Chapter 56

UNDER THE LEE OF THE LONG-BOAT, REDBURN AND HARRY HOLD CONFIDENTIAL
COMMUNION

A sweet thing is a song; and though the Hebrew captives hung their harps
on the willows, that they could not sing the melodies of Palestine
before the haughty beards of the Babylonians; yet, to themselves, those
melodies of other times and a distant land were as sweet as the June dew
on Hermon.

And poor Harry was as the Hebrews. He, too, had been carried away
captive, though his chief captor and foe was himself; and he, too, many
a night, was called upon to sing for those who through the day had
insulted and derided him.

His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small, silken person like
his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered and tinkled through the
words of a song, like a musical brook that winds and wantons by pied and
pansied margins.

"I can't sing to-night"--sadly said Harry to the Dutchman, who with his
watchmates requested him to while away the middle watch with his
melody--"I can't sing to-night. But, Wellingborough," he whispered,--and I
stooped my ear,--"come you with me under the lee of the long-boat, and
there I'll hum you an air."

It was "The Banks of the Blue Moselle."

Poor, poor Harry! and a thousand times friendless and forlorn! To be
singing that thing, which was only meant to be warbled by falling
fountains in gardens, or in elegant alcoves in drawing-rooms,--to be
singing it here--here, as I live, under the tarry lee of our long-boat.

But he sang, and sang, as I watched the waves, and peopled them all with
sprites, and cried "chassez!" "hands across!" to the multitudinous
quadrilles, all danced on the moonlit, musical floor.

But though it went so hard with my friend to sing his songs to this
ruffian crew, whom he hated, even in his dreams, till the foam flew from
his mouth while he slept; yet at last I prevailed upon him to master his
feelings, and make them subservient to his interests. For so delighted,
even with the rudest minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well knew Harry
possessed a spell over them, which, for the time at least, they could
not resist; and it might induce them to treat with more deference the
being who was capable of yielding them such delight. Carlo's organ they
did not so much care for; but the voice of my Bury blade was an
accordion in their ears.

So one night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald
jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse.
Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them
like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the
fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra,