The Greatest Sea Adventure Novels: 30+ Maritime Novels, Pirate Tales & Seafaring Stories. R. M. Ballantyne

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      “Beautiful!” exclaimed a long-limbed, shambling fellow named Jim Scroggles, “why, that ain’t the word at all. Now, I calls it splendiferous.”

      Scroggles looked round at his comrades, as if to appeal to their judgment as to the fitness of the word, but not receiving any encouragement, he thrust down the glowing tobacco in his pipe with the end of his little finger, and reiterated the word “splendiferous” with marked emphasis.

      “Did ye ever see that word in Johnson?” inquired Gurney.

      “Who’s Johnson?” said Scroggles, contemptuously.

      “Wot, don’t ye know who Johnson is?” cried Gurney, in surprise.

      “In course I don’t; how should I?” retorted Scroggles. “There’s ever so many Johnsons in the world; which on ’em all do you mean?”

      “Why, I mean Johnson wot wrote the diksh’nary—the great lexikragofer.”

      “Oh, it’s him you mean, is it? In course I’ve knowed him ever since I wos at school.”

      A general laugh interrupted the speaker.

      “At school!” cried Nickel Sling, who approached the group at that moment with a carving knife in his hand—he seldom went anywhere without an instrument of office in his hand—“At school! Wal now, that beats creation. If ye wos, I’m sartin ye only larned to forgit all ye orter to have remembered. I’d take a bet now, ye wosn’t at school as long as I’ve been settin’ on this here windlass.”

      “Yer about right, Sling, it ’ud be unpossible for me to be as long as you anywhere, ’cause everybody knows I’m only five fut two, whereas you’re six fut four!”

      “Hear, hear!” shouted Dick Barnes—a man with a huge black beard, who the reader may perhaps remember was the first to “raise the oil.” “It’ll be long before you make another joke like that, Gurney. Come, now, give us a song, Gurney, do; there’s the cap’n’s darter standin’ by the foremast, a-waitin’ to hear ye. Give us ‘Long, long ago.’”

      “Ah! that’s it, give us a song,” cried the men. “Come, there’s a good fellow.”

      “Well, it’s so long ago since I sung that song, shipmates,” replied Gurney, “that I’ve bin and forgot it; but Tim Rokens knows it; where’s Rokens?”

      “He’s in the watch below.”

      In sea parlance, the men whose turn it is to take rest after their long watch on deck are somewhat facetiously said to belong to the “watch below.”

      “Ah! that’s a pity; so we can’t have that ’ere partickler song. But I’ll give ye another, if ye don’t object.”

      “No, no. All right; go ahead, Gurney! Is there a chorus to it?”

      “Ay, in course there is. Wot’s a song without a chorus? Wot’s plum-duff without the plums? Wot’s a ship without a ’elm? It’s my opinion, shipmates, that a song without a chorus is no better than it should be. It’s wus nor nothin’. It puts them wot listens in the blues an’ the man wot sings into the stews—an’ sarve him right. I wouldn’t, no, I wouldn’t give the fag-end o’ nothin’ mixed in bucket o’ salt water for a song without a chorus—that’s flat; so here goes.”

      Having delivered himself of these opinions in an extremely vigorous manner, and announced the fact that he was about to begin, Gurney cleared his throat and drew a number of violent puffs from his pipe in quick succession, in order to kindle that instrument into a glow which would last through the first verse and the commencement of the chorus. This he knew was sufficient, for the men, when once fairly started on the chorus, would infallibly go on to the end with or without his assistance, and would therefore afford him time for a few restorative whiffs.

      “It hain’t got no name, lads.”

      “Never mind, Gurney—all right—fire away.”

      “Oh, I once know’d a man as hadn’t got a nose,

       An’ this is how he come to hadn’t—

       One cold winter night he went and got it froze—

       By the pain he was well-nigh madden’d.

       (Chorus.) Well-nigh madden’d, By the pain he was well-nigh madden’d. “Next day it swoll up as big as my head, An’ it turn’d like a piece of putty; It kivered up his mouth, oh, yes, so it did, So he could not smoke his cutty. (Chorus.) Smoke his cutty, So he could not smoke his cutty. “Next day it grew black, and the next day blue, An’ tough as a junk of leather; (Oh! he yelled, so he did, fit to pierce ye through)— An’ then it fell off altogether! (Chorus.) Fell off altogether, An’ then it fell off altogether! “But the morial is wot you’ve now got to hear, An’ it’s good—as sure as a gun; An’ you’ll never forget it, my messmates dear, For this song it hain’t got none! (Chorus.) Hain’t got none, For this song it hain’t got none!”

      The applause that followed this song was most enthusiastic, and evidently gratifying to Gurney, who assumed a modest deprecatory air as he proceeded to light his pipe, which had been allowed to go out at the third verse, the performer having become so engrossed in his subject as to have forgotten the interlude of puffs at that point.

      “Well sung, Gurney. Who made it?” inquired Phil Briant, an Irishman, who, besides being a jack-of-all-trades and an able-bodied seaman, was at that time acting-assistant to the cook and steward, the latter—a half Spaniard and half negro, of Californian extraction—being unwell.

      “I’m bound not to tell,” replied Gurney, with a conscious air.

      “Ah, then, yer right, my boy, for it’s below the average entirely.”

      “Come, Phil, none o’ yer chaff,” cried Dick Barnes, “that song desarves somethin’ arter it. Suppose now, Phil, that you wos to go below and fetch the bread-kid.”

      “Couldn’t do it,” replied Phil, looking solemn, “on no account wotiver.”

      “Oh, nonsense, why not?”

      “’Cause its unpossible. Why, if I did, sure that surly compound o’ all sorts o’ human blood would pitch into me with the carvin’-knife.”

      “Who? Tarquin?” cried Dick Barnes, naming the steward.

      “Ay, sure enough that same—Tarquin’s his name, an it’s kuriously befittin’ the haythen, for of all the cross-grained mixtures o’ buffalo, bear, bandicoot, and crackadile I iver seed, he’s out o’ sight—”

      “Did I hear any one mention my name?” inquired the steward himself who came aft at that moment. He was a wild Spanish-like fellow, with a handsome-enough figure, and a swart countenance that might have been good-looking but for the thickish lips and nose and the bad temper that marked it. Since getting into the tropics, the sailors had modified their costumes considerably, and as each man had in some particular allowed himself a slight play of fancy, their appearance, when grouped together, was varied and picturesque. Most of them wore no shoes, and the caps of some were, to say the least, peculiar. Tarquin wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, with a conical crown, and a red silk sash СКАЧАТЬ