns were sold to the town, and planted at the corners of divers streets; others went off to the iron-foundry; the balance, numbering twelve, were dumped down on a deserted wharf at the foot of Anchor Lane, where, summer after summer, they rested at their ease in the gra.s.s and fungi, pelted in autumn by the rain and annually buried by the winter snow. It is with these twelve guns that our story has to deal.
The wharf where they reposed was shut off from the street by a high fence--a silent dreamy old wharf, covered with strange weeds and mosses.
On account of its seclusion and the good fishing it afforded, it was much frequented by us boys.
There we met many an afternoon to throw out our lines, or play leap-frog among the rusty cannon. They were famous fellows in our eyes.
What a racket they had made in the heyday of their unchastened youth!
What stories they might tell now, if their puffy metallic lips could only speak! Once they were lively talkers enough; but there the grim sea-dogs lay, silent and forlorn in spite of all their former growlings.
They always seemed to me like a lot of venerable disabled tars, stretched out on a lawn in front of a hospital, gazing seaward, and mutely lamenting their lost youth.
But once more they were destined to lift up their dolorous voices--once more ere they keeled over and lay speechless for all time. And this is how it befell.
Jack Harris, Charley Marden, Harry Blake, and myself were fishing off the wharf one afternoon, when a thought flashed upon me like an inspiration.
"I say, boys!" I cried, hauling in my line hand over hand, "I"ve got something!"
"What does it pull like, youngster?" asked Harris, looking down at the taut line and expecting to see a big perch at least.
"O, nothing in the fish way," I returned, laughing; "it"s about the old guns."
"What about them?"
"I was thinking what jolly fun it would be to set one of the old sogers on his legs and serve him out a ration of gunpowder."
Up came the three lines in a jiffy. An enterprise better suited to the disposition of my companions could not have been proposed.
In a short time we had one of the smaller cannon over on its back and were busy sc.r.a.ping the green rust from the touch-hole. The mould had spiked the gun so effectually, that for a while we fancied we should have to give up our attempt to resuscitate the old soger.