A FIGHT.
We had swept the island out of sight before we left the dinner table.
When I came on deck the horizon had closed somewhat upon us. The ocean
was a weak blue, and ran with a frosty sparkle into a sort of film or
thickness that went all round the sea. The breeze had freshened, and it
whipped the waters into little billows, with yearning and snapping heads
of foam, and it was pouring its increasing volume into the lofty height
and wide expanse of canvas under which the brig was thrusting along in a
staggering, rushing way, the glass-smooth curve of brine at the bow
breaking abreast of the gangway with a twelve-knot flash of the foam
into the throbbing race of the long wake.
We kept her so throughout the afternoon until six o’clock, when the
evening began to darken eastward; we then took in the lower and
topgallant studding sails, but left her to drag the fore topmast
studding sails if she could not carry it, for this was wind to make the
most of; we could not, to our impatience, come up with the Horn too
soon; many parallels were there for our keel to cut before we should
find ourselves abreast of that headland; degrees of latitude lying like
hurdles for the brig to take along that mighty and majestic course of
ocean.
That same night of the day of our departure from the island, Greaves
came out of the cabin and walked the deck with me. He had been amusing
himself for an hour below with the company of the Señorita Aurora. From
time to time I had watched them through the skylight. He smoked a cigar;
a glass of grog stood at his elbow, some wine and ship’s biscuit before
the lady. He held a pencil, and from time to time wrote, looking up at
her; and she would bend over the paper, read, give him a dignified nod,
take the pencil, and herself write.
But it seemed to me that she forced herself to endure this tuition. She
held herself as much away from him as the obligation of writing and
extending her hand and receiving the paper permitted. This went on till
about nine o’clock. The lady then withdrew, and Greaves came on deck as
I have said.
“This is fine sailing,” said he.
“Ay, indeed. I would part with some of those dollars below for a month
of it.”
“I have been teaching the girl English, and have picked up some Spanish
words from her. She is an apt scholar; her mind is as swift as the light
in her eyes. It is clever of her to wish to learn English. We can’t be
always sending for that fellow Antonio. She seemed astonished when I
talked of three months, but she knows--she _must_ know--that the run
might occupy a vessel more than three months. What change would the
skipper of the craft she sailed out of Acapulco in be willing to give
out of _four_ months, ay, and perhaps five, in a passage to Cadiz?”
“She, perhaps, thought of herself as being without clothes when you
talked of three months, and so cried out.”
“Well, it is clever of her to wish to learn English. Here she is, and
here she’s likely to remain until we send her ashore in the Downs.”
“But why?”
“Why?”
“Is there no chance of something coming along,” said I, “in which we can
send her to a port this side America?”
“She knows there is a big treasure on board.”
“That’s sure.”
“She knows that it is Spanish money, and how got by us.”
“True.”
“Well, now, send her out of this brig with our secret in her head, and
we stand to be chased by the chap we put her aboard of.”
“Not if she be an English ship.”
“I’d trust no Englishman in this part of the world. Figure a craft as
heavily armed again as our little brig; figure _that_, and then count
our crew forward there. I’ll have no risks. I’ll speak nothing. We have
got what we came to fetch, and this is to be my last voyage. I am a rich
man now. There are thirty-six thousand pounds belonging to me below.
No, Fielding, the lady will have to go along with us. You shall teach
her English, she shall teach me Spanish. She shall pour out tea, act the
hostess, sing; the very spirit of melody swells her fine throat every
time she opens her lips. She shall make dresses for herself and
under-linen.”
“And the two Spaniards?”
“They must go along with us too. They are a worthless, skulking pair of
fellows, I fear; but we must keep ’em.”
“They get no dollars?” said I.
“Not so much as shall buy them soap. We have saved their lives; that’s
good pay for such service as they’ll render. What shall you do with your
money?”
“Well, I have often considered, captain,” I answered. “I believe I shall
buy a little house, put what remains out at interest, and go a-fishing
for the rest of my days. And you?”
“First of all,” he answered, “I shall knock off the sea. I shall then
strike deep inland and look for a little estate in the heart of a
midland shire. I do not know that I shall marry. Should I marry, it will
be with a lady of my own degree in life. I will play the gentleman only
so far as I am entitled by my condition to represent one. I will be no
sham. There is no yardarm high enough for the hanging of the men who,
having got or inherited money, set up as country gentlemen, still
splashed with the mud of the gutter out of which their fathers crawled,
shaking themselves--illiterate, vulgar, scorned by the footmen who stand
behind their chairs, belly-crawlers, title-lickers, toadies. Faugh! I
once made a rhyme on shams--four lines--the only rhymes I ever made in
my life:
“Pull up your blinds that all the world may see
The house you live in and the man you be.
The blinds are up, and now the sun hath shone:
The house is empty and the man is gone.”
“By which you mean to imply----” said I.
“By which I mean to imply,” he interrupted, “that if the lines don’t
tell their own story they must be deuced bad.”
He stopped to look at the compass. The night was dark, but the dusk had
cleared. The clouds raced swiftly over the stars, and the wind blew
strong, but with no increase of weight since we had taken in the
studding sails. The brig rushed along, leaving a meteor’s line of light
astern of her. The dim squares of her royals swayed on high with the
floating stroke of a pendulum. I admired the dark and pallid picture of
the little fabric speeding lonely through this vast field of night.
Greaves came from the binnacle and stood beside me.
“Fielding,” he exclaimed, with cordiality strong in his voice, “it
rejoices my heart when I reflect that I, whose life you saved, should,
by a very miracle of chance, be the one man chosen, as it were, to
substantially, and I may say handsomely, serve you.”
“I shall walk through my days blessing your name,” said I, grasping the
hand he extended. “And how have you repaid me? You have not only
preserved me from drowning, you make me easy for the rest of my time.”
“The accounts are squared to my taste,” said he. “I am very well
satisfied. To-morrow I shall want you to take stock of the cases in the
lazarette. You found them heavy?”
“All, sir.”
“And all are full, no doubt. But you shall make sure for me.”
“I shall want help,” said I. “Whom shall I choose among the crew?”
“It matters not,” he answered. “All hands know the money is there.”
“Yes; but it is an _idea_ to them now. When they come to see the sparkle
of the white dollars!”
“There is no good in distrusting them,” said he. “I am aware that your
fears run that way. When we were outward bound your fears ran in another
direction,” he added dryly. “Let me tell you this, whether we choose to
trust the men or not, they’re aboard; they man the ship; they are the
people who are to navigate her home. We _must_ trust them,” he repeated
with emphasis. “In fact,” he continued after a short pause, “I would set
an example of good faith by letting them understand how entirely I trust
them. Therefore, to-morrow, take Bol and two others of the men who were
left aboard me when you went to the _Casada_, and examine the cases in
their presence, you testing, they moving the boxes for you.”
I replied in the customary sea phrase; for this was a direct order, the
wisdom of which it was no duty of mine to challenge. Shortly afterward
he went below.
It blew so fresh that night and next day, however, that the sea ran too
high to enable me to get below among the cases. It was a spell of wild,
hard weather for that part of the world, though it never blew so fierce
as to oblige us to heave-to.
The gale held steady on the quarter and we stormed along, the white
seas rising in clouds as high as the foretop and blowing ahead like vast
bursts of steam from the hatchway.
Greaves pressed the brig, and she rushed through the surge in madness. I
never before saw a vessel spring through the seas as did the _Black
Watch_ at this time under a single-reefed foresail and double-reefed
topsails. She’d be in a smother forward, just a seething dazzle of yeast
’twixt the forecastle rails, everything hidden that way in a snowstorm,
so that you’d think the whole length of her was thundering into the
boiling whiteness about her bows; but in a breath she’d leap, black and
streaming, to the height of the lifting sea, with a toss of the head
that filled the wind with crystals and prisms of brine, while a
long-drawn whistling and hooting came out of the fabric of her slanting
masts, and the water blew forward in white smoke from the gushing
scuppers.
Then came a change; the dawn of the third morning painted a delicate
lilac along the eastern sky, and when the sun rose over the wide Pacific
the morning was one of cloudless splendor.
At eight o’clock Yan Bol came aft to take charge of the deck. I told him
that presently we would be going into the lazarette to take stock of the
cases of silver, and that the captain would keep a lookout while he was
below.
A dull light glittered in the eyes of the big Dutchman. He grinned and
said, “Vill not she be a long shob, Mr. Fielding?”
“Yes,” said I.
“How long shall she take a man to gount a tousand dollars? Und dere vhas
hoondreds und tousands of dollars to gount below.”
“Do you think I mean to count the dollars?”
“Yaw.”
I arched my eyebrows at him, and then gave him my back.
“Veil, I vhas sorry. I like gounting money. Dere vhas a shoy in der feel
of money if so be ash he vhas gold or silver--I do not love copper--dot
makes me happier, Mr. Fielding, dan any odder pleasure. Ox me vhy und I
tells you? Because vhen I gounts money she vhas mine own. No man gives
me his money to gount. She vhas mine own; but leedle I have, and vhen I
counts her it vhas after long years, so dot der pleasure vhas all der
same as a pipe und a pot to a man vhen he comes out of der lockoop.”
While I breakfasted I enjoyed some conversation in dumb show with the
lady Aurora--dumb show for the most part, I should say--for a number of
English words she now possessed, and I was astonished not more by her
memory than by the excellence of her pronunciation. Her knowledge of a
single word uttered by me seemed to light up the whole phrase to her
perception. Her gaze would continue passionately wistful and expectant
whenever she listened with a desire to understand, and whenever she
seized or thought she had seized the sense of what was said, a flush
visited her cheeks, her whole face brightened.
There was a degree of eagerness in this desire of hers to learn English
that was a little perplexing. It was an earnestness, call it an
enthusiasm if you will, that went beyond my idea of her need. It was
intelligible that she should wish to make herself understood. She would
now know that she was to be locked up in a ship with a number of
Englishmen for three or four months; what more reasonable than that she
should desire to make her wants intelligible without being forced upon
so disagreeable and ignorant an interpreter as Antonio, and without
seeking expression in grimaces and the lunatic language of the eyebrows,
shoulders, and hands? What more reasonable, I ask? But her earnestness,
her zeal, her satisfaction when she understood, caused me to wonder
somewhat when I thought of her in this way. She was on a desert island a
few days ago, with small prospect of deliverance from as frightful a
fate as could well befall a woman. For all she knew her mother was
drowned; she might be an orphan, and who was to tell what property
belonging to her and her mother had sunk in the Spaniard from which she
had escaped, supposing that vessel to have foundered? And yet spite of
all this her spirits were good, her beauty growing as the lingering
traces of her suffering died out. She took an interest in everything her
eyes rested upon, questioning me like a child, questioning Greaves, nay,
walking forward, as I have told you, to ask Antonio for the English
names of things, and all the while her troubles, so far as she was able
to express them, did not go beyond an anxiety as to clothes for herself
and an eagerness to pick up our tongue.
These thoughts ran in my head as I ate my breakfast, while she talked to
me by gesticulation, occasionally uttering a word or two in English, and
listening with shining eyes to the sentences I let fall in my own
speech. Greaves lay upon a locker. He listened, sometimes smiling, but
rarely spoke. He complained this morning of an aching in his side where
he had hurt himself, and said that he feared he had made a mistake in
walking yesterday; he was afraid he had overworked the bruised ribs, but
he looked well, and when he spoke there was a heartiness in his voice.
It was as likely as not that he had angered the bruise by too much
walking about the decks, and I advised him to lie up until the pain
went.
However, the brig was to be watched while I went into the lazarette with
Bol and the others, so I sent Jimmy on deck with a chair, and when I had
breakfasted Greaves got up, put his hand upon my shoulder, and together
we ascended the companion ladder.
Yan Bol was carpenter as well as bo’sun and sail-maker. I bade him fetch
the necessary tools for opening the cases and securing them again. With
us went Henry Call and another--I forget who that man was. We lighted a
couple of lanterns, and going into the cabin lifted the lazarette hatch
that was just abaft the companion steps. The lady Aurora came to the
square hole to look at us, and inquired by signs what we were going to
do. I shrugged Spanish fashion, and made a face at her, that she might
gather that what we were going to do was entirely beyond the art of my
shoulders and arms to communicate.
“Doan she shpeak no English, Mr. Fielding?” said Bol, as he handed down
his tools to Call, who was already in the lazarette.
“No,” said I.
“Veil, I, Yan Bol, teaches him herself in a month for von of her rings.”
“Over with ye, Bol. Catch hold of this lantern.”
He dropped through the hatch and I followed, and Miss Aurora stood at
the edge of the square of the hole, holding by the companion steps and
peering down.
There were one hundred and forty cases; we examined every one of them;
it was a long job. I felt mighty reluctant at first to let Bol prize
open the lids and gaze with the others at the dull, frosty glitter of
the long rolls of dollars; but a little reflection made me sensible of
the force of Greaves’ argument. If the crew were not to be trusted, what
was to be done? And was it not a mere piece of cheap quarter-deck
subtlety on my part to hold that the _idea_ of the dollars being aft was
not the same as _seeing_ them?
There was no need to watch very anxiously; the dollars were packed as
tightly as though the metal had been poured red-hot into the cases and
hardened in solid blocks. There was never a nail on Bol’s stump-ended
fingers that could have scratched a coin out.
“Vhas dere goldt here as veil ash silver?” he inquired.
“No.”
“Oxcuse me, Mr. Fielding, but how vhas you to know?”
“How was anybody to know what these cases contained at all? Shove ahead,
will ye, and ask fewer questions. Are we to be here all day?”
It was as hot as fire in this lazarette. Our blood was speedily in a
blaze and our clothes soaked. The three Jews who were summoned from the
province of Babylon to be hove into a burning furnace suffered not as we
did. Bol’s eyes took a gummy look and turned dull as bits of jelly fish;
yet the three fellows were perfectly happy in staring at the silver and
pulling the cases about. Every time a lid was lifted their heads came
together in the sheen of the lantern, and rude sounds of rejoicing broke
from them.
“How many sprees goes to each box?”
“There’s an Atlantic Ocean of drink in this here case alone.”
“Smite me, but if this gets blown the girls’ll be coming down to meet
the brig afore she’s reported.”
“She vhas a handsome coin. I likes to feel her in mine pocket. How much
vhas she vurth, Mr. Fielding?”
“All that you shall be able to buy with her. Next case, and bear a
hand.”
“How many tousand dollars vhas tdere in all?”
“Enough to stiffen you with sausage and to keep ye oozy with schnapps.”
We worked our way to the bottom case, and every case was chock-a-block,
as we say at sea--filled flush--and the dollars by the lantern light
resembled exquisitely wrought chain armor. I saw that every case was
securely nailed; the boxes were restowed. We then climbed out of the
lazarette, and Bol and the others went forward while I put on the hatch,
padlocked it, and withdrew the key.
I plunged my fire-red face in water, quickly shifted, and quitted the
cabin, tired, burning hot, but very well satisfied with the morning’s
work. Greaves was seated in a chair, and Miss Aurora walked the deck, in
the shadow of the little awning, pacing the planks abreast of him. Her
carriage, to use the old-fashioned word, had she been draped as the
beauties of her person demanded, would have been lofty yet flowing,
dignified yet easy and floating, graceful as the motions of a dancer who
swims from the dance into walking; but the barbaric cut of her gown
spoiled all. Never did I behold a woman’s dress so ridiculously shaped.
It was a grief to an English eye, for in my country the girls’ costumes
were just such as would have hit and sweetened by suggestion the form of
Miss Aurora. Well do I remember the English girls’ style of 1815; the
neckerchief with its peep of white breast, the girdle under the swelling
bosom, the fair up and down fall of drapery thence. Never do I recall
that costume, with its hat of chip or leghorn, without a fancy of the
smell of buttercups and daisies, the flavor of cream, the scent of a
milkmaid fresh from the udder.
I handed the key to Greaves. He put it in his pocket and gazed at me
inquiringly.
“It’s all right, sir, to the bottom dollar,” said I.
“Good!” he exclaimed.
“It is so much right,” said I, “that I am disposed to think there is
more money than the manifest represents.”
“There are five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in one hundred and
forty cases. I wish there may be more, but I suspect the entry was
correct. What did the men say?”
“Yan Bol was all a-rumble with questions. There will be much talk
forward.”
“There has been much talk aft,” he exclaimed, smiling. “Sailors are
human, and those fellows yonder are to pocket twelve hundred dollars
apiece besides their wages on this job. Let them talk. Let imagination
run away with them. Let the fiddle be jigging in their ears; let their
Polls be seated on their knees--in fancy. Keep their hearts willing, for
this bucket has to be whipped home.”
The lady Aurora looked and listened as she paced abreast of us. Her
eyes, full of light, often rested on me. Greaves ran his gaze slightly
over her figure, and, leaning back in his chair and looking away, that
she might not suspect he talked of her, said:
“Our dark and lonely friend is mighty full of curiosity. I can believe
that Eve was such another. When Eve walked round the apple tree and
looked up at the fruit, with her head a little on one side, she wore
just the sort of expression the dark and lonely party puts on when she
motions a question.”
“_Qué hora es_, señor?” said the lady.
Greaves made her understand, by pronouncing the word “one” in Spanish
and by gesticulating the remainder of his meaning, that it was drawing
on to two o’clock.
“She may be hungry,” said I.
“She shall be fed in a few minutes,” said Greaves.
The girl seated herself on the skylight and watched the motion of
Greaves’ lips, listening, at the same time, with a little frown of
attention to the pronunciation of the words he coolly delivered:
“I was observing,” said he, with an askant glance at her, “that the dark
and lonely party is mighty full of curiosity. She tried to pump me about
the dollars below; wanted to know what you were doing in the hold; asked
the value of the treasure.”
“How did you understand her?”
“She beckoned to Antonio; but when I found she had no more to say than
_that_, I sent him forward again with a sea blessing on his head. And
when I was taking sights she put out her hand for my quadrant. I let her
hold it. She clapped it to her eye--shutting the eye to which she put
it, of course--fell to fingering the thing, and I took it from her. I
wish she wasn’t so handsome. A little mustache, a pretty shadowing of
beard, the Valladolid complexion, and a few chocolate teeth would make
the difference I want, to enable me to look my meaning when she teases
me with questions. But who could be angry with the owner of those eyes?”
He gazed at her fully. She averted her face suddenly. I fancied I caught
a fleeting expression of aversion, or, at all events, of distrust. She
flashed her eyes upon me with a gaze as significant as though she
understood what Greaves had been talking about, rose from the skylight,
and motioned me to walk with her. Greaves left his chair and stepped
slowly to the companion way. At this moment Jimmy came along with the
cabin dinner. The lady, inclining her face to my ear, spoke low in
Spanish, pointed to the cabin skylight, shook her head, then pressed her
forefinger to her lip, all which, in plain English, meant: “I don’t like
him.” I could have answered that she owed her life to him as master of
the ship, and that his offhand manners were British, and meant nothing.
“Dinner,” said I.
“Dinner,” she repeated, smiling.
She repeated the word several times.
“Will you come?” said I.
These words she likewise repeated; then, giving me a little bow, she
extended her hand, that I might conduct her below.
The evening of this same day was soft and beautiful, rich with the
lights of heaven; the ocean so calm that some of the most brilliant of
the luminaries found reflection in the water--tremulous, wire-like lines
of silver; yet had the breeze body enough to give the brig way. It came
fanning and breathing cool as dew off the dark surface of the sea, and
the refreshment of it after the fiery heat of the day was as drink to
the parched throat.
I walked in the gangway, smoking a pipe. It was shortly after eight
o’clock. Yan Bol was aft with Greaves. The lady Aurora was in the cabin
writing with a pencil. Some seamen were in the bows of the brig; their
shadowy figures flitted to and fro, all very quietly. Voices proceeded
from the other side of the caboose; the speakers did not probably know
that I walked near. I could not choose but listen. One was Antonio, the
other Wirtz, and the third Thomas Teach.
“What I don’t understand’s this,” said the voice of Teach. “Th’ole man
[meaning Captain Greaves] falls in with that there ship locked up in the
island, and boards her. He finds the silver--why didn’t he take it,
instead of leaving it with a chance of the vessel going to pieces, or
some covey a-nabbing the dollars afore he could come back for them?”
“Dot may seem all right to you,” said Wirtz, “but see here, Tommy;
shuppose der captain had took der dollars into der ship he commanded
vhen he falls in mit der island; vhat do his crew say? Und vhen he
arrives vhat vhas he to do mit der dollars? Gif dem oop to der owners of
his ship? By Cott, he see dem dom’d first. If he keep der dollars for
himself, how vhas he going to landt dem on der sly mitout der crew
asking him for one-half, maybe, and making him like as he can hang
himself for der rest? Dot’s vhere she vhas. No, no,” rumbled the man in
his deep, Dutch voice, “der capt’n know his beesiness. Dis trip for der
dollars vhas vhat you English call shipshape und Pristol fashion.”
“Is the dollars to be run, I wonder, when we gets home?” said Teach.
“Do you mean shmuggled?”
“Yaw, smuggled’s the word, Yonny,” said Teach.
“Vell, if dey vhas not run dey vhas seized.”
“Who’s a-going to seize ’em?”
“Ox der captain.”
“I’d blow the blooming brains out of any man’s head as laid a finger on
my share,” said Teach.
“Yaw, und you gif me der pleasure of seeing you hanging oop by der neck.
Den I pulls off my hat, und I say how vhas she oop dere mit you? Vhas he
pretty vindy oop dere?”
“When I gets my share,” said Teach, after a pause, “I’m a-going in for a
buster. There’ll be no half-laughs and purser’s grins about the
gallivanting I’ve chalked out for myself. There’s Galen always a-telling
us what he’s going to do with his money; sometimes he’s a-going to buy a
share in a vessel; then, no, dumm’d if he is, he’ll buy a house and put
his young woman into it; then no, dumm’d if he’ll do that, he’ll clap
his money in a bank, and wait till the figures grow big enough to allow
of his living like a gent for the remainder of his days.”
“Vhen I gets my money dis vhas my shoke,” said the Dutchman. “My girl
shall teach me to eat. She shall puy me a silver fork. By Cott, I drink
mine beer out of silver. Every day I hov veal broth, und sausages, peas
und salad, stewed apple und ham, und pickled herrings mit smoked beef,
und butter und sheese, und I shplits myself mit almonds und raisins.”
“I like the taste of the Dutch!” cried Antonio, in a voice that sounded
thin and almost shrill after Wirtz’s. “When I get my money see what it
shall bring me; white cod and onions from Galicia, walnuts from Biscay,
oranges from Mercia, sausages from Estramadura”--here he loudly smacked
his lips--“sweet citrons and iced barley-water and water-melons. _Vaya!_
What have you to say now to your veal broth and salt herrings? And I
will have Malaga raisins, and my olives shall come from Seville, and my
grapes and figs from Valencia. _Vaya!_ I am a Spaniard, and this is how
a Spaniard chooses. All that is good may be had in Madrid, and all that
is good will I have when my share is paid me.”
There fell a short silence as of astonishment.
“Share!” cried Wirtz in a low, deep, trembling voice. “Share didt you
say? Shpeak again. I like to hear dot verdt vonce more.”
“Share! What share are ye talking about. Ye aint thinking of the dollars
below, I hope?” said Teach, in a tone of menace.
“I expect a share,” said the Spaniard.
“Oxpect--say dot again. I likes to hear you shpeak,” said Wirtz, with
an accent that made me figure him doubling his fist.
“Aren’t I a sailor on board this ship?” said Antonio.
“A _sailor_, d’ye call yourself?” cried Teach. “Well,” he snapped,
“suppose y’ are, what then?”
“I have a right to a share.”
“And do you tink you get a share?”
“I have a right to a share,” repeated the Spaniard in a sullen note.
“Call her a shoke or I vill fight mit you,” said Wirtz.
“I will not fight,” said the Spaniard in a dogged voice. “I have a right
to a share. The capitan will pay me and Jorge. We are sailors with you,
and are helping to navigate this brig to your country. The dollars are
Spanish; they are money of my own country. The capitan is a gentleman,
and will not wrong me and Jorge, and we will receive our share as a part
of the crew.”
This was followed by a Dutch oath, by a crash and a low cry.
“Hallo, there--hallo!” I called. “What are you men about there on
t’other side the caboose?”
I sprang across the deck, and, by such light as the stars made, beheld
Antonio in the act of getting on to his legs.
“Mind! He may have a knife!” shouted Teach. The Spaniard, uttering a
malediction, whipped a blade from a sheath that lay strapped to his hip,
and flung it upon the deck. The point of the weapon pierced the plank,
and the knife stood upright.
“I am no assassin! I do not draw knives upon men!” cried Antonio.
“Who knocked this man down?” I demanded.
“I--Vertz.
“You are a bully and a ruffian. This is a shipwrecked man, scarce
recovered from great sufferings. He is half your size, too.”
“He talked of his share, Heer Fielding, und my bloodt poiled. We safe
his life, he eats und drinks, und der toyfil has der impudence to talk
of his share!”
“Forward there! What is wrong?” cried the voice of Greaves. “Where is
Mr. Fielding?”
“Here, sir.”
“What is wrong, I am asking.”
“Come aft to the captain, the three of you,” said I; and I led the way.
All hands were on deck at this hour. The forecastle was roasting, and
the watch below lay about the forward part of the decks. The whole crew,
therefore, heard the noise, were drawn by it, and followed me as I went
aft, Teach loitering in my wake to tell those who brought up the rear
that “the blooming Spaniard was swearing he’d a right to a share of the
dollars, and that he was bragging as how he meant to spend his money in
Madrid on onions and figs, when he was brought up with a round turn by
Yonny Vertz’s fist.”
It is strange that unto the eye of memory the picture which the brig at
this hour made should stand the most clearly cut, the most sharply
defined of all my recollections of her. Why is this? Because, perhaps,
of the accentuation that night scene took from the shadowy heap of the
men assembled upon the quarter-deck, from the quarrel beside the
caboose, from the significance that must come into any sort of
difficulty aboard us from the treasure in the lazarette.
The sails soared dark and still in the weak night-wind; a brook-like
bubbling noise of water rose from under the bows; the vessel was steeped
in the dye of the night; but there was a faint shining in the air round
about the illuminated binnacle, and a dim sheen hovered over the cabin
skylight. The sea sloped vast and flat to the scintillant wall of the
sky. The voices of the men deepened upon the ear the silence out upon
the ocean. It was a night to set the mind running upon that saying and
realizing it: “And darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
“What’s wrong?” said Greaves.
The shapeless figure of Bol came trudging from the neighborhood of the
wheel to listen.
“There’s been some sort of discussion between Wirtz and Antonio,” said
I, “and Wirtz knocked the Spaniard down.”
“Captain,” exclaimed Wirtz, “all hands likes to know if der Spaniards
you safe shares in der dollars?”
“Who began the row?” said Greaves.
“Señor,” exclaimed Antonio, “I was speaking of the food that we eat in
my country----”
“Captain,” bawled Teach, “he was a-bragging of the cod and onions, the
nuts and barley-water he meant to treat hisself to out of his share, as
he calls it, when he gets to his home.”
“She made mine plood poil,” cried Wirtz; “und he laughs at me vhen I
speaks of vhat ve eats in mine own country.”
“Señor,” exclaimed Antonio, “have not Jorge and me a right to a share?”
“Of what?”
“Of the money in the cases--of my country’s money--that you take out of
the Spanish ship.”
“Bol shall slit your nose if you talk like that. You rascal! Is it not
enough that we have saved your life? And what d’ye mean by your
country’s money? Of what country are you?”
“I am of Spain, señor; born at Salamanca.”
“There is no money in your country,” shouted Greaves. “Ye are paupers
all, cowards all, sneaks and rogues to a man.” Yan Bol laughed deep.
“Speak again of the money below being the money of your country, and
we’ll hang ye.”
“Señor,” said Antonio, “am I and Jorge to receive no money for working
as sailors in this ship?”
“Not so much as will purchase you a rag to wind round your greasy
ankles.”
A half-smothered laugh broke from Wirtz and others.
“We ask, then, that you land us,” said the Spaniard, whose audacity in
continuing to address Greaves was scarcely less astonishing than the
captain’s extraordinary exhibition of temper and wilder display of
words.
“Mind that you are not landed at the bottom of the sea, with a
twenty-four pound shot to keep you there,” cried Greaves. “Wirtz, did
you knock that man down?”
“Yaw, captain,” responded Wirtz, in a voice that made one guess at the
grin upon his face.
“You are a big man, Wirtz, and Antonio is a little man. Wirtz, I wish
you may not be a coward at heart. Know you not,” cried Greaves,
elevating his voice, “that it is written, ‘Make not an hungry soul
sorrowful; neither provoke a man in his distress.’ The soul of Antonio
is hungry for dollars and you have made him sorrowful; he is in
distress, being shipwrecked and having lost all his clothes, and you
have provoked him. Your grog is stopped for a week, Wirtz.”
“By Cott, but dot vhas hardt upon a man,” said the Dutchman.
“Now get forward, all hands,” exclaimed Greaves, “but mark you this; any
man who raises his hand against another on board this brig goes into
irons and forfeits his share of dollars. This is to be a peaceful and a
smiling ship. We are going to get home sweetly and soberly; then comes
your enjoyment--the pleasures of beasts or men, as you choose. Let no
man say no to this.”
He walked aft; I thought he would stay to have a word with me. Instead
he immediately descended into the cabin. The men moved forward, talking
among themselves, some of them laughing.
Yan Bol came up to me and said:
“I tell you vhat, Mr. Fielding, der Captain Greaves vhas a very fine
shentleman.”
“Very.”
“How he talks--mine Cott, how he talks! I would gif half mine dollars to
talk like dot shentleman.”
“He is an educated man, and speaks well.”
“Yaw, vell indeedt. I like der sheck of Antonio in oxbecting a share.
But he oxbects no longer, ha?”
I turned from the Dutchman and looked through the skylight, and saw
Greaves sitting at table, leaning his head upon his hand. The lady
Aurora continued to write, but once or twice while I watched, she lifted
her eyes to look at the captain. I was weary and passed below to go to
my cabin. Greaves had left the table and was entering his own berth, as
I descended the companion steps. The materials for a glass of grog were
on a swing tray. While I mixed myself a tumbler the girl rose and handed
me the paper she had been writing upon. The sheets had been torn by
Greaves from an old log book, and they were filled by her with Spanish
names with their English meanings. I ran my eye over the writing, which
was a very neat, clean Spanish hand, and nodded and smiled, and returned
the pages to her, saying _Bueno_. Then emptying my glass I gave her a
bow, bade her good-night in Spanish, received her answer of “Good-night,
sir,” well expressed in English, and passed into my berth.