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- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.843Z
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- 10956
- text
- CHAPTER LVI.
UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL
COMMUNION
A sweet thing is a song; and though the Hebrew captives hung their
harps on the willows, that they could not sing the melodies of
Palestine before the haughty beards of the Babylonians; yet, to
themselves, those melodies of other times and a distant land were as
sweet as the June dew on Hermon.
And poor Harry was as the Hebrews. He, too, had been carried away
captive, though his chief captor and foe was himself; and he, too, many
a night, was called upon to sing for those who through the day had
insulted and derided him.
His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person
like his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through
the words of a song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by
pied and pansied margins.
“_I_ can’t sing to-night”—sadly said Harry to the Dutchman, who with
his watchmates requested him to while away the middle watch with his
melody—“I can’t sing to-night. But, Wellingborough,” he whispered,—and
I stooped my ear,— “come _you_ with me under the lee of the long-boat,
and there I’ll hum you an air.”
It was _The Banks of the Blue Moselle._
Poor, poor Harry! and a thousand times friendless and forlorn! To be
singing that thing, which was only meant to be warbled by falling
fountains in gardens, or in elegant alcoves in drawing-rooms,—to be
singing it _here—here,_ as I live, under the tarry lee of our
long-boat.
But he sang, and sang, as I watched the waves, and peopled them all
with sprites, and cried _“chassez!” “hands across!”_ to the
multitudinous quadrilles, all danced on the moonlit, musical floor.
But though it went so hard with my friend to sing his songs to this
ruffian crew, whom he hated, even in his dreams, till the foam flew
from his mouth while he slept; yet at last I prevailed upon him to
master his feelings, and make them subservient to his interests. For so
delighted, even with the rudest minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well
knew Harry possessed a spell over them, which, for the time at least,
they could not resist; and it might induce them to treat with more
deference the being who was capable of yielding them such delight.
Carlo’s organ they did not so much care for; but the voice of my Bury
blade was an accordion in their ears.
So one night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald
jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse.
Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them
like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the
fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled
in velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring eyes in fascinated and
fascinating brilliancy. Ay, still and hissingly all, for a time, they
relinquished their prey.
Now, during the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and
more upon myself for companionship; and few can keep constant company
with another, without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for
all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be
intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose
cherisher and inspirer is solitude.
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