Foxholme Hall Part 8

"No; I mean what I say; there is no blunder for you to grin at. I stuck the pole so firmly into the deep mud, that I could not pull it out; but it pulled me in."

"Why didn't you let go at once?"

"I hadn't time to think of that; instinctively I grasped the pole, lost my balance, and tumbled into the river."

The unfortunate youth was extracted from the deep slime among osiers by a labourer near hand, and he dried his clothes in a cottage--

"Quae villula tectum, Praebuit--"

without any bad results.

"But, do you remember, Master Tydvill," said O'Mackerry, "the day when I was so near catching you and throwing you into the deep hole--clothes and all? Ay, and you deserved a ducking?"

"But really, Mack, would you have pitched me in, when you knew that I was a bad swimmer, especially when dressed?"

"a.s.suredly I would have done so, for I was unusually hot in my temper, though very cold in my body at that moment; however, I suppose that I should have acted the part of the Newfoundland dog, and dragged the puppy by his neck out of the water."

This complimentary part he addressed to the crew at large, and then described the incident.

He had been sitting on the top bar of a ladder, of which the lower end rested on the bottom of a very deep part of the river under a high and steep bank, for the purpose of aiding a swimmer in his ascent from the water. The day was cold, and O'Mackerry remained in a crouching posture for a few moments on the ladder, meditating the plunge, but not taking it. His playful friend stole behind and jerked him, heels over head, into the water, and immediately ran away. O'Mackerry, after recovering from the shock and getting out of the river, pursued the offender nearly half a mile, and happily without catching him. Tydvill rather unhandsomely afterwards caricatured his friend as a barometrical green frog in a broad pellucid bottle partly filled with water, squatting on a rung of a ladder, ingeniously serving as a graduated scale, to show the condition of the atmosphere; the frog rising or descending as its sensations led it to immerse its body in water, or rise more or less above it. O'Mackerry was a capital swimmer, and was sometimes seen to capsize himself from an Indian canoe, which he had purchased somewhere on the river Shannon, into its tidal waters with his clothes on, for the purpose of habituating himself to swim under such difficulty. He had the satisfaction of saving the lives of two persons in danger of drowning, by his skill, courage, and presence of mind.

"But how did you learn to swim and dive so well?"

"When I was a little boy, I was fond of books of Voyages, and I liked, above all things, to read the description of the bathing pranks of the Otaheite savages, who were such active divers, that when a nail was thrown overboard, they would plunge after it, and catch it before it reached the bottom. I thought that I could do what a savage did so easily, and I soon learned to do what so many animals do without any instruction at all. If you want a model, take a frog, and imitate its motions in the water. Courage is everything."

"But, Mack, every one hasn't such long and strong legs and arms as you have--just like a frog's."

"Thank you for the comparison--not for the first time, Master Tyd--but I have not a great belly like a frog's, which is useful in swimming--at least in floating. A large pot-bellied man may lie on the water as long as he likes, if he keeps his head well back so as to have it supported by the water--and with his heels closed and neck up."

"But surely in that position he would be like a log on the water, and make no way," remarked some one of the listeners.

"True, but he can rest himself in that position until he chooses to strike out again. Just fancy yourself a fish: you are specifically lighter than water, and you can lie as near the surface as you please; use your fins and you can move about to the right or left--as a boat is moved by its oars; use your tail and you steer in any direction--as the rudder turns the direction of the boat. Then fancy your fins and tail cut off--there you lie like a raft--without poles or oars--but you do not sink. If you have one fin, or part of one, you move like a boat with one whole or broken oar. Now our bodily apparatus is not designed like that of a fish for swimming, but it is capable of enabling us to swim sufficiently well for our necessities. Just read Old Franklin on the art of swimming, and you will understand the theory of the matter at once. The great difficulty in practice is the fear which people have of being drowned, and this can only be overcome by accustoming ourselves to the water."

"Now, Mack," said Tydvill, "you know I cannot swim; what ought I to have done if you had pitched me into that awful hole?"

"You should have kept yourself from struggling and plunging, letting the back of your head lie quietly under the water, with your mouth free for breathing--but not for screaming and water-drinking--till I had taken the trouble of catching hold of you."

"But surely," replied Tydvill, "the weight of my clothes would have sunk me?"

"I think not," rejoined his friend; "the water would have supported them too, though you'd have found them very heavy when you came out of it.

Will you try the experiment?"

"The theory is sufficient for me," concluded the sprightly Welshman.

However, another of the crew put this question:--

"Since the body can be supported on the surface of the water, as O'Mackerry has said, and with little exertion, or without any, as in swimming on the back, how is it that a drowned body sinks, and often rises some days afterwards?"

"Because," said our philosopher,--who had been crammed on the subject,--"the lungs of a drowning person become filled with water, and therefore the body, becoming specifically heavier, sinks. The body remains at the bottom only until the water has been quite freed from it by _compression_; it then is swelled and expanded by gases generated within, and becoming lighter than the water, rises to the top."

They had for some time been leaning on their oars, enjoying this chat, and were about to retrace their course, when one of the English lads asked O'Mackerry if he had ever been in real danger in a boat. The other reflected a little, and then thought of an incident which had occurred to him some years ago, before he had learned to swim. "Yes,"

said he, "but for G.o.d's good providence I would have been," ("You mean _should_, I suppose," said c.o.xswain Green, in an under tone) "a.s.suredly drowned. I had been contriving how to put out striker lines in a deep loch near my father's house, and, not having a boat, I subst.i.tuted a stable door, taken from its hinges, as a raft for my purpose. I had read of rafts on the Rhine with whole families on them--with a cabin and cow-house and pig-sty; and why should not my miniature raft support my weight? I floated the door--balanced myself nicely upon it--put out for the middle of the loch, gently paddling it with a pole, and fearful of the slightest change of my position, which would have destroyed the horizontal equilibrium of my feeble raft. When I had gone far enough-- into water thirty or forty feet deep--I sent off the strikers, but unfortunately flung away my paddle along with them. My insensibly nervous movements caused the door to incline into the water at one side an inch or two. I moved a hair's breadth; it then declined to the other side. It would sink. I had no doubt of this. Then I gently stooped to try if I could unfasten a shoe; but this was impracticable. I tried a balancing movement again, and the door righted, but not entirely. My presence of mind, however, did not fail me. I took off my hat, and paddled myself with this from side to side alternately, until I reached the strand--through thick ma.s.ses of aquatic plants--the water-lily in particular, whose long and interlacing stems would have embraced me to death, if I had fallen among them. I have never known any one to swim or bathe in that dangerously deep loch. I do not see how I could have escaped drowning at that time if I had slipped from the raft."

This led the adventurous youth to narrate another difficulty from which he had been mercifully extricated by G.o.d's providence. He had been snipe-shooting in an Irish hog, and thoughtlessly trod upon a green, firm, and sound-looking, but very treacherous quagmire, us he was watching a snipe which had just sprung up. He was suddenly immersed in the semi-fluid peat to his shoulders, and only saved from quickly subsiding into the depths of the mora.s.s by a solid bed of clay, at the depth of five feet and a half. He sank to his under lip, barely escaping suffocation, and having his breath spared for shouting. He was pulled up by various contrivances, a reeking column of black mire. As it seemed clear that Mr O'Mackerry must have been engulfed in the bog if he had been half an inch under six feet two in stature, it was illogically argued that it would be a general advantage to manhood if all were exceedingly tall--suppose of the height of the suite of the Duke of Brunswick (composed of men some inches above seven feet), which came to London a hundred years ago.

"Of course," said Tydvill, "Churchill is right in the Rosciad when he says:

"`Your hero should be always tall, you know.'"

But the wiser ones of the crew showed that the ordinary height, as fixed by the Almighty, is the best. If the scale of men were raised a foot or so, with proportioned frame and weight, horses and other beasts of burden should be increased also; else the giants could neither hunt nor even travel, nor find beef and mutton, etc, for their support. And if the animals were larger, more gra.s.s, etc, would be required than at present. The whole scale of proportions would require alteration. Who can dare to think that G.o.d's design is not the best? Neither giants nor dwarfs form the general rule, and extreme exceptions are happily very rare.

"What became of the gun?" inquired one of the party. "I hope that was not swallowed up?"

"No; that was pulled up with me. I had kept fast hold of it; we fell and rose together, and so I was not--

"`Doomed to perish by the slaughtering gun.'"

However, it was unfit for service, like its owner, for the remainder of that day; its chilled barrel looked as if it were moaning forth to me, in hollow tone,--

"`Stay by me--thou art resolute and faithful; I have employment worthy of thy arm.'"

It will be seen that Mr O'Mackerry had a smattering of cla.s.sical lore.

He was asked to name his last poet.

"Dryden," said he, off-hand.

"You hadn't a _dry_ den when you were up to your chin in the wet, black hole," quickly added Tydvill. Here there was unanimous applause.

This led to some conversational nonsense about punning.

"What is a pun?"

"Don't you know," said O'Mackerry, "Swift's definition in the essay which he ent.i.tled `The Ars Punica sive flos linguarum, by Tom-Pun-Sibi, Dublin?'" None other of the crew knew anything concerning it; O'Mack therefore gave them the concluding part as a specimen, and in reply to the question. "Punning is an art of harmonious jingling upon words, which, pa.s.sing in at the ears and falling upon the diaphragms, excites a t.i.tillatory motion in those parts, and this being conveyed by the animal spirits into the muscles of the face, raises the c.o.c.kles of the heart, and promotes the end of good fellows.h.i.+p, which is laughing."

Just at that moment the crew in training for the coming race between the rival universities neared the Rose, for so the boat must now be called, and, as in duty bound, the latter drew to the opposite bank to allow the eight-oared cutter to pa.s.s at fullest speed, and then following in her wake, the rest of the trip was pa.s.sed in comparative silence, so eagerly did our freshmen note each movement of that skilful crew.

STORY FIVE, CHAPTER ONE.

STORY FIVE--THE FORCE OF CONSCIENCE--A TALE BY A NAVAL CHAPLAIN.

Soon after I entered Holy Orders I joined the old ---, 74, in the West Indies. As we were for a considerable time stationary at Port Royal, Jamaica, and my health was suffering from the climate, I obtained leave to take a few weeks' cruise with an elder brother, who commanded a brig of war on the station. While I was on board the brig, she was sent in search of a piratical craft, which had of late been committing great depredations on British commerce in those seas. At length, after a long search, we sighted her, made chase, attacked, and, after a desperate fight, captured her, with a loss of several of our own men, and one-third of the pirates killed and wounded.

Among the pirate crew a young man was brought on board badly wounded, whose countenance exhibited such an expression of deep melancholy and despair, that I could not help feeling compa.s.sion for him; indeed, I persuaded myself that he must be less guilty than his companions. They were, or their physiognomies woefully belied them, as villainous a set of scoundrels as were ever collected together, and their captain, if report spoke true, was the greatest miscreant of them all. I attended daily by the bed-side of the unhappy youth I speak of, and had hopes, although he said little, that I had worked on his mind some impression of the awful state in which he was placed; but as he recovered his strength his obduracy of heart appeared to return, and he seemed to have persuaded himself that he should escape the punishment of his crimes.

After a long beat we at length entered Port Royal in triumph with our prize, and were thanked by all the merchants for the service we had rendered them. The pirates were tried without delay, one of them turning king's evidence, and being all convicted of the most atrocious murders on the high seas, with this single exception, they were all sentenced to death.

The evening before his execution the young man I spoke of sent to entreat me to visit him. I gladly acceded to his wish. I found him heavily ironed and chained to the ground, in a room with a strongly-grated window, where three of his piratical s.h.i.+pmates were also confined. These latter were Spaniards, and dark ferocious-looking ruffians they seemed--more like beasts than men with immortal souls, so brutalising are the effects of habitual crime.

They regarded me as I entered with glances of furious hate, for they recognised me as having belonged to the s.h.i.+p which captured them, and, had they not been manacled, they would, I truly believe, have rushed at me to satisfy their longing for vengeance, but their chains, fortunately for me, holding them down, they again sank into the sullen apathy from which my appearance had roused them.