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Captain Jiggins, as I heard him explaining to the first officer when I was taking my trick at the wheel, and blessing the brig as usual for her stiff helm, intended making the quickest passage that ever was made, he said, by striking down into them outlandish latitudes before he steered east and made the Horn; and I suppose he knew what he was about, as he was as good a navigator as ever handled a sextant.
"Old Cap'en Jiggins, however, wasn't of our way of thinking. "He was the part owner as well as master of the vessel; and loved the old brig the `Janey' he called her, the old fool! like the very apple of his eye, always praising her up to the nines and not allowing anybody to say a word against her sea-going qualities.
That done, I hearing what play it was that is to be acted before the King to-night, I would not stay, but home by coach, where I find my wife troubled about Gosnell, who brings word that her uncle, justice Jiggins, requires her to come three times a week to him, to follow some business that her mother intrusts her withall, and that, unless she may have that leisure given her, he will not have her take any place; for which we are both troubled, but there is no help for it, and believing it to be a good providence of God to prevent my running behindhand in the world, I am somewhat contented therewith, and shall make my wife so, who, poor wretch, I know will consider of things, though in good earnest the privacy of her life must needs be irksome to her.
"In spite of Cap'en Jiggins' praise, I never sailed in such an out-and- out obstinate craft as that identical Cranky Jane. She seemed to have been laid down on the lines and constructed, plank by plank, especially to spile a man's temper!
"I suppose it's forty years ago, more or less," he began, "since I shipped in the brig Jane, John Jiggins master, bound from London to Melbourne with an assorted cargo.
Jiggins is dead. He was, of course, a pioneer, but the fact that he dumb-belled himself to death at an early age does not prevent a whole generation of young men from following in his path. They are ridden by the Health Mania. They make themselves a nuisance. They get up at impossible hours. They go out in silly little suits and run Marathon heats before breakfast.
"We had a good land-fall all right, entering the Channel shortly after sighting the Lizard, making the quickest passage ever known for a sailing brig from Fiji; and, in spite of all the dear old craft's shortcomings and temper and weather-helm, myself and the rest of the crew, including of course Pat O'Brien and his `poor feet, were willing, even after all the perils we had passed through, and the dangers we had escaped, every mother's son of us, with Captain Jiggins' permission, and the chief officer's favour, to sign articles, and ship for another voyage in the old Cranky Jane; and, what is more, we did too, sticking to the brig till she went to pieces off Cape Lewis to the south of New Zealand in her last voyage out.
Consequently, the brig couldn't help herself but go straight onward, when the trades were shoving her along and while nobody wanted her to tack, or beat up, or otherwise perform any of those delicate little points of seamanship which a true sailor likes to see his ship go through, almost against his own interest, sometimes, as far as hard work is concerned in reefing and furling and taking in sail, or piling on the canvas and `letting her rip. So long as nothing of this sort was wanted from her the brig was as easy-going as you could wish and all probably that Cap'en Jiggins thought her; but, you had only just to try to get her to sail up in the wind's eye or run with the breeze a bit ahead of the beam, and you'd soon have seen for yourself how cantankerous she could be!
Twenty years ago I knew a man called Jiggins, who had the Health Habit. He used to take a cold plunge every morning. He said it opened his pores. After it he took a hot sponge. He said it closed the pores. He got so that he could open and shut his pores at will. Jiggins used to stand and breathe at an open window for half an hour before dressing. He said it expanded his lungs.
"Sometimes, when the man at the wheel would be swearing at the lubberly craft in a silent way, so that you could see he was suffocating himself with passion and ready to burst himself, for the way in which she would fall off, or bowse up into the wind's eye, and try to go her own way, like a horse that gets the bit between his teeth and sets his ears back, then you'd hear old Jiggins a-talking to himself about the blessed old tub.
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