Chapter Fifteen.
Comedy to Tragedy.
“Hullo, my lads! This won’t do, this won’t do!” shouted out a petty officer just then, as he came tacking about the deck and trying to make a straight course for the hatchway. “There’d be a fine row if Number One came along here and saw that theer mess on the deck!”
“Faith, we couldn’t hilp it, row or no row,” said Mick, whose temper was a little bit heated from the recollection of ‘Ugly’s’ conduct, and the fright he really had experienced on my account in spite of his trying to treat it as a joke. “Sure, sor, the toob toombled down atop ov this poor bhoy here, an’ a’most made gammy duff ov him!”
“Well, well, p’raps y’ll have better luck next time,” replied the man jokingly; and, turning to me, he said in a kindly way, “A miss is as good as a mile, my lad; but, accident or no accident, you’ll have to clear up that mess there, or there’ll be ructions aboard, I can tell you!”
“All roight, sor,” said Mick, as he clutched hold of a swab which we had brought with us, in case of such an emergency. “Oi’ll make it roight, sure, in a brace ov shakes, sor.”
I, too, bore a hand with another swab, as did Finlayson; and we soon made the place all shipshape again, another wave, which washed down the hatchway when we had finished, putting a polish on our work.
Nothing further was seen of ‘Ugly,’ however, either by Mick or myself, the ill-tempered brute evidently keeping out of our way; and it was not till late in the afternoon that I saw him again aft, when both watches were called to treble-reef the topsails, and we boys belonging to the ship had to go aloft to take in the mizzen.
We had not weathered Finisterre yet, though we had been bucketing about in the Bay now for over three days; the wind, which had been blowing in strong squalls from the north’ard and west’ard, suddenly backing to the south-east and coming on to blow harder than ever.
The sea got up also in a corresponding degree, its huge billows, as they rolled onward propelled by the gale, rearing themselves up in mid-air till they seemed sometimes to be level with the top of our mainmast, surpassing in height even those which my old friend Larrikins had described as ‘mountings ’igh.’