the staysail sheet over, and by proper management she came up on the
other tack with her nose pointing N.N.E. They hauled up what was now
the weather clew of the foresail, and the second mate and the men
jumped aloft and furled it.
"Oh, dear," said Mr. Ruddle, "how dreadful to see them up there! I
can't believe that I ever did it, Chadwick."
But the _Wave_ was carrying her topsails, and though they were reefed
she was scooting with her lee-rail awash. As soon as the foresail
was stowed, both topsail halliards were let go and the sails partly
smothered by the spilling lines. When they were furled, the lower
foretopsail was clewed up, and Ruddle, who got much excited, went
down on the main-deck in spite of the seas which came over right
for'ard by the galley. Mrs. Ruddle said, 'Oh, don't,' but Ruddle
said, 'My dear, it is so interesting, and I must.' And there he was
staring up at the crowd on the topsail-yard who were fighting the
bellying canvas like heroes.
"Bless my soul, how very remarkable, and even terrible," said Ruddle.
"How very extraordinary. I wonder if I ever did that, I'll ask Mr.
Dixon if the manoeuvre is often performed."
He fell upon the busy and very cross mate with this inquiry, and
though Dixon had heard the tale about him he did not credit it, and
put it down to some hallucination.
"Do I do it often? Do what often?" asked Dixon scornfully.
"Why, tie those sails up like that when it blows so hard?" asked
Ruddle innocently. "Why don't you tie them up when it is fine? It
would be much easier I should think."
"Oh, go home and die," said the mate savagely.
"That's very rude," said Ruddle, "and I don't like it."
"If you don't like it you can lump it," said the mate. "Haven't you
more sense than to come worrying here in a gale of wind?"
"Is it a real gale?" asked Ruddle. "A very hard one?"
It certainly looked like one, for every squall came harder and
harder, so that the topsail when it was once smothered was blown out
of the men's grip, and was all abroad and bellying once more.
"Damn your eyes, hold on to it or you'll lose the sail after all!"
yelled Dixon. But no one heard him on the yard, they were at grips
with the canvas again, and the second mate and the bo'son at the bunt
were doing all the cursing that was necessary for a task like that.
"They seem to be working very courageously, and I think it wrong of
you to swear at them," said Ruddle severely; and then Dixon turned on
him as if he were going to hit him. At that moment a fresh squall
struck the _Wave_ and almost laid her on her beam ends, though she
was practically hove to under the lower maintopsail.
"I never swear," said Ruddle, as the mate lifted his fist. Then the
squall shrieked, and as the _Wave_ laid over to it both Ruddle and
the mate lost their footing, and slid between the fo'castle and the
fore part of the deck-house as if they were on an ice toboggan run.
The mate said some awful things, and Ruddle gasped, 'You shouldn't,
oh, you really shouldn't.' And then they fetched up against the
lee-rail with a thump that caused a common accident and wrought a
very uncommon miracle. Mr. Dixon snapped his arm like a carrot, and
let a yell out of him that reached the crowd on the yard.
"By crimes!" said the men up aloft, "when old Dickie squeals like
that he means comin' aloft himself to talk to hus like a father. Now
then, boys, grab again and 'old 'er!"
As they tackled the topsail for the third time the cook came out of
the lee door of the galley and picked the mate out of the swamped
scuppers.
"Easy, easy, you swab," said Dixon. "My arm's broke."
With the cook's help he got aft, and when he did he promptly sat down
in the cabin and fainted right off with the pain. And Ruddle still
wallowed in the scuppers, for he had hit the rail with his head and
given it a most tremendous and effectual thump. After a minute or
two he stirred and spat out a mouthful of salt water. He also shook
his head and rubbed it. Then he sat up and said--
"Well, I'm damned! What has happened?"
He shook his head again, and suddenly jumped to his feet. The
miracle happened, and they all heard it. Tom Ruddle in the old days
had the very finest foretopsail-yard ahoy voice that ever rang across
the wastes of ocean. It came back to him now.
"Ain't you dogs got that topsail stowed yet?" he roared in accents
that made the second mate on the yard shake in his rubber boots.
"Oh, you slabsided gang of loafers, oh, you sojers, dig in and do
somethin', or before you know I'll be up there and boot you off the
yard."
The entire crowd on the yard was so paralysed by what they heard that
they turned and looked at him, and very promptly lost all that they
had gained the last bout. To see a minister suddenly become a seaman
and use such language was enough to scare them into loosing the
jack-stay and tumbling overboard.
"Jehoshaphat!" said they, "what's gone wrong with him?"
And the second greaser was just as much surprised as any of them; so
much so, indeed, that he could not swear. Ruddle did it for him, and
his language was awful, full, abundant, brilliant and biting. He
told the second mate what he thought of him, and what he thought of
all his relations; and he confided to the storm what his opinion of
the crew was and always had been; and of a sudden he made a bound,
and jumping on the rail ran up the rigging like a monkey, and before
they could gasp he was right in among them at the bunt, exhorting
them as if they were impenitent mules.
"Now, now, up with it, you no sailors, you!" he roared, as his long
black coat flapped in the wind like Irish pennants. He dug into the
bellying canvas with the clutch of a devil's claw, and the crew
sighed and were subdued to the strange facts, and did as he told them
like the best. There was now a sudden scream from aft. Mrs. Ruddle
caught sight of him on the yard, and Chadwick cried out--
"Oh, it was your husband that was swearing so."
"Oh, Tom, Tom," screamed his wife, "come down, come down!"
And she screamed again, and Ruddle heard it and swore vigorously.
"What's a woman doin' on deck in such weather?" he cried, as he
clawed at the sail and held it with his stomach, and yelled in unison
with the second mate, who now began to see the joke of it.
"Where does he think he is?" he said; and at that moment the last
great fold of the top-sail rose in the air like a breaking wave, and
with one yell of triumph the whole of the crowd threw themselves on
it and smothered its life out.
"Sock it to her!" roared Ruddle triumphantly, as he dropped the
gathered bunt into the skin of the sail and reached for the bunt
gasket.
"There you are," said Ruddle; and then for the first time he looked
at the second mate, and an expression of the blankest amazement
passed across his face.
"Who the devil are you?" he asked. "I never saw you before."
It was almost impossible to make one's self heard in the howl of the
gale, but Ruddle did it, and the crowd, with a grin on all their
weather-beaten and hairy countenances, waited to hear Mr. Smith's
answering yell.
"Who the devil do you think you are?" he asked.
"I'm the mate of this ship," said Ruddle, "but, but I don't think I
ever saw any of you before?"
"How do you come to be togged up like you are, if you are mate?"
asked Smith, as he made the bunt gasket fast. "Don't you think you
look a hell of a sailor in that rig?"
"I don't understand it," said Ruddle blankly. "Where did I get these
clothes?"
"You'd better ask the 'old man,'" said the second mate. "You're a
clergyman, and you ain't a sailor at all."
"You're a liar," said Ruddle. "But I don't understand it. I don't
know any of you. Where are we?"
"Off the Cape, to be sure," said Smith.
Ruddle shook his head.
"There is something very horrid about this," he said, with an
awe-stricken expression of countenance, "for when we clewed up this
topsail we were off the Head of Kinsale."
"Holy Moses," said the crowd, "'ow she must have scooted in 'alf a
watch!"
"Well, we're off the Cape now," said Smith impatiently; "and if you
don't believe it, you can ask the captain."
And they all came down on deck. Ruddle walked like a man in a dream,
and as he walked he rubbed the spot that had been bruised. When his
wife saw him coming she screamed again, and called out to him--
"Oh, Tom, Tom! how could you do it?"
And Tom grasped the second mate by the arm.
"Who's that woman calling 'Tom'?"
The second mate stopped as if he had been shot, and whistled.
"D'ye mean to say you don't know?" he asked.
"Confound you, I wouldn't ask if I did," said Ruddle savagely. "It
ain't me, surely?"
It was Smith's turn to grab hold of him.
"Don't you know her?" he asked in tones of positive alarm.
"No!" roared the unfortunate Ruddle. "No more than I know you or any
of 'em."
Smith nearly fell down.
"Man, she's your wife," said Smith; and once more Susan Ruddle said--
"Oh, Tom, how could you do it and me here?"
Then Chadwick spoke and rebuked Ruddle very strongly for having done
it, and Ruddle shook his head and scratched it and shook it again,
and then burst out with dreadful language against Chadwick for
interfering with a stranger.
"He don't know any of you," said Smith, as Chadwick fell into a cold
perspiration to hear his chief use such awful language. "He don't
know any of you. And he lets on that he is the mate of this ship,
and that we are off the Old Head of Kinsale."
And Susan Ruddle fainted dead away.
"Take the poor silly woman down below," said Ruddle. "She must be
mad. I don't know where I am, or how I got here, but I do know jolly
well that I ain't married, and that a girl in London that I ain't by
no means stuck on thinks I'm going to marry her this very year. But
I ain't goin' to, by a dern sight. Not me."
They carried her down below just as the 'old man' came on deck after
setting the mate's arm. Smith told him what had happened.
The skipper shook his head.
"This is very remarkable and tryin'," said the skipper. "For Mr.
Dixon's arm is broken through this Ruddle barrackin' him and askin'
him why he did not take in sail when it was calm, as it would be
easier. Oh, this is very wonderful, and I makes very little of it.
And now he says he ain't married. He brought her here as his wife,
and you are all witnesses to that. Oh, it is very remarkable, and I
make nothin' of it in spite of his havin' been a sailor before, as
looks likely as he went aloft. Is it true he swore?"
"Most awful and hair-raisin' and blasphemous," replied the second
mate, who was a very good judge of swearing.
"Did he now, and him a minister? It's very remarkable, and I makes
nothin' of it," said the skipper, and he ran up the poop and right
into the arms of Ruddle.
"Who are you? Are you the captain? I want to see the captain before
I go ragin' luny," said Ruddle.
"Steady," said the old skipper, grasping him tightly by the arm,
"steady, my son. Don't you know me?"
"Never saw you before that I know of," groaned Ruddle. "And there's
no one here that I know; and I don't know where I am or what I am, or
where I got these disgusting clothes from, or where we are, or
anything about anythin' whatsoever."
The skipper gasped.
"You don't remember bein' a minister, and tellin' me that you had
been a seaman and had had a bash on the crust with a shearpole from
aloft that laid you out stiff, and when you come to you didn't
rek'lect havin' bin a sailor at all, and that you then bore up for
the Church and became a missionary? Oh, say you rek'lect, for if you
don't I makes nothin' of it, and am most confused; and there is your
wife in a dead faint down below."
But Ruddle shook his head.
"I don't believe I ever was a missionary, for I always allowed they
were a scaly lot. And I ain't married, and the girl that thinks I'll
marry her is away off her true course by points. But I say, how long
do you reckon I was minister?"
He held on to the 'old man' as if he was holding on to sanity, and
implored an answer.
"We'll ask your pal," said Gray, and he bellowed down the companion
for Chadwick, who came on deck with his eyes bolting.
"Is that my pal?" asked Ruddle in great disappointment. "Why, I
never saw him either."
Poor Chadwick burst into tears.
"Oh, this is dreadful, this is very dreadful," said poor Chadwick.
"What shall we do? Our chief stay and strength is gone from us, and
doesn't know even me that married him."
Ruddle stared, and then rushed at him and held him in the grip of a
bear.
"Steady, mister, are you speakin' truth or are you gettin' at me?"
"It's the truth," said Chadwick.
"Then how long was I in your business? Tell me straight, or I'll
sling you overboard right now."
"Eight years," squealed Chadwick; "and there's all of us downstairs
can testify to the same."
Ruddle sighed, and looked at the raging sea and at the skipper and at
Chadwick, and up aloft. After a long silence he spoke.
"If I'm right the year's eighteen-ninety, and if you are right it
must be ninety-eight or more, accordin' to the time it took me to get
my certificate as missionary. What year is it?"
"Nineteen hundred, so 'elp me," said the skipper; "and I'll have up
the Nautical Almanac to show you."
But Ruddle took their word for it, and sniffed a little, and then
remarked--
"I do think my beard wants trimmin'. And am I mad now?"
"No, no," said the faithful Chadwick, "you aren't mad, and in a
little while it will all come back to you, and you will come back to
us, and we'll all be happy, even Blithers."
"Who's Blithers?" asked Ruddle sadly. Yet he did not wait for an
answer. Though the _Wave_ was now hove to under her main-topsail,
with the fore-yards checked in, and was fairly comfortable, the gale
instead of moderating let another reef out, so to speak, and was a
regular sizzler.
"I should like to see that main-topsail goose-winged, sir," said
Ruddle suddenly, "for if we are off the Cape, as you all seem to
think, this is by no means the worst of it, and it will be a real
old-fashioned scorcher."
The 'old man' looked at him.
"Do you know the mate's arm is broke?"
"No," said Ruddle.
"Well, it is, and he ain't fit to do a thing, naturally, and that
means I haven't a mate."
Ruddle looked pleased for the first time since he came back to his
old sea-self.
"You don't say so. Well, that is fortunate," he said with a happy
smile. "This is what I call real luck. I'll be the mate, sir, till
you can get another."
"Right," said the skipper. "And if you like you can goose-wing the
topsail, Mr. Ruddle. I reckon you're right about the weather. We
have enough parsons aboard to make old Davy Jones do his best."
And Ruddle, with a happy flush on his face, bellowed from the break
of the poop for the watch to lay aft. They heard his voice with
amazement and came very lively.
"Haul up the lee clew of the lower main-topsail," said the new mate,
and going down on the main-deck he saw the gear manned, and started
the sheet, and then lent his gigantic strength to get the clew chock
up.
"Jump aloft and goose-wing it," said Ruddle to the bo'son, and the
men jumped and did as they were told with extraordinary agility.
They said it was a miracle, and so it was. But Ruddle was quite
happy for a moment, and when they were down on deck again he turned
to the skipper and laughed, positively laughed.
But the 'old man' did not even smile.
"I'm thinking of the poor little lady down below, Mr. Ruddle," he
said with a sigh. "What are you goin' to do about her?"
A look of great determination came over Ruddle's face, and the smile
died out of it.
"If I married, and I don't believe I did, when I was dotty through
bein' hit on the crust, I ain't goin' to acknowledge it," said he
with firmness. "I ain't the same man, that's obvious. And as I
don't know the lady, the situation would be uncommon awkward for her
and for me, and I think the best thing is for nothin' further to be
said."
The skipper was very doubtful as to whether this was the proper way
to look at it, and he expressed a very decided opinion on what the
lady would say.
"I'm a married man myself," said Gray, "and I own I have a wife that
is a jewel, but what she would say if I said I didn't know her, owing
to some accident at sea, fair inspires me with dread. I don't
believe Mrs. Ruddle will put up with it, and you'll have a holy time
in front of you if she as much as hears that you think of trying it
on."
But Ruddle said he didn't care, and that he wasn't going to have a
wife foisted on him, so there. And down below Chadwick was breaking
the dreadful news to Susan Ruddle that her husband did not know her
or anyone else, and that he had become a sailor with a remarkably
unorthodox vocabulary, and when this was driven into the poor woman's
mind she screamed, and almost fainted again.
"Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do!" she cried. And then Mr.
Blithers, who had never liked Ruddle, said that he would put it right.
"I don't believe a word he says if he says he doesn't know us," said
Blithers angrily. "I always thought he was not the man he wanted us
to think. And as for that story of his, I never believed that
either. I shall go on deck and tell him that he is a scoundrel."
He did so. He crawled to the poop and emerged into the gale in which
Ruddle was fairly revelling.
"Ruddle, you are a scoundrel," said Blithers. "I always thought so,
and now I know it."
Ruddle inspected him with great curiosity.
"I'm a scoundrel, am I?" asked the new mate. "And what may you be?"
"Don't you dare say you don't know me, Ruddle," said Blithers.
"I know you," said Ruddle. "I can tell by the cut of your jib that
you are an infernal humbug of the first water. Get out of this
before I hurt you!"
"I won't," said Blithers furiously. "I won't till you say what you
are going to do about your wife, who is weeping about you now, and
crying to you to come to her."
"If you don't stop tellin' lies about me and ladies I'll throw you
down into the cabin," said Ruddle.
"Hypocrite, liar, and man of sin, I defy you!" said Blithers; and the
next minute Ruddle had him by the neck and threw him into the cabin.
"Stand from under," said Ruddle, and Blithers howled and fell, and
turned over and over as he went, and at last came to a stop at the
feet of Chadwick and the disconsolate wife.
"He threw me down, and he knew me," screamed Blithers. "He said, 'I
know you, and you are a humbug.' He's just pretending."
"I don't believe it, Mr. Blithers," wailed the unhappy woman. "He
was always a good judge of character even when he was at sea before.
But I want to see him myself. I must, and I will. He'll know me.
Oh, he must know me or I shall die!"
The skipper came down below.
"Oh, captain," said Susan Ruddle, "I want to see him. If he is the
mate now, as you say, you must order him to come to me at once."
"I will," said the skipper. "It's odd I never thought of that
before, when he as good as said he declined to hear any more argument
about wives and women, and let on that the girl that reckoned to
marry him was likely to be disapp'inted. You cheer up, ma'am. I'll
send him down sharp."
"Leave me here alone," said the discarded wife, who in spite of her
grief looked as pretty as a picture. "Leave me alone, please."
Chadwick withdrew, and dragged the raging Blithers with him. As
Chadwick said, if anyone could bring Ruddle back to a sense of the
lost period of his youth, it was his wife, and if she failed it was
likely to be a very remarkable business and no mistake about it. He
told Blithers of other cases of the kind of which he had heard. On
the whole, Chadwick was optimistic. But Blithers shook his head, and
rather hoped that Ruddle would remain a sailor for the rest of his
life.
"I never thought he was fit to be a missionary," said Blithers. "And
instead of him, I ought to be looked on as the chief here."
There was a sharp argument going on on deck in the meantime.
"I'll take charge of her, Mr. Ruddle," said the skipper, "and you can
go below and see your wife, who is naturally anxious to see you."
"I ain't in the least anxious to go below," said Ruddle. "In fact,
if it's all the same to you I'd rather stay here till she's out of
the way."
"I don't like to think that you are a coward," observed the skipper
severely, "but I'll be compelled to think so if you don't go at once
and square things up in some sort of shape."
"Well," said Ruddle, "that's all very well for you, sir, that ain't
caught in the same nip. But I don't want to go. I don't know the
lady, and I'm naturally shy, and the cold perspiration pours off me
at the thought of it."
"I order you to do your duty," said the 'old man.' "I order you to
go below and soothe the lady."
"Oh Lord, oh, I say, I won't," stammered Ruddle. "I'd rather stay on
deck all night."
"You won't? That's mutiny, Mr. Ruddle. It is disobeyin' orders, it
is refusing duty. I'd be very sorry to use severe measures with you,
but if you don't go I'll have you put in irons and carried to her."
"You don't mean that, sir, do you?"
"I mean it," said the skipper. "But I never did see such a man. I
never knew anyone so unwillin' to see a pretty woman before."
"Oh, is she pretty?" asked Ruddle anxiously.
"Rather," said the 'old man.' "Oh, a regular beauty, and no fatal
error. Dixon and Smith were both off their nuts about her when you
came on board."
"What's she like?" asked Ruddle. "Tell me what she is like."
"Well, for one thing, she has got the most beautiful golden hair,"
said the skipper; "and from the way it's coiled, tier on tier on her
head, I should reckon she can sit on it easy."
Ruddle sighed.
"Well, that seems all right," he said. "I was afraid I might have
landed one of the half-bald kind I hate. I like 'em fair too. But
go on, sir."
"Her eyes are a very superior kind of blue," said the poetical
skipper; "and in my judgment they don't stay the same kind of blue
all the time, but changes like the sea when clouds obscure the
heavens in a squall. I reckon she's mostly sweet tempered, but if
you riled her it would not surprise me to learn that she could stand
up for herself."
"That's the way I like 'em," said Ruddle. "I never could abide the
milk-and-water woman. But is she big or little?"
"Neither one nor the other," returned the skipper. "Speaking as a
judge of them, I should say she is as she should be, not too little,
not too big, but what you might call sizeable. And her complexion,
of which I'm a judge, is quite remarkable. Oh, on consideration I
should state with some firmness that she's very pretty."
"You comfort me a good deal," said Ruddle; "and if you still insist
on my seein' her, I'll do it at once."
"It's my duty to insist, Ruddle," said the 'old man.' "So down you
go, and mind you behave. And don't be too stand-offish, for I can't
abide to see tears, and never could, and as a result I've had much
trouble in my life. And when it's fixed up, come and tell me all
about it."
And Ruddle started to see his wife with slow, reluctant steps.
"It's my firm belief that nothin' of this nature ever happened
before," said Ruddle, "and my bein' nervous seems tolerable natural.
I wonder, oh, I do wonder, if I shall like her!"
He descended the companion as slowly as if he were going to execution.
"Oh, Tom, Tom," cried the lady who was, they said, his wife, and a
cold shiver ran down Ruddle's back. He did not dare to lift his
eyes, and stood there like a big schoolboy who has got into sad
trouble and is much ashamed of himself.
"Oh, Tom, don't you know me?" cried Susan. She made an attempt to
rise, which was very promptly frustrated by the gale. Ruddle lifted
his eyes at last.
"If you please, ma'am, I don't think I do," said he. Then he added
in desperation--"At least, not well, ma'am."
The situation was too desperate for screaming, and Susan accordingly
did not scream. She became dignified.
"I have been your wife for three years, and now you say you don't
know me. If you don't know me, who am I, and what am I? Tom, sir,
Mr. Ruddle, I pause for a reply."
Poor Ruddle shook his head very sadly.
"It's mighty awkward, I own," he said after some reflection; "and I
don't know what to do about it. I'm very sorry I don't know you, but
I can't say I do, much as I'd like to oblige a lady that I'm bound to
respect, as, according to the other gents in long-tailed coats, I'm
married to her. But they say I was a missionary, and now I'm a
seaman again, and maybe you don't care for those that follow the sea."
"I don't mind anything," sobbed Susan, who was wondering if she might
tell her husband that she loved him and would not care if he were a
dustman. But somehow it did not seem quite proper to speak in that
way to a man who didn't know her.
"Oh, please, don't cry," said Ruddle in great distress. "When a lady
cries I never know what to do."
"I think I'm almost glad you d-don't," said Susan, and she smiled on
him through her tears, and looked very beautiful.