THE “REBECCA.”
Now, when Van Laar was gone all hands of us seemed to settle down very
comfortably to the rough, hard, simple discipline of the sea-life. The
more I saw of Greaves, the more I saw of the brig, the better I liked
both. Over and over again I congratulated myself upon my good fortune. I
seemed to trace it all to that gibbet on the sand hills. I know not why.
What more ghastly, what more hideously ominous, you might say, could the
mind of man imagine than a gibbet and a dead felon hanging from it in
irons, and a mother receiving the horrible burthen of the beam from the
fire-bright hand of the storm, and nursing the fearful object as though
it were once again the babe that she had suckled? What more hideously
ominous than such things could man ask of Heaven to initiate his career
with, to inaugurate a new departure with? But that gibbet it was which
kept me waiting when by walking I must have missed the press-gang and,
for all I can now tell, have safely got me aboard the _Royal
Brunswicker_.
Be this as it will. I liked Greaves; I liked his little ship; I liked my
position on board of her; and I could find no fault with the crew. The
people of my watch ran about without murmurs. Yan Bol seemed to have
the whole company well in hand. The spun-yarn winch was often a-going;
we were a very clean ship; the complicated machinery aloft was carefully
looked to; the long guns were kept bright. I had overhauled the
slop-chest and taken what I wanted, and there lay, in a big sea-box
which Greaves had somewhere fished out for me, as comfortable a stock of
clothes as ever I could wish to sail out of port with.
I did not imagine, however, that the crew would long content themselves
with what, while Greaves remained dumb, must be to them no more nor less
than an aimless sailing over the breast of the ocean. Sailors do not
love to be long at sea without making a voyage. Our crew might look at
the compass and note that the course was a straight one for cutting the
equator; but what imaginations were they to build up on the letters
S.S.W.? We were not a king’s ship. There was no obligation of
_passivity_. The sailors were merchant seamen, claiming all the old
traditional rights of their calling; of exercising those rights, at all
events, whenever convenient: the rights of grumbling, cursing, laying
aft in a body and expostulating, holding forward in a body and turning
deaf ears to the boatswain’s music. “Surely,” I would sometimes think,
while I paced the deck, eyeing the fellows of my watch at work, “those
men will not wait till we are south of the line to hear what the errand
of this brig is!”
It came to pass that, a few days after we had got rid of Van Laar, I
went on deck at midnight to take charge of the brig until four in the
morning. The noble wind of the northeast trade was full in our canvas--a
small, fresh, quartering gale--the sky lively with the sliding of stars
amid the steam-tinctured heap of the trade-cloud swarming away
southwest. Studding-sails were out and the brig hummed through it,
shouldering the seas off both bows into snowstorms. The burly figure of
Yan Bol stood to windward, abreast of the little skylight. He waited for
me to relieve him, and, while he waited, he sang to himself in a deep
voice, like the drumming of the wind as it flashed into the hollow of
the trysail and fled to leeward in a hollow roar under the boom.
“Is that you, Bol?”
“Yaw, it vhas her himself,” he answered.
“This will do,” said I, stepping up to him.
“Yaw, dis vhas a nice little draught,” he replied.
I made a few quarter-deck inquiries relating to the business of the
brig during his charge of the deck since eight o’clock, and was then
going aft to look at the binnacle, but stayed on finding that he
lingered.
“Do you know,” said he, “I vhas not very gladt to be second mate.”
“Why not?”
“Vell, I believe dot der men vouldt hov more respect for me if I vhas
one of demselves.”
“But you are bo’sun, anyway, and your rating, therefore, is higher than
that of the others.”
“Dot may be,” he replied, “but a bo’sun in der merchant service vhas no
better dan vhat you call in your language a common sailor. He blows a
whistle; dot, and a dollar or two more money, and dere you hov der
difference.”
“Who else could be second mate?” said I. “As bo’sun of this vessel it
would not please you to be ordered about by an able seaman.”
He was silent. It was too dark to see anything of the man save the
shapeless lump of shadow which he made against the stars over the sea.
“Mr. Fielding,” said he, “can you tell me vhere dis brig vhas boun’ to?”
“I know where she is bound to,” I answered.
“Ho, _you_ know, sir!” he exclaimed, with a tone of surprise trembling
through his deep voice; “Ve all tink dot she vhas der captain’s secret.”
“If you all did think that,” said I, “why do you ask me where the brig
is bound to.”
“It vhas about time dot ve knew vhere ve vhas boun’ to,” said Bol. “Dis
vhas a larsh verld. Dere vhas many places in him. Some of dose places I
have visited and vish never to see again. Derefore I likes to know vhere
ve vhas boun’ to.”
“It is for the captain, not for me, to tell you that,” said I.
“Vhen shall he speak?” said Bol.
“In good time, I warrant you.”
“I vhas villing to agree dot vhere we sailed to should be der captain’s
secret for a leedle time; but now ve hov been somevhiles at sea, und
still she vhas a secret, und I belief dot der men did not suppose dot
she vouldt be a secret so long. Dere vhas no cargo. Nothing vhas
consigned. Derefore, if ve vhas boun’ anywhere it vhas to a port to call
for orders. Und after----”
“The captain will not keep the crew in ignorance much longer,” said I.
“But you can tell us, Mr. Fielding, vhere ve vhas boun’ to?”
“I know where we are bound to.”
“Dot vhas strange! You come on board as a shipwreckt man, vhich vhas
quite right; und you take Heer Van Laar’s place, vhich vhas also quite
right; and of all der crew, excepting der captain, you alone know vhere
der brig vhas boun’ to! Mr. Fielding, oxcuse me, I mean no offense, but
I say again dot vhas dom’d strange.”
There was jealousy here which I witnessed, understood, and, to a degree,
sympathized with. Here was I, a stranger to the brig--a stranger, I
mean, in the sense of not having formed one of her company when she
sailed from Amsterdam; here was I, not only installed in the room of Van
Laar, and, for all I knew, regarded by the crew as the cause of that
man’s expulsion from the ship, but in possession of knowledge withheld
from all hands. This might excite a feeling against me among the men,
which would be unfortunate. The voyage had opened with so much promise
that I had resolved to spare no effort to make a jolly jaunt of it to
the uttermost end of the traverse, whether that end was to be called the
Downs, or Amsterdam. Preserving my temper, and speaking in the kindliest
voice I could command, I said to the big figure alongside of me:
“Yan Bol, I do not wonder you are surprised that I should know what is
hidden from you. You are an officer of this ship as well as I.”
“Nine, nine!” he exclaimed in a voice as deep as a trombone.
“But why am I intrusted,” I continued, “with the secret of this voyage a
little while before it is communicated to the crew? I will tell you.
Captain Greaves wanted a mate in the room of Van Laar. It was not to be
supposed that I would accept the offer of the post of mate unless I knew
where I was bound to. Therefore, to secure my services, Captain Greaves
explained the nature of this expedition. With the others of you it was
different. You agreed to sail in this brig, and you were willing, when
you agreed to sail, to be kept in ignorance of the brig’s destination.
Had I been at Amsterdam when a crew was wanted for the _Black Watch_,
and had I been invited to join her as able seaman, boatswain, chief
mate, what you will, I should have answered: ‘Tell me first where you
are bound to, for I will not join your ship until I know where she is
going and what her business is?’”
“Vell, dot vhas right,” he exclaimed, half smothering a huge yawn. “I
hov noting to say against dot. But you hov der ear of your captain. You
vhas his countryman: you vhas old friendts, I hov heard. You vill make
us men tankful to you if you vill ask him to let us know vhere ve vhas
boun’ as conveniently soon as may pe.”
“I will speak to him as you wish,” said I.
He bade me good-night very civilly, and his great shape rolled forward
and vanished in the blackness that lay upon the fore part of the brig.
I paced the deck, musing over this conversation. It seemed to me to
justify Greaves’ resolution to withhold all knowledge of the ship’s
errand from the men until their characters lay somewhat plain to his
gaze; but on the other hand, I conceived that it would be a mistake to
irritate them by keeping silence too long. They had a right to know
where they were going. Then the provocation of silence might lead to
murmurs and difficulties, and what would _that_ mean.
I was again on deck at eight o’clock in the morning. One of the most
comfortless conditions of the sea-life is this ceaseless turning in and
turning out. It is called watch and watch. The ladies will want to know
what watch and watch means. Ladies, watch and watch means this: Snob is
chief mate. He takes charge of the ship from midnight until four o’clock
in the morning. Nob, who is the second mate, is then roused up, comes on
deck, and looks after the ship until eight o’clock in the morning. At
this hour Snob’s turn has come round. He arrives, and takes over the
ship until noon. Another four hours brings the time to four o’clock,
when the ordinary watch is split in halves, and each half, called a
dog-watch, lasts two hours. This provides change and change about, so
that Snob, who last night had charge from twelve to four, will to-night
be in bed during those hours, weather permitting.
When I stepped on deck at eight o’clock I found a brilliant morning all
about, but a softer sea, a lighter wind than I had left, a languider
courtesying of the brig, even a dull flap at times forward when the
cloths of the heavy forecourse hollowed into the stoop of the bows as a
child’s cheek dimples when it sucks in its breath. The trade-wind was
not taking off. Not at all. The heavens were gay with the flight of the
trade-cloud, as gay as ever the sky could be made by a dance of sea-fowl
on the wing; and while that vapor flew, one knew that the wind was
constant. Only we had happened just now to have washed with foam rising
in thunder to each cathead into a pause or interval of the inspiring
commercial gale of the North Atlantic; the strong, glad rush of air
which had hoarily veiled every deep blue hollow with white brine, torn
flashing from each curling head, had sunk for a little into a tropic
fanning, and the swell of the sea was small and each surge no more than
a giant ripple, with scarce weight enough in its run to ridge into foam.
But, bless me, had a week of stark calm descended upon our heads we
should still have done uncommonly well. Our average progress, since the
day on which I had recovered consciousness on board the _Black Watch_,
had come very near to steam as steam is in these days in which I am
writing, though to what velocities the boiler may hereafter attain I am
not here to predict.
Greaves stood abreast of the wheel. He was looking through a telescope
at some object that lay about three points on the weather bow. He
continued to gaze with a degree of steadfastness that rendered him
insensible of my presence. I looked and seemed to see some small vessel
upon the edge of the sea; but I could not be sure. She was above a
league distant, and the morning light was confusing that way with the
blending of the shadowy lift of the swell, the violet shadows of the
clouds, and the hazy splendor of the early morning distances. My
caressing and speaking to Galloon, who lay near his master, caused
Greaves to bring his eye away from the glass.
“Good-morning, Fielding. The breeze has fallen slack. I am trying to
make out the meaning of that little schooner down there;” and he pointed
over the bow with his telescope. “Look for yourself.”
I leveled the glass, and beheld a schooner of about a hundred tons,
rolling broadside to the sea, abandoned, or, if not abandoned, then
helpless. Her jib boom was gone; so, too, was her fore topmast;
otherwise she seemed sound enough, saving that for canvas she had
nothing set but her gaff foresail, though, as I seemed to find, when I
strained my gaze through the glass, her mainsail was not furled, but lay
heaped upon the boom, as though the halliards had been let go and
nothing more done.
“She’ll be worse off than the craft that Van Laar’s gone home in,” said
I, returning the telescope to Greaves.
“Do you believe in dreams?” said he.
“No,” I answered.
“Do not be in too great a hurry with your ‘noes,’” he exclaimed. “I like
a man to reflect when he is asked a question in metaphysics.”
“I know nothing about metaphysics,” said I, “and I do not believe in
dreams.”
“I believe in the unseen,” said he, putting down the glass, and folding
his arms and leaning back against the rail, as though settling himself
down for a talk or an argument. “The materialist tells you not to put
your faith in anything you can’t see, or handle, or smell, that you
can’t bring some organ or function of sense to bear upon, in short.
Throw yourself down upon your back, and look straight up into the sky.
What do you see? Hey? But do you see it? Yes. Do you understand it? No.
It is visible, and yet it is the unseen; for at what does a man look
when he gazes straight up into the sky?”
“There are few things worth going mad for,” said I, “and two things I am
resolved shall never send me to Bedlam.”
“What are they?”
“One of them’s that,” said I, pointing straight up.
“What do you make of yonder schooner,” said he.
I described such features as I had observed.
“She has a black hull, and a thin line of painted ports,” said he.
“She has.”
“She has lost her fore topmast and jib boom.”
“That’s so.”
“It is very extraordinary!” he exclaimed. “I dreamt last night, or in
one of this morning watches, that I sighted that schooner. I saw her in
my dream as I have been seeing her in that glass there. She was wrecked
forward, she lay in the trough, she showed no canvas but her gaff
foresail. There it all is!” he said, pointing; “and yet how quick you
are with your ‘No’ when I asked if you believed in dreams!” He smiled
and continued, “But my dream carried me further than I intend to go in
these waking hours; for, in my dream, I launched a boat, where from I
can’t tell ye, and went aboard that schooner. I looked about me, her
decks were lifeless. I stepped below into her little cabin, and what
d’ye think I saw? The figure of Death seated in an armchair at the table
with a pack of cards in one skeleton hand. He pointed to a chair and
began to deal. I awoke, and wasn’t sorry to wake. There lies the
schooner. How very extraordinary! Is old Death below, waiting for a
partner? You shall find out, Fielding. I’ll lay you aboard. By thunder,
rather than go myself I would forfeit all the money I hope to take up at
the end of this run.”
Many lies are told of us sailors by landsmen, but when they call us a
superstitious clan they speak the truth. Superstitious, indeed, are
sailors. I am talking of the Jacks of my time; I understand that the
mariner is more enlightened in these days. I looked at the little
schooner anxiously. I felt no reluctance to board her; but, though I had
told Greaves that I did not believe in dreams, I discovered,
nevertheless, that this dream had communicated a particular significance
to the little craft. I had meant to talk to him about my chat with Yan
Bol at midnight, and the subject went out of my head while I looked at
the schooner and thought of Greaves’ dream.
“I will board her,” said I, “and enter her cabin.”
“Oh, yes,” said he, “I shall want you to do that. My dream was so vivid
that I shall ask you to take notice of the fittings of that cabin for
the sake of corroboration, and let me be first with you----”
He shut his eyes as one seeking strongly to realize his own
imaginations, and said: “It is a square cabin with a square table
directly under an oblong skylight. There is a chair at the head of the
table. In that chair sat the skeleton, not answering to Milton’s
magnificent fancy:
“What seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
No, the thing was uncrowned. It was a skeleton, but it lived, and made
as though it would deal the cards it held. Opposite is another chair; on
either hand are lockers. There are sleeping berths at the foot of the
companion ladder, and that’s all that I can remember,” said he, opening
his eyes.
Jimmy announced breakfast. Yan Bol came aft to take charge while I went
below. The burly Dutchman looked at me meaningly, and then I recollected
my talk with him; but I resolved to say nothing to the captain this side
my excursion to the schooner.
Before we sat down Jimmy received one of his lessons. There was a ham
upon the table, and he called it a leg of mutton. I had long ago
discovered that the boy was honestly wanting in the power to distinguish
between articles of food. Sometimes I supposed he blundered on purpose
to divert his master, who appeared to enjoy the concert that was part of
the lesson, but I was now convinced that though he had the names of
many varieties of meats, and even dishes, at his tongue’s end, he was
utterly unable to correctly apply them. His confidence in his own
indications was the extraordinary part of his misapplications. He spoke,
for instance, of the ham as a leg of mutton as though quite sure; then
to the first syllable of correction that fell from Greaves, and to a
faint, uneasy groan which the dog always gave when Greaves spoke on
these occasions--as though the noble beast knew that the boy had
blundered and that the duet was inevitable--Jimmy stiffened himself into
a soldier-like posture, nose in the air, hands up and down like a pump
handle, and the dog looking at him ready to howl. The lesson ended, we
sat down and fell to.
“Your teaching does not seem to make the lad see the difference between
meats,” said I.
“I have hopes of him,” he answered, “and Galloon’s face is good on these
occasions.”
He then talked of the schooner, of his dream, and his discourse ran in
such a strain that I discovered that secretly he was not only of a
serious and religious cast of mind, but superstitious beyond any man I
had ever sailed with. Thought has the speed of the lightning stroke, and
I remember as I sat listening to him, saying very little myself--for I
had but the shallowest understanding of the subject he had got upon; I
say that I remember thinking: Suppose this voyage should be the
consequence of a dream? Suppose this Pacific quest for hard Spanish
milled dollars should be an effect of superstitious fancy? Suppose the
whole scheme should be as unsubstantial in fact as the actors in the
revels in the ‘Tempest’? But the image of Mynheer Tulp swept as an
inspiration of support into my mind. I had entertained myself by
figuring that man. In thinking over this voyage I had depicted its
promoter, and my fancy gave me the likeness of a little withered
Dutchman in a velvet cap, with a nose of Hebraic proportions, a keen
black eye, a wary, sarcastic smile, and a mind whose horizon was the
circumference of a guilder. I seemed to see the little creature looking
over Greaves’ shoulder at me as I mused upon my companion’s somewhat
foggy talk, and I said unto myself, “Tulp believing, all’s well.”
When we went on deck the schooner was within musket shot. She had
seemingly been in collision with another vessel, though her hull looked
perfectly sound; nor did she sit upon the sea, nor rise with the slope
of the swell, as if she had more water in her than was good for
buoyancy. Nothing alive was visible aboard.
I know not a more forlorn object, the wide world over, than an abandoned
vessel encountered deep in the heart of an ocean solitude. She sucks in
the desolation of the sea and grows gray, lean, and haggard with the
melancholy that sometimes raves and sometimes sleeps, but that forever
dwells upon the bosom of the deep. There is no fancy in this. Many ways
are there in which loneliness may be personified or illustrated: the
widow weeping upon the tomb of her only child, a blind man in a crowd, a
prostrate figure on some wide spread of midnight moor, over whose vague
and distant edge a red eye of moon is glancing under a lid of black
cloud. In many ways may loneliness be represented, but there is no
expression of it that equals, to my mind, the abandoned ship. Is it
because the movement of the sea communicates a fancy of life to the
vessel? She looks to be sentient as she sways, to be sensible that she
is the only object for leagues upon the prodigious liquid waste over
which the boundless heavens are spread. Some unfurled canvas flaps; the
wheel revolves, or the tiller shears through the air to the blows of the
seas upon the rudder: there may be the ends of gear snaking overboard;
they move, they writhe like serpents; they seem to _pour_ as though they
were the life blood of the vessel draining from her heart. And terrible
is the silence of the decks. It is not the silence of the empty house
that was yesterday full and clamorous with merry voices. It is such a
silence as you meet with nowhere else, deepened to the meditative mind
by sounds which would vex and break in upon and destroy all other
silence. Yes, to my mind the abandoned ship at sea is the most perfect
expression of human and inanimate loneliness.
This I thought as I gazed at that little schooner. Greaves watched her
with a look of uneasiness. He came to my side and said, in a low voice:
“Take a boat, will ye, Fielding, and explore that craft? She’s been
abandoned for weeks; I am sure of that. You’ll find nothing alive, and
if it wasn’t for that dream of mine last night I’d pass on. But I _must_
find out whether the cabin furniture is as I beheld it in my sleep.”
A boat was lowered; three men jumped in. I followed, and gained the side
of the schooner. We pulled under her stern to see her name, and read in
big white letters on the slope of her counter the word _Rebecca_. I
fastened a superstitious eye upon the two little starboard portholes,
which, as I might guess, illuminated her cabin. What was inside?
“Two of you,” said I to the men, “come aboard with me. You, Travers,
remain in charge of the boat.”
The men who scrambled over the side were Friend and Meehan. We stood
gazing and listening. The foresail occasionally flapped as the little
vessel heaved to the swell, but the water washed along the bends
noiseless as quicksilver. Saving the wreckage forward, I could see
nothing wrong with the schooner. There were signs of confusion, as
though she had been abandoned in a hurry: the sails had come down with a
run, and lay unfurled; the decks were littered with ropes’ ends. But all
deck fixtures were in their place; nay, there was even a small boat
chocked under the starboard gangway forward, but the bigger boat, which
such a craft as this would carry, was missing.
My eye went to the skylight, and I started. It was oblong. “What more of
the dream remains to be verified?” thought I. The skylight was closed,
the frames secured within, the glass filthy. I peered and peered to no
purpose. On this I stepped to the companion, while the two seamen moved
forward to look down the hatches in obedience to my orders; but I paused
when I was in the companion way. I seemed to smell a damp odor as of a
vault. “Good God!” thought I, “if there _should_ be anything horrible at
the head of the table, with a pack of---- Chut! ye fool!” I said to
myself, “say a prayer and shove on, and be hanged to you!” and down I
went.
Well, there was no skeleton; there was nothing horrible to be seen. If
the grim Feature had ever occupied the head of that table, he had found
a companion; he had played his trump card: he had won of a surety, and
he and his opponent were gone. But had I veritably beheld a living
skeleton seated at the table and motioning as though it would deal, I
could not have been more scared--no; let me say I could not have been
more impressed than I was--by the sight of the furniture. of the cabin.
It was precisely as Greaves had described it. It was the plainest sea
interior in the world--nothing whatever worth looking at, nothing in it
to detain the attention for an instant; yet it was all exactly as
Greaves described it. I was revisited by the misgiving of an earlier
hour. “The man is an extraordinary dreamer,” I said to myself. “He may
be a little mad. A few people dream as this man has dreamt, and those
few, I suspect, will be found somewhat mad at root. Has he dreamt of the
ship in the island cave? Did he, that he might justify to _himself_ his
faith in his extraordinary vision by sailing on this quest--did he
_forge_ that manifest which, backed by his eloquent advocacy, no doubt,
induced old Bartholomew Tulp to put his hand in his pocket?”
I stood thus thinking when I heard my name called.
“Hallo!” I exclaimed.
“There’s somebody alive forrad!” cried one of the men.
I ran on deck.
“What is it?”
“This way, sir,” shouted Meehan.
I followed the fellow to the forecastle--that is to say, to the hatch by
which the forecastle was entered and quitted.
“There’s somebody knocking,” cried Friend.
“Thump back and sing out,” I cried.
The man did so, and we heard a faint voice, feeble as a sweep’s
call-down from the height of a tall chimney.
“Don’t you see what has happened?” cried I. “Why, look! This vessel has
been in collision--struck some vessel on end. Her bowsprit has been run
in by the blow, and _the heel of it has closed the slide of the hatch
over the people who are below here_!”
I thumped and sang out. A voice dimly responded. I thumped again, and
roared at the top of my lungs:
“We’ll have you out of this, but you must wait a bit. Do you hear me?”
and there was a note in the faint, inarticulate response that made me
know I was heard.
I looked about, but my eye sought in vain for such machinery of tackles
as I required to free the men below. I did not choose to waste time by
hunting, and told Meehan to jump into the boat and pull, with Travers,
over to the brig. By this time the two vessels had so closed to each
other as to be within easy speaking distance. I hailed the _Black
Watch_, and Greaves stood up and made answer.
“There are two men locked up in this schooner’s fok’sle, and the heel of
the bowsprit----” and I explained how it happened that the hatch was
closed and immovably secured. He flourished his arm. I then requested
him to send me the necessary gear for clearing the hatch by running out
the bowsprit; I likewise asked him for a couple more men. Again he
flourished his arm. By this time the boat was alongside the brig.
“What have you found aft in the cabin?” shouted Greaves.
“Nothing but ordinary furniture,” I answered.
“I see,” he cried, “that the skylight is oblong. Is the table square?”
“It is, sir.”
“A chair at the head and foot?”
“Ay, sir, and lockers on either hand.”
His figure hardened into a posture of astonishment. He stood mute. I
could readily imagine an expression of superstitious dismay on his face;
or rather, let me say, that I _hoped_ this, for methought it would be
ominous for our faith in those distant South Pacific dollars if he
should accept the startling realization of this dream with the
tranquillity of a man who dreams much, and who believes in his dreams,
and whose actions are governed by them.
The boat returned with the additional assistance I required, and with
the necessary gear for freeing the forecastle hatch. The business was
somewhat tedious. It was a case of what sailors know as _jam_. It
involved luff upon luff, much sweating and swearing, much hard straining
and hoarse chorusing at the little forecastle capstan. At last we
started the bowsprit, the heel ran clear of the hatch, and two of the
men, grasping the hatch cover, swept it through its grooves.
The moment the hatch was open a figure rose up out of the darkness
below; another followed at his heels. I looked for more, but there were
but two, and those two stood blinking and rubbing their eyes, and
turning their heads about as though their motions were produced by
clockwork. One of them was the strangest looking man I had ever seen.
Did you ever read the story of Peter Serrano? If so, then figure Serrano
with his beard cropped, his hairy body clothed in a sleeved waistcoat
and a pair of short pilot breeches, the hair of his head still long, and
rings in his ears, the whole man still preserving a good deal of that
oyster-like expression of face and sandy grittiness of complexion which
Peter got from a long residence upon a shoal.
This man might have been Peter Serrano after he had been trimmed,
washed, and cared for ashore. His eyes were small and fiery, the edges
of the lids a raw red. He was about five feet tall, with the smallest
feet that ever capered at the extremities of a sailor’s trousers. His
companion was of the ordinary type of merchant seamen, red-haired, of a
heavy cast of countenance; the complexion of this man was of the hue of
sailors’ duff--which you must go to sea to understand, for there is no
word in the English language to express the color of it. They had risen
through the hatch with activity; as they stood they seemed fairly strong
on their pins. But the light confounded them, and they continued to rub
and to weep and to mechanically rotate their heads for some few minutes
after I had begun to talk to them.
“Well, my lads,” said I, “this is a stroke of fortune for you. Talk of
rats in a hole! How came ye into this mess? But, first, are ye English?”
“English both,” said the little man.
“How come ye to be locked up after this fashion?”
The little chap looked round at us with streaming eyes and said, in just
the sort of harsh, salt, gritty voice that my imagination had fitted him
with before he opened his lips--a voice that was extraordinary with its
suggestion of sand, the seething of surf, and the spasmodic shriek of
the gull: “Tell us the time, will yer?”
I looked at my watch and gave him the hour. He lugged out a great silver
turnip from his breeches’ band; the dial plate of that watch was about
the size of a shilling, and the back of it came nearly to the
circumference of a saucer.
“What does he say?” he exclaimed, holding up the watch. “This here blaze
is like striking of a man blind.”
“The time by your watch,” said I, looking at it, “is seven o’clock.”
“Is he right?” asked the little man eagerly.
“Not by nearly four hours,” said I.
“If he aint furder out it’s all one,” exclaimed the other sailor.
“Me and my mate,” said the little man, “has had a good many arguments
about the time while we’ve been locked up below, but I think my tally’ll
come out right.”
“How long have you been locked up below according to your tally?” said
I.
“This here’s a Wednesday, aint it?” he inquired, once again straining
the moisture out of his eyes with his knuckles, and blinking at me.
“No,” said I; “it’s Thursday.”
“Nearer than you, Bobby, anyway!” he cried. “Your tally brought it to
Saturday.”
“How long have you been locked up, men?”
“Why,” he exclaimed, “if this here’s a Thursday”--his voice broke like
that of a youth entering manhood, as he continued--“we’ve been locked up
a fortnight when it shall ha’ gone nine o’clock.”
A murmur of pity and amazement escaped my men.
“And it happened like this,” continued the little fellow, beginning to
walk swiftly in a small circle: “Me and Bobby was in the same watch. We
had come below and turned in. We was waked by a crash, and I heerd the
hatch cover closed. There went eight of us to a crew, but when I sings
out only Bobby answers. The others who was below may have heard the
capt’n or mate singing out on deck afore the collision. They was gone.
Bobby and me tries to open the hatch. No fear! Eh, Bobby?” exclaimed the
little fellow, who continued to walk very rapidly in a circle. “And how
did it happen that that there hatch was closed? Why, I don’t know _now_.
How did it happen?” he yelled.
I explained. The little fellow looked at the bowsprit heel, at the
hatch, and then his mate, and exclaimed:
“Wrong again, Bobby! Bobby was for having it that the hatch had been
closed ’spressly to drown us by one of the sailors as him and me hated,
as him and me had fought with and licked times out o’ counting.”
I was about to ask the fellows how they had managed to breathe in their
black hole of a forecastle during their fortnight’s imprisonment, when I
caught sight of a stove funnel piercing the forecastle deck and rising a
few feet above it. That funnel was all the answer my question needed. I
inquired how they managed to obtain food and the little sore-eyed man
answered that they had lifted the hatch of the forepeak and found oil
for their lamps and water to drink, some barrels of bread and flour, and
a piece or two of beef; for, luckily for them, the provisions in this
schooner were stowed forward. There was coal in the forepeak. They
lighted the forecastle stove and so dressed their victuals; but they
were always forced to be in a hurry with their cooking, for the fire
carried the fresh air up with it; and when they had raked the coals out
they would sit with their heads close in to the stove to breathe the air
as it gushed in again through the flue.
“Did you never try to break out?” said one of my men.
“Time arter time, mate. There was sights o’ trying, and you see what
it’s comes to,” exclaimed the little fiery-eyed man, starting to walk in
a circle again.
At this moment I was hailed by Greaves:
“How many men have you released?”
“Two, sir; there are no more.”
“Then bring them aboard, Mr. Fielding. I wish to proceed.”
“Get your clothes,” said I to the little man, “and come along.”
He stopped in his circling walk and looked at the fellow he called
Bobby; then, as if influenced by the same thought, they both cast their
eyes over the schooner, first staring up at the broken topmast, then at
the bowsprit, then running their gaze over the decks.
“Have you sounded the well?” cried the little man to me.
“No, I have not,” I answered.
He flew to the pumps; his feet twinkled as he fled. I never witnessed
such activity; it seemed impossible in a man who had been suffering from
a fortnight of black hole. He pounced upon the sounding-rod, dropped the
bar down the well, whipped it up, looked at it, uttered a gull-like cry,
flung the iron down, and was with us in a jiffey.
“Bobby,” he exclaimed, “nut dust aint in it with her.”
“Don’t I know her for a corker?” responded Bobby. “Froth and pop when it
blows, and a dead marine at heart.”
“Bobby, what d’ye think?” said the raw-eyed little man, questioning his
mate as though the suggestion had been made.
The man looked round the sea, looked up aloft, and answered:
“Agreeable.”
“We’ll carry the schooner home, sir,” said the little fellow, addressing
me.
“You two?”
“Say us four, sir. There’s a two-man power for each hand a-coming out of
such a salvage job as this.”
I observed some of my men gaze about them thirstily and enviously and a
little gloomily.
“Are you resolved?” said I, looking at the fellow, doubting my right to
suffer them to embark on such an adventure after their long, weakening
spell of imprisonment.
“It’s two blocks, aint it, Bobby?” said the little man.
“Ay,” answered Bobby, “nothing wanting but this: First, that this kind
gentleman will help us to secure the bowsprit afore he takes away his
men; and, next, that he gives the course to steer for the Henglish
Channel.”
I was again hailed impatiently by Greaves, on which I got upon the rail
and told him that the two men wished to carry their schooner home.
Should I permit them to do it, considering----
“Certainly,” he shouted; “they’ll pick up help as they go along.”
I then called out that I would stay a little while longer, that I might
secure the bowsprit and set them a course; and I then bade the little
man with the fiery eyes go below and rummage the cabin that had been
occupied by his captain for such charts as might be there. He was off
like a hare, and returned in a few minutes with a small bag of charts,
one of which represented the North Atlantic Ocean; and, while my people
were busy with the bowsprit, I, with a pencil, marked upon the chart the
track and courses for the red-eyed man and his mate to pursue. We then
made sail on the schooner, shook hands with the two fellows, and entered
the boat.
As I was about to drop over the side I overheard one of my men, in a
grumbling voice, say:
“Is this here traverse of ourn going to consist of rummaging jobs, I
wonder. Nothen but boarding so far, and what for?”
“Vere vhas ve boun’?” said another. “By Cott! boot I like to know by dis
time vere ve vhas goin’.”