In the Misty Seas: A Story of the Sealers of Behring Strait. Bindloss Harold
morning Appleby found a big, blue envelope upon his breakfast plate.
"I wonder what is inside it," said Mrs. Niven.
Appleby sighed. "It has a business appearance," he said. "It will be to tell me when I'm to go to the office."
"Hadn't you better open it?" said Mrs. Niven with a glance at her husband, and there was silence while Appleby tore open the envelope. Then the colour crept into his face, and his fingers trembled as he took out a document.
"I can't understand it," he said. "This seems to be an apprentice's commission – indentures – for me. The ship is the Aldebaran."
There was a howl of delight from Chriss, and a rattle as he knocked over his coffee, but Appleby sat still, staring at the paper, while belief slowly replaced the wonder in his eyes. Then he rose up, and his voice was not even as he said, "It is real. I am to go in the Aldebaran. I have to thank you, sir, for this?"
Mr. Niven laughed. "No, my lad," he said. "It was my wife's doing, and if you are sorry by and by you will have her to blame."
Appleby turned to the lady, and his eyes were shining. "It's almost too much," he said. "Chriss and I are going together. It is everything I could have hoped for."
Mrs. Niven smiled, though there was a little flush in her face. "Sit down and get your breakfast before Chriss goes wild and destroys all the crockery," she said.
Chriss laughed uproariously. "Crockery!" he said. "If we'd been at Sandycombe we'd have smashed every pane in the Head's conservatory. Tom, it's – oh, it's jim-bang, blazing, glorious!"
That was the happiest Christmas Appleby had ever spent, and he remembered it many a time afterwards when he kept his lonely watch peering into the bitter night from plunging forecastle and spray-swept bridge, or while he clung to the slanted topsail yard clawing at the canvas that banged above him in the whirling snow.
Then, when he knew the reality, he could smile a little at his boyish dream, but that day he only felt his blood tingle and every fibre in him thrill in answer to the calling of the sea. He was English, and the spirit which had from the beginning of his nation's history driven out hero and patriot, as well as cutthroat slaver and privateer, to scorch, and freeze, and suffer, do brave things, and some that were shameful, too, and with it all keep the red flag flaunting high in symbol of sovereignty, was in him also. All that day shield-ringed galley, caravel, towering three-decker, steel-sheathed warship, and ugly cargo tramp sailed through his visions, and they had for a background palms and coral beaches, mountains rolled in snow cloud, and the blink of frozen seas. They and their crews' story were a part of his inheritance, because, although the times have changed and canvas is giving place to steam, English lads have not forgotten, and the sea is still the same.
Appleby, however, had commenced to realize that going to sea is not all luxury when he stood on the Aldebaran's sloppy deck one bleak morning in February. It was drizzling, and the light was dimmed by a smoky haze, while the ship was foul all over with black grime from the coaling staithes and the dust that had blown across her from a big elevator hurling up Indian wheat. It was also very raw, and Niven's face was almost purple with the cold, while the moisture glistened on his new uniform. A few bedraggled women and a cluster of dripping men stood on the dock wall above them. Other men tumbled dejectedly about the forecastle, falling over the great wet hawsers, while one or two who had crawled out of the mate's sight lay rather more than half-asleep in the shadow beneath it.
A grey-haired man with a sour face paced up and down the poop, raising one hand now and then when a dock official shouted, while Appleby sprang aside when another man he spoke to came down the poop-ladder and along the deck in long, angry strides. He wore a woolly cloth cap, knee-boots, and a very old pilot-coat, and he had a big, coarse face, with heavy jawbone and cruel eyes. Still, the very way he put his feet down denoted strength, and Appleby noticed the depth of his chest and the spread of his shoulders. Niven, who had not seen him, did not move in time, and the man flung him backwards.
"Out of the way!" he said.
Niven's face was flushed when he recovered his balance, and there was an angry flash in his eyes as he watched the man plunge into the shadow below the forecastle. In another moment several figures came scrambling out of it, and went up the ladder as for their lives, with the man in the pilot-coat close behind.
"If that's the new mate he looks more like a prize-fighter than a sailor," said Niven. "How does he strike you, Tom?"
"I think he's a brute," said Appleby quietly.
They said nothing further, for that was their first acquaintance with the under-side of life at sea, and their thoughts were busy, while in another minute the mate looking in their direction signed to them, and it did not appear advisable to keep a man of his kind waiting.
"Give these beasts a hand," he said when they stood among the seamen on the sloppy forecastle. "You can't be more useless than they are, anyway."
Niven stooped, and clawed disgustedly at the great wet hawser behind the swaying men, and one of them, who was dark-haired and sallow, glanced over his shoulder when the mate swung away.
"Ah, cochon!" he said.
Another, who had tow-hair, stood up and stretched his stalwart limbs. "Der peeg! Oh, yes. Dot vas goot," he said. "I tink der vas some troubles mit dot man soon."
A little man with high cheek bones and curious half-closed eyes loosed his grasp upon the rope and laughed softly. He also said something to himself, but as it was Finnish neither Appleby nor Niven were much the wiser.
It, however, occurred to them that the language they had listened to was not quite what one would have expected to hear on board an English ship. There were a few Englishmen on board her, but they did not talk, and for the most part leaned up against anything handy, or slouched aimlessly about looking very unfit for work, which was not altogether astonishing considering the fashion in which they had spent the previous night.
Still the hawser was paid out at last, and Appleby stood up breathless, smeared with slime and coal-dust when the ropes astern fell with a splash, and there was a hoot from the bustling little tug. Somebody roared out orders on the quay above, paddles splashed, and the lad felt his heart give a curious little throb as the Aldebaran slowly commenced to move. She was a big iron barque loaded until her scuppers amidships were apparently only a foot or two from the scum of the dock.
He stood forward behind the maze of wire rope about the jibboom, which was not yet run out, on the forecastle, but just below him this broke off, and the deck ran aft sunk almost a man's height between the iron bulwarks to the raised poop at the opposite end of the ship. Half-way between stood a little iron house, and down the middle of the deck rose the three great masts, the last and smallest of them, springing from the poop. Behind it a man in shining oilskins was spinning the wheel. The deck looked very long and filthy, for the wheat-dust and the coal-dust were over everything, and bales, and boxes, and cases strewn amidst the straggling lengths of rope.
Then he heard a fresh shouting, and saw that the bowsprit was already raking through the open gate of the dock, and there were faces smiling down on him from the wall above.
"Chriss," he said, "look up."
Niven did, and Appleby swung his cap off when a hoarse and somewhat spiritless cheer went up. Mr. Niven was shouting something he could not catch, Mrs. Niven was smiling down at them with misty eyes, and the very pretty girl at her side waving a handkerchief.
Appleby glanced at his comrade out of the corner of his eyes and saw that Chriss's face had grown unusually red. Still, he was shouting lustily, and swinging his cap, while in the silence that followed the cheer a hoarse voice rose up —
Blow the men down,
Blow the men down,
Oh, give us time
To blow the men down.
There was another scream from the whistle, and a roar from the mate, and while the last ropes were cast off the two lads ran aft along the deck. Paddles splashed, ropes slid through the water, and while the red ensign thrice swung up and sank above their heads the Aldebaran slid out into the Mersey. Once