on board. “My dear fellow, I’m so glad we’ve overtaken you,” he began. “Your friend, Mrs Skyscraper, and those young ladies with her, were so anxious to have another cruise on board the ‘Frolic’ before the summer is over, that I consented to bring them down here, as I made sure that you would be delighted to see them!” Never did Hearty’s face assume a more puzzled and vexed expression. “Heaven defend me from them!” he exclaimed. “Tell them that we’ve got the yellow-fever – or the plague, or the cholera, or the measles, or the whooping-cough, or any thing dreadful you can think of; make every excuse – or no excuse; the thing is impossible, not to be thought of for a moment: they can’t come. We are bound foreign, say to the North Pole, or the West Indies, or the coast of Africa, or the South Pacific, or to the Antipodes. They don’t want to go there, at all events, I suppose.”
“But if you don’t take them, what am I to do with them?” exclaimed O’Wiggins. “I’m bound down Channel, and if they don’t worry me out of house and home, they’ll drive me overboard with the very clatter of their tongues.”
A bright thought struck Hearty. Just then the “Sea Eagle” came up, and hove-to on our quarter.
“Much obliged to you for your kind intentions towards us, but, instead, just hand them over to Drummore,” said he, rubbing his hands. “If any man can manage so delicate an affair, you can, O’Wiggins, without wishing to pay you an undue compliment.”
Sir Charles Drummore was a baronet, one of our yachting acquaintances, and had lately purchased the “Sea Eagle.” A worthy old fellow, though he had the character of being somewhat of a busybody. He certainly looked more in his place in his club than on board his yacht. “Well, I’ll try it,” answered the O’Wiggins, who was himself easily won by the very bait he offered so liberally to others. “Trust me, I’ll do it if mortal man can. I’ll weave a piteous tale of peerless damsels in distress, and all that sort of thing. Thank you for the hint; it will take, depend on it.”
“Well, be quick about it,” we exclaimed, “or Drummore will be topping his boom, and you will miss your chance.” Thereon O’Wiggins tumbled into his boat, and pulled aboard the “Sea Eagle.” What story he told – what arguments he used – we never heard; but very shortly we had the satisfaction of seeing the Misses Rattler and Mary Masthead, with their skittish chaperone, Mrs Skyscraper, transferred to the deck of the “Sea Eagle.”
We strongly suspected that the prim baronet had not the slightest conception as to who formed the component parts of the company with whom he was to be favoured. He bowed rather stiffly as he received them and their bandboxes on deck; but he was in for it; his gallantry would not allow him to send them back to the “Popple,” and he had, therefore, only to wish sincerely for a fair breeze, that he might land them as speedily as possible at Ryde. The O’Wiggins waved his cap with an extra amount of vehemence, and putting up his helm, and easing off his sheets, stood away for Falmouth. We, at the same time, shaped a course down Channel, mightily glad that we were free of all fast young ladies and flirting widows.
“O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free,
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home!”
spouted Carstairs, pointing to the wide Atlantic which rolled before us.
“The sea, the sea, the open sea! —
The wide, the blue, the ever free;
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth’s wide region round!
I’m on the sea —
I am where I would ever be:
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe’er I go,”
chimed in Hearty, whose quotations and sketches were always from authors of more modern date.
“You’ll sing different songs to those, gentlemen, if it comes on to blow a gale of wind while we are crossing the Bay,” said Porpoise, laughing. “The sea always puts me in mind of a woman, very delightful when she’s calm and smiling, but very much the contrary when a gale is blowing. I’ve knocked about all my life at sea, and have got pretty tired of storms, which I don’t like a bit better than when I first went afloat.”
“Never fear for us,” answered Hearty. “I never was in a storm in my life, and I want to see how the ‘Frolic’ will behave.”
“As to that, I dare say she will behave well enough,” said Porpoise. “There’s no craft like a cutter for lying-to, or for beating off a lee-shore; or working through a narrow channel, for that matter, though a man-of-war’s man says it. We have the credit of preferring our own square-rigged vessels to all others, and not knowing how to handle a fore-and-after.”
“Come what may, we’ll trust to you to do the best which can be done under any chances which may occur,” said Hearty. “And now here comes Ladle to summon us to dinner.” To dinner we went, and a good one we ate, and many a good one after it. Many a joke was uttered, many a story told, and many a song was sung. In truth, the days slipped away more rapidly even than on shore.
“Well, after all, I can’t say that there is much romance in a sea-life,” exclaimed Carstairs, stretching out his legs, as he leaned back in an arm-chair on deck, and allowed the smoke of his fragrant Havana to rise curling over his upturned countenance, for there was very little wind at the time, and from what there was we were running away.
“I can’t quite agree with you on that point: there is romance enough at sea, as well as everywhere else, if people only know how to look for it,” observed Will Bubble, who had been scribbling away most assiduously all the morning in a large note-book which he kept carefully closed from vulgar eyes!
“Oh, I know, of course, ‘Books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing,’” answered Carstairs, who was seldom at a loss for a quotation from Shakespeare. “But I mean, who ever meets a good, exciting, romantic adventure with pirate-smugglers, savages, or some thing of that sort? Perhaps you, Bubble, have got something of that sort in your book there which you will give us, but then it will be only fiction: I want a stern reality. The world has grown too matter-of-fact to keep a fellow awake.”
“I’ll own to the soft impeachment,” answered Bubble, laughing. “But my story’s real; I’ve been merely putting some notes into form for our amusement, and I hope all hands will be duly grateful.” We all thanked Bubble for his promise.
“I cannot agree with you, in any way, as to there being no romance in a sea-life,” said I. “Only last year I took part in a very pretty little bit of romance, which would have made the fortune of any paper into which it had been allowed to find its way; but for the sake of the actors we kept the affair a profound secret, or you would certainly have heard of it.”
“Let’s have it all out now,” exclaimed Hearty; “we won’t peach: we’ll be as tight as the ‘Frolic’ herself.”
“I wouldn’t trust you in the club,” said I. “But, out here, I don’t think it will go beyond the bulwarks, so you shall hear my story.” While the rest of our party sat round, and drew, or netted, or smoked, I gave an account of the incident to which I alluded. As it is an important introduction to our subsequent adventures, it is, I feel, well worthy of a chapter to itself.
Chapter Ten
