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

Arrived at the cottage, which had a fine lawn in front and commanded a splendid view of the sea, Captain Bream got down, took up a position at the garden-gate, and, shaking hands with each guest as he or she entered, bade him or her welcome to “Short Blue Cottage!”

“’Tis a pleasant anchorage,” he said to the sisters Seaward as they passed in, “very pleasant at the end of life’s voyage. Praise the Lord who gave it me! Show them the way, Nellie; they’ll know it better before long. You’ll find gooseberry bushes in the back garden, an’ the theological library in the starboard attic. Their own berths are on the ground-floor.”

You may be sure that with such a host the guests were not long in making themselves at home.

Captain Bream had not invited the party merely to a wedding feast. It was the season of fruits and flowers, and he had set his heart on his friends making a day of it. Accordingly, he had made elaborate preparations for enjoyment. With that practical sagacity which frequently distinguishes the nautical mind, he had provided bowls and quoits for the men; battledore and shuttlecock for the younger women; football and cricket and hoops, with some incomprehensible Eastern games for the children, and a large field at the side of the cottage afforded room for all without much chance of collision.

The feast was, of course, a strictly temperance one, and we need scarcely say it was all the more enjoyable on that account.

“You see, my friends,” said the host, referring to this in one of his brief speeches, “as long as it may please God to leave me at anchor in this snug port, I’ll never let a drop o’ strong drink enter my doors, except in the form of physic, and even then I’ll have the bottle labelled ‘poison—to be taken under doctor’s prescription.’ So, my lads—my friends, I mean, beggin’ the ladies’ pardon—you’ll have to drink this toast, and all the other toasts, in lemonade, ginger beer, soda water, seltzer, zoedone, tea, coffee, or cold water, all of which wholesome beverages have been supplied in overflowing abundance to this fallen world, and are to be found represented on this table.”

“Hear! hear!” from John Gunter, and it was wonderful to hear the improvement in the tone of Gunter’s voice since he had left off strong drink. His old foe, but now fast friend, Luke Trevor, who sat beside him, echoed the “hear! hear!” with such enthusiasm that all the others burst into a laugh, and ended in a hearty cheer.

“Now, fill up—fill up, lads,” continued the captain. “Let it be a bumper, whatever tipple you may choose. If our drink is better than it used to be, our cups ought not to be less full—and my toast is worthy of all honour. I drink to the success and prosperity, temporal and spiritual, of the North Sea Trawlers,”—there was a symptom of a gathering cheer at this point, but the captain checked it with a raised finger, “especially to that particular fleet which goes by the name of the ‘Short Blue!’”

The pent-up storm burst forth now with unrestrained vehemence, insomuch that three little ragged boys who had climbed on the low garden wall to watch proceedings, fell off backwards as if shot by the mere sound!

Observing this, and being near them, Mrs Bright rose, quietly leaned over the wall, and emptied a basket of strawberries on their heads by way of consolation.

We cannot afford space for the captain’s speech in full. Suffice it to say that he renewed his former promise to re-visit the fleet and spend some time among the fishermen as often as he could manage to do so, and wound up by coupling the name of Joe Davidson, skipper of the Evening Star, with the toast.

Whereupon, up started Joe with flashing eyes; (intense enthusiasm overcoming sailor-like modesty;) and delivered a speech in which words seemed to tumble out of him anyhow and everyhow—longwise, shortwise, askew, and upside-down—without much reference to grammar, but with a powerful tendency in the direction of common sense. We have not space for this speech either, but we give the concluding words:

“I tell ’ee wot it is, boys. Cap’n Bream has drunk prosperity to the Short Blue, an’ so have we, for we love it, but there’s another Short Blue—”

A perfect storm of cheering broke forth at this point and drowned Joe altogether. It would probably have blown over the three ragged boys a second time, but they were getting used to such fire, and, besides, were engaged with strawberries.

“There’s another Short Blue,” resumed Joe, when the squall was over, “which my missis an’ me was talkin’ about this very day, when our blessed babby fell slap out o’ bed an’ set up such a howl—”

Joe could get no further, because of the terrific peals of laughter which his words, coupled with the pathetic sincerity of his expression, drew forth. Again and again he tried to speak, but his innocent look and his mighty shoulders, and tender voice, with the thoughts of that “blessed babby,” were too much for his mates, so that he was obliged to finish off by shouting in a voice of thunder—“Let’s drink success to Short Blue Cottage!” and, with a toss of his hand in the true North Sea-salute style, sat down in a tempest of applause.

“Yes,” as an Irish fisherman remarked, “it was a great day intoirely,” that day at Short Blue Cottage, and as no description can do it full justice, we will turn to other matters—remarking, however, before quitting the subject, that we do not tell the reader the exact spot where the cottage is situated, as publicity on this point might subject our modest captain to much inconvenience!

“Billy,” said Captain Bream one day, a few months after the wedding-day just described, “come with me to the Theological Library; I want to have a chat with ’ee, lad.”

Billy followed his new-found uncle, and sat down opposite to him.

“Now, lad, the time has come when you and I must have it out. You’re fond o’ hard work, I’m told.”

“Well, uncle, I won’t say as I’m exactly fond of it, but I don’t object to it.”

“So far good,” returned the captain. “Well, you know I’m your uncle, an’ I’ve got a goodish lot of tin, an’ I’m goin’ to leave the most of it to your mother—for she’s the only relation I have on earth,—but you needn’t expect that I’m goin’ to leave it to you after her.”

“I never said as I did expect that, uncle,” said Billy with such a straightforward look of simplicity that the captain burst into one of his thundering laughs.

“Good, my boy,” he said, in a more confidential tone. “Well, then, this is how the matter stands. I’ve long held the opinion that those who can work should work, and that all or nearly all the cash that people have to spare should be given or left to those who can’t work—such as poor invalids—specially women—and those who have come to grief one way or another, and lost the use o’ their limbs.”

“Right you are, uncle,” said Billy with strong emphasis.

“Glad you agree so heartily, boy. Well, that bein’ so, I mean to leave the interest of all that I have to your dear mother as long as she lives—except a legacy to the Miss Seawards and some other poor folk that I know of. Meanwhile, they have agreed, as long as I live, to stay wi’ me here in this cottage, as my librarians and assistants in the matter of Theology. I had a tough job to get ’em to agree, but I managed it at last. So you see, Billy, I don’t mean to leave you a sixpence.”

“Well, uncle,” said Billy with a quiet look, “I don’t care a brass farden!”

Again the captain laughed. “But,” he continued, “I’m very fond o’ you, Billy, an’ there’s no reason why I shouldn’t help you, to help yourself. So, if you’re willin’, I’ll send you to the best of schools, and after that to college, an’ give you the best of education,—in short, make a man of you, an’ put you in the way of makin’ your fortune.”

Captain Bream looked steadily into the fair boy’s handsome face as he made this glowing statement; but, somewhat to his disappointment, he got no responsive glance from Billy. On the contrary, the boy became graver and graver, and at last his mind seemed lost in meditation while his gaze was fixed on the floor.

“What think ye, lad?” demanded the captain.

Billy seemed to awake as from a dream, and then, looking and speaking more like a man than he had ever done before, he said—

“It is kind of you, uncle—very kind—but my dear dad once said he would make a man of me, and he did! I’ll do my best to larn as much as ever I can o’ this world’s larnin’, but I’ll never leave the sea.”

“Now, my boy,” said the captain, “think well before you decide. You could do far more good if you were a highly educated man, you know.”

“Right you may be, uncle, an’ I don’t despise edication, by no means, but some folk are born to it, and others ain’t. Besides, good of the best kind can be done without much edication, when the heart’s right an’ the will strong, as I’ve seed before now on the North Sea.”

“I’m sorry you look at it this way, Billy, for I don’t see that I can do much for you if you determine to remain a fisherman.”

“Oh! yes, you can, uncle,” cried Billy, rising up in his eagerness and shaking back his curly hair. “You can do this. You can take the money you intended to waste on my schoolin’, an’ send out books an’ tracts and medicines, an’ all sorts o’ things to the fishin’ fleets. An’ if you’re awful rich—as you seem to be by the way you talk—you can give some thousands o’ pounds an’ fit out two or three more smacks as you did the noo Evenin’ Star, an’ hand ’em over to the Mission to become gospel-ships to the fleets that have got none yet. That’s the way to do good wi’ your coppers. As for me—my daddy was a fisherman and my mother was a fisherman’s wife, and I’m a fisherman to the back-bone. What my father was before me, I mean to be after him, so, God permittin’, I’ll sail wi’ Joe Davidson till I’m old enough to take command o’ the Evenin’ Star; and then I’ll stick through thick an’ thin to the North Sea, and live and die a fisherman of the Short Blue!”

Billy Bright’s determination was unalterable, so Captain Bream fell in with it, and heartily set about that part of the work which his nephew had recommended to him.

Whether he and Billy will remain of the same mind to the end, the future alone can show—we cannot tell; but this we—you and I, Reader—can do if we will—we can sympathise with our enthusiastic young Trawler, and do what in us lies to soften the hard lot of the fisherman, by aiding those whose life-work it is to fish for souls of men, and to toil summer and winter, in the midst of life and death, tempest and cold, to rescue the perishing on the North Sea.