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Updated: May 11, 2025
So they went down into the busy harbour of Troy, where the singing sailor-men were bumping bales of goods from the backs of camels into the holds of the ships, and they took a passage in a little coasting ship. She hove anchor and was rowed out through the entrance between the ends of the granite piers of the harbour.
"She's fully big for us three; it would be all the better if we had another hand, though it's a pity too, when you can pick up natives for half nothing. Then we must have a cook. I can fix raw sailor-men, but there's no going to sea with a new-chum cook. I can lay hands on the man we want for that: a Highway boy, an old shipmate of mine, of the name of Amalu.
The Dockyard tug, with its freight of hoarse yet still vociferous sailor-men, had weighed her anchor, and moved down to the end of the line preparatory to steaming in the wake of the last race. The Umpire, in the stern of an officious picket-boat, was apparently the only dispassionate participator in the animated scene.
Right willingly he went, and they sailed away together like the wind, and were lost to view. Yes, this was Dalzell's hour. She knew nothing of the brave deeds of sailor-men common and constant as eating and drinking, and performed to no audience and for no reward. The Shetlands pattered along at a great rate, but did not come up with the riders until they were nearly at Bundaboo.
On and on, unhasting but unresting, we stolidly jogged, by great good fortune slipping across the "doldrums" that hateful belt of calms about the line so much detested by all sailor-men without losing the south-east wind. Not one day of calm delayed us, the north-east trades meeting us like a friend sent to extend a welcoming hand and lend us his assistance on our homeward way.
I must repeat that the sailor-men of Hudson's time and until long after Hudson's time were little better than dangerous brutes; and the savage ferocity that was in them was kept in check only by meeting it with a more savage ferocity on the part of their superiors. At the very outset of the voyage trouble began.
The roof was not latted or plastered. When I last saw it, some twenty-five years or more ago, the joists and timbers were all open to view. Mother Redcap was a great favourite with the sailor-men and had their entire confidence. She had hiding-places for any number, and the men used, on returning from their voyages, to deposit with her their pay and prize-money, until they wanted it.
"If I'd only stopped to think, instead o' being in such a hurry to do good to others, I should ha' been all right, and the pack o' monkey-faced swabs on the Lizzie and Annie wot calls themselves sailor-men would 'ave had to 'ave got something else to laugh about.
I've seen older sailor-men than you who wouldn't have taken the risk." Never before had she appeared more splendid in his eyes than at this moment. After changing his clothes in the fo'castle, he sat for a long time, his chin in his hands, very thoughtful.
A little indulgence of the fancy does you no harm even though you may be all wrong; very likely the skipper of the glad-looking vessel is tipsy, maybe he has just been rope's-ending his cabin-boy or engaging in some equally unpoetic pursuit; still no one is harmed by idealizing a little, and so, by your leave, we will not alter our crude romance of the sailor-men.
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