Gil the Gunner: The Youngest Officer in the East

by George Manville Fenn

Chapter Five.

Rough weather as soon as we were out of the mouth of the Thames gave me something else to think about, and I did not spend much time in calculating whether I liked Captain Brace or not; but I suppose I behaved pretty well, for in two days I went on deck feeling a little faint, and as if the great ship was playing at pretending to sink beneath my feet.

“Come, that’s good,” said a familiar voice; and I found Captain Brace had crossed over to where I was holding on by the bulwark, looking at the distant shore. “Why, Vincent, you are a better sailor than I am.”

I smiled at him in rather a feeble manner.

“Oh, I mean it,” he said. “It has been very rough for the past forty-eight hours, and I have been, as you know, pretty queer, but I forced myself to get up this morning, and it has done me no end of good. I have been down to see the men, thinking I would rouse them up, but, poor fellows, they are all so utterly miserable that I think I’ll leave them alone to-day.”

Human nature is curious; for I was so glad that the men were worse than the officers, that I felt quite cheerful, and after breakfast—to which I went down feeling as if I could not touch a bit, but did touch a good many bits and drops—I found myself walking up and down the deck with Captain Brace, taking an interest in the towering masts with their press of sail, and the flashing, sparkling water, which came with a bump every now and then against the side of the great ship, and scattered a fine shower of spray over the bows.

For the wind was brisk, and the ship heeled over pretty well as she sped down Channel.

In the course of the day, during which I began to be acquainted with the officers, a passenger or two slowly made his appearance. I say “his,” because not a lady showed on deck during the week. Then, as the weather fell calm, they all came up nearly at once; and when I caught sight of the stout elderly lady who had been so affectionate to me in the docks, I felt disposed to go down. But there was no occasion. The week’s confinement below, and their miserable state of illness, had pretty well swept away the recollection of the drowning scene, and beyond one or two looks and a whisper passed on from one to the other, which I felt were about me, there was nothing to make me feel nervous and red.

I am not going to give a description of our long voyage round by the Cape, for that was our course in those days; let it suffice if I say that we sailed south into warmer seas, with the torrid sun beating down upon us in a way which Captain Brace said would prepare us for what was to come. We had storms in rounding the Cape, and then we sailed on again north and east.