OUNG Captain Michael O'Shea, shipmaster, sat by a window of the Jolly Mermaid tavern, at Blackwall on the Thames, below London. His companion, Johnny Kent, was a stout, red-faced, gray-headed man who had sailed the seas in many kinds of steamers as chief engineer. These two leisurely drank mugs of bitter beer, and gazed with professional interest at the crowded shipping of that great seaport thoroughfare which sailormen call London River. The Jolly Mermaid was one of a jostling row of ancient buildings with bow windows and balconies painted in bright hues, which overhung the tide at Blackwall to remind one of the maritime London of towering frigates and high-pooped galleons and stout seamen of Devon. The near-by shore was filled with shipyards and weedy wharves, and a little way downriver was the entrance of the vast inland basin called the East India Docks, where soared a wonderful confusion of spars and rigging, and the red funnels of the Union Castle liners lay side by side.
On the turbid river moved in procession a singular variety of craft—drifting Thames barges with dyed sails, square-riggers in tow, Norwegian tramps half hidden beneath uncouth deckloads of lumber, rusty Spanish fruiters, coastwise schooners, spray-stained steam trawlers from the Dogger Bank, stubby Dutch eel-schuits, stately mail boats homeward bound from the tropics, sooty colliers from Cardiff.
They slid past with an incessant din of whistles, which, warning, expostulating, shouted the rules of the road in the language of the sea.
These familiar sights and sounds pleased Captain O'Shea, and he was contented with his seat by the window of the Jolly Mermaid and the excellent brew dispensed by the apple-cheeked young woman behind the bar. Amphibious loafers drifted in and out, or cast anchor on the wharf alongside—riggers, watermen, dock laborers, sailors who seemed to have a world of time on their hands. Their gait was slouching, their attire careless, and their conversation peppered with sanguinary references to their eyes.
"'Tis a restful place, Johnny, and as diverting as a theater," observed O'Shea.
The chief engineer returned rather fretfully:
"I'm willing to be idle in this bit of slack water for a while, and sort of pull myself together, Cap'n Mike. But this don't earn wages, and I ain't makin' much headway toward buyin' that farm down in the State o' Maine."
Whimsical amusement lighted O' Shea's bold, smooth-shaven features as he replied:
"I am not a man to seek a humdrum life, afloat or ashore, you impatient old pirate! There was a lot of fuss kicked up at home about that last voyage of ours, as ye well know. And there was a strong chance that we would be laid by the heels in one of Uncle Sam's jails for breaking the laws between nations. We are better off where we are."
"Governments are touchy, but it's dog-goned foolishness to hold it against us," grumbled Johnny Kent. "We were peacefully runnin' a cargo of guns and cartridges ashore for them rebellious patriots in the Caribbean, and most strictly mindin' our own business. That Spanish gunboat got in our way, and her intentions was plain blood-thirsty. What if we did ram her and then blow her up? She interfered with men who were try in' to make an honest livin' on the high seas."
"Argue as far as you like, Johnny. It won't alter the fact that it was healthier for you and me to make ourselves hard to find."
"But it's discouragin' to look for another ship here in England, Cap'n Mike. We can't show Board of Trade certificates. We're fish out of water. American masters' and engineers' papers are no good among these Britishers."
"'Tis not easy to find our kind of a ship anywhere," O'Shea reminded him. "Big risks and big wages is our game. There are no revolutions popping the lid off in Central or South America, and we will sit tight and trust in my lucky star. I have a gold piece or two left in the toe of the sock where I stowed it against times like this. And we have not sunk so low that we must sign on for a lawful voyage in a ship that does not dodge every smoke she sights."