_ CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. A QUESTION OF FEAR
It was as if all the bad weather had been left behind, for after a little snatch or two, as Joe Cross called them, the cruise down south had been glorious.
The bluff, good-humoured sailor explained to Rodd what he meant by a snatch, something after this fashion.
"You see, sir, after we started from Havre the weather seemed to be a bit sorry for itself for being so dirty, and you know how we bowled along down south till the wind got into a tantrum again--got out of bed the wrong way, as you may say, and then everything was wrong. We were getting into the Bay, you see, where it comes quite natural to lay all that day. In the Bay of Biscay O! Then Nature got all out of sorts again. It seemed as if she was waxy to let us have it so comfortable, and made a snatch to drag us back again. But the old man was one too many for her, and kept on for them two bad days, when we sailed out of her reach and everything was fine."
"Yes, Joe, it was fine. All that coast of Spain and Portugal was lovely."
"Yes, sir, and you got grumbling 'cause your uncle wouldn't give orders for us to let go the anchor for you to go fishing."
"Well, see how grand it was, and how calm the sea used to get of an evening before we put in to Gibraltar."
"And then you weren't half satisfied, sir. You'll excuse me, Mr Rodd, sir, but you do make me laugh;" and to the boy's great annoyance the man half turned from him, leaned over the taffrail, laughed till his sides shook, and then pulling himself up suddenly wiped his eyes. "I am very sorry, sir," he said.
"Doesn't seem like it," cried Rodd warmly, as he made as if to go away.
It was one evening when the calm sea as it heaved seemed in places to glint forth all the glorious colours of a beautiful pearl shell, and the east wind was of a different complexion to that familiar to an English lad, for it was soft, balmy and sweet, suggestive of its having been blowing gently for miles and miles over beds of flowers.
"Oh, don't go away in a tiff, Mr Rodd, sir. It was only me, and you know what I am. I didn't mean no offence."
"Well, it was offensive," said Rodd. "How would you like to be laughed at?"
"Me, sir?" cried the man merrily. "Me who has been knocking about the sea nearly all my life, first in a west-country fishing-boat, and then in a King's ship, and been in action! Like being laughed at! Why, bless your heart, sir, it suits me down to the deck. I like it. Deal better than having the old man dropping on to me about something being wrong aloft."
"Well, I don't see that there was anything to laugh at," cried Rodd, softening down a little, for somehow the liking he had felt for the sturdy-looking sailor ever since he had come on board had gone on increasing, and Rodd affected Joe's society more than that of any one in the ship. At least he said so to Uncle Paul, who shook his head and with a grim smile joined issue.
"No, Pickle," he cried, "I won't have that. You seem to make better friends with the cook than with anybody."
"Oh, uncle," replied the boy, "you always do tease me about my appetite."
"Never mind, Pickle," said Uncle Paul good-humouredly. "Go on eating, and grow."
But to return to the conversation by the taffrail.
"No, sir," said Joe Cross, "of course you don't, sir. It'd be contrairy to nature if you did. We chaps can't see ourselves. There's the old Bun. He's been offended over and over again because people told him he was so fat. He can't see it, sir."
"Oh, he must," cried Rodd, laughing.
"There aren't no must in it, sir. He can't. He might find it out perhaps if he tried to get into a pair of boy's trousers--yours, for instance; but then that aren't likely, because you won't give him the chance, and what's more, he wouldn't want to. You try him some day about being too fat, and you see if he don't stare at you."
"He will, Joe, when I'm so rude to him. But come now, you are shuffling. Why is it that you laugh at me?"
"Well, sir, because I like you, for one thing, and another is because you are such an unreasonable chap."
"I? Unreasonable?" cried Rodd hotly. "That I'm sure I'm not!"
"Why, sir, wasn't you put out because your uncle and the old man wouldn't sail right into the Mediterranean Sea?"
"Well, there was nothing unreasonable in that. I am sure it would have been very interesting."
"Not it, sir. I've been there over and over again, and it always seemed to me just like any other sea, only a bit rougher sometimes, and it aren't got hardly any tide. You wait till we get a little further on, and you'll find plenty to make you open you eyes wider than ever you opened them before. I don't know a finer place for seeing wonders of the deep than along where we are going, as you say we are to, right along the West Coast of Afriky. Why, you might begin fishing and dredging directly after we had put in at Mogador, where the fish are wonderful, and you can't drop in a line without hauling something out."
"That's good," cried Rodd eagerly; "but I am afraid uncle won't let us have much time for ordinary fishing. He will be more on the look-out for curiosities."
"Ah, well, there's plenty of them too, sir--all sorts, and the farther you gets into warmer water the more there are."
"What sort?" asked Rodd.
"All sorts, and the nearer you are to land the more you get. Then I suppose some time we shall come upon that there Sargassey Sea."
"Where's that?" asked Rodd.
"Right away down south, sir. Let's see, if I remember right we falls in with that soon after you pass the islands."
"What islands?"
"Let's see; I ought to know, sir. The fust that comes near Europe is the Azores; then farther south there's that there island where all the sick people goes, Madeiry; then there's the Canaries, where the birds come from; only they aren't all yaller like people keeps in their cages. Most I seed there was green, and put me in mind of them little chaps as we have at home with the yaller heads--you know, sir; them as cries, 'A little bit of bread and no cheese.' And you see them up country, a-twittering among the hedges."
"Yes, I know," said Rodd sharply; "but what about the Sargassey Sea?"
"Ah! I'm thinking it was after that we come to that sea, only I aren't quite sure, sir. But if I recollect right, they say it shifts about according to what sort of weather we have."
"Well, so does every sea," cried Rodd, "when the waves are running high."
"Ah, but they don't run high here, sir. You see, the Sargassey Sea aren't like other seas, and I suppose it's only part of the Atlantic after all. It's all smooth like because as far as you can see it's all like one great bed of floating seaweed, so thick that you can hardly sail through it at times, and if you go out into it in a boat it's as much as you can do to dip your oars."
"Have you been out amongst it then?" asked Rodd.
"Yes, sir, more'n once. It was when I was in the _Prince George_ off the West Coast of Africa, and we had got a surgeon on board there, and him and our second lieutenant had both got it badly."
"What, West African fever?" cried Rodd.
"No, no, sir; same as your uncle's got--looking after strange things as lives in the sea. I was one of the crew of the second cutter then, and in the beautiful calm weather we used to take the doctor and the second luff out in this Sargassey Sea, which used to look sometimes as if we were floating about in green fields."
"Oh, you mean the Sargasso Sea!" cried Rodd. "Nay, I don't, sir; I means the Sargassey Sea."
"Well, that's the same thing, only you spell it differently," cried Rodd.
"Oh no, sir; that I don't. That's a thing as I never pretended to do. I can take my spell at the pump or at any other job; but what you call spelling was never in my way."
"But you mean the same thing," cried Rodd. "It isn't Sar-gass-ey; it's Sar-gass-o."
"Ho! Sar-gass-ho, is it, sir?"
"Yes, of course."
"All right, sir; I'm willing. But my one was all alive with little things, little fish and slugs and snails of all kinds of rum sorts; and our second luff used to make us haul in great lengths of the seaweed as was floating about, and then help him to pick 'em out into bottles till they were quite full, and looking just as if they was pickles same as you see in the grocers' shops in Plymouth town."
"Well, the same as you saw uncle and me do that day during the calm?"
"Yes, sir, just like that, only yours as you did were small shop and ours was like big warehouse, though I don't think our doctor did much good with them, because so many of them used to go bad, and our cook and his mate used to have to throw no end away and wash the bottles."
"Ah, ours won't go bad," said Rodd confidently. "My uncle will preserve them differently to that."
"Oh, yes, I suppose so, sir. You see, we've all come out this time ready for the job; our officers on the _Prince George_ only did their bit just for a day or two's holiday like, and our job was to look after the mounseers' cruisers, not to catch tittlebats and winkles, and it wasn't so very long after that we was at it hammer and tongs with a big French frigate, making work for the doctor of a precious different kind, and for our ship's carpenters too. Different sort of nat'ral history that was, sir, I can tell you, for we lost nineteen of our men and had a lot wounded; but we took the frigate, and carried her safe into Portsmouth Harbour."
"Ah!" cried Rodd softly, as his eyes flashed at the thoughts of the deeds of naval daring carried out by our men-of-war. "I wish I'd been there!"
"You do, sir?" said Joe. "Mean it?"
"Mean it? Of course! There, don't look at me like that. I wasn't thinking of being a man, but a reefer--one of those middies that we used to see at Plymouth."
"Ah, it's all very fine, sir," said Joe, shaking his head, "and it sounds very nice about firing broadsides and then getting orders to board when the two big men-of-war get the grappling-irons on board and you have to follow your officers, scrambling with your cutlass in your hand out of the chains from your ship into the enemy's; and all the time there's the roaring of the guns and the popping away of the marines up in the tops, and the men cheering as your officers lead them on. It's a very different thing, sir, to what you think, and so I can tell you."
"Why, Joe," cried Rodd, almost maliciously, "you talk as if you felt afraid!"
"Afraid, sir?" said the man, quietly and thoughtfully. "No, sir. No, sir; I never felt afraid, and I never knowed one of my messmates as said he was."
"Oh no, of course they wouldn't say so," cried Rodd, laughing.
"No, sir, that's right. But I aren't bragging, sir. I've been in several engagements like that, and my messmates always seemed to feel just as I did. You see, they'd got it to do, sir, and we always felt that it was only mounseers that we'd got to beat and captur' their ship; and then as soon as we had begun, whether we was crews of guns, stripped and firing away, or answering the orders to board, why, then we never had time to feel afraid."
"What, not when you saw your messmates shot down beside you?" cried Rodd.
"My word, no, sir!" cried Joe, laughing. "We none of us felt afraid then; it only made us feel wild and want to sarve the other side out. No, sir," continued the bluff fallow, in a quiet matter-of-fact way, and his voice utterly free of vaunt, "whether it's a sea-fight or things are going wrong in a storm, we sailor fellows are always too busy to feel afraid. You see, I think, sir, it has something to do with the drill and discipline, as they calls it, training the lads all to work together. You see, it makes them feel so strong."
"I can't say I do see," said Rodd.
"No, sir, because you haven't been drilled; but it's like this 'ere. One man's one man, and a hundred men's a hundred men--no, stop; that aren't quite what I mean. It aren't in my way, Mr Rodd, sir; I never was a beggar to argue. The fat Bun can easily beat me at that. This 'ere's what I mean. One man's one man, and a hundred men's a hundred one men. That's if they aren't drilled and trained like sailors or soldiers; but if they are trained, you see each one man feels as if he has got a hundred men with him all working together, and con-se-quently, sir, every chap aboard feels as if he's as strong as a hundred men. Now don't you see, sir?"
"Well, yes," said Rodd quietly; "I think I begin to see what you mean."
"Why, of course you do, sir. Say it's heaving a boat aboard, and it takes twenty men to do it. Why, if they go and try one at a time, where are you? But if you all go and take hold together, and your officer says to you, 'Now, my lads, with a will, all together! Heave ho!' why then, up she comes. Well now, I do call that rum! Look at that, sir. If here aren't the old man, just as if he had heard what we was talking about, passing the word for gun drill, or else a bit of knicketty knock with the cutlasses and pikes!" _