Chapter X

PADDY'S ADVENTURE--FRED HARRIS PROVES
HIMSELF A HERO.

Though far wilder scenes and adventures must soon engage our attention, I shall linger just a little longer in the blue Levant before we sail away south and round the world. Alexandria, then, where Jack was permitted to land and enjoy himself pretty much as he pleased, he liked, probably on this very account. Our hero was certainly not allowed an unlimited amount of pocket-money, but he had enough; besides, you know, it was impossible to spend any at sea, for no card-playing for money was permitted on board the _Gurnet_.

An Egyptian offered to be his guide, and Jack accepted his services. A lithe and saucy-looking tatterdemalion he was, from his greasy skull-cap to his bare brown toes. He took Jack everywhere, and showed him all the sights. At Pompey's Pillar he met a crowd of blue-jackets not belonging to his own ship. They had flown a kite over the pillar and drawn a rope up, and several sailors went hand over hand up to the top. They danced on the top, and they drank on the top. It made Jack's head giddy to look at them, for he could not help noticing that some of them were not perfectly sober.

Presently he was horrified to see one young sailor lose his balance and topple over. What followed illustrated the presence of mind of a British tar in a way that I think has never been beaten. He was standing near Jack when the man fell.

"Haul taut above!" he shouted.

Then in the twinkling of an eye he loosened the rope below. It is no exaggeration to say that in less than two seconds he had full command of the line, and in two seconds more he had coiled a bight of it round the falling sailor.

"Now lower away from aloft!" he shouted.

The man had been caught by body and legs when about half-way down, and was now lowered easily to the ground.

He was partially insensible, but otherwise intact.

"That's the way we catches Cape pigeons," said the man who had so cleverly saved his shipmate's life.

Jack begged him to explain.

"Why, young sir," he said, "it's simple enough. Near the Cape, you know, and up the 'Bique, the birds come sailing round astern of the ship to pick up the crumbs. Well, we just tie a line to a chunk o' wood and pitches it overboard. When a bird flies near it, we loosens the line like, and a turn of the wrist entangles him; then on board he comes straight off the reel."

In a hotel in one of the beautiful squares Jack dined that day in solitary grandeur.

When he went on board again, he told his adventures to his messmates.

"I say, little 'un," said Gribble, the assistant-paymaster, "you're getting on. I thought I was a bit of a liar myself, but-- Steward, another cup o' tea."

"Well," said Jack, in a disheartened kind of way, "I don't see the value of truthfulness if one isn't to be believed."

"Bravo, Jack!" cried Dr. Reikie. "I believe you. What you have told us is doubtless true. The clever feat is scientifically possible; but, alas! to talk science to Gribble there is like throwing pearls before--"

"Before what, Mister Learned Scot?"

"Before-- Steward, another cup of tea."

The advantages of temperance are nowadays well recognized by the men themselves in the royal navy; but in those times it was nothing unusual to find the men come off in the liberty-boat "fechtin' fou," as Dr. Reikie called it--that is, to put it plain, "fighting drunk." Sometimes they had to be put in irons on account of their violence. This was not perhaps so much owing to the amount they disposed of as to the vile nature of the stuff they drank.

When Midshipman Jack was one day sent on shore with a boat's crew and some letters at Alexandria, he felt himself a very important officer indeed. He had orders also to make a call and wait for a reply, but to be off again within two hours. He got down to his boat in plenty of time, singing to himself. He sang another song, though, when he found only one man at the boat.

He lowered his brows, and demanded to know where the others were.

"Only gone up to drink the Queen's health, God bless her!" said Paddy O'Rayne.

"But I gave them strict orders not to leave the boat."

"Bhoys will be bhoys, yer honor. But if you'll stand by her head here, sorr, troth I'll bring them all in a minute."

Away went Paddy.

In an hour's time, and when Jack was almost in tears, down came two men--they were singing. Then came Paddy--he was reeling. Then two more--one with a black eye. Jack would wait no longer, but shoved off.

Three times did the stroke oar catch a crab; the third time he couldn't get up, and Paddy took his place.

In order to get alongside safely and gracefully, he made a kind of admiral's sweep, much to the amusement of Dr. Reikie and Lieutenant Sturdy, who were both on the quarter-deck.

"In bow!"

"Way enough! Oars!"

The bow stood up, boat-hook in hand.

He tried to do so very gracefully--too gracefully in fact; for in reaching out to catch on, he lost his balance. He was fished out after a time; and so Jack and his merry men got up the side.

Our young hero made his report very sadly; but Sturdy only laughed.

"I merely sent you," he said, "to give you experience. Sailors are just like babies, you know, and want a lot of watching to keep them out of mischief."

"That's true," said Reikie. "Why, I remember once when in the old gunboat _Rattler_, on the coast of Africa, having ten men down with sickness all in one day. I thought we were struck with cholera till I made inquiry, and found it was 'pine-apple ailment.' They had all been on shore at Zanzibar, and pine-apples were cheap. Well, Sturdy, would you believe, one man told me that '_sure, he'd only eaten nine!_'"

* * * * *

In two months' time the _Gurnet_ was at anchor at Constantinople. This was Jack's first visit to the capital of the Turk, but it wasn't to be his last by any means.

Just one little story here concerning Paddy O'Rayne.

Paddy was a sailor-soldier, you must know; in other words, he was a red marine. He belonged to the R.M.L.I., or Royal Marine Light Infantry. They are called infantry, not to distinguish them from cavalry--for there are no horse marines--but from the R.M.A., or Royal Marine Artillery. These red marines are really splendid fellows, and, as a rule, men of grand physique. It is said that they take up as much room on parade as the "gallant Forty-twa," though my own opinion is that the Highlanders could give them yards and beat them. Never mind, Paddy was a capital specimen; and he "did for the doctor"--that is, he was the worthy surgeon's servant, and sometimes even assisted in the sick-bay.

As regards drinking, Dr. Reikie had always considered him fairly temperate, and had never missed a drop out of his own bottle of rum, which was taken up for him once a week.

"I never saw you the worse of drink yet," said the doctor to him one day, by way of compliment.

"Indade! thin, sorr," said Paddy, "the raison is just this: I niver dhrink more than one glass at a time. Sure, sorr, me mouth wouldn't hould a dhrop more."

But, alas! during this visit to Constantinople proof was forthcoming that even Paddy was not invariably infallible.

Paddy was granted a day's leave then to go on shore and see the "unspakeable Turk." He was as natty as a new pin when he passed over the side to take his place in the liberty-boat.

But when that same boat came off with the liberty-men at night, behold Paddy was not there. Nor did he appear next day, nor till the middle of the next, when he came on board. His appearance as he came in over the side was, to say the least, sufficient to make him the cynosure of all eyes. He had nothing on at all except a pair of old blue drawers and a brass cavalry helmet. His face was fearfully disfigured. But heedless of the peals of laughter that greeted him from all hands, he marched boldly aft to where Dr. Reikie stood on the quarter-deck, saluted, and reported himself.

"It's me, sorr," he said, "and sorra a one else."

"Well, Paddy, I wouldn't have known you. Get down at once to the sick-bay, and I'll see you there."

There were three parallel scars on Paddy's face--brow, nose, and chin--thus [3 bars]. The excuse he pleaded, when asked how he managed to injure himself, was as droll as Paddy himself.

"You, see, sorr, it was like this. I was aslape on the floor as innocent as an unborn lamb, sorr, and when I awoke I found the stove had thrown itself down and the bars had burnt me face."

But he spoke as if the stove had been lying on his face for quite a long time.

Dr. Reikie forgave him.

The officers of the _Gurnet_ managed to enjoy themselves very much at Constantinople, and were everywhere well received. There were other ships here too, and so the fun was pretty general.

After leaving the Turkish capital, the _Gurnet_ returned to Alexandria and Malta and Gibraltar.

The reason was that there was then no Suez Canal, else the saucy craft would have steamed right away through into the Indian Ocean.

Round the Cape she must go therefore, but nobody minded this. The Cape of Good Hope is rather a pleasant station than otherwise; and, besides, time is of no object with a ship just newly commissioned, for throe or four years being a very long time to look forward to, no one thinks of looking.

The ship touched at Madeira, then stood straight away south--with not much easterly in it--for Ascension and St. Helena.

After many days' sailing they sighted the beautiful Canary Islands, and then the Cape de Verd Islands, getting pretty close to one which I think was St. Antonio. But they did not land, for the breeze was a spanking trade, and carried them on and on all day and all night, as if their ship had been a fairy ship and the sea around a fairy sea.

There was certainly not much in the shape of adventure, however, and not a deal to be seen; although Dr. Reikie, ever busy in the pursuit of science, found much in that deep-blue sparkling ocean to interest him: for he trailed little open gauze nets overboard, and the animalcules that he caught thus and spread out on black card-board with the aid of needles were extremely beautiful to behold. It needed good eyes to see some of the worthy medico's specimens, however. Here, for instance, were tiny transparent fishes, seemingly, all perfect and complete, yet so small they could have swum easily through the eye of a bodkin; little star-fish too, and the drollest and daftest looking shrimps you could imagine, and these were no bigger than the head of an old-fashioned pin. Under a large magnifying-glass, however, you could see even the hearts of these little fishes beating.

"Oh, isn't it wonderful!" Dr. Reikie would say; "and to think that God made them all, and every tiny blood-vessel in their bits of bodies."

One night about five bells in the first watch there was a cry of, "Man overboard."

This was quickly followed by the bos'n's pipe--"Away, lifeboat's crew."

But who was it? Everybody looked about on deck or below to see if they missed a messmate.

Rattle-rattle, rumble-tumble, how those good fellows fly on deck! Hardly a minute elapses ere the boat reaches the water on a level keel and with a dull plash. Then there are the swish of the oars, and the clunk-clunk in the rowlocks, as she speeds away astern.

The life-buoy has been lit and let go, and is burning brightly enough far away astern yonder, and as speedily as possible the ship is hove to.

For that life-buoy the men are now steadily pulling as if their own lives depended on the strength of their brawny arms, while the sub-lieutenant himself as coxswain stands tiller in hand in the stern sheets.

What a long pull it seems to be! But they reach the beacon light at last.

No soul is clinging there!

But a huge shark appears for a moment in the bright starlight, swims half-way round the buoy, and disappears with an ugly plash.

"Ah, lads," says the officer, "that tiger of the seas has had his supper. We can do no more. Stand by to ship the buoy."

This was got inboard and steadied forward in the bows, and after pulling around slowly for a short time, the lifeboat was headed once more for the now distant ship.

"Pull easy, men--pull easy."

The poor fellows were terribly pumped.

"Hark!" cried the first-class boy Harris. "Did you hear that cry, sir?"

It was the same lad who had been planked by Sturdy for skylarking in church: a bold and fearless young fellow he was.

"Hark, sir, there it is again!"

"Lie on your oars, men.--You must have 'cute ears, boy. I heard nothing."

There wasn't a sound now except the "jabble" or lapping of the water as the boat moved slowly up and down. The night was delightfully clear; the stars so bright and near it seemed as though they were not many oars' lengths overhead. The Southern Cross was particularly brilliant. No clouds in the sky except a few rock-and-tower-shaped ones low down on the western horizon, behind which the tropical lightning played intermittently.

But never a sound.

"Hark again!" cried Harris.

Yes; every one heard it now--far down to leeward.

"It is but the cry of a bird," said the officer.

"It's only a Mother Carey's chicken," said the stroke.

"Round with her, lads," cried Sub-Lieutenant Wilson. "Give way port. Off she dances. We'll soon see."

The beacon light was out, but a lantern was hung up, and away went the lifeboat. Though I say life-boat, reader, remember she was but an ordinary whaler.

After pulling for some time, they could hear the cries ahead distinctly enough.

They answered with a vigorous shout, and redoubled their efforts, for the cries were unmistakably those of a drowning man.

They ceased entirely after a time.

The good crew were in despair. They listened and listened in vain, and were just putting about, when Harris dropped his oar, to the astonishment of everybody, and sprang overboard like a flash.

In the side of a dark curling wave he had seen a white face. Next minute he was ploughing along back towards the boat with one hand, while with the other he supported the form of the drowned or drowning man.

It was the doctor himself. While hauling in his net as he sat in the dinghy that hung from the davits astern, he had somehow slued it and gone head foremost into the sea.

For a long time he gave no signs of life. But his wet clothing was speedily taken off, and he was laid on the men's coats. After fully half an hour of rubbing and rolling, he gave a sigh and opened his eyes. A little flask of brandy was held to his lips, a portion of which he managed to swallow. He speedily revived now, and by the time they got him on board he was able to tell his story. He did not swim to the life-buoy, he said, because it was watched by a demon shark that would undoubtedly have taken him down.

Next day he was able to resume his duties; but that boy Fred Harris was the hero of the ship for many a week after this strange adventure.