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The only discordant sounds that met the ears of those who voyaged in the bark Ocean Queen were the cacklings of a creature in the hen-coops which had laid an egg, or thought it had done so, or wished to do so, or, having been sea-sick up to that time, perhaps, endeavoured to revive its spirits by recalling the fact that it once did so, and might perhaps do so again!
The mornings were passed away in sparring, fencing, reading, walking the deck, or lolling on the hen-coops upon the poop. The announcement of the dinner-hour was a signal for rejoicing; and they remained late at the table, doing ample justice to the captain's excellent claret. The evening was finished with cards, cigars, and brandy pawnee.
Barrels, boxes, planks, hen-coops, bridge lumber, piles of straw that waltzed solemnly as they went, cord-wood, old shingles, door-steps, floated here and there in melancholy confusion; and down upon all still drizzled the slackening rain. At length it ceased. Richling still stood in the door-way, the picture of mute helplessness. Yes, there was one other thing he could do; he could laugh.
Three long hen-coops which stood piled against the wall were laid on the ground and covered with mats; on these the tired men stretched their limbs, but they could not sleep. The little lamp was extinguished, and for an hour all was still in the dark room.
Well, for a time he were all right, a-fixin' up his house, a-buildin' new barns and hen-coops and fences and the like, and I've heerd tell that the house where he kep' his pigs were better than any dwellin'-house in that region, and the whole place were the wonder of the country roundabout; but arter he had fixed his house all up like a ship, with little staterooms all through the upper part of it, and had got everythin' inside and out in shipshape order, and there weren't nothin' else he could think of for to do, he gits terribly homesick and discontented, and times when he'd come to the city for to collect his sheer of the profits of ships as he had a interest in, he'd sit for hours on the wharf a-watchin' the vessels on the river, and it were like drawin' teeth for to git him to leave and go up to his home.
Their disputes went on from bad to worse, so what does he do one day, but call four or five hands aft, fellows always ready to do any dirty work for a glass of grog, and getting hold of the poor doctor, clap him into one of the hen-coops. `Now, says he, `you'll stay there till you beg my pardon. `I'll never beg your pardon, says the doctor. `I'll see if I can't make you, says the captain.
There was no hamlet in sight, merely scattered farms. The river, swollen and yellow with the Spring rains, swept upon its bosom fence rails, hen-coops, and other flotsam of a Spring flood. Yonder, at a crossing, part of the bridge had been carried away. "If the dam at Minturn goes, we shall be flooded all through this low land again," Helen Cameron explained.
Among other bad practices, he frequently slept on his watch, and having been discovered asleep by the captain, he was told that he would be turned off duty if he did it again. To prevent it in every way possible, the hen-coops were ordered to be knocked up, for the captain never sat down on deck himself, and never permitted an officer to do so.
As for the spirit of the peasantry in making a gallant defence behind hedge-rows, and through plate-racks and hen-coops, highly as I think of their bravery, I do not know any nation in Europe so likely to be struck with the panic as the English; and this from their total unacquaintance with the science of war.
Bower a peer of this realm! a fellow of yesterday, that scarce knows a mast from a manger! a snotty-nose boy, whom I myself have ordered to the gun, for stealing eggs out of the hen-coops! and I, Hawser Trunnion, who commanded a ship before he could keep a reckoning, am laid aside, d'ye see, and forgotten!
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