Hard Cash Part 36

"Young gentleman?" inquired Collier. "What the devil officer is that?"

"That is a name we give the middies; I don't know why."

"Nor I neither; ha! ha!"

Dodd and Fullalove came on deck, and Commodore Collier bestowed the highest compliments on the "makeshift." Dodd begged him to transfer them to the real inventor, and introduced Fullalove.

"Ay," said Collier, "I know you Yankees are very handy. I lost my rudder at sea once, and had to ship a makeshift; but it was a cursed complicated thing, not a patch upon yours, Mr. Fullalove. Yours is ingenious and _simple._ Ship has been in action, I see: pray how was that, if I may be so bold?"

"Pirates, commodore," said Sharpe. "We fell in with a brace of Portuguese devils, lateen-rigged, and carrying ten guns apiece, in the Straits of Gaspar: fought 'em from noon till sundown, riddled one, and ran down the other, and sunk her in a moment. That was all your doing, Captain: so don't try to shift it on other people; for we won't stand it."

"If he denies it, I won't believe him," said Collier, "for he has got it in his eye. Gentlemen, will you do me the honour to dine with me to-day on board the flag-ship?"

Dodd and Fullalove accepted. Sharpe declined, with regret, on the score of duty. And as the c.o.c.ked hat went down the side, after saluting him politely, he could not help thinking to himself what a difference between a real captain, who had something to be proud of, and his own unlicked cub of a skipper with the manners of a pilot-boat. He told Robarts the next day: Robarts said nothing, but his face seemed to turn greenish, and it embittered his hatred of Dodd the inoffensive.

It is droll, and sad, but true, that Christendom is full of men in a hurry to hate. And a fruitful cause is jealousy. The schoolmen, or rather certain of the schoolmen--for nothing is much shallower than to speak of all those disputants as one school--defined woman, "a featherless biped vehemently addicted to jealousy." Whether she is more featherless than the male can be decided at a trifling expense of time, money, and reason: you have but to go to court. But as for envy and jealousy, I think it is pure, un.o.bservant, antique Cant which has fixed them on the female character distinctively. As a molehill to a mountain is women's jealousy to men's. Agatha may have a host of virtues and graces, and yet her female acquaintance will not hate her, provided she has the moderation to abstain from being downright pretty. She may sing like an angel, paint like an angel, talk, write, nurse the sick, all like an angel, and not rouse the devil in her fair sisters, so long as she does not dress like an angel. But the minds of men being much larger than women's, yet very little greater, they hang jealousy on a thousand pegs. Where there was no peg, I have seen them do with a pin.

Captain Robarts took a pin, ran it into his own heart, and hung that sordid pa.s.sion on it.

He would get rid of all the Doddites before he sailed. He insulted Mr.

Tickell, so that he left the service and entered a mercantile house ash.o.r.e: he made several of the best men desert, and the ship went to sea short of hands. This threw heavier work on the crew, and led to many punishments and a steady current of abuse. Sharpe became a mere machine, always obeying, never speaking: Grey was put under arrest for remonstrating against ungentlemanly language; and Bayliss, being at bottom of the same breed as Robarts, fell into his humour, and helped hector the petty officers and men. The crew, depressed and irritated, went through their duties pully-hauly-wise. There was no song under the forecastle in the first watch, and often no grog on the mess table at one bell. Dodd never came on the quarter-deck without being reminded he was only a pa.s.senger, and the ship was now under naval discipline.

_"I_ was reared in the royal navy, sir," would Robarts say, "second lieutenant aboard the _Atalanta:_ that is the school, sir, that is the only school that breeds seamen." Dodd bore scores of similar taunts as a Newfoundland puts up with a terrier in office: he seldom replied, and, when he did, in a few quiet dignified words that gave no handle.

Robarts, who bore the name of a lucky captain, had fair weather all the way to St. Helena.

The guard-ship at this island was the _Salamanca._ She had left the Cape a week before the _Agra._ Captain Robarts, with his characteristic good-breeding, went to anchor in-sh.o.r.e of Her Majesty's ship: the wind failed at a critical moment, and a foul became inevitable. Collier was on his quarter-deck, and saw what would happen long before Robarts did; he gave the needful orders, and it was beautiful to see how in half a minute the frigate's guns were run in, her ports lowered, her yards toppled on end, and a spring carried out and hauled on.

The _Agra_ struck abreast her own forechains on the _Salamanca's_ quarter.

(Pipe.) "Boarders away. Tomahawks! cut everything that holds!" was heard from the frigate's quarter-deck. Rush came a boarding party on to the merchant ship and hacked away without mercy all her lower rigging that held on to the frigate, signal halyards and all; others boomed her off with capstan bars, &c., and in two minutes the ships were clear. A lieutenant and boat's crew came for Robarts, and ordered him on board the _Salamanca,_ and, to make sure of his coming, took him back with them. He found Commodore Collier standing stiff as a ramrod on his quarter-deck. "Are you the master of the _Agra?_" (His quick eye had recognised her in a moment.)

"I am, sir."

"Then she was commanded by a seaman, and is now commanded by a lubber.

Don't apply for your papers this week; for you won't get them. Good morning. Take him away."

They returned Robarts to his ship, and a suppressed grin on a score of faces showed him the clear commanding tones of the commodore had reached his own deck. He soothed himself by stopping the men's grog and mast-heading three midshipmen that same afternoon.

The night before he weighed anchor this disciplinarian was drinking very late in a low public-house. There was not much moon, and the officer in charge of the ship did not see the gig coming till it was nearly alongside: then all was done in a flurry.

"Hy! man the side! Lanterns there! Jump, you boys, or you'll catch pepper."

The boys did jump, and little Murphy, not knowing the surgeon had ordered the ports to be drooped, bounded over the bulwarks like an antelope, lighted on the midship port, which stood at this angle /, and glanced off into the ocean, lantern foremost: he made his little hole in the water within a yard of' Captain Robarts. That Dignity, though splashed, took no notice of so small an incident as a gone ship-boy: and if Murphy had been wise and stayed with Nep. all had been well. But the poor urchin inadvertently came up again, and without the lantern. One of the gig's crew grabbed him by the hair, and prolonged his existence by an inconsiderate impulse.

"Where is the other lantern?" was Robarts' first word on reaching the deck: as if he didn't know.

"Gone overboard, sir, with the boy Murphy."

"Stand forward, you, sir," growled Robarts.

Murphy stood forward, dripping and shivering with cold and fear.

"What d'ye mean by going overboard with the ship's lantern?"

"Och, your arnr, sure some unasy divil drooped the port; and the lantern and me we had no foothold at all at all, and the lantern went into the say, bad luck to ut; and I went afther to try and save ut--for your arnr."

"Belay all that!" said Robarts; "do you think you can blarney me, you young monkey? Here, Bosen's mate, take a rope's-end and start him!--Again!--Warm him well!--That's right."

As soon as the poor child's shrieks subsided into sobs, the disciplinarian gave him Explanation for Ointment: "I can't have the Company's stores expended this way."

The force of discipline could no farther go than to flog zeal for falling overboard: so, to avoid anticlimax in that port, Robarts weighed anchor at daybreak; and there was a southwesterly breeze waiting for this favourite of fortune, and carried him past the Azores. Off Ushant it was westerly, and veered to the nor'-west just before they sighted the Land's End: never was such a charming pa.s.sage from the Cape. The sailor who had the luck to sight Old England first nailed his starboard shoe to the mainmast for contributions; and all hearts beat joyfully--none more than David Dodd's. His eye devoured the beloved sh.o.r.e: he hugged the treasure his own ill luck had jeopardised--but Robarts had sailed it safe into British waters--and forgave the man his ill manners for his good luck.

Robarts steered in for the Lizard; but, when abreast the Point, kept well out again, and opened the Channel and looked out for a pilot

One was soon seen working out towards him, and the _Agra_ brought to. The pilot descended from his lugger into his little boat, rowed alongside, and came on deck; a rough, tanned sailor, clad in flushing, and in build and manner might have pa.s.sed for Robarts' twin brother.

"Now then, you, sir, what will you take this ship up to the Downs for?"

"Thirty pounds."

Roberts told him roughly he would not get thirty pounds out of' _him._

"Thyse and no higher, my Bo," answered the pilot st.u.r.dily: he had been splicing the main brace, and would have answered an admiral.

Robarts swore at him l.u.s.tily: Pilot discharged a volley in return with admirable prompt.i.tude. Robarts retorted, the other rough customer rejoined, and soon all Billingsgate thundered on the _Agra's_ quarter-deck. Finding, to his infinite disgust, his visitor as great a blackguard as himself, and not to be outsworn, Robarts ordered him to quit the ship on pain of being man-handled over the side.

"Oh, that's it, is it?" growled the other: "here's fill and be off then." He prudently bottled the rest of his rage till he got safe into his boat, then shook his fist at the _Agra_, and cursed her captain sky-high. "You see the fair wind, but you don't see the Channel fret a-coming, ye greedy gander. Downs! You'll never see them: you have saved your ---- money, and lost your ---- ship, ye ---- lubber."

Robarts hurled back a sugar-plum or two of the same and then ordered Bayliss to clap on all sail, and keep a mid-channel course through the night.

At four bells in the middle watch, Sharpe, in charge of the ship, tapped at Robarts' door. "Blowing hard, sir, and the weather getting thickish."

"Wind fair still?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then call me if it blows any harder," grunted Robarts.

In two hours more, tap, tap, came Bayliss, in charge. "If we don't take sail in, they'll take themselves out."

"Furl to-gallen'sels, and call me if it gets any worse."

In another hour Bayliss was at him again. "Blowing a gale, sir, and a Channel fog on."

"Reef taupsles, and call me if it gets any worse."

At daybreak Dodd was on deck, and found the ship flying through a fog so thick that her forecastle was quite invisible from the p.o.o.p, and even her foremast loomed indistinct and looked distant. "You'll be foul of something or other, Sharpe," said he.

"What is that to you?" inquired a loud rough voice behind him. "I don't allow pa.s.sengers to handle my ship."