Morley Roberts

“ Ruddle?" asked Captain Gray. "Barring your rig-out you look a deal more like a seaman than a parson, at least you do to my eye."
"Your eye is right, captain," said Ruddle with a sigh. "But it is a very remarkable thing that though I have been a sailor I know nothing about the sea that I have not picked up on board the unlucky steamer we have just left."
"That's a very strange thing to say, sir," said the skipper, as he eyed Ruddle from head to foot. "May I ask how you make that out? Once a seaman always a seaman, I should say. I can't imagine my forgetting anything. I never could." ”

“ And if the mate found him his master in navigation, Humphries found that there wasn't a trick of practical seamanship that wasn't at his finger-ends, from cutting out a jib to a double Matthew Walker on a four-stranded rope, which the skipper could almost do with his eyes shut.
"Everything is all the same to me, Mr. Humphries," said the skipper calmly. "I'm a born pilot, and I can handle every rig as easy as if I'd been born in 'em. I can sail a scow or a schooner, and every kind of sailing-boat from a catamaran to an Arab dhow. And at steam I'm just as good." ”

“ The Swan ground past a small berg, and had a narrower shave than with the liner.
"If we'd been going a trifle slower, Ward," said the skipper, "I might have plugged that lump plump in the middle, and you would have been down on the main-deck seeing the boats put over the side."
"There's no arguing with you," growled the mate, "you'd sicken a hog, and I wish it was Day's watch instead of mine. If he has the same temper when he wakes that he went below with, you'll have a dandy time with him." ”

“ And it seemed to the skipper that there was something very absurd in Wardle's whiskers as the wind caught them and wrapped them in a kind of hairy smear across one weather-beaten cheek. All those in the boat were now quite calm; the excitement was on board the Ullswater, and when the gale let them catch a word of what the mate said, as he stood on the rail with his arm about a backstay, they caught the quality of strain.
"Ould Wardle is as fidgety as a fool," said Mike the Irishman, as he still held on to his jaw. ”

“ I've known one man with four pairs of inscribed binoculars. I daresay Captain Brown has a pair or two. When you see him, tell him that you met Captain Gleeson, who used to command the Samuel Plimsoll. And as I'm goin' now, I don't mind owning that I'm the man that has the four pairs of binoculars, gentlemen."
He bade them good-night, and Humphries said when he had gone that he was probably as big a liar as the skipper, and had never seen the Samuel Plimsoll.
"And as for Brown bein' a hero," added the second mate, "I simply don't believe it. A liar can't be brave." ”

“ Ruddle said that he did not think much of it, for he thought the skipper was not frightened.
"Although the sea threatens to rage, my friends," said the chief, "he shows no signs of unseemly terror, but with calm confidence bids his brave crew haste up aloft and reduce the mighty spread of canvas. They are even now engaged in the task. Hear with what strange music, which somehow begins to have a familiar ring in my ears, they encourage each other in their arduous duties. ”

“ What all sailors say must be true, for they know their business.
One of these missionaries was the Reverend Mr. Ruddle, and he was the chief of all the others, who were going to South Africa to do it good. There were six of them all told. Thomas Ruddle had his wife with him, for he could not exist without her; and she, for her part, thought him a marvellous man and a darling. He had a beautiful smile, and a big black beard, and a voice like the bellow of an amiable bull. But Mrs. Ruddle was blue-eyed, with the complexion of a Californian peach and a voice like a flute. ”

“ For the idea of sailing her into Table Bay was as feasible as sailing her to the moon. The wind, although it had fallen light, was still in the east, and it threatened to stay so till it blew another gale, after the fashion of Cape weather, where fifty per cent. of all winds that blow are gales.
"It is exceedingly unfortunate," said Ruddle.
"What will happen to us?" asked his fellows in deep melancholy.
"Something must," said their brave leader, and sure enough it did. A sailing ship hove in sight to loo'ard. The skipper, as soon as he heard of the stranger, made up his mind what to do. ”

“ That isn't bein' a liar. I daresay he has saved life at sea. He wouldn't have offered me a silver-mounted sextant if he hadn't several."
"I shall believe you will get it when I see you with it," said Jack Humphries. "In my opinion Captain Amos Brown is a first-class liar."
Perhaps he spoke a little too loudly for a public place, though that public place was a billiard-room with four second mates playing a four-handed game, and making as much row over it as if they were picking up the bunt of the fore-sail in a gale of wind. He was overheard by the only old man in the room. ”

“ My luck is where it was, except in the matter of my officers, and it's notorious that I have no luck with them. We're out of the Swan without a life lost, we've got heaps of grub, plenty of blankets, and a fine comfortable iceberg under us. There's many this hour in the Western Ocean that might envy us, and don't you make any error about that. I come from Glo'ster, and my name is Captain Harry Sharpness Spink, and drunk or sober it's as good as havin' your life insured to sail with me. Oh, I'm all right, and I propose to plug the first man that growls, if he's as big as the side of a house. ”

“ Blithers said his brother was unkind, and ought to be more gentle with a weak vessel. And at that the skipper put in his oar, and suggested that so weak a vessel should not carry sail but retire to his cabin. At this Ruddle laughed jovially, and Blithers said he was hard and cruel, and devoid of all real religious feelings.
"Don't be a fool, my dear man," said Ruddle, "but go to bed. It is perhaps natural to be upset by the strange uproar, and the noise of the wind, and the trampling of the men on deck, but that is no reason why you should say I am not religious. ”

“ She had been running under a heavy press of canvas when she broached to, and went over on her beam ends, for even yet the sheets of the upper main-topsail were out to the lower yardarm, and though the starboard half of the sail had blown out of the bolt ropes, the upper or port yardarm still was sound and as tight as a drum with the wind.
"If she hasn't sunk yet she'll swim a while longer," said the skipper of the Ullswater, as the day grew lighter and lighter still. "Show the British ensign, Mr. Humphries, and cheer them up if they're alive. ”

“ Ay, ay, sir, let go that head-line! Jump and haul—haul it in, men!"
The men were cheerful; there was something in the voice of a real man now on the poop that bucked them up. And they knew as well as Plump himself that he was happy to have got rid of Brogger. The Enchantress looked as if she was to be a happy ship on the passage home.
"You seem a derned happy family," said the runner to Jack Eales as he skipped ashore.
"So we are," said Jack. "But tell us what's the name of the chap that'll come aboard at Astoria."
"His name," said the runner—"his name—oh, it's Bill Juggins!" ”

“ The other gentlemen in black mostly kept to their cabins, but Ruddle went about in the most astonishing way. If the Nantucket stood on her head Ruddle never lost his feet, and when she stood on her tail he was quite at his ease. When she indulged in a wild compound wallow in those delightful cross pyramidal seas which are the peculiar attribute of the South Atlantic in the neighbourhood of the Cape, all that Tom Ruddle said was 'Dear me.' He even said it when Captain Stokes did a flying scoot on the main-deck, and brought up against the rail with a crash that almost unshipped his teeth. ”

“ And still Spink chuckled and paid out the twine, until suddenly the boat ran into a still deeper darkness.
"Easy, boy," said the skipper, with a strange note of exultation in his voice. "Easy, we're there now."
As he spoke the boat ground up against the side of the derelict, and Lim'us turned about on the thwart and touched the iron plates with his hand.
"If you let a yell out of you," said the captain, "I'll cut your throat from ear to ear." ”

“ Spink sighed.
"I'm the most unfortunate man that ever commanded any blasted hooker that ever sailed the seas," he said. "Day tries me more than you do, Ward. There are times I regret I ever knew him. I must have been brought up badly to have such a disposition as I have. Well, well, it can't be helped, a man is what he was meant to be, there is no get-away from that. But I should admire to see you plug him. Oh, I say, it's fairly thick, ain't it?"
It was a deal thicker than much of the pea-soup served up in the Swan, though Spink rather prided himself on the way the men were fed in her. ”

“ The firm stood by in mute misery.
"That's the beginnin'," said the skipper sternly, and not one of them had the pluck to ask him what he meant. Gruddle went in tears to Thripp and asked him.
"You're the worst of the lot, you are," said the independent mate, "and I decline to tell you. But I've no objection to throw out a dark 'int that this boat is undermanned all round both on deck and in the stokehold. Does the thought that that gives rise to in your mind make you curl up? Oh, Gruddle, all this is real jam to us, and we mean to scoff it to the very last spoonful. It will do us good!" ”

“ And Plump's face lighted up slowly.
"He's still dead," said Plump. "And if the owners don't like it they can lump it. And, what's more, I don't believe our new skipper would stand aside now for any man that ever breathed."
"If he does he's not the man I take him for," said the second mate. "I shall get up that blue paint in the forenoon watch, sir."
"Get it up," said Plump. And in ten minutes he fell fast asleep again. For it takes more than a little to rob a seaman of his slumber. ”

“ They held the boat, and the 'old man' kept it straight on the roaring crest, and at that moment they were lifted high, and saw beyond the hull of the barque the white waste of driven seas. Then they went down, down, down; and when they were flung up again the skipper screamed to those on board, and as he screamed he threw the grapnel at the gear of the spanker, and as they surged past her stern the hooks caught in the bight of her loosened vangs. ”

“ In spite of the fog it was not difficult to see that she was a fine new boat of about two thousand tons, built and fitted, as was pretty obvious from her derricks, for a fast freight boat. It was equally obvious that the whole crew had evacuated her in a panic, for Spink found the skipper's berth with the bed-clothes on the floor, along with a sad and derelict pair of trousers. The 'old man' had evidently been in his bunk instead of being on the bridge, and, so far as Spink could see, he had stayed to grab nothing but the ship's papers, without which there can be no maritime salvation. ”

“ But the agents, who cared about no man's brother, put their foot down.
"We've found you a captain, Mr. Plump."
"What sort?" asked Plump anxiously.
"He's a good man and well recommended, and a thorough seaman."
"That'll be a change," said Plump. "Poor old Brogger was fit to skipper a canal-barge. All right, if you say so. We're ready if your new man is. All we want is another hand, and he's coming on board to-night if we sail to-morrow. We've had luck that way, whatever else has gone wrong. If Brogger had lived I believe he'd have lost the whole crowd the way he was shaping. ”

“ As yet neither of you two gentlemen have got as much as the cheapest pair of binoculars out of our own Board of Trade or a foreign Government. With me you'll have your chance to go home to your girl and chuck somethin' of that sort into her lap, and make her cry with joy. I saved my own wife, who is the most beautiful woman in the world, and weighs eleven stone, and has for years, and I got a sextant and a nobleman's daughter at one fell swoop. Oh, I've been a lucky man."
"How did you save your wife, sir?" asked Humphries, who was almost beginning to believe what the skipper said. ”

“ They had visions of Shody, who was a wholesale grocer as well as a ship-owner, when he sampled the stores that he supplied the firm with. They smiled to think of Sloggett and Butterworth, the junior partners, who promised to be quite as bad as their elders by and by, and were known to be fond of high feeding. The only mistake they fell into about the whole body of the firm was that they took them for fools who did not know what sort of food they gave their officers and crews. ”

“ Nantucket, bound from New York to Table Bay, were of a kind to make any old-fashioned seaman shake his head and talk dismally of Davy Jones. They were nearly all ministers and missionaries, and it is well known to all who follow the sea that gentlemen of that kind are unlucky to have on board. For Davy Jones is the very devil, and if he gets a chance to drown a minister he does it at once, so that he may do no more good. ”

“ And Brogger went for'ard like a lamb.
"It's cruel! it's cruel!" said Brogger. But in less than two shakes of a lamb's tail he found himself getting paint out of the bo'son's locker in company with Corlett and Jack Eales.
"What you've got to do, sonny," said Jack, who had half a mind to be sorry for him, "is to do your duty and do it smart and quick. Just now you're off-colour, so to speak, in spite of that 'ealthy complexion of yours, and you don't feel well. Exercise will do you good. We'll have you on a topsail-yard yet singin' out: ''Aul out to loo'ard' with the best." ”

“ The boat was hauled on board, and when the skipper's foot touched the deck he reeled. Humphries caught him.
"Oh, steady, sir," said Humphries, as Mike came up to them.
The captain stared at him, for he did not remember striking him.
"It's the brrave man you are," said Mike simply; "and you're the firrst man that I've tuk a blow from since I was the length of my arm. Oh, bhoys, it's the brrave man the skipper is."
The second mate pushed him away, and he went like a child and lent a hand to help the poor 'divils of Dagoes,' as he called those who had been saved. ”

“ As both Ward and Day admitted, he might be hard to get along with, but he had nerves which would have done credit to a bull. Most skippers in the Western Ocean get into the state of mind which sees disaster before it is in sight, and if they don't take to drink it is because they die of continued scares. Spink feared nothing under heaven, and though he sometimes drank more than was good for him, it was not because he wanted it, but because he liked it. ”