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I. HURRICANE JACK

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"STOP you!" said Para Handy, looking at his watch, "and I will give you a trate; I will introduce you to the finest sailor ever sailed the seas. He's comin' aboard the vessel in a little to say good-bye to us before he joins a kind o' a boat that's bound for Valapariza. And I right or am I wrong, Dougie?"

"That's what he said himsel', at any rate," said Dougie dubiously. "But ye canna put your trust in Jeck. He meant it right enough at the time, but that wass yesterday, and Jeck hass wan o' them memories for mindin' things that's no' to be depended on--ass short and foggy ass a winter day!"

"You'll see he'll come!" said Para Handy confidently. "Jeck's a man o' his word, a perfect chentleman! Forbye, I have the lend o' his topcoat."

"Who is the consummate and accomplished mariner?" I asked, delaying my departure from the Vital Spark.

"There's only wan in all the cope and canopy o' British shippin'" said the Captain. "'John Maclachlan'in the books, but 'Hurricane Jeck' in every port from here to Callao. You have heard me speak of him? An arm like a spar and the he'rt of a child!"

"I'll assure you there iss nothing wrong wi' his arm whatever," said the mate; "it's like a davit." But he offered no comment on the heart of the illustrious seaman.

"He'll be here in a chiffy," Para Handy assured me eagerly. "It's worth your while waitin' to meet him when you have the chance. You'll find him most agreeable; no pride nor palavers about him; chust like any common sailor. A full-rigged ship tattooed on his chest, and his hat wi' a list to starboard. A night wi' Jeck iss ass good ass a college education. You never saw such nerve!"

"I'll wait a little," I said; "life offers so few opportunities for seeing the really great."

Five minutes later, and a lanky weather-beaten person with a tightly buttoned blue serge suit, a brown-paper parcel in his hand, and a very low-crowned bowler hat at an angle of forty-five, dropped on to the deck of the Vital Spark.

"Peter," he said to the Captain anxiously, without preamble, "what did ye do wi' my portmanta?"

"I never saw it, Jeck," said Para Handy. "Iss it runnin' in your mind ye lost it?"

"Not exactly lost," said Hurricane Jack, "but it's been adrift in this old town since Friday, and I'm tackin' round my friends to see if any of them's wearin' a good Crimea shirt I had in it. No reflections upon anybody, mind--that was an A1 shirt," and he looked with some suspicion at the turned-up collar of my coat.

"Nobody here hass your shirt, Jeck, I'll assure you," protested the Captain. "What kind of a portmanta wass it?"

"It was a small tin canister," said Hurricane Jack quite frankly, and, having said so, cheered up magically, unburdened his mind of his loss, and was quite affable when I was formally presented to his distinguished notice by the Captain. He had a hybrid accent, half Scotch and half American, and I flatter myself he seemed to take to me from the very first.

"Put it there!" he exclaimed fervently, thrusting out a hand in which, on my response to the invitation, he almost crushed my fingers into pulp. "I'm nothin' but an old sailor-man, but if I can do anything for anybody at any time between now and my ship sailin', say the word, sunny boys!"

I assured him there was nothing pressing that I wanted done at the moment.

"I told ye!" exclaimed the Captain triumphantly. "Always the perfect chentleman! He thinks of everything!" He beamed upon the visitor with a pride and gratification it was delightful to witness.

"We havena anything on the boat," remarked Dougie, with what, to stupid people, might seem irrelevance. Hurricane Jack, however, with marvellous intuition, knew exactly what was indicated, looked at me with some expectancy, and I had not the slightest difficulty in inducing them all to join me in a visit to the Ferry Inn.

The bright particular star of the British mercantile marine having given the toast, "A fair slant!" three minutes later, addressed himself to the disposal of the largest quantity of malt liquor I have ever seen consumed at one breath, put down the empty vessel with unnecessary ostentation, and informed all whom it might concern that it was the first to-day.

"The chentleman," said Para Handy, alluding to me, "would take it ass a special trate, Jeck, to hear some specimens of your agility."

I did my best to assume an aspect of the most eager curiosity.

"In the old clipper tred," Para Handy informed me in a stage whisper. "Wan of the very best! Namely in all the shuppin' offices! Took a barque they called the Port Jackson from Sydney to San Francisco in nine-and-thirty days. Look at the shouthers o' him!"

"If a bit of a song, now--an old come-all-ye, or a short-pull shanty like 'Missouri River,'--would be any good to the gentleman," said Hurricane Jack agreeably, "I'll do my best endeavours as soon as I've scoffed this off. Here's salute!"

Para Handy looked a little apprehensive. "What wass runnin' in my mind," said he, "wass no' so mich a song, though there's none can touch you at the singin', Jeck, but some of your diversions in foreign parts. Take your time, Jeck; whatever you like yoursel'!" He turned again to me with a glance that challenged my closest and most admiring attention for the performance about to take place, and whispered, "Stop you, and you'll hear Mr Maclachlan!"

The gifted tar was apparently reluctant to abandon the idea of a song, and rather at a loss which of the stirring incidents of his life to begin with.

"Vino," he remarked, and then, lest there should be any mistake about the word, he spelled it. "V-i-n-o, that's wine in the Dago lingo. Wherever there's land there's liquor, and down away in the Dago countries you take a wide sheer in, see, to a place like Montevidio. Montevidio's like here, see--" and he drew some lines on the counter with spilt ale; "and down about here's Bahia, and round the Horn, say just right here, there's Valaparisa. Well, as I say, you tack in to any o' them odd places, it might be for a cargo o' beef, and you're right up against the vino. That's Dago for wine, sunny boys! V-i-n-o."

"Didn't I tell ye!" exclaimed Para Handy ecstatically, looking at me. "Jeck hass been everywhere. Speaks aal their languages like a native. Yes, Jeck; go on, Jeck; you're doin' capital, Jeck!"

"Extremely interesting!" I said to the fascinating child of the sea. "Valparaiso now; it's pretty liable to earthquake, isn't it?"

"Take your time, Jeck; don't be in a hurry," said Para Handy anxiously, as if I had been a K.C. trying to trap a witness.

"Never saw the bloomin' place but it was pitchin' like a Cardiff tramp," said Hurricane Jack. "It's the vino. V-i-n-o. Silly thing, the Dago lingo; I know it fine, all the knots and splices of it, but it's the silliest lingo between Hell and Honolulu. Good enough, I guess, for them Johnny Dagoes. What this country wants is genuine British sailormen, to sail genuine British ships, and where are they? A lot o' ruddy Dutchmen! None o' the old stuff that was in the Black Ball Line wi' me; it wasn't blood we had in our veins in them days, sunny boys, but Riga balsam and good Stockholm tar."

He suddenly put his hand into a pocket, dragged out a leather bag, and poured a considerable quantity of silver coinage on the counter.

"Set her up again, sunny boy!" he said to the barman; "and don't vast' heavin' till this little pot o' money's earned."

"Always the perfect chentleman!" said Para Handy with emotion. "Money is nothing to Jeck; he will spend it like the wave of the sea." But he gathered it up and returned it, all but a shilling or two, to the leather bag, which was by force restored to its owner's pocket.

"What," I asked, "is the strangest port you have seen?"

Hurricane Jack reflected. "You wouldn't believe me, sunny boys," said he, "if I told you."

"Yes, yes, Jeck; the chentleman'll believe anything," said Para Handy.

"The rummiest port I've struck," said Hurricane Jack, "is Glasgow. The hooker I was on came into the dock last week, the first time I've been home for three years, and I goes up the quay for a tot o' rum wi' a shipmate. Jerry Sloan, that comes out o' Sligo. It wasn't twelve o'clock--"

"At night?" asked Dougie.

"Certainly! Who wants rum in the middle o' the day? I'd been so long away, perusin' up and down the South America coasts and over to Australia, I'd clean forgot the Glasgow habits, and I tell you I got a start when I found the rum-shops battened down. There wasn't even a shebeen! They tell me shebeenin's against the law in Glasgow now. They'll soon be shuttin' up the churches!

"'This is the worst place ever I scoffed!' says Jerry, and he's a lad that's been a bit about the world. Next day Jerry and me takes a slant up-town to buy a knife, and blamed if there was a cutlery shop or an ironmonger's open in the whole village!

"'The man that makes the knives in Sheffield's dead, and they're celebratin' his funeral, or this is the slowest town on the Western Hemisphere,' says Jerry.

"Next day we took another slant to buy boiled ham, and went into a shop that was full of ham, but the son-of-a-gun who kept it said he daren't sell us anything but oranges! So the both of us went back like billy-oh to the waterside and signed for Valaparisa. That's where the vino is, sunny boys, and don't you forget it! V-i-n-o."

"Capital!" said Para Handy, and, turning again to me, remarked: "It's wonderful the things you see in traivellin'. If you'll come over to the vessel now, we'll maybe get Jeck to give a stave o' 'Paddy came round.'"

But I tore myself away on the plea of urgent business.