It was on Wednesday night that we became the guests of Clump and Juno,
and commenced our cape life. The next morning at breakfast--and what a
breakfast! eggs and bacon, lard cakes, clotted cream, honey preserves,
and as much fresh milk as we wanted--Mr Clare told us that we need not
commence our studies until the next week; that we could have the
remainder of this week as holidays in which to make a thorough
acquaintance with our new world.
Our first wishes were to see the wreck and old Mr Mugford, whom we
agreed to dub Captain Mugford; and so, immediately after breakfast, we
started out with Mr Clare to find those items of principal interest.
When we had got beyond a hillock and an immense boulder of
pudding-stone, which stood up to shut out the beach view from the west
side of the house, we saw the wreck, only about half a mile off, and
hurried down to it. Mr Clare joined in the race and beat us, although
Walter pushed him pretty hard.
The brig sat high up on the rocky cliff, where only the fullest tides
reached it. The deck careened at a small angle, and the stern projected
several feet beyond the rocks hanging over the sea. The bow pointed
toward the house. The brig's foremast only was standing, to the head of
which old Mugford used to hoist, on all grand occasions, or on such as
he chose to consider grand, a Union Jack or a red ensign, which had been
saved from the wreck. The bowsprit was but little injured, and the
cordage of that and of the foremast was there, and the shrouds--all of
which had been replaced by old Mugford, who, having made the wreck his
residence by my father's wishes, restored to it some of the grace and
order the good brig possessed before misfortune overtook her, and now it
looked fit for either a sailor or a landsman--a curious mongrel, half
ship, half house. By the stump of the mainmast there stood a stove-pipe
projecting from the deck.
When near the brig, which we always afterwards called by the name she
had sailed under--_Clear the Track_--we hailed "Brig ahoy!" In a moment
the head and shoulders of the Captain appeared above the
companion-hatch, and his sonorous voice answered heartily, "Ah! ahoy, my
hearties: this is the good brig _Clear the Track_; come aboard." He
cast over the side a rope-ladder, such as is in common use on board
ships, and we climbed to the quarterdeck, over the stern-board of which,
and covering the companion-hatch, there had been built a roof, or open
cabin, making that part of the brig answer the same purposes as the
porch of a house. There were benches along the sides, a spyglass
hanging overhead in beckets, and a binnacle close by where the wheel had
once stood.
The Captain, as we will henceforth call him, however, just then fixed
our attention more than the strangely fitted--up wreck. He was short,
only about five feet four in height, with very heavy, broad, straight
shoulders, immense chest, long arms, very narrow, compact hips, and
short, sturdy legs, much bowed. His features were large, straight, and
determined, and with something of the bulldog in them, yet stamped with
kindness, intelligence, and humour--a face that might be a terror to an
enemy, as it was a surety to a friend. It was well bronzed by many a
storm and tropical sun, and a dark beard grew on it, as the wild moss on
the sea-rocks, in a luxuriant, disorderly manner. His hair was very
thick, black, and glossy, only here and there flecked with the grey of
age, and hung in curls that almost made his rough and powerful head even
handsome. Walter said that night that he was sure Samson and Neptune
were relatives, for without doubt the Captain was descended from both of
them. With the jawbone of an ass he might put to flight a thousand
Philistines, and with a trident drive a four-in-hand of porpoises.
We told that to the Captain afterwards, when we got to know him well,
and it tickled him greatly. He declared it was the finest compliment he
had ever received, and took Walter high in his favour from that moment.
Our new friend never wore either collar or vest. When not "on duty," as
he expressed it, he went about in his shirt-sleeves. His breeches were
of the ample sailor-cut, and hung from suspenders as intricate as a
ship's rigging. His shirts were spotlessly white, and of very fine
linen. A short black pipe was always in his mouth, or sticking its clay
stem from a waist-band pocket.
Such, my dear boys, was Captain Mugford, whom we fellows dubbed "our
salt tute," in contradistinction to Mr Clare, who was afterwards known
as "our fresh tutor."
As Mr Clare came over the brig's side, he said, with a bow, "Captain
Mugford, I believe. These boys are to be both your crew and my
scholars. I am their tutor, Richard Clare."
"I am happy to see you, Mr Clare. Give me your hand, sir. I hope our
different commands will not clash."
As the skipper shook hands, he looked Mr Clare all over at a glance,
and smiled as if pleased with the inspection.
"Come here, boys; if I'm not out in my calculation, these boys will do
to sail any craft on land or water! Well, my hearties, we are often to
be shipmates, so let's be friends to start with. I don't know your
different names, boys, only that three of you are sons of my old and
respected friend and owner--that's good enough--and you all look as if
you hated lies and kept above-board."
"These," said Mr Clare, laying his hands on Harry's and Alfred's
shoulders, "are Higginsons!"
"Higginsons? Fancy I knew your father, young gentlemen--an honest man,
and a kind man, and a true man, and a brave man, if he was John
Higginson; and brother of David Higginson, under whom I once served, and
a better sailor never stepped. As he died unmarried, I take you to be
John Higginson's sons. And if all you boys act as honest as you look,
you need not care for shipwrecks of any kind--love or money, lands or
goods, by land or by water."
Well, we thought the Captain a brick. So he was. So he proved.
We passed all the morning on the wreck. Each one of its details was a
new delight. The Captain talked about the brig as if she were a human
being in misfortune. An old invalid, he said--a veteran old salt laid
up in a sailor's snug harbour; laid up and pensioned for the remainder
of life, where it was able to overlook, by the side and in the very
spray of its well-loved brine, the billows it had often gloried in.
We went below to the Captain's cabin and stateroom. There everything
bore the marks of a sea habitation, and when hearing the dash of the
waves on the shore and listening to the Captain's talk, I could not help
fancying myself on a voyage. Not a nook or hole of that vessel but we
explored, and numberless questions had each one of us to ask. Mr Clare
seemed as much pleased and interested as we were. When at play, indeed,
he was as heartily a boy as any of us.
Great was our astonishment--Mr Clare, however, was prepared for it--
upon going between decks, where the cargo had once been stored, to find
ourselves in a _schoolroom_--a long, low schoolroom. Thick glass
windows, only about eighteen inches square, had been set in on each
side, and protected with dead-lights to fasten tight in case a heavy
surf should dash up so high, and the entire hold--where on many and many
long voyages there had been stored, in darkness, spices, coffee, sugar,
and perhaps gold and jewels--was now transformed to a schoolroom.
There was a long table and there were globes and maps, shelves of books,
and a blackboard. That schoolroom had, I am sure, none of the dulness
and repulsiveness of other schoolrooms to us. No; it rather seemed a
delightful place--an Arabian Nights' sort of study, with a romantic
salty influence pervading it to comfort us at our tasks. We could take
hold there of geography and history. Mathematics in a vessel's hold,
what was it but a foreshadowing of navigation? We felt no hostility to
Latin and Greek, for we were but reading of foreign lands and strange
people across the ocean in old times, the occurrences of which were but
storm-cast hulks like our old brig.
So low was our roof, the deck, that the crown of Walter's cap touched
it, and Mr Clare had to bend his neck when he moved about. The square,
dwarf windows looked out on nothing but jagged rocks and rolling blue
waves.
Away forward and aft our schoolroom was dark, and the distance between
decks so narrowed that we could only explore those extremes of the hold
by going on hands and knees--with the chance, too, of starting some big
rat, an old grey navigator, perhaps, who, believing firmly in "Don't
give up the ship!" could not get over his surprise at seeing his once
rolling and well-stored residence now stationary, and furnishing no
better victuals than book-leaves, chalk, and sometimes the crumbs of a
boy's lunch. I imagined the crew of old rats assembling beneath the
globes at night, when a moon streamed through the small windows; and the
captain, a surly grey fellow, with long whiskers and brown, broken
grinders, taking his place on a Greek lexicon, and then the speeches of
inquiry and indignation shrilly uttered in the mass meeting. "Long
tails!"--would commence some orator with a fierce squeak--"long tails,
long tails, I say! what in the name of all that's marine does this mean?
Cheese and spices! how things are changed. Will this craft never sail,
and our parents waiting for us in the New World over the sea! Where is
our `life on the ocean wave'? where is, I say, where `a home in the
rolling deep'? Can it be that our young are no longer to be nourished
on sago, rice, or maize? Alas! if it has come to that, I myself will
gnaw the beard from the old curmudgeon who thinks he sleeps here safely.
Is the degradation of effeminate land rats, cheese-eaters, wharf
robbers, stable vermin, to come upon us? Fates forbid it! Soon,
perhaps, some fierce tabby may come to make our once brave hearts
tremble. Then, then,"--but I imagined the eloquence broken off there
and giving place to a furious scamper, as perhaps old Captain Mugford,
arrayed in a long nightshirt and red bandanna nightcap, would fling open
his stateroom door and send a boot-jack flying amid the noisy, noxious
animals.
To think that our schoolhouse was on such a wild seashore--in a wrecked
vessel, the same craft in which poor Harry Breese, who rested in the
churchyard near by, had voyaged and been lost from--to have the smell of
tar, and be surrounded by a thousand other sailor-like associations.
What a glorious school-house, that old wreck by the ocean! What boy
ever had a finer one!
The afternoon of that first day of novelty on the cape I remember with
minute distinctness. We strolled about the beaches and climbed the
rocks, everything being marvellous and delightful to us. In the evening
Captain Mugford came in, and Mr Clare and he talked whilst we boys
listened. After the Captain had gone, Mr Clare read the evening
prayers to us, and that grand Psalm, the one hundred and seventh. The
words reached us with the noise of the waves they sang of:--
_They that go down to the sea in ships_,
_that do business in great waters_.
_These see the works of the Lord_,
_and His wonders in the deep_.
_For He commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind_,
_which lifteth up the waves thereof_.
_They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths_:
_their soul is melted because of trouble_.
_They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man_,
_and are at their wit's end_.
_Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble_,
_and He bringeth them out of their distresses_.
_He maketh the storm a calm_,
_so that the waves thereof are still_.