Blown to Bits | Page 4

their native pockets.
"This is a bad ending to a prosperous voyage," said the youth, sadly;
"but you don't seem to take it much to heart, father!"
"How much or little I take it to heart you know nothin' whatever about,
my boy, seein' that I don't wear my heart on my coat-sleeve, nor yet on
the point of my nose, for the inspection of all and sundry. Besides, you
can't tell whether it's a bad or a good endin', for it has not ended yet one
way or another. Moreover, what appears bad is often found to be good,
an' what seems good is pretty often uncommon bad."
"You are a walking dictionary of truisms, father! I suppose you mean to
take a philosophical view of the misfortune and make the best of it,"
said Nigel, with what we may style one of his twinkling smiles, for on
nearly all occasions that young man's dark, brown eyes twinkled, in
spite of him, as vigorously as any "little star" that was ever told in prose

or song to do so--and much more expressively, too, because of the
eyebrows of which little stars appear to be destitute.
"No, lad," retorted the captain; "I take a common-sense view--not a
philosophical one; an' when you've bin as long at sea as I have, you'll
call nothin' a misfortune until it's proved to be such. The only
misfortune I have at present is a son who cannot see things in the same
light as his father sees 'em."
"Well, then, according to your own principle that is the reverse of a
misfortune, for if I saw everything in the same light that you do, you'd
have no pleasure in talking to me, you'd have no occasion to reason me
out of error, or convince me of truth. Take the subject of poetry, now--"
"Luff," said Captain Roy, sternly, to the man at the wheel.
When the man at the wheel had gone through the nautical evolution
involved in "luff," the captain turned to his son and said abruptly--
"We'll run for the Cocos-Keelin' Islands, Nigel, an' refit."
"Are the Keeling Islands far off?"
"Lift up your head and look straight along the bridge of your nose, lad,
and you'll see them. They're an interesting group, are the Keelin'
Islands. Volcanic, they are, with a coral top-dressin', so to speak. Sit
down here an' I'll tell 'ee about 'em."
Nigel shut up the telescope through which he had been examining the
thin, blue line on the horizon that indicated the islands in question, and
sat down on the cabin skylight beside his father.
"They've got a romantic history too, though a short one, an' are set like
a gem on the bosom of the deep blue sea--"
"Come, father, you're drifting out of your true course--that's poetical!"
"I know it, lad, but I'm only quotin' your mother. Well, you must know
that the Keelin' Islands--we call them Keelin' for short--were

uninhabited between fifty and sixty years ago, when a Scotsman named
Ross, thinking them well situated as a port of call for the repair and
provisioning of vessels on their way to Australia and China, set his
heart on them and quietly took possession in the name of England.
Then he went home to fetch his wife and family of six children,
intendin' to settle on the islands for good. Returning in 1827 with the
family and fourteen adventurers, twelve of whom were English, one a
Portugee and one a Javanee, he found to his disgust that an Englishman
named Hare had stepped in before him and taken possession. This Hare
was a very bad fellow; a rich man who wanted to live like a Rajah, with
lots o' native wives and retainers, an' be a sort of independent prince.
Of course he was on bad terms at once with Ross, who, finding that
things were going badly, felt that it would be unfair to hold his people
to the agreement which was made when he thought the whole group
was his own, so he offered to release them. They all, except two men
and one woman, accepted the release and went off in a gun-boat that
chanced to touch there at the time. For a good while Hare and his rival
lived there--the one tryin' to get the Dutch, the other to induce the
English Government to claim possession. Neither Dutch nor English
would do so at first, but the English did it at long-last--in 1878--and
annexed the islands to the Government of Ceylon.
"Long before that date, however--before 1836--Hare left and went to
Singapore, where he died, leaving Ross in possession--the 'King of the
Cocos Islands' as he came to be called. In a few years--chiefly through
the energy of Ross's eldest son, to whom