Flora Lyndsay Volume Ii Part 5

"Captain, I entreat you not to be so rash. Divide the quant.i.ty into four parts; add as much more water to each, and give it every four hours, and it will do good. But if you persist in administering it your way, it may be attended with very serious consequences."

"Fiddle-de-dee! Mrs. Lyndsay, I'm not going to make a toil of a pleasure. He has to take it, and once will do for all." And, in spite of her remonstrances, the obstinate old fellow went out to administer the terrible dose with his own hands to the patient. It operated as untowardly as Flora had predicted, and the lad came so near his death that the Captain grew alarmed. Perhaps his conscience tormented him not a little, for his previously harsh conduct had been the original cause of the lad's illness. So he gave up all faith in his own medical skill, and resigned the chest, and all its pernicious contents, into Flora's safe keeping.

The lad did ultimately recover from the effects of the Captain's doctoring, but he was unable to do much during the rest of the voyage, and crawled about the deck like a living skeleton.

If the Captain took little notice of him, he never treated him, or suffered others to treat him, with the brutality which had marked his former conduct towards him.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LOST JACKET, AND OTHER MATTERS.

The routine of life on board s.h.i.+p, especially on board such a small vessel as the brig _Anne_, was very dull and monotonous, when once out of sight of land. The weather, however, continued cloudless; and though, after the first week, the favourable wind which had wafted them so far over their watery path in safety deserted them, and never again filled their sails, or directed them in a straight course, they had no cause to complain. The captain grumbled at the prevalence of westerly winds; the mates grumbled, and the sailors grumbled at having to tack so often; yet the s.h.i.+p slowly and steadily continued to traverse the vast Atlantic, with the blue sky above, and the deep green sea below, both unruffled by cloud or storm. The health of both pa.s.sengers and crew continued excellent; the prentice lad, Monro, and Mrs. Lyndsay's maid, Hannah, forming the only exceptions. As to the latter, Flora soon discovered that her illness was all apocryphal. She chose to lie in her berth all day, where she was fed from the cabin table, and duly dosed with brandy-and-water by the Captain, who did not attempt to conceal his partiality for this worthless woman. At night she was always well enough to get up and dance till after midnight on the deck with the pa.s.sengers and sailors. Her conduct became a matter of scandal to the whole s.h.i.+p, and Mr. Collins complained of his brother-in-law's unprincipled behaviour in no measured terms. "But she's a bad woman, an infamous woman! Mrs. Lyndsay. You had better part with her the moment you reach land."

This Flora would gladly have done. But they had laid out so much money in her pa.s.sage and outfit, that she did not like to incur such a heavy loss. She still hoped, that when removed from the bad influence of the Captain, she would behave herself with more propriety. A sad mistake; for this woman proved a world of trouble and sorrow, as she was both weak and wicked, and her conduct after they reached Canada occasioned her much anxiety and uneasiness.

Flora remonstrated with her, but she found her insolently indifferent to her orders. "She was free," she said, "from all engagement the moment she landed in Canada. She should be a lady there, as good as other folks, and she was not going to slave herself to death as a nurse girl, tramping about with a heavy child in her arms all day. Mrs. Lyndsay could not compel her to wait upon her on board s.h.i.+p, and she might wait upon herself for what she cared."

"But how do you expect to get your living in Canada?" replied Flora.

"You must work there, or starve."

"Indeed!" said Hannah, tossing up her head. "It's not long that I shall stay in Canada. I'm going home with Captain Williams. He has promised to divorce his wife and marry me, when he gets back to Scotland."

"Marry you, and divorce his wife! the nice kind woman you saw on board the night we sailed! Can you lend a willing ear to such idle tales? He can neither divorce his wife nor marry you, poor, foolish girl--wicked, I should add, for your conduct, when your situation is taken into consideration, is an aggravation of hardened guilt."

"It's no business of yours, at any rate," sobbed Hannah, who had tears always at command. "I don't mean to lose the chance of being a lady in order to keep my word with you. You may get somebody else to wait on you and the child; I won't."

And she flounced back to her berth, and cried till the Captain went to console her.

This matter led to a serious quarrel with old Boreas. Lyndsay reproached him with tampering with his servant, and setting her against her employers, and threatened to write to Mr. Gregg and expose his conduct.

Boreas was first in a towering pa.s.sion. He bullied, and swore, and cursed the impudent jade, who, he declared, was more competent to corrupt his morals than he was to corrupt hers. That she was his mistress, he did not deny; but as to the tale of divorcing his Jean for such a ---- as her, none but a fool could believe it for a moment.

He promised, however, but very reluctantly, to conduct himself towards the girl properly for the future, and he remained as sulky and as rude as a bear to the Lyndsays for the rest of the voyage.

As to little Josey, she did not at all miss the attentions of her nurse.

On deck she found abundance of nurses, from old Bob Motion to the stately Mr. Collins, who, when off duty, carried her about in his arms, singing sea songs or Scotch ballads. Her kindest and best friend, however, was Mr. Wright, the second mate. He had been brought up a gentleman, and had served his time as mids.h.i.+pman and master on board a King's s.h.i.+p, and had been broken for some act of insubordination, which had stopped his further promotion in that quarter. He had subsequently formed an imprudent marriage with some woman much beneath himself, and had struggled for many years with poverty, sickness, and heart-breaking cares. He had, in the course of time, buried this wife and seven children, and was now alone in the world, earning his living as the second mate of the small brig, the _Anne_.

The Captain disliked him, but said, "that he was an excellent seaman, and could be depended upon." The mate was jealous of him, and thought that the Captain preferred Wright to him, and considered him the ablest man of the two. But old Boreas only hated him for being a gentleman of superior birth and breeding to himself. In speaking of him he always added--"Ah, d----n him, he's a gentleman! and writes and speaks Dic. I hate gentlemen on board s.h.i.+p!"

Mr. Wright, with his silver hair and mild pale face, was a great favourite with Flora, and while he carried Josey in his arms to and fro the deck, she listened with pleasure to the sad history of his misfortunes, or to the graphic pictures he drew of the countries he had visited during a long life spent at sea. He fancied that Josey was the image of the last dear babe he lost,--his pet and darling, whom he never mentioned without emotion--his blue-eyed Bessy. She lost her mother when she was just the age of Josey, and she used to lie in his bosom of a night, with her little white arms clasped about his neck. She was the last thing left to him on earth, and he had loved her with all his heart; but G.o.d punished him for the sin of his youth by taking Bessy from him. He was alone in the world now--a grey-haired, broken-hearted old man, with nothing to live for but the daily hope that death was nearer to him than it was the day before, and that he should soon see his angel Bessy and her poor mother again.

And so he took to Josey, and used to call her Bessy, and laugh and cry over her by turns, and was never so happy as when she was in his arms, with her little fingers twined in his long grey locks. He would dance her, and hold her over the vessel's side to look at the big green waves, as they raced past the s.h.i.+p das.h.i.+ng their white foam-wreaths against her brown ribs, and Josey would regard them with a wondering wide-open glance, as if she wanted to catch them as they glided by.

"Always towards home," as Flora said, for the westerly winds still prevailed, and they made slow progress over the world of waters.

The Captain now found it necessary to restrain the great amount of cooking constantly going on at the caboose; and as a matter of prudence, to inspect the stores of provision among the steerage pa.s.sengers. He found many of these running very low, and he represented to all on board the necessity of husbanding their food as much as possible, for he began to be apprehensive that the voyage would prove long and tedious, and the s.h.i.+p was only provided for a six weeks' voyage.

The good folks listened to him with an incredulous stare, as if such a calamity as starvation overtaking them was impossible. From that day--and they had been just three weeks out--the people were put upon short allowance of water, which was gradually diminished from day to day.

Unfortunately for the people on board, the weather was very warm, and no rain had fallen of any account since they left Scotland. Lyndsay and Flora had been greatly amused by a venture which an honest Northumbrian labourer was taking out to Canada, at which they had laughed very heartily. It was neither more nor less than nine barrels of _potatoes_, which they had told him was "_taking coals to Newcastle_." Droll as this investment of his small capital appeared, however, the hand of Providence had directed his choice. At the time when most of the food provided for the voyage was expended in the s.h.i.+p, the Captain was glad to purchase the labourer's venture at three dollars a bushel, and as each barrel contained four bushels of potatoes, the poor fellow made twenty-seven pounds of his few bushels of the "_soul-debasing root_," as Cobbett chose to style it. As he was a quiet, sensible fellow, this unhoped-for addition to his small means must have proved very useful in going into the woods. A young fellow from Glasgow, who carried out with him several large packets of kid gloves, was not half so fortunate for though they appeared a good speculation, they got spotted and spoiled by the sea water, and he could not have realised upon them the original cost.

Among the steerage pa.s.sengers there was a little tailor, and two brothers who followed the trade of the awl, who always afforded much mirth to the sailors. The little tailor, who really might have pa.s.sed for the ninth part of a man, he was so very small and insignificant, was the most aspiring man in the s.h.i.+p. Climbing seemed born in him, for it was impossible to confine him to the hold or the deck, up he most go--up to the clouds, if the mast would only have reached so high; and there he would sit or lie, with the sky above, and the sea below, as comfortable and as independent as if he were sitting crosslegged upon his board in a garret of one of the dark lofty wynds of the ancient town of Leith.

The Captain was so delighted with Sandy Rob's aspiring spirit, that he often held jocose dialogues with him from the deck.

"Hollo, Sandy! what news above there? Can't you pet.i.tion the clerk of the weather to give us a fair wind?"

"Na, Captain, I'm thinkin' it's of na use until the change o' the mune.

I'll keep a gude look out, an' gie ye the furst intelligence o' that event."

"And what keeps you broiling up there in the full blaze of the sun, Sandy? The women say that they are wanting you below."

"That's mair than I'm wantin' o' them. My pleasure's above--theirs is a'

below. I'm jist thinkin', it's better to be here basking in the broad suns.h.i.+ne, than deefened wi' a' their clavers; breathin' the caller air, than suffocated wi' the stench o' that pit o' iniquity, the hould. An'

as to wha' I'm doin' up here, I'm jest lookin' out to get the furst glint o' the blessed green earth."

"You'll be tanned as black as a n.i.g.g.e.r, Sandy, before you see the hill-tops again. If we go on at this rate, the summer will slip past us altogether."

Often during the night he would cry out, "Ho, Sandy! are you up there, man? What of the night, watchman--what of the night?"

"Steady, Captain--steady. No land yet in sight."

And Boreas would answer with a loud guffaw, "If we were in the British Channel, tailor, I'd be bound that you'd keep a good look-out for the Needle's eye."

The shoemakers, in disposition and appearance, were quite the reverse of the little tailor. They were a pair of slow coaches, heavy lumpish men, who would as soon have attempted a ride to the moon on a broomstick, as have ventured two yards up the mast. They were indefatigable eaters and smokers, always cooking, and puffing forth smoke from their short bra.s.s-lidded pipes. They never attempted a song, still less to join in the nightly dance on deck, which the others performed with such spirit, and entered into with such a keen relish, that their limbs seemed strung upon wires. They seldom spoke, but sat upon the deck looking on with listless eyes, as the rest bounded past them, revelling in the very madness of mirth.

Geordie Muckleroy, the elder of the twain, was a stout, clumsy made man, whose head was stuck into his broad rounded shoulders, like the handle of his body which had grown so stiff from his stolid way of thinking, (if indeed he ever thought,) and his sedentary habits, that he seemed to move it with great difficulty, and, in answering a question, invariably turned his whole frame to the speaker. He had a large, flabby, putty-coloured face, deeply marked with the small pox, from which cruel, disfiguring malady he and his brother Jock seemed to have suffered in common. A pair of little black meaningless eyes looked like blots in his heavy visage; while a profusion of black, coa.r.s.e hair, cut very short, stuck up on end all over his flat head, like the bristles in a scrubbing-brush. He certainly might have taken the prize for ugliness in the celebrated club which the _Spectator_ has immortalized. Yet this hideous, unintellectual looking animal had a wife, a neat, sensible-looking woman, every way his superior, both in person and intelligence. She was evidently some years older than her husband, and had left a n.o.bleman's service, in which she had been cook for a long period, to accompany Geordie as his bride across the Atlantic. Like most women, who late in life marry very young men, she regarded her mate as a most superior person, and paid him very loving attentions, which he received with the most stoical indifference, at which the rest of the males laughed, making constant fun of Geordie and his old girl. Jock was the counterpart of his brother in manners and disposition; but his head was adorned with a red scrubbing-brush, instead of a black one, and his white freckled face was half-covered with carrotty whiskers. The trio were so poor, that after having paid their pa.s.sage-money, they only possessed among them a solitary sixpence.

The day after they reached the banks of Newfoundland, and the s.h.i.+p was going pretty smartly through the water, Geordie hung his woollen jacket over the s.h.i.+p's side while he performed his ablutions, and a sudden puff of wind carried it overboard.

Mrs. Lyndsay was sitting upon the deck with Josey in her arms, when she heard a plunge into the water, followed by a loud shriek, and Mrs.

Muckleroy fell to the deck in a swoon.

The cry of "A man overboard!--a man overboard!" now rang through the s.h.i.+p. Every one present sprang to their feet, and rushed to the side of the vessel, looking about in all directions, to see the missing individual rise to the surface of the water, and Flora among the rest.

Presently a black head emerged from the waves, and two hands were held up in a deplorable bewildered manner, and the great blank face looked towards the skies with a glance of astonishment, as if the owner could not yet comprehend his danger, and scarcely realized his awful situation. He looked just like a seal, or some uncouth monster of the deep, who having ventured to the surface, was confounded by looking the sun in the face, and was too much frightened to retreat.

Lyndsay, the moment he heard the man plunge into the sea, had seized a coil of rope which lay upon the deck, and running forward, hurled it with a strong arm in the direction in which Muckleroy had disappeared.

Just at the critical moment when the apparition of the shoemaker rose above the waves, it fell within the length of his grasp. The poor fellow, now fully awake to the horrors of his fate, seized it with convulsive energy, and was drawn to the side of the vessel, where two sailors were already hanging in the chains, with another rope fixed with a running noose at one end, which they succeeded in throwing over his body and drawing him safely to the deck.

And then, the joy of the poor wife, who had just recovered from her swoon, at receiving her dead to life, was quite affecting, while he, regardless of her caresses, only shook his wet garments, exclaiming--"My jacket! my jacket, Nell, I have lost my jacket. What can a man do, wantin' a jacket?"

This speech was received with a general roar of laughter: the poor woman and her spouse being the only parties from whom it did not win a smile.