Chapter Twenty.
Trawling off the Nab.
The same evening, while they were all on the pier, listening to the band, and chatting pleasantly together in the pauses between the music, Mrs Gilmour turned the conversation upon a matter of extreme interest to Master Bob, and one concerning which he had been in much doubt of mind for some time past; although his native diffidence had prevented him from personally broaching the subject in his own right.
Sitting there within hail of the sea, the soft arpeggio of whose faint ripple on the shore seemed to harmonise with the louder instrumentation of the orchestra, which was just then playing a selection from Weber’s “Oberon,” the talk naturally drifted into a nautical channel; the old sailor dilating, to the delight of his listeners, on the charms of a life afloat and the divine beauty of the ocean, whether in storm or at rest.
“Aye, there’s no life like it,” said he. “A life on the ocean wave!”
“It sounds nice in poetry,” observed the Irish barrister, who although full of sentiment, like most of his countrymen, always tried to hide it under a mask of comedy. “But, I think it must be a very up and down sort of existence. Too uncertain for me, at all events!”
“Oh, Dugald!” remonstrated his wife. “Why, this morning you were rhapsodising over the sea, and wishing you were able to spend your brief life afloat.”
“My brief life, indeed!” exclaimed Mr Strong. “It’s precious few briefs I get, or it would be more pleasant. I wish more of ’em would come in, my dear, to pay for those children’s shoes. They’ve worn out half-a-dozen pairs apiece, I believe, since they’ve been down here!”
“Better a shoemaker’s bill,” said Mrs Gilmour, “than a doctor’s, sure, me dear Dugald.”
“Aye, by Jove!” put in the Captain with a chuckle. “There’s nothing like leather, you know.”
“By the way, talking of that, though I don’t mean to say it’s made like the old Britons’ coracles,” observed Mrs Gilmour silly, “when is that yacht of yours going to be ready, Captain?”
This unexpected inquiry made the old sailor blush a rosy red, for his face was turned westwards towards the setting sun, and all could see it plainly; albeit, he tried to conceal his perturbation by drawing out his brilliant bandana handkerchief and blowing his nose vigorously—an old trick of his.
“I—I—I’m having her done up,” he at length stammered out. “She wanted a lot of repair.”
“So I should think,” rejoined his persecutor, turning round to the others. “You must know, good people, that I’ve been hearing of nothing but this yacht for the last two years; and, would you believe it, I’ve never seen her yet!”
“I assure you—,” began the Captain; but, alas! his enemy, in addition to being a host in herself, had allies of whom he little dreamt; and so he was interrupted ere he could get at a second stammering “I assure you!”
“Why, you promised, Captain,” said Nell mischievously, “the very first time we saw you in the train, to take us out for a ‘sail in your yacht’; and I have been longing so much for it ever since. We thought that was what you meant when you said you were going to take us somewhere or do something that ‘to-morrow come never’ as you called it!”
“You wicked man, to deceive the poor children so!” cried
Mrs Gilmour, shaking her finger at him. “Oh, you bad man!”
But, before he could answer a word, Bob, who had been waiting anxiously for an opening, likewise assailed him.
“Ah! Don’t you remember, Captain, that day when you took Dick down to the Dockyard to get him entered as a sailor boy on board the Saint Vincent, and they wouldn’t take him because he was too thin, you said it didn’t matter, for you would employ him on board your yacht when the racing season began? Why, Dick and I have been looking out for a sail ever since. Don’t you remember?”
“Now, aren’t you ashamed of yourself, sure?” said Mrs Gilmour, following up Bob’s flank attack; his father and mother enjoying the discussion immensely, coupled as it was with the old sailor’s comical embarrassment. “Tell me, now, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
Taking off his hat and shoving his hands through his hair until he raised it up on the top of his head in a high ridge, he looked at his tormentors appealingly; although, the merry twinkle in his bird-like eyes took off somewhat from his contrition.
“Do forgive me!” implored he in accents that had a very suspicious chuckle about them. “I confess my sins!”
“You must clear yourself completely, sir, before you can hope to obtain absolution for your sins of omission,” insisted Mrs Gilmour, pretending to be very stern indeed. “Now, prisoner at the bar, answer truly, have you or have you not got a yacht?”
“I have,” he replied solemnly, entering into her humour. “By Jove, I have, ma’am!”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that at all events,” retorted his questioner in rather an injudicial way. “Sure, I didn’t think you had one at all, not having seen it after all your talking about it. What sort of a yacht is it, now?”
“Only a half-decked little cutter of about two or three tons,” answered the Captain abjectly, trying to minimise his offence. “A very little one, ma’am, I assure you.”
Mrs Gilmour burst into a fit of laughter, in which they all joined heartily; the barrister’s jovial roar being heard above the music of the band.
“Ah, no wonder you didn’t like my seeing it!” she cried with pleasant irony, which, however, made the old sailor wince, this “yacht” of his being a subject on which he was wont to enlarge amongst his friends. “Why, from what you said, I thought she was a big schooner like the one that took the cup at Cowes last year when we all went over with those horrid Tomkinses to see the regatta! Call that a yacht, a boat of such a size? I call it a cockleshell!”
This nettled the Captain very considerably, it must be confessed.
“Well, ma’am, you may call it what you please,” he replied shortly, with some little heat, putting on his hat again and jamming it down on his head firmly, using a good deal of force as if expending in that way his latent caloric. “But, cockleshell or no cockleshell, she’s big enough for me!”
“But, Captain dear, isn’t there room enough for me, too?” asked Nell coaxingly, seeing that he was vexed, and sliding her little hand into his, as if to show that she at all events was not joining in the fun against him. “Won’t you take Bob and me?”
Her touch somehow or, other banished his pettishness, enabling him to see that Mrs Gilmour was only joking, and that he had but played into her hands, as he said to himself, by losing his temper over it.
“I tell you what,” he now exclaimed, without a single trace of ill-humour. “You shall see that I’m not ashamed of my little craft, for I’ll have the Zephyr brought over from Gosport to-morrow. What is more, too, the whole lot of you shall go out for a sail in her—by Jove!”
The Captain was as good as his word, the yacht being towed across the following afternoon from Haslar Creek, where she had been lying, ever since the last yachting season, on the mud flats that there exist.
The little craft, which was a dapper cutter with an oyster-knife sort of bow and a clean run aft, as if she could race well when heeling over and show a good deal of her copper sheathing, did not exceed the tonnage mentioned by the Captain.
But, in spite of her smallness of size, she appeared to have the making of a good sea boat in her, and gained many admirers amongst the Southsea watermen as they surveyed her at her new moorings; the little craft being anchored off the coastguard-station and placed now under the charge of Hellyer, when the Captain was not immediately looking after her himself.
Mrs Gilmour, however, remained obdurate; for, though satisfied now that the “yacht” really was an actual fact instead of merely a creation of her old friend’s fancy, being somewhat averse to adventuring her life on the deep save in large vessels, and even of these she confessed feeling rather shy since the wreck of the Bembridge Belle, she, very aggravatingly, declined going out in the cutter—a want of taste on her part shared by her sister-in-law, whose weak nerves supplied a more reasonable pretext for not accepting the Captain’s usual invitation to make the little vessel’s better acquaintance.
Bob’s father, however, exhibited no such reluctance; and, as for Bob himself, he and Nellie and Dick were all in the seventh heaven of delight when, a morning or two afterwards, there being a nice nor’-westerly breeze blowing, which was good both for working out to sea and running home again, the Captain took them for a sail, managing single-handed the smart cutter as only a sailor, such as he was, could.
Thenceforward, Bob’s holidays were all halcyon days.
He had certainly enjoyed himself before; in his rambles on the beach, in his daily dip and new experiences of the delights of swimming; in the various little trips he and Nellie had taken; aye, and in the pleasurable occupation of collecting all those strange wonders of the shore, with which they had been so recently made familiar.
But, never had he enjoyed himself to the extent he did now!
There was nothing, on his once having tasted the joy of sailing, that could compare with it for a moment in his mind; and, if his own tastes had been consulted, he would have been content to have spent morning, noon, and night on board the Zephyr.
It was the same with Dick; and, under the Captain’s able tuition, both the boys soon acquired sufficient knowledge of tacking and wearing, sailing close-hauled and going free with the helm amidships, besides other nice points of seamanship, as to be able almost to handle the cutter as well as their instructor.
Nellie, naturally, could not enter so fully into these details as Bob and Dick; but, still, she took quite as much pleasure as they did in skimming over the undulating surface of the water and hearing the gurgling ripple made by the boat’s keel.
She felt a little alarm sometimes, perhaps, when, with her mainsail sharply braced up, the Zephyr would heel over to leeward, burying her gunwale in the foam ploughed up by her keen-edged bow, as it raced past, boiling and eddying, astern.
On one occasion the Captain took them out trawling between the Nab and Warner light-ships; where a bank of sand stretches out to sea, forming the favourite fishing-ground of the Portsmouth watermen hailing from Point and the Camber at the mouth of the harbour.
“What is trawling?” asked Master Bob, of course, when the matter was mooted by the owner of the cutter.
“What is trawling, eh?” repeated the old sailor, humming and cogitating for a minute or so. “Let me see; ah, yes, you let down a trawl and catch your fish in it, instead of using a line or drag-net.”
“Sure, Captain,” cried Mrs Gilmour, laughing at this, “that’s as good as your definition of steam the other day! You’ll have Bob asking you now what is a trawl, the same as I’ve got to do; please tell us, won’t you?”
“Sure and I will,” returned he, imitating her accent and making her brother and herself laugh, Mrs Strong only smiling faintly, as she had a marked dislike to any allusion to the Irish brogue. “The trawl, ma’am, is a very simple contrivance when it is understood; and, by your leave, I’ll try and make it plain to you. It consists of an ordinary net, like a seine, which you’ve seen, of course?”
“Yes,” replied his questioner, “I have seen them dragging the seine, as it is called, down on the beach often.”
“Oh, auntie, Nell and I saw them, too, the day after that storm we had when we first came,” said Bob eagerly. “I know, because I asked the men what they were doing, and they told me.”
“There’s nothing like asking for information,” observed the Captain approvingly. “It’s lucky, though, those men told you at once, or you’d have worried their lives out!”
“Sure and you may well say that,” put in Mrs Gilmour. “You have to suffer frequently from some little people’s thirst for knowledge.”
“I don’t mind,” chuckled the Captain, beaming with good-humour. “But, to go on with my description of the trawl. You must imagine, as I have said, an ordinary seine net, which must be a small one, and that looped up at the corners, too, somewhat in the shape of a funnel, or rather in the form of a cone sliced in two. The mouth of this apparatus is kept open on its flat side by means of a pole some ten or twelve feet long, termed the ‘trawl-beam,’ which floats uppermost when the net is down; while the lower side is weighted with a thick heavy piece of hawser styled the ‘ground-rope,’ around which the meshes of the net are woven. A bridle or ‘martingale’ unites the two ends of the trawl-beam.”
“Yes, I see,” said Bob, who was all attention, and taking the greatest interest in the Captain’s explanation. “I see.”
“Well,” continued the old sailor, “to this bridle there is attached a double-sheaved block, through which runs a hundred-and-fifty fathom rope, capable of bearing a heavy strain. But, in hauling this in, great nicety must be observed, for, the slightest hitch or deflection will cause the beam to turn the wrong way; when, if the net ‘gets on her back,’ as the fisher-folk say, all your catch is simply turned out into ‘the vasty deep,’ and your toil results in a case of ‘Love’s labour lost!’”
“But, what do you do with the net and beam, when it’s all ready?” asked Bob. “You haven’t told us that, yet.”
“Why, drop it over the side as soon as you get out to the fishing-ground,” replied the Captain laconically; “and now, I hope, you understand all about it?”
“Oh yes,” responded his listeners with alacrity; all, that is, but Mrs Gilmour, who assented somewhat dubiously, as if she could not quite grasp the idea, requiring the whole thing to be explained to her over again, when she declared herself still “all in a fog!”
Her brother, however, the barrister, comprehended it at once.
“I should think it was great fun,” he observed; “so I would like to come with you.”
“Do,” said the Captain, with much heartiness. “You’ll be amply repaid for the trouble. It is intensely exciting waiting and watching for what the trawl will bring up. It’s just like dipping your hands in the ‘lucky bag,’ Miss Nellie, at Christmas-time.”
“Do you ever find any very curious things, Captain?” she inquired on being thus appealed to. “I mean really curious things!”
“Oh yes, my dear,” replied the old sailor. “I was once out trawling with a fisherman off Saint Helens, when we dragged up a donkey-cart!”
“O-oh!” exclaimed Nellie, opening her blue eyes wide with wonder. “Did you catch the donkey as well?”
“Well, no,” answered the Captain, smiling at her amazement, her eyes being so big and her face such a study. “The poor man’s donkey, missy, had been eaten by the crabs, but the cart was there, shafts, wheels, and all; and, a nice mess the lot made of the trawl-net, tearing it all to pieces!”
“That clenches it then. I’ll come with you by all means!” cried Mr Dugald Strong, a pleased smile creeping over his face as he rubbed his hands with expectant glee. “If you find such strange fish as that, it must be worth going out.”
“All right, I shall be glad of your company,” replied the Captain; “only, mind, you’ll have to work your passage, and help hauling in the trawl.”
“I agree to that,” said the other; and, the matter being thus settled, it was arranged that they should proceed the following day on their expedition, if the weather were favourable and nothing occurred to alter their plans. Nellie was specially granted permission to accompany the party, much against the wish of her mother, who declared that she would spoil all her things to a certainty; saying besides, that, from what she had gathered of the conversation, she did not believe trawling was a very ladylike pursuit, “for little girls, at all events.”
However, all the same, Miss Nellie was up betimes the next morning, and sallied out with Bob and his father, whose pet she was, just as the early milkman was coming his rounds; the trio getting down to the beach punctually at seven o’clock, the hour fixed by the Captain for their start.
Here they found the old sailor and Dick, ready and waiting for them; when, going off in the little dinghy belonging to the Zephyr, although the boat had to make a couple of passages to and fro, being only capable of accommodating two passengers besides proud Dick the sculler, they were soon all on board.
The cutter, then, having her jib and mainsail already set, had only to slip her moorings, and was off and away, bowling out seaward before the breeze, which was blowing from the land.
The morning was bright and balmy; and the sun having risen some hours earlier even than the very early risers of the party, its beams by this time warmed the heavens and lit up the landscape, the rose-tints of dawn being succeeded by a golden glow all over the sky, the sea dancing in sympathy and sparkling in the sunlight—being altogether too merry to look blue.
It did not take the little craft long, running before the wind with a slack sheet, to reach the Horse Shingle shoal, beyond the outlying fort, and near the Warner light-ship, where lay the fishing-ground, or “bank,” which the Captain had described as being especially favourable for their sport.
“Now,” said the old sailor, “the time for action has at last arrived. We must get ready to ‘shoot’ the trawl.”
“You are not going to fire?” cried Nell in alarm, hearing him use the technical term he had employed. “I’m so afraid of guns.”
“No, my dear,” he answered chuckling, “I meant pitching the trawl over the side, just in the same way as you say ‘shooting’ coals or rubbish. Are you ready at your end, Strong?”
“Yes, I’m all right,” replied the barrister, who had been ably helping the Captain in arranging the meshes of the net along the starboard-gunwale, out of the way of the swing of the boom, and getting the trawl-beam across the stern-sheets of the cutter; while Bob and Dick attended to the sheets and tiller. “Fire away, Captain Dresser!”
“Well, then, let us heave over,” sang out the Captain, in his quarter—deck voice, as he called it. “One—two—three—off she goes!”
So, with a dull plunge, the trawl was “shot,” the old sailor and Mr Strong quickly pitching over the side, after it, the bunchy folds of the net; when the guy-rope fastened to the bridle of the beam was secured to the bowsprit-bitts and then again to a thole-pin aft, so as to prevent its getting under the keel.
The boat was then allowed to fill her jib and drift out with the ebbing tide, keeping a straight course for the Nab, and steering herself by means of the dragging net astern; neither the services of Bob nor of Dick being required any further at the helm under the circumstances.
“You can light your pipe now, if you like,” said Captain Dresser to Mr Strong, when this was satisfactorily accomplished. “We shall have nothing to do for the next hour or two; for we must have the net down long enough to let something have a chance of getting into the pocket of it.”
“I suppose the smell of tobacco won’t frighten the fish?” observed the barrister, gladly taking advantage of the permission and striking a vesuvian, his pipe being already loaded and ready. “Fresh-water anglers are rather particular on the point.”
“Bless you, no!” replied the old sailor laughing, “our fish at sea know what’s good for them and like it!”
Miss Nell, who seemed anxious about something, presently hazarded a question when her father had lit his pipe and was smoking comfortably on the forecastle.
“Are we not going to have any breakfast?” said she, in a very grave way, as befitted a matter of such deep importance. “I feel very hungry.”
“Dear me, I was almost forgetting breakfast!” cried the Captain, throwing away the end of the cigar the barrister had offered him, which he was smoking rather against the grain, preferring his tobacco in the form of snuff. “Dick, did you bring the things all right as I told you?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Dick. “They be in the fo’c’s’le, sir.”
“Is the coffee on the stove?”
“Yes, sir, and biling.”
“That’s right,” said the Captain, who continued, turning to Nellie, “Now, missy, you can preside over our breakfast-table if you like. You’ll find all the traps ready in the little cabin for’ard under the half-deck.”
Thereupon, Miss Nellie, with much dignity, busied herself in pouring out the coffee, which had been kept hot all the while on “such a dear little stove,” as she called out to Bob the moment she caught sight of it in the fore-cabin; the pair constituting themselves steward and stewardess instanter, and serving out, with Dick’s help, their rations to the rest of the company.
They were in the midst of breakfast, the trawl having been dragging along the bottom of the sea for not quite an hour, when, all at once, the rope holding it attached to the bowsprit-bitts began to jerk violently.
“Hallo!” cried the Captain, starting up from his seat on one of the bunks in the little cabin, which, even with stooping, he and Mr Strong found it a hard matter to squeeze themselves into. “We’ve caught something big this time!”
“Do you think it’s a whale?” said Nell, jumping up also, abandoning in her hurry her post as mistress of the ceremonies. “It must be awfully big to make that great rope shake so!”
The old sailor chuckled till his sides shook.
“You seem wonderfully fond of whales, missy!” he exclaimed, turning round as soon as he had managed to wriggle himself out of the fo’c’s’le and was able to stand erect again. “Don’t you remember, you mistook those grampuses we came across the other day when going to Seaview for whales?”
“Yes; and I remember, too, Captain, your making fun of me then, the same as now,” replied Nell, smiling as she went on. “I don’t mind it though, for I like being here with you and dad!”
“That’s right, my dear,” replied the old sailor. “There’s nothing like keeping your temper. But, we must now see about hauling in the trawl; for the chap who has got into the net is a big fellow, whoever he is, and, if we don’t pull him in pretty sharp, he’ll knock our net to pieces!”
So saying, the Captain brought the end of the tackle to the little windlass placed amidships; when he and Mr Dugald Strong, who did not find the task, by the way, as easy as he imagined, began reeling in the trawl rope fathom by fathom, until, anon, the end of the beam was seen peering above the water alongside.
The jerking of the tackle, which had continued all the time they were hauling in, appeared to increase as the trawl was raised to the surface, the net now that it was within view swaying from side to side; and, when Captain Dresser and the barrister leant over the gunwale to lift in the beam with its pocket attached, there was a hoarse barking sound heard proceeding from the folds of the net, like that of a dog in the distance.
“Oh!” cried Nellie, in alarm, climbing up on the thwarts and getting as far away as she could—“what is it?”
“What is it?” echoed Bob in the same breath. “What is it?”
The Captain, however, did not immediately satisfy their curiosity.
“I’ve got my suspicions,” he commenced in a leisurely way as he bent a little more over the side to get a better hold of the net; but, what he saw, as the trawl lifted out of the sea, made him quicken his speech, and he exclaimed in a much louder tone— “Take care, missy, and look out, you boys! There’s a shark in the trawl-net, and a pretty venomous beast, too!”