I FIGHT VAN LAAR.
About the hour of four, that same afternoon, I followed Greaves out of
his berth into the state cabin and living room. We had been closeted for
an hour, and during that hour our discourse had related wholly to the
voyage. I followed him into the cabin. There had been no change in the
weather since the morning. The brig was rushing through the swollen seas
under whole topsails and some fore-and-aft canvas, to keep her head
straight, for now and again she would yaw widely with the swing of the
surge, and, indeed, it needed two stout fellows at the wheel to keep the
sheet of rushing wake astern of her a fairly straight line.
We had not entered the cabin five minutes when Van Laar descended the
companion steps. It was four o’clock. Yan Bol had come on to the
quarter-deck to relieve the mate until the hour of six, and Van Laar,
descending the ladder, was rolling in a thrusting and sprawling walk to
his berth, without taking the least notice of the captain and me, when
Greaves stopped him.
“Van Laar, sit down. I have something to say to you.”
The Dutch mate rounded suddenly. The insipid and meaningless layers of
fat which formed his face were quickened by an expression of surprise.
He had pulled his cloth cap off on entering, and now worried it between
his hands as he stared at Greaves. His mind worked slowly. Presently he
gathered from the looks of Greaves that he was to expect something
unpleasant, on which he said:
“I do not wish to sit down. Vy der doyvil should I sit down? Vot hov you
to say, Captain Greaves?”
“You are already aware that I am dissatisfied with you,” said Greaves.
“‘Ow vhas dot?”
“I desire no words. Enough if I tell you _simply_ that you do not suit
me.”
“Vy der doyvil did you engage me, den?”
“I was misled by Mynheer Tulp, who was misled by Mynheer somebody else,”
answered Greaves, admirably controlling his voice, but nevertheless
sternly surveying the man whom he addressed. “I was told that you knew
your duty as a seaman and as a mate, but you are so ignorant of your
duty that I will no longer trust you on my quarter-deck.”
“Vy der doyvil did you ask me to schip? If I do not know my duty, vhas
dere a half-drown man ash we drag on boardt dot can teach her to me?”
“I do not choose to go into that,” exclaimed Captain Greaves calmly. “I
presume you are not so ignorant of the sea but that you know what my
powers as a commander are?”
“Hey! you speaks too vast for me.”
The captain slowly and deliberately repeated his remark.
“Oh, yes,” exclaimed Van Laar, with a slow sideways motion of the head.
“I need not to be instrocted as to dere powers of a commander, nor do I
need to be instrocted as to dere rights of dose who sail oonder her. I
vhas your mate; vhat hov you to say against dot?”
“Which will you do,” said Greaves, with a note of impatience in his
voice, “will you take the place of second mate, in the room of Yan Bol,
who will be glad to be relieved of that trust, or will you go home by
the first ship that’ll receive you?”
Van Laar looked from Greaves to me, and from me to Greaves, and putting
his cap upon the table, and thrusting his immensely fat hands into his
immensely deep trousers’ pockets, he exclaimed, with a succession of
nods:
“Dis vhas a consbiracy.”
“Conspiracy or no conspiracy,” said Greaves, scarcely concealing a
smile, “you will give me your answer at once, if you please. My mind is
made up.”
“Dis vhas your doing,” said Van Laar, looking at me; and he pulled his
right hand out of his pocket and held it clenched.
“Make no reference to that gentleman,” cried Greaves, “I am the captain
of this ship, and all that is done is of _my_ doing. I await your
answer.”
“Vy der doyvil,” said Van Laar deliberately, with his eyes fastened upon
my face, “vhas not you drown? Shall I tell you? Because you vhas reserve
for anoder sort of end,” and here he bestowed a very significant nod
upon me.
I felt the blood in my cheeks. I could have whipped him up the steps and
overboard for talking to me like that. I looked at Greaves, met his
glance, bit my lip, and held my peace.
“Which will you do, Mr. Van Laar?” said Captain Greaves. “If you do not
answer for yourself I will find an answer for you.”
“Gott, but I hov brought my hogs, as you English say, to a pretty
market. I am dere servant of Mynheer Bartholomew Tulp.”
“I am master of this ship and you are my mate. I can break you and send
you forward. I can have you triced up and your broad breech ribbanded. I
can swing you at the yardarm till your neck is as long as an emu’s. Why
do I tell you this? Because you are ignorant of the sea and must learn
that my powers are not to be disputed by any man under me, from you
down, or, as I would rather say, from you up,” he added, with a
sarcastic sneer.
“Vhat vhas your offer?” said the mate.
There was a perversity in this man’s stupidity that was very irritating.
The captain quietly named again the alternative.
“Vat vhas dis voyage about?” inquired the mate.
“That is my affair.”
The Dutchman stood gazing at one or the other of us. He then put on his
cap and saying, “I vill schmoke a pipe in my bed und tink him out,” he
made a step toward his berth.
“I must have your answer by six o’clock,” said the captain.
The mate, taking no notice of Greaves’ remark, entered his berth and
closed the door.
Greaves and I were silent upon the man’s behavior; he was so absolutely
and helplessly in the power of his captain that the sense of fairplay
would not suffer us to speak of him.
“I will tell Jimmy,” said Greaves, “to get the slop chest up, and you
can overhaul it for the clothes you require. You will want a chest;
_that_ can be managed. What else will you require? Your bedroom needs
furnishing. I can lend you a razor and give you a hairbrush. Linen and
boots you will find among the slops. As to wages--we will arrange it
thus: I shall give a written undertaking to each of the crew, on
announcing to them the purpose of this voyage. In my undertaking to you,
in which I shall state your share, I can name the wages agreed upon--ten
pounds a month, starting from to-day, which of course, I will make a
note of in my log book. Does this meet your views?”
“Handsomely,” I answered.
He left his seat.
“With your leave, captain,” said I, “it is _captain_ now; it shall be
_sir_ anon.”
“No, no,” he interrupted, “not the least need; not as between you and
me, Fielding. In the presence of the crew and in the interests of
discipline, why, perhaps it had better be an occasional _sir_ for me,
you know, and a _mister_ for you, d’ye see? But the words may be uttered
with our tongues in our cheeks. What were you going to say?”
“That with your leave, I will at once write a letter to my uncle Captain
Joseph Round, relating my adventures, telling him where I am, but not
where I am bound to, and requesting him to communicate with Captain
Spalding, that my wages may be sent to my uncle at Deal. We may fall in
with a ship in any hour and I will have a letter ready.”
“Right,” he exclaimed, “you will find pen and ink and paper in my
cabin;” and he sprang up the hatch, whistling cheerily, as though his
mind were extraordinarily relieved, not indeed through my agreeing to
serve under him--oh no, I am not such a coxcomb as to believe
_that_--but because he had as good as cleared Van Laar off his
quarter-deck.
I entered his berth, and finding the materials I required for producing
a letter, I returned to the cabin, seated myself at the table, and began
a letter to my uncle Joseph. The chair I occupied was at the forward end
of the table, and when I raised my eyes from the paper, I commanded both
the captain’s and the mate’s berths. It was about half-past four. There
was plenty of daylight; the windy westering sunshine came and went upon
the cabin skylight with the sweep of the large masses of vapor across
the luminary. The roar of frothing waters alongside penetrated dully.
The lift of the brig was finely buoyant and rhythmic, insomuch that you
might almost have made time out of the swing of a tray over the table,
as you make time out of the oscillations of a pendulum.
I had nearly completed my letter when, happening to lift my head to
search the skylight for a thought, or perhaps for the spelling of a
word, I beheld the fat countenance of Van Laar surveying me from his
doorway. On my looking at him he withdrew his head, with a manner of
indecision. I went on writing. The lad Jimmy came into the cabin,
followed by Galloon. The boy, as I call him, busied himself, and I went
on with my letter, the dog jumping on to the chair which he occupied at
meals, and watching me. Presently, looking up, I again perceived Van
Laar’s head in his doorway. Once more he withdrew, but at the instant of
signing my letter, I heard a strange noise close beside me; I seemed to
smell spirits; I raised my eyes. Van Laar stood at the table, leaning
upon it, and breathing very heavily; his breathing, indeed, sounded like
a saw cutting through timber; his little eyes were uncommonly fierce and
fiery, and the flesh of his face of a dull red. The moment my gaze met
his, he exclaimed:
“You vhas a broodelbig!”
His accent was so much broader than the spelling which I have endeavored
to convey it in that I did not understand him. I believed he had applied
some injurious Dutch word to me.
“What do you say?” I exclaimed.
“I should like to know,” said he, fingering the cuffs of his coat as
though he meant to turn them up, “vhat sort of a man you vhas. Who vhas
you? ’Ow vhas it you vhas half drown? ’Ow comes you into dere water?
Vhas you chooked overboart? Maype you vhas a pirate? I should like to
know some more about you. Vhat schip vhas yours? Have you a farder? Vere
vhas you porn?”
“Return to your cabin and finish your pipe and bottle,” said I. “Do not
meddle with me, I beg you.”
“Meddle! Vhat vhas dot? Meddle; I must hov satisfaction of my questions.
My master is Mynheer Tulp. Am I to give oop my place to a half-drown
man, vhen I hov agree for der voyage mit Mynheer Tulp’s consent?” He
swelled his breast and roared--“No beast of an Englishman shall take
dere place of Van Laar in a schip dot vhas own by Mynheer Tulp.” He then
smote the table furiously with his fist, and, putting his face close to
mine, he thundered out--“You are a broodelbig!” _Now_ I understood him
to mean “a brutal pig,” my ear having, perhaps, been educated by his
previous speech.
“Jimmy,” I exclaimed, “hold the dog!” and, with the back of my hand, I
slapped the Dutchman heavily on the nose.
The dog growled. Jimmy sprang and clasped the creature round the neck,
holding him in a vise, and grinning with every fang in his head between
the dog’s ears. A fight to an English lad, himself clasping a growling
dog to his heart! Match him such another joy if you can!
Having struck Van Laar, I stood up and immediately pulled off my coat
and waistcoat. Van Laar also undressed himself, and, while he did so, he
bawled out:
“I vhas sorry for you. Better for you had you never been porn. If I vhas
you, I like some more to be drown or hang dan to be you.”
He stripped himself to his flesh, keeping nothing but his trousers on,
and stood before me like a vast mass of yellow soap. He was drenched
with perspiration. Galloon barked hoarsely at him. I was almost disposed
to regard this exhibition of himself as an appeal to my sensibility. He
was shaped like a dugong--after the pattern, indeed, of one of the most
corpulent of those interesting marine epicenes. He opposed to me a ton
of infuriate flesh. How could I strike it, or rather _where_? It would
be like plunging my fist into a full slush-pot.
“Dere better der man dere better der mate!” he roared. “call upon Cott,
if you belief in Him, to help you. Dere better der man dere better der
mate! Goom on!”
Poising his immense fists close against his face, he approached me, and
then, hoping perhaps to end the business at a _coup_ he rushed upon me,
whirling both his arms with the velocity of a windmill in a strong
breeze. I took a step and planted a blow, but not without compunction,
for I saw that the poor devil had no science. I say I planted a blow in
his right eye, which instantly took a singular expression of leering. I
backed and he followed, still swinging his arms; and certainly, had I
permitted one of those rotary fists to descend upon my head, I must have
gone down as though to the blow of a handspike. But alas! for poor Van
Laar. He knew nothing of boxing, and I was well versed in that art. I
dodged him for a while, hoping that, by winding him, I should be able to
bring the battle to a bloodless close. But the fellow had very
remarkable staying powers; he seemed unnaturally strong in the wind
considering his tonnage. He continued to thrash the air, seeking to rush
upon me, while he thundered:
“Dere better der man, dere better der mate!”
So, to end the business, I knocked him down. He fell flat and heavily
upon his back. Jimmy roared with laughter, and Galloon barked furiously
at the yellow heap on the deck, straining in the lad’s arms to get at
it. Greaves came into the cabin. He stopped when in the companion way,
and stared at the motionless figure of Van Laar.
“Is the man killed?” cried he.
“Oh, dear, no,” I answered. “He’s only resting.”
“What is all this about?” he demanded.
I told him how it had come about, but when I repeated the insulting
expression which had been twice made use of, Van Laar sat up and said:
“It vhas true, but I will fight no more mit you. I allow dot you are der
better man. I said, ’Dere better der man, dere better der mate,’ and dat
shall be as Cott pleases.”
“Go to your cabin, sir!” cried Greaves, looking at him with disgust;
but, on Van Laar turning his face, the captain’s countenance relaxed.
The Dutchman’s eye was closed, and it painted upon his countenance the
fixed expression of a wink; otherwise he was not hurt. I had known how
to fell him without greatly injuring him or drawing blood, and the worst
of the knockdown blow I had administered lay in the shock of the fall of
his own weight.
“Go to your cabin, sir,” repeated the captain, “and keep to it. Consider
yourself under arrest. Your brutal conduct now determines me to clear
the ship of you, and you shall be sent home by the first vessel that I
can speak.”
“You vhas in a hurry,” said Van Laar, getting on to his legs, and
beginning to pick up his clothes: “had you vaited you would have foundt
me first. It vhas me,” he roared, striking his fat chest, “who tell you,
and not you who tell me, dot I leave for goot dis footy hooker. But
stop,” cried he, wagging his fat forefinger at the captain, “till I see
Mynheer Tulp. Den I vhas sorry for you,” and thus speaking he went to
his cabin, bearing his clothes with him.
I put on my coat and waistcoat, and exclaimed, “I am truly grieved that
this should have happened. Yonder lad Jimmy witnessed the fellow’s
treatment of me.”
“There is nothing to regret,” said Greaves. “Yes, I regret that you did
not punish him more severely. He knows that you have been insensible for
three days, and the coward, no doubt, counted upon finding you weak
after your illness.”
“It is well for him,” said I, “that he should have made up his mind at
once that I am the better man. I felt a sort of pity for the shapeless
bulk when I saw it rushing upon me, with its arms whirring like the
flails of a thresher upon a whale. A fellow apprentice of mine, in the
third voyage I made, was the son of a prize-fighter. He had learnt the
art from his father, and claimed to have his science. Many a stand-up
affair happened between this youth and me, during our watches below. He
showed me every trick at last, though the education cost my face some
new skins.”
“If Van Laar shows himself on deck, or indeed, if he leaves his berth,
I’ll clap him in irons,” said Greaves. “Meanwhile, Fielding, you will
enter upon your duties at once, providing you feel strong enough.”
“Perfectly strong enough,” said I.
“Very well,” said he, “you will relieve Yan Bol at four bells, and I
will call the crew aft and tell them that you are mate of the _Black
Watch_.”
So here now was I chief mate of a smart brig, with ten pounds a month
for wages, not to mention the six thousand pounds I was to take up if we
brought our cargo of dollars home in safety. Truthfully had I told
Greaves that my adventures at sea had been few, but surely now life was
making atonement for her past beggarly provision of strange, surprising
experiences, by the creation of incidents incomparably romantic and
memorable, as I will maintain before the whole world, was that incident
of the gibbet, on the sand hills near Deal.
When I reached the deck I found a noble, flying, inspiriting scene of
swelling and cleaving and foaming brig and ocean curling southward.
Through the luster of an angry, glorious sunset, the froth flew in
flakes of blood, and every burst of white water from the courtesying
bows was crimson with sparkles as of rubies. I wondered, when I looked
at the see-saw sloping of the deck, how on earth the Dutchman and I had
managed to keep our pins while we fought. Yet, why did I wonder? I found
myself standing beside the captain, no more sensible than he of a swing
and sway that when it came to a roll was roof-steep often, gazing
forward with him at the crew, who were assembling in response to the
boatswain’s summons, preparatory to laying aft.
This was a small business and promptly dispatched. Two men were at the
wheel, and eight men, leaving Jim Vinten out, came to the mainmast to
hear what the captain had to say. He said no more than this: “Yan Bol,
and you men: Mr. Van Laar is under arrest in his cabin, and Mr. William
Fielding here is and will be the mate of the _Black Watch_. He is a much
better man than Van Laar. You would split your throats with huzzas did
you know how very much smarter Mr. Fielding is than Van Laar. We want
nothing but sharp and able men aboard the _Black Watch_. You’ll know why
anon--you’ll know why anon. I have my eye upon ye, lads, and so far, I’m
very well satisfied. You seem a willing crew; keep so. A man, after he
has heard our errand, would sooner have cut his throat than fail me.
Heed me well, hearts, for this is to be a big cruise. Here’s your mate,
Mr. William Fielding,” and he put his hand upon my shoulder.
The fellows stared very hard. They were strangers to me as yet, and I
knew not which were Dutch and which were English; but some exchanged
looks with a half-suppressed grin, and those I guessed were English. Yan
Bol stood forward--Yan we called him, though he spelt his name with a J.
He was, as you have heard, boatswain, carpenter, and sailmaker, a stern,
bearded, beetle-browed man, heavily clothed with hair--leonine--indeed,
in the matter of hair.
“I beg pardon, captain,” said he, “does Herr Van Laar goom forward?”
“No,” answered the captain, “he goes over the side presently, when
there’s a ship to pick him up.”
“I vhas to be second mate still?”
“Yaw, it is so, Yan. We want no better man.”
But the compliment was not relished. Methought Yan Bol, as he fronted
the stormy western light, looked sterner and more beetle-browed,
hairier, and more bearded than before, when he understood that he was to
remain second mate.
“There are three Dutchmen aboard not counting you, Bol,” said the
captain, “and seven Englishmen. I want such a distribution of watches,
as will put the three Dutchmen under you, Yan. Wirtz, you and Hals will
come out of the starboard into the larboard watch, and Meehan and
Travers will take their place. That’s all I’ve got to say, excepting
this--pipe for grog, Bol, to drink the health of the new mate.”
This dismissed them chuckling. Bol sounded his whistle, and Jimmy
presently came out of the cabin and went forward with a can of black rum
swinging in his hand.
“I am lumping the Dutchmen together under one head,” said Greaves, as we
paced the deck, “to give their characters a chance of developing,
before they learn the motive of this voyage. Not that I have more or
less faith in Dutchmen than in Englishmen; but sailors of a nationality
do not distrust one another, therefore whatever is bad will quickly
ripen: but mix them with others and you arrest rapid development by
misgiving; and a difficulty, that might come to a head quickly, is
delayed until a remedy becomes difficult or impracticable.”
“I understand you, sir.” He smiled on my giving him the _sir_ for the
first time. “You want to get at the character of your crew as promptly
as may be.”
“That I may clear my forecastle of whatever is doubtful. A cargo of five
hundred and fifty thousand dollars makes a rich ship, and a rich ship is
a wicked temptation to wicked men. It is a pity we could not manage with
fewer hands; but death, sickness, many disabling causes are to be
considered; the voyage is a long one--there is the Horn; we could not
have done with less men.”
“I wonder what notion of this voyage the men have in their heads,” said
I. “I watched them while you talked. I could not see that they made sign
by grin, or stare, or look.”
“They would not be sailors if they were not careless of the future,”
said Greaves. “What’s for dinner to-day? _That’s_ it, you know. Is there
a shot in the locker? Is there a drop of rum in the puncheon? Is there a
fiddle aboard? and if the answer be yea, marry, a clear, strong, manly
bass voice sings out, ‘All’s well.’ Those men don’t care, because they
don’t think. Can’t you hear them talk, Fielding?--‘Where the blazes are
we bound to, I wonder?--Hand us that pipe along for a draw and a spit,
matey.’--‘I’m for the land o’ shoe-shine arter this job, bullies’--‘Der
bork in dis schip vhas goodt,’ says a Dutchman. Then grunt goes another,
and snore goes a third, and the rest is snorting. Don’t it run so,
Fielding? _You_ know sailors as well as I. But I’ll tell you what; it’ll
put gunpowder into the heels of their imaginations, to learn that we’re
going to load dollars out of a derelict. They shan’t know yet a bit.
Well it is that Van Laar doesn’t know either. Tulp was for having me
explain the nature of our errand to him. ‘No, by Isten,’ said I--which I
believe is Hungarian--‘no, by Isten,’ I exclaimed, ‘no man shall know
what business we’re upon till I have gained some knowledge of the
character of the company of fellows who are under me.’”
“All this makes me feel your confidence in me the more flattering, sir,”
said I.
“Don’t _over_ sir me. I must replace a guzzling and gorging baboon of a
Dutch mate--a worthless mass of unprofessional fat--I must replace this
hogshead of lard by a _man_, and Galloon finds me the man I need lying
half-drowned off Ramsgate. I want him very earnestly, very imperatively.
I must have a mate--a smart, English seaman. Here he is; but how am I to
keep him? He is not going to be detained by vague talk of a voyage
whose issue I decline to say anything about, whose motive is
mysterious--criminal, for all he is to know--imperiling the professional
reputation of those concerned in it, with such a gibbet as that which
stands upon the sand hills at the end of it all. No; to keep you I must
be candid, or you wouldn’t have stayed.”
“That is true.”
“See to the brig, Fielding. She’s a fine boat, don’t you think? If she
didn’t drag so much water--look at that lump of sea on either
quarter--she’d be a comet in speed. Why the deuce don’t the shipwrights
ease off when they come aft, instead of holding on with the square run
of the butter-box to the very lap of the taffrail?”
He looked aloft; he looked around the sea; he walked to the binnacle and
watched the motion of the card; he then went below.
It was nearly dark. The red was gone out of the west, but the dying
sheen of it seemed to linger in the south and east, whither the
shapeless masses of shadow were flying across the pale and windy stars,
piling themselves down there with a look of boiling-up, as though the
rush of vapor smote the hindmost of the clouds into steam.
Why, thought I, it was but a day or two ago that I, mate of the _Royal
Brunswicker_, was conning that ship, with her head pointing t’other way,
in these same waters; and then I was thinking of Uncle Joe, and of some
capers ashore, and of the relief of a month or two’s rest from the
derned hurl of the restless billow, as the poets call it, with plenty of
country to smell and fields to walk in, and a draught of new milk
whenever I had a mind. Only a day or two ago--it seems no longer.
Insensibility takes no count of time. In fact, whether I knew it or not,
I went to sea again on this voyage on the same day on which I arrived in
the Downs, after two years of furrin-going. How will it end? I shall
become a fish. But six thousand pounds, thought I, to be picked up,
invested, safely secured betwixt this and next May, I dare say! Oh,
it’s good enough--it’s good enough; and I whistled through my teeth,
with a young man’s light heart, as I walked, watching the brig closely,
nevertheless, and observing that the fellows at the helm kept her before
it, as though her keel was sweeping over metal rails.