Chapter IV In Search of a Ship
That same day Keppel Drummond bade his friends of the Blue Ensign goodbye.
The good landlady gave the boy her blessing. Katie gave him a bunch of ribbons and he gave Katie a kiss. He was saucy enough almost for anything.
“Goodbye, sonny,” said Jack, “the world isn’t so very wide, and we may meet again.”
Then with his bag over his shoulder Kep bore up for the railway-station straight away, and in due time was deposited at Southampton.
The ship would sail in two days’ time, so he went straight away and booked himself a second-class passage. Then set out to purchase his travelling box and kit. Kep did not mean to let the grass grow up between his toes it he could help it.
I suppose the lad really had a good share of Scottish forethought in his nature, as well as Italian frugality, and he counted his cash again, and counted all costs before he booked. The landlady at the Blue Ensign on giving him back his money had refused to accept a single coin for her hospitality, and the boy had turned red when he remembered that he had at first positively taken her pretty little hostelry for a boozing ken.
He did not go on board the Paramaribo until the very last bell, thinking that his youthful appearance might cause enquiries. It is so seldom, if ever, that a boy of fourteen starts on so long a voyage without a friend or guardian.
He posted another letter to Madge, his sister, before leaving, and a little pink note to Katie, quite a boy’s love letter in fact and of no more value than most juvenile love letters. Only it pleased Katie. In addition to Jack Stormalong, she could now boast that she had a little boy lover far away on the stormy main.
Jack Stormalong was one day—if not eaten by blue sharks—going to marry Katie, and the two were to have the Blue Ensign. But she showed Kep’s letter to Jack.
Jack took a pull at his beer and laughed. “Why, he is a precockshious lad and no mistake,” he said. “He’s bound to fall on his feet, Katie. Bound to come out top-dog, or die for it.”
Once on board, and settled down, our Kep was not long in making himself friends. His flute with its blue ribbon did that for him. Of course, it was away forward that he made his first friends. But soon his fame became noised abroad and then Kep was invited aft to play. The boy’s knowledge of music was really phenomenal, and his execution on the piano astonished everybody.
He called himself Charlie Bowser because in his pride he considered it would be lowering his father’s caste somewhat to travel second class with his own name.
But apart from his musical talents some of the ladies aft took a great fancy for our saucy self-contained boy. There was a mystery about him, too, which was fascinating to many. Nor, when asked, did he hesitate to say that he was travelling under an assumed name.
“But why should you run away from home, Charlie?” asked one lady, “so bright a lad as you?”
“Only just to see a little life, dear lady,” said the boy. “Perhaps there is something radically wrong with my idiosyncracy, you know, but I assure you I’m not running away an account of any evil I have done. I’m not cut-purse and I never held up a coach nor even a motor-car.”
“You are very young, Charlie!”
“A man,” he replied, “is just as old as he feels, so I must be quite twenty.”
“I had the best Italian masters,” he replied to another lady, who was praising his musical talents. “My father talks several languages.”
“And your mother, Charlie.”
“Mother talked many more languages than father. But mother is with the saints in Heaven, madam.” This with a sigh.
“And in Heaven,” he added, “they talk Latin, I suppose, or a kind of refined Volapuk.”
How very quickly the days flew by in the Paramaribo, the “old Pram,” as the sailors unceremoniously called her. But the life to Kep was all so new and delightful.
The voyage came to an end at last, and at Jamaica a really pleasant old lady, as Kep called her in his own mind, resolved to carry the boy away inland. Well, as he did not object to see a little of the beautiful interior, he readily consented.
What a tropical paradise it was she brought him to! And life amidst the sublimity of such mountain scenery, under a tropical sky, and with such magnificence of flowers around him, was to Kep with his ardent temperament and his love of romance and poetry like a foretaste of Heaven.
The house itself was larger than his father’s, as white as the snows of Ben Nevis, wherever a glimpse could be caught of its walls, through the wealth of climbing flowers that surrounded it and clustered over its verandas.
The gardens were gorgeous, and Kep laughed with delight to see the bright-winged birds dashing through and through the white spray of the fountains, that played here and there on the sward.
The lady had a quiet and gentle husband who seemed to be her loving slave, so fond was he of her. She had children too, boys and girls, dark-eyed like himself and browned-skinned as Ethiops.
“Live here always, and for ever,” said little Zuleika to him one day, “and be our brother.”
But there was restlessness in the boy’s heart before he had been among these enchanted hills and dells a fortnight.
“No, Zulee,” he said. “I must away and soon,” and then he told the child all about his sister and his own English home, all that she could understand.
“But take Zulee with you, home to your home, and your sister shall be Zulee’s sister.”
“Well,” said Kep, returning her innocent embrace, “I must leave Zulee and come back for her some day—perhaps.”
Kep was really burning to get away to sea in some capacity or another, so promising to return and bid his new friends all adieu, as soon as he had got a ship, our Kep journeyed back once more to Jamaica.
He had spent such a happy time, and they had been so good to him—but then everybody was.
“Heigho!” the boy sighed. “Heaven must be such a nice place, just because when you do make friends you keep them, and there are no more cruel partings.”
Kep found apartments in a tiny cactus-surrounded cottage, not far from the busy parts of the city, yet cool and quiet—a little oasis in a somewhat objectionable desert.
He counted his cash again, and found to his surprise that it could not last for ever.
He must find work, and that work must be on board some sailing ship or steamer.
Now, strangely enough, he did not find this so easy to do as he had imagined. No one appeared to want a really talented boy on board ship, and his repeated rebuffs began to tell on him. He grew just a trifle less buoyant and hopeful.
How different were the shippy parts of the city into which trading skippers dived here in search of wretched crews from those of his own dear England.
There were “houffs” here, partly brandy shops, partly cafés, where these same skippers were wont to call. And rough seamen frequented these in search of a job—seamen ever so rough, gallows rogues of all nations, apparently. And into these Kep had often to go and sit at some vile little table sipping his black coffee and waiting.
These places reeked with the scum of all kinds of sea-bred rascality. Reeked with sin and language so horrible that Kep was often terrified as he sat in his half dark corner waiting for that something that was sure to turn up some day, he told himself, but drink besotted men would swagger in with knives in their belts that Kep felt sure had been used in many a horrid melée. Then men would play dominoes with others of the same calibre, drinking the while, and using terrible imprecations. Or they would quarrel and fight or, if extra friendly, indulge in the aguardiente, until they reeled and got kicked into corners there to lie and snore, awaking only to call for more of their fiery potations.
Kep never took his money to such places, preferring to leave it at his little cottage. This was the house of two Creoles, but they were kindness personified to their brave little lodger, so he had no fear of dishonesty.
When Kep wrote to his sister now, he did not tell her a word about his anxiety and hardships, which would have grieved her, so all his letters breathed the poetry and romance of the beautiful island into which Fate had thrown him.
The boy was sitting one afternoon in a somewhat dark corner of a dingy café, making his cup last as long as possible before calling for another, when there entered and sat down at the long table about half a dozen men. One who appeared to be chief called for coffee and brandy.
The men whom the skipper, for such he turned out to be, was endeavouring to engage as seamen, were a mixed lot, and as villainous-looking as any Kep had yet seen in this particular café. Badly dressed, hulking fellows, with a cast of the butcher in every one of them. The boy felt sure these men would do anything or commit any crime for money. But the skipper experienced great difficulty in bargaining with them. One was an immense hulk of a negro, who spoke English after a fashion. Of the other five one only was a Britisher, and easily dealt with. It was different with the big Turk, the Italian, and the two Spaniards.
“I fear it is no go,” grunted the skipper, himself an American. “Garçon!”
“Oui, m’sieu.”
“Have you anyone in your place that can translate me the garble these chaps are talking? Can pay for an interpreter?”
Kep had been hustled into a corner by this tall skipper and was only waiting for a chance to escape.
As the garçon was unable to solve the difficulty and get the skipper out of the clove-hitch, the boy tapped him modestly on the shoulder.
He turned at once and gave Kep a little more room.
“Strike me lucky!” he said, “if I knowed there war any crittur there.”
Kep smiled conciliatively.
“I know all that these men are saying,” he said.
“Well, fire away, younk, and I pay you smartly.”
“I don’t want pay. I’m looking for a ship like the rest of them, and if you can help me, I’ll be glad to do anything I can for you.”
“You’re true blue? Nothing of this sort?”
As he spoke he adroitly picked his red silk handkerchief from his own pocket and nimbly palmed it.
Kep laughed rightly merrily.
“Oh, no, I’m not a thief,” he said.
“Waal, then, just look jerky, and tell these beggars all I ask you to.”
So jerky did Kep look and act that in two minutes’ time the men were engaged.
“And that,” said the skipper, “makes up my complement, and when they’ve signed articles, we’ll sail.”
“Bothered!” he added, “if I don’t think you’d do, boy, to help our steward and cook. You look a play-acting kind of a chap, can ye do anything likely to amoose us.”
“I can pipe if the men want to dance on a Saturday night, or when you’re heaving the capstan.”
“Pipe? Waal, I’d like to hear yer.”
Out came the little piccolo, and in half a minute Kep commanded the whole situation. Drunken sailors crawled out of their corners to dance, sailors’ sweethearts all kinds and colours joined in, and even the doorway was blocked by dusky faces listening.
It was a mad five minutes.
“Hurrah!” cried the skipper, beating the table with his brown fist. “Strike me lucky if ever I heard its equal! Why, siree, the pied piper of Hamelin wouldn’t be in it with you. Give us yer flipper, younk. Will you sign on?”
“Yes, you are going to queer places evidently. I’ll sign on. I’ll see life.”
Something like a cloud shadow darkened the skipper’s face for just an instant.
“You’ll maybe see death, too, lad. But there, you look a good plucked one. Come, we’ll march these beggars on board, else they’ll get drunk and bilk us.”
They had a long way to row, but at last found themselves alongside a tall dark taper-masted barque. Though the paint was washed off her sides a bit, she looked good and sea-worthy, and Kep liked the golden hue of her copper bottom as she heeled over now and then to the swell.
The skipper invited Kep down to the cabin, which was large and roomy with doors off it, leading into staterooms at each side and the spirit-room abaft. It was comfortably, though not luxuriously furnished, and the great black tom-cat asleep in the captain’s easychair gave an air of extra cosiness to the place.
“Have a drink? No? Better not. Had Nat Stainer, and that’s me, never touched, tasted nor handled, he’d have been a Commodore in the United States Navy by this time.”
Kep was sent on shore, promising to be off early in the morning.
He paid his bill, and bade his hostess a kindly good-bye, and at two bells next forenoon watch, his boat was rasping against the sides of the Macbeth.
A Jacob’s ladder was thrown him carelessly, and up he scrambled and stood once more on deck.
General confusion reigned throughout, but probably not more than we usually find on ships of this kind about to leave for a long voyage. But this confusion was worse confused, owing to many of the crew being unacquainted with the language in which orders were given, for the second mate who had charge of this watch was a Finn.
To him Kep reported himself, saluting as he did so. All he received in return was a kind of grunt.
“We don’t care much for man-o’-war prattle here,” he said. “Go and find something, do. Translate my orders to these grub-eaters.”
After doing so for a whole hour, Kep, who was willing and cheerful, bolted down the after companion to the pantry, where he found the steward, a little black-haired young man, with a pleasant face. He was an Austrian, or Swiss, at any rate he talked good French, and for this Kep was thankful.
He had not much to say at first, and the boy was unwilling to force the conversation. Presently, however, he wheeled round on Kep, rubbing hard at a spoon as he did so.
“I think you weel like dis sheep?” he said.
“I don’t know yet,” returned Kep. “I hope so. Do you?” He spoke in French now. The steward shook his head.
“Glad,” he said, “you talk French; we will be companions, comrades. But I am so poor, I must sail in anything. See here.”
He took two strides farther forward as he spoke and picked up an electric lantern.
“Follow me. The Capitan has not yet come off, and we sail this evening.” He led the way into the saloon, and through it to the spirit-room door, which he opened with a bright and shining key. He now let the lantern’s glare fall on the deck inside. It was splatched and spotted with black, so were the bulkheads.
“Claret?” said Kep.
“Blood,” said the little steward. “They fought in there. Now come this way.” He threw open the door of the Captain’s stateroom and kicked away a grass mat. Ominous stains again. “Just there,” he continued, “the first mate died. Shot down he was by the master.”
“Murder?” And Kep shuddered a little.
“Who can say, the mate had a knife, the Capitan was quicker, he had a revolver.”
Kep was undoubtedly brave, yet for some seconds he seemed to be turned into stone.
“Was there an inquest, an enquiry?”
“No, we were far at sea. The mate was buried two hours afterwards sans ceremonie. The blood kept dropping through the blanket we had sewn him in, and the stains will never leave the stairs.”
“But surely such things call aloud for——”
“Hush! hush!” cried Dolphin (his name was Adolphus), “we speak not so here. And list, that is the Capitan’s voice, he is just coming over the side.”
Dolphin hurried to the pantry and was singing cheerfully at his work when the Captain came down below.
He nearly run Kep down, being sun-blind for a time. “Hullo, little piper, I can feel it is you. Can’t see much, though. Dolphin, knock the head off a bottle of fizz. We’ll be out o’ here by five.”
“I say,” he continued after swallowing a smoking tumblerful of the champagne. “I say, Dolphin, mum’s the stuff I’m drinking, ain’t it?”
“It is, sir.”
“Waal, mum’s the word you’ve got to remember when talking to any new hand, else——”
The rest of the sentence was hissed into the steward’s ear, and the little man turned a shade paler.
There was some sort of mystery and horror about this ship that crept coldly round our Kep’s heart. He had half a mind to ask to be put on shore, but that would have been cowardly. He did not even like the barque’s name—Macbeth. There was something ominous about it, and the word rhymes with death.
“You are to be told off to do all sorts of odd jobs,” said Dolphin, soon after this, “but I think you’ll be principally the Capitan’s servant and interpreter.”
“I’ll be glad to be busy,” said Kep.
The anchor was got up, and sail set, and with much noise, and terrible shouting. Then she slid away towards the open sea, but the first watch had well begun before the cargo, heavy barrels and boxes, was stowed away even temporarily. Should it come on to blow a bit during the night this cargo would shift, and there would be more noise than ever.
Adolphus and Kep had a wretched little state-room next to the pantry. Hardly six feet square was it, with a ventilator in the door and one scuttle which could only be carried open in calm weather.
There was the evil odour of cockroaches here too, and as soon as the light was put out they rustled and ran all over the beds in a way which was not at all pleasant for our hero.
But Kep was tired and was soon in the land of dreams.
He was up at four bells, and went on deck bare-footed—the men were washing decks—to plash about and see the red sun rise over hills of rolling water.