Kenneth McAlpine Part 21

"You must take the shadow as well as the sunshine, though," returned Kenneth. "You would rather be back at my boathouse cave, I daresay, at Cotago, launching the tub for a pleasant day among the islands, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, indeed. Stand by; there is another wave."

"Hark?" said Kennie during a lull. "They are singing forward, round the galley fire. I've a good mind to go and join them; will you come? a second officer can do what a first can't."

"Yes, take your flute; that will be an excuse."

Given a trim ship and plenty of sea room, and it isn't all the wind that can blow that will succeed in lowering the spirits of the British sailor.

The jolliest of the crew of the _Brilliant_ were seated to-night near the galley fire, or they clung to lockers or lay on the deck; it is all the same. It was cold enough to make a fire pleasant and agreeable, and they were all within speaking distance; they had pipes and tobacco and plates of sea-pie, for it was Friday night, the old custom of making Friday a kind of Banian day being still kept up in some vessels of the merchant service.

"Hullo! Mr McAlpine," cried the carpenter. "Right welcome, sir. And you too, Mr McCrane. Glad to see the smiling faces of the pair of you.

Ain't we, mates?"

"That we are," and "that we be," came the ready chorus.

"Some sea-pie, gentlemen," said the cook, handing each a steaming basin of that most savoury dish.

"I made it," cried the bo'sun.

"Not all," cried another. "I rolled the paste."

"And I cut the beef."

"And I sliced the bacon."

"And I chopped the onions."

"And I pared the 'taters." This last from the cabin-boy.

"Ha! ha! ha!" roared the jolly carpenter. "I say, maties, blowed if we haven't all had a hand in the pie."

"Well, it is jolly eating anyhow," said Kenneth.

"The smell of it's enough to raise a dying man," quoth Archie.

"Bravo, sir," cried the bo'sun, "and I hopes it makes ye both 'appy."

"Happy, yes," said Kenneth. "I'm so happy now, I can sing and play."

"Oh I give us a toot on the old flute first."

Kenneth gave them "a toot."

"Now give us a song."

"Let the gentleman take his breath," the carpenter remonstrated.

"Never a breath," persisted the bo'sun. "He must pay his footin', I says. And I warrant you, too, he has as much pleasure in singing as we has in listenin' to 'im."

"Oh! shut up, old Barkshire," said somebody.

"Barkshire be bothered," cried the bo'sun. "I'm not ashamed to own my shire. You comes from the land o' _Tres_ and _Pens_; you're west-country, you be. Have to fish for your breakfast every mornin', else ye doesn't get none: He! he!"

"Well, never mind," said the good-natured carpenter, smiling. "We're all nationalities here. Bill here is York; Tim is Irish; I'm just what Pipes calls me, Barkshire."

"And I and my friend are Scotch," said Kenneth.

"Hurrah! for a Scotch song, then."

It wasn't one, but several songs Kennie and Archie had to sing, but all Scotch, and what can beat them, reader mine?

"Sing ony o' the auld Scotch sangs, The blithesome or the sad; They mak' me laugh when I am wae, And weep when I am glad.

Though eyes grow dim and hair grow grey, Until the day I dee, I'll bless the Scottish tongue that sings The auld Scotch sangs to me."

There was no satisfying his audience, so once more Kennie had to fall back upon the flute. While playing, a heavy sea struck the vessel on the weather bow, and the water came tumbling down the hatchway; although it rushed forward among the men and hissed against the hot iron fending of the copper, they hardly shifted their positions.

But Kenneth played a selection of the best English, Irish, Scotch, and Welsh airs now, now merry, now plaintive and sad, now almost wailing, and anon merry again, once more.

There was a perfect chorus of applause when he had finished. The old bo'sun must crawl over to the corner where the musician was--although, owing to the motion of the ship, it was no easy task--and shake Kenneth by the hand.

"G.o.d bless you, young sir," he said, and the tears were in his eyes. "I was back in bonnie Berkshire all the time you was a-playin', sir. I saw my children, sir, runnin' among the daisies, the crimson poppies growin'

among the corn's green, the waving lime trees all in flower and covered with bees--ah! sir, you took the old man home, you took him home."

"Don't talk twaddle," cried his tormentor; "he took us all home, for the matter o' that."

"Sit down, ye ould fool!" cried Tim O'Flaherty.

Kenneth put up his flute, and the bo'sun sat down beside him.

"Hark to the thunder!" he said; "listen to the thud o' the seas. My eye! it is a night and a half. Just like the night we went over in the old _Salanella_."

"Went over!" cried the carpenter. "What d'ye mean?"

"Why, I means what I says, to be sure. We turned turtle. Every soul below was called to his account, and only myself and five more managed to cling to the keel."

"She must have been a barnacley old tub," said the cook, "else you wouldn't ha' got over the copper."

"You just mind your ladle, old man," said the carpenter. "You're only a cook, arter all, and Pipes knows what he's a-talking about."

"O' course I does," said Pipes. "Thank ye, Chips; it ain't very often you takes my part. O' course I knows what I'se a-talkin' about. The keel rolled over to us, and we easily got on top."

"Suffer much?"

Pipes did not look at the speaker, but away into vacancy as if he were recalling the past.

"Suffer!" he said. "I hope it may never be the lot o' anybody in this galley to know what we suffered. For three days and nights o' storm I and one other clung to that ship's bottom; the rest dropped off one by one or slipped willingly into the sea, glad to end their terrible misery.