The Girl Crusoes Part 4

"Well, you and your sisters seem to have spoiled the young scamp. When they brought him up from below he whimpered out that the young ladies had been kind to him, and he didn't like carrying luggage and cleaning railway lamps, and when he heard that you were coming to sea he wanted his mother to get me to take him as a cabin-boy. She boxed his ears.

But he found out when you were leaving, and hid in a goods wagon that reached Southampton a little before we did, and watched his opportunity to slip on board when the barque was lying at the quay-side. That's all I got out of him; and the motion served him as it serves most landsmen, and he dropped asleep just where you see him there. I'll have something to say to him when he wakes."

"Poor little fellow!" said Tommy. "You won't be hard on him, Uncle?"

The Captain grunted. Perhaps he remembered that fifty years before he had himself run away to sea.

"A rascally young stowaway," he muttered. "I can't put him ash.o.r.e, as I shan't touch at any port this side of Buenos Ayres. And his mother crying her eyes out, I'll be bound. And I'll have to spend several shillings on a cable to tell her he's safe. A pretty thing for a man with three nieces."

"I'll pay for the cable, Uncle."

"What! has she damaged the cable?" asked Mary innocently, coming up at this moment.

Captain Barton shook with laughter.

"Oh, you bookworms!" he said, when he had command of his breath. "Take a look at the cable, Mary, and see if you think Tommy, for all her mischievousness, could do it much damage. No, 'tis another kind of cable we were speaking of--all along of young Samson there. What would you do with a stowaway, Bess?" he asked of his eldest niece, who had just joined the others.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Elizabeth, "you were right after all, Tommy.

What a little sweep he looks!"

At this moment Dan stirred, opened his eyes, and when he saw the girls smiled sheepishly.

"Now, young Samson, stand up and listen to me," said the Captain severely. "Lay a hold of that stay there if you can't stand steady.

You come sneaking aboard this vessel, ruining my cargo, expecting to fill yourself with my victuals, and all for what? Because you didn't like cleaning lamps and carrying luggage. What's that for a reason?

There's worse than that aboard ship, I can tell you. If I did my duty, I should have you lashed to the mast and dosed with the cat. And your poor mother crying her eyes out, and the police dragging the ponds, and the Government sending detectives to all parts, and wiring to all the recruiting sergeants, spending hundreds of pounds of the country's money all for a discontented young shaver not four feet high. Now just you run along to Mr. Purvis and ask him to forgive you. He's very strict is Mr. Purvis, much stricter than I am; and then ask Sandy Sam very politely to fling a few buckets of water over you and scrub you with holystone; and after that go to Cook and ask him if he can spare a biscuit and a can of soup; and then I'll see if I can find some clothes that will fit you, and we'll make a man of you, and an A.B. in time."

The Captain's tone grew less stern and more genial as he went along, and when he had finished Dan smiled cheerfully, gave Tommy an extra smile, and went aft to obey orders.

The run down Channel was very pleasant to the girls. They showed the keenest interest in the ship and the doings of the sailors. These rough, good-tempered fellows were flattered by the attentions of their pa.s.sengers, and never tired of answering their questions. It was not long before all three were able to tie all kinds of sailors' knots, splice ropes, and do other simple things of the kind. They knew the names of the sails and the yards, and Tommy in particular never tired of airing her nautical vocabulary.

Even the ship's cook became their willing slave. Elizabeth took him in hand, and he meekly received her instructions, with great advantage to his bill of fare. Captain Barton declared that it was a good job he was retiring, for this unwonted luxury was killing his seaman's qualities.

The evenings were spent in the little deck cabin, where they played at draughts with the Captain and mate, or listened to the yarns they spun.

Mary had brought her mandoline, and on fine evenings they would get up a concert, the sailors singing their chanties and dancing the hornpipe.

The Captain hunted up some ancient gra.s.s hammocks, and when the weather was quite calm the sailors rigged these up on deck for the girls. Some of the crew taught them how to make hammocks, using string instead of gra.s.s, and they often amused themselves by weaving string bags and baskets.

As for Dan Whiddon, he soon became the pet of the ship. He was a good-tempered little fellow, willing to oblige anybody. He was kept always busy, and it was not long before he found that the life of a sailor was a good deal harder even than that of a porter at a wayside station.

"But I likes it, I do," he said once to Tommy, "better'n cleaning lamps and such."

"You get no tips, Dan," she replied.

"What's tips!" he said. "I never had no good of 'em, miss. Mother took them all except a penny now and then for sweets, and the Captain he gives me sweets for nothing, he do, and so I save, don't I, miss?"

The weather held fair almost without interruption, and the girls became so well seasoned that an occasional gale did not distress them. As they approached the tropics the heat became rather trying, and then they brought out of their trunk sundry light blouses at which their uncle c.o.c.ked an eye.

"Rank disobedience!" he said sternly. "I said serge."

"Don't they look nice, Uncle?" said Tommy mischievously, "and we made them ourselves. You can't object to that, my dear man, and we shall wash them ourselves, so there's no laundry bill for you to pay. In fact, you haven't a leg to stand on, so you had better say at once they look sweet and save time. Don't you think so, Mr. Purvis?"

"Weel," said the Scotsman cautiously, "I wouldna say but what they are suitable to the climate, but they're terrible gay like."

"Oh, you should see Bess's evening frock. It's perfectly lovely--chiffon, with pink insertion; it suits her dark hair splendidly."

"There, Tommy, that'll do," said the Captain; "such talk isn't suitable aboard this vessel. You're unruly minxes, and what I'll do with you in London I don't know."

"You'll soon get used to it, Uncle dear, and I really wouldn't worry if I were you. We'll keep you straight."

"A happy girl, Purvis," said the Captain, when they were alone.

"Ou, ay, she is that."

They spent a couple of days in Buenos Ayres while Captain Barton was unloading part of his cargo and settling his affairs. When they left, a certain young electrical engineer asked to be allowed to call on them when he returned to England, and looked very crestfallen when Elizabeth told him that they had no address. They were almost disappointed when they rounded the terrible Cape Horn without encountering a storm.

After a short stay at Valparaiso, the Captain set his course direct for the Pacific Islands. Interested as the girls had been hitherto, they became intensely excited now. Mary knew a great deal about Captain Cook and other early navigators, and all the girls had read a volume of Stevenson's on the South Seas, which their uncle had brought home once in a colonial edition. The romance of this quarter of the globe had captured their imagination, and they looked eagerly forward to seeing the strange men and women, the gorgeous scenery, the many novel things which their reading and their uncle's stories had led them to expect.

CHAPTER V

A MIDNIGHT WRECK

"Well, now, I'm real glad I brought you girls with me," said Captain Barton, as they sat on deck one evening. "Many's the time I've felt a bit lonesome at night between sunset and turning in, but you do help to pa.s.s the time away."

"Pastimes, are we?" said Tommy, with affected indignation. "Toys!

Dolls! I won't be called a doll."

"Very well, my dear, you shan't," replied her uncle, slipping one arm round her waist, and the other round Mary's. Elizabeth sat on her deck-chair opposite them, knitting the second of a pair of socks.

"But, now," continued the Captain, "you'd better be turning in. 'Tis latish, and sleep, you know, 'it is a precious thing, beloved from pole to pole'; and if you don't get your full eight hours you'll be neither useful nor ornamental, Miss Tommy."

"Oh, Uncle! It's such a lovely night," pleaded Tommy, leaning back on his arm, and looking up into the brilliant sky--a sky such as is seen in the South Pacific, and nowhere else in the world.

Here a heavy figure approached the group from forward.

"Gla.s.s is dropping fast, sir," said Mr. Purvis.

Elizabeth's needles ceased clicking.

"That means a storm, doesn't it, Uncle?" she said.

"A bit of a blow, maybe," said the Captain. "Now, girls, off with you.

I'll just make things snug. You go below, and sleep through it, and you'll come up fresh as paint in the morning."

Tommy grumbled a little, declaring that a storm was impossible with such a clear sky and no wind; but she went below with her sisters, and soon all three were fast asleep in their snug little cabin.

It was perhaps two hours later when Elizabeth awoke suddenly. There were strange noises overhead, and the ship was rolling and pitching with a violence new to her. Every now and then she heard a hoa.r.s.e shout, and a scurry of feet on deck. The little appointments of the cabin rattled, and presently, as the vessel gave a particularly heavy lurch, the gla.s.s water-bottle slipped from its rack, and fell with a crash to the floor.

"What is it?" cried Tommy, sitting straight up in her bunk.

"The sea is rather rough," said Elizabeth quietly, "and has sent the water-bottle spinning."