Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/316

304 Redburn, a New York merchant's son, as sailor-boy in a merchant-vessel, is even prosy, bald, and eventless; and would be dull beyond redemption, as a story, were not the author gifted with a scrutinising gaze, and a habit of taking notes as well as "prenting" them, which ensures his readers against absolute common-place. It is true, he more than once plunges into episodic extravaganzas—such as the gambling-house frenzy of Harry Bolton—but these are, in effect, the dullest of all his moods; and tend to produce, what surely they are inspired by, blue devils. Nor is he over chary of introducing the repulsive,—notwithstanding his disclaimer, "Such is the fastidiousness of some readers, that, many times, they must lose the most striking incidents in a narrative like mine:" for not only some, but most readers, are too fastidious to enjoy such scenes as that of the starving, dying mother and children in a Liverpool cellar, and that of the dead mariner, from whose lips darted out, when the light touched them, "threads of greenish fire, like a forked tongue," till the cadaverous face was "crawled over by a swarm of worm-like flames"—a hideous picture, as deserving of a letter of remonstrance on æsthetic grounds, as Mr. Dickens' spontaneous combustion case (Krook) on physical. Apart from these exceptions, the experiences of Redburn during his "first voyage" are singularly free from excitement, and even incident. We have one or two "marine views" happily done, though not in the artist's very happiest style. The picture of a wreck may be referred to—that of a dismantled, water-logged schooner, that had been drifting about for weeks; her bulwarks all but gone—the bare stanchions, or posts, left standing here and there, splitting in two the waves which broke clear over the deck—her open main-hatchway yawning into view every time she rolled in the trough of the sea, and submerged again, with a rushing, gurgling sound of many waters; the relic of a jacket nailed atop of the broken mainmast, for a signal; and, sad, stern sight—most strange and most unnatural—"three dark, green, grassy objects," lashed, and leaning over sideways against the taffrail—slowly swaying with every roll, but otherwise motionless! There is a spirited sketch, too, of the sailor-boy's first ascent to "loose the main-skysail"—not daring to look down, but keeping his eyes glued to the shrouds—panting and breathing hard before he is half-way up—reaching the "Jacob's ladder," and at last, to his own amazement, finding himself hanging on the skysail yard, holding on might and main to the mast, and curling his feet round the rigging, as if they were another pair of hands; thence gazing at length, mute and awe-stricken, on the dark midnight sea beneath, which looks like a great, black gulf, hemmed in all round by beetling black cliffs—the ship below, seeming like a long narrow plank in the water—the boy above, seeming in utter loneliness to tread the swart night clouds, and every second expecting to find himself falling—falling—falling, as he used to feel when the nightmare was on him. Redburn managed his first ascent deftly, and describes it admirably. Sir Nathaniel, indeed, never has been sedentary on a main sky-sail; but he is pretty sure, from these presents, that Mr. Melville has.