The Island of Gold Part 16

"Well," said Halcott, "I daresay you have a story to tell."

"I've had strange experiences in life, and some were sad enough. For the sake of that dear boy and girl, I thank G.o.d I am no longer in the grip of poverty; but, my friend, I've seen worse days."

"Tell us, Tandy."

Tandy told him, sitting there, all the reader already knows and much more, receiving silent but heartfelt sympathy.

"So you've sold the _Merry Maiden_!"

"Yes; although some of the happiest years of my life were spent on board of her, and in the little cottage. Heigho! I wish I could bring back the past; but if I live to be able to afford it, I shall build a house where the old cot stands, and will just end my days there, you know.

And now for your story."

"Oh, that is a strange and a sad one; but as your friend is coming down to-morrow, I propose postponing it. This Captain Weathereye must, from all you say, be a real jolly fellow."

This was agreed to; and next morning Tandy met bluff old Weathereye at the little railway station.

"I'll stay a week, Tandy, a whole week. Yes, my hearty, I'll gladly make your house my home, and shall rejoice to see your friend, and hear the yarn he has got to spin."

Book 2--CHAPTER THREE.

A QUARTERDECK DREAM.

"Once a sailor, gentlemen," began Halcott, as he filled his pipe, gazing thoughtfully over the sea, "always a sailor.

"That's a truism, I believe. Why, the very sight of the waves out yonder, with the evening sunlight dancing and playing on their surface, makes me even at this moment long to tread the deck again.

"And there are, perhaps, few seafarers who have more inducements to stay at home than I, Charlie Halcott, have.

"I have a beautiful house of my own, and some day soon, I hope, you will both come and see it, and judge for yourselves.

"My house has a tower to it. Many a night, while walking the quarterdeck keeping my watch, with no companions save the silver-shining stars, I have said to myself--'Charlie Halcott,' I have said, 'if ever you leave off ploughing the ocean wave, and settle down on sh.o.r.e, you must have a house with a tower to it.'

"And now I've got it.

"A large, square, old-fashioned tower it is, with a mullioned window on each side of it; and up the walls the dense green ivy climbs, with just enough Virginia creeper to cast a glamour of crimson over it in autumn, like the last red rays of the setting sun.

"One window looks up the valley of the Thames, where not far off is a little Niagara, a snow-white weir: I can hear the drowsy monotone of its foaming waters by night and by day, and its song is ever the same.

Another window looks away down the valley, and the river here goes winding in and out among the meadows and the green and daisied leas, till, finally, it takes the appearance of a silver string, and loses itself, or is lost to me, amidst the distant trees. A third window, from which I dearly like to look early on a summer's morning, while the blackbirds are yet in fullest, softest song, shows an English landscape that to me is the sweetest of the sweet. As far as eye can reach, till bounded by the grey horizon's haze, are woods and wilds and meadows green, with the red gables or the roofs of many a stately farm peeping up through the rolling cloudland of foliage; and many a streamlet too, seen here and there in the sunbeams, as it goes speeding on towards the silent river.

"But though this house of mine has a tower to it, it is not a castle by any means, apart from the fact that every Englishman's house is his castle. I have a tower, but no donjon keep. My castle is a villa--'a handsome modern-built villa,' the agent described it when I commenced correspondence with a view to its purchase. It is indeed a beautiful villa, and it is situated high up on the brow of a hill, all among the dreamy woods.

"Though I have been but a short spell on sh.o.r.e, my town friends already call me the 'Sailor hermit,' because I stick to my castle and its woods and gardens. Not for a single day can they prevail upon me to exchange it for the bustle and din of hideous London. But I retaliated on my city friends by bringing them down to my 'castle' in spring time, when the early flowers were opening their petals in the warm sunshine, and the very tulips seemed panting in the heat, and when there was such a gush of bird-melody coming from grove and copse and hedgerow that every leaf seemed to hide a feathered songster. And I rejoiced to see those friends of mine struck dumb by the wealth of beauty they beheld around them. For Philomel was making day melodious with a strange, unearthly music.

"All through the darkness the bird sang to his mate, and all through the day as well. No bolder birds than our nightingales live. They sing at our side, at our feet; they sing as they fly, sing as they alight, sing _to_ us, ay and _at_ us defiantly. No wonder we all love this sweet bird, this sweet spirit of the spring.

"So my quarterdeck dream has become a dear reality.

"Strange to say, it is always at night that I think most of the ocean.

And on nights of storm--then it is that I lie awake listening to the wind roaring through the stately elms, with a sound like the sough of gale-tossed waves. It is then I long to tread once more the deck of my own bonnie barque, and feel her move beneath me like a veritable thing of life and reason. My house with the ivied tower is well away among the midlands; and yet on nights of tempest, sea-birds--the gull, and the tern, and the light-winged kittywake--often fly around the house and the trees. I can hear their voices rising shrill and high above the roar of the wind.

"'Kaye--kay--ay--ay,' they scream. 'Come away--come away--ay,' they seem to cry. 'Why have you left us? why have you left the seas? We miss you. Come away--come away--ay--ay.'

"Never into my quarterdeck dreams, gentlemen, had there come, strange to say, a companion fair of womankind. My house with the tower to it should be just as it is to-day, just what--following out my dreams--I have made it. Its gardens all should bloom surpa.s.sing fair, my woods and trees be green; the rose lawns should look like velvet; my ribboned flower-beds like curves of coloured light; the nightingales in spring should bathe in the spray of my fountains,--there should be joy and loveliness and bird-song everywhere, but a wife?--well, I had somehow never dreamt of that. If any of the officers--for I was captain and part owner of the good barque _Sea Flower_--had been bold enough to suggest such a thing--I mean such a _person_, I should have laughed at him where he stood. 'Who,' I should have said, 'would many a simple sailor like me, over thirty, brown-red in face, and hard in hands. Who indeed?'

"But into my quarterdeck dreams companions had come. Should I not have jolly farmers and solid-looking red-faced squires to dine with me, and to smoke with me out of doors in the cool of midsummer evenings, or in the cosy red parlour around the fire in the long forenights of winter, and listen to my yarns of the dark blue sea, or talk to me of the delights of rural life? Well, it was a pretty dream, it must be admitted.

"But it never struck me then, as it does now, that all the joys of life are tame indeed, unless shared by some one you love more than all things bright and fair.

"A pretty dream--and a beautiful dream. A piece of ice itself is beautiful at times; but perhaps, as we stand and admire it, the sunshine may steal down and melt it. Then we find that we love the sunshine even more than we loved the ice.

"It is not every sailor who has the luck to be captain, or, to speak more correctly, master, of so fine a sailing craft as the _Sea Flower_, at the age of twenty-six. But such had been my fortune; and I had sailed the seas in her for six long years, and, with the exception of the few accidents inseparable from a life at sea, I had never had a serious mishap. Many a wild gale had we weathered in her, my mate and I; many a dark and tempestuous night had we staggered along under bare poles; more than once had we sprung a leak, and twice had we been on fire.

"But all ended well, and during our brief spells on sh.o.r.e, either in England or in some foreign port, though James and I always managed to enjoy ourselves in our own quiet way, yet neither he nor I was sorry when we got back home again to our bonnie barque, and were once more afloat on the heaving sea.

"James was perhaps more of a sailor than I. Well, he was some years my senior, and he was browner and harder by far, and every inch a man. And though a very shy one, as far as female society is concerned, he was a very bold one nevertheless. But for his courageous example on the night of our last fire, the _Sea Flower_ would have helped to swell the list of those ships that go to sea and are heard of no more.

"When we were taken aback in a white squall in the Indian Ocean, and it verily seemed that we had but a few minutes to float, James was here, there, and everywhere, his manly voice, calm and collected, ringing high above the roaring of the wind and the surging of the terrible seas. The very fire of his bravery on that occasion affected the men, and they worked as only bold men can work in face of death and danger, till our craft was once more righted and tearing along before the wind.

"And just as brave on sh.o.r.e as afloat was st.u.r.dy James Malone.

"When our steward was attacked by fifty spear-armed savages on sh.o.r.e at the Looboo Island, my mate seized a club that a gorilla could hardly have wielded, and fought his way through the black and vengeful crowd, till he reached and saved our faithful steward.

"And, that day, it was not until he had almost reached the ship that he told me, with that half-shy and quiet smile of his, that he believed he was slightly wounded. Then he fainted dead away.

"I nursed poor James back to health. Yes, but more than once, both before and after that event, he nursed me, and I doubt if even a brother could have been half so kind as my mate James.

"For many a long year, then, James and I had sailed the salt seas together. Without James sitting opposite me at the table at breakfast or at dinner, the neatly painted and varnished saloon, with all its glittering odds and ends, wouldn't have seemed the same. Without James sitting near me on the quarterdeck on black-dark evenings in the tropics, I should have felt very strange and lonesome indeed.

"But James and I didn't agree on every subject on which we conversed.

Had we done so, conversation would have lost its special charm. No, he aired his opinions and I shook out mine. There were times when I convinced James; there were times when James convinced me; there were times when neither convinced the other, and then we agreed to differ.

"'Very well, sir,' James would say, 'you has your 'pinions, and I has mine. You keeps to your 'pinions, and I sticks to mine.'

"It will be noted that James's ordinary English would scarcely have pa.s.sed muster in the first families of Europe. But, like many of his cla.s.s, James could talk correctly enough when he set himself the task.

But there was no better sailor afloat for all that, and on the stormiest night or squalliest day I always felt safe when my first mate trod the planks.

"James could tell a good story too, and I used to keep him at it of an evening--any evening save Sunday. On Sunday, James did nothing in the intervals of duty except read the Bible--the 'Good Book,' as he called it. This New Testament was one of those large type editions which very old people use.

"His mother--dead and gone--had left him that Book, and also her gold-rimmed specs, and it was interesting, on a Sunday afternoon, to see James sitting solemnly down to the Book, and shipping those specs athwart his nose.

"'What on earth,' I said once to him, 'do you use the specs for, my friend?'

"When James looked up at me, half-upbraidingly, those eyes of his, seen through the powerful lenses, looked as big and wild and round as a catamount's. It was unearthly.