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Title: The Vital Spark
Author: Neil Munro (1864-1930) (Pen Name of Hugh Foulis)
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0700591h.html
Language: English
Date first posted: April 2007
Date most recently updated: April 2007
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The Vital Spark
by
Neil Munro
I. PARA HANDY, MASTER MARINER
A short, thick-set man, with a red beard, a hard round felt hat,
ridiculously out of harmony with a blue pilot jacket and trousers and a
seaman's jersey, his hands immersed deeply in those pockets our fathers
(and the heroes of Rabelais) used to wear behind a front flap, he would
have attracted my notice even if he had not, unaware of my presence so
close behind him, been humming to himself the chorus of a song that
used to be very popular on gabbarts, but is now gone out of date, like
"The Captain with the Whiskers took a Sly Glance at Me." You may have
heard it thirty years ago, before the steam puffer came in to sweep the
sailing smack from all the seas that lie between Bowling and Stornoway.
It runs--
"Young Munro he took a notion For to sail across the sea, And he
left his true love weeping, All alone on Greenock Quay,"
and by that sign, and by his red beard, and by a curious gesture he
had, as if he were now and then going to scratch his ear and only
determined not to do it when his hand was up, I knew he was one of the
Macfarlanes. There were ten Macfarlanes, all men, except one, and he
was a valet, but the family did their best to conceal the fact, and
said he was away on the yachts, and making that much money he had not
time to write a scrape home.
"I think I ought to know you," I said to the vocalist with the hard
hat. "You are a Macfarlane: either the Beekan, or Kail, or the Nipper,
or Keep Dark, or Para Handy--"
"As sure as daith," said he,﹃I'm chust Para Handy, and I ken your
name fine, but I cannot chust mind your face.﹄He had turned round on
the pawl he sat on, without taking his hands from his pockets, and
looked up at me where I stood beside him, watching a river steamer
being warped into the pier.
"My goodness!" he said about ten minutes later, when he had wormed
my whole history out of me; "and you'll be writing things for the
papers? Cot bless me! and do you tell me you can be makin' a living off
that? I'm not asking you, mind, hoo mich you'll be makin', don't tell
me; not a cheep! not a cheep! But I'll wudger it's more than Maolean
the munister. But och! I'm not saying: it iss not my business. The
munister has two hundred in the year and a coo's gress; he iss aye the
big man up yonder, but it iss me would like to show him he wass not so
big a man as yourself. Eh? But not a cheep! not a cheep! A Macfarlane
would never put his nose into another man's oar."
"And where have you been this long while?" I asked, having let it
sink into his mind that there was no chance to-day of his learning my
exact income, expenditure, and how much I had in the bank.
"Me!" said he; "I am going up and down like yon fellow in the
Scruptures--what wass his name? Sampson--seeking what I may devour. I
am out of a chob. Chust that: out of a chob. You'll not be hearin' of
anybody in your line that iss in want of a skipper?"
Skippers, I said, were in rare demand in my line of business. We
hadn't used a skipper for years.
"Chust that! chust that! I only mentioned it in case. You are making
things for newspapers, my Cot! what will they not do now for the penny?
Well, that is it; I am out of a chob; chust putting bye the time. I'm
not vexed for myself, so mich as for poor Dougie. Dougie wass mate, and
I wass skipper. I don't know if you kent the Fital Spark?"
The Vital Spark, I confessed, was well known to me as the most
uncertain puffer that ever kept the Old New-Year in Upper Lochfyne.
"That wass her!" said Macfarlane, almost weeping. "There was never
the bate of her, and I have sailed in her four years over twenty with
my hert in my mooth for fear of her boiler. If you never saw the Fital
Spark, she is aal hold, with the boiler behind, four men and a derrick,
and a watter-butt and a pan loaf in the fo'c'sle. Oh man! she wass the
beauty! She was chust sublime! She should be carryin' nothing but
gentry for passengers, or nice genteel luggage for the shooting-lodges,
but there they would be spoilin' her and rubbin' all the pent off her
with their coals, and sand, and whunstone, and oak bark, and timber,
and trash like that."
"I understood she had one weakness at least, that her boiler was apt
to prime."
"It's a--lie," cried Macfarlane, quite furious; "her boiler never
primed more than wance a month, and that wass not with fair play. If
Dougie wass here he would tell you.
"I wass ass prood of that boat ass the Duke of Argyll, ay, or Lord
Breadalbane. If you would see me waalkin' aboot on her dake when we
wass lyin' at the quay! There wasna the like of it in the West
Hielan's. I wass chust sublime! She had a gold bead aboot her; it's no
lie I am tellin' you, and I would be pentin' her oot of my own pocket
every time we went to Arran for gravel. She drawed four feet forrit and
nine aft, and she could go like the duvvle."
"I have heard it put at five knots," I said maliciously.
Macfarlane bounded from his seat. "Five knots!" he cried. "Show me
the man that says five knots, and I will make him swallow the hatchet.
Six knots, ass sure ass my name iss Macfarlane; many a time between the
Skate and Otter. If Dougie wass here he would tell you. But I am not
braggin' aboot her sailin'; it wass her looks. Man, she was smert,
smert! Every time she wass new pented I would be puttin' on my Sunday
clothes. There wass a time yonder they would be callin' me Two-flag
Peter in Loch Fyne. It wass wance the Queen had a jubilee, and we had
but the wan flag, but a Macfarlane never wass bate, and I put up the
wan flag and a regatta shirt, and I'm telling you she looked chust
sublime!"
"I forget who it was once told me she was very wet," I cooed
blandly; "that with a head wind the Vital Spark nearly went out
altogether. Of course, people will say nasty things about these
hookers. They say she was very ill to trim, too."
Macfarlane jumped up again, grinding his teeth, and his face purple.
He could hardly speak with indignation. "Trum!" he shouted. "Did you
say 'trum'? You could trum her with the wan hand behind your back and
you lookin' the other way. To the duvvle with your trum! And they would
be sayin' she wass wet! If Dougie wass here he would tell you. She
would not take in wan cup of watter unless it wass for synin' oot the
dishes. She wass that dry she would not wet a postage stamp unless we
slung it over the side in a pail. She wass sublime, chust sublime!
"I am telling you there iss not many men following the sea that
could sail the Fital Spark the way I could. There iss not a rock, no,
nor a chuckie stone inside the Cumbrie Heid that I do not have a name
for. I would ken them fine in the dark by the smell, and that iss not
easy, I'm telling you. And I am not wan of your dryland sailors. I wass
wance at Londonderry with her. We went at night, and did Dougie no' go
away and forget oil, so that we had no lamps, and chust had to sail in
the dark with our ears wide open. If Dougie wass here he would tell
you. Now and then Dougie would be striking a match for fear of a
collusion."
"Where did he show it?" I asked innocently. "Forward or aft?"
"Aft," said the mariner suspiciously. "What for would it be aft? Do
you mean to say there could be a collusion aft? I am telling you she
could do her six knots before she cracked her shaft. It wass in the
bow, of course; Dougie had the matches. She wass chust sublime. A gold
bead oot of my own pocket, four men and a derrick, and a watter-butt
and a pan loaf in the fo'c'sle. My bonnie wee Fital Spark!"
He began to show symptoms of tears, and I hate to see an ancient
mariner's tears, so I hurriedly asked him how he had lost the
command.
"I will tell you that," said he. "It was Dougie's fault. We had
yonder a cargo of coals for Tarbert, and we got doon the length of
Greenock, going fine, fine. It wass the day after the New Year, and I
wass in fine trum, and Dougie said, 'Wull we stand in here for orders?'
and so we went into Greenock for some marmalade, and did we no' stay
three days? Dougie and me wass going about Greenock looking for
signboards with Hielan' names on them, and every signboard we could see
with Campbell, or Macintyre, on it, or Morrison, Dougie would go in and
ask if the man came from Kilmartin or anyway roond aboot there, and if
the man said no, Dougie would say, 'It's a great peety, for I have
cousins of the same name, but maybe you'll have time to come oot for a
dram?' Dougie was chust sublime!
"Every day we would be getting sixpenny telegrams from the man the
coals was for at Tarbert, but och! we did not think he wass in such an
aawful hurry, and then he came himself to Greenock with the Grenadier,
and the only wans that wass not in the polls-office wass myself and the
derrick. He bailed the laads out of the polls-office, and 'Now,' he
said,' you will chust sail her up as fast as you can, like smert laads,
for my customers iss waiting for their coals, and I will go over and
see my good-sister at Helensburgh, and go back to Tarbert the day efter
to-morrow.'
"Hoo can we be going and us with no money?' said Dougie--man, he
wass sublime! So the man gave me a paper pound of money, and went away
to Helensburgh, and Dougie wass ooilin' up a hawser forrit ready to
start from the quay. When he wass away, Dougie said we would maybe
chust be as weel to wait another tide, and I said I didna know, but
what did he think, and he said, 'Ach, of course!' and we went aal back
into Greenock. 'Let me see that pound!' said Dougie, and did I not give
it to him? and then he rang the bell of the public-hoose we were in,
and asked for four tacks and a wee hammer. When he got the four tacks
and the wee hammer he nailed the pound note on the door, and said to
the man, 'Chust come in with a dram every time we ring the bell till
that's done!' If Dougie wass here he would tell you. Two days efter
that the owner of the Fital Spark came doon from Gleska and five men
with him, and they went away with her to Tarbert."
"And so you lost the old command," I said, preparing to go off.
"Well, I hope something will turn up soon."
"There wass some talk aboot a dram," said the mariner. "I thought
you said something aboot a dram, but och! there's no occasion!"
A week later, I am glad to say, the Captain and his old crew were
reinstated on the Vital Spark.
II. THE PRIZE CANARY
"CANARIES!" said Para Handy contemptuously, "I have a canary yonder
at home that would give you a sore heid to hear him singing. He's chust
sublime. Have I no', Dougie?"
It was the first time the mate had ever heard of the Captain as a
bird-fancier, but he was a loyal friend, and at Para Handy's wink he
said promptly, "You have that, Peter. Wan of the finest ever stepped.
Many a sore heid I had wi't."
"What kind of a canary is it?" asked the Brodick man jealously. "Is
it a Norwich?"
Para Handy put up his hand as usual to scratch his ear, and checked
the act half-way. "No, nor a Sandwich; it's chust a plain yellow wan,"
he said coolly. "I'll wudger ye a pound it could sing the best you have
blin'. It whustles even-on, night and day, till I have to put it under
a bowl o' watter if I'm wantin' my night's sleep."
The competitive passions of the Brodick man were roused. He
considered that among his dozen prize canaries he had at least one that
could beat anything likely to be in the possession of the Captain of
the Vital Spark, which was lying at Brodick when this conversation took
place. He produced it--an emaciated, sickle-shaped, small-headed,
bead-eyed, business-looking bird, which he called the Wee Free. He was
prepared to put up the pound for a singing contest anywhere in Arran,
date hereafter to be arranged.
"That's all right," said Para Handy, "I'll take you on. We'll be
doon this way for a cargo of grevel in a week, and if the money's wi'
the man in the shippin'-box at the quay, my canary'll lift it."
"But what aboot your pound?" asked the Brodick man. "You must wudger
a pound too."
"Is that the way o't?" said the Captain.﹃I wass never up to the
gemblin', but I'll risk the pound,﹄and so the contest was
arranged.
"But you havena a canary at aal, have you?" said Dougie, later in
the day, as the Vital Spark was puffing on her deliberate way to
Glasgow.
"Me?" said Para Handy, "I would as soon think of keepin' a hoolet.
But och, there's plenty in Gleska if you have the money. From the
needle to the anchor. Forbye, I ken a gentleman that breeds canaries;
he's a riveter, and if I wass gettin' him in good trum he would maybe
give me a lend o' wan. If no', we'll take a dander up to the Bird
Market, and pick up a smert wan that'll put the hems on Sandy Kerr's
Wee Free. No man wi' any releegion aboot him would caal his canary a
Wee Free."
The Captain and the mate of the Vital Spark left their noble ship at
the wharf that evening--it was a Saturday--and went in quest of the
gentleman who bred canaries. He was discovered in the midst of an
altercation with his wife which involved the total destruction of all
the dishes on the kitchen-dresser, and, with a shrewdness and
consideration that were never absent in the Captain, he apologised for
the untimely intrusion and prepared to go away. "I see you're busy," he
said, looking in on a floor covered with the debris of the delft which
this ardent lover of bird life was smashing in order to impress his
wife with the fact that he was really annoyed about something--"I see
you're busy. Fine, man, fine! A wife need never weary in this
hoose--it's that cheery. Dougie and me wass chust wantin' a wee lend of
a canary for a day or two, but och, it doesna matter, seein' ye're so
throng; we'll chust try the shops."
It was indicative of the fine kindly humanity of the riveter who
loved canaries that this one unhesitatingly stopped his labours, having
disposed of the last plate, and said, "I couldna dae't, chaps; I wadna
trust a canary oot o' the hoose; there's nae sayin' the ill-usage it
micht get. It would break my he'rt to ha'e onything gang wrang wi' ony
o' my birds."
"Chust that, Wull, chust that!" said Para Handy agreeably.﹃Your
feelings does you credit. I would be awful vexed if you broke your
he'rt; it'll soon be the only hale thing left in the noose. If I wass
you, and had such a spite at the delf, I would use dunnymite,﹄and
Dougie and he departed.
"That's the sort of thing that keeps me from gettin' merrit," the
Captain, with a sigh, confided to his mate, when they got down the
stair. "Look at the money it costs for dishes every Setturday
night."
"Them riveters iss awfu' chaps for sport," said Dougie
irrelevantly.
"There's nothing for't now but the Bird Market," said the Captain,
leading the way east along Argyle Street. They had no clear idea where
that institution was, but at the corner of Jamaica Street consulted
several Celtic compatriots, who put them on the right track. Having
reached the Bird Market, the Captain explained his wants to a party who
had "Guaranteed A1 Songsters" to sell at two shillings. This person was
particularly enthusiastic about one bird which in the meantime was as
silent as "the harp that once through Tara's halls." He gave them his
solemn assurance it was a genuine prize roller canary; that when it
started whistling, as it generally did at breakfast time, it sang till
the gas was lit, with not even a pause for refreshment. For that reason
it was an economical canary to keep; it practically cost nothing for
seed for this canary. If it was a songster suitable for use on a ship
that was wanted, he went on, with a rapid assumption that his customers
were of a maritime profession, this bird was peculiarly adapted for the
post. It was a genuine imported bird, and had already made a sea
voyage. To sell a bird of such exquisite parts for two shillings was
sheer commercial suicide; he admitted it, but he was anxious that it
should have a good home.
"I wish I could hear it whustlin'," said the Captain, peering
through the spars at the very dejected bird, which was a moulting
hen.
"It never sings efter the gas is lighted," said the vendor
regretfully, "that's the only thing that's wrang wi't. If that bird wad
sing at nicht when the gas was lit, it wad solve the problem o'
perpetual motion."
Para Handy, considerably impressed by this high warrandice, bought
the canary, which was removed from the cage and placed in a brown paper
sugar-bag, ventilated by holes which the bird-seller made in it with
the stub of a lead pencil.
"Will you no' need a cage?" asked Dougie.
"Not at aal, not at aal!" the Captain protested;﹃wance we get him
doon to Brodick we'll get plenty o' cages,﹄and away they went with
their purchase, Para Handy elate at the imminent prospect of his prize
canary winning an easy pound. Dougie carefully carried the bag
containing the bird.
Some days after, the Vital Spark arrived at Brodick, but the
Captain, who had not yet staked his pound with the man in the
shipping-box as agreed on, curiously enough showed no disposition to
bring off the challenge meeting between the birds. It was by accident
he met the Brodick man one day on the quay.
"Talking about birds," said Para Handy, with some diffidence,
"Dougie and me had a canary yonder--"
"That's aal off," said the Brodick man hurriedly, getting very red
in the face, showing so much embarrassment, indeed, that the Captain of
the Vital Spark smelt a rat.
"What way off?" he asked. "It sticks in my mind that there wass a
kind of a wudger, and that there's a pound note in the shupping-box for
the best canary."
"Did you bring your canary?" asked the Brodick man anxiously.
"It's doon there in the vessel singin' like to take the rivets oot
o' her," said Para Handy. "It's chust sublime to listen to."
"Weel, the fact iss, I'm not goin' to challenge," said the Brodick
man. "I have a wife yonder, and she's sore against bettin' and
wudgerin' and gemblin', and she'll no let me take my champion bird Wee
Free over the door."
"Chust that!" said Para Handy. "That's a peety. Weel, weel, the
pund'll come in handy. I'll chust go away down to the shupping-box and
lift it. Seeing I won, I'll stand you a drink."
The Brodick man maintained with warmth that as Para Handy had not
yet lodged his stake of a pound the match was off; an excited
discussion followed, and the upshot was a compromise. The Brodick man,
having failed to produce his bird, was to forfeit ten shillings, and
treat the crew of the Vital Spark. They were being treated, and the ten
shillings were in Para Handy's possession, when the Brodick sportsman
rose to make some disconcerting remark.
"You think you are very smert, Macfarlane," he said, addressing the
Captain. "You are thinkin' you did a good stroke to get the ten
shullin's, but if you wass smerter it iss not the ten shullin's you
would have at aal, but the pound. I had you fine, Macfarlane. My wife
never said a word aboot the wudger, but my bird is in the pook, and
couldna sing a note this week. That's the way I backed oot."
Para Handy displayed neither resentment nor surprise. He took a deep
draught of beer out of a quart pot, and then smiled with mingled
tolerance and pity on the Brodick man.
"Ay, ay!" he said, "and you think you have done a smert thing. You
have mich caause to be ashamed of yourself. You are nothing better than
a common swundler. But och, it doesna matter; the fact iss, oor bird's
deid."
"Deid!" cried the Brodick man. "What do you mean by deid?"
"Chust that it's no' livin'," said Para Handy coolly. "Dougie and me
bought wan in the Bird Market, and Dougie was carryin' it doon to the
vessel in a sugar-poke when he met some fellows he kent in Chamaica
Street, and went for a dram, or maybe two. Efter a while he didna mind
what he had in the poke, and he put it in his troosers pockets,
thinkin' it wass something extra for the Sunday's dinner. When he
brought the poor wee bird oot of his pocket in the mornin', it wass
chust a' remains."
III: THE MALINGERER
THE crew of the Vital Spark were all willing workers, except The
Tar, who was usually as tired when he rose in the morning as when he
went to bed. He said himself it was his health, and that he had never
got his strength right back since he had the whooping-cough twice when
he was a boy. The Captain was generally sympathetic, and was inclined
to believe The Tar was destined to have a short life unless he got
married and had a wife to look after him.﹃A wife's the very thing for
you,﹄he would urge; "it's no' canny, a man as delicate as you to be
having nobody to depend on."
"I couldna afford a wife," The Tar always maintained. "They're all
too grand for the like of me."
"Och ay! but you might look aboot you and find a wee, no' aawfu'
bonny wan," said Para Handy.
"If she was blin', or the like of that, you would have a better
chance of gettin' her," chimed in Dougie, who always scoffed at The
Tar's periodical illnesses, and cruelly ascribed his lack of energy to
sheer laziness.
The unfortunate Tar's weaknesses always seemed to come on him when
there was most to do. It generally took the form of sleepiness, so that
sometimes when he was supposed to be preparing the dinner he would be
found sound asleep on the head of a bucket, with a half-peeled potato
in his hand. He once crept out of the fo'c'sle rubbing his eyes after a
twelve-hours' sleep, saying, "Tell me this and tell me no more, am I
going to my bed or comin' from it?"
But there was something unusual and alarming about the illness which
overtook The Tar on their way up Loch Fyne to lift a cargo of timber.
First he had shivers all down his back; then he got so stiff that he
could not bend to lift a bucket, but had to kick it along the deck in
front of him, which made Dougie admiringly say,﹃Man! you are an aawful
handy man with your feet, Colin.﹄His appetite, he declared, totally
disappeared immediately after an unusually hearty breakfast composed of
six herrings and two eggs; and finally he expressed his belief that
there was nothing for it but his bed.
"I'll maybe no trouble you long, boys," he moaned lugubriously. "My
heid's birling roond that fast that I canna even mind my own name two
meenutes."
"You should write it on a wee bit paper," said Dougie unfeelingly,
"and keep it inside your bonnet, so that you could look it up at any
time you were needin'."
Para Handy had kinder feelings, and told The Tar to go and lie down
for an hour or two and take a wee drop of something.
"Maybe a drop of brandy would help me," said The Tar, promptly
preparing to avail himself of the Captain's advice.
"No, not brandy; a drop of good Brutish spurits will suit you
better, Colin," said the Captain, and went below to dispense the
prescription himself.
The gusto with which The Tar swallowed the prescribed dram of
British spirits and took a chew of tobacco after it to enhance the
effect, made Para Handy somewhat suspicious, and he said so to Dougie
when he got on deck, leaving The Tar already in a gentle slumber.
"The rascal's chust scheming," said Dougie emphatically. "There iss
nothing in the world wrong with him but the laziness. If you'll notice,
he aalways gets no weel when we're going to lift timber, because it iss
harder on him at the winch."
The Captain was indignant, and was for going down there and then
with a rope's-end to rouse the patient, but Dougie confided to him a
method of punishing the malingerer and at the same time getting some
innocent amusement for themselves.
Dinner-time came round. The Tar instinctively wakened and lay
wondering what they would take down to him to eat. The Vital Spark was
puff-puffing her deliberate way up the loch, and there was an unusual
stillness on deck. It seemed to The Tar that the Captain and Dougie
were moving about on tiptoe and speaking in whispers. The uncomfortable
feeling this created in his mind was increased when his two shipmates
came down with slippers on instead of their ordinary sea-boots,
creeping down the companion with great caution, carrying a bowl of
gruel.
"What's that for?" asked The Tar sharply. "Are you going to paste up
any bills?"
"Wheest, Colin," said Para Handy, in a sick-room whisper.﹃You must
not excite yourself, but take this gruel. It'll do you no herm. Poor
fellow, you're looking aawful bad.﹄They hung over his bunk with an
attitude of chastened grief, and Dougie made to help him to the gruel
with a spoon as if he were unable to feed himself.
"Have you no beef?" asked The Tar, looking at the gruel with
disgust. "I'll need to keep up my strength with something more than
gruel."
"You daurna for your life take anything but gruel," said the Captain
sorrowfully. "It would be the daith of you at wance to take beef,
though there's plenty in the pot. Chust take this, like a good laad,
and don't speak. My Chove! you are looking far through."
"You're nose is as sherp as a preen," said Dougie in an awed
whisper, and with a piece of engine-room waste wiped the brow of The
Tar, who was beginning to perspire with alarm.
"I don't think I'm so bad ass aal that," said the patient. "It wass
chust a turn; a day in my bed'll put me aal right--or maybe two."
They shook their heads sorrowfully, and the Captain turned away as
if to hide a tear. Dougie blew his nose with much ostentation and
stifled a sob.
"What's the metter wi' you?" asked The Tar, looking at them in
amazement and fear.
"Nothing, nothing, Colin," said the Captain. "Don't say a word. Iss
there anything we could get for you?"
"My heid's bad yet," the patient replied. "Perhaps a drop of
spurits--"
"There's no' another drop in the ship," said the Captain.
The patient moaned. "And I don't suppose there's any beer either?"
he said hopelessly.
He was told there was no beer, and instructed to cry if he was
requiring any one to come to his assistance, after which the two nurses
crept quietly on deck again, leaving him in a very uneasy frame of
mind.
They got into the quay late in the afternoon, and the Captain and
mate came down again quietly, with their caps in their hands, to
discover The Tar surreptitiously smoking in his bunk to dull the pangs
of hunger that now beset him, for they had given him nothing since the
gruel.
"It's not for you, it's not for you at aal, smokin'!" cried Para
Handy in horror, taking the pipe out of his hand. "With the trouble you
have, smoking drives it in to the hert and kills you at wance."
"What trouble do you think it iss?" asked the patient seriously.
"Dougie says it's--it's--what did you say it wass, Dougie?"
"It's convolvulus in the inside," said Dougie solemnly; "I had two
aunties that died of it in their unfancy."
"I'm going to get up at wance!" said The Tar, making to rise, but
they thrust him back in his blankets, saying the convolvulus would
burst at the first effort of the kind he made.
He began to weep.﹃Fancy a trouble like that coming on me, and me
quite young!﹄he said, pitying himself seriously. "There wass never wan
in oor femily had it."
"It's sleep brings it on," said Dougie, with the air of a specialist
who would ordinarily charge a fee often guineas--"sleep and sitting
doon. There iss nothing to keep off convolvulus but exercise and rising
early in the morning. Poor fellow! But you'll maybe get better; when
there's hope there's life. The Captain and me wass wondering if there
wass anything we could buy ashore for you--some grapes, maybe, or a
shullin' bottle of sherry wine."
"Mercy on me! am I ass far through ass that?" said The Tar.
"Or maybe you would like Macphail, the enchineer, to come doon and
read the Scruptures a while to you," said Para Handy.
"Macphail!" cried the poor Tar; "I wudna let a man like that read a
song-book to me."
They clapped him affectionately on the shoulders;
Dougie made as if to shake his hand, and checked himself; then the
Captain and mate went softly on deck again, and the patient was left
with his fears. He felt utterly incapable of getting up.
Para Handy and his mate went up the town and had a dram with the
local joiner, who was also undertaker. With this functionary in their
company they were moving towards the quay when Dougie saw in a grocer's
shop-door a pictorial card bearing the well-known monkey portrait
advertising a certain soap that won't wash clothes. He went chuckling
into the shop, made some small purchase, and came out the possessor of
the picture. Half an hour later, when it was dark, and The Tar was
lying in an agony of hunger which he took to be the pains of internal
convolvulus. Para Handy, Dougie, and the joiner came quietly down to
the fo'c'sle, where he lay. They had no'lamp, but they struck matches
and looked at him in his bunk with countenances full of pity.
"A nose as sherp as a preen," said Dougie; "it must be the galloping
kind of convolvulus."
"Here's Macintyre the joiner would like to see you, Colin," said
Para Handy, and in the light of a match the patient saw the joiner cast
a rapid professional eye over his proportions.
"What's the joiner wantin' here?" said The Tar, with a frightful
suspicion.
"Nothing, Colin, nothing--six by two--I wass chust passing--six by
two--chust passing, and the Captain asked me in to see you. It's--six
by two, six by two--it's no' very healthy weather we're havin'. Chust
that!"
The fo'c'sle was in darkness and The Tar felt already as if he was
dead and buried. "Am I lookin' very bad?" he ventured to ask
Dougie.
"Bad's no' the name for it," said Dougie.﹃Chust look at yourself in
the enchineer's looking-gless.﹄He produced from under his arm the
engineer's little mirror, on the face of which he had gummed the
portrait of the monkey cut out from the soap advertisement, which
fitted neatly into the frame. The Captain struck a match, and in its
brief and insufficient light The Tar looked at himself, as he thought,
reflected in the glass.
"Man, I'm no' that awful changed either; if I had a shave and my
face washed. I don't believe it's convolvulus at aal," said he, quite
hopefully, and jumped from his bunk.
For the rest of the week he put in the work of two men.
IV: WEE TEENY
THE last passenger steamer to sail that day from Ardrishaig was a
trip from Rothesay. It was Glasgow Fair Saturday, and Ardrishaig Quay
was black with people. There was a marvellously stimulating odour of
dulse, herring, and shell-fish, for everybody carried away in a
handkerchief a few samples of these marine products that are now the
only seaside souvenirs not made in Germany. The Vital Spark, in
ballast, Clydeward bound, lay inside the passenger steamer, ready to
start when the latter had got under weigh, and Para Handy and his mate
meanwhile sat on the fo'c'sle-head of "the smertest boat in the tred"
watching the frantic efforts of lady excursionists to get their
husbands on the steamer before it was too late, and the deliberate
efforts of the said husbands to slink away up the village again just
for one more drink. Wildly the steamer hooted from her siren, fiercely
clanged her bell, vociferously the Captain roared upon his bridge,
people aboard yelled eagerly to friends ashore to hurry up, and the
people ashore as eagerly demanded to know what all the hurry was about,
and where the bleezes was Wull. Women loudly defied the purser to let
the ship go away without their John, for he had paid his money for his
ticket, and though he was only a working man his money was as good as
anybody else's; and John, on the quay, with his hat thrust back on his
head, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and a red
handkerchief full of dulse at his feet, gave a display of step-dancing
that was responsible for a great deal of the congestion of traffic at
the shore end of the gangway.
Among the crowd who had got on board was a woman with eleven
children. She was standing on the paddle-box counting them to make
sure--five attached to the basket that had contained their food for the
day, other four clinging to her gown, and one in her arms.﹃Yin, twa,
three, fower, and tower's eight, and twa's ten, and then there's Wee
Teeny wi' her faither doon the caibin.﹄She was quite serene. If she
could have seen that the father--at that moment in the fore-saloon
singing
"In the guid auld summer time,
In the guid auld summer time,
She'll be your tootsy-wootsy
In the guid auld summer time."
had no Wee Teeny with him, she would have been distracted. As it
was, however, the steamer was miles on her way when a frantic woman
with ten crying children all in a row behind her, and a husband
miraculously sobered, made a vain appeal to the Captain to go back to
Ardrishaig for her lost child.
The child was discovered on the quay by the local police ten minutes
after the excursion steamer had started, and just when Para Handy was
about to cast off the pawls. She was somewhere about three years old,
and the only fact that could be extracted from her was that her name
was Teeny. There had probably not been a more contented and
self-possessed person on Ardrishaig Quay that day: she sucked her thumb
with an air of positive relish, smiled on the slightest provocation,
and showed the utmost willingness to go anywhere with anybody.
"The poor wee cratur!" said Para Handy sympathetically. "She minds
me fearfully of my brother Cherlie's twuns. I wudna wonder but she'a
twuns too; that would be the way the mistake would be made in leavin'
her; it's such a terrible thing drink. I'm no' goin' to ask you,
Dougie, to do anything you wudna like, but what would you be sayin' to
us takin' the wean wi' us and puttin' her ashore at Rothesay? Mind you,
chust if you like yoursel'."
"It's your own vessel, you're the skipper of her, and I'm sure and I
have no objections, at aal at aal," said Dougie quite heartily, and it
was speedily arranged with the police that a telegram should be sent to
wait the Captain of the excursion steamer at Rothesay, telling him the
lost child was following in the steam-lighter Vital Spark.
Macphail the engineer, and The Tar, kept the child in amusement with
pocket-knives, oil-cans, cotton-waste, and other maritime toys, while
the Captain and Dougie went hurriedly up the village for stores for the
unexpected passenger.
"You'll not need that mich," was Dougie's opinion; "she'll fall
asleep as soon as it's dark, and no' wake till we put her ashore at
Rothesay."
"Ah, but you canna be sure o' them at that age," said the Captain.
"My brother Cherlie wass merrit on a low-country woman, and the twuns
used to sit up at night and greet in the two languages, Gaalic and
Gleska, till he had to put plugs in them."
"God bless me! plugs?" said Dougie astonished.
"Ay, chust plugs," said the Captain emphatically. "You'll see them
often. They're made of kahouchy, with a bone ring on them for screwing
them on and off. It's the only thing for stopping them greetin'."
The adventures of Wee Teeny from this stage may be better told as
Para Handy told it to me some time afterwards.
"To let you ken," he said, "I wass feared the wean would sterve.
Nothing in the ship but sea biscuits and salt beef. I went into wan
shop and got a quart of milk on draught, half a pound of boiled ham the
same as they have at funerals, and a tin tinny For a Good Girl. Dougie
wasna slack either; he went into another shop and got thruppence worth
of sweeties and a jumpin'-jack. It wass as nice a thing ass ever you
saw to see the wee cratur sittin' on the hatches eatin' away and
drinkin' wi' the wan hand, and laughing like anything at the
jumpin'-jeck wi' the other. I never saw the ship cheerier; it wass
chust sublime. If Dougie wass here himsel' he would tell you.
Everything wass going first-rate, and I wass doon below washing my face
and puttin' on my other jecket and my watch-chain oot o' respect for
the passenger, when Dougie came doon in a hurry wi' a long face on him,
and says--
"'She's wantin' ta-ta.'
"'Mercy on us, she canna be more ta-ta than she iss unless we throw
her over the side,' I says to Dougie. But I went up on dake and told
her she would be ta-ta in no time becaase the ship was loggin' six
knots and the wind wi' us.
"'Ta-ta,' says she, tuggin' my whuskers the same as if I wass merrit
on her--ah, man! she wass a nice wee thing. And that good-natured! The
best I could do wass to make The Tar show her the tattoo marks on his
legs, and Dougie play the trump (Jew's harp), and when she wass tired
o' that I carried her up and doon the dake singin' 'Auld Lang Syne'
till she was doverin' over.
"'She's goin' to sleep noo,' I says to Dougie, and we put her in my
bunk wi' her clothes on. She wanted her clothes off, but I said, 'Och!
never mind puttin' them off. Teeny; it's only a habit.' Dougie said, if
he minded right, they always put up a kind of prayer at that age. 'Give
her a start,' I says to Dougie, and he said the 23rd Psalm in Gaalic,
but she didn't understand wan word of it, and went to sleep wi' a poke
o' sweeties in her hand.
"We were off Ardlamont, and Macphail wass keepin' the boat bangin'
at it to get to Rothesay before the mother went oot of her wuts, when I
heard a noise doon below where Teeny wass. I ran doon and found her
sittin' up chokin' wi' a sweetie that wass a size too lerge for her.
She wass black in the face.
"'Hut her on the back, Peter!' said Dougie.
"'Hut her yoursel'; I wudna hurt her for the world,' I says, and
Dougie said he wudna do it either, but he ran up for The Tar, that
hasna mich feelin's, and The Tar saved her life. I'm tellin' you it
wass a start! We couldna trust her below, herself, efter that, so we
took her on dake again. In ten meenutes she fell down among Macphail's
engines, and nearly spoiled them. She wasna hurt a bit, but Macphail's
feelin's wass, for she wass wantin' the engines to her bed wi' her. She
thought they were a kind of a toy. We aye keep that up on him yet.
"'My Chove! this wean's no' canny,' said Dougie, and we took her up
on dake again, and put up the sail to get as mich speed oot of the
vessel as we could for Rothesay. Dougie played the trump even-on to
her, and The Tar walked on his hands till she was sore laughing at him.
Efter a bit we took oor eyes off her for maybe two meenutes, and when
we turned roond again Teeny wass fallin' doon into the fo'c'sle.
"'This iss the worst cargo ever we had,' I says, takin' her up again
no' a bit the worse. 'If we don't watch her like a hawk aal the time
shs'll do something desperate before we reach Rothesay. Sha'll jump
over the side or crawl doon the funnel, and we'll be black
affronted.'
"'I wudna say but you're right,' said Dougie. We put her sittin' on
the hatch wi' the jumpin'-jeck, and the tin tinny For a Good Girl, and
my watch and chain, Dougie's trump, the photygraph of The Tar's lass,
and Macphail's new carpet sluppers to play wi', and the three of us sat
roond her watchin' she didna swallow the watch and chain.
"When I handed her over to her mother and father on Rothesay Quay, I
says to them, 'I'm gled I'm no' a mother; I would a hunder times sooner
be a sailor.'
"But it's a nice thing a wean, too; for a week efter that we missed
her awful," concluded the Captain pensively.
V: THE MATE'S WIFE
THAT the Captain of the Vital Spark should so persistently remain a
bachelor surprised many people. He was just the sort of man, in many
respects, who would fall an easy prey to the first woman on the
look-out for a good home. He had rather a gallant way with the sex,
generally said "mem" to them all, regardless of class; liked their
society when he had his Sunday clothes on, and never contradicted them.
If he had pursued any other calling than that of mariner I think he
would have been captured long ago; his escape doubtless lay in the fact
that sailing about from place to place, only briefly touching at
West-Coast quays, and then being usually grimed with coal-dust, he had
never properly roused their interest and natural sporting instincts.
They never knew what a grand opportunity they were losing.
"I'm astonished you never got married. Captain," I said to him
recently.
"Ach, I couldn't be bothered," he replied, like a man who had given
the matter his consideration before now. "I'm that busy wi' the ship I
havena time. There's an aawful lot of bother aboot a wife. Forbye, my
hert's in the Vital Spark--there's no' a smerter boat in the tred. Wait
you till I get her pented!"
"But a ship's not a wife. Captain," I protested.
"No," said he, "but it's a responsibulity. You can get a wife any
time that'll stick to you the same as if she wass riveted as long's you
draw your pay, but it takes a man with aal his senses aboot him to get
a ship and keep her. And chust think on the expense! Oh, I'm not
sayin', mind you, that I'll not try wan some day, but there's no hurry,
no, not a bit."
"But perhaps you'll put it off too long," I said, "and when you're
in the humour to have them they won't have you."
He laughed at the very idea. "Man!" he said, "it's easy seen you
have not studied them. I ken them like the Kyles of Bute. The captain
of a steamer iss the most popular man in the wide world--popularer than
the munisters themselves, and the munisters iss that popular the weemen
put bird-lime in front of the Manses to catch them, the same ass if
they were green-linties. It's worse with sea-captains--they're that
dashing, and they're not aalways hinging aboot the hoose wi' their
sluppers on."
"There's another thing," he added, after a little pause, "I couldna
put up with a woman comin' aboot the vessel every pay-day. No, no, I'm
for none o' that. Dougie's wife's plenty."
"But surely she does not invade you weekly?" I said, surprised.
"If the Fital Spark's anywhere inside Ardlamont on a Setturday,"
said Para Handy, "she's doon wi' the first steamer from Gleska, and her
door-key in her hand, the same ass if it wass a pistol to put to his
heid. If Dougie was here himsel' he would tell you. She's a low-country
woman, wi' no' a word o' Gaalic, so that she canna understand Dougie at
his best. When it comes to bein' angry in English, she can easy bate
him. Oh, a cluvver woman: she made Dougie a Rechabite, and he's aalways
wan when he's at home, and at keepin' him trum and tidy in his clothes
she's chust sublime. But she's no' canny aboot a ship. The first week
efter she merried him we were lyin' at Innellan, and doon she came on
the Setturday wi' her door-key at full cock. When Dougie saw her comin'
doon the quay he got white, and turned to me, sayin', 'Peter, here's
the Mustress; I wish I hadna touched that dram, she'll can tell it on
me, and I'm no' feared for her, but it would hurt her feelings.'
"'Man!' I said, 'you're an aawful tumid man for a sailor; but haste
you doon the fo'c'sle and you'll get a poke of peppermint sweeties in
my other pocket I had for the church to-morrow. Chust you go like the
duvvle, and I'll keep her in conversation till you get your breath
shifted.'
"Dougie bolted doon below, and wass up in a shot. 'I got the
sweeties, Peter,' he said, 'but, oh! she's as cunning as a jyler, and
she'll chalouse something if she smells the peppermints. What would you
say to the whole of us takin' wan or two sweeties so that we would be
aal the same, and she wouldna suspect me?' 'Very weel,' I said,
'anything to obleege a mate,' and when the good leddy reached the side
of the vessel the enchineer and The Tar and me and Dougie wass standin'
in a row eating peppermints till you would think it wass the front sate
of the Tobermory Free Church.
"'It's a fine day and an awfu' smell o' losengers,' was the first
words she said when she put her two feet on the deck. And she looked
very keen at her man.
"'It is that, mem,' I said. 'It's the cargo.'
"'What cargo?' said she, looking at Dougie harder than ever. 'I'll
cargo him!'
"'I mean the cargo of the boat, mem,' I said quite smert. 'It's a
cheneral cargo, and there's six ton of peppermint sweeties for the
Tarbert fishermen.'
"'What in the wide world dae the Tarbert fishermen dae wi' sae mony
sweeties?' said she.
"'Och, it's chust to keep them from frightening away the herrin'
when they're oot at the fishin',' I said. Man! I'm tellin' you I had
aal my wuts aboot me that day! It wass lucky for us the hatches wass
doon, so that she couldna see the cargo we had in the hold. There wasna
wan sweetie in it.
"I couldna but be nice to the woman, for she wasna my wife, so I
turned a bucket upside doon and gave her a sate, and let on that Dougie
was chust ass mich a man of consequence on the Fital Spark as myself.
It does not do to let a wife see wi' her own eyes that her man iss
under you in your chob, for when she'll get him at home she'll egg him
on to work harder and get your place, and where are you then, eh! where
are you then, I'm asking? She wass a cluvver woman, but she had no
sense. 'Weel,' said she,' I don't think muckle o' yer boat. I thocht it
was a great big boat, wi' a cabin in it. Instead o' that, it's jist a
wee coal yin.'
"Man! do you know that vexed me; I say she wasna the kind of woman
Dougie should have merited at aal, at aal. Dougie's a chentleman like
mysel'; he would never hurt your feelings unless he wass tryin'.
"'There's nothing wrong with the Fital Spark, mem,' I said to her.
'She's the most namely ship in the tred; they'll be writing things
aboot her in the papers, and men often come to take photographs of
her.'
"She chust sniffed her nose at that, the way merrit women have, and
said, 'Jist fancy that!'
"'Yes; chust fancy it!' I said to her. 'Six knots in a gale of wind
if Macphail the enchineer is in good trum, and maybe seven if it's
Setturday, and him in a hurry to get home. She has the finest lines of
any steamboat of her size coming oot of Clyde; if her lum wass pented
yellow and she had a bottom strake or two of green, you would take her
for a yat. Perhaps you would be thinkin' we should have a German band
on board of her, with the heid fuddler goin' aboot gaitherin' pennies
in a shell, and the others keekin' over the ends of their flutes and
cornucopias for fear he'll pocket some. What? H'm! Chust that!'
"Efter a bit she said she would like to see what sort of place her
man and the rest of us slept in, so there was nothing for it but to
take her doon to the fo'c'sle, though it wass mich against my will.
When she saw the fo'c'sle she wass nestier than ever. She said, 'Surely
this iss not a place for Christian men'; and I said, 'No, mem, but
we're chust sailors.' "'There's nae richt furniture in't,' she said.
"'Not at present, mem,' I said. 'Perhaps you were expectin' a piano,'
but, och! she wass chust wan of them Gleska women, she didna know life.
She went away up the toon there and then, and came back wi' a bit of
waxcloth, a tin of black soap, a grocer's calendar, and a wee
lookin'-gless, hung her bonnet and the door-key on a cleat, and started
scrubbin' oot the fo'c'sle. Man, it wass chust peetiful! There wass a
damp smell in the fo'c'sle I could feel for months efter, and I had a
cold in my heid for a fortnight. When she had the floor of the fo'c'sle
scrubbed, she laid the bit of waxcloth, got two nails from The Tar, and
looked for a place to hang up the calendar and the wee lookin'-gless,
though there wass not mich room for ornaments of the kind. 'That's a
little mair tidy-like,' she said when she was feenished, and she came
up lookin' for something else to wash. The Tar saw the danger and went
ashore in a hurry.
"'Are ye merrit?' she asked me before she left the vessel wi'
Dougie's pay. "'No, mem,' I said,' I'm not merrit yet.' "'I could easy
see that,' she said, sniffin' her nose again, the same ass if I wass
not a captain at aal, but chust before the mast. 'I could easy see
that. It's time you were hurryin' up. I ken the very wife wad suit you;
she's a kizzen o' my ain, a weedow wumman no' a bit the worse o' the
wear.'
"'Chust that!' said I, 'but I'm engaged.'
"'Wha to?' she asked quite sherp, no' very sure o' me.
"'To wan of the Maids of Bute, mem,' I told her, meanin' yon two
pented stones you see from the steamer in the Kyles of Bute; and her
bein' a Gleska woman, and not traivelled mich, she thocht I wass in
earnest.
"'I don't ken the faimily,' she said, 'but it's my opeenion you wad
be better wi' a sensible weedow.'
"'Not at aal, mem,' I said, 'a sailor couldna have a better wife nor
wan of the Maids of Bute; he'll maybe no' get mich tocher with her, but
she'll no' come huntin' the quays for him or his wages on the
Setturday.'"
VI: PARA HANDY--POACHER
THE Vital Spark was lying at Greenock with a cargo of scrap-iron, on
the top of which was stowed loosely an extraordinary variety of
domestic furniture, from bird cages to cottage pianos. Para Handy had
just had the hatches off when I came to the quay-side, and he was
contemplating the contents of his hold with no very pleasant
aspect.
"Rather a mixed cargo!" I ventured to say.
"Muxed's no' the word for't," he said bitterly. "It puts me in mind
of an explosion. It's a flittin' from Dunoon. There would be no
flittin's in the Fital Spark if she wass my boat. But I'm only the
captain, och aye! I'm only the captain, thirty-five shullin's a-week
and liberty to put on a pea-jecket. To be puttin' scrap-iron and
flittin's in a fine smert boat like this iss carryin' coals aboot in a
coach and twice. It would make any man use Abyssinian language."
"Abyssinian language?" I repeated, wondering.
"Chust that, Abyssinian language--swearing, and the like of that,
you ken fine, yoursel', withoot me tellin' you. Fancy puttin' a
flittin' in the Fital Spark! You would think she wass a coal-laary, and
her with two new coats of pent out of my own pocket since the New
Year."
"Have you been fishing?" I asked, desirous to change the subject,
which was, plainly, a sore one with the Captain. And I indicated a
small fishing-net which was lying in the bows.
"Chust the least wee bit touch," he said, with a very profound wink.
"I have a bit of a net there no' the size of a pocket-naipkin, that I
use noo and then at the river-mooths. I chust put it doon--me and
Dougie--and whiles a salmon or a sea-troot meets wi' an accident and
gets into't. Chust a small bit of a net, no' worth speakin' aboot, no'
mich bigger nor a pocket-naipkin. They'll be calling it a splash-net,
you ken yoursel' withoot me tellin' you." And he winked knowingly
again.
"Ah, Captain!" I said, "that's bad! Poaching with a splash-net! I
didn't think you would have done it."
"It's no' me; it's Dougie," he retorted promptly. "A fair duvvle for
high jeenks, you canna keep him from it. I told him many a time that it
wasna right, becaause we might be found oot and get the jyle for't, but
he says they do it on aal the smertest yats. Yes, that iss what he said
to me--'They do it on aal the first-cless yats; you'll be bragging the
Fital Spark iss chust ass good ass any yat, and what for would you
grudge a splash-net?'"
"Still it's theft, Captain," I insisted. "And it's very, very bad
for the rivers."
"Chust that!" he said complacently. "You'll likely be wan of them
fellows that goes to the hotels for the fushing in the rivers. There's
more sport aboot a splash-net; if Dougie wass here he would tell
you."
"I don't see where the sport comes in," I remarked, and he laughed
contemptuously.
"Sport!" he exclaimed. "The best going. There wass wan time yonder
we were up Loch Fyne on a Fast Day, and no' a shop open in the place to
buy onything for the next mornin's breakfast. Dougie says to me, 'What
do you think yoursel' aboot takin' the punt and the small bit of net
no' worth mentionin', and going doon to the river mooth when it's dark
and seeing if we'll no' get a fush?'
"'It's a peety to be poaching on the Fast Day,' I said to him.
"'But it's no' the Fast Day in oor parish,' he said. 'We'll chust
give it a trial, and if there's no fush at the start we'll come away
back again.' Oh! a consuderate fellow, Dougie; he saw my poseetion at
wance, and that I wasna awfu' keen to be fushin' wi' a splash-net on
the Fast Day. The end and the short of it wass that when it wass dark
we took the net and the punt and rowed doon to the river and began to
splash. We had got a fine haul at wance of six great big salmon, and
every salmon Dougie would be takin' oot of the net he would be feeling
it all over in a droll way, till I said to him, 'What are you
feel-feelin' for, Dougie, the same ass if they had pockets on them? I'm
sure they're all right.'
"'Oh, yes,' he says, 'right enough, but I wass frightened they might
be the laird's salmon, and I wass lookin' for the luggage label on
them. There's none. It's all right; they're chust wild salmon that
nobody planted.'
"Weel, we had got chust ass many salmon ass we had any need for when
somebody birled a whustle, and the river watchers put off in a small
boat from a point outside of us to catch us. There wass no gettin' oot
of the river mooth, so we left the boat and the net and the fush and
ran ashore, and by-and-by we got up to the quay and on board the Fital
Spark, and paaused and consudered things.
"'They'll ken it's oor boat,' said Dougie, and his clothes wass up
to the eyes in salmon scales.
"'There's no doo't aboot that,' I says. 'If it wassna the Fast Day I
wouldna be so vexed; it'll be an awful disgrace to be found oot workin'
a splash-net on the Fast Day. And it's a peety aboot the boat, it wass
a good boat, I wish we could get her back.'
"'Ay, it's a peety we lost her,' said Dougie; 'I wonder in the wide
world who could have stole her when we were doon the fo'c'sle at oor
supper?' Oh, a smert fellow, Dougie! when he said that I saw at wance
what he meant.
"'I'll go up this meenute and report it to the polls office,' I said
quite firm, and Dougie said he would go with me too, but that we would
need to change oor clothes, for they were covered with fush-scales. We
changed oor clothes and went up to the sercheant of polls, and reported
that somebody had stolen oor boat.
"He wass sittin' readin' his Bible, it bein' the Fast Day, wi' specs
on, and he keeked up at us, and said, 'You are very spruce, boys, with
your good clothes on at this time of the night.'
"'We aalways put on oor good clothes on the Fital Spark on a Fast
Day,' I says to him; 'it's as little as we can do, though we don't
belong to the parish.'
"Next day there wass a great commotion in the place aboot some
blackguards doon at the river mooth poachin' with a splash-net. The
Factor wass busy, and the heid gamekeeper wass busy, and the polis wass
busy. We could see them from the dake of the Fital Spark goin' aboot
buzzin' like bum-bees.
"'Stop you!' said Dougie to me aal of a sudden. 'They'll be doon
here in a chiffy, and findin' us with them scales on oor clothes--we'll
have to put on the Sunday wans again.'
"'But they'll smell something if they see us in oor Sunday clothes,'
I said. 'It's no' the Fast Day the day.'
"'Maybe no' here,' said Dougie, 'but what's to hinder it bein' the
Fast Day in oor own parish?'
"We put on oor Sunday clothes again, and looked the Almanac to see
if there wass any word in it of a Fast Day any place that day, but
there wass nothing in the Almanac but tides, and the Battle of
Waterloo, and the weather for next winter. That's the worst of
Almanacs; there's nothing in them you want. We were fair bate for a
Fast Day any place, when The Tar came up and asked me if he could get
to the funeral of a cousin of his in the place at two o'clock.
"'A funeral!'said Dougie. 'The very thing. The Captain and me'll go
to the funeral too. That's the way we have on oor Sunday clothes.' Oh,
a smert, smert fellow, Dougie!
"We had chust made up oor mind it wass the funeral we were dressed
for, and no' a Fast Day any place, when the polisman and the heid
gamekeeper came doon very suspeecious, and said they had oor boat. 'And
what's more,' said the gamekeeper, 'there's a splash-net and five stone
of salmon in it. It hass been used, your boat, for poaching.'
"'Iss that a fact? 'I says. 'I hope you'll find the blackguards,'
and the gamekeeper gave a grunt, and said somebody would suffer for it,
and went away busier than ever. But the polis sercheant stopped behind.
'You're still in your Sunday clothes, boys,' said he; 'what iss the
occasion to-day?'
"'We're going to the funeral,' I said.
"'Chust that! I did not know you were untimate with the diseased,'
said the sercheant.
"'Neither we were,' I said, 'but we are going oot of respect for
Colin.' And we went to the funeral, and nobody suspected nothin', but
we never got back the boat, for the gamekeeper wass chust needin' wan
for a brother o' his own. Och, ay! there's wonderful sport in a
splash-net."
VII: THE SEA COOK
THE TAR'S duties included cooking for the ship's company. He was not
exactly a chef who would bring credit to a first-class club or
restaurant, but for some time after he joined the Vital Spark there was
no occasion to complain of him. Quite often he would wash the
breakfast-cups to have them clean for tea in the evening, and it was
only when in a great hurry he dried plates with the ship's towel. But
as time passed, and he found his shipmates not very particular about
what they ate, he grew a little careless. For instance, Para Handy was
one day very much annoyed to see The Tar carry forward the potatoes for
dinner in his cap.
"That's a droll way to carry potatoes, Colin," he said mildly.
"Och! they'll do no herm; it's only an old kep anyway," said The
Tar. "Catch me usin' my other kep for potatoes!"
"It wass not exactly your kep I wass put aboot for," said the
Captain. "It wass chust running in my mind that maybe some sort of a
dish would be nater and genteeler. I'm no' compleenin', mind you, I'm
chust mentioning it."
"Holy smoke!" said The Tar. "You're getting to be aawful polite wi'
your plates for potatoes, and them no peeled!"
But the want of variety in The Tar's cooking grew worse and worse
each voyage, and finally created a feeling of great annoyance to the
crew. It was always essence of coffee, and herring--fresh, salt,
kippered, or red--for breakfast, sausages or stewed steak and potatoes
for dinner, and a special treat in the shape of ham and eggs for
Sundays. One unlucky day for the others of the crew, however, he
discovered the convenience of tinned corned beef, and would feed them
on that for dinner three or four days a week. Of course they commented
on this prevalence of tinned food, which the engineer with some humour
always called "malleable mule," but The Tar had any number of reasons
ready for its presence on the midday board.
"Sorry, boys," he would say affably,﹃but this is the duvvle of a
place; no' a bit of butcher meat to be got in't till Wednesday, when it
comes wi' the boat from Gleska.﹄Or "The fire went oot on me, chaps,
chust when I wass making a fine thing. Wait you till Setturday, and
we'll have something rare!"
"Ay, ay; live, old horse, and you'll get corn," the Captain would
say under these circumstances, as he artistically carved the wedge of
American meat. "It's a mercy to get anything; back in your plate,
Dougie."
It became at last unbearable, and while The Tar was ashore one day
in Tarbert, buying bottled coffee and tinned meat in bulk, a conference
between the captain, the engineer, and the mate took place.
"I'm no' going to put up wi't any longer," said the engineer
emphatically. "It's all very well for them that has no thinking to do
wi' their heids to eat tinned mule even on, but an engineer that's
thinking aboot his engines all the time, and sweatin' doon in a
temperature o' 120, needs to keep his strength up."
"What sort o' heid-work are you talking aboot?" said the Captain.
"Iss it readin' your penny novelles? Hoo's Lady Fitzgerald's man
gettin' on?" This last allusion was to Macphail's passion for penny
fiction, and particularly to a novelette story over which the engineer
had once been foolish enough some years before to show great
emotion.
"I move," said Dougie, breaking in on what promised to be an
unprofitable altercation,--"I move that The Tar be concurred."
"Concurred!" said the engineer, with a contemptuous snort. "I
suppose you mean censured?"
"It's the same thing, only spelled different," said the mate.
"What's censured?" asked the Captain.
"It's giving a fellow a duvvie of a clourin'," answered Dougie
promptly.
"No, no, I wouldna care to do that to The Tar. Maybe he's doin' the
best he can, poor chap. The Tar never saw mich high life before he came
on my boat, and we'll have to make an allowance for that."
"Herrin' for breakfast seven days a week! it's a fair scandal," said
the engineer. "If you were maister in your own boat, Macfarlane, you
would have a very different kind of man makin' your meat for you."
"There's not mich that iss wholesomer than a good herrin'," said
Para Handy. "It's a fush that's chust sublime. But I'll not deny it
would be good to have a change noo and then, if it wass only a finnen
haddie."
"I have a cookery book o' the wife's yonder at home I'll bring wi'
me the next time we're in Gleska, and it'll maybe give him a tip or
two," said the engineer, and this was, in the meantime, considered the
most expedient thing to do.
Next trip, on the way to Brodick on a Saturday with a cargo of
bricks. The Tar was delicately approached by the Captain, who had the
cookery book in his hand.﹃That wass a nice tender bit of tinned beef
we had the day, Colin,﹄he said graciously. "Capital, aaltogether! I
could live myself on tinned beef from wan end of the year to the other,
but Dougie and the enchineer there's compleenin' that you're givin' it
to them too often. You would think they were lords! But perhaps I
shouldna blame them, for the doctor told the enchineer he should take
something tasty every day, and Dougie's aye frightened for tinned meat
since ever he heard that the enchineer wance killed a man in the
Australian bush. What do you say yoursel' to tryin' something fancy in
the cookery line?"
"There's some people hard to please," said The Tar; "I'm sure I'm
doin' the best I can to satisfy you aal. Look at them red herrin's I
made this mornin'!"
"They were chust sublime!" said the Captain, clapping him on the
back. "But chust try a change to keep their mooths shut. It'll only
need to be for a little, for they'll soon tire o' fancy things. I have
a kind of a cookery book here you might get some tips in. It's no'
mine, mind you, it's Macphail's."
The Tar took the cookery book and turned over some pages with
contemptuous and horny fingers. "A lot o' nonsense!" he said. "Listen
to this:
"'Take the remains of any cold chicken, mix with the potatoes, put
in a pie-dish, and brown with a salamander.' Where are you to get the
cold chucken? and where are you to take it? Fancy callin' it a remains;
it would be enough to keep you from eatin' chucken. And what's a
salamander? There's no' wan on this vessel, at any rate."
"It's chust another name for cinnamon, but you could leave it oot,"
said the Captain.
"Holy smoke! listen to this," proceeded The Tar: "'How to make clear
stock. Take six or seven pounds of knuckle of beef or veal, half a
pound of ham or bacon, a quarter of a pound of butter, two onions, one
carrot, one turnip, half a head of salary, and two gallons of water.'
You couldna sup that in a week."
"Smaal quantities, smaal quantities, Colin," explained the Captain.
"I'm sorry to put you to bother, but there's no other way of pleasin'
them other fellows."
"There's no' a thing in this book I would eat except a fowl that's
described here," said The Tar, after a further glance through the
volume.
"The very thing!" cried the Captain, delighted.﹃Try a fowl for
Sunday,﹄and The Tar said he would do his best.
"I soon showed him who wass skipper on this boat," said the Captain
going aft to Dougie and the engineer. "It's to be fowls on Sunday."
There was an old-fashioned cutter yacht at anchor in Brodick Bay
with a leg of mutton and two plucked fowls hanging openly under the
overhang of her stern, which is sometimes even yet the only pantry a
yacht of that type has, though the result is not very decorative.
"Look at that!" said the engineer to The Tar as the Vital Spark
puffed past the yacht. "There's sensible meat for sailors; no malleable
mule. I'll bate you them fellows has a cook wi' aal his wuts aboot
him."
"It's aal right, Macphail," said The Tar; "chust you wait till
to-morrow and I'll give you fancy cookin'."
And sure enough on Sunday he had two boiled fowls for dinner. It was
such an excellent dinner that even the engineer was delighted.
"I'll bate you that you made them hens ready oot o' the wife's
cookery book," he said. "There's no' a better cookery book on the
South-side of Gleska; the genuine Aunt Kate's. People come far and near
for the lend o'that when they're havin' anything extra."
"Where did you buy the hens?" inquired the Captain, nibbling
contentedly at the last bone left after the repast.
"I didna buy them at aal," said The Tar. "I couldna be expected to
buy chuckens on the money you alloo me. Forbye, it doesna say anything
aboot buying in Macphail's cookery book. It says, 'Take two chickens
and boil slowly.' So I chust had to take them."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Para Handy, with great
apprehension.
"I chust went oot in a wee boat late last night and took them from
the stern o' yon wee yacht," said The Tar coolly; and a great silence
fell upon the crew of the Vital Spark.
"To-morrow," said the Captain emphatically at last--"to-morrow
you'll have tinned meat; do you know that, Colin? And you'll never have
chucken on the boat again, not if Macphail was breakin' his he'rt for
it."
VIII: LODGERS ON A HOUSE-BOAT
A MAN and his wife came down Crarae Quay from the village. The man
carried a spotted yellow tin box in one hand and a bottle of milk in
the other. He looked annoyed at something. His wife had one child in
her arms, and another walked weeping behind her, occasionally stopping
the weeping to suck a stalk of The Original Crarae Rock. There was a
chilly air of separation about the little procession that made it plain
there had been an awful row. At the quay the Vital Spark lay with her
hold half covered by the hatches, after discharging a cargo. Her
gallant commander, with Dougie, stood beside the winch and watched the
family coming down the quay.
"Take my word for it, Dougie," said Para Handy, "that man's no' in
very good trum; you can see by the way he's banging the box against his
legs and speaking to himsel'. It's no' a hymn he's going over, I'll
bate you. And hersel's no' mich better, or she wouldna be lettin' the
poor fellow carry the box."
The man came forward to the edge of the quay, looked at the newly
painted red funnel of the Vital Spark, and seemed, from his
countenance, to have been seized by some bright idea.
"Hey! you with the skipped kep," he cried down eagerly to Dougie,
"when does this steamer start?"
Para Handy looked at his mate with a pride there was no concealing.
"My Chove! Dougie," he said in a low tone to him. "My Chove! he thinks
we're opposeetion to the Lord of the Isles or the King Edward. I'm aye
tellin' you this boat iss built on smert lines; if you and me had brass
buttons we could make money carryin' passengers."
"Are ye deaf?" cried the man on the quay impatiently, putting down
the tin box, and rubbing the sweat from his brow. "When does this boat
start?"
"This iss not a boat that starts at aal," said the Captain. "It's
a--it's a kind of a yat."
"Dalmighty!" exclaimed the man, greatly crestfallen, "that settles
it. I thocht we could get back to Gleska wi' ye. We canna get ludgin's
in this place, and whit the bleezes are we to dae when we canna get
ludgin's?"
"That's a peety," said the Captain. "It's no' a very nice thing to
happen on a Setturday, and there's no way you can get oot of Crarae
till Monday unless you have wan of them motor cars."
"We havena oors wi' us," said the wife, taking up a position beside
her husband and the tin box. "I'm vexed the only thing o' the kind I
ha'e's a cuddy, and if it wasna for him we would ha'e stayed at
Rothesay, whaur you can aye get ludgin's o' some kind. Do ye no' think
ye could gie us twa nicht's ludgin's on your boat? I'm shair there's
plenty o' room."
"Bless my sowl, where's the plenty o' room?" asked the Captain.
"This boat cairries three men and an enchineer, and we're crooded
enough in the fo'c'sle."
"Where's that?" she asked, taking all the negotiations out of the
hands of her husband, who sat down on the spotted tin box and began to
cut tobacco.
"Yonder it is," said Para Handy, indicating the place with a lazy,
inelegant, but eloquent gesture of his leg.
"Weel, there's plenty o' room," persisted the woman,--"ye can surely
see for yersel' there's plenty o' room; you and your men could sleep at
the--at the--the stroup o' the boat there, and ye could mak' us ony
kind o' a shake-down doon the stair there "--and she pointed at the
hold.
"My coodness! the stroup o' the boat!" exclaimed Para Handy; "you
would think it wass a teapot you were taalkin' aboot. And that's no' a
doon-stairs at aal, it's the howld. We're no' in the habit of takin' in
ludgers in the coastin' tred; I never had wan in the Fital Spark in aal
my life except the time I cairried Wee Teeny. We havena right
accommodation for ludgers; we have no napery, nor enough knives and
forks--"
"Onything wad dae for a shove-bye," said the woman. "I'm shair ye
wouldna see a dacent man and his wife and twa wee hameless lambs
sleepin' in the quarry as lang as ye could gie them a corner to sit
doon in on that nice clean boat o' yours."
She was a shrewd woman; her compliment to the Vital Spark found the
soft side of its captain's nature, and, to the disgust of Macphail the
engineer and the annoyance of The Tar--though with the hearty consent
of the mate--Jack Flood and his family, with the tin box and the bottle
of milk, were ten minutes later installed in the fo'c'sle of the Vital
Spark as paying guests. The terms arranged were two shillings a night.
"You couldna get ludgin's in a good hotel for mich less," said the
Captain, and Mrs Flood agreed that that was reasonable.
The crew slept somewhat uncomfortably in the hold, and in the middle
watches of the night the Captain wakened at the sound of an infant
crying. He sat up, nudged Dougie awake, and moralised.
"Chust listen to that, Dougie," he said, "the wee cratur's greetin'
ass naitural ass anything, the same ass if it wass a rale ludgin's or
on board wan of them ships that carries passengers to America. It's me
that likes to hear it; it's ass homely a thing ass ever happened on
this vessel. I wouldna say but maybe it'll be good luck. I'm tellin'
you what, Dougie, we'll no' cherge them a d--n ha'penny; what do you
think, mate?"
"Whatever you say yoursel'," said Dougie.
The wail of the infant continued; they heard Jack Flood get up at
the request of his wife and sing. He sang "Rocked in the Cradle of the
Deep "--at least he sang two lines of it over and over again, taking
liberties with the air that would have much annoyed the original
composer if he could have heard him.
"It's chust sublime!" said Para Handy, stretched on a rolled-up
sail. "You're a lucky man, Dougie, that iss married and has a hoose of
your own. Oor two ludgers iss maybe pretty cross when it comes to the
quarrelling, but they have no spite at the weans. You would not think
that man Flood had the sense to rise up in the muddle of the night and
sing' Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep' at his child. It chust shows
you us workin'-men have good he'rts."
"Jeck may have a cood enough he'rt," said Dougie, "but, man! he has
a poor, poor ear for music! I wish he would stop it and no' be
frightenin' the wean. I'm sure it never did him any herm."
By-and-by the crying and the music ceased, and the only sound to be
heard was the snore of The Tar and the lapping of the tide against the
run of the vessel.
Sunday was calm and bright, but there was no sign of the lodgers
coming on deck till late in the forenoon, much to the surprise of the
Captain. At last he heard a loud peremptory whistle from the fo'c'sle,
and went forward to see what was wanted. Flood threw up four pairs of
boots at him. "Gie them a bit polish," he said airily.﹃Ye needna be
awfu' parteecular,﹄he added, "but they're a' glaur, and we like to be
dacent on Sunday."
The Captain, in a daze, lifted the boots and told The Tar to oil
them, saying emphatically at the same time to Dougie, "Efter aal, we'll
no' let them off with the two shillin's. They're too dirty
parteecular."
There was another whistle ten minutes later, and Dougie went to see
what was wanted.
"I say, my lad," remarked Mr Flood calmly, "look slippy with the
breakfast; we canna sterve here ony langer."
"Are you no' comin' up for't?" asked Dougie in amazement. "It's a
fine dry day."
"Dry my auntie!" said Mr Flood. "The wife aye gets her breakfast in
her bed on Sundays whether it's wet or dry. Ye'll get the kippered
herrin' and the loaf she brung last nicht beside the lum."
The Tar cooked the lodgers' breakfast under protest, saying he was
not paid wages for being a saloon steward, and he passed it down to the
fo'c'sle.
"Two shilling's a night!" said the Captain. "If I had known what it
wass to keep ludgers, it wouldna be two shillin's a night I would be
cherging them."
He was even more emphatic on this point when a third whistle came
from the fo'c'sle, and The Tar, on going to see what was wanted now,
was informed by Mrs Flood that the cooking was not what she was
accustomed to. "I never saw a steamer like this in my life," she said,
"first cless, as ye micht say, and no' a table to tak' yer meat aff,
and only shelfs to sleep on, and sea-sick nearly the hale nicht to the
bargain! Send us doon a pail o' water to clean oor faces."
Para Handy could stand no more. He washed himself carefully, put on
his Sunday clothes and his watch chain, which always gave him great
confidence and courage, and went to the fo'c'sle-head. He addressed the
lodgers from above.
"Leezy," he said ingratiatingly (for so he had heard Mr Flood
designate his wife), "Leezy, you're missing aal the fun doon there; you
should come up and see the folk goin' to the church; you never saw such
style among the women in aal your days."
"I'll be up in a meenute," she replied quickly; "Jeck, hurry up and
hook this."
On the whole, the lodgers and the crew of the Vital Spark spent a
fairly pleasant Sunday. When the Flood family was not ashore walking in
the neighbourhood, it was lying about the deck eating dulse and picking
whelks culled from the shore by Jack. The mother kindly supplied the
infant with as much dulse and shell-fish as it wanted, and it had for
these a most insatiable appetite.
"You shouldna eat any wulks or things of that sort when there's no
'r's' in the month," Para Handy advised her. "They're no' very
wholesome then."
"Fiddlesticks!" said Mrs Flood. "I've ett wulks every Fair since I
was a wee lassie, and look at me noo! Besides, there's an 'r' in Fair,
that puts it a' richt."
That night the infant wailed from the moment they went to bed till
it was time to rise in the morning; Jack Flood sang﹃Rocked in the
Cradle of the Deep﹄till he was hoarse, and the crew in the hold got up
next morning very sorry for themselves.
"You'll be takin' the early steamer?" said Para Handy at the first
opportunity.
"Och! we're gettin' on fine," said Jack cheerfully;﹃Leezy and me
thinks we'll just put in the week wi' ye,﹄and the wife indicated her
hearty concurrence.
"You canna stay here," said the Captain firmly.
"Weel, we're no' goin' to leave, onywye," said Mr Flood, lighting
his clay pipe. "We took the ludgin's, and though they're no' as nice as
we would like, we're wullin' to put up with them, and ye canna put us
oot withoot a week's warnin'."
"My Chove! do you say that?" said Para Handy in amazement. "You're
the first and last ludger I'll have on this vessel!"
"A week's notice; it's the law o' the land," said the admirable Mr
Flood, "isn't that so, Leezy?"
"Everybody that has sense kens that that's richt," said Mrs Flood.
And the Flood family retired en masse to the fo'c'sle.
Ten minutes later the Vital Spark was getting up steam, and soon
there were signs of her immediate departure from the quay.
"Whaur are ye gaun?" cried Jack, coming hurriedly on deck.
"Outward bound," said Para Handy with indifference. "That's a
sailor's life for you, here the day and away yesterday."
"To Gleska?" said Mr Flood hopefully.
"Gleska!" said Para Handy. "We'll no' see it for ten months; we're
bound for the Rio Grande."
"Whaur's that in a' the warld?" asked Mrs Flood, who had joined her
husband on deck.
"Oh! chust in foreign perts," said Para Handy. "Away past the Bay of
Biscay, and the first place on your left-hand side after you pass New
Zealand. It's where the beasts for the Zoo comes from."
In four minutes the Flood family were off the ship, and struggling
up the quay with the spotted tin trunk, and the Vital Spark was
starting for Bowling.
"I'm a stupid man," said Para Handy in a few minutes after leaving
the quay. "Here we're away and forgot aal aboot the money for the
ludgin's."
IX: A LOST MAN
IT was a dirty evening, coming on to dusk, and the Vital Spark went
walloping drunkenly down Loch Fyne with a cargo of oak bark, badly
trimmed. She staggered to every shock of the sea; the waves came
combing over her quarter, and Dougie the mate began to wish they had
never sailed that day from Kilcatrine. They had struggled round the
point of Pennymore, the prospect looking every moment blacker, and he
turned a dozen projects over in his mind for inducing Para Handy to
anchor somewhere till the morning. At last he remembered Para's
partiality for anything in the way of long-shore gaiety, and the lights
of the village of Furnace gave him an idea.
"Ach! man, Peter," said he, "did we no' go away and forget this wass
the night of the baal at Furnace? What do you say to going in and
joining the spree?"
"You're feared, Dougie," said the Captain; "you're scaared to daith
for your life, in case you'll have to die and leave your money. You're
thinkin' you'll be drooned, and that's the way you want to put her into
Furnace. Man! but you're tumid, tumid! Chust look at me--no' the least
put aboot. That's becaause I'm a Macfarlane, and a Macfarlane never was
bate yet, never in this world! I'm no' goin' to stop the night for any
baal--we must be in Clyde on Friday; besides, we havena the clothes wi'
us for a baal. Forbye, who'll buy the tickets? Eh? Tell me that! Who'll
buy the tickets?"
"Ach! you don't need tickets for a Furnace baal," said Dougie,
flicking the spray from his ear, and looking longingly at the village
they were nearing. "You don't need tickets for a Furnace baal as long
as you ken the man at the door and taalk the Gaalic at him. And your
clothes'll do fine if you oil your boots and put on a kind of a collar.
What's the hurry for Clyde? It'll no' run dry. In weather like this,
too! It's chust a temptin' of Providence. I had a dream yonder last
night that wasna canny. Chust a temptin' of Providence."
"I wudna say but it is," agreed the Captain weakly, putting the
vessel a little to starboard; "it's many a day since I was at a spree
in Furnace. Are you sure the baal's the night?"
"Of course I am," said Dougie emphatically; "it only started
yesterday."
"Weel, if you're that keen on't, we'll maybe be chust as weel to put
her in till the mornin'," said Para Handy, steering hard for Furnace
Bay; and in a little he knocked down to the engines with the usual,
"Stop her, Macphail, when you're ready."
All the crew of the Vital Spark went to the ball, but they did not
dance much, though it was the boast of Para Handy that he was﹃a fine
strong dancer.﹄The last to come down to the vessel in the morning when
the ball stopped, because the paraffin-oil was done, was the Captain,
walking on his heels, with his pea-jacket tightly buttoned on his
chest, and his round, go-ashore pot hat, as he used to say himself,﹃on
three hairs.﹄It was a sign that he felt intensely satisfied with
everything.
"I'm feeling chust sublime," he said to Dougie, smacking his lips
and thumping himself on the chest as he took his place at the wheel,
and the Vital Spark resumed her voyage down the loch. "I am chust like
the eagle that knew the youth in the Scruptures. It's a fine, fine
thing a spree, though I wass not in the trum for dancing. I met sixteen
cousins yonder, and them all in the committee. They were the proud men
last night to be having a captain for a cousin, and them only
quarry-men. It's the educaation, Dougie; educaation gives you the
nerve, and if you have the nerve you can go round the world."
"You werena very far roond the world, whatever o't," unkindly
interjected the engineer, who stuck up his head at the moment.
The Captain made a push at him angrily with his foot.﹃Go down,
Macphail,﹄he said, "and do not be making a display of your ignorance
on this ship. Stop you till I get you at Bowling! Not round the world!
Man, I wass twice at Ullapool, and took the Fital Spark to Ireland
wance, without a light on her. There iss not a port I am not acquent
with from the Tail of the Bank to Cairndow, where they keep the two New
Years. And Campbeltown, ay, or Barra, or Tobermory. I'm telling you
when I am in them places it's Captain Peter Macfarlane iss the
mich-respected man. If you were a rale enchineer and not chust a
fireman, I would be asking you to my ludgings to let you see the things
I brought from my voyages."
The engineer drew in his head and resumed the perusal of a penny
novelette.
"He thinks I'm frightened for him," said the Captain, winking darkly
to his mate. "It iss because I am too cuvil to him: if he angers me,
I'll show him. It is chust spoiling the boat having a man like that in
cherge of her enchines, and her such a fine smert boat, with me, and a
man like me, in command of her."
"And there's mysel', too, the mate," said Dougie; "I'm no' bad
mysel'."
Below Minard rocks the weather grew worse again: the same old seas
smashed over the Vital Spark.﹃She's pitching aboot chust like a
washin'-boyne,﹄said Dougie apprehensively. "That's the worst of them
oak-bark cargoes."
"Like a washin'-boyne!" cried Para Handy indignantly; "she's chust
doing sublime. I wass in boats in my time where you would need to be
bailing the watter out of your top-boots every here and there. The
smertest boat in the tred; stop you till I have a pound of my own, and
I will paint her till you'll take her for a yat if it wasna for the
him. You and your washin'-boyne! A washin'-boyne wudna do you any herm,
my laad, and that's telling you."
They were passing Lochgair; the steamer Cygnet overtook and passed
them as if they had been standing, somebody shouting to them from her
deck.
Para Handy refrained from looking. It always annoyed him to be
passed this way by other craft; and in summer time, when the turbine
King Edward or the Lord of the Isles went past him like a streak of
lightning, he always retired below to hide his feelings. He did not
look at the Cygnet. "Ay, ay," he said to Dougie, "if I was telling Mr
Macbrayne the umpudence of them fellows, he would put a stop to it in a
meenute, but I will not lose them their chobs; poor sowls! maybe they
have wifes and femilies. That'll be Chonny Mactavish takin' his fun of
me; you would think he wass a wean. Chust like them brats of boys that
come to the riverside when we'll be going up the Clyde at Yoker and
cry,' Columbia, ahoy!' at us--the duvvle's own!"
As the Cygnet disappeared in the distance, with a figure waving at
her stern, a huge sea struck the Vital Spark and swept her from stem to
stem, almost washing the mate, who was hanging on to a stay,
overboard.
"Tar! Tar!" cried the Captain. "Go and get a ha'ad o' that bucket or
it'll be over the side."
There was no response. The Tar was not visible, and a wild dread
took possession of Para Handy.
"Let us pause and consider," said he to himself; "was The Tar on
board when we left Furnace?"
They searched the vessel high and low for the missing member of the
crew, who was sometimes given to fall asleep in the fo'c'sle at the
time he was most needed. But there was no sign of him.﹃I ken fine he
wass on board when we started,﹄said the Captain, distracted,﹃for I
heard him sputtin'. Look again, Dougie, like a good laad.﹄Dougie
looked again, for he, too, was sure The Tar had returned from the ball
with him. "I saw him with my own eyes," he said,﹃two of him, the same
as if he was a twins; that iss the curse of drink in a place like
Furance.﹄But the search was in vain, even though the engineer said he
had seen The Tar an hour ago.
"Weel, there's a good man gone!" said Para Handy. "Och! poor Tar! It
was yon last smasher of a sea. He's over the side. Poor laad! Poor
laad! Cot bless me, dyin' without a word of Gaalic in his mooth! It's a
chudgment on us for the way we were carryin' on, chust a chudgment; not
another drop of drink will I drink, except maybe beer. Or at a New Year
time. I'm blaming you, Dougie, for making us stop at Furnace for a baal
I wudna give a snuff for. You are chust a disgrace to the vessel, with
your smokin' and your drinkin', and your ignorance. It iss time you
were livin' a better life for the sake of your wife and femily. If it
wass not for you makin'me go into Furnace last night. The Tar would be
to the fore yet, and I would not need to be sending a telegram to his
folk from Ardrishaig. If I wass not steering the boat, I would break my
he'rt greetin' for the poor laad that never did anybody any herm. Get
oot the flag from below my bunk, give it a syne in the pail, and put it
at half-mast, and we'll go into Ardrishaig and send a telegram--it'll
be a sixpence. It'll be a telegram with a sore he'rt, I'll assure you.
I do not know what I will say in it, Dougie. It will not do to break it
too much to them; maybe we will send the two telegrams--that'll be a
shilling. We'll say in the first wan--'Your son, Colin, left the boat
to-day ': and in the next wan we will say--' He iss not coming back, he
iss drooned.' Och! och! poor Tar, amn't I sorry for him? I was chust
going to put up his wages a shillin' on Setturday."
The Vital Spark went in close to Ardrishaig pier just as the Cygnet
was leaving after taking in a cargo of herring-boxes. Para Handy and
Dougie went ashore in the punt, the Captain with his hands washed and
his watch-chain on as a tribute of respect for the deceased. Before
they could send off the telegram it was necessary that they should
brace themselves for the melancholy occasion.﹃No drinking, chust wan
gless of beer,﹄said Para Handy, and they entered a discreet contiguous
public-house for this purpose.
The Tar himself was standing at the counter having a refreshment,
with one eye wrapped up in a handkerchief.
"Dalmighty!" cried the Captain, staggered at the sight, and turning
pale. "What are you doing here with your eye in a sling?"
"What's your business?" retorted The Tar coolly. "I'm no' in your
employ anyway."
"What way that?" asked Para Handy sharply.
"Did you no' give me this black eye and the sack last night at the
baal, and tell me I wass never to set foot on the Vital Spark again? It
was gey mean o' you to go away withoot lettin' me get my dunnage oot,
and that's the way I came here with the Cygnet to meet you. Did you no'
hear me roarin' on you when we passed?"
"Weel done! weel done!" said Para Handy soothingly, with a wink at
his mate. "But ach! I wass only in fun, Colin; it wass a jeenk; it wass
chust a baur aalthegither. Come away back to the boat like a smert
laad. I have a shilling here I wass going to spend anyway. Colin,
what'll you take? We thought you were over the side and drooned, and
you are here, quite dry as usual."
X: HURRICANE JACK
I VERY often hear my friend the Captain speak of Hurricane Jack in
terms of admiration and devotion, which would suggest that Jack is a
sort of demigod. The Captain always refers to Hurricane Jack as the
most experienced seaman of modern times, as the most fearless soul that
ever wore oilskins, the handsomest man in Britain, so free with his
money he would fling it at the birds, so generally accomplished that it
would be a treat to be left a month on a desert island alone with
him.
"Why is he called Hurricane Jack?" I asked the Captain once.
"What the duvvle else would you caal him?" asked Para Handy. "Nobody
ever caals him anything else than Hurricane Jeck."
"Quite so, but why?" I persisted.
Para Handy scratched the back of his neck, made the usual gesture as
if he were going to scratch his ear, and then checked himself in the
usual way to survey his hand as if it were a beautiful example of Greek
sculpture. His hand, I may say, is almost as large as a Belfast
ham.
"What way wass he called Hurricane Jeck?" said he. "Well, I'll soon
tell you that. He wass not always known by that name; that wass a name
he got for the time he stole the sheep."
"Stole the sheep!" I said, a little bewildered, for I failed to see
how an incident of that kind would give rise to such a name.
"Yes; what you might call stole," said Para Handy hastily; "but,
och! it wass only wan smaal wee sheep he lifted on a man that never
went to the church, and chust let him take it! Hurricane Jeck would not
steal a fly--no, nor two flies, from a Chrustian; he's the perfect
chentleman in that."
"Tell me all about it," I said.
"I'll soon do that," said he, putting out his hand to admire it
again, and in doing so upsetting his glass. "Tut, tut!" he said. "Look
what I have done-knocked doon my gless; it wass a good thing there wass
nothing in it.
"Hurricane Jeck," said the Captain, when I had taken the hint and
put something in it, "iss a man that can sail anything and go anywhere,
and aalways be the perfect chentleman. A millionaire's yat or a
washing-boyne--it's aal the same to Jeck; he would sail the wan chust
as smert as the other, and land on the quay as spruce ass if he wass
newly come from a baal. Oh, man! the cut of his jeckets! And never
anything else but 'lastic-sided boots, even in the coorsest weather! If
you would see him, you would see a man that's chust sublime, and that
careful about his 'lastic-sided boots he would never stand at the wheel
unless there wass a bass below his feet. He'll aye be oil-oiling at his
hair, and buying hard hats for going ashore with: I never saw a man wi'
a finer heid for the hat, and in some of the vessels he wass in he
would have the full of a bunker of hats. Hurricane Jeck wass brought up
in the China clupper tred, only he wassna called Hurricane Jeck then,
for he hadna stole the sheep till efter that. He wass captain of the
Dora Young, wan of them cluppers; he's a hand on a gaabert the now, but
aalways the perfect chentleman."
"It seems a sad downcome for a man to be a gabbart hand after having
commanded a China clipper," I ventured to remark. "What was the reason
of his change?"
"Bad luck," said Para Handy. "Chust bad luck. The fellow never got
fair-play. He would aye be somewhere takin' a gless of something wi'
somebody, for he's a fine big cheery chap. I mind splendid when he wass
captain on the clupper, he had a fine hoose of three rooms and a big
decanter, wi' hot and cold watter, oot at Pollokshaws. When you went
oot to the hoose to see Hurricane Jeck in them days, time slupped bye.
But he wassna known as Hurricane Jeck then, for it wass before he stole
the sheep."
"You were just going to tell me something about that," I said.
"Jeck iss wan man in a hundred, and ass good ass two if there wass
anything in the way of trouble, for, man! he's strong, strong! He has a
back on him like a shipping-box, and when he will come down Tarbert
quay on a Friday night after a good fishing, and the trawlers are
arguing, it's two yerds to the step with him and a bash in the side of
his hat for fair defiance. But he never hit a man twice, for he's aye
the perfect chentleman iss Hurricane Jeck. Of course, you must
understand, he wass not known as Hurricane Jeck till the time I'm going
to tell you of, when he stole the sheep.
"I have not trevelled far mysel' yet, except UIlapool and the time I
wass at Ireland; but Hurricane Jeck in his time has been at every place
on the map, and some that's no'. Chust wan of Brutain's hardy
sons--that's what he iss. As weel kent in Calcutta as if he wass in the
Coocaddens, and he could taalk a dozen of their foreign kinds of
languages if he cared to take the bother. When he would be leaving a
port, there wassna a leddy in the place but what would be doon on the
quay wi' her Sunday clothes on and a bunch o' floo'ers for his cabin.
And when he would be sayin' good-bye to them from the brudge, he would
chust take off his hat and give it a shoogle, and put it on again; his
manners wass complete. The first thing he would do when he reached any
place wass to go ashore and get his boots brushed, and then sing 'Rule
Britannia' roond aboot the docks. It wass a sure way to get freend or
foe aboot you, he said, and he wass aye as ready for the wan as for the
other. Brutain's hardy son!
"He made the fastest passages in his time that waas ever made in the
tea trade, and still and on he would meet you like a common
working-man. There wass no pride or nonsense of that sort aboot
Hurricane Jeck; but, mind you, though I'm callin' him Hurricane Jeck,
he wasna Hurricane Jeck till the time he stole the sheep."
"I don't like to press you. Captain, but I'm anxious to hear about
that sheep," I said patiently.
"I'm comin' to't," said Para Handy. "Jeck had the duvvle's own bad
luck; he couldna take a gless by-ordinar' but the ship went wrong on
him, and he lost wan job efter the other, but he wass never anything
else but the perfect chentleman. When he had not a penny in his pocket,
he would borrow a shilling from you, and buy you a stick pipe for
yourself chust for good nature--"
"A stick pipe?" I repeated interrogatively.
"Chust a stick pipe--or a wudden pipe, or whatever you like to call
it. He had three medals and a clock that wouldna go for saving life at
sea, but that wass before he wass Hurricane Jeck, mind you; for at that
time he hadna stole the sheep."
"I'm dying to hear about that sheep," I said.
"I'll soon tell you about the sheep," said Para Handy. "It wass a
thing that happened when him and me wass sailing on the Elizabeth Ann,
a boat that belonged to Girvan, and a smert wan too, if she wass in any
kind of trum at aal. We would be going here and there aboot the West
Coast with wan thing and another, and not costing the owners mien for
coals if coals wass our cargo. It wass wan Sunday we were passing
Caticol in Arran, and in a place yonder where there wass not a hoose in
sight we saw a herd of sheep eating gress near the shore. As luck would
have it, there wass not a bit of butcher-meat on board the Elizabeth
Ann for the Sunday dinner, and Jeck cocked his eye at the sheep and
says to me, 'Yonder's some sheep lost, poor things; what do you say to
taking the punt and going ashore to see if there's anybody's address on
them?'
"'Whatever you say yoursel',' I said to Jeck, and we stopped the
vessel and went ashore, the two of us, and looked the sheep high and
low, but there wass no address on them. 'They're lost, sure enough,'
said Jeck, pulling some heather and putting it in his pocket--he wassna
Hurricane Jeck then--' they're lost, sure enough, Peter. Here's a nice
wee wan nobody would ever miss, that chust the very thing for a coal
vessel,' and before you could say 'knife' he had it killed and carried
to the punt. Oh, he iss a smert, smert fellow with his hands; he could
do anything.
"We rowed ass caalm ass we could oot to the vessel, and we had chust
got the deid sheep on board when we heard a roarin' and whustling.
"'Taalk about Arran being releegious!" said Jeck. 'Who's that
whustling on the Lord's day?'
"The man that wass whustling wass away up on the hill, and we could
see him coming running doon the hill the same ass if he would break
every leg he had on him.
"'I'll bate you he'll say it's his sheep,' said Jeck. 'Weel, we'll
chust anchor the vessel here till we hear what he hass to say, for if
we go away and never mind the cratur he'll find oot somewhere else it's
the Elizabeth Ann.'
"When the fermer and two shepherds came oot to the Elizabeth Ann in
a boat, she wass lying at anchor, and we were all on deck, every man
wi' a piece o' heather in his jecket.
"'I saw you stealing my sheep,' said the fermer, coming on deck,
furious. 'I'll have every man of you jiled for this.'
"'Iss the man oot of his wuts?' said Jeck. 'Drink--chust drink!
Nothing else but drink! If you were a sober Christian man, you would be
in the church at this 'oor in Arran, and not oot on the hill recovering
from last night's carry-on in Loch Ranza, and imagining you are seeing
things that's not there at aal, at aal.'
"'I saw you with my own eyes steal the sheep and take it on board,'
said the fermer, nearly choking with rage.
"'What you saw was my freend and me gathering a puckle heather for
oor jeckets,' said Jeck, 'and if ye don't believe me you can search the
ship from stem to stern.'
"'I'll soon do that,' said the fermer, and him and his shepherds
went over every bit of the Elizabeth Ann. They never missed a corner
you could hide a moose in, but there wass no sheep nor sign of sheep
anywhere.
"'Look at that, Macalpine,' said Jeck. 'I have a good mind to have
you up for inflammation of character. But what could you expect from a
man that would be whustling on the hill like a peesweep on a Sabbath
when he should be in the church. It iss a good thing for you,
Macalpine, it iss a Sabbath, and I can keep my temper.'
"'I could swear I saw you lift the sheep,' said the fermer, quite
vexed.
"'Saw your auntie! Drink; nothing but the cursed drink!" said Jeck,
and the fermer and his shepherds went away with their tails behind
their legs.
"We lay at anchor till it was getting dark, and then we lilted the
anchor and took off the sheep that wass tied to it when we put it oot.
'It's a good thing salt mutton,' said Hurricane Jeck as we sailed away
from Catiool, and efter that the name he always got wass Hurricane
Jeck."
"But why 'Hurricane Jeck'?" I asked, more bewildered than ever.
"Holy smoke! am I no' tellin' ye?" said Para Handy. "It wass because
he stole the sheep."
But I don't understand it yet.
XI: PARA HANDY'S APPRENTICE
THE owner of the Vital Spark one day sent for her Captain, who oiled
his hair, washed himself with hot water and a scrubbing-brush, got The
Tar to put three coats of blacking on his boots, attired himself in his
good clothes, and went up to the office in a state of some anxiety.
"It's either a rise in pay," he said to himself,﹃or he's heard aboot
the night we had in Campbeltown. That's the worst of high jeenks;
they're aye stottin' back and hittin' you on the nose; if it's no' a
sore heid, you've lost a pound-note, and if it's nothing you lost, it's
somebody clypin' on you.﹄But when he got to the office and was shown
into the owner's room, he was agreeably enough surprised to find that
though there was at first no talk about a rise of pay, there was, on
the other hand, no complaint.
"What I wanted to see you about, Peter," said the owner, "is my
oldest boy Alick. He's tired of school and wants to go to sea."
"Does he, does he? Poor fellow!" said Para Handy. "Och, he's but
young yet, he'll maybe get better. Hoo's the mustress keepin'?"
"She's very well, thank you, Peter," said the owner. "But I'm
anxious about that boy of mine. I feel sure that he'll run away some
day on a ship; he's just the very sort to do it and I want you to help
me. I'm going to send him one trip with you, and I want you to see that
he's put off the notion of being a sailor--you understand? I don't care
what you do to him so long as you don't break a leg on him, or let him
fall over the side. Give him it stiff."
"Chust that!" said the Captain. "Iss he a boy that reads
novelles?"
"Fair daft for them!" said the owner. "That's the cause of the whole
thing."
"Then I think I can cure him in wan trip, and it'll no' hurt him
either."
"I'll send him down to the Vital Spark on Wednesday, just before you
start," said the owner. "And, by the way, if you manage to sicken him
of the idea, I wouldn't say but there might be a small increase in your
wages."
"Och, there's no occasion for that," said Para Handy.
On the Wednesday a boy about twelve years of age, with an Eton suit
and a Saturday-to-Monday hand-bag, came down to the wharf in a cab
alone, opened the door of the cab hurriedly, and almost fell into the
arms of Para Handy, who was on shore to meet him.
"Are you the apprentice for the Fital Spark?" asked the Captain
affably. "Your name'll be Alick?"
"Yes," said the boy. "Are you the Captain?"
"That's me," said the Captain, "die me a haad o' your portmanta,"
and taking it out of Alick's hand, he led the way to the side of the
wharf, where the Vital Spark was lying, with a cargo of coals that left
her very little free-board, and all her crew on deck awaiting
developments. "I'm sorry," he said, "we havena any gangway, but I'll
hand you doon to Dougie, and you'll be aal right if your gallowses'll
no' give way."
"What! is THAT the boat I'm to go on?" cried the boy, astounded.
"Yes," said the Captain, with a little natural irritation. "And
what's wrong with her? The smertest boat in the tred. Stop you till you
see her goin' roond Ardlamont!"
"But she's only a coal boat; she's very wee," said Alick. "I never
thought my father would apprentice me on a boat like that."
"But it's aye a beginnin'," explained the Captain, with remarkable
patience.﹃You must aye start sailorin' some way, and there's many a
man on the brudge of Atlantic liners the day that began on boats no
bigger than the Fital Spark. If you don't believe me, Dougie'll tell
you himsel'. Here, Dougie, catch a haad o' oor new apprentice, and
watch you don't dirty his clean collar wi' your hands.﹄So saying, he
slung Alick down to the mate, and ten minutes later the Vital Spark,
with her new apprentice on board, was coughing her asthmatic way down
the river outward bound for Tarbert. The boy watched the receding wharf
with mixed feelings.
"What do you say to something to eat?" asked the Captain, as soon as
his command was under way. "I'll tell The Tar to boil you an egg, and
you'll have a cup of tea. You're a fine high-spurited boy, and a
growin' boy needs aal the meat he can get. Watch that rope; see and no'
dirty your collar; it would never do to see an apprentice wi' a dirty
collar."
Alick took the tea and the boiled egg, and thought regretfully that
life at sea, so far, was proving very different from what he had
expected. "Where are we bound for?" he asked.
"Oh! a good long trup," said the Captain. "As far as Tarbert and
back again. You'll be an A.B. by the time you come back."
"And will I get wearing brass buttons?" inquired Alick.
"Brass buttons!" exclaimed Para Handy. "Man, they're oot o'date at
sea aalthegither; it's nothing but hooks and eyes, and far less trouble
to keep them clean."
"Can I start learning to climb the mast now?" asked Alick, who was
naturally impatient to acquire the elements of his new profession.
"Climb the mast!" cried Para Handy, horrified. "There wass never an
apprentice did that on my vessel, and never will; it would dirty aal
your hands! I see a shoo'er o' rain oomin'; there's nothing worse for
the young sailor than gettin' damp; away doon below like a good boy,
and rest you, and I'll give you a roar when the rain's past."
Alick went below bewildered. In all the books he had read there had
been nothing to prepare him for such coddling on a first trip to sea;
so far, there was less romance about the business than he could have
found at home in Athole Gardens. It rained all afternoon, and he was
not permitted on deck; jelly "pieces" were sent down to him at
intervals. The Tar was continually boiling him eggs; he vaguely felt
some dreadful indignity in eating them, but his appetite compelled him,
and the climax of the most hum-drum day he had ever spent came at night
when the Captain insisted on his taking gruel to keep off the cold, and
on his fastening his stocking round his neck.
Alick was wakened next morning by The Tar standing at the side of
his bunk with tea on a tray.﹃Apprentices aye get their breakfast in
their bed,﹄said The Tar, who had been carefully coached by the Captain
what he was to do. "Sit up and take this, and then have a nice sleep to
yoursel', for it's like to be rainin' aal day, and you canna get on
deck."
"Surely I can't melt," said the boy, exasperated. "I'll not learn
much seamanship lying here."
"You would maybe get your daith o' cold," said The Tar,﹃and a
nice-like job we would have nursin' you.﹄He turned to go on deck when
an idea that Para Handy had not given him came into his head, and with
great solemnity he said to the boy, "Perhaps you would like to see a
newspaper; we could put ashore and buy wan for you to keep you from
wearyin'."
"I wouldn't object to 'Comic Cuts,'" said Alick, finding the whole
illusion of life on the deep slipping from him.
But "Comic Cuts" did not come down. Instead, there came the Captain
with a frightful and familiar thing--the strapful of school-books to
escape from which Alick had first proposed a sailor's life. Para Handy
had sent to Athole Gardens for them the previous day.
"Shipmate ahoy!" he cried, cheerily stumping down to the fo'c'sle.
"You'll be frightened you left your books behind, but I sent The Tar
for them, and here they are," and, unbuckling the strap, he poured the
unwelcome volumes on the apprentice's lap.
"Who ever heard of an apprentice sailor taking his school-books to
sea with him?" said Alick, greatly disgusted.
"Who ever heard o'anything else?" retorted the Captain. "Do you
think a sailor doesna need any educaation? Every apprentice has to keep
going at his Latin and Greek, and Bills of Parcels, and the height of
Ben Nevis, and Grammar, and aal the rest of it. That's what they call
navigation, and if you havena the navigation, where are you? Chust
that, where are you?"
"Do you meant to tell me that when you were an apprentice you
learned Latin and Greek, and all the rest of that rot?" asked Alick,
amazed.
"Of course I did," said the Captain unblushingly. "Every day till my
heid wass sore!"
"Nature Knowledge, too?" asked Alick.
"Nature Knowledge!" cried Para Handy. "At Nature Knowledge I wass
chust sublime! I could do it with my eyes shut. Chust you take your
books, Alick, like a sailor, and wire into your navigation, and it'll
be the brudge for you aal the sooner."
There were several days of this unromantic life for the boy, who had
confidently expected to find the career of a sea apprentice something
very different. He had to wash and dress himself every morning as
scrupulously as ever he did at home for Kelvinside Academy; Para Handy
said that was a thing that was always expected from apprentices, and he
even went further and sent Alick back to the water-bucket on the ground
that his neck and ears required a little more attention. A certain
number of hours each day, at least, were ostensibly devoted to the
study of "Navigation," which, the boy was disgusted to find, was only
another name for the lessons he had had at the Academy. He was not
allowed on deck when it was wet without an umbrella, which the Captain
had unearthed from somewhere; it was in vain he rebelled against
breakfast in bed, gruel, and jelly "pieces."
"If this is being a sailor, I would sooner be in a Sunday School,"
said Alick finally.
"Och! you're doin' splendid," said Para Handy. "A fine high-spurited
laad! We'll make a sailor of you by the time we're back at Bowling if
you keep your health. It's pretty cold the night; away doon to your
bunk like a smert laad, and The Tar'll take doon a hot-watter bottle
for your feet in a meenute or two."
When the Vital Spark got back to the Clyde, she was not three
minutes at the wharf when her apprentice deserted her.
Para Handy went up to the owner's office in the afternoon with the
boy's school-books and the Saturday-to-Monday bag.
"I don't know how you managed it," said Alick's father, quite
pleased; "but he's back yonder this morning saying a sailor's life's a
fraud, and that he wouldn't be a sailor for any money. And by the
fatness of him, I should say you fed him pretty well."
"Chust that!" said Para Handy. "The Tar would be aye boilin' an egg
for him noo and then. Advice to a boy iss not much use; the only thing
for it iss kindness, chust kindness. If I wass wantin' to keep that boy
at the sailin', I would have taken the rope's-end to him, and he would
be a sailor chust to spite me. There wass some taalk aboot a small rise
in the pay, but och--"
"That's all right, Peter; I've told the cashier," said the owner,
and the Captain of the Vital Spark went down the stair beaming.
XII: QUEER CARGOES
"THE worst cargo ever I sailed wi'," said Macphail the engineer,
"was a wheen o' thae Mahommedan pilgrims: it wasna Eau de Colong they
had on their hankies."
"Mahommedans!" said Para Handy, with his usual Suspicions of the
engineer's foreign experience--"Mahommedans! Where were they bound for?
Was't Kirkintilloch?"
"Kirkintilloch's no' in Mahommeda," said Macphail nastily. "I'm
talkin' aboot rale sailin', no' wyding in dubs, the way some folk does
a' their days."
"Chust that! chust that!" retorted the Captain, sniffing. "I thought
it wass maybe on the Port-Dundas Canal ye had them."
"There was ten or eleeven o' them died every nicht," proceeded
Macphail, contemptuous of these interruptions. "We just gied them the
heave over the side, and then full speed aheid to make up for the seven
meenutes."
"Like enough you would ripe their pockets first," chimed in Dougie.
"The worst cargo ever I sailed with wass leemonade bottles; you could
hear them clinking aal night, and not wan drop of stumulents on board!
It wass duvilish vexing."
"The worst cargo ever I set eyes on," ventured The Tar timidly, in
presence of these hardened mariners, "wass sawdust for stuffing
dolls."
"Sawdust would suit you fine, Colin," said the Captain. "I'll
warrant you got plenty of sleep that trup.
"You're there and you're taalking about cargoes," proceeded Para
Handy, "but there's not wan of you had the experience I had, and that
wass with a cargo of shows for Tarbert Fair. They were to go with a
luggage-steamer, but the luggage-steamer met with a kind of an
accident, and wass late of getting to the Broomielaw: she twisted wan
of her port-holes or something like that, and we got the chob. It's me
that wassna wantin' it, for it wass no credit to a smert boat like the
Fital Spark, but you ken yoursel' what owners iss; they would carry
coal tar made up in delf crates if they get the freight for it."
"I wouldna say but what you're right," remarked Dougie
agreeably.
"A stevedore would go wrong in the mind if he saw the hold of the
vessel efter them showmen got their stuff on board. You would think it
wass a pawnshop struck wi' a sheet o' lightning. There wass everything
ever you saw at a show except the coconuts and the comic polisman. We
started at three o'clock in the mornin', and a lot of the show people
made a bargain to come wi' us to look efter their stuff. There wass the
Fattest Woman in the World, No-Boned Billy or the Boy Serpent, the
Mesmerising Man, another man very namely among the Crowned Heads for
walkin' on stilts, and the heid man o' the shows, a chap they called Mr
Archer. At the last meenute they put on a wee piebald pony that could
pick oot any card you asked from a pack. If you don't believe me,
Macphail, there's Dougie; you can ask him yoursel'."
"You're quite right, Peter," said Dougie emphatically.﹃I'll never
forget it. What are you goin' to tell them aboot the Fair?﹄he added
suspiciously.
"It's a terrible life them show folk has!" resumed the Captain,
without heeding the question. "Only English people would put up with
it; poor craturs, I wass sorry for them! Fancy them goin' aboot from
place to place aal the year roond, wi' no homes! I would a hundred
times sooner be a sailor the way I am. But they were nice enough to us,
and we got on fine, and before you could say 'knife' Dougie wass
flirtin' wi' the Fattest Woman in the World."
"Don't believe him, boys," said the mate, greatly embarrassed. "I
never even kent her Chrustian name."
"When we got the shows discherged at Tarbert, Mr Archer came and
presented us aal with a free pass for everything except the stilts.
'You'll no' need to put on your dress clothes,' says he. He wass a
cheery wee chap, though he wass chust an Englishman. Dougie and me went
ashore and had a royal night of it. I don't know if ever you wass at a
Tarbert Fair, Macphail--you were aye that busy learnin' the names of
the foreign places you say you traivelled to, that you wouldn't have
the time; but I'll warrant you it's worth while seein'. There's things
to be seen there you couldna see the like of in London. Dougie made for
the tent of the mesmeriser and the Fattest Woman in the World whenever
we got there: he thought she would maybe be dancin' or something of
that sort, but aal she did was to sit on a chair and look fat. There
wass a crood roond her nippin' her to make sure she wasna padded, and
when we got in she cried, 'Here's my intended man, Mr Dugald; stand
aside and let him to the front to see his bonny wee rosebud. Dugald,
darling, you see I'm true to you and wearin' your ring yet,' and she
showed the crood a brass ring you could tie boats to."
"She wass a caaution!" said Dougie. "But what's the use of rakin' up
them old stories?"
"Then we went to the place where No-Boned Billy or the Boy Serpent
wass tying himself in knots and jumpin' through girrs. It was truly
sublime! It bates me to know hoo they do it, but I suppose it's chust
educaation."
"It's nothing else," said the mate. "Educaation'll do anything for
you if you take it when you're young, and have the money as weel."
"Every noo and then we would be takin' a gless of yon red lemonade
they sell at aal the Fairs, till Dougie got dizzy and had to go to a
public-house for beer."
"Don't say a word aboot yon," interrupted the mate anxiously.
"It's aal right, Dougie, we're among oorsel's. Weel, as I wass
sayin', when he got the beer, Dougie, right or wrong, wass for goin' to
see the fortune-teller. She wass an Italian-lookin' body that did the
spaein', and for a sixpence she gave Dougie the finest fortune ever you
heard of. He wass to be left a lot of money when he wass fifty-two, and
mairry the dochter of a landed chentleman. But he wass to watch a man
wi' curly hair that would cross his path, and he wass to mind and never
go a voyage abroad in the month o' September. Dougie came out of the
Italian spaewife's in fine trum wi' himsel', and nothing would do him
but another vusit to the Fattest Woman in the World."
"Noo, chust you be canny what you're at next!" again broke in the
mate. "You said you would never tell anybody."
"Who's tellin' anybody?" asked Para Handy impatiently. "I'm only
mentionin' it to Macphail and Colin here. The mesmeriser wass readin'
bumps when we got into the tent, and Dougie wass that full o' the fine
fortune the Italian promised him that he must be up to have his bumps
read. The mesmeriser felt aal the bumps on Dougie's heid, no'
forgettin' the wan he got on the old New Year at Cairndow, and he said
it wass wan of the sublimest heids he ever passed under his hands. 'You
are a sailor,' he said to Dougie, 'but accordin' to your bumps you
should have been a munister. You had a fine, fine heid for waggin'.
There's great strength of will behind the ears, and the back of the
foreheid's packed wi' animosity.'
"When the readin' of the bumps wass done, and Dougie wass nearly
greetin' because his mother didna send him to the College in time, the
mesmeriser said he would put him in a trance, and then he would see
fine fun."
"Stop it, Peter," protested the mate. "If you tell them, I'll never
speak to you again."
Para Handy paid no attention, but went on with his narrative. "He
got Dougie to stare him in the eye the time he wass working his hands
like anything, and Dougie was in a trance in five meenutes. Then the
man made him think he wass a railway train, and Dougie went on his
hands and knees up and doon the pletform whustlin' for tunnels. Efter
that he made him think he wass a singer--and a plank of wud--and a
soger--and a hen. I wass black affronted to see the mate of the Fital
Spark a hen. But the best of the baur was when he took the Fattest
Woman in the World up on the pletform and married her to Dougie in
front of the whole of Tarbert."
"You gave me your word you would never mention it," interrupted the
mate, perspiring with annoyance.
"Then the mesmeriser made Dougie promise he would come back at
twelve o'clock the next day and take his new wife on the honeymoon.
When Dougie wass wakened oot of the trance, he didn't mind ony-thing
aboot it."
"Neither I did," said the mate.
"Next day, at ten meenutes to twelve, when we were makin' ready to
start for the Clyde, my mate here took a kind of a tirrivee, and wass
for the shows again. I saw the dregs of the mesmerism wass on the poor
laad, so I took him and gave him a gill of whisky with sulphur in it,
and whipped him on board the boat and off to the Clyde before the
trance came on at its worst. It never came back."
"Iss that true?" asked The Tar.
"If Dougie wass here--Of course it iss true," said the Captain.
"All I can mind aboot it is the whisky and sulphur," said Dougie.
"That's true enough."
XIII: IN SEARCH OF A WIFE
THE TAR had only got his first week's wages after they were raised a
shilling, when the sense of boundless wealth took possession of him,
and went to his head like glory. He wondered how on earth he could
spend a pound a week. Nineteen shillings were only some loose coins in
your pocket, that always fell through as if they were red-hot: a
pound-note was different, the pleasure of not changing it till maybe
to-morrow was like a wage in itself. He kept the pound-note untouched
for three days, and then dreamed one night that he lost it through a
hole in his pocket. There were really holes in his pockets, a fact that
had never troubled him before; so the idea of getting a wife to mend
them flashed on him. He was alarmed at the notion at first--it was so
much out of his daily routine of getting up and putting on the fire,
and cooking for the crew, and working the winch, and eating and
sleeping--so he put it out of his head; but it always came back when he
thought of the responsibility of a pound a week, so at last he went up
to Para Handy and said to him sheepishly, "I wass thinking to mysel'
yonder that maybe it wouldna be a bad plan for me to be takin' a kind
of a wife."
"Capital! First-rate! Good for you, Colin!" said the Captain. "A
wife's chust the very thing you're needing. Your guernsays iss no
credit to the Fital Spark--indeed they'll be giving the boat a bad
name; and I aalways like to see everything in nice trum aboot her. I
would maybe try wan mysel', but I'm that busy on the boat with wan
thing and another, me being Captain of her, I havena mich time for
keeping a hoose. Butoch! there's no hurry for me; lam chust nine and
two-twenties of years old, no' countin' the year I wass workin' in the
sawmull. What wass the gyurl you were thinkin' on?"
"Och, I didna get that length," said The Tar, getting very red in
the face at having the business rushed like that.
"Weel, you would need to look slippy," said Para Handy. "There's
fellows on shore with white collars on aal the time going aboot picking
up the smert wans."
"I wass chust thinkin' maybe you would hear of somebody aboot Loch
Fyne that would be suitable: you ken the place better nor me."
"I ken every bit of it," said Para Handy, throwing out his chest. "I
wass born aal along this loch-side, and brocht up wi' an auntie. What
kind of a wan would you be wantin'?"
"Och, I would chust leave that to yoursel'," said The Tar. "Maybe if
she had a puckle money it wouldna be any herm."
"Money!" cried the Captain. "You canna be expectin' money wi' the
first. But we'll consuder, Colin. We'll paause and consuder."
Two days later the Vital Spark was going up to Inveraray for a cargo
of timber. Para Handy steering, and singing softly to himself--
"As I gaed up yon Hieland hill, I met a bonny lassie; She looked at
me and I at her, And oh, but she was saucy. With my rolling eye, Fal
tee diddle dye, Rolling eye dum deny, With my rolling eye."
The Tar stood by him peeling potatoes, and the charming domestic
sentiment of the song could not fail to suggest the subject of his
recent thoughts. "Did you have time to consuder yon?" he asked the
Captain, looking up at him with comical coyness.
"Am I no' consudering it as hard as I'm able?" said Para Handy.
"Chust you swept aal them peelin's over the side and no' be spoiling
the boat, my good laad."
"I wass mindin', mysel', of a femily of gyurls called Macphail up in
Easdale, or maybe it wass Luing," said The Tar.
"Macphails!" cried Para Handy. "I never hear the name of Macphail
but I need to scratch mysel'. I wouldna alloo any man on the Fital
Spark to mairry a Macphail, even if she wass the Prunce of Wales. Look
at that man of oors that caals himsel' an enchineer; he's a Macphail,
that's the way he canna help it."
"Och, I wass chust in fun," The Tar hastened to say soothingly. "I
don't think I would care for any of them Macphail gyurls whatever.
Maybe you'll mind of something suitable before long."
Para Handy slapped himself on the knee. "My Chove!" said he, "I have
the very article that would fit you."
"What's--what's her name?" asked The Tar alarmed at the way destiny
seemed to be rushing him into matrimony.
"Man, I don't know," said the Captain, "but she's the laandry-maid
up here in the Shurriff's--chust a regular beauty. I'll take you up and
show her you to-morrow."
"Will we no' be awfu' busy to-morrow?" said The Tar hastily. "Maybe
it would be better to wait till we come back again. There's no' an
awfu' hurry."
"No hurry!" cried the Captain. "It's the poor heid for business you
have, Colin; a gyurl the same as I'm thinkin' on for you will be
snapped up whenever she gets her Mertinmas wages."
"I'm afraid she'll be too cluver for me, her being a laandry-maid,"
said The Tar. "They're aawfu' high-steppers, laandry-maids, and aawfu'
stiff."
"That's wi' working among starch," explained Para Handy. "It'll aal
come oot in the washin'. Not another word, Colin; leave it to me. And
maybe Dougie, och ay, Dougie and me'll see you right."
So keenly did the Captain and Dougie enter into the matrimonial
projects of The Tar that they did not even wait till the morrow, but
set out to interview the young lady that evening. "I'll no' put on my
pea-jecket or my watch-chain in case she might take a fancy to mysel',"
the Captain said to his mate.﹃A man in a good poseetion like me canna
be too caautious.﹄The Tar, at the critical moment, showed the utmost
reluctance to join the expedition. He hummed and hawed, protested he
"didna like," and would prefer that they settled the business without
him; but this was not according to Para Handy's ideas of business, and
ultimately the three set out together with an arrangement that The Tar
was to wait out in the Sheriff's garden while his ambassadors laid his
suit in a preliminary form before a lady he had never set eyes on and
who had never seen him.
There was a shower of rain, and the Captain and his mate had
scarcely been ushered into the kitchen on a plea of﹃important
business﹄by the Captain, than The Tar took shelter in a large wooden
larder at the back of the house.
Para Handy and Dougie took a seat in the kitchen at the invitation
of its single occupant, a stout cook with a humorous eye.
"It was the laandry-maid we were wantin' to see, mem," said the
Captain, ducking his head forward several times and grinning widely to
inspire confidence and create a genial atmosphere without any loss of
time. "We were chust passing the door, and we thought we would give her
a roar in the by-going."
"You mean Kate?" asked the cook.
"Ay! chust that, chust that--Kate," said the Captain, beaming warmly
till his whiskers curled. "Hoo's the Shurriff keeping himsel'?" he
added as an afterthought. "Iss he in good trum them days?" And he
winked expansively at the cook.
"Kate's not in," said the domestic. "She'll be back in a while if
you wait."
The Captain's face fell for a moment.﹃Och perhaps you'll do fine
yoursel',﹄said he cordially, at last. "We have a fellow yonder on my
boat that's come into some money, and what iss he determined on but to
get married? He's aawfu' backward, for he never saw much Life except
the Tarbert Fair, and he asked us to come up here and put in a word for
him."
"Is that the way you do your courtin' on the coal-gabbarts?" said
the cook, greatly amused.
"Coal-gaabert!" cried Para Handy, indignant. "There iss no
coal-gaabert in the business; I am the Captain of the Fital Spark, the
smertest steamboat in the coastin' tred--"
"And I'm no' slack mysel'; I'm the mate," said Dougie, wishing he
had brought his trump.
"He must be a soft creature not to speak for himself," said the
cook.
"Never mind that," said the Captain; "are you game to take him?"
The cook laughed. "What about yoursel'?" she asked chaffingly, and
the Captain blenched.
"Me!" he cried. "I peety the wumman that would mairry me. If I wass
not here, Dougie would tell you--would you no', Dougie?--I'm a fair
duvvle for high jeenks. Forbye, I'm sometimes frightened for my
health."
"And what is he like, this awfu' blate chap?" asked the cook.
"As smert a laad as ever stepped," protested Para Handy. "Us sailors
iss sometimes pretty wild; it's wi' followin' the sea and fightin'
hurricanes, here the day and away yesterday; but Colin iss ass dacent a
laad ass ever came oot of Knapdale if he wass chust letting himself go.
Dougie himsel' will tell you."
"There's nothing wrong wi' the fellow," said Dougie. "A fine riser
in the mornin'."
"And for cookin', there's no' his equal," added the Captain.
"It seems to me it's my mistress you should have asked for," said
the cook; "she's advertising for a scullery-maid." But this sarcasm
passed over the heads of the eager ambassadors.
"Stop you!" said the Captain,﹃and I'll take him in himsel'; he's
oot in the garden waiting on us.﹄And he and the mate went outside.
"Colin!" cried Para Handy,﹃come away and be engaged, like a smert
laad.﹄But there was no answer, and it was after considerable searching
they discovered the ardent suitor sound asleep in the larder.
"It's no' the laandry-maid; but it's a far bigger wan," explained
the Captain. "She's chust sublime. Aal you have to do now is to come in
and taalk nice to her."
The Tar protested he couldn't talk to her unless he had some
conversation lozenges. Besides, it was the laundry-maid he had arranged
for, not the cook.
"She'll do fine for a start; a fine gyurl," the Captain assured him,
and with some difficulty they induced The Tar to go with them to the
back-door, only to find it emphatically shut in their faces.
"Let us paause and consuder, what day iss this?" asked the Captain,
when the emphasis of the rebuff had got time to sink into his
understanding.
"Friday," said Dougie.
"Tuts! wass I not sure of it? It's no' a lucky day for this kind of
business. Never mind, Colin, we'll come to-morrow when the
laandry-maid's in, and you'll bring a poke of conversation lozenges.
You mustna be so stupid, man; you were awfu' tumid!"
"I wasna a bit tumid, but I wasna in trum," said The Tar, who was
walking down to the quay with a curious and unusual straddle.
"And what for would you not come at wance when I cried you in?"
asked the Captain.
"Because," said The Tar pathetically, "I had a kind of an accident
yonder in the larder: I sat doon on a basket of country eggs."
XIV: PARA HANDY'S PIPER
IF you haven't been at your favourite coast resort except at the
time of summer holidays, you don't know much about it. At other seasons
of the year it looks different, smells different, and sounds
different--that is, when there's any sound at all in it. In those
dozing, dreamy days before you come down with your yellow tin trunk or
your kit-bag, there's only one sound in the morning in the coast
resort--the sizzling of frying herring. If it is an extra lively day,
you may also hear the baker's van-driver telling a dead secret to the
deaf bellman at the other end of the village, and the cry of sea-gulls.
Peace broods on that place then like a benediction, and (by the odour)
some one is having a sheep's head singed at the smithy.
I was standing one day on Brodick quay with Para Handy when the
place looked so vacant, and was so quiet we unconsciously talked in
whispers for fear of wakening somebody. The Vital Spark shared the
peace of that benign hour: she nodded idly at the quay, her engineer
half asleep with a penny novelette in his hands; The Tar, sound asleep
and snoring, unashamed, with his back against the winch; Dougie, the
mate, smoking in silent solemnity, and occasionally scratching his
nose, otherwise you would have taken him for an ingenious automatic
smoking-machine, set agoing by putting a penny in the slot. If anybody
had dropped a postage-stamp in Brodick that day, it would have sounded
like a dynamite explosion. It was the breakfast hour.
Suddenly a thing happened that seemed to rend the very heavens: it
was the unexpected outburst of a tinker piper, who came into sight
round the corner of a house, with his instrument in the preliminary
stages of the attack.
"My Chove!" said Para Handy, "isn't that fine? Splendid
aalthegither!"
"What's your favourite instrument?" I asked.
"When Dougie's in trum it's the trump," said he in a low voice, lest
the mate (who was certainly very vain of his skill on the trump--that
is to say, the Jew's harp) should hear him; "but, man! for gaiety, the
pipes. They're truly sublime! A trump's fine for small occasions, but
for style you need the pipes. And good pipers iss difficult nooadays to
get; there's not many in it. You'll maybe can get a kind of a plain
piper going aboot the streets of Gleska noo and then, but they're like
the herrin', and the turnips, and rhubarb, and things like that--you
don't get them fresh in Gleska; if you want them at their best, you
have to go up to the right Hielands and pull them on the tree. You ken
what I mean yoursel'."
And the Captain of the Vital Spark widely opened his mouth and
inhaled the sound of the bagpipe with an air of great refreshment.
"That's 'The Barren Rocks of Aden' he iss on now," he informed me by
and by. "I can tell by the sound of it. Oh, music! music! it's me
that's fond of it. It makes me feel that droll I could bound over the
mountains, if you understand. Do you know that I wance had a piper of
my own?"
"A piper of your own!"
"Ay, chust that, a piper of my own, the same ass if I wass the
Marquis of Bute. You'll be thinkin' I couldna afford it," Para Handy
went on, smiling slyly, "but a MacFarlane never wass bate. Aal the fine
gentry hass their piper that plays to them in the momin' to put them
up, and goes playin' roond the table at dinner-time when there's any
English vusitors there, and let them chust take it! It serves them
right; they should stay in their own country. My piper wass a
Macdonald."
"You mean one of the tinker pipers?" I said mischievously, for I
knew a tribe of tinker pipers of that name.
Para Handy was a little annoyed. "Well," he said, "I wouldna deny
but he wass a kind of a tinker, but he wass in the Militia when he wass
workin', and looked quite smert when he wass sober."
"How long did you keep the piper?" I asked, really curious about
this unexpected incident in the Captain's career.
"Nearly a whole day," he answered. "Whiles I kept him and whiles he
wass going ashore for a dram.
"To let you understand, it wass the time of the fine fushin's in
Loch Fyne, and I had a cousin yonder that wass gettin' married at
Kilfinan. The weddin' wass to be on a Friday, and I wass passin' up the
loch with a cargo of salt, when my cousin hailed me from the shore, and
came oot in a small boat to speak to me.
"'Peter,' he said to me, quite bashful, 'they're sayin' I'm goin' to
get mairried on Friday, and I'm lookin' for you to be at the
thing.'
"'You can depend on me bein' there, Dougald,' I assured him. 'It
would be a poor thing if the Macfarlanes would not stick by wan another
at a time of trial.'
"'Chust that!' said my cousin; 'there's to be sixteen hens on the
table and plenty of refreshment. What's botherin' me iss that there's
not a piper in Kilfinan. I wass thinkin' that maybe between this and
Friday you would meet wan on your trevels, and take him back with you
on your shup.'
"'Mercy on us! You would think it wass a parrot from foreign perts I
wass to get for you,' I said. 'But I'll do my best.' and off we went. I
watched the hillsides aal the way up the loch to see if I could see a
piper; but it wass the time of the year when there's lots of work at
the hay, and the pipers wass keepin' oot of sight, till I came to
Caimdow. Dougie and me wass ashore at Caimdow in the mornin', when we
saw this Macdonald I'm telling you aboot standin' in front of the Inns
with pipes under his oxter. He wass not playin' them at the time. I
said to him, 'There's a weddin' yonder at Kilfinan to-morrow, that
they're wantin' a piper for. What would you take to come away doon on
my vessel and play for them?'
"'Ten shillin's and my drink,' he said, as quick as anything.
"'Say five and it's a bargain,' I said; and he engaged himself on
the spot. He wass a great big fellow with a tartan trooser and a
cocketty bonnet, and oh, my goodness! but his hair wass rud! I couldna
but offer him a dram before we left Caimdow, for we were startin' there
and then, but he wouldna set foot in the Inns, and we went on board the
Fital Spark withoot anything at all, and started doon the loch. I
thought it wass a droll kind of a piper I had that would lose a
chance.
"When we would be a mile or two on the passage, I said to him,
'Macdonald, tune up your pipes and give us the Macfarlanes' Merch.'
"He said he didna know the Macfarlanes had a Merch, but would do the
best he could by the ear, and he began to screw the bits of his pipes
together. It took him aboot an hour, and by that time we were off
Strachur.
"'Stop you the boat,' he said, 'I'll need to get ashore a meenute to
get something to soften the bag of this pipes; it's ass hard ass a bit
of stick.'
"'You can get oil from the enchineer,' I said to him.
"'Oil!' said he; 'do you think it's a clock I'm mendin'? No, no;
there's nothing will put a pipe bag in trum but some treacle poured in
by the stock.'
"Well, we went ashore and up to the Inns, and he asked if they could
give him treacle for his bagpipes. They said they had none. 'Weel,'
said he, 'next to that the best thing for it iss whusky--give me a gill
of the best, and the Captain here will pay for it; I'm his piper.' He
got the gill, and what did he do but pour a small sensation of it into
the inside of his pipes and drink the rest? 'It comes to the same thing
in the long-run,' said he, and we got aboard again, and away we
started.
"'There's another tune I am very fond of,' I said to him, watchin'
him workin' away puttin' his drones in order. 'It's "The 93rd's
Farewell to Gibraltar.'"
"'I ken it fine,' he said, 'but I don't ken the tune. Stop you, and
I'll give you a trate if I could get this cursed pipe in order. What
aboot the dinner?'
"The dinner wass nearly ready, so he put the pipes past till he wass
done eatin', and then he had a smoke, and by the time that wass done we
were off Lochgair. 'That puts me in mind,' said he; 'I wonder if I
could get a chanter reed from Maclachlan the innkeeper? He plays the
pipes himself. The chanter reed I have iss bad, and I would like to do
the best I could at your cousin's weddin'.'
"We stopped, and Dougie went ashore in the smaal boat with him, and
when they came back in half-an-hour the piper said it wass a peety, but
the innkeeper wasna a piper efter aal, and didna have a reed, but maybe
we would get wan in Ardrishaig.
"'We're no' goin' to Ardrishaig, we're goin' to Kilfinan,' I told
him, and he said he couldna help it, but we must make for Ardrishaig,
right or wrong, for he couldna play the pipes right withoot a new reed.
'When you hear me playing,' he said, 'you will be glad you took the
trouble. There iss not my equal in the three parishes,' and, man, but
his hair wass rud, rod!
"We wouldna be half-an-oor oot from Lochgair when he asked if the
tea would soon be ready. He wass that busy puttin' his pipes in order,
he said, he was quite fatigued. Pipers iss like canaries, you have to
keep them going weel with meat and drink if you want music from them.
We gave him his tea, and by the time it wass finished we were off
Ardrishaig, and he made me put her in there to see if he could get a
reed for his chanter. Him and Dougie went ashore in the smaal boat.
Dougie came back in an oor wi' his hair awfu' tousy and nobody wi'
him.
"'Where's my piper?' I said to him.
"'Man, it's terrible!' said Dougie; 'the man's no a piper at aal,
and he's away on the road to Kilmertin. When he wass standin' at
Caimdow Inns yonder, he was chust holdin' the pipes for a man that wass
inside for his mornin', and you and me'll maybe get into trouble for
helpin' him to steal a pair o' pipes.'
"That wass the time I kept a piper of my own," said Para Handy, in
conclusion. "And Dougie had to play the trump to the dancin' at my
cousin's weddin'."
XV: THE SAILORS AND THE SALE
PARA HANDY'S great delight was to attend farm sales.﹃A sale's a
sublime thing,﹄he said,﹃for if you don't like a thing you don't need
to buy it. It's at the sales a good many of the other vessels in the
tred get their sailors.﹄This passion for sales was so strong in him
that if there was one anywhere within twelve miles of any port the
Vital Spark was lying at, he would lose a tide or risk demurrage rather
than miss it. By working most part of a night he got a cargo of coals
discharged at Lochgoilhead one day in time to permit of his attending a
displenishing sale ten miles away. He and the mate, Dougie, started in
a brake that was conveying people to the sale; they were scarcely
half-way there when the Captain sniffed.
"Hold on a meenute and listen, Dougie," said he. "Do you no' smell
anything?"
Dougie sniffed too, and his face was lit up by a beautiful smile as
of one who recognises a friend. "It's not lemon kali at any rate," he
said knowingly, and chuckled in his beard.
"Boys!" said the Captain, turning round to address the other
passengers in the brake, who were mainly cattle dealers and
farmers--"Boys! this iss going to be a majestic sale; we're five miles
from the place and I can smell the whisky already."
At that moment the driver of the brake bent to look under his seat,
and looked up again with great vexation written on his countenance.
"Isn't it not chust duvvelish?" he said. "Have I not gone away and put
my left foot through a bottle of good spurits I wass bringing up wi' me
in case anybody would take ill through the night."
"Through the night!" exclaimed one of the farmers, who was plainly
not long at the business. "What night are you taalking aboot?"
"This night," replied the driver promptly.
"But surely we'll be back at Lochgoilhead before night?" said the
farmer, and all the others in the coach looked at him with mingled pity
and surprise.
"It's a term sale we're going to, and not a rent collection," said
the driver. "And there's thirty-six gallons of ale ordered for it, no'
to speak of refreshments. If we're home in time for breakfast from this
sale it's me that'll be the bonny surprised man, I'm telling you."
At these farm sales old custom demands that food and drink should be
supplied "ad lib." by the outgoing tenant. It costs money, but it is a
courtesy that paya in the long-run, for if the bidding hangs fire a
brisk circulation of the refreshments stimulates competition among the
buyers, and adds twenty per cent to the price of stots. It would be an
injustice to Para Handy and Dougie to say they attended sales from any
consideration of this sort; they went because of the high jeenks. At
the close of the day sometimes they found that they had purchased a
variety of things not likely to be of much use on board a
steam-lighter, as on the occasion when Dougie bought the rotary
churn.
"Keep away from the hoosehold furniture aaltogither!" said the
Captain, this day. "We have too mich money in oor pockets between us,
and it'll be safer no' to be in sight of the unctioneer till the beasts
iss on, for we'll no' be tempted to buy beasts."
"I would buy an elephant for the fun of the thing, let alone a coo
or two," said Dougie.
"That's put me in mind," said the Captain, "there's a cousin of my
own yonder in Kilfinan wantin' a milk coo for the last twelvemonth; if
I saw a bargain maybe I would take it. But we'll do nothing rash,
Dougie, nothing rash; maybe we're chust sailors, but we're no' daft
aalthegither."
By this time they were standing on the outside of a crowd of
prospective purchasers interested in a collection of farm utensils and
household sundries, the disposal of which preceded the rouping of the
beasts. The forenoon was chilly; the chill appeared to affect the mood
of the crowd, who looked coldly on the chain harrows, tumip-cutters,
and other articles offered to them at prices which the auctioneer said
it broke his heart to mention, and it was to instil a little warmth
into the proceedings that a handy man with red whiskers went round with
refreshments on a tray.
"Streetch your hand and take a gless," he said to the Captain.
"It'll do you no herm."
"Man, I'm not mich oaring for it," drawled the Captain. "I had wan
yesterday. What do you think, Dougie? Would it do any herm chust to
take wan gless to show we're freendly to the sale of impliments and
things?"
"Whatever you say yoursel'," replied Dougie diffidently, but at the
same time grasping the glass nearest him with no uncertain hand.
"Weel, here's good prices!" said the Captain, fixing to another
glass, and after that the sun seemed to come out with a genial
glow.
The lamentable fact must be recorded that before the beasts came up
to the hammer the mate of the Vital Spark had become possessor of a
pair of curling-stones--one of them badly chipped--a Dutch hoe, and a
baking-board.
"What in the world are you going to do with that trash?" asked the
Captain, returning from a visit to the outhouse where the ale was, to
find his mate with the purchases at his feet.
"Och! it's aal right," said Dougie, cocking his eye at him. "I
wassna giving a docken for the things mysel', but I saw the unctioneer
aye look-looking at me, and I didna like no' to take nothing. It's
chust, as you might say, for the good of the hoose. Stop you and you'll
see some fun."
"But it's a rideeculous thing buying curling-stones at this time of
the year, and you no' a curler. What?"
Dougie scratched his neck and looked at his purchases.﹃They didn't
cost mich,﹄he said; "and they're aye handy to have aboot you."
When the cattle came under the hammer it was discovered that prices
were going to be very low. All the likely buyers seemed to be
concentrated round the beer-barrel in the barn, with the result that
stots, queys, cows, and calves were going at prices that brought the
tears to the auctioneer's eyes. He hung so long on the sale of one
particular cow for which he could only squeeze out offers up to five
pounds that Para Handy took pity on him, and could not resist giving a
nod that put ten shillings on to its price and secured the animal.
"Name, please?" said the auctioneer, cheering up wonderfully.
"Captain Macfarlane," said Para Handy, and, very much distressed at
his own impetuosity, took his mate aside.﹃There you are, I bought your
coo for you,﹄he said to Dougie.
"For me!" exclaimed his mate. "What in the world would I be doing
with a coo?"
"You said yoursel' you would take a coo or two for the fun o' the
thing," said Para Handy.
"When I'm buying coos I'm buying them by my own word o' mooth; you
can chust keep it for your cousin in Kilfinan. If I wass buyin' a coo
it wouldna be wan you could hang your hat on in fifty places. No, no,
Peter, I'm Hielan', but I'm no' so Hielan' ass aal that."
"My goodness!" said Para Handy, "this iss the scrape! I will have to
be taking her to Lochgoilhead, and hoisting her on the vessel, and
milking her, and keeping her goodness knows what time till I'll have a
cargo the length of Kilfinan. Forbye, my cousin and me's no' speakin'
since Whitsunday last."
"Go up to the unctioneer and tell him you didna buy it at aal, that
you were only noddin' because you had a tight collar," suggested the
mate, and the Captain acted on the suggestion; but the auctioneer was
not to be taken in by any such story, and Para Handy and his mate were
accordingly seen on the road to Lochgoil late that night with a cow,
the possession of which took all the pleasure out of their day's
outing. Dougie's curling-stones, hoe, and baking-board were to follow
in a cart.
It was a long time after this before the Vital Spark had any
occasion to go to Lochgoilhead. Macphail the engineer had only to
mention the name of the place and allude casually to the price of beef
or winter feeding, and the Captain would show the most extraordinary
ill-temper. The fact was he had left his purchase at a farmer's at
Lochgoil to keep for him till called for, and he never liked to think
upon the day of reckoning. But the Vital Spark had to go to
Lochgoilhead sooner or later, and the first time she did so the Captain
went somewhat mournfully up to the farm where his cow was being kept
for him.
"It's a fine day; hoo's the mustress?" he said to the farmer, who
showed some irritation at never having heard from the owner of the cow
for months.
"Fine, but what aboot your coo, Peter?"
"My Chove! iss she living yet?" said the Captain. "I'll be due you a
penny or two."
"Five pounds, to be exact; and it'll be five pounds ten at the end
of next month."
"Chust the money I paid for her," said Para Handy.﹃Chust you keep
her for me till the end of next month, and then pay yoursel' with her
when my account iss up to the five pound ten,﹄a bargain which was
agreed on; and so ended Para Handy's most expensive high jeenk.
XVI: A NIGHT ALARM
THE wheel of the Vital Spark was so close to the engines that the
Captain could have given his orders in a whisper, but he was so proud
of the boat that he liked to sail her with all the honours, so he
always used the knocker. He would catch the brass knob and give one,
two, or three knocks as the circumstances demanded, and then put his
mouth to the speaking-tube and cry coaxingly down to the engineer,
"Stop her, Dan, when you're ready." That would be when she was a few
lengths off the quay. Dan, the engineer, never let on he heard the
bell; he was very fond of reading penny novelettes, and it was only
when he was spoken to soothingly down the tube that he would put aside
'Lady Winifred's Legacy,' give a sigh, and stop his engine. Then he
would stand upright--which brought his head over the level of the deck,
and beside the Captain's top-boots--wiping his brow with a piece of
waste the way real engineers do on the steamers that go to America. His
great aim in taking a quay was to suggest to anybody hanging about it
that it was frightfully hot in the engine-room--just like the Red
Sea--while the fact was that most of the time there was a draught in
the engine-room of the Vital Spark that would keep a cold store going
without ice.
When he stuck up his head he always said to the Captain, "You're aye
wantin' something or other; fancy goin' awa' and spoilin' me in the
middle o' a fine baur."
"I'm sorry, Dan," Para Handy would say to him in an agony of
remorse, for he was afraid of the engineer because that functionary had
once been on a ship that made a voyage to Australia, and used to say he
had killed a man in the Bush. When he was not sober it was two men, and
he would weep. "I'm sorry, Dan, but I did not know you would be busy."
Then he would knock formally to reverse the engine, and cry down the
tube, "Back her, Dan, when you're ready; there's no hurry," though the
engineer was, as I have said, so close that he could have put his hand
on his head.
Dan drew in his head, did a bit of juggling with the machinery, and
resumed his novelette at the place where Lady Winifred lost her jewels
at the ball. There was something breezy in the way he pulled in his
head and moved in the engine-room that disturbed the Captain.﹃Dan's
no' in good trum the day,﹄he would say, in a hoarse whisper to the
mate Dougie under these circumstances. "You daurna say wan word to him
but he flies in a tiravee."
"It's them cursed novelles," was always Dougie's explanation; "they
would put any man wrong in the heid, let alone an enchineer. If it wass
me wass skipper of this boat, I wadna be so soft with him, I'll assure
you."
"Ach, you couldna be hard on the chap and him a Macphail," said the
Captain. "There wass never any holdin' o' them in. He's an aawful
fellow for high jeenks; he killed a man in the Bush."
One afternoon the Vital Spark came into Tarbert with a cargo of
coals that could not be discharged till the morning, for Sandy
Sinclair's horse and cart were engaged at a country funeral. The
Captain hinted at repainting a strake or two of the vessel, but his
crew said they couldn't be bothered, forbye Dougie had three shillings;
so they washed their faces after tea and went up the town. Peace
brooded on the Vital Spark, though by some overlook Macphail had left
her with almost a full head of steam. Sergeant Macleod, of the
constabulary, came down when she lay deserted. "By Cheorge!" said he to
himself,﹃them fellows iss coing to get into trouble this night, I'm
tellin' you,﹄for he knew the Vital Spark of old. He drew his tippit
more firmly about him, breathed hard, and went up the town to survey
the front of all the public-houses. Peace brooded on the Vital Spark--a
benign and beautiful calm.
It was ten o'clock at night when her crew returned. They came down
the quay in a condition which the most rigid moralist could only have
described as jovial, and went to their bunks in the fo'c'sle. A
drizzling rain was falling. That day the Captain had mounted a new cord
on the steam whistle, so that he could blow it by a jerk from his
position at the wheel. It was drawn back taut, and the free end of it
was fastened to a stanchion. As the night passed and the rain continued
falling, the cord contracted till at last it acted on the whistle,
which opened with a loud and oroupy hoot that rang through the harbour
and over the town. Otherwise peace still brooded on the Vital Spark. It
took fifteen minutes to waken the Captain, and he started up in wild
alarm. His crew were snoring in the light of a small globe lamp, and
the engineer had a 'Family Herald Supplement' on his chest.
"That's either some duvvlement of somebody's or a warnin'," said
Para Handy, half irritated, half in superstitious alarm. "Dougie, are
you sleepin'?"
"What would I be here for if I wass not sleepin'?" said Dougie.
"Go up like a smert laad and see who's meddlin' my whustle."
"I canna," said Dougie; "I havena but the wan o' my boots on. Send
up The Tar."
The Tar was so plainly asleep from his snoring that it seemed no use
to tackle him. The Captain looked at him. "Man!" he said,﹃he hass a
nose that minds me o' a winter day, it's so short and dirty. He would
be no use any way. It's the enchineer's chob, but I daurna waken him,
he's such a man for high jeenks.﹄And still the whistle waked the
echoes of Tarbert.
"If I wass skipper of this boat I would show him," said Dougie,
turning in his bunk, but showing no sign of any willingness to turn
out. "Give him a roar, Peter, or throw the heel of yon pan loaf at
him."
"I would do it in a meenute if he wasna a Macphail," said the
Captain, distracted.﹃He wance killed a man in the Bush. But he's the
enchineer; the whustle's in his department. Maybe if I spoke nice to
him he would see aboot it. Dan!﹄he cried softly across the fo'c'sle to
the man with the 'Family Herald Supplement' on his chest--"Dan, show a
leg, like a good laad, and go up and stop that cursed whustle."
"Are you speakin' to me?" said the engineer, who was awake all the
time.
"I was chust makin' a remark," explained the Captain hurriedly.
"It's not of any great importance, but there's a whustle there, and
it's wakin' the whole toon of Tarbert. If you werena awfu' throng
sleepin', you might take a bit turn on dake and see what is't. Chust
when you're ready, Dan, chust when you're ready."
Dan ostentatiously turned on his side and loudly went to sleep
again. And the whistle roared louder than ever.
The Captain began to lose his temper.﹃Stop you till I get back to
Bowling,﹄he said, "and I'll give every man of you the whole
jeeng-bang, and get rale men for the Fital Spark. Not a wan of you iss
worth a spittle in the hour of dancher and trial. Look at Macphail
there tryin' to snore like an enchineer with a certeeficate, and him
only a fireman! I am not a bit frightened for him; I do not believe he
ever killed a man in the Bush at aal--he hass not the game for it; I'll
bate you he never wass near Australia--and what wass his mother but wan
of the Macleans of Kenmore? Chust that; wan of the Macleans of Kenmore!
Him and his pride! If I had my Sunday clothes on I would give him my
opeenion. And there you are, Dougie! I thocht you were a man and not a
mice. You are lying there in your ignorance, and never wass the length
of Ullapool. Look at me--on the vessels three over twenty years, and
twice wrecked in the North at places that's not on the maps."
The two worthies thus addressed paid no attention and snored with
suspicious steadiness, and the Captain turned his attention to The
Tar.
"Colin!" he said more quietly,﹃show a leg, like a cluvver fellow,
and go up and put on the fire for the breakfast.﹄But The Tar made no
response, and in the depth of the fo'c'sle Para Handy's angry voice
rose up again, as he got out of his bunk and prepared to pull on some
clothes and go up on deck himself.
"Tar by by-name and Tar by nature!" said he. "You will stick to your
bed that hard they could not take you off without half-a-pound of saalt
butter. My goodness! have I not a bonny crew? You are chust a wheen of
crofters. When the owners of vessels wass wantin' men like you, they go
to the Kilmichael cattle-market and drag you down with a rope to the
seaside. You will not do the wan word I tell you. I'll wudger I'll not
hammer down to you again, Dan, or use the speakin'-tube, the same ass
if you were a rale enchineer; I'll chust touch you with the toe of my
boot when I want you to back her, mind that! There iss not a finer nor
a faster vessel than the Fital Spark in the tred; she iss chust
sublime, and you go and make a fool of her with your drinking and your
laziness and your ignorance."
He got up on deck in a passion, to find a great many Tarbert people
running down the quay to see what was wrong, and Sergeant Macleod at
the head of them.
"Come! come! Peter, what iss this whustlin' for on a wet night like
this at two o'clock in the mornin'?" asked the sergeant, with a foot on
the bulwark. "What are you blow-blow-blowin' at your whustle like that
for?"
"Chust for fun," said the Captain. "I'm a terrible fellow for high
jeenks. I have three fine stots from the Kilmichael market down below
here, and they canna sleep unless they hear a whustle."
"The man's in the horrors!" said the sergeant in a whisper to some
townsmen beside him on the quay. "I must take him to the lock-up and
make a case of him, and it's no' a very nice chob, for he's ass strong
ass a horse. Wass I not sure there would be trouble when I saw the
Fital Spark the day? It must be the lock-up for him, and maybe
Lochgilphead, but it iss a case for deleeberation and caaution--great
caaution.
"Captain Macfarlane," he said in a bland voice to the Captain, who
stood defiant on the deck, making no attempt to stop the whistling. "Mr
Campbell the banker wass wantin' to see you for a meenute up the toon.
Chust a meenute! He asked me to come doon and tell you."
"What will the banker be wantin' wi' me?" said the Captain, cooling
down and suspecting nothing. "It's a droll time o' night to be sendin'
for onybody."
"So it is, Captain Macfarlane," admitted the constable mildly. "I do
not know exactly what he wants, but it iss in a great hurry. He said he
would not keep you wan meenute. I think it will be to taalk about your
cousin Cherlie's money."
"I'll go wi' you whenever I get on my bonnet," said the Captain,
preparing to go below.
"Never mind your bonnet; it iss chust a step or two, and you'll be
back in five meenutes," said the sergeant; and, thus cajoled, the
Captain of the Vital Spark, having cut the cord and stopped the
whistle, went lamb-like to the police office.
Peace fell again upon the Vital Spark.
XVII: A DESPERATE CHARACTER
THOUGH Para Handy went, like a lamb, with Sergeant Macleod, he had
not to suffer the ignominy of the police office, for the sergeant found
out on the way that the Captain belonged to the Wee Free, and that made
a great deal of difference. Instead of putting the mariner into a cell,
he took him into his own house, made a summary investigation into the
cause of the whistling of the Vital Spark, found the whole thing was an
accident, dismissed the accused without a stain on his character, gave
him a dram, and promised to take him down a pair of white hares for a
present before the vessel left Tarbert.
"I am glad to see you belong to the right Church, Peter," he said.
"Did I not think you were chust wan of them unfuduls that carries the
rud-edged hime-books and sits at the prayer, and here you are chust a
dacent Christian like mysel'. My goodness! It shows you a man cannot be
too caautious. Last year there wass but a small remnant of us
Christians to the fore here--myself and Macdougall the merchant, and
myself and the Campbells up in Clonary Farm, and myself and the
steamboat aagent, and myself and my cousins at Dunmore; but it'll be
changed days when we get a ha'ad o' the church. They'll be sayin'
there's no hell; we'll show them, I'll assure you! We are few, but
firm--firm; there's no bowin' of the knee with us, and many a pair of
white hares I'll be gettin' from the Campbells up in Clonary. I have
chust got to say the word that wan of the rale old Frees iss in a
vessel at the quay, and there will be a pair of white hares doon for
you to-morrow."
"I'm a staunch Free," said Para Handy, upsetting his glass, which by
this time had hardly a drop left in it. "Tut! tut!" he exclaimed
apologetically, "it's a good thing I never broke the gless. Stop! Stop!
stop in a meenute; I'm sure I'm no needin'any more. But it's a cold wet
nicht, whatever. I'm a staunch Free. I never had a hime-book on board
my boat; if Dougie wass here he would tell you."
"You'll no' get very often to the church, wi' you goin' about from
place to place followin' the sea?" said the sergeant.
"That's the worst of it," said Para Handy, heaving a tremendous
sigh. "There's no mich fun on a coal vessel; if it wasna the Fital
Spark wass the smertest in the tred, and me the skipper of her, I would
mairry a fine strong wife and start a business. There wass wan time
yonder, when I wass younger, I wass very keen to be a polisman."
"The last chob!" cried the sergeant. "The very last chob on earth!
You would be better to be trapping rabbits. It iss not an occupation
for any man that has a kind he'rt, and I have a he'rt mysel' that's no
slack in that direction, I'm tellin' you. Many a time I'll have to take
a poor laad in and cherge him, and he'll be fined, and it's mysel'
that's the first to get the money for his fine."
"Do you tell me you pay the fine oot of your own pocket?" asked Para
Handy, astonished.
"Not a bit of it; I have aal my faculties about me. I go roond and
raise a subscruption," explained the sergeant. "I chust go roond and
say the poor laad didna mean any herm, and his mother wass a weedow,
and it iss aal right, och aye! it iss aal right at wance wi' the folk
in Tarbert. Kind, kind he'rts in Tarbert--if there's any lushing. But
the polis iss no chob for a man like me. Still and on it's a good pay,
and the uniform, and a fine pair of boots, and an honour, so I'm no'
complaining. Not a bit!"
Para Handy put up his hand with his customary gesture to scratch his
ear, but as usual thought better of it, and sheered off.﹃Do you ken
oor Dougie?﹄he asked.
"Iss it your mate?" replied the constable. "They're telling me aboot
him, but I never had him in my hands."
"It's easy seen you're no' long in Tarbert," said the Captain. "He
wass wan time namely here for makin' trouble; but that wass before he
wass a kind of a Rechabite. Did you hear aboot him up in Castlebay in
Barra?"
"No," said the sergeant.
"Dougie will be aye bouncin' he wass wan time on the yats, and
wearing a red night-kep aal the time, and whitening on his boots, the
same ass if he wass a doorstep, but, man! he's tumid, tumid! If there's
a touch of a gale he starts at his prayers, and says he'll throw his
trump over the side. He can play the trump sublime--reels and things
you never heard the like of; and if he wass here, and him in trum, it's
himself would show you. But when the weather's scoury, and the Fital
Spark not at the quay, he'll make up his mind to live a better life,
and the first thing that he's going to stop's the trump. 'Hold you on,
Dougie,' I'll be sayin' to him; 'don't do anything desperate till we
see if the weather'll no lift on the other side of Minard.' It's a long
way from Oban out to Barra; many a man that hass gold braid on his kep
in the Clyde never went so far, but it's nothing at aal to the Fital
Spark. But Dougie does not like that trup at aal, at aal. Give him
Bowling to Blairmore in the month of Aagust, and there's no' a finer
sailor ever put on oilskins."
"Och, the poor fellow!" said the sergeant, with true sympathy.
"Stop you!" proceeded Para Handy. "When we would be crossing the
Munch, Dougie would be going to sacrifice his trump, and start
releegion every noo and then; but when we had the vessel tied to the
quay at Castlebay, the merchants had to shut their shops and make a
holiday."
"My Chove! do you tell me?" cried the sergeant.
"If Dougie was here himsel' he would tell you," said the Captain.
"It needed but the wan or two drams, and Dougie would start walkin' on
his heels to put an end to Castlebay. There iss not many shops in the
place aaltogither, and the shopkeepers are aal MacNeils, and cousins to
wan another; so when Dougie was waalkin' on his heels and in trum for
high jeenks, they had a taalk together, and agreed it would be better
chust to put on the shutters."
"Isn't he the desperate character!" said the constable. "Could they
no' have got the polis?"
"There's no a polisman in the island of Barra," said Para Handy. "If
there wass any need for polismen they would have to send to Lochmaddy,
and it would be two or three days before they could put Dougie on his
trial. Forbye, they kent Dougie fine; they hadna any ill-wull to the
laad, and maybe it wass a time there wasna very mich business doin'
anyway. When Dougie would find the shops shut he would be as vexed as
anything, and make for the school. He would go into the school and give
the children a lecture on music and the curse of drink, with
illustrations on the trump. At last they used to shut the school, too,
and give the weans a holiday, whenever the Fital Spark was seen off
Castle Kismul. He wass awfu' popular, Dougie, wi' the weans in
Castlebay."
"A man like that should not be at lerge," said the constable
emphatically.
"Och! he wass only in fun; there wass no more herm in Dougie than a
fly. Chust fond of high jeenks and recreation; many a place in the
Highlands would be gled to get the lend of him to keep them cheery in
the winter-time. There's no herm in Dougie, not at aal, chust a love of
sport and recreation. If he wass here himsel' he would tell you."
"It iss a good thing for him he does not come to Tarbert for his
recreation," said the constable sternly; "we're no' so Hielan' in
Tarbert ass to shut the shops when a man iss makin' himsel' a nuisance.
By Cheorge! if he starts any of his high jeenks in Tarbert he'll suffer
the Laaw."
"There iss no fear of Tarbert nowadays," said the Captain, "for
Dougie iss a changed man. He mairried a kind of a wife yonder at
Greenock, and she made him a Good Templar, or a Rechabite, or something
of the sort where you get ten shillin's a week if your leg's broken
fallin' doon the stair, and nobody saw you. Dougie's noo a staunch
teetotaller except aboot the time of the old New Year, or when he'll
maybe be takin' a dram for medicine. It iss a good thing for his wife,
but it leaves an awfu' want in Barra and them other places where they
kent him in his best trum."
XVIII: THE TAR'S WEDDING
IT was months after The Tar's consultation with Para Handy about a
wife: The Tar seemed to have given up the idea of indulgence in any
such extravagance, and Para Handy had ceased to recommend various
"smert, muddle-aged ones wi' a puckle money" to the consideration of
the young man, when the latter one day sheepishly approached him, spat
awkwardly through the clefts of his teeth at a patch in the funnel of
the Vital Spark, and remarked, "I wass thinkin' to mysel' yonder.
Captain, that if there wass nothing parteecular doing next Setturday, I
would maybe get mairried."
"Holy smoke!" said the Captain; "you canna expect me to get a wife
suitable for you in that time. It's no reasonable. Man, you're gettin'
droll--chust droll!"
"Och, I needn't be puttin' you to any trouble," said The Tar,
rubbing the back of his neck with a hand as rough as a rasp. "I wass
lookin' aboot mysel', and there's wan yonder in Campbeltown'll have me.
In fact, it's settled. I thocht that when we were in Campbeltown next
Setturday, we could do the chob and be dune wi't. We were roared last
Sunday--"
"Roared!" said the Captain. "Iss it cried, you mean?"
"Yes, chust cried," said The Tar, "but the gyurl's kind of dull in
the hearing, and it would likely need to be a roar. You'll maybe ken
her--she's wan of the MacCallums."
"A fine gyurl," said the Captain, who had not the faintest idea of
her identity, and had never set eyes on her, but could always be
depended on for politeness. "A fine gyurl! Truly sublime! I'm not
askin' if there's any money; eh?--not a word! It's none of my business,
but, tuts! what's the money anyway, when there's love?"
"Shut up aboot that!" said the scandalised Tar, getting very red.
"If you're goin' to speak aboot love, be dacent and speak aboot it in
the Gaalic. But we're no' taalkin' aboot love; we're taalkin' aboot my
mar-rage. Is it aal right for Setturday?"
"You're a cunning man to keep it dark till this," said the Captain,
"but I'll put nothing in the way, seein' it's your first caper of the
kind. We'll have high jeenks at Campbeltown."
The marriage took place in the bride's mother's house, up a stair
that was greatly impeded by festoons of fishing-nets, old oars, and
net-bows on the walls, and the presence of six stalwart Tarbert
trawlers, cousins of The Tar's, who were asked to the wedding, but were
so large and had so many guernseys on, they would of themselves have
filled the room in which the ceremony took place; so they had agreed,
while the minister was there at all events, to take turn about of going
in to countenance the proceedings. What space there was within was
monopolised by the relatives of the bride, by Para Handy and Dougie,
The Tar in a new slop-shop serge suit, apparently cut out by means of a
hatchet, the bride--a good deal prettier than a Goth like The Tar
deserved--and the minister. The wedding-supper was laid out in a
neighbour's house on the same stair-landing.
A solemn hush marked the early part of the proceedings, married only
by the sound of something frying in the other house and the shouts of
children crying for bowl-money in the street. The minister was a
teetotaller, an unfortunate circumstance which the Captain had
discovered very early, and he was very pleased with the decorum of the
company. The MacCallums were not church-goers in any satisfactory
sense, but they and their company seemed to understand what was due to
a Saturday night marriage and the presence of "the cloth." The
clergyman had hardly finished the ceremony when the Captain began
manoeuvring for his removal. He had possessed himself of a bottle of
ginger cordial and a plate of cake.
"You must drink the young couple's health, Mr Grant," he said. "We
ken it's you that's the busy man on the Setturday night, and indeed
it's a night for the whole of us goin' home early. I have a ship
yonder, the Fital Spark, that I left in cherge of an enchineer by the
name of Macphail, no' to be trusted with such a responsibulity."
The minister drank the cheerful potion, nibbled the corner of a
piece of cake, and squeezed his way downstairs between the Tarbert
trawlers.
"We're chust goin' away oorscl's in ten meenutes," said the Captain
after him.
"Noo that's aal right," said Para Handy, who in virtue of his office
had constituted himself master of ceremonies. "He's a nice man, Mr
Grant, but he's not strong, and it would be a peety to be keeping him
late out of his bed on a Setturday night. I like, mysel', yon
old-fashioned munisters that had nothing wrong wi' them, and took a
Chrustian dram. Pass oot that bottle of chinger cordial to the laads
from Tarbert and you'll see fine fun."
He was the life and soul of the evening after that. It was he who
pulled the corks, who cut the cold ham, who kissed the bride first, who
sang the first song, and danced with the new mother-in-law.﹃You're an
aawful man, Captain Macfarlane,﹄she said in fits of laughter at his
fun.
"Not me!" said he, lumberingly dragging her round in a polka to the
strains of Dougie's trump. "I'm a quate fellow, but when I'm in trum I
like a high jeenk noo and then. Excuse my feet. It's no' every day
we're merryin' The Tar. A fine, smert, handy fellow, Mrs MacCallum; you
didn't make a bad bargain of it with your son-in-law. Excuse my feet. A
sailor every inch of him, once you get him wakened. A pound a-week of
wages an' no incum-brance. My feet again, excuse them!"
"It's little enough for two," said Mrs MacCallum;﹃but a man's aye a
man,﹄and she looked the Captain in the eye with disconcerting
admiration.
"My Chove! she's a weedow wuman," thought the Captain; "I'll have to
ca' canny, or I'll be in for an engagement."
"I aye liked sailors," said Mrs MacCallum; "John--that's the
depairted, I'm his relic--was wan."
"A poor life, though," said the Captain, "especially on the
steamers, like us. But your man, maybe, was sailin' foreign, an' made
money? It's always a consuderation for a weedow."
"Not a penny," said the indiscreet Mrs MacCallum, as Para Handy
wheeled her into a chair.
At eleven o'clock The Tar was missing. He had last been seen pulling
off his new boots, which were too small for him, on the stair-head; and
it was only after considerable searching the Captain and one of the
Tarbert cousins found him sound asleep on the top of a chest in the
neighbour's house.
"Colin," said the Captain, shaking him awake, "sit up and try and
take something. See at the rest of us, as jovial as anything, and no' a
man hit yet. Sit up and be smert for the credit of the Fital
Spark."
"Are you angry wi' me. Captain?" asked The Tar.
"Not a bit of it, Colin! But you have the corkscrew in your pocket.
I'm no' caring myself, but the Tarbert gentlemen will take it amiss.
Forbye, there's your wife; you'll maybe have mind of her--wan Lucy
MacCallum? She's in yonder, fine and cheery, wi' two of your Tarbert
cousins holding her hand."
"Stop you! I'll hand them!" cried the exasperated bridegroom, and
bounded into the presence of the marriage-party in the house opposite,
with a demonstration that finally led to the breaking-up of the
party.
Next day took place The Tar's curious kirking. The MacCallums, as
has been said, were not very regular churchgoers; in fact, they had
overlooked the ordinances since the departed John died, and forgot that
the church bell rang for the Sabbath-school an hour before it rang for
the ordinary forenoon service.
Campbeltown itself witnessed the bewildering spectacle of The Tar
and his bride, followed by the mother and Para Handy, marching
deliberately up the street and into the church among the children. Five
minutes later they emerged, looking very red and ashamed of
themselves.
"If I knew there wass so mich bother to mind things, I would never
have got merried at all," said the bridegroom.
XIX: A STROKE OF LUCK
IT was a night of harmony on the good ship Vital Spark. She was fast
in the mud at Colintraive quay, and, in the den other. Para Handy was
giving his song, "The Dancing Master"--
"Set to Jeanie Mertin, tee-teedalum, tee-tadulam, Up the back and
doon the muddle, tec-tadalum, tee-tadulam. Ye're wrong, Jeck, I'm
certain; tee-tadalum, tee-tadulam,"
while the mate played an accompaniment on the trump--that is to say,
the Jew's harp, a favourite instrument on steam-lighters where the
melodeon has not intruded. The Captain knew only two verses, but he
sang them over several times.﹃You're getting better and better at it
every time,﹄The Tar assured him, for The Tar had got the promise of a
rise that day of a shilling a week on his pay.﹃If I had chust on my
other boots,﹄said the Captain, delighted at this appreciation.﹃This
ones iss too light for singin' with--﹄and he stamped harder than ever
as he went on with the song, for it was his idea that the singing of a
song was a very ineffective and uninteresting performance unless you
beat time with your foot on the floor.
The reason for the harmony on the vessel was that Dougie the mate
had had a stroke of luck that evening. He had picked up at the
quay-side a large and very coarse fish called a stenlock, or coal-fish,
and had succeeded, by sheer effrontery, in passing it off as a cod
worth two shillings on a guileless Glasgow woman who had come for the
week to one of the Colintraive cottages.
"I'm only vexed I didna say it wass a salmon," said Dougie, when he
came back to the vessel with his ill-got florin. "I could have got
twice ass much for't."
"She would ken fine it wasna a salmon when it wasna in a tin," said
the Captain.
"There's many a salmon that iss not in a canister," said the
mate.
"Och ay, but she's from Gleska; they're awfu' Hielan' in Gleska
aboot fush and things like that," said the Captain. "But it's maybe a
peety you didn't say it wass a salmon, for two shullin's iss not mich
among four of us."
"Among four of us!" repeated Dougie emphatically. "It's little
enough among wan, let alone four; I'm going to keep her to mysel'."
"If that iss your opeenion, Dougie, you are maakin' a great mistake,
and it'll maybe be better for you to shift your mind," the Captain said
meaningly. "It iss the jyle you could be getting for swundling a poor
cratur from Gleska that thinks a stenlock iss a cod. Forbye, it iss a
tremendous risk, for you might be found oot, and it would be a disgrace
to the Fital Spark!"
Dougie was impressed by the possibility of trouble with the law as a
result of his fish transaction, which, to do him justice, he had gone
about more as a practical joke than anything else.﹃I'm vexed I did it,
Peter,﹄he said, turning the two shillings over in his hand. "I have a
good mind to go up and tell the woman it wass chust a baur."
"Not at aal! not at aal!" cried Para Handy. "It wass a fine cod
right enough; we'll chust send The Tar up to the Inns with the two
shullin's and the jar, and we'll drink the Gleska woman's health that
does not ken wan fish from another. It will be a lesson to her to be
careful; chust that, to be careful."
So The Tar had gone to the Inn for the ale, and thus it was that
harmony prevailed in the fo'c'sle of the Vital Spark.
"Iss that a song of your own doing?" asked Dougie, when the Captain
was done.
"No," said Para Handy, "it iss a low-country song I heard wance in
the Broomielaw. Yon iss the place for seeing life. I'm telling you it
iss Gleska for gaiety if you have the money. There iss more life in wan
day in the Broomielaw of Gleska than there iss in a fortnight on Loch
Fyne."
"I daarsay there iss," said Dougie; "no' coontin' the herring."
"Och! life, life!" said the Captain, with a pensive air of ancient
memory; "Gleska's the place for it. And the fellows iss there that iss
not frightened, I'm telling you."
"I learned my tred there," mentioned the engineer, who had no
accomplishments, and had not contributed anything to the evening's
entertainment, and felt that it was time he was shining somehow.
"Iss that a fact, Macphail? I thocht it wass in a coalree in the
country," said Para Handy.﹃I wass chust sayin', when Macphail put in
his oar, that yon's the place for life. If I had my way of it, the
Fital Spark would be going up every day to the Chamaica Brudge the same
as the Columba, and I would be stepping ashore quite spruce with my
Sunday clothes on, and no' lying here in a place like Colintraive,
where there's no' even a polisman, with people that swundle a Gleska
woman oot of only two shullin's. It wass not hardly worth your while,
Dougie.﹄The ale was now finished.
The mate contributed a reel and strathspey on the trump to the
evening's programme, during which The Tar fell fast asleep, from which
he wakened to suggest that he should give them a guess.
"Weel done, Colin!" said the Captain, who had never before seen such
enterprise on the part of The Tar. "Tell us the guess if you can mind
it."
"It begins something like this," said The Tar nervously: "'Whether
would you raither--' That's the start of it."
"Fine, Colin, fine!" said the Captain encouragingly. "Take your
breath and start again."
"'Whether would you raither,'" proceeded The Tar--"'whether would
you raither or walk there?'"
"Say't again, slow," said Dougie, and The Tar repeated his
extraordinary conundrum.
"If I had a piece of keelivine (lead pencil) and a lump of paper I
could soon answer that guess," said the engineer, and the Captain
laughed.
"Man Colin," he said, "you're missing half of the guess oot. There's
no sense at aal in 'Whether would you raither or walk there?'"
"That's the way I heard it, anyway," said The Tar, sorry he had
volunteered. "'Whether would you raither or walk there?' I mind fine it
wass that."
"Weel, we give it up anyway; what's the answer?" said the
Captain.
"Man, I don't mind whether there wass an answer or no'," confessed
The Tar, scratching his head; and the Captain irritably hit him with a
cap on the ear, after which the entertainment terminated, and the crew
of the Vital Spark went to bed.
Next forenoon a very irate-looking Glasgow woman was to be observed
coming down the quay, and Dougie promptly retired into the hold of the
Vital Spark, leaving the lady's reception to the Captain.
"Where's that man away to?" she asked Para Handy. "I want to speak
to him."
"He's engaged, mem," said the Captain.
"I don't care if he's merried," said the Glasgow woman; "I'm no'
wantin' him. I jist wanted to say yon was a bonny-like cod he sell't me
yesterday. I biled it three oors this momin', and it was like leather
when a' was done."
"That's droll," said the Captain. "It wass a fine fush, I'll assure
you; if Dougie was here himsel' he would tell you. Maybe you didna boil
it right. Cods iss curious that way. What did you use?"
"Watter!" snapped the Glasgow woman; "did you think I would use
sand?"
"Chust that! chust that! Walter? Weel, you couldna use anything
better for boilin' with than chust watter. What kind of coals did you
use?"
"Jist plain black yins," said the woman.﹃I bocht them frae Cameron
along the road there,﹄referring to a coal agent who was a trade rival
to the local charterer of the Vital Spark.
"Cameron!" cried Para Handy. "Wass I not sure there wass something
or other wrong? Cameron's coals wouldna boil a wulk, let alone a fine
cod. If Dougie wass here he would tell you that himsel'."
XX: DOUGIE'S FAMILY
THE size of Dougie the mate's family might be considered a matter
which was of importance to himself alone, but it was astonishing how
much interest his shipmates took in it. When there was nothing else
funny to talk about on the Vital Spark, they would turn their attention
to the father of ten, and cunningly extract information from him about
the frightful cost of boys' boots and the small measure of milk to be
got for sixpence at Dwight's dairy in Plantation.
They would listen sympathetically, and later on roast him
unmercifully with comments upon the domestic facts he had innocently
revealed to them.
It might happen that the vessel would be lying at a West Highland
quay, and the Captain sitting on deck reading a week-old newspaper,
when he would wink at Macphail and The Tar, and say,﹃Cot bless me!
boys, here's the price of boots goin' up; peety the poor faithers of
big femilies.﹄Or, "I see there's to be a new school started in
Partick, Dougie; did you flit again?"
"You think you're smert, Peter," the mate would retort lugubriously.
"Fun's fun, but I'll no' stand fun aboot my femily."
"Och! no offence, Dougald, no offence," Para Handy would say
soothingly. "Hoo's the mustress keepin'?" and then ask a fill of
tobacco to show his feelings were quite friendly.
In an ill-advised moment the parental pride and joy of the mate
brought on board one day a cabinet photograph of himself and his wife
and the ten children. "What do you think of that?" he said to Para
Handy, who took the extreme tip of one corner of the card between the
finger and thumb of a hand black with coal-grime, glanced at the group,
and said--
"Whatna Sunday School trup's this?"
"It's no' a trup at aal," said Dougie with annoyance.
"Beg pardon, beg pardon," said the Captain, "I see noo I wass wrong;
it's Quarrier's Homes. Who's the chap wi' the whuskers in the muddle,
that's greetin'?"
"Where's your eyes?" said Dougie. "It's no' a Homes at aal; that's
me, and I'm no' greetin'. What would I greet for?"
"Faith, I believe you're right," said the Captain. "It's yoursel'
plain enough, when I shut wan eye to look at it; but the collar and a
clean face make a terrible dufference. Well, well, allooin' that it's
you, and you're no greetin', it's rideeculous for you to be goin' to a
dancin'-school."
"It's no' a dancin'-school, it's the femily," said the mate, losing
his temper. "Fun's fun, but if you think I'll stand--"
"Keep caalm, keep caalm!" interrupted the Captain hurriedly,
realising that he had carried the joke far enough. "I might have kent
fine it wass the femily they're aal ass like you both ass anything, and
that'll be Susan the eldest."
"That!" said Dougie, quite mollified--"that's the mustress
hersel'."
"Well, I'm jeegered," said the Captain, with well-acted amazement.
"She's younger-looking than ever; that's a woman that's chust
sublime."
The mate was so pleased he made him a present of the photograph.
But it always had been, and always would be, a distressing task to
Dougie to have to intimate to the crew (as he had to do once a year)
that there was a new addition to the family, for it was on these
occasions that the chaff of his shipmates was most ingenious and
galling. Only once, by a trick, had he got the better of them and
evaded his annual roastings. On that occasion he came to the Vital
Spark with a black muffler on, and a sad countenance.
"I've lost my best freend," said he, rubbing his eyes to make them
red.
"Holy smoke!" said Para Handy, "is Macmillan the pawnbroker
deid?"
"It's no' him," said Dougie, manfully restraining a sob, and he went
on to tell them that it was his favourite uncle, Jamie. He put so much
pathos into his description of Uncle Jamie's last hours, that when he
wound up by mentioning, in an off-hand way, that his worries were
complicated by the arrival of another daughter that morning, the crew
had, naturally, not the heart to say anything about it.
Some weeks afterwards they discovered by accident that he never had
an Uncle Jamie.
"Man! he's cunning!" said Para Handy, when this black evidence of
Dougie's astuteness came out. "Stop you till the next time, and we'll
make him pay for it."
The suitable occasion for making the mate smart doubly for his
deceit came in due course. Macphail the engineer lived in the next
tenement to Dougie's family in Plantation, and he came down to the quay
one morning before the mate, with the important intelligence for the
Captain that the portrait group was now incomplete.
"Poor Dugald!" said the Captain sympathetically. "Iss it a child or
a lassie?"
"I don't ken," said the engineer. "I just got a rumour frae the
night polisman, and he said the wife was fine."
"Stop you and you'll see some fun with Dougie," said the Captain.
"I'm mich mistaken if he'll swundle us this twict."
Para Handy had gone ashore for something, and was back before his
mate appeared on board the Vital Spark, which was just starting for
Campbeltown with a cargo of bricks. The mate took the wheel, smoked
ceaselessly at a short cutty pipe, and said nothing; and nobody said
anything to him.
"He's plannin' some other way oot of the scrape," whispered the
Captain once to the engineer; "but he'll not get off so easy this time.
Hold you on!"
It was dinner-time, and the captain, mate, and engineer were round
the pot on deck aft, with The Tar at the wheel, within comfortable
hearing distance, when Para Handy slyly broached the topic.
"Man, Dougie," he said, "what wass I doin' yonder last night but
dreamin' in the Gaalic aboot you? I wass dreamin' you took a charter of
the Vital Spark doon to Ardkinglas with a picnic, and there wass not, a
park in the place would hold the company."
Dougie simply grunted.
"It wass a droll dream," continued the Captain, diving for another
potato. "I wass chust wonderin' hoo you found them aal at home. Hoo's
the mustress keepin'?"
The mate got very red. "I wass chust goin' to tell you aboot her,"
he said with considerable embarrassment.
"A curious dream it wass," said Para Handy, postponing his pleasure,
like the shrewd man he is, that he might enjoy it all the more when it
came. "I saw you ass plain ass anything, and the Fital Spark crooded
high and low with the picnic, and you in the muddle playing your trump.
The mustress wass there, too, quite spruce, and--But you were goin' to
say something aboot the mustress, Dougie. I hope she's in her
usual?"
"That's chust it," said Dougie, more and more embarrassed as he saw
his news had to be given now, if ever. "You would be thinkin' to
yourself I wass late this mornin', but the fact iss we were in an
aawful babble in oor hoose--"
"Bless me! I hope the him didn't take fire nor nothing like that?"
said Para Handy anxiously; and The Tar, at the wheel behind, was almost
in a fit with suppressed laughter.
"Not at aal! worse nor that!" said Dougie in melancholy tones.
"There's--there's--dash it! there's more boots than ever needed
yonder!"
"Man, you're gettin' quite droll," said Para Handy. "Do you no' mind
you told me aboot that wan chust three or four months ago?"
"You're a liar!" said Dougie, exasperated; "it's a twelvemonth since
I told you aboot the last."
"Not at aal! not at aal! your mind's failin'," protested the
Captain. "Five months ago at the most; you told me aboot it at the
time. Surely there's some mistake?"
"No mistake at aal aboot it," said the mate, shaking his head so
sadly that the Captain's heart was melted.
"Never mind, Dougald," he said, taking a little parcel out of his
pocket. "I'm only in fun. I heard aboot it this mornin' from Macphail,
and here's a wee bit peeny and a pair o' sluppers that I bought
for't."
"To the muschief! It's no' an 'it,'" said Dougie; "it's--it's--it's
a twuns!"
"Holy smoke!" exclaimed Para Handy. "Iss that no chust desperate?"
And the mate was so much moved that he left half his dinner and went
forward towards the bow.
Para Handy went forward to him in a little and said, "Cheer up,
Dougie; hoo wass I to ken it wass a twuns? If I had kent, it wouldna be
the wan peeny and the wan sluppers; but I have two or three shillin's
here, and I'll buy something else in Campbeltown."
"I can only--I can only say thankye the noo, Peter; it wass very
good of you," said the mate, deeply touched, and attempting to shake
the Captain's hand.
"Away! away!" said Para Handy, getting very red himself; "none of
your chat! I'll buy peenies and sluppers if I like."
XXI: THE BAKER'S LITTLE WIDOW
ON the night after New Year's Day the Captain did a high-spirited
thing he had done on the corresponding day for the previous six years;
he had his hair cut and his beard trimmed by Dougie the mate, made a
specially careful toilet--taking all the tar out of his hands by
copious applications of salt butter--wound up his watch (which was
never honoured in this way more than once or twice a twelvemonth), and
went up the quay to propose to Mrs Crawford. It was one of the rare
occasions upon which he wore a topcoat, and envied Macphail his
Cairngorm scarfpin. There was little otherwise to suggest the ardent
wooer, for ardent wooers do not look as solemn as Para Handy looked.
The truth, is, he was becoming afraid that his persistency might wear
down a heart of granite, and that this time the lady might accept
him.
The crew of the Vital Spark, whom he thought quite ignorant of his
tender passion for the baker's widow, took a secret but intense
interest in this annual enterprise. He was supposed to be going to take
tea with a cousin (as if captains took the tar off their hands to visit
their own cousins!), and in order to make the deception more complete
and allay any suspicions on the part, especially, of Macphail, who, as
a great student of penny novelettes, was up to all the intrigues of
love, the Captain casually mentioned that if it wasn't that it would
vex his cousin he would sooner stay on the vessel and play Catch the
Ten with them.
"I hate them tea-pairties," he said; "chust a way of wasting the New
Year. But stay you here, boys, and I'll come back ass soon ass ever I
can."
"Bring back some buns, or cookies, or buscuits wi' you," cried
Dougie, as the Captain stepped on to the quay.
"What do you mean?" said Para Handy sharply, afraid he was
discovered.
"Nothing, Peter, nothing at aal," the mate assured him, nudging The
Tar in the dark. "Only it's likely you'll have more of them that you
can eat at your cousin's tea-pairty."
Reassured thus that his secret was still safe. Para Handy went
slowly up the quay. As he went he stopped a moment to exchange a genial
word with everybody he met, as if time was of no importance, and he was
only ashore for a daunder. This was because, dressed as he was, if he
walked quickly and was not particularly civil to everybody, the whole
of Campbeltown (which is a very observant place) would suspect he was
up to something and watch him.
The widow's shop was at a conveniently quiet corner. He tacked back
and forward off it in the darkness several times till a customer, who
was being served, as he could see through the glass door, had come out,
and a number of boys playing at "guesses" at the window had passed on,
and then he cleared his throat, unbuttoned his topcoat and jacket to
show his watch-chain, and slid as gently as he could in at the glass
door.
"Dear me, fancy seeing you. Captain Macfarlane!" said the widow
Crawford, coming from the room at the back of the shop. "Is it really
yourself?"
"A good New Year to you," said the Captain, hurried and confused. "I
wass chust goin' up the toon, and I thought I would give you a roar in
the by-going. Are you keeping tip-top, Mery?"
His heart beat wildly; he looked at her sideways with a timid eye,
for, hang it! she was more irresistible than ever. She was little,
plump, smiling, rosy-cheeked, neat in dress, and just the exact age to
make the Captain think he was young again.
"Will you not come ben and warm yourself? It's a nasty, damp night,"
said Mrs Crawford, pushing the back door, so that he got the most
tempting vision of an interior with firelight dancing in it, a genial
lamp, and a tea-table set.
"I'll chust sit doon and draw my breath for a meenute or two. You'll
be busy?" said the Captain, rolling into the back room with an
elephantine attempt (which she skilfully evaded) at playfully putting
his arm round the widow's waist as he did so.
"You're as daft as ever, I see, Captain," said the lady. "I was just
making myself a cup of tea; will you take one?"
"Och, it's puttin' you to bother," said the Captain.
"Not a bit of it," said the widow, and she whipped out a cup, which
was suspiciously handy in a cupboard, and told the Captain to take off
his coat and he would get the good of it when he went out.
People talk about young girls as entrancing. To men of experience
like the Captain girls are insipid. The prime of life in the other sex
is something under fifty; and the widow, briskly making tea, smiling on
him, shaking her head at him, pushing him on the shoulder when he was
impudent, chaffing him, surrounding him with an intoxicating atmosphere
of homeliness, comfort, and cuddleability, seemed to Para Handy there
and then the most angelic creature on earth. The rain could be heard
falling heavily outside, no customers were coming in, and the back room
of the baker's shop was, under the circumstances, as fine an earthly
makeshift for Paradise as man could ask for.
Para Handy dived his hand into his coat pocket.
"That minds me," said he; "I have a kind of a bottle of scent here a
friend o' mine, by the name of Hurricane Jeck, took home for me from
America last week. It's the rale Florida Water; no' the like o't to be
got here, and if you put the least sensation on your hanky you'll feel
the smell of it a mile away. It's chust sublime."
"Oh! it's so kind of you!" said the widow, beaming on him with the
merriest, brownest, deepest, meltingest of eyes, and letting her plump
little fingers linger a moment on his as she took the perfume bottle.
The Captain felt as if golden harps were singing in the air, and
fairies were tickling him down the back with peacocks' feathers.
"Mery," he said in a little, "this iss splendid tea. Capital,
aalthegither!"
"Tuts! Captain," said she, "is it only my tea you come to pay
compliments to once a year? Good tea's common enough if you're willing
to pay for it. What do you think of myself?"
The Captain neatly edged his chair round the corner of the table to
get it close beside hers, and she just as neatly edged her chair round
the other comer, leaving their relative positions exactly as they had
been.
"No, no, Captain," said she, twinkling;﹃hands off the widow. I'm a
done old woman, and it's very good of you to come and have tea with me;
but I always thought sailors, with a sweetheart, as they say, in every
port, could say nice things to cheer up a lonely female heart. What we
women need. Captain--the real necessity of our lives--is some one to
love us. Even if he's at the other end of the world, and unlikely ever
to be any nearer, it makes the work of the day cheery. But what am I
haverin' about?﹄she added, with a delicious, cosy, melting, musical
sigh that bewitchingly heaved her blouse. "Nobody cares for me, I'm too
old."
"Too old!" exclaimed the Captain, amused at the very idea. "You're
not a day over fifty. You're chust sublime."
"Forty-nine past, to be particular," said the widow, "and feel like
twenty. Oh! Captain, Captain! you men!"
"Mery," entreated Para Handy, putting his head to one side,﹃caal me
Peter, and gie me a haad o' your hand.﹄This time he edged his chair
round quicker than she did hers, and captured her fingers. Now that he
had them he didn't know very well what to do with them, but he decided
after a little that a cute thing to do was to pull them one by one and
try to make them crack. He did so, and got slapped on the ear for his
pains.
"What do you mean by that?" said she.
"Och, it was chust a baur, Mery," said Para Handy. "Man, you're
strong, strong! You would make a sublime wife for any sober, decent,
good-looking, capable man. You would make a fine wife for a sailor, and
I'm naming no names, mind ye; but"--here he winked in a manner that
seemed to obliterate one complete side of his face--"they caal him
Peter. Eh? What?"
"Nobody would have me," said the widow, quite cheerfully, enjoying
herself immensely. "I'm old--well, kind of old, and plain, and I have
no money."
"Money!" said Para Handy contemptuously; "the man I'm thinking of
does not give wan docken for money. And you're no more old than I am
mysel', and as for bein' plain, chust look at the lovely polka you have
on and the rudness of your face. If Dougie was here he would tell--no,
no, don't mention a cheep to Dougie--not a cheep; he would maybe
jalouse something."
"This is the sixth time of asking. Captain," said the widow. "You
must have your mind dreadful firm made up. But it's only at the New
Year I see you; I'm afraid you're like all sailors--when you're away
you forget all about me. Stretch your hand and have another London
bun."
"London buns iss no cure for my case," said the Captain, taking one,
however. "I hope you'll Say yes this time."
"I'll--I'll think about it," said the widow, still smiling; "and if
you're passing this way next New Year and call in, I'll let you
know."
The crew of the Vital Spark waited on deck for the return of the
skipper. Long before he came in sight they heard him clamping down the
quay singing cheerfully to himself--
"Rolling home to bonnie Scotland, Rolling home, dear land, to thee;
Rolling home to bonnie Scotland, Rolling home across the sea."
"Iss your cousin's tea-pairty over already?" said Dougie innocently.
"Wass there many at it?"
"Seven or eight," said Para Handy promptly. "I chust came away. And
I'm feeling chust sublime. Wan of Brutain's hardy sons."
He went down below, and hung up his topcoat and his watch and took
off his collar, which uncomfortably rasped his neck.﹃Mery's the right
sort,﹄said he to himself; "she's no' going ram-stam into the business.
She's caautious like mysel'. Maybe next New Year she'll make her mind
up."
And the widow, putting up her shutters that night, hummed cheerfully
to herself, and looked quite happy. "I wish I HAD called him Peter,"
she thought; "next year I'll not be so blate."
XXII: THREE DRY DAYS
ON the first day of February the Captain of the Vital Spark made an
amazing resolution. Life in the leisure hours of himself and his crew
had been rather strenuous during the whole of January, for Dougie had
broken the Rechabites. When Dougie was not a Rechabite, he always
carried about with him an infectious atmosphere of gaiety and a
half-crown, and the whole ship's company took its tone from him. This
is a great moral lesson. It shows how powerful for good or evil is the
influence and example of One Strong Man. If Dougie had been more at
home that month, instead of trading up the West Coast, his wife would
have easily dispelled his spirit of gaiety by making him nurse the
twins, and she would have taken him herself to be reinstalled in the
Rechabites, for she was "a fine, smert, managin' woman," as he admitted
himself; but when sailors are so often and so far away from the benign
influences of home, with nobody to search their pockets, it is little
wonder they should sometimes be foolish. So the Captain rose on the
first day of the month with a frightful headache, and emphatically
refused to adopt the customary method of curing it. "No," he said to
his astonished mates, "I'm no' goin' up to the Ferry Hoose nor anywhere
else; I'm teetotal."
"Teetotal!" exclaimed Dougie, much shocked. "You shouldna make a
joke aboot things like that, and you no' feelin' very weel; come on up
and take your mornin'."
"Not a drop!" said Para Handy firmly.
"Tut, tut, Peter; chust wan beer," persisted the mate patiently.
"Not even if it wass jampaigne," said the Captain, drying his head,
which he had been treating to a cold douche. "My mind's made up.
Drink's a curse, and I'm done wi't, for I canna stand it."
"There's nobody askin' you to stand it," explained the mate. "I have
a half-croon o' my own here."
"It's no odds," said the Captain. "I'm on the teetotal tack. Not
another drop will I taste--"
"Stop, stop!" interrupted Dougie, more shocked than ever. "Don't do
anything rash. You might be struck doon deid, and then you would be
sorry for what you said. Do you mean to tell us that you're goin' to be
teetotal aalthegether?"
"No," said the Captain, "I'm no' that desperate. I wouldna care
chust to go aal that length, but I'm goin' to be teetotal for the month
o' February."
"Man, I think you're daft, Peter," said the mate. "February, of aal
months! In February the New Year's no' right bye, and the Gleska Fair's
chust comin' on; could you no' put it off for a more sensible
time?"
"No," said the Captain firmly, "February's the month for me; there's
two or three days less in't than any other month in the year."
So the crew filed ashore almost speechless with
astonishment--annoyed and depressed to some extent by this inflexible
virtue on the part of Para Handy.
"He's gettin' quite droll in his old age," was Dougie's
explanation.
"Fancy him goin' away and spoilin' the fun like that!" said The Tar
incredulously.
"I aye said he hadna the game in him," was the comment of Macphail
the engineer.
Para Handy watched them going up to the Ferry House, and wished it
was the month of March.
The first day of his abstinence would have passed without much more
inclination on his part to repent his new resolution were it not for
the fact that half a score of circumstances conspired to make it a day
of unusual trial. He met friends that day he had not met for months,
all with plenty of time on their hands; Hurricane Jack, the
irresistible, came alongside in another vessel, and was immediately for
celebrating this coincidence by having half a day off, a proposal the
Captain evaded for a while only by pretending to be seriously ill and
under medical treatment; the coal merchant, whose cargo they had just
discharged, presented the crew with a bottle of whisky; there was a
ball at the George Hotel; there was a travelling piper on the streets,
with most inspiring melodies; the headache was away by noon--only a
giant will-power could resist so many circumstances conducive to
gaiety. But Para Handy never swerved in his resolution. He compromised
with the friends who had plenty of time and the inclination for
merriment by taking fills of tobacco from them; confiscated the bottle
of whisky as Captain, and locked it past with the assurance to his crew
that it would be very much the more matured if kept till March; and the
second time Hurricane Jack came along the quay to see if the Captain of
the Vital Spark was not better yet, he accompanied him to the Ferry
House, and startled him by saying he would have "Wan small half of
lime-juice on draught."
"What's that, Peter?" said Hurricane Jack. "Did I hear you say
something aboot lime-juice, or does my ears deceive me?"
"It's chust for a bate, Jeck--no offence," explained the Captain
hurriedly. "I have a bate on wi' a chap that I'll no' drink anything
stronger this month; but och! next month, if we're spared, wait you and
you'll see some fine fun."
Hurricane Jack looked at him with great disapproval. "Macfarlane,"
he said solemnly, "you're goin' far, far wrong, and mind you I'm
watchin' you. A gembler iss an abomination, and gemblin' at the expense
of your inside iss worse than gemblin' on horses. Us workin' men have
nothing but oor strength to go on, and if we do not keep up oor
strength noo and then, where are we? You will chust have a smaal gill,
and the man that made the bate wi' you'll never be any the wiser."
"No, Jeck, thank you aal the same," said the Captain, "but I'll
chust take the lime-juice. Where'll you be on the first o' Merch?"
Hurricane Jack grudgingly ordered the lime-juice, and asked the
landlady to give the Captain a sweetie with it to put away the taste,
then looked on with an aspect of mingled incredulity and disgust as
Para Handy hurriedly gulped the unaccustomed beverage and chased it
down with a drink of water.
"It's a fine thing a drap watter," said Para Handy, gasping.
"No' a worse thing you could drink," said Hurricane Jack. "It rots
your boots; what'll it no' do on your inside? Walter's fine for sailin'
on--there's nothing better--but it's no' drink for sailors."
On the second day of the great reform Para Handy spent his leisure
hours fishing for saithe from the side of the vessel, and was, to all
appearance, firmer than ever. He was threatened for a while by a good
deal of interference from his crew, who resented the confiscation of
the presentation bottle, but he turned the tables on them by coming out
in the role of temperance lecturer. When they approached him, he
sniffed suspiciously, and stared at their faces in a way that was
simply galling--to Dougie particularly, who was naturally of a rubicund
countenance. Then he sighed deeply, shook his head solemnly, and put on
a fresh bait.
"Are you no' better yet?" Dougie asked. "You're looking ass dull ass
if the shup wass tied up to a heidstone in the Necropolis o' Gleska.
None o' your didoes, Peter; give us oot the spurits we got the present
o'. It's Candlemas."
Para Handy stared at his fishing-line, and said gently, as if he
were speaking to himself, "Poor sowls! poor sowls! Nothing in their
heids but drink. It wass a happy day for me the day I gave it up, or I
might be like the rest o' them. There's poor Dougald lettin' it get a
terrible grup o' him; and The Tar chust driftin', driftin' to the
poor's-hoose, and Macphail iss sure to be in the horrors before
Setturday, for he hasna the heid for drink, him no' bein' right
Hielan'."
"Don't be rash; don't do anything you would be vexed for, but come
on away up the toon and have a pant," said Dougie coaxingly. "Man, you
have only to make up your mind and shake it off, and you'll be ass
cheery ass ever you were."
"He's chust takin' a rise oot o' us; are you no', Captain?" said The
Tar, anxious to leave his commander an honourable way of retreat from
his preposterous position.
Para Handy went on fishing as if they were not present.
"Merried men, too, with wifes and femilies," he said musingly. "If
they chust knew what it wass, like me, to be risin' in the mornin' wi'
a clear heid, and a good conscience, they would never touch it again. I
never knew what happiness wass till I joined the teetotal, and it'll be
money in my pocket forbye."
"You'll go on, and you'll go on with them expuriments too far till
you'll be a vegetarian next," said Dougie, turning away. "Chust a
vegetarian, tryin' to live on turnips and gress, the same ass a coo. If
I was a Macfarlane I wouldna care to be a coo."
Then they left him with an aspect more of sorrow than of anger, and
he went on fishing.
The third day of the month was Saturday; there was nothing to do on
the Vital Spark, which was waiting on a cargo of timber, so all the
crew except the Captain spent the time ashore. Him they left severely
alone, and the joys of fishing saithe and reading a week-old newspaper
palled.
"The worst of bein' good iss that it leaves you duvelish lonely,"
said the Captain to himself.
An hour later, he discovered that he had a touch of toothache, and,
strongly inclined for a temporary suspension of the new rules for
February, he went to the locker for the presentation bottle.
It was gone!
XXIII: THE VALENTINE THAT MISSED FIRE
A FORTNIGHT of strict teetotalism on the part of the Captain was too
much of a joke for his crew. "It's just bounce," said the mate; "he's
showin'off. I'm a Rechabite for six years, every time I'm in Gleska;
but I never let it put between me and a gless of good Brutish spurits
wi' a shipmate in any port. Loch Fyne or foreign."
"It's most annoyin'," said The Tar. "He asked me yesterday if my
health wassna breakin' doon wi' drink, the same ass it would break doon
wi' aal I take."
"Chust what I told you; nothing but bounce!" said Dougie gloomily.
"Stop you! Next time he's in trum, I'll no' be so handy at pullin'
corks for him. If I wass losin' my temper wi' him, I would give him a
bit o' my mind."
The engineer, wiping his brow with a wad of oily waste, put down the
penny novelette he was reading and gave a contemptuous snort.﹃I wonder
to hear the two o' ye talkin',﹄said he. "Ye're baith feared for him. I
could soon fix him."
"Could you, Macphail?" said Dougie. "You're aawful game: what would
you do?"
"I would send him a valentine that would vex him," replied the
engineer promptly; "a fizzer o' a valentine that would mak' his hair
curl for him."
The mate impulsively smacked his thigh. "My Chove! Macphail," said
he, "it's the very ticket! What do you say to a valentine for the
Captain, Colin?"
"Whatever you think yersel'," said The Tar.
That night Dougie and The Tar went ashore at Tarbert for a
valentine. There was one shop-window up the town with a gorgeous
display of penny "mocks," designed and composed to give the recipient
in every instance a dull, sickening thud on the bump of his
self-esteem. The two mariners saw no valentine, however, that quite met
the Captain's case.
"There'll be plenty o' other wans inside on the coonter," said
Dougie diplomatically. "Away you in, Colin, and pick wan suitable, and
I'll stand here and watch."
"Watch what?" inquired The Tar suspiciously. "It would be more like
the thing if you went in and bought it yoursel'; I'll maybe no' get wan
that'll please you."
"Aal you need to ask for iss a mock valentine, lerge size, and
pretty broad, for a skipper wi' big feet. I would go in mysel' in a
meenute if it wassna that--if it wassna that it would look droll, and
me a muddle-aged man wi' whuskers."
The Tar went into the shop reluctantly, and was horrified to find a
rather pretty girl behind the counter. He couldn't for his life suggest
mock valentines to her, and he could not with decency back out without
explanation.
"Have you any--have you any nice unvelopes?" he inquired bashfully,
as she stood waiting his order.
"What size?" she asked.
"Lerge size, and pretty broad, for a skipper wi' big feet," said The
Tar in his confusion. Then he corrected himself, adding, "Any size,
muss, suitable for holdin' letters."
"There's a great run on that kind of envelope this winter," the lady
remarked, being a humorist. "How many?"
"A ha'pennyworth," said The Tar. "I'll chust take them wi' me."
When The Tar came out of the shop the mate was invisible, and it was
only after some search he found him in a neighbouring public-house.
"I chust came in here to put by the time," said Dougie; "but seein'
you're here, what am I for?"
The Tar, realising that there must be an unpleasant revelation
immediately, produced the essential threepence and paid for beer.
"I hope you got yon?" said the mate anxiously.
"Ass sure ass daith, Dougie, I didna like to ask for it," explained
the young man pathetically. "There's a gasalier and two paraffin lamps
bleezin' in the shop, and it would gie me a rud face to ask for a mock
valentine in such an illumination. Iss there no other wee dark shop in
the toon we could get what we want in?"
The mate surveyed him with a disgusted countenance.﹃Man, you're a
coward, Colin,﹄he said. "The best in the land goes in and buys mock
valentines, and it's no disgrace to nobody so long ass he has the money
in his hand. If I had another gless o' beer I would go in mysel'."
"You'll get that!" said The Tar gladly, and produced another
threepence, after which they returned to the shop-window, where
Dougie's courage apparently failed him, in spite of the extra glass of
beer. "It's no' that I give a docken for anybody," he explained, "but
you see I'm that weel kent in Tarbert. What sort o' body keeps the
shop?"
"Ooh, it's chust an old done man wi' a sore hand and wan eye no'
neebours," replied The Tar strategically. "Ye needna be frightened for
him; he'll no' say a cheep. To bleezes wi'him!"
Dougie was greatly relieved at this intelligence. "Toots!" he said.
"Iss that aal? Watch me!" and he went banging in at the door in three
strides.
The lady of the shop was in a room behind. To call her attention
Dougie cried, "Shop!" and kicked the front of the counter, with his
eyes already on a pile of valentines ready for a rush of business in
that elegant form of billet-doux. When the pretty girl came skipping
out of the back room, he was even more astounded and alarmed than The
Tar had been.
"A fine night," he remarked affably: "iss your faither at the
back?"
"I think you must have made a mistake in the shop," said the lady.
"Who do you want?"
"Him with the sore hand and the wan eye no' right neebours," said
the mate, not for a moment suspecting that The Tar had misled him.
"It's parteecular business; I'll no' keep him wan meenute."
"There's nobody here but myself," the girl informed him, and then he
saw he had been deceived by his shipmate.
"Stop you till I get that Tar!" he exclaimed with natural
exasperation, and was on the point of leaving when the pile of
valentines met his eye again, and he decided to brazen it out.
"Maybe you'll do yoursel'," said he, with an insinuating leer at the
shopkeeper. "There iss a shipmate o' mine standin' oot there took a
kind o' notion o' a mock valentine and doesna like to ask for't. He
wass in a meenute or two ago--you would know him by the warts on his
hand--but he hadna the nerve to ask for it."
"There you are, all kinds," said the lady, indicating the pile on
the counter, with a smile of comprehension. "A penny each."
Dougie wet his thumb and clumsily turned over the valentines,
seeking for one appropriate to a sea captain silly enough to be
teetotal. "It's chust for a baur, mind you," he explained to the lady.
"No herm at aal, at aal; chust a bit of a high jeenk. Porbye, it's no'
for me: it's for the other fellow, and his name's Colin Turner, but
he's blate, blate." He raised his voice so that The Tar, standing
outside the window, could hear him quite plainly; with the result that
The Tar was so ashamed, he pulled down his cap on his face and
hurriedly walked off to the quay.
"There's an awful lot o' them valentines for governesses and tyiers
and polismen," said Dougie; "the merchant service doesna get mich of a
chance. Have you nothing smert and nippy that'll fit a sea captain, and
him teetotal?"
The shopkeeper hurriedly went over her stock, and discovered that
teetotalism was the one eccentricity valentines never dealt with; on
the contrary, they were all for people with red noses and bibulous
propensities.
"There's none for teetotal captains," said she;﹃but here's one for
a captain that's not teetotal,﹄and she shoved a valentine with a most
unpleasant-looking seaman, in a state of intoxication, walking
arm-inarm with a respectable-looking young woman.
"Man, that's the very tup!" said Dougie, delighted. "It's ass clever
a thing ass ever I seen. I wonder the way they can put them valentines
thegather. Read what it says below, I havena my specs."
The shopkeeper read the verse on the valentine:
"The girl that would marry a man like you
Would have all the rest of her life to rue;
A sailor soaked in salt water and rum
Could never provide a happy home."
"Capital!" exclaimed the mate, highly delighted. "Ass smert ass
anything in the works of Burns. That wan'll do splendid."
"I thought it was for a teetotal captain you wanted one," said the
lady, as she folded up the valentine.
"He's only teetotal to spite us," said Dougie. "And that valentine
fits him fine, for he's coortin' a baker's weedow, and he thinks we
don't know. Mind you, it's no' me that's goin' to send the valentine,
it's Colin Turner; but there's no herm, chust a bit of a baur. You ken
yoursel'."
Then an embarrassing idea occurred to him--Who was to address the
envelope?
"Do you keep mournin' unvelopes?" he asked.
"Black-edged envelopes--yes," said the shopkeeper.
"Wan," said Dougie; and when he got it he put the valentine inside
and ventured to propose to the lady that, seeing she had pen and ink
handy, she might address the envelope for him, otherwise the recipient
would recognise Colin Turner's hand-of-write.
The lady obliged, and addressed the document to
CAPTAIN PETER MACFARLANE, ss. VITAL SPARK, TARBERT.
Dougie thanked her effusively on behalf of The Tar, paid for his
purchases and a penny stamp, and went out. As he found his shipmate
gone, he sealed the envelope and posted it.
When the letter-carrier came down Tarbert quay next morning, all the
crew of the Vital Spark were on deck--the Captain in blissful
unconsciousness of what was in store for him, the others anxious not to
lose the expression of his countenance when he should open his
valentine.
It was a busy day on the Vital Spark; all hands had to help to get
in a cargo of wood.
"A mournin' letter for you, Captain," said the letter-carrier,
handing down the missive.
Para Handy looked startled, and walked aft to open it. He took one
short but sufficient glimpse at the valentine, with a suspicious glance
at the crew, who were apparently engrossed in admiration of the scenery
round Tarbert. Then he went down the fo'c'sle, to come up a quarter of
an hour later with his good clothes on, his hat, and a black tie.
"What the duvvle game iss he up to noo?" said Dougie, greatly
astonished.
"I hope it didna turn his brain," said The Tar. "A fright sometimes
does it. Wass it a very wild valentine, Dougie?"
Para Handy moved aft with a sad, resigned aspect, the mourning
envelope in his hand.﹃I'm sorry I'll have to go away till the
efternoon, boys,﹄he said softly. "See and get in that wud nice and
smert before I come back."
"What's wrong?" asked Dougie, mystified.
The Captain ostentatiously blew his nose, and explained that they
might have noticed he had just got a mourning letter.
"Was't a mournin' wan? I never noticed," said Dougie.
"Neither did I," added The Tar hurriedly.
"Yes," said the Captain sadly, showing them the envelope; "my poor
cousin Cherlie over in Dunmore iss no more; he just slipped away
yesterday, and I'm goin' to take the day off and make
arrangements."
"Well, I'm jiggered!" exclaimed Dougie, as they watched Para Handy
walking off on what they realised was to be a nice holiday at their
expense, for they would now have his share of the day's work to do as
well as their own.
"Did ye ever see such a nate liar?" said The Tar, lost in admiration
at the cunning of the Captain.
And then they fell upon the engineer, and abused him for suggesting
the valentine.
XXIV: THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF ERCHIE'S NIECE
PARA HANDY never had been at a Glasgow ball till he went to the
Knapdale Natives', and he went there simply to please Hurricane Jack.
That gallant and dashing mariner came to him one day at Bowling,
treated him to three substantial refreshments in an incredibly short
space of time, and then delivered a brilliant lecture on the duty of
being patriotic to one's native place, "backing up the boys," and
buying a ticket for the assembly in question.
"But I'm not a native of Knapdale," said the Captain. "Forbye, I'm
kind of oot o' the dancin'; except La Va and Petronella I don't mind
wan step."
"That's aal right, Peter," said Hurricane Jack encouragingly;
"there's nobody'll make you dance at a Knapdale ball if you're no' in
trum for dancin'. I can get you on the committee, and aal you'll have
to do will be to stand at the door of the committee room and keep the
crood back from the beer-bottles. I'm no' there mysel' for amusement:
do you ken Jean Mactaggart?"
"Not me," said Para Handy. "What Mactaggarts iss she off, Jeck?"
"Carradale," said Hurricane Jack modestly. "A perfect beauty! We're
engaged."
The Captain shook hands mournfully with his friend and cheerlessly
congratulated him. "It's a responsibulity, Jeck," he said, "there's no
doot it's a responsibulity, but you ken yoursel' best."
"She's a nice enough gyurl so far ass I know," said Hurricane Jack.
"Her brother's in the Western Ocean tred. What I'm wantin' you on the
committee for iss to keep me back from the committee room, so that I'll
not take a drop too much and affront the lassie. If you see me
desperate keen on takin' more than would be dacent, take a dozen strong
smert fellows in wi' you at my expense and barricade the door. I'll
maybe taalk aboot tearin' the hoose doon, but och, that'll only be my
nonsense."
The Captain accepted the office, not without reluctance, and went to
the ball, but Hurricane Jack failed to put in any appearance all night,
and Para Handy considered himself the victim of a very stupid practical
joke on the part of his friend.
Early next forenoon Hurricane Jack presented himself on board the
Vital Spark and made an explanation. "I'm black affronted, Peter," he
said, "but I couldna help it. I had a bit of an accident. You see it
wass this way, Peter. Miss Mactaggart wass comin' special up from
Carradale and stayin' with her uncle, old Macpherson. She wass to put
her clothes on there, and I wass to caal for her in wan of them cabs at
seven o'clock. I wass ready at five, all spruce from clew to earing,
and my heid wass that sore wi' wearin' a hat for baals that I got hold
of a couple of men I knew in the China tred and went for chust wan
small wee gless. What happened efter that for an oor or two's a
mystery, but I think I wass drugged. When I got my senses I wass in a
cab, and the driver roarin' doon the hatch to me askin' the
address.
"'What street iss it you're for?" said he.
"'What streets have you?' I asked.
"'Aal you told me wass Macfarlane's shup,' he said; 'do you think
we're anyway near it?'
"When he said that I put my heid oot by the gless and took an
observation.
"'Iss this Carrick Street or Monday mornin'?' says I to him, and
then he put me oot of his cab. The poor sowl had no fear in him; he
must have been Irish. It wass not much of a cab; here's the door
handles, a piece of the wud, and the man's brass number; I chust took
them with me for identification, and went home to my bed. When I
wakened this mornin' and thought of Jean sittin' up aal night waitin'
on me, I wass clean demented."
"It's a kind of a peety, too, the way it happened," said Para Handy
sympathetically. "It would put herself a bit aboot sittin' aal night
wi' her sluppers on."
"And a full set o' new sails," said Hurricane Jack pathetically.
"She was sparin' no expense. This'll be a lesson to me. It'll do me
good; I wish it hadna happened. What I called for wass to see if you'll
be kind enough, seein' you were on the committee, to go up to 191 Barr
Street, where she's stayin' wi' Macpherson, and put the thing ass
nicely for me ass you can."
Para Handy was naturally shy of the proposal.﹃I never saw the
lassie,﹄said he. "Would it no' look droll for me to go instead of
yoursel'?"
"It would look droll if you didna," said Hurricane Jack
emphatically. "What are you on the committee for, and in cherge of aal
the beer, unless you're to explain things? I'll show you the close, and
you'll go up and ask for two meenutes' private conversation with Miss
Mactaggart, and you'll tell her that I'm far from weel. Say I wass on
my way up last night in fine time and the cab collided with a tramway
car. Break it nice, and no' frighten the poor gyurl oot of her senses.
Say I was oot of my conscience for seven 'oors, but that I'm gettin'
the turn, and I'm no' a bit disfigured."
Para Handy was still irresolute.﹃She'll maybe want to nurse you,
the way they do in Macphail's novelles,﹄said he, "and what'll I tell
her then?"
This was a staggerer for Hurricane Jack. He recognised the danger of
arousing the womanly sympathies of Miss Mactaggart. But he was equal to
all difficulties of this kind. "Tell her," said he, "there's nobody to
get speakin' to me for forty-eight 'oors, but that I'll likely be oot
on Monday."
The Captain agreed to undertake this delicate mission, but only on
condition that Dougie the mate should accompany him to back him up in
case his own resourcefulness as a liar should fail him at the critical
moment.
"Very well," said Hurricane Jack, "take Dougie wi' you, but watch
her uncle; I'm told he's cunning, cunning, though I never met him--a
man Macpherson, by the name of Erchie. Whatever you tell her, if he's
there at the time, tell it to her in the Gaalic."
Para Handy and his mate that evening left Hurricane Jack at a
discreet public bar called the "Hot Blast," and went up to the house of
Erchie Macpherson. It was himself who came to answer their knock at his
door, for he was alone in the house.
"We're no' for ony strings o' onions, or parrots, or onything o'
that sort," he said, keeping one foot against the door and peering at
them in the dim light of the rat-tail burner on the stair-landing. "And
if it's the stair windows ye want to clean, they were done
yesterday."
"You should buy specs," said the Captain promptly--"they're no' that
dear. Iss Miss Mactaggart in?"
Erchie opened the door widely, and gave his visitors admission to
the kitchen.
"She's no' in the noo," said he. "Which o' ye happens to be the
sailor chap that was to tak' her to the ball last nicht?"
"It wasna any o' us," said Para Handy. "It wass another gentleman
aalthegither."
"I micat hae kent that," said Erchie. "Whit lockup is he in? If it's
his bail ye're here for, ye needna bother. I aye tell't my
guid-sister's dochter she wasna ill to please when she took up wi' a
sailor. I had a son that was yince a sailor himself, but thank the Lord
he's better, and he's in the Corporation noo. Were ye wantin' to see
Jean?"
"Chust for a meenute," said Para Handy, quietly taking a seat on the
jawbox. "Will she be long?"
"Five feet three," said Erchie, "and broad in proportion. She hasna
come doon sae much as ye wad think at her disappointment."
"That's nice," said Para Handy.﹃A thing o' the kind would tell
terribly on some weemen. You're no' in the shuppin' tred yoursel', I
suppose? I ken a lot o' Macphersons in the coast line. But I'm no'
askin', mind ye; it's chust for conversation. There wass a femily of
Macphersons came from the same place ass mysel' on Lochfyneside; fine
smert fellows they were, but I daresay no relation. Most respectable.
Perhaps you ken the Gaalic?﹄Y TALES
"Not me!" said Endue frankly--"jist plain Gleska. If I'm Hielan' I
canna help it; my faither took the boat to the Broomielaw as soon as he
got his senses."
The conversation would have languished here if Dougie had not come
to the rescue. "What's your tred?" he asked bluntly.
"Whiles I beadle and whiles I wait," replied Eichie, who was not the
man to be ashamed of his calling. "At ither times I jist mind my ain
affairs; ye should gie 't a trial--it'll no hurt ye."
The seamen laughed at this sally: it was always a virtue of both of
them that they could appreciate a joke at their own expense.
"No offence, no offence, Mr Macpherson," said Para Handy. "I wish
your niece would look slippy. You'll be sorry to hear aboot what
happened to poor Jeck."
Erchie turned quite serious. "What's the maitter wi' him?" he
said.
"The cab broke doon last night," said the Captain solemnly, "and he
got a duvvle of a smash."
"Puir sowl!" said Erchie, honestly distressed. "This'll be a sair
blow for Jeanie."
"He lost his conscience for 'oors, but there's no dis-feegurement,
and he'll be speechless till Monday momin'. It's a great peety. Such a
splendid voice ass he had, too; it wass truly sublime. He's lyin'
yonder wi' his heid in a sling and not wan word in him. He tell't me I
was to say to--"
Here Dougie, seeing an inconsistency in the report, slyly nudged his
captain, who stopped short and made a very good effort at a sigh of
deep regret.
"I thocht ye said he oouldna speak," said Erchie suspiciously.
"My mistake, my mistake," said the Captain. "What I meant wass that
he could only speak in the Gaalic; the man's fair off his usual.
Dougie'll tell you himsel'."
Dougie shook his head lugubriously. "Ay," said he, "he's yonder wi'
fifteen doctors roond him waitin' for the turn."
"What time did it happen?" inquired Erchie. "Was it efter he was
here?"
"He wass on his way here," said Para Handy. "It was exactly
half-past seven, for his watch stopped in the smash."
At this Erchie sat back in his chair and gave a disconcerting laugh.
"Man," he said, "ye're no' bad at a baur, but ye've baith put yer feet
in't this time. Will ye tak' a refreshment? There's a drop speerits in
the noose and a bottle or two o' porter."
"I'm teetotal mysel' at present," said Para Handy, "but I have a
nesty cold. I'll chust take the spurits while you're pullin' the
porter. We'll drink a quick recovery to Jeck."
"Wi' a' my he'rt," said Erchie agreeably. "I hope he'll be oot again
afore Monday. Do ye no' ken he came here last nicht wi' the cab a'
richt, but was that dazed Jeanie wadna gang wi' him. But she got to the
ball a' the same, for she went wi' Mackay the polisman."
"My Chove!" said the Captain, quite dumb-foundered. "He doesna mind,
himself, a thing aboot it."
"I daresay no'," said Erchie, "that's the warst o' trevellin' in
cabs; he should hae come in a motor-caur."
When the Captain and Dougie came down Macpherson's stair, they
considered the situation in the close.
"I think mysel'," said the Captain, "it wouldna be salubrious for
neither o' the two of us to go to the 'Hot Blast' and break the news to
Jeck the night."
"Whatever ye think yoursel'," said Dougie, and they headed straight
for home.
XXV: PARA HANDY'S WEDDING
IT is possible that Para Handy might still have been a bachelor if
Calum Cameron had not been jilted. Three days before Calum was to have
been married, the girl exercised a girl's privilege and changed her
mind. She explained her sad inconstancy by saying she had never cared
for him, and only said "yes" to get him off her face. It was an awkward
business, because it left the baker's widow, Mrs Crawford, with a large
bride's-cake on her hands. It is true the bride's-cake had been paid
for, but in the painful circumstances neither of the parties to the
broken contract would have anything to do with it, and it continued to
lie in the baker's window, a pathetic evidence of woman's perfidy. All
Campbeltown talked about it; people came five and six miles in from the
country to look at it. When they saw what a handsome example of the
confectioner's art it was, they shook their heads and said the lassie
could have no heart, let alone good taste.
Mrs Crawford, being a smart business woman, put a bill in the window
with the legend--
EXCELLENT BRIDE'S-CAKE SECOND'HAND.
But there were no offers, and she was on the point of disposing of
it on the Art Union principle, when, by one of those providential
accidents that are very hard on the sufferer but lead by a myriad
consequent circumstances to the most beneficent ends, a man in Carrick
Street, Glasgow, broke his leg. The man never heard of Para Handy in
all his life, nor of the Vital Spark; he had never been in Campbeltown,
and if he had not kept a pet tortoise he would never have figured in
this book, and Para Handy might not have been married, even though
Calum Cameron's girl had been a jilt.
The Carrick Street man's tortoise had wandered out into the close in
the evening; the owner, rushing out hurriedly at three minutes to ten
to do some shopping, tripped over it, and was not prevented by the
agony of his injured limb from seizing the offending animal and
throwing it into the street, where it fell at the feet of Para Handy,
who was passing at the time.
"A tortoise!" said the Captain, picking it up. "The first time ever
I kent they flew. I'll take it to Macphail--he's keen on birds anyway,"
and down he took it to the engineer of the Vital Spark.
But Macphail refused to interest himself in a pet which commended
itself neither by beauty of plumage nor sweetness of song, and for
several days the unhappy tortoise took a deck passage on the Vital
Spark, its constitution apparently little impaired by the fact that at
times The Tar used it as a coal-hammer.
"I'll no' see the poor tortoise abused this way," said Para Handy,
when they got to Campbeltown one day;﹃I'll take it up and give it to a
friend o' mine,﹄and, putting it into his pocket in the evening, he
went up to the baker's shop.
The widow was at the moment fixing a card on the bride's-cake
intimating that tickets for the raffle of it would cost sixpence each,
and that the drawing would take place on the following Saturday. Her
plump form was revealed in the small shop-window; the flush of exertion
charmingly irradiated her countenance as she bent among her penny buns
and bottles of fancy biscuits; Para Handy, gazing at her from the
outside, thought he had never seen her look more attractive. She
blushed more deeply when she saw him looking in at her, and retired
from the window with some embarrassment as he entered the shop.
"Fine night, Mery," said the Captain. "You're pushin' business
desperate, surely, when you're raffling bride's-cakes."
"Will you not buy a ticket?" said the lady, smiling. "You might be
the lucky man to get the prize."
"And what in the world would I do wi' a bride's-cake?" asked the
Captain, his manly sailor's heart in a gentle palpitation. "Where would
I get a bride to--to--to fit it?"
"I'm sure and I don't know," said the widow hurriedly, and she went
on to explain the circumstances that had left it on her hands. The
Captain listened attentively, eyed the elegant proportions of the cake
in the window, and was seized by a desperate resolve.
"I never saw a finer bride's-cake," he said; "it's chust sublime! Do
you think it would keep till the Gleska Fair?"
"It would keep a year for that part o't," said the widow. "What are
you askin' that for?"
"If it'll keep to the Fair, and the Fair suits yoursel'," said Para
Handy boldly,﹃we'll have it between us. What do you say to that,
Mery?﹄and he leaned amorously over the counter.
"Mercy on me! this is no' the New Year time," exclaimed the widow;
"I thought you never had any mind of me except at the New Year. Is this
a proposal, Captain?"
"Don't caal me. Captain, caal me Peter, and gie me a haad o' your
hand," entreated Para Handy languishingly.
"Well, then--Peter," murmured the widow, and the Captain went back
to the Vital Spark that night an engaged man: the bride's-cake was
withdrawn from the window, and the tortoise took up its quarters in the
back shop.
Of all the ordeals Para Handy had to pass through before his
marriage, there was none that troubled him more than his introduction
to her relatives, and the worst of them was Uncle Alick, who was very
old, very deaf, and very averse to his niece marrying again. The
Captain and his "fiancée" visited him as in duty bound, and
found him in a decidedly unfavourable temper.
"This is Peter," said the widow by way of introduction; and the
Captain stood awkwardly by her side, with his pea-jacket tightly
buttoned to give him an appearance of slim, sprightly, and dashing
youthfulness.
"What Peter?" asked the uncle, not taking his pipe out of his mouth,
and looking with a cold, indifferent eye upon his prospective
relative.
"You know fine," said the lady, flushing. "It's my lad."
"What did you say?" inquired Uncle Alick, with a hand behind his
ear.
"My lad," she cried. "Peter Macfarlane--him that's Captain on the
Vital Spark."
"Catched him in a park," said Uncle Alick. "I'll wudger you didna
need to run fast to catch him. Whatna park was it?"
"The Fital Spark," roared the Captain, coming to Mary's assistance.
"I'm captain on her."
"Are you, are you?" said Uncle Alick querulously. "Weel, you needna
roar at me like that; I'm no' that deaf. You'll be wan o' the
Macfarlanes from Achnatra; they were aal kind of droll in the mind, but
hermless."
The Captain explained that he was a member of a different family
altogether, but Uncle Alick displayed no interest in the explanation.
"It's none of my business," said he.
"Mery thinks it is," rejoined the Captain. "That's the reason we're
here."
"Beer!" said Uncle Alick. "No, no, I have no beer for you. I never
keep drink of any sort in the hoose."
"I never said beer," exclaimed Para Handy.
"I'll be telling a lie then," said Uncle Alick. "The same ass if I
didn't hear you with my own ears. You'll be the man that Mery's goin'
to merry. I canna understand her; I'm sure she had plenty of trouble
wi' Donald Crawford before he went and died on her. But it's none o' my
business: I'm only an old done man, no' long for this world, and I'm
not goin' to interfere wi' her if she wass to merry a bleck. She never
consulted me, though I'm the only uncle she has. You shouldna put
yoursel's to bother tellin' me anything aboot it; I'm sure I would have
heard aboot it from some o' the neebours. The neebours iss very good to
me. They're sayin' it's a droll-like thing Mery merryin' again, and her
wi' a nice wee shop o' her own. What I says to them iss,' It's her own
business: perhaps she sees something takin' in the man that nobody else
does. Maybe,' I says to them,' he'll give up his vessel and help her in
the shop.'"
"Och, you're chust an old haiver!" remarked the Captain sotto voce,
and of course the deaf man heard him.
"A haiver!" said he. "A nice-like thing to say aboot the only uncle
Mery has, and him over eighty-six. But you're no' young yoursel'. Maybe
it wass time for you to be givin' up the boats."
"I'm no' thinkin' o' givin' them up, Uncle," said Para Handy
cheerfully. "The Vital Spark's the smertest boat in the tred. A
bonny-like hand I would be in a shop. No, no, herself here--Mery, can
keep the shop or leave it, chust ass it pleases hersel', it's aal wan
to me; I'm quite joco. I hope you'll turn up at the weddin' on the
fufteenth, for aal langsyne."
"What's your wull?" inquired Uncle Alick.
"I hope you'll turn up at the weddin' and give us support," bellowed
the Captain.
"Give you sport," said the old man indignantly. "You'll surely get
plenty of sport withoot takin' it off a poor old man like me."
"Och! to the muschief!" exclaimed the Captain somewhat impatiently.
"Here's a half pound o' tobacco me and Mery brought you, and surely
that'll put you in better trum."
"What wey did you no' say that at first?" said Uncle Alick. "Hoo
wass I to know you werena wantin' the lend o' money for the weddin'?
Stop you and I'll see if there's any spurits handy."
I was not at the wedding, but the Captain told me all about it some
days afterwards. "It would be worth a bit in the papers," he said with
considerable elation. "I'll wudger there wasna another weddin' like it
in Kintyre for ohenerations. The herrin' trawlers iss not back at their
work yet, and herrin's up ten shullin's a box in Gleska. Dougie and The
Tar and their wifes wass there, quite nate and tidy, and every noo and
then Macphail would be comin' doon to the boat and blowin' her whustle.
Och, he's not a bad chap Macphail, either, but chust stupid with
readin' them novelles.
"I never saw Mery lookin' more majestic; she wass chust sublime!
Some of them said I wassna lookin' slack mysel', and I daarsay no', for
I wass in splendid trum. When the knot was tied, and we sat doon to a
bite, I found it wass a different bride's-cake aalthegither from the
wan that julted Cameron.
"'What's the meanin' of that? 'I whuspered to the mustress. 'That's
no' the bride's-cake you had in the window.'
"'No,' says she,' but it's a far better one, isn't it?'
"'It's a better-lookin' wan,' I says, 'but the other wan might have
done the business.'
"'Maybe it would,' she said, 'but I have all my wuts aboot me, and I
wasna goin' to have the neighbours say that both the bride and
bride's-cake were second-hand.' Oh! I'm tellin'you she's a smert wan
the mustress!"
"Well, I wish you and your good lady long life and happiness,
Captain," I said.
"Thanky, thanky," said he. "I'll tell the mustress. Could you no put
a bit in the papers sayin', 'The rale and only belle o' Captain
Macfariane's weddin' wass the young lady first in the grand merch,
dressed in broon silk.'"
"Who was the young lady dressed in brown?" I asked.
"What need you ask for?" he replied. "Who would it be but the
mustress?"
THE END
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