The Island of Gold: A Sailor's Yarn

An apprenticeship in a Dundee trader, owned in Belfast, and sailing from Cardiff, this was secured; though what use a lad not yet eleven might be put to on board such a craft, I confess I hardly know. But this I do know, that the sooner a boy who is to be a British sailor goes to sea the better.

Babs ventured back to the window at last, and glanced once more out into the now gathering gloom. Far away beyond Selsea Bill the sun had set behind lurid coppery clouds, that boded little good for ships that were toiling up the Channel.

“O daddy, here is postie at long, long last, and he’s all, all dressed in oilskins! He is coming to the door! Oh!”

She could not say another word for a few moments, but flew toward her father.

“It is – it is – O daddy! it’s Ransey!”

Book Two – Chapter Two.

“Ship-Shape and Seaman-Fashion.”

There wasn’t a doubt about that, and no lad surely ever got a happier welcome home.

Bob and Murrams knew him, and the Admiral too, who danced for joy in the back-garden when Ransey Tansey went to see him.

Everybody, with the exception of the father, seemed to walk on air that night. Mr Tandy was simply quietly happy.

Ransey was quite a man, Babs told him, and she felt sure he would soon have a moustache. Indeed, she brought a small magnifying-glass to strengthen her convictions on this point.

What a lot lads have to tell when they return from sea for the first time! and their friends cannot give them greater pleasure than by listening to all their adventures and “hairbreadth scapes;” sympathising with them in sorrows past and gone, and dangers encountered, and thanking Providence that they have been spared to come safely home from off the stormy ocean.

Ransey had gone to the old cottage first, not knowing anything about the change. He had found strangers there, and his heart had sunk to zero.

“Perhaps,” he thought, “they are dead and gone.”

No Bob to meet him! no Babs! no dancing crane!

He hadn’t had the heart to go in; he just ran right away to Captain Weathereye’s, and he told him all.

Ransey had had to sling his hammock here the first night, and visit Miss Scragley’s next day.

And Eedie was now ten years of age, and shy, but welcomed Ransey with a soft handshake and a bonnie blush, and in her little secret morsel of a heart admired him.

“Didn’t I tell you I’d make a man of him, Miss Scragley? See how tall he is. Look at those bold blue eyes of his, and the sea-tan on his cheeks,” said the captain.

No wonder that it was Ransey’s turn to blush.

“Tell your father, dear boy, that in four or five days I’m coming down to B – to see him. A breath of the briny will do an old barnacle like me a power of good.”

“That I will,” the boy had replied.

Then, after saying good-bye, Ransey went off to see Mrs Farrow; and that good lady was indeed pleased, for she had always had an idea that those who went to sea hardly ever returned.

She had to put the corner of her apron to her eyes now; but, if she did shed a tear, it was one of joy and nothing else.

Well, it would have done your heart good to have witnessed the happiness of Ransey and Babs, as they wandered hand in hand along the golden sands. Bob, too, was so elated that he hardly knew what to do with himself at first. This joy, however, settled down into a watchful kind of care and love for his young master; and he used to walk steadily behind him on the beach as if afraid that, if he once let him out of sight, he might be spirited away and never be seen again.

The Admiral was quite a seafarer now, and wonderful and sweet were the morsels he found or dug up for himself on the wet stretches of sand. The sea-gulls at first had taken him for something uncanny; but they now took him for granted, and walked about quite close to him, although at times, when this marvellous bird took it into his long head that a dance would do him good and increase his circulation, they were scared indeed, and flew screaming seawards.

But the Admiral didn’t mind that a bit; he just kept dancing away till there really didn’t seem to be a bit more dance left in him. Then he desisted, and went in for serious eating once more.

One beautiful day, while the dancing crane was holding a levée of sea-gulls, with a sprinkling of rooks, far seawards on the wet sands, while Mr Tandy was seated, smoking as usual, on a bench with his children near him, Bob uttered a defiant kind of a growl, and stood up with his hair on end from ears to rump. A gentleman dressed in blue, with sailor’s cap on his head, and reading a newspaper, was approaching the seat, on which there was plenty of room for one more.

But it was not at him that Bob was growling. No, but at a beautiful Scottish collie which was walking by his side.

Bob rushed forward at once, and the two met face to face and heads up.

Scottie carried his tail defiantly high.

Young England would have done the same with his, had he had anything to show.

The conversation seemed to be somewhat as follows: —

“You and I are about the same size, aren’t we?” said Bob.

“There isn’t much to figure on between us, I think,” replied Scottie.

“Lower your flag, then, or I’ll shake you out of your skin.”

“Scotland never lowered flag to a foreigner yet. Why don’t you raise your standard? Why, because you haven’t got one to raise. Ha, ha! what a fright you are! I only wonder your master lets you go about like that.”

“Yah – ah – r-r – r-r – r-r!”

“Waugh – r-r – r-r – r-r – r!”

And there was war next second.

Tandy rushed to the scene of action.

“I’m very sorry, sir,” he said. “Which dog, do you think, began the fight?”

“I think they both began it,” said the newcomer, laughing.

Scotland and England were having a terrible tulzie, as Scotland and England have often had in days long, long gone by.

They were rolling over each other, sometimes Bob above, sometimes Bob below, and the yellow sands were soon stained with blood.

Little Nelda was in tears, and the Admiral scray-scraying and dancing with joy.

“I think,” said the stranger, “they’ve both had enough of it, and my proposal is this – I’ll pull my dog off by the tail, and you do the same by yours.”

“I’d gladly do so,” said Tandy, laughing, “but, my dear sir, the fact is that my dog is like Tam o’ Shanter’s mare after she escaped from the witches —

“‘The ne’er a tail has he to shake.’”

Dogs are just like men, however, and these two, seemingly satisfied that neither could kill the other, soon made it up, and presently they went galloping off together to the sea to wash the sand out of their shaggy jackets.

Down sat the stranger between Ransey and his father. He rolled up his paper and lit his pipe, and soon the two were engaged in a very animated conversation.

Sailors all three. No wonder that the acquaintance thus brought about by their honest dogs ripened into friendship in a few days.

Captain Halcott – for so this new friend was named – had, some months before this, reached England after a very long and strangely adventurous cruise.

“Are you like me, I wonder?” he said to Tandy, as they sat smoking the calumet of peace together on a breezy cliff-top, while Ransey and his sister were fishing for curios in the pools of water left among the rocks by the receding tide. “Are you like me, I wonder? for I am no sooner safely arrived in Merrie England than I begin once more to long for life on the heaving billows.”

“You’re a free man, Captain Halcott; I’ve got a little family; and you’re a somewhat younger man, as well.”

“Yes, yes; granted. But, before going further, tell me what is your Christian name?”

“Dick.”

“Well, and mine’s Charlie. We’re both seafarers; don’t let us ‘Mr’ each other, or ‘captain’ each other either. You’re Tandy or you’re Dick, I’m Halcott or I’m Charlie, just as, for the time being, the humour may suit us. Is that right?”

“That’s right – ship-shape and seaman-fashion.” Two brown fists met and were shaken – no mincing landlubber’s shake, but a firm and hearty grip and wholesome pressure; a grip that seemed to speak and to say, – “Thine, lad, thine! Thine in peace or war; in calm or tempest, thine!”

How is it that sailors so often resemble one another? I cannot answer the question. But it is none the less true.

Tandy and Halcott appeared to have been cast in the same mould; the same open, bronzed, and weather-beaten faces, the same eyes – eyes that could twinkle with merriment one moment and be filled with pity the next.

Even Captain Weathereye himself, although older than either, and somewhat lighter in complexion, might easily have passed as brother to both.

“Well,” said Halcott, “I daresay you have a story to tell.”

“I’ve had strange experiences in life, and some were sad enough. For the sake of that dear boy and girl, I thank God I am no longer in the grip of poverty; but, my friend, I’ve seen worse days.”

“Tell us, Tandy.”

Tandy told him, sitting there, all the reader already knows and much more, receiving silent but heartfelt sympathy.

“So you’ve sold the Merry Maiden!”

“Yes; although some of the happiest years of my life were spent on board of her, and in the little cottage. Heigho! I wish I could bring back the past; but if I live to be able to afford it, I shall build a house where the old cot stands, and will just end my days there, you know. And now for your story.”

“Oh, that is a strange and a sad one; but as your friend is coming down to-morrow, I propose postponing it. This Captain Weathereye must, from all you say, be a real jolly fellow.”

This was agreed to; and next morning Tandy met bluff old Weathereye at the little railway station.

“I’ll stay a week, Tandy, a whole week. Yes, my hearty, I’ll gladly make your house my home, and shall rejoice to see your friend, and hear the yarn he has got to spin.”

Book Two – Chapter Three.

A Quarterdeck Dream

“Once a sailor, gentlemen,” began Halcott, as he filled his pipe, gazing thoughtfully over the sea, “always a sailor.

“That’s a truism, I believe. Why, the very sight of the waves out yonder, with the evening sunlight dancing and playing on their surface, makes me even at this moment long to tread the deck again.

“And there are, perhaps, few seafarers who have more inducements to stay at home than I, Charlie Halcott, have.

“I have a beautiful house of my own, and some day soon, I hope, you will both come and see it, and judge for yourselves.

“My house has a tower to it. Many a night, while walking the quarterdeck keeping my watch, with no companions save the silver-shining stars, I have said to myself – ‘Charlie Halcott,’ I have said, ‘if ever you leave off ploughing the ocean wave, and settle down on shore, you must have a house with a tower to it.’

“And now I’ve got it.

“A large, square, old-fashioned tower it is, with a mullioned window on each side of it; and up the walls the dense green ivy climbs, with just enough Virginia creeper to cast a glamour of crimson over it in autumn, like the last red rays of the setting sun.

“One window looks up the valley of the Thames, where not far off is a little Niagara, a snow-white weir: I can hear the drowsy monotone of its foaming waters by night and by day, and its song is ever the same. Another window looks away down the valley, and the river here goes winding in and out among the meadows and the green and daisied leas, till, finally, it takes the appearance of a silver string, and loses itself, or is lost to me, amidst the distant trees. A third window, from which I dearly like to look early on a summer’s morning, while the blackbirds are yet in fullest, softest song, shows an English landscape that to me is the sweetest of the sweet. As far as eye can reach, till bounded by the grey horizon’s haze, are woods and wilds and meadows green, with the red gables or the roofs of many a stately farm peeping up through the rolling cloudland of foliage; and many a streamlet too, seen here and there in the sunbeams, as it goes speeding on towards the silent river.

“But though this house of mine has a tower to it, it is not a castle by any means, apart from the fact that every Englishman’s house is his castle. I have a tower, but no donjon keep. My castle is a villa – ‘a handsome modern-built villa,’ the agent described it when I commenced correspondence with a view to its purchase. It is indeed a beautiful villa, and it is situated high up on the brow of a hill, all among the dreamy woods.

“Though I have been but a short spell on shore, my town friends already call me the ‘Sailor hermit,’ because I stick to my castle and its woods and gardens. Not for a single day can they prevail upon me to exchange it for the bustle and din of hideous London. But I retaliated on my city friends by bringing them down to my ‘castle’ in spring time, when the early flowers were opening their petals in the warm sunshine, and the very tulips seemed panting in the heat, and when there was such a gush of bird-melody coming from grove and copse and hedgerow that every leaf seemed to hide a feathered songster. And I rejoiced to see those friends of mine struck dumb by the wealth of beauty they beheld around them. For Philomel was making day melodious with a strange, unearthly music.

“All through the darkness the bird sang to his mate, and all through the day as well. No bolder birds than our nightingales live. They sing at our side, at our feet; they sing as they fly, sing as they alight, sing to us, ay and at us defiantly. No wonder we all love this sweet bird, this sweet spirit of the spring.

“So my quarterdeck dream has become a dear reality.

“Strange to say, it is always at night that I think most of the ocean. And on nights of storm – then it is that I lie awake listening to the wind roaring through the stately elms, with a sound like the sough of gale-tossed waves. It is then I long to tread once more the deck of my own bonnie barque, and feel her move beneath me like a veritable thing of life and reason. My house with the ivied tower is well away among the midlands; and yet on nights of tempest, sea-birds – the gull, and the tern, and the light-winged kittywake – often fly around the house and the trees. I can hear their voices rising shrill and high above the roar of the wind.

“‘Kaye – kay – ay – ay,’ they scream. ‘Come away – come away – ay,’ they seem to cry. ‘Why have you left us? why have you left the seas? We miss you. Come away – come away – ay – ay.’

“Never into my quarterdeck dreams, gentlemen, had there come, strange to say, a companion fair of womankind. My house with the tower to it should be just as it is to-day, just what – following out my dreams – I have made it. Its gardens all should bloom surpassing fair, my woods and trees be green; the rose lawns should look like velvet; my ribboned flower-beds like curves of coloured light; the nightingales in spring should bathe in the spray of my fountains, – there should be joy and loveliness and bird-song everywhere, but a wife? – well, I had somehow never dreamt of that. If any of the officers – for I was captain and part owner of the good barque Sea Flower– had been bold enough to suggest such a thing – I mean such a person, I should have laughed at him where he stood. ‘Who,’ I should have said, ‘would many a simple sailor like me, over thirty, brown-red in face, and hard in hands. Who indeed?’

“But into my quarterdeck dreams companions had come. Should I not have jolly farmers and solid-looking red-faced squires to dine with me, and to smoke with me out of doors in the cool of midsummer evenings, or in the cosy red parlour around the fire in the long forenights of winter, and listen to my yarns of the dark blue sea, or talk to me of the delights of rural life? Well, it was a pretty dream, it must be admitted.

“But it never struck me then, as it does now, that all the joys of life are tame indeed, unless shared by some one you love more than all things bright and fair.

“A pretty dream – and a beautiful dream. A piece of ice itself is beautiful at times; but perhaps, as we stand and admire it, the sunshine may steal down and melt it. Then we find that we love the sunshine even more than we loved the ice.

“It is not every sailor who has the luck to be captain, or, to speak more correctly, master, of so fine a sailing craft as the Sea Flower, at the age of twenty-six. But such had been my fortune; and I had sailed the seas in her for six long years, and, with the exception of the few accidents inseparable from a life at sea, I had never had a serious mishap. Many a wild gale had we weathered in her, my mate and I; many a dark and tempestuous night had we staggered along under bare poles; more than once had we sprung a leak, and twice had we been on fire.

“But all ended well, and during our brief spells on shore, either in England or in some foreign port, though James and I always managed to enjoy ourselves in our own quiet way, yet neither he nor I was sorry when we got back home again to our bonnie barque, and were once more afloat on the heaving sea.

“James was perhaps more of a sailor than I. Well, he was some years my senior, and he was browner and harder by far, and every inch a man. And though a very shy one, as far as female society is concerned, he was a very bold one nevertheless. But for his courageous example on the night of our last fire, the Sea Flower would have helped to swell the list of those ships that go to sea and are heard of no more.

“When we were taken aback in a white squall in the Indian Ocean, and it verily seemed that we had but a few minutes to float, James was here, there, and everywhere, his manly voice, calm and collected, ringing high above the roaring of the wind and the surging of the terrible seas. The very fire of his bravery on that occasion affected the men, and they worked as only bold men can work in face of death and danger, till our craft was once more righted and tearing along before the wind.

“And just as brave on shore as afloat was sturdy James Malone.

“When our steward was attacked by fifty spear-armed savages on shore at the Looboo Island, my mate seized a club that a gorilla could hardly have wielded, and fought his way through the black and vengeful crowd, till he reached and saved our faithful steward.

“And, that day, it was not until he had almost reached the ship that he told me, with that half-shy and quiet smile of his, that he believed he was slightly wounded. Then he fainted dead away.

“I nursed poor James back to health. Yes, but more than once, both before and after that event, he nursed me, and I doubt if even a brother could have been half so kind as my mate James.

“For many a long year, then, James and I had sailed the salt seas together. Without James sitting opposite me at the table at breakfast or at dinner, the neatly painted and varnished saloon, with all its glittering odds and ends, wouldn’t have seemed the same. Without James sitting near me on the quarterdeck on black-dark evenings in the tropics, I should have felt very strange and lonesome indeed.

“But James and I didn’t agree on every subject on which we conversed. Had we done so, conversation would have lost its special charm. No, he aired his opinions and I shook out mine. There were times when I convinced James; there were times when James convinced me; there were times when neither convinced the other, and then we agreed to differ.

“‘Very well, sir,’ James would say, ‘you has your ’pinions, and I has mine. You keeps to your ’pinions, and I sticks to mine.’

“It will be noted that James’s ordinary English would scarcely have passed muster in the first families of Europe. But, like many of his class, James could talk correctly enough when he set himself the task. But there was no better sailor afloat for all that, and on the stormiest night or squalliest day I always felt safe when my first mate trod the planks.

“James could tell a good story too, and I used to keep him at it of an evening – any evening save Sunday. On Sunday, James did nothing in the intervals of duty except read the Bible – the ‘Good Book,’ as he called it. This New Testament was one of those large type editions which very old people use.

“His mother – dead and gone – had left him that Book, and also her gold-rimmed specs, and it was interesting, on a Sunday afternoon, to see James sitting solemnly down to the Book, and shipping those specs athwart his nose.

“‘What on earth,’ I said once to him, ‘do you use the specs for, my friend?’

“When James looked up at me, half-upbraidingly, those eyes of his, seen through the powerful lenses, looked as big and wild and round as a catamount’s. It was unearthly.

“‘My mother bade me. Would you disobey your mother?’

“This was a bombshell, and I said no more.

“But there was one subject on which James and I never disagreed – namely, ‘the ladies,’ as he called women folks. ‘They are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,’ James would say, ‘and I means to steer clear on ’em.’ And James always did.

“There was one pleasure James and I had in common – namely, witnessing a good tragedy on the boards of Liverpool theatre. You see this was our port of destination on our return from the far, far south. Mind, we wouldn’t go to see a drama, because there might be too much nonsensical love business in it, and too many of ‘the frivolous antics of women’ – James’s own words. But in a tragedy the women often came to grief, which James thought was only natural.

“So we chose tragedy.

“Now, one night at this same theatre, I had one of the strangest experiences of my life; and never yet have I found any one who could explain it.

“James and I had gone early that evening, because there was something specially tragic on, and we desired to secure good seats. We sat in the front row, and at the left end of the row, because we wished to leave the theatre between each act to enjoy a few whiffs of tobacco.

“The play was well begun, and my eyes were riveted on the stage. There was a momentary silence, and during this time I was sensible, from a slight rustling noise, that the private box behind and above me was being occupied.

“Did you ever hear psychologists mention the term or feeling ‘ecstasy’? That was what stole over me now. For a few minutes I saw nothing on the stage; only a feeling of intense happiness, such as I have seldom experienced since that night, stole over me, occupying, bathing, I may say, my whole soul and mind.

“I turned at last, and my eyes met those of a young lady in that private box. Never before had I seen such radiant beauty. Never had I been impressed with beauty of any kind before. My heart almost stood still. It was really an awful moment – that is, if intense happiness can ever be awful.

“Well, if it is possible for a sailor, with a face as brown as the back of a fiddle, to blush, I blushed. She, too, I think, coloured just a little.

“What was it? What could it mean?

“I know not how I sat out the act. When I rose with James to go out, I dared one other glance towards the box. The lady had gone, and a feeling of coldness crept round my heart. I felt as depressed now as I had recently felt happy.

“‘James,’ I said, ‘take me home, I – I believe I’m ill.’

“‘Why,’ said James, ‘you look as though you had seen a ghost.’

“I got home. Something, I knew not what, was going to happen; but all that night dream after dream haunted my pillow, and of every dream, the sweet young face I had seen in the private box was the only thing I could remember when daylight broke athwart the eastern sky.”

Book Two – Chapter Four.

“Dear, Unselfish, but Somewhat Silly Fellow.”

“I never had a secret from James Malone; no, not so much as one. Had I known what was the matter with me on the evening before, I should have told James manfully and in a moment.

“But when he came to my rooms in the morning, to share my humble breakfast, and consult about the duties of the day, we being just then fitting out for sea, —

“‘James,’ I began —

“And then – well, then I told him all the story, even down to my strange dreams and the sweet young face that had haunted them.

“‘Why, James,’ I concluded, ‘I have only to close my eyes now to see her once again, and I can neither read nor write without thinking of her.’