If the reader—who I sincerely hope is going to be a sailor, for there is no life like that on the ocean wave—will take a glance at a map of the world and ferret out Venezuela, he will note that by sailing south-west by west in almost a bee-line for about 4700 miles, he would strike this land of beauty, and land of flowers and forests.
After leaving Azores, if his ship called there, he would find himself in a long and lonesome sea indeed, and after some weeks the Caribbean Islands would heave in sight, and our young sailor would know then he was far, far away from home.
Our own land—God bless it, and wouldn't you and I fight for it just?—is but like the cloud of fog that hangs over a city, compared to the loveliness of many of these fairy isles. The blue sky is fringed with the tall palm-trees that shoot from the soil, the islands themselves as you approach them appear to hang on the horizon, and so azure is the ocean, so cerulean the sky, you scarce can tell in fine weather where they meet and kiss.
The water around one's yacht or ship is sometimes so clear, so pellucid, that you see the bottom full ten fathoms beneath, where corals lie deep, where gorgeous and magnificently coloured shell-fish move slowly about, where marine gardens—more lovely far than any on earth,—planted and attended to by mermaids one would think, dazzle the eyes and delight the senses, and where on clear yellow patches of sand you may see flat fishes float, their sides so bedecked with patches of bright crimson, orange, and blue, that you cannot help thinking there must be a fish's fancy-dress ball on.
Then between you and the bottom float medusæ or jelly-fishes—bigger and more transparent than even those in Skye, for the limbs of these seem to be rainbow-tinted, or studded with gems of purest ray serene, diamonds, rubies, and amethysts. Yet all the creatures in that submarine garden wide and wild are not beautiful. Perhaps you are lying in a boat, gazing down through your water-telescope entranced, and half believing you will presently see a mermaid come out of a little cave combing her bonnie yellow hair, when, instead of the tiny mermaid, some patches of black-brown weeds are visibly stirred, and an awful head with fore-fins or fore-feet and claws, you cannot tell which, is protruded. Oh that deformed, scaly, warty head and these awful eyes, bearing some faint resemblance to a nightmarish caricature of man or fiend! If you are a nervous lad you will think and dream about this slimy apparition for weeks.
Well, all around Bermuda the rocks and sea-gardens are almost quite as lovely. Had the Osprey been going straight to Venezuela it would have been out of her course to stop here, but she had despatches to leave.
Two of the Ossian's shipwrecked crew were left there, but the mate begged to be allowed to remain and the captain had no objections. Goodwin was a naval reserve man, and even a lieutenant in that service.
This mate of a merchantman was in some ways a singular being, for although I think that the English he spoke was often rude, he could talk the language purely when he chose. Moreover, he was a student of gunnery, and could have worked a gun with any officer afloat. He was made an honorary member of the warrant officers' mess, and having no particular duties to perform, he spent most of his time making models of the newest guns and machinery of great iron-clads. Having got together, with the aid of the gunner and carpenter, some nice models, he announced in the gun-room that he was willing to give lessons to the midshipmen therein which would be of use to them when war's pennant floated red and bloody over the main. And many availed themselves of the kind offer, chief among them being Creggan himself and the Ugly Duckling—more about the latter presently. But even some of the ward-room officers, and now and then the captain himself, would look on as this ultra-enthusiast in naval warfare described the play of a battle of giant iron-clads, and the use of the terrible guns.
"Ah, boys," he would say, "there was much romance attached to the glorious days of Nelson, when hostile fleets lay in rows, mebbe two deep, one to support t'other like. When it was ship to ship, and hammer and tongs till one blazed, blew up, and sank, or when the skipper of a Britisher shouted through his trumpet to the master at the wheel: 'Lay us aboard that frog-eating Frenchman!' When the master steered so close to the foe that guns met muzzle to muzzle, and high o'er the din o' battle rang out the order: 'Away, boarders! Give the beggars Rule Britannia, lads!' The days when our brave blue-jackets used to swarm over the sides of the enemy's ship, or creep in through the ports, pistol in hand, cutlass in mouth perhaps, and lay the Frenchees dead at their guns.
"Yes, boys, these were the dashin' days of old, and somehow I sighs w'en I think they're gone.
"But the future sea-fights, young gents, are goin' to be fought with cool heads on sturdy shoulders. Excitement or rashness will mean annihilation; manoeuvring will be prominent, ay, and pre-eminent."
Here Goodwin would pause perhaps, look funnily down at his models and smile.
"You may think it a droll remark o' me to make, lads, but I do believe that, given two hostile battleships, encountering each other, then that skipper who is a good whist player, and has a long head that can see a bit into futurity as it were, or guesses before-hand what t'other chap will do when he, the whist man, plays his next card, will win the game o' war.
"This will kind o' knock some o' the romance out o' naval warfare. But not so much as we may think. Moral courage, mind you, boys, is of a far higher sort of quality than physical. And altho' the poet asks—
"'And how can man die better,
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods?'
one might answer him thus: He may die more truly courageously, more bravely too, if calm, if he meets his fate on a sinking iron-clad man-o'-war."
* * * * * * * * * * *
After their visit to Bermuda, and a delightful ramble through the beautiful island, Creggan was glad enough to find himself steering south and away via Puerto Rico, and bearing up for Venezuela. For the sea had already cast a glad glamour over the young man's life and soul.
Whenever he had time he wrote long delightful letters to his mother, to Daddy the hermit, to Archie, and to the Nugents, as well as to the manse. Perhaps his best and dearest of letters were those received by Matty. For Creggan couldn't help loving the child, and often he used to dream of her when far away at sea. Somehow she always appeared to him sitting in the stern of the skiff, her bonnie yellow hair toyed with by the breeze, and her eyes glistening with joy and happiness.
It was not pleasant, however, to be awakened from such a delightful dream at the dark hour of midnight to go on deck to keep watch on an angry sea.
It is needless to say that Creggan's letters were received at home with joy, read over and over again, and even laid aside for future perusal.
Goodwin was frequently invited to spend an evening in the gun-room mess, and these were red-letter nights for the middies, for this warlike mate of a merchantman could even make the sallow-faced young clerk smile. As for the Ugly Duckling, he smiled aloud till the beams rung and the plates on the table wanted to skip like lambs.
This midshipman's mess was always a merry one. Guns may change their form in the service, and ships as well, but our bold blue-jackets, and our daft, fun-loving and gallant middies, will never change as long as Britain's flag is unfurled,
"To brave the battle and the breeze".
Creggan, though somewhat older than midshipman Robertson, the plain-faced lad whose sense of humour nevertheless carried his mess-mates by storm, liked the droll boy very much, and they were together on shore whenever there was a chance. Along with them usually went the gentle Sidney Wickens.
Poor Sidney—he is dead and gone now—enjoyed a joke but never played one, but his smile was very pleasant, and at times even sad. He had, however, a quiet, quaint way of putting things that often made his mess-mates laugh. His fad during this cruise, as well as in the flag-ship at Sheerness, was the collection of beautiful gold rings. He often asked one or two of the warrant officers to look at these of an evening. And if the bo's'n, for instance, particularly fancied and admired one, Sidney would quietly hand it over his shoulder, saying, "Here, will you accept it, and wear it for my sake?"
Gun-room officers are fond of chaff, and unsparing in the use of it, no matter how it gives offence or how it is taken. But they always like best when the banter is returned. There is the banterer and the banteree, and woe betide the latter if he gets angry!
I believe Sidney—he was always called by his Christian name in a kindly, brotherly way, and somehow no one ever chaffed him—Sidney, I was going to say, was often sorry for the Ugly Duckling. But nothing could possibly upset the Ugly Duckling himself. Not even Bobbie's chaff. So good-natured was this droll duckling, that his extreme and quaint ugliness was really never observable. And his manner was as soft and gentle as that of a young girl, except when his soul was just bursting with fun and merriment, then he used to take to the rigging with Admiral Jacko to expand his extra steam, and allay his feelings.
A question whether Admiral Jacko or Duckie was the uglier, at times arose in the mess, even in the lad's presence. One day midshipmite Bobbie had the cheek to ask the Duckling to sit side by side with the Admiral during dinner, so that the right conclusion might be arrived at, and our friend did so readily and good-naturedly.
The Ugly Duckling is, you will readily believe when I tell you, a sketch from the life, and now that my memory brings him once more up before my mind's eye, I believe I am right in asserting that poor Mr. Duckling's face was more droll than ugly. Somewhat difficult to describe too. Forehead receded somewhat; nose nowhere, or hardly anywhere; eyes half-shut and full of fun; plenty of cheek, moral and physical; a longish, protruding upper lip; and an immense square jaw. His ears stuck out too, like lug-sails.
"Mind, Mr. Ugly Duckling," Bobbie told him one day at mess, "you must never get lost on the coast of Benin."
"Why, Scottie?"
"Why? How can you ask? Forgotten all your history? The king of Benin, you know, always nails his captives by the ears to a tree, and your ears you know, mon ami, are wonderfully suggestive!"
That day when the Duckling sat beside Admiral Jacko there was a good deal of amusement. The Admiral, I may tell you, was a very large and by no means handsome species of ape, and though he could not use a knife and fork, he ate most contentedly from the plate that M'Carthy the steward always placed before him, and he even used a table-napkin. On this particular day he more than once put his head cheek-by-jowl with the Duckling's, and the merriment increased.
The Admiral was exceedingly fond of the Ugly Duckling.
"Oh, look, mess-mates, look, now that their heads are together!" This from Bobbie. "Why, I declare that Jacko takes the cake!"
"For ugliness?"
"No; for beauty, boys!"
But Admiral Jacko had another very dear friend, namely, the ship's cat, a beautiful, half-bred brindled Persian.
After every meal Jacko used to collect tit-bits and stuff them into his jowl till his cheek stuck out, then he went at once in search of pussy and fed him. The action was almost human. Indeed it might have been called more so, for the "lower animals", as we are all too fond of calling them, often exhibit more kindness to each other than mankind does to any of them.
There was something quite out of the common about Jacko in many ways. He really had less mischief in his mental composition than monkeys generally. Hurricane Bob and Oscar used to be washed regularly once a week. The gun-room steward, superintended by Creggan himself, used to perform this operation. After the rubbing and rinsing with warm water and soap, they were always deluged with pailfuls of clear, soft water, and after they were dried down with half a dozen towels—the dogs' own property—they were combed and brushed.
Then ensued a wild scamper round and round the Osprey's decks, that made everyone laugh who saw it.
Admiral Jacko used to squat on top of the capstan while the doggies were being washed, and from the long, doleful face he wore, it was evident he pitied them. But as soon as the scamper up and down the decks after belaying-pins that the men threw to them was over, both dogs went and lay down on the quarter-deck in the sunshine. And now Jacko considered that his duties had commenced. He would leap solemnly down from the top of the capstan, Creggan would hand him the comb, then off he went to his friends the dogs. No peasant woman in Normandy could have combed her boy's hair more carefully than did Jacko go over Hurricane Bob's coat first, and then honest Oscar's, with finger-nails and brush. Well, if he did catch an errant flea it was executed on the spot; but the earnestness with which Jacko did the work, and the exceeding gravity of his face while at it, would have drawn laughter from a California mule.
* * * * * * * * * * *
I myself have never yet seen a more active middy on board a British man-o'-war than the Ugly Duckling was. No part of the ship's rigging was inaccessible to him. He would climb to the main-truck and wave his cap to those below.
One day, however, he attempted a feat that, although he had often performed it in harbour, was undoubtedly dangerous at sea, even on the calmest day. The sea all around that forenoon was as still and quiet as the grave, and the Osprey was on an even keel. They were now nearing the north coast of South America, and though steam was up, and the ship churning up a long wake of froth that trailed for miles in the rear, it made no other motion save vibration. Well, Jacko and the Ugly Duckling had been having fine fun that forenoon, much to the delight of those below. Up aloft they went, to top after top, and down again to deck by a back-stay. Hand over hand up that back-stay again, and so on, seeming to have no tire in them. But at last, to the horror, it must be said, of the officers on the quarter-deck, the Ugly Duckling slowly drew himself up to the top of the gilded truck, and then slowly and cautiously stood up.
There was no laughing now among those below, all were mute with fears for the poor boy's fate. This daring middy balanced himself first on one foot and then on the other, and then—will it be believed?—he took from his jacket pocket a tiny ebony fife, at playing which he was a great adept, and commenced to pipe The Girl I left behind me.
He never finished the tune, however.
Something had suddenly unnerved him, and well he knew that to fall deckwards would be death. He was seen, therefore, to suddenly crouch, and putting his hands in swimming fashion above his head, to spring into the air. He came down like a flash, and sunk far into the water, many yards on the port side of the ship.
"Away, life-boat's crew!"
Never, perhaps, was that life-boat launched more speedily. A life-buoy, too, had been thrown overboard.
The Ugly Duckling was too good a swimmer, however, to need such assistance, only he kept close to it, as he did not wish it to be lost.
Now the great danger was the sharks, cruel tigers of the seas, that in these hot latitudes swarm.
But the boat picked the middy up just at the very moment that two monster sharks sprang at the life-buoy and hauled it down.
The Ugly Duckling had stuck to his fife all the time, and now much to the amusement of the life-boat's crew commenced once more to play The Girl I left behind me, and continued to play till the boat got alongside. Then up ran the still dripping Duckling, and on gaining the quarter-deck first saluted it and then saluted Captain Leeward.
"Come to report myself, sir," he said, "for leaving the ship without leave."
"And I ought to punish you, sir," said the captain, trying in vain to suppress a smile; "but I will forgive you if you promise not to stand on the truck again."
"I promise, sir, readily; for, sir, it wouldn't be half good enough to be swallowed by a shark, fife and all."
And down below dived this queer middy to change his dripping garments.