Читать книгу Shifting Winds: A Tough Yarn - Robert Michael Ballantyne - Страница 10

The room to which Haco led his daughter was a small oblong one, divided off into compartments similar to those with which we are familiar in eating-houses and restaurants of the poorer class. It formed part of the Home, but was used by the general public as well as by seamen, who wished to order a meal at any time and pay for it.

Haco Barepoles, being at the time a boarder in the home, was entitled to his dinner in the general mess-room, but being bent on enjoying his meal in company with Susan, he chose to forego his rights on that occasion.

Being the hour at which a number of seamen, labourers, clerks, and others were wont to experience the truth of the great fact that nature abhors a vacuum, the room was pretty full, and a brisk demand was going on for soup, tea, coffee, rolls, and steaks, etcetera, all of which were supplied on the most moderate terms, in order to accommodate the capacities of the poorest purse.

In this temple of luxury you could get a small bowl of good soup for one penny, which, with a halfpenny roll, might form a dinner to any one whose imagination was so strong as to enable him to believe he had had enough. Any one who was the fortunate possessor of threepence, could, by doubling the order, really feel his appetite appeased. Then for those whose poverty was extreme, or appetite unusually small, a little cup of tea could be supplied for one halfpenny—and a good cup of tea too, not particularly strong, it is true, but with a fair average allowance of milk and sugar.

“Waiter,” cried Haco Barepoles in a voice that commanded instant attention.

“Yessir.”

“Soup for two, steaks an’ ’taties for ditto to foller.”

“Yessir.”

“Please, father, I would like a cup of coffee after the soup instead of a steak. I don’t feel very hungry.”

“All right, lass. Waiter, knock off one o’ the steaks an’ clap a cup o’ coffee in its place.”

“Yessir. Roll with it, Miss?”

“Of course,” said Haco.

“Butter, Miss?”

“Sartinly. An’ double allowance o’ milk an’ sugar,” replied the skipper. “S’pose you han’t got cream?”

“No sir.”

“Never mind. Look alive now, lad. Come, Susan, here’s a box with only one man in’t, we’ll— Hallo! shiver my timbers if it ain’t—no—it can’t be—Stephen Gaff, eh! or his ghost?”

“Just so,” said Stephen, laying down his knife and fork, and shaking warmly the hand which Haco stretched across the table to him; “I’m always turnin’ up now an’ again like a bad shillin’. How goes life with ’ee, Haco? you don’t seem to have multiplied the wrinkles since I last saw ye.”

“Thank ’ee, I’m pretty comf’rable. This is my darter Susan,” said Haco, observing that his friend glanced inquiringly at his fair companion—“The world always uses me much the same. I find it a roughish customer, but it finds me a jolly one, an’ not easily put out. When did I see ye last? Let me see,—two years come Christmas. Why, I’ve been wrecked three times since then, run down twice, an’ drownded at least half-a-dozen times; but by good luck they always manages to bring me round—rowsussitate me, as the doctors call it.”

“Ay, you’ve had hard times of it,” observed Gaff, finishing his last morsel of meat, and proceeding to scrape up the remains of gravy and potato with his knife; “I’ve bin wrecked myself sin’ we last met, but only once, and that warn’t long ago, just the last gale. You coasters are worse off than we are. Commend me to blue water, and plenty o’ sea-room.”

“I believe you, my boy,” responded the skipper. “There’s nothin’ like a good offing an’ a tight ship. We stand but a poor chance as we go creepin’ ’long shore in them rotten tubs, that are well named ‘Coal-Coffins.’ Why, if it comes on thick squally weather or a gale when yer dodgin’ off an’ on, the ‘Coal-Coffins’ go down by dozens. Mayhap at the first burst o’ the gale you’re hove on your beam-ends, an’ away go the masts, leavin’ ye to drift ashore or sink; or p’raps you’re sharp enough to get in sail, and have all snug, when, just as ye’re weatherin’ a headland, away goes the sheet o’ the jib, jib’s blowed to ribbons, an’ afore ye know where ye are, ‘breakers on the lee bow!’ is the cry. Another gust, an’ the rotten foretops’l’s blow’d away, carryin’ the fore-topmast by the board, which, of course, takes the jib-boom along with it, if it an’t gone before. Then it’s ‘stand by to let go the anchor.’ ‘Let go!’ ‘Ay, ay, sir.’ Down it goes, an’ the ‘Coffin’s’ brought up sharp; not a moment too soon, mayhap, for ten to one but you see an’ hear the breakers, roarin’ like mad, thirty yards or so astern. It may be good holdin’ ground, but what o’ that?—the anchor’s an old ’un, or too small; the fluke gives way, and ye’re adrift; or the cable’s too small, and can’t stand the strain, so you let go both anchors, an’ ye’d let go a dozen more if ye had ’em for dear life; but it’s o’ no use. First one an’ then the other parts; the stern is crushed in a’most afore ye can think, an’ in two minutes more, if not less, it’s all up with ye, unless there’s a lifeboat at hand.”

“Ah! pity there’s not more of ’em on the coast,” said Gaff.

“True,” rejoined Haco, “many a poor feller’s saved every year by them blessed boats, as would otherwise have gone to the bottom, an’ left widder and childer to weep for him, an’ be a burden, more or less, on the country.”

The waiter appeared at this point in the conversation with the soup, so Haco devoted himself to dinner, while Gaff ordered a plate of bread and cheese extra in order to keep him company. For some minutes they all ate in silence. Then Haco, during the interval between the courses, informed Gaff that he expected to return to the port of London in a day or two; whereupon Gaff said that he just happened to be lookin’ out for a ship goin’ there, as he had business to do in the great city, and offered to work his way. The skipper readily promised to ship him as an extra hand, if the owner chose to send the ‘Coffin’ to sea without repairs, “which,” observed Haco, “is not unlikely, for he’s a close-fisted customer.”