McRafferty indicated a chair; Halfhyde sat. “You’ve made up your mind?” McRafferty asked abruptly.
Halfhyde stroked his long chin; he was reluctant to confess to having failed to recall most of the previous night’s talk. He fished. He said, “Your offer was somewhat inconclusive, Captain.”
“It was not. On the contrary, it was definite. The truth is this: you were too damned drunk to remember what the devil it was I said. You’ll admit that now?”
Halfhyde grinned and said, “Yes. I’m sorry.”
“You need not be. Many a good man gets drunk ashore. You’ll be needing a hair of the dog I don’t doubt.” McRafferty turned aside, opened a cupboard and brought out a bottle of Dunville’s, two tumblers and a jug of water. He half filled each tumbler. “Help yourself to water. I’ll take mine neat.”
He did; he put the tumbler to his lips and appeared to suck it up in one long draught. He said, “The bottle will not reappear after tomorrow morning until the ship berths in Iquique. There is no drinking at sea aboard my ship. Well? Last night I offered you two alternatives: I’ll take you as a passenger, or I’ll sign you on articles as an able seaman, not at the full rate of pay but at a nominal shilling a month. You’ll work hard and repay me by being a cheap hand. I’m short of seamen, as the fo’c’sles of the old windjammers always are today—the men prefer the ease and softness of the steamers, bad cess to them! Your answer was that as a passenger you would twiddle your thumbs and waste your time. As a fo’c’sle hand, by God, you’d learn the ropes—literally! You told me you’d had experience of sail, but you did not specify what it was. ’Tis that I’d like to know now.”
Halfhyde felt the whisky glow in his veins, bringing back a touch of health. He said, “The training ship Britannia gave me some basic sailing skills. Then I was in the sail training squadron as a midshipman, under the Earl of Clanwilliam.”
McRafferty laughed. “Aye, the Earl o’ Clanwilliam, no less. There are few earls in the merchant ships, Halfhyde. You will find life harder here.”
“Yet Lord Clanwilliam drove us hard.”
Here, this morning, aboard his ship, Captain McRafferty seemed a different man, a man standing where he was acknowledged as God. Smiling, he said, “You will embark on the hardest life that providence ever put in the way of man, and you will ship with some hard shipmates. Rogues the lot of them, or mostly—but fine seamen—again, mostly. Every ship has its share of loafers, who are not signed on again once found out. My First Mate, Mr Bullock, is a hard case who’s done time in the down-easters under the Yankee flagships that have always carried bullies as mates. If you ship under me, then you’ll be driven harder and for longer than any lord would drive. I have given you fair warning. Do you accept?”
Halfhyde finished his whisky. “I accept,” he said quietly.
“Very well, then. You will learn plenty, Halfhyde. But there is one thing above all that you must learn for your own sake to forget, and quickly, and that is this, that you’ve held command of your own. For my part, I shall make no mention to anyone of your past, or of your future hopes as an owner. I shall make it known, if I need to, that you have done naval service—it will be, or should be, clear to the hands that you’re no greenhorn.” McRafferty paused and turned away to pace his cabin. When he spoke again he came close to Halfhyde and kept his voice low. He said, “There is a reason why I have a need for you…why you can perhaps be useful to me.”
“Yes, Captain?”
McRafferty said, “I told you last night, I own my ship, as you hope to own yours. Times are hard in sail today. The expenses mount continually, and cargoes are not always easy to find. No cargoes, no money—no money, no ship. The Aysgarth Falls is my home. It is very worrying—the ship is heavily mortgaged. What I am driving at is this: after we discharge at Sydney, I have as yet no homeward cargo promised—”
“Is there not always plenty of wool for home?”
“No,” McRafferty said with a shrug, “not always. Sail is being beaten to it by these damned steamers—it’s true our rates are preferential, but we have not the speed. And always I am forced to cut my rates a little more to obtain the cargoes. I repeat, it is very worrying for a shipmaster who also owns his ship.” He paused, pulling at his bushy side-whiskers. “I have had to provide an additional form of income, a kind of insurance, in case there is no homeward cargo. I have arranged to pick up a passenger in Iquique, our first port of call, in Chile. I am being paid a not inconsiderable sum to take this person to Sydney.”
Halfhyde raised an eyebrow, quizzically. “A not inconsiderable sum…do you mean a sum beyond what you’d normally expect?”
McRafferty nodded. “You are quick enough to guess. Yes, that is the case.”
Halfhyde asked directly, “Why are you telling me this, Captain?”
McRafferty shrugged and said simply, “Because I trust you. You have an honest look, an honest way of speaking. I have had much experience of men, as all shipmasters have. I know a good man from a bad one. And as I’ve said already, I may need your help. Your advice.”
“My advice? I have no commercial experience as yet, and a passenger, I would take it, is a commercial proposition. Is not your First Mate the man for this?”
“It was my First Mate
