The Island of Gold: A Sailor's Yarn Read online

timbers been stanch and sound they certainlywould not have done so.

  She had new sails, a new jibboom, and several new spars; and before shegot clear and away out of the English Channel the crew of many ahomeward-bound ship manned their riggings and gave her a hearty cheer.

  Halcott had left the whole rig-out of the _Sea Flower_ to Mr Tandy, andhad not come near her for six long weeks.

  He was better employed, perhaps, and more happy on shore. But pleasedenough he was on his return.

  "Why, Tandy, my dear fellow, this isn't a ship any more; it's a yacht?"

  "A pot of paint and a bucket of tar go a long way," Tandy repliedsmiling.

  "Ah! there's a good deal more than tar here; but how you've managed toget her decks and spars so white and beautiful, bother me if I can tell.And her ebony is ebony no longer, it is polished jet, while her brasswork is gold."

  Down below the two had now gone together.

  Tandy could not have made the cabin a bit bigger if he had tried, but hehad removed every morsel of her lumbering old lockers and tables, andrefurnished it with all he could think of that was graceful andbeautiful.

  Mirrors, too, were everywhere along the bulk-heads, and these made thesaloon look larger. The only wonder is that, in a lit ofabsent-mindedness, some one did not walk right through a mirror.

  Hanging tables, beautiful crystal, brackets, and artificial flowers gavea look that was both lightsome and gay.

  On the port side, when you touched a knob, a mirrored door opened intothe captain's cabin--small but pretty, and lighted by an airy port thatcould be carried open in good weather, and all along in the trades.

  The other state-room was larger. This Halcott had insisted upon Tandytaking; and it contained not only his own bunk, but a lower one forNelda, and was better decorated and furnished than even the captain's.

  "Oh, gaily goes the ship when the wind blows free."

  And right gaily she had gone too, as yet.

  Halcott was a splendid sailor and navigator. It might have beenthought, however, that Tandy, from his long residence on shore, hadturned a little rusty in his seamanship.

  If he had, the rust had not taken long to rub off; and as he trod theivory-white quarterdeck in his duck trousers, neat cap, and jacket ofnavy blue, he really looked ten years younger than in the days when hesailed the _Merry Maiden_ up and down the canal.

  The crew were well-dressed, and looked happy and jolly enough foranything.

  I need hardly say that Nelda was the pet of the _Sea Flower_, fore andaft. There was no keeping the child to any one part of the ship. Infine weather--and, with the exception of a "howther" in the Bay, it hadup till now been mostly fine--she was here, there, and everywhere: inthe men's quarters; down below in the forecastle; at the forecastle-headitself, when the men leaned over the bows there, smoking, yarning, andlaughing; and in the cook's galley, helping to make the soup. But sheventured even further than this, and more than once her father startedto find her in the foretop, and standing beside her that tall,imperturbable Admiral.

  The bird was pet number two; but Bob made an equal second.

  At first the 'Ral was inclined to mope. Perhaps he was sea-sick. It isa well-known fact that if a Cape pigeon, as a certain gull is called, istaken on board, it can fly no more, but walks slowly and stupidly roundthe deck.

  Sea-sickness had not troubled Bob in the slightest. When he saw the'Ral standing in the lee-scuppers, with his neck hitched right roundtill the head lay right on the top of his tail, Bob looked at himcomically with _his_ head cocked funnily to one side.

  Then he seemed to laugh right away down both sides, so to speak. Bobwas a droll dog.

  "My eyes, Admiral," he said, "what a ridiculous figure you do cut, to besure! Why, at first I couldn't tell which was the one end of you andwhich was the other."

  "I don't care what becomes of me," the Admiral replied, talking over histail. "It is a very ordinary world. I'll never dance again."

  But, nevertheless, in three days' time the Hal did dance, and so drolland comical were his capers on the heaving deck that the crew lay aft ina body and laughed till they nearly burst their belts. The Admiral tookkindly to his meal-worms after that, and didn't despise potted salmonand morsels of mutton.

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  Now it must not be supposed that the _Sea Flower_ was going out inballast, on the mere chance of filling up with gold. They might neversee the Isle of Misfortune, and all their dreams of gold might yet turnout as dreams so often do.

  Halcott and Tandy were good sailors, and but little likely to trustovermuch to blind chance. They took out with them, therefore, agood-paying cargo of knick-knacks and notions to barter with the nativesalong the coast of Africa. Having made a good voyage--and they knewthey should--and having filled up with copal, nutmegs, arrowroot,spices, ivory, and perhaps even gold-dust and ostrich feathers from thefar interior, they would stretch away out and over the broad Atlantic,and rounding the Horn, make search for the Isle of Misfortune, whichthey hoped to find an island of gold.

  If unsuccessful, they should then bear up for the northern PacificIslands, taking their chance of doing something with pearls ormother-of-pearl, and so on and away to San Francisco, where they weresure of a market, even if they wished to sell the _Sea Flower_ herself.

  But the best of sailors get disheartened far sooner in calms than evenin tempests.

  In the latter, one has all the excitement of a battle with the elements;in the former, one can but wait and think and long for the winds toblow.

  "The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free."

  Yes; but although in the region of calms some ships seem to have luck,the _Sea Flower_ had none.

  "Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'Twas sad as sad could be; And they did speak only to break The silence of the sea."

  A week, a fortnight, nearly three weary weeks went past like this.

  There was no singing now forward among the men. Even little Fitz thenigger, who generally _was_ trolling a song, at times high over the roarof the wind, was silent now. So, too, was Ransey Tansey. He and Neldahad been before the life of the good ship. It seemed as if they shouldnever be so again. Bob took to lying beside the man at the wheel. Asfar as the latter was concerned, there might just as well have been noman there at all. The sea all round was a sea of heaving oil. Thewaves were houses high--not long rollers, but a series of hills andvalleys, in which the _Sea Flower_ wallowed and tumbled; while thefierce heat of the sun caused the pitch to melt and bubble where thedecks were not protected by an awning.

  The motion of the good ship was far indeed from agreeable. Any seamancan walk easily even when half a gale of wind is roaring through therigging. There is a method in the motion of a ship in such a sea-way.There is no method in the motion of a vessel in the doldrums; and whenone puts one's foot down on the quarterdeck, or, rather, where it seemedto be a second before, it finds but empty space. The body lurchesforward, and the deck swings up to receive it. A grasp at a stay orsheet alone can avert a fall.

  In such a sea-way there is no longer any leeward or windward. The sailsgo flapping to and fro, however: they are making wind for themselves asthe vessel rolls and tumbles; and if this wind carries her forward a fewyards one minute, it hurls her back again the next.

  No wonder Nelda often asked her father if the wind would never, neverblow again, or whether it would be always, always like this.

  No birds either, save now and then a migrant gull that floated lazily ona wave to rest, or perched on the fin of a basking shark.

  So day after day passed wearily on, and you could not have told one dayfrom the other. But when, at six o'clock, the sun hurriedly capped thegreat heaving waves with crimson, leaving the hollows in deepest purpleshade, and soon after sank, then, in the gloaming that for a brief spellhung over the ocean, the stars came out; and very brightly did theyshine, so that night was eve
n more pleasant than day.

  Banks of clouds sometimes lay along the horizon. By day they appearedlike far-off, snow-capped, serrated mountains; at night they were dark,but lit up every few moments by flashes of lightning, which spread outbehind them and revealed their form and shape.

  No thunder ever followed this lightning; it brought no wind; nor did theclouds ever rise or bring a drop of rain.

  Phantom lightning; phantom clouds!

  There were times on nights like these when Ransey took his sister ondeck to look at the sky, and wonder at the lightning and that strangemountain-range of clouds.

  She was not afraid when Ransey was with her. But she would not havegone "upstairs," as she called it, with even the stewardess herself.

  Ransey, I may mention, lived in the saloon with his father and thecaptain, the second and third mates having comfortable quarters in themidship decks.

  A stewardess only was carried on the _Sea Flower_, and she