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1 I E> R.AR.Y
OF THE UN IVLRSITY Of ILLINOIS
323 v. 2.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
http://www.archive.org/details/jackscourtshipsa02russ
JACK'S COURTSHIP
A SAILOR'S YARN OF LOVE AND SHIPWRECK.
BY
W. CLAEK EUSSELL,
AUTHOE OF "THE ' LADT MAID,'" "A SEA QUEEN,'
IX TEHEE VOLUMES. VOLl IT.
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MAESTON, SEAELE & RIVIXGTOX,
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.
1884.
.1// rights reserved.)
loxdox :
PRINTED BT WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AXD CHARING CROSi.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAVXZB PAGE
I. The " Strathmore " ^ ... ... ... 1
II. Hoodwinking ... ... ... ... 23
III. I EMBARK ... ... ... ... ... M
IV. Night in the River ... ... ,.. 56
A*. Mb. Morecomre m Sea-sick ... ... ... 88
VI. With my Love 103
VII. Mb. Hobeoohbe is Very III ... ... ... 119
VIII. Down Channel ... .., ... ... 135
IX. 1 breakfast with Florence ... ... ... 155
X. Mr. Mokecombe »;oes Ashore ... ... 175
XI. Aunt Damaris is Confidential ... ... 191
XII. Half a Gale of Wind ... ... ... 215
XIII. 1 bate a Child's Life ... ... ... 230
XIV. Florence confesses ... ... ... 258
XV. In the North-east Trades ... ... ... 290
XVI. A Dead Calm 309
XVII. On the Equator ... ... ... ... 331
JACKS COURTSHIP
CHAPTER I.
THE " STRATHMORE."
A good proof of the interest rny uncle took in my proposal to ship along with Florence and go to sea with her was in a letter I received next morning from him, enclosing a cheque for one hundred pounds. " My dear Jack/' he wrote, " the accompanying money will enable you to pay your passage out, and lay in a stock of shirts and toothpicks for the voyage. Let us have no thanks — no nonsense. Just pay the draft into your bank, if you have one, and belay all jaw about it unless you want me to think you a swab, which is a term I think you object to. You'll be giving us a call soon, I hope. Yours, Uncle." — There also arrived a long letter from Sophie in answer to the lamentations I had poured out to her two days
VOL. II. v, B
Z JACK'S COURTSHIP.
before. The dear girl had evidently taken a great deal of trouble in writing this reply, for there were no less than seven quotations from five poets, whose works it must have been no joke to her to overhaul for the lines, all of which were very apt and bore fully upon the state of my heart ; and moreover she was exceedingly poetical on her own account, as for example, when she assured me that love was a plant which tears were invented to keep green, and that if Florence and I were truly attached, Mr. Alphonso Hawke might cause all the seas of the world not only to roll between us but over us without washing away our affection. She gave me some news which was more interesting to me than the poetry, namely, that Mr. Hawke, his sister and daughters, had arrived at Clifton Lodge on the previous day, and that a Miss Booth had told her that Colonel Jones had said to her father that Mr. Hawke had told him that his daughter would be leaving Clifton for Australia in about three weeks' time. I say that this news was interesting to me because it proved that up to the present, at all events, no change had come over the spirit of Alphonso's intentions.
I wrote a few words of thanks to my uncle for his handsome gift, and a letter to Sophie, the production of which afflicted me with a lively sense of hypocrisy, as, in order not to excite suspicion, I had to write as if Florence's going rendered me
THE " STBATHMOBE." 3
inconsolable. However, if it is possible to conceive any sort of deception forgivable, I think mine was. ungrateful as it might appear, for it was practised at the request of my uncle, who very properly did not want his wife and daughter to have any knowledge of the blow I was aiming at old Hawke's schemes.
Two days after my chat with my uncle at the hotel, I determined to take a run down to the East India Docks and have a look at the Stratlimore. But first I thought it advisable to call on my way at the offices of the Company, and ascertain if Aunt Damarifl and Florence had booked their passage. Arrived at Fenchurch Street I entered the offices of Duncan, Golightly, & Co., and as I stood at the broad counter, behind which half a dozen of clerks were hard at work, the sense of my old life came up in me so strong that I felt as if my calling was still that of a sailor, and that I was here to obtain a berth. There was one old chap I remembered, the others were strangers. The old fellow looked at me through his spectacles, but did not recognize me, and went on with his work. A young man came to the counter, and I said, " You have a ship advertised to sail on the 28th ? "
"Yes, sir."
" Does she call at Plymouth ? "
"No. Passengers must embark at the Docks or Gravesend."
4 JACK'S COUKTSHIP.
" I expect some friends -will take cabins in that vessel, and if they go I shall accompany them. Is your cuddy full? "
" No, sir ; there are still three cabins vacant."
" Give me the names of the people who have already booked, will you ? I want to know if my friends are among them."
" What are their names, sir ? "
" Miss Damaris Hawke and Miss Florence Hawke."
He looked at a pile of letters, and presently pulled out a sheet of paper, gilt-edged, adorned with Alphonso's old gander, and after glancing over it said, " Miss Damaris Hawke and Miss Florence Hawke, No. 6 cabin. The first-named lady arrived home in the vessel last voyage, and occupied the cabin she now applies for." He then laid a plan of the saloon before me with the cabins numbered. There was a row of six cabins of a side and two aft, the one on the port side being the captain's ; the two forward berths facing each other and coming just under the break of the poop were occupied respectively by the first and second mates. " This, then," said I, putting my finger on No. 6 — that is, the one next the captain's, right aft — "is the cabin that has been taken by the two ladies you name. Which are the berths still to let?"
He indicated them.
THE " STRATHMORE." 5
"Til go and have a look at the ship," said I. '• What's the charge for one of these cabins ? "
" Sixty-two pound ten."
" Do I get the cabin to myself for that ? " I asked. He answered that that would depend. The company only guaranteed exclusive use on payment of such and such a sum (I forget what it was). "I'll save my money and take my chance," said I, "of there being more cabins than passengers, in which case of course I shall have the berth to myself?" He answered, "Yes, certainly."
" Are the ladies sure of taking No. 6 ? "
" Sure," he replied. "Half the passage money was sent with the application."
My heart came into my throat when I heard this.
" Tell me now," said I, " if the Captain Thompson I see advertised as the commander of the Strathmore is the Daniel Thompson who was some years ago second mate of your ship the Montrose."
He went to the clerk in the spectacles and repeated my question. The old fellow said " Yes," without looking up.
" Is he in London ? " I inquired.
" Yes, sir, and if you're going down to the docks at once you'll probably find him about. If you like, I'll accompany you and show you the ship."
6 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
I thanked liira and said I believed I could find my way there without assistance, and so quitted the office. I was in joyous spirits as I made my way to the railway station in Fenchurch Street. The fact of the cabin having been secured for Aunt Damaris and Florence, and half the fare paid, made me realize the meaning of the adventurous job "I was on to a degree I had not approached before. For three months certain should I be associated with my darling, week after week, day after day, and my heart beat high in me as with the rapidity of thought I drew a score of pictures of our rapturous communion, in gales and calms, in heat and cold, under skies of brass and nights soft and sweet with moonlight and dew. And a mighty vigorous imagination I must have had even to come near to anything poetical in Fenchurch Street Station. The roadway was filled with a crowd of grimy fellows, turnpike sailors, loafing scarecrows as bad as the worst specimens of the ragamuffins I have seen shivering in shipping- yards and scrawling their hatred of captains and owners upon benches and whitewashed walls. It took me back some years when I got upon the platform and looked at the people who were waiting for the train ; mates in velvet waistcoats, skippers with red faces and a consequential strut smoking cigars, seamen of divers nationalities, some with white bags, some with all they had in
THE " STBATHMOBE." 7
the world wrapped up in a red or blue handker- chief ; Dutchmen grunting like pigs, negroes with a bland grin on their black faces as the}' stared about them, and English Jack, drunk, shoving, and noisy. I say the sight took me back some years, and it wanted little to persuade me that my chest and bedding were aboard, and that I was bound along with the others for the "pier-head jump."
Presently a Blackwall train arrived, a lot of people tumbled out, and I took my seat in a first- class carriage that smelt like the parlour of a public-house after a night's orgy. Just as we were about to start, the door was flung open and a man bundled in. I was full of thought and hardly glanced at him. Presently he said, " Very genteel rolling stock they have on this line, sir. But I suppose anything's good enough for sailors. Do you object to my lighting a pipe to kill the fragrance in this atmosphere?"
'• Not at all," said I, looking at him hard, struck by his voice, in which I fancied I could catch a note that was familiar to me.
He was a rather short squarely built man of about forty-five years of age, with reddish whiskers and beard that half circled his face as though you should cut a grummet of rope in half and pass it under your chin with the ends against your ears ; his face was the reddest I ever saw on a man, and rendered peculiar by the colour lying in lines and
8 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
blotches, so that when you took a close squint at him, his skin seemed to be covered with a red lace veil with the meshes thickened in places. He had fine honest laughing eyes and a heartily cheerful expression of countenance, and was in his way the completest figure of a merchant seaman one could imagine, dressed in dark blue cloth and a cap with a shovel-shaped peak to it. Finding me staring at him, he began to stare at me, meanwhile groping in his side pockets for his pipe and tobacco. At last I said, " Six years ago I was shipmate with a second mate aboard the Montrose named Daniel Thompson. If you are not he, then you are the devil."
"Daniel Thompson is my name," said he, " and six years ago I was second mate aboard the Mon- trose, and — why, heart alive oh ! you're Jack Seymour ! " and, with a sailor's warmth, he flung down his pipe and tobacco-pouch, jumped into the seat opposite me, and grasped both my hands. "Think of my not knowing you!" cried he. " But then you've grown a moustache and you're a foot taller, and who the blazes would recognize Jack Seymour in those shore-going duds ? "
" This is a strange meeting, Thompson," said I. "Will you believe it — I was actually bound in quest of you. I am going to the docks to have a look at your Stratkmore. Do you know I am thinking of sailing with you ? "
" Sailing with me ! " he exclaimed, letting go my
THE " STRATHMOBE." 9
hands and returning to his pipe; "why, I heard that you had knocked off the sea some years ago — come into an estate — and was living up to the hammer somewhere or other.'1
"Oh!"' said I, laughing, "don't suppose I'm going to sea with you as a sailor. I'm thinking of taking a cabin in your ship for a voyage to New South Wales. I saw your name in the advertisement as skipper, and just now called at the office of the Company to make sure of you. They- told me I should find you aboard."
"I hope you'll come with me; I hope you'll come!" cried he in his hearty fashion. "We'll find many a yarn to spin together — many a talk over old days. But what in the name of Moses takes you to sea again, even as passenger ? Didn't you get enough of salt water in your time ? Only let somebody leave me an estate," said he, lighting his pipe, " and there's never a house agent in the United Kingdom who could find me & dwelling deep enough inland."
" I'll tell you presently why I am going to sea again," I replied. "But first let's hear of yourself. Are you married? are you saving money? how long have you been skipper ? "
He answered these questions by a story that carried us to Blackwall, but though I kept on nodding and saying "Oh!" and " Beally ! " and " Indeed ! " I am sure I did not give his yam all
10 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
the attention he believed it was receiving. The truth is, rny mind was so busy with my own affairs that I could think of nothing else ; though I took in enough of what he said to gather that he was married and had a couple of youngsters, that his wife had a trifle of money, and that he had com- manded the Strathmore two years.
We sallied forth arm in arm, he jabbering in- cessantly, and, after walking a bit, came abreast of a ship whose name I did not need to inquire. I stopped to have a look. There in front of me lay the counterpart of the vessel in whose heart I had passed many a long month; whose mastheads I had watched swaying under stars which no northern dweller ever beholds, whose massive shrouds had shrieked back the refrain of the Cape Horn hurricane, whose topmost canvas had glimmered like dissolving wreaths of vapour amid the breathless gloom of the hushed tropical night.
"What are you stopping for?" shouted Thomp- son. " What do you see that you're staring aloft ? Anything wrong there ? "
" See ! " cried I ; " why, the picture of my old life, Daniel ; the old business of the lonely watch, the streaming decks, the bunk under which I used to grope for my boots when the horrid shout of 1 Eisht bells ! ' awoke me from dreams of feather beds and soft tack and mutton-chops for breakfast. What a jolly life the sailor's 'is, Thompson ! Why,
THE " STEATHMOBE." 11
I'd rather be a rat in jour lazarette than go through it again ; and yet, hang me if the sight of that craft of yours don't infuse a sort of tenderness into me, too, though, for all I know, her iron ribs ma}' be only one degree removed from the ore, and her timber planking as rotten as an old Stilton cheese."
" Don't you go and make any mistake of that kind, my young friend," exclaimed Thompson. " Eotten ! Why, as a matter of strength, the Tower of London's a joke to that ship ; and as to her angle frames being one degree removed from the ore, there's nothing wanting but a little grinding to convert them into the loveliest razors in the world. But come aboard, man, come aboard ! " and we stepped along the plank over the side and sprang on to the deck.
A dock is to a ship what a dressing-room is to a lady, and you must expect dishevelment until she sallies forth into her ocean-world, when you will find her dressed in the latest fashion, painted and sparkling, and dropping many a handsome curtsey as she goes. The Strath more' s topgallant and royal yards were down, all her sails unbent, and the running gear unrove; the yards wore braced fore and aft, there were lumpers at work in her hold, and grimy faces grinned at you over the combings of the main hatch ; a crane alongside was slinging cases of merchandize into her, and
12 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
her main deck was a surface of straw, dirt, wet, and what sailors call raffle. But just as a pretty wench with tousled hair, dirty face, befouled frock, and little toes peeping out of her yawning boots, preserves her prettiness and takes the eye in spite of her squalid attire, so did the Strathmore offer to the experienced gaze every point of a handsome, powerful clipper ship, notwithstanding her grimy decks, her disordered yards, the nakedness of her upper spars, her rigged-in jibboom. She was, as the advertisement about her said, a composite ship — that is, built of iron frames covered with wood. She was slightly longer than the Portia, with a trifle less of beam, and had the reputation of being a very fast sailer, though what is termed a wet ship. This indeed might have been guessed by looking at her bows, which were almost like a yacht's, with hardly any perceptible swell or " flairing." Her lower masts were painted white ; she had channels, though even then those ap- pendages for spreading wide the lower rigging were going out of date, and chequered sides — a broad white band running the length of her, broken with painted ports, so that with her square stern decorated with a row of cabin windows, short royal mastheads, and exceedingly square yards, she might at a distance have passed for a frigate.
Thompson, however, gave me very little time to look about : for after taking a squint down the
THE " STEATHMOFvE." 13
main hatchway and bawling out some question to the people below, he again seized my arm and walked me into the cuddy, as the saloon under the poop was formerly called. This was a fine sweep of cabin, most handsomely decorated, with maple panellings and stanchions cased in satinwood, superbly fluted and gilded, whilst as much as was revealed of the mizzenmast was cased so as to re- semble a Corinthian column, abaft of which a piano- forte was secured. A very handsome staircase led into the steerage on the lower deck, and on either side were the cabins or berths ; whilst overhead were two large skylights, racks full of glass for the tobies, globes for gold-fish, together with a row of brightly burnished swinging trays hanging over the tables, which were shaped like the letter T> one running athwartships atop and the other coming down nearly the whole length of the cuddy. I am no upholsterer or house decorator, and cannot talk to you about this interior in such a way as to make you understand what a radiant, breezy drawing- room of a place it was ; but I often recall it and other passenger ship saloons I have peeped into when I hear of the splendours of the present age in that way, and wonder that there should be so much brag about us, really as though in magnificence of marine decoration we had gone leagues ahead, and clean out of sight of our ancestors : the truth being that many a long year before my time, in the days
14 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
of John Company's ships and the castle-like West India traders, the cabins, hired by old Nabobs and opulent planters at an immense cost, were a perfect blaze of costly furniture, as let noble Tom Cringle certify, who, in speaking of a vessel that he boarded of five hundred tons, rattles away about panels fitted with crimson cloth, edged with gold mouldings, and superb damask hangings before the stern windows and side berths, and plate-glass mirrors, and brilliant swinging lamps, and a splendid grand piano, and a rudder-case richly carved and gilded to resemble a palm tree, '''the stem painted white and interlaced with golden fretwork, like the lozenges of a pine-apple, while the leaves spread up and abroad on the roof," and so on and so on. Faith, I often think there is a deal of the swab in our natures : we barely allow our fore- fathers the smallest merit, and, standing on tiptoe, crow as if we bantams were the only Cochin-chinas creation had produced. Why, who shall swear that at this moment some poor little creature is not writing a book to prove that Trafalgar was a two- penny business, and that it would need the blue- jackets of the present day to make a battle of that job? Is not Shakespeare overrated, and is there no poet amongst us capable of better work? Is Wellington a patch upon the living splendid generals whose breasts are one glorious constellation of medals and orders ?
THE ■' STBATHMOBE." 15
But let me haul off from these distracting reflec- tions before I lose my temper and grow personal ; for hang me if I'm not already in the humour, mates, to give you an idea of what honest disgust sounds like ! "Well, as I have said, Daniel Thomp- son marched me through the cuddy, past the mizzen-mast, and the piano, and the stove, into his cabin, the door of which he closed, and over- hauling a locker took from it a box of cigars and four fat bottles, and then producing some glasses, pointed to the cigar-box and afterwards to a chair, and said, " Now, Mr. Jack Seymour, make yourself at home, sir." This I did without parley, helping myself to a glass of excellent liquor and lighting a cigar. He did likewise, and in a few minutes we lay sprawling upon the lockers talking like brothers.
•'This is the sort of cabin to go to sea in, Daniel,"' said I, casting my eyes round ; " room to grope about in when something you want fetches away and gets lost, and a good view of the world out of those back windows. Is the cabin alongside just as roomy? "
" Just the same size," he answered.
•' They told me at the office that it's taken by a Miss Damaris Hawke."
"Oho!" said he, " that's the lady that came home with us this time, and she's going out with us again, eh ? She's a rum old fish ; only wants a pea-jacket to make her a sailor. Coming on deck
16 JACK'S COUJKTSHIP.
one night in the tropics she stepped aft and found the man at the wheel nodding, whereupon, hang me, Seymour, if she didn't take him by the arm and shake him, and ask him if he knew where he was going. The man fell to abusing her — he was a little Dane — and the shindy brought the second mate to them. I laughed till I cried when he told me the story, and ever after the hands called her Lady Damn-her-eyes, and put her into their songs. D'ye know her ? " said he suddenly, as if struck by my face.
"Thompson," said I, "Til tell you all about it — why I'm interested in Miss Damaris Hawke, why I'm going to Australia, why' I choose this ship. But it's a profound secret, Daniel : a matter that concerns my very senses, for if I'm dished I shall go mad. On your honour as an old shipmate you'll stow what I'm about to tell you as deep down into your silence and confidence as it'll go ? "
"Well," he replied, laughing, "so long as it don't involve any scuttling or stranding or firing job, you may trust me."
Thereupon, without any further preface I told him the whole story. How I had gone to Clifton on a visit to some relatives and fallen in love with Florence Hawke: how her father wanted her to marry another man named Reginald Morecombe, whose offer she had refused : how Aunt Damaris had arrived from Sydney and, as I supposed,
THE " STRATHMORE." 17
recomraended her brother to send Florence with her to Australia as a good way of getting rid of rne : how, as I had no occupation, nothing in the world to do, I had made up rny mind to go to Australia with her, and how my resolution had been com- pleted by discovering that the ship whose name Florence had mentioned was commanded by an old shipmate and friend.
He listened as attentively and gravely as if I was talking to him on freights and bills of lading, and when I had done said, "I understand, Jack; but is the girl worth the trouble you are going to take ? M
" Stop till you see her," said I.
" Is she fond of you ? " he asked.
" I think she is," I replied.
" And I suppose," said he, " that you reckon upon getting her to promise to marry you on your arrival at Sydney."
I nodded, for there was no use in telling him that this voyage was only undertaken by me as part of a somewhat forlorn courtship.
"I'm afraid," said he, "you'll find the aunt a big mouthful as a pill. Does your sweetheart know you intend to join her ? "
" No ; nothing has been said — nobody but my uncle and you are aware of my intention. I'll get you to tell her I'm aboard when we're clear of the river."
VOL. II. c
18 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
He grinned and exclaimed, "I suppose yon don't mind trusting me now that you know I have a wife. I wondered at your curiosity when you asked me if I was married ; but I understand your fears. I was a very suspicious man myself when I was in love."
I laughed as I looked at his jolly bright-red face, and observed the self-complacency in it.
"But," continued he, "you're giving me, as skipper of this vessel, a rum commission. I hope when I've told her you're aboard you'll do the rest of the business yourself. I'm no hand at messages. I never could talk soft, and when I asked my girl to marry me, all I could find to say was, ' Susie, shall we get spliced? Say the word, and when you're ready there'll be a cab at the door with me in it.' After all," said he, "plain talk is better than romancing. A woman knows what you mean when you sheer alongside of her, and would much rather you should speak out than humbug with her hands and keep her waiting."
"Your views are very correct," said I. "But every man has not your sense. Daniel, there's one thing I shall have to do. I wish it were not neces- sary, but I don't see my way without it."
" What ? " he asked.
" I shall have to ship under an assumed name. I'll tell you why. Aunt Damaris has never seen me ; but she would instantly guess who I am if
THE "STBATHMOBB." 19
s>he were to hear of me as Jack Seymour ; and if she's a person capable of giving a seaman a talking to, 3*011 may depend on it she would furnish me with even less opportunity of being with my darling than I should find if we all re- mained at Bristol."
" That's quite true," said he. " If you ship as Brown or Jones, you can talk and walk with your sweetheart without exciting the aunt's suspicions — unless, indeed, you pile on your attentions too thick."
" I'll not do that," said I ; "at all events, whilst she's looking."
" There's no reason," said he, "why 3-011 shouldn't take an alias. It's the usual thing with murderers, and forgers, and thieves, and why not with lovers ? But I say, Se3Tmour, whatever surname you take, please stick to your Christian handle, for I'm sure to call you Jack when I'm not thinking, and if you ship as Alfred or William, the slip will be awkward."
"Let's settle a name at once," said I. "Give me something that'll come easy to 3~ou."
" Anything in two S3'llables will do for me," he answered ; " what do you think of Johnson ?
"Too common," I replied. "If Aunt Damans resemble her brother, she respects blood — you know what blood is, don't you, Daniel ? "
" I've heard of it," he replied. " It belongs to
20 JACK'S COUKTSHIP.
the upper circles, don't it, and is rarely to be found in anything much lower than a squire."
" As I was saying, if the aunt respects blood it'll be worth while to impress her. I wish you'd allow me three syllables, Daniel."
"Well, I don't mind three," said he; "but what- ever it is, let it be pronounced as it's spelt. We brought home a man last voyage called Majori- banks. When I saw the name written, dash my wig if I didn't think he was in the army, and I kept calling him Major Banks until, growing annoyed, he rounded on me with, ' Excuse me, Captain, my name is Marchbanks.' No doubt the correct thing to do with a major is to make him march," said he, grinning from ear to ear over his vile pun, "but if major's to be called march, why isn't it spelt march ? "
"What do you think of Trevelyan?" said I. He reflected, and said he doubted if he should be able to remember it, and asked me to give him something in the nautical line. But nothing that I could think of as belonging to a ship or the sea would satisfy me ; so, after a number of sugges- tions, we fixed upon Egerton, as having an aristo- cratic sound and being easy to pronounce.
On the whole, my friend -did not seem so much astonished by my scheme as I had expected ; but this might be because sailors see so many strange things, and pass through so many curious adven-
THE " STRATHMORE." 21
tures, that the faculty of being amazed is soon worn out in them. We continued for some time talking about the voyage and Miss Damaris Hawke and other matters ; and I then went to look at the unlet cabins, and, after peering and considering, decided upon taking No. 4, it being the roomiest of those which remained unhired, and for that reason safe to choose on the chance of some fellow sharing it with me.
" Will you come aboard in the docks or at Gravesend ? " asked Thompson.
" In the docks," I replied. " If the Hawkes don't join you at Gravesend, we may take it that they are not going to Australia in the Strathmorc"
"Ay," he replied, "for when we leave Gravesend we go clean away to Australia, I hope. You may certainly take it as you say, that if they don't join the ship at Gravesend they've either postponed the voyage or abandoned it."
" Then, of course, I shall go ashore again," said I.
" What ! " cried he, " forfeit your passage-money and the delight of eighty or ninety days of sea and my society ! "
I laughed and said, "But there's no use sup- posing they won't come. Hawke's not a man to send your Company a cheque unless he meant to get something for it."
"If it is to depend upon the aunt," he said,
22 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
"you need not fear of being disappointed. She likes the ship and she likes me, and I now recollect that when we were in the Channel she asked me if there was any chance of my taking the same mates and stewards next time, as she thought the former very safe gentlemen to sail with, and the stewards she considered extremely attentive. That looks as if she had made up her mind even then. Depend upon it, she'll come if she can."
I asked who the mates were, but he gave me names which were unknown to me. I then took a turn over the vessel, and having spent pretty nearly two hours aboard, I bade my old shipmate good-b}Te, begging him as he valued my happiness and prospects to behave with extreme circumspec- tion when I joined the vessel ; never on any account to let it be supposed that I had been at sea as a sailor, but to let the passengers imagine that he called me Jack because we had known each other as boys ; and I wound up by asking him to come and spend a day with me at the West End. But this he said he could not manage, as his wife and children were in the country, and he meant to pass a few days with them, and when he returned his hands would be too full of business for visiting.
( 23 )
CHAPTER II.
HOODWINKING.
I will spare you an account of the thoughts with which I beguiled my ride home and the various reflections which kept me as restless as a buoy in a seaway. So far everything had been plain sail- ing ; Daniel Thompson had proved to be my old shipmate, and the man of all others whom I would have chosen to go to sea with on such an errand as mine ; a berth had been secured by Aunt Damaris and Florence, and half the passage-money paid; and the only fly in this pleasant pot of ointment with which I was greasing the ways of my courtship was the fear that at the last moment Hawke might change his mind and keep Florence at home.
However, my business was to go on steering a straight course and take my chance of the wind holding steady; and accordingly, on my return home from the docks, I forwarded the necessary deposit money to Duncan, Golightly, & Co. for cabin No. 4, and signed myself " John Egerton," feeling a trifle uncomfortable perhaps as I did
24 JACK'S COUETSHIP.
so, though surely my conscience was needlessly sensitive, for I was as guiltless of all wrongdoing in assuming a name as an actor who puts on a wig and runs upon the stage and calls himself the Duke of Gloucester.
A few days after I had visited the Strathmore I went down to Clifton. Hearty as was my respect for my uncle's character, I never could think of him as a man capable of holding his peace, and I was in constant fear that he would betray my project to his wife, and that the news would reach Florence, and perhaps old Hawke. But I was mistaken ; he was as secret as the grave. He had not only not given his wife or daughters the least hint of the truth, but he assured me that he had done his best to dismiss the thing from his own mind, that he might humbug his conscience into believing that he was as ignorant as the others.
" I want," says he, " to be able not only to look but to feel innocent when the truth comes out, so that should Mr. Hawke call upon me or send me an impertinent letter, I shall be able to talk to him with the sense of being an injured man."
This policy in him suited me perfectly, and I begged him to ask me no more questions about my schemes, " for the more I talk," said I, "the more you are obliged to know ; whereas if nothing be said you cannot be sure, even whilst we now con- verse, that I am still bent on going to Australia."
HOODWINKING. 25
" You're right," he replied, " and so we'll confine ourselves to Punch and Judy or the weather ; " though for all that his curiosity was so sharp set that I believe he would have been glad to take his chance of his conscience had I offered him the least encouragement to make inquiries.
However, as I have said, it answered my purpose very well to keep him silent and ignorant. I was a bachelor, but I knew what married people are, and how if a wife comes to suspect that her husband is hiding anything from her she will never rest till she has it out of him. But I had a very difficult part to play with Sophie ; so difficult that it drove me back to London next day and determined me to visit them no more this side my voyage, though but for that I should have been glad to eke out the time that remained by spending a week at Clifton, where I could have kept myself posted in all the latest news about the Hawkes' movements. The fact is, both Sophie and Amelia expected to find me miserably disconsolate, and I reckoned that Florence would either suspect my sincerity as a lover or guess that I had some scheme on hand if I was not reported to her by my cousins as being broken down. Consequently I had to put on the air of a man whose heart is bleeding, and no harder job did I ever undertake, especially when- ever my uncle, who saw into my motive, was looking, for there would be a grin in the cock of
26 JACK'S COUETSHIP.
liis eye that made a sentimental countenance an enormous achievement.
Yet somehow I managed so well that my cousins honestly believed I was in a wretched state of mind, and Sophie did all she could to cheer me. She told me (the moment she had an opportunity of speaking to me alone) that she had met Florence soon after her return from the North in company with her sister, who was in a Bath chair, and had walked with her for nearly half an hour, scarcely noticing Emily, who was very cool, and talking to Florence in order to get all the news she could for me.
"I hope you told her," said I, in my most melancholy manner, "that her going to Australia was an awful blow to me."
"I did, Jack," she replied. "I said that if your heart was not broken outright it was because you believed that separation would not alter her, and that she would bring back the same loving loyal heart she took with her and renew your chance of proving your devotion. ' Before I come back,' said she, ' I dare say he will have found out that he mistook his feelings ; he is very young, Sophie. And indeed,' said she, sighing so prettily, Jack, ' he ought not to wait nor give me a thought when I am gone, for who knows whether I shall ever return?' "
I groaned so heavily at this that for the moment
HOODWINKING. 27
I was afraid from the look Sophie gave me that she considered it almost too full of anguish to he honest. But an uneasy conscience is always putting wrong constructions upon things.
" I answered," continued Sophie, " that though you were young you were old enough to he staunch, and I begged her not to leave England without giving me some token for 3*011 to remember her by — something for you to go on wearing until she came back."
"What did she say to that ? " I asked.
" Why, that she would send me something for you ; it hasn't come yet, but the moment it arrives you shall have it."
This moved me to a degree that made the tremor in my voice real enough. Indeed I was as much touched by this proof of Sophie's fidelity to me as I was stirred and affected by Florence's promise as an indication that I had made greater progress into the darling's heart than I had dared to hope. I squeezed niy cousin's hand and thanked her tenderly for her suggestion to Florence, and then asked if there was any chance of Mr. Hawke changing his mind and keeping his daughter at home. No; she was afraid that there was no chance at all. Florence had told her that every prepara- tion was being made for the voyage, their cabin was secured and they would join the ship at Gravesend. Sbe said that Florence could not
28 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
make head nor tail of her father's resolution ; she never remembered speaking about me or behaving in any way to account for such an extreme step as sending her all the way to Australia. The sugges- tion came from Aunt Damaris, and was immedi- ately seized by Mr. Hawke ; and she could not account for his conduct, for his willingness to lose her society at home and subject her to the risk of a long voyage, unless something more than Mr. Jack Seymour was at the bottom of her father's reasons for sending her away.
" Did she give you any idea of what that some- thing more might be ? " I asked very anxiously.
" No, she has no suspicion. For my part, I believe her father's sole motive is to separate her from you. She declares that she has never said anything about you to him to account for his alarm. But how does she know? Feelings will leak out insensibly ; her father may see more than she herself suspects she shows or even possesses. The wonder to me is that Florence should make no stand ; that she shouldn't bluntly refuse to be driven to the other end of the world. But I suppose she is sincere when she says she likes the idea of revisiting Sydney, and no doubt she is not very happy at home just now : and then, again, she shows proper dignity in coldly and uncomplain- ingly obeying her papa and accompanying her aunt. And who knows, Jack, that she would not
HOODWINKING. 29
be willing to go to the North Pole if by making such a journey she could get rid of that worrying, fortune-hunting creature Morecombe ? "
At this point we were interrupted and had to break off ; nor was I sorry, for it was desperately hard to maintain an air of misery when alone with Sophie, whose sympathy was bound to render her uncommonly shrewd : and besides, conjectures as to Hawke's intentions were exceedingly unprofit- able, seeing that all I required to be satisfied upon was, that Aunt Damaris and Florence meant to sail to Sydney in the Strathmore.
Well, lads, as I have said, I returned to London next day, because I was but a clumsy hand at masquerading, and was sure that my cousins would find me out if I did not look sharp and haul off. Sophie seemed a good deal struck by niy im- patience to be gone, and expressed her surprise that I did not stay, if only for the chance of seeing Florence before she left England.
M Do yon think," cried I, " that I could say good- bye to my darling who leaves with a misgiving that we may never meet again ? Sophie, I could not control myself — the trial would be too much for me. No ! tell her, should you meet, why 1 hurried away : and above all let me have whatever she desires me to remember her by when you get it."'
Whether this satisfied Sophie I did not trouble
30 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
myself to find out. I knew that whatever might be her thoughts I should right myself when she came to hear that I had sailed with Florence in the Strathmore, and meanwhile my business was to keep my plan secret. So before leaving my rela- tions I told my uncle not to expect to see me at Clifton again, as the obligation to play a hypo- critical part was altogether too hard, and I felt that every sham sigh I heaved was an outrage upon Sophie's affectionate, faithful nature.
" All right, my boy, do as you please," said he ; •• but I hope you'll send us a letter from Gravesend to let us know you're gone."
"Certainly," I answered.
••And, on reflection," he continued, "I think you had better address your letter to me, telling me your motive in going, and so on, as though I knew nothing about it. It will be something to flourish before old Hawke should he trouble me ; and it will throw your aunt off the scent, for I don't want her to know that I was all along in your confidence."
This I promised to be sure to do, and then as we were alone I bade him good-bye, for unless he came to see me in London we should not meet again before I sailed. I had never said farewell to my father when I started on a voyage with more emo- tion than I felt as I held my uncle's hand. And yet so far as words went it came, between us, to no
HOODWINKING. 31
more than a brief "God bless you." Nevertheless I had to linger awhile to recover myself before seeking my aunt and cousins ; and though there was little apparent significance in my manner as I took my leave of them, I assure you it was a bitter wrench to say good-bye to Sophie lightly, as though we were to see each other soon, when, could I have had my way, I should have hugged her, and told her we might not meet for months, and perhaps years, and thanked her again and yet again for all that she had done for me, for all she would like to do for me, for her loyal good wishes and sisterly pride in me.
And now, having got back to London, nothing remained but to lay in a stock of such articles as I required for the voyage, and wait for the 28th of the month to arrive. I had not ruany arrange- ments to make : indeed, the list was completed when I had bought a good box upon which I had " John Egerton " painted, and put my clothes and purchases in it, and when I had given notice to quit my lodgings to the landlady. And note here : it took me over half an hour to persuade the woman that I was in earnest, and bound to the other end of the world. I was so much a part of her house that she had come to look upon me as she did her front door and staircase, and when she understood that I was in earnest and really going, she sat down upon the floor and wept there.
32 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
It was on this day that the post brought me a small parcel, which on opening I found to contain a little square box and a letter. In the box was a locket with a wisp of gold-brown hair coiled up in it, and the letter was from Sophie telling me that the locket was my sweetheart's parting gift. " I may tell you," wrote Sophie, "that Florence quite implied she would have liked to give you this her- self, by which you may judge she is not a little disappointed, and perhaps pained, by what I had to call your ' incapacity ' to bid her good-bye. How- ever, if she understands your reason and you are satisfied, it is not for me to lecture you, though I may as well declare, if I were going to Australia and my lover had not the heart to say farewell to me, I should leave with the feeling that if I chose to fall in love with somebody else across the sea, I might do so safely."
This was a snub to my tremendous young sin- cerity that set me gaping to speak out, but I restrained myself on reflecting that in a very few days both she and Florence would know the truth. So all that I did was to acknowledge the receipt of the locket in a few lines, saying that my heart was too full to write at length, and that the only answer I could return to her reference to my incapacity to say good-bye to Florence was to ask her to wait until my darling girl came home, and then judge whether I had remained staunch, and whether my
HOODWINKING. 3fJ
behaviour was of a kind to justify Florence in falling in love with anybody else.
This letter being posted, I purchased a riband for the locket, and hid the little keepsake away under my waistcoat, so proud and happy in the possession of this thing that I cannot recall my delight without sorrowfully reflecting that before I could ever again enjoy pleasure so pure my boyish heart must return to me, and I must be loving my first love as I loved her then, when the morning of life was around and the shadows upon the dew leaned into the west.
VOL, II.
34 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
CHAPTEE III.
I EMBARK.
Monday, September 28, 18--. This was the day fixed for the sailing of the Strathmore, and I had ascertained from the owners, to whom I had for- warded the balance of the passage money, that if I meant to join the ship in the docks I must be on board not later than eleven o'clock in the morning. I had sent my luggage down on the previous Friday, and, Monday being arrived, I bade my landlady farewell, and, armed with a large carpet- bag, in which were stowed the few conveniences I immediately required, I jumped into a cab and was driven to Fenchurch Street Station. I had had so much time in which to thoroughly think over the resolution I had formed to accompany Florence to Sydney, taking my chance of what might follow when we were landed on Australian soil, that, now that the hour I had so long looked forward to was arrived and I had practically em- barked, as I may say, on my wild and singular
I EMBARK. 35
undertaking, I set about the job of joining the ship with the same cool deliberateness of mind I should have possessed had I been going in her as mate for seven or eight pounds a month, or as a passenger bound on some commercial errand.
It was about half-past ten o'clock when I reached the ship, and the scene of life raised up in me such a flavour of my old calling that I felt as if I had no business to be going leisurely aboard, but ought to be tumbling about the decks, shouting out orders, and seeing all ready for hauling out of dock. The Strathmore was now in regular sea-going trim, loaded down to well above the line of her yellow sheathing, all yards across and the sails bent, the long-boat full of live-stock, the hen-coops along the poop crammed with poultry ; huge squares of com- pressed hay (which flung a farmyard smell upon the air), secured near the main rigging, blue peter floating lazily at the fore, the Company's house flag at the main, and the English ensign at the peak. The main deck was full of people, steerage and 'tween-deck passengers and their friends convers- ing in groups, and waiting for the inevitable signal for separating. The scene was a familiar one to me, and yet I found myself, as I stepped over the gangway, glancing with perfectly fresh interest at the old picture of here a young woman silently crying ; there a family of father, mother, and little -children gathered round the aged couple who had
3b JACK'S COURTSHIP.
made a weary journey to see the poor hearts off, and who would find the return home wearier still ; yonder an ill-clad man standing with his arms folded, looking at the ships which lay around, his haggard face giving you a good image of the de- jected, doubting, harassed mind inside him. The Strathrnore was not an emigrant ship, but she had accommodation in her 'tween decks, between the steerage bulkhead and the mainmast, for a few poor people who were charged emigrants' fares and went out as emigrants ; and, consequently, her deck on this day presented all the interest of an emigrant vessel : and I don't know whether in all this world there is any sight to equal the scene a ship bound on a long voyage offers just before the steam-tug lays hold of her, and whilst passengers and their friends are mingled on her decks. There are the little children gaping about them full of wonder ; there are relatives holding on to one another's hand in a grasp that once relaxed may never again be felt ; you hear sounds of sobbing and the painful echo of laughter between, the hoarse voices of men, the sharp feverish chatter of women striving to put as much talk as might fill up a day into these last ten minutes ; and dock officials yell directions to Jack who is sprawling about on the forecastle, drunk, and singing and grinning and lurching here and there, with a kind of defiant rolling, as if he would have you take
I EMBABK. 7
aiotice that he for one doesn't mean to make a blubbering job of this leave-taking; whilst over- head the great spars and masts tower into the dusty blue and look ponderous pieces of furniture now that all the sea-gear is rove and the sails bent and rolled up ; and they set you thinking of the pallid heights of canvas they will be presently uprearing, and of the night that shall come down by-and-by upon the distant sea, amid which this same ship will be heaving slowly, with never a sound rising from her heart wherein those men and women and childen shall be slumbering, with a thousand fathoms of water betwixt them and the bottom of the black profound whose surface is full of starlight.
I ran my eye along the poop, but did not see Captain Thompson, and as the mates were strangers to me, I thought I could not do better than turn to and set my cabin in order, and write a letter to my uncle ready for posting at Gravesend. There was nobody at that moment in the cuddy, though I could hear a stir in the steerage, the sounds coming very plainly up the hatchway. 1 stood a moment looking along and, thought I, " If I could see one of the stewards now, I would ask him if the Hawkes' luggage was in their cabin ; " then I said to myself, " Better not ask questions, Jack, for you never can tell what may not set Aunt Damaris putting two and two together. Look for yourself."
oS JACK'S COURTSHIP.
Whereupon, putting niy bag upon the table, I marched to No. 6 cabin, knocked, received no answer, tried the handle, found the door unlocked, and peeped in.
A single glance was enough : one side of the cabin was full of boxes, parcels, etc., with Miss I). Hawke and Miss F. Hawke plainly painted or written on them. The sight of these traps was the same as seeing the owners, so far as the cer- tainty of their sailing in the Strathmore was con- cerned ; and closing the door, I came away, picked up my bag, and entered my own cabin.
The light was feeble, owing to the scuttle or window being in the shadow of the quay wall, but, nevertheless, I was able to see that I was not to have the cabin to myself. Luggage that did not belong to me stood near my box, and in the bunk under mine was a collection of articles including a waterproof coat, a gun-case, a bundle consisting of an umbrella, a walking-stick, a sword-stick, etc. I was a good deal disappointed, as I had reckoned upon being alone. Evidently the Strathmore was taking out a full complement of passengers. The consideration now was, what sort of companion was I to have? A cheerful, amiable fellow, whose society would be a pleasure, or a sea-sick growling old hunks whose company would be a perpetual affliction ?
I peered at the things in the bunk, and then
I EMBARK. 39
noticing a name painted on the top of a box some- what resembling mine, I bent down to see what it was, and read in large white letters :
"Reginald Morecombe, Esq.,
Cabin Passenger. Per Stratkmore"
I could hardly credit my senses. I stood up and stared around me, then took another squint at the card, and, lost in amazement, looked at the traps in the bunk, and came once more to the card. " Reginald Morecombe ! " There it was plain enough, and I stood erect, absolutely dumbfounded. But, stop ! how wras I to be sure without seeing the fellow that this Reginald Morecombe was Florence's admirer ? Might there not be another man of that name among the millions who populate Great Britain, and through the operation of one of those strange conjunctions of circumstances which sometimes happen in this life, might not he have chosen the Stratkmore to sail to Australia in, and had the half of my cabin allotted to him ? I ex- amined the boxes, but not being able to see inside them, I found nothing more suggestive than the name. I then overhauled the traps in the bunk, but there was nothing to be learnt by looking at the gun-case and the macintosh. Nevertheless, though I could not have taken my oath that my companion would prove Mr. Hawke's young friend, I was so perfectly convinced in my own mind he was nobody
40 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
else, that I was as much confounded, annoyed, and nonplussed as if I had entered the cabin and found the man in bed in it.
Was this the explanation of Hawke's singular willingness to send his daughter away on a long voyage ? Did he hope by boxing up her and More- combe for three or four months in a ship that the young fellow would succeed in worrying the girl into accepting him ? Was it Aunt Da maris' scheme '? She would be here, at all events, to help the youth, and her house would be open to him at Sydney. And did Florence know he was to accom- pany them ? If not, why there would be positive baseness in her father's scheme to make the Strath- more a mere trap for her. But if, on the other hand, she knew all about it, why did she keep the news from Sophie ? Why had she sent me a keepsake to remember her by, and messages to cherish, when all the time she was aware that she was going to Australia in company with the man whom her father had chosen for her to marry ?
I sat on my box with my forehead in my hand and my mind in a whirl. Yoices were bawling on deck, feet were stamping overhead, people were moving about in the cuddy. I knew by the cries which reached me that we should be warping out of dock in a few minutes, and such was the state of bewilderment into which I had been flung by the conviction that my cabin-mate was to be no other
I EMBARK. 41
than Hawke's young friend, by the astonishing pertinacity old Hawke was exhibiting, by the deter- mination of Mr. Morecombe, who was going to abandon society for sea-sickness and a long voyage in the hope of winning Florence, and by the fear that the girl had all along known he was to join her and her aunt, that I declare for some moments it was just the spin of a coin whether I should jump on shore, send for my traps at Gravesend, and drop all thoughts of Florence as completely as I abandoned the voyage.
This was my mood, when, casting my eyes towards the bunks, which were built one above the other, the absurdity of the situation in which Morecombe and I would be placed by occupying one cabin and sleeping one atop of the other, struck me ; I burst into a lit of laughter and roared so lustily that I came very near to choking. And nothing, I believe, could have done me more good ; the flood of merriment seemed to cleanse my mind and leave room for the old devil-may-care spirit to assert itself again.
Without more ado I opened my box, bundled such things as I required to have at hand into one of the two small chests of drawers with which that cabin was furnished, and then, pulling out a writing-case, began a letter to my uncle. When it came, however, to using a pen and collecting my thoughts, I found I was rather too agitated to say
42 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
much. I opened by telling him I was going to Australia, and why, as though he had known nothing of my intentions, and then went on to say that I was on board, that the Hawkes' luggage was in their cabin, and that some baggage labelled " Reginald Morecombe " was in my cabin. I could not yet positively declare that this Eeginald Morecombe was Hawke's friend, but I would let him know hi a postscript when the man came aboard at Gravesend. "If he proves to be Florence's admirer," said I, " you will understand, and especially Sophie appreciate, the profound cunning old Hawke exhibits by this manoeuvre. I only hope that Florence is ignorant of the plot : unhappily I shall not be able to tell you how this is, for I am not likely to see her until we have been some time under way. If in my postscript I inform you that my cabin companion is the Reginald Morecombe, please take the earliest opportunity of letting old Hawke know that I have sailed in the Strathmore." I then wound up by thanking him for his kindness, and begging him to ask Sophie's forgiveness of me for concealing from her my intention to accompany Florence, and brought my letter to an end with a proper sentimental flourish.. Having finished that job, leaving the envelope open for the postcript I had promised, I put on my hat and shoved my head out of the cabin-door to see who might be about before boldly issuing
I EMBARK. 43
forth, since for all I could tell Florence might have come aboard whilst I was below. True, I had understood she was to join the ship at Gravesend, but her aunt might have changed her mind and chosen to start from the dock : anyhow, I could not be sure, and the very last thing I wanted was to plump up against the darling unawares, and frighten her before her aunt or an}Tbody else into a betrayal of our being " auld acquaintance " ; and so, I say, I peered out cautiously, saw a group of persons talking near the companion steps, and an under-steward in a camlet jacket rubbing the table. But there was nobody I knew in sight ; I therefore walked on to the main-deck, and found to my surprise that we were out of the dock and in the river, and that a tug had got hold of us and was canting our head towards midstream.
I walked a short distance forward so as to be able to see who was on the poop before going there. Most of the 'tween-deck and steerage folks were below, but a few had clambered on to the bulwarks, and a knot of them stood on the fore- castle waving their hats and handkerchiefs to their friends who stood on the walls and pierheads watching the noble ship start. I took a good look aft, and seeing nothing but strange faces, saving Dan Thompson, who stood alone listening to the bawling of the mud pilot, and watching, without of course taking any part in the busy scene, I
44 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
mounted the poop ladder and went up to un- friend.
" Hallo, Jack ! " said he, gripping my fingers heartily; "I was only just now thinking of you and wondering whether you were aboard. When did you come ? " I told him. " Whisper," says he, "what's the name I am to call you by ? Con- found me if I can recollect it ; something to do with edge, hadn't it ? "
" Egerton — Jack Egerton," I replied; "and for heaven's sake, Daniel, don't go and forget it. Think of edging down ; that's nautical, you can't forget that."
"No, no, Egerton — Jack Egerton — I have it now," said he. " Be easy ; Egerton' s the word."
" Since I've been aboard," said I, "I've been rendered doubly anxious by one of the most bothersome things happening that ever you could imagine. I was in hope of getting a cabin to myself, and I find I'm to have a companion."
"Well, and what does that mean? " cried he, with a broad grin on his jolly nautical red face ; "merely that Dan Thompson's a mighty popular skipper, beloved of ladies and gentlemen. Would you have me sail with unlet cabins ? And besides, how many bunks does an old lobscouser like you want to sleep in ? "
"That's not it," I replied; "I don't object to a companion. But guess who he is to be ? "
r EMBABK 45
u Pooh, poob ! out with it, man : how the dickens can I guess ? "
"When I Bpoke to you of the business that's bringing me on this voyage, did I tell you/' said 1, " that there was a young chap named More- combe wanted by my sweetheart's father as a husband for my pet."
"Did you? — may be. may be. And what then?"
" Why, smother him, Daniel, his luggage is in my cabin — he's to be — not my bedfellow, thank heaven, but he is to lie in the bunk under me. The old man has hoped to make a rat-trap of your ship for his girl. He's planned the voyage for her, that young Morecombe may be in her com- pany all the while you keep at sea and after you've set us ashore. And if that's not enough,"' cried I, savagely dwelling upon the baseness of the plot (as if I, lads, were the most innocent of beings, and not in the smallest degree working out a very much more audacious scheme), "he's to share my cabin and I'm to have the privilege of hearing him snorting under me in his sleep for seventy ox eighty days.*'
Daniel burst into a loud laugh. " What'll you do, Jack?" he exclaimed, "since he's to be under you, will you contrive to smother him one night '? Your bunk-planks are movable, you know, and there's nothing to prevent you coming down upon
46 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
him. Pity your mattress isn't a feather bed ; " and he broke into another long guffaw.
At this moment the pilot roared out an order to the wheel, and my friend ran to the rail to peer at something ahead, and there he stood, clean for- getting all about my troubles and thinking only of his ship. It was scarcely the right moment to bother him, though I was determined, before we brought up at Gravesend, to have my way with him in something I required him to do. So I hauled off and went and sat on the edge of the after skylight to think a bit, and to have a look at what was going on. And plenty there was to see, as there always is on the Thames, which is the noblest river in the world to my mind. I have been upon African and Indian and South American rivers, and beheld a thousand strange and shining beauties, and in China have slept on a rushing stream amid a crowd of wobbling and straining junks, with a glimpse of temples beyond the outlandish trees, and a soft wind sighing under the sharp hard blue of the sky, and smells about as aromatic as the materials which go to the making of a plum-pudding. But the scenery of the Thames is the work of human hands, and that's the impressive part of the noble old stream. Gaze along it in an atmosphere of yellow light, when magnitude and vagueness are given to the leagues of waterside structures, and when objects
I EMBABK. 47
glooin upon the dun horizon and cheat you with the idea of immensity by the remoteness they take. The Strathmore's fTying-jibbooni was looking right over the elliptical stern of the tug, and we were swarming down the bend which bears the polite name of Bugsby's Keach. And hereabouts was no lack of life on that day; there were half a score of big vessels in this Keach coming or going, whilst lighters crept by broadside on, tugs sped along in quest of towage jobs, passenger steamers drove through the steel-coloured water, with a glancing of silver at their keen stems, and a whirl of snow elucing in a broad current from under their counters. I took notice of a big India steamship leisurely making for Gravesend, trim as a man-of-war, her sides and funnel spotless, her scuttles winking like stars in her as she coiled her ebony length along the southern sunshine and rounded eastwards into Woolwich Reach, whilst, towing past her for London, there came a small full-rigged ship from the other side of the world, her brave little hull covered with scars of the con- flicts she had fought in distant seas, her canvas rlumsily rolled up, her gear grey from constant wetting and drying, and the crew on the forecastle pointing out to one another the familiar scenes ashore.
This is one of the contrasts the noble river gives you. And look yonder at the familiar Thames
48 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
wherry, with the old waterman resting on his oars and squinting over his shoulder at the passing tug- in whose tumble, as the steamer rushes past, the little boat flounders and wallops, and sets the old chap's oars flourishing like a pair of knitting- needles in a woman's hand, whilst his hat shortens and enlarges with the reeling as if he wanted to show all observers what an optical illusion was like. And hark now to the panting of that little screw tug that heads up river with a chain of deeply-laden coal barges in her wake, and see the lazy grimy villain atop of the dirty heaps, in shirt sleeves, a pipe in his mouth, and his soot}^ face to the sky.
Our voyage was begun on a fine bright day, if so be the hauling out of dock for Gravesend can be called the beginning. We were too near London for the azure overhead to be rich, but there was a gay autumn tone in it, with a lightening of the blue into a kind of silver over the furthest reaches of the south shore, against which every tree, house, and curve of land took a delicate black outline like a sketch in ink. The sunshine poured full upon our ship and put fiery lines into the yellow top- masts and topgallantmasts, and notched the sky- lights and the brasswork with flashing white stars ; and the soft wind that followed carried the smoke of the tug along with us for a space until we rounded into Galleons Reach, when the dark coil
I EMBARK. 49
floated away in a bluish shadow over Plunistead Marshes. There was a constant coming and going of figures upon the main deck, with sad-hearted faces overhanging the rail watching the passing land, and some drunken horseplay of sailors upon the forecastle, where stood the chief mate of the ship ready to echo the pilot's orders to the tug.
A few of the cuddy passengers had joined the vessel in the docks and sauntered about the poop. I took notice of what was unmistakably a newly- married pair; they kept together arm in arm, and the husband showed his wife the card in the binnacle, the pump for washing down betwixt the mizzenmast and the skylight, the quarter boats and the captain's gig over the stern, with the air of a man who meant to get his honeymoon out of everything that came in his road. There was an elderly gentleman of a stern cast of counte- nance, who walked about with his hands behind him, and every now and again he would come to a stand and cast a look aloft in a manner that made me suspect he knew the difference between the head-pump and the poop-downhaul. I after- wards found him to be Captain Jackson, K.N., going to Sydney, with his wife, on some govern- ment business. There were other persons standing about the poop and looking at the brilliant river- show, but I did not give them much attention,
VOL. II. S
50 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
having more interesting subjects to occupy my mind with. And do you ask me if there was any yearning in my bowels after the old city we were leaving in our wake, and the soil that was dropping astern fathom by fathom as the tug hauled us onwards ? Not an atom, my lads. Had I been leaving a wife or a mother, or some one dear to me, why then of course my face would have been as melancholy as the longest and yellowest of the visages among the third-class passengers. But I was outward bound, in the vessel that was to carry the darling of my heart to Australia. I was going for a sail around the world, not as a poor devil who had to haul upon ropes or keep a look-out with his eye against a snow-squall, but as a cuddy passenger who was to eat the best that was in the ship, sleep in all night, and go below when it rained. If I was thought- ful, it was because I was puzzled and worried by the discovery that young Morecombe was going to make one of our happy family, not because I was leaving England, or because I was afraid of being sea-sick.
Well, by-and-by we were abreast of Erith, float- ing pleasantly along, the sky hollowing over our mastheads into a deeper tint, and the ship making a noble show upon the broadening stream, with a certain rugged heavy appearance aloft that hand- somely fitted her deep trim and the appearance of
I EMBARK. 51
the men and women who stared over her bulwarks. An outward-bounder she was from the vane above the truck to the line of white water which the wheels of the tug swept under her glittering figure- head and along her glossy bends, and I sat looking at the massive yards lying square upon the tower- ing masts, and at the fretwork of shadows cast by the fore shrouds upon the galley and the longboat, and thought of one day when the North-east Trades had breezed up into half a gale of wind, and when I leaned over the jibboom with my hand upon the outer jibstay and saw such another vessel as this rushing at me under a maintopgallant sail set over a single -reefed topsail, sending the surges boiling far ahead of me with every downward crash of the shearing cutwater and flinging a continuous roll of thunder upon the gale out of the iron-hard hollows of her white canvas.
Thompson had been talking to a middle-aged lady with an Irish accent, and when they separated I went up to my friend and said, " Daniel, can you listen to me for three minutes ? "
" Certainly," he answered; "I must apologize for interrupting you just now, but didn't you notice the dumb-barge right in the road of the tug? Those things are the curse of the river. Captains' lives are made up of nothing but actions brought against them by barge owners. What is it you have to say, Seymour? "
u OF ill LIB.
52 JACK'S COUETSHIP.
" Egerton, man — Egerton ! Didn't I exhort you not to mistake ? " cried I.
"Look here, Jack," says he, "Egerton be bio wed ! I shall never be able to remember it, and therefore to make sure I must call you Jack and nothing else. You can say I'm a cousin, if you like, a foundling adopted by your parents, a foster- brother, half a twin, anything you choose. But I'll bungle Egerton as sure as your name's Se}Tmour ; so Jack it must be between us, and I'll leave you to account for the familiarity."
" If you can't call me, Egerton, then I must be Jack," said I; "there's no familiarity, and conse- quently any accounting for it would be a mistake. And now I am going to ask you to do me a favour. When we reach Gravesend and I catch sight of Miss Hawke coming aboard, I must go and hide, for fear that, should she see me, her astonishment might lead her to suspect who I am."
"But don't the aunt know you?" asked Thompson, who had evident!}7 forgotten the story I had given him in the docks.
"No," I answered, "she has never seen me nor have I ever set eyes on her. Morecombe I once caught sight of, but I am unknown to him."
" And does Miss Hawke know you ? " said he.
" Why, hang it all, my good Daniel," cried I, " didn't I tell you that she was half in love with
I EMBARK. *»o
me, that I was passionately in love with her, and making this voyage for the sake of being with her and in the hope of inducing her to marry me?"
"Yes, yes, I remember now," he added; "and what is it you want me to do ? You said some- thing about hiding."
"I said that when Miss Hawke heaves in sight I must go below. You must take the very first opportunity you can find to tell her privately that I am on board and beg her not to show any astonishment when I appear, and that you will introduce me to her as though I was a stranger."
"What sort of a girl is she? I'm willing to oblige you," said he, " but hang it, Jack, you're now asking me to take liberties. What will she think when I beg her not to be astonished ? "
" Do you think, Daniel," said I, " that I am likely to place an old friend like you in a false position ? She will think that you are behaving very kindly to us both in cautioning her against allowing her surprise to betray me to her aunt."
He took a few short turns up and down in front of me, with his good-natured red face working as though he was rehearsing the thing, and then said, " Well, there can be no harm ; I'll do this. When she arrives, and a chance comes, I'll say, ' There's an old friend of mine aboard — an old shipmate — named Jack Seymour!' She is sure to sing out,
54 JACK'S COUKTSHIP.
■ What, Jack Seymour ! ' and I'll answer ' Yes*. He tells me he has the honour of your acquaint- ance, and has asked me to let you know he's aboard, in order that when he turns up you mayn't be frightened.' "
" Not frightened, Daniel," said I: " surprised- All the rest will do capitally."
" Surprised, then," he continued. "And then I'll say, ' for reasons I've not troubled myself to ask, he tells me he's shipped under the name of Egerton, but as I can't reckon upon always remembering that name, I shall call him Jack. It's not my business,' I'll say, 'to inquire into names. All I've got to do is to carry my ship and the people in her safely across the ocean.' I'll say that, Jack, to satisfy my own mind ; no harm in it, I hope ? "
"None whatever."
" And what else is there to do ? " said he.
"Why," I replied, "you can tell her that I've asked you to introduce me to her."
I saw he did not like that, but instead of declining he said, " What d'ye want to be intro- duced for ? Go plump to her and ask her what she thinks of the weather. People don't stand on shore -going ceremonies at sea. You ought to know that, Jack."
" Never mind that part of the job, Daniel. If you'll just tell her I'm aboard, and let me know
I EMBARK. 55
when you have given her the news, I shall be eternally obliged to you.''
" All right, my lad, 111 do that," said he, clapping me on the shoulder and laughing in my face ; and then, taking a look round, he said something to the pilot and went below.
56 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
CHAPTER IV.
NIGHT IN THE RIVER.
I could not help wondering at my impudence in thrusting my love business on the mind of a sea captain, full of the responsibility of a big ship crowded with 'passengers and loaded down to her chain-plate bolts with valuable merchandise. However, I had calculated upon his help and was not going to be cheated out of it ; and, besides, there would be a freemasonry between us which few landsmen could fully understand. We had been old shipmates, had had many a frolic together ashore under Southern and Eastern skies, were fast friends whilst professionally associated, and con- sequently he would act and speak before me privately without any of the reserve he would think necessary to maintain for the preservation of his dignity in the presence of others. What sort of captain he made I could not yet tell, but I remembered him as a smart, exceedingly intelligent seaman as second mate; a man who had made
NIGHT IX THE BITER 57
Lis position by hard work and close attention to his duties ; who, if he had not crept aboard through the hawsepipe, had not gained admittance by the cabin window, but as apprentice, had worked his way up out of the slush-pot into com- mand of one of the finest ships which then traded to Australia.
Lunch was on the table and I went into "the cuddy to take my first meal aboard the Strathmore. Only two or three of the passengers came to the table, among them being Captain Jackson. He talked in a loud voice to Thompson, who sat at the head of the table ; and I remember the navy man inquiring if the ship was not uncommonly deep in the water, to which Thompson replied that her height of side was an inch more than she had last voyage.
''Well,*' says Captain Jackson, "it's my ignor- ance of merchant vessels that makes me ask the question. I was brought up in frigates and line- of-battle ships, sir, and am used to a dip of twenty feet, and when I required to judge our pace of sail- ing by looking over the side, I had to peer a long way down before I came to water."
" You're going to alter all that in the navy, I hear," says Thompson ; " hulls are to be flush with the water, aren't they ? and nothing's to show but the things you point your guns out of ? "
"Oh," cried Captain Jackson scornfully,
58 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
" what's going to be altered in the navy I'm sure I don't know. I'm sorry, but I can't help the change, sir. Iron and steam are the curse of the country, sir ; they have robbed us of our ships and of our sailors. What's a man-of-war in these times ? An immense floating kettle, sir, with fire inside it and steam blowing out of the spout ; and how can they call the men who man those monstrous utensils sailors ? What could Nelson have done with a parcel of fellows brought up in floating saucepans, where there are no yards to brace about, where a bolt of canvas would furnish all the sail needed, and where the helm is worked by a steam engine ? "
Thompson tipped me a wink as the prejudiced old fellow stopped his chatter by filling his mouth. This specimen of the gallant captain's opinions made me glad to think that he was to be one of us, as I might reckon upon a deal of amusementc No humorist equals the man who passes his closing years in pointing to the past with one hand and pulling the nose of the present with the other, and I never tire of hearing such people and encouraging them to talk.
He began again about the Strathmore being overloaded, and his wife, a large stout lady with a cast in her port eye, who sat next him, said she was sorry to hear that he had misgivings on that subject, for nobody could imagine how deeply her
NIGHT IX THE BIVER. 69
husband was versed in all nautical matters, being the author not only of a marine dictionary, but of a work on the management of boats at sea. On this the Irish lady, Mrs. O'Brien, who was seated near Thompson, said to him, " Captain, if the gentleman knows all about it and says the ship is too deep, then she must be unsafe, and I hope ye '11 have her lightened before we get among the wave.-, which they tell me roll mountains high in the Bay of Biscay."
How Daniel eased their minds I don't know, for, having finished lunch and suspecting that Gravesend would not be far off, I left the table and went on deck to look about me, thinking as I mounted the companion-steps, and hearing my friend blandly jabbering about free-board and tonnage (soul-sickening subjects), that the old navy man would give him some trouble with his prejudices if he did not mind his eye.
It was half -past one or later yet, and we were in Xorthfleet Hope, as the stretch of water betwixt Grays and Tilburyness is called, and by squinting- over the port bow I could see where Gravesend lay by the colour of the sky there. The wind had freshened and the water was trembling and running in a stress of little waves under it ; the smoke from the tug's funnel fled away flat from the orifice and blew down upon the water ; a couple of yachts with the tacks of their mainsails triced up were passing
60 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
us in a smother of foam, through which their greenish copper flashed like a shark's body in the boiling and seething white of a ship's wake, an old black collier, with the clews of her square foresail stretched on a boom, was staggering along within pistol-shot of a lovely slope of mud on the Tilbury side ; and a tug was dragging a fine Yankee barque up the river, hands aloft unbending the sails, and the stripes and stars making a brilliant spot of colour against the sky, under which a flight of windy-looking clouds were speeding with a ragged look in their tails as if they had been torn out of some solid body of vapour that would not be Ions in coming.
Now that Gravesend was almost within hail I grew desperately nervous and agitated, and seemed to realize with a deeper sense of it than had yet come to me the resolution old Hawke was illus- trating by his stratagem of sending Florence and Morecombe away together on a long voyage. Evi- dently my cousins were perfectly right when they had said that the young fellow was not to be got rid of by a plain refusal. The worry in me was rendered livelier by my anxiety to make sure that the man who was to share my cabin was the fellow I feared he would prove. I stood watching the passing shore as we opened Gravesend Reach, and then presently the old town which I knew so well as a point of departure and arrival — for I had
MIGHT IX THE IilYEE. 61
always sailed out of the port of London — hove in view, its bits of piers forking out into a squadron of wherries that danced around them, and I saw the windows of the Falcon Hotel sparkling in the light (may be Florence was at that moment watching the approaching ship from one of them, and it was her I mistook for the sunshine in the window panes), and the lumber of houses that huddled close to the river's edge ; while far away down the Hop*. , shining like marble in the fitful radiance of the cloud-swept sun, were the white heights of Clift't , crowning the visible confines of a stretch of water that was full at that hour of shipping, at rest or under way, and gay with the windy streaming of scores of flags.
It was three o'clock by the time the ship was moored to a buoy, very nearly abreast of Gravesend, and, armed with a pipe and a small but powerful telescope of my own, I went forward on to the fore- castle, where I could watch the passengers come aboard without being noticed myself. There was a squally look in the sky, and it was blowing a fresh north-east wind with an edge of winter in it that made the pilot cloth coat I wore a very acceptable garment. The women and children on the main deck, and the rather squalid-looking gentry who paced the forecastle or hung about the galley for the warmth and shelter down there, gave, I am bound to say. a somewhat slum-like look to the
62 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
ship in that part of her which they were permitted to use. But when I glanced at the clear quarter- deck, with the shining windows in the cuddy front and the brasswork and painting there, then at the long sweep of poop which ran with a very clear white surface into the sky that was pouring past in clouds, and then turned my eyes aloft where the house flag, dwarfed by height, was rattling like a peal of musketry at the main royal masthead, and looked at the grand spread of yards, and noticed the frigate-like pose of the masts, stayed to a hair, every sail with a bunt as smooth as a pillow, the ratlines ruling the shrouds as straight and square as the shear poles, all the braces hauled taut, and the wind giving a curve to every slack line it met and rushing away out of the topmast rigging with a kind of angry hiss in its wild humming, I thought that if Florence was viewing the Strathmore from yonder hotel or any other land point, she would be thinking her a noble-looking craft for her class and character, and not the less fitted to ride the stormy seas of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans because Captain Jackson, E.N., found her deeper than he thought good.
"Well, mates, after I had been keeping a look-out for about twenty minutes I spied a boat shove off from the steps behind the pier, and bringing my glass to bear I noticed that the waterman headed for us and that there was a man sitting in the
XIGHT IN THE RIVER. 63
sternsheets. I kept the little telescope upon this last, and presently made out a large moustache, a white billycock, an eye-glass, stick-up collar, and a iigure dressed in a grey coat with a cape, and a rug over his arm and a black portmanteau alongside of him. I had only seen Mr. Morecombe once, as you know, but the moment my glass gave me the face of the fellow in the sternsheets of that boat so that I could clearly see the features of it, all doubts as to the man who was to share my cabin vanished. Reginald Morecombe it was as certain as that it was I who was watching him. The name on the luggage below ought to have convinced me, but though I had been pretty sure I was not so sure as I was now, and such was the effect of this con- firmatory and conclusive evidence upon me that, though God knows I should have reckoned myself in anything but a merry mood, I burst into a wild laugh, shaken to the heart by the absurdity of us two taking this voyage for the same purpose, coming together without the least suspicion of each other's intention, and actually sharing the same cabin, and sleeping one atop of the other !
However, if there was any comfort at all to be got out of the fact of this man coming aboard it lay in his arriving alone, for that looked to me very much as if Florence knew nothing of the plot that had been devised, and I might count upon good results following her disgust if it turned out that
64 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
she was ignorant of the conspiracy between Hawke and Aunt Damaris and Morecombe. I went on to the quarter-deck as his boat sheered alongside, and watched him come up the gangway ladder. He knew very little about ships, I took it, and was boarding the Strathmore for the first time I sus- pected by the way he halted and stared, as if he didn't know which end of the vessel belonged to him ; and I dare say he would be puzzled by the crowd of 'tween-deck passengers who stood by to see him arrive and by the appearance of the main- deck, which with its rows of scuttle-butts, spare booms, hatchway gratings, coils of rigging upon pins, and the dirt and confusion which third-class passengers have a happy knack in bringing along with them as a part of their luggage, must have presented to the entirely shore-going eye a very complicated appearance.
He paid the waterman and took up his bag, and seeing him looking around in quest of some one to inform him what was next to be done, I stepped up to him and said, " Excuse me, sir ; are you Mr. Reginald Morecombe ? "
He bowed and said " Yaas," and looked at me gladly as if thankful to heaven that some one knew him amid this wilderness of ropes, live-stock, and frowsy passengers.
"It was a mere conjecture of mine," said I. "A Mr. Reginald Morecombe is to share my cabin, and
NIGHT IN THE BTVEK. 65
if you are the gentleman, I shall bo happy to show you where it is."
"Oh, thur-timr-ank you, thank you," said he with his stammer, following me. " How deyvelish confusing a ship is. This vessel looks vewy dirty. Who are all those fellahs outside ? " meaning the people on the main deck, for we were now in the cuddy.
" 'Tween-deck passengers," said I. " This is the cabin we are to share," — bundling into it. " I found these traps in the lower bunk and supposed you had chosen it. But top or bottom is the same to me. You can have which you like."
He peered with his glass in his eye and said, "Oh, thur-thur-anks; I -think the under one will suit me best. I am a wetched sailaw," grinning palely, " and the one beneath is the easiest to enter. What vewy queear beds for fellahs to lie in ! But I suppose a man gets used to this sort of thing in time."
I was in the act of leaving the cabin, being anxious to watch for the arrival of Florence and her aunt, when he said, pulling his moustaches and smiling with tremendous politeness, " I baig your pardon, as we are to be companions in this — aw — this woom, might I be allowed to ask your name ? " I was within an ace of answering that it was Seymour — the word was trembling on my lips when I suddenly remembered, and stammered, " John
VOL. II. F
66 JACK'S COUKTSHIP.
Egerton — Mr. John Egerton. You'll see it on that box there," and I swung hastily out into the cuddy that he might not perceive the conscience-stricken look which I could feel as hot as fire in my face. I stopped a moment to pull out the letter I had addressed to my uncle and scribbled with a pencil the following postscript : " The Eeginald Morecombe who is to share my cabin is Mr. Haiuke's young friend. Endeavour to let the old man know as early as possible that I am accompanying his daughter to Australia. I want to have the full benefit of his fears and rage, and the sooner he is told the longer he will suffer. Would any man have conceived the pompous old chap capable of such an underhand stroke as this ? God bless you all." This being written, I closed the envelope, and gave the letter to one of the stewards to put into the bag which would be cleared or sent ashore before the ship sailed, and then went on to the maindeck in order to take another spell of watching on the fore- castle, but just as I was stepping out of the cuddy some people came over the gangway, the sight of whom sent me backing and cowering under the starboard poop ladder for fear that Florence might be among the party. They proved to be five cuddy passengers, and when I found that my darling was not one of them I made my way to the forecastle and resumed my seat there. You will have seen, my lads, that much had not
NIGHT IN THE RIVEU. 67
passed between Mr. Morecoinbe and myself; but little as it was, there was enough of it to convince me that my relatives were perfectly right in saying that the man was a fool. I may make his words look as much like his pronunciation of them as I can ; but there's no art that I'm master of to represent the dawdling, affected tone of his voice, the foolishness of his smile, the astounding good opinion of himself that he managed somehow to convey. Part and parcel of the man his conceit must have been to strike me as it did at a time when he was so bothered by the novelty of his surroundings that even an actor would have been natural under the circumstances. Not that I found him less good- looking than I thought him that day when I caught a glimpse of him at Bristol seated in old Hawke's carriage ; but for all that, the few sentences he had let fall, and above everything his smile, persuaded me that there was a world of truth in what my aunt had told me about his good looks disappearing in his stupidness when you got close to him in talk; and when I thought of how Florence had spoken of him as a fool, and remembered that she had refused his offer of marriage, why, I began to consider that after all perhaps nothing better could have happened for me than that Morecombe should have fallen into Hawke's scheme (for Hawke's it was, if it was not the devil's), since what was more likely to complete her disgust of the young fellow than being placed
68 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
in the one situation of all others in which she would be unable to keep clear of his unwelcome company unless she imprisoned herself in her cabin ?
Full of these agreeable reflections, I sat with a grin upon my face poising my telescope ready to level it at the first boat that should come away from Gravesend. The wind was strong and cold ; no rain had fallen as yet, but the clouds were full of wet and I guessed that we should have a sopping night. Only a few of the crew were about, the rest being, as I might suppose from experience, too drunk to be of use. I was near the scuttle and could hear the fellows jabbering and breaking into songs that sounded as if all hands were sea-sick. Queer it was to me to feel as I looked around me, and spied the first mate stumping the break of the poop athwart ships, an ordinary seaman in the maintop at work on some job up there, the second mate in the waist singing out to a hand in the foretopmast crosstrees, and so on, that I had nothing to do with the ship, could go where I liked, use the weather side of the poop whenever I chose, and enjoy more liberty than even my friend Daniel. I suppose most men who have knocked off the sea as a profession have felt what I am describing when they have taken a voyage as passenger whilst their memory of sea discipline and work was fresh.
At last I began to get rather tired of the
NIGHT IN THE EIVEE. 69
Strathmore's forecastle, and above all of the wind that was whistling nippingly into my starboard ear, and was wondering if it was to fall dark before Florence and her aunt came aboard. As I was in the act of rising to stretch my legs and take a final squint at the flight of steps near the pier before going aft, I spied a boat draw out from the other wherries. I waited, but would not seem to look too inquisitively, for just then I noticed young Morecombe posted near the port-quarter boat holding the ship's telescope — which he would have found on brackets under the companion hood — with his face turned my way. Presently he rested the glass on the rail and aimed it at the approaching boat ; this was my chance to take a hurried squint myself, and the moment the faces of the persons in the sternsheets of the boat entered the field of the lenses my heart gave a mighty throb. Ay, boys, she was coming at last ! I had seen her darling face, the trembling of the feather of her hat in the strong wind, and thrusting the little telescope into my pocket, I went and posted myself before — or as landsmen might say behind — the forecastle capstan, so that it might screen me from observation as she came over the side.
Morecombe had made her out, too, by this time, and after looking at the boat through his eyeglass for a few moments, he turned tail and disappeared
70 JACKS COURTSHIP.
down the companion steps. I looked to see him reappear on the main deck, making snre he would receive the ladies, but he did not show up again. His manner of leaving the deck suggested to me that he was doing precisely what I was — hiding. But I did not give the matter very much thought, being fully occupied in watching the boat, whose approach filled me with extraordinary agitation and excitement. If ever a fear had risen in me that something might, at the last moment, stop my pet from coming, it was ended now. There she was, nearing the ship as fast as a couple of watermen could row her ; in a few minutes she would be in the vessel, for many a long week to be my adorable shipmate ; no more need of twopenny lodgings, of imploring Sophie's help, of day after day passing without giving me a sight of her. No wonder my heart beat fast and rapturously. I had attempted a bold adventure, but so far all had gone as if ordered by my own wishes ; and now my darling and I were to be together until Australia was reached ; and of what was to follow then I had so little doubt, that had she been coming to me as my bride my spirits could not have been more triumphantly joyous.
The wind had raised a middling stiff wobble on the water, and the boat jumped and tumbled in a very lively manner as she came along. Every moment the spray would fly over her like a hatful
NIGHT IN THE RIVER. 71
of feathers tossed on the breeze, and I would notice Aunt Darnaris, who, of course, would be Florence's companion, duck and curtsey as the shower blew along. She wore a thick greyish-coloured veil and a hat resembling a man's wideawake, and as I watched her bobbing in the sternsheets of that boat I thought to myself, "What would be your ideas, my old beauty, were you to know whose eyes were gazing at you from the Strathmores fore- castle ? " Presently the boat came alongside, and in a few moments Florence and her aunt stepped over the gangway and immediately went into the cuddy, followed by one of the under- stewards with an armful of odds and ends belonging to them. I went on to the main deck and posted myself between the foremast and the galley, out of sight of the poop and quarter-deck, whilst I considered what I had best do. I had made up my mind not to let Florence see me until the news of my being aboard had been given her by Thompson (who by the way had gone ashore). I was not going to run risks. It was not for a moment to be doubted that if Aunt Darnaris got to know I was in the Strathmore she would abandon the voyage by that vessel and carry Florence away, with Morecombe, of course, in their wake. Consequently, even Florence herself ought not to know that I was to be one of the vessel's passengers until we were well afloat and the nearest port a long distance astern.
72 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
These being my considerations, I stood debating what I should do. I had no excuse to stick to my cabin for the rest of the afternoon and evening, for we were not at sea, and I could not sham sickness, nor, indeed, did I relish the notion of a long spell of solitary confinement. Dinner would be served at half -past five or six, and of course I could not take my place at the table. My best plan clearly was not to go aft at all until it was time to turn in, at which hour I might take it Florence and her aunt would have stowed themselves away in their cabin. I had half a mind to walk into the forecastle and see if there were any faces about that I remembered, and then reflecting that there was rather too much drunkenness there to make a visit agreeable, I was turning my attention to the 'tween-decks and planning a voyage into those regions for the shelter of them and the secure hiding-place they would make for me, when my eye caught sight of a figure in the boatswain's berth sitting upon a chest and drinking tea out of a pannikin which he held in one hand whilst he flourished a lump of soft tack in the other. This berth or cabin was bulk- headed . off from the rest of the forecastle and formed a kind of wing on the port side of the deck, a corresponding structure facing it on the starboard side. The boatswain and carpenter of the Portia had shared a similar bedroom in .that ship, and the same arrangement would be found, I supposed,
NIGHT IX THE RIVER. 73
in this sister vessel. I stepped over to the door of this cabin, meaning to ask the man, whoever he might be, if he knew at what hour we were to get under way in the morning, when, struck by his appearance, I looked at him attentively and ex- claimed, " What, Jimmy Shilling ! After all these — still alive oh ! Surely you remember me ! "
He took a kind of slow long look at me over his pannikin and then put it down and stood up. ,; Mr. Seymour ! " he exclaimed. " Well, I'm blowed ! how are you, sir ? "
This man had been boatswain's mate in the Portia, and fours years ago he had looked ten years younger than he did now, so scurvily does the sea use her children ; but his grizzled beard, the weather-ploughed look of his leathery skin, and the knots which hauling and pulling and swearing and piping had tied up around his eyes and over his temples did not disguise him from me. I gave him a hearty handshake and sat down, bidding him not mind me, but to go on with his supper, or whatever the snack he was working at might be styled.
At that moment in steps the carpenter, a hairy, wiry sea-dog, with a beard like a worn-out scrubbing- brush upon his chin, and strange pale eyes, as if they had lost their colour by looking too much to windward in wet weather. The boatswain politely introduced me to him, whereupon he pulled off
74 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
his fur cap as a salutation, and pitched it into his bunk, and then hauling forth a short black pipe from his breeches pocket, he filled it out of a well- worn brass box, and began very gravely to smoke.
"You don't mean to say, Mr. Seymour," said the boatswain, " that you've come to sea again?"
"No, Shilling," said I, "not as a sailor man. I'm going to Australia along with you — as the old chantey says, ' I've embarked into a ship which her topsails is let fall, and all unto an ileyand where we never will go home,' but not to soil my hands with your filthy grease and tar. No, Shilling ; no more keeping a look-out, no more hauling and slaving for this child. You may pipe your whistle and be hanged ; you'll never get me to dance to it. I'm a cuddy passenger, my lively hearty, taking a sail round what the negro calls dis circumnabular globe for the fun of watching others do what I've had to do myself, and don't mean to do again."
The carpenter grinned broadly behind his pipe, and the boatswain exclaimed, " Cuddy passenger, eh? Shingles," addressing the carpenter, "ain't the cuddy a place under the poop where the ladies live, and were ye may find by looking nothing but fust-class eatin' knocking about ? "
" If it ain't there, it ain't forrards," answered the carpenter ; "leastways in this vessel."
"And a good job too," said I. "Mr. Shingles,
NIGHT IX THE RIVER. 75
would you have ladies to live among the drunken Dutchmen you may hear snorting like hogs, if you'll put your ear to the forescuttle."
" You're right, Mr. Seymour," exclaimed the boatswain. " Hogs they are, and it's ammals after that there pattern to which sailors have reduced themselves. Sailors do I call 'em ! Why, I'd swallow that pannikin, Shingles — bolt it afore ye whilst you sit looking on — if out of this ship's company ye '11 be able to pick me one man that hasn't more to learn of his calling than an apprentice, when I first went to sea, would ha' needed teaching after he had been six months sailoring."
" Eight you are, mate," replied the carpenter, smoking thoughtfully ; "but there's no use grumb- ling. A man must take things as they come. If ye can't get first-class seamen, then ye must put up with middlin' sailors ; and if they're not to be got, then ye must be content with sojers and scaramouches and turnpike men. My argument is, what's the use of cussin' and swearin' ? Will you have a pipe of tobacco, Mr. Seymour, sir ? " and he fumbled about for his brass box.
I took a pinch for company's sake and put it into my pipe, and then all at once bethinking myself that these fellows were calling me Mr. Sey- mour— and, mind you, in no uncertain notes, for the boatswain had the most roaring voice that ever
76 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
human being used in calling upon sailors to quit their beds of down and mount the masts, whilst there was the true deep-sea rumble in the carpenter's pipes — I said, "Jimmy, and you, Mr. Shingles, my name aboard the Strathmore is not Seymour but Egerton. "Will you try to think of that, my friends ? There are some passengers aft who mustn't on any account know I'm here. And they can only find out that I am here, even when I am sitting among them, and they are looking at me, by learning my name. So I'm Mr. Egerton, Jimmy, and you Mr. Shingles ; and in some second dog-watch, when everything's quiet aloft and the sailors are at prayers, I'll tell you why I've come to sea in your ship, and give you both such a yarn that you'll never afterwards want to use curling-irons for your hair again so long as you live."
" All right, sir," said the boatswain ; " Hegerton's the word, and Hegerton it is."
" Same here," warbled Chips.
Note in this the beautiful gentlemanly spirit of the sailor. Had a landsman heard me say that I had changed my name, then — unless I had ex- plained that property was the cause — he would straightway have suspected me of arson, forgery, or murder, and that I was flying to Australia to escape British justice. On the other hand, these two shell-backs asked no questions, suspected
NIGHT IX THE RIVEB. 77
nothing, simply said "Hegerton it is," and so made an end of the matter. Having gone so far with them, I thought I would go farther yet, and I told them that as my friend Daniel Thompson, their skipper, was ashore, and unable therefore to let a certain passenger know that I was in the ship, and as I did not want to meet that passenger until she had been informed that I was aboard, I desired to keep forward, or somewhere out of sight, until bedtime, and asked leave to use their cabin.
" To be sure you may, Mr. ifrgerton," said the boatswain, with a grin, as he put a gale of wind into the aspirate to let me know how completely he had mastered the word ; " and if ye'd like to sleep here, there's my bunk and welcome."
This hospitable offer I declined, but I told him if he'd get me a pannikin of tea from the galley, and a piece of bread, I should feel very much obliged to him, and these things he at once pro- cured ; so that, seated on his chest, with the fumes of the strong cavendish cake-tobacco that sailors smoke mingling in my nostrils with the steam of the galley tea, and the wind making a rushing noise in the rigging outside, I felt as if I were once more a sailor, and only waiting for the order to turn to to bundle out with the others and fall to work. I had a pleasant talk with these men about the ship aud the skipper (whom they had both sailed with before, and spoke of in high terms), and amongst
7S JACK'S COURTSHIP.
us we revived some old and pleasant memories ; and then, having duties to attend to on deck, they left me alone. It was now raining, with a promise of a dark foul night, and the wind was screeching in squalls overhead. I poked my nose out and looked along the decks ; a couple of brass-bound apprentices (the Strathmore carried five of these "young gentlemen ") were lurking about the head of one of the poop ladders, swathed in oilskins, and the second mate, similarly attired, was rambling about in solitary dignity in the neighbourhood of the wheel. Not one of the passengers of any description was to be seen ; and the deserted dark wet decks, the rain flying in clouds of drizzle past the masts, the streaming rigging, and the gloomy sky, which the shadow of the approaching night was fast darkening, made a truly miserable and depressing picture. I wondered what Morecombe was doing ; whether he was with Aunt Damaris and Florence. But there was no use wondering. My present business was to kill the evening, and so I lighted a pipe, and on looking at the carpenter's bunk spied a book at the foot of it which proved to be a collection of tales of shipwreck, and several of these yarns I read to the hoarse accompaniment of the wind groaning and roaring outside.
The dinner bell rang, the evening gathered, and, by and by, on taking another look aft, I saw the cuddy lamps alight, and the passengers eating
NIGHT IX THE RIVER. 79
their first dinner aboard the Strathmore. It was no joke peering through the wet from the grim and rude interior of the boatswain's cabin at that brilliant cuddy, as though I were a 'tween-deck passenger and could only peep and envy. The tea and bread I had eaten had, it is true, plugged my appetite, still I felt as if there was enough hunger leaking out to qualify me to give an opinion on old Drainings' cookery ; and above all, this skulking was extremely disagreeable, as tending to make me reckon that my courtship was to consist altogether of hiding and seeking. However, it was clearly not my policy to go and rise up before my darling as if I was a ghost, and frighten her, as I was bound to do, if my presence was not gently made known to her ; and so comforting myself with the reflection that the necessity of skulking would soon be over, I once more picked up the book of shipwrecks and went on reading until Jimmy and the carpenter came into the cabin.
No company do I like better than sailors', and the conversation of these two men was a real entertainment. It was evening, the anchor- watch had been set, a riding light was burning on the forestay, and, there being nothing more to do until the tug came alongside in the morning, the car- penter and boatswain were at liberty to yarn and smoke as long as they pleased, and then turn in. Threshold impressions, memories which belong to
80 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
the first step of any momentous matter, are always lively and lasting, and that, no doubt, is why I recall the picture of that berth more vividly than I can see anything else in that vanished ship : the oil-lamp like a coffee-pot hanging overhead; the two bunks with their rough furniture of coarse blankets and mattresses which looked as old as Captain Cook's time, and as if they had been making voyages round the world ever since; the flap table against the ship's side ; the battered sea chests upon which many a pound of stick tobacco must have been cut, to judge from the web-like notchings along the edges of the lids ; the oilskins and sou' westers hanging on nails up in a corner, looking like seamen who had committed suicide. The lamp cast a narrow stream of light through the sliding door on the deck, throwing out upon the darkness a few links of the huge chain cable that was stretched along from the windlass, and a coil of gear upon a belaying pin at the foot of the fore- mast, and such things. It was strange to hear the rushing noise of the wind and the seething of rain swept through shrouds and stays, and yet feel no motion in the hull, for the night was so black and the sound aloft so ocean-like that it was almost impossible at times to realize that we were on the smooth Thames, and Gravesend pretty nearly within musket-shot.
Not choosing to go supperless to bed, and yet not
NIGHT IN THE RIVER. 81
caring to make the steward wonder by asking him for something to eat, I partook of a bit of fresh beef which the boatswain brought out of a shelf, and one bell (half-past eight) having been struck on the quarter-deck I relieved my entertainers of my company, knowing very well that the poor tired fellows would turn in and fall fast asleep the moment my back was turned. The rain had ceased, but the sky had a wild look, and the decks were full of water for the want of a list to carry the wet through the scupper holes, I made my way aft and came to a stand opposite the cuddy front, through the windows of which I could com- mand a view of the interior without being seen. Dinner had been cleared away a long while before. The place looked to me to be full of people, and I noticed the newly-married couple (whose name I afterwards heard was Mr. and Mrs. Marmaduke Mortimer), Captain Jackson, E.N., and his wife, a young gentleman named Thompson Tucker, Mrs. O'Brien, one or two other ladies, and at the thwartship table, at the end, Florence, Aunt Damaris, and Mr. Morecombe ! When I saw that fellow talking to the aunt, and Florence sitting quietly alongside, my old miserable misgiving returned. It looked almost certain that she must have known Morecombe intended to accompany her, otherwise, could I suppose, if he had sneaked on board as I had, that he would have had the courage
VOL. ii.
82 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
to discover himself within an hour or two of her arrival? Just as I was sure, if the aunt learnt that I was on board she would forthwith carry her niece ashore, might not he in the same way have feared that if Florence knew that he was going to make the voyage in the ship, she would insist upon leaving the vessel ? Of course he enjoyed an immense advantage over me by having Aunt Damaris on his side, and he might presume upon that to make his presence know to Florence. Nevertheless, it rendered me extremely unhappy to see him there in that warm, comfortable, brilliant cuddy, close to Florence and chatting with the aunt, and not to be able to satisfy my mind that his voyage had been arranged without the girl's knowledge.
The better to see her I went on to the poop, for they were all three of them sitting well within the range of the after skylight. A figure was walking up and down — one of the mates, no doubt — but it was too dark to see which of them it was. The wind was mighty keen, having grown more northerly and coming very fresh. I walked to the after skylight and looked down, and there under me was the beautiful face of the girl for whom I was taking all this desperate trouble and heaping discomforts upon my head. Had she been alone, the sight that skylight framed would have been like a vision, lor the blackness stood all around
NIGHT IX THE RIVER. Od
the illuminated glass, and the deck was dark too, so that the radiance of the lamps, and the face and glittering hair of Florence, and the swell of her lovely bosom rounding above the table on which she rested her elbow with her white hand under her chin, were all contained in a kind of luminous square ; but unfortunately for the beauty of that irradiated night-piece, Aunt Damaris was in it and so was Morecombe. There they were, all three of them, and I watched them. For ten minutes I stood overhanging that skylight, but during that time I never could detect that Florence spoke once, neither did I observe that she ever turned her face towards Mr. Morecombe. It would be hard to tell her exact expression in that light : the glass was wet and the moisture made its transparency trea- cherous, but if there was not a look of coldness and offended pride in her face, then I am blessed if I can tell you what other sort of appearance it presented. I took, as you may suppose, a prolonged squint at Aunt Damaris. One glimpse I had caught of her, as you will remember I told you, at Bristol, but the impression left was exceedingly small, and what I now saw therefore was quite fresh and new to me. She seemed about sixty years old : very sharp features, a long narrow nose, a wide mouth with thin lips, and small restless black eyes. Her hair was grey, and she was very bald about the parting. She wore two old-fashioned sausage-shaped carls
84 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
in front of the ear. She looked to be dressed in black satin, for the stuff gleamed whenever she moved : her cap was large, with plenty of riband in it, and around her neck was a stretch of lace * or something of that kind, with the ends hanging down in front of her. She had the appearance, I am bound to say, of a respectable, well-to-do old lady.
Well, whilst I was staring down at them, I saw Florence lean towards her aunt, say something, and then rise. The old woman lifted her eyes to her and seemed to expostulate ; then, apparently thinking better of it, she got up too, and shook hands with Mr. Morecombe, but Florence gave him such a chilly bow that the sight of it brought my two hands together in a rapturous squeeze, and then in a breath there was nothing left of the picture the skylight had framed but the bare table. I turned to go below by the cuddy front entrance and found the person I had noticed stumping the deck at my elbow and peering at me.
"Are you a cuddy passenger ? " said he.
" I am," I replied.
" Oh, I beg your pardon," said he. " May I ask what name ? "
" Mr. John Egerton," I answered.
" My name is Thornton," said he, " and I'm the chief officer. I did not notice you at dinner.
* The right name is fichu, Florence has since told me. — Jaok.
NIGHT IN THE RIVEK. 85
I don't think I have seen you in this vessel before ; when did you come aboard, sir ? "
"In the docks."
He continued to peer at me as though he could not make up his mind as to whether I was an Irish assassin or the latest English forger, but when, in reply to the question, I gave him the number of my cabin and the name of the person who was to share it with me, he exclaimed, " Oh, it's all right, sir, of course," and resumed his walk. This matter, trifling as it was, never- theless hugely disgusted and annoyed me, and I was never more disposed to curse myself for a fool for putting myself into situations full of mortifications, misconstructions, and the obliga- tion of sneaking and skulking. I lingered a few minutes on the poop, not choosing that the mate should flatter himself that he had hastened my departure. There was no rain, but the darkness was thickened with a rolling and eddying mist that sometimes drove past the illuminated skylights like bursts of steam. The lights at Gravesend twinkled wildly, and the loom of the high land behind was visible in a deeper blackness above the winking flickering sparks. The river from the light abreast of Northfleet away down as far as the Hope looked as if a galaxy of stars were hovering over its glooming waters ; how many vessels those lanterns represented I could not imagine, but any-
86 JACK'S COUETSHIP.
one might easily suppose, from the appearance of the multitudinous shining, that an immense fleet had brought up in Gravesend Eeach. Most of the lights -were stationary, but here and there you would see one reeling and staggering with a sweep- ing movement upon the darkness, denoting some small craft tossing upon the little sea which the strong wind had raised in the river, whilst close at hand over the side the water glimmered amid the deep night-shadow in dull flashes of pallid froth, and washed in a crunching sound along the bends of our motionless vessel, making the rudder jar now and again with a faint rattling of the tiller chains in the leading-sheaves. Aloft, the noise of the wind was like the shearing of a gale through a forest, but many a wild note there was in addition twanged on the harp-like rigging, and you could not have stood and listened for five minutes, with the sobbing of the water to help your fancy, without believing that a world of phantoms had come down on the wings of the wind and alighted on those darkling spars and faintly glimmering yards — ghosts of mothers singing to wailing babies, ghosts of ruined men groaning in their misery, ghosts of madwomen shrieking in torment. A strange chorus, mates, as you all know, for what sailor's thoughts have not run to it ? though, to find a meaning in such spirit-crying, there should be no shore - lights about, you must be leagues and leagues
NIGHT IX THE RIVER. ST
away out at sea, on the forecastle. Bay, where you ma}' be alone — for aft there are the helmsman and the officer of the watch to keep you company — with a composant burning at the foreyard arm, and the ocean a wild and hurling shadow around you, with the desolate glint of foam under the bows and trailing in a line astern, making the deep as sad as a winter landscape with a sweep of blown snow lying on the black land under the blacker sky.
A few minutes of this were as much as satisfied me. I went on to the quarter-deck, and looked through the cuddy windows. Florence and Aunt Damaris had withdrawn to their cabin ; indeed, all the ladies had retired, and the only occupants of the cuddy were a group of three or four men, Morecombe amongst them, sipping grog at that part of the table which was nearest the stove.
Seeing the road clear I entered, walked straight into my cabin and went to bed.
88 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
CHAPTEK V.
MR. MORECOMBE IS SEA-SICK.
Had I been a sailor just turned in after having been twenty-four hours on deck, I could not have fallen asleep more quickly nor slept more soundly. At what hour Mr. Morecombe came to bed I do not know ; I never heard him, though he was the first thing I remembered in the morning when I awoke and found the autumn sunshine standing like a wall of silver against the thick glass of the large scuttle or circular window. I put my head over the side of the bunk and saw him underneath ; he was wide awake, and instantly sang out, " Hallo ! good morning."
" Good morning," I answered.
" I say," cried he, " can you tell me the time ? My old turnip has stopped, and hang me — aw — if I know whether I ought to get up or not."
I looked at my watch that was in my waistcoat, slung within reach. " A quarter to eight," said I.
" At what hour do we bweakfast, do you know ? "
MB. MORECOMBE IS SEA-SICK. 89
said he, forking his legs out of bed and looking about him for his smallclothes.
" I really can't say. If you'll put your head out the steward will tell you, if he's in sight," I replied, debating within myself whether to get up or sham indisposition and have breakfast in my cabin. I decided upon the latter, and accordingly lay down again, drawing a long face as I turned my nose up to the deck above. The ship was on a level keel, but there was the tremor of passing water in the light outside, and I might easily guess that we were in the wake of a towing tug. It was pretty plain, however, that we had not long been under way; fine as the weather might be now, there was too much weight in last night's wind to leave the water calm in the river's mouth where the Channel swell would be, and I reckoned by the feel in the hull that, even if we had passed the Nore, Prince's Channel was still some distance ahead.
Morecombe put on his drawers and boots, and, opening the cabin door, peered out, and catching sight of one of the stewards, ascertained the break- fast hour, and then said to me, " We bweakfast at a quarter to nine. Would you like to get up ? because if so I'll go to bed until you've done dwessing. It's a dayvlish tight fit for two," says he, looking around him, " and wot me if it isn't too cold for tubbing. Suppose there's a bathwoom somewhere ? "
90 JACKS COUETSHIP.
" I shan't get up," said I ; "I don't feel very well."
"Not sea-sick, are you? " he exclaimed. " Oh, hang it all, you can't he sea-sick yet. Why, the ship isn't moving ! "
"It's not the movement, it's the smell," said I. " It's what they call the hilge water. Sniff strongly, and you'll see what I mean," and I gave a bit of a grunt.
" "Wot me if I'm going to sniff," says he. " Don't smell anything wong natuwally, and don't want to fancy things. I say, didn't you tell me your name was Egerton ? "
" You'll see it on that box there," I replied, pretending to speak with an effort.
" Any welation," says he, lathering himself for a shave, " to the Tatton Egertons ? "
"No," I replied, knowing that the fellow had a lot of titled connections, and that I must mind my eye.
" Oulton-Park Egertons, pwaps ? " said he, flourishing a razor and squinting at himself in the looking-glass.
" Nothing to do with them," I answered.
" Is it the Ellesmere family then — or pwaps it's Wilton ? " said he, awaiting my answer before applying his razor.
"It's a Kentish family," said I in a faint manner. "There were five of us, counting my parents, and I am the only one surviving."
MR. MOEECOMBE IS SEA-SICK. 91
His mind went to work upon this answer whilst he sheaved, but he didn't appear to make much of it. "When that job was over he said, " What's taking you to Austwalia — hailth ? "
"That's it," said I. "Lord, isn't the ship heaving ! or can it be the bilge water ? "
"Dayvlish odd ! " cried he. "Deck's as steady as land, and whatever bilge water may be, dooce take me if I can smell anything wong."
"Oh," said I, "perhaps you're an old sailor; if so, it's not fair to laugh at me.''
" Old sailor," cried he ; " well, I've done a bit of yachting with my uncle, Lord Alchester. Know him ? " I wagged my head. " But I'm as ignowant of the water and of — aw — ships of this land — haw — by gad, as I am of tailoring. More so, dooce take me, Mr. Egerton, for, look heeah; a man can't live long without finding out that tailors are fwightful thieves and beastly bill-discounters. Glad to think that old Hebwew, Madox of Bond
Street Know him?" I replied that I did
not. " Madox isn't his wight name," continued he ; " can't say what it is, and curse me if I care. Glad to feel I owe him thwee hundwed pounds, though. He can't take a boat and follow me, you know ; ha ! ha ! Ever been to Austwalia before ? "
I made a sound that might pass for yes or no.
" Vulgar people the Austwalians, I heah ; but,
92 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
poor dayvils, they can't help it. If we send out convicts there, why, dooce seize it, it's too much to expect their descendants to be gentlemen. Had a little blood gone wong and they'd twansported it, why, then you know, you might expect to find a bit of polish heeah and there-ah. I know an old Austwalian cock— shan't tell you where he lives — who's got so much money that this cabin wouldn't
hold it in sovewins. Of all the old snobs Why,
he sports a crest with as much assuwance as if it had come to him from the Conquewor ; whereas I'd bet any man half a dozen hats that he stole or invented it since he awived in England. A fellow can't help sp winging from nothing, you know, but it's adoocidpiece of impertinence when he not only imitates his bettaws, but twies to pass himself off as one of them."
His reference to Alphonso — for what other old Australian cock should he mean ? — as a cad was extremely agreeable to me. " Little you wot, my aristocratic friend," thought I, as I watched him combing his hair and putting on his high stick-up collar, " how all that you say is being taken down against you." Why, I never should have dreamt that the creature was such a chatterbox nor such a consummate ass as his conversation proved him to be. Was it very surprising that Florence should think him a fool and despise him and reject him ? How should such an ape make love? Even his
MR. MORECOMBE IS SEA-SICK. 93
good looks, as I now began to perceive, were effective only on the first impression. I had thought him handsome, as you know, when I saw him in Bristol — and handsome he was ; but as I lay with my eyes upon him now, I reckoned that the girl he married would need to be as great an idiot as he not to find his beauty mighty insipid after a month or two.
In handling this fellow I am annoyed to feel that I can't put him before you with the right kind of colour to make the picture true to life. He had a sort of stammer impossible to express in words ; he garnished his language with a variety of oaths — of the most approved and modish kind, no doubt, and quite in keeping with the character of a young swell — but which I am obliged to soften or omit, and so sacrifice a characteristic I remembered him by : and he said aw and haw just as Sophie had described (indeed, I fancied I could detect the source of Hawke's aristocratic pronunciation and hesita- tion), but in a manner so peculiar, that were he in the next room and you heard one of those aws you would be able to put a perfect image of the man before you merely from catching the conceit, the imbecilitjr, the impudent suggestion of condescen- sion, and I know not what other things which the sound conveyed.
Having finished dressing, he said, putting on his hat, "If we haven't left Gwavesend, curse me if I
94: JACK'S COURTSHIP.
don't go ashore and have a look at the place. Had scarcely time to do more yesterday than get a fit of indigestion. Since I have the bore of travelling I may as well see all I can, and as Gwavesend's a place where the common people go and eat shwimps in the summer, I ought to be able, when I weturn, to tell my friends that I've been over it."
I did not undeceive the man, and, as he was leaving the cabin, I asked him to be good enough to send the steward to me. This seemed to astonish him, for he said, " 'Stwardinawy you should feel sea-sick ! If you're ill now, by George, what'll you do when we get out upon the sea ? " He then went away, and presently the steward arrived — a smart little man in a round jacket and bow legs, named Hay.
" "When breakfast is ready, let me have a cup of tea and something to eat here, will you ? " said I.
"Yes, sir."
" Where are we now, steward?"
" In the Warp, sir," he answered, naming the well-known stretch of river betwixt the Nore and the Oaze Deep.
" Is the captain on deck ? "
" He's just gone into his cabin," replied Hay.
" Please go at once and tell him, with my compliments, that his friend, Mr. Jack Egerton,
MR. MORECOMBE IS SEA-SICK. 95
will breakfast in his cabin, and that he hopes to be able to go on deck during the afternoon."
I knew that Daniel would understand my mean- ing : for you see, on recalling his short memory I was afraid that he would forget to tell Florence I was aboard unless I employed some means to remind him of his promise. However, I was speedily eased of that fear by the steward return- ing. " The captain's compliments to you, sir, and he certainly hopes you will be well enough to come on deck this afternoon, and perhaps before. He'll look in upon you, sir, after breakfast."
Well, there I lay in my bunk, sometimes laugh- ing to myself until I was like to split, when I thought of Morecombe and the wonderful absurdity of our sharing the same cabin, and then falling as grave as a judge and feeling a kind of tremble running through me when I turned my mind to Florence and wondered how she would receive the news of my being in the ship and what sort of greeting she would give me when Daniel "intro- duced " us. I pulled out her locket, which, you may reckon, boys, I wore day and night, and found a sort of strength in kissing it, for after all I considered she must like me a deal more than a little bit to have sent me that keepsake, and she surely would not like me less for following her to the world's end, as I was literally doing. Anyhow, she could not use me worse than she had
96 JACK'S COUETSHIP.
treated Morecorube, if there was any meaning in the manner I spied in her when I peered through the skylight last night; and when I recalled the bit of behaviour I had taken notice of, it surprised me that the man should be able to carry himself so easily as he did in his imbecile conversation with me ; for knowing how her coldness would affect me, I found it mighty hard to understand his indifference, for so it seemed, even when I had made the most liberal allowance for him as a con- ceited fool who was cock-sure in his own mind of winning the girl sooner or later, and was only astonished that such a killing, lovely, highly- connected creature should not have been instantly accepted.
The first breakfast bell was rung, and half-an- hour later I could hear all the passengers at table, a regular hum of voices, broken by the clattering of plates and now and again the loud distinct tones of Captain Jackson and Mrs. O'Brien. I strained my ear to catch the only notes which would fall sweetly upon it, and sometimes fancied I could detect the rich bell-like music of my darling's voice ; but fancy it was, of course, and I wished it to be so, for it pleased me best to think of her as cold and silent, and averting her beautiful face from the eye-glass that I might reckon would be peering at her hard by, with a puppy's eye behind it.
MR. M0REC03IBE IS SEA-SICK. 97
The steward came into my cabin with a well- stocked tray, in the inspiration of which methought I could trace my friend Daniel ; and glad was I to fall to, for the aroma of the good things on the cuddy table stealing in through the venetian-like panelling of the door had excited a lively hunger in me. I speedily cleared the tray, tumbled out of my bunk, shaved and dressed myself, and then, opening the scuttle and finding it to leeward, I lighted a pipe and smoked it with my face in the aperture, so that no smell of the tobacco should pass into the cuddy. It was like looking through a telescope without the magnification. Only a small view was to be got through the open port, but what there was of it was all sunshine and streaming waters, a kind of trembling white radiance, with the lines of the breeze-swept river- surface shining like ribs of polished steel through it, and a glimpse across the Kentish flats of the WLitstable and Heme Bay coast, looking like a stretch of blue haze. The tug was towing bravely, and the noise of the seething of the foam from her paddles washing past beneath me came up like the sound of a fountain ; but I would now and again hear an ominous creak, a significant strain of timber or bulwark, and note that the horizon would take a slight slant first toward the bows and then towards the stern, as if it were the central portion of some gigantic see-saw. If, thought I
VOL. II. II
98 JACK'S COUKTSHIP.
we are beginning to feel the swell' here, we should be finding a pleasant tumble further on.
Another half-hour passed. The motion was growing more defined, the creaking busier, and I was beginning to feel mighty tired of my cabin and to pine for the sunshine, and the breeze, and the leg- stretching space of poop. What! already? Somebody was sick in the next cabin. The groaning was as that of a monk wrestling with Beelzebub. There was no periodical explosion, no hopeful and soothing blow-up, but a steady grumbling, and now and again a slight roar. On a sudden a tap fell on my door, and in walked Daniel Thompson. His red face was illuminated by a broad grin, whilst he snuffed and exclaimed in a sepulchral voice, " Hallo ! who's been smoking here?"
" It's that box," said I, pointing to Morecombe's ; "it's full of tobacco. How are you, Daniel, and what news have you brought me?"
"Well, I've done your business," he answered. " It's all right. She knows you're aboard. You can clear out of this."
"Have you really explained already?" cried I. "What did she say? For heaven's sake, speak out, Daniel ; I thought you were coming to see me after breakfast to arrange what to say to her ? "
" I'm not going to make a long yarn of it," he replied. "I have other things to do. See here,
MB. MOEECOMBE IS SEA -SICK. 99
Jack, it was after breakfast : she and her aunt and Mr. Morecornbe were on the poop. Hallo ! what's that noise ? "
" Somebody sick next door," I replied. " Heave ahead, Thompson."
"Well, they were on the poop. Presently the aunt goes below, young Morecornbe having pre- viously stepped over to Mrs. O'Brien to answer some question she had sung out to him. I saw my chance and went up to the girl, and after manoeuvring a bit, as nervous as a stammering chap in a witness-box, and wishing you at Jericho for putting me on such a job, I told her plump that you had asked me to say you were aboard under some name which I couldn't for the moment recollect."
"Well?"
11 Well — she just turned the colour of the ship's ensign. Split me, Jack, if ever I saw a girl blush so heavily before," said he. "A red Indian wouldn't have been in it alongside her. I'd have sheered off right away for fear that the others might twig the rosy look, and suspect I was making love to her, if I hadn't been more afraid, if they saw me go off in a hurry, that they'd imagine I had insulted her. But I say, my friend — she's a real beauty. You have a correct taste. She's a fine girl. I don't know that I ever saw a handsomer eve in a female. ' I'm an old friend
100 JACK'S COUETSHIP.
of his,' said I, ' and I undertake this job merely to oblige him, and, I hope, you too,' said I. ' He declines to show up until I've informed you he's in the ship, and the next business, I think,' said I, ' he wants me to undertake, is to introduce him to you as if you were strangers, which, when done, will complete all that my friend Jack expects of me.
" Was that all that passed ? " said I.
" That's all," he answered.
I thanked him heartily for his kindness, assuring him that as a friend in need he was the best of all friends, and I begged him to believe that I appre- ciated his friendliness all the more for knowing how the sense of his being skipper would bother him in his willingness to lend me a hand.
"What will you do now?" said he. "There's no need to keep below, is there ? I think you told me the aunt don't know you ? "
I answered that I would go forward, where I could command the poop ; if Florence was alone I would come aft, but I explained that it would not be advisable to introduce me in the presence of the aunt, as Florence's manner, on our first meeting, might betray us.
"All right," said he; "but you'll understand, Jack, after I've introduced you to her you must go on making love alone. I'll have nothing more to do with it ; and I hope you'll tell her never
MB. MORECOMBE IS SEA-SICK. 101
on any account in the future to speak of the part I have played, for though it might make my fortune among the girls it would ruin me among the fathers, who, after all, are the people who choose ships and pay the passage money."
I promised him in the most solemn manner that not a syllable concerning him should ever escape Miss Hawke or me, and he then went away.
I was in the act of struggling into a top coat, when the door was violently flung open and Mr. Morecombe bolted in. He was deadly pale, and his chest hollowed and swelled out like a pair of bellows, whilst his face had a twist in it as though he was strangling. He stood in the middle of the cabin glaring around him whilst a man might have counted ten, and his eyes then light- ing on the wash-basin, he rushed up to it and vomited in the most dreadful manner that ever I beheld. No doubt I was right in suspecting that he had felt sick for some time, but had been fighting with his qualms on deck, and had rushed below to be ill out of sight of Miss Hawke. I tell you, his sufferings seemed dreadful, and he raised such an outcry as he hung over the basin, with both hands grasping his waistcoat, the per- spiration streaming down his face, and first one leg and then the other giving a wild kick up astern of him as he roared, that I had not the heart to leave him until his paroxysm was over.
102 JACK'S COUETSHIP.
" Let nie give you a hand into your bunk," said I. " You can't do better than lie down, and I will send the steward to you."
Well, I bundled him into his bunk, and never did a more woebegone face embellish a pillow. Ladies, you should have seen this good-looking fellow ! I pulled open his shirt-collars, which were choking him, and hauled off his boots and put the basin alongside of him. He lay groaning and moaning like a wounded man, and the noise he made appeared to have started off the person in the next cabin afresh, for in the intervals of More- combe's ramblings I could hear the muffled notes of similar sounds beyond the bulkhead. I quitted the cabin, and calling to the steward, told him to look after the gentleman in number 4, and then went on to the main- deck, watched with some surprise by the little bow-legged fellow, who would scarcely know what to make of a man that was one moment too ill to leave his bed for the breakfast table, and the next was stepping along the deck with the deep sea-roll that comes like an instinct the moment the trained leg feels the heave of a deck-plank.
( 103 )
CHAPTEE VI.
WITH MY LOVE.
A noble morning it was, streaming and shining, a light blue sky and a crescent of mares' tails over the mastheads and a flock of steam-coloured clouds scattering on the lee horizon, where the land was a greenish film on our starboard bow. To wind- ward the pale green water ran into the whitish sky, and all that way there was nothing to be seen but a deep collier swarming along stiff as a church, with her yards hard against the lee rigging. The black smoke of the tug blew away from our flying jibboom end, and our ship followed with every stay-sail upon her hoisted, a crowd of passengers on the forecastle sunning themselves and standing black against the white cloths of the jibs, a blue vein breaking from the galley chimney, the gay decks glittering like sand, and a sweep of blue heaven deepening and lightening beyond the curve of the bows, which rose and sank upon the ruffled folds of the swell that was rolling out of the
104 JACK'S COUETSHIP.
Channel into which we were heading. I stepped as far as the main-hatch and then took a squint aft. The pilot was walking athwart the poop close to the brass rail, taking a sharp look ahead and around at every turn, but I had to go a little further to see as much as I needed of the poop, and when abreast of the galley I stopped again and saw Florence near the mizzenmast talking to some children.
Three or four only of the passengers were about, and Aunt Damaris was certainly not one of them. Thompson stood right aft near the wheel, and the idea coming into my head that he was waiting there to " introduce " me, and might be wondering what on earth was keeping me below, I pulled myself together and stepped without further ado on to the poop. He spied me the moment my head was above the ladder, and advanced to meet me.
"Jack," said he, "there's the lady, but you don't want me to introduce you, do ye? Hang it, there's nobody looking. Give me as little to do in this job as you can, mate."
" Let's carry the programme through," I replied, my heart thumping under my coat. " You told her you would introduce me." (This was not quite true, by the way). " Some confounded eye that we don't suspect may be on us ; so take me up to her, will you ? "
WITH MY LOYE. 105
Florence had her back upon us, and pointed to the collier, whilst she talked to the children.
"Come along, then," said Thompson. "If it must be done, let's get it over; " and, leaving me to follow, he went up to Florence, who, in turning to him, saw me. Nobody but the nurse who had charge of the children was near enough to notice what was going on, and she called the youngsters away when we advanced; and lucky it was that nobody paid attention, for the abrupt manner in which Daniel had walked up to my darling and the extraordinary flourish he made over the business of introducing me must have set any observer wondering.
"Allow me, Miss Hawke," said he, contorting himself into the queerest of nautical bows, and waving his hands as though he were motioning to the man at the wheel, " to have the pleasure of introducing my friend Jack Edge — Edgy — hum ! Mr. Jack Edgymore to you. Mr. Edgymore — Miss Hawke. Nice weather, Miss Hawke. The tug will be dropping us presently, and then we shall make sail, you know. Ahem ! yes, that will be it ; " and he fixed a bewildered eye on me as if he should say, "Must I go on talking a bit, or walk off at once ? "
I raised my hat, and Florence, not being able to help herself, bowed, though one glance into each other's eyes was enough to satisfy us that we both
106 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
equally felt the absurdity of this situation. But trying in its way as it was, let me tell you, lads, that her composure and self-possession could not have been completer had this been really our first introduction. A bright colour had flashed into her cheeks when she turned and saw me, but it was gone before Daniel had ended his speech, and look- ing at me with a faint, nervous, twitching smile upon her lips, she said in her sweet quiet voice through which ran a kind of tremble, " I was very much surprised when Captain Thompson told me that you were on board the Strathmore and going to Australia, Mr. Seymour."
When she pronounced my name Daniel laughed, and then appearing to find something deeply interesting in the sky to windward, he crossed the deck.
"I hope you are not angry with me," I began, scarcely knowing what to say, and hardly able to realize that I was alongside her at last, talking to her, looking into her beautiful eyes, and that this was just the very beginning of many weeks of constant association.
" Indeed I have not had time to find out," she replied. " I am too much astonished. I had no idea you would take such a step. If Sophie knew your intention, she should have told me."
"I assure you she knew nothing whatever about it," I replied. " I dared not trust her for fear of
WITH MY LOVE. 107
my project reaching your ears, and perhaps your father's. She wrote to tell rne she wondered that I did not try to see you before you left, which made my secret the harder for me to keep from her, but her surprise will end when she gets my letter. Did you think I could endure to be separated from you? You sent me this to remember you by," said I, hauling out the locket, " but did you believe it would suffice ? There is only one thing in this world that will satisfy me as a keepsake — and that is yourself."
She bent her eyes downwards, quietly smiling. Thompson was talking to the pilot ; Mrs. O'Brien had got hold of the children and was amusing them ; Captain Jackson and his wife stumped the other side of the poop arm in arm ; everybody else belonging aft was below.
" Of course you know, Mr. Seymour, that my aunt is with me ? " said she, after a pause.
" Yes," I replied. " She is the reason why I have shipped as Jack Egerton ? Will you call me Egerton ? If you address me as Seymour she will guess who I am."
" Ought I to say I will? " she answered, smiling. " It will be so difficult." And then with an uneasy look coming into her face she said, " Are you fair in asking me to be deceitful ? I wish you had not come."
" Don't for heaven's sake, say so ! " cried I.
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" If my presence annoys you, I'll shift my quarters into the 'tween decks yonder, and never approach this part of the vessel for the rest of the voyage. It will be something, at all events, to feel that I am in the same ship with you. When I made up my mind to follow you I never feared that you would wish I had not come. It's true that I did not dare hope you would be glad to see me, but I counted upon your not being angry, for it is for love of you, and only for that, Florence, that I have followed you."
"I am not angry, Mr. Sey — , Mr. Edg — , Mr. — Oh, what am I to call you ? " she exclaimed, colouring and stammering. "I do not want you to leave this part of the ship; I — I — " The darling broke down, looking away with her sweet eyes over the sea, with a trembling of the lovely lashes as though tears were not far off ; and then rallying a ;bit she said in her gentle way, with a quiver in the lower notes of her voice : " The deceitfulness is the only part I dislike. I shall never be able to address you as Mr. Egerton with- out feeling that I am telling a story."
"Then," said I, peeping round into her face, "if you can't help feeling that it will be wrong to call me Mr. Egerton, say Jack when we are alone — that will be enough ; there's no need to address me by any name when others are present."
Here came another pause, and then said she —
WITH MY LOVE. 109
" Do you know that Mr. Reginald Morecombe is in this ship ? "
"Perfectly well," I replied. "He shares my cabin ; and I have just left him horribly sea-sick, after stowing him away in his bunk."
u What ! does he know you are here ? " she cried, with her eyes wide open with wonder.
" He knows that Mr. Egerton is here — that's all," I answered.
" But have you never met before ? "
" I caught a glimpse of him once at Bristol, but he did not see me, and does not know me from Adam."
She raised her hands with a gesture of astonish- ment, and then I suppose the absurdity of his sharing my cabin — indeed, the ridiculousness of the position we were all of us in — struck her ; she broke into a short semi-hysterical laugh, though she grew very soon grave again, and turned a glance now and then at the companion hatch which caused me to ask her if she expected her aunt to come on deck.
"I don't think she will come," she answered. " She complained of feeling a little sick, and went to her cabin to lie down."
" Does not this motion inconvenience you ? "
"Not in the least," she replied; and indeed I had already noticed how easily she poised her beautiful figure to the heave of the deck. Looking
110 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
at her closely whilst we conversed, and better able to observe points in her now that my agitation was gone, I took notice of a certain careworn expression in her face — a sorrowful appearance that would have passed with me as the grief she would feel in saying good-bye to her home, were it not that it looked too old to belong to the date of her fare- well. She caught me watching her wistfully, and I at once said —
" I am afraid they have been making you un- happy on my account. You haven't the healthful, happy looks I remember, Florence ; though, please God, they'll be coming back to you now."
She did not answer me ; whether or not she liked me calling her Florence, there was no rebuke in her face when I said the word.
"I heard from Sophie," said I, "that you were a good deal worried when in Scotland. Did you know that Mr. Morecombe was to be one of the Stmthmores passengers ? "
" How can you ask me ? " she answered quickly, with a sparkle like a tear in her eyes, and the cold look I had noticed when peering at her through the skylight on the previous evening coming into her face. " I should not be here if I had known."
" Ah ! " said I, " I see how the coast lies now. What a mean wretch he must be to pursue you in this fashion after your flat rejection of him. The instant I entered my cabin and spied the fellow's
WITH MY LOVE. Ill
traps I saw the plot. How could your father have the heart to subject you to this sort of thing ? What opinion can he have of you not to guess that the more Mr. Morecombe worries you the more you will hate him ! " .
She could not help smiling at this, dejected as she looked and was, and said —
" The idea of the voyage is Aunt Damans', not papa's," as though she would apologize for her father.
" And was it Miss Damaris Hawke who suggested the notion of Mr. Morecomhe's voyaging to Australia with you?"
" I cannot tell you, Mr. Sey— , Mr. "
"Jack — say Jack, Florence," I exclaimed. "If you will not think of me as myself, think of me as Sophie's cousin, and you'll not find Jack hard to pronounce. If you do not mind me calling you Florence, why should you hesitate to call me Jack?"
"You call me Florence without asking my leave — how do you know I don't mind ? " she answered.
Well, it was early times to press this matter of Jack, so I went back to my question as to what share Aunt Damaris had in the plot that had brought young Morecombe into the Strathmore. She replied that she could not say, as until she came aboard at Gravesend she did not know that Mr. Morecombe meant to sail in the ship. She
112 JACK'S COUKTSHIP.
said that shortly after their arrival in Scotland Aunt Damaris had asked her if she would like to return to Sydney with her in September, and stop a few months there. She answered yes, the voyage would amuse her, and she would be glad to see Sydney again. A little later her father talked to her on the same matter, and made her see he wished her to go with her aunt ; so then she took the thing in earnest, and wrote to Sophie about it, but she had not the least idea that the voyage was a plan to bring her. and More combe together ; she never thought when she left England to see the youth again, otherwise, though she was quite willing to go to Australia, she never would have sailed in that ship with him. She told me this in a very quiet way, speaking softly and often looking at me anxiously as if she feared I might distrust any portion of her narrative. She did not utter a word against her father or her aunt, nevertheless she contrived somehow or other to make me see that ever since she had met me she had led an uncom- fortable, if not an unhappy life at her home ; and that being so, then there was very little to wonder at in her willingness to leave it for a spell. I noticed that as we continued conversing the em- barrassment she had first shown passed away, she warmed up, glancing at me with a sort of pleasure in her eyes as if she was beginning to thoroughly realize that I was on board. And, my lads, even if
WITH MY LOVE. 113
this girl thought of me then as no more than a friend, there would be a pleasantness when she looked along the ship and saw the crowd of strange people on the main deck and forecastle and then over the bows and beheld the leagues of heaving sea there, in remembering that I was on board, with a face that brought up pleasant memories of Clifton, and Bristol Cathedral, and Sophie, and the like ; for though, to be sure, her aunt was in the ship, the feeling that the old woman sided with her brother and had meanly played into his hands would so qualify the sense of companionship as to make the girl feel, when she looked around the sea, that she was hardly less alone than the loneliest of the 'tween-deck passengers. So I believe that she would have been glad to know that I was on board, even had I been merely a friend ; but it would not do to pretend that I was no more than that to her. There were memories between us which rose in me as sweet as the recollection of kisses, and her nervousness and wonder at my presence being past, she could not view the ocean towards which we were towing, nor reflect that these were the first hours of a voyage that was to last for some months, without guessing that it must be something deeper than a boyish whim that had brought me alongside of her to take my chance of what she might think and how she might treat me.
I was much too earnest and absorbed in talk
VOL. II. I
114 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
with her to take notice of what was passing around. The swell of the sea was growing longer and heavier, and the funnel of the tug waved hand- somely athwart our hawse as the great ship curtsied solemnly in her wake. Mrs. O'Brien, the nurse, and the children had gone below, and the only persons now on the poop besides ourselves were the pilot, the captain, the second mate, who stood to leeward near the mizzen rigging, and Captain Jackson and his wife. I should have said, had I been asked to forecast this adventure, that it would have taken me some time to reconcile Florence to my presence; that the sense that her father, were he to know that I was on board, would command her to have nothing to do with me, would weigh upon her as a heavy obligation ; and that consequently it would cost me a long struggle to bring her heart nearer to mine — though if I had ever doubted of accomplishing this, never of course would I have undertaken the voyage. But whether it was that she liked me better than I should have dared to believe, or that her indignation at finding this voyage nothing but a trap set by her father and aunt for Morecombe to catch her in made her defiant, I found after the first five or ten minutes of uneasiness that she talked to me freely and gladly. She never appeared to give herself any trouble as to Aunt Damaris' movements, and, instead of thinking we had conversed long enough,
WITH MY LOVE. 115
and that she ought to go to her aunt in the cabin, she immediately joined me in patrolling the deck when I proposed walking for fear that she would feel the cold by standing. I caught Thompson grinning away like clockwork as we faced round on reaching the taffrail. What there was in us to tickle his fancy I do not know and did not care. I was passionately proud, happy beyond expression, triumphantly joyous at having my darling with me, keeping me company, talking with a lighter note in her dear voice, and letting me see, though without an atom of coquetry, that her first alarm at sight of me was false to her deeper feelings, and that she was welcoming me now — not perhaps as a man whom she loved, but as a man whom she knew devotedly loved her. She talked to me as if it did her good to open her mind, and although you may think that she ought to have found Mr. More- combe a delicate subject to discuss with me, I assure you she spoke out about him with great frankness, and seemed to be amazed at his hardi- hood in taking this voyage with her after her refusal of him.
" Oh, but he's such a fool," said I ; "so ludi- crously self-conceited that he won't believe you're in earnest. He supposes, I dare say, you don't know him well enough, but that you'll have found him out before you get to Sydney, and allow your- self to be vanquished."
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She smiled disdainfully. " At all events," said she, " I've made up my mind to return in this ship. I have said nothing to Aunt Damaris, nor shall I for some time to come, but if Mr. More- combe intends to remain in Sydney, that place will not be big enough to contain me too, and I shall go home with your friend Captain Thompson."
As she said this, my mind went to the fellow groaning and writhing on his back in the cabin, and I said, " If he's going to continue as sea-sick as he's begun he'll have more than he wants of the voyage before we are out of the Channel."
" Why," asked she suddenly, " do you insist upon calling yourself Egerton ? "
" Because," I replied, " if your aunt finds out who I am she will not allow you to speak to me."
Here eyes took a brighter light as she exclaimed, " Do not you think I have any will of my own ? There is no harm in your speaking to me, Mr. Seymour, and if I choose to let you do so I do not think that my aunt would object."
There was a perfect revelation to me in these few words. Sweet and tender and gloriously lovable I always knew her to be, but never should I have believed that with the adorable qualities of her heart she combined real force of character. And yet, upon my word, I had only to remember how she had refused Morecombe in defiance of all the in- fluence her father could bring to bear upon her,
WITH MY LOVE. 117
unci how loyally she had stuck to my cousins, and with what a brave, uncomplaining soul she embarked on this long voyage, to wonder that I should have needed a speech from her to find out that she had a high spirit. I hardly knew what answer to make her.
" I don't wish to influence you," she continued, "but if you have assumed a name only for my sake, let me assure you the disguise is unnecessary. You are quite right in supposing that my aunt would be very vexed to find you on board, but why should I study other people's feelings when I see how little mine are considered. I'm not responsible for your being here, but my aunt is answerable for Mr. Morecombe's presence, and she came to the ship at Gravesend expecting to find him in her, as I could see by the way they met. Aunt Damaris doesn't mind humiliating me by this plot, as yon might call it, and since you are on board, Mr. Seymour, I do not know why she should not be told who you are."
There was no anger in her manner, but she spoke as a woman would who is deeply offended, with a flush in her cheek and a sparkling in her eyes and a trembling of the lips.
" I will do whatever you wish," I replied, " and I feel the truth of all that you say, believe me. But as my name is down as Egerton, as the stewards and others know me by that name,
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and as it is on my luggage, it would be rather awkward to alter it. And then," said I, " think of the effect of the discovery upon Mr. Moreconibe, who, you must know, sleeps in the bunk under mine. We should end our days like the Kilkenny- cats. If Sydney would not be big enough to hold you and him, I am sure this ship would not be large enough to hold him and me if once I discovered that he knew who I was."
She broke into one of her old merry laughs, and said, " You will do as you like, I suppose, but I shall never be able to speak or think of you as Mr. Egerton, aristocratic as the name is."
" I want you to think of me as Jack and call me so — not of course before others, but when we art alone. Will you ? " I asked.
" I can't tell you now," she replied, coming to a stand at the companion ; and putting her foot upon the step, she looked a few moments at the haze of land on the starboard beam with a shadow of melancholy on her beautiful eyes, and then saying, " There is no chance of our not meeting again soon noiv" she went below.
I 119 )
CHAPTER VII.
MB. M0BEC0MBE IS VERY ILL.
The moment Florence was gone, Daniel came up to me. I should have been glad of a spell of soli- tude, if merely to enjoy the luxury of thinking over this meeting and conversation with my darling girl, and the noble hope that had come to me ; but my friend was not to be put off.
"You have had a longish bout of it, Jack," said he. "How have you enjoyed yourself? By thunder, she has a proper face and figure ! Does she use her heels or her toes when she walks ? Never saw such a floating movement in a woman on a rolling deck. Will not she be a fine dancer now, eh ? How have you got on ? "
" Pretty much as you did when you were court- ing, Daniel. I'm greatly obliged to you for your friendly offices."
" Not at all. Glad to have been able to steer you ; but you're on your own hook now, my lad ; well out of my pilotage district, and must shift for
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yourself. But that I think you know how to do. How does she relish you under that confounded name of yours, which I never can remember ? "
I made him some kind of answer, and changed the subject by asking where the tug was to drop us. " Abreast of the Foreland," he replied. " Yonder 's Margate," and he pointed to the land which, owing to the haziness, loomed faintly in the distance, as though it were leagues away.
The wind had freshened, and was blowing a steady breeze with weight enough in it to give a heel to the ship, though she was under fore and aft canvas only. The swell came along from the north and east with a regular Channel roll, and a bit of a sea on top that hissed sharply in small green surges, and made an eager glancing under the sun that sailed fast among the squadrons of windy clouds which swarmed along the pale autumn blue. The swell was nearly ahead, and the ship pitched slowly as she went, smothering a broad space of water around her with a surface of blowing and winking and shining foam at every crushing and shearing blow of the powerful bows and cutwater ; and the tug ahead sometimes rolled sponsons under as she dragged at us, now and again hoisting one or the other of her wheels almost bodily out of water into the air, where you could see it spin round like a circle of bright steel sparkling wet in the sun, and dipping her head in the smother she
MB. MORECOMBE IS VERY ILL. 121
raised until the sea-line beyond stood, as high as the bridge, and then slackening the great hawser into a bight as her stern swooped into the snow under her counter and gave us a clear view of her deck. Some of the steerage passengers overhung our forecastle rail or main deck bulwarks, very sick. The chief officer was forward standing by for the tug to let go, and the crew lounged about waiting for the order to make sail. It was a moment full of interest and excitement. The little steamer^ahead was the final link that connected us with home, and she would be dropping us very soon, like the withdrawal of the hand that gives you the last shake. There was a fleet of smacks ratching to the eastwards on our port bow, jumping the green hollows heavily and crowding a space of the cloudy sky and the jagged olive-green of the hazy horizon with their chocolate-coloured sails; a few gulls hung in our wake peering with arched necks into the boiling eddies and balancing them- selves like shapes of marble against the streaming wind, now and again uttering hoarse cries as they stooped to the foam which flew scattering from the rolling coils of the waves like feathers from their own beautiful breasts ; right ahead of us was a deal galley flashing through the seas under her fragment of reefed canvas, with a couple of men in yellow oilskins sitting to windward and a fellow crouching aft ; the wind was keen and damp
122 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
with spray as it blew in moans over the bulwarks and rushed with a shriek through the rigging into the staysails, and there was a hard look in the sk}T to the southward and eastward, away past the tiny red dancing blotch of the North Sands Head light- ship, which made me suspect that a teaser lay lurking there in readiness for us presently.
We were heading to pass the Goodwins to the eastward, which would keep the land a shadow wherever it was. About three quarters of an hour after Florence had left the deck the tug dropped us. Lunch was on the table ; I had slipped below to get something to eat, and I would have stopped there had Florence been visible, but not seeing her, and preferring the busy cheerful scene on deck to Captain Jackson's views on the decadence of the Koyal Navy and Mrs. O'Brien's loud abuse of her native country, I was soon on the poop again, watching the tug pitching and flinging the green water in shining showers of emeralds over her for- ward deck as she swept in a long curve away from us, a fellow on the bridge waving his hat, and the thick smoke of the funnel blowing like flying scud straight into the land. Hands were aloft on our ship, canvas was rattling its folds, chain sheets were grinding and tearing upon the sheaves, and the crew were springing about in all directions^ raising those hoarse peculiar cries which are to my ears as much a portion of ocean sounds
MR. MOEECOMBE IS VERY ILL. 123
as the seething of foam or the singing of the wind.
I remained on deck, constantly hoping that Florence would arrive. Though her aunt was apparently prostrate there was evidently no fear of sea-sickness attacking my sweetheart, for whilst we had walked and talked I took notice that she seemed to feel the ship under her as a horsewoman would a frolicsome mare, and to enjoy the vessel's jumping as though the dance were a hurdle-race. I stumped ahout, sniffing up the keen salt wind and tasting the spray on my lips and relishing the sweetness of it, my thoughts full of my darling, though some little attention I could give to the ship and the foaming and rushing sea through which the Strathmore was squeezing and rolling. Such were the fancies my talk with Florence had put into my head, that it seemed to me, if her father had wanted to play into my hands, he could not have done hetter than send his daughter to Australia along with Morecornbe. Particularly had I noticed the resentment in her when she spoke of her aunt. The more she thought over the ruse, the more pained and disgusted was she bound to feel. It was not for her health, for her amusement, that her father had sent her away; no, but that Morecombe and she might be locked up in a place where no Jack Seymour could intrude upon her to whine out his love. Mr. Hawke's young friend
124 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
would have her all to himself; and, backed by Aunt Damaris, would end in getting her to acoept him ; that was the idea, and to obtain that man as a son-in-law, merely because some of these days he would be making his wife her ladyship, Mr. Hawke was willing to send his child to Australia, lose her companionship for he would scarcely know how long, subject her to the dangers of the sea, and inflict upon her the attentions of the creature she had already refused ! Would not such considera- tions vex and disgust my high-spirited girl more and more as she looked into and understood them ? It was all new to her yet ; only yesterday had she discovered the meaning of the voyage ; but already had it done a deal of work in her feelings, as I could tell ; and, faith, I should not have been much of a lover if I did not quietly rejoice over the possi- bility of her rebelling against her father's wishes in a manner sweeter to myself and more emphatic to h im than was signified in the mere refusal of Mr. Morecombe's empty heart and itching palm.
We had left the North Sands Head lightvessel dancing fast and furious a long way astern, and the deep ship, pressed down pretty nearly to her covering-board by the weight of her whole topsails into which the wind was rushing with a shout as though it must presently burst through the strained, distended spaces, was heavily breaking her way through the quick fierce head sea of the
MB. MOEECOMBE IS VERY ILL. 125
Channel, her forecastle dark and wet, her running gear blowing out in semicircles, the foretack groan- ing like a wounded giant with every weather roll of the hull, the crew in oilskins, the older salts among them casting their eyes to windward at the stormy look of the driving sky that way, and then aloft in evident readiness for an order to reef down ; and the decks forward wholly cleared of the passengers by the Hying wet. It was a winter-piece, for the wind was as raw as if frost were in it, the sea was a hard dark green out on the horizon, the clouds as they flew out of the south and east and swept like smoke over our mast-heads seemed to be full of snow, with their slate-coloured bellies fining into a whitish grey at the skirts, and though the distance was thick, }ret there was the sharpness of outline 3'ou see in things on a clear frosty January morning in all objects this side the haze, such as the buoy that slided past us, rising and falling amid a showering of spray and leaning with the tide, in the white water that flashed and quivered upon the submerged Goodwins, in the two or three black-hulled smacks which were heading for the North Sea, burying their bowsprits with every chopping fall, and in the paddle -steamer that was passing us on our port quarter, her sides shining like oil as she lifted away from us, with her red wheel twinkling over the foam in which the next roll would bury it.
126 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
I was about to go below to be out of the wind for a spell, when the order to clew up the maintop - gallant sail was given ; and a minute afterwards another order was delivered, the chief mate echoed it, and the boatswain's pipe took it up with a long piercing silvery whistling, instantly followed by his hurricane roar of "All hands reef topsails I" I lingered to watch an old familiar scene. The top- gallant halliards were let go, the sail clewed up, and the rigging jumped to the sprawling of the fellows who slapped the ratlines as they mounted the shrouds and swarmed over the top like revolving porpoises. Down came the three topsail yards with a tearing sound of whirling sheaves and rattling of chains, and then followed a thumping and thundering of canvas as the reef-tackles were manned, whilst the seamen heartily chorused, and the ship, with her way slackened and the pressure aloft nearly gone, bowed and curtsied with almost erect spars upon the head sea that poured in sharp concussions against her weather bow. When I saw the third mate jump aloft for the weather mizzen topsail earring, followed by the brass- bounders and an ordinary seaman or two, my fingers languished for the feel of a ratline and a reefpoint ; but it did not answer my purpose to let the cuddy passengers — a few of whom had come on deck on hearing the noise — see me on the topsail yard, and guess from the spectacle that I knew the difference
MB. MORECOMBE IS VERY ILL. 127
betwixt a backstay and a brass rail ; so I kept where I was.
Keefing topsails is a lively thing to watch, boys, as yeu know, when there are hands enough for all three sails at once, and the men are nimble ; for at such a time there will be plenty of wind — unless you're providing against a low glass in what Jack Spaniard calls a furious calm — and the screeching of it as it sweeps off the combing ridges with a slanting bound right up along the canvas, making it boom like a thousand drummer-boys at work up there, is the sort of accompaniment that is wanted to make music of the deep sea-notes of the men lighting over to windward and hauling out to leeward ; the surges run along the bends with a wild washing noise : the wheel leaps in the hands of the man grasping the spokes as the sea smites the rudder and swings up full and gurgling under the counter ; and there is a kind of strangeness in the recovery of the ship from the slope she has been rushing along with, and in the tumbling, rolling, straining, creaking pause as if something was wrong. Well, I stopped until the men were off the yards, and had mastheaded them with a rattling chantey at each halliard, and then taking notice as the ship leaned down again under her single-reefed canvas and snapped and worried the seas as she gained way, how a number of wind- bound craft in the Downs over our lee bow were
128 JACK'S COUKTSHIP.
shaping themselves out of the haze in rocking outlines, and how the coast there, which should be as white as milk in the sunshine, hung like a smoky louring of vapour betwixt heaven and water, I walked to the companion and trotted down the steps, feeling all the enjoyment of a special privi- lege now that my darling and I had been properly introduced, and we could meet without risk of a betraying exclamation or an equally traitor-like blush, such as Daniel had described.
On entering my cabin I found a man seated on a box close to Morecombe, who lay in his bunk moaning in the most dismal manner. The stranger stood up as I shut the door, and suspecting from his appearance that he was the ship's surgeon, whom I had not before seen, no doubt from the circumstance of his cabin and apothecary's shop being in the steerage under the cuddy, I asked him straight if he was the doctor, and he answered " Yes : I have been called to this gentleman by the steward. He is certainly very bad, I don't like his symptoms at all. Indeed I don't believe he ought to continue the voyage."
I peered into the bunk, and my eyes getting used to the gloom — for, you see, the sky was made up of whirling vapour, and the scuttle which the lee heel of the ship pointed at the sea let in but very little of what light there was — I made out Mr. Morecombe tying like a corpse, his eyes closed,
MB. 3IORECOMBE IS VERY ILL. 129
his face of the colour of a turnip, with gouts of sweat all over it, with a kind of saliva draining from the lips, whilst the posture of his arms and half-closed hands indicated an exhaustive degree of prostration. I did not need the surgeon, whose name was Griffith — a young red-headed chap fresh from the hospitals, I suppose, and who had shipped like most sea-doctors do, to get experience by experimenting on poor Jack — I did not want him, I say, to tell me that Morecombe was in a very bad way. I really could not help pitying the fellow, as he lay with moaning noises breaking from his mouth and looking like a dying man, and, said I, forgetting that we should have to land the pilot, " If you think he should not pursue the voyage, what's to be done ? We're bound right away out ; there's to be no more stopping, I think."
''Well," replied the medico, "he can't go on like this. He must be got ashore, somehow, if he don't show signs of recover}7. You should have been here twenty minutes since. Sick ! I never saw more furious and dreadful retching," lowering his voice : " the veins on his head stood out like that," said he, holding up his finger, "and I expected every minute to see the blood come up out of him like a fountain."
" He seemed all right this morning in the river," said I.
" The water was smooth — but this is cwuel— it is
VOL. II. k
130 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
killing me!" groaned the sufferer, to my surprise ; for by the looks of him I should have thought that if he was not past hearing he was certainly past speaking.
"Don't you think your nausea will subside?" said I. " Most people are ill at the first start, you know, but they recover when they feel the long deep sea-heave of blue water under them."
He made no answer to this, for a reason that was only too fully explained by a sudden explosion that I thought would have torn him in halves. I dropped on one knee and supported him, whilst the doctor assisted him in other ways ; his throes and convulsions were truly formidable ; indeed I had never seen anything of the kind to approach his, and when I let him sink back I thought he had fainted ; he scarcely seemed to breathe, and his face pre- sented a most ghastly appearance from the puffy discoloration under the eyes caused by his violent straining.
"I can't let this go on," said the doctor: "he must be set ashore somehow or other. I'll not be responsible for his life if we carry him much farther."
"Well, sir," said I, " suppose you go and speak to the captain, and ask him to come and look for himself. I'll keep watch here."
He assented, and left the cabin.
" Do you feel a little easier ? " I asked the poor
MR. MORECOMBE IS VERY ILL. 131
moaning creature, fancying that the last burst-up might have relieved him.
He _ replied in the faintest imaginable voice, " No, I am vewy ill — I am dying — the captain must land me."
"But," said I, "you told me you had done some yachting in your time. Won't you give yourself a chance ? This is bound to pass if you'll hold on."
"I've done vewy little yachting — always in smooth water — never weally liked it," he gasped out: "this is killing— I shall never wecover — the cajDtain must land me."
The doctor and he knew more about it, of course, than I did, for at that time I never reckoned sea-sickness a dangerous thing ; perhaps because, never suffering from it, I had no sympathy with people affected by it. But since then I have heard of people dying of it, and only the other day read of a steamer that called at a port some miles out of her course to land a woman who was so ill from the effects of nausea, that she expired as she was being conveyed ashore. Yet, though I could not guess that there was any uncommon danger in \Torecoinbe's sickness, it was easy to see that the man was suffering horribly, and that if there was no chance of his recovering shortly, he must be got out of the ship ; for even the length of the Channel from the Downs to the Scillies would be leagues too much of a voyage
132 JACK'S COUKTSHIP.
for a stomach that promised to kill its owner by rupturing a bloodvessel or two if its agony was not ended ; I say I could see that ; and small as would be the notice I should have taken on my own account of the staggering rolling deck, yet the sight of Morecombe made me clearly under- stand what the rude and giddy motion must seem to him, with its accompaniments of creaking and straining timbers, the washing and thundering of water alongside and the deep hollow gurgle of the seas as they swelled up over the scuttle and veiled the immensely thick glass of it with the glimmer- ing green darkness of their folds.
Presently the doctor returned with my friend Daniel, who stood awhile trying to catch sight of Morecombe, who lay in the dusk of the bunk, and then making out how fearfully ill he looked, he said with a deal of pity and good feeling in his voice, " I am sorry to find you so bad, sir. If you feel unable to continue the voyage, there need be no difficulty in setting you ashore — perhaps not yet a bit," said he, with a cock of his eye at the scuttle, " for there'll be top much wind and sea to enable us to do anything in that way this side of to-morrow, I fear ; but if you can manage to hold on until we fetch the Isle of Wight, the pilot '11 be leaving us there, and you can go with him."
" I'm fwightfully bad," answered Morecombe, in so faint and choking a voice that the skipper had
MB. MORECOMBE IS VERY ILL. 133
to put his ear to his mouth to hear him above the grinding and complaining noises in the cabin. Here the doctor spoke to Thompson, talking in a low tone that Morecombe might not hear him, so that I did not catch what was said ; but there was great gravity in the medico's face, and by the glances Thompson directed at the sufferer, I could judge he was a good deal concerned by what he was hearing. Well, you know, sea-sickness is a thing for which no cure has been discovered yet ; the doctor could do nothing, and it was plain that the only remedy for ITorecombe was to put him on solid ground ; and looking at him and thinking of Florence, I began to consider that nothing better could happen for us all than that he should leave the ship. Whether something to that effect was in Daniel's mind I can't say ; but I fancied there was a kind of wink in the droop of the eye he turned on me as he slewed round on his heel to leave the cabin, saying to the doctor as he went that he was afraid there was no chance of landing Mr. Morecombe before next day, but he'd speak to the pilot to see what could be done. It went against my grain to leave the poor chap alone, so I told the doctor I would stop with him until dinner-time ; and this I did, putting a wet towel to his forehead to keep the swooning feeling down, and supporting him when the deadly fit of retch- ing seized him : but the job was one, let me tell
134 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
you, I bad not much relish for, as some of the attacks were so bad that I was thoroughly frightened by them, and expected when I let his head sink on the pillow to find him lifeless.
How on earth he could have come to sea with such a stomach as his I could not imagine. He must have travelled in his time, been upon the water if only for a short run, such as from Dover to Calais, or Holyhead to Kingstown ; and would therefore know what sort of seafaring qualities he possessed. He was too ill to answer questions, was unable to speak indeed, and so I could only go on ministering to him and puzzling my head. And what a thing was this to come about ! Here were we rivals for the same girl, capable on dry land of shooting at each other for her — following her to the other side of the globe : here were we, I say, in one cabin, one of us in the most horrible condition of sea-sickness, and the other nursing him ! Just dwell upon this if you're fond of the unexpected.
( 135
CHAPTER VIII.
DOWN CHANNEL.
Meanwhile, as I kept watch by Mr. Morecornbe's side, doing what I could to soothe his sufferings, I heard the sound of running rigging thrown down on deck, the voices of sailors singing out at the ropes, and the muffled napping of canvas. More reefs were being taken in, and the increasing violence of the wind was to be felt in the weight of the seas that lifted the vessel. We were booked for a regular Channel dusting : a black night was drawing up, and I pretty well knew that there would be too much anxiety felt on deck by pilot, skipper, and mates to allow room for thoughts of Mr. More- combe. The first dinner-bell rang at half-past five ; it was then quite dark, the cuddy lamps alight, the glass of the scuttle in my cabin like ebony, and the wind roaring in thunder outside. I stepped out and found the doctor talking to Captain Jackson in the cuddy.
" Well, Mr. Egerton," said he (I suppose he had
136 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
read this name on my boxj, "how's your sick friend?"
" Much too bad to be left alone, that's my opinion," said I. " Go and look at him, doctor, will you ? And if you think proper, get one of the stewards to tend him, for he'll expire if he's not lifted in one of his fits." And there being ten minutes to spare before the second bell announced that dinner was served, I trotted up the companion- ladder to have a look around.
The wind seemed to be coming with the hardness of a gale as I put my head into it clear of the companion. The evening had come down in a shadow as black as a storm, and the darkness was made the thicker for the clouds of spray which were swept off the breaking crests of the sea and whirled like wreaths of mist through the rigging. The ship was under double-reefed topsails and reefed foresail. The wind was abeam, and under this small canvas the ship was pressing forwards, rolling most uneasily over the ugly, quick, short surges. There was not a star to be seen, not a ship's lantern nor shore-light. The water was as black as ink among the froth ; there was never a gleam in it that I could see. A bright look-out would be needed on such a night as this in these narrow waters ; and in the haze of light that came up through the glass of the foremost skylight, I could see the figures of the pilot and the mate
EL.
walking athv. to and fro, pausing to wind-
ward to take a squint at the sea on that side, and then to leeward for a look at the ponderous shadow on the war:: I twist the main and the fore shrouds. F I :he ship was in dark:
for the side lights were invisible aft, and no ah
but from them; you could just make out the bands of topsails glimmering like the pinions of monstrous birds swayed over-
I ; but nothi::, as to be Been, -
the screaming and wailing that eame down out of the hidden rigging was a kind of wonder, w and again a rush of dann swepl op in a burst of wind, but the showers dried as fast as they fell, and the deck of the poop i : retch
of grey from the break of it ; -heel, wL
yellow haze overhung the binnacle, and gave an outline to the figure that was grinding at the spokes behind it.
Well, we were holding our course and swarming down Channel at about five knots, as I might guess by fixing nrj :i any leaping surfa-
white to leeward and watching ii slide away on the quarter. There was - .on in this,
and so long as the wind enabled us to keep our jibboom pointed towards the Atlantic — why., it might blow half a gale for all I cared : bo I went below, and in a minute or two the second dinner- bell r >f the cuddy passengers who
138 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
were not sea-sick came out of their cabins and seated themselves. Amongst them was Florence, and she was alone. I went round the table to her, and she pretended not to see me coming ; but I knew better. There must be some kind of reflec- tion of me in her shining beautiful e3*es, or what did the little smile mean ?
You will remember that I described the tables as forming this shape, T, the top cross running athwart. "Well, in the centre of this thwartship table was the captain's place, and when he looked forward he commanded the length of the fore and aft table. There were two seats on either hand of him. He was waiting for the passengers to take their places, when I went up to Florence and asked her which was her seat.
"Here," answered Daniel for her, giving me a knowing grin ; " Miss Hawke sits next to me — her aunt on my right. I like to divide the ladies, you had better secure that corner, Mr. — Edgboro', is it ? " said he, pointing to the seat on Florence's left ; and these being the skipper's orders, you see, I sat down, Florence being 'twixt Daniel and me. There were five besides ourselves. Everybody was sick, it seemed, but Captain Jackson and his wife, Mrs. O'Brien, Mr. Thompson Tucker, and Mr. Joyce. The cuddy fare was very good in those days — excellent soup, poultry, joints, decent wines, dried fruits, and such things ; and dinner was not
DOWN CHANNEL. 139
only a long business, but it gave one plenty to do. I see the picture at this moment of that dinner- table on this first black Channel night I am telling you about ; the white table-cloth all agleam with glass and plate, the burnished swinging trays toss- ing convulsively in the bright light of the large pendulous lamps, ripples of radiance running about the polished bulkheads as the heaving of the ship brought the rays to bear on different points, the passengers eating with very little avidity, pausing often whilst in the act of lifting a spoon or fork to their mouths when the ship gave an extra heavy lurch, and frequently directing their eyes at the skylight, the panes of which resembled squares of ebony against the blackness, and reflecting the shining tabic under them like looking-glasses. Thompson, with his jolly red face, sat eating and enjoying his dinner, and answering questions about the weather and such things, and the stewards trotted with solicitude past the people. But these matters received but little attention from me. My darling was close alongside ; I had her all to myself, and I talked to her and nobody else, though I took great pains so to manage my face that the passengers should not guess too much of what was passing in me.
Aunt Damaris, she said, was not actually ill but felt queer, and was in bed and not likely to get up for a day or two, as it took her about that time to conquer her nausea.
140 JACK'S COURTSHIP.
"Have you heard," said I, "how fearfully ill Mr. Morecombe is ? "
" Xo, I have not heard about him, nor am I interested," she replied, with a curl of her red underlip.
When, however, I told her how dangerously sick he was, and what the doctor had said about him, and how there was a risk of his rupturing a blood- vessel and dying in one of his attacks, she looked up at me in amazement. "What will he do?" she asked. " Will he continue the voyage ? "
" I think not," I answered. " He has begged to be put ashore ; but that was not to be done in the face of such weather as this and with a black night drawing up. If he lives until we fetch the Isle of Wight, he will probably land with the pilot."
She fancied I was joking by saying "If he lives," but Thompson overhearing us, assured her that I was speaking the truth, and to confirm my words called out to the doctor, who was at the bottom of the table, " What's the latest report of Mr. Morecombe ? "
"He's as bad as bad can be, captain. I looked in before dinner, and don't think he could be worse. You'll have to put him ashore, sir. If he's carried out to sea it'll be odds if he don't answer for it with his life."
Here the passengers took the subject up, and all sorts