List, Ye Landsmen! A Romance of IncidentRussell, William Clark
General
List, Ye Landsmen! A Romance of Incident
Russell, William Clark
English fiction -- 19th century; Sea stories
A couple of seamen ran him into the lantern light; I could have killed
him.
“Did not I tell you to stow Galloon away?”
“So I did, master.”
“Why is he perishing out yonder then, you villain?”
I turned my back and walked aft.
CHAPTER XXV.
AURORA ENTERTAINS US.
I’ll not swear I did not feel the loss of the dog more than I felt the
death of Greaves. Should I be ashamed to own it? The captain’s death I
had long expected; it came without suddenness, it brought no
astonishment. But the loss of Galloon happened in a breath. He was here,
and then he was gone. He had gathered a human significance from my long
association with him, my spoken reveries to which he seemed to listen,
loving of eye and patient. For days and nights I was haunted by the
thoughts of him, swimming round and round in that dark sea. He swam
well, and I say that it was long an agony to think of him struggling out
in that foaming water.
The lad Jimmy was broken hearted. So crushed was he that I had no heart
to deal with him for indirectly causing the dog’s death. For days he’d
snatch minutes at a time to stand at the rail just where the plank had
rested, just where Galloon had sprung overboard, and there he’d gaze
astern with his face working and his eyes bubbling. The men let this
maudlin behavior pass without jeering. They reckoned him half an idiot.
Yet the chap’s grief went deep. He was alone in the world, and had
nothing to love. Greaves had been kind to him, but he could not love the
captain as he loved the captain’s dog. Galloon had been his friend.
Often used the lad to talk to him as a negro talks to a monkey or a pig.
They’d lie together on deck, and had slept together, and now the dog was
gone the boy’s heart ached. He looked around him: there was no friend;
he sent his fancies ashore and found himself alone there.
On the morning following Greaves’ funeral I took possession of his
cabin. I spent a couple of hours in overhauling his papers, for I could
not bring myself to believe that he had been without a relative in the
world, Tulp excepted. I could not realize such a thing as a man without
a relation in the whole blessed wide world. Yet I found nothing to tell
me that Greaves had not been alone. I carefully stowed his papers away
with his clothes and other effects. To whom belonged his little
property--his clothes, his books, his nautical instruments, and the
like, together with a bag of thirty odd guineas and a quantity of
English silver? To whom, I say? To Tulp?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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