“Is your visit on board going to be a long one?” drawled out Lord Charles, languidly; “for I own I am not the least aquatic, and were it not for lobsters and whitebait I vote the sea a humbug.”
“Then I 'll say good-bye,” said Cashel. “That blue water, that curling ripple, and the fluttering of that bunting, have set me a-thinking about a hundred things.”
“You 'll dine with us at seven, won't you?”
“No, I 'll dine on board, or not dine at all,” said he, as he sprang from the carriage, and, waving his hand in adieu, made his way to the harbor. Taking the first boat that offered, Cashel rowed out to the yacht, just in time to catch Lieutenant Sickleton, who, in full yacht costume, was about to wait on his principal. He was a bluff, good-natured, blunt fellow, who, having neither patronage nor interest in the service, had left the wardroom for the easier, but less ambitious, life of a yacht commander; a thoroughly good seaman, and brave as a lion, he saw himself reduced to a position almost menial from hard and galling necessity. He had twice been to Alexandria with touring lords, who, while treating him well in all essentials, yet mingled so much of condescension in their courtesy as to be all but unendurable. He had gone to America with a young Oxford man, the son of a great London brewer, whose overbearing insolence he had been obliged to repel by a threat of personal consequences. He had taken an invalid family to Madeira, and a ruined duke to Greece, and was now, with the yacht and its company, transferred to Cashel's hands, not knowing—scarce caring—with whom or where his future destinies were to be cast.
The Freemasonry of the sea has a stronger tie than the mere use of technicals. Cashel was not ten minutes on board ere Sickleton and he were like old acquaintances. The “Lucciola” was, in Skeleton's ideas, the best thing that ever ran on a keel; there was nothing she could n't do,—fair weather or foul. She could outsail a Yankee smack in a gale off the coast of Labrador, or beat a felucca in the light winds off the Gulf of Genoa. If these tidings were delightful to Cashel's ears,—the most exciting and heart-stirring he had listened to for many a day,—the gratification was no less to Sickleton that he was about to sail with one who really loved the sea, and thoroughly understood and could value the qualities of his noble craft.
From the vessel, they turned the conversation to all the possible places the world's map afforded for a cruise. Sickleton's experiences were chiefly Eastern,—he knew the Mediterranean as well as he did the Downs; while Cashel's could vie with him in both coasts of the great Spanish peninsula, and all the various channels of the West India islands. For hours they sat discussing soundings, the trade winds, and shore currents, with all the bearings of land points, bluffs, and lighthouses. In talk, they visited half the globe; now staggering under a half-reefed topsail in the Bay of Biscay, now swimming along, with winged and stretching sails, under the blue cliffs of Baia.
“I 'm sure I don't know how you ever could lead a shore life,” said Sickleton, as Cashel described with warm enthusiasm some passages of his rover's existence.
“Nor do I understand how I have borne it so long,” said Cashel; “its dissipations weary, its deceits provoke me. I have lost—if not all—great part of that buoyancy which mingled peril and pleasure create, and I suppose, in a month or two more, I should be about as apathetic, as indolent, and as selfish as any fine gentleman ought to be. Ah, if we had a war!”
“That's it,—that's what I say every day and every night: if we had a war, the world would be worth living, in or dying for. Fellows like myself, for instance, are never thought of in a peace; but they 'look us all out,'—just as they do a storm-jib, when it comes on to blow. No laughing a man out of position, then,—no, faith!”
“How do you mean?” said Cashel, who saw in the intense expression of the speaker how much the words covered.