"Now give us a song."
"Let the gentleman take his breath," the carpenter remonstrated.
"Never a breath," persisted the bo'sun. "He must pay his footin', I
says. And I warrant you, too, he has as much pleasure in singing as we
has in listenin' to 'im."
"Oh! shut up, old Barkshire," said somebody.
"Barkshire be bothered," cried the bo'sun. "I'm not ashamed to own my
shire. You comes from the land o' _Tres_ and _Pens_; you're
west-country, you be. Have to fish for your breakfast every mornin',
else ye doesn't get none: He! he!"
"Well, never mind," said the good-natured carpenter, smiling. "We're
all nationalities here. Bill here is York; Tim is Irish; I'm just what
Pipes calls me, Barkshire."
"And I and my friend are Scotch," said Kenneth.
"Hurrah! for a Scotch song, then."
It wasn't one, but several songs Kennie and Archie had to sing, but all
Scotch, and what can beat them, reader mine?
"Sing ony o' the auld Scotch sangs,
The blithesome or the sad;
They mak' me laugh when I am wae,
And weep when I am glad.
Though eyes grow dim and hair grow grey,
Until the day I dee,
I'll bless the Scottish tongue that sings
The auld Scotch sangs to me."
There was no satisfying his audience, so once more Kennie had to fall
back upon the flute. While playing, a heavy sea struck the vessel on
the weather bow, and the water came tumbling down the hatchway; although
it rushed forward among the men and hissed against the hot iron fending
of the copper, they hardly shifted their positions.
But Kenneth played a selection of the best English, Irish, Scotch, and
Welsh airs now, now merry, now plaintive and sad, now almost wailing,
and anon merry again, once more.
There was a perfect chorus of applause when he had finished. The old
bo'sun must crawl over to the corner where the musician was--although,
owing to the motion of the ship, it was no easy task--and shake Kenneth
by the hand.
"God bless you, young sir," he said, and the tears were in his eyes. "I
was back in bonnie Berkshire all the time you was a-playin', sir. I saw
my children, sir, runnin' among the daisies, the crimson poppies growin'
among the corn's green, the waving lime trees all in flower and covered
with bees--ah! sir, you took the old man home, you took him home."
"Don't talk twaddle," cried his tormentor; "he took us all home, for the
matter o' that."
"Sit down, ye ould fool!" cried Tim O'Flaherty.
Kenneth put up his flute, and the bo'sun sat down beside him.
"Hark to the thunder!" he said; "listen to the thud o' the seas. My
eye! it is a night and a half. Just like the night we went over in the
old _Salanella_."
"Went over!" cried the carpenter. "What d'ye mean?"
"Why, I means what I says, to be sure. We turned turtle. Every soul
below was called to his account, and only myself and five more managed
to cling to the keel."
"She must have been a barnacley old tub," said the cook, "else you
wouldn't ha' got over the copper."
"You just mind your ladle, old man," said the carpenter. "You're only a
cook, arter all, and Pipes knows what he's a-talking about."
"O' course I does," said Pipes. "Thank ye, Chips; it ain't very often
you takes my part. O' course I knows what I'se a-talkin' about. The
keel rolled over to us, and we easily got on top."
"Suffer much?"
Pipes did not look at the speaker, but away into vacancy as if he were
recalling the past.
"Suffer!" he said. "I hope it may never be the lot o' anybody in this
galley to know what we suffered. For three days and nights o' storm I
and one other clung to that ship's bottom; the rest dropped off one by
one or slipped willingly into the sea, glad to end their terrible
misery.
"I never did think the ocean was so vast and empty-like till then,
mates. All the weary days we did nothing but gaze and gaze around us,
and hope and hope, and pray and pray. Well, blessed be His name, mates,
God heard our prayers at last. A ship--'twas the second we'd seen, for
the first took no notice of us--bore down and took us off, and that was
no easy task in the condition our misery had reduced us to."
"Listen," cried one of the men.
There were three distinct knocks on the deck with a heavy boot; [A plan
adopted in some merchant ships for calling the attention of those below
to an order about to be given] then a stentorian voice sang down the
hatchway,--
"All hands, shorten sail! Look alive there, lads. Tumble up. Tumble
up."
A fiercer squall than any the vessel had yet encountered struck her
before the men had time to reach the yards, and the sails they would
have furled were rent into ribbons, and the noise they made as they
fluttered out in the breeze was like the volley-firing of a company of
soldiers. It was two hours before those whose watch was not on deck got
back to the galley fire. It had just gone eight bells in the last dog
watch, so the evening was still young.