John Holdsworth, Chief Mate. William Clark Russell
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of fighting and love-making, and two traitors, both of whom died game and covered with blood. There was a little too much gunpowder at the end; but I rather think they raised smoke to hide the acting, which fell off as the piece made headway. The best part of the entertainment, to my thinking, was a fight between two sailors in a private box. Mr. St. Aubyn, where do you gentlemen, when you are run through the body, stow all the blood you lose? That’s often puzzled me to think.”
“Oh, don’t let me hear,” cried Mrs. Ashton. “I hate to be told such secrets.”
“Captain,” said the General, “how long is this calm going to last?”
“All night, I am afraid. How’s her head?” sang out the captain.
“East-south-east, sir,” responded the man at the wheel.
“We’re homeward bound,” said the captain laughing; “the old girl wants to get back again.”
He walked away from the group, and stood near the wheel, gazing aloft and around. The passengers continued talking and laughing, their voices sounding unreal when listened to at a distance, and with the great, desolate, silent sea breathing around. The sails flapped lazily aloft, and the wheel-chains clanked from time to time as the vessel rose and fell. Mrs. Tennent came on deck, the captain joined her, and they walked up and down. On the other side of the deck paced the second mate. Forward were the dark shadows of some of the hands upon the forecastle, smoking pipes and talking in low voices.
The night had fallen darkly; there was no moon, but the stars were large and brilliant, and glittered in flakes of white light in the sea. Presently a fiddle was played in the forecastle, and a voice sang a mournful tune that sounded weirdly in the gloom, and with a muffled note. The air and voice were not without sweetness, but there was the melancholy in it which many songs popular among sailors have, and the wailing cadence was helped out by the ghostly sails rearing their glimmering spaces, and the subdued plash of the water about the bows, as the ship sank into the hollows of the swell.
Mrs. Tennent stopped, with the captain, at the poop-rail to listen.
“What odd music!” cried Mrs. Ashton. “It sounds as if some one were playing out in the sea there.”
“Let’s have the fiddler here,” said Mr. Holland. “I like to enlarge my mind by observation, and have never yet heard a real Jack Tar sing.”
“Oh yes! oh yes!” exclaimed Mrs. Ashton, while Mr. St. Aubyn called out, “I’ll go and fetch him.”
“Better stop where you are, sir,” said the skipper, drily; “the forecastle’s a dangerous hold for landsmen to put their heads into. Mr. Thompson,” he called to the second mate, “just go and send that fiddler aft here.”
Presently came the man, followed at a respectful distance by a crowd of his mates, who drew to the capstan on the quarterdeck, and waited for what was to follow.
The fiddler and vocalist was a stumpy seaman, with black whiskers, a hooked nose, and keen black eyes, dressed in loose canvas breaches, well smeared with tar, and a canvas shirt, with a belt about his middle, in which was a sheath-knife. He hailed from Southampton, but had gone so many voyages in every species of ships—Danish, French, Spanish, American—that he might fairly claim to belong to the whole world.
He scraped with his left foot, and stood bashfully awaiting orders, his glittering eyes travelling over the group of gentlemen and ladies.
“You’re wanted to sing a song, Daniels,” said Captain Steel.
“Ay, ay, sir. What might it be?”
“Something wild and plaintive,” suggested Mrs. Ashton.
“Give us a song about a sweetheart,” said Mr. Holland.
This was English to the sailor; so, after a few moments’ reflection, he screwed his fiddle into his neck, scraped a few bars, and then sang.
He did his best, and murmurs from time to time about the capstan illustrated enthusiastic appreciation in one portion of his audience at least. Those on the poop were more quiet, impressed by the peculiar wildness of the song, and the rough, uncouth melody of the tune.
The song was about a woman whose husband was a sailor. The sailor went away to sea, and did not come home, and she thought he had deserted her; so she put on man’s clothes, shipped on board a vessel as a “hand,” and went in search of him. One night she is on the forecastle, on the look-out. The watch are asleep; there’s not a breath of air:
When, looking over the starboard side,
She sees a face as pale
As snow upon a mountain top,
Or moonlight on a sail.
The figure attached to the face rises, waist high, out of the water, and extends his hands.
“O God!” she screams, “is this my love?
Can this my Joey be?”
And then she casts her eyes above
And jumps into the sea.
And sure enough the phantom was Joey, who had not deserted her, as she had cruelly thought, but had been drowned in the very spot where the vessel she was on board of was becalmed. The song wound up with an injunction to all wives or sweethearts of sailors never to think that their Joes have played them false because they do not return to their homes.
The passengers thanked the man for his song, and Mrs. Ashton wanted another; but Captain Steel, holding that enough condescension had been exhibited, bade the singer go to the steward and get a “tot of grog.”
Much criticism followed; but all, with the exception of Mr. St. Aubyn, owned themselves impressed by the rough simplicity and tragical theme of the forecastle ballad.
“Pshaw!” cried the actor; “put the man on a stage before an audience, and he’d be hissed off. It’s the queer scratching of the catgut and the picturesque costume of the fellow that have pleased you. His voice isn’t good enough to get him the post of call-boy at a theatre.”
A warm argument followed this decision, and lasted nearly half an hour, during which the General and Mr. Ashton left the group; then the steward’s bell rang, and the passengers went below to their nightly potations and to munch sweet biscuits.
CHAPTER V.
A GALE OF WIND.
At midnight Holdsworth came on deck to relieve the second mate. A man out of the port watch came to the wheel, and stood yawning, scarcely awake. The night was dark—a hazy atmosphere through which the stars gleamed sparely, and the sea like ebony. The rise and fall of the ship flapped the sails against the masts and drove eddies of air about the decks, but in reality there was not a breath of wind.
There was something stupendous in the black, profound, and breathless placidity of the night. The compass swung round in the binnacle anywhere, but the swell made the rudder kick heavily now and again, and gave the wheel a twist that flung the spokes out of the man’s hand and woke him up.
This prolonged inactivity was galling. One longed to hear the rush of parting water and the singing of the wind in the shrouds.
The mainsail flapped so heavily that Holdsworth ordered it to be furled. The song of the men brought the captain on deck. He flitted, shadow-like, about the binnacle, sniffed at the night impatiently, and then went to Holdsworth.
“The glass has fallen half an inch since eight bells,” said he.
“Yes, sir; there’ll be a change before morning.”
“Better stow the royals and mizzen-top gall’ns’l.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
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