Ethel and Rose, so pure, so fair, so lovely, and so highly bred, to be in such peril; at the mercy of such men as those who formed the crew of the Hermione, and far from all human succour on the wide, wide, open sea.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SAIL TO WINDWARD.
Under the interlaced crosses of Great Britain—our brave old union-jack—a very different crew manned that good little ship the Princess, of London, which we last left when dropping the giant cone of Tristan d'Acunha astern, and bearing on her voyage towards Tasmania.
Under Tom Bartelot's command, all went well and prosperously, and his ship had fine weather and spanking topsail breezes, after leaving the romantic Isle of Tristan.
Anxious to be useful and to kill time, Morley Ashton had applied himself to seamanship, and, in seeking to master all the mysteries thereof, became the peculiar pupil of old Noah Gawthrop, who confidently undertook "to make a man and a sailor of him, before they saw Wan Demon's Land."
He could soon dip his hands in a bucket of tar without wincing; slush the mast, from the royal-masthead down, without becoming squeamish; he could box the compass, take his trick at the helm, and achieve many clever things, from holding the log-reel upwards to sending down a royal-yard without mistake or blunder, which Noah told him "was one of the prime feats of seamanship, which even the queen on the throne couldn't do."
The first time he accomplished this, was when a squall was coming on. Ben Plank had the fore-royal, Noah the main-royal, and Morley the mizzen.
His spar was certainly the lightest, with a smaller sail, but he had it struck and sent down before the others, greatly to the delight of old Noah, who, with all his ugliness, which was undeniable, was a genuine salt of the old school—a regular British tar, with his slouching shoulders and light gait, swinging arms, and half-closed hands, that were always ready to "tally on" to anything; a comical twinkle in his eye, and who believed in whistling for wind as truly as the Turkish skipper who pours oil upon the sea, in the hope that it may float to Mecca, for the same useful purpose.
Noah bore on his breast, engraved in gunpowder, a little romance of his younger days—a sailor and a girl standing on the sea-shore. In the background (or offing, to speak more correctly) lay a ship, with her topsails loose, hove-apeak to her anchor, while the smoke from a gun—the signal for sea—curled over her quarter. Under the male figure were the initials "N.G.," and under the girl's were—what we won't say, for in them, lay the pet secret of old Noah's honest heart. The ship, however, he often pointed to with pride, saying it was a "lovely pictur' of her Majesty's ship the Haurora, of fifty guns, as was—an ugly smoke-jack now, with a screw-propeller in her starn."