The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (9 page)

In time, the day came for the “Lady Hannibal” to sail for home, and the skipper paced the poop in an almost tearful mood, hoping to discover the figure of Miss Jenny on the wharf, waving a good-bye. Yet in this, as you may think, he was bound to be disappointed, as was the third mate, who now realised definitely that he had no more to gain from the friendship of Master Tommy, and therefore took the first opportunity of soundly kicking the boy. The assault of the third mate resulted in his getting rather hurt; for Tommy, desperate, pulled an iron pin from the wall, and hit the third mate on the head, stunning him for a moment. Then the first mate interfered, and sent Master Tommy into the berth, to be out of the way, warning him plainly to avoid the third.

A consultation was held in the berth, among the lads, and it was agreed that, all things being taken into account, Tommy had better do his disappearing trick without delay—that very night, in fact.

It was James who saw Tommy fall overboard, and gave the warning cry, which resulted in the vessel being hove-to for something like a couple of hours, whilst the boat plied round about in circles, trying to find the boy; naturally having to return without him, to the genuine grief of the first mate, and the sorrow of the third, who would like to have kicked Tommy soundly once more before his decease. However, it could not be helped, there were still left the five others, and he expended his sorrow conscientiously upon them.

And so the “Lady Hannibal” sailed onward—minus at last that bright spirit of mischief and pluck, Tommy Dodd!

Even as it was James who saw Tommy go, it was the same shameless lad who saw Miss Jenny Dayrin come; at least, he was the one who first drew attention to the soft and persistent knocking on the coamings of the main hatch, two days after Tommy had been lost overboard. They lifted a hatch-cover, and saw the pretty face of the girl, looking up brightly at them.

“I’ve got tired of being down here,” she assured them happily, whilst the third mate nearly fell down the hatchway, in his astonishment, delight and surprise at this unexpected wonder from the gods.

News of the find was taken to the skipper, who blossomed suddenly with joy, and ran like a lad all the way to the hatch, where with his own hands he rigged a ladder to enable the dainty maid to ascend from the hold. And Tommy, thoroughly sick of the darkness, and able to have come up in a moment like any cat, had to fight down his impatience, and finally ascend in decorous fashion, with the third mate and the captain each vying with the other to give her much unnecessary assistance.

“I always meant to be a stowaway,” she explained to the group of officers who now surrounded her. She looked at the captain. “I thought I’d come in your ship,” she said sweetly. She held out a bundle. “See,” she added, “I’ve brought some clothes, and there are some more down in that nasty place. Please, Mr. Third Mate, will you get them for me?” It was obvious that Tommy was enjoying himself, and that he had not been brought up with “elder sisters” for nothing!

Later, the captain took Miss Jenny the round of the cabins, so that she might take her choice. She chose the biggest, but remarked that it smelled fusty, at which—as Tommy had intended—the captain set the steward to scrub it out thoroughly, and wash the paintwork. Then, very well satisfied, Tommy returned to the poop, and sat languidly in the captain’s deck-chair, whilst the captain and the third mate, rigged up a weather cloth to windward of him, to protect him from the wind.

Needless to say again, Tommy was enjoying himself. He enjoyed especially the efforts of the five other ’prentices to obtain surreptitious views of the poop deck. Finally, the third mate also became cognisant of these efforts, and went down on to the main deck to explain in his own fashion how unsuited they were to the manners of the “captain’s young gentlemen.”

Tommy, much trained by painful experience, had watched the departure of the third mate, and now listened keenly. Immediately afterwards, the sound of a scuffle, and a lad crying out, told him that the third mate was indulging his feet. The girl jumped from her chair, furious. Now she would reap the real reward of her position. She raced to the break of the poop, and looked down, and the skipper came quickly after her; for he, too, had heard the muffled sounds, and was perturbed by the swift action of this pretty maid, who was staring down now on to the main deck.

“Oh, you horrible, brutal man!” the skipper heard her say, in clear-cut, passionate tones of scorn, that could be heard fore and aft. “Fancy a great, ugly coward like you kicking a boy! I couldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it.” She turned to the skipper. “Captain,” she said, tensely, and looking very pale and likable, for Tommy was truly shaken with anger, “Captain, do you allow this sort of thing?” And the skipper, who had before now, as you know, been forced to interfere between the third and his victim, though hard himself of heart, found himself, in the position of the “paternal and benevolent” captain, forced to speak both didactically and morally. Moreover, he, himself, was very angry that the third mate should have brought about this scene. He stooped over the rail of the break, and looked down at the sullen and half-shamed third, where he stood, still holding the lad he had been hammering, whilst a little way off, waited a group of the ’prentices, looking tense and excited.

“Let go that boy, mister!” said the skipper. “I’m ashamed of you, Mister Davies. I won’t have this sort of thing in my ship.”

The third mate stared up furiously at the skipper. He felt that his superior was being gratuitously treacherous. Never before had the skipper posed as a stickler for tenderness to the boys.

“Go to blazes!” muttered the third mate, and flung the boy he held brutally against the hatch.

“Oh, captain!” said the girl’s voice, shrill with horror and anger. And the man in the captain answered to the call; besides, he had been insulted before the girl. He came down the poop ladder in two jumps, his coat dropping on the bottom step.

“You need manners, mister,” he said; and hit the third mate hard in the neck. Curiously, the girl on the poop gave out no scream at this fresh scene of brutality. She seemed to take a personal delight and zest in each heavy blow which the captain got home on the lumbering carcase of the third. Indeed, she danced excitedly from foot to foot.

“That’s what he’s been wanting! That’s what he’s been wanting!” she breathed ecstatically to herself, as the skipper laid the third flat with a strong punch in the face. And not an onlooker but echoed the thing in his heart. The third was certainly not beloved in the “Lady Hannibal,” nor in any other ship where he had been allowed to make himself evident.

“Captain,” said Miss Jenny, when the breathless, but triumphant, skipper returned to the poop, putting on his coat. “Captain, will you shake hands. That man deserved it.” She held out her hand, and the skipper, a delighted conquering hero, grasped it, and shook warmly.

“I was afraid, Miss Jenny,” he said, “you’d think I’d been a bit hard. But he needed it. I’ve had to speak to him before,” he added virtuously.

“He certainly needed it,” said Miss Jenny. “I’m sure you would never strike a defenceless boy.” Tommy was thinking of that bucket the skipper had thrown, besides odd and sundry kicks received in person. But the skipper replied manfully:

“Never, miss.” And, somehow the young lady pardoned him the lie without contempt. He had done her heart’s desire that day, and she could forgive much.

It was the following morning that Miss Jenny learned the fate of Tommy, and returned from the ’prentices berth to the poop to play mourner to her own death. “What a dreadful thing, captain,” she said. “And I believe the poor boy was driven to it by the brutality of the third mate. I can never sit at table again with that man. I shall always feel he is a murderer!”

And the skipper was sufficiently alarmed at this view of the matter, and his own possible responsibility in the case, not to remove any of the latter from the shoulders of the third mate; but made that much-hammered young man sit down later to his meals alone. Thus did Tommy go forward along the path of virtue, leaving vengeance unto those best able to dispense it.

In the meantime, he shifted his attention to considering the case of the bo’sun, who had been somewhat over-attentive in the days of Tommy’s ’prenticeship.

Incidentally, while he was turning this matter over in his brain, he improved the condition of the ’prentices’ berth by insisting on having his tea there every evening with the watch below, to which the reluctant captain found himself forced to give consent, and to add, privately, unusual dietary luxuries to the normal bill of fare of the glory hole, so that he should not fail to stand well with his young enchanter; Certainly the skipper was not coming off scot-free in the scheme of retribution which Master Tommy Dodd had introduced. As for the steward, he groaned in his soul, or his apology for that article, for in verity the boys in the ’prentices’ berth were living almost as well as the cabin. Truly, Tommy Dodd was a great man!

One day, whilst Tommy and the skipper were pacing the poop together, the latter waxed paternal. Tommy had been speaking of the ’prentices—a common topic of his— for, when not with the captain, Miss Jenny was sure to be found in the ’prentices’ berth.

“You mustn’t let them boys be too free with you, Miss Jenny,” said the captain.

“No,” said Miss Jenny demurely.

“They’ve never—er—any of ’em tried to kiss you, or any nonsense o’ that sort?” asked the skipper, a little hesitatingly.

“Never!” said Miss Jenny emphatically, which was in every way true.

“You just tell me, Miss Jenny, if anyone ever bothers you. I’ll deal with ’em!” the captain assured her fervently. And Tommy thought he might venture to put the first spoke in the bo’sun’s wheel.

“I—I don’t like the bo’sun,” said Tommy, in a shy voice. “He looks rudely at me,” which was likely enough; for it is to be doubted whether the bo’sun had ever looked otherwise at any woman.

“I’ll settle him—quick!” said the captain, and began to walk towards the break of the poop. “The dirty scum! I beg pardon, miss; but the very idea!”

“No,” said Tommy simply, “don’t touch him, please; but I do wish you’d make him clean out that pigsty forrard. It smells horridly whenever I go past. I’ve told him once. I told him he ought to get inside and clean it properly himself, instead of making the boys. Don’t you think it’s a man’s work, captain? It needs such hard scrubbing, I should think. He was so rude when I told him.”

“Come along forrid with me, miss,” said the captain. “I’ll just have a look at that pigsty. I’ll learn him to so rude!”

The captain went forrard with the girl, and together they inspected the pigsty, Like most stys, it smelled on the “strong side”; but to the infatuated skipper this was sufficient. It smelled. He sent for the bo’sun, meaning to make the pigsty an excuse for letting off his wrath at the bo’sun because that man of tar and sin had dared even to look in the direction of his pretty companion.

“Get a bucket an’ broom, smart now,” said the skipper, harshly, when the man arrived. “Get some of the boys to fetch water along for you, an’ give that sty a proper clean out. It’s a disgrace to any ship, a foul, stinkin’ thing like this. Makes the young lady sick every time she passes it. An’ I don’t wonder!”

The bo’sun glared angrily at the girl, for whom already he had achieved a strong antipathy; but he obeyed the skipper, in silence, for the skipper was a “tough,” and notorious, at that, with his fists. When the water came, the man began to clean out the sty in the usual sailor-man fashion; that is, with buckets of salt water and a long-handled deck broom.

“Why don’t you go in, bo’sun, like you make the boys?” asked Miss Jenny, quietly.

“You stow it, miss,” said the bo’sun, nearly bursting. “You don’t understand ship work, you don’t!”

“Silence, you clod-foot” roared the skipper. “The lady’s right; you get inside, an’ do it on your hands and knees.”

The bo’sun straightened up, and Tommy, to his joy, perceived that there was going to be bad trouble. The skipper saw it in the same moment, else he had never earned his title as a bucko, and he hit the bo’sun hard and solid in the wind, then bundled him, limp and gasping, into the iron-barred sty. He shouted to a man to go aft to the steward for a padlock, and with this he secured the iron-barred door, which closed the only entrance to the sty.

“Now, my lad,” said the skipper, “I’ll learn you to be civil; you stays in there, ’long o’ the pigs, till you’ve scrubbed that sty out good on your hands and knees; an’ if you wants water, here’s water!” And he hove a dozen buckets of salt water over the cooped man.

And as Tommy went aft and ascended the poop ladder with the skipper, he heard the sounds of stifled mirth proceeding evidently from the ’prentices’ berth, and be knew that joy reigned in the glory hole, for all the ship was aware that the skipper had locked the bo’sun in the pigsty.

From now onward, so far, at least, as the ’prentices were concerned, the voyage was very pleasant, for Miss Jenny held the skipper religiously to his “paternal and benevolent” attitude towards his “young gentlemen,” whilst that same captain, though the father of a large family, grew daily more enamoured of his fair passenger. One morning, when the decks were being wet down, and Miss Jenny was paddling about gaily with bare feet in the cool water, the captain’s affections got the better of his discretion, for having gallantly offered to hold Miss Jenny’s shoes for her, whilst she sat and dried her feet, be so far forgot himself as to stoop quickly and kiss her “pretty toes,” as he termed them.