Jules Verne For Children: 16 Incredible Tales of Mystery, Courage & Adventure (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
Hull; “but, in my opinion, the best have almost all begun their career as children, and, without speaking of Nelson and a few others, the worst are not those who began by being cabin-boys.”
At that moment they saw Cousin Benedict springing up from the rear companion-way. As usual he was absorbed, and as little conscious of this world as the Prophet Elias will be when he returns to the earth.
Cousin Benedict began to walk about on the deck like an uneasy spirit, examining closely the interstices of the netting, rummaging under the hen-cages, putting his hand between the seams of the deck, there, where the pitch had scaled off.
“Ah! Cousin Benedict,” asked Mrs. Weldon, “do you keep well?”
“Yes—Cousin Weldon—I am well, certainly—but I am in a hurry to get on land.”
“What are you looking for under that bench, Mr. Benedict?” asked Captain Hull.
“Insects, sir,” returned Cousin Benedict. “What do you expect me to look for, if not insects?”
“Insects! Faith, I must agree with you; but it is not at sea that you will enrich your collection.”
“And why not, sir? It is not impossible to find on board some specimen of——”
“Cousin Benedict,” said Mrs. Weldon, “do you then slander Captain Hull? His ship is so well kept, that you will return empty-handed from your hunt.”
Captain Hull began to laugh.
“Mrs. Weldon exaggerates,” replied he. “However, Mr. Benedict, I believe you will lose your time rummaging in our cabins.”
“Ah! I know it well,” cried Cousin Benedict, shrugging his shoulders. “I have had a good search——”
“But, in the Pilgrim’s hold,” continued Captain Hull, “perhaps you will find some cockroaches—subjects of little interest, however.”
“Of little interest, those nocturnal orthopters which have incurred the maledictions of Virgil and Horace!” retorted Cousin Benedict, standing up straight. “Of little interest, those near relations of the ‘periplaneta orientalis’ and of the American kakerlac, which inhabit——”
“Which infest!” said Captain Hull.
“Which reign on board!” retorted Cousin Benedict, fiercely.
“Amiable sovereignty!”
“Ah! you are not an entomologist, sir?”
“Never at my own expense.”
“Now, Cousin Benedict,” said Mrs. Weldon, smiling, “do not wish us to be devoured for love of science.”
“I wish, nothing, Cousin Weldon,” replied, the fiery entomologist, “except to be able to add to my collection some rare subject which might do it honor.”
“Are you not satisfied, then, with the conquests that you have made in New Zealand?”
“Yes, truly, Cousin Weldon. I have been rather fortunate in conquering one of those new staphylins which till now had only been found some hundreds of miles further, in New Caledonia.”
At that moment Dingo, who was playing with Jack, approached Cousin Benedict, gamboling.
“Go away! go away!” said the latter, pushing off the animal.
“To love cockroaches and detest dogs!” cried Captain Hull. “Oh! Mr. Benedict!”
“A good dog, notwithstanding,” said little Jack, taking Dingo’s great head in his small hands.
“Yes. I do not say no,” replied Cousin Benedict. “But what do you want? This devil of an animal has not realized the hopes I conceived on meeting it.”
“Ah! my goodness!” cried Mrs. Weldon, “did you, then, hope to be able to classify it in the order of the dipters or the hymenopters?”
“No,” replied Cousin Benedict, seriously. “But is it not true that this Dingo, though it be of the New Zealand race, was picked up on the western coast of Africa?”
“Nothing is more true,” replied Mrs. Weldon, “and Tom had often heard the captain of the Waldeck say so.”
“Well, I had thought—I had hoped—that this dog would have brought away some specimens of hemipteras peculiar to the African fauna.”
“Merciful heavens!” cried Mrs. Weldon.
“And that perhaps,” added Cousin Benedict, “some penetrating or irritating flea—of a new species——”
“Do you understand, Dingo?” said Captain Hull. “Do you understand, my dog? You have failed in all your duties!”
“But I have examined it well,” added the entomologist, with an accent of deep regret. “I have not been able to find a single insect.”
“Which you would have immediately and mercilessly put to death, I hope!” cried Captain Hull.
“Sir,” replied Cousin Benedict, dryly, “learn that Sir John Franklin made a scruple of killing the smallest insect, be it a mosquito, whose attacks are otherwise formidable as those of a flea; and meanwhile you will not hesitate to allow, that Sir John Franklin was a seaman who was as good as the next.”
“Surely,” said Captain Hull, bowing.
“And one day, after being frightfully devoured by a dipter, he blew and sent it away, saying to it, without even using thou or thee: ‘Go! the world is large enough for you and for me!’”
“Ah!” ejaculated Captain Hull.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, Mr. Benedict,” retorted Captain Hull, “another had said that long before Sir John Franklin.”
“Another?”
“Yes; and that other was Uncle Toby.”
“An entomologist?” asked Cousin Benedict, quickly.
“No! Sterne’s Uncle Toby, and that worthy uncle pronounced precisely the same words, while setting free a mosquito that annoyed him, but which he thought himself at liberty to thee and thou: ‘Go, poor devil,’ he said to it, ‘the world is large enough to contain us, thee and me!’”
“An honest man, that Uncle Toby!” replied Cousin Benedict. “Is he dead?”
“I believe so, indeed,” retorted Captain Hull, gravely, “as he has never existed!”
And each began to laugh, looking at Cousin Benedict.
Thus, then, in these conversations, and many others, which invariably bore on some point of entomological science, whenever Cousin Benedict took part, passed away long hours of this navigation against contrary winds. The sea always fine, but winds which obliged the schooner to tack often. The Pilgrim made very little headway toward the east—the breeze was so feeble; and they longed to reach those parts where the prevailing winds would be more favorable.
It must be stated here that Cousin Benedict had endeavored to initiate the young novice into the mysteries of entomology. But Dick Sand had shown himself rather refractory to these advances. For want of better company the savant had fallen back on the negroes, who comprehended nothing about it. Tom, Acteon, Bat, and Austin had even finished by deserting the class, and the professor found himself reduced to Hercules alone, who seemed to him to have some natural disposition to distinguish a parasite from a thysanuran.
So the gigantic black lived in the world of coleopteras, carnivorous insects, hunters, gunners, ditchers, cicindelles, carabes, sylphides, moles, cockchafers, horn-beetles, tenebrions, mites, lady-birds, studying all Cousin Benedict’s collection, not but the latter trembled on seeing his frail specimens in Hercules’ great