Book Two—Chapter Eight.
At Sea—Mermaids and Mermen.
So long as the wind blew free, even though it did not always blow fair, there was joy, and jollity, too, in every heart that beat on board the saucy Sea Flower, fore as well as aft.
She looked a bonnie barque now, in every sense of the word.
Tandy and Halcott had spared neither expense nor pains in rigging her well out. Had not her timbers been stanch and sound they certainly would not have done so.
She had new sails, a new jibboom, and several new spars; and before she got clear and away out of the English Channel the crew of many a homeward-bound ship manned their riggings and gave her a hearty cheer.
Halcott had left the whole rig-out of the Sea Flower to Mr Tandy, and had not come near her for six long weeks.
He was better employed, perhaps, and more happy on shore. But pleased enough he was on his return.
“Why, Tandy, my dear fellow, this isn’t a ship any more; it’s a yacht?”
“A pot of paint and a bucket of tar go a long way,” Tandy replied smiling.
“Ah! there’s a good deal more than tar here; but how you’ve managed to get her decks and spars so white and beautiful, bother me if I can tell. And her ebony is ebony no longer, it is polished jet, while her brass work is gold.”
Down below the two had now gone together.
Tandy could not have made the cabin a bit bigger if he had tried, but he had removed every morsel of her lumbering old lockers and tables, and refurnished it with all he could think of that was graceful and beautiful.
Mirrors, too, were everywhere along the bulk-heads, and these made the saloon look larger. The only wonder is that, in a lit of absent-mindedness, some one did not walk right through a mirror.
Hanging tables, beautiful crystal, brackets, and artificial flowers gave a look that was both lightsome and gay.
On the port side, when you touched a knob, a mirrored door opened into the captain’s cabin—small but pretty, and lighted by an airy port that could be carried open in good weather, and all along in the trades.
The other state-room was larger. This Halcott had insisted upon Tandy taking; and it contained not only his own bunk, but a lower one for Nelda, and was better decorated and furnished than even the captain’s.
“Oh, gaily goes the ship when the wind blows free.”
And right gaily she had gone too, as yet.
Halcott was a splendid sailor and navigator. It might have been thought, however, that Tandy, from his long residence on shore, had turned a little rusty in his seamanship.
If he had, the rust had not taken long to rub off; and as he trod the ivory-white quarterdeck in his duck trousers, neat cap, and jacket of navy blue, he really looked ten years younger than in the days when he sailed the Merry Maiden up and down the canal.
The crew were well-dressed, and looked happy and jolly enough for anything.
I need hardly say that Nelda was the pet of the Sea Flower, fore and aft. There was no keeping the child to any one part of the ship. In fine weather—and, with the exception of a “howther” in the Bay, it had up till now been mostly fine—she was here, there, and everywhere: in the men’s quarters; down below in the forecastle; at the forecastle-head itself, when the men leaned over the bows there, smoking, yarning, and laughing; and in the cook’s galley, helping to make the soup. But she ventured even further than this, and more than once her father started to find her in the foretop, and standing beside her that tall, imperturbable Admiral.
The bird was pet number two; but Bob made an equal second.
At first the ’Ral was inclined to mope. Perhaps he was sea-sick. It is a well-known fact that if a Cape pigeon, as a certain gull is called, is taken on board, it can fly no more, but walks slowly and stupidly round the deck.
Sea-sickness had not troubled Bob in the slightest. When he saw the ’Ral standing in the lee-scuppers, with his neck hitched right round till the head lay right on the top of his tail, Bob looked at him comically with his head cocked funnily to one side.
Then he seemed to laugh right away down both sides, so to speak. Bob was a droll dog.
“My eyes, Admiral,” he said, “what a ridiculous figure you do cut, to be sure! Why, at first I couldn’t tell which was the one end of you and which was the other.”
“I don’t care what becomes of me,” the Admiral replied, talking over his tail. “It is a very ordinary world. I’ll never dance again.”
But, nevertheless, in three days’ time the Hal did dance, and so droll and comical were his capers on the heaving deck that the crew lay aft in a body and laughed till they nearly burst their belts. The Admiral took kindly to his meal-worms after that, and didn’t despise potted salmon and morsels of mutton.
Now it must not be supposed that the Sea Flower was going out in ballast, on the mere chance of filling up with gold. They might never see the Isle of Misfortune, and all their dreams of gold might yet turn out as dreams so often do.
Halcott and Tandy were good sailors, and but little likely to trust overmuch to blind chance. They took out with them, therefore, a good-paying cargo of knick-knacks and notions to barter with the natives along the coast of Africa. Having made a good voyage—and they knew they should—and having filled up with copal, nutmegs, arrowroot, spices, ivory, and perhaps even gold-dust and ostrich feathers from the far interior, they would stretch away out and over the broad Atlantic, and rounding the Horn, make search for the Isle of Misfortune, which they hoped to find an island of gold.
If unsuccessful, they should then bear up for the northern Pacific Islands, taking their chance of doing something with pearls or mother-of-pearl, and so on and away to San Francisco, where they were sure of a market, even if they wished to sell the Sea Flower herself.
But the best of sailors get disheartened far sooner in calms than even in tempests.
In the latter, one has all the excitement of a battle with the elements; in the former, one can but wait and think and long for the winds to blow.
“The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free.”
Yes; but although in the region of calms some ships seem to have luck, the Sea Flower had none.
“Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
’Twas sad as sad could be;
And they did speak only to break
The silence of the sea.”
A week, a fortnight, nearly three weary weeks went past like this.
There was no singing now forward among the men. Even little Fitz the nigger, who generally was trolling a song, at times high over the roar of the wind, was silent now. So, too, was Ransey Tansey. He and Nelda had been before the life of the good ship. It seemed as if they should never be so again. Bob took to lying beside the man at the wheel. As far as the latter was concerned, there might just as well have been no man there at all. The sea all round was a sea of heaving oil. The waves were houses high—not long rollers, but a series of hills and valleys, in which the Sea Flower wallowed and tumbled; while the fierce heat of the sun caused the pitch to melt and bubble where the decks were not protected by an awning.
The motion of the good ship was far indeed from agreeable. Any seaman can walk easily even when half a gale of wind is roaring through the rigging. There is a method in the motion of a ship in such a sea-way. There is no method in the motion of a vessel in the doldrums; and when one puts one’s foot down on the quarterdeck, or, rather, where it seemed to be a second before, it finds but empty space. The body lurches forward, and the deck swings up to receive it. A grasp at a stay or sheet alone can avert a fall.
In such a sea-way there is no longer any leeward or windward. The sails go flapping to and fro, however: they are making wind for themselves as the vessel rolls and tumbles; and if this wind carries her forward a few yards one minute, it hurls her back again the next.
No wonder Nelda often asked her father if the wind would never, never blow again, or whether it would be always, always like this.
No birds either, save now and then a migrant gull that floated lazily on a wave to rest, or perched on the fin of a basking shark.
So day after day passed wearily on, and you could not have told one day from the other. But when, at six o’clock, the sun hurriedly capped the great heaving waves with crimson, leaving the hollows in deepest purple shade, and soon after sank, then, in the gloaming that for a brief spell hung over the ocean, the stars came out; and very brightly did they shine, so that night was even more pleasant than day.
Banks of clouds sometimes lay along the horizon. By day they appeared like far-off, snow-capped, serrated mountains; at night they were dark, but lit up every few moments by flashes of lightning, which spread out behind them and revealed their form and shape.
No thunder ever followed this lightning; it brought no wind; nor did the clouds ever rise or bring a drop of rain.
Phantom lightning; phantom clouds!
There were times on nights like these when Ransey took his sister on deck to look at the sky, and wonder at the lightning and that strange mountain-range of clouds.
She was not afraid when Ransey was with her. But she would not have gone “upstairs,” as she called it, with even the stewardess herself.
Ransey, I may mention, lived in the saloon with his father and the captain, the second and third mates having comfortable quarters in the midship decks.
A stewardess only was carried on the Sea Flower, and she acted in another capacity—that of maid to Nelda. A black girl she was, but clean, smart, and tidy and trim, full of merriment and good-nature. Her assistant was Fitz, and with him alone she deemed it her duty to be a little harsh now and then. Because Fitz wouldn’t keep his place, so she said.
Poor Janeira, she always forgot she was a nigger herself, seeing so many white faces all around her. But when she looked into the little mirror that hung in her pantry, she used to go into fits of laughter at her face therein displayed. She was a funny girl.
Ransey used to take Nelda up on these nights, and hoist her on to the grating abaft the quarterdeck, and she would cling to his arm, while he held on to the bulwark.
Thus they would stand, silent and awed, for long minutes at a time.
Was there nothing to break the dread stillness? There was occasionally the flap of a sail, or a footstep forward; but no song from the men, no loud talking—they hardly cared to speak above a whisper. But more than once a plash was heard, and a great dark head would appear from the side of a billow, seen distinctly enough in the gleam of the starlight, then sink and disappear.
“Oh, the awful beast, ’Ansey! Can it climb up and swallow us?”
“No, dear silly, no.”
But older people than Nelda have been frightened by such dread spectres appearing close to a ship at night while in the doldrums, and wiser heads than hers have been puzzled to account for them.
Are they sharks? No, no. Five times as large are they as any shark ever seen. Whales? No, again. A whale lives not under the water but on it.
In the ocean wild and wide, reader, we sailors find many a strange mystery, see many a fearsome sight at night we can neither describe nor explain. And if we talk of these when we come on shore, you landsmen look incredulous.
But after a time the child became accustomed to scenes like these. Indeed the sea by night appeared to have a kind of fascination for her.
In beholding it, she appeared to be looking through it into some strange land, the abode of the fairies and elves and mermaids with which her imagination had peopled it.
“Deep, deep down among the rocks,” she would say to Ransey, “who lives there? Tell us, tell us.”
Ransey had therefore to become the story-teller whether he would or not.
He spoke to her then of mermaid-land deep down below the dark, heaving ocean.
“Deep, deep, deep down, ’Ansey?”
“Very, very deep. You see only a glimmer of light below you as you sink and sink; and this light is greenish and clear, and the farther down you get the brighter and more beautiful does it become.”
“And you’re not drowned?”
“No! oh, no! not if you’re good. Well, then you come to—oh, ever so beautiful a country! The trees are all of sea-weed, and underneath them is the yellow, yellow sand; but here and there are beautiful rockeries, and beds of such bright and lovely flowers that they would dazzle your eyes to look upon. And the strange thing about these flowers is this, Babs, they are all alive.”
“All alive? My! and can they talk to you?”
“Yes, and sing too. A sailor man who had been there told me. And he said their voices were so low and sweet that you had to put your ear quite close down before you could hear and understand; for at a little distance, he said, it was just like the tinkling of tiny silver bells. The danger is in stopping too long, and being enchanted or slain.”
“Enchanted? Whatever is that, ’Ansey?”
“Oh, you stay so long listening that you feel like in a dream, and before you know what has happened you are a flower yourself; and then, though you can see and hear everything that goes on around you, you cannot move away from the rock you are growing on, and you never get back again out of the water.”
“Never, never, ’Ansey?”
“Never, never, Babs.”
“But in the deep, dark, beautiful woods that you come to and enter there is many a terrible monster living—horned, shelly, warty monsters. And they are all waiting to catch you.”
“Terrible, ’Ansey!”
“Are you afraid, dear?”
“Oh, no, ’Ansey! Be terrible some more.”
“Well, there is danger all around you now, for some of these monsters are quite hidden among the sand, with only one eye protruding, and this looks like a flower because it grows on a stalk. But when you go to look at it, suddenly the sandy ground gives way under you. You are caught and killed, and know no more.
“Some of these monsters, Nelda, live in caves, and if you go too near the entrance a great, long, skinny arm is thrust out, and you are dragged into the dark and devoured.”
“But I would turn quickly away out of that terrible wood, ’Ansey,” said Nelda.
“Yes, that is just what the sailor did.”
“And then he was saved?”
“Not yet. He came to a lovely wide patch of clear, hard sand, and he was looking down to admire it. He had taken up some to examine, and was pouring it from one hand into the other—for the sand was pure gold mixed with pearls and rubies—when all at once it began to get dark, and looking up he saw a creature that was nearly all one horrible, cruel, grinning head, with eight long arms round it. It stopped high up, just hovering, Nelda, like a hawk over a field. The sailor man was spell-bound. He could only stare up at it with starting eyes and utter a long, low, frightened moan. But from the creature above a tent was lowered, just like a huge bell, and he knew it would soon fall over him and he would be sucked up to the sea-demon’s body and slowly eaten alive.
“But at that very moment, sissie, the creature uttered a terribly wild and mournful cry, and darted off through the water, which was all just like ink now.”
“And the sailor was dead?”
“No; a voice that sounded like the sweetest music ever he had heard in his life was heard, and a hand grasped his.
“‘Quick, quick,’ she cried, for it was a mermaid, ‘I will lead you into safety. Stay but another moment here and you are doomed.’
“‘I’ll follow you to the end of the world, miss,’ said the gallant sailor.
“It did seem queer to call a mermaid miss, but Jack Reid couldn’t help it.
“‘You won’t have to follow so far,’ she said, with a sweet smile that put Jack’s heart all in a flutter.
“And in five minutes’ time they were out of danger, and there was Jack with his hat in his hand, which he had taken off for politeness’ sake, being led along by the most charming young lady he had ever clapped eyes on.
“‘Her beauty,’ he said to me, ‘was radiant, and her long yellow hair floated behind her in the water till I was ravished; on’y the wust of it was, that all below the waist wasn’t lady at all, but ling or some other kind of fish.’
“But Jack wouldn’t look at the ling part at all, only just at the mermaid’s face and hair and hands.
“However dark it might have been, you could have seen to read by the light of the diamonds around her brow and neck.
“They soon came to a rock of quartz and porphyry, and next minute Jack found himself in a hall of such dazzling delight that he had to rub his eyes and pinch himself hard to make sure he was not in a dream. This was the mermaids’ and sea-fairies’ great ballroom.
“Tier upon tier of galleries rose up towards the beautiful, star-studded ceiling, and every gallery was filled with beautiful ladies. Jack knew that they all ended in ling, but the tails could not be seen.
“There was light and loveliness everywhere, and flowers everywhere—”
“Go on, ’Ansey. Your story is better than the Revelations, better even than ‘Jack the Giant Killer.’”
“I must stop, siss, because even I don’t know much more, only that the music was so ravishing that Jack himself danced till he couldn’t dance a bit more.”
“And did he sit down?”
“No; he thought he would like a smoke, so he floated away down to the entrance to a cave at the far, far end.
“‘That must be the smoking-room,’ he thought to himself, so he pushed aside the curtain and floated boldly in.
“But lo and behold, this inner cave was filled with little shrivelled-up old men, uglier far in the face than toads.
“These, sissie, were the mermen, and they were all sitting on rough blocks of coral, which must have hurt them dreadful, nursing their tails. These mermen sat there swaying their yellow, wrinkled bodies back and fore, to and fro, but taking not the slightest notice of Jack. The sailor stood staring at them; and well he might, for whatever motion one made the others all made the same. If one lifted a skeleton hand to rub its bald head, every hand was raised, every bald head was rubbed; whichever way one swayed all the rest swayed; sometimes every blear eye was directed to the ceiling, or lowered towards their tails, as the case might be; and when one gaped and yawned they all gaped and yawned, and Jack told me that he had never seen such a set of ugly, toothless mouths in his life before.
“But as they wouldn’t speak, Jack Reid himself—and he was a very brave sailor, sissie—did speak.
“‘Ahoy, maties!’ he cried, ‘ye don’t seem an over-lively lot here, I must say, but has e’er a one o’ ye got sich a thing as a bit o’ baccy?’
“Jack told me, Babs, that when he made this speech he got a fearful fright. Every merman stood up straight on its stool, its skinny arms and claw-like hands held straight above its head, and a yell rang through the hall that Jack says is ringing in his ears till this day.
“‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘if that’s your little game, here’s for off.’
“Jack must have been glad enough to get back to the ballroom, but this was now deserted. No one was there at all except the lovely mermaid who had saved him from being devoured by the terrible devil-fish.
“She smiled upon him as sweetly as ever.
“‘I’m going to guide you,’ she said, ‘to the nursery grotto; it is time that all sailor boys went to by-by.’
“‘Go on, missie,’ Jack said, ‘go on, yer woice is sweeter far than the song of—of a Mother Carey’s chicken. Wot a lovely lady ye’d be, miss, if ye didn’t end in ling!’
“She smiled, and combed her hair with her long white fairy fingers as she glided on.
“‘Going to by-by am I? Well, the mum did used to call it that like, miss, but we grown-up sailor lads calls it a bunk or an ’ammock. Ain’t got ne’er a bit o’ baccy about ye, has ye, miss?’
“But the fairy mermaid only smiled.
“So soft and downy was the bed that Jack fell asleep singing low to himself—
“‘All in the downs the fleet was moored.’
“And that is the end of the story, siss.”
“Oh, no! What did he see when he woke up again?”
“Well, when he awoke in the morning, much to his amazement, he found himself in his own bed in his mother’s little cottage at home.
“He rubbed his eyes twice before he spoke.
“‘What! mother?’ he cried.
“‘Yes, it is your own old mother, dearie, and I’ve been sittin’ up with you, and sich nonsense you has been a-talkin’, surely.’
“‘I’m not a merman, or anything, am I, mother? I don’t end in ling, do I, mother?’
“‘No, Jack Reid, you end in two good strong legs; but strong as they are, my boy, they weren’t strong enough to keep you from tumbling down last night. O Jack, Jack!’”
Book Two—Chapter Nine.
Wonderful Adventures of the Dancing Crane.
Hardly had Ransey finished his story ere a bright flash of lightning lit up the ship from stem to stern—a flash that seemed to strike the top of every rolling wave and hiss in the hollows between; a flash that left the barque in Cimmerian though only momentary darkness, for hardly had the thunder that followed—deep, loud, and awful—commenced, ere flash succeeded flash, and the sea all around seemed an ocean of fire.
For a time little Nelda could not be prevailed upon to go below. She was indeed a child of the wilds, and a thunderstorm was one of her chief delights.
Ah! but this was going to be somewhat more than a thunderstorm.
“Hands, shorten sail! All hands on deck!” It was Tandy’s voice sounding through the speaking trumpet—ringing through it, I might say, and yet it scarce could be heard above the incessant crashing of the thunder.
The men came tumbling up, looking scared and frightened in the blue glare of the lightning.
“Away aloft! Bear a hand, my hearties! Get her snug, and we’ll splice the main-brace. Hurrah, lads! Nimbly does it!”
Swaying high up on the top-gallant yards they looked no bigger than rooks, and with every uncertain lurch and roll the yard-ends seemed almost to touch the water.
It was at this moment that the stewardess came staggering aft.
“Don’t go, ’Ansey—don’t go,” cried Nelda.
“Duty’s duty, dear, and it’s ‘all hands’ now.”
He saw her safely down the companion-way, and next minute he was swarming up the ratlines to his station. But he had to pause every few seconds and hang on to the rigging, with his back right over the water—hang on for dear life.
The sails were reefed, and some were got in, and not till the men had got down from aloft did the rain come on. For higher and higher had the clouds on the northern horizon banked up, till they covered all the sky.
So awful was the rain, and so blinding, that it was impossible to see ten yards ahead, or even to guess from which direction the storm would actually come.
The wind was already whirling in little eddies from end to end of the deck, but hardly yet did it affect the motion of the ship, or give her way in any one direction.
The men were ordered below in batches, to get into their oilskins, for right well Tandy knew that a fearful night had to be faced.
The men received their grog now, and well did they deserve it.
Another hand was put to the wheel (two men in all), and near them stood the bold mate Tandy, ready to give orders by signal or even by touch, should they fail to hear his voice. All around the deck the men were clinging to bulwark or stay.
Waiting for the inevitable!
Ah! now it came. The rain had ceased for a time. So heavy had it been that the waves themselves were levelled, and Tandy could now see a long line of white coming steadily up astern.
He thanked the God who rules on sea as well as on dry land that the squall was coming from that direction. Had it taken the good ship suddenly aback she might have gone down stern-foremost, even with the now limited spread of canvas that was on her.
As it was, the first mountain wave that hit the good barque sent her flying through the sea as if she had been but an empty match-box. That wave burst on board, however—pooped her, in fact—and went roaring forward, a sea of solid foaming water.
The good vessel shivered from stem to stern like a creature in the throes of death. For a few minutes only. Next minute she had shaken herself free, and was dashing through the water at a pace that only a yacht could have beaten.
The thunder now went rolling down to leeward, and the rain ceased, but the gale increased in force, and in a short time she had to be eased again, and now she was scudding along almost under bare poles. It would be hours before mate Tandy could get below; but Ransey’s watch was now off deck, so he went down to ask Janeira, the stewardess, if Nelda was in bed.
She was in bed most certainly, but through the half-open doorway she could hear Ransey’s voice, and shouted to him.
“I fink, sah,” Janeira said, “she am just one leetle bit afraid.”
There was no doubt about that, and the questions with which she plied her brother, when he took a seat by her bunk to comfort her, were peculiar, to say the least.
“Daddy won’t be down for a long, long time?”—that was one.
“The poor men, though, how many is drownded?”—another.
“The ship did go to the bottom though, didn’t it, ’cause I heard the water all rush down?”—a third.
“You are quite, quite sure father isn’t drownded? And you are sure no awful beasts have come up with long arms? Well, tell us some stories.”
Nolens volens, Ransey had to. But Babs got drowsy at last, the white eyelids drooped and drooped till they finally closed; then Ransey went quietly away and turned into his hammock.
Young though he was, the heaviest sea-way could not frighten him, nor the stormiest wind that could blow. The sound of the wind as it went roaring through the rigging could only make him drowsy, and the ship herself would rock him to sleep. The barque was snug, too, and it was happiness itself to hear his father’s footsteps, as he walked the quarterdeck, pausing now and then to give an order to the men at the wheel.
“Behaved like an angel all through, Halcott!” That was what Tandy told the skipper next morning at breakfast.
“I knew she would, Tandy. I’m proud of our Sea Flower, and, my friend, I’m just as proud of you. I’d have stopped on deck to lend a hand, but that wouldn’t have done any good.
“Jane,” he cried. Jane was the contraction for “Janeira.”
“Iss, sah; I’se not fah off.”
“Is there no toast this morning?”
“No, sah; Lord Fitzmantle he done go hab one incident dis mawnin’. He blingin’ de toast along, w’en all same one big wave struckee he and down he tumble, smash de plate, and lose all de toast foh true.”
“Oh, the naughty boy!” said Nelda, who was hurrying through her breakfast to go on deck to “see the sea,” as she expressed it.
“No, leetle Meess Tandy, Lord Fitzmantle he good boy neahly all de time. It was poorly an incident, meesie, for de big sea cut his legs clean off, and down he come.”
“Well, I’m sorry for Fitz,” said Nelda with a sigh; “I suppose it was only his sea-legs though. And I’m going to have mine to-day. I asked the carpenter, and he said he would make me some soon, and it wouldn’t be a bit sore putting them on.”
With varying fortunes the good ship Sea Flower sailed south and away, till at last the Cape of Good Hope was reached and rounded.
Here they experienced very heavy weather indeed, with terrible storms of thunder and lightning, and bigger seas than Tandy himself had ever seen before.
But by this time little Nelda was quite a sailor, and a greater favourite fore and aft than ever.
Sea-legs had, figuratively speaking, been served out to all the green hands. Nelda had a capital pair, and could use them well. Fitz had to make his old ones do another time; but Bob had received two pairs from Neptune, when he came aboard that starry still night when crossing the line. As for the Hal, it must be confessed that there wasn’t a pair in Neptune’s boat long enough to fit him. However, in ordinary weather he managed to run along the deck pretty easily, his jibboom, as the sailors called his neck, held straight out in front of him, and helping himself along with his wings.
Sometimes on the quarterdeck it would suddenly occur to the ’Ral that a step or two of a Highland schottische would help to make time pass more quickly and pleasantly. The ’Ral wasn’t a bird to spoil a good intention, so, with just one or two preliminary “scray—scrays” he would start.
Bother the deck though, and bother the heaving sea, for do what he would the bird could no longer dance with ease and grace; so he would soon give it up, and go and lean his chin wearily over the lee bulwark, and thus, with his drooping wings, he did cut rather a ridiculous figure as seen from behind. He looked for all the world like some scraggy-legged little old man, who had got up in the morning and put nothing on except a ragged swallow-tailed coat.
The men liked the ’Ral though. He made them laugh, and was better than an extra glass of rum to them. So, as the bird seemed always rather wretched in dirty weather, the carpenter was solicited to make him some sort of shelter.
The carpenter consulted the sailmaker. The carpenter and sailmaker put their heads together. Something was sure to come of that.
“He’s sich an awkward shape, ye see,” said old Canvas.
“That’s true,” said Chips; “and he won’t truss hisself, as ye might call it.”
“No; if he’d on’y jest double up his legs, Chips, and close reef that jibboom o’ his, we might manage some’ow.”
“A kind o’ sentry-box would just be the thing, old Can.”
“Humph! yes. I wonder why the skipper didn’t bring a grandfather’s clock with ’im; that would suit the ’Ral all to pieces.”
But a sort of sentry-box, with a tarpaulin in front of it, was finally rigged up for the ’Ral, and placed just abaft the main-mast, to which it was lashed.
The ’Ral didn’t take to it quite kindly at first, but after studying it fore and aft he finally thought it would fit him nicely.
It would be protection from the sun on hot days, and when it blew a bit the men would draw down the tarpaulin, and he would be snug enough.
But in sunny weather it must be confessed that, solemnly standing there in his sentry-box, the Admiral did look a droll sight.
The ’Ral was a very early riser. He always turned out in time to go splashing about while the hands were washing decks, and although they often turned the hose on him he didn’t mind it a bit.
One very hot day, the poor ’Ral was observed standing pensively up against the capstan. His head was out of sight, thrust into one of the holes.
This was unusual, but the bird did so many droll things that, for an hour or more, nobody took much notice; but Ransey came round at last, carrying Babs, who was riding on his shoulders.
“Hillo!” cried Babs, “here’s the ’Ral with his head buried in a hole.”
“Which he stowed hisself away there, missie, more’n an hour ago,” said a seaman. “Afraid o’ gettin’ sunstroke, that’s my opinion.”
“Poor Hallie,” cried Babs, sympathisingly, “does your headie ache?”
The Admiral drew out his head, and looked at the child very mournfully indeed.
“He’s got some silent sorrow hevidently, I should say,” remarked another of the crew.
There was quite a little circle now around the capstan.
“Cheer up,” cried Ransey Tansey. “Come along and have a dance, ’Rallie.”
“I don’t feel like dancing to-day,” the crane replied, or appeared to reply. “Fact is, I don’t feel like moving at all.”
No wonder, poor bird; the truth is, he was glued to the deck with melted pitch.
What a job it was getting him clear too—or “easing him off,” as Chips called it.
But with the help of putty knives the ’Ral got free at last, though it took a deal of orange-peel to clean his poor feet. Then they were found to be so red and swollen that a hammock was slung for him forthwith atween decks, and the Admiral was laid at full length in it—his head on a pillow at one end, his feet away down at the other, his body covered with the carpenter’s lightest jacket.
Very funny he did appear stretched like that, but he himself appreciated, not the joke, but the comfort. He lay there for days, only getting up a little in the cool of the evening, if there was any cool in it.
Ransey fed him, and attended to his feet twice a day, so he was soon on deck again, as right as a trivet.
But the Admiral had learned a lesson, and ever after this, on hot days, to have seen the bird coming along the deck, you would have sworn he was playing at hop-Scotch, so careful was he to hop over the seams where the pitch was soft, his long neck bent down, and one eye curiously examining the planks.
Yes, the ’Ral was a caution, as old Canvas said.
But one of the bird’s drollest adventures occurred one day when the ship was lying becalmed in the Indian Ocean, or rather in the Mozambique Channel.
The Sea Flower was within a measurable distance of land; for though none was in sight, birds of the gull species flew around the ship, tack and half-tack, or floated lazily on the smooth surface of the sea.
The ’Ral slowly left his sentry-box, stretched his wings a bit, uttered a mild scray—scray—ay or two, then did a hop-Scotch till he got abreast of the man at the wheel. This particular sailor was somewhat of a dandy, and had a morsel of red silk handkerchief peeping prettily out from his jacket pocket.
The ’Ral eyed it curiously for a moment, then cleverly plucked it out and jumped away with it. He dropped it on a portion of the quarterdeck where the pitch was oozing, kicked it about with his feet to spread it out, as a man does with a handful of straw, and stood upon it.
“Well, I do call that cheek! My best silk handkerchief, too,” cried the man at the wheel.
The crane only looked at him wonderingly with one eye.
“You’ve no idea,” he told this man, “how soft and nice it feels. I—I—yes, I verily believe I shall dance. Craik—craik—cray—ay—y!”
And dance he did, Nelda and half the crew at least clapping their hands and cheering with delight.
The ’Ral was just in the very midst of his merriment, when the man, after giving the wheel an angry turn or two to port, made a dart to recover his favourite bandana. With such a rush did he come that the ’Ral took fright, and flew to the top of the bulwark. There was some oiled canvas here, and this was so hot that the bird had to keep lifting one foot and putting down the other all the time, just like a hen on a hot griddle.
“How delightfully sweet it must be up there,” he said to himself, gazing at the gulls that were screaming with joy as they swept round and round in the blue sky. “I think I’ll have a fly myself. Scray—ay!”
And greatly to every one’s astonishment away he flew high into the air.
Alarmed at first, the gulls soon regained courage, and made a daring attack on the ’Ral. But he speedily vanquished the foe, and one or two fell bleeding into the water.
A gull was perched on the back fin of a shark. The ’Ral flew down.
“It’s nice and snug you look,” said the ’Ral. “Get off at once, the king’s come. Get off, I say, or I’ll dig both your impudent eyes out.”
And next moment the Admiral was perched there, as coolly as if he had been used to riding on sharks ever since his babyhood.
But Nelda was in tears. She would never see the ’Ral again, and the awful beast would eat him, sea-legs and all. So a boat was called away to save him.
None too soon either. For the ’Ral had commenced to investigate that fin with his long beak. No respectable basking shark could be expected to stand that, so down he dived, leaving the bird screaming and swaying and scrambling on the top of the water. “Scray—scray—craik—craik—cray!”
But for the timely aid of the boat, the Admiral would have met with a terrible fate, for his screaming and struggling brought around him three sharks at least, all eager to find out what a long-legged bird like this tasted like.
Every fine day the crane now indulged himself in the pleasure of flight, but he never evinced the slightest inclination to perch again on the back of a basking shark. It wasn’t good enough, he would have told you, had you asked him. “As regards the backs of basking sharks,” he might have said, “I’m going to be a total abstainer.”
Up the east coast of Africa went the bonnie barque Sea Flower.
Tandy knew almost every yard of the ground he was now covering, and could pilot the vessel into creeks and over sand-banks or bars with very little danger indeed.
But still the coast here is so treacherous, and the sands and bottom change so frequently, that, night and day, men had to be in the chains heaving the lead.
The natives, also, across the line in Somaliland, are as treacherous as the coral rocks that guard their clay-built towns, and more treacherous than either are the semi-white, slave-dealing Arabs.
Book Two—Chapter Ten.
A Brush with the Somalis—the Derelict.
All along the Somali coast was Tandy’s “chief market ground,” as he called it. Here he knew he could drive precisely the kind of bargains he wished to make; and as for the Somalis, with their shields, spears, ugly broad knives, and grinning sinister faces, this bold seaman did not care anything. Nor for the Arabs either. He soon gave both to understand that he was a man of the wide, wide world, and was not afraid of any one.
He had come to trade and barter, he told the Arabs, and not to study their slave-hunting habits; so if they would deal, they had only to trot out their wares—he was ready. And if they didn’t want to deal, there was no harm done. He even took Ransey with him sometimes, and once he took Nelda as well.
The savages just here were a bad, bloodthirsty lot, and he knew it, but he had with him five trusty men. Not armed—that is, not visibly so.
But on this particular day there was blood in those natives’ eyes. Tall, lithe, and black-brown were they, their skins oiled and shining in the sun. But smiling. Oh, yes, these fiends will smile while they cut a white man’s throat.
Every eye was fixed hungrily on the beautiful child. What a present she would be for a great chief who dwelt far away in the interior and high among the mountains!
The bartering went on as usual, but Tandy kept his weather eye lifting.
Leopards’ skins, lions’ skins and heads, ostrich feathers, gum-copal, ivory tusks, and gold-dust. The boat was already well filled, Nelda was on board, so was Tandy himself, and his crew, all save one man, who was just shoving her off when the rush was made. The prow of the boat was instantly seized, and the man thrown down.
Pop—pop—pop—pop—rang Tandy’s revolver, and the yelling crowd grew thinner, and finally fled.
A spear or two was thrown, but these went wide of the mark.
Human blood looks ghastly on white coral sands, but was Tandy to blame?
Nelda was safe, and in his arms.
“O daddy,” she cried, kissing his weather-beaten face, “are we safe?”
“Yes, darling; but I mustn’t land here again.”
Salook was the village king here, a big, burly brute of an Arab, with a white, gilded turban and a yellow, greasy face beneath it. Tandy had known some of his tricks and manners in days gone by.
At sunset that very same evening Salook was surrounded by his warriors.
“Everything yonder,” he said in Swahili, as he pointed to the Sea Flower, “is yours. The little maiden shall be my slave. Get ready your boats, and sharpen your spears. Even were the ship a British man-of-war I’d board her.”
At sunset that evening Tandy was surrounded by his men, and pistols and cutlasses were served out to all.
“We’ll have trouble to-night, men,” he said, “as soon as the moon rises. If there was a breath of wind off-shore I’d slip. We can’t slip—but we’ll fight.”
A cheer rose from the seamen, which Tandy quickly suppressed.
“Hush! Let us make them believe we suspect no treachery. But get up steam in the donkey engine, and connect the pipes.”
This is a plan of defence that acts splendidly and effectively against all kinds and conditions of savages.
Boiling water on bare skins causes squirming, so Tandy felt safe.
The ship carried but one big gun, and this was now loaded with grape.
There wasn’t a sound of life to be heard on board the barque, when about seven bells that night a flood of moonlight, shining softly o’er the sea, revealed the dark boats of the Somalis speeding out to the attack.
But every man on board was at his station.
This was to be a fight to the very death, and all hands knew it.
Nearer and nearer they come—those demon boats. The biggest boat of all is leading, and, sword in hand, Salook stands in the prow. It is crowded with savages, their spear-heads glittering in the moonbeams. On this boat the gun is trained.
The rocks re-echo the crash five seconds after, but the echo is mingled with the yelling of the wounded and the drowning.
Ah! a right merry feast for the sharks, and Salook goes down with the bottomless boat.
The fight does not end with this advantage. Those Somalis are like fiends incarnate. Not even the rifles and revolvers can repel their attack. See, they swarm on the bulwarks round the bows, for the ship has swung head on to the shore with the out-flowing tide.
“Give it to them. The water now, boys. Warm them well!”
Oh, horror! The shrieking is too terrible to be described.
In their boats the unwounded try to reach the shore; but the rifles play on these, and they are quickly abandoned, for the Somalis can swim like eels.
“Now for loot, lads,” cries Tandy. “They began the row. Man and arm the boats.”
When the Sea Flower’s men landed on the white sands, led on by Tandy and Ransey, the conquest was easy. A few volleys secured victory, and the savages were driven to their crags and hills.
“Let us spoil the Egyptians,” said Tandy, “then we shall return and splice the main-brace.”
The loot obtained was far more valuable than the cargoes they had obtained by barter, and I need hardly say that the main-brace was spliced.
Towards morning the wind came puffing off the land. It ought to have died away at sunrise, but did not. So the Sea Flower soon made good her offing, and before long the land lay like a long blue cloud far away on the weather-beam.
The ship was reprovisioned at Zanzibar, and one or two sick hands were allowed to land to be attended to at the French hospital.
In less than a fortnight she once more set sail, and in two months’ time, everything having gone well and cheerily, despite a storm or two, the Sea Flower was very far at sea indeed, steering south-west, and away towards the wild and stormy Cape Horn.
On going on deck one morning, Halcott found Tandy forward, glass in hand, steadying himself against the foremast, while he swept the sea ahead.
“Hallo! Tandy. Land, eh?”
“No, it isn’t land, Halcott. A precious small island it would be. But we’re a long way to the west’ard of the Tristan da Cunha, and won’t see land again till we hail the Falklands. Have a squint, sir.”
“What do you make of her, sir?” asked Tandy.
“Why, a ship; but she’s a hulk, Tandy, a mere hulk or derelict.”
“There might be some poor soul alive there notwithstanding.”
“I agree with you. Suppose we overhaul her,” said Halcott, “and set her on fire. She’s a danger to commerce, anyhow, and I’ll go myself, I think.”
So the whaler was called away, and in a few minutes the boat was speeding over the water towards the dismantled ship, while the Sea Flower, with her foreyard aback, lay floating idly on the heaving sea.
It was early summer just than, in these regions—that is, December was well advanced, and the crew were looking forward to having a real good time of it when Christmas came.
Alas! little did they know what was before them, or how sad and terrible their Christmas would be.
“Pull easy for a bit, men,” cried Halcott; “she is a floating horror! Easy, starboard! give way, port! We’ll get the weather gauge on her, for she doesn’t smell sweet.”
Not a living creature was there to answer the hail given by Halcott. Abandoned she evidently had been by the survivors of her crew, for the starboard boats still hung from her davits, while the ports were gone, and at this side a rope ladder depended.
The boat-hook caught on; with strange misgivings Halcott scrambled on board followed by two men.
He staggered and almost fell against the bulwark, and no wonder, for the sight that met his eyes was indeed a fearful one.
On the lower deck was a great pile of wood, and near it stood a big can of petroleum. It was evident that the crew had intended firing the ship before leaving her, but had for some reason or other abandoned the idea.
Halcott, however, felt that he had a duty to perform, so he gave orders for the paraffin to be emptied over the pile and over the deck. As soon as this was done lighted matches were thrown down, and hardly had they time to regain the boat and push off, ere columns of dark smoke came spewing up the hatchways, followed high into the air by tongues and streams of fire.
Before noon the derelict sank spluttering into the summer sea, and only a few blackened timbers were left to mark the spot where she had gone down.
A few days after this the wind fell and fell, until it was a dead calm.
Once more the sea was like molten lead, and its surface glazed and glassy, but never a bird was to be seen, and for more than a week not a cloud was in the sky as big as a man’s hand. Nor was the motion of the ship appreciable. By day the sun shone warm enough, but at night the stars far in the southern sky shone green and yellow through a strange, dry haze.
On Saturday night Tandy as usual gave orders to splice the main-brace. He, and Halcott also, loved the real old Saturday nights at sea, of the poet Dibdin’s days. And hitherto, in fair weather or in foul, these had been kept up with truly British mirth and glee.
There was no rejoicing, however, on this particular evening, for two of the hands lay prostrate on deck. Halcott himself ministered to them, sailor fashion. First he got them placed in hammocks swung under a screen-berth on deck. This was for the sake of the fresh air, and herein he showed his wisdom.
Then he took a camp-stool and sat down near them to consider their symptoms. But these puzzled him; for while one complained of fierce heat, with headache, and his eyes were glazed and sparkling, the other was shivering and blue with cold. He had no pain except cramps in his legs and back, which caused him an agony so acute that he screamed aloud every time they came on.
Halcott went aft to study. He studied best when walking on his quarterdeck. Hardly knowing what he did, he picked up a bone that honest Bob had been dining off, and threw it into the sea. There was still light enough to see, and the man at the wheel looked languidly astern. When three monster sharks dived, nose on, towards the bone, he looked up into the captain’s face.
“Seen them before?” said Halcott, who was himself superstitious.
“Bless ye, yes, sir. It’s just four days since they began to keep watch, and there they be again. Ah, sir! it ain’t ham-bones they’s a-lookin’ arter. They’ll soon get the kind o’ meat they likes best.”
“What mean you, Durdley?”
“I means the chaps you ’as in the ’ammocks. Listen, sir. There’s no deceivin’ Jim Durdley. We’ve got the plague aboard! I’ve been shipmate with she afore to-day.”
Halcott staggered as if shot.
“Heaven forbid!” he exclaimed.
No one on board cared much for this man Durdley. Nor is this to be wondered at. In his own mess he was quarrelsome to a degree. Poor little Fitz fled when he came near him, and many a brutal blow he received, which at times caused fierce fights, for every one fore and aft loved the nigger boy.
Durdley was almost always boding ill. His only friends were the foreigners of the crew, men that to make a complement of five-and-twenty Tandy had hired in a hurry.
Mostly Finns they were, and bad at that, and if there was ever any grumbling to be done on board the Sea Flower these were the fellows to begin it.
Halcott recovered himself quickly, gave just one glance at Durdley’s dark, forbidding countenance—the man was really ugly enough to stop a church clock—and went below.
He met Tandy at the saloon door, and told him his worst fears.
Alas! these fears were fated to be realised all too soon.
The men now stricken down were those who had boarded the derelict with Halcott. One died next evening, and was lashed in his hammock and dropped over the bows a few hours afterwards.
No doubt, seeing his fellow taken away, the other, who was one of the best of the crew, lost heart.
“I’m dying, sir,” he told Halcott. “No use swallowing physic, the others’ll want it soon.”
By-and-by he began to rave. He was on board ship no longer, but walking through the meadows and fields far away in England with his sister by his side.
“I’ll help you over the old-fashioned stile,” Fitz, who was nursing him, heard him say—“yes, the old-fashioned stile, Lizzie. Oh, don’t I love it! And we’ll walk up and away through the corn-field, by the little, winding path, to the churchyard where mother sleeps. Look, look at the crimson poppies, dear siss. How bonnie they are among the green. Ah-h!”
That was a scream which frightened poor Fitz.
“Go not there, sister. See, see, the monster has killed her! Ah, me!”
Fitz rushed aft to seek for assistance, for the captain had told him to call him if Corrie got worse.
Alas! when the two returned together, Corrie’s hammock was empty.
No one had heard even a plash, so gently had he lowered himself over the side, and sunk to rise no more.