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THE MUTINEERS
_A tale of old days at sea and of adventures in the Far East as Benjamin
Lathrop set it down some sixty years ago_
by Charles Boardman Hawes
_Illustrated_
_To_ D.C.H.
_TO PAY MY SHOT_
_To master, mate, and men of the ship Hunter, whose voyage is the backbone
of my story; to Captain David Woodard, English mariner, who more than a
hundred and twenty years ago was wrecked on the island of Celebes; to
Captain R.G.F. Candage of Brookline, Massachusetts, who was party to the
original contract in melon seeds; and to certain blue-water skippers who
have left sailing directions for eastern ports and seas, I am grateful for
fascinating narratives and journals, and indebted for incidents in this
tale of an earlier generation._
_C.B.H._
CONTENTS
I
IN WHICH WE SAIL FOR CANTON, CHINA
I My Father and I Call on Captain Whidden
II Bill Hayden
III The Man Outside the Galley
IV A Piece of Pie
V Kipping
II
IN WHICH WE ENCOUNTER AN ARAB SHIP
VI The Council in the Cabin
VII The Sail with a Lozenge-Shaped Patch
VIII Attacked
IX Bad Signs
X The Treasure-Seeker
III
WHICH APPROACHES A CRISIS
XI A Hundred Thousand Dollars in Gold
XII A Strange Tale
XIII Trouble Forward
XIV Bill Hayden Comes to the End of His Voyage
IV
IN WHICH THE TIDE OF OUR FORTUNES EBBS
XV Mr. Falk Tries to Cover His Tracks
XVI A Prayer for the Dead
XVII Marooned
XVIII Adventures Ashore
V
IN WHICH THE TIDE TURNS
XIX In Last Resort
XX A Story in Melon Seeds
XXI New Allies
XXII We Attack
XXIII What We Found in the Cabin
VI
IN WHICH WE REACH THE PORT OF OUR DESTINATION
XXIV Falk Proposes a Truce
XXV Including a Cross-Examination
XXVI An Attempt to Play on Our Sympathy
XXVII We Reach Whampoa, but Not the End of Our Troubles
VII
OLD SCORES AND NEW AND A DOUBTFUL WELCOME
XXVIII A Mystery Is Solved and a Thief Gets Away
XXIX Homeward Bound
XXX Through Sunda Strait
XXXI Pikes, Cutlasses, and Guns
XXXII "So Ends"
ILLUSTRATIONS
"_At 'em, men! At 'em! Pull, you sons of the devil, pull_!"
_Suddenly, in the brief silence that followed the two thunderous reports, a
pistol shot rang out sharply, and I saw Captain Whidden spin round and
fall_.
_We helped him pile his belongings into his chest ... and gave him a hand
on deck_.
"_Sign that statement, Lathrop," said Captain Falk_.
_He cut from the melon-rind a roughly shaped model of a ship and stuck in
it, to represent masts, three slivers of bamboo_.
[Illustration: "_At 'em, men! At 'em! Pull, you sons of the devil, pull_!"]
I
IN WHICH WE SAIL FOR CANTON, CHINA
CHAPTER I
MY FATHER AND I CALL ON CAPTAIN WHIDDEN
My father's study, as I entered it on an April morning in 1809, to learn
his decision regarding a matter that was to determine the course of all my
life, was dim and spacious and far removed from the bustle and clamor of
the harbor-side. It was a large room paneled with dark wood. There were
books along the walls, and paintings of ships, and over the fireplace there
stood a beautiful model of a Burmese junk, carved by some brown artist on
the bank of the Irawadi.
My father sat by the open window and looked out into the warm sunshine,
which was swiftly driving the last snow from the hollows under the
shrubbery.
Already crocuses were blossoming in the grass of the year before, which was
still green in patches, and the bright sun and the blue sky made the study
seem to me, entering, dark and sombre. It was characteristic of my father,
I thought with a flash of fancy, to sit there and look out into a warm, gay
world where springtime was quickening the blood and sunshine lay warm on
the flowers; he always had lived in old Salem, and as he wrote his sermons,
he always had looked out through study windows on a world of commerce
bright with adventure. For my own part, I was of no mind to play the
spectator in so stirring a drama.
With a smile he turned at my step. "So, my son, you wish to ship before the
mast," he said, in a repressed voice and manner that seemed in keeping with
the dim, quiet room. "Pray what do you know of the sea?"
I thought the question idle, for all my life I had lived where I could look
from my window out on the harbor.
"Why, sir," I replied, "I know enough to realize that I want to follow the
sea."
"To follow the sea?"
There was something in my father's eyes that I could not understand. He
seemed to be dreaming, as if of voyages that he himself had made. Yet I
knew he never had sailed blue water. "Well, why not?" he asked suddenly.
"There was a time--"
I was too young to realize then what has come to me since: that my father's
manner revealed a side of his nature that I never had known; that in his
own heart was a love of adventure that he never had let me see. My sixteen
years had given me a big, strong body, but no great insight, and I thought
only of my own urgent desire of the moment.
"Many a boy of ten or twelve has gone to sea," I said, "and the Island
Princess will sail in a fortnight. If you were to speak to Captain
Whidden--"
My father sternly turned on me. "No son of mine shall climb through the
cabin windows."
"But Captain Whidden--"
"I thought you desired to follow the sea--to ship before the mast."
"I do."
"Then say no more of Captain Whidden. If you wish to go to sea, well and
good. I'll not stand in your way. But we'll seek no favoritism, you and I.
You'll ship as boy, but you'll take your medicine like a man."
"Yes, sir," I said, trying perversely to conceal my joy.
"And as for Captain Whidden," my father added, "you'll find he cuts a very
different figure aboard ship from that he shows in our drawing-room."
Then a smile twinkled through his severity, and he laid his hand firmly on
my shoulder.
"Son, you have my permission ungrudgingly given. There was a time--well,
your grandfather didn't see things as I did."
"But some day," I cried, "I'll have a counting-house of my own--
some day--"
My father laughed kindly, and I, taken aback, blushed at my own eagerness.
"Anyway," I persisted, "Roger Hamlin is to go as supercargo."
"Roger--as supercargo?" exclaimed a low voice.
I turned and saw that my sister stood in the door.
"Where--when is he going?"
"To Canton on the Island Princess! And so am I," I cried.
"Oh!" she said. And she stood there, silent and a little pale.
"You'll not see much of Roger," my father remarked to me, still smiling. He
had a way of enjoying a quiet joke at my expense, to him the more pleasing
because I never was quite sure just wherein the humor lay.
"But I'm going," I cried. "I'm going--I'm going--I'm going!"
"At the end of the voyage," said my father, "we'll find out whether you
still wish to follow the sea. After all, I'll go with you this evening,
when supper is done, to see Joseph Whidden."
The lamps were lighted when we left the house, and long beams from the
windows fell on the walk and on the road. We went down the street side by
side, my father absently swinging his cane, I wondering if it were not
beneath the dignity of a young man about to go to sea that his parent
should accompany him on such an errand.
Just as we reached the corner, a man who had come up the street a little
distance behind us turned in at our own front gate, and my father, seeing
me look back when the gate slammed, smiled and said, "I'll venture a guess,
Bennie-my-lad, that some one named Roger is calling at our house this
evening."
Afterwards--long, long afterwards--I remembered the incident.
When my father let the knocker fall against Captain Whidden's great front
door, my heart, it seemed to me, echoed the sound and then danced away at a
lively pace. A servant, whom I watched coming from somewhere behind the
stairs, admitted us to the quiet hall; then another door opened silently, a
brighter light shone out upon us, and a big, grave man appeared. He
welcomed us with a few thoughtful words and, by a motion of his hand, sent
us before him into the room where he had been sitting.
"And so," said Captain Whidden, when we had explained our errand, "I am to
have this young man aboard my ship."
"If you will, sir," I cried eagerly, yet anxiously, too, for he did not
seem nearly so well pleased as I had expected.
"Yes, Ben, you may come with us to Canton; but as your father says, you
must fill your own boots and stand on your own two feet. And will you,
friend Lathrop,"--he turned to my father,--"hazard a venture on the
voyage?"
My father smiled. "I think, Joe," he said, "that I've placed a considerable
venture in your hands already."
Captain Whidden nodded. "So you have, so you have. I'll watch it as best I
can, too, though of course I'll see little of the boy. Let him go now. I'll
talk with you a while if I may."
My father glanced at me, and I got up.
Captain Whidden rose, too. "Come down in the morning," he said. "You can
sign with us at the Websters' counting-house.--And good-bye, Ben," he
added, extending his hand.
"Good-bye? You don't mean--that I'm not to go with you?"
He smiled. "It'll be a long time, Ben, before you and I meet again on quite
such terms as these."
Then I saw what he meant, and shook his hand and walked away without
looking back. Nor did I ever learn what he and my father talked about after
I left them there together.