Chapter 11

Jarl Afflicted With The Lockjaw

If ever again I launch whale-boat from sheer-plank of ship at sea, I
shall take good heed, that my comrade be a sprightly fellow, with a
rattle-box head. Be he never so silly, his very silliness, so long as
he be lively at it, shall be its own excuse.

Upon occasion, who likes not a lively loon, one of your giggling,
gamesome oafs, whose mouth is a grin? Are not such, well-ordered
dispensations of Providence? filling up vacuums, in intervals of
social stagnation relieving the tedium of existing? besides keeping
up, here and there, in very many quarters indeed, sundry people's
good opinion of themselves? What, if at times their speech is insipid
as water after wine? What, if to ungenial and irascible souls, their
very "mug" is an exasperation to behold, their clack an inducement to
suicide? Let us not be hard upon them for this; but let them live on
for the good they may do.

But Jarl, dear, dumb Jarl, thou wert none of these. Thou didst carry
a phiz like an excommunicated deacon's. And no matter what happened,
it was ever the same. Quietly, in thyself, thou didst revolve upon
thine own sober axis, like a wheel in a machine which forever goes
round, whether you look at it or no. Ay, Jarl! wast thou not forever
intent upon minding that which so many neglect--thine own especial
business? Wast thou not forever at it, too, with no likelihood of
ever winding up thy moody affairs, and striking a balance sheet?

But at times how wearisome to me these everlasting reveries in
my one solitary companion. I longed for something enlivening; a burst
of words; human vivacity of one kind or other. After in vain essaying
to get something of this sort out of Jarl, I tried it all by myself;
playing upon my body as upon an instrument; singing, halloing, and
making empty gestures, till my Viking stared hard; and I myself
paused to consider whether I had run crazy or no.

But how account for the Skyeman's gravity? Surely, it was based upon
no philosophic taciturnity; he was nothing of an idealist; an aerial
architect; a constructor of flying buttresses. It was inconceivable,
that his reveries were Manfred-like and exalted, reminiscent of
unutterable deeds, too mysterious even to be indicated by the
remotest of hints. Suppositions all out of the question.

His ruminations were a riddle. I asked him anxiously, whether, in any
part of the world, Savannah, Surat, or Archangel, he had ever a wife
to think of; or children, that he carried so lengthy a phiz. Nowhere
neither. Therefore, as by his own confession he had nothing to think
of but himself, and there was little but honesty in him (having
which, by the way, he may be thought full to the brim), what could I