THE LOST JACKET, AND OTHER MATTERS.
The routine of life on board ship, especially on board such a small
vessel as the brig _Anne_, was very dull and monotonous, when once out
of sight of land. The weather, however, continued cloudless; and though,
after the first week, the favourable wind which had wafted them so far
over their watery path in safety deserted them, and never again filled
their sails, or directed them in a straight course, they had no cause to
complain. The captain grumbled at the prevalence of westerly winds; the
mates grumbled, and the sailors grumbled at having to tack so often; yet
the ship slowly and steadily continued to traverse the vast Atlantic,
with the blue sky above, and the deep green sea below, both unruffled by
cloud or storm. The health of both passengers and crew continued
excellent; the prentice lad, Monro, and Mrs. Lyndsay's maid, Hannah,
forming the only exceptions. As to the latter, Flora soon discovered
that her illness was all apocryphal. She chose to lie in her berth all
day, where she was fed from the cabin table, and duly dosed with
brandy-and-water by the Captain, who did not attempt to conceal his
partiality for this worthless woman. At night she was always well enough
to get up and dance till after midnight on the deck with the passengers
and sailors. Her conduct became a matter of scandal to the whole ship,
and Mr. Collins complained of his brother-in-law's unprincipled
behaviour in no measured terms. "But she's a bad woman, an infamous
woman! Mrs. Lyndsay. You had better part with her the moment you reach
land."
This Flora would gladly have done. But they had laid out so much money
in her passage and outfit, that she did not like to incur such a heavy
loss. She still hoped, that when removed from the bad influence of the
Captain, she would behave herself with more propriety. A sad mistake;
for this woman proved a world of trouble and sorrow, as she was both
weak and wicked, and her conduct after they reached Canada occasioned
her much anxiety and uneasiness.
Flora remonstrated with her, but she found her insolently indifferent to
her orders. "She was free," she said, "from all engagement the moment
she landed in Canada. She should be a lady there, as good as other
folks, and she was not going to slave herself to death as a nurse girl,
tramping about with a heavy child in her arms all day. Mrs. Lyndsay
could not compel her to wait upon her on board ship, and she might wait
upon herself for what she cared."
"But how do you expect to get your living in Canada?" replied Flora.
"You must work there, or starve."
"Indeed!" said Hannah, tossing up her head. "It's not long that I shall
stay in Canada. I'm going home with Captain Williams. He has promised to
divorce his wife and marry me, when he gets back to Scotland."
"Marry you, and divorce his wife! the nice kind woman you saw on board
the night we sailed! Can you lend a willing ear to such idle tales? He
can neither divorce his wife nor marry you, poor, foolish girl--wicked,
I should add, for your conduct, when your situation is taken into
consideration, is an aggravation of hardened guilt."
"It's no business of yours, at any rate," sobbed Hannah, who had tears
always at command. "I don't mean to lose the chance of being a lady in
order to keep my word with you. You may get somebody else to wait on you
and the child; I won't."
And she flounced back to her berth, and cried till the Captain went to
console her.
This matter led to a serious quarrel with old Boreas. Lyndsay reproached
him with tampering with his servant, and setting her against her
employers, and threatened to write to Mr. Gregg and expose his conduct.
Boreas was first in a towering passion. He bullied, and swore, and
cursed the impudent jade, who, he declared, was more competent to
corrupt his morals than he was to corrupt hers. That she was his
mistress, he did not deny; but as to the tale of divorcing his Jean for
such a ---- as her, none but a fool could believe it for a moment.
He promised, however, but very reluctantly, to conduct himself towards
the girl properly for the future, and he remained as sulky and as rude
as a bear to the Lyndsays for the rest of the voyage.
As to little Josey, she did not at all miss the attentions of her nurse.
On deck she found abundance of nurses, from old Bob Motion to the
stately Mr. Collins, who, when off duty, carried her about in his arms,
singing sea songs or Scotch ballads. Her kindest and best friend,
however, was Mr. Wright, the second mate. He had been brought up a
gentleman, and had served his time as midshipman and master on board a
King's ship, and had been broken for some act of insubordination, which
had stopped his further promotion in that quarter. He had subsequently
formed an imprudent marriage with some woman much beneath himself, and
had struggled for many years with poverty, sickness, and heart-breaking
cares. He had, in the course of time, buried this wife and seven
children, and was now alone in the world, earning his living as the
second mate of the small brig, the _Anne_.
The Captain disliked him, but said, "that he was an excellent seaman,
and could be depended upon." The mate was jealous of him, and thought
that the Captain preferred Wright to him, and considered him the ablest
man of the two. But old Boreas only hated him for being a gentleman of
superior birth and breeding to himself. In speaking of him he always
added--"Ah, d----n him, he's a gentleman! and writes and speaks Dic. I
hate gentlemen on board ship!"
Mr. Wright, with his silver hair and mild pale face, was a great
favourite with Flora, and while he carried Josey in his arms to and fro
the deck, she listened with pleasure to the sad history of his
misfortunes, or to the graphic pictures he drew of the countries he had
visited during a long life spent at sea. He fancied that Josey was the
image of the last dear babe he lost,--his pet and darling, whom he never
mentioned without emotion--his blue-eyed Bessy. She lost her mother when
she was just the age of Josey, and she used to lie in his bosom of a
night, with her little white arms clasped about his neck. She was the
last thing left to him on earth, and he had loved her with all his
heart; but God punished him for the sin of his youth by taking Bessy
from him. He was alone in the world now--a grey-haired, broken-hearted
old man, with nothing to live for but the daily hope that death was
nearer to him than it was the day before, and that he should soon see
his angel Bessy and her poor mother again.
And so he took to Josey, and used to call her Bessy, and laugh and cry
over her by turns, and was never so happy as when she was in his arms,
with her little fingers twined in his long grey locks. He would dance
her, and hold her over the vessel's side to look at the big green waves,
as they raced past the ship dashing their white foam-wreaths against her
brown ribs, and Josey would regard them with a wondering wide-open
glance, as if she wanted to catch them as they glided by.
"Always towards home," as Flora said, for the westerly winds still
prevailed, and they made slow progress over the world of waters.
The Captain now found it necessary to restrain the great amount of
cooking constantly going on at the caboose; and as a matter of prudence,
to inspect the stores of provision among the steerage passengers. He
found many of these running very low, and he represented to all on board
the necessity of husbanding their food as much as possible, for he began
to be apprehensive that the voyage would prove long and tedious, and the
ship was only provided for a six weeks' voyage.
The good folks listened to him with an incredulous stare, as if such a
calamity as starvation overtaking them was impossible. From that
day--and they had been just three weeks out--the people were put upon
short allowance of water, which was gradually diminished from day to
day.
Unfortunately for the people on board, the weather was very warm, and no
rain had fallen of any account since they left Scotland. Lyndsay and
Flora had been greatly amused by a venture which an honest Northumbrian
labourer was taking out to Canada, at which they had laughed very
heartily. It was neither more nor less than nine barrels of _potatoes_,
which they had told him was "_taking coals to Newcastle_." Droll as this
investment of his small capital appeared, however, the hand of
Providence had directed his choice. At the time when most of the food
provided for the voyage was expended in the ship, the Captain was glad
to purchase the labourer's venture at three dollars a bushel, and as
each barrel contained four bushels of potatoes, the poor fellow made
twenty-seven pounds of his few bushels of the "_soul-debasing root_," as
Cobbett chose to style it. As he was a quiet, sensible fellow, this
unhoped-for addition to his small means must have proved very useful in
going into the woods. A young fellow from Glasgow, who carried out with
him several large packets of kid gloves, was not half so fortunate for
though they appeared a good speculation, they got spotted and spoiled by
the sea water, and he could not have realised upon them the original
cost.
Among the steerage passengers there was a little tailor, and two
brothers who followed the trade of the awl, who always afforded much
mirth to the sailors. The little tailor, who really might have passed
for the ninth part of a man, he was so very small and insignificant, was
the most aspiring man in the ship. Climbing seemed born in him, for it
was impossible to confine him to the hold or the deck, up he most go--up
to the clouds, if the mast would only have reached so high; and there he
would sit or lie, with the sky above, and the sea below, as comfortable
and as independent as if he were sitting crosslegged upon his board in a
garret of one of the dark lofty wynds of the ancient town of Leith.
The Captain was so delighted with Sandy Rob's aspiring spirit, that he
often held jocose dialogues with him from the deck.
"Hollo, Sandy! what news above there? Can't you petition the clerk of
the weather to give us a fair wind?"
"Na, Captain, I'm thinkin' it's of na use until the change o' the mune.
I'll keep a gude look out, an' gie ye the furst intelligence o' that
event."
"And what keeps you broiling up there in the full blaze of the sun,
Sandy? The women say that they are wanting you below."
"That's mair than I'm wantin' o' them. My pleasure's above--theirs is a'
below. I'm jist thinkin', it's better to be here basking in the broad
sunshine, than deefened wi' a' their clavers; breathin' the caller air,
than suffocated wi' the stench o' that pit o' iniquity, the hould. An'
as to wha' I'm doin' up here, I'm jest lookin' out to get the furst
glint o' the blessed green earth."
"You'll be tanned as black as a nigger, Sandy, before you see the
hill-tops again. If we go on at this rate, the summer will slip past us
altogether."
Often during the night he would cry out, "Ho, Sandy! are you up there,
man? What of the night, watchman--what of the night?"
"Steady, Captain--steady. No land yet in sight."
And Boreas would answer with a loud guffaw, "If we were in the British
Channel, tailor, I'd be bound that you'd keep a good look-out for the
Needle's eye."
The shoemakers, in disposition and appearance, were quite the reverse of
the little tailor. They were a pair of slow coaches, heavy lumpish men,
who would as soon have attempted a ride to the moon on a broomstick, as
have ventured two yards up the mast. They were indefatigable eaters and
smokers, always cooking, and puffing forth smoke from their short
brass-lidded pipes. They never attempted a song, still less to join in
the nightly dance on deck, which the others performed with such spirit,
and entered into with such a keen relish, that their limbs seemed strung
upon wires. They seldom spoke, but sat upon the deck looking on with
listless eyes, as the rest bounded past them, revelling in the very
madness of mirth.
Geordie Muckleroy, the elder of the twain, was a stout, clumsy made man,
whose head was stuck into his broad rounded shoulders, like the handle
of his body which had grown so stiff from his stolid way of thinking,
(if indeed he ever thought,) and his sedentary habits, that he seemed to
move it with great difficulty, and, in answering a question, invariably
turned his whole frame to the speaker. He had a large, flabby,
putty-coloured face, deeply marked with the small pox, from which cruel,
disfiguring malady he and his brother Jock seemed to have suffered in
common. A pair of little black meaningless eyes looked like blots in his
heavy visage; while a profusion of black, coarse hair, cut very short,
stuck up on end all over his flat head, like the bristles in a
scrubbing-brush. He certainly might have taken the prize for ugliness in
the celebrated club which the _Spectator_ has immortalized. Yet this
hideous, unintellectual looking animal had a wife, a neat,
sensible-looking woman, every way his superior, both in person and
intelligence. She was evidently some years older than her husband, and
had left a nobleman's service, in which she had been cook for a long
period, to accompany Geordie as his bride across the Atlantic. Like most
women, who late in life marry very young men, she regarded her mate as a
most superior person, and paid him very loving attentions, which he
received with the most stoical indifference, at which the rest of the
males laughed, making constant fun of Geordie and his old girl. Jock was
the counterpart of his brother in manners and disposition; but his head
was adorned with a red scrubbing-brush, instead of a black one, and his
white freckled face was half-covered with carrotty whiskers. The trio
were so poor, that after having paid their passage-money, they only
possessed among them a solitary sixpence.
The day after they reached the banks of Newfoundland, and the ship was
going pretty smartly through the water, Geordie hung his woollen jacket
over the ship's side while he performed his ablutions, and a sudden puff
of wind carried it overboard.
Mrs. Lyndsay was sitting upon the deck with Josey in her arms, when she
heard a plunge into the water, followed by a loud shriek, and Mrs.
Muckleroy fell to the deck in a swoon.
The cry of "A man overboard!--a man overboard!" now rang through the
ship. Every one present sprang to their feet, and rushed to the side
of the vessel, looking about in all directions, to see the missing
individual rise to the surface of the water, and Flora among the rest.
Presently a black head emerged from the waves, and two hands were held
up in a deplorable bewildered manner, and the great blank face looked
towards the skies with a glance of astonishment, as if the owner could
not yet comprehend his danger, and scarcely realized his awful
situation. He looked just like a seal, or some uncouth monster of the
deep, who having ventured to the surface, was confounded by looking the
sun in the face, and was too much frightened to retreat.
Lyndsay, the moment he heard the man plunge into the sea, had seized a
coil of rope which lay upon the deck, and running forward, hurled it
with a strong arm in the direction in which Muckleroy had disappeared.
Just at the critical moment when the apparition of the shoemaker rose
above the waves, it fell within the length of his grasp. The poor
fellow, now fully awake to the horrors of his fate, seized it with
convulsive energy, and was drawn to the side of the vessel, where two
sailors were already hanging in the chains, with another rope fixed with
a running noose at one end, which they succeeded in throwing over his
body and drawing him safely to the deck.
And then, the joy of the poor wife, who had just recovered from her
swoon, at receiving her dead to life, was quite affecting, while he,
regardless of her caresses, only shook his wet garments, exclaiming--"My
jacket! my jacket, Nell, I have lost my jacket. What can a man do,
wantin' a jacket?"
This speech was received with a general roar of laughter: the poor woman
and her spouse being the only parties from whom it did not win a smile.
"Confound the idiot!" cried old Boreas; "he thinks more of his old
jacket, that was not worth picking off a dunghill, than of his wife and
his own safety. Why man," turning to the shoemaker, who was dripping
like a water-dog, "what tempted you to jump into the sea when you could
not swim a stroke?"
"My jacket," continued the son of Crispin, staring wildly at his
saturated garments: "it was the only one I had. Oh, my jacket, my
jacket!"
Strange that such a dull piece of still life should risk his life for a
jacket--and an old one that had seen good service and was quite
threadbare; but necessity replies, it was his only garment. A rich
person can scarcely comprehend the magnitude of the loss of an only
jacket to a poor man.
No one was more amused by the adventure of the jacket than Stephen
Corrie, who wrote a comic song on the subject, which Duncan the fiddler
set to music, and used to sing, to the great annoyance of the hero of
the tale, whenever he ventured in his shirt sleeves upon the deck.
The Duncans, for there were two of them, were both highlanders, and
played with much skill on the violin. They were two fine, honest,
handsome fellows, who, with their music and singing kept all the rest
alive. Directly the sun set, the lively notes of their fiddles called
young and old to the deck, and Scotch reels, highland flings, and
sailors' hornpipes were danced till late at night--often until the broad
beams of the rising sun warned the revellers that it was time to rest.
The Captain and the Lyndsays never joined the dancers; but it was a
pretty sight to watch them leaping and springing, full of agility and
life, beneath the clear beams of the summer moon.
The foremost in these nightly revels was a young highlander called Tam
Grant, who never gave over while a female in the ship could continue on
her legs. If he lacked a partner he would seize hold of the old beldame,
Granny Williamson, and twist and twirl her around at top speed, never
heeding the kicking, scratching, and shrieking of the withered old
crone. Setting to her, and nodding at her with the tassel of the red
nightcap he wore, hanging so jauntily over his left eye, that it would
have made the fortune of a comic actor to imitate--he was a perfect
impersonification of mischief and wild mirth.
By-and-by the old granny not only got used to his mad capers, but
evidently enjoyed them; and used to challenge Tam for her partner; and
if he happened to have engaged a younger and lighter pair of heels, she
would retire to her den below, cursing him for a rude fellow, in no
lullaby strains.
And there was big Marion, a tall, stout, yellow-haired girl, from
Berwickshire, who had ventured out all alone, to cross the wide Atlantic
to join her brother in the far west of Canada, who was the admiration of
all the sailors on board, and the adored of the two Duncans. Yet she
danced just as lightly as a cow, and shook her fat sides and jumped and
bounded through the Scotch reels, much in the same fashion that they
did, when,
"She up and wolloped o'er the green,
For brawly she could frisk it."
Marion had had many wooers since she came on board; but she laughed at
all her lovers, and if they attempted to take any liberties with her,
she threatened to call them out if they did not keep their distance, for
she had "a lad o' her ain in Canada, an' she didna care a bodle for them
an' their clavers."
Yet, in spite of her boasted constancy, it was pretty evident to Flora
that Rab Duncan was fiddling his way fast into the buxom Marion's heart;
and she thought it more than probable that he would succeed in
persuading her to follow his fortunes instead of seeking a home with
her brother and her old sweetheart in the far West.
There was one sour-looking puritanical person on board, who regarded the
music and dancing with which the poor emigrants beguiled the tedium of
the long voyage with silent horror. He was a minister of some dissenting
church; but to which of the many he belonged Flora never felt
sufficiently interested in the man to inquire. His countenance exhibited
a strange mixture of morose ill-humour, shrewdness, and hypocrisy. While
he considered himself a vessel of grace chosen and sanctified, he looked
upon those around him as vessels of wrath only fitted for destruction.
In his eyes they were already damned, and only waited for the execution
of their just sentence. Whenever the dancing commenced he went below and
brought up his Bible, which he spread most ostentatiously on his knees,
turning up the whites of his eyes to heaven, and uttering very audible
groans between the pauses in the music. What the subject of his
meditations were, is best known to himself: but no one could look at his
low head, sly, sinister-looking eyes and malevolent scowl, and imagine
him a messenger of the glad tidings that speak of peace and good-will to
man. He seemed like one who would rather call down the fire from heaven
to destroy, than learn the meaning of the Christ-spoken text--"I will
have mercy and not sacrifice."
Between this man and Mr. Lootie a sort of friendship had sprung up. They
might constantly be seen about ten o'clock P.M. seated beneath the shade
of the boat, wrangling and disputing about contested points of faith,
contradicting and denouncing their respective creeds in the most
unchristianlike manner, each failing to convince the other, or gain the
least upon his opponent.
"That is the religion of words," said Lyndsay, one day to Flora, as they
had been for some time silent listeners to one of Mr. S----'s fierce
arguments on predestination--"I wonder how that man's actions would
agree with his boasted sanctity?"
"Let him alone," said Flora; "time will perhaps show. I have no faith in
him."
For three weeks the _Anne_ was becalmed upon the Banks. They were
surrounded by a dense fog, which hid even the water from their sight,
while the beams of sun and moon failed to penetrate the white vapour
which closed them in on every side. It was no longer a pleasure to pace
the deck in the raw damp air and drizzling rain, which tamed even the
little tailor's aspiring soul, and checked the merry dancers and the
voice of mirth. Flora retreated to the cabin, and read all the books in
the little cupboard at her bed-head. A "Life of Charles XII. of Sweden,"
an odd volume of "Pamela," and three of "The Children of the Abbey"
comprised the Captain's library. What could she do to while away the
lagging hours? She thought, and re-thought--at length, she determined to
weave some strange incidents, which chance had thrown in her way, into a
story, that might divert her mind from dwelling too much upon the
future, and interest her husband. So unpacking her writing-desk, she set
to work; and in the next Chapter we give to our readers the tale which
Flora Lyndsay wrote at sea.