Many Cargoes Part 36

"Don't you wink at me," said Mrs. Blossom wrathfully. "Come out of that galley."

"There's room for both," said the new cook persuasively. "Come in an'

put your 'ed on my shoulder."

Utterly unprepared for this mode of attack, Mrs. Blossom lost her nerve, and, instead of storming the galley, as she had fully intended, drew back and retired to the cabin, where she found a short note from the skipper, enclosing her pay, and requesting her to take the train home.

After reading this she went ash.o.r.e again, returning presently with a big bundle, which she placed on the cabin table in front of Harris and the mate, who had just begun tea.

"I'm not going home by train," said she, opening the bundle, which contained a spirit kettle and provisions. "I'm going back with you; but I am not going to be beholden to you for anything-I 'm going to board myself."

After this declaration she made herself tea and sat down. The meal proceeded in silence, though occasionally she astonished her companions by little mysterious laughs, which caused them slight uneasiness. As she made no hostile demonstration, however, they became rea.s.sured, and congratulated themselves upon the success of their manoeuvre.

"How long shall we be getting back to London, do you think?" inquired Mrs. Blossom at last.

"We shall probably sail Tuesday night, and it may be anything from six days upwards," answered the skipper. "If this wind holds it'll probably be upwards."

To his great concern Mrs. Blossom put her handkerchief over her face, and, shaking with suppressed laughter, rose from the table and left the cabin.

The couple left eyed each other wonderingly.

"Did I say anything pertickler funny, George?" inquired the skipper, after some deliberation.

"Didn't strike me so," said the mate carelessly; "I expect she's thought o' something else to say about your family. She wouldn't be so good-tempered as all that for nothing. I feel cur'ous to know what it is."

"If you paid more attention to your own business," said the skipper, his choler rising, "you'd get on better. A mate who was a good seaman wouldn't ha' let a cook go on like this-it's not discipline."

He went off in dudgeon, and a coolness sprang up between them, which lasted until the bustle of starting in the small hours of Wednesday morning.

Once under way the day pa.s.sed uneventfully, the schooner crawling sluggishly down the coast of Wales, and, when the skipper turned in that night, it was with the pleasant conviction that Mrs. Blossom had shot her last bolt, and, like a sensible woman, was going to accept her defeat. From this pleasing idea he was aroused suddenly by the watch stamping heavily on the deck overhead.

"What's up?" cried the skipper, darting up the companion-ladder, jostled by the mate.

"I dunno," said Bill, who was at the wheel, shakily. "Mrs. Blossom come up on deck a little while ago, and since then there's been three or four heavy splashes."

"She can't have gone overboard," said the skipper, in tones to which he manfully strove to impart a semblance of anxiety. "No, here she is.

Anything wrong, Mrs. Blossom?"

"Not so far as I'm concerned," replied the lady, pa.s.sing him and going below.

"You've been dreaming, Bill," said the skipper sharply.

"I ain't," said Bill stoutly. "I tell you I heard splashes. It's my belief she coaxed the cook up on deck, and then shoved him overboard. A woman could do anything with a man like that cook."

"I'll soon see," said the mate, and walking forward he put his head down the fore-scuttle and yelled for the cook.

"Aye, aye, sir," answered a voice sleepily, while the other men started up in their bunks. "Do you want me?"

"Bill thinks somebody has gone overboard," said the mate. "Are you all here?"

In answer to this the mystified men turned out all standing, and came on deck yawning and rubbing their eyes, while the mate explained the situation. Before he had finished the cook suddenly darted off to the galley, and the next moment the forlorn cry of a bereaved soul broke on their startled ears.

"What is it?" cried the mate.

"Come here!" shouted the cook, "look at this!"

He struck a match and held it aloft in his shaking fingers, and the men, who were worked up to a great pitch of excitement and expected to see something ghastly, after staring hard for some time in vain, profanely requested him to be more explicit.

"She's thrown all the saucepans and things overboard," said the cook with desperate calmness. "This lid of a tea kettle is all that's left for me to do the cooking in."

The Gannet, manned by seven famine-stricken misogynists, reached London six days later, the skipper obstinately refusing to put in at an intermediate port to replenish his stock of hardware. The most he would consent to do was to try and borrow from a pa.s.sing vessel, but the unseemly behaviour of the master of a brig, who lost two hours owing to their efforts to obtain a saucepan of him, utterly discouraged any further attempts in that direction, and they settled down to a diet of biscuits and water, and salt beef scorched on the stove.

Mrs. Blossom, unwilling perhaps to witness their sufferings, remained below, and when they reached London, only consented to land under the supervision of a guard of honour, composed of all the able-bodied men on the wharf.

A BENEFIT PERFORMANCE

In the small front parlour of No. 3, Mermaid Pa.s.sage, Sunset Bay, Jackson Pepper, ex-pilot, sat in a state of indignant collapse, tenderly feeling a cheek on which the print of hasty fingers still lingered.

The room, which was in excellent order, showed no signs of the tornado which had pa.s.sed through it, and Jackson Pepper, looking vaguely round, was dimly reminded of those tropical hurricanes he had read about which would strike only the objects in the path, and leave all others undisturbed.

In this instance he had been the object, and the tornado, after obliterating him, had pa.s.sed up the small staircase which led from the room, leaving him listening anxiously to its distant mutterings.

To his great discomfort the storm showed signs of coming up again, and he had barely time to effect an appearance of easy unconcern, which accorded but ill with the flush afore-mentioned, when a big, red-faced woman came heavily downstairs and burst into the room.

"You have made me ill again," she said severely, "and now I hope you are satisfied with your work. You'll kill me before you have done with me!"

The ex-pilot shifted on his chair.

"You're not fit to have a wife," continued Mrs. Pepper, "aggravating them and upsetting them! Any other woman would have left you long ago!"

"We've only been married three months," Pepper reminded her.

"Don't talk to me!" said his wife; "it seems more like a lifetime!"

"It seems a long time to ME" said the ex-pilot, plucking up a little courage.

"That's right!" said his wife, striding over to where he sat. "Say you're tired of me; say you wish you hadn't married me! You coward! Ah!

if my poor first husband was only alive and sitting in that chair now instead of you, how happy I would be!"

"If he likes to come and take it he's welcome!" said Pepper; "it's my chair, and it was my father's before me, but there's no man living I would sooner give it to than your first. Ah! he knew what he was about when the Dolphin went down, he did. I don't blame him, though."

"What do you mean?" demanded his wife.

"It's my belief that he didn't go down with her," said Pepper, crossing over to the staircase and standing with his hand on the door.