On Board the Esmeralda Part 21

"No, sir," said I, unable to avoid the joke, "we didn't agree--we fell out, as you saw!"

Jorrocks burst out laughing at this, and even the skipper himself couldn't repress a smile--although he bit his lips to hide it, seeing the first mate scowling at me as if he could eat me up without salt, for he was afraid of the truth now coming out.

"Don't be impudent, Leigh! you know what I mean well enough. Did your calculation agree with that of Mr Macdougall?" asked Captain Billings again.

"No, Captain Billings," I answered, this time gravely enough. "I found that our dead reckoning was nearly thirty leagues out, some set of current having carried us considerably to the westward; but when I told this to Mr Macdougall, he called me a fool."

"Why did you not come and report the matter to me?"

"Well, sir, I didn't have time to," I said. "When Mr Macdougall spoke to me in that way, I suppose I gave him a cheeky retort, for he threatened to knock me down."

"And then?" asked the skipper, when I paused here, not wishing to tell of my being floored.

"Why, I dared him to touch me," I continued, "and he did knock me down."

"Did he? I heard nothing of this before! I thought that you had attacked Mr Macdougall first--indeed, he told me so himself!" Captain Billings said, with much surprise, eyeing the first mate suspiciously.

At this point, an unexpected witness stepped forth in my defence, in the person of Haxell, the taciturn carpenter. This individual seldom spoke to any one unless previously addressed; so his voluntary testimony on my behalf was all the more striking and effective, especially as it was given in the very nick of time.

"Aye, but the lad didn't," now sang out Haxell, who had come up on the p.o.o.p without any one previously noticing him. "I saw Mr Macdougall knock him down twice afore ever he raised his hand ag'in' him."

"The deuce he did!" exclaimed the skipper, indignantly; and then turning on the first mate, he gave him another "dressing down" before all the men, such as I never heard given to any one before. It, really, almost made me feel sorry for him!

"You lying thing!" he cried to Mr Macdougall in withering accents, the scorn of which was more than I could express in words. "I can't call you a man, and you aren't a sailor, by Jove, for sailors don't behave like that to poor friendless orphan boys! You have told me a heap of falsehoods about this whole occurrence from first to last, and I despise you from the bottom of my soul for the way in which you have acted throughout. I'm only sorry we're at sea, for you shouldn't stop an hour longer in my ship if I could help it!"

"But, Cap'en," interposed Mr Macdougall, feebly, trying to ward off the storm of the skipper's wrath, "the ill favourt loon provokit me, and was mair than inseelent."

"Phaugh, man!" exclaimed Captain Billings, with intense disgust. "Don't try and excuse yourself; it only makes matters much worse! I don't mind your knocking the lad down, and I daresay Leigh would forgive you for that, too; but what I am indignant at is the fact of your telling such a gross lie about the transaction, and allowing me to take an unjust view of the quarrel--making me disrate the young fellow, and punish him as I did, under a false, impression of what his conduct had been, all of which a word from you might have altered! Besides, just think how in your conceited ignorance you nearly wrecked the ship and sacrificed all our lives through your refusal to take a hint from the lad as to our position. Why, I don't mind receiving a suggestion from the humblest foremast hand any day!"

"But--" put in the mate again, trying to defend himself.

His appeal, however, was in vain, for the skipper would not listen to him for a moment.

"You had better go below, Mr Macdougall," he said. "I cannot speak calmly to you now, and the sooner you're out of my sight the better for you! But stop a minute," he added, as if on after reflection. "As you were present when I disrated Leigh--on the ground mainly of your false statements as to his having a.s.saulted you without any provocation on your part, which has now been proved to have been false--it is only right that you should also be present at the restoration of the lad to his former post. Leigh!"

"Here, sir," I replied to this last hail of the skipper's, on his completing his reprimand to the mate. I antic.i.p.ated, of course, what was coming, and my heart gave an exultant thump, almost "leaping into my mouth," as the saying is.

"I'm sorry, my boy, I did you a wrong this afternoon," said Captain Billings, stretching out his hand kindly to me as he spoke. "I hope, however, you'll forgive me, and bear no malice. I now wish you to return to your duties as acting second mate in Mr Ohlsen's place until he's fit and well again; and I trust you'll have no further disagreements with any of the officers of the ship."

"Thank you, sir," I answered respectfully, accepting the hand he offered and giving it a cordial shake. "I will be very careful of my conduct in future, and I'm sorry for being impertinent to Mr Macdougall--"

I turned here towards where the first mate had been standing; but he had disappeared, so the skipper accepted the apology I intended for him, on his behalf in his absence, making short my _amende honorable_.

"Never mind him now, my lad," he said, waving his hand as if dismissing Mr Macdougall from further consideration. "He's gone below, and joy go with him, if he's got any conscience! And, by the way, Leigh, I shan't forget that you've saved all our lives to-night by your timely warning."

"It was more Jorrocks than I, sir," I interposed here, stopping the skipper's thanks. "I thought the sound of the breakers was caused by a lot of whales blowing near us; but he knew better, and he it was who sang out to the helmsman."

"Well, well, we won't argue the point," replied Captain Billings, laughing. "I will say you both had a hand in it, if that'll suit you better; but now, to end the controversy, you can go and turn in to your old bunk, as I intend keeping the first watch till we're safe on our right track again."

To hear was to obey, although, before I left the p.o.o.p, the _Esmeralda_ having got well away from the perilous rocks that had nearly been her ruin, I had the satisfaction of seeing her hauled round again up to the wind, with her head pointing south, thus resuming her proper course towards Cape Horn--only now with a more southerly pitch, sailing close- handed on the port tack.

Towards four bells in the morning watch we achieved the wonderful nautical feat of "Crossing the Line," and, as I was on deck at the time, interviewing Pat Doolan in order to coax some coffee out of him, the Irish cook had a joke or two at my expense, under the plea of christening me on my entrance into Neptune's rightful "territory"--if that term be not a Hibernian bull, considering the said territory is supposed to lie below the sea!

It was only our thirty-third day out, and some of the hands were congratulating themselves on our having got so far on our journey, many vessels knocking about the equator when within reach of it for days frequently before they can accomplish the pa.s.sage.

"Be jabers!" said Doolan, "I call to mind once whin I was goin' from Noo Yark to Australy in a schooner with a cargo o' mules--"

"Lor', here's a bender coming now!" interrupted one of the crew with a laugh.

"Whisht, now!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the cook indignantly. "Sure an' it's the trooth I'm tell'n ye, an' niver a lie! Whin I were a goin' to Australy in this here schooner, we kept dancing about hereabouts till a lot ov them blessed mules died, an' in coorse we hove 'em overboard as soon as they turned up their toes."

"That's a good un!" put in Jorrocks, who was standing by. "This is the fust time I ever heard tell of a mule having toes!"

"Well, hooves thin, if you likes them betther," said Pat, a little upset by this correction. "But, as I was a sayin' when this omahdaun here took the word out ov me mouth, unlike the raal gintleman he ginerally is--"

"Stow that flummery," cried Jorrocks, putting his hands before his face, under pretence of blushing at the compliment; but Doolan took no notice of him further, proceeding with his yarn.

"Whin we hove them mules over the side, I noticed one as was coollured most peculiar, all sthripes ov black on a white skin, jist like one ov them zaybrays they haves in the sarcus show, an' they're called so, by the same token, 'case they brays like a donkey and comes over the zay, you see?"

"Aye, we see," said the hands, winking at each other and whispering that Pat was "carrying on finely this morning!"

"Well, bhoys, as I was a sayin'," continued the narrator, serving out pannikins of hot coffee to the watch the while, and so attending to duty and pleasure in the same breath, "I notic't this sthripy mule when it was chucked over the side at the beginning of the month. It was last August twelvemonth as how we was crossing the Line; and, after pitching the poor brute over, we sailed on and on--would you belayve it?--aye, for thray weeks longer, as I'm a living sinner, whin one foine mornin', jist the same as this now, the look-out man sings out as he says a boat floating ahid ov the schooner! Our old man, thinkin' there might be sowls in the blissid thing, puts the vessel off ov her coorse to fetch to windward ov it; and blest if what the look-out man thought was a boat wasn't the self-same carkiss ov that there sthripy mule we hove over three weeks before!"

"You'll do," was the comment of Jorrocks to this story. "You 'mind me, Pat, of a yarn I heard once about an old lady and a chap who knew how to 'bowse his jib up,' same as yourself."

"What was that?" I asked, seeing that Jorrocks looked as if he were primed up to fire off another story, and only needed a little pressing to make him reel it out.

"Lord, Mister Leigh, it ain't nothing to speak of," he began, with a preliminary hitch of his trowser stocks; "it's only what them book- people calls a nanny goat."

"An anecdote, eh?" I said. "Well, that'll be all the better. Heave ahead with it now you're on the tack."

"All right, then," replied Jorrocks. "Here goes. You must know as how this old lady were going over the Atlantic for the fust time, being on a voyage from Falmouth to Saint Kitts, in the West h'Indies; and she were mighty curious, when she had rekivered from sea-sickness, about all the strange sights o' the h'ocean, pestering the cap'en to death with questions.

"One day she tackled the old man 'bout flying fish. 'Bless me, Mr Capting,' she says, 'is it really true as how there be fishes as fly hereabouts?'

"Now, it were just on to noon that day, and the old man was busy 'bout taking a sight o' the sun, the same as you're so handy with, Mister Leigh; so he says to the old lady, 'I'm engaged, mum, at present, but if you axes that man there at the wheel while I goes below, he'll tell you all about it.'

"So, as soon as he dives down the companion to take the time of the chronometer below, the old lady goes up to the helmsman--all bridling up and curtseying down, the same as a ship in a heavy head sea.

"'Good-morning, Mr Sailor,' says she.

"'Mornin',' says the man at the wheel, who was a rough old sh.e.l.lback, and didn't waste his words like Pat Doolan here.

"'Is it really true, Mr Sailor,' says the old lady, 'as how there are fishes in the sea in these lat.i.toods, as can fly in the air, like birds?

The capting told me to ax you, or I wouldn't trouble you.'

"'Bless you, mum, no trouble at all,' answered the man. 'In course there be flying fish hereabouts; you'll see flocks of 'em presently.'

"'And are they very large, Mr Sailor?' says the old lady.