CHAPTER XVI.
LIFE ON THE GOOD SHIP OSPREY.
It was a stormy day in the end of October when the good frigate Osprey got up steam and put out to sea.
Signals had been exchanged for an hour before this between the admiral's office and the ship. The admiral thought it most imprudent to sail on such a day.
Captain Leeward was persistent, however, and at last, like any other wilful man, he had his way.
The wind was from the east-south-east, cold and bitter and high. The air, too, was filled with sleet or snow.
When they passed the breakwater it caught her bows smartly, and slued her for a few moments out of her course. But the helmsman quickly put her up, and the strong paddles fought the water fiercely, and successfully too.
Balked in its design of driving the Osprey against the breakwater, the wind did all sorts of ill-natured things. It cut the smoke of the funnel clean off, and drove its dark wreaths to leeward; it rattled the braces, it shook the rigging; it slammed the companion doorways, swayed the hanging boats about, and dashed the spray inboard with sometimes a green sea, till everybody who had to be on deck and hadn't an oilskin on was drenched to the skin. A nasty, disagreeable old wind!
The Osprey didn't seem to mind it a bit. She had a broad beam of her own, a strong bowsprit and jibboom, and she lifted her bows slowly, and with a sturdy disdain that showed she cared for neither wind nor sea.
Nor did the men either—every one of whom had been picked and chosen by Captain Leeward himself, every one of whom was as hardy as the vikings of old.
Before the ship was two miles from the Sound, and while standing amidships talking to Grant,—the Osprey's head being now turned to west-and-south, so that spray no longer flew inboard,—Creggan said:
"Listen, doctor; what a grand singer!"
For up from the forehatch rose high above the roar of the wind a manly voice, singing one of Dibdin's most favourite songs:—
"Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear
The mainmast by the board,
My heart with thoughts of thee, my dear,
And love well stor'd,
Shall brave all danger, scorn all fear;
The roaring winds, the raging sea;
In hopes on shore
To be once more
Safe moor'd with thee."
"Yes, he sings well. And do you know, that with the kindliest heart that ever was in sailor's breast, Captain Leeward has his peculiarities."
"Yes?"
"Yes. I've known him before, and sailed with him, always in a wooden ship. He hates an iron-clad, and he must see canvas bellying out aloft if there be a bit of wind at all. He is really an independent man, and wouldn't take a ship at all unless he had all his own way. So every man-jack is a jolly tar of the good old school, and his officers too, are, I have always found, genuine fellows. He must have somebody to dine with him every night, and it is just as often a middie as a ward-room officer. As for myself, I have always a knife and fork laid for me, and if I don't dine with Leeward I look in after dessert, and many a yarn he spins me."
"So different from Flint."
"Oh, yes; but we must never say a word against the absent."
"No."
"Hark!" cried Grant; "didn't I tell you?"
The ship's head was kept away a point or two.
Next minute the bo's'n's shrill pipe was heard. "Eep—eep—peep—peep—ee—ee—ee! All hands make sail!"
Up rattle the watches below, and aloft they went right cheerily.
Creggan had never seen a ship's sails cast loose so speedily, nor so quickly braced up.
"They are indeed good sailors, Dr. Grant."
"Yes, I told you. But look here, old fellow, just call me 'Grant', and 'douse' the 'Dr.'."
"All right, Grant," said Creggan, laughing.
The fires were now let down and the paddles thrown out of gear, and presently that old Osprey was doing ten knots an hour on a beam wind.
I suppose that Captain Leeward had some inkling of where he was going to, else he would not have held this course.
But the sealed orders were opened next morning, and he found that the Osprey was on particular service, her first destination being Venezuela.
He told his officers this, and that they might then look in at Rio and open further orders there—probably.
If, reader mine, you knew the Service as well as I do, you would remark that it was very good of the gallant Captain Leeward to be thus explicit with his officers. Many men that I know, or have known, would have shrouded themselves in their cold dignity, and to any inquiry made by an officer as to their destination, would simply have replied—
"Venezuela."
If asked, "And where next, sir?" such men would reply, "I really can't tell you at present".
Well, lads who mean to join the glorious British Navy, and serve either as young officers or boys under—
"'The flag that braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze',
must not expect their lives to be all sunshine, any more than they need expect the sea around to be always blue, rippled by balmy winds, and domed over with an azure sky, flecked with fleecy cloudlets, and at night studded with silver-shining stars.
In some ships they will find that fighting the waves is not fun by any means, because many of the best of our navy ships are sent to sea defective. Machinery—and it is marvellously intricate nowadays—may break down at an untimely moment, even in the midst of a terrible storm, and having no serviceable sail, even the largest iron-clad will then be at the mercy of the waves. Oh, how she rolls and yaws and plunges and careens at such a time!
The best sailors on board cannot keep their feet, their heads swim with the awful motion. Things break loose and play pitch-and-toss about the deck, the ward-room furniture may be all one chaotic heap, and all the while the seas are making a plaything of her, dashing over her, high as the conning tower, and rushing in cataracts fore to aft, or even vice versa. At such a time it seems as if the ocean wished to show those poor wave-beleaguered sailors how small the strongest works of man are, compared to those of God.
But independently of storms without or the breaking down of machinery, the ship may not be a happy one as far as officers and men are concerned. The crew, all told, may be a badly assorted one, and I have been in ships, only for a short spell, thank goodness, that were known on the station as "floating hells".
Much depends upon one's captain. If he is a kind-hearted, genuine fellow he can do everything to keep things smooth fore and aft. The ward-room officers take their cue from him, the gun-room follows the example which the ward-room sets them on deck or below, the midshipmen influence the warrant officers, and these in their turn the able and ordinary seamen and the first and second class boys themselves.
But I must heave ahead with my story, instead of hauling my fore-yard aback or lying-to, in order to ruminate and preach. Oh, I know my own faults, my lads; I have so much to say about sea and a life on the ocean wave, that, with a pen in my hand, I want to say it or write it all at once.
Well, Creggan hadn't been a day at sea before he found out that the Osprey was going to be a real happy ship.
They soon lost sight of land in the haze of the storm, though all day long the beautiful gulls kept sailing around the ship, tack and half-tack in the air. For these sea-gulls look upon ships as their own, because from them they receive their main supply of food; so they always follow them afar, trying, as it were, by their plaintive calls, to get them to return.
It was dark enough at eight o'clock to-night, and the gulls had all returned shorewards. The gale still raged, but the Osprey was under easy sail, and the motion was by no means disagreeable to a sailor.
Creggan had been keeping the second dog-watch, but now went below. There was first the fighting deck to pass through, where the great port-holes were, and the black, shining guns, each with its snow-white lanyard prettily coiled and lying on the breach. A fine open breezy deck, the shot and shell neatly arranged in racks around the hatchways, and the sick-bay far away forward yonder. Abaft here was the captain's quarters or saloon, with a red-coated, armed sentry walking near it, slowly fore and aft.
Then Creggan dived below. Aft again on this deck and right under the captain's quarters, only coming more forward, was the well-lighted ward-room, from which issued the sound of merry voices and laughing. Turning forward and on the port side there was first a cabin or two, and then the gun-room.
Below this was the orlop deck, where many hammocks were hung, and which was lined with two rows of dingy, dark, though white-washed cabins, lighted by day only by the round scuttle-hole, and at night by a candle hung in jimbles. These cabins were told off to warrant officers, bo's'n, carpenter, &c., &c., and to senior officers of the gun-room. But really most of these preferred a hammock just outside, for the sake of fresher air.
To-night, Creggan, to whom one of these cabins, and a good one too, was allotted, had occasion to go below. He heard a sad moaning proceeding from a hammock, and a white, white melancholy face hanging half over the side.
"I say!"
"Yes, my lad."
"Are you the surgeon? I'm very dickey. I'm a a clerk, and I wish I had never, never left the land."
"Well, I'm sub, and the second senior member of your mess. Don't give way. I'll go and get the surgeon."
And so he did.
Kind-hearted Grant first gave him a doze of something, which I know well but must not mention, then a tumblerful of good champagne, and in five minutes' time poor little Mr. Todd was wrapt in dreamless slumber.
There were two more of Neptune's young children who wanted seeing to. Having done so, Grant went aloft again.
Then Creggan went to his quarters.
"Come along, sir," cried one of three bold middies who sat around the gun-room table when Creggan drew back the curtain; "come along, and have a hand at whist."
"Thank you, messmates, but I must feed first."
"Steward!"
"Ay ay, sorr," said an unmistakably Irish voice. "That's me, myself, sorr;" and a tallish, smart fellow, with black buttons on his short jacket, and a blue ground to his beardless face, entered the mess.
"Bring in the beef, and all kinds of fixings."
"Any dhrink, sorr?"
"No drink, thanks. What's your name?"
"M'Carthy, sorr, sure enough."
"Well, Mac, heave round."
"Be back afore ye could say knife, sorr."
Creggan made a capital supper. Then he had just one game to please the youngsters.
"I'm dying with sleep, boys," he said, "so I'll turn in. Ta-ta, see you all in the morning."
He departed, leaving them singing, and, turning in, was soon sound and fast. And thus he slept till called to keep the morning watch.
It was a little cold, but Creggan had bent on his thickest pilot jacket, and the second lieutenant soon came stumping up, and he also had on his foul-weather gear.
But the wind had gone down considerably, and with it the sea. She had lost way, too. So Mellor sent men aloft to loosen and shake out sails. The effect was magical, and with the wind well abaft the beam the Osprey pulled herself together, threw off dull sloth and went through the water like a thing of life. All along the top-gallant bulwarks forward, the spray was sprinkled as the good ship spurned the billows, but nothing came aft.
Mr. Mellor, the lieutenant, a round-faced, fair-haired young Cornishman, strode up and down the deck talking, and smoking a short clay. Creggan and he were swapping yarns—humorous yarns mostly—and exchanging experiences, and were soon as well acquainted as if they had known each other for years.
Soon after five bells, a light was seen gradually spreading over the eastern horizon, getting higher and higher momentarily. It looked at first like the reflection of a far-off city on a dark night.
But the light grew whiter and brighter.
It was gray dawn now. Then high up in the west a streak of a cloud began to glow with orange and crimson beauty. Rolling clouds on the horizon astern were lit up with a fringe of gold and carmine. Then all the east became a glory of colour that was almost dazzling, but very beautiful. The god of day was rising, and this dazzlingly-painted orient formed the curtains of his couch.
Soon now, red and fiery, his beams spread in a path of blood across the sea, and lo! it was day.
Both Creggan and Mellor spent that watch very pleasantly, and before going below the latter held out his hand, and Creggan gladly grasped it.
"Good-bye," said Mellor. "We're going to be friends, you know.”