Courage, True Hearts Part 20

Now, I do not know whether that king penguin had a wife and a family of eggs or not, but if he had he very soon forgot them and settled down to s.h.i.+p life as if he had been to the manner born. In fact, he became a general favourite on board owing to his grave and peculiar gait.

Old Pen, as he was called, became specially attached to Johnnie s.h.i.+ngles, and stuck to him as Johnnie had clung to him before they were hauled into the boat.

As to the penguin's eggs: they lay but two, a big and a bigger. They are good to eat--scrambled. But I am unable to say whether the king bird or c.o.c.k comes out of the big sh.e.l.l, and the hen out of the smaller, or _vice versa_.

This particular king had very intelligent eyes, with which he would stare at one fixedly for a minute at a time with his head on one side.

Indeed, he was always, to all appearance, seeking for information everywhere, and there was not much on deck that he did not examine.

The coiled ropes were a source of great amus.e.m.e.nt to him, and after unravelling one end he would seize it, and walk straight off with it as men do with a hawser. When the men were was.h.i.+ng down decks, before the weather got very cold he was never tired examining their naked toes. He used to straddle quietly up and separate them with his beak as a starling would.

If the men jumped and cried "Oh-h!" Old Pen held back his head and chuckled quietly to himself.

"I only wanted to know if you were web-footed," he appeared to say.

Well, if old Pen was grotesque and amusing when dressed only in his own feathers, he was infinitely more droll when the men dressed him up as a funny old girl with a black bonnet, a short dark skirt, a shawl, a pair of frilled white trousers, and a gingham umbrella.

Old Pen didn't care. If everyone else laughed he only nodded his head and seemed all the prouder.

I don't know whether Johnnie or he was the taller, only the grinning wee n.i.g.g.e.r used to give the singular old lady an arm, and together they used to walk up and down the deck in the most comical way imaginable.

But this was not all, for Johnnie taught her to waltz.

On board the _Flora_ was a man who could play the clarionet, while another could bring very sweet music indeed from the guitar. This really was all the band, with, of course, Frank's fiddle. But very far indeed was it from bad, and dressed in their Sunday's best, the sailors used to be invited aft, and during that long, long voyage to the southern fields and floes of ice, many an evening concert beguiled the time.

But if the sailor musicians went aft, Frank often went forward, and it was on these occasions that old Mrs. Pen, as she was often called, was trotted out by the curly-polled n.i.g.g.e.r-boy. It is a misappropriation of a term to say "trotted out", for certainly there was very little trot about the quaint old dame. But waltzing just suited her flat feet.

Yes, and there is no doubt that she liked it too. She might be down below half-asleep before the galley fire, when the fiddle and guitar began getting into tune with the clarionet; but she now p.r.i.c.ked up her ears at once and presently prepared to negotiate the broad companion steps or stairs that led to the upper deck. This was always a very serious matter for the great king penguin. Sometimes he tried to stride from one step to another, a foot at a time. But this plan was invariably a failure, so he found it more convenient on the whole to hop, and his lower limbs were wondrously strong.

Arrived on deck, Johnnie s.h.i.+ngles was there to meet him, and dress him as Susie. Then the _he_ became a _she_.

But the men would be at it by this time, dancing the daftest and wildest of hornpipes. No chance of their catching cold when so engaged, nor after, for as soon as they had finished a spell that

"Put life and mettle in their heels",

they threw on their heavy jumpers and walked around defiant, enjoying the daft capers of their s.h.i.+pmates.

Then Susie and s.h.i.+ngles would appear on the scene arm in arm, the boy with his round face, his laughing eyes, and his two rows of alabaster teeth, looking a picture of radiant fun and good humour.

"Now, Ma.s.sa Frank," he might cry, "gib me and my ole mudder a nice d'eamy valtz."

"A dreamy waltz, eh? Well, you must have it."

"I must foh shuah, sah. My mudder hab got a soft co'n, and rheumatiz, and all sorts ob tings."

There was no laughing about Susie. She took everything in grim earnest, but, with her chin resting on black Johnnie's shoulder, she evidently enjoyed both the movement and the melody, sometimes even closing her eyes.

Her partner, like herself, was barefooted even in the coldest of weather; but when once he tramped on Susie's toes, the old lady rewarded him with a dig on the cheek that made Johnnie howl, and taught him caution for all time to come.

Well, what with laughing and dancing, an evening thus spent sped away very quickly, and was worth a whole bushel of doctor's stuff. There was no surgeon on board, I may mention parenthetically. The law does not require such an officer to be carried when the crew, all told, is under forty men.

It is really somewhat marvellous that a bird like this big king penguin, should have taken so soon and so kindly to the company and customs of human beings; but then the poor bird was exceedingly well-treated, and whenever fish was served out, Pen was always in the front rank. Ah, well, it is only one more proof of the truth that _amor vincit omnia_--love conquers all things.

Pen was not always dressed as Mother Gamp. No, for he had a really good outfit, to which the neater-fisted seamen were always adding. So sometimes he would appear on the quarter-deck as a man-o'-war sailor, at others as a smart and elegantly-attired artilleryman, with his cap stuck provokingly on one side, and a little cane under his left arm.

He was at times dressed as Paul Pry. And on these occasions, as he stretched his head and neck curiously out in front of him, he really seemed to say: "I hope I don't intrude".

Pen was a grand actor. Mr. Toole himself would have been nowhere in it with Pen.

Viking at first must have thought the bird something "no canny". He would start up with a wild "wowff" if Pen came anywhere near him, and quietly retire.

The monkey or ape, on the other hand, tried to get up a friends.h.i.+p with Pen. He would approach him with a peace-offering, crying "Ha! hah!

hah!" which, being interpreted, signifieth, "Take that, old Pen, and eat it. It will taste in your mouth like b.u.t.ter and honey." As the peace-offering invariably consisted of a gigantic c.o.c.kroach about three inches long, I think it may be doubted whether it tasted as well as the monkey would have had Pen believe. However, the presentation was kindly meant.

This huge monkey's mouth was always crammed with c.o.c.kroaches. One side at all events, and that one side stuck out as if he were suffering from a huge gum-boil.

The men were somewhat sorry, I think, that they could not teach old Pen to chew 'baccy, but old Pen drew the line at this. I must, out of respect for the truth, state, however, that the bird could not be called a total abstainer, for he dearly loved a piece of "plum-duff" steeped in rum, and on this questionable delicacy I think he used at times to get about half seas over. Then he would commence wagging his head and neck very much from side to side, and indulge in a little song to himself.

Old Pen was not much of a singer, however, and never could have composed an opera. In fact his song was partly grunt, partly squeak, and partly squawk. But it pleased Pen, and that was enough.

After singing for a short time he would pinch a favourite seaman's leg.

"Kack!" he would say, opening his mouth. This meant "Chuck us another sop, matie".

After receiving it he would be off, and take his usual stand near the galley fire, and begin to wink and wink, and nod and nod, till finally the lower eyelids would ascend over the beautiful irises, and Pen be wafted away into dreamland. He wasn't aboard s.h.i.+p any longer. He was back once more on his own little rocky sea-girt isle, with the gulls and the cormorants screaming high in the air around. Near him stood Mrs.

Pen, his wife, and near her, and in front, his two youngsters--fluffy, downy, droll brats, gaping their red mouths to be fed.

On the whole, I think Pen was a curious bird, and eminently suited for a sailor's pet.

CHAPTER VI.--"BACK WATER ALL! FOR LIFE, BOYS, FOR LIFE!"

It was summer--strange, weird, and silent summer in the Antarctic Ocean.

November was wearing to a close. The days were long and sunny; so long, indeed, that the sun did not trouble himself to go down at all. At midnight he just made a feint of doing so, and lowered himself towards the horizon, but thought better of it, and was speedily mounting higher and higher again every minute.

A great, cold-looking sun it was, however, a bright and almost rayless disc of whitest light, that you could look at and even count the spots thereon.

The good barque _Flora M'Vayne_ was still ploughing her way through the dark waters of that southern ocean, and the great glacial barrier was still far away. They could have told this even by the paucity of bird life around them. A long-winged frigate-bird went swiftly across the hawse now and then, and soared away and away towards the few fleecy clouds that hovered high in air like puffs of gunpowder smoke.

That mighty eagle of the sea--the albatross--was also a constant visitor. What a wondrous flight is his! At one moment beating up to windward, tack and half-tack, yet with a speed almost as great as that of a swallow, till one can scarcely see him, so far and far away is he; then, wheeling next moment, down he flashes on the breeze, but more quickly than any ordinary breeze e'er blew. Not straight before the wind, however, but with a kind of sidelong rush which brings into full view the vast outspread of his wondrous wings.

They were still in the "roaring forties", as that part of the ocean 'twixt the lat.i.tude of the Cape and the fifties is called. But what a wide expanse of ocean is all around them! I have stood spell-bound on the fore or main-top, not admiring so much as adoring this mighty work of a mightier Creator: a turmoil of water, water, water in every direction one can look. And it is not so much the height of the waves one wonders at--though that is indeed vast--but their tremendous breadth, the sweep, as it were, between one curling comber and another.

High and of fearful force are the seas in, for example, the Bay of Biscay during a gale, but they are mere channel chops to these. And wide though the expanse of these latter, they race each other round the world with an earnestness, and even fury, that causes one to stand aghast.

I wish I had s.p.a.ce to describe some of the sunsets our heroes beheld shortly after leaving the last land. No wonder that Duncan more than once grasped Frank by the arm, and pointed northward and west at eventide.

"Look! Oh, look!"