The Island of Gold: A Sailor's Yarn

The motion of the good ship was far indeed from agreeable. Any seaman can walk easily even when half a gale of wind is roaring through the rigging. 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 when one puts one’s foot down on the quarterdeck, or, rather, where it seemed to be a second before, it finds but empty space. The body lurches forward, and the deck swings up to receive it. A grasp at a stay or sheet alone can avert a fall.

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

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

No birds either, save now and then a migrant gull that floated lazily on a 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 day from the other. But when, at six o’clock, the sun hurriedly capped the great heaving waves with crimson, leaving the hollows in deepest purple shade, and soon after sank, then, in the gloaming that for a brief spell hung over the ocean, the stars came out; and very brightly did they shine, so that night was even more pleasant than day.

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

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

Phantom lightning; phantom clouds!

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

She was not afraid when Ransey was with her. But she would not have gone “upstairs,” as she called it, with even the stewardess herself.

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

A stewardess only was carried on the Sea Flower, and she acted in another capacity – that of maid to Nelda. A black girl she was, but clean, smart, and tidy and trim, full of merriment and good-nature. Her assistant was Fitz, and with him alone she deemed it her duty to be a little harsh now and then. Because Fitz wouldn’t keep his place, so she said.

Poor Janeira, she always forgot she was a nigger herself, seeing so many white faces all around her. But when she looked into the little mirror that hung in her pantry, she used to go into fits of laughter at her face therein displayed. She was a funny girl.

Ransey used to take Nelda up on these nights, and hoist her on to the grating abaft the quarterdeck, and she would cling to his arm, while he held on to the bulwark.

Thus they would stand, silent and awed, for long minutes at a time.

Was there nothing to break the dread stillness? There was occasionally the flap of a sail, or a footstep forward; but no song from the men, no loud talking – they hardly cared to speak above a whisper. But more than once a plash was heard, and a great dark head would appear from the side of a billow, seen distinctly enough in the gleam of the starlight, then sink and disappear.

“Oh, the awful beast, ’Ansey! Can it climb up and swallow us?”

“No, dear silly, no.”

But older people than Nelda have been frightened by such dread spectres appearing close to a ship at night while in the doldrums, and wiser heads than hers have been puzzled to account for them.

Are they sharks? No, no. Five times as large are they as any shark ever seen. Whales? No, again. A whale lives not under the water but on it.

In the ocean wild and wide, reader, we sailors find many a strange mystery, see many a fearsome sight at night we can neither describe nor explain. And if we talk of these when we come on shore, you landsmen look incredulous.

But after a time the child became accustomed to scenes like these. Indeed the sea by night appeared to have a kind of fascination for her.

In beholding it, she appeared to be looking through it into some strange land, the abode of the fairies and elves and mermaids with which her imagination had peopled it.

“Deep, deep down among the rocks,” she would say to Ransey, “who lives there? Tell us, tell us.”

Ransey had therefore to become the story-teller whether he would or not.

He spoke to her then of mermaid-land deep down below the dark, heaving ocean.

“Deep, deep, deep down, ’Ansey?”

“Very, very deep. You see only a glimmer of light below you as you sink and sink; and this light is greenish and clear, and the farther down you get the brighter and more beautiful does it become.”

“And you’re not drowned?”

“No! oh, no! not if you’re good. Well, then you come to – oh, ever so beautiful a country! The trees are all of sea-weed, and underneath them is the yellow, yellow sand; but here and there are beautiful rockeries, and beds of such bright and lovely flowers that they would dazzle your eyes to look upon. And the strange thing about these flowers is this, Babs, they are all alive.”

“All alive? My! and can they talk to you?”

“Yes, and sing too. A sailor man who had been there told me. And he said their voices were so low and sweet that you had to put your ear quite close down before you could hear and understand; for at a little distance, he said, it was just like the tinkling of tiny silver bells. The danger is in stopping too long, and being enchanted or slain.”

“Enchanted? Whatever is that, ’Ansey?”

“Oh, you stay so long listening that you feel like in a dream, and before you know what has happened you are a flower yourself; and then, though you can see and hear everything that goes on around you, you cannot move away from the rock you are growing on, and you never get back again out of the water.”

“Never, never, ’Ansey?”

“Never, never, Babs.”

“But in the deep, dark, beautiful woods that you come to and enter there is many a terrible monster living – horned, shelly, warty monsters. And they are all waiting to catch you.”

“Terrible, ’Ansey!”

“Are you afraid, dear?”

“Oh, no, ’Ansey! Be terrible some more.”

“Well, there is danger all around you now, for some of these monsters are quite hidden among the sand, with only one eye protruding, and this looks like a flower because it grows on a stalk. But when you go to look at it, suddenly the sandy ground gives way under you. You are caught and killed, and know no more.

“Some of these monsters, Nelda, live in caves, and if you go too near the entrance a great, long, skinny arm is thrust out, and you are dragged into the dark and devoured.”

“But I would turn quickly away out of that terrible wood, ’Ansey,” said Nelda.

“Yes, that is just what the sailor did.”

“And then he was saved?”

“Not yet. He came to a lovely wide patch of clear, hard sand, and he was looking down to admire it. He had taken up some to examine, and was pouring it from one hand into the other – for the sand was pure gold mixed with pearls and rubies – when all at once it began to get dark, and looking up he saw a creature that was nearly all one horrible, cruel, grinning head, with eight long arms round it. It stopped high up, just hovering, Nelda, like a hawk over a field. The sailor man was spell-bound. He could only stare up at it with starting eyes and utter a long, low, frightened moan. But from the creature above a tent was lowered, just like a huge bell, and he knew it would soon fall over him and he would be sucked up to the sea-demon’s body and slowly eaten alive.

“But at that very moment, sissie, the creature uttered a terribly wild and mournful cry, and darted off through the water, which was all just like ink now.”

“And the sailor was dead?”

“No; a voice that sounded like the sweetest music ever he had heard in his life was heard, and a hand grasped his.

“‘Quick, quick,’ she cried, for it was a mermaid, ‘I will lead you into safety. Stay but another moment here and you are doomed.’

“‘I’ll follow you to the end of the world, miss,’ said the gallant sailor.

“It did seem queer to call a mermaid miss, but Jack Reid couldn’t help it.

“‘You won’t have to follow so far,’ she said, with a sweet smile that put Jack’s heart all in a flutter.

“And in five minutes’ time they were out of danger, and there was Jack with his hat in his hand, which he had taken off for politeness’ sake, being led along by the most charming young lady he had ever clapped eyes on.

“‘Her beauty,’ he said to me, ‘was radiant, and her long yellow hair floated behind her in the water till I was ravished; on’y the wust of it was, that all below the waist wasn’t lady at all, but ling or some other kind of fish.’

“But Jack wouldn’t look at the ling part at all, only just at the mermaid’s face and hair and hands.

“However dark it might have been, you could have seen to read by the light of the diamonds around her brow and neck.

“They soon came to a rock of quartz and porphyry, and next minute Jack found himself in a hall of such dazzling delight that he had to rub his eyes and pinch himself hard to make sure he was not in a dream. This was the mermaids’ and sea-fairies’ great ballroom.

“Tier upon tier of galleries rose up towards the beautiful, star-studded ceiling, and every gallery was filled with beautiful ladies. Jack knew that they all ended in ling, but the tails could not be seen.

“There was light and loveliness everywhere, and flowers everywhere – ”

“Go on, ’Ansey. Your story is better than the Revelations, better even than ‘Jack the Giant Killer.’”

“I must stop, siss, because even I don’t know much more, only that the music was so ravishing that Jack himself danced till he couldn’t dance a bit more.”

“And did he sit down?”

“No; he thought he would like a smoke, so he floated away down to the entrance to a cave at the far, far end.

“‘That must be the smoking-room,’ he thought to himself, so he pushed aside the curtain and floated boldly in.

“But lo and behold, this inner cave was filled with little shrivelled-up old men, uglier far in the face than toads.

“These, sissie, were the mermen, and they were all sitting on rough blocks of coral, which must have hurt them dreadful, nursing their tails. These mermen sat there swaying their yellow, wrinkled bodies back and fore, to and fro, but taking not the slightest notice of Jack. The sailor stood staring at them; and well he might, for whatever motion one made the others all made the same. If one lifted a skeleton hand to rub its bald head, every hand was raised, every bald head was rubbed; whichever way one swayed all the rest swayed; sometimes every blear eye was directed to the ceiling, or lowered towards their tails, as the case might be; and when one gaped and yawned they all gaped and yawned, and Jack told me that he had never seen such a set of ugly, toothless mouths in his life before.

“But as they wouldn’t speak, Jack Reid himself – and he was a very brave sailor, sissie – did speak.

“‘Ahoy, maties!’ he cried, ‘ye don’t seem an over-lively lot here, I must say, but has e’er a one o’ ye got sich a thing as a bit o’ baccy?’

“Jack told me, Babs, that when he made this speech he got a fearful fright. Every merman stood up straight on its stool, its skinny arms and claw-like hands held straight above its head, and a yell rang through the hall that Jack says is ringing in his ears till this day.

“‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘if that’s your little game, here’s for off.’

“Jack must have been glad enough to get back to the ballroom, but this was now deserted. No one was there at all except the lovely mermaid who had saved him from being devoured by the terrible devil-fish.

“She smiled upon him as sweetly as ever.

“‘I’m going to guide you,’ she said, ‘to the nursery grotto; it is time that all sailor boys went to by-by.’

“‘Go on, missie,’ Jack said, ‘go on, yer woice is sweeter far than the song of – of a Mother Carey’s chicken. Wot a lovely lady ye’d be, miss, if ye didn’t end in ling!’

“She smiled, and combed her hair with her long white fairy fingers as she glided on.

“‘Going to by-by am I? Well, the mum did used to call it that like, miss, but we grown-up sailor lads calls it a bunk or an ’ammock. Ain’t got ne’er a bit o’ baccy about ye, has ye, miss?’

“But the fairy mermaid only smiled.

“So soft and downy was the bed that Jack fell asleep singing low to himself —

“‘All in the downs the fleet was moored.’

“And that is the end of the story, siss.”

“Oh, no! What did he see when he woke up again?”

“Well, when he awoke in the morning, much to his amazement, he found himself in his own bed in his mother’s little cottage at home.

“He rubbed his eyes twice before he spoke.

“‘What! mother?’ he cried.

“‘Yes, it is your own old mother, dearie, and I’ve been sittin’ up with you, and sich nonsense you has been a-talkin’, surely.’

“‘I’m not a merman, or anything, am I, mother? I don’t end in ling, do I, mother?’

“‘No, Jack Reid, you end in two good strong legs; but strong as they are, my boy, they weren’t strong enough to keep you from tumbling down last night. O Jack, Jack!’”

Book Two – Chapter Nine.

Wonderful Adventures of the Dancing Crane

Hardly had Ransey finished his story ere a bright flash of lightning lit up the ship from stem to stern – a flash that seemed to strike the top of every rolling wave and hiss in the hollows between; a flash that left the barque in Cimmerian though only momentary darkness, for hardly had the thunder that followed – deep, loud, and awful – commenced, ere flash succeeded flash, and the sea all around seemed an ocean of fire.

For a time little Nelda could not be prevailed upon to go below. She was indeed a child of the wilds, and a thunderstorm was one of her chief delights.

Ah! but this was going to be somewhat more than a thunderstorm.

“Hands, shorten sail! All hands on deck!” It was Tandy’s voice sounding through the speaking trumpet – ringing through it, I might say, and yet it scarce could be heard above the incessant crashing of the thunder.

The men came tumbling up, looking scared and frightened in the blue glare of the lightning.

“Away aloft! Bear a hand, my hearties! Get her snug, and we’ll splice the main-brace. Hurrah, lads! Nimbly does it!”

Swaying high up on the top-gallant yards they looked no bigger than rooks, and with every uncertain lurch and roll the yard-ends seemed almost to touch the water.

It was at this moment that the stewardess came staggering aft.

“Don’t go, ’Ansey – don’t go,” cried Nelda.

“Duty’s duty, dear, and it’s ‘all hands’ now.”

He saw her safely down the companion-way, and next minute he was swarming up the ratlines to his station. But he had to pause every few seconds and hang on to the rigging, with his back right over the water – hang on for dear life.

The sails were reefed, and some were got in, and not till the men had got down from aloft did the rain come on. For higher and higher had the clouds on the northern horizon banked up, till they covered all the sky.

So awful was the rain, and so blinding, that it was impossible to see ten yards ahead, or even to guess from which direction the storm would actually come.

The wind was already whirling in little eddies from end to end of the deck, but hardly yet did it affect the motion of the ship, or give her way in any one direction.

The men were ordered below in batches, to get into their oilskins, for right well Tandy knew that a fearful night had to be faced.

The men received their grog now, and well did they deserve it.

Another hand was put to the wheel (two men in all), and near them stood the bold mate Tandy, ready to give orders by signal or even by touch, should they fail to hear his voice. All around the deck the men were clinging to bulwark or stay.

Waiting for the inevitable!

Ah! now it came. The rain had ceased for a time. So heavy had it been that the waves themselves were levelled, and Tandy could now see a long line of white coming steadily up astern.

He thanked the God who rules on sea as well as on dry land that the squall was coming from that direction. Had it taken the good ship suddenly aback she might have gone down stern-foremost, even with the now limited spread of canvas that was on her.

As it was, the first mountain wave that hit the good barque sent her flying through the sea as if she had been but an empty match-box. That wave burst on board, however – pooped her, in fact – and went roaring forward, a sea of solid foaming water.

The good vessel shivered from stem to stern like a creature in the throes of death. For a few minutes only. Next minute she had shaken herself free, and was dashing through the water at a pace that only a yacht could have beaten.

The thunder now went rolling down to leeward, and the rain ceased, but the gale increased in force, and in a short time she had to be eased again, and now she was scudding along almost under bare poles. It would be hours before mate Tandy could get below; but Ransey’s watch was now off deck, so he went down to ask Janeira, the stewardess, if Nelda was in bed.

She was in bed most certainly, but through the half-open doorway she could hear Ransey’s voice, and shouted to him.

“I fink, sah,” Janeira said, “she am just one leetle bit afraid.”

There was no doubt about that, and the questions with which she plied her brother, when he took a seat by her bunk to comfort her, were peculiar, to say the least.

“Daddy won’t be down for a long, long time?” – that was one.

“The poor men, though, how many is drownded?” – another.

“The ship did go to the bottom though, didn’t it, ’cause I heard the water all rush down?” – a third.

“You are quite, quite sure father isn’t drownded? And you are sure no awful beasts have come up with long arms? Well, tell us some stories.”

Nolens volens, Ransey had to. But Babs got drowsy at last, the white eyelids drooped and drooped till they finally closed; then Ransey went quietly away and turned into his hammock.

Young though he was, the heaviest sea-way could not frighten him, nor the stormiest wind that could blow. The sound of the wind as it went roaring through the rigging could only make him drowsy, and the ship herself would rock him to sleep. The barque was snug, too, and it was happiness itself to hear his father’s footsteps, as he walked the quarterdeck, pausing now and then to give an order to the men at the wheel.

“Behaved like an angel all through, Halcott!” That was what Tandy told the skipper next morning at breakfast.

“I knew she would, Tandy. I’m proud of our Sea Flower, and, my friend, I’m just as proud of you. I’d have stopped on deck to lend a hand, but that wouldn’t have done any good.

“Jane,” he cried. Jane was the contraction for “Janeira.”

“Iss, sah; I’se not fah off.”

“Is there no toast this morning?”

“No, sah; Lord Fitzmantle he done go hab one incident dis mawnin’. He blingin’ de toast along, w’en all same one big wave struckee he and down he tumble, smash de plate, and lose all de toast foh true.”

“Oh, the naughty boy!” said Nelda, who was hurrying through her breakfast to go on deck to “see the sea,” as she expressed it.

“No, leetle Meess Tandy, Lord Fitzmantle he good boy neahly all de time. It was poorly an incident, meesie, for de big sea cut his legs clean off, and down he come.”

“Well, I’m sorry for Fitz,” said Nelda with a sigh; “I suppose it was only his sea-legs though. And I’m going to have mine to-day. I asked the carpenter, and he said he would make me some soon, and it wouldn’t be a bit sore putting them on.”

With varying fortunes the good ship Sea Flower sailed south and away, till at last the Cape of Good Hope was reached and rounded.

Here they experienced very heavy weather indeed, with terrible storms of thunder and lightning, and bigger seas than Tandy himself had ever seen before.

But by this time little Nelda was quite a sailor, and a greater favourite fore and aft than ever.

Sea-legs had, figuratively speaking, been served out to all the green hands. Nelda had a capital pair, and could use them well. Fitz had to make his old ones do another time; but Bob had received two pairs from Neptune, when he came aboard that starry still night when crossing the line. As for the Hal, it must be confessed that there wasn’t a pair in Neptune’s boat long enough to fit him. However, in ordinary weather he managed to run along the deck pretty easily, his jibboom, as the sailors called his neck, held straight out in front of him, and helping himself along with his wings.

Sometimes on the quarterdeck it would suddenly occur to the ’Ral that a step or two of a Highland schottische would help to make time pass more quickly and pleasantly. The ’Ral wasn’t a bird to spoil a good intention, so, with just one or two preliminary “scray – scrays” he would start.

Bother the deck though, and bother the heaving sea, for do what he would the bird could no longer dance with ease and grace; so he would soon give it up, and go and lean his chin wearily over the lee bulwark, and thus, with his drooping wings, he did cut rather a ridiculous figure as seen from behind. He looked for all the world like some scraggy-legged little old man, who had got up in the morning and put nothing on except a ragged swallow-tailed coat.

The men liked the ’Ral though. He made them laugh, and was better than an extra glass of rum to them. So, as the bird seemed always rather wretched in dirty weather, the carpenter was solicited to make him some sort of shelter.

The carpenter consulted the sailmaker. The carpenter and sailmaker put their heads together. Something was sure to come of that.

“He’s sich an awkward shape, ye see,” said old Canvas.

“That’s true,” said Chips; “and he won’t truss hisself, as ye might call it.”

“No; if he’d on’y jest double up his legs, Chips, and close reef that jibboom o’ his, we might manage some’ow.”

“A kind o’ sentry-box would just be the thing, old Can.”

“Humph! yes. I wonder why the skipper didn’t bring a grandfather’s clock with ’im; that would suit the ’Ral all to pieces.”

But a sort of sentry-box, with a tarpaulin in front of it, was finally rigged up for the ’Ral, and placed just abaft the main-mast, to which it was lashed.

The ’Ral didn’t take to it quite kindly at first, but after studying it fore and aft he finally thought it would fit him nicely.

It would be protection from the sun on hot days, and when it blew a bit the men would draw down the tarpaulin, and he would be snug enough.

But in sunny weather it must be confessed that, solemnly standing there in his sentry-box, the Admiral did look a droll sight.

The ’Ral was a very early riser. He always turned out in time to go splashing about while the hands were washing decks, and although they often turned the hose on him he didn’t mind it a bit.

One very hot day, the poor ’Ral was observed standing pensively up against the capstan. His head was out of sight, thrust into one of the holes.

This was unusual, but the bird did so many droll things that, for an hour or more, nobody took much notice; but Ransey came round at last, carrying Babs, who was riding on his shoulders.

“Hillo!” cried Babs, “here’s the ’Ral with his head buried in a hole.”

“Which he stowed hisself away there, missie, more’n an hour ago,” said a seaman. “Afraid o’ gettin’ sunstroke, that’s my opinion.”

“Poor Hallie,” cried Babs, sympathisingly, “does your headie ache?”

The Admiral drew out his head, and looked at the child very mournfully indeed.

“He’s got some silent sorrow hevidently, I should say,” remarked another of the crew.

There was quite a little circle now around the capstan.

“Cheer up,” cried Ransey Tansey. “Come along and have a dance, ’Rallie.”

“I don’t feel like dancing to-day,” the crane replied, or appeared to reply. “Fact is, I don’t feel like moving at all.”