CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

ERIC'S PROJECT.

Fritz was not long in the company of Mr Nathaniel Washington Slater on the following day before he discovered, much to his disappointment, that he was one of those superficial characters who are given largely to dealing in promises that they either have no intention of keeping when making them originally, or which they never were or would be in a position to carry out.

When coming up Long Island Sound on board the Rhode Island steamer and having that friendly chat in the bows of the boat, the deck hand had been lavishly expansive as to what he would be able to accomplish for his newly-made acquaintance, in the way of procuring him employment; but, when Fritz met him again, according to their arrangement of the previous afternoon, "Nat" did not appear to exhibit that eager alacrity in introducing him to business men--or "big bugs," as he termed them-- which his words of the night before had led Fritz naturally to expect.

Whether this arose from the fact that the deck hand's desire to aid the young German had evaporated as rapidly as it had arisen, or because his morning reflections had convinced him that he had too rashly promised something which he was unable to perform, Fritz, of course, could not precisely tell. Whatever was the reason, the result came to the same thing, that Mr Slater showed a most unmistakable inclination to "back out" of the matter in the same easy way in which those double-ender floating palaces Fritz had noticed on the way up could go astern in order to avoid an obstruction; albeit Nat was prolific in the extreme with all manner of excuses--excuses that were as baseless and unsubstantial as the foam churned up by the steamboat's paddle-wheels!

He "felt ugly" and was "no end sorry," but he really "hadn't the time that morning." This was his first attempt at shunting the engagement; but then, when Fritz, in the exuberance of hopeful possibilities, offered to meet him at the same place and time on the following day, "Nat" "couldn't think of putting him to the trouble," as he "might have to return to New York in the boat at a moment's notice." Besides, he said, it would be "better to put off the appointment awhile," as he'd just heard that the "boss" of the very identical shipping firm where he thought he could have got Fritz a berth had started "right away" for Boston, and he was such a "durned electric eel of a cuss, here, there, and everywhere," that it would be "just dubersome to kalkerlate" when he would "reel his way back to hum!"

Fritz could not understand many of these very choice Americanisms; still, he was sufficiently gifted with common sense to see pretty plainly that all the deck hand's "tall talking" of the previous evening had been, to use his own expressive vernacular, nothing but "bunk.u.m,"

and that, if he wished to get any situation in the place, he must trust more to his own good fortune than to Mr Slater's kind offices as a go- between.

This disheartened him at the time; but when he got back to Captain Brown's shanty later on, the worthy old skipper, noticing his despondency, soon cheered him out of it.

"Bless you, sonny," said he affectionately, for he seemed to have taken as great a fancy to Fritz as he had to Eric--the young fellow having told him all his plans and prospects, besides giving him an epitome of his adventures during the war when narrating the same for his brother's edification,--"Bless you, sonny, nary you mind what thet ne'er-do-well Nat Slater sez. I'd half a mind to tell you thet yesterday, when I seed you so thick with him! Jerusalem, mister, he's a c.o.o.n thet's bin allers a loafer all his life, stickin' to nuthin' even fur a dog-watch, an' as shifty as one o' them sculpens in the creek thaar! You jest wait an'

make yourself comf'able haar till bye-em-bye, an' I reckon we'll fix you up to sunthin'."

The same evening, when the two brothers were alone together, and speaking of old Captain Brown's kindness, Eric suddenly, as if in a moment of inspiration, said, "Why should you not come along with me in the _Pilot's Bride_ when we start next month?"

"What!" exclaimed Fritz in astonishment.

"Don't look so startled, brother," said Eric, laughing at the expression of the other's face. "Recollect, that as you say, you've been unable to get any work here, so, why not go with me? I'm sure Captain Brown would take you with us if you ask him."

"But I'm not a sailor," argued Fritz; "and, besides, if I were one, going to sea would not be the way to make the fortune I have planned, so that I may be able to return home and marry Madaleine."

"Ah, that dear Madaleine!" said Eric. "I wonder when I'll see her, and whether I shall think her all that you describe? Never mind," he added, seeing that Fritz appeared vexed at this speech, "I've no doubt she's a beautiful maiden, and that you'll both be as happy as the day is long!

But, I'm going to speak about business now, my brother; and, if you listen, you'll see that my idea of your coming in the _Pilot's Bride_ is not such a wild-goose chase, after all."

"I confess I don't see it yet," interposed Fritz, with a smile at Eric's boyish eagerness. "In what way will going whaling with Captain Brown and your important self advance my fortunes?"

"Listen," said the other, "and I'll soon tell you. Do you recollect when I was recounting my story, that after I was picked up from the boat and taken on board the _Pilot's Bride_, I mentioned the fact of the ship calling at Tristan d'Acunha?"

"Yes; and you also said that you would inform me of something important about the place 'bye-and-bye,' if you alluded then to what you're going to tell me now."

"Precisely, 'bye-and-bye' is 'now,'" said Eric, laughing again and tossing his mane-like hair back from his forehead in the old fashion.

"We landed at Tristan d'Acunha--"

"Where on earth is that place?" interrupted Fritz. "I've a confused notion that it is an island of some sort; but, in what precise spot it is situated, I'm sure I can't tell!"

"Well, then," commenced Eric grandiloquently--only too glad of the opportunity of having to instruct his elder brother, who had been regarded in the family circle as the centre of all wisdom--"'Tristan d'Acunha' is the centre island of a group, so-called after the Portuguese navigator who discovered them in the early beginning of the sixteenth century. The islands are probably the most isolated and remote of all the abodes of men, lying as they do almost in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and nearly equidistant from the continents of America and Africa; for, they are situated nearly on the line that could be drawn between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope--from the latter of which they are distant some fifteen hundred miles in a westerly direction, while Saint Helena, the nearest other land to them on the north, is thirteen hundred miles away."

"You're very explicit, I'm sure," said Fritz in a chaffing way; "you must have been coaching up your geography recently."

"I disdain vulgar interruption and idle clamour," returned the other in a similar vein. "But, to proceed. The group consists of the larger island of Tristan and two smaller islands--Inaccessible Island, some eighteen miles to the south-west, and Nightingale Island, twenty miles to the south. These islands are uninhabited, save by penguins and seals; but an interesting little colony of some eighty souls occupies Tristan, breeding cattle and cultivating vegetables, with which they supply pa.s.sing vessels, mostly whalers--these calling there from time to time, on their way to and from their fishing grounds in the great Southern Ocean."

"Your account is highly interesting, my dear Eric," said Fritz, when his brother had completed this exhaustive description of the Tristan d'Acunha group; "still, I confess I do not see in what way it affects me."

"Don't you?"

"No."

"Then you will soon; listen a moment longer. I told you that, with the exception of the larger one, these islands are uninhabited save by the penguins and seals and such-like marine animals."

"Yes, you've told me that; and I don't wonder at it when they are situated so remotely from all civilisation."

"That fact has its advantages none the less," proceeded Eric. "Being so cut off from communication with men makes these islands just the favourite resort of those animals that shun the presence of their destroyers. Seals, as you know, are very nervous, retiring creatures seeking their breeding-places in the most out-of-the-way, deserted spots they can find; and the advance of the human race, planting colonies where the poor things had formerly undisputed sway around the sh.o.r.es of the South American continent, has driven them further and further afield, or rather to sea, until they are now only to be met with in any numbers in the Antarctic Ocean, and such islands as lie adjacent to that great Southern continent which has never yet been discovered--although Lord Ross pretty nearly put foot on it, if any explorer can be said to have done that."

"Really, Eric," exclaimed Fritz jokingly, "you surpa.s.s yourself!"

"Oh, I've read up all this in some books Captain Brown lent me," said the boy. "I wanted to learn everything that was to be learnt about a whaler's life, and to become acquainted with the special parts of the ocean that have to be visited by vessels in the trade in order to find a profitable fishing ground."

"But you've been talking about seals, not whales," remarked Fritz.

"Yes, because it is with seals that my present business lies," said the other, not a bit put out by the correction.

"Banished now from their once favourite waters around Cape Horn, adjacent to the islands of the Pacific, there are yet some stray outlandish spots left which the animals frequent, so as to be able to breed in peace and multiply, without fear of that wholesale extermination which is their unhappy lot elsewhere. Amongst such isolated places is the Tristan d'Acunha group; and, to Inaccessible Island as well as the other islets they come in countless numbers every year. Seal fishing is a very profitable concern; for, not only is the oil valuable, but the skins fetch the most extravagant prices in the market, especially those of the finer sort. Now, do you see what I'm after, brother?"

"You want to go sealing, I suppose; but, won't you have plenty of that in the _Pilot's Bride_ with Captain Brown, eh?"

"Not in the way I mean," replied Eric. "I have an idea of settling for a time at Tristan d'Acunha, going in thoroughly for the thing as a business on sh.o.r.e."

Fritz appeared to p.r.i.c.k up his ears at this.

"But, I thought you said there was a colony there already; why don't the people manage to cultivate the trade? Besides, if they have it all their own way, I think they would not like a couple of strange interlopers, like you and me, going amongst them to rob them of their harvest from the sea!"

"Ah, I see you're bitten with the idea," exclaimed Eric, clapping his hands triumphantly. "But, it was not of Tristan, the larger island, I was thinking; it was of Inaccessible Island, where there wouldn't be another living soul but ourselves, the seals, and sea birds."

"'Monarchs of all we survey,' eh, like Robinson Crusoe?" said Fritz with a smile. "That would be very nice, wouldn't it?"

"Don't laugh, brother," returned Eric, speaking earnestly. "I a.s.sure you I've considered this thing well. The people living at Tristan told me that they went fishing to the other islands once a year; but, the weather is generally so rough and the beach so hard to land at or get off from, on account of the heavy ocean rollers coming in when the wind is up at all, that the islanders can never make a long stay at the islets--and so cannot get half the number of sealskins which might be easily procured by any one stopping ash.o.r.e there for any length of time.

I really thought, I a.s.sure you, of asking Captain Brown, when I went on my next voyage with him, to land me at Inaccessible Island, with provisions enough to last me six months or so, and to call for me on his return voyage from the Cape, as he was wending his way back home again here."

"And you would have gone there alone?"

"Yes; why not? But now, oh, Fritz, if you would only go with me, we might settle at this place like regular Robinson Crusoes--as you said just now--and make a pile of money, or, rather, of skins, in a year or two!"

"The idea is feasible," said Fritz in a reflective way. "I'll talk to Captain Brown, and see what he says of it." The elder brother had a good deal of German caution in his composition; so that, although prompt of action, he was never accustomed to undertake anything without due deliberation.

Eric, on the contrary, all impulse, was thoroughly carried away by the notion, now that he saw that Fritz, instead of ridiculing it, thought it worth consideration.

The project of going to settle on a real uninhabited island, like Robinson Crusoe, that hero of boyhood throughout the world, exceeded the realisation of his wildest dreams, when first as a little chap he had planned how he should go to sea as soon as he was big enough. Why, he and Fritz would now be "Brother Crusoes," if his project were carried out, as there seemed every likelihood of its being--crusoes of their own free-will and not by compulsion, besides having the satisfaction of knowing that within a certain period it would be in their power to end their solitary island life; that is, should they find, either that it did not come up to their expectations in a business point of view, or that its loneliness and seclusion combined with the discomforts of roughing it were more than they could bear.

It was a glorious plan!