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And it was certainly a lie that they whispered in the forecastle: that the skipper had not quite got his sea-legs. Young men always tell such stories to cabin-boys, in order to appear manly. And, besides, there was a steersman on the brig, who could, on a pinch, easily round the headlands alone.
I have some stories about cabin-boys who were not much older than I." "Let us hope that your friend Fred won't go away," said Giselle. "But why do you wish to be a cabinboy?" "Because I want to go away with him, if he does not stay here because I like him," answered Enguerrand in a tone of decision. Hereupon Giselle kissed her boy with more than usual tenderness.
His cabin and his substance! He talks more like a preacher than a sailor. I should like to see him in a storm! He's no sailor at all. His men hate him. It wouldn't be difficult to get up a mutiny on board this ship. Richie, I understand the whole plot: he's in want of cabin-boys. The fellow has impressed us. We shall have to serve till we touch land.
The ships were from an isle of the sea. The men who manned them were born within sight of the ocean. In their childhood they sported with its waves. At twelve they were cabin-boys. At twenty, thorough seamen. Against the skill born of such an experience, of what avail was mere courage, however fiery? A similar train of remarks may with truth be made about our Northern and Southern States.
But after they had sailed, when John Broom felt very ill, and asked the one-eyed sailor where he was to sleep, the one-eyed sailor pleasantly replied that if he hadn't brought a four-post bed in his pocket he must sleep where he could, for that all the other cabin-boys were sleeping in Davy's Locker, and couldn't be disturbed.
At this cry the entire crew rushed towards the harpooner captain, officers, masters, sailors, and cabin-boys; even the engineers left their engines, and the stokers their furnaces. The frigate was now moving only by her own momentum, for the engines had been stopped. My heart beat violently. I was sure the harpooner's eyes had not deceived him.
Chinese deck-stewards glided about in their felt slippers, trying to attach the right person to the right steamer-chair. Cabin-boys scurried about with baskets of fruit and flowers and other sea-going impedimenta that, after one appreciative glance from the recipient, are usually consigned to the ice-box. All was noise and confusion.
The launch was laden to the brim; three of our biggest boats were in tow; an abundant collation, in charge of a corps of cabin-boys, gave assurance of success in one line at least. We explored. Old Vancouver did the same thing long ago, and no doubt found these shores exactly as we find them to-day.
Just then up came a tramp, and stopped to ask why we were crying, and what we were doing out there in the road at that hour in the morning. `We are going to Portsmouth to be cabin-boys, we told him, and I can remember to this day how he laughed. `If you are going to be cabin-boys, you won't want those clothes, he said. `You had better take them off, and give them to me, to change for proper sailor things.
Yet the passengers were not the only learners; for, one day, we saw one of the cabin-boys, carrying a heavy ham down the steps from a meat-safe on board, miss his footing in a lurch of the ship, and away went our fine ham into the lee-scuppers, spoilt and lost. We lunched at twelve.
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