The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. George Augustus Sala
She combed my hair, and wiped away the tears that besmirched my face. When the Wagon halted at the King's Arms, Kensington, she tripped down and brought me a flagon of new milk with some peppermint in it; and she told me stories all the way to Hounslow, and bade me mind my book, and be a good child, and that Angels would love me. Likewise that she was being courted by a Pewterer in Panyer Alley, who had parted a bright sixpence with her—she showed me her token, drawn from her modest bodice, and who had passed his word to Wed, if he had to take to the Road for the price of the Ring—but that was only his funning, she said—or if she were forced even to run away from her Mistress, and make a Fleet Match of it. It was little, in good sooth, that I knew about courtships or Love-tokens or Fleet Matches; but I believe that a woman, for want of a better gossip, would open her Love-budget to a Baby or a Blind Puppy, and I listened so well that she kissed me ere we parted, and gave me a pocketful of cheese-cakes.
It was quite night, and far beyond Hounslow, when I was dozing off into happy sleep again, that the Wagon came to a dead stop, and I awoke in great fright at the sound of a harsh voice asking if the Boy Jack was there. I was the "Boy Jack:" and the Wagoner, coming to the after-part of the tilt with his lantern, pulled me from among the straw with far less ado than if I had been the Tinker's dog.
I was set down on the ground before a tall man with a long face and an ugly little scratch wig, who had large boots with straps over his thighs like a Farmer, and swayed about him with a long whip.
"Oh, this is the boy, is it?" said the long man. "A rare lump to lick into shape, upon my word."
I was too frightened to say aught; but the Wagoner muttered something in the long man's ear, and gave him my bundle and money and the letter; and then I was clapped up on a pillion behind the long man, who had clomb up to the saddle of a vicious horse that went sideways; and he, bidding me hold on tight to his belt, for a mangy young whelp as I was, began jolting me to the dreadful place of Torture and Infernal cruelty which for six intolerable months was to be my home.
This man's name was Gnawbit, and he was my Schoolmaster. I was delivered over to him, bound hand and foot, as it were, by those hard-hearted folk (who should have been most tender to me, a desolate orphan) in Hanover Square. His name was Gnawbit, and he lived hard by West Drayton.
We are told in Good Books about the Devil and his Angels; but sure I think that the Devil must come to earth sometimes, and marry and have children: whence the Gnawbit race. I don't believe that the man had one Spark of Human Feeling in him. I don't believe that any tale of Man or Woman's Woe would ever have wrung one tear from that cold eye, or drawn a pang from that hard heart. I believe that he was a perfectly senseless, pitiless Brute and Beast, suffered, for some unknown purpose, to dwell here above, instead of being everlastingly kept down below, for the purpose of Tormenting. I was always a Dangerous, but I was never a Revengeful man. I have given mine enemy to eat when he was a-hungered, and to drink when he was athirst. I have returned Good for Evil very many times in this Troubled Life of mine, exposed as it has been always to the very sorest of temptations; but I honestly aver, that were I to meet this Tyrant of mine, now, on a solitary island, I would mash his Hands with a Club or with my Feet, if he strove to grub up roots; that were I Alone with him, wrecked, in a shallop, and there were one Keg of Fresh Water between us, I would stave it, and let the Stream of Life waste itself in the gunwales while I held his head down into the Sea, and forced him to swallow the brine that should drive him Raving Mad. But this is unchristian, and I must go consult Doctor Dubiety.
Flesh and Blood! Have you never thought upon the Wrongs your Pedagogue has wrought upon you, and longed to meet that Wretch, and wheal his flesh with the same instrument with which he whealed you, and make the Ruffian howl for mercy? Mercy, quotha! did he ever show you any? A pretty equal match it was, surely! You a poor, weak starveling of a child shivering in your shoes, and ill-nurtured by the coarse food he gave you, and he a great, hulking, muscular villain, tall and long-limbed, and all-powerful in his wretched Empire; while you were so ignorant as not to know that the Law, were he discovered (but who was to denounce him?), might trounce him for his barbarity. Ah! brother Gnawbit, if I had ever caught you on board a good ship of mine! Aha! knave, if John Dangerous would not have dubbed himself the sheerest of asses, had he not made your back acquainted with nine good tails of three-strand cord, with triple knots in each, and the brine-tub afterwards. I will find out this Gnawbit yet, and cudgel him to the death. But, alas, I rave. He must have been full five-and-forty-years old when I first knew him, and that is nigh sixty years agone. And at a hundred and five the cruellest Tyrant is past cudgelling.
This man had one of the prettiest houses that was to be seen in the prettiest part of England. The place was all draped in ivy, and roses, and eglantine, with a blooming flower-garden in front, and a luscious orchard behind. He had a wife too who was Fair to see—a mild little woman, with blue eyes, who used to sit in a corner of her parlour, and shudder as she heard the boys shrieking in the schoolroom. There was an old infirm Gentleman that lodged with them, that had been a Captain under the renowned Sir Cloudesley Shovel and Admiral Russell, and could even, so it was said, remember, as a sea-boy, the Dutch being in the Medway, in King Charles's time. This Old Gentleman seemed the only person that Gnawbit was afraid of. He never interfered to dissuade him from his brutalities, nay, seemed rather to encourage him therein, crying out as the sounds of torture reached him, "Bear it! bear it! Good again! Make 'em holloa! Make 'em dance! Cross the cuts! Dig it in! Rub in the brine! Oho! Bear it, brave boys; there's nothing like it!" Yet was there something jeering and sarcastic in his voice that made Gnawbit prefer to torture his unhappy scholars when the Old Gentleman was asleep—and even then he would sometimes wake up and cry out, "Bear it!" from the attic, or when he was being wheeled about the neighbourhood in a sick man's chair.
The first morning I saw the Old Gentleman he shook his crutch at me, and cried, "Aha! another of 'em! Another morsel for Gnawbit. More meat for his market. Is he plump? is he tender? Will he bear it? Will he dance? Oho! King Solomon for ever." And then he burst into such a fit of wheezing laughter that Mrs. Gnawbit had to come and pat him on the back and bring him cordials; and my Master, looking very discomposed, sternly bade me betake myself to the schoolroom.
After that, the Old Gentleman never saw me without shaking his crutch and asking me if I liked it, if I could bear it, and if Gnawbit made my flesh quiver. Of a truth he did.
Why should I record the sickening experience of six months' daily suffering. That I was beaten every day was to be expected in an Age when blows and stripes were the only means thought of for instilling knowledge into the minds of youth. But I was alone, I was friendless, I was poor. My master received, I have reason to believe, but a slender Stipend with me, and he balanced accounts by using me with greater barbarity than he employed towards his better paying scholars. I had no Surname, I was only "Boy Jack;" and my schoolfellows put me down, I fancy, as some base-born child, and accordingly despised me. I had no pocket-money. I was not allowed to share in the school-games. I was bidden to stand aside when a cake was to be cut up. God help me! I was the most forlorn of little children. Mrs. Gnawbit was as kind to me as she dared be, but she never showed me the slightest favour without its bringing me (if her husband came to hear of it) an additionally cruel Punishment.
There was a Pond behind the orchard called Tibb's hole, because, as our schoolboy legend ran, a boy called Tibb had once cast himself thereinto, and was drowned, through dread of being tortured by this Monster. I grew to be very fond of standing alone by the bank of this Pond, and of looking at my pale face in its cool blue-black depth. It seemed to me that the Pond was my friend, and that within its bosom I should find rest.
I was musing in this manner by the bank one day when I felt myself touched on the shoulder. It was the crutch of the Old Gentleman, who had been wheeled hither, as was his custom, by one of the boys.
"You go into the orchard and steal a juicy pear," said the Old Gentleman to his attendant. "Gnawbit's out, and I won't tell him. Leave me with Boy Jack for five minutes, and then come back.—Boy Jack," he continued, when we were alone, "how do you like it?"
"Like what, sir?" I asked humbly.
"All of it, to be sure:—the birch, the cane, the thong, the ferula, the rope's-end—all Gnawbit's little toys?"
I told him, weeping, that I was very, very unhappy, and that