We and the World: A Book for Boys. Part II

The weather was fair enough, and we went along very steadily and pleasantly that afternoon. I was undoubtedly getting my sea-legs, which was well for me, as they were put to the test unexpectedly. I happened to be standing near Alister (we were tarring ropes), when some orders rang out in Mr. Waters’ voice, which I found had reference to something to be done to some of the sails. At last came the words “Away aloft!” which were responded to by a rush of several sailors, who ran and leaped and caught ropes and began climbing the rigging with a nimbleness and dexterity which my own small powers in that line enabled me to appreciate, as I gazed upwards after them. The next order bore unexpected and far from flattering references to me.

“Hi, there. Francis!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“Take that gaping booby up with you. I hear he’s ‘good at athletics.’”

The sailors who were rope-tarring sniggered audibly, and Alister lifted his face with a look of anxiety, that did as much as the sniggering to stimulate me not to disgrace myself.

“Kick off your shoes, and come along,” said Francis. “Jump on the bulwarks and then follow me. Look aloft—that’s up, ye know—never mind your feet, but keep tight hold of the ratlins—so, with your hands, and when you are up aloft, don’t let one hand go till you’re sure of your hold with the other.”

Up we went, gripping the swaying ropes with toes and fingers, till we reached the main-top, where I was allowed to creep through the “Lubber’s Hole,” and Francis swung himself neatly over the outside edge of the top, and there he and I stood for a few minutes to rest.

I cannot say I derived much comfort from his favourable comments on my first attempt. I was painfully absorbed by realizing that to climb what is steady, and to climb what is swaying with every wave, are quite different things. Then, in spite of warnings, I was fascinated by the desire to look down; and when I looked I felt more uncomfortable than ever; the ship’s deck was like a dancing tea-tray far below; my legs and arms began to feel very light, and my head heavy, and I did not hear what Francis was saying to me, so he pinched my arm and then repeated it.

“Come along—and if the other chaps put any larks on you, keep your eyes open, and never lose a grip by one hand somewhere. So long as you hold on to some of the ship’s ropes you’re bound to find your way back somehow.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

Then through the confusion in my head I heard a screaming whistle, and a voice from beneath, and Francis pricked his ears, and then suddenly swung himself back on to the ladder of ropes by which we had climbed.

“Lucky for you, young shaver,” said he. “Come along!”

I desired no more definite explanation. Francis was going down, and I willingly did the same, but when my foot touched the deck I staggered and fell. It was Mr. Johnson who picked me up by the neck of my slops, saying, as he did so, “Boatswain! The captain will give an extra lot of grog to drink Mr. O’Moore’s good health.”

This announcement was received with a cheer, and I heard the boatswain calling to “stow your cleaning-tackle, my lads, and for’ards to the break of the fo’c’sle. Them that has white ties and kid gloves can wear ’em; and them that’s hout of sech articles must come as they can. Pick up that tar-pot, ye fool! Now are ye all coming and bringing your voices along with ye? Hany gentleman as ’as ’ad the misfortin’ to leave his music behind will oblige the ship’s company with an ex-tem-por.”

“Long life to ye, bo’sun; it’s a neat hand at a speech ye are, upon my conscience!” cried Dennis, over my shoulder, and then his arm was around it, shaking with laughter, as we were hurried along by the eager crowd.

“He’s a wag, that old fellow, too. Come along, little Jack! You’re mighty shaky on your feet, considering the festivities that we’re bound for. Step it out, my boy, or I’ll have to carry ye.”

“Are ye coming to the fo’c’sle?” said I, being well aware that this was equivalent to a drawing-room visitor taking tea in the kitchen. “You know it’s where the common sailors, and Alister and I have our meals?” I added, for his private ear.

“Thank ye for the hint. I know it’s where I hope to meet the men that offered their lives for mine.”

“That’s true, Dennis, I know; but don’t be cross. They’ll be awfully pleased to see you.”

“And not without reason, I can tell ye! Didn’t I beard the lion in his den, the captain in his cabin, to beg for the grog? And talking of beards, of all the fiery ——, upon my soul he’s not safe to be near gunpowder. Jack, is he Scotch?”

“Yes.”

“They’re bad to blarney, and I did my best, I can tell you, for my own sake as well as for the men. I’m as shy with strangers as an owl by daylight, and I’ll never get a thank ye out of my throat, unless we’ve the chance of a bit of sociability. However, at last he called to that nice fellow—third mate, isn’t he?—and gave orders for the rum. ‘Two-water grog, Mr. Johnson,’ says he. ‘Ah, captain,’ I said, ‘don’t be throwing cold water on the entertainment; they got their share of that last night. It’s only the rum that’s required to complete us now.’ But he’s as deaf to fun as he is to blarney. Is he good to you, little stowaway?”

“Oh, very,” said I. “And you should hear what the men tell about other captains. They all like this one.”

“He has an air of uprightness about him; and so has that brother-in-adversity of yours, more polish to him! He must be a noble fellow, though. I can’t get over his volunteering, without the most distant obligation to risk his life for me—not even a sailor. And yet he won’t be friendly, do what I will. As formal as you please—that’s pride, I suppose—he’s Scotch too, isn’t he? Blarney’s no go with him. Faith, it’s like trying to butter short-bread with the thermometer at zero. By Jove, there he is ahead of us. Alister, man! Not the ghost of a look will he give me. He’s fine-looking, too, if his hair wasn’t so insanely distracted, and his brow ridged and furrowed deep enough to plant potatoes in. What in the name of fortune’s he doing to his hands?”

“He’s washing them with a lump of grease,” said I. “I saw Francis give it him. It’s to get the tar off.”

“That indeed? Alister! Alister! Have ye no eyes in the back of ye? Here’s Jack and myself.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Alister, stiffly.

“Oh, confound your sir-liness!” muttered Dennis, and added aloud, “Is that pomatum for your hair?”

Alister laughed in spite of himself.

“More like hair-dye, sir,” said he, and rubbing desperately at his fingers, he added, “I can’t get them decent.”

“Ah, let them rest!” said Dennis. “It’s painting the lily to adorn them. On ye go; and mind ye keep near to us, and we’ll make a landlubber’s parliament in a corner to ourselves.”

My first friend had thawed, and went cheerfully ahead of us, as I was very glad to see. Dennis saw it too, but only to relapse into mischief. He held me back, as Alister strode in front, and putting out his thumb and finger, so close to a tuft of hay-coloured hair that stood cocked defiantly up on the Scotchman’s crown that I was in all the agony he meant me to be for fear of detection, he chattered in my ear, “Jack, did ye ever study physiognomy, or any of the science of externals? Look at this independent tuft. Isn’t the whole character of the man in it? Could mortal man force it down? Could the fingers of woman coax it? Would ye appeal to it with argument? Would hair’s grease, bear’s grease ——”

But his peroration was suddenly cut short by a rush from behind, one man tumbling over another on the road to the forecastle. Dennis himself was thrown against Alister, and his hand came heavily down on the stubborn lock of hair.

“It’s these fellows, bad manners to them,” he explained; but I think Alister suspected a joke at his expense, and putting his arms suddenly behind him, he seized Dennis by the legs and hoisted him on to his back as if he had been a child. In this fashion the hero of the occasion was carried to a place of honour, and deposited (not too gently) on the top of an inverted deck-tub, amid the cheers and laughter of all concerned.

Round another tub—a shallow oak one, tidily hooped with cooper—which served as spittoon, a solemn circle of smokers was already assembled. They disturbed themselves to salute Dennis, and to make room for others to join them, and then the enlarged circle puffed and kept silence as before. I was watching the colour come and go on the Irish boy’s face, and he was making comical signs to me to show his embarrassment, when Mr. Johnson shouted for the grog-tub to be sent aft, and the boatswain summoned me to get it and follow him.

The smokers were not more silent than we, as the third mate slowly measured the rum—half a gill a head—into the grog-tub. But when this solemnity was over and he began to add the water, a very spirited dialogue ensued; Mr. Johnson (so far as I could understand it) maintaining that “two-water grog” was the rule of the ships on their line, and the boatswain pleading that this being a “special issue” was apart from general rules, and that it would be more complimentary to the “young gentleman” to have the grog a little stronger. How it ended I do not know; I know I thought my “tot” very nasty, and not improved by the reek of strong tobacco in the midst of which we drank it, to Dennis O’Moore’s very good health.

When the boatswain and I got back to the forecastle, carrying the grog-tub, we found the company as we had left it, except that there was a peculiarly bland expression on every man’s face as he listened to a song that the cook was singing. It was a very love-lorn, lamentable, and lengthy song, three qualities which alone would recommend it to any audience of Jack Tars, as I have since had many occasions to observe. The intense dolefulness of the ditty was not diminished by the fact that the cook had no musical ear, and having started on a note that was no note in particular, he flattened with every long-drawn lamentation till the ballad became more of a groan than a song. When the grog-tub was deposited, Dennis beckoned to the boatswain, and we made our way to his side.

“Your cook’s a vocal genius, anyhow, bo’sun,” said he. “But don’t ye think we’d do more justice to our accomplishments, and keep in tune, if we’d an accompaniment? Have ye such a thing as a fiddle about ye?”

The boatswain was delighted. Of course there was a fiddle, and I was despatched for it. I should find it hanging on a hook at the end of the plate-rack, and if the bow was not beside it it would be upon the shelf, and there used to be a lump of resin and a spare string or two in an empty division of the spice-box. The whole kit had belonged to a former cook, a very musical nigger, who had died at sea, and bequeathed his violin to his ship. Sambo had been well liked, and there were some old hands would be well pleased to hear his fiddle once more.

It took me some little time to find everything, and when I got back to Dennis another song had begun. A young sailor I did not know was singing it, and the less said about it the better, except that it very nearly led to a row. It was by way of being a comic song, but except for one line which was rather witty as well as very nasty, there was nothing humorous about it, unless that it was funny that any one could have been indecent enough to write it, and any one else unblushing enough to sing it. I am ashamed to say I had heard some compositions of a similar type at Snuffy’s, and it filled me with no particular amazement to hear a good deal of sniggering in the circle round the spittoon, though I felt miserably uncomfortable, and wondered what Mr. O’Moore would think. I had forgotten Alister.

I was not likely soon to forget his face as I saw it, the blood swelling his forehead, and the white wrath round his lips, when he gripped me by the shoulder, saying, in broader Scotch than usual, “Come awa’ wi’ ye, laddie! I’ll no let ye stay. Come awa’ oot of this accurst hole. I wonder he doesna think black burning shame of himsel’ to stand up before grey-heided men and fill a callant’s ears with filth like yon.”

Happily just indignation had choked Alister’s voice as well as his veins, and I don’t think many of the company heard this too accurate summary of the situation. The boatswain did, but before he could speak, Dennis O’Moore had sprung to the ground between them, and laying the fiddle over his shoulder played a wild sort of jig that most effectually and unceremoniously drowned the rest of the song, and diverted the attention of the men.

“The fiddle’s an old friend, so the bo’sun tells me,” he said, nodding towards the faces that turned to him.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Why, I’m blessed if it isn’t Sambo’s old thing.”

“It’s your honour knows how to bring the heart out of it, anyhow.”

“My eyes, Pat! You should ha’ heerd it at the dignity ball we went ashore for at Barbadoes. Did you ever foot the floor with a black washerwoman of eighteen stun, dressed out in muslin the colour of orange marmalade, and white kid shoes?”

“I did not, the darlin’!”

As the circle gossiped, Dennis tuned the fiddle, talking vehemently to the boatswain between whiles.

“Bo’sun! ye’re not to say a word to the boy. (Sit down, Alister, I tell ye!) I ask it as a favour. He didn’t mince matters, I’ll allow, but it was God’S truth, and no less, that he spoke. Come, bo’sun, who’s a better judge of manners than yourself? We’d had enough and to spare of that, (Will ye keep quiet, ye cantankerous Scotchman! Who’s harming ye now? Jack, if ye move an inch, I’ll break this fiddle over your head.) Bo’sun! we’re perishing for our grog, are ye aware?”

The diversion was successful. The boatswain, with a few indignant mutterings, devoted himself to doling out the tots of grog, and then proposed Dennis O’Moore’s health in a speech full of his own style of humour, which raised loud applause; Dennis commenting freely on the text, and filling up awkward pauses with flourishes on Sambo’s fiddle. The boatswain’s final suggestion that the ship’s guest should return thanks by a song, instead of a sentiment, was received with acclamations, during which he sat down, after casting a mischievous glance at Dennis, who was once more blushing and fidgeting with shyness.

“Ye’ve taken your revenge, bo’sun,” said he.

“Them that blames should do better, sir,” replied the boatswain, folding his arms.

“A song! a song! Mr. O’Moore!” shouted the men.

“I only know a few old Irish songs,” pleaded Dennis.

“Ould Ireland for ever!” cried Pat Shaughnessy.

“Hear! hear! Encore, Pat!” roared the men. They were still laughing. Then one or two of those nearest to us put up their hands to get silence. Sambo’s fiddle was singing (as only voices and fiddles can sing) a melody to which the heads and toes of the company soon began to nod and beat:

“La, lĕ lā la la, la la la, lā lĕ la, lâ
Lā, le lā la la, la la la, lâ—lĕ la lâ,”

hummed the boatswain. “Lor’ bless me, Mr. O’Moore, I heard that afore you were born, though I’m blessed if I know where. But it’s a genteel pretty thing!”

“It’s all about roses and nightingales!” shouted Dennis, with comical grimaces.

“Hear! hear!” answered the oldest and hairiest-looking of the sailors, and the echoes of his approbation only died away to let the song begin. Then the notes of Sambo’s fiddle also dropped off, and I heard Dennis O’Moore’s beautiful voice for the first time as he gave his head one desperate toss and began:

“There’s a bower of roses by Bendemeer’s stream,
And the nightingale sings round it all the night long.
In the time of my childhood ‘twas like a sweet dream
To sit in the roses and hear the bird’s song.”

One by one the pipes were rested on the smokers’ knees; they wanted their mouths to hear with. I don’t think the assembled company can have looked much like exiles from flowery haunts of the nightingale, but we all shook our heads, not only in time but in sympathy, as the clear voice rose to a more passionate strain:

“That bower and its music I never forget;
But oft when alone in the bloom of the year,
I think—is the nightingale singing there yet?
Are the roses still bright by the calm Bendemeer?”

I and the oldest and hairiest sailor were sighing like furnaces as the melody recommenced with the second verse:

“No, the roses soon withered that hung o’er the wave,
But some blossoms were gathered while freshly they shone,
And a dew was distilled from their flowers, that gave
All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone.”

If making pot-pourri after my mother’s old family recipe had been the chief duty of able-bodied seamen, this could not have elicited more nods of approbation. But we listened spell-bound and immovable to the passion and pathos with which the singer poured forth the conclusion of his song:

“Thus memory draws from delight, ere it dies,
An essence that breathes of it many a year;
Thus bright to my soul—as ‘twas then to my eyes—
Is that bower on the banks of the calm Bendemeer.”

And then (as somebody said) the noise we made was enough to scare the sea-gulls off the tops of the waves.

“You scored that time, Mr. O’Moore,” said the boatswain. “You’d make your fortune in a music-hall, sir.”

“Thank ye, bo’sun. Glad I didn’t give ye your revenge, anyhow.”

But the boatswain meant to strike nearer home. A ship’s favourite might have hesitated to sing after Dennis, so Alister’s feelings may be guessed on hearing the following speech:

“Mr. O’Moore, and comrades all. I believe I speak for all hands on this vessel, when I say that we ain’t likely to forget sech an agreeable addition to a ship’s company as the gentleman who has just given us a taste of the nightingale’s quality” (loud cheers). “But we’ve been out-o’-way favoured as I may say, this voyage. We mustn’t forget that there’s two other little strangers aboard” (roars of laughter). “They ’olds their ’eads rather ’igh p’raps, for stowaways” (“Hear! hear!”), “but no doubt their talents bears ’em out” (“Hear, hear!” from Dennis, which found a few friendly echoes). “Anyway, as they’ve paid us a visit, without waiting to ask if we was at ’ome to callers, we may look to ’em to contribute to the general entertainment. Alister Auchterlay will now favour the company with a song.”

The boatswain stood back and folded his arms, and fixed his eyes on the sea-line, from which attitude no appeals could move him. I was very sorry for Alister, and so was Dennis, I am sure, for he did his best to encourage him.

“Sing ‘God save the Queen,’ and I’ll keep well after ye with the fiddle,” he suggested. But Alister shook his head. “I know one or two Scotch tunes,” Dennis added, and he began to sketch out an air or two with his fingers on the strings.

Presently Alister stopped him. “Yon’s the ‘Land o’ the Leal’?”

“It is,” said Dennis.

“Play it a bit quicker, man, and I’ll try ‘Scots wha hae.’”

Dennis quickened at once, and Alister stood forward. He neither fidgeted nor complained of feeling shy, but as my eyes (I was squatted cross-legged on the deck) were at the level of his knees, I could see them shaking, and pitied him none the less, that I was doubtful as to what might not be before me. Dennis had to make two or three false starts before poor Alister could get a note out of his throat, but when he had fairly broken the ice with the word “Scots!” he faltered no more.

The boatswain was cheated a second time of his malice. Alister could not sing in the least like Dennis, but he had a strong manly voice, and it had a ring that stirred one’s blood, as he clenched his hands, and rolled his Rs to the rugged appeal:

“Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory!”

Applause didn’t seem to steady his legs in the least, and he never moved his eyes from the sea, and his face only grew whiter by the time he drove all the blood to my heart with

“Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward’s grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!”

“God forbid!” cried Dennis impetuously. “Sing that verse again, me boy, and give us a chance to sing with ye!” which we did accordingly; but as Alister and Dennis were rolling Rs like the rattle of musketry on the word turn, Alister did turn, and stopped suddenly short. The captain had come up unobserved.

“Go on!” said he, waving us back to our places.

By this time the solo had become a chorus. Beautifully unconscious, for the most part, that the song was by way of stirring Scot against Saxon, its deeper patriotism had seized upon us all. Englishmen, Scotchmen, and sons of Erin, we all shouted at the top of our voices, Sambo’s fiddle not being silent. And I maintain that we all felt the sentiment with our whole hearts, though I doubt if any but Alister and the captain knew and sang the precise words:

“Wha for Scotland’s king and law
Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or freeman fa’,
Let him on wi’ me!”

CHAPTER VIII.

“’Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange—
Stranger than fiction.”—Byron.

“Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows.”—Gray.

The least agreeable part of our voyage came near the end. It was when we were in the fogs off the coast of Newfoundland. The work that tired one to death was not sufficient to keep one warm; the cold mist seemed to soak through one’s flesh as well as one’s slops, and to cling to one’s bones as it clung to the ship’s gear. The deck was slippery and cold, everything, except the funnel, was sticky and cold, and the fog-horn made day and night hideous with noises like some unmusical giant trying in vain to hit the note Fa. The density of the fog varied. Sometimes we could not see each other a few feet off, at others we could see pretty well what we were about on the vessel, but could see nothing beyond.

We went very slowly, and the fog lasted unusually long. It included a Sunday, which is a blessed day to Jack at sea. No tarring, greasing, oiling, painting, scraping or scrubbing but what is positively necessary, and no yarn-spinning but that of telling travellers’ tales, which seamen aptly describe as spinning yarns. I heard a great many that day which recalled the school-master’s stories, and filled my head and heart with indefinable longings and impatience. More and more did it seem impossible that one could live content in one little corner of this interesting world when one has eyes to see and ears to hear, and hands for work, and legs to run away with.

Not that the tales that were told on this occasion were of an encouraging nature, for they were all about fogs and ice; but they were very interesting. One man had made this very voyage in a ship that got out of her course as it might be where we were then. She was too far to the north’ard when a fog came on, as it might be the very fog we were in at that moment, and it lasted, lifting a bit and falling again worse than ever, just the very same as it was a-doing now. Cold? He believed you this fog was cold, and you might believe him that fog was cold, but the cold of both together would not be a patch upon what it was when your bones chattered in your skin and you heard the ship’s keel grinding, and said “Ice!” “He’d seen some queer faces—dead and living—in his time, but when that fog lifted and the sun shone upon walls of green ice on both sides above our head, and the captain’s face as cold and as green as them with knowing all was up ——”

At this point the narrator was called away, and somebody asked,

“Has any one heard him tell how it ended?”

“I did,” said Pat Shaughnessy, “and it spoilt me dinner that time.”

“Go on, Pat! What happened to them?”

“The lowest depths of misfortune. Sorra a soul but himself and a boy escaped by climbing to a ledge on the topmost peak of one of the icebergs just in the nick of time to see the ship cracked like a walnut between your fingers. And the worst was to come, bad luck!”

“What? Go on, Paddy! What did he and the boy do?”

“They just eat each other,” faltered Pat. “But, Heaven be praised! a whaler fetched off the survivor. It was then that he got the bad fever though, so maybe he dreamt the worst.”

I felt great sympathy with Pat’s evident disrelish for this tale, but the oldest and hairiest sailor seemed hardly to regard it as worth calling an adventure. If you wanted to see ice that was ice, you should try the coast of Greenland, he said. “Hartic Hexploration for choice, but seals or blubber took you pretty far up. He remembered the Christmas he lost them two.” (And cocking one leg over the other, he drew a worsted sock from his foot, and displayed the fact that his great toe and the one next to it were gone.) “They lost more than toes that time too. You might believe it gave you a lonelyish kind of feel when there was no more to be done for the ship but get as much firewood out of her timber as you could, and all you had in the way of a home was huts on an ice-floe, and a white fox, with a black tip to its tail, for a pet. It wouldn’t have lasted long, except for discipline,” we young ’uns might take notice. “Pleasure’s all very well ashore, where a man may go his own way a long time, and show his nasty temper at home, and there’s other folks about him doing double duty to make up for it and keep things together; but when you come to a handful of men cast adrift to make a world for themselves, as one may say, Lord bless you! there’s nothing’s any good then but making every man do as he’s bid and be content with what he gets—and clearing him out if he won’t. It was a hard winter at that. But regularity pulled us through. Reg’lar work, reg’lar ways, reg’lar rations and reg’lar lime-juice, as long as it lasted. And not half a bad Christmas we didn’t have neither, and poor Sal’s Christmas-tree was the best part of it. ‘What sort of a Christmas-tree, and why Sal’s?’ Well, the carpenter put it up, and an uncommon neat thing he made too, of pinewood and birch-broom, and some of the men hung it over with paper chains. And then the carpenter opened the bundle Sal made him take his oath he wouldn’t open till Christmas, whatever came, and I’m blest if there wasn’t a pair of brand-new socks for every soul of the ship’s crew. Not that we were so badly off for socks, but washing ’em reg’lar, and never being able to get ’em really dry, and putting ’em on again like stones, was a mighty different thing to getting all our feet into something dry and warm. ‘Who was Sal?’ Well, poor Sal was a rum ’un, but she’s dead. It’s a queer thing, we only lost one hand, and that was the carpenter, and he died the same day poor Sal was murdered down Bermondsey way. It’s a queer world, this, no matter where you’re cruising! But there’s one thing you’ll learn if you live as long as me; a woman’s heart and the ocean deep’s much about the same. You can’t reckon on ’em, and God A’mighty, as made ’em, alone knows the depths of ’em; but as our doctor used to say (and he was always fetching things out and putting ‘em into bottles), it’s the rough weather brings the best of it up.”

This was not a cheerful story, but it was soon driven out of our heads by others. Fog was the prevailing topic; yarns of the fogs of the northern seas being varied by “red fogs” off the Cape de Verd Islands; and not the least dismal of the narratives was told by Alister Auchterlay, of a fog on Ben Nevis, in which his own grandmother’s uncle perished, chiefly, as it appeared, in consequence of a constitutional objection to taking advice, or to “going back upon his word,” when he had made up his mind to do something or to go somewhere. And this drew from the boatswain the sad fate of a comrade of his, who had sailed twice round the world, been ship-wrecked four times, in three collisions, and twice aboard ships that took fire, had Yellow Jack in the West Indies, and sunstroke at the Cape, lost a middle finger from frost-bite in the north of China, and one eye in a bit of a row at San Francisco, and came safe home after it all, and married a snug widow in a pork-shop at Wapping Old Stairs, and got out of his course steering home through a London fog on Guy Fawkes Day, and walked straight into the river, and was found at low tide next morning with a quid of tobacco in his cheek, and nothing missing about him but his glass eye, which shows, as the boatswain said, that “Fogs is fogs anywhere, and a nasty thing too.”

It was towards dark, when we had been fourteen days at sea, that our own fog suddenly lifted, and the good news flew from mouth to mouth that we might be “in about midnight.” But the fog came down again, and I do not think that the whole fourteen days put together felt so long as the hours of that one night through which the fog-horn blew, and we longed for day.

I was leaning against the bulwarks at eight o’clock the next morning. White mist was all around us, a sea with no horizon. Suddenly, like the curtain of a theatre, the mist rose. Gradually the horizon-line appeared, then a line of low coast, which, muddy-looking as it was, made one’s heart beat thick and fast. Then lines of dark wood; then the shore was dotted with grey huts; then the sun came out, the breeze was soft and mild, and the air became strangely scented, and redolent of pine forests. Nearer the coast took more shape, though it was still low, rather bare and dotted with brushwood and grey stones low down, and always crowned with pines. Then habitations began to sparkle along the shore. Red roofs, cardboard-looking churches, little white wooden houses, and stiffish trees mixed everywhere. And the pine odour on the breeze was sweeter and sweeter with every breath one drew.

Suddenly I found Alister’s arm round my shoulder.

“Isn’t it glorious?” I exclaimed.

“Aye, aye,” he said, and then, as if afraid he had not said enough, he added with an effort: “The toun’s built almost entirely of wood, I’m told, with a population of close on 30,000 inhabitants.”

“What a fellow you are!” I groaned: “Alister, aren’t you glad we’re safe here? Are you ever pleased about anything?”

He didn’t speak, and I turned in his arm to look up at his face. His eyes, which always remind me of the sea, were looking away over it, but he brought them back to meet mine, and pressed my shoulder.

“It is bonnie,” he said, “verra bonnie. But eh, man! if strange land shines like yon, hoo’ll oor ain shores look whenever we win Home?”

CHAPTER IX.

“One, two, three, and away!”

We three were fast friends when our voyage ended, and in planning our future we planned to stick together, “Like the three leaves of the shamrock,” as Dennis O’Moore said.

The captain would have kept Alister as one of his crew, but the Scotch lad had definite plans for looking up a cousin on this side of the Atlantic, and pushing his fortunes by the help of his relative, so he did not care to make the return voyage. The captain did not offer the berth to me, but he was very kind, and returned my money, and gave us a written paper testifying to our good conduct and capabilities. He also gave Alister his address, and he and the other officers collected a small sum of money for him as a parting gift.

That afternoon we three crossed the harbour, and went for a walk in the pine-woods. How I longed for Charlie! I would have given anything if he could have been there, warmed through by the hot sun, refreshed by the smell of pines, resting his poor back in the deep moss, and getting excited over the strange flowers that grew wild all round our feet. One never forgets the first time one sees unknown flowers growing wild; and though we were not botanical, like Charlie, we had made ourselves very hot with gathering nosegays by the time that Dennis summoned us to sit down and talk seriously over our affairs. Our place of council was by the side of a lake, which reflected a sky more blue than I had ever seen. It stretched out of sight, and all about it were pines—pines. It was very lovely, and very hot, and very sweet, and the little black flies which swarmed about took tiny bits out of our cheek, and left the blood trickling down, so cleverly, that one did not feel it—till afterwards. We did feel the mosquitoes, and fought with them as well as we could, whilst Dennis O’Moore, defending his own face with a big bunch of jack-in-pulpits striped like tabby cats, explained his plans as follows:

Of course we had no notion of going home awhile. Alister and I had come away on purpose; and for his own part it had always been the longing of his soul to see the world. Times out of mind when he and Barney were on board one of these emigrant ships, that had put into the bay, God-speeding an old tenant or acquaintance with good wishes and whisky and what not, he had been more than half inclined to give old Barney and the hooker the slip, and take his luck with the outward bound. And now he was here, and no blame for it, why would he hurry home? The race of the O’Moores was not likely to become extinct for the loss of him, at the worst; and the Squire wouldn’t grudge him a few months’ diversion and a peep at the wide world. Far from it; he’d send him some money, and why not? He (Dennis) was a bit of a favourite for his mother’s sake, and the Squire had a fine heart. The real difficulty was that it would be at least a month before the Squire could get a letter and Dennis could get his money; but if we couldn’t keep our heads above water for a month we’d small chance of pushing our way in the world.

It is needless to say that I was willing to fall in with Dennis O’Moore’s plans, being only too thankful for such companions in my wanderings. I said so, and added that what little money I had was to be regarded as a common purse so long as it lasted.

When Alister was appealed to, he cast in his lot with no less willingness, but it seemed that he must first look up a relation of his mother’s, who lived in Halifax, and to whom his mother had given him a letter of introduction. Alister had never told us his history, and of course we had not asked for it; but on this occasion some of it crept out. His father had been the minister of a country parish in Scotland, but he had died young, and Alister had been reared in poverty. Dennis and I gathered that he had well-to-do relatives on his father’s side, but, as Dennis said, “more kinship than kindness about them.” “Though I wouldn’t wonder if the widow herself had a touch of stiff-neckedness in her,” he added.

However that might be, Alister held with his mother, of course, and he said little enough about his paternal relations, except one, whom he described as “a guid man, and verra canny, but hard on the failings of the young.” What youthful failings in our comrade had helped to snap the ties of home we did not know, but we knew enough of Alister by this time to feel sure they could not have been very unpardonable.

It was not difficult to see that it was under the sting of this man’s reproaches that the lad had taken his fate into his own hands.

“I’m not blaming him,” said Alister in impartial tones; and then he added, with a flash of his eyes, “but I’ll no be indebted to him!”

We had returned to the town, and were strolling up the shady side of one of the clean wooden streets, when a strange figure came down it with a swinging gait, at a leisurely pace. She (for, after a moment’s hesitation, we decided that it was a woman) was of gipsy colouring, but not of gipsy beauty. Her black hair was in a loose knot on her back, she wore a curious skull-cap of black cloth embroidered with beads, a short cloth skirt, a pair of old trousers tucked into leather socks, a small blanket with striped ends folded cunningly over her shoulders, and on her breast a gold cross about twice as large as the one concealed beneath the Irish boy’s shirt. And I looked at her with a curious feeling that my dreams were coming true. Dark—high-cheeked—a blanket—and (unless the eyes with which I gazed almost reverentially at the dirty leather socks deceived me) moccasins—she was, she must be, a squaw!

Probably Dennis had come to the same conclusion, when, waving the tabby-coloured arums he said, “I’ll ask her what these are,” and gaily advanced to carry out his purpose.

“Ye’re daft,” said Alister, getting red.

“It’s a North American Indian!” said I.

“It’s a woman, anyhow!” retorted Dennis over his shoulder, with a twinkle of his eyelashes that drew from Alister in his broadest accent, “The lad’s a pairrfect libberrteen!” an expression which he afterwards retracted and apologized for at considerable length.

Within a few feet of the squaw Dennis lifted the broad-brimmed hat which I had bought for him directly we landed, and then advancing with a winning smile, he asked the name of the flowers in very good Irish, The squaw smiled too; she touched the flowers, and nodded and said something in a soft, rapid and unknown tongue, which only made Dennis shake his head and smile again, on which she spoke in a language still dark to Alister and me, but not so to Dennis, who, to our amazement, replied in the same, and a dialogue so spirited ensued, that they both seemed to be talking at once. Alister’s face was a study when Dennis put out his hand towards the squaw’s gold cross, and all but touched it, and then (both chattering faster than ever) unbuttoned his throat and drew out his crucifix to show her. His last act was to give her half the tabby-striped arums as they parted. Then he lifted the broad hat once more and stood bareheaded, as the squaw came slowly down the wooden causeway, not without one glance at us as she passed. But at the bottom of the street she turned round to look at Dennis. His hat was still in his hand, and he swung it round his head, crying, “A Dieu, Madame!”

“A Dieu!” said the squaw, and she held up the tabby-striped arums. Very mingled feelings seemed to have been working in Alister’s mind, but his respect for the fruits of education was stronger even than his sense of propriety. He forgot to scold Dennis for his unseemly familiarity with a stranger, he was so anxious to know in what language he had been speaking.

“French,” said Dennis. “There seems to be a French mission somewhere near here. She’s a good Catholic too, but she has a mighty queer accent, and awful feet!”

“It’s a grand thing to speak with other tongues!” said Alister.

“If ye want to learn French, I’ll teach ye all I can,” said Dennis. “Sh—sh! No kindness whatever. I wish we mayn’t have idle time for any amount of philology!”

At the top of the hill we parted for a time, and went our ways. Alister to look up his relation, I to buy stationery and stamps for our letters home, and Dennis to convert his gold ring into the currency of the colony. We would not let him pawn his watch, which he was most anxious to do, though Alister and I pointed out how invaluable it might prove to us (it was a good hunting-watch, and had been little damaged by the sea), because, as he said, “he would feel as if he was doing something, anyhow.”

Alister and I were the last to part, and as we did so, having been talking about Dennis O’Moore, I said, “I knew it was French when I got nearer, but I never learnt French, though my mother began to teach me once. You don’t really think you’ll learn it from him, do you?”

“With perseverance,” replied Alister, simply.

“What good will French be to you?” I asked.

“Knowledge is a light burden, and it may carry ye yet,” was Alister’s reply.

When we met again, Dennis was jingling some money in his pocket, which was added to the common fund of which the miser’s legacy had formed the base. I had got paper and stamps, and information as to mails, and some more information which was postponed till we found out what was amiss with the Scotch leaf of our shamrock. For there were deep furrows on Alister’s brow, but far deeper was the despondency of his soul. He was in the lowest possible spirits, and with a Scotchman that is low indeed. He had made out his way to his cousin’s place of business, and had heard a very satisfactory report of the commercial success, but—the cousin had gone “to the States.”

Alister felt himself very much ill-used by fate, and I believe Dennis felt himself very much ill-used by Alister, that evening, but I maintain that I alone was the person really to be pitied, because I had to keep matters smooth between the two. The gloom into which Alister relapsed, his prophecies, prognostications, warnings, raven-like croakings, parallel instances, general reflections and personal applications, as well as his obstinate notion that he would be “a burden and a curse” to “the two of us,” and that it would have been small wonder had the sailors cast him forth into the Atlantic, like the Prophet Jonah, as being certain to draw ill-luck on his companions, were trying enough; but it was no joke that misfortune had precisely the opposite effect upon Dennis. If there was a bit of chaff left unchaffed in all Ireland, from Malin Head to Barley Cove, I believe it came into Dennis’s head on this inappropriate occasion, and he forthwith discharged it at Alister’s. To put some natures into a desperate situation seems like putting tartaric acid into soda and water—they sparkle up and froth. It certainly was so with Dennis O’Moore; and if Alister could hardly have been more raven-like upon the crack of doom, the levity of Dennis would, in our present circumstances, have been discreditable to a paroquet.

For it was no light matter to have lost our one hope of a friend in this strange land; and yet this was practically what it meant, when we knew that Alister Auchterlay’s cousin had gone to the States. But the idea of kinship at last suggested, something more sensible than jokes to Dennis O’Moore.

“Why, I’ve a cousin of my own in Demerara, and I’d forgotten him entirely!” he suddenly announced.

“You haven’t a cousin in New York, have you?” I asked, and I proceeded to explain, that having done my business, I had been drawn back to the harbour by all the attractions shipping has for me, and had there been accosted by the mate of a coasting-vessel bound for New York with salt fish, who was in want of hands both to load and man her. The Water-Lily had been pointed out to me from a distance, and we might go and see her to-morrow morning if we liked. With the prospect of living for at least a month on our slender stocking, the idea of immediate employment was very welcome, to say nothing of the attraction of further adventures. Alister began to cheer up, and Dennis to sober down. We wrote home, and posted our letters, after which we secured a decent sleeping-room and a good meal of broiled salmon, saffron-coloured cakes, and hot coffee, for a very reasonable sum; but, moderate as it was, it confirmed us in the conviction that we could not afford to eat the bread of idleness.

Next day we were early at the wharf. The Water-Lily was by no means so white as she was named, and the smell of the salt fish was abominable. But we knew we could not pick and choose when we wanted employment, and wanted to be together; and to this latter point we had nailed our colours. With Alister and me the mate came to terms at once, but for a time he made difficulties about Dennis. We “stowaways” had had so much dirty work to do in all weathers for the past fortnight, that we looked sailor-like enough, I dare say; and as it had honestly been our endeavour to learn all we could, and shirk nothing, and as the captain’s paper spoke well of us, I think the mate got a very good bargain—for we were green enough to take lower wages than the customary rate on the strength of a long string of special reasons which he made us swallow. This probably helped towards his giving in about Dennis. The matter about Dennis was that he looked too much of the fine gentleman still, though his homespun suit had seen salt water, and was far from innocent of tar and grease, for he had turned his hand to plenty of rough work during the voyage, partly out of good-nature, and partly to learn all he could get the sailors to teach him. However, his coaxing tongue clinched the bargain at last; indeed the mate seemed a good deal struck by the idea that he would find it “mighty convenient” to have a man on board who was a good scholar and could help him to keep the log. So we signed articles, and went to our duty.

The Water-Lily was loaded, and we sailed in her, and we got to New York. But of all the ill-found tubs that ever put to sea, I should think she might have taken the first prize. We were overhauling her rotten rigging, taking off, putting on, and mending chafing gear every bit of our time, Sunday included. The carpenter used horrible language, but for his vexation I could have forgiven him if he had expressed it more decently, for he never had a moment’s rest by day; and though a ship’s carpenter is exempt from watches and allowed to sleep at night as a rule, I doubt if he had two nights’ rest between Halifax and New York.

As Dennis put it, there was “any amount of chicanery about the whole affair.” Some of our pay was “set against” supplying “duds” for Dennis to do dirty work in; Alister was employed as sail-maker, and then, like the carpenter, was cheated of his rest. As to food, we were nearly starved, and should have fared even worse than we did, but that the black cook was friendly towards us.

“Dis Water-Lily ob ours a leetle ober-blown, Dennis, I’m tinking,” said Alfonso, showing all his white teeth. “Hope she not fall to pieces dis voyage.”

“Hope not, Alfonso. She hasn’t lost her scent, anyhow!” At which allusion to our unsavoury cargo Alfonso yelled with laughter.

For our favour with the cook (and it means hot coffee, dry socks, and other little comforts being in favour with the cook) we had chiefly to thank Dennis. Our coal-black comrade loved jokes much, but his own dignity just a little more; and the instinctive courtesy which was as natural to Dennis as the flow of his fun, made him particularly acceptable to Alfonso.

And for the rest, we came to feel that if we could keep the Water-Lily afloat to the end of her voyage, most other considerations were minor ones.

CHAPTER X.