"Humph!" grunted Captain Gillespie, astounded by this information.
"That's the joker, is it?"
"Aye, aye, sorr," said Tim Rooney, thinking he was asked the question
again as to the other's identity; "it's him, sure enough."
"Then I should like to know what the dickens he means by such conduct as
this? The beggar first comes aboard my ship without my leave or
license, and then tries to break his neck by going aloft when nobody
sent him there!"
"Arrah sure, sorr, the poor chap ownly did it to show his willin'ness to
worruk his passige, sayin' as how Mr Mackay tould him ye'd blow him up
for comin' aboard whin he came-to this arternoon, sorr," pleaded Tim,
not perceiving, as I did, that all the captain's anger against the
unfortunate stowaway had melted away by this time on learning that he
had shown such courage. "Begorra, he would cloimb up the shrouds, sorr,
whin ye tould the hands to lay aloft; an' the divil himsilf, sorr,
wouldn't 'a stopped him."
"He's a plucky fellow," cried the captain in a much more amiable tone of
voice, to Tim's great surprise.
"Send him aft, bosun, and I'll talk to him now instead of to-morrow, as
I said."
"Aye, aye, sorr," replied Tim; and, presently, the stowaway, who looked
none the worse for his fall, came shambling sheepishly up the poop
ladder, Tim following in his wake, and saying as he ushered him into the
captain's presence, "Here he is, sorr."
"Well, you rascal," exclaimed Captain Gillespie, looking at him up and
down with his squinting eyes and sniffing, taking as good stock of him
as the faint light would permit, "what have you got to say for
yourself--eh?"
"Oi dunno," answered the ragged lad, touching his forelock and making a
scrape back with his foot, in deferential salute. "Of's got nowt ter
say, only as Oi'll wark me pessage if you'll let me be, and dunno put me
in that theer dark pit agin."
"Do you know you're liable to three months imprisonment with hard labour
for stowing yourself aboard my ship?" replied Captain Gillespie, paying
no attention to his words apparently, and going on as if he had not
spoken. "What will you do if I let you off?"
"Oi'll wark, measter," cried the other eagerly. "Oi'll wark loike a
good un, Oi will, sure, if you lets Oi be."
"Ha, humph! I'll give you a try, then," jerked out Old Jock with a
snort, after another nautical inspection of the new hand; "only, mind
you don't go tumbling off the yard again. I don't want any accidents on
board my ship, although I expect every man to do his duty; and when I
say a thing I mean a thing. What's your name--eh?"
"Oi be called Joe Fergusson, measter," replied the shock-headed fellow,
moving rather uneasily about and shuffling his feet on the deck, the
captain's keen quizzical glance making him feel a bit nervous. "My
mates at whoam, though, names me, and the folk in Lancacheer tew, `Joey
the moucher.'"
"Oh, then, Master Joey, you'll find you can't mooch here, my lad,"
retorted Old Jock, glad of the opportunity of having one of his personal
jokes, and sniggering and snorting over it in fine glee. "However, I'll
forgive you coming aboard on the promise of your working your passage to
China; but, you won't find that child's play, my joker! Fergusson, I'll
enter you on the ship's books and you'll be rated as an able seaman, for
you look as if you had the makings of one in you from the way you've
tried already to earn your keep."
"Thank ye koindly, measter," stammered out the redoubtable Joe, seeing
from the captain's manner that his peace was made, and that nothing
dreadful was going to be done to him, as he had feared from all that Tim
Rooney and the hands forward had told him of Old Jock's temper--although
he did not understand half what the captain said--"Oi'll wark, measter."
"There, that will do," said Captain Gillespie interrupting him ere he
could proceed any further with his protestations of gratitude; "the
proof of the pudding lies in the eating, and I'll soon see what you're
made of. Bosun, take him forrud and rig him out as well as you can.
I'll send you an old shirt and trousers by the steward."
"Aye, aye, sorr," answered Tim obediently, pleased at "the ould skipper
behavin' so handsomely," as he afterwards said; "an' I'll give him an
ould pair av brogues av me own."
"You can do as you like about that," said Captain Gillespie, turning on
his heel and calling the watch to tauten the lee-braces a bit, telling
the men at the wheel at the same time to "luff" more; "but, you'd better
let the chap have a good lie-in to-night and put him in the port watch
to-morrow so that Mr Mackay can look after him."
"Aye, aye, sorr," replied Tim, leading his charge down the poop ladder
again. "I'll say to that same, sorr."
"And, bosun--"
"Aye, aye, sorr."
"Just see if those pigs in the long-boat got damaged by that fellow
tumbling on top of them. His weight ought to have been enough to have
made pork of some, I should think!"
"Aye, aye, sorr," said Tim as he went off laughing; and I could hear his
whispered aside to Adams, who was standing by the deck-house. "Begorra,
I'd have betted the ould skipper wouldn't forgit thim blissid pigs av
his. He wor thinkin' av thim all the toime that poor beggar wor fallin'
from aloft, I belave!"
Much to the captain's satisfaction, though, the grunting inhabitants of
the long-boat were found to be all right, escaping as harmlessly as Joe
Fergusson; and so, with his mind relieved Old Jock went below soon after
"six bells," or two o'clock, leaving the charge of the deck to Mr
Saunders--who, grumbling at the captain's rather insidious usurpation of
his authority, had betaken himself to the lee-side of the taffrail,
whence he watched the ship's wake and the foaming rollers that came
tumbling after her, as she drove on before the stiff nor'-wester under
reefed topsails and courses, the waves trying to poop her every instant,
though foiled by her speed.
So things went on till midnight, when the men at the wheel were
relieved, as well as the look-out forward, and the port watch came on
deck; while, the starbowlines going below, Mr Mackay took the place of
the second mate as the officer on duty. Tom Jerrold, too, lugged out
Sam Weeks and made him put in an appearance, much against his will; but
nothing subsequently occurred to vary the monotony of the life on board
or interfere with the vessel's progress, for, although it was blowing
pretty nearly "half a gale," as sailors say, we "made a fair wind of
it"--keeping steadily on our course, south-west by west, and getting
more and more out into the Atlantic with each mile of the seething water
the Silver Queen spurned with her forefoot and left eddying behind her.
The wind, somehow or other, seemed to get into my head, like a glass of
champagne I had on Christmas-day when father and all of us went to
Westham Hall and dined with the squire. I can't express how jolly it
made me feel--the wind I mean, not the champagne; for it was as much as
I could do to refrain from shouting out aloud in my exultation, as it
blew in my face and tossed my hair about, pressing against my body with
such force that I had to hold on by both hands to the weather bulwarks
to keep my feet, as I gazed out over the side at the magnificent scene
around me--the storm-tossed sea, one mass of foam; the grand blue vault
of heaven above, now partially lit by the late rising moon and twinkling
stars, that were occasionally obscured by scraps of drifting clouds and
flying scud; and, all the while, the noble ship tearing along, a thing
of beauty and of life, mastering the elements and glorying in the fight,
with the hum of the gale in the sails and its shrieking whistle through
the rigging, and the ever-murmuring voices of the waters, all filling
the air around as they sang the dirge of the deep!
"You seem to like it, youngster," observed Mr Mackay, stopping his
quarter-deck walk as he caught sight of my face in the moonlight and
noticed it's joyous glow, reflecting the emotions of my mind. "You look
a regular stormy petrel, and seem as if you wanted to spread your wings
and fly."
"I only wish I could, sir," I cried, laughing at his likening me to a
"Mother Carey's chicken," as the petrel is familiarly termed, a number
of them then hovering about the ship astern. "I feel half a bird
already, the wind makes me so jolly."
Mr Mackay quietly smiled and put his hand on my shoulder.
"Take care, my boy," said he good-humouredly, "you'll be jumping
overboard in your enthusiasm. You seem to be a born sailor. Are you
really so fond of the sea?"
"I love it! I love it!" I exclaimed enthusiastically. "Now, I can
imagine, sir, the meaning of what I read in Xenophon with father, about
the soldiers of Cyrus crying with joy when they once more beheld the sea
after their toilsome march for months and months, wandering inland over
a strange and unknown country without a sight of its familiar face to
tell them of their home by the wave-girt shores of Greece!"
"You're quite a poet, Graham," observed Mr Mackay, laughing now, though
not unkindly. There was, indeed, a tone of regret and of sadness, it
seemed to me, in his voice. "Ah, well, you'll soon have all such
romantic notions taken out of you, my boy, when you've seen some of the
hardships of a sailor's life, like others who at one time were, perhaps,
as full of ardour for their profession at the start as yourself."
"I hope not, sir," I replied seriously. "I should never like to believe
differently of it to what I do now. I think it is really something to
be proud of, being a sailor. It is glorious, it--it--it's--jolly,
that's what it is, sir!"
"A jolly sight jollier being in bed on a cold night like this," muttered
Weeks, who was shivering by the skylight, the tarpaulin cover of which
he had dragged round his legs for warmth. "Don't you think so, sir?"
"That depends," replied Mr Mackay on Sammy putting this question to him
rather impudently, as was his wont in speaking to his elders, his bump
of veneration being of the most infinitesimal proportions. "I think,
though, that a fellow who likes being on deck in a gale of wind will
turn out a better sailor than a skulker who only cares about caulking in
his bunk below; and you can put that in your pipe, Master Sam Weeks, and
smoke it!"
This had the effect of stopping any further conversation on the part of
my fellow apprentice, who retired to the lee-side of the deck in high
dudgeon with this "flea in his ear;" and, it being just four o'clock in
the morning now and the end of the middle watch, eight bells were struck
and the starbowlines summoned on deck again to duty, we of the port
watch getting some hot coffee all round at the galley and then turning
in. For this I was not sorry, as I began now to feel sleepy.
"I'd rather be a dog with the mange than a sailor," yawned Tom Jerrold
when Sam Weeks roused him out of his nice warm bunk to go on duty in the
cold grey morning. "Heigh-ho, it's an awful life!"
So, it can be seen that all of us were not of one opinion in the matter.
But, in spite of sundry drawbacks and disagreeables which I subsequently
encountered, and which perhaps took off a little of the halo of romance
which at first encircled everything connected with the sea in my mind, I
have never lost the love and admiration for it which I experienced that
night in mid Atlantic when I kept the middle watch with Mr Mackay, nor
regretted my choice; neither have I ever felt inclined, I may candidly
state, to give an affirmative answer to Tim Rooney's stereotyped inquiry
every morning-- "An' ain't ye sorry now, Misther Gray-ham, as how ye
iver came to say?"
The next day, our third out from the Lizard, we spoke the barque Mary
Webster from Valparaiso for London, sixty days at sea.
She signalled that she had broken her chronometer and had to trust only
to her dead reckoning, so Captain Gillespie hove-to and gave them our
latitude and longitude, 45 degrees 15 minutes North and 10 degrees 20
minutes West, displaying the figures chalked on a black-board over our
quarter, in order that those on board the other vessel might read the
inscription easily with a glass, as we bowed and dipped towards each
other across the rolling waves, both with our main-topsails backed.
Before the following morning we had weathered Cape Finisterre, Mr
Mackay told me, having got finally beyond the limits of the dread Bay of
Biscay, with all its opposing tides and contrary influences of winds and
currents which make it such a terror to navigators passing both to and
from the Equator; and, in another two days, we had reached as far south
as the fortieth parallel of latitude, our longitude being now 13 degrees
10 minutes west, or about some five hundred miles to the eastward of the
Azores, or Western Islands.
As we worked our way further westwards I noticed a curious thing which I
could not make out until Mr Mackay enlightened me on the subject.
On my last birthday father had given me a very nice little gold watch,
similar to one which he had presented to my brother Tom, much to my envy
at the time, on his likewise obtaining his fifteenth year.
This watch was a very good timekeeper, being by one of the best London
makers; and, hitherto, had maintained an irreproachable character in
this respect, the cook at home, whenever the kitchen clock went wrong,
always appealing to me to know what was the correct time, with the
flattering compliment that "Master Allan's watch, at all events," was
"sure to be right!"
But now, strange to say, although my watch kept exactly to railway time
up to the day of my arrival in London and while we were on our way down
the river, I found that, as we proceeded into the Channel and out to sea
it began to gain, the difference being more and more marked as we got
further to the westward; until, when the captain, after taking the sun
on our fifth day out, told Tom Jerrold who was on the deck beside him to
"make it eight bells," or strike the ship's bell to declare it was noon,
I was very nearly an hour ahead of that time--my watch, which I was
always careful about winding up every evening as father enjoined me when
giving it to me, pointing actually to one o'clock!