The Lively Poll: A Tale of the North Sea. Robert Michael Ballantyne

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СКАЧАТЬ friends never see me except in bed. Indeed I live in bed; but you must not think I’m lazy. It’s only that my back’s bad. Come in and sit down.”

      “Well, boy,” demanded the skipper again, “were you sent here to find me?”

      “Yes, sir,” said Lumpy, with his eyes still fixed on the earnest little face of Eve. “Mister Jay sent me to say he wants to speak to you about the heel o’ the noo bowsprit.”

      “Tell him I’ll be aboard in half an hour.”

      “I didn’t know before,” said Eve, “that bowsprits have heels.”

      At this Lumpy opened his large mouth, nearly shut his small eyes, and was on the point of giving vent to a rousing laugh, when his commander half rose and seized hold of a wooden stool. The boy shut his mouth instantly, and fled into the street, where he let go the laugh which had been thus suddenly checked.

      “Well, she is a rum ’un!” he said to himself, as he rolled in a nautical fashion down to the wharf where the Lively Poll was undergoing repairs.

      “I think he’s a funny boy, that,” said Eve, as the skipper stooped to kiss her.

      “Yes, he is a funny dog. Good-bye, my pretty one.”

      “Stay,” said Eve solemnly, as she laid her delicate little hand on the huge brown fist of the fisherman; “you’ve often told me stories, Stephen; I want to tell one to you to-night. You need not sit down; it’s a very, very short one.”

      But the skipper did sit down, and listened with a look of interest and expectation as the child began—

      “There was once a great, strong, brave man, who was very kind to everybody, most of all to little children. One day he was walking near a river, when a great, fearful, ugly beast, came out of the wood, and seized the man with its terrible teeth. It was far stronger than the dear, good man, and it threw him down, and held him down, till—till it killed him.”

      She stopped, and tears filled her soft eyes at the scene she had conjured up.

      “Do you know,” she asked in a deeper tone, “what sort of awful beast it was?”

      “No; what was it?”

      “A Blue Boar,” said the child, pressing the strong hand which she detained.

      Lockley’s eyes fell for a moment before Eve’s earnest gaze, and a flush deepened the colour of his bronzed countenance. Then he sprang suddenly up and kissed Eve’s forehead.

      “Thank you, my pretty one, for your story, but it an’t just correct, for the man is not quite killed yet and, please God, he’ll escape.”

      As he spoke the door of the hut received a severe blow, as if some heavy body had fallen against it. When Isa opened it, a dirty bundle of rags and humanity rolled upon the floor. It was Eve’s mother!

      Lifting her up in his strong arms, Lockley carried her into the closet which opened off the outer room, and laid her tenderly on a mattress which lay on the floor. Then, without a word, he left the hut and went home.

      It is scarcely necessary to add that he took the longer road on that occasion, and gave a very wide berth indeed to the Blue Boar.

      Chapter Four

      Hardships on the Sea

      Fly with us now, good reader, once more out among the breeze-ruffled billows of the North Sea.

      It was blowing a fine, fresh, frosty fishing breeze from the nor’-west on a certain afternoon in December. The Admiral—Manx Bradley—was guiding his fleet over that part of the German Ocean which is described on the deep-sea fisherman’s chart as the Swarte, or Black Bank. The trawls were down, and the men were taking it easy—at least, as easy as was compatible with slush-covered decks, a bitter blast, and a rolling sea. If we had the power of extending and intensifying your vision, reader, so as to enable you to take the whole fleet in at one stupendous glance, and penetrate planks as if they were plate glass, we might, perhaps, convince you that in this multitude of deep-sea homes there was carried on that night a wonderful amount of vigorous action, good and bad—largely, if not chiefly bad—under very peculiar circumstances, and that there was room for improvement everywhere.

      Strong and bulky and wiry men were gambling and drinking, and singing and swearing; story-telling and fighting, and skylarking and sleeping. The last may be classed appropriately under the head of action, if we take into account the sonorous doings of throats and noses. As if to render the round of human procedure complete, there was at least one man—perhaps more—praying.

      Yes, Manx Bradley, the admiral, was praying. And his prayer was remarkably brief, as well as earnest. Its request was that God would send help to the souls of the men whose home was the North Sea. For upwards of thirty years Manx and a few like-minded men had persistently put up that petition. During the last few years of that time they had mingled thanksgiving with the prayer, for a gracious answer was being given. God had put it into the heart of the present Director of the Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen to inaugurate a system of evangelisation among the heretofore neglected thousands of men and boys who toil upon the North Sea from January to December. Mission or Gospel smacks were purchased, manned by Christian skippers and crews, and sent out to the various fleets, to fish with them during the week, and supply them with medicine for body and soul, with lending libraries of wholesome Christian literature, and with other elevating influences, not least among which was a floating church or meeting-house on Sundays.

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