Our new friend never wore either collar or vest. When not “on duty,” as he expressed it, he went about in his shirt-sleeves. His breeches were of the ample sailor-cut, and hung from suspenders as intricate as a ship’s rigging. His shirts were spotlessly white, and of very fine linen. A short black pipe was always in his mouth, or sticking its clay stem from a waist-band pocket.
Such, my dear boys, was Captain Mugford, whom we fellows dubbed “our salt tute,” in contradistinction to Mr Clare, who was afterwards known as “our fresh tutor.”
As Mr Clare came over the brig’s side, he said, with a bow, “Captain Mugford, I believe. These boys are to be both your crew and my scholars. I am their tutor, Richard Clare.”
“I am happy to see you, Mr Clare. Give me your hand, sir. I hope our different commands will not clash.”
As the skipper shook hands, he looked Mr Clare all over at a glance, and smiled as if pleased with the inspection.
“Come here, boys; if I’m not out in my calculation, these boys will do to sail any craft on land or water! Well, my hearties, we are often to be shipmates, so let’s be friends to start with. I don’t know your different names, boys, only that three of you are sons of my old and respected friend and owner—that’s good enough—and you all look as if you hated lies and kept above-board.”
“These,” said Mr Clare, laying his hands on Harry’s and Alfred’s shoulders, “are Higginsons!”
“Higginsons? Fancy I knew your father, young gentlemen—an honest man, and a kind man, and a true man, and a brave man, if he was John Higginson; and brother of David Higginson, under whom I once served, and a better sailor never stepped. As he died unmarried, I take you to be John Higginson’s sons. And if all you boys act as honest as you look, you need not care for shipwrecks of any kind—love or money, lands or goods, by land or by water.”
Well, we thought the Captain a brick. So he was. So he proved.
We passed all the morning on the wreck. Each one of its details was a new delight. The Captain talked about the brig as if she were a human being in misfortune. An old invalid, he said—a veteran old salt laid up in a sailor’s snug harbour; laid up and pensioned for the remainder of life, where it was able to overlook, by the side and in the very spray of its well-loved brine, the billows it had often gloried in.