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Updated: June 14, 2025
"Could ye tak' a dog?" asked Tammy. "Ye could that, mannie. It's no' a picnic wi'oot a sonsie doggie to rin on the brae wi' ye." "Oh!" Ailie's blue eyes slowly widened in her pallid little face. "But ye couldna hae a picnic i' the snawy weather." "Ay, ye could. It's the bonniest of a' when ye're no' expectin' it. I aye keep a picnic hidden i' the ingleneuk aboon."
He was singing out to Tammy to get up on to the house with his blue-light. We reached the fore rigging, and, the same instant, the strange, ghastly flare of Tammy's blue-light burst out into the night causing every rope, sail, and spar to jump out weirdly. I saw now that the Second Mate was already in the starboard rigging, with his lantern.
After I had got the light from Plummer, and lashed it up to the starboard sherpole, I hurried aft. I found Tammy and the other 'prentice in our watch, busy in the locker, lighting lamps. "What are we doing?" I asked. "The Old Man's given orders to lash all the spare lamps we can find, in the rigging, so as to have the decks light," said Tammy. "And a damned good job too!"
Tammy, poignantly conscious of being of no practical use, sat on Auld Jock's grave, firm in the conviction that Bobby would return to that spot his ainsel' And Ailie, being only a maid, whose portion it was to wait and weep, lay across the window-sill, on the pediment of the tomb, a limp little figure of woe. Mr. Traill's heart was full of misgiving.
"You'd better take a look over the side, Sir," I replied. My tone must have given him an inkling that we had discovered something fresh; for, at my words, he made one spring, and stood on the spar, alongside of me. "Look, Sir," said Tammy. "There's four of them." The Second Mate glanced down, saw something and bent sharply forward. "My God!" I heard him mutter, under his breath.
I had the mat slug on the fore side of the mainmast, between it and the after end of the house; and, in a few minutes, Tammy brought his sinnet and yarns to the mast, and made fast to one of the pins. "What do you think it was, Jessop?" he asked, abruptly, after a short silence. I looked at him. "What do you think?" I replied. "I don't know what to think," he said.
In the same second, almost, it seemed to me that the surface of the water above the submerged truck was broken, and I am sure now, I saw something a moment in the air against the ship's side a sort of shadow in the air; though I did not realise it at the time. Anyway, the next instant, Tammy gave out an awful scream, and was head downwards over the rail, in a second.
Bobby was host to the disinherited children of the tenements. Now, at the tap-tap-tapping of Tammy Barr's crutches, he scampered up the slope, and he suited his pace to the crippled boy's in coming down again. Tammy chose a heap of cut grass on which to sit enthroned and play king, a grand new crutch for a scepter, and Bobby for a courtier.
He was shouting to Tammy to keep the drip from his light clear of the staysail, which was stowed upon the house. Then, from somewhere on the port side, I heard the Skipper shout to us to hurry. "Smartly now, you men," he was saying. "Smartly now." The man who had been told to take up a station in the fore-top, was just behind the Second Mate. Plummer was a couple of ratlines lower.
Tammy, who died a bachelor, had been soured in his youth by a disappointment in love, of which he spoke but seldom. She lived far away in a town which he had wandered in the days when his blood ran hot, and they became engaged. Unfortunately, however, Tammy forgot her name, and he never knew the address; so there the affair ended, to his silent grief.
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