Hard Cash Part 35

"I'll soon know," cried Dodd. "Lower the gig; I'll go myself."

The gig was lowered, and six swift rowers pulled him to windward, while the ship kept on her course.

It is most unusual for a captain to leave the ship at sea on such petty errands: but Dodd half hoped the man might be alive; and he was so unhappy; and, like his daughter, who probably derived the trait from him, grasped instinctively at a chance of doing kindness to some poor fellow alive or dead. That would soothe his own sore, good heart.

When they had pulled about two miles, the sun was sinking into the horizon. "Give way, men," said Dodd, "or we shall not be able to see him." The men bent to their oars and made the boat fly.

Presently the c.o.xswain caught sight of an object bobbing on the water abeam.

"Why, that must be it," said he: "the lubber! to take it for a man's head. Why, it is nothing but a thundering old bladder, speckled white."

"What?" cried Dodd, and fell a-trembling. "Steer for it! Give way!"

"Ay, ay, sir!"

They soon came alongside the bladder, and the c.o.xswain grabbed it.

"Hallo! here's something lashed to it: a bottle!"

"Give it me!" gasped Dodd in a voice choked with agitation. "Give it me! Back to the ship! Fly! fly! Cut her off, or she'll give us the slip _now._"

He never spoke a word more, but sat in a stupor of joyful wonder.

They soon caught the ship; he got into his cabin, he scarce knew how: broke the bottle to atoms, and found the indomitable Cash uninjured.

With trembling hands he restored it to its old place in his bosom, and sewed it tighter than ever.

Until he felt it there once more, he could hardly realise a stroke of good fortune that seemed miraculous--though, in reality, it was less strange than the way he had lost it;* but now, laid bodily on his heart, it set his bosom on fire. Oh, the bright eye, the bounding pulse, the buoyant foot, the reckless joy! He slapped Sharpe on the back a little vulgarly for him:--

"Jonah is on board again, old fellow: look out for squalls."

*The _Agra_, being much larger than the bottle, had drifted faster to leeward in the storm.

He uttered this foreboding in a tone of triumph, and with a gay elastic recklessness, which harmonised so well with his makeshift rudder, that Sharpe groaned aloud, and wished himself under any captain in the world but this, and in any other ship. He looked round to make sure he was not watched, and then tapped his forehead significantly. This somewhat relieved him, and he did his duty smartly for a man going to the bottom with his eyes open.

But ill luck is not to be bespoken any more than good: the _Agra's_ seemed to have blown itself out; the wind veered to the south-west, and breathed steadily in that quarter for ten days. The topgallant sails were never lowered nor shifted day nor night all that time, and not a single danger occurred between this and the Cape, except to a monkey, which I fear I must relate, on account of its remoter consequences. One fine afternoon, everybody was on deck amusing themselves as they could: Mrs. Beresford, to wit, was being flattered under the p.o.o.p awning by Kenealy. The feud between her and Dodd continued, but under a false impression. The lady had one advantage over the gentler specimens of her s.e.x; she was never deterred from a kind action by want of pluck, as they are. Pluck? Aquilina was brimful of it. When she found Dodd was wounded, she cast her wrongs to the wind, and offered to go and nurse him. Her message came at an unlucky moment, and by an unlucky messenger: the surgeon said hastily, "I can't have him bothered." The stupid servant reported, "He can't be worried;" and Mrs. Beresford, thinking Dodd had a hand in this answer, was bitterly mortified; and with some reason. She would have forgiven him, though, if he had died; but, as he lived, she thought she had a right to detest him, and did; and showed her sentiments like a lady, by never speaking to him, nor looking at him, but ignoring him with frigid magnificence on his own quarter-deck.

Now, among the crew of this ship was a favourite goat, good-tempered, affectionate, and playful; but a single vice counterbalanced all his virtues: he took a drop. A year or two ago some light-hearted tempter taught him to sip grog; he took to it kindly, and was now arrived at such a pitch that at grog-time he used to b.u.t.t his way in among the sailors, and get close to the canteen; and, by arrangement, an allowance was always served out to him. On imbibing it, he pa.s.sed with quadrupedal rapidity through three stages, the absurd, the choleric, the sleepy; and was never his own goat again until he awoke from the latter. Now Master Fred Beresford encountered him in the second stage of inebriety, and, being a rough playfellow, tapped his nose with a battledore. Instantly Billy b.u.t.ted at him; mischievous Fred screamed and jumped on the bulwarks. Pot-angry Billy went at him there; whereupon the young gentleman, with all eldrich screech, and a comparative estimate of perils that smacked of inexperience, fled into the sea, at the very moment when his anxious mother was rushing to save him. She uttered a scream of agony, and would actually have followed him, but was held back, uttering shriek after shriek, that pierced every heart within hearing.

But Dodd saw the boy go overboard, and vaulted over the bulwark near the helm, roared in the very air, "Heave the ship to!" and went splash into the water about ten yards from the place. He was soon followed by Vespasian, and a boat was lowered as quickly as possible. Dodd caught sight of a broad straw hat on the top of a wave, swam l.u.s.tily to it, and found Freddy inside: it was tied under his chin, and would have floated Goliath. Dodd turned to the ship, saw the poor mother with white face and arms outstretched as if she would fly at them, and held the urchin up high to her with a joyful "hurrah." The ship seemed alive and to hurrah in return with giant voice: the boat soon picked them up, and Dodd came up the side with Freddy in his arms, and placed him in his mother's with honest pride and deep parental sympathy.

Guess how she scolded and caressed her child all in a breath, and sobbed over him! For this no human pen has ever told, nor ever will. All I can just manage to convey is that, after she had all but eaten the little torment, she suddenly dropped him, and made a great maternal rush at Dodd. She flung her arms round him, and kissed him eagerly, almost fiercely: then, carried away wild by mighty Nature, she patted him all over in the strangest way, and kissed his waistcoat, his arms, his hands, and rained tears of joy and grat.i.tude on them.

Dodd was quite overpowered. "No! no!" said he. "Don't now, pray, don't!

There! there! I know, my dear, I know; I'm a father." And he was very near whimpering himself; but recovered the man and the commander, and said, soothingly, "There! there!" and he handed her tenderly down to her cabin.

All this time he had actually forgotten the packet. But now a horrible fear came on him. He hurried to his own cabin and examined it. A little salt water had oozed through the bullet-hole and discoloured the leather; but that was all.

He breathed again.

"Thank Heaven I forgot all about it!" said he: "it would have made a cur of me."

Lady Beresford's petty irritation against Dodd melted at once--before so great a thing: she longed to make friends with him; but for once felt timid. It struck her now all of a sudden that she had been misbehaving.

However, she caught Dodd alone on the deck, and said to him softly, "I want so to end our quarrel."

"Our quarrel, madam!" said he; "why, I know of none: oh, about the light eh? Well, you see the master of a ship is obliged to be a tyrant in some things."

"I make no complaint," said the lady hastily, and hung her head. "All I ask you is to forgive one who has behaved like a fool, without even the excuse of being one; and--will you give me your hand, sir?"

"Ay, and with all my heart," said Dodd warmly, enclosing the soft little hand in his honest grasp.

And with no more ado these two highflyers ended one of those little misunderstandings petty spirits nurse into a feud.

The ship being in port at the Cape, and two hundred hammers tapping at her, Dodd went ash.o.r.e in search of Captain Robarts, and made the _Agra_ over to him in the friendliest way, adding warmly that he had found every reason to be satisfied with the officers and the crew. To his surprise, Captain Robarts received all this ungraciously. "You ought to have remained on board, sir, and made me over the command on the quarter-deck." Dodd replied politely that it would have been more formal. "Suppose I return immediately, and man the side for you: and then you board her, say, in half-an-hour?"

"I shall come when I like," replied Robarts crustily.

"And when will you like to come?" inquired Dodd, with imperturbable good-humour.

"Now, this moment: and I'll trouble you to come along with me."

"Certainly, sir."

They got a boat and went out to the ship: on coming alongside, Dodd thought to meet his wishes by going first and receiving him. But the jealous, cross-grained fellow, shoved roughly before him and led the way up the ship's side. Sharpe and the rest saluted him: he did not return the salute, but said hoa.r.s.ely, "Turn the hands up to muster."

When they were all aft, he noticed one or two with their caps on. "Hats off and be ---- to you!" cried he. "Do you know where you are? Do you know who you are looking at? If not, I'll show you. I'm here to restore discipline to this ship: so mind how you run athwart my hawse: don't you play with the bull, my men; or you'll find his horns ---- sharp. Pipe down! Now, you, sir, bring me the log-book."

He ran his eye over it, and closed it contemptuously: "Pirates, and hurricanes! _I_ never fell in with pirates nor hurricanes: I have heard of a breeze, and a gale, but I never knew a seaman worth his salt say 'hurricane.' Get another log-book, Mr. Sharpe; put down that it begins this day at noon; and enter that Captain Robarts came on deck, found the ship in a miserable condition, took the command, mustered the officers and men, and stopped the ship's company's grog for a week for receiving him with hats on."

Even Sharpe, that walking Obedience, was taken aback. "Stop--the ship's company's--grog--for a week, sir?"

"Yes, sir, for a week; and if you fling my orders back in my face instead of clapping on sail to execute them, I'll have you towed ash.o.r.e on a grating. Your name is Sharpe; well my name is Dammedsharpe, and so you'll find."

In short, the new captain came down on the ship like a blight.

He was especially hard on Dodd: nothing that commander had done was right, nor, had he done the contrary, would that have been right: he was disgracefully behind time; and he ought to have put in to the Isle of France, which would have r.e.t.a.r.ded him: his rope bulwarks were lubberly: his rudder a disgrace to navigation: he, Robarts, was not so green as to believe that any master had really sailed sixteen hundred miles with it, and if he had, more shame for him. Briefly, a marine criticaster.

All this was spoken _at_ Dodd--a thing no male does unless he is an awful sn.o.b--and grieved him, it was so unjust. He withdrew wounded to the little cabin he was ent.i.tled to as a pa.s.senger, and hugged his treasure for comfort. He patted the pocket-book, and said to it, "Never _you_ mind! The greater Tartar he is, the less likely to sink you or run you on a lee sh.o.r.e."

With all his love of discipline, Robarts was not so fond of the ship as Dodd.

While his repairs were going on he was generally ash.o.r.e, and by this means missed a visit. Commodore Collier, one of the smartest sailors afloat, espied the Yankee makeshift from the quarter-deck of his vessel, the _Salamanca,_ fifty guns. In ten minutes he was under the _Agra's_ stern inspecting it; then came on board, and was received in form by Sharpe and the other officers. "Are you the master of this ship, sir?"

he asked.

"No, commodore. I am the first mate: the captain is ash.o.r.e."

"I am sorry for it. I want to talk about his rudder."

"Oh, _he_ had nothing to do with that," replied Sharpe, eagerly: "that was our dear old captain: he is on board. Young gentleman! ask Captain Dodd to oblige me by coming on deck! Hy! and Mr. Fullalove too."