THE EMIGRANT SHIP.

Star (Christchurch), 25 July 1893, Page 1

THE EMIGRANT SHIP.

.» [HY W. CLARK RUBBELL.J To My Yalued»Friend, Major-General Patrick Maxwell, Soldier and Scholar. Chap ier XVIII. I TAKE COMMAND. The table was prepared for breakfast. Nothing could be more seasonable as a. pioture to a sharpset man than Gouger's spread of ship's beef, preserved mutton, biscuit, cheese, and ham. Brigstock overhead called out for Joe Harding to lay aft, and " Bill," he shouted, " give an eye to the ship, matey, whilst we breakfasts." After a few minutes he came down the companion along with Joe Barding, at the same moment that Gouger entered by the cuddy door with cans of coffee and cocoa for üb. Brigstock stalked up to me, Harding close behind bim, and looking grimly, bo severe was the gravity of the fellow with the anxiety in him, he said in a low, level, preaching voice, " Well, sir, how's it to be?" „ " It's eight belle and I'll tell you," eaid I. "I accept the command of this Bhip." They both looked— Joe's sneering, whiskered face jußt behind Brigstock's long, formal, grave countenance —as though they did not believe their ears j both men then smiled, and Brigstock said, "Mr Morgan, give me your 'and." I shook handß with the man ,- J-." Harding then extended a large cold ti=t which I also Bhook. While this was doing I Baw, in the corner of my eye, the ordinarj seaman Gouger who Btopd in the cuddy door flourish his arm, and a moment after I heard some cheering and laughter in the neighbourhood of the galley. *• I'm glad indeed, and truly indeed am I glad," exclaimed Brigstock, "Eb, Joe? What a lot of messing about that little word * yea ' often saves ! Capt'n, we're here to breakfast with you this morning to talk matters over. Afterwards it's for yon to give orders as to how things are to be carried on aft." I seated myself at that part of the table where Captain Halcrow had been struck blind, Brigstock opposite where Dr Rolt had been killed, and Harding alongside of him. The movement of the Bhip' wbb gentle, the cuddy full of light, and the warm sweet wind of the sea gushed in through the open skylight with a humming Bound like the moaning of doves. We fell to, and whilst we ate and drank we discoursed thus : "I'm to carry this ship," said I, "to an island in the Pacific ? " "That's bo," exclaimed Brigstock. • ,f Have you no island of any sort in your head?" "We must hunt for what we wknt," answered Brigstock. "We shall know what we like when we ccc it," said Harding. " Did you ever chance to cast your eyes upon a chart of the North and South Pacific Ocean, Btarting from about a hundred degrees of west longitude and running on to about a hundred and thirty of east longitude ? It's all islands, Mr Brigstock, there, from the parallel of thirty degrees south to the same latitude north ; a mighty big field to pick and choose from." "Why, yes, {tutting it in tbat way, so it is," he answered, with his mouth full of preserved mutton, " but now you are in charga, sir, with a knowledge of them Beas » — I shook my head, but he went on — "and good charts aboard, there'll be no difficulty afore we're up to the Horn in settling upon a corner of that field as you rightly tarm it, to hunt over. No call to chase the whole ocean, It's climate fust. That carries 6oil and nil else we've got in our minds along with it." " Yon go ashore," said I, " with a number of women who have never in their lives, perhaps, slept unsheltered. How do yon mean to stow them till yon can build a roof for their heads ?" " That's what we mean by climate," said Harding, wiping a smear of cocoa off his sourly curled lips with the back of his hand, that was of the very colour cf the Btuff with weather and the tar-bucket. " The climate's all the roof that's needed iall a village is bnilt. What are we to be told— that poor savages with nothen on fit to be took notice of, can sleep Bound and keep their health under the stars, and hearty Englishmen all wrapped up in good clothes, an' strong aa cows, are to sicken for the want of shelter ? " "No call to talk o' shelter/ said Brigstock. " How much temporeery roofing may a man get out of a Bpare foretopsail?" "To come to the business of my command ; what's to be the discipline with regard to the emigrants ?" "It can't be bettered," exclaimed Brigstock. " I believe that, always providing the crew keep clear of the women's quarters and interfere with the girls no more than they did in Dr Rolfs time." " Then they'll interfere with, them less," exclaimed Harding with a sour nod. " Don't go and suppose, sir, that the doctor waß all eye. Our choice is our choice ; there'll be. no interference." " Trust our pardners to see to it!" said Brigstock with a grave Bmile. " I've had all night to think the matter over," said I, "and I can find nothing to stipulate for. When you leave the ship you give her up lo me and the rest is my affair. Ia that bo? " All bo," exclaimed Brigstock, with emphasis. " It's my intention to sail her to Sydney when you've landed. I shall want men to work her." " We'll pick up a crew of Kanakas a 9 we go along," said Harding. "That's possible. What put thisscheme of settling an island into your heads ?" said I, looking at Brigstock. "Well," he answered pronouncing hiß words very deliberately, " for a many year now it's been a sort of passion of mine to Btart a new conatitootion. It was never one of them rich and shining fancies which lead a man out of his plain -valk of life in chase; but things happenin' as they've done aboard this ship, all hinnocently contrived, everything fallin' out in the lawful and correct course of accidents, why, the occasion being come I grasped it, sir, and I put it to my mates aa a splendid hopportunity to free theirselves from the galling restraints of civilisation and the hardship of having to work for four and twenty hours a day in frost and wet and muck, for two pound ten and three pound ten a month. They seed it as I seed it. There waa to be no wrong-doing. We put it to certain of the femaleß. It was like giving them new hearts. They jumped with delight. Worn't it so, Joe? Didn't that there Nell Wilde of yourn cut a caper or two when you offered yourself? What was it they was to be given ? An 'usband and a 'ome apiece, a pick o' acres, nothen to do but to develop the settlement-— instead of what ? " he paused with a grimace of deep disgust. " Why instead of being menials and slaves in a new country, a-drudging in Australia as they drudged in England, grate cleanin', boot cleanin', floor sweepin', hup at cock-rise, bulleyed by a mistress a<3 mi^ht hare been a convick ! " He spoke with a slight twang in his nose and suegestpd tbe Sunday etrret corner ranter. I watched and listened to him with interest. Long as 1 had used the sea, I had cover met quite the like of such ti Eailoi* a3 thir, though I had been shipmate with some pious respectable worthy fellow?, too, in my time.

~^*Ff^^'f a ffiTnramnßiritiTii» _ -w*i « trmimf- 1 ? ■ "— * "»-™™» "Havo you ever read about Pitcairn Island ?" said I. He smiled and said, "Often; I could give you tho yarn of that there mutiny and settlement off by heart. Old Adams i 9 my model in this here scheme." " I guessed as much," said I. " You choose Adams in preference to Fletcher Christian." " Recollect what Christian was shot for," he answered. " Dyer remember the description the parties as met with them islanders gave of the settlement; how Adam's daughter, a fine handsome, girl, clothed slightly, like a female in a play, stood waiting on the top of a hill for the men-of-war people to land, and how she led 'em through groves of cocoanut and bread-fruit trees to a beautiful picturesque little village. Them's the words of the yarn, if my memory ain't astray. Ha! " he cried, fetching a deep breath, " hain't that description fetching enough for the likes of such folks as us and our pardners?" „ "The whole twelve of youthen are of one mind ? " " _y. Twelve strands all laid up into a rope of resolution. "Do they and the women realise what they surrender by living on a lonely Pacific island P" "Surrender!" cried Brigstock, whose dark eyes began to sparkle with animation. "Yes, sir. They realise that they surrender the grog-shop and the dancingroom, the Sails and Sukeys of the highway and the outports, the crimp who drugß and the owners who drown men, and the capt'n and mates in whose eyeß the sailor's /-.scoundrel dog, meant by Almighty God to be kicked and cursed and starved, too vile to be prayed for, so that he never hears a prayer ; good only as a skinful of bones, which are to be worked and bruised and chilled and starved through his ragcovered flesh, till they're only fit to be tossed overboard with a stone in.the hammock clews, and not a creature in the wide world to tell you whose child he was. Oh yes, we all know what we're a-going to surrender." I was astonished by the man's rude eloquence, and judged of its influence upon the crew by observing how it worked in Joe Harding, who, when Brigstock ceased, threw an empty pannikin at the cuddy door, and without speech fetched the table a savage whack with his fist. "But it ain't aurrenderin' only," continued Brigstock ; "we're all sick of what we mears to give up, so are our pardners. Ain't there to be never any change for a man ? Often when I look at a clock I says to myself, why are them hands always agoing round the same way ? Is time to be read only in one fashion. No sensible man can think of custom without feeling ill. We're born naked and the rest is habit. I'm for a conatitbotiori where habit shall be all nature just as the baby's all nature. Likewise, I'm for founding the religion of my constitootion upon 'Oly Writ. What's a Christian now-a-days ? Ain't he a cove that believes in everything but what's to be found in the Bible ?" " It's the samenesß that's killing," exclaimed Harding. "Every day's like a shilling, and a bad 'un at that — head one side, tail t'other ; whichever side ye tarn it — there it is ; head or tail." . "It may end in your joining of us, Mr .Morgan," said Brigafcock; "I see you're already beknown to as nice a little party as there ia aboard." . " She's a lady, the daughter of a clergyman, an intimate friend, driven by poverty into crossing the sea for bread. Her being iv the ship increases my anxiety as to the behaviour of your men." " I assure you, sir," he exclaimed, earnestly, "there's no call to be in the least uneasy." " More like t'other way about, I allow," said Harding. " It's us as wants protecting." " What's the discipline ?" I asked. "We've kep' to the doctor's lines," answered Brigstock. " The females breakfast at eight, dines at half-past twelve, and get their supper at half-past five. Mies Cobbs, the matron as she is called, is a fust rate 'and ; everything under her moves as soft and quiet as ile. She waa born to help a man to start a new conßtitootion. I fancied her the hinstant I saw her. She's my pardner in this here traverse," said he, viewing me gravely. He added, "More'n I'd got a right to expect as a plain working man, whose looks ain't perhaps quite what they wa3 twenty year ago." I held my face steady, though with difficulty. An inopportune Bmile must be a perilous thing with men so consumedly serious as those two fellows. " None of the Tew I suppose are ever allowed in the women's quarters? " " None. Not likely. All twelve of us has got the same as a wife there. Dyer think I'd rel"sh hearing of my mates cruising about in the dark below in the neighbourhood of Miss Cobbs? Every man hain't got the same tone of voice, but we can all sing out when we're hurt. What's my poison ain't going to prove meat for Joe there. You take it, Mr Morgan, that if your young pardner was ashore under her father's roof, Bhe couldn't be safer than she is here." " And perhaps not so safe," exclaimed Harding gruffly, "if you're to believe all that's told of what happens in them country vicarages. Not long afore we sailed come chap at the houße I lodged at read a piece in a paper about a parson's daughter as had been run away with by a nobleman's footman. She shammed it were his doing when they waa brought up charged with pawning the church silver. But letters was read in the Court-house a-proving beyond argeyment that both parties w&„ equally willin.' " "Well then, sir," exclaimed Brigstock making as though to leave the table, " Its understood that you take charge of the ship?" " Ay, setting those ashore who wish to leave her and then proceeding." " The course now to be headed is straight for the Horn," said he. "It's the read to the South Seas. I shall want to get at the ship's stock of provisions end fresh water." " Say the word and it's done, sir," said Brigstock. " We'll start at half-paßt nine." " There nothing to keep me here, I think, is there, Mr Brigstock ?" said Harding, who on getting a shake of the head from the other left the cuddy. "Mr Morgan," said Brigstock after looking at me for a few moments very earnestly, " you now perceive that our intentions are hinnocent an' honest." " There's nothing to find fault with. I'm not for holding that you're still bound by the articles seeing how things are, but I doubt if the lawyers would let you touch the cargo." " We'll take for our necessities only, and the value shan't exceed our wages. 'Sidep, shan't we have saved the ship for the i owners by putting you in command, and working her till Australia's almost aboard?" Then finding me silent, he said in his low level deep voice, "Mr Morgan, , in giving you this trust, ub men of course have full confidence in you." "I'll carry you to the South Pacific where it's for you to find an island, i No'hing more'a expected ?" " Hothen." " From me, I mean. From yon I shall want thi3 : the women must be as faithi fully and jealously protected as though . armed sentries were betwixt them and the I forecastle." ! "The men know my viow?, and they'll 1 lam yours," paid he. " I tell you, sir, i there's nothen to be afraid of in that • way." I gave him a n-.d, and our conversation

having ended, he went on deck, and I stepped into my cabin. (To be continued.)