“Tit-it-it-take that, ye ugly mim-m–monkey!” is its accompaniment in speech as spiteful as defective.
The girl sends up a shriek, crying out:
“Oh, Eleparu! Orundelico killed! He dead!”
“No, not dead,” answers the boy, instantly on his feet again like a rebounding ball, and apparently but little injured. “He take me foul. Let him try once more. Come on, big brute!”
And the pigmy places himself in a defiant attitude, fronting an adversary nearly twice his own size.
“Stan’ side!” shouts Eleparu, interposing. “Let me go at him!”
“Neither of you!” puts in a new and resolute voice, that of Henry Chester, who, pushing both aside, stands face to face with the aggressor, fists hard shut, and eyes flashing anger. “Now, you ruffian,” he adds, “I’m your man.”
“Wh–wh–who are yi-yi-you? an’ wh–wh–what’s it your bi-bib-business?”
“No matter who I am; but it’s my business to make you repent that cowardly blow. Come on and get your punishment!”
And he advances towards the stammerer, who has shrunk back.
This unlooked-for interference puts an end to the fun-making of the mud-larks, all of whom are now highly incensed, for in their new adversary they recognise a lad of country raising – not a town boy – which of itself challenges their antagonistic instincts.
On these they are about to act, one crying out, “Let’s pitch into the yokel and gie him a good trouncin’!” a second adding, “Hang his imperence!” while a third counsels teaching him “Portsmouth manners.”
Such a lesson he seems likely to receive, and it would probably have fared hardly with our young hero but for the sudden appearance on the scene of another figure – a young fellow in shirt-sleeves and wearing a Panama hat – he of the Calypso.
“Thunder and lightning!” he exclaimed, coming on with a rush. “What’s the rumpus about? Ha! a fisticuff fight, with odds – five to one! Well, Ned Gancy ain’t going to stand by an’ look on at that; he pitches in with the minority.”
And so saying, the young American placed himself in a pugilistic attitude by the side of Henry Chester.
This accession of strength to the assailed party put a different face on the matter, the assailants evidently being cowed, despite their superiority of numbers. They know their newest adversary to be an American, and at sight of the two intrepid-looking youths standing side by side, with the angry faces of Eleparu and Orundelico in the background, they become sullenly silent, most of them evidently inclined to steal away from the ground.
The affair seemed likely thus to end, when, to the surprise of all, Eleparu, hitherto held back by the girl, suddenly released himself and bounded forward, with hands and arms wide open. In another instant he had grasped the big bully in a tiger-like embrace, lifted him off his feet, and dashed him down upon the flags with a violence that threatened the breaking of every bone in his body.
Nor did his implacable little adversary, who seemed possessed of a giant’s strength, appear satisfied with this, for he afterwards sprang on top of him, with a paving-stone in his uplifted hands.
The affair might have terminated tragically had not the uplifted hand been caught by Henry Chester. While he was still holding it, a man came up, who brought the conflict to an abrupt close by seizing Eleparu’s collar, and dragging him off his prostrate foe.
“Ho! what’s this?” demands the newcomer, in a loud authoritative voice. “Why, York! Jemmy! Fuegia! what are you all doing here? You should have stayed on board the steamship, as I told you to do. Go back to her at once.”
By this time the mud-larks have scuttled off, the big one, who had recovered his feet, making after them, and all speedily disappearing. The three gipsy-looking creatures go too, leaving their protectors, Henry Chester and Ned Gancy, to explain things to him who has caused the stampede. He is an officer in uniform, wearing insignia which proclaim him a captain in the Royal Navy; and as he already more than half comprehends the situation, a few words suffice to make it all clear to him, when, thanking the two youths for their generous and courageous interference in behalf of his protégés, as he styles the odd trio whose part they had taken, he bows a courteous farewell, and continues his interrupted walk along the Hard.
“Guess you didn’t get much sleep,” observes the young American, with a knowing smile, to Henry Chester.
“Who told you I was asleep?” replies the latter in some surprise.
“Who? Nobody.”
“How came you to know it, then?”
“How? Wasn’t I up in the maintop, and didn’t I see everything you did? And you behaved particularly well, I must say. But come! Let’s aboard. The captain has come back. He’s my father, and maybe we can find a berth for you on the Calypso. Come along!”
That night Henry Chester eats supper at the Calypso’s cabin table, by invitation of the captain’s son, sleeps on board, and, better still, has his name entered on her books as an apprentice.
And he finds her just the sort of craft he was desirous to go to sea in – a general trader, bound for the Oriental Archipelago and the isles of the Pacific Ocean. To crown all, she has completed her cargo and is ready to put to sea.
Sail she does, early the next day, barely leaving him time to keep that promise, made by the Devil’s Punch Bowl, of writing to his mother.
Chapter Four.
Off the “Furies.”
A ship tempest-tossed, labouring amid the surges of an angry sea; her crew on the alert, doing their utmost to keep her off a lee-shore. And such a shore! None more dangerous on all ocean’s edge; for it is the west coast of Tierra del Fuego, abreast the Fury Isles and that long belt of seething breakers known to mariners as the “Milky Way,” the same of which the great naturalist, Darwin, has said: “One sight of such a coast is enough to make a landsman dream for a week about shipwreck, peril, and death.”
There is no landsman in the ship now exposed to its dangers. All on board are familiar with the sea – have spent years upon it. Yet is there fear in their hearts and pallor on their cheeks, as their eyes turn to that belt of white frothy water between them and the land, trending north and south beyond the range of vision.
Technically speaking, the endangered vessel is not a ship, but a barque, as betokened by the fore-and-aft rig of her mizenmast. Nor is she of large dimensions; only some six or seven hundred tons. But the reader knows this already, or will, after learning her name. As her stern swings up on the billow, there can be read upon it the Calypso; and she is that Calypso in which Henry Chester sailed out of Portsmouth Harbour to make his first acquaintance with a sea life.
Though nearly four years have elapsed since then, he is still on board of her. There stands he by the binnacle. No more a boy, but a young man, and in a garb that bespeaks him of the quarter-deck – not before the mast, for he is now the Calypso’s third officer. And her second is not far-off; he is the generous youth who was the means of getting him the berth. Also grown to manhood, he, too, is