"Meanwhile some rude Arion's restless hand
Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love;
A circle there of merry listeners stand,
Or to some well-known measure featly move,
Thoughtless as if on shore they still were free to rove."
Scene: The upper deck of a barque in mid-Atlantic, homeward bound.
Sailors dancing amidships to the music of flute and fiddle. Aft, under
an awning, a table is spread, at which sit Leonard, Douglas, Captain
Blunt, with the skipper of the vessel, and one of his officers.
Skipper James, of the timber barque _Black-eyed Susan_, was a sailor of
the good old school. He was homeward bound, and happening to call at a
village on the west shore of Newfoundland, he heard that a shipwrecked
crew of his countrymen were residing at a small fishing station on the
Labrador coast. He did not hesitate a moment. He put about, and sailed
back right away to the nor'ard and west and took every soul on board.
Men like Skipper James, I fear, are, nowadays, like angels' visits, few
and far between. Ah! and they are angels, too, when you find them;
rough enough to all outward appearance, perhaps, but good in the main,
and men, too, who carry their hearts upon their sleeves.
Skipper James and our heroes got friendly at once. And before they were
three days on board they felt as if they had known this kindly skipper
all their lives.
"My ship's only a rough one," he had told them frankly; "and your fare
may not be first-class; but by my song, gentlemen, you are right welcome
to the best I have."
It was a Saturday night. They had been three weeks at sea, with fine
weather nearly all the time, so no wonder all hands were happy, fore and
aft.
Now I have said that this skipper was an old-fashioned sailor, and so he
was; and this being Saturday night, he determined, as he always did,
that his men should enjoy themselves forward as much as the officers
aft. There was singing, therefore, and dancing, and sea-pie. A
glorious sea-pie steamed on the table of the quarter-deck, and a dozen
of the same sort aft.
Rory O'Reilly was the mate's name; the life and soul of the mess he was.
He could sing a song or tell a story with any one.
"Dear Captain James," he said to-night, "do tell us a story. Do you
believe in the sarpint, sorr?"
Captain James quietly finished his second plate of sea-pie, and put the
plate in a corner so stayed up that the ship's motion could not displace
it. For this skipper was a most methodical man. Then he took his old
brown clay with its tin lid, and proceeded to fill it. He shook out the
"dottle," as the unburned portion of tobacco in the bottom was called,
and put it carefully on Rory O'Reilly's open palm, held out in a
friendly and obliging way for James's benefit. Then he loaded up to
near the top with fresh cut, broke up the dottle and put that above,
then pinched up the dust and put that over all, then slowly and solemnly
lit up. When he had blown a few blasts of such density of volume that
further proofs of the pipe's being well lit up were needless, the
skipper cleared his throat and commenced--