By this time the ship of deliverance, having hove to, was getting a boat out. That laborious business over, the boat came at fair speed towards the only practicable landing-place, until the commiserating face of the officer in charge took on an expression of bewilderment as he noted the smug complacency on the countenances of the castaways.
It did not diminish when the skipper, gravely welcoming him with one hand, held out invitingly a decapitated bottle of extra special Scotch with the other, saying, with lingering sweetness in his voice--
“Mahn dear, here’s wussin’ ye a Merry Chrismuss.”
“South 70° E., sir, weather’s a bit sulky and inclined to dirt before daylight, I should think. Lot of ships about. Bishop bore N. 20° W. fifteen miles off at eight bells (4 a.m.). Good morning.” And as he uttered the last words the second officer of the Kafirstan, 10,000-ton cargo steamer, London to Boston, U.S., swung his burly form down the lee-bridge ladder, and the darkness swallowed him up. The chief, who had just relieved him, mumbled out “G’mornin’” in the midst of a cavernous yawn, not because he was churlish or out of humour, but for the reason that be a man never so seasoned, the sudden transition from the cosy recesses of a warm bunk and sweet sleep to a narrow platform some forty feet above the sea, fully exposed to the wrathful edge of a winter gale at four o’clock in the morning, does not predispose him to cheerful conversation, or indeed any other of the amenities of life, until the wonderful adaptability of the human body has had time to adjust itself to the altered conditions.
No; John Furness, chief mate, was anything but a sulky man. Buffeted by the storms of Fate from his earliest youth in far fiercer fashion than ever the gales of winter had smitten him, he was now by way of esteeming himself one of the most fortunate of mankind, for, after serving as second mate for several years with a chief and master’s ticket, and never getting a better berth than some thousand-ton tramp could afford him, he had suddenly taken unto himself a wife--a dear girl, as poor and as friendless as himself--with the quaint remark that the best thing to do with two lonely people was to make ’em one, on the principle that like cures like. And with his marriage his luck seemed to have turned. On the second day of his honeymoon he was taking his young wife round the docks, and pointing out to her the various ships--like introducing her to old acquaintances--when suddenly, with a bound, he left her side and disappeared over the edge of a jetty. He had caught sight of an old gentleman who had tripped his foot in a coil of rope and tumbled over it and the edge of the pier at the same time. John’s promptitude cost him a wetting, but got him his present berth, the best he had ever held in his life, and his heart beat high with hope that at last he was on the high road to fortune.