soon after the wedding recorded in the last chapter an event occurred which entirely altered the character and current of our coxswain’s career, at least for a time. this was the sudden death of the bed-ridden old mother, who had played such an interesting part at the wedding-feast.
to our hero, who was a tender-hearted man, and a most affectionate son, the blow was almost overwhelming, although long expected.
“i don’t think i can stay here much longer,” he said one evening to his pretty wife, as they sat together outside their door and watched the village children romping on the sands; “everything minds me o’ the dear old woman, an’ takes the heart out me. if it wasn’t for you, nell, i’d have been off to the other side o’ the world long before now, but i find it hard to think o’ takin’ you away from all your old friends and playmates—and your aunt betty.”
a peculiar smile lit up nellie’s face as her husband concluded.
“i should be sorry to leave the old friends here,” she replied, “but don’t let that hinder you if ye want to go away. i’d leave everything to please you, bob. and as to aunt betty—well, i’m not ungrateful, i hope, but—but she wouldn’t break her heart at partin’ wi’ me.”
“right you are, nell, as you always was, and always will be,” said massey. he laughed a short, dry laugh, and was grave again.
it was quite evident that aunt betty would not be a hindrance to the departure of either of them and no wonder, for betty had received nellie carr into her family with a bad grace when her widowed brother, “old carr,” died, leaving his only child without a home. from that day betty had brought the poor little orphan up—or, rather, had scolded and banged her up—until bob massey relieved her of the charge. to do aunt betty justice, she scolded and banged up her own children in the same way; but for these—her own young ones—she entertained and expressed a species of affection which mankind shares in common with cats, while for nellie carr she had no such affection, and contrived to make the fact abundantly plain. as we not infrequently find in such circumstances, the favoured children—which numbered seven—became heart-breakers, while the snubbed one turned out the flower of the flock.
“then you’re sure you won’t think it hard, nell, if i ask you to leave home and friends and go wi’ me over the sea?”
“yes, bob, i’m quite sure. i’m willin’ to follow you to the end o’ the world, or further if that’s possible!”
“then the thing’s settled,” said massey, with decision, rising and thrusting his short pipe into his vest pocket, the lining of which had already been twice renewed in consequence of the inroads of that half-extinguished implement.
in pursuance of his “settled” purpose, our coxswain proceeded to the lifeboat-shed in search of his bowman, joe slag, and found him there.
“joe,” said he, in the quiet tone that was habitual to him, “nell and i have made up our minds to go to australia.”
“to austrailly!” exclaimed slag, leaning his arms on the mop with which he had been washing down the lifeboat.
“ay; i can’t settle to work nohow since the dear old woman went away; so, as nell is agreeable, and there’s nothin’ to keep me here, i’ve decided to up anchor and bear away for the southern seas.”
the bowman had seated himself on a cask while his friend was speaking, and gazed at him with a bewildered air.
“are ’ee in arnest, bob?”
“ay, joe, in dead earnest.”
“an’ you say that you’ve nothin’ to keep you here! what’s this?” said slag, laying his strong hand tenderly on the blue side of the boat.
“well, i’ll be sorry to leave her, of course, an all my friends in greyton, but friends will get along well enough without me, an’ as for the boat, she’ll never want a good coxswain while joe slag’s alive an’ well.”
“you’re wrong there, mate,” returned the bowman, quickly, while a look of decision overspread his bluff countenance, “there’ll be both a noo cox’n and a noo bowman wanted for her before long, for as sure as the first goes away the tother follers.”
“nonsense, joe; you’re jokin’ now.”
“yes, i’m jokin’ if you’re jokin’; otherwise, i’m in dead arnest too—in as dead arnest as yourself, if not deader. wasn’t you an’ me born on the same day, bob? didn’t our mothers crow over us cheek by jowl when we was babbies? haven’t we rollicked together on the shore ever since we was the height of our daddies’ boots, an’ gone fishin’ in company, fair weather an’ foul, to the present hour, to say nothin’ o’ the times we’ve lent a hand to rescue men an’ women an’ child’n i’ the lifeboat? no, no, bob massey! if you lay yer course for austrailly, joseph slag follers, as sure as a gun.”
finding that his comrade was in downright earnest, and possessed of a will as inflexible as his own, bob made no effort to dissuade him from his purpose. on the contrary, he approved of the determination, for he was pleased at the unexpected demonstration of affection which his announcement had called forth in one who was by nature undemonstrative, and who, having thus given vent to his aroused feelings, quickly resumed the reserve from which he had been so suddenly drawn out. massey, therefore, shook hands with him, by way of sealing an unspoken compact of eternal friendship, and suggested that they should proceed together to the office of an emigration agent, who had recently made his appearance in the village.
in the office they found a very small boy, with an air of self-possession that would have been suitable in his grandfather.
“is the agent in?” asked the coxswain.
“yes, but engaged. sit down; he’ll attend to you directly.”
the lifeboat men obeyed, almost sheepishly, the one speculating as to whether highly developed precocity was not almost criminal, the other wondering how such a boy would look and act if obliged to undergo the process of being rescued—say by the hair of his head—from a wreck.
their minds were diverted from this subject of contemplation by the entrance of a man and woman. these, like themselves, were told to sit down and wait. the man was long, thin, and lugubrious. the woman short, slight, and lackadaisical, though rather pretty.
evidently the agent was a busy man, for he kept them waiting some time. when he at length appeared he almost took the breath away from his visitors by the rapid and enthusiastic way in which he described the advantages of the great island on the other side of the globe. there was gold—yes, enormous quantities of gold in all directions. there was land of the finest quality to be had for next to nothing; work for all who were blessed with good bone and muscle; a constant demand for labour—skilled or unskilled—at high wages; a climate such as the olympian gods might revel in, and—in short, if all england had heard the oration delivered by that man, and had believed it, the country would, in less than a month, have been depopulated of its younger men and women, and left to the tender mercies of the old and middle-aged.
our two fishermen were captivated. so were the lugubrious man and his mild little wife. the end of it was that, three weeks later, these four, with many other men and women of all ranks and conditions, found themselves on board the good ship lapwing, ploughing their way through the billows of the broad atlantic ocean bound for the sunny isles of the antipodes.
wheels within wheels—worlds within worlds—seems to be the order of nature everywhere. someone has written, with more of truth than elegance—
“big fleas have little fleas upon their legs to bite ’em,
and little fleas have lesser fleas—and so ad infinitum.”
one’s native land is to millions of people the world in which their thoughts centre, and by which they are circumscribed. a farmer’s homestead is the world to him, and one of the farmer’s cheeses contains a mighty world in itself. but the most complete, compact, and exclusive world in existence, perhaps, is a ship at sea—especially an emigrant ship—for here we find an epitome of the great world itself. here may be seen, in small compass, the operations of love and hate, of wisdom and stupidity, of selfishness and self-sacrifice, of pride, passion, coarseness, urbanity, and all the other virtues and vices which tend to make the world at large—a mysterious compound of heaven and hell.
wherever men and women—not to mention children—are crowded into small space, friction ensues, and the inevitable result is moral electricity, positive and negative—chiefly positive! influences naturally follow, pleasant and unpleasant—sometimes explosions, which call for the interference of the captain or officer in charge of the deck at the time being.
for instance, tomlin is a fiery but provident man, and has provided himself with a deck-chair—a most important element of comfort on a long voyage. sopkin is a big sulky and heedless man, and has provided himself with no such luxury. a few days after leaving port sopkin finds tomlin’s chair on deck, empty, and, being ignorant of social customs at sea, seats himself thereon. tomlin, coming on deck, observes the fact, and experiences sudden impulses in his fiery spirit. the electricity is at work. if it were allowable to venture on mental analysis, we might say that tomlin’s sense of justice is violated. it is not fair that he should be expected to spend money in providing comforts for any man, much less for a man who carelessly neglects to provide them for himself. his sense of propriety is shocked, for sopkin has taken possession without asking leave. his self-esteem is hurt, for, although sopkin knows it is his chair, he sits there doggedly, “like a big brute as he is,” and does not seem to care what tomlin thinks or how he looks. besides, there is thrust upon tomlin the disagreeable necessity of claiming his own, and that, too, in a gentlemanly tone and manner—for it will not do to assume beforehand that sopkin is going to refuse restitution. tomlin is not aware that he thinks all this, but he knows that he feels it, and, in spite of himself, demands his property in a tone and with a look that sets agoing the electrical current in sopkin, who replies, in a growling tone, “it is my chair just now.”
ordinary men would remonstrate in a case of this kind, or explain, but tomlin is not ordinary. he is fiery. seizing the back of his property, he hitches it up, and, with a deft movement worthy of a juggler, deposits the unreasonable sopkin abruptly on the deck! sopkin leaps up with doubled fists. tomlin stands on guard. rumkin, a presumptuous man, who thinks it his special mission in life to set everything wrong right, rushes between them, and is told by both to “mind his own business.” the interruption, however, gives time to the captain to interfere; he remarks in a mild tone, not unmixed with sarcasm, that rough skylarking is not appropriate in the presence of ladies, and that there is a convenient fo’c’s’l to which the gentlemen may retire when inclined for such amusement.
there is a something in the captain’s look and manner which puts out the fire of tomlin’s spirit, and reduces the sulky sopkin to obedience, besides overawing the presumptuous rumkin, and from that day forth there is among the passengers a better understanding of the authority of a sea captain, and the nature of the unwritten laws that exist, more or less, on ship-board.
we have referred to an incident of the quarter-deck, but the same laws and influences prevailed in the forepart of the vessel in which our coxswain and his friend had embarked.
it was the evening of the fifth day out, and massey, joe slag, the long lugubrious man, whose name was mitford, and his pretty little lackadaisical wife, whose name was peggy, were seated at one end of a long mess-table having supper—a meal which included tea and bread and butter, as well as salt junk, etcetera.
“you don’t seem quite to have recovered your spirits yet, mitford,” said massey to the long comrade. “have a bit o’ pork? there’s nothin’ like that for givin’ heart to a man.”
“ay, ’specially arter a bout o’ sea-sickness,” put in slag, who was himself busily engaged with a mass of the proposed remedy. “it ’ud do yer wife good too. try it, ma’am. you’re not half yerself yit. there’s too much green round your eyes an’ yaller about yer cheeks for a healthy young ooman.”
“thank you, i—i’d rather not,” said poor mrs mitford, with a faint smile—and, really, though faint, and called forth in adverse circumstances, it was a very sweet little smile, despite the objectionable colours above referred to. “i was never a great ’and with victuals, an’ i find that the sea don’t improve appetite—though, after all, i can’t see why it should, and—”
poor mrs mitford stopped abruptly, for reasons best known to herself. she was by nature rather a loquacious and, so to speak, irrelevant talker. she delivered herself in a soft, unmeaning monotone, which, like “the brook,” flowed “on for ever”—at least until some desperate listener interrupted her discourteously. in the present instance it was her own indescribable feelings which interrupted her.
“try a bit o’ plum-duff, mrs mitford,” suggested massey, with well-intentioned sincerity, holding up a lump of the viand on his fork.
“oh! please—don’t! some tea! quick! i’ll go—”
and she went.
“poor peggy, she never could stand much rough an’ tumble,” said her husband, returning from the berth to which he had escorted his wife, and seating himself again at the table. “she’s been very bad since we left, an’ don’t seem to be much on the mend.”
he spoke as one who not only felt but required sympathy—and he got it.
“och! niver give in,” said the assistant cook, who had overheard the remark in passing. “the ould girl’ll be all right before the end o’ this wake. it niver lasts more nor tin days at the outside. an’ the waker the patients is, the sooner they comes round; so don’t let yer sperrits down, mr mitford.”
“thank ’ee, kindly, terrence, for your encouragin’ words; but i’m doubtful. my poor peggy is so weak and helpless!”
he sighed, shook his head as he concluded, and applied himself with such energy to the plum-duff that it was evident he expected to find refuge from his woes in solid food.
“you don’t seem to be much troubled wi’ sickness yourself,” remarked massey, after eyeing the lugubrious man for some time in silence.
“no, i am not, which is a blessin’. i hope that mrs massey ain’t ill?”
“no; my nell is never ill,” returned the coxswain, in a hearty tone. “she’d have been suppin’ along with us to-night, but she’s nursin’ that poor sick lad, ian stuart, that’s dyin’.”
“is the lad really dyin’?” asked mitford, laying down his knife and fork, and looking earnestly into his companion’s face.
“well, it looks like it. the poor little fellow seemed to me past recoverin’ the day he came on board, and the stuffy cabin, wi’ the heavin’ o’ the ship, has bin over much for him.”
while he was speaking nellie herself came softly to her husband’s side and sat down. her face was very grave.
“the doctor says there’s no hope,” she said. “the poor boy may last a few days, so he tells us, but he may be taken away at any moment. pour me out a cup o’ tea, bob. i must go back to him immediately. his poor mother is so broken down that she’s not fit to attend to him, and the father’s o’ no use at all. he can only go about groanin’. no wonder; ian is their only child, bob—their first-born. i can’t bear to think of it.”
“but you’ll break down yourself, nell, if you go nursin’ him every night, an’ all night, like this. surely there’s some o’ the women on board that’ll be glad to lend a helpin’ hand.”
“i know one who’ll be only too happy to do that, whether she’s well or ill,” said mitford, rising with unwonted alacrity, and hastening to his wife’s berth.
just then the bo’s’n’s stentorian voice was heard giving the order to close reef tops’ls, and the hurried tramping of many feet on the deck overhead, coupled with one or two heavy lurches of the ship, seemed to justify the assistant cook’s remark—“sure it’s durty weather we’re goin’ to have, annyhow.”
