“Our friend’s been a sailor man, I should say, from the way he handles himself!”
“You may well say that,” replied Mr. Stewart. “He was a boat steerer or harponeer in a South Sea whaler, and according to what his old skipper said the very best in the ship. I’ve never seen him at his work before, but judging from what I know of him I should say he would be extra good at anything he undertook. He’s that kind of a man, isn’t he, dear?”
“Indeed he is,” replied Mary, “and oh, I’m so glad that he’s found something that he likes to do. I know how he has been suffering for exercise lately.”
When presently C. B. rejoined them, looking with an air of comic ruefulness at his hands, they roasted him unmercifully for forgetting his dignity as a cuddy passenger at which he only smiled and replied—
“See what a lazy life does for a man. My hands have got that soft that it is most painful for me to hold a rope. They feel as if they were all red hot.” And the skipper, who was listening, laughed loudly before he remarked that it sounded so familiar to him who had suffered much in the same way himself.
They had an excellent slant of wind right from the start, which was most fortunate, for the crew were a poor lot and needed licking into shape according to Yankee ideas before they were fit to do all that was required of them. This same drilling hurt C. B. horribly, but recognizing his position he did not venture to interfere in any way, even when his gentle wife expressed her indignation at the harsh treatment the men were receiving. After all, as he explained to her, there was little real cruelty, it was little more than drill, though he thought unnecessarily harsh, and he told her of several incidents on board the Eliza Adams which amazed her.
So that by the time they had reached the equator she was a smart ship and C. B. with his willing hands, his ready smile and his perfect habit of non-interference except to help with his great strength was a highly popular favourite fore and aft. But I regret to say that he was also taken as soft because of his unfailing good humour, looked upon as a man you might safely impose upon, and many were the sarcastic remarks passed upon the hard luck as they called it of his wife, to be tied to a man who seemed to be utterly devoid of pluck, although they put it much more coarsely after the manner of seamen. The two aspects in which he was regarded seemed contradictory, I know, but I have had much experience of similar cases I am sorry to say.
But the worst offender was the captain. When once a sailing ship is well started on a long passage the life of her master, unless he be a man with a good hobby of some kind, is a very lazy one. He has literally nothing to do except find the ship’s position at noon each day, and I have often wondered how it is that our sailing ship masters having so much time on their hands have not turned out a number of famous literary men from their ranks instead of being represented as they are, but by one giant, and he a foreigner, Mr. Joseph Conrad. In captain Eldridge’s case the old adage about Satan’s opportunity for idle hands held good, and he began to amuse himself by paying assiduous court to Mrs. Adams, yet in so polite and insidious a manner that only her feminine wit divined his true intent; even her father, immersed in books, tryin’ to catch up on to his readin’ as he termed it, failed to notice anything wrong. And Mary could do nothing, for she had nothing definite to complain of, and she did not wish to make any unpleasantness.
C. B. went on his happy way, spending much of his time at work and not noticing in the least that he was leaving his beloved wife too much to the attentions of the skipper. Indeed his true and honest mind was clear and incapable of suspicion, and had any one hinted their ideas of the wrong drift of things he would have been unspeakably shocked as well as amazed. And so the clouds thickened insensibly about them as the good ship sped on.