Rory! Like every one with a poetic temperament, he was easily cast down, and just as easily raised again. Ralph’s wondrous appetite always amused him.
“Oh, you true Saxon!” said Rory – “you hungry Englishman!” But, ten minutes afterwards, he felt himself constrained to join the party at the supper table.
You see, reader mine, a sailor’s life is like an April day – sunshine now and showers anon.
“How now, Stevenson?” said McBain, as the mate entered with a kind of a puzzled look on his face.
“Well, sir, we are, as you said, off the Faroes. The night is precious dark, but I can see the lights of a village in here, and the lights of a vessel of some size, evidently lying at anchor.”
“Then, mate,” said the captain, “as we don’t know exactly where we are, I don’t think we can do wrong to steam in and drop anchor alongside this craft. We can then board her and find out. How is the weather?”
“A bit thick, sir, and seems inclined to blow a little from the east-south-east.”
“Let it, Stevenson – let it. If the other vessel can ride it out I don’t think the Arrandoon is likely to lose her anchors. Hullo! Mitchell,” he continued, as the second mate next entered hat in hand, “what’s in the wind now, man?”
“Why, sir,” said Mitchell, “I’m all ashore like, you see; I can’t make it out. But here is a boat just been a-hailing of us, and the passenger – there is only one, a comely lass enough – has just come on board, and wants to see you at once. Seems a bit cranky. Here she be, sir;” and Mitchell retired.
A young girl. She was probably not over seventeen, fair-faced, and with wild blue eyes, and yellow hair, dripping with dew, floating over her shoulders.
“Stop the ship!” she cried, seizing McBain by the arm. “Go no farther, or her ribs will be scattered over the waves, and your bones will bleach on the cliffs of the rocks.”
“Poor thing!” muttered McBain. “Oh, you heed me not!” continued the girl, wringing her hands in despair. “It will be too late – it will be too late! I tell you here is no harbour, here is no ship. The lights you see are placed there to lure your vessel on shore. They are wreckers, I tell you; they will – ”
“By the deep three!” sung the man in the chains.
Then there was a shout from the man at the foretop.
“Breakers ahead!”
Then, “Stand by both anchors. Ready about.”
Chapter Six.
A Life on the Ocean Wave – On the Rocks – Mystery – A Home on the Rolling Deep
Has the reader ever been to sea? The first feeling that a landsman objects to at sea is that of the heaving motion of the ship; to your true sailor the cessation of that motion, or its absence under circumstances, is disagreeable in the extreme. To me there is always a certain air of romance about the old ocean, and about a ship at sea; but what can be less romantic than lying in a harbour or dull wet dock, with no more life nor motion in your craft than there is in the slopshop round the corner? To lie thus and probably have to listen to the grating voices and pointless jokes of semi-inebriated stevedores, as they load or unload, soiling, as they do, your beautiful decks with their dreadful boots, is very far from pleasant. In a case like this how one wishes to be away out on the blue water once more, and to feel life in the good ship once again – to feel, as it were, her very heart throb beneath one’s feet!
But disagreeable as the sensation is of lying lifeless in harbour or dock, still more so is it to feel your vessel, that one moment before was sailing peacefully over the sea, suddenly rasp on a rock beneath you, then stop dead. Nothing in the world will wake a sailor sooner, even should he be in the deepest of slumber, than this sudden cessation of motion. I remember on one particular occasion being awakened thus. No crew ever went to sleep with a greater feeling of security than we had done, for the night was fine and the ship went well. But all at once, about four bells in the middle watch, —
Kurr-r-r-r! that was the noise we heard proceeding from our keel, then all was steady, all was still. And every man sprang from his hammock, every officer from his cot.
We were in the middle of the Indian Ocean, or rather the Mozambique Channel, with no land in sight, and we were hard and fast on the dreaded Lyra reef. A beautiful night it was, just enough wind to make a ripple on the water for the broad moon’s beams to dance in, a cloudless sky, and countless stars. We took all this in at the first glance. Safe enough we were – for the time; but if the wind rose there was the certainty of our being broken up, even as the war-ship Lyra was, that gave its name to the reef.
At the first shout from the man on the outlook in the Arrandoon, McBain rushed on deck. “Stand by both anchors. Ready about.” But these orders are, alas! too late. Kurr-r-r-r! The stately Arrandoon is hard and fast on the rocky bottom.
The ship was under easy sail, for although there was hardly any wind, what little there was gave evident signs of shifting. It might come on to blow, and blow pretty hard, too, from the south-east or east-south-east, and Mr Stevenson was hardly the man to be caught in a trap, to find himself on a lee shore or a rock-bound coast, with a crowd of canvas. Well for our people it was that there was but little sail on her and little wind, or, speedily as everything was let go, the masts – some of them at least – would have gone by the board.
Half an hour after she struck, the Arrandoon was under bare poles and steam was up.
The order had been given to get up steam with all speed. Both the engineer and his two assistants were brawny Scots.
“Man!” said the former, “it’ll take ye a whole hour to get up steam if you bother wi’ coals and cinders alone. But do your best wi’ what ye hae till I come back.”
He wasn’t gone long ere he came staggering down the ladder again, carrying a sack.
“It’s American hams,” he said; “they’re hardly fit for anything else but fuel, so here goes.”
And he popped a couple into the fire.
“That’s the style,” he said, as they began to frizzle and blaze. “Look, lads, the kettle’ll be boilin’ in twa seconds.”
“Thank you, Stuart,” said McBain, when the engineer went on the bridge to report everything ready; “you are a valuable servant; now stand by to receive orders.”
All hands had been called, and there was certainly plenty for them to do.
It wanted several hours to high-water, and McBain determined to make the best of his time.
“By the blessing of Providence on our own exertions, Stevenson,” the captain said, “we’ll get her off all right. Had it been high-water, though, when we ran on shore, eh!”
Stevenson laughed a grim laugh. “We’d leave her bones here,” he said, “that would be all.”
The men were now getting their big guns over the side into the boats. This would lighten her a little. But as the tide was flowing, anchors were sent out astern, to prevent the ship from being carried still farther on to the reef.
“Go astern at full speed.”
The screws revolved and kept on revolving, the ship still stuck fast. The night was very dark, so that everything had to be done by the weird light of lanterns. Never mind, the work went cheerily on, and the men sang as they laboured.
“High-water about half-past two, isn’t it, Stevenson?” asked Captain McBain.
“Yes, sir,” the mate replied, “that’s about the time, sir.”
“Ah! well,” the captain said, “she is sure to float then, and there are no signs of your storm coming.”
“There is hardly a breath of wind now, sir, but you never know in these latitudes where it may come on to blow from next.”
The cheerful way in which McBain talked reassured our heroes, and towards