“Plaize, yer ’onner,” said he, addressing Larkyns, who was still caterer of the mess and the senior in rank of those present, as he was twanging away at his banjo with infinite zest, “the docthor sez if ye can’t be aisy he axes ye to be as aisy as ye can.”
An uproarious shout was all the answer he got; and, grinning from ear to ear, he retreated, only to be succeeded by the master-at-arms, who came down to put out the lights by the commander’s orders, when those who had not to go on night duty turned in and peace was restored.
Sailing with the south-west monsoon, we did not have so speedy a passage homeward as we did when outward bound, but we made way southward as well as we could, close-hauled, and reached the Cape two months after passing through Java Heads.
At Simon’s Bay we refitted ship and took in fresh supplies; and while we remained getting these latter on board several old friends came to see us from Cape Town.
Amongst these was no other than Don Ferdinando Olivarez, who told us he had given up the sea as a profession.
He still adventured on the deep, however, despite his memorable experiences of its perils; for, he said, he had to voyage about a good deal from port to port in the prosecution of his new avocation as the agent for a large firm of wine exporters at Cadiz, where he lived when at home, being now married.
At Captain Farmer’s request, Don Olivarez took passage with us to Madeira; and while on board with us made himself, if possible, better liked than before.
All of us parted with him with regret when he left us at Funchal, where we put in to land him and correct an error in our chronometers, which had gone wrong from an accident resulting from a violent thunderstorm we fell in with when crossing the Equator for the last time, in which the ship got struck by the lightning, when the captain’s cabin, where the chronometers were kept, was seriously damaged by the electric fluid.
From Madeira to England we had fair winds and fine weather, crossing the Bay of Biscay, which had given us so much trouble going out, with all our kites flying and the wind well in the quarter, which made all the old hands say that the “Portsmouth girls had got hold of our towrope.”
Talking of the men, Master “Downy,” the ex-gravedigger, although he had been scraped into something of a sailor in appearance in the time he had been afloat, now nearly five years, in which period, by the way, he had accumulated enough prize-money to more than discharge the debts he had left behind on quitting his country, could never be taught to be smart in his movements, always going about the deck as if he were engaged at a funeral.