The afternoon, however, was not destined to pass without another incident.
It was getting on for sunset; and, steering more to the west well out from the land so as to avoid the Royal Sovereign shoal, we must have been just abreast of Hastings, although we could not see it, the weather thickening at the time, when suddenly a strange bird settled on the rigging utterly exhausted. It had evidently been blown out to sea and lost its reckoning.
“Here’s a Mother Carey’s chicken come aboard!” cried Sam Weeks, making for the poor tired thing to catch it. “I’ll have it.”
“Don’t hurt it, it’s a starling,” I said. “Can’t you see its nice shiny black-and-green plumage, and its yellow bill like a blackbird? Leave the poor little thing alone, it’s tired to death.”
“A starling! your grandmother!” he retorted, nettled at my speaking, and bearing me a grudge still for what had recently occurred in the deck-house. “A fine lot you know about birds, no doubt! I tell you I’ll catch it, and kill it too, if I like.”
So saying, he made another grab at the little creature, which, just fluttering off the rigging in time, managed for the moment to escape him and perched on the backstay, when the cruel lad hove a marlin-spike at it. He again missed the bird, however, and it then flew straight into the bosom of my jacket as I stood in front of it, whistling to entice it in that chirpy kissing way in which you hear starlings call to each other, having learnt the way to do so from a boy at Westham.
Weeks was furious at my succeeding in the capture of the poor bird when he had failed; although he would not understand that I had only coaxed it to protect it from his violence. Poor little thing. I could feel its little heart palpitating against mine as it rested safe within the breast of my jacket, nestling close to my flannel shirt!
“Why, you’ve caught it yourself after all, you mean sneak!” he cried; and thinking he was more of a match for me than he was for Tom Jerrold, and could bully me easily, he made a dash at my jacket collar to tear it open, exclaiming at the same time, “I will have it, I tell you. There!”
He made a wrong calculation, however, for, holding my right arm across my chest so as to keep my jacket closed and protect the poor bird that had sought my succour, I threw out my left hand; and so, as he rushed towards me, my outstretched fist caught him clean between the eyes, tumbling him backwards, as if he had been shot, on to the deck, where he rolled over into a lot of water that had accumulated in the scuppers to leeward—the pool in the scuppers washing forwards and then aft as the ship rose and fell and heeled over to port on the wind freshening with the approach of night.