Dry Fish and Wet Part 52

At this Doffen grew angry in earnest, and slammed down the lid of his desk, making the ink-stands fairly dance.

"Well, of all the.... First of all I do my very utmost to save you from being ruined by your illegitimate offspring, then I manage to get her away in a decent, respectable manner--you ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself, if you ask me."

The Admiral looked round as if in search of something.

"What the devil have you done with that Directory?" he said at last.

"Oho! Perhaps you'd like to be had up for another attempted manslaughter, what?"

"Not a bit of it. But there's a reward for extermination of rats and other mischievous beasts."

Here the discussion was interrupted by the entrance of Ferryman Arne, who just looked in to ask if the Admiral hadn't an old pair of breeches to give away, as the seat was all out of the ones he was wearing. The Admiral never refused. He went to a wardrobe, routed out an old pair and gave them to Arne. The latter examined them carefully, front and back, but instead of saying thank you, he rudely declared that if the Admiral wanted to give a poor man something to wear, he might at least give him something that wasn't falling to bits already.

This led to a most satisfactory battle-royal between Arne and the Admiral, each trying to outdo the other in lurid pigeon-English--a tongue which both of them spoke fluently, Arne having been twelve years in the China Seas.

And in the end the Admiral presented Arne with two brand-new pairs of trousers and a pound in cash.

The years pa.s.sed by. Doffen stayed on in the office, and became indispensable as time went on. He and the Admiral made a pair. And whenever the conversation languished towards the milk-and-watery, Ferryman Arne would come and lend a hand.

The Princess roamed far and wide about the world. She sent home newspapers, wherein they read that she was performing at this or that great city, with thousands of admirers at her tiny feet.

The Admiral read it all without the slightest token of surprise, his only comment being: "All right, that's her business." But when one day he received a card bearing the inscription, "Countess Montfalca,"

surmounted by a coronet, he spat, and remarked to Doffen:

"Well, after all, there's nothing surprising in that, seeing her mother was a queen."

XXI

DIRRIK

The first time I met him was in 1867, on board the schooner _Jenny_ of Svelvik. The skipper was an uncle of mine, and had taken me along as odd boy for a summer cruise. And Ole Didriksen, or Dirrik, as we called him, was first hand on board.

We had taken in a cargo of pit props at Drammen, and came down the fjord with a light northerly breeze. A little way out the wind dropped altogether and the _Jenny_ lay drifting idly under a blazing sun.

Dirrik sounded the well, and declared that "the old swine was leaking like a sieve."--"Nonsense!" said the skipper. "Why, it's not more than three years since her last overhaul."--"Maybe," said Dirrik, "but she's powerful old."--"Old she may be--built in '32--and I won't say but she's a trifle groggy about the ribs; still, she's good for this bit of a run. And summer weather and all."

Dirrik tried again. "Twenty-two inches," he said, and looked inquiringly at the skipper. "Well, then, you two men get the boat and go ash.o.r.e for a few sacks of caulking. There's plenty of ant-heaps up in the wood there."

I was ready to burst with pride at finding myself thus bracketed with Dirrik as a "man." I felt myself a sailor already, and would not have bartered the t.i.tle for that of a Consul-General or Secretary of State.

But the ant-heaps puzzled me. I could see no connection between ant-heaps in a wood on sh.o.r.e and the caulking of a leaky schooner.

However, the first duty of man at sea is to obey the orders of the supreme power on board, _i.e._ the skipper; I curbed my curiosity, then, for the time, and waited till we were a few lengths away from the ship.

"Ant-heaps?" said Dirrik. "Why, 'tis the only way to do with a leaky old tub like that. We dig 'em up, d'ye see, pine needles and all, and drag a caseful round her sides and down towards her keel, and she sucks it all up in her seams, ants and needles and bits of twigs, and the whole boiling, and that's the finest caulking you can get!"

"Queer sort of caulking," I said.

"There's queerer things than that, lad, when a vessel gets that old.

It's the same like with human beings. Some of them keeps sound and fit, and others go rotten and mouldy and drink like hogs--but they often live the longest for all that!"

"Do you think we'll ever get her across to England, Dirrik?"

"Get her across? Why, what are you thinking of? She's never had so much as a copper nail put in these last thirty years, but she'll sail for all that. Run all heeled over on one side, she will, and squirming and screeching like a sea-serpent."

"She looks a bit cranky, anyway," I ventured.

"Warped and gaping. But still she'll do the trip for all that."

We reached the sh.o.r.e, and Dirrik ordered me up into the wood to fill the sacks, while he just ran up to old Iversen, the pilot, for a moment.

I managed, not without some difficulty, to get the boat loaded up, but it was a full half-hour before Dirrik appeared.

At last he came strolling down, in company with a pretty, buxom girl.

"This is my young lady, an' her name's Margine," said Dirrik, and pointing to me: "Our new hand on board."--"Well, see you make a nice trip," said Margine, "and come back again soon."

We caulked the _Jenny_ as per instructions, and got her taut as a bottle. "Ants, they trundles off sharp, all they know, into the holes for safety," Dirrik explained, "and take along the pine needles with 'em."

A fresh northerly wind took us well out into the North Sea; then, a few days later, we lay becalmed on the Dogger. An English fishing vessel sent a boat aboard of us, trading fresh cod for a couple of bottles of gin. Looking through the skylight I saw the old man quietly making up the two bottles from one, by the simple process of adding water to fill up. Rank swindling it seemed to me, but he explained afterwards that it was "our way of keeping down drunkenness, my boy."

Eight days out from Drammen we put in to Seaham Harbour. Half our cargo under deck was sodden through, for we'd three feet of water in the hold all the voyage, despite the patent caulking.

"Get it worse going home," said Dirrik. "We're taking small coal to Drobak."

A few hours later we were getting in our cargo, and soon the _Jenny_ was loaded almost to the waterline with smalls. We were just about to batten down the hatches, when the skipper came along and told us to wait, there was some Government stuff still to come.

Down the quay trundled a heavy railway waggon with two pieces of cannon, and before we had properly time to wonder at the sight, the crane had taken hold, the guns swung high in the air above the quay, and--one, two, three--down they came into the main hatchway all among the coals.

The schooner gave a sort of gasp as the crane let go, and I thought for a moment we had broken her back. She went several inches lower in the water, till the chain bolts were awash, and the scuppers clear by no more than a hair's breadth.

"This looks dangerous," I said to the skipper cautiously, as he stood by the side.

"Why, what are you afraid of?"

"My life," was all I found to answer.

"And a lot to be afraid of in that!" said he, spitting several yards out into the dock. "The guns are for the fort at Oskarsborg, and it isn't every voyage I can make fifteen pounds over a couple of fellows like that."

We set off on our homeward voyage. Fortunately, our protecting ants still kept to their places in the leaks, or there would have been an end of us, and the guns as well. The skipper was ill, and stuck to his berth the whole way home. The night before we left Seaham Harbour he had been to a crab-supper ash.o.r.e at the ship-chandler's, and what with stewed crabs and ginger beer, the feast had "upset all his innards," as he put it.

We got into trouble rounding the Ness. Dirrik was at the helm, and hailed the skipper to ask if we hadn't better shorten sail.

"Nonsense!" said the old man. "It's summer weather--keep all standing till she's clear." The rigging sang, and the water was flung in showers over the deck.