The Young Trawler, R. M. Ballantyne [dark books to read TXT] 📗

wave swung them alongside again, Spivin and Zulu were glaring up—ready for more—while Joe and Gunter were gazing down—ready to deliver.

When the boat was loaded the painter was cast off and she dropped astern. The oars were shipped, and they made for the steamer. From the low deck of the smack they could be seen, now pictured against the sky on a wave’s crest, and then lost to view altogether for a few seconds in the watery valley beyond.

By that time quite a crowd of little boats had reached the steamer, and were holding on to her, while their respective smacks lay-to close by, or sailed slowly round the carrier, so that recognitions, salutations, and friendly chaff were going on all round—the confusion of masts, and sails, and voices ever increasing as the outlying portions of the fleet came scudding in to the rendezvous.

“There goes the Boy Jim,” said Luke Trevor, pointing towards a smart craft that was going swiftly past them.

“Who’s the Boy Jim?” growled Gunter, whose temper, at no time a good one, had been much damaged by the blows he had received in the fall of the previous night.

“He’s nobody—it’s the name o’ that smack,” answered Luke.

“An’ her master, John Johnston, is one o’ my best friends,” said Billy, raising his fist on high in salutation. “What cheer, John! what cheer, my hearty!”

The master of the Boy Jim was seen to raise his hand in reply to the salutation, and his voice came strong and cheerily over the sea, but he was too far off to be heard distinctly, so Billy raised his hand again by way of saying, “All right, my boy!”

At the same time a hail was heard at the other side of the vessel. The crew turned round and crossed the deck.

“It’s our namesake—or nearly so—the Morning Star,” said Trevor to Gunter, for the latter being a new hand knew little of the names of either smacks or masters.

“Is her skipper a friend o’ yours too?” asked Gunter of Billy.

“Yes, Bowers is a friend o’ mine—an’ a first-rate fellow too; which is more than you will ever be,” retorted Billy, again stretching up the ready arm and hand. “What cheer, Joseph, what cheer!”

“What cheer! Billy—why, I didn’t know you, you’ve grow’d so much,” shouted the master of the Morning Star, whose middle-sized, but broad and powerful frame was surmounted by a massive countenance, with good humour in the twinkling eyes, and kindly chaff often in the goodly-sized mouth.

“Yes, I’ve grow’d,” retorted Billy, “an’ I mean to go on growin’ till I’m big enough to wallop you.”

“Your cheek has been growin’ too, Billy.”

“So it has, but nothin’ like to your jaw, Joseph.”

“What luck?” shouted David as the Morning Star was passing on.

“Fifteen trunks. What have you got?”

The skipper held up his hand to acknowledge the information, and shouted “nineteen,” in reply.

“You seem to have a lot o’ friends among the skippers, Billy,” said Gunter, with a sneer, for he was fond of teasing the boy, who, to do him justice, could take chaff well, except when thrown at him by ill-natured fellows.

“Yes, I have a good lot,” retorted Billy. “I met ’em all first in Yarmouth, when ashore for their week’s holiday. There’s Joseph White, master of the mission smack Cholmondeley, a splendid feller he is; an’ Bogers of the Cephas, an’ Snell of the Ruth, an’ Kiddell of the Celerity, an’ Moore of the M.A.A., an’ Roberts of the Magnet, an’ Goodchild and Brown, an’ a lot more, all first-rate fellers, whose little fingers are worth the whole o’ your big body.”

“Well, well, what a lucky fellow you are!” said Gunter, with affected surprise; “an’ have you no bad fellers at all among your acquaintance?”

“Oh yes,” returned the boy quickly, “I knows a good lot o’ them too. There’s Dick the Swab, of the White Cloud, who drinks like a fish, an’ Pimply Brock, who could swear you out o’ your oiled frock in five minutes, an’ a lot of others more or less wicked, but not one of ’em so bad as a big ugly feller I knows named John Gunter, who—”

Billy was interrupted by Gunter making a rush at him, but the boy was too nimble for the man, besides which, Gunter’s bruises, to which we have before referred, were too painful to be trifled with. Soon afterwards the boat returned for another cargo of trunks, and the crew of the Evening Star went to work again.

Meanwhile the “power of littles” began to tell on the capacious hold of the steamer. Let us go on board of her for a few minutes and mount the bridge. The fleet had now closed in and swarmed around her so thickly, that it seemed a miracle that the vessels did not come into collision. From the smacks boat after boat had run alongside and made fast, until an absolute flotilla was formed on either side. As each boat came up it thrust itself into the mass, the man who had pulled the bow-oar taking the end of the long painter in his hand ready for a leap. Some boats’ crews, having trans-shipped their trunks, were backing out; others were in the midst of that arduous and even dangerous operation; while still more came pouring in, seeking a place of entrance through the heaving mass.

The boat of the Evening Star was ere long among the latter with her second load—Zulu grinning in the bow and Spivin in the stern. Zulu was of that cheery temperament that cannot help grinning. If he had been suddenly called on to face Death himself, we believe he would have met him with a grin. And, truly, we may say without jesting, that Zulu had often so faced the King of Terrors, for it is a sad fact that many a bold and brave young fellow meets his death in this operation of trans-shipping the fish—a fall overboard is so very easy, and, hampered as these men are with huge sea-boots and heavy garments, it too often happens that when they chance to fall into the sea they go down like a stone.

They never seem to think of that, however. Certainly Zulu did not as he crouched there with glittering eyes and glistening teeth, like a dark tiger ready for a spring.

There was strict discipline, but not much interference with the work, on board the steamer. No boat was permitted to put its trunks aboard abaft a certain part of the vessel, but in front of that the fishermen were left to do the work as best they could. They were not, however, assisted—not even to the extent of fastening their painters—the crew of the steamer being employed below in stowing and iceing the fish.

When the Evening Star’s boat, therefore, had forced itself alongside, Zulu found himself heaving against the steamer’s side, now looking up at an iron wall about fifteen feet high, anon pitching high on the billows till he could see right down on the deck. He watched his opportunity, threw himself over the iron wall, with the painter in one hand, (while Spivin and the boat seemed to sink in the depths below), rolled over on the deck, scrambled to his feet, made the painter fast to the foremast shrouds, and ran to look over the side.

Spivin was there ready for him, looking up, with a trunk on the boat’s gunwale. Next moment he was looking down, for a wave had lifted the boat’s gunwale absolutely above the vessel’s bulwark for an instant. No words were needed. Each knew what to do. Zulu made a powerful grab, Spivin let go, the trunk was on the steamer’s rail, whence it was hurled to the deck, narrowly missing the legs and toes of half-a-dozen reckless men who seized it and sent it below. Almost before Zulu could turn round Spivin was up again with another trunk, another wild grab was made, but not successfully, and Spivin sank to rise again. A second effort proved successful—and thus they went on, now and then missing the mark, but more frequently hitting it, until the boat was empty.

You have only to multiply this little scene by forty or fifty, and you have an idea of the loading of that steamer on the high seas. Of course you must diversify the picture a little, for in one place you have a man hanging over the side with a trunk in mid-air, barely caught when in its descent, and almost too heavy for him by reason of his position. In another place you have a man glaring up at a trunk, in another glaring down;—in all cases action the most violent and most diversified, coupled with cool contempt of crushed fingers and bruised shins and toes.

At last the furore began to subside. By degrees the latest boats arrived, and in about three hours from the time of commencing, the crew of the steamer began to batten down the hatches. Just then, like the “late passenger,” the late trawler came up. The captain of the steamer had seen it long before on the horizon doing its best to save the market, and good-naturedly delayed a little to take its fish on board, but another smack that came up a quarter of an hour or so after that, found the hatches closed, and heard the crushing reply to his hail—“Too late!”

Then the carrying-steamer turned her sharp bow to the sou’-west, put on full steam, and made for the Thames—distant nearly 300 miles—with over 2000 trunks of fresh fish on board, for the breakfast, luncheon and dinner tables of the Great City. Thus, if the steamer were to leave early on a Monday, it would arrive on Tuesday night and the fish be sold in the market on Wednesday morning about five o’clock.

With little variation this scene is enacted every day, all the year round, on the North Sea. It may not be uninteresting to add, that on the arrival of the steamer at Billingsgate, the whole of her cargo would probably be landed and sold in less than one hour and a half.