Read Ebook: The Ocean Cat's Paw: The Story of a Strange Cruise by Fenn George Manville Stacey W S Walter S Illustrator

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Ebook has 3117 lines and 106987 words, and 63 pages

ibute some of the rain that was splashing down upon his sou'-wester, and grinning visibly now, he cried--

"Why, Mr Rodd, sir, you've forgot your umbrella."

"Get out!" cried Rodd good-humouredly. "But I say, Joe, how long is this rain going to last?"

"Looks as if it means to go on for months, sir, but may leave off to-night. I say, though, that's a splendid fit, sir. You do look fine! Are you comfortable in there?"

Rodd did not answer, for he was trying to pierce the streaming haze and make out whether the brig was visible.

For a few moments he could not make it out, but there it was, looking faint and strange, about a hundred yards away.

"That's the brig, isn't it, yonder?" he said at last.

"Yes, sir, that's she, and they seem to have got her fast now; but she wouldn't hurt us if she broke from her moorings, for the wind's veered a point or two, and it would take her clear away."

Rodd remained silent as he stood thinking, he did not know why, unless it was that the vessel with the tall, dimly-seen tapering spars bore a French name, and somehow--again he could not tell why, only that it seemed to him very ridiculous--the shadowy vessel associated itself with the two French officers he had encountered in the darkness of the previous night, when he heard one of them after brushing against him murmur the word "Pardon!" And he found himself thinking that if the vessel had been swept up against the schooner when her anchor was dragging, it would have been no use for her crew to cry "Pardon!" as that would not have cured the damage.

"Well, sir, what do you make of her?" cried the sailor, putting an end to the lad's musings.

"Can't see much," said Rodd, "for the rain, but she seems beautifully rigged."

"Yes, sir, and she can sail well too--for a brig--but I should set her down as being too heavily sparred, and likely to be top-heavy. If she was going along full sail, and was caught in such a squall as we had yesterday, and laid flat like the schooner, I don't believe she'd lift again. Anyhow, I shouldn't like to be aboard."

"No, it wouldn't be pleasant," said Rodd; "but I say, I can't see anything of that long gun you talked about."

"No wonder, sir. You want that there long water-glass, as you called it--that there one you showed me as you was unpacking it. Don't you remember? Like a big pipe with panes of glass in it as you said you could stick down into the sea and make out what was on the bottom. You want that now."

The man passed his hand along the brow edge of his sou'-wester to sweep away the drops, and then took a long look at the deck of the brig.

"No, sir; can't make it out now; but I see it plainly enough this morning, covered with a lashed down tarpaulin as if to hide it, and I knew at once. I can almost tell a big gun by the smell--I mean feel it like, if it's there."

"But do you still think she's a privateer?"

"Well, I don't say she is, sir, for that's a thing you can't tell for sartain unless you see a ship's papers; but she is something of that kind, I should say, and--Ay, ay, sir!--There's the skipper hailed me, sir. I say, Mr Rodd, sir, do mind you don't get wet!"

This was as the man rolled away sailor fashion, and emitting a crackling whishing sound as he made for the vessel's bows, where he received some order from his captain which sent him to the covered-in hatchway of the forecastle, where he slowly disappeared into a kind of haze, half water, half smoke, for several of the water-bound crew had given up the chewing of their tobacco to indulge in pipes.

But Rodd was in a talkative humour, and made his way to the skipper, saluting him with--

"I say, Captain Chubb, how do you manage to do it?"

"Do what, my lad?"

"Why, say for certain what the weather's going to be."

There was a low chuckling sound such as might have been emitted by a good-humoured porpoise which had just ended one of its underwater curves, and thrust its head above the surface to take a good deep breath before it turned itself over and dived down again.

"Second natur', youngster, and that's use. Takes a long time to learn, and when you have larnt your lesson perfect as you think, you find that you don't know it a bit."

"But you did know it," said Rodd. "You said that the storm would come on again, when it was beautiful and fine yesterday evening; and here it is."

"Well, yes, my lad, if you goes on for years trying to hit something you must get a lucky shot sometimes."

"Oh yes, but there's something more than that," said Rodd. "When I have been amongst the fishermen in Plymouth, and over in Saltash, I have wondered to find how exact they were about the weather, and how whenever they wouldn't take us out fishing they were always right. They seemed to know that bad weather was coming on."

"Oh, of course," said the skipper. "Why, my lad, if you got your living by going out in your boat, don't you think the first thing you would try to learn would be to make it your living?"

"Why, of course," cried Rodd.

"Ah, you don't mean the same as I do. I mean, make it your living and not your dying."

"Oh, I see."

"You wouldn't want," continued the skipper, "to go out at times that might mean having them as you left at home standing on the shore looking out to sea for a boat as would never come back."

"No," said the boy, with something like a sigh. "I know what you mean. Ah, it has been very horrible sometimes, and all those little churchyards at the different villages about the coast with that regular `Drowned at sea' over and over and over again."

"Right, my lad. Things go wrong sometimes; but that's what makes sailors and fishermen get to learn what the moon says and the sun and the clouds, and the bit of haze that gathers sometimes off the coast means. Why, if you'd looked out yesterday afternoon when the wind went down and the glint of sunshine come out, there was a nasty dirty look in the sky. You wait a bit and keep your eyes open, and put that and that together, and as you grow up you'll find that it isn't so hard as you'd think to say what the weather is going to be to-morrow. You'll often be wrong, same as I am."

"Ah! then I shall begin at once," cried Rodd eagerly, as he looked sharply round. "Well, it can't go on pelting down like this with hail coming now and then in showers. Showers come and go."

"Right!" said the skipper, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Oh!" cried Rodd sharply.

"Hullo! Why, you don't mean to say that hurt?"

"Hurt! No," cried Rodd, shaking his head violently. "You shot a lot of cold water right up into my ear."

"Oh, that will soon dry up. Well, what do you say the weather's going to be?"

"The storm soon over, and a fine day to-morrow."

"Done?" asked the skipper.

"Oh yes; but mind, that's only a try."

"Then it's my turn now, youngster, so here goes. I say we shall have worse weather to-morrow than we have got to-day."

"Oh, it can't be!" cried Rodd.

"Well," cried the skipper, chuckling, "we shall see who's right."

"Oh, but I don't want for us to have to stop here in this French port."

"More don't I, my lad, so we think the same there. You going to stop on deck?"

"Yes, till dinner-time," cried Rodd, and just then the haze of rain out seaward opened a little, revealing the brig with its tall spars and web of rigging.

This somehow set the boy thinking about the escape from accident when they came into port, and then of the encounter ashore, and he began talking.

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