第23章 THE VOYAGE(11)

The captain's humanity,if I may so call it,did not so totally destroy his philosophy as to make him yield himself up to affliction on this melancholy occasion.Having felt his loss like a man,he resolved to show he could bear it like one;and,having declared he had rather have lost a cask of rum or brandy,betook himself to threshing at backgammon with the Portuguese friar,in which innocent amusement they had passed about two-thirds of their time.

But as I have,perhaps,a little too wantonly endeavored to raise the tender passions of my readers in this narrative,I should think myself unpardonable if I concluded it without giving them the satisfaction of hearing that the kitten at last recovered,to the great joy of the good captain,but to the great disappointment of some of the sailors,who asserted that the drowning a cat was the very surest way of raising a favorable wind;a supposition of which,though we have heard several plausible accounts,we will not presume to assign the true original reason.

Friday,July 12.--This day our ladies went ashore at Ryde,and drank their afternoon tea at an ale-house there with great satisfaction:here they were regaled with fresh cream,to which they had been strangers since they left the Downs.

Saturday,July 13.--The wind seeming likely to continue in the same corner where it had been almost constantly for two months together,I was persuaded by my wife to go ashore and stay at Ryde till we sailed.I approved the motion much;for though I am a great lover of the sea,I now fancied there was more pleasure in breathing the fresh air of the land;but how to get thither was the question;for,being really that dead luggage which I considered all passengers to be in the beginning of this narrative,and incapable of any bodily motion without external impulse,it was in vain to leave the ship,or to determine to do it,without the assistance of others.In one instance,perhaps,the living,luggage is more difficult to be moved or removed than an equal or much superior weight of dead matter;which,if of the brittle kind,may indeed be liable to be broken through negligence;but this,by proper care,may be almost certainly prevented;whereas the fractures to which the living lumps are exposed are sometimes by no caution avoidable,and often by no art to be amended.

I was deliberating on the means of conveyance,not so much out of the ship to the boat as out of a little tottering boat to the land;a matter which,as I had already experienced in the Thames,was not extremely easy,when to be performed by any other limbs than your own.Whilst I weighed all that could suggest itself on this head,without strictly examining the merit of the several schemes which were advanced by the captain and sailors,and,indeed,giving no very deep attention even to my wife,who,as well as her friend and my daughter,were exerting their tender concern for my ease and safety,Fortune,for I am convinced she had a hand in it,sent me a present of a buck;a present welcome enough of itself,but more welcome on account of the vessel in which it came,being a large hoy,which in some places would pass for a ship,and many people would go some miles to see the sight.

I was pretty easily conveyed on board this hoy;but to get from hence to the shore was not so easy a task;for,however strange it may appear,the water itself did not extend so far;an instance which seems to explain those lines of Ovid,Omnia pontus erant,deerant quoque littora ponto,in a less tautological sense than hath generally been imputed to them.

In fact,between the sea and the shore there was,at low water,an impassable gulf,if I may so call it,of deep mud,which could neither be traversed by walking nor swimming;so that for near one half of the twenty-four hours Ryde was inaccessible by friend or foe.But as the magistrates of this place seemed more to desire the company of the former than to fear that of the latter,they had begun to make a small causeway to the low-water mark,so that foot passengers might land whenever they pleased;but as this work was of a public kind,and would have cost a large sum of money,at least ten pounds,and the magistrates,that is to say,the churchwardens,the overseers,constable,and tithingman,and the principal inhabitants,had every one of them some separate scheme of private interest to advance at the expense of the public,they fell out among themselves;and,after having thrown away one half of the requisite sum,resolved at least to save the other half,and rather be contented to sit down losers themselves than to enjoy any benefit which might bring in a greater profit to another.Thus that unanimity which is so necessary in all public affairs became wanting,and every man,from the fear of being a bubble to another,was,in reality,a bubble to himself.

However,as there is scarce any difficulty to which the strength of men,assisted with the cunning of art,is not equal,I was at last hoisted into a small boat,and being rowed pretty near the shore,was taken up by two sailors,who waded with me through the mud,and placed me in a chair on the land,whence they afterwards conveyed me a quarter of a mile farther,and brought me to a house which seemed to bid the fairest for hospitality of any in Ryde.

We brought with us our provisions from the ship,so that we wanted nothing but a fire to dress our dinner,and a room in which we might eat it.In neither of these had we any reason to apprehend a disappointment,our dinner consisting only of beans and bacon;and the worst apartment in his majesty's dominions,either at home or abroad,being fully sufficient to answer our present ideas of delicacy.