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Fitz the Filibuster, a novel by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 23. Boating |
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_ CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. BOATING "Well, Mr Poole, sir, we seem to have got ourselves into a pretty jolly sort of mess. I feel quite damp. You are skipper, sir; what's to be done?" "Shout again," cried Poole; "all together,"--and another lusty yell was given. "There, 'tarn't no use, sir," said the boatswain, "if so be as I may speak." "Speak? Of course! I am only too glad of your advice. What were you going to say?" "Only this 'ere, sir--that it aren't no use to shout. I am wet and cold, and hollering like this is giving me a sore throat, and the rest of the lads too. There's Dick Boulter is as husky as my old uncle Tom's Cochin fowl. Here, I want to know why the skipper don't show a blue light." "He dare not," said Poole hastily. "It would be showing the gunboat where the schooner is." There was a sharp slap heard in the darkness, caused by the boatswain bringing his hand smartly down upon his sturdy thigh. "Right you are, my lad. I never thought of that. I oughter, but it didn't come. 'Cause I was so wet, I suppose. Well, sir, what do you think?" "Try, every one of you," said Poole, "whether you can make out a light. The _Teal_ oughtn't to be very far away." "Nay, sir, she oughtn't to be, but she is. Off shore here in these seas you get currents running you don't know where. We don't know, but I expect we are in one of them, and it's carrying us along nobody knows how fast; and like as not another current's carrying on the same game with the _Teal_." "Well, we must row, and row hard," said Poole. "But that may be making worse of it," put in Fitz, who had been listening and longing to speak. "Well done," said the boatswain. "Spoke like a young man-o'-war officer! He's right, Mr Poole, sir. I am longing to take an oar so as to get warm and dry; but it's no use to try and make what's as bad as ever it can be, ever so much worse." "That would puzzle you, Mr Butters," said Fitz, laughing. "Oh, I don't know, sir," said the boatswain seriously, and perfectly unconscious of the bull he had made. "We might, you know. What's to be done, Mr Poole?" "I can only see one thing to be done," said the skipper's son, "and that seems so horrible and wanting in spirit." "What's that?" said Fitz sharply. "Wait for daylight." "Oh!" cried Fitz impatiently. "Impossible! We can't do that." "Well, I don't know, Mr Burnett, sir," growled the boatswain, gazing round. "Seems to me as if we must. Look here, you Bob Jackson," he almost roared now, as he turned sharply on the shivering foremast-man who had just been brought back to life, "what have you got to say for yourself for getting us all into such a mess as this? I always thought you were a bit of a swab, and now I knows it." "Don't bully the poor fellow," cried Poole hotly. "It was an accident." "Of course it was, sir," cried the boatswain, in an ill-used tone, as he drew off his jacket and began to wring it as tightly as he could; "and accidents, as I have heared say, will happen in the best-manned vessels. One expects them, and has to put up with them when they comes; but people ought to have accidents at proper times and places, not just when we've escaped running ourselves down, and the Spanish gunboat's arter us. Now then, Bob, don't sit there hutched up like a wet monkey. Speak out like a man." "I haven't got nothing to say, Mr Butters, sir, only as I am very sorry, and much obliged to you for saving my life." "Much obliged! Sorry! Wuss and wuss! Yah! Look at that now! Wuss and wuss. It never rains but it pours." "What's the matter?" cried Fitz, for the boatswain had made a sudden dash with one hand as if striving to catch something that had eluded his grasp. "Matter, sir? Why, I squeeged my brass 'bacca-box out of my jacket-pocket. It was chock-full, and it would go down like lead. Here, I give up now. Give your orders, Mr Poole, and I'll row or do anything else, for I'm quite out of heart." "Never mind your tobacco-box," said Fitz. "I'll give you a good new one the first time I get the chance." "Thankye kindly, sir," replied the man, "but what's the good of that? It aren't the box I mind. It's the 'bacca. Can you give me a mossel now?" "I am sorry to say I can't," said Fitz. "I've got plenty of that, Mr Butters, sir," said his wet companion, dragging out a box with some difficulty, for his wet hand would hardly go into his tight breeches-pocket, and when he had forced it in, declined to come out. "You've got plenty, Bob, my lad?" cried the boatswain. "Then you are a better man than I thought. There, I'll forgive you for going overboard. It were an accident, I suppose.--Hah! That's better," he continued, opening his knife and helping himself to a quid, which completely altered the tone of his voice. "There you are, my lad; put that there box back, and take care on it, for who knows but what that may be all our water and biscuit and other stores as will have to last us till we get picked up again? Now, Mr Poole, sir, what's it to be? I am at your sarvice if you will give the word." "I think we had better keep pulling gently, Butters, and go by the stars westward towards the land. It will be far better, and the feeling that we are doing something will keep us all from losing heart." "Right, my lad. Your father the skipper couldn't have spoken wiser words than them. Here, you Bob Jackson, get out of that jacket and shirt, and two of you lads hold the things over the side and one twist one way and t'other t'other, like the old women does with the sheets on washing-day. I am going to do just the same with mine. And then we two will do what bit of rowing's wanted till we gets quite dry. Say, Mr Fitz, sir, you couldn't get better advice than that, if you had been half-drowned, if you went to the best physic doctor in Liverpool." Shortly after, steering by the stars, the boat was headed pretty well due west, and a couple of oars were kept dipping with a monotonous splash, raising up the golden water, which dripped in lambent globules from the blades. All above was one grand dome of light, but below and around it was as if a thick stratum of intense blackness floated on the surface of the sea. So strangely dark this seemed that it impressed the boat's crew with a sense of dread that they could not master. It was a condensation of dread and despair, that knowledge of being alone in a frail craft at the mercy of the sea, without water or supplies of any kind, and off a coast which the currents might never let them reach, while at any hour a tempestuous wind might spring up and lash the sea into waves, in which it would be impossible for the boat to live. "Don't sit silent like that, Burnett," whispered Poole. "Say something, there's a good fellow." "Say? What can I say?" was whispered back. "Anything. Sing a song, or tell a story. I want to keep the lads in good heart. If we show the white feather they'll show it too." "That's right enough," said Fitz gloomily; "but I don't feel as if I could do anything but think. I couldn't sing a song or tell a story to save my life." "But you must. It _is_ to save your life." "I tell you I can't," cried Fitz angrily. "Then whistle." The middy could not even whistle, but the suggestion and the manner in which it was said did have a good effect, for it made him laugh. "Ah! That's better," cried Poole. "I say, Butters, do you think if we had a fishing-line overboard we should catch anything?" "Like enough, lad, if we had a good bait on. Fish is generally on the feed in the night, and there's no end of no-one-knows-whats off these 'Merican coasts. Might get hold of something big as would tow us right ashore." "Yes, or right out to sea," said Fitz. "Ay, my lad; but we should have to chance that." "But there's not likely to be a line in the locker," said Poole. "And if there was," said Fitz, "you have no bait." "'Cept 'bacca," said the boatswain, "and they wouldn't take that. And even if they would, we couldn't afford to waste it on fish as most likely wouldn't be good to eat. You catches fishes off these coasts as is painted up like parrots--red, and green, and yaller, and blue; but they are about as bad as pison.--Getting warmer, Bob?" "Bit," said the man addressed. "So'm I.--Tell the lads to keep their ears open, Mr Poole, for breakers. There may be shoal water anywhere, and we don't want to run into them." "You think it's likely, then," said Fitz, "that we may reach the shore?" "Oh yes, sir; we might, you know; and if we did I dare say you young gents would find it an uninhabited island where you could play at Robinson Crusoe till a ship come and took us off. What do you say to that?" "Nothing," said Fitz. "I want the daylight to come, and a sight of the _Silver Teal_." "Same here, sir. My word, I'm beginning to feel like wishing we had got the Camel here, though he would be no good without the galley and his tools. Not a bad chap to have, though, Mr Poole, if we was to land in a sort of Robinson Crusoe island. There's worse messmates at a time like that than a chap as can knock up decent wittles out of nothing; make a good pot of soup out of a flannel-shirt and an old shoe, and roast meat out of them knobs and things like cork-blocks as you find growing on trees. Some of them cookie chaps too, like the Camel, are precious keen about the nose, long-headed and knowing. Old Andy is an out-and-out clever chap at picking out things as is good to eat. I had a ramble with him once up country in Trinidad. He was a regular wunner at finding out different kinds of plants. 'Look 'ere,' he says, 'if you pull this up it's got a root something like a parsnep whose grandfather had been a beet.' And then he showed me some more things creeping up the trees like them flowers at home in the gardens, wonvuluses, as they call them, only he called them yams, and he poked one out with his stick, and yam it was--a great, big, black, thick, rooty thing, like a big tater as had been stretched. Andy said as no fellow as had brains in his head ought to starve out in a foreign land; and that's useful to know, Mr Poole and Mr Burnett, sir. Come in handy if we have to do the Robinson Crusoe for a spell.--Keep it up, young gents," he whispered; "the lads like to hear us talk.--'That's all very fine, Andy,' I says," he continued, aloud, "'but what about water? Whether you are aboard your ship or whether you are in a strange land, you must have plenty of water in your casks!' 'Find a river,' he says. 'But suppose you can't,' says I. 'Open your snickersee,' says he, 'and dig a hole right down till you come to it. And if there aren't none, then use your eyes.' 'Why, you can't drink your eyes,' I says, 'and I'd rather have sea-water any day than tears.' 'Use them,' he says; 'I didn't say drink 'em. Look about. Why, in these 'ere foreign countries there's prickly plants with long spikes to them to keep the wild beasts from meddling with them, so as they shall be ready for human beings; and then all you have got to do is to rub or singe the spikes off and they're chock-full of water--juice, if you like to call it so--only it's got no taste. Then there's plahnts with a spunful of water in their jyntes where the leaves come out, and orkard plahnts like young pitchers or sorter shucks with lids to keep the birds off, and a lot of water in the bottom of them, besides fruits and pumpkin things. Oh, a fellow can rub along right enough if he likes to try. I could manage; I know that.' And I believe he could, gentlemen, and that's what makes me say as the Camel would be just the right sort of fellow to have with us now, him and old Chips, so long as old Chips had got his basket of traps; not as he would stand still if he hadn't, for he's just the fellow, if he has no tools, as would set to and make some." And the night gradually wore on, with the men taking their turns at rowing. The boatswain and Bob Jackson both declared themselves to be as dry as a bone, and what with talking and setting despair at defiance, they went on and on through the great silence and darkness that hovered together over the mighty deep, till all at once the boatswain startled Fitz by turning quite suddenly and saying to him-- "There aren't no farmyard and a stable handy, sir, to give us what we want. Could you make shift to do it?" "To do what?" said Fitz wonderingly. "Crow like a cock, sir. It's just the right time now." "You don't mean to say it's morning, Butters?" "No, sir; it's Natur' as is a-doing that. You've got your back to it. Turn round and look behind you. That's the east." Both lads wrenched themselves round upon the thwart where they sat, to gaze back over the sea and catch the first glimpse of the faint dawn with its promises of hope and life, and the end of the terrible night through which they had passed. And after the manner of the tropics, the broad daylight was not long in coming, followed by the first glint of the sun, which, as it sent a long line of ruddy gold over the surface of the sea, lit up one little speck of light miles upon miles to the north of where they lay. Fitz Burnett was the first to make it out, but before he could speak the boatswain had seen it too, and broke out with-- "Three cheers, my lads. Put all you know into it, hearty. There lies the _Teal_. Can you see the skipper, Mr Poole, sir?" "See my father?" cried the lad. "No! What do you mean?" "Ah, you want practice, sir. You ought to see him with your young eyes. He's there on deck somewhere with that double-barrelled spyglass of his, on the look-out for this 'ere boat." "Perhaps so," said Poole quietly, "and I suppose that's one of the _Teal's_ sails; but it's only half as big as a pocket-handkerchief folded into twenty-four." Two hours later they were on board, for it had not been long before the double-barrelled spyglass had picked them out. _ |
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