THE GREEN HAND.
A "SHORT" YARN.—PART II.
We left the forecastle group of the "Gloucester" disappointed by the abrupt departure of their story-teller, Old Jack, at so critical a thread of his yarn. As old Jacobs went aft on the quarter-deck, where the binnacle-lamp before her wheel was newly lighted, he looked in with a seaman's instinct upon the compass-boxes, to see how the ship headed; ere ascending to the poop, he bestowed an approving nod upon his friend the steersman, hitched up his trousers, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in a proper deference to female society, and then proceeded to answer the captain's summons. The passengers, in a body, had left the grand cabin to the bustling steward and his boys, previously to assembling there again for tea—not even excepting the little coterie of inveterate whist-players, and the pairs of inseparable chess-men, to whom an Indian voyage is so appropriately the school for future nice practice in etiquette, war, and commerce. Everybody had at last got rid of sea-sickness, and mustered for a promenade; so that the lofty poop of the Indiaman, dusky as it was, and exposed to the breeze, fluttered with gay dresses like the midway battlement of a castle by the waves, upon which its inmates have stolen out from some hot festivity. But the long heave from below, raising her stern-end slowly against the western space of clear-obscure, in the manner characteristic of a sea abaft the beam, and rolling her to either hand, exhibited to the eyes on the forecastle a sort of alto-relievo of figures, amongst whom the male, in their blank attempts to appear nautical before the ladies, were distinguished from every other object by their variety of ridiculous postures. Under care of one or two bluff, good-humoured young mates—officers polished by previous opportunities of a kind unknown either to navy-men or mere "cargo-fenders," along with several roguish little quasi-midshipmen—the ladies were supported against the poop-rail, or seated on the after-gratings, where their contented dependence not only saved them from the ludicrous failures of their fellow-passengers, but gained them, especially the young ones, the credit of being better sailors. An accompaniment was contributed to this lively exercise on the part of the gentlemen promenaders, which otherwise, in the glimmering sea-twilight, would have been striking in a different sense; by the efforts, namely, of a little band of amateur musicians under the break of the poop, who, with flute, clarionet, bugles, trombone, and violin, after sundry practisings by stealth, had for the first time assembled to play "Rule Britannia." What, indeed, with the occasional abrupt checks, wild flourishes, and fantastic variations caused by the ship's roll; and what with the attitudes overhead, of holding on refractory hats and caps, of intensely resisting and staggering legs, or of sudden pausing above the slope which one moment before was an ascent, there was additional force in the designation quaintly given to such an aspect of things by the fore-mast Jacks—that of "a cuddy jig." As the still-increasing motion, however, shook into side-places this central group of cadets, civilians, and planters adrift, the grander features of the scene predominated: the broad mass of the ship's hull—looming now across and now athwart the streak of sinking light behind—drawn out by the weltering outline of the waters; the entire length of her white decks, ever and anon exposed to view, with their parallel lines, their nautical appurtenances, the cluster of hardy men about the windlass, the two or three "old salts" rolling to and fro along the gangway, and the variety of forms blending into both railings of the poop. High out of, and over all, rose the lofty upper outline of the noble ship, statelier and statelier as the dusk closed in about her—the expanse of canvass whitening with sharper edge upon the gloom; the hauled-up clues of the main-course, with their huge blocks, swelling and lifting to the fair wind—and the breasts of the topsails divided by their tightened bunt-lines, like the shape of some full-bosomed maiden, on which the reef-points heaved like silken fringes, as if three sisters, shadowy and goddess-like, trod in each other's steps towards the deeper solitude of the ocean; while the tall spars, the interlacing complicated tracery, and the dark top-hamper showing between, gave graceful unity to her figure; and her three white trucks, far overhead, kept describing a small clear arc upon the deep blue zenith as she rolled: the man at the wheel midway before the doors of the poop-cabin, with the light of the binnacle upon his broad throat and bearded chin, was looking aloft at a single star that had come out beyond the clue of the main-topsail.
The last stroke of "six bells" or seven o'clock, which had begun to be struck on the ship's bell when Old Jack broke off his story, still lingered on the ear as he brought up close to the starboard quarter-gallery, where a little green shed or pent-house afforded support and shelter to the ladies with the captain. The erect figure of the latter, as he lightly held one of his fair guests by the arm, while pointing out to her some object astern, still retained the attitude which had last caught the eyes of the forecastle group. The musical cadets had just begun to pass from "Rule Britannia" to "Shades of Evening;" and the old sailor, with his glazed hat in his hand, stood waiting respectfully for the captain's notice. The ladies, however, were gazing intently down upon the vessel's wake, where the vast shapes of the waves now sank down into a hollow, now rose seething up into the rudder-trunk, but all marked throughout with one broad winding track, where the huge body of the ship had swiftly passed. From foaming whiteness it melted into yesty green, that became in the hollow a path of soft light, where the sparks mingled like golden seed; the wave-tops glimmered beyond: star-like figures floated up or sank in their long undulations; and the broad swell that heaped itself on a sudden under the mounting stern bore its bells, and bubbles, and flashes, upwards to the eye. When the ship rose high and steady upon it, and one saw down her massy taffrail, it looked to a terrestrial eye rather like some mystic current issuing from the archway under a tall tower, whose foundations rocked and heaved: and so said the romantic girl beside the captain, shuddering at the vividness of an image which so incongruously brought together the fathomless deep and the distant shores of solid old England. The eye of the seaman, however, suggested to him an image more akin to the profession, as he directed his fair companion's attention to the trough of the ship's furrow, where, against the last low gleam of twilight, and by the luminous wake, could be seen a little flock of black petrels, apparently running along it to catch what the mighty ploughshare had turned up; while a gray gull or two hovered aslant over them in the blue haze. As he looked round, too, to aloft, he exchanged glances with the old sailor who had listened—an expression which even the ladies understood. "Ah! Jacobs,"—said the captain, "get the lamp lighted in my cabin, and the tea-kettle aft. With the roll she has on her, 'twill be more ship-shape there than in the cuddy." "Ay, ay, sir," said the old seaman. "How does she head just now, Jacobs?" "Sou'-west and by south, sir." "She'd lie easier for the ladies though," said the captain, knowing his steward was a favourite with them, "were the wind a point or two less fair. Our old acquaintance Captain Williamson, of the Seringapatam now, Jacobs, old-fashioned as he was, would have braced in his lee-yards only to steady a lady's tea-cup." "Ay, your honour," replied Jacobs, and his weather eye twinkled, "and washed the fok'sle under, too! But ye know, sir, he'd got a reg'lar-built Nabob aboard, and a beauty besides!" "Ah, Mr Jacobs!" exclaimed the romantic young lady, "what was that? Is it one of your stories?" "Well, your ladyship, 'tis a bit of a yarn, no doubt, and some'at of a cur'ous one." "Oh!" said another of the captain's fair protégées, "I do love these 'yarns,' as you call them; they are so expressive, so—and all that sort of thing!" "Nonsense, my love," said her mother; "you don't understand them, and 'tis better you should not,—they are low, and contain a great many bad words, I fear." "But think of the imagination, aunt," rejoined the other girl, "and the adventures! Oh, the ocean of all places for that! Were it not for sea-sickness, I should dote upon it! As for the storm just now, look how safe we are,—and see how the dear old ship rises up from the billows, with all her sails so delightfully mysterious one over another!" "Bless your heart, ma'rm, yes," responded Old Jack, chuckling; "you talks just like a seaman, beggin' your pardon. As consarns the tea, sir, I make bould to expect the'll be a shift o' wind directly, and a slant deck, as soon as we get fair into the stream, rid o' this bit of a bubble the tail of it kicks up hereabouts." "Bear a hand, then, Jacobs," said the captain, "and see all right below for the party in the cabin,—we shall be down in a few minutes." The captain stood up on the quarter-gallery, to peer round into the dusk and watch the lifting of the main-royal; but the next minute he called to the ladies, and their next neighbours, to look towards the larboard bow, and see the moon rise. A long edge of gray haze lay around the eastern horizon, on which the dark rim of the sea was defined beyond the roll of the waves, as with the sweep of a soft brush dipped in indigo; while to westward it heaved up, weltering in its own watery light against the gloom. From behind this low fringe of vapour was silently diffusing, as it were, a pool of faint radiance, like a brook babbling from under ice; a thread of silver ran along the line of haze, growing keener at one point, until the arch of the moon shot slowly up, broad and fair; the wave-heads rising between were crested here and there with light; the bow of the ship, the bellies of her fore-canvass, her bowsprit with the jibs hanging idly over it, and the figure-head beneath, were tinged by a gentle lustre, while the hollow shadows stole out behind. The distant horizon, meanwhile, still lay in an obscure streak, which blended into the dark side of the low fog-bank, so as to give sea and cloud united the momentary appearance of one of those long rollers that turn over on a beach, with their glittering crest: you would expect to see next instant what actually seemed to take place—the whole outline plashing over in foam, and spreading itself clearly forward, as soon as the moon was free. With the airy space that flowed from her came out the whole eastern sea-board, liquid and distinct, as if beyond either bow of the lifting Indiaman one sharp finger of a pair of compasses had flashed round, drawing a semicircle upon the dull background, still cloudy, glimmering, and obscure. From the waves that undulated towards her stern, the ship was apparently entering upon a smoother zone, where the small surges leapt up and danced in moonshine, resembling more the current of some estuary in a full tide. To north-westward, just on the skirts of the dark, one wing of a large, soft-gray vapour was newly smitten by the moon-gleam; and over against it on the south-east, where the long fog-bank sank away, there stretched an expanse of ocean which, on its farthest verge, gave out a tint of the most delicate opal blue. The ship, to the south-westward of the Azores, and going large before the trade-wind, was now passing into the great Gulf Stream which there runs to the south-east; even the passengers on deck were sensible of the rapid transition with which the lately cold breeze became warmer and fitful, and the motion of the vessel easier. They were surprised, on looking into the waves alongside, to perceive them struggling, as it were, under a trailing net-work of sea-weed; which, as far as one could distinctly see, appeared to keep down the masses of water like so much oil—flattening their crests, neutralising the force of the wind, and communicating a strangely sombre green to the heaving element. In the winding track of the ship's wake the eddies now absolutely blazed: the weeds she had crushed down rose to the surface again in gurgling circles of flame, and the showers of sparks came up seething on either side amongst the stalks and leaves: but as the moonlight grew more equally diffused it was evident she was only piercing an arm of that local weed-bed here formed, like an island, in the bight of the stream. Farther ahead were scattered patches and bunches of the true Florida Gulf-weed, white and moss-like; which, shining crisp in the level moonlight, and tipping the surges as it floated past, gave them the aspect of hoary-bearded waves, or the garlanded horses of Neptune. The sight still detained the captain's party on deck, and some of the ladies innocently thought these phenomena indicative of the proximity of land.
"I have seldom seen the Stream so distinct hereabouts," said Captain Collins to his first officer, who stood near, having charge of the watch. "Nor I, sir," replied the chief mate; "but it no doubt narrows with different seasons. There goes a flap of the fore-topsail, though! The wind fails, sir." "'Tis only drawing ahead, I think," said the captain; "the stream sucks the wind with its heat, and we shall have it pretty near from due nor'-west immediately." "Shall we round in on the starboard hand, then, sir, and keep both wind and current aft?" "I think not, Mr Wood," said the captain. "'Twould give us a good three knots more every hour of the next twenty-four, sir," persisted the first officer eagerly—and chief mates generally confine their theories to mere immediate progress. "Yes," rejoined the captain, "but we should lose hold of the 'trade' on getting out of the stream again. I intend driving her across, with the nor'wester on her starboard beam, so as to lie well up afterwards. Get the yards braced to larboard as you catch the breeze, Mr Wood, and make her course south-west by west." "Very well, sir." "Ladies," said the captain, "will you allow me to hand you below, where I fear Jacobs will be impatient with the tea?" "What a pity, Captain Collins," remarked the romantic Miss Alicia, looking up as they descended the companion—"what a pity that you cannot have that delicious moonlight to shine in at your cabin windows just now; the sailors yonder have it all to themselves." "There is no favour in these things at sea, Miss Alicia," said the captain, smiling. "Jack shares the chance there, at least, with his betters; but I can promise those who honour my poor suite this evening both fine moonshine and a steadier floor." On reaching the snug little after-cabin, with its swinging lamp and barometer, its side "state-room," seven feet long, and its two stern-windows showing a dark glimpse of the rolling waters, they found the tea-things set, nautical style, on the hard-a-weather, boxed-up table—the surgeon and one or two elderly gentlemen waiting, and old Jacobs still trimming up the sperm-oil light. Mrs St Clair, presiding in virtue of relationship to their host, was still cautiously pouring out the requisite half-cups, when, above all the bustle and clatter in the cuddy, could be heard the sounds of ropes thrown down on deck, of the trampling watch, and the stentorian voice of the first officer. "Jacobs!" said the captain, a minute or two afterwards; and that worthy factotum instantly appeared from his pantry alongside of the door—from whence, by the way, the old seaman might be privy to the whole conversation—"stand by to dowse the lamp when she heels," an order purposely mysterious to all else but the doctor. Every one soon felt a change in the movement of their wave-borne habitation; the rolling lift of her stern ceased; those who were looking into their cups saw the tea apparently take a decided inclination to larboard—as the facetious doctor observed, a "tendency to port." The floor gradually sloped down to the same hand, and a long, wild, gurgling wash was suddenly heard to run careering past the timbers of the starboard side. "Dear me!" fervently exclaimed every lady at once; when the very next moment the lamp went out, and all was darkness. Captain Collins felt a little hand clutch his arm in nervous terror, but the fair owner of it said nothing; until, with still more startling effect than before, in a few seconds there shot through both stern-windows the full rays of the moon, pouring their radiance into the cabin, shining on the backs of the books in the hanging shelves by the bulkhead, on the faces of the party, and the bald forehead of old Jacobs "standing by" the lamp,—lastly, too, revealing the pretty little Alicia with her hand on the captain's arm, and her pale terrified face. "Don't be alarmed, ladies!" said the surgeon, "she's only hauled on the starboard tack!" "And her counter to the east," said the captain.
"But who the dev—old gentleman, I mean—put out the lamp?" rejoined the doctor. "Ah,—I see sir!—'But when the moon, refulgent lamp of night.'" "Such a surprise!" exclaimed the ladies, laughing, although as much frightened for a moment by the magical illumination as by the previous circumstances. "You see," said the captain, "we are not like a house,—we can bring round our scenery to any window we choose." "Very prettily imagined it was, too, I declare!" observed a stout old Bombay officer, "and a fine compliment to the ladies, by Jove, sir!" "If we had any of your pompous Bengal 'Quy hies' here though, colonel," said the doctor, "they wouldn't stand being choused so unceremoniously out of the weather-side, I suspect." "As to the agreeable little surprise I meant for the ladies," said Captain Collins, "I fear it was done awkwardly, never having commanded an Indiaman before, and laid up ashore this half-a-dozen years. But one's old feelings get freshened up, and without knowing the old Gloucester's points, I can't help reckoning her as a lady too,—a very particular old 'Begum,' that won't let any one else be humoured before herself,—especially as I took charge of her to oblige a friend." "How easily she goes now!" said the doctor, "and a gallant sight at this moment, I assure you, to any one who chooses to put his head up the companion." "Ah, mamma!" said one of the girls, "couldn't you almost think this was our own little parlour at home, with the moonlight coming through the window on both sides of the old elm, where we were sitting a month ago hearing about India and papa?"
"Ah!" responded her cousin, standing up, "but there was no track of moonshine dancing beyond the track of the ship yonder! How blue the water is, and how much warmer it has grown of a sudden!"
"We are crossing the great Gulf Stream!" said the captain,—"Jacobs! open one of the stern-ports." "'Tis the very place and time, this is," remarked a good-humoured cotton-grower from the Deckan, "for one of the colonel's tiger-hunts, now!" "Sir!" answered the old officer, rather testily, "I am not accustomed to thrust my tiger-hunts, as you choose to call my humble experiences, under people's noses!" "Certainly not, my dear sir," said the planter,—"but what do you say, ladies, to one of the captain's sea-yarns, then? Nothing better, I'm sure, here and now, sir—eh?" Captain Collins smiled, and said he had never spun a yarn in his life, except when a boy, out of matter-of-fact old junk and tar. "Here is my steward, however," continued he, "who is the best hand at it I know,—and I daresay he'll give you one." "Charming!" exclaimed the young ladies; and "What was that adventure, Mr Jacobs," said Miss Alicia, "with a beauty and a Nabob in it, that you alluded to a short time ago?" "I didn't to say disactly include upon it, your ladyship," replied old Jacobs, with a tug of his hair, and a bow not just à la maître; "but the captain can give you it better nor I can, seeing as his honur were the Nero on it, as one may say." "Oh!" said the surgeon, rubbing his hands "a lady and a rupee-eater in the case!" "Curious stories, there are, too," remarked the colonel, "of those serpents of nautch-girls, and rich fools they've managed to entangle. As for beauty, sir, they have the devil's, and they'd melt the 'Honourable John's' own revenue! I know a very sensible man,—shan't mention his name,—but made of rupees, and a regular beebee-hater,—saw one of these—" "Hush, hush, my dear sir!" interrupted the planter, winking and gesticulating; "very good for the weather poop,—but presence of ladies!"—"For which I'm not fit, you'd say, sir?" inquired the colonel, firing up again. "Oh! oh! you know, colonel!" said the unlucky planter, deprecatingly. "But a godown[7] of best 'Banda' to a cowrie now, the sailor makes his beauty a complete Nourmahal, with rose-lips and moon-eyes,—and his Nabob a jehan punneh,[8] with a crore, besides diamonds. 'Twould be worth hearing, especially from a lascar. For, 'twixt you and I, colonel, we know how rare it is to hear of a man who saves his lac, now-a-days, with Yankees in the market, no Nawaubs to fight, and reform in cutcheries[9]!" "There seems something curious about this said adventure of yours, my dear captain," said Mrs St Clair, archly,—"and a Beauty too! It makes me positively inquisitive, but I hope your fair lady has heard the story?" "Why, not exactly, ma'am," replied Captain Collins, laughing as he caught the doctor looking preternaturally solemn, after a sly lee-wink to the colonel; who, having his back to the moonlight, stretched out his legs and indulged in a grim, silent chuckle, until his royal-tiger countenance was unhappily brought so far flush[10] in the rays as to betray a singular daguerreotype, resembling one of those cut-paper phantasmagoria thrown on a drawing-room wall, unmistakably black and white, and in the character of Malicious Watchfulness. The rubicund, fidgety little cotton-grower twiddled his thumbs, and looked modestly down on the deck, with half-shut eyes, as if expecting some bold revelation of nautical depravity; while the romantic Miss Alicia coloured and was silent. "However," said the captain, coolly, "it is no matrimonial secret, at any rate! We both think of it when we read the Church Service of a Sunday night at home, with Jacobs for the clerk." "Do, Mr Jacobs, oblige us!" requested the younger of the girls. "Well, Miss," said he, smoothing down his hair in the doorway, and hemming, "'Tan't neither for the likes o' me to refuse a lady, nor accordin' to rules for to give such a yarn in presence of a supperior officer, much less the captain,—with a midship helm, ye know marm, ye carn't haul upon one tack nor the other. Not to say but next forenoon watch——" "I see, Jacobs, my man," interrupted Captain Collins, "there's nothing for it but to fore-reach upon you, or else you'll be 'Green-Handing' me aft as well as forward; so I must just make the best of it, and take the winch in my own fashion at once!" "Ay, ay, sir—ay, ay, your honour!" said Old Jack demurely, and concealing his gratification as he turned off into the pantry, with the idea of for the first time hearing the captain relate the incidents in question. "My old shipmate," said the latter, "is so fond of having trained his future captain, that it is his utmost delight to spin out everything we ever met with together into one endless yarn, which would go on from our first acquaintance to the present day, although no ship's company ever heard the last of it. Without falling knowingly to leeward of the truth, he makes out every lucky coincidence, almost, to have been a feat of mine, and puts in little fancies of his own, so as to give the whole thing more and more of a marvellous air, the farther it goes. The most amusing thing is, that he almost always begins each time, I believe, at the very beginning, like a capstan without a paul—sticking in one thing he had forgot before, and forgetting another; sometimes dwelling longer on one part—a good deal like a ship making the same voyages over again. I knew, now, this evening, when I heard the men laughing, and saw Old Jack on the forecastle, what must be in the wind. However, we have shared so many chances, and I respect the old man so much, not to speak of his having dandled my little girls on his knee, and being butler, steward, and flower-gardener at home, that I can't really be angry at him, in spite of the sort of every man's rope he makes of me!" "How very amusing a character he is!" said one young lady. "A thought too tarry, perhaps?" suggested the surgeon. "So very original and like a—seaman!" remarked Miss Alicia, quietly, but as if some other word that crossed her mind had been rejected, as descriptive of a different variety, probably higher. "Original, by Jove!" exclaimed the colonel; "if my Khansa-man, or my Abdar,[11] were to make such a dancing dervish and tumasha[12] of me behind back, by the holy Vishnu, sir, I'd rattan him myself within an inch of his life!" "Not an unlikely thing, colonel," put in the planter; "I've caught the scoundrels at that trick before now." "What did you do?" inquired the colonel, speculatively. "Couldn't help laughing, for my soul, sir; the puckree bund[13] rascals did it so well, and so funnily!" The irascible East-Indian almost started up in his imaginative fury, to call for his palkee, and chastise his whole verandah, when the doctor reminded him it was a long way there. "Glorious East!" exclaimed the medico, looking out astern, "where we may cane our footmen, and whence, meanwhile, we can derive such Sanscrit-sounding adjurations, with such fine moonlight!"
The presence of the first officer was now added to the party, who came down for a cup of tea, fresh from duty, and flavouring strongly of a pilot cheroot. "How does she head, Mr Wood?" asked the captain. "Sou'-west by west, sir,—a splendid night, under everything that will draw,—spray up to the starboard cat-head!"