The Lifeboat Part 2

"What'll you take to drink, my boy, supposin' you gits the offer?"

inquired another man, giving him a facetious poke in the ribs.

"Is John Bax here?" inquired Guy.

"Hallo, messmate--here you are, port your helm and heave a-head--steady!

rocks to leeward; starboard hard! ah, I knew you'd never clear these rocks without touchin'," said Bax, as his young friend tripped over three or four spittoons, and plunged into the corner from which the sailor's deep ba.s.s voice issued. "There now, sit down; what'll you have?"

"Nothing, Bax; what a horrible hole to feed in! Couldn't you come out and talk with me in the fresh air?"

It must indeed have been a wonderfully impure place when Guy could venture by contrast to speak of the air outside as being fresh.

"Couldn't do it, my lad," replied Bax, with his mouth full. "I haven't had a bit since six o'clock this morning, and I'm only half through."

The fact was evident, for a large plate of biscuit and cheese stood on the small table before the seaman, with a tumbler of hot gin and water.

So Guy sat down, and, observing that the waiter stood at his elbow, ordered half a pint of stout. Guy did not drink spirits, but he had no objection to beer, so he took occasion to remonstrate with Bax on his tendency to drink gin, and recommended beer instead, as it would "do him more good." It did not occur to Guy that a young man in robust health does not require physical good to be done to him at all, beyond what food, and rest, and exercise can achieve, and that, therefore, artificial stimulant of any kind is unnecessary!

"Skipper ahoy!" shouted, a gruff voice in the doorway.

"Ay, ay!" cried several of the party in reply.

"Is John Bax in this here port?"

"Here you are," replied the man in request, "port your helm, old boy!

rocks on the lee bow, look out!"

"Steady, so," said a fat burly seaman, as he steered in obedience to these sailing directions, and finally "cast anchor" beside our two friends.

"How are ye, Captain Bluenose?" said Bax, holding out his hand.

"Same to you, lad," replied the Captain, seizing the offered hand in his own enormous fist, which was knotty and fleshy, seamed with old cuts and scars, and stained with tar. "Hallo! Guy, is this you?" he added, turning suddenly to the youth. "Why, who'd 'a thought to see _you_ here? I do b'lieve I han't seen ye since the last time down at the coast. But, I say, Guy, my boy, you han't took to drinkin', have ye?"

"No, Captain," said Guy, with a smile, "nothing stronger than beer, and not much of that. I merely came here to meet Bax."

Captain Bluenose--whose name, by the way, had no reference to his nose, for that was small and red--scratched his chin and stared into vacancy, as if he were meditating.

"Why, boy," he said at length, "seems to me as if you'd as good cause to suspec' me of drinkin' as I have to suspec' you, 'cause we're both _here_, d'ye see? Howsever, I've been cruisin' after the same craft, an' so we've met, d'ye see, an' that's nat'ral, so it is."

"Well, and now you have found me, what d'ye want with me?" said Bax, finis.h.i.+ng the bread and cheese, and applying to the gin and water.

"s.h.i.+pmet, I'm goin' home, and wants a berth a-board the `Nancy,'" said Bluenose.

"Couldn't do it, Captain," said Bax, shaking his head, "'gainst rules."

"I'll go as a hextra hand--a suppernummerary," urged the Captain.

"Why, Captain," said Guy, "is it not strange that I should have come here to make the very same request? Come, Bax, you're a good fellow, and will take us both. I will guarantee that my uncle will not find fault with you."

"Ah, that alters the case," said Bax, "if you choose to take the responsibility on your own shoulders, Guy, you're welcome to the best berth a-board the old `Nancy.' D'ye know, I've a fondness for that old craft, though she is about as unseaworthy a schooner as sails out o' the port of London. You see, she's the only craft bigger than a Deal lugger that I ever had command of. She's my first love, is the old `Nancy,'

and I hope we won't have to part for many a day."

"Quite right, young man," said Captain Bluenose, nodding his head approvingly, and filling his pipe from a supply of tobacco he always carried in the right pocket of his capacious blue waistcoat. The Captain gazed with a look of grave solemnity in the manly countenance of the young sailor, for whom he entertained feelings of unbounded admiration. He had dandled Bax on his knee when he was a baby, had taught him to make boats and to swim and row when he became a boy, and had sailed with him many a time in the same lugger when they put off in wild storms to rescue lives or property from s.h.i.+ps wrecked on the famous Goodwin Sands.

"Quite right, young man," repeated the Captain, as he lighted his pipe, "your sentiments does you credit. W'en a man's got his first love, d'ye see, an' finds as how she's all trim and s.h.i.+p-shape, and taut, and well ballasted, and all that sort o' thing, stick to her to the last, through thick and thin. That's wot _I_ say, d'ye see? There's no two ways about it, for wot's right can't be wrong. If it can, show me how, and then I'll knock under, but not before."

"Certainly not, Captain," cried Bax, laughing, "never give in--that's my motto."

"There," said Bluenose, gravely, "you're wrong--'cause why? You're not right, an' w'en a man's not right he ought always to give in."

"But how is a fellow to know when he's right and when he's wrong?" asked Bax.

"Con-sideration," said Bluenose.

"Bravo! Captain," cried Guy, with a laugh, "if it be true that `brevity is the soul of wit,' you must be the wittiest fellow on Deal beach."

"I dun-know," retorted the Captain, slowly, "whether it's the soul or the body o' wit, an' wot's more, I don't care; but it's a fact, d'ye see, that consideration'll do it; least-wise if consideration won't, nothin' will. See now, here it is,"--(he became very earnest at this point),--"w'en a thing puzzles people, wot does people do? why, they begins right off to talk about it, an' state their opinions afore they han't got no opinions to state. P'raps they takes the puzzler up by the middle an' talks wild about that part of it; then they give a look at the end of it, an' mayhap they'll come back and glance at the beginnin', mayhap they won't, and then they'll tell you as grave as owls that they've made up their minds about it, and so nail their colours to the mast."

At this stage in the elucidation of the knotty point, Bluenose observed that his pipe was going out, so he paused, pulled at it vigorously for a few seconds, and then resumed his discourse.

"Now, lads, wot _ought_ you for to do w'en you've got hold of a puzzler?

Why, you ought to sit down and consider of it, which means you should begin at the beginnin'; an' let me tell you, it's harder to find the beginnin' of a puzzler than p'raps you suppose. Havin' found the beginnin', you should look at it well, and then go on lookin', inch by inch, and fut by fut, till you comes to the end of it; then look it back, oncommon slow, to the beginnin' again, after which turn it outside in, or inside out,--it don't much matter which way,--and go it all over once more; after which cram your knuckles into yer two eyes, an' sit for half-an-hour (or three-quarters, if it's tremendous deep) without movin'. If that don't do, and you ha'nt got time to try it over again, give in at once, an haul your colours down, but on no occasion wotiver nail them to the mast,--'xceptin' always, w'en you're c.o.c.ksure that you're right, for then, of coorse, ye can't go far wrong."

This little touch of philosophy convinced Bax that if he did not wish to sit there half the night, the sooner he changed the subject the better, so he called the waiter, and paid his bill, saying to his companions that it was time to go aboard if they wanted a snooze before tripping the anchor.

"What have you had, sir?" said the waiter, turning to Bluenose.

The man said this with a sneer, for he knew that the captain had taken nothing since he entered the house, and was aware, moreover, that he was a water-drinker.

"I've had nothin'," replied the Captain, "nor don't want any, thank 'ee."

"Oh! beg pardon, sir," the waiter bowed and retired impressively.

"The house couldn't keep goin' long with _some_ customers," stammered a rough-looking, half-tipsy fellow who had overheard these remarks.

"Might do something for the good of the house," said another, who was equally drunk.

"Who bade _you_ put in your oar?" cried the first speaker fiercely, for he had reached that condition of intoxication which is well known as the fighting stage. The other man was quite ready to humour him, so, almost before one could understand what had been said, a savage blow was given and returned, oaths and curses followed, and in two seconds one of the combatants had his opponent by the throat, threw him on his back, with his neck over the fender and his head thrust into the ashes.

Instantly the room was a scene of wild confusion, as some of the friends of both men endeavoured to separate them, while others roared in drunken glee to "let 'em have fair play, and fight it out."

The result of this quarrel might have been serious had not Bax thrust the yelling crowd aside, and, exerting to the utmost the extraordinary muscular power with which he had been endowed, tore the combatants asunder by main force, and hurled them violently to opposite sides of the room.

"Shame on you; lads," said he, "can you not drink your grog without quarrelling about nothing?"

The towering size and the indignant look of Bax, as he said this, were sufficient to quell the disturbance, although some of the more irascible spirits could not refrain from grumbling about interference, and the Yankee roundly a.s.serted that "before he'd go into a public, and sit down and smoke his pipe without doin' somethin' for the good o' the 'ouse, he'd like to see himself chawed up pretty slick, he would."

"Waiter a-hoy!" shouted Captain Bluenose sternly, on hearing this.

"Yes-sir."