PREPARATIONS FOR A LONG CRUISE--HEARTY CONFESSES TO A SOFT IMPEACHMENT--
THE O'WIGGINS AND HIS PASSENGERS--HOW WE GOT RID OF THEM.
Hearty had long projected a voyage up the Mediterranean, and invited
Carstairs, and Bubble, and me to join him. Groggs, as may be supposed,
had become a bore, unbearable; and, as soon as we arrived at Plymouth,
had been sent back to cultivate his paternal acres and describe the
wonders he had seen during his nautical career. While Porpoise was
attending to the refitting of the yacht, Bubble and I were busily
engaged in laying in stores of comestibles, and drinkables, and
burnables and smokables, of all sorts. Food for the mind, as well as
for the body, was not forgotten; but Hearty would not allow a pack of
cards or dice on board. It was a fancy of his, he said, that he did not
much mind being peculiar. "If a set of men with heads on their
shoulders and brains in their heads cannot amuse themselves, unless by
the aid of means invented for the use of idiots, and fit only for the
half-witted, I would rather dispense with their society," he used to
observe. We had, however, chess and draughts, though he was no great
admirer of either game, especially of the latter. "However," as he
said, "though those games kill time which I think it would be wise of
men if they tried to keep alive, as they, at all events, won't let a
fellow's mind go to sleep, we may as well have them."
We exerted all our ingenuity and thought in laying in every thing which
could possibly be required for a long voyage; and seldom has a yacht, I
suspect, been better found in this respect. Seldom, also, have five
jolly bachelors been brought together more ready to enjoy themselves.
Three is generally considered the best number to form a travelling
party, and certainly on shore no party should exceed that number, unless
there is some stronger bond of union than mere pleasure or convenience.
Seldom when more men unite do they fail to separate before the end of
the journey. For a yacht voyage, however, the case is different. In
the first place, there is more discipline. The owner, if he is a man of
judgment, assumes a certain amount of mild authority; acts as captain
over every one on board, and keeps order. Should a dispute arise, he
instantly reconciles the disputants, and takes care himself never to
dispute with any one.
Hearty was just the man for the occasion. "Now, my dear fellows," said
he to all the party on giving us the invitation, "the first thing we
have to do is to sign articles to preserve good fellowship, and to do
our best to make each other happy. I don't want to top the officer over
my guests; but all I want you to promise me is, that if there arises any
difference, you will allow me at once to be umpire. If I differ with
any one, the rest must act the part of judge and jury." We, of course,
were all too happy to agree to so reasonable a proposal, and so the
matter was settled. With respect also to the numbers on board, in
reality only Hearty and Carstairs were idlers; Porpoise was officially
master; Bubble had originally fitted out the yacht, and acted as
caterer; while I had undertaken to keep my watch, and aid Will in his
duties. We had with us guns and ammunition, and fishing-rods and nets,
and camera-lucidas, and sketch-books; and musical instruments, flutes, a
violin, a guitar, and accordion. We had even some scientific apparatus;
nor had we forgotten a good supply of writing materials. The truth was
that Bubble and I had some claim to be authors. Will had written a good
deal: indeed, his prolific pen had often supplied him with the means of
paying his tailor's bill; while I had more than once appeared in print.
We agreed, therefore, not to interfere with one another in our literary
compositions. While he took one department, I was to take the other.
At last we were all ready for sea. Mizen came out in the "Fun" to see
us off, with Fanny Farlie, Miss Mizen, Mr and Mrs Rullock, and Susan
Simms on board, as well as several of our friends, and we struck up, as
the yachts at length parted, with our voices and all the musical
instruments we could bring into action, "The Girls we leave behind us."
Hearty heaved a sigh as he was looking through his glass at the
fast-receding "Fun."
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Yes, she is a sweet girl!" he ejaculated, not answering me, however. I
spoke again.
"Laura Mizen, to be sure," he replied. "Who else? She's unlike all the
rest of our yachting set away at Ryde there. They are all young ladies,
cast in the same mould, differing only in paint, outside show; one may
be blue and the other red, another yellow, though I don't think you
often find them of any primitive colour; generally they are of
secondary, or mixed colours, as the artists say. One again wishes to be
thought fast, and another sentimental, another philanthropic or
religious, and another literary. I don't know which of the pretenders I
dislike the most. The fast young ladies are the most difficult to deal
with. They do such impudent things, both to one and of one. If they
knew how some of the fast men speak of them in return, it would make
them wince not a little, I suspect, if they have not rattled away from
all delicacy themselves. Oh, give me a right honest, good girl, who
does not dream of being any thing but herself; who is a dutiful
daughter, and is ready to be a loving, obedient wife of an honest man,
and the affectionate mother of some fine hearty children, whom she may
bring up with a knowledge of the object for which they were sent into
the world."
"Well said, my dear fellow," I answered, warmly; for I seriously
responded to his sentiments, though, it must be confessed, they were
very different to the style which had been usual on board the "Frolic."
"Why did you not ask her, though?" I continued.
"Because I was a fool," he answered. "Those Rattler girls, Masons and
Sandons, and that Miss Mary Masthead, and others of her stamp, were
running in my head, and I couldn't believe that Laura Mizen was in
reality superior to them. I used to talk the same nonsense to her that
I rattled into their willing ears; and it is only now that I have
thought over the replies she made, and many things she lately said to
me, and that I have discovered the vast difference there is between her
and the rest."
"Well, 'bout ship, and propose," said I; "though sorry to lose the
cruise, your happiness shall be the first consideration."
"Oh, no, no! that will never do," he answered. "I doubt if she will
have me now. When we come back next summer I will find her out, and if
she appears to receive me favourably, I will propose. Now she thinks me
only a harum-scarum rattler. It would never do."
I could say nothing to this. I truly believed that though Hearty's
fortune would weigh with most girls, it would but little with her; and I
could only hope that in the mean time she would not bestow her
affections on any one else.
Just as we got outside the breakwater we sighted a schooner, standing in
for the Sound, which we had no difficulty in making out to be the
"Popple." As soon as she discovered us, she bore down on us,
signalising away as rapidly as possible.
"What are they saying?" asked Hearty, as he saw the bunting run up to
her masthead.
"Heave-to, I want to speak to you," I answered, turning over the leaves
of the signal-book.
"Shall we?" asked Porpoise.
"Oh, by all means," replied Hearty. "O'Wiggins may have something of
importance to communicate."
"Down with the helm; let fly the jib-sheet; haul the foresail to
windward," sung out Porpoise, and the cutter lay bobbing her head
gracefully to the sea, while the schooner approached her.
Still they continued running up and down the bunting on board the
"Popple." I had some difficulty in making out what they intended to
say. "Ladies aboard--trust to gallantry," I continued to interpret, as
I made out the words by reference to the book.
"What can they wish to say?" exclaimed Hearty.
"They wish to lay an embargo on us of some sort, and begin by
complimenting us on our gallantry," observed Bubble.
"By the pricking of my thumbs, something evil this way comes," exclaimed
Carstairs. "As I am a living gentleman, there are petticoats on board.
Who has been acting the part of a perfidious wretch, and breaking tender
vows? An avenging Nemesis is in his wake in the person of Mrs
Skyscraper, or the Rattler girls, or Mary Masthead. Even at this
distance I can make them out."
So it was, as the schooner approached, the very dames Carstairs had
named were seen on board.
We had observed, as we went down the Sound, a large schooner beating up
from the westward. There had been discussions as to what she was. Our
glasses had now once more been turned towards her, when we discovered
her to be the "Sea Eagle." Seeing our bunting going up and down so
rapidly, Sir Charles Drummore, her owner, curious to know what we were
talking about, stood towards us.
The "Popple" hove-to to windward of us, and a boat being lowered,
O'Wiggins pulled on board. "My dear fellow, I'm so glad we've overtaken
you," he began. "Your friend, Mrs Skyscraper, and those young ladies
with her, were so anxious to have another cruise on board the `Frolic'
before the summer is over, that I consented to bring them down here, as
I made sure that you would be delighted to see them!" Never did
Hearty's face assume a more puzzled and vexed expression. "Heaven
defend me from them!" he exclaimed. "Tell them that we've got the
yellow-fever--or the plague, or the cholera, or the measles, or the
whooping-cough, or any thing dreadful you can think of; make every
excuse--or no excuse; the thing is impossible, not to be thought of for
a moment: they can't come. We are bound foreign, say to the North Pole,
or the West Indies, or the coast of Africa, or the South Pacific, or to
the Antipodes. They don't want to go there, at all events, I suppose."
"But if you don't take them, what am I to do with them?" exclaimed
O'Wiggins. "I'm bound down Channel, and if they don't worry me out of
house and home, they'll drive me overboard with the very clatter of
their tongues."
A bright thought struck Hearty. Just then the "Sea Eagle" came up, and
hove-to on our quarter.
"Much obliged to you for your kind intentions towards us, but, instead,
just hand them over to Drummore," said he, rubbing his hands. "If any
man can manage so delicate an affair, you can, O'Wiggins, without
wishing to pay you an undue compliment."
Sir Charles Drummore was a baronet, one of our yachting acquaintances,
and had lately purchased the "Sea Eagle." A worthy old fellow, though
he had the character of being somewhat of a busybody. He certainly
looked more in his place in his club than on board his yacht. "Well,
I'll try it," answered the O'Wiggins, who was himself easily won by the
very bait he offered so liberally to others. "Trust me, I'll do it if
mortal man can. I'll weave a piteous tale of peerless damsels in
distress, and all that sort of thing. Thank you for the hint; it will
take, depend on it."
"Well, be quick about it," we exclaimed, "or Drummore will be topping
his boom, and you will miss your chance." Thereon O'Wiggins tumbled
into his boat, and pulled aboard the "Sea Eagle." What story he told--
what arguments he used--we never heard; but very shortly we had the
satisfaction of seeing the Misses Rattler and Mary Masthead, with their
skittish chaperone, Mrs Skyscraper, transferred to the deck of the "Sea
Eagle."
We strongly suspected that the prim baronet had not the slightest
conception as to who formed the component parts of the company with whom
he was to be favoured. He bowed rather stiffly as he received them and
their bandboxes on deck; but he was in for it; his gallantry would not
allow him to send them back to the "Popple," and he had, therefore, only
to wish sincerely for a fair breeze, that he might land them as speedily
as possible at Ryde. The O'Wiggins waved his cap with an extra amount
of vehemence, and putting up his helm, and easing off his sheets, stood
away for Falmouth. We, at the same time, shaped a course down Channel,
mightily glad that we were free of all fast young ladies and flirting
widows.
"O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!"
spouted Carstairs, pointing to the wide Atlantic which rolled before us.
"The sea, the sea, the open sea!--
The wide, the blue, the ever free;
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide region round!
I'm on the sea--
I am where I would ever be:
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go,"
chimed in Hearty, whose quotations and sketches were always from authors
of more modern date.
"You'll sing different songs to those, gentlemen, if it comes on to blow
a gale of wind while we are crossing the Bay," said Porpoise, laughing.
"The sea always puts me in mind of a woman, very delightful when she's
calm and smiling, but very much the contrary when a gale is blowing.
I've knocked about all my life at sea, and have got pretty tired of
storms, which I don't like a bit better than when I first went afloat."
"Never fear for us," answered Hearty. "I never was in a storm in my
life, and I want to see how the `Frolic' will behave."
"As to that, I dare say she will behave well enough," said Porpoise.
"There's no craft like a cutter for lying-to, or for beating off a
lee-shore; or working through a narrow channel, for that matter, though
a man-of-war's man says it. We have the credit of preferring our own
square-rigged vessels to all others, and not knowing how to handle a
fore-and-after."
"Come what may, we'll trust to you to do the best which can be done
under any chances which may occur," said Hearty. "And now here comes
Ladle to summon us to dinner." To dinner we went, and a good one we
ate, and many a good one after it. Many a joke was uttered, many a
story told, and many a song was sung. In truth, the days slipped away
more rapidly even than on shore.
"Well, after all, I can't say that there is much romance in a sea-life,"
exclaimed Carstairs, stretching out his legs, as he leaned back in an
arm-chair on deck, and allowed the smoke of his fragrant Havana to rise
curling over his upturned countenance, for there was very little wind at
the time, and from what there was we were running away.
"I can't quite agree with you on that point: there is romance enough at
sea, as well as everywhere else, if people only know how to look for
it," observed Will Bubble, who had been scribbling away most assiduously
all the morning in a large note-book which he kept carefully closed from
vulgar eyes!
"Oh, I know, of course, `Books in the running brooks, sermons in stones,
and good in every thing,'" answered Carstairs, who was seldom at a loss
for a quotation from Shakespeare. "But I mean, who ever meets a good,
exciting, romantic adventure with pirate-smugglers, savages, or some
thing of that sort? Perhaps you, Bubble, have got something of that
sort in your book there which you will give us, but then it will be only
fiction: I want a stern reality. The world has grown too matter-of-fact
to keep a fellow awake."
"I'll own to the soft impeachment," answered Bubble, laughing. "But my
story's real; I've been merely putting some notes into form for our
amusement, and I hope all hands will be duly grateful." We all thanked
Bubble for his promise.
"I cannot agree with you, in any way, as to there being no romance in a
sea-life," said I. "Only last year I took part in a very pretty little
bit of romance, which would have made the fortune of any paper into
which it had been allowed to find its way; but for the sake of the
actors we kept the affair a profound secret, or you would certainly have
heard of it."
"Let's have it all out now," exclaimed Hearty; "we won't peach: we'll be
as tight as the `Frolic' herself."
"I wouldn't trust you in the club," said I. "But, out here, I don't
think it will go beyond the bulwarks, so you shall hear my story."
While the rest of our party sat round, and drew, or netted, or smoked, I
gave an account of the incident to which I alluded. As it is an
important introduction to our subsequent adventures, it is, I feel, well
worthy of a chapter to itself.