Our position looked unpleasant enough now, thus cast away in a piratical district; and besides, the gathering clouds to windward, of inky blackness, foretold to our experienced eyes that one of the violent squalls of wind and rain called Sumatras, which are of daily occurrence at this season, would soon be upon us. Seamen, however, are the handiest of mortals; and in a surprisingly short space of time a tent was rigged from the boats’ sails and spars, under which we all huddled from the storm, which was now in full strength. How the rain did come down! As if the very flood-gates of heaven were open! And how the furious wind shook our frail tent till we expected every moment to have it down about our ears. The situation was becoming every moment the more trying, as with sails soaked through, we were subjected to the full brunt of the awful drench. In spite of the trenches that we had dug in the sand with our oars to serve as water-ways, we were soon lying in a pool of water.
Strange to say, however, this was found rather a relief from the cold breeze, and many men proceeded to deepen their beds so as to immerse the whole body in water. Of the two elements the water was found to be the warmer! All the mosquitoes within hail had of course made their rendezvous in our tent; and even worse than they, the abominable sand-flies commenced their assaults with such zeal that nothing was to be heard but slaps and anathemas, bestowed with great impartiality. Strange to say, many men actually slept calmly through all the din; but most of us kept awake, singing and smoking; and so the wretched night passed away till the last touch was given to our misery by seeing the fire put out by an unusually heavy squall and rain. To supplement even the last touch, a cruel stop was put to our smoking, as our matches had become soaked and useless. Our pipe was literally put out; and as the last drop of grog had been served out, we had to content ourselves with singing and yarning till the first faint streaks of dawn appeared and the rain ceased.
What miserable, bedraggled creatures we were when the morning sun broke bright and cloudless on the beach, our dripping clothes stained with mud and sand, and our faces so swollen with bites that it was with difficulty we could recognise each other! However it did not do to stand and shiver—that is an absurdity which Jack has never been guilty of—so one party set to work trying to light a fire with the help of a cartridge (a futile endeavour, everything being so soaked); while others endeavoured to launch the cutter, which was lying high and dry on the mud, a large hole in her bottom explaining the hitherto unaccountable mystery of her sinking. Our ingenuity was fully taxed in our attempts to again wed the somewhat unwieldy craft to the water; but Jack’s resources seem never to fail him, as with many an ingenious artifice we at length succeed in patching the leak and floating the cutter.
We were hungry enough by this time to eat anything; but it was no use piping to breakfast, for we had no food; and even had we caught some more fish, they were no use without a fire, and all attempts to create even a spark had been in vain. So we sauntered about the beach or tried to penetrate the jungle; in the latter case getting well bitten for our pains by the red ants, till our eyes were gladdened by the sight of two boats pulling in our direction from the ship. This was lucky, for we had just decided on risking the passage in the cutter. It was a long time before the boats could reach us, for they too had a difficulty in finding the channel; but at last they pulled into the river and landed with some provisions. Oh, how enjoyable was that glass of rum! How precious the matches wherewith to rekindle the beloved baccy! Even the raw pork was pleasant enough to our hungry stomachs. But after we had lit our pipes, we forgot all our troubles, and expressed our willingness to remain another night and have some more fun. It was not to be, however. Our relief brought us orders to return aboard immediately; and in another hour we found ourselves alongside the ship, receiving the congratulations and chaff of our shipmates, and after all none the worse for our seining-party.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
CHAPTER XVII.—AT OLD PLUGGER’S.
London boarding-houses being regulated by no statute law, and as little liable to the supervision of the police and the interference of the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Home Department as are other free commercial concerns, are very much harder to classify than are London hotels, inns, and public-houses. Their very exterior, which is decorated by no gaudy signs or gold-lettered inscriptions relative to viands, neat wines or cordials, might cause them to be mistaken for schools, workshops, or private dwellings. Even when a brass plate on the door bears the name of Bloss or Grewer or Pawkins—people who keep boarding-houses do appear, for some inscrutable reason, to parade the oddest patronymics—nobody not enlightened enough to know who Pawkins, Bloss, or Grewer may be, would gather much information from the laconic announcement. In all London there was not, taking one place with another, a much queerer boarding-house than one which stood on the Southwark or Surrey side of the Thames, and so nearly opposite to the Tower that the gaunt turrets of the grim old fortress were always (save in a fog of peculiar density) visible from its upper windows. This boarding-house, at the corner of what was called Dampier’s Row, was very solidly built, chiefly as it would seem, of the massive timbers of ships dissected in the breakers’ yards close by; and with its bow-windows and bulging outline, seemed to stand hard by the water’s edge, like some sturdy collier craft that had accidentally got stranded and was trying to accustom itself to life ashore. This particular boarding-house, the green door of which bore no distinguishing mark, was known in the neighbourhood and far along the river below bridge, as ‘Old Plugger’s.’
Whether there was a Plugger still in existence or not, it may be surmised that the original and veteran possessor of that name had enjoyed a widespread connection among mariners, for most of the present inmates of the house were seafaring persons. Most, but not all. And of the nautical boarders at Plugger’s none were common seamen. The title of ‘Captain’ was in as constant requisition within its weather-bleached porch, overgrown with scarlet-runners, as it could possibly be at a military club farther west. Two-thirds of the swarthy, restless-eyed customers claimed to have a right to that honorary prefix, or at the least to have been ‘officers’ of one branch or another of the mercantile marine. The remainder, apparently attracted to the spot by the smell of the tar and paint from the neighbouring wharfs, or by the sight of the forest of masts that rose up between them and the Middlesex shore, or by congenial company, had much to say as to gulches and placers and auriferous river-bars, and gold-dust which, after months of toil and hunger, had been fooled away in a week’s mad revel; and colossal fortunes that could infallibly be realised by any one who had a pitiful thousand pounds at command, and would be guided by sound advice as to its investment.
It was not a cheap boarding-house, according to the tariff of such establishments, this one of Old Plugger’s. Rivals and humbler imitators held it in respect, for it was a thriving concern. Its rooms seldom stood empty for long, and its frequenters somehow found the wherewithal to pay their score. It was not a noisy place; by no means comparable to the riotous dens about Tiger Bay and elsewhere, or to the sailors’ publics at Wapping or Rotherhithe; but now and then there was a din from within it, a shouting of hoarse voices, a trampling of heavy feet, a crashing of woodwork or of glass, and then silence. And if just then a patrol of the police happened to be passing down the main street, and some one said that the disturbance was at Old Plugger’s, the sergeant would shake his head as meaningly as Lord Burleigh in the Critic. But nobody seemed to care to inquire too curiously into the nature of the altercation in what was euphemistically known, among the trades-folk of the vicinity, as the captains’ boarding-house.