Afloat at Last Part 9

Matthews and Jerrold alone managed the mizzen topgallant-sail, after which the spanker was set, making the ship drive on all the faster through the water; though, even then, Captain Gillespie was not content yet.

"We must have the main-sail and forecourse on her," he said a few minutes later to Mr Mackay. "It would be a sin to lose this wind."

"All right, sir!" replied the other; and the order being at once given, these lower sails were soon set, adding considerably to our average of canvas, the vessel now forging ahead at a good eight knots or more; and we pa.s.sed Deal, on our starboard hand, some couple of hours or so from the time of our leaving the river.

"I call this going--eh?" cried Captain Gillespie to the pilot, while he c.o.c.ked his eye up aloft as if he seriously thought of setting the royals. "I said I'd get out of the Straits before the afternoon; and, you know, when I say a thing I always mean a thing!"

"Aye, aye," returned the other, motioning to the helmsman to keep her off a bit as the ship luffed up; "but we'll soon have to come about, for we'll be getting a little too near that shoal to the eastwards on this tack."

"Very good," said the captain; "whenever you please."

"I think we'll wait till we pa.s.s the South Sands light," replied the pilot. "Then we can round the Foreland handsomely on the starboard tack with the wind well abaft our beam."

"All right!" was Captain Gillespie's laconic response, rubbing his hands gleefully together again. "Carry-on."

Noticing Tom Jerrold just then on the main-deck, I went down from off the p.o.o.p and joined him.

"Have you had any breakfast?" he asked when I got up to him, patting his stomach significantly. "I was just thinking of getting mine as I feel very empty here, for all the rest have had theirs."

"No, I haven't had anything but some coffee the cook brought me a long while ago, and I feel hungry too," I replied. "Where do we get our meals?"

"In the cuddy, after the captain and mates have done grubbing," he said.

"Come along with me and we'll rouse up that Portugee steward."

"What! Pedro?"

"Yes; you've made his acquaintance already, I see. Did you notice anything particular about him?"

"Only his temper," I said. "Dear me, hasn't he got an awful one!"

"Bless you he only puts half of it on to try and frighten you if you're a new hand," replied Jerrold as he jauntily walked into the cuddy with the air of a commodore. "Only give him a little backsheesh and he'll do anything for you."

"Backsheesh! What is that?"

"Palm oil--tip him. Do you twig?" whispered Tom; "but, mum's the word, here we are in the lion's den!"

To my surprise, however, the whilom cranky steward made no difficulty about supplying our wants; and I strongly suspect that my fellow apprentice must have carried out his advice anent tipping Pedro that very morning, he was so extremely civil. He gave us some cold fried ham and eggs, the remains no doubt of Captain Gillespie's breakfast, with the addition of some coffee which he heated up for us especially, and which I enjoyed all the more from its having some milk in it--it was the very last milk that I tasted until I landed in England again, alas!

After making a hearty meal, I suggested to Tom that if he'd nothing to do we'd better go to work and make our cabin in the deck-house more cosy and habitable; and, on his agreeing, we left the cuddy, I taking care before going out to slip five shillings into the steward's ready palm as an earnest of my future intentions towards him should he treat me well.

"Well, you're in luck's way now, old fellow," said Jerrold when I told him of this outside the pa.s.sage, Pedro retiring to his pantry to secrete my tip along with others he had probably already received. "Only a day on board, and friends with the first mate, boatswain, cook, and steward; and, last, though by no means least, your humble servant myself, I being the most important personage of all."

"Are you really such a very important personage?" I rejoined, laughing at his affected air--"as big a man as the captain?"

"Aye, for after another voyage I'll be made third mate too, like Matthews, and then second, and then first; and after that a captain like our old friend 'sayings and meanings' here, only a regular tip-topper, unlike him."

"Aren't you antic.i.p.ating matters a bit, like the Barber's Fifth Brother in the Arabian Nights," said I--"counting your chickens before they're hatched, as my father says?"

"Your father must be a wonderful man," he retorted; but he grinned so funnily that I really couldn't be angry, though I coloured up at his remark; seeing which, to change the subject, he added, "Come and let us rouse out the deck-house and make things comfortable there for ourselves."

This was easier said than done; for in the first place Weeks, who only seemed to think of eating and sleeping and nothing else, was having a quiet "caulk," as sailors call it, cuddled up in the bunk appropriated by Jerrold as being the roomiest, with all our blankets wrapped round him, although the day was quite warm and spring-like for February.

"Hullo!" cried Jerrold at the sight of the slumbering lamb, seizing hold of the blankets. "Out you go, my hearty; and confound your cheek for taking possession of my crib!"

With these words, giving a good tug, Weeks was rolled out on the deck, tumbling on his head. This angered him greatly, and he got up as red as a turkey c.o.c.k, with the freckles on his face coming out in strong relief.

Seeing that Tom Jerrold was the culprit, however, he soon quieted down, being an arrant sneak and afraid of him.

"What did you do that for?" he whined. "I was only having a nap."

"You're always napping," retorted Tom; "and I should like to know what the d.i.c.kens you mean by going snoozing in my bunk? I've half a mind to punch your head. The next time I catch you at it I'll keelhaul you, Master Sammy, by Jupiter!"

Jerrold kept on grumbling away, pretending to be very angry; and he frightened Weeks so that he forgot the ugly knock he had received on his own head, and apologised abjectly for the offence he had committed. Tom then allowed his a.s.sumed indignation to pa.s.s away, and forgave him on the condition that he took away all the spare crockery ware, which the steward had stowed in the top bunk of the deck-house, into the cuddy, giving it to the Portuguese with his, Tom's, compliments.

Weeks thereupon proceeded to execute this mission, Jerrold and I awaiting the result with much antic.i.p.ated enjoyment, Tom saying to me confidentially as he started for the cuddy, "Won't Pedro carry-on at him! I wouldn't be in the young fool's shoes for something."

The denouement justified our expectations; for, no sooner had Weeks entered the pa.s.sage way than he came flying out again looking awfully scared, a tremendous crash following as if all the crockery ware was pitched after him, bang! Next, we heard Pedro swearing away in his native tongue, and kicking his preserved meat tins about his pantry at such a rate that Captain Gillespie sang out on the p.o.o.p above, and sent Matthews down the companion to find out what he was making all the row about. This finally quieted the steward down, but subdued mutterings came to our ears from the cuddy for long afterwards, Pedro never having been so roused up before, not even when Tim Rooney tackled him on the previous day.

Weeks got very angry on our laughing at him when he returned crestfallen to the deck-house, and he went off forwards in high dudgeon; but this did not make any difference to us, we being rather pleased at getting rid of his company--at least I was, for one. So we went on arranging the chests and things in the little cabin until we ultimately made it quite ship-shape and comfortable. As Jerrold had proposed, he had his chest on one side of the doorway and mine and Weeks's were now stowed alongside our bunks, just sufficient s.p.a.ce and no more being left for us to open them without having to shift them, and also to get in and out of the cabin.

"Be jabers ye've made a tidy job av it, lads," said the boatswain, coming up as we finished, and surveying approvingly our arrangements.

"I couldn't have done it no betther mesilf! Ye can well-nigh swing a cat round, which it would a poozled ye to a-done afore, faix. An' sure, Misther Gray-ham, does ye loike bayin' at say yit?"

"Of course I do," I answered. "Why shouldn't I?"

"Begorra, ye're a caution!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "An', did that haythin, Ching w.a.n.g, wake ye up this mornin' wid some coffee, as he promised me.

I wor too busy to say you or ax you afore?"

"Yes," I replied; "and many thanks for your kind thoughtfulness."

"Stow that flummery," he cried; and to prevent my thanking him he began to tell Jerrold and me one of his funny yarns about a pig which his grandmother had, but unfortunately the story was nipped in the bud by a roar from the captain on the p.o.o.p.

"Hands 'bout ship!"

In a second the boatswain was away piping on the forecastle, and ropes cast off and sails flapping again.

"Helms a-lee!" was the next order from the captain, followed by a second which grew familiar enough to me in time. "Raise tacks and sheets!" and the foretack and main-sheet were cast off with the weather main-brace hauled taut.

Then came the final command, "Main-sail haul!" and the Silver Queen came up to the wind slowly. The foretack being then boarded and the main- sheet hauled aft, she heeled over on the starboard tack with the wind well on her starboard beam, heading towards the South Foreland, which she rounded soon after.

Off Dungeness, which we reached about three in the afternoon, or "six bells," exactly twenty-four hours from the time of our leaving the docks, we hove-to, backing our main-topsail and hoisting a whiff at the peak as a signal that we wanted a boat from the sh.o.r.e to disembark our pilot.

A dandy-rigged little cutter soon came dancing out to us; when the thin man in the monkey-jacket took his farewell of Captain Gillespie and went on board to be landed, the Silver Queen filling again and shaping a course west by south for Beachy Head, and so on down channel, free now of the last link that bound her to old England.

The afternoon, however, was not destined to pa.s.s without another incident.

It was getting on for sunset; and, steering more to the west well out from the land so as to avoid the Royal Sovereign shoal, we must have been just abreast of Hastings, although we could not see it, the weather thickening at the time, when suddenly a strange bird settled on the rigging utterly exhausted. It had evidently been blown out to sea and lost its reckoning.