Chapter Four.

Chapter Four.Life at Leigh Hall—The Launch of the “Arrandoon”—Trial Trips—A Row and a Fight—“Freezing Powders.”As the owner of a large house, the head of a county family, and a landed proprietor, there were many duties devolved upon Ralph Leigh when at home, from which he never for a moment thought of shrinking. Though a great part of the day was spent in shooting, rowing, or fishing, the mornings were never his own, nor the evenings either. He had a knack of giving nice dinners, and young though he was, he also possessed the happy knack of making all his guests feel perfectly at home, so that when carriages drew round, and it was time to start for their various homes, everybody was astonished at the speed with which the evening had sped away; and that was proof positive it had passed most pleasantly.They kept early hours at Leigh Hall, and so they did at every house all over the quiet, romantic country, and no doubt they were all the better for it, and all the more healthy.But our heroes must be forgiven, if, after the last guest had gone, after the lights were out in the banqueting hall, and the doors closed for the night, they assembled in a cosy, fire-brightened room upstairs, all by their three selves, for a quiet confab and talk, a little exchange of ideas, a little conversation about the days o’ auld lang syne, and their hopes of adventures in the far north, whither they were so soon to sail.About once a fortnight, McBain, whom we may as well call Captain McBain now—Captain McBain, of the steam yachtArrandoon—used to run down to Leigh Hall to report progress; the “social hour,” as Rory called it, was then doubly dear to them all, and I’m not at all sure that they did not upon these occasions steal half an hour at least from midnight. You see they were very happy; they were happy with the happiness of anticipation. They never dreamt of failure in the expedition on which they were about to embark.“In the lexicon of youth, which fate reservesFor a great manhood, there is no such word as—fail.”True, but had they known the dangers they were to encounter, the trials they would have to come through, brave as they undoubtedly were, their hearts might have throbbed less joyfully. They had, however, the most perfect confidence in each other, just as brothers might have. The friendship, begun long ago between them, cemented, during the cruise of theSnowbird, in many an hour of difficulty and danger—for had they not come through fire and death together?—was strengthened during their residence at Leigh Hall. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that their affection for each other was brotherly to a degree. Dissimilar in character in many ways they were, but this same dissimilarity seemed but to increase their mutual regard and esteem. Faults each one of them had—who on this earth has not?—and each could see those of the other, if he did not always notice his own. Says Burns—“O would some power the giftie gie us,To see ourselves as others see us,It would from mony a fautie free us.”Probably, individually they did not forget these lines, and so the one was most careful in guarding against anything that might hurt the feelings of the others. Is not this true friendship?But as to what is called “chaff,” they had all learned long ago to be proof against that—I’m not sure they did not even like it; Rory did, I know; he said so one day; and on Allan asking him his reason, “My reason is it?” says Rory; “sure enough, boys, chaffing metres with laughing; where you find the chaff you find the laugh, and laughing is better to a man than cod-liver oil. And that’s my reason!”And Rory’s romantic sayings and doings were oftentimes the subject of a considerable deal of chaff and fun; so, too, was what the young Irishman was pleased to call Ralph’s English “stolidity” and Allan’s Scottish fire and intensity of patriotism; but never did the blood of one of our boys get hot, never did their lips tighten in anger or their cheeks pale with vexation.Just on one occasion—which I now record lest I forget it—was boy Rory, as he was still affectionately called, very nearly losing his temper under a rattling fire of chaff from Allan and Ralph, who were in extra good spirits. It happened months after they had sailed in theArrandoon. All at once that day Rory grew suddenly quiet, and the smile that still remained on his face was only round the lips, and didn’t ripple round the eyes. It was a sad kind of a smile; then he jumped up and ran away from the table.“We’ve offended him,” said Allan, looking quite serious.“I hope not,” said Ralph, growing serious in turn.“I’ll go and look him up;” this from Allan.“No, that you won’t!” put in McBain.“Leave boy Rory alone; he’ll come to presently.”Meanwhile, ridiculous as it may seem, Rory had sped away forward to the dispensary, where he found the doctor. “Doctor, dear,” cried Rory, “give me a blue pill at once—a couple of them, if you like, for sure it isn’t well I am!”“Oh!” said the surgeon, “liver a bit out of order, eh?”“Liver!” cried Rory; “I know by the nasty temper that’s on me that there isn’t a bit of liver left in me worth mentioning! There now, give me the pills.”The doctor laughed, but Rory had his bolus; then he came aft again, smiling, confessing to his comrades what a ninny he had very nearly been making of himself. Just like Rory!The bearing of our young heroes towards Captain McBain was invariably respectful and affectionate; they both loved and admired him, and, indeed, he was worthy of all their esteem. In wealth there is power, but in wisdom worth, and Ralph, Rory, and Allan felt this truth if they never expressed it. McBain had really raised himself to the position he now held; he was a living proof that—“Whate’er a man dares he can do.”I will not deny, however that McBain possessed a little genius to begin with; but here is old Ap, once but a poor boat-builder, with never a spark of genius in him, superintending the construction of a noble ship. In him we have an example of industry and perseverance pure and simple.TheArrandoonmade speedy progress on the stocks, and the anxious day was near at hand when she would leave her native timbers, and slide gracefully and auspiciously it was to be hoped, into the smooth waters of the Clyde.That day came at last, and with it came thousands to view the launch. With it came Mrs McGregor and Allan’s sister; and the latter was to break the tiny phial of wine and name the ship!On the platform beneath, and closely adjoining the bows of theArrandoon, were numerous gentlemen and ladies; conspicuous among the former was Rory. He was full of earnest and pleasant excitement. Conspicuous among the latter was Helen Edith. She certainly never looked more lovely than she did now. The ceremony she was about to engage in, in which, indeed, she was chief actress, was just a trifle too much for her delicate nerves, and as she stood, bouquet in hand, with a slight flush on her cheek and a sparkle in her eye, with head slightly bent, she looked like a bride at the altar. Rory stood near her; perhaps his vicinity comforted her, as did his remarks, to which, however, he met with but little response.I am beginning to think that Rory loved this sweet child; if he did it was a love that was purely Platonic, and it needed be none the less sincere for all that. As for Helen Edith—but hark! A gun rings out from the deck of theArrandooncausing every window in the vicinity to rattle again, and the steeples to nod. The gallant ship moves off down the slip slowly—slowly—slowly, yes, slowly but steadily, swerving neither to starboard nor larboard, quicker now faster still. Will she float? Our heroes’ hearts stand still. McBain is pale and breathes not. She slows, she almost stops, now she is over the hitch and on again, on—on—and on—and into the water. Hurrah! You should have heard that cheer, and Rory shakes hands with Helen Edith, and compliments her, and positively there are tears in the foolish boy’s eyes. There was a deal of hand-shaking, I can assure you, after the launch, and a deal of joy expressed, and if the truth be told, more than one prayer breathed for the future safety of theArrandoonand her gallant crew. There was lunch after launch in the saloon of the new yacht, at which Allan’s mother presided with the same quiet dignity she was wont to maintain at the castle that gave the ship its name.McBain made a speech, and a good one, too, after Ralph had spoken a few words. Poor Ralph! speaking was certainly not his strong point. But there was no hesitancy about McBain, and no nervousness either, and during its delivery he stood bolt upright in his place, as straight as an arrow, and his words were manly and straightforward. Allan felt proud of his foster-father. But Rory came next. For once in his life he hadn’t the slightest intention of making anybody laugh. But because he tried not to, he did; and when Irish bull after Irish bull came rattling out, “Och!” thinks Rory to himself, “seriousness isn’t my forte after all;” then he simply gave himself rein, and expressed himself so comically that there was not a dry eye in the room, for tears come with laughing as well as weeping.There was a deal to be done to theArrandoon—in her, on her, and around her—after she was launched, before she was ready; but it would serve no good purpose and only waste time to describe her completion, for we long to be “steam up” and away to seaen routefor the starry north.She was a gallant sight, theArrandoon, as she stood away out to sea, past the rocky shores of Bute, bound south on her trial trip by the measured mile. Fifteen hundred tons burden was she, with tall and tapering masts: lower, main, topgallant, and royal; not one higher; no star-gazers, sky-scrapers, or moon-rakers; she wouldn’t have to rake much for the wind in the stormy seas they were going to. Then there was the funnel, such a funnel as a man with an eye in his head likes to see, not a mere pipe of a thing, but a great wide armful of a funnel, with the tiniest bit of rake on it; so too had the masts, though theArrandoondid not look half so saucy as theSnowbird. TheArrandoonhad more solidity about her, and more soberness and staidness, as became her—a ship about to be pitted against dangers unknown.Her figure-head was the bust of a fair and beautiful girl.That day, on her trial trip, the ladies were on board; and Rory made this remark to Helen Edith:“The fair image on our bows, Helen, will soon be gazing wistfully north.”“Ah! you seem to long for that,” said Helen, “but,” she added archly, “mamma and I look forward to the time when she will be gazing just as wistfully south again.”Rory laughed, and the conversation assumed a livelier tone.Steamers, I always think, are very similar in one way to colts, they require a certain amount of breaking in, they seldom do well on their trial trip. TheArrandoonwas no exception; she promised well at first, and fulfilled that promise for twenty good miles and two; then she intimated to the engineers in charge that she had had enough of it. Well, this was a good opportunity of trying her sailing qualities, and in these she exceeded all expectations.McBain rubbed his hands with delight, for no yacht at Cowes ever sailed more close to the wind, came round on shorter length, or made more knots an hour. He promised himself a treat, and that treat was to run out some day with her in half a gale of wind, when there were no ladies on board. He would then see what theArrandooncould do under sail, and what she couldn’t. He did this; and the very next day after he came back he made the journey to Leigh Hall, and stopped there for a whole week. That was proof enough that the captain was pleased with his ship.Early in the month of the succeeding February, theArrandoonlay at the Broomielaw, with the blue-peter unfurled, steam up, all hands on board, and even the pilot. That very morning they were to begin their adventurous voyage. Ralph, Allan, and Rory would be picked up at Oban, and the vessel now only awaited the arrival of McBain before casting off and dropping down stream.The Broomielaw didn’t look pretty that morning, nor very comfortable. Although the hills all around Glasgow were white with snow, over the city itself hung the smoke like a murky pall. There was mud under feet, and a Scotch mist held possession of the air. Here was nothing cheering to look at, slop-shops and pawn-shops, and Jack-frequented dram-shops, bales of wet merchandise on the quay, and eave-dripping dock-houses; nor were the people pleasant to be among; the only human beings that did seem to enjoy themselves were the ragged urchins who had taken shelter in the empty barrels that lined the back of the warehouses; they had shelter, and sugar to eat. McBain thought he wouldn’t be sorry when he was safely round the Mull of Cantyre.“Come on, Jack,” cried one of these tiny gutter-snipes, rushing out of his tub; “come on, here’s a row.”There was a row; apparently a fight was going on, for a ring had formed a little way down the street; and simply out of curiosity McBain went to have a peep over the shoulders of the mob. As usual, the policemen were very busy in some other part of the street.Only a poor little itinerant nigger boy lying on the ground, being savagely kicked by a burly and half-drunken street porter.“Oh!” the little fellow was shrieking; “what for you kickee my shins so? Oh!”McBain entered the ring in a very businesslike fashion indeed; he begged for room; he told the mob he meant thrashing the ruffian if he did not apologise to the poor lad. Then he intimated as much to the ruffian himself.“Come on,” was the defiant reply, as the fellow threw himself into a fighting attitude. “Man, your mither’ll no ken ye when you gang home the nicht.”“We’ll see,” said McBain, quietly.For the next three minutes this ruffianly porter’s movements were confined to a series of beautiful falls, that would have brought down the house in a circus. When he rose the last time it was merely to assume a sitting position, “Gie us your hand,” he said to McBain. “You’re the first chiel that ever dang Jock the Wraggler. I admire ye, man—I admire ye.”“Come with me, my little fellow,” said McBain to the nigger boy; and he took him kindly by the hand. Meanwhile a woman who had been standing by placed a curious-looking bundle in the lad’s hand, and bade him be a good boy, and keep out of Jock the Wraggler’s way next time.“I’ll see you a little way home, Jim,” continued McBain, when they were clear of the crowd. “Jim is what they call you, isn’t it?”“Jim,” said the blackamoor, “is what dey are good enough to call me. But, sah, Jim has no home.”“And where do you sleep at night, Jim?”“Anywhere, sah. Jim ain’t pertikler; some time it is a sugar barrel, an oder time a door-step.”A low, sneering laugh was at this moment heard from the mysterious bundle Jim carried. McBain started.“Don’t be afeared, sah,” said Jim; “it’s only de cockatoo, sah!”“Have you any money, Jim?” asked McBain.“Only de cockatoo, sah,” replied Jim; “but la!” he added, “I’se a puffuk gemlam (gentleman), sah—I’se got a heart as high as de steeple, sah!”“Well, Jim,” said McBain, laughing, “would you like to sail in a big ship with me, and—and—black my boots?”“Golly! yes, sah; dat would suit Jim all to nuffin.”“But suppose, Jim, we went far away—as far as the North Pole?”“Don’t care, sah,” said Jim, emphatically; “der never was a pole yet as Jim couldn’t climb.”“Have you a surname, Jim?”“No, sah,” replied poor Jim; “I’se got no belongings but de cockatoo.”“I mean, Jim, have you a second name?”“La! no, sir,” said Jim; “one name plenty good enough for a nigga boy. Only—yes now I ’members, in de ship dat bring me from Sierra Leone last summer de cap’n never call me nuffin else but Freezin’ Powders.”McBain did not take long to make up his mind about anything; he determined to take this strange boy with him, so he took him to a shop and bought him a cage for the cockatoo, and then the two marched on board together, talking away as if they had known each other for years.Freezing Powders was sent below to be washed and dressed and made decent. The ship was passing Inellan when he came on deck again. Jim was thunderstruck; he had never seen snow before.“La! sah,” he cried, pointing with outstretched arm towards the hills; “look, sah, look; dey never like dat before. De Great Massa has been and painted dem all white.”

As the owner of a large house, the head of a county family, and a landed proprietor, there were many duties devolved upon Ralph Leigh when at home, from which he never for a moment thought of shrinking. Though a great part of the day was spent in shooting, rowing, or fishing, the mornings were never his own, nor the evenings either. He had a knack of giving nice dinners, and young though he was, he also possessed the happy knack of making all his guests feel perfectly at home, so that when carriages drew round, and it was time to start for their various homes, everybody was astonished at the speed with which the evening had sped away; and that was proof positive it had passed most pleasantly.

They kept early hours at Leigh Hall, and so they did at every house all over the quiet, romantic country, and no doubt they were all the better for it, and all the more healthy.

But our heroes must be forgiven, if, after the last guest had gone, after the lights were out in the banqueting hall, and the doors closed for the night, they assembled in a cosy, fire-brightened room upstairs, all by their three selves, for a quiet confab and talk, a little exchange of ideas, a little conversation about the days o’ auld lang syne, and their hopes of adventures in the far north, whither they were so soon to sail.

About once a fortnight, McBain, whom we may as well call Captain McBain now—Captain McBain, of the steam yachtArrandoon—used to run down to Leigh Hall to report progress; the “social hour,” as Rory called it, was then doubly dear to them all, and I’m not at all sure that they did not upon these occasions steal half an hour at least from midnight. You see they were very happy; they were happy with the happiness of anticipation. They never dreamt of failure in the expedition on which they were about to embark.

“In the lexicon of youth, which fate reservesFor a great manhood, there is no such word as—fail.”

“In the lexicon of youth, which fate reservesFor a great manhood, there is no such word as—fail.”

True, but had they known the dangers they were to encounter, the trials they would have to come through, brave as they undoubtedly were, their hearts might have throbbed less joyfully. They had, however, the most perfect confidence in each other, just as brothers might have. The friendship, begun long ago between them, cemented, during the cruise of theSnowbird, in many an hour of difficulty and danger—for had they not come through fire and death together?—was strengthened during their residence at Leigh Hall. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that their affection for each other was brotherly to a degree. Dissimilar in character in many ways they were, but this same dissimilarity seemed but to increase their mutual regard and esteem. Faults each one of them had—who on this earth has not?—and each could see those of the other, if he did not always notice his own. Says Burns—

“O would some power the giftie gie us,To see ourselves as others see us,It would from mony a fautie free us.”

“O would some power the giftie gie us,To see ourselves as others see us,It would from mony a fautie free us.”

Probably, individually they did not forget these lines, and so the one was most careful in guarding against anything that might hurt the feelings of the others. Is not this true friendship?

But as to what is called “chaff,” they had all learned long ago to be proof against that—I’m not sure they did not even like it; Rory did, I know; he said so one day; and on Allan asking him his reason, “My reason is it?” says Rory; “sure enough, boys, chaffing metres with laughing; where you find the chaff you find the laugh, and laughing is better to a man than cod-liver oil. And that’s my reason!”

And Rory’s romantic sayings and doings were oftentimes the subject of a considerable deal of chaff and fun; so, too, was what the young Irishman was pleased to call Ralph’s English “stolidity” and Allan’s Scottish fire and intensity of patriotism; but never did the blood of one of our boys get hot, never did their lips tighten in anger or their cheeks pale with vexation.

Just on one occasion—which I now record lest I forget it—was boy Rory, as he was still affectionately called, very nearly losing his temper under a rattling fire of chaff from Allan and Ralph, who were in extra good spirits. It happened months after they had sailed in theArrandoon. All at once that day Rory grew suddenly quiet, and the smile that still remained on his face was only round the lips, and didn’t ripple round the eyes. It was a sad kind of a smile; then he jumped up and ran away from the table.

“We’ve offended him,” said Allan, looking quite serious.

“I hope not,” said Ralph, growing serious in turn.

“I’ll go and look him up;” this from Allan.

“No, that you won’t!” put in McBain.

“Leave boy Rory alone; he’ll come to presently.”

Meanwhile, ridiculous as it may seem, Rory had sped away forward to the dispensary, where he found the doctor. “Doctor, dear,” cried Rory, “give me a blue pill at once—a couple of them, if you like, for sure it isn’t well I am!”

“Oh!” said the surgeon, “liver a bit out of order, eh?”

“Liver!” cried Rory; “I know by the nasty temper that’s on me that there isn’t a bit of liver left in me worth mentioning! There now, give me the pills.”

The doctor laughed, but Rory had his bolus; then he came aft again, smiling, confessing to his comrades what a ninny he had very nearly been making of himself. Just like Rory!

The bearing of our young heroes towards Captain McBain was invariably respectful and affectionate; they both loved and admired him, and, indeed, he was worthy of all their esteem. In wealth there is power, but in wisdom worth, and Ralph, Rory, and Allan felt this truth if they never expressed it. McBain had really raised himself to the position he now held; he was a living proof that—

“Whate’er a man dares he can do.”

“Whate’er a man dares he can do.”

I will not deny, however that McBain possessed a little genius to begin with; but here is old Ap, once but a poor boat-builder, with never a spark of genius in him, superintending the construction of a noble ship. In him we have an example of industry and perseverance pure and simple.

TheArrandoonmade speedy progress on the stocks, and the anxious day was near at hand when she would leave her native timbers, and slide gracefully and auspiciously it was to be hoped, into the smooth waters of the Clyde.

That day came at last, and with it came thousands to view the launch. With it came Mrs McGregor and Allan’s sister; and the latter was to break the tiny phial of wine and name the ship!

On the platform beneath, and closely adjoining the bows of theArrandoon, were numerous gentlemen and ladies; conspicuous among the former was Rory. He was full of earnest and pleasant excitement. Conspicuous among the latter was Helen Edith. She certainly never looked more lovely than she did now. The ceremony she was about to engage in, in which, indeed, she was chief actress, was just a trifle too much for her delicate nerves, and as she stood, bouquet in hand, with a slight flush on her cheek and a sparkle in her eye, with head slightly bent, she looked like a bride at the altar. Rory stood near her; perhaps his vicinity comforted her, as did his remarks, to which, however, he met with but little response.

I am beginning to think that Rory loved this sweet child; if he did it was a love that was purely Platonic, and it needed be none the less sincere for all that. As for Helen Edith—but hark! A gun rings out from the deck of theArrandooncausing every window in the vicinity to rattle again, and the steeples to nod. The gallant ship moves off down the slip slowly—slowly—slowly, yes, slowly but steadily, swerving neither to starboard nor larboard, quicker now faster still. Will she float? Our heroes’ hearts stand still. McBain is pale and breathes not. She slows, she almost stops, now she is over the hitch and on again, on—on—and on—and into the water. Hurrah! You should have heard that cheer, and Rory shakes hands with Helen Edith, and compliments her, and positively there are tears in the foolish boy’s eyes. There was a deal of hand-shaking, I can assure you, after the launch, and a deal of joy expressed, and if the truth be told, more than one prayer breathed for the future safety of theArrandoonand her gallant crew. There was lunch after launch in the saloon of the new yacht, at which Allan’s mother presided with the same quiet dignity she was wont to maintain at the castle that gave the ship its name.

McBain made a speech, and a good one, too, after Ralph had spoken a few words. Poor Ralph! speaking was certainly not his strong point. But there was no hesitancy about McBain, and no nervousness either, and during its delivery he stood bolt upright in his place, as straight as an arrow, and his words were manly and straightforward. Allan felt proud of his foster-father. But Rory came next. For once in his life he hadn’t the slightest intention of making anybody laugh. But because he tried not to, he did; and when Irish bull after Irish bull came rattling out, “Och!” thinks Rory to himself, “seriousness isn’t my forte after all;” then he simply gave himself rein, and expressed himself so comically that there was not a dry eye in the room, for tears come with laughing as well as weeping.

There was a deal to be done to theArrandoon—in her, on her, and around her—after she was launched, before she was ready; but it would serve no good purpose and only waste time to describe her completion, for we long to be “steam up” and away to seaen routefor the starry north.

She was a gallant sight, theArrandoon, as she stood away out to sea, past the rocky shores of Bute, bound south on her trial trip by the measured mile. Fifteen hundred tons burden was she, with tall and tapering masts: lower, main, topgallant, and royal; not one higher; no star-gazers, sky-scrapers, or moon-rakers; she wouldn’t have to rake much for the wind in the stormy seas they were going to. Then there was the funnel, such a funnel as a man with an eye in his head likes to see, not a mere pipe of a thing, but a great wide armful of a funnel, with the tiniest bit of rake on it; so too had the masts, though theArrandoondid not look half so saucy as theSnowbird. TheArrandoonhad more solidity about her, and more soberness and staidness, as became her—a ship about to be pitted against dangers unknown.

Her figure-head was the bust of a fair and beautiful girl.

That day, on her trial trip, the ladies were on board; and Rory made this remark to Helen Edith:

“The fair image on our bows, Helen, will soon be gazing wistfully north.”

“Ah! you seem to long for that,” said Helen, “but,” she added archly, “mamma and I look forward to the time when she will be gazing just as wistfully south again.”

Rory laughed, and the conversation assumed a livelier tone.

Steamers, I always think, are very similar in one way to colts, they require a certain amount of breaking in, they seldom do well on their trial trip. TheArrandoonwas no exception; she promised well at first, and fulfilled that promise for twenty good miles and two; then she intimated to the engineers in charge that she had had enough of it. Well, this was a good opportunity of trying her sailing qualities, and in these she exceeded all expectations.

McBain rubbed his hands with delight, for no yacht at Cowes ever sailed more close to the wind, came round on shorter length, or made more knots an hour. He promised himself a treat, and that treat was to run out some day with her in half a gale of wind, when there were no ladies on board. He would then see what theArrandooncould do under sail, and what she couldn’t. He did this; and the very next day after he came back he made the journey to Leigh Hall, and stopped there for a whole week. That was proof enough that the captain was pleased with his ship.

Early in the month of the succeeding February, theArrandoonlay at the Broomielaw, with the blue-peter unfurled, steam up, all hands on board, and even the pilot. That very morning they were to begin their adventurous voyage. Ralph, Allan, and Rory would be picked up at Oban, and the vessel now only awaited the arrival of McBain before casting off and dropping down stream.

The Broomielaw didn’t look pretty that morning, nor very comfortable. Although the hills all around Glasgow were white with snow, over the city itself hung the smoke like a murky pall. There was mud under feet, and a Scotch mist held possession of the air. Here was nothing cheering to look at, slop-shops and pawn-shops, and Jack-frequented dram-shops, bales of wet merchandise on the quay, and eave-dripping dock-houses; nor were the people pleasant to be among; the only human beings that did seem to enjoy themselves were the ragged urchins who had taken shelter in the empty barrels that lined the back of the warehouses; they had shelter, and sugar to eat. McBain thought he wouldn’t be sorry when he was safely round the Mull of Cantyre.

“Come on, Jack,” cried one of these tiny gutter-snipes, rushing out of his tub; “come on, here’s a row.”

There was a row; apparently a fight was going on, for a ring had formed a little way down the street; and simply out of curiosity McBain went to have a peep over the shoulders of the mob. As usual, the policemen were very busy in some other part of the street.

Only a poor little itinerant nigger boy lying on the ground, being savagely kicked by a burly and half-drunken street porter.

“Oh!” the little fellow was shrieking; “what for you kickee my shins so? Oh!”

McBain entered the ring in a very businesslike fashion indeed; he begged for room; he told the mob he meant thrashing the ruffian if he did not apologise to the poor lad. Then he intimated as much to the ruffian himself.

“Come on,” was the defiant reply, as the fellow threw himself into a fighting attitude. “Man, your mither’ll no ken ye when you gang home the nicht.”

“We’ll see,” said McBain, quietly.

For the next three minutes this ruffianly porter’s movements were confined to a series of beautiful falls, that would have brought down the house in a circus. When he rose the last time it was merely to assume a sitting position, “Gie us your hand,” he said to McBain. “You’re the first chiel that ever dang Jock the Wraggler. I admire ye, man—I admire ye.”

“Come with me, my little fellow,” said McBain to the nigger boy; and he took him kindly by the hand. Meanwhile a woman who had been standing by placed a curious-looking bundle in the lad’s hand, and bade him be a good boy, and keep out of Jock the Wraggler’s way next time.

“I’ll see you a little way home, Jim,” continued McBain, when they were clear of the crowd. “Jim is what they call you, isn’t it?”

“Jim,” said the blackamoor, “is what dey are good enough to call me. But, sah, Jim has no home.”

“And where do you sleep at night, Jim?”

“Anywhere, sah. Jim ain’t pertikler; some time it is a sugar barrel, an oder time a door-step.”

A low, sneering laugh was at this moment heard from the mysterious bundle Jim carried. McBain started.

“Don’t be afeared, sah,” said Jim; “it’s only de cockatoo, sah!”

“Have you any money, Jim?” asked McBain.

“Only de cockatoo, sah,” replied Jim; “but la!” he added, “I’se a puffuk gemlam (gentleman), sah—I’se got a heart as high as de steeple, sah!”

“Well, Jim,” said McBain, laughing, “would you like to sail in a big ship with me, and—and—black my boots?”

“Golly! yes, sah; dat would suit Jim all to nuffin.”

“But suppose, Jim, we went far away—as far as the North Pole?”

“Don’t care, sah,” said Jim, emphatically; “der never was a pole yet as Jim couldn’t climb.”

“Have you a surname, Jim?”

“No, sah,” replied poor Jim; “I’se got no belongings but de cockatoo.”

“I mean, Jim, have you a second name?”

“La! no, sir,” said Jim; “one name plenty good enough for a nigga boy. Only—yes now I ’members, in de ship dat bring me from Sierra Leone last summer de cap’n never call me nuffin else but Freezin’ Powders.”

McBain did not take long to make up his mind about anything; he determined to take this strange boy with him, so he took him to a shop and bought him a cage for the cockatoo, and then the two marched on board together, talking away as if they had known each other for years.

Freezing Powders was sent below to be washed and dressed and made decent. The ship was passing Inellan when he came on deck again. Jim was thunderstruck; he had never seen snow before.

“La! sah,” he cried, pointing with outstretched arm towards the hills; “look, sah, look; dey never like dat before. De Great Massa has been and painted dem all white.”

Chapter Five.Danger on the Deep—A Forest of Waterspouts—The “Arrandoon” is Swamped—The Warning.“La la lay lee-ah, lay la le lo-O” So went the song on deck—a song without words, short, and interrupted at every bar, as the men hauled cheerily on tack and sheet.Such a thing would not be allowed for a single moment on board a British man-o’-war, as the watch singing while they obeyed the orders of the bo’sun’s pipe, taking in sail, squaring yards, or doing any other duty required of them. And yet, with all due respect for my own flag, methinks there are times when, as practised in merchant or passenger ships, that strange, weird, wordless song is not at all an unpleasant sound to listen to. By night, for instance, after you have turned in to your little narrow bed—the cradle of the deep, in which you are nightly rocked—to hear it rising and falling, and ending in long-drawn cadence, gives one an indescribable feeling of peace and security. Your bark is all alone—so your thoughts may run—on a wild world of waters. There may not be another ship within hundreds of miles; the wind may be rising or the wind may be falling—what do you care? What need you care? There are watchful eyes on deck, there are good men and true overhead, and they seem to sing your cradle hymn, “La la lee ah,” and before it is done you are wrapt in that sweetest, that dreamless slumber that landsmen seldom know.There was one man at least in every watch on board theArrandoon, who usually led the song that accompanied the hauling on a rope, with a sweet, clear tenor voice; you could not have been angry with these men had you been twenty times a man-o’-war’s man.It was about an hour after breakfast, and our boys were lazing below. For some time previous to the working song, there had been perfect silence on board—a silence broken only now and then by a short word of command, a footstep on deck, or the ominous flapping of the canvas aloft, as it shivered for a moment, then filled and swelled out again.Had you been down below, one sign alone would have told you that something was going to happen—that some change was about to take place. It was this: when everything is going on all right, you hear the almost constant tramp, tramp of the officer of the watch up and down the quarter-deck, but this was absent now, and you would have known without seeing him that he was standing, probably, by the binnacle, his eyes now bent aloft, and now sweeping the horizon, and now and then glancing at the compass.Then came a word or two of command, given in a quiet, ordinary tone of voice—there was no occasion to howl on this particular morning. And after this a rush of feet, and next the song, and the bo’sun’s pipe. Thus:—Song.—“La la lee ah, lay la le lo-O.”Spoken.—“Hoy!”Boatswain’s Pipe.—“Whee-e, weet weet weet, wee-e.”Song.—“La la lee ah, lay la le lo-O.”Spoken.—“Belay!”Boatswain’s Pipe.—“Wee wee weet weet weet weet, wee-e.”Spoken.—“Now lads.”Song.—“Lo ah o ee.”Pipe.—“Weet weet!”Then a hurry-scurrying away forward, a trampling of feet enough to awaken Rip van Winkle, then the bo’sun’s pipeencore.Allan straightens his back in his easy-chair—he has been bending over the table, reading the “Noctes Ambrosianae”—straightens his back, stretches his arms, and says “Heigho!” Rory is busy arranging some beautiful transparent specimens of animalculae, not bigger than midges, on a piece of black cardboard; he had caught them overnight in a gauze net dragged astern. He doesn’t look up. Ralph is lying “tandem” on a sofa, reading “Ivanhoe.” He won’t take his eyes off the book, nor move as much as one drowsy eyelid, but he manages to say,—“What are they about on deck, Rory?”“Don’t know even a tiny bit,” says Rory.“Rory,” continues Ralph, in a slightly louder key; “you’re a young man; run up and see.”“Rory won’t then,” says Rory, intent on his work; “fag for yourself, my lazy boy.”“Oh!” says Ralph, “won’t you have your ears pulled when I do get up!”“Ha! ha!” laughed Rory, “you’ll have forgotten all about it long before then.”“Freezing Powders!” roared Ralph.The bright-faced though bullet-headed nigger boy introduced in last chapter appeared instantly. He was dressed in white flannel, braided with blue. Had he been a sprite, or a djin, he couldn’t have popped up with more startling rapidity. Truth is, the young rascal had been asleep under the table.“Off on deck with you, Freezing Powders, and see what’s up.”Freezing Powders was down again in a moment.“Take in all sail, sah! and square de yard; no wind, sah! nebber a puff.”It was just as Freezing Powders said, but there was noise enough presently, and puffing too, for steam was got up, and the great screw was churning the waters of the dark northern ocean into creamish foam, as the vessel went steadily ahead at about ten knots an hour. There was no occasion to hurry. When Rory and Allan went on deck, they found the captain in consultation with the mates, Mitchell and Stevenson.“I must admit,” McBain was remarking, “that I can’t make it out at all.”“No more can we,” said Stevenson with a puzzled smile. “The wind has failed us all at once, and the sea gone down, and the glass seems to have taken leave of its senses entirely. It is up one moment high enough for anything, and down the next to 28 degrees. There, just look at that sea and look at that sky.”There was certainly something most appalling in the appearance of both. The ocean was calm and unruffled as glass, with only a long low heave on it; not a ripple on it big enough to swamp a fly; but over it all a strange, glassy lustre that—so you would have thought—could have been skimmed off. The sky was one mass of dark purple-black clouds in masses. It seemed no distance overhead, and the horizon looked hardly a mile away on either side. Only in the north it was one unbroken bluish black, as dark seemingly as night, from the midst of which every now and then, and every here and there, would come quickly a little puff of cloud of a lightish grey colour, as if a gun had been fired. Only there was no sound.There was something awe-inspiring in the strange, ominous look of sea and sky, and in the silence broken only by the grind and gride of screw and engine.“No,” said McBain, “I don’t know what we are going to have. Perhaps a tornado. Anyhow, Mr Stevenson, let us be ready. Get down topgallant masts, it will be a bit of exercise for the men; let us have all the steam we can command, and—”“Batten down, sir?”“Yes, Mr Stevenson, batten down, and lash the boats inboard.”The good shipArrandoonwas at the time of which I write about fifty miles south of the Faroes, and a long way to the east. The weather had been dark and somewhat gloomy, from the very time they lost sight of the snow-clad hills around Oban, but it now seemed to culminate in a darkness that could be felt.The men were well drilled on board this steam yacht. McBain delighted to have them smart, and it was with surprising celerity that the topgallant masts were lowered, the hatches battened down, and the good ship prepared for any emergency. None too soon; the darkness grew more intense, especially did the clouds look threatening ahead of them. And now here and there all round them the sea began to get ruffled with small whirlwinds, that sent the water wheeling round and round like miniature maelstroms, and raised it up into cones in the centre.“How is the glass now, Mr Stevenson?” asked McBain.“Stands very low, sir,” was the reply, “but keeps steadily down.”“All right,” said McBain; “now get two guns loaded with ball cartridge; have no more hands on deck than we want. No idlers, d’ye hear?”“Ay, ay, sir.”“Send Magnus Bolt here.”“Now, Magnus, old man,” continued McBain, “d’ye mind the time, some years ago in theSnowbird, when you rid us of that troublesome pirate?”“Ay, that I do right well, sir,” said this little old weasened specimen of humanity, rubbing his hands with delight. “It were a fine shot that. He! he! he! Mercy on us, to see his masts and sails come toppling down, sir,—he! he! he!”“Well, I want you again, Magnus; I’d rather trust to your old eye in an emergency than to any in the ship.”“But where is the foe, sir?”“Look ahead, Magnus.”Magnus did as he was told; it was a strange, and to one who understood it, a dreadful sight. Apparently a thousand balloons were afloat in the blue, murky air, each one trailing its car in the sea, balloons of terrible size, flat as to their tops, which seemed to join or merge into one another, forming a black and ominous cloud. The cars that trailed on the sea were snowy white.“Heaven help us?” said Magnus, clasping his hands for just a moment, while his cheeks assumed an ashen hue. “Heaven help us, sir; this is worse than the pirate.”“They are all coming this way,” said McBain; “fire only at those that threaten us, and fire while they are still some distance ahead.”Meanwhile Ralph had come on deck, and joined his companions. I do not think that through all the long terrible hour that followed, either of them spoke one word; although there was no sea on, and for the most part no motion, they clutched with one hand rigging or shroud, and gazed terror-struck at the awful scene ahead and around them.They were soon in the very centre of what appeared an interminable forest of waterspouts. Few indeed have ever seen such a sight or encountered so pressing a danger and lived to tell it.The balloon-shaped heads of these waterspouts looked dark as midnight; their shafts, I can call them nothing else, were immense pillars rising out of gigantic feet of seething foam. So close did they pass to some of these that the yardarms seemed almost to touch them. Our heroes noticed then, and they marvelled at it afterwards, the strange monotonous roaring sound they emitted,—a sound that drowned even the noise of the troubled waters around their shafts.(Such a phenomenon as this has rarely been witnessed in the Northern Ocean. It is somewhat strange that on the self-same year this happened, an earthquake was felt in Ireland, and shocks even near Perth, in Scotland.)Old Magnus made good use of his guns on those that threatened the good ship with destruction; one shot broke always one, and sometimes more, probably with the vibration; but the thundering sound of the falling waters, and the turmoil of the sea that followed, what pen can describe?But, good shot as he is, Magnus is not infallible, else McBain would not now have to grasp his speaking-trumpet and shout,—“Stand by, men, stand by.”A waterspout had wholly, or partially at least, broken on board of them. It was as though the splendid ship had suddenly been blown to atoms by a terrible explosion, and every timber of her engulfed in the ocean!For long moments thus, then her crew, half drowned, half dead, could once more look around. TheArrandoonwas afloat, but her decks were swept. Hundreds of tons of water still filled her decks, and poured out into the sea in cataracts through her broken bulwarks; ay, and it poured below too, at the fore and main hatchways, which had been smashed open with the violence and force of the deluge. The main-yard had come down, and one whaler was smashed into matchwood. I wish I could say this was all, but two poor fellows lost for ever the number of their mess. One was seen floating about dead and unwounded on the deck ere the water got clear; the other, with sadly splintered brow, was still clutching in a death-grasp a rope that had bound a tarpaulin over a grating.But away ahead appeared a long yellowish streak of clear sky, close to the horizon. The danger had passed.All hands were now called to clear away the wreck and make good repairs. The pumps, too, had to be set to work, and as soon as the wind came down on them from the clear of the horizon, sail was set, for the fires had been drowned out.The wind increased to a gale, and there was nothing for it but to lay to. And so they did all that night and all next day; then the weather moderated, and the wind coming more easterly they were able to show more canvas, and to resume their course with something akin to comfort.The bodies of the two poor fellows who had met with so sad a fate were committed to the deep—the sailor’s grave.“Earth to earth and dust to dust.”There was more than one moist eye while those words were uttered, for the men had both been great favourites with their messmates.Rory was sitting that evening with his elbows resting on the saloon table, his chin on his hands, and a book in front of him that he was not looking at, when McBain came below.“You’re quieter than usual,” said McBain, placing a kindly hand on his shoulder.Rory smiled, forced a laugh even, as one does who wants to shake off an incubus.“I was thinking,” he said, “of that awful black forest of waterspouts. I’ll never get it out of my head.”“Oh! yes you will, boy Rory,” said McBain; “it was a new sensation, that’s all.”“New sensation!” said Allan, laughing in earnest; “well, captain, I must say that is a mild way of putting it.Idon’t want any more such sensations. Steward, bring some nice hot coffee.”“Ay!” cried Ralph, “that’s the style, Allan. Some coffee, steward—and, steward, bring the cold pork and fowls, and make some toast, and bring the butter and the Chili vinegar.”Poor Irish Rory! Like every one with a poetic temperament, he was easily cast down, and just as easily raised again. Ralph’s wondrous appetite always amused him.“Oh, you true Saxon!” said Rory—“you hungry Englishman!” But, ten minutes afterwards, he felt himself constrained to join the party at the supper table.You see, reader mine, a sailor’s life is like an April day—sunshine now and showers anon.“How now, Stevenson?” said McBain, as the mate entered with a kind of a puzzled look on his face.“Well, sir, we are, as you said, off the Faroes. The night is precious dark, but I can see the lights of a village in here, and the lights of a vessel of some size, evidently lying at anchor.”“Then, mate,” said the captain, “as we don’t know exactly where we are, I don’t think we can do wrong to steam in and drop anchor alongside this craft. We can then board her and find out. How is the weather?”“A bit thick, sir, and seems inclined to blow a little from the east-south-east.”“Let it, Stevenson—let it. If the other vessel can ride it out I don’t think theArrandoonis likely to lose her anchors. Hullo! Mitchell,” he continued, as the second mate next entered hat in hand, “what’s in the wind now, man?”“Why, sir,” said Mitchell, “I’m all ashore like, you see; I can’t make it out. But here is a boat just been a-hailing of us, and the passenger—there is only one, a comely lass enough—has just come on board, and wants to see you at once. Seems a bit cranky. Here she be, sir;” and Mitchell retired.A young girl. She was probably not over seventeen, fair-faced, and with wild blue eyes, and yellow hair, dripping with dew, floating over her shoulders.“Stop the ship!” she cried, seizing McBain by the arm. “Go no farther, or her ribs will be scattered over the waves, and your bones will bleach on the cliffs of the rocks.”“Poor thing!” muttered McBain. “Oh, you heed me not!” continued the girl, wringing her hands in despair. “It will be too late—it will be too late! I tell you here is no harbour, here is no ship. The lights you see are placed there to lure your vessel on shore. They are wreckers, I tell you; they will—”“By the deep three!” sung the man in the chains.Then there was a shout from the man at the foretop.“Breakers ahead!”Then, “Stand by both anchors. Ready about.”

“La la lay lee-ah, lay la le lo-O” So went the song on deck—a song without words, short, and interrupted at every bar, as the men hauled cheerily on tack and sheet.

Such a thing would not be allowed for a single moment on board a British man-o’-war, as the watch singing while they obeyed the orders of the bo’sun’s pipe, taking in sail, squaring yards, or doing any other duty required of them. And yet, with all due respect for my own flag, methinks there are times when, as practised in merchant or passenger ships, that strange, weird, wordless song is not at all an unpleasant sound to listen to. By night, for instance, after you have turned in to your little narrow bed—the cradle of the deep, in which you are nightly rocked—to hear it rising and falling, and ending in long-drawn cadence, gives one an indescribable feeling of peace and security. Your bark is all alone—so your thoughts may run—on a wild world of waters. There may not be another ship within hundreds of miles; the wind may be rising or the wind may be falling—what do you care? What need you care? There are watchful eyes on deck, there are good men and true overhead, and they seem to sing your cradle hymn, “La la lee ah,” and before it is done you are wrapt in that sweetest, that dreamless slumber that landsmen seldom know.

There was one man at least in every watch on board theArrandoon, who usually led the song that accompanied the hauling on a rope, with a sweet, clear tenor voice; you could not have been angry with these men had you been twenty times a man-o’-war’s man.

It was about an hour after breakfast, and our boys were lazing below. For some time previous to the working song, there had been perfect silence on board—a silence broken only now and then by a short word of command, a footstep on deck, or the ominous flapping of the canvas aloft, as it shivered for a moment, then filled and swelled out again.

Had you been down below, one sign alone would have told you that something was going to happen—that some change was about to take place. It was this: when everything is going on all right, you hear the almost constant tramp, tramp of the officer of the watch up and down the quarter-deck, but this was absent now, and you would have known without seeing him that he was standing, probably, by the binnacle, his eyes now bent aloft, and now sweeping the horizon, and now and then glancing at the compass.

Then came a word or two of command, given in a quiet, ordinary tone of voice—there was no occasion to howl on this particular morning. And after this a rush of feet, and next the song, and the bo’sun’s pipe. Thus:—

Song.—“La la lee ah, lay la le lo-O.”

Spoken.—“Hoy!”

Boatswain’s Pipe.—“Whee-e, weet weet weet, wee-e.”

Song.—“La la lee ah, lay la le lo-O.”

Spoken.—“Belay!”

Boatswain’s Pipe.—“Wee wee weet weet weet weet, wee-e.”

Spoken.—“Now lads.”

Song.—“Lo ah o ee.”

Pipe.—“Weet weet!”

Then a hurry-scurrying away forward, a trampling of feet enough to awaken Rip van Winkle, then the bo’sun’s pipeencore.

Allan straightens his back in his easy-chair—he has been bending over the table, reading the “Noctes Ambrosianae”—straightens his back, stretches his arms, and says “Heigho!” Rory is busy arranging some beautiful transparent specimens of animalculae, not bigger than midges, on a piece of black cardboard; he had caught them overnight in a gauze net dragged astern. He doesn’t look up. Ralph is lying “tandem” on a sofa, reading “Ivanhoe.” He won’t take his eyes off the book, nor move as much as one drowsy eyelid, but he manages to say,—

“What are they about on deck, Rory?”

“Don’t know even a tiny bit,” says Rory.

“Rory,” continues Ralph, in a slightly louder key; “you’re a young man; run up and see.”

“Rory won’t then,” says Rory, intent on his work; “fag for yourself, my lazy boy.”

“Oh!” says Ralph, “won’t you have your ears pulled when I do get up!”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Rory, “you’ll have forgotten all about it long before then.”

“Freezing Powders!” roared Ralph.

The bright-faced though bullet-headed nigger boy introduced in last chapter appeared instantly. He was dressed in white flannel, braided with blue. Had he been a sprite, or a djin, he couldn’t have popped up with more startling rapidity. Truth is, the young rascal had been asleep under the table.

“Off on deck with you, Freezing Powders, and see what’s up.”

Freezing Powders was down again in a moment.

“Take in all sail, sah! and square de yard; no wind, sah! nebber a puff.”

It was just as Freezing Powders said, but there was noise enough presently, and puffing too, for steam was got up, and the great screw was churning the waters of the dark northern ocean into creamish foam, as the vessel went steadily ahead at about ten knots an hour. There was no occasion to hurry. When Rory and Allan went on deck, they found the captain in consultation with the mates, Mitchell and Stevenson.

“I must admit,” McBain was remarking, “that I can’t make it out at all.”

“No more can we,” said Stevenson with a puzzled smile. “The wind has failed us all at once, and the sea gone down, and the glass seems to have taken leave of its senses entirely. It is up one moment high enough for anything, and down the next to 28 degrees. There, just look at that sea and look at that sky.”

There was certainly something most appalling in the appearance of both. The ocean was calm and unruffled as glass, with only a long low heave on it; not a ripple on it big enough to swamp a fly; but over it all a strange, glassy lustre that—so you would have thought—could have been skimmed off. The sky was one mass of dark purple-black clouds in masses. It seemed no distance overhead, and the horizon looked hardly a mile away on either side. Only in the north it was one unbroken bluish black, as dark seemingly as night, from the midst of which every now and then, and every here and there, would come quickly a little puff of cloud of a lightish grey colour, as if a gun had been fired. Only there was no sound.

There was something awe-inspiring in the strange, ominous look of sea and sky, and in the silence broken only by the grind and gride of screw and engine.

“No,” said McBain, “I don’t know what we are going to have. Perhaps a tornado. Anyhow, Mr Stevenson, let us be ready. Get down topgallant masts, it will be a bit of exercise for the men; let us have all the steam we can command, and—”

“Batten down, sir?”

“Yes, Mr Stevenson, batten down, and lash the boats inboard.”

The good shipArrandoonwas at the time of which I write about fifty miles south of the Faroes, and a long way to the east. The weather had been dark and somewhat gloomy, from the very time they lost sight of the snow-clad hills around Oban, but it now seemed to culminate in a darkness that could be felt.

The men were well drilled on board this steam yacht. McBain delighted to have them smart, and it was with surprising celerity that the topgallant masts were lowered, the hatches battened down, and the good ship prepared for any emergency. None too soon; the darkness grew more intense, especially did the clouds look threatening ahead of them. And now here and there all round them the sea began to get ruffled with small whirlwinds, that sent the water wheeling round and round like miniature maelstroms, and raised it up into cones in the centre.

“How is the glass now, Mr Stevenson?” asked McBain.

“Stands very low, sir,” was the reply, “but keeps steadily down.”

“All right,” said McBain; “now get two guns loaded with ball cartridge; have no more hands on deck than we want. No idlers, d’ye hear?”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“Send Magnus Bolt here.”

“Now, Magnus, old man,” continued McBain, “d’ye mind the time, some years ago in theSnowbird, when you rid us of that troublesome pirate?”

“Ay, that I do right well, sir,” said this little old weasened specimen of humanity, rubbing his hands with delight. “It were a fine shot that. He! he! he! Mercy on us, to see his masts and sails come toppling down, sir,—he! he! he!”

“Well, I want you again, Magnus; I’d rather trust to your old eye in an emergency than to any in the ship.”

“But where is the foe, sir?”

“Look ahead, Magnus.”

Magnus did as he was told; it was a strange, and to one who understood it, a dreadful sight. Apparently a thousand balloons were afloat in the blue, murky air, each one trailing its car in the sea, balloons of terrible size, flat as to their tops, which seemed to join or merge into one another, forming a black and ominous cloud. The cars that trailed on the sea were snowy white.

“Heaven help us?” said Magnus, clasping his hands for just a moment, while his cheeks assumed an ashen hue. “Heaven help us, sir; this is worse than the pirate.”

“They are all coming this way,” said McBain; “fire only at those that threaten us, and fire while they are still some distance ahead.”

Meanwhile Ralph had come on deck, and joined his companions. I do not think that through all the long terrible hour that followed, either of them spoke one word; although there was no sea on, and for the most part no motion, they clutched with one hand rigging or shroud, and gazed terror-struck at the awful scene ahead and around them.

They were soon in the very centre of what appeared an interminable forest of waterspouts. Few indeed have ever seen such a sight or encountered so pressing a danger and lived to tell it.

The balloon-shaped heads of these waterspouts looked dark as midnight; their shafts, I can call them nothing else, were immense pillars rising out of gigantic feet of seething foam. So close did they pass to some of these that the yardarms seemed almost to touch them. Our heroes noticed then, and they marvelled at it afterwards, the strange monotonous roaring sound they emitted,—a sound that drowned even the noise of the troubled waters around their shafts.

(Such a phenomenon as this has rarely been witnessed in the Northern Ocean. It is somewhat strange that on the self-same year this happened, an earthquake was felt in Ireland, and shocks even near Perth, in Scotland.)

Old Magnus made good use of his guns on those that threatened the good ship with destruction; one shot broke always one, and sometimes more, probably with the vibration; but the thundering sound of the falling waters, and the turmoil of the sea that followed, what pen can describe?

But, good shot as he is, Magnus is not infallible, else McBain would not now have to grasp his speaking-trumpet and shout,—

“Stand by, men, stand by.”

A waterspout had wholly, or partially at least, broken on board of them. It was as though the splendid ship had suddenly been blown to atoms by a terrible explosion, and every timber of her engulfed in the ocean!

For long moments thus, then her crew, half drowned, half dead, could once more look around. TheArrandoonwas afloat, but her decks were swept. Hundreds of tons of water still filled her decks, and poured out into the sea in cataracts through her broken bulwarks; ay, and it poured below too, at the fore and main hatchways, which had been smashed open with the violence and force of the deluge. The main-yard had come down, and one whaler was smashed into matchwood. I wish I could say this was all, but two poor fellows lost for ever the number of their mess. One was seen floating about dead and unwounded on the deck ere the water got clear; the other, with sadly splintered brow, was still clutching in a death-grasp a rope that had bound a tarpaulin over a grating.

But away ahead appeared a long yellowish streak of clear sky, close to the horizon. The danger had passed.

All hands were now called to clear away the wreck and make good repairs. The pumps, too, had to be set to work, and as soon as the wind came down on them from the clear of the horizon, sail was set, for the fires had been drowned out.

The wind increased to a gale, and there was nothing for it but to lay to. And so they did all that night and all next day; then the weather moderated, and the wind coming more easterly they were able to show more canvas, and to resume their course with something akin to comfort.

The bodies of the two poor fellows who had met with so sad a fate were committed to the deep—the sailor’s grave.

“Earth to earth and dust to dust.”

“Earth to earth and dust to dust.”

There was more than one moist eye while those words were uttered, for the men had both been great favourites with their messmates.

Rory was sitting that evening with his elbows resting on the saloon table, his chin on his hands, and a book in front of him that he was not looking at, when McBain came below.

“You’re quieter than usual,” said McBain, placing a kindly hand on his shoulder.

Rory smiled, forced a laugh even, as one does who wants to shake off an incubus.

“I was thinking,” he said, “of that awful black forest of waterspouts. I’ll never get it out of my head.”

“Oh! yes you will, boy Rory,” said McBain; “it was a new sensation, that’s all.”

“New sensation!” said Allan, laughing in earnest; “well, captain, I must say that is a mild way of putting it.Idon’t want any more such sensations. Steward, bring some nice hot coffee.”

“Ay!” cried Ralph, “that’s the style, Allan. Some coffee, steward—and, steward, bring the cold pork and fowls, and make some toast, and bring the butter and the Chili vinegar.”

Poor Irish Rory! Like every one with a poetic temperament, he was easily cast down, and just as easily raised again. Ralph’s wondrous appetite always amused him.

“Oh, you true Saxon!” said Rory—“you hungry Englishman!” But, ten minutes afterwards, he felt himself constrained to join the party at the supper table.

You see, reader mine, a sailor’s life is like an April day—sunshine now and showers anon.

“How now, Stevenson?” said McBain, as the mate entered with a kind of a puzzled look on his face.

“Well, sir, we are, as you said, off the Faroes. The night is precious dark, but I can see the lights of a village in here, and the lights of a vessel of some size, evidently lying at anchor.”

“Then, mate,” said the captain, “as we don’t know exactly where we are, I don’t think we can do wrong to steam in and drop anchor alongside this craft. We can then board her and find out. How is the weather?”

“A bit thick, sir, and seems inclined to blow a little from the east-south-east.”

“Let it, Stevenson—let it. If the other vessel can ride it out I don’t think theArrandoonis likely to lose her anchors. Hullo! Mitchell,” he continued, as the second mate next entered hat in hand, “what’s in the wind now, man?”

“Why, sir,” said Mitchell, “I’m all ashore like, you see; I can’t make it out. But here is a boat just been a-hailing of us, and the passenger—there is only one, a comely lass enough—has just come on board, and wants to see you at once. Seems a bit cranky. Here she be, sir;” and Mitchell retired.

A young girl. She was probably not over seventeen, fair-faced, and with wild blue eyes, and yellow hair, dripping with dew, floating over her shoulders.

“Stop the ship!” she cried, seizing McBain by the arm. “Go no farther, or her ribs will be scattered over the waves, and your bones will bleach on the cliffs of the rocks.”

“Poor thing!” muttered McBain. “Oh, you heed me not!” continued the girl, wringing her hands in despair. “It will be too late—it will be too late! I tell you here is no harbour, here is no ship. The lights you see are placed there to lure your vessel on shore. They are wreckers, I tell you; they will—”

“By the deep three!” sung the man in the chains.

Then there was a shout from the man at the foretop.

“Breakers ahead!”

Then, “Stand by both anchors. Ready about.”

Chapter Six.A Life on the Ocean Wave—On the Rocks—Mystery—A Home on the Rolling Deep.Has the reader ever been to sea? The first feeling that a landsman objects to at sea is that of the heaving motion of the ship; to your true sailor the cessation of that motion, or its absence under circumstances, is disagreeable in the extreme. To me there is always a certain air of romance about the old ocean, and about a ship at sea; but what can be less romantic than lying in a harbour or dull wet dock, with no more life nor motion in your craft than there is in the slopshop round the corner? To lie thus and probably have to listen to the grating voices and pointless jokes of semi-inebriated stevedores, as they load or unload, soiling, as they do, your beautiful decks with their dreadful boots, is very far from pleasant. In a case like this how one wishes to be away out on the blue water once more, and to feel life in the good ship once again—to feel, as it were, her very heart throb beneath one’s feet!But disagreeable as the sensation is of lying lifeless in harbour or dock, still more so is it to feel your vessel, that one moment before was sailing peacefully over the sea, suddenly rasp on a rock beneath you, then stop dead. Nothing in the world will wake a sailor sooner, even should he be in the deepest of slumber, than this sudden cessation of motion. I remember on one particular occasion being awakened thus. No crew ever went to sleep with a greater feeling of security than we had done, for the night was fine and the ship went well. But all at once, about four bells in the middle watch,—Kurr-r-r-r! that was the noise we heard proceeding from our keel, then all was steady, all was still. And every man sprang from his hammock, every officer from his cot.We were in the middle of the Indian Ocean, or rather the Mozambique Channel, with no land in sight, and we were hard and fast on the dreaded Lyra reef. A beautiful night it was, just enough wind to make a ripple on the water for the broad moon’s beams to dance in, a cloudless sky, and countless stars. We took all this in at the first glance. Safe enough we were—for the time;butif the wind rose there was the certainty of our being broken up, even as the war-shipLyrawas, that gave its name to the reef.At the first shout from the man on the outlook in theArrandoon, McBain rushed on deck. “Stand by both anchors. Ready about.” But these orders are, alas! too late. Kurr-r-r-r! The statelyArrandoonis hard and fast on the rocky bottom.The ship was under easy sail, for although there was hardly any wind, what little there was gave evident signs of shifting. It might come on to blow, and blow pretty hard, too, from the south-east or east-south-east, and Mr Stevenson was hardly the man to be caught in a trap, to find himself on a lee shore or a rock-bound coast, with a crowd of canvas. Well for our people it was that there was but little sail on her and little wind, or, speedily as everything was let go, the masts—some of them at least—would have gone by the board.Half an hour after she struck, theArrandoonwas under bare poles and steam was up.The order had been given to get up steam with all speed. Both the engineer and his two assistants were brawny Scots.“Man!” said the former, “it’ll take ye a whole hour to get up steam if you bother wi’ coals and cinders alone. But do your best wi’ what ye hae till I come back.”He wasn’t gone long ere he came staggering down the ladder again, carrying a sack.“It’s American hams,” he said; “they’re hardly fit for anything else but fuel, so here goes.”And he popped a couple into the fire.“That’s the style,” he said, as they began to frizzle and blaze. “Look, lads, the kettle’ll be boilin’ in twa seconds.”“Thank you, Stuart,” said McBain, when the engineer went on the bridge to report everything ready; “you are a valuable servant; now stand by to receive orders.”All hands had been called, and there was certainly plenty for them to do.It wanted several hours to high-water, and McBain determined to make the best of his time.“By the blessing of Providence on our own exertions, Stevenson,” the captain said, “we’ll get her off all right. Had it been high-water, though, when we ran on shore, eh!”Stevenson laughed a grim laugh. “We’d leave her bones here,” he said, “that would be all.”The men were now getting their big guns over the side into the boats. This would lighten her a little. But as the tide was flowing, anchors were sent out astern, to prevent the ship from being carried still farther on to the reef.“Go astern at full speed.”The screws revolved and kept on revolving, the ship still stuck fast. The night was very dark, so that everything had to be done by the weird light of lanterns. Never mind, the work went cheerily on, and the men sang as they laboured.“High-water about half-past two, isn’t it, Stevenson?” asked Captain McBain.“Yes, sir,” the mate replied, “that’s about the time, sir.”“Ah! well,” the captain said, “she is sure to float then, and there are no signs of your storm coming.”“There is hardly a breath of wind now, sir, but you never know in these latitudes where it may come on to blow from next.”The cheerful way in which McBain talked reassured our heroes, and towards eleven o’clock English Ralph spoke as follows,—“Look here, boys—”“There isn’t a bit of good looking in the dark, is there?” said Allan.“Well,” continued Ralph, “figuratively speaking, look here; I don’t see the good of sticking up on deck in the cold. We’re not doing an atom of good; let us go below and finish our supper.”“Right,” said Allan; “and mind you, that poor girl is below there all this time. She may want some refreshment.”When they entered the saloon they found it empty, deserted as far as human beings were concerned. Polly the cockatoo was there, no one else.“Well?” said the bird, inquiringly, as she helped herself to an enormous mouthful of hemp-seed. “Well?”“What have you done with the young lady?” asked Allan.“The proof o’ the pudding—”Polly was too busy eating to say more. Peter the steward entered just then, overhearing the question as he came.“That strange girl, sir,” he replied, “went over the side and away in her boat as soon as the ship struck.”“Well, I call that a pity,” said Allan; “the poor girl comes here to warn us of danger and never stops for thanks. It is wonderful.”“From this date,” remarked Ralph, “I cease to wonder at anything. Steward, you know we were only half done with supper, and we’re all as hungry as hunters, and—”But Peter was off, and in a few minutes our boys were supping as quietly and contentedly as if they had been in the Coffee-room of the Queen’s Hotel, Glasgow, instead of being on a lee shore, with the certainty that if it came on to blow not a timber of the good shipArrandoonthat would not be smashed into matchwood.But hark! the noise on deck recommences, the men are heaving on the winch, the engines are once more at work, and the great screw is revolving. Then there is a shout from the men forward.“She moves!”“Hurrah! then, boys, hurrah!” cried McBain; “heave, and she goes.”(The word “hurrah” in the parlance of North Sea sailors means “do your utmost” or “make all speed.”)The men burst into song—tune a wild, uncouth sailor’s melody, words extempore, one man singing one line, another metreing it with a second, with a chorus between each line, in which all joined, with all their strength of voice to the tune, with all the power of their brawny muscles to the winch. Mere doggerel, but it did the turn better, perhaps, than more refined music would have done.In San Domingo I was born,Chorus—Hurrah! lads, hurrah!And reared among the yellow corn.Heave, boys, and away we go.Our bold McBain is a captain nice,Chorus—Hurrah! lads, hurrah!The main-brace he issureto splice.Heave, boys, and away we go.The Faroe Isles are not our goal,Oh! no, lads, no!We’ll reach the North, and we’llbagthe Pole,Heave, boys, and away we go,Hurrah!“We’re off,” cried Stevenson, excitedly. “Hurrah! men. Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!”The men needed but little encouragement now, though. Round went the winch right merrily, and in a quarter of an hour the bows were abreast of the anchors.“Now, steward,” said the captain, “splice the main-brace.”The ration was brought and served, Ted Wilson, who was a moving spirit in the ’tween decks, giving a toast, which every man re-echoed ere he raised the basin to his head,—“Success to the saucyArrandoon, and our bold skipper, Captain McBain.”The vessel’s head was now turned seawards, and presently the anchors that had been taken in were let go again, and fires banked. The long night wore away, and the dismal dawn came. McBain had lain down for a short time, with orders to be roused on the first appearance of daylight. Rory, anxious to see how the land looked, was on deck nearly as soon as the captain.A grey mist was lifting up from off the sea, and from off the shore, revealing black, beetling crags, hundreds of feet high at the water’s edge, a sheer beetling cliff around which thousands of strange sea-birds were wheeling and screaming, their white wings relieved against the black of the rocks, on which rows on rows of solemn-looking guillemots sat, and lines of those strange old-fashion-faced birds, the puffins.The cliffs were snow-clad, the hills above were terraced with rocks almost to their summits. Between the ship and this inhospitable shore lay a long, dangerous-looking reef of rocks.“Ah! Rory,” said McBain, “there was a merciful Providence watching over us last night. Yonder is where we lay; had it come on to blow, not one of us would be alive this morning to see the sun rise.”Rory could hardly help, shuddering as he thought of the narrow escape they had had from so terrible a fate.When steam was got up they went round the island—it was one of the most southerly of the Faroes; but except around one little bay, where boats might land with difficulty, it seemed impossible that human beings could exist in such a place. What, then, was the mystery of the previous evening, of the fair-haired girl, of the lights inside the reef that simulated those of a broad-beamed ship, of the lights like those of a village that twinkled on shore? The whole affair seemed strange, inexplicable. Now that it was broad daylight the events of the preceding night, with its dangers and its darkness, had more the similitude of some dreadful dream than a stern reality.This same evening the anchor was let go in the Bay of Thorshaven, the capital—city, shall I say?—of the Faroe Islands. I am writing a tale of adventure, not a narrative of travel, else would I willingly devote a whole chapter to a description of this quaint and primitive wee, wee town. Our heroes saw it at its very worst, its very bleakest, for winter still held it in thrall; the turf-clad roofs of its cottages, that in summer are green with grass and redolent of wild thyme, were now clad with snow; its streets, difficult to climb even in July, were now stairs of glass; its fort looked frozen out; and its little chapel, where Sunday after Sunday the hardy and brave inhabitants, who never move abroad without their lives in their hands, worship God in all humility—this little chapel stood up black and bold against its background of snow.Although the streamlets were all frozen, although ice was afloat in the bay, and a grey and leaden sky overhead, our boys were not sorry to land and have a look around. To say that they were hospitably received would be hardly doing the Faroese justice, for hospitality really seems a part and parcel of the people’s religion. The viands they placed before them were well cooked, but curious, to say the least of it. Steak of young whale, stew of young seal’s liver, roast guillemot and baked auk; these may sound queer as dinner dishes, but as they were cooked by the ancient Faroese gentleman who entertained our heroes at his house, each and all of them were brave eating.Couldn’t they stop a month? this gentleman, who looked like a true descendant of some ancient viking, asked McBain. Well then, a fortnight? well, surely one short week?But, “Nay, nay, nay,” the captain answered, kindly and smilingly, to all his entreaties; they must hurry on to the far north ere spring and summer came.The Faroese could give them no clue to the mystery that shrouded the previous night. They had never heard of either wreckers or pirates in these peaceful islands.“But,” said the old viking, “we are willing to turn out to a man; we are one thousand inhabitants in all—including the women; but even they will go; and we have ten brave, real soldiers in the fort, they too will go, and we will make search, and if we find them we will hang them on—on—” the old man hesitated.“On the nearest tree,” suggested Rory with a mischievous smile.The viking laughed grimly at the joke.“Well,” he said, “we will hang them anyhow, trees or no trees.”But McBain could not be induced to deviate from his set purpose, and bidding these simple folk a friendly farewell, they steamed once more out of the bay, passed many a strange, fantastic island, passed rocks pierced with caves, and bird-haunted, and so, with the vessel’s prow pointing to the northward and west, they left the Faroes far behind them.Tremendous seas rolled in from the broad Atlantic all that night and all next day, little wind though, and no broken water. In the evening, in the dog-watch, the waves seemed to increase in size; they were miles long, mountains high; when down in the trough of the sea you had to look up to their crests as you would to the summer’s sun at noontide. Indeed, those waves made the brave shipArrandoonlook wondrous small.McBain, somewhat to Stevenson’s astonishment, made the man at the wheel steer directly north.“We’re out of our course, sir,” said the mate.“Pardon me for a minute or two,” replied the captain, half apologetically, “we are now broadside on to these seas, I just want to test her stability.”“Well, everything is pretty fast, sir,” said the mate, quietly; “but if the ship goes on her beam-ends don’t blame me.”“Perhaps, Mr Stevenson, there wouldn’t be much time to blame any one; but I can trust my ship, I think. Wo! my beauty.”The beauty didn’t seem a bit inclined to “wo!” however. She positively rolled her ports under, and Rory confessed that the doldrums were nothing to this.Presently up comes Rory from below.“Och! captain dear,” he says, “my gun-case has burst my fiddle-case, and I’m not sure that the fiddle herself is safe, the darling.”Next up comes Stevenson. “Please captain,” he says, “the steward says his crockery is all going to smithereens, and the cook can’t keep the fire in the galley range, and Freezing Powders has broken the tureen and spilt the soup, and—”“Enough, enough,” cried McBain, laughing; “take charge, mate, and do as you like with her, I’m satisfied.”So down below dived the captain, the ship’s head was once more turned north-west, and a bit of canvas clapped on to steady her.

Has the reader ever been to sea? The first feeling that a landsman objects to at sea is that of the heaving motion of the ship; to your true sailor the cessation of that motion, or its absence under circumstances, is disagreeable in the extreme. To me there is always a certain air of romance about the old ocean, and about a ship at sea; but what can be less romantic than lying in a harbour or dull wet dock, with no more life nor motion in your craft than there is in the slopshop round the corner? To lie thus and probably have to listen to the grating voices and pointless jokes of semi-inebriated stevedores, as they load or unload, soiling, as they do, your beautiful decks with their dreadful boots, is very far from pleasant. In a case like this how one wishes to be away out on the blue water once more, and to feel life in the good ship once again—to feel, as it were, her very heart throb beneath one’s feet!

But disagreeable as the sensation is of lying lifeless in harbour or dock, still more so is it to feel your vessel, that one moment before was sailing peacefully over the sea, suddenly rasp on a rock beneath you, then stop dead. Nothing in the world will wake a sailor sooner, even should he be in the deepest of slumber, than this sudden cessation of motion. I remember on one particular occasion being awakened thus. No crew ever went to sleep with a greater feeling of security than we had done, for the night was fine and the ship went well. But all at once, about four bells in the middle watch,—

Kurr-r-r-r! that was the noise we heard proceeding from our keel, then all was steady, all was still. And every man sprang from his hammock, every officer from his cot.

We were in the middle of the Indian Ocean, or rather the Mozambique Channel, with no land in sight, and we were hard and fast on the dreaded Lyra reef. A beautiful night it was, just enough wind to make a ripple on the water for the broad moon’s beams to dance in, a cloudless sky, and countless stars. We took all this in at the first glance. Safe enough we were—for the time;butif the wind rose there was the certainty of our being broken up, even as the war-shipLyrawas, that gave its name to the reef.

At the first shout from the man on the outlook in theArrandoon, McBain rushed on deck. “Stand by both anchors. Ready about.” But these orders are, alas! too late. Kurr-r-r-r! The statelyArrandoonis hard and fast on the rocky bottom.

The ship was under easy sail, for although there was hardly any wind, what little there was gave evident signs of shifting. It might come on to blow, and blow pretty hard, too, from the south-east or east-south-east, and Mr Stevenson was hardly the man to be caught in a trap, to find himself on a lee shore or a rock-bound coast, with a crowd of canvas. Well for our people it was that there was but little sail on her and little wind, or, speedily as everything was let go, the masts—some of them at least—would have gone by the board.

Half an hour after she struck, theArrandoonwas under bare poles and steam was up.

The order had been given to get up steam with all speed. Both the engineer and his two assistants were brawny Scots.

“Man!” said the former, “it’ll take ye a whole hour to get up steam if you bother wi’ coals and cinders alone. But do your best wi’ what ye hae till I come back.”

He wasn’t gone long ere he came staggering down the ladder again, carrying a sack.

“It’s American hams,” he said; “they’re hardly fit for anything else but fuel, so here goes.”

And he popped a couple into the fire.

“That’s the style,” he said, as they began to frizzle and blaze. “Look, lads, the kettle’ll be boilin’ in twa seconds.”

“Thank you, Stuart,” said McBain, when the engineer went on the bridge to report everything ready; “you are a valuable servant; now stand by to receive orders.”

All hands had been called, and there was certainly plenty for them to do.

It wanted several hours to high-water, and McBain determined to make the best of his time.

“By the blessing of Providence on our own exertions, Stevenson,” the captain said, “we’ll get her off all right. Had it been high-water, though, when we ran on shore, eh!”

Stevenson laughed a grim laugh. “We’d leave her bones here,” he said, “that would be all.”

The men were now getting their big guns over the side into the boats. This would lighten her a little. But as the tide was flowing, anchors were sent out astern, to prevent the ship from being carried still farther on to the reef.

“Go astern at full speed.”

The screws revolved and kept on revolving, the ship still stuck fast. The night was very dark, so that everything had to be done by the weird light of lanterns. Never mind, the work went cheerily on, and the men sang as they laboured.

“High-water about half-past two, isn’t it, Stevenson?” asked Captain McBain.

“Yes, sir,” the mate replied, “that’s about the time, sir.”

“Ah! well,” the captain said, “she is sure to float then, and there are no signs of your storm coming.”

“There is hardly a breath of wind now, sir, but you never know in these latitudes where it may come on to blow from next.”

The cheerful way in which McBain talked reassured our heroes, and towards eleven o’clock English Ralph spoke as follows,—

“Look here, boys—”

“There isn’t a bit of good looking in the dark, is there?” said Allan.

“Well,” continued Ralph, “figuratively speaking, look here; I don’t see the good of sticking up on deck in the cold. We’re not doing an atom of good; let us go below and finish our supper.”

“Right,” said Allan; “and mind you, that poor girl is below there all this time. She may want some refreshment.”

When they entered the saloon they found it empty, deserted as far as human beings were concerned. Polly the cockatoo was there, no one else.

“Well?” said the bird, inquiringly, as she helped herself to an enormous mouthful of hemp-seed. “Well?”

“What have you done with the young lady?” asked Allan.

“The proof o’ the pudding—”

Polly was too busy eating to say more. Peter the steward entered just then, overhearing the question as he came.

“That strange girl, sir,” he replied, “went over the side and away in her boat as soon as the ship struck.”

“Well, I call that a pity,” said Allan; “the poor girl comes here to warn us of danger and never stops for thanks. It is wonderful.”

“From this date,” remarked Ralph, “I cease to wonder at anything. Steward, you know we were only half done with supper, and we’re all as hungry as hunters, and—”

But Peter was off, and in a few minutes our boys were supping as quietly and contentedly as if they had been in the Coffee-room of the Queen’s Hotel, Glasgow, instead of being on a lee shore, with the certainty that if it came on to blow not a timber of the good shipArrandoonthat would not be smashed into matchwood.

But hark! the noise on deck recommences, the men are heaving on the winch, the engines are once more at work, and the great screw is revolving. Then there is a shout from the men forward.

“She moves!”

“Hurrah! then, boys, hurrah!” cried McBain; “heave, and she goes.”

(The word “hurrah” in the parlance of North Sea sailors means “do your utmost” or “make all speed.”)

The men burst into song—tune a wild, uncouth sailor’s melody, words extempore, one man singing one line, another metreing it with a second, with a chorus between each line, in which all joined, with all their strength of voice to the tune, with all the power of their brawny muscles to the winch. Mere doggerel, but it did the turn better, perhaps, than more refined music would have done.

In San Domingo I was born,Chorus—Hurrah! lads, hurrah!And reared among the yellow corn.Heave, boys, and away we go.Our bold McBain is a captain nice,Chorus—Hurrah! lads, hurrah!The main-brace he issureto splice.Heave, boys, and away we go.The Faroe Isles are not our goal,Oh! no, lads, no!We’ll reach the North, and we’llbagthe Pole,Heave, boys, and away we go,Hurrah!

In San Domingo I was born,Chorus—Hurrah! lads, hurrah!And reared among the yellow corn.Heave, boys, and away we go.Our bold McBain is a captain nice,Chorus—Hurrah! lads, hurrah!The main-brace he issureto splice.Heave, boys, and away we go.The Faroe Isles are not our goal,Oh! no, lads, no!We’ll reach the North, and we’llbagthe Pole,Heave, boys, and away we go,Hurrah!

“We’re off,” cried Stevenson, excitedly. “Hurrah! men. Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!”

The men needed but little encouragement now, though. Round went the winch right merrily, and in a quarter of an hour the bows were abreast of the anchors.

“Now, steward,” said the captain, “splice the main-brace.”

The ration was brought and served, Ted Wilson, who was a moving spirit in the ’tween decks, giving a toast, which every man re-echoed ere he raised the basin to his head,—

“Success to the saucyArrandoon, and our bold skipper, Captain McBain.”

The vessel’s head was now turned seawards, and presently the anchors that had been taken in were let go again, and fires banked. The long night wore away, and the dismal dawn came. McBain had lain down for a short time, with orders to be roused on the first appearance of daylight. Rory, anxious to see how the land looked, was on deck nearly as soon as the captain.

A grey mist was lifting up from off the sea, and from off the shore, revealing black, beetling crags, hundreds of feet high at the water’s edge, a sheer beetling cliff around which thousands of strange sea-birds were wheeling and screaming, their white wings relieved against the black of the rocks, on which rows on rows of solemn-looking guillemots sat, and lines of those strange old-fashion-faced birds, the puffins.

The cliffs were snow-clad, the hills above were terraced with rocks almost to their summits. Between the ship and this inhospitable shore lay a long, dangerous-looking reef of rocks.

“Ah! Rory,” said McBain, “there was a merciful Providence watching over us last night. Yonder is where we lay; had it come on to blow, not one of us would be alive this morning to see the sun rise.”

Rory could hardly help, shuddering as he thought of the narrow escape they had had from so terrible a fate.

When steam was got up they went round the island—it was one of the most southerly of the Faroes; but except around one little bay, where boats might land with difficulty, it seemed impossible that human beings could exist in such a place. What, then, was the mystery of the previous evening, of the fair-haired girl, of the lights inside the reef that simulated those of a broad-beamed ship, of the lights like those of a village that twinkled on shore? The whole affair seemed strange, inexplicable. Now that it was broad daylight the events of the preceding night, with its dangers and its darkness, had more the similitude of some dreadful dream than a stern reality.

This same evening the anchor was let go in the Bay of Thorshaven, the capital—city, shall I say?—of the Faroe Islands. I am writing a tale of adventure, not a narrative of travel, else would I willingly devote a whole chapter to a description of this quaint and primitive wee, wee town. Our heroes saw it at its very worst, its very bleakest, for winter still held it in thrall; the turf-clad roofs of its cottages, that in summer are green with grass and redolent of wild thyme, were now clad with snow; its streets, difficult to climb even in July, were now stairs of glass; its fort looked frozen out; and its little chapel, where Sunday after Sunday the hardy and brave inhabitants, who never move abroad without their lives in their hands, worship God in all humility—this little chapel stood up black and bold against its background of snow.

Although the streamlets were all frozen, although ice was afloat in the bay, and a grey and leaden sky overhead, our boys were not sorry to land and have a look around. To say that they were hospitably received would be hardly doing the Faroese justice, for hospitality really seems a part and parcel of the people’s religion. The viands they placed before them were well cooked, but curious, to say the least of it. Steak of young whale, stew of young seal’s liver, roast guillemot and baked auk; these may sound queer as dinner dishes, but as they were cooked by the ancient Faroese gentleman who entertained our heroes at his house, each and all of them were brave eating.

Couldn’t they stop a month? this gentleman, who looked like a true descendant of some ancient viking, asked McBain. Well then, a fortnight? well, surely one short week?

But, “Nay, nay, nay,” the captain answered, kindly and smilingly, to all his entreaties; they must hurry on to the far north ere spring and summer came.

The Faroese could give them no clue to the mystery that shrouded the previous night. They had never heard of either wreckers or pirates in these peaceful islands.

“But,” said the old viking, “we are willing to turn out to a man; we are one thousand inhabitants in all—including the women; but even they will go; and we have ten brave, real soldiers in the fort, they too will go, and we will make search, and if we find them we will hang them on—on—” the old man hesitated.

“On the nearest tree,” suggested Rory with a mischievous smile.

The viking laughed grimly at the joke.

“Well,” he said, “we will hang them anyhow, trees or no trees.”

But McBain could not be induced to deviate from his set purpose, and bidding these simple folk a friendly farewell, they steamed once more out of the bay, passed many a strange, fantastic island, passed rocks pierced with caves, and bird-haunted, and so, with the vessel’s prow pointing to the northward and west, they left the Faroes far behind them.

Tremendous seas rolled in from the broad Atlantic all that night and all next day, little wind though, and no broken water. In the evening, in the dog-watch, the waves seemed to increase in size; they were miles long, mountains high; when down in the trough of the sea you had to look up to their crests as you would to the summer’s sun at noontide. Indeed, those waves made the brave shipArrandoonlook wondrous small.

McBain, somewhat to Stevenson’s astonishment, made the man at the wheel steer directly north.

“We’re out of our course, sir,” said the mate.

“Pardon me for a minute or two,” replied the captain, half apologetically, “we are now broadside on to these seas, I just want to test her stability.”

“Well, everything is pretty fast, sir,” said the mate, quietly; “but if the ship goes on her beam-ends don’t blame me.”

“Perhaps, Mr Stevenson, there wouldn’t be much time to blame any one; but I can trust my ship, I think. Wo! my beauty.”

The beauty didn’t seem a bit inclined to “wo!” however. She positively rolled her ports under, and Rory confessed that the doldrums were nothing to this.

Presently up comes Rory from below.

“Och! captain dear,” he says, “my gun-case has burst my fiddle-case, and I’m not sure that the fiddle herself is safe, the darling.”

Next up comes Stevenson. “Please captain,” he says, “the steward says his crockery is all going to smithereens, and the cook can’t keep the fire in the galley range, and Freezing Powders has broken the tureen and spilt the soup, and—”

“Enough, enough,” cried McBain, laughing; “take charge, mate, and do as you like with her, I’m satisfied.”

So down below dived the captain, the ship’s head was once more turned north-west, and a bit of canvas clapped on to steady her.

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