CHAPTER XXXII. THE WOODEN MIDSHIPMAN GOES TO PIECES. HONEST Captain Cuttle, as the weeks flew over him in his fortified retreat, by no means abated any of his prudent provisions against surprise, because of the non-appearance of the enemy. The Captain argued that his present security was too profound and wonderful to endure much longer; he knew that when the wind stood in a fair quarter, the weathercock was seldom nailed there; and he was too well acquainted with the determined and danntless character of Mrs. Mac Stinger, to doubt that that heroic woman had devoted herself to the task of his discovery and capture. Trembling beneath the weight of these reasons, Captain Cuttle lived a very close and retired life; seldom stirring abroad until after dark; venturing even then only into the obscurest streets; never going forth at all on Sundays; and both within and without the walls of his retreat, avoiding bonnets, as if they were worn by raging lions. The Captain never dreamed that in the event of his being pounced upon by Mrs. Mac Stinger, in his walks, it would be possible to offer resistance. He felt that it could not be done. He saw himself, in his mind's eye, put meekly into a hackney-coach, and carried off to his old lodgings. He foresaw that, once immured there, he was a lost man: his hat gone; Mrs. Mac Stinger watchful of him day and night; reproaches heaped upon his head, before the infant family; himself the guilty object of suspicion and distrust: an ogre in the children's eyes, and in their mother's a detected traitor. A violent perspiration, and a lowness of spirits, always came over the Captain as this gloomy picture presented itself to his imagination. It generally did so previous to his stealing out of doors at night for air and exercise. Sensible of the risk he ran, the Captain took leave of Rob, at those times, with the solemnity which became a man who might never return: exhorting him, in the event of his (the Captain's) being lost sight of, for a time, to tread in the paths of virtue, and keep the brazen instruments well polished. But not to throw away a chance; and to secure to himself a means, in case of the worst, of holding eommunication with the external world; Captain Cuttle soon conceived the happy idea of teaching Rob the Grinder some secret signal, by which that adherent might make his presence and fidelity known to his commander, in the hour of adversity. After much cogitation, the Captain decided in favour of instructing him to whistle the marine melody, "Oh cheerily, cheerily !" and Rob the Grinder attaining a point as near perfection in that accomplishment as a landsman could hope to reach, the Captain impressed these mysterious instructions on his mind: "Now, my lad, stand by! If ever I'm took-" "Took, Captain!" interposed Rob, with his round eyes wide open. "Ah!" said Captain Cuttle darkly, "if ever I goes away, meaning to come back to supper, and don't come within hail again, twenty-four hours arter my loss, go you to Brig Place and whistle that 're tune near my old moorings-not as if you was a meaning of it, you understand, but as if you'd drifted there, promiscuous. If I answer in that tune, you sheer off, my lad, and come back four-and-twenty-hours arterwards; if I answer in another tone, do you stand off and on, and wait till I throw out further signals. Do you understand them orders now?" "What am I to stand off and on of, Captain?" inquired Rob. "The horse-road?" "Here's a smart lad for you!" cried the Captain, eyeing him sternly, "as don't know his own native alphabet! Go away a bit and come back again alternate-d'ye understand that?” "Yes, Captain," said Rob. 66 Very good my lad, then," said the Captain, relenting. Do it!" That he might do it the better, Captain Cuttle sometimes condescended, of an evening after the shop was shut, to rehearse this scene: : retiring into the parlour for the purpose, as into the lodgings of a supposititious Mae Stinger, and carefully observ ing the behaviour of his ally, from the hole of espial he had cut in the wall. Rob the Grinder discharged himself of his duty with so much exactness and judgment, when thus put to the proof, that the Captain presented him, at divers times, with seven sixpences, in token of satisfaction; and gradually felt stealing over his spirit the resignation of a man who had made provision for the worst, and taken every reasonable precaution against an unrelenting fate. Nevertheless, the Captain did not tempt ill-fortune, by being a whit more venturesome than before. Though he considered it a point of good breeding in himself, as a general friend of the family, to attend Mr. Dombey's wedding (of which he had heard from Mr. Perch), and to show that gentleman a pleasant and approving countenance from the gallery, he had repaired to the church in a hackney cabriolet with both windows up; and might have scrupled even to make that venture, in his dread of Mrs. Mac Stinger, but that the lady's attendance on the ministry of the Reverend Melchisedech rendered it peculiarly unlikely that she would be found in communion with the Establishment. The Captain got safe home again, and fell into the ordinary routine of his new life, without encountering any more direct alarm from the enemy, than was suggested to him by the daily bonnets in the street. But other subjects began to lie heavy on the Captain's mind. Walter's ship was still unheard of. No news came of old Sol Gills. Florence did not even know of the old man's disappearance, and Captain Cuttle had not the heart to tell her. Indeed the Captain, as his own hopes of the gener ous, handsome, gallant-hearted youth, whom he had loved, according to his rough manner, from a child, began to fade, and faded more and more from day to day, shrunk with instinctive pain from the thought of exchanging a word with Florence. If he had had good news to carry to her, the hones Captain would have braved the newly decorated | any-had transpired among his ship's company; house and splendid furniture - though these, connected with the lady he had seen at church, were awful to him and made his way into her presence. With a dark horizon gathering around their common hopes, however, that darkened every hour, the Captain almost felt as if he were a new misfortune and affliction to her; and was scarcely less afraid of a visit from Florence, than from Mrs. Mac Stinger herself. It was a chill dark autumn evening, and Captain Cuttle had ordered a fire to be kindled in the little back parlour, now more than ever like the cabin of a ship. The rain fell fast, and the wind blew hard; and straying out on the housetop by that stormy bedroom of his old friend, to take an observation of the weather, the Captain's heart died within him, when he saw how wild and desolate it was. Not that he associated the weather of that time with poor Walter's destiny, or doubted that if Providence had doomed him to be lost and ship. wrecked, it was over, long ago; but that beneath an outward influence, quite distinct from the subject-matter of his thoughts, the Captain's spirits sank, and his hopes turned pale, as those of wiser men had often done before him, and will often do again. Captain Cuttle, addressing his face to the sharp wind and slanting rain, looked up at the heavy scud that was flying fast over the wilderness of housetops, and looked for something cheery there in vain. The prospect near at hand was no better. In sundry tea-chests and other rough boxes at his feet, the pigeons of Rob the Grinder were cooing like so many dismal breezes getting up. A crazy weathercock of a midshipman, with a telescope at his eye, once visible from the street, but long bricked out, creaked and complained upon his rusty pivot as the shrill blast spun him round and round, and sported with him cruelly. Upon the Captain's coarse blue vest the cold rain-drops started like steel beads; and he could hardly maintain himself aslant against the stiff Nor' Wester that came pressing against him, importunate to topple him over the parapet, and throw him on the pavement below. If there were any Hope alive that evening, the Captain thought, as he held his hat on, it certainly kept house, and wasn't out-of doors; so the Captain, shaking his head in a despondent manner, went in to look for it. Captain Cuttle descended slowly to the little back parlour, and, seated in his accustomed chair, looked for it in the fire; but it was not there, though the fire was bright. He took out his tobacco-box and pipe, and composing himself to smoke, looked for it in the red glow from the bowl, and in the wreaths of vapour that curled upward from his lips; but there was not so much as an atom of the rust of Hope's anchor in either. He tried a glass of grog; but melancholy truth was at the bottom of that well, and he couldn't finish it. He made a turn or two in the shop, and looked for Hope among the instruments; but they obstinately worked out reckonings for the missing ship, in spite of any opposition he could offer, that ended at the bottom of the lone sea. how the changes had come all together one day, as it might be; and of what a sweeping kind they were. Here was the little society of the back parlour broken up, and scattered far and wide. Here was no audience for Lovely Peg, even if there had been anybody to sing it, which there was not; for the Captain was as morally certain that nobody but he could execute that ballad, as he was that he had not the spirit, under existing circumstances, to attempt it. There was no bright face of "Wal'r" in the house ;-here the Captain transferred his sleeve for a moment from the Midshipman's uniform to his own cheek ;-the familiar wig and buttons of Sol Gills were a vision of the past; Richard Whittington was knocked on the head; and every plan and project, in connexion with the Midshipman, lay drifting, without mast or rudder, on the waste of waters. As the Captain, with a dejected face, stood revolving these thoughts, and polishing the Midshipman, partly in the tenderness of old acquaintance, and partly in the absence of his mind, a knocking at the shop-door communicated a frightful start to the frame of Rob the Grinder, seated on the counter, whose large eyes had been intently fixed on the Captain's face, and who had been debating within himself, for the five hundredth time, whether the Captain could have done a murder, that he had such an evil conscience, and was always running away. "What's that!" said Captain Cuttle, softly. "Somebody's knuckles, Captain," answered Rob the Grinder. The Captain, with an abashed and guilty air, immediately sneaked on tip-toe to the little parlour and locked himself in. Rob, opening the door, would have parleyed with the visitor on the threshold if the visitor had come in female guise; but the figure being of the male sex, and Rob's orders only applying to women, Rob held the door open and allowed it to enter: which it did very quickly, glad to get out of the driving rain. "A job for Burgess and Co. at any rate," said the visitor looking over his shoulder compassionately at his own legs, which were very wet and covered with splashes. "Oh, how-de-do, Mr. Gills?" The salutation was addressed to the Captain, now emerging from the back parlour with a most transparent and utterly futile affectation of coming out by accident. "Thankee," the gentleman went on to say in the same breath; "I'm very well indeed, myself, I'm much obliged to you. My name is Toots,-Mister Toots." The Captain remembered to have seen this young gentleman at the wedding, and made him a bow. Mr. Toots replied with a chuckle; and being emharrassed, as he generally was, breathed hard, shook hands with the Captain for a long time, and then falling on Rob the Grinder, in the absence of any other resource, shook hands with him in a most affectionate and cordial manner. "I say! I should like to speak a word to you, Mr. Gills, if you please," said Toots at length, with surprising presence of mind. "I say! Miss D. O. M. you know!" The Captain, with responsive gravity and mys. tery, immediately waved his hook towards the little parlour, whither Mr. Toots followed him. The wind still rushing, and the rain still pattering, against the closed shutters, the Captain brought to before the wooden Midshipman upon the counter, and thought, as he dried the little officer's uni- "Oh! I beg your pardon though," said Mr. form with his sleeve, how many years the Midship. Toots, looking up in the Captain's face as he sat aan had seen, during which few changes-hardly | down in a chair by the fire, which the Captain placed for him; "you don't happen to know the morning at daybreak he went over the side," said Chicken at all; do you, Mr. Gills?" "The Chicken ?" said the Captain. "The Game Chicken," said Mr. Toots. The Captain shaking his head, Mr. Toots explained that the man alluded to was the celebrated public character who had covered himself and his country with glory in his contest with the Nobby Shropshire One; but this piece of information did not appear to enlighten the Captain very much. "Because he's outside: that's all," said Mr. Toots. "But it's of no consequence; he won't get very wet, perhaps." "I can pass the word for him in a moment," said the Captain. "Well, if you would have the goodness to let him sit in the shop with your young man," chuckled Mr. Toots, "I should be glad; because, you know, he's easily offended, and the damp 's rather bad for his stamina. I'll call him in, Mr. Gills." With that, Mr. Toots repairing to the shop-door, sent a peculiar whistle into the night, which produced a stoical gentleman in a shaggy white greatcoat and a flat-brimmed hat, with very short hair, a broken nose, and a considerable tract of bare and sterile country behind each ear. "Sit down, Chicken," said Mr. Toots. The compliant Chicken spat out some small pieces of straw on which he was regaling himself, and took in a fresh supply from a reserve he carried in his hand. "There an't no drain of nothing short handy, is there?" said the Chicken, generally. "This here sluicing night is hard lines to a man as lives on his condition." Captain Cuttle proffered a glass of rum, which the Chicken, throwing back his head, emptied into himself, as into a cask, after proposing the brief sentiment "Towards us!" Mr. Toots and the Captain returning then to the parlour, and taking their seats before the fire, Mr. Toots began: "Mr. Gills-" "Awast!" said the Captain. "My name's Cuttle." Mr. Toots looked greatly disconcerted, while the Captain proceeded gravely. Cap'en Cuttle is my name, and England is my nation, this here is my dwelling-place, and blessed be creation-Job," said the Captain, as an index to his authority. "Oh! I couldn't see Mr. Gills, could I?" said Mr. Toots; "because-" "If you could see Sol Gills, young gen'l'm'n," said the Captain, impressively, and laying his heavy hand on Mr. Toots 's knee, "old Sol, mind you-with your own eyes-as you sit there-you'd be welcomer to me, than a wind astarn, to a ship becalmed. But you can't see Sol Gills. And why can't you see Sol Gills ?" said the Captain, apprised by the face of Mr. Toots that he was making a profound impression on that gentleman's mind. cause he 's inwisible." "Be Mr. Toots in his agitation was going to reply that it was of no consequence at all. But he corrected himself, and said, "Lor bless me!" "That there man," said the Captain, "has left me in charge here by a piece of writing, but though he was a'most as good as my sworn brother, I know no more where he 's gone, or why he's gone; if so be to seek his nevy, or if so be along of being not quite settled in his mind; than you do. One the Captain," without a splash, without a ripple. I have looked for that man high and low, and never set eyes, nor ears, nor nothing else, upon him from that hour." "But, good gracious, Miss Dombey don't know--" Mr. Toots began. "Why, I ask you as a feeling heart," said the Captain, dropping his voice, "why should she know? why should she be made to know, until such time as there warn't any help for it? She took to old Sol Gills, did that sweet creetur, with a kindness, with a affability, with a-what's the good of say. ing so? you know her." "I should hope so," chuckled Mr. Toots, with a conscious blush that suffused his whole counte. nanec. "And you come here from her!" said the Cap tain. "I should think so," chuckled Mr. Toots. "Then all I need observe, is," said the Captain, "that you know a angel, and are chartered by a angel." Mr. Toots instantly seized the Captain's hand, and requested the favour of his friendship. "Upon my word and honour," said Mr. Toots, earnestly, "I should be very much obliged to you if you'd improve my acquaintance. I should like to know you, Captain, very much. I really am in want of a friend, I am. Little Dombey was my friend at old Blimber's, and would have been now, if he 'd have lived. The Chicken," said Mr. Toots, in a forlorn whisper, "is very well-admirable in his way-the sharpest man perhaps in the world; there's not a move he isn't up to, everybody says so-but I don't know-he's not everything. So she is an angel, Captain. If there is an angel any. where, it's Miss Dombey. That's what I've always said. Really though, you know," said Mr. Toots, "I should be very much obliged to you if you'd cultivate my acquaintance." Captain Cuttle received this proposal in a polite manner, but still without committing himself to its acceptance; merely observing "Aye aye, my lad. We shall see, we shall see" and reminding Mr. Toots of his immediate mission, by inquiring to what he was indebted for the honour of that visit. "Why the fact is," replied Mr. Toots, "that it's the young woman I come from. Not Miss Dombey -Susan you know." The Captain nodded his head once, with a grave expression of face, indicative of his regarding that young woman with serious respect. "And I'll tell you how it happens," said Mr. Toots. "You know, I go and call sometimes, on Miss Dombey. I don't go there on purpose, you know, but I happen to be in the neighbourhood very often; and when I find myself there, whywhy I call." 66 Nat'rally," observed the Captain. "Yes," said Mr. Toots. "I called this afternoon. Upon my word and honour, I don't think it's pos sible to form an idea of the angel Miss Dombey was this afternoon." The Captain answered with a jerk of his head, implying that it might not be easy to some people, but was quite so, to him. "As I was coming out," said Mr. Toots, "the young woman, in the most unexpected manner, took me into the pantry." The Captain seemed, for the moment, to object to this proceeding; and leaning back in his chair, looked at Mr. Toots with a distrustful, if not threatening visage. 66 'Where she brought out," said Mr. Toots, "this newspaper. She told me that she had kept it from Miss Dombey all day, on account of something that was in it, about somebody that she and Dombey used to know; and then she read the passage to me. Very well. Then she said-wait a minute; what was it, she said though!" Mr. Toots, endeavouring to concentrate his mental powers on this question, unintentionally fixed the Captain's eye, and was so much discomposed by its stern expression, that his difficulty in resuming the thread of his subject was enhanced to a painful extent. "Oh!" said Mr. Toots after long consideration. "Oh ah! Yes! She said that she hoped there was a bare possibility that it mightn't be true; and that as she couldn't very well come out herself, without surprising Miss Dombey, would I go down to Mr. Solomon Gills the Instrument-Maker's in this street, who was the party's uncle, and ask whether he believed it was true, or had heard anything else in the city. She said, if he couldn't speak to me, no doubt Captain Cuttle could. By the bye!" said Mr. Touts, as the discovery flashed upon him, "you, you know!" The Captain glanced at the newspaper in Mr. Toots's hand, and breathed short and hurriedly. 66 'Well," pursued Mr. Toots, "the reason why I'm rather late is, because I went up as far as Finchley first, to get some uncommonly fine chickweed that grows there, for Miss Dombey's bird. But I came on here, directly afterwards. You've seen the paper, I suppose ?" The Captain, who had become cautious of reading the news, lest he should find himself advertised at full length by Mrs. Mac Stinger, shook his head. Shall I read the passage to you?" inquired Mr. Toots. "The Captain making a sign in the affirmative, Mr. Toots read as follows, from the Shipping Intelligence: and Heir, port of London, bound for Barbadoes, are now set at rest for ever; that she broke up in the last hurricane; and that every soul on board per. ished.'" Captain Cuttle, like all mankind, little knew how much hope had survived within him under discou ragement, until he felt its death-shock. During the reading of the paragraph, and for a minute or two afterwards, he sat with his gaze fixed on the modest Mr. Toots, like a man entranced; then, suddenly rising, and putting on his glazed hat, which, in his visitor's honour, he had laid upon the table, the Captain turned his back, and bent his head down on the little chimney-piece. "Oh, upon my word and honour," cried Mr. Toots, whose tender heart was moved by the Cap. tain's unexpected distress, "this is a most wretched sort of affair this world is! Somebody's always dying, or going and doing something uncomforta. ble in it. I'm sure I never should have looked forward so much, to coming into my property, if I had known this. I never saw such a world. It's a great deal worse than Blimber's." Captain Cuttle, without altering his position, signed to Mr. Toots not to mind him; and presently turned round, with his glazed hat thrust back upon his ears, and his hand composing and smoothing his brown face. "Wal'r my dear lad," said the Captain, "fare. well! Wal'r my child, my boy, and man, I loved you! He warn't my flesh and blood," said the Captain, looking at the fire-"I an't got none-but something of what a father feels when he loses a son, I feel in losing Wal'r. For why?" said the Captain. "Because it an't one loss, but a round dozen. Where's that there young schoolboy with the rosy face and curly hair, that used to be as merry in this here parlour, come round every week, as a piece of music? Gone down with Wal'r. Where's that there fresh lad, that nothing couldn't tire nor put out, and that sparkled up and blushed so, when we joked him about Heart's Delight, that he was beautiful to look at? Gone down with Wal'r. Where's that there man's spirit, all afire, that wouldn't see the old man hove down for a minute, and cared nothing for itself? Gone down with Wal'r. It an't one Wal'r. There was a dozen Wal'rs that I know'd and loved, all holding round his neck when he went down, and they're "Southampton. The barque Defiance, Henry James, Commander, arrived in this port to-day, with a cargo of sugar, coffee, and rum, reports that being becalmed on the sixth day of her passage home from Jamaica, in '-in such and such a lati-a-holding round mine now!" tude, you know," said Mr. Toots, after making a feeble dash at the figures, and tumbling over them. "Aye" cried the Captain, striking his clenched hand on the table. "Heave a-head, my lad!" Mr. Toots sat silent: folding and refolding the newspaper as small as possible upon his knee. "And Sol Gills," said the Captain, gazing at the fire," poor nevyless old Sol, where are you got to! you was left in charge of me; his last words was, Take care of my uncle;' What came over you, Sol, when you went and gave the go-bye to Ned Cuttle; and what am I to put in my accounts that he's a looking down upon, respecting you! Sol Gills, Sol Gills!" said the Captain, shaking his head slowly, "catch sight of that there newspaper, away from home, with no one as know'd Wal'r by, to say a word; and broadside to you broach, and down you pitch, head-foremost!" "-latitude," repeated Mr. Toots, with a star. tled glance at the Captain," and longitude so-andso, the look-out observed, half an hour before sunset, some fragments of a wreck, drifting at about the distance of a mile. The weather being clear, and the barque making no way, a boat was hoisted out, with orders to inspect the same, when they were found to consist of sundry large spars, and a part of the main rigging of an English brig, of about five hundred tons burden, together with a portion of the stern on which the words and letters Drawing a heavy sigh, the Captain turned to Mr. Son and H-' were yet plainly legible. No ves- Toots, and roused himself to a sustained conscioustige of any dead body was to be seen upon the float-ness of that gentleman's presence. ing fragments. Log of the Defiance states, that a My lad," said the Captain, "you must tell the brecze springing up in the night, the wreck was young woman honestly that this here fatal news is seen no more. There can be no doubt that all sur-too correct. They don't romance, you see, on sich mises as to the fate of the missing vessel, the Son pints. It's entered on the ship's log, and that's 66 |