Afloat at Last Part 11

As Weeks, therefore, advanced with a grin, confidently as before, thinking that I should merely remain on guard, I threw my left straight out, swinging all the weight of my body in the blow; and then, stepping forwards, I gave him the benefit of my right fist, the one following up the other in quick succession, although I acted on Tim's advice, and directed my aim towards his body.

The result of these new tactics of mine altered alike the complexion not only of the fight but that of my antagonist as well; for he went down on the deck with a heavy dull thud, almost all his remaining breath knocked out of him.

"Hurrah, the little un wins!" cheered some of the hands; while others rejoined in opposition, "The lanky one ain't licked yet!"

But, to my especial friend the boatswain the end of the contest was now a foregone conclusion and victory a.s.sured to me.

"Bedad, me bhoy," he whispered in my ear as he prepared me for what turned out to be the final round of the battle, "that last dhroive av yourn wor loike the kick av a horse, or a pony anyhow! One more brace av them one-twos, Misther Gray-ham, an' he'll be kilt an' done wid!"

It was as Rooney said.

Matthews forced Weeks well-nigh against his will to face me once more, when my double hit again floored him incontinently, when the ship, giving a lurch to leeward at the same time, rolled him into the scuppers, as before at our first encounter.

This settled the matter, for, with all the pluck taken out of him and completely cowed, Master Sammy did not offer to rise until Matthews, catching hold of his collar, forcibly dragged him to his feet.

"Three cheers for the little un!" shouted one of the hands, as I stood triumphant on the deck in their midst, the hero of the moment, sailors following the common creed of their fellow men in worshipping success.

"Hooray!"

A change came over the scene, however, the next instant.

For, ere the last note of the cheer had ceased ringing out from their l.u.s.ty throats, Captain Gillespie's long nose came round the corner of the cook's caboose, followed shortly afterwards by the owner of the article--causing Ching w.a.n.g, who had been surveying the progress of the fight with much enjoyment, to retreat instantly within his galley, the smile of satisfaction on his yellow oval face and twinkle of his little pig-like eyes being replaced by that innocent look of one conscious of rect.i.tude and in whom there is no guile, affected by most of his celestial countrymen.

"Hullo, bosun!" cried the captain, addressing Tim Rooney, who was helping me to put on my jacket again, and endeavouring, rather unsuccessfully, to conceal all traces of the fray on my person. "What the d.i.c.kens does all this mean?"

"Sorry o' me knows, sorr, why them omahdawns is makin' all av that row a-hollerin'," said Tim, scratching his head as he always did when puzzled for the moment for an answer. "It's ownly Misther Gray-ham, sorr, an' Misther Wakes havin' a little bit of foon togither, an'

settlin' their differses in a frindly way, loike, sorr."

"Fighting, I suppose,--eh?"

An ominous stillness succeeded this question, the men around following Ching Whang's example and sneaking inside the forecastle and otherwise slily disappearing from view. Presently, only Tim Rooney and Matthews remained before the captain besides us two, the princ.i.p.als of the fight, and Tom Jerrold, who, blocked between Captain Gillespie and the caboose, could not possibly manage to get away unperceived.

"Yes, there's no doubt you've been fighting," continued the captain, looking from Weeks to me and from me to Weeks, and seeming to take considerably more interest than either of us cared for in our bruised knuckles and battered faces and generally dilapidated appearance; for his long nose turned up scornfully as he sniffed and expanded his nostrils, compressing his thin lips at the end of his inspection with an air of decision. "Well, youngsters, I'd have you to know that I don't allow fighting aboard my ship, and when I say a thing I mean a thing.

There!"

"But, sir," snivelled Weeks, beginning some explanation, intended no doubt to throw all the blame on me. "Graham--"

Captain Gillespie, however, interrupted him before he could proceed any further.

"You'd better not say anything, Weeks," said the captain. "Graham's a new hand and you're an old one; at least, you've already been one voyage, whilst this is his first. I see you've had a lickin' and I'm glad of it, as I daresay it's been brought about by your own bullying; for I know you, Master Samuel Weeks, by this time, and you can't take me in as you used to do with your whining ways! If I didn't believe you were pretty well starched already, I'd give you another hiding now, my lad. Please, my good young gentleman, just to oblige me, go up in the mizzen-top so that I can see you're there, and stop till I call you down! As for you, Matthews, whom I have just promoted I'm surprised at your forgetting yourself as an officer, and coming here forrud, to take part with the crew in a disgraceful exhibition like this. I--"

"Please, sir--" expostulated the culprit. But the captain was firm on the matter of discipline, as I came to know in time.

"You'll go aft at once, Mr Matthews," he said, waving him away with his outstretched arm. "Another such dereliction from duty and you shall come forrud altogether, as you appear to like the fo'c's'le so well. I have made you third officer; but bear in mind that if I possess the power to make, I can break too!"

It was now Tim Rooney's turn, the captain wheeling round on him as soon as he'd done with Matthews.

"Really, bosun," he said, "I didn't think a respectable man like you would encourage two boys to fight like that!"

"Bedad it wor ownly to privint their bein' onfrindly, sorr," pleaded Tim, looking as much ashamed as his comical twinkling left eye would permit. "I thought it'd save a lot av throuble arterwards, spakin' as regards mesilf, sorr; fur I'm niver at paice onless I'm in a row, sure!"

"Ha, a nice way of making friends--pummelling each other to pieces and upsetting my ship," retorted Captain Gillespie. But, as Tim Rooney made no answer, thinking discretion the better part of valour in this instance, and going up into the bows as if to look out forward, the captain then addressed me: "Graham!"

"Yes, sir," said I, awaiting my sentence with some trepidation. "I'm very sorry, sir, for what has happened, I--"

"There, I want no more jaw," he replied, hastily snapping me up before I could say another word. "I saw all that occurred, though neither of you thought I was looking. Weeks rushed at you, and you hit him; and then this precious hot-headed bosun of mine made you 'have it out,' as he calls it, in 'a friendly way,' the idiot, in his Irish bull fashion!

But, as I told you, I won't have any fighting here, either between boys or men, and when I say a thing I mean a thing; so, to show I allow no relaxation of discipline on board so long as I'm captain, Master Graham, you'll be good enough to remain on deck to-night instead of going to bed, and will keep the middle watch from 'eight bells' to morning."

"Very good, sir," I replied, bowing politely, having already taken off my cap on his speaking to me; and I then went back to our deck-house cabin and had a lie down, as I felt pretty tired. Ching w.a.n.g, however, came to rouse me up soon afterwards with a pannikin of hot coffee, his way of showing his appreciation of my conduct in the fray, and I subsequently went with Tim Rooney to see the starling--which made me quite forget all about being tired and having to stop up all night, and that Tom Jerrold had escaped any punishment for his presence at the fight!

At eight o'clock, when it was quite dark, we pa.s.sed Beachy Head, seeing the light in the distance; and then, feeling hungry again, I went to the steward in the cuddy and got something to eat, meeting there poor Weeks, whom the captain had only just called down from his perch in the mizzen- top, very cold and shivery from being so long up there in his wet clothes in the night air.

He looked rather grimly at me, and from the light in the saloon I noticed that he had a lovely pair of black eyes; but, on my stretching out my hand to him, we made friends, and agreed to bury all the disagreeable occurrences of the day in oblivion.

We had a lot of yarning together until midnight inside the deck-house, where Tom Jerrold lay an his bunk snoring away, utterly regardless of our presence; and then, on Mr Mackay's summoning me, by the captain's order as he told me, to keep watch with him on the p.o.o.p, I went up the ladder and remained with him astern, watching the ship bowling along under all plain sail, with the same buoyant breeze behind her with which we had started.

"Now, Graham," said Mr Mackay at daybreak, when we were just off Saint Catharine's Point in the Isle of Wight, as he informed me, "you can go and turn in. Bosun, call the starboard watch!"

"Aye, aye, sorr," answered Tim Rooney from the bows, where he had been keeping his vigils, too, like us aft. "Starbowlines, ahoy--!"

I only remained on the p.o.o.p while the man at the wheel was being relieved, and Mr Saunders, the second mate, came on deck to take Mr Mackay's place; when, going below to the deck-house cabin, I was soon in my little shelf of a bed, falling asleep more quickly, I think, than I had ever done before; doing so, indeed, almost the instant I got within the blankets.

The next day, at noon, we tore by the Start, and, later on, that n.o.blest monument a man could have, the Eddystone, Smeaton's glory; the ship racing down Channel as if all the sea-nymphs were chasing us, and old Neptune, too, at their heels to hurry them on, with his tritons after him.

Our average speed all that day was a good ten knots, the wind never shifting and every sail drawing fore and aft. Sometimes it was even more, according to Tom Jerrold's calculations, he having to heave the log at intervals and turn the fourteen-second gla.s.s, his especial duty, in order to determine our rate of progress through the water; but I don't think it was ever less from the time the sun rose in the morning.

At all events, the Silver Queen made such good use of her time that, at six o'clock on this evening of our second day under sail, we were up to the Lizard, the last bit of English sh.o.r.e we should see in a hurry; and at "six bells" in the first watch, were speeding along some ten miles south of the Bishop's Rock lightship in the Scilly Isles, really, at last, at sea!

CHAPTER EIGHT.

A SUDDEN INTERRUPTION.

"Now, my boy," said Mr Mackay, who had the "first watch," from eight o'clock till midnight that is, I sharing it with him, speaking as we were just abreast of the light I've mentioned, although so far to the southward that it could only be seen very faintly glimmering on the horizon like a star, a trifle bigger than those which twinkled above it and on either side in the clear northern sky--"we've run exactly forty- six miles from our departure point."

"Departure point, sir!" I repeated after him, my curiosity aroused by the use of such a term. "What is that?"

"The last land sighted before a ship gains the open sea," replied he kindly, always willing to give me any information, although I'm afraid I caused him a good deal of trouble with my innumerable questions, in my zeal to get acquainted with everything connected with the ship and my profession as an embryo sailor. "Ours was the Lizard; didn't you notice Cap'en Gillespie taking the bearings of it as we pa.s.sed this afternoon?"

"Yes, sir. I saw him with his s.e.xtant, as you told me that queer triangular thing was," said I; "but I didn't know what he was doing. I thought our starting-place was the Thames? We must have gone miles and miles since we left the Downs."

"So we have, my boy; still, that was only the threshold of our long journey, and sailors do not begin to count their run until fairly out at sea as we are now. When you came up to town the other day from that place in the country--West something or other?"

"Westham, sir," I suggested; "that's where we live."

"Well, then," he went on, accepting my correction with a smile, "when you were telling your adventures and stated that you came from Westham to London in three hours, say, you would not include the time you had taken in going from the door of your house to the garden gate and from thence to the little town or village whence you started by the railway-- eh?"

"No, sir," said I, laughing at his way of putting the matter. "I would mean from the station at Westham to the railway terminus in London."