Chapter Twenty Seven.
The Captain’s Appetite Restored, and Ruth in a New Light
Captain Bream reclined one day on a sofa in the sitting-room of the house where he had first made the acquaintance of the Miss Seawards. Both ladies were seated by his side, the one working worsted cuffs and the other comforters, and both found the utmost difficulty in repressing tears when they looked at their kind nautical friend, for a great change had come over him since we last saw him.
We will not venture to state what was the illness that had laid the captain, as he himself expressed it on his beam-ends, but whatever it might have been, it had reduced him to a mere shadow. His once round cheeks were hollow; his eyes were so sunken that they appeared to have retired into the interior of his head, out of which, as out of two deep caverns, they gleamed solemnly. His voice, having been originally pitched so low that it could not well get lower, had become reduced to the sound of a big drum muffled; it had also a faint resemblance to a bassoon with a bad cold. His beard and moustache, having been allowed to grow, bore a striking likeness to a worn-out clothes-brush, and his garments appeared to hang upon a living skeleton of large proportions.
It is right however, to add that this was the worst that could be said of him. The spirit within was as cheery and loving and tender as ever it had been—indeed more so—and the only wonder was that it did not break a hole in the once tough but now thin shell of its prison-house, and soar upwards to its native regions in the sky!
“You must not work so hard at these cuffs, Miss Jessie,” he said, with a pleasant though languid smile. “If you do I’ll reduce my board.”
“But that would only render it necessary that I should work harder,” returned Jessie, without checking the pace of the needles.
“It is hard,” resumed the captain, “that I should be disobeyed at every turn now that I’m on my beam-ends, with little more strength in me than a new-born kitten. But never mind, I’m beginnin’ to feel stronger, and I’ll pay you off, my dear, when I’m able to move about.”
“Do you really feel a little stronger?” asked Kate, who, although more lively—even mischievous in a small way—than her sister, had been more deeply affected by the captain’s long illness, and could not shake off the impression that he was going to die.
“Feel stronger!” exclaimed the wrecked giant. “Give me your hand. D’ee feel that?”
“That” which Kate was to feel was a squeeze as a test of strength.
“There. Doesn’t it hurt you? I believe I could make you cry if I was to try.”
And the captain did make her cry even without trying, for Kate was so deeply touched with the weakness of the trembling squeeze, coupled with the hearty kindness and little touches of fun in the prostrate man, that she could not keep it down. Rising hurriedly, therefore, she flung her unfinished comforter into Jessie’s lap, left the room, and, retiring to her chamber, wept quietly there. Those tears were not now, however, as they had often been, tears of anxious sorrow, but of thankful joy.
Having accomplished this little matter, and relieved her feelings, she returned to the parlour.
“I’ve been just trying to persuade him, Kate,” said Jessie, as the former entered, “that in a week or two a trip to Yarmouth will do him so much good, but he does not seem to think he will be equal to it.”
“Come, now, Miss Jessie, that’s not a fair way to put it. I have no doubt that I shall be able enough—thanks to the good Lord who has spared me—but what I think is that Yarmouth, pleasant though it be, is not exactly what I want just now.”
“What then, do you think would be better for you?” asked Kate.
“‘The sea! The sea! The open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free!’” answered the captain, with a gleam in the sunken eyes such as had not been seen there for many days.
“Horrible thought!” said Jessie, with a pretended shudder.
“You know the proverb, ‘What’s one man’s meat is another man’s poison,’” returned the captain. “Ah! ladies, only those who have been cradled on the deep for three quarters of a lifetime, and who love the whistling winds, and the surging waves, and the bounding bark, know what it is to long, as I do, for another rest upon my mother’s breast:—
“‘And a mother she was and is to me,
For I was born—was born on the open sea.’”
“I had no idea you were so poetical,” said Jessie, much surprised at the invalid’s enthusiasm.
“Sickness has a tendency to make people poetical. I suppose,” returned the captain.
“But how are you to manage it? You can scarcely walk yet. Then excuse me, you haven’t got a ship, and I fear that not many owners would intrust one to you till you are stronger. So, what will you do?”
“Go as a passenger, my dear. See here; it’s all arranged,” said the captain, holding up a letter.
“I got this by the post this morning, and want to consult with you about it. Knowing my condition and desires, that excellent man the chaplain, who took me out in his steam-launch the day I got the first shot of this illness, had made known my case to the Director of the Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen, and he has kindly agreed to let me go a trip to the North Sea in one of the mission-ships, on the understanding that I shall do as much of a missionary’s work as I am fit for when there.”
“But you’re not fit for work of any kind!” exclaimed Kate with a flush of indignation which was partly roused by the idea of her friend being taken away from her at a time when he required so much nursing, and partly by the impropriety of so sick a man being expected to work at all.
“True, my dear, but I shall be fit enough in a week or two. Why, I feel strength coming back like a torrent. Even now I’m so hungry that I could devour my—my—”
“Your dinner!” cried Kate, as, at that opportune moment the door opened and Liffie Lee appeared with a tray in her hand.
There could be no doubt as to the captain’s appetite. Not only did his eyes glare, in quite a wolfish manner, at the food while it was being set before him, but the enormous quantity he took of that food became quite a source of alarm to the sisters, who watched and helped him.
“Now, captain,” said Jessie, laying her hand at last on his thin arm, as it was stretched out to help himself to more, “you really must not. You know the doctor said that it would never do, at first, to—”
“My dear,” interrupted the invalid, “hang the doctor!”
“Well, I have no objection to his being hanged, if you don’t ask me to do it,” returned Jessie, “but really—”
“Oh! let him alone,” said Kate, who, being very healthy, shared the captain’s unreasonable contempt for medical men, and was more than pleased at the ravenous tendencies of her old friend.
“Now for the sponge-cakes,” said the captain, wiping his mouth and rubbing his hands on finishing the first course.
“You are to have none,” said Kate, firmly. The captain’s face elongated into a look of woe.
“Because you are to have rice-pudding and thick cream instead!” continued Kate.
The captain’s face shortened again into a beaming smile.
Liffie Lee appeared at the moment with the viands named.
“I never saw anything like it!” exclaimed Jessie with a short laugh, and a look of resignation.
“I enjoy it so much!” said Kate, pouring out the cream with liberal hand.
Liffie said nothing, but if the widest extension of her lips, and the exposing of her bright little teeth from ear to ear, meant anything, it meant that her sympathies were entirely with Kate.
The captain was helped to pudding in a soup plate, that being relatively a rather small dessert plate for him. He was about to plunge the dessert spoon into it, but stopped suddenly and gazed at it. Then he turned his awful gaze on the small servant who almost shrank before it.
“Liffie, my dear.”
“Y–yes, sir.”
“Bring me a table-spoon, the biggest one you have.”
“Yes, sir,” she said,—and vanished. Presently she returned with an enormous gravy spoon.
“Ha! ha!” shouted the captain, with much of his old fire; “that’s better than I had hoped for! Hand it here, Liffie; it’ll do.”
He seized the weapon, and Liffie uttered an involuntary squeal of delight as she saw him sweep up nearly the whole of his first helping, and make one bite of it! He then attempted to smile at Liffie’s expression of joy, but did it awkwardly in the circumstances.
Just as he had finished his little repast, and was tranquilly stirring a breakfast cup of coffee, the door bell rang.
A minute later Liffie appeared with her mouth and eyes like three round O’s.
“If you please, ma’am, here’s Mister and Missis Dalton, as wants to know if they may come in.”
“Mr and Mrs who?” exclaimed both sisters.
“Mister an’ Missis Dalton,” repeated Liffie.
“Show them in—at once, child. Some ridiculous mistake,” said Jessie, glancing at Kate. “But, stay, Liffie;—you have no objection, captain?”
“None in the least.”
Another moment and Ruth appeared blushing in the door-way, with a handsome young man looming in the background.
“Mr and Mrs Dalton!” said the two sisters with a dazed look as they sank into two chairs.
“Oh no! darling Jessie,” cried Ruth, rushing forward and throwing her arms round her friend; “not—not quite that yet, but—but—engaged. And we determined that the very first call we made should be to you, darling.”
“Well, now, this is capital! Quite a picture,” growled the captain; “does more good to my digestion than—”
“Come,” interrupted Jessie, taking Ruth by the hand. “Come to our room!”
Regardless of all propriety, the sisters hurried Ruth off to their bedroom to have it out with her there, leaving young Dalton to face the captain.
“I congratulate you, my lad,” said the captain, frankly extending his hand. “Sit down.”
Dalton as frankly shook the hand and thanked the captain, as he took a seat beside him.
“I’m deeply grieved, Captain Bream, to see you so much reduced, yet rejoiced to find that you are fairly convalescent.”
“Humph! I wouldn’t give much for the depth of either your grief or joy on my account seein’ that you’ve managed to get hooked on to an angel.”
“Well, I confess,” said the youth, with a laugh, “that the joy connected with that fact pretty much overwhelms all other feelings at present.”
“The admission does you credit boy, for she is an angel. I’m not usin’ figures o’ speech. She’s a real darlin’, A1 at Lloyd’s. True blue through and through. And let me tell you, young fellow, that I know her better than you do, for I saw her before you were bor—, no, that couldn’t well be, but I knew her father before you were born, and herself ever since she saw the light.”
“I’m delighted to have your good opinion of her, though, of course, it cannot increase my estimation of her character. Nothing can do that!”
“Which means that my opinion goes for nothing. Well, the conceit of the rising generation is only equalled by—by that o’ the one that went before it. But, now, isn’t it strange that you are the very man I want to see?”
“It is indeed,” replied Dalton with a slightly incredulous look.
“Yes, the very man. Look ye here. Have you got a note-book?”
“I have.”
“Pull it out, then. I want you to draw out my will.”
“Your will, Captain Bream!”
“My will,” repeated the captain. “Last will an’ testament.”
“But I’m not lawyer enough to—”
“I know that, man! I only want you to sketch it out. Listen. I’m going in a week or two to the North Sea in a fishing-smack. Well, there’s no sayin’ what may happen there. I’m not infallible—or invulnerable—or waterproof, though I am an old salt. Now, you are acquainted with all my money matters, so I want you to jot down who the cash is to be divided among if I should go to the bottom; then, take the sketch to my lawyer—you know where he lives—and tell him to draw it out all ship-shape, an’ bring it to me to sign. Now, are you ready?”
“But, my dear sir, this may take a long time, and the ladies will probably return before we—”
“You don’t bother your head about the ladies, my lad, but do as I tell ’ee. Miss Ruth has got hold of two pair of ears and two hearts that won’t be satisfied in five minutes. Besides, my will won’t be a long one. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” said Dalton, spreading his note-book on his knee.
“Well,” resumed the captain, “after makin’ all the usual arrangements for all expenses—funeral, etcetera, (of which there’ll be none if I go to the bottom), an’ some legacies of which I’ll tell the lawyer when I see him, I leave all that remains to Miss Jessie and Miss Kate Seaward, share an’ share alike, to do with it as they please, an’ to leave it after them to whomsoever they like. There!”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, that’s all,” returned the captain, sadly. “I once had a dear sister, but every effort I have made to find her out has failed. Of course if I do come across her before it pleases the Lord to take me home, I’ll alter the will. In the meantime let it be drawn out so.”
Soon after this important transaction was finished the ladies returned, much flushed and excited, and full of apologies for their rude behaviour to their male friends.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
Out with the Short Blue again
Pleasant and heart-stirring is the sensation of returning health to one who has sailed for many weeks in the “Doldrums” of Disease, weathered Point Danger, crossed the Line of Weakness, and begun to steer with favouring gales over the smooth sea of Convalescence.
So thought Captain Bream one lovely summer day, some time after the events just narrated, as he sat on the bridge of a swift steamer which cut like a fish through the glassy waves of the North Sea.
It was one of Hewett and Company’s carriers, bound for the Short Blue fleet. Over three hundred miles was the total run; she had already made the greater part of it. The exact position of the ever-moving fleet was uncertain. Nevertheless, her experienced captain was almost certain—as if by a sort of instinct—to hit the spot where the smacks lay ready with their trunks of fish to feed the insatiable maw of Billingsgate.
Captain Bream’s cheeks were not so hollow as they had been when we last saw him. Neither were they so pale. His eyes, too, had come a considerable way out of the caves into which they had retreated, and the wolfish glare in the presence of food was exchanged for a look of calm serenity. His coat, instead of hanging on him like a shirt on a handspike, had begun to show indications of muscle covering the bones, and his vest no longer flapped against him like the topsail of a Dutchman in a dead calm. Altogether, there was a healthy look about the old man which gave the impression that he had been into dock, and had a thorough overhaul.
Enough of weakness remained, however, to induce a feeling of blessed restfulness in his entire being. The once strong and energetic man had been brought to the novel condition of being quite willing to leave the responsibility of the world on other shoulders, and to enjoy the hitherto unknown luxury of doing nothing at all. So thoroughly had he abandoned himself in this respect, that he did not even care to speak, but was satisfied to listen to others, or to gaze at the horizon in happy contemplation, or to pour on all around looks of calm benignity.
“How do you feel to-day, sir?” asked the mate of the steamer, as he came on the bridge.
“My strongest feeling,” said Captain Bream, “is one of thankfulness to God that I am so well.”
“A good feelin’ that doesn’t always come as strong as it ought to, or as one would wish; does it, sir?” said the mate.
“That’s true,” answered the captain, “but when a man, after bein’ so low that he seems to be bound for the next world, finds the tide risin’ again, the feelin’ is apt to come stronger, d’ee see? D’you expect to make the fleet to-day?”
“Yes, sir, we should make it in the evenin’ if the admiral has stuck to his plans.”
The captain became silent again, but after a few minutes, fearing that the mate might think him unsociable, he said—
“I suppose the admiral is always chosen as being one of the best men of the fleet?”
“That’s the idea, sir, and the one chosen usually is one of the best, though of course mistakes are sometimes made. The present admiral is a first-rate man—a thorough-going fisherman, well acquainted with all the shoals, and a Christian into the bargain.”
“Ah, I suppose that is an advantage to the fleet in many respects,” said the captain, brightening up, on finding the mate sympathetic on that point.
“It is for the advantage of the fleet in all respects, sir. I have known an ungodly admiral, on a Sunday, when they couldn’t fish, an’ the weather was just right for heavin’-to an’ going aboard the mission smack for service—I’ve known him keep the fleet movin’ the whole day, for nothin’ at all but spite. Of course that didn’t put any one in a good humour, an’ you know, sir, men always work better when they’re in good spirits.”
“Ay, well do I know that,” said the captain, “for I’ve had a good deal to do wi’ men in my time, and I have always found that Christian sailors as a rule are worth more than unbelievers, just because they work with a will—as the Bible puts it, ‘unto the Lord and not unto men.’ You’ve heard of General Havelock, no doubt?”
“Oh yes, sir, you mean the Indian general who used to look after the souls of his men?”
“That’s the man,” returned the captain. “Well, I’ve been told that on one occasion when the commander-in-chief sent for some soldiers for special duty, and found that most of ’em were drunk, he turned an’ said, ‘Send me some of Havelock’s saints: they can be depended on!’ I’m not sure if I’ve got the story rightly, but, anyhow, that’s what he said.”
“Ay, sir, I sometimes think it wonderful,” said the mate, “that unbelievers don’t themselves see that the love of God in a man’s heart makes him a better and safer servant in all respects—according to the Word, ‘Godliness is profitable to the life that now is, as well as that which is to come.’ There’s the fleet at last, sir!”
While speaking, the mate had been scanning the horizon with his glass, which he immediately handed to the captain, who rose at once and saw the line of the Short Blue like little dots on the horizon. The dots soon grew larger; then they assumed the form of vessels, and in a short time the carrying-steamer was amongst them, making straight for the admiral, whose smack was distinguishable by his flag.
“What is the admiral’s name?” asked the captain as they advanced.
“Davidson—Joe Davidson; one of the brightest young fellows I ever knew,” answered the captain of the steamer, who came on the bridge at that moment, “and a true Christian. He is master of the Evening Star.”
“Why, I thought that was the name of a smack that was wrecked some time ago near Yarmouth—at least so my friends there wrote me,” said Captain Bream with sudden interest; and well might he feel interest in the new Evening Star, for it was himself who had given the thousand pounds to purchase her, at Ruth Dotropy’s request, but he had not been told that her skipper, Joe Davidson, had been made admiral of the fleet.
“So it was the Evening Star, sir, that was wrecked, but some open-handed gentleman in London bought a new smack for widow Bright and she called it by the same name, an’ the young man, who had been mate with her husband, she has made skipper till her son Billy is old enough to take charge of her. The strangest thing is, that all the old crew have stuck together, and the smack is now one of the best managed in the fleet. Joe wouldn’t have been made admiral if that wasn’t so.”
To this, and a great deal more, the captain listened with great joy and thankfulness, without, however, giving a hint as to his own part in the matter. Originally he had given the thousand pounds to please Ruth, and he had been at that time glad to think that the gift was to benefit a deserving and unfortunate widow. It was not a little satisfactory, therefore, to hear that his gift had been so well bestowed; that it had even become the admiral’s vessel, and that he was about to have the opportunity of boarding the new Evening Star and himself inspecting its crew.
“Tell me a little more about this Evening Star,” he said to the captain of the steamer. “I have sometimes heard of her from a lady friend of mine, who takes a great interest in her owner, but I was so ill at the time she wrote that I couldn’t pay much attention to anything.”
Thus invited the captain proceeded to tell all he knew about David Bright and his wife, and Billy, and Luke Trevor, Spivin, Gunter, Zulu, the wreck, the launch of the new smack, etcetera,—much of which was quite new to Captain Bream, and all of which was of course deeply interesting to him.
While these two were conversing the fleet gradually thickened around them, for a light breeze, which seemed to have sprung up for the very purpose, enabled them to close in. Some of the smacks were close at hand; others more distant. To those within hail, the captain and mate of the steamer gave the customary salute and toss of the fist in the air as they passed.
“There’s the admiral,” said the captain, “two points off the port bow.”
“An’ the gospel-ship close alongside,” said the mate. “Don’t you see the M.D.S.F. flag? Trust Joe for bein’ near to her when he can manage it. Here they come, fast an’ thick. There’s the Fern, I’d know her a mile off, an’ the Martin, an’ Rover, Coquette, Truant! What cheer, boys!”
“Is that the Cherub or the Andax abeam of us?” asked the captain.
“It’s neither. It’s the Guide, or the Boy Jim, or the Retriever—not quite sure which.”
“Now, Captain Bream, shall we put you on board the mission-ship at once, or will you wait to see us boarded for empty trunks?”
“I’ll wait,” returned Captain Bream.
Soon the steamer hove-to, not far from the admiral’s vessel. The smacks came crowding round like bees round a hive, each one lowering a boat when near enough.
And once again was enacted a scene similar in many respects to that which we have described in a previous chapter, with this difference, that the scramble now was partly for the purpose of obtaining empty boxes. Another steamer had taken off most of their fish early that day, and the one just arrived meant to wait for the fish of the next morning.
It chanced that a good many of the rougher men of the fleet came on board that evening, so that Captain Bream, whose recent experiences had led him half to expect that all the North Sea fishermen were amiable lions, had his mind sadly but effectively disabused of that false idea. The steamer’s deck soon swarmed with some four hundred of the roughest and most boisterous men he had ever seen, and the air was filled with coarse and profane language, while a tendency to fight was exhibited by several of them.
“They’re a rough lot, sir,” said the mate as he leant on the rail of the bridge, gazing down on the animated scene, “but they were a rougher lot before the gospel-ship came out to stay among them, and some of the brightest Christians now in the fleet were as bad as the worst you see down there.”
“Ay, Jesus came to save the lost, and the worst,” said the captain in a low tone—“praise to His name!”
As soon as the trunks had been received, the admiral bore away to windward, and the fleet began to follow and make preparation for the night’s fishing; for the fish which were destined so soon to smoke on London tables were at that moment gambolling at the bottom of the sea!
“We must run down to the mission smack, and put you aboard at once, sir,” said the mate, “for she follows the admiral—though she does not fish on Saturday nights, so that the hold may be clear of fish and ready for service on Sundays.”
Captain Bream was ready.
“They know you are coming, I suppose?”
“Yes, they expect me.”
In a few minutes the steamer was close to the mission-ship, and soon after, the powerful arms of its hospitable skipper and mate were extended to help the expected invalid out of the boat which had been sent for him.
“We’re makin’ things all snug for the night,” said the skipper, as he led his guest into the little cabin, “an’ when we’re done we shall have tea; but if you’d like it sooner—”
“No, no, skipper, I’ll wait. Though I’m just come from the shore, you don’t take me for an impatient land-lubber, do you? Go, finish your work, and I’ll rest a bit. I’ve been ill, you see, an’ can’t stand as much as I used to,” he added apologetically.
When left alone, Captain Bream’s mode of resting himself was to go down on his knees and thank God for having brought him to so congenial a resting-place on the world of waters, and to pray that he might be made use of to His glory while there.
How that prayer was answered we shall see.