The Ocean Cat's Paw Part 26

"Second natur', youngster, and that's use. Takes a long time to learn, and when you have larnt your lesson perfect as you think, you find that you don't know it a bit."

"But you did know it," said Rodd. "You said that the storm would come on again, when it was beautiful and fine yesterday evening; and here it is."

"Well, yes, my lad, if you goes on for years trying to hit something you must get a lucky shot sometimes."

"Oh yes, but there's something more than that," said Rodd. "When I have been amongst the fishermen in Plymouth, and over in Saltash, I have wondered to find how exact they were about the weather, and how whenever they wouldn't take us out fishing they were always right. They seemed to know that bad weather was coming on."

"Oh, of course," said the skipper. "Why, my lad, if you got your living by going out in your boat, don't you think the first thing you would try to learn would be to make it your living?"

"Why, of course," cried Rodd.

"Ah, you don't mean the same as I do. I mean, make it your living and not your dying."

"Oh, I see."

"You wouldn't want," continued the skipper, "to go out at times that might mean having them as you left at home standing on the sh.o.r.e looking out to sea for a boat as would never come back."

"No," said the boy, with something like a sigh. "I know what you mean.

Ah, it has been very horrible sometimes, and all those little churchyards at the different villages about the coast with that regular 'Drowned at sea' over and over and over again."

"Right, my lad. Things go wrong sometimes; but that's what makes sailors and fishermen get to learn what the moon says and the sun and the clouds, and the bit of haze that gathers sometimes off the coast means. Why, if you'd looked out yesterday afternoon when the wind went down and the glint of sunshine come out, there was a nasty dirty look in the sky. You wait a bit and keep your eyes open, and put that and that together, and as you grow up you'll find that it isn't so hard as you'd think to say what the weather is going to be to-morrow. You'll often be wrong, same as I am."

"Ah! then I shall begin at once," cried Rodd eagerly, as he looked sharply round. "Well, it can't go on pelting down like this with hail coming now and then in showers. Showers come and go."

"Right!" said the skipper, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Oh!" cried Rodd sharply.

"Hullo! Why, you don't mean to say that hurt?"

"Hurt! No," cried Rodd, shaking his head violently. "You shot a lot of cold water right up into my ear."

"Oh, that will soon dry up. Well, what do you say the weather's going to be?"

"The storm soon over, and a fine day to-morrow."

"Done?" asked the skipper.

"Oh yes; but mind, that's only a try."

"Then it's my turn now, youngster, so here goes. I say we shall have worse weather to-morrow than we have got to-day."

"Oh, it can't be!" cried Rodd.

"Well," cried the skipper, chuckling, "we shall see who's right."

"Oh, but I don't want for us to have to stop here in this French port."

"More don't I, my lad, so we think the same there. You going to stop on deck?"

"Yes, till dinner-time," cried Rodd, and just then the haze of rain out seaward opened a little, revealing the brig with its tall spars and web of rigging.

This somehow set the boy thinking about the escape from accident when they came into port, and then of the encounter ash.o.r.e, and he began talking.

"It's no use to go down below. It's so stuffy, and I want to chat. I say, captain, what do you think of that brig?"

"Very smartly built craft indeed, my lad--one as I should like to sail if I could do as I liked."

"Do as you liked?" asked Rodd.

"Yes; alter her rig--make a schooner of her. But as she is she's as pretty a vessel as I ever see--for a brig. Frenchmen don't often turn out a boat like that."

"What should you think she is?" asked Rodd. "A merchantman?"

"No, my lad; I should say she was something of a dispatch boat, though she aren't a man-of-war. I don't quite make her out. She's got a very smart crew, and I saw two of her officers go aboard in some sort of uniform, though it was too dark to quite make it out."

"But if she's a man-of-war she would carry guns, wouldn't she?" asked Rodd.

"Well, I don't think she's a man-of-war, my lad," replied the skipper; "but she do carry guns, and one of them's a big swivel I just saw amidships. But men-of-war, merchantmen, and coasters, we're all alike in a storm, and glad to get into shelter."

"Yes, it is a fine-looking brig. Is she likely to be a privateer?"

"Eh? What do you know about privateers?"

"Oh, not much," said Rodd. "But going about at Plymouth and talking to the sailors, of course I used to hear something about them."

"Well, yes, of course," said the skipper thoughtfully, as he too swept the drops from the front of his sou'-wester, and tried to pierce the falling rain. "She might be a French privateer out of work, as you may say, for their game's at an end now that the war's over. Yes, a very smart craft."

"But do you think she's here for any particular purpose?"

"Yes, my lad; a very particular purpose."

"Ah!" cried the boy rather excitedly. "What?"

"To take care of herself and keep in harbour till the weather turns right. Why? What were you thinking?"

"I was wondering why she came in so close after us, and then anch.o.r.ed where she is."

"Oh, I can tell you that," said the skipper, chuckling. "It was because she couldn't help herself."

"Then you don't think she was watching us?"

"No-o! What should she want to watch us for?"

"Why, to take us as a prize, seeing what a beautiful little schooner it is."

"Bah! She'd better not try," said the skipper grimly. "Why, what stuff have you got in your head, boy? We are not at war with France."