The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Finch's Monkey, by John C. Hutcheson

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Title: Tom Finch's Monkey
       and How he Dined with the Admiral

Author: John C. Hutcheson

Illustrator: Anonymous

Release Date: April 16, 2007 [EBook #21097]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM FINCH'S MONKEY ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Tom Finch's Monkey, and how he dined with the Admiral
and other yarns.

by John C. Hutcheson
________________________________________________________________
This is quite a short book, containing five short late Victorian
stories.

The first of these concerns a monkey on board ship, which was dressed up
as an officer, and as such introduced to a visiting Admiral, who invites
all the officers to dinner, stressing that he hoped to entertain the one
who didn't speak much.

The second story is an informative one about icebergs.

The third concerns a yachting cruise in the Aegean Sea, among the Greek
Islands, in which they save the live of a Greek. There is an encounter
with bandits, from which they are surprisingly released without further
harm.  Why would that be, I wonder.

The fourth concerns a "sighting of a sea-serpent of extraordinary
dimensions", by HMS Daedalus in 1848.

And the fifth is a story about the curious events at a cricket match.
________________________________________________________________
TOM FINCH'S MONKEY, AND HOW HE DINED WITH THE ADMIRAL
AND OTHER YARNS.

BY JOHN C. HUTCHESON



CHAPTER ONE.

AND HOW HE DINED WITH THE ADMIRAL.

We were cruising off Callao on the Pacific station when it all happened,
and I daresay there are a good many others who will recollect all about
it as well as myself.  But to explain the matter properly I must go back
a little in my dates; for, instead of Callao at the commencement of my
yarn, you must read Calabar.

You see, I was in the _Porpoise_ at the time, a small old-fashioned,
paddle-wheel steamer that had been ordered across from the West Coast of
Africa by "my lords" of the Admiralty to reinforce our squadron in South
American waters on account of a war breaking out between Chili and Peru.
Being a "sub" on board of her, and consequently subject to the
authorities that be, when the _Porpoise_ was obliged to abandon the
fragrant mangrove swamps at the mouth of the Congo river, where we had
been enjoying ourselves for over a twelvemonth amidst the delights of a
deadly miasma that brought on perpetual low fever, and as constant a
consumption of quinine and bottled beer to counteract its effects, I was
of course forced to accompany her across the Atlantic and round the Horn
to her allotted destination.

Thence "this plain unvarnished tale," which is as clear as mud in a
ditch, although you needn't believe it if you don't like--there is no
compulsion required to make hungry people eat roast mutton!

Tom Finch, the lieutenant in command of the _Porpoise_, who had got his
promotion through the death vacancy of his senior at Cape Coast Castle--
he was just ahead of me on the roster, luckily for him--was one of the
jolliest fellows I ever sailed with or under, since I entered the
service; and I'm sure I've known a few "swabs" in my time!

Unlike some junior officers I could name, when suddenly intrusted with
the reins of power, there was nothing of the martinet about Tom, even on
the first day he assumed his new rank, when a little extra pomposity
might have been excusable.  But no, he gave himself no airs or graces
whatever.

He was the same Tom Finch who had chaffed and larked and talked
confidence with me in the gunroom, now that he trod the quarter-deck "in
all his war paint," as I told him somewhat impudently, the "skipper" of
HMS _Porpoise_, "paddle sloop, 6 guns," as she was described in the
_Navy List_--the same unaffected, jovial, good-natured sailor whom
everybody liked, men and messmates alike.  His only weakness was a love
for practical joking, which he would carry out sometimes, perhaps, to a
rather ticklish extent--for his own good, that is, as he never knowingly
did anyone else an injury by it.

"What will you do with your monkey?"  I said, when the mail brought in
our orders from the commodore on the West Coast for us to sail for Monte
Video at once, and there await our further instructions--which would be
sent on from England; "what will you do with him when we go?"

"Take him with me of course," answered Tom; "why shouldn't I?"

"Well, I don't see any reason against it certainly," I replied; "now
that you are captain of the ship, and can do as you please without
asking anybody's leave."

"Poor Griffin," said Tom, "he _did_ object to Jocko's society; that was
the reason I always used to keep the dear fellow ashore; however, as you
say, Gerald, I am my own master and can do as I like now.  You don't
think the crew dislike my monkey, do you?" he added eagerly.

He was such a kind-hearted obliging chap, that if he thought that even
the loblolly boy objected to the presence of Jocko on board, he would
have banished him from the ship for ever, especially from the very fact
of his being the commander and having no one to dispute his authority.

"Oh dear, no, certainly not," I replied at once, with "effusion," as the
French say in their idiom.  "The men like him better than you do, if
that is possible; and I don't know what they would do without him, I
only thought the change of climate might be deleterious to his health,
that's all!"

"Deleterious indeed, Gerald! wherever did you pick up such a fine word?
I suppose you have been interviewing old Jalap about your liver, eh, you
hypochondriacal young donkey!  Why, Monte Video is a regular paradise
for the monkey tribe, and Jocko will be in his element there!"

"But I don't suppose we'll stop there, Tom; didn't you say that you
thought it probable that we would have to go round Cape Horn and join
the squadron at Callao?"

I may here explain that while on the quarter-deck, I invariably
addressed Tom Finch as "Sir," for was he not my commanding officer?
But, while below, or when off duty, he insisted on my retaining my old
custom of calling him by his Christian name, the same as when we were
together in the gunroom, and he only a "sub."

"And if we _do_ go round the Horn, what then, Mr Sub-lieutenant
Follett?" said he.

"Won't Jocko find it cold: you know it's winter time there now?"

"And can't I have him clothed like a Christian, stupid, and keep him by
the fire, or in the cook's cabin, where he will be so warm, that he'll
fancy himself in his native clime?"

"Oh, yes," said I, "I quite forgot that his dearest friend next to you
was Pompey!" alluding to the ship's cook, a sable African, who came very
probably from the same locality as the monkey; the two being very much
alike, not only in the colour of their complexions, but in their
features and facial development.

"Yes," said Tom reflectively, "Pompey will take care he doesn't freeze.
He could not be fonder of him than his own brother would be; he might,
indeed, _be_ his relative, if Darwin's theory should prove to be true!
However, I must see about getting Jocko rigged out properly in a decent
sailor's suit so that he may get accustomed to the clothing before we
come to the cold latitudes.  I daresay my marine, who is a smart fellow,
can manage to cut down a guernsey frock and a pair of canvas or serge
trousers to fit the brute: I will give an order on the paymaster for
them at once and Smith can set to work on them without delay;" and he
bustled out of his cabin to carry his intentions into effect.

Not being intimately acquainted with even the rudimentary elements of
natural history, I cannot say to what order or genus of the monkey
family Jocko belonged; but, roughly speaking, I think he was a specimen
of chimpanzee or small gorilla, as he had no tail, and when he walked
erect, which was his favourite position, he looked uncommonly like the
"superior animal."

Tom Finch had shot the monkey's mother in the bush when on a hunting
excursion up the interior of the country, which he indulged in on first
coming to the coast; and having captured and nursed the youngster with
the utmost solicitude, Jocko repaid his master's attention by learning
so many tricks and imitating the deportment, of those with whom he was
brought in contact so carefully, that he was now, at the time of which I
speak, such a thoroughly educated and well-bred monkey as to be "um
purfit genelman," as Pompey, the cook, said--one "fit to shine in any
circle," especially on ship-board, where he was an endless source of
amusement to us all, from the lieutenant-commander down to the loblolly
boy aforesaid.

Pursuant to Tom Finch's directions and the exertions of his marine
servant Smith, before we left the mouth of the Congo our friend Jocko
was decorously habited in a smart seafaring costume; and, long ere we
had crossed the Atlantic and arrived at Monte Video, the intelligent
animal had got so habituated to his new rig that the difficulty would
have been to persuade him to go about once more in his former unclothed
state--and yet some sceptics say that monkeys aren't human!  You should
only have seen him walking up and down the quarter-deck, or on the
bridge by Tom's side, he looked for all the world like a juvenile
"reefer!"

It was in the cabin, however, that Jocko's acquirements came out in the
strongest relief.  Tom had taught him to sit at table and use a spoon or
fork in helping himself from his plate as naturally as possible; and, as
for drinking, you should only have seen him pour out a tumbler of
bottled stout, for which he had an inordinate relish, and tossing it
down his throat, give a sigh of the deepest satisfaction when he had
finished it, when, replacing his glass on the table, he would lean back
in his chair as if overcome by the exertion.

Before he had been clothed in sailor fashion, Jocko used to be very fond
of skylarking with the men forward, stealing their mess utensils and
scampering up and down the rigging to evade pursuit when his
mischievousness had been found out; but, after that period, he seemed to
become possessed of a wonderful amount of dignity which made him give up
his wild frolicsomeness, and leave off his previous habits, for he never
went to the forecastle again, but restricted himself to the officers'
quarters aft.  This he did, too, in spite of the coaxings of the crew,
who were very fond of him, and the fact of Tom often kicking him out of
his cabin, where he would take possession of his sofa whenever he had
the chance, wrapping himself in Tom's boat-cloak and reclining
gracefully on the cushions.  One of Jocko's chief amusements also was in
watching the machinery when in motion; and he would spend hours in
looking down at it through the engine-room hatch.

Once, when the skylight was up, he had a narrow squeak for his life;
for, carried away by his excitement, in trying to put his hands--paws I
should say--on the revolving shaft, he tumbled through; and, but for the
chief engineer seeing him in time and stopping the engines, which were
just then going slow, poor Jocko would have come to grief.

This accident, however, never broke him of the habit of inspecting the
machinery.  It had a sort of weird attraction for him which he could not
resist.  Possibly, he might have been a sort of incubating Watt or
Brunel, who knows?  But, alas, he never became sufficiently developed or
"evolved" from his quadrumanous condition to answer the question in
person, as the engines which were his hobby in the end compassed his
untimely death!

Those paddle-wheel steamers that were built for the navy some forty
years ago, although designed for capturing Cuban slavers, were certainly
not remarkable for their speed, and the _Porpoise_ was no exception to
her class; so, what with her naturally slow rate of progression through
the water, and the strict Admiralty circular limiting the consumption of
coal even on special service like ours, we did not make a very rapid
passage across the south Atlantic to Monte Video.  This place is
charmingly situated on the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, and very
appropriately named; for it can be seen far away off, for miles at sea,
and itself commands magnificent views of its own beautiful harbour and
the surrounding inland scenery.

Here despatches awaited us, as Tom Finch had previously been informed at
Cape Coast Castle would be the case, ordering the _Porpoise_ to proceed
immediately to the Pacific and join the admiral on that station at
Callao; and, accordingly, after one of the briefest of stays at a port
which I have always longed since to have a more extended
acquaintanceship with, we up anchor and paddled away to our assigned
rendezvous--not by way of the "Horn," which we did not go round, as I
had imagined we would, for it was far too stormy; but, through the
Straits of Magellan, which are easy enough of passage to a steamer,
independent almost of winds and currents, although somewhat perilous to
sailing vessels, especially during the winter months.

Jocko seemed to feel the cold as soon as we began to run down towards
Terra del Fuego, and had some additional garments placed round him; but
true to what he evidently thought was his new and proper position, he
would not take up his quarters with his "old friend and brother,"
Pompey, in the cook's caboose, preferring to shiver in Tom's cabin till
he almost turned blue.

"Bress dat Massa Jocko!"  Pompey would say after a vain attempt to coax
him to share his hospitality.  "I can't make he out nohow!  Guess he
tinks himself buckra ossifer and bery fine genelman, now de captin take
um into cabin, sure; but, he no rale genelman to turn up nose at um ole
frens!  No, sah, I no spik to him no more!" and the negro cook would
retire with ill-suppressed anger, which was all the more amusing to us
from its having been occasioned by a monkey!

On our getting round into the Pacific, and sighting the coast towards
Valparaiso, where we had to stop and coal once more, the _Porpoise_ not
having much storage room in her old bunkers, Jocko got more on friendly
terms with the thermometer, making faces and jabbering away in his
lingo, which unfortunately no one but himself could understand, just as
if he were still in his native clime on the African continent.

Occasionally, too, as if his spirits carried him away on his restoration
to warmer latitudes, he would indulge in one of his old skylarking bouts
with the crew, and even made advances to Pompey in his caboose, which
that worthy, in spite of his indignation at the manner in which he had
been treated by Jocko when he assumed the dignity of the _toga virilis_,
was only too glad to welcome and reciprocate; but, after one of these
unusual unbendings, the monkey grew even more dignified and
inapproachable than before, except to Tom and myself, who could do
anything with him, and he then confined himself exclusively to the cabin
and quarter-deck.

At Valparaiso we got further despatches hurrying us up to the Peruvian
coast, where the admiral much wanted to use us as a despatch vessel; so,
taking in as much coal as our old tub, the _Porpoise_, could cram into
her, we started for Callao, steaming hard day and night all this time--
but it took us no less than ten days to reach our port at last.

The admiral's ship was in the offing as we entered the harbour; and,
without the slightest warning or time for preparation after we had made
our muster, the old gentleman signalled, much to Tom's discomposure,
that he was coming on board of us for inspection at once.

"A pretty kettle of fish!" exclaimed Tom; "just as if he couldn't give a
fellow time to paint up a bit and look tidy after sweltering all the
pitch off her for eighteen months on the coast, and scuttling across the
Atlantic as if the deuce were after us, and not a day allowed us to
overhaul and make the old ship look presentable--why, it's too bad!"

"You needn't grumble, sir," said I--we were both on the quarter-deck
now, and the _friend_ had, of course, to yield to the _office_--"I'm
sure the admiral won't be able to find much fault with the _Porpoise_,
even if he were predetermined to do so, as she's in apple-pie order!"

And so she was; while her crew, who almost worshipped Tom and would have
followed him to a man anywhere, were in the highest state of discipline
and health, the African fever having disappeared almost as soon as we
lost sight of the pestilential West Coast and got into blue water.

"Do you think so, Follett?" he said more calmly.

"Certainly," I answered, "I would back her against any other vessel on
the station for being in the highest state of efficiency."

"I'm glad you think so, Gerald," he said to me aside, so that the
middies who went to man the side ropes for the admiral at the gangway
could not hear him.  "You know these big guns are always sharp on a
fellow who holds a first command; and, as I have no interest to back me
up at the Admiralty board, I don't want a bad report to go in against
me, and a black mark be set before my name for ever!"

"Don't you fear, Tom," said I cheerfully, "you'll pass muster with
flying colours!"

Well, the admiral came on board and the inspection turned out just as I
expected.

Not only was the gallant chief satisfied with the condition of the
_Porpoise_; but, after having mustered the men at quarters, and having
them exercised at gun-drill and cutlasses, he was so pleased that he
publicly complimented Tom Finch on the state of his ship and crew,
saying that they were not only creditable to him, but to the service
generally.

So far, so good.

When the admiral, however, descended presently to Tom's cabin to sign
papers, and perhaps to give a look around him, too, to see how such an
efficient officer comported himself when "at home" so to speak, Tom's
evil genius placed Master Jocko in the way.

There he was, seated on the sofa, dressed up in some nondescript sort of
uniform with which the youngsters had invested him during Tom's absence
on deck--the young imps were always up to some of their larks--and being
of a kindred disposition himself, Tom was never hard on them for their
tricks.

The monkey had on a blue coat and trousers with a red sash across his
chest and a Turkish fez on his head, which gave him the appearance of
one of the many Chilian field marshals, and generals, and colonels whom
we had seen at Valparaiso, his wizened, dried-up face adding to the
delusion.

As luck would have it, too, what should Jocko do, as the admiral and Tom
entered the cabin, but rise from the sofa; and taking off the cap from
his head with one of his paws, while the other was laid deferentially on
his chest, he made a most polite bow, in the manner he had always been
used to do, when either of us greeted him on coming in.

"Who's this gentleman?" said the admiral pleasantly, taking off _his_
cocked hat likewise, and returning the salute--"I suppose someone you've
given a passage to on the way, eh?"

Tom was at his wit's end, as he told me afterwards, for the moment; but
his native "nous" came to the rescue, and, combined with his love of a
practical joke, suggested a loophole of escape.

"Oh, sir," said he, "this is one of the aides-de-camp of the Chilian
generalissimo, a Senor Carrambo, who begged me to land him at Callao on
some urgent private business.  Of course, I know, sir, of the
hostilities between his native state and Peru, and that as a neutral I
ought not to offer any means of communication between the two powers;
but, sir, as you see for yourself, he's a very harmless sort of fellow,
and--"

"Hush!" said the admiral, apparently shocked at Tom's speaking out in
such an off-hand way his opinion of the foreign gentleman, as he took
Jocko to be.

"Oh, bless you," went on Tom, forgetting for the moment to whom he was
speaking--"he cannot understand a word of English, and I can't make out
a single word of his Chilian Spanish--but he's very polite."

"So I see," replied the admiral affably, as master Jocko made another
obeisance at this juncture; "pray ask him to accompany you on board the
flagship with me to dinner.  Tell him I shall feel honoured by his
company, as indeed I shall be by yours."

To say he was thunderstruck at the admiral's request would not convey
the slightest idea of Tom's mental condition when he found himself in
such a dilemma.  He could have bitten off his tongue for its having got
him into such a scrape, by telling the fib about the monkey in the first
instance; but it was too late now, for the admiral had turned to leave
the cabin, and the marine was at the door, besides others, who would
hear any explanation he might make.

Tom determined, therefore, with a courage that was almost heroic, to
carry the thing through to the bitter end--giving me a pathetic wink to
instruct everybody to "keep the thing dark" on board--for none knew
about Jocko excepting our ship's company.

Furtively shoving the fez down over the monkey's head, so that it almost
concealed its features, he threw the boat-cloak that rested on the sofa
around him; and, taking hold of his paw, marched in the admiral's wake
to the gangway, and thence down into the chief's barge alongside, where
the admiral and he and Jocko took their seats in state in the stern-
sheets and were rowed off to the flagship--our crew manning the rigging
as they left and giving three hearty cheers!

"I like to see that proof of affection in your men," said the admiral,
as he witnessed this unofficial performance.  "They are proud of their
commander, and, I am sure, you have a crew to be proud of!"

Tom bowed in acknowledgment of the compliment.  He knew well enough what
had occasioned the enthusiasm of the blue-jackets, and bit his lips to
restrain his laughter, which so suffocated him that he felt he would
burst if he had to keep it in much longer!

All he could do now was to brazen out the imposture, and he huddled the
boat-cloak round Jocko so as to conceal his form.

"Poor Senor Carrambo is suffering fearfully from the ague," he said in
explanation to the admiral of this little attention on his part--"I'm
afraid he should not have ventured out of the cabin."

"A good glass of sherry will soon warm him," said the admiral smiling,
"and I think I shall be able to offer him one."

"He's rather partial to bottled ale or stout," suggested Tom, "and he
may possibly prefer that."

"Rather a queer taste for a Spaniard," said the admiral, as the barge
reached the side of the flagship; "but I think I can also gratify on
board my ship this predilection of Senor--"

"Carrambo," prompted Tom.

"Yes, Carrambo," added the admiral as he mounted the accommodation
ladder of the flagship--Tom Finch with Jocko on his arm following in his
wake, as before, amidst the mutual salutes of the admiral and the
officers, to the state cabin of the chief.

Seated at the dinner-table, to which all were summoned with all proper
ceremony to the exhilarating tune of the "Roast beef of old England,"
Jocko, who had a chair alongside of Tom, behaved with the utmost
decorum.

He indeed appeared to eat little but bread, biscuit, tart, and fruit;
but, beyond a grimace, which must have caused the admiral to reflect
that of all the ugly persons he ever beheld in his life, this Chilian
officer was certainly the ugliest, nothing particularly happened, and
the dinner passed off without an exposure.

Tom, the admiral observed, frequently helped "the generalissimo's aide-
de-camp," especially in pouring out his wine, which he limited in a
marked degree; but the jocular lieutenant-commander passed this off by
saying that his distinguished friend--whom he exchanged a word with
occasionally, of some outlandish language, a mixture of Spanish and High
Dutch, with a sprinkling of the Chinese tongue--was in the most feeble
health and acting under the doctor's directions regarding his diet:--
that was the reason also, he explained, of his remaining cloaked and
with his head-covering on at the admiral's table, for which he craved a
thousand pardons!

After dinner, Tom would have given worlds to have beaten a retreat to
his own ship, as several officers came into the saloon while coffee was
handed round, and he dreaded each moment that Jocko would disgrace
himself and the bubble would burst; but no, there the admiral, would
keep him, talking all the time, and directing most of his attention
towards the pseudo "Senor Carrambo," for whose benefit Tom had to
translate, or pretend to translate, what was said.

Tom said he never got so punished for a joke in his life before, and he
took very good care not to let his sense of the ridiculous put him in
such a plight again, as for more than two mortal hours he suffered all
the tortures of a condemned criminal; as he said, he would rather have
been shot at once!

But when the admiral shook hands with him on his departure, Tom felt
worst of all.

"Good-bye, lieutenant," said the admiral, "and thanks for your
introduction to `Senor Carrambo.'  I admired the condition and
discipline of your ship to-day, Mr Finch, and, in forming my opinion of
your character I must say that you carry out a joke better than anyone I
ever met.  _But you should remember, lieutenant, that those who have the
end of the laugh, enjoy the joke best_.  Good-night, I shall communicate
with you to-morrow!"

Poor Tom! after believing that the admiral had suspected nothing up to
the last moment, to be thus undeceived.

It was heartrending!

Gone was his commission, he thought, at one fell blow, with all the
pleasant dreams of promotion that had flashed across his brain after the
admiral's encomiums on him that afternoon; and he would have to think
himself very lucky if he were not tried by court-martial and dismissed
the service with disgrace.

It was paying dearly for a practical joke, played off on the spur of the
moment, truly!

When he reached the _Porpoise_ he felt so disgusted that he kicked poor
Jocko, boat-cloak, fez and all, down the main hatch, gruffly ordered his
gig to be triced up to the davits, and went below to brood over his
anticipated disgrace in the solitude of his own cabin, where I presently
found him.

After a great deal of persuasion, I got him to indite a letter of
apology to the admiral, detailing all Jocko's perfections, and how he
had been constantly an inmate of his cabin; while assuring him that the
passing off the monkey as a "foreigner" had not been a planned thing,
but was only the result of an accident and his own unaccountable love of
fun, although the falsehood he had been guilty of was most
reprehensible.

Indeed, as I made him observe, if it had not been for the admiral
himself suggesting the imposture, he, Tom, would never have dreamt of
it; but, he concluded, he would regret it all his life, for he had not
only told a lie, but the whole matter appeared like a deliberately
contemplated insult to his superior officer.

This letter Tom, still acting under my advice, sent off immediately to
the flagship, as it was yet not late, and within half an hour he
received an answer which made him dance an Indian war-dance of delight
around the cabin table, where he and I were awaiting the news that was
to make or mar poor Tom's future life.

The admiral's ran thus:--

  "Flag, at sea, July, 18---.

  "Dear Commander,

  "I accept your apology, and forgive the joke which I enjoyed, I
  believe, more than you did, having discovered Master Jocko's identity
  from the first moment when he took his Turkish fez off to salute me in
  the cabin, on my entering--you young rascal!  I would not have missed
  for a hundred pounds the agony you were in all the time you were
  sitting at my table, and, I really think, I had the best of the joke!

  "Come and breakfast with me and I will tell you the reason _why I
  address you as_ above--I suppose he never told you, but your father
  was one of my dearest friends.

  "Yours, with best compliments to `Senor Carrambo,'

  "Anson."

"By George, Tom," said I when we had both perused this letter, "you are
in luck!  He doesn't call you _Commander_ for nothing!"

"No, I suppose not," said he, "at all events, Gerald, he's a trump!  I
recollect my old father saying something once about asking him to put in
a good word for me; but, I daresay he forgot all about it: but I am none
the worse for it now, eh?"

"No," said I, "thanks to Jocko!"

The next day Tom Finch had his commission made out by the admiral's
secretary as commander of the _Blanche_, while I was promoted to his
place in the _Porpoise_, owing to the good word he put in for me when he
breakfasted with the jolly old chief; and we both of us were busy enough
the next few months on the station, protecting British interests and
stopping would-be privateers from having such a festive time as they
expected during the period that hostilities lasted between the two rival
South American republics at the time of which I speak; then wars between
Chili and Peru, and the rest of these very independent states, being of
as periodic occurrence of the yellow fever in the Gulf of Mexico!

Poor Jocko, as I hinted at before, came finally to grief in a very sad
way.

We were chasing a suspicious looking blockade-runner, a short time after
he had his remarkable invitation to dine with the admiral; our engines
were moving a little more rapidly than usual; and, Jocko, who was
perched on the skylight above, was looking at them with the most intense
interest.

All at once, the platform on which he was resting slipped, and the
talented monkey fell into the engine-room, in the midst of the
machinery--there was one sharp agonised squeak, and the last page of
poor Jocko's history was marked with the word _Finis_.



CHAPTER TWO.

ESCAPE OF THE "CRANKY JANE."

A STORY ABOUT AN ICEBERG.

One day, some three years ago or so, I chanced to be down at Sheerness
dockyard, and, while there, utilised my time by inspecting the various
vessels scattered about this naval repository.  Some of the specimens
exhibited all the latest "improvements" in marine architecture, being
built to develop every destructive property--huge floating citadels and
infernal machines; while others were old, and now useless, types of the
past "wooden walls of old England," ships that once had braved the
perils of the main in all the panoply of their spreading canvas, and
whose broadsides had thundered at Trafalgar, making music in the ears of
the immortal Nelson and his compeers.

Amongst the different craft that caught my eye--old hulks, placidly
resting their weary timbers on the muddy bosom of the Medway,
dismantled, dismasted, and having pent-houses like the roofs of barns
over their upper decks in lieu of awnings; armour-plated cruisers, in
the First Class Steam Reserve, ready to be commissioned at a moment's
notice; and ships in various degrees of construction, on the building
slips and in dry dock--was a vessel which seemed to be undergoing the
operation of "padding her hull," if the phrase be admissible as
explaining what I noticed about her, the planking, from which the copper
sheathing had been previously stripped, being doubled, apparently, and
protected in weak places by additional beams and braces being fixed to
the sides.  Of course, I may be all wrong in this, but it was what
seemed to me to be the case.

On inquiry I learnt that the vessel was the _Alert_, which it may be
recollected was one of the two ships in the Arctic expedition commanded
by Sir George Nares.  I wondered why so many workmen were busy about
her, hammering, sawing, planing, riveting, fitting and boring holes with
giant gimlets, so I asked the reason for this unwonted activity, when it
might have been reasonably supposed that the vessel had played her part
in the service, and might have been allowed to pass the remainder of her
days afloat, in an honourable retreat up the estuary on which the
dockyard stands.

But, no.

I was informed that the _Alert_ had yet many more days of Arctic
experience in store for her, our government having placed her at the
disposal of the United States authorities to take part in the relief of
Lieutenant Greeley's Polar expedition.--I may here mention in
parenthesis that the vessel subsequently successfully performed the task
committed to her substantial frame; and it was mainly by means of the
stores deposited by her in a _cache_ in Smith Sound that the survivors
of the expedition were enabled to be transported home again in safety.--
I, really, only mention the vessel's name on account of the man who told
me about her--a gentleman who entered into conversation with me about
the cold regions of the north generally, and of the escapes of ships
from icebergs in particular.

He was a seafaring man.  I could see that at a glance, although he was
not one I should have thought who had donned her majesty's uniform, for
he lacked that dapper look that the blue-jackets of the service are
usually distinguished by; but he was a veritable old salt, or "shell-
back," none the less, sniffing of the ocean all over, and having his
face seamed with those little venous streaks of pink (as if he indulged
in a dab of rouge on the sly occasionally) which variegate the tanned
countenances of men exposed to all the rigours of the elements, and who
encounter with an equal mind the freezing blast of the frozen sea or the
blazing sun of Africa.

I told this worthy that once, when on a voyage in one of the Inman line
of steamers from Halifax to Liverpool, I had gone--or rather the vessel
had, to be more correct--perilously near an iceberg, when my nautical
friend proceeded to give vent to his own exposition of the "glacial
theory," saying that a lot of nonsense was written about the ice in the
Arctic regions by people who never went beyond their own firesides at
home and had never seen an iceberg.  It made him mad, he said, to read
it!

"I daresay you've read a lot of rubbish on the subject?" said the old
gentleman, getting excited about the matter, as if he only wanted a good
start to be off and away on his hobby.

"I daresay I have," I replied.

"Well, what with all the fiction that has been written and the fabulous
stories told of the Arctic and its belongings, the `green hand' who
makes the voyage for the first time is full of expectations concerning
all the wonderful sights he's going to see in `the perennial realms of
ice and snow'--that's the phrase the newspaper chaps always use--
expectations which are bound to be disappointed,--and why?"

"I'm sure I can't tell!" said I.

"Because the things that he fancies he's going to see don't really
exist, nor never yet did in spite of what book-learned people may say!
The voyager who goes north for the first time is bound, let us say for
illustration, for Baffin's Bay; and, from what he has learnt beforehand,
bears and walruses, seals and sea-lions, whale blubber and the Esquimaux
who eat it, all occupy some considerable share of his imagination.  But,
above all these, the first thing that he looks forward to see are the
icebergs, or floating mountains of ice, which are so especially the
creation of the cold regions, to which he is sailing.  These icebergs,
sir, form the staple background of every Arctic view, without which none
would be deemed for a moment complete.  Their gigantic peaks and jagged
precipices are familiar to most, in a score of pictures and engravings
drawn by artists who were never beyond the Lizard Lights; and really, I
believe that if one was sketched that wasn't at least a thousand feet
high or more, and didn't have a polar bear perched on top and a full
rigged ship sailing right underneath it, why, the generality of people
would think it wasn't a bit like the real thing!"

"And what is the `real thing' like?"  I asked with some curiosity.

"There you have me," said the old sailor, who had from his speech
evidently received a good education; and if once "before the mast" had
now certainly risen to something much higher.  "To men whose minds have
been wrought up to such a pitch of fancy and expectation, the first
sight of a real iceberg is a complete take-down to their imagination.
Your ship is pitching about, say, in the cross seas near the mouth of
Davis Strait, preparatory to entering within the smooth water of the
Arctic circle, when in the far distance your eye catches sight of a lump
of ice, looking, as it rises and falls sluggishly in the trough of the
sea, not unlike a hencoop covered with snow, after it had been pitched
overboard by some passing ship, or like a gigantic lump of foam tossed
on the crest of a wave.  If the day is sunless, the reflection of light
which gives it that glistening appearance, so remarkable as the midnight
sun glances among an array of these objects, is wanting to add dignity
to the contour of what it is a rude dissipation of life's young dream to
learn is an iceberg--though on a very small scale.  It is simply a wave-
worn straggler from the fleet which will soon be met sailing southward
out of the Greenland fjords.  The warm waters of the Atlantic will in
the course of a few days be too much for it.  The sun will be at work on
it; it will get undermined by the wash of the breakers, until, being
top-heavy, it will speedily capsize.  Then the war between the ice and
the elements will begin afresh, until the once stately ice-mountain will
become the `bergy bit,' as whalers call the slowly-lessening mass of
crumbling, spongy ice, until it finally disappears in the waters; but
only to rise again in the form of vapour, which the cold of the north
will convert into snow, the parent of that inland ice about the polar
regions which forms the source of subsequent icebergs afresh--the
process being always going on, never ending!"

"Why, you are quite a philosopher," I observed.

"A bit of a one, sir," said the old gentleman with a smile.  "Those who
go down to the sea in ships, you know, see wonders in the deep!  But, to
continue what I was telling you about the icebergs.  As your ship
proceeds further north they become more numerous and of larger
dimensions, until, as you pass the entrance of some of those great
fjords, or inlets, which intersect the Greenland coast-line, they pour
out in such numbers that the wary mariner is thankful for the continuous
daylight and summer seas that enable him so easily to avoid these
floating rocks.  Here are several broken-up ones floating about in the
Waigat, a narrow strait between the island of Disco and the mainland of
Greenland, and in close vicinity to several fjords noted for sending big
bergs adrift in the channel way to float southward.  These are the `ice-
mountains' of the fancy artist.  One ashore close into the land, and yet
not stranded or on account of its depth in the water getting into any
very shallow soundings, you may see in your mind's eye, as I've seen
them scores of times in reality.  It presents to your notice a dull
white mass of untransparent ice--not transparent, with objects to be
seen through it on the other side, as I have noticed in more than one
picture of the North Pole taken by an artist on the spot!  This mass is
generally jagged at the top with saw-like edges, and it doesn't so very
much resemble those Gothic cathedral spires as Arctic writers try to
make out.  Still, on the whole, the shape of this monster floating mass
of ice is very striking to those seeing it for the first time; and when
you come to look at it more closely, its size and general character lose
nothing by having the details ciphered down, as a Yankee skipper would
say."

"Are the icebergs very big?"  I inquired.

"Well," said the old gentleman, quite pleased at being asked for
information on the subject, and evidently wishing to convert me to his
own practical way of thinking in opposition to Arctic fiction-mongers,
"they may sometimes be seen of a hundred and fifty feet high,
occasionally reaching to a couple of hundred, while sometimes I've seen
an iceberg that towered up more than double that height; but the
majority of them do not exceed a hundred feet at most.  The colour, as
I've said, is not emerald green, as most folks think--that is, not
unless it is seen under what science-folks call the prismatic action of
light--but a dull white that is almost opaque.  The sides are,
generally, dripping with the little streams of water formed by the
melting of the ice, and glistening in the rays of the sun; but a dull
white is the principal colour of the mass.  Its base is broader than its
summit, and is here and there hollowed into little caverns by the action
of the waves.  The pinnacles seen in the pictures of the illustrated
papers I've spoken of are not very plain.  Indeed, both the one we are
supposing and the other bergs, that are always, like the `birds of a
feather' of the proverb, to be seen close together, are flattened on the
top; and if here and there worn into fantastic shapes by the weather,
they mostly go back to a shape which may be roughly described as broader
at the base than the top; otherwise the berg would speedily capsize.
When this happens, they go over with a tremendous splash, rocking and
churning up the sea for miles round, and sending wave circles spreading
and widening out as from the whirlpool in the centre, in the same way as
when a child pitches a stone into a pond.

"On some of the bergs are masses of earth, gravel and stone, proving
that they must lately have been connected with the land; for owing to
the old bergs becoming undermined by the waves, they soon turn over, and
so of course send _their_ load to the bottom.  An examination of the
sides of the ice-mass also shows to the eye some other peculiarities.
The greater part of the ice is white and thoroughly full of air-bubbles,
which lie in very thin lines parallel to each other; but throughout the
white ice there are numerous slight cracks or streaks, of an intensely
blue and transparent ice, which, on being exposed to heat, before
melting, I've been told by the surgeon of the ship I was in, dissolve
into large angular grains.  These blue cracks cross and cross over again
in the mass of the berg, and may possibly be water which has melted and
been frozen again either on the surface of the berg, or in its crevasses
or cracks, when it was a part of the glacier from which it first came.
But, besides the blue ice, in some icebergs may be seen a kind of
conglomerate of ice-blocks of various sizes, the spaces between them
being filled up with snow or crumbled ice.  This conglomerate exists
usually in cracks, though it is found also in layers, and even forms
large masses of the larger bergs, mixed up with stones and earthy
lumps."

"Did you ever have any adventure amongst the icebergs?"  I asked the old
gentleman at this juncture, thinking I had quite enough of the
scientific aspect of the subject, and dreading lest he might dive
further into the original composition of ice.

"Not in the Arctic Ocean," he replied; "but once, when I was only a
common sailor before the mast and aboard a vessel in the Australian
trade, I came across icebergs in the southern latitudes which were
mighty perilous; and one of these bergs was, by the way, bigger than any
I ever saw in northern seas."

"Tell me all about it," I said, glad to get him on to a regular sea
yarn.

The old gentleman was nothing loth; and I noticed that the moment he
began to speak of his old experiences as a merchant seaman, he dropped
the somewhat affected phraseology in which he had previously been
expounding his theories for my information concerning the polar regions
and the formation of icebergs--thenceforth speaking much more naturally
in the ordinary vernacular of Jack tars.

"I suppose it's forty years ago, more or less," he began, "since I
shipped in the brig _Jane_, John Jiggins master, bound from London to
Melbourne with an assorted cargo.

"She was a decent-sized brig enough, and handy to manage when she had
plenty of sea-room, and a wind right aft; but on a bowline, or when the
wind was on the quarter, and there was a bit of a sea on, she kept such
a stiff weather-helm, and was such a downright cranky vessel, never
bending down to a breeze or lifting to the swell, that it was no wonder
that as soon as the hands got used to her ways, and tumbled to her
contrary points--and she was that contrary sometimes as to remind you of
a woman's temper on washing days, most ladies then being not
particularly pleasant, and feeling more inclined to drive a man mad,
rather than to coax and wheedle him--as soon as we all got used to her
ways, I say, we christened her the `_Cranky Jane_,' and that she was
more or less, barring when she had a fair wind, with an easy sea and
everything agreeable for her, as I said before.

"Old Cap'en Jiggins, however, wasn't of our way of thinking.

"He was the part owner as well as master of the vessel; and loved the
old brig--the `Janey' he called her, the old fool!--like the very apple
of his eye, always praising her up to the nines and not allowing anybody
to say a word against her sea-going qualities.

"Sometimes, when the man at the wheel would be swearing at the lubberly
craft in a silent way, so that you could see he was suffocating himself
with passion and ready to burst himself, for the way in which she would
fall off, or bowse up into the wind's eye, and try to go her own way,
like a horse that gets the bit between his teeth and sets his ears back,
then you'd hear old Jiggins a-talking to himself about the blessed old
tub.

"`That's it, my beauty!  Look how she rides, the darling, like a duck!
What a clipper she is, to be sure; so easy to handle! a child could
steer her with a piece of thread!'

"When, p'raps it took all one man's strength, and perhaps two, to bring
up the beast a single point to the wind!

"In spite of Cap'en Jiggins' praise, I never sailed in such an out-and-
out obstinate craft as that identical _Cranky Jane_.  She seemed to have
been laid down on the lines and constructed, plank by plank, especially
to spile a man's temper!  Somehow or other, with the very lightest of
breezes--except, as I've said before, we had the wind right dead aft--we
could never get her to lay to her course and keep it.  She was always
falling off and breaking away in every way but the right one, and
wanting to go just in the very opposite direction, to what we did;
exactly like Paddy's pig when he's taking it to market, and he has to
whisper in its ear that he's going to Cork, when he really wants to meet
the dealer at Bandon!

"This peculiarity of the brig, of course, very naturally set the men
against her; as, although what is usually called a `dry ship'--that is,
the hands could sleep comfortably in the forecastle, instead of being
drenched through day and night, by the seas she took in over the bows,
as is the case in some clippers I've sailed in--she was so dreadfully
hard to steer that a man's trick at the wheel was like going on the
treadmill!  And yet, that very peculiarity and contrariness that made us
cuss and swear too, only induced Captain Jiggins to say occasionally
when she was most outrageous wide in her yawing, `Pretty dear!' or some
such trash--this very peculiarity, I say, saved all our lives from the
most dreadful fate, and brought us home safe to England after
encountering one of the most deadly perils of the deep.  Curious, isn't
it?  But I'll tell you all about it.  Here goes for the yarn.

"We had done the voyage out in pretty fair time from London to Port
Philip; for, most of the way, the wind was fair and almost dead aft from
the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope, down in the `roaring forties,'
till we got to the Heads.  Consequently, the brig couldn't help herself
but go straight onward, when the trades were shoving her along and while
nobody wanted her to tack, or beat up, or otherwise perform any of those
delicate little points of seamanship which a true sailor likes to see
his ship go through, almost against his own interest, sometimes, as far
as hard work is concerned in reefing and furling and taking in sail, or
piling on the canvas and `letting her rip.'  So long as nothing of this
sort was wanted from her the brig was as easy-going as you could wish
and all probably that Cap'en Jiggins thought her; but, you had only just
to try to get her to sail up in the wind's eye or run with the breeze a
bit ahead of the beam, and you'd soon have seen for yourself how
cantankerous she could be!

"No, it was all plain sailing to Port Philip Heads; and even after we
had unloaded our home cargo, and went round, first to Sydney, and
afterwards to the Fiji Islands--I shan't forget Suva Suva Bay in a
hurry, I can tell you.  So far, everything went serene; for, no matter
where we wanted to go--and you see, the skipper wasn't tied to any
especial port to seek a cargo, but being part owner, could please
himself by going to the best market; which, being a shrewd man, with his
head screwed on straight, you can bet he did!--no matter where we wanted
to go, as I say, the wind seemed to favour us, for it was always right
astern, and everything set below and aloft, and the wind blowing us
there beautifully right before it all the way--just as the old _Jane_
liked it, sweet and not too strong!

"So far, going out to Australia, and looking in at Sydney and Fiji and
the islands for cargo, and loading up choke-full with just everything
that our skipper counted at the highest freight, with no dead weight to
break the brig's back--so far, everything went `high-falutin'' as the
Yanks say; but when we came to leave Polynesia--it ought to be
christened Magnesia, I consider, for it contains a bigger continent,
with a larger number of islands than Europe--and shape a course
homewards to the white cliffs of Old Albion, that we longed to see again
after our long absence, for we were away good two years in all, the
cap'en thinking nothing of time, being his own charterer, so long as he
got a good cargo from port to port, and we were engaged on a trading
voyage, and not merely out and home again directly--then it was that the
_Cranky Jane_ came out in her true colours, and made us love her--oh
yes! just as the skipper did--over the left!

"Why, sir, she was that aggravating, that, as Bill the boatswain and I
agreed, we should have liked to run her ashore on the very first land we
came to, beach her and chop her up there and then for firewood; and we
wouldn't have been content till we had burned up the very last fragment
of her obstinate old hull!

"After leaving Suva Suva Bay, Fiji, where we filled up the last
remaining space in the _Cranky Jane's_ hold with copra--which is a lot
of cocoa-nuts smashed up so as to stow easy, out of which they make oil
at home for moderator lamps--we went south further than I ever went
before in any ship.  Captain Jiggins, as I heard him explaining to the
first officer when I was taking my trick at the wheel, and blessing the
brig as usual for her stiff helm, intended making the quickest passage
that ever was made, he said, by striking down into them outlandish
latitudes before he steered east and made the Horn; and I suppose he
knew what he was about, as he was as good a navigator as ever handled a
sextant.  _He_ called it great circle sailing; but _I_ called it queer-
sailing; and so did most of the hands, barring Bill the boatswain, who
said the captain was right; but anyways, right or wrong, it led us into
an ugly corner, as you shall hear.

"Well, we went down the latitudes like one o'clock, the brig, running
free before the north-east monsoon as if she were sailing for a wager in
a barge-race on the Thames; and the weather as fine as you please, warm
and sunny--too much so, sometimes--so that a man hadn't to do a stroke
of work on board, save to take his turn at the wheel.  Watch on deck,
and watch below, we had nothing to do but loll about, with a stray pull
at a brace here and a sheet there, or else walk into our grub and then
turn into our bunks; for Cap'en Jiggins was the proper sort of skipper.
None of your making work for him when there was nothing to do; but when
the hands were wanted, why he did expect them to look alive, and have no
skulking--small blame to him, say I, for one!

"We had run down below the parallel of Cape Horn, pretty considerable I
should think, when we at last had to ask the old brig to bear up
eastwards to lie her proper course; and then you should have seen the
tricks she played--confound her!  Why, we had to treat her as gingerly
as if she were a yacht rounding a mark-boat to make her bear up a point
or go to the wind; although I'll give her the credit of saying, if she
were cranky--and she was that, and no mistake--she made no leeway, which
was a blessing at all events.

"It was some days after we had altered our course to East South East,
with as much more easterly as we could get out of her--and that wasn't
much, try all we could, with as much fore and aft sail as we could get
on her--when the weather began to change, and the wind, which had been
steadily blowing from the north-east, chopped round a bit more ahead,
the sea getting up, and a stray squall coming now and again, which made
us more alert trimming the sails, and taking in and letting out canvas
as occasion arose.  It was no use, however, trying to drive the brig to
the eastward any longer with this wind shifting about, humour her as we
might; so the skipper altered her course again more to the south,
although we were then as far down as we ought to have gone.

"`The darling,' says he to the first officer when he gave the order to
lay her head South South East, `she's a little playful with the heavy
cargo we've got on board, and wants to keep warm as long as she can!
Let her run a hundred miles or so more south, and then we'll fetch up to
the Horn, and be able to spin along like winking, just as the beautiful
creature wants!'

"Well! it did make us mad to hear the old man talk like this about the
clumsy old tub; but of course we couldn't help ourselves, so we only
grinned, and said to each other,--`Catch us coming again in the _Cranky
Jane_ when once we're safe ashore!'

"Would you believe it?  The blessed brig, although the new course she
was on brought the wind aft instead of on her beam, she was that
spiteful over it, that, as it was blowing much stronger than it had
been, it took two of us to keep her head from deviating from her proper
track, and we had hard work to prevent her from breaking off more than
she did.

"The wind came on towards the afternoon to blow harder and harder; and
by nightfall--you know it gets dark as soon as the sun goes down in
those latitudes--we had to shorten sail so much that the _Cranky Jane_
was staggering along at the rate of nearly fourteen knots an hour with
reefed top-sails and jib and main-sail besides the stay-sails.

"The weather got wilder and wilder as time went on, the heavens quite
dark overhead, except an occasional glint of a star which didn't know
whether he ought to show or not; but still, although we were pretty far
below the equator, the night was warm and even sultry, so that we
expected a hurricane, or cyclone, or something of that sort, for it was
quite unnatural to feel as if in the tropics when fifty degrees south!

"The cap'en, I know, thought it would blow by and by, for before he
turned in he caused even the reefed top-sails and stay-sails to be taken
in, and left her snug for the night, with only a close-reefed main-sail
and the jib on her.

"`Keep a good look-out, Mr Stanchion,' says he to the chief officer, as
he went down the companion-ladder to his cabin, `and call me if there's
the slightest change.'

"`Ay, ay, sir,' says Mr Stanchion; and so the skipper goes below with a
cheerful good-night, in spite of the weather looking dirty and squalls
being handy before morning.

"Now, as luck would have it--as some folks say, although others put it
down to something more than luck--Mr Stanchion wasn't like one of those
jolly, devil-may-care, slap-dash sort of officers, that your regular
shell-backs like best.  He was a silent, quiet, reflective man, who
looked and spoke as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth; and yet he
thought deeper and further than your dash-and-go gentlemen, who act on
the spur of the moment without cogitating.

"As soon as the skipper had turned in, he did a thing which perhaps not
one officer in a hundred would have done in his place, considering we
were on the open ocean out of the track of passing vessels, and that it
wasn't much darker than it is on most nights when there's no moon, and
the sky is cloudy.

"What do you think it was?  Why, he put a man on the look-out on the
forecastle, just as if we were going up channel, or in a crowded sea-
way!  The skipper had meant him to look-out himself, but another
wouldn't be amiss, he said.

"Providentially, too, the very man whom he accidentally selected was the
very best person he could have placed as look-out, if he had picked the
whole crew over from the captain downward; although the mate did not
know this when he sang out to him to go on the forecastle.

"This was Pat O'Brien--`Paddy,' as all the hands called him--an
Irishman, of course, as you would judge from his name, who had been in
one of the Arctic expeditions, which we were speaking of just now.  He
went out with Sir Leopold McClintock I think; but all I know is, that he
once was up a whole winter in the Polar Sea, and there had got laid on
his back with scurvy, besides having his toes frost-bitten, as he
frequently told us when yarning amongst the crew of an evening.

"Generally speaking, he was a careless, happy-go-lucky fellow, and one
might have wondered that Mr Stanchion called him from out the watch
that had just came on deck; but, as I said before, the mate could not
possibly have made a better selection, as it turned out afterwards.

"Pat O'Brien was a comic chap, full of fun, and always making jokes; so
that as soon as he opened his mouth almost to say anything the other
fellows would laugh, for they knew that some lark was coming.

"`Be jabers,' says Pat, as he goes forward in obedience to the chief
officer's order, `it's a nice pleasant look-out I'll have all by
meeself! while you're coilin' the ropes here, I'll be thinkin' of my
colleen there!' and he went out on the foc'sl.

"By and by we could hear him muttering to himself.  `Wurrah, wurrah!
Holy mother, can't you let me be aisy!' he sang out presently aloud as
if he was suffering from something, or in pain.

"`Look-out, ahoy!' hails Mr Stanchion from aft; `what's the matter
ahead--what are you making all that row about?'

"`Sure an' it's my poor feet, save yer honour, that are hurting of me,
they feels the frost terrible!'

"The first mate naturally thought Master Paddy was trying to play off
one of his capers on him--for it wouldn't be the first time he tried the
game on; so this answer got up his temper, making him shout back an
answer to the Irishman that would tell him he wasn't going to catch him
napping.

"`Nonsense, man,' he calls out--`frost?  Why, you are dreaming!  The
thermometer is up to over sixty degrees, and it's warm enough almost for
the tropics.'

"The hands, of course, thought too that Pat was only joking in his usual
way and endeavouring to make fun of Mr Stanchion; and they waited to
hear what would come next from the Irishman, knowing that he was not
easily shut up when once he had made up his mind for anything.  However,
they soon could tell from the tone of voice in which Pat spoke again
that he wasn't joking this time, or else he was acting very well in
carrying out his joke on the mate; for as we were laughing about his
`poor feet,' which was a slang term in those days, Paddy calls out again
in reply to the mate:--

"`Faix,' says he, `it's ne'er a lie I'm telling, yer honour.  Be jabers!
my feet feel as if they were in the ice now, and frost-bitten all over!'

"Another officer in Mr Stanchion's place would, as likely as not, have
consigned poor Pat to a warmer locality in order to warm his limbs
there; but Mr Stanchion, as I've said, was a man of a different stamp,
and a reflective one, too; and the words of the Irishman made him think
of something he had read once of a frost-bitten limb having been
discovered by a well-known meteorologist to be an unfailing weather-
token of the approach of cold.  Instead, therefore, of angrily telling
Pat to hold his tongue and look-out as he ought, Mr Stanchion went
forward and joined him; we on deck, of course, being on the look-out at
once.

"Presently, we could see the chief officer and the Irishman on the
forecastle, peering out together over the ship's bows as if looking for
something.

"`I'm certain, sir,' I heard Pat say earnestly, `we're near ice whenever
my feet feels the cold, yer honour; and there, be jabers, there's the
ice-blink, as they calls it in the Arctic seas, and we're amongst the
icebergs, as sure as you live!'

"At the same moment, the atmosphere lightened up with a whitish blue
light--somewhat like pale moonshine--and Mr Stanchion shouted out at
the top of his voice, louder than we ever dreamt he could speak--`Hard
a-starboard!  Down with the helm for your life!'

"Bill, the boatswain, and I, who were together at the wheel, jammed down
the spokes with all our strength; but the blessed brig wouldn't come up
to the wind as we wanted her.  She wouldn't, although we both almost
hung on the wheel and wrenched it off the deck.  `Hard up with the helm,
men, do you hear?' again sings out the chief officer, rushing aft as he
spoke.  `Hard up, men! all our lives are at stake!'

"And the brig wouldn't come up, try all we could.  Bill and I could have
screamed with rage; but in another minute we were laughing with joy.

"The light got clear; and there, to our horror, just where we wanted the
dear old brig to go--and she wouldn't go, like a sensible creature,
although we cursed her for not obeying the helm--was an enormous iceberg
rising out of the depths of the ocean, and towering above the masts of
the poor _Jane_, which I feel loth to call `cranky' any longer--as high
almost as the eyes could see, like the cliffs at Dover, only a hundred
yards higher, without exaggeration!  If the brig had come up to the
wind, as Mr Stanchion sang out for us to make her, why, two minutes
after, she would have struck full into the iceberg, and running, as she
was, good fourteen knots and more under her jib and main-sail, her bows
would have stoved in, and we'd all have been in Davy Jones's locker
before we could have said Jack Robinson!

"As it was, we weren't out of danger by any means.  There were icebergs
to the right of us; icebergs astern of us, by which we had passed
probably when Pat first complained of feeling the cold; icebergs ahead
of us, through which we would have gingerly to make our way, for we had
no option with the gale that was blowing but to keep the same course we
were on, as to lie to amidst all that ice would be more dangerous even
than moving on; and the big, enormous berg we had just escaped was on
our left, or port side properly speaking--looking, for all the world,
like a curving range of cliffs on some rock-bound coast, as it spread
out more than five or six miles in length.  It was certainly the biggest
iceberg I ever saw in my life, beating to nothing all that I afterwards
noticed in the Arctic seas when I went north in the _Polaris_; and
perhaps that is the reason why all the ice mounds I saw there became so
dwarfed by comparison that they looked quite insignificant.

"Pat kept on the forecastle, looking out and directing the course of the
vessel, as the cap'en, who had just come on deck, roused by the noise,
thought the Irishman's experience in the Arctic seas would make him more
useful even than himself in coursing the ship.

"The skipper was right as usual; and Pat had soon a chance of showing
that his choice had not been misplaced.

"`Kape her away! kape her away!'  Pat shouted out in a minute or two
after the cap'en had come on deck `The top of the berg is loosenin', yer
honour; and sure it's falling on us it will be in a brace of shakes!
Kape her away, or, be jabers, it's lost we'll be for sartin!'

"The old brig, although she wouldn't come up to the wind when we wanted
her, and thus saved our lives by disobeying orders, now answered her
helm promptly without any demur, and dashed away from the mass of ice
before the gale at, I should be ashamed to say what speed.

"Bless the old _Cranky Jane_!  How could we ever have reviled her and
despised her?  She seemed almost as if she had human intelligence and a
kind of foresight.

"We only just weathered the berg when the summit toppled over with a
crash, missing the after-part of the brig by a very few yards, and
churning up the sea far around with a sort of creamy surf, that dashed
over our decks, and swept us fore and aft.

"It was a marvellous escape, and only second to that we had just before
had in avoiding running on to the same gigantic mass of floating ice,
which had probably come up from the Antarctic regions for the summer
season--at least, that was Pat O'Brien's explanation for our meeting
with it there.

"All that night and next morning we were passing through bergs of every
size, big and little, although none were so large as the one which had
been so risky to us--bergs that in their splendid architecture and
magnificence, with fantastic peaks and fine pinnacles, that glittered in
the rising sun with all the colours of the rainbow, flashing out rays
and lights of violet and purple, topaz blue and emerald green, blush
rose and pink and red, mingled with shades of crimson and gleams of
gold, with a frosting over all of silver and bright white light--Those
who haven't seen an iceberg at sea at sunrise have no idea of the depth
and breadth of beauty in nature, though I, one who has served his time
before the mast, says so.  But, avast with such flummery and wordage!"

"Good gracious me!"  I exclaimed, aghast at the old gentleman turning
round so completely from the statement he had made when we first entered
into conversation.  "I thought you said just now that all icebergs were
a dull white without any other colour, save a streak of blue sometimes
running through them like a vein; and yet, here you are painting them in
all the varied tints of the rainbow!"

He was not a bit put out, however, by this accusation of inconsistency.

"This was how they looked at sunrise, which, like a brilliant sunset, as
you know, makes a very great difference in the appearance of objects,
causing even the most common things to look brilliant, and dignifying
the common so as to make it look sublime!  But, with your permission,"
added the old gentleman courteously, "I will finish my story of the
brig's escape.

"After we passed all the ice, the wind came round, as the captain said
it would, right favourable for our course; and the _Cranky Jane_ behaved
like a good one.  We made all our easting on one tack, and passed the
Cape still a good distance to the south, but in as good a latitude as we
could have passed it in for the weather we had, which was first-rate.

"And when we began to mount northwards again, towards the little island
which we all prize so much, although it is but a little spot on the map
of Europe, why, the wind changed too, still almost due aft as the dear
old _Cranky Jane_ liked, much to the delight and joy of everybody on
board, especially the skipper, who exclaimed, as he rubbed his hands
together in joy, and walked up and down the poop,--`Bless the darling,
she's a walker!  And I wouldn't swop her for the best clipper in the
China trade!'

"We had a good land-fall all right, entering the Channel shortly after
sighting the Lizard, making the quickest passage ever known for a
sailing brig from Fiji; and, in spite of all the dear old craft's
shortcomings and temper and weather-helm, myself and the rest of the
crew, including of course Pat O'Brien and his `poor feet,' were willing,
even after all the perils we had passed through, and the dangers we had
escaped, every mother's son of us, with Captain Jiggins' permission, and
the chief officer's favour, to sign articles, and ship for another
voyage in the old _Cranky Jane_; and, what is more, we did too, sticking
to the brig till she went to pieces off Cape Lewis to the south of New
Zealand in her last voyage out.  That's all!"

So saying, the old gentleman, bowing to me politely, took his departure
from Sheerness dockyard, which I also left soon afterwards, pleased with
all that I had seen and more than glad of having visited the place if
only for the chance it afforded me of hearing his yarn.



CHAPTER THREE.

THE GREEK BANDIT.

A REMINISCENCE OF A YACHTING CRUISE IN THE AEGEAN SEA.

Some few years ago, when I was a youngster, I had what was then the
great desire of my heart gratified by being allowed to accompany a party
on a yachting cruise to the Mediterranean.

How I enjoyed myself, and how tragically our cruise nearly terminated, I
will now proceed to tell.

There were six of us in all on board the yacht.  There was dad, one;
Captain Buncombe, two; Mr Joe Moynham, three; Bob, four; myself,
Charley, five; and dog Rollo, six--though I think, by rights, I ought to
have counted Rollo first, as he was the best of us all, and certainly
thought the least of himself--brave, fine, black, curly old fellow that
he was!

Just as you fellows in England were having the nastiest part of the
winter, when there is no skating or snowballing, and only drenching rain
and easterly winds, that bring colds and coughs and mumps, we were
enjoying the loveliest of blue skies and jolly warm weather, that made
swimming in the sea a luxury, and ices after dinner seem like a taste of
nectar.  We did enjoy ourselves; and had a splendid cruise up the old
Mediterranean, going everywhere and seeing everything that was to be
seen.  Oh, it was jolly!  The yacht stopped at Gibraltar, where we
climbed the rock and saw the monkeys that lived in the caverns on the
top; at Malta, where we went up the "Nothing to Eat" stairs mentioned in
_Midshipman Easy_: and then, sailing up the Levant, the _Moonshine_--she
was eighty tons, and the crack of the RYS--was laid up at anchor for a
long time at Alexandria, while we went ashore, going through the Suez
Canal, across the desert to Cairo, and thence to the pyramids, after
which we started for Greece.

You must know, before we get any further, that Bob and I didn't want to
go anywhere near Greece at all!  We had good reasons for this dislike.
There were dad and Captain Buncombe--who was what people call an
archaeologist, fond of grubbing up old stones and skeletons, and digging
like an old mole amongst ruins--continually talking all day long about
Marathon and Hymettus, the Parthenon and Chersonese, the Acropolis, and
Theseus and Odysseus and all the rest of them, bothering our lives out
with questions about Homer and the _Iliad_, and all such stuff; so, I
put it to you candidly, whether it wasn't almost as bad as being back
again at school, making a fellow feel small who was shaky in his Greek
and had a bad memory for history?

However, we had scarcely anchored in the Piraeus when some events
happened which drove the classics out of the heads of our elders; and I
may say that thenceforth we heard no more about the ancients.

There had been a sharp squall shortly before, in which we had been
amused by seeing the smart little zebeques, with their snowy white
lateen sails, flying before the wind like a flock of small birds
frightened by a hawk; and the _Moonshine_ was just coming up to the wind
in order to let go her anchor, when Bob and I, who were close together
on the forecastle, watching the men preparing for running out and
bitting the cable, saw, almost at the same moment, a man's head in the
water right in front of the yacht's forefoot; then--it all happened as
suddenly as a flash of lightning--his hands were thrown up as if in
entreaty, although we heard no cry, and he disappeared.

"Man overboard!" sang out one of the crew, who was pulling away at the
jib down-haul in order to stow the sail, the halliards having been cast
loose, "Man overboard!" in a voice which rang through the vessel fore
and aft, and attracted everybody's attention.

"Hi!  Rollo, good dog!" cried out Bob, turning round sharp to where the
brave old fellow had been lying on the deck not a moment before,
flopping his tail lazily, and with his great red tongue lolling out, as
though he laughed cheerily at everything going on around him.

"Hi!  Rollo!" said I too, in almost the same breath with Bob.  "Fetch
him out, good dog!" and I turned round also.

But the dog was gone.

Bob and I were "nonplussed."  We had both seen Rollo there not--why, not
a second before.  And now he was gone.

However, we soon discovered the noble fellow and the cause of his
absence.

The cry of "Man overboard!" had startled everybody, so that the anchor
had not been let go; and the steersman's attention, naturally, having
been taken up, the yacht had paid off again instead of bringing up, and
her head had swung; consequently, what had been ahead of us just before
was now astern, and we were quite confused as to our bearings.

While we were looking in perplexity in every direction but the right
one, Captain Buncombe, who was at the wheel, and perhaps anxious to
atone for his carelessness in letting the _Moonshine_ swing round,
shouted out "Bravo!" waving his hat like a madman.  Of course all our
several pairs of eyes were turned on him at once.

"There he is--there he is--the brave old fellow!" cried the captain,
letting go the helm in his eagerness, and pointing with his hat--waving
hand to the water under the stern.  "Look aft, you duffers!  Where are
your eyes?  Bravo, Rollo! good dog!  Hold up, old fellow!  I'm coming to
help you!" and with these words, before you could say "Jack Robinson,"
Captain Buncombe had thrown off his coat, pitched away the hat he had
been waving, jumped over the taffrail of the yacht into the bosom of the
blue Aegean Sea, and was rapidly swimming to where we could see dear old
Rollo's black head and splashing paws as he supported a man in the
yacht's wake, and tried to drag him towards us in the _Moonshine_.

We gave a "Hooray!" which you might have heard at Charing Cross if you
had been listening!

Captain Buncombe and Rollo, with their burden, were so near the yacht
that there was no necessity for lowering the gig as we had hastened to
do; and in a very little time we hauled them on board--Rollo jumping
about in the highest spirits, as if he had been just having a quiet lark
on his own account; but the rescued person was limp and insensible,
though he presently came to by the aid of hot-water bottles and
blankets.  The _Moonshine_ then made another start, and succeeded better
in anchoring in a respectable fashion, as she had always been accustomed
to do.

The man was a handsome young fellow, with black hair and piercing eyes--
a Greek, he told us in French which he spoke fluently--although he had
not that treacherous cast of countenance which most of his countrymen
possess.  He was profuse in the thanks which he bestowed broadcast for
our saving him from drowning, although Rollo had really all the credit
of it.  His name was Stephanos Pericles, he said, and he was crossing to
Salamis, when the squall came on, and his boat was upset.  He had been
dragged under water by the boat and almost suffocated before he could
get to the surface, being quite exhausted when the dog gripped him.  For
Rollo had seen him before any of us, and had not waited for our
directions as to what to do.

"I'm a soldier," he said, proudly tapping his chest, and looking round
at dad and the captain, and Mr Moynham.  "I've eaten your bread,"--he
had dinner with us after he had got all right again, and we had settled
down into that general routine in which our meals were attended to with
the strictest punctuality--"and I shall never forget you have saved my
life.  By that bread I have eaten, I will repay you, I swear!"

Then turning to Bob and I, who were sitting on each side of him, and
Rollo, who stuck close to him, as if under the idea that having saved
him he was now his property--"And much thanks to you, little Englishmen,
and your dogs I vill nevare forget, no nevare!"

He couldn't speak English as well as French.  The evening had closed
now, so Captain Buncombe told the crew to get the boat ready, and the
Greek with many more fervent expressions of gratitude, was rowed ashore.

The next morning we had landed and after pottering about the port
proceeded up to Athens, which much disappointed all of us, especially
dad and the captain.  It had a garish and stucco-like appearance; while
the people looked as if they were costumed for a fancy ball, being not
apparently at home in their national dress, picturesque though it was.
It was quite nightmarish for Bob and me to read the names on the shop
fronts in the streets, and see the newspapers printed in the old Greek
characters.  Fancy "Modiste," and "Perruquier," as they will have the
French terms spelt, in the letters sacred to Euripides and Xenophon.  It
seemed like walking in a dream!

We had inspected Athens, as I've said, and visited the plain of
Marathon, which was offered by the Greeks to Lord Byron for sixteen
thousand piastres, or about eight hundred pounds--alas for glory!--and
returned on board the yacht for dinner again, when we were told that a
messenger had been off in our absence and left a parcel for us.  What do
you think it contained?  Guess.

Well, there was a splendid shawl, worth more than a hundred guineas, for
Captain Buncombe, and a handsome jewelled pipe for dad; while Mr Joe
Moynham had a case of Greek wines for his special self!

Bob and I were not forgotten either.  He had a fine gun, with the stock
inlaid with ivory, and carved beautifully; and I, a yataghan, decorated
with a jewelled hilt, that was even more valuable than dad's pipe.
Rollo was presented with a grand gold collar, which Mr Joe Moynham said
was like the one that Malachi, one of the Irish kings, wore in the days
of Brian Boru; and, if you please, a lot of little purses, each
containing a handsome present, were sent also in the parcel--a good big
one, you may be sure--for distribution amongst the crew.  It was
princely gratitude, wasn't it, in spite of the slighting way in which
Mr Moynham had spoken of the modern Greeks and their ways?  However, he
had to "take it all back," as he said, when he drank the health of
Monsieur Pericles--who seemed, by the way, to be much better off than
his illustrious ancestor, and whom we put down as the Sultan Haroun el
Raschid in disguise--in a glass of the very wine that he had sent on
board the yacht.

But that wasn't the end of it all, by any means:-- why, I am only just
coming to my real story now.

Time rolled on--when I say "time," of course, I only mean hours and days
as we mean, not years and centuries as the ancients calculated the lapse
of time--and we managed to see everything that sight-seers see in the
city of Minerva.

Having nothing else to look at close at hand, therefore, we determined
to go on our travels, like Ulysses; not amongst the islands, which we
had already visited, but towards the mountains, Captain Buncombe having
made a vow ere he left England to see the ruins of Thebes, after which,
he said, he would have no further object in life, and would perform the
Japanese feat of the "happy despatch!"

We had horses, and mules, and donkeys for the journey; that is, dad and
the captain rode horses, there were mules for our traps and food, which
we had to take along with us, thanks to the hospitality of the regions
we were going to, while the donkeys were for Bob and me and Mr Moynham.
That gentleman, who would be very positive when he liked, declared that
no earthly consideration should compel him to mount the Bucephalus that
was provided for him.  He said that a horse was expressly stated by King
David to be "a vain thing to save a man," and so why should he go
against that ruling?

The first part of our journey went off as jolly as possible: the way was
good; the scenery--although I confess I didn't trouble my head very much
about it--though dad and the captain were in raptures with it--
magnificent; the halts, just at the right time, although all in classic
places, whose names Bob and I hated the sound of; the food was first-
rate, and Mr Moynham so funny, that he nearly made me roll off my
donkey every now and then with laughter.  But towards evening, when we
were all ascending a steep hill, with rocks and thick shrubbery on each
side of it, through a narrow defile, a harsh voice suddenly exclaimed
through the gloom, something that sounded like the Greek imperative
Statheets!  _Stop_! and then again another monosyllable, which we
certainly understood better, "Halt!"  A gun was also fired off at the
same time; and, by the flash of the discharge we could see several long
gleaming rifle barrels peering out from the bushes on either side of the
way.

"Brigands!" ejaculated the guides together, tumbling prostrate on the
ground pell-mell, as if they had been swept down.

"Fascia a terra!  Ventre a terre!" shouted out the same hoarse voice
again, and a volley was fired over our heads.

"Pleasant!" said Mr Moynham, throwing himself down with his face to the
ground like the cowardly guides.  "But I suppose we'd better do as these
gentry require, or else they'll be hitting us under the fifth
buttonhole; and, what would become of us then?"

"Fascia a terra!" repeated the leader of the brigands, emerging from a
clump of shrubbery at the head of the pass, motioning his arms violently
at dad and the captain, who were inclined to show fight at first; but
discretion proved the better part of valour, and they both dropped the
pistols they had hurriedly drawn from their pockets, seeing that the
rifle barrels covered them, sinking down prone on the earth like the
rest of us.

Rollo, however, poor brave old fellow, made one dash at the ruffian as
he threatened dad; and, seizing him by the throat, dashed him to the
ground.

Poor fellow, the next moment he had a stiletto jammed into him, which
made him sink down bleeding, with a faint howl, to which Bob and I
responded with a cry, as if we felt the blow ourselves!

The moment dad and Captain Buncombe heard Rollo's howl and our cry, they
jumped up again like lightning, and began hitting out right and left at
the brigands who now surrounded us; and Mr Moynham was not behind, I
can tell you!  He butted one big chap right in the pit of the stomach,
and sent him tumbling down the defile, his body rattling against the
stones, and he swearing like mad all the time.  Bob and I scrambled at
them as best we could, catching hold of their legs and tripping them up;
but they were too many for us, for the cowardly guides did not stir hand
or foot to help us, but lay stretched like logs along the ground,
although they were unbound.  We were certain that they were in league
with the robbers; and so, without doubt, they were, for, if they had
only assisted us, now that their assailants had dropped their firearms,
and were engaged in a regular rough-and-tumble fight, we could have
mastered them, I'm sure, as, counting Bob and myself in, we were nearly
man for man as many as they were.

The struggle did not last long, although dad and the captain held out
bravely to the last, flooring the brigands one after another, and
knocking them down as if they had been nine-pins.  They were presently
tied securely, with their arms behind them, and menaced with death if
they stirred, by a brawny ruffian touching each of their heads with a
pistol barrel.  As for Bob and me, they did not think it necessary to
tie us.

"Well, this is a delightful ending to our picnic," said Mr Moynham in
lugubrious tones, as we all lay on the ground, with the exception of the
guides, who appeared to mingle freely with the robbers, who were grouped
in picturesque attitudes around us, leaning on their carbines.  "I
wonder what's their little game?"

The leader presently gave an order, and our seniors were then each
lifted on to a horse or mule, and tied securely there.

"At all events," said Mr Moynham, who kept up his spirits still
wonderfully, "we sha'n't fall off, that's one comfort, and so we'll have
the less bruises after the scrimmage!"

Although the chief brigand scowled at me, he allowed me to lift poor
Rollo, who was not dead as I had feared, and I bandaged his neck where
the wound was with my handkerchief, and took him up in front of me.

The leader then spoke vehemently in his own language to one of the
treacherous guides, who approached dad as if to speak.

"Away, scoundrel!" said dad, wrathfully.  "Don't speak to me; I would
kill you if I were free, for leading us into this ambush!"

The man, however, urged again by the chief, who raised his pistol
ominously at dad, approached him once more.

"The Albanian chief says that if twenty thousand piastres apiece, or one
hundred thousand piastres in all, are not paid for you by sunset here
to-morrow evening, you shall all be shot in cold blood, and your doom be
on your own heads."

"Tell your chief, or thief, or whatever ruffian he is, that none of us
will pay a penny.  Our friends at Athens will miss us, and you'll have
the palikari after you all in hot haste if I'm not back to-night safe."

"The English lord forgets that he left word that he might remain for two
days on the mountains, and his friends will not think him missing before
to-morrow night: at that time, the English lord and his friends, and the
little lords, will be all dead men if the ransom be not paid."

"What on earth shall I do, Buncombe?" asked dad of the captain.  "Shall
I write an order on my bankers for the money to be sent?  One hundred
thousand piastres will be about five thousand pounds--I don't know
whether my credit will be good for that amount?"

"Your credit and mine will be sufficient," Captain Buncombe said; "one
can't trifle with these fellows, for the villains keep their word, I'm
told."

The guide again spoke by the chief's order to dad, as if the tenor of
the captain's words were understood.

"The Albanian chief declares that if the ransom be not paid by sunset
to-morrow at latest, every one of you shall be shot, and your heads cut
off and sent back to Athens in token of your fate."

"Ugh!" said Mr Moynham, shuddering; "I certainly have been a Tory
throughout all my life, but I should not like to follow Charles the
First's example."

"I declare it's disgraceful," said Captain Buncombe; "I'll apply to the
ambassador.  This brigandage is the curse of Greece.  I'll--"

"That won't help us now," said dad.  "I suppose we must write for the
ransom, although under protests; for, however much we have to pay, we
must remember that our lives are in jeopardy; and that's the main
consideration."

The advice was good; so, a joint letter was despatched to certain
influential friends, as well as dad's banker at Athens, urging that the
ransom should be sent in a certain way, to be handed over, as the
brigand chief arranged, as we were given up, so that there should be no
treachery on either side.  The false guides then went off cheerfully
down hill towards the plains, whilst our cavalcade, encompassed by the
brigands, moved towards those mountain fastnesses, "where they resided
when they were at home," as Mr Moynham said.

Up and down hill and dale, we seemed in the darkness to be penetrating
miles into the country; until, at last, passing, as well as we could see
from the gloom, which was almost impenetrable, through a narrow glen
between steep peaks, we suddenly turned a corner of a projecting rock,
and found ourselves on an elevated plateau on the top of the mountains,
where a strange scene awaited us.  A number of ruddy watch-fires were
burning with red and smoky light, and around these sat, reclined, or
moved about, in a variety of active employments, a number of dark forms,
most of which were robust Arnauts, clad in their national dress, which
in the distance is not unlike that seen among Highlandmen, consisting as
it does of a snowy white kilt, green velvet jacket, and bright-coloured
scarf wound round the waist.  Here and there, the glare from the
firelight was reflected from the barrels of guns, rifles, and
matchlocks, which the owners were cleaning or examining; while, before
several of the fires cooking operations were going on.  Kids, whole
sheep, and pieces of raw flesh, were being slowly broiled, hanging from
bits of stick stuck in the ground, or suspended by pieces of string
attached to the branches of the overhanging trees that encircled the
plateau.  This added to the "effect" of the scene.

"Quite operatic, and better than old Drury," I heard Mr Moynham say;
but we were all too depressed and uncomfortable from our constrained
attitudes to feel inclined to appreciate the picturesque, the brigands
having taken us off the horses, and flung us down on the ground, having
this time bound even Bob and myself; indeed, they treated us with even
less attention than they would have bestowed on anything eatable,
judging by the care they evinced in their cuisine, although they did not
offer us anything either to eat or drink, much to Mr Moynham's great
chagrin especially, nor did they give us the slightest covering to
protect us from the night air when the waning watch-fires told us that
bedtime--save the mark--had arrived.  I suppose they thought that it did
not much matter if we did catch cold, considering that we were going to
be shot within twenty-four hours!

Tired out with fatigue, we finally sank to rest in the same place where
we were first pitched down, not awaking till late the next morning, when
we found most of the brigands had departed--to look-out for other
"welcome guests" like ourselves, I suppose!  Only three were left to
guard us, but they were quite enough, considering that we were tied up
fast, and couldn't move if we wished.

How slowly that day dragged out!  We thought it would never end.  They
gave us some hard coarse dry bread to eat and water to drink, nothing
else; and the hours dragged themselves slowly along, as if they would
never end.

Our hopes gradually sank, as the sun declined in the heavens, for we
watched the progress of the glowing orb with almost the devoted zeal of
the followers of Zoroaster.

At last, just as it was within half an hour of sunset as nearly as we
could calculate, we heard a tumult as of many voices in the ravine
leading to the plateau; and, presently, the man whom we had conceived to
be the leader of the brigands advanced towards us, in company with his
band, now largely reinforced by others.  At a word from him our bonds
were untied, and we were assisted to our feet, on which we could not
stand firmly for some little time, on account of the want of circulation
of our blood during the long time we had been in such constrained
attitudes.

The guide who had previously acted the part of interpreter after
betraying us--although, by the way, he told us before he left us that he
belonged to the band, and thus, perhaps, had only acted honourably
according to his creed--then translated what the leader had to say.

Our ransom had been paid, and we were free to go down the mountains.
The horses, mules, and everything belonging to us would be restored, and
a trusty guide--the speaker, of course--would put us in the direct route
to Athens, but as near the city as possible; and, finally, the chief
begged that we would excuse the rough treatment to which we had been
subjected, as he had a great regard for us!

"It was all very well to dissemble his love," quoted Mr Moynham;
"but,--why did he kick us down-stairs?"

"The chief!--which chief, or thief?" said dad sternly.  He did not feel
particularly pleased with the Arnauts or their leader.  "I've had enough
of the scoundrels already, and the sooner I lose sight of them the
better!  What do you mean by the chief?"

"He means me!" said a gorgeous individual, all green velvet jacket, and
gold braid, and red sash, with a cap set rakishly on the side of his
head, in the front of which glittered a diamond of surpassing
brilliancy.

We had noticed this individual before, but not especially, and he had
been rather hidden by the figure of the man we looked upon as the
leader: now he stepped forward, and we could see his face plainly, as we
recognised the voice.

Who do you think it was?

Why, Stephanos Pericles, the man whom we had saved from drowning, and
who had sent us those handsome presents!

"Why have we met with this treatment at your hands?" said papa, puzzled
at the Greek's behaviour.

"You have nothing to complain of," said Stephanos, with an air of
courteous nobility which exasperated the captain to that degree that I
saw him clenching and unclenching his fists, and dancing about, as Mr
Moynham said afterwards, "like a hen on a hot griddle."

"My dear sir, you have nothing really to complain of," said the Greek.
"You saved my life, I admit, and I think I politely expressed my
obligations at the time.  In return I now present you with five lives,
independently of that of the dog, which, I am sorry to see, has been
hurt."

"But the ransom?" said dad.

"Oh, I'm sorry I had to insist on that," said Stephanos, placidly; "but
it is one of our rules to enforce such in all cases, and I'm sorry that
I could not let you off, although my friendship yearned to set you free
without it.  You must really please excuse the treatment you have met
with.  If I had known who honoured me with their company, I'm sure you
would have had no reason to be dissatisfied with my hospitality.  The
_next_ time you favour me with your presence, my lord--"

"The next time you catch me here, or anywhere else on Greek ground,"
laughed my father in a hearty "Ho! ho!" in which all of us joined, "you
may cut me up into kabobs and cook and eat me, and welcome; for I know
I'll then deserve it!"

We got back safe aboard the _Moonshine_ all right, setting sail from the
Piraeus next day; but it was a good trick of the brigand chief, wasn't
it--though I can't say much for his gratitude after all, spite of those
magnificent presents, which there was little reason to wonder at his
offering us, considering the easy manner in which he got his money?

The cut in Rollo's neck healed soon, and he is now as right as ever he
was, excepting a slight scar which tells where the stiletto or dagger
went, and he wears still the collar of gold that Stephanos Pericles
presented him with.  As for the rest of our party, all of us got home
safe with the _Moonshine_, which is now fitting out at Ryde for the
coming regatta, where I hope she'll come off as successfully in carrying
off prizes as "THE GREEK BANDIT."



CHAPTER FOUR.

JIM NEWMAN'S YARN: OR, A SIGHT OF THE SEA SERPENT.

"Was you ever up the Niger, sir?"

"Why, of course not, Jim! you know that I've never been on the African
station, or any other for that matter.  But why do you ask the
question?"

"Don't know 'xactly, sir.  P'raps that blessed sea-fog reminds me of it,
somehow or other--though there's little likeness, as far as that goes,
between the west coast and Portsmouth, is there, sir?"

"I don't suppose there is," I said; "but what puts the Niger, of all
places in the world, in your head at the present moment?"

"Ah, that'd tell a tale, sir," he answered, cocking his left eye in a
knowing manner, and giving the quid in his mouth a turn.  "Ah, that'd
tell a tale, sir!"

Jim Newman, an old man-of-war's man--now retired from the navy, and who
eked out his pension by letting boats for hire to summer visitors--was
leaning against an old coal barge that formed his "office," drawn up
high and dry on the beach, midway between Southsea Castle and Portsmouth
Harbour, and gazing out steadily across the channel of the Solent, to
the Isle of Wight beyond.  He and I were old friends of long standing,
and I was never so happy as when I could persuade him--albeit it did not
need much persuasion--to open the storehouse of his memory, and spin a
yarn about his old experiences afloat in the whilom wooden walls of
England, when crack frigates were the rage instead of screw steamers
with armour-plates.  We had been talking of all sorts of service
gossip--the war, the weather, what not--when he suddenly asked me the
question about the great African river that has given poor Sambo "a
local habitation and a name."

Although the gushing tears of April had hardly washed away the traces of
the wild March winds, the weather had suddenly become almost tropical in
its heat.  There was not the slightest breath of air stirring, and the
sea lay lazily asleep, only throbbing now and then with a faint
spasmodic motion, which barely stirred the shingle on the shore, much
less plashed on the beach; while a thick, heavy white mist was steadily
creeping up from the sea, shutting out, first the island, and then the
roadstead at Spithead from view, and overlapping the whole landscape in
thick woolly folds, moist yet warm.  Jim had said that the sea-fog,
coming as it did, was a sign of heat, and that we should have a regular
old-fashioned hot summer, unlike those of recent years.

"Ah, sir," he repeated, "I could tell a tale about that deadly Niger
river, and the Gaboon, and the whole treacherous coast, if I liked, from
Lagos down to the Congo--ay, I could!  It was that 'ere sea-fog that put
Afriker into my head, Master Charles; I know that blessed white mist, a-
rising up like a curtain, well, I do!  The `white man's shroud,' the
niggers used to call it--and many a poor beggar it has sarved to shroud,
too, in that killing climate, confound it!"

"Well, Jim, tell us about the Niger to begin with," said I, so as to
bring him up to the scratch without delay; for, when Jim once got on the
moralising or sentimental tack, he generally ended by getting angry with
everybody and everything around him; and when he got angry, there was an
end to his stories for that day at least.

"All right, your honour," said the old fellow, calming down at once into
his usual serenity again, and giving his quid another shift as he braced
himself well up against the old barge, on the half-deck of which I was
seated with my legs dangling down--"All right, your honour!  If it's a
yarn you're after, why I had best weigh anchor at once and make an
offing, or else we shan't be able to see a handspike afore us!"

"Heave ahead, Jim!" said I impatiently; "you are as long as a three-
decker in getting under way!"

With this encouragement, he cleared his throat with his customary
hoarse, choking sort of cough, like an old raven, and commenced his
narrative without any further demur.

"It's more'n twenty years now since I left the service--ay, thirty years
would be more like it; and almost my very last cruise was on the West
African station.  I had four years of it, and I recollect it well; for,
before I left the blessed, murdering coast, with its poisonous lagoons
covered with thick green slime, and sickly smells, and burning sands, I
seed a sight there that I shall never forget as long as I live, and
which would make me recklect Afrikey well enough if nothing else would!"

"That's right, Jim, fire away!" said I, settling myself comfortably on
my seat to enjoy the yarn.  "What was it that you saw?"

"Steady!  Let her go easy, your honour; I'm a-coming to that soon
enough.  It was in the old _Amphitrite_ I was at the time--she's broken-
up and burnt for firewood long ago, poor old thing!--and we was a-lying
in the Bight of Benin, alongside of a slaver which we had captured the
day before off Whydah.  She was a Brazilian schooner with nearly five
hundred wretched creatures on board, so closely packed that you could
not find space enough to put your foot fairly on her deck in any place.
The slaves had only been a night on board her; but the stench was so
awful, from so many unfortunate niggers being squeezed so tightly
together like herrings in a barrel, and under a hot sun too, that we
were longing to send the schooner away to Sierra Leone, and get rid of
the horrid smell, which was worse than the swamps ashore!  Well, I was
in the morning watch after we had towed in the slaver to the Bights,
having carried away her foremast with a round shot in making her bring
to, and was just going forward to turn in as the next watch came on
deck, when who should hail me but my mate, Gil Saul, coming in from the
bowsprit, where he had been on the look-out--it was him as was my
pardner here when I first started as a shore hand in letting out boats,
but he lost the number of his mess long ago like our old ship the
_Amphitrite_.

"As he came up to me his face was as white as your shirt, and he was
trembling all over as if he was going to have a fit of the fever and
ague.

"`Lor', Gil Saul,' sez I, `what's come over you, mate? are you going on
the sick list, or what?'

"`Hush, Jim,' sez he, quite terror-stricken.  `Don't speak like that;
I've seen a ghost, and I knows I shall be a dead man afore the day's
out!'

"With that I burst into a larf.

"`Bless your eyes, Gil,' sez I, `tell that to the marines, my bo'! you
can't get over me on that tack.  You won't find any respectable ghosts
leaving dear old England for the sake of this dirty, sweltering west
coast, which no Christian would come to from choice, let alone a ghost!'

"`But, Jim,' he sez, leaning his hand on my arm to detain me as I was
going down below, `this wasn't a h'English ghost as I sees just now.  It
was the most outlandish foreign reptile you ever see.  A long, big,
black snake like a crocodile, only twice the length of the old corvette;
with a head like a bird, and eyes as big and fiery as our side-lights.
It was a terrible creature, Jim, and its eyes flamed out like lightning,
and it snorted like a horse as it swam by the ship.  I've had a warning,
old shipmate, and I'll be a dead man before to-morrow morning, I know!'

"The poor chap shook with fright as he spoke, though he was as brave a
man as we had aboard; so I knew that he had been drinking and was in a
state of delirium tremendibus, or else he was sickening for the African
fever, which those who once have never forget.  I therefore tried to
pacify him and explain away his fancy.

"`That's a good un, Gil Saul,' I sez.  `Don't you let none of the other
hands hear what you've told me, that you've seen the great sea sarpint,
or you'll never get the end of it.'

"Gil got angry at this, forgetting his fright in his passion at my
doubting his word like.

"`But it was the sea sarpint, I tells you, or its own brother if it
wasn't.  Didn't I see it with my own eyes, and I was as wide awake as
you are, and not caulking?'

"`The sea sarpint!'  I repeated scornfully, laughing again in a way that
made Gil wild.  `Who ever heard tell of such a thing, except in a Yankee
yarn?'

"`And why shouldn't there be a big snake in the sea the same as there
are big snakes on land like the Bow constreetar, as is read of in books
of history, Jim Newman?  Some folks are so cocksure, that they won't
believe nothing but what they sees for themselves.  I wonder who at
home, now, would credit that there are some monkeys here in Afrikey that
are bigger than a man and walk upright; and you yourself, Jim, have told
me that when you were in Australy you seed rabbits that were more than
ten foot high when they stood on their hind-legs, and that could jump a
hundred yards at one leap.'

"`So I have, Gil Saul,' sez I, a bit nettled at what he said, and the
way he said it, `and what I says I stick to.  I have seen at Port Philip
kangaroos, which are just like big rabbits with upright ears, as big as
I've said; and I've seen 'em, too, jump more than twice the distance any
horse could.'

"`And why then,' sez he, argumentifying on to me like a shot, `and why
then shouldn't there be such a thing as the sea sarpint?'

"This flummuxed me a bit, for I couldn't find an answer handy, so I axed
him another question to get out of my quandary.

"`But why, Gil, did you say you had seed a ghost, when it was a
sarpint?'

"This time _he_ was bothered for a moment.

"`Because, Jim,' sez he, after a while, `it appeared so awful to me when
I saw it coming out of the white mist with its glaring red eyes and
terrible beak.  It was a ghost I feels, if it wasn't the sea sarpint;
and whether or no it bodes no good to the man wot sees it, I know.  I'm
a doomed man.'

"I couldn't shake him from that belief, though I thought the whole thing
was fancy on his part, and I turned into my hammock soon after we got
below, without a thought more about the matter--it didn't stop my caulk,
I know.  But, ah! that was only in the early morning.  Before the day
was done, as Gil had said, that conversation was recalled to me in a
terrible way--ah, a terrible way!" the old sailor repeated impressively,
taking off his tarpaulin hat, and wiping his forehead with his
handkerchief, as if the recollection of the past awed him even now.  He
looked so serious that I could not laugh, inclined as I was to ridicule
any such story as that of the fabled sea serpent, which one looks for
periodically as a transatlantic myth to crop up in dull seasons in the
columns of American newspapers.

"And did you see it too?"  I asked; "and Gil Saul's prophecy turns out
true?"

"You shall hear," he answered gravely; "I'm not spinning a yarn, as you
call it, Master Charles; I'm telling you the truth."

"Go on, Jim," said I, to reassure him.  "I'm listening, all attention."

"At eight bells that day, another man-of-war come in, bringing an empty
slaver she had taken before she had shipped her cargo.  In this vessel
we were able to separate some of the poor wretches packed on board our
Brazilian schooner, and so send them comfortably on to Sierra Leone,
which was what we were waiting to do, as I've told you already; and now
being free to go cruising again, we hove up anchor and made our way down
the coast to watch for another slaver which we had heard news of by the
man-o'-war that came in to relieve us.

"We had a spanking breeze all day, for a wonder, as it generally fails
at noon; but towards the evening, when we had made some eighty miles or
so from the Bights, it fell suddenly dead calm, as if the wind had been
shut off slap without warning.  It was bright before, but the moment the
calm came a thick white mist rose around the vessel, just like that
which came just now from seaward, and has hidden the island and Spithead
from view; you see how it's reminded me now of the west coast and the
Niger river, Master Charles, don't you?"

"Ay," said I, "Jim, I see what you were driving at."

"Those thick mists," he continued, "always rise on the shores of Afrikey
in the early mornings--just as there was a thick one when Gil had seen
his ghost, as he said--and they comes up again when the sun sets; but
you never sees 'em when the sun's a-shining bright as it was that
arternoon.  It was the rummiest weather I ever see.  By and by, the mist
lifted a bit, and then there were clumps of fog dancing about on the
surface of the sea, which was oily and calm, just like patches of trees
on a lawn.  Sometimes these fog curtains would come down and settle
round the ship, so that you couldn't see to the t'other side of the deck
for a minute, and they brought a fearful bad smell with them, the very
smell of the lagoons ashore with a dash of the niggers aboard the slave
schooner, only a thousand times worse, and we miles and miles away from
the land.  It was most unaccountable, and most uncomfortable.  I
couldn't make it out at all.

"Jest as I was a-puzzling my brains as to the reason of these fog banks
and the stench they brought with them, Gil Saul came on deck too, and
sheered up alongside of me as I was looking out over the side.  His face
was a worse sight than the morning; for, instead of his looking white,
the colour of his skin was grey and ashy, like the face of a corpse.  It
alarmed me so that I cried out at once--

"`Go down below, Gil!  Go down and report yourself to the doctor!'

"`No,' sez he, `it ain't the doctor an will cure me, Jim; I feel it
coming over me again as I felt this morning.  I shall see that sarpint
or ghost again, I feel sure.'

"What with his face and his words, and the bad smell from the fog, I
confess I began to feel queer myself--not frightened exactly--but I'd
have much rather have been on Southsea common in the broad daylight than
where I was at that moment, I can tell you."

"Did you see anything, Jim?"  I asked the old sailor at this juncture.

"I seed nothing, Master Charles, _as yet_ but I felt something, I can't
tell what or how to explain; it was a sort of all-overish feeling, as if
something was a-walking over my grave, as folks say, summat uncanny, I
do assure you.

"The captain and the first lieutenant was on the quarter-deck, the
latter with his telescope to his eye a-gazing at something forward
apparently, that he was trying to discern amongst the clumps of fog.  I
was nigh them, and being to leeward could hear what they said.

"The first lieutenant, I hears him, turns to the captain over his
shoulder speaking like, and sez he--

"`Captain Manter, I can't make it out exactly, but it's most curious;'
and then turning to me, he sez, `Newman, go down to my steward and ax
him to give you my night-glass.'

"I went down and fetched the glass and handed it to him, he giving me
t'other one to hold; and he claps the night-glass to his eye.

"`By Jove, Captain Manter,' sez he presently, `I was right, it is the
greatest marine monster I ever saw!'

"`Pooh!' says the captain, taking the glass from him and looking
himself.  `It's only a waterspout, they come sometimes along with this
appearance of the sea!'  But presently I heard him mutter something
under his voice to the lieutenant, and then he said aloud, `It is best
to be prepared;' and a moment after that he gave an order, and the
boatswain piped up and we beat to quarters.  It was very strange that,
wasn't it?  And so every man on board thought.

"A very faint breeze was springing up again, and I was on the weather
side of the ship, which was towards the land from which the wind came,
when suddenly Gil Saul, who was in the same battery and captain of my
crew, grips my arm tight.  `It's coming! it's coming!' he said right in
my ear, and then the same horrible foul smell wafted right over the ship
again, and a noise was heard just as if a herd of wild horses were
sucking up water together.

"At this moment the fog lifted for a bit, and we could see clear for
about a couple of miles to windward, where the captain and first
lieutenant and all the hands had their eyes fixed as if expecting
something.

"By George! you could have knocked me down with a feather, I tell you!
I never saw such a sight in my life, and may I never see such another
again!  There, with his head well out of the water, shaped like a big
bird, and higher in the air than the main truck of the ship, was a
gigantic reptile like a sarpint, only bigger than you ever dreamt of.
He was wriggling through the water at a fearful rate, and going nearly
the same course as ourselves, with a wake behind him bigger than a line-
of-battle ship with paddle-wheels, and his length--judging by what I saw
of him--was about half a mile at least, not mentioning what part of his
body was below the water; while he must have been broader across than
the largest sperm whale, for he showed good five feet of freeboard.

"The captain and first lieutenant were flabbergasted, I could see; but
Captain Manter was as brave an officer as ever stepped, and he pulled
himself together in a minute, as the fog, which had only lifted for a
minute, came down again shutting out everything from view so that we
could not see a yard from the side.  `Don't be alarmed, my men,' he
sings out in his cheery voice, so that every hand could hear him, `it's
only a waterspout that is magnified by the fog; and as it gets nearer
we'll give it the starboard broadside to clear it up and burst it.'

"`Ay! ay!' sez the men with a cheer, while the smell grew more awful and
the snorting gushing sound we had heard before so loud that it was quite
deafening, just immediately after the captain spoke, when it had stopped
awhile.

"As for poor Gil, he had never lost the grip of my arm since we sighted
the reptile, although he had the lanyard of his gun in his right hand
all the same.

"`Fire!' sez the captain; and, in a moment, the whole starboard
broadside was fired off, point blank across the water, in a line with
the deck, as Captain Manter had ordered us to depress the guns, the old
_Amphitrite_ rocking to her keel with the explosion.

"Well, sir, as true as I'm standing here a-talking to you, at the very
instant the guns belched out their fire and smoke, and the cannon-balls
with which they were loaded, there was a most treemenjus roar and a dash
of water alongside the ship, and the waves came over us as if we were on
a lee shore; and then, as the men stood appalled at the things going on
around them, which was what no mortal ever seed before, Gil clasped my
arm more tightly, loosening his right hand from the lanyard of the gun
which he had now fired, and shrieked out, `There! there!'

"Master Charles, it were awful!  A long heavy body seemed to be reared
up high in the air right athwart the vessel, and plunged far away in the
sea to leeward; and, as the body passed over our heads, I looked up with
Gil, and saw the fearful fiery eyes of the biggest snake that ever
crawled on the earth, though this was flying in the air, and round his
hideous head, that had a long beak like a bird, was a curious fringe or
frill all yellowish green, just like what a lizard puffs out under his
throat when in a rage.  I could see no more, for the thing was over us
and gone a mile or more to leeward in a wink of the eye, the fog
drifting after it and hiding it from sight.  Besides which, I was
occupied with Gil, who had sank down on the deck in a dead swoon.

"Whatever it was, the thing carried away our main topmast with the
yards, and everything clean from the caps as if it had been shot away,
and there wasn't a trace of them floating in the sea around, as we could
see.

"`A close thing that!' said the captain, after the shock was over,
speaking to the lieutenant, although all hands could hear him, for it
was as still as possible now.  `A close thing, Mr Freemantle.  I've
known a waterspout do even more damage than this; so let us be
thankful!'

"And then all hands were piped to clear the wreck, and make the ship
snug; for we had some bad weather afterwards, and had to put into Sierra
Leone to refit.

"Gil was in a swoon for a long time after; and then he took the fever
bad, and only recovered by the skin of his teeth; but he never forgot
what he had seen, nor I either, nor any of the hands, though we never
talked about it.  We knew we had seen something unearthly; even the
captain and Lieutenant Freemantle, though they put down the damage to a
waterspout for fear of alarming the men, knew differently, as we did.
We had seen the great sea sarpint, if anybody had, every man-jack of us
aboard!  It was a warning, too, as poor Gil Saul had declared; for,
strange to say, except himself and me, not a soul as was on board the
_Amphitrite_ when the reptile overhauled us, lived to see Old England
again.  The bones of all the others were left to bleach on the burning
sands of the east coast of Africa, which has killed ten thousand more of
our own countrymen with its deadly climate than we have saved slaves
from slavery!"

"But, Jim," said I, as the old sailor paused at the end of his yarn.
"Do you think it was really the sea serpent?  Might it not have been a
waterspout, or a bit of floating wreck, which you saw in the fog?"

Jim Newman got grumpy at once, at the bare insinuation of such a thing.

"Waterspouts and bits of wreck," said he sarcastically, "generally
travel at the rate of twenty miles an hour when there is no wind to move
them along, and a dead calm, don't they?  Waterspouts and bits of wreck
smell like polecats when you're a hundred miles from land, don't they?
Waterspouts and bits of wreck roar like a million wild bulls, and snort
and swish as they go through the water like a thousand express trains
going through a tunnel, don't they?"

I was silenced by Jim's sarcasm, and humbly begged his pardon for
doubting the veracity of his eyesight.

"Besides, Master Charles," he urged, when he had once more been restored
to his usual equanimity; "besides, you must remember that nearly in the
same parts, and about the same time--in the beginning of the month of
August, 1848--the sea sarpint, as people who have never seen it are so
fond of joking of, was seen by the captain and crew of HMS _Daedalus_
and the event was put down in the ship's log, and reported officially to
the Admiralty.  I suppose you won't go for to doubt the statement which
was made by a captain in the navy, a gentleman, and a man of honour, and
supported by the evidence of the lieutenant of the watch, the master, a
midshipman, the quartermaster, boatswain's mate, and the man at the
wheel--the rest of the ship's company being below at the time?"

"No, Jim," said I, "that's straight enough."

"We was in latitude 5 degrees 30 minutes north, and longitude about 3
degrees east," continued the old sailor, "when we saw it on the 1st of
August, 1848, and they in latitude 24 degrees 44 minutes south, and
longitude 9 degrees 22 minutes east, when they saw it on the 6th of the
same month; so the curious reptile--for reptile he was--must have put
the steam on when he left us!"

"Stirred up, probably, by your starboard broadside?" said I.

"Jest so," went on Jim.  "But, he steered just in the direction to meet
them when he went off from us, keeping a southward and eastward course;
and I daresay, if he liked, he could have made a hundred knots an hour
as easy as we could sail ten on a bowline with a stiff breeze."

"And so you really have seen the great sea serpent?" said I, when the
old man-of-war's man had shifted his quid once more, thus implying that
he had finished.

"Not a doubt of it, sir; and by the same token he was as long as from
here to the Spit Buoy, and as broad as one of them circular forts out
there."

"That's a very good yarn, Jim," said I; "but do you mean to say that you
saw the monster with your own eyes, Jim, as well as all the rest of
you?"

"I saw him, I tell you, Master Charles, as plain as I see you now; and
as true as I am standing by your side the sarpint jumped right over the
_Amphitrite_ when Gil Saul and I was a-looking up, and carried away our
maintopmast and everything belonging to it!"

"Well, it must have been wonderful, Jim," said I.

"Ay, ay, sir," said he, "but you'd ha' thought it a precious sight more
wonderful if you had chanced to see it, like me!"

I may add, that, shortly afterwards, I really took the trouble to
overhaul a pile of the local papers to see whether Jim's account of the
report made by the captain of the _Daedalus_ to the Lords of the
Admiralty was substantially true; and, strange to say, I discovered
amongst the numbers of the _Hampshire Telegraph_ for the year 1848, the
following copy of a letter forwarded by Captain McQubae to the admiral
in command at Devonport dockyard at the date mentioned:--

  "Her Majesty's Ship _Daedalus_

  "Hamoaze, October 11th, 1848.

  "Sir,--In reply to your letter of this day's date, requiring
  information as to the truth of a statement published in the _Globe_
  newspaper, of a sea serpent of extraordinary dimensions having been
  seen from her Majesty's ship _Daedalus_, under my command, on her
  passage from the East Indies, I have the honour to acquaint you, for
  the information of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, that at
  five o'clock, PM, on the 6th of August last, in latitude 24 degrees 44
  minutes south, and longitude 9 degrees 22 minutes east, the weather
  dark and cloudy, wind fresh from the North West, with a long ocean
  swell from the South West, the ship on the port tack heading North
  East by North, something very unusual was seen by Mr Sartons,
  midshipman, rapidly approaching the ship from before the beam.  The
  circumstance was immediately reported by him to the officer of the
  watch, Lieutenant Edgar Drummond, with whom and Mr William Barrett,
  the master, I was at the time walking the quarter-deck.  The ship's
  company were at supper.

  "On our attention being called to the object it was discovered to be
  an enormous serpent, with head and shoulders kept about four feet
  constantly above the surface of the sea, and as nearly as we could
  approximate, by comparing it with the length of what our main-topsail-
  yard would show in the water, there was at the very least sixty feet
  of the animal _a fleur d'eau_, no portion of which was, to our
  perception, used in propelling it through the water, either by
  vertical or horizontal undulation.  It passed rapidly, but so close
  under our lee quarter that had it been a man of my acquaintance I
  should have easily recognised his features with the naked eye; and it
  did not, either in approaching the ship or after it had passed our
  wake, deviate in the slightest degree from its course to the South
  West, which it held on at the pace of from twelve to fifteen miles per
  hour, apparently on some determined purpose.

  "The diameter of the serpent was about fifteen or sixteen inches
  behind the head, which was, without any doubt, that of a snake, and
  never, during the twenty minutes that it continued in sight of our
  glasses once below the surface of the water; its colour a dark brown,
  with yellowish white about the throat.  It had no fins, but something
  like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of sea-weed, washed about
  its back.  It was seen by the quartermaster, the boatswain's mate, and
  the man at the wheel, in addition to myself and officers above-
  mentioned.

  "I am having a drawing of the serpent made from a sketch taken
  immediately after it was seen, which I hope to have ready for
  transmission to my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty by to-morrow's
  posts.

  "I have, etcetera,

  "Peter McQubae, Captain.

  "To Admiral Sir WH Gage, GCH, Devonport."

Consequently, having this testimony, which was amply verified by the
other witnesses at the time, I see no reason to doubt the truth of Jim
Newman's yarn about THE GREAT SEA SERPENT!



CHAPTER FIVE.

"OUR SCRATCH ELEVEN."

This all happened a year or two before I went to sea, and so doesn't
come under the ordinary designation of a "yarn," which, I take it,
should only be about the doings of seafaring men and those who have to
toil over the ocean for a living; still, as it concerns myself, I give
it in pretty nearly the exact words I told it the other day to a party
of youngsters who had just come in from cricketing and asked me for a
story.

I never played in such a match in my life before or since, I began; but,
there, I had better commence at the right end, and then you'll be able
to judge for yourselves.

Charley Bates, of course, was dead against it from the first.

"I tell you it's all nonsense," he said, when we mooted the subject to
him.  "How on earth can we get up a decent eleven to play chaps like
those, who have been touring it all over the country, and licking
professionals even on their own ground?  It's impossible, and a
downright absurdity.  We can't do it."

"But, Charley," suggested Sidney Grant, a tall, fair-haired fellow, and
our best bat--he could swipe away at leg balls; and as for straight
drives, well, he'd send 'em over a bowler's head, just out of his reach,
and right to the boundary wall, at such a rate, like an express train
going through the air, that they defied stopping.  "But, Charley," he
suggested, "we've got some good ones left of our team, and I daresay we
can pick up some fresh hands from amongst the visitors to make up a fair
scratch lot."

"It would be a scratch lot," sneered Charley--"a lot that would be
scratched out with duck's eggs, and make us the laughing-stock of the
place."

"Oh, that's all nonsense!"  Sidney said, decisively.

Besides being our best bat, he was the captain of the Little Peddlington
Cricket Club, which, as it was far into the month of August, had got
somewhat dispersed through some of the team having gone off on those
cheap excursions to London, to the Continent, and elsewhere, that are
rife at most of the seaside places on the south coast during the season.
But now that the great travelling team of the "Piccadilly Inimitables"
purposed paying a passing visit to our rural shades, it of course
behoved the Little Peddlington Cricket Club to challenge the celebrated
amateurs to a match, albeit we were so woefully weak from the absence of
many of our best members, or else be for ever disgraced amongst the
patrons of the noble game.

It was this very point we were debating now, our captain having
collected the remnants of the club together in solemn caucus, to
deliberate on the situation and see what was to be done.

"I don't see why we shouldn't challenge the Inimitables," he went on.
"The worst that can happen to us is to get licked; but we might make a
good fight for it, and if vanquished we should not be covered with
dishonour.  There are five of us here of the first eleven to form a
nucleus with: Charley Bates--whom I mention first, not by reason of his
superior skill with the willow," the captain slily put in, "as that is
known to all of us, but on account of his being the oldest member of the
Little Peddlington Cricket Club present, with the exception of myself--
Jack Limpet, who is a very good all-round player if he didn't brag quite
so much,"--this was one at me--"Tom Atkins, John Hardy, and last, though
by no means least, my worthy self.  Thus we've five good men and true,
whom we have tried already in many a fray, to rely on; and I daresay we
can pick out two or three likely youngsters from the juniors, while some
of those new fellows amongst the visitors that came down last week would
lend us a hand.  There were three of them especially that I noticed
yesterday practising, whom I should certainly like to have in the eleven
if I could get them to join us."

"They'd be glad enough if you'd ask them," grumbled Charley Bates, who
always seemed to prefer looking at the disagreeable side of things; "but
I don't think much of their play.  And as for the juveniles, there isn't
one worth his salt."

"Yes, there is," said John Hardy, who seldom spoke; but when he did open
his mouth, generally did so to the purpose.  "That young fellow James
Black is first-class both at batting and bowling.  I've watched him many
a time.  He ought to have been in the eleven long ago."

"Do you think so?" said Sidney inquiringly.  "I'm afraid I've overlooked
him.  I'll make a note of his name, even if we don't have him with us to
play against the Inimitables."

Without much further demur, Sidney Grant proceeded to settle that he and
John Hardy should form themselves into a deputation and wait upon the
committee of the visitors' cricket club, requesting them to furnish the
assistance of the three members whom our captain had specified, to the
Little Peddlington Eleven, which would be also duly recruited from the
ranks of its junior team, not forgetting young James Black, in order to
enable them to challenge the Piccadilly Inimitables, and try to stop
their triumphal progress round the south coast.

Charley Bates objected, naturally, as might have been imagined from the
position he took at first.  He objected not only to the visitors being
asked to join our scratch team and represent the Little Peddlingtonians,
but also specially--just because John Hardy mentioned his name, and for
no other earthly reason--to the fact of young Black's being selected
from the junior eleven.  He was over-ruled, however, on both points,
much to his chagrin, as he was in the habit generally of getting his own
way by bullying the rest, and he left the meeting in the greatest
disgust, saying that he wouldn't play, and thus "make himself a party to
the disgrace that was looming over the club," in their defeat by the
Inimitables, which he confidently expected.

"He's too fond of figuring in public to care to take a back seat when we
are all in it, and bite off his nose to spite his face!" said Tom Atkins
when he went away from us in his dudgeon, shaking off the dust from his
cricketing shoes, so to speak, in testimony against us.  "Master Charley
will come round and join us when he sees we are in for the match, you
bet!"

And so he did, at the last moment.  The other members having cordially
supported the captain's several propositions, they were carried
unanimously by our quorum of four, and immediately acted upon.  Young
Black, with two other juniors, and three of the best men we could pick
out from the visitors that were at Little Peddlington for the season
that year--and there were some first-rate cricketers, too, amongst
them--made up our scratch eleven, Charley Bates relenting when he found
that we would have played without him.  And a challenge having been sent
to the Piccadilly Inimitables without delay, which they as promptly
accepted, the match was fixed to come off, on our ground, of course, on
the opening days of the ensuing week--provided, as the secretary of our
opponents' club, very offensively as we thought, added in a postscript
to his communication, the contest was not settled on the first day's
play.  But they reckoned without their host when they tackled the Little
Peddlingtonians, as you will see.

We fellows who formed the Little Peddlington Cricket Club were for the
most part studying there under a noted tutor, who prepared us for the
army, Woolwich, or India; but we admitted a few of the townspeople.

A cricket match at such a retired spot opened a field of excitement to
both residents and summer tourists alike.  Even an ordinary contest,
such as we sometimes indulged in with the Hammerton or Smithwick clubs,
or the Bognor garrison, would have aroused considerable interest in the
vicinity of Little Peddlington; but when it became known that we were
going to play the celebrated Piccadilly Inimitables, who had licked
Lancashire and Yorkshire, and almost every county eleven they had met in
their cricketing tour from the north to the south of England, there was
nothing else talked about from one end of our seaside town to the other,
the news spreading to the adjacent hamlets, and villages beyond, until
it reached the cathedral city twenty miles away.

Under these circumstances it cannot be wondered at that when Monday, the
opening day of the match--which turned out beautifully fine for a
wonder, as it always rained on the very slightest provocation at Little
Peddlington--arrived, there was such a crowd of carriages and drags,
filled to their utmost capacity, as to astonish even the memory of that
far-famed individual "the oldest inhabitant."  These were drawn up in a
sort of semicircle around our cricket ground--a charmingly situated spot
with a very wide area, and nicely sheltered by rows of waving elms from
the hot August sun--and besides the "carriage folk," as the rustics
termed them, came on foot everybody in the neighbourhood, besides all
Little Peddlington itself.

The Piccadilly Inimitables arrived early in the morning, having stopped
overnight at Brighton, where they had scored their last victory over the
Sussex eleven, and which place was not so remote from Little Peddlington
as you might suppose, consequently we were able to commence the match in
good time, and as our club won the toss for first innings we buckled to
at once for the fray, sending in John Hardy, who had the reputation with
us of being a "sticker," and the grumbling Charley Bates, to the wickets
punctually at eleven o'clock.

The bowling at the beginning was rather shady, the Inimitables not being
accustomed to the ground, which our batsmen, of course, were perfectly
familiar with; so runs got piled on in a way that raised our hopes
pretty considerably, especially when Sidney Grant took Charley Bates's
place--that worthy having in his second over skied a ball that was
immediately caught, sending him out for five runs, two singles and a
three, or two more than he had totalled in his last match.

It was a sight to see Sidney as he cut and drove the slow and fast
bowlers of our opponents' team for four almost every over; whilst John
Hardy backed him up ably by remaining, as he was instructed, strictly on
the defensive, and blocking every ball that came at all near his wicket
Sidney was the run-getter; he had simply to run.

We had scored thirty-eight for the loss of only one wicket, and the
captain seemed to be well set and good to make the century--as he had
done a month before in our match with the Smithwick Club--when a new
bowler went on at the lower end of the ground, and "a change came over
the spirit of our dream."

"I don't like the way that chap walks up to the wicket," said Tom Atkins
to me.  "I saw him taking Sidney's measure when he was serving as long-
stop, and if he doesn't play carefully, he'll bowl him out almost with
his first ball."

"Not he," said I sanguinely.  "He seems too confident."

"Ah well! we'll see," replied Tom.

That new bowler was something awful.  He sent in the balls at such a
pace that they came on the wicket like battering-rams, and their twist
was so great that they would pitch about a mile off and appear to be
wides, when all of a sudden they would spin in on a treacherous curve,
right on to a fellow's leg-stump.  John Hardy stood them well enough,
blocking away with a calm sense of duty, and never attempting to strike
one.  But poor Sidney lost his head in a very short time, and hitting
out wildly at what he thought was a short ball, it rose right over the
shoulder of his bat and carried off his bails in the neatest manner
possible--two wickets for forty-one runs, as the captain had only
managed to put on three runs since that fiend in human form had come on
to bowl.

Of course there was a wild shout of victory from the Inimitables when
our best bat was disposed of, and corresponding woe in our camp, which
was sympathisingly shared in by all the Little Peddlingtons around, and
in the midst of the excitement I went to the wicket to fill the lamented
vacancy.

"Mind, Jack," said Sidney, who did not allow the sense of defeat to
overcome his duty, "and be certain to play those balls well back.  It
was all through my stepping out to them that caused my collapse.  Only
be cautious and take things coolly, and you and Prester John will tire
him out."

"Oh, yes," sneered Charley Bates, whose temper had not been improved by
his getting out for five, when, in spite of his assurances of the
superiority of our antagonists, he had looked forward to getting the
highest score against them,--"Oh, yes.  Tire him out!  Why, the chap
hasn't got into the use of his arm yet.  He'll send Jack Limpet's stumps
flying presently.  But I shall laugh when Tom Atkins faces his balls!
Our comic man won't have anything to joke about then, I'll warrant."

He was a nasty fellow that Charley Bates!  I don't know anything more
ungenerous than to try and dishearten a fellow just when he is going to
the wicket, and knows what a responsibility he has resting on him!  But,
then, what can you expect from such a chap?  I'm glad he got out for
five.  I wish he had been bowled for nix.

With these pleasant thoughts in my mind I walked leisurely up the
ground, from where I had been standing by the scoring tent watching the
game, and with an inward sinking at my heart faced the "Slogger," as we
had christened our opponents' terrible bowler.

For a couple of overs I got on very well.  Acting on the captain's
advice I stopped in my own ground, playing all the Slogger's balls
carefully back, and by this means managed to score two good leg hits in
the fourth over, that sent up six to my account, in addition to three
singles, which I had put on by careful watchfulness at first.

Just then, however, Prester John made a hit for a wonder--a straight
drive for five; and fired with emulation I let out at the next ball I
received.  Throwing all caution and the captain's commands to the winds,
I did "let out with a vengeance," as Tom Atkins said on my return to the
tent, for I "let in" the ball, which, coming in with a swish, snapped my
leg-stump in two, sending the pieces flying sky high in the air!

Three wickets for fifty-seven runs, two for byes; so far, the scoring
was not bad; but in a very short time Pelion was piled on Ossa in the
history of our disasters.  Prester John got run out through the absurd
folly of Tom Atkins, who stopped actually in mid-wicket to laugh at some
nonsense or other that had at that moment flashed across the vision of
what he called his "mind;" and with his fall our chances sank rapidly to
zero, wicket after wicket being taken without a run being scored, until
the whole of us were out for a total still under sixty.

It was maddening!  But what annoyed John Hardy even more than that ass
Tom Atkins having run him out was that the captain had never given young
James Black any opportunity of showing his batting skill, as, being
persuaded by Charley Bates, who pooh-poohed the youngster's abilities
_in toto_, he had only sent him in as "last-man," and Black hadn't, of
course, the chance of playing a ball.  Sidney, however, promised to
right the matter in our second innings, should our opponents give us
time to play one, and not occupy the wickets, as seemed very probable,
for the two days over which the match could only extend: and with this
promise Prester John and his protege, young Jemmy Black, were fain to be
content.

The three recruits we had engaged from amongst the visitors to join our
scratch eleven had, up to the present, done nothing to warrant our
captain's encomiums on their skill--at least in the batting line, which
they had only essayed as yet; it remained to be proved whether they were
worth anything in the field; if not, then our chances of receiving a
hollow licking were uncommonly bright, as Charley Bates pointed out with
his customary cheerful irony.

Well, after luncheon, when we entertained them in the most hospitable
manner, as if we loved them instead of feeling sentiments the reverse of
amicable towards them, the Inimitables went in for their first innings;
and the way they set to work scoring from the moment they commenced to
handle the bat, prognosticated that Charley Bates' evil surmise as to
our defeat would be speedily realised.

I think I have already hinted that I somewhat prided myself on my
bowling, being celebrated amongst the members of the Little Peddlington
Cricket Club for sending in slows of such a judicious pitch that they
generally got the man caught out who attempted to drive them, while,
should he contemptuously block them, they had such an underhand twist
that they would invariably run into the wickets, although they mightn't
seem to have strength to go the distance?  From this speciality of mine
I was looked upon as a tower of strength in the bowling line to the
club; and, consequently, I and one of our visitor recruits, Tomkins by
name, were intrusted with the ball at the first start.

Tomkins bowled swift with a pretty fair pitch, and I bowled slow, dead
on to the wicket every time; but the two men of the Inimitables who
began the batting on their side-men who have gained almost a European
reputation in the handling of the willow, and I wouldn't like to hurt
their feelings by mentioning their names now--seemed to play with us as
they liked, hitting the ball to every part of the ground, and scoring
threes and fours, and even sixes, in the most demoralising manner
possible.  They hadn't been in a quarter of an hour when they passed our
miserable total, amidst the cheers of their own party--in which the
fickle Little Peddlingtonians now joined, and the blue looks of our
men--and it appeared as if their scoring would, like Tennyson's brook,
"go on for ever."

"We must put a stop to this," said Sidney, when seventy went up on the
scoring-board, "and change the bowling," which he did, by going on
himself at my end and putting one of the other visitors, who was also
supposed to be a dab with the ball, in the place of Tomkins.

For a time, this did a little good, as it stopped the rapidity of the
scoring; but after an over or two, the batsmen, neither of whom had been
yet displaced, began putting up the runs again, even quicker than they
had done with us; and the hundred was passed almost within the hour from
the time they started.

"By George, Limpet," said the captain, calling me to him out of the
field, "you must go on again at the upper end, changing places with that
chap.  Try a full pitch, and we'll catch that long-legged beggar out;
he's so confident now that he would hit at anything."

Going on again, as Sidney had directed, I tried a full-pitched ball
after a short delivery or two, and the "long-legged beggar" skied it,
amidst the breathless suspense of our team.

Unfortunately, however, no one was there to catch it when it fell to the
ground a long way beyond cover-point, and the Inimitables scored six for
it--disgusting!

"That Atkins deserves to be expelled the club!" said the captain in a
rage.  "He can't put on a bit of steam when it's necessary to use his
legs, although he could run Prester John out for a ball that wasn't
worth moving for.  Play!"  And the game went on again.

Giving my opponent another brace of short balls to take him off his
guard, I watched my opportunity again and treated him again to a full
one, which he skied, as before, to the same point.

This time, however, he did not escape scatheless.  Young Black, whom I
had strangely missed from his position at long-stop since I commenced to
bowl the over, stepped out from beneath the shadow of the trees, where
he had concealed himself in the meantime, and amidst the ringing
plaudits, not only of our lot but of the spectators as well--who turned
round in our favour at the first breath of success--caught the ball with
the utmost _sangfroid_, sending it a moment afterwards spinning in the
air triumphantly, in the true cricketonian manner, as an acknowledgment
of the feat and accompanying cheers.

It wasn't much to brag of, getting out the long-limbed one, as it was
only one wicket for one hundred and seventeen runs; but when the second
man went shortly after without increasing the score, our hopes began to
rise.  They were hopes based on sand, however.  The two newcomers began
making runs just like their predecessors, and completely mastered the
bowling.

Every member of the club had now been tried with the ball, besides the
three visitors, who certainly bowled fairly well, but nothing
hysterically brilliant.  Even Charley Bates had a turn, although I don't
believe he had ever hit the wicket in his life; and on his surrendering
the ball, after presenting our opponents with three wides and any number
of byes, our captain was at his wits' end.  He didn't know who he could
set on to bowl.

"Try young Black," suggested Hardy at this juncture, when we were having
a short interval of rest from our exhilarating game of leather-hunting,
which had now been going on for two hours and more.

"Young Black, indeed!" repeated Charley Bates with intense scorn.

"Well," said Prester John, "he can't possibly do worse than you."

And the remark was so painfully true that even Charley could not but see
the point of it, and he said no more.

On being called, Jemmy Black came up with a broad grin on his face,
which looked exactly like one of those public-house signs you sometimes
see in country villages, of "The Rising Sun," or "The Sun in Splendour."
He was otherwise a dapper little fellow, although scarcely five feet in
height, and strongly built, his legs and arms being very muscular.

He endeavoured to receive with proper gravity and dignity the ball from
Sidney, who gave him a few words of appropriate advice, but he failed
utterly in the attempt.  That grin would not leave his face: it was as
much a part of his physiognomy as his nose, I believe!

Little chap as he was, however, his advent produced a change at once.
His first three overs were maidens, balls that were dead on to the
wicket, and so true and ticklish that the Inimitable champions did not
dare to play them.  In the next, bang went one of the two stickers' leg-
stump at young Black's first ball; with the second he caught and bowled
the fresh man who came in, before he scored at all--four wickets for a
hundred and fifty runs, not one of which had been put on since he came
on to bowl.  Things began to look up, or, at all events, did not appear
in so sombre a light as they had done previously.

"Bravo, Black!" resounded from every part of the field; but the little
fellow took no notice of the applause, beyond grinning more widely than
ever, "his mouth stretching from ear to ear," as Charley Bates said,
green with envy and jealousy of the other's performance.

The new bowler seemed to demoralise the batsmen even as they had
previously demoralised us, for I had a bit of luck a little further on,
taking one wicket by a low-pitched ball, and getting another man out
with a catch; and then Black, as if he had been only playing with the
Inimitables hitherto, braced himself up to the struggle, and began
laying the stumps low right and left.

It was a wonder that such a small chap could send in the balls at the
terrific speed he did, balls that set leg-guards and pads at defiance,
and splintered one of the batsmen's spring-handled bats as if it had
been match wood; but he did it.

His last over in that first innings of the Inimitables, however, was the
crowning point in his victorious career.  With four consecutive balls he
took the four last wickets of our opponents, and sent them off the
ground without putting up a run--the whole eleven being out for one
hundred and fifty-six runs--or not quite the century beyond us; and the
principal feature of Black's triumph was, that from the moment he
handled the leather, the Inimitables only scored six to the good, but
one run of which was off his bowling.

I should like you to beat that analysis, if you can!

With the disposal of our antagonists so easily at the end, we began our
second innings with more sanguine expectations than could have been
imagined from our previous prostration.

"Black had better go in as first man along with you, Hardy, and see what
he can do," our captain said.

The two accordingly went to the wickets at the beginning of the innings;
and there they remained without giving a single chance until the
conclusion of the day's play, when the stumps were drawn at seven
o'clock in the evening.

Young Black had scored by that time no less than eighty off his own bat,
and Hardy forty-one, after being in to their own cheek exactly as long
as the Inimitables' whole innings lasted.  It was glorious, one hundred
and eighteen without the loss of a wicket, and the bowling and fielding
must have been good, as there were only seven extras all that long while
our men had been in.  Why, that placed us thirty-one runs to the good at
the close of the first day's play.  Who would have thought it?

The next morning play began as punctually as on the first day, and the
crowd to witness the match was even greater than before, many coming now
who had stayed away previously, expecting our wholesale defeat in one
innings; and "young Ebony," as Black was called affectionately, and
Prester John resumed their places at the wickets amidst the tremendous
cheering from the whole of the hamlet and twenty miles round.

The bowlers of the Inimitables were on their metal now if they never
were; but they bowled, and changed their bowling, in vain, for young
Jemmy Black continued his brilliant hitting without any cessation, while
Prester John remained on the defensive, except some very safe ball
tempted him, until our score turned the two hundred in our second
innings.

Prester John here retired by reason of his placing a ball in short-
slip's hands; but on our captain taking his place and facing Black, the
run-getting went steadily on until we were considerably a hundred over
our antagonists.  Young Black had not given a chance, save one close
shave of a run out, when he got clean bowled for one hundred and fifty-
one.  Fancy that; and off such first-class bowling, too!

It was as much as Hardy and I could do to prevent him being torn in
pieces by the excited spectators, who rushed in _en masse_ when he
abandoned the wicket he had defended so well, his face all the time
expanding into one huge grin, which appeared to convert it into all
mouth and nothing else.

Sidney and I, and one or two others, scored well, although nothing like
what our two champion stickers had done; and the whole of our second
innings terminated for two hundred and eighty-eight runs, thus leaving
the Inimitables no less than a hundred and ninety-one to get to tie us,
and one more to win.  I fancy that was something like a feather in the
cap of the Little Peddlington Cricket Club, although it was all owing to
young Jemmy Black, whose bowling, when the Inimitables went in to make
their final effort, was on a par with his magnificent batting.  We had
finished our second innings just before lunch time; so immediately after
that meal the great travelling team, who were going to do such wonders
when they came to annihilate the Little Peddlingtonians--I can't help
crowing a little now it is all over--went to the wickets to finish the
match, or spin it out, if they could, so that it might end in a draw.

Young Black was all there, however, and so was I, too, for, whether by
his example or what, I know not, I never bowled so well before or since
in my life.  Really, between us two, and the efficient assistance of our
fieldsmen, who seemed also spurred up to extra exertions, even Charley
Bates and Tom Atkins distinguishing themselves for their quickness of
eye and fleetness of foot, the Piccadilly Inimitables got all put out
long before time was called, for the inglorious total of our own first
innings--fifty-nine.  Hurrah!

We had conquered by a hundred and thirty-two runs, and licked the most
celebrated amateur club in England.  It would be a vain task to try and
recount our delighted surprise, so I'll leave it alone.  Thenceforward
the rest of the chronicles of the Little Peddlington Cricket Club are
they not written in gold?  At all events, I know this, that we never
forgot what happened to us in that ever-memorable match, with only "Our
Scratch Eleven."






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