Going aloft was at first fearful work. I’ll never forget, though, lying out on a yard making a sham of reefing, and holding on like a fly on a roof, praying, and expecting every moment to be hurled into the sea. It came easier at last, and before we reached Saint Helena, where we lay in, I could do a deal both below and aloft, and had hands and feet as good as the captain’s cat.
Now if ever the lines of any two boys were cast in pleasant places on going first to sea, they were Jill’s and mine, and yet we were not happy. What would it have been had we been subjected to the thousand and one little tyrannies of ship life most apprentices have to endure? I’m not going to describe them, because I am telling a story, not giving a lecture; nor do I wish to say a word to prevent bold, hardy lads from adopting the sea as a profession; but let no one go to be a sailor lured by the romance and glamour thrown over it in too many sea novels.
Peter and we got on shore together at Saint Helena. This was a treat, because we were now quite friendly, and I had not forgotten the good advice he gave us the first evening we met.
Leila, Mrs Coates’ maid, also had a passage on shore in the same boat, and Peter, much to the amusement of the men—with whom, by the way, he was a great favourite—pretended to make love to her all the way. He told her, to begin with, that her name was sweetly poetic, and pretty. So far he was right. Then he said her teeth were like pearls. Leila grinned, simpered, and showed her teeth. And really Peter was not far wrong. Having adhered to the truth so far, I believe Leila was in a position to believe anything. So Peter praised her eyes next. He said they reminded him of koh-i-noors floating in a bucket of tar, and he referred to the coxswain to say whether he was not right. The coxswain confessed that diamonds were never so numerous where he had been, as to float them on tar, but that Leila was pretty enough to make a fellow pitch a ball of spun-yard at the captain’s head if she asked him to.
For this pretty compliment the coxswain received a dig in the ribs from Leila that well-nigh sent him overboard among the sharks and turtles, and certainly took his breath away.
“Oh!” cried the coxswain. “If that’s your way of showing your affection, my beauty, a little of it goes a long way.”
“What for you tease a poor girl, then?”
“Your hair, my Leila—” began Peter again.
“Cut it short, Mr Jeffries,” cried the coxswain, laughing; “why, sir, you can’t praise that!”
“Cut it short!” said Peter; “why it couldn’t be shorter. But look at those crisp wee ringlets, how they curl round one’s affections, how they entwine themselves with every poetic feeling—”