“Well, be quick about it,” we exclaimed, “or Drummore will be topping his boom, and you will miss your chance.” Thereon O’Wiggins tumbled into his boat, and pulled aboard the “Sea Eagle.” What story he told—what arguments he used—we never heard; but very shortly we had the satisfaction of seeing the Misses Rattler and Mary Masthead, with their skittish chaperone, Mrs Skyscraper, transferred to the deck of the “Sea Eagle.”
We strongly suspected that the prim baronet had not the slightest conception as to who formed the component parts of the company with whom he was to be favoured. He bowed rather stiffly as he received them and their bandboxes on deck; but he was in for it; his gallantry would not allow him to send them back to the “Popple,” and he had, therefore, only to wish sincerely for a fair breeze, that he might land them as speedily as possible at Ryde. The O’Wiggins waved his cap with an extra amount of vehemence, and putting up his helm, and easing off his sheets, stood away for Falmouth. We, at the same time, shaped a course down Channel, mightily glad that we were free of all fast young ladies and flirting widows.
“O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!”
spouted Carstairs, pointing to the wide Atlantic which rolled before us.
“The sea, the sea, the open sea!—
The wide, the blue, the ever free;
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth’s wide region round!
I’m on the sea—
I am where I would ever be:
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe’er I go,”
chimed in Hearty, whose quotations and sketches were always from authors of more modern date.
“You’ll sing different songs to those, gentlemen, if it comes on to blow a gale of wind while we are crossing the Bay,” said Porpoise, laughing. “The sea always puts me in mind of a woman, very delightful when she’s calm and smiling, but very much the contrary when a gale is blowing. I’ve knocked about all my life at sea, and have got pretty tired of storms, which I don’t like a bit better than when I first went afloat.”
“Never fear for us,” answered Hearty. “I never was in a storm in my life, and I want to see how the ‘Frolic’ will behave.”
“As to that, I dare say she will behave well enough,” said Porpoise. “There’s no craft like a cutter for lying-to, or for beating off a lee-shore; or working through a narrow channel, for that matter, though a man-of-war’s man says it. We have the credit of preferring our own square-rigged vessels to all others, and not knowing how to handle a fore-and-after.”
“Come what may, we’ll trust to you to do the best which can be done under any chances which may occur,” said Hearty. “And now here comes Ladle to summon us to dinner.” To dinner we went, and a good one we ate, and many a good one after it. Many a joke was uttered, many a story told, and many a song was sung. In truth, the days slipped away more rapidly even than on shore.