IS SHE THE ‘SHARK’?
It was not to prove a gale, though it would have been hard to guess
what lay behind that dirty jumble of white and livid terraces which
had been stealthily creeping all the morning zenithwards. The clouds
scattered to the rush of the wind, the sun with a brightened disk leapt
from one flying vaporous edge to another, dazzling out the snows of the
dissolving seas till the eye reeled from the glare of the brilliant
foam and the sharp and lovely sparkle of the pure dark blue between.
Indeed, before long the wind steadied down into a noble sailing breeze
with a piebald sky of warm and cheerful weather steadily swinging into
the south-east, as though the whole heaven revolved from one quarter to
another like a panorama on a cylinder. Wilfrid looked his wishes, but
said nothing. He hung apart in a fashion that was the same as telling
me to keep off, nor had he anything to say to Miss Jennings. Finn
easily interpreting his master’s face, piled cloths on the yacht till
it seemed as though another rag would blow the whole lofty white fabric
of canvas, tapering spar, and rigging clean over the bows. We fled
along in thunder, and to every curtsey of the vessel’s head the water
recoiled in a roar of spume as far as the jibboom end, to speed aft as
fast, you would have thought, as the eye could follow it, the swell
washing to the counter as if to help her.
We held on in this way for some time, when suddenly Wilfrid, who had
come to a stand at the weather rail and was looking ahead, bawled with
the note of a shriek in his voice, ‘Look!’ and out sprang his long arm
pointing directly on a line with our bowsprit.
‘Ay, there she is, sure enough!’ cried I, as I caught sight, to a
floating lift of the deck at that moment, of the pearlish gleam of
canvas of a milky brilliance slanting past the soft whiteness of a head
of sea against the marble look of the sky there, where the sun-touched
clouds were going down to the ocean edge in a crowd with a vein of
violet here and there amongst them. I glanced at Wilfrid, not knowing
what sort of mood this first glimpse of the yacht would put into him,
but there was no alteration of face. His countenance had set into an
iron hard expression; methought resolution could never show more grimly
stubborn. Miss Jennings came to the side to look.
‘There is little to be seen as yet,’ said I to her, ‘but we shall be
heaving her hull up very soon. She is taking it quietly.’
Finn stood near; I took his glass from him and levelled it. ‘Why, ’tis
merely _ambling_ with her, captain,’ said I; ‘gaff topsails down and
no hint of squaresail that I can make out. The cloud we are making
astern should puzzle her. D’ye think Captain Fidler will recognise this
vessel?’
‘Why, yes, sir; bound to it,’ he answered; ‘we aren’t like the “Shark,”
you know: our figure-head alone is as good as naming us. Then our sheer
of bow ’ud sarve like a sign-post to Fidler. Back this by our square
rig and he’d have to ha’ fallen dark to mistake,’ meaning by dark,
blind.
‘Is the “Shark” to be as easily recognised?’ asked Miss Jennings, who
stood close by me, occasionally laying her hand upon my arm to steady
herself and putting the other to her lips to speak, for the breeze
rang with a scream in it at times over the rail in a manner to sweep
the words out of her mouth as though her syllables were the smoke of a
cigarette. Finn shook his long head.
‘Lay me close aboard, miss,’ said he, ‘and I’ll tell you the “Shark”
from another craft; but there’s nothen distinct about her as there
is with us. She’s black without gilt like a great many others, of a
slaving pattern, long, low, without spring forrads or aft, with apple
sides like others again. But,’ said he after a pause, during which
he had taken a look through his telescope at the glistening fragment
hovering like a butterfly over the bow, ‘though I don’t want to say too
much, sir, I’d be willing to lay down a good bit o’ money on the chance
of yonder chap proving the “Shark.” Time, place, all sarcumstances
point her out.’
‘True,’ said I; ‘but there are many schooners afloat.’
‘Ay, sir; but such a coincidence as _that_, your honour,’ said he
pointing, ‘sits too far on the werge of what’s likely to fit it to
sarve as part of a man’s reckonings.’
‘I agree with Captain Finn,’ said Miss Laura; ‘besides, I feel _here_
that it is the vessel we are pursuing.’ She laid her hand upon her
bosom and turned to cross the deck where her chair was.
I assisted her to her seat with a peep out of the corner of my eyes at
Wilfrid, but there was no encouragement in his face; so, posting myself
forward of the companion for the shelter of it, I lighted a cigar and
puffed away in silence till the luncheon bell rang. Wilfrid did not
come to table. When I returned on deck after lingering nearly an hour
below, partly with the wish to put some heart into Miss Jennings, who
was pitifully dejected and nervous, and partly because I had had a long
spell in the open air and guessed that for some time yet there would
be little enough of the schooner showing to be worth looking at--I say
when I returned I found my cousin at the rail with his arms tightly
clasped on his breast staring fixedly ahead, with a face grim, indeed,
with the scowling contraction of the brows, but as collected in the
determined severity of it as can be imagined. In fact, the sight of the
schooner ahead had gathered all his faculties and wandering fancies
and imaginations into a bunch, so to speak, and his mind as you saw
it in his eyes, in the set of his lips, in the resolved and contained
posture of his body, was as steady as that of the sanest man aboard
us. It was without wonder, however, that I perceived we had risen the
yacht to the line of her rail, when I noticed that she still kept under
short canvas whilst the ‘Bride’ was bursting through the surges to
the impulse now even of the lower studdingsail. I took Finn’s glass
from him and made out a very handsome schooner, loftily sparred with
an immense head to her mainsail, the boom of which hung far over her
quarter, whilst she swang in graceful floating leapings from hollow to
ridge with the round of her stern lifting black and flashing off each
melting brow that underran her. We had, indeed, come up with her hand
over hand, but then it would be almost the worst point of sailing for
a fore-and-aft vessel, whilst we were carrying in our square rig alone
pretty nearly the same surface of canvas that she had abroad. She was
too far off as yet, even with the aid of the glass, to distinguish her
people.
‘What do you think, Finn, _now_?’ said I, turning to him. He stood
close beside me with his long face working with anxiety, and straining
his sight till I thought he would shoot his eyes out of their sockets.
‘If she ain’t the “Shark,”’ said he, ‘she’s the “Flying Dutchman.” I
had but one doubt. Yonder craft’s boats are white, and my notion, but
I couldn’t swear to him, was that the “Shark’s” boats were blue. I’ve
been forrards amongst the men, a few of whom are acquainted with Lord
Winterton’s yacht, and one of ’em says her boats was blue, whilst th’
others are willing to bet their lives that they are white.’
‘But the cut of her as she shows yonder proves her the “Shark,” you
think?’
‘I do, sir,’ he answered emphatically.
‘Well,’ said I, fetching a deep breath, ‘after _this_ hang me if I
don’t burn my book and agree with your mate, old Jacob Crimp, to
believe in ghosts.’
I levelled the glass again and uttered an exclamation as I got the
lenses to bear upon her. ‘By thunder, Finn! yes, they look to have the
scent of us now. See! there goes her gaff topsail?’
Wilfrid caught my words. ‘What are they doing?’ he roared, bursting out
in a mad way from his rapt iron-like silence; ‘making sail, d’ye say?’
and he came running up to us with an odd thrusting forward of his head
as though straining to determine what was scarce more than a blur to
his short sight. He snatched the glass from my hand. ‘Yes,’ he shouted,
‘and there goes her squaresail. By every saint, Finn, there’s an end of
my doubts;’ and he closed the glass with a ringing of the tubes as he
telescoped them that would have made you think that the thing was in
pieces in his hands.
‘Shall I signal her to heave to, your honour?’ exclaimed Finn, speaking
with a doubtful eye as if measuring the distance.
‘Ay, at once,’ cried Wilfrid, ‘but’--he cast a look at the gaff
end--‘she’ll not see your colours there,’ pointing vehemently.
‘I’ll run ’em up at the fore, Sir Wilfrid; they’ll blow out plain there
with the t’gallant halliards let go.’
‘Do as you will, only you must make her know my meaning,’ cried my
cousin, and he went with an impetuous stride right aft and resumed his
former sentinel posture. Miss Jennings came timidly up to me.
‘She is the “Shark,” then?’ she said in a low voice.
‘All who know her are agreed, Finn says, saving here and there a doubt
about the colour of her boats,’ I answered.
She had a sailor’s eye for sea effects, and instantly noticed that the
schooner ahead had broadened her show of canvas.
‘Do they suspect who we are?’ she exclaimed, talking as though she were
musing.
‘No doubt the “Bride” is recognised, and they will run away if they
can.’
She looked at Wilfrid. ‘I do not like to speak to him,’ she exclaimed.
‘He’s killing Hope-Kennedy over and over again,’ said I: ‘his wife is
before him too, and he is haranguing her. Bless us, what a wonderful
thing human imagination is!’
Up went the signal flags forward in a string of balls, a man tugged,
the bunting broke and streamed out in its variety of lustrous colours,
every flag stiff as a sheet of horn handpainted, with the light of
the sky past it showing through. I caught myself breathing short and
hard whilst waiting for what was to follow this summons to the running
craft. We had been crushing through it after her with the speed of a
steamer, and, supposing her indeed to be the ‘Shark,’ had literally
verified Wilfrid’s boast that the ‘Bride’ could sail two feet to her
one. But now that she had broadened her wings there was a threat of
considerable tediousness in the chase.
‘Do you suppose they have made out what yacht we are?’ I asked Finn.
‘Likely as not, sir. I shall think so for sartin if they don’t shorten
sail on reading that bunting up there. A stranger ’ud be willing enough
to speak us. Why not? ’Tis understandable that Fidler should have kept
his rags small in the face of the muck that was crawling in the nor’rad
this morning. _He’s_ got nothen to chase, and was always a careful man,
so I’ve heard, and I tell ye, sir,’ said he in a subdued way, speaking
with his eyes fixed on Miss Jennings, who stood close with a white
face, ‘that the sight of his easy canvas is almost the same to me as
seeing of her ladyship a sitting there,’ levelling his hairy finger
at the yacht, ‘for, fond as she was of the water, let anything of a
breeze come and she was always for having Sir Wilfrid reduce sail.’
He put the glass to his eye as he spoke. ‘Hillo!’ he exclaimed in an
instant, ‘they’re hoisting a colour. There it goes--there it blows.
Oh my precious eyes! What is it? what is it?’ he rumbled, talking to
himself and working into the glass as though he would drive an eye
clean through it. ‘Why, Mr. Monson,’ he bawled, ‘I’m Field Marshal the
Duke o’ Wellington, sir, if she han’t hoisted Dutch colours.’
I snatched the glass from his hand, and sure enough made out the
Batavian horizontal tricolour streaming from the peak signal halliards
like a fragment of rainbow against the lustrous curve of the mainsail.
‘Wilfrid,’ I shouted, addressing him as he stood right aft, Miss Laura
and I and the skipper being grouped a little forward of the main
rigging, ‘they’ve hoisted Dutch colours. She’s a Hollander, not the
“Shark!”’ and I fetched something like a breath of relief, for it was a
condition of suspense that you wanted to see an end to one fashion or
another as quickly as possible.
He approached us slowly, took the glass from my hand in silence, and
after a steady inspection turned to Finn.
‘She’s the “Shark,”’ he said, with a fierce snap in his manner that was
like letting fly a pistol at the skipper.
‘Your honour thinks so?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Them Dutch colours, Sir Wilfrid----’
‘A device, a trick! What could confirm one’s suspicions more than
yonder display of a foreign ensign? She’s the “Shark,” I tell you, and
that colour’s a stratagem. What do you say, Charles?’
‘I’m blest if I know what to think,’ said I. ‘If she’s the “Shark,” why
has she taken it so leisurely, only just now setting her squaresail and
gaff topsail though we have been in sight for a long time, crowding
down upon her under a press that should awhile since have excited
their suspicions? No need for them to hoist Dutch colours. If Fidler
thinks he is chased, why don’t he haul his wind instead of keeping that
fore-and-aft concern almost dead before it, as if he didn’t know on
which side to carry his main boom?’
‘She’s the “Shark”!’ thundered Wilfrid, ‘the flag she is flying is a
lie. Finn,’ he cried in a voice so savagely imperious, so confoundedly
menacing, that I saw Miss Laura shrink, whilst the poor skipper gave
a hop as though he had touched something red-hot; ‘are we overhauling
that vessel?’
‘Yes, Sir Wilfrid.’
‘How long will it take us to come within gunshot of her?’
Finn scratched the back of his head. ‘Mr. Monson, sir,’ said he,
addressing me, ‘that gun’ll throw about three-quarters of a mile, I
allow.’
‘Call it a mile,’ said I.
My cousin, with his nostrils distended to the widest, his respiration
hysteric, his whole body on the move, and with that _raised_ look in
his face I have formerly described, stared at Finn as though he would
slay him with his gaze. The skipper scratched the back of his head
again.
‘Well, your honour, if yon schooner holds as she is and this here
breeze don’t take off, we ought to be within gun-shot,’ here he
produced a silver watch of the size and shape of an apple, ‘in three
hours’ time, making it about half-past five.’
‘How far is she distant now?’
‘Betwixt three and four mile, Sir Wilfrid.’
‘Get your gun ready.’
‘A blank shot, your honour?’
‘A blank devil and be damned to you. Load with ball. Who’s your gunner?’
‘We shall have to manage amongst us, Sir Wilfrid,’ turning a face of
alarm upon me.
I was about to remonstrate, but there was an expression in the eye
that my cousin bent on me at that instant that caused me to take Miss
Jennings’ hand as an invitation to her to cross the deck and walk.
‘Charles,’ said he, ‘you told me that you knew something about gunnery.
Will you handle that weapon yonder for me?’
‘Wilf, it is madness,’ said I. ‘What! plump a shot into a craft that
may not be the vessel you want! or, which in my opinion is just as
bad, fire at with a chance of sinking a yacht with a lady aboard--that
lady your wife--the woman whom you have embarked on this extraordinary
adventure to rescue?’
My blood rose with my words. I dared not trust myself to reason with
him. I crossed the deck with Miss Laura, and when we faced round
I spied Wilfrid marching forwards with Finn, and presently he was
beside of the gun gesticulating vehemently to a body of seamen who had
collected round the piece.
Our signals were kept flying at the fore, whilst with the naked eye
one could behold the minute spot of colour steadfast at the schooner’s
peak. Onwards she held her course, swarming steadily forward in long
gliding curtseyings over each frothing surge that chased her, a most
shapely and beautiful figure with a long flash of her low black wet
side coming off the line of foam like a lift of dull sunshine, whilst
on high soared the stretches of her sails with something of the
airiness of a dragon-fly’s wing in the milk-white softness of their
spaces against the cloudy distance beyond. The time passed, Wilfrid
remained forward. He stood upon one of the anchors swaying with folded
arms to the movement of the yacht, stiff as a handspike, his face
fixedly directed at the schooner ahead. The sailors hung about, chewing
hard, spitting much, saying things to one another past the hairy backs
of their hands, here and there a whiskered face looking stupid with
a sort of dull wonder that was like an inane smile; but the fact is,
from Cutbill down to the youngest hand all the seamen were puzzled,
excited, and uneasy. The state of my cousin’s mind showed plainly to
the least penetrating of those nautical eyes. No man amongst them could
imagine what wild directions would be delivered, and though I made no
doubt the gun would be let fly when the order to fire was given, I was
pretty sure that should it come to a command to board the schooner by
force the men would decline. Sometimes Finn was forward, fluttering
near Wilfrid, sometimes aft, restlessly inspecting the compass or going
feverishly to the side and looking over, when again and again I would
hear him say in a voice as harsh as the sound of a carpenter’s plane,
‘Glory, glory! blow, my sweet breeze, blow!’ manifestly unconscious
that he spoke aloud, but evidently obtaining some ease of mind from the
ejaculation.
The sun went floating down westwards, the breeze shifted a point or
two towards him and then slackened, though it continued to blow a fine
sailing wind with a regular sea that had long before lost the early
snappish and worrying hurl put into it by the first of the dark blast.
Slowly we had been gaining upon the chase; minute after minute I had
been expecting to see her put her helm down, flatten her sheets, and
go staggering away into the reddening waters weltering and washing to
the sky under the descending sun, on what she might know to be some
best point of sailing. She kept her squaresail spread and the Dutch
flag hoisted, and swung stubbornly ahead of us, making nothing of our
signals, which still continued to fly. Through Finn’s glass I could
distinguish the figures of a few seamen forward and a couple of men
pacing the weather-side of the quarterdeck. Now and again a head would
show at the rail as though watching us, but the suggestion I seemed
to find in the general posture and air aboard the vessel was that of
indifference, as though, in fact, we had long ago exhausted curiosity,
and had been quitted as a spectacle for inboard jobs and the routine of
such life as was led there.
‘_Is_ she the “Shark,”?’ I said to Finn.
‘If she isn’t,’ said he, ‘my eyes ain’t mates, sir. It is but a
question of the colour of the quarter-boats.’
‘I see no name on the counter.’
‘No, sir, the “Shark” has no name painted on her.’
‘She’s steered by a wheel,’ said I.
‘So is the “Shark,” sir.’
‘What do the men forward who know the “Shark” think now?’ I asked.
‘Two of ’em say that it ain’t her; the rest that it is. But ne’er a man
aboard has that knowledge of her that ’ud give him conscience enough to
take an oath upon it. Glory, glory, there she walks! By the piper that
played afore Moses in the woods, your honour, ’twill be the fairest
sunrise that ever I see that lights up the end of this damned mess,
begging your pardon, Mr. Monson, and yours, miss, I’m sure. Fact is, I
feel all of a work inside me, like a brig’s boom in a calm.’
‘I am unable to hold the glass steady,’ said Miss Laura. ‘Mr. Monson, I
see no signs of a lady on board. Do you, Captain Finn?’
‘Not so much as the twinkle of a hinch of a petticoat, miss; but if her
ladyship’s there, of course she’d keep below.’
‘You know Captain Fidler,’ said I.
‘Very well, sir.’
‘There are two figures walking that quarterdeck. Is one of them he?’
‘It’s too fur off, sir. I’ve been looking and looking, but it’s too fur
off, I say, sir. Mind!’ he suddenly roared, ‘they’re a-going to fire,’
and he rolled hurriedly forwards.
A moment or two after, crash! went the gun. The blast broke in a dead
shock upon the ear, and the smoke blew away over the lee bow as red
with the tincturing of the sun as a veil of vapour at the edge of the
crimson moon. Miss Jennings shrieked. A long yearning gush of sea
catching the ‘Bride’ fair on the quarter swung her for a breadth or two
so as to hide the schooner, then to her next yaw with Wilfrid still at
the anchor bending forward in impetuous headlong pose and two or three
sailors handling the gun and a crowd of men in the head staring their
hardest, the chase swept into view afresh.
‘Ha!’ I shouted, ‘she’s heaving to.’
‘Oh, Mr. Monson!’ cried Miss Jennings, clasping her hands.
Instantly Finn fell to thundering out orders. ‘In stun’sails! clew
up the t’garnsail! down squares’l; down gaff tops’l!’ Twenty such
directions volleyed from him; in a trice the decks of the ‘Bride’ were
as busy as an anthill; canvas rattled like musketry as it was hauled
down; the strains of Cutbill’s whistle shrilled high above the voices
of the men, and a true ocean meaning came rolling into the commotion
and clamour from the yeasty seething over the side, the singing of the
wind past the ear, and the frisky motions of the yacht as she brought
the sea on her bow heading, to Finn’s yell to the man at the helm,
to range to windward of the schooner that was now fast coming round
with her squaresail descending, her main tack hoisting and her topsail
withering with her head to the west.
Distance is mightily deceptive at sea. How far off the schooner was
when they let drive at her from our forecastle I could not say. She was
probably out of range; at all events she showed no damage as she came
rounding to, away down upon the blue throbbing which had softened much
within the hour, with a bronze gleam of sheathing, as she heeled over
ere her canvas broke shivering in the eye of the wind, that wonderfully
heightened the beauty of the long, low, black, most shapely hull, and
the bland and elegant fabric of bright spar and radiant cloths shining
white yet through the faint claret tinge in the atmosphere. Wilfrid
came slowly aft, constantly looking at her as he walked. Under reduced
canvas we swept down leisurely, sliding lightly upon the run of the
surge that was now on the beam. I examined her carefully through the
glass whilst Miss Laura stood by my side asking questions.
‘Is she the “Shark”?’
‘She may be. But such of her crew as I make out don’t look to me to be
English.’
‘Can you distinguish any women on board?’
‘Nothing approaching a woman. They mean to board us. They have a fine
boat of a whaling pattern hanging to leeward, and there are sailors
preparing to lower her. They are not Englishmen, I swear. I see a large
fat man delivering orders apparently with sluggish gesticulations,
which strike me as distinctly Dutch. How about her figure-head?’ I
continued, and I brought the glass to bear on the bows of the schooner.
‘Ha!’ I cried, and looked round.
Wilfrid was watching the schooner right aft, where he had stood during
the greater part of the chase, his arms folded as before, the same
iron-hard expression on his countenance. I called to him.
‘What is the figure-head of the “Shark”?’
He started, and answered, ‘I don’t know. Ask Finn,’ and so saying
walked towards us.
The skipper was giving some instructions to Crimp on the other side of
the deck.
‘Captain Finn,’ I called.
‘Sir.’
‘What’s the “Shark’s” figure-head?’
‘A gold ball in a cup shaped like a lily, your honour.’
‘Then, Wilfrid,’ I cried, shoving the glass into his hands, ‘your
pursuit must carry you further afield yet, for that craft’s figure-head
is a white effigy, apparently a woman’s head.’
His manner to the sudden, desperate surging of the disappointment in
him fell in a breath into the old form of the craziness of his moods of
excitement. He looked through the glass, and then roared out--
‘Finn.’
The skipper came bundling over to us.
‘That vessel is not the “Shark.”’
‘I’ve been afeared not, sir, I’ve been afeared not,’ said Finn.
‘Like as two eggs end on; but now she’s drawed out--’tain’t only the
figure-head. She han’t got the “Shark’s” length of bowsprit.’
Wilfrid dashed the telescope down on to the deck. ‘A fool’s chase!’ he
exclaimed, scarcely intelligible for the way he spoke with his teeth
set. ‘Heavenly God, what a disappointment! But it should have been
Monday, it should have been Monday,’ and his gaze went in a scowling,
wandering way from us to the schooner.
‘I suppose you know,’ said I to Finn, ‘that they’re standing by to
lower a boat when we shall have come to a stand?’
‘Ay, sir, I know it,’ exclaimed Finn, who had picked up his telescope
and was feeling over it in a nervous, broken-down manner as though he
feared it was injured, but durst not look to make sure while Wilfrid
stood nigh. ‘I shall heave to to looard for their convenience,’ and
with that he walked aft to the wheel.
Wilfrid looked crushed with something absolutely lifeless in the dull
leaden blank of his eyes. It was perhaps fortunate for us, if not for
him, that this sudden prodigious blow of disappointment should have
completed the sense of physical and mental exhaustion which inevitably
attended the war of emotions that had been going on all day in his weak
mind, otherwise heaven alone knows what miserable and painful display
might have followed this failure of his expectations. I was much
affected by his manner, and endeavoured to console him, but he motioned
me to silence with a gesture of the hand, and seated himself on the
skylight, where he remained with his arms folded and his eyes fixed on
the deck, apparently heeding nothing that passed around him.
‘He’ll rally after a little,’ said I to Miss Laura, who furtively
watched him with eyes sad with the shadow of tears.
‘It ought to have been the “Shark,” Mr. Monson,’ she exclaimed in a
low voice. ‘My cowardly heart all day has been praying otherwise; and
now I would give ten years of my life that my sister were there--for
_his_ sake, for mine, and for yours too, that this wretched voyage of
expectation and mistakes and superstitions--oh, and I do not know what
else,’ she added with a little toss of her arms like a wringing of her
hands, ‘might come to an end.’
The sailors forward were eyeing the vessel steadily as we approached
her. By this time all hands were aware of the blunder that had been
made, and one seemed to see a kind of suspense in the posture of the
fellows, with a half-grin in it, too, as though ’twas an incident to
be as much laughed at as wondered at. The breeze continued to slacken,
the seas were momentarily losing weight as they rolled, the gushing of
the western crimson floated in the air like a delicate red smoke, with
a heap of flame-coloured clouds resting broodingly upon the southern
confines and the new moon over the sun, a wonder for the bright
sharpness of its curve in such a hectic as she stood in. We ran down
and hove to within easy hailing distance to leeward of the schooner,
but it was plain that Mynheer had no notion of talking to us from over
his rail. His fine large boat hung manned at the davits as we rounded
to, with a gang of fellows at either fall, and no sooner was our way
arrested than down slowly sank the six-oared fabric. The oars sparkled
in the red light, and away she came for us.
‘Charles,’ called my cousin from the skylight. I went to him. ‘I’m too
ill to be worried,’ said he; ‘represent me, dear boy, will you? Get us
out of this mess as best you can, and as quickly.’
He spoke faintly and slightly staggered after he had risen. Miss
Jennings seeing this, took his arm and together they went below.
I stood at the gangway along with friend Finn. ’Twas a ludicrous
position to be in, and what excuses to make I knew not, unless it
was to come to my explaining the full motive and meaning of our
expedition--a sort of candour I did not like the idea of. In the
stern-sheets of the approaching boat was the large fat man I had
previously taken notice of on the schooner’s quarterdeck. His face was
as round as the moon, with a smudge of bristly yellow moustache under a
bottle-shaped nose: his person was the completest pudding of a figure
that can be imagined, as though forsooth a huge suit of clothes had
been filled out with suet. He wore a blue cap with a shovel-shaped peak
and a piece of gold lace on it going from one brass button to the other.
‘That’s not Fidler,’ said I to Finn.
‘Fidler!’ he ejaculated, staring with all his might at the boat;
‘there’s twenty Fidlers in that man, your honour. Why Fidler’s a mere
rib, lean enough to shelter himself under the lee of a rope-yarn.’
The boat came fizzing alongside handsomely, and the fat man, watching
his opportunity, planted himself upon the steps and rose like a whale
to our deck, upon which he stepped. In a very phlegmatic, leisurely
way he stood staring around him for a little out of a pair of small,
greenish, expressionless eyes, and with a countenance that discovered
no signs of any sort of emotion; then in the deepest voice I ever heard
in a man, a tone that literally vibrated upon the ear like the low note
of a church organ, he said in Dutch, ‘Who speaks my language?’
I knew a few sentences in German, enough to enable me to understand
his question, but by no means enough to converse with, even if the man
spoke that tongue, so I said bluntly in English, ‘No one, sir.’
He wheezed a bit, looking stolidly at me, and exclaimed ‘You are
captain?’
I motioned to Finn.
‘Vy you vire ot me?’ he demanded, turning his fat, emotionless face
upon the skipper.
Finn touched his cap. ‘Heartily sorry, sir: ’twas all a blunder
happening through our mistaking you for another craft. I’m very willing
to ’pologise and do whatever’s right.’
The Dutchman listened apathetically, then slowly bringing his fist
of the shape, if not the hue, of a leg of beef to his vast spread of
breast, he exclaimed in a voice even deeper than his former utterance,
‘Vot I ask is, vy you vire at me?’
Finn substantially repeated his former apology. The Dutchman gazed at
him dully, with an expression of glassiness coming into his eyes.
‘Vot schip dis?’
Finn answered with alacrity, ‘The schooner-yacht “Bride,” sir.’
‘Zhe vight vorr herr nation?’ sending a lethargic glance at our
masthead as if in search of a pennant.
‘No, sir,’ cried Finn, ‘we’re a pleasure vessel.’
‘Dere is no var,’ exclaimed the Dutchman, shaking his head, ‘between
mine coundry und yours.’
‘Ho no, sir,’ exclaimed Finn.
‘Den I ask,’ said the Dutchman, in a voice like a trombone, ‘vy you
vire ot me?’
This promised no end. I hastily whispered to Finn, ‘Leave him to me.
Turn to quietly and trim sail and get way upon the vessel. He’ll take
no other hint, I fear.’ Finn sneaked off. ‘Pardon me, sir,’ said I,
‘you’ll have heard from the captain that our firing at you was a
blunder into which we were led by mistaking your ship. We desire to
tender you our humble apology, which I trust you will see your way
to accept without delay as we are very desirous of proceeding on our
voyage.’
He looked at me with a motionless head and a face as vacant of human
intelligence as a cloud, with its fat, its paleness, its Alp upon Alp
of chin, then ponderously and slowly putting his hand into his breast
he pulled out a great pocket-book and said, ‘Vot dis schip’s name?’
‘The “Bridesmaid,”’ said I.
He wrote down the word, wheezing laboriously.
‘Your captain name?’
‘Fidler,’ I answered.
This he entered.
‘Owner!’
‘Colonel Hope-Kennedy.’
‘Ow you shpell?’
I dictated, and he put down the letters as I delivered them.
‘Where you vrom?’
‘Limerick,’ I answered.
‘Ow you shpell?’ He got the word, and then said, ‘Vere you boun’?’
‘To the Solomon Group,’ I answered.
This I had to spell for him too. He wrote with such imperturbability,
with such a ponderosity of phlegmatic manner in his posture, with such
whale-like asthmatic wheezings broken only by the trembling notes of
his deep, deep voice, that again and again I was nearly exploding
with laughter, and indeed, had I caught anybody’s eye but his, I
must certainly have whipped out with the merriment that was almost
suffocating me. He slowly returned the note-book to his pocket and
exclaimed, ‘Goot. You hear more of dis,’ and with that walked to the
gangway.
‘Pray forgive me,’ said I, following him and speaking very courteously,
‘will you kindly tell me the name of your ship?’
He regarded me with a kind of scowl as he hung an instant in the
gangway--the only expression approaching intelligence that entered his
face, and said, ‘Malvina.’
‘And pray where are you bound to, sir?’
‘Curaçoa.’
‘Are you the owner, sir?’
‘Captain,’ he responded with an emphatic nod, and so saying he put his
foot on the ladder and entered his boat.
Five minutes later we were breaking the seas afresh, making a more
southerly course than was needful by two points, that we might give as
wide a berth as soon as possible to the Dutch schooner, that, at the
time I went below to the summons of the dinner-bell, was sliding away
west-south-west a league distant under every cloth that she had to
hoist.