The Ghost Ship Part 35

All this took a long time; and then, having had enough and to spare of fighting and bloodshed, and tired of mining too, I disposed of my interest in the Gondifera mine, and at last sailed for Europe, bidding a long adieu to Venezuela and everything belonging to it, my journey home being hastened by a somewhat tenderer letter than usual from Elsie, who had read a paragraph in the papers about my having been wounded at the battle of San Sebastien, though, of course, I had not mentioned anything about the affair to her or my mother, as it was a mere flea bite and of no consequence, and I feared to have alarmed them needlessly had I said anything about it in my letters to them at home.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

HOME AT LAST!

Fellows who knock about the world sailoring and so on, cannot help coming to the conclusion that its compa.s.s is narrower than stay-at-home folk might be inclined to believe, for you can hardly stir a step without knocking across some one whom you previously imagined to have been miles and miles away, separated, perhaps, by an ocean from yourself.

I had scarcely stepped into the train from Southampton, bound Londonwards, _en route_ for Liverpool, having only landed from the mail steamer that brought me direct all the way from Colon that very morning, when whom should I see looking at me from the opposite corner of the railway carriage but a big, bushy-haired, brown-bearded man whom I did not know from Adam.

"Faith," exclaimed this gentleman, after a moment's scrutiny, a broad grin lighting up his face and his eyes twinkling with a comical expression that would alone have made me recognise him, had I not heard his delightful, to me at any rate, Irish brogue, "ye're ayther d.i.c.k Haldane or the divvle!" stretching out both hands to grasp mine.

I was as pleased to see him, as may readily be believed, as the genial Irishman was to see me, I was sure, even without his telling me so.

"Well," said I, after we had pretty nigh wrung each other's hands off in friendly greeting, "and how are you all getting on aboard the dear old barquey? I want to hear about everybody."

"Begorrah, d.i.c.k, give me toime to recover me bre'th, me bhoy, an' thin I'll till ye ivverythin'," and then he continued in a bashful sort of way, unlike his usual off-hand manner, "I've lift the say for good, an'

sit up for a docther ash.o.r.e on me own hook, faith."

"Why!" I exclaimed in great surprise, "how's that?"

"Bedad, you'd betther axe y'r sister."

"What! my sister Janet?"

"Faith, yis; the very same little darlint of a colleen. d.i.c.k, ye spalpeen, jist lit me shake y'r fist agin, lad. I'm the happiest man in the wurrld!"

"Whee-e-e-e-eew," I whistled through my teeth. "This is indeed a surprise!"

Then it all came out, Garry telling a long yarn about his calling at my mother's house to ask about me some few months back, and meeting there Elsie, whom he had no difficulty in identifying, he said, as "the little girl of the ghost-s.h.i.+p," though she had grown a bit taller and was more good-looking than he remembered her at the time he saw her on board the _Saint Pierre_. But, good-looking as she was, he did not think her to be compared to my sister Janet, with whom he had evidently fallen in love at first sight and very deeply so, too!

On his subsequently declaring his pa.s.sion, impetuous as usual, after a very short acquaintance, my mother insisted as a first step to entertaining his suit that he should leave the sea, as he had another profession by which he was quite capable of supporting a wife as well as himself, if he so pleased.

"Faith, and I wint an' bought a practis' at onst, havin' a snig little sum stowed away in the bank," continued Garry, "the savin's of me pay for the last five year an' more, besides that money we all got for salvagin' the French s.h.i.+p, sure, of which I nivver spint a ha'poth. But aven thin, d.i.c.k, ould chap, yer dear ould mother wern't satisfied, bless her ould heart. She sid that yer sisther an' mesilf wu'ld have to wait to git marri'd till you came home, ye spalpeen; an' not thin aven, if so be as how ye'd turn nasty an' disagreyable, an' refuse yer consint.

Faith, ye won't now, will ye? or, bedad, I'll be afther breakin' ivvrey bone in y'r body, avic, an' thin have to plasther ye up ag'in."

To avoid such a terrible contingency I there and then gave my hearty consent to the arrangement he and Janet, with my mother's concurrence, had thus planned without my knowledge; although, really, if I had been inclined to grumble at not being informed previously of what now so unexpectedly transpired, I had only time and distance to blame, not the parties concerned, for the engagement was of so recent a date that the news of it, though on the way through the post, had not reached Venezuela when I left.

After I had answered a lot of Garry O'Neil's questions concerning myself and the time I had pa.s.sed in South America, speaking, too, of poor Colonel Vereker, whose death he had learnt from my mother, I began again, asking in my turn all about my old s.h.i.+pmates, and, of course, his own also.

"Faith, the skipper is foine and flouris.h.i.+n'," he informed me, "an' the ould barquey as good an' as sound as ivver she was. Do you ricollict ould Stokes?"

"Of course I do," I said. "Is he still chief?"

"No, no; he retired a year ago or more on a pinsion which the company gave him for his long service; an' little Grummet--ye rimimber him?-- well, he's promoted, sure, to ould Stokes' billet. The ould chap, though, is alive an' hearty, an' as asthamataky as ivver!"

"What's become of Mr Fosset?"

"Och, be jabbers! he's a big man now. He's a skipper on his own hook, jist loike Cap'en Applegarth. He's got the ould _Fairi Quane_, the sicond best boat but one to the line. D'ye ricollict that ould thaife of a bo'sun we had on the _Star of the North_?"

"Why, you must mean poor old Masters! I should think I did."

"That same, alannah. He wasn't a bad sort of chap, an' a good sayman, ivvry inch of him, though I used for to call him an ould thaife just 'for fun an' fancy'--as the old song says--well, he's lift the ould barquey an' gone with Cap'en Fosset in the _Fairi Quane_. But ye haven't axed me onst afther yer ould fri'nd Spokeshave! Sure, now, ye haven't forgot little 'Conky,' faith!"

"No, indeed," said I, amused at his query and the funny wink that accompanied it. "What has become of that spiteful little beggar?"

"Begorrah, ye'll laugh an' be amused, but he's marri'd to a wife as big as one of thim grannydeers we onst took in the ould barquey to Bermuda, d'ye rimimber? Faith, she's saix feet hoigh, an' broad in the b'ame in propors.h.i.+'n. They make a purty couple, bedad! an' they do say she kapes him in order. Do ye rickolict what an argufyin' chap Spokeshave was aboard?"

"I should think I did, indeed," replied I. "I think he was the most cantankerous little beast I ever came across in my life, either afloat or ash.o.r.e!"

"Faith, ye wouldn't say that same now, d.i.c.k," rejoined Garry with much earnestness. "The poor little beggar's as make as a cat, for he daren't call his sowl his own!"

I asked after some of the other men belonging to my old s.h.i.+p, including Accra Prout, whom the colonel wished to accompany us to Venezuela, the mulatto refusing on the plea that, though he should always love his "old ma.s.sa," he could not go with him for one insurmountable reason.

"Guess I'd hav' 'sociate wid dem tam black raskels daan thaar, ma.s.sa, an' dis chile no like dat nohow. I'se nebbah 'sparrage my famerly by 'sociatin' wid n.i.g.g.ahs, ma.s.sa, nebbah. De Prouts 'long good old plantation stock, an' raise in Lousianner!"

This supercilious autocrat, it must be borne in mind, all the time being more than half a negro himself, though, for that matter, his heart was better and his disposition braver than many a white man who would have despised his coloured skin.

Some of the other hands about whom I inquired had left the old barquey and s.h.i.+pped aboard other vessels, so Garry told me; but at this I was not much surprised, sailors as a rule being fond of change and very unconservative in their habits.

With suchlike conversation my old mess-mate and I beguiled our long railway journey to Liverpool, which we reached the same evening, but before we had quite exhausted our respective questions and answers respecting everybody we had ever met or known during the time he and I had been to sea together.

My meeting with my dear mother and sister after so long an absence abroad can be well imagined, and so too my first interview with Elsie, whom I should hardly have known again, for how can I describe her beauty and grace, and though I had been prepared in some measure from accounts my mother had sent me, still they exceeded my expectations.

It would be impossible if I tried to picture her for "a month of Sundays," as Captain Applegarth used to say on board the old barquey when he thought a fellow spent too much time over a job.

So to make a long story short and to avoid all further explanation, it need only be added that one fine day last summer, when the trees were all green and leafy, and the flowers abloom, and happy birds filling the air with song, Elsie and I were married.

Garry O'Neil joined his lot with that of my sister at the same time, the two brides being given away respectively by the skipper, who managed to run the _Star of the North_ home in time for the wedding, and old Mr Stokes, the chief engineer of the old barquey, who had only to cross the road, instead of the Atlantic, to get to our house, as he lived near to us now--he also was present. Captain Applegarth, who was a very old friend of my mother's and a kind one too, likewise, lived in a good substantial house surrounded by a lovely garden in our pretty, picturesque, old village.

To all whom it may concern, it may, in conclusion, be mentioned that this double-barrelled affair took place in the quaint, old-fas.h.i.+oned, non-ritualistic, semi-Gothic, and many-galleried old village church, of which so few remain now in England, situated close to our cottage, and where our widowed mother had, in our childhood, taught us to lisp our first prayers to heaven, our dead father resting in the ivy-grown and flower-adorned graveyard adjoining. The nuptial knot was tied by Parson Goldwire, as everybody called him in the neighbourhood, a.s.sisted by Matthew Jacon, the equally elderly parish clerk, without whose joint ministration on the occasion neither Janet nor myself would have believed the marriage ceremony had been properly solemnised, both my sister and myself standing in much awe of the learned divine and his inseparable "double," and holding to the creed that the austere pair represented the very quintessence of orthodoxy.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

A PRESENTMENT OF THE PAST.

After Elsie and I got "spliced," to use the old familiar language of my boyhood, the expressive _argot_ of the sea, for which I shall always retain a pa.s.sionate love, only second to that I bear towards my dear wife, we set off for the Continent, having determined to spend the happy period of our honeymoon abroad, like the fine folk of the fas.h.i.+onable world with whom, though, there is little in common between us, their ways otherwise not being our ways, nor their thoughts, ambitions, hopes or desires in any respect akin to ours.

First we went up the Seine to Rouen, where I had pa.s.sed a couple of years of my school life, studying French and teaching the young scions of the Gallic race, with whom I was a.s.sociated for the time the exigencies of football, as we play the game in Lancas.h.i.+re, varied by an occasional ill.u.s.trative exhibition explanatory of the merits of _la boxe Anglaise_.

Time pa.s.sed swiftly with so sweet and sympathetic a companion; our tastes were similar, both taking the greatest delight in ancient buildings and lovely scenery; the weather, too, was charming, and altogether we were as happy as two mortals can be on this earth.

Elsie and I saw all that was to be seen in the old city we first visited, which, in addition to its architectural beauties, should have a special charm for all Englishmen from the fact of the dauntless Richard Coeur de Lion having such an affection for the town that he bequeathed it his lion heart, and then we journeyed on through _la belle Normandie_, loitering here and there at those historic spots, woven into the life of our country, spots where artists of all nations love to linger.

We stayed anon at slow, sedate Caen, as still as the stone for which it is celebrated, and that furnished the building material of Winchester Cathedral; Bayeux, boastful of its antique tapestry; and Dol and Saint Servan, and away beyond, Sainte Michel, so like and yet unlike the like- named Saint Michael's Mount of Cornwall, in our own sea-girt isle that it might have been chipped out of the same block by its grand handycraftsman to serve as a replica; until, entering brighter Bretaigne, in the sunny south of France, where the landmarks of the past seem to stand out in bolder relief, we visited Nantes and other places of interest, and jogging on thence through Angouleme and Poictiers, halting a day at Poictiers to fight our Plantagenet battles o'er again, we finally ended our pilgrimage at Bordeaux.