Gordon Stables - Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure

This umbrella was a weapon of offence as well as defence. We had proof of that on the very first day, for as he passed along the deck the second steward had the bad manners to titter. Next moment the umbrella had descended with crushing force on his head, and he lay sprawling in the lee scuppers.

'I'll teach ye,' she said, 'to laugh at an auld wife, you gang-the-gate swinger.'

'Mither! mither!' pleaded Moncrieff, 'will you never be able to behave like a lady?'

The steward crawled forward crestfallen, and the men did not let him forget his adventure in a hurry.

'Mither's a ma rr vel,' Moncrieff whispered to me more than once that evening, for at table no 'laird's lady' could have behaved so well, albeit her droll remarks and repartee kept us all laughing. After dinner it was just the same – there were no bounds to her good-nature, her excellent spirits and comicality. Even when asked to sing she was by no means taken aback, but treated us to a ballad of five-and-twenty verses, with a chorus to each; but as it told a story of love and war, of battle and siege, of villainy for a time in the ascendant, and virtue triumphant at the end, it really was not a bit wearisome; and when Moncrieff told us that she could sing a hundred more as good, we all agreed that his mother was indeed a marvel.

I have said the voyage was uneventful, but this is talking as one who has been across the wide ocean many times and oft. No long voyage can be uneventful; but nothing very dreadful happened to mar our passage to Rio de Janeiro. We were not caught in a tornado; we were not chased by a pirate; we saw no suspicious sail; no ghostly voice hailed us from aloft at the midnight hour; no shadowy form beckoned us from a fog. We did not even spring a leak, nor did the mainyard come tumbling down. But we did have foul weather off Finisterre; a man did fall overboard, and was duly picked up again; a shark did follow the ship for a week, but got no corpse to devour, only the contents of the cook's pail, sundry bullets from sundry revolvers, and, finally, a red-hot brick rolled in a bit of blanket. Well, of course, a man fell from aloft and knocked his shoulder out – a man always does – and Mother Carey's chickens flew around our stern, boding bad weather, which never came, and shoals of porpoises danced around us at sunset, and we saw huge whales pursuing their solitary path through the bosom of the great deep, and we breakfasted off flying fish, and caught Cape pigeons, and wondered at the majestic flight of the albatross; and we often saw lightning without hearing thunder, and heard thunder without seeing lightning; and in due course we heard the thrilling shout from aloft of 'Land ho!' and heard the officer of the watch sing out, 'Where away?'

And lo and behold! three or four hours afterwards we were all on deck marvelling at the rugged grandeur of the shores of Rio, and the wondrous steeple-shaped mountain that stands sentry for ever and ever and ever at the entrance to the marvellous haven.

When this was in sight, Moncrieff rushed off into the cabin and bore his mother out.

He held the old lady aloft, on one arm, shouting, as he pointed landwards —

'Look, mither, look! the Promised Land! Our new home in the Silver West!'

It was well on in the afternoon when land was sighted, but so accurately had the ship been navigated for all the long, pleasant weeks of our voyage that both the captain and his first officer might easily have been excused for showing a little pride in their seamanship. Your British sailor, however, is always a modest man, and there was not the slightest approach to bombast. The ship was now slowed, for we could not cross the bar that night.

At the dinner-table we were all as merry as schoolboys on the eve of a holiday. Old Jenny, as Moncrieff's mother had come to be called, was in excellent spirits, and her droll remarks not only made us laugh, but rendered it very difficult indeed for the stewards to wait with anything approaching to sang-froid . Moncrieff was quietly happy. He seemed pleased his mother was so great a favourite. Aunt, in her tropical toilet, looked angelic. The adjective was applied by our mutual friend Captain Roderigo de Bombazo, and my brothers and I agreed that he had spoken the truth for once in a way. Did he not always speak the truth? it may be asked. I am not prepared to accuse the worthy Spaniard of deliberate falsehood, but if everything he told us was true, then he must indeed have come through more wild and terrible adventures, and done more travelling and more fighting, than any lion-hunter that ever lived and breathed.

He was highly amusing nevertheless, and as no one, with the exception of Jenny, ever gave any evidence of doubting what he said and related concerning his strange career, he was encouraged to carry on; and even the exploits of Baron Munchausen could not have been compared to some of his. I think it used to hurt his feelings somewhat that old Jenny listened so stolidly to his relations, for he used to cater for her opinion at times.

'Ah!' Jenny would say, 'you're a wonderful mannie wi' your way o't! And what a lot you've come through! I wonder you have a hair in your heed!'

'But the señora believes vot I say?'

'Believe ye? If a' stories be true, yours are no lees, and I'm not goin' ahint your back to tell ye, sir.'

Once, on deck, he was drawing the long-bow, as the Yankees call it, at a prodigious rate. He was telling how, once upon a time, he had caught a young alligator; how he had tamed it and fed it till it grew a monster twenty feet long; how he used to saddle it and bridle it, and ride through the streets of Tulcora on its back – men, women, and children screaming and flying in all directions; how, armed only with his good sabre, he rode it into a lake which was infested with these dread saurians; how he was attacked in force by the awful reptiles, and how he had killed and wounded so many that they lay dead in dozens next day along the banks.

'Humph!' grunted old Jenny when he had finished.

The little captain put the questions,

'Ah! de aged señora not believe! De aged señora not have seen much of de world?'

Jenny had grasped her umbrella.

'Look here, my mannie,' she said, 'I'll gie ye a caution; dinna you refer to my age again, or I'll "aged-snorer" you. If ye get the weight o' my gingham on your shou'ders, ye'll think a coo has kick't ye – so mind.'

And the Spanish captain had slunk away very unlike a lion-hunter, but he never called Jenny old again.

To-night, however, even before we had gone below, Jenny had given proofs that she was in an extra good temper, for being a little way behind Bombazo – as if impelled by some sudden and joyous impulse – she lifted that everlasting umbrella and hit him a friendly thwack that could be heard from bowsprit to binnacle.

'Tell as mony lees the nicht as ye like, my mannie,' she cried, 'and I'll never contradict ye, for I've seen the promised land!'

'And so, captain, you must stay at Rio a whole week?' said my aunt at dessert.

'Yes, Miss M'Crimman,' replied the captain. 'Are you pleased?'

'I'm delighted. And I propose that we get up a grand picnic in "the promised land," as good old Jenny calls it.'

And so it was arranged. Bombazo and Dr. Spinks, having been at Rio de Janeiro before, were entrusted with the organization of the 'pig-neeg,' as Bombazo called it, and held their first consultation on ways and means that very evening. Neither I nor my brothers were admitted to this meeting, though aunt was. Nevertheless, we felt confident the picnic would be a grand success, for, to a late hour, men were hurrying fore and aft, and the stewards were up to their eyes packing baskets and making preparations, while from the cook's gally gleams of rosy light shot out every time the door was opened, to say nothing of odours so appetising that they would have awakened Van Winkle himself.