The Young Trawler by R. M. Ballantyne (i read books txt) 📖

Captain Bream reclined one day on a sofa in the sitting-room of the house where he had first made the acquaintance of the Miss Seawards. Both ladies were seated by his side, the one working worsted cuffs and the other comforters, and both found the utmost difficulty in repressing tears when they looked at their kind nautical friend, for a great change had come over him since we last saw him.

We will not venture to state what was the illness that had laid the captain, as he himself expressed it on his beam-ends, but whatever it might have been, it had reduced him to a mere shadow. His once round cheeks were hollow; his eyes were so sunken that they appeared to have retired into the interior of his head, out of which, as out of two deep caverns, they gleamed solemnly. His voice, having been originally pitched so low that it could not well get lower, had become reduced to the sound of a big drum muffled; it had also a faint resemblance to a bassoon with a bad cold. His beard and moustache, having been allowed to grow, bore a striking likeness to a worn-out clothes-brush, and his garments appeared to hang upon a living skeleton of large proportions.

It is right however, to add that this was the worst that could be said of him. The spirit within was as cheery and loving and tender as ever it had been—indeed more so—and the only wonder was that it did not break a hole in the once tough but now thin shell of its prison-house, and soar upwards to its native regions in the sky!

“You must not work so hard at these cuffs, Miss Jessie,” he said, with a pleasant though languid smile. “If you do I’ll reduce my board.”

“But that would only render it necessary that I should work harder,” returned Jessie, without checking the pace of the needles.

“It is hard,” resumed the captain, “that I should be disobeyed at every turn now that I’m on my beam-ends, with little more strength in me than a new-born kitten. But never mind, I’m beginnin’ to feel stronger, and I’ll pay you off, my dear, when I’m able to move about.”

“Do you really feel a little stronger?” asked Kate, who, although more lively—even mischievous in a small way—than her sister, had been more deeply affected by the captain’s long illness, and could not shake off the impression that he was going to die.

“Feel stronger!” exclaimed the wrecked giant. “Give me your hand. D’ee feel that?”

“That” which Kate was to feel was a squeeze as a test of strength.

“There. Doesn’t it hurt you? I believe I could make you cry if I was to try.”

And the captain did make her cry even without trying, for Kate was so deeply touched with the weakness of the trembling squeeze, coupled with the hearty kindness and little touches of fun in the prostrate man, that she could not keep it down. Rising hurriedly, therefore, she flung her unfinished comforter into Jessie’s lap, left the room, and, retiring to her chamber, wept quietly there. Those tears were not now, however, as they had often been, tears of anxious sorrow, but of thankful joy.

Having accomplished this little matter, and relieved her feelings, she returned to the parlour.

“I’ve been just trying to persuade him, Kate,” said Jessie, as the former entered, “that in a week or two a trip to Yarmouth will do him so much good, but he does not seem to think he will be equal to it.”

“Come, now, Miss Jessie, that’s not a fair way to put it. I have no doubt that I shall be able enough—thanks to the good Lord who has spared me—but what I think is that Yarmouth, pleasant though it be, is not exactly what I want just now.”

“What then, do you think would be better for you?” asked Kate.

“‘The sea! The sea! The open sea! The blue, the fresh, the ever free!’” answered the captain, with a gleam in the sunken eyes such as had not been seen there for many days.

“Horrible thought!” said Jessie, with a pretended shudder.

“You know the proverb, ‘What’s one man’s meat is another man’s poison,’” returned the captain. “Ah! ladies, only those who have been cradled on the deep for three quarters of a lifetime, and who love the whistling winds, and the surging waves, and the bounding bark, know what it is to long, as I do, for another rest upon my mother’s breast:—

“‘And a mother she was and is to me,

For I was born—was born on the open sea.’”

“I had no idea you were so poetical,” said Jessie, much surprised at the invalid’s enthusiasm.

“Sickness has a tendency to make people poetical. I suppose,” returned the captain.

“But how are you to manage it? You can scarcely walk yet. Then excuse me, you haven’t got a ship, and I fear that not many owners would intrust one to you till you are stronger. So, what will you do?”

“Go as a passenger, my dear. See here; it’s all arranged,” said the captain, holding up a letter.

“I got this by the post this morning, and want to consult with you about it. Knowing my condition and desires, that excellent man the chaplain, who took me out in his steam-launch the day I got the first shot of this illness, had made known my case to the Director of the Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen, and he has kindly agreed to let me go a trip to the North Sea in one of the mission-ships, on the understanding that I shall do as much of a missionary’s work as I am fit for when there.”

“But you’re not fit for work of any kind!” exclaimed Kate with a flush of indignation which was partly roused by the idea of her friend being taken away from her at a time when he required so much nursing, and partly by the impropriety of so sick a man being expected to work at all.

“True, my dear, but I shall be fit enough in a week or two. Why, I feel strength coming back like a torrent. Even now I’m so hungry that I could devour my—my—”

“Your dinner!” cried Kate, as, at that opportune moment the door opened and Liffie Lee appeared with a tray in her hand.

There could be no doubt as to the captain’s appetite. Not only did his eyes glare, in quite a wolfish manner, at the food while it was being set before him, but the enormous quantity he took of that food became quite a source of alarm to the sisters, who watched and helped him.

“Now, captain,” said Jessie, laying her hand at last on his thin arm, as it was stretched out to help himself to more, “you really must not. You know the doctor said that it would never do, at first, to—”

“My dear,” interrupted the invalid, “hang the doctor!”

“Well, I have no objection to his being hanged, if you don’t ask me to do it,” returned Jessie, “but really—”

“Oh! let him alone,” said Kate, who, being very healthy, shared the captain’s unreasonable contempt for medical men, and was more than pleased at the ravenous tendencies of her old friend.

“Now for the sponge-cakes,” said the captain, wiping his mouth and rubbing his hands on finishing the first course.

“You are to have none,” said Kate, firmly. The captain’s face elongated into a look of woe.

“Because you are to have rice-pudding and thick cream instead!” continued Kate.

The captain’s face shortened again into a beaming smile.

Liffie Lee appeared at the moment with the viands named.

“I never saw anything like it!” exclaimed Jessie with a short laugh, and a look of resignation.

“I enjoy it so much!” said Kate, pouring out the cream with liberal hand.

Liffie said nothing, but if the widest extension of her lips, and the exposing of her bright little teeth from ear to ear, meant anything, it meant that her sympathies were entirely with Kate.

The captain was helped to pudding in a soup plate, that being relatively a rather small dessert plate for him. He was about to plunge the dessert spoon into it, but stopped suddenly and gazed at it. Then he turned his awful gaze on the small servant who almost shrank before it.

“Liffie, my dear.”

“Y–yes, sir.”

“Bring me a table-spoon, the biggest one you have.”

“Yes, sir,” she said,—and vanished. Presently she returned with an enormous gravy spoon.

“Ha! ha!” shouted the captain, with much of his old fire; “that’s better than I had hoped for! Hand it here, Liffie; it’ll do.”

He seized the weapon, and Liffie uttered an involuntary squeal of delight as she saw him sweep up nearly the whole of his first helping, and make one bite of it! He then attempted to smile at Liffie’s expression of joy, but did it awkwardly in the circumstances.

Just as he had finished his little repast, and was tranquilly stirring a breakfast cup of coffee, the door bell rang.

A minute later Liffie appeared with her mouth and eyes like three round O’s.

“If you please, ma’am, here’s Mister and Missis Dalton, as wants to know if they may come in.”

“Mr and Mrs who?” exclaimed both sisters.

“Mister an’ Missis Dalton,” repeated Liffie.

“Show them in—at once, child. Some ridiculous mistake,” said Jessie, glancing at Kate. “But, stay, Liffie;—you have no objection, captain?”

“None in the least.”

Another moment and Ruth appeared blushing in the door-way, with a handsome young man looming in the background.

“Mr and Mrs Dalton!” said the two sisters with a dazed look as they sank into two chairs.

“Oh no! darling Jessie,” cried Ruth, rushing forward and throwing her arms round her friend; “not—not quite that yet, but—but—engaged. And we determined that the very first call we made should be to you, darling.”

“Well, now, this is capital! Quite a picture,” growled the captain; “does more good to my digestion than—”

“Come,” interrupted Jessie, taking Ruth by the hand. “Come to our room!”

Regardless of all propriety, the sisters hurried Ruth off to their bedroom to have it out with her there, leaving young Dalton to face the captain.

“I congratulate you, my lad,” said the captain, frankly extending his hand. “Sit down.”

Dalton as frankly shook the hand and thanked the captain, as he took a seat beside him.

“I’m deeply grieved, Captain Bream, to see you so much reduced, yet rejoiced to find that you are fairly convalescent.”

“Humph! I wouldn’t give much for the depth of either your grief or joy on my account seein’ that you’ve managed to get hooked on to an angel.”

“Well, I confess,” said the youth, with a laugh, “that the joy connected with that fact pretty much overwhelms all other feelings at present.”

“The admission does you credit boy, for she is an angel. I’m not usin’ figures o’ speech. She’s a real darlin’, A1 at Lloyd’s. True blue through and through. And let me tell you, young fellow, that I know her better than