"We are crossing the great Gulf Stream," said the captain—"Jacobs! open one of the stern-ports." "'Tis the very place and time, this is," remarked a good-humoured cotton-grower from the Deccan, "for one of the colonel's tiger-hunts, now!" "Sir!" answered the old officer, rather testily, "I am not accustomed to thrust my tiger-hunts, as you choose to call my humble experiences, under people's noses!" "Certainly not, my dear sir," said the planter—"but what do you say, ladies, to one of the captain's sea-yarns, then? Nothing better, I'm sure, here now, sir—eh?" Captain Collins smiled, and said he had never spun a yarn in his life, except when a boy, out of matter-of-fact old junk and tar. "Here is my steward, however," continued he, "who is the best hand at it I know, and I daresay he'll give you one." "Charming!" exclaimed the young ladies; and "What was that adventure, Mr Jacobs," said Miss Alicia, "with a beauty and a nabob in it, that you alluded to a short time ago?" "I didn't to say disactly include upon it, your ladyship," replied old Jacobs, with a tug of his hair, and a bow not just à la maître; "but the captain can give you it better nor I can, seeing as his honour were the Nero on it, as one may say." "Oh!" said the surgeon, rubbing his hands, "a lady and a rupee-eater in the case!" "There seems something curious about this said adventure of yours, my dear captain," said Mrs St Clair, archly, "and a beauty too! It makes me positively inquisitive, but I hope your own fair lady has heard the story?" "Why, not exactly, ma'am," replied Captain Collins, laughing as he caught the doctor looking preternaturally solemn, after a sly lee-wink to the colonel, who, having his back to the moonlight, stretched out his legs and indulged in a grim, silent chuckle, until his royal-tiger countenance was unhappily brought so far flush [2] in the rays as to betray a singular daguerreotype, resembling one of those cut-paper phantasmagoria thrown on a drawing-room wall, unmistakably black and white, and in the character of Malicious Watchfulness. The rubicund, fidgety little cotton-grower twiddled his thumbs, and looked modestly down on the deck, with half-shut eyes, as if expecting some bold revelation of nautical depravity; while the romantic Miss Alicia coloured and was silent. "However," said the captain, coolly, "it is no matrimonial secret, at any rate! We both talk of it sometimes when we read the Church Service of a Sunday night at home, with Jacobs for the clerk." "Do, Mr Jacobs, oblige us!" requested the younger of the girls. "Well, miss," said he, smoothing down his hair in the doorway, and hemming, "'tain't neither for the likes o' me to refuse a lady, nor accordin' to rules for to give such a yarn in presence of a supperior officer, much less the captain; with a midship helm, ye know, marm, ye carn't haul upon one tack nor the other. Not to say but next forenoon watch——" "I see, Jacobs, my man," interrupted Captain Collins, "there's nothing for it but to fore-reach upon you, or else you'll be 'Green-Handing' me aft as well as forward; so I must just make the best of it, and take the winch in my own fashion at once!" "Ay, ay, sir—ay, ay, your honour!" said Old Jack demurely, and concealing his gratification as he turned off into the pantry, with the idea of for the first time hearing the captain relate the incidents in question. "My old shipmate," said the latter, "is so fond of having trained his future captain, that it is his utmost delight to spin out everything we ever met with together into one endless yarn, which would go on from our first acquaintance to the present day, although no ship's company ever heard the last of it. Without falling knowingly to leeward of the truth, he makes out every lucky coincidence almost to have been a feat of mine, and puts in little fancies of his own, so as to give the whole thing more and more of a marvellous air the farther it goes. The most amusing thing is, that he almost always begins each time, I believe, at the very beginning, like a capstan without a paul—sticking in one thing he had forgot before, and forgetting another; sometimes dwelling longer on one part—a good deal like a ship making the same voyages over again. I knew, now, this evening, when I heard the men laughing, and saw Old Jack on the forecastle, what must be in the wind. However, we have shared so many chances, and I respect the old man so much, not to speak of his having dandled my little girls on his knee, and being butler, steward, and flower-gardener at home, that I can't really be angry at him, in spite of the sort of every man's rope he makes of me!" "How very amusing a character he is!" said one young lady. "A thought too tarry, perhaps?" suggested the surgeon. "So very original and like a—a seaman!" remarked Miss Alicia, quietly, but as if some other word that crossed her mind had been rejected, as descriptive of a different variety, probably higher. "Original, by Jove!" exclaimed the colonel; "if my Khansa-man, or my Abdar, [3] were to make such a dancing dervish and tumasha [4] of me behind back, by the holy Vishnu, sir, I'd rattan him myself within an inch of his life!" "Not an unlikely thing, colonel," put in the planter; "I've caught the scoundrels at that trick before now." "What did you do?" inquired the colonel, speculatively. "Couldn't help laughing, for my soul, sir; the puckree-bund [5] rascals did it so well, and so funnily!" The irascible East-Indian almost started up in his imaginative fury, to call for his palkee, and chastise his whole verandah, when the doctor reminded him that it was a long way there. "Glorious East!" exclaimed the medico, looking out astern, "where we may cane our footmen, and whence, meanwhile, we can derive such Sanscrit-sounding adjurations, with such fine moonlight!"
The presence of the first officer was now added to the party, who came down for a cup of tea, fresh from duty, and flavouring strongly of a pilot cheroot. "How does she head, Mr Wood?" asked the captain. "Sou'-west-by-west, sir—a splendid night, under everything that will draw—spray up to the starboard cathead!"
"But as to this story, again, Captain Collins?" said Mrs St Clair, as soon as she had poured out the chief mate's cup. "Well," said the captain, "if you choose to listen till bedtime to a plain draught of the affair, why I suppose I must tell it you; and what remains then may stand over till next fine night. It may look a little romantic, being in the days when most people are such themselves, but, at any rate, we sailors—or else we should never have been at sea, you know; so you'll allow for that, and a spice to boot of what we used to call at sea 'lovemaking'; happily there were no soft speeches in it, like those in books, for then I shouldn't tell it at all.
"By the time I was twenty-four, I had been nine years at sea, and at the end of the war, was third lieutenant of a crack twenty-eight, the saucy Iris—as perfect a sloop-model, though over-sparred certainly, as ever was eased off the ways of Chatham, or careened to a north-easter. The Admiralty had almost learned to build by that day, and a glorious ship she was, made for going after the small fry of privateers, pirates, and slavers, that swarmed about the time. Though I had roughed it in all sorts of craft, from a first-rate to a dirty French lugger prize, and been eastward, so as to see the sea in its pride at the Pacific, yet the feeling you have depends on the kind of ship you are in. I never knew so well what it was to be fond of a ship and the sea; and when I heard of the poor Iris, that had never been used to anything but blue water on three parts of the horizon at least, laying her bones not long after near Wicklow Head, I couldn't help a gulp in the throat. I once dreamt I had gone down in her, and risen again to the surface with the loss of my brains, such as I had had; while at the same moment, there I was, still sitting below on a locker in the wardroom, with the arms of her beautiful figure-head around me, and her mermaid's tail like the best-bower cable, with an anchor at the end of it far away out of soundings, over which I bobbed and dipped for years and years, in all weathers, like a buoy. We had no Mediterranean time of it, though, in the Iris, off the Guinea coast, from Cape Palmas to Cape Negro; looking out to windward for white squalls, and to leeward for black ones, and in-shore for Spanish cattle-dealers, as we called them, had made us all as sharp as so many marling-spikes; and our captain was a man that taught us seamanship, with a trick or two beyond. The slavers had not got to be so clever then, either, with their schooners and clippers: they built for stowage, and took the chance, so that we sent in bale after bale to the West India admiral, made money, and enjoyed ourselves now and then at the Cape de Verdes. However, this kind of thing was so popular at home, as pickings after the great haul was over, that the Iris had to give up her station to a post-frigate, and be paid-off. The war was over, and nobody could expect to be promoted without a friend near the blue table-cloth, although a quiet hint to a secretary's palm would work wonders, if strong enough. But most of such lucky fellows as ourselves dissipated their funds in blazing away at balls and parties, where the gold band was everything, and the ladies wore blue ribbons and anchor brooches in honour of the navy. The men spent everything in a fortnight, even to their clothes, and had little further chance of eating the king's biscuit with hopes of prize-money; I used to see knots of them, in red shirts and dirty slops, amongst the foremast Jacks in outward-bound ships, dropping past Greenwich, and waving their hats to the Hospital. You knew them at once by one of them giving the song for the topsail-halliards, instead of the merchantmen's bull's chorus; indeed, I could always pick off the dashing men-o'-war's-men, by face and eye alone, out from among the others, who looked as sober and solitary, with their serious faces and way of going about a thing, as if everyone of them was the whole crew. I once read a bit of poetry called the 'Ancient Mariner,' to old Jacobs, who by-the-by is something of a breed betwixt the two kinds, and his remark was: 'That old chap warn't used to hoisting altogether with a run, your honour! By his looks I'd say he was bred where there was few in a watch, and the watch-tackle laid out pretty often for an eke to drag down the fore-tack.'
"As I was riding down to Croydon in Surrey, where my mother and sister had gone to live, I fell in with a sample of the hard shifts the men-o'-war's-men were put to in getting across from harbour to some merchant port, when all their money was chucked away. It was at a little town called Bromley, where I brought to by the door of a tavern and had a pail for the horse, with a bottle of cider for myself at the open window, the afternoon being hot. There was a crowd of townspeople at the other end of the street, country bumpkins and boys—women looking out at the windows, dogs barking, and children shouting—the whole concern bearing down upon us.
"'What's all this?' said I to the ostler.
"'Don't know, sir,' said he, scratching his head; ''tis very hodd, sir! That corner is rather a sharp turn for the coach, sir, and she do sometimes run over a child there, or somethink. But 'tain't her time yet! Nothink else hever 'appens 'ere, sir.'
"As soon as I could hear or see distinctly for the confusion, I observed the magnet of it to be a party of five or six regular blue-jackets, a good deal battered in their rig, who were roaring out sea-songs in grand style as they came along, leading what I thought at first was a bear. The chief words I heard were what I knew well. 'We'll disregard their tommy-hawks, likewise their scalping-knives—and fight alongside of our mates to save our precious lives—like British tars and sowldiers in the North Americay!'
"On getting abreast of the inn door, and finding an offing with good holding-ground, I suppose, they hove to and struck up the 'Buffalo,' that finest of chants for the weather forecastle with a spanking breeze, outward bound, and the pilot lately dropped: