Then, I stopped in front of the forecastle, as Tim Rooney giving me a cheery hail, and saw to my wonder Joe Fergusson looking all hale and hearty and jolly amongst the men, without the least trace of having been, apparently, at his last gasp but an hour or so before.
He was half lying down, half sitting on the edge of one of the bunks, nursing the big stray tortoise-shell tom-cat which had shared his lodgings in the forepeak, and he had mistaken it for a rat as it crept up and down the chain-pipe to see what it could pick up in the cook’s galley at meal-times, which it seemed to know by some peculiar instinct of its own; and although thus partially partial to Ching Wang’s society, the cat now appeared to have taken even a greater fancy to his bed-fellow in his hiding-place below than it had done to the cook, looking upon the stowaway evidently as a fellow-comrade, who was unfortunately in similar circumstances to himself.
Joe Fergusson not only looked all right, but he likewise was in the best of spirits, possibly from the tot of rum Tim Rooney had given him after his soup, to “pull him together,” as the boatswain said; for, ere I left the precincts of the forecastle he volunteered to sing a song, and as I made my way aft I heard the beginning of some plaintive ditty concerning a “may-i-den of Manches-teer,” followed by a rousing chorus from the crew, which had little or nothing to do with the main burden of the ballad, the men’s refrain being only a “Yo, heave ho, it’s time for us to go!”
A hint which I took.
The wind did not freshen quite so soon as either Mr Mackay or the captain expected; but it continued to blow pretty steadily from the north-west with considerable force, the ship bending over to it as it caught her abaft the beam, and bowling along before it over the billowy ocean like a prancing courser galloping over a race-course, tossing her bows up in the air one moment and plunging them down the next, and spinning along at a rare rate through the crested foam.
As it got later, though, the gale increased; and shortly after “two bells in the first watch,” nine o’clock that is in landsman’s time, Captain Gillespie, who was on deck again, gave the order to shorten sail.
“Stand by your topgallant halliards!” cried Mr Mackay, giving the necessary instructions for the captain’s order to be carried into effect, following this command up immediately by a second—“Let go!”
Then, the clewlines and buntlines were manned, and in a trice the three topgallants were hanging in festooned folds from the upper yards, I doing my first bit of service at sea by laying hold of the ropes that triced up the mizzen-topgallant-sail, and hauling with the others, Mr Mackay giving me a cheery “Well done, my lad,” as I did so.
Tom Jerrold, who now appeared on the poop, and whom I had fought shy of before, thinking he had behaved very unkindly to me in the morning, was one of the first to spring into the mizzen-shrouds and climb up the ratlines on the order being given to furl the sail, getting out on the manrope and to the weather earing at the end of the yard before either of the three hands who also went up.
Seeing him go up the rigging, I was on the point of following him; but Mr Mackay, whose previous encouragement, indeed, had spurred me on, stopped me.