Two Knapsacks Part 2

"I shouldn't wonder."

"Then, Wilks, I tell you what it is, we must slope. When it gets dark, I'll slip over the stern into the dingy and bring her round to the side for you; then we'll sail away for parts unknown."

"Corry, I am ashamed of you for imagining that I would lend myself to base treachery, and robbery, or piracy rather, on the high seas, laying us open, as you, a lawyer, must know, to penalties that would blast our reputations and ruin our lives. No, sir, we must face our misfortune like men. In the meanwhile, I will find out, from the captain, where his niece and her friend are likely to be."

Coristine walked aft to The Crew, and served his apprenticeship to sitting on the tiller and propelling the rudder thereby in the desired direction. When he went wrong, while The Crew was lighting his pipe, the flapping of the sails warned him to back the tiller to its proper place.

When hauling at the halliards, he had sung to his admiring companion in toil the "Sailor's Shanty":--

My Polly said she'd marry me when I came home, Yo hee, yo ho, haul all together; But when I came I found she'd been and took my messmate Tom, Yo hee, yo ho, haul all together.

Now, therefore, The Crew was urgent for a song to cheer up the lonesomeness a bit, and the lawyer, nothing loath, sang with genuine pathos:--

A baby was sleeping; Its mother was weeping.

For her husband was far on the wide rolling sea.

When he came to the sea-ee-ee-ee-ee at the end of the third line, The Crew, who had been keeping time with one foot on the deck and with one hand on the tiller, aided him in rolling it forth, and, when the singing was over, he characterized it as "pooty and suitin' like," by which he meant that the references to the howling tempest and the raging billow were appropriate to the present nautical circ.u.mstances. After much persuasion The Crew was induced to add to the harmony of the evening.

His voice was strong, but, like many strong things, under imperfect control; his tune was nowhere, and his intended pathetic unction was simply maudlin. Coristine could recall but little of the long ballad to which he listened, the story of a n.i.g.g.ardly and irate father, who followed and fought with the young knight that had carried off his daughter. Two verses, however, could not escape his memory, on account of the disinterested and filial light in which they made the young lady appear:--

"O stay your hand," the old man cried, A-lying on the ground, "And you shall have my daughter, And twenty thousand pound."

"Don't let him up, dear sweetheart, The portion is too small."

"O stay your hand," the old man said, "And you shall have it all."

The lawyer was loud in his admiration of this cla.s.sical piece, and what he afterwards found was The Crew's original and only tune. "That was the kind of wife for a poor man," remarked Sylva.n.u.s, meditatively; "but she was mighty hard on her old dad."

"They're a poor lot, the whole pack of them," said the lawyer, savagely, thinking of the quandary in which he and his friend were placed.

"Who is?" asked The Crew.

"Why, the women, to be sure."

"Look here, Mister, my name may be Sylva.n.u.s, but I know I'm pretty rough, for all that. But, rough as I am, I don't sit quiet and let any man, no, not as good friends as you and me has been, say a word agin the wimmen. When I think o' these yere gals as was in this blessed schooner last summer, I feel it my juty, bein' I'm one o' them as helped to sail her then, to stand up fer all wimmen kind, and, no offence meant. I guess your own mother's one o' the good sort, now wasn't she?"

"I should say she is," replied Coristine; "there are splendid women in the world, but they're all married."

"That don't stand to reason, nohow," said The Crew, with gravity, "'cos there was a time wonst when they wasn't married, and if they was good arter they was good afore. And, moreover, what was, is, and ever shall be, Amen!"

"All right, Sylva.n.u.s, we won't quarrel over them, and to show I bear no malice, I'll sing a song about the s.e.x," whereupon he trolled out: "Here's to the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen." Wilkinson came running aft when he heard the strain, and cried: "Good heavens! Coristine, whatever has got into you, are you mad or intoxicated?"

"I'll bet you your boots and your bottom dollar that he ain't that, Mister," interposed The Crew, "fer you couldn't scare up liquor enough on this yere _Susan Thomas_ to turn the head of a canary."

"We are exchanging musical treats," said Coristine in defence. "Sylva.n.u.s here favoured me with an old ballad, not in the Percy collection, and I have been giving him one of the songs from the dramatists."

"But about women!" protested the dominie.

"There ain't no songs that ain't got somethin' about women in 'em that's wuth a cent," indignantly replied The Crew, and Wilkinson sullenly retired to the bow.

When the captain emerged from the hold he was hardly recognizable.

Instead of his common sleeved waist coat and overalls, he was attired in a dark blue suit of broadcloth, the vest and frock coat of which were resplendent with gilt b.u.t.tons. These clothes, with a befitting peaked cap and a pair of polished boots, had evidently come out of the large bundle he had brought from Belle Ewart, where the garments had probably done Sunday duty, for a smaller bundle, which he now threw upon the deck, contained his discarded working dress. Wilkinson was confirmed, by the spectacle presented, in his dire suspicion that the captain's niece would appear at Barrie, and, then and there, begin an acquaintance with him that might have the most disastrous consequences. But hope springs eternal in the human breast, as the poet says, so the schoolmaster tackled the commander, congratulated him on his fine appearance, and began to pump him as to the whereabouts of Miss Carmichael. The old gentleman, for such he looked now, was somewhat vain in an off-hand sort of way, and felt that he was quite the dominie's equal. He was cheerful, even jovial, in spite of the contrary a.s.sertions of The Crew, as he replied to Wilkinson's interrogations.

"Ah, you sly young dog," he said, "I see what you're at now. You'd like to hear that the pair of them are waiting for us at Barrie; but they're not. They've gone to stay with my brother-in-law, Carruthers, in the County of Grey, where I'll go and see their pretty faces myself in a few days."

Wilkinson swallowed the "sly young dog" for the sake of the consolation, and, hurriedly making his way aft, communicated the joyful news to Coristine. That gentleman much amused The Crew by throwing an arm round the schoolmaster's waist and waltzing his unwilling partner over the deck. All went merry as a marriage bell till the waltzers struck a rope coil, when, owing to the dominie's struggles, they went down together. Recovering themselves, they sat on deck glaring at each other.

"You're a perfect idiot, Coristine."

"You're a regular old m.u.f.f, Wilkinson."

The Crew, thinking this was a special pantomime got up impromptu for his benefit, roared with laughter, and applauded on the tiller. He was about to execute a hoedown within tiller limits to testify his sympathy with the fun, when the captain appeared in all his Sunday finery.

"Let her away, you laughing hyena," he yelled to the unlucky Sylva.n.u.s, who regained his mental balance and laid his back to the tiller the other way.

"Sorry I've no chairs for you gentlemen," he remarked to the seated travellers; "but I guess the deck's as soft as the wooden kind."

"Don't mention it, my dear captain," said Coristine, as he sprang to his feet; "we were only taking the lat.i.tude and longitude, but it's hard work on the bones."

"You allow yourself too much lat.i.tude, sir, both in your actions and in your unjustifiable remarks," muttered the pedagogue, more slowly a.s.suming the perpendicular.

"Now, captain," cried the lawyer, "I leave it you, sir, as a judge of language, good and bad. What is the worst thing to call a man, a m.u.f.f or an idiot!"

The captain toyed with the lanyard of his tortoise sh.e.l.l rimmed gla.s.ses, then put them deliberately across his nose, coughed judiciously, and gave his opinion:--

"An ijit is a man that's born without sense and can't keep himself, d'ye see? But a m.u.f.f is that stupid, like Sylva.n.u.s here, that he can't use the sense he's got. That being the case, a m.u.f.f is worse than an ijit."

"Mr. Wilkinson, I bow, as in duty bound, to the verdict of the court, and humbly apologize for having called you something worse than an idiot. In my poor opinion, sir, you are not worse than the unfortunate creature thus described."

Wilkinson was about to retort, when The Crew called out that the schooner was in the Bay, and that the lights of Barrie could be seen in the distance.

"Keep to your helm, Sylva.n.u.s," growled the captain; "there's three pair of eyes here as good as yourn, and I hope with more sense abaft 'em."

Sylva.n.u.s relapsed into silence of a modified kind, merely whistling in a soft way his original copyright tune. As the travellers had never seen Kempenfeldt Bay before, they admired it very much, and forgot their little misunderstanding, while arm in arm they leaned over the bulwarks, and quoted little s.n.a.t.c.hes of poetry in one another's ears. The twinkling lights of the town upon the cliffs suggested many a pleasing pa.s.sage, so that Wilkinson told his dear Corry he was more than repaid for the trouble incident on their expedition by the sweet satisfaction of gazing on such a scene in company with a kindred spirit of poesy. To this his comrade replied, "Wilks, my dear boy, next to my mother you're the best friend I ever hope to have."

"Let us cherish these sentiments for one another, kind friend, and the cloud on the horizon of our tour will never rise to darken its happy future," after which the learned dominie recited the words of Ducis:--

"_n.o.ble et tendre amitie, je te chante en mes vers_."

"Murder!" cried Coristine, "Do you know that that Miss Jewplesshy, or Do Please, or whatever her name is, is French?"

"O, Corry, Corry, how could you break in upon a scene of purest friendship and nature worship like this with your wretched misses? O, Corry, be a man!"

"The anchor's agoin' out," remarked The Crew, as he pa.s.sed by; so the travellers rushed to the capstan and got hold of the spikes. Out went the cable, as Coristine sang:--

Do! my Johnny Boker, I'm a poo-er sailor, Do! my Johnny Boker, Do!!!

The ship made fast, the captain said, "Sylva.n.u.s will take you gentlemen ash.o.r.e in the dingy. It only holds three, so I'll wait till he comes back." The pedestrians protested, but in vain. Sylva.n.u.s should take them ash.o.r.e first. So they bade the captain good-bye with many thanks and good wishes, and tumbled down into the dingy, which The Crew brought round. The captain shouted from the bulwarks in an insinuating way, "I'll keep my eye on you, Mr Wilkinson, trying to steal an old man's niece away from him," at which the victim shuddered. Away went the dingy some fifty yards or more, when Coristine called out, "Have you got the knapsacks, Farquhar, my dear?"

"Why, bless me, no," he answered. "I thought you had them." "Row back for your life, Sylva.n.u.s, to get the blessed knapsacks;" and Sylva.n.u.s, patient creature, did as he was told. The captain threw them over the side with another farewell speech, and then the dingy made for the bank, while Coristine sang in a rich voice:--

Pull for the sh.o.r.e, sailor, Pull for the sh.o.r.e.