‘What are those people in her?’
‘Rogues all, missy—rogues all.’
‘Where are they going to?’ said I.
He pointed to a great wooden hulk that lay off Woolwich, the hull of a man-of-war, made hideous by a variety of deck erections, and by rows of linen fluttering betwixt the poles which rose out of her decks.
‘That’s where they’re going to,’ said Mr. Smears. ‘And shall I tell ’ee who’s the skipper of that craft? ’Taint no Government bloke—let ne’er a man believe it! The skipper’s name begins with a D and ends with a h-L. I’m not going to say more, missy. Father’ll supply ye with the missing letters. Yond skipper’s name begins with a D and ends with a h-L, and them livelies in gray,’ said he, nodding toward the boat we had nearly run down, ‘are his young ’uns, and they do credit to their parient, if looks ain’t lies.’
Then, starting up, he cried: ‘Ready about, lads!’ and a moment later the helm was put down and our canvas was wildly shaking, and then the brig heeled over and with steady sails ripped through the yellow lustrous surface of the river’s breast on her slanting course down Woolwich Reach.
I did not long look at the great hull of the old man-of-war and her hideous deck erections and her flapping prison linen. I was a child, with a child’s eye for beauty, and my gaze would quickly wander from the prison-ship which I was altogether too young to quicken and inform with the loathsome fascination one finds in all such abodes of human crime and miserable mortal distress; I say my eye would quickly turn from that horrible floating jail to the fifty sights of movement and colour round about; to the hoy with its cargo of passengers from Margate and a fiddle and a harp making music in the bows lazily stemming Londonward; to the barge going away with the tide, sending a scent of rich country across the wind from its lofty cargo of hay on whose summit lies a man on his back, sound asleep; to the large ship fresh from the other side of the world with sailors dangling aloft, and a merry echo of capstanpawls timing a little crowd of men running round and round her forecastle; the wife of the captain aft talking to a waterman in a wherry over the side, and the captain himself, baked brown by the suns of three or four great oceans, excitedly stepping from rail to rail in a walk of impassioned anxiety and impatience.
I have the words, you see! Does the language of the deep sound strange in the mouth of a woman? The wives and daughters of military men may deliver themselves in the speech of the barracks and nobody thinks anything of it. Why should not the daughter of a sailor and the wife of a sailor possess the language of her father and of her husband’s profession, and talk it whenever the need arises without raising wonder?
After my father’s death, his little fleet of ships were sold, in accordance with the direction of his will. The thing was bungled. My mother was a poor woman of business. She fell out with my uncle, William Johnstone, over the sale of the vessels, and put the business in the hands of a broker, who robbed us. Yet, when the estate was realised, we were pretty well to do. The freehold in Stepney was to come to me at the death of my mother. Under my father’s will there was a settlement that secured me three hundred pounds a year. The trustees were two sea-captains. My mother was well provided for; but one saw, by the terms of my father’s will, that he had no confidence in her. Yet he did not stipulate that she should not marry again; though, had I been older at the time, I should have looked for some condition of the sort, for he was very jealous. In fine, and what I have to relate obliges me to dwell upon these trumpery particulars, my father’s will gave me his house at my mother’s death, and secured three hundred pounds a year to me in any case when I should become of age or on my marriage, the interest meanwhile to grow and be mine; and then, at my mother’s death, a portion of what had been willed to her was to revert to me, and the remainder was to be distributed amongst two or three poor and distant relations and a few charities, all of them maritime.
Thus, at my father’s death, I might fairly have been described by a forward-looking eye as what you would call a tolerably fair match; and at the age of seventeen I deserved to be thought so, not only because of my money and the pleasant old house that would be mine, but because of my good looks. At seventy-seven there can be no vanity in retrospect. Moreover, since this story is to be told, you shall have the whole truth. At seventeen, then, I was a tall, strong, well-made girl, broad, but in proportion, and they used to tell me that I carried my figure with the grace of a professional dancer. I was exactly opposite to my mother in colour. My hair was black as the wing of a raven; my eyes very black and filled with a strong light, which brightened to a look of fever in times of excitement; my complexion was pale but clear; my teeth large, white, and regular, and I showed them much in talking and laughing. I’ll not deny that my charms—and handsome I truly was—inclined to coarseness; by which I mean that they leaned toward the manly rather than the womanly side. My voice was a contralto, and when I sang I would sink to a note that was reckoned uncommonly deep for a girl.