Hemstead's province was that of the repairs, and he had his hands full. Nothing on board but was decayed in a proportion; the lamps leaked; so did the decks; door-knobs came off in the hand, mouldings parted company with the panels, the pump declined to suck, and the defective bathroom came near to swamp the ship. Wicks insisted that all the nails were long ago consumed, and that she was only glued together by the rust. "You shouldn't make me laugh so much, Tommy," he would say. "I'm afraid I'll shake the sternpost out of her." And, as Hemstead went to and fro with his tool basket on an endless round of tinkering, Wicks lost no opportunity of chaffing him upon his duties. "If you'd turn to at sailoring or washing paint or something useful, now," he would say, "I could see the fun of it. But to be mending things that haven't no insides to them appears to me the height of foolishness." And doubtless these continual pleasantries helped to reassure the landsmen, who went to and fro unmoved, under circumstances that might have daunted Nelson.
The weather was from the outset splendid, and the wind fair and steady. The ship sailed like a witch. "This Currency Lass is a powerful old girl, and has more complaints than I would care to put a name on," the captain would say, as he pricked the chart; "but she could show her blooming heels to anything of her size in the Western Pacific." To wash decks, relieve the wheel, do the day's work after dinner on the smoking-room table, and take in kites at night,--such was the easy routine of their life. In the evening--above all, if Tommy had produced some of his civilisation--yarns and music were the rule. Amalu had a sweet Hawaiian voice; and Hemstead, a great hand upon the banjo, accompanied his own quavering tenor with effect.
There was a sense in which the little man could sing. It was great to hear him deliver _My Boy Tammie_ in Austrylian; and the words (some of the worst of the ruffian Macneil's) were hailed in his version with inextinguishable mirth.
Where hye ye been a' dye? he would ask, and answer himself:--I've been by burn and flowery brye, Meadow green an' mountain grye, Courtin' o' this young thing, Just come frye her mammie.
It was the accepted jest for all hands to greet the conclusion of this song with the simultaneous cry: "My word!" thus winging the arrow of ridicule with a feather from the singer's wing. But he had his revenge with _Home, Sweet Home,_ and _Where is my Wandering Boy To-night?_--ditties into which he threw the most intolerable pathos. It appeared he had no home, nor had ever had one, nor yet any vestige of a family, except a truculent uncle, a baker in Newcastle, N.S.W. His domestic sentiment was therefore wholly in the air, and expressed an unrealised ideal. Or perhaps, of all his experiences, this of the Currency Lass, with its kindly, playful, and tolerant society, approached it the most nearly.
It is perhaps because I know the sequel, but I can never think upon this voyage without a profound sense of pity and mystery; of the ship (once the whim of a rich blackguard) faring with her battered fineries and upon her homely errand, across the plains of ocean, and past the gorgeous scenery of dawn and sunset; and the ship's company, so strangely assembled, so Britishly chuckle-headed, filling their days with chaff in place of conversation; no human book on board with them except Hadden's Buckle, and not a creature fit either to read or to understand it; and the one mark of any civilised interest, being when Carthew filled in his spare hours with the pencil and the brush: the whole unconscious crew of them posting in the meanwhile towards so tragic a disaster.
Twenty-eight days out of Sydney, on Christmas eve, they fetched up to the entrance of the lagoon, and plied all that night outside, keeping their position by the lights of fishers on the reef and the outlines of the palms against the cloudy sky. With the break of day, the schooner was hove to, and the signal for a pilot shown. But it was plain her lights must have been observed in the darkness by the native fishermen, and word carried to the settlement, for a boat was already under weigh.
She came towards them across the lagoon under a great press of sail, lying dangerously down, so that at times, in the heavier puffs, they thought she would turn turtle; covered the distance in fine style, luffed up smartly alongside, and emitted a haggard looking white man in pyjamas.
"Good-mornin', Cap'n," said he, when he had made good his entrance. "I was taking you for a Fiji man-of-war, what with your flush decks and them spars. Well, gen'lemen all, here's wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year," he added, and lurched against a stay.
"Why, you're never the pilot?" exclaimed Wicks, studying him with a profound disfavour. "You've never taken a ship in--don't tell me!"
"Well, I should guess I have," returned the pilot. "I'm Captain Dobbs, I am; and when I take charge, the captain of that ship can go below and shave."
"But, man alive! you're drunk, man!" cried the captain.
"Drunk!" repeated Dobbs. "You can't have seen much life if you call me drunk. I'm only just beginning. Come night, I won't say; I guess I'll be properly full by then. But now I'm the soberest man in all Big Muggin."
"It won't do," retorted Wicks. "Not for Joseph, sir. I can't have you piling up my schooner."
"All right," said Dobbs, "lay and rot where you are, or take and go in and pile her up for yourself like the captain of the Leslie.
That's business, I guess; grudged me twenty dollars' pilotage, and lost twenty thousand in trade and a brand new schooner; ripped the keel right off of her, and she went down in the inside of four minutes, and lies in twenty fathom, trade and all."
"What's all this?" cried Wicks. "Trade? What vessel was this Leslie, anyhow?"
