DIRTY WEATHER
At eight bells the Captain came on deck again, glancing once more
somewhat anxiously astern. Not a cloud was to be seen in the moonlit sky,
and the breeze that had blown so steadily, though so softly, for weeks,
was sinking gradually, dying out, as it were, in a succession of gentle,
peaceful sighs. Eugène, with the weather-wisdom of a man who had been but
a few months at sea, rather inclined to think they might be becalmed.
The crew did not trouble themselves about the matter. Every rag the
brigantine could show was already set, and if a sail flapped idly against
the mast, it soon drew again as before, to propel them smoothly on their
course.
Moreover, a topic had been lately broached on the forecastle, of
engrossing interest to every man before the mast. It affected no less
delicate a subject than the beauty of ‘The Bashful Maid’ herself, as
typified by her figure-head. This work of art had unfortunately suffered
a slight defacement in one of their late exploits, nearly the whole of
its nose having been carried away by an untoward musket-shot. Such a
loss had been replaced forthwith by the ship’s carpenter, who supplied
his idol with a far straighter, severer, and more classical feature
than was ever yet beheld on the human countenance. Its proportions were
proclaimed perfect by the whole crew; but though the artist’s execution
was universally approved, his florid style of colouring originated many
conflicting opinions and much loud discussion on the first principles of
imitative art. The carpenter was a man of decided ideas, and made large
use of a certain red paint nearly approaching vermilion in his flesh
tints. ‘The Bashful Maid’s’ nose, therefore, bloomed with a hue as rosy
as her cheeks, and these, until toned down by wind and weather, had been
an honest scarlet. None of the critics ventured to dispute the position
that the carpenter’s theory was sound. Slap-Jack, indeed, with a lively
recollection of her wan face when he took leave of his Alice, suggested
that for his part he liked them “a little less gaudy about the gills”;
but this heresy was ignominiously coughed down at once. It was merely a
question as to whether the paint was, or was not, laid on a trifle too
thick, and each man argued according to his own experience of the real
human subject.
All the older hands (particularly Bottle-Jack, who protested vehemently
that the figure-head of ‘The Bashful Maid,’ so far from being a
representation of feminine beauty, was in fact an elevated ideal of that
seductive quality, a very model to be imitated, though hardly possible
to be approached) were in favour of red noses, as adding warmth and
expression to the female face. Their wives, their sweethearts, their
sisters, their mothers, their grandmothers, all had red noses, and were
careful to keep up the colouring by the use of comforting stimulants.
“What,” said the principal speaker, “was the pints of a figur’-head, as
laid down in the song? and no man on this deck was a-goin’ to set up his
opinion again _that_, he should think! Wasn’t ’em this here?—
‘Eyes as black as sloes,
Cheeks like any rose.’
And if the song was played out further, which it might or it might _not_,
d’ye see, wouldn’t the poet have naturally added—
‘With a corresponding nose?’”
It was a telling argument, and although two or three of the foretopmen,
smart young fellows, whose sweethearts had not yet taken to drinking,
seemed disinclined to side with Slap-Jack, it insured a triumphant
majority, which ought to have set the question at rest, even without the
conclusive opinion delivered by the negro.
“Snowball,” said Bottle-Jack, “you’ve not told us _your_ taste. Now
you’re impartial, you are, a-cause you can’t belong to either side. What
say ye, man? Red or white? Sing out and hoist your ensign!”
The black nodded, grinned, and voted—
“Iss! berry well,” said he; “I like ’em white berry well; like ’em red
berry better!”
At this interesting juncture the men were a good deal surprised by an
order from the Captain to “turn all hands up and shorten sail.” They
rose from the deck, wondering and grumbling. Two or three, who had been
sleeping below, came tumbling up with astonished faces and less willing
steps than usual. All seemed more or less discontented, and muttered to
each other that “the skipper must be mad to shorten sail at midnight with
a bright moon, and in a light breeze, falling every moment to a calm!”
They went about the job somewhat unwillingly, and indeed were so much
less ready than usual as to draw a good deal of animadversion from the
deck. Something in this style—
“Now, my lads, bear a hand, and look smart. Foretop there! What are you
about with that foretopsail? Lower away on your after-haulyards! Easy!
Hoist on those forehaulyards, ye lubbers! Away with it, men! Altogether,
and _with a will_! Why, you are going to sleep over it! I’d have done it
smarter with the crew of a collier!”
To all such remonstrances, it is needless to say, the well-disciplined
Slap-Jack made no reply; only once, finding a moment to look to windward
from his elevated position as captain of the foretop, and observing a
white mist-like scud low down on the horizon, he whispered quietly to his
mate, then busied himself with a reef-knot—
“Blowed if he bain’t right, arter all, Jem! We’ll be under courses afore
the sun’s up. If we don’t strike topmasts, they’ll be struck for us, I
shouldn’t wonder. I see _him_ once afore,” explained Slap-Jack, jerking
his head in the direction of the coming squall; “and he’s a snorter,
mate, that’s about wot _he_ is!”
The Captain’s precautions were not taken too soon. The topsails were
hardly close reefed, all the canvas not absolutely required to steer
the brigantine had been hardly taken in, ere the sky was darkened as if
the moon had been suddenly snuffed out, and the squall was upon them.
‘The Bashful Maid’ lay over, gunwale under, driving fiercely through
the seething water, which had not yet risen to the heavy sea that was
too surely coming. She plunged, she dived, she strained, she quivered
like some living thing striving earnestly and patiently for its life.
The rain hissed down in sheets, the lightning lit up the slippery deck,
the dripping pale-faced men, the bending spars, the straining tackle,
and the few feet of canvas that must be carried at any price. In the
quick-succeeding flashes every man on board could see that the others
did their duty. From the Captain, holding on by one hand, composed and
cheerful, with his speaking-trumpet in the other, to the ship’s boy,
with his little bare feet and curling yellow hair, there was not a
skulker amongst them! They remembered it long afterwards with honest
pride, and ‘The Bashful Maid’ behaved beautifully! Yes, in defiance of
the tempestuous squall, blowing as it seemed from all points of the
compass at once; in defiance of crackling lightning, and thunder crashing
overhead ere it rolled away all round the horizon, reverberating over
the ocean for miles; in defiance of black darkness and lurid gleams, and
drenching rain, and the cruel raging sea rising every moment and running
like a mill-race, Captain and crew were alike confident they would
weather it. And they did.
But it was a sadly worn, and strained, and shattered craft that lay upon
the fast subsiding water, some six hours after the squall, under the
glowing sun of a morning in the tropics; a sun that glinted on the sea
till its heaving surface looked all one sheet of burnished gold; a sun
that was truly comforting to the drenched and wearied crew, although
its glare exposed pitilessly the whole amount of damage the brigantine
had sustained. That poor ‘Bashful Maid’ was as different now from the
trim yacht-like craft that sailed past the Needles, gaudy with paint
and gleaming with varnish, as is the dead seabird, lying helpless and
draggled on the wave, from the same creature soaring white and beautiful,
in all its pride of power and plumage, against the summer sky.
There was but one opinion, however, amongst the crew as to the merits of
the craft, and the way she had been handled. Not one of them, and it was
a great acknowledgment for sailors to make, who never think their present
berth the best—not one of them had ever before sailed in any description
of vessel which answered her helm so readily or could lay her head so
near the wind’s eye—not one of them had ever seen a furious tropical
squall weathered so scientifically and so successfully, nor could call to
mind a captain who seemed so completely master of his trade. The three
Jacks compared notes on the subject before turning in about sunrise, when
the worst was indeed over, but the situation, to a landsman at least,
would have yet appeared sufficiently precarious: The brigantine was still
driving before a heavy sea, showing just so much canvas as should save
her from being becalmed in its trough, overtaken and buried under the
pursuing enemy. The gale was still blowing with a fury that offered the
best chance of its force soon becoming exhausted, and two men were at the
helm under the immediate supervision of the skipper himself.
Nevertheless, the three stout tars betook themselves to their berth
without the slightest anxiety, well aware that each would be sleeping
like a child almost before he could clamber into his hammock.
But while he took off and wrung his dripping sea-coat, Bottle-Jack
observed sententiously to his mates—
“Captain Kidd could fight a ship, my sons, and Captain Kidd could sail
a ship. Now if you asks my opinion, it’s this here—In such a squall as
we’ve a-weathered, or pretty nigh a-weathered, Captain Kidd, he’d a-run
afore it at once, an’ he’d a bin in it now. This here young skipper, he
laid to, so long as she _could_ lay to, an’ he never run till he couldn’t
fight no more. That’s why he’ll be out on it afore the middle watch.
Belay now, I’m a-goin’ to caulk it for a spell.”
Neither Smoke-Jack nor Slap-Jack were in a humour for discussion, and
each cheerfully conceded the Captain’s judicious seamanship. The former
expressing his opinion that nothing in the King’s navy could touch
the brigantine, and the latter, recurring to his previous experience,
rejoicing that he no longer sailed under the gallant but unseamanlike
Captain Delaval.
The honest fellows, thoroughly wearied, were soon in the land of
dreams. Haunted no more by visions of dancing spars, wet slippery ropes,
yards dripping in the waves, and flapping sails struggling wildly for
the freedom that must be their own destruction, and the whole ship’s
company’s doom. No, their thoughts were of warm sanded parlours, cheerful
coal-fires, endless pipes of tobacco, messmates singing, women dancing,
the unrestrained festivities and flowing ale-jugs of the Fox and Fiddle.
Perhaps, to the imagination of the youngest, a fair pale face, loving and
tearful, stood out from all these jovial surroundings, and Slap-Jack felt
a purer and a better man while, though but in imagination, he clasped his
true and tender Alice to his heart once more.