The Lively Poll: A Tale of the North Sea

Only at intervals was the old woman’s cheerfulness disturbed, and that was during the occasional visits of her ne’er-do-well son Dick, for he was generally drunk or “half-seas-over” when he came. Granny never mentioned his name when he was absent, and for a long time Mrs Martin supposed that she tried to forget him, but her opinion changed on this point one night when she overheard her mother praying with intense earnestness and in affectionate terms that her dear Dick might yet be saved. Still, however much or frequently Granny’s thoughts might at any time be distracted from their main channel, they invariably returned thereto with the cheerful assurance that “he would soon come now.”

“You’re ill, my boy,” said Mrs Martin, after the first greetings were over.

“Right you are, mother,” said the worn-out man, sitting down with a weary sigh. “I’ve done my best to fight it down, but it won’t do.”

“You must have the doctor, Fred.”

“I’ve had the doctor already, mother. I parted with Isa Wentworth at the bottom o’ the stair, an’ she will do me more good than dozens o’ doctors or gallons o’ physic.”

But Fred was wrong.

Not long afterwards the Lively Poll arrived in port, and Stephen Lockley hastened to announce his arrival to his wife.

Now it was the experience of Martha Lockley that if, on his regular return to land for his eight days’ holiday, after his eight weeks’ spell afloat, her handsome and genial husband went straight home, she was wont to have a happy meeting; but if by any chance Stephen first paid a visit to the Blue Boar public-house, she was pretty sure to have a miserable meeting, and a more or less wretched time of it thereafter. A conversation that Stephen had recently had with Fred Martin having made an impression on him—deeper than he chose to admit even to himself—he had made up his mind to go straight home this time.

“I’ll be down by daybreak to see about them repairs,” he said to Peter Jay, as they left the Lively Poll together, “and I’ll go round by your old friend, Widow Mooney’s, and tell her to expect you some time to-night.”

Now Peter Jay was a single man, and lodged with Widow Mooney when on shore. It was not, however, pure consideration for his mate or the widow that influenced Lockley, but his love for the widow’s little invalid child, Eve, for whose benefit that North Sea skipper had, in the kindness of his heart, made a special collection of deep-sea shells, with some shreds of bright bunting.

Little Eve Mooney, thin, wasted, and sad, sat propped up with dirty pillows, in a dirty bed, in a dirtier room, close to a broken and paper-patched window that opened upon a coal-yard with a prospect rubbish-heap beyond.

“Oh, I’m so glad it’s you!” cried Eve, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, as the fisherman entered.

“Yes, Eve, my pretty. I’m back sooner than I expected—and look what I’ve brought you. I haven’t forgot you.”

Joy beamed in the lustrous eyes and on every feature of the thin face as the sick child surveyed the treasures of the deep that Lockley spread on her ragged counterpane.

“How good—how kind of you, Stephen!” exclaimed Eve.

“Kind!” repeated the skipper; “nothing of the sort, Eve. To please you pleases me, so it’s only selfishness. But where’s your mother?”

“Drunk,” said the child simply, and without the most remote intention of injuring her parent’s character. Indeed, that was past injury. “She’s in there.”

The child pointed to a closet, in which Stephen found on the floor a heap of unwomanly rags. He was unable to arouse the poor creature, who slumbered heavily beneath them. Eve said she had been there for many hours.

“She forgot to give me my breakfast before she went in, and I’m too weak to rise and get it for myself,” whimpered Eve, “and I’m so hungry! And I got such a fright, too, for a man came in this morning about daylight and broke open the chest where mother keeps her money and took something away. I suppose he thought I was asleep, for I was too frightened to move, but I could see him all the time. Please will you hand me the loaf before you go? It’s in that cupboard.”

We need scarcely add that Lockley did all that the sick child asked him to do—and more. Then, after watching her till the meal was finished, he rose.

“I’ll go now, my pretty,” he said, “and don’t you be afeared. I’ll soon send some one to look after you. Good-bye.”

Stephen Lockley was unusually thoughtful as he left Widow Mooney’s hut that day, and he took particular care to give the Blue Boar a wide berth on his way home.

Chapter Three

The Skipper Ashore

Right glad was Mrs Lockley to find that her husband had passed the Blue Boar without going in on his way home, and although she did not say so, she could not feel sorry for the accident to the Lively Poll, which had sent him ashore a week before his proper time.

Martha Lockley was a pretty young woman, and the proud mother of a magnificent baby, which was bordering on that age when a child begins to have some sort of regard for its own father, and to claim much of his attention.

“Matty,” said Stephen to his wife, as he jolted his daughter into a state of wild delight on his knee, “Tottie is becoming very like you. She’s got the same pretty little turned-up nose, an’ the same huge grey eyes with the wicked twinkle in ’em about the corners.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Stephen, but tell me about this robbery.”

“I know nothin’ about it more than I’ve told ye, Matty. Eve didn’t know the man, and her description of him is confused—she was frightened, poor thing! But I promised to send some one to look after her at once, for her drunken mother isn’t fit to take care of herself, let alone the sick child. Who can I send, think ’ee?”

Mrs Lockley pursed her little mouth, knitted her brows, and gazed thoughtfully at the baby, who, taking the look as personal, made a face at her. Finally she suggested Isabella Wentworth.

“And where is she to be found?” asked the skipper.

“At the Martins’, no doubt,” replied Mrs Lockley, with a meaning look. “She’s been there pretty much ever since poor Fred Martin came home, looking after old granny, for Mrs Martin’s time is taken up wi’ nursing her son. They say he’s pretty bad.”

“Then I’ll go an’ see about it at once,” said Stephen, rising, and setting Tottie down.

He found Isa quite willing to go to Eve, though Mrs Mooney had stormed at her and shut the door in her face on the occasion of her last visit.

“But you mustn’t try to see Fred,” she added. “The doctor says he must be kep’ quiet and see no one.”

“All right,” returned the skipper; “I’ll wait till he’s out o’ quarantine. Good day; I’ll go and tell Eve that you’re coming.”

On his way to Mrs Mooney’s hut Stephen Lockley had again to pass the Blue Boar. This time he did not give it “a wide berth.” There were two roads to the hut, and the shorter was that which passed the public-house. Trusting to the strength of his own resolution, he chose that road. When close to the blue monster, whose creaking sign drew so many to the verge of destruction, and plunged so many over into the gulf, he was met by Skipper Ned Bryce, a sociable, reckless sort of man, of whom he was rather fond. Bryce was skipper of the Fairy, an iron smack, which was known in the fleet as the Ironclad.

“Hullo! Stephen. You here?”

“Ay, a week before my time, Ned. That lubber Groggy Fox ran into me, cut down my bulwarks, and carried away my bowsprit an’ some o’ my top-hamper.”

“Come along—have a glass, an’ let’s hear all about it,” said Bryce, seizing his friend’s arm; but Lockley held back.

“No, Ned,” he said; “I’m on another tack just now.”

“What! not hoisted the blue ribbon, eh!”

“No,” returned Lockley, with a laugh. “I’ve no need to do that.”

“You haven’t lost faith in your own power o’ self-denial surely?”

“No, nor that either, but—but—”

“Come now, none o’ your ‘buts.’ Come along; my mate Dick Martin is in here, an’ he’s the best o’ company.”

“Dick Martin in there!” repeated Lockley, on whom a sudden thought flashed. “Is he one o’ your hands?”

“In course he is. Left the Grimsby fleet a-purpose to j’ine me. Rather surly he is at times, no doubt, but a good fellow at bottom, and great company. You should hear him sing. Come.”

“Oh, I know him well enough by hearsay, but never met him yet.”

Whether it was the urgency of his friend, or a desire to meet with Dick Martin, that shook our skipper’s wavering resolution we cannot tell, but he went into the Blue Boar, and took a glass for good-fellowship. Being a man of strong passions and excitable nerves, this glass produced in him a desire for a second, and that for a third, until he forgot his intended visit to Eve, his promises to his wife, and his stern resolves not to submit any longer to the tyranny of drink. Still, the memory of Mrs Mooney’s conduct, and of the advice of his friend Fred Martin, had the effect of restraining him to some extent, so that he was only what his comrades would have called a little screwed when they had become rather drunk.

There are many stages of drunkenness. One of them is the confidential stage. When Dick Martin had reached this stage he turned with a superhumanly solemn countenance to Bryce and winked.

“If—if you th–think,” said Bryce thickly, “th–that winkin’ suits you, you’re mistaken.”

“Look ’ere,” said Dick, drawing a letter from his pocket with a maudlin leer, and holding it up before his comrade, who frowned at it, and then shook his head—as well he might, for, besides being very illegibly written, the letter was presented to him upside down.

After holding it before him in silence long enough to impress him with the importance of the document, Dick Martin explained that it was a letter which he had stolen from his sister’s house, because it contained “something to his advantage.”

“See here,” he said, holding the letter close to his own eyes, still upside down, and evidently reading from memory: “‘If Mr Frederick Martin will c–call at this office any day next week between 10 an’ 12, h–he will ’ear suthin’ to his ad–advantage. Bounce and Brag, s’licitors.’ There!”

“But you ain’t Fred Martin,” said Bryce, with a look of supreme contempt, for he had arrived at the quarrelsome stage of drunkenness.

“Right you are,” said Martin; “but I’m his uncle. Same name c–’cause his mother m–married her c–cousin; and there ain’t much difference ’tween Dick and Fred—four letters, both of ’em—so if I goes wi’ the letter, an’ says, ‘I’m Fred Martin,’ w’y, they’ll hand over the blunt, or the jewels, or wotiver it is, to me—d’ee see?”

“No, I don’t see,” returned Bryce so irritatingly that his comrade left the confidential stage astern, and requested to know, with an affable air, when Bryce lost his eyesight.

“When I first saw you, and thought you worth your salt,” shouted Bryce, as he brought his fist heavily down on the table.

Both men were passionate. They sprang up, grappled each other by the throat, and fell on the floor. In doing so they let the letter fall. It fluttered to the ground, and Lockley, quietly picking it up, put it in his pocket.

“You’d better look after them,” said Lockley to the landlord, as he paid his reckoning, and went out.

In a few minutes he stood in Widow Mooney’s hut, and found Isa Wentworth already there.

“I’m glad you sent me here,” said the girl, “for Mrs Mooney has gone out—”

She stopped and looked earnestly in Lockley’s face. “You’ve been to the Blue Boar,” she said in a serious tone.

“Yes, lass, I have,” admitted the skipper, but without a touch of resentment. “I did not mean to go, but it’s as well that I did, for I’ve rescued a letter from Dick Martin which seems to be of some importance, an’ he says he stole it from his sister’s house.”

He handed the letter to the girl, who at once recognised it as the epistle over which she and Mrs Martin had puzzled so much, and which had finally been deciphered for them by Dick Martin.

“He must have made up his mind to pretend that he is Fred,” said Isa, “and so get anything that was intended for him.”

“You’re a sharp girl, Isa; you’ve hit the nail fair on the head, for I heard him in his drunken swagger boast of his intention to do that very thing. Now, will you take in hand, lass, to give the letter back to Mrs Martin, and explain how you came by it?”

Of course Isa agreed to do so, and Lockley, turning to Eve, said he would tell her a story before going home.

The handsome young skipper was in the habit of entertaining the sick child with marvellous tales of the sea during his frequent visits, for he was exceedingly fond of her, and never failed to call during his periodical returns to land. His love was well bestowed, for poor Eve, besides being of an affectionate nature, was an extremely imaginative child, and delighted in everything marvellous or romantic. On this occasion, however, he was interrupted at the commencement of his tale by the entrance of his own ship’s cook, the boy Bob Lumsden, alias Lumpy.

“Hullo, Lumpy, what brings you here?” asked the skipper.

But the boy made no answer. He was evidently taken aback at the unexpected sight of the sick child, and the skipper had to repeat his question in a sterner tone. Even then Lumpy did not look at his commander, but, addressing the child, said—

“Beg parding, miss; I wouldn’t have come in if I’d knowed you was in bed, but—”

“Oh, never mind,” interrupted Eve, with a little smile, on seeing that he hesitated; “my friends never see me except in bed. Indeed I live in bed; but you must not think I’m lazy. It’s only that my back’s bad. Come in and sit down.”

“Well, boy,” demanded the skipper again, “were you sent here to find me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Lumpy, with his eyes still fixed on the earnest little face of Eve. “Mister Jay sent me to say he wants to speak to you about the heel o’ the noo bowsprit.”

“Tell him I’ll be aboard in half an hour.”

“I didn’t know before,” said Eve, “that bowsprits have heels.”

At this Lumpy opened his large mouth, nearly shut his small eyes, and was on the point of giving vent to a rousing laugh, when his commander half rose and seized hold of a wooden stool. The boy shut his mouth instantly, and fled into the street, where he let go the laugh which had been thus suddenly checked.

“Well, she is a rum ’un!” he said to himself, as he rolled in a nautical fashion down to the wharf where the Lively Poll was undergoing repairs.

“I think he’s a funny boy, that,” said Eve, as the skipper stooped to kiss her.

“Yes, he is a funny dog. Good-bye, my pretty one.”

“Stay,” said Eve solemnly, as she laid her delicate little hand on the huge brown fist of the fisherman; “you’ve often told me stories, Stephen; I want to tell one to you to-night. You need not sit down; it’s a very, very short one.”

But the skipper did sit down, and listened with a look of interest and expectation as the child began—

“There was once a great, strong, brave man, who was very kind to everybody, most of all to little children. One day he was walking near a river, when a great, fearful, ugly beast, came out of the wood, and seized the man with its terrible teeth. It was far stronger than the dear, good man, and it threw him down, and held him down, till—till it killed him.”

She stopped, and tears filled her soft eyes at the scene she had conjured up.

“Do you know,” she asked in a deeper tone, “what sort of awful beast it was?”

“No; what was it?”

“A Blue Boar,” said the child, pressing the strong hand which she detained.

Lockley’s eyes fell for a moment before Eve’s earnest gaze, and a flush deepened the colour of his bronzed countenance. Then he sprang suddenly up and kissed Eve’s forehead.

“Thank you, my pretty one, for your story, but it an’t just correct, for the man is not quite killed yet and, please God, he’ll escape.”

As he spoke the door of the hut received a severe blow, as if some heavy body had fallen against it. When Isa opened it, a dirty bundle of rags and humanity rolled upon the floor. It was Eve’s mother!

Lifting her up in his strong arms, Lockley carried her into the closet which opened off the outer room, and laid her tenderly on a mattress which lay on the floor. Then, without a word, he left the hut and went home.

It is scarcely necessary to add that he took the longer road on that occasion, and gave a very wide berth indeed to the Blue Boar.

Chapter Four

Hardships on the Sea

Fly with us now, good reader, once more out among the breeze-ruffled billows of the North Sea.

It was blowing a fine, fresh, frosty fishing breeze from the nor’-west on a certain afternoon in December. The Admiral—Manx Bradley—was guiding his fleet over that part of the German Ocean which is described on the deep-sea fisherman’s chart as the Swarte, or Black Bank. The trawls were down, and the men were taking it easy—at least, as easy as was compatible with slush-covered decks, a bitter blast, and a rolling sea. If we had the power of extending and intensifying your vision, reader, so as to enable you to take the whole fleet in at one stupendous glance, and penetrate planks as if they were plate glass, we might, perhaps, convince you that in this multitude of deep-sea homes there was carried on that night a wonderful amount of vigorous action, good and bad—largely, if not chiefly bad—under very peculiar circumstances, and that there was room for improvement everywhere.

Strong and bulky and wiry men were gambling and drinking, and singing and swearing; story-telling and fighting, and skylarking and sleeping. The last may be classed appropriately under the head of action, if we take into account the sonorous doings of throats and noses. As if to render the round of human procedure complete, there was at least one man—perhaps more—praying.

Yes, Manx Bradley, the admiral, was praying. And his prayer was remarkably brief, as well as earnest. Its request was that God would send help to the souls of the men whose home was the North Sea. For upwards of thirty years Manx and a few like-minded men had persistently put up that petition. During the last few years of that time they had mingled thanksgiving with the prayer, for a gracious answer was being given. God had put it into the heart of the present Director of the Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen to inaugurate a system of evangelisation among the heretofore neglected thousands of men and boys who toil upon the North Sea from January to December. Mission or Gospel smacks were purchased, manned by Christian skippers and crews, and sent out to the various fleets, to fish with them during the week, and supply them with medicine for body and soul, with lending libraries of wholesome Christian literature, and with other elevating influences, not least among which was a floating church or meeting-house on Sundays.

But up to the time we write of, Manx Bradley had only been able to rejoice in the blessing as sent to others. It had not yet reached his own fleet, the twelve or thirteen hundred men and boys of which were still left in their original condition of semi-savagery, and exposure to the baleful influences of that pest of the North Sea—the coper.

“You see, Jacob Jones,” said the admiral to the only one of his “hands” who sympathised with him in regard to religion, “if it warn’t for the baccy, them accursed copers wouldn’t be able to keep sich a hold of us. Why, bless you, there’s many a young feller in this fleet as don’t want no grog—especially the vile, fiery stuff the copers sell ’em; but when the Dutchmen offers the baccy so cheap as 1 shilling 6 pence a pound, the boys are only too glad to go aboard and git it. Then the Dutchmen, being uncommon sly dogs, gives ’em a glass o’ their vile brandy for good-fellowship by way of, an’ that flies to their heads, an’ makes ’em want more—d’ee see? An’ so they go on till many of ’em becomes regular topers—that’s where it is, Jacob.”

“Why don’t the mission smacks sell baccy too?” asked Jacob, stamping his feet on the slushy deck to warm them, and beating his right hand on the tiller for the same purpose.

“You’re a knowing fellow,” returned the admiral, with a short laugh; “why, that’s just what they’ve bin considerin’ about at the Head Office—leastwise, so I’m told; an’ if they manage to supply the fleets wi’ baccy at 1 shilling a pound, which is 6 pence less than the Dutchmen do, they’ll soon knock the copers off the North Sea altogether. But the worst of it is that we won’t git no benefit o’ that move till a mission smack is sent to our own fleet, an’ to the half-dozen other fleets that have got none.”

At this point the state of the weather claiming his attention, the admiral went forward, and left Jacob Jones, who was a new hand in the fleet, to his meditations.

One of the smacks which drew her trawl that night over the Swarte Bank not far from the admiral was the Lively Poll—repaired, and rendered as fit for service as ever. Not far from her sailed the Cherub, and the Cormorant, and that inappropriately named Fairy, the “ironclad.”

In the little box of the Lively Poll—which out of courtesy we shall style the cabin—Jim Freeman and David Duffy were playing cards, and Stephen Lockley was smoking. Joe Stubby was drinking, smoking, and grumbling at the weather; Hawkson, a new hand shipped in place of Fred Martin, was looking on. The rest were on deck.

“What’s the use o’ grumblin’, Stub?” said Hawkson, lifting a live coal with his fingers to light his pipe.

“Don’t ‘Stub’ me,” said Stubley in an angry tone.

“Would you rather like me to stab you?” asked Hawkson, with a good-humoured glance, as he puffed at his pipe.

“I’d rather you clapped a stopper on your jaw.”

“Ah—so’s you might have all the jawin’ to yourself?” retorted Hawkson.

Whatever reply Joe Stubley meant to make was interrupted by Jim Freeman exclaiming with an oath that he had lost again, and would play no more. He flung down the cards recklessly, and David Duffy gathered them up, with the twinkling smile of a good-natured victor.

“Come, let’s have a yarn,” cried Freeman, filling his pipe, with the intention of soothing his vanquished spirit.

“Who’ll spin it?” asked Duffy, sitting down, and preparing to add to the fumes of the place. “Come, Stub, you tape it off; it’ll be better occupation than growlin’ at the poor weather, what’s never done you no harm yet though there’s no sayin’ what it may do if you go on as you’ve bin doin’, growlin’ an’ aggravatin’ it.”

“I never spin yarns,” said Stubley.

“But you tell stories sometimes, don’t you?” asked Hawkson.

“No, never.”

“Oh! that’s a story anyhow,” cried Freeman.

“Come, I’ll spin ye one,” said the skipper, in that hearty tone which had an irresistible tendency to put hearers in good humour, and sometimes even raised the growling spirit of Joe Stubley into something like amiability.

“What sort o’ yarn d’ee want, boys?” he asked, stirring the fire in the small stove that warmed the little cabin; “shall it be comical or sentimental?”

“Let’s have a true ghost story,” cried Puffy.

“No, no,” said Freeman, “a hanecdote—that’s what I’m fondest of—suthin’ short an’ sweet, as the little boy said to the stick o’ liquorice.”

“Tell us,” said Stubley, “how it was you come to be saved the night the Saucy Jane went down.”

“Ah! lads,” said Lockley, with a look and a tone of gravity, “there’s no fun in that story. It was too terrible and only by a miracle, or rather—as poor Fred Martin said at the time—by God’s mercy, I was saved.”

“Was Fred there at the time!” asked Duffy.

“Ay, an’ very near lost he was too. I thought he would never get over it.”

“Poor chap!” said Freeman; “he don’t seem to be likely to git over this arm. It’s been a long time bad now.”

“Oh, he’ll get over that,” returned Lockley; “in fact, it’s a’most quite well now, I’m told, an’ he’s pretty strong again—though the fever did pull him down a bit. It’s not that, it’s money, that’s keepin’ him from goin’ afloat again.”

“How’s that?” asked Puffy.

“This is how it was. He got a letter which axed him to call on a lawyer in Lun’on, who told him an old friend of his father had made a lot o’ tin out in Austeralia, an’ he died, an’ left some hundreds o’ pounds—I don’t know how many—to his mother.”