Chapter Fifteen.
Comedy to Tragedy.
“Hullo, my lads! This won’t do, this won’t do!” shouted out a petty officer just then, as he came tacking about the deck and trying to make a straight course for the hatchway. “There’d be a fine row if Number One came along here and saw that theer mess on the deck!”
“Faith, we couldn’t hilp it, row or no row,” said Mick, whose temper was a little bit heated from the recollection of ‘Ugly’s’ conduct, and the fright he really had experienced on my account in spite of his trying to treat it as a joke. “Sure, sor, the toob toombled down atop ov this poor bhoy here, an’ a’most made gammy duff ov him!”
“Well, well, p’raps y’ll have better luck next time,” replied the man jokingly; and, turning to me, he said in a kindly way, “A miss is as good as a mile, my lad; but, accident or no accident, you’ll have to clear up that mess there, or there’ll be ructions aboard, I can tell you!”
“All roight, sor,” said Mick, as he clutched hold of a swab which we had brought with us, in case of such an emergency. “Oi’ll make it roight, sure, in a brace ov shakes, sor.”
I, too, bore a hand with another swab, as did Finlayson; and we soon made the place all shipshape again, another wave, which washed down the hatchway when we had finished, putting a polish on our work.
Nothing further was seen of ‘Ugly,’ however, either by Mick or myself, the ill-tempered brute evidently keeping out of our way; and it was not till late in the afternoon that I saw him again aft, when both watches were called to treble-reef the topsails, and we boys belonging to the ship had to go aloft to take in the mizzen.
We had not weathered Finisterre yet, though we had been bucketing about in the Bay now for over three days; the wind, which had been blowing in strong squalls from the north’ard and west’ard, suddenly backing to the south-east and coming on to blow harder than ever.
The sea got up also in a corresponding degree, its huge billows, as they rolled onward propelled by the gale, rearing themselves up in mid-air till they seemed sometimes to be level with the top of our mainmast, surpassing in height even those which my old friend Larrikins had described as ‘mountings ’igh.’
I had seen already in my trips in the Martin up and down Channel what I fancied at the time to be rough weather; but, never in my life previously had I ever seen such a scene of grandeur as the ocean presented that stormy afternoon!
Far and wide, it seethed and boiled like a huge cauldron, its surface covered with foam as white as snow, which the dark setting of inky clouds along the horizon brought out in whiter relief.
Above, masses of ragged wrack scudded aimlessly across the sky, whose leaden hue was cheerless and grim, save where, in the west, the sun went down suddenly in a wrath of crimson majesty, the darkness of night descending on the scene as if a curtain of crêpe, had been let down the moment after he vanished beneath the waste of angry waters, unlightened by a single ray of his customary after-glow.
Apparently the tempest-loving demons of the deep were only waiting for the shades of night in order to carry on their revels with the greater ‘go’ at our expense; for no sooner had the evening closed in than the gale increased in force, and the sea waxed even angrier, so that by Four Bells in the first watch, that is at ten o’clock, in landsman’s parlance, the ship had to lie-to under storm staysails—pitching and plunging bows under, and taking in some of the huge rollers occasionally over her forecastle, that swept down into the waist to such an extent that it was as much as the scuppers could do to get rid of the water as she rolled.
Fortunately, we did not get any of this below, the hatches having been battened down early in the afternoon, subsequently to our mishap with the ‘gashing-tub’; but, although this saved us some wet, it was far from pleasant on our mess-deck, the steam from the wet clothes of the fellows belonging to the watch just relieved, and the smell of the bilge from the place being shut up, making it resemble towards morning something like what I have read of an African slaver’s hold being in the middle latitudes.
When day broke, I found, on turning out of my hammock, our ship riding a little easier, the rolling having abated considerably; and, on going on deck shortly afterwards, though there was no order as usual to ‘lash up and stow,’ the weather being too rough for that, the reason for this change for the better, so far as the uneasy motion was concerned, became apparent enough.
The commodore had ordered a storm jib to be set, as well as the after-trysail, which was about the size of a good old-fashioned pocket-handkerchief; and, instead of laying-to as we had been when I turned in close on midnight, the ship was now running before the south-easter and making good progress, too, out of the neighbourhood of the treacherous Bay.
By breakfast-time we were making so much better weather of it that we were able to open the hatches, and the windsails were rigged up to let down some fresh air below, which enabled us to have a better meal than we expected; so our hot cocoa and bread possessed an additional relish, not only from this circumstance, but also from the fact of our not having enjoyed anything hot since the previous day at dinner, the galley fires having been swamped out just before tea-time, thus forcing us to turn in supperless.
Later on, as the gale slackened, we set our topsails close-reefed, and more ‘fore-and-aft’ sail; and, when the sun had got above our foreyard, the commodore ordered the topgallant-masts to be sent up, these having been housed when it came on to blow heavily. Our topgallants were consequently set above our close-reefed topsails, which some of the young seamen on board appeared to think a most extraordinary proceeding; but one of the quarter-masters, who was an old hand, said he had often seen it done when sailing “under old Fitzroy on the Pacific station,” when their ship would be bowling along under this sail before a stiff nor’-easter, in the run down from Vancouver to Callao, past the inhospitable Californian coast.
At noon that day, the navigating officer, who took the sun on the poop, surrounded by a lot of the young midshipmen we had on board for instruction during the training cruise, like us boys on the lower deck each in our respective billet, gave out that we were in latitude 44 degrees 10 minutes north, and longitude 10 degrees 15 minutes west, thus showing that we were well to the westward of the ill-omened Cape Finisterre and now safely out of the Bay of Biscay!
The navigator also told our commanding officer, in the usual stereotyped nautical formula, that it was twelve o’clock.
“All right,” replied the commodore. “Make it so!”
Accordingly, the sentry on the forecastle struck Eight Bells, and the men were piped down to dinner; the boatswain’s mates sounding their shrill calls through the ship as the echo of the last stroke of the clapper on the side of the ship’s bell ceased to reverberate in the noisy air, which was filled with the creaking of the blocks aloft and the hum of the wind, the sea breaking against our counter alongside in a sullen fashion as if old Neptune were disappointed at letting us slip out of his clutches!
At One Bell, half-an-hour later, when the grog was served out to the men—we boys, of course, having none of this, nor wanting it either—a rather amusing incident occurred.
Some of the chaps on board, though passed for ordinary seamen, were ‘green hands’; and the older sailors that leavened the company, used to crack jokes on these and ‘pull their legs’ pretty considerably, until the green ones got too knowing to be taken in.
One fellow we had with us in the starboard watch, however, seemed to be so naturally ‘raw’ that nothing served to ‘salt’ him; and he was the butt not only of his own mess, but of the whole ship’s company.
On this occasion Harris, a leading seaman, took a fine rise out of him.
“Say, Joblins,” he called out, as he was going to light his pipe to have a smoke forwards, we boys having set out the spittoons for the men along the ‘’tween decks,’ “got your grog all right, old ship?”
“Oh ay,” answered the other. “I’se droonk un.”
“But I means yer second ’lowance.”
“Hay?” said Mr Johnny Raw, his eyes beginning to visibly brighten. “What fur be that?”
“Yer second ’lowance,” repeated the joker Harris. “All the noo hands can git it if they axes fur it.”
“Now, yer bean’t a-joking?”
“No,” declared Harris unblushingly, winking to the others around. “Joking—why should I, man?”
The greenhorn grew quite excited at the prospect of another tot of grog after his pipe.
“Say, shipmate,” said he, rising from the bench at the mess-table where he had been sitting having a whiff, “tell us wot I shall do fur to get un?”
“Take hold on that ‘spud-net’ there,” said Harris, pointing to the net in which the potatoes had been boiled for the mess, the other fellows near turning their backs so that Joblins couldn’t see them laugh as he proceeded to carry out the joker’s suggestion. “Ah, ye’ve got it all right, then? Now, Joblins, ye can take that to the upper deck, where they’re now sarvin’ out the grog for the port watch, and tell the ‘Jaunty’ that yer come fur yer second ’lowance.”
Would you believe it?
Well, whether you do so or not, all I have to say is that the innocent yokel actually went up on deck with the potato-net in his hand, holding it out in front of him as he took his station beside those standing round the grog-tub.
“Hullo!” exclaimed the ship’s steward, who acts as master of the ceremonies in this daily allowance of drink to the ship’s company, assisted by one of the corporals, and sometimes even by the master-at-arms himself, the purveyor of the grog recognising him as having previously received his quota. “What do you want here? You’ve had your ’lowance already!”
Joblins, however, was reluctant to give up the chance of getting an additional supply without a struggle for it, so, he would not accept this rebuff.
“They sez below, sir,” explained he, still holding out the spud-net straight in front of him, “as how I wer to tell yer, sir, as I wur a noo hand, an’ yer would give I a second ’lowance.”
“Oh, you’re a new hand are you?”
“Ay,” replied Joblins, in a very satisfied tone, thinking the matter was now satisfactorily settled. “That I be, sir.”
“I thought so,” said the ship’s steward drily. “What are you going to put the grog in if I gave it to you?”
Joblins did not reply in words, but held out the net.
“Well,” exclaimed the steward, with a grin on his face that was reflected in that of every one standing by, “I’ve heard of green hands and greenhorns before; but of all the raw johnnies I ever saw on board ship you take the cake!”
Strange to say, such was his denseness, that even then, the yokel could not see the point of the joke and the steward had to order him away.
“Now, clear out of this,” he cried, getting a bit angry when his laugh was out. “Don’t you see, you fool, if you can see anything at all, that the rum would run out of the net like water out of a sieve? Be off with you!”
Then at last the poor chap recognised the fact that Harris had been ‘taking him in,’ and darted down the ladder with the obvious intention of ‘taking it out’ of his tormentor; but the shout of merriment with which he was received when he got forward amongst the men again, stopped his saying anything, and the watch being just then called, his anger had time to evaporate before he had any further chance of calling his tormentor to account.
The weather continuing on the mend, the commodore gave orders to the officer of the watch, soon after dinner, to shape a course for Madeira, that being the appointed rendezvous of the squadron in the event of their parting company at any time in this first part of our cruise; for we had seen nothing of any of them since the beginning of the gale, the little Ruby being the last we had sighted shortly before our being forced to lie-to.
During the afternoon, however, the horizon clearing to the nor’ard and a gleam of sunshine lighting up the sea, a distant sail was seen hull down on our lee quarter.
“Signalman,” hailed the officer of the watch, “what do you make her out to be?”
“Can’t say yet, sir,” replied the man, with the glass screwed to his eye, squinting to leeward. “She’s too fur off, sir.”
After a short pause the officer repeated his question.
“Make her out yet, Jones?”
“No, sir,” replied the signalman; “but she’s rising now, sir, an’ I thinks she’s closing us.”
“Ay.”
Another short interval elapsed; and then, being down in the waist, right under the break of the poop, the quarter-master having set me to work flemishing down the slack ends of some of the sheets that he did not think were tidily arranged, I heard the signalman mumble some exclamation or other which he could not get out properly from his excitement.
“What is it, you say?” said the officer of the watch, who had gone to the binnacle to look at the compass and did not quite catch what the man said. “Speak distinctly, my man. I can’t hear you!”
“It’s the Ruby, sir!” shouted out the signalman, in a voice that could be heard, I believe, at the distance by which our consort was separated from us, making the officer of the watch, Lieutenant Robinson, jump off the deck, he having come up quite close in the meantime. “I knows her by the clew on her tops’l.”
“All right, my man,” blurted out the lieutenant, who was a crusty, ill-tempered, sour sort of chap, one always speaking to the men as if he had a bad liver and who couldn’t look a chap square in the eye if he stood up before him, having underhung brows and a nasty way of looking from under them. “You needn’t roar at me like a grampus, Jones. I’ve a great mind to put you in the list for disrespectful conduct to your superior officer! What did you say?”
“The Ruby, sir,” repeated the signalman, as tenderly now as a sucking dove. “It’s the gallant little Ruby sure enough, sir.”
The irate lieutenant did not appear, though, to share the enthusiasm of Jones; and I afterwards heard that he had some grudge against the ‘boss’ of the Ruby, as indeed he had against most people with whom he came in contact; and I don’t think many were sorry when he left the service subsequently to our cruise, starting in some line of civil life where his uncivil demeanour has probably gained him as many friends as he got afloat!
“I don’t want any of your opinions, my man,” said he; “and, if you talk of gallantry, I don’t think she has stuck to us as she might have done in the gale. Probably, though, she couldn’t help this; for she’s a wretched tub and has the misfortune of having a nincompoop for a commander besides!”
Luckily for the sour-tempered chap, whom I had time to reckon up since I had been on board the corvette, the commodore did not hear what he said, or he would most probably, officer of the watch though he might be, have given him a ‘dressing down’ before us all.
The fact of our having sighted the Ruby had already been communicated by one of the midshipmen to our chief, who was down in his cabin having a rest, never having left the deck either day or night, I believe, since the gale overtook us; and, as soon as we got within signalling distance, he ordered the yeoman at the signal halliards to make our number.
Although the weather was becoming finer, as I have said, the wind was still gusty and chopping about between the east and nor’-east quadrants; and, hardly had our pennant been run up to the mizzen truck than the ‘fly’ of the flag got foul of the halliards.
“Hi, boy!” cried Lieutenant Robinson, wishing to be very smart, now the commodore was on deck. “’Way aloft there and free that flag!”
I thought he spoke to me, and jumped towards the weather shrouds to obey the order, but as I got into the rigging I saw ‘Ugly’ was before me.
He was in the chains and on his way up to the top before the lieutenant spoke, and naturally he had first addressed him.
‘Ugly,’ however, was so sluggish in his movements through the corvette rolling a bit and the ratlines being none too steady, that Lieutenant Robinson grew impatient.
“Here, you boy!” he roared at me even louder than Jones had spoken to him shortly before. “See if you can’t teach that lubber how to climb aloft and free a flag when he is told, without taking a month of Sundays over the job!”
Almost before he had spoken I had sprung into the rigging after ‘Ugly’; and by the time the lieutenant’s last word was uttered I was more than half-way up to the top, overhauling ‘Ugly’ at the crosstrees.
From thence, he and I proceeded upward, he on one side of the mast, I on the other, and neither speaking a word as we shinned up the ‘Jacob’s ladder.’
So we climbed up to the cap of the topgallant-mast in company; but, as far apart as the poles, though so close together.
Then, each of us set about in his own fashion, without minding the other, to disentangle the fly of the pennant, which had been whipped by the wind round the halliards till it had formed itself into half a dozen granny’s knots.
We were holding on to the royal lift and brace, both of us, each with one hand while with the other we tried to unloose the closely knotted bunting, our faces almost touching each other, and still without ever saying a word; when, all at once, through some one having neglected his duty when the topgallant-mast was sent aloft after the gale, the ends of the lift and brace slipped off the jack, to which they had been only loosely secured, leaving ‘Ugly’ and I suspended in the air partly by the signal halliards and partly by the flag, which latter parted with a ripping sound that I hear now in my ears as I speak of it. Aye, and as I always shall hear it, I believe!
I heard also at the time, confused cries and orders from below, singing out I know not what.
My companion’s face was close to mine as we swung from the feeble cord and more fragile stuff that interposed between us and eternity; a fall to the deck beneath or into the sea meaning death in one way or the other, either by drowning or by a more cruel fate.
I could see into his very soul, I think, at that awful moment, and he into mine!
It all occurred in an instant, recollect!
But in that instant ‘Ugly’ had time to break the silence that had existed between us since our fight on the forecastle of the Saint Vincent and my rescue of him aboard the same ship later on.
He spoke to me, at last, now.
“To-am Bowlin’,” whispered he hoarsely, “two chaps can’t hang on yere fur long. I’ll give oop fur ’ee, me lad. Here goes!”