The Island of Gold Part 25

Down below the two had now gone together.

Tandy could not have made the cabin a bit bigger if he had tried, but he had removed every morsel of her lumbering old lockers and tables, and refurnished it with all he could think of that was graceful and beautiful.

Mirrors, too, were everywhere along the bulk-heads, and these made the saloon look larger. The only wonder is that, in a lit of absent-mindedness, some one did not walk right through a mirror.

Hanging tables, beautiful crystal, brackets, and artificial flowers gave a look that was both lightsome and gay.

On the port side, when you touched a k.n.o.b, a mirrored door opened into the captain's cabin--small but pretty, and lighted by an airy port that could be carried open in good weather, and all along in the trades.

The other state-room was larger. This Halcott had insisted upon Tandy taking; and it contained not only his own bunk, but a lower one for Nelda, and was better decorated and furnished than even the captain's.

"Oh, gaily goes the ship when the wind blows free."

And right gaily she had gone too, as yet.

Halcott was a splendid sailor and navigator. It might have been thought, however, that Tandy, from his long residence on sh.o.r.e, had turned a little rusty in his seamanship.

If he had, the rust had not taken long to rub off; and as he trod the ivory-white quarterdeck in his duck trousers, neat cap, and jacket of navy blue, he really looked ten years younger than in the days when he sailed the _Merry Maiden_ up and down the ca.n.a.l.

The crew were well-dressed, and looked happy and jolly enough for anything.

I need hardly say that Nelda was the pet of the _Sea Flower_, fore and aft. There was no keeping the child to any one part of the ship. In fine weather--and, with the exception of a "howther" in the Bay, it had up till now been mostly fine--she was here, there, and everywhere: in the men's quarters; down below in the forecastle; at the forecastle-head itself, when the men leaned over the bows there, smoking, yarning, and laughing; and in the cook's galley, helping to make the soup. But she ventured even further than this, and more than once her father started to find her in the foretop, and standing beside her that tall, imperturbable Admiral.

The bird was pet number two; but Bob made an equal second.

At first the 'Ral was inclined to mope. Perhaps he was sea-sick. It is a well-known fact that if a Cape pigeon, as a certain gull is called, is taken on board, it can fly no more, but walks slowly and stupidly round the deck.

Sea-sickness had not troubled Bob in the slightest. When he saw the 'Ral standing in the lee-scuppers, with his neck hitched right round till the head lay right on the top of his tail, Bob looked at him comically with _his_ head c.o.c.ked funnily to one side.

Then he seemed to laugh right away down both sides, so to speak. Bob was a droll dog.

"My eyes, Admiral," he said, "what a ridiculous figure you do cut, to be sure! Why, at first I couldn't tell which was the one end of you and which was the other."

"I don't care what becomes of me," the Admiral replied, talking over his tail. "It is a very ordinary world. I'll never dance again."

But, nevertheless, in three days' time the Hal did dance, and so droll and comical were his capers on the heaving deck that the crew lay aft in a body and laughed till they nearly burst their belts. The Admiral took kindly to his meal-worms after that, and didn't despise potted salmon and morsels of mutton.

Now it must not be supposed that the _Sea Flower_ was going out in ballast, on the mere chance of filling up with gold. They might never see the Isle of Misfortune, and all their dreams of gold might yet turn out as dreams so often do.

Halcott and Tandy were good sailors, and but little likely to trust overmuch to blind chance. They took out with them, therefore, a good-paying cargo of knick-knacks and notions to barter with the natives along the coast of Africa. Having made a good voyage--and they knew they should--and having filled up with copal, nutmegs, arrowroot, spices, ivory, and perhaps even gold-dust and ostrich feathers from the far interior, they would stretch away out and over the broad Atlantic, and rounding the Horn, make search for the Isle of Misfortune, which they hoped to find an island of gold.

If unsuccessful, they should then bear up for the northern Pacific Islands, taking their chance of doing something with pearls or mother-of-pearl, and so on and away to San Francisco, where they were sure of a market, even if they wished to sell the _Sea Flower_ herself.

But the best of sailors get disheartened far sooner in calms than even in tempests.

In the latter, one has all the excitement of a battle with the elements; in the former, one can but wait and think and long for the winds to blow.

"The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free."

Yes; but although in the region of calms some ships seem to have luck, the _Sea Flower_ had none.

"Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'Twas sad as sad could be; And they did speak only to break The silence of the sea."

A week, a fortnight, nearly three weary weeks went past like this.

There was no singing now forward among the men. Even little Fitz the n.i.g.g.e.r, who generally _was_ trolling a song, at times high over the roar of the wind, was silent now. So, too, was Ransey Tansey. He and Nelda had been before the life of the good ship. It seemed as if they should never be so again. Bob took to lying beside the man at the wheel. As far as the latter was concerned, there might just as well have been no man there at all. The sea all round was a sea of heaving oil. The waves were houses high--not long rollers, but a series of hills and valleys, in which the _Sea Flower_ wallowed and tumbled; while the fierce heat of the sun caused the pitch to melt and bubble where the decks were not protected by an awning.

The motion of the good ship was far indeed from agreeable. Any seaman can walk easily even when half a gale of wind is roaring through the rigging. There is a method in the motion of a ship in such a sea-way.

There is no method in the motion of a vessel in the doldrums; and when one puts one's foot down on the quarterdeck, or, rather, where it seemed to be a second before, it finds but empty s.p.a.ce. The body lurches forward, and the deck swings up to receive it. A grasp at a stay or sheet alone can avert a fall.

In such a sea-way there is no longer any leeward or windward. The sails go flapping to and fro, however: they are making wind for themselves as the vessel rolls and tumbles; and if this wind carries her forward a few yards one minute, it hurls her back again the next.

No wonder Nelda often asked her father if the wind would never, never blow again, or whether it would be always, always like this.

No birds either, save now and then a migrant gull that floated lazily on a wave to rest, or perched on the fin of a basking shark.

So day after day pa.s.sed wearily on, and you could not have told one day from the other. But when, at six o'clock, the sun hurriedly capped the great heaving waves with crimson, leaving the hollows in deepest purple shade, and soon after sank, then, in the gloaming that for a brief spell hung over the ocean, the stars came out; and very brightly did they shine, so that night was even more pleasant than day.

Banks of clouds sometimes lay along the horizon. By day they appeared like far-off, snow-capped, serrated mountains; at night they were dark, but lit up every few moments by flashes of lightning, which spread out behind them and revealed their form and shape.

No thunder ever followed this lightning; it brought no wind; nor did the clouds ever rise or bring a drop of rain.

Phantom lightning; phantom clouds!

There were times on nights like these when Ransey took his sister on deck to look at the sky, and wonder at the lightning and that strange mountain-range of clouds.

She was not afraid when Ransey was with her. But she would not have gone "upstairs," as she called it, with even the stewardess herself.

Ransey, I may mention, lived in the saloon with his father and the captain, the second and third mates having comfortable quarters in the midship decks.

A stewardess only was carried on the _Sea Flower_, and she acted in another capacity--that of maid to Nelda. A black girl she was, but clean, smart, and tidy and trim, full of merriment and good-nature. Her a.s.sistant was Fitz, and with him alone she deemed it her duty to be a little harsh now and then. Because Fitz wouldn't keep his place, so she said.

Poor Janeira, she always forgot she was a n.i.g.g.e.r herself, seeing so many white faces all around her. But when she looked into the little mirror that hung in her pantry, she used to go into fits of laughter at her face therein displayed. She was a funny girl.

Ransey used to take Nelda up on these nights, and hoist her on to the grating abaft the quarterdeck, and she would cling to his arm, while he held on to the bulwark.

Thus they would stand, silent and awed, for long minutes at a time.

Was there nothing to break the dread stillness? There was occasionally the flap of a sail, or a footstep forward; but no song from the men, no loud talking--they hardly cared to speak above a whisper. But more than once a plash was heard, and a great dark head would appear from the side of a billow, seen distinctly enough in the gleam of the starlight, then sink and disappear.

"Oh, the awful beast, 'Ansey! Can it climb up and swallow us?"

"No, dear silly, no."

But older people than Nelda have been frightened by such dread spectres appearing close to a ship at night while in the doldrums, and wiser heads than hers have been puzzled to account for them.