This Abrupt Departure In The Darkness Disappointed
Some Of Us, Who Had Promised Ourselves The Pleasure Of Seeing His
Grandeur Depart In State In The Morning, Shaved, Clean, And In Full
Pontificals, The Tripping Little Secretary Swinging An Incense-Pot
Before Him, And The Greasy Chaplain Bearing His Crosier.
Next day we had another bishop, who occupied the very same berth
his Grace of Beyrouth had quitted - was
Sick in the very same way -
so much so that this cabin of the "Lady Mary Wood" is to be
christened "the bishop's berth" henceforth; and a handsome mitre is
to be painted on the basin.
Bishop No. 2 was a very stout, soft, kind-looking old gentleman, in
a square cap, with a handsome tassel of green and gold round his
portly breast and back. He was dressed in black robes and tight
purple stockings: and we carried him from Lisbon to the little
flat coast of Faro, of which the meek old gentleman was the chief
pastor.
We had not been half-an-hour from our anchorage in the Tagus, when
his Lordship dived down into the episcopal berth. All that night
there was a good smart breeze; it blew fresh all the next day, as
we went jumping over the blue bright sea; and there was no sign of
his Lordship the bishop until we were opposite the purple hills of
Algarve, which lay some ten miles distant, - a yellow sunny shore
stretching flat before them, whose long sandy flats and villages we
could see with our telescope from the steamer.
Presently a little vessel, with a huge shining lateen sail, and
bearing the blue and white Portuguese flag, was seen playing a sort
of leap-frog on the jolly waves, jumping over them, and ducking
down as merry as could be. This little boat came towards the
steamer as quick as ever she could jump; and Captain Cooper roaring
out, "Stop her!" to "Lady Mary Wood," her Ladyship's paddles
suddenly ceased twirling, and news was carried to the good bishop
that his boat was almost alongside, and that his hour was come.
It was rather an affecting sight to see the poor old fat gentleman,
looking wistfully over the water as the boat now came up, and her
eight seamen, with great noise, energy, and gesticulation laid her
by the steamer. The steamer steps were let down; his Lordship's
servant, in blue and yellow livery (like the Edinburgh Review),
cast over the episcopal luggage into the boat, along with his own
bundle and the jack-boots with which he rides postilion on one of
the bishop's fat mules at Faro. The blue and yellow domestic went
down the steps into the boat. Then came the bishop's turn; but he
couldn't do it for a long while. He went from one passenger to
another, sadly shaking them by the hand, often taking leave and
seeming loth to depart, until Captain Cooper, in a stern but
respectful tone, touched him on the shoulder, and said, I know not
with what correctness, being ignorant of the Spanish language,
"Senor 'Bispo! Senor 'Bispo!" on which summons the poor old man,
looking ruefully round him once more, put his square cap under his
arm, tucked up his long black petticoats, so as to show his purple
stockings and jolly fat calves, and went trembling down the steps
towards the boat. The good old man! I wish I had had a shake of
that trembling podgy hand somehow before he went upon his sea
martyrdom. I felt a love for that soft-hearted old Christian. Ah!
let us hope his governante tucked him comfortably in bed when he
got to Faro that night, and made him a warm gruel and put his feet
in warm water. The men clung around him, and almost kissed him as
they popped him into the boat, but he did not heed their caresses.
Away went the boat scudding madly before the wind. Bang! another
lateen-sailed boat in the distance fired a gun in his honour; but
the wind was blowing away from the shore, and who knows when that
meek bishop got home to his gruel?
I think these were the notables of our party. I will not mention
the laughing ogling lady of Cadiz, whose manners, I very much
regret to say, were a great deal too lively for my sense of
propriety; nor those fair sufferers, her companions, who lay on the
deck with sickly, smiling female resignation: nor the heroic
children, who no sooner ate biscuit than they were ill, and no
sooner were ill than they began eating biscuit again: but just
allude to one other martyr, the kind lieutenant in charge of the
mails, and who bore his cross with what I can't but think a very
touching and noble resignation.
There's a certain sort of man whose doom in the world is
disappointment, - who excels in it, - and whose luckless triumphs in
his meek career of life, I have often thought, must be regarded by
the kind eyes above with as much favour as the splendid successes
and achievements of coarser and more prosperous men. As I sat with
the lieutenant upon deck, his telescope laid over his lean legs,
and he looking at the sunset with a pleased, withered old face, he
gave me a little account of his history. I take it he is in nowise
disinclined to talk about it, simple as it is: he has been seven-
and-thirty years in the navy, being somewhat more mature in the
service than Lieutenant Peel, Rear-Admiral Prince de Joinville, and
other commanders who need not be mentioned. He is a very well-
educated man, and reads prodigiously, - travels, histories, lives of
eminent worthies and heroes, in his simple way. He is not in the
least angry at his want of luck in the profession. "Were I a boy
to-morrow," he said, "I would begin it again; and when I see my
schoolfellows, and how they have got on in life, if some are better
off than I am, I find many are worse, and have no call to be
discontented." So he carries Her Majesty's mails meekly through
this world, waits upon port-admirals and captains in his old glazed
hat, and is as proud of the pennon at the bow of his little boat,
as if it were flying from the mainmast of a thundering man-of-war.
He gets two hundred a year for his services, and has an old mother
and a sister living in England somewhere, who I will wager (though
he never, I swear, said a word about it) have a good portion of
this princely income.
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