by John Conroy Hutcheson ________________________________________________________________ This short book tells the adventures over just one voyage to Shanghai of the hero, Allan Graham, whose father is a country vicar. Allan is obtained a place as an apprentice aboard the Silver Queen, which he joins at Wapping Docks. An Irish bosun, Tim Rooney, takes a liking to the lad and helps him learn the ropes. Hutcheson nearly always has an Irish co-hero in his books. We get a good description of how the vessel is warped out of the dock, how she makes her way down river, assisted by a steam-tug, and then down the English Channel and into the wide Atlantic Ocean. Allan begins to learn a bit about navigation and ship-handling, when the movement of the vessel in the Bay of Biscay causes him to retire with sea-sickness. A stowaway is found on board, in the forepeak. Allan finds an ally in the Chinese cook, Ching Wang. On the other hand the Portuguese steward, Pedro, hates that cook.
They round the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa), cross the Indian Ocean, and get into the Malay seas, where they notice a proa following them. After negotiating the tail end of a typhoon, they think they have escaped these possible pirates, pass through another typhoon, in which all their storm sails are blown out, yet see the pirates again. They are blown onto the Pratas shoal, aground, in which predicament the pirates attack. Ching Wang and Allan manage to get away in one of the pirates' small boats, and sail to where they can get help for the Silver Queen from a patrolling British Naval vessel, the Blazer. Rescued, eventually they get to Shanghai, where they receive their mails--it is extraordinary how the mails are always waiting for them, no matter how fast a vessel has travelled. Back home with an uneventful voyage, and that's the end of the story. The book is very helpful in teaching you the basics of reading these old nautical novels. N.H. ________________________________________________________________ AFLOAT AT LAST
"But, is there no other profession you would prefer--the law, for instance? It seems a prosperous trade enough, judging from the fact that solicitors generally appear well to do, with plenty of money-- possibly that of other people--in their possession; so, considering the matter from a worldly point of view, you might do worse, Allan, than join their ranks."
I shook my head, however, as a sign of dissent to this proposition.
"Well then, my boy," went on father in his logical way, anxious that I should clearly understand all the bearings of the case, and have the advantages and disadvantages of each calling succinctly set before me, "there is medicine now, if you dislike the study of Themis, as your gesture would imply. It is a noble profession, that of healing the sick and soothing those bodily ills which this feeble flesh of ours is heir to, both the young and old alike--an easier task, by the way, than that of ministering to `the mind diseased,' as Shakespeare has it; although, mind you, I must confess that a country physician, such as you could only hope to be, for I have not the means of buying you a London practice, has generally a hard life of it, and worse pay. However, this is beside the question; and I want to avoid biassing your decision in any way. Tell me, would you like to be a doctor--eh?"
But to this second proposal of my father as to my future career, I again signified my disapproval by shaking my head; for I did not wish to interrupt his argument by speaking until he had finished all he had to say on the subject, and I could see he had not yet quite done.
"H'm, the wise man's dictum as to speech being silvern and silence gold evidently holdeth good with the boy, albeit such discretion in youth is somewhat rare," he murmured softly to himself, as if unconsciously putting his thoughts in words, adding as he addressed me more directly: "You ought to get on in life, Allan; for `a still tongue,' says the proverb, `shows a wise head.' But now, my son, I've nearly come to the end of the trio of learned professions, without, I see, prepossessing you in favour of the two I have mentioned. You are averse to the law, and do not care about doctoring; well then, there's the church, last though by no means least--what say you to following my footsteps in that sacred calling, as your brother Tom purposes doing when he leaves Oxford after taking his degree?"
I did not say anything, but father appeared to guess my thoughts.
"Too many of the family in orders already--eh? True; still, recollect there is room enough and work enough, God knows, amid all the sin and suffering there is in the world, for you also to devote your life to the same good cause in which, my son, I, your father, and your brother have already enlisted, and you may, I trust, yet prove yourself a doughtier soldier of the cross than either of us. What say you, Allan, I repeat, to being a clergyman--the noblest profession under the sun?"
"No, father dear," I at length answered on his pausing for my reply, looking up into his kind thoughtful gray eyes, that were fixed on my face with a sort of wistful expression in them; and which always seemed to read my inmost mind, and rebuke me with their consciousness, if at any time I hesitated to tell the truth for a moment, in fear of punishment, when, as frequently happened, I chanced to be brought before him for judgment, charged with some boyish escapade or youthful folly. "I don't think I should ever be good enough to be a clergyman like you, father, however hard I might try; while, though I know I am a bad boy very often, and do lots of things that I'm sorry for afterwards, I don't believe I could ever be bad enough to make a good lawyer, if all the stories are true that they tell in the village about Mr Sharpe, the attorney at Westham."
The corners of father's mouth twitched as if he wanted to smile, but did not think it right to do so.
"You are shrewd in your opinions, Allan," he said; "but dogmatic and paradoxical in one breath, besides being too censorious in your sweeping analysis of character. I should like you to show more charity in your estimate of others. Your diffidence in respect of entering the church I can fully sympathise with, having felt the same scruples myself, and being conscious even now, after many years, of falling short of the high ideal I had originally, and have still, of one who would follow the Master; but, in your wholesale condemnation of the law and lawyers, judging on the ex uno disce omnes principle and hastily, you should remember that all solicitors need not necessarily be rogues because one of their number has a somewhat evil reputation. Sharpe is rather a black sheep according to all report; still, my son, in connection with such rumours we ought to bear in mind the comforting fact that there is a stratum of good even in the worst dispositions, which can be found by those who seek diligently for it, and do not merely try to pick out the bad. Who knows but that Sharpe may have his good points like others? But, to return to our theme--the vexed question as to which should be your occupation in life. As you have decided against the church and the law, giving me your reasons for coming to an adverse conclusion in each instance, pray, young gentleman, tell me what are your objections to the medical profession?"
"Oh, father!" I replied laughing, he spoke in so comical a way and with such a queer twinkle in his eye, "I shouldn't care at all to be only a poor country surgeon like Doctor Jollop, tramping about day and night through dirty lanes and sawing off people's sore legs, or else feeling their pulses and giving them physic; although, I think it would be good fun, father, wouldn't it, just when some of those stupid folk, who are always imagining themselves ill wanted to speak about their fancied ailments, to shut them up by saying, `Show me your tongue,' as Doctor Jollop bawls out to deaf old Molly the moment she begins to tell him of her aches and pains? I think he does it on purpose."
Father chuckled.
"Not a bad idea that," said he; "and our friend the doctor must have the credit of being the first man who ever succeeded in making a woman hold her tongue, a consummation most devoutly to be wished-for sometimes-- though I don't know what your dear mother would say if she heard me give utterance to so heretical and ungallant a doctrine in reference to the sex."
"Why, here is mother now!" I exclaimed, interrupting him in my surprise at seeing her; it being most unusual for her to leave the house at that hour in the afternoon, which was generally devoted to Nellie's music lesson, a task she always superintended. "She's coming up the garden with a letter in her hand."
"I think I know what that letter contains," said father, not a bit excited like me; "for, unless I'm much mistaken, it refers to the very subject about which we've been talking, Allan,--your going to sea."
"Does it?" I cried, pitching my cap up in the air in my enthusiasm and catching it again dexterously, shouting out the while the refrain of the old song-- "The sea, the sea, a sailor's life for me! Hurrah! Hurrah!"
Father sighed, and resumed his "quarter-deck walk," as mother termed it, backwards and forwards along the little path under the old elm-tree in front of the summer-house, with its bare branches stretched out like a giant's fingers clutching at the sky, always turning when he got up to the lilac bush and retracing his steps slowly and deliberately, as if anxious to tread in his former footprints in the very centre of the box- edged walk.
I think I can see him now: his face, which always had such a bright genial look when he smiled, and seemed to light up suddenly from within when he turned to speak to you, wearing a somewhat sad and troubled air, and a far-away thoughtful expression in his eyes that was generally there when he was having a mental wrestle with some difficulty, or trying to solve one of those intricate social problems that were being continually submitted for his consideration. And yet, at first glance, a stranger would hardly have taken him to be a clergyman; for he had on an old brown shooting-jacket very much the worse for wear, and was smoking one of those long clay pipes that are called "churchwardens," discoloured by age and the oil of tobacco, and which he had lit and let out and relit again half a dozen times at least during our talk.
"Very unorthodox," some critical people will say.
Aye, possibly so; but if these censors only knew father personally, and saw how he fulfilled his mission of visiting the fatherless and widow in their affliction, in addition to preaching the gospel and so winning souls to heaven, and how he was liked and loved by every one in the parish; perhaps they could condone his "sin of omission" in the matter of not wearing a proper clerical black coat with a stand-up collar of Oxford cut and the regulation white tie, and that of "commission" in smoking such a vulgar thing as a common clay pipe!
