A Jolly Fellowship by Frank Richard Stockton (best management books of all time TXT) 📗
- Author: Frank Richard Stockton
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"What's that swishing?"
"That what?" said I.
"There it goes again!" Harry cried. "Splashing!"
"It's the wheels!" exclaimed Rectus.
"That's so!" cried Scott. "The old thing's off! Rush up! Here! The hind-stairs! Quick!"
And upstairs to the deck we all went, one on top of another. The wheels were going around, and the steamer was off!
Already she was quite a distance from the wharf. I suppose the tide carried her out, as soon as the lines[14] were cast off, for I'm sure the wheels had not been in motion half a minute before we heard them. But all that made no difference. We were off.
I never saw four such blank faces as the committee wore, when they saw the wide space of water between them and the wharf.
"Stop her!" cried Scott to me, as if I could do anything, and then he made a dive toward a party of men on the deck.
"They're passengers!" I cried. "We must find the captain."
"No, no!" said Harry. "Go for the steersman. Tell him to steer back! We mustn't be carried off!"
Tom Myers and his brother George had already started for the pilot-house, when Rectus shouted to them that he'd run down to the engineer and tell him to stop the engine. So they stopped, and Rectus was just going below when Scott called to him to hold up.
"You needn't be scared!" he said. (He had been just as much scared as anybody.) "That man over there says it will be all right. We can go back with the pilot. People often do that. It will be all the more fun. Don't bother the engineer. There's nothing I'd like better than a trip back with a pilot!"
"That's so," said Harry; "I never thought of the pilot."
"But are you sure he'll take you back?" asked Rectus, while Tom Myers and his brother George looked very pale and anxious.
"Take us? Of course he will," said Scott. "That's one of the things a pilot's for,—to take back passen[15]gers,—I mean people who are only going part way. Do you suppose the captain will want to take us all the way to Savannah for nothing?"
Rectus didn't suppose that, and neither did any of the rest of us, but I thought we ought to look up the captain and tell him.
"But, you see," said Scott, "it's just possible he might put back."
"Well, don't you want to go back?" I asked.
"Yes, of course, but I would like a sail back in a pilot-boat," said Scott, and Harry Alden agreed with him. Tom Myers and his brother George wanted to go back right away.
We talked the matter over a good deal. I didn't wish to appear as if I wanted to get rid of the fellows who had been kind enough to come all the way from Willisville to see me off, but I couldn't help thinking that it didn't look exactly fair and straightforward not to say that these boys were not passengers until the pilot was ready to go back. I determined to go and see about the matter, but I would wait a little while.
It was cool on deck, especially now that the vessel was moving along, but we all buttoned up our coats and walked up and down. The sun shone brightly, and the scene was so busy and lively with the tug-boats puffing about, and the vessels at anchor, and the ferry-boats, and a whole bay-full of sights curious to us country boys, that we all enjoyed ourselves very much—except Tom Myers and his brother George. They didn't look happy.[16]
CHAPTER II. GOING BACK WITH THE PILOT.We were pretty near the Narrows when I thought it was about time to let the captain, or one of the officers, know that there were some people on board who didn't intend to take the whole trip. I had read in the newspapers that committees and friends who went part way with distinguished people generally left them in the lower bay.
But I was saved the trouble of looking for an officer, for one of them, the purser, came along, collecting tickets. I didn't give him a chance to ask Scott or any of the other fellows for something that they didn't have, but went right up to him and told him how the matter stood.
"I must see the captain about this," he said, and off he went.
"He didn't look very friendly," said Scott, and I had to admit that he didn't.
In a few moments the captain came walking rapidly up to us. He was a tall man, dressed in blue, with[17] side-whiskers, and an oil-cloth cap. The purser came up behind him.
"What's all this?" said the captain. "Are you not passengers, you boys?" He did not look very friendly, either, as he asked this question.
"Two of us are," I said, "but four of us were carried off accidentally."[18]
"Accident? Fiddlesticks!" exclaimed the captain. "Didn't you know the vessel was starting? Hadn't you time to get off? Didn't you hear the gong? Everybody else heard it. Are you all deaf?"
This was a good deal to answer at once, so I just said that I didn't remember hearing any gong. Tom Myers and his brother George, however, spoke up, and said that they had heard a gong, they thought, but did not know what it was for.
"Why didn't you ask, then?" said the captain, who was getting worse in his humor. I had a good mind to tell him that it would take up a good deal of the crew's time if Tom Myers and his brother George asked about everything they didn't understand on board this ship, but I thought I had better not. I have no doubt the gong sounded when we were having our row in the state-room, and were not likely to pay attention to it even if we did hear it.
"And why, in the name of common sense," the captain went on, "didn't you come and report, the instant you found the vessel had started? Did you think we were fast to the pier all this time?"
Then Scott thought he might as well come out square with the truth; and he told how they made up their minds, after they found that the steamer had really started, with them on board, not to make any fuss about it, nor give anybody any trouble to stop the ship, or to put back, but just to stay quietly on board, and go back with the pilot. They thought that would be most convenient, all around.
"Go back with the pilot!" the captain cried. "Why,[19] you young idiot, there is no pilot! Coastwise steamers don't carry pilots. I am my own pilot. There is no pilot going back!"
You ought to have seen Scott's face!
Nobody said anything. We all just stood and looked at the captain. Tears began to come into the eyes of Tom Myers and his brother George.
"What are they to do?" asked the purser of the captain. "Buy tickets for Savannah?"[20]
"We can't do that," said Scott, quickly. "We haven't any money."
"I don't know what they're to do," replied the captain. "I'd like to chuck 'em overboard." And with this agreeable little speech he walked away.
The purser now took the two tickets for Rectus and myself, and saying: "We'll see what's to be done with the rest of you fellows," he walked away, too.
Then we all looked at one another. We were a pretty pale lot, and I believe that Rectus and I, who were all right, felt almost as badly as the four other boys, who were all wrong.
"We can't go to Savannah!" said Harry Alden. "What right have they to take us to Savannah?"
"Well, then, you'd better get out and go home," said Scott. "I don't so much mind their taking us to Savannah, for they can't make us pay if we haven't any money. But how are we going to get back? That's the question. And what'll the professor think? He'll write home that we've run away. And what'll we do in Savannah without any money?"
"You'd better have thought of some of these things before you got us into waiting to go back with the pilot," said Harry.
As for Tom Myers and his brother George, they just sat down and put their arms on the railing, and clapped their faces down on their arms. They cried all over their coat-sleeves, but kept as quiet as they could about it. Whenever these two boys had to cry before any of the rest of the school-fellows, they had learned to keep very quiet about it.[21]
While the rest of us were talking away, and Scott and Harry finding fault with each other, the captain came back. He looked in a little better humor.
"The only thing that can be done with you boys," he said, "is to put you on some tug or small craft that's going back to New York. If we meet one, I'll lie to and let you off. But it will put me to a great deal of trouble, and we may meet with nothing that will take you aboard. You have acted very badly. If you had come right to me, or to any of the officers, the moment you found we had started, I could have easily put you on shore. There are lots of small boats about the piers that would have come out after you, or I might even have put back. But I can do nothing now but look out for some craft bound for New York that will take you aboard. If we don't meet one, you'll have to go on to Savannah."
This made us feel a little better. We were now in the lower bay, and there would certainly be some sort of a vessel that would stop for the boys. We all went to the forward deck and looked out. It was pretty cold there, and we soon began to shiver in the wind, but still we stuck it out.
There were a good many vessels, but most of them were big ones. We could hardly have the impudence to ask a great three-masted ship, under full sail, to stop and give us a lift to New York. At any rate, we had nothing to do with the asking. The captain would attend to that. But every time we came near a vessel going the other way, we looked about to see if we[22] could see anything of an officer with a trumpet, standing all ready to sing out, "Sail ho!"
But, after a while, we felt so cold that we couldn't stand it any longer, and we went below. We might have gone and stood by the smoke-stack and warmed ourselves, but we didn't know enough about ships to think of this.
We hadn't been standing around the stove in the dining-room more than ten minutes, before the purser came hurrying toward us.
"Come, now," he said, "tumble forward! The captain's hailed a pilot-boat."
"Hurrah!" said Scott; "we're going back in a pilot-boat, after all!" and we all ran after the purser to the lower forward deck. Our engines had stopped, and not far from us was a rough-looking little schooner with a big "17" painted in black on her mainsail. She was "putting about," the purser said, and her sails were flapping in the wind.
There was a great change in the countenances of Tom Myers and his brother George. They looked like a couple of new boys.
"Isn't this capital?" said Scott. "Everything's turned out all right."
But all of a sudden he changed his tune.
"Look here!" said he to me, pulling me on one side; "wont that pilot want to be paid something? He wont stop his vessel and take us back for nothing, will he?"
I couldn't say anything about this, but I asked the purser, who still stood by us.[23]
"I don't suppose he'll make any regular charge," said he; "but he'll expect you to give him something,—whatever you please."
"But we haven't anything," said Scott to me. "We have our return tickets to Willisville, and that's about all."
"Perhaps we can't go back, after all," said Harry, glumly, while Tom Myers and his brother George began to drop their lower jaws again.
I did not believe that the pilot-boat people would ask to see the boys' money before they
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