Gordon Stables

“ A breeze has sprung up at last, and both Halcott and Tandy have reluctantly come to the conclusion that it will be better to steer for colder weather. So southward the Sea Flower flies, under every stitch of canvas, with studding-sails low and aloft. Shall the plague be stayed? Heaven alone can tell!
As it is, the depression hangs like a dark, foreboding cloud over the ship.
No one cares to talk much by day or by night. The men sit silently at their meals, with lowered brows and frightened looks. They eye each other askance; they know not who may be the next. ”

“ Neither Tandy, Halcott, nor James could remember having encountered so terrible a storm before. No one thought of turning in that night, for, being so short-handed, every man was needed on deck.
About midnight this fearful gale was evidently at its worst. The sea was then making a clean breach over the ship from fore to aft. The darkness was intense; hardly any light was there at all from the sky, save now and then a bright gleam of lightning that lit up mast, rigging, and shrouds, and the pale faces of the men as they clung in desperation to bulwark or stay. ”

“ In the eyes of the terror-stricken savages every man must have seemed a multitude. And no wonder. It was death or victory for the poor Crusoes; and never before did soldier on battlefield, or sailor on slippery battle-deck, fight with greater fury than they did now.
But, lo! James has seen the king himself, with his golden-headed spear, which he tries in vain to poise, so crushed and crowded is he in the midst of his mob of warriors. ”

“ The good vessel shivered from stem to stern like a creature in the throes of death. For a few minutes only. Next minute she had shaken herself free, and was dashing through the water at a pace that only a yacht could have beaten.
The thunder now went rolling down to leeward, and the rain ceased, but the gale increased in force, and in a short time she had to be eased again, and now she was scudding along almost under bare poles. It would be hours before mate Tandy could get below; but Ransey’s watch was now off deck, so he went down to ask Janeira, the stewardess, if Nelda was in bed. ”

“ It is crowded with savages, their spear-heads glittering in the moonbeams. On this boat the gun is trained.
The rocks re-echo the crash five seconds after, but the echo is mingled with the yelling of the wounded and the drowning.
Ah! a right merry feast for the sharks, and Salook goes down with the bottomless boat.
The fight does not end with this advantage. Those Somalis are like fiends incarnate. Not even the rifles and revolvers can repel their attack. See, they swarm on the bulwarks round the bows, for the ship has swung head on to the shore with the out-flowing tide. ”

“ Yet none on his low grave might weep.”
“My friends,” said Halcott, “there in peace rests the body of my dearest friend, my adopted brother. I never had a brother save him. How much I loved him none can ever know. The world and the ship will be a deal more lonesome to me now that James has gone. For many and many a long year we sailed the seas together, and weathered many a gale and storm. Sound, sound may he sleep, while wind and waves shall sing his dirge. Unselfish was he to the end, and every inch a sailor. ”

“ When we were taken aback in a white squall in the Indian Ocean, and it verily seemed that we had but a few minutes to float, James was here, there, and everywhere, his manly voice, calm and collected, ringing high above the roaring of the wind and the surging of the terrible seas. The very fire of his bravery on that occasion affected the men, and they worked as only bold men can work in face of death and danger, till our craft was once more righted and tearing along before the wind. ”

“ But see, there is a storm coming up astern, so, speedily now, the Merry Maiden is once more under way.
Babs is bundled down below, and Bob goes with her.
Presently the air is chilly enough to make one shiver. A puff of high wind, a squall we may call it, brings up an army of clouds and darkness. Thunder rolls, and the swift lightning flashes—red, bright, intense—then down come the rain and the big white hailstones. These rattle so loudly on the poop deck, and on the great tarpaulin that covers the cargo, that for a time the thunder itself can scarcely be heard. ”

“ Poor Nelda! There she lay in her bunk, pale and frightened-looking.
No tears now though; only smiles and caresses for her father. She had one arm round Bob, who was stretched out beside the child, as if to guard her from threatened danger.
But strange and earnest were the questions she had to ask.
Were the savages all killed, and shot, and drowned? Would they come back again? Would Ransey, and Bob, and the ’Rallie, and poor daddie be killed and roasted if the awful men came with their spears and knives, and their bows and arrows? ”

“ Birds, too, came wheeling around our ship—strange, swift gulls, the lonesome frigate-bird, and the wondrous albatross, king of storms, great eagle of the ocean wave.
“Had we not been upon the strange mission on which we were now bound, and the outcome of which we could not even guess, both James and I would have enjoyed this delightful cruise; for, like myself, he was every inch a sailor, and loved his ship as a landsman may love his bride. ”

“ Sammy is already sound asleep beneath the tarpaulin, and Ransey takes his little sister below to bed at once.
But father stops on deck a little while, to think and muse.
How still the night is! Not a breath of wind now; not a sound save the distant melancholy hooting of an owl as he flies low across the fields, the champ-champing of the horse in the stable, and an occasional plash in the canal as some great frog leaps off the bank. ”

“ Halcott was lying on the green turf, fanning himself with his broad hat.
But he now lit his pipe. Like most sailors, he was capable of calmer and more concentrated thought when smoking.
“Tandy,” he said slowly, after a few whiffs of the too seductive weed—“Tandy, we have luck on our side. Those blackamoors have fled helter-skelter at the first signs of the eruption. Nothing in the world strikes greater terror to the mind of the ordinary savage—and precious ordinary most of them are—than a sudden convulsion of nature.” ”

“ A piece of ice itself is beautiful at times; but perhaps, as we stand and admire it, the sunshine may steal down and melt it. Then we find that we love the sunshine even more than we loved the ice.
“It is not every sailor who has the luck to be captain, or, to speak more correctly, master, of so fine a sailing craft as the Sea Flower, at the age of twenty-six. ”

“ All the way to the Cape, and farther, James treated me as tenderly and compassionately as if I had been an invalid brother. He never contradicted me even once. He used to keep me talking and yarning on the quarterdeck, when he wasn’t on watch, for whole hours at a stretch; and in the evenings, when tired spinning me yarns, he would take his banjo and sing to me old sea-songs in his bold and thrilling voice. And James could sing too; there were the brine, and the breeze, and the billows’ roll in every bar of the grand old songs he sang, and indeed I was never tired of listening to them. ”

“ He, Ransey Tansey, was to be a wild Indian, Babs would be the white man, Bob the bear, and the Admiral the spirit of the wild woods and ghost of the haunted cañon.
The play passed off without a hitch. Only Ransey Tansey himself required to dress for his part. This he did to perfection. He retired to a secluded spot by the river’s bank for the purpose. He divested himself of his pants and his solitary suspender. These were but the evidences of an effete civilisation. What could such things as these have to do with the red man of the wild West, the solitary scalp-hunter of the boundless prairie? ”

“ Gradually the country wakens up to newness of life. Smoke comes curling up from many a humble cottage; cocks are crowing here and there; and busy workman-like dogs are hurrying to and fro as they drive cattle or sheep to distant pasture lands.
There are houses dotted about everywhere, some very close to the canal side, from the doors of which half-dressed children rush out to wave naked arms and “hooray” as the barge goes slowly floating past. To these Babs must needs wave her wee hands and give back cheer for cheer. ”

“ Go on.”
“I see a beach of coral sand, dark canoes like tree-trunks are lying here and there, and I see dark figures moving to and fro, and many more around a fire. The beach is banked behind by waving plantain or banana-trees, and cocoa palms are nodding in the air.”
“Then,” said Halcott, “I was right, and those savages you see, Tandy, are the natives of this Island of Gold—for we shall call it the Isle of Misfortune never again—the very natives, Tandy, who fled from this place when Vulcan’s thunders began to shake the earth.” ”

“ In a marvellously short time they were seen swarming on the beach, and in all haste dragging down and launching their great war-canoes; and in less than twenty minutes’ time they were, to the immense relief of the little garrison, afloat on the now heaving bosom of the deep.
When Halcott ran on board the hulk, I do not think he knew quite what he was doing or saying. He seemed beside himself with joy.
“Oh, live, brother James! live! Do not die and leave us now that our safety is assured. The savages have fled, they will never return. Live, brother, live?” ”

“ The eruption continues with unabated horror—the thunderings, the lightnings, the showers of stones and ashes, and the rolling clouds of dust through which, even at midday, the sun glares like a ball of crimson fire.
“Poor Chips is dead; we buried him yesterday. More of us are ill. Halcott himself is depressed, and my wee Nelda cares for nothing save lying languidly on the sofa all day long. The thought that she may die haunts me night and day.” ”

“ Indeed, when perched on the very, very top of a tall larch-tree Ransey himself didn’t look much bigger than a rook.
Yet I think the ever-abiding sorrow with Bob was not that he had not a tail worth talking about, but that he could not climb a tree.
Different birds behaved in different ways when Ransey visited their nests. Thus: a linnet or a robin, flying from its sweet, cosy little home in a bush of orange-scented furze, would sit and sing at no great distance in a half-hysterical kind of way, as if it really didn’t know what it was about. ”

“ It suddenly occurs to Jim that a dance wouldn’t be at all a bad idea. Ransey is some distance behind his horse, when he sees him lower his head and fling his heels high in air. This is merely preparatory; next minute he is off at a gallop, making straight for that meadow of fragrant hay, the wind catching mane and tail and blowing it straight out fore and aft.
When tired of galloping round the field, Jim bears right down upon the haymakers themselves. ”

“ We’re both seafarers; don’t let us ‘Mr’ each other, or ‘captain’ each other either. You’re Tandy or you’re Dick, I’m Halcott or I’m Charlie, just as, for the time being, the humour may suit us. Is that right?”
“That’s right—ship-shape and seaman-fashion.” Two brown fists met and were shaken—no mincing landlubber’s shake, but a firm and hearty grip and wholesome pressure; a grip that seemed to speak and to say,—“Thine, lad, thine! Thine in peace or war; in calm or tempest, thine!” ”

“ Halcott was very far indeed from being vindictive, but long experience had taught him that mutinous intentions are seldom carried out if active occupation be found for body and mind.
“I breathe more freely now,” said the captain, as Tandy and he walked briskly up and down the quarterdeck.
“Heigho!” said Tandy, “we no doubt have sinned—we certainly have suffered. But,” he added, “I thank God, Halcott, from my inmost soul, first that you are spared, and secondly, that my little innocent child here and my brave boy Ransey Tansey are still alive and happy.” ”

“ There would be a chorus of plaintive cries and shrieks, dying away into a low, murmuring moan, which caused Nelda, who was on deck, to shiver with fear and cling close to her brother’s arm.
“What on earth can it be?” said Tandy. “Can the place be haunted?”
“Haunted by birds of prey, doubtless. These are not the cries that savages utter, even during an orgie. But, strangely enough—whatever your experience may be, Tandy—I have seldom found birds of prey on the inhabited islands of the South Pacific.”
“Nor I,” said Tandy. “Look yonder!” ”

“ Halcott considered it rather an ominous sign that no savages were visible, and that not a single outrigger boat was drawn up on the beach.
Experience teaches fools, and it teaches savages also. Just a little inland from the head of the bay the cover was very dense indeed; and though, even with the aid of their glasses, neither Halcott nor Tandy could discover a sign of human life, still, for all they could tell to the contrary, that green entanglement of bush might be peopled by wild men who knew the Sea Flower all too well, and would not dare to venture forth. ”

“ Grief does not stay long at a time in the hearts of children. It comes there all the same, nevertheless, and is quite as poignant while it does last as it is in the breasts of older folks. Children are like the traditional April day—sunshine and showers.
“I think, mum,” said Ransey after a while, “it is time for us to bundle and go.”
Miss Scragley watched the lad with considerable interest while he struck his little camp. First he scattered the remains of his fire and ashes carefully, so that there should be no danger to the wood. Then he prepared to hide his ship. ”