The Ocean Cat's Paw Part 25

"Thought you were lost, gentlemen. Been waiting half-an-hour. Take care; the boat's down here;" and striding along the top of the harbour wall the skipper led the way to the descending steps, where the boat was waiting, and they were rowed aboard.

An hour later Rodd was plunged in the deepest of deep sleeps, but dreaming all the same of the storm and of getting into difficulties with some one who was constantly running against him and whispering softly, "Pardon!"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THE SUSPICIOUS CRAFT.

"Oh, I say, Uncle Paul, isn't it horrible?" cried Rodd the next morning.

Breakfast was just over, and Captain Chubb had gone on deck, while the wind was howling furiously as if in a rage to find its playthings, some two or three hundred vessels of different tonnage, safely moored in the shelter of the harbour, and out of its power to toss here and there and pitch so many helpless ruins to be beaten to pieces upon the sh.o.r.e.

Down it kept coming right in amongst them, making them check at their mooring cables and chains, but in vain, for their crews had been too busy, and the only satisfaction that the tempest could obtain, was to hearken to the miserable dreary groans that were here and there emitted as some of the least fortunate and worst secured ground against each other.

"Isn't it horrible, uncle?" shouted Rodd, for the rain just then was mingled with good-sized hailstones, and was rattling down upon the deck and skylight in a way that half-drowned the lad's voice.

"Miserable weather, Pickle; but never mind. We must settle down to a good morning's work in the laboratory."

"Oh no, not yet, uncle; we don't seem to have started. It will only be a makeshift."

"But we might put things a little more straight, boy."

"Oh no, uncle; they are too straight now, and I want to go on deck."

"Bah! It isn't fit. Wait till the weather holds up."

"Oh, I shall dress up accordingly, uncle. But I say, where does all the rain come from? It must be falling in millions of tons everywhere."

"Ah, you might as well ask me where the wind comes from. Study up some book on meteorology."

"Oh yes, I will, uncle; but not yet."

"Very well; be off."

Rodd hurried out of the cabin, and five minutes later came back rattling and crackling, to present himself before his uncle, who thrust up his spectacles upon his forehead and stared.

"There," cried Rodd; "don't think I shall get wet. I wish I'd had it the other night. It's splendid, uncle, and so stiff that if I like to stoop down a little and spread my arms, I can almost rest in it. I say, don't I look like a dried haddock?"

"Humph! Well, yes, you do look about the same colour," grumbled the doctor, for the boy was b.u.t.toned up in a glistening oilskin coat of a buff yellow tint; the turned-up collar just revealed the tips of his ears, and he was crowned by a sou'-wester securely tied beneath his chin.

"I say, this will do, won't it?"

"Yes, you look a beauty!" grunted the doctor; "but there, be off; I want to write a letter or two."

Rodd went crackling up the cabin stairs, clump, clump, clump, for he was wearing a heavy pair of fisherman's boots that had been made waterproof by many applications of oil--a pair specially prepared for fishing purposes and future wading amongst the wonders of coral reef and strand.

The deck was almost deserted, the only two personages of the schooner's crew being the captain and Joe Cross, both costumed so as to match exactly with the boy, who now joined them, to begin streaming with water to the same extent as they.

They both looked at him in turn, Cross grinning and just showing a glint of his white teeth where the collar of his oilskin joined, while his companion scowled, or seemed to, and emitted a low grumbling sound that might have meant welcome or the finding of fault, which of the two Rodd did not grasp, for the skipper turned his back and rolled slowly away as if he were bobbing like a vessel through the flood which covered the deck and was streaming away from the scuppers.

As the skipper went right forward and stood by the bowsprit, looking straight ahead through the haze formed by the streaming rain, Rodd was thrown back upon Joe Cross, with whom, almost from the day when the man had joined, he had begun to grow intimate; and as he went close up to him, the sailor gave his head a toss to distribute some of the rain that was splashing down upon his sou'-wester, and grinning visibly now, he cried--

"Why, Mr Rodd, sir, you've forgot your umbrella."

"Get out!" cried Rodd good-humouredly. "But I say, Joe, how long is this rain going to last?"

"Looks as if it means to go on for months, sir, but may leave off to-night. I say, though, that's a splendid fit, sir. You do look fine!

Are you comfortable in there?"

Rodd did not answer, for he was trying to pierce the streaming haze and make out whether the brig was visible.

For a few moments he could not make it out, but there it was, looking faint and strange, about a hundred yards away.

"That's the brig, isn't it, yonder?" he said at last.

"Yes, sir, that's she, and they seem to have got her fast now; but she wouldn't hurt us if she broke from her moorings, for the wind's veered a point or two, and it would take her clear away."

Rodd remained silent as he stood thinking, he did not know why, unless it was that the vessel with the tall, dimly-seen tapering spars bore a French name, and somehow--again he could not tell why, only that it seemed to him very ridiculous--the shadowy vessel a.s.sociated itself with the two French officers he had encountered in the darkness of the previous night, when he heard one of them after brushing against him murmur the word "Pardon!" And he found himself thinking that if the vessel had been swept up against the schooner when her anchor was dragging, it would have been no use for her crew to cry "Pardon!" as that would not have cured the damage.

"Well, sir, what do you make of her?" cried the sailor, putting an end to the lad's musings.

"Can't see much," said Rodd, "for the rain, but she seems beautifully rigged."

"Yes, sir, and she can sail well too--for a brig--but I should set her down as being too heavily sparred, and likely to be top-heavy. If she was going along full sail, and was caught in such a squall as we had yesterday, and laid flat like the schooner, I don't believe she'd lift again. Anyhow, I shouldn't like to be aboard."

"No, it wouldn't be pleasant," said Rodd; "but I say, I can't see anything of that long gun you talked about."

"No wonder, sir. You want that there long water-gla.s.s, as you called it--that there one you showed me as you was unpacking it. Don't you remember? Like a big pipe with panes of gla.s.s in it as you said you could stick down into the sea and make out what was on the bottom. You want that now."

The man pa.s.sed his hand along the brow edge of his sou'-wester to sweep away the drops, and then took a long look at the deck of the brig.

"No, sir; can't make it out now; but I see it plainly enough this morning, covered with a lashed down tarpaulin as if to hide it, and I knew at once. I can almost tell a big gun by the smell--I mean feel it like, if it's there."

"But do you still think she's a privateer?"

"Well, I don't say she is, sir, for that's a thing you can't tell for sartain unless you see a ship's papers; but she is something of that kind, I should say, and--Ay, ay, sir!--There's the skipper hailed me, sir. I say, Mr Rodd, sir, do mind you don't get wet!"

This was as the man rolled away sailor fashion, and emitting a crackling whishing sound as he made for the vessel's bows, where he received some order from his captain which sent him to the covered-in hatchway of the forecastle, where he slowly disappeared into a kind of haze, half water, half smoke, for several of the water-bound crew had given up the chewing of their tobacco to indulge in pipes.

But Rodd was in a talkative humour, and made his way to the skipper, saluting him with--

"I say, Captain Chubb, how do you manage to do it?"

"Do what, my lad?"

"Why, say for certain what the weather's going to be."

There was a low chuckling sound such as might have been emitted by a good-humoured porpoise which had just ended one of its underwater curves, and thrust its head above the surface to take a good deep breath before it turned itself over and dived down again.