No sooner is his cleanliness questioned than they
rise upon him like a mob of the Middle Ages upon a Jew; drag him into
the lee-scuppers, and strip him to the buff. In vain he bawls for
mercy; in vain calls upon the captain to save him.
Alas! I say again, for the land-lubber at sea. He is the veriest
wretch the watery world over. And such was Bope Tarn; of all
landlubbers, the most lubberly and most miserable. A forlorn,
stunted, hook-visaged mortal he was too; one of those whom you know
at a glance to have been tried hard and long in the furnace of
affliction. His face was an absolute puzzle; though sharp and sallow,
it had neither the wrinkles of age nor the smoothness of youth; so
that for the soul of me, I could hardly tell whether he was
twenty-five or fifty.
But to his history. In his better days, it seems he had been a
journeyman baker in London, somewhere about Holborn; and on Sundays
wore a Hue coat and metal buttons, and spent his afternoons in a
tavern, smoking his pipe and drinking his ale like a free and easy
journeyman baker that he was. But this did not last long; for an
intermeddling old fool was the ruin of him. He was told that London
might do very well for elderly gentlemen and invalids; but for a lad
of spirit, Australia was the Land of Promise. In a dark day Ropey
wound up his affairs and embarked.
Arriving in Sydney with a small capital, and after a while waxing snug
and comfortable by dint of hard kneading, he took unto himself a
wife; and so far as she was concerned, might then have gone into the
country and retired; for she effectually did his business. In short,
the lady worked him woe in heart and pocket; and in the end, ran off
with his till and his foreman. Ropey went to the sign of the Pipe and
Tankard; got fuddled; and over his fifth pot meditated suicide - an
intention carried out; for the next day he shipped as landsman aboard
the Julia, South Seaman.
The ex-baker would have fared far better, had it not been for his
heart, which was soft and underdone. A kind word made a fool of him;
and hence most of the scrapes he got into. Two or three wags, aware
of his infirmity, used to "draw him out" in conversation whenever the
most crabbed and choleric old seamen were present.
To give an instance. The watch below, just waked from their sleep, are
all at breakfast; and Ropey, in one corner, is disconsolately
partaking of its delicacies. "Now, sailors newly waked are no
cherubs; and therefore not a word is spoken, everybody munching his
biscuit, grim and unshaven. At this juncture an affable-looking
scamp - Flash Jack - crosses the forecastle, tin can in hand, and seats
himself beside the land-lubber.
"Hard fare this, Ropey," he begins; "hard enough, too, for them that's
known better and lived in Lun'nun. I say now, Ropey, s'poaing you
were back to Holborn this morning, what would you have for breakfast,
eh?"
"Have for breakfast!" cried Ropey in a rapture. "Don't speak of it!"
"What ails that fellow?" here growled an old sea-bear, turning round
savagely.
"Oh, nothing, nothing," said Jack; and then, leaning over to Rope
Yarn, he bade him go on, but speak lower.
"Well, then," said he, in a smuggled tone, his eyes lighting up like
two lanterns, "well, then, I'd go to Mother Moll's that makes the
great muffins: I'd go there, you know, and cock my foot on the 'ob,
and call for a noggin o' somethink to begin with."
"What then, Ropey?"
"Why then, Flashy," continued the poor victim, unconsciously warming
with his theme: "why then, I'd draw my chair up and call for Betty,
the gal wot tends to customers. Betty, my dear, says I, you looks
charmin' this mornin'; give me a nice rasher of bacon and h'eggs,
Betty my love; and I wants a pint of h'ale, and three nice h'ot
muffins and butter - and a slice of Cheshire; and Betty, I wants - "
"A shark-steak, and be hanged to you!" roared Black Dan, with an oath.
Whereupon, dragged over the chests, the ill-starred fellow is
pummelled on deck.
I always made a point of befriending poor Ropey when I could; and, for
this reason, was a great favourite of his.
CHAPTER XV.
CHIPS AND BUNGS
BOUND into port, Chips and Bungs increased their devotion to the
bottle; and, to the unspeakable envy of the rest, these jolly
companions - or "the Partners," as the men called them - rolled about
deck, day after day, in the merriest mood imaginable.
But jolly as they were in the main, two more discreet tipplers it
would be hard to find. No one ever saw them take anything, except
when the regular allowance was served out by the steward; and to make
them quite sober and sensible, you had only to ask them how they
contrived to keep otherwise. Some time after, however, their secret
leaked out.
The casks of Pisco were kept down the after-hatchway, which, for this
reason, was secured with bar and padlock. The cooper, nevertheless,
from time to time, effected a burglarious entry, by descending into
the fore-hold; and then, at the risk of being jammed to death,
crawling along over a thousand obstructions, to where the casks were
stowed.
On the first expedition, the only one to be got at lay among others,
upon its bilge with the bung-hole well over. With a bit of iron hoop,
suitably bent, and a good deal of prying and punching, the bung was
forced in; and then the cooper's neck-handkerchief, attached to the
end of the hoop, was drawn in and out - the absorbed liquor being
deliberately squeezed into a small bucket.
