Read Ebook: The Last Entry by Russell William Clark

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Ebook has 935 lines and 42987 words, and 19 pages

the tall heights of the delicate mastheads, each of them star-crowned with a shining gilt truck.

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.

Forward the seamen growled in talk indistinguishable to the quarter-deck walkers.

'What sort of boss is th' ole man going to turn out?' exclaimed one of the seamen, staring aft. 'I don't like his looks. But when once I've signed a vessel's articles I'm for outweathering the skipper, if he was the devil himself. He'll get no change out of Joseph Dabb, and it's extraordinary, bullies, that Joseph Dabb should be my name.'

'If there's no eddication in the fok'sle of this vessel, fired if there oughtn't to be enough aft to enable all hands to spell the word "lush,"' said a dark, heavy-browed man, gazing with a deep and surly smile at the plump figure of Tweed, as he walked, rolling about like a butterbox in a seaway, alongside the captain. 'I never see a face in all my time more beautifully decorated. How many pints go to one of them blossoms? We shall be hearing of him singing "We're all a-noddin'" in some middle watch, when there's onusual need for a bright look-out.'

'I was spliced three weeks ago,' exclaimed a red-headed seaman. 'I'm a-missing of Sally, my joys. I feel gallus like going home again.'

He eyed the land about the West India Docks, and extended his arms, amidst a rumble of laughter and much spitting of yellow froth over the bows.

'I don't expect to see my old 'oman again,' exclaimed a seaman, standing upright with his arms folded. 'If she don't die, she'll make tracks, and, foreseeing of that, I sold off my household furniture yesterday.'

'Ain't ye left her nothing to sit upon?' said the red-headed seaman.

'Yes; a carpenter's knee. D'ye think I'm to be hubbled?' he cried, letting fall his arms, and turning fiercely upon the red-headed man. 'I wondered to find her at home last voyage. She'd have found me a true man. Bruised if I like ship's carpenters, anyhow. I never yet knew a ship's carpenter yer could trust as a man.'

'Stow that!' exclaimed a seaman, leaning over the rail, and merely turning his head to speak.

'Where's this vessel bound to?' said another man.

'I signed for a cruise,' answered someone.

'Something was said about the Equator,' exclaimed another.

'The Equator's no coast,' said the red-headed man.

'The covey that owns this here craft,' exclaimed the carpenter, who was also the boatswain, 'is a Dutchman. He ain't a Dutchman only--he's a feenansure. Now, I've heard tell that when a Dutchman makes more money than his mind's capable of weighing the idea of, his intellects go wrong. Did ye ever hear of the prices they paid for toolips? I'm the son of a sweep, lads, if some of 'em didn't pay as much as a ?100 in good money for a durned stalk not worth a cabbage! They was all rich men as bought them bulbs, and they was all mad; and you lay your last farden's-worth of silver spoons if this here scheme of a voyage to the Equator ain't the caper of a blooming Dutchman who's made so much money that his brains have given under the weight of the idea of his fortune!'

His daughter was handsomely draped in velvet and fur, and wore a turban-shaped hat that was as good for the deck as for her looks. In a minute there was a little crowd of well-dressed gentlemen and ladies standing on the quarter-deck, gazing around them and aloft, with Mr. Vanderholt laughing with the wind in his beard, and Miss Vi gazing somewhat pensively at the full scene of the schooner.

It was the right sort of morning for a start for the ocean. The brisk breeze covered the surface of the river with sliding shapes, coming and going. A large Indiaman, newly arrived, with the rust of four months of brine draining down her chain-plate bolts, her sheathing green as grass, with a quivering of weeds here and there, lay off the Docks opposite. Her house-flag blew stately from the lofty masthead; stately and proud, too, she floated, tall and square. She seemed alive, and conscious of victory. The lights of her cabin windows shook through the ripples in long darts of silver. A chorus of thirty stormy throats swept down the wind, and there came out of that inspiriting windlass-song of sailors who had brought their lofty ship home the whole spirit of the ocean into this living, brimming picture of river.

'He goes alone with his daughter,' said one gentleman to another, 'and touches nowhere. I do not envy her.'

'Don't you remember,' said the other, 'what the German said? "I don't see der use of being seek onless you makes your friends seek mit you."'

They both laughed.

Mr. Vanderholt led the whole party into the cabin, where they found the table clothed for a cold lunch. A steward stood in a corner, waiting for the hour to strike when he should summon the company by a bell. Some baskets of champagne were beside him. It was a roomy cabin, with plenty of accommodation for eight or nine people to sit at table; brightly lighted, handsomely upholstered, painted and gilded as charmingly as a drawing-room. Some little berths aft had been knocked into two, and Violet was very well pleased with the size and comfort of her sea bedroom. She would swing in a cot; the furniture provided her with many more conveniences than she would get ashore in a friend's house.

Mr. Vanderholt's cabin was plainly equipped. He was going to sea as a sailor; he was bent upon reviving old memories; and his guests laughed when he pointed to a sea-chest, which he said contained nearly the whole of his kit, which chest had also been the one he had used in the last voyage he made as a sailor.

'Do you see those ragged marks?' said he, stooping to run his finger along the edge of the chest, whilst he looked up into the face of a fashionably-dressed lady. 'They were caused by my cutting up plug tobacco. I would not have them filled in. On this chest I have sat and blown strong Cavendish tobacco-smoke into an atmosphere composed almost entirely of carbonic acid gas; I have watched the blue ring burning round the flame of the lamp, and smoked on.'

'Would you be a sailor again?' asked the fashionably-dressed lady.

Presently the little bell rang, and they seated themselves. The champagne fizzed, knives and forks rattled on plates, the one steward ran about. Mr. Vanderholt was in high spirits; he drank to his daughter amongst others; no more cordial or hospitable gentleman ever sat at the head of a cabin table.

'The hardest part of a sailor's life,' said a pretty young woman, with black eyes, and a handsome white feather coiled round a large hat, 'must be saying good-bye to the girls, as I think they call them,' exposing a row of milk-white teeth. 'They are absent for months and years; how can you expect constancy?'

'Ha!' exclaimed Mr. Vanderholt. 'But a man may be faithful, even though he should be as much cut off from his girl as if he was buried. Don't you remember what your Richard Steele says? I quote from memory: "The poor fellow who lost his arm last siege will tell you that he feels the fingers that are buried in Flanders ache every cold morning at Chelsea."'

'I do not see the application,' said one of the gentlemen.

'It is perfectly plain,' said Violet, flushing.

'Vanderholt,' exclaimed one of the guests, 'tell me what has become of that old sailor who used to take a month in making a pair of clews for the captain's cot, or a fancy pair of beckets for the mate's camphor-wood chest.'

'He belonged to the days of leisure,' answered Mr. Vanderholt. 'It is all for speed now, cracking on, carrying away, four months to Bombay, when in my time six months was looked upon as a good voyage.'

Captain Glew, at the invitation of Mr. Vanderholt, sat at the foot of the table.

'The lady,' said he, with an inclination of his head in the direction of the person referred to, 'was speaking just now of constancy amongst sailors. I remember some years ago being aboard a ship in a collision. The other vessel received us, and it turned out that the first seaman who sprang into the ship was the husband of the wife of the captain.'

'Lor', what a complication!' said somebody.

'The seaman who sprang was supposed to be dead?' said Mr. Vanderholt.

Captain Glew looked at him without smiling. His face, however, was not wanting in a certain arch expression.

'Sailors undergo very many more perils than are written down, or than the world wots of,' said a gentleman. 'I once met a travelling show. Part of it was a man in a cage. Nothing in this or the under world could be more frightful to see than that man. And what had happened to him? He had slept on a bale of cloves, and the cloves, by drawing all the moisture out of him, had left him a skeleton, with a heart beating under a loose coat of parchment.'

'Poor thing!' said a lady. 'And are cloves so drying? Really! How could the poor creature while away the time in a cage?'

Captain Glew rose, and, bowing to the company, went to his cabin, which was a cupboard forward annexed to the pantry. Opposite was the mate's. He reappeared in a minute or two, said something to Mr. Vanderholt, and passed on deck.

'I wonder you do not touch at Madeira,' said a gentleman.

'I touch at the Line only.'

'Oh, but Miss Vanderholt,' exclaimed the gentleman, 'if you have not seen Madeira, you should compel your father to stop at the island,

'"Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine, And all, save the spirit of man, is divine."'

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