LIST, YE LANDSMEN!
LIST, YE LANDSMEN!
_A ROMANCE OF INCIDENT_
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF “THE WRECK OF THE ‘GROSVENOR,’” “AN OCEAN TRAGEDY,”
“THE FROZEN PIRATE,” ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE
COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. I ARRIVE IN THE DOWNS, 1
II. I VISIT MY UNCLE AT DEAL, 10
III. THE GIBBET, 18
IV. I ESCAPE FROM THE PRESS, 27
V. CAPTAIN MICHAEL GREAVES OF THE _Black Watch_, 34
VI. I VIEW THE BRIG, 43
VII. A STRANGE STORY, 53
VIII. A STARTLING PROPOSAL, 62
IX. I FIGHT VAN LAAR, 71
X. WE TRANSHIP VAN LAAR, 82
XI. THE _Rebecca_, 95
XII. THE ROUND ROBIN, 111
XIII. A MIDNIGHT SCARE, 124
XIV. I SEND MY LETTER, 137
XV. THE WHITE WATER, 147
XVI. GREAVES’ ISLAND, 160
XVII. THE SHIP IN THE CAVE, 171
XVIII. WE TRANSHIP THE DOLLARS, 183
XIX. OFF THE ISLAND, 198
XX. WE START FOR HOME, 213
XXI. A FIGHT, 227
XXII. GREAVES SICKENS, 242
XXIII. THE WHALER, 255
XXIV. A SAILOR’S WILL, 267
XXV. AURORA ENTERTAINS US, 284
XXVI. A TRAGIC SHIFT OF COURSE, 300
XXVII. BOL’S RUSE, 315
XXVIII. I SCHEME, 331
XXIX. AMSTERDAM ISLAND, 345
XXX. MY SCHEME, 357
XXXI. A QUAKER SKIPPER, 373
XXXII. MYNHEER TULP, 391
LIST, YE LANDSMEN!
CHAPTER I.
I ARRIVE IN THE DOWNS.
Sailors visit many fine countries; but there is none--not the very
finest--that delights them more than the coast of their own native land
when they sight it after a long voyage. The flattest piece of treeless
English shore--such a melancholy, sandy, muddy waste, say, as that which
the River Stour winds greasily and slimily through past Sandwich, into
the salt, green, sparkling waters of the Small Downs--the English sailor
will look at with a thirstier and sharper pleasure than ever could be
excited in him by the most majestic and splendid scenery abroad.
Thus in effect thought I, as I stood upon the quarter-deck of the _Royal
Brunswicker_, viewing the noble elevation of the white South Foreland
off which the ship was then leisurely rolling as she flapped her way to
the Downs with her yards squared to the weak westerly breeze; for--to
take you into my confidence at once--this part of the coast of old
England I had the best of all reasons for loving. First of all, I was
born at Folkestone; next, on losing my parents, I was taken charge of by
a maternal uncle, Captain Joseph Round, whose house stood on the road
between Sandwich and Deal; and then, when I first went to sea, I was
bound apprentice to a master sailing out of Dover Harbor; so that this
range of coast had peculiar associations for me. Consider. It comprised
the sum of my boyish, and of most, therefore, of my happiest, memories;
indeed, I could not gaze long at those terraces of chalk, with their
green slopes of down on top, and with clusters of houses between
sparkling like frost, and many a lozenge-shaped window glancing back the
light of the sun with the clear, sharp gleam of the diamond, without
recollection stealing in a moisture into my eyes.
The ship was the _Royal Brunswicker_. I was her first mate. The name of
her master was Spalding; mine William Fielding. Captain Spalding had
married a relative of my mother’s. He was a north-countryman, and had
sailed for many years from the Tyne and from the Wear; but two years
before the date of this story--that is to say, in the middle of the year
1812--he had been offered the command of the _Royal Brunswicker_, a
small, cozy, lubberly, full-rigged ship of 490 tons, belonging to the
Port of London. I was stopping at Deal with my uncle at that time, and
heard that Captain Spalding--but I forget how the news of such a thing
reached me at Deal--was in want of a second mate. I applied for the
post, and, on the merits of my relationship with the captain’s wife, to
say no more, I obtained the appointment.
We sailed away in the beginning of September, 1812, bound to the east
coast of South America. Before we were up with the Line the mate--a
sober, gray-haired, God-fearing Scotsman--died, and I took his post and
served as mate during the rest of the voyage. We called at several
ports, receiving and discharging cargo, and then headed for Kingston,
Jamaica, whence, having filled up flush to the hatches, we proceeded to
England in a fleet of forty sail, convoyed by a two-decker, a couple of
frigates, and some smaller ships of the King. But in latitude 20° north
a hurricane of wind broke us up. Every ship looked to herself. We, with
top-gallant masts on deck, squared away under bare poles, and drove for
three days bow under in foam, the seas meeting in slinging sheets of
living green upon the forecastle. We prayed to God not to lose sight of
us, and kept the chain-pumps going, and every hour a dram of red rum was
served out to the hearts; and there was nothing to do but to steer, and
pump, and swear, and hope.
Well, the gale broke, and the amazing rush of the wings of seas sank
into a filthy, staggering sloppiness of broken, rugged surge, amidst
which we tumbled with hideous discomfort for another two days, so
straining that we would look over the side thinking to behold the water
full of tree-nails and planks of bottom sheathing. But the _Royal
Brunswicker_ was built to swim. All the honesty of the slow, patient,
laborious shipwright of her time lived in every fiber of her as a noble
conscience in a good man. When the weather at last enabled us to make
sail and proceed from a meridian of longitude many degrees west of the
point where we had parted company with the convoy, we found the ship
staunch as she had been at the hour of her birth.
All the water she had taken in had tumbled into her from above. What say
ye to this, ye sailors of the paddle and the screw? We made the rest of
the passage alone, cracking on with the old bucket to recover lost time,
and keeping a bright lookout for anything that might betoken an enemy’s
ship.
And now on the afternoon of September 19, in the year of God 1814, the
_Royal Brunswicker_ was off the South Foreland, languidly flapping with
square yards before a light westerly breeze into the Downs that lay
broad under her bows, crowded with shipping.
The hour was about three. A small trickle of tide was working eastward,
and upon that we floated along, more helped by the fast failing run of
the stream than by the wind; but there would be dead water very soon,
and then a fast gathering and presently a rushing set to the westward,
and I heard Captain Spalding whistle low as he stood on the starboard
quarter, sending his gaze aloft over the canvas, and looking at the
shipping which had opened upon us as the South Foreland drew away,
seeking with his slow, cold blue north-country eye for a comfortable
spot in which to bring up.
The coast of France lay, for all its whiteness, in a pale orange streak
upon the edge of the sea, where it seemed to hover as though it were
some sunny exhalation in process of being drawn up and absorbed by the
sun that was shining with September brightness in the southwest sky. But
over that smudge of orange-colored land slept a roll of massive white
clouds, the thunder-fashioned heads of them a few degrees high, and
clouds of a like kind rested in vast shapeless bulks of tufted heaped-up
vapor--very cordilleras of clouds--on the ice-smooth edge of the water
in the northeast. The sea streamed in thin ripples out of the west; and
upon the light movement running through it the smaller of the vessels at
anchor in the Downs were lazily flourishing their naked spars. Captain
Spalding called to me.
“I shall bring up, Bill,” said he; for Bill was the familiar name he
gave me when we were alone, though it was always “Mr. Fielding” in the
hearing of the men. “I shall bring up, Bill,” said he. “I don’t quite
make out yet what the weather’s going to prove. See those clouds? Who’s
to tell what such appearances signify in these waters? But the westerly
wind’s failing. There’s nothing coming out astern that’s going to help
us,” and he looked at the horizon that way. “I shall bring up.”
I was mighty pleased to hear this, though indeed I had expected it: for
now might I hope to get leave to pay my uncle, Captain Joseph Round, a
visit for a few hours. I believe Spalding saw what was passing in my
mind; he gazed at the land and then round upon the sea, and fell
a-whistling again in a small note, shaking his head. I reckoned that I
could not do better than ask leave at once, and said:
“As you intend to bring up, I hope you’ll allow me to go ashore for a
few hours to see how Uncle Joe does. He’d not forgive me for failing to
visit him should he hear that the _Royal Brunswicker_ had anchored
almost abreast of his dwelling-place, and that I had missed your consent
simply for not seeking it.”
He sniffed and looked suspiciously about him awhile, and answered:
“Don’t ask me for leave until the anchor’s down and the ship’s snug, and
the weather’s put on some such a face as a man may read.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said I.
“Bill,” said he, “go forward now and see all clear for bringing up.
There’s a good berth some cables’ length past that frigate
yonder--betwixt her and the pink there.”
As I was walking forward a man came clumsily sprawling over the side on
to the deck. His face was purple; he wore a hair cap, a red shawl round
his throat, and a jersey. I peered over the rail and saw a small Deal
galley hooked alongside, with two men in her.
“Going to bring-up, sir?” said the man.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Where are ye bound to?”
“To London.”
“Want a pilot?”
“You’ll find the captain aft there,” said I. “You are from Deal, I
suppose?”
“Whoy, yes.”
“Have you ever heard of Captain Joseph Round?”
“Ever heard of Cap’n Joseph Round?” echoed the man. “Whoy, ye might as
well ask me if I’ve ever heard or Deal beach.”
“Is he living?”
“There’s ne’er a fish a-swimming under this here keel that’s more
living.”
“And he’s well, I hope?”
“It’s going to be a bad job when old Cap’n Round falls ill. Old Cap’n
Round’s one of them gents as never knows what it is to have so much as a
spasm; though when the likes of them _are_ took bad, it’s common-loy
good-noight,” said he with an emphatic nod.
“I don’t reckon your services will be required,” said I; “but I may be
wanting to go ashore after we’ve brought up, and you can keep your eye
upon this ship if you like.”
“Thank ye, sir. Loike to see a paper, sir?” and here the man thrust his
hand under his jersey and pulled down a tattered newspaper a few weeks
old, gloomy with beer stains and thumb marks; but news, even a few weeks
old, must needs be very fresh news to me after an absence of two years,
during which I had caught but a few idle and ancient whispers of what
was happening at home. I thanked the man, put the newspaper in my
pocket, meaning to look at it when I should have leisure, and stepped on
to the forecastle, where I stood staring about me awaiting orders from
the captain.
The scene on the water was very grand. There were, probably, two hundred
sail of wind-bound ships at anchor. Every kind of rig, I think, was
there, from the tall spars of the British frigate down to the little,
squab, apple-bowed, wallowing hoy. I am writing this in the year 1849. A
great change in shipping has happened since 1814. You have men-of-war
now with funnels and paddle-wheels; steam has shortened the passage to
India from four months to two months and a half, which is truly
wonderful. Nay, the Atlantic has been crossed in three weeks, and I may
yet live to see the day when the run from Liverpool to New York shall
not exceed a fortnight. But the change since 1814 is not in steam only.
Many are the structural alterations. Ships I will not deny have gained
in speed and convenience; but they have lost in beauty. They are no
longer romantic, and picturesque, and quaint. No; ships are no longer
the gay, the shining, the castellated, the spacious-winged fabrics of my
young days.
Could you possess the memory of the scene of Downs, as it showed on that
September afternoon from the forecastle of the _Royal Brunswicker_, you
would share in the affectionate enthusiasm, the delight and the regret
with which I recur to it. How am I to express the light, the life, the
color of the picture; the fiery flashing of glossy, low, black, wet
sides, softly stooping upon the silken heave of the sea; the gleam of
storied windows in tall sterns; the radiance of giltwork on the quarter
galleries of big West and East Indiamen, straining motionless at their
hempen cable and lifting star-like trucks to the altitude of the
mastheads of a line-of-battle ship! I see again the long, low,
piratic-looking schooner. Her brand-new metal sheathing rises like a
strong light, flowing upward out of the water on which she rests to
within a strake or two of her covering board. I see the handsome brig
with a rake of her lower masts aft and topgallant masts stayed into a
scarce perceptible curve forward. There is a short grin of guns along
the waist and a brilliant brass-piece pivoted on her forecastle; she is
a trader bound to the west coast of Africa. She will be making the
Middle Passage anon; but she will take care to furnish no warrant for
suspicion while she flies the peaceful commercial flag on this side the
Guinea parallels. And I see also the snug old snow, of a beam expanded
into the proportions of a Dutchman’s stern, huge pieces of fresh beef
slung over the taffrail, a boat triced up to the forestay, and a tiny
boy swinging, knife in hand, at the mast.
But what I most clearly see is the fine English frigate motionless in
the heart of the forest of shipping that stretches away to right and
left of her. With what exquisite precision are her yards braced! How
admirably furled is every sail, and how finely managed each cone-shaped
bunt! There is no superfluous rigging to thicken her gear. Whatever is
not wanted is removed. Her long pennant floats languidly down the
topgallant mast, and at her gaff-end ripples the flag of Great
Britain--the fighting flag of the State; the flag that, by the victory
at Trafalgar but a few years since, was hauled to the very masthead of
the world, with such stout hearts still left, in this year of God 1814,
to guard the hilliards, that one cannot recall their names without a
glow of pride coming into the cheek and a deeper beat entering every
pulse.
Ah! thought I, as I gazed at the fine frigate, delighting with
appreciative nautical eye in the hundred points of exquisite equipment
which express the perfect discipline of the sea; admiring the white line
of hammocks which crowned the grim, silent, muzzled tier of ordnance,
the spot of red that denoted a marine, the agility of some fellows in
her forerigging--Heavens! how different from the slow and cumbersome
sprawling of the heavily-breeched merchant Jack! Ah! thought I, while I
kept my eyes bent in admiration upon the frigate, who would not rather
be the first lieutenant of such a craft as that than the first mate of
such an old wagon as this? And yet I don’t know, thought I, keeping my
eyes fastened upon the frigate. It is good to be a sailor to begin
with--best sailor, best man, spite of uniforms and titles and the color
of the flag he serves under. And which service produces the best sailor,
I wonder? And here I told over to myself a number of names of seamen who
had risen to great, and some of them to glorious, eminence in the Royal
Navy, all of whom had served in the beginning of their years in the
merchant service; and then I also thought to myself, who sees most of
the real work--the hard, heavy, perilous work of the ocean--the
man-of-warsman or the merchantman? And I could not but smile as I looked
from that trim and lovely frigate to our own sea-beaten hooker, and from
the few lively hearties of the man-of-war visible upon her decks, to the
weather-stained, round-backed men of our crew, who were hanging about
waiting for the captain to sing out orders. No, I could not help
smiling.
But while I smiled a volley of orders was suddenly fired off by Captain
Spalding from the quarter-deck, and in an instant I was singing out too,
and the crew were hauling upon the ropes, shortening sail.
We floated to the spot that Spalding had singled out with his eye, the
Deal boat towing alongside, with the fellow that had boarded us inside
of her, for the captain had promptly motioned him overboard on his
stepping aft, and then the anchor was let go, and the sails rolled up.
It was just then sunset. The frigate fired a gun; down fluttered her
ensign, and a sort of tremble of color seemed to run through the forests
of masts as every vessel, big and little, in response to the sullen clap
of thunder from the frigate’s side, hauled down her flag. A stark calm
had fallen, heavy masses of electric cloud were lifting slowly east and
south, but they were to my mind a summer countenance. Methought I had
used the sea long enough to know wind by my sight and smell without
hearing or feeling it; and I was cocksure that those clouds signified
nothing more than a storm or two--as landsmen would call it--a small
local matter of lightning and thunder, with no air to notice, and a
silent night of stars to follow.
When I had attended to all that required being seen to by me acting as
the mate of the ship, I went aft to Captain Spalding, who was walking
the deck alone, smoking a pipe, and said to him, “It’s going to be a
fine night.”
“I believe you are right,” said he, gazing into the dusk of the evening,
amid which the near shipping looked pale, and the more distant craft
dark and swollen.
“Are you going ashore?” said I.
“No,” he answered. “There’s nothing at Deal to call me ashore. I know
Deal and I don’t love it, Bill.”
“I should like to shake Uncle Joe by the hand,” said I.
“So you shall,” said he. “But see here, my lad, you must keep a bright
lookout on the weather. If ever you’re to keep your weather eye lifting
’tis whilst you are visiting Uncle Joe, for should there come a slant of
wind, I’m off! there’ll be no stopping to send ashore to let you know
that I’m going.”
“Right you are,” cried I heartily, “a bright lookout shall be kept. But
there’ll be no slant of wind this night--a little thunder, but no wind,”
said I, catching as I spoke the dim sheen of distant lightning coming
and going in a winking sort of way upon the mass of stuff that overhung
the coast of France.
I stepped below into my cabin to change my clothes. It will not be
supposed that my slender wardrobe showed very handsomely after two years
of hard wear. I put on the best garments I had, a shaggy pilot coat,
with large horn buttons, and a velvet waistcoat, and on my head I seated
a round hat with a small quantity of ribbon floating down abaft it, so
that on the whole my appearance was rather that of a respectable
forecastle hand than that of the chief mate of a ship.
Here whilst I am brushing my hair before a bit of broken looking glass
in my cabin let me give you in a few sentences a description of myself.
And first of all, having been born in the year 1790, I was aged
twenty-four, but looked a man of thirty, owing to the many years I had
passed at sea and the rough life of the calling. I was about five foot
eleven in height, shouldered and chested in proportion, very strong on
my legs, which were slightly curved into a kind of easy bowling, rolling
air by the ceaseless slanting of decks under me; in short taking me
altogether you would fairly have termed me at that age of twenty-four a
fine young fellow. I was fair, with dark reddish hair and dark blue
eyes, which the girls sometimes called violet; my cheeks and chin were
smooth shaven, according to the practice of those times; my teeth very
good, white, and even; my nose straight, shapely, and proper, but in my
throat and neck I was something heavy. Such was I, William Fielding, at
the age of twenty-four. I write without vanity. God knows it is too
late for vanity! Suppose a ghost capable of thinking: figure it musing
upon the ashes of the body it had occupied--ashes moldering and
infragrant in a clay-rotted coffin twelve foot deep.
Even as such a ghost might muse, so write I of my youth.
I pocketed the boatman’s newspaper, lest the cabin servant, coming into
my cabin, should espy and carry it away. And I also put in my pocket
some trifles which I had purchased as curios at one or another of the
ports we had visited, and then going on deck I hailed the boat that had
been keeping close to us, but that was now lying alongside a brig some
little distance away, and bade the fellows put me ashore.
Sheet lightning was playing round the sea, but stars in plenty were
shining over our mastheads; the water was very smooth; I did not feel
the lightest movement of air. Forward on our ship a man was playing on
the fiddle, and a group of seamen in lounging attitudes were listening
to him. I also heard the voice of a man singing on the vessel lying
astern of us: but all was hushed aboard the frigate; the white lines of
her stowed canvas ruled the stars in pallid streaks as though snow lay
upon the yards; no light showed aboard of her; she lay grim, hushed, big
in the dusk with a suggestion of expectancy in the dominating sheer of
her bows and in the hearkening steeve of her bowsprit, as though
steed-like she was listening with cocked ears and wide nostrils; and
yet, dark as it was, you would have known her for a British man-of-war,
spite of the adjacency of some East and West Indiamen which looked in
the gloom to float nearly as tall as she.
“It’s a quarter to eight, Bill,” exclaimed Captain Spalding, going to
the companion way and standing in it, while he spoke to me with one foot
on the ladder. “You will remember to keep your weather eye lifting, my
lad. At the first slant I get my anchor; so stand by. Ye’d better ask
Uncle Joe to keep his window open, that you may smell what you can’t see
and hear what you can’t smell. My respects to Uncle Joe. Tell him if I’m
detained here to-morrow I may pay him a visit, unless he has a mind for
a cut of Deal beef and a piece of ship’s bread down in my cabin. Anyhow,
my respects to him,” and he vanished.
I dropped into the mizzen chains, got into the galley, and was rowed
ashore.