A STRANGE TALE
Roger Hamlin's words were to linger a long time in my ears, and so far as I
then could see, there was little to say in reply. A hundred thousand
dollars in gold had bought, soul and body, many a better man than Captain
Falk. At that very moment Falk was watching us from the quarter-deck with
an expression on his face that was partly an amused smile, partly a sneer.
Weak and conceited though he was, he was master of that ship and crew in
more ways than one.
But Roger had not finished. "Do you remember, Ben," he continued in a low
voice, but otherwise unmindful of those about us, "that some half a dozen
years ago, when Thomas Webster was sore put to it for enough money to
square his debts and make a clean start, the brig Vesper, on which he had
sent a venture, returned him a profit so unbelievably great that he was
able to pay his creditors and buy from the Shattucks the old Eastern
Empress, which he fitted out for the voyage to Sumatra that saved his
fortunes?"
I remembered it vaguely--I had been only a small boy when it happened--and
I listened with keenest interest. The Websters owned the Island Princess.
"Not a dozen people know all the story of that voyage. It's been a kind of
family secret with the Websters. Perhaps they're ashamed to be so deeply
indebted to a Chinese merchant. Well, it's a story I shouldn't tell under
other conditions, but in the light of all that's come to pass, it's best
you should hear the whole tale, Ben; and in some ways it's a fine tale,
too. The Websters, as you probably know, had had bad luck, what with three
wrecks and pirates in the West Indies. They were pretty much by the head in
those days, and it was a dark outlook before them, when young Webster
signed the Vesper's articles as first officer and went aboard, with all
that the old man could scrape together for a venture, and with the future
of his family hanging in the balance. At Whampoa young Webster went up to
the Hong along with the others, and drove what bargains he could, and
cleared a tidy little sum. But it was nowhere near enough to save the
family. If only they could get the money to tide them over, they'd weather
the gale. If not, they'd go on a lee shore. Certain men--you'd know their
names, but such things are better forgotten--were waiting to attach the
ships the Websters had on the ways, and if the ships were attached there
would be nothing left for the Websters but stools in somebody's
counting-house.
"As I've heard the story, young Webster was waiting by the river for his
boat, with a face as long as you'd hope to see, when a Chinese who'd been
watching him from a little distance came up and addressed him in such
pidgin English as he could muster and asked after his father. Of course
young Webster was taken by surprise, but he returned a civil answer, and
the two fell to talking together. It seemed that, once upon a time, when
the Chinese was involved, head and heels, with some rascally down-east
Yankee, old man Webster had come to the rescue and had got him out of the
scrape with his yellow hide whole and his moneybags untapped.
"The Chinaman seemed to suspect from the boy's long face that all was not
as it should be, and he squeezed more or less of the truth out of the
young fellow, had him up to the Hong again, gave him various gifts, and
sent him back to America with five teak-wood chests. Just five ordinary
teak-wood chests--but in those teak-wood chests, Ben, was the money that
put the Websters on their feet again. The hundred thousand dollars below
is for that Chinese merchant."
It was a strange tale, but stranger tales than that were told in the old
town from which we had sailed.
"And Captain Falk--?" I began questioningly.
"Captain Falk was never thought of as a possible master of this ship."
"Will he try to steal the money?"
Roger raised his brows. "Steal it? Steal is a disagreeable word. He thinks
he has a grievance because he was not given the chief mate's berth to begin
with. He says, at all events, that he will not hand over any such sum to a
yellow heathen. He thinks he can return it to the owners two-fold. Although
he seldom reads his Bible, I believe he referred to the man who was given
ten talents."
"But the owners' orders!" I exclaimed.
"The owners' orders in that respect were secret. They were issued to
Captain Whidden and to me, and Captain Falk refuses to accept my version of
them."
"And you?"
Roger smiled and looked me hard in the eye. "I am going to see that they
are carried out," he said. "The Websters would be grievously disappointed
if this commission were not discharged. Also--" his eyes twinkled in the
old way--"I am not convinced that Captain Falk is in all respects an
honest--no, let us not speak too harshly--let us say, a _reliable_ man."
"So there'll be a fight," I mused.
"We'll see," Roger replied. "In any case, you know the story. Are you with
me?"
After fifty years I can confess without shame that I was frightened when
Roger asked me that question, for Roger and I were only two, and Falk, by
hook or by crook, had won most of the others to his side. There was Bill
Hayden, to be sure, on whom we could count; but he was a weak soul at best,
and of the cook's loyalty to Roger and whatever cause he might espouse I
now held grave doubts. Yet I managed to reply, "Yes, Roger, I am with you."
I thought of my sister when I said it, and of the white flutter of her
handkerchief, which had waved so bravely from the old wharf when Roger and
I sailed out of Salem harbor. After all, I was glad even then that I had
answered as I did.
"I'll have more to say later," said Roger; "but if I stay here much longer
now, Falk and Kipping will be breaking in upon us." And, turning, he coolly
walked aft.
Falk and Kipping were still watching us with sneers, and not a few of the
crew gave us hostile glances as we separated. But I looked after Roger with
an affection and a confidence that I was too young fully to appreciate. I
only realized that he was upright and fearless, and that I was ready to
follow him anywhere.
More and more I was afraid of the influence that Captain Falk had
established in the forecastle. More and more it seemed as if he actually
had entered into some lawless conspiracy with the men. Certainly they
grumbled less than before, and accepted greater discomforts with better
grace; and although I found myself excluded from their councils without any
apparent reason, I overheard occasional snatches of talk from which I
gathered that they derived great satisfaction from their scheme, whatever
it was. Even the cook would have none of me in the galley of an evening;
and Roger in the cabin where no doubt he was fighting his own battles, was
far away from the green hand in the forecastle. I was left to my own
devices and to Bill Hayden.
To a great extent, I suppose, it counted against me that I was the son of a
gentleman. But if I was left alone forward, so Roger, I learned now and
then, was left alone aft.
Continually I puzzled over the complacency of the men. They would nod and
smile and glance at me pityingly, even when I was getting my meat from the
same kids and my tea from the same pot; and chance phrases, which I caught
now and then, added to my uneasiness.
Once old Blodgett, prowling like a cat in the night, was telling how he was
going to "take his money and buy a little place over Ipswich way. There's
nice little places over Ipswich way where a man can settle snug as you
please and buy him a wife and end his days in comfort. We'll go home by way
of India, too, I'll warrant you, and take each of us our handful of round
red rubies. Right's right, but right'll be left--mind what I tell you."
Another time--on the same day, as I now recall it--I overheard the
carpenter saying that he was going to build a brick house in Boston up on
Temple Place. "And there'll be fan-lights over the door," he said, "their
panels as thin as rose-leaves, and leaded glass in a fine pattern." The
carpenter was a craftsman who aspired to be an artist.
But where did old Blodgett or the carpenter hope to get the money to
indulge the tastes of a prosperous merchant? I suspected well enough the
answer to that question, and I was not far wrong.
The cook remained inscrutable. I could not fathom the expressions of his
black frowning face. Although Captain Falk of course had no direct
communication with him openly, I learned through Bill Hayden that
indirectly he treated him with tolerant and friendly patronage. It even did
not surprise me greatly to be told that sometimes he secretly visited the
galley after dark and actually hobnobbed with black Frank in his own
quarters. It was almost incredible, to be sure; but so was much else in
which Captain Falk was implicated, and I could see revealed now in the game
that he was playing his desire to win and hold the men until they had
served his ends, whatever those ends might be.
"Yass, sah," black Frank would growl absently as he passed me without a
glance, "dis am de most appetizin' crew eveh Ah cooked foh. Dey's got no
mo' bottom to dey innards dan a sponge has. Ah's a-cookin' mah head off to
feed dat bunch of wuthless man-critters, a-a-a-a-h!" And he would stump to
the galley with a brimming pail of water in each hand.
I came sadly to conclude that old Frank had found other friends more to his
taste than the boy in the forecastle, and that Captain Falk, by trickery
and favoritism, really was securing his grip on the crew. In all his petty
manoeuvres and childish efforts to please the men and flatter them and make
them think him a good officer to have over them, he had made up to this
point only one or two false steps.
Working our way north by west to the Straits of Singapore, and thence on
into the China Sea, where we expected to take advantage of the last weeks
of the southwest monsoon, we left far astern the low, feverous shores of
Sumatra. There were other games than a raid on India to be played for
money, and the men thought less and less now of the rubies of Burma and the
gold mohurs and rupees of Calcutta.