Full Fathom 5000 The Expedition of The Hms Challenger and The Strange Animals It Found in The Deep Sea Graham Bell 2 Full Chapter

Full Fathom 5000: The Expedition of the
HMS Challenger and the Strange

Animals It Found in the Deep Sea
Graham Bell
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Full Fathom 5000
Full Fathom 5000
The Expedition of HMS Challenger and the Strange
Animals It Found in the Deep Sea
GRAHAM BELL
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021044997
ISBN 978–0–19–754157–9
eISBN 978–0–19–754159–3
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197541579.001.0001
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2
“For the whole family”
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Names and Units
Introduction
PART 1. BEFORE
1. The Deep Sea
2. Edward Forbes
3. Two Committees
The Dredging Committee
Two Cruises
The Circumnavigation Committee
4. The Ship and Her Crew
The Ship
The Scientists
The Crew
PART 2. THE CRUISE

5. Outward Bound: December 1872–February 1873
Sheerness to Portsmouth
Portsmouth to Lisbon
Station I: 30 December 1872
Sounding and dredging in theory and practice
A soft starfish
Station IV: 16 January 1873
Gorgonians
Station VII: 31 January 1873
Pennatulids
6. First Leg: The First North Atlantic Transect, February–March
1873
Globigerina
Station 5: 21 February 1873
Red clay
Station 13: 4 March 1873
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge
A blind lobster
Black pebbles
A deep worm
Snails with wings
Sharks
Accidents
A stalked crinoid
The attic of the world?
7. Second Leg: The Sargasso Sea and Gulf Stream, March–May
1873
Station 30: 1 April 1873
Sargassum
The Gulf Stream
Station 45: 3 May 1873
Sea serpents
The crinoid plague
Brittle stars
Deserters
Sea legs
A worm in the wrong place
8. Third Leg: The Second North Atlantic Transect, June–July 1873
Station 61: 17 June 1873
Scatter
Blink
Dwarf males
Weedfall
Slaters
A frangible bag
Absence of a gutless worm
Station 78: 10 July 1873
A cup of coral
9. Fourth Leg: Into the South Atlantic, July–September 1873
The sea devil
Station 98: 14 August 1873
A fierce clam
A cloak of invisibility
Gill slits
Moss animals and lamp shells
Naming
Sally Lightfoot
Station 122: 10 September 1873
Tripod
Fine filtration
10. Fifth Leg: Across the South Atlantic, September–December
1873
Sea skaters
Station 133: 11 October 1873
A cosmopolitan cucumber
Neither blind nor sighted
A tale of two brothers
Snorkel starfish
11. Sixth Leg: The Southern Ocean, December 1873–April 1874
Sea serpent
Station 143: 19 December 1873
Cucumbers with legs
Station 147: 30 December 1873
Grenadiers and cutthroats
High pressure
Colossal
Station 149: 9–29 January 1874
The peculiar animals
Cabbage
Transit of Venus
Cold water
Salt water
Unnamed Station between 155 and 156: 24 February 1874
Ice
Termination Land
Diatom ooze
Spun Glass
A fierce sponge
False witnesses
The enigmatic tunic
12. Seventh Leg: The Coral Sea, June–September 1874
A precious clam
A shark with molars
Venus’ girdle
Double-bagged
Catch of the day
Pink paint
Shape-changers
Coins
Pearly king
The moral of the mudskipper
Jaws
Beauty and the beast
The lancelet
A deadly snail
Decorator crabs
The inverse hydra
13. Eighth Leg: The Sea of Islands, September 1874–January 1875
The garden of forking tubes
The sage of Ternate
The cage of thorns
Station 205: 13 November 1874
Eating wood
The change of command
14. Ninth Leg: The West Pacific Ocean, January–April 1875
Station 209: 22 January 1895
The glass hotel
Metamorphosis
A fierce scallop
The Challenger Deep
Huxley’s mistake
15. Tenth Leg: The North Pacific Ocean, May–July 1875
Knots in slime
The mop-headed animal
The bamboo grove
Diversity at depth
Small fry
An enigmatic polyp
16. Eleventh Leg: The Length of the Pacific Ocean, July–November
1875
The Admiralty worm
The beauty of the deep
More strange lumps
Glass mines
The death of a naturalist
Fire coral
The homeless crab
Whalefall
That sinking feeling
Plume and splash
Extraterrestrials
The waters above
The usual suspects
17. Twelfth Leg: The Patagonian Fjords, December 1875–February
1876
Animal forests
A very unexpected result
The angler
The espalier animals
18. Homeward Bound: February–May 1876
The vampire snail
The free rider
The last clam
Homecoming
PART 3. AFTER
19. What Happened to the Ship
20. What Happened to the People
The Death of Another Naturalist
The Challenger Medal
John Murray
The Other Scientists
Officers and Men
The End
21. What Happened to the Animals
A Takeover Bid
The Reports
Physics, Chemistry, and Politics
The New Zoology
The New Bodies
The New Way of Life
General Index
Index of Animals
Acknowledgments
I am extremely grateful for the help given by Lauren Williams and

the Rare Books Collection of McGill University in supplying high-
quality images from the Reports, which are the basis for the figures
in this book. I benefited greatly from visits to the Caird Library of the
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and the Foyle Reading Room
of the Royal Geographical Society in South Kensington.
A Note on Names and Units
I have avoided common names for animals wherever possible. The

reason is that they are rarely used in common speech. There are
exceptions, such as crab and starfish, but who would ever refer in
conversation to a comma shrimp or a sea lily? I have instead used
the zoological names (cumacean and crinoid, in this case), even
though they may be new terms to most readers, on the grounds that
any terms will be new and these are exact. It is a little like getting to
know the characters in a novel; the names themselves are not
important, but you need to know them to understand the plot. I
have explained the standard system for naming individual species in
the text (Station 106, 25 August 1873). The names of animals
sometimes change, however, and the names given in the
contemporary Reports may not correspond with those currently
accepted; I have taken the World Register of Marine Species
(WORMS) as being authoritative.
The most important quantity in the book is depth, which I have
given in fathoms, as in the original documents of the voyage. A
fathom is six feet, or about two meters. Multiplying the depth in
fathoms by two will give you the depth in meters, to an acceptable
approximation. Most distances are given in miles, about 1.6
kilometers, or nautical miles, somewhat more; the unit of velocity is
the knot, which is one nautical mile per hour or about 1.85
kilometers per hour. Other dimensions, of animals for example, are
given in whatever unit seems most appropriate; it may be useful to
recollect that one inch is about 25 millimeters and one foot about 30
centimeters. False precision is the enemy of understanding.
Introduction
If you’re the sort of person who reads introductions (which you are,
obviously), I thought you might like to know what this book is about
and how it came to be written. I teach biology at McGill University in
Montreal, including a rather old-fashioned course on zoology in
which I describe all the main groups of animals. Most of these live in
the sea. There are plenty of animals on land, of course, but almost
all of them are insects or vertebrates, plus a few snails and spiders.
Because there are many more different kinds of animal in the sea
than on land, I found myself preparing lectures by reading a lot
about marine biology, despite not being a proper marine biologist. It
was not long before I began to come across references to the
voyage of HMS Challenger, back in the 1870s, when many of these
animals were collected for the first time. It was obviously a famous
affair. The newspapers of the day printed progress reports, and the
officers were greeted by royalty, or at least the nearest local
equivalent, at many of the ports they visited. All this public attention
was because the voyage had a unique objective: it was a scientific
expedition to find out what (if anything) lived at the bottom of the
deep sea. Nobody knew for sure. Biologists had paddled at the edge
of the sea since Aristotle, but anything living deeper than the handle
of a net was for all practical purposes out of reach. A few animals
were brought up from time to time by fishing gear or ships’ anchors,
but otherwise the only people to visit the bottom of the sea were
dead sailors. The first sustained attempts to explore this unknown
world were not made until the Industrial Revolution was well under
way. When the Challenger expedition sailed in 1873, it was to make
the first systematic investigation of what lay beneath the surface of
the world’s oceans. Nobody knew what it would find. Anecdotes
aside, nobody was sure what covered the sea floor, or what lived
there, or even how deep it was. It was the Victorian equivalent of a
voyage to the surface of the moon.
The voyage was not particularly eventful, in fact. There were no
battles at sea, no shipwrecks, no mutinies to be quelled or pirates to
be fought off. It was fairly comfortable, at least by nineteenth-
century standards, and the crew were never reduced to eating rats
or boiled boot-leather. The scientists on board were very
distinguished, but their names and reputations have long since faded
into the Victorian mists. There were no women on board at all, no
affairs and no scandal. So what is there to write about? Not
surprisingly, most of the narrators have chosen to describe at length
the time spent on shore, especially the visits to exotic and unfamiliar
places, and tend to gloss over the time spent merely sailing from
one port to another. Their accounts make very interesting reading as
Victorian travelogues, but it seemed to me that something was
missing—such as the main point of the expedition, the animals that
it found in the deep sea.
That’s why I began to make notes about the animals that had
been discovered during the expedition, and then to trace the voyage
on a very large map, and then to scrutinize the species lists for each
station, and by then it was too late; at some point it became easier
to write the book than not. But why are the animals so important?
Well, I suppose that for convenience you might recognize three
kinds of animal: there are those you can see, on land and in shallow
water; there are those you can’t see, because they are too small;
and then there are those you can’t see because they are hidden
from sight in deep water. The first kind is familiar to us all; the
second kind was discovered by the early microscopists; and the third
kind was discovered by the Challenger expedition. Most of the
species captured from the deep sea during the expedition had never
been seen before, either by scientists or by anyone else. The
expedition did not merely lengthen the catalog of living animals, but,
much more than that, added a whole new volume to accommodate
the hidden fauna of half the world.
There are people on the stage too, of course, especially the
scientists on board. Their leader was the portly and somewhat
pompous Charles Wyville Thomson, accompanied by Henry Moseley,
who always seems a little raffish; the saturnine chemist John Young
Buchanan; and the earnest student Rudolf von Willemoes-Söhm,
who was drafted more or less by accident. John Murray belongs in a
separate sentence as the ablest of them, the deepest thinker, the
hardest worker, and the only one of them to turn a profit from the
voyage. Then there were the officers: the two captains, George
Nares and Frank Thomson; John Maclear and Tom Tizard, who did
most of the navigating; the aristocratic lieutenant Lord George
Campbell, who left the raciest account of the voyage; his junior
Herbert Swire, who left the grumpiest account but unfortunately
bowdlerized it at the last minute; and all the others needed to work
a naval ship. There were also 200 or so anonymous seamen in the
background, which is where they stay, as usual, with the peculiar
exception of Assistant Steward Henry Matkin, whose letters home
have survived and give us a rare glimpse of life on the lower deck.
The voyage itself is the thread on which the animals are strung as
we pass from station to station across the oceans for nearly 80,000
miles. I have given short shrift to the visits on shore, which can be
read about in other books, but to spare the reader I have also
omitted a lot of technical stuff about currents and sediments that
seemed to me less than gripping. What remains is the animals
themselves, including the ugliest fish in the world, flesh-eating
clams, dwarf males, sea devils, and an octopus that wears lipstick. I
hope that you will be as fascinated by these strange creatures of the
deep sea as I have been, as we follow HMS Challenger on her long
and complicated voyage around the world.
PART 1
BEFORE
1
The Deep Sea
Mudskippers are small, popeyed fish that hop around on beaches in

the tropics, foraging for anything that crawls just above the high-tide
mark. They are on the land but not of the land, so to speak, tourists
rather than residents, who can venture no further than the
mangrove roots. We are mudskippers in reverse, familiar enough
with the bright rim of the sea and occasionally venturing a little
further with mask and snorkel, but unable to leave the shore without
the sort of technology that mudskippers lack. Even with our best
technology, however, we are no more than tourists on an extended
visit. The mudskipper sees the beach and the fringe of the forest,
but cannot imagine mountain, desert, and river. We see the shore
and the reef without realizing that a mile or two beyond lies a very
different place, in which none of the rules by which we are
accustomed to live our lives hold any more.
If you could walk directly into the sea, through the surf and away
from the land, you would be likely to descend a gentle slope for two
or three days. The water over your head would gradually become
deeper, until the surface was about 200 meters above, say two
average city blocks away. About this time the gradient would begin
to increase, and soon you are walking quite steeply downhill, with
the surface rapidly receding. The sediment beneath your feet will
thicken as you approach the edge of the continent, where the soil
and debris washed from the land eventually accumulates. At the end
of a long day’s walk the gradient eases and you stride out onto a
prairie that stretches away into the far distance, flat and featureless,
or sometimes with rolling hills or even studded with sudden abrupt
mountains. The surface is now quite far away, not mere city blocks
but the whole downtown core of a large city distant from where you
stand. You have arrived at the edge of the abyssal plain. The details
of your walk will vary according to where you start out, and might be
quite different if you begin in eastern Canada and walk into the
Atlantic, say, or in western Canada and walk into the North Pacific.
In either case, though, you will eventually reach the abyssal plain,
where the last of the land has been left behind and nothing is
familiar.
To begin with, it is dark. If water were as transparent as air, every
detail of the bed of the sea would be as clear as the hills and valleys
seen from an airplane. But water seems transparent only in small
quantities, in a glass or a bath. You can see pebbles and fish 100
feet down in water as pure as Georgian Bay or the Sulu Sea, but
beyond this light fades even in the purest seas. Beyond the sunlit
zone, just a few hundred feet down, there is no light. It is always
nighttime, but darker than night; the darkness is absolute and
perpetual, without sun or moon or stars. Without sunlight, there are
no forests or meadows, but in their place a vast bare plain, relieved
only by the occasional thicket of sponges or gorgonians. Without
forests and meadows, there are no plants to eat, but instead only
the rain of dead bodies from the lighted zone, a perpetual thin snow
of bacteria, fecal pellets, and unfamiliar organisms such as
coccolithophores and copepods, chaetognaths and ctenophores, with
the occasional plunging body of a dead whale or shark.
It is also very cold; it is always winter in the depths of the sea.
The water is everywhere cold, as cold as snow melt, although it
never freezes. It is very calm, far from surf, wave, and tide, stirred
only by an almost imperceptible current. There are ridges and
ravines in some places, but most of the seabed is flat or gently
sloping and floored with an impalpable ooze long smoothed by
gravity. The pressure of the long column of water is crushing. Each
10 meters of water adds one atmosphere of pressure, and in the
deep sea the pressure is 100 times, or more, what we are
accustomed to on land. A can of beans would implode; a strong
steel safe, carefully sealed, would be bent and buckled; wood is
crushed, so that knots stand proud of the surface.
Deep water is not just different but different in kind from the
edge of the sea, just as deep space and deep time cannot be
understood by simply extrapolating from mundane scales. At first
glance, the abyssal plain might seem to be a hostile and extreme
environment, where darkness, cold, dearth, and pressure reach their
limits in the ocean. And yet it is by no means an exceptional
environment. Quite the contrary: abyssal plains cover a little more
than half the surface of the Earth. Far from being the exception,
they are the rule: they form by far the largest habitat by area, and
the waters immediately above them form by far the largest habitat
by volume. Despite their vast extent, we know very little about
them. Nobody can live down there, of course, and even a brief visit
requires specially built vessels that only a rich country can afford.
Remotely operated vehicles and cameras have been used in recent
years to peer into the deep sea, but even today only a few percent
has yet been explored. Two hundred years ago we knew nothing at
all beyond a few anecdotes. In particular, we knew nothing of the
animals that live there, not even whether there were any. Now we
know that animals do live in the deep sea, but most are of unfamiliar
kinds, or strangely altered versions of familiar kinds. None of them
had ever been seen by human eyes, and they lived as they had lived
for long ages, unknown, untaken, and secure from our prying gaze—
until 1872.
2
Edward Forbes
It all goes back to Forbes, eventually, or at least I think it does.

Edward Forbes. His name is not much remembered nowadays, and
his reputation has been thoroughly plowed under by modern
commentators. You might say, quite fairly, that he had only two big
ideas, and one of them was wrong. In his defense, having even one
big idea that is scientifically credible is far from commonplace—his
detractors have not managed one yet—and his errors were more
fruitful than a hundred narrow truths. Here is how it all began.
On the evening of 23 February 1844 Edward Forbes read a paper
at the meeting of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, now the
Royal Society of Edinburgh. It was about dredging. This is not a very
promising subject; it sounds somewhere between “dreadful” and
“grudging.” It is not a very romantic operation, either, at least on the
face of it. A dredge is a net attached to a rigid frame, towed along
the seabed for a while before being brought onboard for its contents
to be examined. Pause for a while to consider: you are in a small
boat on a rough sea, pulling on a couple of hundred feet of slimy
rope to bring in a net full of mud. It is not an enchanting prospect.
Well, put it another way. Most of the Earth’s surface is under sea,
and its inhabitants are unknown and inaccessible to the creatures
who live on the land. Forbes’s feeble scratchings were the first
systematic attempt to find out what creatures lived far, far below the
surface of the sea.
Forbes was born at Douglas on the Isle of Man in the Waterloo
year of 1815, and he spent the first 15 years of his life there. He
seldom attended school and instead passed his time poking around
in the local bogs and beaches, a naturalist in the making. By the age
of 16 he was familiar with the fauna of the island and had even
visited an offshore bank where the fishermen used a dredge to bring
up scallops together, inevitably, with a variety of other animals. At
this point he left home for Edinburgh, where he was intended to
take a medical degree at the university. He could scarcely have
chosen better. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
the Scottish universities, Edinburgh and Glasgow in particular, led a
new revival of learning, at a time when Oxford and Cambridge were
moribund. They produced a crowd of illustrious names: David Hume
in philosophy, Adam Smith in economics, James Boswell in literature,
Joseph Black in chemistry, James Hutton in geology, Colin Maclaurin
in mathematics, and a host of others. Forbes had come, not to a
provincial college, but to the New Athens.
As a young man, Forbes was somewhat slight in build; he was
clean-shaven and wore his hair long, almost to his shoulders. His
face was lean and saturnine with a slightly melancholic cast and
rather protuberant eyes. Nevertheless, he had a cheerful disposition
and made many fast friends, including John Goodsir, who shared his
interest in marine life and sailed with him many times when they
were students together. His letters and manuscripts are sprinkled
with humorous sketches and comic songs; he seems to have been a
congenial companion and a “wine-bibber,” as he refers to himself in
a letter to his brother. He was also clearly an active and vigorous
man, well able to handle a small boat in a rough sea. Yet there was
some physical frailty that led to recurrent serious illness. He was
kept at home until he was 11 years old by his parents, because of
some childhood illness or indisposition, and later had two alarming
episodes, a high fever that kept him in bed for over a week at sea
far from medical help, and later an attack of scarlet fever, a serious
matter in the days before antibiotics, while fossil-hunting in Dorset.
He was enrolled in the medical school, which at that time could
claim to be one of the foremost scientific institutions in Europe. It
didn’t take. He seems to have dutifully attended the lectures of the
medical curriculum, but his heart was not in it, and he eventually
abandoned his studies without taking a degree. What he did not
abandon was his enthusiasm for natural history. One of his
professors was Robert Jameson, the Regius Professor of natural
history for almost the entire first half of the nineteenth century.
Jameson’s most famous pupil was Charles Darwin, who found his
lectures tedious, but his most dedicated pupil was Edward Forbes,
who didn’t, and who was, in the end, destined to be his successor.
Jameson was a museum man, in the days when the principal goal of
the biologist was to collect and catalog as many specimens as
possible, in order to fill out the plan of the world and thereby to
discover the mind of God. Forbes was himself a collector from his
earliest youth and must have found this congenial; at all events, he
turned away from his medical studies to concentrate more and more
on natural history.
In May 1832 Forbes hired a boat and went dredging in the Firth
of Forth, before attending Jameson’s lectures. Two years later, in the
summer of 1834, he again went dredging, this time on a bank off
the coast of the Isle of Man. He was working in relatively shallow
water—20 fathoms or so—perhaps because of the limitations of his
gear, but nevertheless far beyond the range of any shore-haunting
naturalist. He was not the first to dredge offshore: Otto Muller had
dredged in deeper water in the Norwegian fjords as early as the
1770s, and indeed Forbes used a dredge based on Muller’s design.
Nevertheless, Forbes’s tentative trials with primitive gear mark the
beginning of an organized and concerted effort to find out what lived
on the sea floor. He made detailed notes of the animals he found,
mostly limpets, snails, and brittle stars, but also a crinoid that
surprised and disappointed him by promptly disarticulating itself.
(We shall meet crinoids later; they are not animals that a shore-
borne naturalist would ever come across.) He published his results in
a respectable scientific journal, the Magazine of Natural History, with
detailed descriptions of the animals he found and the conditions in
which they lived. He was, in short, beginning to carve out a career
for himself and, in doing so, to point biology in a new direction.
It is not obvious now how such a mundane activity as towing a
net along the bottom of the sea should be such a novel idea. At the
time, however, we knew almost nothing about the animals that lived
on the seabed far from land. The mirror of the sea concealed them
from us. Sailors and fishermen knew something of what swam in the
upper waters of the ocean, but their knowledge of the depths was
confined to what was brought up on the wax of the sounding lead. It
was as though, reversing the roles, we had evolved as marine
creatures, able to explore the intertidal zone, but knowing nothing of
what lay beyond except for a few blurred glimpses of beach or cliff.
Forbes broke the mirror of the sea and began the first systematic
exploration of an unknown world.
Forbes relinquished his medical studies at Edinburgh (by the
simple expedient of failing his exams) and after 1834 turned his
attention exclusively to natural history. At the same time, he began
to mature from a rather reclusive young man into an outgoing and
influential member of the scientific community. In August 1836 he
traveled to Bristol (not an easy journey from Edinburgh, then as
now) to attend the annual meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, where he found himself in the company of
most of the leading British scientists of the day, together with many
of their younger colleagues. He found their company very congenial
—so much so, indeed, that he attended every subsequent meeting
(except when he was out of the country) for the rest of his life.
Every year, he presented a report of his researches, soon became
secretary of Division D (Zoology and Botany), and, in short, became
widely known and respected among his peers. Forbes was a coming
man.
The trouble was, Forbes had no job; nothing that paid a salary.
He was, in fact, supported by his father, a successful banker in
Douglas, and otherwise had no income of his own. He went on a
couple of summer cruises, paid for by grants from the British
Association, but he must have been relieved when his application to
join the survey ship HMS Beacon as naturalist was accepted. From
early in 1841 to the summer of 1842 he cruised in the Aegean and
made use of the opportunity to develop his ideas about the
distribution of animals in the sea, with all the assistance provided by
a naval vessel. He caught plenty of animals in the dredge, and
noticed that each interval of depth was inhabited by a characteristic
set of species. He concluded that animal communities occupy
distinct zones in the sea, comparable with the zonation that can
readily be seen between the tidemarks. He also noticed that animals
as a whole became fewer and less diverse at greater depths. Not
content with a superficial impression, he plotted animal abundance
against depth and then extrapolated the plot to zero abundance,
marking the depth below which, he predicted, no animals would be
found. This was a very early and very clever use of quantitative
analysis in ecology, and led him to the conclusion that the limit of
animal life in the sea lay at about 300 fathoms. This was Forbes’s
“azoic hypothesis,” which had a great influence on the planning of
future dredging expeditions. It has been ridiculed by modern
commentators, who point out that there were previous reports of
animals from much greater depths: John Ross, for example, had
recovered starfish and tubeworms from 1,000 fathoms in the Arctic
as early as 1818. It seems to me that this criticism misses the point.
These previous reports were anecdotes, not the result of systematic
surveys. They were poorly documented; estimates of depth were
unreliable; and a few stragglers would not substantially alter
Forbes’s conclusion anyway. There were comparable anecdotes of
sea-serpents, after all, some from witnesses of unimpeachable
authority on board naval ships. Forbes was wrong, as a matter of
fact—the Aegean has an exceptionally scanty fauna—but his
argument was sound and his hypothesis eminently testable.
It was a brilliantly successful cruise that furnished him with the
two leading ideas for which he is remembered, but it ended with
catastrophic news from home. His father had flourished, as bankers
do, but was now ruined, as bankers sometimes are. His remittances
were at an end, and he was forced to abandon plans for a further
cruise to the Red Sea and instead return to London and find a job.
He began as curator in charge of the museum of the Geological
Society of London in Craig’s Court, a very curious blind alley a few
yards from Trafalgar Square. Most fortunately, the professorship of
botany at King’s College London also fell vacant at this time, and
(with a little help from his friends) Forbes secured this appointment
too. The problem was that these positions, although they were his
entrée into professional science, and certainly kept him very busy,
did not pay very much; only enough together to keep him in
stirabout and water-porridge, as he put it. To put butter in his
porridge, he moved to the Geological Survey as the head of
paleontology in 1844. He was now self-sufficient (especially because
he kept his position at King’s), and began to clamber further up the
academic ladder, soon being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
and giving lectures at the Royal Institution and later at the newly
created School of Mines. He organized moving the collections of the
Geological Society, which had outgrown their original site, to the
new Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, which was
opened by Prince Albert in the Exhibition year of 1851. (In 1935 they
were moved again to the Geological Museum, now part of the
Natural History Museum, in South Kensington.) His dredging days
were over, though, it seemed, and he applied himself mainly to other
subjects. He did go on one last summer cruise in the Atlantic in
1850, but after this he turned more toward geology and
paleontology, with great thoroughness, but, I think, rather less
enthusiasm and originality. His great opportunity to go back to his
early love came in the spring of 1854, when Robert Jameson died in
Edinburgh and his Regius Chair became vacant. Forbes was hustled
into it by May 1854 (I think Huxley was the prime mover) and was
free to return to dredging, where he had begun his career in
science.
Forbes had now reached his zenith. He had secured one of the
most prestigious positions in his field in the country; he was on
cordial terms with Charles Lyell, Henry Huxley, and Charles Darwin;
he had a growing family—he had married in 1848—and a fresh start
in research. He was at the forefront of modern thinking about
biology: a few years previously he had given a lecture at the Royal
Institution with the potentially controversial title “Have new Species
of Organized Beings appeared since the Creation of Man?” His
answer was “no,” but he was very close to showing that a steady
stream of new species had come into being during geological time.
In four years’ time, Darwin and Wallace would publish the first
account of evolution by natural selection, with On the Origin of
Species appearing in the following year. There is no doubt that
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“You have certainly been misinformed,” said she; “you are
welcome to search the house, but be assured you will find no such
men here.”
“Come, come, my little fair un, that is all in my eye and Betty
Martin. Here they are, this is certain, and we are determined to make
our quarters good till we find them out;” and away they went to
search the other apartments of the house.
Meanwhile our charming little protectress, alarmed at the
threatened siege, and fearing that we would be starved into a
surrender, took the opportunity, while the gang were rummaging the
parlour and some other bedrooms, to supply our garrison with
provisions. A basket with boiled ham, a couple of capons, a
household loaf of ample dimensions, half-a-dozen of brown stout,
the family bottle of excellent stingo, and a can of water, were
expeditiously handed up the vent. This supply set our minds quite at
ease, as we knew it would enable us to stand a week’s close siege. Our
patience, however, was not put to this trial, for the gang, after a two
hours’ vigilant search, abandoned their pursuit in despair, and
departed.
We could not, of course, think of venturing up to Bristol to look
after our wages, so we employed our landlord to perform this duty.
After a good many vexatious delays, we succeeded in getting our
money, paid off all scores, and began to think how we were to
dispose of ourselves. My companion Lindsay was so deeply smitten
with the charms of one of the youthful sirens, that he found it
impossible to depart; and I had to concert all my future projects
alone, and leave him bound in Cupid’s silken chain.
My blue jacket and fringed dimity trousers, my check shirt and
scarlet vest, were at once discarded, and their places supplied by
articles of a more landward appearance. I knew that it would be
impossible to travel the country safely in seaman’s dress, so I
determined to try my fortune as a beau. The body of Bill Bobstay
incased in a ruffled shirt, silk vest, white stockings, breeches
buttoned at the knees, and a swallow-tailed coat, presented such a
curious spectacle, that he himself could scarcely help laughing at it,
and it seemed to produce the same effects on the landlord’s
daughter, as she with a witching smile chucked up my chin, until she
arranged the bights and ends of my white neckcloth, according to the
most approved form. She took as long to perform this little office as I
could have rigged in toto, and seamen are never backward in acts of
courtesy, when the ladies are concerned. Her ruby lips were all the
while within marlingspike’s length of my own, and how could I avoid
saluting them?
Thus equipped, I set out on foot for Bath, but as I had no business
to perform in that city of invalided nabobs, I immediately took coach
for London, and after travelling all night, I, on awaking from a short
nap, found myself rattling over the stones at Hyde Park corner.
My object was to procure a passage to the northward, in one of the
Leith or Berwick smacks, and I expected in eight or ten days, after an
absence of as many years, to set foot once more on my native soil. As
soon therefore as the coach stopped in Piccadilly, I alighted, and
knowing the bearing by compass of London Bridge, I, without
waiting to breakfast, winded my way through the Haymarket, past
Charing Cross, along the Strand, Fleet Street, and Ludgate Hill, till I
arrived at St Paul’s. From this point I took a fresh departure, and
holding as nearly as cross streets would admit, a south-easterly
course, gained Thames Street, and soon found myself in the vicinity
of the Tower.
Smartly as I had moved my body along, my imagination, as is
usual with me, had got a long way a-head. It had obtained a passage,
secured a fair wind, landed me on the pier of Leith, and was
arranging my introductory visit to my friends, so as to produce the
greatest sum of agreeable surprise. But there is much, says the old
proverb, between the cup and the lip. In the midst of this agreeable
reverie, as I was crossing Tower Hill, I found myself tapped on the
shoulder, and on looking round, was accosted by a man in seaman’s
dress in the words, “What ship?” I assumed an air of gravity and
surprise, and told him I apprehended he was under some mistake, as
my business did not lie among shipping. But the fellow was too well
acquainted with his business to be thus easily put off. He gave a
whistle, the sound of which still vibrates in my ear, and in a moment
I was surrounded by half-a-dozen ruffians, whom I immediately
suspected, and soon found out to be the press-gang. They dragged
me hurriedly through several lanes and alleys, amid the mingled
sympathy and execrations of a numerous crowd, which had collected
to witness my fate, and soon landed me in the rendezvous. I was
immediately ushered into the presence of the lieutenant of the gang,
who questioned me as to my name, country, profession, and what
business had led me to Tower Hill. Totally unexpecting any such
interruption, I had not thought of concocting any plausible story, and
my answers were evasive and contradictory. I did not acknowledge
having been at sea; but my hands were examined, found hard with
work, and discoloured with tar. This circumstance condemned me,
and I was remanded for further examination.
Some of the gang then offered me spirits, affected to pity me, and
pretended to comfort me under my misfortune, but like the
comforters of Job, miserable comforters were they all. The very
scoundrel who first seized me put on a sympathising look, and
observed what a pity it was to be disappointed when so near the
object of my wishes. Such sympathy from such a source was truly
provoking; but having no way of showing my resentment, I was
constrained to smother it.
In a short time I was reconducted into the presence of the
lieutenant, who told me, as I was already in his hands, and would
assuredly be kept, I might as well make a frank confession of my
circumstances. It would save time, and insure me better treatment.
What could I do? I might indeed have continued silent and sullen,
but of what service could this prove? It might, or might not, have
procured me worse treatment, but one thing I knew well, it would
not restore me to liberty. I therefore acknowledged that I had been a
voyage to the West Indies, and had come home carpenter of a ship.
His eye brightened at this intelligence.
“I am glad of this, my lad. We are very much in want of carpenters.
Step along with these lads, and they will give you a passage aboard.”
The same fellows who had first seized me led me along the way we
came, handed me into a pinnace lying at Tower Wharf, and before
mid-day I was safely handed on board the Enterprize.
What crosses and vexations, and reverses and disappointments,
are we mortals destined to meet with in life’s tempestuous voyage! At
eight in the morning I entered London a free agent, elated with joy,
and buoyed up with hope. At noon I entered a prison ship, a
miserable slave, oppressed with sorrow, and ready to despair.
Despair, did I say? No. I will have nothing to do with that disturber
of human peace. When misfortune befalls us, we are not to sit down
in despondency and sigh. Up and be doing, is the wise man’s maxim,
and it was the maxim I was resolved to observe. What befell me on
my arrival on board the Enterprize, what reception I met with, and
what mirth I excited as I was lowered into the press-room, with my
short breeches and swallow-tailed coat—what measures I exerted to
regain my liberty, and what success attended these measures—the
space at my disposal prevents me setting forth.—Paisley Magazine.
THE LAIRD OF COOL’S GHOST.
Upon the 3d day of February 1722 at seven o’clock in the evening,

after I had parted with Thurston, and coming up the burial road, one
came up riding after me. Upon hearing the noise of the horse’s feet, I
took it to be Thurston; but looking back, and seeing the horse of a
gray colour, I called, “Who’s there?” The answer was, “The Laird of
Cool; be not afraid.” Looking to him with the little light the moon
afforded, I took him to be Collector Castlelaw, who had a mind to put
a trick upon me, and immediately I struck with all my force with my
cane, thinking I would leave a mark upon him that would make him
remember his presumption; but although sensible I aimed as well as
ever I did in my life, yet my cane finding no resistance, but flying out
of my hand to the distance of sixty feet, and observing it by its white
head, I dismounted and took it up, but had some difficulty in
mounting again, partly by reason of a certain sort of trembling
throughout my whole joints, something also of anger had its share in
my confusion; for though he laughed when my staff flew out of my
hand, coming up with him again (who halted all the time I was
seeking my staff), I asked him once more who he was? He answered,
“The Laird of Cool.” I inquired, first, if he was the Laird of Cool;
secondly, what brought him thither? and thirdly, what was his
business with me? He answered, “The reason that I want you is, that
I know you are disposed to do for me what none of your brethren in
Nithsdale will so much as attempt, though it serve never so good a
purpose.” I told him I would never refuse to do anything to serve a
good purpose, if I thought I was obliged to do it as my duty. He
answered, that I had undertaken what few in Nithsdale would, for he
had tried several persons on that subject, who were more obliged to
him than I was to any person living. Upon this I drew my bridle
reins, and asked in surprise, what I had undertaken? He answered,
“That on Sabbath last, I heard you condemned Mr Paton, and the
other ministers of Dumfries, for dissuading Mr Menzies from
keeping his appointment with me; and if you had been in their place,
would have persuaded the lad to do as I desired, and that you would
have gone with him yourself, if he had been afraid; and if you had
been in Mr Paton’s place, you would have delivered my commissions
yourself, as they tended to do several persons justice.” I asked him,
“Pray, Cool, who informed you that I talked at that rate?” to which he
answered, “You must know that we are acquainted with many things
that the living know nothing about; these things you did say, and
much more to that purpose, and deliver my commissions to my
loving wife.” Upon this I said, “’Tis a pity, Cool, that you who know so
many things should not know the difference between an absolute and
conditional promise; I did, indeed, at the time you mention, blame
Mr Paton, for I thought him justly blamable, in hindering the lad to
meet with you, and if I had been in his place, I would have acted
quite the reverse; but I did never say, that if you would come to
Innerwick and employ me, that I would go all the way to Dumfries on
such an errand; that is what never so much as entered into my
thoughts.” He answered, “What were your thoughts I don’t pretend
to know, but I can depend on my information these were your words.
But I see you are in some disorder; I will wait upon you when you
have more presence of mind.”
By this time we were at James Dickson’s enclosure, below the
churchyard; and when I was recollecting in my mind, if ever I had
spoken these words he alleged, he broke off from me through the
churchyard, with greater violence than any man on horseback is
capable of, with such a singing and buzzing noise, as put me in
greater disorder than I was in all the time I was with him. I came to
my house, and my wife observed more than ordinary paleness in my
countenance, and alleged that something ailed me. I called for a
dram, and told her I was a little uneasy. After I found myself a little
refreshed, I went to my closet to meditate on this most astonishing
adventure.
Upon the 5th of March 1722, being at Harehead, baptizing the
shepherd’s child, I came off about sunsetting, and near William
White’s march, the Laird of Cool came up with me as formerly; and
after his first salutation bade me not be afraid. I told him I was not in
the least afraid, in the name of God and Christ my Saviour, that he
would do me the least harm; for I knew that He in whom I trusted
was stronger than all they put together; and if any of them should
attempt to do, even to the horse that I ride upon, as you have done to
Doctor Menzies’ man, I have free access to complain to my Lord and
Master, to the lash to whose resentment you are as liable now as
before.
Cool. You need not multiply words on that head, for you are safe
with me; and safer, if safer can be, than when I was alive.
Ogil. Well then, Cool, let me have a peaceable and easy
conversation with you for the time we ride together, and give me
some information concerning the affairs of the other world, for no
man inclines to lose his time in conversing with the dead, without
hearing or learning something useful.
Cool. Well, sir, I will satisfy you as far as I think proper and
convenient. Let me know what information you want.
Ogil. May I then ask you, if you be in a state of happiness or not?
Cool. There are a great many things I can answer that the living are
ignorant of; there are a great many things that, notwithstanding the
additional knowledge I have acquired since my death, I cannot
answer; and there are a great many questions you may start, of which
the last is one that I will not answer.
Ogil. Then I know how to manage our conversation; whatever I
inquire of you, I see you can easily shift me; to that I might profit
more by conversing with myself.
Cool. You may try.
Ogil. Well, then, what sort of a body is that you appear in; and
what sort of a horse is that you ride upon, which appears to be so full
of mettle?
Cool. You may depend upon it, it is not the same body that I was
witness to your marriage in, nor in which I died, for that is in the
grave rotting; but it is such a body as serves me in a moment, for I
can fly as fleet with it as my soul can do without it; so that I can go to
Dumfries, and return again, before you can ride twice the length of
your horse; nay, if I have a mind to go to London, or Jerusalem, or to
the moon, if you please, I can perform all these journeys equally
soon, for it costs me nothing but a thought or wish: for this body is as
fleet as your thought, for in the moment of time you can turn your
thoughts on Rome, I can go there in person; and as for my horse, he
is much like myself, for he is Andrew Johnston, my tenant, who died
forty-eight hours before me.
Ogil. So it seems when Andrew Johnston inclines to ride, you must
serve him in the quality of a horse, as he does you now.
Cool. You are mistaken.
Ogil. I thought that all distinctions between mistresses and maids,
lairds and tenants, had been done away at death.
Cool. True it is, but you do not take up the matter.
Ogil. This is one of the questions you won’t answer.
Cool. You are mistaken, for the question I can answer, and after
you may understand it.
Ogil. Well then, Cool, have you never yet appeared before God, nor
received any sentence from Him as a Judge?
Cool. Never yet.
Ogil. I know you was a scholar, Cool, and ’tis generally believed
there is a private judgment, besides the general at the great day, the
former immediately after death. Upon this he interrupted me,
arguing.
Cool. No such thing, no such thing! No trial; no trial till the great
day! The heaven which good men enjoy after death consists only in
the serenity of their minds, and the satisfaction of a good conscience;
and the certain hopes they have of eternal joy, when that day shall
come. The punishment or hell of the wicked, immediately after
death, consists in the stings of an awakened conscience, and the
terrors of facing the great Judge, and the sensible apprehensions of
eternal torments ensuing! And this bears still a due proportion to the
evils they did when living. So indeed the state of some good folks
differ but little in happiness from what they enjoyed in the world,
save only that they are free from the body, and the sins and sorrows
that attended it. On the other hand, there are some who may be said
rather not to have been good, than that they are wicked; while living,
their state is not easily distinguished from that of the former; and
under that class comes a great herd of souls—a vast number of
ignorant people, who have not much minded the affairs of eternity,
but at the same time have lived in much indolence, ignorance, and
innocence.
Ogil. I thought that their rejecting the terms of salvation offered
was sufficient ground for God to punish them with eternal
displeasure; and as to their ignorance, that could never excuse them,
since they live in a place of the world where the true knowledge of
these things might have been easily attained.
Cool. They never properly rejected the terms of salvation; they
never, strictly speaking, rejected Christ; poor souls, they had as great
a liking both to Him and heaven, as their gross imaginations were
capable of. Impartial reason must make many allowances, as the
stupidity of their parents, want of education, distance from people of
good sense and knowledge, and the uninterrupted applications they
were obliged to give to their secular affairs for their daily bread, the
impious treachery of their pastors, who persuaded them, that if they
were of such a party all was well; and many other considerations
which God, who is pure and perfect reason itself, will not overlook.
These are not so much under the load of Divine displeasure, as they
are out of His grace and favour; and you know it is one thing to be
discouraged, and quite another thing to be persecuted with all the
power and rage of an incensed earthly king. I assure you, men’s faces
are not more various and different in the world, than their
circumstances are after death.
Ogil. I am loath to believe all that you have said at this time, Cool
(but I will not dispute those matters with you), because some things
you have advanced seem to contradict the Scriptures, which I shall
always look upon as the infallible truth of God. For I find, in the
parable of Dives and Lazarus, that the one was immediately after
death carried up by the angels into Abraham’s bosom, and the other
immediately thrust down to hell.
Cool. Excuse me, sir, that does not contradict one word that I have
said; but you seem not to understand the parable, whose only end is
to illustrate the truth, that a man may be very happy and flourishing
in this world, and wretched and miserable in the next; and that a
man maybe miserable in this world, and happy and glorious in the
next.
Ogil. Be it so, Cool, I shall yield that point to you, and pass to
another, which has afforded me much speculation since our last
encounter; and that is, How you came to know that I talked after the
manner that I did concerning Mr Paton, on the first Sabbath of
February last? Was you present with me, but invisible? He answered
very haughtily, No, sir, I was not present myself. I answered, I would
not have you angry, Cool. I proposed this question for my own
satisfaction; but if you don’t think proper to answer, let it pass. After
he had paused, with his eyes on the ground, for three or four minutes
of time at most, with some haste and seeming cheerfulness, he says—
Cool. Well, sir, I will satisfy you in that point. You must know that
there are sent from heaven angels to guard and comfort, and to do
other good services to good people, and even the spirits of good men
departed are employed in that errand.
Ogil. And do you not think that every man has a good angel?
Cool. No, but a great many particular men have: there are but few
houses of distinction especially, but what have at least one attending
them; and from what you have already heard of spirits, it is no
difficult matter to understand how they may be serviceable to each
particular member, though at different places at a great distance.
Many are the good offices which the good angels do to them that fear
God, though many times they are not sensible of it: and I know
assuredly, that one powerful angel, or even an active clever soul
departed, may be sufficient for some villages; but for your great
cities, such as London, Edinburgh, or the like, there is one great
angel that has the superintendence of the whole; and there are
inferior angels, or souls departed, to whose particular care such a
man, of such a particular weight or business, is committed. Now, sir,
the kingdom of Satan does ape the kingdom of Christ as much in
matters of politics as can be, well knowing that the court of wisdom
is from above; so that from thence are sent out missionaries in the
same order. But because the kingdom of Satan is much better
replenished than the other, instead of one devil there are in many
instances two or three commissioned to attend a particular family of
influence and distinction.
Ogil. I read that there are ten thousand times ten thousand of
angels that wait upon God, and sing His praise and do His will; and I
cannot understand how the good angels can be inferior in number to
the evil.
Cool. Did not I say, that whatever the number be, the spirits
departed are employed in the same business; so that as to the
number of original deities, whereof Satan is chief, I cannot
determine, but you need not doubt but there are more souls departed
in that place, which in a loose sense you call hell, by almost an
infinity, than what are gone to that place, which, in a like sense, you
call heaven, which likewise are employed in the same purpose; and I
can assure you that there is as great a difference between angels,
both good and bad, as there is among men, with respect to their
sense, knowledge, cunning, cleverness, and action; nay, which is
more, the departed souls on both sides outdo severals, from their
very first departure, of the original angels. This you will perhaps
think a paradox, but is true.
Ogil. I do not doubt it; but what is that to my question, about
which I am solicitous?
Cool. Take a little patience, sir; from what I have said you might
have understood me, if you had your thoughts about you; but I shall
explain myself to you. Both the good and the bad angels have stated
times of rendezvous, and the principal angels, who have the charge
either of towns, cities, or kingdoms, not to mention particular
persons, villages, and families, and all that is transacted in these
several parts of the country, are there made open; and at their re-
encounter on each side, every thing is told, as in your parish, in
milns, kilns, and smithies, with this difference, that many things
false are talked at the living re-encounters, but nothing but what is
exact truth is said or told among the dead; only I must observe to
you, that, as I am credibly informed, several of the inferior bad
angels, and souls of wicked men departed, have told many things
that they have done, and then when a more intelligent spirit is sent
out upon inquiry, and the report of the former seeming doubtful, he
brings in a contrary report, and makes it appear truth, the former
fares very ill: nevertheless their regard to truth prevents it; for while
they observe the truth, they do their business and keep their station,
for God is truth.
Ogil. So much truth being among the good angels, I am apt to
think that lies and falsehood will be as much in vogue among the
bad.
Cool. A gross mistake, and it is not alone the mistake which the
living folks fall under with respect to the other world; for the case
plainly is this: an ill man will not stick at a falsehood to promote his
design; as little will an evil soul departed stop at anything that can
make himself successful; but in admitting report he must tell the
truth, or woe be to him. But besides their monthly, quarterly, or
yearly meetings, or whatever they be, departed souls acquainted may
take a trip to see one another yearly, weekly, daily, or oftener, if they
please. Thus, then, I answer your question that you was so much
concerned about; for my information was from no less than three
persons, viz., Aikman, who attends Thurston’s family; James Corbet,
who waits upon Mr Paton; for at that time he was then looking after
Mrs Sarah Paton, who was at your house, and an original emissary
appointed to wait upon yours.
At this I was much surprised, and after a little thinking, I asked
him, And is their really, Cool, an emissary from hell, in whatever
sense you take it, that attends my family?
Cool. You may depend upon it.
Ogil. And what do you think is his business?
Cool. To divert you from your duty, and cause you to do as many ill
things as he can; for much depends on having the minister on their
side.
Upon this I was struck with a sort of terror, which I cannot account
for. In the meantime he said several things I did not understand. But
after coming to my former presence of mind, said—
Ogil. But, Cool, tell me, in earnest, if there be a devil that attends
my family, though invisible.
Cool. Just as sure as you are breathing; but be not so much
dejected upon this information, for I tell you likewise that there is a
good angel who attends you, who is stronger than the other.
Ogil. Are you sure of that, Cool?
Cool. Yes; there is one riding on your right hand, who might as
well have been elsewhere, for I meant you no harm.
Ogil. And how long has he been with me?
Cool. Only since we passed Brand’s Lee, but now he is gone.
Ogil. We are just upon Elenscleugh, and I desire to part with you,
though perhaps I have gained more by conversation than I could
have otherwise done in a twelvemonth. I choose rather to see you
another time, when you’re at leisure, and I wish it were at as great a
distance from Innerwick as you can.
Cool. Be it so, sir; but I hope you will be as obliging to me next re-
encounter, as I have been to you this.
Ogil. I promise you I will, as far as is consistent with my duty to
my Lord and Master Christ Jesus; and since you have obliged me so
much by information, I will answer all the questions you propose, as
far as consists with my knowledge; but I believe you want no
information from me.
Cool. I came not here to be instructed by you, but I want your help
of another kind.
Upon the 5th of April 1722, as I was returning from Old
Hamstocks, Cool came up with me on horseback at the foot of the
ruinous enclosure, before we came to Dod. I told him his last
conversation had proved so acceptable to me, that I was well pleased
to see him again; that there was a number of things that I wanted to
inform myself further of, if he would be so good as satisfy me.
Cool. Last time we met, I refused you nothing you asked; and now
I expect that you shall refuse me nothing that I shall ask.
Ogil. Nothing, sir, that is in my power, or that I can do with safety
to my reputation and character. What, then, are your demands?
Cool. All that I desire of you is, that as you promised that on a
Sabbath-day you would go to my wife, who now possesses all my
effects, and tell her the following particulars—tell her in my name to
rectify these matters:—First, That I was owing justly to Provost
Crosby £50 Scots, and three years’ interest, but on hearing of his
death, my good-brother the Laird of C—l and I forged a discharge,
narrated the bond, the sum, and other particulars, with this
honourable clause, “And at the time it had fallen by, and could not be
found;” with an obligation on the provost’s part to deliver up this
bond as soon as he could hit upon it. And this discharge was dated
three months before the provost’s death. And when his son and
successor, Andrew Crosby, wrote to me concerning this bond, I came
to him and showed him the forged discharge, which silenced him; so
that I got up my bond without more ado. And when I heard of Robert
Kennedy’s death, with the same help of C—l, I got a bill upon him for
£190, of which I got full and complete payment. C—l got the half.
When I was at Dumfries, the same day that Robert Grier died, to
whom I was owing an account of £36, C—l, my good-brother, was
then at London; and not being able of myself, being but a bad writer,
to make out a discharge of the account, which I wanted, I met
accidently with one Robert Boyd, a poor writer lad in Dumfries; I
took him to Mrs Carnock’s, and gave him a bottle of wine, and told
him I had paid Thomas Grier’s account, but had neglected to get a
discharge, and if he would help me to one I would reward him. He
flew away from me in a great passion, saying, he would rather be
hanged; but if I had a mind for these things, I had better wait till C—l
came home. This gave me great trouble, fearing what C—l and I had
done formerly was no secret. I followed Boyd to the street, and made
an apology, saying, I was jesting, commending him for his honesty,
and got his promise never to repeat what had passed. I sent for my
Cousin B—m H—rie, your good-brother, who, with no difficulty, for a
guinea and a half, undertook and performed all that I wanted; and
for a guinea more made me up a discharge for £200 Scots that I was
owing to your father-in-law and his friend Mr Muirhead, which
discharge I gave to John Ewart, when he desired the money; and he,
at my desire, produced it to you, which you sustained.
A great many of the like instances were told, of which I cannot
remember the persons, names, and things; but, says he, what vexes
me more than all these, is the injustice I did Homer Maxwell, tenant
to my Lord Nithsdale, for whom I was factor. I borrowed £2000
from him, £500 of which he borrowed from another hand: I gave
him my bond, and, for reasons I contrived, I obliged him to secrecy.
He died within the year, and left nine children, his wife being dead
before himself. I came to seal up his papers for my lord’s security; his
eldest daughter entreated me to look through them all, and to give
her an account of what was their stock and what was their debt. I
very willingly undertook it; and in going through the papers, I put
my own bond in my pocket. His circumstances proving bad, his nine
children are now starving. These things I desire you to represent to
my wife, and take her brother with you, and let them be immediately
rectified, for she has a sufficient fund to do it upon; and if it were
done, I think I would be easy, and therefore I hope you will make no
delay.
After a short pause, I answered, ’Tis a good errand, Cool, you are
sending me to do justice to the oppressed and injured; but
notwithstanding I see myself come in for £200 Scots, yet I beg a little
time to consider the matter. And since I find you are as much master
of reason now as ever, and more than ever, I will reason upon the
matter in its general view, and then with respect to the expediency of
my being the messenger; and this I will do with all manner of
frankness. From what you have said, I see clearly what your present
condition is, so that I need not ask any more questions on that head;
and you need not bid me take courage, for at this moment I am no
more afraid of you than a new-born child.
Cool. Well, say on.
Ogil. Tell me, then, since such is your ability that you can fly a
thousand miles in the twinkling of an eye, if your desire to do the
oppressed justice be as great as you pretend, what’s the reason you
don’t fly to the coffers of some rich Jew or banker, where are
thousands of gold and silver, invisibly lift, and invisibly return it to
the coffers of the injured? And since your wife has sufficient funds,
and more, why cannot you empty her purse invisibly, to make these
people amends?
Cool. Because I cannot.
Ogil. You have satisfied me entirely upon that head. But pray,
Cool, what is the reason that you cannot go to your wife yourself, and
tell her what you have a mind? I should think this a more sure way to
gain your point.
Cool. Because I will not.
Ogil. That is not an answer to me, Cool.
Cool. That is one of the questions that I told you long ago I would
not answer: but if you go as I desire, I promise to give you full
satisfaction after you have done your business. Trust me for once,
and believe me I will not disappoint you.
Upon the 10th of April 1722, coming from Old Cambus, upon the
post-road, I met with Cool on the head of the heath called the Pees.
He asked me, if I had considered the matter he had recommended? I
told him I had, and was in the same opinion I was in when we
parted; that I would not possibly undertake his commissions, unless
he could give me them in writing under his hand. I told him that the
list of his grievances were so great that I could not possibly
remember them without being put in writing; and that I wanted
nothing but reason to determine me in that, and all other affairs of
my life.
“I know,” says he, “this is a mere evasion: but tell me if the Laird of
Thurston will do it?”
“I am sure,” said I, “he will not; and if he should, I would do all
that I could to hinder him; for I think he has as little to do in these
matters as myself. But tell me, Cool, is it not as easy to write your
story as tell it, or ride on what-do-ye-call-him? for I have forgot your
horse’s name.”
Cool. No, sir, it is not; and perhaps I may convince you of the
reasonableness of it afterwards.
Ogil. I would be glad to hear a reason that is solid for not speaking
to your wife yourself; but, however, any rational creature may see
what a fool I would make of myself, if I would go to Dumfries, and
tell your wife you had appeared to me, and told so many forgeries
and villanies that you had committed, and that she behoved to make
reparation; the consequence might perhaps be, that she would scold
me; for she would be loath to part with any money she possesses, and
therefore tell me I was mad, or possibly pursue me for calumny. How
would I vindicate myself; how could I prove that you ever spoke with
me? Mr Paton and other ministers in Dumfries would tell me the
devil had spoken with me; and why should I repeat these things for
truth which he, that was a liar from the beginning, had told me? C—p
—l and B—r— H—rie would be upon me, and pursue me before the
commissary; everybody would look upon me as brain-sick or mad:
therefore, I entreat you, do not insist upon sending me so ridiculous
an errand. The reasonableness of my demands I leave to your own
consideration, as you did your former to mine. But dropping the
matter till our next interview, give me leave to enter upon some more
diverting subject. I do not know, Cool, but the information you have
given may do as much service to mankind, as the redress of all these
grievances I would amount to. Mr Ogilvie died very soon after.—Old
Chap Book.
ALLAN-A-SOP.
By Sir Walter Scott.
The MacLeans, a bold and hardy race, who, originally followers of

the Lords of the Isles, had assumed independence, seized upon great
part both of the Isle of Mull and the still more valuable island of
Islay, and made war on the MacDonalds with various success. There
is a story belonging to this clan, which I may tell you, as giving
another striking picture of the manners of the Hebrideans.
The chief of the clan, MacLean of Duart, in the Isle of Mull, had an
intrigue with a beautiful young woman of his own clan, who bore a
son to him. In consequence of the child’s being, by some accident,
born on a heap of straw, he received the name of Allan-a-Sop, or
Allan of the Straw, by which he was distinguished from others of his
clan. As his father and mother were not married, Allan was, of
course, a bastard, or natural son, and had no inheritance to look for,
save that which he might win for himself.
But the beauty of the boy’s mother having captivated a man of rank
in the clan, called MacLean of Torloisk, he married her, and took her
to reside with him at his castle of Torloisk, situated on the shores of
the sound, or small strait of the sea, which divides the smaller island
of Ulva from that of Mull. Allan-a-Sop paid his mother frequent visits
at her new residence, and she was naturally glad to see the poor boy,
both from affection, and on account of his personal strength and
beauty, which distinguished him above other youths of his age. But
she was obliged to confer marks of her attachment on him as
privately as she could, for Allan’s visits were by no means so
acceptable to her husband as to herself. Indeed, Torloisk liked so
little to see the lad, that he determined to put some affront on him,
which should prevent his returning to the castle for some time. An
opportunity for executing his purpose soon occurred.
The lady one morning, looking from the window, saw her son
coming wandering down the hill, and hastened to put a girdle cake
upon the fire, that he might have hot bread for breakfast. Something
called her out of the apartment after making this preparation, and
her husband, entering at the same time, saw at once what she had
been about, and determined to give the boy such a reception as
should disgust him for the future. He snatched the cake from the
girdle, thrust it into his stepson’s hands, which he forcibly closed on
the scalding bread, saying, “Here, Allan, here is a cake which your
mother has got ready for your breakfast.” Allan’s hands were severely
burnt; and, being a sharp-witted and proud boy, he resented this
mark of his step-father’s ill-will, and came not again to Torloisk.
At this time the western seas were covered with the vessels of
pirates, who, not unlike the sea-kings of Denmark at an early period,
sometimes settled and made conquests on the islands. Allan-a-Sop
was young, strong, and brave to desperation. He entered as a
mariner on board of one of these ships, and in process of time
obtained the command, first of one galley, then of a small flotilla,
with which he sailed round the seas and collected considerable
plunder, until his name became both feared and famous. At length he
proposed to himself to pay a visit to his mother, whom he had not
seen for many years; and setting sail for this purpose, he anchored
one morning in the sound of Ulva, and in front of the house of
Torloisk. His mother was dead, but his step-father, to whom he was
now as much an object of fear as he had been formerly of aversion,
hastened to the shore to receive his formidable stepson, with great
affectation of kindness and interest in his prosperity; while Allan-a-
Sop, who, though very rough and hasty, does not appear to have been
sullen or vindictive, seemed to take his kind reception in good part.
The crafty old man succeeded so well, as he thought, in securing
Allan’s friendship, and obliterating all recollections of the former
affront put on him, that he began to think it possible to employ his
stepson in executing his own private revenge upon MacQuarrie of
Ulva, with whom, as was usual between such neighbours, he had
some feud. With this purpose, he offered what he called the following
good advice to his stepson:—“My dear Allan, you have now wandered
over the seas long enough: it is time you should have some footing
upon land—a castle to protect yourself in winter, a village and cattle
for your men, and a harbour to lay up your galleys. Now, here is the
island of Ulva, near at hand, which lies ready for your occupation,
and it will cost you no trouble, save that of putting to death the
present proprietor, the Laird of MacQuarrie, a useless old carle, who
has cumbered the world long enough.”
Allan-a-Sop thanked his step-father for so happy a suggestion,
which he declared he would put in execution forthwith. Accordingly,
setting sail the next morning, he appeared before MacQuarrie’s
house an hour before noon. The old chief of Ulva was much alarmed
at the menacing apparition of so many galleys, and his anxiety was
not lessened by the news that they were commanded by the
redoubted Allan-a-Sop. Having no effectual means of resistance,
MacQuarrie, who was a man of shrewd sense, saw no alternative save
that of receiving the invaders, whatever might be their purpose, with
all outward demonstrations of joy and satisfaction; the more
especially as he recollected having taken some occasional notice of
Allan during his early youth, which he now resolved to make the
most of. Accordingly, MacQuarrie caused immediate preparations to
be made for a banquet, as splendid as circumstances admitted,
hastened down to the shore to meet the rover, and welcomed him to
Ulva with such an appearance of sincerity, that the pirate found it
impossible to pick any quarrel, which might afford a pretence for
executing the violent purpose which he had been led to meditate.
They feasted together the whole day; and, in the evening, as Allan-
a-Sop was about to retire to his ships, he thanked the laird for his
hospitality, but remarked, with a sigh, that it had cost him very dear.
“How can that be,” said MacQuarrie, “when I bestowed this
entertainment upon you in free goodwill?”
“It is true, my friend,” replied the pirate, “but then it has quite
disconcerted the purpose for which I came hither; which was to put
you to death, my good friend, and seize upon your house and island,
and so settle myself in the world. It would have been very convenient
for me, this island of Ulva; but your friendly reception has rendered
it impossible for me to execute my purpose, so that I must be a
wanderer on the seas for some time longer.”
Whatever MacQuarrie felt at learning he had been so near to
destruction, he took care to show no emotion save surprise, and
replied to his visitor: “My dear Allan, who was it that put into your
mind so unkind a purpose towards your old friend; for I am sure it
never arose from your own generous nature? It must have been old
Torloisk, who made such an indifferent husband to your mother, and
such an unfriendly step-father to you when you were a helpless boy;
but now, when he sees you a bold and powerful leader, he desires to
make a quarrel betwixt you and those who were the friends of your
youth. If you consider this matter rightly, Allan, you will see that the
estate and harbour of Torloisk lie to the full as conveniently for you
as those of Ulva, and that, if you are disposed (as is very natural) to
make a settlement by force, it is much better it should be at the
expense of the old churl, who never showed you kindness or
countenance, than at that of a friend like me, who always loved and
honoured you.”
Allan-a-Sop was struck with the justice of this reasoning; and the
old offence of his scalded fingers was suddenly recalled to his mind.
“It is very true what you say, MacQuarrie,” he replied, “and, besides,
I have not forgotten what a hot breakfast my step-father treated me
to one morning. Farewell for the present; you shall soon hear news of
me from the other side of the Sound.” Having said thus much, the
pirate got on board, and commanding his men to unmoor the galleys,
sailed back to Torloisk, and prepared to land in arms. MacLean
hastened to meet him, in expectation to hear of the death of his
enemy, MacQuarrie. But Allan greeted him in a very different
manner from what he expected.
“You hoary old traitor,” he said, “you instigated my simple good-
nature to murder a better man than yourself! But have you forgotten
how you scorched my fingers twenty years ago with a burning cake?
The day is come that that breakfast must be paid for.”
So saying, he dashed out the old man’s brains with a battle-axe,
took possession of his castle and property, and established there a
distinguished branch of the clan of MacLean.—From Tales of a
Grandfather.

Full Fathom 5000 The Expedition of The Hms Challenger and The Strange Animals It Found in The Deep Sea Graham Bell 2 Full Chapter

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Full Fathom 5000 The Expedition of The Hms Challenger and The Strange Animals It Found in The Deep Sea Graham Bell 2 Full Chapter

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Full Fathom 5000: The Expedition of the

HMS Challenger and the Strange

PART 2. THE CRUISE

I am extremely grateful for the help given by Lauren Williams and

I have avoided common names for animals wherever possible. The

Mudskippers are small, popeyed fish that hop around on beaches in

It all goes back to Forbes, eventually, or at least I think it does.

Upon the 3d day of February 1722 at seven o’clock in the evening,

By Sir Walter Scott.

The MacLeans, a bold and hardy race, who, originally followers of

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