A Dream of the North Sea Part 7

Then, of course, Blair must needs have one of those wonderful jokes of his. "Ha! I want more! A sort of scientific Oliver. I want more! What a Bashaw! And what does his highness of many tails want?"

"Mr. Ferrier mustn't be too exorbitant. Science wears the seven-league boots, but we have to be content with modest lace-ups and Balmorals,"

quietly observed Mrs. Walton.

"Oh! beautiful! A regular flash of--the real thing, don't you know. An epigram. Most fahscinating! Oh-h!"

Poor Tom's elephantine delight over anything like a simile was always emphatic, no matter whether he saw the exact point or not, and I'm afraid that brilliant folk would have thought him perilously like a fool. Happily his companions were ladies and gentlemen who were too simple to sneer, and they laughed kindly at all the big man's floundering ecstasies.

Ferrier said, "When I have got what I want, I shall vary your programme if you will permit me. Do you know, it struck me that those good souls are very like a live lizard cased in the dry clay? He fits his mould, but he doesn't see out of it. I should like to give the men a little wider horizon."

"Isn't heaven wide enough?"

"But your men are always staring _up_ at heaven. Could you not give them a chance of looking _round_ a bit?"

"What are you driving at?"

"Mr. Ferrier means that they do not employ all their faculties. They are going cheerfully through a long cave because they see the sun at the mouth; but they don't know anything about the earth on the top of the cave."

This was a surprisingly long speech for Marion Dearsley.

"You take me exactly. Now, Fullerton, I'm going to stay the winter out here."

"You're what?" interjected Blair.

"Yes, I'm going to see the winter through; and I mean to lay some plans before you."

"The Bashaw has some glimmerings of sense. Yes, the scientific creature has. Go on, oh! many-tailed one."

"You miss the secular side a little. You cannot expect those grand, good-humoured fellows of yours to be always content with devotional excitement."

"But we don't. Our secular work, our care for the men's bodies, is just as great as our care for their souls," said Fullerton, warmly. "We simply cannot do everything; we lack means, and that must be our plea, no matter how sordid it may seem to you. But you must clearly understand that for my part, while I hold tenaciously to the primary duty of 'holding forth the Word of Life'--for it is 'the entrance of Thy Word giveth light _and understanding to the simple_'--yet I am entirely with you in feeling that we need to cultivate the intellect of these men. Go on, Ferrier."

"Well; I meant to say that you must let the men know something of the beauty of the world, and the wonder of it as well. Look here, Blair: do you mean to say that I couldn't make a regular fairy tale out of the geology of these Banks? Pray, ladies, excuse just a little shop; I can't help it. Give me just one tooth of an elephant, dredged up off Scarborough, and if I don't make those men delighted, then I may leave the Royal Society."

"But, my good Bashaw," said Blair, "if you blindfold one of the skippers, and tell him the soundings from time to time, he'll take you from point to point, and pick up his marks just as surely as you could touch your bedroom-door in the dark."

"Exactly. That's empirical knowledge; but when you explain _causes_, you give a man a new pleasure. It _clinches_ his knowledge. Then, again, supposing I were to tell those men something accurate about the movement of the stars? Don't you think that would be interesting? If I could not make it like a romance, then all the years I spent in learning were thrown away."

"Could you get them to care for anything of the kind? Do you know that a seaman is the most absolutely conservative of the human race?"

"We must begin. You give the men light, and I'll be bound that some of us will make them like sweetness. If Miss Dearsley were to read 'Rizpah,' or 'Big Tom,' or any other story of pathos or self-sacrifice, she would do the men good. Why, if I had the chance, I'd bring off my friend Tom Gale, and let him make them laugh till they cried by reading about Mr. Peggotty of Great Yarmouth and the lobster; or Mrs. Gummidge and the drown-ded old-'un."

Mrs. Walton had been very quiet. She turned to the staid and taciturn Mrs. h.e.l.lier and asked, "How do you find your readings suit at your mission-room?"

"They please the women, and I suppose they would please men. Our people are quite happy when we have a good reader. I'm a failure, because I always begin to cry at the critical points; but Lena has no feelings at all, and she can keep the room hushed for a whole hour."

Mrs. Walton smiled placidly.

"You see, Mr. Blair, there may be something in Mr. Ferrier's idea after all. I believe that sweet, simple stories, or poetry, or pictures, would please the men. See how pleased that Great Grimsby man was with the girl's picture-book that you gave him. I'm almost converted. Besides, now I remember it, I heard a gentleman who had been public orator at Cambridge make a crowd of East-End people cry by reading 'Enoch Arden'--of all the incredible things in the world."

"Thank you, madam; and when I have got that hospital for you, I shall insist on having one room for pleasure, and pleasure alone; and I'll take good care my patients are not disturbed in any way. Fullerton is already on our side, so you and I will take Blair in hand, and curb that unruly scepticism of his. He is a most unblus.h.i.+ng, scoffing sceptic, is he not, madam?"

Blair shook his jolly sides and rose, muttering something about a fahscinating young puppy;--whereby it may be perceived that he was thinking of mocking Tom. The night was splendid, and when a sharp air of wind set all the smacks gliding, our voyagers had once more an experience that is one of the most memorable for those to whom it comes seldom. The seaman tramps smartly; c.o.c.ks an eye at the topsail, swings round, and rolls back till he is abreast of the wheel; then _da capo_, and so on all night. But the reflective landsman gathers many sheaves for the harvest of the soul. Happy is he if he learns to know what the dense seaman's life is like.

There are nights when the joy of living will not let one sleep. Do I not know them?

Ferrier held a little chat with the girls before the scattered party finally broke up, and Marion Dearsley pleased him mightily by saying, "You were quite right about the pleasure-room. Only wait till we've begun our work, and we shall make that dreadful Mr. Blair ashamed of himself."

"What's this? Scandal and t.i.ttle-tattle begun on board? I shall exert my authority as admiral."

"I knew you were behind me, and that is why I reproved you, sir. We think the same about the matter, and so does Lena."

Then Ferrier and Blair and Tom talked until the air of the small hours drove them below, and they saw the yacht skimming among the quiet fleet.

There was enough wind to move the trawls, but the lonely procession did not travel as on that tremendous night when Lewis first learnt what a regular hustler was like.

All the days that followed went by pleasantly enough, though Ferrier could not help chafing. He was constantly busy with lancet, bandages, splints; he kept a diary of his cases, and after he had cruised among the fleet for three weeks he came to the conclusion that, if the average of injuries and ailments were the same all the year round, every man in the fleet must be under treatment at least _three times a year_. It sounds queer, but I can back it with facts--definite cases.

November opened finely, and the weather, except for sharp breezes in the chill of the early morning, left it possible to visit vessel after vessel daily. Ferrier never had an uncivil word. One rough customer whom he asked to board the yacht grinned and answered, "No, sir; I don't hold with Bethel s.h.i.+ps. But," he added remorsefully, "I've heard I reckon fifty times about you and your ladies and gentlemen, and if you was capsized out o' that eer boat, I'd have mine out and take her arter you my own self if the seas was a comin' over that there mast-head."

Then Lewis shook hands with his frank opponent, who grinned affably and waved until the boat was nearly out of sight. When the time for parting came, Blair told the Admiral, and the bold fellow said humbly, "Well, you've done us good. If you only knew, sir, what it is for _us_--_us_, you know, to have people like you among us, why you'd go and give such a message as would make the gentlemen ash.o.r.e feel regular funny. When I first come to sea we was brutes, and we was treated as brutes. We know you can't do everything, but just the thought of you being about makes a difference. It makes men prouder and more ready to take care o'

themselves--if you'll excuse me saying so."

"We'll do far more yet, Admiral," interposed Fullerton. "We're learning to walk at present. Wait till you see us in full going order, and none of you will know yourselves."

"Well, good-bye, sir. And I want to ask you particular, sir--_very_ particular. If the wind suits, don't run for home till just about dusk to-morrow evening, and go through us. The gla.s.s is firm, and I think we shall do well for days to come. Mind you oblige us, sir."

And next morning, as the boats met by the side of the carrier, there was much gossip, and many mysterious messages pa.s.sed. Blair told Skipper Freeman what the Admiral wanted, and the good man grinned hard. "Right, sir; your time's your own. I'll manage."

The dusk drooped early; a fair breeze was blowing, and the swift schooner loitered with the smacks. Freeman sent up a rocket, the schooner's foresail was let over, and she rustled away through the squadron of brown-sailed craft.

"What's that, Freeman?" asked Blair, as a rocket shot up from the Admiral's vessel.

"You'll see, sir, presently."

The schooner lay hard over when the big topsails were put on her, and drew past one smack after another. Then a dingy vessel broke suddenly into spots of fire; then another, then another. Flares, torches--every kind of illumination was set going; the hands turned up, and a roar that reverberated from s.h.i.+p to s.h.i.+p was carried over the water. The very canopy of light haze looked fiery; the faces of the men flashed like pallid or scarlet phantoms; the russet sails took every tint of crimson and orange and warm brown, and from point to point of the horizon a mult.i.tude of flames threw shaking shafts of light that glimmered far down and splendidly incarnadined the mult.i.tudinous sea.

Every s.h.i.+p's company cheered vociferously, and the yacht tore on amid clamour that might have scared timid folk.

"Why, the good fellows, they're giving us an illumination," said Fullerton.

"Hah! very modest, I'm sure. I should just think they _were_ giving us an illumination, sir. I should venture to say that they possibly _were_ doing a little in that way, sir. Yes, sir. Hah! Oh! No-o-oble, sir.

Picturesque, sir, in extreme! I'll write a poem descriptive of this, sir. And, thank G.o.d," said Tom at last, with real feeling, "thank G.o.d there are some people in the world who know what grat.i.tude is like. Hah!

I'm glad I lived to see this day."

The last cheer rattled over the waves. "That's the grandest thing I ever saw, Miss Dearsley," whispered Lewis.

"I was about to say those very words." Still the schooner tore on; still the light failed more and more; and then once again, with stars and sea-winds in her raiment, Night sank on the sea. The yacht was bound for home, and every one on board had a touch of that sweet fever that attacks even the most callous of sailors when the vessel's head is the right way. We shall see what came of the trip which I have described with dogged care.