Chapter Sixteen.Escape.Three more shots were fired at intervals, as the brig kept making short tack after tack, and with each report the flash appeared to be brighter, indicative of the increasing darkness, while now a pale lambent light seemed to be dawning at times and making the shape of the brig stand out more clearly at intervals, but only to fade away again quickly, while there were moments when the vessel quite disappeared.“Why is that, uncle?” asked Rodd quickly, as he looked vainly now in search of the flying craft. “Ah, there she is again! I began to think she had gone down. Why is she seen so dimly sometimes?”“Hidden by the flying spray, I think,” said Uncle Paul.“Oh yes, of course,” cried the boy. “Ah, there she is, quite clear now, and still going on nearer and nearer to the harbour mouth. No—now it’s getting darker than ever.—There, now she’s coming into sight again quite clearly.”“Yes, she’s getting out where the harbour lights are full upon her,” said Uncle Paul.As he spoke there were two more reports, almost simultaneous, and Rodd felt a peculiar sense of pain attacking him, for at one moment when the two guns flashed, the brig could be plainly seen; the next, as the boy strained his eyes, all was black darkness, and he caught at his uncle’s arm with his hands trembling and an intense longing upon him to speak; but no words would come.It seemed like some minutes before a word was uttered, and then it was the doctor who spoke.“I haven’t caught sight of the boats lately,” he said. “It is evident that they have given up the chase.”“Oh, uncle, uncle,” cried Rodd, “I was not thinking about them, but of those poor fellows in the brig. One of those last shots must have hit, and they have gone down.”“Oh no,” cried Uncle Paul; “I saw her once again. Just now.—Yes, there she is, tossing wildly in the waves. She must be beyond the mouth of the harbour, and—”“Yes, I see her! I see her!” cried Rodd wildly. “No, she’s gone again; but she was pitching and tossing horribly.”“Yes,” said Uncle Paul. “It’s going to be hard work for them now, for the waves out there must be tremendous. Well, my boy, it was a daring attempt, and whoever they are let’s hope they may escape, but—”Uncle Paul was silent, and once more the boy uttered a low groan.Then no one spoke, but all stood straining their eyes to try and catch sight again of the vessel, which had seemed to be pitching wildly in the darkness; but they looked in vain, for all now seemed to be rapidly growing black.The boy tried to speak, but no words would come, and even the waiter was silent, as he stood trying to catch sight of the vessel once more; but the darkness now was rapidly increasing, and though from time to time they could make out the faint outline of the lights, all seemed to become more dense and obscure, and the boy started violently as their guide suddenly exclaimed—“It is no use now, sare. I sink she must have gone down.”Silence; but as Uncle Paul pressed his nephew’s arm Rodd followed him slowly without a word, while the waiter shook his head and suggested that they should return to thecafé.The boy gave one glance before stirring, and then uttered a sigh.“Come, my boy,” said his uncle; “perhaps there is no occasion to despair. It is quite evident that the captain of the brig knows what he is about, and may escape.”Rodd followed his uncle without a word, the waiter going on before them to show the devious ways along by the harbour and the old town.As they drew near the yard Rodd felt a sense of hesitation. “I think I would rather get back on board the schooner, uncle,” he said.“Oh, but we couldn’t do that, my boy,” cried Uncle Paul. “I gave an order for dinner to be prepared.”“Yes, uncle, but I don’t feel as if I could eat anything now.”“Why?”“It seemed so horrible watching that vessel trying to escape under fire.”“It was evidently not hit, my boy.”“But it was going right out into the face of this storm, and even you thought she’d be driven ashore.”“Yes; perhaps I have been thinking the worst; but the brig’s captain is evidently a clever sailor and knows what he’s about. It is rather jumping at conclusions to consider that he will let his vessel be wrecked. Yes, it was nervous work watching a vessel like that; but there, we must hope for the best, and possibly there is no reason to despond. Whoever the brig belonged to had good reason for getting away, and they have succeeded in that. There, come along; let’s have our dinner, and think no more about it. But hallo! What’s the matter here?”Uncle Paul’s remark was caused by a loud angry voice scolding in French at the waiter who had just led them to the yard door, and it was evident that the man was in difficulties for absenting himself from his duties after giving the order that the visitors’ dinner should be prepared.“But I have been in attendance upon the gentlemen,” he protested, with not much truth in his utterance. “I had to take them down to the side of the harbour to see the firing at the spy. Is everything ready? Because the gentlemen are anxious for their dinner.”Uncle Paul nudged his nephew, glad of the opportunity to change the bearing of the boy’s thoughts, and shortly after the good meal prepared in the snug, warm room diverted Rodd’s mind from the roaring of the storm, which was still beating round the great hotel; and they had just finished and were talking about going outside to see what the weather was like, when a very familiar gruff voice saluted their ears, as the waiter showed Captain Chubb into the room.“Oh, here you are,” he grunted. “Come ashore to look after you. ’Fraid you were lost.”“We are very glad to see you,” said Uncle Paul. “Sit down. We thought it was not safe to try and get aboard.”“Well, it aren’t very,” said the skipper; “but we come in the boat to make sure you weren’t both drowned, and if you’ll risk it I think I can get you round by keeping under the lee of two or three vessels.”“What do you say, Rodd?” asked Uncle Paul. “Shall we risk it?”“Oh, I don’t think that there’ll be much risk, uncle, if Captain Chubb considers it safe. I don’t mind going with him.”The skipper gave the boy a nod and looked pleased; then nodding at Uncle Paul he said quietly—“As we were ashore I told the men to get a few stores down to the boat, and that I’d meet them here. I dare say Joe Cross will be an hour, and by that time it will have lulled a bit, or else be a deal worse, and we’ll see.”It took very little persuasion to make the skipper partake of some of the hotel fare, and naturally enough the conversation turned upon the incident that had lately taken place.“Yes,” said Captain Chubb, “the skipper of that craft has got some stuff in him, and he knew how to navigate his boat. I could have done it if I’d been obliged, but I should have wanted a deal of shoving before I hoisted sail. Storm was bad enough, and no room to tack; but what I shouldn’t have liked was being fired at by two boats’ crews and three or four forts. I know what being fired at is, young squire,” continued the captain, giving Rodd a very peculiar look out of one eye, after closing the other, “and you may take my word for it it aren’t nice.”“What, have you been out in a man-of-war?” asked Rodd eagerly.“Nay, my lad, but several of our fellows have, and if you ask them, they can tell you what it’s like too.”“Then you never were fired at?” said Rodd questioningly.“Who says I warn’t? I tell you I was, though it wasn’t by forts. It was a Revenue cutter got trying to hit me.”“What, smuggling?” cried Rodd.“Nay! Smuggling, indeed! It was her skipper—Lieutenant somebody or another—I forget his name—say Smith. He made a blunder, same as I did in taking you and the doctor here for slavers.”“Oh!” cried Rodd, laughing.“Ah, it warn’t anything to laugh at, my lad, with round shot coming a-splashing right across your bows. Certainly it was in a fog, and my craft didn’t get hit, but more than once the balls came pretty near, and I remember thinking whether if the cutter did sink us we should all be able to swim ashore, and I come to the conclusion that we couldn’t in our boots, for it was about nine miles.”“I should think not,” replied Rodd dryly. “But, Captain Chubb—about that brig; do you think they’d get right away to sea?”“I shouldn’t think they’d try to, my lad.”“They seemed to be trying to.”“Not they. Her skipper, as soon as he got outside the harbour, would try to creep under the lee of the high ground somewhere out west. Whether he’d do it or not is quite another thing. Let’s hope he did, for I don’t care about hearing that good men and true have been drowned in a storm, even if they are French. I am not like your uncle here.”“Come, I say, Captain Chubb,” cried the doctor indignantly, “how dare you say that! Surely a thinking man can have a feeling of antipathy against Napoleon Bonaparte and all his works without being accused of liking to see brave Frenchmen drowned.”“Beg pardon, sir. I suppose you are right,” granted the skipper; “but I should like to hear that that there smart brig got safe away.”“Well, I hope so too,” said Uncle Paul shortly, and with a look in his countenance that made Rodd think about some words a friend had once said about a red rag to a bull. “But I suppose you don’t believe that vessel had some emissaries of Napoleon on board, come to set fire to the port of Havre?”“Nay,” said the skipper, drawing out the negative very deliberately. “Don’t see any likelihood of their doing such a thing. What for? Suppose they did get it alight, that wouldn’t bring Bony back. Nay, his game’s about up now, and there will be quiet again over here for a bit, though I wouldn’t venture to say for how long. Keeping quiet isn’t in a Frenchman’s nature.”“But there was evidently something very special about the vessel, or else the French Government wouldn’t have sent orders for her to be seized.”“French Government did?”“Yes, I believe so,” replied Uncle Paul. “We saw the officer and his men come riding in with the dispatch.”“Nay. Order for the Revenue to put men on board.”“Oh no,” replied Uncle Paul. “From what we saw and what we heard, it was something much more important than that. Why, hang it, captain, they wouldn’t have turned out the garrison and manned all the forts to stop the progress of a smuggler, would they?”“We wouldn’t at Plymouth, sir; but there’s no knowing what Frenchmen will do. But there, I give in. It must have been something stronger than that, and I am beginning to think that squire here’s right, and that yon vessel, the—the—the—”“Jeanne d’Arc” cried Rodd.“Right,” snorted the skipper. “She was something of a privateer, on mischief bent, and I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if we was to hear something more about her. I don’t know, though; if the storm blows itself out before morning we shan’t lie long here in harbour, but make away south as fast as I can make the schooner bowl along.”“Then you think the weather will hold up soon?” said Rodd.“Nay, I am not going to think, squire; I’ll wait until I can be sure. Anyhow, I won’t fill my pipe till we get aboard.”“Then you mean to try soon?” cried Rodd eagerly.“Why not?” replied the skipper gruffly. “Look yonder; what do you say to that?”“That” was the presence of Joe Cross, who was being ushered into the dining-saloon by the waiter, to announce that the wind had sunk a bit and only came in squalls, between two of which he thought he could easily run the boat alongside of the schooner.And he did—while the next morning broke almost absolutely calm.
Three more shots were fired at intervals, as the brig kept making short tack after tack, and with each report the flash appeared to be brighter, indicative of the increasing darkness, while now a pale lambent light seemed to be dawning at times and making the shape of the brig stand out more clearly at intervals, but only to fade away again quickly, while there were moments when the vessel quite disappeared.
“Why is that, uncle?” asked Rodd quickly, as he looked vainly now in search of the flying craft. “Ah, there she is again! I began to think she had gone down. Why is she seen so dimly sometimes?”
“Hidden by the flying spray, I think,” said Uncle Paul.
“Oh yes, of course,” cried the boy. “Ah, there she is, quite clear now, and still going on nearer and nearer to the harbour mouth. No—now it’s getting darker than ever.—There, now she’s coming into sight again quite clearly.”
“Yes, she’s getting out where the harbour lights are full upon her,” said Uncle Paul.
As he spoke there were two more reports, almost simultaneous, and Rodd felt a peculiar sense of pain attacking him, for at one moment when the two guns flashed, the brig could be plainly seen; the next, as the boy strained his eyes, all was black darkness, and he caught at his uncle’s arm with his hands trembling and an intense longing upon him to speak; but no words would come.
It seemed like some minutes before a word was uttered, and then it was the doctor who spoke.
“I haven’t caught sight of the boats lately,” he said. “It is evident that they have given up the chase.”
“Oh, uncle, uncle,” cried Rodd, “I was not thinking about them, but of those poor fellows in the brig. One of those last shots must have hit, and they have gone down.”
“Oh no,” cried Uncle Paul; “I saw her once again. Just now.—Yes, there she is, tossing wildly in the waves. She must be beyond the mouth of the harbour, and—”
“Yes, I see her! I see her!” cried Rodd wildly. “No, she’s gone again; but she was pitching and tossing horribly.”
“Yes,” said Uncle Paul. “It’s going to be hard work for them now, for the waves out there must be tremendous. Well, my boy, it was a daring attempt, and whoever they are let’s hope they may escape, but—”
Uncle Paul was silent, and once more the boy uttered a low groan.
Then no one spoke, but all stood straining their eyes to try and catch sight again of the vessel, which had seemed to be pitching wildly in the darkness; but they looked in vain, for all now seemed to be rapidly growing black.
The boy tried to speak, but no words would come, and even the waiter was silent, as he stood trying to catch sight of the vessel once more; but the darkness now was rapidly increasing, and though from time to time they could make out the faint outline of the lights, all seemed to become more dense and obscure, and the boy started violently as their guide suddenly exclaimed—
“It is no use now, sare. I sink she must have gone down.”
Silence; but as Uncle Paul pressed his nephew’s arm Rodd followed him slowly without a word, while the waiter shook his head and suggested that they should return to thecafé.
The boy gave one glance before stirring, and then uttered a sigh.
“Come, my boy,” said his uncle; “perhaps there is no occasion to despair. It is quite evident that the captain of the brig knows what he is about, and may escape.”
Rodd followed his uncle without a word, the waiter going on before them to show the devious ways along by the harbour and the old town.
As they drew near the yard Rodd felt a sense of hesitation. “I think I would rather get back on board the schooner, uncle,” he said.
“Oh, but we couldn’t do that, my boy,” cried Uncle Paul. “I gave an order for dinner to be prepared.”
“Yes, uncle, but I don’t feel as if I could eat anything now.”
“Why?”
“It seemed so horrible watching that vessel trying to escape under fire.”
“It was evidently not hit, my boy.”
“But it was going right out into the face of this storm, and even you thought she’d be driven ashore.”
“Yes; perhaps I have been thinking the worst; but the brig’s captain is evidently a clever sailor and knows what he’s about. It is rather jumping at conclusions to consider that he will let his vessel be wrecked. Yes, it was nervous work watching a vessel like that; but there, we must hope for the best, and possibly there is no reason to despond. Whoever the brig belonged to had good reason for getting away, and they have succeeded in that. There, come along; let’s have our dinner, and think no more about it. But hallo! What’s the matter here?”
Uncle Paul’s remark was caused by a loud angry voice scolding in French at the waiter who had just led them to the yard door, and it was evident that the man was in difficulties for absenting himself from his duties after giving the order that the visitors’ dinner should be prepared.
“But I have been in attendance upon the gentlemen,” he protested, with not much truth in his utterance. “I had to take them down to the side of the harbour to see the firing at the spy. Is everything ready? Because the gentlemen are anxious for their dinner.”
Uncle Paul nudged his nephew, glad of the opportunity to change the bearing of the boy’s thoughts, and shortly after the good meal prepared in the snug, warm room diverted Rodd’s mind from the roaring of the storm, which was still beating round the great hotel; and they had just finished and were talking about going outside to see what the weather was like, when a very familiar gruff voice saluted their ears, as the waiter showed Captain Chubb into the room.
“Oh, here you are,” he grunted. “Come ashore to look after you. ’Fraid you were lost.”
“We are very glad to see you,” said Uncle Paul. “Sit down. We thought it was not safe to try and get aboard.”
“Well, it aren’t very,” said the skipper; “but we come in the boat to make sure you weren’t both drowned, and if you’ll risk it I think I can get you round by keeping under the lee of two or three vessels.”
“What do you say, Rodd?” asked Uncle Paul. “Shall we risk it?”
“Oh, I don’t think that there’ll be much risk, uncle, if Captain Chubb considers it safe. I don’t mind going with him.”
The skipper gave the boy a nod and looked pleased; then nodding at Uncle Paul he said quietly—
“As we were ashore I told the men to get a few stores down to the boat, and that I’d meet them here. I dare say Joe Cross will be an hour, and by that time it will have lulled a bit, or else be a deal worse, and we’ll see.”
It took very little persuasion to make the skipper partake of some of the hotel fare, and naturally enough the conversation turned upon the incident that had lately taken place.
“Yes,” said Captain Chubb, “the skipper of that craft has got some stuff in him, and he knew how to navigate his boat. I could have done it if I’d been obliged, but I should have wanted a deal of shoving before I hoisted sail. Storm was bad enough, and no room to tack; but what I shouldn’t have liked was being fired at by two boats’ crews and three or four forts. I know what being fired at is, young squire,” continued the captain, giving Rodd a very peculiar look out of one eye, after closing the other, “and you may take my word for it it aren’t nice.”
“What, have you been out in a man-of-war?” asked Rodd eagerly.
“Nay, my lad, but several of our fellows have, and if you ask them, they can tell you what it’s like too.”
“Then you never were fired at?” said Rodd questioningly.
“Who says I warn’t? I tell you I was, though it wasn’t by forts. It was a Revenue cutter got trying to hit me.”
“What, smuggling?” cried Rodd.
“Nay! Smuggling, indeed! It was her skipper—Lieutenant somebody or another—I forget his name—say Smith. He made a blunder, same as I did in taking you and the doctor here for slavers.”
“Oh!” cried Rodd, laughing.
“Ah, it warn’t anything to laugh at, my lad, with round shot coming a-splashing right across your bows. Certainly it was in a fog, and my craft didn’t get hit, but more than once the balls came pretty near, and I remember thinking whether if the cutter did sink us we should all be able to swim ashore, and I come to the conclusion that we couldn’t in our boots, for it was about nine miles.”
“I should think not,” replied Rodd dryly. “But, Captain Chubb—about that brig; do you think they’d get right away to sea?”
“I shouldn’t think they’d try to, my lad.”
“They seemed to be trying to.”
“Not they. Her skipper, as soon as he got outside the harbour, would try to creep under the lee of the high ground somewhere out west. Whether he’d do it or not is quite another thing. Let’s hope he did, for I don’t care about hearing that good men and true have been drowned in a storm, even if they are French. I am not like your uncle here.”
“Come, I say, Captain Chubb,” cried the doctor indignantly, “how dare you say that! Surely a thinking man can have a feeling of antipathy against Napoleon Bonaparte and all his works without being accused of liking to see brave Frenchmen drowned.”
“Beg pardon, sir. I suppose you are right,” granted the skipper; “but I should like to hear that that there smart brig got safe away.”
“Well, I hope so too,” said Uncle Paul shortly, and with a look in his countenance that made Rodd think about some words a friend had once said about a red rag to a bull. “But I suppose you don’t believe that vessel had some emissaries of Napoleon on board, come to set fire to the port of Havre?”
“Nay,” said the skipper, drawing out the negative very deliberately. “Don’t see any likelihood of their doing such a thing. What for? Suppose they did get it alight, that wouldn’t bring Bony back. Nay, his game’s about up now, and there will be quiet again over here for a bit, though I wouldn’t venture to say for how long. Keeping quiet isn’t in a Frenchman’s nature.”
“But there was evidently something very special about the vessel, or else the French Government wouldn’t have sent orders for her to be seized.”
“French Government did?”
“Yes, I believe so,” replied Uncle Paul. “We saw the officer and his men come riding in with the dispatch.”
“Nay. Order for the Revenue to put men on board.”
“Oh no,” replied Uncle Paul. “From what we saw and what we heard, it was something much more important than that. Why, hang it, captain, they wouldn’t have turned out the garrison and manned all the forts to stop the progress of a smuggler, would they?”
“We wouldn’t at Plymouth, sir; but there’s no knowing what Frenchmen will do. But there, I give in. It must have been something stronger than that, and I am beginning to think that squire here’s right, and that yon vessel, the—the—the—”
“Jeanne d’Arc” cried Rodd.
“Right,” snorted the skipper. “She was something of a privateer, on mischief bent, and I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if we was to hear something more about her. I don’t know, though; if the storm blows itself out before morning we shan’t lie long here in harbour, but make away south as fast as I can make the schooner bowl along.”
“Then you think the weather will hold up soon?” said Rodd.
“Nay, I am not going to think, squire; I’ll wait until I can be sure. Anyhow, I won’t fill my pipe till we get aboard.”
“Then you mean to try soon?” cried Rodd eagerly.
“Why not?” replied the skipper gruffly. “Look yonder; what do you say to that?”
“That” was the presence of Joe Cross, who was being ushered into the dining-saloon by the waiter, to announce that the wind had sunk a bit and only came in squalls, between two of which he thought he could easily run the boat alongside of the schooner.
And he did—while the next morning broke almost absolutely calm.
Chapter Seventeen.A Question of Fear.It was as if all the bad weather had been left behind, for after a little snatch or two, as Joe Cross called them, the cruise down south had been glorious.The bluff, good-humoured sailor explained to Rodd what he meant by a snatch, something after this fashion.“You see, sir, after we started from Havre the weather seemed to be a bit sorry for itself for being so dirty, and you know how we bowled along down south till the wind got into a tantrum again—got out of bed the wrong way, as you may say, and then everything was wrong. We were getting into the Bay, you see, where it comes quite natural to lay all that day. In the Bay of Biscay O! Then Nature got all out of sorts again. It seemed as if she was waxy to let us have it so comfortable, and made a snatch to drag us back again. But the old man was one too many for her, and kept on for them two bad days, when we sailed out of her reach and everything was fine.”“Yes, Joe, it was fine. All that coast of Spain and Portugal was lovely.”“Yes, sir, and you got grumbling ’cause your uncle wouldn’t give orders for us to let go the anchor for you to go fishing.”“Well, see how grand it was, and how calm the sea used to get of an evening before we put in to Gibraltar.”“And then you weren’t half satisfied, sir. You’ll excuse me, Mr Rodd, sir, but you do make me laugh;” and to the boy’s great annoyance the man half turned from him, leaned over the taffrail, laughed till his sides shook, and then pulling himself up suddenly wiped his eyes. “I am very sorry, sir,” he said.“Doesn’t seem like it,” cried Rodd warmly, as he made as if to go away.It was one evening when the calm sea as it heaved seemed in places to glint forth all the glorious colours of a beautiful pearl shell, and the east wind was of a different complexion to that familiar to an English lad, for it was soft, balmy and sweet, suggestive of its having been blowing gently for miles and miles over beds of flowers.“Oh, don’t go away in a tiff, Mr Rodd, sir. It was only me, and you know what I am. I didn’t mean no offence.”“Well, it was offensive,” said Rodd. “How would you like to be laughed at?”“Me, sir?” cried the man merrily. “Me who has been knocking about the sea nearly all my life, first in a west-country fishing-boat, and then in a King’s ship, and been in action! Like being laughed at! Why, bless your heart, sir, it suits me down to the deck. I like it. Deal better than having the old man dropping on to me about something being wrong aloft.”“Well, I don’t see that there was anything to laugh at,” cried Rodd, softening down a little, for somehow the liking he had felt for the sturdy-looking sailor ever since he had come on board had gone on increasing, and Rodd affected Joe’s society more than that of any one in the ship. At least he said so to Uncle Paul, who shook his head and with a grim smile joined issue.“No, Pickle,” he cried, “I won’t have that. You seem to make better friends with the cook than with anybody.”“Oh, uncle,” replied the boy, “you always do tease me about my appetite.”“Never mind, Pickle,” said Uncle Paul good-humouredly. “Go on eating, and grow.”But to return to the conversation by the taffrail.“No, sir,” said Joe Cross, “of course you don’t, sir. It’d be contrairy to nature if you did. We chaps can’t see ourselves. There’s the old Bun. He’s been offended over and over again because people told him he was so fat. He can’t see it, sir.”“Oh, he must,” cried Rodd, laughing.“There aren’t no must in it, sir. He can’t. He might find it out perhaps if he tried to get into a pair of boy’s trousers—yours, for instance; but then that aren’t likely, because you won’t give him the chance, and what’s more, he wouldn’t want to. You try him some day about being too fat, and you see if he don’t stare at you.”“He will, Joe, when I’m so rude to him. But come now, you are shuffling. Why is it that you laugh at me?”“Well, sir, because I like you, for one thing, and another is because you are such an unreasonable chap.”“I? Unreasonable?” cried Rodd hotly. “That I’m sure I’m not!”“Why, sir, wasn’t you put out because your uncle and the old man wouldn’t sail right into the Mediterranean Sea?”“Well, there was nothing unreasonable in that. I am sure it would have been very interesting.”“Not it, sir. I’ve been there over and over again, and it always seemed to me just like any other sea, only a bit rougher sometimes, and it aren’t got hardly any tide. You wait till we get a little further on, and you’ll find plenty to make you open you eyes wider than ever you opened them before. I don’t know a finer place for seeing wonders of the deep than along where we are going, as you say we are to, right along the West Coast of Afriky. Why, you might begin fishing and dredging directly after we had put in at Mogador, where the fish are wonderful, and you can’t drop in a line without hauling something out.”“That’s good,” cried Rodd eagerly; “but I am afraid uncle won’t let us have much time for ordinary fishing. He will be more on the look-out for curiosities.”“Ah, well, there’s plenty of them too, sir—all sorts, and the farther you gets into warmer water the more there are.”“What sort?” asked Rodd.“All sorts, and the nearer you are to land the more you get. Then I suppose some time we shall come upon that there Sargassey Sea.”“Where’s that?” asked Rodd.“Right away down south, sir. Let’s see, if I remember right we falls in with that soon after you pass the islands.”“What islands?”“Let’s see; I ought to know, sir. The fust that comes near Europe is the Azores; then farther south there’s that there island where all the sick people goes, Madeiry; then there’s the Canaries, where the birds come from; only they aren’t all yaller like people keeps in their cages. Most I seed there was green, and put me in mind of them little chaps as we have at home with the yaller heads—you know, sir; them as cries, ‘A little bit of bread and no cheese.’ And you see them up country, a-twittering among the hedges.”“Yes, I know,” said Rodd sharply; “but what about the Sargassey Sea?”“Ah! I’m thinking it was after that we come to that sea, only I aren’t quite sure, sir. But if I recollect right, they say it shifts about according to what sort of weather we have.”“Well, so does every sea,” cried Rodd, “when the waves are running high.”“Ah, but they don’t run high here, sir. You see, the Sargassey Sea aren’t like other seas, and I suppose it’s only part of the Atlantic after all. It’s all smooth like because as far as you can see it’s all like one great bed of floating seaweed, so thick that you can hardly sail through it at times, and if you go out into it in a boat it’s as much as you can do to dip your oars.”“Have you been out amongst it then?” asked Rodd.“Yes, sir, more’n once. It was when I was in thePrince Georgeoff the West Coast of Africa, and we had got a surgeon on board there, and him and our second lieutenant had both got it badly.”“What, West African fever?” cried Rodd.“No, no, sir; same as your uncle’s got—looking after strange things as lives in the sea. I was one of the crew of the second cutter then, and in the beautiful calm weather we used to take the doctor and the second luff out in this Sargassey Sea, which used to look sometimes as if we were floating about in green fields.”“Oh, you mean the Sargasso Sea!” cried Rodd. “Nay, I don’t, sir; I means the Sargassey Sea.”“Well, that’s the same thing, only you spell it differently,” cried Rodd.“Oh no, sir; that I don’t. That’s a thing as I never pretended to do. I can take my spell at the pump or at any other job; but what you call spelling was never in my way.”“But you mean the same thing,” cried Rodd. “It isn’t Sar-gass-ey; it’s Sar-gass-o.”“Ho! Sar-gass-ho, is it, sir?”“Yes, of course.”“All right, sir; I’m willing. But my one was all alive with little things, little fish and slugs and snails of all kinds of rum sorts; and our second luff used to make us haul in great lengths of the seaweed as was floating about, and then help him to pick ’em out into bottles till they were quite full, and looking just as if they was pickles same as you see in the grocers’ shops in Plymouth town.”“Well, the same as you saw uncle and me do that day during the calm?”“Yes, sir, just like that, only yours as you did were small shop and ours was like big warehouse, though I don’t think our doctor did much good with them, because so many of them used to go bad, and our cook and his mate used to have to throw no end away and wash the bottles.”“Ah, ours won’t go bad,” said Rodd confidently. “My uncle will preserve them differently to that.”“Oh, yes, I suppose so, sir. You see, we’ve all come out this time ready for the job; our officers on thePrince Georgeonly did their bit just for a day or two’s holiday like, and our job was to look after the mounseers’ cruisers, not to catch tittlebats and winkles, and it wasn’t so very long after that we was at it hammer and tongs with a big French frigate, making work for the doctor of a precious different kind, and for our ship’s carpenters too. Different sort of nat’ral history that was, sir, I can tell you, for we lost nineteen of our men and had a lot wounded; but we took the frigate, and carried her safe into Portsmouth Harbour.”“Ah!” cried Rodd softly, as his eyes flashed at the thoughts of the deeds of naval daring carried out by our men-of-war. “I wish I’d been there!”“You do, sir?” said Joe. “Mean it?”“Mean it? Of course! There, don’t look at me like that. I wasn’t thinking of being a man, but a reefer—one of those middies that we used to see at Plymouth.”“Ah, it’s all very fine, sir,” said Joe, shaking his head, “and it sounds very nice about firing broadsides and then getting orders to board when the two big men-of-war get the grappling-irons on board and you have to follow your officers, scrambling with your cutlass in your hand out of the chains from your ship into the enemy’s; and all the time there’s the roaring of the guns and the popping away of the marines up in the tops, and the men cheering as your officers lead them on. It’s a very different thing, sir, to what you think, and so I can tell you.”“Why, Joe,” cried Rodd, almost maliciously, “you talk as if you felt afraid!”“Afraid, sir?” said the man, quietly and thoughtfully. “No, sir. No, sir; I never felt afraid, and I never knowed one of my messmates as said he was.”“Oh no, of course they wouldn’t say so,” cried Rodd, laughing.“No, sir, that’s right. But I aren’t bragging, sir. I’ve been in several engagements like that, and my messmates always seemed to feel just as I did. You see, they’d got it to do, sir, and we always felt that it was only mounseers that we’d got to beat and captur’ their ship; and then as soon as we had begun, whether we was crews of guns, stripped and firing away, or answering the orders to board, why, then we never had time to feel afraid.”“What, not when you saw your messmates shot down beside you?” cried Rodd.“My word, no, sir!” cried Joe, laughing. “We none of us felt afraid then; it only made us feel wild and want to sarve the other side out. No, sir,” continued the bluff fallow, in a quiet matter-of-fact way, and his voice utterly free of vaunt, “whether it’s a sea-fight or things are going wrong in a storm, we sailor fellows are always too busy to feel afraid. You see, I think, sir, it has something to do with the drill and discipline, as they calls it, training the lads all to work together. You see, it makes them feel so strong.”“I can’t say I do see,” said Rodd.“No, sir, because you haven’t been drilled; but it’s like this ’ere. One man’s one man, and a hundred men’s a hundred men—no, stop; that aren’t quite what I mean. It aren’t in my way, Mr Rodd, sir; I never was a beggar to argue. The fat Bun can easily beat me at that. This ’ere’s what I mean. One man’s one man, and a hundred men’s a hundred one men. That’s if they aren’t drilled and trained like sailors or soldiers; but if they are trained, you see each one man feels as if he has got a hundred men with him all working together, and con-se-quently, sir, every chap aboard feels as if he’s as strong as a hundred men. Now don’t you see, sir?”“Well, yes,” said Rodd quietly; “I think I begin to see what you mean.”“Why, of course you do, sir. Say it’s heaving a boat aboard, and it takes twenty men to do it. Why, if they go and try one at a time, where are you? But if you all go and take hold together, and your officer says to you, ‘Now, my lads, with a will, all together! Heave ho!’ why then, up she comes. Well now, I do call that rum! Look at that, sir. If here aren’t the old man, just as if he had heard what we was talking about, passing the word for gun drill, or else a bit of knicketty knock with the cutlasses and pikes!”
It was as if all the bad weather had been left behind, for after a little snatch or two, as Joe Cross called them, the cruise down south had been glorious.
The bluff, good-humoured sailor explained to Rodd what he meant by a snatch, something after this fashion.
“You see, sir, after we started from Havre the weather seemed to be a bit sorry for itself for being so dirty, and you know how we bowled along down south till the wind got into a tantrum again—got out of bed the wrong way, as you may say, and then everything was wrong. We were getting into the Bay, you see, where it comes quite natural to lay all that day. In the Bay of Biscay O! Then Nature got all out of sorts again. It seemed as if she was waxy to let us have it so comfortable, and made a snatch to drag us back again. But the old man was one too many for her, and kept on for them two bad days, when we sailed out of her reach and everything was fine.”
“Yes, Joe, it was fine. All that coast of Spain and Portugal was lovely.”
“Yes, sir, and you got grumbling ’cause your uncle wouldn’t give orders for us to let go the anchor for you to go fishing.”
“Well, see how grand it was, and how calm the sea used to get of an evening before we put in to Gibraltar.”
“And then you weren’t half satisfied, sir. You’ll excuse me, Mr Rodd, sir, but you do make me laugh;” and to the boy’s great annoyance the man half turned from him, leaned over the taffrail, laughed till his sides shook, and then pulling himself up suddenly wiped his eyes. “I am very sorry, sir,” he said.
“Doesn’t seem like it,” cried Rodd warmly, as he made as if to go away.
It was one evening when the calm sea as it heaved seemed in places to glint forth all the glorious colours of a beautiful pearl shell, and the east wind was of a different complexion to that familiar to an English lad, for it was soft, balmy and sweet, suggestive of its having been blowing gently for miles and miles over beds of flowers.
“Oh, don’t go away in a tiff, Mr Rodd, sir. It was only me, and you know what I am. I didn’t mean no offence.”
“Well, it was offensive,” said Rodd. “How would you like to be laughed at?”
“Me, sir?” cried the man merrily. “Me who has been knocking about the sea nearly all my life, first in a west-country fishing-boat, and then in a King’s ship, and been in action! Like being laughed at! Why, bless your heart, sir, it suits me down to the deck. I like it. Deal better than having the old man dropping on to me about something being wrong aloft.”
“Well, I don’t see that there was anything to laugh at,” cried Rodd, softening down a little, for somehow the liking he had felt for the sturdy-looking sailor ever since he had come on board had gone on increasing, and Rodd affected Joe’s society more than that of any one in the ship. At least he said so to Uncle Paul, who shook his head and with a grim smile joined issue.
“No, Pickle,” he cried, “I won’t have that. You seem to make better friends with the cook than with anybody.”
“Oh, uncle,” replied the boy, “you always do tease me about my appetite.”
“Never mind, Pickle,” said Uncle Paul good-humouredly. “Go on eating, and grow.”
But to return to the conversation by the taffrail.
“No, sir,” said Joe Cross, “of course you don’t, sir. It’d be contrairy to nature if you did. We chaps can’t see ourselves. There’s the old Bun. He’s been offended over and over again because people told him he was so fat. He can’t see it, sir.”
“Oh, he must,” cried Rodd, laughing.
“There aren’t no must in it, sir. He can’t. He might find it out perhaps if he tried to get into a pair of boy’s trousers—yours, for instance; but then that aren’t likely, because you won’t give him the chance, and what’s more, he wouldn’t want to. You try him some day about being too fat, and you see if he don’t stare at you.”
“He will, Joe, when I’m so rude to him. But come now, you are shuffling. Why is it that you laugh at me?”
“Well, sir, because I like you, for one thing, and another is because you are such an unreasonable chap.”
“I? Unreasonable?” cried Rodd hotly. “That I’m sure I’m not!”
“Why, sir, wasn’t you put out because your uncle and the old man wouldn’t sail right into the Mediterranean Sea?”
“Well, there was nothing unreasonable in that. I am sure it would have been very interesting.”
“Not it, sir. I’ve been there over and over again, and it always seemed to me just like any other sea, only a bit rougher sometimes, and it aren’t got hardly any tide. You wait till we get a little further on, and you’ll find plenty to make you open you eyes wider than ever you opened them before. I don’t know a finer place for seeing wonders of the deep than along where we are going, as you say we are to, right along the West Coast of Afriky. Why, you might begin fishing and dredging directly after we had put in at Mogador, where the fish are wonderful, and you can’t drop in a line without hauling something out.”
“That’s good,” cried Rodd eagerly; “but I am afraid uncle won’t let us have much time for ordinary fishing. He will be more on the look-out for curiosities.”
“Ah, well, there’s plenty of them too, sir—all sorts, and the farther you gets into warmer water the more there are.”
“What sort?” asked Rodd.
“All sorts, and the nearer you are to land the more you get. Then I suppose some time we shall come upon that there Sargassey Sea.”
“Where’s that?” asked Rodd.
“Right away down south, sir. Let’s see, if I remember right we falls in with that soon after you pass the islands.”
“What islands?”
“Let’s see; I ought to know, sir. The fust that comes near Europe is the Azores; then farther south there’s that there island where all the sick people goes, Madeiry; then there’s the Canaries, where the birds come from; only they aren’t all yaller like people keeps in their cages. Most I seed there was green, and put me in mind of them little chaps as we have at home with the yaller heads—you know, sir; them as cries, ‘A little bit of bread and no cheese.’ And you see them up country, a-twittering among the hedges.”
“Yes, I know,” said Rodd sharply; “but what about the Sargassey Sea?”
“Ah! I’m thinking it was after that we come to that sea, only I aren’t quite sure, sir. But if I recollect right, they say it shifts about according to what sort of weather we have.”
“Well, so does every sea,” cried Rodd, “when the waves are running high.”
“Ah, but they don’t run high here, sir. You see, the Sargassey Sea aren’t like other seas, and I suppose it’s only part of the Atlantic after all. It’s all smooth like because as far as you can see it’s all like one great bed of floating seaweed, so thick that you can hardly sail through it at times, and if you go out into it in a boat it’s as much as you can do to dip your oars.”
“Have you been out amongst it then?” asked Rodd.
“Yes, sir, more’n once. It was when I was in thePrince Georgeoff the West Coast of Africa, and we had got a surgeon on board there, and him and our second lieutenant had both got it badly.”
“What, West African fever?” cried Rodd.
“No, no, sir; same as your uncle’s got—looking after strange things as lives in the sea. I was one of the crew of the second cutter then, and in the beautiful calm weather we used to take the doctor and the second luff out in this Sargassey Sea, which used to look sometimes as if we were floating about in green fields.”
“Oh, you mean the Sargasso Sea!” cried Rodd. “Nay, I don’t, sir; I means the Sargassey Sea.”
“Well, that’s the same thing, only you spell it differently,” cried Rodd.
“Oh no, sir; that I don’t. That’s a thing as I never pretended to do. I can take my spell at the pump or at any other job; but what you call spelling was never in my way.”
“But you mean the same thing,” cried Rodd. “It isn’t Sar-gass-ey; it’s Sar-gass-o.”
“Ho! Sar-gass-ho, is it, sir?”
“Yes, of course.”
“All right, sir; I’m willing. But my one was all alive with little things, little fish and slugs and snails of all kinds of rum sorts; and our second luff used to make us haul in great lengths of the seaweed as was floating about, and then help him to pick ’em out into bottles till they were quite full, and looking just as if they was pickles same as you see in the grocers’ shops in Plymouth town.”
“Well, the same as you saw uncle and me do that day during the calm?”
“Yes, sir, just like that, only yours as you did were small shop and ours was like big warehouse, though I don’t think our doctor did much good with them, because so many of them used to go bad, and our cook and his mate used to have to throw no end away and wash the bottles.”
“Ah, ours won’t go bad,” said Rodd confidently. “My uncle will preserve them differently to that.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose so, sir. You see, we’ve all come out this time ready for the job; our officers on thePrince Georgeonly did their bit just for a day or two’s holiday like, and our job was to look after the mounseers’ cruisers, not to catch tittlebats and winkles, and it wasn’t so very long after that we was at it hammer and tongs with a big French frigate, making work for the doctor of a precious different kind, and for our ship’s carpenters too. Different sort of nat’ral history that was, sir, I can tell you, for we lost nineteen of our men and had a lot wounded; but we took the frigate, and carried her safe into Portsmouth Harbour.”
“Ah!” cried Rodd softly, as his eyes flashed at the thoughts of the deeds of naval daring carried out by our men-of-war. “I wish I’d been there!”
“You do, sir?” said Joe. “Mean it?”
“Mean it? Of course! There, don’t look at me like that. I wasn’t thinking of being a man, but a reefer—one of those middies that we used to see at Plymouth.”
“Ah, it’s all very fine, sir,” said Joe, shaking his head, “and it sounds very nice about firing broadsides and then getting orders to board when the two big men-of-war get the grappling-irons on board and you have to follow your officers, scrambling with your cutlass in your hand out of the chains from your ship into the enemy’s; and all the time there’s the roaring of the guns and the popping away of the marines up in the tops, and the men cheering as your officers lead them on. It’s a very different thing, sir, to what you think, and so I can tell you.”
“Why, Joe,” cried Rodd, almost maliciously, “you talk as if you felt afraid!”
“Afraid, sir?” said the man, quietly and thoughtfully. “No, sir. No, sir; I never felt afraid, and I never knowed one of my messmates as said he was.”
“Oh no, of course they wouldn’t say so,” cried Rodd, laughing.
“No, sir, that’s right. But I aren’t bragging, sir. I’ve been in several engagements like that, and my messmates always seemed to feel just as I did. You see, they’d got it to do, sir, and we always felt that it was only mounseers that we’d got to beat and captur’ their ship; and then as soon as we had begun, whether we was crews of guns, stripped and firing away, or answering the orders to board, why, then we never had time to feel afraid.”
“What, not when you saw your messmates shot down beside you?” cried Rodd.
“My word, no, sir!” cried Joe, laughing. “We none of us felt afraid then; it only made us feel wild and want to sarve the other side out. No, sir,” continued the bluff fallow, in a quiet matter-of-fact way, and his voice utterly free of vaunt, “whether it’s a sea-fight or things are going wrong in a storm, we sailor fellows are always too busy to feel afraid. You see, I think, sir, it has something to do with the drill and discipline, as they calls it, training the lads all to work together. You see, it makes them feel so strong.”
“I can’t say I do see,” said Rodd.
“No, sir, because you haven’t been drilled; but it’s like this ’ere. One man’s one man, and a hundred men’s a hundred men—no, stop; that aren’t quite what I mean. It aren’t in my way, Mr Rodd, sir; I never was a beggar to argue. The fat Bun can easily beat me at that. This ’ere’s what I mean. One man’s one man, and a hundred men’s a hundred one men. That’s if they aren’t drilled and trained like sailors or soldiers; but if they are trained, you see each one man feels as if he has got a hundred men with him all working together, and con-se-quently, sir, every chap aboard feels as if he’s as strong as a hundred men. Now don’t you see, sir?”
“Well, yes,” said Rodd quietly; “I think I begin to see what you mean.”
“Why, of course you do, sir. Say it’s heaving a boat aboard, and it takes twenty men to do it. Why, if they go and try one at a time, where are you? But if you all go and take hold together, and your officer says to you, ‘Now, my lads, with a will, all together! Heave ho!’ why then, up she comes. Well now, I do call that rum! Look at that, sir. If here aren’t the old man, just as if he had heard what we was talking about, passing the word for gun drill, or else a bit of knicketty knock with the cutlasses and pikes!”
Chapter Eighteen.A Strange Visitor.Upon hearing Joe Cross’s announcement Rodd eagerly turned, to find his uncle just coming on deck to take his evening walk after a busy day with his specimens that he had dragged and trawled from the calm sea.The captain had just given orders to the mate to summon all hands on deck, and one of the first proceedings was to call the men to attention, the next to send them to the small-arms chest, from which each returned with cutlass buckled on and carrying a boarding pike, which were placed in a rack round the mainmast.Rodd took his position just opposite as the men fell into line; Uncle Paul seated himself as far off as he could get, in a deck-chair, where he sat and frowned; and then Captain Chubb diligently put his men through all the evolutions of cutlass drill over and over again, till he was satisfied, when he bade them fall out for a few minutes to rid themselves of their cutlasses.In the interval Rodd went up to where his uncle was seated.“I say, uncle,” he said, “how the men have improved!” Uncle Paul grunted, and just then Captain Chubb strolled up.“Well, sir,” he said, “we shall soon have a crew now as smart as a man-of-war’s.”“So I see,” grumbled Uncle Paul; “and when you have got them perfect what are you going to do with them?”“Ah, that remains to be seen, sir. There’s nothing like being prepared.”“Better let the men rest after all they have done to-day. What with their deck cleaning and the work they have done for me, they don’t want setting to play at soldiers.”“Playing at soldiers, eh, sir? I call it playing at sailors. No use to lock the stable-door after the steed’s stolen. My lads may never be called upon to fight, but if by bad luck we are, I should like them to be able to use their fighting tools like men.”“Oh, it isn’t likely,” said Uncle Paul, “in a peaceful voyage like ours.”“Most unlikely things are those that happen first,” growled the captain.“But you worry the men with too much work, and I want them to be fresh and ready for me to-morrow morning. I don’t want the poor fellows to be discontented.”“Discontented, sir!” cried the skipper hotly. “I should like to see them look discontented! But not they! They like it. Puts them in mind of their old fighting days. Now you shall see them go through their drill with the boarding pikes, and see how smart I have made them. I say they like it, sir; and I know.”“Then I suppose,” said Uncle Paul, “you will set them to work lumbering about that great gun, pretending to load and fire it. Why, who in the world do you expect we are going to encounter out here on the high seas? We are not at war with the French.”“Captain Chubb thinks we may meet with the privateer,” said Rodd merrily.“Don’t you make rude remarks, Rodney!” cried Uncle Paul angrily. “Well, there, captain, I suppose you will have your own way, but it seems to me great waste of time.”“Oh no, sir,” said the skipper good-humouredly. “I suppose you mean to run in and up some of those rivers we shall pass by and by?”“Most certainly,” cried the doctor.“Well, and what then, sir? You are going right out of civilisation there, and among black tribes and warlike people who are ready for anything, from attacking another tribe and bringing the prisoners down the river to sell for slaves, up to taking a fancy to any smart craft they can master, and then stripping her and burning her to the water’s edge.”“And what becomes of the crews?” cried Rodd sharply.“Well, Mr Rodd, that’s rather a hard question to answer. If ever you go to Liverpool or Bristol and you get asking questions amongst the merchants there, you will find they have got some queer tales to tell. Sorry you don’t like my plans, Dr Robson, but even if we never get into trouble we shall be none the worse for being prepared.”“Oh, I am not going to complain, Captain Chubb. Drill away as much as you like. You say the men like it, and it satisfies you. Then my boy Rodd, here, nothing will please him better than letting him have a canister of gunpowder to play with and pop off that gun. So I am in a minority, and I will give in. There, you’d better take Rodd and drill him too.”“I’ll take you at your word, sir,” said Captain Chubb, laughing, and making Rodd start with eagerness. “Fall in, my lads. Pikes.”The drilling went on till it was beginning to grow dusk, and then pikes were laid aside and orders given for the gun crew to take their places, Rodd closing up quickly in anticipation of something coming off.“Rather warm weather, Mr Rodd, sir,” whispered Joe Cross, as, aided by another of the crew, he proceeded to cast loose the lashings and strip the tarpaulin off the long gun. “If it warn’t for the showers this ’ere pocket pistol might very well do without her greatcoat. I say, sir, didn’t I hear your uncle tell the old man that you were to have a canister of powder just to fire her off once or twice?”“Yes, Joe, but I think it was only to tease me.”“You ask the skipper to let you have one. It’s all very well to go on ramming and sponging and making believe to load, but it is like having your grog served out in an empty glass. And if the old man grunts and shakes his head and grumbles about waste of ammunition, you just ask him if he’d mind you bringing one of your canisters of powder as you and your uncle’s got for your double guns. He might let you then, if your old man don’t mind. We could divide it into about four goes as wouldn’t make much noise, and there’d be some sense in it. There would be something to ram down; and the lads would like it.”“But the captain wouldn’t let you fire away any cannon balls, Joe.”“Well, no, sir, I suppose not, unless we got the cook up with a pudding-bag to hold it over the muzzle and catch them again.”“Wouldn’t a straw hat be better, Joe?” said Rodd dryly.“Well, now you talk of it, sir,” replied the man, grinning, “I never thought of that. Perhaps it would if one of us held it lightly in his hand and eased off a good deal when we fired. If you didn’t do that of course the ball might go right through.”“Well, I’ll ask the captain, Joe.”“Yes, sir; do, sir. As I said afore, it would please the lads, and do good too, for it would clean the gun’s teeth, sweep away all the scales and rust.”“Scales and rust!” cried Rodd. “Why, it isn’t an iron gun; it’s brass.”“Why, so it is, Master Rodd, sir. Why, only fancy me not thinking of that! But here he comes. Try it on, sir.”“Shall I, Joe?”“Yes, do, sir; as I said, it would please the lads. They’re just like a lot of school-boys when they gets a chance of a change.”“And Joe Cross doesn’t care a bit,” said Rodd.The man gave the speaker a comical look as he replied—“Well, sir, you see, I was a boy once, and I was born with a lot of human natur’ in me, and I never got rid of it, and I am afraid I never shall. There, go on, sir,” whispered Joe. “Pitch it into him at once.”Rodd moved towards the skipper as he came up, and as the latter looked at him inquiringly he began—“You heard what my uncle said, captain?”“What about, my lad?”“Letting me have some powder to play with.”“Ay, ay! But you don’t want that?”“Oh, I don’t know. I wish you would have a canister and let the men load the gun properly.”“Eh?”“It would be like practice.”“Well, that’s true. But it would be only waste of powder; and I’m not going to waste any of the cannon balls.”“No, I don’t want you to do that.”“Besides, I don’t want to use either of the powder-bags, and they’re made for a regular charge.”“Beg pardon, sir,” cried Cross. “Might make small charges up with a snuff of powder wrapped up in paper; and then I could prick and prime.”“Um–m–m!” the captain growled, and frowned, while the gun crew stood with parted lips, looking as eager as so many boys on the Fifth of November. Then the captain grunted.“There, Mr Rodd,” he said, “it will be a bit of practice for the lads, and it won’t please you, of course. You don’t want to see the gun really fired?”“Oh, I have seen salutes fired, at Plymouth.”“Ah, so you have, of course, my lad. But those are bangs, and this would be a bit of a whiff.”“That doesn’t matter,” said Rodd. “It will be real, and not pretending to fire.”“Very well,” said the captain, smiling grimly. “Maybe you’d like to fire?”“Yes, I should,” cried Rodd. “No; let Joe Cross and the other men do that. I’ll stand aside.”There was a little more discussion, quite in opposition to ordinary drill, while the skipper went below and then returned with a pound gunpowder canister painted red.“I say, look here, Chubb,” cried the doctor. “Shall I have to move?”“Oh no, sir; we shan’t shoot you,” replied the skipper grimly. “You’ll be safe enough, unless the long gun bursts. But she’s too new and strong for that. Here you are, Cross. Make that into four charges.”The speaker was in the act of passing the canister to the man, when the look-out man from forward suddenly shouted—“Sail ho!”“Where away?” cried the captain. “About five points off the starboard bow, sir. Leastwise, sir, it aren’t a sail. It’s a big boat, bottom upwards and just awash.”“Stop a minute,” cried Rodd. “I’ll fetch our glass.”“Bring mine too, my lad,” cried the captain, and Rodd raised his hand in token of his having heard the order, as he dashed to the cabin hatch, to return directly after and find that his uncle was forward along with the skipper scanning the object about a quarter of a mile away.“Catch hold, uncle,” cried Rodd, and he held out the telescope with one hand, and the captain’s big mahogany tubed spy-glass, decorated with coloured flags, with the other.“No, focus it and use it yourself, boy. I’ll have a look afterwards.”Rodd raised the glass at once to his eye, but by this time the skipper had caught the object, and began to growl remarks.“Capsized long-boat,” he muttered. “No, it’s a fish—sick whale, I think. But I don’t know. It’s moving pretty well through the water. What do you make of it, my lad?”“It’s very big and long,” cried Rodd excitedly, “and it may be part of a whale’s back just showing above the water. I don’t know, though. I never saw a whale swimming before. Here, I know! I think it’s five or six porpoises swimming one after the other and close together.”“Nay!” growled the captain. “It’s something—”“It’s gone!” shouted Rodd. “Oh, uncle, I wish you’d seen it. It seemed to sink down out of sight all at once.”“’Cause it didn’t like to be looked at, sir,” whispered Joe Cross. “But look out, sir,” he cried eagerly. “There it is again, a little farther off.”“Have a look, doctor,” said the skipper, passing the glass to Uncle Paul.“Is it a whale?” asked the doctor.“Nay, that’s no whale, sir,” replied the captain. “A whale don’t go under water like that when she sounds. Down goes her head, and she throws her flukes up in the air.”“Then what is it?” cried Uncle Paul, with the glass now glued to his eye. “It’s something very big. Yes, I can see plainly now—blackish-grey, and shiny as if slimy. It seems to undulate, for one minute the back seems to be only a few feet long, then three or four parts are above the surface at once, as if the creature were twenty or thirty feet long.”“Yes, sir; I can see that with the naked eye.—Nay, nay, sir; you keep the glass. It’s more in your way than mine. Seems to me as if we have hit a curiosity for you, only it’s rather too big to tackle.”“I think it’s a great snake,” cried Rodd excitedly. “I mean, a very large eel, swimming on the top, and he keeps throwing his head about as if he were feeding in the middle of a shoal of fish.”“Yes, it is something like that, Rodd,” said the doctor; “but no conger eel could be as large as that, and really I don’t know.”“Sea-sarpint, sir,” whispered Joe Cross to Rodd, and looking longingly at the glass the while.“Nonsense!” cried Rodd. “Here, you have a look, Joe,” and he passed the glass to the sailor. “Now then,” he said, “what do you make of it?”“I say sea-sarpint, sir.” The captain growled more deeply than ever.“Sea-sarpint!” he said, in a tone of disgust. “There, hold your tongue, my lad. You’re a naturalist, doctor; you haven’t got no sea-sarpints in your books, have you?”“No,” replied the doctor, handing the glass to one of the men, as he caught his longing eye. “But this must be a very curious fish, and it is evidently feeding. I wish it were coming this way, so that we could have a better view.”Joe Cross lowered the boy’s glass and looked questioningly at Rodd, giving at the same time a wag of his head in the direction of the nearest man.“Yes, let him have a look,” said Rodd hoarsely, and as the glass was passed the boy caught the sailor by the sleeve, and whispered, making Joe start and gaze at him inquiringly, before stooping down and giving his thigh a slap with his right hand.“Ay, ay, sir!” he whispered. “Ask the skipper.”“Ask thecaptainwhat?” said the skipper sharply.“I have been thinking, Captain Chubb,” panted Rodd. “Have the long gun loaded with a ball, and let the men try and hit that thing. ’Tisn’t above a quarter of a mile away.”“Eh? Have a shot at it, my lad?” said the captain, staring, and then shading his eyes to watch the object that was gliding along, making the water ripple strangely, while all around it was in violent ebullition, betokening that a large shoal of fish was feeding there. “Well, I don’t know. What do you say, doctor?” continued the speaker. “I don’t say that the lads could hit it, but they might.”“Certainly,” said the doctor eagerly. “Try.”There was no occasion to give orders for a ball to be fetched up. Joe Cross and Rodd had darted off together, plunged down the hatchway, and were back again in an incredibly short space of time, the sailor carrying the ball, while Rodd had snatched up three or four big sheets of paper from off one of the laboratory lockers, and then as rapidly as possible a good charge of powder was emptied into one of the sheets, the gun’s crew fell into place and rammed the charge home in the most business-like manner, the ball followed, Joe Cross thrust the pricker down into the touch-hole and primed, while another of the men ran with a piece of slow match to the cook’s galley, where the water was being boiled for tea.Everything was done skilfully and with speed, while all on deck were in a state of profound excitement and dread lest the great creature should disappear from sight and rob the spectators of their looked-for sport.“Oh, do be quick!” cried Rodd.“Yah–h–h!” came in a groan, for as the words left the boy’s lips there was a violent ebullition where the great serpent or whatever it was had been playing, the beautiful ripple of the shoal of fish died out, and in the fast-fading light of the evening the sea all around lay gleaming and grey, as it gently heaved, with no other movement now.“Oh, what a pity we were so long,” said Rodd dismally. “I believe we should have hit it. I am disappointed!”“Well, so am I, if you come to that, Rodd, my boy,” said the doctor, “though I don’t think the men could have made a successful shot. You see, it requires a great deal of practice to hit an object like that with a big gun.”“Whatever it was,” growled the captain, “it was feeding on that shoal of fish, and when it made that dash it scared the lot away. There it is again! You, Joe Cross, take a good long careful sight. Don’t hurry. Slow and sure. My word, you ought to hit that, my lad! It’s a big ’un and no mistake. Silence there! Every man in his place. Slew the muzzle round a little more. Ready, Cross?”“No, sir; want to lower a little;” and as he spoke the sailor thrust in one of the wedges a trifle. “That’s about got it, sir.”“Looks as if he’d come to stay, doctor,” said the captain excitedly, as he bent down to glance along over the gun’s two sights, for the shoal of fish had risen once more, turning the beautiful smooth sea into a diaper-like pattern, while the strange object seemed as far as they could make out to be making a snatching dart here and another there, seeming to be like some whale-like creature with a long neck.“Now she’s steady, sir,” whispered Joe Cross huskily, after taking the captain’s place for another sight. “It’s as near as I can get, sir. If you’ll give me the word.”As he spoke the sailor drew back slightly, the captain cried “Fire!” and with a heavy, sharp crack a puff of white smoke darted from the muzzle and began to expand forward like a grey balloon, obscuring everything from the sight of the lookers-on for about a minute, before it rose clear, and then the darkening sea was all grey once more.
Upon hearing Joe Cross’s announcement Rodd eagerly turned, to find his uncle just coming on deck to take his evening walk after a busy day with his specimens that he had dragged and trawled from the calm sea.
The captain had just given orders to the mate to summon all hands on deck, and one of the first proceedings was to call the men to attention, the next to send them to the small-arms chest, from which each returned with cutlass buckled on and carrying a boarding pike, which were placed in a rack round the mainmast.
Rodd took his position just opposite as the men fell into line; Uncle Paul seated himself as far off as he could get, in a deck-chair, where he sat and frowned; and then Captain Chubb diligently put his men through all the evolutions of cutlass drill over and over again, till he was satisfied, when he bade them fall out for a few minutes to rid themselves of their cutlasses.
In the interval Rodd went up to where his uncle was seated.
“I say, uncle,” he said, “how the men have improved!” Uncle Paul grunted, and just then Captain Chubb strolled up.
“Well, sir,” he said, “we shall soon have a crew now as smart as a man-of-war’s.”
“So I see,” grumbled Uncle Paul; “and when you have got them perfect what are you going to do with them?”
“Ah, that remains to be seen, sir. There’s nothing like being prepared.”
“Better let the men rest after all they have done to-day. What with their deck cleaning and the work they have done for me, they don’t want setting to play at soldiers.”
“Playing at soldiers, eh, sir? I call it playing at sailors. No use to lock the stable-door after the steed’s stolen. My lads may never be called upon to fight, but if by bad luck we are, I should like them to be able to use their fighting tools like men.”
“Oh, it isn’t likely,” said Uncle Paul, “in a peaceful voyage like ours.”
“Most unlikely things are those that happen first,” growled the captain.
“But you worry the men with too much work, and I want them to be fresh and ready for me to-morrow morning. I don’t want the poor fellows to be discontented.”
“Discontented, sir!” cried the skipper hotly. “I should like to see them look discontented! But not they! They like it. Puts them in mind of their old fighting days. Now you shall see them go through their drill with the boarding pikes, and see how smart I have made them. I say they like it, sir; and I know.”
“Then I suppose,” said Uncle Paul, “you will set them to work lumbering about that great gun, pretending to load and fire it. Why, who in the world do you expect we are going to encounter out here on the high seas? We are not at war with the French.”
“Captain Chubb thinks we may meet with the privateer,” said Rodd merrily.
“Don’t you make rude remarks, Rodney!” cried Uncle Paul angrily. “Well, there, captain, I suppose you will have your own way, but it seems to me great waste of time.”
“Oh no, sir,” said the skipper good-humouredly. “I suppose you mean to run in and up some of those rivers we shall pass by and by?”
“Most certainly,” cried the doctor.
“Well, and what then, sir? You are going right out of civilisation there, and among black tribes and warlike people who are ready for anything, from attacking another tribe and bringing the prisoners down the river to sell for slaves, up to taking a fancy to any smart craft they can master, and then stripping her and burning her to the water’s edge.”
“And what becomes of the crews?” cried Rodd sharply.
“Well, Mr Rodd, that’s rather a hard question to answer. If ever you go to Liverpool or Bristol and you get asking questions amongst the merchants there, you will find they have got some queer tales to tell. Sorry you don’t like my plans, Dr Robson, but even if we never get into trouble we shall be none the worse for being prepared.”
“Oh, I am not going to complain, Captain Chubb. Drill away as much as you like. You say the men like it, and it satisfies you. Then my boy Rodd, here, nothing will please him better than letting him have a canister of gunpowder to play with and pop off that gun. So I am in a minority, and I will give in. There, you’d better take Rodd and drill him too.”
“I’ll take you at your word, sir,” said Captain Chubb, laughing, and making Rodd start with eagerness. “Fall in, my lads. Pikes.”
The drilling went on till it was beginning to grow dusk, and then pikes were laid aside and orders given for the gun crew to take their places, Rodd closing up quickly in anticipation of something coming off.
“Rather warm weather, Mr Rodd, sir,” whispered Joe Cross, as, aided by another of the crew, he proceeded to cast loose the lashings and strip the tarpaulin off the long gun. “If it warn’t for the showers this ’ere pocket pistol might very well do without her greatcoat. I say, sir, didn’t I hear your uncle tell the old man that you were to have a canister of powder just to fire her off once or twice?”
“Yes, Joe, but I think it was only to tease me.”
“You ask the skipper to let you have one. It’s all very well to go on ramming and sponging and making believe to load, but it is like having your grog served out in an empty glass. And if the old man grunts and shakes his head and grumbles about waste of ammunition, you just ask him if he’d mind you bringing one of your canisters of powder as you and your uncle’s got for your double guns. He might let you then, if your old man don’t mind. We could divide it into about four goes as wouldn’t make much noise, and there’d be some sense in it. There would be something to ram down; and the lads would like it.”
“But the captain wouldn’t let you fire away any cannon balls, Joe.”
“Well, no, sir, I suppose not, unless we got the cook up with a pudding-bag to hold it over the muzzle and catch them again.”
“Wouldn’t a straw hat be better, Joe?” said Rodd dryly.
“Well, now you talk of it, sir,” replied the man, grinning, “I never thought of that. Perhaps it would if one of us held it lightly in his hand and eased off a good deal when we fired. If you didn’t do that of course the ball might go right through.”
“Well, I’ll ask the captain, Joe.”
“Yes, sir; do, sir. As I said afore, it would please the lads, and do good too, for it would clean the gun’s teeth, sweep away all the scales and rust.”
“Scales and rust!” cried Rodd. “Why, it isn’t an iron gun; it’s brass.”
“Why, so it is, Master Rodd, sir. Why, only fancy me not thinking of that! But here he comes. Try it on, sir.”
“Shall I, Joe?”
“Yes, do, sir; as I said, it would please the lads. They’re just like a lot of school-boys when they gets a chance of a change.”
“And Joe Cross doesn’t care a bit,” said Rodd.
The man gave the speaker a comical look as he replied—
“Well, sir, you see, I was a boy once, and I was born with a lot of human natur’ in me, and I never got rid of it, and I am afraid I never shall. There, go on, sir,” whispered Joe. “Pitch it into him at once.”
Rodd moved towards the skipper as he came up, and as the latter looked at him inquiringly he began—
“You heard what my uncle said, captain?”
“What about, my lad?”
“Letting me have some powder to play with.”
“Ay, ay! But you don’t want that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I wish you would have a canister and let the men load the gun properly.”
“Eh?”
“It would be like practice.”
“Well, that’s true. But it would be only waste of powder; and I’m not going to waste any of the cannon balls.”
“No, I don’t want you to do that.”
“Besides, I don’t want to use either of the powder-bags, and they’re made for a regular charge.”
“Beg pardon, sir,” cried Cross. “Might make small charges up with a snuff of powder wrapped up in paper; and then I could prick and prime.”
“Um–m–m!” the captain growled, and frowned, while the gun crew stood with parted lips, looking as eager as so many boys on the Fifth of November. Then the captain grunted.
“There, Mr Rodd,” he said, “it will be a bit of practice for the lads, and it won’t please you, of course. You don’t want to see the gun really fired?”
“Oh, I have seen salutes fired, at Plymouth.”
“Ah, so you have, of course, my lad. But those are bangs, and this would be a bit of a whiff.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Rodd. “It will be real, and not pretending to fire.”
“Very well,” said the captain, smiling grimly. “Maybe you’d like to fire?”
“Yes, I should,” cried Rodd. “No; let Joe Cross and the other men do that. I’ll stand aside.”
There was a little more discussion, quite in opposition to ordinary drill, while the skipper went below and then returned with a pound gunpowder canister painted red.
“I say, look here, Chubb,” cried the doctor. “Shall I have to move?”
“Oh no, sir; we shan’t shoot you,” replied the skipper grimly. “You’ll be safe enough, unless the long gun bursts. But she’s too new and strong for that. Here you are, Cross. Make that into four charges.”
The speaker was in the act of passing the canister to the man, when the look-out man from forward suddenly shouted—
“Sail ho!”
“Where away?” cried the captain. “About five points off the starboard bow, sir. Leastwise, sir, it aren’t a sail. It’s a big boat, bottom upwards and just awash.”
“Stop a minute,” cried Rodd. “I’ll fetch our glass.”
“Bring mine too, my lad,” cried the captain, and Rodd raised his hand in token of his having heard the order, as he dashed to the cabin hatch, to return directly after and find that his uncle was forward along with the skipper scanning the object about a quarter of a mile away.
“Catch hold, uncle,” cried Rodd, and he held out the telescope with one hand, and the captain’s big mahogany tubed spy-glass, decorated with coloured flags, with the other.
“No, focus it and use it yourself, boy. I’ll have a look afterwards.”
Rodd raised the glass at once to his eye, but by this time the skipper had caught the object, and began to growl remarks.
“Capsized long-boat,” he muttered. “No, it’s a fish—sick whale, I think. But I don’t know. It’s moving pretty well through the water. What do you make of it, my lad?”
“It’s very big and long,” cried Rodd excitedly, “and it may be part of a whale’s back just showing above the water. I don’t know, though. I never saw a whale swimming before. Here, I know! I think it’s five or six porpoises swimming one after the other and close together.”
“Nay!” growled the captain. “It’s something—”
“It’s gone!” shouted Rodd. “Oh, uncle, I wish you’d seen it. It seemed to sink down out of sight all at once.”
“’Cause it didn’t like to be looked at, sir,” whispered Joe Cross. “But look out, sir,” he cried eagerly. “There it is again, a little farther off.”
“Have a look, doctor,” said the skipper, passing the glass to Uncle Paul.
“Is it a whale?” asked the doctor.
“Nay, that’s no whale, sir,” replied the captain. “A whale don’t go under water like that when she sounds. Down goes her head, and she throws her flukes up in the air.”
“Then what is it?” cried Uncle Paul, with the glass now glued to his eye. “It’s something very big. Yes, I can see plainly now—blackish-grey, and shiny as if slimy. It seems to undulate, for one minute the back seems to be only a few feet long, then three or four parts are above the surface at once, as if the creature were twenty or thirty feet long.”
“Yes, sir; I can see that with the naked eye.—Nay, nay, sir; you keep the glass. It’s more in your way than mine. Seems to me as if we have hit a curiosity for you, only it’s rather too big to tackle.”
“I think it’s a great snake,” cried Rodd excitedly. “I mean, a very large eel, swimming on the top, and he keeps throwing his head about as if he were feeding in the middle of a shoal of fish.”
“Yes, it is something like that, Rodd,” said the doctor; “but no conger eel could be as large as that, and really I don’t know.”
“Sea-sarpint, sir,” whispered Joe Cross to Rodd, and looking longingly at the glass the while.
“Nonsense!” cried Rodd. “Here, you have a look, Joe,” and he passed the glass to the sailor. “Now then,” he said, “what do you make of it?”
“I say sea-sarpint, sir.” The captain growled more deeply than ever.
“Sea-sarpint!” he said, in a tone of disgust. “There, hold your tongue, my lad. You’re a naturalist, doctor; you haven’t got no sea-sarpints in your books, have you?”
“No,” replied the doctor, handing the glass to one of the men, as he caught his longing eye. “But this must be a very curious fish, and it is evidently feeding. I wish it were coming this way, so that we could have a better view.”
Joe Cross lowered the boy’s glass and looked questioningly at Rodd, giving at the same time a wag of his head in the direction of the nearest man.
“Yes, let him have a look,” said Rodd hoarsely, and as the glass was passed the boy caught the sailor by the sleeve, and whispered, making Joe start and gaze at him inquiringly, before stooping down and giving his thigh a slap with his right hand.
“Ay, ay, sir!” he whispered. “Ask the skipper.”
“Ask thecaptainwhat?” said the skipper sharply.
“I have been thinking, Captain Chubb,” panted Rodd. “Have the long gun loaded with a ball, and let the men try and hit that thing. ’Tisn’t above a quarter of a mile away.”
“Eh? Have a shot at it, my lad?” said the captain, staring, and then shading his eyes to watch the object that was gliding along, making the water ripple strangely, while all around it was in violent ebullition, betokening that a large shoal of fish was feeding there. “Well, I don’t know. What do you say, doctor?” continued the speaker. “I don’t say that the lads could hit it, but they might.”
“Certainly,” said the doctor eagerly. “Try.”
There was no occasion to give orders for a ball to be fetched up. Joe Cross and Rodd had darted off together, plunged down the hatchway, and were back again in an incredibly short space of time, the sailor carrying the ball, while Rodd had snatched up three or four big sheets of paper from off one of the laboratory lockers, and then as rapidly as possible a good charge of powder was emptied into one of the sheets, the gun’s crew fell into place and rammed the charge home in the most business-like manner, the ball followed, Joe Cross thrust the pricker down into the touch-hole and primed, while another of the men ran with a piece of slow match to the cook’s galley, where the water was being boiled for tea.
Everything was done skilfully and with speed, while all on deck were in a state of profound excitement and dread lest the great creature should disappear from sight and rob the spectators of their looked-for sport.
“Oh, do be quick!” cried Rodd.
“Yah–h–h!” came in a groan, for as the words left the boy’s lips there was a violent ebullition where the great serpent or whatever it was had been playing, the beautiful ripple of the shoal of fish died out, and in the fast-fading light of the evening the sea all around lay gleaming and grey, as it gently heaved, with no other movement now.
“Oh, what a pity we were so long,” said Rodd dismally. “I believe we should have hit it. I am disappointed!”
“Well, so am I, if you come to that, Rodd, my boy,” said the doctor, “though I don’t think the men could have made a successful shot. You see, it requires a great deal of practice to hit an object like that with a big gun.”
“Whatever it was,” growled the captain, “it was feeding on that shoal of fish, and when it made that dash it scared the lot away. There it is again! You, Joe Cross, take a good long careful sight. Don’t hurry. Slow and sure. My word, you ought to hit that, my lad! It’s a big ’un and no mistake. Silence there! Every man in his place. Slew the muzzle round a little more. Ready, Cross?”
“No, sir; want to lower a little;” and as he spoke the sailor thrust in one of the wedges a trifle. “That’s about got it, sir.”
“Looks as if he’d come to stay, doctor,” said the captain excitedly, as he bent down to glance along over the gun’s two sights, for the shoal of fish had risen once more, turning the beautiful smooth sea into a diaper-like pattern, while the strange object seemed as far as they could make out to be making a snatching dart here and another there, seeming to be like some whale-like creature with a long neck.
“Now she’s steady, sir,” whispered Joe Cross huskily, after taking the captain’s place for another sight. “It’s as near as I can get, sir. If you’ll give me the word.”
As he spoke the sailor drew back slightly, the captain cried “Fire!” and with a heavy, sharp crack a puff of white smoke darted from the muzzle and began to expand forward like a grey balloon, obscuring everything from the sight of the lookers-on for about a minute, before it rose clear, and then the darkening sea was all grey once more.
Chapter Nineteen.Chubb re Sea-Serpents.“Hah! Very disappointing—very,” said the doctor.“Yes, it’s gone, I suppose, sir. One couldn’t see where the shot hit for smoke, but I expect it turned up the water and scared the thing away. Well, it’s best as it is. A great thing like that might have grown very dangerous if it had been hit.”“Oh, we don’t know that,” cried the doctor. “Well, I suppose we can do nothing more,” he continued, as, following his nephew’s example, he strained his eyes over the darkening plain.“No,” said the captain. “Cover up that gun, my lads, and break off. You, Cross, take charge of the gun, and well sponge her out. You others, pikes; fall in. Now then, right face. March!”“I’m disappointed,” said the doctor, as the men were marched off. “I should have liked to have had a closer examination of that creature. Well, captain, what next?”“Tea,” said the skipper bluntly.The tropics were very near, and the night began to come on rapidly, so that the tea meal was partaken of by the light of the swinging lamp. But before it was over the moon rose above the sea very bright and silvery, and getting rapidly near the full, while later on as it rose higher it was nearly as light as day.Rodd was anxious to get on deck again, to see if by any possibility the weird-looking object that they had seen that evening might rise to the surface; but anxious as he was to join the sailors and question them as to whether they had seen anything more, the conversation between his uncle and the skipper kept him below, where he listened to their different expressed opinions.At last, though, he went on deck, and found all the men grouped together forward, and whispering to themselves about the visitor they had seen.One man said it was a sign, and another grunted, while a third turned to Joe Cross to ask his opinion.It was the stout heavy member of the crew who went by the name of the Bun, and seeming the most impressed of the whole crew he asked Joe Cross as above.“Yes,” said Cross slowly, “you are quite right, Ikey Gregg. It’s a sign.”“What’s a sign?” asked Rodd, coming up.“The—the—Bun—Ikey Gregg says it is a sign, sir, that we see that big squirming wormy thing, and I says he’s quite right, sir. It is a sign.”“Why, what can it be a sign of, Joe?”“Sea’s calm, sir, and that brings all the shoals of young fish up to the top to feed, and that there thing that feeds on them come up to the top to get a regular tuck out.”“Oh, that won’t do,” said Gregg the fat. “Things like that only come up to the top at particular times, and you mark my words, it means a storm.”As the man finished, he turned his eyes to right and left, scanning the beautiful silvery water before him, and then uttering a loud yell, he dashed by his companions, made for the forecastle hatch, and without troubling himself about the steps, leaped right down.“What’s the matter with Ikey?” said one of the men. “Showing us how he can jump?”“Nonsense!” said Rodd. “It was as if he had been scared by something. He looked quite wild.”The boy walked close up to the rail and looked over, to see that the whole of the water right away from the bows was apparently ablaze with fire; but for a time he could make out nothing else, in spite of its crystal clearness and the way in which in addition it was laced and latticed as it were by the rays of the moon.Seeing nothing for the moment likely to have alarmed the sailor, he was about to turn off, but only to start the next minute, and stand clinging with both hands to the rail, for some fifteen or twenty yards away the erst calm, heaving sea began to be violently agitated, running as it were with the swiftness of a mill-stream; and then something dull and glistening and shining like a halo appeared just beneath the surface, rising till it was quite clear of the water, and passing the schooner in one broad pale streak.He was too much astonished to be startled, and for a few moments the only idea that he could form was that a good-sized vessel had careened over on to its side and was swiftly gliding along almost level with the water.Then all at once something of the same moonlit glistening tint, but long and sinuous, slowly rose up eight or ten feet above the sea; then higher and higher till it was double that altitude, and in his excitement and agitation he realised that it was ended or begun by a snake-like head something after the fashion of that of a huge conger, the eyes being many inches across and dull and heavy after the fashion seen in a deep-sea fish.One moment he thought it eel-like, the next that it was some serpent, while to his utter astonishment what he took to be its neck rose higher in a graceful swan-like shape, beautiful in curve as it was horrible in its gleaming, pallid, slimy aspect. One of the great eyes seemed turned to him with a peculiar glare, while as he fixed his own upon it as if unable to resist the attraction, he made out that from behind the curve the elongated body of the creature rose just above the surface, carrying out the semblance on a great scale to some swan-like half-fishy creature, and then with a quick rush as if the water were being hurled from it by enormously powerful fin-like paddles, the strange fish, reptile, or whatever it was, had passed on into the hazy moonlit night and was gone.“Hullo here! Anything the matter, Rodd?” cried the familiar voice of Dr Robson, as he came quickly forward, followed by the skipper. “Where is it?”“Where is it, uncle?” faltered the boy.“Yes; that man Cross came running down to us in the cabin to say that they had seen the sea-serpent again.”Rodd slowly raised one hand from the rail to which he had been holding, and pointed outward over the sea.“Well,” said Uncle Paul, “what are you pointing out? Plenty of moonlight, and glorious phosphorescence, but where’s the sea-serpent? Where did it show again? Why, what’s the matter, boy?” he continued, catching his nephew by the arm and taking his hand. “Don’t stand staring like that. Your hand’s all wet, and like ice! Have you been frightened?”“I—don’t know, uncle, I suppose so,” said the boy slowly and dreamily. “I never saw anything like it before, and—and—it came so close to the schooner. I think I thought it was going to make a snatch at me and take me under water. But don’t ask me now, please. I don’t feel quite right. I suppose I am cowardly; but it made Gregg run away.”“Then why didn’t you,” said the doctor jocularly, “if it was so horrible as that?”“I couldn’t, uncle,” cried the boy passionately. “I turned cold all over and couldn’t stir.”“Well, come down below for a bit,” continued the doctor. “Why, Chubb, the boy’s had a regular scare.”“Ah! and no wonder,” said the skipper gruffly. “It scared the men too. They saw it.”“What, the same thing that you fired at?”“Ah, that I don’t know. That was a great long eely thing; but Joe Cross here says this was more like a great turtle, with flippers and a long neck, and a head like a snake.”No more was said till they were in the cabin, where soon after he had found himself in safety, shut in and with the swinging lamp burning above his head, Rodd heaved a deep sigh and then uttered a forced laugh.“I couldn’t help it, uncle,” he said, “and I didn’t think I could have been such a coward; but I am all right now. The other men did see it too, didn’t they?”“Yes, my lad; they saw it too,” replied the skipper; “and next time we goes ashore, if we are stupid enough to talk about it every one will laugh and say we are making up tales for the marines. I’ve known skipper after skipper who has seen something of the kind in the warm seas and has told yarns about them. But men don’t often do so now, no matter what they see, for one don’t like to be laughed at. Well, sir, I suppose you believe there’s more queer things in the sea than most people know of?”“Well, yes,” said Uncle Paul, “I am beginning to believe more and more that we who follow out natural history have a great deal to learn.”“Take my word for it, sir, you have. But I dare say you will be disposed to laugh at me and think that I am making up a bit of gammon, when I ask you if you remember what a frigate looks like when she has got all her ports open and her lanterns lit.”“I don’t see why I should,” said Uncle Paul quietly. “But of course I have seen a man-of-war like that by night; and a very beautiful object she is.”“Very, sir. But what should you say if I was to ask you if you had seen a fish looking like a little frigate with her ports all open and her lights shining in a couple of rows along her sides—lights that don’t burn, sir, but shine brightly as if they did?”“Well, I am not a man to laugh at anything new in science, Chubb,” said the doctor quietly, “but between ourselves, your description is a bit too flowery.”“Not a bit, sir.”“I have seen,” continued the doctor, “phosphorescent fish and insects, and even now, swimming round us, the sea is full of light-giving creatures, but nothing approaching your frigates with the ports open, or anything near them.”“Well, sir, I could take you right away to the eastward into the Indian seas—and I am not romancing, mind, but talking honest truth—I could take you and squire here, where you could drag up fishermen sort of fish, big-mouthed fellows ready to swallow what they catches, fish that guide themselves down in the dark deeps of the sea amongst the seaweed at the bottom, and there they hang out from the tops of their heads long barbels that look like worms, and fish with them for other fishes, to catch them to eat.”“Oh yes, that’s right enough, captain,” replied the doctor. “You know, Rodd, that great frog fish, the Father Lasher, as the fishermen call him. Why, captain, we have got them at home off the Devon coast.”“I know,” said the skipper. “I have seen them; but those are not what I mean. He didn’t give me time to finish, squire,” continued the skipper, facing round to Rodd. “My ones out yonder in the Eastern seas always live down below where it’s deep and dark, and where the fishes couldn’t see their baits. So what do you think they do?”“Swim up to where it’s lighter,” said Rodd. “Not they, sir. They grows a little bait as might be a little bit of meat at the end of their barbel-like fishing-lines, and wave it about in the water for the fish they want to catch to see.”“You said it was all black darkness deep down there,” cried Rodd.“So it is, my lad, and so that the fish may see it those little baits of theirs all glow with light, and shine out in the dark black water. Now, doctor, what do you think of that for a bit of nature?”“Extraordinary!” cried the doctor. “But who told you that?”“Nobody, sir. I have seen them with my own eyes.”“Yes, but what about the men-of-war with their ports lit up?”“Of course I didn’t mean men-of-war, sir. I thought I made you understand I meant fish. Fish about two foot long, with a row of lights down each side like lamps to see their way in the darkness. There, gentlemen, that’s no story to tell to the marines, but a fact that I have seen with my own eyes; and if there’s things like that deep down in the seas, I don’t see anything wonderful in there being what some people calls sea-sarpints that might be as big as a great sparmacetti whale; and if you put some of them beside a cable a hundred foot long there isn’t much rope to spare. I knew of a ninety-footer once, though they don’t often get so long as that.”
“Hah! Very disappointing—very,” said the doctor.
“Yes, it’s gone, I suppose, sir. One couldn’t see where the shot hit for smoke, but I expect it turned up the water and scared the thing away. Well, it’s best as it is. A great thing like that might have grown very dangerous if it had been hit.”
“Oh, we don’t know that,” cried the doctor. “Well, I suppose we can do nothing more,” he continued, as, following his nephew’s example, he strained his eyes over the darkening plain.
“No,” said the captain. “Cover up that gun, my lads, and break off. You, Cross, take charge of the gun, and well sponge her out. You others, pikes; fall in. Now then, right face. March!”
“I’m disappointed,” said the doctor, as the men were marched off. “I should have liked to have had a closer examination of that creature. Well, captain, what next?”
“Tea,” said the skipper bluntly.
The tropics were very near, and the night began to come on rapidly, so that the tea meal was partaken of by the light of the swinging lamp. But before it was over the moon rose above the sea very bright and silvery, and getting rapidly near the full, while later on as it rose higher it was nearly as light as day.
Rodd was anxious to get on deck again, to see if by any possibility the weird-looking object that they had seen that evening might rise to the surface; but anxious as he was to join the sailors and question them as to whether they had seen anything more, the conversation between his uncle and the skipper kept him below, where he listened to their different expressed opinions.
At last, though, he went on deck, and found all the men grouped together forward, and whispering to themselves about the visitor they had seen.
One man said it was a sign, and another grunted, while a third turned to Joe Cross to ask his opinion.
It was the stout heavy member of the crew who went by the name of the Bun, and seeming the most impressed of the whole crew he asked Joe Cross as above.
“Yes,” said Cross slowly, “you are quite right, Ikey Gregg. It’s a sign.”
“What’s a sign?” asked Rodd, coming up.
“The—the—Bun—Ikey Gregg says it is a sign, sir, that we see that big squirming wormy thing, and I says he’s quite right, sir. It is a sign.”
“Why, what can it be a sign of, Joe?”
“Sea’s calm, sir, and that brings all the shoals of young fish up to the top to feed, and that there thing that feeds on them come up to the top to get a regular tuck out.”
“Oh, that won’t do,” said Gregg the fat. “Things like that only come up to the top at particular times, and you mark my words, it means a storm.”
As the man finished, he turned his eyes to right and left, scanning the beautiful silvery water before him, and then uttering a loud yell, he dashed by his companions, made for the forecastle hatch, and without troubling himself about the steps, leaped right down.
“What’s the matter with Ikey?” said one of the men. “Showing us how he can jump?”
“Nonsense!” said Rodd. “It was as if he had been scared by something. He looked quite wild.”
The boy walked close up to the rail and looked over, to see that the whole of the water right away from the bows was apparently ablaze with fire; but for a time he could make out nothing else, in spite of its crystal clearness and the way in which in addition it was laced and latticed as it were by the rays of the moon.
Seeing nothing for the moment likely to have alarmed the sailor, he was about to turn off, but only to start the next minute, and stand clinging with both hands to the rail, for some fifteen or twenty yards away the erst calm, heaving sea began to be violently agitated, running as it were with the swiftness of a mill-stream; and then something dull and glistening and shining like a halo appeared just beneath the surface, rising till it was quite clear of the water, and passing the schooner in one broad pale streak.
He was too much astonished to be startled, and for a few moments the only idea that he could form was that a good-sized vessel had careened over on to its side and was swiftly gliding along almost level with the water.
Then all at once something of the same moonlit glistening tint, but long and sinuous, slowly rose up eight or ten feet above the sea; then higher and higher till it was double that altitude, and in his excitement and agitation he realised that it was ended or begun by a snake-like head something after the fashion of that of a huge conger, the eyes being many inches across and dull and heavy after the fashion seen in a deep-sea fish.
One moment he thought it eel-like, the next that it was some serpent, while to his utter astonishment what he took to be its neck rose higher in a graceful swan-like shape, beautiful in curve as it was horrible in its gleaming, pallid, slimy aspect. One of the great eyes seemed turned to him with a peculiar glare, while as he fixed his own upon it as if unable to resist the attraction, he made out that from behind the curve the elongated body of the creature rose just above the surface, carrying out the semblance on a great scale to some swan-like half-fishy creature, and then with a quick rush as if the water were being hurled from it by enormously powerful fin-like paddles, the strange fish, reptile, or whatever it was, had passed on into the hazy moonlit night and was gone.
“Hullo here! Anything the matter, Rodd?” cried the familiar voice of Dr Robson, as he came quickly forward, followed by the skipper. “Where is it?”
“Where is it, uncle?” faltered the boy.
“Yes; that man Cross came running down to us in the cabin to say that they had seen the sea-serpent again.”
Rodd slowly raised one hand from the rail to which he had been holding, and pointed outward over the sea.
“Well,” said Uncle Paul, “what are you pointing out? Plenty of moonlight, and glorious phosphorescence, but where’s the sea-serpent? Where did it show again? Why, what’s the matter, boy?” he continued, catching his nephew by the arm and taking his hand. “Don’t stand staring like that. Your hand’s all wet, and like ice! Have you been frightened?”
“I—don’t know, uncle, I suppose so,” said the boy slowly and dreamily. “I never saw anything like it before, and—and—it came so close to the schooner. I think I thought it was going to make a snatch at me and take me under water. But don’t ask me now, please. I don’t feel quite right. I suppose I am cowardly; but it made Gregg run away.”
“Then why didn’t you,” said the doctor jocularly, “if it was so horrible as that?”
“I couldn’t, uncle,” cried the boy passionately. “I turned cold all over and couldn’t stir.”
“Well, come down below for a bit,” continued the doctor. “Why, Chubb, the boy’s had a regular scare.”
“Ah! and no wonder,” said the skipper gruffly. “It scared the men too. They saw it.”
“What, the same thing that you fired at?”
“Ah, that I don’t know. That was a great long eely thing; but Joe Cross here says this was more like a great turtle, with flippers and a long neck, and a head like a snake.”
No more was said till they were in the cabin, where soon after he had found himself in safety, shut in and with the swinging lamp burning above his head, Rodd heaved a deep sigh and then uttered a forced laugh.
“I couldn’t help it, uncle,” he said, “and I didn’t think I could have been such a coward; but I am all right now. The other men did see it too, didn’t they?”
“Yes, my lad; they saw it too,” replied the skipper; “and next time we goes ashore, if we are stupid enough to talk about it every one will laugh and say we are making up tales for the marines. I’ve known skipper after skipper who has seen something of the kind in the warm seas and has told yarns about them. But men don’t often do so now, no matter what they see, for one don’t like to be laughed at. Well, sir, I suppose you believe there’s more queer things in the sea than most people know of?”
“Well, yes,” said Uncle Paul, “I am beginning to believe more and more that we who follow out natural history have a great deal to learn.”
“Take my word for it, sir, you have. But I dare say you will be disposed to laugh at me and think that I am making up a bit of gammon, when I ask you if you remember what a frigate looks like when she has got all her ports open and her lanterns lit.”
“I don’t see why I should,” said Uncle Paul quietly. “But of course I have seen a man-of-war like that by night; and a very beautiful object she is.”
“Very, sir. But what should you say if I was to ask you if you had seen a fish looking like a little frigate with her ports all open and her lights shining in a couple of rows along her sides—lights that don’t burn, sir, but shine brightly as if they did?”
“Well, I am not a man to laugh at anything new in science, Chubb,” said the doctor quietly, “but between ourselves, your description is a bit too flowery.”
“Not a bit, sir.”
“I have seen,” continued the doctor, “phosphorescent fish and insects, and even now, swimming round us, the sea is full of light-giving creatures, but nothing approaching your frigates with the ports open, or anything near them.”
“Well, sir, I could take you right away to the eastward into the Indian seas—and I am not romancing, mind, but talking honest truth—I could take you and squire here, where you could drag up fishermen sort of fish, big-mouthed fellows ready to swallow what they catches, fish that guide themselves down in the dark deeps of the sea amongst the seaweed at the bottom, and there they hang out from the tops of their heads long barbels that look like worms, and fish with them for other fishes, to catch them to eat.”
“Oh yes, that’s right enough, captain,” replied the doctor. “You know, Rodd, that great frog fish, the Father Lasher, as the fishermen call him. Why, captain, we have got them at home off the Devon coast.”
“I know,” said the skipper. “I have seen them; but those are not what I mean. He didn’t give me time to finish, squire,” continued the skipper, facing round to Rodd. “My ones out yonder in the Eastern seas always live down below where it’s deep and dark, and where the fishes couldn’t see their baits. So what do you think they do?”
“Swim up to where it’s lighter,” said Rodd. “Not they, sir. They grows a little bait as might be a little bit of meat at the end of their barbel-like fishing-lines, and wave it about in the water for the fish they want to catch to see.”
“You said it was all black darkness deep down there,” cried Rodd.
“So it is, my lad, and so that the fish may see it those little baits of theirs all glow with light, and shine out in the dark black water. Now, doctor, what do you think of that for a bit of nature?”
“Extraordinary!” cried the doctor. “But who told you that?”
“Nobody, sir. I have seen them with my own eyes.”
“Yes, but what about the men-of-war with their ports lit up?”
“Of course I didn’t mean men-of-war, sir. I thought I made you understand I meant fish. Fish about two foot long, with a row of lights down each side like lamps to see their way in the darkness. There, gentlemen, that’s no story to tell to the marines, but a fact that I have seen with my own eyes; and if there’s things like that deep down in the seas, I don’t see anything wonderful in there being what some people calls sea-sarpints that might be as big as a great sparmacetti whale; and if you put some of them beside a cable a hundred foot long there isn’t much rope to spare. I knew of a ninety-footer once, though they don’t often get so long as that.”