WE TRANSHIP VAN LAAR.
It blew fresh all that night and all next day. I was for carrying on,
and shook a reef out of the forecourse and set the topgallant sail; and
when Greaves came on deck he looked up, and that was all. He would not
trust the brig with too much sail on her in a staggering breeze when Van
Laar had charge of the deck; but he trusted her now, and trusted her
afterward to Yan Bol when he came to relieve me; and hour after hour the
_Black Watch_ stormed along, bowing her spritsail yard at the bowsprit’s
end into the foam of her own hurling till it was buried, and every
shroud and backstay was as taut as wire, and sang, swelling into such a
concert as you must sail the stormy ocean to hear, with a noise of drums
rolling through it out of the hollow of the sails, and no lack of bugle
notes and trumpeting as each sea swept the brig to its summit.
On the third day the weather was quiet. It was shortly before the hour
of noon. A light swell was flowing out of the north, but the breeze was
about northwest, and the brig was pushing through it under
studding-sails. The men were preparing to get their dinner, one of the
Dutch seamen at the wheel, and Greaves and I standing side by side, each
with a quadrant in his hand.
“I wish,” exclaimed the captain, “that something would come
along--something to receive Van Laar! The fancy of that fellow confined
in his berth is not very agreeable to me. Jimmy tells me that he smokes
all day; that he removes the pipe from his mouth merely to eat. Then,
indeed, the pipe is for some time out of his mouth.”
“Sail ho!” I exclaimed at that instant; for, while he addressed me, my
gaze was upon the sea over the lee bow, and there, like a hovering
feather, hung a sail.
Greaves looked at her, and exclaimed:
“I hope she is coming this way. I hope she is homeward bound, and that
she will receive Van Laar.”
We applied our eyes to our quadrants, made eight bells, and, leaving Yan
Bol to keep a lookout, went below.
“How am I to foist Van Laar upon a ship’s captain?” said he, as we
entered his berth to work out the latitude. “Is he a passenger? Then he
must pay. But Van Laar is not a man to pay, and not one doit shall I be
willing to pay for him. Is he a distressed mariner whom we have picked
up? No. What is he but an inefficient officer, full of mutiny, beef,
tobacco, and schnapps? I may find difficulty in persuading a captain to
take him. I hope it may not come to it, but I fear I shall be forced to
throw him overboard.”
We worked out the latitude and entered the cabin. Galloon sat upon his
chair at the table, watching Jimmy lay the cloth for dinner.
“What are you going to give us to eat, Jimmy?” said the captain.
“Oh, I know, master,” replied the lad with his foolish smile; and here I
observed that Galloon looked at him. “It’s roast beef to-day, master.”
“There is no fresh beef in the ship; therefore we are not going to have
roast beef for dinner. Corned beef it is, not roast beef. Say corned
beef, not roast beef.”
The boy, stiffening himself into the posture of a private soldier at
sight of his officer, cried in a groaning voice:
“Say corned beef, not roast beef!” and Galloon howled in sympathy.
“Again, if you please.”
“Say corned beef, not roast beef!” bawled the youth; and Galloon’s howl
rose high in suffering.
“Once more.”
The boy bellowed, and the dog’s accompaniment made a horrible duet.
Scarcely had the noise ceased when Van Laar opening his door, put his
head out, and cried:
“Vhas dere cornedt beef ready?”
“You will give that man ship’s bread for his dinner,” said Greaves
calmly. “If he shows his nose again I will have a hammock slung for him
in the lazarette--the lazarette or the fore-peak--he may take his
choice; but the hatch will be kept on.”
These words had no sooner left the captain’s lips than Van Laar came out
of his berth.
“You debrive me of my liberty,” he shouted in his deepest tones, “and I
vhas content till ve meets mit a schip to take me out of dis beesly
hooker. But, by Cott! mine dinner vhas to be someding more dan schip’s
bread, or I vhas sorry for you, Dis is Mynheer Tulp’s schip. I oxpects
my full rations. If not, I goes to der law vhen I gets home, and I takes
der bedt from oonder you und your vife. A pretty consbiracy--first
against mine liberty and now against mine appetite. I have brought my
hogs, as you Englishmen say, to a nice market indeedt.”
“Mr. Fielding,” said Captain Greaves quietly, “step on deck, if you
please, and send Yan Bol to me with the bilboes. You will keep the deck
till Yan Bol returns.”
I hastened up the ladder, and found Yan Bol tramping to and fro. I
repeated the captain’s instructions to him.
“Who vhas der bilboes for?” said he, in a voice that trembled upon the
ear with the power of its volume.
“Van Laar,” said I.
He looked not in the least surprised.
“For Herr Van Laar. I shall hov to pick out der biggest;” and he went
forward to fetch the bilboes, as the irons in which sailors’ legs were
imprisoned were in those days termed.
We had considerably risen the sail that I had made out shortly before
eight bells, and I took the telescope from the companion way to look at
her. She was apparently a small brig, smaller than the _Black Watch_,
visible as yet above the horizon to the line of her bulwark rails only.
I found something singular in the trim of her canvas, but she was too
far off at present to make sure of in any direction of character,
tonnage, or aspect, and I returned the glass to its brackets, satisfied
at all events to have discovered that she was heading to cross our
hawse, and would be within easy speaking distance anon.
Bol came aft with the bilboes and descended into the cabin, whence very
soon afterward there arose through the open skylight a great noise of
voices. Van Laar was giving trouble. He declined to sit quietly while
Yan Bol fitted him. His deep voice roared out Dutch oaths, intermingled
with insults in English leveled at Captain Greaves.
Galloon barked furiously, and Yan Bol’s deeper notes rolled upward like
the sound of thunder above the explosions of artillery. Presently I
heard a noise of wrestling; then Van Laar called out:
“All right, all right! Let me go! Put her on! I vhas quiet now, but
after dis, if I vhas you, I vould hang myself.”
His voice was then muffled, as though he had been dragged or carried
into his cabin, and a few minutes later Yan Bol came on deck, lifting
his hair with one hand and wiping the sweat from under it with the
other.
“He gifs too much trouble,” said he, with a massive shake of his head,
“it vhas not right. He vhas a badt sailor, too. I could have told
Captain Greaves dot before we sailed from Amsterdam. Van Laar put a ship
ashore two years ago. He vhas too fat and lazy for der sea. He vhas
ignorant, and has not a sailor’s heart in him.”
“I do not know what sort of a sailor he is,” said I, “but a more
insulting son of a swab I never met in my life.”
“Dere’s a ship dot may take him,” said Bol, leveling a hand as big as a
shovel at the sea.
“Mr. Bol, please to keep your eye upon her while I am below,” said I;
“one needs to be wary in these waters.”
“Let me look at her,” said he, and he fetched the glass. “Dere vhas
noting for dis brig to be afraid of in _her_,” said he, after a slow
Dutch gaze and ruminating pause; “it vhas not all right, I belief, but
vhat vhas wrong mit her vhas right for us.”
Jimmy passed with the cabin dinner from the galley. A minute later he
arrived to report it served. I went below, and was about to sit down
when I suddenly exclaimed:
“Hark, what is that?”
“Van Laar singing,” said Greaves.
He took his seat, looking very severely, but on a sudden his face
collapsed, and he burst into a fit of laughter.
“Ye Gods, what a voice!” he cried. “He is improvising, and pretty
cleverly too. He is asking in Dutch for his dinner, _rhyming_ as he goes
along and shouting his fancies to a Dutch air. Yet shall he get no beef,
though he should sing till his windpipe splits. I am getting mighty sick
of this business. What of the sail?”
“We are rising her fairly fast and she’s heading our way. The wind is
taking off and I don’t think we shall be abreast much before another
hour.”
Van Laar ceased to sing.
“Is Jimmy an idiot?” said I, when the lad’s back was turned.
“Not at all. He is a very honest lad, with the strength of two mules in
his limbs. He has sailed with me before. I have carried him on this
voyage because of his foolishness. I did not want too much forecastle
intelligence to be dodging about my table.”
“Hark!” said I, “Van Laar is calling.”
“Captain,” roared the voice of the Dutchman, in syllables perfectly
distinct, though dulled by the bulkhead which his lungs had to
penetrate, “vhas I to hov any dinner? Dis vhas Mynheer Tulp’s ship. I
vhas sorry for you if you starf me.”
Jimmy returned.
“When did Mr. Van Laar breakfast?” said Greaves to him.
The youth looked up at the clock in the skylight, and answered
instantly:
“At one bell, master,” meaning half-past eight.
“What did he have?”
“A trayful, master,” and I noticed that the boy talked with his eyes
fixed on Galloon, while the dog looked up at him as though ready to howl
presently.
“But what did he have?”
“He had coffee, mutton chops, sights of biscuits, a tin of preserved
pork, more biscuit, master, ay, and fried bacon--twice he sent me to the
galley for fried bacon, and he was eating from one bell till hard upon
fower.”
“There are no mutton chops on board this ship,” said Greaves, “and as to
tins of preserved pork--but you will guess,” said he, looking at me,
“that the hog’s trough was liberally brimmed; and still the beast
grunts. Listen!”
Van Laar was now singing again. Presently he ceased and talked loudly to
himself. He then fell silent; but by this time Greaves and I had dined
and we went on deck.
The brig, that had seemingly shifted her course, as though to stand
across our hawse, was lying hove-to off the weather bow. There was a
color at the peak. I brought the glass to bear and made out the English
ensign, union down. She had a very weedy and worn look as she lay
rolling and pitching somewhat heavily upon the light swell. Her sails
beat the masts with dislocating thumps, and in imagination I could hear
the twang of her rigging to the buckling of her spars. She was timber
laden; the timber rose above her rails.
“What on earth is she towing?” exclaimed Greaves, looking at her through
the glass.
I could not make the object out; something black, resembling a small
capsized jolly-boat, rose and fell close astern of her. It jumped with
a wet flash, then disappeared past the brow of a swell, jumped again and
vanished as though hoisted and sunk by human agency. We ran the ensign
aloft and bore slowly down, and when we were within speaking distance
hove to.
Presently we made out the queer flashful object astern of the dirty,
woe-begone little brig to be nothing more nor less than a large cask,
suspended at the end of the trysail gaff; the line was rove through a
big block up there and led forward, but into what part of the ship I
could not then perceive. Three men were squatted on the timber that was
built round about the galley chimney; their hands clasped their knees,
they eyed us with their chins on their breasts. The melancholy appeal of
the inverted ensign was not a little accentuated by the distressful
posture of those three squatting men. A fourth man stood aft. He was
clad in a long yellow coat, and wore a red shawl round his neck, and a
hat like a Quaker’s. When we were within speaking distance, and silence
had followed the operation of bringing the brig to a stand, the man in
the yellow coat called in a wild, melancholy voice across the water:
“Brig ahoy!”
“Hallo!”
“Will you send a boat?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Anan?”
“What is wrong with you?” roared Greaves.
“There’s nothen’ that’s right with us,” was the answer.
“What ship is that?”
“The _Commodore Nelson_.”
“Where are you from, and where are you bound to?”
“From Quebec to the Clyde.”
“The Clyde!” exclaimed Greaves, looking at me. “Where does he make the
Clyde to flow? But he’s homeward bound, and you shall induce him to take
Van Laar. Go over to him, Fielding, and see what is wrong;” and he
called across the water to the man in the yellow coat, “I will send a
boat.”
A boat was lowered; four men and myself entered her. We pulled alongside
the wallowing little brig, and I clambered aboard. It was like
hearkening to the sound of a swaying cradle. She creaked in every pore,
creaked from masthead to jib boom end, from the eyes to the taffrail.
She was full of wood and rolled with deadly lunges. The three men
continued to sit upon the timber that was piled round about the galley
chimney. They turned their eyes upon me when I stepped on board, but
seemed incapable of taking more exercise than that.
I made my way over the deck cargo to where the man in the yellow coat
was standing, and as I went I observed that the end of the line which
was rove through the block attached to the gaff led through another
block, secured near one of the pumps and fastened--that is to say, the
end of the line was fastened--to the brake or handle of the pump, which
was frequently and violently jerked, causing water to gush forth, but
intermittently and spasmodically.
“What is wrong with you?” said I, approaching the man who awaited me
instead of advancing to receive me, as though he had some particular
reason in desiring to converse with me aft.
“Everything is wrong,” he answered, in a patient, melancholy voice.
“First of all, will ye tell me what’s to-day?”
“Do you mean the day of the week or the day of the month?”
“Both,” he answered.
Not a little astonished by this question, I supplied him with the
information he desired.
“Thought as much,” said he, mildly jerking his fist. “Two days wrong.
Yesterday was my birthday and a’ never knew it.”
“Did you say that you are bound to the Clyde?”
“That’s where this cargo’s consigned to,” he answered, “and of course us
men go along with it.”
“What are you doing down in these latitudes?”
He gazed round the sea with a lost-my-way expression of eye, and
replied:
“I don’t know where we are.”
“The Canary Islands bear about thirty leagues east-southeast,” said I.
He stared at the horizon as though, by looking hard, he would see the
Canary Islands.
“Pray, what are you?” said I, looking at him and then glancing at his
little ship and the three men who sat disconsolately clasping their
knees on top of the deck-load.
“I am the second mate and carpenter.”
“Where’s your captain?”
“Gone blind and mad,” he answered.
“And your mate?”
“Gone dead,” he replied, “it’s been an uncomfortable voyage so far,” he
continued, speaking with patient melancholy and with an odd expression
of expectation in his eyes. “We left Quebec, and the mate he takes on
and dies. He couldn’t help it, poor chap, but t’other----” He gazed at
the deck as though to direct my imagination below. “It was drink, drink
all around the clock with him; no sharing--a up-in-the-corner job;
cuddling a bottle all day long and the blinds drawed. Then he goes mad.
That aint enough. Then he goes blind. _That_ aint enough. What must he
do but break a leg! And there he lies,” said he, pointing straight down
with a forefinger pale as though boiled, like a laundress’s hand. “The
navigation was left to me--‘deed, then; it had been left to me for some
time--but _I_ never shipped to know navigation. No fear. Me, indeed!” he
exclaimed, laughing dully. “I’m a carpenter by trade. However, here I
was; so I hove the log and steered east, and here I am!” he exclaimed
with another patient, forlorn look around the ocean.
“You have lost your way,” said I. “You are not the first sailor who has
lost his way. But have you never sighted anything with a skipper to give
you the latitude and the longitude and a true course for the Clyde?”
“Plenty have we sighted, but nothing that would speak us. The only thing
that showed a willingness to speak us turned out a privateer, and night
drawing down,” he exclaimed, slightly deepening his voice, “saved our
throats.”
“That cask astern of you,” said I, “is a novel dodge for keeping your
ship pumped out.”
A little life came into his melancholy eye.
“The men took ill,” said he. “Five of them were down, and still are
down, and the nursing of ’em all, including of the captain, blind and
mad, and the cook unable to stand with dropsy, is beginning to tell upon
my spirits.”
“That I can believe.”
“There was but four men left. There sits three of ’em. Who was to do the
pumping? The swinging of a yard’s pretty nigh as much as we can manage.
I didn’t want to get water-logged: I wish to get home. My wife’ll be
wondering what’s become of me. So, after thinking a bit, I rigs up this
here pumping apparatus, as ye see, and if the weather holds fine, and
the drag of the cask don’t jump the pump out, I think it’ll answer.”
“Well,” said I, “what can we do for you?”
“I should like to be put in the way of getting home, sir,” he answered.
“We don’t want for food and water. There aint no purser like sickness,”
he exclaimed with a melancholy smile. “When I fell in with your brig I
was a-steering east, with the hope of making the land and coming across
some village or town where I might larn what the day of the month was,
and how to head. It’s one thing not to know what’s o’clock, but I tell
ye it makes a man feel weak in the mind to lose reckoning of the day of
the week and not know what the date of the month is.”
“What is your name?”
“Tarbrick, sir.”
“Well, Mr. Tarbrick, we shall be able to be of service to you, I
believe. We have a Dutchman on board who wants to get home. He and the
captain have fallen out, and the Dutchman desires to return by the first
passing ship. You may guess that he speaks English, and that he is a
navigator, when I tell you he was mate of that vessel. Will you receive
him?”
“Will I?” he cried, his face lighting up. “Why, he’s just the man we
want.”
“Is there nothing else we can do for you?”
“No, sir; and I never reckoned on getting so much,” he answered mildly
and sadly. “I reckoned only on larning the day of the week and the date
of the month, and getting the course for a straight steer home.”
“Keep all fast as you are,” said I, “and I will return to you.”
I dropped into the boat and was rowed aboard the brig. Greaves was
impatiently walking the deck. He came to that part of the rail over
which I climbed, and said:
“Will the brig take Van Laar?”
I answered, “Yes.”
His face instantly cleared. I gave him the story of the _Commodore
Nelson_, as it had been related to me by Mr. Tarbrick, and explained the
object of the cask under the stern and the lines rove from it to the
pump handle. He laughed, but there was a note of admiration in his
laughter.
“That Tarbrick is no fool, spite of his thinking the Clyde lies down
this way. I have heard of worse notions than that of making a ship pump
herself out. The cask is half full of water, I suppose?”
“It would not be heavy enough for the down-drag unless it were half full
of water,” said I.
“And it is guyed to either quarter, of course,” he continued,
“otherwise, when the brig moves, it must be towed directly from the
gaff-end, which would never do. A clever notion. Bol!”
The boatswain, who was standing forward looking at the brig, immediately
came aft.
“Come below with me,” said the captain, “and free Van Laar. That brig
will receive him. Keep your boat over the side, Mr. Fielding, and stand
by to receive Van Laar and his clothes.”
They entered the cabin. In a few minutes I heard a confused noise of
voices. Van Laar’s tones were distinguishable, but I could not collect
what he said. Bol came under the skylight and asked me to send down a
couple of hands to bring up Van Laar’s chest. Presently Van Laar cried
out, “Dis vhas Mynheer Tulp’s schip, and you vhas kicking me out of
her.”
“You leave at your own request,” I heard Greaves say.
“Dot vhas valse,” shouted the Dutchman. “But you are a whole ship’s
gompany to von man. Yet vill I have der bed from oonder you und your
vife.”
“Now step on deck, if you please.”
“Dere law----” but the rest was lost to my ear by the Dutchman getting
into the companion way. He emerged, looking very pale, greasy, even
fatter than he had before shown; scowled when he met my glance, stared
around him with the bewilderment of a newly-released man, and called
out, “Vere is der schip?” He saw her as he spoke, shaded his eyes while
he looked at her, and, falling back a step, exclaimed, “I vhas not going
home in dot schip.”
“That is the ship, and you are going home in her,” said Greaves. “The
boat is alongside, and Mr. Fielding waits for you to jump in.”
“You vhas sorry for dis by an’ by. Do you inten’ dot I should drown by
your sending me to dot footy hooker? Who has been on boardt her?” he
shouted, looking around him with a frown; “you, sir?” cried he to me.
“Vot vhos dot oonder her taffrail? I must know vot dot vhas before I
stir!”
“It’s nothing that will hurt you,” answered Greaves, who, as I might
see, dared not meet my gaze for fear of laughing.
“Vhat vhas it, I ask? I hov a right to know;” and here the poor fat
fellow, for whom I was beginning to feel a sort of pity, made spectacles
of his thumbs and forefingers, and put them to his eyes to stare at the
cask and repeated, “Vhat vhas it? Sir, oblige me by handing me dere
glass.”
“Mr. Van Laar,” said Greaves, “I should regret to use force, but if you
don’t instantly get into that boat I shall have you lifted over the side
and dropped into her.”
“Who vhas it dot has been on boardt? Vhas it you, sir?” cried the
Dutchman, again addressing me. “Dos she leak? Vot vhis her cargo? Vot
are her stores? I have had no dinner, and you are sending me to a schip
dot may be stone proke.”
All this while the crew of the brig, saving those in the boat, had been
standing in the fore-part, looking on. I thought to find some signs of
sympathy with Van Laar among the Dutch seamen, but if sympathy were
felt, it found no expression in their faces or bearing. The grinning had
been broad and continuous, but now I caught a murmur or two of
impatience that might have signified disgust.
“Will you enter the boat?” cried Greaves. Van Laar began to protest.
“Aft here, some of you,” exclaimed Greaves, “and help Mr. Van Laar over
the side.”
The Dutchman immediately went to the rail, crawled over it, breathing
heavily, then pausing when he was outside, while he still grasped the
rim, and while nothing was visible of him but his fat face above the
rail, he roared out:
“Down mit dot beastly country, England! Hurrah for der law! Hurrah for
der right! Ach, boot I vhas sorry for you by an’ by.”
He then dropped into the boat, I followed, and we shoved off. Galloon
barked at the Dutchman as we rowed away. Van Laar talked aloud to
himself, constantly wiping his face. His speech was Dutch, and I did not
understand what he said. Presently he broke out in English:
“Yaw; a timber cargo. Dot vhas my fear. Dere you vhas, and dot’s to be
my home, and vot oonder der sky is dot cask oonder der taffrail? Der
schip’s provisions? Very like, very like. She hov a starved look. And
who vhas dose dree men sitting up dere? Vhas dot der captain in dere
yellow coat? He hov der look of a man who lives on rats. An’ I ask vhat
dos a timber schip do down here? By Gott! I do not like the look of
her.”
I paid no attention to his words, and put on a frowning face to preserve
my gravity, which was severely taxed, not more by Van Laar’s talk and
appearance than by the grins of the men who were rowing the boat. We
approached the brig, and Mr. Tarbrick came to the main rigging, as
though he would have me steer the boat alongside under the main chains.
“Brick, ahoy!” shouted Van Laar, standing up, and setting his thick legs
apart to balance himself; for the boat swayed with some liveliness upon
the swell that was running.
“Hallo!” responded Tarbrick, with a flourish of his hand.
“Vhat vhas dot cask oonder your shtern?”
“It keeps the pump a-going,” cried Tarbrick.
“Goot anchells!” cried Van Laar, “do I onderstand that you hov not a
schip’s gompany strong enough to keep der pumps manned?”
“We are four well men and myself,” shouted Tarbrick; “the rest are
sick.”
“I do not go home in dot schip,” said Van Laar, sitting down.
“Oars!” I cried, as we swept alongside. “Mr. Van Laar, I beg you will
step on board. Pray give us no trouble. You _must_ go, you know, though
it should come to my having to send for fresh hands to whip you aboard,”
by which word _whip_ he perfectly well understood me to mean a tackle
made fast to the yardarm, used for hoisting. “Mr. Tarbrick, call those
three fellows of yours aft to get this chest over the side.”
The three men rose in a lifeless way from the top of the timber,
shambled to abreast of the boat in a lifeless way, and in a lifeless way
still dragged up Van Laar’s sea-chest, to the grummet handle of which a
rope had been attached.
“On deck dere,” called Van Laar, getting up again and planting his legs
apart, “how moch do you leak in der hour?”
I winked at Tarbrick, who was leaning over the rail, but the man was
either a fool or did not catch my wink, for he answered, in his
melancholy voice:
“It’s a-drainin’ in very unpleasantly. I han’t sounded the well since
this morning, but,” he added, as though to encourage Van Laar, “we’re
full of timber and can’t sink.”
Down sat the Dutchman again, with a weight of fall upon the thwart that
made the boat throw a couple of little seas away from her quarters.
“Here I sthop,” he said, doggedly folding his arms.
“You will force me to row back to the brig, obtain fresh hands, and whip
you aboard, Mr. Van Laar.”
“You vhas a big,” he said, without looking at me.
“Men,” he exclaimed, addressing the seamen in the boat, “dere _Black
Vatch_ belongs to Mynheer Tulp. I vhas mate of her by Mynheer Tulp’s
consent. Vill you allow your lawful mate to be put into dis beast of a
schip, to starf, to drown, to miserably perish?”
“You had better jump on board,” said one of the men.
“Cast off!” I exclaimed. “I must return to Captain Greaves for further
instructions.”
“Shtop!” shouted the Dutchman. “On deck dere, how vhas you off for
provisions?”
“Very well off,” answered Tarbrick. “There’s plenty to eat aboard this
here brig.”
“And how vhas you off for drink?”
“Come and judge for yourself, sir. There’s been too much drink. It’s
been the ruin of us,” exclaimed Tarbrick.
On this Van Laar, putting his hands upon the laniards of the main
rigging, got into the chains. We instantly shoved off and were at some
lengths from him while he was still heavily clambering on to the deck.
“Blowed if his weight don’t make the little craft heel again,” exclaimed
one of the men. “See what a list to larboard she’s took.”
I regained the _Black Watch_ mightily rejoiced that the Dutchman was off
my hands. So vast a mass of flesh had made the transferring of it a very
formidable undertaking. He was an elephant of a man; it needed but an
impassioned gambol or two on his part to capsize a boat three times
larger than anything the _Black Watch_ carried. Besides, Van Laar was
not the sort of man that one would care to sacrifice one’s life for. As
we pulled away I looked over my shoulder, and now the Dutchman had
cleared the rail and was wiping his face, with Tarbrick in the act of
approaching him. When he saw that I looked he shook his first and
roared. His words fell short; his tones alone came along like the low of
a cow. My men burst into a laugh, and a minute later we were alongside
the _Black Watch_.
The moment the boat was hoisted we trimmed sail and were presently
pushing through the quiet glide of the dark blue swell, and very soon
the magic of distance was dealing with the poor little craft in our
wake. The afternoon was advanced, the light in the heavens and upon the
water was soft and red and still. In the south clouds were terraced upon
the horizon, every towering layer of radiant vapor defined with an
edging of gilt. There was wind enough to keep the water sparkling
wherever the light smote it; our sails soared like breasts of yellow
silk breathing without noise to the courtesying of the craft.
A rich ocean afternoon it was, and the beauty of it entered the little
vessel which we were leaving astern of us even as a spirit might,
vitalizing her with colors and with a radiance not her own, converting
her into a gem-like detail for the embellishment of the wide, bare
breast of sea. Greaves and I stood looking at her; but the instant I
leveled the telescope the enchantment vanished, for then she showed as a
crazy old brig once more, a cask in tow of her, her sails ill-set, and
the bulky figure of Van Laar striding here and there, with many marks of
agitation in his motions.
“The captain mad and blind in the cabin,” said Greaves; “five men sick
in the forecastle and the others crushed in spirits, forecastle fare for
cabin fare, and bad at that; the water draining into the hold; and the
vessel fearfully to the southward of her destination. I do not envy Van
Laar.”
However, long before we ran the little vessel out of sight, they had got
her head pointed in a direction that was right for the British Channel,
if not the Clyde. The breeze had freshened, she was leaning over, and
the cask astern had been cut adrift.