his cap to Martyn, who touched his in return.
“Everything ready for getting under weigh, Mr. Tarleton?”
“Everything quite ready, sir.”
“Then shorten the chain a bit; man the capstan.”
Jack Tarleton gave the order. Tom Burdett’s boatswain’s whistle rang out loudly; the capstan-bars were already fixed, and a dozen men ran merrily round with it till the whistle sounded again.
“The anchor is short, sir,” Tarleton sang out to Martyn.
“Very well, leave her so, Mr. Tarleton. Will you make sail, Mr. Miller?”
The orders were given, the mainsail, foresail, and fore-staysail hoisted, and the jibs run out on the bowsprit. As soon as the halliards were belayed and coiled down, the capstan-bars were manned again, and the anchor weighed. The tide had just turned to run out, there was a gentle breeze blowing, and as the two jibs were run up the Creole began to steal through the water.
“Port your helm!” Martyn said to the man at the wheel; “let her come round easy. Slack off the main-sheet; that will do now. Get her topsails on her, Mr. Miller.”
Horace looked up with a feeling of pride and delight at the cloud of white sail and at the smart active crew, all in duck trousers, blue shirts, and red caps. Once out of the river the sheets were hauled in, the yards of the fore-topsail were braced as much fore and aft as they would stand, and the Creole turned her head seaward, looking, as Martyn said, almost into the wind’s eye. The red ensign was flying from the peak of the mainsail, and from the mast-head a long pennant bearing her name.
“She is slipping through the water rarely, Miller,” Will Martyn said, as he looked over the side.
“Yes, she is going six knots through it, and that, considering how close-hauled she is and that the wind is light, is wonderful.”
“She would go a good knot faster,” Martyn said, “if she had fifty tons of that stuff out of her. Those slavers know how to build, and no mistake, and I don’t think they ever turned out a better craft than this.”
It was not until late in the afternoon that the Creole dropped anchor off the magazine, where she was to take in her powder, as Martyn ran her out twenty miles to sea and back again to stretch her ropes and, as he said, let things shape down a bit. When the trip was over there was not a man on board but was in the state of the highest satisfaction with the craft. Both close-hauled on the way out and free on her return they had passed several vessels almost as if these had been standing still, going three feet to their two; and although there was but little sea on, there was enough to satisfy them that she had no lack of buoyancy, even in her present trim.
As soon as the anchor was down and the sails stowed Marco announced that dinner was ready, for all had been too much interested in the behaviour of the schooner to think of going down for lunch. It was the first meal that they had taken on board beyond a crust of bread and cheese in the middle of the day, and as they sat down, Will Martyn taking the head of the table, Horace, as his father’s representative, facing him, and the others at the sides, Miller said with a laugh, as he looked at the appointments, all of which had been sent over from the house two days before by Zaimes: “This is rather a contrast, Martyn, to the cockpit of a man-of-war.”
“Rather. I never did dine with an admiral, but this is the sort of thing that I have always fancied it would be if it had entered into the head of one to invite me. What do you think, Tarleton?”
“I feel shy at present, sir, and as if I oughtn’t to speak till spoken to.”
“You will be spoken to pretty sharply if you say ‘sir’ down below. On deck, as we agreed, we would have things in man-of-war fashion; but we are not going to have anything of that sort when we are below together.”
The dinner was an excellent one, and though the expectations of Miller and Tarleton had been raised by Martyn’s encomiums of the Greek’s cooking they were far surpassed by the reality. “It is a dinner fit for a king,” Martyn said when the cloth was cleared away and a decanter of port placed on the table.
“There is one misfortune in it. If this sort of thing is going to last we shall never be fit for service in an ordinary craft again, we shall become Sybarites. Is this the sort of dinner you always have at home, Horace?”
“About the same, I think,” Horace laughed. “My father takes no exercise and has not much appetite, and I think he likes nice things; and it is one of the Greek’s great aims in life to tempt him to eat. We always have a very good cook, but Zaimes insists on having a few little things of his own cooking on the table, and as he is generally at war with the cook, and they leave in consequence about every three or four months, he often has the dinner altogether in his hands till a fresh one arrives, and I am amused sometimes to see how Zaimes fidgets when my father, which is often the case, is so occupied with his own thoughts that he eats mechanically and does not notice what is before him. Zaimes stands it for a minute or two and then asks some question or makes some observation that calls my father’s attention back to what he is doing. They have both been with him for two-and-twenty years and are devoted to him. They are hardly like English servants, and talk to him in a way English servants would not think of doing. They are always perfectly respectful, you know, but they regard themselves, as he regards them, as friends as well as servants.”
“Well, gentlemen, we will drink the usual toast, ‘The King, God bless him;’ that is duty. Now fill up again, here is ‘Success to the Creole.’” When the toast was drank Martyn went on:
“How did your father pick them up, Horace?”
“It was just after he went out to Greece, which was directly after he left college. He was at Samos, and got leave from the Turkish governor to visit the prison. In one of the cells were Zaimes and Marco, who was then a boy about sixteen. They were condemned to death; they had been smuggling, and a Turkish boat had overhauled them. They had resisted. Four of the men with them had been killed in the fight, and several of the Turks. These two had been both severely wounded and made prisoners. My father was new to that sort of thing then. After he had been a year or two in Greece he knew that it would take a king’s fortune to buy out all the prisoners in the Turkish jails, but being only out there a month or two he was touched at the sight of the two prisoners. They were both very handsome, though, of course, pale and pulled down by their wounds and imprisonment, and Zaimes, who was the spokesman, had that courteous gentle manner that my father says all the Greeks have when they are not excited.”
“At any rate he was very much interested and went off to the governor again, and the Turk was glad enough for a bribe of a hundred pounds to give him an order for the release of the two prisoners, on condition that they were to be let out after dark and at once put on board a craft that was sailing at daybreak next morning. My father went with them, and after that they absolutely refused to leave him, and travelled with him in Greece for some time and fought very pluckily when some Klepts once tried to carry him away into the mountains. Then he bought a small craft and established his head-quarters at Mitylene, and for a year lived there and cruised about the islands. When he came home he offered the felucca to them, but they refused to take it, and begged so hard for him to take them home with him that he agreed to do so, and they have proved invaluable to him ever since.”
“Your father is lucky in having got hold of two such men,” Martyn said. “I believe the lower order of Greeks are fine fellows in their way. They are quarrelsome and passionate, no doubt, and apt to whip out their knives at the smallest provocation, and there is no trade they take so kindly to as that of a bandit; otherwise I believe they are honest hardworking fellows. But as for the upper class of Greeks, the less I have to
