‘And what else?’ cried Mr. Cocker, smothering his laughter.
‘Oh, him say “Gib me egg for breakfiss;” and him laugh “haw-haw;” and him say “hook it” and “whach you wantee;” and he speakee better than common sailor-man;’ and here he burst out into another long wailing ‘Oh—ai—O! Him gone for drownded. Him gone for lost, I say!’
‘Now you hear what this man says, my lads,’ called Mr. Cocker. ‘Jump aloft, those of you who are not afraid, and catch the bird if you can.’
The young fourth mate set the example; and in a trice a dozen sailors were running up the fore main and mizzen, where for a long half-hour they were bawling to one another, some of them feigning to have caught the bird, whilst they kurikity-cooed at the top of their pipes, the Chinaman meanwhile shrieking with excitement as he ran from one mast to another. But it was all to no purpose. The bird had evidently gone overboard; probably had attempted a flight with its shorn pinions after the second of the men who had been frightened had come down in a hurry. The search was renewed next morning at daybreak; but poor Prince was gone for good.
CHAPTER VI
WE LOSE A MAN
Spite of Mr. Cocker’s hints as to Captain Keeling’s timidity in the matter of canvas, the old skipper evidently knew what he was about in taking in his flying kites in good time, for whilst the seamen were still scrambling in the rigging and skylarking up there in search of the parrot, the breeze freshened in a long moaning gust over the rail, with a brighter flashing of the stars to windward, and a sudden stoop of the Indiaman that sent a line of water washing along her sides in milk; and at midnight she was bowing down with nothing showing above her main topgallant-sail to a strong wind off the beam, the stars gone, and a look of hard weather in the obscurity of the horizon.
For the next four days we had plenty of wind and high seas with frequent grey rain-squalls shrouding the ship, and leaving her with streaming decks and darkened canvas and dribbling gear. It was Channel weather again, in short, saving that there was the relish of the temperate parallels in the air, whilst the seas rolled large and wide and regular with all the difference betwixt the motion of the ship and her rollicking neck-breaking capers in the narrow waters that you’d find between the trot of a donkey and the majestical thunderous gallop of a charger.
But the wet made a miserable time of it. What was there to be seen on deck save the gleaming forms of men in oil-skins, the sweep of the dark-green surge out of the near veil of haze, the rain-shadowed curves of the canvas—the whole fitly put to music by the damp dull clattering of booms, noises of chafing up aloft, and the wild whistling of the wind upon the taut weather rigging? The males amongst us who smoked would come together after meals in a huddle under the break of the poop, cowering against the weather bulkhead out of the wet of the rain; and on these occasions arguments ran high. If Colonel Bannister was of our company, nothing could be said but that he whipped out with a flat contradiction to it. In fact, he was of that order of mind who reckons its mission to be that of teaching everybody to think correctly.