Chapter Seven.

Chapter Seven.Amongst the Islands.In spite of all Captain Miles’ endeavours to effect an early start from Saint Vincent, we were not really able to weather the island that evening until many hours after our anchor was tripped and all plain sail made.This was not due, however, either to the delay caused in hoisting the obstreperous cow on board or to the embarrassing episode that occurred after she was shipped. It was entirely owing to the failure of our moving spirit the wind; for we lay becalmed until morning under the lee of the giant Souffrière, whose dark shadow prevented the land breeze from reaching the vessel, while the next day was far advanced before we could gain an offing so as to take advantage of the light airs that then sprang up from seaward. But, then, theJosephine, bellying out her canvas, bore away on her voyage.The wide gulf of sea which we were traversing—named after the aboriginal Caribs who ruled over its domain lang syne, and hedged in from the Atlantic Ocean by the semicircular group of the Lesser Antilles, or “Windward Islands” of the West Indies—presents great difficulties to the navigators of sailing ships; as, while the wind throughout its extent blows almost constantly in one direction, a series of cross currents set in another, making it a hard task for even experienced seamen to preserve a straight course towards any particular point when going to windward, the result of which is that “the longest way round,” as in other matters pertaining to shore life, is frequently “the shortest way home!”Taking up the chart casually, a novice would imagine that our direct route from our port of departure to the English Channel would be indicated by a line drawn between the two points and passing through the Azores; but, a sailor accustomed to tropical latitudes would know that, however feasible this might appear in theory, we could not possibly have adopted such a course. It would have presupposed, in the first case, our possessing the ability to sail straight in the teeth of the north-east trade wind, and, in the second case, that we took no account of the influence of the equatorial current, the stream of which setting westwards into the Caribbean Sea, would have drifted as so far to leeward that at the end of the day’s run we must have been pretty nearly where we started from, any progress we made ahead being neutralised by the action of the stream carrying us in a lateral direction.For these reasons, all navigators up to their work, when making the passage home from the West Indies andvice versa, instead of fighting against the forces of nature as some old seamen of the past used to do, now make both winds and tides run harmoniously in their favour by meeting them half-way, so to speak. Captain Miles, in our instance, therefore, did not wear out his crew by trying to beat to windward in order to get to the open Atlantic immediately. On the contrary, he kept his vessel well away to leeward, shaping a course for Saint Christopher’s, so as to pass afterwards through the Anegada Channel, between the Virgin Islands, and reach the ocean in that way. In other words, following the example of the ready-witted Irishman who drove an obstinate pig to market by pulling him back by the tail, he deliberately steered to the north-west while really wanting to go to the north-east. But, circuitous as such a route looked, the captain was in the end a gainer by it; for, not only did he keep the wind well abeam of the ship all the way on the starboard tack, but he had the additional advantage of having the strong north-westerly current in his favour in lieu of trying to work against it.During this portion of our voyage the weather was beautifully fine, the sky being of a clear transparent opal tint without a cloud and the sea of the purest ultramarine blue, with little merry dancing wavelets occasionally flecking its changing surface into foam.The air, too, was balmy, and not unpleasantly warm, a fine healthy breeze blowing, which filled our good ship’s sails, so that they expanded to the furthest limits of the bolt-ropes, speeding her on her way at the rate of some eight knots an hour, as rising and falling she surged through the sparkling water and left a foaming wake astern that spread out in the shape of a fan behind her track, widening until it was lost in the distance.When I mentioned my going to visit theJosephineas she lay at anchor while taking in cargo at Grenville Bay, I think I said that I had never before been in a vessel. This, however, was not strictly accurate, for when dad came out to the West Indies from England with my mother and sisters some few years previously, I, of course, accompanied them; and as we had to cross the Atlantic in order to reach Grenada, and there was no other mode of overcoming the three thousand odd miles of ocean that lay between us and our destination except by our adventuring the passage in the ordinary way, I was then really for the first time taken on board a ship. But it must be remembered that I was only at that period a tiny baby about the size of my little sister Tot; and, therefore, my recollections of the time being rather hazy, my first real experiences of the sea and all the incidents of the voyage came upon me with all that novelty and interest which unfamiliarity alone can produce. It is, nevertheless, only right that I should make this correction of my former mis-statement, for I wish to give a true and impartial account of all that happened to me from first to last. I am not “spinning a yarn” merely, as sailor’s say, but telling a true story of my life with all its haps and mishaps.Now, therefore, as theJosephinedashed along, all was new and strange to me; the limitless expanse of blue water shimmering in the summer sun, with flocks of flying-fish rising in the air occasionally to seek refuge from their enemies of the deep, only to fall back again below the surface after a short curving flight, to avoid the grey pelicans hovering above to attack them there; the fresh bracing breeze, which blew in my face so exhilaratingly; the swaying motion of the vessel that gave a lurch now and then, heeling over when the wind took her suddenly on the quarter as she rose on the swell; the whistling of the cordage and creaking of timbers and rattling of blocks, combined with the cheery yo-ho-hoing of the sailors as they slacked a sheet here and tightened a brace there. Really, I was so pleased, excited, and delighted with the whole scene and its surroundings that it seemed as if I were in the ship of a dream sailing on an enchanted sea!Presently there arose out of the deep on our starboard bow the Pitons of Saint Lucia, two twin conical rocks like the Needles, only ever so much bigger, being over three thousand feet in height. They were festooned from base to summit with beautiful evergreen foliage; and the entrance to the harbour of the island was to be seen within and beyond these outlying sentinels, stretching up inland towards a mass of purple mountains from a beach of yellow sand.Next, we passed to the leeward of Martinique; and, then, towards sunset of the same day, as we approached Saint Kitts, islet after islet jumped up out of the sea in front of us, to the right hand and to the left. They were all misty at first, but changed their colours from slaty grey to green as we approached them nearer, although their shape was all pretty much the same—tall sugar-loaf peaks surrounded by verdure sloping down in graceful curves to the water’s edge, the surf breaking against the shore of those to leeward in clouds of spray, while the waves washed the rocky feet of those on the windward side without a ripple.When the sun disappeared below the western horizon, Montserrat, Redonda, Nevis, Saint Christopher, and Saint Eustatius were all in sight around us; and, just at ten o’clock at night, when the moon was at the full, lighting up the scene with its silvery beams as brightly almost as if it were day, we passed between Saint Eustatius and the island of Saba. We approached the latter within two miles, but when its north point bore west we steered for Dog Island, clearing the reefs somewhere about the middle watch.Soon after sunrise next morning we weathered Sombrero, the last of the Antilles, and thus got fairly out into the Atlantic, leaving the West Indies behind us as we hauled our wind and bore away for the Azores—although a long stretch of ocean had to be crossed ere we might hope to reach this half-way port on our voyage.But I have not yet described our ship and those on board.TheJosephinewas an old-fashioned barque of about five hundred tons burden, built with a high poop and a topgallant forecastle, “or fo’c’s’le,” as seamen call it.She was a roomy vessel, possessing great breadth of beam, which made her a staunch sea-boat in rough weather, for she could tumble about as much as she pleased without causing much damage to her timbers or risk of her stability; and this roominess, besides, allowed good accommodation aft for a large number of passengers, although in this instance I was the single solitary “landsman” aboard—that is, if a young shaver of thirteen can be dignified with such a high-sounding title!Her officers and crew consisted of eighteen hands all told; and amongst the former Captain Miles, her master, a sturdy old sea-dog of forty-five or thereabouts, is entitled to be the first described. He had a broad honest face, with a pair of bushy, reddish-brown mutton-chop whiskers, for, unlike the sailors of to-day, the captain was always clean shaven as to his chin and upper lip, esteeming a moustache an abomination, “which only one of those French Johnny Crapaud lubbers ever think of wearing.”The next officer in rank after Captain Miles was Mr Marline, the first mate, a thin wiry north countryman, with a lot of latent fun and dry humour in him; and then came Davis, the second mate, a thick-set bull-necked dark-haired Welshman, not more than twenty-four or five years of age. He had been promoted from the foremast on account of his predecessor having died on the passage out. Davis was a very good seaman and up to his work; otherwise, his education being sadly deficient, as even I, a boy, could perceive, and his temper and disposition being none of the best, he was certainly not very well fitted to command those with whom he had formerly associated as an equal.My old friend Moggridge, the boatswain, and Adze, the carpenter, completed the list of those in authority; and, besides these, must be enumerated Cuffee, the king of the cook’s galley; Jake, who had been put on the muster-roll as an ordinary hand; Harry, the captain’s tawny mulatto steward; and ten able seamen—the finest and strongest of all these being Jackson, a smart young Cornishman hailing from Plymouth, who stood some six feet two in his stockings and gloried in such a broad pair of shoulders that he was worth any three of the other hands put together.To complete the description of our ship, the lower portion of our cargo, stowed in the ground tier of the hold above the dunnage, was sugar and coffee, with some odd bags of cocoa from my father’s plantation to make weight; but our chief freight, fortunately for us, as you will learn later on, was rum. The puncheons containing this were packed as tightly as possible fore and aft the ship above the heavy produce, reaching up amidships to the level of the main hatch, all the spaces between being so compactly filled in with the lighter samples of cargo that not even a cockroach could have squeezed itself in sideways.In the waist of the vessel on the upper deck, ranged along the inside of the bulwarks on either hand, from the entrance to the cabin under the break of the poop to right away forwards just abaft the foremast, was a row of water-casks. A couple of these had their tops sawn off lengthwise and contained several live turtle which Captain Miles was hopeful of carrying home safely in time for the next ensuing banquet at the Mansion House on lord mayor’s day, an enterprising ship’s chandler in the Minories having given him an order to that effect before he left England on his voyage out to the West Indies. In a similar way, against the sides of the poop were fixed what looked at first sight to be benches for sitting down upon, but which on closer inspection I discovered to be hen-coops,—their occupants projecting their long necks and heads therefrom, in much perplexity evidently at their strange fate in being thus brought to sea; for, as was the case with myself, this was their first experience of what life on board ship was like, and the exigencies of the cabin table would most probably cause it to be their last!It was not until the fourth day after we had set sail from Grenada that I was able to note all these particulars. Up to that time I had been too much interested with the moving panorama around me to notice things inboard; and, besides, the motion of theJosephine, when she got lively in the seaway amongst the islands, produced an uneasy feeling which led me ere long to retire below and bewail my old home and those from whom I had been so ruthlessly severed with greater grief than I had felt before. I suffered from that fearful nausea which Father Neptune imposes as a penance on the majority of his votaries, and it was wonderful how very melancholy the sensation made me.However, I struggled gallantly against the fell foe, and, one morning, I crawled out of my bunk early, just as the men began to wash down the decks, the first work of the day aboard ship. This was shortly after we had cleared the island of Sombrero, and when theJosephinewas working her way out to sea.At first I stopped in the waist, near the entrance to the cabin, but Davis, the second mate, who stood with his trousers tucked up showing his bare feet and legs, superintending the hands sluicing the water about from the hose attached to the head pump out on the forecastle, told me politely to sheer off, as they wanted no idlers in the way; so, I ascended the poop-ladder, and was commiserating the poor fowls in the hen-coops along the rails, when Captain Miles, who was standing close to the helmsman at the wheel, addressed me.“Hallo, Master Tom,” said he, “got your sea-legs again?”“Yes, captain,” I replied, “I’m all right now, thank you.”“Beginning to feel peckish, eh?”“Not very,” said I, for I was qualmish still, although the fresh air had considerably revived me even in the short time since I had come out of the close cabin.“Ah, but you must eat, though, my boy,” observed Captain Miles kindly, giving me a kindly pat on the back. “An empty stomach is the worst thing in the world to voyage on. Why, you haven’t hardly eaten a bite since the other evening when that poor cow knocked our dinner all into the middle of next week! Never mind, though, breakfast will be ready at eight bells, and we’ll see whether we can’t get some lining upon your ribs, my little skillygalee.”“I have already asked Jake to get me a cup of coffee, sir,” I said in reply to this; but, before the captain could answer me again, we both had our attention drawn to the deck below. There seemed to be some sort of commotion going on in the cook’s galley away forward, for all the men had their faces turned in that direction, and they were laughing as if at some good joke.“Waist ahoy, there!” shouted out Captain Miles, going to the edge of the break of the poop and looking down. “What’s the row forward?”“Hanged if I know, sir,” answered Davis somewhat surlily, adding more gruffly still to the hands around him, “Here, you lazy lubbers, lay along to your work, or I’ll give you something else to grin about!”“You need not haze the men like that for nothing,” said the captain sharply, muttering something under his breath about “setting a beggar on horseback, and he’ll ride to the—”However, his further words were cut short by a loud shout of laughter from the men all together, as if with one accord; and then the commotion in the cook’s galley increased, for I could now distinguish the sound of some violent altercation, voices being raised in anger, mingled with the noise of shuffling feet and the crash of crockery-ware.“By Jingo, they’re going it!” exclaimed Moggridge, who stood in the waist immediately below us. “They’ll be like the Kilkenny cats, and leave only their tails behind!”“What’s the matter?” again asked Captain Miles. “Anybody fighting, eh?”“Yes, sir,” said the boatswain, “the two niggers. They’ve been at it in the caboose ever since we began to wash down decks.”“Then it’s high time to stop them,” cried the captain darting towards the poop-ladder with the intention of ending the fray, whatever it was.But, before he could descend two steps, the half-door of the galley burst open outwards with a crash, when two dark figures, locked in a tight embrace and pommelling one another with immense fury, came rolling out upon the deck. They then scrambled and tumbled into the lee scuppers, where they continued to struggle still, unmindful of the foot deep or more of water, into which they were suddenly plunged, that was swishing to and fro with the motion of the ship.“You take dat now,” I heard Jake’s voice say excitedly. “I mash um face well.”“An’ you take dat, you hangman tief,” cried the other with equal earnestness. “Golly, I gib you gosh!”Then came the thud of blows, easily distinguishable above the splashing of the refuse water that had accumulated to leeward from the sluicing of the decks, with the convulsive movements of two pairs of arms and legs mingled together in a confused mass—one woolly head being occasionally uplifted above the other and immediately as quickly dragged down again. The crew all the while screamed with laughter, enjoying the combat with the utmost relish, and without attempting to interfere in any way between the angry antagonists.“Stop the rascals, stop them!” sang out Captain Miles, jumping down into the waist and hurrying to the scene of action. “They’ll either kill or drown each other!”

In spite of all Captain Miles’ endeavours to effect an early start from Saint Vincent, we were not really able to weather the island that evening until many hours after our anchor was tripped and all plain sail made.

This was not due, however, either to the delay caused in hoisting the obstreperous cow on board or to the embarrassing episode that occurred after she was shipped. It was entirely owing to the failure of our moving spirit the wind; for we lay becalmed until morning under the lee of the giant Souffrière, whose dark shadow prevented the land breeze from reaching the vessel, while the next day was far advanced before we could gain an offing so as to take advantage of the light airs that then sprang up from seaward. But, then, theJosephine, bellying out her canvas, bore away on her voyage.

The wide gulf of sea which we were traversing—named after the aboriginal Caribs who ruled over its domain lang syne, and hedged in from the Atlantic Ocean by the semicircular group of the Lesser Antilles, or “Windward Islands” of the West Indies—presents great difficulties to the navigators of sailing ships; as, while the wind throughout its extent blows almost constantly in one direction, a series of cross currents set in another, making it a hard task for even experienced seamen to preserve a straight course towards any particular point when going to windward, the result of which is that “the longest way round,” as in other matters pertaining to shore life, is frequently “the shortest way home!”

Taking up the chart casually, a novice would imagine that our direct route from our port of departure to the English Channel would be indicated by a line drawn between the two points and passing through the Azores; but, a sailor accustomed to tropical latitudes would know that, however feasible this might appear in theory, we could not possibly have adopted such a course. It would have presupposed, in the first case, our possessing the ability to sail straight in the teeth of the north-east trade wind, and, in the second case, that we took no account of the influence of the equatorial current, the stream of which setting westwards into the Caribbean Sea, would have drifted as so far to leeward that at the end of the day’s run we must have been pretty nearly where we started from, any progress we made ahead being neutralised by the action of the stream carrying us in a lateral direction.

For these reasons, all navigators up to their work, when making the passage home from the West Indies andvice versa, instead of fighting against the forces of nature as some old seamen of the past used to do, now make both winds and tides run harmoniously in their favour by meeting them half-way, so to speak. Captain Miles, in our instance, therefore, did not wear out his crew by trying to beat to windward in order to get to the open Atlantic immediately. On the contrary, he kept his vessel well away to leeward, shaping a course for Saint Christopher’s, so as to pass afterwards through the Anegada Channel, between the Virgin Islands, and reach the ocean in that way. In other words, following the example of the ready-witted Irishman who drove an obstinate pig to market by pulling him back by the tail, he deliberately steered to the north-west while really wanting to go to the north-east. But, circuitous as such a route looked, the captain was in the end a gainer by it; for, not only did he keep the wind well abeam of the ship all the way on the starboard tack, but he had the additional advantage of having the strong north-westerly current in his favour in lieu of trying to work against it.

During this portion of our voyage the weather was beautifully fine, the sky being of a clear transparent opal tint without a cloud and the sea of the purest ultramarine blue, with little merry dancing wavelets occasionally flecking its changing surface into foam.

The air, too, was balmy, and not unpleasantly warm, a fine healthy breeze blowing, which filled our good ship’s sails, so that they expanded to the furthest limits of the bolt-ropes, speeding her on her way at the rate of some eight knots an hour, as rising and falling she surged through the sparkling water and left a foaming wake astern that spread out in the shape of a fan behind her track, widening until it was lost in the distance.

When I mentioned my going to visit theJosephineas she lay at anchor while taking in cargo at Grenville Bay, I think I said that I had never before been in a vessel. This, however, was not strictly accurate, for when dad came out to the West Indies from England with my mother and sisters some few years previously, I, of course, accompanied them; and as we had to cross the Atlantic in order to reach Grenada, and there was no other mode of overcoming the three thousand odd miles of ocean that lay between us and our destination except by our adventuring the passage in the ordinary way, I was then really for the first time taken on board a ship. But it must be remembered that I was only at that period a tiny baby about the size of my little sister Tot; and, therefore, my recollections of the time being rather hazy, my first real experiences of the sea and all the incidents of the voyage came upon me with all that novelty and interest which unfamiliarity alone can produce. It is, nevertheless, only right that I should make this correction of my former mis-statement, for I wish to give a true and impartial account of all that happened to me from first to last. I am not “spinning a yarn” merely, as sailor’s say, but telling a true story of my life with all its haps and mishaps.

Now, therefore, as theJosephinedashed along, all was new and strange to me; the limitless expanse of blue water shimmering in the summer sun, with flocks of flying-fish rising in the air occasionally to seek refuge from their enemies of the deep, only to fall back again below the surface after a short curving flight, to avoid the grey pelicans hovering above to attack them there; the fresh bracing breeze, which blew in my face so exhilaratingly; the swaying motion of the vessel that gave a lurch now and then, heeling over when the wind took her suddenly on the quarter as she rose on the swell; the whistling of the cordage and creaking of timbers and rattling of blocks, combined with the cheery yo-ho-hoing of the sailors as they slacked a sheet here and tightened a brace there. Really, I was so pleased, excited, and delighted with the whole scene and its surroundings that it seemed as if I were in the ship of a dream sailing on an enchanted sea!

Presently there arose out of the deep on our starboard bow the Pitons of Saint Lucia, two twin conical rocks like the Needles, only ever so much bigger, being over three thousand feet in height. They were festooned from base to summit with beautiful evergreen foliage; and the entrance to the harbour of the island was to be seen within and beyond these outlying sentinels, stretching up inland towards a mass of purple mountains from a beach of yellow sand.

Next, we passed to the leeward of Martinique; and, then, towards sunset of the same day, as we approached Saint Kitts, islet after islet jumped up out of the sea in front of us, to the right hand and to the left. They were all misty at first, but changed their colours from slaty grey to green as we approached them nearer, although their shape was all pretty much the same—tall sugar-loaf peaks surrounded by verdure sloping down in graceful curves to the water’s edge, the surf breaking against the shore of those to leeward in clouds of spray, while the waves washed the rocky feet of those on the windward side without a ripple.

When the sun disappeared below the western horizon, Montserrat, Redonda, Nevis, Saint Christopher, and Saint Eustatius were all in sight around us; and, just at ten o’clock at night, when the moon was at the full, lighting up the scene with its silvery beams as brightly almost as if it were day, we passed between Saint Eustatius and the island of Saba. We approached the latter within two miles, but when its north point bore west we steered for Dog Island, clearing the reefs somewhere about the middle watch.

Soon after sunrise next morning we weathered Sombrero, the last of the Antilles, and thus got fairly out into the Atlantic, leaving the West Indies behind us as we hauled our wind and bore away for the Azores—although a long stretch of ocean had to be crossed ere we might hope to reach this half-way port on our voyage.

But I have not yet described our ship and those on board.

TheJosephinewas an old-fashioned barque of about five hundred tons burden, built with a high poop and a topgallant forecastle, “or fo’c’s’le,” as seamen call it.

She was a roomy vessel, possessing great breadth of beam, which made her a staunch sea-boat in rough weather, for she could tumble about as much as she pleased without causing much damage to her timbers or risk of her stability; and this roominess, besides, allowed good accommodation aft for a large number of passengers, although in this instance I was the single solitary “landsman” aboard—that is, if a young shaver of thirteen can be dignified with such a high-sounding title!

Her officers and crew consisted of eighteen hands all told; and amongst the former Captain Miles, her master, a sturdy old sea-dog of forty-five or thereabouts, is entitled to be the first described. He had a broad honest face, with a pair of bushy, reddish-brown mutton-chop whiskers, for, unlike the sailors of to-day, the captain was always clean shaven as to his chin and upper lip, esteeming a moustache an abomination, “which only one of those French Johnny Crapaud lubbers ever think of wearing.”

The next officer in rank after Captain Miles was Mr Marline, the first mate, a thin wiry north countryman, with a lot of latent fun and dry humour in him; and then came Davis, the second mate, a thick-set bull-necked dark-haired Welshman, not more than twenty-four or five years of age. He had been promoted from the foremast on account of his predecessor having died on the passage out. Davis was a very good seaman and up to his work; otherwise, his education being sadly deficient, as even I, a boy, could perceive, and his temper and disposition being none of the best, he was certainly not very well fitted to command those with whom he had formerly associated as an equal.

My old friend Moggridge, the boatswain, and Adze, the carpenter, completed the list of those in authority; and, besides these, must be enumerated Cuffee, the king of the cook’s galley; Jake, who had been put on the muster-roll as an ordinary hand; Harry, the captain’s tawny mulatto steward; and ten able seamen—the finest and strongest of all these being Jackson, a smart young Cornishman hailing from Plymouth, who stood some six feet two in his stockings and gloried in such a broad pair of shoulders that he was worth any three of the other hands put together.

To complete the description of our ship, the lower portion of our cargo, stowed in the ground tier of the hold above the dunnage, was sugar and coffee, with some odd bags of cocoa from my father’s plantation to make weight; but our chief freight, fortunately for us, as you will learn later on, was rum. The puncheons containing this were packed as tightly as possible fore and aft the ship above the heavy produce, reaching up amidships to the level of the main hatch, all the spaces between being so compactly filled in with the lighter samples of cargo that not even a cockroach could have squeezed itself in sideways.

In the waist of the vessel on the upper deck, ranged along the inside of the bulwarks on either hand, from the entrance to the cabin under the break of the poop to right away forwards just abaft the foremast, was a row of water-casks. A couple of these had their tops sawn off lengthwise and contained several live turtle which Captain Miles was hopeful of carrying home safely in time for the next ensuing banquet at the Mansion House on lord mayor’s day, an enterprising ship’s chandler in the Minories having given him an order to that effect before he left England on his voyage out to the West Indies. In a similar way, against the sides of the poop were fixed what looked at first sight to be benches for sitting down upon, but which on closer inspection I discovered to be hen-coops,—their occupants projecting their long necks and heads therefrom, in much perplexity evidently at their strange fate in being thus brought to sea; for, as was the case with myself, this was their first experience of what life on board ship was like, and the exigencies of the cabin table would most probably cause it to be their last!

It was not until the fourth day after we had set sail from Grenada that I was able to note all these particulars. Up to that time I had been too much interested with the moving panorama around me to notice things inboard; and, besides, the motion of theJosephine, when she got lively in the seaway amongst the islands, produced an uneasy feeling which led me ere long to retire below and bewail my old home and those from whom I had been so ruthlessly severed with greater grief than I had felt before. I suffered from that fearful nausea which Father Neptune imposes as a penance on the majority of his votaries, and it was wonderful how very melancholy the sensation made me.

However, I struggled gallantly against the fell foe, and, one morning, I crawled out of my bunk early, just as the men began to wash down the decks, the first work of the day aboard ship. This was shortly after we had cleared the island of Sombrero, and when theJosephinewas working her way out to sea.

At first I stopped in the waist, near the entrance to the cabin, but Davis, the second mate, who stood with his trousers tucked up showing his bare feet and legs, superintending the hands sluicing the water about from the hose attached to the head pump out on the forecastle, told me politely to sheer off, as they wanted no idlers in the way; so, I ascended the poop-ladder, and was commiserating the poor fowls in the hen-coops along the rails, when Captain Miles, who was standing close to the helmsman at the wheel, addressed me.

“Hallo, Master Tom,” said he, “got your sea-legs again?”

“Yes, captain,” I replied, “I’m all right now, thank you.”

“Beginning to feel peckish, eh?”

“Not very,” said I, for I was qualmish still, although the fresh air had considerably revived me even in the short time since I had come out of the close cabin.

“Ah, but you must eat, though, my boy,” observed Captain Miles kindly, giving me a kindly pat on the back. “An empty stomach is the worst thing in the world to voyage on. Why, you haven’t hardly eaten a bite since the other evening when that poor cow knocked our dinner all into the middle of next week! Never mind, though, breakfast will be ready at eight bells, and we’ll see whether we can’t get some lining upon your ribs, my little skillygalee.”

“I have already asked Jake to get me a cup of coffee, sir,” I said in reply to this; but, before the captain could answer me again, we both had our attention drawn to the deck below. There seemed to be some sort of commotion going on in the cook’s galley away forward, for all the men had their faces turned in that direction, and they were laughing as if at some good joke.

“Waist ahoy, there!” shouted out Captain Miles, going to the edge of the break of the poop and looking down. “What’s the row forward?”

“Hanged if I know, sir,” answered Davis somewhat surlily, adding more gruffly still to the hands around him, “Here, you lazy lubbers, lay along to your work, or I’ll give you something else to grin about!”

“You need not haze the men like that for nothing,” said the captain sharply, muttering something under his breath about “setting a beggar on horseback, and he’ll ride to the—”

However, his further words were cut short by a loud shout of laughter from the men all together, as if with one accord; and then the commotion in the cook’s galley increased, for I could now distinguish the sound of some violent altercation, voices being raised in anger, mingled with the noise of shuffling feet and the crash of crockery-ware.

“By Jingo, they’re going it!” exclaimed Moggridge, who stood in the waist immediately below us. “They’ll be like the Kilkenny cats, and leave only their tails behind!”

“What’s the matter?” again asked Captain Miles. “Anybody fighting, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” said the boatswain, “the two niggers. They’ve been at it in the caboose ever since we began to wash down decks.”

“Then it’s high time to stop them,” cried the captain darting towards the poop-ladder with the intention of ending the fray, whatever it was.

But, before he could descend two steps, the half-door of the galley burst open outwards with a crash, when two dark figures, locked in a tight embrace and pommelling one another with immense fury, came rolling out upon the deck. They then scrambled and tumbled into the lee scuppers, where they continued to struggle still, unmindful of the foot deep or more of water, into which they were suddenly plunged, that was swishing to and fro with the motion of the ship.

“You take dat now,” I heard Jake’s voice say excitedly. “I mash um face well.”

“An’ you take dat, you hangman tief,” cried the other with equal earnestness. “Golly, I gib you gosh!”

Then came the thud of blows, easily distinguishable above the splashing of the refuse water that had accumulated to leeward from the sluicing of the decks, with the convulsive movements of two pairs of arms and legs mingled together in a confused mass—one woolly head being occasionally uplifted above the other and immediately as quickly dragged down again. The crew all the while screamed with laughter, enjoying the combat with the utmost relish, and without attempting to interfere in any way between the angry antagonists.

“Stop the rascals, stop them!” sang out Captain Miles, jumping down into the waist and hurrying to the scene of action. “They’ll either kill or drown each other!”

Chapter Eight.Poor Jackson.As soon as the seamen heard the captain’s words, uttered as they were in a tone which they well knew from experience was meant to be obeyed, several of them at once rushed to where the two darkeys were still struggling in the lee scuppers; when Jackson, the tall young sailor whom I had already noticed for his smartness, stepping forward in advance of the others and stooping down at the same time, lifted up the combatants on to their feet, holding one in each hand as easily as if the two big negroes had been only little dolls.“Be quiet, I tell ’ee,” he cried, giving Cuffee, the cook, who was the most obstreperous, a shake as he clutched him by the back of his woolly head in the same way as a terrier holds a rat; “be quiet, I tell ’ee, or I’ll pitch you overboard!”So saying, and emphasising the threat by raising Cuffee at arm’s length, to the level of the bulwarks, he dragged the irate pair along to where Captain Miles was standing by the mainmast bitts, there setting them down before him for judgment.“Now, you quarrelsome black rascals!” exclaimed the captain confronting them, “what the dickens do you mean by kicking up all this bobbery? I don’t allow any fighting aboard my ship.”“It ain’t me, Mass’ Cap’en,” said Jake eagerly, “it’s dat nasty niggah dere dat make all de muss ’bout nuffin’ at all!”“Dat one big lie,” retorted the other scornfully. “He come ’teal de coffee out ob de coppers, an’ w’en I ’peak to him like gen’leman he hit um in the eyeball, him.”“Belieb me, Mass’ Cap’en, I’se no tief,” said Jake indignantly, drawing himself up and looking very much as if he were going to pitch into Cuffee again. “I’se only go in de galley to get um coffee for Mass’ Tom, an’ I’se ax dat poor trash dere to gib um cup in de most perliteful way as um please; an’ I no sooner done dis dan he catch um crack wid one big ladle on de shin—golly, um hurt now! Den, ob course, I hit um back in brace ob shakes, an’ we go down in rough an’ tumble togedder.”“My, what big ’tory!” exclaimed the cook in apparent amazement at Jake’s mendacity. “Me go forrud to clean de fis’ for breakfus, an’ w’en um come back in galley, dere I see dat hangman tief takin’ de coffee, an’ den—”“Then you had a scuffle together, I suppose,” interposed Captain Miles, interrupting Cuffee’s further harangue at this point. “Well, well, as far as I can see you were both in the wrong. Jake, you had no business to enter the cook’s galley without his leave, or touch anything there, for remember he’s as much captain of the caboose as I am on the poop.”“Golly, Mass’ Cap’en, me no go dere afore widout Cuffee ax me,” put in Jake as Captain Miles made a pause in his lecture.“Well, don’t you do it again,” continued the captain. “And as for you, Cuffee, I’d advise you not to be so handy with your soup-ladle again in striking your brother darkey, before ascertaining what he wants when he comes to your galley, and who sent him. There, my fighting cocks, you’d better shake hands now and make friends, as the row’s all over!”This the two at once did, with much grinning and showing of their ivory teeth; and they then went away forwards again together on the most amicable terms, albeit arguing good-humouredly as to which of them had got the best of the fray. Jake believed that he had come off with flying colours, while Cuffee persisted that he was the conqueror, the upshot of the matter being that Jackson, to whom they referred the knotty question, decided that it was “six for one and half a dozen for the other.” With this Solomon-like settlement of the difficulty both were quite satisfied and were sworn chums ever after. I, indeed, was the only loser by the little difference between the two, having to go without my coffee until the proper breakfast hour, “eight bells,” when, possibly, I enjoyed my meal all the more from not getting anything before.Towards mid-day, we had sunk the land entirely to the westwards, the ship being then on the wide-spreading ocean, with not a thing in sight but water—“water everywhere!”In front, in rear, to right, to left, all around was one expanse of blue, like a rolling valley, as far as the eye could reach, while the sky above was cloudless and the wind blowing steadily, a little to the southward of east, right on our starboard beam as we steered north-eastwards.We were not altogether alone, however, for the ubiquitous flying-fish were springing up every now and then from the azure deep, taking short flights from one wave crest to another, or else entangling themselves in the rigging of the ship, and then falling a gasping prey on the deck for Cuffee bye and bye to operate upon in his galley, whence they would emerge again fried into a savoury dish for the cabin table at dinner-time.Bonitoes and albacore also played round our bows, and the many-hued dolphin could be seen disporting himself astern in our wake; while, at one time, a large grampus swam for some considerable period abreast of the vessel, as if showing how easily he could keep pace with us and outstrip us too when he pleased, for, later on in the afternoon, he darted away and was soon lost to sight. I had now got over all the effects of sea-sickness, a hearty breakfast having restored my equilibrium, thus enabling me to enjoy all that was going on around. The captain especially claimed my attention when he “took the sun” at noon, an operation which I watched with the most absorbed interest; and I found out afterwards the use of the sextant, and the way in which the difference between the ship’s mean time and that of the chronometer below in the cabin—which showed what the hour was at Greenwich—enabled Captain Miles to tell almost to a mile on the chart what was our position with regard to our longitude, our latitude being “worked out” in a different fashion.Then, there was the heaving of the log at stated intervals to ascertain the speed of the ship through the water, and the constant trimming of the sails; for more canvas was piled on as the breeze fell light during the afternoon, as we wanted everything spread that could draw in order to catch the slightest breath of wind there was.Oh, yes, there was plenty to see for a novice like me! TheJosephinewas fresh out of port, and there were lots of things that had to be done to make her ship-shape for the long voyage before her; and, besides, had there been nothing else for the hands to do beyond taking their trick at the wheel and attending to the braces—the ordinary routine of their duty with a fair wind such as we had—the captain and first mate would have felt bound to find them something to keep their minds from mischief. Sailors are never allowed a minute to be idle on a vessel at sea save on Sundays, and then they find work for themselves, as a rule, in the way of mending their clothes and putting their chests in order.I noticed this device on Captain Miles’s part to provide employment for the men when he came on deck after luncheon; when, seeing some of the seamen lounging about in the waist, he immediately set them to pump out the bilge. This, however, did not occupy them very long, the ship being pretty dry; for, after a thick dirty stream of ill-smelling water, mixed with a portion of molasses, leakage from the casks of sugar below, had poured into the scuppers for a few minutes, the pumps sucked, thus showing that the hold was clear down to the well bottom.A second washing-down decks followed, to efface the traces of the nasty bilge-water; and then, Captain Miles looked about for another task to keep the hands busy.“How is she going?” he asked Mr Marline, who had just seen to the heaving of the log, the man assisting him having not quite yet reeled in the line.“Six knots, sir,” answered the chief mate.“By Jingo! that’ll never do with this breeze,” said the captain. “We must get the starboard stunsails on her.”“All right, sir,” responded Mr Marline; and thereupon a couple of men went aloft to reeve the studding-sail halliards through the jewel blocks at the end of the yard-arms, while others stood below preparing the tackle and getting the booms ready, with tacks rove for hoisting, sail after sail being speedily packed on in addition to the canvas we were already carrying.The log was then hove again, and a couple more knots of way somewhat pleased the captain; but, a moment afterwards, seeing that the hands were out of work once more, he thought of a fresh task for them.“Mr Marline,” he sang out presently, as he paced up and down the poop, eyeing the spars aloft and then casting his eyes forward.“Aye, aye, sir,” was the prompt answer from the chief mate, who was standing by the taffrail behind the man at the wheel, looking aloft to see how the sails drew and then glancing round the ship occasionally, in a similar sailor-like way to the captain.“What say you to getting the anchors aboard and unshackling the cables, eh? I don’t think we shall want to use them again now before we get into soundings, and she seems a little down by the head.”“All right, sir,” said the mate. “I’ll go forwards and see to the job at once. Here, you idlers,” he added as he descended the poop-ladder, “spring up there on the fo’c’s’le and see about getting the anchors inboard!”This operation, I may explain, is generally undertaken soon after a ship leaves harbour and clears the channel when outwards bound across seas; for, not only do the anchors interfere with the vessel’s sailing trim from their dead weight hanging over the bows, even when properly catted and fished, but they are a great deal in the way. In addition to this, the ship is liable to take in water through the hawse-holes, which can be plugged up, of course, when the cable chains are unshackled, although not before. As we had been, however, up to this time navigating the narrow passages between the clustering islands of the Caribbean Sea and the dangerous reefs in their vicinity, where we might have had occasion possibly to anchor at any moment should the wind fail us and the cross currents near the land peril the safety of the ship, the anchors had been left still ready for instant service; but, now that we were in the open sea, we would have no necessity for having recourse to their aid until we fetched our home port, so they might just as well be stowed away till then.“May I go, too, and see what they are doing, Captain Miles?” I asked as Mr Marline and the crew scampered forwards.“Yes, my boy,” he said kindly. “Only, mind you don’t get into any danger! I promised your father, you know, to look after you.”“Oh, I’ll take care,” I replied with a joyous laugh at getting the permission; and, away I followed the others to the forecastle, where I had been longing to go ever since the early morning, when, it may be remembered, Davis ordered me back to the poop on my attempting to pass forwards as I first came out of the cabin.If it was jolly watching the progress of the ship from aft, it was ever so much more delightful from my new coign of vantage; for, as she dived her head and parted the waves with her bows, the water dashed up on either side in a column of spray like a fountain. The sunlight falling on this refracted the most beautiful prismatic colours, a perfect rainbow being formed to leeward which was ever being broken up and then arching itself anew into a sort of emerald and orange halo in front of the vessel’s prow.From where I stood on the knight heads, in the centre of the forecastle, just under the shadow of the bellying sails, the sea appeared much nearer to me, swelling up to the lee-rail as theJosephinetore along through it in ploughing her course onward; and yet, the outlook conveyed a better idea of its vastness than when I was on the poop aft and more elevated above the surface level, for the immense plain of water, in constant surging motion—now flat as a meadow, now ridged with curling waves as far as the eye could reach, and then again scooped out into a wide hollow valley covered over with yeasty foam, looking as if a giant custard had been poured over it—extended to where the curving horizon met the sky-line in the distance, our ship, in comparison with the limitless expanse, being only as it were a tiny cork, floating on the ocean of blue and blown along as lightly before the wind!The fore-staysail, which had only recently been hoisted when the studding-sails were set, being now found to be in the way of getting in the anchors, as it prevented the hands from working freely, Mr Marline ordered the downhaul to be manned as soon as the halliards were cast-off. The sail was then loosely stowed for a while, and a double-purchase block and tackle rigged up in its place on the stay.Mr Marline then sang out to Moggridge to cast-off the shank painter securing the best bower to the starboard side of the ship, this being the easiest anchor of the two to handle, for it was to windward, clear of the sheets of the head-sails; whereupon, the lifting gear being attached, the ponderous mass of metal was soon hoisted up above the cat-head and swayed inboard by means of a guy-line fastened to one of the flukes.The command was then given to lower away, when, the anchor being deposited on the deck of the forecastle, it was made snug close to the foremast bitts, so that it could not shift its new moorings as the vessel rolled.The chain-cable was next unshackled from the ring in the anchor-stock and rattled down into the locker in the fore-peak; after which, the starboard hawse-hole was plugged up to prevent any water from finding its way below through the orifice. Thus, in a very little time, half the task the captain had set the men to do was accomplished, the seamen working with a will and singing cheerily as they laid on to the falls of the tackle, “yo-ho-heaving” all together, and pulling with might and main.The other anchor, however, being to leeward, was a little more difficult to manage, for it was submerged every now and then as the ship canted over, pitching her bows into the sea and splashing the spray up over the yard-arm; but, sailors are not soon daunted when they have a job on hand, and soon the shank painter of this was also cast-off and the purchase tackle made fast.“Hoist away, men!” cried Mr Marline.“Run away with the falls, you lubbers,” echoed Moggridge, who was as busy about the matter as the first mate and doing two men’s work himself; but, although the usual chorus was raised, and the sailors tugged away with all their strength, the anchor would not budge from its resting-place on the cat-head.“The tackle has fouled the jib-sheet,” said Jackson, who had been pulling like a horse at the rope’s end, and now looked over the side to see what prevented them from lifting the port bower. “Shall I get over and clear it, sir?”“Aye, do,” replied the mate; when Jackson got over the bows in a jiffey, holding on with one hand while he used the other to disentangle the purchase tackle, and not minding a bit the water, which rose up as high as his neck when the ship dipped.“Haul away, it’s all clear now!” he called out presently; and he was just stepping inboard again when, theJosephinesuddenly luffing up to the wind, the jib flapped, and, the sheet knocking the poor fellow off his balance, he tumbled backwards into the sea, without having time even to utter a cry.“Man overboard!” shouted Mr Marline at the top of his voice.For a moment, the wildest confusion seemed to reign throughout the vessel, the hands scurrying to the side; and looking over into the sea below, where we could see Jackson’s head bob up for an instant; but as we gazed down he was drifted rapidly astern and quickly lost to sight in the trough of the waves.The hubbub, however, only lasted an instant; for almost as soon as the mate’s shout had been heard aft, Captain Miles’s voice rang through the vessel in brief words of command, sharp and to the point.“Stand by, men,” he cried. “Hands ’bout ship!”The crew at once jumped toward the braces, singing out “Ready, aye, ready,” as they cast them off, some going to the lee-sheets to haul in there.“Helm’s a-lee!” then came from aft, followed by the orders “Tacks and sheets!” and “Mainsail haul!” when, theJosephine’sbows paying off under the influence of the tacked head-sails, the yards were swung round in a trice; and, within less than five minutes the vessel was retracing the same track she had just gone over in quest of the missing man.A man was sent up in the foretop, while Captain Miles himself ran up the ratlines of the mizzen shrouds to look out; and, at the same time, preparations were made for lowering the gig, which fortunately was still slung from the davits astern, not having been yet housed inboard with the other boats amidships—that being the next job the captain intended seeing to after the anchors were got in.I, of course, was as much excited as anyone, and remained on the forecastle, looking out eagerly for any sign of Jackson, although I could not see him anywhere. I believe I was so confused with the ship having gone round on the opposite tack, in order to go back on her course, that I hardly knew in which direction to look for the unfortunate man, for what had before been ahead of the ship was now necessarily astern from her reversing her position.In another minute, however, the look out in the foretop discerned Jackson, and he hailed the deck at once.“There he is! there he is!” he sang out.“Where?” cried Captain Miles impatiently.“About four cables’ length off the weather bow. I can see his head quite clear above the wash of the sea; and he seems swimming towards us.”“All right then, keep your eye on him, so as to pilot us! Mr Marline,” continued Captain Miles, “lower the boat at once with four hands; we can’t go close enough without it to the poor fellow, for we are to leeward of him.”“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the chief mate, who had gone aft and was seeing to the falls of the boat; which presently, with himself in the stern-sheets and four hands to pull the oars, was lowered down all standing, the helmsman “luffing up” at the proper moment, so that the way of the ship might be arrested to prevent the gig being upset before getting on an even keel in the sea, it being a rather ticklish thing to launch a boat from a vessel under sail.Luckily, however, the manoeuvre was safely accomplished without any mishap, the fall tackles being unhitched the instant the gig touched the water; and then, the boat’s crew shipping their oars without delay, she was pulled off to windward of us in the direction indicated by the look out man in the foretop, who with his hand extended pointed the course to be steered.TheJosephinemeanwhile gathered way again slowly and followed astern of the boat, although somewhat more to leeward, the wind being almost in her teeth and the ship having to sail close-hauled.After a little time—for we had run nearly half a mile before going about and some minutes were consumed in getting the ship round on the opposite tack—we approached the spot where the accident had occurred; then, all of us could see Jackson plainly from the deck.He was swimming grandly; now rising up on the top of a rolling wave, and then, as he surmounted this, sinking for a moment from sight in the hollow of the next, but making steady progress towards the ship all the while. Every now and again, too, he lifted one of his hands out of the water on commencing his stroke, as if to tell us he was all right and in good heart, noticing that we were coming to his rescue. The boat, the while rowed ahead of us as fast as the men in her could pull, putting their backs into the oars with all their strength, although making for the gallant swimmer in a slanting course to that of theJosephine.Nearer and nearer we sailed, but much more slowly than all hands on board could wish, for the breeze was very light; nearer and nearer the gig approached Jackson, until we could see the very expression of his face.He was actually grinning, and appeared from the movement of his mouth once when on top of a roller, to shout out some chaffing exclamation to us, seeming to regard the whole thing as a huge joke; and, Captain Miles was just about issuing some order about backing the main-topsail in order to heave the ship to, so as to get him and the boat aboard again, when, all at once, our anticipated joy at welcoming the poor fellow was turned into dismay by a startled cry from Jake, who was standing up in the weather rigging near me.“Golly, Mass’ Tom!” he yelled out, loud enough for all to hear him, his black face changing nearly to a sickly sea-green colour with horror and consternation. “Dere’s one big shark swimmin’ right ahind de poor buckra. O Lor’, O Lor’, he jus’ up to him now!”At this time the ship was not quite a cable’s length from the unfortunate man, who was about a point off our port bow; while the gig couldn’t have been half that distance away from him; and, no sooner had Jake’s startling announcement of the shark’s proximity alarmed us all at the new and terrible peril threatening the swimmer, than the crew, led by Captain Miles, shouted out a concentrated cry of warning. “Ahoy! Look out! Shark!”The words came out almost simultaneously, as it uttered by one voice, thrilling through the air with their fearful meaning, when, hardly had the sounds died away than we could see that Mr Marline and those in the gig with him heard us; for, recognising the urgency of the case, they redoubled their exertions to reach Jackson in time, so as to frustrate the intentions of his terrible antagonist. They seemed to put fresh steam in their oars, pulling all they knew against the choppy sea and wind, both of which were against them, counteracting their efforts and pressing the boat back as they urged it forwards.From the fact, however, of our being to leeward of him and the wind bearing our shout away, Jackson unfortunately did not appear to hear us. At all events, he made no sign in response whatever, still swimming onwards in the direction of the ship, but leisurely, as if ignorant of any new source of danger.Captain Miles grew intensely excited, as, indeed, we all were by this time; so, jumping up on the poop bulwarks and holding on to the mizzen shrouds, he repeated the cry of warning, all hands taking it up as before in one hoarse shout.“Shark! shark! Look out, man alive! He’s now close in upon you, and coming up fast astern!”This time Jackson caught our hail, but still, evidently mistook its import. He thought we only called to him by way of encouraging him to strike out more vigourously for the ship, and he waved his hand in acknowledgment of the signal; then he breasted the waves anew in fine style, although taking it quite easy as if thoroughly confident in himself and not a bit alarmed.The reason he made for theJosephinewas that he did not perceive the boat, which he had not seen lowered; and, besides this, it was every now and then hidden from view as it sank down between the ridges of the rollers, while, in addition, his face was turned in the opposite direction to that in which the little craft was approaching him.The captain was in a perfect agony.“Shark! shark!” he again screamed, more than cried, out. “For heaven’s sake, strike out, man, or you’re lost!”Then, all at once, Jackson appeared to grasp the meaning of the warning; and, looking behind him hurriedly, he caught sight of the cruel monster that was swimming after him, stroke by stroke and ready to sheer up alongside when it thought the proper opportunity had arrived for seizing its prey.It must have given the poor fellow an awful sensation!He could not but have realised the fearful doom that possibly awaited him; for we could, in a moment, even at that distance, notice his face change—a terror-stricken look coming over it in place of its previously buoyant expression. The brave fellow, however, uttered never a word, but only continued swimming on towards us in grim desperation.“Pull, Marline, for God’s sake, pull!” shouted out Captain Miles to the mate and those with him in the boat; but, although the men made the water churn up over the bows of the gig in their mad haste to urge it forwards, the relentless shark was quicker in its movements and crept up closer to poor Jackson.It was close in his rear, while the boat was yet thirty or forty yards away; and then, like a flash of lightning, we saw the monster’s gleaming white stomach as it threw itself over on its back and opened its wide maw lined with rows of serrated teeth.“My God!” exclaimed Captain Miles, turning away his head, “they are too late!”A sympathetic groan of anguish ran through the ship, and I could not help bursting into tears as I jumped down from the gangway, not daring to watch the end of the tragedy; but I thought I heard one agonised scream from the poor fellow, which must have escaped his lips just as the cruel teeth of the shark gripped its unresisting victim, telling that all was over.After this, for one single moment, there was a still silence as of death around me, the men appearing to hold their very breaths in excess of emotion.

As soon as the seamen heard the captain’s words, uttered as they were in a tone which they well knew from experience was meant to be obeyed, several of them at once rushed to where the two darkeys were still struggling in the lee scuppers; when Jackson, the tall young sailor whom I had already noticed for his smartness, stepping forward in advance of the others and stooping down at the same time, lifted up the combatants on to their feet, holding one in each hand as easily as if the two big negroes had been only little dolls.

“Be quiet, I tell ’ee,” he cried, giving Cuffee, the cook, who was the most obstreperous, a shake as he clutched him by the back of his woolly head in the same way as a terrier holds a rat; “be quiet, I tell ’ee, or I’ll pitch you overboard!”

So saying, and emphasising the threat by raising Cuffee at arm’s length, to the level of the bulwarks, he dragged the irate pair along to where Captain Miles was standing by the mainmast bitts, there setting them down before him for judgment.

“Now, you quarrelsome black rascals!” exclaimed the captain confronting them, “what the dickens do you mean by kicking up all this bobbery? I don’t allow any fighting aboard my ship.”

“It ain’t me, Mass’ Cap’en,” said Jake eagerly, “it’s dat nasty niggah dere dat make all de muss ’bout nuffin’ at all!”

“Dat one big lie,” retorted the other scornfully. “He come ’teal de coffee out ob de coppers, an’ w’en I ’peak to him like gen’leman he hit um in the eyeball, him.”

“Belieb me, Mass’ Cap’en, I’se no tief,” said Jake indignantly, drawing himself up and looking very much as if he were going to pitch into Cuffee again. “I’se only go in de galley to get um coffee for Mass’ Tom, an’ I’se ax dat poor trash dere to gib um cup in de most perliteful way as um please; an’ I no sooner done dis dan he catch um crack wid one big ladle on de shin—golly, um hurt now! Den, ob course, I hit um back in brace ob shakes, an’ we go down in rough an’ tumble togedder.”

“My, what big ’tory!” exclaimed the cook in apparent amazement at Jake’s mendacity. “Me go forrud to clean de fis’ for breakfus, an’ w’en um come back in galley, dere I see dat hangman tief takin’ de coffee, an’ den—”

“Then you had a scuffle together, I suppose,” interposed Captain Miles, interrupting Cuffee’s further harangue at this point. “Well, well, as far as I can see you were both in the wrong. Jake, you had no business to enter the cook’s galley without his leave, or touch anything there, for remember he’s as much captain of the caboose as I am on the poop.”

“Golly, Mass’ Cap’en, me no go dere afore widout Cuffee ax me,” put in Jake as Captain Miles made a pause in his lecture.

“Well, don’t you do it again,” continued the captain. “And as for you, Cuffee, I’d advise you not to be so handy with your soup-ladle again in striking your brother darkey, before ascertaining what he wants when he comes to your galley, and who sent him. There, my fighting cocks, you’d better shake hands now and make friends, as the row’s all over!”

This the two at once did, with much grinning and showing of their ivory teeth; and they then went away forwards again together on the most amicable terms, albeit arguing good-humouredly as to which of them had got the best of the fray. Jake believed that he had come off with flying colours, while Cuffee persisted that he was the conqueror, the upshot of the matter being that Jackson, to whom they referred the knotty question, decided that it was “six for one and half a dozen for the other.” With this Solomon-like settlement of the difficulty both were quite satisfied and were sworn chums ever after. I, indeed, was the only loser by the little difference between the two, having to go without my coffee until the proper breakfast hour, “eight bells,” when, possibly, I enjoyed my meal all the more from not getting anything before.

Towards mid-day, we had sunk the land entirely to the westwards, the ship being then on the wide-spreading ocean, with not a thing in sight but water—“water everywhere!”

In front, in rear, to right, to left, all around was one expanse of blue, like a rolling valley, as far as the eye could reach, while the sky above was cloudless and the wind blowing steadily, a little to the southward of east, right on our starboard beam as we steered north-eastwards.

We were not altogether alone, however, for the ubiquitous flying-fish were springing up every now and then from the azure deep, taking short flights from one wave crest to another, or else entangling themselves in the rigging of the ship, and then falling a gasping prey on the deck for Cuffee bye and bye to operate upon in his galley, whence they would emerge again fried into a savoury dish for the cabin table at dinner-time.

Bonitoes and albacore also played round our bows, and the many-hued dolphin could be seen disporting himself astern in our wake; while, at one time, a large grampus swam for some considerable period abreast of the vessel, as if showing how easily he could keep pace with us and outstrip us too when he pleased, for, later on in the afternoon, he darted away and was soon lost to sight. I had now got over all the effects of sea-sickness, a hearty breakfast having restored my equilibrium, thus enabling me to enjoy all that was going on around. The captain especially claimed my attention when he “took the sun” at noon, an operation which I watched with the most absorbed interest; and I found out afterwards the use of the sextant, and the way in which the difference between the ship’s mean time and that of the chronometer below in the cabin—which showed what the hour was at Greenwich—enabled Captain Miles to tell almost to a mile on the chart what was our position with regard to our longitude, our latitude being “worked out” in a different fashion.

Then, there was the heaving of the log at stated intervals to ascertain the speed of the ship through the water, and the constant trimming of the sails; for more canvas was piled on as the breeze fell light during the afternoon, as we wanted everything spread that could draw in order to catch the slightest breath of wind there was.

Oh, yes, there was plenty to see for a novice like me! TheJosephinewas fresh out of port, and there were lots of things that had to be done to make her ship-shape for the long voyage before her; and, besides, had there been nothing else for the hands to do beyond taking their trick at the wheel and attending to the braces—the ordinary routine of their duty with a fair wind such as we had—the captain and first mate would have felt bound to find them something to keep their minds from mischief. Sailors are never allowed a minute to be idle on a vessel at sea save on Sundays, and then they find work for themselves, as a rule, in the way of mending their clothes and putting their chests in order.

I noticed this device on Captain Miles’s part to provide employment for the men when he came on deck after luncheon; when, seeing some of the seamen lounging about in the waist, he immediately set them to pump out the bilge. This, however, did not occupy them very long, the ship being pretty dry; for, after a thick dirty stream of ill-smelling water, mixed with a portion of molasses, leakage from the casks of sugar below, had poured into the scuppers for a few minutes, the pumps sucked, thus showing that the hold was clear down to the well bottom.

A second washing-down decks followed, to efface the traces of the nasty bilge-water; and then, Captain Miles looked about for another task to keep the hands busy.

“How is she going?” he asked Mr Marline, who had just seen to the heaving of the log, the man assisting him having not quite yet reeled in the line.

“Six knots, sir,” answered the chief mate.

“By Jingo! that’ll never do with this breeze,” said the captain. “We must get the starboard stunsails on her.”

“All right, sir,” responded Mr Marline; and thereupon a couple of men went aloft to reeve the studding-sail halliards through the jewel blocks at the end of the yard-arms, while others stood below preparing the tackle and getting the booms ready, with tacks rove for hoisting, sail after sail being speedily packed on in addition to the canvas we were already carrying.

The log was then hove again, and a couple more knots of way somewhat pleased the captain; but, a moment afterwards, seeing that the hands were out of work once more, he thought of a fresh task for them.

“Mr Marline,” he sang out presently, as he paced up and down the poop, eyeing the spars aloft and then casting his eyes forward.

“Aye, aye, sir,” was the prompt answer from the chief mate, who was standing by the taffrail behind the man at the wheel, looking aloft to see how the sails drew and then glancing round the ship occasionally, in a similar sailor-like way to the captain.

“What say you to getting the anchors aboard and unshackling the cables, eh? I don’t think we shall want to use them again now before we get into soundings, and she seems a little down by the head.”

“All right, sir,” said the mate. “I’ll go forwards and see to the job at once. Here, you idlers,” he added as he descended the poop-ladder, “spring up there on the fo’c’s’le and see about getting the anchors inboard!”

This operation, I may explain, is generally undertaken soon after a ship leaves harbour and clears the channel when outwards bound across seas; for, not only do the anchors interfere with the vessel’s sailing trim from their dead weight hanging over the bows, even when properly catted and fished, but they are a great deal in the way. In addition to this, the ship is liable to take in water through the hawse-holes, which can be plugged up, of course, when the cable chains are unshackled, although not before. As we had been, however, up to this time navigating the narrow passages between the clustering islands of the Caribbean Sea and the dangerous reefs in their vicinity, where we might have had occasion possibly to anchor at any moment should the wind fail us and the cross currents near the land peril the safety of the ship, the anchors had been left still ready for instant service; but, now that we were in the open sea, we would have no necessity for having recourse to their aid until we fetched our home port, so they might just as well be stowed away till then.

“May I go, too, and see what they are doing, Captain Miles?” I asked as Mr Marline and the crew scampered forwards.

“Yes, my boy,” he said kindly. “Only, mind you don’t get into any danger! I promised your father, you know, to look after you.”

“Oh, I’ll take care,” I replied with a joyous laugh at getting the permission; and, away I followed the others to the forecastle, where I had been longing to go ever since the early morning, when, it may be remembered, Davis ordered me back to the poop on my attempting to pass forwards as I first came out of the cabin.

If it was jolly watching the progress of the ship from aft, it was ever so much more delightful from my new coign of vantage; for, as she dived her head and parted the waves with her bows, the water dashed up on either side in a column of spray like a fountain. The sunlight falling on this refracted the most beautiful prismatic colours, a perfect rainbow being formed to leeward which was ever being broken up and then arching itself anew into a sort of emerald and orange halo in front of the vessel’s prow.

From where I stood on the knight heads, in the centre of the forecastle, just under the shadow of the bellying sails, the sea appeared much nearer to me, swelling up to the lee-rail as theJosephinetore along through it in ploughing her course onward; and yet, the outlook conveyed a better idea of its vastness than when I was on the poop aft and more elevated above the surface level, for the immense plain of water, in constant surging motion—now flat as a meadow, now ridged with curling waves as far as the eye could reach, and then again scooped out into a wide hollow valley covered over with yeasty foam, looking as if a giant custard had been poured over it—extended to where the curving horizon met the sky-line in the distance, our ship, in comparison with the limitless expanse, being only as it were a tiny cork, floating on the ocean of blue and blown along as lightly before the wind!

The fore-staysail, which had only recently been hoisted when the studding-sails were set, being now found to be in the way of getting in the anchors, as it prevented the hands from working freely, Mr Marline ordered the downhaul to be manned as soon as the halliards were cast-off. The sail was then loosely stowed for a while, and a double-purchase block and tackle rigged up in its place on the stay.

Mr Marline then sang out to Moggridge to cast-off the shank painter securing the best bower to the starboard side of the ship, this being the easiest anchor of the two to handle, for it was to windward, clear of the sheets of the head-sails; whereupon, the lifting gear being attached, the ponderous mass of metal was soon hoisted up above the cat-head and swayed inboard by means of a guy-line fastened to one of the flukes.

The command was then given to lower away, when, the anchor being deposited on the deck of the forecastle, it was made snug close to the foremast bitts, so that it could not shift its new moorings as the vessel rolled.

The chain-cable was next unshackled from the ring in the anchor-stock and rattled down into the locker in the fore-peak; after which, the starboard hawse-hole was plugged up to prevent any water from finding its way below through the orifice. Thus, in a very little time, half the task the captain had set the men to do was accomplished, the seamen working with a will and singing cheerily as they laid on to the falls of the tackle, “yo-ho-heaving” all together, and pulling with might and main.

The other anchor, however, being to leeward, was a little more difficult to manage, for it was submerged every now and then as the ship canted over, pitching her bows into the sea and splashing the spray up over the yard-arm; but, sailors are not soon daunted when they have a job on hand, and soon the shank painter of this was also cast-off and the purchase tackle made fast.

“Hoist away, men!” cried Mr Marline.

“Run away with the falls, you lubbers,” echoed Moggridge, who was as busy about the matter as the first mate and doing two men’s work himself; but, although the usual chorus was raised, and the sailors tugged away with all their strength, the anchor would not budge from its resting-place on the cat-head.

“The tackle has fouled the jib-sheet,” said Jackson, who had been pulling like a horse at the rope’s end, and now looked over the side to see what prevented them from lifting the port bower. “Shall I get over and clear it, sir?”

“Aye, do,” replied the mate; when Jackson got over the bows in a jiffey, holding on with one hand while he used the other to disentangle the purchase tackle, and not minding a bit the water, which rose up as high as his neck when the ship dipped.

“Haul away, it’s all clear now!” he called out presently; and he was just stepping inboard again when, theJosephinesuddenly luffing up to the wind, the jib flapped, and, the sheet knocking the poor fellow off his balance, he tumbled backwards into the sea, without having time even to utter a cry.

“Man overboard!” shouted Mr Marline at the top of his voice.

For a moment, the wildest confusion seemed to reign throughout the vessel, the hands scurrying to the side; and looking over into the sea below, where we could see Jackson’s head bob up for an instant; but as we gazed down he was drifted rapidly astern and quickly lost to sight in the trough of the waves.

The hubbub, however, only lasted an instant; for almost as soon as the mate’s shout had been heard aft, Captain Miles’s voice rang through the vessel in brief words of command, sharp and to the point.

“Stand by, men,” he cried. “Hands ’bout ship!”

The crew at once jumped toward the braces, singing out “Ready, aye, ready,” as they cast them off, some going to the lee-sheets to haul in there.

“Helm’s a-lee!” then came from aft, followed by the orders “Tacks and sheets!” and “Mainsail haul!” when, theJosephine’sbows paying off under the influence of the tacked head-sails, the yards were swung round in a trice; and, within less than five minutes the vessel was retracing the same track she had just gone over in quest of the missing man.

A man was sent up in the foretop, while Captain Miles himself ran up the ratlines of the mizzen shrouds to look out; and, at the same time, preparations were made for lowering the gig, which fortunately was still slung from the davits astern, not having been yet housed inboard with the other boats amidships—that being the next job the captain intended seeing to after the anchors were got in.

I, of course, was as much excited as anyone, and remained on the forecastle, looking out eagerly for any sign of Jackson, although I could not see him anywhere. I believe I was so confused with the ship having gone round on the opposite tack, in order to go back on her course, that I hardly knew in which direction to look for the unfortunate man, for what had before been ahead of the ship was now necessarily astern from her reversing her position.

In another minute, however, the look out in the foretop discerned Jackson, and he hailed the deck at once.

“There he is! there he is!” he sang out.

“Where?” cried Captain Miles impatiently.

“About four cables’ length off the weather bow. I can see his head quite clear above the wash of the sea; and he seems swimming towards us.”

“All right then, keep your eye on him, so as to pilot us! Mr Marline,” continued Captain Miles, “lower the boat at once with four hands; we can’t go close enough without it to the poor fellow, for we are to leeward of him.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the chief mate, who had gone aft and was seeing to the falls of the boat; which presently, with himself in the stern-sheets and four hands to pull the oars, was lowered down all standing, the helmsman “luffing up” at the proper moment, so that the way of the ship might be arrested to prevent the gig being upset before getting on an even keel in the sea, it being a rather ticklish thing to launch a boat from a vessel under sail.

Luckily, however, the manoeuvre was safely accomplished without any mishap, the fall tackles being unhitched the instant the gig touched the water; and then, the boat’s crew shipping their oars without delay, she was pulled off to windward of us in the direction indicated by the look out man in the foretop, who with his hand extended pointed the course to be steered.

TheJosephinemeanwhile gathered way again slowly and followed astern of the boat, although somewhat more to leeward, the wind being almost in her teeth and the ship having to sail close-hauled.

After a little time—for we had run nearly half a mile before going about and some minutes were consumed in getting the ship round on the opposite tack—we approached the spot where the accident had occurred; then, all of us could see Jackson plainly from the deck.

He was swimming grandly; now rising up on the top of a rolling wave, and then, as he surmounted this, sinking for a moment from sight in the hollow of the next, but making steady progress towards the ship all the while. Every now and again, too, he lifted one of his hands out of the water on commencing his stroke, as if to tell us he was all right and in good heart, noticing that we were coming to his rescue. The boat, the while rowed ahead of us as fast as the men in her could pull, putting their backs into the oars with all their strength, although making for the gallant swimmer in a slanting course to that of theJosephine.

Nearer and nearer we sailed, but much more slowly than all hands on board could wish, for the breeze was very light; nearer and nearer the gig approached Jackson, until we could see the very expression of his face.

He was actually grinning, and appeared from the movement of his mouth once when on top of a roller, to shout out some chaffing exclamation to us, seeming to regard the whole thing as a huge joke; and, Captain Miles was just about issuing some order about backing the main-topsail in order to heave the ship to, so as to get him and the boat aboard again, when, all at once, our anticipated joy at welcoming the poor fellow was turned into dismay by a startled cry from Jake, who was standing up in the weather rigging near me.

“Golly, Mass’ Tom!” he yelled out, loud enough for all to hear him, his black face changing nearly to a sickly sea-green colour with horror and consternation. “Dere’s one big shark swimmin’ right ahind de poor buckra. O Lor’, O Lor’, he jus’ up to him now!”

At this time the ship was not quite a cable’s length from the unfortunate man, who was about a point off our port bow; while the gig couldn’t have been half that distance away from him; and, no sooner had Jake’s startling announcement of the shark’s proximity alarmed us all at the new and terrible peril threatening the swimmer, than the crew, led by Captain Miles, shouted out a concentrated cry of warning. “Ahoy! Look out! Shark!”

The words came out almost simultaneously, as it uttered by one voice, thrilling through the air with their fearful meaning, when, hardly had the sounds died away than we could see that Mr Marline and those in the gig with him heard us; for, recognising the urgency of the case, they redoubled their exertions to reach Jackson in time, so as to frustrate the intentions of his terrible antagonist. They seemed to put fresh steam in their oars, pulling all they knew against the choppy sea and wind, both of which were against them, counteracting their efforts and pressing the boat back as they urged it forwards.

From the fact, however, of our being to leeward of him and the wind bearing our shout away, Jackson unfortunately did not appear to hear us. At all events, he made no sign in response whatever, still swimming onwards in the direction of the ship, but leisurely, as if ignorant of any new source of danger.

Captain Miles grew intensely excited, as, indeed, we all were by this time; so, jumping up on the poop bulwarks and holding on to the mizzen shrouds, he repeated the cry of warning, all hands taking it up as before in one hoarse shout.

“Shark! shark! Look out, man alive! He’s now close in upon you, and coming up fast astern!”

This time Jackson caught our hail, but still, evidently mistook its import. He thought we only called to him by way of encouraging him to strike out more vigourously for the ship, and he waved his hand in acknowledgment of the signal; then he breasted the waves anew in fine style, although taking it quite easy as if thoroughly confident in himself and not a bit alarmed.

The reason he made for theJosephinewas that he did not perceive the boat, which he had not seen lowered; and, besides this, it was every now and then hidden from view as it sank down between the ridges of the rollers, while, in addition, his face was turned in the opposite direction to that in which the little craft was approaching him.

The captain was in a perfect agony.

“Shark! shark!” he again screamed, more than cried, out. “For heaven’s sake, strike out, man, or you’re lost!”

Then, all at once, Jackson appeared to grasp the meaning of the warning; and, looking behind him hurriedly, he caught sight of the cruel monster that was swimming after him, stroke by stroke and ready to sheer up alongside when it thought the proper opportunity had arrived for seizing its prey.

It must have given the poor fellow an awful sensation!

He could not but have realised the fearful doom that possibly awaited him; for we could, in a moment, even at that distance, notice his face change—a terror-stricken look coming over it in place of its previously buoyant expression. The brave fellow, however, uttered never a word, but only continued swimming on towards us in grim desperation.

“Pull, Marline, for God’s sake, pull!” shouted out Captain Miles to the mate and those with him in the boat; but, although the men made the water churn up over the bows of the gig in their mad haste to urge it forwards, the relentless shark was quicker in its movements and crept up closer to poor Jackson.

It was close in his rear, while the boat was yet thirty or forty yards away; and then, like a flash of lightning, we saw the monster’s gleaming white stomach as it threw itself over on its back and opened its wide maw lined with rows of serrated teeth.

“My God!” exclaimed Captain Miles, turning away his head, “they are too late!”

A sympathetic groan of anguish ran through the ship, and I could not help bursting into tears as I jumped down from the gangway, not daring to watch the end of the tragedy; but I thought I heard one agonised scream from the poor fellow, which must have escaped his lips just as the cruel teeth of the shark gripped its unresisting victim, telling that all was over.

After this, for one single moment, there was a still silence as of death around me, the men appearing to hold their very breaths in excess of emotion.

Chapter Nine.A Water-Spout.Then, the next instant, a wild frenzied roar of joy echoed fore and aft the ship, making theJosephinequiver almost down to her bottom timbers.“Hooray!”I could scarcely believe my ears; but, as I looked up in surprise and wonder I caught sight of Jake’s ebony face all aglow with delight, his eyes rolling about like a vessel in a heavy seaway and his mouth expanded from ear to ear. He was evidently about to indulge in one of his usual huge guffaws when especially highly pleased and unable to contain himself, as he evidently was now.“Golly, dat splendiferous!” he cried out in ecstasy. “Um beat cock-fightin’ nohow!”“Bravo, well done!” I heard Captain Miles’s voice exclaim also at the same time, with a joyous heartiness utterly indescribable.“Why, what has happened, Jake?” I asked, quite puzzled.“Wat happen’, eh, Mass’ Tom? I tell um sharp! De sailor man lick de shark arter all! Him dibe under de fis; as um go to grab him; an’ den, dey catch de nasty debbil one big crack wid um boat-hook, an’ pull Mass’ Jackson into der boat. Golly, I’se so berry glad, Mass’ Tom! I’se a’most cry wid joy, for true.”And then, not content with this expression of his feelings, the sympathetic darkey, sliding down from the rigging where he had been perched, looking on at the terribly exciting scene taking place a moment before in the water, tumbled himself over on the deck in paroxysms of merriment, perfectly unable to restrain himself and keep still.When I now looked over the side of the ship, which by this time was hove-to, the gig, with Jackson seated in the stern-sheets by Mr Marline, was close under the port quarter, and the rescued swimmer with those who had saved him in the nick of time were just preparing to come on board.Presently, Jackson and the mate mounted the side-ladder amidst a perfect ovation from the crew, all hands cheering like mad and pressing forwards to shake the fist of him whom they had never expected to see again. After this the gig was veered astern and hoisted up once more to the davits, and theJosephine, bearing round and filling her sails, again resumed her north-east course on the starboard tack. The job of making the port anchor snug inboard was completed later on, when the men had sobered down somewhat from the excitement which had reigned through the ship from the moment Jackson had first fallen overboard—it having been an awfully anxious time throughout his peril by drowning, his hairbreadth escape from the shark, and his ultimate rescue.Later on, Moggridge told me how the poor fellow escaped from the very jaws of death.Jackson, he said, when he became aware of being pursued by the bloodthirsty monster, instead of losing his presence of mind, as most men would have done under the circumstances, remained perfectly calm and collected, having once before had an encounter with a shark in his native element.He swam on steadily towards the ship, apparently unmindful of his enemy; but, he carefully kept his weather eye opened, and when he saw the brute going to turn on his back in order to make a snatch at him, he at once dived under the shark’s body, thus circumventing his attack. Before the monster could recover itself and make a fresh onslaught, Moggridge said, the chief mate caught it a pretty tidy whack over the head with a boat-hook, while Jackson was hauled into the gig at the same time by the other men.It was a wonderful escape, however, and nothing else was talked of on board for days after.Strange to say, too, the shark, as if determined not to be easily balked of its prey, followed the ship steadily; and this fact, of course, kept the incident fresh in our minds, even if we had been at all inclined to forget it, the hideous creature’s bottle-like fin ever perceptible in our wake being a constant reminder!“He’s bound to hab somebody for suah,” said the captain’s mulatto steward Harry, who by the way was the person who had given out that agonised shriek which I had fancied to be poor Jackson’s death knell. “Shark nebber follow ship for nuffin’!”“No,” observed Captain Miles grimly; “this beggar sha’n’t at all events, if I know it!” and he paced up and down the poop, as if revolving the matter in his mind.This was the third day after the affair had happened, and the captain was quite incensed at the shark’s pertinacity; for, morning, noon, and night, whenever we logged over the side, there could be seen the sea-pirate’s long sinewy body, floating under our stern and always keeping pace with the ship whether she was going fast or slow—although, as we had little or no wind, the latter was generally the case.“I fancy, Mr Marline,” said the captain, soon after replying to Harry’s rather frightened observation, the mulatto being very timid and of a cowardly nature, as the fact of his fainting when the cow invaded the cabin would readily tell—“I say, Mr Marline, I think it’s time for us to give that joker down there a lesson, eh?”“Perhaps you’ll find him too artful to take a hook, cap’en,” answered the mate. “He seems to me an ‘old sojer,’ from the look of him and the regularity of his movements. Just see him now looking up, as if listening to what we were saying!”“Well, we’ll try him anyway,” said Captain Miles, telling Moggridge to bring the shark hook aft, as he wished to attempt the capture of our unwelcome attendant.“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the boatswain, going forwards and presently returning with a large steel hook, much about the same size as those they use in butchers’ shops for hanging meat on. A piece of chain was attached to this by a swivel instead of rope or a line, which, although good enough for other fish, the saw-like teeth of the monster of the deep would quickly have bitten through.“Is the tackle all sound?” asked the captain.“Aye, aye, sir; sound enough to catch a whale,” responded Moggridge, proceeding to bait the hook with a four-pound piece of salt pork which completely concealed the barbs; and then, a stout half-inch rope having been fastened on to the end of the chain, the whole apparatus was thrown overboard close to where the shark was patrolling the water under our stern.He sheered off a bit on hearing the splash; but afterwards soon swam up to where the baited hook was towing in our wake, smelling at it cautiously as if to see whether it was advisable for him to bolt the savoury morsel or not. Then, with a disdainful swish of his screw-like tail, he turned round in the water and resumed his station further astern, as if he saw through our attempt to entrap him, and despised it.“I thought so,” said Mr Marline. “He’s too old a bird to be caught by chaff. You won’t hook him in a blue moon!”“Don’t you be too cocksure of that,” retorted Captain Miles. “Sharks, I have noticed, frequently resemble cats in the way they will nibble at a bait, and pretend they don’t care about it, when all the while they are dying to gobble it down—just in the same manner as you’ll observe pussy, if you offer her a nice bit of meat, will sniff and turn away her head as if rejecting the morsel with disdain, affecting to make you believe it beneath her notice, only the next moment to abstract it slily from your hand, glad enough to get it! You’ll see presently, Mr Marline, that our friend there will go at the pork again, I’ll bet anything.”“All right, cap’en,” replied Mr Marline. “I only hope, I’m sure, that your anticipation will prove correct;” but, from the sly quizzical smile on his face and the dry way in which he spoke, I don’t think the mate believed in our hooking the ugly brute, all the same.After a little time, I noticed two small fishes coming up towards the bait and poking their pointed noses into it as if taking observations, and I called Captain Miles’s attention to them.“Oh, that’s a good sign,” said he. “Those are pilot-fish, which always accompany his majesty Mr Shark in the way ofaides-de-camp, as you call those smart gentlemen in gay uniforms who are usually seen prancing about the general at a review of troops ashore. Whenever you see the little chaps, the shark himself is never far off, for they precede him as his scouts to warn him of danger as well as tell him if there’s anything worth grabbing in the offing. If it wasn’t for them I believe he’d fare rather badly, as his own sight is bad—fortunately for poor fellows that fall in the water in the way Jackson did t’other day!”“But, captain,” I remarked, “they must be very bad guides if they do not tell the shark about the hook.”“Aye,” he replied; “something like ‘the blind leading the blind,’ eh? Still, you know Moggridge has taken care that the bait carefully conceals the snare within, and the pilot-fish are none the wiser. See them now!”As I watched, I noticed first one and then the other of the little fish smell at the piece of pork, making their observations apparently, after which they swam back to the side of the shark, where they remained for a moment on either side of his snout, as if they were making their report upon the tempting object and giving their master all particulars.Then the shark, with a fluke of his tail, also advanced closer to the bait, which just then, by a twist of the rope attached to it, the boatswain jerked away.This was enough for Master Shark, who, thinking he was going to lose the coveted morsel, at once sheered alongside of it, turning over on his back and opening his terrible-looking cavern of a mouth in the same way I had seen him do when he tried to catch poor Jackson. The recollection of that made me shudder all over!The next moment the monster had bolted both bait and hook, as well as a couple of feet of the chain; but when he turned to sheer off again he was “brought up with a round turn,” as sailors say, by the rope tightening suddenly, the jerk almost making him turn a somersault in the water.He was not altogether captured yet, however, and his struggles to get free were tremendous. Really, his jaws must have been pretty tough to have not given way under the furious flings and writhings he made to release himself; for the strong half-inch manilla rope that held him tethered was stretched like a fiddle-string, its strands all quivering with the strain upon it.First to one side of the ship and then to the other the brute bounded in turns, making the sea boil around him like a whirlpool, until finally, after half an hour’s fight of it, he gave in and lay quiet, although not dead yet by any means.As soon as the shark began to flounder about, I noticed that the pilot-fish went away, leaving him alone in his extremity; and on my mentioning this to Mr Marline he took the opportunity of pointing a moral for my especial benefit.“It’s just the way in the world, Master Tom,” said he. “Foolish companions lead many a young fellow into a scrape; but as soon as they see him in the mess into which they were the means of inveigling him, they scuttle off, abandoning him to his fate and probably laughing at his troubles too.”“Aye,” put in Captain Miles, wishing also to improve the occasion; “and if that shark had not been so madly impetuous in rushing at the hook he would never have been caught; in the same way as somebody told me of a certain young gentleman, who, not looking before he leaped, as the proverb says, and only thinking of the end he had in view, galloped down a hill and came to grief—getting a tumble which laid him up for weeks!”“Oh, Captain Miles,” said I, “you don’t think I’m a shark, do you?”“Well, not quite so bad as that, youngster,” he replied with one of his cheery laughs; “but, quite as impetuous sometimes, eh, Master Tom?”I made no answer to this thrust, knowing there was some truth in it, my mother having frequently to call me over the coals for doing things on the spur of the moment, which, as she was aware, I always regretted afterwards.This thoughtless impulse is a great fault, as I know to my cost; for, it has led me into many a scrape—sometimes to the danger of my life!While we were talking the shark was still struggling in the water; but when he grew tolerably composed, only an occasional splash of his tail showing that he yet lived, the men began to make preparations for hauling him on board.The bight of a rope was made into a running knot and hove round the body of the animal; when, the men hauling away with a will at the other end of the line, which was passed through a snatch-block hung in the rigging, the captive was soon bowsed up to the mizzen chains.No sooner, however, was he got out of the water than the hampered monster appeared to be imbued with fresh vitality, lashing his tail about and splintering the wood-work of the bulwarks as if it had been brown paper; but when the slip-knot was drawn tighter this controlled his frantic movements a bit, and Jackson, who was allowed precedence of the rest of the sailors from his previous acquaintance with the savage brute, then advanced with a sharp butcher’s knife, which he had borrowed from the cook, in order to give his old enemy his quietus.Taking care not to get within reach of either the jaws or ponderous tail of the shark, he leaned over the side of the ship and stabbed it in the neck; after which, with two long slashing cuts he severed the head, which quickly splashed down into the sea under the counter, sinking to the bottom at once from the mere weight of the bone it contained. Jackson then proceeded, by the captain’s orders, to rip open the animal’s stomach; but it was found to contain nothing digestible but the piece of pork which had led to the brute’s capture, the shark evidently having been lately on short allowance.When, however, Jackson extracted the hook from the bait, he started back suddenly as if he had received a blow, clutching hold of the shrouds to steady himself.I thought he was going to faint.“Hullo!” exclaimed Captain Miles; “what’s the matter?”“See here!” replied the young sailor, holding up in his hand something dark and soft looking, with a bit of ribbon fluttering from one end.“Well, what is it?” repeated the captain.“My cap,” said Jackson solemnly; “and, but for the mercy of God I also might have been in the same place!”It gave us all a thrill, I can tell you, the sight of this old cap, which must have floated off Jackson’s head when he dived to escape the rush of the shark. The brute had swallowed it, no doubt, greedily, thinking it had got the owner.As for Jackson himself, when he clambered up over the side again and came inboard, his face was as white as a table-cloth. I did not hear him, either, joking about the deck all day afterwards in his usual way; although the young sailor, besides being the smartest of the hands at his work, had hitherto been the life of the crew, always laughing and chaffing the others, as well as being the first to lead a song on the fo’c’s’le of an evening. The startling discovery of his cap in the shark’s stomach, coupled with the reflection that, had not Providence intervened in his behalf, he might have also been swallowed up, seemed to have completely sobered him for the time.The other hands, however, were not much affected by the incident; and, presently, when the bight of the rope round the shark was unloosed and the body allowed to drop overboard, Moggridge sang out in a triumphant voice: “Now we’ve got rid of Jonah, we’ll have a shift of wind at last!”“Why does the boatswain say that?” I asked Captain Miles. “What had the shark to do with the weather?”“Well, you see, my boy,” he answered, “sailors are generally superstitious, and they always think that killing a shark brings good luck of some sort. Now, the best sort of luck we can have would be a good stiff south-wester, or something of that sort, to drive us on our way across the Atlantic, as we have experienced nothing but light breezes since we left the islands, barely making five hundred miles’ distance from Sombrero. We’ll never get to England at this rate in a month of Sundays.”Unlike most prophecies referring to the weather, which, as a rule, must generally be made after the event to be correct, that of the old boatswain, curiously enough, turned out a true one, for, although we had been only favoured with light winds from the time of Jackson’s escape from the shark and all the while the ill-fated brute followed in our wake like a phantom of evil, not many hours elapsed after we had captured the animal before a strong southerly breeze sprang up. This, shifting round later on more to the westwards, came right astern of the vessel—thus enabling her to spread studding-sails and sky-sails, exposing every rag of canvas she could carry from truck to deck.The wind, too, fortunately, was not a cat’s-paw either, like the shifting airs we had previously had, for it lasted us ten days at one stretch, carrying us well to the south-east of Bermuda and almost more than half-way to the Azores.During all this time, no very remarkable incident occurred on board, save that, whether owing to change of air or through some deficiency of their native diet, three out of the half a dozen turtle, which Captain Miles was hoping to carry home for the lord mayor’s banquet, died one by one. They were hove over the side in the same fashion; and, as I watched their shelly backs floating astern, I could see flocks of sea-birds settle down on them, evidently rejoicing in having such an unexpected feast. A pig, too, was killed one day, supplying us in the cabin with savoury roast pork, which was an agreeable change from the salt beef and boiled fowls that were our ordinary fare—although, as the hen-coops were becoming rapidly untenanted, I should not have much longer to complain of any monotony of the latter item of our diet, I thought.But, if there was nothing to chronicle of any stirring character I enjoyed the voyage immensely, being as happy as the day was long.It seemed like paradise to me, sailing on and on before the genial western wind over the wide blue sea, with an azure sky above unflecked by a cloud in the daytime and studded with a glorious galaxy of stars at night that made the heavens look like a casket of jewels.Before long, I became quite a sailor too, being able to make my way aloft to the cross-trees without help, and I was learning by familiarity every rope whose name Moggridge had before taught me; for, when the captain saw that I was careful through his repeated cautions, and also had Jackson to look after me, he withdrew the embargo he had placed on my mounting the rigging. Indeed, he was kind enough to let me do duty as an “extra hand,” as I loved to consider myself, in Mr Marline’s watch, or when he himself was on deck.Another great delight I had consisted in going out on the bowsprit and fishing for bonitoes and dolphins with a bit of red or white cloth tied to a hook, in the same way as one goes “reeling” for mackerel in the Channel; and many a savoury supper, cooked surreptitiously by Jake in his friend the cook’s caboose, had I on the sly at night in the fo’c’s’le, when Captain Miles thought I had turned in and was snug asleep in my bunk!Day after day passed alike, with the exception, of course, of Sundays, when the captain read prayers on the poop to the hands clustered round, all dressed out in their best shore clothes, and with the decks especially holystoned in honour of the day—the ship the while making some couple of hundred miles every twenty-four hours on her onward way, while scarcely shifting a sail or altering a brace from week’s end to week’s end.It was getting on towards the end of August, the wind having continued fair from about the middle of the month and the weather being all that could be desired; when, one morning, that of our fifteenth day out from Grenada, I recollect, I noticed that Captain Miles looked rather anxious after coming on deck, shortly before our breakfast hour, “eight bells,” according to his usual custom when everything was going on all right.He first glanced aloft, sailor-like, to see that everything was correct with the rigging and the sails all drawing, and then he cast an eye forward, noting the orderly arrangements there; finally, walking across to the binnacle in order to observe what course the ship was steering, and asking Mr Marline, who had charge of the morning watch, how she was going.“Eight knots good, sir, last heave of the log,” promptly said the mate.“That’s all right,” observed the captain; “but, I don’t like the look ahead. It seems to me as if there’s going to be a change.”“Indeed?” replied Mr Marline; “I haven’t noticed anything at all unusual. The wind has kept steady from the westwards ever since I came on the poop at four bells, the same as we left it overnight.”“But, the glass is going down, Marline,” rejoined Captain Miles; “and don’t you notice the sea is getting a bit cross off our port bow? It strikes me we’ll have a shift of wind presently from the eastwards, if nothing more. However, we oughtn’t to grumble, for ten days of such fine weather is rather unusual in these latitudes, you know, at this time of year.”“Yes, certainly,” replied the mate; “we’ve made good use of the time, too.”“Aye, that we have,” replied the captain. “I fixed our position last night by a couple of lunars.”“And I suppose it corroborates your observation of yesterday, eh?”“Pretty nearly,” said Captain Miles; “calculating for the distance we’ve run since, I should think we’re somewhere about 30 degrees North and 52 degrees West.”“Well, that’s strange!” exclaimed Mr Marline. “We’ve got to the limit of the north-east trade without having once the benefit of it from the day we started, the winds having been south-east and southerly till they shifted round to the westwards!”“So they have,” said the captain; “still, that has been all the more lively for us. But I don’t like this change brewing up. Look at the clouds now!”“Ha, they’re getting up at last!” replied the other. “I see you were right, the change will come from the eastwards.”Up to now it had been a beautifully bright morning, the sky without a scrap of vapour to obscure its lucent expanse, and the sea lit up with golden sunshine that made it appear bluer somehow or other; but, even while Captain Miles and Mr Marline were speaking, a low bank of cloud arose along the eastern horizon, and this, spreading gradually up towards the zenith, soon shut out the half-risen sun and his rays, casting a sombre tinge at the same time on the ocean below.“All hands shorten sail!” shouted the captain, and the studding-sail halliards being let go by the run, theJosephine, which a moment before had looked like a bird with outspread wings, had these latter clipped off in a jiffey, the light sails bagging with the wind like balloons as they were hauled down; and, soon afterwards, the booms projecting from the yard-arms on which they had been rigged out, were sent below and laid with the other spare spars along the bulwarks in the waist.While the crew were busy at this task, the strong breeze, which but a short time before had filled our canvas, gradually died away until there did not seem to be a puff of air stirring, the larger sails now hanging loose or else flapping idly against the masts.Captain Miles, however, did not stop merely at taking in the studding-sails, for the royals were next furled as well as the topgallant-sails; and then, under reefed topsails and courses, in addition to her jib and spanker which were still set, he awaited what the weather might have in store for his vessel. An experienced seaman, such as he was, when forewarned, as in the present instance, by a falling barometer, always prepares for eventualities of the worst possible character, never leaving anything to chance or neglecting to take proper precautions. By not doing so many a gallant ship with all hands on board is lost through the carelessness of bad navigators.The cloud in the east, meanwhile, rose higher in the heavens, showing a bit of clear sky for a moment at its base, when it began to travel towards the ship at great speed, but in a very eccentric fashion, whirling round and looking as if it were dancing on the surface of the water.“I can’t make it out,” said Mr Marline in a puzzled sort of way. “There must be a good deal of wind at the back of it; but, why doesn’t it keep a straight course towards us, eh sir?”“It’s a whirlwind, I fancy,” replied Captain Miles; “I’ve seen a good many in the South Atlantic, near the African coast, although never one before in these latitudes so far from land.”“Are they dangerous at all, captain?” I asked, rather anxiously.“No, Tom, not unless you got in the vortex of one, when it might twist the spars out of a ship perhaps, though I never saw any mischief done by one myself. Mind your helm,” added Captain Miles to the man at the wheel, whose office at present was a sinecure, for the ship was almost becalmed and the rudder swaying to and fro from port to starboard as it listed. “If the wind catches us suddenly we may be taken aback, and I want you to be ready when I give the word.”This made the sailor who was “taking his trick” all alert, instead of lounging over the spokes as he had been doing previously, listening to our talk.Presently, a quick puff of air came from the west again, and theJosephinebegan to gather way; but almost in an instant afterwards the wind shifted right ahead, coming down with the cloud, and the yards were at once braced round, the vessel being headed towards the north.The cloud approached rapidly now on our weather bow; and, as it got nearer, we could see that its bottom edge, which was attenuated to the proportions of a slender pillar of vapour, seemed to be united to the water, the sea, where it joined the surface, being greatly agitated, foaming up in columns of spray that were circled round and round and then drawn up in corkscrew fashion into the denser body above.“Why, it’s a water-spout!” exclaimed Mr Marline in great surprise.“So it is,” said the captain, a bit startled and perplexed too. “Look sharp, Marline, and see to the hatches being battened down and the scuppers open; for, if the blessed thing bursts immediately overhead, it will flood our decks with a deluge of water worse than if we had shipped a heavy sea.”“Aye, aye, sir,” answered the other, scuttling down the poop-ladder to attend to these orders; but he had hardly left the captain’s side ere a terrific gust of wind struck us, coming from the same direction as the water-spout.The instant after, the wind shifted round to the opposite quarter, and then a series of squalls, hot and strong, seemed to assail us from almost every point of the compass at once.“Hands shorten sail!” roared out Captain Miles again, using the palms of his two hands before his mouth for a speaking trumpet. “Be smart, men! Some of you brail up the spanker here and man the jib downhaul. Right! Now, away aloft the rest of you; we must have those topsails close-reefed. Cast-off the halliards—there—cheerily, men; that’s the way to do it!”No sooner were the hands down from the topsail-yards, however, than he had them up again to take in the courses, which had already been clewed up and were now furled; theJosephinelying-to under close-reefed topsails, with the fore-topmast staysail set to keep her in command of her helm.She did not look so gay as she had done earlier in the day, with all her snowy plumage spread before the favouring breeze; but, she was all the better prepared to battle with the elements, and now steadily and sturdily awaited their onset.The struggle was not long delayed.Closer and closer came the whirling water-spout, surrounded by columns of misty spray and accompanied by the fierce wind. The sea was agitated with violent eddies that rocked the ship to her centre every moment; and, above the shriek of the constant squalls tearing through the rigging, and the splash of the boiling water at the foot of the terrible cloud column, we could distinguish a peculiar hoarse sucking noise, as if the whole herd of Neptune’s horses were drinking their fill, and letting us know about it, too!

Then, the next instant, a wild frenzied roar of joy echoed fore and aft the ship, making theJosephinequiver almost down to her bottom timbers.

“Hooray!”

I could scarcely believe my ears; but, as I looked up in surprise and wonder I caught sight of Jake’s ebony face all aglow with delight, his eyes rolling about like a vessel in a heavy seaway and his mouth expanded from ear to ear. He was evidently about to indulge in one of his usual huge guffaws when especially highly pleased and unable to contain himself, as he evidently was now.

“Golly, dat splendiferous!” he cried out in ecstasy. “Um beat cock-fightin’ nohow!”

“Bravo, well done!” I heard Captain Miles’s voice exclaim also at the same time, with a joyous heartiness utterly indescribable.

“Why, what has happened, Jake?” I asked, quite puzzled.

“Wat happen’, eh, Mass’ Tom? I tell um sharp! De sailor man lick de shark arter all! Him dibe under de fis; as um go to grab him; an’ den, dey catch de nasty debbil one big crack wid um boat-hook, an’ pull Mass’ Jackson into der boat. Golly, I’se so berry glad, Mass’ Tom! I’se a’most cry wid joy, for true.”

And then, not content with this expression of his feelings, the sympathetic darkey, sliding down from the rigging where he had been perched, looking on at the terribly exciting scene taking place a moment before in the water, tumbled himself over on the deck in paroxysms of merriment, perfectly unable to restrain himself and keep still.

When I now looked over the side of the ship, which by this time was hove-to, the gig, with Jackson seated in the stern-sheets by Mr Marline, was close under the port quarter, and the rescued swimmer with those who had saved him in the nick of time were just preparing to come on board.

Presently, Jackson and the mate mounted the side-ladder amidst a perfect ovation from the crew, all hands cheering like mad and pressing forwards to shake the fist of him whom they had never expected to see again. After this the gig was veered astern and hoisted up once more to the davits, and theJosephine, bearing round and filling her sails, again resumed her north-east course on the starboard tack. The job of making the port anchor snug inboard was completed later on, when the men had sobered down somewhat from the excitement which had reigned through the ship from the moment Jackson had first fallen overboard—it having been an awfully anxious time throughout his peril by drowning, his hairbreadth escape from the shark, and his ultimate rescue.

Later on, Moggridge told me how the poor fellow escaped from the very jaws of death.

Jackson, he said, when he became aware of being pursued by the bloodthirsty monster, instead of losing his presence of mind, as most men would have done under the circumstances, remained perfectly calm and collected, having once before had an encounter with a shark in his native element.

He swam on steadily towards the ship, apparently unmindful of his enemy; but, he carefully kept his weather eye opened, and when he saw the brute going to turn on his back in order to make a snatch at him, he at once dived under the shark’s body, thus circumventing his attack. Before the monster could recover itself and make a fresh onslaught, Moggridge said, the chief mate caught it a pretty tidy whack over the head with a boat-hook, while Jackson was hauled into the gig at the same time by the other men.

It was a wonderful escape, however, and nothing else was talked of on board for days after.

Strange to say, too, the shark, as if determined not to be easily balked of its prey, followed the ship steadily; and this fact, of course, kept the incident fresh in our minds, even if we had been at all inclined to forget it, the hideous creature’s bottle-like fin ever perceptible in our wake being a constant reminder!

“He’s bound to hab somebody for suah,” said the captain’s mulatto steward Harry, who by the way was the person who had given out that agonised shriek which I had fancied to be poor Jackson’s death knell. “Shark nebber follow ship for nuffin’!”

“No,” observed Captain Miles grimly; “this beggar sha’n’t at all events, if I know it!” and he paced up and down the poop, as if revolving the matter in his mind.

This was the third day after the affair had happened, and the captain was quite incensed at the shark’s pertinacity; for, morning, noon, and night, whenever we logged over the side, there could be seen the sea-pirate’s long sinewy body, floating under our stern and always keeping pace with the ship whether she was going fast or slow—although, as we had little or no wind, the latter was generally the case.

“I fancy, Mr Marline,” said the captain, soon after replying to Harry’s rather frightened observation, the mulatto being very timid and of a cowardly nature, as the fact of his fainting when the cow invaded the cabin would readily tell—“I say, Mr Marline, I think it’s time for us to give that joker down there a lesson, eh?”

“Perhaps you’ll find him too artful to take a hook, cap’en,” answered the mate. “He seems to me an ‘old sojer,’ from the look of him and the regularity of his movements. Just see him now looking up, as if listening to what we were saying!”

“Well, we’ll try him anyway,” said Captain Miles, telling Moggridge to bring the shark hook aft, as he wished to attempt the capture of our unwelcome attendant.

“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the boatswain, going forwards and presently returning with a large steel hook, much about the same size as those they use in butchers’ shops for hanging meat on. A piece of chain was attached to this by a swivel instead of rope or a line, which, although good enough for other fish, the saw-like teeth of the monster of the deep would quickly have bitten through.

“Is the tackle all sound?” asked the captain.

“Aye, aye, sir; sound enough to catch a whale,” responded Moggridge, proceeding to bait the hook with a four-pound piece of salt pork which completely concealed the barbs; and then, a stout half-inch rope having been fastened on to the end of the chain, the whole apparatus was thrown overboard close to where the shark was patrolling the water under our stern.

He sheered off a bit on hearing the splash; but afterwards soon swam up to where the baited hook was towing in our wake, smelling at it cautiously as if to see whether it was advisable for him to bolt the savoury morsel or not. Then, with a disdainful swish of his screw-like tail, he turned round in the water and resumed his station further astern, as if he saw through our attempt to entrap him, and despised it.

“I thought so,” said Mr Marline. “He’s too old a bird to be caught by chaff. You won’t hook him in a blue moon!”

“Don’t you be too cocksure of that,” retorted Captain Miles. “Sharks, I have noticed, frequently resemble cats in the way they will nibble at a bait, and pretend they don’t care about it, when all the while they are dying to gobble it down—just in the same manner as you’ll observe pussy, if you offer her a nice bit of meat, will sniff and turn away her head as if rejecting the morsel with disdain, affecting to make you believe it beneath her notice, only the next moment to abstract it slily from your hand, glad enough to get it! You’ll see presently, Mr Marline, that our friend there will go at the pork again, I’ll bet anything.”

“All right, cap’en,” replied Mr Marline. “I only hope, I’m sure, that your anticipation will prove correct;” but, from the sly quizzical smile on his face and the dry way in which he spoke, I don’t think the mate believed in our hooking the ugly brute, all the same.

After a little time, I noticed two small fishes coming up towards the bait and poking their pointed noses into it as if taking observations, and I called Captain Miles’s attention to them.

“Oh, that’s a good sign,” said he. “Those are pilot-fish, which always accompany his majesty Mr Shark in the way ofaides-de-camp, as you call those smart gentlemen in gay uniforms who are usually seen prancing about the general at a review of troops ashore. Whenever you see the little chaps, the shark himself is never far off, for they precede him as his scouts to warn him of danger as well as tell him if there’s anything worth grabbing in the offing. If it wasn’t for them I believe he’d fare rather badly, as his own sight is bad—fortunately for poor fellows that fall in the water in the way Jackson did t’other day!”

“But, captain,” I remarked, “they must be very bad guides if they do not tell the shark about the hook.”

“Aye,” he replied; “something like ‘the blind leading the blind,’ eh? Still, you know Moggridge has taken care that the bait carefully conceals the snare within, and the pilot-fish are none the wiser. See them now!”

As I watched, I noticed first one and then the other of the little fish smell at the piece of pork, making their observations apparently, after which they swam back to the side of the shark, where they remained for a moment on either side of his snout, as if they were making their report upon the tempting object and giving their master all particulars.

Then the shark, with a fluke of his tail, also advanced closer to the bait, which just then, by a twist of the rope attached to it, the boatswain jerked away.

This was enough for Master Shark, who, thinking he was going to lose the coveted morsel, at once sheered alongside of it, turning over on his back and opening his terrible-looking cavern of a mouth in the same way I had seen him do when he tried to catch poor Jackson. The recollection of that made me shudder all over!

The next moment the monster had bolted both bait and hook, as well as a couple of feet of the chain; but when he turned to sheer off again he was “brought up with a round turn,” as sailors say, by the rope tightening suddenly, the jerk almost making him turn a somersault in the water.

He was not altogether captured yet, however, and his struggles to get free were tremendous. Really, his jaws must have been pretty tough to have not given way under the furious flings and writhings he made to release himself; for the strong half-inch manilla rope that held him tethered was stretched like a fiddle-string, its strands all quivering with the strain upon it.

First to one side of the ship and then to the other the brute bounded in turns, making the sea boil around him like a whirlpool, until finally, after half an hour’s fight of it, he gave in and lay quiet, although not dead yet by any means.

As soon as the shark began to flounder about, I noticed that the pilot-fish went away, leaving him alone in his extremity; and on my mentioning this to Mr Marline he took the opportunity of pointing a moral for my especial benefit.

“It’s just the way in the world, Master Tom,” said he. “Foolish companions lead many a young fellow into a scrape; but as soon as they see him in the mess into which they were the means of inveigling him, they scuttle off, abandoning him to his fate and probably laughing at his troubles too.”

“Aye,” put in Captain Miles, wishing also to improve the occasion; “and if that shark had not been so madly impetuous in rushing at the hook he would never have been caught; in the same way as somebody told me of a certain young gentleman, who, not looking before he leaped, as the proverb says, and only thinking of the end he had in view, galloped down a hill and came to grief—getting a tumble which laid him up for weeks!”

“Oh, Captain Miles,” said I, “you don’t think I’m a shark, do you?”

“Well, not quite so bad as that, youngster,” he replied with one of his cheery laughs; “but, quite as impetuous sometimes, eh, Master Tom?”

I made no answer to this thrust, knowing there was some truth in it, my mother having frequently to call me over the coals for doing things on the spur of the moment, which, as she was aware, I always regretted afterwards.

This thoughtless impulse is a great fault, as I know to my cost; for, it has led me into many a scrape—sometimes to the danger of my life!

While we were talking the shark was still struggling in the water; but when he grew tolerably composed, only an occasional splash of his tail showing that he yet lived, the men began to make preparations for hauling him on board.

The bight of a rope was made into a running knot and hove round the body of the animal; when, the men hauling away with a will at the other end of the line, which was passed through a snatch-block hung in the rigging, the captive was soon bowsed up to the mizzen chains.

No sooner, however, was he got out of the water than the hampered monster appeared to be imbued with fresh vitality, lashing his tail about and splintering the wood-work of the bulwarks as if it had been brown paper; but when the slip-knot was drawn tighter this controlled his frantic movements a bit, and Jackson, who was allowed precedence of the rest of the sailors from his previous acquaintance with the savage brute, then advanced with a sharp butcher’s knife, which he had borrowed from the cook, in order to give his old enemy his quietus.

Taking care not to get within reach of either the jaws or ponderous tail of the shark, he leaned over the side of the ship and stabbed it in the neck; after which, with two long slashing cuts he severed the head, which quickly splashed down into the sea under the counter, sinking to the bottom at once from the mere weight of the bone it contained. Jackson then proceeded, by the captain’s orders, to rip open the animal’s stomach; but it was found to contain nothing digestible but the piece of pork which had led to the brute’s capture, the shark evidently having been lately on short allowance.

When, however, Jackson extracted the hook from the bait, he started back suddenly as if he had received a blow, clutching hold of the shrouds to steady himself.

I thought he was going to faint.

“Hullo!” exclaimed Captain Miles; “what’s the matter?”

“See here!” replied the young sailor, holding up in his hand something dark and soft looking, with a bit of ribbon fluttering from one end.

“Well, what is it?” repeated the captain.

“My cap,” said Jackson solemnly; “and, but for the mercy of God I also might have been in the same place!”

It gave us all a thrill, I can tell you, the sight of this old cap, which must have floated off Jackson’s head when he dived to escape the rush of the shark. The brute had swallowed it, no doubt, greedily, thinking it had got the owner.

As for Jackson himself, when he clambered up over the side again and came inboard, his face was as white as a table-cloth. I did not hear him, either, joking about the deck all day afterwards in his usual way; although the young sailor, besides being the smartest of the hands at his work, had hitherto been the life of the crew, always laughing and chaffing the others, as well as being the first to lead a song on the fo’c’s’le of an evening. The startling discovery of his cap in the shark’s stomach, coupled with the reflection that, had not Providence intervened in his behalf, he might have also been swallowed up, seemed to have completely sobered him for the time.

The other hands, however, were not much affected by the incident; and, presently, when the bight of the rope round the shark was unloosed and the body allowed to drop overboard, Moggridge sang out in a triumphant voice: “Now we’ve got rid of Jonah, we’ll have a shift of wind at last!”

“Why does the boatswain say that?” I asked Captain Miles. “What had the shark to do with the weather?”

“Well, you see, my boy,” he answered, “sailors are generally superstitious, and they always think that killing a shark brings good luck of some sort. Now, the best sort of luck we can have would be a good stiff south-wester, or something of that sort, to drive us on our way across the Atlantic, as we have experienced nothing but light breezes since we left the islands, barely making five hundred miles’ distance from Sombrero. We’ll never get to England at this rate in a month of Sundays.”

Unlike most prophecies referring to the weather, which, as a rule, must generally be made after the event to be correct, that of the old boatswain, curiously enough, turned out a true one, for, although we had been only favoured with light winds from the time of Jackson’s escape from the shark and all the while the ill-fated brute followed in our wake like a phantom of evil, not many hours elapsed after we had captured the animal before a strong southerly breeze sprang up. This, shifting round later on more to the westwards, came right astern of the vessel—thus enabling her to spread studding-sails and sky-sails, exposing every rag of canvas she could carry from truck to deck.

The wind, too, fortunately, was not a cat’s-paw either, like the shifting airs we had previously had, for it lasted us ten days at one stretch, carrying us well to the south-east of Bermuda and almost more than half-way to the Azores.

During all this time, no very remarkable incident occurred on board, save that, whether owing to change of air or through some deficiency of their native diet, three out of the half a dozen turtle, which Captain Miles was hoping to carry home for the lord mayor’s banquet, died one by one. They were hove over the side in the same fashion; and, as I watched their shelly backs floating astern, I could see flocks of sea-birds settle down on them, evidently rejoicing in having such an unexpected feast. A pig, too, was killed one day, supplying us in the cabin with savoury roast pork, which was an agreeable change from the salt beef and boiled fowls that were our ordinary fare—although, as the hen-coops were becoming rapidly untenanted, I should not have much longer to complain of any monotony of the latter item of our diet, I thought.

But, if there was nothing to chronicle of any stirring character I enjoyed the voyage immensely, being as happy as the day was long.

It seemed like paradise to me, sailing on and on before the genial western wind over the wide blue sea, with an azure sky above unflecked by a cloud in the daytime and studded with a glorious galaxy of stars at night that made the heavens look like a casket of jewels.

Before long, I became quite a sailor too, being able to make my way aloft to the cross-trees without help, and I was learning by familiarity every rope whose name Moggridge had before taught me; for, when the captain saw that I was careful through his repeated cautions, and also had Jackson to look after me, he withdrew the embargo he had placed on my mounting the rigging. Indeed, he was kind enough to let me do duty as an “extra hand,” as I loved to consider myself, in Mr Marline’s watch, or when he himself was on deck.

Another great delight I had consisted in going out on the bowsprit and fishing for bonitoes and dolphins with a bit of red or white cloth tied to a hook, in the same way as one goes “reeling” for mackerel in the Channel; and many a savoury supper, cooked surreptitiously by Jake in his friend the cook’s caboose, had I on the sly at night in the fo’c’s’le, when Captain Miles thought I had turned in and was snug asleep in my bunk!

Day after day passed alike, with the exception, of course, of Sundays, when the captain read prayers on the poop to the hands clustered round, all dressed out in their best shore clothes, and with the decks especially holystoned in honour of the day—the ship the while making some couple of hundred miles every twenty-four hours on her onward way, while scarcely shifting a sail or altering a brace from week’s end to week’s end.

It was getting on towards the end of August, the wind having continued fair from about the middle of the month and the weather being all that could be desired; when, one morning, that of our fifteenth day out from Grenada, I recollect, I noticed that Captain Miles looked rather anxious after coming on deck, shortly before our breakfast hour, “eight bells,” according to his usual custom when everything was going on all right.

He first glanced aloft, sailor-like, to see that everything was correct with the rigging and the sails all drawing, and then he cast an eye forward, noting the orderly arrangements there; finally, walking across to the binnacle in order to observe what course the ship was steering, and asking Mr Marline, who had charge of the morning watch, how she was going.

“Eight knots good, sir, last heave of the log,” promptly said the mate.

“That’s all right,” observed the captain; “but, I don’t like the look ahead. It seems to me as if there’s going to be a change.”

“Indeed?” replied Mr Marline; “I haven’t noticed anything at all unusual. The wind has kept steady from the westwards ever since I came on the poop at four bells, the same as we left it overnight.”

“But, the glass is going down, Marline,” rejoined Captain Miles; “and don’t you notice the sea is getting a bit cross off our port bow? It strikes me we’ll have a shift of wind presently from the eastwards, if nothing more. However, we oughtn’t to grumble, for ten days of such fine weather is rather unusual in these latitudes, you know, at this time of year.”

“Yes, certainly,” replied the mate; “we’ve made good use of the time, too.”

“Aye, that we have,” replied the captain. “I fixed our position last night by a couple of lunars.”

“And I suppose it corroborates your observation of yesterday, eh?”

“Pretty nearly,” said Captain Miles; “calculating for the distance we’ve run since, I should think we’re somewhere about 30 degrees North and 52 degrees West.”

“Well, that’s strange!” exclaimed Mr Marline. “We’ve got to the limit of the north-east trade without having once the benefit of it from the day we started, the winds having been south-east and southerly till they shifted round to the westwards!”

“So they have,” said the captain; “still, that has been all the more lively for us. But I don’t like this change brewing up. Look at the clouds now!”

“Ha, they’re getting up at last!” replied the other. “I see you were right, the change will come from the eastwards.”

Up to now it had been a beautifully bright morning, the sky without a scrap of vapour to obscure its lucent expanse, and the sea lit up with golden sunshine that made it appear bluer somehow or other; but, even while Captain Miles and Mr Marline were speaking, a low bank of cloud arose along the eastern horizon, and this, spreading gradually up towards the zenith, soon shut out the half-risen sun and his rays, casting a sombre tinge at the same time on the ocean below.

“All hands shorten sail!” shouted the captain, and the studding-sail halliards being let go by the run, theJosephine, which a moment before had looked like a bird with outspread wings, had these latter clipped off in a jiffey, the light sails bagging with the wind like balloons as they were hauled down; and, soon afterwards, the booms projecting from the yard-arms on which they had been rigged out, were sent below and laid with the other spare spars along the bulwarks in the waist.

While the crew were busy at this task, the strong breeze, which but a short time before had filled our canvas, gradually died away until there did not seem to be a puff of air stirring, the larger sails now hanging loose or else flapping idly against the masts.

Captain Miles, however, did not stop merely at taking in the studding-sails, for the royals were next furled as well as the topgallant-sails; and then, under reefed topsails and courses, in addition to her jib and spanker which were still set, he awaited what the weather might have in store for his vessel. An experienced seaman, such as he was, when forewarned, as in the present instance, by a falling barometer, always prepares for eventualities of the worst possible character, never leaving anything to chance or neglecting to take proper precautions. By not doing so many a gallant ship with all hands on board is lost through the carelessness of bad navigators.

The cloud in the east, meanwhile, rose higher in the heavens, showing a bit of clear sky for a moment at its base, when it began to travel towards the ship at great speed, but in a very eccentric fashion, whirling round and looking as if it were dancing on the surface of the water.

“I can’t make it out,” said Mr Marline in a puzzled sort of way. “There must be a good deal of wind at the back of it; but, why doesn’t it keep a straight course towards us, eh sir?”

“It’s a whirlwind, I fancy,” replied Captain Miles; “I’ve seen a good many in the South Atlantic, near the African coast, although never one before in these latitudes so far from land.”

“Are they dangerous at all, captain?” I asked, rather anxiously.

“No, Tom, not unless you got in the vortex of one, when it might twist the spars out of a ship perhaps, though I never saw any mischief done by one myself. Mind your helm,” added Captain Miles to the man at the wheel, whose office at present was a sinecure, for the ship was almost becalmed and the rudder swaying to and fro from port to starboard as it listed. “If the wind catches us suddenly we may be taken aback, and I want you to be ready when I give the word.”

This made the sailor who was “taking his trick” all alert, instead of lounging over the spokes as he had been doing previously, listening to our talk.

Presently, a quick puff of air came from the west again, and theJosephinebegan to gather way; but almost in an instant afterwards the wind shifted right ahead, coming down with the cloud, and the yards were at once braced round, the vessel being headed towards the north.

The cloud approached rapidly now on our weather bow; and, as it got nearer, we could see that its bottom edge, which was attenuated to the proportions of a slender pillar of vapour, seemed to be united to the water, the sea, where it joined the surface, being greatly agitated, foaming up in columns of spray that were circled round and round and then drawn up in corkscrew fashion into the denser body above.

“Why, it’s a water-spout!” exclaimed Mr Marline in great surprise.

“So it is,” said the captain, a bit startled and perplexed too. “Look sharp, Marline, and see to the hatches being battened down and the scuppers open; for, if the blessed thing bursts immediately overhead, it will flood our decks with a deluge of water worse than if we had shipped a heavy sea.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” answered the other, scuttling down the poop-ladder to attend to these orders; but he had hardly left the captain’s side ere a terrific gust of wind struck us, coming from the same direction as the water-spout.

The instant after, the wind shifted round to the opposite quarter, and then a series of squalls, hot and strong, seemed to assail us from almost every point of the compass at once.

“Hands shorten sail!” roared out Captain Miles again, using the palms of his two hands before his mouth for a speaking trumpet. “Be smart, men! Some of you brail up the spanker here and man the jib downhaul. Right! Now, away aloft the rest of you; we must have those topsails close-reefed. Cast-off the halliards—there—cheerily, men; that’s the way to do it!”

No sooner were the hands down from the topsail-yards, however, than he had them up again to take in the courses, which had already been clewed up and were now furled; theJosephinelying-to under close-reefed topsails, with the fore-topmast staysail set to keep her in command of her helm.

She did not look so gay as she had done earlier in the day, with all her snowy plumage spread before the favouring breeze; but, she was all the better prepared to battle with the elements, and now steadily and sturdily awaited their onset.

The struggle was not long delayed.

Closer and closer came the whirling water-spout, surrounded by columns of misty spray and accompanied by the fierce wind. The sea was agitated with violent eddies that rocked the ship to her centre every moment; and, above the shriek of the constant squalls tearing through the rigging, and the splash of the boiling water at the foot of the terrible cloud column, we could distinguish a peculiar hoarse sucking noise, as if the whole herd of Neptune’s horses were drinking their fill, and letting us know about it, too!

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