Benjamin, finding that his threats and his struggles were useless, had good sense enough to learn patience from the resigned manner of his companion, and soon settled himself down by the side of Natty, with a contemptuousness expressed in his hard features, that showed he had substituted disgust for rage.
When the violence of the steward’s feelings had in some measure subsided, he turned to his fellow-sufferer, and, with a motive that might have vindicated a worse effusion, he attempted the charitable office of consolation,
“Taking it by and large, Master Bump-ho, it’s but a small matter after all,” he said.
“Now, I’ve known very good sort of men, aboard of the Boadishey, laid by the heels, for nothing, mayhap, but forgetting that they’d drunk their allowance already, when a glass of grog has come in their way.
This is nothing more than riding with two anchors ahead, waiting for a turn in the tide, or a shift of wind, d’ye see, with a soft bottom and plenty of room for the sweep of your hawse.
Now I’ve seen many a man, for over-shooting his reckoning, as I told ye moored head and starn, where he couldn’t so much as heave his broadside round, and mayhap a stopper clapped on his tongue too, in the shape of a pump-bolt lashed athwartship his jaws, all the same as an outrigger along side of a taffrel-rail.”
The hunter appeared to appreciate the kind intentions of the other, though he could not understand his eloquence, and, raising his humbled countenance, he attempted a smile, as he said:
“Anan!”
“‘Tis nothing, I say, but a small matter of a squall that will soon blow over,” continued Benjamin.
“To you that has such a length of keel, it must be all the same as nothing; thof, seeing that I am little short in my lower timbers, they’ve triced my heels up in such a way as to give me a bit of a cant.
But what cares I, Master Bump-ho, if the ship strains a little at her anchor? it’s only for a dog-watch, and dam’me but she’ll sail with you then on that cruise after them said beaver.
I’m not much used to small arms, seeing that I was stationed at the ammunition-boxes, being summat too low-rigged to see over the hammock-cloths; but I can carry the game, dye see, and mayhap make out to lend a hand with the traps; and if so, be you’re any way so handy with them as ye be with your boat-hook, ‘twill be but a short cruise after all, I’ve squared the yards with Squire Dickens this morning, and I shall send him word that he needn’t bear my name on the books again till such time as the cruise is over.”
“You’re used to dwell with men, Benny,” said Leather-Stocking, mournfully, “and the ways of the woods would be hard on you, if——”
“Not a bit—not a bit,” cried the steward;
“I’m none of your fair-weather chaps, Master Bump-ho, as sails only in smooth water.
When I find a friend, I sticks by him, dye see.
Now, there’s no better man a-going than Squire Dickens, and I love him about the same as I loves Mistress Hollister’s new keg of Jamaiky.”
The steward paused, and turning his uncouth visage on the hunter, he surveyed him with a roguish leer of his eye, and gradually suffered the muscles of his hard features to relax, until his face was illuminated by the display of his white teeth, when he dropped his voice, and added;
“I say, Master Leather-Stocking, ‘tis fresher and livelier than any Hollands you’ll get in Garnsey. But we’ll send a hand over and ask the woman for a taste, for I’m so jammed in these here bilboes that I begin to want summat to lighten my upper works.”
Natty sighed, and gazed about him on the crowd, that already began to disperse, and which had now diminished greatly, as its members scattered in their various pursuits. He looked wistfully at Benjamin, but did not reply; a deeply-seated anxiety seeming to absorb every other sensation, and to throw a melancholy gloom over his wrinkled features, which were working with the movements of his mind.
The steward was about to act on the old principle, that silence gives consent, when Hiram Doolittle, attended by Jotham, stalked out of the crowd, across the open space, and approached the stocks.
The magistrate passed by the end where Benjamin was seated, and posted himself, at a safe distance from the steward, in front of the Leather-Stocking.
Hiram stood, for a moment, cowering before the keen looks that Natty fastened on him, and suffering under an embarrassment that was quite new; when having in some degree recovered himself, he looked at the heavens, and then at the smoky atmosphere, as if it were only an ordinary meeting with a friend, and said in his formal, hesitating way:
“Quite a scurcity of rain, lately; I some think we shall have a long drought on’t.”
Benjamin was occupied in untying his bag of dollars, and did not observe the approach of the magistrate, while Natty turned his face, in which every muscle was working, away from him in disgust, without answering.
Rather encouraged than daunted by this exhibition of dislike, Hiram, after a short pause, continued:
“The clouds look as if they’d no water in them, and the earth is dreadfully parched.
To my judgment, there’ll be short crops this season, if the rain doesn’t fail quite speedily.”
The air with which Mr. Doolittle delivered this prophetical opinion was peculiar to his species. It was a jesuitical, cold, unfeeling, and selfish manner, that seemed to say,
“I have kept within the law,” to the man he had so cruelly injured.
It quite overcame the restraint that the old hunter had been laboring to impose on himself, and he burst out in a warm glow of indignation.
“Why should the rain fall from the clouds,” he cried, “when you force the tears from the eyes of the old, the sick, and the poor!
Away with ye—away with ye! you may be formed in the image of the Maker, but Satan dwells in your heart.
Away with ye, I say!
I am mournful, and the sight of ye brings bitter thoughts.”
Benjamin ceased thumbing his money, and raised his head at the instant that Hiram, who was thrown off his guard by the invectives of the hunter, unluckily trusted his person within reach of the steward, who grasped one of his legs with a hand that had the grip of a vise, and whirled the magistrate from his feet, before he had either time to collect his senses or to exercise the strength he did really possess.
Benjamin wanted neither proportions nor manhood in his head, shoulders, and arms, though all the rest of his frame appeared to be originally intended for a very different sort of a man.
He exerted his physical powers on the present occasion, with much discretion; and, as he had taken his antagonist at a great disadvantage, the struggle resulted very soon in Benjamin getting the magistrate fixed in a posture somewhat similar to his own, and manfully placed face to face.
“You’re a ship’s cousin, I tell ye, Master Doo-but-little,” roared the steward; “some such matter as a ship’s cousin, sir. I know you, I do, with your fair-weather speeches to Squire Dickens, to his face, and then you go and sarve out your grumbling to all the old women in the town, do ye? Ain’t it enough for any Christian, let him harbor never so much malice, to get an honest old fellow laid by the heels in this fashion, without carrying sail so hard on the poor dog, as if you would run him down as he lay at his anchors?
But I’ve logged many a hard thing against your name, master, and now the time’s come to foot up the day’s work, d’ye see; so square yourself, you lubber, square yourself, and we’ll soon know who’s the better man.”
“Jotham!” cried the frightened magistrate—“Jotham! call in the constables.
Mr. Penguillium, I command the peace—I order you to keep the peace.”
“There’s been more peace than love atwixt us, master,” cried the steward, making some very unequivocal demonstrations toward hostility; “so mind yourself! square your self, I say! do you smell this here bit of a sledge-hammer?”
“Lay hands on me if you dare!” exclaimed Hiram, as well as he could, under the grasp which the steward held on his throttle—“lay hands on me if you dare!”
“If you call this laying, master, you are welcome to the eggs,” roared the steward.
It becomes our disagreeable duty to record here, that the acts of Benjamin now became violent; for he darted his sledge-hammer violently on the anvil of Mr. Doolittle’s countenance, and the place became in an instant a scene of tumult and confusion.
The crowd rushed in a dense circle around the spot, while some ran to the court room to give the alarm, and one or two of the more juvenile part of the multitude had a desperate trial of speed to see who should be the happy man to communicate the critical situation of the magistrate to his wife.
Benjamin worked away, with great industry and a good deal of skill, at his occupation, using one hand to raise up his antagonist, while he knocked him over with the other; for he would have been disgraced in his own estimation, had he struck a blow on a fallen adversary.
By this considerate arrangement he had found means to hammer the visage of Hiram out of all shape, by the time Richard succeeded in forcing his way through the throng to the point of combat. The sheriff afterward declared that, independently of his mortification as preserver of the peace of the county, at this interruption to its harmony, he was never so grieved in his life as when he saw this breach of unity between his favorites.
Hiram had in some degree become necessary to his vanity, and Benjamin, strange as it may appear, he really loved.