Wild Life in the Land of the Giants Part 17

"You don't think me a very nasty fellow now, do you?" said Peter.

"No, I begin to like you rather."

"Am I very ugly?"

"No, not ugly, but you looked conceited."

"Well, so I perhaps am. Now, I'm lots older than you, and we've known each other all the evening, so forgive me for trying plainly to put you up to ropes. You're green, and you must get rid of your lime-juice.

Now, _never_ lose your temper."

"Oh! Jill," I cried, laughing, "Peter is right, and we've broken our good resolve."

"Always take chaff in the spirit it is meant."

"So we had intended," I sighed, "hadn't we, Jill?"

"a.s.suredly."

"Well, that's all to-night. We're friends?"

"We are."

"Then, good-night. I have got to keep the first morning watch."

"Good-night, Peter."

"Jill," I said, "we've made fools of ourselves already. Let us go down below, and turn in."

So we did, and cosy little cribs we had, and a little cabin all to ourselves--this is most exceptional, mind, but we were very young.

Just after we got up from our knees,--

"Give us the log-books," I said, "Jill."

"I say, Jack," said Jill, sleepily, "maybe it would be as well to write every day's doings complete every morning."

"I dare say that would be best," I said, "and I must say I'm feeling very tired."

Next day it was blowing a bit, and we had something else to occupy our minds than writing logs. Indeed I never felt so thoroughly bad and unambitious in my life. I did try to eat some breakfast, but the fish got it after. Jill was the same, _so_ ill, and the s.h.i.+p would keep capering about in a way that made me wish I'd been a soldier instead of a sailor.

"How're you getting on?" Peter often asked kindly. "Oh, you are not nearly so bad as I was at first, and on the day the mate rope-ended me off to my watch."

"Isn't it blowing hard?" I ventured to ask.

"Blowing? dear life no, it's a glorious breeze."

The glorious breeze--how I hated such glory--kept at it for many days.

The sea got rougher and the waves higher, and we got worse. I do not think anything would have induced me to go near a s.h.i.+p again, if a good angel had only put me down then at the door of Trafalgar Cottage.

But every one was kind to us.

Then one day the mate--he was rather a tartar--put us both in separate watches, and after this I think our sufferings began in earnest.

Not a word had yet been written in the log, so that was our third good intention thrown to the winds.

It really seemed to me that the mate was cruel; he did not kick us about, but he sent us flying, on very short notice too. And we dared not say a word. Then we had all kinds of little menial offices to perform, even for the captain's cat and for two beautiful dogs that belonged to the mate. To be sure, there was a boy or two forward, but the mate told us--Jill and me--that he wanted to make men of us. He explained that no officer could ever know when a thing was well done unless he knew how to do it himself.

Going aloft was at first fearful work. I'll never forget, though, lying out on a yard making a sham of reefing, and holding on like a fly on a roof, praying, and expecting every moment to be hurled into the sea. It came easier at last, and before we reached Saint Helena, where we lay in, I could do a deal both below and aloft, and had hands and feet as good as the captain's cat.

Now if ever the lines of any two boys were cast in pleasant places on going first to sea, they were Jill's and mine, and yet we were not happy. What would it have been had we been subjected to the thousand and one little tyrannies of s.h.i.+p life most apprentices have to endure?

I'm not going to describe them, because I am telling a story, not giving a lecture; nor do I wish to say a word to prevent bold, hardy lads from adopting the sea as a profession; but let no one go to be a sailor lured by the romance and glamour thrown over it in too many sea novels.

Peter and we got on sh.o.r.e together at Saint Helena. This was a treat, because we were now quite friendly, and I had not forgotten the good advice he gave us the first evening we met.

Leila, Mrs Coates' maid, also had a pa.s.sage on sh.o.r.e in the same boat, and Peter, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the men--with whom, by the way, he was a great favourite--pretended to make love to her all the way. He told her, to begin with, that her name was sweetly poetic, and pretty.

So far he was right. Then he said her teeth were like pearls. Leila grinned, simpered, and showed her teeth. And really Peter was not far wrong. Having adhered to the truth so far, I believe Leila was in a position to believe anything. So Peter praised her eyes next. He said they reminded him of koh-i-noors floating in a bucket of tar, and he referred to the c.o.xswain to say whether he was not right. The c.o.xswain confessed that diamonds were never so numerous where he had been, as to float them on tar, but that Leila was pretty enough to make a fellow pitch a ball of spun-yard at the captain's head if she asked him to.

For this pretty compliment the c.o.xswain received a dig in the ribs from Leila that well-nigh sent him overboard among the sharks and turtles, and certainly took his breath away.

"Oh!" cried the c.o.xswain. "If that's your way of showing your affection, my beauty, a little of it goes a long way."

"What for you tease a poor girl, then?"

"Your hair, my Leila--" began Peter again.

"Cut it short, Mr Jeffries," cried the c.o.xswain, laughing; "why, sir, you can't praise that!"

"Cut it short!" said Peter; "why it couldn't be shorter. But look at those crisp wee ringlets, how they curl round one's affections, how they entwine themselves with every poetic feeling--"

"Way enough--oars," shouted the c.o.xswain.

There was indeed way enough. The good fellow had not been keeping his weather eye lifting, and now the boat took the beach with such force that nearly all hands caught crabs, the bewitching Leila among the rest.

Peter made haste to help her up, and a.s.sisted her on sh.o.r.e. He even carried his politeness so far as to offer her his arm along the beach.

"You go 'long now," she replied. "You nothing but one piccaninny. I not can gib dis heart ob mine to a child so small as you."

Jill and I laughed, and Peter laughed good-naturedly, and fell back.

"Bother it all, boys, she's got the best of me after all."

Here, in James's Town, as in other places, my brother and I attracted universal attention, among blacks and whites, by our wonderful resemblance to each other. And they did not hesitate to show it. For instance, I was some distance behind Jill and Peter, when I met a bluff old sailor.

"Hullo! matie," he shouted, "blessed if I ain't three sheets in the wind. I could have sworn I met you a minute ago, and there you are again. I'll go back and have a sleep. Can't go on board like this."

But when he saw the two of us together, he concluded to go on board, after treating himself to another gla.s.s of beer, and drinking our healths. So we had to "shout" as Peter called it.

Before we entered the little inn, which was kept by a highly respectable man of colour, Peter pushed me unceremoniously into a little stable place, and told me to wait till come for.