“Everything drawing, too, slow and aloft!” said the captain, with just a shade of discontent in his cheery voice, as he took in with a quick, sailor-like glance the position of the ship and every detail of the swelling pyramids of canvas that towered up on each mast from deck to sky—the yards braced round sharp, almost fore and aft, the huge square sails flattened like boards, the tremulous fluttering of the flying jib, and occasional gybing of the spanker, showing how close up to the wind the vessel was being steered. “You couldn’t luff her a bit more, McCarthy, could you?” he added, after another glance at the compass and a murmured “steady!” to the steersman.
“Not a ha’porth, sorr,” replied the mate sorrowfully, as if it went to his heart to make the announcement. “I had the watch up only jist a minit ago; an’ if you’ll belave me, Cap’en Dinks, we’ve braced up the yards to the last inch the sheets will run, bad cess to thim!”
“Well, well, I suppose we’ll have to put up with it; though it’s rather disheartening to have this sou’-wester right in one’s teeth before we have cleared the Chops of the Channel, after all our good luck in having so fair a wind down with us from the Nore!”
The captain still spoke somewhat disconsolately; but, his temperament was of too bright and elastic a nature to allow him long to look merely on the dark side of things. Soon, he saw something to be cheerful over, in spite of the adverse influence of Aeolus; and this was, as it appeared to him, the wonderful progress the ship was making, although sailing, close-hauled as she was, with the wind right before the beam.
“Now, isn’t she a beauty, though, McCarthy,” he said presently, with a sort of triumphant ring in his speech, after gazing for a few moments in silence over the taffrail astern at the long foaming wake the vessel was leaving behind her, spread out like a glittering silver fan across the illimitable expanse of greenish-tinged water. “Isn’t she a beauty to behave as she does under the circumstances! There are not many ships laden like her that would make five knots out of a foul wind, as she is now doing, eh?”
“That there ain’t, sorr,” promptly returned the other with hearty emphasis, only too glad to have the opportunity of agreeing with his skipper. “An’ jist you wait, sorr, till we get into the nor’-east trades; an’ by the powers we’ll say the crathur walk away from us, like one of thim race-horses on the Skibbereen coorse whin you’re a standin’ still and a watchin’ thim right foreninst you.”
“Aye, that we will, McCarthy,” chimed in Captain Dinks, now all good humour again, chuckling with anticipated pleasure and rubbing his hands together gleefully. “I wouldn’t wish for a better ship under me in fair wind or foul than the Nancy Bell. Bless her old timbers, she’s staunch and sound from truck to keelson, and the smartest clipper that ever sailed out of the London Docks—when she has anything like decent weather!”
“That she is, sorr, plaze the pigs!” chorused the Irishman to this paean of praise, which might have run on to an interminable length if it had not been just then interrupted by the mate’s suddenly raising his gilt-banded cap in nautical salute to a new-comer, who now appeared on the scene.
Captain Dinks, at once “cutting short” any further rhapsodical encomiums he may have contemplated anent the merits of the Nancy Bell, turned round.
“Ah, good morning, Mr Meldrum,” said he in cordial tones, raising his cap politely like his chief officer. “You are early on deck: an old sailor, I presume!”