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New Zealand Mail, Issue 849, 8 June 1888, Page 8

songs of a qu ar ter-of-a-century ago, and are still familiar to, and enjoyed by, the present generation. Mr Russell, senior, was warmly interested in the anti-slavery cause, and iu the emigration of Englishlaborers to America, and made several professional visits to the States with his family, during one of which, his son, W. Clark Russell, was born, at Carlton House Hotel, Broadway, New York City, on February 24t'n, 1844. Shortly afterwatds the family were again in England. Young Russell was educated at Winchester, and went to sea in Duncan Dupbar’s service. For eight years he led a roving life in the mercantile marine, storing up the material which was to do him good servioe in future years. CHAPTER I. I Sail as Second Mate in tiie Saracen. I will pass by all the explanations concerning the reasons of my going to sea, as I do not desire to forfeit your kind patience by letting this story stand. Enough if I say that after I had been fairly well grounded in English, arithmetic, and the like, which plain education I have never wearied of improving by reading every thing good that came in my way, 1 was bound apprentice to a respectable man named Joshua Cox, of Whitby, and served my time in his vessel, the Laughing Susan, a brave, nimble brigantine. ' » ,i! , . We traded to Riga, Stookholm, and Baltic ports, and often to Rotterdam, where, having a quick ear, which has sometimes served me for playing on the fiddle for my mates to dance or sing to, I picked up enough of Dutch to enable me to hold my own in conversing with a Hollander, or Hans Butterbox, as these people used to be called ; that is to say, I had sufficient words at command to qualify me to follow what was said and to answer so as to be intelligible ; the easier, since uncouth as that language is, there is so much of it resembling ours iu sound that manywordsiuit might easily pass for portions of our tongue grossly and ludicrously articulated. Why I mention this will hereafter appear. When my apprenticeship term was expired, I made two voyages as second mate, and then obtained an appointment to that post in a ship named the Saracen, for a voyage to the East Indies. This was anno 1796. I was then two-and-twenty years of age, a tall, well-built young fellow of tawny hair, of the mariner’s complexion from the high suns I had sailed uuder and the hardening gales I had stared into, with dark blue eyes filled with the light of an easy and natnrally merry heart, white teeth, very regular, and a glad expression as though,-forsooth, I found something gay and to like iu all that I looked at. Indeed.it was a saying with my mother that ‘ Geft,’ (meaning Geoffrey) that ' Geff’s appearance was as though a very little joke would set the full measure of his spirits overflowing.’ .. The master of the Saracen was one Jacob Skevington, and the mate’s name Christopher Hall. We sailed from Gravesend—for with Whitby I was now done—in the month of April, 1796. We were told to look to ourselves when we should arrive in the neighborhood of the Cape of Good Hope, for it was rumored that the Dutch, with the help of the French, were likely to send a squadron to recover Cape Town, that had fallen into the hands of the British in the previous Septem. ber. However, .at the time of our lifting anchor off Gravesend, the Cape Settlement lay on the other side of the globe ; whatever danger there might be there, was too remote to cast the least faint shadow upon us ; besides, the sailor was so used to the perils of the enemy and the chase, that nothing could put an element of uneasiness into his plain, shipboard life, short of the assurance of his own or his captain’s eyes that the sail that had hauled his wind and was fast growing upon the sea-line was undeniably an enemy’s ship, heavily armed, and big enough to cannonade him into staves. So with resolved spirits, which many of us had cheered and heartened by a few farewell drams—for of all parts of the sea-faring life the saying good-bye to those we love, and whom the God of fieaven alone knows whether we shall ever clasp to our breasts again,.is The hardest —we plied the capstan with a will, raising the anchor to a chorus that fetched an echo from the river’s banks up and down the Reach; and then sheeting home our topsails, dragging up the halliards with piercing, far-sounding songs, we gathered the weight of the pleasant sunny wind into those spacious hollows, and in a few minutes had started upon our long journey. CHAPTER 11. We Meet and Speak the Lovely Nancy, • Snow, For days and days after we had cleared the Channel and entered upon those deep waters, which, off soundings sway in brilliant blue billows, sometimes paling into faint azureor weltering in dyes as purely dark as the violet, according as the mood of the sky is, nothing whatever of consequence befell. We were forty of a company. Captain Skevington was a stout but sedate sailor, who had used the sea for many years, and had confronted so many perils that there was scarce an ocean danger you could name about which he could not talk from personal experience. He was, likewise, a man of education and intelligence, with a manner about him at times not very intelligible, though his temper was always excellent and his skill as a seaman equal to every call made upon it. We carried six twelve pounders and four brass bwivels and a plentiful store of small arms and ammunition. Our ship was five years old, a good sailer, handsomely found iu all respects of sails and tackling, so that any prospect we might contemplate of falling in with privateers and such gentry troubled us little ; since with a brave ship and nimble heels, high hot hearts, English cannon and jolly British beef for the working of them, the mariner need never doubt that the Lord will own him wherever he may go and whateier he may do. We crosed the Equator in longitude thirty degrees west, then braced up to the Trade Wind that heeled us with a brisk gale in five degrees south latitude, and we skirted the sea in that great African bight ’tvvixt Cape Palmas and the Cape of Good Hope, formerly called, and very, properly, I think, the Ethiopic Ocean ; for, though to be sure it is all Atlantic Ocean, yet methinks, it is as fully entitled to a distinctive appellation as is

the Bay of Biscay, that is equally one sea with that which rolls into it. One morning in July, we being then some* what south of the latitude of the island of St. Helena, a seaman, who was on the top-sail-yard, hailed the deck, and cried out that there was a sail right ahead. We waited with much expectation and some anxiety for the stranger to approach near enough to enable us to gather her character, or even her nationality ; for the experienced eye will always observe a something in the ships of the Dutch and French nations to distinguish the fl*gs they belong to. It was soon evident that she was standing directly for us, shown by the speed with which her sails rose ; but when her hull was fairly exposed, Captain SkevingtoD, after a careful examination of her, declared her to be a vessel of about one hundred tons, probably a snow—her mainmast being in one with her foremast —and so we stood on, leaving it to her to be wary if she chose. After a little the English ensign was seen to flutter at her fore-topgallant-masthead. To this signal we instantly replied by hoisting our colors ; and shortly after midday, arriving abreast of each other, we backed our topsail yard, she doing the like : and bo we lay steady upon the calm sea, and so close, that we could see the faces of her people over the rail, and hear the sound, though not the words, of the voice of the master giving his orders. It was Captain Skevington's intention th board her, as he suspeoced she was from the Indies, and capable therefore of giving us some hints concerning the Dutch, into whose waters, in a manner of speaking, we were now entering; accordingly the jolly boat was lowered and pulled away for the stranger, that proved to be the snow, ‘Lovely Nancy,' of Plymouth—name of cruel omen as I shall always deem it, though I must ever love the name of Nancy as being that of a fair-haired sister who died in her fifteenth year. • - I know not why I should have stood looking very longingly at that Plymouth ship whilst our captain was on board her ; for though to be sure we had now been at sea since April, whilst she was homeward bound, yet I was well satisfied with the Saracen and all on board. I was glad to be getting a living and earning in wages money enough to put away ; my dream being to save so much as would procure me an interest in a ship, for out of such slender beginnings have sprung many renowned merchant princes in this country. But so it was. My heart yearned for that snow as though I had a sweetheart on board. Even Mr Hall, the mate, a plain, literal, practical seaman, with as much sentiment in him as you may find in the first Dutchman you meet in the Amsterdam fish-market, even he noticed my wistful eyes, and clapping me on the back, cried out :

1 Why, Fenton, my lad, I believe you’d be glad to go home in that little waggon yonder if the captain would let ye.’ . ‘I believe I would, sir,' I replied; ‘and yet if I could, I don’t know that I would, either ’

He laughed and turned away, ridiculing what he reckoned a piece of ladylike sentiment ; and that it was no more, I daresay I was as sure as he, though I wished the depression at the devil, for it caused me to foel whilst it was on me, as though a considerable slice of my manhood had slipped away overboard.

CHAPTER 111.

The Captain and I talk op the Death Ship.

After three-quarters-of-an-hour, or thereabouts, Captain Skevington returned ; we then trimmed to our course again, and, ere long, the Plymouth snow was astern of us, rolling her spread of canvas in a saluting way that was like a flourish of farewell.

Whilst the jolly boat was being hoisted, the captain stood gazing at the snow with a very thoughtful face, and then burying his hands in his pockets, he took several turns up and down the deck with his head bowed, and his whole manner not a little grave. He presently went to the mate, aud talked with him, but it looked as though Mr Hall found little to raise concern in what the captain said, as he often smiled, and once or twice broke into a laugh that seemed to provoke a kind of remonstrance from the master, who yet aoted aB though he were but half in earnest too ; but they stood too far away for me to catch a syllabic of their talk. It was my watch below at eight o’clock that evening. I was sitting alone in the cabin, sipping a glass of rum and water, ready to go to bed when I had swallowed the dose. There was but one lamp, hanging from a midship beam, and the cabin was somewhat darksome. The general gloom was deepened by the bulkhead being of a sombre, walnut color, without any relief—such as probably would have been furnished had we carried passengers—from table-glass or silver, or such furniture. I mention these matters because they gave their complexion to the talk I am now to repeat. Presently, down into this interior, through the companion hatch comes Captain Skev* ington. I drained my glass and rose to with* draw.

‘Stop a minute, Fentonsays he ; ‘what have you been drinking there ?’ I told him. ‘Another drop can’t hurt you,’ said he ; * you have four hours to sleep it off in.’ With which he called to the boy to bring him a bottle of brandy from his cabin, lie bid me help myself whilst he lighted a pipe of tobacco, and then said : —‘ The master of the bdow we met to-day warns iis to keep a bright look-out for the Dutch. He told me that yesterday he spoke an American ship that was short of flour, and learnt from the Yankey—though how Jonathan got the news 1 don’t know that there’s a Dutch squadron making for the Cape, in charge of Admiral Lucas, and that among the ships is the Dordreoht of sixty-six guns, and two forty-gun frigates.’ ‘But should we fall in with them will they meddle with us, do you think, sir,’ said I.

* Beyond question,’ he answered. ‘Then,’ said I, ‘there is nothing for it but to keep a sharp look out. We have heels, anyway. ’ He smoked his pipe with a serious face as though not heeding me : then looking at me steadfastly, he exclaimed ;