Читать книгу Hurricane Jack of The Vital Spark - Hugh Foulis - Страница 4

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UP at the bar of the inn the crew of the Vital Spark mildly regaled themselves with munition ale which the Captain audibly surmised had been made on the premises after the last washing-day.

It seemed good enough, however, for a gang of young Glasgow Fair lads who were also in the bar, and made as much noise as if the liquor legislation of the past five years had been abandoned.

"They're only lettin' on," said Para Handy sadly. "Just play-actin'! It's no' on ale o' this dimensions that they're keepin' up the frolic. A barrel o' that wouldna rouse a song in a Templar lodge."

He cut himself a plug of thick black twist, and chewed it to remove as speedily as possible the flavour of Macalister's still undemobilised beer.

"I say, old chap," said the cheekiest of the Glasgow youths, "what do ye chew tobacco for?"

"Just to get oot the juice," said Para Handy. "Iss everybody weel aboot Barlinnie?"

The trippers came surging boisterously up to his end of the counter; there was about them an infectious jollity that slightly thawed even the saturnine Macphail.

"Is that your vessel at the quay?" said one of the strangers after a while. "She looks a bit battered. Needin' paintin' an' that--"

Para Handy sighed.

"Ye may weel say it!" he responded. "It would be droll if she wassna lookin' battered. Ye would read in the papers aboot the 'Mystery Ship'?"

"Often," said the Glasgow man.

"That's her," whispered Para Handy. "Q Boat 21--the chenuine article! The cammyflage iss off her, and her cannons iss back at Beardmore's, but if ye had seen her a year ago ye would call her the gem o' the sea. Am I right or am I wrong, Dougie?"

"Ye chust took the word oot o' my mooth," responded the mate with impressive alacrity. "The gem o' the ocean."

Macphail merely snorted.

"What was she for?" asked one of the trippers, quite impressed.

"That's just the very words I asked the Admirality when they took her over," said Para Handy, "and they wouldna tell me. 'Ye'll fin' oot soon enough," says they; 'she's the very packet we're lookin' for to play a prank on Jerry. She looks like a boat that would have agility.'

"They painted her streakum-strokum like the batters o' a book I have at home called John Bunyan's 'Holy War,' so that ye couldna make her oot a hundred yerds off if ye shut your eyes; they put a wireless instrument doon her funnel, and a couple o' nice wee guns at her stern, wi' a crate on the top o' them the same ass they were chickens, and put on board her an old frien' o' my own by the name o' Hurricane Jeck that's weel acquent wi' the ocean tred, and another chap for a gunner. The hold was packed wi' ammunition."

"Where did ye a' sleep?" asked one of the Glasgow company.

"It wassna a place to sleep in that wass botherin' us," explained the Captain; "the trouble wass to find a place to put doon the pail in when Dougie and me and Macphail and Jeck was takin' oor baths in the morning."

"Oh, Jerusalem!" exclaimed Macphail to himself, with his face in another mug of munition ale. "Baths!"

"Had ye navy uniforms?" asked one of the intensely interested strangers.

"The very latest!" Para Handy assured him. "I'll assure you they did it handsome."

"'Q 21' on the guernsey in red, red letters," added Dougie. "Tasty!"

"Every man a telescope and a heavily mounted blue pea-jacket," added Macphail, with an ironic humour that went over the heads of the audience.

"But whit was the mystery bit?" inquired an impatient listener. "Did ye sink onything?"

"Did we sink onything?" repeated Para Handy in an impressive whisper, after looking round the bar, to assure himself no person of German sympathies might be present. "When I tell you, chentlemen, that Hurricane Jeck wass the Admirality's man on board my boat, there iss no need to go into the question aboot sinkin'."

"Perhaps the gentleman never heard o' Hurricane Jeck," suggested the engineer maliciously.

"Perhaps not by that name," said Para Handy briskly, "but they would hear o' John Maclachlan, V.C., and that's the same chentleman."

"I mind o' readin' the name o' a V.C. like that in the papers," said an intelligent Glasgow man.

"There iss no more namely sailor in the Western Ocean tred," said Para Handy, "and no man livin' that did more to win the war than my old friend Jeck. Yon old fellow Tirpitz had a great respect for Jeck; he gave orders to aal the German submarines to beware of Jeck in parteecular. But, mind ye--Jeck Maclachlan iss aalways the perfect chentleman! He would sink your boat on ye the way ye would think it wass a favour."

"What sort o' lookin' chap is he?" asked a Glasgow man.

"A great big copious kind o' fellow wi' fur in his ears and the he'rt of a child," said Para Handy with fervour. "He wass on the China clippers in his time; there's not a quirk of navigation that Jeck iss not acquent wi', nor a British sailor that hass seen more life. Am I no' right, Dougie?"

"Chust exactly what I would say myself," responded the mate. "Jeck's a clinker! I never met a more soothin' man--very soothin'!"

"Puts ye in mind o' Steedman's Powders," interpolated Macphail in a confidential whisper to Macalister, the publican. "Whit is it ye put in that beer? It has a queer effect."

"Where did ye sail to?" asked one of the strangers, eager to get on with what gave promise of being a most thrilling narrative.

Para Handy shook his head, and had another glass under pressure. "If I had a bit o' a map and two or three days wi' ye," he said, "I could show ye where we sailed. But it wouldna be fair to Jeck. Ye'll mind this was the Mystery Ship, and though I wass in command of her, Jeck wass for the Admirality. Would I dare put it any clearer, Dougie?"

"Ye'll have to be caautious, Captain," said the mate anxiously. "Keep mind o' the regulations!"

"Don't get into trouble, whitever you do!" advised the engineer with a sardonic air.

Para Handy paid no heed to the engineer. He had sized up the Glasgow visitors as a most agreeable and vivacious party of fine young gentlemen whose acquaintance was well worth cultivating in the absence of more exhilarating elements in John Macalister's bar.

"Where are ye bidin'?" he asked them abruptly, and was informed that the bell-tent round the point, on the shore, was to be their residence for another week.

"Capital!" said Para Handy. "A tent's the very place for speakin' your mind; ye never ken who's aboot ye in a bar. Dougie and me'll go roond to the tent at supper-time and tell ye things aboot the Mystery Ship that'll make your blood run cold."

"Right-ho!" said the Glasgow gentlemen with one accord.

"Mind ye!" warned the Captain, "strictly between oorsel's! If the Admirality thocht that we wass blabbin' the way we won the war, there would be trouble. We're no' a bit feared for oorsel's--Dougie and me--but we must consuder Jeck. It wass me that wass in command o' Q Boat 21, but it wass Jeck that had the agility. Just to let ye ken--we would be sailin' oot each trip wi' oor life in oor hands, and comin' back wi'--"

"Caautious, Captain! Caautious!" implored Dougie, with his eye on the clock.

"Half-past two; bar's closed, gentlemen!" announced Macalister, and his guests streamed out.

"Be round at the tent at six," said one of the Glasgow fellows.

"Ye can depend on it!" the Captain assured him. "And just to show ye the kind o' man he wass, I'll bring Hurricane Jeck's photygraf."