you have but to go to court. But as for envy and jealousy, I think it is pure, unobservant, antique Cant which has fixed them on the female character distinctively. As a molehill to a mountain is women's jealousy to men's. Agatha may have a host of virtues and graces, and yet her female acquaintance will not hate her, provided she has the moderation to abstain from being downright pretty. She may sing like an angel, paint like an angel, talk, write, nurse the sick, all like an angel, and not rouse the devil in her fair sisters, so long as she does not dress like an angel. But the minds of men being much larger than women's, yet very little greater, they hang jealousy on a thousand pegs. Where there was no peg, I have seen them do with a pin.
Captain Robarts took a pin, ran it into his own heart, and hung that sordid passion on it.
He would get rid of all the Doddites before he sailed. He insulted Mr.
Tickell, so that he left the service and entered a mercantile house ashore: he made several of the best men desert, and the ship went to sea short of hands. This threw heavier work on the crew, and led to many punishments and a steady current of abuse. Sharpe became a mere machine, always obeying, never speaking: Grey was put under arrest for remonstrating against ungentlemanly language; and Bayliss, being at bottom of the same breed as Robarts, fell into his humour, and helped hector the petty officers and men. The crew, depressed and irritated, went through their duties pully-hauly-wise. There was no song under the forecastle in the first watch, and often no grog on the mess table at one bell. Dodd never came on the quarter-deck without being reminded he was only a passenger, and the ship was now under naval discipline. _"I_ was reared in the royal navy, sir," would Robarts say, "second lieutenant aboard the _Atalanta:_ that is the school, sir, that is the only school that breeds seamen." Dodd bore scores of similar taunts as a Newfoundland puts up with a terrier in office: he seldom replied, and, when he did, in a few quiet dignified words that gave no handle.
Robarts, who bore the name of a lucky captain, had fair weather all the way to St. Helena.
The guard-ship at this island was the _Salamanca._ She had left the Cape a week before the _Agra._ Captain Robarts, with his characteristic good-breeding, went to anchor in-shore of Her Majesty's ship: the wind failed at a critical moment, and a foul became inevitable. Collier was on his quarter-deck, and saw what would happen long before Robarts did; he gave the needful orders, and it was beautiful to see how in half a minute the frigate's guns were run in, her ports lowered, her yards toppled on end, and a spring carried out and hauled on.
The _Agra_ struck abreast her own forechains on the _Salamanca's_quarter.
(Pipe.) "Boarders away. Tomahawks! cut everything that holds!" was heard from the frigate's quarter-deck. Rush came a boarding party on to the merchant ship and hacked away without mercy all her lower rigging that held on to the frigate, signal halyards and all; others boomed her off with capstan bars, &c., and in two minutes the ships were clear. Alieutenant and boat's crew came for Robarts, and ordered him on board the _Salamanca,_ and, to make sure of his coming, took him back with them. He found Commodore Collier standing stiff as a ramrod on his quarter-deck.
"Are you the master of the _Agra?_" (His quick eye had recognised her in a moment.)"I am, sir.""Then she was commanded by a seaman, and is now commanded by a lubber.
Don't apply for your papers this week; for you won't get them. Good morning. Take him away."They returned Robarts to his ship, and a suppressed grin on a score of faces showed him the clear commanding tones of the commodore had reached his own deck. He soothed himself by stopping the men's grog and mast-heading three midshipmen that same afternoon.
The night before he weighed anchor this disciplinarian was drinking very late in a low public-house. There was not much moon, and the officer in charge of the ship did not see the gig coming till it was nearly alongside: then all was done in a flurry.
"Hy! man the side! Lanterns there! Jump, you boys, or you'll catch pepper."The boys did jump, and little Murphy, not knowing the surgeon had ordered the ports to be drooped, bounded over the bulwarks like an antelope, lighted on the midship port, which stood at this angle /, and glanced off into the ocean, lantern foremost: he made his little hole in the water within a yard of' Captain Robarts. That Dignity, though splashed, took no notice of so small an incident as a gone ship-boy: and if Murphy had been wise and stayed with Nep. all had been well. But the poor urchin inadvertently came up again, and without the lantern. One of the gig's crew grabbed him by the hair, and prolonged his existence by an inconsiderate impulse.
"Where is the other lantern?" was Robarts' first word on reaching the deck: as if he didn't know.
"Gone overboard, sir, with the boy Murphy.""Stand forward, you, sir," growled Robarts.
Murphy stood forward, dripping and shivering with cold and fear.