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Loving the sea and my profession, however, with all a sailor's love, besides being attached to my old ship and her officers, I felt no inclination then to give up what I had learnt to look upon as my legitimate calling, and turn landsman; so, although I had the highest admiration for the colonel, coupled with more than a liking for his young daughter, between whom and myself there seemed such a mysterious sympathy on the evening of my sighting the Saint Pierre, when the captain declared we were some hundreds of miles apart, I reluctantly and, so it seemed to me, ungraciously, declined his proposal, telling him I preferred "sticking" to the skipper and the old barquey!
By this means we all had a more comfortable time of it, the old barquey no longer shipping water in any considerable quantity and there being less work below in the way of clearing it, all of the bilge-pumps, fortunately for us all, Stoddart and the engine-room staff were able to keep going; otherwise we must have foundered long since!
"The cylinder is all right again and will bear any pressure now, and I tell you what it is, the old barquey shall steam along in pursuit of those demons faster than she ever went in her life since she was launched and engined!" "I am with you there, old fellow," said Grummet, our third engineer, hastening towards the stoke-hold.
Who'd a-thought av sayin' ye ag'in in the ould barquey, Ching Wang? Glad ye're a-comin' with us, an' hopes ye're all roight!" "Chin-chin, Mass' Looney," answered the Chinee, putting his monkey-like paw into Tim's broad palm and shaking hands cordially in English fashion. "Me belly well, muchee sank you. Me fetchee chow-chow number one chop when you wauchee."
Then, our dear old barquey sailed for Hongkong, where she put in for temporary repair so as to be able to prosecute the remainder of her voyage, and here poor Mr Saunders died at last, and was laid to rest in "Happy Valley," the English burying-place, that has such a poetical name and such sad surroundings!
"Faith, the skipper is foine and flourishin'," he informed me, "an' the ould barquey as good an' as sound as ivver she was. Do you ricollict ould Stokes?" "Of course I do," I said. "Is he still chief?" "No, no; he retired a year ago or more on a pinsion which the company gave him for his long service; an' little Grummet ye rimimber him? well, he's promoted, sure, to ould Stokes' billet.
"The old doctor, too, looks in a precious wax and is carrying on at a grand rate about our keeping him waiting, I bet. He's jawing away now to that knowing hand of a marine of his; so the sooner we see about getting him aboard our old barquey again the better!"
I was as pleased to see him, as may readily be believed, as the genial Irishman was to see me, I was sure, even without his telling me so. "Well," said I, after we had pretty nigh wrung each other's hands off in friendly greeting, "and how are you all getting on aboard the dear old barquey? I want to hear about everybody."
Some of the other hands about whom I inquired had left the old barquey and shipped aboard other vessels, so Garry told me; but at this I was not much surprised, sailors as a rule being fond of change and very unconservative in their habits.
This was in the height of the storm, just before daybreak, about two bells in the morning watch, or five o'clock AM. Our poor old barquey then rolled so much that the skipper thought the wire hawser attached to the spars had parted and that we were at the very mercy of the tempest.
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