Chapter Six.
The Starling.
Rubbing my eyes and then opening them to the full, wide awake at last, I at once recollected where I was, and who was speaking to me as he shook me.
It was Ching Wang, the Chinese cook, smiling all over his round yellow face, and holding out a tin pannikin with something steaming in it, that sent forth a fragrant smell which made my mouth water.
“Hi me wakee can do,” he said in his broken pigeon English, although from having been several voyages he spoke more intelligibly than the majority of his countrymen, “Mass’ Looney me axee lookee after lilly pijjin, and so me fetchee piecee coffee number one chop. You wanchee—hey?”
“Thank you,” I cried gratefully, drinking the nice hot coffee, which seemed delicious though there was no milk in it. Then, forgetting I was in the top bunk, I sprang off the mattress on which I had been lying, falling further than I thought, it being quite six feet to the deck below; and, knocking down the good-natured Chinaman, with whom I tumbled over amongst the things scattered about the floor and landed finally outside the door of the deck-house in a heap, rolled up with him in the blanket I had clutched as I fell!
Fortunately, however, neither of us was injured by this little scrimmage, which somehow or other seemed to smooth over the awkwardness of our making acquaintance, both of us grinning over the affair as a piece of good fun.
“Chin-chin, lilly pijjin,” said my new friend, as he picked himself up from the deck and made his way back to his galley with the empty pannikin, whose contents I was glad to have swallowed before jumping out of the bunk, or else it would have been spilt in another fashion. “When you wanchee chow-chow you comee Ching Wang and he givee you first chop.”
“Thank you,” I replied again, not knowing then what he meant by his term “chow-chow,” although I fancied he intended something kind, and probably of an edible nature, as he was the cook. But all thoughts of him and his intentions were quickly banished from my mind the moment I looked around me, and saw and heard all the bustle going on in the ship; for, men were racing here and there, and ropes were being thrown down with heavy bangs, the captain and Mr Mackay both on the poop were yelling out queer orders that I couldn’t understand, and Mr Saunders and the boatswain on the forecastle were also shouting back equally strange answers, while, to add to the effect, blocks were creaking and canvas flapping aloft, and groups of sailors everywhere were hauling and pulling as if their lives depended on every tug they gave.
It was broad daylight and more; the sun having, unlike me, been up long since, it being after eight o’clock and a bright beautiful morning, with every prospect of fine weather before us for the run down the Channel.
We had come through the Bullock Channel, emerging from the estuary of the Thames ahead of the North Foreland, which proudly raised its head away on our starboard bow, the sun shining on its bare scarp and picking out every detail with photographic distinctness. Further off in the distance, on our port quarter, lay the French coast hazily outlined against the clear blue sky, from which the early mists of dawn that had at first hung over the water had withdrawn their veil, the fresh nor’-easterly breeze sweeping them away seaward with the last of the ebb. The tide was just on the turn, and the dead low water showed up the sandbanks at the river’s mouth.
The little tug Arrow was right ahead; but she had eased her paddles and stopped towing us, preparatory to casting off her hawser and leaving the Silver Queen to her own devices. The good ship on her part seemed nothing loth to this; for, those on board were bustling about as fast as they could to make sail, so that they might actually start on their voyage—all the preliminary work of towing down the river by the aid of the tug being only so much child’s play, so to speak, having nothing to do with the proper business of the gallant vessel.
And here I suddenly became confronted with one of the discomforts of board-ship life, which contrasted vividly with the conveniences to which I had been accustomed at home ever since childhood.
Before presenting myself amongst the others I naturally thought of dressing, or rather, as I had gone to sleep in my clothes, of performing some sort of toilet and making myself as tidy as I could; but, lo and behold, when I looked round the cabin of the deck-house, nothing in the shape of a washhand-stand was to be seen, while my sea-chest being underneath a lot of traps, I was unable to open the lid of it and make use of the little basin within, as I wished to do if only to “christen it.”
I was completely nonplussed at first; but, a second glance showing me Tom Jerrold, one of my berthmates who had turned out before me, washing his face and hands in a bucket of sea-water in the scuppers, I followed suit, drying myself with a very dirty and ragged towel which he lent me in a friendly way, albeit I felt inclined to turn up my nose at it.
“You thought, I suppose,” observed Jerrold with a grin, “that you’d have a nice bath-room and a shampooing establishment for your accommodation—eh?”
“No, I didn’t,” said I, smiling too, and quite cheerful under the circumstances, having determined to act on my father’s advice, which Tim Rooney had subsequently confirmed, of never taking umbrage at any joke or chaff from my shipmates, but to face all my disagreeables like a man; “I think, though, we might make some better arrangement than this. I’ve got a little washhand-basin fixed up inside my chest under there, only I can’t get at it.”
“So have I in mine, old fellow,” he rejoined familiarly; “and it was only sheer laziness that prevented me rigging it up. The fact is, as you’ll soon find out, being at sea gets one into terribly slovenly habits, sailors generally making a shift of the first thing that comes to hand.”
“I see,” said I meditatively; looking no doubt awfully wise and solemn, for he laughed in a jolly sort of way.
“I tell you what, Graham,” he remarked affably as he proceeded to plaster his hair down on either side with the moistened palm of his hand in lieu of a brush. “You’re not half a bad sort of chap, though Weeks thought you too much of a stuck-up fine gentleman for us; and, d’you know, I’ll back you up if you like to keep our quarters in the deck-house here tidy, and set a better example for imitation than Master Weeks, or Matthews—though the latter has left us now, by the way, for a cabin in the saloon, the skipper having promoted him to third mate, as I heard him say just now. Do you agree, eh, to our making order out of chaos?”
“All right! I’ll try if you’ll help me,” I answered, reciprocating his friendly advances, as he seemed a nice fellow—much nicer, I thought, than that little snob Sam Weeks, with his vegetable-marrow sort of face, my original dislike to the latter being far from lessened by the observation Jerrold told me he had made about me! “I like things to be neat and tidy; and as my father used to say, ‘cleanliness is next to godliness.’”
“I’m afraid, then,” chuckled Tom Jerrold, “we poor sailors are in a bad way; for, although we live on the water and have the ocean at command, I don’t believe there’s a single foremast hand that washes himself oftener than once a week, at least while he’s at sea, from year’s end to year’s end.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed, making him laugh again at my expression of horror.
“Aye, it is so; I’m telling the truth, as you’ll find if you ask the boatswain, whom I see you’ve got chummy with already. But, by Jove, they’re just going to set the tops’les; and we’ll have the skipper or old Sandy Saunders after us with a rope’s-end if we stop jawing here any longer.”
From the way he spoke you would think we had been talking for a very long time; but, really, our conversation had only lasted a couple of minutes or so at the outside, while I was making myself tidy, using a little pocket-comb my mother had given me just before I left home, to arrange my hair, instead of imitating Jerrold with his palm brush. I also utilised the bucket of sea-water as an improvised looking-glass so as to get the parting of my hair straight and fix my collar.
The ropes I had heard thrown about the decks were the halliards and clewlines, buntlines, and other gear belonging to the topsails being let go, the gaskets having been thrown off before I was awake; and now at a quick word of command from Mr Mackay—“Sheet home!”—the sails on the fore and main-topsail yards were hauled out to the ends of the clews and set, the canvas being thus extended to its full stretch.
Then followed the next order.
“Man the topsail halliards!”
Thereupon the yards were swung up and the sails expanded to the breeze; and then, the outer jib being hoisted at the same time and the lee-braces hauled in, the man at the wheel putting the helm up the while, the ship payed off on the port tack, making over towards the French coast so as to take advantage of the tide running down Channel on that side. At the same time, the towing-hawser which had up to now still attached us to the tug, was dropped over the bows as we got under weigh.
The Silver Queen seemed to rejoice in her freedom, tossing her bowsprit in the air as she cast off from the tug; and then, heeling over to leeward as she felt the full force of the breeze on her quarter, she gave a plunge downwards, ploughing up the water, now beginning to be crested with little choppy waves as the wind met the current, and sending it sparkling and foaming past her bulwarks, and away behind her in a long creamy wake, that stretched out like a fan astern till it touched Margate sands in the distance.
I now went up on the poop, avoiding the weather side, which Tim Rooney had told me the previous evening was always sacred to the captain or commanding officer on duty; for I noticed that the thin pilot in the monkey-jacket, who had just mounted the companion stairs from the cuddy after having his late breakfast, was walking up and down there with Captain Gillespie, the latter smiling and rubbing his hands together, evidently in good humour at our making such a fine start.
“Good morning!” said Mr Mackay, who was standing at the head of the lee poop ladder, accosting me as I reached the top. “I hope you had a sound, healthy sleep, my boy?”
“Oh yes, thank you, sir,” I replied. “I’m ashamed of being so late when everybody else has been so long astir. Isn’t there something I can do, sir?”
“No, my boy, not at present,” cried he, laughing at my eagerness to be useful, which arose from my seeing Jerrold nimbly mounting up the after-shrouds with Matthews and a couple of other hands to loosen the mizzen-topsail. “You haven’t got your sea-legs yet, nor learnt your way about the ship; and so you would be more a hindrance than a help on a yard up aloft.”
“But I may go up by and by?” I asked, a little disappointed at not being allowed to climb with the others, they looked so jolly swinging about as if they enjoyed it; with Tom Jerrold nodding and grinning at me over the yard. “Sha’n’t I, sir?”
“Aye, by and by, when there’s no fear of your tumbling overboard, youngster,” he answered good-naturedly. “You must be content with looking on for a while and picking up information. Use your eyes and ears, my lad; and then we’ll see you shortly reefing a royal in a gale! You needn’t be afraid of our not making you work when the time comes.”
“I’ll be very glad, sir,” I said. “I do not like being idle when others are busy.”
“A very good sentiment that, my boy; and I only hope you’ll stick to it,” he replied earnestly. “That desire to be doing something shows that you’re no skulker, but have the makings of a sailor in you, as I told the captain last night; so, you see, you mustn’t go back on the character I’ve given you.”
“I won’t, sir, if I can help it,” said I, with my heart in my words; and, from Mr Mackay’s look I’m sure he believed me, but just at that moment he crossed over to the other side of the poop, Captain Gillespie calling him and telling him what he wanted before he could take a step to reach him.
“We’d better get some more sail on her,” said the captain, still rubbing his hand as if rolling pills between them; “the pilot thinks so, and so do I.”
“All right, sir!” replied Mr Mackay; and going to the front by the rail, he shouted out forwards:
“Hands make sail!”
“Aye, aye, sorr,” I heard the boatswain answer in his rich Irish brogue, supplemented by his hail to the crew of: “Tumble up there, ye spalpeens! Show a leg now, smart!”
“Lay out aloft there and loose the fore and main topgallants, my men!” cried Mr Mackay, as soon as he saw the sailors out on the deck. “And, some of you, come aft here to set the spanker!”
Up the ratlines of the rigging clambered the men, racing against each other to see who would be up first, while others below cast off the ropes holding up the bunt and leech of the sail, as soon as the smart fellows had unloosed the gaskets; and then, the folds of the sails being dropped, were sheeted home with a “one, two, three, and a yo heave ho!” by those on deck, before the top men were half-way down the shrouds.
Matthews and Jerrold alone managed the mizzen topgallant-sail, after which the spanker was set, making the ship drive on all the faster through the water; though, even then, Captain Gillespie was not content yet.
“We must have the main-sail and forecourse on her,” he said a few minutes later to Mr Mackay. “It would be a sin to lose this wind.”
“All right, sir!” replied the other; and the order being at once given, these lower sails were soon set, adding considerably to our average of canvas, the vessel now forging ahead at a good eight knots or more; and we passed Deal, on our starboard hand, some couple of hours or so from the time of our leaving the river.
“I call this going—eh?” cried Captain Gillespie to the pilot, while he cocked his eye up aloft as if he seriously thought of setting the royals. “I said I’d get out of the Straits before the afternoon; and, you know, when I say a thing I always mean a thing!”
“Aye, aye,” returned the other, motioning to the helmsman to keep her off a bit as the ship luffed up; “but we’ll soon have to come about, for we’ll be getting a little too near that shoal to the eastwards on this tack.”
“Very good,” said the captain; “whenever you please.”
“I think we’ll wait till we pass the South Sands light,” replied the pilot. “Then we can round the Foreland handsomely on the starboard tack with the wind well abaft our beam.”
“All right!” was Captain Gillespie’s laconic response, rubbing his hands gleefully together again. “Carry-on.”
Noticing Tom Jerrold just then on the main-deck, I went down from off the poop and joined him.
“Have you had any breakfast?” he asked when I got up to him, patting his stomach significantly. “I was just thinking of getting mine as I feel very empty here, for all the rest have had theirs.”
“No, I haven’t had anything but some coffee the cook brought me a long while ago, and I feel hungry too,” I replied. “Where do we get our meals?”
“In the cuddy, after the captain and mates have done grubbing,” he said. “Come along with me and we’ll rouse up that Portugee steward.”
“What! Pedro?”
“Yes; you’ve made his acquaintance already, I see. Did you notice anything particular about him?”
“Only his temper,” I said. “Dear me, hasn’t he got an awful one!”
“Bless you he only puts half of it on to try and frighten you if you’re a new hand,” replied Jerrold as he jauntily walked into the cuddy with the air of a commodore. “Only give him a little backsheesh and he’ll do anything for you.”
“Backsheesh! What is that?”
“Palm oil—tip him. Do you twig?” whispered Tom; “but, mum’s the word, here we are in the lion’s den!”
To my surprise, however, the whilom cranky steward made no difficulty about supplying our wants; and I strongly suspect that my fellow apprentice must have carried out his advice anent tipping Pedro that very morning, he was so extremely civil. He gave us some cold fried ham and eggs, the remains no doubt of Captain Gillespie’s breakfast, with the addition of some coffee which he heated up for us especially, and which I enjoyed all the more from its having some milk in it—it was the very last milk that I tasted until I landed in England again, alas!
After making a hearty meal, I suggested to Tom that if he’d nothing to do we’d better go to work and make our cabin in the deck-house more cosy and habitable; and, on his agreeing, we left the cuddy, I taking care before going out to slip five shillings into the steward’s ready palm as an earnest of my future intentions towards him should he treat me well.
“Well, you’re in luck’s way now, old fellow,” said Jerrold when I told him of this outside the passage, Pedro retiring to his pantry to secrete my tip along with others he had probably already received. “Only a day on board, and friends with the first mate, boatswain, cook, and steward; and, last, though by no means least, your humble servant myself, I being the most important personage of all.”
“Are you really such a very important personage?” I rejoined, laughing at his affected air—“as big a man as the captain?”
“Aye, for after another voyage I’ll be made third mate too, like Matthews, and then second, and then first; and after that a captain like our old friend ‘sayings and meanings’ here, only a regular tip-topper, unlike him.”
“Aren’t you anticipating matters a bit, like the Barber’s Fifth Brother in the Arabian Nights,” said I—“counting your chickens before they’re hatched, as my father says?”
“Your father must be a wonderful man,” he retorted; but he grinned so funnily that I really couldn’t be angry, though I coloured up at his remark; seeing which, to change the subject, he added, “Come and let us rouse out the deck-house and make things comfortable there for ourselves.”
This was easier said than done; for in the first place Weeks, who only seemed to think of eating and sleeping and nothing else, was having a quiet “caulk,” as sailors call it, cuddled up in the bunk appropriated by Jerrold as being the roomiest, with all our blankets wrapped round him, although the day was quite warm and spring-like for February.
“Hullo!” cried Jerrold at the sight of the slumbering lamb, seizing hold of the blankets. “Out you go, my hearty; and confound your cheek for taking possession of my crib!”
With these words, giving a good tug, Weeks was rolled out on the deck, tumbling on his head. This angered him greatly, and he got up as red as a turkey cock, with the freckles on his face coming out in strong relief.
Seeing that Tom Jerrold was the culprit, however, he soon quieted down, being an arrant sneak and afraid of him.
“What did you do that for?” he whined. “I was only having a nap.”
“You’re always napping,” retorted Tom; “and I should like to know what the dickens you mean by going snoozing in my bunk? I’ve half a mind to punch your head. The next time I catch you at it I’ll keelhaul you, Master Sammy, by Jupiter!”
Jerrold kept on grumbling away, pretending to be very angry; and he frightened Weeks so that he forgot the ugly knock he had received on his own head, and apologised abjectly for the offence he had committed. Tom then allowed his assumed indignation to pass away, and forgave him on the condition that he took away all the spare crockery ware, which the steward had stowed in the top bunk of the deck-house, into the cuddy, giving it to the Portuguese with his, Tom’s, compliments.
Weeks thereupon proceeded to execute this mission, Jerrold and I awaiting the result with much anticipated enjoyment, Tom saying to me confidentially as he started for the cuddy, “Won’t Pedro carry-on at him! I wouldn’t be in the young fool’s shoes for something.”
The denouement justified our expectations; for, no sooner had Weeks entered the passage way than he came flying out again looking awfully scared, a tremendous crash following as if all the crockery ware was pitched after him, bang! Next, we heard Pedro swearing away in his native tongue, and kicking his preserved meat tins about his pantry at such a rate that Captain Gillespie sang out on the poop above, and sent Matthews down the companion to find out what he was making all the row about. This finally quieted the steward down, but subdued mutterings came to our ears from the cuddy for long afterwards, Pedro never having been so roused up before, not even when Tim Rooney tackled him on the previous day.
Weeks got very angry on our laughing at him when he returned crestfallen to the deck-house, and he went off forwards in high dudgeon; but this did not make any difference to us, we being rather pleased at getting rid of his company—at least I was, for one. So we went on arranging the chests and things in the little cabin until we ultimately made it quite ship-shape and comfortable. As Jerrold had proposed, he had his chest on one side of the doorway and mine and Weeks’s were now stowed alongside our bunks, just sufficient space and no more being left for us to open them without having to shift them, and also to get in and out of the cabin.
“Be jabers ye’ve made a tidy job av it, lads,” said the boatswain, coming up as we finished, and surveying approvingly our arrangements. “I couldn’t have done it no betther mesilf! Ye can well-nigh swing a cat round, which it would a poozled ye to a-done afore, faix. An’ sure, Misther Gray-ham, does ye loike bayin’ at say yit?”
“Of course I do,” I answered. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Begorra, ye’re a caution!” he ejaculated. “An’, did that haythin, Ching Wang, wake ye up this mornin’ wid some coffee, as he promised me. I wor too busy to say you or ax you afore?”
“Yes,” I replied; “and many thanks for your kind thoughtfulness.”
“Stow that flummery,” he cried; and to prevent my thanking him he began to tell Jerrold and me one of his funny yarns about a pig which his grandmother had, but unfortunately the story was nipped in the bud by a roar from the captain on the poop.
“Hands ’bout ship!”
In a second the boatswain was away piping on the forecastle, and ropes cast off and sails flapping again.
“Helms a-lee!” was the next order from the captain, followed by a second which grew familiar enough to me in time. “Raise tacks and sheets!” and the foretack and main-sheet were cast off with the weather main-brace hauled taut.
Then came the final command, “Main-sail haul!” and the Silver Queen came up to the wind slowly. The foretack being then boarded and the main-sheet hauled aft, she heeled over on the starboard tack with the wind well on her starboard beam, heading towards the South Foreland, which she rounded soon after.
Off Dungeness, which we reached about three in the afternoon, or “six bells,” exactly twenty-four hours from the time of our leaving the docks, we hove-to, backing our main-topsail and hoisting a whiff at the peak as a signal that we wanted a boat from the shore to disembark our pilot.
A dandy-rigged little cutter soon came dancing out to us; when the thin man in the monkey-jacket took his farewell of Captain Gillespie and went on board to be landed, the Silver Queen filling again and shaping a course west by south for Beachy Head, and so on down channel, free now of the last link that bound her to old England.
The afternoon, however, was not destined to pass without another incident.
It was getting on for sunset; and, steering more to the west well out from the land so as to avoid the Royal Sovereign shoal, we must have been just abreast of Hastings, although we could not see it, the weather thickening at the time, when suddenly a strange bird settled on the rigging utterly exhausted. It had evidently been blown out to sea and lost its reckoning.
“Here’s a Mother Carey’s chicken come aboard!” cried Sam Weeks, making for the poor tired thing to catch it. “I’ll have it.”
“Don’t hurt it, it’s a starling,” I said. “Can’t you see its nice shiny black-and-green plumage, and its yellow bill like a blackbird? Leave the poor little thing alone, it’s tired to death.”
“A starling! your grandmother!” he retorted, nettled at my speaking, and bearing me a grudge still for what had recently occurred in the deck-house. “A fine lot you know about birds, no doubt! I tell you I’ll catch it, and kill it too, if I like.”
So saying, he made another grab at the little creature, which, just fluttering off the rigging in time, managed for the moment to escape him and perched on the backstay, when the cruel lad hove a marlin-spike at it. He again missed the bird, however, and it then flew straight into the bosom of my jacket as I stood in front of it, whistling to entice it in that chirpy kissing way in which you hear starlings call to each other, having learnt the way to do so from a boy at Westham.
Weeks was furious at my succeeding in the capture of the poor bird when he had failed; although he would not understand that I had only coaxed it to protect it from his violence. Poor little thing. I could feel its little heart palpitating against mine as it rested safe within the breast of my jacket, nestling close to my flannel shirt!
“Why, you’ve caught it yourself after all, you mean sneak!” he cried; and thinking he was more of a match for me than he was for Tom Jerrold, and could bully me easily, he made a dash at my jacket collar to tear it open, exclaiming at the same time, “I will have it, I tell you. There!”
He made a wrong calculation, however, for, holding my right arm across my chest so as to keep my jacket closed and protect the poor bird that had sought my succour, I threw out my left hand; and so, as he rushed towards me, my outstretched fist caught him clean between the eyes, tumbling him backwards, as if he had been shot, on to the deck, where he rolled over into a lot of water that had accumulated in the scuppers to leeward—the pool in the scuppers washing forwards and then aft as the ship rose and fell and heeled over to port on the wind freshening with the approach of night.