"I daresay I should have walked out the first watch, and the second too, if Westwood hadn't come up beside me before he turned in.
"'Why, you look like the officer of the watch, Ned!' said my friend, after taking a glance round at the night. 'Yes—what?—a—a—I don't think so,' stammered I, not knowing what he said, or at least the meaning of it, though certainly it was not so deep. 'I hope not though, Tom!' said I again; ''tis the very thing I don't want to look like!' 'You seem bent on keeping it up, and coming the innocent, at any rate,' said he; 'I really didn't know you the first time I saw you in the cuddy.' 'Why, man, you never saw our theatricals in the dear old Iris, on the African station! I was our best female actor of tragedy there, and did Desdemona so well that the black cook, who stood for Othello, actually cried. He said, "Nobody but 'ee dibble umself go for smudder Missee Dasdemoner!"' 'I daresay,' said Westwood; 'but what is the need for it now, even if you could serve as a blind for me?' 'My dear fellow,' said I, 'not at all—you've kept it up very well so far—just go on.' 'Keep it up, Ned?' inquired he—'what do you mean? I've done nothing except keep quiet from mere want of spirits.' 'So much the better,' I said; 'I never saw a man look more like a prophet in the wilderness; it doesn't cost you the least trouble—why you'd have done for Hamlet in the Iris, if for nothing else! After all, though, a missionary don't wear blue pilot cloth trousers, nor tie his neckerchief as you do, Tom. You must bend a white neck-cloth to-morrow morning! I'm quite serious, Westwood, I assure you,' continued I. 'Just think of the suspicious look of two navy men being aboard an Indiaman, nobody knows how! Why, the first frigate we speak, or port we touch at, they'd hand one or both of us over at once—which I, for my part, shouldn't at all like!' 'Indeed, Collins,' said Tom, turning round, 'I really cannot understand why you went out in her! It distresses me to think that here you've got yourself into this scrape on my account! At least you'll put back in the first home-bound ship we——'
"'Oh!' exclaimed I, blushing a little in the dark though, both at Westwood's simplicity, and my not wishing to tell him my secret yet—'I'm tired of shore—I want to see India again—I'm thinking of going into the army!' 'The army, indeed!' said Westwood, laughing for the first time, 'and you still midshipman all over. No, no—that won't do! I see your drift, you can't deceive me! You're a true friend, Ned, to stand by an old schoolmate so!' 'No, Tom!' said I; ''tis you yourself that has too kind a heart, and more of a sailor's, all fair and above-board, than I can manage! I won't humbug you, at any rate—I tell you I've got a scheme of my own, and you'll know more of it soon.' Tom whistled; however I went on to tell him, 'The long and the short of it is, Westwood, you'll bring both of us down by the head if you don't keep up the missionary.' 'Missionary!' repeated he; 'you don't mean to say you and Neville intended all that long toggery you supplied my kit with, for me to sail under missionary colours? I tell you what, Ned, it's not a character I like to cut jokes upon, much less to sham.' 'Jokes!' said I; 'there's no joking about it; 'tis serious enough.' 'Why,' said Westwood, 'now I know the reason of a person like a clergyman sighting me through his spectacles for half an hour together, these two evenings below! This very afternoon he called me his brother, and began asking me all manner of questions, which I could no more answer than the cook's mate.' 'Clergyman be hanged!' said I, 'you must steer clear of him, Tom—take care you don't bowse up your jib too much within hail of him! Mind, I gave your name, both to the head-steward and the skipper, as the Reverend Mr Thomas, going back to Bombay. There was nothing else for it, Westwood,' I said, 'when you were beyond thinking for yourself. All you've got to do with that solemn dissenting chap in the spectacles is just to look as wise as possible, and let him know you belong to the Church. And as for shamming, you needn't sham a bit—take to it, my dear fellow, if that will do you good.' I said this in joke, but Westwood seemed to ponder on it for a minute or two. 'Indeed, Collins,' said he gravely, 'I do think you're right. What do we sailors do but give up everything in life for a mere schoolboy notion, and keep turning up salt water for years together like the old monks did the ground; only they grew corn and apples for their pains, and we have nothing but ever so many dull watches and wild cruises ashore to remember! How many sailors have turned preachers and missionaries, just because something, by accident, as it were, taught them to put to account what you can't help feeling now and then in the very look of the sea. What does it mean in the Scriptures, Ned, about "seeing the wonders of the Lord in the deep?"' As Westwood said this, both of us stopped on the taffrail, and, somehow or other, a touch of I didn't well know what went through me. I held my breath, with his hand on my arm, just at the sight I had seen a thousand times—the white wake running broad away astern, with a mark in the middle as if it had been torn, on to the green yeast of the waves, then right to their black crests plunging in the dark. It was midnight ahead, and the clouds risen aloft over where I had been looking half-an-hour before; but the long ragged split to westward was opened up, and a clear glaring glance of the sky, as pale as death, shot through it on the horizon. 'I can't be sorry for having gone to sea,' said Westwood again; 'but isn't it a better thing to leave home and friends, as those men do for the sake of carrying the Gospel to the heathen?' As soon as we wheeled round, with the ship before us, leaning over and mounting to the heave, and her spread of canvas looming out on the dark, my thoughts righted. 'Well,' said I, 'it may be all very well for some—everyone to his rope; but, for my part, I think if man hadn't been made for the sea, he couldn't have built a ship, and where would your missionaries be then? You're older than I am, Westwood, or I'd say you let some of your notions run away with you, like a Yankee ship with her short-handed crew!' 'Oh, Ned,' said he, 'of all places in the world for one's actions coming back on him the sea is the worst, especially when you're an idler, and have nothing to do but count the sails or listen to the passengers' feet on deck. These two days, now, I've thought more than I ever did in my life. I can't get that man's death out of my head; every time the sea flashes round me as I come from below, I think of him—it seems to me he is lying yet by the side of the Channel. I can't help having the notion he perhaps fired in the air!' ''Twas a base lie!' said I; 'if he weren't there, you wouldn't be here, I can tell you, Westwood.' 'I don't know how I shall ever drag through this voyage,' continued he. 'If there were a French gunboat to cut out to-morrow morning, or if we were only to have a calm some day in sight of a Spanish slaver—'tis nothing but a jogging old Indiaman though! I shall never more see the flag over my head with pride—every respect I had was in the service!'
CHAPTER V
"Next morning was fine, and promised to be hot; the ship still with a side-wind from near south-west, which 'twas easy to see had slackened since midnight with a pour of rain, the sails being all wet, and coats hung to dry in the fore-rigging; she was going little more than five or six knots headway. The water was bluer, lifting in long waves, scarce a speck of foam except about the ship; but instead of having broke up with the sun, or sunk below the level, the long white clouds were risen high to leeward, wandering away at the top, and facing us steady below out of the sky, a pretty sure sign they had more to do. However, the Indiaman was all alive from stem to stern; decks drying as clean as a table; hens and ducks clucking in the coops at their food; pigs grunting; stewards and cabin-boys going fore and aft, below and above, and the men from aloft coming slowly down for breakfast, with an eye into the galley funnel. Most of the passengers were upon deck, in knots all along the poop-nettings, to look out for Corvo and Flores, the western-most of the Azores, which we had passed before daybreak.
"'I say, Fawd!' said the warlike cadet with the moustache, all of a sudden yawning and stretching himself, as if he'd been struck with the thing himself, 'cussed dull this vessel already, ain't it?' 'No,' said Ford, the nautical man; 'that's because you're not interested in the ocean—the sea—as I am! You should study the craft, Bob, my boy! I'll teach you to go aloft. I only wish it would blow harder—not a mere capful of wind, you know, but a tempest!' 'By Jove! Fawd,' said the other, 'how we shall enjoy India—even that breakfast with old Rollock! By-the-by, ain't breakfast ready yet?' These two fellows, for my part, I took for a joint-model, just trying to hit a mid-helm betwixt them, else I couldn't have got through it; accordingly they both patronised me. 'Haw, Cawlins!' said one, nodding to me. 'Is that you, my boy?' said the other; 'now, you're a fellow never would make a sailor!' 'I daresay not,' I said gravely, 'if they have all to commence as horse-marines.' 'Now, such ignorance!' said Ford; 'marines don't ride horses, Collins, you fellow!—how d'you think they could be fed at sea, eh?' 'Well—now—that didn't occur to me!' said I, in the cadet key. 'Fawd, my boy, you know too much—you're quite a sea-cook!' 'Oh, now! But I'm afraid, Winterton, I never shall land ashore in India—I am tempted to go into the navy, instead.' 'I say, Mr Ford,' put in a fat unlicked cub of a tea-middy, grinning as he listened, 'I've put you up to a few rises aboard, but I don't think I told you we've got a dozen or so of donkeys [11] below in the steerage?' 'Donkeys!—no?' said the griffin. 'Yes,' replied the midshipman; 'they kick like mad, though, if they get loose in a gale: why mine, now, would knock a hole through the side in no time—I'll show you them for a glass of grog, Mr Ford.'
"'Done!' and away they went. 'That fool, Fawd, you know, Cawlins, makes one sick with his stuff; I declare he chews little bits of tobacco in our room till he vomits as much as before,' said Winterton. 'I tell you what, Cawlins, you're a sensible man—I'll let you into a secret! What do you think—there's the deucedest pretty girl in the vessel, we've none of us seen except myself; I caught a sight of her this very mawning. She don't visit the cuddy at all; papa's proud, you pusseeve—a nabob, in short!' 'Oh dear!' said I. 'Yes, I do assure you, quite a bew-ty! What's to be done?—we absolutely must meet her, eh, Cawlins?' Here I mused a bit. 'Oh!' said I, looking up again, 'shall we send a deputation, do you think?' 'Or get up a ball, Cawlins? Hallo, what's this?' said he, leaning over the breast-rail to look at a stout lady who was lugging a chubby little boy of three or four, half dressed, up the poop-stair, while her careful husband and a couple of daughters blocked it up above. 'See, Tommy, dear!' said she, 'look at the land—the nice land, you know, Tommy.' 'Come away, my love,' said her spouse, 'else you won't see it.' Tommy, however, hung back manfully. 'Tommy don't want wook at yand,' sang out he, kicking the deck; 'it all such 'mell of a sheep, ma; me wook at 'at man wis gate feel. Fare other feel, man? Oh, fat a ugwy man!' The honest tar at the wheel pulled up his shirt, and looked terribly cut at this plain remark on his phiz, which certainly wasn't the most beautiful; meanwhile he had the leech of the mainto'gallant-sail shaking. 'Mind your helm, there,' sung out the second mate from the capstan. 'My good man,' said the lady, 'will you be so kind as to show us the land?' 'Ay, ay, sir,' growled he, putting up his weather spokes; 'sorry I carn't, ma'am—please not to speak to the man at the wheel.' Jacobs was coiling down the ropes on a carronade close by, and stepped forward: 'Beg your ladyship's pardon,' said he, 'but if ye'll give me charge o' the youngster till you goes on the poop—why, I've got a babby at home myself.' The stout lady handed him over, and Jacobs managed the little chap wonderfully. This was the first time Tommy had been on deck since leaving home, and he couldn't see over the high bulwarks, so he fancied it was a house he was in. 'Oh, suts big tees, man,' shouted he, clapping his hands as soon as he noticed the sails and rigging aloft; 'suts warge birds in a tees.' 'Ay, ay, my little man,' answered Jacobs, 'that's the wonderful tree. Did ye ever hear Jack and the Bean-stalk, Tommy?' 'Oh, 'ess, to be soo, man,' said Tommy, scornfully, as if he should think he had.
"'Well, little un,' said Jacobs, 'that's it, ye see. It grows up every night afore Jack's door—and them's Jack an' his brothers a-comin' down out on the wonderfowl country aloft, with fruits in their hands.' The little fellow was delighted, and for going aloft at once. 'Ye must wait a bit, Tommy, my lad, till you're bigger,' said Jacobs; 'here, I'll show you the country, though'; so he lifted the boy up to let him see the bright blue sea lying high away round the sky. In place of crying, as he would have done otherwise, Tommy stared with pleasure, and finished by vowing to get as soon big as possible, Jacobs advising him to eat always as hard as he had been doing hitherto.
"That morning the breakfast party was in high spirits; Mr Finch, the chief officer, rigged up to the nines in white trousers and Company's jacket, laying himself out to please the young ladies, with whom he began to be a regular hero. He was as blustering as a young lion, and as salt-tongued as a Channel pilot to the men; but with the ladies, on the poop or in the cabin, he was always twisting his sea-talk into fine language, like what you see in books, as if the real thing weren't good enough. He rubbed his hands at hearing the mate on deck singing out over the skylight to trim yards, and gave a look along to the captain. 'You must understand, ladies,' said the mate, 'this is what we mariners call the "ladies' wind"!' 'Oh, delightful!' 'Oh, so nice!' 'You sailors are so polite!' exclaimed the young ladies—'then does it actually belong to us?' 'Why it's a Trade wind, Miss Fortescue!' said Ford, the nautical cadet, venturing to put in a word; but the ladies paid no attention to him, and the chief mate gave him a look of contempt. 'You see, ladies, the reason is,' said the mate, in a flourishing way, 'because it's so regular, and as gentle as—as—why it wafts your bark into the region of, you see—the——' 'The "Doldrums,"' put in the third mate, who was a brinier individual by far, and a true seaman, but wished to pay his compliments, too, between his mouthfuls. 'At any rate,' Finch went on, 'it's congenial, I may say, to the feelings of the fair—you need never touch her braces from one day to another. I just wish, Miss Fortescue, you'd allow me the felicity of letting you see how to put the ship about.' 'A soldier might put her in stays, miss,' said the third mate again, encouragingly, 'and out of 'em again; she's a remarkably easy craft, owing to her——' 'Confound it, Mr Rickett,' said the first mate, turning round to his unlucky inferior, 'you're a sight too coarse for talking to ladies. Well the captain didn't hear you!' Rickett looked dumfoundered, not knowing what was wrong; the old ladies frowned; the young ones either blushed or put their handkerchiefs to their mouths, and some took the occasion for walking off.