‘What!’ shouted the mate, walking for’ard to meet his watch. ‘Isn’t he a sailor-man?’
‘Nary sailor-man,’ replied the other. ‘He’s a fellow from the country—a good sort o’ chap—but as green’s they make ’em as regards o’ salt water.’
‘Damn that Gallagher!’ exclaimed the officer. ‘He brought the coon aboard, an’ got the bounty, swearin’ he was a shellback all over—blood Stockholm tar, and every hair on his head a rope yarn! If ever we fetch Coalport again I’ll skin that Irish thief!’
So also affirmed the captain of the John F. Harkins, who was out of pocket a month’s advance, besides two pounds “head money,” to the crimp who had netted poor Peter.
Luckily, very luckily for Peter, he had not fallen into the hands of a set of ‘white-washed Americans,’ half Irish, half anything, proficients in the art of [27] ]sea-bullying, and in the use of revolvers and knuckle-dusters.
The officers and most of the men of the John F. were genuine Down-Easters, natives of Salem, Martha’s Vineyard, and thereabout, shrewd and kindly people; and, though all naturally indignant at the trick played upon them, too just to visit their wrath on its unfortunate object.
Presently Peter was recognised by the steward, who had tasted of his hospitality ashore, and who now, seeing the poor fellow still suffering from the effects of the narcotic administered in that last ‘for luck’ drink of scamp Gallagher’s, put him to bed and brought him restoratives. So, in due course, Peter became his own man again, and got fine-weather sea-legs upon him, and would have been comparatively happy but for thoughts of those far-away calves and foals, and the clumsy fingers of a certain assistant stockman. They taught him how to sweep decks, coil up ropes, and make sinnet. They also coaxed him aloft; but he never could get further up the rigging than the futtock-shrouds. There he stuck helplessly, and over them he never went. He was young and light and active; but, somehow, he couldn’t bend his body outward into empty air and trust its weight to a little bit of rope no thicker than a clothes-line. It didn’t seem natural. One cannot make a sailor at twenty-five.
The John F. was bound for Colombo, thence to Hamburg, and, so far, everything had been fine sailing. But one day a dead-ahead gale arose and blew fiercely for three days.
[28]
]Then it was that Peter began to realise earnestly what he had before but dimly suspected, viz., that on such an occasion one foot of dry land is worth ten thousand acres of foaming ocean. Easier by far would it have been for him to sit the roughest colt that ever bucked than to stand a minute erect on the barque’s deck.
Of such jumping and rearing, plunging and swerving, Peter had possessed no conception before, except in the saddle. There, however, he would have been comparatively safe. Here he was tossed about apparently at the pleasure of the great creature beneath him—one minute on to the back of his head, the next in the lee-scuppers. When he arose, dripping and grasping blindly for support, the rushing past of big seas, the wild, stern hum in the strained rigging, the roar of the blast in the bellies of the tugging topsails, and the swirling of green water round his legs, so bewildered him that he was unable to distinguish one end of the ship from the other.