PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
VOL. 100.
January 24, 1891.
MR. PUNCH'S PRIZE NOVELS.
NO. XII.--THE MATE OF THE MARLINSPIKE.
(_BY SHARK MUSSELL; AUTHOR OF "ERECT WITH A STOVE IN HER," "MY GYP
MADE TO WHEEZE," "THE ROMANCE OF A PENNY PARLOUR," "A HOOK FOR THE
BANNOCK," "FOUND THE GAL ON FIRE," "THE MYSTERY OF THE LOTION JAR,"
"THE JOKES O' LEAD," &C., &C., &C._)
["Here you are, my hearty," writes the Author, "this is a
regular briny ocean story, all storms and thunderclaps and
sails and rigging and soaring masts and bellying sails. How
about 'avast heaving' and 'shiver my timbers,' and 'son of a
sea-cook,' and all that? No, thank you; that kind of thing's
played out. MARRYAT was all very well _in his day_, but that
day's gone. The public requires stories about merchant ships,
and, by Neptune, the public shall have them, with all kinds
of hairy villains and tempest-tossed wrecks and human interest
and no end of humour, likewise word-pictures of ships and
storms. That's me. So clear the decks, and here goes."]
CHAPTER I.
We were in mid-ocean. Over the vast expanses of the oily sea no ripple
was to be seen although Captain BABBIJAM kept his binoculars levelled
at the silent horizon for three-quarters of an hour by the saloon
clock. Far away in the murky distance of the mysterious empyrean, a
single star flashed with a weird brilliance down upon the death-like
stillness of the immemorial ocean. Yet the good old _Marlinspike_
was rolling from side to side and rising and falling as if the liquid
expanse were stirred by the rush of a tempest instead of lying as
motionless as a country congregation during the rector's sermon.
Suddenly Captain BABBIJAM closed his binoculars with an angry snap,
and turned to me. His face showed of a dark purple under his white
cotton night-cap.
[Illustration]
"The silly old ship," he muttered, half to himself and half to me, "is
trying to make heavy weather of it; but I'll be even with her. I'll be
even with her."
"You'll find it a very _odd_ thing to do," I said to him, jocosely.
He sprang at me like a seahorse, and reared himself to his full height
before me.
"Come, Mr. TUGLEY," he continued, speaking in a low, meaning voice,
"can you take a star?"
"Sometimes," I answered, humouring his strange fancy; "but there's
only one about, and it seems a deuce of a long way off--however, I'll
try;" and, with that, I reached my arm up in the direction of the
solitary planet, which lay in the vast obscure like a small silver
candlestick, with a greenish tinge in its icy sparkling, mirrored far
below in the indigo flood of the abysmal sea, while a grey scud came
sweeping up, no one quite knew whence, and hung about the glossy face
of the silent luminary like the shreds of a wedding veil, scattered
by a honey-moon quarrel across the deep spaces far beyond the hairy
coamings of the booby-hatch.
"Fool!" said the Captain, softly, "I don't mean that. If you can't
take a star, can you keep a watch?"
"Well, as to that, Captain," said I, half shocked and half amused at
his strange questionings, "I never take my own out in a crowd. It's
one of DENT's best, given me by my aunt, and I've had it for nigh
upon--"
But the Captain had left me, and was at that moment engaged on his
after-supper occupation of jockeying a lee yard-arm, while the first
mate, Mr. SOWSTER, was doing his best to keep up with his rough
commanding officer by dangling to windward on the flemish horse,
which, as it was touched in the wind and gone in the forelegs,
stumbled violently over the buttery hatchway and hurled its
venturesome rider into the hold.