ABOARD THE BRIG
I woke with a ray of sunshine streaming across my face through the
thick, greenish glass of a deadlight and an odd feeling of
contentment. Mice were cheeping in the paneling at my elbow; the
timbers and planking of the hull were groaning and snorting; there
was a soothing swissh-ssh of divided waters; and the brig herself was
swaying easily in a following sea.
Corlaer was sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion, and I was at
pains not to disturb him as I slipped to the floor, opened the door
and entered the main cabin. This was deserted save for the boy
Darby, who was curled up on the seat under the stern windows, peering
out at the brig’s creamy wake. He heard the door close after me and
swiveled round at once, landing lightly on his feet as if he had been
to sea for years.
“Och, Master Bob,” says he, “I thought ye’d never wake up. Ah, it’s
the grand, grand day. And do ye smell the brine in the air? It
makes the toes of your two feet dance, whether ye will or no--troth,
it does.”
’Twas impossible to nourish resentment against the boy for his
betrayal of us. He was as naturally lawless and unmoral as a young
wolf, but I could not resist a jeer at his recent transformation.
“And how does it seem to be a pirate, Darby?”
“Oh, fine! Sure, I always knew I wasn’t intended for a bond-boy to
run errands and carry bales. Ah, it’s the grand life, Master Bob!
They tell me himself--” he jerked his thumb toward the door of a
stateroom opposite that in which Peter and I were berthed--“is own
uncle to ye, and some day, if ye choose, ye can be as great as him.
Faith, and I know what my choice would be!”
“Is it your idea that pirates never work?” I inquired.
His face fell a trifle.
“Och, there’s work everywhere ye go, bad ’cess to it! It’s, ‘Darby,
lend a hand here!’ Or, ‘Darby, catch hold o’ this rope!’ Or,
‘Darby, fetch me a pannikin o’ rum!’ Darby this and Darby that the
night long.”
His face lightened again.
“But I’m to have my own cutlass and two pistols for my belt, and they
say I’m good luck.”
“Good luck? How’s that?”
“Sure, it’s my hair, I think. Flint--him that this crew sail with by
usual--he has a liking for a red-headed lad. Such as meself brings
him luck, so they swear, and Long John----”
“Who?”
“Long John--Master Silver, to be sure--him with the one leg we talked
to by the shore yesterday--he says I’ll go far with Flint.”
I had to laugh at my own bemusement at the picture Darby’s remark
called up. Yesterday morning at this hour I had been laboring
industriously in the counting-room in Pearl Street. And how much had
happened since then! I harked back to my setting-forth for the
Bristol packet, the casual conversation with the one-legged
mariner--how skilfully he had pumped me and annexed Darby to his
plot!--the encounter with the Irish maid----
With this I curbed my recollections. Thought of Moira O’Donnell was
unpleasant, for I could not rid my mind of the suspicion that she
must be bound up in some way in the schemes her father worked at in
coöperation with my great-uncle.
But there! I found relief in this reflection. Certes, her father
could be no worse than my relative; and here was I, innocent of any
art or part in Murray’s devious ploys, yet tossed into the grip of
their mechanism as ruthlessly as if my life depended upon his
success. And perhaps it did. What more natural, then, than that she
was equally innocent? Aye, from the conversation betwixt the two
conspirators I had overheard the night before it appeared that she
was innocent, probably in greater ignorance of her father’s plans
than I, else how explain O’Donnell’s concern upon discovering the
character of the men with whom she was to be thrown in contact?
And this aroused a further recollection. What was it the lass had
said as we parted?
“Here our paths diverge.”
She would not have said that had she known all, for there had been no
necessity for the lie. Doubt not, she was in entire ignorance of the
black evil these two plotted! I was glad with a great burst of
exultation which must have shown itself in my face, for Darby
exclaimed:
“There was a good fairy flicked a wing over you, Master Bob! Glory,
but ye had the happy thought. Will ye throw in with us and be a
pirate chief? Troth, there’d be no better.”
“Not I, Darby; but I will have a bite to eat, if such there be aboard
a pirate craft.”
“Lashin’s of everything in nature,” rejoined Darby briskly. “Sit to
the table yon, and I’ll fetch it from the galley.”
The table was set and ready, not with coarse crockery and steel
forks, knives and spoons, but with dainty china, heavy silverware and
fine napery, too. I commented on this when Darby returned, balancing
smoking dishes and a jug of hot chocolate upon a tray.
“’Tis the way himself--” his thumb indicated the starboard stateroom
door--“will live. The best of everything he’ll have, and on his own
ship nigger slaves to serve him, and they in liveries like grand
gentlemen have. Whisht!”
His voice sank to a whisper.
“He’s a terrible unchancy fellow, yon, Master Bob. Not for all the
gold onzas Long John do be always talkin’ of would I ha’ _him_ for
uncle! No, no! I’ll sail with Flint, rather. The eye to him--and
the soft voice and quiet ways! And him as swift to cut your throat
or walk ye down the plank as Flint; aye, and swifter! I ha’ the
creepies on my back whiles I look at him.
“Flint, now, he’s main different, Long John says. He’ll swig rum wi’
any man, and if he wants your life ye’ll be in no doubt of that same;
and he curses better’n Bill Bones.”
“You seem to have experienced no trouble in becoming intimate with
your new companions, Darby,” I remarked.
“It’s me head does it,” returned Darby, unabashed. “As I told ye, it
brings good luck.”
“Not to me,” I retorted with a grin.
“And don’t ye be too sure,” he flashed. “We’ll maybe sail a long
ways together; and I’m your friend, Master Bob, for ye were never one
to let me be put upon in the counting-room.”
“Humph,” said I. “That is to be seen. Where is ‘himself,’ as you
call him?”
“Asleep in his berth. Troth, he was up until dawn conning the brig
through the harbor shoals.”
“Are we outside?”
“Sure, we’re by and beyond what they call Sandy Hook. There’s only
the wide ocean in front.”
“I’m for the deck then,” I answered. “Keep an ear on Master Corlaer,
Darby. If he craves food fetch him some of this chocolate.”
“Leave him to me,” said Darby confidently. “He’s another I like
fine. Wasn’t it him brought me the Injun scalp and the knife wi’
blood on it? Oh, ye must both turn pirate! We’d make a grand crew,
just the three of us.”
The companionway was empty, and I met nobody until I had climbed to
the deck. The brig was running free before a smart nor’west breeze,
and there was just enough of a sea to toss an occasional shower of
spray over the bows. The wind was booming in the hollow of the
sails, and the cordage sang like a great harp. Sea-birds were
circling the mast-tops and skimming the waves with occasional raucous
cries. And over all the sun cast a warm, golden radiance that held a
magic spell.
I understood now the contentment with which I had wakened, although
indeed ’twas passing strange that I so readily adapted myself to the
sea and its ways, seeing that all my life I had never been beyond the
waters of the inner harbor. Yet ’tis the fact I had no discomfort or
misgiving and even acquired instinctively the sailor’s tricks of
standing and walking, as was commented upon by no less an authority
than John Silver.
The deck was deserted for’ard. One man was lashed in the main
cross-trees, sweeping the entire circuit of the horizon with a
spyglass. Aft there were only Silver and another fellow at the
wheel. The one-legged man waved to me with his crutch from his seat
on the cabin skylight.
“Come and talk with Long John, Master Ormerod,” he called. “Where
did ye find them sea-legs o’ yourn? You walk like a blasted admiral,
no less.”
“I found them below,” I answered, for the life of me unable to resist
the scoundrel’s ingratiating manner. “Where are the rest of your
company?”
He laughed and winked at the man at the wheel, an awful-looking
creature, so heavy of shoulder as to appear deformed, with a green
shade over deeply sunken eyes that were all pitted around with tiny
blue scars.
“Ha, ha! Our young gentleman says to himself, says he: ‘Only two on
deck, one on ’em wi’ a single leg, t’other all but blind. And here’s
me as is young and sturdy.’ A clean field, says you, Master Ormerod;
but you’re failin’ to reckon on John’s crutch, which same can be a
very nasty weapon at need; and if Pew’s eyes don’t see far he can
shoot by ear as well as most o’ us by sight.”
I shook my head.
“Rascals as thorough as you, Silver, would never leave an opportunity
like that. ’Tis true I have had no sea-service, but I have fought
with the savages upon our northern frontier.
“I’ll not move until I see a clear path before me.”
He laughed uproariously at this.
“Now that ’ere’s a good joke on me! Might ha’ knowed you wasn’t as
open as your face. You’ll learn fast, you will, Master Ormerod.
I’ll lay four spade-guineas to that. Bear over just a p’int, Ezra,
matey. Aye, so!”
“Is that foretops’l drawin’ full, John?” asked the man with the green
eye-shade in a voice that was singularly soft.
Silver squinted aloft.
“She’ll do,” he decided.
“Would you mind telling me how a blind man can steer?” I inquired.
The man with the green eye-shade chuckled in a way to chill your
blood, so sardonic, so overpoweringly evil was the caliber of the
mirth it suggested.
“A poor, blind man has to earn his bread and ’backy somehow, young
sir,” he answered unctuously.
“Don’t go to makin’ up your mind Pew can’t see everything, Master
Ormerod,” said Silver, shifting his crutch. “I’d hate to have him
decide to take a shot at me. Steer? Well now, what’s needed in
steerin’? A strong arm, says you, and you says true. Also and
likewise, an ear for canvas. Lastly and leastwise, an eye for the
course.
“Any man can read a compass, young gentleman; but not every sailorman
can feel how his ship takes the wind and meet his rudder quick when
she wants meetin’. Pew can. Give him some one like me to play eyes
for him, and he’ll steer as straight a course as a packet-boat wi’ a
bonus on the voyage.”
“Are there many cripples in your crew?” I asked curiously.
“Cripples?” repeated Silver. “It all depends on what you might mean.
There’s cripples and cripples. Me and Pew now, we got ours in the
same broadside. ’Twas a Injyman wi’ a fighting master, and she stood
to us, board and board.”
He slapped the stump of his thigh.
“An eighteen-pounder did that. _Whoof_! Off she went. Pew, he was
rammin’ home a charge and leaned out through the port and caught the
flash of a carronade. ’Tain’t good for the eyes, nowise; but as I
was a-sayin’, don’t you ever go for to believe Pew can’t see. He’s
surprizin’, he is.
“But we was talkin’ of cripples. Yes, there’s cripples and cripples.
Some on ’em ye pays their screw----”
“Their what?” I interrupted.
“Their screw, the what d’ye call it--insurance money. So much we get
from the prize money extry for the hurt. Pew, he got a thousand
pounds, which same he blowed in three nights in St. Pierre. D’ye
mind, Ezra? I got eight hundred pounds for my leg--and fair enough,
if you asks me.
“And that eight hundred pounds I’ll gamble you ha’ stowed away in a
safe hole, John,” said Pew with a gentleness which gave the words a
peculiarly sinister significance.
Silver nodded almost complacently.
“What I gets, I keeps. I’m none o’ your free spenders, rich today,
poor tomorrow. Some day I’ll be retirin’ from piratin’, and then
I’ll aim to ride in my own coach and sit in Parleyment.”
“You’ll have to sail your own ship first, John,” said Pew, and the
remark was fraught with implications that made me turn cold at the
pit of my stomach.
It was as if you could see the trail of bloodshed and suffering
Silver would blaze to possess that ship and to exploit her to
advantage.
“And why not?” returned Silver vigorously. “We’ll name no names,
Ezra, but captains can’t live for ever. Some is aged and some soaks
theirselves in rum. You never know! You never know!”
“There’s Bill Bones, as has ideas on the subjeck,” remarked Pew.
And he contrived to make me feel the horror of a long-drawn-out feud
and rivalry.
“Yes, there’s Bill,” ruminated Silver. “Flint’s mate, is Bill.
Flint’s best pal, is Bill. Flint’s confeydantey, some says, is Bill.
Well, well! But we was talkin’ o’ cripples and how a blind man can
steer, which is a long way off from Bill, who isn’t neither crippled
nor blind, and maybe has hopes, so he has, when he remembers that.”
Pew laughed so coldly, with such demoniac inhumanity, that I
experienced a sudden fellow-feeling for Master Bones, distasteful as
I had found him--also, a pronounced desire to change the subject.
The bare proximity to such whole-souled, heartless cruelty was
unpleasant.
“Do you commonly indulge in exploits like yesterday’s, Silver?” I
asked.
He cocked his head on one side.
“Exploits? Yesterday? Meanin’ the disposition of yourself? We-ell,
no, sir; not reg’larly, I’d say, Ezra.”
“Not by a capful o’ onzas,” agreed Pew.
“I’m no man for makin’ trouble,” continued Silver, “but there’s them
as might say the captain was a mite rash.”
“Why don’t you call him by his name?”
Silver gave me an odd look.
“There’s some names as is better off unmentioned in conversation,” he
said. “We’ll call him the captain, wi’ your kind leave and
permission, sir.”
“Call him what you please,” I answered; “but I should think it was
insanity for men with your reputations to venture into New York.
Why, the second mate of that Bristol packet had seen Captain Murray,
and would have known him.”
“Ah!” said Silver, grinning. “But he didn’t see the captain, which
is more to the point, my master; nor he wouldn’t have had the chance
to see him in any case. ’Cause why? ’Cause the captain come ashore
most careful in the dusk wi’ his cloak around his face and three
stout hearties to fend off inquisitive strangers.”
“But the rest of you----”
“Now, Master Ormerod, what honest sailorman a-tremblin’ for his life
is goin’ to remember faces out o’ a crew o’ pirates he sees on a
shot-up deck? All he thinks of, says you, is a lot of villains as
has likely slaughtered his mess-mates and looted his ship, and quite
right. Why, I’ve been stood treat in Kingston by a skipper I’d
stripped two months past--but that was afore I lost my leg, which
bein’ in other seas ain’t as yet a mark of identification on me in
these parts.”
“And did you take this ship designedly to carry you into New York?”
“You might say truthfully she was the best fitted for it of several,”
he acknowledged. “Blow my other stick off if she was good for
anything else.”
“Not forty pounds in her,” mumbled Pew, twiddling the wheel-spokes.
“Her crew----”
Silver raised his eyebrows and gave me a slow wink.
“Poor unfortunates! ’Twas one time we couldn’t take chances.”
Pew’s chuckle trickled icily from under the eye-shade which cast a
green blur over his whole lower face.
“I suppose there is a hell for such as you,” I said, trying to keep
my voice steady.
“Some says there is and some says there isn’t,” answered Silver
reasonably. “No use to worry, says I.”
I was so wrought up that I think I must have come to blows with them
but for a fortunate diversion. Bones and several other men emerged
from the fo’csle hatch, yawning and stretching their arms, evidently
having just arisen from sleep. At the same moment Peter Corlaer
climbed from the cabin companionway, lurched for a moment, on his
feet and then staggered precariously toward the bulwarks. I started
for’ard to aid him, and Bones ran aft with a loud yell.
“Don’t ye spoil my decks, ye fat cow!” he shouted.
Poor Peter, regardless of both of us, seized a stay and clung to it
abjectly, quite helpless. Bones reached him first and gave him a
shove which sent him plunging into the scuppers head first.
“Get up,” snarled Bones, and dealt him a vicious kick with a heavy
sea-boot.
Peter groaned, and I caught Bones by the arm.
“---- you for a coward!” I shouted. “Captain Murray bade you use us
gently. Is this how you obey?”
He snatched free of me and yanked out a knife.
“Obey, ye lousy lubber!” he howled. “I’m Flint’s mate, and I’ll show
ye who can say obey to me. Get back there or I’ll cut your heart out
and eat it afore ye.”
I looked about me for a weapon, anxious to give him a lesson; but
there was not a sign of anything handy, and I backed away cautiously
from the menace of his knife. He had been drinking through the night
on top of liberal potations during the previous day, and the effect
was to render him quite insensible to any rule now that his passions
were aroused. Silver shouted to him to let us be, as did one or two
others; but his only answer was a string of the curses in which he
was so proficient, and he continued to circle after me.
For myself I was not greatly frightened, for, as it chanced,
knife-fighting was an art in which I was somewhat expert, thanks to
instruction from my father’s Indian friends; but I was concerned lest
the scoundrel make a dart at Peter and slay the Dutchman as he lay
inert. Judge of my amazement then when Peter swayed to his feet,
holding on to the bulwarks to pull himself erect. His face was
white, but he abandoned his support without hesitation and advanced,
crooked-legged, across the deck toward us.
“I take him, Bob,” he said.
I jumped between him and Bones in time to stop the pirate’s rush,
dodging a knife-thrust by the width of my coat-sleeve.
“Keep away, Peter,” I panted. “I can handle him. You can’t.
You’ll----”
“I take him,” repeated Corlaer.
He reached out his hand, grasped my shoulder and spun me from his
path as easily as if I had been a child. And I did not attempt to
return to his side, for I had felt the strength in his arm and knew
that I had no cause to question his ability to take care of himself
against any man, however armed.
Bones stared at him for a moment with a mixture of rage and surprize.
“D’ye want your ---- throat cut?” he sneered. “Here, turn your head
and I’ll take an ear instead. There’s naught in slaying a cow like
you.”
Peter said nothing, simply stood there before him weaponless, arms
slightly bent, legs crooked at the knees. The Dutchman’s little
eyes, almost buried from sight in his face, glittered with a steely
menace.
“Let him be, Bill,” called Silver again--was I wrong in fancying his
tone unduly officious, provocative?
“I’m ---- if I do,” rasped Bones. “If he wants it, he’ll get it.”
He sprang at Peter with knife upraised, aiming to slash his throat;
but Peter moved with lightning speed to counter him. One immense
arm, thick as a tree-bough, shot out and imprisoned the wrist of the
knife-hand; a twist, and the knife pinged on the deck. The other arm
captured a thigh, and Bones was reared above Peter’s head.
Peter gave him a preliminary shake as if to prove to him how
completely he was in his power and started to walk back to the lee
bulwark. Bones shrieked like the lost soul he was, certain that
Peter intended to cast him into the sea; but half-way across the deck
Peter came to a loose halyard. He lowered Bones carelessly, tucked
him under one arm and proceeded to reeve a landsman’s slip-noose. We
all watched him with utter fascination, and it is an indication of
the pirates’ code in such affairs that none of them intervened. But
Peter was not to hang Master Bones.
“Your object is no doubt praiseworthy, Peter,” remarked my
great-uncle from the cabin companionway behind us, “but I fear I must
request you to let the man go. He is of some value to a friend of
mine.”
Peter regarded Murray curiously.
“He knifes Robert and me--_ja_,” answered the Dutchman.
“He will not do it again,” Murray assured him. “Master Bones!”
Peter regretfully unhitched the noose from Bones’ neck and
administered a shove which sent him reeling across the deck, to carom
into the butt of the mizzenmast, recoiling with the loss of a broken
tooth and ending up in a battered heap at Murray’s feet. My
great-uncle regarded the fellow with obvious displeasure.
“Stand up, Master Bones,” he said.
Bones stumbled to his feet, bleeding from several cuts and scratches.
He was very plainly frightened at what lay ahead of him.
“Master Bones,” resumed my great-uncle, “you are for the present
under my command, and I happen to have somewhat old-fashioned
theories as regards discipline and the carrying out of orders. You
have recently disobeyed an order of mine.”
“Sure, I didn’t----”
“Master Bones,” my uncle went on without raising his voice, “did you
ever know a man named Fotherill--Jack, I believe, was the given name?”
Bones nodded, unable to speak.
“And what did I order done to him, Master Bones?”
Bones moistened his lips.
“Keel-hauled, he was.”
“Correct,” agreed my great-uncle. “Keel-hauled. A most expressive
phrase, Robert,” he added to me. “Technically, I should explain, it
involves drawing a man under the keel of a vessel. It has--shall we
say?--unpleasant consequences.”
He turned to Bones.
“No man disobeys an order of mine more than once, Master Bones. That
is all. You may go for’ard.”
The man started to slouch off, wiping the blood from his cheek with
his coat sleeve; but Peter stepped in front of him.
The Dutchman took an oaken belaying-pin from the rack around the
mizzenmast, held it out toward Bones and the others and calmly broke
it in two with his bare hands and tossed the fragments overside.
“Admirable!” exclaimed my great-uncle. “What words could hope to
express so much as that gesture? And it intrigues me to note that
Corlaer has a distinct taste for the dramatic. I trust that you are
recovering from the seasickness, friend Peter?”
“I get well, _ja_,” answered Peter.
“Then perhaps you will come below and join me at breakfast?”
Peter looked unhappy--he loved his food, did Peter.
“_Neen_,” he said simply. “If I eat, I get sick.”
“You have my sympathy,” replied my great-uncle with unfailing
courtesy. “I advise a modest diet for a day or two, with an
occasional dram of liquor to warm the stomach, and then I prophesy
you will become as good a sailor as any of us. You, Robert, I
perceive to have made yourself instantly at home upon the strange
element. That is excellent. You shall yet prove a credit to me. Do
you feel sufficiently stimulated by your new experiences to partake
of a second meal so early in the day?”
“I have just been hearing what became of the lawful crew of this
vessel,” I answered. “It left me no appetite for food.”
“Regrettable,” he returned sadly. “Life is a hard business, Robert,
as you have yet to learn. Mercy is as often as not a mistaken
policy, a vice as much as a virtue. Silver, has the lookout sighted
any vessel?”
“Not a sail since we cleared Sandy Hook, sir,” the one-legged man
answered briskly.
“Very good. Keep on this course and call me at once should a sail
show in any quarter.” And he descended with proper dignity to his
breakfast.