Читать книгу Hurricane Jack of The Vital Spark - Hugh Foulis - Страница 8

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THE Vital Spark, with the labours of the day completed, dozed in her berth inside the harbour, enveloped in an atmosphere of peace and frying mackerel. From the stove-pipe rose the pale blue smoke of pine-wood: she had been loading timber. A couple of shirts were drying on a string; the Captain felt them. "Duvvle a drop o' drouth iss in it, Dougie," he remarked to the mate impatiently; "they'll no' be dry till Monday!"

"My goodness!" said the mate. "I wish I wass a shirt! I'm that dry you could use me for a blot-sheet! And there iss Jum again wi' his mackerel for the tea; the fellow has no contrivance at the cookin'--mackerel even-on since we came roond Ardlamont! Ye would think he was stockin' an aquarium. Fried mackerel iss the thirstiest fish that ever swam the sea!"

"All right, chaps!" Sunny Jim cried from the stove; "to-morrow ye'll get boiled yins!"

Dougie cast a pathetic look at the engineer.

"Issn't that the ruffian?" said he. "Many a man that caals himself a cook would put his mind into the business noo and then and think o' something else than mackerel. It iss my opinion Jum goes doon to the slips wi' a pail at night and picks them up where the fishermen threw them over the quay in the mornin'. Man, I never, never, never wass so thirsty!"

^Macphail, the engineer, who was rather bored with mackerel himself, was in a nasty humour. "It's my opeenion," he remarked, "that that's no' a mackerel thirst at a', but the thirst ye started wi' last Setturday when ye got yer pay. There's naething 'll cure it for ye, Dougie; it would tak' far mair money than ye earn, and it's worse noo that tratin's no permitted on the Clyde."

The mate was so indignant at the suggestion that trouble seemed impending, when Para Handy hurried to the restoration of a more peaceful humour with a defence of Dougie which, to subtler instincts, would have rather appeared an added insult.

"Never you mind him, Dougie!" said he; "Macphail iss aalways jibing. And he's aal wrong aalthegither; the worst man in the world can be turned from drink if his friends go aboot the thing wi' kindness. It's aal in the kindly word! That puts me in mind o' wan time yonder my old frien'. Hurricane Jeck, made a Rechabite for life o' a man in Campbeltown that up till then wass keepin' the distilleries goin' till his wife, poor body, wass near demented. It wass aal in the kindly word, and Jeck's agility.

"It wass long afore Jeck sailed on the clippers and made his reputation. Me and him and a bit o' a boy wass on the Margaret Ann, a gaabert that made money for a man in Tarbert. At that time, even, Jeck wass a perfect chentleman; his manners wass complete. To see him stavin' up the quay ye would think he wass off a steamboat, and 'twas him, I'll assure you, had the gallant eye! 'Peter,' he would say to me, and his bonnet cocked, 'I'm goin' for a perusal up the village, chust to show them the kind o' men we breed in Kinlochaline.' My Chove! he had the step!

"There wass wan time yonder, we were puttin' oot coals in Campbeltown, and a cairter wi' the bye-name o' the Twister wass a perfect he'rtbreak to us wi' drink. He couped ower the side o' the cairt the best part o' the coals we slung to him, and came back from every rake wi' another gill in him. The cargo was nearly oot, and him no' over the side o' the quay yet wi' his horse and cairt, when his wife came doon and yoked on us for leadin' her man astray.

"'Mrs MacCallum,' Jeck said to her, calm and gentle,' there iss not a man on board this boat the day hass drunk ass much ass would wet the inside o' a flute; when wass the good-man sober last?'

"'The year they took the lifeboat over the Machrihanish; he was at the cairtin' o't,' says she, and her near greetin'.

"'It iss high time he wass comin' to a conclusion wi't!' said Hurricane Jeck. 'Away you home, and I'll send your husband back to ye a dufferent character. For the next three months have in a good supply of buttermilk!'

"The woman went away. Her man came back to the boat ten meenutes efter, worse than ever. 'No more the night,' said Hurricane Jeck; 'we'll put the rest oot in the mornin',' and the Twister made a course at wance wi' his horse and cairt for the nearest public-hoose.

"Jeck and me and the boy went efter him, and found the horse tied to a ring at the mooth o' a close. The Twister wass in the next door in the public-hoose, and so wass the rest o' Campbeltown, perhaps, for the street was like a Sunday mornin'.

"'There's goin' to be a cairt amissin' here,' said Jeck, quite blithe wi' us, and made a proposeetion. We took the horse oot o' the trams and led it through the close to a washin'-green that wass at the back. We then took off the wheels o' the cairt and rolled them in beside the horse. Between us we lifted the body o' the cairt on its side and through the close wi't, too, like hey-ma-nanny, and back on the green we put on the wheels again and yoked the horse.

"'There you are!' said Jeck. 'The first time ever a cairt wass here since they built the tenement! Stop ye till ye hear what the Twister says when he finds it!'

"Oh, man! man! I tell you it wass Jeck had the agility! He wass chust sublime!

"It took nearly half an oor for the Twister to find where his cairt wass, and we gave him twenty meenutes to himsel' before we went up to the close to see what he wass doin'.

"He had a bit o' string. First he would measure the width o' the close and then the cairt, and he was greetin' sore, sore!

"'What iss't?' says Hurricane Jeck, quite kindly.

"'Issn't this the fearful calamity that's happened?' said the cairter. 'I canna get my cairt oot.'

"'What cairt?' said Hurricane Jeck, quite cool--oh, man, he was a genius!

"'What cairt but this wan,' said the Twister. 'The horse in some way that I canna fathom broucht it in, and noo I canna get it oot!'

"'Willyum,' said Jeck, and clapped his shouther, 'that's no' a horse and cairt at all; it's just imaginaation! Hoo on earth could a cairt get in here? Chust you go home like a decent lad, and stop the drinkin' or ye'll see far worse than cairts!'

"We got him home. 'Mind what I said aboot the buttermilk!' said Jeck to the Twister's wife; 'he's fairly in the horrors!' And then we went back, took doon the cairt again and through the close, and to the yaird where it belonged, and stabled the horse as nate as ninepence.

"From that day on the Twister never tasted drink. I can tell you he got the start! It wass ten years efter that before he found oot it wass railly his cairt wass up the close, and no' a hallucinaation. And by that time it wass hardly worth while to start drinkin' again."