Complete New Tales of Para Handy (56 page)

Macphail, still querulous and ill-tempered after the exertions he had been called upon to make in piling on the coal in a vain pursuit of the extra knots demanded by the Captain, was in the
Vital Spark
's bows with a blunt safety razor and the ship's mirror, scraping at his face with an expression of considerable concentration and periodic protests as he nicked his skin.

Captain and Mate shared the puffer's ablutions bucket at the fore-end of the main hatch. Dougie, despite Para Handy's caustic comments as to the superfluity of the gesture (given the almost total absence of hair upon his head) was shampooing vigorously, while his commander was using copious applications of soft-soap to rid his hands of a layer of caked-on cement.

Sunny Jim alone was ready for the fray. His melodeon lay at his feet as he stood on the after-end of the same hatch and amused himself (and several passers-by on the quayside) with a brisk display of step-dancing for which his whistling provided the only music.

“Will you lot get a move on,” he cried in exasparation a few minutes later, when he stopped to draw breath. “It's a fair that's on for wan day, no' a fortnight, and besides for all the good you three auld fogeys are likely to get oot of it, ye're a' jist wastin' yer time.”

Para Handy was on the point of retaliating caustically to these unkind remarks when there came the tuneless toot of a rather feeble ship's whistle and another puffer appeared round the head of the jetty and drifted down towards the
Vital Spark
.

“Oh no,” said the Captain, swivelling round to inspect the new arrival, “oh no, for peety's sake. It's the
Cherokee
! I had raither hoped they had emigrated wi' the Klondike men, but then I should have kent better. We'll neffer be rid o' Rab Gunn, the man's like the proverbial bad penny.”

Gunn's
Cherokee
was one of the few skipper-owned puffers to be encountered on the river, though in fact she spent most of her time on the Forth and Clyde and Monklands Canals, ferrying coals from the mines to the furnaces of the Lanarkshire steel mills, and finished iron and steel from there to the shipyards on the upper Clyde. That meant that, thankfully, her path only rarely crossed that of the
Vital Spark
.

The origins of the strained relations between the two skippers were lost in history, though Para Handy's constant references to Gunn as a ‘lowland loon' and that worthy's dismissal of his rival as a ‘Hielan' haddie' did little to smooth the way to peace and harmony.

This antipathy extended to the two crews as well. Gunn's Mate, Big Fergie, was an ox of a man with an arm like a side of beef and a temper on a short fuse, of whom gentle Dougie kept well clear. Morrison, the Engineer, was a mean-spirited man with a weakness for gambling and a reputation for cheating at cards while the Deckhand, known simply as Towser, was a swarthy young man with gold ear-rings and long, straggly hair.

“Ah'm amazed yon rust-bucket o' yours is still afloat,” roared Gunn from his wheelhouse as the
Cherokee
eased her way into the berth immediately astern of the
Vital Spark
. “Ah heard she'd been hit and sunk by an oaring-boat aff Skelmorlie!”

“Iss that so,” said Para Handy huffily, hastily completing the last of his own toilet and hurrying to join his crew, who now stood waiting him on the quayside: “well, that chust shows you that you shouldna believe a word you hear in those disgraceful low-country shebeens you spend your days in!

“I am more than a little surprised to see you in Loch Fyne at aal, there's no caall for coal-gabbarts up here. And besides wi' your navigation abulities I didna think they let you loose outside the canals for even you canna get lost in there, aal you have to do is follow your nose. It's different oot here on the real river. Are you sure you havna taken the wrong turn at the Garrioch Heid, are you no' meant to be in Ayr right noo for a load of nutty slack from the mines aboot Cumnock?”

“Very cluvver,” riposted Gunn. “You are much too smart for your ain good, Macfarlane. I wuddna normally gi'e you the time o' day aboot it, but jist to pit you in your place Ah'll tell ye for nothin' that the
Cherokee
is on her way tae Inveraray for a cairgo o' baled wool frae the Argyll estates. Ah'm sure an' you wush you could get a classy job like that but you've nae chance wi' yon tarry old hooker o' yours.”

Para Handy drew himself up with dignity. “Classy chob? You mean you caall shuftin' a few bales of greasy wool a
classy
chob? We are off later tonight to the heid of the Loch to load a
real
classy cargo furst thing tomorrow at Cairndow! The cases and baggage of the biggest shooting perty of English chentlemen effer seen in Upper Loch Fyne. Tarry old hooker, indeed!”

And, turning away, he picked his way across the quayside — an operation which had to be undertaken with some care, as it was in the course of being resurfaced in places and stacks of cobblestones and low pyramids of roadstone had been deposited where repairs were being carried out.

The crew returned to the puffer at dusk, foot-weary but more than content with life after a splendid day at the Fair.

The Engineer's years of shovelling coal had stood him in good stead at the Test-Your-Strength Stall and his mighty hammer blow had sent the wooden shuttle flying up the vertical post to ring the bell at the top with a reverberating, satisfying clang: and won him a bottle of whisky which, in the euphoria of his success, he had generously agreed would be shared with his colleagues.

Sunny Jim, relying on his nimble-footedness to see him through, had put himself forward at the Boxing Booth (to the horror of the pacifist Mate) and successfully survived three rounds against the promoter's protégé, largely by virtue of running rapidly backwards round the ring, but had nonetheless qualified to win the half-crown on offer for the achievement, and used it to treat his shipmates at the Harbour Inn on their way back to the boat.

Even the lugubrious Dougie, cautiously investing his six-pence to enter the incense-filled tent of The Mystic Maharajah of Mysore, had emerged happily when that necromancer (actually an out-of-work riveter from Yorkhill) prognosticated nothing for him but future success and early promotion. For the next month or so he was on the look-out, whenever the
Vital Spark
was in port, for the arrival of the telegraph boy bringing news of his posting to his own command — till he gradually forgot the whole affair.

Para Handy had enjoyed a particularly satisfactory day, for he had early on made the happy discovery that two of his cousins were on the Fair ‘Committee' and had spent a pleasant hour or so in that crowded and convivial tent enjoying the hospitality of the Fair's organisers.

That happy atmosphere of universal goodwill was destroyed in an instant when the crew reached the edge of the quayside where the puffer had been moored.

There was no sign of her.

Para Handy blanched: “My Cot,” he said, ‘Issn't this the bonnie calamity! The shup's been stole on us! Whateffer wull the owner say!”

Sunny Jim caught hold of the Captain's sleeve and tugged at it, pointing towards the stern of the
Cherokee
, where Rab Gunn sat on a coil of rope puffing contentedly at his pipe and looking on innocently.

“If ye're looking for that rust-bucket of yours,” he said, “Ah think ye'll find her over at the steamer pier. We jist left her there wance we'd finished wi' her.

“You see, my boys decided to earn a penny or two from the towerists and we wisnae going to use wir ain boat, and spoil wir ain reputation. Wance the last steamer had left we set your tarry old hooker up as a sort of a floating funfair and gave them free trups roond the bay. But we made a fortune aff the entertainment! Big Fergie carried on a Boxing Prize Match doon in the hold and though wan fella caught him wi' a lucky poke in the eye for the rest o' the time he jist plain murdered them, it wis like takin' toffee aff af a bairn. Morrison ran a school o' Find-the-Lady on the foredeck and Towser wrapped himself in a couple o' blankets and did the genuine Gypsy Rose Lee in the fo'c'sle. We took in near on four pund, and the lads are aff to spend their share.

“Ah'm just staying on board to keep an eye on the shup, for Ah ken whit you Hielan' stots can be like when your temper's up!”

And with a sarcastic, satisfied laugh he stood up, stretched luxuriously, and made his way along the deck and down the hatch of the fo'c'sle.

Para Handy, dejected and at a loss for words, shook his head sadly and, motioning the crew to follow him, set off on the half-mile walk round to the steamer pier.

Once again, Sunny Jim caught him by the sleeve and pointed, but this time towards the assorted building materials which had been left on the quayside overnight by the construction gang.

“Captain,” he whispered urgently, “is that no' a tar-biler over there? And iss that no a length of hose connected tae it, wi' a handpump on the side of the biler?”

“Aye,” said the Captain, “what of it?”

“Well,” said Jim “D'ye no' think, if someone were to tip-toe aboard the
Cherokee
wi' the end of yon hose while Gunn's asleep and before his crew get back from the Inns, and slide aside jist wan plank on the hatch, that we'd have a fine chance to get back at them…?”

Sharing the contents of Macphail's bottle of spirits in their thick tea-mugs was a welcome bonus, but the crew were in high spirits (for very different reasons) as the
Vital Spark
chugged out into Loch Fyne half-an-hour later and set her course for a moonlight run north to Cairndow.

“I chust wush,” said the Captain, “that I could be in Inveraray tomorrow morning to see Gunn's face when they open the hatches to take that cargo of wool on board.

“Some chance! Not with three inches or more of liquid tar lying on the floor of the hold. That was a sublime notion of yours, Jum, chust sublime. There iss no getting away from it. I could wish though that there had been more tar in the biler than that but at least it will give them something to think aboot.

“There's no doot at aal now as to which shup is the tarry old hooker now, eh, boys? Gunn'll no' shout that at the
Vital Spark
again in a hurry!”

F
ACTNOTE

The second
Lord of the Isles
featured in my first collection of Para Handy stories. Launched from D & W Henderson's Meadowside Yard in 1891, she was an acclaimed and handsome ship which in no way could eclipse the Columbia, but which ran her close in terms of public loyalty and affection, and could almost — but not quite — match her for speed.

The Captain's reference to the Klondike has, of course, nothing to do with the operations and practices of the rusting and battered fish-processing factory ships which have followed the herring fleets round Scotland in recent decades, but everything to do with the great Canadian Gold Rush of 1897.

Only the Californian bonanza of the late 1840s exceeded the Klondike for madness and mayhem, but of course that was located in a (slightly) more accessible and (certainly) more amenable environment. And lasted just a little longer: the Klondike was over and done with in less than four years.

The Klondike River in the Arctic North-West of Canada, on that country's border with Alaska, came to public notice when gold was discovered in its creeks and those of its tributaries. Both the climate and the terrain were implacably hostile. Wintertime temperatures fell to 50 degrees below centigrade and the area of the strike could only be reached with the very greatest of difficulty, either up the Yukon river or by way of treacherous mountain passes from Alaska.

Yet despite those almost insurmountable hazards nearly 30,000 prospectors and camp-followers streamed into the area. Shanty towns sprang up overnight. In all probability the owners of the saloons and brothels did rather better out of the ‘strike' than did any of the miners. Dawson City, the self-created ‘capital' of the gold fever country, reached a peak population of about 20,000. Only about 300 households remain there today.