The Last Entry. William Clark Russell
the crew be blue-water men. I shall want real sailors aboard the Mowbray.'
'There's nothing like them, sir.'
'The craft lies dismantled, as you know. I leave the whole work of her being made ready for sea to you. Employ your own labour. Call upon me as the work proceeds. I shall make you several visits from time to time, for I am a man of leisure.'
'Does the young lady go with us, sir?'
'Yes.'
'You'll wish her cabin specially fitted?'
'I will see to that myself, Captain Glew.'
'Right, sir. And the voyage, I understand, is to be a cruise in the North Atlantic?'
'It is to be a run to the Equator and home.'
'It seems such an odd place to steer for,' said Miss Vanderholt, breaking the silence for the first time.
'It's as determinable as a rock, anyhow!' exclaimed Mr. Vanderholt. 'I want to be able to report a wonder when we return.' Here his Dutch countenance put on the air of good-humoured cunning with which he usually prefaced a joke. 'There is about a quarter of a mile of Equatorial water which possesses a remarkable property. Sink an object in it, and you draw it up gilt. If we strike this wonderful patch of sea, we will gild the Mowbray from waterway to truck; boats, ground-tackle—everything—shall be resplendent, and we shall be the marvel of London as we sail up the Thames.'
Miss Vanderholt watched Captain Glew, to see how he relished this sort of thing.
The skipper exclaimed austerely:
'It's a tract of water written of in books for the marines. It's not to be found at sea, sir.'
'We must strike it, man, so that we may return covered with glory.'
'Patch got any colour, sir?'
'I believe it is a blood-red. A man I once sailed with claimed to have sighted it. He was in the foretop-mast crosstrees, and saw the patch off the bow, and hailed the deck, but he squinted damnably. You can't keep a true course for anything when you squint. The captain missed the patch. No other man saw it; and the sailor, who was a Dane, was, or is, the only man in the world who has ever seen that miraculous bit of Equatorial water.'
He looked at his daughter, clearly enjoying his own imagination; and Captain Glew uttered a hollow laugh, and stood up.
'I will visit the vessel to-morrow, sir, and report. I will bring my papers along with me——'
'No need,' interrupted Mr. Vanderholt; 'Mr. Fairbanks' introduction is enough.'
The man made a nautical bow to the father and daughter, and was going, when he suddenly stopped to say:
'Are you particular as to the nationalities of the men, sir?'
'English and Dutchmen, in such proportions as may please you,' said Mr. Vanderholt; 'but never a Dago, Captain Glew. I was once stabbed by a Dago.'
'And a Dago would have stabbed me if I hadn't killed him,' said the captain. 'We'll ship no Dagos, sir.'
He made another nautical bow, and departed.
'I like him,' said Mr. Vanderholt, turning in his chair so as to resume his letter-writing; 'but I guess the crew will find him a taut hand.'
'What is a taut hand?' inquired his daughter.
'A man who breeds mutinies,' he answered.
He looked thoughtful for a few moments, as though visited by some tragic memories; then, taking up his pen, he went on writing his letters.
CHAPTER II. DOWN RIVER.
On the morning of November 21, 1837, the schooner Mowbray lay at anchor abreast of Greenwich. In the fresh westerly wind you found the sun-white sparkle of winter. Buildings, ships, wharves, the further bends of the Reach, stood out with the sharpness and delicacy of ivory work. The movements of the drapery of bunting, the swelling and breathing of passing canvas, were beautiful to see under the hard, blue sky, with its frost-work of gleaming cloud high over Plaistow Level.
The schooner looked exceedingly handsome as she floated at her cable, with the ripples of the blown stream twisting in slender lines of light from the cut-water. These lines flashed in her glossy sides as they trembled past, and her coppered hull was beautified by other lustres than the light of day, as she sat motionless, courting the eye to the tall heights of the delicate mastheads, each of them star-crowned with a shining gilt truck.
She was handsomer than a yacht, because she lacked the summer precision and fine-weather finish of that sort of craft. The nautical eye does not love fine feathers. The Mowbray was a sea-going boat. She had beam for stability, a height of side which promised a dry ship, a spring of bow smack-like with its promise of domination. Her copper shone; she was sheathed to the bends; she carried little or no finery about her decks, but the scantling of everything—the companion, the skylights, the sailors' deck-house, nay, even the caboose forward—might have been that of a ten-gun brig.
The hour was about half-past eleven. A number of seamen, apparelled with some regard to uniformity of attire, lounged in the bows, staring Greenwich way, or at the familiar scene of docks the other side of the river. They looked a rough company of the genuine merchant-sailor type—raggedly hairy, defiant in stare, in fold of arm, resolved in their several postures. They wore round hats and jackets, and the bell-ended, blue-cloth trousers of the Jacks of that day.
On the quarter-deck walked Captain Glew and the mate who had signed articles for the run, Mr. Tweed. This was a short, hearty, plump man. His grog-blossomed, jovial face suggested a suppressed boisterousness of spirits; you felt that in him lay the voice for the back-parlour of the Free and Easy. The owner of the vessel and party were expected on board shortly, and Tweed had clothed himself with care, in a short, round jacket, with a corner of red silk handkerchief carelessly straying from one side-pocket. His trousers rippled as he walked, and the rest of him consisted of a check shirt and pumps.
'I think he ought to be pleased,' said Captain Glew, coming to a stand at the binnacle, and throwing a look over the little ship and then up aloft; 'nothing handsomer sails out of the Thames this year.'
'She is sweet enough for a pennon,' said Tweed. 'I wish she was mine. I'd like to go a-pirating in a vessel of this sort. No, I wouldn't, either; I'd go a-slaving. A hundred and eighty tons. I reckon you could stow away six hundred blacks in her 'tween decks.'
'I sometimes wish I'd been born a hundred years sooner,' said Captain Glew. 'I would have been a pirate; the ocean was thick with booty, and you got an estate with very little risk. The dogs came to the gibbet because they never would be satisfied.'
'Piracy gave a sailor a good chance,' said the mate, with a groggy look at the hands lounging forward.
'Here am I grateful for this £30 job,' growled the captain. 'The wife and young uns may now eat and drink for three months, and for three months the thought of to-morrow morning shan't keep me awake. Holy Jemmy! But it's on the quarter-deck where the hearts of stone are wanted. To those fellows forward the getting a ship's as easy as an oath. Do you or I get ships as easily as we swear?'
'No, not by all that I'm worth!' answered Tweed. 'Captain, I have followed the sea for twenty years, and I'll tell you how it stands with me now: in my cabin you'll find a sea-chest; it's painted green—green it should be; it's the colour of my life. In that sea-chest is all that I own in the world, saving a matter of a few pounds stowed away ashore. Twenty years of the sea, and nothing but a bloomed green sea-chest to show for it!' exclaimed Tweed, with so much blood in his face that his grog-blossoms made him look as if he had burst into a dangerous rash.
Thus these worthies discoursed, as they walked the quarter-deck, awaiting the arrival