The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (Illustrated). Mark Twain
field in presence of all the armies!
And what was Scoresby's blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his right hand for his left—that was all. An order had come to him to fall back and support our right; and instead, he fell forward and went over the hill to the left. But the name he won that day as a marvelous military genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will never fade while history books last.
He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can be, but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains. Now that is absolutely true. He is the supremest ass in the universe; and until half an hour ago nobody knew it but himself and me. He has been pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for a generation; he has littered his whole military life with blunders, and yet has never committed one that didn't make him a knight or a baronet or a lord or something. Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed in domestic and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one of them is the record of some shouting stupidity or other; and taken together, they are proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a man is to be born lucky. I say again, as I said at the banquet, Scoresby's an absolute fool.
The Captain's Story
There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain “Hurricane” Jones, of the Pacific Ocean – peace to his ashes! Two or three of us present had known him; I, particularly well, for I had made four sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born on a ship; he picked up what little education he had among his ship-mates; he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea. He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea, he necessarily knows nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the world’s thought, nothing of the world’s learning but it’s A B C, and that blurred and distorted by the unfocused lenses of an untrained mind. Such a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old Hurricane Jones was – simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his spirit was in repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his wrath was up he was a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive. He was formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build and dauntless courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was around his left ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle bare and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a clouding of India ink: “Virtue is its own R’d.” (There was a lack of room.) He was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fish-woman. He considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand an order unillumined by it. He was a profound Biblical scholar – that is, he thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the “advanced” school of thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles, somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of creation six geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a rather severe satirist on modern scientific religionists. Such a man as I have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and argument; one knows that without being told it.
One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was a clergyman, since the passenger list did not betray the fact. He took a great liking to this Rev. Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great deal: told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and wove a glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that was refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated speech. One day the captain said, “Peters, do you ever read the Bible?”
“Well – yes.”
“I judge it ain’t often, by the way you say it. Now, you tackle it in dead earnest once, and you’ll find it’ll pay. Don’t you get discouraged, but hang right on. First you won’t understand it; but by and by things will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn’t lay it down to eat.”
“Yes, I have heard that said.”
“And it’s so too. There ain’t a book that begins with it. It lays over “em all, Peters. There’s some pretty tough things in it – there ain’t any getting around that – but you stick to them and think them out, and when once you get on the inside everything’s plain as day.”
“The miracles, too, captain?”
“Yes, sir! the miracles, too. Every one of them. Now, there’s that business with the prophets of Baal; like enough that stumped you?”
“Well, I don’t know but—”
“Own up, now; it stumped you. Well, I don’t wonder. You hadn’t any experience in raveling such things out, and naturally it was too many for you. Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, and show you how to get at the meat of these matters?”
“Indeed, I would, captain, if you don’t mind.”
Then the captain proceeded as follows: “I’ll do it with pleasure. First, you see, I read and read, and thought and thought, till I got to understand what sort of people they were in the old Bible times, and then after that it was clear and easy. Now, this was the way I put it up, concerning Isaac and the prophets of Baal.1
There was some mighty sharp men amongst the public characters of that old ancient day, and Isaac was one of them. Isaac had his failings – plenty of them, too; it ain’t for me to apologize for Isaac; he played a cold deck on the prophets of Baal, and like enough he was justifiable, considering the odds that was against him. No, all I say is, ’t’wa’n’t any miracle, and that I’ll show you so’s ’t you can see it yourself.
“Well, times had been getting rougher and rougher for prophets – that is, prophets of Isaac’s denomination. There were four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal in the community, and only one Presbyterian; that is, if Isaac was a Presbyterian, which I reckon he was, but it don’t say. Naturally, the prophets of Baal took all the trade. Isaac was pretty low-spirited, I reckon, but he was a good deal of a man, and no doubt he went a-prophesying around, letting on to be doing a land-office business, but ’twa’n’t any use; he couldn’t run any opposition to amount to anything. By and by things got desperate with him; he sets his head to work and thinks it all out, and then what does he do? Why he begins to throw out hints that the other parties are this and that and t’other – nothing very definite, maybe, but just kind of undermining their reputation in a quiet way. This made talk, of course, and finally got to the King. The King asked Isaac what he meant by his talk. Says Isaac, ‘Oh, nothing particular; only, can they pray down fire from heaven on an altar? It ain’t much, maybe, your majesty, only can they do it? That’s the idea.’ So the King was a good deal disturbed, and he went to the prophets of Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had an altar ready, they were ready; and they intimated he better get it insured, too.
“So next morning all the Children of Israel and their parents and the other people gathered themselves together. Well, here was that great crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job. When time was called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent; told the other team to take the first innings. So they went at it, the whole four hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopefully, and doing their level best. They prayed an hour – two hours – three hours – and so on, plumb till noon. It wa’n’t any use; they hadn’t took a trick. Of course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they might. Now, what would a magnanimous man do? Keep still, wouldn’t he? Of course. What did Isaac do? He graveled the prophets of Baal every way he could think of. Says he, ‘You don’t speak up loud enough; your god’s asleep, like enough, or maybe he’s taking a walk; you want to holler, you know,’ or words to