Read Ebook: The Last Entry by Russell William Clark

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Ebook has 935 lines and 42987 words, and 19 pages

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

'I know nothing about the virgins of that island,' said a gentleman; 'but the men who visit your ship, and the men who salute you when you get ashore, are poisonously hideous. They cling like toads to a bed of glorious growths. The spirit of man is not divine at Madeira.'

'I touch nowhere,' said Mr. Vanderholt. 'When our forefoot cuts the zero of the chart, we shift helm for the homeward run.'

He glanced at a clock in the skylight, made a movement, and simultaneously all stood up, and, standing, they drank a final glass of champagne to the safety of the voyage, to Vanderholt's health, to the return of the charming Violet Vanderholt; then, conducted by the owner of the schooner, the guests went on deck, and in a few minutes took their leave.

There was much hand-shaking--all the usual assurances of friendship agitated by leave-taking. Nevertheless, when the company were in their boat, going ashore, one of the gentlemen exclaimed:

'I think Vanderholt must be a selfish old cuckoo to carry away his daughter to the ocean, with no other company but his own grumbling self and Captain Glew.'

'I would not be sailing to the Equator in that schooner for a thousand pounds!' said a lady. 'I should have to be run away with to do such a thing;' and she leered sweetly at a gentleman opposite her.

'They are flourishing their handkerchiefs to us,' cried someone.

All stood up in the boat to wave back.

'For Gord's sake, sit down, ladies and gents! You'll be capsizing of us!' bawled the one-eyed bow oar.

On board the schooner they were getting under weigh. The name of the boatswain--he was also the carpenter--who had shipped to act as second mate whenever his services in this capacity should be required, was Jones. No man blew the boatswain's silver pipe more sweetly. He had sent his lark-like carol to the mastheads, and afar on either hand the streaming river that pure music of the sea thrilled, whilst their guests were making their way ashore.

The cherry-faced mate, Tweed, standing in the bows, soon reported the cable up and down; then sail was made. The eager little ship herself broke her anchor out of the London mud, and to the impulse of her mounting standing jib, staysail, and gaff foresail, was, with a clipper's restlessness of spirit in the whole length of her, swiftly turning her head down-stream, whilst a few hands sang 'Old Stormy, he is dead and gone' at the little windlass, lifting the anchor to the cathead.

Before the length of Blackwall Reach had been measured, the schooner was clothed, her seamen coiling down, some attending the sheets--everything quiet and comfortable. The captain stood beside the tiller, conning the little vessel. He was qualified as a pilot for the Thames, and boasted that he could smell his way up and down in the dark--and truly perhaps the nose, in some parts of this noble river, would be as good as the lead, or a buoy, to tell a man where he was. Glew caught the eye of Mr. Vanderholt, who, approaching him, said:

'I am very well pleased. You have chosen well. This is a good company of seamen.'

Captain Glew touched his cap, and continued to watch the schooner. She was square-rigged forward, carried topsail, top-gallant-sail, and royal; but there was no good in humbugging with this sort of canvas in a serpentine river that shifts your course for you every two miles by three or four points.

Miss Vanderholt stood at the rail viewing the moving picture round about, with a very pensive face. Her eyes often went to a large vessel at anchor ahead. That full-rigged ship made her think of George. In much such a ship, no doubt, George would return. When? In all probability before her own arrival; and how maddening that would be! For, oddly enough, though it was a long time since they had parted, Miss Violet Vanderholt was quite as much in love with Captain George Parry as ever she was on that day when she and her father saw him off in the East India Docks, when she cried, and he hugged her, and when they had spent half an hour up in a corner all alone in talk as impassioned as ever passed between two lovers.

This must convince us that there was something Dutch and solid in the girl's character, for she had had many opportunities to recollect herself and transfer her affection. Though Vanderholt's wealth was not of a size to lead to newspaper paragraphs and to editorial exaggerations, it was, in a quiet way, known and talked about, and people passing his house would look up and nod at it, and say:

'A rich old cock lives there.'

However, Miss Vi's meditations were presently to be interrupted by a scene not very unfamiliar in the River Thames. The wind was west, and it blew a fresh breeze. The ripples rushing to the whipping carried a little edging of foam. Whatever was under canvas, unless it was a barge, or something running in a mile or two of straight water, leaned in shafts of light. You caught the glance of copper sheathing, the sunshine showered in a rainbow glow upon flashes of brackish foam bursting without the life of brine from shearing bows and gliding sides. The smoke ashore blew away quickly, and the heavens remained a beautiful blue, and the sky over the Plaistow Flats shone like the inside of an oyster-shell with the prismatic hues of a setting of motionless, finely-linked clouds.

'Let go your tawps'l brace, you blooming old fool! Don't you see it's foul of my mainyard-arm?'

'What in flames are you keeping your jib hoisted for? You're paying her right into me!'

'Jumped if we shan't both go ashore if yer don't starboard yer 'ellum. Why don't you let go yer anchor, you rooting hogs?'

'Yes, and tear my smothered bows out because a crew of dairymen don't know how to steer their ship!'

Then, in the midst of this--crash!--off short like a carrot would snap a yard, or down, torn bodily out by its roots, would fall a gaff, amidst yells of:

'You gutter-sots! You're all drunk this holy day! Suffocate yer, you scabs! Let go yer taws'l halliards! Don't you see they're binding the wessels together by my yard that's gone in the slings?'

'ALONG OF BILL.'

At six o'clock the cabin bell was rung to call them to dinner. Mr. Vanderholt and Captain Glew arrived from the deck, Miss Vanderholt from her cabin. The interior was a pretty little picture of hospitality; two handsome lamps shone purely and brightly. The burnished swing-trays reflected the beams of the lamps. The light glanced dart-like in polished bulkhead and mirror, and shone on silver and damask, and fruit and crystal. The steward appeared with a dish of fish.

'I think you have a pretty good cook in this vessel,' said Vanderholt, examining the fish, as he helped his daughter.

'He served his time in liners, and has done a deal of cooking at sea in his day.'

'I hope he will take some trouble to please the men,' said Mr. Vanderholt. 'It is always bad food for the forecastle, but a bad cook makes bad bad indeed.'

'What do the men get to eat?' asked the young lady.

'The usual ship-going fare, miss,' answered Glew: 'pork, junk, pease-soup, biscuit, and the like.'

'Who keeps the log of this ship?' said Mr. Vanderholt.

'I shall,' said the captain.

'What is a log?' inquired Miss Vanderholt.

'A book, my dear, in which the chief mate of a ship enters daily her situation, the state of the weather, and such observations as he is capable of making.'

'They are not many, or of a poetical order,' said Glew, with his faint taut smile. 'The nearest romantic stroke that I can recollect was this entry: "A dreadful day. At noon precisely the ship blew up, and nobody was left but William Gibson."'

'I suspect, captain,' said Mr. Vanderholt, 'that you will have met with some romantic traverses in your time?'

'I don't recall any,' answered the captain.

'Why, to put one instance as delicately as I can,' said Mr. Vanderholt, filling a silver tankard till it foamed over with India pale ale; 'that extraordinary affair of some early love.' Miss Vi looked extremely confused, and gazed with entreaty at her father. 'The remarkable story, I mean,' continued Vanderholt, bringing out his mouth and nose covered with froth, 'that Mr. Fairbanks told me.'

'And what might the story be, sir?' said Captain Glew, looking blankly.

Miss Vanderholt continued to gaze with entreaty, whilst her father repeated the story. Captain Glew drained his wine-glass, and uttered a dismal laugh, in which his face bore no part.

'Why,' said he, 'that yarn's told of old Jim Dyson, old Captain Dyson, who was found dead in his bed three years ago at the sign of the Sot's Hole, down Limehouse way.'

Miss Vanderholt burst out laughing.

'So the bubbles break as quickly as they are blown,' said Mr. Vanderholt. 'But I confess I never would have thought it of you, Captain Glew.'

After dinner the father and daughter patrolled the deck, warmly wrapped. Mr. Vanderholt smoked an immense pipe that curled from an amber tip at his lips into a richly-bronzed and glowing bowl in his hand. It was early night. The wind was gone, the stream of tide softly shaled along the bends of the schooner in the note of surf washing on shingle heard at a distance. How dismal, flat and gaunt looked the treeless Tilbury shore in that sad light! The very stars shining over it seemed to tremble with the spirit of mud and cold desolation. Shadowy shapes of ships went by, sometimes to a sound of music, as of concertinas and the like; tall phantasmal shapes, lifting spires as delicate as needles to the stars, loomed anear and afar. In the main, silence lay upon that river, with its burden of living freights.

The crew loafed about the schooner's deck forward, and the grumble of their voices came aft, along with the scent of tobacco-smoke. They slept in a deck-house, with three windows of a side, and spikes of light shot from those windows, occasionally glancing on the figure of a passing man, and falling in streams of radiance upon the bulwarks. Besides this deck-house, the schooner owned a small forecastle, containing three or four bunks.

'I don't know how it may be with you, Vi,' said Mr. Vanderholt, pressing his daughter's arm affectionately against his side, 'but I give you my word I feel better already.'

'That's a good thing,' exclaimed the young lady. 'I wish George were with us.'

'George is not two men. He can't be in India and here at the same time.'

'He ought to be here, by my side,' said Miss Vanderholt. 'Oh, how delicious the voyage would then be! I should not object to your sailing round the world.'

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