I The Glamour of the Ocean
II Kep was Gone
III "Any Spot on Earth is a Home for the Brave"
IV In Search of a Ship
V The Ship "Macbeth"--Horrible Mutiny
VI The Hurricane--Crusoes in Great Snake Island
VII Sunken Gold--Jack's Career in Sidney
VIII A Breezy Ship, a Breezy Captain, and a Breezy Crew
IX Through the Hawse Hole
X The Broadsword-Men of the Breezy--Kep Cuts off a Leg
XI On the "Scout"
XII A Startling Adventure in the Woods--The Chief's Plot
XIII Preparing for the Fight
XIV Within a Yard of them lay poor Fisher's Head
XV The Attack upon the Barracoon
XVI Poor Bungle! Just let him Sleep
XVII The Midget Fleet--Bombardment--Fearful Scenes
XVIII Furious Fighting on Sea and Land
XIX Kep Commands a Dhow--A Deposed Sultan
XX "That Bar of Gold was Stolen from Me," Said Kep
XXI Tragedy on an Island--A Cannibal Witch
XXII In Slumbering Woods--Kep Captured by Savages
XXIII Fierce Fighting with the Cannibals
XXIV "Good Heavens, this is my Sister Madge!"
XXV A Great Ocean Race--"Goddard began to Shoot"
XXVI Something Extraordinary Happened
XXVII The Home-Coming of the Sauciest Boy
XXVIII Not another "But" about It
*CHAPTER I*
*THE GLAMOUR OF THE OCEAN*
There were few things that gave Kep Drummond more real pleasure than the
graphic little descriptions of sea-scapes which occurred every here and
there in the boys' stories he read. He knew the true from the false,
and avoided tales by authors who had probably never been further from
shore than one could pitch a biscuit.
Oh, if ever the glamour of old ocean had got right round a lad's heart
and altered all his life and thoughts, that lad was Kep Drummond. The
passages he chiefly delighted in were those that seemed to bring the
scene right up before the boy's mind's eye, like pictures from a magic
lantern. Though but little over fourteen years of age, he had a
wonderful imagination and was full to the brim with the poetry of true
feeling. _En rapport_, in fact, with all that is charming in nature,
part and parcel of all the life and love he could see around him on such
a sunny summer's day as that on which I now present him for the first
time to my readers' notice.
Seated he is on the high and grassy top of a rocky cliff that beetles
over what he calls his own sea, because the land all around here belongs
to his father. Those tremendous rocks are the guardians of his father's
Cornish estate. Behind him stretch wild moorlands and rising hills,
while down below--peeping over the greenery of elm woods--red rise the
turrets of what the boy knows as home.
But he leans his back against a hillock of tasseled turf, and opens a
book; and as he reads his thoughts, his dreams, fly straight away
through space, six thousand miles and over to the sylvan-bound silver
sands of the Indian Ocean. And this is what he is reading: "How
windless and warm it is! One's shoes take up the pitch and soil the
ivory-white quarter-deck. We are only a gun-boat, but there isn't a
yard-arm one inch out of the square, a rope's end uncoiled, nor a
capstan bar awry; the wood work scintillates, the brass work shines like
burnished gold, and our guns have the shimmer of papier mache. But our
men to-day all look fagged and lazy. They are sun-weary. Yet every Jack
amongst them is as neatly dressed as if he were about to take part in a
nautical opera.
"The water round the ship, which is lying at anchor, is clearer to-day
than gum copal. Five fathoms beneath we can see the bottom well; see
the coral rocks, see patches of coral sand and the ever waving
mysterious-looking seaweed, the home of crustaceans black or blue and
grey, and of curious fishes that glide and dart, clad in every colour of
the rainbow.
"Nearer the surface are scores and scores of splendid medusae or
jelly-fishes; under their waving limbs glint and radiate rubies,
emeralds and sapphires. On this brightest day of tropical sunshine they
float lazily along with the tide, but they are perilously near to the
shore, and hundreds will be stranded on the beach. Many a little azure
nautilus or 'Portuguese man o' war' sails hither and thither on the
gently-heaving waves.
"Seawards, if we look, the ocean's breast is flecked and patched with
tender graze greens and with opal tints, but towards the horizon it is
as blue as the sky itself. Landwards, in long white lines, the breakers
roll in on the snow-white sands that are at present all but deserted by
both negro and Somali, who will sleep in the shadows till the sun sinks
lower and lower and kisses the sea good-night. Yonder are the silvery
house-blocks of Zanzibar, but the flags on the various consulates droop
listlessly roofwards, and our own white ensign is almost trailing in the
waters astern."
Kep closes the book, closes his eyes, too, but he is not going to sleep,
but only just to day-dream, and his long brown fingers keeps the place
for him.
There is the thunder of waves beneath the cliffs leaping lion-like on
the black and weed-trailed rocks; there is the scream of the British
sea-mew too, and the long lorn wail of many another sea-bird that floats
all day 'twixt sky and sea. They are all the boy's friends and
favourites, and when at morn or noon he dashes into the water and
breasts the billows far off the shore, they fly friendly around his
head, or float so white and near he might almost touch their paddling
feet.
The glamour of the ocean!
Yes, and all things of the ocean that he has ever seen or read about
appeal to Kep. Realities, I mean. He thinks himself a man, and would
be ashamed to recite "The boy stood on the burning deck." That was
sheer nonsense. Why could he not have leapt into the blue bosom of
kindly Mother Ocean? That is what Kep would have done. Some of the
folk lore of the sea, however, still enamoured him. He wanted to
believe, or liked to believe, there were real mermaids and sirens also,
that sung by night on the rocks of fairy islands to lure the
unsuspecting mariners to their doom.
But there were real sea-poems, that night after night in his turret
chamber among the elm trees he loved to fall asleep thinking about.
Well for Kep Drummond, I ween, that he had such little sea-poems to call
upon, especially during the long dark nights of winter, for he was a
somewhat excitable brainful boy. His chamber was an eerie one, but he
had chosen it himself chiefly for that very eerieness. After bidding
his father good-night and kissing Madge, his sister, and her pet
Newfoundland, Bounder, he had to climb high, high up the winding stone
stairs. There was said to be a ghost at Martello Castle, as the place
was called, and if by any chance you had met the pensive dark-eyed boy,
candle in hand, in the narrow stairway, you might have been somewhat
startled.
The room itself was not large, and it was round. Kep's hammock was slung
at one end near to two long narrow windows, and in winter time the
leafless fingers of the elm-trees had an uncanny way of tapping on the
panes. There were no blinds to these windows, because the boy liked to
see out when skies were clear and stars shone, or the moon glinted
laughingly through the branches.
One night as Kep was going to bed he met old Elspet coming down. A
faithful old retainer she, but to-night her eyes were round and glassy,
and the very flaps of her mob-cap seemed to have been stiffened with
fear.
"Go not up, Keppie, darling; there is that in your room no boy should
see!"
"Oh, if it is the ghost," cried Kep, "here's a boy who does want to see
it, badly."
She tried to hold him. "It was a white face glaring in through the
black, dark window!" she hissed. But Kep was off. She might as well
have tried to restrain an eel.
The window was dark certainly, and yonder sure enough was the white
face.
No ghost though, only the wondering eyes of a great white owl that often
came to see the boy, for he laid up a little store of meat for this
strange visitor, and sometimes a dead mouse or rat.
"It's you, is it?" said Kep, throwing open the casement. "Come in, Bob,
and have your supper."
And Bob did. He ate and seemed thankful, and then spread his great
white wings and flew out into the night and the darkness, taking the
largest piece of meat with him.
As, like a true manly boy, Kep slept with open windows, and didn't put
his light out until he had done reading by his small table, great bats
often flew in, and did not leave until the candle was extinguished. Then
seeing a distant star perhaps, they flew out towards that.
In this turret chamber Kep was high above the rookery, and could in
February look down into the nests. But the birds all knew Kep.
When the boy tired of reading, then he crept into bed. He said his
prayers, repeated some Latin hymns to himself, and soon after that--the
sea-poems. One after another these sea-poems of his used to spread
themselves out before him, and indeed he seemed part and parcel of the
poem itself, and is it any wonder that he should go to sleep right in
the middle of one of them, the waking thoughts merging into delightful
sea, seldom terrifying, dreams, and these into the sweetest, soundest
kind of sleep that any young lad e'er enjoyed.
Mermaids were not realities. They belonged to the folk-lore of the
ocean. Yet there were some nights he used to delight to dwell with them
in their diamond-lit caves far down among the brown trailing sea-weed.
He would imagine their revels and mingle with sea-fairies in their
gladsome dances, or sit on rocks full fifty fathoms deep with strange
wee water babies, listening to their stories or telling them stories of
his own. Meanwhile there would be music everywhere in those fairy
submarine gardens, for even the floating sea-weed emitted sweet sounds;
the very sand was musical, and from under rocks or from caves came the
songs of the sea-folk and the tinkle of lutes. And down there the
mermaid peoples dwelt and would dwell ever and ever and ever, always,
always happy and gay.
But the scene is changed--it is another sea-poem, but true, and tells
its own story of the wonders of the mighty deep. For sailors who had
been to the far-off northern seas had told him that oft-times when the
ship was becalmed in a lonely expanse of ocean, mayhap a thousand miles
wide, a solitary whale would be sighted, rising and falling on the sea's
dark bosom, but heading steadily southwards, never varying a single
point. What guided the lonesome leviathan? What story had it to tell
could it but speak? Had it no friends? Had the great beast been
deserted by all it had loved, and was it, with the sorrow of night at
its heart, moving, sailing, plunging southwards and southwards,
reckless, forsaken, unheeding, to be stranded on a reef and to die?
Mother Carey's chickens, the stormy petrels, were another sea-poem to
Kep. He could see in his mind's eye the rise and fall of the stern of a
big black ship, the quickly obliterated wake, the spume of a
wind-tortured ocean, and across and across, darting over, darting under,
these mysterious chips of darkness, the petrels, and he could hear their
quick sharp shriek--was it a song or was it a wail? Did it portend joy
to the crew, or sorrow and a sailor's grave? Bird of mystery! Ah, yes,
but what a poem!
A shoal of porpoises. They seemed always busy always merry--diving,
gambolling around a ship on voyage. Then dashing off again or
disappearing over the horizon, followed by blessings from the seamen for
the luck they always bring.
These are but samples of this strange boy's sea-poems. He would hear
many more before he left his teens.
But now on the grassy cliff-top, Kep sits up once more and continues his
story. Not for very long, however, because over the cliff-top yonder,
or from, some part of the precipice itself, he can hear a young voice
hailing him. Then two great black paws, like those of a bear, claw at
the cliff-brink. There is a serious black face with a long pink tongue
and flashing ivory teeth between these paws, and, dropping his book, Kep
dashes forward and at some risk to himself seizes Bounder's collar and
brings the noble fellow to bank.
Then, facing the sea, the dog stands up to bark at Kep and towards the
cliff.
"Poor Madge is down yonder," he seems to say. "Aren't you going to help
her up also?"
But wild Madge needs no help. Next minute, with her lustrous black eyes
a-sparkle, her cheeks aglow with exercise and pleasure, she stands
beside her brother.
"It was a feat of rare daring, I suppose," she said, laughing, "and
father will scold when I tell him. But Bounder is a poor cragsman, and I
had to help him half the way."
Tall for her age--sixteen--hair and eyes as dark as night, an Italian
night, and she was half Italian, ripe parted lips that showed even teeth
as white as Bounder's, Madge Drummond was really a beautiful girl.
Slender, though round in features, and with garments that draped
naturally to her shapely limbs.
Kep saw little of all this. He only saw his big sister Madge and
Bounder. And he felt but like a baby beside her.
"So you ran away from us, Kep," she said.
"Ran away to read, Madge."
"Well, come back from the cliff and sit down. I've had enough of that,
and so has Bounder. And what have you been reading? Oh, a sea-story.
Well, I like those, too, but I love a school-story with a somewhat
naughty girl in it better."
It was the most natural thing in the world that Kep should slip his hand
into Madge's and be led back to his seat.
"Well," she said a little later on, in answer to a remark of Kep's, "we
are both of us sailors already. Haven't we been everywhere in father's
yacht? Haven't we lived in sunny Italy, more on its waters than on
shore? Have we not lived in France and Spain, and in Algiers itself?
Father would let you go anywhere in his yacht, Kep, but you don't want
to leave our father's Cornish home. Oh, I should miss you so. There
would be nobody but me and Bounder and old nurse Elspet. Bounder is
sympathetic, and sits and listens to my stories and licks my cheek or
ear now and then, to show he understands. Ah! Kep, if you run away
from home as you want to, I'd miss our mother more and more. I'd want to
go back and sit and sing on her grave to keep her company."
Kep was silent for a short spell. His eyes were turned towards the
horizon, his thoughts were far beyond it.
Oh, that glamour of the ocean!
When he spoke again it was more to himself than to his sister Madge.
"Yes, I must go to sea. Father will not send me. But they call me!"
"Who calls you?"
"The spirits that ride on the clouds, spirits of the wind and the waves.
The sea itself is calling me now--listen to its friendly boom. It is
the waves that speak. 'You are son of ours,' they are crying. 'Come to
us. Come to us.' And the wild mews; Madge, hear you not their voices?
'Come--come--away--away--away--ay!'"
* * * * *
Slowly down the glen, hand in hand, sister and brother, to Martello
Castle, and across the Martello lawns, but the lad's mind is made up.
Kep will be a sailor.
*CHAPTER II*
*KEP WAS GONE*
Far round the point yonder, though it could not be seen even from the
cliff top, was a town, an old-fashioned seaport, into which even big
ships often came for shelter, such times as the sea-birds flew far
inland. A town of narrow streets and quaintly gabled houses, a town
that smelt of tar from end to end, and a beach with boats and
broad-beamed fishermen who wore jerseys or baggy breeches and braces
only, sou'-westers, and the everlasting short pipes that they leaned
against post or pillar to smoke.
These seafaring folk looked lazy, dreamy and very quiet in manner, yet
never were they afraid to face the stormiest billows on the stormiest of
nights if danger or duty called. There was the might of Old England and
its daring and pride of pluck in their half-shut eyes, and this only
wanted waking. In the season, a signal from a hill would set them all
astir like a swarming hive of bees. The mackerel or pilchards had been
spotted in silvery millions, and if the French themselves had been
threatening a landing, the stir and commotion could scarce have been
more.
Kep Drummond loved that old town. There was the odour of brine about
it. Sometimes, I must admit, even the odour of unburied fish that might
have been better out of the way; but still a run over to Marshton to
yarn with the fisher-folk was always a most pleasant trip for the boy.
The fishermen idolized him, so did their honest, rough and witty wives,
because Kep possessed the power of making them laugh at will. That is
at his will, they had to laugh whether they willed it or not. There was
not much about a ship of any kind that Kep wasn't up to long before he
was fourteen. One might therefore have dubbed him a sailor born, and
not been very far wrong.
But Kep had another reason for visiting Marshton, and that lay in the
fact that here he met men of many various nations, and delighted in
talking to them in their own languages.
Apart from his marvellous musical powers, he had one great gift, namely,
that of language. To say nothing of English, French, Italian and
Spanish, he could converse in several other tongues, and could pick up
almost any language in an incredibly short time.
My own opinion is that music and the gift of tongues go hand in hand,
and that they are far more common in foreign European countries than
they are in Britain. Iverach Drummond, the children's father, was a true
type of the wealthy Scotsman, and of the wandering Scot. One of the
best yachtsmen who ever trod on the weather side of a quarter-deck, his
devotion to travel took him everywhere, and when he got married to a
noble Italian lady, for her sweet sake he bought the estates of
Martello, so that she might be as near to the Mediterranean as possible.
Madge and Kep had been born here, but hitherto had been educated by
worthy priests at their grandfather's home on the shores of the blue
Levant.
When his wife died Drummond was inconsolable. He seemed to care no more
for yachting, because at sea everything spoke to him of that gentle lady
and mother of his children who had always been by his side in fair
weather or in foul.
He was, at the commencement of this story, as handsome a specimen of the
true Highlander as one could wish to see. But honourable, strict, and
sternly religious. He had, moreover, that pride of birth and lineage
which we find clings to the scions of Scottish chiefs, be they ever so
poor.
The result, therefore, of an interview that Kep had with his sturdy
father, some days after Madge's adventure on the cliff, is not to be
wondered at.
"Father," said Kep, peeping round the edge of the library door, "may I
come?"
"Certainly, my dear boy."
"Sure you are not too much pre-occupied to listen to what I have to
say?"
"Unbend, my boy, unbend," cried Drummond, laughing, "that is hardly
conversational English. What do you want? A new pony? Or have you
taken the motor-car fever?"
"Oh no, my handsome and dearest father. I should smash a motor-car to
pieces in a week. A steam-launch would be more in my way."
"And that shall be yours, Keppel, if you really think you can't live
without it."
"I can live without it, father, and mean to. But I am a man
now--fourteen last month--and so I want to go down to the sea in ships
and see the Lord's wonders in the mighty deep."
"Well, my yacht is as taut and trim as she was on the day she was
launched. Ah, lad, it was my--it was your dear mother who provided and
baptized her."
"But----" The boy hesitated, as well he might. "I want to go farther
afloat than any yacht could ever take me. I wish to go and see wild
places such as my best authors speak of, to kill wild beasts, to fight
with savages, and snakes, and sharks, and tigers."
"Pile it up, boy. You're not at all ambitious, are you? But, Kep, I'm
not rich enough to buy you a ship, and I have other views for you. You
are my only son, and heir to all my property. I want to take you into
London society. I want you to have a career, to become member for the
county, and probably eventually Leader of the House."
"Father, _you_ are not at all ambitious, are you? But I hate society, I
hate London, I hate M.P.s, and I hate the Leader of the House. I'd
rather," he added determinedly, "go to sea before the stick, and if you
do not send me to sea, I fear I'll run away."
Iverach Drummond was trying to keep down his prideful wrath. He sat
silent and stern now, so stern that Kep was frightened.
"Oh father, oh daddy, you're not angry at little Kep?"
He was kneeling by the chief's side, passionately holding his father's
hand and weeping.
"Your anger would kill me, dearest and best."
"Then you won't speak of sea to me again."
The boy let go his father's hand. There was a flash of Italian pride in
his eyes. But he speedily turned them downwards, then glided away and
closed the door.
And something at that moment told Drummond he should not see his boy
more.
* * * * *
Martello Castle was really a fine old place, and historical also.
Drummond--what will not love do--was as patriotic a Celt as ever drew
blood in the Stuart cause, but for his wife's sake he had expatriated
himself and come to live here, far away from his own mountain wilds.
And yet he had the satisfaction of remembering that Cornwall itself had
been a land of Celts, and, to some extent, the same blood that burned so
fiercely in the bosoms of the ancient inhabitants was still alive in the
people around him.
Drummond had shooting on this estate all the year round, and was lord of
the manor, and yet, like Walter Scott, he would have died had he been
prevented from seeing the heather that blooms on the Highland hills at
least once a year.
He had, up to the time of his dear wife's death, mingled cheerfully with
the landed gentry and best families of the county, but at present and
lately he had been somewhat more of a recluse. He was feeling old now,
he avowed, though he was but little over forty. And all his hopes and
fears centred in his boy Keppel and his daughter Madge. For their sakes
he was at home to all who did him the honour of calling. And Madge was
as contented and cheerful as ever a girl needs to be, and had more than
the average girl's opportunities of living an ideal life in her own
grand gardens, or in woods and wilds. Though not so romantic and poetic
at soul as her brother Kep, and with none of his extraordinary longings
to see foreign life and seek for adventures abroad, she was nevertheless
one of nature's children.
On the same day upon which Kep had held that meeting with his father, he
picked up his little rifle, kissed his sister, and told her he was going
for shooting practice over the hills. There was something in his face
that told Madge he was not happy, and but for the fact that her
governess was with her she would have accompanied him.
Kep went to the hill to practise making bull's eyes at boulders, as he
phrased it, but his heart was not in the sport to-day, and presently he
threw down the gun, and lay down himself to look at the sea, and to
think.
What was he going to do? he asked himself. Going to run away from his
parent, his sister, his home? There was only one word to answer the
question, and that was "Yes."
But the morale of these questions was what puzzled his most, for he had
been strictly religious trained. Was he about to commit deliberately a
sin for which he might never be forgiven?
This was a question that took him a long time to argue. There were many
sides to it. He was going to sea in obedience to an impulse. Nothing
was there to prevent him. There are fathers and fathers, some of these
would send forth a hue and cry and bring a boy back _nolens volens_.
His father, Kep knew well enough, was not one of these. He would be too
proud to search for his lost boy, and he knew also the nature of that
boy, knew that restraint and compulsion could only tend to harden him,
and that the disgrace of being brought back a prisoner would break his
brave heart.
No, there was little, if any, fear of pursuit, and he had some money of
his own, enough at any rate to purchase his kit and rig-out. Yes, the
world was all before him. Yet the "sin" attached to his flight--ah!
that was the word he could not keep from ringing in his ears.
His father's priest was Kep's best friend, and his tutor besides.
Should he go and tell him? Perhaps he should, but he would not. You
may get pardon for sins you have done--if you are genuinely
penitent--but not for those you have it in your heart to commit. He
would not see his priest. What, never again? The lad's heart gave an
uneasy throb. That "never" is a long, long saddening word. So he told
himself that he was not running away for good and all, only just for a
few years, then if his father forgave him and asked him to return he
would.
But his sister Madge--ah! how she would cry, and how bitter and hot and
blinding would be those tears, for they loved each other, those two
mitherless bairns, as only young sister and brother can. Kep was all
the world to Madge. No boy ever so kind and gentle, so brave. None
ever so pleasant and so wildly mirthfully, gleesome and humorous.
As he thought of this he took from his side pocket a tiny little black
orchestra flute or piccolo. Not much bigger nor thicker was it than a
fountain pen, but oh, the marvellous music he was wont to elicit from
it. Mostly all Italian and German, chiefly operatic, yet the birds that
perched on the golden scented furze in spring used to stop their songs
to listen when Kep played, and little anxious creatures in fur used to
peep wonderingly out of their holes. He took his pipe from his pocket,
I say, and began to play--merrily at first, but soon mournfully and
sadly. The music that he breathed into it or that welled out of it was
such as he himself had never heard before. It seemed to come from his
very soul, to be the very own voice of that soul; and what more sweet,
if pure, than the soul of a boy of his still tender years?
This did not, could not, last long.
He dropped the magic pipe, and threw himself on his face to weep.
"Oh, Madge, oh, Madge," he sobbed, "I am going away, away--I am
following destiny--and you--you--how I love you, sister! but distance
can never, never divide nor sunder us. Never, Madge, never."
He spoke through his tears, as if his sister were close at his elbow.
"I'll write often and often, and you shall write to me. I may not
always get your letters, but you shall always have mine. What is this?"
he added, speaking more to himself now. He picked something off a bush
of ling. It was one of wild Madge's hair-ribbons--they often sat down
to rest, the brother and sister, in this very spot.
He looked at it. He held the bonnie blue silk to his lips, and sighed a
sigh which gave him comfort. Then he attached the ribbon to his wee
flute and tied it to a button hole.
He would never part from either ribbon or flute, go where he might, over
sea or land. The ribbon would be his mascot and charm danger away, the
tie that would knit him to his sister and to home.
Don't laugh at poor Kep, if I tell you that he must now kneel down by
the bush and pray. He marched off down the glen after this, but no
farther than the house of Duncan Rae, one of his father's keepers.
Duncan was at home and glad to see Kep. Would he not step inside and
have a bowl of milk, his wife would be so pleased.
"And there," continued Duncan, "comes Colie to bid you welcome and my
two little lassies evermore. But has our good laird's boy been crying?
But see, Keppie, my lad, go to the brook and wash your face, and it is
myself that will run for a towel for you."
Kep always felt easy at that homely fireside, and in five minutes' time
he was sitting with a child girl on his knee and two more curly-haired
tots listening to and laughing at his strange stories.
"But you'll play a bit to us, Keppie, and sure the bairns will dance,
for it is you that is the grand whistler. Never could scream of plover
in the mist equal the shrill sweet music of your flute."
And Kep did play, and forgot his sorrow for the time. Then he got up to
go, and handed Duncan Rae his little rifle to keep until he called for
it.
"But eh! boy, there is the big sorrow in your heart this moment, and
there is something there you won't tell your poor Duncan."
"No sorrow, Duncan. Only joy to come."
And he forced a smile as he waved his hand.
And Duncan stood looking after him till the hazel copse hid him from
view.
Then he sighed and went in doors.
* * * * *
Bob, the great white owl, came that night to stare in at the window of
the little turret chamber, but all was dark.
And the cawing of the rooks to greet the rising sun brought no young
face to the window next morning.
Kep was gone.
*CHAPTER III*
*"ANY SPOT ON EARTH is A HOME FOR THE BRAVE."*
About a week after this, rather a crack little cruiser was lying with
steam up, or fires alit anyhow, in Plymouth Sound. Long, low, rakish
she was, and looked just the craft to go anywhere and do anything,
howsoever daring.
Kep Drummond stood gazing at her from the Hoe.
There was a sailor sitting on the end of a bench near by, and him Kep
addressed. "What ship is that, mate?" he said.
"That is the _Breezy_, my son. She sails to-morrow."
"Do you belong to her?"
"Not I. Just come from China station."
"I think I should like to sail in that craft. There is a bit of romance
about her, lying with her bowsprit pointing to the breakwater. I like
her looks, and what a lot of boats are passing to and fro. How had I
best get on board?"
"Why, with a shore-boat, of course. You don't imagine, do you, that
they would call away the first whaler for a kinchin like you, though you
do look pretty fit."
"Well, anyhow, I'm going to join that ship and sail in her."
The seaman laughed aloud.
"As what?" he asked. "Second lieutenant, paymaster, or what? Mebbe
you'd like to take command of her. I'm sure you have only to wire the
Admiralty to get appointed right away."
Kep's eyes were riveted on the _Breezy_, and he was all a-quiver with a
new-born excitement.
"How old are you, sonny?"
The man now laid a kindly hand on his shoulder.
"Fourteen and begun again."
"Run away from your parents, haven't you?"
"That's my business, matey."
"Well, but take a man-o'-war sailor's advice. Don't go on board the
_Breezy_; if you do, you'll get copped and sent home again. And it is
there you should be. If I did my duty now----"
"Come and have a pint, Jack."
"Oh, I'm nothing loath," said Jack.
"Then we can yarn about it," said Kep.
They were soon seated in the parlour of an inn, where Jack seemed to be
well known. There was a foaming tankard in front of the sailor and one
by Kep, which he pretended to sip, but fought shy of.
Kep told Jack little bits about himself, but no more than Jack could
conveniently swallow.
"Have you been much abroad, sir?" said Kep. The "sir" almost stuck in
the boy's throat, but then, this man had many stripes on his sleeve, and
Kep thought it as well to err on the safe side.
"Been kicked about a lot, sonny, if that's what you mean. I'm eight and
twenty, and next commission may be my last--"
"Why, you think you'll be drowned then?"
"No, no, lad, only if I do two years more, my time will be about up, but
I'll join on again, 'cause I dearly love the sea. I say, young fellow,
you're not drinking yours."
"Never meant to. Ordered it for company's sake."
"Thought so. There's a pal o' mine in the bar, he could let daylight
inside that tankard if your lordship will allow me to call him in."
"Certainly--delighted."
The pal, a young man, clean-shaven and very baggy about the lower
garments, did let daylight into the tankard after nodding frankly to
Kep.
The boy had heard of boozing kens, and he wondered if he was in one now.
Anyhow, he believed he could take care of himself.
A buxom middle-aged landlady presently came in, and Jack said something
to her in an undertone. She smiled most pleasantly, and patted Kep's
hand. "Poor boy!" she said, "nothing must come over him then."
Kep called for more stout all round, and threw down a sovereign. But
this fresh supply stood for some time untouched, for the lads of the
Royal Navy are not now what they were in the days of Dibdin.
"I'll call Katie, my daughter," said the landlady, "as I must attend to
duty. Katie dear, come this way."
Kep thought he had never seen so winsome a girl before and he asked her
to have something, but she took positively no notice.
Only a minute after, she pulled Kep on to her knee.
"The sweet little lamb," she said, "and oh, the black eyes of him.
Jack, he is his mother's wopsy-popsy, I'll bet."
"What--how--why," the boy cried, wriggling away from her. "Can't you
see I'm a man? Fourteen and began again?"
But Katie soothed him. "I'm sure you'd like a cup of tea," she said.
Kep would.
Yet he had some suspicions that if this were in reality a boozing den,
the tea might be drugged, and that being hocussed, he might be robbed.
But one look at sweet Katie convinced him that his suspicions were
really unmanly.
"You'll sleep here to-night, won't you?" she said.
"Yes, if they don't keep me on board the _Breezy_."
Jack roared with laughter and Katie couldn't help joining in.
"I think," said Jack, "that even the first lieutenant has been
appointed, and they will have to dispense with your services, sonny.
Why didn't you 'phone to the Port Admiral, and say you were coming?"
"You _funny_ boy!" said Katie. "But how much money is in that purse of
yours, that makes your trousers pocket bulge out so?"
"Oh, enough to pay for the tea, twenty times over."
"Why dear, I don't mean that," and the girl reddened a little.
"Well," she added, "you'll count all your gold out there on the table,
and give it to my mother except just a handful of silver. She'll give
you a receipt for it, and you'll come back here to sleep."
Kep looked at Jack, and Jack nodded. Then the boy counted his gold and
notes out as innocently as a boy of nine might have done, and Mrs.
Monck, the landlady of the _Blue Ensign_, took it in charge.
Jack told him he would meet him here again that evening, told him also
where to charter a shore-boat.
"Hillo you, what's the fare to the _Breezy_?"
"Three bob to you, cap'n."
"Take ye for 'arf," cried another.
"Jump in," said Kep.
The men jumped in and off they pulled. There was a rudder, and Kep took
the tiller.
"Been at this game before, young sir?"
"I know what a boat is."
"Be ye a-goin' to join, sir?"
"Don't know yet. Going to see the first officer."
"Humph! well, that means the commander or first luff. The _Breezy_ is a
warship."
The way Kep steered that boat along-side the _Breezy_--sta'board side
mind you--was a source of great fun to some middies.
"Admiral's sweep, by Jove! Why, he thinks himself quite a little toff.
Wonder who the devil he is?"
"Couldn't say, I'm sure. May as well have sideboys, anyhow."
And down the steps the side-boys rattled and handed Kep the pipe-clayed
ropes.