But, before he could answer a word, Bob, who had been waiting anxiously
for an opening, likewise assailed him.
"Ah! Don't you remember, Captain, that day when you took Dick down to
the Dockyard to get him entered as a sailor boy on board the _Saint
Vincent_, and they wouldn't take him because he was too thin, you said
it didn't matter, for you would employ him on board your yacht when the
racing season began? Why, Dick and I have been looking out for a sail
ever since. Don't you remember?"
"Now, aren't you ashamed of yourself, sure?" said Mrs Gilmour,
following up Bob's flank attack; his father and mother enjoying the
discussion immensely, coupled as it was with the old sailor's comical
embarrassment. "Tell me, now, aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
Taking off his hat and shoving his hands through his hair until he
raised it up on the top of his head in a high ridge, he looked at his
tormentors appealingly; although, the merry twinkle in his bird-like
eyes took off somewhat from his contrition.
"Do forgive me!" implored he in accents that had a very suspicious
chuckle about them. "I confess my sins!"
"You must clear yourself completely, sir, before you can hope to obtain
absolution for your sins of omission," insisted Mrs Gilmour, pretending
to be very stern indeed. "Now, prisoner at the bar, answer truly, have
you or have you not got a yacht?"
"I have," he replied solemnly, entering into her humour. "By Jove, I
have, ma'am!"
"Well, I'm glad to hear that at all events," retorted his questioner in
rather an injudicial way. "Sure, I didn't think you had one at all, not
having seen it after all your talking about it. What sort of a yacht is
it, now?"
"Only a half-decked little cutter of about two or three tons," answered
the Captain abjectly, trying to minimise his offence. "A very little
one, ma'am, I assure you."
Mrs Gilmour burst into a fit of laughter, in which they all joined
heartily; the barrister's jovial roar being heard above the music of the
band.
"Ah, no wonder you didn't like my seeing it!" she cried with pleasant
irony, which, however, made the old sailor wince, this "yacht" of his
being a subject on which he was wont to enlarge amongst his friends.
"Why, from what you said, I thought she was a big schooner like the one
that took the cup at Cowes last year when we all went over with those
horrid Tomkinses to see the regatta! Call that a yacht, a boat of such
a size? I call it a cockleshell!"
This nettled the Captain very considerably, it must be confessed.
"Well, ma'am, you may call it what you please," he replied shortly, with
some little heat, putting on his hat again and jamming it down on his
head firmly, using a good deal of force as if expending in that way his
latent caloric. "But, cockleshell or no cockleshell, she's big enough
for me!"
"But, Captain dear, isn't there room enough for me, too?" asked Nell
coaxingly, seeing that he was vexed, and sliding her little hand into
his, as if to show that she at all events was not joining in the fun
against him. "Won't you take Bob and me?"
Her touch somehow or, other banished his pettishness, enabling him to
see that Mrs Gilmour was only joking, and that he had but played into
her hands, as he said to himself, by losing his temper over it.
"I tell you what," he now exclaimed, without a single trace of ill-
humour. "You shall see that I'm not ashamed of my little craft, for
I'll have the _Zephyr_ brought over from Gosport to-morrow. What is
more, too, the whole lot of you shall go out for a sail in her--by
Jove!"
The Captain was as good as his word, the yacht being towed across the
following afternoon from Haslar Creek, where she had been lying, ever
since the last yachting season, on the mud flats that there exist.
The little craft, which was a dapper cutter with an oyster-knife sort of
bow and a clean run aft, as if she could race well when heeling over and
show a good deal of her copper sheathing, did not exceed the tonnage
mentioned by the Captain.
But, in spite of her smallness of size, she appeared to have the making
of a good sea boat in her, and gained many admirers amongst the Southsea
watermen as they surveyed her at her new moorings; the little craft
being anchored off the coastguard-station and placed now under the
charge of Hellyer, when the Captain was not immediately looking after
her himself.
Mrs Gilmour, however, remained obdurate; for, though satisfied now that
the "yacht" really was an actual fact instead of merely a creation of
her old friend's fancy, being somewhat averse to adventuring her life on
the deep save in large vessels, and even of these she confessed feeling
rather shy since the wreck of the _Bembridge Belle_, she, very
aggravatingly, declined going out in the cutter--a want of taste on her
part shared by her sister-in-law, whose weak nerves supplied a more
reasonable pretext for not accepting the Captain's usual invitation to
make the little vessel's better acquaintance.
Bob's father, however, exhibited no such reluctance; and, as for Bob
himself, he and Nellie and Dick were all in the seventh heaven of
delight when, a morning or two afterwards, there being a nice nor'-
westerly breeze blowing, which was good both for working out to sea and
running home again, the Captain took them for a sail, managing single-
handed the smart cutter as only a sailor, such as he was, could.
Thenceforward, Bob's holidays were all halcyon days.
He had certainly enjoyed himself before; in his rambles on the beach, in
his daily dip and new experiences of the delights of swimming; in the
various little trips he and Nellie had taken; aye, and in the
pleasurable occupation of collecting all those strange wonders of the
shore, with which they had been so recently made familiar.
But, never had he enjoyed himself to the extent he did now!
There was nothing, on his once having tasted the joy of sailing, that
could compare with it for a moment in his mind; and, if his own tastes
had been consulted, he would have been content to have spent morning,
noon, and night on board the _Zephyr_.
It was the same with Dick; and, under the Captain's able tuition, both
the boys soon acquired sufficient knowledge of tacking and wearing,
sailing close-hauled and going free with the helm amidships, besides
other nice points of seamanship, as to be able almost to handle the
cutter as well as their instructor.
Nellie, naturally, could not enter so fully into these details as Bob
and Dick; but, still, she took quite as much pleasure as they did in
skimming over the undulating surface of the water and hearing the
gurgling ripple made by the boat's keel.
She felt a little alarm sometimes, perhaps, when, with her mainsail
sharply braced up, the _Zephyr_ would heel over to leeward, burying her
gunwale in the foam ploughed up by her keen-edged bow, as it raced past,
boiling and eddying, astern.
On one occasion the Captain took them out trawling between the Nab and
Warner light-ships; where a bank of sand stretches out to sea, forming
the favourite fishing-ground of the Portsmouth watermen hailing from
Point and the Camber at the mouth of the harbour.
"What is trawling?" asked Master Bob, of course, when the matter was
mooted by the owner of the cutter.
"What is trawling, eh?" repeated the old sailor, humming and cogitating
for a minute or so. "Let me see; ah, yes, you let down a trawl and
catch your fish in it, instead of using a line or drag-net."
"Sure, Captain," cried Mrs Gilmour, laughing at this, "that's as good
as your definition of steam the other day! You'll have Bob asking you
now what is a trawl, the same as I've got to do; please tell us, won't
you?"
"Sure and I will," returned he, imitating her accent and making her
brother and herself laugh, Mrs Strong only smiling faintly, as she had
a marked dislike to any allusion to the Irish brogue. "The trawl,
ma'am, is a very simple contrivance when it is understood; and, by your
leave, I'll try and make it plain to you. It consists of an ordinary
net, like a seine, which you've seen, of course?"
"Yes," replied his questioner, "I have seen them dragging the seine, as
it is called, down on the beach often."
"Oh, auntie, Nell and I saw them, too, the day after that storm we had
when we first came," said Bob eagerly. "I know, because I asked the men
what they were doing, and they told me."
"There's nothing like asking for information," observed the Captain
approvingly. "It's lucky, though, those men told you at once, or you'd
have worried their lives out!"
"Sure and you may well say that," put in Mrs Gilmour. "You have to
suffer frequently from some little people's thirst for knowledge."
"I don't mind," chuckled the Captain, beaming with good-humour. "But,
to go on with my description of the trawl. You must imagine, as I have
said, an ordinary seine net, which must be a small one, and that looped
up at the corners, too, somewhat in the shape of a funnel, or rather in
the form of a cone sliced in two. The mouth of this apparatus is kept
open on its flat side by means of a pole some ten or twelve feet long,
termed the `trawl-beam,' which floats uppermost when the net is down;
while the lower side is weighted with a thick heavy piece of hawser
styled the `ground-rope,' around which the meshes of the net are woven.
A bridle or `martingale' unites the two ends of the trawl-beam."
"Yes, I see," said Bob, who was all attention, and taking the greatest
interest in the Captain's explanation. "I see."
"Well," continued the old sailor, "to this bridle there is attached a
double-sheaved block, through which runs a hundred-and-fifty fathom
rope, capable of bearing a heavy strain. But, in hauling this in, great
nicety must be observed, for, the slightest hitch or deflection will
cause the beam to turn the wrong way; when, if the net `gets on her
back,' as the fisher-folk say, all your catch is simply turned out into
`the vasty deep,' and your toil results in a case of `Love's labour
lost!'"
"But, what do you do with the net and beam, when it's all ready?" asked
Bob. "You haven't told us that, yet."
"Why, drop it over the side as soon as you get out to the fishing-
ground," replied the Captain laconically; "and now, I hope, you
understand all about it?"
"Oh yes," responded his listeners with alacrity; all, that is, but Mrs
Gilmour, who assented somewhat dubiously, as if she could not quite
grasp the idea, requiring the whole thing to be explained to her over
again, when she declared herself still "all in a fog!"
Her brother, however, the barrister, comprehended it at once.
"I should think it was great fun," he observed; "so I would like to come
with you."
"Do," said the Captain, with much heartiness. "You'll be amply repaid
for the trouble. It is intensely exciting waiting and watching for what
the trawl will bring up. It's just like dipping your hands in the
`lucky bag,' Miss Nellie, at Christmas-time."
"Do you ever find any very curious things, Captain?" she inquired on
being thus appealed to. "I mean really curious things!"
"Oh yes, my dear," replied the old sailor. "I was once out trawling
with a fisherman off Saint Helens, when we dragged up a donkey-cart!"
"O-oh!" exclaimed Nellie, opening her blue eyes wide with wonder. "Did
you catch the donkey as well?"
"Well, no," answered the Captain, smiling at her amazement, her eyes
being so big and her face such a study. "The poor man's donkey, missy,
had been eaten by the crabs, but the cart was there, shafts, wheels, and
all; and, a nice mess the lot made of the trawl-net, tearing it all to
pieces!"
"That clenches it then. I'll come with you by all means!" cried Mr
Dugald Strong, a pleased smile creeping over his face as he rubbed his
hands with expectant glee. "If you find such strange fish as that, it
must be worth going out."
"All right, I shall be glad of your company," replied the Captain;
"only, mind, you'll have to work your passage, and help hauling in the
trawl."
"I agree to that," said the other; and, the matter being thus settled,
it was arranged that they should proceed the following day on their
expedition, if the weather were favourable and nothing occurred to alter
their plans. Nellie was specially granted permission to accompany the
party, much against the wish of her mother, who declared that she would
spoil all her things to a certainty; saying besides, that, from what she
had gathered of the conversation, she did not believe trawling was a
very ladylike pursuit, "for little girls, at all events."
However, all the same, Miss Nellie was up betimes the next morning, and
sallied out with Bob and his father, whose pet she was, just as the
early milkman was coming his rounds; the trio getting down to the beach
punctually at seven o'clock, the hour fixed by the Captain for their
start.
Here they found the old sailor and Dick, ready and waiting for them;
when, going off in the little dinghy belonging to the _Zephyr_, although
the boat had to make a couple of passages to and fro, being only capable
of accommodating two passengers besides proud Dick the sculler, they
were soon all on board.
The cutter, then, having her jib and mainsail already set, had only to
slip her moorings, and was off and away, bowling out seaward before the
breeze, which was blowing from the land.
The morning was bright and balmy; and the sun having risen some hours
earlier even than the very early risers of the party, its beams by this
time warmed the heavens and lit up the landscape, the rose-tints of dawn
being succeeded by a golden glow all over the sky, the sea dancing in
sympathy and sparkling in the sunlight--being altogether too merry to
look blue.
It did not take the little craft long, running before the wind with a
slack sheet, to reach the Horse Shingle shoal, beyond the outlying fort,
and near the Warner light-ship, where lay the fishing-ground, or "bank,"
which the Captain had described as being especially favourable for their
sport.
"Now," said the old sailor, "the time for action has at last arrived.
We must get ready to `shoot' the trawl."
"You are not going to fire?" cried Nell in alarm, hearing him use the
technical term he had employed. "I'm so afraid of guns."
"No, my dear," he answered chuckling, "I meant pitching the trawl over
the side, just in the same way as you say `shooting' coals or rubbish.
Are you ready at your end, Strong?"
"Yes, I'm all right," replied the barrister, who had been ably helping
the Captain in arranging the meshes of the net along the starboard-
gunwale, out of the way of the swing of the boom, and getting the trawl-
beam across the stern-sheets of the cutter; while Bob and Dick attended
to the sheets and tiller. "Fire away, Captain Dresser!"
"Well, then, let us heave over," sang out the Captain, in his quarter--
deck voice, as he called it. "One--two--three--off she goes!"
So, with a dull plunge, the trawl was "shot," the old sailor and Mr
Strong quickly pitching over the side, after it, the bunchy folds of the
net; when the guy-rope fastened to the bridle of the beam was secured to
the bowsprit-bitts and then again to a thole-pin aft, so as to prevent
its getting under the keel.
The boat was then allowed to fill her jib and drift out with the ebbing
tide, keeping a straight course for the Nab, and steering herself by
means of the dragging net astern; neither the services of Bob nor of
Dick being required any further at the helm under the circumstances.
"You can light your pipe now, if you like," said Captain Dresser to Mr
Strong, when this was satisfactorily accomplished. "We shall have
nothing to do for the next hour or two; for we must have the net down
long enough to let something have a chance of getting into the pocket of
it."
"I suppose the smell of tobacco won't frighten the fish?" observed the
barrister, gladly taking advantage of the permission and striking a
vesuvian, his pipe being already loaded and ready. "Fresh-water anglers
are rather particular on the point."
"Bless you, no!" replied the old sailor laughing, "our fish at sea know
what's good for them and like it!"
Miss Nell, who seemed anxious about something, presently hazarded a
question when her father had lit his pipe and was smoking comfortably on
the forecastle.
"Are we not going to have any breakfast?" said she, in a very grave way,
as befitted a matter of such deep importance. "I feel very hungry."
"Dear me, I was almost forgetting breakfast!" cried the Captain,
throwing away the end of the cigar the barrister had offered him, which
he was smoking rather against the grain, preferring his tobacco in the
form of snuff. "Dick, did you bring the things all right as I told
you?"
"Yes, sir," replied Dick. "They be in the fo'c's'le, sir."
"Is the coffee on the stove?"
"Yes, sir, and biling."
"That's right," said the Captain, who continued, turning to Nellie,
"Now, missy, you can preside over our breakfast-table if you like.
You'll find all the traps ready in the little cabin for'ard under the
half-deck."
Thereupon, Miss Nellie, with much dignity, busied herself in pouring out
the coffee, which had been kept hot all the while on "such a dear little
stove," as she called out to Bob the moment she caught sight of it in
the fore-cabin; the pair constituting themselves steward and stewardess
instanter, and serving out, with Dick's help, their rations to the rest
of the company.
They were in the midst of breakfast, the trawl having been dragging
along the bottom of the sea for not quite an hour, when, all at once,
the rope holding it attached to the bowsprit-bitts began to jerk
violently.
"Hallo!" cried the Captain, starting up from his seat on one of the
bunks in the little cabin, which, even with stooping, he and Mr Strong
found it a hard matter to squeeze themselves into. "We've caught
something big this time!"
"Do you think it's a whale?" said Nell, jumping up also, abandoning in
her hurry her post as mistress of the ceremonies. "It must be awfully
big to make that great rope shake so!"
The old sailor chuckled till his sides shook.
"You seem wonderfully fond of whales, missy!" he exclaimed, turning
round as soon as he had managed to wriggle himself out of the fo'c's'le
and was able to stand erect again. "Don't you remember, you mistook
those grampuses we came across the other day when going to Seaview for
whales?"
"Yes; and I remember, too, Captain, your making fun of me then, the same
as now," replied Nell, smiling as she went on. "I don't mind it though,
for I like being here with you and dad!"
"That's right, my dear," replied the old sailor. "There's nothing like
keeping your temper. But, we must now see about hauling in the trawl;
for the chap who has got into the net is a big fellow, whoever he is,
and, if we don't pull him in pretty sharp, he'll knock our net to
pieces!"
So saying, the Captain brought the end of the tackle to the little
windlass placed amidships; when he and Mr Dugald Strong, who did not
find the task, by the way, as easy as he imagined, began reeling in the
trawl rope fathom by fathom, until, anon, the end of the beam was seen
peering above the water alongside.
The jerking of the tackle, which had continued all the time they were
hauling in, appeared to increase as the trawl was raised to the surface,
the net now that it was within view swaying from side to side; and, when
Captain Dresser and the barrister leant over the gunwale to lift in the
beam with its pocket attached, there was a hoarse barking sound heard
proceeding from the folds of the net, like that of a dog in the
distance.
"Oh!" cried Nellie, in alarm, climbing up on the thwarts and getting as
far away as she could--"what is it?"
"What is it?" echoed Bob in the same breath. "What is it?"
The Captain, however, did not immediately satisfy their curiosity.
"I've got my suspicions," he commenced in a leisurely way as he bent a
little more over the side to get a better hold of the net; but, what he
saw, as the trawl lifted out of the sea, made him quicken his speech,
and he exclaimed in a much louder tone-- "Take care, missy, and look
out, you boys! There's a shark in the trawl-net, and a pretty venomous
beast, too!"