Chapter Ten.
Book II—Patagonia and the Land of Fire.
A Strange Introduction—Saint Helena and Fun on Shore—Cape Town.
The amount of good advice vouchsafed to us before sailing, by dear aunt, was only equalled by the sum total of our own good resolves. There was nothing in the world we were not going to do and be that was worth doing or being. And every night of our lives for weeks before sailing, we made some new good intention, and duly entered it in the log of our memories.
Alas! I fear that going to sea for the first time is very like entering upon a new year: there is the same firm determination to do good and to be good, and one invariably sticks to his intentions boldly—for a week or a fortnight.
Our life now, I remember, was to be all couleur de rose. There would not be a single hitch in it; it would spin over the wheels of time as softly as a well-coiled rope glides through a greased block. We were going to work like New Hollanders, and get up to the working of the ship in a month at the farthest, be able to reef, steer, and box the compass in another month; we would always be on deck three minutes before the watch was called; we would show the men a good example—we certainly had a good opinion of our little selves; we would be always cheerful and merry and willing; and last, but not least, we would keep such a log as would be worth handing over to the British Museum when done with.
However, there is no harm in trying to be perfect; on the contrary, it shows a boy is ambitious, and an ambitious boy is certain to do well and advance. He may not obtain to the height of his ambition, but if he aims high he’ll hit high, nevertheless, although he may neither send his arrow through the moon nor set the Thames on fire.
The Salamander was a sailing ship, but a crack little craft at that, well-handled, and well-manned. A barque she was as to rig, but almost clipper built, without extra narrowness of beam. She was a strong, sturdy-timbered, safe ship, and could do a bit of handsome sailing on a wind.
But being a sailing ship, she had to be towed by such a puffing little dirty noisy tug, all the way down the river. This is a sort of a beginning to a voyage that I never could endure. When I go to sea, I like best to get into blue water right away, just as I dearly love to take a header from the rocks into deep water when bathing—right splash down among the jelly fishes.
But we hoisted sail at last with a deal of “yee-hoing” and sing-songing, then the tug and we parted company with a ringing cheer, which Jill and I took an eminent part in. Indeed, when the order was given to hoist the jib, both of us attempted to take an eminent part in that also, and were thunderstruck at being advised to go aft if we didn’t want our toes tramped. Why, the scramble in setting sail, the hurrying here and scurrying there, the noise and shouting, would have left a Rugby football match far in the rear.
When sail was got up at last, and the water had entirely lost its pea-soup colour, the Salamander went bobbing and curtseying over the wee wavelets, swaying about like a pretty Spanish girl dancing a fandango, and with a motion altogether so pleasant, that I said to Jill I did not think there was any life in the world so pleasant as a life on the ocean wave.
Just as I was saying this I received a dig from a thumb in the ribs, accompanied by that clicking sound a Jehu makes with his mouth when he wants his horse to “gee up.” I think it is spelt thus: “tsck!” If not, I do not know how to spell it.
“Tsck! youngsters, how d’y’e like it? Eh! Tsck! Sorry to leave the shorie-worry. Eh? Tsck.”
He was a youth of about fifteen, in blue pilot jacket with brass buttons, and a cap on the after-part of his head. He had a short neck and handsome face, but square chin, which he stuck very much up in the air when he spoke. I did not like him, then.
I drew myself up to my full height—four feet six, I think—and asked him if he was aware he was taking an unwarrantable amount of familiarity with my ribs.
I was using my very best English on him—auntie’s English.
“What’s your name, chummy?”
“Captain Coates may be able to inform you.”
“Ha! ha! going to ride the high horse. Eh?”
“What’s your name, little un? Tsck!” This to Jill.
Jill bridled up now.
“When I’m as big as you, I’ll thrash you,” said my brother.
“But you’ll never be, ’cause I’ll keep growing. See?”
I looked at him disdainfully up and down.
“You don’t give promise at present,” I said, “of ever attaining heroic dimensions.”
“Eh?” he said, putting a finger behind his left ear, as deaf people do. “I didn’t catch on. What ship did you say?”
“Because,” I added, “you’re squat, and you’re not wholesome, nor handsome.”
This was hardly handsome of me.
He shook his head now as if in great grief.
“Oh! you ungrateful little griffin,” he gasped out. “Here is poor innocent me come to chummy with you, and there is you a-rebuffing of me like everything. I declare it’s enough to make the binnacle pipe its eye.”
Then he brightened up all at once.
“I say,” he said, “was that old duchess your aunt? Uncommon fine old girl. Give you any yellow boys, eh?”
I turned on my heel and walked away, arm-in-arm with Jill.
At the same moment Mrs Coates and her black maid came up, and I was surprised to observe the immediate change in this young officer’s demeanour. He lifted his hat to the lady, and advanced almost shyly, certainly deferentially.
“Now, boys,” said Mrs Coates, smiling, “let me make you acquainted with your brother officer, Mr Jeffries. Mr Jeffries—Master Reginald—and-all-the-rest-of-it Jones; Master Rupert, etc, Jones—twin brothers, as you may see.”
Mr Jeffries cordially shook hands with us.
“I really was trying to scrape acquaintance with them when you came on deck, Mrs Coates.”
“How did you proceed?” asked the lady.
“Well, I—I fear I dug them in the ribs rather, Mrs Coates, but I now most humbly apologise.”
“And I have to apologise,” I returned, “for calling you squat and ugly.” I lifted my hat.
“And I,” said Jill, lifting his hat, “have to apologise for saying I would thrash you—I won’t.”
“No,” said Mr Jeffries, “I dare say you won’t yet awhile. Well, let’s all be pleasant. We’re all in the same boat. But boys, I’m plain Peter. Don’t Mr me.”
“And I’m Jack.”
“And I’m Jill.”
“Oh,” laughed Mrs Coates, “then I must call my Jack—John.”
I could not help thinking this was a very strange introduction, but the ice was broken, and that was everything.
We had music after dinner, in our pretty little saloon, Mrs Coates and Peter playing duets together, he with the clarionet—on which charming instrument every boy should take lessons before going to sea—and she at the piano.
We youngsters went on deck before turning in. The stars were all out, and all sail was crowded; but though well into the Channel, we made but little way, the sea all round being as calm as an English lake.
We sat down together near the companion.
“You don’t think me a very nasty fellow now, do you?” said Peter.
“No, I begin to like you rather.”
“Am I very ugly?”
“No, not ugly, but you looked conceited.”
“Well, so I perhaps am. Now, I’m lots older than you, and we’ve known each other all the evening, so forgive me for trying plainly to put you up to ropes. You’re green, and you must get rid of your lime-juice. Now, never lose your temper.”
“Oh! Jill,” I cried, laughing, “Peter is right, and we’ve broken our good resolve.”
“Always take chaff in the spirit it is meant.”
“So we had intended,” I sighed, “hadn’t we, Jill?”
“Assuredly.”
“Well, that’s all to-night. We’re friends?”
“We are.”
“Then, good-night. I have got to keep the first morning watch.”
“Good-night, Peter.”
“Jill,” I said, “we’ve made fools of ourselves already. Let us go down below, and turn in.”
So we did, and cosy little cribs we had, and a little cabin all to ourselves—this is most exceptional, mind, but we were very young.
Just after we got up from our knees,—
“Give us the log-books,” I said, “Jill.”
“I say, Jack,” said Jill, sleepily, “maybe it would be as well to write every day’s doings complete every morning.”
“I dare say that would be best,” I said, “and I must say I’m feeling very tired.”
Next day it was blowing a bit, and we had something else to occupy our minds than writing logs. Indeed I never felt so thoroughly bad and unambitious in my life. I did try to eat some breakfast, but the fish got it after. Jill was the same, so ill, and the ship would keep capering about in a way that made me wish I’d been a soldier instead of a sailor.
“How’re you getting on?” Peter often asked kindly. “Oh, you are not nearly so bad as I was at first, and on the day the mate rope-ended me off to my watch.”
“Isn’t it blowing hard?” I ventured to ask.
“Blowing? dear life no, it’s a glorious breeze.”
The glorious breeze—how I hated such glory—kept at it for many days. The sea got rougher and the waves higher, and we got worse. I do not think anything would have induced me to go near a ship again, if a good angel had only put me down then at the door of Trafalgar Cottage.
But every one was kind to us.
Then one day the mate—he was rather a tartar—put us both in separate watches, and after this I think our sufferings began in earnest.
Not a word had yet been written in the log, so that was our third good intention thrown to the winds.
It really seemed to me that the mate was cruel; he did not kick us about, but he sent us flying, on very short notice too. And we dared not say a word. Then we had all kinds of little menial offices to perform, even for the captain’s cat and for two beautiful dogs that belonged to the mate. To be sure, there was a boy or two forward, but the mate told us—Jill and me—that he wanted to make men of us. He explained that no officer could ever know when a thing was well done unless he knew how to do it himself.
Going aloft was at first fearful work. I’ll never forget, though, lying out on a yard making a sham of reefing, and holding on like a fly on a roof, praying, and expecting every moment to be hurled into the sea. It came easier at last, and before we reached Saint Helena, where we lay in, I could do a deal both below and aloft, and had hands and feet as good as the captain’s cat.
Now if ever the lines of any two boys were cast in pleasant places on going first to sea, they were Jill’s and mine, and yet we were not happy. What would it have been had we been subjected to the thousand and one little tyrannies of ship life most apprentices have to endure? I’m not going to describe them, because I am telling a story, not giving a lecture; nor do I wish to say a word to prevent bold, hardy lads from adopting the sea as a profession; but let no one go to be a sailor lured by the romance and glamour thrown over it in too many sea novels.
Peter and we got on shore together at Saint Helena. This was a treat, because we were now quite friendly, and I had not forgotten the good advice he gave us the first evening we met.
Leila, Mrs Coates’ maid, also had a passage on shore in the same boat, and Peter, much to the amusement of the men—with whom, by the way, he was a great favourite—pretended to make love to her all the way. He told her, to begin with, that her name was sweetly poetic, and pretty. So far he was right. Then he said her teeth were like pearls. Leila grinned, simpered, and showed her teeth. And really Peter was not far wrong. Having adhered to the truth so far, I believe Leila was in a position to believe anything. So Peter praised her eyes next. He said they reminded him of koh-i-noors floating in a bucket of tar, and he referred to the coxswain to say whether he was not right. The coxswain confessed that diamonds were never so numerous where he had been, as to float them on tar, but that Leila was pretty enough to make a fellow pitch a ball of spun-yard at the captain’s head if she asked him to.
For this pretty compliment the coxswain received a dig in the ribs from Leila that well-nigh sent him overboard among the sharks and turtles, and certainly took his breath away.
“Oh!” cried the coxswain. “If that’s your way of showing your affection, my beauty, a little of it goes a long way.”
“What for you tease a poor girl, then?”
“Your hair, my Leila—” began Peter again.
“Cut it short, Mr Jeffries,” cried the coxswain, laughing; “why, sir, you can’t praise that!”
“Cut it short!” said Peter; “why it couldn’t be shorter. But look at those crisp wee ringlets, how they curl round one’s affections, how they entwine themselves with every poetic feeling—”
“Way enough—oars,” shouted the coxswain.
There was indeed way enough. The good fellow had not been keeping his weather eye lifting, and now the boat took the beach with such force that nearly all hands caught crabs, the bewitching Leila among the rest.
Peter made haste to help her up, and assisted her on shore. He even carried his politeness so far as to offer her his arm along the beach.
“You go ’long now,” she replied. “You nothing but one piccaninny. I not can gib dis heart ob mine to a child so small as you.”
Jill and I laughed, and Peter laughed good-naturedly, and fell back.
“Bother it all, boys, she’s got the best of me after all.”
Here, in James’s Town, as in other places, my brother and I attracted universal attention, among blacks and whites, by our wonderful resemblance to each other. And they did not hesitate to show it. For instance, I was some distance behind Jill and Peter, when I met a bluff old sailor.
“Hullo! matie,” he shouted, “blessed if I ain’t three sheets in the wind. I could have sworn I met you a minute ago, and there you are again. I’ll go back and have a sleep. Can’t go on board like this.”
But when he saw the two of us together, he concluded to go on board, after treating himself to another glass of beer, and drinking our healths. So we had to “shout” as Peter called it.
Before we entered the little inn, which was kept by a highly respectable man of colour, Peter pushed me unceremoniously into a little stable place, and told me to wait till come for.
I obeyed, feeling sure Peter was up to some lark. About five minutes after, the door was opened, not by Peter, but by a black man in a white jacket.
He sprang back in amazement when he saw me.
“You must be de debbil, sah,” he said.
“Thank you,” I replied, “but you’re more of his colour.”
The explanation is this: after calling for beer and sherbet, Peter, who knew the landlord, having been here before, said—
“Now, Mr Brown, you see this young gentleman,” alluding to Jill.
“Yes, sah,” said Mr Brown, “pertiklerly handsom boy, sah.”
“True,” said Peter, “but his chief peculiarity is his ubiquitousness.”
“Yes, sah, sure ’nuff, sah; come to look again, he is rather obliquitous.”
“He can go through a key-hole.”
The man drew back.
“Now, come and I’ll show you.” And upstairs the three went; and after making sure the window was properly fastened, Jill was duly locked into the room, and the landlord put the key in his pocket. In a minute after they returned. The room was empty to all appearance—Jill, in fact, was behind a chair in a corner. The landlord peeped under the bed, then stared in blank amazement.
“Now come on,” cried Peter, “we’ll find him out of doors. Go and look in your little stable.”
And there, of course, Mr Brown found me. Meanwhile Jill had got downstairs, and had hidden himself in the parlour, so that Peter had an opportunity of ringing the changes on this trick in several ways.
Finally we both appeared at once.
“I’m going to pay for the sherbet,” said I and Jill both in a breath, and both extending our hands at once.
“No, sah,” said Mr Brown, “I not touch it. P’r’aps sah, the money is obliquitous too—ha! ha!”
We had a deal of fun that day one way or another, and very much enjoyed our visit to Napoleon’s tomb. I believe I should have waxed quite romantic about that, or about some of the splendid views we saw on every side of us, but who could be romantic with Peter alongside making us laugh every moment?
After returning, we went to climb ladder hill. Every one does so, therefore we must. The ladder leads up the face of a cliff about four hundred feet high.
“I think,” said Peter, “I see my way to a final joke before going off. Jill, old man, you hide down here till I shout from the cliff top, then come slowly up the ladder, rubbing yourself as if you had tumbled.”
Then up we went. We were in luck. An old gentleman at the top was watching our ascent from under his white umbrella. We said “good afternoon,” and passed along some little way, and at a sign from Peter I got into hiding.
Peter ran back. “Oh!” he cried, “I fear my young friend has fallen over the cliff.”
“Dear me, dear me,” said the old gentleman, looking bewilderedly round, “so he must have. How very, very terrible.”
“But it won’t hurt him, will it?”
“Hurt him? why he’ll be cat’s meat by this time.”
“Oh, you don’t know my friend,” said Peter. “He’s a perfect little gutta-percha ball, he is.”
Then he shouted, “Jill—Jill, are you hurt?”
And when Jill presently came puffing and blowing up the ladder, and making pretence to dust his jacket, that old gentleman’s face was such a picture of mingled amazement and terror that I felt sorry for him; so I suddenly appeared on the scene, and, according to Peter, thus spoiled the sport.
Jill and I had built all sorts of castles in the air anent our arrival at Cape Town, and the meeting with our darling mother and brave papa. We were not in the least little bit afraid of a scolding from either.
The Salamander was to lie here for a whole week, so we would be certain to enjoy ourselves if—ah! there always is an if. I do not believe there ever was a castle in the air yet that had not a big ugly ogre living in some corner of it. Supposing father were killed, or something happened to mamma.
But here was the Cape at last, and the bay, and the town, and the grand old hills above. It was early in the morning when we dropped anchor, but there was plenty of bustle and stir on the water nevertheless. The houses looked very white in the sun’s glare, which was so bright on the water that we could scarcely look on it. The hills were purple, grey, and green with patches of bright crimson here and there, for it was early summer in this latitude. Indeed, everywhere around us was ablaze with sunlight and beauty. But all this fell flat on Jill and me, and we did not feel any near approach to happiness till the boat was speeding swiftly towards the landing with us. For somewhere in shore yonder lived, we hoped, all we held truly dear.