On Board the Esmeralda Part 22

"'Large, mum?' repeats the helmsman, looking around as if in search of something to liken the size of the fish to. 'Why, I've seed em as big round as--aye, as the stump of that there mizzen-mast there!'

"'My good gracious!' screams the old lady, 'Why, they must be larger nor crocodiles!'

"'Aye, all that,' says the man, as cool as you please. 'The last voyage I was on, my mate was in the foretop of the vessel I was in, looking out to windward, when pop jumps one of 'em right down his throat!'

"'And the fish was as big as the mizzen-mast there?' says the old lady, curious like, in her surprise at the chap's awful bender; although she didn't mis...o...b.. his telling her the truth, for she would ha' took in anything!

"But he was too fly for her, was my joker!

"'You mustn't speak to the man at the wheel!' says he, gruffly; and so he got out cleverly from answering any more questions on the point-- smart of him, wasn't it?"

I could not help laughing at this story, the other hands joining in the merriment; all of us, though, wondering how Pat Doolan would take it.

The Irishman, however, did not consider there was anything personal in it. Other people's pulls at the long-bow always seem much more apparent than one's own!

"Ov coorse that chap was takin' a rise out of the ould lady," he said parenthetically; "but what I tould you ov the mule was thrue enough."

"What! do you mean to say that you were sailing away from the carcase for three weeks and came across it again?" I inquired, with a smile.

"Not a doubt ov it," replied the Irishman, stoutly, "and going good siven knots an hour by the log, too, at that! I rec'lect that v'yage o'

mine in that schooner well, too, by the same token! It was there I found that Manilla guernsey ov mine so handy ag'in' the could."

"A Manilla guernsey?" said Jorrocks, in much amazement. "I know what Manilla cables are, and I've heard tell o' Manilla cigars, though I've never smoked 'em; but a Manilla guernsey--why, who ever came across sich an outlandish thing?"

"Be jabers, I have, boatswain," cried Pat Doolan. "Sure, an' I made it mysilf; so, if you'll listen, I'll till ye all about it."

"Hooray, here's another bender!" sang out the chaps standing by; but, seeing that the cook appeared as if he would turn rusty if they showed any further incredulity at his statements, they composed their faces--"looking nine ways for Sunday," as the phrase goes; or, like the Carthaginians when the pious Aeneas was spinning that wonderful yarn of his which we read about in Virgil, in the presence of Queen Dido and her court, _conticuere omnes et ora tenebant_!

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

CAUGHT IN A PAMPERO.

"Sure an' you must bear in mind, messmates," commenced Pat, coming outside his galley and leaning against the side in free-and-easy fas.h.i.+on, "when I wint aboord that vessel in Noo Yark, I was a poor gossoon, badly off for clothes, having no more slops than I could carry handy in a hankercher."

"Not like your splendiferous kit now," observed Sails, the sail-maker, with a nudge in Jorrocks' ribs to point the joke--the cook's gear in the way of raiment being none of the best.

"No, not a ha'porth ov it," proceeded the Irishman, taking no notice of the sarcastic allusion to his wardrobe. "To till the truth, I'd only jist what I stood up in, for I'd hard times ov it in the States, an' was glad enough to s.h.i.+p in the schooner to git out ov the way ov thim rowdy Yankees, bad cess to 'em! They trate dacint Irishmen no betther nor if they were dirthy black nayghurs, anyhow! How so be it, as soon as I got afloat ag'in, I made up my mind to git some traps togither as soon as I could."

"Let you alone for that!" interposed Sails again, maliciously.

"Arrah, be aisy now, old bradawl and palm-string, or I'll bring ye up with a round turn!" exclaimed Pat, getting nettled at the remark.

"Why can't you let him be?" cried the rest, thereupon. "Heave ahead, cooky;" and, so encouraged, the Irishman once more made a fresh start, declaring, however, that if he were once more interrupted they'd "never hear nothing" of what he was going to tell them, "at all, at all!"

Peace being then restored, he resumed the burden of his tale.

"As soon as the ould schooner was riddy to start with all thim mules aboard, we got a tugboat to take us in tow down the harbour out to the Narrows, as they calls the entrance to Noo Yark Bay; and whin the tug's hawser was fetched over our bows to be fastened to the bollards I sees that the rope's a bran-new Manilla one.

"'Aha,' thinks I, 'that's a foine pace of rope anyhow! I'll have a bit ov you, me lad, to stow away with my duds; mayhap ye'll come in handy by-and-bye!' and so saying to meeself, I sings out to the chap on the tugboat a-paying out the hawser, to give me some more slack, and he heaves over a fathom or two more, which allowed me to cut off a good length, lavin' plenty yit to belay around the bollards; an' whin no one was lookin' I takes the pace ov cable below and kicks it away in the forepeak, so as I could know where to foind it forenenst the time I wanted for to use it.

"Well, we sailed away from Sandy Hook down to the Line, an' sailed and sailed, losin' most of our mules, and making no headway, as I've tould you, until at last we got into the south-east Trades, same as this s.h.i.+p is now, and fetched down the coast to Cape Horn.

"Presently, it begins to get so could, that for want of clothing I was nearly blue-mouldy with the frost in the nights, until I could stand it no longer; but none ov the chaps had any duds to spare, an' I was clane out of me head what for to do.

"One evening, howsoever, whin I were that blue with could as I could have sarved for a Blue Pater if triced up to the mast-head, a sinsible kind ov idea sthruck me.

"'Be jabers,' sez I to mesilf, 'I'm forgettin' that pace of Manilla hawser I've got stowed away; sure an' it'll make an illigant overall!'

"No sooner I thinks that, than down I goes to the forepeak, where I found me rope all right; and thin, thin and there, boys, I unreaves the strands, making it all into spun yarn--you know, I s'pose, as how I'm a sail-maker by rights, like Sails here, and not a reg'ler cook?"

"The deuce you are!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Sails; "you never told us that before."

"No fear," replied Pat. "Faix, I don't till you iverythin' I knows--I larnt better nor that from the monkeys in Brazil, old s.h.i.+p!"

"But what did you do with the Manilla hemp arter you unrove the hawser?"

asked Jorrocks, his curiosity now roused by the matter-of-fact way in which the Irishman told his story--relating it as if every word was "the true truth," according to the French idiom.

"Why, you omahdaun, I jist worked it into a guernsey, knitting it from the nick downwards, the same as the ladies, bless 'em! do them woollen fallals that they wear round theirselves."

"You wove it into a guernsey?" cried Sails, in astonishment.

"Aye, I did that so," returned Pat; "and wore it, too, all round Cape Horn!"

"Then let me look at you a little closer," cried the sail-maker, pulling Doolan towards him, and pa.s.sing his hand over his nose.

"What the blazes are ye afther, man?" asked Pat, not being able to make out what the other meant by handling him in that fas.h.i.+on.

"Only seeing if you had my mark," said Sails, calmly; "and here it is, by all that's powerful!"

"Your mark, Sails? What on airth d'ye mane?"

"Why, whenever I sews up a chap in his hammock as dies at sea, which I've often had to do as part of the sail-maker's duty in the many s.h.i.+ps I've been in, I allers makes a p'int of sticking my needle through the corpse's nose, to prevent him slipping out of his covering."

"What!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Irishman, startled for the moment out of his native keenness of wit; "an' is it m'aning to say as it's a could corpus I've been, an' that I've bin did an' buried in the bottom of the say?"

"Aye, aye, my hearty," answered Sails, with great nonchalance. "And I've sewed you up in your hammock, too, for sarten--that is, just as sure as you fetched across that there streaky mule of yourn, arter sailing over the ocean for three weeks, and made a guernsey frock out of a Manilla hawser!"

There was a regular shout of laughter from all hands at the sail-maker thus turning the tables so completely on the Irishman, who got so angry at our merriment for the moment that he retired within his caboose, slamming the half-door too, and declaring that not a single mother's son of those present should have the taste of hot coffee again in the morning watch!

However, Pat's fits of temper were as evanescent as they were quickly produced, and presently he was laughing and talking away as if he had not been offended, enjoying the joke Sails had against him almost as much as any of the others.

Two days after crossing the Line we sighted the Rocas, on pa.s.sing the parallel of Fernando Noronha, where the Brazilians have a penal settlement; and, on the third day, we cleared the Cape of Saint Roque, which is the most projecting point of the South American continent-- stretching out, as it does, miles into the Atlantic Ocean, while the coast-line on either side of it trends away in a wide sweep, away westwards, north and south, back from the sea.

After pa.s.sing Saint Roque, we ran down our lat.i.tudes rapidly, the south- east Trades keeping with us until we had reached the twentieth parallel; and we fetched Rio on our forty-second day out. This was not bad time, considering the great distance we were driven out of our way by the gale, and the fact of our subsequently knocking about for a week in the Doldrums.

With regard to matters on board the s.h.i.+p, I may state here, that, from the date of that eventful night when the _Esmeralda_ had so providentially escaped being wrecked on the Rocks of Saint Paul, and Captain Billings, after "dressing down" the mate, had restored me to my former position aft, Mr Macdougall had not spoken a single word to me, although I had made many overtures of peace towards him, wis.h.i.+ng the matter to drop--nothing being so unpleasant as to be on awkward terms with any one with whom one is brought in constant contact, especially when the daggers-drawn parties are cooped up together in a vessel on the high seas.