a

THE VOYAGE, A DRAMATICLE.

SCENE.- A Castle-hall.

CREDULAR and Mendes, at Table.
Cred. Nine hundred fathom, didst thou say? what, nine !
Prythee, again; that I may glut mine ears
With admiration. Hundred! Stars above !
A wave nine hundred fathom high !

Men. Ay, from the base to the brow.
Cred. O lowly hills! what are ye all to this !
Men. Tut! a mere water-bubble.

Cred. Bubble! bubble! what a throat has he
Who'd swallow such a bubble !

Men. Lord, sir !--the sea was then
Scarce in its merry mood. This was a time
We well might call the silvery time o' the flood;
So clear, so bright, so sweet, so little dread,
The halcyon and the sail-blown nautilus
Might in the glass-green waves their image see
As gay as in a calm ; this was a time
The wind slept in the cradle of our mast
And only dreamt of blowing. Hadst thou seen
The tempest rouse himself, and shake his mane,
That were a sight indeed! Then we had waves!

Cred. Ah! higher than these?
Men.

As far above their cope, As heav'n's sev'nth roof above the floor of hell.

Cred. O! wondrous! 0, what it is to be a voyager !
Prythee, good Mendes, pray good signior Mendes,
My compotator—and my excellent friend-
Let's have these miracles, Come, sir ! a glass of wine;
Nay, by Saint Jago! but you shall-
Wine helps the tongue, the memory, and the wit;
I pledge you, sir. Now for your storms and waves !

Men. A you'll pardon me plain phrase?
We cavaliers o'the.quarter-deck, we knights o' the mast,
We sailors, are a rough-mouth'd breed; we talk
Loud as the sea-horse laughs; our ocean-phrase
Smacks of the shell --Tritonian-somewhat rude
But then for truth, hard truth-

Cred. No whit more true in fact than choice in phrase
I'll warrant thee, signior Traveller. Rude!-what, rude!
Your breath is worth an atmosphere of that
Spent by us fireside men.
Come, sir! the Voyage, from the snout to the tail.

Men. Sir, you shall hear.-
We sailed from Genoa; summer-sweet the morn;
The winds that blew ere-night were out of breath,
Spent with their over-blowing; as a scold
Seized with a spasm, so stood the storm-stock-still.

Cred. Good.

Men. The amorous breeze sigh'd in our galley's sail,
And, like a lover, press'd her tow'rds his couch,
That lay right on the lee.

Cred. Aha! the winds can woo:
How liked your bark this soft persuasion ?

Men. On flew the sea-bird; fair, and fast, and free;
Sweeping her way to Spain ; the kindling foam
Stream'd from the sharp division of her keel -

Cred. 'Sblood, sir! you talk like a water-poet. Sailor-like indeed! Let's have some ribaldry.

1

Men. It is not time for tempest yet, sir ; here was a calm.
Cred. Ay, ay ; Queen Amphitrite rode the waves.

Men. Yes, sir,
And green-tail'd Tritons too; and water-nymphs,
Pillion'd on dolphins, comb'd their weedy locks,
Whilst the bluff sea-god blew his shrill-shell horn.

Cred. 'Tis vouch'd by the ancients, mermaids have been seen; And dolphins too; and men with horus

Men. O! commonly.
Cred. Well, signior Argonaut.

Men. What shall be said o' the sun? shall he shine in peace? Shall's thrust him by ? shall's leave him out o' the bill?

Cred. Leave out the sun! in broad day light! impossible !
Past twilight, signior, and the sun must shine
Whether we will or no.

Men. True.
The heavens look'd like a dome of turquoise stone,
Athwart which crept (as it might be) a snail,
With golden shell, emburnish'd till it blazed ;
This was the sun.

Cred. Good, good; go on.
Men.

Now, mark!
Scarce had this sun-like snail, or snail-like sun,
Paused at the viewless boundary of morn
Where noon begins and ends, when-mark me, signior-
Nay, you don't mark-
Cred.

I do, sir; slit mine ears !
Men. When the swol'n storm, recovering all its rage,
Nay, trebly fraught with elemental rack,
Burst in a rattling hurricane around !

Cred. ()! excellent! well

Men. The blustering, bellowing, brimstone-breathing llast, (Whipt by some fiend broke loose from Erebus) First struck the surly ocean; ocean roared.

Cred. 0! well done, ocean! brave ocean!
Men. Another blow.
Cred. O! excellent! Well, sir-
Men.

Well, sir, you must think, The sea, provoked by this assault, grew angry.

Cred. Why, if 'twere made of milk 'twould rage at th's.
Men. Rage! 0, for words! It raged, and swellid as if
"Twould fill the concave, and with impious waves
Burst the empyreal doors !
Cred.

0! excellent !
O, what a man might do in a tub! translate himself!
More o' the storm,

signior, more o' the storm, if you love me. Men. The groaning sky hur”d down wing'd thunder-bolts, Thick as it erst rain'd quails on Israel ; The clouds dropt fire, fast as you'd boulter gold Ta'en froin the Tagus' bed; while th' hair-brain'd storm Mixed up a second chaos; drown'd distinction; Mingled the roaring billows with the clouds ; And daub'd the face of heaven with filthy sand Torn from the sea-bed wild !

Cred. O! excellent! A little more villainy, signior.

Men. The hell-black heav'ns grew neighbour to the waves And cloak'd us in the utter pall of night. Lightning our only day; and every flash Lit a grim scene : like Pelions lost in clouds Stood the tall billows, and the rueful waste Look'd like a mountain-field of wintry snow, So beaten into foam and yeasty, they.

Cred. O! excellent! O!'excellent!
Men. Here were a time indeed to cry, 0 hills!
Why, man, we rode so far above thy hills,
That--if truth's credible--I saw th' Antipodes.

Cred. Th’ Antipodes !--breath!

Men. Under the great toe ; just as it might be here ;
As plain 's this shoe, I saw th' Antipodes.

Cred. Good lack! what wondrous sights these travellers see !
Men. There are other puffs i' the wind.
Cred. Ha! Have you any more miracles?

Men. Good sir, you take the height of possible
By the span of a small experience ; coop'd here
Between two neighbouring hills, which lave their feet
In the calm tide of this sequester'd strand,
You mete your earth, your ocean, and your air,
By an unequal measure.
Cred.

l'faith, 'tis so.
Men. But we, who are men o'the world, who've walk'd the waves
On two-inch boards, who've seen the fiends o' the storm
Unmanacled, we know something.

Cred. True as th' Apocrypha, true as th’ Apocrypha.
Where did we leave?
Ay-at th' Antipodes. Did the bark bide buffet?

Men. Like a tennis-ball.-
Mark, sir; we'd clear'd the gulf; the dying storm
Throbb'd in heart-sick convulsions; and the sky
Dabbled its dark with dun. All was yet well;
When doubling round the shoulders of the Alp
That knits broad France to boot-shaped Italy,
Behold a sea of storm came rushing down,
That blew us in a whiff to Barbary.

Cred. What! in one whiff!
Men. Mark, sir; I'd one hand on the gunwale thus ;
With t'other I had hoodwink'd thus mine eyes,
Wrapt in mine own profundity ; the wind
Sobb’d heavily; I woke, and saw our Christian hills
Before me; shut mine eyes in peace ; the blast
Roar'd! I look'd up--and lo! as I stand here,
Afric seem'd wedded to our continent!
A Pagan bay shelter'd our Catholic bark.

Cred. Holy Virgin! Would you swear 'twas Pagan?

Men. Ay, on the Koran. Hark ye
I pull'd the Dey of Tunis by the beard,
Look! here are some o' the hairs !

Cred. As God's alive, it is a proof! "Tis plain
You could not pluck a beard in Africa
And you in Italy ; 'tis a proof, a proof.
Well-and what next? saw you no monsters?

Men. Frequent as figs. Sir, I've a monstrous tale
For every notch upon the dial; how
We fought with griffins, grappled with green dragons,
Wept with the crocodiles, supp'd with the cannibals,
Set traps for pigmies, dug pitfalls for giants-

Cred. I thought your fairy-tales were only lies !

Men. If I lie now, may sixpence slit the tongue Of Gasco Mendes !-then, I shall lie doubly, Cred. The doom's too horrible.-Whew! the brass sings clear!

[Horn without. We'll hear these miracles another time. Good night, good signior.-Well-truth's truth-that's plain As my own nose ;-yet still — I can but cry, Good lack! what wondrous sights these travellers see !

[Excunt.

THE OLD SEAMAN, A SKETCH FROM NATURE.

a

I like a sailor. He is the oldest with more adversaries - the fire of boy that wears a jacket ;-frank, ge- the foe-the ice of the North Polenerous, playful, and somewhat pug, the struggle of the winds—and the nacious. Not that he will fight for assault of the wild waters. The nothing : - but he will battle for elements are his playmates, and his glory, for that is like a ship's name; home is the wide sea. “ He is," or, if men wear wooden shoes, he will says Sir T. Overbury~" a pitcht drub them for it, though he should peece of reason calckt and tackled, get a leg made of the same leather. and onely studied to dispute with Talk of “our Wives and Liberties,” tempests. He has encountered -he will fight for “ Doll of Wap. shrieking hurricanes - billows, like ping,” and get into a French prison. mountains with the white sheep atop But for laurel - or wreaths of it, he —and rocks, like the door-posts of would rather win rolls of pigtail ; death! He has circumvented the and as for palms" Palmam qui quicksand, and been too cunning for meruit ferat,"-—he has lost his hand the deep! Wind, wave, rock.– and the palm with it. Immorta- showers of shot,- bayonet and cutlity is not his aim: but he is a las,—he has withstood them all, Dryad up to the knees; and, so far, either by force or skill.What a fine he will not die like “all flesh.” Gout, flesh and blood trophy-(and some or cramp, or rheumatism, what are wood too)-is he of various victory! they to him ?--he is a Stoic as far as The roaring sea, the howling, gale, the timber goes. Wooded,-but not the thundering cannon-his old adwatered,—for he hates grog, except versaries,--sing his triumph over for the liquor that is in it. He looks them. What has he not braved and like a human peg-top: you might endured? We “ love him for the spin him with a coil of cable. Talk dangers he has passed;" as the genof your improved rollers, and drilling tle Desdemona loved her husband, machines, and sowing machines, the Moor, the more he recounted of he is the best dibble for potatoes — his perils. He can talk too ofm but that will soon enough be disco- Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose vered of him when he comes to his heads touch hear'nparish. One of his arms too is a fin; And of the cannibals that each other eat, and he has lost an eye. It is the The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads starboard one, and looks as if it had Do grow beneath their shoulders. the wind in it--but it was blown out A good lie, to do him justice, is no with gunpowder. He was in the labour to him: but on the other hand Spitfire, off Cape Cod, when she he is as freely eredulous. It was he took fire in the gun-room, and flew up who saw the man hunted by devils like a rocket! He went aloft almost into Vesuvius - or Ætna- as it is to his cherub, and when he came written and witnessed upon oath in down again he was half dead and his log-book. Tell him that sparhalf blind: one window, as he said, rows may be caught with salt upon was as dark as night ;—but he makes their tails, and he will believe you; light of it. All his bereavements for he knows that cod-fish are so eye-arm-leg--are trifles to him: taken. He has a great faith in the one, indeed, is a standing jest. He Kraken. If you will credit him, he often takes off his wooden leg.-- has hooked one larger than the sea's Diogenes was nothing to him as a bottom, with the best bower anchor ; philosopher: he is proud even of his and he has seen the Sea-Serpent misfortunes. Whilst others bewail and the Merinaid. Some at least of their scratches, and plaister their his wonders he can show you : he razor cuts, he throws open his blue has a flying fish in his chest, and a jacket, and shows the deep furrowed young dolphin-besides cockroaches, scars, and exclaims, “ Talk not to which eat up one's linen in the West me of seams!”

Indies ;-but the blue shark he has To see an old seaman is to see a given to a friend. The green parrot man. An old soldier, in the compa- too he has parted with, but with more rison, looks like an old woman-per- kindness than discretion ; for he sent haps, because his uniform is red like it to an old aunt, and she was pleased her cloak. But a sailor has fought at the gift ; but the bird, it turner!

sea

out, blasphemed, and she was still North Pole,” he says, “ for there the more shocked at the giver. It is hares turn white in winter.” Such a worth one ear to listen to him when, fragment as he would be a fit inmate with these marvels, he talks over his of the noble hospital at Greenwichvoyages, his engagements, his adven-, but he an out-pensioner, and wantures, and, above all, his residence a- ders through the country; he premongst the savages; and how he made ferred it. It was at a farmhouse in Christians of them and some of Berkshire that I met with him, and them, as he says, d-d good ones learned these snatches of his history.. too! On this matter he is frequent; The dogs barked, as they will do at a won to it, perhaps, by the remem- beggar; the people of the house brance of the flattering court paid said “ There comes old Bill!” and in him by the great king, Eea Tooa, came this Auncient Marinere, thrustand the pearly smiles of the black ing a fistful of ballads before him. Princesses. Only on one subject is He stumped in with a fine smiling ashe more eloquent :-HIS SHIP! There surance, and heaving his old glazed he luxuriates : there he talks poetry! hat into the middle of the floor, took It is a doubt whether he could de- possession of a low elbow-chair by scribe his mistress better. She sits the fire. His old bronzed forehead upon the spray-speaking pastorally was rugged and weather-beaten like

- like a bird. She is the fleetest of a rock, and the white hair sprinkled the fleet. Tacking, or close-hauled, over it like the foam of his own or under bare poles, there is none ocean. A lean puckered eyelid seemcan compare with her. To see her in ed to squeeze the light out again full dress--skyscrapers, and royals, from one little grey twinkling eye; and stud-sails, is to fancy one of but the other was blind and blank those lady-ships, who from Trojan His face was red, and cured by the galleys were changed into salt sea air, and warranted “ to keep nymphs;

in any climate," but his cheeks were She walks the waters like a thing of life, thin, and his nose and chin sharp and And seems to dare the elements

to strife. prominent. Still he smiled, and seemFor all that he has endured, our ed to wear a happy heart that had mariner has only been made a gun- never been among breakers; and he ner's mate; but “ one man is born sang one of his old sea songs with a with a silver spoon in his mouth, and firm jolly voice. He only wanted another with a wooden ladle.” Poor more rum and tobacco to set the Bill was not a spoon-bill. · He was world at defiance; and he thought it brought up to the sea; for he was hard he could not have them. “ Have born on board ship, cradled on the you no parish ?” asked the farmer, ocean, schooled in the fleet, and who was himself an overseer. “ Pashould have married a mermaid ; but, rish!-aye to be sure I have," said as the tale goes, she jilted him, and the old tar, “every man has his he took up with Nancy Dawson, parish—but no one likes to go to it with whom he fell in love because that has got his limbs, thank God, she was so like the ship's figure-head. and can go about picking up where At twelve years old he was wrecked he pleases.” “ But they will relieve in the Agamemnon: at fourteen he you.”—“ Aye, aye, I know that,' was taken in the Vengeur; and at said the sailor, shaking his head; thirty he was blown up in the Spit- " they offered me as good as eight fire.' What a sea-fortune! But he shilling a week if I would give 'em never quarrelled with his profession, up my pension, and go into their nor-as his good mother sometimes House of Correction—but I liked my advised him-threw up the sea. He liberties better." “ But you would was never sick of it. At last, in the at least have a house over you; and engagement off Trafalgar, under the as much soup and gruel'

:Soup immortal Nelson, he lost his arm by and gruel,” said the old man, with a a shot; but, binding it up, he per- brisk volley of oaths ; " soup and sisted in remaining upon deck, if it gruel !-what! a man here that has were only, as he said, to have satis- fought for his king and country, and faction for it—the next broadside lost his precious limbs, and has ate carried away both his legs. He was beef and biscuit, to be fed upon pap then grafted. Now he is ancient and and spoon-victuals! No, damme uite grey; but he will not confess but come, hand us over a drop of that

age: it is through going to the beer to sop my crust in.' T.