Rivers of Ice by R. M. Ballantyne (best fiction novels to read TXT) 📖

the way when not wanted, and out of the way when required.”

“Yes,” said the Captain, meditatively, “I’ve got my eye—”

“Your weather eye?” asked Lewis.

“Yes, my weather eye, on a lad who’ll fit you.”

“To a tee?” inquired Emma, archly.

“To a tee, miss,” assented the Captain, with a bland smile.

Lewis again pulled out his note-book to enter the name and address, but the Captain assured him that he would manage this case himself; and it was finally settled—for Lewis carried everything his own way, as a matter of course—that Dr George Lawrence was to be written to next day, and Captain Wopper was to provide a page.

“And you’ll have to get him and yourself ready as fast as possible,” said the youth in conclusion, “for we shall set off as soon as my mother’s trunks are packed.”

Next morning, while Captain Wopper was seated conversing with his old landlady at the breakfast-table—the morning meal having been just concluded—he heard the voice of Gillie White in the court. Going to the end of the passage, he ordered that imp to “come aloft.”

Gillie appeared in a few seconds, nodded patronisingly to old Mrs Roby, hoped she was salubrious, and demanded to know what was up.

“My lad,” said the Captain—and as he spoke, the urchin assumed an awful look of mock solemnity.

“I want to know if you think you could behave yourself if you was to try?”

“Ah!” said Gillie, with the air of a cross-examining advocate, “the keewestion is not w’ether I could behave myself if I wos to try, but, w’ether I think I could. Well, ahem! that depends. I think I could, now, if there was offered a very strong indoocement.”

“Just so, my lad,” returned the Captain, nodding, “that’s exactly what I mean to offer. What d’ee say to a noo suit of blue tights, with three rows brass buttons; a situation in a respectable family; a fair wage; as much as you can eat and drink; and a trip to Switzerland to begin with?”

While the Captain spoke, the small boy’s eyes opened wider and wider, and his month followed suit, until he stood the very picture of astonishment.

“You don’t mean it?” he exclaimed.

“Indeed I do, my lad.”

“Then I’m your man,” returned the small boy emphatically, “putt me down for that sitooation; send for a lawyer, draw up the articles, I’ll sign ’em right off, and—”

“Gillie, my boy,” interrupted the Captain, “one o’ the very first things you have to do in larnin’ to behave yourself is to clap a stopper on your tongue—it’s far too long.”

“All right, Capp’n,” answered the imp, “I’ll go to Guy’s Hospital d’rectly and ’ave three-fourths of it ampitated.”

“Do,” said the Captain, somewhat sternly, “an’ ask ’em to attach a brake to the bit that’s left.

“Now, lad,” he continued, “you’ve got a very dirty face.”

Gillie nodded, with his lips tightly compressed to check utterance.

“And a very ragged head of hair,” he added.

Again Gillie nodded.

The Captain pointed to a basin of water which stood on a chair in a corner of the room, beside which lay a lump of yellow soap, a comb, and a rough jack-towel.

“There,” said he, “go to work.”

Gillie went to work with a will, and scrubbed himself to such an extent, that his skin must undoubtedly have been thinner after the operation. The washing, however, was easy compared with the combing. The boy’s mop was such a tangled web, that the comb at first refused to pass through it; and when, encouraged by the Captain, the urchin did at last succeed in rending its masses apart various inextricable bunches came away bodily, and sundry teeth of the comb were left behind. At last, however, it was reduced to something like order, to the immense satisfaction of Mrs Roby and the Captain.

“Now,” said the latter, “did you ever have a Turkish bath?”

“No—never.”

“Well, then, come with me and have one. Have you got a cap?”

“Hm—never mind, come along; you’re not cleaned up yet by a long way; but we’ll manage it in course of time.”

As the Captain and his small protégé passed along the streets, the former took occasion to explain that a Turkish bath was a species of mild torture, in which a man was stewed alive, and baked in an oven, and par-boiled, and scrubbed, and pinched, and thumped (sometimes black and blue), and lathered with soap till he couldn’t see, and heated up to seven thousand and ten, Fahrenheit and soused with half-boiling water, and shot at with cold water—or shot into it, as the case might be—and rolled in a sheet like a mummy, and stretched out a like corpse to cool. “Most men,” he said, “felt gaspy in Turkish baths, and weak ones were alarmed lest they should get suffocated beyond recovery; but strong men rather enjoy themselves in ’em than otherwise.”

“Hah!” exclaimed the imp, “may I wentur’ to ax, Capp’n, wot’s the effect on boys?”

To this the Captain replied that he didn’t exactly know, never having heard of boys taking Turkish baths. Whereupon Gillie suggested, that if possible he might have himself cleaned in an ordinary bath.

“Impossible, my lad,” said the Captain, decidedly. “No or’nary bath would clean you under a week, unless black soap and scrubbin’ brushes was used.

“But don’t be alarmed, Gillie,” he added, looking down with a twinkle in his eyes, “I’ll go into the bath along with you. We’ll sink or swim together, my boy, and I’ll see that you’re not overdone. I’m rather fond of them myself, d’ee see, so I can recommend ’em from experience.”

Somewhat reassured by this, though still a little uneasy in his mind, the imp followed his patron to the baths.

It would have been a sight worth seeing, the entrance of these two into the temple of soap-and-water. To see Gillie’s well-made, but very meagre and dirty little limbs unrobed; to see him decked out with the scrimpest possible little kilt, such as would, perhaps, have suited the fancy of a Fiji islander; to see his gaze of undisguised admiration on beholding his companion’s towering and massive frame in the same unwonted costume, if we may so style it; to see the intensifying of his astonishment when ushered into the first room, at beholding six or seven naked, and apparently dead men, laid round the walls, as if ready for dissection; to see the monkey-like leap, accompanied by a squeal, with which he sprang from a hot stone-bench, having sat down thereon before it had been covered with a cloth for his reception; to see the rapid return of his self-possession in these unusual circumstances, and the ready manner in which he submitted himself to the various operations, as if he had been accustomed to Turkish baths from a period long prior to infancy; to see his horror on being introduced to the hottest room, and his furtive glance at the door, as though he meditated a rush into the open air, but was restrained by a sense of personal dignity; to see the ruling passion strong as ever in this (he firmly believed) his nearest approach to death, when, observing that the man next to him (who, as it were, turned the corner from him) had raised himself for a moment to arrange his pillow, he (Gillie) tipped up the corner of the man’s sheet, which hung close to his face in such a manner that he (the man), on lying down again, placed his bare shoulder on the hot stone, and sprang up with a yell that startled into life the whole of the half-sleeping establishment with the exception of the youth on the opposite bench, who, having noticed the act, was thrown into convulsions of laughter, much to the alarm of Gillie, who had thought he was asleep and feared that he might “tell;”—to see him laid down like a little pink-roll to be kneaded, and to hear him remark, in a calm voice, to the stalwart attendant that he might go in and win and needn’t be afraid of hurting him; to observe his delight when put under the warm “douche,” his gasping shriek when unexpectedly assailed with the “cold-shower,” and his placid air of supreme felicity when wrapped up like a ghost in a white sheet, and left to dry in the cooling-room—to see and hear all this, we say, would have amply repaid a special journey to London from any reasonable distance. The event, however, being a thing of the past and language being unequal to the description, we are compelled to leave it all to the reader’s imagination.