Читать книгу Red Lion and Blue Star - John Arthur Barry - Страница 8

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The Marine Board of Port Endeavor, the capital and chief harbor of Cooksland, had for a long time turned a deaf ear to petitions presented by many shipmasters, coasting and foreign, that the Cat and Kittens reef should be either bell-buoyed or lit from a stationary vessel. The Board's contention was that, as the Point Mangrove Light, in addition to its chief duty, also threw a green ray between the bearings of S. ¾ W. and S.S.E., four cables east of the reef, such was ample warning to enable vessels to clear the dangerous Cat and her family.

Two brigs, and a coasting schooner had already come to grief on the just awash rocks. Skippers and mates had lost their certificates, and some their lives; and all the survivors swore to the absence of "the green ray." But as the Board knew it must have been there, the excuse availed nothing.

One night, however, the President of the Board himself, coming up from the south in dirty weather on the Palmetto, all at once was awakened from sleep by a nasty thumping and bumping that nearly shook him out of his bunk.

Rushing up on to the bridge in his pyjamas, he shouted to the skipper—old Jack Haynes—"What's the matter now? Where the duce have you got the ship?"

"Hard and fast on the Cat and Kittens," replied old Jack calmly. "And now where's your cussed green ray, eh?"

As a matter of fact, nothing at all was visible except a smother of white foam leaping with joyful crashings on the forepart of the little steamer, and Point Mangrove Light bearing exactly as it should have done to enable the Palmetto to clear the reef.

"But I've seen the green light myself, many a time!" exclaimed the President, as he hung on and shivered to windward, whilst the engines rattled and clattered full-speed astern for all they were worth in a vain attempt to get out of the Cat's claws.

"So've I," replied Haynes, placidly, "in clear weather. But not in a southerly smother like this. Just such another night it was that my brother Jim ran on to 'em in the Star of Judah. And you broke him for it; and told him he was no sailor because he couldn't see your cussed green ray. Now, when you get to kingdom-come and meet those other poor chaps there you'll have to admit that even Marine Boards don't know everything." And with a short laugh the old captain turned away.

But eventually, the lifeboat coming out to them, they all escaped just by the skin of their teeth, leaving the old Palmetto to be crushed to pieces by rocky fangs and claws.

And the President being, when convinced, as he was that night, on the whole a just man, not only caused the captain's certificate to be returned to him, but saw, too, that he got another ship. Still, to the end of his life he swore that old Jack Haynes had shoved his vessel on to the reef simply because the President of the Marine Board happened to be a passenger.

However, this was the little incident that caused tenders to be called for the construction, locally, of a bell-buoy. And inasmuch as all young countries like big things, this buoy was to be very big—a record buoy, in fact, carrying a bell as big as a drum.

Sam Johnson, of the Vulcan Foundry, was the man who got the contract, not because he was the lowest tenderer, but because he was the only one.

Other artificers fought shy of the business. Doubtless they could construct the buoy; but the bell bothered them. And by the terms of the contract everything was to be made within the colony. However, nothing daunted, Sam and his men and his one apprentice went to work, with the result that, in a few weeks, a huge cone of riveted sheet-iron lay in his yard. Each apex of the cone was flat. To the bottom one was bolted a great staple for the mooring chain; on the top one, hung from a cross-head supported by two uprights; an oblong-shaped fabric of Muntz-metal with, inside it, a tongue as big as a very big water-bottle. This was the bell. And if swung any way to the lightest touch, giving forth a dull boom; that Johnson swore could be heard at Flat Island Light, 20 miles down the coast.

Take one of those Australian bullock bells their owners set such store by, and which resemble in shape nothing so much as an oval-sided jug, long and narrow, and whose hollow knock can be heard a tremendous distance; then multiply it indefinitely, and you will have a faint conception of what this great bell was like. As for the buoy, it was bigger than any of its family to be seen in Portsmouth Dockyard. And there are some very big ones there.

And as it lay on its side, with its third coat of bright red paint just dry, and its gaping man-hole waiting to be hermetically sealed, the Marine Board and the harbormaster, and all the seafarers of the port, came and inspected it, and pronounced it "a good job," and congratulated its builder, and prophesied that now the Cat and Kittens should claim no more victims

Of course, there was a lightship clique who growled. But they were in a minority, and unpopular because the magic word "retrenchment" was just at that time in the air. And a lightship would be a very expensive matter. Besides, the buoy was a local article manufactured neither in Great Britain nor Germany, but in Cooksland, and probably the first, as it certainly was the biggest, in the colonies to be thus made. Therefore prior to placing it in position there assuredly must be the usual Greater-British feeding and drinking to mark the event, and show those jealous Southern States what Cooksland could do at a pinch when called upon. And the pretty daughter of the Governor of the great, grim, stone gaol, up there on the hill, was presently asked to give the buoy a name, and break a bottle of wine over its steep sides, up and down and across which rows of round-headed rivets ran like buttons on a coster's Sunday coat.

Perhaps a touch of her own peculiar environment lent itself to the suggestion as, after a moment's thought, the Governor's blushing daughter pulled the string, and in clear tones said, as the bottle smashed: "I name you the Red Warder. And may you ever keep faithful watch and ward; warning with loud voice through storm and darkness the ships to avoid the cruel rocks we put you in charge of."

Without any preparation, it was prettily said—and the cheers that greeted the little speech echoed loud and long from many a lusty throat whose owner used the sea.