Courage, True Hearts Part 38

"And trees?"

"Yes, again, and if we are spared to come back here we shall bring with us a few hundreds of young pine-trees--Scotch, and spruce--and plenty of seed."

"How delightful! I should like so much to be a Crusoe. But listen!

Surely that was a dog barking high up the hill yonder."

And so it was, for next moment down came Vike with a rabbit in his mouth.

"Why, Vike," cried Duncan, "we left you on board."

"Very likely," said Vike, speaking with his tail and eyes as he lay there panting from his exertions, with about two yards--more or less--of pink tongue hanging out over his alabaster teeth. "Very likely, but five hundred yards of a swim isn't much to a dog like me. And what is more. Wowff, wowff! you had no business to bolt away without me.

Wowff! Don't do it again!"

"Well, now," said Talbot to his mate next day at breakfast, "what do you say to stay here till we lay in a real good cargo, for outside the elephants are in thousands, and the poor things have young beside them too."

"The idea is excellent, sir," said Morgan, "and I have another."

"Out with it, mate. We can't have too many ideas in this world, if we mean to be successful. These ideas of ours don't all hold water; but then we can go over them at our leisure and pick out the best."

"That's it, sir. Well, why not get all the skins we can procure, and then make off the oil. Coals are plentiful on sh.o.r.e, and we have cauldrons, you know."

"Bravo! Morgan. That is just what we shall do."

So after breakfast boats were called away, and returned in the evening laden to the gunwales.

So the vessel was s.h.i.+fted nearer to the open sea, and thus the whalers could go and return twice or even thrice in one day with their hauls.

It was no easy work, you may well believe, when I tell you that the skin and blubber of one of these huge sea-elephants sometimes weighed eight hundred-weight.

Poor, great, innocent brutes, it did seem a shame to kill their young before their eyes! The sight of the blood made mothers and fathers frantic, and they rushed on sh.o.r.e as if bent on revenge, but only to fall victims to the rifles of the gunners.

It was a b.l.o.o.d.y and terrible scene, and I have no desire to describe it.

Indeed, were I to tell the reader one quarter of the cruelties I have seen enacted by sealers, I should so harrow his feelings that his dreams would not be pleasant for one night afterwards.

Not merely for a fortnight, but for more than three weeks did the _Flora_ lie at Kerguelen, but in a sheltered cove, so that the hurricanes, that on four or five different occasions swept down from the mountains with terrific violence, had but little effect on her. By this time they had boiled down all their oil, salted all their skins and tanked them, and were in reality a b.u.mper s.h.i.+p.

I must not forget one little incident that took place about a week after their arrival.

One day that extremely wise and wondrous bird, Old Pen, went hopping down the starboard gangway and leapt into the sea.

Vike, who had been observing him, sprang right off the bulwark and tried most energetically to head him off.

The bird and dog met face to face, and it really seemed as if a conversation somewhat as follows took place.

Old Pen: "Hullo, what's your game?"

Viking: "I'm going to rush you back to your s.h.i.+p."

O. P.: "Your grandmother! I won't be rushed. I can swim better than you, and dive like a fish-hawk. So don't let us quarrel. In spring, you know, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. I've got an appointment on sh.o.r.e here. Ta, ta! Be as good's ye can."

Vike: "But I say, Old Pen--"

Old Pen had dived and was out of sight, and so Vike swam sadly back to the s.h.i.+p once more.

Just a few hours, however, before the anchor was got up, and while the crew were busy shaking out the sails before departing for the far west, something between a squawk and a squeal was heard alongside, and, sure enough, there was Old Pen come back again.

He was a.s.sisted on board, and shook himself as unconcernedly as if nothing unusual had happened.

But Viking's delight knew no bounds, nor did that of little Johnnie s.h.i.+ngles. The former went tearing round and round the deck, like a hairy hurricane.

"If I don't allay my feelings thus," cried Vike, "I shall go clean off my chump."

Now it happened that Frank was on deck with his fiddle, ready to play to the men as they got up the anchor.

But, seeing how matters stood, he instantly struck up a lively schottische.

"Squawk--s--squaw--awk!" cried Old Pen, waving his flippers.

"Hurray!" cried Johnnie, and next moment he and his strange partner were whirling round and round on the quarter-deck, in one of the maddest, merriest dances that surely ever yet was seen.

And I don't believe there was a soul on board who was not rejoiced that Old Pen had returned once again.

That evening they were far away on the quiet and lonesome sea, and, standing by the fire in the saloon warming his flat feet, one by one, as usual, was Old Pen, while near him, sound asleep, lay Vike.

"Awfully good of the bird to come off in time, wasn't it, boys?" said the skipper, relighting his pipe. "If he hadn't come back I should have believed I was about to be deserted by all my good fortune.

"We are glad to see you, Pen, and hope you'll never leave us again. But what put it into your silly noddle to go away at all, Pen?"

Pen made two hops of the s.p.a.ce between him and the captain. Then leaning his head on his knee he looked up drolly with one eye--which being half-closed gave him the appearance of winking.

"I did think of getting spliced, you know," he seemed to say, "and more than one lovely Lady Pen asked me to fly with her to a foreign sh.o.r.e.

Nary a fly," says I, "not if Pen knows it. Marriage is a precarious kind of experiment, so after flirting around for a bit I remembered my old friends and just floated off again."

Fine weather all the way to the Cape, with stunsails set 'low and aloft most of the time.

Ah, reader, there isn't much to beat the life a sailor leads after all!

In foul weather? Yes, foul or fine, and it isn't always blowing big guns at sea.

And Jack has no undergrowth of care to curl round the very roots of his life, and try to swamp him.

If he does his duty--and what real sailor doesn't?--he may be as happy and jolly as the Prince of Wales, only a vast deal more so.

Besides, what Jack afloat is there, who has not some loved one to think of when far away at sea; someone that he knows right well is thinking, ay, and praying, for him. So even in storm and in danger Jack may sing:

"Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear The main-mast by the board; My heart with thoughts of thee, my dear, And love well stored, Shall brave all danger, scorn all fear.