Sunk at Sea

A grave, stern expression settled on the youth’s countenance as he arose and followed him into the passage. Meeting his mother there, he seized her suddenly in his arms and held her in a long embrace; then, without explaining the cause of his strong emotion, he ran down stairs and left his father’s house.

In a dirty narrow street, near the harbour of the town, there stood a small public-house which was frequented chiefly by the sailors who chanced to be in the port, and by the squalid population in its immediate neighbourhood. Although small, the Red Lion Inn was superior in many respects to its surroundings. It was larger than the decayed buildings that propped it; cleaner than the locality that owned it; brighter and warmer than the homes of the lean crew on whom it fattened. It was a pretty, light, cheery, snug place of temptation, where men and women, and even children assembled at nights to waste their hard-earned cash and ruin their health. It was a place where the devil reigned, and where the work of murdering souls was carried on continually,—nevertheless it was a “jolly” place. Many good songs were sung there, as well as bad ones; and many a rough grasp of hearty friendship was exchanged. Few people, going into the house for a few minutes, could have brought themselves to believe that it was such a very broad part of the road leading to destruction: but the landlord had some hazy notion on that point. He sat there day and night, and saw the destruction going on. He saw the blear-eyed, fuddled men that came to drown conscience in his stalls, and the slatternly women who came and went. Nevertheless he was a rosy, jocund fellow who appeared to have a good deal of the milk of human kindness about him, and would have looked on you with great surprise, if not scorn, had you told him that he had a hand in murdering souls. Yes! the Red Lion might have been appropriately styled the Roaring Lion, for it drove a roaring trade among the poor in that dirty little street near the harbour.

The gas was flaring with attractive brilliancy in the Red Lion when Will Osten entered it, and asked if Captain Dall was within.

“No, sir,” answered the landlord; “he won’t be here for half-an-hour yet.”

“A pot of beer,” said Will, entering one of the stalls, and sitting down opposite a tall, dark-countenanced man, who sat smoking moodily in a corner.

It was evident that our hero had not gone there to drink, for the beer remained untouched at his elbow, as he sat with his face buried in his hands.

The dark man in the corner eyed him steadily through the smoke which issued from his lips, but Will paid no attention to him. He was too deeply absorbed in his own reflections.

“A fine night, stranger,” he said at length, in a slightly nasal tone.

Still Will remained absorbed, and it was not until the remark had been twice repeated that he looked up with a start.

“I beg pardon; did you speak?” he said. “Well, yes,” drawled the dark man, puffing a long white cloud from his lips, “I did make an observation regardin’ the weather. It looks fine, don’t it?”

“It does,” said Will.

“You’re waitin’ for Captain Dall, ain’t you?”

“Why, how did you come to know that?” said Will.

“I didn’t come to know it, I guessed it,” said the dark man.

At that moment the door opened, and a short thick-set man, in a glazed hat and pea-jacket, with huge whiskers meeting under his chin, entered.

His eye at once fell upon the dark man, whom he saluted familiarly— “All ready, Mr Cupples?”

“All ready, sir,” replied the other; “it’s now more than half-flood; in three hours we can drop down the river with the first of the ebb, and if this breeze holds we’ll be in blue water before noon to-morrow.”

“Hallo, doctor, is that yourself?” said the captain, whose eye had for some moments rested on Will.

“It is,” said the youth, extending his hand, which the other grasped and shook warmly.

“What! changed your mind—eh?”

“Yes, I’m going with you.”

“The governor bein’ agreeable?” inquired the captain.

Will shook his head.

“Hope there ain’t bin a flare-up?” said the captain earnestly.

“Not exactly,” said Will; “but he is displeased, and will not give his consent, so I have come away without it.”

At this the jovial skipper, who was styled captain by courtesy, sat down and shook his head gravely, while he removed his hat and wiped the perspiration from his bald forehead.

“It’s a bad business to run agin the wishes of one’s parents,” he said; “it seldom turns out well; couldn’t you come round him nohow?”

“Impossible. He won’t listen to reason.”

“Ah, then, it’s of no manner of use,” said the captain, with a pitying sigh, “when a man won’t listen to reason, what’s the consequence? why he’s unreasonable, which means bein’ destitoot of that which raises him above the brutes that perish. Such bein’ the case, give it up for a bad job, that’s my advice. Come, I’ll have a bottle o’ ginger-beer, not bein’ given to strong drink, an’ we’ll talk over this matter.”

Accordingly the beer was ordered, and the three sat there talking for a couple of hours in reference to a long, long voyage to the southern seas.

After that they rose, and, leaving the Red Lion, went down to the pier, where a boat was in waiting. It conveyed them to a large ship, whose sails were hanging in the loose condition peculiar to a vessel ready to set sail. An hour after that the anchor was raised, and wind and tide carried the ship gently down to the sea. There seemed to Will something very solemn and mysterious in the quiet way in which, during these still and dark hours of the night, the great ship was slowly moved towards her ocean cradle. At length she floated on the sea, and, soon after, the moon arose on the distant horizon, streaming across the rippling surface as if to kiss and welcome an old friend. The wind increased; the ship became submissive to the breeze, obedient to the helm, and ere long moved on the waters like “a thing of life,” leaving Old England far behind her.

It was then that young Osten, leaning over the taffrail and looking wistfully back at the point where he had seen the last glimpse of the chalk cliffs, began to experience the first feelings of regret. He tried to quiet his conscience by recalling the harsh and unjustifiable conduct of his father, but conscience would not be quieted thus, and faithful memory reminded him of the many acts of kindness he had experienced at his father’s hands, while she pointed to his gentle mother, and bade him reflect what a tremendous blow this sudden departure would be to her.

Starting up and shaking off such thoughts, sternly he went below and threw himself into his narrow cot, where conscience assailed him still more powerfully and vividly in dreams. Thus did Wandering Will leave his native land.

Commenting on his sudden departure, two days afterwards, Maryann said, in strict confidence, to her bosom friend “Jemimar,” that she “know’d it would ’appen—or somethink simular, for, even w’en a hinfant, he had refused to larf at her most smudgin’ blandishments; and that she knew somethink strange would come of it, though she would willingly have given her last shilling to have prevented it, but nothink was of any use tryin’ of w’en one couldn’t do it, as her ’usband, as was in the mutton-pie line, said to the doctor the night afore he died,—and that her ’art was quite broken about it, so it was.”

Whereupon Jemima finished to the dregs her last cup of tea, and burst into a flood of tears.

Chapter Three.

Tells of the Sea, and some of the Mysteries Connected Therewith

For many days and nights the good ship Foam sailed the wide ocean without encountering anything more than the ordinary vicissitudes and experiences of sea-life. Dolphins were seen and captured, sharks were fished for and caught, stiff breezes and calms succeeded each other, constellations in the far north began to disappear and new constellations arose in the southern skies. In fact, during many weeks the voyage was prosperous, and young Will Osten began to experience those peculiar feelings with which all travellers are more or less acquainted—he felt that the ship was “home”; that his cabin with its furniture, which had appeared so small and confined at first, was quite a large and roomy place; that all the things about him were positive realities, and that the home of his childhood was a shadow of the past—a sort of dream.

During all this time the young doctor led a busy life. He was one of those active, intelligent, inquiring spirits which cannot rest. To acquire information was with him not a duty, but a pleasure. Before he had been many days at sea he knew the name and use of every rope, sail, block, tackle, and spar in the ship, and made himself quite a favourite with the men by the earnestness with which he questioned them in regard to nautical matters and their own personal experiences. George Goff, the sail-maker, said he “was a fust-rate feller;” and Larry O’Hale, the cook, declared, “he was a trump intirely, an’ ought to have been born an Irishman.” Moreover, the affections of long Mr Cupples (as the first mate was styled by the men) were quite won by the way in which he laboured to understand the use of the sextant, and other matters connected with the mysteries of navigation; and stout Jonathan Dall, the captain, was overjoyed when he discovered that he was a good player on the violin, of which instrument he was passionately fond. In short, Will Osten became a general favourite on board the Foam, and the regard of all, from the cabin-boy to the captain, deepened into respect when they found that, although only an advanced student and, “not quite a doctor,” he treated their few ailments with success, and acted his part with much self-possession, gentleness, and precision.

Larry O’Hale was particularly eloquent in his praises of him ever after the drawing of a tooth which had been the source of much annoyance to the worthy cook. “Why, messmates,” he was wont to say, “it bait everything the way he tuk it out. ‘Open yer mouth,’ says he, an’ sure I opened it, an’ before I cud wink, off wint my head—so I thought—but faix it wor only my tuth—a real grinder wi’ three fangs no less—och! he’s a cliver lad intirely.”

But Will did not confine his inquiries to the objects contained within his wooden home. The various phases and phenomena of the weather, the aspects of the sky, and the wonders of the deep, claimed his earnest attention. To know the reason of everything was with him a species of mania, and in pursuit of this knowledge he stuck at nothing. “Never venture never win,” became with him as favourite a motto as it had been with his father, and he acted on it more vigorously than his father had ever done.

One calm evening, as he was leaning over the side of the ship near the bow, gazing contemplatively down into the unfathomable sea, he overheard a conversation between the cook and one of the sailors named Muggins. They were smoking their pipes seated on the heel of the bowsprit.

“Larry,” said Muggins, “I think we have got into the doldrums.”

“Ye’re out there, boy,” said Larry, “for I heerd the capting say we wos past ’em a long way.”

The men relapsed into silence for a time.

Then Muggins removed his pipe and said—

“Wot ever caused the doldrums?”

“That’s more nor I can tell,” said Larry; “all I know about them is, that it’s aisy to git into them, but uncommon hard to git out again. If my ould grandmother was here, she’d be able to tell us, I make no doubt, but she’s in Erin, poor thing, ’mong the pigs and the taties.”

“Wot could she tell about the doldrums?” said Muggins, with a look of contempt.

“More nor ye think, boy; sure there isn’t nothin’ in the univarse but she can spaik about, just like a book, an’ though she niver was in the doldrums as far as I knows, she’s been in the dumps often enough; maybe it’s cousins they are. Anyhow she’s not here, an’ so we must be contint with spekilation.”