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CHAPTER I

At one of the reunions of the League of Ancient Mariners, discussion and argument ran high on the question as to whether a sailor, after retiring from the sea and living ashore for many years, ever becomes incapacitated, other than by old age or physical infirmity, from again following his business in great waters.

All those present were master mariners; and they now represented many professions and trades. Among them were lawyers, doctors, pastoralists, marine assessors, tradesmen, and merchants of every description from a chemist to a miller; from a man who had done well out of a patent window blind, to one who managed a big daily newspaper. And at one time or another they had all held command—mostly under canvas. The oldest of the company was over ninety; the average was about sixty.

Opinions seemed about equally divided on the matter, so nearly, indeed, that of the hundred present the party opposed to the sea-going theory only numbered a majority of three.

"I'd go afloat to-morrow," shouted one old veteran, broad of beam and bright of eye, "either fore or aft, as good a man as ever I was. And I'll bet I'd be able to show some of these modern sailor-men a few wrinkles in their work. And I'm sixty-five this month."

"You couldn't," roared one of the minority. "It ain't to be done. I'm only fifty-eight, but I'm too stiff to go aloft, and my sight isn't what it was; and I'm a bit hard o' hearing. I've been too long ashore. And what's more, I've got too much sense to leave it. So've you, Cap'n Burns; only you ain't game to say so."

Laughter and cheers greeted the speaker; pipes were filled, the nip freshened all round, and the argument was beginning afresh, when up rose an ancient mariner and in a thunderous voice roared for silence.

He was tall and somewhat bowed, but a fine crop of hair, which the years had only succeeded in grizzling, crowned a massive, ruddy face, clean-shaven except for a fringe of snow-white whisker that ran from ear to ear under the chin. From beneath jet black brows twinkled a pair of small, frosty blue eyes.

"I'm sixty-three," he announced; "and, as you all know, I'm reckoned worth a goodish bit of money. Well, that's neither here nor there; but I will say that running a steam laundry's a far more paying game than running the finest packet that floats the sea. Why, a pub, on a good stand, isn't to be compared with it."

Cheers and exclamations of emphatic assent met this statement. "I left the sea just twenty years ago," continued the speaker. "I was master of the Ballymena Castle, trading to Calcutta—Parsee-built old frigate she was, comfortable as a house, and quite fast enough. However, that's neither here nor there. But I'm willing to lay a level couple o' hundred pounds that me and others in this room to-night 'll go on board a ship and leave her at the end of the voyage with A.B.'s discharges and 'V.G.' on every one of 'em. Anybody like a flutter?"

Almost at once, a small, stout, baldheaded man, one of the most prominent of the oppositionists, jumped up and exclaimed, "I'll take the wager, Cap'n Lord. An' I reckon that two hundred just as good as if 'twere in my pocket this minute."

A very babel of protest and encouragement arose from the assembled League as the taker of the bet, the proprietor of a large and flourishing store in one of the suburbs of Capricorn, laughingly resumed his seat, saying to the man next to him:

"Old stupid! I don't want his money. Just did it to knock some of the conceit out of him and his lot. Only wish he would take it up in earnest. You'd see some fun then."

"Well, Cap'n Black," remarked the other dryly, as a fresh burst of cheering rang through the room, "I fancy you'll have your wish. Listen to them calling you. And I ain't so dead certain you're goin' to win either. There's some uncommonly hardy old birds among us. And don't you forget it."

* * * * * *

"Harry," remarked my mate, Phil Scott, to me one day as we leaned over the rail of the Zenobia, then lying out in the stream in Port Capricorn, "did you ever come across a ship's company of cheerful seaboys, all merry as grigs, singing and larking, and cracking jokes by and large?"

"No," I replied, "I never did. Nor has anybody else ever done so. What put the idea into your head, Phil?"

"Well," he replied, "I've just been reading a book about the sea, by a modern writer, and you'd think that the whole show is one of the funniest things imaginable. His characters are comic-opera sailors; and they don't work; all they have to do is to get in and out of impossible situations, mostly with extraordinary women."

"Well," I said, "all the merchant seamen I've come across are the dullest, heaviest crowd you can well imagine. There's not an ounce of comicality or fun to the shipload of 'em. He must indeed be a genius who could get anything of the kind out of the British sailorman."

"Umph," grunted Phil, "I like what's natural and true to life in my yarns. And when I'm asked to believe in comic-opera sailors, why, then I'm off the writer who tried to shove such stuff into me. It may go down all right with the people ashore, but those who know the life will laugh at, and not with, the man who tries to turn Jack into a buffoon."

Phil and I, after a rather exciting sort of a trip among the islands, had at last struck a calm spell in the Zenobia, an old ship of fourteen hundred tons, owned in Auckland. We had come across to Port Capricorn and loaded railway sleepers for South Africa, and just as we'd got the hatches on there came a report of a rich diggings that had broken out about three hundred miles up country. And like magic the Port of Capricorn was left empty of sailors. True, there was not much shipping in just then: and we were about the only vessel ready for sea. All the same it was awkward for the merchants.

We two Australians, accustomed to a Bush life, also to gold digging, would have cleared out with the crowd, but that we happened to know the country pretty well; had, in fact, prospected near the site of the new rush. And we were far from sure that it was not a duffer. So we stuck to the ship—the only ones to do so except her officers. Still, it was counted unto us for righteousness with the afterguard.

Weeks passed, and it seemed as if the Zenobia and her sleepers would never get any nearer to Table Mountain, when one day the captain came on board beaming—for him.

He had found a crew, a full crew. That they would only sign for the run made no difference. And they were coming on board that very evening. Then off to sea in the morning.

"Are they sailormen, sir?" I heard the mate ask in a puzzled tone.

"Of course," said the skipper rather huffily. "Think I'd ship ploughmen. Certainly," he continued, "they're rather an elderly lot. But they've got capital discharges, and I dare say they'll behave much better than younger men."

The Zenobia's topgallant fo'c'sle was a beast of a place. Athwart it ran one of the old-fashioned windlasses; a partition divided it into two compartments for the port and starboard watches respectively. Every time the anchor was hove-up the mud, or whatever the bottom might be, was thick on the fo'c'sle deck. Also, the hawse-pipes leaked and kept everything in a general condition of sloppiness. An evilsmelling slush-lamp was suspended from the ceiling, and two flaring wicks made out of cotton waste served to illumine the draughty, comfortless den.

About eight bells in the afternoon a tug came alongside crowded with men and luggage.

"Passengers!" exclaimed Phil in amazement. "I didn't know we had accommodation for so many."

"Perhaps it's the crew," I corrected. "A mighty ancient-looking lot, too. But I say, Phil, they do come aboard in style, don't they? All sober. And each one with an outfit that would last an ordinary sailorman a couple of years."

The skipper was ashore. The mate and the second, both youngsters, were on the poop gazing at the tug with puzzled faces, while a score of men, dressed pretty much alike in blue serge and hard, round, black hats, stared aloft at the towering spars of the Zenobia.

"Tug ahoy," shouted the second mate, as presently she came alongside with a grinding of fenders. "What do you want?"

"Brought your crew out," replied the skipper from his bridge.

"Oh, all right," said the mate dubiously. "But what's all that dunnage?"

"That's ours," replied a stentorian voice, to which later on we became well accustomed. "We'll have it on board in a brace of shakes."

Each man had a big chest and a bundle of rugs and bedding, and in addition a kit-bag and a leather portmanteau. There were also heavy cases at whose contents we could make no guess whatever. And, wonderful to relate, the tug hands turned to and helped with a will to get the things on board, while Phil and I from the main-hatch, and the two officers from the break of the poop, stared fascinated at a "joining ship" which so excelled anything we had ever imagined possible.

When the great pile was finally stowed on deck, the tug gave a shrill cock-a-doodle-doo in token of farewell and steamed away, while the new-comers began to carry their belongings for'ard.

"Well," remarked Phil, "don't this beat the band! Why, damn it, some of 'em are eighty if they are a day, Harry! And there's one nearer a hundred. I'll bet all the tea in China on it."

"But they're spry, Phil," I replied. "Come on, let's give 'em a hand."

"Thanks, young fellers," said the man with the big voice, as we finished distributing the things about equally on each side, "we're none of as young as we were a few years ago. Same old pigsty, I see," he continued with a look around. "Just the same as it was forty years ago. Same old tucker, too, I'll swear. Well, boys, we'll have a nip, for those who like it, and then try and get things a bit shipshape."

Bottles and tumblers appeared from somewhere in a minute, and Phil and I helped ourselves to a modest allowance of very excellent whisky. But to our surprise fully half the crowd declined the spirit. These drank ginger ale, of which there seemed to be a liberal supply.

"Fill your glasses, gentlemen, and drink to a quick trip and a merry one," said the leader, whom the others addressed as "Cap'en," and whose name we presently discovered to be Lord—a sharp-eyed, red-faced, powerfully built old chap, who, it seemed to us, had a natural air of command and authority which made him prominent among them all.

Then they started to unpack, while Phil and I, perched on our bunks, watched the process with excited interest.

"Shade of Noah!" whispered Phil presently, "they've brought combs and brushes with 'em. And there's not enough hair among the lot to make a decent wig."

But what they lacked in hair they evidently supplied in experience, for they shook down in a very short time. Beds were neatly made; oilskins of the very best make hung up; shore-going togs neatly packed away, and stout dungaree donned in their place.

"I suppose," ventured Phil to one old fellow, who was busy drawing an elastic bandage over each knee, "that it's some time since you gentlemen have seen the inside of a fo'c'sle?"

The other's eyes twinkled shrewdly as he lifted a weather-beaten and wrinkled face to where we sat, and replied:

"Let me see. It must be well on for fifty year now since I was A.B. in the old Alfred. She was thirteen hundred and fifty ton register; and we carried a crew of sixty, all told. There were five mates, three boatswains and their three mates, two carpenters, and forty-one A.B.'s. That was in the early 'forties. We came out to Sydney, and laid alongside where Circular Quay is now. I was only a youngster then. I'd been a master five-and-twenty years when I gave the sea best, and took to the land and estate business."

"Come on deck," whispered Phil to me after a pause. "I feel as if a whiff of fresh air would do me good. There are ghosts of ancient sailors all around us, Harry. The 'early 'forties,' did he say? Good Lord deliver us! And he's quite chippy yet—only a bit gone in the knees. Let's have a look in on the starboard side."

There we found matters much the same—gear stowed away, and the veterans full of beans. This portion of the amazing crowd ran more to flesh, some of them sporting quite formidable corporations. Still, old as they were, and soft as many of them undoubtedly were, there seemed a lot of vim and energy about them lacking in any crew of younger men we had ever happened upon.

One or two of the cases had been opened, and some of their contents were visible in the shape of tinned stuff of various descriptions, cheeses, hams, jams, and preserved fruits.

"You see, sons," explained a thin, cadaverous mariner with bold black eyes and a hawk-like beak projecting from a long, clean-shaven face, "we've been doin' ourselves pretty high for a good long spell now, and we don't reckon that the bill o' fare's changed much since our day. Also, our grinders ain't as sound as they were fifty year ago. All the same, we'll shake the old dug-out over to Table Bay all right. Last time I was there was in—let me see—the late 'fifties, 'bout time o' the Indian Mutiny. I was master of the Clan Alpine, taking emigrants out to Melbourne. And I recollect—"

"Now, Cap'n," interrupted Lord, "no longwinded yarns just yet a while. It's four bells, and I'm off to the galley on an exploring expedition. I saw the doctor in there when we came aboard, and I expect he'll have some hot water. We'll do the rest. You two boys can join us, if you like. I think unless the passage is going to be a long one, that we've brought enough grub along to last us out."

So we sat and partook of their meal, making one of the best we had eaten since joining the Zenobia in Auckland; for though not a badly found ship by any means, the cook was a poor artist.