“Hooray!” shouted out Josh, throwing up his battered straw-hat into the air, and capering round the improvised caboose, in response to the miners’ ringing cheers on Ernest’s consent to join the party and act as engineer of the mine. “Me berry glad Massa Britisher now am one of us, for sure! Golly, we nebbah hab to put up with dat nasty salt pork no more now, yup, yup! Massa Britisher um berry good shot, su-ah! Um shoot tree sheep at one go. Golly, Jasper, you no laugh. I tell you for true!”—And the negro cook grinned himself, to the full extent of his wide mouth and glistening ivory teeth, while administering this rebuke to his darkey brother.
“Shoo! go way wid yer nonsenz, and don’t bodder me,” responded the hungry and aggrieved Jasper, who did not appreciate the joke, the young Englishman’s humorous mistake as to the result of his rifle-shot not having yet been promulgated for the benefit of those in camp. “Am none ob you gentlemens comin’ to dinnah, hey?”—he called out more loudly—“Massa Rawlins me tellee hab tings ready in brace o’ shakes; and now tings fix up tarnation smart, nobody come. Um berry aggerabating—can’t oberstand it, no how!”
“None o’ your sass,” said Seth gruffly, although the lurking smile on his face took off from the effect of his words, “none o’ your sass, Jasper, or I’ll keelhaul you, and make you fancy yourself aboard ship once more!”
“Me not sassy, Massa Seth. I’se hab too much respect for myself, sah, for dat! I only tells you as de meat’s done and gettin’ cool, dat’s all, while yous be all jabberin’ way jus like passul monkeys. No imperance in dat, massa, as I sees!”
“Stow that, you ugly cuss,” said Seth good-humouredly, for he was used somewhat to Master Jasper’s “cheek” by this time. “You’re jest about as bad as a Philadelphy lawyer, when you’ve got your jaw tackle aboard! Now, boys,” he added, hailing the miners, who were nothing loth to obey the signal, “the darkey says the vittles are ready, and you as wants to feed had better fall to!”
Story 1—Chapter IX.
Concerning Sailor Bill.
During this little interlude, Ernest Wilton had been closely engaged in watching the actions of the poor boy, “Sailor Bill.”
His face had attracted him from the first moment he caught sight of him; but when he had more leisure to observe him, after the palaver with Mr. Rawlings and the miners was over, and he noticed certain peculiarities about the object of his attention which had previously escaped his notice, his interest became greatly heightened.
Sailor Bill had altered very much in appearance since the day he had been picked up in the Bay of Biscay and taken on board the Susan Jane, a thin, delicate-looking boy with a pale face and a wasted frame. The keen healthy air and out-of-doors life out west had worked wonders with him, and he was now rosy and stalwart, his body having filled out and his cheeks grown much fatter, while he was even considerably taller than he had been some six months previously.
His bright golden-brown hair was, of course, the same, and so were the long dark lashes to the blue eyes that had so especially appealed to Captain Blowser’s fancy when he had spoken about the boy’s resemblance to a girl, for they yet bore the same peculiar far-away look as if they belonged to a person walking in his sleep, without intelligence or notice in them whatever.
As on board ship, Sailor Bill stuck to Seth Allport as his shadow, moving where he moved, stopping where he stopped, with the faithful attachment of a dog, albeit wanting in that expression of sagacity, which even the dullest specimen of the canine race exhibits on all occasions. Seth Allport seemed to be the mainspring of the boy’s action, and after a time it became almost painful to watch the two, although the sailor had now grown accustomed to being followed about in so eccentric a fashion—as had, indeed, the rest of the party, who were not so distinctly singled out by the poor boy’s regard; but it was all new and strange to Ernest Wilton as he watched and wondered.
“What is the matter with the boy?” asked he presently of Mr. Rawlings, who, from the fixed observation of his companion, had been expecting the question. “Poor fellow, he doesn’t seem all right in his mind—and a healthy, nice-looking boy, too!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Rawlings, tapping his forehead expressively, and speaking feelingly as he looked affectionately at Sailor Bill, whom all had learnt to like as they would have done a pet dog;—“something wrong there, although I hope in time he will get over it in the same way as he came by it, if God so wills it!”
“I suppose he’s got some story attached to him, eh?” said Ernest Wilton.
“No doubt,” answered Mr. Rawlings; “but nobody but himself knows it!”
“How strangely you pique my curiosity! Besides, his face seems quite familiar to me, somehow or other. Yes, it’s really quite familiar,” he repeated.
“Does it?” said Mr. Rawlings eagerly, hoping that the young engineer might be able to tell something.
“Yes,” replied the other, “and I cannot tell how or where I have seen somebody like him before. But I will recollect presently, I have no doubt, after a little more reflection.”
“We picked up the poor chap at sea, half-drowned, and bleeding from a very terrible cut across the forehead; and such a slender thin shaving of a boy that you would not have known him to be the same as he is now!”
“Indeed!” said Ernest Wilton with greater interest even than he had displayed before; and thereupon Mr. Rawlings told the whole story of Sailor Bill’s rescue, and how he afterwards saved the life of Seth Allport, to whom he had thenceforward attached himself; and how the worthy sailor had refused to part with him, and brought him out west.
The young engineer had been carefully noting all the points of the narrative while the other was speaking; and seemed to revolve the whole circumstances of Sailor Bill’s history in his mind with a view to solving the mystery.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said he, when Mr. Rawlings had completed his yarn, “if he belonged to that deserted ship which you subsequently came across; and that in the mutiny, or whatever else occurred on board, he got wounded and thrown into the sea.”
“That is possible,” said Mr. Rawlings, “but not quite probable, considering the time that elapsed after our saving him to meeting with the water-logged vessel, and the distance we traversed in the interval. Besides, the boy was lashed to the spar that supported him in the water, and he couldn’t have done that, with the wound he had received, by himself; so that gets rid of the theory of his being half-murdered and pitched overboard. Altogether, the story is one of those secrets of the sea that will never be unravelled, unless he comes to his senses at some time or other and tells us all about it!”
“And you don’t know his name, or anything?”
“No, only just what I have told you.”
“Had he no marks on his clothing, or anything in his pockets, that might serve for identification, should any one claim him by and by?” said Ernest Wilton, pursuing his interrogatories like a cross-examining barrister fussy over his first case.
“He had nothing on but his shirt and trousers, I tell you,” said Mr.