Young Tom Bowling Part 21

"Begorrah, Tom," cried he, wiping his eye with the sleeve of his jumper, "Oi wudn't 'a belaved it, sure, if ye hadn't towld me, mabouchal, wid yer own potato trap! Faith, the poor chap samed quoite a t'other sort.

Sure, Tom, me darlint, as he's bin an' gone an' saved the noomber ov yer mess, be the powers, Oi'll spake to Father O'Flannagan whin I git back to Porchmouth an' ax him fur to say a ma.s.s, sure, fur the poor beggar, so that his sowl may rest in paice. May the saints protict him!"

Three days afterwards, without any further adventure, we anch.o.r.ed in Funchal Roads.

Here the squadron remained a week, the other ships having joined us when within a day's sail of Madeira; and, as we were going to make such a comparatively long stay, the men were granted leave to go ash.o.r.e, watch and watch in turn.

Just before we left, the commodore gave a grand picnic to all the officers at the Grande Curral, when I had the luck of accompanying the party that went from our ship, a piece of good fortune shared by Mick, my chum.

This Curral, a name which means, I'm told, in the Spanish language a 'sheepfold,' is an immense valley, completely surrounded by hills, that lies a few miles to the north-west of Funchal, the capital of the island.

The hills encircling the natural plateau of the Curral are literally perpendicular, being in no part less than a thousand feet high; while round a part of the cliffs there is a narrow road leading to the 'garden houses' of the rich folk having business premises in the town, and a number of plantations, which is cut out of the solid rock and is about ten or twelve feet high.

As the picnic party went along over this road, the view presented to our eyes on looking down below was that of an unfathomable abyss, filled up by a ma.s.s of clouds and vapours, all rolling about in constant motion, and tumbling the one on top of another.

Mick and I were each aboard a mule and enjoyed ourselves to rights, racing against one another all the way; though we took precious good care to keep in the rear of our officers, amongst whom was Lieutenant Robinson, whose liver must have been particularly out of sorts that morning, for he was in a grumpier and more fault-finding mood than usual.

He did catch sight of us once as we were turning a sharp point in the road round a projection of a cliff; but, through the fortunate circ.u.mstance of the mule which the lieutenant was riding happening to bolt at the moment, the joker had too much to do in taking care of his own valuable carca.s.s to have much time to growl at us.

The lieutenant, though, did not forget the incident: for, on Mick chancing to trip over one of his legs as he sat on the gra.s.s while handing him a plate of salad, the pleasant gentleman called him as many names as some of the watermen at Point are in the habit of using when they are put out of temper by being cheated of a fare.

"Bedad, Tom," whispered Mick to me, when he got out of range of the lieutenant's grapeshot, and we were having a feed ourselves in a quiet corner, "Oi wush thet blissid ould baist he wor roidin' hed run away wid him, sure, over the cliff an' made an ind ov the spalpeen! Faith, it isn't mesilf thet wud cry me oyes out, or wear mournin' fur him!"

On leaving Madeira, which we did with much regret, the people being very hospitable and most good-naturedly disposed towards all sailors, especially to British bluejackets, we fetched a compa.s.s for Teneriffe, where we arrived some three or four days afterwards; the commodore occupying the additional time in exercising the ships under his command, and matching them one against another.

In sailing on a wind the _Active_, I'm glad to say, beat all the rest of the squadron; though, in running before the wind, the little _Ruby_ weathered on us and the _Volage_, our sister ship, ran us pretty close.

When nearing Teneriffe and close in to the African coast, we saw a splendid tight in the sea, between a big black whale on the one side, and a 'thrasher' or fox-shark on the other, aided by a swordfish, with which latter he had just apparently struck up an alliance offensive and defensive for the time.

The thrasher, which has a back as elastic as an india-rubber ball, would jump clean out of the water and give the whale a whack in the ribs that must have taken all the elasticity out of him; and then, on the poor leviathan of the deep fluking his tail to dive so as to escape from his aerial antagonist, his chum the swordfish would tickle up the whale from below by sending a yard or two of his long saw-like snout into his tenderest part.

Presently, as we luffed up to see the end of the fun, the sea in the vicinity of the fray became tinged with blood, the colour of carmine, showing that somebody at all events was having a bad time of it.

"By the powers, it bates Bannagher," cried Mick, who was watching the fight alongside of me on the upper deck, springing up on to the hammock nettings in his excitement to see the finish, unthinking of the breach of discipline he was committing. "Go it, ye cripples. Sure, Tom, the little wun'll win--what d'ye call him?"

"He's a thrasher," I replied, jumping up, too, on the top of the nettings. "A sort of shark, I think. Father has one stuffed at home, stowed away somewhere, that looks like that chap. If so, he's a fox- shark."

"A fox-shark, begorrah!" repeated Mick, with a grin. "Faith, Tom, he's goin' fur thet ould whale theer ez if he wor not ownly a fox, sure, but a pack of hounds as will, alannah!"

"Hi, there, you boys," roared out a voice at this juncture, which we had little difficulty in recognising as belonging to Lieutenant Robinson, who was again officer of the watch this afternoon, his turn of duty having once more come round. "Get off that netting at once and go below, both of you. Master-at-arms, take those boys' names down and put them in the report, and bring them up on the deck after 'divisions' to- morrow!"

The 'Jaunty,' who was standing below the break of the p.o.o.p, looked up at the scowling lieutenant, saluting him.

"Very good, sir," said he, with another touch of his hat, in recognition of the authority of the speaker. "I will see to it, sir."

But, a 'Deus ex machina,' or 'G.o.d from the bathing-machine,' as our old captain of the _Saint Vincent_ would have said in his Latin lingo, just then intervened on our behalf.

Mick Donovan and I were sneaking down the main hatch, like a pair of whipped dogs with their tails between their legs--though I must say we were more chagrined at losing the best part of the fight going on in the water, which was rapidly approaching a climax, than dismayed at having incurred the displeasure of the lieutenant--when, if you please, we heard somebody shout out something behind us, and the master-at-arms, who had followed in our wake, called out to us to stop.

"Belay there, you boys," he shouted down the hatchway. "Ye're to return on deck!"

In obedience to this order, we ascended the ladder-way again, retracing our steps at an even slower pace than we had gone down at; for we both expected, the same thought having flashed across our minds when the 'Jaunty' hailed us, that Lieutenant Robinson had, on more mature consideration, fancied he had let us off too lightly for the heinous offence we had committed, and had ordered us to be brought back to give us 'four dozen' apiece at least, there and then!

The result, however, was very different to our sad antic.i.p.ations; for when we reached the deck the old commodore was standing by the p.o.o.p rail, close to the ladder on the port side leading down from thence into the waist of the ship.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE.

"Lieutenant Robinson," said he to our persecutor, who looked ill at ease as he stood before him, the s.e.xtant which he had s.n.a.t.c.hed up in a hurry to calculate the angle of distance of the whale and its antagonists now hanging listlessly in his hand, "be good enough, sir, to tell those boys that they may remain on the upper deck and look over the side, but that they must not stand on the hammock nettings. I like discipline to be preserved on board the ship I may have the honour to command, but I never allow any unnecessary severity being shown to the men or boys of the ship's company!"

Much against his will, the lieutenant, thus rebuked on the quarter-deck in the presence not only of his own brother-officers, but in that of all of us on the deck below as well, had now to 'eat humble pie' and give us the commodore's message; and, though Mick and I could not repress a grin on his bowing to us with mock politeness, we could see from the look in his underhung eyes that he intended to pay us out bye-and-bye when he had the chance for having been obliged to beg our pardon, as he had to do almost then.

Unhappily, though, the permission for us to look over the side again came too late; for the thrasher and the swordfish had been too much for the poor whale, whose huge lifeless body was now floating away to leeward, half a cable's length astern of the ship, surrounded by an eddy of b.l.o.o.d.y water, while its a.s.sailants had both disappeared.

"Begorrah," cried Mick, much disgusted at this, "sure, we're jist in toime to be too late!"

In our pa.s.sage from Madeira to the Canary Islands we steered south by west, in order to avoid the Salvages.

These are a number of rocky islets, named the 'Great Piton,' the 'Little Piton,' and 'Ilha Grande,' lying in lat.i.tude 30 degrees 8 minutes north, and longitude 15 degrees 55 minutes west. The largest island is covered with bushes, amongst which thousands of sea-fowl make their nests; and, from the fact of its not being seen until a ship be close in to it, when these very birds tell of its propinquity, by darkening the air almost as they rise, it is a great danger to mariners.

A little farther to the eastward is Lanzarote, which is very mountainous, possessing a volcano of its own, where a violent eruption took place not very long ago, when a stream of lava from two hundred to three hundred yards broad spread out into the sea like a river, the floating pumice-stone being picked up by pa.s.sing vessels miles away.

For this piece of information I am indebted to the navigating officer, who happened to be telling one of the young midshipmen all about the place as I was attending to a job the boatswain had set me to aft.

I also heard him tell the same young gentleman a queer yarn about a buried treasure which is supposed to be concealed near a little cove on the southern extremity of the island, called 'Janubio.' The story goes that, in the beginning of the century--I think the navigator said it was in the year 1804, but I am not quite certain--the crew of a South American Spanish treasure ship, bound to Cadiz from Lima with produce and which had besides over two millions of dollars in chests aboard, mutinied, and murdered their captain and officers; the rascals then making off in the long boat with this treasure towards an island, which, from the description given, must have been either Lanzarote or one of the Salvages.

On this island, whichever it was, the dollars were carried ash.o.r.e and buried above high-water mark in a snug little bay to the south; the mutineers, according to the prevailing superst.i.tion of such gentry, burying the body of their murdered captain on top of the treasure, so that his ghost might prevent any unprivileged intruders from meddling with their cache.

The navigator said, just as I was going down below after finishing my job, that this tale was told to an English sailor by one of the surviving mutineers; and he added that the Admiralty were so much impressed by its appearance of truth that Admiral Hercules Robinson, the grandfather, I believe, of our present High Commissioner at the Cape of Good Hope, was actually sent out to make a search for the treasure when in command of HMS _Prometheus_, in 1813.

We coaled at Teneriffe, putting into the harbour of Santa Cruz for this purpose; and Mick and I were much struck by the fact of the black ladies who carried the baskets of coal on their heads along the jetty from the sh.o.r.e to the ship, doing the job, too, in first-rate style and as good as any gang of wharfingers at home, all of them wearing the most expansive crinolines, which, with their thin dresses and black stockings, of nature's own provision, had a very comical effect!

"Faith!" exclaimed Mick, after watching these dusky belles with much interest for some time, the lot of them chattering and laughing away, showing their teeth, which a dentist would have given something to possess for his showcase, "Oi'd loike Father O'Flannagan jist for to say thim quare craychurs, Tom, me hearty, if ownly to say him toorn oop the whoites ov his oyes. Bedad, he'd be afther sprinklin' 'em wid howly wather an' exorcisin' on 'em, ez if he'd sayn the divvle, sure!"

Jones the signalman, who was standing near when Mick said this, laughed.

"Your old priest would have his work cut out for him in more ways than that," said he, with a very significant wink to one of the other hands, "if he'd only go to Grand Canary instead of Teneriffe!"

The name he mentioned at once made Mick c.o.c.k his ear.

"Grand Canary," repeated my chum after the signalman, with a puzzled look on his face. "Ain't thet the place, Tom, whare thim yaller burds yer sisther Jenny has, sure, at home comes from? She s'id they wor canaries, Oi'd take me davy!"

"Of course, they are, Mick," said I, in reply to this. "Why, mother must have a hundred of them in the shop at this very minute, besides those little ones she brought up herself which Jenny used to act as nurse to!"

"Och, sure, Oi rimimber thim will enuff," answered Mick, with a melancholy look on his face, as if his mind had turned back from Santa Cruz to Bonfire Corner all of a sudden and to our little house there.

"An' thet little chap ov a canary thet had a crist on the top ov his hid, loike a crown, sure, thet yer sisther Jenny used fur to make so much ov--the little darlint!"