"You're your father's son," laughed the captain, as they made their way up the deck. "Sure, your father never in his life let slip a chance t' make a speech."
In the forecastle they had a lad on the table under the lantern--a tow-headed, blue-eyed, muscular boy, of Archie's age, or less. He had on goatskin boots, a jacket of homespun, and a flaring red scarf. The men were quiet; for the boy was piping, in a clear, quavering treble, the "Song o' the Anchor an' Chain," a Ruddy Cove saga, which goes to the air of a plaintive West Country ballad of the seventeenth century, with the refrain,
"Sure, the chain 'e parted, An' the schooner drove ashoare, An' the wives o' the 'ands Never saw un any moare. No moare! Never saw un any mo-o-o-are!"
He was near the end of the sixteenth verse, and the men were drawing breath for the chorus, when the captain appeared in the door, wrath in his eyes.
There was no answer. The lad turned to face the captain, in part deferentially, in part humorously, altogether fearlessly.
_Billy Topsail is Shipped Upon Conditions, and the Dictator, in a Rising Gale, is Caught in a Field of Drift Ice, with a Growler to Leeward_
"WHERE'D you come aboard, b'y?" Captain Hand demanded.
"You're from Ruddy Cove?" said the captain.
"Yes, sir. Me name's Billy, an' me father's a Labrador fisherman. Sure, I've sailed t' the French Shore, sir, an' I'm a handy lad t' work, sir."
The captain raised his eyebrows; then dropped them, and stared at the boy. He had been before the mast with old Tom Topsail on a South American barque in years long gone.
"You'll work hard, b'y," said he, severely, for he had been bothered with stowaways for thirty years, "an' I'll ship you regular, if you do your duty. If you don't," and here the captain frowned tremendously, "I'll have you thrashed at the post at Long Tom, an' you'll have no share with the crew in the cargo."
"Ay, sir," said Billy, gladly. "Sure, I'll stand by it, sir."
When the captain turned his back, out came the belated chorus, with young Billy Topsail leading:
"Sure, the chain 'e parted, An' the schooner drove ashoare, An' the wives o' the 'ands Never saw un any moare. No moare! Never saw un any mo-o-o-are!"
"If he's like his dad," the captain chuckled to Archie, as they mounted to the deck, "his name will be on the ship's books before the v'y'ge is over, sure enough."