Chapter Twenty Seven.
I go to Venezuela.
“You’d better stick to us,” said the skipper to Colonel Vereker, who talked of taking the next Cunard steamer, which was advertised to leave on the morrow, as the Star of the North was being berthed in our company’s dock on the East River. “I’m only going to stop here long enough to discharge our cargo and ship a fresh one; which is all ready and waiting for us; and then, sir, we’ll ‘make tracks,’ as our friends the Yankees say, right away over the ‘herring-pond’ to Liverpool as fast as steam and sail can carry the old barquey. Better stick to us, colonel, and see the voyage out.”
“All right, Señor Applegarth,” replied the colonel, who could not drop his Spanish phraseology all at once, though otherwise gradually returning to his and our own native tongue and becoming less of a foreigner in every way, “I will return with you.”
Both were as good as their word, he and little Elsie coming home with us, and the skipper making the passage from Sandy Hook to the Mersey in eight days from land to land, the fastest run we had ever yet achieved across the Atlantic, whether outward or homeward-bound.
But, quick as we were, the Saint Pierre managed to reach Liverpool before we did, the pilot who boarded us off the Skerries bringing the news that she had gone up the river a tide ahead of us.
This piece of intelligence was confirmed beyond question by Garry O’Neil coming off in the company’s tug that sheered alongside as we dropped anchor in the stream later on, midway between the Prince’s landing-stage and the Birkenhead shore, the manager of our line being anxious to compliment the skipper on his successful rescue of the French ship, the percentage on whose valuable cargo for bringing her safely to port, and thus saving all loss to the underwriters, would more than repay any damage done for the detention of our vessel when engaged on the errand of mercy and justice that took her off her course.
In addition likewise to the thanks of the company and the underwriters, the skipper was also presented with a handsome gold chronometer watch by the committee of Lloyds, besides participating in the amount awarded by the charterers of the Saint Pierre for the salvage of the ship, though in this latter apportionment it was only fair to mention that we all shared, officers and crew alike, I for my part coming into the sudden possession of such a tidy little sum of ready money that I felt myself a comparative millionaire.
When talking with Garry, whom it is almost needless to say all hands were glad to see again, the men cheering him lustily as he crossed the gangway from the tug, he told us that though otherwise they had had a fairly pleasant voyage after parting company with us off the Azores, the Boissons gave him a good deal of trouble.
Madame, he said, worried his life out by “making eyes” at him when he went below at meal-times, while on deck he was never safe for a moment from her embarrassing attentions unless, in desperation, as he was often forced to do, he went aloft to get out of her way.