Sail Ho! | Page 2

wich one end, and then fall flat within a foot of where two lads dressed as midshipmen in the merchant service had been standing, but who at the first shout had rushed in different directions, one to stumble over a coil of rope, perform an evolution like the leap of a frog, and come down flat on his front; the other to butt his head right into the chest of a big, burly, sunburnt man, who gave vent to a sound between a bellow and a roar.
"Where are--Hi! aloft there!--oh, my wind! Ahoy there, you--!"
Then followed, as the big burly man recovered his breath, a startling volley of words--expletives and sea terms, in which he denounced the gang of men aloft as sea-cooks and lubbers, and threatened divers punishments and penalties for their carelessness.
Then he turned to another man who was bigger, burlier, redder, and browner, especially about the nose, and made certain exceedingly impolite inquiries as to what he was about, to allow the owner's tackle to be smashed about in that fashion. To which the bigger and browner man growled out a retort that he'd nothing to do with the gang, as things hadn't been handed over to him yet. And then he grew frantic too, and kicked the fallen yard, and yelled up to the riggers that the said piece of wood was sprung, that they'd have to get another yard, for he wasn't going to sea with a main-top-galn'sl-yard fished and spliced.
Meantime the first brown man had turned to the two lads, and cooling down, nodded to them.
"Come on board then, eh?"
"Yes, sir--yes, sir."
"Lucky for you that you both hopped out of the way, youngsters, or I should have had to send one of you back home with a hole through him, and t'other broke in half."
I was the boy who would have been sent home with a hole through him--I the boy who write this--and the other boy who would have been broken in half, was one whom I had encountered at the dock-gates, where we had both arrived together, that miserable, mizzly morning, in four-wheeled cabs with our sea-chests on the top, and both in mortal dread--and yet somehow hopeful--that we should be too late, and that the good ship Burgh Castle had sailed.
I had been very anxious to go to sea. I loved it, and all through the preparations I was eagerness itself; but somehow, when it came to the morning that I started from the hotel where I had slept for the one night in London, a curious feeling of despondency came over me, a feeling which grew worse as I passed through the city, and then along the water-side streets, where there were shops displaying tarpaulins, canvas, and ropes; others dealing in ships' stores; and again others whose windows glittered with compass, sextant, and patent logs, not wooden, but brass.
Perhaps it was seeing all this through the steamy, misty rain.
"What a while he is!" I said to myself, "and what a dismal place!"
Just then, as we were going down the muddiest street I ever saw, I became aware of a dirty, ragged-looking fellow of eighteen or nineteen trotting along beside the cab, and directly after of one on the other side, who kept up persistently till at last we reached the docks and the cabman drew up.
"Drive on," I shouted.
"Don't go no further," was the reply, and I stepped out into the drizzle to see about my chest and pay the man, just as a sharp quarrel was going on close by, and I saw a lad a little bigger than myself scuffling with two more rough-looking fellows who had seized upon his chest, and insisted upon carrying it.
The next moment I was engaged with the pair who had trotted by my cab, and who had fastened most officiously upon mine.
"You touch it again," came sharply, "and I'll let you know."
"Leave the box alone," I said, "I don't want your help."
"Carry it in, sir. I was fust, sir. Yah! you get out."
"Don't let 'em take it," shouted the lad who was squabbling with the first pair, and I was just beginning to think that I should have to fight for my belongings, when a dock policeman came to our help, the cabmen were paid, and our chests were placed upon a truck, while the cab touts pressed upon us and insisted on being paid for doing nothing.
"You must have got plenty of tin," said my companion in difficulties, after I had compromised matters by giving each of the ragged touts a shilling; "you won't do that next voyage. I did first time I came."
"Have you been to sea before, then?" I said, looking at the speaker with interest.
"Rather. Are you going in the Burgh Castle? Yes, I can see you are."
"How?"