Robert Michael Ballantyne - Charlie to the Rescue

“Quite true, Stride, I have no doubt that you are nautically as well as morally correct, so I leave it to you to bring round the mistress, and consider that matter as settled. By the way, I hope that she and your little girl have not suffered from the wetting and rough handling experienced when being rescued.”

“Not in the least, sir, thankee. In fact I incline to the belief that they are rather more frisky than usual in consekince. Leastwise little Maggie is.”

“Glad to hear it. Now, about that young fellow.”

“By which I s’pose you mean Mr Brooke, sir?”

“The same. He has just left me, and upon my word, he’s about the coolest young fellow I ever met with.”

“That’s just what I said to the missus, sir, the very night arter we was rescued. ‘The way that young feller come off, Maggie,’ says I, ‘is most extraor’nar’. No fish that—’”

“Yes, yes, Stride, I know, but that’s not exactly what I mean: it’s his being so amazingly independent that—”

“’Zactly what I said, sir. ‘Maggie,’ says I, ‘that young feller seemed to be quite independent of fin or tail, for he came right off in the teeth o’ wind and tide—’”

“That’s not what I mean either, Captain,” interrupted the old gentleman, with slight impatience. “It’s his independent spirit I refer to.”

“Oh! I ax your pardon, sir.”

“Well, now, listen, and don’t interrupt me. But first let me ask, does he know that I am the owner of the brig that was lost?”

“Yes; he knows that.”

“Does he know that I also own the Walrus .”

“No, I’m pretty sure he don’t. Leastwise I didn’t tell him, an’ there’s nobody else down there as knows anything about you.”

“So far, good. Now, Stride, I want you to help me. The young goose is so proud, or I know not what, that he won’t accept any favours or rewards from me, and I find that he is out of work just now, so I’m determined to give him something to do in spite of himself. The present supercargo of the Walrus is a young man who will be pleased to fall in with anything I propose to him. I mean, therefore, to put him in another ship and appoint young Brooke to the Walrus . Fortunately the firm of Withers and Company does not reveal my name—I having been Company originally, though I’m the firm now, so that he won’t suspect anything, and what I want is, that you should do the engaging of him—being authorised by Withers and Company—you understand?”

“I follow you, sir. But what if he objects?”

“He won’t object. I have privately inquired about him. He is anxious to get employment, and has strong leanings to an adventurous life on the sea. There’s no accounting for taste, Captain!”

“Right you are, sir,” replied the Captain, with an approving nod. “That’s what I said only this mornin’ to my missus. ‘Maggie,’ says I, ‘salt water hasn’t a good taste, as even the stoopidest of mortals knows, but w’en a man has had to lick it off his lips at sea for the better part of half a century, it’s astonishin’ how he not only gits used to it, but even comes to like the taste of it.’ ‘Pooh!’ says she, ‘don’t tell me you likes it, for you don’t! It’s all a d’lusion an’ a snare. I hates both the taste an’ the smell of it.’ ‘Maggie,’ says I, quite solemn-like, ‘that may be so, but you’re not me.’ ‘No, thank goodness!’ says she—which you mustn’t suppose, sir, meant as she didn’t like me , for she’s a true-hearted affectionate creetur—though I say it as shouldn’t—but she meant that she’d have had to go to sea reg’lar if she had been me, an’ that would have done for her in about six weeks, more or less, for the first time she ever went she was all but turned inside—”

“If you’re going citywards,” interrupted Mr Crossley, again pulling out his watch, “we may as well finish our talk in the street.”

As Captain Stride was “quite agreeable” to this proposal, the two left the house together, and, hailing a hansom, drove off in the direction of the City.

On the sea-shore, not far from the spot where the brig had been wrecked, Charlie Brooke and Shank Leather walked up and down engaged in earnest conversation soon after the interviews just described.

Very different was the day from that on which the wreck had taken place. It seemed almost beyond possibility that the serene sky above, and the calm, glinting ocean which rippled so softly at their feet, could be connected with the same world in which inky clouds and snowy foam and roaring billows had but a short time before held high revelry.

“Well, Charlie,” said his friend, after a pause, “it was very good of you, old boy, and I hope that I’ll do credit to your recommendation. The old man seems a decent sort of chap, though somewhat cross-grained.”

“He is kind-hearted, Shank; I feel quite sure of that, and hope sincerely that you will get on well with him.”

“‘With him!’” repeated Leather; “you don’t seem to understand that the situation he is to get for me is not in connection with his own business, whatever that may be. It is in some other City firm, the name of which he has not yet mentioned. I can’t myself understand why he is so close!”

“Perhaps because he has been born with a secretive nature,” suggested Charlie.

“May be so. However, that’s no business of mine, and it doesn’t do to be too inquisitive when a man is offering you a situation of two hundred a year. It would be like looking a gift-horse in the mouth. All I care about is that I’m to go to London next week and begin work—Why, you don’t seem pleased to hear of my good fortune,” continued Leather, turning a sharp look on his friend, who was gazing gravely at the sand, in which he was poking holes with his stick.

“I congratulate you, Shank, with all my heart, and you know it; but—I’m sorry to find that you are not to be in connection with Mr Crossley himself, for there is more good in him than appears on the surface. Did he then make no mention of the nature of his own business?”

“None whatever. To say truth, that mysteriousness or secrecy is the only point about the old fellow’s character that I don’t like,” said Leather, with a frown of virtuous disapproval. “‘All fair and above-board,’ that’s my motto. Speak out your mind and fear nothing!”

At these noble sentiments a faint smile, if we may say so, hovered somewhere in the recesses of Charlie Brooke’s interior, but not the quiver of a muscle disturbed the solemnity of his face.

“The secrecy of his nature seems even to have infected that skipper with—or rather by—whom he was wrecked,” continued Leather, “for when I asked him yesterday about the old gentleman, he became suddenly silent, and when I pressed him, he made me a rigmarole speech something like this: ‘Young man, I make it a rule to know nothin’ whatever about my passengers. As I said only two days past to my missus: “Maggie,” says I, “it’s of no use your axin’ me. My passengers’ business is their business, and my business is mine. All I’ve got to do is to sail my ship, an’ see to it that I land my passengers in safety.”’

“‘You made a pretty mess of your business, then, the last trip,’ said I, for I was bothered with his obvious determination not to give me any information.

“‘Right you are, young man,’ said he, ‘and it would have been a still prettier mess if your friend Mr Brooke hadn’t come off wi’ that there line!’

“I laughed at this and recovered my temper, but I could pump nothing more out of him. Perhaps there was nothing to pump.—But now tell me, how is it—for I cannot understand—that you refused all offers to yourself? You are as much ‘out of work’ just now as I am.”