The Wreck of the Nancy Bell

The Wreck of the Nancy Bell; or, Cast Away on Kerguelen Land
By John Conroy Hutcheson
CHAPTER ONE.
OUTWARDS BOUND.
"How's her head?" exclaimed Captain Dinks, the moment his genial,
rosy, weather-beaten face appeared looming above the top-rail of the
companion way that led up to the poop from the saloon below, the
bright mellow light of the morning sun reflecting from his deep-tanned
visage as if from a mirror, and making it as radiant almost as the orb of
day.
"West-sou'-west, sorr," came the answer, ere the questioner could set
foot on the deck, in accents short, sharp, prompt, and decisive, albeit
with a strong Milesian flavour, from the chief mate. He was the officer
of the watch, and was standing alongside the man at the wheel on the
weather-side of the ship, with a telescope under his arm and a keen
look of attention in his merry, twinkling grey eyes.
"Ha-hum!" muttered the captain to himself reflectively. "I wish the
wind would shift over more to the nor'ard, and we'd then be able to
shape a better course; we're going far too much to the west to please me!
I suppose," he added in a louder tone, addressing the mate again, "she
isn't making any great way yet since daylight, McCarthy, eh?"
"No, sorr, leastways, Captain Dinks," replied that worthy, a genuine
thorough-going Irishman, "from the crown of his head to the sole of his
fut," as he would have said himself, and with a shaggy head of hair and
beard as red as that of the wildest Celt in Connemara, besides being
blessed with a "brogue" as pronounced as his turned-up nose--on which
one might have hung a tea-kettle on an emergency, in the hope that its

surroundings would supply the requisite fire and fuel for boiling
purposes. "No, sorr, no way at all at all, sure! Not more'n five knots,
cap'en honey, by the same token, the last time we hove the log at six
bells, bad cess to it!"
"Everything drawing, too, slow and aloft!" said the captain, with just a
shade of discontent in his cheery voice, as he took in with a quick,
sailor-like glance the position of the ship and every detail of the
swelling pyramids of canvas that towered up on each mast from deck to
sky--the yards braced round sharp, almost fore and aft, the huge square
sails flattened like boards, the tremulous fluttering of the flying jib, and
occasional gybing of the spanker, showing how close up to the wind
the vessel was being steered. "You couldn't luff her a bit more,
McCarthy, could you?" he added, after another glance at the compass
and a murmured "steady!" to the steersman.
"Not a ha'porth, sorr," replied the mate sorrowfully, as if it went to his
heart to make the announcement. "I had the watch up only jist a minit
ago; an' if you'll belave me, Cap'en Dinks, we've braced up the yards to
the last inch the sheets will run, bad cess to thim!"
"Well, well, I suppose we'll have to put up with it; though it's rather
disheartening to have this sou'-wester right in one's teeth before we
have cleared the Chops of the Channel, after all our good luck in
having so fair a wind down with us from the Nore!"
The captain still spoke somewhat disconsolately; but, his temperament
was of too bright and elastic a nature to allow him long to look merely
on the dark side of things. Soon, he saw something to be cheerful over,
in spite of the adverse influence of Aeolus; and this was, as it appeared
to him, the wonderful progress the ship was making, although sailing,
close-hauled as she was, with the wind right before the beam.
"Now, isn't she a beauty, though, McCarthy," he said presently, with a
sort of triumphant ring in his speech, after gazing for a few moments in
silence over the taffrail astern at the long foaming wake the vessel was
leaving behind her, spread out like a glittering silver fan across the
illimitable expanse of greenish-tinged water. "Isn't she a beauty to

behave as she does under the circumstances! There are not many ships
laden like her that would make five knots out of a foul wind, as she is
now doing, eh?"
"That there ain't, sorr," promptly returned the other with hearty
emphasis, only too glad to have the opportunity of agreeing with his
skipper. "An' jist you wait, sorr, till we get into the nor'-east trades; an'
by the powers we'll say the crathur walk away from us, like one of thim
race-horses on the Skibbereen coorse whin you're a standin' still and a
watchin' thim right foreninst you."
"Aye, that we will, McCarthy," chimed in Captain Dinks, now all good
humour again, chuckling