Many Cargoes

“We shall probably sail Tuesday night, and it may be anything from six days upwards,” answered the skipper. “If this wind holds it’ll probably be upwards.”

To his great concern Mrs. Blossom put her handkerchief over her face, and, shaking with suppressed laughter, rose from the table and left the cabin.

The couple left eyed each other wonderingly.

“Did I say anything pertickler funny, George?” inquired the skipper, after some deliberation.

“Didn’t strike me so,” said the mate carelessly; “I expect she’s thought o’ something else to say about your family. She wouldn’t be so good-tempered as all that for nothing. I feel cur’ous to know what it is.”

“If you paid more attention to your own business,” said the skipper, his choler rising, “you’d get on better. A mate who was a good seaman wouldn’t ha’ let a cook go on like this—it’s not discipline.”

He went off in dudgeon, and a coolness sprang up between them, which lasted until the bustle of starting in the small hours of Wednesday morning.

Once under way the day passed uneventfully, the schooner crawling sluggishly down the coast of Wales, and, when the skipper turned in that night, it was with the pleasant conviction that Mrs. Blossom had shot her last bolt, and, like a sensible woman, was going to accept her defeat. From this pleasing idea he was aroused suddenly by the watch stamping heavily on the deck overhead.

“What’s up?” cried the skipper, darting up the companion-ladder, jostled by the mate.

“I dunno,” said Bill, who was at the wheel, shakily. “Mrs. Blossom come up on deck a little while ago, and since then there’s been three or four heavy splashes.”

“She can’t have gone overboard,” said the skipper, in tones to which he manfully strove to impart a semblance of anxiety. “No, here she is. Anything wrong, Mrs. Blossom?”

“Not so far as I’m concerned,” replied the lady, passing him and going below.

“You’ve been dreaming, Bill,” said the skipper sharply.

“I ain’t,” said Bill stoutly. “I tell you I heard splashes. It’s my belief she coaxed the cook up on deck, and then shoved him overboard. A woman could do anything with a man like that cook.”

“I’ll soon see,” said the mate, and walking forward he put his head down the fore-scuttle and yelled for the cook.

“Aye, aye, sir,” answered a voice sleepily, while the other men started up in their bunks. “Do you want me?”

“Bill thinks somebody has gone overboard,” said the mate. “Are you all here?”

In answer to this the mystified men turned out all standing, and came on deck yawning and rubbing their eyes, while the mate explained the situation. Before he had finished the cook suddenly darted off to the galley, and the next moment the forlorn cry of a bereaved soul broke on their startled ears.

“What is it?” cried the mate.

“Come here!” shouted the cook, “look at this!”

He struck a match and held it aloft in his shaking fingers, and the men, who were worked up to a great pitch of excitement and expected to see something ghastly, after staring hard for some time in vain, profanely requested him to be more explicit.

“She’s thrown all the saucepans and things overboard,” said the cook with desperate calmness. “This lid of a tea kettle is all that’s left for me to do the cooking in.”

The Gannet, manned by seven famine-stricken misogynists, reached London six days later, the skipper obstinately refusing to put in at an intermediate port to replenish his stock of hardware. The most he would consent to do was to try and borrow from a passing vessel, but the unseemly behaviour of the master of a brig, who lost two hours owing to their efforts to obtain a saucepan of him, utterly discouraged any further attempts in that direction, and they settled down to a diet of biscuits and water, and salt beef scorched on the stove.

Mrs. Blossom, unwilling perhaps to witness their sufferings, remained below, and when they reached London, only consented to land under the supervision of a guard of honour, composed of all the able-bodied men on the wharf.

A BENEFIT PERFORMANCE

In the small front parlour of No. 3, Mermaid Passage, Sunset Bay, Jackson Pepper, ex-pilot, sat in a state of indignant collapse, tenderly feeling a cheek on which the print of hasty fingers still lingered.

The room, which was in excellent order, showed no signs of the tornado which had passed through it, and Jackson Pepper, looking vaguely round, was dimly reminded of those tropical hurricanes he had read about which would strike only the objects in the path, and leave all others undisturbed.

In this instance he had been the object, and the tornado, after obliterating him, had passed up the small staircase which led from the room, leaving him listening anxiously to its distant mutterings.

To his great discomfort the storm showed signs of coming up again, and he had barely time to effect an appearance of easy unconcern, which accorded but ill with the flush afore-mentioned, when a big, red-faced woman came heavily downstairs and burst into the room.

“You have made me ill again,” she said severely, “and now I hope you are satisfied with your work. You’ll kill me before you have done with me!”

The ex-pilot shifted on his chair.

“You’re not fit to have a wife,” continued Mrs. Pepper, “aggravating them and upsetting them! Any other woman would have left you long ago!”

“We’ve only been married three months,” Pepper reminded her.

“Don’t talk to me!” said his wife; “it seems more like a lifetime!”

“It seems a long time to ME” said the ex-pilot, plucking up a little courage.

“That’s right!” said his wife, striding over to where he sat. “Say you’re tired of me; say you wish you hadn’t married me! You coward! Ah! if my poor first husband was only alive and sitting in that chair now instead of you, how happy I would be!”

“If he likes to come and take it he’s welcome!” said Pepper; “it’s my chair, and it was my father’s before me, but there’s no man living I would sooner give it to than your first. Ah! he knew what he was about when the Dolphin went down, he did. I don’t blame him, though.”

“What do you mean?” demanded his wife.

“It’s my belief that he didn’t go down with her,” said Pepper, crossing over to the staircase and standing with his hand on the door.

“Didn’t go down with her?” repeated his wife scornfully. “What became of him, then? Where’s he been this thirty years?”

“In hiding!” said Pepper spitefully, and passed hastily upstairs.

The room above was charged with memories of the late lamented. His portrait in oils hung above the mantel-piece, smaller portraits—specimens of the photographer’s want of art—were scattered about the room, while various personal effects, including a mammoth pair of sea-boots, stood in a corner. On all these articles the eye of Jackson Pepper dwelt with an air of chastened regret.

“It ‘ud be a rum go if he did turn up after all,” he said to himself softly, as he sat on the edge of the bed. “I’ve heard of such things in books. I dessay she’d be disappointed if she did see him now. Thirty years makes a bit of difference in a man.”

“Jackson!” cried his wife from below, “I’m going out. If you want any dinner you can get it; if not, you can go without it!”

The front door slammed violently, and Jackson, advancing cautiously to the window, saw the form of his wife sailing majestically up the passage. Then he sat down again and resumed his meditations.

“If it wasn’t for leaving all my property I’d go,” he said gloomily. “There’s not a bit of comfort in the place! Nag, nag, nag, from morn till night! Ah, Cap’n Budd, you let me in for a nice thing when you went down with that boat of yours. Come back and fill them boots again; they’re too big for me.”

He rose suddenly and stood gaping in the centre of the room, as a mad, hazy idea began to form in his brain. His eyes blinked and his face grew white with excitement. He pushed open the little lattice window, and sat looking abstractedly up the passage on to the bay beyond. Then he put on his hat, and, deep in thought, went out.

He was still thinking deeply as he boarded the train for London next morning, and watched Sunset Bay from the window until it disappeared round the curve. So many and various were the changes that flitted over his face that an old lady, whose seat he had taken, gave up her intention of apprising him of the fact, and indulged instead in a bitter conversation with her daughter, of which the erring Pepper was the unconscious object.

In the same preoccupied fashion he got on a Bayswater omnibus, and waited patiently for it to reach Poplar. Strange changes in the landscape, not to be accounted for by the mere lapse of time, led to explanations, and the conductor—a humane man, who said he had got an idiot boy at home—personally laid down the lines of his tour. Two hours later he stood in front of a small house painted in many colours, and, ringing the bell, inquired for Cap’n Crippen.

In response to his inquiry, a big man, with light blue eyes and a long grey beard, appeared, and, recognising his visitor with a grunt of surprise, drew him heartily into the passage and thrust him into the parlour. He then shook hands with him, and, clapping him on the back, bawled lustily for the small boy who had opened the door.