Teddy Part 10

He had not thought there was any danger in disobeying the doctor's instructions, and yet here was the gig smashed up and the wagoner's horses injured irreparably, one poor brute having to be shot afterwards; besides which he did not know what had become of the runaway animal.

All the mishap had arisen through disobedience!

He went home at once and told his father everything; but the vicar, though comforting him by saying that he would get the doctor a new gig, and recompense the farmer to whom the wagon belonged for the loss of his team, seemed to have his eyes awakened at last to the evil to which Doctor Jolly had so vainly tried to direct his attention.

He determined that Teddy should go to school.

But, before this intention could be carried out, there was a most unexpected arrival at the vicarage.

This was no less a personage than Uncle Jack, whom neither Teddy nor his sisters had ever seen before, he having gone to sea the same year the vicar had married, and never been heard of again, the vessel in which he had sailed having gone down, and all hands reported lost.

Uncle Jack hadn't foundered, though, if his ship had, for here he was as large as life, and that was very large, he weighing some fourteen or fifteen stone at the least!

What was more, he had pa.s.sed through the most wonderful adventures and been amongst savages. These experiences enabled him to recount the most delightful and hairbreadth yarns--yarns that knocked all poor Jupp's stories of the cut-and-dried cruises he had had in the navy into a c.o.c.ked hat, Teddy thought, as he hung on every utterance of this newly- found uncle, longing the while to be a sailor and go through similar experiences.

Uncle Jack took to him amazingly, too, and when he had become domesticated at the vicarage, asked one day what he was going to be.

"What, make a parson of him, brother-in-law!" exclaimed the sailor in horrified accents. "You'd never spoil such a boy as that, who's cut out for a sailor, every inch of him--not, of course, that I wish to say a word against your profession. Still, he can't go into the church yet; what are you going to do with him in the meantime, eh?"

"Send him to school," replied the other.

"Why, hasn't he been yet?"

"Oh, yes, he's not altogether ignorant," said the vicar. "I think he's a very fair scholar for his years."

"Then why dose him any more with book learning, eh? When you fill a water-cask too full it's apt to run over!"

"I quite agree with you about cramming, Jack," said the vicar, smiling at the nautical simile; "but, I'm sending Teddy to a leading school more for the sake of the discipline than for anything more that I want him to learn at present."

"Discipline, eh! is that your reason, brother-in-law? Then allow me to tell you he'll get more of that at sea than he ever will at school."

"Oh, father!" interrupted Teddy, who had been present all the time during the confab, listening as gravely as any judge to the discussion about his future, "do let me be a sailor! I'd rather go to sea than anything."

"But you might be drowned, my boy," said the vicar gravely, his thoughts wandering to every possible danger of the deep.

"No fear of that," answered Teddy smiling. "Why, I can swim like a fish; and there's Uncle Jack now, whom you all thought lost, safe and sound after all his voyages!"

"Aye and so I am!" chorused the individual alluded to.

"Well, well, we'll think of it," said the vicar. "I'll hear what my old friend Jolly has to say to the plan first."

But he could not have consulted a more favourable authority as far as Teddy was concerned.

"The very thing for him!" said the doctor approvingly. "I don't think you could ever turn him into a parson, Vernon. He has too much animal spirits for that; think of my gig, ho! ho!"

Overcome by the many arguments brought forward, and the general consensus of judgment in favour of the project, the vicar at last consented that Teddy might be allowed to go to sea under the aegis of Uncle Jack, who started off at once to London to see about the shipping arrangements; when the rest of the household set to work preparing the young sailor's outfit in the meantime, so that no time might be lost-- little Cissy making him a wonderful anti-maca.s.sar, which, in spite of all ridicule to the contrary, she a.s.serted would do for the sofa in his cabin!

Of course, Jupp and Mary came over to wish Teddy good-bye; but, albeit there was much grief among the home circle at the vicarage when they escorted him to the little railway-station, on the day he left there were not many tears shed generally at his going, for, to paraphrase not irreverently the words of the Psalmist, "Endleigh, at heart, was glad at his departing, and the people of the village let him go free!"

CHAPTER NINE.

AT SEA.

"Well, here we are, my hearty!" said Uncle Jack, who was on the watch for him at London Bridge station, and greeted him the moment the train arrived; "but, come, look sharp, we've a lot to do before us, and precious little time to do it in!"

Teddy, however, was not inclined at first to "look sharp."

On the contrary, he looked extremely sad, being very melancholy at leaving home, and altogether "down in the mouth," so to speak.

This arose, not so much from the fact of his parting with his father and sisters, dearly as he loved them all in his way; but, on account of poor Puck, who, whether through grief at his going away, which the intelligent little animal seemed quite as conscious of through the instinct of his species as if he were a human being, or from his chronic asthma coming to a crisis, breathed his last in Teddy's arms the very morning of his departure from home!

The doggy, faithful to the end, was buried in the garden, Conny, Cissy, and Liz attending his obsequies, and the two latter weeping with Teddy over his grave, for all were fond of Puck; but none lamented him so deeply as he, and all the journey up to town, as the train sped its weary way along, his mind was busy recalling all the incidents that attended their companionship from the time when his grandmother first gave him as a present. He was a brisk young dog then, he remembered, the terror of all strange cats and hunter of rabbits, but his affection had not swerved down to the last year of their a.s.sociation, when, toothless and wheezy, he could hunt no more, and cats came fearlessly beneath his very nose when he went through the feeble pretence of trying to gnaw a bone on the lawn.

Poor Puck--_requiescat in pace_!

Still, doggy or no doggy, Uncle Jack was not the sort of fellow to let Teddy remain long in the dumps, especially as he had said there was a good deal to be done; and, soon, Teddy was in such a whirl of excitement, with everything new and strange around him, that he had no time left to be melancholy in.

First, Uncle Jack hailed a hansom, all Teddy's belongings in the shape of luggage being left in the cloak-room at the terminus, and the two jumping in were driven off as rapidly as the crowded state of the streets would allow, to Tower Hill, where the offices of the shipping agents owning the _Greenock_ were situated.

Here Uncle Jack deposited a cheque which the vicar had given him, and Master Teddy was bound over in certain indentures of a very imposing character as a first-cla.s.s apprentice to the said firm, the lad then signing articles as one of the crew of the _Greenock_, of which vessel, it may be mentioned, Uncle Jack had already been appointed chief officer, so that he would be able to keep a watchful eye over his nephew in his future nautical career.

"Now that job's done," said Uncle Jack when all the bothersome writing and signing were accomplished and the vicar's cheque paid over, "we'll have a run down to look at the ship; what say you to that, eh?"

"All right!" responded Teddy, much delighted at the idea; and the pair then were driven from Tower Hill to the Fenchurch Street railway- station, where they dismissed their cab and took train for the docks, the state of locomotion in the neighbourhood of which does not readily permit of the pa.s.sage of wheeled vehicles, a hansom running the risk of being squashed into the semblance of a pancake against the heavy drays blocking the narrow streets and ways, should it adventure within the thoroughfares thereof.

On their arrival at Poplar, Uncle Jack threaded his way with amazing ease and familiarity through a narrow lane with high walls on either hand, and then into a wide gateway branching off at right angles.

Entering within this Teddy found himself in a vast forest of masts, with ships loading and unloading at the various quays and jetties alongside the wharves, opposite to lines of warehouses that seemed to extend from one end of the docks to the other.

Uncle Jack was not long in tumbling across the _Greenock_, which had nearly completed taking in her cargo and was to "warp out next morning,"

as he told Teddy, who didn't know what on earth he meant by the phrase, by the way.

There appeared to be a great deal of confusion going on in front of the jetty to which she was moored; but Uncle Jack took him on board and introduced him to Mr Capstan, the second officer, as a future messmate, who showed him the cabins and everything, telling him to "make himself at home!"

The _Greenock_ was a fine barque-rigged vessel of some two thousand tons, with auxiliary steam-power; and she gained her living or earned her freight, whichever way of putting it may please best, by sailing to and fro in the pa.s.senger trade between the ports of London and Melbourne, but doing more in the goods line on the return journey, because colonials bent on visiting the mother country generally prefer the mail steamers as a speedier route. Emigrants, however, are not so squeamish, contenting themselves in getting out to Australia, that land of promise to so many hard-up and despairing people at home, by whatever means they can--so long only as they may hope to arrive there at some time or other!

Teddy was surprised at the gorgeousness of the _Greenock's_ saloons and cabins, and the height of her masts, and the mult.i.tude of ropes about running in every conceivable direction, crossing and recrossing each other with the bewildering ingenuity of a spider's web; but Uncle Jack took all these wonders as a matter of course, and rather pooh-poohed them.

"Wait till you see her at Gravesend," he said. "She's all dismantled now with these sh.o.r.e lumpers and lubbers aboard, and won't be herself till she's down the river and feels herself in sailors' hands again.

Why, you won't know her! But come along, laddie, we've got to buy a sea-chest and a lot of things to complete your kit; and then, we'll go to granny's and try to see something of the sights of London."

So, back they trudged again to the Poplar station and were wafted once more to Fenchurch Street, where Uncle Jack dived within the shop of a friendly outfitter, who had a mackintosh and s.e.xtant swinging in front of his establishment to show his marine leanings and dealings.

Here, a white sea-chest, whose top was made like a washing-stand, and several other useful articles, were purchased by Uncle Jack without wasting any time, as he had made up his mind what he wanted before going in and knew what he was about; and these things being ordered to be forwarded to the cloak-room at the London Bridge station, to be placed with Teddy's other luggage, Uncle Jack rubbed his hands gleefully.

"Now that business is all settled," he said, "we can enjoy ourselves a bit, as the ship won't be ready for us till next Monday. Come along, my hearty! Let us bear up for granny's--you haven't been to her place before, have you, eh?"

No, Teddy explained. Granny had often been down to Endleigh to see him, but he had never been up to town to see her; that first attempt of his, which had been frustrated by Mary's pursuit and the machinations of Jupp, having deterred him, somehow or other, from essaying the journey a second time. Indeed, he had never been to London at all.