The ship had a passenger for Madeira, parcels for Ascension and Saint Helena, and she lay in at the Cape for a whole week.
Here Captain Vesey left the vessel, bidding Archie a kind farewell, after dining with him at the Fountain, and roaming with him all over the charming Botanical Gardens.
“I’ve an idea we’ll meet again,” he said as he bade him adieu. “If God spares me, I’ll be sure to visit Sydney in a year or two, and I hope to find you doing well. You’ll know if my little yacht, the Barracouta, comes in, and I know you’ll come off and see me. I hope to find you with as good a coat on your back as you have now.”
Then the Dugong sailed away again; but the time now seemed longer to Archie than ever, for in Captain Vesey he really had lost a good friend—a friend who was all the more valuable because he spoke the plain, unvarnished truth; and if in doing so one or two of the young man’s cherished idols were brought tumbling down to the ground, it was all the better for the young man. It showed those idols had feet of clay, else a little cold water thrown over them would hardly have had such an effect. I am sorry to say, however, that no sooner had the captain left the ship, than Archie set about carefully collecting the pieces of those said idols and patching them up again.
“After all,” he thought to himself, “this Captain Vesey, jolly fellow as he is, never had to struggle with fortune as I shall do; and I don’t think he has the same pluck in him that my father has, and that people say I have. We’ll see, anyhow. Other fellows have been fortunate in a few years, why shouldn’t I? ‘In a few years?’ Yes, these are the very words Captain Vesey laughed at me for. ‘In a few years?’ To be sure. And why not? What is the good of a fortune to a fellow after he gets old, and all worn down with gout and rheumatism? ‘Cheer, boys, cheer;’ I’m going in to win.”
How slow the ship sailed now, apparently; and when it did blow it usually blew the wrong way, and she would have to stand off and on, or go tack and half-tack against it, like a man with one long leg and one short. But she was becalmed more than once, and this did seem dreadful. It put Archie in mind of a man going to sleep in the middle of his work, which is not at all the correct thing to do.
Well, there is nothing like a sailing ship after all for teaching one the virtue of patience; and at last Archie settled down to his sea life. He was becoming quite a sailor—as hard as the wheel-spokes, as brown as the binnacle. He was quite a favourite with the captain and officers, and with all hands fore and aft. Indeed he was very often in the forecastle or galley of an evening listening to the men’s yarns or songs, and sometimes singing a verse or two himself.
He was just beginning to think the Dugong was Vanderdecken’s ship, and that she never would make port at all, when one day at dinner he noticed that the captain was unusually cheerful.
“In four or five days more, please God,” said he, “we’ll be safe in Sydney.”
Archie almost wished he had not known this, for these four or five days were the longest of any he had yet passed. He had commenced to worship his patched-up idols again, and felt happier now, and more full of hope and certainty of fortune than he had done during the whole voyage.