Part 6 (1/2)
I was mistaken. Mr Jones had influence, though he might be short of cash.
”If you're really hard up,” he said, ”I can put you onto a kind of job-- if you like it. They are doing 'The Battle of Blenheim' at our place.
It'll be eighteenpence a night. You'll have to double the armies, and be shot down at the end of every act. But it's all easy enough.”
I thought this would suit me very well for the time, and most likely shooting down wasn't permanently injurious to the system any more than being a gambler and a roue; so I thanked him very much.
”But how can I help you in return?” I asked.
”Well, it's to that chance I spoke of,” he said, confidentially. ”Look here--I've an engagement for a tour down to the Midland counties. The pay isn't very wonderful, to start with; but I'm to have more if we do good business, you know; and I've stipulated that we do a nautical drama, and I play _Jack Brine_--that's the sailor hero, you know-- myself.”
”What makes you want to play a sailor? I suppose you've done it before, and made a hit?”
”Well--no; I can't say I've ever tried it. But nautical pieces used to be a tremendous go once, and are so still down in some parts of the country, and--There! _I've got it in me_, I'm certain--I feel it here!”
And he tapped the breast of a dilapidated sham sealskin waistcoat as he spoke, and knit his brows with determination.
”But you haven't told me yet how I can be of service to you,” said I.
”Well,” he said, ”look here! This is one of the acts of the piece I'm going to do. I've done it myself--faked it up, you know, pulling in the best bits from one or two others; but that's nothing--and it'll go immense! It's cram-full of business, and the situations are tremendous!”
”It ought to go, if that's the case.”
”It's a certainty, dear boy! It can't help it! But there's just one thing about it, do you know, that makes me uncomfortable, and that's where you can help me.”
”And that is--”
”You see, I'm not a nautical man myself. It was very odd of you to take me for one right off! Of course, I can put it on pretty well when I like; but if you want the real honest truth, I never even saw the sea in all my life--never been nearer to it than Rosherville; and as I don't happen to be personally acquainted with any nautical men, the fact is I'm not quite certain there is not a screw loose up and down in the words. Of course I'm all right in the s.h.i.+ver my timbers and douse my pig-tails parts; but it's when you get reefing your jib-boom and hugging the sh.o.r.e with your lee-scupper that you don't feel altogether as if you'd got your sea-legs on. Look here, I'd like to go through the thing with you quietly, and you can tell me where it isn't quite right.”
I gladly agreed to render him all the a.s.sistance in my power. I thought if there was very much more of the same style he had been quoting there ought to have been a s.h.i.+pwreck or two up and down in that piece of his, and that I should be something like a Captain Boyton's swimming-dress to this poor struggling author over head and ears in a tempestuous ocean of his own manufacture.
I met him by appointment, therefore, next day at the stage-door of the theatre where he was acting, and where he had promised to procure me an opening as extra or supernumerary. He got me on easily enough, and my duties, though they made me precious hot, did not require very much genius. I was on my mettle, and wanted to reflect as much credit as possible upon my new friend for the introduction, so I fought away and took forlorn hopes like one o'clock; and the prompter was good enough to say that I evidently had something in me, and would do better presently, if I stuck to it.
After a night or two they found I was an active kind of fellow, and had the full use of my arms and legs, so they introduced a bit of rope climbing on my account, and worked in another bit specially, where I was shot down from among the rigging, with a round of applause every night.
In the daytime, Mr Jones and I talked the nautical drama, and I set his ”lee-scuppers” right for him, and got him to make things generally a little bit more like the right thing.
At the end of a fortnight, however, I was able to get at my friends, and through them to stop the mouths of the angry coffin-s.h.i.+p owners; and so I had no more occasion to fight shy of the seaports, and resolved to go to sea again.
If it had not been for that, Mr Jones would have tried to get me into the company he was just then joining, and I should have figured in one or two small parts in the great drama.
However, instead of that, I bid him good-by, and thanked him, and wished him every success, and went my way, leaving him to go his.
I only went for a short cruise round the coast of Spain, but I met with the pleasantest mates--bar present company, of course--I ever remember sailing with. We all of us got to be like brothers before the s.h.i.+p touched land again in England, and as another vessel was in want of hands, and about to sail in two or three days for the China Sea, I and five others agreed to stick together and join. I took two days just to drop down and see my friends, and the next day we met together and had a bit of a spree, agreeing to spend our last night at the play. I had told my messmates about Jones, and how I had been on the stage myself, so they looked up to me as rather an authority, as you may suppose, and pa.s.sing me over the play-bill the waiter had brought us, asked if I knew anything of the piece they were playing.
Know anything, indeed!
Ha! ha! That was not bad.
Why, it was Jones's piece, and Atlantic Jones, in great letters, was to appear in his great character of _Jack Brine_, the Bo's'en of the Bay of Biscay.