Two Sailor Lads.

A STORY OF

STIRRING ADVENTURES ON SEA AND LAND

BY

GORDON STABLES, M.D., C.M.

(Surgeon, Royal Navy),

AUTHOR OF "FOR ENGLAND, HOME, AND BEAUTY;" "IN THE DASHING DAYS OF OLD;" "ON TO THE RESCUE;" ETC. ETC.

"The story of my life, Even from my boyish days To the very moment that he bade me tell it."

NEW EDITION.

JOHN F. SHAW AND CO., LTD., Publishers, 3, PILGRIM STREET, LONDON, E.C.

CONTENTS.

CHAP.

I. "Hush! Do you Hear that Cry? What can it be?"

II. "But Looking Back, Boys, it is all Like a Dream"

III. An Aimless Life—Peace at Last

IV. Sitting up to Think—The Dignity of Labour

V. At the Fisherman's Cave—Fred's Aquarium

VI. Taking Tea inside a Whale—The strange Story of the Stranded Leviathan

VII. "Five Years Ago this very Night"

VIII. Pleasant Surprises—Frank's Yacht—The Launch of the "Water-Baby"

IX. Playing at Being Pirates—A Storm at Sea—The Wreck

X. On the Desert Island—Toddie's Adventure on the Cliff—the Bonfire

XI. "Friends for Life"—Round the Camp Fire

XII. That Awful Night at Sea—A Ride for Precious Life

XIII. "A Strange, Strange Story," said Frank. "I Wonder how it will all End"

XIV. "Duty, Lad, Duty. Stick to it through Thick and Thin"

XV. The Good Ship "San Salvador."—A Mystery of the Southern Seas

XVI. Deakin and Co. and the Lost Brig "Resolute"

XVII. Southward Ho! to the Sea of Ice

XVIII. Señor Sarpinto

XIX. A Fairy Isle—The Lost Boat

XX. "What their Fate was to be they could not even Guess"

XXI. "A Land flowing with Cocoanut-milk and Honey"

XXII. A Terrible Apparition

XXIII. A Swim for Dear Life—Pursued by Sharks

XXIV. Stingaree

XXV. "Row, Brothers, Row"—Quambo's Shark Story—Fast to a Sword-fish

XXVI. "What was the Mystery surrounding that Strange Vessel?"

XXVII. Frank gazed Aghast

XXVIII. Could he be——Dead?

XXIX. The Arrival of Savages

XXX. "There is no going Back now," Frank said

XXXI. In Cannibal Islands

XXXII. The whole Beach was lined with Yelling Savages

XXXIII. South and South sailed the good Barque

XXXIV. Fighting in Earnest

XXXV. "Would she see their Signals?"

TWO SAILOR LADS.

CHAPTER I. "HUSH! DO YOU HEAR THAT CRY? WHAT CAN IT BE?"

There is no more beautiful bay than that of Methlin on all the wild west shores of Scotland; there is no quainter or more old-fashioned little town than the fishing village that clusters around its shores, its wee little whitewashed cottages half hidden in the green of waving elders and drooping silver birch trees. Behind the village is a wealth of woodland, stretching for miles away up the valley, between hills so high that at sunrise they cast their darkling shadows far across the sea.

But our story opens at eventide. The sun has already gone down behind the waves, leaving a sky and sea of such gorgeous and startling colours—such a mad mixture of crimson, orange, purple, and grey—as never surely was seen on artist's canvas.

And not only from the water, but even from the wide expanse of wet sand, are these colours reflected.

The sea is very calm, yet the Atlantic Ocean, that swells and heaves and breaks along this coast, never falls quite asleep; and if you glance to-night across the sands at the far-receding tide, you may note long moving lines of orange, and hear the gentle boom of the breaking wavelets.

Right in the centre of this mixed mass of radiant light and colour—darkling against it, and throwing long shadows on the wet flat beach—are two figures. How tall they look! Yes; but they are but boy and girl. Even the sea-gulls that run across the sands appear gigantic birds in that painted haze. Children both they are; he but ten, and she but six.

In looking seaward there is something else one will not fail to note; namely, a long dark wall of rocks, forming the southern horn of the bay, and running straight out into the ocean a mile and more.

There are a few fishing-boats drawn up upon the beach, and this is all the view.

Young though they are, both Fred Arundel and his foster-sister Toddie must be impressed by the solemnity and beauty of the scene, for they are unusually silent, as hand in hand they come homewards across the soloured sands.

But suddenly they start, and stop and listen.

"Hush, Toddie! Did you hear that cry? What can it be?"

"Only a Tatywake, Fled."

"No, Todd, it was no Kittywake. It was no bird at all Hark! There it is again."

Yes; borne towards the beach on the evening breeze, and falling on their listening ears, comes once again a faint but plaintive cry, that anyone less a child of the ocean than Fred, might well have mistaken for the scream of some sea-bird, a gull, or tern, or skua.

Toddie clung fearfully to Fred now.

"O Fleddie," she cried, "I is so flightened. What is it? Some poor man dlowning out there all by his self. Yun home, Fled, and tell daddy. O Fleddie, yun, yun!"

"No," said Fred boldly. "Whoever it is, must be clinging to the rocks. The tide is rising fast, Todd; but the little cobble is handy, and I'll pull out and see."

"And I must come too," insisted Toddie.

"All right," said Fred. "I'll ship the tiller, and you can steer."

"Yes, I'll teer, Fled. Oh, be twick!"

Fred was quick; no boy could have been quicker; and in less than five minutes, impelled by his strong young arms, the cobble was bounding over the rising tide.

Fred had got wet to the waist in launching the boat, but he did not mind that. Something told him there was a precious life to be saved, and he could think of nothing else.

For fully half a mile straight out to the sea ran the rocks and cliffs, ending in a bold and rocky promontory nearly seven hundred feet in height.

Bight along by the rocks rowed Fred, Toddie grasping the tiller in her tiny hands, her anxious, pretty face strained with listening.

Every now and then Fred rested on his oars for a few moments to listen, and ever as he did so, rising high over the screaming of the gulls, they could hear that piteous cry for help.

Quicker and quicker now rowed Fred. He was a good oar, and was warming to his work. No extra finish was there about Fred's rowing, no feathering of oars or any such folly, but a long pull and a strong pull, dipping his blades into the water deep enough to get good purchase, but not an inch deeper, and bending well to every stroke. Right steadily too the lad rowed, so that verily there was music and rhythm 'twixt rowlock and oar.

The clouds had lost their gorgeous colours, and from a rift of blue on the eastern sky one single star looked down.

Night was coming on apace, and there was not wanting evidence that it would be a stormy one. The swell was rising high out here, the surging seas broke white against the cliff foot, and little angry catspaws were already ruffling the water.

Fred rested on his oars and listened once more.

All was still. The wandering sea-birds wheeled near and shrieked their dismal shriek, but no human sound could the children hear.

Fred himself began to get frightened now. The silence was like the silence of death, and even the voices of the birds had a ghostly ring in them. Was it all over then?

No; for even at that moment Fred's quick ear caught the sound of something moving in the water.

"Look! look!" cried Toddie. "A seal, Fled, coming this way all by his self."

Yes, there was a black head yonder, coming rapidly on towards the boat.

Fred quickly shipped his oars now, and stood by to give assistance; for he soon discovered that the black head was human, the face pale and startled-looking.

Presently the swimmer stopped, and trode water not four yards away from the boat's bow.

"Please were you co-co-coming for m-m-m-me?"

"Of course," cried Fred. "What else? Swim nearer and I'll help you up. Mind, Toddie, we don't capsize."

Toddie held the helm grimly amidships, and sat on the gunwale, and in a moment more Fred had pulled a lad apparently a year or so older than himself in over the bows.

A tallish, gentlemanly-looking boy, dressed in a dripping kilt, and with a strongly English accent.

"It's awfully go-go-good of you," he began. "Oh," he added, "you have a li-li-little la-la-lady on board. Good evening, m-m-miss. The tide was r-r-rising over the rocks, and soon would have drowned me."

Then he raised his hand as if to pull his cap off, but there was no cap there.

"I do-do-don't s-s-stutter, mind," he said, "it is only the co-co-cold."

And Toddie felt she could have cried for this handsome boy, whose teeth were chattering in his head.

"Mammy Mop will soon wa'm oo," said Toddie consolingly.

"Oh, thanks! And may I take an oar? Thanks awfully."

Before the boys had beached the boat and hauled her up the stranger had quite recovered his speech.

"I can never thank you enough," he said, "for rescuing me from what would have been a watery grave."

"Give me oo hand now," said Toddie. "We will all yun home, and oo can tell the stoly to Mammy Mop."

"But really I mustn't——," began the boy.

There was nothing else for it, however; for Fred had seized his other hand, and between Toddie and him they ran him right up the beach, along the road a little way, and through a bonnie garden, towards the door of a cottage, the light from which was streaming out into the gloom of the falling night.

Half an hour afterwards, had you peeped in through the four-paned window of the fisherman's cottage, this is what you would have seen: A bright and cheerful fire of peat and wood burning on a low hearth, a pot with a steaming and savoury stew in it hanging from a soot-blackened chain above it; in one corner, sitting in an old-fashioned high-backed chair, a tall and elderly man, with finely-chiselled features, long hair floating over his jersey, an almost wild look in his eyes, but kindness in every lineament nevertheless. This is Papa Pop, and on his knee sits Toddie, one arm round his neck, but her great wondering blue eyes fixed on the face of that handsome English-looking boy, who, to her way of thinking, seems like the prince of some fairy tale, suddenly dropped out of the clouds. In the other corner sits Fred himself, and at his feet a sonsy cat and a dachshund dog.

Standing on the floor behind this group is the fisherman's wife, tall and bony, rough, but kindly-looking withal, and in front of her, with the firelight streaming on his strangely uncouth face, is Bunko, the fool of the village.

But "fool" is too harsh a word to use; for although but half-witted, there is a deal of sense and shrewdness under that towsy mop of his. Bunko holds in one hand a rough stick or pole higher than himself. This is his rod of office; for Bunko takes all the village cows away to the hills every morning, and besides this he does all kinds of odd jobs that few save he could accomplish.

"Weel, Bunko," the fisherman's wife is saying as she crams his pocket with buttered scones, "you'll tak' the road right over the hills."

"Umphm!" says Bunko.

"And ten miles and a bittock will bring ye to the hoose o' Benshee. Knock at the door—d'ye understan'?"

"Fine that."

"And tell the laird's folk that Master Fielding is safe for the nicht at——"

Bunko strode across the floor and laid a huge red hand on the young stranger.

"Master Fielding—that's this wee blinker, isn't it noo?"

The lad laughed, and put something in Bunko's hand. Bunko looked at the coin.

"A bonnie white shillin'!" he cried. "Hurrah! Noo I tell ye, sirs, the grass winna grow aneath poor Bunko's feet till he's at Benshee-house and back again. Keelie, laddie, whaur are you?"

A wall-eyed collie dog sprang up at the summons. Bunko struck his pole once on the floor, then he and Keelie went out into the darkness, and were seen no more that night.

"I really ought to have gone with Bunko," said Frank Fielding, for that was the stranger's name. "But it doesn't matter much," he added, "only mamma will be quite pleased to hear of our adventure. Fred, you will be a hero, and Miss Toddie a heroine. For mamma is very romantic. And I'm sure, Fred, I'll never forget it. I had been fishing, sir"—he was addressing the old fisherman now—"and was overtaken by the tide. It was very dreadful with the night coming on, and the sea birds moaning and screaming around that cold grey rock, and the water rising, rising, rising. Heigho! it would soon have covered me; so you see, Miss Toddie, you saved my life."

"Well," replied little Miss Consequential, "when oo says oo players to-night, of tourse oo'll thank the dood Lord?"

"Yes, Toddie, I must," said Frank with a little sigh. Well might he sigh! Prayers in the family circle were unknown at Benshee Hall.

Frank was already strangely interested in the inmates of this little cot, and when Mammy Mop, as the children called her, handed down the great old Bible, and when this brown-faced fisherman read a portion, and afterwards prayed more earnestly and in loftier language than ever the parish minister used, Frank looked at him in reverent wonder not unmixed with awe.

Then they all sat round the fire again.

The wind had now risen and was moaning round the cot, and the rain rattled dismally against it.

Fred shuddered a little as he listened to the wind.

"I'm so glad," he said, "that we went down to-night to our aquarium, to feed the blennies, and a new pet of Toddie's that she called Tom."

"Tom has been naughty," said Toddie, "so Tom has been sent home."

"Yes, that is true," said Fred, "very naughty, and we had gone down to the rocks to put Tom away, else we never should have heard your cry."

The children's aquarium, I may tell you, was a marine one in a cave down by the sea. The cave was a shallow one in the south side of the ridge of high cliffs that ran out to sea, but far removed beyond the avaricious clutch of a rising tide unless something out of the common should occur. Bodily the sea had never risen so high as Fred's cave in his time, although in days of storm and tempest, when great green waves broke and thundered on the beach, the spray was often carried far along the face of the cliffs with force enough to drench anyone to the skin who ventured as far as the cave; once inside, however, one was safe enough. Not more than ten feet in depth or width was the cave, though more than nearly twenty feet high, and a very pleasant place to spend an hour or two in by day during the summer months. At noon the sun shone right into it, and penetrated the water of Fred's aquarium at the end. This latter was a natural basin in the rock, a kind of hollow shelf about three feet above the floor, which these children kept filled with water, and stocked with many curious

creatures, that they found upon the beach, such as shell fish, tiny medusæ, sea anemones, and little fishes of many kinds. Toddie delighted in droll, weird-looking water things, and used to shout aloud for joy when she found any new form of youthful marine monster left in a pool of the rocks when the tide went back. She never went seawards without Fred, and he carried a little hand landing-net, and whenever a fresh specimen was discovered ugly enough to commend itself to Toddie, she peremptorily ordered her chaperon to fish it out and convey it to the cave aquarium.

Things throve here very well indeed, owing perhapa to the fact that they kept the water constantly changed and carefully removed any wee creature that died. Singularly enough, however, soon after the arrival of Tom, specimens began to disappear in the most mysterious manner.

But it is time to explain who Tom was. Watching the fishermen drawing in their nets one day, in which was a goodly quantity of bonnie silver herrings, Toddie noticed one of the men pull a strange-looking fish out of the net and throw it inland to die. Toddie went straight away after it. The creature had fallen among a lot of dry seaweed, so it was none the worse, though it wriggled alarmingly when the girl lifted it up and put it in her apron. In ten minutes' time she had placed it in Fred's cave aquarium, where it rested on its side a short time, then began a tour of inspection much to Toddie's delight. A long stone-grey, light-spotted thing, with a semicircular mouth away under its chin, and a tail with one half of it much longer than the other. In fact it was that species of small shark that abounds round British coasts, called the dog-fish.

Toddie and Fred had determined to make a great pet of it, so they fed it on sand-hoppers and earthworms, and bait generally. Tom ate everything they gave him greedily enough, and seemed to look for more.

But since his arrival the other specimens began to disappear, and the pretty little sea-minnows, as Fred called them, that had been placed beside Tom to keep him company, had gone also.

On this evening when Fred and Toddie had gone to the cave they found Tom waiting expectantly.

I'm afraid Tom was a very sly fish.

"Just look at me now," he seemed to say, as he gazed at them with that slit of an eye of his, "you see before you one of the most innocent and kind-hearted trouts in all creation. To be sure my shape is rather against me, and so is my colour; but for all that I'm the most gentle and——"

It is a pity that at this very instant the last newcomer, a sea-minnow, should have darted out from under a bit of sea-weed, and sailed to the front.

All Tom's virtue and goodness were forgotten in a moment. He quivered all over from stem to stern, his very eyes appeared to flash fire. Next moment he had thrown himself on his side, the water rippled, the sea-minnow was gone at a snap.

Toddie threw up her hands and screamed. Fred stood firm.

"What do you think of that, Todd?" he said.

"Oh, Tom, Tom," cried Toddie, "you naughty dolly fish!"

"It was all a mistake I assure you," Tom seemed to say. "I opened my mouth to yawn, you know, and——"

"Fred! Fred!" said Toddie, "tatch that naughty Tom and put him in the sea."

So Tom's doom was sealed at once.

He was caught, therefore, in the landing-net, carried away to the deeper water close by the rocks, and dropped into the sea.

And that was the last Toddie saw of her "dolly-fish."

"And now," said Frank, addressing Eean, "I know you have a story to tell. Do tell it, sir, and make it as dreadful as possible."

The fisherman laughed as he looked at Frank.

"I don't think," he said, "I must tell you anything very terrible; but if I tell you a story, I promise you it shall be a true one. And a true story is better than a terrible one. Ahem!"

CHAPTER II. "BUT LOOKING BACK, BOYS, IT IS ALL LIKE A DREAM."

Was it a gleam of pleasure, or the flush from the firelight, that spread over old Eean's face as Frank Fielding made his quiet but ingenuous request, to be favoured with a story?

The fisherman smiled, and now the rugged lineaments of his face softened wonderfully. He did not answer directly, however.

Eppie, his wife, had drawn near to the circle round the fire with her great black spinning-wheel, and it was towards her that Eean turned. Surely too it was for her that smile was intended.

He stretched out his left arm, the one that was nearest to his wife, and laid his hand on her lap. There was something very touching in this simple act, and in the tender look that accompanied it. For a moment or two the birring of the spinning-wheel ceased as Eppie took her husband's hand in both of hers.

He had really asked a question, though not in words; but it was in words that Eppie replied.

"Yes, Eean, yes," she said. "What for no tell the story?"

"Our story, Eppie."

"Ay, ay, our story, Eean."

Birr—rr—rr went the spinning-wheel again; and I'm not sure there was not some moisture in Eppie's eyes as she bent once more over her work.

It was a very old-fashioned pipe of clay that Eean now lit with a morsel of burning peat, and when he got it to go he placed over the bowl the white iron lid which was attached by a tiny chain to the stalk. Then he leaned back in his chair, and for a time seemed intent only on watching the blue rings of smoke, that went curling up towards the blackened rafters of the humble cottage.

"Boys, boys," he said slowly at last, "it is a long, long time ago since my real life-story began. Thirty years and over, lads. Is that not so, Eppie?"

Birr—rr—rr! went the spinning-wheel.

"Imphm," assented Eppie.