On Board the Esmeralda Part 13

"Aye, aye, my c.o.c.kbird. A barque of a thousand tons, or more, and her name's the _Esmeralda_."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

SIGNING ARTICLES.

"She's loading at Cardiff--cargo o' steam coals, I b'lieve, for some o'

them Pee-ruvian men-o'-war out there," explained Sam, presently, when the first excitement occasioned by his announcement of the news had somewhat calmed down. "It's lucky, laddie, as how the schooner's all ready for sailing, as I thought o' fetching down to Saint Mary's morrer mornin', arter some new taties; but the taties must wait now, and I fancy as how this arternoon tide'll sarve jest as well for us--the wind's right fair for the Lizard, too!"

"What, Sam--you don't mean that, really?" exclaimed Jane Pengelly, not expecting such a hurried sending of me off to sea. "Surely not so soon, my man, eh?" She was almost breathless with grief and surprise.

"Aye, but I do mean it," persisted he. "The shep's a loadin' now, I tell you, and she oughter start on her v'yage in a fortnight's time at th' outside; and if you reckon as how we'll take a week to reach Cardiff, we'll ha' no time to lose, for, if the wind changes arter we rounds the Longships, we'll ha' all our work cut out to beat up the Bristol Channel, in time to see the lad comf'ably off!"

"My, Sam! couldn't you take the train across country to Cardiff, when you'd all ha' more time for getting ready, and I could see to mending all the poor dearie's things before he goes for--it'll be the last sight I'll ever see of his blessed face?"

Jane Pengelly said this timidly, wiping her eyes carefully, with each corner of her ap.r.o.n in turn; for, she well knew her brother's horror of the railway, and all conveyances--indeed, he disliked any mode of land travelling, save on foot, or "on Shank's mare," as he called it, which was the plan he invariably adopted for reaching such places which he could not get to by water.

"Why, Jane, my woman," Sam indignantly rejoined; "your brains must all be a wool-gathering! Catch me and the lad agoing by that longsh.o.r.e schreechin', smokin', ramshacklin' fire engine, when we can ha' a boat's sound plank under our foot, and sail over the sea in a nat'ral sort o'

way, such as we're born to! You're the last person to think as how Sam Pengelly 'd desart his colours and bringing-up, for to go over to such an outlandish way o' fetching the port for which he's bound! No, Jane-- I ain't angry, but I feels hurt a bit on the h'insinivation--but there, let it be. We'll go round to Cardiff in the schooner, as is as smart a little craft for a pa.s.sage boat as ere a one could wish to clap eyes on, though I says it as shouldn't, and we'll start, laddie, this arternoon, as soon as the tide sets down Channel; so, you'd better see after your traps, and stow your chest when dinner's over--and then, we'll get under weigh, and clear outwards!"

Little dinner, however, was eaten that day at the cottage, notwithstanding the fact that Jane Pengelly, as a reward for my industry in making up and remoulding her asparagus bed, had concocted a favourite Cornish dish for our repast, y'clept a "Mevagissey pie"--a savoury compound consisting of alternate slices of mutton and layers of apples and onions cut into pieces, and symmetrically arranged, the whole being subsequently covered with a crust, pie-fashion, and then baked in the oven until well browned; when, although the admixture seems somewhat queer to those unused to a Cornish cuisine, the result is not by any means to be despised; rather is it uncommonly jolly!

Generally, this dish would have been considered a _tour de force_ on the table, and not much left of it after our united knife and fork play when operations had once begun; but now, albeit Sam Pengelly made a feeble pretence of having a tremendous appet.i.te, failing most ridiculously in the attempt, while his sister heaped up my plate, we were all too much perturbed in our minds to do justice to the banquet. So it was that the Mevagissey pie, toothsome as it was, went almost untasted away, Jane removing the remains presently to the larder--that was, as she said, but I could not help noticing that she did not return afterwards to clear away the dinner things and make matters tidy in the kitchen, as was her regular custom when we had finished meals.

I soon found out the reason of this, when, on going up shortly afterwards to my little room, I discovered the soft-hearted creature bending over the sea-chest which I had been presented with--in addition to her son Teddy's clothes and other property--"having a good cry," as she said in excuse for the weakness.

From some cause or other, she had taken to me from the moment her brother Sam first brought me to the cottage, placing me in the vacant spot in her heart left by Teddy's early death, and I am sure my own mother, if she had lived, could not have loved me more.

Of course I reciprocated her affection--how could I help it, when she and her brother were the only beings in the world who had ever exhibited any tenderness towards me?

Strangely enough, however, she would never allow me to call her "mother"

or "Mistress Pengelly," as I wanted to--thinking "Jane" too familiar, especially when applied by a youngster like myself to a middle-aged woman.

No, she would not hear of my addressing her otherwise than by her Christian name.

"If you calls me Missis anything, dearie, mind if I don't speak to you always as 'Master Leigh'--that distant as how you won't know me," she said; so, as she always said what she meant, I did as she wished, and she continued to style me her "dearie," that being the affectionate pet name she had for me, in the same way as her brother Sam had dubbed me his "c.o.c.kbird," when he first introduced himself to me on the Hoe, a mode of address which he still persisted in.

I may add, by the way, to make an end of these explanations, that Jane Pengelly had married her first cousin on the father's side, as the matter was once elaborately made plain to me; consequently, she was not compelled, as most ladies are, to "change her name" when she wedded Teddy's sire, and still retained after marriage her ancestral patronymic--which was sometimes sported with such unction by her brother, when laying down the law and giving a decided opinion.

Partings are sad things, and the sooner they are over the better. So Sam thought too, no doubt, for he presently hailed us both to come down- stairs, as time was up, and a man besides waiting with a hand-truck to trundle my chest down to the quay in the Catt.w.a.ter, off which Sam's little schooner was lying.

Thereupon, Jane giving me a final hug, my chest was bundled below in a brace of shakes, and Sam and I, accompanied by the man wheeling the truck, were on our way down the Stoke Road towards Plymouth--a lingering glance which I cast behind, in order to give a farewell wave of the hand to my second mother, imprinting on my memory every detail of the little cottage, with its clematis-covered porch, and the bright scarlet geraniums and fuchsias in full bloom in front, and Jane Pengelly's tearful face standing out amidst the flowers, crying out a last loving "good-bye!"

We reached the schooner in good time so as to fetch out of the Sound before the tide ebbed, and, after clearing the breakwater, as the wind was to the northward of east, Sam made a short board on the port tack towards the Eddystone, in order to catch the western stream--which begins to run down Channel an hour after the flood, when about six miles out or so from the land, the current insh.o.r.e setting up eastwards towards the Start and being against us if we tried to stem it by proceeding at once on our true course.

When we had got into the stream, however, and thus had the advantage of having the tideway with us, Sam let the schooner's head fall off; and so, wearing her round, he shaped a straight course for the Lizard, almost in the line of a crow's flight, bringing the wind nearly right aft to us now on the starboard tack as we ran before it. We pa.s.sed abreast of the goggle-eyed lighthouse on the point which marks the landfall for most mariners when returning to the English Channel after a foreign voyage, close on to midnight--not a bad run from Plymouth Sound, which we had left at four o'clock in the afternoon.

It was a beautiful bright moonlight night, the sea being lighted up like a burnished mirror, and the clear orb making the distant background of the Cornish coast come out in relief, far away on our western bow. The wind being still fair for us, keeping to the east-nor'-east, Sam brought it more abeam, bearing up so that he might pa.s.s between the Wolf Rock and the Land's End, striking across the bight made by Mount's Bay in order to save the way we would have lost if he had taken the insh.o.r.e track, like most coasters--and, indeed, as he would have been obliged to do if it had been foggy or rough, which, fortunately for us, it wasn't.

By sunrise next morning we had fetched within a couple of miles of the Longships; when, bracing round the schooner's topsail yard and sailing close-hauled, with the wind nearly on our bow, we ran for Lundy Island in the British Channel.

I never saw any little craft behave better than the schooner did now, sailing on a bowline being her best point of speed, as is the case with most fore and aft rigged vessels. She almost "ate into the wind's eye;"

and, although the distance was over a hundred miles from the Longships, she was up to Lundy by nightfall, on this, the second day after leaving home.

From this point, however, we had to beat up all the way to Cardiff, as the easterly wind was blowing straight down the Bristol Channel, and consequently dead in our teeth, as soon as we began to bear up. It was a case of tack and tack about--first a long leg over to the Mumbles on the starboard tack, followed by a corresponding reach towards Dunkery Beacon on the port hand; backwards and forwards, see-saw, turn and turn about, until, finally, we rounded Penarth Heads, arriving at our destination on the afternoon of our fourth day from Plymouth.

We got to Cardiff none too early, either.

The _Esmeralda_ having completed loading in her cargo sooner than the owners had expected, had cast-off from the jetty and was now lying in the stream off the harbour. She was quite ready to start on her voyage, and seemed longing to be on the move, for her topsails were hanging loose and the courses were in the brails, so that they could be let fall and sheeted home at a moment's notice.

We could see this for ourselves, as we rounded close under the vessel's stern when running into the harbour; and further particulars of the ship's readiness to set sail we learnt at the agent's ash.o.r.e, with whom Sam Pengelly had been in communication for some time, unknown to me, with reference to having me articled as a first-cla.s.s apprentice in one of their best ships. The good-hearted fellow, too, without my knowledge, although I learnt this later on, had entered into an agreement to pay a good round sum as a premium for me in order that I might have accommodation aft and mess with the officers.

Sam enlightened me about some of these particulars, mentioning the arrangements he had made for my comfort, while we were making our trip round to the Bristol Channel in the schooner, our departure from the cottage having been too hurried for me to gain any information on the point, save the great fact of my being about to go to sea at last. The reason for the delay in this, Sam now explained to me, was on account of the absence of the _Esmeralda_ on a long round voyage to the China seas and back, my worthy old friend having picked that vessel out from amongst the many that had put into Plymouth since I had been with him, and which he had overhauled for the special purpose in view, because of her staunch sailing qualities and the clipper-like cut of her lines, besides his personal knowledge that she was "commanded by a skipper as knew how to handle a shep," as he said, "so as a b'y might expect to larn somethin' under him," and he had therefore set his heart on my going in her.

We had not now been long at the agent's, from the windows of whose small office we could see the barque riding at her moorings, before this identical gentleman came bustling in as if in a most desperate hurry.

"Why, here he is!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Sam aside to me as he entered, saying to the other as he took off his cap with one hand and shoved out his other fist in greeting, "Sarvent, sir, Cap'en Billings; how d'ye find yourself since we last met in Plymouth Sound?"

"Oh, is that you, Pengelly?" responded the skipper of the _Esmeralda_ cordially, accepting Sam's proffered hand and shaking it heartily, "I was just thinking of you and your boy--have you brought him with you?"

"Aye, there's the b'y," replied Sam, pushing me forward affectionately, "and a right good straight up and down youngster you'll find him, Cap'en Billings, with all the makings of a sailor in him, I tell you, sure's my name's Sam Pengelly!"

"Well, I'll take your word for that," laughed the other.

He seemed to me at first sight a genial good-tempered man--with rough reddish hair and beard, and a pair of merry twinkling blue eyes; but I could also see, from a quick sharp look he threw over me, reckoning me up from top to toe, that he'd all his wits about him and was used to command.

He looked like one of those sort of fellows that wouldn't be trifled with when roused.

"I'm glad to see you, Leigh, and have you with me," he said to me, affably--although he didn't offer to shake hands, some distance lying between the position of a skipper and an apprentice. "You're lucky to be just in time, though, for we're all ready to sail as soon as the tide serves for us to cross the outer bar and be off. Got all the papers ready, Mr Tompkins?"

"Yes, captain," replied the agent. "Here they are; Leigh and Mr Pengelly have just signed them."

"All right then. If you'll come along with me over to the Marine Superintendent's office," said Captain Billings, to us two, "we'll have the signatures witnessed to these indenture articles; and then the thing'll be all settled, and the boy can come aboard at once."

"Heave ahead, my hearty," replied Sam. "We're both ready and willing;"

and thereupon we all adjourned to the presence of the responsible official of the port entrusted with the supervision of all matters connected with the mercantile marine, in whose presence I was formally bound apprentice to the captain of the _Esmeralda_.

These preliminaries duly arranged, Sam Pengelly had some further dealings of a private nature with the captain and agent, in which the c.h.i.n.king of gold coin had apparently a good deal to do; and then he and I, at the skipper's invitation, taking our seats in a boat that was lying by the side of the jetty started off for the _Esmeralda_, whither Sam had previously directed one of the schooner's men to have my sea- chest removed while we went on to the agent's.

Really, I could not explain the mingled feelings of hope, joy, pride, and satisfaction, that had filled my breast at the thought that I was really going to sea, and having the darling wish of my heart at last gratified--my contentment much increased by my overhearing a whispered comment of my new captain to Sam Pengelly, that I "wasn't a pigeon-toed landsman, thank goodness!" He said he could see that from the manner in which I put my feet on the side cleats, as I got out of the boat and swung myself up to the gangway.

"Now at length," thought I, speaking of myself in Sam's fashion, as if I were some other person--"Martin Leigh you are going afloat at last!"

And, although I was only an humble reefer in the merchant service, whose spick-and-span uniform of blue serge and gold-banded cap had never yet smelt salt water to christen them, I felt as proud on first stepping "on board the _Esmeralda_" as Nelson must have done, when standing on the quarter-deck of the _Victory_ and seeing her close with the Spanish fleet immediately after his famous signal was displayed--"England expects every man this day to do his duty!"

CHAPTER TWELVE.