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He had scarcely reached his room on the second floor, however, when the pool game came to an end and he heard voices in the drawing room, followed presently by a few random chords struck on the piano, and a resonant baritone was raised in the strangest song ever heard in that drawing room a deep-sea chantey.
It appeared that no one of the adventurers was acquainted with an anchor song, and Cleggett, and, indeed, all on board, felt that these anchors should be hoisted to the accompaniment of some rousing chantey. Lady Agatha was especially insistent on the point.
That night those who dwelt near the harbor heard the clank of a windlass as the crew of the Royal James hove the cable short, and the melodious, deep-throated refrain of a farewell chantey floated across the quiet water. With the flood of the tide and a landward breeze, the brig stole out across the bar while the topsails were sheeted home.
The leader begins something like this, using, perhaps, the air and refrain of an old chantey or college song. Leader "I spotted a beaver, But he wasn't very nye." Chorus "Don't you rock so hard!" Second Soloist "His fur was all ragged And he had but one eye." Chorus "Don't you rock so hard. Oh! You rock and I rock, and Don't you rock so hard!
I underwent the fierce scrutiny of an instant, then the taper was thrown away half consumed. "Where did you learn it?" the stranger asked in an altered voice. "I don't remember," I replied; "it is a common enough deep-sea chantey." A heavy pause fell. Finally the stranger sighed. "Quite like," he said; "I never heard but one man sing it."
Lavender himself had now broken into a strange and lamentable chantey, which, in combination with the creeping flutter of the flames in the weekly journals encircling the base of the funeral pyre, well-nigh made her blood curdle. "Aurora," sang Mr. Lavender, in that most dolorous voice,
"We're going to sail through that there gap in the reef if it can be done." From a distance they could hear the voice of Mr. Rogers giving orders. And the stamp of the seamen's feet announced that the Bertha Hamilton was getting under way. Short-handed as she was, never did sailors swing into the ancient chantey in better tune and with more cheerfulness.
With the clanging fall of the final pair of rails, a third army, spike-drivers these, fell upon the newly placed steel, shouting their chantey as they swung the great pointed hammers; and in the midst of this fresh turmoil the train, with its brigade of bolters deftly preparing another section, was slowly pushed to the new front for another advance.
As a rule, he owned a share of the ship and received a percentage of the freights and passage money. His rank when ashore was more exalted than can be conveyed in mere words. Any normal New York boy would sooner have been captain of a Black Ball packet than President of the United States, and he knew by heart the roaring chantey It is of a flash packet, A packet of fame.
He passed the bight of the stern-line in a triple loop around the drum of the windlass, and without awaiting his instructions, the girl grasped the slack of the line and prepared to walk away with it as the rope paid in on the windlass. Cardigan inserted a belaying-pin in the windlass, paused and looked at the girl. "Raise a chantey," he suggested.
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