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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Finch's Monkey, by John C. Hutcheson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Tom Finch's Monkey
+       and How he Dined with the Admiral
+
+Author: John C. Hutcheson
+
+Illustrator: Anonymous
+
+Release Date: April 16, 2007 [EBook #21097]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOM FINCH'S MONKEY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+Tom Finch's Monkey, and how he dined with the Admiral
+and other yarns.
+
+by John C. Hutcheson
+________________________________________________________________
+This is quite a short book, containing five short late Victorian
+stories.
+
+The first of these concerns a monkey on board ship, which was dressed up
+as an officer, and as such introduced to a visiting Admiral, who invites
+all the officers to dinner, stressing that he hoped to entertain the one
+who didn't speak much.
+
+The second story is an informative one about icebergs.
+
+The third concerns a yachting cruise in the Aegean Sea, among the Greek
+Islands, in which they save the live of a Greek. There is an encounter
+with bandits, from which they are surprisingly released without further
+harm.  Why would that be, I wonder.
+
+The fourth concerns a "sighting of a sea-serpent of extraordinary
+dimensions", by HMS Daedalus in 1848.
+
+And the fifth is a story about the curious events at a cricket match.
+________________________________________________________________
+TOM FINCH'S MONKEY, AND HOW HE DINED WITH THE ADMIRAL
+AND OTHER YARNS.
+
+BY JOHN C. HUTCHESON
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+AND HOW HE DINED WITH THE ADMIRAL.
+
+We were cruising off Callao on the Pacific station when it all happened,
+and I daresay there are a good many others who will recollect all about
+it as well as myself.  But to explain the matter properly I must go back
+a little in my dates; for, instead of Callao at the commencement of my
+yarn, you must read Calabar.
+
+You see, I was in the _Porpoise_ at the time, a small old-fashioned,
+paddle-wheel steamer that had been ordered across from the West Coast of
+Africa by "my lords" of the Admiralty to reinforce our squadron in South
+American waters on account of a war breaking out between Chili and Peru.
+Being a "sub" on board of her, and consequently subject to the
+authorities that be, when the _Porpoise_ was obliged to abandon the
+fragrant mangrove swamps at the mouth of the Congo river, where we had
+been enjoying ourselves for over a twelvemonth amidst the delights of a
+deadly miasma that brought on perpetual low fever, and as constant a
+consumption of quinine and bottled beer to counteract its effects, I was
+of course forced to accompany her across the Atlantic and round the Horn
+to her allotted destination.
+
+Thence "this plain unvarnished tale," which is as clear as mud in a
+ditch, although you needn't believe it if you don't like--there is no
+compulsion required to make hungry people eat roast mutton!
+
+Tom Finch, the lieutenant in command of the _Porpoise_, who had got his
+promotion through the death vacancy of his senior at Cape Coast Castle--
+he was just ahead of me on the roster, luckily for him--was one of the
+jolliest fellows I ever sailed with or under, since I entered the
+service; and I'm sure I've known a few "swabs" in my time!
+
+Unlike some junior officers I could name, when suddenly intrusted with
+the reins of power, there was nothing of the martinet about Tom, even on
+the first day he assumed his new rank, when a little extra pomposity
+might have been excusable.  But no, he gave himself no airs or graces
+whatever.
+
+He was the same Tom Finch who had chaffed and larked and talked
+confidence with me in the gunroom, now that he trod the quarter-deck "in
+all his war paint," as I told him somewhat impudently, the "skipper" of
+HMS _Porpoise_, "paddle sloop, 6 guns," as she was described in the
+_Navy List_--the same unaffected, jovial, good-natured sailor whom
+everybody liked, men and messmates alike.  His only weakness was a love
+for practical joking, which he would carry out sometimes, perhaps, to a
+rather ticklish extent--for his own good, that is, as he never knowingly
+did anyone else an injury by it.
+
+"What will you do with your monkey?"  I said, when the mail brought in
+our orders from the commodore on the West Coast for us to sail for Monte
+Video at once, and there await our further instructions--which would be
+sent on from England; "what will you do with him when we go?"
+
+"Take him with me of course," answered Tom; "why shouldn't I?"
+
+"Well, I don't see any reason against it certainly," I replied; "now
+that you are captain of the ship, and can do as you please without
+asking anybody's leave."
+
+"Poor Griffin," said Tom, "he _did_ object to Jocko's society; that was
+the reason I always used to keep the dear fellow ashore; however, as you
+say, Gerald, I am my own master and can do as I like now.  You don't
+think the crew dislike my monkey, do you?" he added eagerly.
+
+He was such a kind-hearted obliging chap, that if he thought that even
+the loblolly boy objected to the presence of Jocko on board, he would
+have banished him from the ship for ever, especially from the very fact
+of his being the commander and having no one to dispute his authority.
+
+"Oh dear, no, certainly not," I replied at once, with "effusion," as the
+French say in their idiom.  "The men like him better than you do, if
+that is possible; and I don't know what they would do without him, I
+only thought the change of climate might be deleterious to his health,
+that's all!"
+
+"Deleterious indeed, Gerald! wherever did you pick up such a fine word?
+I suppose you have been interviewing old Jalap about your liver, eh, you
+hypochondriacal young donkey!  Why, Monte Video is a regular paradise
+for the monkey tribe, and Jocko will be in his element there!"
+
+"But I don't suppose we'll stop there, Tom; didn't you say that you
+thought it probable that we would have to go round Cape Horn and join
+the squadron at Callao?"
+
+I may here explain that while on the quarter-deck, I invariably
+addressed Tom Finch as "Sir," for was he not my commanding officer?
+But, while below, or when off duty, he insisted on my retaining my old
+custom of calling him by his Christian name, the same as when we were
+together in the gunroom, and he only a "sub."
+
+"And if we _do_ go round the Horn, what then, Mr Sub-lieutenant
+Follett?" said he.
+
+"Won't Jocko find it cold: you know it's winter time there now?"
+
+"And can't I have him clothed like a Christian, stupid, and keep him by
+the fire, or in the cook's cabin, where he will be so warm, that he'll
+fancy himself in his native clime?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said I, "I quite forgot that his dearest friend next to you
+was Pompey!" alluding to the ship's cook, a sable African, who came very
+probably from the same locality as the monkey; the two being very much
+alike, not only in the colour of their complexions, but in their
+features and facial development.
+
+"Yes," said Tom reflectively, "Pompey will take care he doesn't freeze.
+He could not be fonder of him than his own brother would be; he might,
+indeed, _be_ his relative, if Darwin's theory should prove to be true!
+However, I must see about getting Jocko rigged out properly in a decent
+sailor's suit so that he may get accustomed to the clothing before we
+come to the cold latitudes.  I daresay my marine, who is a smart fellow,
+can manage to cut down a guernsey frock and a pair of canvas or serge
+trousers to fit the brute: I will give an order on the paymaster for
+them at once and Smith can set to work on them without delay;" and he
+bustled out of his cabin to carry his intentions into effect.
+
+Not being intimately acquainted with even the rudimentary elements of
+natural history, I cannot say to what order or genus of the monkey
+family Jocko belonged; but, roughly speaking, I think he was a specimen
+of chimpanzee or small gorilla, as he had no tail, and when he walked
+erect, which was his favourite position, he looked uncommonly like the
+"superior animal."
+
+Tom Finch had shot the monkey's mother in the bush when on a hunting
+excursion up the interior of the country, which he indulged in on first
+coming to the coast; and having captured and nursed the youngster with
+the utmost solicitude, Jocko repaid his master's attention by learning
+so many tricks and imitating the deportment, of those with whom he was
+brought in contact so carefully, that he was now, at the time of which I
+speak, such a thoroughly educated and well-bred monkey as to be "um
+purfit genelman," as Pompey, the cook, said--one "fit to shine in any
+circle," especially on ship-board, where he was an endless source of
+amusement to us all, from the lieutenant-commander down to the loblolly
+boy aforesaid.
+
+Pursuant to Tom Finch's directions and the exertions of his marine
+servant Smith, before we left the mouth of the Congo our friend Jocko
+was decorously habited in a smart seafaring costume; and, long ere we
+had crossed the Atlantic and arrived at Monte Video, the intelligent
+animal had got so habituated to his new rig that the difficulty would
+have been to persuade him to go about once more in his former unclothed
+state--and yet some sceptics say that monkeys aren't human!  You should
+only have seen him walking up and down the quarter-deck, or on the
+bridge by Tom's side, he looked for all the world like a juvenile
+"reefer!"
+
+It was in the cabin, however, that Jocko's acquirements came out in the
+strongest relief.  Tom had taught him to sit at table and use a spoon or
+fork in helping himself from his plate as naturally as possible; and, as
+for drinking, you should only have seen him pour out a tumbler of
+bottled stout, for which he had an inordinate relish, and tossing it
+down his throat, give a sigh of the deepest satisfaction when he had
+finished it, when, replacing his glass on the table, he would lean back
+in his chair as if overcome by the exertion.
+
+Before he had been clothed in sailor fashion, Jocko used to be very fond
+of skylarking with the men forward, stealing their mess utensils and
+scampering up and down the rigging to evade pursuit when his
+mischievousness had been found out; but, after that period, he seemed to
+become possessed of a wonderful amount of dignity which made him give up
+his wild frolicsomeness, and leave off his previous habits, for he never
+went to the forecastle again, but restricted himself to the officers'
+quarters aft.  This he did, too, in spite of the coaxings of the crew,
+who were very fond of him, and the fact of Tom often kicking him out of
+his cabin, where he would take possession of his sofa whenever he had
+the chance, wrapping himself in Tom's boat-cloak and reclining
+gracefully on the cushions.  One of Jocko's chief amusements also was in
+watching the machinery when in motion; and he would spend hours in
+looking down at it through the engine-room hatch.
+
+Once, when the skylight was up, he had a narrow squeak for his life;
+for, carried away by his excitement, in trying to put his hands--paws I
+should say--on the revolving shaft, he tumbled through; and, but for the
+chief engineer seeing him in time and stopping the engines, which were
+just then going slow, poor Jocko would have come to grief.
+
+This accident, however, never broke him of the habit of inspecting the
+machinery.  It had a sort of weird attraction for him which he could not
+resist.  Possibly, he might have been a sort of incubating Watt or
+Brunel, who knows?  But, alas, he never became sufficiently developed or
+"evolved" from his quadrumanous condition to answer the question in
+person, as the engines which were his hobby in the end compassed his
+untimely death!
+
+Those paddle-wheel steamers that were built for the navy some forty
+years ago, although designed for capturing Cuban slavers, were certainly
+not remarkable for their speed, and the _Porpoise_ was no exception to
+her class; so, what with her naturally slow rate of progression through
+the water, and the strict Admiralty circular limiting the consumption of
+coal even on special service like ours, we did not make a very rapid
+passage across the south Atlantic to Monte Video.  This place is
+charmingly situated on the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, and very
+appropriately named; for it can be seen far away off, for miles at sea,
+and itself commands magnificent views of its own beautiful harbour and
+the surrounding inland scenery.
+
+Here despatches awaited us, as Tom Finch had previously been informed at
+Cape Coast Castle would be the case, ordering the _Porpoise_ to proceed
+immediately to the Pacific and join the admiral on that station at
+Callao; and, accordingly, after one of the briefest of stays at a port
+which I have always longed since to have a more extended
+acquaintanceship with, we up anchor and paddled away to our assigned
+rendezvous--not by way of the "Horn," which we did not go round, as I
+had imagined we would, for it was far too stormy; but, through the
+Straits of Magellan, which are easy enough of passage to a steamer,
+independent almost of winds and currents, although somewhat perilous to
+sailing vessels, especially during the winter months.
+
+Jocko seemed to feel the cold as soon as we began to run down towards
+Terra del Fuego, and had some additional garments placed round him; but
+true to what he evidently thought was his new and proper position, he
+would not take up his quarters with his "old friend and brother,"
+Pompey, in the cook's caboose, preferring to shiver in Tom's cabin till
+he almost turned blue.
+
+"Bress dat Massa Jocko!"  Pompey would say after a vain attempt to coax
+him to share his hospitality.  "I can't make he out nohow!  Guess he
+tinks himself buckra ossifer and bery fine genelman, now de captin take
+um into cabin, sure; but, he no rale genelman to turn up nose at um ole
+frens!  No, sah, I no spik to him no more!" and the negro cook would
+retire with ill-suppressed anger, which was all the more amusing to us
+from its having been occasioned by a monkey!
+
+On our getting round into the Pacific, and sighting the coast towards
+Valparaiso, where we had to stop and coal once more, the _Porpoise_ not
+having much storage room in her old bunkers, Jocko got more on friendly
+terms with the thermometer, making faces and jabbering away in his
+lingo, which unfortunately no one but himself could understand, just as
+if he were still in his native clime on the African continent.
+
+Occasionally, too, as if his spirits carried him away on his restoration
+to warmer latitudes, he would indulge in one of his old skylarking bouts
+with the crew, and even made advances to Pompey in his caboose, which
+that worthy, in spite of his indignation at the manner in which he had
+been treated by Jocko when he assumed the dignity of the _toga virilis_,
+was only too glad to welcome and reciprocate; but, after one of these
+unusual unbendings, the monkey grew even more dignified and
+inapproachable than before, except to Tom and myself, who could do
+anything with him, and he then confined himself exclusively to the cabin
+and quarter-deck.
+
+At Valparaiso we got further despatches hurrying us up to the Peruvian
+coast, where the admiral much wanted to use us as a despatch vessel; so,
+taking in as much coal as our old tub, the _Porpoise_, could cram into
+her, we started for Callao, steaming hard day and night all this time--
+but it took us no less than ten days to reach our port at last.
+
+The admiral's ship was in the offing as we entered the harbour; and,
+without the slightest warning or time for preparation after we had made
+our muster, the old gentleman signalled, much to Tom's discomposure,
+that he was coming on board of us for inspection at once.
+
+"A pretty kettle of fish!" exclaimed Tom; "just as if he couldn't give a
+fellow time to paint up a bit and look tidy after sweltering all the
+pitch off her for eighteen months on the coast, and scuttling across the
+Atlantic as if the deuce were after us, and not a day allowed us to
+overhaul and make the old ship look presentable--why, it's too bad!"
+
+"You needn't grumble, sir," said I--we were both on the quarter-deck
+now, and the _friend_ had, of course, to yield to the _office_--"I'm
+sure the admiral won't be able to find much fault with the _Porpoise_,
+even if he were predetermined to do so, as she's in apple-pie order!"
+
+And so she was; while her crew, who almost worshipped Tom and would have
+followed him to a man anywhere, were in the highest state of discipline
+and health, the African fever having disappeared almost as soon as we
+lost sight of the pestilential West Coast and got into blue water.
+
+"Do you think so, Follett?" he said more calmly.
+
+"Certainly," I answered, "I would back her against any other vessel on
+the station for being in the highest state of efficiency."
+
+"I'm glad you think so, Gerald," he said to me aside, so that the
+middies who went to man the side ropes for the admiral at the gangway
+could not hear him.  "You know these big guns are always sharp on a
+fellow who holds a first command; and, as I have no interest to back me
+up at the Admiralty board, I don't want a bad report to go in against
+me, and a black mark be set before my name for ever!"
+
+"Don't you fear, Tom," said I cheerfully, "you'll pass muster with
+flying colours!"
+
+Well, the admiral came on board and the inspection turned out just as I
+expected.
+
+Not only was the gallant chief satisfied with the condition of the
+_Porpoise_; but, after having mustered the men at quarters, and having
+them exercised at gun-drill and cutlasses, he was so pleased that he
+publicly complimented Tom Finch on the state of his ship and crew,
+saying that they were not only creditable to him, but to the service
+generally.
+
+So far, so good.
+
+When the admiral, however, descended presently to Tom's cabin to sign
+papers, and perhaps to give a look around him, too, to see how such an
+efficient officer comported himself when "at home" so to speak, Tom's
+evil genius placed Master Jocko in the way.
+
+There he was, seated on the sofa, dressed up in some nondescript sort of
+uniform with which the youngsters had invested him during Tom's absence
+on deck--the young imps were always up to some of their larks--and being
+of a kindred disposition himself, Tom was never hard on them for their
+tricks.
+
+The monkey had on a blue coat and trousers with a red sash across his
+chest and a Turkish fez on his head, which gave him the appearance of
+one of the many Chilian field marshals, and generals, and colonels whom
+we had seen at Valparaiso, his wizened, dried-up face adding to the
+delusion.
+
+As luck would have it, too, what should Jocko do, as the admiral and Tom
+entered the cabin, but rise from the sofa; and taking off the cap from
+his head with one of his paws, while the other was laid deferentially on
+his chest, he made a most polite bow, in the manner he had always been
+used to do, when either of us greeted him on coming in.
+
+"Who's this gentleman?" said the admiral pleasantly, taking off _his_
+cocked hat likewise, and returning the salute--"I suppose someone you've
+given a passage to on the way, eh?"
+
+Tom was at his wit's end, as he told me afterwards, for the moment; but
+his native "nous" came to the rescue, and, combined with his love of a
+practical joke, suggested a loophole of escape.
+
+"Oh, sir," said he, "this is one of the aides-de-camp of the Chilian
+generalissimo, a Senor Carrambo, who begged me to land him at Callao on
+some urgent private business.  Of course, I know, sir, of the
+hostilities between his native state and Peru, and that as a neutral I
+ought not to offer any means of communication between the two powers;
+but, sir, as you see for yourself, he's a very harmless sort of fellow,
+and--"
+
+"Hush!" said the admiral, apparently shocked at Tom's speaking out in
+such an off-hand way his opinion of the foreign gentleman, as he took
+Jocko to be.
+
+"Oh, bless you," went on Tom, forgetting for the moment to whom he was
+speaking--"he cannot understand a word of English, and I can't make out
+a single word of his Chilian Spanish--but he's very polite."
+
+"So I see," replied the admiral affably, as master Jocko made another
+obeisance at this juncture; "pray ask him to accompany you on board the
+flagship with me to dinner.  Tell him I shall feel honoured by his
+company, as indeed I shall be by yours."
+
+To say he was thunderstruck at the admiral's request would not convey
+the slightest idea of Tom's mental condition when he found himself in
+such a dilemma.  He could have bitten off his tongue for its having got
+him into such a scrape, by telling the fib about the monkey in the first
+instance; but it was too late now, for the admiral had turned to leave
+the cabin, and the marine was at the door, besides others, who would
+hear any explanation he might make.
+
+Tom determined, therefore, with a courage that was almost heroic, to
+carry the thing through to the bitter end--giving me a pathetic wink to
+instruct everybody to "keep the thing dark" on board--for none knew
+about Jocko excepting our ship's company.
+
+Furtively shoving the fez down over the monkey's head, so that it almost
+concealed its features, he threw the boat-cloak that rested on the sofa
+around him; and, taking hold of his paw, marched in the admiral's wake
+to the gangway, and thence down into the chief's barge alongside, where
+the admiral and he and Jocko took their seats in state in the stern-
+sheets and were rowed off to the flagship--our crew manning the rigging
+as they left and giving three hearty cheers!
+
+"I like to see that proof of affection in your men," said the admiral,
+as he witnessed this unofficial performance.  "They are proud of their
+commander, and, I am sure, you have a crew to be proud of!"
+
+Tom bowed in acknowledgment of the compliment.  He knew well enough what
+had occasioned the enthusiasm of the blue-jackets, and bit his lips to
+restrain his laughter, which so suffocated him that he felt he would
+burst if he had to keep it in much longer!
+
+All he could do now was to brazen out the imposture, and he huddled the
+boat-cloak round Jocko so as to conceal his form.
+
+"Poor Senor Carrambo is suffering fearfully from the ague," he said in
+explanation to the admiral of this little attention on his part--"I'm
+afraid he should not have ventured out of the cabin."
+
+"A good glass of sherry will soon warm him," said the admiral smiling,
+"and I think I shall be able to offer him one."
+
+"He's rather partial to bottled ale or stout," suggested Tom, "and he
+may possibly prefer that."
+
+"Rather a queer taste for a Spaniard," said the admiral, as the barge
+reached the side of the flagship; "but I think I can also gratify on
+board my ship this predilection of Senor--"
+
+"Carrambo," prompted Tom.
+
+"Yes, Carrambo," added the admiral as he mounted the accommodation
+ladder of the flagship--Tom Finch with Jocko on his arm following in his
+wake, as before, amidst the mutual salutes of the admiral and the
+officers, to the state cabin of the chief.
+
+Seated at the dinner-table, to which all were summoned with all proper
+ceremony to the exhilarating tune of the "Roast beef of old England,"
+Jocko, who had a chair alongside of Tom, behaved with the utmost
+decorum.
+
+He indeed appeared to eat little but bread, biscuit, tart, and fruit;
+but, beyond a grimace, which must have caused the admiral to reflect
+that of all the ugly persons he ever beheld in his life, this Chilian
+officer was certainly the ugliest, nothing particularly happened, and
+the dinner passed off without an exposure.
+
+Tom, the admiral observed, frequently helped "the generalissimo's aide-
+de-camp," especially in pouring out his wine, which he limited in a
+marked degree; but the jocular lieutenant-commander passed this off by
+saying that his distinguished friend--whom he exchanged a word with
+occasionally, of some outlandish language, a mixture of Spanish and High
+Dutch, with a sprinkling of the Chinese tongue--was in the most feeble
+health and acting under the doctor's directions regarding his diet:--
+that was the reason also, he explained, of his remaining cloaked and
+with his head-covering on at the admiral's table, for which he craved a
+thousand pardons!
+
+After dinner, Tom would have given worlds to have beaten a retreat to
+his own ship, as several officers came into the saloon while coffee was
+handed round, and he dreaded each moment that Jocko would disgrace
+himself and the bubble would burst; but no, there the admiral, would
+keep him, talking all the time, and directing most of his attention
+towards the pseudo "Senor Carrambo," for whose benefit Tom had to
+translate, or pretend to translate, what was said.
+
+Tom said he never got so punished for a joke in his life before, and he
+took very good care not to let his sense of the ridiculous put him in
+such a plight again, as for more than two mortal hours he suffered all
+the tortures of a condemned criminal; as he said, he would rather have
+been shot at once!
+
+But when the admiral shook hands with him on his departure, Tom felt
+worst of all.
+
+"Good-bye, lieutenant," said the admiral, "and thanks for your
+introduction to `Senor Carrambo.'  I admired the condition and
+discipline of your ship to-day, Mr Finch, and, in forming my opinion of
+your character I must say that you carry out a joke better than anyone I
+ever met.  _But you should remember, lieutenant, that those who have the
+end of the laugh, enjoy the joke best_.  Good-night, I shall communicate
+with you to-morrow!"
+
+Poor Tom! after believing that the admiral had suspected nothing up to
+the last moment, to be thus undeceived.
+
+It was heartrending!
+
+Gone was his commission, he thought, at one fell blow, with all the
+pleasant dreams of promotion that had flashed across his brain after the
+admiral's encomiums on him that afternoon; and he would have to think
+himself very lucky if he were not tried by court-martial and dismissed
+the service with disgrace.
+
+It was paying dearly for a practical joke, played off on the spur of the
+moment, truly!
+
+When he reached the _Porpoise_ he felt so disgusted that he kicked poor
+Jocko, boat-cloak, fez and all, down the main hatch, gruffly ordered his
+gig to be triced up to the davits, and went below to brood over his
+anticipated disgrace in the solitude of his own cabin, where I presently
+found him.
+
+After a great deal of persuasion, I got him to indite a letter of
+apology to the admiral, detailing all Jocko's perfections, and how he
+had been constantly an inmate of his cabin; while assuring him that the
+passing off the monkey as a "foreigner" had not been a planned thing,
+but was only the result of an accident and his own unaccountable love of
+fun, although the falsehood he had been guilty of was most
+reprehensible.
+
+Indeed, as I made him observe, if it had not been for the admiral
+himself suggesting the imposture, he, Tom, would never have dreamt of
+it; but, he concluded, he would regret it all his life, for he had not
+only told a lie, but the whole matter appeared like a deliberately
+contemplated insult to his superior officer.
+
+This letter Tom, still acting under my advice, sent off immediately to
+the flagship, as it was yet not late, and within half an hour he
+received an answer which made him dance an Indian war-dance of delight
+around the cabin table, where he and I were awaiting the news that was
+to make or mar poor Tom's future life.
+
+The admiral's ran thus:--
+
+  "Flag, at sea, July, 18---.
+
+  "Dear Commander,
+
+  "I accept your apology, and forgive the joke which I enjoyed, I
+  believe, more than you did, having discovered Master Jocko's identity
+  from the first moment when he took his Turkish fez off to salute me in
+  the cabin, on my entering--you young rascal!  I would not have missed
+  for a hundred pounds the agony you were in all the time you were
+  sitting at my table, and, I really think, I had the best of the joke!
+
+  "Come and breakfast with me and I will tell you the reason _why I
+  address you as_ above--I suppose he never told you, but your father
+  was one of my dearest friends.
+
+  "Yours, with best compliments to `Senor Carrambo,'
+
+  "Anson."
+
+"By George, Tom," said I when we had both perused this letter, "you are
+in luck!  He doesn't call you _Commander_ for nothing!"
+
+"No, I suppose not," said he, "at all events, Gerald, he's a trump!  I
+recollect my old father saying something once about asking him to put in
+a good word for me; but, I daresay he forgot all about it: but I am none
+the worse for it now, eh?"
+
+"No," said I, "thanks to Jocko!"
+
+The next day Tom Finch had his commission made out by the admiral's
+secretary as commander of the _Blanche_, while I was promoted to his
+place in the _Porpoise_, owing to the good word he put in for me when he
+breakfasted with the jolly old chief; and we both of us were busy enough
+the next few months on the station, protecting British interests and
+stopping would-be privateers from having such a festive time as they
+expected during the period that hostilities lasted between the two rival
+South American republics at the time of which I speak; then wars between
+Chili and Peru, and the rest of these very independent states, being of
+as periodic occurrence of the yellow fever in the Gulf of Mexico!
+
+Poor Jocko, as I hinted at before, came finally to grief in a very sad
+way.
+
+We were chasing a suspicious looking blockade-runner, a short time after
+he had his remarkable invitation to dine with the admiral; our engines
+were moving a little more rapidly than usual; and, Jocko, who was
+perched on the skylight above, was looking at them with the most intense
+interest.
+
+All at once, the platform on which he was resting slipped, and the
+talented monkey fell into the engine-room, in the midst of the
+machinery--there was one sharp agonised squeak, and the last page of
+poor Jocko's history was marked with the word _Finis_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+ESCAPE OF THE "CRANKY JANE."
+
+A STORY ABOUT AN ICEBERG.
+
+One day, some three years ago or so, I chanced to be down at Sheerness
+dockyard, and, while there, utilised my time by inspecting the various
+vessels scattered about this naval repository.  Some of the specimens
+exhibited all the latest "improvements" in marine architecture, being
+built to develop every destructive property--huge floating citadels and
+infernal machines; while others were old, and now useless, types of the
+past "wooden walls of old England," ships that once had braved the
+perils of the main in all the panoply of their spreading canvas, and
+whose broadsides had thundered at Trafalgar, making music in the ears of
+the immortal Nelson and his compeers.
+
+Amongst the different craft that caught my eye--old hulks, placidly
+resting their weary timbers on the muddy bosom of the Medway,
+dismantled, dismasted, and having pent-houses like the roofs of barns
+over their upper decks in lieu of awnings; armour-plated cruisers, in
+the First Class Steam Reserve, ready to be commissioned at a moment's
+notice; and ships in various degrees of construction, on the building
+slips and in dry dock--was a vessel which seemed to be undergoing the
+operation of "padding her hull," if the phrase be admissible as
+explaining what I noticed about her, the planking, from which the copper
+sheathing had been previously stripped, being doubled, apparently, and
+protected in weak places by additional beams and braces being fixed to
+the sides.  Of course, I may be all wrong in this, but it was what
+seemed to me to be the case.
+
+On inquiry I learnt that the vessel was the _Alert_, which it may be
+recollected was one of the two ships in the Arctic expedition commanded
+by Sir George Nares.  I wondered why so many workmen were busy about
+her, hammering, sawing, planing, riveting, fitting and boring holes with
+giant gimlets, so I asked the reason for this unwonted activity, when it
+might have been reasonably supposed that the vessel had played her part
+in the service, and might have been allowed to pass the remainder of her
+days afloat, in an honourable retreat up the estuary on which the
+dockyard stands.
+
+But, no.
+
+I was informed that the _Alert_ had yet many more days of Arctic
+experience in store for her, our government having placed her at the
+disposal of the United States authorities to take part in the relief of
+Lieutenant Greeley's Polar expedition.--I may here mention in
+parenthesis that the vessel subsequently successfully performed the task
+committed to her substantial frame; and it was mainly by means of the
+stores deposited by her in a _cache_ in Smith Sound that the survivors
+of the expedition were enabled to be transported home again in safety.--
+I, really, only mention the vessel's name on account of the man who told
+me about her--a gentleman who entered into conversation with me about
+the cold regions of the north generally, and of the escapes of ships
+from icebergs in particular.
+
+He was a seafaring man.  I could see that at a glance, although he was
+not one I should have thought who had donned her majesty's uniform, for
+he lacked that dapper look that the blue-jackets of the service are
+usually distinguished by; but he was a veritable old salt, or "shell-
+back," none the less, sniffing of the ocean all over, and having his
+face seamed with those little venous streaks of pink (as if he indulged
+in a dab of rouge on the sly occasionally) which variegate the tanned
+countenances of men exposed to all the rigours of the elements, and who
+encounter with an equal mind the freezing blast of the frozen sea or the
+blazing sun of Africa.
+
+I told this worthy that once, when on a voyage in one of the Inman line
+of steamers from Halifax to Liverpool, I had gone--or rather the vessel
+had, to be more correct--perilously near an iceberg, when my nautical
+friend proceeded to give vent to his own exposition of the "glacial
+theory," saying that a lot of nonsense was written about the ice in the
+Arctic regions by people who never went beyond their own firesides at
+home and had never seen an iceberg.  It made him mad, he said, to read
+it!
+
+"I daresay you've read a lot of rubbish on the subject?" said the old
+gentleman, getting excited about the matter, as if he only wanted a good
+start to be off and away on his hobby.
+
+"I daresay I have," I replied.
+
+"Well, what with all the fiction that has been written and the fabulous
+stories told of the Arctic and its belongings, the `green hand' who
+makes the voyage for the first time is full of expectations concerning
+all the wonderful sights he's going to see in `the perennial realms of
+ice and snow'--that's the phrase the newspaper chaps always use--
+expectations which are bound to be disappointed,--and why?"
+
+"I'm sure I can't tell!" said I.
+
+"Because the things that he fancies he's going to see don't really
+exist, nor never yet did in spite of what book-learned people may say!
+The voyager who goes north for the first time is bound, let us say for
+illustration, for Baffin's Bay; and, from what he has learnt beforehand,
+bears and walruses, seals and sea-lions, whale blubber and the Esquimaux
+who eat it, all occupy some considerable share of his imagination.  But,
+above all these, the first thing that he looks forward to see are the
+icebergs, or floating mountains of ice, which are so especially the
+creation of the cold regions, to which he is sailing.  These icebergs,
+sir, form the staple background of every Arctic view, without which none
+would be deemed for a moment complete.  Their gigantic peaks and jagged
+precipices are familiar to most, in a score of pictures and engravings
+drawn by artists who were never beyond the Lizard Lights; and really, I
+believe that if one was sketched that wasn't at least a thousand feet
+high or more, and didn't have a polar bear perched on top and a full
+rigged ship sailing right underneath it, why, the generality of people
+would think it wasn't a bit like the real thing!"
+
+"And what is the `real thing' like?"  I asked with some curiosity.
+
+"There you have me," said the old sailor, who had from his speech
+evidently received a good education; and if once "before the mast" had
+now certainly risen to something much higher.  "To men whose minds have
+been wrought up to such a pitch of fancy and expectation, the first
+sight of a real iceberg is a complete take-down to their imagination.
+Your ship is pitching about, say, in the cross seas near the mouth of
+Davis Strait, preparatory to entering within the smooth water of the
+Arctic circle, when in the far distance your eye catches sight of a lump
+of ice, looking, as it rises and falls sluggishly in the trough of the
+sea, not unlike a hencoop covered with snow, after it had been pitched
+overboard by some passing ship, or like a gigantic lump of foam tossed
+on the crest of a wave.  If the day is sunless, the reflection of light
+which gives it that glistening appearance, so remarkable as the midnight
+sun glances among an array of these objects, is wanting to add dignity
+to the contour of what it is a rude dissipation of life's young dream to
+learn is an iceberg--though on a very small scale.  It is simply a wave-
+worn straggler from the fleet which will soon be met sailing southward
+out of the Greenland fjords.  The warm waters of the Atlantic will in
+the course of a few days be too much for it.  The sun will be at work on
+it; it will get undermined by the wash of the breakers, until, being
+top-heavy, it will speedily capsize.  Then the war between the ice and
+the elements will begin afresh, until the once stately ice-mountain will
+become the `bergy bit,' as whalers call the slowly-lessening mass of
+crumbling, spongy ice, until it finally disappears in the waters; but
+only to rise again in the form of vapour, which the cold of the north
+will convert into snow, the parent of that inland ice about the polar
+regions which forms the source of subsequent icebergs afresh--the
+process being always going on, never ending!"
+
+"Why, you are quite a philosopher," I observed.
+
+"A bit of a one, sir," said the old gentleman with a smile.  "Those who
+go down to the sea in ships, you know, see wonders in the deep!  But, to
+continue what I was telling you about the icebergs.  As your ship
+proceeds further north they become more numerous and of larger
+dimensions, until, as you pass the entrance of some of those great
+fjords, or inlets, which intersect the Greenland coast-line, they pour
+out in such numbers that the wary mariner is thankful for the continuous
+daylight and summer seas that enable him so easily to avoid these
+floating rocks.  Here are several broken-up ones floating about in the
+Waigat, a narrow strait between the island of Disco and the mainland of
+Greenland, and in close vicinity to several fjords noted for sending big
+bergs adrift in the channel way to float southward.  These are the `ice-
+mountains' of the fancy artist.  One ashore close into the land, and yet
+not stranded or on account of its depth in the water getting into any
+very shallow soundings, you may see in your mind's eye, as I've seen
+them scores of times in reality.  It presents to your notice a dull
+white mass of untransparent ice--not transparent, with objects to be
+seen through it on the other side, as I have noticed in more than one
+picture of the North Pole taken by an artist on the spot!  This mass is
+generally jagged at the top with saw-like edges, and it doesn't so very
+much resemble those Gothic cathedral spires as Arctic writers try to
+make out.  Still, on the whole, the shape of this monster floating mass
+of ice is very striking to those seeing it for the first time; and when
+you come to look at it more closely, its size and general character lose
+nothing by having the details ciphered down, as a Yankee skipper would
+say."
+
+"Are the icebergs very big?"  I inquired.
+
+"Well," said the old gentleman, quite pleased at being asked for
+information on the subject, and evidently wishing to convert me to his
+own practical way of thinking in opposition to Arctic fiction-mongers,
+"they may sometimes be seen of a hundred and fifty feet high,
+occasionally reaching to a couple of hundred, while sometimes I've seen
+an iceberg that towered up more than double that height; but the
+majority of them do not exceed a hundred feet at most.  The colour, as
+I've said, is not emerald green, as most folks think--that is, not
+unless it is seen under what science-folks call the prismatic action of
+light--but a dull white that is almost opaque.  The sides are,
+generally, dripping with the little streams of water formed by the
+melting of the ice, and glistening in the rays of the sun; but a dull
+white is the principal colour of the mass.  Its base is broader than its
+summit, and is here and there hollowed into little caverns by the action
+of the waves.  The pinnacles seen in the pictures of the illustrated
+papers I've spoken of are not very plain.  Indeed, both the one we are
+supposing and the other bergs, that are always, like the `birds of a
+feather' of the proverb, to be seen close together, are flattened on the
+top; and if here and there worn into fantastic shapes by the weather,
+they mostly go back to a shape which may be roughly described as broader
+at the base than the top; otherwise the berg would speedily capsize.
+When this happens, they go over with a tremendous splash, rocking and
+churning up the sea for miles round, and sending wave circles spreading
+and widening out as from the whirlpool in the centre, in the same way as
+when a child pitches a stone into a pond.
+
+"On some of the bergs are masses of earth, gravel and stone, proving
+that they must lately have been connected with the land; for owing to
+the old bergs becoming undermined by the waves, they soon turn over, and
+so of course send _their_ load to the bottom.  An examination of the
+sides of the ice-mass also shows to the eye some other peculiarities.
+The greater part of the ice is white and thoroughly full of air-bubbles,
+which lie in very thin lines parallel to each other; but throughout the
+white ice there are numerous slight cracks or streaks, of an intensely
+blue and transparent ice, which, on being exposed to heat, before
+melting, I've been told by the surgeon of the ship I was in, dissolve
+into large angular grains.  These blue cracks cross and cross over again
+in the mass of the berg, and may possibly be water which has melted and
+been frozen again either on the surface of the berg, or in its crevasses
+or cracks, when it was a part of the glacier from which it first came.
+But, besides the blue ice, in some icebergs may be seen a kind of
+conglomerate of ice-blocks of various sizes, the spaces between them
+being filled up with snow or crumbled ice.  This conglomerate exists
+usually in cracks, though it is found also in layers, and even forms
+large masses of the larger bergs, mixed up with stones and earthy
+lumps."
+
+"Did you ever have any adventure amongst the icebergs?"  I asked the old
+gentleman at this juncture, thinking I had quite enough of the
+scientific aspect of the subject, and dreading lest he might dive
+further into the original composition of ice.
+
+"Not in the Arctic Ocean," he replied; "but once, when I was only a
+common sailor before the mast and aboard a vessel in the Australian
+trade, I came across icebergs in the southern latitudes which were
+mighty perilous; and one of these bergs was, by the way, bigger than any
+I ever saw in northern seas."
+
+"Tell me all about it," I said, glad to get him on to a regular sea
+yarn.
+
+The old gentleman was nothing loth; and I noticed that the moment he
+began to speak of his old experiences as a merchant seaman, he dropped
+the somewhat affected phraseology in which he had previously been
+expounding his theories for my information concerning the polar regions
+and the formation of icebergs--thenceforth speaking much more naturally
+in the ordinary vernacular of Jack tars.
+
+"I suppose it's forty years ago, more or less," he began, "since I
+shipped in the brig _Jane_, John Jiggins master, bound from London to
+Melbourne with an assorted cargo.
+
+"She was a decent-sized brig enough, and handy to manage when she had
+plenty of sea-room, and a wind right aft; but on a bowline, or when the
+wind was on the quarter, and there was a bit of a sea on, she kept such
+a stiff weather-helm, and was such a downright cranky vessel, never
+bending down to a breeze or lifting to the swell, that it was no wonder
+that as soon as the hands got used to her ways, and tumbled to her
+contrary points--and she was that contrary sometimes as to remind you of
+a woman's temper on washing days, most ladies then being not
+particularly pleasant, and feeling more inclined to drive a man mad,
+rather than to coax and wheedle him--as soon as we all got used to her
+ways, I say, we christened her the `_Cranky Jane_,' and that she was
+more or less, barring when she had a fair wind, with an easy sea and
+everything agreeable for her, as I said before.
+
+"Old Cap'en Jiggins, however, wasn't of our way of thinking.
+
+"He was the part owner as well as master of the vessel; and loved the
+old brig--the `Janey' he called her, the old fool!--like the very apple
+of his eye, always praising her up to the nines and not allowing anybody
+to say a word against her sea-going qualities.
+
+"Sometimes, when the man at the wheel would be swearing at the lubberly
+craft in a silent way, so that you could see he was suffocating himself
+with passion and ready to burst himself, for the way in which she would
+fall off, or bowse up into the wind's eye, and try to go her own way,
+like a horse that gets the bit between his teeth and sets his ears back,
+then you'd hear old Jiggins a-talking to himself about the blessed old
+tub.
+
+"`That's it, my beauty!  Look how she rides, the darling, like a duck!
+What a clipper she is, to be sure; so easy to handle! a child could
+steer her with a piece of thread!'
+
+"When, p'raps it took all one man's strength, and perhaps two, to bring
+up the beast a single point to the wind!
+
+"In spite of Cap'en Jiggins' praise, I never sailed in such an out-and-
+out obstinate craft as that identical _Cranky Jane_.  She seemed to have
+been laid down on the lines and constructed, plank by plank, especially
+to spile a man's temper!  Somehow or other, with the very lightest of
+breezes--except, as I've said before, we had the wind right dead aft--we
+could never get her to lay to her course and keep it.  She was always
+falling off and breaking away in every way but the right one, and
+wanting to go just in the very opposite direction, to what we did;
+exactly like Paddy's pig when he's taking it to market, and he has to
+whisper in its ear that he's going to Cork, when he really wants to meet
+the dealer at Bandon!
+
+"This peculiarity of the brig, of course, very naturally set the men
+against her; as, although what is usually called a `dry ship'--that is,
+the hands could sleep comfortably in the forecastle, instead of being
+drenched through day and night, by the seas she took in over the bows,
+as is the case in some clippers I've sailed in--she was so dreadfully
+hard to steer that a man's trick at the wheel was like going on the
+treadmill!  And yet, that very peculiarity and contrariness that made us
+cuss and swear too, only induced Captain Jiggins to say occasionally
+when she was most outrageous wide in her yawing, `Pretty dear!' or some
+such trash--this very peculiarity, I say, saved all our lives from the
+most dreadful fate, and brought us home safe to England after
+encountering one of the most deadly perils of the deep.  Curious, isn't
+it?  But I'll tell you all about it.  Here goes for the yarn.
+
+"We had done the voyage out in pretty fair time from London to Port
+Philip; for, most of the way, the wind was fair and almost dead aft from
+the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope, down in the `roaring forties,'
+till we got to the Heads.  Consequently, the brig couldn't help herself
+but go straight onward, when the trades were shoving her along and while
+nobody wanted her to tack, or beat up, or otherwise perform any of those
+delicate little points of seamanship which a true sailor likes to see
+his ship go through, almost against his own interest, sometimes, as far
+as hard work is concerned in reefing and furling and taking in sail, or
+piling on the canvas and `letting her rip.'  So long as nothing of this
+sort was wanted from her the brig was as easy-going as you could wish
+and all probably that Cap'en Jiggins thought her; but, you had only just
+to try to get her to sail up in the wind's eye or run with the breeze a
+bit ahead of the beam, and you'd soon have seen for yourself how
+cantankerous she could be!
+
+"No, it was all plain sailing to Port Philip Heads; and even after we
+had unloaded our home cargo, and went round, first to Sydney, and
+afterwards to the Fiji Islands--I shan't forget Suva Suva Bay in a
+hurry, I can tell you.  So far, everything went serene; for, no matter
+where we wanted to go--and you see, the skipper wasn't tied to any
+especial port to seek a cargo, but being part owner, could please
+himself by going to the best market; which, being a shrewd man, with his
+head screwed on straight, you can bet he did!--no matter where we wanted
+to go, as I say, the wind seemed to favour us, for it was always right
+astern, and everything set below and aloft, and the wind blowing us
+there beautifully right before it all the way--just as the old _Jane_
+liked it, sweet and not too strong!
+
+"So far, going out to Australia, and looking in at Sydney and Fiji and
+the islands for cargo, and loading up choke-full with just everything
+that our skipper counted at the highest freight, with no dead weight to
+break the brig's back--so far, everything went `high-falutin'' as the
+Yanks say; but when we came to leave Polynesia--it ought to be
+christened Magnesia, I consider, for it contains a bigger continent,
+with a larger number of islands than Europe--and shape a course
+homewards to the white cliffs of Old Albion, that we longed to see again
+after our long absence, for we were away good two years in all, the
+cap'en thinking nothing of time, being his own charterer, so long as he
+got a good cargo from port to port, and we were engaged on a trading
+voyage, and not merely out and home again directly--then it was that the
+_Cranky Jane_ came out in her true colours, and made us love her--oh
+yes! just as the skipper did--over the left!
+
+"Why, sir, she was that aggravating, that, as Bill the boatswain and I
+agreed, we should have liked to run her ashore on the very first land we
+came to, beach her and chop her up there and then for firewood; and we
+wouldn't have been content till we had burned up the very last fragment
+of her obstinate old hull!
+
+"After leaving Suva Suva Bay, Fiji, where we filled up the last
+remaining space in the _Cranky Jane's_ hold with copra--which is a lot
+of cocoa-nuts smashed up so as to stow easy, out of which they make oil
+at home for moderator lamps--we went south further than I ever went
+before in any ship.  Captain Jiggins, as I heard him explaining to the
+first officer when I was taking my trick at the wheel, and blessing the
+brig as usual for her stiff helm, intended making the quickest passage
+that ever was made, he said, by striking down into them outlandish
+latitudes before he steered east and made the Horn; and I suppose he
+knew what he was about, as he was as good a navigator as ever handled a
+sextant.  _He_ called it great circle sailing; but _I_ called it queer-
+sailing; and so did most of the hands, barring Bill the boatswain, who
+said the captain was right; but anyways, right or wrong, it led us into
+an ugly corner, as you shall hear.
+
+"Well, we went down the latitudes like one o'clock, the brig, running
+free before the north-east monsoon as if she were sailing for a wager in
+a barge-race on the Thames; and the weather as fine as you please, warm
+and sunny--too much so, sometimes--so that a man hadn't to do a stroke
+of work on board, save to take his turn at the wheel.  Watch on deck,
+and watch below, we had nothing to do but loll about, with a stray pull
+at a brace here and a sheet there, or else walk into our grub and then
+turn into our bunks; for Cap'en Jiggins was the proper sort of skipper.
+None of your making work for him when there was nothing to do; but when
+the hands were wanted, why he did expect them to look alive, and have no
+skulking--small blame to him, say I, for one!
+
+"We had run down below the parallel of Cape Horn, pretty considerable I
+should think, when we at last had to ask the old brig to bear up
+eastwards to lie her proper course; and then you should have seen the
+tricks she played--confound her!  Why, we had to treat her as gingerly
+as if she were a yacht rounding a mark-boat to make her bear up a point
+or go to the wind; although I'll give her the credit of saying, if she
+were cranky--and she was that, and no mistake--she made no leeway, which
+was a blessing at all events.
+
+"It was some days after we had altered our course to East South East,
+with as much more easterly as we could get out of her--and that wasn't
+much, try all we could, with as much fore and aft sail as we could get
+on her--when the weather began to change, and the wind, which had been
+steadily blowing from the north-east, chopped round a bit more ahead,
+the sea getting up, and a stray squall coming now and again, which made
+us more alert trimming the sails, and taking in and letting out canvas
+as occasion arose.  It was no use, however, trying to drive the brig to
+the eastward any longer with this wind shifting about, humour her as we
+might; so the skipper altered her course again more to the south,
+although we were then as far down as we ought to have gone.
+
+"`The darling,' says he to the first officer when he gave the order to
+lay her head South South East, `she's a little playful with the heavy
+cargo we've got on board, and wants to keep warm as long as she can!
+Let her run a hundred miles or so more south, and then we'll fetch up to
+the Horn, and be able to spin along like winking, just as the beautiful
+creature wants!'
+
+"Well! it did make us mad to hear the old man talk like this about the
+clumsy old tub; but of course we couldn't help ourselves, so we only
+grinned, and said to each other,--`Catch us coming again in the _Cranky
+Jane_ when once we're safe ashore!'
+
+"Would you believe it?  The blessed brig, although the new course she
+was on brought the wind aft instead of on her beam, she was that
+spiteful over it, that, as it was blowing much stronger than it had
+been, it took two of us to keep her head from deviating from her proper
+track, and we had hard work to prevent her from breaking off more than
+she did.
+
+"The wind came on towards the afternoon to blow harder and harder; and
+by nightfall--you know it gets dark as soon as the sun goes down in
+those latitudes--we had to shorten sail so much that the _Cranky Jane_
+was staggering along at the rate of nearly fourteen knots an hour with
+reefed top-sails and jib and main-sail besides the stay-sails.
+
+"The weather got wilder and wilder as time went on, the heavens quite
+dark overhead, except an occasional glint of a star which didn't know
+whether he ought to show or not; but still, although we were pretty far
+below the equator, the night was warm and even sultry, so that we
+expected a hurricane, or cyclone, or something of that sort, for it was
+quite unnatural to feel as if in the tropics when fifty degrees south!
+
+"The cap'en, I know, thought it would blow by and by, for before he
+turned in he caused even the reefed top-sails and stay-sails to be taken
+in, and left her snug for the night, with only a close-reefed main-sail
+and the jib on her.
+
+"`Keep a good look-out, Mr Stanchion,' says he to the chief officer, as
+he went down the companion-ladder to his cabin, `and call me if there's
+the slightest change.'
+
+"`Ay, ay, sir,' says Mr Stanchion; and so the skipper goes below with a
+cheerful good-night, in spite of the weather looking dirty and squalls
+being handy before morning.
+
+"Now, as luck would have it--as some folks say, although others put it
+down to something more than luck--Mr Stanchion wasn't like one of those
+jolly, devil-may-care, slap-dash sort of officers, that your regular
+shell-backs like best.  He was a silent, quiet, reflective man, who
+looked and spoke as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth; and yet he
+thought deeper and further than your dash-and-go gentlemen, who act on
+the spur of the moment without cogitating.
+
+"As soon as the skipper had turned in, he did a thing which perhaps not
+one officer in a hundred would have done in his place, considering we
+were on the open ocean out of the track of passing vessels, and that it
+wasn't much darker than it is on most nights when there's no moon, and
+the sky is cloudy.
+
+"What do you think it was?  Why, he put a man on the look-out on the
+forecastle, just as if we were going up channel, or in a crowded sea-
+way!  The skipper had meant him to look-out himself, but another
+wouldn't be amiss, he said.
+
+"Providentially, too, the very man whom he accidentally selected was the
+very best person he could have placed as look-out, if he had picked the
+whole crew over from the captain downward; although the mate did not
+know this when he sang out to him to go on the forecastle.
+
+"This was Pat O'Brien--`Paddy,' as all the hands called him--an
+Irishman, of course, as you would judge from his name, who had been in
+one of the Arctic expeditions, which we were speaking of just now.  He
+went out with Sir Leopold McClintock I think; but all I know is, that he
+once was up a whole winter in the Polar Sea, and there had got laid on
+his back with scurvy, besides having his toes frost-bitten, as he
+frequently told us when yarning amongst the crew of an evening.
+
+"Generally speaking, he was a careless, happy-go-lucky fellow, and one
+might have wondered that Mr Stanchion called him from out the watch
+that had just came on deck; but, as I said before, the mate could not
+possibly have made a better selection, as it turned out afterwards.
+
+"Pat O'Brien was a comic chap, full of fun, and always making jokes; so
+that as soon as he opened his mouth almost to say anything the other
+fellows would laugh, for they knew that some lark was coming.
+
+"`Be jabers,' says Pat, as he goes forward in obedience to the chief
+officer's order, `it's a nice pleasant look-out I'll have all by
+meeself! while you're coilin' the ropes here, I'll be thinkin' of my
+colleen there!' and he went out on the foc'sl.
+
+"By and by we could hear him muttering to himself.  `Wurrah, wurrah!
+Holy mother, can't you let me be aisy!' he sang out presently aloud as
+if he was suffering from something, or in pain.
+
+"`Look-out, ahoy!' hails Mr Stanchion from aft; `what's the matter
+ahead--what are you making all that row about?'
+
+"`Sure an' it's my poor feet, save yer honour, that are hurting of me,
+they feels the frost terrible!'
+
+"The first mate naturally thought Master Paddy was trying to play off
+one of his capers on him--for it wouldn't be the first time he tried the
+game on; so this answer got up his temper, making him shout back an
+answer to the Irishman that would tell him he wasn't going to catch him
+napping.
+
+"`Nonsense, man,' he calls out--`frost?  Why, you are dreaming!  The
+thermometer is up to over sixty degrees, and it's warm enough almost for
+the tropics.'
+
+"The hands, of course, thought too that Pat was only joking in his usual
+way and endeavouring to make fun of Mr Stanchion; and they waited to
+hear what would come next from the Irishman, knowing that he was not
+easily shut up when once he had made up his mind for anything.  However,
+they soon could tell from the tone of voice in which Pat spoke again
+that he wasn't joking this time, or else he was acting very well in
+carrying out his joke on the mate; for as we were laughing about his
+`poor feet,' which was a slang term in those days, Paddy calls out again
+in reply to the mate:--
+
+"`Faix,' says he, `it's ne'er a lie I'm telling, yer honour.  Be jabers!
+my feet feel as if they were in the ice now, and frost-bitten all over!'
+
+"Another officer in Mr Stanchion's place would, as likely as not, have
+consigned poor Pat to a warmer locality in order to warm his limbs
+there; but Mr Stanchion, as I've said, was a man of a different stamp,
+and a reflective one, too; and the words of the Irishman made him think
+of something he had read once of a frost-bitten limb having been
+discovered by a well-known meteorologist to be an unfailing weather-
+token of the approach of cold.  Instead, therefore, of angrily telling
+Pat to hold his tongue and look-out as he ought, Mr Stanchion went
+forward and joined him; we on deck, of course, being on the look-out at
+once.
+
+"Presently, we could see the chief officer and the Irishman on the
+forecastle, peering out together over the ship's bows as if looking for
+something.
+
+"`I'm certain, sir,' I heard Pat say earnestly, `we're near ice whenever
+my feet feels the cold, yer honour; and there, be jabers, there's the
+ice-blink, as they calls it in the Arctic seas, and we're amongst the
+icebergs, as sure as you live!'
+
+"At the same moment, the atmosphere lightened up with a whitish blue
+light--somewhat like pale moonshine--and Mr Stanchion shouted out at
+the top of his voice, louder than we ever dreamt he could speak--`Hard
+a-starboard!  Down with the helm for your life!'
+
+"Bill, the boatswain, and I, who were together at the wheel, jammed down
+the spokes with all our strength; but the blessed brig wouldn't come up
+to the wind as we wanted her.  She wouldn't, although we both almost
+hung on the wheel and wrenched it off the deck.  `Hard up with the helm,
+men, do you hear?' again sings out the chief officer, rushing aft as he
+spoke.  `Hard up, men! all our lives are at stake!'
+
+"And the brig wouldn't come up, try all we could.  Bill and I could have
+screamed with rage; but in another minute we were laughing with joy.
+
+"The light got clear; and there, to our horror, just where we wanted the
+dear old brig to go--and she wouldn't go, like a sensible creature,
+although we cursed her for not obeying the helm--was an enormous iceberg
+rising out of the depths of the ocean, and towering above the masts of
+the poor _Jane_, which I feel loth to call `cranky' any longer--as high
+almost as the eyes could see, like the cliffs at Dover, only a hundred
+yards higher, without exaggeration!  If the brig had come up to the
+wind, as Mr Stanchion sang out for us to make her, why, two minutes
+after, she would have struck full into the iceberg, and running, as she
+was, good fourteen knots and more under her jib and main-sail, her bows
+would have stoved in, and we'd all have been in Davy Jones's locker
+before we could have said Jack Robinson!
+
+"As it was, we weren't out of danger by any means.  There were icebergs
+to the right of us; icebergs astern of us, by which we had passed
+probably when Pat first complained of feeling the cold; icebergs ahead
+of us, through which we would have gingerly to make our way, for we had
+no option with the gale that was blowing but to keep the same course we
+were on, as to lie to amidst all that ice would be more dangerous even
+than moving on; and the big, enormous berg we had just escaped was on
+our left, or port side properly speaking--looking, for all the world,
+like a curving range of cliffs on some rock-bound coast, as it spread
+out more than five or six miles in length.  It was certainly the biggest
+iceberg I ever saw in my life, beating to nothing all that I afterwards
+noticed in the Arctic seas when I went north in the _Polaris_; and
+perhaps that is the reason why all the ice mounds I saw there became so
+dwarfed by comparison that they looked quite insignificant.
+
+"Pat kept on the forecastle, looking out and directing the course of the
+vessel, as the cap'en, who had just come on deck, roused by the noise,
+thought the Irishman's experience in the Arctic seas would make him more
+useful even than himself in coursing the ship.
+
+"The skipper was right as usual; and Pat had soon a chance of showing
+that his choice had not been misplaced.
+
+"`Kape her away! kape her away!'  Pat shouted out in a minute or two
+after the cap'en had come on deck `The top of the berg is loosenin', yer
+honour; and sure it's falling on us it will be in a brace of shakes!
+Kape her away, or, be jabers, it's lost we'll be for sartin!'
+
+"The old brig, although she wouldn't come up to the wind when we wanted
+her, and thus saved our lives by disobeying orders, now answered her
+helm promptly without any demur, and dashed away from the mass of ice
+before the gale at, I should be ashamed to say what speed.
+
+"Bless the old _Cranky Jane_!  How could we ever have reviled her and
+despised her?  She seemed almost as if she had human intelligence and a
+kind of foresight.
+
+"We only just weathered the berg when the summit toppled over with a
+crash, missing the after-part of the brig by a very few yards, and
+churning up the sea far around with a sort of creamy surf, that dashed
+over our decks, and swept us fore and aft.
+
+"It was a marvellous escape, and only second to that we had just before
+had in avoiding running on to the same gigantic mass of floating ice,
+which had probably come up from the Antarctic regions for the summer
+season--at least, that was Pat O'Brien's explanation for our meeting
+with it there.
+
+"All that night and next morning we were passing through bergs of every
+size, big and little, although none were so large as the one which had
+been so risky to us--bergs that in their splendid architecture and
+magnificence, with fantastic peaks and fine pinnacles, that glittered in
+the rising sun with all the colours of the rainbow, flashing out rays
+and lights of violet and purple, topaz blue and emerald green, blush
+rose and pink and red, mingled with shades of crimson and gleams of
+gold, with a frosting over all of silver and bright white light--Those
+who haven't seen an iceberg at sea at sunrise have no idea of the depth
+and breadth of beauty in nature, though I, one who has served his time
+before the mast, says so.  But, avast with such flummery and wordage!"
+
+"Good gracious me!"  I exclaimed, aghast at the old gentleman turning
+round so completely from the statement he had made when we first entered
+into conversation.  "I thought you said just now that all icebergs were
+a dull white without any other colour, save a streak of blue sometimes
+running through them like a vein; and yet, here you are painting them in
+all the varied tints of the rainbow!"
+
+He was not a bit put out, however, by this accusation of inconsistency.
+
+"This was how they looked at sunrise, which, like a brilliant sunset, as
+you know, makes a very great difference in the appearance of objects,
+causing even the most common things to look brilliant, and dignifying
+the common so as to make it look sublime!  But, with your permission,"
+added the old gentleman courteously, "I will finish my story of the
+brig's escape.
+
+"After we passed all the ice, the wind came round, as the captain said
+it would, right favourable for our course; and the _Cranky Jane_ behaved
+like a good one.  We made all our easting on one tack, and passed the
+Cape still a good distance to the south, but in as good a latitude as we
+could have passed it in for the weather we had, which was first-rate.
+
+"And when we began to mount northwards again, towards the little island
+which we all prize so much, although it is but a little spot on the map
+of Europe, why, the wind changed too, still almost due aft as the dear
+old _Cranky Jane_ liked, much to the delight and joy of everybody on
+board, especially the skipper, who exclaimed, as he rubbed his hands
+together in joy, and walked up and down the poop,--`Bless the darling,
+she's a walker!  And I wouldn't swop her for the best clipper in the
+China trade!'
+
+"We had a good land-fall all right, entering the Channel shortly after
+sighting the Lizard, making the quickest passage ever known for a
+sailing brig from Fiji; and, in spite of all the dear old craft's
+shortcomings and temper and weather-helm, myself and the rest of the
+crew, including of course Pat O'Brien and his `poor feet,' were willing,
+even after all the perils we had passed through, and the dangers we had
+escaped, every mother's son of us, with Captain Jiggins' permission, and
+the chief officer's favour, to sign articles, and ship for another
+voyage in the old _Cranky Jane_; and, what is more, we did too, sticking
+to the brig till she went to pieces off Cape Lewis to the south of New
+Zealand in her last voyage out.  That's all!"
+
+So saying, the old gentleman, bowing to me politely, took his departure
+from Sheerness dockyard, which I also left soon afterwards, pleased with
+all that I had seen and more than glad of having visited the place if
+only for the chance it afforded me of hearing his yarn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+THE GREEK BANDIT.
+
+A REMINISCENCE OF A YACHTING CRUISE IN THE AEGEAN SEA.
+
+Some few years ago, when I was a youngster, I had what was then the
+great desire of my heart gratified by being allowed to accompany a party
+on a yachting cruise to the Mediterranean.
+
+How I enjoyed myself, and how tragically our cruise nearly terminated, I
+will now proceed to tell.
+
+There were six of us in all on board the yacht.  There was dad, one;
+Captain Buncombe, two; Mr Joe Moynham, three; Bob, four; myself,
+Charley, five; and dog Rollo, six--though I think, by rights, I ought to
+have counted Rollo first, as he was the best of us all, and certainly
+thought the least of himself--brave, fine, black, curly old fellow that
+he was!
+
+Just as you fellows in England were having the nastiest part of the
+winter, when there is no skating or snowballing, and only drenching rain
+and easterly winds, that bring colds and coughs and mumps, we were
+enjoying the loveliest of blue skies and jolly warm weather, that made
+swimming in the sea a luxury, and ices after dinner seem like a taste of
+nectar.  We did enjoy ourselves; and had a splendid cruise up the old
+Mediterranean, going everywhere and seeing everything that was to be
+seen.  Oh, it was jolly!  The yacht stopped at Gibraltar, where we
+climbed the rock and saw the monkeys that lived in the caverns on the
+top; at Malta, where we went up the "Nothing to Eat" stairs mentioned in
+_Midshipman Easy_: and then, sailing up the Levant, the _Moonshine_--she
+was eighty tons, and the crack of the RYS--was laid up at anchor for a
+long time at Alexandria, while we went ashore, going through the Suez
+Canal, across the desert to Cairo, and thence to the pyramids, after
+which we started for Greece.
+
+You must know, before we get any further, that Bob and I didn't want to
+go anywhere near Greece at all!  We had good reasons for this dislike.
+There were dad and Captain Buncombe--who was what people call an
+archaeologist, fond of grubbing up old stones and skeletons, and digging
+like an old mole amongst ruins--continually talking all day long about
+Marathon and Hymettus, the Parthenon and Chersonese, the Acropolis, and
+Theseus and Odysseus and all the rest of them, bothering our lives out
+with questions about Homer and the _Iliad_, and all such stuff; so, I
+put it to you candidly, whether it wasn't almost as bad as being back
+again at school, making a fellow feel small who was shaky in his Greek
+and had a bad memory for history?
+
+However, we had scarcely anchored in the Piraeus when some events
+happened which drove the classics out of the heads of our elders; and I
+may say that thenceforth we heard no more about the ancients.
+
+There had been a sharp squall shortly before, in which we had been
+amused by seeing the smart little zebeques, with their snowy white
+lateen sails, flying before the wind like a flock of small birds
+frightened by a hawk; and the _Moonshine_ was just coming up to the wind
+in order to let go her anchor, when Bob and I, who were close together
+on the forecastle, watching the men preparing for running out and
+bitting the cable, saw, almost at the same moment, a man's head in the
+water right in front of the yacht's forefoot; then--it all happened as
+suddenly as a flash of lightning--his hands were thrown up as if in
+entreaty, although we heard no cry, and he disappeared.
+
+"Man overboard!" sang out one of the crew, who was pulling away at the
+jib down-haul in order to stow the sail, the halliards having been cast
+loose, "Man overboard!" in a voice which rang through the vessel fore
+and aft, and attracted everybody's attention.
+
+"Hi!  Rollo, good dog!" cried out Bob, turning round sharp to where the
+brave old fellow had been lying on the deck not a moment before,
+flopping his tail lazily, and with his great red tongue lolling out, as
+though he laughed cheerily at everything going on around him.
+
+"Hi!  Rollo!" said I too, in almost the same breath with Bob.  "Fetch
+him out, good dog!" and I turned round also.
+
+But the dog was gone.
+
+Bob and I were "nonplussed."  We had both seen Rollo there not--why, not
+a second before.  And now he was gone.
+
+However, we soon discovered the noble fellow and the cause of his
+absence.
+
+The cry of "Man overboard!" had startled everybody, so that the anchor
+had not been let go; and the steersman's attention, naturally, having
+been taken up, the yacht had paid off again instead of bringing up, and
+her head had swung; consequently, what had been ahead of us just before
+was now astern, and we were quite confused as to our bearings.
+
+While we were looking in perplexity in every direction but the right
+one, Captain Buncombe, who was at the wheel, and perhaps anxious to
+atone for his carelessness in letting the _Moonshine_ swing round,
+shouted out "Bravo!" waving his hat like a madman.  Of course all our
+several pairs of eyes were turned on him at once.
+
+"There he is--there he is--the brave old fellow!" cried the captain,
+letting go the helm in his eagerness, and pointing with his hat--waving
+hand to the water under the stern.  "Look aft, you duffers!  Where are
+your eyes?  Bravo, Rollo! good dog!  Hold up, old fellow!  I'm coming to
+help you!" and with these words, before you could say "Jack Robinson,"
+Captain Buncombe had thrown off his coat, pitched away the hat he had
+been waving, jumped over the taffrail of the yacht into the bosom of the
+blue Aegean Sea, and was rapidly swimming to where we could see dear old
+Rollo's black head and splashing paws as he supported a man in the
+yacht's wake, and tried to drag him towards us in the _Moonshine_.
+
+We gave a "Hooray!" which you might have heard at Charing Cross if you
+had been listening!
+
+Captain Buncombe and Rollo, with their burden, were so near the yacht
+that there was no necessity for lowering the gig as we had hastened to
+do; and in a very little time we hauled them on board--Rollo jumping
+about in the highest spirits, as if he had been just having a quiet lark
+on his own account; but the rescued person was limp and insensible,
+though he presently came to by the aid of hot-water bottles and
+blankets.  The _Moonshine_ then made another start, and succeeded better
+in anchoring in a respectable fashion, as she had always been accustomed
+to do.
+
+The man was a handsome young fellow, with black hair and piercing eyes--
+a Greek, he told us in French which he spoke fluently--although he had
+not that treacherous cast of countenance which most of his countrymen
+possess.  He was profuse in the thanks which he bestowed broadcast for
+our saving him from drowning, although Rollo had really all the credit
+of it.  His name was Stephanos Pericles, he said, and he was crossing to
+Salamis, when the squall came on, and his boat was upset.  He had been
+dragged under water by the boat and almost suffocated before he could
+get to the surface, being quite exhausted when the dog gripped him.  For
+Rollo had seen him before any of us, and had not waited for our
+directions as to what to do.
+
+"I'm a soldier," he said, proudly tapping his chest, and looking round
+at dad and the captain, and Mr Moynham.  "I've eaten your bread,"--he
+had dinner with us after he had got all right again, and we had settled
+down into that general routine in which our meals were attended to with
+the strictest punctuality--"and I shall never forget you have saved my
+life.  By that bread I have eaten, I will repay you, I swear!"
+
+Then turning to Bob and I, who were sitting on each side of him, and
+Rollo, who stuck close to him, as if under the idea that having saved
+him he was now his property--"And much thanks to you, little Englishmen,
+and your dogs I vill nevare forget, no nevare!"
+
+He couldn't speak English as well as French.  The evening had closed
+now, so Captain Buncombe told the crew to get the boat ready, and the
+Greek with many more fervent expressions of gratitude, was rowed ashore.
+
+The next morning we had landed and after pottering about the port
+proceeded up to Athens, which much disappointed all of us, especially
+dad and the captain.  It had a garish and stucco-like appearance; while
+the people looked as if they were costumed for a fancy ball, being not
+apparently at home in their national dress, picturesque though it was.
+It was quite nightmarish for Bob and me to read the names on the shop
+fronts in the streets, and see the newspapers printed in the old Greek
+characters.  Fancy "Modiste," and "Perruquier," as they will have the
+French terms spelt, in the letters sacred to Euripides and Xenophon.  It
+seemed like walking in a dream!
+
+We had inspected Athens, as I've said, and visited the plain of
+Marathon, which was offered by the Greeks to Lord Byron for sixteen
+thousand piastres, or about eight hundred pounds--alas for glory!--and
+returned on board the yacht for dinner again, when we were told that a
+messenger had been off in our absence and left a parcel for us.  What do
+you think it contained?  Guess.
+
+Well, there was a splendid shawl, worth more than a hundred guineas, for
+Captain Buncombe, and a handsome jewelled pipe for dad; while Mr Joe
+Moynham had a case of Greek wines for his special self!
+
+Bob and I were not forgotten either.  He had a fine gun, with the stock
+inlaid with ivory, and carved beautifully; and I, a yataghan, decorated
+with a jewelled hilt, that was even more valuable than dad's pipe.
+Rollo was presented with a grand gold collar, which Mr Joe Moynham said
+was like the one that Malachi, one of the Irish kings, wore in the days
+of Brian Boru; and, if you please, a lot of little purses, each
+containing a handsome present, were sent also in the parcel--a good big
+one, you may be sure--for distribution amongst the crew.  It was
+princely gratitude, wasn't it, in spite of the slighting way in which
+Mr Moynham had spoken of the modern Greeks and their ways?  However, he
+had to "take it all back," as he said, when he drank the health of
+Monsieur Pericles--who seemed, by the way, to be much better off than
+his illustrious ancestor, and whom we put down as the Sultan Haroun el
+Raschid in disguise--in a glass of the very wine that he had sent on
+board the yacht.
+
+But that wasn't the end of it all, by any means:-- why, I am only just
+coming to my real story now.
+
+Time rolled on--when I say "time," of course, I only mean hours and days
+as we mean, not years and centuries as the ancients calculated the lapse
+of time--and we managed to see everything that sight-seers see in the
+city of Minerva.
+
+Having nothing else to look at close at hand, therefore, we determined
+to go on our travels, like Ulysses; not amongst the islands, which we
+had already visited, but towards the mountains, Captain Buncombe having
+made a vow ere he left England to see the ruins of Thebes, after which,
+he said, he would have no further object in life, and would perform the
+Japanese feat of the "happy despatch!"
+
+We had horses, and mules, and donkeys for the journey; that is, dad and
+the captain rode horses, there were mules for our traps and food, which
+we had to take along with us, thanks to the hospitality of the regions
+we were going to, while the donkeys were for Bob and me and Mr Moynham.
+That gentleman, who would be very positive when he liked, declared that
+no earthly consideration should compel him to mount the Bucephalus that
+was provided for him.  He said that a horse was expressly stated by King
+David to be "a vain thing to save a man," and so why should he go
+against that ruling?
+
+The first part of our journey went off as jolly as possible: the way was
+good; the scenery--although I confess I didn't trouble my head very much
+about it--though dad and the captain were in raptures with it--
+magnificent; the halts, just at the right time, although all in classic
+places, whose names Bob and I hated the sound of; the food was first-
+rate, and Mr Moynham so funny, that he nearly made me roll off my
+donkey every now and then with laughter.  But towards evening, when we
+were all ascending a steep hill, with rocks and thick shrubbery on each
+side of it, through a narrow defile, a harsh voice suddenly exclaimed
+through the gloom, something that sounded like the Greek imperative
+Statheets!  _Stop_! and then again another monosyllable, which we
+certainly understood better, "Halt!"  A gun was also fired off at the
+same time; and, by the flash of the discharge we could see several long
+gleaming rifle barrels peering out from the bushes on either side of the
+way.
+
+"Brigands!" ejaculated the guides together, tumbling prostrate on the
+ground pell-mell, as if they had been swept down.
+
+"Fascia a terra!  Ventre a terre!" shouted out the same hoarse voice
+again, and a volley was fired over our heads.
+
+"Pleasant!" said Mr Moynham, throwing himself down with his face to the
+ground like the cowardly guides.  "But I suppose we'd better do as these
+gentry require, or else they'll be hitting us under the fifth
+buttonhole; and, what would become of us then?"
+
+"Fascia a terra!" repeated the leader of the brigands, emerging from a
+clump of shrubbery at the head of the pass, motioning his arms violently
+at dad and the captain, who were inclined to show fight at first; but
+discretion proved the better part of valour, and they both dropped the
+pistols they had hurriedly drawn from their pockets, seeing that the
+rifle barrels covered them, sinking down prone on the earth like the
+rest of us.
+
+Rollo, however, poor brave old fellow, made one dash at the ruffian as
+he threatened dad; and, seizing him by the throat, dashed him to the
+ground.
+
+Poor fellow, the next moment he had a stiletto jammed into him, which
+made him sink down bleeding, with a faint howl, to which Bob and I
+responded with a cry, as if we felt the blow ourselves!
+
+The moment dad and Captain Buncombe heard Rollo's howl and our cry, they
+jumped up again like lightning, and began hitting out right and left at
+the brigands who now surrounded us; and Mr Moynham was not behind, I
+can tell you!  He butted one big chap right in the pit of the stomach,
+and sent him tumbling down the defile, his body rattling against the
+stones, and he swearing like mad all the time.  Bob and I scrambled at
+them as best we could, catching hold of their legs and tripping them up;
+but they were too many for us, for the cowardly guides did not stir hand
+or foot to help us, but lay stretched like logs along the ground,
+although they were unbound.  We were certain that they were in league
+with the robbers; and so, without doubt, they were, for, if they had
+only assisted us, now that their assailants had dropped their firearms,
+and were engaged in a regular rough-and-tumble fight, we could have
+mastered them, I'm sure, as, counting Bob and myself in, we were nearly
+man for man as many as they were.
+
+The struggle did not last long, although dad and the captain held out
+bravely to the last, flooring the brigands one after another, and
+knocking them down as if they had been nine-pins.  They were presently
+tied securely, with their arms behind them, and menaced with death if
+they stirred, by a brawny ruffian touching each of their heads with a
+pistol barrel.  As for Bob and me, they did not think it necessary to
+tie us.
+
+"Well, this is a delightful ending to our picnic," said Mr Moynham in
+lugubrious tones, as we all lay on the ground, with the exception of the
+guides, who appeared to mingle freely with the robbers, who were grouped
+in picturesque attitudes around us, leaning on their carbines.  "I
+wonder what's their little game?"
+
+The leader presently gave an order, and our seniors were then each
+lifted on to a horse or mule, and tied securely there.
+
+"At all events," said Mr Moynham, who kept up his spirits still
+wonderfully, "we sha'n't fall off, that's one comfort, and so we'll have
+the less bruises after the scrimmage!"
+
+Although the chief brigand scowled at me, he allowed me to lift poor
+Rollo, who was not dead as I had feared, and I bandaged his neck where
+the wound was with my handkerchief, and took him up in front of me.
+
+The leader then spoke vehemently in his own language to one of the
+treacherous guides, who approached dad as if to speak.
+
+"Away, scoundrel!" said dad, wrathfully.  "Don't speak to me; I would
+kill you if I were free, for leading us into this ambush!"
+
+The man, however, urged again by the chief, who raised his pistol
+ominously at dad, approached him once more.
+
+"The Albanian chief says that if twenty thousand piastres apiece, or one
+hundred thousand piastres in all, are not paid for you by sunset here
+to-morrow evening, you shall all be shot in cold blood, and your doom be
+on your own heads."
+
+"Tell your chief, or thief, or whatever ruffian he is, that none of us
+will pay a penny.  Our friends at Athens will miss us, and you'll have
+the palikari after you all in hot haste if I'm not back to-night safe."
+
+"The English lord forgets that he left word that he might remain for two
+days on the mountains, and his friends will not think him missing before
+to-morrow night: at that time, the English lord and his friends, and the
+little lords, will be all dead men if the ransom be not paid."
+
+"What on earth shall I do, Buncombe?" asked dad of the captain.  "Shall
+I write an order on my bankers for the money to be sent?  One hundred
+thousand piastres will be about five thousand pounds--I don't know
+whether my credit will be good for that amount?"
+
+"Your credit and mine will be sufficient," Captain Buncombe said; "one
+can't trifle with these fellows, for the villains keep their word, I'm
+told."
+
+The guide again spoke by the chief's order to dad, as if the tenor of
+the captain's words were understood.
+
+"The Albanian chief declares that if the ransom be not paid by sunset
+to-morrow at latest, every one of you shall be shot, and your heads cut
+off and sent back to Athens in token of your fate."
+
+"Ugh!" said Mr Moynham, shuddering; "I certainly have been a Tory
+throughout all my life, but I should not like to follow Charles the
+First's example."
+
+"I declare it's disgraceful," said Captain Buncombe; "I'll apply to the
+ambassador.  This brigandage is the curse of Greece.  I'll--"
+
+"That won't help us now," said dad.  "I suppose we must write for the
+ransom, although under protests; for, however much we have to pay, we
+must remember that our lives are in jeopardy; and that's the main
+consideration."
+
+The advice was good; so, a joint letter was despatched to certain
+influential friends, as well as dad's banker at Athens, urging that the
+ransom should be sent in a certain way, to be handed over, as the
+brigand chief arranged, as we were given up, so that there should be no
+treachery on either side.  The false guides then went off cheerfully
+down hill towards the plains, whilst our cavalcade, encompassed by the
+brigands, moved towards those mountain fastnesses, "where they resided
+when they were at home," as Mr Moynham said.
+
+Up and down hill and dale, we seemed in the darkness to be penetrating
+miles into the country; until, at last, passing, as well as we could see
+from the gloom, which was almost impenetrable, through a narrow glen
+between steep peaks, we suddenly turned a corner of a projecting rock,
+and found ourselves on an elevated plateau on the top of the mountains,
+where a strange scene awaited us.  A number of ruddy watch-fires were
+burning with red and smoky light, and around these sat, reclined, or
+moved about, in a variety of active employments, a number of dark forms,
+most of which were robust Arnauts, clad in their national dress, which
+in the distance is not unlike that seen among Highlandmen, consisting as
+it does of a snowy white kilt, green velvet jacket, and bright-coloured
+scarf wound round the waist.  Here and there, the glare from the
+firelight was reflected from the barrels of guns, rifles, and
+matchlocks, which the owners were cleaning or examining; while, before
+several of the fires cooking operations were going on.  Kids, whole
+sheep, and pieces of raw flesh, were being slowly broiled, hanging from
+bits of stick stuck in the ground, or suspended by pieces of string
+attached to the branches of the overhanging trees that encircled the
+plateau.  This added to the "effect" of the scene.
+
+"Quite operatic, and better than old Drury," I heard Mr Moynham say;
+but we were all too depressed and uncomfortable from our constrained
+attitudes to feel inclined to appreciate the picturesque, the brigands
+having taken us off the horses, and flung us down on the ground, having
+this time bound even Bob and myself; indeed, they treated us with even
+less attention than they would have bestowed on anything eatable,
+judging by the care they evinced in their cuisine, although they did not
+offer us anything either to eat or drink, much to Mr Moynham's great
+chagrin especially, nor did they give us the slightest covering to
+protect us from the night air when the waning watch-fires told us that
+bedtime--save the mark--had arrived.  I suppose they thought that it did
+not much matter if we did catch cold, considering that we were going to
+be shot within twenty-four hours!
+
+Tired out with fatigue, we finally sank to rest in the same place where
+we were first pitched down, not awaking till late the next morning, when
+we found most of the brigands had departed--to look-out for other
+"welcome guests" like ourselves, I suppose!  Only three were left to
+guard us, but they were quite enough, considering that we were tied up
+fast, and couldn't move if we wished.
+
+How slowly that day dragged out!  We thought it would never end.  They
+gave us some hard coarse dry bread to eat and water to drink, nothing
+else; and the hours dragged themselves slowly along, as if they would
+never end.
+
+Our hopes gradually sank, as the sun declined in the heavens, for we
+watched the progress of the glowing orb with almost the devoted zeal of
+the followers of Zoroaster.
+
+At last, just as it was within half an hour of sunset as nearly as we
+could calculate, we heard a tumult as of many voices in the ravine
+leading to the plateau; and, presently, the man whom we had conceived to
+be the leader of the brigands advanced towards us, in company with his
+band, now largely reinforced by others.  At a word from him our bonds
+were untied, and we were assisted to our feet, on which we could not
+stand firmly for some little time, on account of the want of circulation
+of our blood during the long time we had been in such constrained
+attitudes.
+
+The guide who had previously acted the part of interpreter after
+betraying us--although, by the way, he told us before he left us that he
+belonged to the band, and thus, perhaps, had only acted honourably
+according to his creed--then translated what the leader had to say.
+
+Our ransom had been paid, and we were free to go down the mountains.
+The horses, mules, and everything belonging to us would be restored, and
+a trusty guide--the speaker, of course--would put us in the direct route
+to Athens, but as near the city as possible; and, finally, the chief
+begged that we would excuse the rough treatment to which we had been
+subjected, as he had a great regard for us!
+
+"It was all very well to dissemble his love," quoted Mr Moynham;
+"but,--why did he kick us down-stairs?"
+
+"The chief!--which chief, or thief?" said dad sternly.  He did not feel
+particularly pleased with the Arnauts or their leader.  "I've had enough
+of the scoundrels already, and the sooner I lose sight of them the
+better!  What do you mean by the chief?"
+
+"He means me!" said a gorgeous individual, all green velvet jacket, and
+gold braid, and red sash, with a cap set rakishly on the side of his
+head, in the front of which glittered a diamond of surpassing
+brilliancy.
+
+We had noticed this individual before, but not especially, and he had
+been rather hidden by the figure of the man we looked upon as the
+leader: now he stepped forward, and we could see his face plainly, as we
+recognised the voice.
+
+Who do you think it was?
+
+Why, Stephanos Pericles, the man whom we had saved from drowning, and
+who had sent us those handsome presents!
+
+"Why have we met with this treatment at your hands?" said papa, puzzled
+at the Greek's behaviour.
+
+"You have nothing to complain of," said Stephanos, with an air of
+courteous nobility which exasperated the captain to that degree that I
+saw him clenching and unclenching his fists, and dancing about, as Mr
+Moynham said afterwards, "like a hen on a hot griddle."
+
+"My dear sir, you have nothing really to complain of," said the Greek.
+"You saved my life, I admit, and I think I politely expressed my
+obligations at the time.  In return I now present you with five lives,
+independently of that of the dog, which, I am sorry to see, has been
+hurt."
+
+"But the ransom?" said dad.
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry I had to insist on that," said Stephanos, placidly; "but
+it is one of our rules to enforce such in all cases, and I'm sorry that
+I could not let you off, although my friendship yearned to set you free
+without it.  You must really please excuse the treatment you have met
+with.  If I had known who honoured me with their company, I'm sure you
+would have had no reason to be dissatisfied with my hospitality.  The
+_next_ time you favour me with your presence, my lord--"
+
+"The next time you catch me here, or anywhere else on Greek ground,"
+laughed my father in a hearty "Ho! ho!" in which all of us joined, "you
+may cut me up into kabobs and cook and eat me, and welcome; for I know
+I'll then deserve it!"
+
+We got back safe aboard the _Moonshine_ all right, setting sail from the
+Piraeus next day; but it was a good trick of the brigand chief, wasn't
+it--though I can't say much for his gratitude after all, spite of those
+magnificent presents, which there was little reason to wonder at his
+offering us, considering the easy manner in which he got his money?
+
+The cut in Rollo's neck healed soon, and he is now as right as ever he
+was, excepting a slight scar which tells where the stiletto or dagger
+went, and he wears still the collar of gold that Stephanos Pericles
+presented him with.  As for the rest of our party, all of us got home
+safe with the _Moonshine_, which is now fitting out at Ryde for the
+coming regatta, where I hope she'll come off as successfully in carrying
+off prizes as "THE GREEK BANDIT."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+JIM NEWMAN'S YARN: OR, A SIGHT OF THE SEA SERPENT.
+
+"Was you ever up the Niger, sir?"
+
+"Why, of course not, Jim! you know that I've never been on the African
+station, or any other for that matter.  But why do you ask the
+question?"
+
+"Don't know 'xactly, sir.  P'raps that blessed sea-fog reminds me of it,
+somehow or other--though there's little likeness, as far as that goes,
+between the west coast and Portsmouth, is there, sir?"
+
+"I don't suppose there is," I said; "but what puts the Niger, of all
+places in the world, in your head at the present moment?"
+
+"Ah, that'd tell a tale, sir," he answered, cocking his left eye in a
+knowing manner, and giving the quid in his mouth a turn.  "Ah, that'd
+tell a tale, sir!"
+
+Jim Newman, an old man-of-war's man--now retired from the navy, and who
+eked out his pension by letting boats for hire to summer visitors--was
+leaning against an old coal barge that formed his "office," drawn up
+high and dry on the beach, midway between Southsea Castle and Portsmouth
+Harbour, and gazing out steadily across the channel of the Solent, to
+the Isle of Wight beyond.  He and I were old friends of long standing,
+and I was never so happy as when I could persuade him--albeit it did not
+need much persuasion--to open the storehouse of his memory, and spin a
+yarn about his old experiences afloat in the whilom wooden walls of
+England, when crack frigates were the rage instead of screw steamers
+with armour-plates.  We had been talking of all sorts of service
+gossip--the war, the weather, what not--when he suddenly asked me the
+question about the great African river that has given poor Sambo "a
+local habitation and a name."
+
+Although the gushing tears of April had hardly washed away the traces of
+the wild March winds, the weather had suddenly become almost tropical in
+its heat.  There was not the slightest breath of air stirring, and the
+sea lay lazily asleep, only throbbing now and then with a faint
+spasmodic motion, which barely stirred the shingle on the shore, much
+less plashed on the beach; while a thick, heavy white mist was steadily
+creeping up from the sea, shutting out, first the island, and then the
+roadstead at Spithead from view, and overlapping the whole landscape in
+thick woolly folds, moist yet warm.  Jim had said that the sea-fog,
+coming as it did, was a sign of heat, and that we should have a regular
+old-fashioned hot summer, unlike those of recent years.
+
+"Ah, sir," he repeated, "I could tell a tale about that deadly Niger
+river, and the Gaboon, and the whole treacherous coast, if I liked, from
+Lagos down to the Congo--ay, I could!  It was that 'ere sea-fog that put
+Afriker into my head, Master Charles; I know that blessed white mist, a-
+rising up like a curtain, well, I do!  The `white man's shroud,' the
+niggers used to call it--and many a poor beggar it has sarved to shroud,
+too, in that killing climate, confound it!"
+
+"Well, Jim, tell us about the Niger to begin with," said I, so as to
+bring him up to the scratch without delay; for, when Jim once got on the
+moralising or sentimental tack, he generally ended by getting angry with
+everybody and everything around him; and when he got angry, there was an
+end to his stories for that day at least.
+
+"All right, your honour," said the old fellow, calming down at once into
+his usual serenity again, and giving his quid another shift as he braced
+himself well up against the old barge, on the half-deck of which I was
+seated with my legs dangling down--"All right, your honour!  If it's a
+yarn you're after, why I had best weigh anchor at once and make an
+offing, or else we shan't be able to see a handspike afore us!"
+
+"Heave ahead, Jim!" said I impatiently; "you are as long as a three-
+decker in getting under way!"
+
+With this encouragement, he cleared his throat with his customary
+hoarse, choking sort of cough, like an old raven, and commenced his
+narrative without any further demur.
+
+"It's more'n twenty years now since I left the service--ay, thirty years
+would be more like it; and almost my very last cruise was on the West
+African station.  I had four years of it, and I recollect it well; for,
+before I left the blessed, murdering coast, with its poisonous lagoons
+covered with thick green slime, and sickly smells, and burning sands, I
+seed a sight there that I shall never forget as long as I live, and
+which would make me recklect Afrikey well enough if nothing else would!"
+
+"That's right, Jim, fire away!" said I, settling myself comfortably on
+my seat to enjoy the yarn.  "What was it that you saw?"
+
+"Steady!  Let her go easy, your honour; I'm a-coming to that soon
+enough.  It was in the old _Amphitrite_ I was at the time--she's broken-
+up and burnt for firewood long ago, poor old thing!--and we was a-lying
+in the Bight of Benin, alongside of a slaver which we had captured the
+day before off Whydah.  She was a Brazilian schooner with nearly five
+hundred wretched creatures on board, so closely packed that you could
+not find space enough to put your foot fairly on her deck in any place.
+The slaves had only been a night on board her; but the stench was so
+awful, from so many unfortunate niggers being squeezed so tightly
+together like herrings in a barrel, and under a hot sun too, that we
+were longing to send the schooner away to Sierra Leone, and get rid of
+the horrid smell, which was worse than the swamps ashore!  Well, I was
+in the morning watch after we had towed in the slaver to the Bights,
+having carried away her foremast with a round shot in making her bring
+to, and was just going forward to turn in as the next watch came on
+deck, when who should hail me but my mate, Gil Saul, coming in from the
+bowsprit, where he had been on the look-out--it was him as was my
+pardner here when I first started as a shore hand in letting out boats,
+but he lost the number of his mess long ago like our old ship the
+_Amphitrite_.
+
+"As he came up to me his face was as white as your shirt, and he was
+trembling all over as if he was going to have a fit of the fever and
+ague.
+
+"`Lor', Gil Saul,' sez I, `what's come over you, mate? are you going on
+the sick list, or what?'
+
+"`Hush, Jim,' sez he, quite terror-stricken.  `Don't speak like that;
+I've seen a ghost, and I knows I shall be a dead man afore the day's
+out!'
+
+"With that I burst into a larf.
+
+"`Bless your eyes, Gil,' sez I, `tell that to the marines, my bo'! you
+can't get over me on that tack.  You won't find any respectable ghosts
+leaving dear old England for the sake of this dirty, sweltering west
+coast, which no Christian would come to from choice, let alone a ghost!'
+
+"`But, Jim,' he sez, leaning his hand on my arm to detain me as I was
+going down below, `this wasn't a h'English ghost as I sees just now.  It
+was the most outlandish foreign reptile you ever see.  A long, big,
+black snake like a crocodile, only twice the length of the old corvette;
+with a head like a bird, and eyes as big and fiery as our side-lights.
+It was a terrible creature, Jim, and its eyes flamed out like lightning,
+and it snorted like a horse as it swam by the ship.  I've had a warning,
+old shipmate, and I'll be a dead man before to-morrow morning, I know!'
+
+"The poor chap shook with fright as he spoke, though he was as brave a
+man as we had aboard; so I knew that he had been drinking and was in a
+state of delirium tremendibus, or else he was sickening for the African
+fever, which those who once have never forget.  I therefore tried to
+pacify him and explain away his fancy.
+
+"`That's a good un, Gil Saul,' I sez.  `Don't you let none of the other
+hands hear what you've told me, that you've seen the great sea sarpint,
+or you'll never get the end of it.'
+
+"Gil got angry at this, forgetting his fright in his passion at my
+doubting his word like.
+
+"`But it was the sea sarpint, I tells you, or its own brother if it
+wasn't.  Didn't I see it with my own eyes, and I was as wide awake as
+you are, and not caulking?'
+
+"`The sea sarpint!'  I repeated scornfully, laughing again in a way that
+made Gil wild.  `Who ever heard tell of such a thing, except in a Yankee
+yarn?'
+
+"`And why shouldn't there be a big snake in the sea the same as there
+are big snakes on land like the Bow constreetar, as is read of in books
+of history, Jim Newman?  Some folks are so cocksure, that they won't
+believe nothing but what they sees for themselves.  I wonder who at
+home, now, would credit that there are some monkeys here in Afrikey that
+are bigger than a man and walk upright; and you yourself, Jim, have told
+me that when you were in Australy you seed rabbits that were more than
+ten foot high when they stood on their hind-legs, and that could jump a
+hundred yards at one leap.'
+
+"`So I have, Gil Saul,' sez I, a bit nettled at what he said, and the
+way he said it, `and what I says I stick to.  I have seen at Port Philip
+kangaroos, which are just like big rabbits with upright ears, as big as
+I've said; and I've seen 'em, too, jump more than twice the distance any
+horse could.'
+
+"`And why then,' sez he, argumentifying on to me like a shot, `and why
+then shouldn't there be such a thing as the sea sarpint?'
+
+"This flummuxed me a bit, for I couldn't find an answer handy, so I axed
+him another question to get out of my quandary.
+
+"`But why, Gil, did you say you had seed a ghost, when it was a
+sarpint?'
+
+"This time _he_ was bothered for a moment.
+
+"`Because, Jim,' sez he, after a while, `it appeared so awful to me when
+I saw it coming out of the white mist with its glaring red eyes and
+terrible beak.  It was a ghost I feels, if it wasn't the sea sarpint;
+and whether or no it bodes no good to the man wot sees it, I know.  I'm
+a doomed man.'
+
+"I couldn't shake him from that belief, though I thought the whole thing
+was fancy on his part, and I turned into my hammock soon after we got
+below, without a thought more about the matter--it didn't stop my caulk,
+I know.  But, ah! that was only in the early morning.  Before the day
+was done, as Gil had said, that conversation was recalled to me in a
+terrible way--ah, a terrible way!" the old sailor repeated impressively,
+taking off his tarpaulin hat, and wiping his forehead with his
+handkerchief, as if the recollection of the past awed him even now.  He
+looked so serious that I could not laugh, inclined as I was to ridicule
+any such story as that of the fabled sea serpent, which one looks for
+periodically as a transatlantic myth to crop up in dull seasons in the
+columns of American newspapers.
+
+"And did you see it too?"  I asked; "and Gil Saul's prophecy turns out
+true?"
+
+"You shall hear," he answered gravely; "I'm not spinning a yarn, as you
+call it, Master Charles; I'm telling you the truth."
+
+"Go on, Jim," said I, to reassure him.  "I'm listening, all attention."
+
+"At eight bells that day, another man-of-war come in, bringing an empty
+slaver she had taken before she had shipped her cargo.  In this vessel
+we were able to separate some of the poor wretches packed on board our
+Brazilian schooner, and so send them comfortably on to Sierra Leone,
+which was what we were waiting to do, as I've told you already; and now
+being free to go cruising again, we hove up anchor and made our way down
+the coast to watch for another slaver which we had heard news of by the
+man-o'-war that came in to relieve us.
+
+"We had a spanking breeze all day, for a wonder, as it generally fails
+at noon; but towards the evening, when we had made some eighty miles or
+so from the Bights, it fell suddenly dead calm, as if the wind had been
+shut off slap without warning.  It was bright before, but the moment the
+calm came a thick white mist rose around the vessel, just like that
+which came just now from seaward, and has hidden the island and Spithead
+from view; you see how it's reminded me now of the west coast and the
+Niger river, Master Charles, don't you?"
+
+"Ay," said I, "Jim, I see what you were driving at."
+
+"Those thick mists," he continued, "always rise on the shores of Afrikey
+in the early mornings--just as there was a thick one when Gil had seen
+his ghost, as he said--and they comes up again when the sun sets; but
+you never sees 'em when the sun's a-shining bright as it was that
+arternoon.  It was the rummiest weather I ever see.  By and by, the mist
+lifted a bit, and then there were clumps of fog dancing about on the
+surface of the sea, which was oily and calm, just like patches of trees
+on a lawn.  Sometimes these fog curtains would come down and settle
+round the ship, so that you couldn't see to the t'other side of the deck
+for a minute, and they brought a fearful bad smell with them, the very
+smell of the lagoons ashore with a dash of the niggers aboard the slave
+schooner, only a thousand times worse, and we miles and miles away from
+the land.  It was most unaccountable, and most uncomfortable.  I
+couldn't make it out at all.
+
+"Jest as I was a-puzzling my brains as to the reason of these fog banks
+and the stench they brought with them, Gil Saul came on deck too, and
+sheered up alongside of me as I was looking out over the side.  His face
+was a worse sight than the morning; for, instead of his looking white,
+the colour of his skin was grey and ashy, like the face of a corpse.  It
+alarmed me so that I cried out at once--
+
+"`Go down below, Gil!  Go down and report yourself to the doctor!'
+
+"`No,' sez he, `it ain't the doctor an will cure me, Jim; I feel it
+coming over me again as I felt this morning.  I shall see that sarpint
+or ghost again, I feel sure.'
+
+"What with his face and his words, and the bad smell from the fog, I
+confess I began to feel queer myself--not frightened exactly--but I'd
+have much rather have been on Southsea common in the broad daylight than
+where I was at that moment, I can tell you."
+
+"Did you see anything, Jim?"  I asked the old sailor at this juncture.
+
+"I seed nothing, Master Charles, _as yet_ but I felt something, I can't
+tell what or how to explain; it was a sort of all-overish feeling, as if
+something was a-walking over my grave, as folks say, summat uncanny, I
+do assure you.
+
+"The captain and the first lieutenant was on the quarter-deck, the
+latter with his telescope to his eye a-gazing at something forward
+apparently, that he was trying to discern amongst the clumps of fog.  I
+was nigh them, and being to leeward could hear what they said.
+
+"The first lieutenant, I hears him, turns to the captain over his
+shoulder speaking like, and sez he--
+
+"`Captain Manter, I can't make it out exactly, but it's most curious;'
+and then turning to me, he sez, `Newman, go down to my steward and ax
+him to give you my night-glass.'
+
+"I went down and fetched the glass and handed it to him, he giving me
+t'other one to hold; and he claps the night-glass to his eye.
+
+"`By Jove, Captain Manter,' sez he presently, `I was right, it is the
+greatest marine monster I ever saw!'
+
+"`Pooh!' says the captain, taking the glass from him and looking
+himself.  `It's only a waterspout, they come sometimes along with this
+appearance of the sea!'  But presently I heard him mutter something
+under his voice to the lieutenant, and then he said aloud, `It is best
+to be prepared;' and a moment after that he gave an order, and the
+boatswain piped up and we beat to quarters.  It was very strange that,
+wasn't it?  And so every man on board thought.
+
+"A very faint breeze was springing up again, and I was on the weather
+side of the ship, which was towards the land from which the wind came,
+when suddenly Gil Saul, who was in the same battery and captain of my
+crew, grips my arm tight.  `It's coming! it's coming!' he said right in
+my ear, and then the same horrible foul smell wafted right over the ship
+again, and a noise was heard just as if a herd of wild horses were
+sucking up water together.
+
+"At this moment the fog lifted for a bit, and we could see clear for
+about a couple of miles to windward, where the captain and first
+lieutenant and all the hands had their eyes fixed as if expecting
+something.
+
+"By George! you could have knocked me down with a feather, I tell you!
+I never saw such a sight in my life, and may I never see such another
+again!  There, with his head well out of the water, shaped like a big
+bird, and higher in the air than the main truck of the ship, was a
+gigantic reptile like a sarpint, only bigger than you ever dreamt of.
+He was wriggling through the water at a fearful rate, and going nearly
+the same course as ourselves, with a wake behind him bigger than a line-
+of-battle ship with paddle-wheels, and his length--judging by what I saw
+of him--was about half a mile at least, not mentioning what part of his
+body was below the water; while he must have been broader across than
+the largest sperm whale, for he showed good five feet of freeboard.
+
+"The captain and first lieutenant were flabbergasted, I could see; but
+Captain Manter was as brave an officer as ever stepped, and he pulled
+himself together in a minute, as the fog, which had only lifted for a
+minute, came down again shutting out everything from view so that we
+could not see a yard from the side.  `Don't be alarmed, my men,' he
+sings out in his cheery voice, so that every hand could hear him, `it's
+only a waterspout that is magnified by the fog; and as it gets nearer
+we'll give it the starboard broadside to clear it up and burst it.'
+
+"`Ay! ay!' sez the men with a cheer, while the smell grew more awful and
+the snorting gushing sound we had heard before so loud that it was quite
+deafening, just immediately after the captain spoke, when it had stopped
+awhile.
+
+"As for poor Gil, he had never lost the grip of my arm since we sighted
+the reptile, although he had the lanyard of his gun in his right hand
+all the same.
+
+"`Fire!' sez the captain; and, in a moment, the whole starboard
+broadside was fired off, point blank across the water, in a line with
+the deck, as Captain Manter had ordered us to depress the guns, the old
+_Amphitrite_ rocking to her keel with the explosion.
+
+"Well, sir, as true as I'm standing here a-talking to you, at the very
+instant the guns belched out their fire and smoke, and the cannon-balls
+with which they were loaded, there was a most treemenjus roar and a dash
+of water alongside the ship, and the waves came over us as if we were on
+a lee shore; and then, as the men stood appalled at the things going on
+around them, which was what no mortal ever seed before, Gil clasped my
+arm more tightly, loosening his right hand from the lanyard of the gun
+which he had now fired, and shrieked out, `There! there!'
+
+"Master Charles, it were awful!  A long heavy body seemed to be reared
+up high in the air right athwart the vessel, and plunged far away in the
+sea to leeward; and, as the body passed over our heads, I looked up with
+Gil, and saw the fearful fiery eyes of the biggest snake that ever
+crawled on the earth, though this was flying in the air, and round his
+hideous head, that had a long beak like a bird, was a curious fringe or
+frill all yellowish green, just like what a lizard puffs out under his
+throat when in a rage.  I could see no more, for the thing was over us
+and gone a mile or more to leeward in a wink of the eye, the fog
+drifting after it and hiding it from sight.  Besides which, I was
+occupied with Gil, who had sank down on the deck in a dead swoon.
+
+"Whatever it was, the thing carried away our main topmast with the
+yards, and everything clean from the caps as if it had been shot away,
+and there wasn't a trace of them floating in the sea around, as we could
+see.
+
+"`A close thing that!' said the captain, after the shock was over,
+speaking to the lieutenant, although all hands could hear him, for it
+was as still as possible now.  `A close thing, Mr Freemantle.  I've
+known a waterspout do even more damage than this; so let us be
+thankful!'
+
+"And then all hands were piped to clear the wreck, and make the ship
+snug; for we had some bad weather afterwards, and had to put into Sierra
+Leone to refit.
+
+"Gil was in a swoon for a long time after; and then he took the fever
+bad, and only recovered by the skin of his teeth; but he never forgot
+what he had seen, nor I either, nor any of the hands, though we never
+talked about it.  We knew we had seen something unearthly; even the
+captain and Lieutenant Freemantle, though they put down the damage to a
+waterspout for fear of alarming the men, knew differently, as we did.
+We had seen the great sea sarpint, if anybody had, every man-jack of us
+aboard!  It was a warning, too, as poor Gil Saul had declared; for,
+strange to say, except himself and me, not a soul as was on board the
+_Amphitrite_ when the reptile overhauled us, lived to see Old England
+again.  The bones of all the others were left to bleach on the burning
+sands of the east coast of Africa, which has killed ten thousand more of
+our own countrymen with its deadly climate than we have saved slaves
+from slavery!"
+
+"But, Jim," said I, as the old sailor paused at the end of his yarn.
+"Do you think it was really the sea serpent?  Might it not have been a
+waterspout, or a bit of floating wreck, which you saw in the fog?"
+
+Jim Newman got grumpy at once, at the bare insinuation of such a thing.
+
+"Waterspouts and bits of wreck," said he sarcastically, "generally
+travel at the rate of twenty miles an hour when there is no wind to move
+them along, and a dead calm, don't they?  Waterspouts and bits of wreck
+smell like polecats when you're a hundred miles from land, don't they?
+Waterspouts and bits of wreck roar like a million wild bulls, and snort
+and swish as they go through the water like a thousand express trains
+going through a tunnel, don't they?"
+
+I was silenced by Jim's sarcasm, and humbly begged his pardon for
+doubting the veracity of his eyesight.
+
+"Besides, Master Charles," he urged, when he had once more been restored
+to his usual equanimity; "besides, you must remember that nearly in the
+same parts, and about the same time--in the beginning of the month of
+August, 1848--the sea sarpint, as people who have never seen it are so
+fond of joking of, was seen by the captain and crew of HMS _Daedalus_
+and the event was put down in the ship's log, and reported officially to
+the Admiralty.  I suppose you won't go for to doubt the statement which
+was made by a captain in the navy, a gentleman, and a man of honour, and
+supported by the evidence of the lieutenant of the watch, the master, a
+midshipman, the quartermaster, boatswain's mate, and the man at the
+wheel--the rest of the ship's company being below at the time?"
+
+"No, Jim," said I, "that's straight enough."
+
+"We was in latitude 5 degrees 30 minutes north, and longitude about 3
+degrees east," continued the old sailor, "when we saw it on the 1st of
+August, 1848, and they in latitude 24 degrees 44 minutes south, and
+longitude 9 degrees 22 minutes east, when they saw it on the 6th of the
+same month; so the curious reptile--for reptile he was--must have put
+the steam on when he left us!"
+
+"Stirred up, probably, by your starboard broadside?" said I.
+
+"Jest so," went on Jim.  "But, he steered just in the direction to meet
+them when he went off from us, keeping a southward and eastward course;
+and I daresay, if he liked, he could have made a hundred knots an hour
+as easy as we could sail ten on a bowline with a stiff breeze."
+
+"And so you really have seen the great sea serpent?" said I, when the
+old man-of-war's man had shifted his quid once more, thus implying that
+he had finished.
+
+"Not a doubt of it, sir; and by the same token he was as long as from
+here to the Spit Buoy, and as broad as one of them circular forts out
+there."
+
+"That's a very good yarn, Jim," said I; "but do you mean to say that you
+saw the monster with your own eyes, Jim, as well as all the rest of
+you?"
+
+"I saw him, I tell you, Master Charles, as plain as I see you now; and
+as true as I am standing by your side the sarpint jumped right over the
+_Amphitrite_ when Gil Saul and I was a-looking up, and carried away our
+maintopmast and everything belonging to it!"
+
+"Well, it must have been wonderful, Jim," said I.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," said he, "but you'd ha' thought it a precious sight more
+wonderful if you had chanced to see it, like me!"
+
+I may add, that, shortly afterwards, I really took the trouble to
+overhaul a pile of the local papers to see whether Jim's account of the
+report made by the captain of the _Daedalus_ to the Lords of the
+Admiralty was substantially true; and, strange to say, I discovered
+amongst the numbers of the _Hampshire Telegraph_ for the year 1848, the
+following copy of a letter forwarded by Captain McQubae to the admiral
+in command at Devonport dockyard at the date mentioned:--
+
+  "Her Majesty's Ship _Daedalus_
+
+  "Hamoaze, October 11th, 1848.
+
+  "Sir,--In reply to your letter of this day's date, requiring
+  information as to the truth of a statement published in the _Globe_
+  newspaper, of a sea serpent of extraordinary dimensions having been
+  seen from her Majesty's ship _Daedalus_, under my command, on her
+  passage from the East Indies, I have the honour to acquaint you, for
+  the information of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, that at
+  five o'clock, PM, on the 6th of August last, in latitude 24 degrees 44
+  minutes south, and longitude 9 degrees 22 minutes east, the weather
+  dark and cloudy, wind fresh from the North West, with a long ocean
+  swell from the South West, the ship on the port tack heading North
+  East by North, something very unusual was seen by Mr Sartons,
+  midshipman, rapidly approaching the ship from before the beam.  The
+  circumstance was immediately reported by him to the officer of the
+  watch, Lieutenant Edgar Drummond, with whom and Mr William Barrett,
+  the master, I was at the time walking the quarter-deck.  The ship's
+  company were at supper.
+
+  "On our attention being called to the object it was discovered to be
+  an enormous serpent, with head and shoulders kept about four feet
+  constantly above the surface of the sea, and as nearly as we could
+  approximate, by comparing it with the length of what our main-topsail-
+  yard would show in the water, there was at the very least sixty feet
+  of the animal _a fleur d'eau_, no portion of which was, to our
+  perception, used in propelling it through the water, either by
+  vertical or horizontal undulation.  It passed rapidly, but so close
+  under our lee quarter that had it been a man of my acquaintance I
+  should have easily recognised his features with the naked eye; and it
+  did not, either in approaching the ship or after it had passed our
+  wake, deviate in the slightest degree from its course to the South
+  West, which it held on at the pace of from twelve to fifteen miles per
+  hour, apparently on some determined purpose.
+
+  "The diameter of the serpent was about fifteen or sixteen inches
+  behind the head, which was, without any doubt, that of a snake, and
+  never, during the twenty minutes that it continued in sight of our
+  glasses once below the surface of the water; its colour a dark brown,
+  with yellowish white about the throat.  It had no fins, but something
+  like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of sea-weed, washed about
+  its back.  It was seen by the quartermaster, the boatswain's mate, and
+  the man at the wheel, in addition to myself and officers above-
+  mentioned.
+
+  "I am having a drawing of the serpent made from a sketch taken
+  immediately after it was seen, which I hope to have ready for
+  transmission to my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty by to-morrow's
+  posts.
+
+  "I have, etcetera,
+
+  "Peter McQubae, Captain.
+
+  "To Admiral Sir WH Gage, GCH, Devonport."
+
+Consequently, having this testimony, which was amply verified by the
+other witnesses at the time, I see no reason to doubt the truth of Jim
+Newman's yarn about THE GREAT SEA SERPENT!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+"OUR SCRATCH ELEVEN."
+
+This all happened a year or two before I went to sea, and so doesn't
+come under the ordinary designation of a "yarn," which, I take it,
+should only be about the doings of seafaring men and those who have to
+toil over the ocean for a living; still, as it concerns myself, I give
+it in pretty nearly the exact words I told it the other day to a party
+of youngsters who had just come in from cricketing and asked me for a
+story.
+
+I never played in such a match in my life before or since, I began; but,
+there, I had better commence at the right end, and then you'll be able
+to judge for yourselves.
+
+Charley Bates, of course, was dead against it from the first.
+
+"I tell you it's all nonsense," he said, when we mooted the subject to
+him.  "How on earth can we get up a decent eleven to play chaps like
+those, who have been touring it all over the country, and licking
+professionals even on their own ground?  It's impossible, and a
+downright absurdity.  We can't do it."
+
+"But, Charley," suggested Sidney Grant, a tall, fair-haired fellow, and
+our best bat--he could swipe away at leg balls; and as for straight
+drives, well, he'd send 'em over a bowler's head, just out of his reach,
+and right to the boundary wall, at such a rate, like an express train
+going through the air, that they defied stopping.  "But, Charley," he
+suggested, "we've got some good ones left of our team, and I daresay we
+can pick up some fresh hands from amongst the visitors to make up a fair
+scratch lot."
+
+"It would be a scratch lot," sneered Charley--"a lot that would be
+scratched out with duck's eggs, and make us the laughing-stock of the
+place."
+
+"Oh, that's all nonsense!"  Sidney said, decisively.
+
+Besides being our best bat, he was the captain of the Little Peddlington
+Cricket Club, which, as it was far into the month of August, had got
+somewhat dispersed through some of the team having gone off on those
+cheap excursions to London, to the Continent, and elsewhere, that are
+rife at most of the seaside places on the south coast during the season.
+But now that the great travelling team of the "Piccadilly Inimitables"
+purposed paying a passing visit to our rural shades, it of course
+behoved the Little Peddlington Cricket Club to challenge the celebrated
+amateurs to a match, albeit we were so woefully weak from the absence of
+many of our best members, or else be for ever disgraced amongst the
+patrons of the noble game.
+
+It was this very point we were debating now, our captain having
+collected the remnants of the club together in solemn caucus, to
+deliberate on the situation and see what was to be done.
+
+"I don't see why we shouldn't challenge the Inimitables," he went on.
+"The worst that can happen to us is to get licked; but we might make a
+good fight for it, and if vanquished we should not be covered with
+dishonour.  There are five of us here of the first eleven to form a
+nucleus with: Charley Bates--whom I mention first, not by reason of his
+superior skill with the willow," the captain slily put in, "as that is
+known to all of us, but on account of his being the oldest member of the
+Little Peddlington Cricket Club present, with the exception of myself--
+Jack Limpet, who is a very good all-round player if he didn't brag quite
+so much,"--this was one at me--"Tom Atkins, John Hardy, and last, though
+by no means least, my worthy self.  Thus we've five good men and true,
+whom we have tried already in many a fray, to rely on; and I daresay we
+can pick out two or three likely youngsters from the juniors, while some
+of those new fellows amongst the visitors that came down last week would
+lend us a hand.  There were three of them especially that I noticed
+yesterday practising, whom I should certainly like to have in the eleven
+if I could get them to join us."
+
+"They'd be glad enough if you'd ask them," grumbled Charley Bates, who
+always seemed to prefer looking at the disagreeable side of things; "but
+I don't think much of their play.  And as for the juveniles, there isn't
+one worth his salt."
+
+"Yes, there is," said John Hardy, who seldom spoke; but when he did open
+his mouth, generally did so to the purpose.  "That young fellow James
+Black is first-class both at batting and bowling.  I've watched him many
+a time.  He ought to have been in the eleven long ago."
+
+"Do you think so?" said Sidney inquiringly.  "I'm afraid I've overlooked
+him.  I'll make a note of his name, even if we don't have him with us to
+play against the Inimitables."
+
+Without much further demur, Sidney Grant proceeded to settle that he and
+John Hardy should form themselves into a deputation and wait upon the
+committee of the visitors' cricket club, requesting them to furnish the
+assistance of the three members whom our captain had specified, to the
+Little Peddlington Eleven, which would be also duly recruited from the
+ranks of its junior team, not forgetting young James Black, in order to
+enable them to challenge the Piccadilly Inimitables, and try to stop
+their triumphal progress round the south coast.
+
+Charley Bates objected, naturally, as might have been imagined from the
+position he took at first.  He objected not only to the visitors being
+asked to join our scratch team and represent the Little Peddlingtonians,
+but also specially--just because John Hardy mentioned his name, and for
+no other earthly reason--to the fact of young Black's being selected
+from the junior eleven.  He was over-ruled, however, on both points,
+much to his chagrin, as he was in the habit generally of getting his own
+way by bullying the rest, and he left the meeting in the greatest
+disgust, saying that he wouldn't play, and thus "make himself a party to
+the disgrace that was looming over the club," in their defeat by the
+Inimitables, which he confidently expected.
+
+"He's too fond of figuring in public to care to take a back seat when we
+are all in it, and bite off his nose to spite his face!" said Tom Atkins
+when he went away from us in his dudgeon, shaking off the dust from his
+cricketing shoes, so to speak, in testimony against us.  "Master Charley
+will come round and join us when he sees we are in for the match, you
+bet!"
+
+And so he did, at the last moment.  The other members having cordially
+supported the captain's several propositions, they were carried
+unanimously by our quorum of four, and immediately acted upon.  Young
+Black, with two other juniors, and three of the best men we could pick
+out from the visitors that were at Little Peddlington for the season
+that year--and there were some first-rate cricketers, too, amongst
+them--made up our scratch eleven, Charley Bates relenting when he found
+that we would have played without him.  And a challenge having been sent
+to the Piccadilly Inimitables without delay, which they as promptly
+accepted, the match was fixed to come off, on our ground, of course, on
+the opening days of the ensuing week--provided, as the secretary of our
+opponents' club, very offensively as we thought, added in a postscript
+to his communication, the contest was not settled on the first day's
+play.  But they reckoned without their host when they tackled the Little
+Peddlingtonians, as you will see.
+
+We fellows who formed the Little Peddlington Cricket Club were for the
+most part studying there under a noted tutor, who prepared us for the
+army, Woolwich, or India; but we admitted a few of the townspeople.
+
+A cricket match at such a retired spot opened a field of excitement to
+both residents and summer tourists alike.  Even an ordinary contest,
+such as we sometimes indulged in with the Hammerton or Smithwick clubs,
+or the Bognor garrison, would have aroused considerable interest in the
+vicinity of Little Peddlington; but when it became known that we were
+going to play the celebrated Piccadilly Inimitables, who had licked
+Lancashire and Yorkshire, and almost every county eleven they had met in
+their cricketing tour from the north to the south of England, there was
+nothing else talked about from one end of our seaside town to the other,
+the news spreading to the adjacent hamlets, and villages beyond, until
+it reached the cathedral city twenty miles away.
+
+Under these circumstances it cannot be wondered at that when Monday, the
+opening day of the match--which turned out beautifully fine for a
+wonder, as it always rained on the very slightest provocation at Little
+Peddlington--arrived, there was such a crowd of carriages and drags,
+filled to their utmost capacity, as to astonish even the memory of that
+far-famed individual "the oldest inhabitant."  These were drawn up in a
+sort of semicircle around our cricket ground--a charmingly situated spot
+with a very wide area, and nicely sheltered by rows of waving elms from
+the hot August sun--and besides the "carriage folk," as the rustics
+termed them, came on foot everybody in the neighbourhood, besides all
+Little Peddlington itself.
+
+The Piccadilly Inimitables arrived early in the morning, having stopped
+overnight at Brighton, where they had scored their last victory over the
+Sussex eleven, and which place was not so remote from Little Peddlington
+as you might suppose, consequently we were able to commence the match in
+good time, and as our club won the toss for first innings we buckled to
+at once for the fray, sending in John Hardy, who had the reputation with
+us of being a "sticker," and the grumbling Charley Bates, to the wickets
+punctually at eleven o'clock.
+
+The bowling at the beginning was rather shady, the Inimitables not being
+accustomed to the ground, which our batsmen, of course, were perfectly
+familiar with; so runs got piled on in a way that raised our hopes
+pretty considerably, especially when Sidney Grant took Charley Bates's
+place--that worthy having in his second over skied a ball that was
+immediately caught, sending him out for five runs, two singles and a
+three, or two more than he had totalled in his last match.
+
+It was a sight to see Sidney as he cut and drove the slow and fast
+bowlers of our opponents' team for four almost every over; whilst John
+Hardy backed him up ably by remaining, as he was instructed, strictly on
+the defensive, and blocking every ball that came at all near his wicket
+Sidney was the run-getter; he had simply to run.
+
+We had scored thirty-eight for the loss of only one wicket, and the
+captain seemed to be well set and good to make the century--as he had
+done a month before in our match with the Smithwick Club--when a new
+bowler went on at the lower end of the ground, and "a change came over
+the spirit of our dream."
+
+"I don't like the way that chap walks up to the wicket," said Tom Atkins
+to me.  "I saw him taking Sidney's measure when he was serving as long-
+stop, and if he doesn't play carefully, he'll bowl him out almost with
+his first ball."
+
+"Not he," said I sanguinely.  "He seems too confident."
+
+"Ah well! we'll see," replied Tom.
+
+That new bowler was something awful.  He sent in the balls at such a
+pace that they came on the wicket like battering-rams, and their twist
+was so great that they would pitch about a mile off and appear to be
+wides, when all of a sudden they would spin in on a treacherous curve,
+right on to a fellow's leg-stump.  John Hardy stood them well enough,
+blocking away with a calm sense of duty, and never attempting to strike
+one.  But poor Sidney lost his head in a very short time, and hitting
+out wildly at what he thought was a short ball, it rose right over the
+shoulder of his bat and carried off his bails in the neatest manner
+possible--two wickets for forty-one runs, as the captain had only
+managed to put on three runs since that fiend in human form had come on
+to bowl.
+
+Of course there was a wild shout of victory from the Inimitables when
+our best bat was disposed of, and corresponding woe in our camp, which
+was sympathisingly shared in by all the Little Peddlingtons around, and
+in the midst of the excitement I went to the wicket to fill the lamented
+vacancy.
+
+"Mind, Jack," said Sidney, who did not allow the sense of defeat to
+overcome his duty, "and be certain to play those balls well back.  It
+was all through my stepping out to them that caused my collapse.  Only
+be cautious and take things coolly, and you and Prester John will tire
+him out."
+
+"Oh, yes," sneered Charley Bates, whose temper had not been improved by
+his getting out for five, when, in spite of his assurances of the
+superiority of our antagonists, he had looked forward to getting the
+highest score against them,--"Oh, yes.  Tire him out!  Why, the chap
+hasn't got into the use of his arm yet.  He'll send Jack Limpet's stumps
+flying presently.  But I shall laugh when Tom Atkins faces his balls!
+Our comic man won't have anything to joke about then, I'll warrant."
+
+He was a nasty fellow that Charley Bates!  I don't know anything more
+ungenerous than to try and dishearten a fellow just when he is going to
+the wicket, and knows what a responsibility he has resting on him!  But,
+then, what can you expect from such a chap?  I'm glad he got out for
+five.  I wish he had been bowled for nix.
+
+With these pleasant thoughts in my mind I walked leisurely up the
+ground, from where I had been standing by the scoring tent watching the
+game, and with an inward sinking at my heart faced the "Slogger," as we
+had christened our opponents' terrible bowler.
+
+For a couple of overs I got on very well.  Acting on the captain's
+advice I stopped in my own ground, playing all the Slogger's balls
+carefully back, and by this means managed to score two good leg hits in
+the fourth over, that sent up six to my account, in addition to three
+singles, which I had put on by careful watchfulness at first.
+
+Just then, however, Prester John made a hit for a wonder--a straight
+drive for five; and fired with emulation I let out at the next ball I
+received.  Throwing all caution and the captain's commands to the winds,
+I did "let out with a vengeance," as Tom Atkins said on my return to the
+tent, for I "let in" the ball, which, coming in with a swish, snapped my
+leg-stump in two, sending the pieces flying sky high in the air!
+
+Three wickets for fifty-seven runs, two for byes; so far, the scoring
+was not bad; but in a very short time Pelion was piled on Ossa in the
+history of our disasters.  Prester John got run out through the absurd
+folly of Tom Atkins, who stopped actually in mid-wicket to laugh at some
+nonsense or other that had at that moment flashed across the vision of
+what he called his "mind;" and with his fall our chances sank rapidly to
+zero, wicket after wicket being taken without a run being scored, until
+the whole of us were out for a total still under sixty.
+
+It was maddening!  But what annoyed John Hardy even more than that ass
+Tom Atkins having run him out was that the captain had never given young
+James Black any opportunity of showing his batting skill, as, being
+persuaded by Charley Bates, who pooh-poohed the youngster's abilities
+_in toto_, he had only sent him in as "last-man," and Black hadn't, of
+course, the chance of playing a ball.  Sidney, however, promised to
+right the matter in our second innings, should our opponents give us
+time to play one, and not occupy the wickets, as seemed very probable,
+for the two days over which the match could only extend: and with this
+promise Prester John and his protege, young Jemmy Black, were fain to be
+content.
+
+The three recruits we had engaged from amongst the visitors to join our
+scratch eleven had, up to the present, done nothing to warrant our
+captain's encomiums on their skill--at least in the batting line, which
+they had only essayed as yet; it remained to be proved whether they were
+worth anything in the field; if not, then our chances of receiving a
+hollow licking were uncommonly bright, as Charley Bates pointed out with
+his customary cheerful irony.
+
+Well, after luncheon, when we entertained them in the most hospitable
+manner, as if we loved them instead of feeling sentiments the reverse of
+amicable towards them, the Inimitables went in for their first innings;
+and the way they set to work scoring from the moment they commenced to
+handle the bat, prognosticated that Charley Bates' evil surmise as to
+our defeat would be speedily realised.
+
+I think I have already hinted that I somewhat prided myself on my
+bowling, being celebrated amongst the members of the Little Peddlington
+Cricket Club for sending in slows of such a judicious pitch that they
+generally got the man caught out who attempted to drive them, while,
+should he contemptuously block them, they had such an underhand twist
+that they would invariably run into the wickets, although they mightn't
+seem to have strength to go the distance?  From this speciality of mine
+I was looked upon as a tower of strength in the bowling line to the
+club; and, consequently, I and one of our visitor recruits, Tomkins by
+name, were intrusted with the ball at the first start.
+
+Tomkins bowled swift with a pretty fair pitch, and I bowled slow, dead
+on to the wicket every time; but the two men of the Inimitables who
+began the batting on their side-men who have gained almost a European
+reputation in the handling of the willow, and I wouldn't like to hurt
+their feelings by mentioning their names now--seemed to play with us as
+they liked, hitting the ball to every part of the ground, and scoring
+threes and fours, and even sixes, in the most demoralising manner
+possible.  They hadn't been in a quarter of an hour when they passed our
+miserable total, amidst the cheers of their own party--in which the
+fickle Little Peddlingtonians now joined, and the blue looks of our
+men--and it appeared as if their scoring would, like Tennyson's brook,
+"go on for ever."
+
+"We must put a stop to this," said Sidney, when seventy went up on the
+scoring-board, "and change the bowling," which he did, by going on
+himself at my end and putting one of the other visitors, who was also
+supposed to be a dab with the ball, in the place of Tomkins.
+
+For a time, this did a little good, as it stopped the rapidity of the
+scoring; but after an over or two, the batsmen, neither of whom had been
+yet displaced, began putting up the runs again, even quicker than they
+had done with us; and the hundred was passed almost within the hour from
+the time they started.
+
+"By George, Limpet," said the captain, calling me to him out of the
+field, "you must go on again at the upper end, changing places with that
+chap.  Try a full pitch, and we'll catch that long-legged beggar out;
+he's so confident now that he would hit at anything."
+
+Going on again, as Sidney had directed, I tried a full-pitched ball
+after a short delivery or two, and the "long-legged beggar" skied it,
+amidst the breathless suspense of our team.
+
+Unfortunately, however, no one was there to catch it when it fell to the
+ground a long way beyond cover-point, and the Inimitables scored six for
+it--disgusting!
+
+"That Atkins deserves to be expelled the club!" said the captain in a
+rage.  "He can't put on a bit of steam when it's necessary to use his
+legs, although he could run Prester John out for a ball that wasn't
+worth moving for.  Play!"  And the game went on again.
+
+Giving my opponent another brace of short balls to take him off his
+guard, I watched my opportunity again and treated him again to a full
+one, which he skied, as before, to the same point.
+
+This time, however, he did not escape scatheless.  Young Black, whom I
+had strangely missed from his position at long-stop since I commenced to
+bowl the over, stepped out from beneath the shadow of the trees, where
+he had concealed himself in the meantime, and amidst the ringing
+plaudits, not only of our lot but of the spectators as well--who turned
+round in our favour at the first breath of success--caught the ball with
+the utmost _sangfroid_, sending it a moment afterwards spinning in the
+air triumphantly, in the true cricketonian manner, as an acknowledgment
+of the feat and accompanying cheers.
+
+It wasn't much to brag of, getting out the long-limbed one, as it was
+only one wicket for one hundred and seventeen runs; but when the second
+man went shortly after without increasing the score, our hopes began to
+rise.  They were hopes based on sand, however.  The two newcomers began
+making runs just like their predecessors, and completely mastered the
+bowling.
+
+Every member of the club had now been tried with the ball, besides the
+three visitors, who certainly bowled fairly well, but nothing
+hysterically brilliant.  Even Charley Bates had a turn, although I don't
+believe he had ever hit the wicket in his life; and on his surrendering
+the ball, after presenting our opponents with three wides and any number
+of byes, our captain was at his wits' end.  He didn't know who he could
+set on to bowl.
+
+"Try young Black," suggested Hardy at this juncture, when we were having
+a short interval of rest from our exhilarating game of leather-hunting,
+which had now been going on for two hours and more.
+
+"Young Black, indeed!" repeated Charley Bates with intense scorn.
+
+"Well," said Prester John, "he can't possibly do worse than you."
+
+And the remark was so painfully true that even Charley could not but see
+the point of it, and he said no more.
+
+On being called, Jemmy Black came up with a broad grin on his face,
+which looked exactly like one of those public-house signs you sometimes
+see in country villages, of "The Rising Sun," or "The Sun in Splendour."
+He was otherwise a dapper little fellow, although scarcely five feet in
+height, and strongly built, his legs and arms being very muscular.
+
+He endeavoured to receive with proper gravity and dignity the ball from
+Sidney, who gave him a few words of appropriate advice, but he failed
+utterly in the attempt.  That grin would not leave his face: it was as
+much a part of his physiognomy as his nose, I believe!
+
+Little chap as he was, however, his advent produced a change at once.
+His first three overs were maidens, balls that were dead on to the
+wicket, and so true and ticklish that the Inimitable champions did not
+dare to play them.  In the next, bang went one of the two stickers' leg-
+stump at young Black's first ball; with the second he caught and bowled
+the fresh man who came in, before he scored at all--four wickets for a
+hundred and fifty runs, not one of which had been put on since he came
+on to bowl.  Things began to look up, or, at all events, did not appear
+in so sombre a light as they had done previously.
+
+"Bravo, Black!" resounded from every part of the field; but the little
+fellow took no notice of the applause, beyond grinning more widely than
+ever, "his mouth stretching from ear to ear," as Charley Bates said,
+green with envy and jealousy of the other's performance.
+
+The new bowler seemed to demoralise the batsmen even as they had
+previously demoralised us, for I had a bit of luck a little further on,
+taking one wicket by a low-pitched ball, and getting another man out
+with a catch; and then Black, as if he had been only playing with the
+Inimitables hitherto, braced himself up to the struggle, and began
+laying the stumps low right and left.
+
+It was a wonder that such a small chap could send in the balls at the
+terrific speed he did, balls that set leg-guards and pads at defiance,
+and splintered one of the batsmen's spring-handled bats as if it had
+been match wood; but he did it.
+
+His last over in that first innings of the Inimitables, however, was the
+crowning point in his victorious career.  With four consecutive balls he
+took the four last wickets of our opponents, and sent them off the
+ground without putting up a run--the whole eleven being out for one
+hundred and fifty-six runs--or not quite the century beyond us; and the
+principal feature of Black's triumph was, that from the moment he
+handled the leather, the Inimitables only scored six to the good, but
+one run of which was off his bowling.
+
+I should like you to beat that analysis, if you can!
+
+With the disposal of our antagonists so easily at the end, we began our
+second innings with more sanguine expectations than could have been
+imagined from our previous prostration.
+
+"Black had better go in as first man along with you, Hardy, and see what
+he can do," our captain said.
+
+The two accordingly went to the wickets at the beginning of the innings;
+and there they remained without giving a single chance until the
+conclusion of the day's play, when the stumps were drawn at seven
+o'clock in the evening.
+
+Young Black had scored by that time no less than eighty off his own bat,
+and Hardy forty-one, after being in to their own cheek exactly as long
+as the Inimitables' whole innings lasted.  It was glorious, one hundred
+and eighteen without the loss of a wicket, and the bowling and fielding
+must have been good, as there were only seven extras all that long while
+our men had been in.  Why, that placed us thirty-one runs to the good at
+the close of the first day's play.  Who would have thought it?
+
+The next morning play began as punctually as on the first day, and the
+crowd to witness the match was even greater than before, many coming now
+who had stayed away previously, expecting our wholesale defeat in one
+innings; and "young Ebony," as Black was called affectionately, and
+Prester John resumed their places at the wickets amidst the tremendous
+cheering from the whole of the hamlet and twenty miles round.
+
+The bowlers of the Inimitables were on their metal now if they never
+were; but they bowled, and changed their bowling, in vain, for young
+Jemmy Black continued his brilliant hitting without any cessation, while
+Prester John remained on the defensive, except some very safe ball
+tempted him, until our score turned the two hundred in our second
+innings.
+
+Prester John here retired by reason of his placing a ball in short-
+slip's hands; but on our captain taking his place and facing Black, the
+run-getting went steadily on until we were considerably a hundred over
+our antagonists.  Young Black had not given a chance, save one close
+shave of a run out, when he got clean bowled for one hundred and fifty-
+one.  Fancy that; and off such first-class bowling, too!
+
+It was as much as Hardy and I could do to prevent him being torn in
+pieces by the excited spectators, who rushed in _en masse_ when he
+abandoned the wicket he had defended so well, his face all the time
+expanding into one huge grin, which appeared to convert it into all
+mouth and nothing else.
+
+Sidney and I, and one or two others, scored well, although nothing like
+what our two champion stickers had done; and the whole of our second
+innings terminated for two hundred and eighty-eight runs, thus leaving
+the Inimitables no less than a hundred and ninety-one to get to tie us,
+and one more to win.  I fancy that was something like a feather in the
+cap of the Little Peddlington Cricket Club, although it was all owing to
+young Jemmy Black, whose bowling, when the Inimitables went in to make
+their final effort, was on a par with his magnificent batting.  We had
+finished our second innings just before lunch time; so immediately after
+that meal the great travelling team, who were going to do such wonders
+when they came to annihilate the Little Peddlingtonians--I can't help
+crowing a little now it is all over--went to the wickets to finish the
+match, or spin it out, if they could, so that it might end in a draw.
+
+Young Black was all there, however, and so was I, too, for, whether by
+his example or what, I know not, I never bowled so well before or since
+in my life.  Really, between us two, and the efficient assistance of our
+fieldsmen, who seemed also spurred up to extra exertions, even Charley
+Bates and Tom Atkins distinguishing themselves for their quickness of
+eye and fleetness of foot, the Piccadilly Inimitables got all put out
+long before time was called, for the inglorious total of our own first
+innings--fifty-nine.  Hurrah!
+
+We had conquered by a hundred and thirty-two runs, and licked the most
+celebrated amateur club in England.  It would be a vain task to try and
+recount our delighted surprise, so I'll leave it alone.  Thenceforward
+the rest of the chronicles of the Little Peddlington Cricket Club are
+they not written in gold?  At all events, I know this, that we never
+forgot what happened to us in that ever-memorable match, with only "Our
+Scratch Eleven."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Finch's Monkey, by John C. Hutcheson
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