Rattlin the Reefer

Rattlin the Reefer, by Edward
Howard

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Title: Rattlin the Reefer
Author: Edward Howard
Editor: Frederick Marryat
Release Date: May 22, 2007 [EBook #21578]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RATTLIN
THE REEFER ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Rattlin the Reefer
by Edward Howard

edited by Captain Marryat.
CHAPTER ONE.
I BEGIN A LIFE WITHOUT A SIMILITUDE WITH A
SIMILE--START OFF WITH FOUR HORSES--AND, FINALLY, I
MAKE MY FIRST APPEARANCE ON ANY STAGE, UNDER THE
PROTECTION OF THE "CROWN."
In the volume I am going to write, it is my intention to adhere rigidly to
the truth--this will be bona fide an autobiography--and, as the public
like novelty, an autobiography without an iota of fiction in the whole of
it, will be the greatest novelty yet offered to its fastidiousness. As many
of the events which will be my province to record, are singular and
even startling, I may be permitted to sport a little moral philosophy,
drawn from the kennel in Lower Thames Street, which may teach my
readers to hesitate ere they condemn as invention mere matters of
absolute, though uncommon fact.
Let us stand with that old gentleman under the porch of Saint Magnus's
Church, for the rain is thrashing the streets till they actually look white,
and the kennel before us is swelled into a formidable, and hardly
fordable brook. That kennel is the stream of life--and a dirty and a
weary one it is, if we may judge by the old gentleman's looks. All is
hurried into that common sewer, the grave! What bubbles float down it!
Everything that is fairly in the middle of the stream seems to sail with it,
steadily and triumphantly--and many a filthy fragment enters the sewer
with a pomp and dignity not unlike the funeral obsequies of a great lord.
But my business is with that little chip; by some means it has been
thrust out of the principal current, and, now that it is out, see what
pranks it is playing. How erratic are its motions!--into what strange
holes and corners it is thrust! The same phenomenon will happen in life.
Once start a being out of the usual course of existence, and many and
strange will be his adventures ere he once more be allowed to regain
the common stream, and be permitted to float down, in silent
tranquillity, to the grave common to all.

About seven o'clock in the evening of the 20th of February, 17---, a
post-chaise with four horses drove with fiery haste up to the door of the
Crown Inn, at Reading. The evening had closed in bitterly. A
continuous storm of mingled sleet and rain had driven every being who
had a home, to the shelter it afforded. As the vehicle stopped, with a
most consequential jerk, and the steps were flung down with that clatter
post-boys will make when they can get four horses before their leathern
boxes, the solitary inmate seemed to shrink further into its dark corner,
instead of coming forward eagerly to exchange the comforts of the
blazing hearth for the damp confinement of a hired chaise. Thrice had
the obsequious landlord bowed his well-powdered head, and, at each
inclination, wiped off; with the palm of his hand, the rain-drops that
had settled on the central baldness of his occiput, ere the traveller
seemed to be aware that such a man existed as the landlord of the
Crown, or that that landlord was standing at the chaise-door. At length
a female, closely veiled, and buried in shawls like a sultana,
tremblingly took the proffered arm, and tottered into the hotel. Shortly
after, mine host returned, attended by porter, waiter, and
stable-boy--and giving, by the lady's orders, a handsome gratuity to
each of the post-boys, asked for the traveller's luggage. There was none!
At this announcement, the landlord, as he afterwards expressed himself
was "struck all of a heap," though what he meant by it was never
clearly comprehended, as any alteration in his curiously squat figure
must have been an improvement. While he remained in perplexity and
in the rain, the latter of which might easily have been avoided, another
message arrived from the lady, ordering fresh horses to be procured,
and those, with the chaise, to be kept in readiness to start at a moment's
warning. More mystery and more perplexity! In fact, if these combined
causes had been allowed to remain