Chapter II (1)

An afternoon in April. No sun appears on high; A moist and yellow lustre fills the deepness of the sky; And through the castle gateway, with slow and solemn tread, Along the leafless avenue they bear the honoured dead.

They stop. The long line closes up, like some gigantic worm; A shape is standing in the path; a wan and ghostlike form; Which gazes fixedly, nor moves; nor utters any sound; Then, like a statue built of snow, falls lifeless to the ground.

And though her clothes are ragged, and though her feet are bare; And though all wild and tangled, falls her heavy silk-brown hair; Though from her eyes the brightness, from her cheeks the bloom, has fled; They know their Lady Alice, the Darling of the Dead.

With silence, in her own old room the fainting form they lay; Where all things stand unaltered since the night she fled away; But who shall bring to life again her father from the clay? But who shall give her back again her heart of that old day?

Footnote 1:

The lion was said to ‘prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.’

ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.
A GLOBE.

One of the most remarkable of self-educated men, James Ferguson, when a poor agricultural labourer, constructed a globe. A friend had made him a present of ‘Gordon’s Geographical Grammar,’ which, he says, ‘at that time was to me a great treasure. There is no figure of a globe in it, although it contains a tolerable description of the globes, and their use. From this description I made a globe in three weeks, at my father’s, having turned the ball thereof out of a piece of wood; which ball I covered with paper, and delineated a map of the world upon it, made the meridian ring and horizon of wood, covered them with paper, and graduated them; and was happy to find that by my globe (which was the first I ever saw) I could solve the problems.’

‘But,’ he adds, ‘this was not likely to afford me bread.’

In a few years this ingenious man discovered the conditions upon which he could earn his bread, by a skill which did not suffer under the competition of united labour. He had made also a wooden clock. He carried about his globe and his clock, and ‘began to pick up some money about the country’ by cleaning clocks. He became a skilled clock-cleaner. For six-and-twenty years afterwards he earned his bread as an artist. He then became a scientific lecturer, and in connection with his pursuits, was also a globe maker. His name may be seen upon old globes, associated with that of Senex. The demand for globes must have been then very small, but Ferguson had learned that cheapness is produced by labour-saving contrivances. A pretty instrument for graduating lines upon the meridian ring, once belonging to Ferguson, is in use at this hour in the manufactory of Messrs. Malby and Son. The poor lad ‘who made a globe in three weeks’ finally won the honours and riches that were due to his genius and industry. But he would never have earned a living in the continuance of his first attempt to turn a ball out of a piece of wood, cover it with paper, and draw a map of the world upon it. The nicest application of his individual skill, and the most careful employment of his scientific knowledge, would have been wasted upon those portions of the work in which the continued application of common routine labour is the most efficient instrument of production.

Let us contrast the successive steps of Ferguson’s first experiment in globe-making with the processes of a globe manufactory.

A globe is not made of ‘a ball turned out of a piece of wood.’ If a solid ball of large dimensions were so turned, it would be too heavy for ordinary use. Erasmus said of one of the books of Thomas Aquinas, ‘No man can carry it about, much less get it into his head;’ and so would it be said of a solid globe. If it were made of hollow wood, it would warp and split at the junction of its parts. A globe is made of paper and plaster. It is a beautiful combination of solidity and lightness. It is perfectly balanced upon its axis. It retains its form under every variety of temperature. Time affects it less than most other works of art. It is as durable as a Scagliola column.

A globe may not, at first sight, appear a cheap production. It is not, of necessity, a low-priced production, and yet it is essentially cheap; for nearly all the principles of manufacture that are conditions of cheapness are exhibited in the various stages of its construction. There are only four globe-makers in England and one in Scotland. The annual sale of globes is only about a thousand pair. The price of a pair of globes varies from six shillings to fifty pounds. But from the smallest 2-inch, to the largest 36-inch globe, a systematic process is carried on at every step of its formation. We select this Illustration of Cheapness as a contrast, in relation to price and extent of demand, to the Lucifer Match. But it is, at the same time, a parallel in principle. If a globe were not made upon a principle involving the scientific combination of skilled labour, it would be a mere article of luxury from its excessive costliness. It is now a most useful instrument in education. For educational purposes the most inexpensive globe is as valuable as that of the highest price. All that properly belongs to the excellence of the instrument is found in combination with the commonest stained wood frame, as perfectly as with the most highly-finished frame of rose-wood or mahogany.

The mould, if we may so express it, of a globe is turned out of a piece of wood. This sphere need not be mathematically accurate. It is for rough work, and flaws and cracks are of little consequence. This wooden ball has an axis, a piece of iron wire at each pole. And here we may remark, that, at every stage of the process, the revolution of a sphere upon its axis, under the hands of the workman, is the one great principle which renders every operation one of comparative ease and simplicity. The labour would be enormously multiplied if the same class of operations had to be performed upon a cube. The solid mould, then, of the embryo globe is placed on its axis in a wooden frame. In a very short time a boy will form a pasteboard globe upon its surface. He first covers it entirely with strips of strong paper, thoroughly wet, which are in a tub of water at his side. The slight inequalities produced by the over-lapping of the strips are immaterial. The saturated paper is not suffered to dry; but is immediately covered over with a layer of pasted paper, also cut in long narrow slips. A third layer of similarly pasted paper—brown paper and white being used alternately—is applied; and then, a fourth, a fifth and a sixth. Here the pasting process ends for globes of moderate size. For the large ones it is carried farther. This wet pasteboard ball has now to be dried,—placed upon its axis in a rack. If we were determined to follow the progress of this individual ball through all its stages, we should have to wait a fortnight before it advanced another step. But as the large factory of Messrs. Malby and Son has many scores of globes all rolling onward to perfection, we shall be quite satisfied to witness the next operation performed upon a pasteboard sphere that began to exist some weeks earlier, and is now hard to the core.

The wooden ball, with its solid paper covering, is placed on its axis. A sharp cutting instrument, fixed on a bench, is brought into contact with the surface of the sphere, which is made to revolve. In less time than we write, the pasteboard ball is cut in half. There is no adhesion to the wooden mould, for the first coating of paper was simply _wetted_. Two bowls of thick card now lie before us, with a small hole in each, made by the axis of the wooden ball. But a junction is very soon effected. Within every globe there is a piece of wood—we may liken it to a round ruler—of the exact length of the inner surface of the sphere from pole to pole. A thick wire runs through this wood, and originally projected some two or three inches at each end. This stick is placed upright in a vice. The semi-globe is nailed to one end of the stick, upon which it rests, when the wire is passed through its centre. It is now reversed, and the edges of the card rapidly covered with glue. The edges of the other semi-globe are instantly brought into contact, the other end of the wire passing through its centre in the same way, and a similar nailing to the stick taking place. We have now a paper globe, with its own axis, which will be its companion for the whole term of its existence.

The paper globe is next placed on its axis in a frame, of which one side is a semi-circular piece of metal;—the horizon of a globe cut in half would show its form. A tub of white composition,—a compound of whiting, glue, and oil is on the bench. The workman dips his hand into this ‘gruel thick and slab,’ and rapidly applies it to the paper sphere with tolerable evenness: but as it revolves, the semi-circle of metal clears off the superfluous portions. The ball of paper is now a ball of plaster externally. Time again enters largely into the manufacture. The first coating must thoroughly dry before the next is applied; and so again till the process has been repeated four or five times. Thus, when we visit a globe workshop, we are at first surprised at the number of white balls, from three inches diameter to three feet, which occupy a large space. They are all steadily advancing towards completion. They cannot be hurriedly dried. The duration of their quiescent state must depend upon the degrees of the thermometer in the ordinary atmosphere. They cost little. They consume nothing beyond a small amount of rent. As they advance to the dignity of perfect spheres, increased pains are taken in the application of the plaster. At last they are polished. Their surface is as hard and as fine as ivory. But, beautiful as they are, they may, like many other beautiful things, want a due equipoise. They must be perfectly balanced. They must move upon their poles with the utmost exactness. A few shot, let in here and there, correct all irregularities. And now the paper and plaster sphere is to be endued with intelligence.

What may be called the artistical portion of globe-making here commences. In the manufactory we are describing there are two skilled workers, who may take rank as artists, but whose skill is limited, and at the same time perfected, by the uniformity of their operations. One of these artists, a young woman, who has been familiar with the business from her earliest years, takes the polished globe in her lap, for the purpose of marking it with lines of direction for covering it with engraved strips, which will ultimately form a perfect map. The inspection of a finished globe will show that the larger divisions of longitude are expressed by lines drawn from pole to pole, and those of latitude by a series of concentric rings. The polished plaster has to be covered with similar lines. These lines are struck with great rapidity, and with mathematical truth, by an instrument called a ‘beam compass,’ in the use of which this workwoman is most expert. The sphere is now ready for receiving the map, which is engraved in fourteen distinct pieces. The arctic and antarctic poles form two circular pieces, from which the lines of longitude radiate. These having been fitted and pasted, one of the remaining twelve pieces, containing 30 degrees, is also pasted on the sphere, in the precise space where the lines of longitude have been previously marked, its lines of latitude corresponding in a similar manner. The paper upon which these portions of the earth’s surface are engraved is thin and extremely tough. It is rubbed down with the greatest care, through all the stages of this pasting process. We have at length a globe covered with a plain map, so perfectly joined that every line and every letter fit together as if they had been engraved in one piece,—which, of course, would be absolutely impossible for the purpose of covering a ball.

The artist who thus covers the globe, called a paster, is also a colourer. This is, of necessity, a work which cannot be carried on with any division of labour. It is not so with the colouring of an atlas. A map passes under many hands in the colouring. A series of children, each using one colour, produce in combination a map coloured in all its parts, with the rapidity and precision of a machine. But a globe must be coloured by one hand. It is curious to observe the colourer working without a pattern. By long experience the artist knows how the various boundaries are to be defined, with pink continents, and blue islands, and the green oceans, connecting the most distant regions. To a contemplative mind, how many thoughts must go along with the mark, as he covers Europe with indications of popular cities, and has little to do with Africa and Australia but to mark the coast lines;—as year after year he has to make some variation in the features of the great American continent, which indicates the march of the human family over once trackless deserts, whilst the memorable places of the ancient world undergo few changes but those of name. And then, as he is finishing a globe for the cabin of some ‘great ammirall,’ may he not think that, in some frozen nook of the Arctic Sea, the friendly Esquimaux may come to gaze upon his work, and seeing how pretty a spot England is upon the ball, wonder what illimitable riches nature spontaneously produces in that favoured region, some of which is periodically scattered by her ships through those dreary climes in the search for some unknown road amidst everlasting icebergs, while he would gladly find a short track to the sunny south. And then, perhaps, higher thoughts may come into his mind; and as this toy of a world grows under his fingers, and as he twists it around upon its material axis, he may think of the great artificer of the universe, having the feeling, if not knowing, the words of the poet:—

‘In ambient air this ponderous ball HE hung.’

Contemplative, or not, the colourer steadily pursues his uniform labour, and the sphere is at length fully coloured.

The globe has now to be varnished with a preparation technically known as ‘white hard,’ to which some softening matter is added to prevent the varnish cracking. This is a secret which globe-makers preserve. Four coats of varnish complete the work.

And next the ball has to be mounted. We have already mentioned an instrument by which the brass meridian ring is accurately graduated; that is, marked with lines representing 360 degrees, with corresponding numerals. Of whatever size the ring is, an index-hand, connected with the graduating instrument, shows the exact spot where the degree is to be marked with a graver. The operation is comparatively rapid; but for the largest globes it involves considerable expense. After great trouble, the ingenious men whose manufactory we are describing have succeeded in producing cast-iron rings, with the degrees and figures perfectly distinct; and these applied to 36-inch globes, instead of the engraved meridians, make a difference of ten guineas in their price. For furniture they are not so beautiful; for use they are quite as valuable. There is only one other process which requires great nicety. The axis of the globe revolves on the meridian ring, and of course it is absolutely necessary that the poles should be exactly parallel. This is effected by a little machine which drills each extremity at one and the same instant; and the operation is termed poling the meridian.

The mounting of the globe,—the completion of a pair of globes,—is now handed over to the cabinet-maker. The cost of the material and the elaboration of the workmanship determine the price.

Before we conclude, we would say a few words as to the limited nature of the demand for globes.

Our imperfect description of this manufacture will have shown that experience, and constant application of ingenuity, have succeeded in reducing to the lowest amount the labour employed in the production of globes. The whole population of English globe-makers does not exceed thirty or forty men, women, and boys. Globes are thus produced at the lowest rate of cheapness, as regards the number of labourers, and with very moderate profits to the manufacturer, on account of the smallness of his returns. The _durability_ of globes is one great cause of the limitation of the demand. Changes of fashion, or caprices of taste, as to the mounting—new geographical discoveries, and modern information as to the position and nomenclature of the stars—may displace a few old globes annually, which then find their way from brokers’ shops into a class somewhat below that of their original purchasers. But the pair of globes generally maintain for years their original position in the school-room or the library. They are rarely injured, and suffer very slight decay. The new purchasers represent that portion of society which is seeking after knowledge, or desires to manifest some pretension to intellectual tastes. The number of globes annually sold represents to a certain extent the advance of Education. But if the labour-saving expedients did not exist in the manufacture the cost would be much higher, and the purchasers greatly reduced in number. The contrivances by which comparative cheapness is produced arise out of the necessity of contending against the durability of the article by encouraging a new demand. If these did not exist, the supply would outrun the demand;—the price of the article would less and less repay the labour expended in its production; the manufacture of globes would cease till the old globes were worn out, and the few rich and scientific purchasers had again raised up a market.

THE GHOST OF THE LATE MR. JAMES BARBER.
A YARN ASHORE.

‘“Luck!” nonsense. There is no such thing. Life is not a game of chance any more than chess is. If you lose, you have no one but yourself to blame.’

This was said by a young lieutenant in the Royal Navy, to a middle-aged midshipman, his elder brother.

‘Do you mean to say that luck had nothing to do with Fine Gentleman Bobbin passing for lieutenant, and my being turned back?’ was the rejoinder.

‘Bobbin, though a dandy, is a good seaman, and—and——.’ The speaker looked another way, and hesitated.

‘I am _not_, you would add—if you had courage. But I say I am, and a better seaman than Bobbin.’

‘Practically, perhaps, for you are ten years older in the service. But it was in the theoretical part of seamanship—which is equally important—that you broke down before the examiners,’ continued the younger officer, in tones of earnest but sorrowful reproach. ‘You never _would_ study.’

‘I’ll tell you what it is, master Ferdinand,’ said the elderly middy, not without a show of displeasure. ‘I don’t think this is the correct sort of conversation to be going on between two brothers after a five years’ separation.’

The young lieutenant laid his hand soothingly on his brother’s arm, and entreated him to take what he said in good part.

‘Well, well!’ rejoined the middy, with a laugh half-forced. ‘Take care what you are about, or, by Jove, I’ll inform against you.’

‘What for?’

‘Why, for preaching without a license.—Besides, you were once as bad as you pretend I am.’

‘I own it with sorrow; but I was warned in time by the wretched end of poor James Barber——’

‘Of whom?’ asked the elder brother, starting back as he pushed his glass along the table. ‘You don’t mean Jovial Jemmy, as we used to call him; once my messmate in the brig “Rollock.”’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘What! dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why, it was one of our great delights, when in harbour and on shore, to “go the rounds,”—as he called it—with Jovial Jemmy. He understood life from stem to stern—from truck to keel. He knew everybody, from the First Lord downwards. I have seen him recognised by _the_ Duke one minute, and the next pick up with a strolling player, and familiarly treat him at a tavern. He once took me to a quadrille party at the Duchess of Durrington’s, where he seemed to know and be known to everybody present, and then adjourned to the Cider Cellars, where he was equally intimate with all sorts of queer characters. Though a favourite among the aristocracy, he was equally welcome in less exclusive societies. He was “Brother,” “Past Master,” “Warden,” “Noble Grand,” or “President” of all sorts of Lodges and Fraternities. Uncommonly knowing was Jemmy in all sorts of club and fashionable gossip. He knew who gave the best dinners, and was always invited to the best balls. He was a capital judge of champagne, and when he betted upon a horse-race everybody backed him. He could hum all the fashionable songs, and was the fourth man who could dance the polka when it was first imported. Then he was as profound in bottled stout, Welsh rabbits, Burton ale, devilled kidneys, and bowls of Bishop, as he was in Roman punch, French cookery, and Italian singers. Afloat, he was the soul of fun:—he got up all our private theatricals, told all the best stories, and sung comic songs that made even the Purser laugh.’

‘An extent and variety of knowledge and accomplishments,’ said Lieutenant Fid, ‘which had the precise effect of blasting his prospects in life. He was, as you remember, at last dismissed the service for intemperance and incompetence.’

‘When did you see him last?’

‘What, _alive_?’ inquired Ferdinand Fid, changing countenance.

‘Of course! Surely you do not mean to insinuate that you have seen his ghost!’

The lieutenant was silent; and the midshipman took a deep draught of his favourite mixture—equal portions of rum and water—and hinted to his younger brother, the lieutenant, the expediency of immediately confiding the story to the Marines; for he declined to credit it. He then ventured another recommendation, which was, that Ferdinand should throw the impotent temperance tipple he was then imbibing ‘over the side of the Ship’—which meant the tavern of that name in Greenwich, at the open bow-window of which they were then sitting—and clear his intellects by something stronger.

‘I can afford to be laughed at,’ said the younger Fid, ‘because I have gained immeasurably by the delusion, if it be one; but if ever there was a ghost, I have seen the ghost of James Barber. I, like yourself and he, was nearly ruined by love of amusement and intemperance, when he—or whatever else it might have been—came to my aid.’

‘Let us hear. I see I am “in” for a ghost story.’

‘Well; it was eighteen forty-one when I came home in the “Arrow” with despatches from the coast of Africa: you were lying in the Tagus in the “Bobstay.” Ours, you know, was rather a thirsty station; a man inclined for it comes home from the Slaving Coasts with a determination to make up his lee way. I did mine with a vengeance. As usual, I looked up “Jovial Jemmy.”’

‘’Twas easy to find him if you knew where to go.’

‘I _did_ know, and went. He had by that time got tired of his more aristocratic friends. Respectability was too “slow” for him, so I found him presiding over the “Philanthropic Raspers,” at the “Union Jack.” He received me with open arms, and took me, as you say, the “rounds.” I can’t recal that week’s dissipation without a shudder. We rushed about from ball to tavern, from theatre to supper-room, from club to gin-palace, as if our lives depended on losing not a moment. We had not time to walk, so we galloped about in cabs. On the fourth night, when I was beginning to feel knocked up, and tired of the same songs, the same quadrilles, the bad whiskey, the suffocating tobacco smoke, and the morning’s certain and desperate penalties, I remarked to Jemmy, that it was a miracle how he had managed to weather it for so many years. “What a hardship you would deem it,” I added, “if you were _obliged_ to go the same weary round from one year’s end to another.”’

‘What did he say to that?’ asked Philip.

‘Why, I never saw him so taken aback. He looked quite fiercely at me, and replied, “I _am_ obliged!”’

‘How did he make that out?’

‘Why, he had tippled and dissipated his constitution into such a state that use had become second nature. Excitement was his natural condition, and he dared not become quite sober for fear of a total collapse—or dropping down like a shot in the water.’

The midshipman had his glass in his hand, but forebore to taste it.—‘Well, what then?’

‘The “rounds” lasted two nights longer. I was fairly beaten. Cast-iron could not have stood it. I was prostrated in bed with fever—and worse.’ Ferdinand was agitated, and took a large draught of his lemonade.

‘Well, well, you need not enlarge upon that,’ replied Phil Fid, raising his glass towards his lips, but again thinking better of it; ‘I heard how bad you were from Seton, who shaved your head.’

‘I had scarcely recovered when the “Arrow” was ordered back, and I made a vow.’

‘Took the pledge, perhaps!’ interjected the mid, with a slight curl of his lip.

‘No! I determined to work more and play less. We had a capital naval instructor aboard, and our commander was as good an officer as ever trod the deck. I studied—a little too hard perhaps, for I was laid up again. The “Arrow” was, as usual, as good as her name, and we shot across to Jamaica in five weeks. One evening as we were lying in Kingston harbour, Seton, who had come over to join the Commodore as full surgeon, told me what he had never ventured to divulge before.’

‘What was that?’

‘Why, that, on the very day I left London, James Barber died of a frightful attack of _delirium tremens_!’

‘Poor Jemmy!’ said the elder Fid sorrowfully, taking a long pull of consolation from his rummer. ‘Little did I think, while singing some of your best songs off Belem Castle, that I had seen you for the last time!’

‘_I_ hadn’t seen him for the last time,’ returned the lieutenant, with awful significance.

Philip assumed a careless air, and said, ‘Go on.’

‘We were ordered home in eighteen forty-five, and paid off in January. I went to Portsmouth; was examined, and passed as lieutenant.’

This allusion to his brother’s better condition made poor Philip look rather blank.

‘On being confirmed at the Admiralty,’ continued Ferdinand, ‘I had to give a dinner to the “Arrows;” which I did at the Salopian, Charing Cross. In the excess of my joy at promotion, my determination of temperance and avoidance of what is called “society” was swamped. I kept it up once more; I went the “rounds,” and accepted all the dinner, supper, and ball invitations I could get, invariably ending each morning in one of the old haunts of dissipation. Old associations with James Barber returned, and like causes produced similar effects. One morning while maundering home, I began to feel the same wild confusion as had previously commenced my dreadful malady.’

‘Ah! a little touched in the top-hamper.’

‘It was just daylight. Thinking to cool myself, I jumped into a wherry to get pulled down here to Greenwich.’

‘Of course you were not quite sober.’

‘Don’t ask! I do not like even to allude to my sensations, for fear of recalling them. My brain seemed in a flame. The boat appeared to be going at the rate of twenty miles an hour. Fast as we were cleaving the current, I heard my name distinctly called out. I reconnoitred, but could see nobody. I looked over on one side of the gunwale, and, while doing so, felt something touch me from the other; I felt a chill; I turned round and saw——’

‘Whom?’ asked the midshipman, holding his breath.

‘What seemed to be James Barber.’

‘Was he wet?’

‘As dry as you are.’

‘I summoned courage to speak. “Hallo! some mistake!” I exclaimed.

‘“Not at all,” was the reply. “I’m James Barber. Don’t be frightened, I’m harmless.”

‘“But——”

‘“I know what you are going to say,” interrupted the intruder. “Seton did not deceive you—I am only an occasional visitor _up here_.”

‘This brought me up with a round turn, and I had sense enough to wish my friend would vanish as he came. “Where shall we land you?” I asked.

‘“Oh, any where—it don’t matter. I have got to be out every night and all night; and the nights are plaguy long just now.”

‘I could not muster a word.

‘“Ferd Fid,” continued the voice, which now seemed about fifty fathoms deep; and fast as we were dropping down the stream, the boat gave a heel to starboard, as if she had been broadsided by a tremendous wave—“Ferd Fid, you recollect how I used to kill time; how I sang, drank, danced, and supped all night long, and then slept and soda-watered it all day? You remember what a happy fellow I seemed. Fools like yourself thought I was so; but I say again, I wasn’t,” growled the voice, letting itself down a few fathoms deeper. “Often and often I would have given the world to have been a market-gardener or a dealer in chick-weed while roaring ‘He is a jolly good fellow,’ and ‘We won’t go home till morning!’ as I emerged with a group from some tavern into Covent Garden market. But I’m punished fearfully for my sins now. What do you think I have got to do every night of my—never mind—what do you think is now marked out as my dreadful punishment?”

‘“Well, to walk the earth, I suppose,” said I.

‘“No.”

‘“To paddle about in the Thames from sunset to sun-rise?”

‘“Worse. Ha! ha!” (his laugh sounded like the booming of a gong). “I only wish my doom _was_ merely to be a mud-lark. No, no, I’m condemned to rush about from one evening party and public house to another. At the former I am bound for a certain term on each night to dance all the quadrilles, and a few of the polkas and waltzes with clumsy partners; and then I have to eat stale pastry and tough poultry before I am let off from _that_ place. After, I am bound to go to some cellar or singing place to listen to ‘Hail, smiling morn,’ ‘Mynheer Van Dunk,’ ‘The monks of old,’ ‘Happy land,’ imitations of the London actors, and to hear a whole canto of dreary extempore verses. I must also smoke a dozen of cigars, knowing—as in my present condition I must know,—what they are made of. The whole to end on each night with unlimited brandy (British) and water, and eternal intoxication. Oh, F. F., be warned! be warned! Take my advice; keep up your resolution, and don’t do it again. When afloat, drink nothing stronger than purser’s tea. When on shore be temperate in your pleasures; don’t turn night into day; don’t exchange wholesome amusements for rabid debauchery, robust health for disease and—well, I won’t mention it. When afloat, study your profession and don’t get cashiered and cold-shouldered as I was. Promise me—nay, you must swear!”

‘At this word I thought I heard a gurgling sound in the water.

‘“If I can get six solemn pledges before the season’s over, I’m only to go these horrid rounds during the meeting of Parliament.”

‘“_Will_ you swear?” again urged the voice, with persuasive agony.

‘I was just able to comply.

‘“Ten thousand thanks!” were the next words I heard; “I’m off, for there is an awful pint of pale ale, a chop, and a glass of brandy and water overdue yet, and I must devour them at the Shades.” (We were then close to London Bridge.) “Don’t let the waterman pull to shore; I can get there without troubling him.”

‘I remember no more. When sensation returned, I was in bed, in this very house, a shade worse than I had been from the previous attack.’

‘That,’ said Philip, who had left his tumbler untasted, ‘must have been when you had your head shaved for the second time.’

‘Exactly so.’

‘And you really believe it was Jovial James’s ghost,’ inquired Fid, earnestly.

‘Would it be rational to doubt it?’

Philip rose and paced the room in deep thought for several minutes. He cast two or three earnest looks at his brother, and a few longing ones at his glass. In the course of his cogitation, he groaned out more than once an apostrophe to poor ‘James Barber.’ At length he declared his mind was made up.

‘Ferd!’ he said, ‘I told you awhile ago to throw your lemonade over the side of the Ship. Don’t. Souse out my grog instead.’

The lieutenant did as he was bid.

‘And now,’ said Fid the elder, ‘ring for soda water; for one must drink _something_.’

* * * * *

Last year it was my own good fortune to sail with Mr. Philip Fid in the ‘Bombottle’ (74). He is not exactly a tee-totaller: but he never drinks spirits, and will not touch wine unmixed with water, for fear of its interfering with his studies, at which he is, with the assistance of the naval instructor (who is also our chaplain), assiduous. He is our first mate, and the smartest officer in the ship. Seton is our surgeon.

One day, after a cheerful ward-room dinner (of which Fid was a guest), while we were at anchor in the bay of Cadiz, the conversation happened to turn upon Jovial Jemmy’s apparition, which had become the best authenticated ghost story in Her Majesty’s Naval service. On that occasion Seton undertook to explain the mystery upon medical principles.

‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘what the commander of the “Arrow” saw (Ferdinand had by this time got commissioned in his old ship) was a spectrum, produced by that morbid condition of the brain, which is brought on by the immoderate use of stimulants, and by dissipation; we call it Transient Monomania. I could show you dozens of such ghosts in the books, if you only had patience while I turned them up.’

Everybody declared that was unnecessary. We would take the doctor’s word for it; though I feel convinced not a soul besides the chaplain and myself had one iota of his faith shaken in the real presence of Jovial Jemmy’s _post-mortem_ appearance to Fid the younger.

Ghost or no ghost, however, the story had had the effect of converting Philip Fid from one of the most intemperate and inattentive to one of the soberest and best of Her Majesty’s officers. May his promotion be speedy!

P. CLAY, LIEUT. R.M.

H.M.S. ‘BOMBOTTLE.’ _20th March, 1850._

THE TRUE STORY OF A COAL FIRE.

IN THREE CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER THE LAST.

The air blew freshly over the bright waving grass of a broad sloping field, on which the morning dews were sparkling and glancing in the sun. The clouds moved quickly over head, in clear grey and golden tints on their upper edges and foamy crests, with dark billows beneath, and their shadows chased each other down the green slopes of the field in rapid succession. Swiftly following them—now in the midst of them—now seeming to lead them on, a fine bay horse with flying mane, wild outspreading tail, and dilated nostrils, dashed onward exulting in his liberty, his strength, his speed, and all the early associations and influences of nature around him! He was a coal-mine horse, and had been just brought up the shaft for a holiday.

All this Flashley saw very distinctly, having been hastily landed at the top of the shaft, lifted into a tram-cart, and trundled off, he knew not by what enginery, till he was suddenly shot out on the top of a green embankment, and rolling down to the bottom, found himself lying in a fresh green field. He enjoyed the action, the spirit, and every motion of the horse. It was the exact embodiment in activity of his strongest present feelings and impulses. He jumped up to run after the horse, and mount him if he could, or if not, scamper about the field with him in the same fashion. But while he sought to advance, he felt as if he were retreating—in fact, he was sure of it;—the grass ran by him, instead of his running over it—the hedges ran through him, instead of his passing along them—the trees sped away before him into the distance, as he was carried backwards. He lost his legs—he sank upon the air—he was still carried backwards—all the landscape faded, and with a loud splash he fell into the sea!

Down he sank, and fancied he saw green watery fields rolling on all sides, and over him; and presently he heard a voice hoarsely calling as if from some bank above. He certainly had heard the voice before, and recognised it with considerable awe, though the words it uttered were homely and unromantic enough. It shouted out ‘Nancy, of Sunderland!—boat ahoy!’

By some inexplicable process—though he clearly distinguished a boat-hook in the performance—Flashley was picked up from beneath the waves, and lifted into a boat. It was a little, dirty, black, thick-gunnelled jollyboat, rowed by two men in short black over-shirts and smutty canvas trowsers. In the stern sat the captain with his arms folded. A broad-brimmed tarpaulin hat shaded his face. They pulled alongside a ship as black as death, but very lively; and a rope being lowered from the side, it was passed under Flashley’s arms in a noose, and the next moment he was hoisted on deck, and told to attend to his duty.

‘My duty!’ ejaculated Flashley, ‘Attend to my duty! Oh, what _is_ my duty?’ His eyes wandered round. Nothing but hard black planks and timbers, and masts with reefed sails, and rigging all covered with coal-dust, met his gaze. The sky, however, was visible above him—_that_ was a great comfort.

‘Scrape these carrots and parsnips,’ said the Captain solemnly, ‘very clean, d’ye mind!—and take them to the cook in the galley, who’ll let you know what’s next. When he has done with you, clean my sea-boots, and grease them with candle-ends; dry my peajacket, pilot-coat, and dreadnoughts; clean my pipe, and fill it—light, and take three whiffs to start it; mix me a glass of grog, and bring it with the lighted pipe; then, go and lend a hand in tarring the weather-rigging, and stand by, to go aloft and ease down the fore-top-gallant mast when the mate wants her on deck.’

‘Oh, heavens!’ thought Flashley, ‘are these then my duties! This hideous black ship must be a collier—and I am the cabinboy!’

A mixed impulse of equal curiosity and apprehension (it certainly was from no anxiety to commence his miscellaneous duties) caused him to ‘inquire his way’ to the cook’s galley. He was presently taken to a square enclosure, not unlike a great black rabbit-hutch, open at both sides, in which he was received by a man of large proportions, who was seated on an inverted iron saucepan, smoking. The black visage gave a grim smile and familiar wink. It could not be the miner who had acted as his guide and companion underground! And yet—

Flashley stepped back hastily, and cast an anxious look towards the after-part of the deck. There stood the Captain. A short yet very heavily-built figure,—a kind of stunted giant. He was not an Indian, nor a Mulatto, nor an African,—and yet his face was as black as a coal, in which several large veins rose prominently, and had a dull yellow tinge, as if they had been run with gold, or some metallic substance of that colour. Who could he be? Some demon _incog._? No, not that—but some one whom Flashley held in equal awe.

How long poor Flashley continued to perform his multifarious duties on board the ‘Nancy’ he had no idea, but they appeared at times very onerous, and he had to undergo many hardships. This was especially the case in the North Sea during the winter months, which are often of the severest kind on the coast between Sunderland and the mouth of the Thames. The rigging was all frozen, so that to lay hold of a rope seemed to take the skin off his hand; the cold went to the bone, and he hardly knew if his hands were struck through with frost, or by a hot iron. The decks were all slippery with ice, so were the ladders down to the cabins, and the cook’s galley was garnished all round with large icicles, from six inches to a foot and a half in length, which kept up a continual drip, drip, on all sides, by way of complimentary acknowledgment of the caboose-fire inside. Sometimes the wind burst the side-doors open—blew the fire clean out of the caboose, and scattered the live and dead coals all over the deck, or whirled them into the sea. One night the galley itself, with all its black and smutty paraphernalia, was torn up and blown overboard. It danced about on the tops of the waves—made deep curtseys—swept up the side of a long billow—was struck by a cross-wave, and disappeared in a hundred black planks and splinters. That same night Flashley was called up from his berth to go aloft and lend a hand to close-reef the main-topsail. The sail was all frozen, and so stiff that he could not raise it; but as he hauled on one of the points, the point broke, and something happened to him,—he did not know what, but he thought he fell backwards, and the wind flew away with him.

The next thing he remembered was that of lying in his berth with a bandage round one arm, and a large patch on one side of his head, while the cook sat on a sea-chest by his side reading to him.

A deep splashing plunge was now heard, followed by the rapid rumbling of an iron chain along the deck overhead. The collier had arrived off Rotherhithe, and cast anchor.

‘Up, Flashley!’ cried the cook; ‘on deck, my lad! to receive the whippers who are coming alongside.’

‘What for?’ exclaimed Flashley; ‘why am I to be whipped?’

‘It is not you,’ said the cook, laughing gruffly, as he ran up the ladder, ‘but the coal-baskets that are to be whipped up, and discharged into the lighter.’

The deck being cleared, and the main hatchway opened, a small iron wheel (called _gin_) was rigged out on a rope passing over the top of a spar (called _derrick_) at some 18 or 20 feet above the deck. Over this wheel a rope was passed, to which four other ropes were attached lower down. These were for the four whippers. At the other end of the wheel-rope was slung a basket. A second basket stood upon the coals, where four men also stood with shovels—two to fill each basket, one being always up and one down. The whippers had a stage raised above the deck, made of five rails, which they ascended for the pull, higher and higher as the coals got lower in the hold. The two baskets-full were the complement for one measure. The ‘measure’ was a black angular wooden box with its front placed close to the vessel’s side, just above a broad trough that slanted towards the lighter. Beside the measure stood the ‘meter,’ (an elderly personage with his head and jaws bound up in a bundle-handkerchief, to protect him from the draughts,) who had a piece of chalk in one hand, while with the other he was ready to raise a latch, and let all the coals burst out of the measure into the trough, by the fall of the front part of the box. The measure was suspended to one end of a balance, a weight being attached to the other, so that the weighing and measuring were performed by one process under the experienced, though rheumatic, eye of the meter.

The whippers continued at their laborious work all day; and as the coals were taken out of the hold, (the basket descending lower and lower as the depth increased,) the ‘whippers’ who hauled up, gave their weight to the pull, and all swung down from their ricketty rails with a leap upon the deck, as the basket ran up; ascending again to their position while the basket was being emptied into the trough.

The lighter had five compartments, called ‘rooms,’ each holding seven tons of coals; and when these were filled, the men sometimes heaped coals all over them from one end of the craft to the other, as high up as the combings, or side-ridges, would afford protection for the heap. By these means a lighter could carry forty-two tons, and upwards; and some of the craft having no separate ‘rooms,’ but an open hold, fore and aft, could carry between fifty and fifty-five tons.

A canal barge or monkey-boat (so called we presume from being very narrow in the loins) now came alongside, and having taken in her load of coals, the friendly cook of the ‘Nancy’ expressed an anxiety that Flashley should lose no opportunity of gaining all possible experience on the subject of coals, and the coal-trade generally, and therefore proposed to him a canal trip, having already spoken with the ‘captain of the barge’ on the subject. Before Flashley had time to object, or utter a demur, he was handed over the side, and pitched neatly on his legs on the after-part of the barge, close to a little crooked iron chimney, sticking blackly out of the deck, and sending forth a dense cloud of the dirtiest and most unsavoury smoke. The captain was standing on the ladder of the cabin, leaning on his great arms and elbows over the deck, and completely filling up the small square hatchway, so that all things being black alike, it seemed as if this brawny object were some live excrescence of the barge, or huge black mandrake whose roots were spread about beneath, and, perhaps, here and there, sending a speculative straggler through a chink into the water.

The mandrake’s eyes smiled, and he showed a very irregular set of large white and yellow teeth, as he scrunched down through the small square hole to enable the young passenger and tourist to descend.

Flashley, with a forlorn look up at the sky, and taking a good breath of fresh air to fortify him for what his nose already warned him he would have to encounter, managed to get down the four upright bars nailed close to the bulk-head, and called the ‘ladder.’

He found himself in a small aperture of no definite shape, and in which there was only room for one person to ‘turn’ at a time. Yet five living creatures were already there, and apparently enjoying themselves. There was the captain, and there was his wife, and there was a child in the wife’s right arm, and another of five years old packed against her left side, and there was the ‘crew’ of the barge, which consisted, for the present, of one boy of sixteen, of very stunted growth, and with one eye turning inwards to such a degree that sometimes the sight literally darted out, seeming to shoot beneath the bridge of his nose. They were all sitting, or rather hunched up, at ‘tea.’ The place had an overwhelming odour of coal-smoke, and tobacco smoke, and brown sugar, and onions, to say nothing of general ‘closeness,’ and the steam of a wet blanket-coat, which was lying in a heap to dry before the little iron stove. The door of this was open, and the fire shone brightly, and seemed to ‘_wink_’ at Flashley as he looked that way.

‘Here we are!’ said a strange voice.

Flashley looked earnestly into the stove. He thought the voice came from the fire. The coals certainly looked very glowing, and shot out what a German or other imaginative author would call _significant_ sparks.

‘Here we are!’ said the voice from another part of the cabin, and, turning in that direction, Flashley found that it proceeded from the ‘crew,’ who had contrived to stand up, and was endeavouring to give a close imitation of the ‘clown,’ on his first appearance after transformation. This, by the help of his odd eye, was very significant indeed.

And here they were, no doubt, and here they lived from day to day, and from night to night; and a pretty wretched, dirty, monotonous life it was. Having once got into a canal, with the horse at his long tug, the tediousness of the time was not easily to be surpassed. From canal to river, and from river to canal, there was scarcely any variety, except in the passage through the locks, the management of the rope in passing another barge-horse on the tow-path, and the means to be employed in taking the horse over a bridge. The duty of driving the horse along the tow-path, as may be conjectured, fell to the lot of our young tourist. Once or twice, ‘concealed by the murky shades of night,’ as a certain novelist would express it, he had ventured to mount the horse’s back; but the animal, not relishing this addition to his work, always took care, when they passed under a bridge, or near a wall, or hard embankment, to scrape his rider’s leg along the side, so that very little good was got in that way. And once, when Flashley had a ‘holiday,’ and was allowed to walk up and down the full length of the barge upon the top of the coals, a sudden bend in the river brought them close upon a very low wooden bridge, just when he was at the wrong end of the barge for making a dive to save his head. Flashley ran along the top as fast as he could, but the rascally horse seemed to quicken his pace, under the captain’s mischievous lash, so that finding the shadow of the bridge running at him before he could make his leap from the top of the coals, he was obliged to save himself from being violently knocked off, by jumping hastily into the canal, to the infinite amusement and delight of the captain, his wife, and the ‘crew.’ The horse being stopped, the captain came back and lugged him out of the bulrushes just as he had got thoroughly entangled, and immersed to the chin; knee-deep in mud, and with frogs and eels skeeling and striking out in all directions around him.

After a week or ten days passed in this delightful manner, Flashley found the barge was again on the Thames, no longer towed by a horse and rope, but by a little dirty steam-tug. They stopped on meeting a lighter on its way up with the tide, and Flashley being told to step on board, was received by his grim but good-natured companion and instructor, the cook of the ‘Nancy,’ now going up with a load to Bankside, and performing the feat of managing two black oars of enormous length and magnitude. They were worked in large grooves in each side of the lighter, one oar first receiving all the strength of this stupendous lighterman (late cook) with his feet firmly planted on a cross-beam in front, so as to add to the mighty pull of his arms, all the strength of his legs, as well as all the weight of his body. Having made this broad sweep and deep, he left the oar lying along the groove, and went to the one on the other side, with which he performed a similar sweep.

‘Here’s a brig with all sails set, close upon us!’ cried Flashley.

‘She’d best take care of herself;’ said our lighterman, as he went on deliberately to complete his long pull and strong.

Bump came the brig’s starboard bow against the lighter; and instantly heeling over with a lift and a lurch, the former reeled away to leeward, a row of alarmed but more enraged faces instantly appearing over the bulwarks—those ‘aft’ with eyes flashing on the lighterman, and those ‘for’ard,’ anxiously looking over to see if the bows had been stove in. A volley of anathemas followed our lighterman; who, however, continued slowly to rise and sink backward with his prodigious pull, apparently not hearing a word, or even aware of what had happened.