The Eagle Cliff. Robert Michael Ballantyne
almost as soon as they were fairly at sea.
“Well, ye–es, oh yes. No doubt I could steer if I were to try.”
“Have you never tried?” asked his friend in surprise.
“Oh yes, I have tried—once. It was on an occasion when a number of us had gone on a picnic. We had to proceed part of the way to our destination by river in a small boat, which was managed by a regular old sea-dog—I forget his name, for we generally hailed him by the title of Old Salt. Some of the impatient members of the party suggested a little preliminary lunch. There are always people ready to back up impatient suggestions! It was agreed to, and Old Salt was ordered to open the provision basket, which had been stowed away in the bows of the boat. ‘Would you steer, sir?’ said Old Salt to me, as he rose to go forward. ‘Certainly, with pleasure,’ said I, for, as you know, it’s an old weakness of mine to be obliging! Well, in a few minutes they were all eating away as if they’d had no breakfast, while we went merrily down the river, with the current and a light breeze in our favour.
“Suddenly Old Salt shouted something that was smothered in its passage through a bite of sandwich. I looked up, and saw a native canoe coming straight towards us. ‘Port!’ roared Old Salt, in an explosion that cleared away half the sandwich. ‘No, thankee; I prefer sherry,’ said I. But I stopped there, for I saw intuitively from the yell with which he interrupted me that something was wrong. ‘Hard a-port!’ he cried, jumping up and scattering his rations. I shoved the tiller hard to the side that suggested itself, and hoped for the best. The worst followed, for we struck the native canoe amidships, as it was steering wildly out of our way, and capsized it! There were only two men in it, and they could swim like ducks; but the river was full of alligators, and two sharp-set ones were on the scent instantly. It is my opinion that those two natives would, then and there, have been devoured, if we had not run in between and made such a splashing and hullaballoo with boat-hook, oars, and voices, that the monsters were scared away. I have never steered since that day.”
“I don’t wonder; and, with my consent, you shall not steer now,” said Mabberly, laughing. “Why, Giles, I was under the impression that you understood everything, and could do almost anything!”
“Quite a mistake, Bob, founded in error or superstition. You have confused the will with the deed. I am indeed willing to try anything, but my capacity for action is limited, like my knowledge. In regard to the higher mathematics, for instance, I know nothing. Copper-mining I do not understand. I may say the same with reference to Tartar mythology, and as regards the management of infants under two years I am densely ignorant.”
“But do you really know nothing at all about boats and ships, Giles?” asked Barret, who, being a good listener, did not always shine as a speaker.
“How can you ask such a question? Of course I know a great deal about them. They float, they sail and row, they steer—”
“Rather badly sometimes, according to your own showing!” remarked Barret.
Having cleared the Pentland Firth, Mabberly consulted the skipper one morning as to the prospects of the weather. “Going to fall calm, I fear,” he said, as McPherson came aft with his hands in his pilot-coat pockets.
“Ay, sir, that iss true, what-ë-ver.”
To pronounce the last word correctly, the central ”ë” must be run into a long-drawn, not an interjectional, sound.
“More-ö-ver,” continued the skipper, in his drawling nasal tone, “it’s goin’ to be thick.”
Being a weather-wise man, the skipper proved to be right. It did come thick; then it cleared, and, as we have said, things became favourable until they got further out to sea. Then a fancy took possession of Mabberly—namely, to have a “spin out into the Atlantic and see how it looked!” It mattered not to Jackman or Barret what they did or where they went; the first being exuberantly joyous, the other quietly happy. So they had their run out to sea; but twenty-four hours of it sufficed—it became monotonous.
“I think we’d better go back now,” suggested Mabberly.
“Agreed,” said his companions.
“Iss it goin’ back you’ll be?” asked the skipper.
“Yes. Don’t you think we may as well turn now?” said Mabberly, who made it a point always, if possible, to carry the approbation of the skipper with him.
“I think it wass petter if we had niver come oot.”
“Why so, Captain?”
“Because it’s comin’ on to plow. Putt her roond, Shames.”
James McGregor, to whom the order was given, and who was the other man of the crew, obeyed. The yacht, which had latterly been beating against a headwind, now ran gaily before it towards the Scottish coast, but when night closed in no outlying islands were visible.
“We wull hev to keep a sharp look-oot, Shames,” remarked the skipper, as he stopped in his monotonous perambulation of the deck to glance at the compass.
“Oo, ay,” responded McGregor, with the air of a man who knew that as well as his superior.
“What do you fear?” asked Mabberly, coming on deck at the moment to take a look at the night before turning in.
“I fear naething, sir,” replied McPherson, gravely.
“I mean, what danger threatens us?”
“None that I ken o’; but we’re makin’ the land, an’ it behooves us to ca’ canny.”
It may be well to remark here that the skipper, having voyaged much on all parts of the Scottish coast, had adopted and mixed up with his own peculiar English several phrases and words in use among the lowland Scots.
Next morning, when Mabberly again visited the deck, he found the skipper standing on the same spot where he had left him, apparently in the same attitude, and with the same grave, sleepless expression on his cast-iron features. The boy, Robin Tips, was at the helm, looking very sleepy. He was an English boy, smart, active, and wide-awake—in the slang sense—in which sense also we may add that he was “cheeky.”
But neither the skipper nor Tips was very visible at the distance of three yards, owing to a dense fog which prevailed. It was one of those white, luminous, dry fogs which are not at all depressing to the spirits, though obstructive to the eyes, and which are generally, if not always, accompanied by profound calm.
“Has it been like this long?” asked Mabberly, after the first salutations.
“Ay, sir, a coot while.”
“And have we made no progress during the night?”
“Oo, ay, a coot bit. We should nae be far off some o’ the islands noo, but it’s hard to say, wi’ naither sun, moon, nor stars veesible to let us fin’ oot where we are.”
Jackman and Barret came on deck at the moment, closely followed by Quin, who, quietly ignoring the owner of the yacht, went up to his master and said—
“Tay’s riddy, sor.”
“Breakfast, you mean,” said Mabberly, with a smile.
“Sure I wouldn’t conterdick—ye, sor, av ye was to call it supper—but it was tay that I put in the pot.”
At breakfast the conversation somehow turned upon boats—ship’s boats—and their construction.
“It is quite disgraceful,” said Jackman, “the way in which Government neglects that matter of boats. Some things, we know, will never be generally adopted unless men are compelled to adopt them. Another biscuit, Barret.”
“Instance something, Giles,” said Mabberly, “and pass the butter. I hate to hear sweeping assertions of an indefinite nature, which no one can either corroborate or confute.”
“Well, there is the matter of lowering boats into the water from a ship’s davits. Now, I’ll be bound that the apparatus for lowering your little punt astern is the ordinary couple of blocks—one at the stem, the other at the stern?”
“Of