A voyage up the east coast of Great Britain and through the Pentland
Firth does not usually take a long time. When the vessel is a swift
little schooner-yacht, and the breeze is stiff as well as fair, the
voyage is naturally a brief one.
Everything favoured the little _Fairy_. Sun, moon, and stars cheered
her, and winds were propitious, so that our voyagers soon found
themselves skimming over the billows of the western sea.
It was one part of Mabberly's plan that he and his friends should do
duty as part of the crew. He was himself accustomed to the handling of
yachts, and Barret he knew had been familiar with the management of
boats from childhood.
"You can steer, of course?" he had asked Giles Jackman almost as soon as
they were fairly at sea.
"Well, ye-es, oh yes. No doubt I could steer if I were to try."
"Have you never tried?" asked his friend in surprise.
"Oh yes, I have tried--once. It was on an occasion when a number of us
had gone on a picnic. We had to proceed part of the way to our
destination by river in a small boat, which was managed by a regular old
sea-dog--I forget his name, for we generally hailed him by the title of
Old Salt. Some of the impatient members of the party suggested a little
preliminary lunch. There are always people ready to back up impatient
suggestions! It was agreed to, and Old Salt was ordered to open the
provision basket, which had been stowed away in the bows of the boat.
`Would you steer, sir?' said Old Salt to me, as he rose to go forward.
`Certainly, with pleasure,' said I, for, as you know, it's an old
weakness of mine to be obliging! Well, in a few minutes they were all
eating away as if they'd had no breakfast, while we went merrily down
the river, with the current and a light breeze in our favour.
"Suddenly Old Salt shouted something that was smothered in its passage
through a bite of sandwich. I looked up, and saw a native canoe coming
straight towards us. `Port!' roared Old Salt, in an explosion that
cleared away half the sandwich. `No, thankee; I prefer sherry,' said I.
But I stopped there, for I saw intuitively from the yell with which he
interrupted me that something was wrong. `_Hard_ a-port!' he cried,
jumping up and scattering his rations. I shoved the tiller hard to the
side that suggested itself, and hoped for the best. The worst followed,
for we struck the native canoe amidships, as it was steering wildly out
of our way, and capsized it! There were only two men in it, and they
could swim like ducks; but the river was full of alligators, and two
sharp-set ones were on the scent instantly. It is my opinion that those
two natives would, then and there, have been devoured, if we had not run
in between and made such a splashing and hullaballoo with boat-hook,
oars, and voices, that the monsters were scared away. I have never
steered since that day."
"I don't wonder; and, with my consent, you shall not steer now," said
Mabberly, laughing. "Why, Giles, I was under the impression that you
understood everything, and could do almost anything!"
"Quite a mistake, Bob, founded in error or superstition. You have
confused the will with the deed. I am indeed willing to try anything,
but my capacity for action is limited, like my knowledge. In regard to
the higher mathematics, for instance, I know nothing. Copper-mining I
do not understand. I may say the same with reference to Tartar
mythology, and as regards the management of infants under two years I am
densely ignorant."
"But do you really know nothing at all about boats and ships, Giles?"
asked Barret, who, being a good listener, did not always shine as a
speaker.
"How can you ask such a question? Of course I know a great deal about
them. They float, they sail and row, they steer--"
"Rather badly sometimes, according to your own showing!" remarked
Barret.
Having cleared the Pentland Firth, Mabberly consulted the skipper one
morning as to the prospects of the weather. "Going to fall calm, I
fear," he said, as McPherson came aft with his hands in his pilot-coat
pockets.
"Ay, sir, that iss true, what-e-ver."
To pronounce the last word correctly, the central "e" must be run into a
long-drawn, not an interjectional, sound.
"More-o-ver," continued the skipper, in his drawling nasal tone, "it's
goin' to be thick."
Being a weather-wise man, the skipper proved to be right. It did come
thick; then it cleared, and, as we have said, things became favourable
until they got further out to sea. Then a fancy took possession of
Mabberly--namely, to have a "spin out into the Atlantic and see how it
looked!" It mattered not to Jackman or Barret what they did or where
they went; the first being exuberantly joyous, the other quietly happy.
So they had their run out to sea; but twenty-four hours of it sufficed--
it became monotonous.
"I think we'd better go back now," suggested Mabberly.
"Agreed," said his companions.
"Iss it goin' back you'll be?" asked the skipper.
"Yes. Don't you think we may as well turn now?" said Mabberly, who made
it a point always, if possible, to carry the approbation of the skipper
with him.
"I think it wass petter if we had niver come oot."
"Why so, Captain?"
"Because it's comin' on to plow. Putt her roond, Shames."
James McGregor, to whom the order was given, and who was the _other_ man
of the crew, obeyed. The yacht, which had latterly been beating against
a headwind, now ran gaily before it towards the Scottish coast, but when
night closed in no outlying islands were visible.
"We wull hev to keep a sharp look-oot, Shames," remarked the skipper, as
he stopped in his monotonous perambulation of the deck to glance at the
compass.
"Oo, ay," responded McGregor, with the air of a man who knew that as
well as his superior.
"What do you fear?" asked Mabberly, coming on deck at the moment to take
a look at the night before turning in.
"I fear naething, sir," replied McPherson, gravely.
"I mean, what danger threatens us?"
"None that I ken o'; but we're makin' the land, an' it behooves us to
ca' canny."
It may be well to remark here that the skipper, having voyaged much on
all parts of the Scottish coast, had adopted and mixed up with his own
peculiar English several phrases and words in use among the lowland
Scots.
Next morning, when Mabberly again visited the deck, he found the skipper
standing on the same spot where he had left him, apparently in the same
attitude, and with the same grave, sleepless expression on his cast-iron
features. The boy, Robin Tips, was at the helm, looking very sleepy.
He was an English boy, smart, active, and wide-awake--in the slang
sense--in which sense also we may add that he was "cheeky."
But neither the skipper nor Tips was very visible at the distance of
three yards, owing to a dense fog which prevailed. It was one of those
white, luminous, dry fogs which are not at all depressing to the
spirits, though obstructive to the eyes, and which are generally, if not
always, accompanied by profound calm.
"Has it been like this long?" asked Mabberly, after the first
salutations.
"Ay, sir, a coot while."
"And have we made no progress during the night?"
"Oo, ay, a coot bit. We should nae be far off some o' the islands noo,
but it's hard to say, wi' naither sun, moon, nor stars veesible to let
us fin' oot where we are."
Jackman and Barret came on deck at the moment, closely followed by Quin,
who, quietly ignoring the owner of the yacht, went up to his master and
said--
"Tay's riddy, sor."
"Breakfast, you mean," said Mabberly, with a smile.
"Sure I wouldn't conterdick--ye, sor, av ye was to call it supper--but
it was tay that I put in the pot."
At breakfast the conversation somehow turned upon boats--ship's boats--
and their construction.
"It is quite disgraceful," said Jackman, "the way in which Government
neglects that matter of boats. Some things, we know, will never be
generally adopted unless men are compelled to adopt them. Another
biscuit, Barret."
"Instance something, Giles," said Mabberly, "and pass the butter. I
hate to hear sweeping assertions of an indefinite nature, which no one
can either corroborate or confute."
"Well, there is the matter of lowering boats into the water from a
ship's davits. Now, I'll be bound that the apparatus for lowering your
little punt astern is the ordinary couple of blocks--one at the stem,
the other at the stern?"
"Of course it is. What then?"
"Why, then, don't you know what would happen if you were lowering that
boat full of people in a rough sea, and the man at the bow failed to
unhook his block at the exact same moment as the man at the stern?"
"Yes, I know too well, Giles, for I have seen it happen. The boat, on
the occasion I refer to, was hung up by one of the blocks, all the
people were dropped into the water, and several of the women and
children drowned. But how is Government to remedy that?"
"Thus, Bob, thus. There is a splendid apparatus invented by somebody
which holds fast the two blocks. By means of an iron lever worked by
_one_ man, the rod is disengaged from both blocks at the same instant.
You cannot work it wrong if you tried to do so. Now, the Government has
only to compel the adoption of that apparatus in the Royal and Merchant
Navies, and the thing is done."
"Then, again," continued Jackman, devouring food more ravenously in
proportion as he warmed with his subject, "look at the matter of rafts.
How constantly it happens that boats get swamped and lost while being
launched in cases of shipwreck at sea, and there is nothing left for the
crews and passengers, after the few remaining boats are filled, save
loose spars or a hastily and ill-made raft; for of course things cannot
be well planned and constructed in the midst of panic and sudden
emergency. Now, it has been suggested, if not actually carried out,
that mattresses should be made of cork, with bands and straps to
facilitate buckling them together, and that a ship's chairs, tables,
camp-stools, etcetera, should be so constructed as to be convertible
into rafts, which might be the means of saving hundreds of lives that
would, under present arrangements, inevitably be lost. Why, I ask, does
not Government see to this? have a special committee appointed to
investigate, find out the best plan, and compel its adoption? Men will
never do this. They are too obstinate. What's wanted is that our
ladies should take it up, and howl with indignation till it is done."
"My dear Giles, ladies never howl," said Barret, quietly tapping the end
of an egg; "they smile, and gently insinuate--that is always sufficient,
because irresistible!"
"Well, being a bachelor I cannot say much on that point," returned
Jackman. "But I was not aware that _you_ were married?"
"Neither am I; but I have a mother and sisters, aunts and cousins, and I
know their ways."
"If such are their ways, I must get you to introduce me to them," said
the woods-and-forester. "Come on deck, now, and I will give you a
practical illustration of what might be done."