Page:Ainsworth's Magazine - Volume 1.djvu/117

"None of y'r play-acting speeches. Learn to act more naturally on the stage, and less artificially off it."

"You're a clever kind of critic, Captain Barlowpotts; and yet you were sold dreadfully at rehearsal this morning."

"You'll not catch me on the hatches behind your painted main-sheets again, I guess. It wasn't handsome, no ways, it wasn't, to get one of your mizen-topmen to hoist my hat up into the cobwebs. I gave a grocery order for seven dollars for that hat, or I wish I may be shot."

"I don't want you behind again: the front is the place for you, at my benefit next Wednesday.—Were you ever behind the scenes, sir?"

"No; but I intend to be shortly. Your manager, whom I met last week, very politely consented to my going behind any evening; but said I should not be amused, as there is no fun going on."

"Why, not always, sir, certainly; but we get up a good thing now and then. Come to-night, sir. Lucius Junius Cobarn is expected from Boston, to play Richard the Third; Rice jumps the jumping Crow; and we conclude with the grand new piece 'The Coronation.' I must be off now, but before we go I'll tell you a case of absence which I have called 'Hats off.' This morning the manager was rehearsing the new melodrame, and all of us were on the stage, when somebody (it doesn't become one to speak of oneself) tied strings to all the actors' hats, and the topmen in the flies over the pro-scenium had hold of the ends. Old Chalk-and-dot-one, the manager, walked up and down by the lamps, and at the conclusion of the first act he gave the word—'Strike your attitudes, and let the band play in G major.' Well, we all struck our attitudes, and the band played in G major, when off went all the hats to the ceiling, and the manager set to and blazed away with double-barrelled oaths for half an hour."

The morning that the steamer bearing the name of the river whose waters she first navigated—the Euphrates—left Annah, she turned her head up to the current a few miles below that centrical and picturesque little town, and lay to for a short time by the edge of the bank, which was here a level greensward, backed at a short distance by a low, rocky terrace. Leaping ashore with others, and speaking for a moment to the Commander, Colonel Chesney, I proceeded to examine the rocks, and found them full of fossil organic remains—curious relics of a world older than that of Assyria or Babylonia. With these I was assiduously filling my pockets, when, on turning round, I found the steamer gone. She was fast sweeping down the broad stream of waters,—already out of hearing, and speedily out of sight.

The most infinitesimal portion of time was sufficient to render me aware of all the perils of my situation. My habitual custom on board the steamer, during her descent of the river, was to sit in front of one of the paddle-boxes, taking notes, so that I should not be missed till dinner-time, which would be at the end of the day's journey, an average distance of from fifty to sixty miles. I was on the opposite side of the river to that on which the town of Annah was situated, and could not go back, and obtain a boat. I had before me a district probably scarcely inhabited, and if so, by lawless and predatory Arabs. I had no arms; but, on examining my purse, found that I had luckily four gazis, small gold coins of four shillings each. Two of these I immediately secreted in my watch-fob, and left two in my purse for demand. Thus circumstanced, my mind never wavered as to what was to be done; but disemcumbering myself of the weighty curiosities I had collected, I set off at a rate of about four miles an hour, to overtake a steamer descending a river fourteen miles in the same time, but which I knew would bring to at night. I had not walked above an hour when I came to a village, near which a group of fellahs, or agricultural Arabs, were sitting beside a corn-rick. The road approached them in such a manner, that I joined the party unobserved. They were greatly surprised at seeing a stranger among them, and like all Arabs in similar circumstances, were at first frightened and distrustful; but when made aware there was no danger, haughty, malicious, and over-bearing.