Robert Michael Ballantyne - The Coxswain's Bride; also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue

A peculiar smile lit up Nellie’s face as her husband concluded.

“I should be sorry to leave the old friends here,” she replied, “but don’t let that hinder you if ye want to go away. I’d leave everything to please you, Bob. And as to Aunt Betty—well, I’m not ungrateful, I hope, but—but she wouldn’t break her heart at partin’ wi’ me .”

“Right you are, Nell, as you always was, and always will be,” said Massey. He laughed a short, dry laugh, and was grave again.

It was quite evident that Aunt Betty would not be a hindrance to the departure of either of them and no wonder, for Betty had received Nellie Carr into her family with a bad grace when her widowed brother, “old Carr,” died, leaving his only child without a home. From that day Betty had brought the poor little orphan up—or, rather, had scolded and banged her up—until Bob Massey relieved her of the charge. To do Aunt Betty justice, she scolded and banged up her own children in the same way; but for these—her own young ones—she entertained and expressed a species of affection which mankind shares in common with cats, while for Nellie Carr she had no such affection, and contrived to make the fact abundantly plain. As we not infrequently find in such circumstances, the favoured children—which numbered seven—became heart-breakers, while the snubbed one turned out the flower of the flock.

“Then you’re sure you won’t think it hard, Nell, if I ask you to leave home and friends and go wi’ me over the sea?”

“Yes, Bob, I’m quite sure. I’m willin’ to follow you to the end o’ the world, or further if that’s possible!”

“Then the thing’s settled,” said Massey, with decision, rising and thrusting his short pipe into his vest pocket, the lining of which had already been twice renewed in consequence of the inroads of that half-extinguished implement.

In pursuance of his “settled” purpose, our coxswain proceeded to the lifeboat-shed in search of his bowman, Joe Slag, and found him there.

“Joe,” said he, in the quiet tone that was habitual to him, “Nell and I have made up our minds to go to Australia.”

“To Austrailly!” exclaimed Slag, leaning his arms on the mop with which he had been washing down the lifeboat.

“Ay; I can’t settle to work nohow since the dear old woman went away; so, as Nell is agreeable, and there’s nothin’ to keep me here, I’ve decided to up anchor and bear away for the southern seas.”

The bowman had seated himself on a cask while his friend was speaking, and gazed at him with a bewildered air.

“Are ’ee in arnest, Bob?”

“Ay, Joe, in dead earnest.”

“An’ you say that you’ve nothin’ to keep you here! What’s this?” said Slag, laying his strong hand tenderly on the blue side of the boat.

“Well, I’ll be sorry to leave her , of course, an all my friends in Greyton, but friends will get along well enough without me, an’ as for the boat, she’ll never want a good coxswain while Joe Slag’s alive an’ well.”

“You’re wrong there, mate,” returned the bowman, quickly, while a look of decision overspread his bluff countenance, “there’ll be both a noo cox’n and a noo bowman wanted for her before long, for as sure as the first goes away the tother follers.”

“Nonsense, Joe; you’re jokin’ now.”

“Yes, I’m jokin’ if you’re jokin’; otherwise, I’m in dead arnest too—in as dead arnest as yourself, if not deader. Wasn’t you an’ me born on the same day, Bob? Didn’t our mothers crow over us cheek by jowl when we was babbies? Haven’t we rollicked together on the shore ever since we was the height of our daddies’ boots, an’ gone fishin’ in company, fair weather an’ foul, to the present hour, to say nothin’ o’ the times we’ve lent a hand to rescue men an’ women an’ child’n i’ the lifeboat? No, no, Bob Massey! if you lay yer course for Austrailly, Joseph Slag follers, as sure as a gun.”

Finding that his comrade was in downright earnest, and possessed of a will as inflexible as his own, Bob made no effort to dissuade him from his purpose. On the contrary, he approved of the determination, for he was pleased at the unexpected demonstration of affection which his announcement had called forth in one who was by nature undemonstrative, and who, having thus given vent to his aroused feelings, quickly resumed the reserve from which he had been so suddenly drawn out. Massey, therefore, shook hands with him, by way of sealing an unspoken compact of eternal friendship, and suggested that they should proceed together to the office of an emigration agent, who had recently made his appearance in the village.

In the office they found a very small boy, with an air of self-possession that would have been suitable in his grandfather.

“Is the agent in?” asked the coxswain.

“Yes, but engaged. Sit down; he’ll attend to you directly.”

The lifeboat men obeyed, almost sheepishly, the one speculating as to whether highly developed precocity was not almost criminal, the other wondering how such a boy would look and act if obliged to undergo the process of being rescued—say by the hair of his head—from a wreck.

Their minds were diverted from this subject of contemplation by the entrance of a man and woman. These, like themselves, were told to sit down and wait. The man was long, thin, and lugubrious. The woman short, slight, and lackadaisical, though rather pretty.

Evidently the agent was a busy man, for he kept them waiting some time. When he at length appeared he almost took the breath away from his visitors by the rapid and enthusiastic way in which he described the advantages of the great island on the other side of the globe. There was gold—yes, enormous quantities of gold in all directions. There was land of the finest quality to be had for next to nothing; work for all who were blessed with good bone and muscle; a constant demand for labour—skilled or unskilled—at high wages; a climate such as the Olympian gods might revel in, and—in short, if all England had heard the oration delivered by that man, and had believed it, the country would, in less than a month, have been depopulated of its younger men and women, and left to the tender mercies of the old and middle-aged.

Our two fishermen were captivated. So were the lugubrious man and his mild little wife. The end of it was that, three weeks later, these four, with many other men and women of all ranks and conditions, found themselves on board the good ship Lapwing , ploughing their way through the billows of the broad Atlantic Ocean bound for the sunny isles of the Antipodes.

Wheels within wheels—worlds within worlds—seems to be the order of nature everywhere. Someone has written, with more of truth than elegance—

One’s native land is to millions of people the world in which their thoughts centre, and by which they are circumscribed. A farmer’s homestead is the world to him, and one of the farmer’s cheeses contains a mighty world in itself. But the most complete, compact, and exclusive world in existence, perhaps, is a ship at sea—especially an emigrant ship—for here we find an epitome of the great world itself. Here may be seen, in small compass, the operations of love and hate, of wisdom and stupidity, of selfishness and self-sacrifice, of pride, passion, coarseness, urbanity, and all the other virtues and vices which tend to make the world at large—a mysterious compound of heaven and hell.

Wherever men and women—not to mention children—are crowded into small space, friction ensues, and the inevitable result is moral electricity, positive and negative—chiefly positive! Influences naturally follow, pleasant and unpleasant—sometimes explosions, which call for the interference of the captain or officer in charge of the deck at the time being.