""Twas none of my affairs who he was if he wasn"t Frankie, and while he talked so hot I slipped behind a green-painted ship with her top-sides splintered. We was all in the middest of "em then.
""Hi! Hoi!" the green ship says. "Come alongside, honest man, and I"ll buy your load. I"m Fenner that fought the seven Portugals--clean out of shot or bullets. Frankie knows me."
""Ay, but I don"t," I says, and I slacked nothing.
"He was a masterpiece. Seein" I was for goin" on, he hails a Bridport hoy beyond us and shouts, "George! Oh, George! Wing that duck. He"s fat!" An" true as we"re all here, that squatty Bridport boat rounds to acrost our bows, intending to stop us by means o" shooting.
"My Aunt looks over our rail. "George," she says, "you finish with your enemies afore you begin on your friends."
"Him that was laying the liddle swivel-gun at us sweeps off his hat an"
calls her Queen Bess, and asks if she was selling liquor to pore dry sailors. My Aunt answered him quite a piece. She was a notable woman.
"Then _he_ come up--his long pennant trailing overside--his waistcloths and netting tore all to pieces where the Spanishers had grappled, and his sides black-smeared with their gun-blasts like candle-smoke in a bottle. We hooked on to a lower port and hung.
""Oh, Mus" Drake! Mus" Drake," I calls up.
"He stood on the great anchor cathead, his shirt open to the middle, and his face shining like the sun.
""Why, Sim!" he says. Just like that--after twenty year! "Sim," he says, "what brings you?"
""Pudden," I says, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "You told me to bring cannon-shot next time, an" I"ve brought "em."
"He saw we had. He ripped out a fathom and a half o" brimstone Spanish, and he swung down on our rail, and he kissed me before all his fine young captains. His men was swarming out of the lower ports ready to unload us. When he saw how I"d considered all his likely wants, he kissed me again.
""Here"s a friend that sticketh closer than a brother!" he says.
"Mistress," he says to my Aunt, "all you foretold on me was true. I"ve opened that road from the East to the West, and I"ve buried my heart beside it."
"I know," she says. "That"s why I be come."
""But ye never foretold this"; he points to both they great fleets.
""This don"t seem to me to make much odds compared to what happens _to_ a man," she says. "Do it?"
""Certain sure a man forgets to remember when he"s proper mucked up with work. Sim," he says to me, "we must shift every living Spanisher round Dunkirk corner on to our Dutch sands before morning. The wind"ll come out of the North after this calm--same as it used--and then they"re our meat."
""Amen," says I. "I"ve brought you what I could scutchel up of odds and ends. Be you hit anywhere to signify?"
""Oh, our folk"ll attend to all that when we"ve time," he says. He turns to talk to my Aunt, while his men flew the stuff out of our hold. I think I saw old Moon amongst "em, but we was too busy to more than nod like. Yet the Spanishers was going to prayers with their bells and candles before we"d cleaned out the _Antony_. Twenty-two ton o" useful stuff I"d fetched him.
""Now, Sim," says my Aunt, "no more devouring of Mus" Drake"s time. He"s sending us home in the Bridport hoy. I want to speak to them young springalds again."
""But here"s our ship all ready and swept," I says.
""Swep" an" garnished," says Frankie. "I"m going to fill her with devils in the likeness o" pitch and sulphur. We must shift the Dons round Dunkirk corner, and if shot can"t do it, we"ll send down fireships."
""I"ve given him my share of the _Antony_," says my Aunt. "What do you reckon to do about yours?"
""She offered it," said Frankie, laughing.
""She wouldn"t have if I"d overheerd her," I says; "because I"d have offered my share first." Then I told him how the _Antony"s_ sails was best trimmed to drive before the wind, and seeing he was full of occupations we went acrost to that Bridport hoy, and left him.
"But Frankie was gentle-born, d"ye see, and that sort they never overlook any folks" dues.
"When the hoy pa.s.sed under his stern, he stood bare-headed on the p.o.o.p same as if my Aunt had been his Queen, and his musicianers played "Mary Ambree" on their silver trumpets quite a long while. Heart alive, little maid! I never meaned to make you look sorrowful----"
Bunny Lewknor in his sackcloth petticoats burst through the birch scrub wiping his forehead.
"We"ve got the stick to rights now! She"ve been a whole hatful o"
trouble. You come an" ride her home, Mus" Dan and Miss Una!"
They found the proud wood-gang at the foot of the slope, with the log double-chained on the tug.
"Cattiwow, what are you going to do with it?" said Dan, as they straddled the thin part.
"She"s going down to Rye to make a keel for a Lowestoft fishin" boat, I"ve heard. Hold tight!"
Cattiwow cracked his whip, and the great log dipped and tilted, and leaned and dipped again, exactly like a stately ship upon the high seas.
FRANKIE"S TRADE
Old Horn to All Atlantic said: (_A-hay O! To me O!_) "Now where did Frankie learn his trade?
For he ran me down with a three-reef mains"le."
(_All round the Horn!_)
Atlantic answered:--"Not from me!
You"d better ask the cold North Sea, For he ran me down under all plain canvas."
(_All round the Horn!_)
The North Sea answered:--"He"s my man, For he came to me when he began-- Frankie Drake in an open coaster."
(_All round the Sands!_)
"I caught him young and I used him sore, So you never shall startle Frankie more, Without capsizing Earth and her waters.
(_All round the Sands!_)
"I did not favour him at all, I made him pull and I made him haul-- And stand his trick with the common sailors.
(_All round the Sands!_)
"I froze him stiff and I fogged him blind, And kicked him home with his road to find By what he could see of a three-day snow-storm.
(_All round the Sands!_)
"I learned him his trade o" winter nights, "Twixt Mardyk Fort and Dunkirk lights On a five-knot tide with the forts a-firing.
(_All round the Sands!_)