“Sir Reginald Vivian would thank you for a copy, I reckon,” continued Prowse. “He did shake hands with ’em both. He was almost the last to do it. I heard his final words to Dan. ‘An’ you tell my son that the sooner he’s home again the better, because I can’t get on at all without him.’ They was his very words.”
The conversation showed a tendency to drift from Johnny’s verses. But he brought it back again.
“If you ax me what I like best myself,” he said, “’tis the first two lines. I never wrote a better matched pair.”
“So they be then. ’Tis a very great gift, Johnny, and the parish ought to be prouder of you than ’tis,” concluded Mr Sweetland. “I must ax you for that bit of writing, if you please,” he added, “for my old woman’s like to have a very snuffly night of it, and these here rhymes of yours will cheer up her lonely heart better than spirits.”
Mr Beer handed over the paper.
“For such a high purpose, you’m welcome to ’em,” he replied.
That night the sea was black and troubled. Under the obscured glimmer of a waning moon, the Royal Mail Packet Orinoco pushed down Channel, while a man and his wife stood upon deck with all the sounds of a great steamer in their ears. They looked upon the waters and saw white foam speeding in ghostly sheets astern and great bodies of darkness heave upwards along the bulwarks, then sink back hissing into the vague. Across the sky, flying with the low cloud-drift, gleamed brief sparks and stars that shot upward from the funnels; and below, the round windows of the engine-room flashed like great eyes upon the night. But forward was no twinkle or glimmer of light to distract the keen eyes there. The steamer was keeping double watches. A rushing and a wailing wind filled the upper air; fingers invisible played strange music on the harps of the shrouds; steam roared; deep sounds rose from the engine-room; the steering gear jolted and grated harshly. Now for a moment it was silent; now it chattered on again, like a violent, voluble, and intermittent voice. From time to time came the clang of a bell to mark other ships ahead, to port, or starboard: and through all sounded the throb, throb, throbbing of the ship’s pulse, where her propeller thundered.
Off the Start a light-house lamp flashed friendly farewell. It shone, sank into darkness, then smiled out again across the labouring waters.
“How does my own little wife like these here strange sights and sounds?” asked the man.