This is in the long-ago, or, to be exact, in July, 1759. The new brig
_Friendship_, not a fortnight off the stocks, is lying in her home
harbor of Whitehaven, being fitted to her first suit of sails. Captain
Bennison is restlessly about her decks, overseeing those sea-tailors,
the sail-makers, as they go forward with their task, when Mr. Younger,
the owner, comes aboard. The latter gentleman is lowland Scotch, stout,
middle-aged, and his severe expanse of smooth-shaven upper-lip tells
of prudence, perseverance and Presbyterianism in even parts, as traits
dominant of his character.
“Dick,” says Mr. Younger, addressing Captain Bennison, “ye’ll have a
gude brig; and mon! ye s’uld have a gude crew. There’ll be none of the
last in Whitehaven, for what ones the agents showed me were the mere
riff-raff of the sea. I’ll even go to Arbigland, and pick ye a crew
among the fisher people.”
“Arbigland!” repeats Captain Bennison, with a glow of approval. “The
Arbigland men are the best sailor-folk that ever saw the Solway. Give
me an Arbigland crew, James, and I’ll find ye the Rappahannock with
the _Friendship_, within the month after she tears her anchor out o’
Whitehaven mud.”
And so Mr. Younger goes over to Arbigland.
It is a blowing July afternoon. An off-shore breeze, now freshening to a
gale, tosses the Solway into choppy billows. Most of the inhabitants
of Arbigland are down at the mouth of the little tide-water creek, that
forms the harbor of the village, eagerly watching a small fishing yawl.
The latter craft is beating up in the teeth of the gale, striving for
the shelter of the creek.
The crew of the yawl consists of but one, and him a lad of twelve.
His right hand holds the tiller; with the left he slacks or hauls the
sheets, and shifts the sail when he goes about.
The yawl has just heeled over on the starboard tack, as Mr. Younger
pushes in among the villagers that crowd the little quay.
“They’ll no make it!” exclaims a fisherman, alluding to the boy and
yawl; “they’ll be blawn oot t’ sea!”
“Ay! they’ll make it sure enough,” declares another stoutly. “It’s
little Jack Paul who’s conning her, and he’d bring the yawl in against
a horrycane. She’s a gude boat, too--as quick on her feet as a dancing
maister; and, as for beating to wind’ard, she’ll lay a point closer to
the wind than a man has a right to ask of his lawful wedded wife. Ye’ll
see; little Jack’ll bring her in.”
“Who is he?” asks Mr. Younger of the last speaker; “who’s yon boy?”
“He’s son to John Paul, gardener to the laird Craik.”
“Sitha! son to Gardener Paul, quo’ you!” breaks in an old fish-wife who,
with red arms folded beneath her coarse apron, stands watching the yawl
with the others. “Now to my mind, he looks mair like the laird than I
s’uld want my son to look, if I were wife to Gardener Paul.”
“Shame for ye, Lucky!” cries the fisherman to whom she speaks. “Would ye
cast doots on the lad’s mither, and only because the lad in his favoring
makes ye think now and again on Maister Craik? Jeanny Paul, that was
Jeanny Macduff, is well kenned to be as carefu’ a wife as ever cooked
her man’s breakfast in Arbigland.”
“Ye think so, Tam Bryce?” retorts the incorrigible Lucky. “Much ye s’uld
know of the wives of Arbigland, and you to sea eleven months o’ the
year! I tell ye, Jeanny came fro’ the Highlands; and it’ll be lang, I
trow, since gude in shape of man or woman came oot o’ the Highlands.”
“Guide your tongue, Lucky!” remonstrates the other, in a low tone;
“guide your tongue, ye jade! Here comes Gardener Paul himsel’.’’
“I’ll no stay to meet him,” says Lucky, moving away. “Puir blinded fule!
not to see what all Arbigland, ay! and all Kirkbean Parish, too, for
that matter, has seen the twal years, that his boy Jack is no mair no
less than just the laird’s bairn when all’s said.”
“Ye’ll no mind her, Maister Younger,” says Tom Bryce, pointing after
Lucky; “although, to be preceese, what the carline tells has in it mair
of truth than poetry.”
“I was no thinking on the dame’s clack,” returns Mr. Younger, his eyes
still on the nearing yawl, “or whether yon lad’s a gardener’s bairn or
a gentleman’s by-blaw. What I will say, in the face of the sun, however,
is that he has in him the rudiments of as brisk a sailorman as ever
walked saut water.”
“There’ll be none that’s better,” observes Tom Bryce, “going in and oot
o’ Solway Firth.” Then, eyeing the yawl: “He’ll win to the creek’s mouth
on the next reach to sta’board.”
Gardener Paul joins Mr. Younger and the fisherman, Tom Bryce.
“We were talking of your son,” says Mr. Younger to Gardener Paul. “What
say ye, mon; will ye apprentice him? I’ll send him with Dick Bennison,
in my new brig Friendship, to the Virginias and Jamaica.”
John Paul, gardener to the laird, Robert Craik, is a dull man, notably
thick of wit, and slow.
“The Virginias!” he repeats. “My son William has been there these
sixteen year. He’s head man for my kinsman Jones, on his plantation by
the Rappahannock. If Jack sails with Dick Bennison, he’ll meet William
that he’s never seen.”
“He’ll see his brother for sure,” returns Mr. Younger. “The _Friendship_
goes from Whitehaven to Urbana, and that’s not a dozen miles down the
Rappahannock from your cousin’s plantation.”
The yawl has come safely into the creek’s mouth, and lies rocking at her
moorings as lightly as a gull. The lad leaps ashore, and is patted on
the back by the fisherman in praise of his seamanship. He smiles through
the salt water that drips from his face; for beating to windward is not
the driest point of sailing, and the lad is spray-soaked from head to
heel.
“And may I go, father?
“This is Mr. Younger, Jack,” says Gardener Paul, as the lad conies up.
“He wants ye to sail ‘prentice with Dick Bennison, in the new brig.’’
The difference to show between Gardener Paul and little Jack Paul,
as the pair stand together on the quay, goes far to justify those
innuendoes of the scandalous Lucky. Gardener Paul’s heavy peasant face
possesses nothing to mark, on his part, any blood-nearness to the boy,
whose olive skin, large brown eyes, clean profile and dark hair like
silk, speak only of the patrician.
“And may I go, father?” asks Jack, a flush breaking eagerly through the
tan on his cheek.
[Illustration: 0019]
“Ye might as weel, I think,” responds Gardener Paul judgmatically.
“Ye’re the born petrel; and for the matter of gardening, being my own
and Adam’s trade, I’ve kenned for lang ye’ll no mair touch spade or
mattock than handle coals of fire. So, as I was saying, ye might as weel
sail ‘prentice with Dick; and when ye meet your brother William, gi’ him
his father’s gude word. Ye’ll never have seen William, Jack, for he left
hame before ye were born; and so it’ll be a braw fore-gathering between
the twa of ye--being brothers that never met before.”
And after this fashion the fisher-boy, John Panl, afterward Admiral Paul
Jones, is given his baptism of the sea.