The Castaways

The Castaways, by Harry
Collingwood

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Title: The Castaways
Author: Harry Collingwood
Illustrator: T.C. Dugdale
Release Date: November 15, 2007 [EBook #23491]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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CASTAWAYS ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Castaways
by Harry Collingwood.

CHAPTER ONE.
MISS ONSLOW.
It was on a wet, dreary, dismal afternoon, toward the end of October
18--, that I found myself en route for Gravesend, to join the clipper
ship City of Cawnpore, in the capacity of cuddy passenger, bound for
Calcutta.
The wind was blowing strong from the south-east, and came sweeping
along, charged with frequent heavy rain squalls that dashed fiercely
against the carriage windows, while the atmosphere was a mere dingy,
brownish grey expanse of shapeless vapour, so all-pervading that it
shut out not only the entire firmament but also a very considerable
portion of the landscape.
There had been a time, not so very long ago--while I was hunting
slavers on the West Coast, grilling under a scorching African sun day
after day and month after month, with pitiless monotony--when the
mere recollection of such weather as this had made me long for a taste
of it as a priceless luxury; but now, after some five months' experience
of the execrable British climate, I folded my cloak more closely about
me, as I gazed through the carriage windows at the rain-blurred
landscape, and blessed the physician who was sending me southward in
search of warmth and sunshine and the strong salt breeze once more.
For it was in pursuit of renewed health and strength that I was about to
undertake the voyage; a spell of over two years of hard, uninterrupted
service upon the Coast--during which a more than average allowance of
wounds and fever had fallen to my share--had compelled me to invalid
home; and now, with my wounds healed, the fever banished from my
system, and in possession of a snug little, recently-acquired
competence that rendered it unnecessary for me to follow the sea as a
profession, I-- Charles Conyers, R.N., aged twenty-seven--was, by the
fiat of my medical adviser, about to seek, on the broad ocean, that
life-giving tonic which is unobtainable elsewhere, and which was all
that I now needed to entirely reinvigorate my constitution and complete

my restoration to perfect health.
Upon my arrival at Gravesend I was glad to find that the rain had
ceased, for the moment, although the sky still looked full of it. I
therefore lost no time in making my way down to the river, where I
forthwith engaged a waterman to convey me, and the few light articles I
had brought with me, off to the ship.
The City of Cawnpore was a brand-new iron ship, of some twelve
hundred tons register, modelled like a frigate, full-rigged, and as
handsome a craft in every respect as I had ever seen. I had seen her
before, of course, in the Docks, when I had gone down to inspect her
and choose my cabin; but she was then less than half loaded; her decks
were dirty and lumbered up with bales and cases of cargo; her
jib-booms were rigged in, and her topgallant-masts down on deck; and
altogether she was looking her worst; while now, lying well out toward
the middle of the stream as she was, she looked a perfect picture, as she
lay with her bows pointing down-stream, straining lightly at her cable
upon the last of the flood-tide, loaded down just sufficiently, as it
seemed, to put her into perfect sailing trim, her black hull with its
painted ports showing up in strong contrast to the peasoup-coloured
flood upon which she rode, her lofty masts stayed to a hair, and all
accurately parallel, gleaming like ruddy gold against the dingy murk of
the wild-looking sky. Her yards were all squared with the nicest
precision, and the new cream-white canvas snugly furled upon them
and the booms; the red ensign streamed from the gaff-end; and the
burgee, or house flag--a red star in a white diamond upon a blue
field--cut with a swallow tail in the present instance to indicate that her
skipper was the commodore of the fleet--fluttered at the
main-royal-masthead.
"She's a pretty ship, sir; a very pretty ship; as handsome a vessel as I've
ever see'd a lyin' off this here town," remarked the waterman who was
pulling me off to her, noting perhaps the admiration in