The Ocean Cat's Paw Part 63

"Hah-h-h!" came from the sailor, and directly after from different parts of the tree there was a cheer.

"Now then, what about you, matey?" shouted Briggs.

"Well, I dunno yet, my lad; I'm just going to try and shape it round. I want to know where some of the others are, and whether if I let go I couldn't manage to make a scramble and swim so as to join a mate."

"No, no, no!" came in chorus. "Don't try it, lad. Aren't you safe where you are?"

"Well, I don't know about being safe," replied the sailor. "Mebbe I could hold on, but here's the water up to my chesty; and don't make a row, or you'll be letting some of those crocs know where I am. Look here, Mr Rodd, sir; are you all right?"

"Yes, Joe; I can sit here as long as I like.--That is," he added to himself, "if the branch doesn't break."

"Well, that's a comfort, sir. And what about you, Harry Briggs?"

"Well, I'm all right, mate; only a bit wet."

"Wet! You should feel me!" cried Cross, quite jocularly. "How about the rest on you?"

"Oh, we are up aloft here in the dark, mate," said one of the men. "I dunno as we should hurt so long as we didn't fall asleep."

"Oh, I wouldn't do that, mates," said Cross. "You might catch cold.

You hang yourselves out as wide as you can, so as to get dry."

"But look here, Joe Cross," shouted Rodd, who was rapidly recovering his spirits, "you mustn't sit there in the water. Can't you manage to climb up?"

"Oh yes, sir, I can climb up easy enough, only it don't seem to me as there's anything to climb."

"But doesn't the branch you are sitting on go right up to the tree?"

"No, sir; it goes right down into it, and I'm sitting in a sort of fork, like a d.i.c.ky bird as has been picking out a handy place for its nest."

"Then what are you going to try to do?"

"Nothing, sir, but think."

"Think?"

"Yes, sir--about what I'm going to say to the skipper if ever we gets back."

"Why, what can you say?"

"That's what I want to know, sir. I know what he'll say to me. He'll say, Look here, my lad, you were c.o.xswain; I want to know what you have done with my gig."

"Ah, the boat!" said Rodd. "Do any of you know what's become of the boat?"

"I don't," said Briggs.

"Oh, she's half-way to South Ameriky by this time, sir," said Joe, "and I shall get all the credit of having lost her."

"Never mind about the boat, Joe."

"Well, sir, if you talk like that, I don't. But it's the skipper who will mind."

"It's nothing to do with him, Joe. It's uncle's boat; and it wasn't your fault."

"Thank you, sir. That's a bit comforting like, and warms one up a bit; but if it's all the same to you I'd raither not talk quite so much, for I don't know as crocs can hear, but if they can it mightn't be pleasant.

Well, my lads, just another word; we have got to make the best of it and wait for daylight, and I suppose by that time the tide will have gone right down, and some on you will be getting dry."

There was silence then, and the men sat holding on to their precarious perches, listening to an occasional sound from the river or the sh.o.r.e, loud splas.h.i.+ngs right away out in the direction of what they supposed to be the main current, and an occasional trumpeting wail or shriek from the forest--sounds that chilled and produced blood-curdling sensations at the first, but to which the men became more and more accustomed as the hours slowly glided on.

"Look here," said Joe Cross, at last, "because I said I didn't want to talk, that wasn't meant for you who are all right up above the water.

It's bad enough to be keeping a watch like this on a dark night, but that is no reason why you chaps shouldn't tell stories and talk and say something to cheer Mr Rodd up a bit. He had about the worst of it, swep' out of the boat as he was. So let go, some on you. You've got to do something, as you can't go to sleep. But I tell you one thing; you chaps are all much better off than I am. I shan't fall out of my bunk on the top of any of you. But look here, Harry Briggs, you always want a lot of stirring up before one can get you to move. Now then; you have got a bit of pipe of your own. Sing us a song. Good cheery one, with a chorus--one that Mr Rodd can pick up and chime in. Now then, let go."

"Who's a-going to sing with the water dripping down out of his toes?"

"Why, you, mate," cried Joe. "There, get on with you. You chaps as knows the best songs always wants the most stirring up, pretending to be bashful, when you want to begin all the time!"

"I tell you I don't, mate. I'm too cold."

"Then heave ahead, and that'll warm you up. You tell him he is to sing, Mr Rodd, sir. You're skipper now, and he must obey orders. It'll do us all good."

"Well," said Rodd, "it doesn't seem a very cheerful time to ask people to sing in the dark; but perhaps it will brighten us all up."

"Ay, ay, sir!" came from the rest.

"Am I to, Mr Rodd?" said the man appealingly; and after a little more pressing he struck up in a good musical tenor the old-fas.h.i.+oned sea song of "The Mermaid," with its refrain of--

"We jolly sailor boys were up, up aloft, And the land lubbers lying down below, below, below, And the land lubbers lying down below!"

right on through the several verses, telling of the sailors'

superst.i.tion regarding its being unlucky to see a mermaid with a comb and a gla.s.s in her hand, when starting upon a voyage, right on to the piteous cry of the sailor boy about his mother in Portsmouth town, and how that night she would weep for him, till the song ended with the account of how the s.h.i.+p went down and was sunk in the bottom of the sea.

It was a wild sad air, sung there in the branches of that tree amidst the darkness and night mist, and in spite of a certain beauty in the melody the singer's voice a.s.sumed a more and more saddened tone, till he finished with the water seeming to hiss more loudly through the lower branches and the inundated trunks around, and then there was a sharp slapping noise on the surface of the stream that might very well have been taken for plaudits.

Then there was a strange braying sound like a weirdly discordant fit of laughter; and then perfect silence, with the darkness more profound than ever.

"I'm blessed!" came at last from Joe. "Hark at him, Mr Rodd. He calls hisself a messmate! Ast him, I did, to sing us a song to cheer us up.

Why, it was bad enough to play for a monkey's funeral march. It's all very well for you others to join in your chorus about jolly sailor boys sitting up aloft, but what about poor me sitting all the time in a cold hipsy bath, as they calls it in hospitals, expecting every moment to feel the young crocs a-tackling my toes? Why, it's enough to make a fellow call out for a clean pocket-handkerchy. Here, some on you, set to and spin us a yarn to take the taste of that out of our mouths."

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.

THE DOCTOR PRESCRIBES.

And so that awful night wore on, one story bringing forth another, and the spinning of one yarn being followed by the spinning of one perhaps longer.

It was anything to relieve the terrible tedium and beguile their thoughts from the peril in which they were placed. The lapse of time was discussed, and the possibility of the slackening of the furious flow of the falling river so that a boat might come down in search of the unfortunates, but to a man all came to the conclusion that nothing could be expected until daylight, and that they must bear their fate as best they might.