Jacob Faithful | Page 3

landed softly on the deck, then put it into his mouth again, and puffed mournfully. "Why, you don't mean to say he is overboard?" screamed my mother.
My father nodded his head, and puffed away at an accumulated rate. A torrent of tears, exclamations, and revilings succeeded to this characteristic announcement. My father allowed my mother to exhaust herself. By the time when she had finished, so was his pipe; he then knocked out the ashes, and quietly observed, "It's no use crying; what's done can't be helped," and proceeded to refill the bowl.
"Can't be helped!" cried my mother; "but it might have been helped."
"Take it coolly," replied my father.
"Take it coolly!" replied my mother in a rage--"take it coolly! Yes, you're for taking everything coolly: I presume, if I fell overboard you would be taking it coolly."
"You would be taking it coolly, at all events," replied my imperturbable father.
"O dear! O dear!" cried my poor mother; "two poor children, and lost them both!"
"Better luck next time," rejoined my father; "so, Sall, say no more about it."
My father continued for some time to smoke his pipe, and my mother to pipe her eye, until at last my father, who was really a kind-hearted man, rose from the chest upon which he was seated, went to the cupboard, poured out a teacupful of gin, and handed it to my mother. It was kindly done of him, and my mother was to be won by kindness. It was a pure offering in the spirit, and taken in the spirit in which it was offered. After a few repetitions, which were rendered necessary from its potency being diluted with her tears, grief and recollection were drowned together, and disappeared like two lovers who sink down entwined in each other's arms.
With this beautiful metaphor, I shall wind up the episode of my unfortunate brother Joe.
It was about a year after the loss of my brother that I was ushered into the world, without any other assistants or spectators than my father and Dame Nature, who I believe to be a very clever midwife if not interfered with. My father, who had some faint ideas of Christianity, performed the baptismal rites by crossing me on the forehead with the end of his pipe, and calling me Jacob: as for my mother being churched, she had never been but once to church in her life. In fact, my father and mother never quitted the lighter, unless when the former was called out by the superintendent or proprietor, at the delivery or shipment of a cargo, or was once a month for a few minutes on shore to purchase necessaries. I cannot recall much of my infancy; but I recollect that the lighter was often very brilliant with blue and red paint, and that my mother used to point it out to me as "so pretty," to keep me quiet. I shall therefore pass it over, and commence at the age of five years, at which early period I was of some little use to my father. Indeed I was almost as forward as some boys at ten. This may appear strange; but the fact is, that my ideas although bounded, were concentrated. The lighter, its equipments, and its destination were the microcosm of my infant imagination; and my ideas and thoughts being directed to so few objects, these objects were deeply impressed, and their value fully understood. Up to the time that I quitted the lighter, at eleven years old, the banks of the river were the boundaries of my speculations. I certainly comprehended something of the nature of trees and houses; but I do not think that I was aware that the former grew. From the time that I could recollect them on the banks of the river, they appeared to be exactly of the same size as they were when first I saw them, and I asked no questions. But by the time that I was ten years old, I knew the name of the reach of the river, and every point--the depth of water, and the shallows, the drift of the current, and the ebb and flow of the tide itself. I was able to manage the lighter as it floated down with the tide; for what I lacked in strength I made up with dexterity arising from constant practice.
It was at the age of eleven years that a catastrophe took place which changed my prospects in life, and I must, therefore, say a little more about my father and mother, bringing up their history to that period. The propensity of my mother to ardent spirits had, as always is the case, greatly increased upon her, and her corpulence had increased in the same ratio. She was now a most unwieldy, bloated mountain of