A Man's Man Part 19

"He's gotten twa wooden feet the noo," replied Goble more cheerfully, "and he's been minding the lamp-room this twenty year. I've heard frae him noo and again, and we've always been freens; but his auld mither has never forgiven me. She's ower seventy the day, but Jeems tells me she aye lets a curse every time he mentions ma name."

A further instalment of Mr. Goble's adventures explained how he took to the sea.

"After I cleared oot o' Motherwell I went to the Clydeside. I was a fair enough mechanic by this time, but I had tak'n a sort o' skunner at machinery--no wi'oot some reason--and I tried for to get taken on as a dock-hand. I had no luck there, and I was fair starvin' when yin day I met a freend o' min' on the Dumbarton Road, and he asked me would I like tae wash dishes and peel potaties on a pa.s.senger steamer. I would hae been pleased tae soop the lums o' muckle h.e.l.l by that time, gin it was for a wage, I was that thrawn wi' hunger; so I jist said, "Deed ay!'

"For a hale summer I sat peelin' potaties and washin' dishes on board the Electra, her that has done a trip doon the watter, roond about Arran and Bute, and hame by Skelmorlie ilka day o' the summer season for twenty-twa years. When the winter cam' on I dooted I would be oot o' a job again; but bein' nowadays permanently on the teetotal, and varra dependable, I was shifted tae the auld Stornoway, o' the same line, carryin' goods, cattle, and pa.s.sengers tae the West Highlands--Coll, Tiree, Barra, Uist, Ullapool, and a wheen places in and oot o' sea-lochs up and doon that coast. She loused frae the Broomielaw every Thursday at three o'clock in the afternoon, and she was back there, week in week out, summer and winter, by eleven in the forenoon o' the following Wednesday. The folk along by Largs, where her cap'n lived, used tae set their watches by her. She was a fine auld boat, the Stornoway: she piled herself up on the rocks below the Scuir of Eig, where she had no call tae be, in a snowstorm seven winters syne. I was a cabin steward nowadays, ye'll unnerstand; and once we were roond the Mull and the pa.s.sengers had thrawn up what they'd had tae their tea off Gourock and tak'n a dander ash.o.r.e at Oban, appet.i.tes was big and I was busy. It was the first time I had seen the gentry at their meals, and it improved my mainners considerable. Never since then have I skailed ma tea intil ma saucer: I jist gie a bit blow on it noo. Yon's Mr. Allerton roarin' for to be relieved at the wheel."

On another occasion Goble explained how he came to forsake the fleshpots of the Stornoway and take to the high seas.

"I was aye hankerin', hankerin' after the machinery," he explained. "A body canna serve tables all his life. So after twa years on the Stornoway I shippit as a fireman on a pa.s.senger steamer outward bound frae Glasgow tae Bilbao. There I left her, tae be second engineer on a wee tramp carrying iron-ore tae the Mediterranean. That was nigh twenty years ago, and I've never set fit in Scotland since. Weel, weel! Aha!

Mphm!" (_Ad lib._ and _da capo_.)

So he would discourse, in a manner which pa.s.sed many a weary hour for both, and added considerably to Hughie's stock of human knowledge.

The days wore on. The work and long hours were beginning to tell their tale, but the entire crew kept grimly to it. Their nerves were in good order too. Even when, on the morning of the sixteenth day, as they groped their way through a streaming wet fog, a great ghostly monster of a liner suddenly loomed out of the wrack, and, as she shouldered her way past them, actually sc.r.a.ped the starboard counter with her stern, while the look-out on her forward deck yelled frantically, and a frightened man up aloft on the bridge flung his wheel over with great rattling of steam steering-gear to avoid a collision, the sole occupant of the Orinoco's deck--it was Goble: he was steering while Hughie and Walsh took their turn in the stokehold and Allerton slept--did not deem the occasion sufficiently important to merit a report until he was relieved from duty two hours later.

But this encounter provided that pawky philosopher with a valuable clue as to their whereabouts.

"She was a Ben liner," he intimated to Hughie in describing the event.

"I saw the twa bit stripes roond her funnel, and her name, Ben Cruachan, on her stern. They're Glasgow boats, and sail every other Thursday tae Buenos Ayres, calling at Moville on Lough Foyle tae tak' up Irish pa.s.sengers. It's no' near Cape Clear we are, anyway. We're somewhere off the north coast o' Ireland, sir. I kenned fine we were near land: this is a ground swell that's throwin' us aboot noo. Aiblins we'll be gettin'

a dunt against the Giant's Causeway if we're no' canny."

There was something in Goble's conclusions, for after they had steamed dead slow all night the rising sun licked up the fog; and there, ten miles to the south of them, lay a long green seacoast; and straight before them uprose what looked like a rocky island, with a homely-looking white lighthouse perched half-way up its rugged face.

"If that land to the right is Ireland," said Hughie, "we can't be very far from Scotland. I wonder what that great rock ahead of us can be.

Lucky we didn't reach it a couple of hours ago!"

"Don't you think," suggested Allerton, putting his head out of the engine-room hatchway, "that as we have a _pukka_ Scot on board, we had better rouse him up and see if he can identify his native land?"

It was Goble's turn for sleep, but Allerton's suggestion was adopted, and he was haled on deck.

"Do you happen to recognise that island straight ahead, Mr. Goble?"

inquired Hughie.

Goble surveyed the rock and the lighthouse, and though his countenance remained unmoved, his eye lit up with proprietary pride.

"Island? Yon's no' an island," he replied. "'Tis Scotland hersel'. Sir, 'tis the Mull o' Kintyre! It rins straight awa' back tae Argyllshire.

We're at the varra mouth o' the Clyde. We micht hae been drawed there across the Atlantic by a bit string! G.o.d presairve us, it's a miracle!"

"The Clyde?" shouted Hughie. It seemed too utterly good to be true. "Are you sure, Goble? Is that really the Mull?"

"Sure?" Goble's expression was a mixture of pity and resentment. "Man, I'm tellin' ye I sailed roond it twice a week for the best pairt o' twa years. I was awfu' sick the first time. The second--"

All this time the Mull of Kintyre was growing nearer.

"What's the course?" queried Walsh, leaning over the bridge. "Do I turn up New Cut, Mr. Goble, or keep straight along the Blackfr'ars Road?"

Everybody's spirits were soaring marvellously at the sight of the blessed green land. Walsh's wife was within twenty-four hours of him.

"Keep yon heap o' stanes on your left hand, ma mannie," replied the greatly inflated Goble, facetiously indicating the towering headland before them, "and then straight on Ailsa Craig. You're daen' fine. Mr.

Marrable, will you rin her up tae the Tail o' the Bank, off Greenock, or gi'e a cry in at Campbeltown Bay? It's jist roond the corner."

"Hang it! we'll take her all the way, now we have got so far," said Hughie. "We're _home_! I _was_ reckoning on bringing up in Plymouth Sound; but that's a detail. Come on, Allerton, let's go below and fire up for the last time. We'll bring her in in style!"

And so it came about that not many hours later the Orinoco, a rotting hulk, clogged with weed, corroded with rust, caked with salt, feebly churning up the water with her debilitated propeller, steamed painfully but grandly past the Cloch Light and into the mouth of the Clyde. A sorry object she may have seemed to the b.u.t.terfly host of natty paddle-steamers which was pouring down the river under the forced draught of triple compet.i.tion, carrying the Glasgow man, released from office, to Dunoon and Rothesay and other summer repositories for wife and family. But to those who _knew_, she was no uncleanly tramp, but a battle-scarred veteran,--a ship that had deserved well of the Republic of the high seas,--another little Golden Hind, though laden with nothing nearer to Spanish ingots than bottles of imitation French claret. Every scar on her sides was an honourable wound; every groan and creak that rose from her starting timbers a paean; every cough and wheeze that proceeded from her leaky cylinders a prayer of joyful thanks. The Orinoco had graduated high in the nameless but glorious band of those who have ill.u.s.trated, not altogether without profit and pride, the homely truth that

Life ain't holdin' good cards; It's playin' a poor hand _well_!

And so she turned the last corner of her long and painful Odyssey, and came home to lay up her bones by the Clyde, which had given them birth.

And by a happy chance the unconscious Hughie, instead of navigating her to the Tail of the Bank as he had intended, changed his mind, put over his helm, and conned her up to the head of that beautiful Gareloch which, many many years ago, had given the little ship her maiden name.

There, swinging at her rusty cable, with the clear green water laving her weary forefoot, and the hills above Roseneath and Shandon smiling rea.s.suringly down upon her in the glow of the evening sun, we will leave her. _Molliter ossa cubent!_

The law's delays are proverbial, and the task of getting even with Mr.

Noddy Kinahan involved Hughie in endless encounters with those in high places, several appearances (with suite) in the abodes of the Law, and another trip to New York--by Cunarder this time.

However, grim determination will accomplish most things; and when some months later Hughie finally sailed from New York for his native land, the labour of love had been completed, and Mr. Noddy Kinahan was duly regretting, for a term of years, the fact that he had ever been born.

This consummation was followed by another, depressing but inevitable.

The Orinoco Salvage Company, having served its purpose, paid Nature's debt and ceased to exist. The circ.u.mstances connected with its demise, together with the respective fates of Hughie's little band of Argonauts, will best be gathered from the following epistolary excerpts:--

No. I (N. B. _Spelling corrected_)

c/o MISTRESS HOWIESON, 17 CANDLISH STREET, GREENOCK.

To H. MARRABLE, Esq.:--

SIR,--I thank you for cheque, and have disposed of same. I also thank you for offer to find a job for me. But I would prefer to bide by you, as I feel I will not get a better job than that. I would like fine to be your servant. You will be needing some one to redd up your quarters and keep your clothes sorted, now you are ash.o.r.e. (Women is no' to be trusted.) Of course I would not want a big wage: the siller from the Orinoco will do grandly for a long time. I ken fine the way to wait at table and clean silver, having been steward, as I once telled you, on the old Stornoway, where they had a cuddy full of gentry every trip.--Your servant (I am hoping),

JNO. ALEX. GOBLE.

No. II

(_Extracts. No date or address, but obviously written in a public-house_)

... So you must take the money back. It is no use to me: all I should get out of it would be a d----d bad headache. Also, it might give me ideas above my station, which is bad for the lower orders at any time. Give it to Walsh; but don't let on, of course, that it comes from me: let him believe that it is part of his natural share of the salvage. I have kept back enough to pay for a new suit (which I am now wearing) and one big bust before I sail next week as deck steward on an Aberdeen liner.

... Well, it was a great trip. We have all got something out of it. You have got an adventure and incidentally done a big thing, and I have spent a month of absolute happiness in the society of men who regarded me neither as an object of pity nor as a monster of depravity, but were content to let me go my own way as a man who prefers to live his own life and be asked no questions.... Your offer to set me on my legs again and make me a respectable member of society is friendly and, I suppose, natural; but it threatens a happy episode with a sad ending. I'm not cut out for conventionality, and (_pace_ your kind references to my "sterling merit and latent force of character") I am not of the stuff that successful men are made of. I have only done two big things in my life. One was getting elected to Pop at Eton, the other was helping you to bring the old Orinoco home. I think I'll rest on my laurels now. I suppose I was born a rotter, and if you were to endeavour to raise me to your giddy heights I should only fall down again, and the b.u.mp at the bottom might hurt. I am safer where I am: the beauty of lying on the floor is that you can't fall off.

... Well, chin, chin! If I may be permitted to gush for a moment, I should like to tell you that you are a good sort.--Yours ever,

LIONEL ALLERTON.

No. III