Sail Ho! Part 1

Sail Ho!

by George Manville Fenn.

CHAPTER ONE.

A BOY AT SEA.

Many many years ago seem like yesterday, and I hope it will always be the same. For, just to be serious for a moment, what is the full stretch of the oldest man's life to time? Just one star-wink, if the astronomers are right about the pa.s.sage of light, and that the glitter of stars that we see now are only the rays which started from them away there in s.p.a.ce long before we were born.

Don't be frightened, I'm not going to talk astronomy, but about my old ship, the first I ever sailed in, after having a kind of training in my father's little yachts, beginning with the shoulder-of-mutton sail; and next with the Cornish lugger, which he bought at Newlyn, on beyond Penzance, when Penwalloc went wrong, and his two boats with all their gear, and about two miles of drift mackerel and pilchard nets, were sold by auction.

Father bought the _Brine_, and had her decked and newly rigged, and many's the cruise I had with him and old Tom Sanders, we three managing the two big sails well enough. After that came the cutter, when we had to have two men and a boy, for the mainsail was pretty big to manage, and took some hauling and setting in a breeze, and some strength to tackle in one of the squalls that come rushing out of the gullies and combes down along our Cornish coast, where the great peninsula or promontory, or whatever you call it, is scored across and across almost from sea to sea with deep valleys; just as you see a loin of pork cut with a sharp knife before it is put down to roast.

There, I'm not going to talk about Cornwall this time, but my adventures on the high seas in the Burgh Castle.

So to begin:--

"Be-low!"

"Hi! you sirs!"

"Look out! Run!"

Quite a little chorus of warnings, and then--

_Spang_.

And directly after--

_Crash_.

One of the yards being hoisted up to its place across the main-topgallant mast of the Burgh Castle lying in the East India Docks, and still in the hands of the riggers, had slipped from the slings, through carelessness, and come down from high, up aloft to strike the deck wich one end, and then fall flat within a foot of where two lads dressed as midshipmen in the merchant service had been standing, but who at the first shout had rushed in different directions, one to stumble over a coil of rope, perform an evolution like the leap of a frog, and come down flat on his front; the other to b.u.t.t his head right into the chest of a big, burly, sunburnt man, who gave vent to a sound between a bellow and a roar.

"Where are--Hi! aloft there!--oh, my wind! Ahoy there, you--!"

Then followed, as the big burly man recovered his breath, a startling volley of words--expletives and sea terms, in which he denounced the gang of men aloft as sea-cooks and lubbers, and threatened divers punishments and penalties for their carelessness.

Then he turned to another man who was bigger, burlier, redder, and browner, especially about the nose, and made certain exceedingly impolite inquiries as to what he was about, to allow the owner's tackle to be smashed about in that fashion. To which the bigger and browner man growled out a retort that he'd nothing to do with the gang, as things hadn't been handed over to him yet. And then he grew frantic too, and kicked the fallen yard, and yelled up to the riggers that the said piece of wood was sprung, that they'd have to get another yard, for he wasn't going to sea with a main-top-galn'sl-yard fished and spliced.

Meantime the first brown man had turned to the two lads, and cooling down, nodded to them.

"Come on board then, eh?"

"Yes, sir--yes, sir."

"Lucky for you that you both hopped out of the way, youngsters, or I should have had to send one of you back home with a hole through him, and t'other broke in half."

I was the boy who would have been sent home with a hole through him--I the boy who write this--and the other boy who would have been broken in half, was one whom I had encountered at the dock-gates, where we had both arrived together, that miserable, mizzly morning, in four-wheeled cabs with our sea-chests on the top, and both in mortal dread--and yet somehow hopeful--that we should be too late, and that the good ship Burgh Castle had sailed.

I had been very anxious to go to sea. I loved it, and all through the preparations I was eagerness itself; but somehow, when it came to the morning that I started from the hotel where I had slept for the one night in London, a curious feeling of despondency came over me, a feeling which grew worse as I pa.s.sed through the city, and then along the water-side streets, where there were shops displaying tarpaulins, canvas, and ropes; others dealing in ships' stores; and again others whose windows glittered with compa.s.s, s.e.xtant, and patent logs, not wooden, but bra.s.s.

Perhaps it was seeing all this through the steamy, misty rain.

"What a while he is!" I said to myself, "and what a dismal place!"

Just then, as we were going down the muddiest street I ever saw, I became aware of a dirty, ragged-looking fellow of eighteen or nineteen trotting along beside the cab, and directly after of one on the other side, who kept up persistently till at last we reached the docks and the cabman drew up.

"Drive on," I shouted.

"Don't go no further," was the reply, and I stepped out into the drizzle to see about my chest and pay the man, just as a sharp quarrel was going on close by, and I saw a lad a little bigger than myself scuffling with two more rough-looking fellows who had seized upon his chest, and insisted upon carrying it.

The next moment I was engaged with the pair who had trotted by my cab, and who had fastened most officiously upon mine.

"You touch it again," came sharply, "and I'll let you know."

"Leave the box alone," I said, "I don't want your help."

"Carry it in, sir. I was fust, sir. Yah! you get out."

"Don't let 'em take it," shouted the lad who was squabbling with the first pair, and I was just beginning to think that I should have to fight for my belongings, when a dock policeman came to our help, the cabmen were paid, and our chests were placed upon a truck, while the cab touts pressed upon us and insisted on being paid for doing nothing.

"You must have got plenty of tin," said my companion in difficulties, after I had compromised matters by giving each of the ragged touts a shilling; "you won't do that next voyage. I did first time I came."

"Have you been to sea before, then?" I said, looking at the speaker with interest.

"Rather. Are you going in the Burgh Castle? Yes, I can see you are."

"How?" I asked, as I saw him glance at my new cap, which I knew was beginning to be soaked by the rain.

"By that," he said, nodding at the embroidered flag and star upon the front. "We're going to be shipmates, then."

"I am glad," I said; but as I uttered the words it did not seem as if I were uttering the truth, for I felt anything but joyful, and my companion did not impress me favourably. For he looked sour, yellow, and discontented as we tramped over the wet stones along by towering warehouses, stacks of chests, and huge b.u.t.tresses of barrels on one side, and with the great basins of water choked with shipping, all apparently in the most inextricable confusion, till we reached a great loftily masted ship and pa.s.sed up the sloping gangway on to her deck.

Here every one was busy--officers, sailors, dockmen; hatches were off and bales of lading and stores were being lowered down, and we were just standing together looking out for some one to show us our quarters and to carry down our chests, when the warning shouts came from aloft, and we had so narrow an escape of being laid low.

CHAPTER TWO.

No one paid any more attention to us, and we still stood looking about, with my companion more helpless than myself, in spite of his having been to sea before, still wanting to get out of the rain and save my new clothes, I began to exert myself, with the result that at last I found a sailor who told me where I could find the steward.

That functionary was too busy, he said, but at the sight of a shilling he thought he could spare a minute, and at the end of five we two damp, miserable, low-spirited lads were seated on our sea-chests in a little dark cabin, after doubling up our mackintoshes to make dry cushions for the wet seats.

There was not much room, our chests doing a good deal towards filling up the narrow s.p.a.ce, and hence our knees were pretty close together as we sat and tried to look at each other, not at all an easy job, for the round window was pretty close to the great stone wall of the basin, and a gangway ran across from the wharf up to the deck, shutting out the little light which would have come in if the way had been clear.

"Cheerful, ain't it?" said my companion.