Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

by Jane Austen; Ben H. Winters

  Marianne was astonished to find how much the imagination of her mother and herself had outstripped the truth.

  “And you really are not engaged to him!” said she. “Yet it certainly soon will happen. But two advantages will proceed from this delay. I shall not lose you so soon, and Edward will have greater opportunity of improving that natural taste for your favourite pursuit which must be so indispensably necessary to your future felicity. Oh! If he should be so far stimulated by your genius as to learn to whittle himself, how delightful it would be!”

  Elinor had given her real opinion to her sister. She could not consider her partiality for Edward in so prosperous a state as Marianne had believed it. There was at times a want of spirits about him, as if he was constantly recovering from the ingestion of bad chowder—if it did not denote indifference, it spoke of something almost as unpromising. Without sure knowledge of his feelings, it was impossible for Elinor to feel easy on the subject. She was far from depending on that result of his preference of her, which her mother and sister considered as certain.

  But Edward’s regard for Elinor, when perceived by Fanny, was enough to make her uneasy and uncivil. That lady took the first opportunity of affronting her mother-in-law, talking expressively of her brother’s great expectations, and of Mrs. Ferrars’s resolution that both her sons should marry well, and of the danger attending any young woman who attempted to draw him in like a tidal pool. Mrs. Dashwood gave her an answer which marked her contempt, resolving that, even if they had to go live in an undersea grotto, in a very nest of sea-squids, her beloved Elinor should not be exposed to another week of such insinuations.

  In this state of her spirits, a letter was delivered to her from the post, which contained a provision particularly well timed. It was to offer their use of a rickety seaside shack belonging to a relation of her own, an aging eccentric monster-hunter and adventurer who had lately returned from the waters off Madagascar, where he had trapped and slain the infamous Malagasy Man-Serpent; he had, upon his return, laid claim to his ancestral inheritance, a chain of small islands off the coast of Devonshire. Sir John (for that was his name) understood that Mrs. Dashwood was in need of a dwelling. And though the waters off Devonshire were well-known to be among the most beast-bedeviled swaths of English ocean, and the house he offered was merely a haphazard shanty, built atop a jagged promontory on the windward side of Pestilent Isle, the smallest island in the archipelago, he assured her that everything should be done to it which she might think necessary. Sir John himself, being vastly experienced in the ways of the hateful denizens of the inky deep, assured her that while she and her family lived on his island every possible measure of security would be offered them. He urged her to come with her daughters to Deadwind Island, the place of his own residence, from whence she could judge for herself whether Barton Cottage—as the tiny, wind-rattled shack on Pestilent Isle was called—could be made comfortable to her. Well, not comfortable, he continued, given the amount of mosquitoes that swarmed the house at all hours, comfort was not really feasible. But she could judge whether it could be made tolerable. Despite this cavil, Sir John seemed really anxious to accommodate them; the whole of his letter, though composed in the crabbed, spidery script of a man used to composing treasure maps and desperate pleas for help rather than warm invitations to distant kin, was written in a most friendly style.

  Mrs. Dashwood needed no time for deliberation or enquiry. Her resolution was formed as she read. To quit the neighbourhood of Norland was no longer an evil; it was an object of desire; it was a blessing, in comparison of the misery of continuing as her daughter-in-law’s guest. She instantly wrote Sir John Middleton her acknowledgement of his kindness, and her acceptance of his proposal.

  As she laid down her pen and called to Marianne, Elinor, and Margaret to pack up their dunnage, lightning crackled in the sky, and a cloud hid the face of the moon.

  CHAPTER 5

  MRS. DASHWOOD SHORTLY INDULGED herself in the pleasure of announcing to her son-in-law and his wife that she was provided with a coastal shanty, and should incommode them no longer. They heard her with surprise. Mrs. Dashwood had great satisfaction in explaining that they were going off the coast of Devonshire. John Dashwood gasped and clapped his hand before his mouth. “Not the Devonshire coast!” he exclaimed, growing very pale, while his wife smiled cruelly at the corners of her mouth, sure in her intuition that her mother-in-law would very shortly pose no future inconvenience, save perhaps to the digestion of some ravenous, bottom-dwelling devil.

  Edward Ferrars turned hastily towards her and, in a voice of surprise and concern, which required no explanation to her, repeated, “Devonshire! Are you, indeed, going there? So far from hence! There? Of all places?”

  Mrs. Dashwood, too suffused with pleasure at finding a situation for herself and her family, did not hear the shock and horror in his normally even voice. Calmly, she explained the situation.

  “Barton Cottage is but a haphazard two-story shack, tottering on a rocky promontory above the sea,” she continued, “But one under the protection of the ancient defenses employed by the sagacious Sir John. I hope to see many of my friends in it. A room or two can easily be added; and if friends find no difficulty in travelling so far to see me, and if they can bribe a ship’s captain to undertake the journey, I am sure I will find no difficulty accommodating them.”

  She concluded with a very kind invitation to Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood to visit her at Barton Cottage, to which they did not bother to pretend enthusiasm; and to Edward she offered an invitation with still greater affection. To separate Edward and Elinor was as far from being her object as ever; and she wished to show Mrs. John Dashwood how totally she disregarded her disapproval of the match.

  Mr. John Dashwood told his mother again and again how exceedingly sorry he was that she had taken a situation at such a distance as to prevent his help in removing her furniture from Norland. He really felt conscientiously vexed on this occasion, and all the more so when the furniture was sent round by water, meaning that its likelihood of actually arriving at their new residence was exceedingly dim.

  Mrs. Dashwood arranged to take the house for a twelvemonth; as she had reported to her son and daughter-in-law, it was already furnished with the netting, drain-plugs, and alarum bells that any seaside domicile must reasonably employ against the threat of ravagement, as well as those more esoteric devices known to Sir John’s wisdom, which he had assured her were unobtrusive but effective. Elinor’s good sense limited the number of servants they would take to four: a maid, a musket-man and two torchbearers, with whom they were speedily provided from amongst those who had formed their establishment at Norland. The servants left immediately to prepare the house for their mistress’s arrival.

  Mrs. Dashwood began to abandon any hope that her son-in-law would abide by his promise to his dying father. He so frequently talked of the increasing expenses of house-protecting, what with the coming of spring tide and the return of Highest Danger Season, and of the perpetual demands upon his purse, and also of the high likelihood that she and the girls would die either en route or soon after their arrival at the coast of Devonshire, and his having to bear their funerary expenses; in short he seemed rather in need of more money himself than to have any design of giving money away.

  Many were the salty tears shed by them in their last adieus to a place so much beloved. “Dear, dear Norland!” said Marianne, as she wandered alone before the house, a pounding rainstorm soaking her pelisse. “When shall I cease to regret you!—when learn to feel a home elsewhere!— Oh! happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence, perhaps, I may view you no more! You will continue the same, unconscious of the pleasure or the regret you occasion, and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade! But who will remain to enjoy you?”

  CHAPTER 6

  THE FIRST PART OF THEIR JOURNEY was simple; in a post-chaise they travelled to the dock at Brighton, where they changed f
rom their lightweight, pointed-toed travelling shoes into thick galoshes to protect their extremities if by some grievous mishap they ended up in the water. The Dashwoods lined up upon the dock to receive the attentions of a prelate, following the long-established custom of administering last rites to anyone embarking on a journey by sea. Gulls circled overhead, seeming to cry piteously for them as they stepped aboard a three-masted, heavily armored schooner called the Tarantella, which would take them to the coast of Devonshire.

  Elinor felt a twinge of horror as the Sussex coast disappeared behind them and they were surrounded on all sides by the churning sea. As for Marianne, she swooned with anticipation of their new life and looked upon the captain of the Tarantella, a stern and weathered personage with a rheumy step and a corncob pipe, as a charming harbinger of the romance and adventure that awaited them.

  Elinor’s apprehensions soon proved prescient; for, as they bore to the starboard after passing Dorset and piloted into the narrow inlet that would lead them to Sir John’s chain of islands, that same captain hollered throatily to his men to take their stations. At once the dozen hardy sea salts of the crew were scrambling grimly about the foredeck, and from a sea chest at the schooner’s waist, were rapidly unloaded blunderbusses and flint-lock muskets.

  Before the Dashwoods could ascertain the nature of the threat, something thudded powerfully against the hull; the mainmast snapped from its moorings and tilted forward at a perilous angle, sending the bosun’s mate, who had been on duty in the crow’s nest, pitching forward wildly; in an instant the unfortunate sailor was holding desperately to the cross trees, dangling beside the bowsprit just above the surface of the waves. The ship, its mainsail flapping uselessly, yawed heavily to port. The Dashwoods clutched each other in fear as a vast mouth appeared at the waterline, opening wide to display two jagged rows of razor-sharp fangs, which rose from the water and chomped down effortlessly on the bosun’s mate.

  It was Mrs. Dashwood who acted first, even as the sailors were still loading their blunderbusses and the coxswain was pulling the tarpaulin off the Ship’s cannon. She grasped a spare oar from its rigging, snapped it in twain upon her knee with a swift motion, and plunged the sharp, broken point into the churning sea—piercing the gleaming, deep-set eye of the beast. “Up, mother! Drive it up!” shouted Elinor, and leant hard upon the flattened oar end to push the sharp point into the brain of the sea serpent. The beast relaxed its grip upon the shattered corpse of the bosun’s mate; it pitched; it rolled; and then it was still, floating belly up upon the surface of the water, its scales glittering blue and green in the sunlight, blood streaming from the punctured eye.

  MRS. DASHWOOD GRASPED A SPARE OAR FROM ITS RIGGING, SNAPPED IT IN TWAIN UPON HER KNEE, AND PLUNGED THE SHARP, BROKEN POINT INTO THE GLEAMING, DEEP-SET EYE OF THE BEAST.

  “Dear God,” said the old captain, flabbergasted, his pipe hanging limply in one hand. “You’ve slain it.”

  “Surely ‘twas it or us!” cried Marianne in response, her breast heaving from the excitement of the moment.

  “Aye. Aye, it was.”

  In the profound silence that followed, their ears were filled with a low thrashing sound, as the corpse of the bosun’s mate was noisily consumed by devil fish. At length the captain drew upon his pipe and spoke again.

  “Let us only pray that this is the worst such abomination you encounter in this benighted land; for such is but a goldfish when compared to the Devonshire Fang-Beast.”

  “The . . . what?”

  But further conversation was impossible. The first mate announced that they had crossed the third line of longitude and entered the realm known and feared as the Devonshire coast. The captain apologised that his superstitious crewmen would take them no farther. The Dashwoods were gingerly lowered into the sea in a cockleshell, which pitiable vessel was cut loose and shoved in the general direction of Pestilent Isle; as the schooner disappeared behind them, the captain called out “God be with you” and turned away; the gesture had a certain coldness to it, as if the whole world was turning its back on them along with the man. This disheartening impression was reinforced by the head of the bosun’s mate slowly drifting by, a twist of seaweed caught in its eye socket.

  They arrived—thanks to Mrs. Dashwood’s clever hand upon the rudder and Elinor’s sure understanding of the coastal map that Sir John had included with his letter—at Pestilent Isle: a rocky and uneven spit of land, not more than nine miles across, patchworked with desolate plateaus, copses of crooked deadwood trees, and fenny marshes; with a single craggy hilltop standing stanchion at the centre of the isle.

  Barton Cottage was situated on the windy north face, set back in a kind of smallish bay or cove that slashed into the northwesterly section of the island like a cruel mouth. The Dashwoods, as they struggled out of their cockleshell onto the rickety dock that jutted out into the cove, were somewhat cheered by the joy of the servants upon their arrival. But their cottage was small and compact—in comparison to Norwood, it was small indeed! It sat perched atop a rugged granite ridge, some forty feet above the waterline, with a rickety wooden stairwell leading from the front door to a small, creaking dock. There was no village or neighbours anywhere— no building on the island but their own. Sloping mudflats, here and there pocked with dense thickets of unfamiliar vegetation, surrounded the house in all directions.

  All of them got busy in arranging their particular concerns and endeavouring, by placing around them books and other possessions, to form themselves a home. Margaret, whooping with the characteristic excitement of her adventuresome spirit, swiftly set off down a miry trail to take the bearings of her new environs. Marianne’s pianoforte was unpacked and properly disposed of; Elinor unpacked her set of thirteen driftwood knives and was pleased to hear from the servants that flotsam was in plentiful supply along the island’s shores.

  In such employments as these they were interrupted by the entrance of their landlord, who called to welcome them to Barton Cottage, and to offer them every accommodation from his own house and docks in which theirs might at present be deficient.

  Sir John was an imposing figure, weathered and burnt nut-brown by years of trekking in tropical heat. He held the lifelong conviction that the Alteration resulted from a curse laid by one of the tribal races who had come under England’s colonial dominion over the centuries, and he had spent the better part of two decades in search of the culprits. Never had he found proof of his belief, let alone any amelioration of his homeland’s peril, but he had in the meantime accumulated a lifetime of wondrous adventures. Sir John had led troups in search of the heart of the Nile, up the slopes of Peruvian volcanoes, and deep into the impassable jungles of Borneo. Except to bed, he invariably wore upon his belt a glinting machete; in his boot a five-inch quicksilver dagger; and ‘round his neck a chain beaded with human ears. He bald head was round and cratered as the new moon, but his eyebrows and beard were thick as the Amazonian undergrowth and white as the snows of Kilimanjaro.

  In his current state of semi-retirement from the life of adventure, Sir John kept prizes zoological, herbivorous, and mineralogical; the various islands of his archipelago were dotted with secret treasure pits, apiaries, and gardens filled with orchids and rare flowering shrubs plucked from Zanzibarian soil. In his den, among the musty, dark leather furniture, was a chess set carved from rhinoceros bone, shelves of dusty tomes revealing the ancient lore of various African, Incan, and Asiatic tribes, and exemplars of 112 distinct species of butterfly, each pinned to a board, their multihued or zebra-striped wings forever stilled.

  But his greatest prize was the island maiden Kukaphahora, now Lady Middleton, a six-foot-two-inch, jewel-bedecked princess of a tribe indigenous to a far-flung atoll. Her village had worshiped Sir John as a god—until they discovered their new deity, in the dead of night, digging a pit from whence to strip-mine the diamonds that glittered in ore deep beneath the village. They nearly castrated him along with all his men, but he and his company fought loose, razed the
village, murdered the men most triumphantly, and dragged away the women in their nets.

  The arrival of the Dashwoods seemed to afford Sir John real satisfaction, and their comfort to be an object of real solicitude to him. His manner was thoroughly good-humoured, if somewhat eccentric to their more civilized tastes, and he delighted in sharing with them his expertise on all manner of monster lore and legend. He said much of his earnest desire of their living in the most sociable terms with his family and pressed them cordially to dine on Deadwind Island every day till they were better settled at home. His kindness was not confined to words; for within an hour after he left them, there arrived a large basket full of edible exotica from Sir John’s various arboreums; this gift was followed before the end of the day by a brace of freshly caught sturgeon; and that by a big bag of opiates. He insisted, moreover, on conveying all their letters to the post-frigate, which delivered letters to and from the mainland; Sir John additionally would not be denied the satisfaction of sending them his newspaper every day.

  Lady Middleton sent a very civil message by him, denoting her intention of waiting on Mrs. Dashwood as soon as she could be assured that her visit would be no inconvenience; and as this message was answered by an invitation equally polite, her ladyship arrived the next day on a handsome pirogue rowed by two sturdy oarsmen, their muscles oiled and glistening in the noonday sun.

  The Dashwoods were, of course, very anxious to see a person on whom so much of their comfort on Pestilent Isle must depend, and the elegance of Sir John’s concubine was favourable to their wishes. Lady Middleton was not more than six or seven and twenty; her face was handsome and her imposing figure was draped in long, flowing robes of distinctive tropical hues. Her manners had all the elegance which her husband’s wanted. But they would have been improved by some share of his frankness and warmth. She was reserved and cold, as if having been stolen from her native village in a burlap sack and made to be servant and helpmate to an Englishman many years her senior, for some reason sat poorly with her. She had nothing to say for herself beyond the commonplace inquiry or remark.