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.