The mate of the Vancouver

ON BOARD THE VANCOUVER.

I am going to write, not the history of my life, which, on the whole, has been as quiet as most men's, but simply the story of about a year of it, which, I think, will be almost as interesting to other folks as any yarn spun by a professional novel writer; and if I am wrong, it is because I haven't the knowledge such have of the way to tell a story. As a friend of mine, who is an artist, says, I know I can't put in the foreground properly, but if I tell the simple facts in my own way, it will be true, and anything that is really true always seems to me to have a value of its own, quite independent of what the papers call "style," which a sailor, who has never written much besides a log and a few love-letters, cannot pretend to have. That is what I think.

Our family--for somehow it seems as if I must begin at the beginning--was always given to the sea. There is a story that my great-grandfather was a pirate or buccaneer; my grandfather, I know, was in the Royal Navy, and my father commanded a China clipper when they used to make, for those days, such fast runs home with the new season's tea. Of course, with these examples before us, my brother and I took the same line, and were apprenticed as soon as our mother could make up her mind to part with her sons. Will was six years older than I, and he was second mate in the vessel in which I served my apprenticeship; but, though we were brothers, there wasn't much likeness either of body or mind between us; for Will had a failing that never troubled me, and never will; he was always fond of his glass, a thing I despise in a seaman, and especially in an officer, who has so many lives to answer for.

In 1881, when I had been out of my apprenticeship for rather more than four years, and had got to be mate by a deal of hard work--for, to tell the truth, I liked practical seamanship then much better than navigation and logarithms--I was with my brother in the Vancouver, a bark of 1100 tons register. If it hadn't been for my mother, I wouldn't have sailed with Will, but she was always afraid he would get into trouble through drink; for when he was at home and heard he was appointed to the command of this new vessel, he was carried to bed a great deal the worse for liquor. So when he offered me the chief officer's billet, mother persuaded me to take it.

"You must, Tom," she said; "for my sake, do. You can look after him, and perhaps shield him if anything happens, for I am in fear all the time when he is away, but if you were with him I should be more at ease; for you are so steady, Tom."

I wasn't so steady as she thought, I dare say, but still I didn't drink, and that was something. Anyhow, that's the reason why I went with Will, and it was through him and his drinking ways that all the trouble began that made my life a terror to me, and yet brought all the sweetness into it that a man can have, and more than many have a right to look for.

When we left Liverpool we were bound for Melbourne with a mixed cargo and emigrants; and I shouldn't like to say which was the most mixed, what we had in the hold or in the steerage, for I don't like such a human cargo; no sailor does, for they are always in the way. However, that's neither here nor there, for though Will got too much to drink every two days or so on the passage out, nothing happened then that has any concern with the story. It was only when we got to Sandridge that the yarn begins, and it began in a way that rather took me aback; for though I had always thought Will a man who didn't care much for women, or, at any rate, enough to marry one, our anchor hadn't been down an hour before a lady came off in a boat. It was Will's wife, as he explained to me in a rather shamefaced way when he introduced her, and a fine-looking woman she was--of a beautiful complexion with more red in it than most Australians have, two piercing black eyes, and a figure that would have surprised you, it was so straight and full.

She shook hands with me very firmly, and looked at me in such a way that it seemed she saw right through me.

"I am very pleased to see you, Mr. Ticehurst," she said; "I know we shall be friends, you are so like your brother."

Now, somehow, that didn't please me, for I could throw Will over the spanker boom if I wanted to; I was much the bigger man of the two; and as for strength, there was no comparison between us. Besides--however, that doesn't matter; and I answered her heartily enough, for I confess I liked her looks, though I prefer fair women.

"I am sure we shall," said I; "my brother's wife must be, if I can fix it so."

And with that I went off and left them alone, for I thought I might not be wanted there; and I knew very well I was wanted elsewhere, for Tom Mackenzie, the second Officer, was making signs for me to come on deck.

After that I saw her a good deal, for we were often together, especially when she came down once or twice and found Will the worse for liquor. The first time she was in a regular fury about it, and though she didn't say much, she looked like a woman who could do anything desperate, or even worse than that. But the next time she took it more coolly.

"Well, Tom," she said, "he was to take me to the theater, but now he can't go. What am I to do?"

"I don't know," said I, foolishly enough, as it seemed, but then I didn't want to take the hint, which I understood well enough.

"Hum!" she said sharply, looking at me straight. I believe I blushed a little at being bowled out, for I was I knew that. However, when she had made up her mind, she was not a woman to be baulked.

"Then I know, Tom, if you don't," she said; "you must take me yourself. I have the tickets. So get ready."

"But, Helen!" I said, for I really didn't like to go off with her in that way without Will's knowing.

Her eyes sparkled, and she stamped her foot.

"I insist on it! So get ready, or I'll go by myself. And how would Will like that?"

There was no good resisting her, she was too sharp for me, and I went like a lamb, doing just as she ordered me, for she was a masterful woman and accustomed to have her own way. If I did wrong I was punished for it afterward, for this was the beginning of a kind of flirtation which I swear was always innocent enough on my side, and would have been on hers too, if Will had not been a coward with the drink.

In Melbourne we got orders for San Francisco, and it was only a few days before we were ready to sail that I found out Helen was going with us. I was surprised enough any way, for I knew the owners objected to their captains having their wives on board, but I was more surprised that she was ready to come. I hope you will believe that, for it is as true as daylight. I thought at first it was all Will's doing, and he let me think so, for he didn't like me to know how much she ruled him when he was sober. However, she came on board to stay just twenty-four hours before we sailed; the very day Will went up to Melbourne to ship two men in place of two of ours who had run from the vessel.

Next morning, when we were lying in the bay, for we had hauled out from the wharf at Sandridge, a boat ran alongside just at six o'clock, and the two men came on board.

"Who are you, and where are you from?" I asked roughly, for I didn't like the look of one of them.

"These are the two hands that Captain Ticehurst shipped yesterday from a Williamstown boarding house," said the runner who was with them.

I always like to ship men from the Sailor's Home, but I couldn't help myself if Will chose to take what he could get out of a den of thieves such as I knew his place to be.

"Very well!" said I gruffly enough. "Look alive, get your dunnage forward and turn to!"

One of them was a hard-looking little Cockney, who seemed a sailor every inch, though there weren't many of them; but the other was a dark lithe man, with an evil face, who looked like some Oriental half-caste.

"Here," said I to the Cockney, "what's your name?"

"Bill Walker, sir," he answered.

"Who's the man with you? What is he?" I asked.

"Dunno, sir," said Walker, looking forward at the figure of his shipmate, who was just disappearing in the fo'c'sle; "I reckon he's some kind of a Dago, that's what he is, some kind of a Dago."

Now, a Dago in sailor's language means, as a rule, a Frenchman, Spaniard, or Greek, or anyone from southern Europe, just as a Dutchman means anyone from a Fin down to a real Hollander; so I wasn't much wiser. However, in a day or two Bill Walker came up to me and told me, in a confidential London twang, that he now believed Matthias, as he called himself, was a half-caste Malay, as I had thought at first. But I was to know him better afterward, as will be seen before I finish.

Now, it is a strange thing, and it shows how hard it is for a man not accustomed to writing, like myself, to tell a story in the proper way, that I have not said anything of the passengers who were going with us to San Francisco. I could understand it if I had been writing this down just at the time these things happened, but when I think that I have put the Malay before Elsie Fleming, even if he came into my life first, I am almost ready to laugh at my own stupidity. For Elsie was the brightest, bonniest girl I ever saw, and even now I find it hard not to let the cat out of the bag before the hour. As a matter of fact, this being the third time I have written all this over, I had to cut out pages about Elsie which did not come in their proper place. So now I shall say no more than that Elsie and her sister Fanny, and their father, took passage with us to California, as we were the only sailing vessel going that way; and old Fleming, who had been a sailor himself, fairly hated steamboats--aye, a good deal worse than I do, for I think them a curse to sailors. But when they came on board I was busy as a mate is when ready to go to sea, and though I believe I must have been blind, yet I hardly took any notice of the two sisters, more than to remark that one had hair like gold and a laugh which was as sweet as a fair wind up Channel. But I came to know her better since; though in a way different from the Malay.

When we had got our anchor on board, and were fairly out to sea, heading for Bass's Straits, I saw her and Helen talking together, and I think it was the contrast between the two that first attracted me toward her, not much liking dark women, being dark myself. She seemed, compared with Will's wife, as fair as an angel from heaven, though the glint of her eyes, and her quick, bright ways, showed she was a woman all over. I took a fancy to her that moment, and I believe Helen saw it, when I think over what has happened since, for she frowned and bit her lip hard, until I could see a mark there. But I didn't know then what I do now, and besides, I had no time to think about such things just then, for we were hard at it getting things shipshape.

Tom Mackenzie, the second officer, and a much older man than myself--for he had been to sea for seventeen years before he took it into his head to try for his second mate's ticket--came up to me when the men were mustered aft.