Fellows who knock about the world sailoring and so on, cannot help
coming to the conclusion that its compass is narrower than stay-at-home
folk might be inclined to believe, for you can hardly stir a step
without knocking across some one whom you previously imagined to have
been miles and miles away, separated, perhaps, by an ocean from
yourself.
I had scarcely stepped into the train from Southampton, bound
Londonwards, _en route_ for Liverpool, having only landed from the mail
steamer that brought me direct all the way from Colon that very morning,
when whom should I see looking at me from the opposite corner of the
railway carriage but a big, bushy-haired, brown-bearded man whom I did
not know from Adam.
"Faith," exclaimed this gentleman, after a moment's scrutiny, a broad
grin lighting up his face and his eyes twinkling with a comical
expression that would alone have made me recognise him, had I not heard
his delightful, to me at any rate, Irish brogue, "ye're ayther Dick
Haldane or the divvle!" stretching out both hands to grasp mine.
I was as pleased to see him, as may readily be believed, as the genial
Irishman was to see me, I was sure, even without his telling me so.
"Well," said I, after we had pretty nigh wrung each other's hands off in
friendly greeting, "and how are you all getting on aboard the dear old
barquey? I want to hear about everybody."
"Begorrah, Dick, give me toime to recover me bre'th, me bhoy, an' thin
I'll till ye ivverythin'," and then he continued in a bashful sort of
way, unlike his usual off-hand manner, "I've lift the say for good, an'
sit up for a docther ashore on me own hook, faith."
"Why!" I exclaimed in great surprise, "how's that?"
"Bedad, you'd betther axe y'r sister."
"What! my sister Janet?"
"Faith, yis; the very same little darlint of a colleen. Dick, ye
spalpeen, jist lit me shake y'r fist agin, lad. I'm the happiest man in
the wurrld!"
"Whee-e-e-e-eew," I whistled through my teeth. "This is indeed a
surprise!"
Then it all came out, Garry telling a long yarn about his calling at my
mother's house to ask about me some few months back, and meeting there
Elsie, whom he had no difficulty in identifying, he said, as "the little
girl of the ghost-ship," though she had grown a bit taller and was more
good-looking than he remembered her at the time he saw her on board the
_Saint Pierre_. But, good-looking as she was, he did not think her to
be compared to my sister Janet, with whom he had evidently fallen in
love at first sight and very deeply so, too!
On his subsequently declaring his passion, impetuous as usual, after a
very short acquaintance, my mother insisted as a first step to
entertaining his suit that he should leave the sea, as he had another
profession by which he was quite capable of supporting a wife as well as
himself, if he so pleased.
"Faith, and I wint an' bought a practis' at onst, havin' a snig little
sum stowed away in the bank," continued Garry, "the savin's of me pay
for the last five year an' more, besides that money we all got for
salvagin' the French ship, sure, of which I nivver spint a ha'poth. But
aven thin, Dick, ould chap, yer dear ould mother wern't satisfied, bless
her ould heart. She sid that yer sisther an' mesilf wu'ld have to wait
to git marri'd till you came home, ye spalpeen; an' not thin aven, if so
be as how ye'd turn nasty an' disagreyable, an' refuse yer consint.
Faith, ye won't now, will ye? or, bedad, I'll be afther breakin' ivvrey
bone in y'r body, avic, an' thin have to plasther ye up ag'in."
To avoid such a terrible contingency I there and then gave my hearty
consent to the arrangement he and Janet, with my mother's concurrence,
had thus planned without my knowledge; although, really, if I had been
inclined to grumble at not being informed previously of what now so
unexpectedly transpired, I had only time and distance to blame, not the
parties concerned, for the engagement was of so recent a date that the
news of it, though on the way through the post, had not reached
Venezuela when I left.
After I had answered a lot of Garry O'Neil's questions concerning myself
and the time I had passed in South America, speaking, too, of poor
Colonel Vereker, whose death he had learnt from my mother, I began
again, asking in my turn all about my old shipmates, and, of course, his
own also.
"Faith, the skipper is foine and flourishin'," he informed me, "an' the
ould barquey as good an' as sound as ivver she was. Do you ricollict
ould Stokes?"
"Of course I do," I said. "Is he still chief?"
"No, no; he retired a year ago or more on a pinsion which the company
gave him for his long service; an' little Grummet--ye rimimber him?--
well, he's promoted, sure, to ould Stokes' billet. The ould chap,
though, is alive an' hearty, an' as asthamataky as ivver!"
"What's become of Mr Fosset?"
"Och, be jabbers! he's a big man now. He's a skipper on his own hook,
jist loike Cap'en Applegarth. He's got the ould _Fairi Quane_, the
sicond best boat but one to the line. D'ye ricollict that ould thaife
of a bo'sun we had on the _Star of the North_?"
"Why, you must mean poor old Masters! I should think I did."
"That same, alannah. He wasn't a bad sort of chap, an' a good sayman,
ivvry inch of him, though I used for to call him an ould thaife just
`for fun an' fancy'--as the old song says--well, he's lift the ould
barquey an' gone with Cap'en Fosset in the _Fairi Quane_. But ye
haven't axed me onst afther yer ould fri'nd Spokeshave! Sure, now, ye
haven't forgot little `Conky,' faith!"
"No, indeed," said I, amused at his query and the funny wink that
accompanied it. "What has become of that spiteful little beggar?"
"Begorrah, ye'll laugh an' be amused, but he's marri'd to a wife as big
as one of thim grannydeers we onst took in the ould barquey to Bermuda,
d'ye rimimber? Faith, she's saix feet hoigh, an' broad in the b'ame in
proporshi'n. They make a purty couple, bedad! an' they do say she kapes
him in order. Do ye rickolict what an argufyin' chap Spokeshave was
aboard?"
"I should think I did, indeed," replied I. "I think he was the most
cantankerous little beast I ever came across in my life, either afloat
or ashore!"
"Faith, ye wouldn't say that same now, Dick," rejoined Garry with much
earnestness. "The poor little beggar's as make as a cat, for he daren't
call his sowl his own!"
I asked after some of the other men belonging to my old ship, including
Accra Prout, whom the colonel wished to accompany us to Venezuela, the
mulatto refusing on the plea that, though he should always love his "old
massa," he could not go with him for one insurmountable reason.
"Guess I'd hav' 'sociate wid dem tam black raskels daan thaar, massa,
an' dis chile no like dat nohow. I'se nebbah 'sparrage my famerly by
'sociatin' wid niggahs, massa, nebbah. De Prouts 'long good old
plantation stock, an' raise in Lousianner!"
This supercilious autocrat, it must be borne in mind, all the time being
more than half a negro himself, though, for that matter, his heart was
better and his disposition braver than many a white man who would have
despised his coloured skin.
Some of the other hands about whom I inquired had left the old barquey
and shipped aboard other vessels, so Garry told me; but at this I was
not much surprised, sailors as a rule being fond of change and very
unconservative in their habits.
With suchlike conversation my old mess-mate and I beguiled our long
railway journey to Liverpool, which we reached the same evening, but
before we had quite exhausted our respective questions and answers
respecting everybody we had ever met or known during the time he and I
had been to sea together.
My meeting with my dear mother and sister after so long an absence
abroad can be well imagined, and so too my first interview with Elsie,
whom I should hardly have known again, for how can I describe her beauty
and grace, and though I had been prepared in some measure from accounts
my mother had sent me, still they exceeded my expectations.
It would be impossible if I tried to picture her for "a month of
Sundays," as Captain Applegarth used to say on board the old barquey
when he thought a fellow spent too much time over a job.
So to make a long story short and to avoid all further explanation, it
need only be added that one fine day last summer, when the trees were
all green and leafy, and the flowers abloom, and happy birds filling the
air with song, Elsie and I were married.
Garry O'Neil joined his lot with that of my sister at the same time, the
two brides being given away respectively by the skipper, who managed to
run the _Star of the North_ home in time for the wedding, and old Mr
Stokes, the chief engineer of the old barquey, who had only to cross the
road, instead of the Atlantic, to get to our house, as he lived near to
us now--he also was present. Captain Applegarth, who was a very old
friend of my mother's and a kind one too, likewise, lived in a good
substantial house surrounded by a lovely garden in our pretty,
picturesque, old village.
To all whom it may concern, it may, in conclusion, be mentioned that
this double-barrelled affair took place in the quaint, old-fashioned,
non-ritualistic, semi-Gothic, and many-galleried old village church, of
which so few remain now in England, situated close to our cottage, and
where our widowed mother had, in our childhood, taught us to lisp our
first prayers to heaven, our dead father resting in the ivy-grown and
flower-adorned graveyard adjoining. The nuptial knot was tied by Parson
Goldwire, as everybody called him in the neighbourhood, assisted by
Matthew Jacon, the equally elderly parish clerk, without whose joint
ministration on the occasion neither Janet nor myself would have
believed the marriage ceremony had been properly solemnised, both my
sister and myself standing in much awe of the learned divine and his
inseparable "double," and holding to the creed that the austere pair
represented the very quintessence of orthodoxy.