Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832», страница 6

We were both of us so intent on our own match, that we lost sight of the Spaniard altogether, and the captain and the first lieutenant were bobbing in the sternsheets of their respective gigs like a couple of souple Tams, as intent on the game as if all our lives had depended on it, when in an instant the long, black, dirty prow of the canoe was thrust in between us, the old Don singing out, "Dexa mi lugar, paysanos, dexa mi lugar, mis hijos."¹² We kept away right and left, to look at the miracle; and there lay the canoe, rumbling and splashing, with her crew walloping about, and grinning and yelling like incarnate fiends, and as naked as the day they were born, and the old Don himself, so staid and sedate, and drawley as he was a minute before, now all alive, shouting, "Tira, diablitos, tira,"¹³ flourishing a small paddle, with which he steered, about his head like a wheel, and dancing and jumping about in his seat, as if his bottom had been a haggis with quicksilver in it.

"Zounds," roared the skipper,—"why, topmen—why gentlemen, give way for the honour of the ship—Gentlemen, stretch out—Men, pull like devils; twenty pounds if you beat him."

It was now the evening, near night-fall. A splendid scene burst upon our view, on rounding a precipitous rock, from the crevices of which some magnificent trees shot up—their gnarled trunks and twisted branches overhanging the canal where we were pulling, and anticipating the fast falling darkness that was creeping over the fair face of nature; and there we floated, in the deep shadow of the cliff and trees—Dragon-flies and Water-sprites, motionless and silent, and the boats floating so lightly that they scarcely seemed to touch the water, the men resting on their oars, and all of us wrapped with the magnificence of the scenery around us, beneath us, and above us.

The left or western bank of the narrow entrance to the harbour, from which we were now debouching, ran out in all its precipitousness and beauty, (with its dark evergreen bushes overshadowing the deep blue waters, and its gigantic trees shooting forth high into the glowing western sky, their topmost branches gold-tipped in the flood of radiance shed by the rapidly sinking sun, while all below where we lay was grey cold shade,) until it joined the northern shore, when it sloped away gradually towards the east; the higher parts of the town sparkling in the evening sun, on this dun ridge, like a golden tower on the back of an elephant, while the houses that were in the shade covered the declivity, until it sank down to the water's edge. On the right hand the haven opened boldly out into a basin about four miles broad by seven long, in which the placid waters spread out beyond the shadow of the western bank into one vast sheet of molten gold, with the canoe tearing along the shining surface, her side glancing in the sun, and her paddles flashing back his rays, and leaving a long train of living fire sparkling in her wake.—It was now about six o'clock in the evening; the sun had set to us, as we pulled along under the frowning brow of the cliff, where the birds were fast settling on their nightly perches, with small happy twitterings, and the lizards and numberless other chirping things began to send forth their evening hymn to the great Being who made them and us, and a solitary white-sailing owl would every now and then flit spectrelike from one green tuft, across the bald face of the cliff, to another, and the small divers around us were breaking up the black surface of the waters into little sparkling circles as they fished for their suppers. All was becoming brown and indistinct near us; but the level beams of the setting sun still lingered with a golden radiance upon the lovely city, and the shipping at anchor before it, making their sails, where loosed to dry, glance like leaves of gold, and their spars, and masts, and rigging like wires of gold, and gilding their flags, which were waving majestically and slow from the peaks in the evening breeze; and the Moorish-looking steeples of the churches were yet sparkling in the glorious blaze, which was gradually deepening into gorgeous crimson, while the large pillars of the cathedral, then building on the highest part of the ridge, stood out like brazen monuments, softening even as we looked into a Stonehenge of amethysts.

We had not pulled fifty yards, when we heard the distant rattle of the muskets of the sentries at the gangways, as they discharged them at sundown, and were remarking, as we were rowing leisurely along, upon the strange effect produced by the reports, as they were frittered away amongst the overhanging cliffs in chattering reverberations, when the captain suddenly sung out, "Oars!" All hands lay on them. "Look there," he continued—"There—between the gigs—saw you ever any thing like that, gentlemen?" We all leant over; and although the boats, from the way they had, were skimming along nearer seven than five knots—there lay a large shark; he must have been twelve feet long at the shortest, swimming right in the middle, and equi-distant from both, and keeping way with us most accurately.

He was distinctly visible, from the strong and vivid phosphorescence excited by his rapid motion through the sleeping waters of the dark creek, which lit up his jaws, and head, and whole body; his eyes were especially luminous, while a long wake of sparkles streamed away astern of him from the lashing of his tail. As the boats lost their speed, the luminousness of his appearance faded gradually as he shortened sail also, until he disappeared altogether. He was then at rest, and suspended motionless in the water; and the only thing that indicated his proximity, was an occasional sparkle from the motion of a fin. We brought the boats nearer together, after pulling a stroke or two, but he seemed to sink as we closed, until at last we could merely distinguish an indistinct halo far down in the clear black profound. But as we separated, and resumed our original position, he again rose near the surface; and although the ripple and dip of the oars rendered him invisible while we were pulling, yet the moment we again rested on them, there was the monster, like a persecuting fiend, once more right between us, glaring on us, and apparently watching every motion. It was a terrible spectacle, and rendered still more striking by the melancholy occurrence of the forenoon. "That's the very identical, damnable baste himself, as murthered poor little Louis this morning, yeer honour; I knows him from the torn flesh of him under his larboard blinker, sir—just where Wiggen's boat hook punished him," quoth the Irish captain of the mizzen-top.

"A water-kelpie," murmured another of the Captain's gigs, a Scotchman.

The men were evidently alarmed, "Stretch out, men: never mind the shark. He can't jump into the boat surely," said the skipper. "What the deuce are you afraid of?"

We arrived within pistol-shot of the ship.

As we approached, the sentry hailed, "Boat, ahoy!"

"Firebrand," sung out the skipper, in reply.

"Man the side—gangway lanterns there," quoth the officer on duty; and by the time we were close to, there were two sidesmen over the side with the manropes ready stuck out to our grasp, and two boys with lanterns above them. We got on deck.

The Gatherer

The Emperor Adrian and the Architect Apollodorus.—When Apollodorus was conversing with Trajan on some plans of architecture, Adrian interfered, and gave an opinion, which the artist treated with contempt. "Go," says he, "and paint gourds" (an amusement which Adrian was fond of), "for you are very ignorant of the subject on which we are conversing." When Adrian became emperor, the affront was remembered, and it prevented Apollodorus from being employed. Nor was the opinion which Apollodorus gave with respect to the plans of a sumptuous temple of Venus forgotten: viz.—upon seeing the statues sitting, as they were, in the temple (which, it seems, wanted much of its due proportion in height), he said, "if the goddesses should ever attempt to stand upon their feet, they would assuredly break their heads against the ceiling." Adrian, meanly jealous and inexcusably revengeful, banished the architect, and having caused him to be accused of various crimes, put him to death.

P.T.W.

Juan Rufa said—"There are two classes of persons who are inconsolable, the rich on the point of death, and women on the departure of their beauty." He said, on another occasion, "that he who defined a compliment to be an agreeable falsehood, which serves as a net to catch dupes, was not far short of the truth, since the greater part of compliments are expressions directly at variance with internal conviction."

Dice are said to have been invented by Palamedes, at the siege of Troy, for the amusement of the soldiers.

ANNUALS FOR 1833

The time requisite for the completion of a large and picturesque Engraving compels us to defer the Supplement, containing the SPIRIT of the ANNUALS, till our next Number.