"Dead!" said the commodore, now seriously angry. "Dead, did he say? Why, he is drunk, gentlemen, and not mad. There is always some method in madness; here there is none." Till recollecting himself—"Poor fellow, let me try him a little farther; but really it is too absurd"—as he looked round and observed the difficulty both officers and men had in keeping countenance—"Let me humour him a little longer," continued he. "Pray, Mr. Donovan, how can you be dead, and speaking to me now?"
"Because," said Donovan promptly, "I have a forenoon's leave from purgatory to see myself decently buried, Sir Oliver."
Here we could no longer contain ourselves, and, notwithstanding the melancholy and humiliating spectacle before us, a shout of laughter burst from all hands fore and aft simultaneously, as the commodore, exceedingly tickled, sung out—"Oh, I see how it is—I see—so do come on board, Mr. Donovan, and we will see you properly buried."
"You see, Sir Oliver!" said the poor fellow; "to be sure you do—a blind horse might persave it."
"I say, Dennis dear," quoth I, "I will be answerable that all the honours shall be paid you." But the deceased Irishman was not to be had so easily, and again refused, point-blank, to leave the Midge.
"Lower away the boat there, Mr. Sprawl," said Sir Oliver; "no use in all this; you see he won't come. Pipe away her crew, Mr. Lanyard, do you hear? So, brisk now—brisk—be off. Take the surgeon with you, and bring that poor fellow on board instantly. Here, Brail, go too, will ye—you are a favourite of his, and probably he will take more kindly to you than any one else."
We shoved off—and in a twinkling we were alongside—"What cheer, Donovan, my darling? How are you, man, and how do you all do?"
"Ah, Benjamin, glad to see you, my boy. I hope you have come to read the service: I'm to be buried at noon, you know."
"Indeed!" said I, "I know nothing of the kind. I have come on board from the commodore to know how you are; he thought you had been ill."
"Very much obliged," continued the poor fellow; "all that sort of thing might have brought joy some days ago—but now!"——
"Well, well, Donovan," said I, "come on board with me, and buried you shall be comfortably from the frigate."
"Well, I will go. This cursed sailmaker of ours has twice this morning refused to lash me up in the hammock, because he chose to say I was not dead; so go with you I will."
The instant the poor fellow addressed himself to enter the boat, he shrank back like a rabid dog at water. "I cannot—I cannot. Sailmaker, bring the shot aft, and do lash me up in my hammock, and heave me comfortably overboard at once."
The poor sailmaker, who was standing close to, caught my eye, and my ear also. "What shall I do, sir?" said he.
I knew the man to be a steady, trustworthy person. "Why, humour him, Warren; humour him. Fetch the shot, and lash him up; but sling him round the waist by a strong three-inch rope, do you hear."
The man touched his forehead, and slunk away. Presently he returned with the cannon-balls slung in a canvass bag, the usual receptacle of his needles, palms, and thread, and deliberately fastened them round Mr. Donovan's legs. He then lashed him up in the hammock, coaxing his arms under the swathing, so that, while I held him in play, he regularly sewed him up into a most substantial strait waistcoat. It would have been laughable enough, if risibility had been pardonable under such melancholy circumstances, to look at the poor fellow as he now stood stiff and upright, like a bolt of canvass on end, swaying about, and balancing himself, as the vessel rolled about on the heave of the sea; but by this time the sail-maker had fastened the rope securely round his waist, one end of which was in the clutch of three strong fellows, with plenty of the slack coiled down and at hand, had it proved necessary to pay out, and give him scope.
"Now, Donovan, dear, come into the boat; do, and let us get on board, will ye."
"Benjamin Brail—I expected kindlier thing's at your hands, Benjie. How can I go on board of the old Gazelle, seeing it has gone seven bells" (although it was in reality five in the afternoon), "and I'm to be hove overboard at twelve o'clock?"
I saw there was nothing else for it, so I whispered little Binnacle to strike eight bells. At the first chime, poor Donovan pricked up his ear; at the second, he began to settle himself on deck; and before the last struck, he was stretched out on a grating with his eyes closed, and really as still and motionless as if he had been actually dead. I jumped on board, muttered a sentence or two, from recollection, of the funeral service, and tipping the wink, we hove him bodily, stoop and roop, overboard, where he sank for a couple of fathoms, when we hauled him up again. When he sank, he was much excited, and flushed and feverish to look at; but when he was now got into the boat, he was still enough, God knows, and very blue and ghastly; his features were sharp and pinched, and he could only utter a low moaning noise when we had stretched him along the bottom of the boat. "Mercy!" said I, "surely my experiment has not killed him?" However, our best plan now was to get back to the frigate as soon as might be, so Lanyard, who had purposely kept in the background, now gave the word to shove off, and in a minute we were all on the Gazelle's quarterdeck; poor Donovan having been hoisted up, lashed into an accommodation chair. He was instantly taken care of, and, in our excellent surgeon's hands, I am glad to say that he recovered, and lived to be an ornament to the service, and a credit to all connected with him for many a long day afterwards.
The first thing little Binnacle did was to explain to Sir Oliver that he had been ill for three days with brain fever, having had a stroke of the sun; but aware of the heavy responsibility of taking forcibly the command of a vessel from one's superior officer, he was allowed to have it all his own way until the Gazelle hove in sight.
"Pray, Mr. Binnacle," said the commodore, "have you brought me the letters and the English newspapers?"
"Yes, Sir Oliver; here they are, sir; and here is a memorandum of several vessels expected on this part of the coast that we got from the Cerberus, sir."
"Oh, let me see."
After a long pause, the commodore again spoke.
"Why, Mr. Binnacle, I have no tidings of the vessels you speak of; but I suppose we must stand in for the point indicated, and take our chance of falling in with them. But where got you all these men? Did the Cerberus man you?"
"No, sir, she did not. Ten of the men were landed at Cape Coast, out of the Tobin, Liverpool trader. They are no great things, sir, certainly; they had been mutinous, so the merchantman who unshipped them chose to make the run home with five free negroes instead. But if they be bad, there is not much of them, for they are the smallest men I ever saw."
The chap who spoke—little Binnacle, viz.—was not quite a giant himself. He was a dapper little bluejacket, about five feet two. His boat's, or rather his canoe's crew, were all very little men, but still evidently full-grown, and not boys. Every thing about the craft he had come from was diminutive, except her late commander. The midshipman was small—the men were all pigmies. The vessel herself could not have carried one of the pyramids of Egypt. The very bandy-legged cur that yelped and scampered along her deck was a small cock-tailed affair that a large Newfoundland canis might easily have swallowed for his breakfast.
After Binnacle had made his report to Sir Oliver, he, with an arch smile, handed me the following letter, open, which I have preserved to this hour for the satisfaction of the curious. Many a time have I since laughed and almost cried over this production of poor Donovan's heated brain:—
