[Transcriber's note: WARNING: some words and language in this book may be offensive to modern readers.]
He dashed the stone into the dying embers.
HOW JACK MACKENZIE
WON HIS EPAULETTES
By
GORDON STABLES, M.D., C.M.
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS
LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN
AND NEW YORK
1906
PREFACE.
There is a glamour and romance about war that appeals to the heart of every young man worthy of the name in these islands. This is as it should be. We are a nation of sailors, it is true, but many a blood-red field can bear witness that we are soldiers also, when we have the right man to lead us.
A weapon, however, that is left too long in its scabbard is apt to rust therein. This was the state in which we found the British sword when the fiery cross was sent round in 1853. We had not been at war for forty years before this, and even many of our generals had forgotten all about the art. Hence the terrible muddle and mismanagement witnessed in the Crimea. Our poor fellows were positively sent off as empty-handed as if going to a grand parade or soldiers' picnic, and indeed but for individual courage, and good luck, the invasion would have ended in national disaster and disgrace, for us as well as for our brave allies the French.
I have no desire to dispel the romance that surrounds as with a halo the noble and necessary art of war. But I think every young fellow should know that to be a real soldier it is necessary for him to be not only a fighting man and a brave man in the field, but a perfect camp's-man also; and he can never learn to be so in barracks, but on the tented field, in times of peace.
It is for this reason that the sailor, if I may be allowed to say a word in favour of the service to which I belong, makes the best soldier. Captain Peel's brigade proved this in the trenches.
In the second book of this story, the youthful reader will find fighting and bloodshed enough, and horrors too. But the tale is all true, sadly, terribly true. Hear what Sir Evelyn Wood says: "It may be asked, Why recall these dismal stories? Because ...... to the present generation our hideous sacrifice of soldiers in the Crimea is but little more known than the sufferings of our troops at Walcheren and in the Peninsula. I believe in the advantage of telling those who elect parliamentary representatives what has happened and what may happen again, unless a high standard of administrative efficiency is maintained. This cannot be attained unless the necessary departments are practised in their duties during peace."
* * * * * *
"Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than war."
In my first book, then, I have endeavoured to give a sketch of the sailor's life in the piping times of peace, and most of the sketches and little adventures and yarns are drawn from the life. Dr. Reikie, who is constantly in the pursuit of science under difficulties, was a real character. So were Sturdy, Gribble, Fitzgerald, Captain Gillespie, and the marine Paddy O'Bayne.
CONTENTS.
Book First.
IN PIPING TIMES OF PEACE.
[III. Mrs. Malony's Wedding-ring]
[IV. "I'll be a Sailor or a Soldier"]
[V. "Hullo, Johnnie Greybreeks! I'm your Uncle"]
[VI. "The Old Lady had a Woman's Heart after all"]
[IX. In the good old "Gurnet"]
[X. Paddy's Adventure—Fred Harris proves himself a Hero]
[XI. A Tragedy—Auld Reikie pursues Science under Difficulties]
[XII. Tom Finch and the Shark—Shooting in the Dismal Swamp—Death and Promotion]
[XIII. Paddy's Hybrid—"A quare, quare Baste, Sorr"—Tricky Niggers—Black Man as Cook—War declared]
Book Second.
FOR HONOUR AND GLORY.
[I. "Blow, Good Wind, and waft us East"]
[II. A Ghastly Adventure—The Embarkation—A Stormy Landing]
[III. A field of Heroes—"On, Lads, On!"—Brave Codrington—Panic and Terror]
[IX. The Battle of Inkermann—The Soldiers' Own]
[X. The Awful Gale—In Camp before Sebastopol—Letters from Home]
[XII. Pelissier to the Front—Death of Lord Raglan]
[XIII. The Russian Bear at Bay—The Last Act of the Tragic War]
[XIV. "Remember, we shall all meet again some Christmas Eve on High"]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
[He dashed the stone into the dying embers] . . . Frontispiece
He threw up his arms, and fell flat on his face . . . Vignette
[missing from source book]
[He crept nearer and nearer to the window]
[He felt a weight on his back]
[He has seized the colours, and his wild slogan can be heard high above the roar]
[She laid about her right and left]
HOW JACK MACKENZIE WON HIS EPAULETTES.
Book First.
IN PIPING TIMES OF PEACE.
CHAPTER I.
WEE JOHNNIE GREYBREEKS.
It was what is called a real old-fashioned Yuletide. The snow had been falling, falling, falling all day long; it had begun at grey daylight in the morning, in little pellets like millet seed, which lay white and unmelted on the frozen pavements. But as the hours went by, these were changed for flakes as big and broad as butterflies' wings, that fell fast and "eident" all the day; and that night the more aristocratic thoroughfares of Glasgow were as silent as a city of the dead.
Not that they were deserted by any means, for passengers flitted about in garments draped with snow, and snow-laden cabs drove past, but not a sound could be heard from hoof of horse or foot of man.
It was not cold, however. There was no high wind to powder the flakes or grind them into ice-dust, or raise wreaths along the pathways; and so pure was the air, that but to breathe it for a little while was to purify every drop of blood in one's body from heart to head and heels, to heighten the vital flame, and to make one feel as happy and contented as one should ever be about a Christmas time.
From the windows of many a beautiful villa in this picture of a winter's night there shone, directly out upon the snow-clad lawns and ghost-like bushes, the ruddy light of cosily-furnished rooms, where rosy children romped and played, while around the fire sat their elders, "doucely" talking about the days of "auld lang syne."
One room in a villa of larger size and more pretentious architecture than its fellows looked particularly bright and cheerful. It was tastefully furnished, and here and there in corners stood tall lamps with coloured shades, while in the centre was placed a lordly Christmas tree. No wonder that the ring of prettily-attired children around gazed with admiration on this masterpiece of decoration. It was indeed very beautiful, its green and spreading branches laden with light and the sunshine of a hundred toys.
But listen! the music of a piano and harp strikes up, and now the children, big and little, join hands and go daftly dancing round the tree. Till one wee toddler tumbles; then the ring is broken, and half a dozen at least are piled on top of her. The very house seems to shake now with the sound of mirth and laughter, the shrill treble of the youngsters receiving a deep and hearty bass in the voices of two jolly-looking elderly gentlemen, who are standing on the hearth with their backs to the fire.
But once again the ring is formed, once again the music that had been partially interrupted is heard, and once again the children dance jubilantly round, madder and wilder now than ever, singing,—
"Here we go round and round and round,
Here we go round the Christmas tree."
The elderly gentlemen who stood with their backs to the fire were spectators of all this fun, frolic, and jollity. But they were not the only ones.
For past the broad and open gate, as he had been creeping through the snow—oh so slowly and wearily—a tiny boy, attracted by the sound of the gladsome voices, had paused to listen. Listening or looking is such a cheap pleasure that even the very poorest can indulge in it. The snowflakes had for a time ceased falling, and from behind a mass of clouds the moon was struggling. But the red rays from the window more than rivalled its splendour, and very inviting indeed did they appear to the little wanderer. He first looked in through the gate, then he crept in through it. Nearer and nearer to the window, closer and closer to the joy within, till the lamplight shone directly on his white, pinched face, and glittered in his dark and wondering eyes, as he stood there keeping hold of a snowy branch with one hand, as if afraid of falling.
To listen and to look on while the rich enjoy themselves—oh yes, these are the privileges of the very poor! But somehow on the present occasion little Jack Mackenzie was doing more than simply listening and looking. Quite unintentionally, remember. He was associating himself with all the games and pleasure inside the room. He was no longer a thinly-clothed, bare-footed laddie, shivering in the winter's snow; he was one of that prettily-dressed crowd of beautiful children playing around the Christmas tree. Fairies he called them in his own mind; for he had once been treated to a gallery seat at a pantomime, and this was just like that, only ever so much more beautiful and natural. No wonder he felt interested and entranced, or that several times his lips parted to give utterance to the exclamation "Oh!" though he always restrained himself in time.
Was it any wonder this poor, half-starved boy was delighted with the scene before him? It was, he thought, as different from what he was used to behold in that part of the city he called his home, as the heaven his mother often spoke about must be from earth—that heaven to which his father had gone, long, long, long ago, so long ago that he couldn't remember him, and always thought of him only as a saint Up Yonder somewhere, where he himself would go one day if he was good.
So completely are Jack Mackenzie's senses enthralled, that he does not hear the sound of a manly voice singing adown the broad terrace, but coming nearer and nearer every moment,—
"'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which seek through the world is ne'er met with elsewhere.
Home, home, etc.
"An exile from home, splendour dazzles in vain:
O give me my lowly thatched cottage again!"
No, Jack doesn't hear the song. Nor does he see the singer, until he is suddenly caught by one shoulder and wheeled right round to confront a well-dressed and handsome man with a huge brown beard, on which melted snow-flakes sparkle like diamonds.
"Hullo! hullo! so I've caught you, have I?" The new-comer had bent down, and was gazing straight into Jack's face.
"Caught me, sir!" replied the boy, with fearless innocence; "did—did you want to catch me, sir?"
"Want to catch you, you young rascal! Come, give an account of yourself. What are you? A burglar's boy, eh?"
Jack looked a little puzzled. He put his hand up as if to feel that his cap was on. It was only a little old glengarry, with a hole where the top used to be, and through which a lock of the lad's hair always straggled.
"No, sir, I'm nothing yet. Was you looking for somebody to be a burglar's boy, sir? I would be it if it was nice. I want to work for mother and Siss, you know. But what do burglars do, sir? Mind, I'm not afraid of work, and I might get shoes and stockings then."
As he spoke, he held up one red and swollen foot. Not that he was courting sympathy. Oh no; only standing in the snow had made his feet cold.
"O you poor wee ragamuffin, are you really so destitute as all that, and on Christmas eve too? Come now, tell me your name and what you were after, and if it is all right I'll give you a penny and let you go."
"My name is Jack Mackenzie, sir; but mebbe, sir, you would know me better as little Johnnie Greybreeks, because that's what the boys all call me."
The big man laughed.
"Me know you! Well, that's good. But what were you doing?"
"Oh," cried the lad ecstatically, "I was looking in there at the fairies. O sir, isn't it grand and beautiful? If you stand here you can have a see too. They won't notice us."
"Ha, ha! Well, but suppose I don't want to have a 'see,' as you call it; suppose I live here?"
Johnnie didn't answer immediately. He heaved a big, double sort of a sigh, and on his eyelashes something appeared that glittered in the light like the melted snow-flakes on the stranger's brown beard.
"I wish my mother and Siss lived in there."
There was a ring of genuine sadness and pathos in the boy's voice that went straight to that tall man's heart, and he would not have trusted himself to speak just then for a good deal. He felt certain in his own mind that this poor, ragged lad was speaking the truth. Then he pictured to himself the contrast between the very poor and the rich in such a city as this. How could he help doing so, when he glanced from the white and weary face before him to the happy children at their innocent gambols within?
"It is a contrast," he murmured to himself, "that Heaven permits for some good purpose, though it is all dark, dark to my limited mental vision."
But, happy thought! he could do something even to-night to soothe the sorrows and sufferings of this one wee waif before him. It was Christmas eve too.
"Tell me, boy," he said first, "how comes it that you can talk such good English?"
"Because I'm talking to a gentleman."
"But can't you speak broad Scotch?"
"Bonnie yon, to the wee callants on the street. But mother makes us—Siss and me—speak English at home."
"And what does your father do?"
He crept nearer and nearer to the window.
"Oh, father's gone to heaven, you know, sir. He's going to stop there always."
"Does your mother—er—wash or char or anything?"
"Oh no, sir; mother's a real lady."
Mr. Tom Morgan—for that was his name—smiled.
"Now show me your hands. Why, they are quite clean! There, give me one, and now march along with me."
Jack drew back hesitatingly.
"I hope, sir," he said, with tears in his voice, "I haven't done any harm?"
"No, no, lad; I'm going to give you supper and send you off. Come."
Somehow, lines from Thorn's beautiful poem "The Mitherless Bairn" were borne to Mr. Morgan's mind, as he led the boy round through the garden to the back door of the villa.
Jack was not mitherless, but in other respects he resembled the subject of the sad song.
"Oh speak him not harshly—he trembles the while—
He bends to your bidding and blesses your smile:
In their dark hour o' anguish the heartless shall learn
That God deals the blow for the mitherless bairn."
* * * * *
When little Johnnie Greybreeks had left his mother's room that evening, he had been on business bent. Business of a very important description, I can assure you, reader. Important to Johnnie, at all events. A few weeks before this, when wandering in the western outskirts of the town, which at the time our story commences—namely, away back in 1849—were beautifully wooded and with very few houses indeed to be seen, he had come upon the ruined walls of a mansion that had been destroyed by fire. It was open to the road, and probably people as poor as Johnnie had been here before, for every rag and piece of wood had been carried away. But to the boy's delight he had come across an ash heap, over which a large elder tree drooped, half hiding it, and here were at least two dozen medicine-bottles, many smashed but many whole. What a find if they could only be his! Next day he had wandered that way again, and was glad to find a man there who was about to clear the heap. The man laughed when Johnnie volunteered his assistance, but for sake of company, he said, permitted the boy to help him. The job was finished in a couple of hours, and Johnnie had the bottles as his wages.
He took as many as he could down to the burn and washed them, then came back for more, and by-and-by they were all nice and clean and hidden away where he was sure no one could find them but himself. Then a good-natured chemist in the street where the boy lived had promised him ninepence for the lot. Ninepence! what a fortune! He had never seen so much money before. When he got it, he tied it up in a handkerchief—it was all in pennies and half-pennies—and resolved not to tell his mother till Christmas eve, when he would go quietly out and purchase something nice for next day's dinner.
And it was with the view of making these purchases that Johnnie had come out to-night. He had come too early though, for in the shops he was to favour with his custom, things were never at their very cheapest till nearly closing-time. So he had treated himself to a walk in the west end.
Then the snow began to fall, and we know the rest.
Mr. Tom Morgan had his reasons for taking Johnnie in by the back door and through the kitchen. He really wanted to know if the boy was in the slightest degree presentable.
He was better pleased with his appearance than he had expected to be. Johnnie's nether garments of hodden grey were patched at the knees and tattered and short at the ankles; his jacket was torn, too, and out at the elbows; but the lad was clean, even to his shirt, which left neck and red chest exposed to the weather.
Johnnie's features were regular and far from unpleasant, but his dark eyes were very large and sad.
"You'll do, lad, you'll do. Come along; it is Christmas eve, and mother is kind anyhow."
CHAPTER II
LIFE IN SUMMER LOANING.
"O children," cried old Mrs. Morgan during a lull in the frolicsome riot, "here comes your uncle Tom. I can hear his voice in the hall. Now we'll have a song and a dance!"
She rose and walked towards the drawing-room door, and the bairns crowded after, with joyful, expectant faces.
But when the door was opened, and they found Uncle Tom standing there holding little ragged Johnnie by the hand, astonishment and wonder seemed to deprive everybody of speech. Miss Scraggs, an elderly spinster, nearly fainted.
"What on earth—" began one elderly gentleman.
"As I live—-" exclaimed the other.
Neither got any further, but both burst into a hearty fit of laughing.
Mrs. Morgan, Tom's mother, found voice first.
"Tom," she cried, "who or what have you gotten there?"
"Well, mother, I couldn't say—at least, not exactly. He is a sort of mitherless bairn—well, not exactly that either, because he has a mother, but no father. And you see how poor the child is. Look at his naked feet, mother and children all, and we so happy and jolly and everything. And this Christmas eve, too, mother. I thought we might—that is, I might—do some little thing for him—a supper, or anything like that—and then send him home."
"My own good-hearted Tom!" said the old lady, smiling. "And did you pick him up in the street?"
"No, not exactly in the street, mother. Fact is, he was in the grounds, and looking in at the window."
"In the grounds, Tom! Oh, do you think he was after the spoons, or—
"No, no, dear mother," interrupted the stalwart son. "He was peeping in at the dancing and the Christmas tree. He said the children were just like fairies."
"Droll boy. What is his name? Jack?—When did you see fairies?"
"When I was a god, big lady."
"When you were what?"
"He means," said Mr. Tom Morgan, "when he had a seat in the gallery of the theatre at a pantomime, I suppose."
"Oh yes.—Are you a good boy?"
"No, ma'am; very wicked. For 'there is none that doeth good and sinneth not, no, not one.'"
The elderly men-people behind laughed loudly and heartily.
"What do you think of that, Dawson?" said one, nudging the other in the ribs.
"Good, good!—Capital, Mrs. Morgan!"
But Miss Scraggs said, "Dreadful!"
"What are you going to be when you grow up to manhood?" continued Mrs. Morgan.
"I'm not quite sure, big lady. I think I'd like to be a bu'glar."
It is no wonder that Miss Scraggs screamed, or that "big lady" lifted up her hands.
"Oh, take the dreadful creature away!" cried Miss Scraggs; "he may kill us all before morning."
But when Tom Morgan laughingly explained that poor little Jack knew not what he was saying, and had no idea what a burglar was, he was restored to favour.
"Well, Tom," said the elder Mr. Morgan, who was Tom's father, "take your little sans-culotte away and give him a feed. I'll warrant he won't say 'no' to that on a Christmas eve."
"And some dood tlothes too," lisped a wee maiden of six—"some dood tlothes, Uncle Tom."
Then Jack made a bow such as he had seen actors outside caravans in the Green make. He took off the remains of his glengarry solemnly with his right hand, put his left hand to his heart, and bent his body low.
"I say, Morgan," cried Dawson, as Tom led Jack off, "that isn't any ordinary boy. Blame me if I don't think there are the makings of a little gentleman about him. What think you?"
"Well, Dawson, you never can tell what a boy of that age may turn to or be. He might turn out a burning and a shining light in church or state, he might become a leader of armies, or he might give—Jack Ketch a job."
* * * * *
Young Tom Morgan—for he was not above four-and-twenty, although his beard was so big and strong—was the younger of two sons who both lived with their parents, the house being very large. The elder son, Grant Morgan, was married, and occupied the northern wing with his wife and three children. The wee lass who had proposed that Jack or Johnnie should have "dood tlothes" was the youngest; then there was a boy of eight and one of eleven.
When Tom returned to the servants' hall, he succeeded in interesting every one there, even the somewhat supercilious butler, in Johnnie Greybreeks; and between the lot of them they succeeded in working quite a transformation in the boy. In fact, they took great fun in doing it.
"Ulric's clothes will just fit him, cook," said Tom.
"Yes, sir; but—"
"Oh, bother the 'but'! this is Christmas eve, cook. There, now; you take him into your own room and see to his hair and his poor little feet. I'll be back in a minute."
Half an hour after this nobody would have taken Johnnie for the same boy, but for his pale face and sad, dark, wondering eyes.
"I'm not going to go away with all these grand things on, am I, sir?" he asked.
"Oh yes, you are."
"I can go to church now!" cried Jack jubilantly. "I tried one time before; but they thought I'd come after the coppers, and chased me away. O sir, mother and Sissie will be pleased; you've made such a happy boy of me!"
Johnnie began bundling up his old clothes in his red handkerchief as he spoke; and when he departed, about an hour after this, he took that bundle with him, and another too, containing more provisions and nice things than would do for several days' dinner.
"Now, Johnnie Greybreeks—" began Tom Morgan.
"Oh, if you please, sir," said Johnnie, "that is only my sobriquet."
"Well, Jack, then," laughed Tom, "I'm going to take you to have a look at the Christmas tree, and it is just possible you may have something off it for your Siss—eh?"
Jack's heart was too full to speak, and there were tears in his eyes.
Everybody said that Miss Scraggs was cocking her cap at young Tom Morgan, though everybody took care to add that she was old enough to be his grand—well, his aunt at least. Tom could not stand her. Not that he hated her—he was too good-hearted to hate anybody—but he just gave her a wide berth, as we say at sea.
But when he returned to the drawing-room with the intention of placing his little protégé in a corner to look at the fun for a few minutes, Tom had his revenge, for he had not felt pleased at the way Miss Scraggs talked to or at the poor ragged boy.
The spinster lady happened to be standing near to the door when Tom entered. She did not see Jack just at once, but as soon as she did she smiled most condescendingly on him.
"How do you do, my little friend? I know your face, but can't recollect where I've had the pleasure of seeing you before.—Oh, goodness gracious!" she cried immediately after; "it's the horrid little burglar boy!"
It was rude of Mr. Dawson and Tom Morgan to laugh so loudly, but they could not help it. As for poor Jack, he crimsoned to the very roots of his hair. I think there is always some good about a boy who can blush. However, Jack never forgot Miss Scraggs. But he thought no more about it for the present, because wee Violet Morgan tripped up to speak to him. There was no pride about Violet.
"So," she said, "you's dot you dood tlothes on. You is so pletty now I tould almost tiss you."
"Violet!" screamed Miss Scraggs; "come here this instant."
But Violet had a will of her own; besides, it was Christmas eve, and she had a right to do whatever she pleased.
"I won't tome there this instant," she said, stamping her tiny foot; "this is Tlismas eve, and 'ittle dirls can do as they pleases, Miss Staggs."
But all eyes were now drawn towards Violet and Jack, and there was momentary silence.
"I say, Morgan," cried Dawson, loud enough for every one to hear, "did ever you, in all your life, see such a remarkable resemblance?"
"'Pon honour, Dawson, I never did!"
"Why, Violet and that little fellow might be sister and brother!"
Same contour, same hair, same eyes, same everything.
"Hush! hush!" said Mr. Morgan the elder; "remember the boy's station in life."
Jack drew back into his corner a little abashed. Half an hour afterwards, when Tom went round that way, the child stole his hand softly into the brown-bearded big man's.
"Take me away now," he beseeched; "I'm tired."
The fun was then getting fast and furious; but Tom and the boy slipped out as quietly as they had come, and in a few minutes more Johnnie Greybreeks found himself once more out in the snow. As he passed through the gate, he paused to look back.
"Heigh-ho!" he sighed; "I've been in fairy-land. What a story I should have to tell mother and Siss! only, long before I get home I shall wake and find it is all a dream."
Then away he went, feathering through the snow, and keeping a good hold on his bundle, but nevertheless expecting every minute to awake and find himself in his own bed.
* * * * *
It is needless to say that Jack didn't awake, and that his adventure wasn't a dream; and it is quite impossible to describe the astonishment of his mother and sister when he told all his wonderful story.
That Christmas dinner, next day, was the best and most delightful ever Jack or his little sister Maggie could remember partaking of since they had come to reside at No. 73 Summer Loaning.
Summer Loaning, indeed! what a cruel misnomer! Well, to be sure, there might have been a time away back in the past when this street was a kind of loaning, or even a lover's lane leading right away out into the cool country. Green hedges might have grown where now stood houses gaunt and grey and grim; hedges of wild hawthorn, trailed over in summer-time with dog-roses pink and red; hedges in which birds in early spring may have sung—the sweet wee linnet, the spotted mavis, the mellow blackbird, or madly-lilting chaffinch. Trees, too, may have waved their branches over Summer Loaning—the rustling ash and the oak and chestnut, and the spreading rowan to which the poet sings and says,—
"Thy leaves were aye the first o' spring,
Thy flowers the simmer's pride;
There wasna sic a bonnie tree
In a' the country-side."
Yes, this may have been the case long, long ago; but now, alas! the change.
Summer Loaning went straggling up a hill, or brae, for fully half a mile, and one glance at the street would have convinced you that, although not a slum by any means, it was the abode of the hard-working poor. People lived here on landings and flats, many families occupying but two rooms, many having to content themselves with only one. The common stairways, generally of stone, went winding up and up from closes—called in England courts—often five or even six stories high. If the landlord of these tenements happened to be a good sort of a fellow, then the staircases might be lighted in winter by tiny jets of gas no bigger than farthing rush-lights; but as often as not they were shrouded in darkness and gloom, and the dwellers in these stone castles had to "glamp" their way up, as it is called, by feeling along the damp, cold walls.
There was poverty enough, though, in Summer Loaning when sickness came, or when the want of work induced it; for trouble haunts the abodes of the hungry and needful. Many a little coffin, in times like these, was manoeuvred down those steep stone stairs, and borne quietly away to the cemetery or Necropolis, which was not a great distance off. Usually a few neighbours went along, and then a kind of funeral procession would be formed. But often, when the coffin was very tiny indeed, the father himself would trudge along with it under his arm, accompanied, perhaps, by his sad-eyed wife; both dressed in black clothes that, more than likely, had been borrowed from kindly neighbours for the occasion. Yes, I said kindly neighbours; for the poor to the poor are ever kind.
This was the sort of neighbourhood in which Jack Mackenzie had hitherto spent most of his young days. And hard indeed his life had been, pinched for food, ragged in clothes, and often cold as well as hungry. Jack had never been to school in his life; but his mother, though in poverty now, had seen far better days, and right well she knew the advantage of a good education in enabling either boy or man to do battle with the world, and so she spent half her time in teaching her two children. It was stitch, stitch, stitch with her now all day long just to get ends to meet. From her poor, thin face you might have said she was not long for this world, and that while sewing at a shirt she was making her shroud. But even while at work, Jack and his sister would be busy at their books, or with their slates.
They lived in one room, and every article in it betokened poverty, although all was cleanly. The ferns and flowers in the window above the "jaw-box," where water was drawn and toilets performed, threw a little of nature into this poor apartment, and a solitary canary made it even cheerful, for he sang as joyously as if his cage had been of gilded wire and all his surroundings the best in the city. Neither of the children was unhappy, and they dearly loved their mother. They never grumbled, either, at their scanty fare—and, O dear reader, it was scanty enough at times. A little oatmeal porridge washed down with a halfpennyworth of blue skimmed milk was all their breakfast; and their supper, too, was much the same.
But Jack was a brave provider, and a capital hand at marketing. No one knew better than he how to make a bargain, or how far six or seven pence would go in the purchase of meal, coals, herrings, and a little tea and sugar for mother. In fact, the whole outdoor management of the family devolved upon little Johnnie Greybreeks, as everybody on the great staircase called him. And very proud indeed he was to be looked upon as purser or paymaster. Often his sister went out with him on his foraging expeditions; but although she was some years older than Johnnie, she had not the boy's knowledge of the world and of mankind. It seems almost ridiculous to talk of a boy of eight years of age knowing anything about the world; but poverty sharpens the wits, I do assure you.
It is said that poverty is a hard taskmaster. Well, perhaps,—and doubtless it is a very exacting one; but, nevertheless, some of the greatest geniuses, generals, statesmen, and thinkers have been brought up in just such schools as Johnnie's, and have been all the better for it. So poor boys must never let down their hearts, but just work, work, work; read, read, read; and think, think, think. Remember the story of Dick Whittington. It is only a kind of fairy romance, you may tell me. Ah! but there is a deal of truth in it; and some very poor lads have become presidents even of the great American republic, and a president is a cut above Lord Mayor of London. So, hurrah! who cares for poverty? Don't forget those spirited lines of Robbie Burns, the great Scottish poet. Yes, Scottish poet, but the British people's poet as well, and the poet of the people of every country where true freedom reigns.
"Is there for honest poverty
That hides his head, and a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
* * * *
"What tho' on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodden grey, and a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man's a man for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that;
Their tinsel show, and a' that;
The honest man, though e'er so poor,
Is king o' men for a' that!"
CHAPTER III.
MRS. MALONY'S WEDDING-RING.
Poor Mrs. Mackenzie's story had been a very sad one. And it was one that is, alas! too common. It does not take long to tell.
She had been well educated and delicately reared in the lap of wealth and luxury. She was an old man's only child, and her father considered there was nothing on earth too good for her. When the girl was about sixteen, her father was in the heyday of success in life. A speculator he was, and lived in a beautiful house on the Borders, and on the banks of the winding Tweed. He was very much looked up to, as wealthy men generally are, simply because they are wealthy. But to have seen Mr. Noble's house and grounds, his retinue of servants and his carriages and horses, would have caused you to think, as everybody else thought, "Here is a man that can never be moved."
At this time, or soon after, he had a winter establishment in Edinburgh, and used to give as good parties as any lord in the city; and Euphemia—his daughter, and she had no mother—used to be the presiding goddess. She was very beautiful; she is beautiful even as we know her now, though poverty and want have hollowed her cheeks, and given a lustre to her dark eyes that her good neighbours on the stair say is hardly "canny."
Euphemia, when only seventeen, had several suitors for her hand, and might have made what is called a very good match. But there was one she cared for above them all. He was a dashing young officer of a Highland regiment at that time stationed in the Castle.
The two became engaged.
Lieutenant Mackenzie was of very good family, and would one day be wealthy; only just at that time he had nothing but his pay, his prospects, and the allowance his mother made him. He couldn't afford to marry for some time. What did that matter? they were both young, and could wait.
So away went the gallant 93rd to India, and with it went Lieutenant Donald Mackenzie, with hope and love to buoy up his heart.
He had not been away a year before a crisis came, and then a crash—oh, such a terrible crash! I suppose Mr. Noble had got too daring, or too something or other, in his speculations. I really do not know all the outs and ins of the matter, but I do know that his house and all his property, down even to Euphemia's pet canaries, were sold, and that after this poor Mr. Noble—poor now indeed—had barely enough to pay the passage-money for himself and daughter to America, where, with the help of some friends or distant relatives, he intended to start afresh. Just think of it—an old man of seventy starting life afresh!
Well, the end seemed to have come, indeed, when Euphie's father died. She was a brave Scotch lassie, however, and would not give in; so she wrote to India to Donald—her Donald now no longer—releasing him from his engagement, then she hired herself out as a governess.
Donald's regiment fought in Afghanistan and the borders of India, and he was wounded. He lost his left arm, brave fellow, and was sent home to be invalided, and retired.
A whole year passed away, and Donald lived at his mother's Highland home—Drumglen—an estate that had been left entirely to her, to will or to do with it as she pleased. Donald was the only son, and a very great favourite. She, the mother, too, was exceedingly jealous of his attentions to any fair maiden that she did not approve of. In fact, she had her eye upon a lady who would make a capital wife for her son. A little older, it is true. What did that matter, the mother told herself; she would be all the more fitted to advise and guide her son through life. Rather dark and stately, too, she was, not to say forbidding. But she owned broad Highland acres, and moorlands, forests, and glens. The absence of beauty, Donald's mother thought, would be an advantage rather than otherwise, for Donald could not well be jealous of a wife ugly enough to stop the church clock.
But, woe is me! Donald still languished and prayed for Euphemia Noble. And one day in Glasgow, lo, he met her! She was only a governess to some very young children. What of that? All Donald's love returned in double force, and he determined to marry her.
It is the old story: the girl consented at last. Then Donald tried to win his mother over. But that stern Highland dowager was inexorable. If he married this wretched governess—doubtless some designing minx and hussy—he should never again darken the doors of Drumglen.
Donald looked at her in sadness and sorrow, and though one sleeve was empty, a very gallant and soldierly man he was. But there was no relenting in his tall, stern, and dignified mother.
"Good-bye."
That was all Donald either said or sighed. He just turned on his heel and walked away as he was—and never once looked back.
The mother gazed after him through the window, till the trees hid him from her view; then she shut herself up in her rooms for days, and no one, not even her maid, knew all that proud woman suffered during this time.
After her marriage with her one-armed soldier, Euphemia and he lived in a tiny cottage down the Clyde. They were so poor that it was difficult indeed to get ends to meet, even in a semi-genteel kind of way. But they were rich in each other's love. And so they struggled on and on for years.
Alas that I should have to tell it! Lieutenant Mackenzie in an evil hour was induced to enter the betting ring. From that hour his downfall may have been dated. It is too sad a story to tell. Instead of the pretty little cottage on the banks of the romantic Clyde, his wife and he were soon occupying rooms in a somewhat squalid quarter of great Glasgow.
How it happened I do not know, but one evening Donald was missing, and he did not return all the next day; but in the gloom of the gloaming a strange man called on Mrs. Mackenzie, and when she saw him she burst at once into an agony of grief that cannot easily be described.
It ended in her leaving her two children to the charge of a neighbour and going away in a cab with the stranger—to a mortuary.
Yes, that was he—that was Donald, pale and draggled and dead; her Donald, with his poor, empty sleeve pinned across his breast!
Oh the pity of it! oh the anguish! But there, the curtain drops on that act, and I am glad it does. Let me just add that ill-health after this reduced Mrs. Mackenzie more and more, till we find her living in this one room, her boy and girl alone to cheer her, and give her some little excuse for hanging on to life.
But compared with many of the large houses in many parts of Glasgow, No. 73 Summer Loaning was very quiet.
Yes, it was quiet, except perhaps on a Saturday night, when, it must be conceded, one or two working-men did come up the long stone stair singing to themselves. Although a lady by birth and education, Mrs. Mackenzie, in her one room, did not keep all her neighbours at bay. They called her the "shuestress," which is a kind of Scotch for dressmaker. They knew she had seen far better days, and that she was poorer now than any of them, because she was unable to do much work. As the song says,—
"The poor make no new friends,
But ah! they love the better far
The few the Father sends."
Now, it might be thought by some that, for sake of her children, Mrs. Mackenzie ought to have written to her late husband's mother or rich relations, and asked for help.
Asked for help? No, a thousand times no; that would have been begging! Mrs. Mackenzie was far too proud to do that. Sooner would she die. But her pride did not forbid her from courting the companionship of the neighbours on the stair. If they were, like herself, poor, or not so poor, they were honest. And really neighbours like these need to be friendly. If you are in the grip of grim poverty, and sick and ill, you will find few more attentive to you, and few whose attentions you will more readily suffer, than those of neighbours who are just as poor as you.
Well-meaning ladies sometimes called upon the Mackenzies with bundles of tracts and Pharisaical advice, and out of politeness Mrs. Mackenzie suffered them. When, however, about a year and two months after little Jack's adventure at the Morgans', his poor mother fell sick, and was confined for weeks to bed, it wasn't to her rich visitors in sealskin sacks and gloves of kid she had to look for comfort and help.
Luckily, in expectation of just such an illness as this, Mrs. Mackenzie had saved a little money. But there lived on the stair immediately below a Mrs. Malony, whose husband was a blacksmith, who sometimes, sad to say, took a dram. He wasn't by any means a bad fellow, however, and often took Johnnie Greybreeks off with him for a whole day to the smithy to see the sparks fly, and always shared his dinner with Johnnie. The blacksmith had no family, and his wife used sometimes to go out charing, so her hands were hard and rough. But her heart wasn't.
Mrs. Malony would often come up to borrow a flat-iron or a "brander," or even a red herring for her man's supper, when hard up. On the other hand, if she happened to make a good bargain down town on a Saturday night, she would never forget to bring "the shuestress" some portion of it—a piece of fish, a few potatoes, a couple of sausages, or a bundle of greens. Often, too, in the long, dreary winter forenights, Mrs. Malony would spend hours in her neighbour's room. She would at times bring her husband also, when he was washed and tidied up; and he did nothing but sit in a corner and smoke and smile. But Johnnie and his sister would "hurkle" down by the fire, nursing the cat between them while they listened to Mrs. Malony's wonderful tales of Ireland and the down-trodden Irish. Evenings like these passed pleasantly enough away.
The children had a younger neighbour, though, a pale-faced, roll-shouldered boy who lived in the garret with his old mother, and used to play the fiddle on the street to support her. Very sweetly he did play, too, though his airs were very sad.
Little Peter, as he was called, used to come downstairs frequently to tea, and bring his fiddle. Well, the tea was almost an imaginary entertainment. It was a delightful sort of a make-belief. To be sure, there was bread and a scraping of butter, and thin, thin tea, with but little milk and less sugar; but then there were oyster-shells and round "chuckie-stanes" to take the place of cakes and currant-buns and all kinds of nice things. And with Maggie presiding in such a dignified and lady-like way, it was quite easy for Little Peter to imagine that an oyster-shell was a slice of delicious tea-cake, or a "chuckie-stane" a pasty.
Then there were really more laughing and fun at these make-believe tea-parties than if everything had been edible.
But that fiddle of Little Peter's was real. There was no mistake about the musical part of the entertainment. But when poor Mrs. Mackenzie fell ill, the sealskin-sack people came but seldom. It might be something catching, you know. The young minister was kind, however, though somewhat too solemn for a sick-room.
It would have been a sad and dreary time, then, for the little family but for their kindly neighbours. Poor Mrs. Malony, with her rough, red hand and her plain face, became a sort of a saint. She allowed Malony to take his "pick" of dinner out of doors, and made him always take Johnnie Greybreeks with him, and keep him all day—there were no Board schools in those days, you know. Malony had also to make his own cup of coffee when he returned at night, buying a polony and a roll on the way to eat with it. But Malony had his pipe, and took things very easy. How gentle Mrs. Malony was with the poor invalid; how softly she spread the bed and softened the hard, small pillows! Ah, it was indeed a treat to have her there. She was very plain-spoken, however. Here, for example, was a specimen of the kind of verbal comfort she used to give Mrs. Mackenzie:—
"An' sure, Mrs. Mackenzee, ye needn't be throublin' yourself aboot dyin' at all. For whin ye're dead and in the soilent grave, it's meself and Malony will be lookin' after the childer. Indade I'll bring thim up as me own, and it's the beautiful blacksmith that Johnnie will make; so niver be grievin', but die whin ye plaze wid an aisy mind, an' sure it's the angels will be waitin' for ye evermore."
Was it any wonder that as she listened to consolation like this, and her mind reverted to her father's beautiful home, or to her life with Donald in the wee cottage by the banks of the bonnie Clyde, tears stole down her pale cheeks? But then she would say to herself, "Oh, how ungrateful I am!" and so she would seize and press Mrs. Malony's kindly hand, and cry,—
"O dear Mrs. Malony, how good you are to me! I'm sure I don't deserve it."
"Is it good ye're sayin', Mrs. Mackenzee? Sure I need all me goodness. An' after all, isn't it the same you'd be doin' for me if I was sick and ill? There now, don't cry. Indade it's just as wake [weak] as a baby ye are."
* * * * *
The young doctor was very attentive, but one evening he left the bedside looking more thoughtful than usual. Mrs. Mackenzie seemed to be dozing, so after keeping his fingers on her pale wrist for a time, he had let the hand drop gently on the coverlet. He looked at Mrs. Malony as he passed out, and she followed him to the landing.
"I don't think," he said, "we can keep her."
"Och and och!" cried Mrs. Malony, with her rough apron to her eyes. "Och and och, dhoctor dear, is it come to this?—so soon and sudden."
"I fear," he said, "she cannot last long."
"And is there no physic ye can think av at all, at all, that—"
"Oh, hang physic!" cried the doctor. "It isn't physic she wants, Mrs. Malony, but good wine and beef-tea."
"An' would the tay and the wine take her from the bhrink av the grave, dhoctor dear?"
"It would give her a chance. Don't leave her, Mrs. Malony; don't leave her! I fear I can do little more."
Mrs. Malony went back to the quiet room. Her patient seemed sleeping, and so she moved about like a mouse, lest she should disturb her.
The spring sun was shining in through the window and falling on a bunch of early flowers that Little Peter had brought the invalid, because he knew she loved them. It fell also on the canary's cage. Even Dick had given up singing lately, as if he knew there was sadness and grief in the air.
Mrs. Malony drew the blind a little way down, then left the room. She stole downstairs on tiptoe. Maggie was there, keeping house.
"Go up," said Mrs. Malony, "as quate as a weasel, and sit by your mother till I come back."
Poor Maggie had been crying, but she now did as she was told.
Mrs. Malony went straight to her cupboard, now her clothes-cupboard, and very soon made up a bundle.
"Och and och," she said to herself, "they won't go far at all, at all."
They were the woman's Sunday clothes for all that, and she meant to take them to the poor man's banker at the sign of the three golden balls.
Then her eyes fell upon her stubby left hand.
"Set you up wid a gold ring indade, Mrs. Malony," she said, "when a brass one would do for a toime! Ill-luck? I won't belave it."
A tear fell on the ring nevertheless, for it brought back memories of happy days of the half-forgotten past. No wonder then she sighed as she screwed it off.
"You've been crying, Mrs. Malony," said the burly pawnbroker as she laid the ring on the counter.
Then the tears sprang afresh to her eyes, and she told him all the story.
"Put that ring back on your finger again this moment, Mrs. Malony," said the man. "I'm going to let you have just double on the dresses. Oh yes, they're worth it. I won't lose by it. Now off you go and buy the wine."
"Lord love you, Mr. Grant," said the poor woman as she picked up the money. "An' I belave it's yourself that's saved a loife this blissid day."
* * * * *
When Mrs. Malony returned, she found Maggie silently weeping by her mother's bed. Then a great fear got possession of her heart. Had her sacrifice been all in vain? Was the invalid gone? She hastily deposited her purchases on the little table and approached the bed.
Mrs. Mackenzie looked very still and beautiful. She might have been made of wax, or her features chiselled from purest marble.
Mrs. Malony touched her hand that still lay on the coverlet. It was cold. She bent over her, and could hear no breathing.
Was as this indeed death?
CHAPTER IV.
"I'LL BE A SAILOR OR A SOLDIER."
As she bent over the bed in grief and sorrow, Mrs. Malony was rewarded and startled at the same time. For the poor patient heaved a sigh, and slowly opened her eyes.
Then a faint smile stole over her lips.
"I had such a happy dream!" she whispered.
"Hush, dear; don't spake another word."
It wasn't the first, nor the second patient either, that Mrs. Malony had nursed, so she had all her wits about her.
She knew that at this very moment Mrs. Mackenzie's life was hanging by the merest thread, and there was no time to lose.
She quickly squeezed some of the juice of the meat into a saucer, and mixing it with a little wine, put it tea-spoonful after tea-spoonful into her patient's mouth.
Mrs. Mackenzie slept after this, a real not a dreamful sleep, and towards evening she awoke refreshed. A cupful of warm beef-tea was ready, and she smiled her thanks as she sipped it.
All that night Mrs. Malony sat up and nursed her, and when next day the doctor came, he was more than satisfied.
"She will do now," he told Mrs. Malony on the landing—"do for a time. If she could only be got down the Clyde to a cottage hospital I know of—Well, I'll do what I can."
"Do, sorr; and may heaven be your portion evermore!"
* * * * *
"I'll tell you how I think it can be managed," said Dr. Gregory, a few days after this. "There is a cottage hospital, or rather a home for poor convalescents, down the water. It is partly supported by voluntary contributions, but the patients have to pay a little themselves."
"But," interrupted Mrs. Malony, "the crayture here is as poor as a church-mouse, sorr, and not able to pay. Och, and och!"
"Wait a minute, Mrs. Malony. I have noticed how deft and handy little Maggie here is. She seems really cut out for a nurse. Now, at the home they want just such a wee lass, and she would have food and keep, and wages enough to maintain her mother at the hospital.—Would you like to go, dear?"
"Oh," cried Maggie, "I would be so delighted."
"All right then; I'll see about it at once."
And the doctor did see about it. For a fortnight, however, if not more, Mrs. Mackenzie was not strong enough to be moved. But during all this time she was slowly improving. This was perhaps as much from the fact that she now had hope as from the extra nourishment she received.
Little Johnnie Greybreeks, however, much to his sorrow, was to remain in Glasgow, and live for a time with the Malonies.
Johnnie kept up very bravely, though. He wouldn't have shed a tear before his mother or sister, not even when the day of parting came, for anything. But when in his little bed at night—ah! then I must confess the lad did give way to grief. We must remember he was little more than a child after all.
"I'm going to learn to be a big man," he told his mother proudly on the last evening, "and Mr. Malony says I'll soon be able to shoe a horse. And, O mother," he added, rather sadly, "shoeing horses is a fine thing, but I would rather be a Highland soldier and wear a feather bonnet, like what father wears in his picture."
"Dear boy," replied his mother, "we must all try to do our duty in the line of life God has appointed us to."
* * * * *
Mrs. Malony had a friend who was skipper of a small sailing schooner. Old Skipper Ross used to pride himself in the beauty and sailing qualities of his little craft, and had rebaptized her Queen of the Clyde.
When this honest, red-faced seaman heard the story of poor Mrs. Mackenzie, he took his pipe from his mouth, and his face puckered with smiles under the blue Kilmarnock night-cap he always wore.
"Dear Mrs. Malony," he said, "instead of the puir lady gaun doon the Clyde in a smoke-jack steam-boat, I'll tak her mysel'. Splinter my jib-boom if I dinna."
This was very good of the skipper, and Mrs. Malony gladly accepted the offer.
Malony himself got a day off. They were all to go down the Clyde together, and make a kind of pleasure-trip of it. They would even take Little Peter with them, to give them music during the voyage.
Well, it wasn't very often that a cab was seen to draw up at 73 Summer Loaning, so when the jarvey stopped and turned his horse at the "close mou',"* young and old flocked out and lined the pavement. When the poor wan invalid was got inside, many a rough voice wished her God-speed, and they even raised a cheer as the cab drove off and away.
* Mouth of the court.
It was a lovely spring morning when the Queen of the Clyde caught the light breeze, and began manoeuvring down the river, Skipper Ross himself holding the tiller. The old man declared he could steer his ship through a hundred herring-boats and never run foul of anything.
Mrs. Mackenzie and party had seats on the deck. And everything was as clean and tidy, too, as the duke's yacht itself, not a rope's end or belaying-pin out of place, and the paint-work as bright as a gipsy's caravan.
The invalid heaved a sigh of relief when at long last the great noisy ship-building yards were left behind, with the awful din of their ringing hammers, and the bonnie river began to open out before them broad and wide, with the sunshine glittering on its bosom, and the greenery of trees and far-off hills bounding the horizon.
Mrs. Mackenzie was thinking sadly of her dear departed husband, who was buried at the lovely town of Helensburgh, and Maggie and Jack were seated on deck at her feet. Then Peter drew out his fiddle.
"Ah! man, ay," cried the skipper. "Play up, lad, do. Sweeter to me is the soond o' the fiddle and its lang-drawn melody than the cry o' the sea-birds, sailin' tack and half-tack roond ma wee bit shippie. Play, laddie, play!"
So down the Clyde they dropped, floating as easily as cormorant on the wave, past villages, past towns, and wilds and woodlands green, and it was quite near eventide when the Queen at last got alongside the pier.
They had indeed enjoyed the voyage. And Jack had spread the banquet on the white planks of the deck, and everybody enjoyed that also.
Just after it was done and cleared away, Skipper Ross drew out a black bottle from a handy locker.
"Ye'll tak a wee skyte, Malony; winna ye?"
But Malony shook his head.
"I've sworn off," he said. "Indade, it's the truth that I'm tellin' ye. For this wee lad here has now to look on Patrick Malony as his father. But thank ye all the same."
* * * * *
The parting was over, and Mrs. Mackenzie was alone in a delightful little ward with her daughter Maggie. They had brought the canary, and he began to sing the very next morning. And no wonder; for everything around was sweet and white and clean, and honeysuckle waved its dark-green foliage around the window, while afar off were the grand old purple hills, with many a glen and wood between.
The cottage home was near to the sea too, for flocks of gulls and rooks together could be seen out in the fields yonder.
"You feel better to-day, mother?"
"Yes, dearie; I feel I shall get well now. But, child, I dread to think of the future."
"Ah! that is only because you are ill, you know. God provides for the rooks and gulls yonder, mother, and he won't forget us surely."
Maggie spoke cheerfully and sincerely. She was not one of your old-old-fashioned children, nor was she given to preaching either. The girl was tall and ladylike, though very young, and pretty besides; but she had a thoughtful and serious look in her eyes, that showed she had not been reared in the stern school of poverty and adversity in vain.
Maggie's faith was very simple. Her little Bible had for many a day been her friend and companion. She went to it for consolation and guidance at all times and under all circumstances, opening it at random, and believing that the very first verse her eyes fell upon was an answer to the thoughts that filled her mind.
There really is much to be said for this simplicity of faith, often present not only in the very young but in their elders. Science as yet is but groping in the dark, although it seems inspired, and may be. But here, in this Book, we have all we appear to want for our happiness laid down in a way that goes straight to the heart. It was concerning such simple wee folks as Maggie, surely, that our Saviour spoke when he said, "Suffer little children to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
* * * * *
When little Johnnie Greybreeks returned to Glasgow, he found life for a time very dull indeed, though the kind-hearted Mrs. Malony and her husband did all they could to cheer him up. But he used to lie in his bed at night, awake and thinking, till long past twelve. What should he be? That was the question that puzzled him to answer.
To tell the truth, Johnnie, as for the time being we may continue to call him, was just a trifle ambitious. At all events, working in the blacksmith's shop was very monotonous, although he did all he could, and really earned his food. He didn't like it though, and told himself so every night of his life, he considering himself dreadfully ungrateful to the good people with whom he lived for doing so.
Whenever Johnnie had an hour or so to spare, Little Peter and he used to go wandering away down by the Broomielaw to look at the ships. Our young hero was better clad now; for since good Tom Morgan had given him that Sunday's suit, his former Sunday's clothes became his week-day wear, and he looked by no means a gutter-snipe or tatterdemalion.
Little Peter was as fond of ships as Johnnie, and as he always took his fiddle with him, the Jackie-tars used to invite him on board sometimes, to play to them while they danced or sang.
"O Johnnie," said Peter one day, as they were going back towards Summer Loaning, "if I wasna a miserable little hunchback, I'd be a sailor mysel'."
Johnnie felt sorry for Peter, so to comfort him he made answer,—
"Well, Peter, if I could play the fiddle as well as you, I wouldn't care what my back was like. Anyhow, I've made up my mind either to be a sailor or a soldier. I'd like to wear a feather bonnet.—Hark!" he continued. "Peter, here come the Highlanders. Can't you hear them?"
"Ay, fine can I hear them. The skirl o' the bagpipes maks my bluid run dancin' through ilka vein in my body, and if I had a sword and was big enough, I could fight to music like that."
A few minutes after, the Highlanders came marching and swinging along, their glittering bayonets flashing in the evening sunshine high above their nodding plumes. Even Peter pulled himself an inch taller as the two lads marched side by side with the regiment all the way to the barracks.
Then they came sadly away.
"Which is it now?" said Peter.
"Oh, a soldier; but I'll have to wait till I grow."
"Unless you learn the drum, Johnnie Greybreeks, Then you could go at once."
But Johnnie only shook his head.
"No, no, Peter," he said; "I must be a real fighting soldier, just as poor father was."
Little did Johnnie know that at that very time there was a tidal wave advancing towards him that might lead on to fortune. Or on to death, who could tell? So true is it what Shakespeare says,—
"There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will."
CHAPTER V.
"HULLO, JOHNNIE GREYBREEKS! I'M YOUR UNCLE."
"Hullo, Johnnie Greybreeks! Why, my little man, I've been looking for you for the last six months."
It was Tom Morgan himself the two friends had run up against at the corner of Jamaica Street—big Tom Morgan, brown waving beard and all.
"Why did you never come and see me?"
"Please, sir, mother wouldn't let me. You see, sir, you were very good to me that Christmas eve, and mother said if I went back it would look just like—begging, you know, sir."
"Fiddlesticks, Johnnie Greybreeks! But talking about fiddlesticks, who is your little friend here carrying the fiddle?"
Johnnie told him.
"Now, come along, both of you," said Tom. "I know an eating-house near here where they have such capital beef."
And a splendid feed Tom ordered them; and it seemed to do the honest fellow's heart good to see them eat.
"Now," said Tom, "will you play me a tune, Peter? and then I'll be off, for time is precious."
Peter gladly did as suggested; but I am sure that big Tom Morgan merely asked him to play that he might have an excuse for giving the poor lad that half-crown.
"Now, Peter, you can run home; but I want to take Johnnie Greybreeks with me for an hour or so. Good-bye, Peter. See you again.—Come on, Johnnie."
* * * * *
In about a quarter of an hour's time Tom Morgan reached a tall, handsome building in a quiet street; and upstairs the two went together, and entered a room without knocking. It was a well-furnished office, and at a table, littered with papers and bundles of documents tied up with red tape, sat a white-haired, elderly gentleman, with a very pleasant face of his own.
When he looked up with a smile, Johnnie could see it was Mr. Dawson, whom he had met on that Christmas eve at the house of the Morgans.
"Come along, Tom, and take a seat. Ha! so you've found little Johnnie Greybreeks at last, have you?—How do you do, my little man?—I say, Tom, how is business?"
"Fairly good."
"Well, lad, let me tell you this: it will soon be better, or it will get a send back that will astonish us all."
"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Dawson. There must always be ships on the sea, and it is father's business to float them."
"True, true, Tom; but being a lawyer, you know, I perhaps can see farther off than you. Now, believe me, Tom Morgan, when I tell you we are drifting into war with Russia, and our country isn't prepared for it."
Tom Morgan laughed.
"We've got the money and the ships, the sailors and the soldiers. Why, Mr. Dawson, let war come, and we'll flog the Russians on shore, and whip them off the seas."
"Well, I'm not so sure; but then I'm getting old, you know. But you'll see. The Russian privateers and legalized pirates will cover the ocean, and British commerce won't have a show."
"Did you see that noble Highland regiment march past, Mr. Dawson? Man, that's the stuff!—Did you see them, Johnnie?"
"O yes, sir; me and Peter marched all the way with them. O sir, I want to be a soldier or a sailor, and help to whip the Russians. Dear father was a soldier, you know," he added sadly.
Mr. Dawson and Tom Morgan exchanged glances.
"Tell us more about your father, Johnnie."
"Oh, I don't know much. I hardly remember father; but poor mother has his picture, and, O sir, he looks so noble, with his kilt and his sword and his feather bonnet. He only had one arm, you know, and—and he was drowned in the Clyde."
"Now tell us about your mother and sister. Where are they, and what do they do?"
Then Johnnie told all the sad story of sickness, of struggle, and of poverty that the reader already knows. More than once the tears stole into his eyes as he spoke, and very patiently indeed did the two gentlemen listen to all he said.
"Tom," said Mr. Dawson, when Johnnie had finished, "I think we're on the right lay."
"I think so too; indeed, I'm sure of it."
"How pleased the old lady will be:'
"If there is any 'please' in her."
"Well, she has some strange ways with her; but I think that she really means well."
"She is extremely orthodox, Mr. Dawson."
"True; and conservative to a degree."
All this was Greek to little Johnnie Greybreeks, who sat there on a high stool waggling his legs, and looking from one to the other, uncertain whether he ought to smile or not. Ever feel in that position, reader? I have.
"Weren't you struck with the remarkable resemblance between Johnnie here and your brother's wee lassie, on the night you brought the boy home?"
"That, indeed, I was," said Tom Morgan; "and so was every one else, especially my father. So, you see," continued Tom, figuring the sentence out on his fingers, "if my oldest brother married Johnnie's father's eldest and only sister—
"That sounds rather Irish, Tom," interrupted Mr. Dawson; "but go on, my boy. Johnnie's father's eldest and only sister—"
"Well, I never was good at counting kin, as it is called, but my brother Fred did marry Johnnie's father's sister—all the world knows that: so little Tottie—Violet, you know—is Johnnie's cousin—no wonder she is like him; and my brother Fred's wife would be Johnnie's aunt; and—and—why, Dawson, I myself am Johnnie's uncle.—Hullo, Johnnie Greybreeks! I'm your uncle. I'm your uncle Tom; shake hands, old man."
At this moment Johnnie really could not have affirmed whether his head or his heels were uppermost, or whether this big, jolly gentleman with the big brown beard wasn't having a joke at his expense. However, he shook hands almost mechanically.
"Hush!" cried Tom; "there are little footsteps on the stairs, and the sound of childish laughter. I believe it is Violet and her governess. Talk of angels, and they appear."
Next moment in rushed Violet, screaming with delight. She kissed Uncle Tom somewhere about the beard.
"Oh," she cried, "doverness has been so dood, and buyed me such a lot of pletty fings."
Then she noticed Johnnie.
She stuck one finger in her mouth thoughtfully, but recovering her self-possession almost immediately, she advanced and held out her wee chubby hand.
"I fink," she said, "you is Dohnnie Dleybleeks? How d'ye do, little boy? You and me has met before."
Johnnie jumped off the stool and shook hands as politely as a nobleman would have done.
"Aren't they like now!" said Tom.
"Miss Gibb," he continued, addressing the governess, "we—that is, Mr. Dawson chiefly—have made a wonderful discovery. This boy you see before you, and who is called Jack Mackenzie, is my niece—no, I mean nephew—by the brother's side, as it were, and consequently first cousin-german to—I say, Mr. Dawson, bother it all, I'm getting a bit mixed again."
Miss Gibb laughed.
"So you's my fist tousin, 'ittle boy, is you?—Miss Dibb, tiss my fist tousin for me; I can't be boddled tissing 'ittle boys."
Miss Gibb dutifully did as she was told; at which condescension Johnnie was more puzzled than ever. He would have given three of his best marbles at that moment to any one who could have told him where he was in particular, and what day of the week it was.
But the interview was soon brought to an end; and when Johnnie went back to his home in Summer Loaning, a very droll story indeed he had to tell Mrs. Malony.
"Och, sure," she cried, "I always tould Malony that poor dear Mrs. Mackenzie wasn't the same as us at all, at all; that she was a lady under a cloud, sure enough. And troth and I'm roight. And it's a foine gintleman you'll be, Johnnie, some day entoirely."
* * * * *
Old Mrs. Mackenzie of Drumglen in Perthshire was certainly all that Tom and Mr. Dawson had said. She was nothing if not orthodox and conservative to a degree.
She belonged to a very old and aristocratic family in the north of Inverness-shire. The family, however, had the misfortune to be somewhat poor, and ill-natured people did say that when Miss Stuart married Mr. Mackenzie, a Jamaica merchant, it was more from love of money and what it could bring than from love of Mac himself. But, of course, ill-natured people will say anything, and charity is a flower that is not half so well cultivated as it ought to be.
Never mind. Miss Stuart was at the time of her wedding stately, tall, and handsome, and—a stanch Jacobite. Mr. Mackenzie, on the other hand, was on the weather-side of forty, and though wiry enough, he was about the same colour as a cake of gingerbread. That is what Jamaica and the West Indies had done for him.
He took his bride out with him at first to the beautiful islands of the West. She admitted they were very beautiful, but she didn't like life there, and she went in a constant state of fear and horror of the creepie-creepies. The flowers were gorgeous, but often from the very centre of a lovely bouquet brought by her black maid a centiped as long as a penholder would wriggle. In the centre of huge bunches of luscious fruit little wicked snakes would be asleep, and even as she stood admiring the fruit, one would protrude a tiny triangle of a head and venomously hiss in her face. Oh, it wasn't nice.
Fire-flies were pretty flitting about among the bushes at night, like stars that had lost their way; but she found creatures indoors even in her bedroom that were not fire-flies, and whose perfume was not like that of attar of roses. She even found things in the soup that the chef couldn't account for, and cockroaches' legs are not the thing in a cup of coffee.
So she told Mackenzie, gently but firmly, that she was going home; that she would not give one glimpse of the purple heather for all the beauty and wealth of the Indian Isles.
Mac was very fond of his aristocratic bride. If she had asked him to live in Kamschatka or build her a mansion in lonely Spitzbergen, he would have done so. Therefore, like a dutiful husband, he came home.
He brought with him a black servant-man, or boy who eventually became a man, just to remind him of those sunny isles in the beautiful West; and soon after his return he bought the mansion-house and broad lands of bonnie Drumglen.
Not long after Johnnie's father was born, Mr. Mackenzie died one wild, stormy winter's morning. After being so long in the tropics, I suppose, the climate of the Scottish Highlands hardly suited him. He was found asleep in his library chair, with his hands folded, his toes on the fender, and a red bandana laid as usual over the bald patch on his crown.
His black servant shook him—once, twice, thrice. It was the laird's last sleep, and shaking was unavailing.
So Snowball went and reported the circumstance to his mistress.
"Pore massa done gone dead, I fink, milady. I shakee he, one, two, tree time, but he not sware at me. I fink, milady, he nebber wake no mo' in dis world."
* * * * *
It was somewhat strange that Mrs. Mackenzie never seemed to take to her daughter, who was about five years older than Donald her boy—Johnnie's father. Her whole life and love seemed bound up in her son.
Under the plea of giving her the best education it was possible to obtain, the girl was sent to a school in Edinburgh. There she lived and grew up, only coming home at holiday-time.
It was at Edinburgh, too, that Flora met Fred Morgan, the son of the wealthy ship-broker. Flora, of course, asked her mother's consent to marry Fred—meaning to marry him, anyhow, for the Mackenzies had always been a self-willed race.
The letter bearing the mother's reply came in due course.
"Oh, certainly, my dear."
That was the gist of it when shorn of its studied and stately verbiage.
At the same time that Sambo, alias Snowball, posted this letter, he dropped one into the box for Mr. Dawson, the family solicitor.
Mr. Dawson went through at once to Drumglen. He arrived early in the afternoon.
But "milady" was as politely reticent as a Mohawk Indian. She said nothing about business that day.
He dined in state—with Snowball behind his high-backed chair, arrayed in a crimson waistcoat and immaculate coat and neckerchief.
Next morning Mrs. Mackenzie accorded her solicitor an interview within the gloomy precincts of the library. The lady came to the point at once, and with as much force and precision as Malony made use of when beating a red-hot horse-shoe.
"My daughter is going to be married, Mr. Dawson," she said.
Dawson bowed and smiled.
But Mrs. Mackenzie brought him up with a round turn.
"No palaver, Mr. Dawson, please," she jerked out. "My daughter is going to be married. She did me the courtesy of asking my leave—a mere matter of friendly formality, of course. She is going to marry a Morgan. The Morgans are Welsh. I don't like the Welsh; they are mere business people. I don't like that. I believe a daughter of mine might have married a lord. N'importe; it is no fault of mine. But, Mr. Dawson, these Morgans are said to be wealthy Welsh. Well, my estate is my own, is it not?"
"To have and to hold, my dear lady; to do absolutely what you please with."
"Well, Mr. Dawson, I can leave all to my dear boy if he continues to love and obey his mother as he does now; but I come of a very independent family, and, if I choose, I can leave my riches to build an hospital, or, what is even more needed, a new ship of war. Now, sir, make out a cheque for £5,000 to my daughter, and I will sign it. Write also a letter, couched in friendly but not too friendly terms, to accompany this cheque. I want my daughter, or rather the Morgans, to understand that there is a gulf fixed between the mansion-house of Drumglen and their shop in Glasgow."
And Mr. Dawson had obeyed her orders to the very letter.
He had, however, always since then managed to keep on the very best terms with the Morgans, as well as with Mrs. Mackenzie herself.
* * * * *
Long, long years, as we know, had gone by since that day when Mrs. Mackenzie turned her soldier son out to face the wide world and poverty, and the stern old dame had somewhat softened as she grew older.
Perhaps if Donald had gone to Drumglen and begged her forgiveness, she would have relented and received him into favour once more. But the same proud blood ran in the veins of both mother and son.
Mr. Dawson went very often to Drumglen, and sometimes spent weeks fishing or shooting on the estate. He enjoyed this, although the house itself and the company were hardly free and easy enough to suit the jolly solicitor.
Dawson was summoned rather hastily once. This was after the body of poor Lieutenant Donald Mackenzie, her son, had been found in the river.
The solicitor found her looking older than ever he had seen her. She seemed broken, not as to physique, but mentally.
She talked a deal about her younger days and her married life, and Dawson guessed rightly that she was working the subject round to her late son.
"O Mr. Dawson," she said at last, "I don't mind confessing to you that I have been just a little too hasty, and that if poor Donald were alive again I—I might consider the whole subject. But there, Mr. Dawson, my regrets are vain; and now I wish you to make my will, for I feel I must soon follow my husband to the grave."
"Why, Mrs. Mackenzie, you are not at all old yet, However," he added, "it is as well we should all be prepared."
"Yes, and that was just what good Mr. M'Thump, our minister, said in the pulpit yesterday. His text was, 'For ye know not the day nor the hour.' A good man and a learned is Mr. M'Thump, and he'll dine with you to-night, Mr. Dawson."
I fear the solicitor did not look overmuch pleased at the information. However, he proceeded to take pencil notes of the lady's will, and that very evening he drew it up.
It was brief in the extreme. She left all she possessed to build a new ship of war, to assist in protecting the freedom of her beloved country.*
* It would be a good thing if wealthy millionaires who have no family would follow the old lady's example. Britain stands sadly in need of more ships of war.—AUTHOR.
* * * * *
Years flew by. The old dame appeared to have renewed her age, as she certainly had her sternness and aristocratic composure. She never mentioned her son now; but Dawson took good care to tell her all about the discovery of little Johnnie Greybreeks, and how strangely he had turned up at the Christmas party. He told the story so feelingly that more than once during the recital he fancied he saw a tear in the stately lady's eyes.
Half a year after this Dawson was once more summoned to Drumglen.
"I had a strange dream last night," she told him. "I thought I saw Donald my boy. He held his little son by the hand, and looked at me, oh, so pleadingly. Heigh-ho! I suppose I am old and soft and silly; but, Mr. Dawson, I am not sure I should not like to see that boy Jack you spoke about—just for once, if you can find him."
"I will do my best, madam," said Dawson.
Dawson, however, was not much of a detective, else he might have found Johnnie before that day on which Tom Morgan met him accidentally near the bridge.
And now we shall see what this accidental meeting led to as far as Johnnie was concerned.
CHAPTER VI.
"THE OLD LADY HAD A WOMAN'S HEART AFTER ALL."
"Veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered).
So said Cæsar of old, by way of describing the ease with which he gained a victory against his enemies.
"Veni, vidi, vici," Johnnie Greybreeks might have said, after his first interview with that stately and aristocratic dame his grandmother.
But wait a minute, reader. I fear I must call our little hero Johnnie Greybreeks no longer—at least not while he is under the lordly roof-tree of Drumglen. He must be Jack.
Well, it was Dawson himself who brought Johnnie—no, I mean Jack—to the mansion-house, and led him into the presence of his grandma.
Johnnie—that is Jack; you see I can't get into the swing of it all at once—was very neatly dressed in Highland tweeds, and brave he looked. The old lady sat erect in her high-backed chair. She could not but notice the striking resemblance between the boy and her Donald of the olden days; yet she had meant to receive him most soberly and stately.
"This is Jack," said Dawson, leading the boy, who was looking shy, forward.
The grandam drew herself up. She looked at Jack once. She looked at him twice. Then she opened wide her arms; and as Jack flew like a bird to her embrace, she pressed him to her heart and fairly burst into tears.
Even Dawson was affected, and wisely withdrew.
Old Mrs. Mackenzie had a woman's heart then, after all.
* * * * *
What a long, delightful letter that was Jack wrote to his mother and sister next day! It did both their hearts good.
Mrs. Mackenzie, junior, was glad, for her boy's sake, that he had found a friend that would advance him in life. For her own part, she would have died at the foot of a pine tree rather than accept a favour from the proud owner of Drumglen, albeit she was her late husband's mother.
Ah! pride, and especially Scotch pride, is a bitter feeling, and often even a cruel. Pride has been called the devil's darling sin, and by Pope
"The never-failing vice of fools."
Says Goldsmith,—
"Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of humankind pass by."
Well, I do believe that with Grandam Mackenzie the stream of life now began to run backwards for a time. She had invited Jack to stay but for a week or two; but the sweet summer-time was coming on, and the boy required no second invitation to make Drumglen his home for a time. The words "for a time" are Mrs. Mackenzie's own, and perhaps she hardly knew the full meaning of them herself.
Jack wasn't going to forget old friends, however, and he wrote to Mrs. Malony, and to Little Peter also, and promised to write again.
I think that young Jack had not been at Drumglen for even a week before the rigidity of the mansion began to thaw.
Jack was jolly, but never with a jollity approaching to vulgarity. Indeed, in company and at table, thanks to his mother's tuition, the boy behaved himself like a little lord. But he often said droll things that made everybody laugh, and caused even the orthodox Mr. M'Thump to smile.
As a rule, the ladies and gentlemen who assembled at a dinner-party here were as stiff and straight in the back, physically and morally, as the chairs in which they sat.
When the ladies retired, however, the men folks did unbend, and some of them drew Jack out; and Jack—he did not require a very great deal of encouragement—gave his ideas about life and things in general in such a comically philosophical way, that old-fashioned lairds thumped the table and laughed aloud.
There was just one subject, however, on which Jack was wisely silent—namely, his sad life of poverty and distress in stony-hearted Glasgow.
Some things are better left unsaid, some stories better left untold. And Jack knew this instinctively as it were, and held his peace—for his grandma's sake.
Moreover he kept his own counsel concerning the whereabouts of his mother and sister, even when so eminent and dignified an individual as the Rev. Mr. M'Thump endeavoured to draw him out.
"This is Jack."
In this, again, Jack pleased his grandma very much. Drumglen mansion-house was in itself a somewhat antiquated and dreary abode, although situated in the midst of the most beautiful Highland scenery—hill and dale, river, loch, scaur, and wild wood.
The weeping birch trees were nowhere of sweeter, softer green in early spring than on the banks and braes around here; and among their branches the mavis and blackbirds trilled their songs with a joy that seemed half hysterical, while from far aloft, skimming the clouds, the laverock showered his notes of love. Nowhere did the primroses grow bigger, cooler, sweeter, than by the banks of the bickering burn that went singing over the stones on its way to the loch, forming many a clear pool wherein the minnows darted hither and thither, and where the crimson-ticked trout loved to bask in the sunshine. Then in autumn the hills around were purpled and encrimsoned with heather and heath high up their sides, till their rugged heads were lost in the clouds.
But the garden walls of Drumglen were high and strong, and the gates of ponderous iron. It seemed as if they had been built to stand a siege in the stormy days of old.
Inside these walls the garden itself was wide and wild, and away aloft, in the black and gloomy foliage of the pine trees, the hoody crow had his nest, and eke that bird of ill-omen the magpie.
The walls of the house itself were very thick and the windows small. Not a sound did your footsteps make as you glided about the rooms. So silent did you move on the thick, soft carpets, that you could scarce help thinking at times that you were your own ghost.
The furniture of this gloomy house seemed a thousand years old at least. The stairs were of oak; and when Jack first beheld his grandmother's bed, he gazed at it with a feeling of awe. It was a huge, dark, and curtained edifice, with drapery of the snowiest white. To have slept under such a weight as that would have made a stranger dream he was about to be smothered alive.
The old dame's servants had always been chosen for their solemnity, one would have said, and their reverential stateliness. They had never been heard to laugh till Jack went to reside at the mansion.
But now things were a little bit altered. For the boy moved about the house like a ray of sunshine, and you could no more have kept him from laughing, or singing the fag-ends of old Scotch songs, than you could have prevented a lark from trilling his love-lilts in May.
I may tell you that Jack knew well enough that his grandam wished him to keep his place if ever he entered the servants' hall. So he did; and yet his presence there never failed to bring sunshine, light, and music, and oftentimes now the dark oak ceilings re-echoed the mirth of servants who had ever before been as sad and solemn as church beadles or funeral mutes.
With all her orthodox conservativeness, however, Mrs. Mackenzie seemed to know that boys like Jack cannot live without amusement, and so at no time was she averse to the visits of youngsters of his own age. She even gave entertainments, and invited to them the children of neighbouring lairds, so that on the whole Jack's life was not so solemn an affair as it might otherwise have been.
In the evenings when alone together, the old lady used to make him draw his low stool up close beside her knee and talk to her. She would even encourage him to tell her about life in what might well be called the lower regions of the great city of Glasgow.
The disinterested kindness of Mrs. Malony and poor Little Peter, the hunch-backed fiddler boy, visibly affected Jack's grandmother.
"I did not think," she said, "that the poor could be so kind to each other as that. I will send Mrs. Malony, and Peter too, a Christmas-box when the time comes round. And so they were going to make a blacksmith of my brave boy, were they?"
"Yes, grandma; but I love work."
"How terrible!"
Jack bent down to smooth an old grimalkin that snoozed upon the rug.
"Malony wasn't so very terrible, though," he said; "and I suppose, grandma, if nobody was a smithy-John, nobody's horses would have any shoes to wear."
"True, my dear, quite true. As the potter makes his wares, some to honour and some to dishonour, so are we too made, and we should do our duty in the station of life which God has appointed us to fill."
Jack didn't reply. He was gazing into the bright fire of peats and coal that blazed so cheerfully on the low hearth, and wondering what station in life it would be his to fill.
"Jack," she said, after a pause, "did it ever occur to you that you would like to be something?"
Jack looked up at her now with glowing, happy face.
"Oh yes, indeed, grandma!"
"And what have you thought of?—the church?"
"Oh no, grandma."
"But think of the honour and glory of serving Him even in this world, and the richness of the reward hereafter. Think of our minister, the Rev. Titus M'Thump. He has ere now been honoured by dining even with royalty."
"I daresay I'm not good enough," said Jack simply.
"Well, child, the law affords facilities for rising to eminence in the world. Mr. Dawson, my own solicitor, is both a great and a good man. But," she added, as Jack did not reply, "how would you like to be a leech?"
Jack looked up astonished, with eyes about as big as billiard-balls. He had seen Malony apply a leech once to his sister's neck when she was ill of quinsy, and did not know that "leech" was the old name for physician.
"A leech, grandma! a nasty, black, creepie-crawlie, blood-sucking leech! Oh no, grandma. You are making fun, aren't you?"
"Well," said the old dame gravely, "you are quite right. I don't care for the profession myself. Your strictures on the leech are probably somewhat severe, however. I had one to dine with me a few months back, and really he seemed fairly intelligent."
"Dine with a leech!" thought Jack; "why, grandmother must be going out of her mind."
"Well, Jack, what would you like to be?"
"I would like, grandma, to be a Highland soldier, and wear a feather bonnet."
Grandma smiled sadly, and for a time gazed silently at the fire.
"No, Jack, no. I would not like you to be a soldier. Anything else?"
"Oh yes," replied the boy, eagerly enough. "You see, grandma, Mr. Dawson says there is going to be a big, big war with Russia."
"Perhaps so, dear, perhaps."
"Well, sailors fight as well as soldiers, and dress all in blue and gold, for I've seen some. They don't have feather bonnets, though—only just cocked hats and long swords. Well, I would like to be a sailor like that; and I'm sure when I grow bigger I could cut off an enemy's head beautifully."
"O boy, boy, how horrible! Well, I'll think about it; and if your mother will let you stay with me for a time, I will get you a good and clever tutor."
Jack did not answer, but he took his grandma's soft hand in both his, and leaned his cheek upon it in a gently caressing way.
"Strange," thought old Mrs. Mackenzie; "that is the way poor Donald used to caress my hand when he was quite a boy. Surely the Lord has given me this child's love to cheer my old age, and to prove that he has forgiven me."
* * * * *
Dawson and Mrs. Mackenzie the elder had a consultation soon after this. The subject to be considered was this: How best could she do something for her daughter-in-law that would not wound her pride?
"I felt sure," said the solicitor, with straightforwardness, "that you would put this question to me, and I have thought it well out. The doctor has told me that she is now almost well, but that if she returns to her life of poverty and hard work in Glasgow, she will soon find her last home in the mools."
"Well, Mr. Dawson?"
"Well, my dear madam, the cottage hospital down the Clyde is turning a great success; if you could add two beds to it—"
"Nothing would please me better. I will build a small additional wing to it, with a little cottage and garden near for the matron."
"Oh, thanks. You quite anticipate what I was going to say."
"Yes—that my daughter-in-law could be appointed manageress, with Jack's sister as nurse."
"That is it."
"Well, it is as good as accomplished. Only let it be between ourselves. No one is to know who the donor is."
"Agreed."
"It is to be our little secret, Mr. Dawson; and, after all, I think one may just as well do good with one's money while alive as after death."
"It certainly is more satisfactory. How about the man-o'-war ship, then?"
"Ah! that is another subject I hope to discuss with you one day. Perhaps—but—well, the matter needs further consideration, so for the present we shall dismiss it."
* * * * *
Jack stayed all the summer at Drumglen; but when the autumn came round, his grandmother, one evening as they sat by the fire, opened the conversation by saying,—
"My dear boy, your tutor, Mr. Newington, tells me you have been working very hard, and made capital progress in your studies; so I am going to send you home for six whole weeks to your mother and sister, at the Cottage Hospital. I hear there has been a new wing built to it, and a little house and garden for the matron, and that your mother has been appointed to that position. Well, dear boy, write and tell them you are coming; and I'll give you an envelope with something in it, so that you can pay your way, and be quite the little gentleman."
Jack took her hand in the old caressing way; but he did even more—he drew her arm right round his neck and nestled more closely up to her knee.
"Dear grandma," he said, "you are so good to me."
Mrs. Malony was busy making her husband's supper one evening about a week after this, when the door opened, and in bounced Jack.
"Och, sure," she cried, "and is it me own dear bhoy, Johnnie Greybreeks? Indade and indade it was only this blissed morning I was talking to Phatrick about ye. An' how well you are looking, alanna! troth it's the foine young gintleman ye are already entoirely. See there, the very cat knows ye; and won't Peter be plazed!"
And so she rattled on. By-and-by the husband himself came in, smiling all over his black and smutty face, and right heartily Johnnie shook his hard and brooky fist.
After supper Peter came down, and brought the fiddle too. That was one of the happiest nights ever Johnnie remembered spending.
Next day he went to see Mr. Dawson and the Morgans, but only for a hurried visit. Then the steamer Iona took him down stream, and at sunset he was seated beside his mother's cottage fire, with the dearest ones on earth beside him—one on each side.
How cosy and home-like everything looked around him! even the canary and the cat seemed as if they had been specially ordained for the cheerful room. There were flowers, too, everywhere, inside and out; but Maggie Mackenzie was the sweetest flower of all—so even her brother Jack thought.
She was dressed primly, it is true, as became her position as a nurse, but that did not detract in the slightest degree from her lady-like appearance.
Jack's mother, too, was looking well.
"Strange how things come about, dear boy," she said. "You see the Lord heard our prayers, and has raised us up friends. For ever blessed be his name!"
As she spoke she wiped away a tear with her white apron. It was a tear of joy and gratitude, however.
For this evening Jack's mother felt that her heart was full to overflowing.
CHAPTER VII.
"HARD A-PORT!"
"Eep—peep—peep—eep—eep—ee!"
It was the bos'n's pipe sounding loud and shrill high over the howling of a nor'-wester and the song of the storm-stirred waves.
"Eep—peep—eep—ee!"
First forward, then further aft amidships.
"All hands shorten sail!"
"Tumble up, my lads—tumble up; it's going to blow a buster."
And hardly had the last notes of the pipe ceased as quickly as if they had been cut off clear and sharp by the wind, than the men came rattling up the ladders to duty.
There was every need for haste too, for the storm had suddenly increased to almost the force of a tornado. The sun was sinking red and angrily away in the west-sou'-west, his last rays luridly lighting up the foam and spume of each breaking billow, and casting rusty rays even on the spray that was now dashing inboard high as the top of the funnel itself. There was no steam up, however, nor were there even banked fires, albeit the ship was not very far off land.
The Gurnet—for that was her name—was a screw gunboat of the very largest build then on the list, with six good Armstrongs on her deck, besides a monster pivot-gun forward.
She was a model. I don't say that because, many a long year after the date of my story, I myself sailed in her. But a model of beauty the Gurnet was, as good as ever sailor would care to look upon. Low in the water, with none too much freeboard, perhaps; rakish as to masts; bows like a clipper, without any merchant-service flimsiness about them though; and jib-boom like part of a picture. Solid and strong was she though, and as black all over as the wing of a rook, except where, just on the edges, her ports were picked out with vermilion.
"All hands shorten sail!"
Yes; and it is indeed time, with the wind howthering like that, tearing at the sails with angry jerks, and trying the strength of the sturdy ship from stem to stern, from bowsprit to rattling rudder-chains.
And she on a lee-shore!
Yes: the Gurnet had crossed the Bay of Biscay on the wings of a beautiful wind a trifle abaft the beam. She had passed the Gulf of Corunna, and was now just off Cape Finisterre, or Land's End as we would call it; but nobody, two hours ago, could have believed that the wind would pop round a point or two and come on to blow like this.
"Where in a' the warld are you goin' to, laddie?"
It was the doctor who spoke—Dr. Reikie, assistant-surgeon in charge—and as he sang out these words he caught young Midshipman Mackenzie by the lower part of his uniform, as he was struggling up the companion-ladder.
The clutch that he made at him was a very unceremonious one indeed, but a most effectual, for he hauled the middie right back and down into the steerage.
"Where were you off to, eh? Are you going daft?"
"Why, sir, it's all hands on deck, isn't it?" said Jack Mackenzie, for it was he. "Mustn't I keep my watch, and help to reef topsails?"
Dr. Reikie laughed loud enough to be heard high above the trampling of feet and shouting of orders on deck.
"Ha! ha! ha! Well, I declare, that's about the best thing I've heard for many a day. Man," he added, leading Jack straight off into the cosy little ward-room, "what use d'ye think a vision of a thing like you would be on deck? No more use, man, than a cat in front of a carriage and four. Sit down on the locker there, or, what is better still, lie down, and thank your stars you've gotten a countryman o' your ain to look after you."
"Well," said Jack, mournfully, "I suppose I must do as I'm told."
"I'll take care you do, youngster. You may disobey anybody else in the mess, but if you dinna do as I tell you, man, I'll lay you across the table and lunner the riggin' o' you. But there," he added, more kindly, "I'm only in fun, or half in fun, you know. Only, dinna forget I'm senior in this mess, and sit at the head o' the table. If I hadn't hauled you down the companion, you'd have been washed half-way to Finisterre afore now."
"Thank you very much, sir."
"Well, mind you're a kind of in the sick-list, and never a watch do you keep—except that bonnie gowd one in your pocket that your granny gave you—till I give you leave."
"Thank you, sir," said Jack again. "But what is supposed to be the matter with me?"
"A touch of sea-sickness—your gills are as white as a haddock's.—Inexperience, and the want o' sea-legs.—Hark! listen! We've carried away something."
This was indeed true; although reefed, the maintopsail had gone.
I could not say how many ribbons it was rent into, but the noise those ribbons made was indescribable. It was like the rattling of platoon-firing when a regiment of soldiers is being drilled.
"I told the skipper the glass was going down like tea and scandal, and he only laughed at me. If a man refuses to obey the dictates of science, well, he deserves to lose his ship—that's all I've got to say."
"You don't think we're going to be shipwrecked, do you, sir?"
"Laddie, how can I tell? If the wind changes, and we don't get up steam in time, our ribs may be dang in on the rocks before mornin'. But don't be afraid. I daresay it will all come right. I'm going on deck to see how her neb is pointing. Keep quiet, and think about your mammy."
And away the doctor went, steadying himself by bulkheads or anything he could lay hold on.
It was now getting very dusk indeed, but so quickly had the men aloft done their duty, that the ship was already snug, and all hands had come below. The captain, Commander Gillespie, was himself on the quarter-deck. He was comparatively a young man, probably not thirty, or about three years the surgeon's senior. He was a smart enough officer, but he had good friends in England in high quarters, and this had got him a separate command; so he walked his own planks, lord of all he saw.
The surgeon and he were already very friendly, only the captain did not put much faith in the weather prognostications advanced by the worthy Scotch medico.
"I told you what was coming, sir," said Dr. Reikie.
"Um—yes—well, I think you did mention something about the glass. But we're all right."
"Just shave Finisterre, won't we, sir?"
"Just shave it! why, we can walk ten miles to windward of it."
"Well, the Gurnet is a beauty anyhow, I will admit that; but still, sir—"
"Look here, doctor: come down below and dine with me—eh?—and we'll have a jolly good talk, and leave service alone; shan't we?"
This was a very pretty way of telling the doctor to mind his own business; and he wisely took the hint, and went off down below to put on his mess-jacket.
The good fellow, however, was not altogether easy in his mind. He did not like the look of the glass, nor—as he told the lieutenant, whom he met as he passed through the ward-room to reach his cabin—the look of things in general. The clouds this evening were racing across the sky, although it was now almost too dark to see them; the wind was unsteady, though very high; and there was a jerkiness in the motion of the brave little ship that Dr. Reikie did not half like.
Lieutenant Sturdy was putting on an oilskin coat and a sou'-wester. He was a rough-looking sea-dog at the best, but arrayed in this style, his round, red, clean-shaven face smiling rather grimly as the doctor spoke to him, he looked more like a North Sea pilot than the first officer of a British man-of-war.
Sturdy was a year or two older than the captain, but he had no great friends at head-quarters, nor anywhere else for the matter of that. He came of a good, honest Newcastle family. His father owned quite a small fleet of coal-steamers that plied between that great city of the north and London or elsewhere. In fact, these coal-ships coasted everywhere, going high up as far as Aberdeen, and south even to Plymouth itself.
There was a larger steamer in which, being fond of the sea, Mr. Sturdy, senior, had himself coasted for years. His wife was a tiny, delicate bit of a body, and feared to venture much upon the ocean; but Lieutenant Ben Sturdy here had sailed with his father from the time when he was hardly as tall as the binnacle. It was a rough kind of a school to learn in, but it made him a sailor, and even in the royal navy an officer is none the worse of being a sailor. What do you think, reader?
Well, Sturdy had entered the service before he was fourteen, and had not been a deal on shore in England since, because he had no interest to get him nice ships that had only a three years' commission. Sturdy's ships had mostly been rotten old tubs that were kept on a station may be for five years and then recommissioned, two or three of the officers being left out in them, perhaps. So you see the service is not all a bed of roses, but it is the best service in the world for all that. An old sailor like myself may be excused for thinking so, at all events.
Sturdy was a good-natured fellow anyhow, although sea-beaten and rough. His daily life and intercourse with his messmates proved that.
"That's right," said the doctor, patronizingly; "you're dressing up to fight the weather, I see."
"Dressing up to fight fiddlesticks, Reikie. It's going to be a bit of a blow, that's all, and I want to be snug. See!—Hullo, little man!" he added, patting Jack on the head; "a bit squeamish, eh? No? All right; keep below for a few days."
Mr. Gribble, the assistant-paymaster, was entering the ward-room dressed in a uniform pilot-jacket, with his cap well reefed, and his hands fathoms deep in his trousers pockets.
He stuck himself right in the doorway, spreading his elbows to steady himself.
"Hullo!" he said, screwing his mouth and eyebrows about as if his face were india-rubber—"hullo! Who are you? Hey?"
"Gangway, Mr. Cheek," answered Sturdy, "unless you want me to give you a fair wind down the hatchway there. You'd look nice riding stride legs on the shaft."
"Why, my blessed eyes, if it ain't you yourself, Lieutenant Benjamin Sturdy! Blow me sky-high if I didn't think it was old Neptune come on board. I say, young man," he continued, "do you know that a yellow oilskin and sou'-wester ain't uniform? I'll be obliged to take notice of it. Sea-boots and all!"
Sturdy lifted a huge brown fist and made pretence he was going to cut Gribble clean through the steerage.
Gribble dodged. "Don't hit a little chap," he cried. "I'll let you off this time."
"I say, Sturdy," cried the doctor.
"Yes."
"I'd get up steam if I were you."
"Humph!" grunted Sturdy from the depths of his capacious chest; then he went stumping up the ladder singing to himself,—
"Here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling,
The darling of our crew;
No more he'll hear the billows howling,
For death hath broached him to."
It did everybody good to hear Ben Sturdy singing; but on the quarter-deck, except at night, this jolly officer could be as polite as in a drawing-room.
"O Mr. Sturdy," said Captain Gillespie, who was still on deck; "here you are."
"Yes, sir. Been bending my foul-weather gear, you see."
"Quite right. Well, I think the old Gurnet is safe."
"As safe as can be, sir."
"Looks beastly thick to windward, though. Think we should get up steam?"
"As you please, sir."
"I was asking you."
"Well, I wouldn't. We'll keep her up a point or two; she'll weather anything."
"There!"
It was a bright flash of lightning that illuminated everything on deck, till brass-work stood out like burnished gold.
This was followed by a peal of thunder that appeared to roll the ship up and crush her from stem to stern as one would an empty match-box.
"That'll do good."
"Eh?"
"It'll bring rain, and rain will lay the wind and sea. Hail will anyhow, and there it comes."
And there it did come too. It was early spring; but for as long as he had been to sea, Sturdy had never before seen such hail as this. In a few minutes' time the decks were covered inches deep. The Gurnet might have been a ship in the Greenland seas. The lightning, too, was incessant, and hail or snow never looks more beautiful than when lit up in this way.
The thunder rolled on almost incessantly, but the wind now seemed less in force, and the sea for the time being was as smooth as if covered with oil.
The man at the wheel cowered beneath the terrible storm, while the hands forward were fain to seek the protection of the weather-bulwarks.
"I'll go below now," said the captain when the sky cleared once more and the thunder went muttering away to leeward. "Come down, Mr. Sturdy, when your watch is over, and have a glass of port."
"I'll be with you, sir."
At eight o'clock he was as good as his word. Dinner was over, but there were biscuits and dessert.
"Come along, Mr. Sturdy. The doctor and I have been having long arguments on scientific subjects. Sit down."
"Ahem!" said the surgeon. "But, Captain Gillespie, 'argument' is the wrong word. I was expatiating."
"Expawsheeatin'," mimicked Sturdy, as he helped himself to the biscuit. "You wouldn't listen to argument, eh, from such as us? You are learned. You must just expawsheeate. Says you,—
"'I am Sir Oracle,
And, when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!'
—Well, sir, what was Dr. Reikie teaching you?"
"Oh," said the captain, laughing, "just as you came down we were away somewhere in the star depths—beyond the nebulæ, I think."
Sturdy had poured himself out a glass of rum in a tumbler—a sort of bos'n's nip, four fingers high. This was a chance for the doctor to have a shot at the lieutenant.
"I say, Sturdy," he said, "talking about nebulæ, if you drink all that rum you'll have a nebulous noddle in the mornin'."
"Yes," continued the captain, "we were off and away into the vastness of the star depths. We had got far beyond Sirius, and never gone once on shore. The doctor was telling me that light travels at the rate of 186,000 miles a second! I say, Mr. Sturdy, how many knots is that an hour?"
"Computations like that, sir," said Reikie, trying another shot, "it would be in vain for Sturdy to attempt in his present condition. Wait, sir, till he has another nip."
Sturdy was silent.
Sturdy was hungry. The biscuits disappeared before him as if by magic. Then he attacked the nuts, and presently settled quietly down to the raisins.
Captain Gillespie's cabin was right abaft the wardroom, with a separate staircase to it, and a steward's pantry at the foot thereof. It was very tastefully furnished—at his own expense of course—and at one end stood a small but good piano, and hanging near it a fiddle. The captain was very fond of music, and so was the surgeon; and the fiddle belonged to the latter.
"Do play, sir," said Sturdy now, "to drown the raging of the storm.—Come, Auld Reikie," he continued, "screw up your Cremona."
"If you'll sing 'Tom Bowling.'"
"Oh, I'll sing anything."
"By the way, sir," said Sturdy, after he had finished that glorious song, which has never yet been beaten, "would you mind me asking poor little Mackenzie in for half-an-hour? I am taking a great liberty, but—"
"Not at all, my good fellow.—Mr. Reikie, will you run for him? you're the younger."
"Mr. Dr. Reikie will be delighted, sir."
This was a shot at the captain himself. Reikie really was a doctor of medicine, and he was just young enough and Scotch enough to resent being deprived of his title.
Jack was a little shy at first, but he soon brightened up, and his pleasant and innocent chatter enlivened the little company. Jack even sung a song.
"Well," said the captain at last, "this is only our second night at sea, though I have known you two gentlemen before. Well, we've spent a very pleasant evening, and if I can have my wish it won't be the last by a long way. We are going on particular service, and are likely to be shipmates for a long time. Why, Midshipman Jack here will be a man before he gets back to his mother."
Jack really fancied he had been a man for over three weeks—ever since, in fact, he had set foot on the Gurnet in Plymouth Sound.
"Well, gentlemen, I like to begin a cruise on commission as we hope to end it—every one doing his duty, every one pleasant, and loving his neighbour as himself. So, good-night. See you all in the morning."
* * * * *
But the wind grew wilder and wilder, and at seven bells in the first watch it was found necessary to get up steam.
The night was very clear now. A half or three-quarter moon had arisen, and every star shone like a diamond.
Hark to that shout!
It is three bells in the morning watch, and the senior midshipman's watch too.
Shoal water ahead.
"Hard a-port!"
Not a man fore or aft that did not hear that shout, not a man fore or aft that did not spring at once from cot or hammock.
And yet there was neither panic, fear, nor confusion; and if every one did hasten on deck even before the bos'n's pipe commenced to sound, it was only because he knew he would be needed, and because he wanted to know as speedily as possible the extent of the danger, and the chance, if any, of safety.
CHAPTER VIII.
JACK'S SEA-DADDY.
Midshipman Jack was among the first on deck. All he could see was the star-lit, wind-tossed waves that, at each dip of the good ship's prow, rose like mountains right ahead, or, as she leaned to leeward, seemed ready to engulf her.
But away on the port bow he could now and then catch a glimpse of huge black boulders, over which spume was dashing white and high. These boulders were the rocks on which the good Gurnet might soon be dashed, and go to pieces.
In each lull of the gale, even already, the boom of the breaking waves could be heard—a sound that had been to many and many a sailor ere now the last he had ever heard on earth.
Jack began to say his prayers, and to think of those at home. One and all of his friends and relations seemed to rise up before his mind's eye at this moment, and seemed to speak to him, to beckon to him, to pray for him.
Poor Jack! his brain was all in a whirl, but suddenly he remembered that he was guilty of a breach of faith. He had no business on deck. The surgeon had given him orders to remain below. He must hasten down, therefore, though it did seem dreadful to be drowned in the dark—drowned like a rat in a drain. The companionship of even those brightly-shining stars would have made death appear less terrible. But—yes, he must go below. The first duty of sailor or soldier is obedience.
He found his way at last into the ward-room, in which the lamp was still burning, and threw himself down on the sofa.
He could pray; ah! there was comfort in that. After he had said his prayers—no, but prayed his prayers; for there is a deal of difference between saying a prayer and praying it: in the one it comes welling up from the heart itself, in the other it is but lip-worship—after he had prayed, he began to repeat a psalm to himself, one that he had learned at his mother's knee:—
"God is our refuge and our strength,
In straits a present aid;
Therefore, although the earth remove,
We will not be afraid:
Though hills amidst the seas be cast;
Though waters roaring make."
It was just at this line that the young sailor boy's thoughts were wafted away and away to hills and glens and streams and woods, all basking in the sweet light of the summer sun.
Jack was asleep and dreaming.
* * * * *
But a terrible time of anxiety was being passed by those on deck.
The captain and Sturdy himself were both on the little three-plank bridge, hanging on to the rope-rail as if to a life-line.
Again and again Sturdy had shouted down the tube, "Get up steam as fast as possible!" Yet down there he knew the engineer and stokers were fighting like furies in the fierce heat of the engine-room. Well they knew how precious every minute, nay, every second, was. Bacon and even bladders of lard were put into the fire, but apparently without any result, although the flames roared high, and there was even danger of firing the padding betwixt boilers and bunkers.
Nearer and nearer loom the black rocks. Can they weather them? All that brave ship can do the Gurnet is doing. She is sailing as close to the wind as gull or frigate-bird. All that brave men can think of to save her has been done.
Again and again they imagine that they have passed the worst; again and again whale-back rocks rise ominously further ahead.
The captain, and even Sturdy, are now in despair, and the last command is given,—
"Stand by to man and lower boats!"
In such a case this would be the sailor's last resort. In such a sea it would be all but hopeless.
Sturdy draws closer to the captain, and pointing with one arm ahead, shouts in his ear, "We can't weather it. Our only chance is to keep her away and try to sail between the rocks into the open water beyond."
The captain is about to assent, when a dark figure is seen struggling up through the companion-hatch. He is waving his hands aloft and shouting. But the wind cuts the words short off; they cannot be heard. He rushes now to the bridge-ladder and clutches the rope and shouts again.
Sturdy bends towards him. He catches the words.
"Saved!" he cries, creeping back towards the captain.
Saved? I doubt it. The ship's fore-part even now touches ground, and the waves leap madly over her.
But the screw is revolving at last, and slowly the good ship begins to forge ahead. It is a fight now, and a hard one, betwixt wind and steam, and for a time no one can tell which will be victor.
But, hurrah, science has conquered! The useless sails are taken in, and in less than half an hour the Gurnet is clear, and away from the terrible reef.
* * * * *
There was nothing talked about at breakfast next morning except the danger the ship had come through. But what signifies danger to sailors, especially when it is past? The wind and sea had now gone down, the fires were banked, and all sail was being made for Gibraltar, that impregnable fortress whose splendid story may never all be told, and the possession of which is begrudged to us by almost every civilized nation on the globe.
Britain means to hold it nevertheless, as long at least as she rides mistress of the seas; as long as there floats over us, in sea-fight or in tempest,
"The flag that braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze."
By the time the Gurnet reached the Rock, Jack was permitted to keep his watch. He was attached to Sturdy's, luckily for him. Under this brave fellow he would learn seamanship, a science that I am sorry to say naval officers of our day do not know too much about.
But Jack's hopes of spending a day on shore on the historical Rock were doomed to disappointment. For the Gurnet had not a clean bill of health. One or two cases of cholera had taken place, it was said, at Plymouth before she sailed. She had therefore come from an infected port, and no one would be allowed to set foot on shore. The utmost indulgence permitted was to post their letters. A boat came alongside for these. They were handed over the side and taken with a pair of tongs, being soon after fumigated with tobacco smoke and the fumes of burning brimstone.
Fruit, however, was handed up, and many other dainties from shore. The money received was immediately plunged into a vase containing some acid disinfectant. Well, all this was provoking enough, especially as there was not a sick man on board.
From the place where they lay waiting for important documents, etc., they could see the soldiers on the Rock and the promenaders near to the shore, and at morn and eventide the sound of music stole sweetly over the waters from military bands in garrison or barracks.
Early though the season was, everything in and around Gibraltar looked semi-tropical, and Jack Mackenzie would have given a good deal, he thought, to be allowed to land. The sky was blue, and the sea and scenery far and near lay quivering in the glorious sunshine all day long.
When Jack turned out to keep the middle watch for the first time, although rather sleepy when aroused, he speedily pulled himself together, dressed, and went on deck. The stars were shining, but no moon, and afar off was the town with its twinkling lights, rising higher and higher up the hill. Lower down, closer to the water's edge, the lights were more abundant; for sailing ships and steamers lay there, and not far away a man-o'-war or two.
But the lights in the town grew fewer and fewer, and the silence greater, till, after a time, little was to be heard except the sentries calling, bells solemnly tolling the hour, and now and then a wild, unearthly yell which Jack could not account for.
He was leaning over the bulwarks, gazing towards the great looming Rock, when a hand was placed on his shoulder, and he looked quickly up to find it was Sturdy's.
"Am I doing right?" said Jack. "You see, I'm not up to keeping watch yet. Should I keep constantly tramping up and down?"
Sturdy laughed.
"You'd soon have Auld Reikie using language if you did. It is while lying at anchor like this that sailors sleep most lightly, and Reikie is nothing if not a sailor. Perhaps if you did much of the tramping business, he'd come up the hatch and shy a boot at you."
"Shy his boot at me! Would he, sir?"
"Well, I didn't say his boot, but a boot. I daresay Auld Reikie would just as soon shy somebody else's, because when one does this sort of thing the boot nearly always flies overboard.—But come and sit down here on the skylight. In keeping your watch, you know, the main thing is to keep your weather eye lifting, and to note what goes on high and low, fore and aft. See?"
"Yes."
"Well, now, let us yarn. Tell me about your brothers and sisters, mother and aunts, and—oh, but of course you are far too young to have a sweetheart."
"Nearly fourteen," said Jack proudly. "Yes, I have a sweetheart—just one."
"Well, one at a time is all I ever have—in the same port, I mean. And what is your young lady's name?"
"She is the first young lady ever I spoke to in all my life. She is my cousin, eight years old, and her name is Tottie Morgan. Tottie isn't her baptismal name, you know, only her brothers and sisters call her that. Her mother calls her Violet."
"And are you going to marry her?"
"Oh yes, I suppose so."
"He, he! Well, it's a long time to look forward to."
"Tottie's oldest brother is a perfect man; Llewellyn is his name. He is sixteen, and going to be a soldier, and wear a feather bonnet."
"Fine fun that'll be. Well, Jack, they say we'll soon have war. Then you will meet your cousin Llewellyn, if he isn't killed in the first off-go. Young fellows often are, because they are so foolishly rash. Soon may it come."
"What, sir?"
"Why, the war. I want my promotion; and if we had plenty of fighting, in two or three years' time, Jack, you too would win your epaulettes, and exchange your toothpick for a cheese-knife."
"I'm afraid, sir, I didn't hear you aright; did I, sir?"
"Exchange your dirk, I mean, for a long sword; that is, if we didn't have to expend a hammock on you—bury you at sea, that is."
"Oh yes, I see, sir. Then I couldn't marry Tottie, could I, sir?"
"No; you'd get out of that engagement."
"Well, sir, I thought once I would like to be a soldier, and wear a feather bonnet like father did; but grandma said 'No!' so I had to be a sailor. But I feel sure I shall like the sea."
"Don't talk, Jack. Why, you haven't been a dog-watch* in the service."
* The two shortest watches on board ship, from 4 to 6, and 6 to 8 p.m., are so called. They are thus arranged that the same men should not come on deck always at the same hours.
"No, sir, I didn't know there was a dog on board."
"Ha, ha, ha! Well, we have an old sea-dog in the shape of a bos'n, and we have a cat too, a beauty, but I don't like to see her taken out."
"Don't you like cats, sir?"
"Not cats with nine tails. But heave round, Jack."
"Heave what round, sir?"
"O Jack, you'll be the death of me. I mean heave round with your yarn. Tell me all about your people while I light my pipe. Never you learn to smoke, Jack," he continued, lighting a match, and holding it to the bowl of his meerschaum. Puff, puff, puff. "It is one of the worst habits out"—puff—"it weakens the heart"—puff—"weakens the nerves"—puff, puff—"and I don't know what all it doesn't do, but Dr. Reikie could tell you"—puff, puff. "Heave round, lad!"
Jack kept Lieutenant Sturdy interested for hours. Somehow the boy felt that he had found in this straightforward English sailor a true friend, and so he never hesitated to tell him all the events of his young life—all his trials and sufferings, and even his aspirations.
And Sturdy listened attentively, sometimes patting the boy's hand with true sympathy.
"Well, well, well," said the lieutenant at last. "I thought I had roughed it in my young days, but your story has the weather-gauge of mine, Jack—the weather-gauge of mine.
"Ah! well, dear lad, I hope the worst is past. You've just got to do your duty now, keep your weather eye aloft, obey orders, and trust in God. Your life afloat won't be all beer and skittles, I assure you. But a sailor's life isn't a bad one after all. I love it, Jack, oh yes, dearly. You've got to rough it now and then, but then you are here, there, and everywhere, over all the world. You see so much and you learn so much, so that in many ways sailors are far wiser than landsmen.
"Well, as long as you and I are shipmates, Jack, just look upon me as your sea-daddy. Come to me if you have any difficulty, and I'll show you how to steer out of it; and what you want to know about the ship I'll tell you."
"Thank you, sir. You are so good I shall always look upon you as my sea-father."
"Right; and if you want a sea-uncle—and that is handy too at times—why, there's the bos'n. He is a roughish old swab like myself, but his heart is as soft as a girl's. He'll put you up to the ropes, and show you how to splice and reef and steer. Never despise knowledge, no matter where it comes from; and if you keep your place without being uppish, if you are brave and bright, depend upon it, the men will love you and respect you. But I say, Jack, weren't you a bit afraid the other night when it was blowing big guns?"
"Well, you see, sir, at first when all hands were called to shorten sail, I thought I should go upstairs and help."
"Ha, ha, ha!"
"I was just going up, sir, when Dr. Reikie caught me by—by a part of my dress, sir, and pulled me down. He made me a prisoner. But I did escape when I thought we were all going to be drowned."
"Yes?"
"Well, then, I went downstairs again and—"
"Yes, you went below and—"
"Well, sir, I fear I was very wicked; for I began to say my prayers, and fell asleep in the middle of them."
"Why, Jack, it's eight bells—four o'clock.—Forward there! Eight bells! Call the watch!"
Ring-ding, ring-ding, ring-ding, ring-ding.
Jack went quickly down below, and began to undress. He felt tired and sleepy now, and could almost have gone to bed with his boots on.
His chest—it was not a large one—stood outside the dispensary door. There Jack knelt to pray.
Then he quickly caught hold of a ring in a beam, and swung himself into his hammock. He could do so now without tumbling out again at the other side.
I think his head had hardly touched the pillow when he was fast asleep—a happy, dreamless, sailor's slumber.
CHAPTER IX.
IN THE GOOD OLD "GURNET."
Before Jack Mackenzie came to sea, he had received, as far as any boy could, a thoroughly theoretical education. His grandmother had seen to that. Much she would have liked to have the boy constantly with her, but she knew that this would not be to his advantage; for when the very best has been said about the system of what I may call fireside education under a tutor, it must be confessed that there is no emulation about it. So Jack had been sent to one of the best schools in Glasgow, and had private tutors as well, one of them being an old naval commander, who saw nothing derogatory in coaching a few young fellows who were to serve afloat. For six months every year Jack had been in Glasgow; the rest of the time he spent at Drumglen and his mother's pretty cottage.
While in Glasgow, as was only to be expected, he had spent many a pleasant day and evening at the villa of his uncle and cousins the Morgans. On Sunday he never failed to put in an appearance dressed and ready for church. But the Sabbath evenings he had used to spend as often as not with Mrs. Malony and Little Peter.
During his intercourse with his cousins, independent of his falling in love, as he termed it, with the tiny but old-fashioned Tottie, he had cemented a close and enduring friendship with the elder boy, Llewellyn.
Ah, reader! friendships like these are very sweet. Wherever in all the wide world we roam, we never, never forget them.
Llewellyn at sixteen was very tall and handsome, and in every way, one would say, cut out for a soldier. If his father was Welsh, his mother was a true Scot; he was therefore Celtic to the core. It is no wonder, then, that he should prefer a cadetship in a Highland regiment to that in any other. The 93rd is most assuredly one of the grandest and gallantest of our Scottish regiments, and has maintained its high renown on many a blood-stained field.
Just one thing I must say in favour of Jack's conservative old grandma. Although then she neither loved the Welsh nor liked business people, she did not now go the whole length of ostracizing her daughter and her family. I suppose old age has a softening effect upon the heart, for she even went so far as to invite her daughter and children now and then to Drumglen. The latter went frequently to see the old lady, but her daughter very seldom, for the simplest and best of reasons—namely, that her husband had not been included.
However, Llewellyn became a special favourite with this stern old dame, and so did Baby Morgan—that is, Jack's wee sweetheart, Tottie or Violet. What glorious days the two boys had spent together on the loch, by the riverside, in the forests—dark even in daylight—or wandering over the purple hills! Never, never would they forget these dear days while in camp or field, in the trenches, or far away on the lone blue sea.
There had been tears of genuine grief coursing down Jack's cheeks when he bade Llewellyn farewell at last; and though older, it must be confessed that the young cadet was glad in a measure when the parting was over, for there was a big lump in his throat that he had tried in vain to swallow.
Little Tottie, now nearly nine years of age, was not, truth compels me to say, so very much affected at bidding her lover good-bye as Jack, who had a large spice of romance in him, would have liked. She did not cry—not she. Her last words, as the train was starting and Jack was leaning over the window, might have been said to smack of selfishness and gore.
"Mind, Johnnie," she cried, "to bring me home somefing very nice, and don't fo'get to kill lots and lots of dead sailors."
* * * * *
There was no naval instructor on board the Gurnet, of course; but Jack determined to study, nevertheless, theoretically as well as practically. Well, he found himself among good friends, always willing to help him out of a hole. There were the doctor and second master down below, and there was Lieutenant Sturdy, his sea-dad, on deck, and the rough but kindly bos'n forward.
Mr. Fitzgerald, the senior midshipman, was a tall, lanky young fellow, the younger son of a lord, and though no doubt clever enough after a fashion, he did not see the fun, he said, of studying anything in particular. "Zeal for the service!" he told Sturdy once; "I haven't got any. There is no extra screw for that; and if my brother dies, I shall go on shore and keep my hunters."
Mr. Gribble, the assistant-paymaster, was the tease of the mess. He could sing a rattling good comic song, however, and spin good yarns—all true, he said, because he himself had made them up. So he was rather a favourite in the little mess.
On the whole, the members of the ward-room mess were fairly well met, and lived as jolly a life as the same number of young fellows could live anywhere.
From Gibraltar they went cruising away down the Mediterranean, for the Gurnet carried important dispatches for Malta. They were not put in quarantine here. They just escaped that, having been detained at sea by contrary winds. Yes, they might have steamed; but Captain Gillespie's orders had been to save coals if possible, and never to light fires if there was wind enough to carry the ship along.
At Malta, then, much to his delight, Jack got on shore. The doctor, who was assistant-surgeon in charge, and could do very much as he liked, took Jack with him.
What long letters our little hero had to write about this strange town, with its streets of stairs, its quaintly-dressed inhabitants, its bumboat men and women, its churches, with bells that jangle-jangled on for ever and ever; its bazaars and fortifications and ships, and its hill, or rather brae, on which a wood was said to exist. Dr. Reikie went to this wood on a butterfly expedition, and in search of fossils. Well, the wood itself seemed a fossil, a most forlorn and dilapidated belt of trees indeed. But the doctor and Jack came back laden with specimens, white with dust, and with faces that seemed to have been rubbed with a wet brick.
The only thing worth seeing about Malta, said Lord Tomfoozle, as the doctor called Fitzgerald, the senior mid, was the opera. So he did not miss that for a single night of the ten days the Gurnet lay in Malta. I fear that in one respect Fitzgerald rather gave himself away, as the Yankees express it; for he assured everybody before coming to Malta that he could speak Italian. Well, when he aired this language for the first time at a good hotel kept by a native of sunny Italia, the landlord shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
"De Rooshian langwidge," he said, "I not can; but de Engleese mooch plenty, sare."
Dr. Reikie, who was there, guffawed. It was very rude. Fitzgerald turned red in the face, then he called the doctor a bear, and left the hotel.
But the doctor, or doctor's mate as some old tars on board would call him, was too good a fellow to take offence at being called a bear by young Tomfoozle; so at dinner that day he was extra civil to him, and asked him twice if he would have some more pudding. Dr. Reikie knew the mid's weakness, and what would soften his heart; so presently my lord smiled.
"I accept your apology, doctor," he said.
"Apology, Tomfoozle? I didn't make one."
"Oh yes, you did. You asked me twice to have pudding. Pudding and apology are—er—"
"Synonymous?"
"That's the word. I called you a bear to-day, doctor, but I meant a brick."
"Oh, he meant a brick, did he?" chimed in the A.P.*
* A.P. is the abbreviation for assistant-paymaster.
"Mr. Sturdy, please take note; Lord Tomfoozle meant a brick."
"Shut up, you A.P.," cried the mid, "or rather you APE. I'm talking to a gentleman.—Yes, doctor, I did mean a brick; so there!"
"I say, doctor, you look out," said the mischievous quill-driver. "Old Tomfoozle expects you to put him on the sick-list next—"
"Next what?" said the mid.
"Next gale of wind."
"Avast heaving now, you youngsters," put in Sturdy.—"That's the worst of having babies in the mess, doctor."
"I didn't heave anything," said Fitzgerald; "but if the biscuits had been handy, Mr. A.P., without the E, would have had to duck his somewhat empty head."
* * * * *
I cannot say that Jack Mackenzie was over-well pleased with the city of the Templars. It was foreign enough and romantic enough, and military enough also, but it lacked greenness and vegetation. True, the orange-trees bloomed bonnie in many of the gardens, and flowers too, rich and rare, but on the whole it was a parched and sunburnt town. The sea all around, however, was very blue and beautiful, and perhaps no one was sorry when the Gurnet was once more off and away on the bosom of the broad Levant, and bound for Alexandria.
The ship was now all that a little ship of war should be. Sturdy took a pride in her. And he would have her clean alow and aloft, outside and in; and the men seeing this, did all they could to please their good lieutenant. The principal warrant or non-commissioned officers on board the Gurnet were the bos'n, who was so good a friend to Jack, the quartermaster, and sergeant of marines. There were ten at least of these redcoats on board; and although they were very plainly dressed indeed on week-days—just sloped about anyhow, as the bos'n phrased it—still, drawn up on the ivory-white deck on a Sunday morning in line with the blue-jackets, all with rifles and white bayonets ready for inspection, the effect was very pretty.
On the Sabbath morning, as Dr. Reikie solemnly called this holy day, divisions of course formed quite an event. The officers were all in frock-coats and swords, except Jack, who was lashed to his dirk. The best and biggest flag floated gaily aloft, and if a breeze was blowing, the Gurnet, with every white sail bellying out before it, looked indeed a thing of life and beauty. Down below on deck there wasn't a rope's end out of place; the hammocks were neatly arranged above the bulwarks, and the brass-work shone like the inside of a good gold watch.
Solemnly along the line of sailors and marines marched the captain, followed by Sturdy, followed in his turn by Dr. Reikie, and there was nothing that escaped the eagle eyes of any of the three. The men's very faces and ears came in for inspection, and even the cut and length of their hair, the hang of their knives, the lay of their lanyards; and if a bluejacket's collar was badly and carelessly spread, or if it were too broad or too narrow, the quartermaster's attention was drawn thereto.
To appear with a dirty face on a Sunday morning was indeed a crime. The captain would call attention to it, perhaps as follows: "Is that man's face clean and wholesome, Dr. Reikie?"
"It's waur* than a brookie's, sir; and look, his lugs† are like midden creels."‡
* "Waur," worse.
† "Lugs," ears.
‡ "Midden creels," baskets used in the Highlands of Scotland for carrying manure to the fields.
There were times, you see, when the English language would hardly meet the demands of the case, and then the honest doctor permitted himself to drift into his dearly-beloved native dialect.
"Bring that man before me to-morrow forenoon, quartermaster."
That man would next day be planked accordingly, and perhaps his grog stopped for a week, or, if the ship were in harbour, his leave stopped.
A milder punishment for milder offences was three-water grog. In this case the men to be punished were drawn up amidships, each with a basin in his hand; and into this was poured his grog, very much diluted indeed. Then came the command, "Caps off. Queen!"
"Queen!" each man would repeat, and thus toasting Her Gracious Majesty, toss off his three-water grog.
I have already said there was no naval instructor on board, neither was there a parson. Now, the duty of reading prayers in such cases devolves, I think, on the captain himself, but on board the saucy Gurnet it was turned over to the first lieutenant. He had a deep, strong voice, which he could make singularly impressive when reading the lessons.
It was rather more than impressive on one particular occasion, shortly after the ship sailed from Malta. It was a very lovely day indeed, and church service was, as usual, held on the upper deck abaft the mainmast.
Sturdy stood by the capstan reading, and more than one officer had been noticing the antics of Fred Harris, a young blue-jacket, a first-class boy, who was doing all he could to make his comrades laugh. His conduct had evidently given Lieutenant Sturdy the fidgets; for, much to everybody's surprise, the service did not conclude that morning with the simple "Amen," but Amen with a pennant to it, as a sailor would say. It ran thus, all in one breath, mind you: "Amen!—Harris, confound you, sir, I've been watching you all the time. You'll have the cat for your shocking irreverence, as sure as my name's Sturdy.—Pipe down!"
Well, it was time to pipe down after this.
N.B.—The above anecdote is perfectly true, but any reader who doesn't like the tone of it is welcome to skip it.
* * * * *
If the reader will take a glance at the map, he will notice that Sicily is a large island lying to the south and west of the extreme end of Italy, which good-naturedly curls round as if to meet it and bid it welcome. Sicily is principally celebrated, Mr. Sturdy told Jack one night in the middle watch, for good fruit, bad garlic, fried fish, brigands, and a burning mountain.
"That would be Mount Etna," said Jack.
"Yes, old Jack; that's her name. There is a navy yarn told about that mountain which I'm not sure I should tell you, although I was told it myself by a priest."
"Oh yes, tell me."
"Well, it's a warning to all contractors anyhow, who sometimes supply very bad biscuits to England's fighting navy. Once upon a time, then, when the gallant Roarer, a shoudy-boudy old seventy-four, and terribly badly found in the matter of hard tack—her biscuits being half dust, half weevils—was cruising around here, the officer of the watch, one dark night in the middle watch, called all hands to witness a terrible but somewhat ridiculous sight.
"The ship was sailing close past Sicily, and not far from Etna, which had been in eruption for some weeks; only they appeared to be burning up the slack and the cinders in the crater just then, because there was plenty of light but not much smoke.
"Well, all hands came tumbling up, thinking perhaps a Frenchman was bearing down upon them, and that they wouldn't have any more sleep till they sent her to Davy Jones's locker.
"But it wasn't that.
"The captain himself stood on the poop, with his battered old telescope to his eye, and turned towards the mountain top.
"The eyes of all the crew were now bent in the same direction. No wonder that they stared in astonishment, rubbed their eyes, and stared again. For there, on the very brink of the crater, stood two tall figures, wrestling, as it were, for the mastery. One was speedily made out to be Mr. Pipeclay, a baker of Portsmouth, who supplied biscuits to the royal navy—biscuits that had been once or twice on a voyage round the world in the merchant service.* The other figure was soon discovered by the captain to be none other than Auld Nickie Ben himself.
* I know for a fact that, not longer ago than the sixties, old ship-biscuits that had been several cruises in whalers and sealers to the Arctic regions, and condemned, were bought up and sold to the navy. Poor Jack!
"'Yes,' shouted the captain, 'it is Nick himself. I can distinctly make out the cloven hoof.—Bravo, Nick, that's got him!'
"Then he took the glass from his eye and shouted to the commander,—
"'Heave her to, Mr. Deadlight; we must see the end of this.'
"The ship was hove to very quickly indeed, and the crew lined the bulwarks and hung like bees to the rigging, and meanwhile the terrible struggle on the mountain top went on.
"Now, Britons are proverbially lovers of fair-play, and in this case they extended their patronage to the baker and Nick without favour.
"The baker was evidently trying to pull away from the crater, while the object of the other combatant was to get his antagonist down the awful pit.
"On board the ship there was wild shouting or cheering, as one or other seemed to gain an advantage, with loud cries of 'Pull, baker, pull,' or 'Pull, Nick, pull,' as the case might be.
"But at last, terrible to relate, the baker was floored and flung in; Auld Nickie Ben, with an eldritch scream, dived after him, the last portion of him seen being his hoof.
"A clap of thunder followed, and soon after that it came on to blow such a fearful gale that for four-and-twenty hours the good ship Roarer was scudding under bare poles, and it is just a wonder that she survived to tell the tale."
CHAPTER X.
PADDY'S ADVENTURE—FRED HARRIS PROVES
HIMSELF A HERO.
Though far wilder scenes and adventures must soon engage our attention, I shall linger just a little longer in the blue Levant before we sail away south and round the world. Alexandria, then, where Jack was permitted to land and enjoy himself pretty much as he pleased, he liked, probably on this very account. Our hero was certainly not allowed an unlimited amount of pocket-money, but he had enough; besides, you know, it was impossible to spend any at sea, for no card-playing for money was permitted on board the Gurnet.
An Egyptian offered to be his guide, and Jack accepted his services. A lithe and saucy-looking tatterdemalion he was, from his greasy skull-cap to his bare brown toes. He took Jack everywhere, and showed him all the sights. At Pompey's Pillar he met a crowd of blue-jackets not belonging to his own ship. They had flown a kite over the pillar and drawn a rope up, and several sailors went hand over hand up to the top. They danced on the top, and they drank on the top. It made Jack's head giddy to look at them, for he could not help noticing that some of them were not perfectly sober.
Presently he was horrified to see one young sailor lose his balance and topple over. What followed illustrated the presence of mind of a British tar in a way that I think has never been beaten. He was standing near Jack when the man fell.
"Haul taut above!" he shouted.
Then in the twinkling of an eye he loosened the rope below. It is no exaggeration to say that in less than two seconds he had full command of the line, and in two seconds more he had coiled a bight of it round the falling sailor.
"Now lower away from aloft!" he shouted.
The man had been caught by body and legs when about half-way down, and was now lowered easily to the ground.
He was partially insensible, but otherwise intact.
"That's the way we catches Cape pigeons," said the man who had so cleverly saved his shipmate's life.
Jack begged him to explain.
"Why, young sir," he said, "it's simple enough. Near the Cape, you know, and up the 'Bique, the birds come sailing round astern of the ship to pick up the crumbs. Well, we just tie a line to a chunk o' wood and pitches it overboard. When a bird flies near it, we loosens the line like, and a turn of the wrist entangles him; then on board he comes straight off the reel."
In a hotel in one of the beautiful squares Jack dined that day in solitary grandeur.
When he went on board again, he told his adventures to his messmates.
"I say, little 'un," said Gribble, the assistant-paymaster, "you're getting on. I thought I was a bit of a liar myself, but— Steward, another cup o' tea."
"Well," said Jack, in a disheartened kind of way, "I don't see the value of truthfulness if one isn't to be believed."
"Bravo, Jack!" cried Dr. Reikie. "I believe you. What you have told us is doubtless true. The clever feat is scientifically possible; but, alas! to talk science to Gribble there is like throwing pearls before—"
"Before what, Mister Learned Scot?"
"Before— Steward, another cup of tea."
The advantages of temperance are nowadays well recognized by the men themselves in the royal navy; but in those times it was nothing unusual to find the men come off in the liberty-boat "fechtin' fou," as Dr. Reikie called it—that is, to put it plain, "fighting drunk." Sometimes they had to be put in irons on account of their violence. This was not perhaps so much owing to the amount they disposed of as to the vile nature of the stuff they drank.
When Midshipman Jack was one day sent on shore with a boat's crew and some letters at Alexandria, he felt himself a very important officer indeed. He had orders also to make a call and wait for a reply, but to be off again within two hours. He got down to his boat in plenty of time, singing to himself. He sang another song, though, when he found only one man at the boat.
He lowered his brows, and demanded to know where the others were.
"Only gone up to drink the Queen's health, God bless her!" said Paddy O'Rayne.
"But I gave them strict orders not to leave the boat."
"Bhoys will be bhoys, yer honor. But if you'll stand by her head here, sorr, troth I'll bring them all in a minute."
Away went Paddy.
In an hour's time, and when Jack was almost in tears, down came two men—they were singing. Then came Paddy—he was reeling. Then two more—one with a black eye. Jack would wait no longer, but shoved off.
Three times did the stroke oar catch a crab; the third time he couldn't get up, and Paddy took his place.
In order to get alongside safely and gracefully, he made a kind of admiral's sweep, much to the amusement of Dr. Reikie and Lieutenant Sturdy, who were both on the quarter-deck.
"In bow!"
"Way enough! Oars!"
The bow stood up, boat-hook in hand.
He tried to do so very gracefully—too gracefully in fact; for in reaching out to catch on, he lost his balance. He was fished out after a time; and so Jack and his merry men got up the side.
Our young hero made his report very sadly; but Sturdy only laughed.
"I merely sent you," he said, "to give you experience. Sailors are just like babies, you know, and want a lot of watching to keep them out of mischief."
"That's true," said Reikie. "Why, I remember once when in the old gunboat Rattler, on the coast of Africa, having ten men down with sickness all in one day. I thought we were struck with cholera till I made inquiry, and found it was 'pine-apple ailment.' They had all been on shore at Zanzibar, and pine-apples were cheap. Well, Sturdy, would you believe, one man told me that 'sure, he'd only eaten nine!'"
* * * * *
In two months' time the Gurnet was at anchor at Constantinople. This was Jack's first visit to the capital of the Turk, but it wasn't to be his last by any means.
Just one little story here concerning Paddy O'Rayne.
Paddy was a sailor-soldier, you must know; in other words, he was a red marine. He belonged to the R.M.L.I., or Royal Marine Light Infantry. They are called infantry, not to distinguish them from cavalry—for there are no horse marines—but from the R.M.A., or Royal Marine Artillery. These red marines are really splendid fellows, and, as a rule, men of grand physique. It is said that they take up as much room on parade as the "gallant Forty-twa," though my own opinion is that the Highlanders could give them yards and beat them. Never mind, Paddy was a capital specimen; and he "did for the doctor"—that is, he was the worthy surgeon's servant, and sometimes even assisted in the sick-bay.
As regards drinking, Dr. Reikie had always considered him fairly temperate, and had never missed a drop out of his own bottle of rum, which was taken up for him once a week.
"I never saw you the worse of drink yet," said the doctor to him one day, by way of compliment.
"Indade! thin, sorr," said Paddy, "the raison is just this: I niver dhrink more than one glass at a time. Sure, sorr, me mouth wouldn't hould a dhrop more."
But, alas! during this visit to Constantinople proof was forthcoming that even Paddy was not invariably infallible.
Paddy was granted a day's leave then to go on shore and see the "unspakeable Turk." He was as natty as a new pin when he passed over the side to take his place in the liberty-boat.
But when that same boat came off with the liberty-men at night, behold Paddy was not there. Nor did he appear next day, nor till the middle of the next, when he came on board. His appearance as he came in over the side was, to say the least, sufficient to make him the cynosure of all eyes. He had nothing on at all except a pair of old blue drawers and a brass cavalry helmet. His face was fearfully disfigured. But heedless of the peals of laughter that greeted him from all hands, he marched boldly aft to where Dr. Reikie stood on the quarter-deck, saluted, and reported himself.
"It's me, sorr," he said, "and sorra a one else."
"Well, Paddy, I wouldn't have known you. Get down at once to the sick-bay, and I'll see you there."
There were three parallel scars on Paddy's face—brow, nose, and chin—thus
. The excuse he pleaded, when asked how he managed to injure himself, was as droll as Paddy himself.
"You, see, sorr, it was like this. I was aslape on the floor as innocent as an unborn lamb, sorr, and when I awoke I found the stove had thrown itself down and the bars had burnt me face."
But he spoke as if the stove had been lying on his face for quite a long time.
Dr. Reikie forgave him.
The officers of the Gurnet managed to enjoy themselves very much at Constantinople, and were everywhere well received. There were other ships here too, and so the fun was pretty general.
After leaving the Turkish capital, the Gurnet returned to Alexandria and Malta and Gibraltar.
The reason was that there was then no Suez Canal, else the saucy craft would have steamed right away through into the Indian Ocean.
Round the Cape she must go therefore, but nobody minded this. The Cape of Good Hope is rather a pleasant station than otherwise; and, besides, time is of no object with a ship just newly commissioned, for throe or four years being a very long time to look forward to, no one thinks of looking.
The ship touched at Madeira, then stood straight away south—with not much easterly in it—for Ascension and St. Helena.
After many days' sailing they sighted the beautiful Canary Islands, and then the Cape de Verd Islands, getting pretty close to one which I think was St. Antonio. But they did not land, for the breeze was a spanking trade, and carried them on and on all day and all night, as if their ship had been a fairy ship and the sea around a fairy sea.
There was certainly not much in the shape of adventure, however, and not a deal to be seen; although Dr. Reikie, ever busy in the pursuit of science, found much in that deep-blue sparkling ocean to interest him: for he trailed little open gauze nets overboard, and the animalcules that he caught thus and spread out on black card-board with the aid of needles were extremely beautiful to behold. It needed good eyes to see some of the worthy medico's specimens, however. Here, for instance, were tiny transparent fishes, seemingly, all perfect and complete, yet so small they could have swum easily through the eye of a bodkin; little star-fish too, and the drollest and daftest looking shrimps you could imagine, and these were no bigger than the head of an old-fashioned pin. Under a large magnifying-glass, however, you could see even the hearts of these little fishes beating.
"Oh, isn't it wonderful!" Dr. Reikie would say; "and to think that God made them all, and every tiny blood-vessel in their bits of bodies."
One night about five bells in the first watch there was a cry of, "Man overboard."
This was quickly followed by the bos'n's pipe—"Away, lifeboat's crew."
But who was it? Everybody looked about on deck or below to see if they missed a messmate.
Rattle-rattle, rumble-tumble, how those good fellows fly on deck! Hardly a minute elapses ere the boat reaches the water on a level keel and with a dull plash. Then there are the swish of the oars, and the clunk-clunk in the rowlocks, as she speeds away astern.
The life-buoy has been lit and let go, and is burning brightly enough far away astern yonder, and as speedily as possible the ship is hove to.
For that life-buoy the men are now steadily pulling as if their own lives depended on the strength of their brawny arms, while the sub-lieutenant himself as coxswain stands tiller in hand in the stern sheets.
What a long pull it seems to be! But they reach the beacon light at last.
No soul is clinging there!
But a huge shark appears for a moment in the bright starlight, swims half-way round the buoy, and disappears with an ugly plash.
"Ah, lads," says the officer, "that tiger of the seas has had his supper. We can do no more. Stand by to ship the buoy."
This was got inboard and steadied forward in the bows, and after pulling around slowly for a short time, the lifeboat was headed once more for the now distant ship.
"Pull easy, men—pull easy."
The poor fellows were terribly pumped.
"Hark!" cried the first-class boy Harris. "Did you hear that cry, sir?"
It was the same lad who had been planked by Sturdy for skylarking in church: a bold and fearless young fellow he was.
"Hark, sir, there it is again!"
"Lie on your oars, men.—You must have 'cute ears, boy. I heard nothing."
There wasn't a sound now except the "jabble" or lapping of the water as the boat moved slowly up and down. The night was delightfully clear; the stars so bright and near it seemed as though they were not many oars' lengths overhead. The Southern Cross was particularly brilliant. No clouds in the sky except a few rock-and-tower-shaped ones low down on the western horizon, behind which the tropical lightning played intermittently.
But never a sound.
"Hark again!" cried Harris.
Yes; every one heard it now—far down to leeward.
"It is but the cry of a bird," said the officer.
"It's only a Mother Carey's chicken," said the stroke.
"Round with her, lads," cried Sub-Lieutenant Wilson. "Give way port. Off she dances. We'll soon see."
The beacon light was out, but a lantern was hung up, and away went the lifeboat. Though I say life-boat, reader, remember she was but an ordinary whaler.
After pulling for some time, they could hear the cries ahead distinctly enough.
They answered with a vigorous shout, and redoubled their efforts, for the cries were unmistakably those of a drowning man.
They ceased entirely after a time.
The good crew were in despair. They listened and listened in vain, and were just putting about, when Harris dropped his oar, to the astonishment of everybody, and sprang overboard like a flash.
In the side of a dark curling wave he had seen a white face. Next minute he was ploughing along back towards the boat with one hand, while with the other he supported the form of the drowned or drowning man.
It was the doctor himself. While hauling in his net as he sat in the dinghy that hung from the davits astern, he had somehow slued it and gone head foremost into the sea.
For a long time he gave no signs of life. But his wet clothing was speedily taken off, and he was laid on the men's coats. After fully half an hour of rubbing and rolling, he gave a sigh and opened his eyes. A little flask of brandy was held to his lips, a portion of which he managed to swallow. He speedily revived now, and by the time they got him on board he was able to tell his story. He did not swim to the life-buoy, he said, because it was watched by a demon shark that would undoubtedly have taken him down.
Next day he was able to resume his duties; but that boy Fred Harris was the hero of the ship for many a week after this strange adventure.
CHAPTER XI.
A TRAGEDY—AULD REIKIE PURSUES SCIENCE
UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
For nine months, if not longer, the Gurnet cruised around the Cape, and along the east coast of Africa, as high up as the tropics, and as low down as Algoa Bay. She took a run round once as far as Simon's Bay.
Jack Mackenzie felt himself now to be a boy no longer. He had grown taller, broader, and, I may add, browner.
Who could have foretold that the little ragged guttersnipe boy whom big Tom Morgan found on that snowy Christmas eve, and took pity upon, would have developed into so manly a young officer, walking the quarter-deck of one of Her Majesty's cruisers, and feeling fit almost to keep a watch all by himself.
We next find the Gurnet at anchor in Bombay roadstead or harbour. She looked small, indeed, beside some of the great East Indiamen lying here, and almost hidden in the forest of masts everywhere around her.
At this time the walls of Bombay were still standing, and a ditch ran round a great portion of it. The British town was therefore far more gloomy than it is now, and the native town perhaps a deal dirtier, if that were possible. Nevertheless, Jack used to enjoy a run on shore with his friend the doctor, for there was much to be seen and much to study from a natural history point of view. So they never came off without specimens of some kind.
"If I had a year to myself," said Dr. Reikie, "I would spend it in studying anthropology and zoology in the old and new towns of Bombay."
Well, as regards these, one might go further and fare worse.
But every creature and human being, except restless Europeans, seemed calm and contented here. The doctor and Jack, after a time, got into a habit of just wandering about in the glorious sunshine and looking at things, or they would hire a buggy and make the buggy-wallah drive slowly about. A palkee or palanquin was another method of progression the two sometimes adopted. They made the bearers walk abreast, so that they could converse from their respective windows, or ports, as Dr. Reikie called them.
A palanquin is really a kind of sedan chair, borne along on a long bamboo pole by half-naked natives; only, instead of sitting you lie at full length. My own experience of palkees leads me to say that in such a mode of travelling one enjoys the dolce far niente to perfection, and people and things flit past you as if they were part and parcel of a beautiful dream, or the transformation scene in a pantomime. The natives are picturesque in the extreme—turbanned Arabs; swarthy Parsees; fat Hindus; native servants of every description; lazy blue-dressed native policemen; British soldiers in scarlet coats; British blue-jackets; solemn-looking little cows with humps and gilded horns; rings of workmen squatting on the foot-path smoking opium; droll-looking birds called adjutants, that, assisted by the bluebottle flies, do all the scavenging; and, last but not least, rows of pretty maidens, dressed in rolls of silk of various colours; with here and there bevies of beautiful children. The whole forms a picture that never passes from the mind away.
The Gurnet next went to Ceylon.
While on her voyage thither some stock-taking was done, and, to Captain Gillespie's astonishment, the rum was short.
Who could the thief be? No one could get into the spirit-room without the assistant-paymaster's orders or Lieutenant Sturdy's. It was extremely puzzling. A watch was kept on the door, nevertheless; but nothing was found out. Still the rum disappeared—more, that is, than was taken out honestly. A small cask was taken up every day at twelve. The bung was started, and the spirit drawn off with a siphon. Then the cask was returned.
It was a case for a detective.
And that detective was forthcoming in the person of Auld Reikie, as his messmates frequently called the honest doctor.
"I have it, Sturdy, I have it," he cried one forenoon, rushing into the ward-room. "Man, there is nothing in a' the warld to beat the glorious licht o' science."
"Well, heave round," said Sturdy, lighting a cigar; "show your glorious 'licht,' as you call it."
"I'll do that, man. Listen, Sturdy; listen, my Lord Tomfoozle, for I'll mak the truth apparent to even your feckless noddle."
"Thank you, Reikie," drawled Fitzgerald.
"Every day, then, the siphon is carried away full. You've only to put your thumb on it and the thing's done. Watch the morn, Sturdy, and you'll put your thumb on the culprits."
And Auld Reikie was right.
But the trick was so simple and yet so clever that the culprits were allowed to escape with only a nominal punishment.
* * * * *
The bos'n was such a good fellow that no one could have believed he had an enemy on board. He was, however, a strict-service man, and nobody at sea can do his duty strictly without making at least one foe.
It was Christmas time then, and the Gurnet was still lying at Bombay. Extra liberty had been granted to the men, which they did not abuse more than usual; and as for the officers, many of them spent nights on shore at entertainments got up in their behalf by rich European merchants.
Jack himself was unusually happy on the Christmas eve, because only the day before he had received a whole bundle of letters from home—from his grandma, his mother, his sister, big Uncle Tom himself, and his little cousin Violet, or Tottie as he liked to call her. He had received a long, delightful letter also from Llewellyn. His regiment, or a part of it, was then at Fort George.
Probably the memory of a long-gone-by Christmas eve tended to make Jack all the brighter and happier on this particular night, but certainly he had never felt brighter or more joyful.
The moon was shining brightly on the water as Dr. Reikie and he came alongside and got quietly on board, for it was now
"The wee short oor ayont the twal."
They turned in almost immediately, but not before Jack had knelt beside his chest and prayed for all the dear ones so far away.
It must have been well on towards six bells in the same watch when the bos'n in his cabin was startled by hearing his curtain drawn back.
There was a feeble light outside, and he could just make out the figure of a tall man in the doorway.
"Who is it? What do you want?"
"It's me, sir; it's Jack Bisset, the man you reported to the commander. You were quite right, and though we haven't been friends since, I couldn't sleep to-night of all nights—for it is Christmas morning—till I came to shake hands and make it up."
"All right, Bisset. Let us be friends. I bear no ill-will."
He held out his right hand as he spoke.
This the sailor grasped tightly with his left, then aimed a murderous blow at the poor bos'n's skull, with an iron bar or huge file.
The bos'n fell back; and thinking he had done his murderous work, Bisset dropped the piece of iron and rushed up the ladder. He flew past the sentry, and reaching the forecastle, leaped at once into the sea.
Once again the shout of "Man overboard!" rang fore and aft, and every one was aroused.
But the would-be murderer was seen but for a moment in the moonlight. He threw up his arms as if making one last appeal to Heaven, then sank like a stone.
The bos'n was not killed. The man's blow had missed the skull, but cut the ear almost off.
So ended that tragedy.
* * * * *
At Bombay one of Dr. Reikie's friends had made him a present of a photographic apparatus. This was a somewhat recent invention in those days, and Auld Reikie was delighted beyond measure.
There would be no end to the scenes he might now depict. I believe the possession of that lens and camera kept him awake for several nights before he reached Ceylon.
There he refused all offers of sport. Elephant-hunting, anyhow, was brutally cruel, he said, and he would find plenty of enjoyment with his camera.
The worthy surgeon, on the ship's arrival at Trincomalee, formed a resolve to astonish his messmates. He would give them a pleasant surprise. He had already taken portraits on glass of the captain himself, of Sturdy, a group of men, the ship's cat, and the mongoose. He should now do something extra and special. Well, pleasant surprises are always welcome, more particularly to officers on foreign stations. So Dr. Reikie betook himself to the woods or bush. There would be plenty of scope here for an effective picture—a lovely bit of scenery, a treescape, with the sea and ships beyond, perhaps. The pictures would aid the advance of science, and prove even to Gribble, the assistant-paymaster, that mankind with the sword of knowledge was moving onwards, ever onwards, conquering and to conquer the world, ay, and the universe itself. Mind, he had told his messmates a thousand times over, was not matter in motion, as some shallow-minded philosophers would try to make out. The soul was as high above the merely material as Sirius was beyond the earth. The mind made use of matter only as a carpenter made use of a tool.
He went on shore, carrying his camera himself. He would not permit even Jack Mackenzie to accompany him to-day. For to-day his pictures would probably be little more than mere experiments. Even science must advance by gradual steps and slow. When he became a little more expert in the use of the camera, he—well, there is no saying what he might not do.
He found at last the spot that suited him—a charming bit of scenery: trees, rhododendrons just bursting into bloom, early though it was, great masses of dark foliage, the bend of a stream, a rustic bridge, and a distant mountain peak. He felt triumphant already. How tenderly he handled his apparatus, how gingerly he set it up, and how carefully he placed his head and shoulders under the black cloth! Yes, there was the picture, upside down of course, but in colouring complete—the most lovely miniature that ever his eyes had beheld. And yonder—oh!
The "oh" was an expression of pain. Something had struck him from behind. He tore off the black cloth and looked round, rubbing himself as he did so. There was a huge nut lying near him; but who could have thrown it? There was no one in sight, and no nut-tree from which it could have fallen. It was strange, but he refused to be discouraged, So he once more enveloped his head in the dark cloth, when whiz! bump! another and another. It was serious; he must be already black and blue.
What could it mean? The place was very lonesome. Not a sound was to be heard except the ripple of the stream and the piping of a bird in a bush near by. He was just a trifle superstitious, and he began to think the wood must be haunted. He dismissed the idea at once, however, as unworthy to be harboured by any scientific thinker.
To prove to himself that he was not afraid, he once more hid himself, and began to make sure of his focus. He had got it as nearly perfect as possible, when suddenly the black cloth was seized from behind and rolled about his head. He felt a weight on his back, a cold and tiny hand on the nape of his neck, and in the struggle to free himself the tripod got mixed up with his legs, and down he rolled, camera and all.