Two Knapsacks | Page 8

squarmish. Wish I'd a drop o' stuff for you, but we don't carry none; wouldn't do, you know." Coristine was touched by the good fellow's kindness, and opened his flask for their joint benefit, after which he felt better, and The Crew said it made him like a four-year-old.
"Hi, Sylvanus, come aft here to your dog watch," cried the captain, and The Crew retired, while his superior officer and Wilkinson came forward. The former went down into the hold, leaving the dominie free for conversation with his friend. "It's all up again, Wilks," said Coristine sadly; "those two girls were on board this very schooner, no later than last summer, and the one that spotted you is the captain's niece."
"I know," groaned Wilkinson; "did he not tell me that he had a niece, a wonderfully fine girl, if he did say it, in the public schools, and made me promise to look her up when I go back to town! This kind of thing will be the death of me, Corry. Tell me, is your friend at the helm another uncle?"
"Oh, no," laughed Coristine, "he's a simple-hearted, humble sort of creature, who worships the boards these girls trod upon. He has a tremendous respect for the Carmichaels. What a lucky thing it is they didn't come on board at Belle Ewart! Do you think they'll be on hand at Barrie?"
"I shouldn't wonder."
"Then, Wilks, I tell you what it is, we must slope. When it gets dark, I'll slip over the stern into the dingy and bring her round to the side for you; then we'll sail away for parts unknown."
"Corry, I am ashamed of you for imagining that I would lend myself to base treachery, and robbery, or piracy rather, on the high seas, laying us open, as you, a lawyer, must know, to penalties that would blast our reputations and ruin our lives. No, sir, we must face our misfortune like men. In the meanwhile, I will find out, from the captain, where his niece and her friend are likely to be."
Coristine walked aft to The Crew, and served his apprenticeship to sitting on the tiller and propelling the rudder thereby in the desired direction. When he went wrong, while The Crew was lighting his pipe, the flapping of the sails warned him to back the tiller to its proper place. When hauling at the halliards, he had sung to his admiring companion in toil the "Sailor's Shanty":--
My Polly said she'd marry me when I came home, Yo hee, yo ho, haul all together; But when I came I found she'd been and took my messmate Tom, Yo hee, yo ho, haul all together.
Now, therefore, The Crew was urgent for a song to cheer up the lonesomeness a bit, and the lawyer, nothing loath, sang with genuine pathos:--
A baby was sleeping; Its mother was weeping. For her husband was far on the wide rolling sea.
When he came to the sea-ee-ee-ee-ee at the end of the third line, The Crew, who had been keeping time with one foot on the deck and with one hand on the tiller, aided him in rolling it forth, and, when the singing was over, he characterized it as "pooty and suitin' like," by which he meant that the references to the howling tempest and the raging billow were appropriate to the present nautical circumstances. After much persuasion The Crew was induced to add to the harmony of the evening. His voice was strong, but, like many strong things, under imperfect control; his tune was nowhere, and his intended pathetic unction was simply maudlin. Coristine could recall but little of the long ballad to which he listened, the story of a niggardly and irate father, who followed and fought with the young knight that had carried off his daughter. Two verses, however, could not escape his memory, on account of the disinterested and filial light in which they made the young lady appear:--
"O stay your hand," the old man cried, A-lying on the ground, "And you shall have my daughter, And twenty thousand pound."
"Don't let him up, dear sweetheart, The portion is too small." "O stay your hand," the old man said, "And you shall have it all."
The lawyer was loud in his admiration of this classical piece, and what he afterwards found was The Crew's original and only tune. "That was the kind of wife for a poor man," remarked Sylvanus, meditatively; "but she was mighty hard on her old dad."
"They're a poor lot, the whole pack of them," said the lawyer, savagely, thinking of the quandary in which he and his friend were placed.
"Who is?" asked The Crew.
"Why, the women, to be sure."
"Look here, Mister, my name may be Sylvanus, but I know I'm pretty rough, for all that. But, rough as I