O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas

What a delightful sensation it was to me to feel myself once more at sea!

“The glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s formGlasses itself in tempest.”

We were homeward bound. I was a passenger, and we had splendid weather, so everything seemed to combine to make me feel joyful and happy. Joyful, did I say? why, there were times when I wanted to run about and shout for joy like a schoolboy, or like the savage that I fear I had almost become.

But I could not run about and shout on board a trim and well-disciplined man-o’-war. The very appearance of the forbade, so at such moments I used to long to be away in the woods again, in order to give proper vent to my exultation.

“White and glassy deck, without a stainWhere, on the watch, the staid lieutenant walked,”

Besides, I had good cause to be staid and sedate. Roberts had heard news that changed the whole course of my life. I was no longer a friendless sailor-boy. My grandfather was dead, and I was the heir to his estate. It was not a very large patrimony, I admit. It was simply a competence, but to me, when I heard it described, it appeared a princely fortune. There would be no longer any need for me to sail the seas. I could settle down in life, or I could choose some honourable career on shore, and, if I was good for anything at all, distinguish myself therein.

Or, stay, I thought, should I become a soldier? “No, no, no,” was the answer of my soul. The war was past and gone; even the terrible Indian Mutiny had been quelled at last. To be a soldier in the field was a career worthy of a king’s son. To be a soldier, and have nothing to do but loll about in some wretched garrison town, play billiards or cricket, have a day’s shooting, English fashion, now and then, be admired by school-misses and probably snubbed by men with more money than brains; no, such a life would not suit me.

I should much prefer, I thought, to stay at home and till my garden. With my jacket off, my shirt-sleeves rolled up, and an axe or spade in hand, I should feel far more free than playing with a useless sword.

Lieutenant Roberts was about to retire from active service in the Royal Navy, and he had already been promised the command of a ship in the Merchant Service. But before he left England he would, he said, see me, his foster-son, well settled down.

The ship was homeward bound. There was nothing but laughing and talking and singing all day long, for many of the poor fellows on board had not placed foot on their native shores for five long years and more. What a glorious place England must be, I mused, to make these men so happy at the prospect of returning to it. How brightly the sun must shine there! How blue and beautiful must be the seas that lave her coasts!

So we presently crossed the Line and sailed north, and north, and north. Past Madeira – and then the brightness began to leave the sky. The wind to me grew chilly, biting, and cruel. The sea became a darker blue, and finally, as we entered the Bay of Biscay, a leaden grey. My hopes of happiness fell, and fell, and fell. Roberts tried all he could to cheer me up, told me of the monster cities I should see, of the ballrooms, of the concert-rooms, and of a multitude of wonderful things, not forgetting cricket and football.

We sailed past the Isle of Wight with a grey chopping sea all around us, grey clouds above us, a bitter cold wind blowing, and a drizzling rain borne along on its wings.

Then we entered Portsmouth harbour, and cast anchor among the wooden walls of England. Finally I landed. Landed, much to my disgust, upon stones instead of soft sand. Landed, still more to my disgust, among crowds of people who stared at me as if I had a plurality of heads, or only one eye right in the middle of my brow. I glanced around me with all the proud dignity of a savage prince. The crowd laughed, and Roberts hurried me on.

I daresay a visit to a fashionable tailor and its subsequent results made me a little more presentable, but I disliked this town of Portsmouth with a healthy dislike, and was glad when my friend took me away.

I had to go to London. The railway amused me, and made me wonder, but used as I was to the quiet of the desert and forest, it deafened me, and the shaking tired me beyond conception.

My solicitor, a prim white-haired man, said he was so glad to see me, though I do believe he was a little afraid of me. Probably not without cause, for at the very moment he was entering into business as he called it, and arranging preliminaries, I was thinking how quickly Otakooma’s savages would rub all the starch out of this respectable citizen. They would not take long to arrange preliminaries with the little man, and as to entering into business, they would do so in a way that would considerably astonish his nerves.

“Bother business!” I exclaimed at last, in a voice that made the prim solicitor almost spring off his chair.

“Oh! my dear sir,” he pleaded, mildly. “We must go into these little matters.”

He ventured to give me two fingers to shake as I left the office with Roberts. I feel sure he was afraid to entrust me with all his hand.

“And as soon as you get home you will telegraph to me; won’t you, Mr Radnor?”

“Telegraph!” I said in astonishment. “Telegraph! and you tell me it is five hundred miles from here to Dunryan. Do you think you can see a fire at that distance? It must be a precious big one I’ll have to light, and the mountains around Dunryan must be amazingly high.”

Both Roberts and the solicitor laughed; they could see that the only idea I had of telegraphing was the building of fires on hill-tops.

I arrived at Dunryan at last – my small patrimony. If I was pleased with it at all, it was simply because it was my own; but everything was so new and so strange and so tame, that as soon as my friend saw me what he called “settled,” and went away to sea and left me, I began, in the most methodical manner possible, to dislike everything round me.

People called on me, but I’m sure they were merely curious to hear my history from my own lips, and partly afraid of me at the same time. They invited me out to tea! Ha! ha! ha! I really cannot help laughing about it now as I write; but fancy a savage sitting down to tea, of all treats in the world, with a company of gossiping ladies of both sexes.

Now my neighbours made me out to be a bigger savage than I really was, because, to do myself justice, I did know a little of the courtesies of civilised life. There was one lady who expressed a wish to have the “dreadful creature” to tea with her. I found out before I went that she had styled me so, though her note of invitation was most politely worded.

The “dreadful creature” did go to tea, intent on a kind of quiet revenge. They could not get a word out of me – neither my hostess nor the three old ladies she had asked to meet me by way of protection. I did nothing but drink cup after cup of tea, handing in my cup to be replenished, and drinking it at once. The bread and butter disappeared in a way that seemed to them little short of miraculous. I saw that they were getting frightened, so I thought I would make them a little soothing speech.

“Ahem!” I began, standing up. I never got any further.

One old lady fainted; another “missed stays,” as a sailor would say, when making for the doorway, and tumbled on the floor; a third fell over the piano-stool. All screamed – all thought I was about to do something very dreadful.

All I did do was to step gingerly out into the hall, pick up my hat, and go off.

I lived in Dunryan for a year. The scenery all around was charming in the extreme. The very name will tell you that Dunryan is in Scotland; the very word Scotland conjures up before the eye visions both of beauty and romance.

But one year even of Scotland, the “land of green heath and shaggy wood,” was enough for me then.

There was no sport, no wild adventure; all was tame, tame, tame, compared to what I had been used to.

But if following game in Scotland seemed tame to me, what could I say of sport in English fashion? I tried both; grew sick of both. Hunting the wild gorilla in the jungles of Africa was more in my line.

One night, soon after the first snow had fallen, a carriage drove up to my door. It was to bear me away to the distant railway-station. The moon was shining brightly down upon our little village as we drove through; here and there in the windows shone a yellow light; but all was silent, and neither the horses’ hoofs nor the carriage wheels could be heard on the snow-muffled street.

It was a peaceful scene, and I heaved one sigh – well, it might have been of regret. For many and many a long year to come I never saw Dunryan again.

Chapter Nine

“The dismal wreck to viewStruck horror to the crew.”Old Song.

The earlier history of a human being’s life is engraved upon his mind as with a pen of steel. After one comes to what are termed years of discretion, the soul is not so impressionable, and events must be of more than usual interest to be very long remembered. The story, then, of a chequered life cannot be told with even a hopeful attempt at minuteness, unless a log has been kept day after day and year after year; and my opinion is, that although diaries are often most religiously commenced, especially about New Year’s time, they are seldom if ever kept up very long.

My own adventures, and the scenes I passed through in the first stages of my existence, were not, as the reader already knows, of a kind to be very easily forgotten, even had my mind never been very impressionable. It was easy enough, therefore, to record them in some kind of chronological form.

The few adventures I and my friend Ben Roberts tell in the pages that follow, and our sketches of life, are given as they occur to our memory; often brought back to our minds by the incidents of our present everyday life.

But I do not think that even if Ben and I live as long as Old Parr, we shall either tire of spinning our yarns, or fall short of subject matter.

Let me say a word or two about the place I live in now, and where Ben so often pays me a visit.

We call it Rowan Tree Villa.

It stands mid-way up a well-wooded hill, about two and a half miles from a dreamy, drowsy old village, in one of the dreamiest, drowsiest nooks of bonnie, tree-clad Berkshire.

The top of the hill is covered by tall-stemmed pine trees, and from this eminence you can see, stretching far away below, all the undulating country, the fertile valley of the Thames, and the river itself winding for many and many a mile through it – a silver thread amidst the green.

From the top of this hill, too, if you take the trouble to climb it, you can have a bird’s-eye view of Rowan Tree Villa.

There it is, a pretty, many-gabled cottage, with a comfortable-looking kitchen garden and orchard behind it, and a long, wide lawn in front. Now this lawn has one peculiarity. From the gate on each side up to the terrace in front of the house sweeps a broad carriage drive, bounded on both its sides, first by a belt of green grass, carefully trimmed and dotted here and there with patches of flowers, and secondly by two rows of rowan trees (the mountain ash), trained on wires, and forming the prettiest bit of hedge-work you could easily imagine.

If you were Scotch, and looked at that hedge even for a moment, the words, and maybe the air as well, of the Baroness Nairne’s beautiful song would rise in your mind —

“Thy leaves were aye the first in spring,    Thy flowers the summer’s pride;There was nae sic a bonnie tree    In a’ the country side.And fair wert thou in summer time,    Wi’ a’ thy clusters white,And rich and gay thy autumn dress    Of berries red and bright.                Oh, rowan tree!”

Well, it is June to-day – an afternoon in June; a day to make one feel life in every limb – a day when but to exist is a luxury. The roses are bending their heads in the sweet sunshine, for there is not a cloud in Heaven’s blue. The butterflies are chasing each other among the flowers on the lawn, where we recline among the daisies, and the big velvety bees go droning and humming from clover blossom to clover blossom.

“Strange, is it not, my dear Ben,” I said, “that on such a day as this, and in the midst of sunshine, I should bethink me of some night-scenes at sea and on land?

“I remember well my first experience of a storm by night in the Northern Ocean. We were going to the Arctic regions, cruising in a sturdy and, on the whole, not badly fitted, nor badly found ship.

“The anchor was weighed, the sails were set, and spread their wings to the breeze; the crew had given their farewell cheer, and the rough old pilot, having seen us safely out of Brassy Sound, had shaken the captain roughly by the hand, and wishing us ‘God-speed and safely home,’ had disappeared in his boat round a point.

“We were once more on the deep and dark blue ocean. Then the night began to fall, and soon the only sound heard was the tramp, tramp on deck, or the steady wash of the water, as our vessel ever and anon dipped her bows or waist in the waves.

“The captain had given his last orders on deck, and came below to our little saloon, the only occupants of which were myself and the ship’s cat.

“Poor Pussy was endeavouring, rather ineffectually, to steady herself on the sofa, and looked very much from home, while I myself was trebly engaged: namely, in placing such articles as were constantly tumbling down into a safer and steadier position, in keeping the fire brightly burning, and in reading a nautical book.

“There was a shade of uneasiness on the captain’s face as he looked at the barometer; and when he entered his state-room, and presently after emerged dressed in oilskins and a sou’-wester hat, I felt as sure we were going to have a dirty night as though he had rigged himself out in sackcloth and ashes.

“He sat down, and, calling for some coffee, invited me to join in a social cup.

“‘Is there plenty of sea-room?’ I inquired.

“‘Very little sea-room,’ he replied; ‘but she must take her chance.’

“Then we relapsed into silence.

“About an hour or two after this it became a difficult matter to sit on a chair at all, so much did the vessel pitch and roll.

“The captain had gone on deck, and as I had neither the need nor the desire to follow him, I threw myself on the sofa, at the risk even of offending my good friend and companion, Pussy.

“The storm was now raging with terrible fury.

“Two watches were called to shorten sail, and the din and noise of voices could be distinctly heard rising high over the dashing of the waves, and the whistling of the wind among the rigging and shrouds. Every timber was stretched, every plank seemed to creak and wail in agony; yet the good ship bore it well.

“Tired of the sofa I turned into bed, hoping to have a few hours of sleep; but was very soon obliged to turn out again, having been awakened from a pleasant dream of green fields, pine-clad hills, and a broad, quiet river, where ferns and water-lilies grew, by the crashing of crockery in the steward’s pantry. It sounded as if bottles, dishes, plates, and cups were all in a heap in the middle of the floor breaking each other to infinitesimal pieces. And that is precisely what they were doing.

“Things in the saloon were fast verging into a state of chaos, and appeared to be making very merry in my absence. The fender and fire-irons presided over the musical department.

“The captain’s big chair was dancing very emphatically, but rather clumsily, with the coal-scuttle as a partner; the table was bowing to the sofa, but the sofa begged to be excused from getting up. The only reasonable-looking article of furniture in the room was a chair, which was merely staggering around with my coat on, while the cat had gone to sleep in my sou’-wester; and while endeavouring to restore quiet and order, I was thrown below the table like a pair of old boots, where, for the want of ability to do anything better, I was fain to remain.

“‘Clear away the wreck!’ I could now hear the captain’s voice bawling, for our fore-mast had gone by the board.

“His voice was not the only one I heard. On passing the man at the wheel, I heard the captain ask, ‘What! are you getting afraid, man?’ And the brave British voice that so firmly replied ‘Not at all, sir!’ explained better than printed volumes could have done the secret of all our naval greatness; for to hearts like his, and hands like his, in many a dark and stormy night, Britannia entrusts her honour, and bravely is it kept and guarded.

“Musing on this fact, I fell soundly to sleep beneath the table, and when I awoke the storm had ceased.

“There are few situations in which a healthy man can be placed that are more full of discomfort than that of being at sea in a small ship during a storm. I do not refer to a mere ‘capful of wind;’ I mean a great-gun gale. There is, literally speaking, no rest for the sole of the foot. Tossed about in all directions, in vain do you seek to exchange your chair for the sofa. Probably you are sent rolling off on to the deck, and thankful you ought to be if the cushions are the only things that follow you. Flesh-sore and weary, perhaps you seek for solace in a cup of tea: thankful you may be again if the steward succeeds in pouring it into your cup, instead of spilling it down your neck. Then, if you so far forget the rules of the sea as to place it for a moment on the table without a hand to guard it, you are instantly treated to a gratuitous shower-bath.

“Still the ocean has its pleasures and its charms as well as the land. My mind, even now, carries me back and away to a scene very different from that which I have just been describing.

“I am sitting in my little cabin. It is a summer’s evening, and all is peace within and around my barque. Yonder is my bed, and the little port close by my snow-white pillow is open, and through it steals the soft, cool breeze of evening, and wantonly lifts and flutters the little blue silken hangers. Not far off I can catch glimpses of the wooded hills and flowery valleys of a sunny land. And night after night the light wind that blows from it is laden with the sweet breath of its flowers; and between there lies the ocean, asleep and quiet and still, and beautiful with the tints of reflected clouds.

“Often in the cool night that succeeds a day of heat have I lain awake for hours, fanned by the breath of the sea, gazing on the watery world beneath and beyond me, and the silvery moon and tiny stars, that make one think of home, till sleep stole gently down on a moonbeam, and wafted me off to dreamland.

“But in witnessing even the war of the elements at sea, a sailor often finds a strange, wild pleasure. Enveloped in the thundercloud you mount with every wave to meet the lightning’s flash, or descend, like an arrow, into the gulf below – down, down, down, till the sun, lurid and red, is hidden at last from view by the wall of black waters around you.

“Or fancy the picture, which no artist could depict, of a ship far away in ocean’s midst by night in a thunderstorm. Dimly through the murky night behold that tumbling sea, lighted only by its own foam and the occasional flash from the storm-cloud. See that dark spot on the sea; it is a ship, and living souls are there – human beings, each with his own world of cares and loves and thoughts that are even now far away, all in that little spot. Whish! now by the pale lightning’s flash you can see it all. The black ship, with her bare poles, her slippery, shining deck and wet cordage, hanging by the bows to the crest of that great inky wave. What a little thing she looks, and what a mighty ocean all around her; and see how pale appear the faces of the crew that ‘cling to slippery shrouds,’ lest the next wave bear them into eternity.

“Whoever has been to prayers at sea during a storm has had a solemn experience he will never forget.”

“Perhaps there is no more impressive ocean-scene ever beheld by the sailor,” said Captain Ben Roberts, “than the phosphorescent seas witnessed at times in the tropics.” But though far more common in these regions than in the temperate zones, this extraordinary luminosity of the water is sometimes observed around our own coasts.

“I shall always remember,” he continues, “the first time I witnessed the phenomenon, though I’ve often seen it since.

“What a happy day we had had, to be sure! We were a party of five – I but a schoolboy, my comrades little more. It was the first time I had been to that most bewitching of western islands called Skye. We had started off one morning early on a ramble. We simply meant to go somewhere – anywhere, so long as we did not come back again for a night or two. Not that we were not happy enough in the old-fashioned manse of K – . But we wanted change, we wanted adventure if we could find any, and if we did not, then probably we should be able to make some. There was, at all events, the wild mountain peak of Quiraing to be climbed, with its strange top – the extinct crater of a burning mountain. Ah! but long before we came anywhere near it, there was a deal to be done.

“We had started from the beautiful little bay of Nigg, keeping a northerly course over a broad Highland upland.

“It was the month of June; the heather was not purple yet, but it was long and rank and green, and it was inhabited by many a curious wild bird, whose nests we hunted for, but did not rob; we saw some snakes, too, and one of us killed a very long one, and we all thought that boy a very hero, though I know now it was no more dangerous or deadly than a tallow candle.

“But the best fun we got was when we took to horse-catching. There was not much harm in this after all. There were dozens of ponies roaming wild over the green moor, and if they allowed themselves to be caught and ridden for miles through the heather, why, it did not hurt them; they soon danced back again.

“We laughed, and screamed, and whooped, loud enough to scare even the curlews, and that is saying a good deal. I’m not sure, indeed, that we didn’t scare the eagles from their eeries; at all events we thought we did. Then we began to ascend Quiraing, a stiff climb and somewhat hazardous; and light-hearted though we were, I believe we were all impressed with the grandeur of the view we caught from between the needle-like rocks that form one side.

“We went down to the plains below more quickly than we came up.

“Presently we came to a little Highland village close to the sea, and there, to our joy, we found that a large fishing-boat was going round the northernmost and east part of the island to Portree, the capital. For a trifle we managed to take a passage. We had lots of bread and cheese in our wallets, and we had some money in our pockets, good sticks, and stout young hearts; so that we should not be badly off even although we should have to trudge on foot back again to the old manse. Which, by the way, we had to.

“Our voyage was a far longer one in time than we had expected it would be, because the wind fell. But the beauty of the scenery, the hills, the strange-shaped mountains, the rocks and cliffs, with waterfalls tumbling sheer over them and falling into the sea; the sea itself, so calm and blue, and the distant mainland, enshrouded in the purple mist of distance, repaid us for all, and made the day seem like one long, happy dream.

“But daylight faded at last, and just as the gloaming star peeped out there came down upon our boat a very large shoal of porpoises, which the boatman gravely assured us at first was the great sea-serpent. These creatures were in chase of herrings, but they were so reckless in their rush and so headlong, that we were fain to scream to frighten them off, and even to arm ourselves with stones from the ballast, and throw at those that came too near.

“Night fell at last, and we were still at sea, and the stars came out above us. But if there were stars above us there were stars beneath us too; nay, not only beneath us, but everywhere about and around us. The sea was alive with phosphorescent animalculae; the wake of the boat was a broad belt of light behind us, every ripple sparkled and shone, and the water that dripped from the oars looked like molten silver.”

“Ah!” said I, “that was one of your first experiences of the open sea, wasn’t it, Ben?”

“I was only a boy, Nie,” replied my friend. “I’ve had many a sleep in the cradle of the deep since then.”

“I was reading this morning,” I said, “of that terrible shipwreck in the Atlantic. It puts me in mind of the loss of the London. I was in the Bay of Biscay in that very gale, Ben; our vessel unmanageable, wallowing in the trough of the seas, the waves making a clean breach over us; and, Ben, at the very darkest hour of midnight, we saw, by the lightning’s gleam, a great ship stagger past us. We were so close that we could have pitched a coil of rope on board. There were no men on her decks; her masts were carried away, and her bulwarks gone, and it was evident she was foundering fast. There were more ships lost, Ben, that night in the Bay of Biscay than ever we shall know of —