Freaks on the Fells by Robert Michael Ballantyne (best way to read e books TXT) 📖

fitted out for an expedition to some distant part of the world. She had come to complete her supply of provisions and to engage a few extra hands.

Here then was a fortunate opportunity! We asked at once where we could find the captain. He was in the bar-room of the inn. We entered it and found him there, standing with his back to the fire and a coat-tail under each arm. He was a big fat man, with a savage expression of countenance, and ragged head and beard, and a red nose.

"Sir," said Jack, "we wish to ship with you."

The captain stared, took a pencil-case out of his pocket, picked his teeth therewith, and surveyed us from head to foot.

"Oh, you do, do you? You wish to ship with me?"

"Yes."

"Suppose I don't want you."

"Then we shall have to try elsewhere."

The captain smiled grimly, shut up the pencil-case, and said--

"What can ye do?"

"We can read, and write, and count," said I, taking the words out of Jack's mouth; for I felt that his brusque manner of replying was not calculated to commend us to the captain.

"Oh, you can read, and write, and count, can ye?" repeated the captain, with deep sarcasm. "If ye had said ye could feed, and fight, and shout, it would have bin more to the purpose."

"Perhaps we can do a little of that sort of thing, too," suggested Jack, with a broad grin.

"Hah?" ejaculated the captain. "Wot else can ye do?"

"Oh, anything," said Jack.

"I gin'rally find," observed the captain, "that w'en a boy says he can do anything, he very soon proves that he can do nothing."

"Well, I don't mean that exactly," rejoined Jack; "I mean we can _try_ anything."

"Ha! that's more to the pint. Where did ye come from?"

We looked at each other. "That," said I, "is a matter of no importance to any one but ourselves. We have run away from home, and we want to go to sea as fast as possible. If you are willing to take us, we are willing to go. What say you?"

"Run away! ho! ho!--run away!" said the captain, chuckling; "you are just the lads I want. Nothing like runaway boys for me. I wouldn't give a pinch of snuff for your good boys that do wot they're bid. Commend me to the high-spirited fellers that runs away, and that folk are so wicked as to call bad boys. That's the sort o' stuff that suits _our_ service."

I did not by any means relish the manner and tone, in which all this was said: so I asked him what particular service he belonged to.

"You'll know that time enough," he replied, laughing; "but after all, why shouldn't I tell ye? there's nothing to conceal. We're a discovery-ship; we're goin' to look for Sir John Franklin's expedition, and after we've found it we're going to try the North Pole, and then go right through the Nor'-west passage, down by Behring's Straits, across the Pacific, touchin' at the Cannibal Islands in passin', and so on to China. Havin' revictualled there, we'll bear away for Japan, Haustralia, Cape o' Good Hope, and the West Indies, and come tearin' across the Atlantic with the Gulf-stream to England! Will that suit ye?"

It may seem strange, and the reader will hardly believe me when I say, that, transparently absurd though this statement was, nevertheless I believed every word of it--and so did Jack. I saw that by his glowing eye and heightened colour.

"And when do you sail?" I inquired joyfully.

"In half an hour; so get aboard, boys, and don't give so much tongue. I've other matters to mind just now. Come, be off!"

We retreated precipitately to the door.

"What's her name?" inquired Jack, looking back.

"`The Ring-tailed Smasher,'" cried the captain, fiercely.

"The what?"

"`The Ring-tailed Smasher,'" roared the captain, seizing the poker.

We vanished. In five minutes we were on board the ship. To this hour I have no remembrance of how we got on board. My brain swam with intense excitement. I felt as if I were flying, not walking, as I ran about the deck and clambered up the rigging.

Shortly after, the captain came aboard. The rope that attached the vessel to the quay was cast off, the sails flew out as if by magic, and the shore began to fall rapidly astern.

It was now, for the first time, that a full sense of what I had done came over me. I leaned over the stern of the ship, and gazed at my native shore as it grew fainter in the distance, until the familiar hills became a mere line of blue on the horizon, and were finally blotted from my view by the blinding tears that sprang suddenly to my eyes. Oh! the agony of that moment I shall never forget. The words that Jack had quoted to me the night before--"Honour thy father and thy mother"--seemed to be stamped in letters of fire within my brain. I felt keenly that, in a moment of passionate self-will, I had done that which would cause me the deepest sorrow all my life.

In that dark hour I forgot all my romantic notions of travel in foreign lands; I cared not a straw for hunting, or fighting, or wild adventures. I would have cheerfully given worlds, had I possessed them, to be permitted to undo the past--to hasten to my dear father's feet, and implore forgiveness of the evil that I had done. But regret was now unavailing. The land soon sank below the horizon, and, ere many hours had passed, our ship was scudding before a stiff breeze and leaping wildly over the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.


STORY TWO, CHAPTER 4.

"Ho! tumble up there, tumble up! All hands, ahoy! tumble up! Look alive, lads; there's work to do, my hearties!"

Such were the words, uttered in the most terrifically violent bass tones, that awoke me on the first morning after I went to sea. Instantly all the men around me leaped out of their hammocks. They were all half-dressed, and I noticed that the greater part of them completed their toilet in the short interval between quitting their hammocks and gaining the deck. Jack and I had lain down in our clothes, so we were on deck almost as soon as the others.

Here the most unexpected sights assailed us. It seemed to me as if a miraculous change had taken place on everybody and everything during the night. The ship when she had set sail was as untidy and lumbered about the decks as a merchantman usually is on quitting port. Now everything was clean, in its place, snugly fastened, and in order. The sails appeared to have undergone some modification. I fancied, too, that the masts raked aft a good deal more than they had done, and round the foot of them were ranged muskets, pistols, cutlasses, and boarding-pikes, where masses of cordage and handspikes had been before. The hencoops had vanished, and in their place were rows of brass carronades, while in the centre of the deck an enormous swivel gun occupied the place, on which the long-boat had formerly rested. Even the captain seemed to have changed. His costume was somewhat Eastern in its character, and his whole aspect was much more ferocious than when I first saw him.

Vague and terrible suspicions crossed my mind as I viewed these wonderful transformations; but I had no time to indulge them, for the men had hastened with the promptitude of men-of-war's men to their stations, leaving Jack and me alone in the middle of the deck.

"Hallo, boys!" shouted the captain, "no idlers allowed aboard this ship. Here, stand by this gun, and lend a hand with the ropes when you're told to. Obey orders,--that's the only duty I've got to lay on you."

We hastened to the gun pointed out, and while I was standing there waiting for orders, I looked over the side, and, for the first time, became aware of the cause of these proceedings.

About two miles to leeward of us, just off our larboard bow, I saw a large ship running under a press of canvas. She was a huge clumsy-looking merchantman, and I heard our first mate say she was an East-Indiaman.

"Then why chase her?" thought I, "and why these warlike preparations?"

It struck me at the time, I remember, that the captain must have guessed my thoughts, for he glanced at me quickly, and then turning to the mate, with a sarcastic smile, said--

"I thought you had better sight than you seem to have. In my judgment that's a Russian merchantman, and as we happen to be at war with Russia just now I'll take the liberty of overhauling her."

Instead of replying to this, the mate burst into a loud laugh in which, strangely enough, he was joined by the captain and all the men who were within hearing. I felt uneasy at this, and expressed my feelings in a whisper to Jack, who shook his head and looked at me mysteriously, but said nothing.

I felt that, even though we were at war with Russia, we, as a discovery-ship, had no right whatever to interfere in the capacity of a war-ship, and I was about to remonstrate with the captain at all hazards, when my thoughts were suddenly changed by the order being given to fire a shot across the stranger's bows. The gun at which I was stationed was run out.

"Stand by!" cried the captain.

"Fire!"

In the excitement of the moment, and without knowing what I had to do, though deeply impressed with the feeling that something ought to be done when an order was given, I pulled violently at the rope which I had in my hand; the effect of which was to move the gun very slightly when it exploded. The result was that the ball, instead of passing well ahead of the strange vessel, passed close to its bow, and carried away half of the bowsprit.

The captain turned on me a face absolutely blazing with wrath. He seized a handspike, and I thought he was about to dash out my brains on the spot. He hissed at me between his clinched teeth; then, suddenly bursting into a shout of fiendish laughter, he cried--

"Well, well, after all there's no harm done. It'll make them understand that we don't mean to trifle with 'em. Clear the boarding-pikes there. Are the grappling-irons ready?"

"Ay, ay, sir."

By this time the stranger had hove-to, and we were bearing down on her so rapidly that a few minutes more would bring us alongside. Our men stood ready for action. They were the worst-looking set of scoundrels I ever beheld.

"Ship ahoy!" shouted our captain as we drew near, "what ship's that?"

A smart young officer leaped on the bulwarks, and cried, "Come alongside and I'll tell you. Show your colours."

At the word our colours went up, as colours are usually hoisted, rolled up like a ball. I watched with intense interest, for I felt that now at last I should