"Man the bars," returned Mr. Sharpe from the quarter-deck. "Play up, fifer. Heave away."Out broke the merry fife, with a rhythmical tune, and tramp, tramp, tramp went a hundred and twenty feet round and round, and, with brawny chests pressed tight against the capstan bars, sixty fine fellows walked the ship up to her anchor, drowning the fife at intervals with their sturdy song, as pat to their feet as an echo:--Heave with a will, ye jolly boys, Heave around:
We're off from Chainee, jolly boys, Homeward bound.
"Short stay apeak, sir," roars the boatswain from forward.
"Unship the bars. Way aloft. Loose sails. Let fall."The ship being now over her anchor, and the top-sails set, the capstan bars were shipped again, the men all heaved with a will, the messenger grinned, the anchor was torn out of China with a mighty heave, and then ran up with a luff tackle and secured; the ship's head cast to port.
"Up with the jib--man the taupsle halliards--all hands make sail." Round she came slow and majestically; the sails filled, and the good ship bore away for England.
She made the Bogue forts in three or four tacks, and there she had to come to again for another chop, China being a place as hard to get into as Heaven, and to get out of as-- Chancery. At three P.M. she was at Macao, and hove to four miles from the land to take in her passengers.
A gun was fired from the forecastle. No boats came off. Sharpe began to fret; for the wind, though light, had now got to the N.W., and they were wasting it. After a while the captain came on deck, and ordered all the carronades to be scaled. The eight heavy reports bellowed the great ship's impatience across the water and out pulled two boats with the passengers. While they were coming, Dodd sent and ordered the gunner to load the carronades with shot, and secure and apron them. The first boat brought Colonel Kenealy, Mr. Fullalove, and a prodigious negro, who all mounted by the side-ropes. But the whip was rigged for the next boat, and the Honourable Mrs. Beresford and poodle hoisted on board, item her white maid, item her black nurse, item her little boy and male Oriental in charge thereof, the strangest compound of dignity and servility, and of black and white, being clad in snowy cotton and japanned to the nine.
Mrs. Beresford was the wife of a member of council in India. She had been to Macao for her boy's health, intending to return to Calcutta: but meantime her husband was made a director, and went home: so she was going to join him. A tall, handsome lady, with too curved a nose.
Like most aquiline women, she was born to domineer a bit; and, for the last ten years, Orientals clinging at her knee and Europeans flattering at her ear had nursed this quality highs and spoiled her with all their might. A similar process had been applied to her boy Frederick from infancy; he was now nearly six. Arrogance and caprice shone so in both their sallow faces, and spoke so in every gesture, that as they came on board, Sharpe, a reader of passengers, whispered the second mate:
"Bayliss, we have shipped the devil."
"And a cargo of his imps," grunted Mr. Bayliss.
Mr. Fullalove was a Methodist parson--to the naked eye: grave, sober, lean, lank-haired. But some men are hidden fires. Fullalove was one of the extraordinary products of an extraordinary nation, the United States of America. He was an engineer for one thing, and an inventive and practical mechanician; held two patents of his own creating, which yielded him a good income both at home and in Great Britain. Such results are seldom achieved without deep study and seclusion; and, accordingly, Joshua Fullalove, when the inventive fit was on, would be buried deep as Archimedes for a twelvemonth, burning the midnight oil: then, his active element predominating, the pale student would dash into the forest or the prairie, with a rifle and an Indian, and come out bronzed, and more or less be-panthered or be-buffaloed; thence invariably to sea for a year or two. There, Anglo-Saxon to the backbone, his romance had ever an eye to business; he was always after foreign mechanical inventions--he was now importing a excellent one from Japan--and ready to do lucrative feats of knowledge: thus he bought a Turkish ship at the bottom of the Dardanelles for twelve hundred dollars, raised her cargo (hardware), and sold it for six thousand dollars; then weighed the empty ship, pumped her, repaired he; and navigated her himself into Boston harbour, Massachusetts. On the way he rescued, with his late drowned ship, a Swedish vessel, and received salvage. He once fished eighty elephants' tusks out of a craft foundered in the Firth of Forth, to the disgust of elder Anglo-Saxons looking on from the shore. These unusual pursuits were varied by a singular recreation: he played at elevating the African character to European levels. With this view he had bought Vespasian for eighteen hundred dollars; whereof anon. America is fertile in mixtures: what do we not owe her? Sherry cobbler, gin sling, cocktail, mint julep, brandy smash, sudden death, eye openers. Well, one day she outdid herself, and mixed Fullalove: Quaker, Nimrod, Archimedes, Philanthropist, decorous Red Rover, and What Not The passenger boats cast loose.
"All hands make sail."
The boatswain piped, the light-heeled topsmen sped up the rathines and lay out the yards, while all on deck looked up as usual to see them work.
Out bellied sail after sail aloft; the ship came curtseying round to the southward, spread her snowy pinions high and wide, and went like a bird over the wrinkled sea--homeward bound.
It was an exhilarating start, and all faces were bright--but one. The captain looked somewhat grave and thoughtful, and often scanned the horizon with his glass; he gave polite but very short answers to his friend Colonel Kenealy, who was firing nothings in his ear, and sent for the gunner.