THE WHALER.
All this while the crew went on quietly with the work of the ship,
giving me no trouble nor occasioning me further anxiety than such as
arose from my fear of how it might prove with us should the captain die.
This will I say of Bol: a better boatswain never trod the decks of a
vessel. I carried by nature a critical eye, and while Greaves lay ill my
vigilance was redoubled; but not once had I cause to find fault with Yan
Bol’s part in the duties of the brig.
We wanted, indeed, the freshening of the paint pot, but in all other
respects we were as smart a little ship, as we blew toward the Horn, as
though we had quitted the Thames but a week before. Our brass guns
sparkled, our decks were yacht-like with holy-stoning, our rigging might
have been newly set up by riggers of the king. Every detail of the
furniture aloft was carefully seen to, from the eyes of the royal
rigging to the lanyards of the channel dead-eyes.
The men feared Bol; his vast bulk of beef and the granite lumps which
swelled in muscle to the movement of his arms made him the match for any
two of them. The delivery of his lungs was the cannon’s roar. I have
seen a stout fellow stagger as though to a blow--sway in the recoil of a
man who is hit hard, on Yan Bol thrusting his huge mouth into the
fellow’s face and exploding in passion an order betwixt his eyes. But
though the crew feared him they also liked him; he acted as second mate,
indeed, but throughout with reluctance; was their shipmate and
forecastle associate first of all, the man who ate out of their kids and
drank out of their scuttle butt, who slung his hammock in their bedroom,
showed them what to do and often how to do it, occasionally went aloft
with them, yarned and smoked with them. So much for Yan Bol.
Greaves had a just and considerable admiration for him, the fullest
confidence in him as a sailor, and counted him the best boatswain he had
ever heard of; and I agreed with him. Going, however, rather farther,
for I had distrusted the man from the beginning, and my distrust of him
was now deeper than ever it had been, and I would have given half my
share of the money in the lazarette had we been blown away from the
island when he was ashore and forced to proceed without him.
The two Spaniards were bad sailors, lazy and reckless. Bol could do
nothing with them. They skulked when there was business to be done
aloft, were not to be trusted at the wheel, and it came at last to our
putting them to help the cook and do the dirty work of the ship when
they were not at sail-making--for, to be sure, they were smart hands
with their palms and needles. There were no more fights, no more
assertions by Antonio and his mate Jorge of their claims to a share. In
talking to me one day about them Bol said it was the wish of the crew to
turn them out of the brig at the first chance.
“The captain won’t hear of it,” said I.
The Dutchman asked why.
“Because,” said I, “the Spaniards know that there is treasure on board.
They also know it is Spanish treasure and how got by us. Suppose you
tranship them; they arrive at a port and state what they know. The news
that we have salved the treasure reaches the ears of the owner of it,
who thereupon makes application for restitution. Our business is to keep
clear of difficulties.”
“Yaw, dot do I see. But hark you, Mr. Fielding, ve keep der Spaniards
und ve arrive home, und der Spaniards go ashore, und den? I ox, und den?
Vill dey not shpeak all der same as dey vould shpoke in von of der own
ports down here?”
“I have considered that; so, too, has Captain Greaves. There is a
remedy, but it does not lie in transferring them in these seas.”
He shrugged his shoulders and the subject dropped.
But the long and short of Greaves’s policy in this particular matter
was; get the money home in safety first, bring off the treasure clear of
the fifty sea risks and perils of the age--the gale, the shoal, the
leak, the pirate, the enemy’s ships of the State. It will be time enough
to trouble yourself with what the Spaniards and others of the crew may
whisper ashore when the money has been landed, divided, exchanged into
gold of the realm, with plenty of leisure for a disappearance that might
run into time should the news of the salving of the treasure of the
_Casada_ ever reach the ears of the owners of the silver.
We carried good strong winds to the southward. The days grew shorter,
there was an edge in the weather let the breeze blow whence it would;
the swell of the sea was long and dark. We bent strong canvas for
rounding the Horn, and in other ways prepared for a conflict which in
those days had a significance that has departed from that wrestle. The
seamen put on warm clothes; there was never a need now for the small
awning aft; the sun shone white, as though the dazzle of his disk was
the reflection of his beam on snow. I say his light was white and often
cold when we had yet to swim many hundreds of miles to fetch the
parallel of the Horn.
In all the weeks we occupied in measuring our way from the island ere
rounding the headland for the Atlantic we fell in with but one ship. It
was our good luck, and there was nothing surprising in it either. In
this present year of my writing my story it may be your chance to sail
over a thousand leagues of Pacific water and meet with nothing. It was a
lonelier ocean in my time than it is now. Northward, on the equatorial
parallel, there was, indeed, some life, but southward the great liquid
highway that now every year foams to the shearing stems of half a
thousand stately ships, was, in the year of the _Black Watch_, scarce
less barren as a breast of sea than when it was swept for the galleon by
the perspective glasses of Dampier and Woodes Rogers.
We fell in with a little ship and spoke her, and the speaking her proved
one of the most memorable of all the incidents in this strange
expedition, as you shall presently learn if you choose to proceed.
Greaves was on this day very weak; he had risen to breakfast, sat like
the specter of death at table, his sunken, leaden, black eyes wandering
from me to Miss Aurora with the seeking gaze of one who strives to
collect his wits; then, rising with a little convulsion of his figure,
he leaned with his hand upon the table and said, in a small voice,
looking downward and slightly smiling:
“I must return to my bunk. It isn’t the machinery that’s wrong; the
spring has slackened and wants setting up afresh.”
I took him by the arm and helped him to his cabin and stood looking on,
waiting to be of service, while Jimmy pulled off his coat and shoes. I
believed he would speak seriously of his illness, for I guessed that if
he felt as bad as he looked he would count himself a dying man. But he
had not one word to say about his sensations or condition. When he was
in bed I stood beside him, and he lay with his eyes wide open, viewing
me steadfastly in silence. Presently he said:
“Why do you stand there? It’s all right with me. Get back to your
breakfast and finish it, Fielding. Whose lookout is it?”
“Mine, sir.”
“Why do you stand there?”
“I wish to see if I can be of use to you,” said I, making a step toward
the door.
“I am truly obliged. Jimmy does all I need. I want you to think of
nothing but the brig. I shall be quite well--I feel it, I am sure of
it--before we have climbed far up the Atlantic. By Isten, Fielding, but
it warms me to the very heart of my soul to reflect that you are in
charge--you and not Van Laar. Van Laar it might have been, with Michael
Greaves helpless in his cabin, and the Horn coming aboard. Lord, Lord,
wonderful are Thy ways!” said he, turning up his eyes. “Now get ye to
your breakfast. The machinery is all right, I tell you; the spring’s
fallen slack, the old clock loses, but the tick’s steady, Fielding, the
tick’s steady, my lad, and a few days will make the time right with me;
so get on to your breakfast.”
I re-entered the cabin and seated myself.
“The captain is bad,” said the lady Aurora.
I answered with a sorrowful nod. She clasped her hands and looked at me
across the table anxiously, and said:
“He die.”
“_Qué hacer?_” (What is to be done?) I answered, for by this time I had
picked up a number of phrases from her.
She slightly shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, and, pointing
upward, exclaimed in Spanish:
“It is as God wills.”
Then, again fixing her fine eyes, full of fire and feeling, upon me,
she, by nods and gestures, contrived to make me understand this
question:
“Suppose the captain dies, how is the brig to get to England?”
I smiled and pointed to myself, and made her gather that, while I was on
board, the brig was pretty sure, in some fashion or other, to head on a
true course for England.
We continued to exchange our meaning in this fashion while I finished
breakfast. Conversation between us was scarcely now the hard labor it
formerly was. She had a number of words in my tongue and I some in hers;
then, by being much together--or, as I would rather put it, having by
this time held many conversations in our fashion of discoursing--we had
got to distinguish shades of signification which had been wasted before
in one another’s gaze and gestures. Her looks were eloquence itself.
Even now was I able to collect her mind when she talked to me with her
face only; when she would talk to me, I say, for five minutes at a time
merely with the expression of her face, never opening her lips. Her eyes
were charged with the language of light and passions. She could look
grief, dismay, concern, horror, pity, all other emotions, indeed, with
an incomparable skill, force, and beauty of mute delivery.
I went on deck, and stepped to the side, as was my custom, to peer
ahead. Bol, who stood near the skylight, called out:
“A sail!”
He pointed over the starboard bow, and looking that way, I spied the
delicate white gleam of a ship’s canvas. It was what we should call a
fine, hard day, the atmosphere strong and tonical, cold, but without
harshness or rawness. The breeze was fresh off the larboard beam, and
swept with a rushing noise betwixt our masts--the breath of the young
giant whose dam was the snow-darkened Antarctic hurricane. The surge was
a long, steady sweep of sea, tall and wide, of the deepest blue I had
ever beheld. The brig, with her yards braced well forward, the bowlines
triced out, and every cloth that would draw pulling white as milk in the
white sunshine from stay and yard and gaff and boom, was sweeping
through the water with the speed of smoke down the wind. Magnificently
buoyant was the vessel’s motion. The yeast of her wake seethed to her
counter as she courtesyed. Large birds were flying over the track of
snow astern.
“What is that craft going to prove, Bol?” said I, taking up the glass.
“Dot vhas not long to findt out,” he answered.
In those times our telescopes were not as yours are now. I leveled the
long and heavy tube, but it resolved me no more of the ship ahead than
this--that a ship she was.
“Shall ve shift our hellum und edge avay?” said Bol.
“I will let you know,” said I, walking aft.
I waited a bit, looked at the sail again, and found we were picking her
up as though she were at anchor. By this time, also, most of her fabric
having lifted above the sea-line, I was able to tell that she was
square-rigged, like ourselves, but that, unlike the _Black Watch_, she
had short topgallant masts; whence, as you will suppose, I set her down
at once as a trader. This and our overhauling her so rapidly--which
means, suppose her an enemy, then she had no more chance of getting
alongside of us than a land crab a scudding rabbit--determined me to
hold on as we were.
You see I was in charge of the brig, and could do as I chose. Yet was it
right that I should report the sail to Greaves, and I called to Yan Bol,
who stood in the waist, and bade him keep a lookout for a few minutes
while I went below. Jimmy came out of the captain’s berth as I entered
the cabin. The lad held open the door, and I passed in.
“I have come to report a sail right ahead, sir.”
He turned his eyes upon me with such a look as you may behold in the
gaze of an old man straining after memory.
“A sail?” he exclaimed.
“Yes, sir.”
“Ay, ay.”
He smiled strangely, fetched a long, trembling breath, and said:
“Suppose she should prove a galleon? We are rich enough, Fielding. Leave
her alone--leave her alone.”
“She is no galleon. She is a small trader, I reckon, and will be abreast
of us and astern while we’re talking about her.”
“We have as much as we need,” said he. “Don’t imperil what you’ve got,
man. D’ye know, Fielding, I fear my sight’s beginning to fail me. Jimmy
gave me the Bible just now. The type’s big and it came and went in a
dissolving way like a wriggle of worms in water. I would to God there
was a priest aboard. I want to ask some questions.”
He closed his eyes, and with them closed repeated, “I want to ask some
questions.”
I waited, supposing he would look at me. He kept his eyes shut; so,
bidding Jimmy, who stood in the door, to have a care of his master, and
to keep within reach of his hail, I returned to the deck very heavy in
my spirits; for the departure of this man did then seem to me a question
of hours instead of days, nay weeks, as I had lately thought, so ill did
he look, so darkly and miserably did his manner and speech accentuate
the menace of his face.
It was not very long before I made out the vessel ahead to be a whaler.
I knew _that_ by her heavy davits, crowd of boats and square, sawed-off
look when she cocked her stern at us. I showed Dutch colors, scarce
doubting as yet but that the stranger would prove a Yankee, for in those
days, as now, many American vessels fished in those waters, pursuing
their gigantic game into seas where the British flag was rarely
flown--that is, over anything in search of grease. But the Dutch flag
had not been blowing three minutes from our gaff end when up floated the
red flag of England to the mizzen mast head of the stranger.
She was a little ship; to describe her exactly she was ship-rigged on
the fore and main, while on her schooner mizzen mast she carried a cross
jack and topsail yard. She lifted, ragged with weeds, to the heads of
the seas, and washed along, heavily rolling and pitching, and blowing
white water off her bows, whalelike. I shifted the helm to close her
for the sake of the sight of a strange face, for the sound of a strange
human voice. She was abreast of us some time before noon and there lay
before us, foaming and plunging, as quaint a picture as the ocean at
that time had to offer, liberally furnished as her breast was with
picturesque structures. She was as broad as she was long, of a greasy
rusty black, and when the sea knocked her over she threw up her round of
bottom till you watched for the keel; and the long grass streamed away
from her as she rolled like hair from the head of a plunging mermaid.
Many faces surveyed us from over her rail. Her sails fitted her ill, and
were dark with use. After every roll and plunge the water poured like a
mountain torrent out of her head-boards and channels; but I had read her
name as we approached--her name and the name of the town she hailed
from. She was the _Virginia Creeper_ of Whitby.
Whitby! I had never visited that town, but I knew it in fancy through
the famous Cook’s association with the place almost as well as I knew in
reality the little towns of Deal and Sandwich. It was just one of those
magical English words to sweep the mind and the imaginations of the mind
clean out of the countless leagues of the Pacific into the narrow miles
of one’s own home waters, there to behold again with a dreamer’s gaze
the milk-white coasts of the south, the chocolate coasts of the north,
the red sail of the smack plunging to the North Sea, the brown sail of
the barge creeping close inshore, the projection of black and tarry
timber pier, with its cluster of bright-hued wherries, the length of
sparkling white sand, the shingly incline, the careened boat, the figure
of its owner worked upon it with a tar brush.
We foamed along together broadside to broadside, within musket shot, and
I hailed the whaler and was answered.
The man who responded stood in the mizzen rigging. He wore a round
glazed hat, a shawl about his throat, a monkey coat to his knees. He
sang out to know what ship I was, and I answered that we were the _Black
Watch_, of London, chartered by a merchant of Amsterdam, and that the
captain and mate, and most of the crew were Englishmen. We were bound to
London, I roared to him, omitting to answer his question where we were
from. Then, in answer, he shouted that he was the _Virginia Creeper_ of
and from Whitby, ten months out, had met with shocking bad luck, and was
bound out of these seas for the South Atlantic. All the whales had gone
east. Sorry we were in such a hurry. He would have been glad to come
aboard for a yarn, and for what news from home we had to give him. Were
we still fighting the Yankees? A Yankee privateer had spoke him in the
South Atlantic, and the captain of the vessel sent a mate aboard him
with a box of cigars, and this message--that the whaler was a ship he
never meddled with, no matter under what color he found her; that he
honored a calling that had given his own nation her finest race of
seamen; and when he sailed away he dipped to the _Virginia Creeper_ as
to a friend. All this I was able to hear. The man, who spoke as a
Quaker, delivered his words with a strong, slightly nasal voice, and his
words came clean as the sound of a bell through the washing hiss of the
water and the roar aloft.
I found time to shout back that our captain was dangerously ill, and to
ask the master of the whaler, as I supposed the man to be, if he knew
aught of physic--of the treatment of injuries. He shook his head
vehemently, crying “No!” thrice, as though he would instantly kill any
hope the sight of him had excited in _that_ way; and, indeed, what
should a sailor know of physic and the treatment of such a sickness as
was fast killing Greaves? I asked the question to ease my conscience and
to satisfy the crew, who were listening. I figured him coming aboard and
stifling a groan when he saw Greaves, vexing the poor, languishing man
with useless questions put to mark his sympathy, and then coming out of
the berth to tell me it was a bad case.
We sped onward. The voice would no longer carry, and the whaler veered
astern almost into our wake, with a wild slap of her foresail, as she
plunged a heavy courtesy of farewell at us.
My notes of what befell me in this memorable year of Waterloo gives much
to my memory, but not everything; and I am unable to recollect the exact
situation of the brig when we fell in with the _Virginia Creeper_
westward of the Horn. I am sure, however, that we were something to the
southward of the island of Juan Fernandez, somewhere about the latitude
of Valdivia. This I supposed from remembrance of the climate. But be it
as it may, it was now, on this date of our speaking the Whitby whaler,
that I confidently supposed my poor friend Greaves would not live to see
the end of the week. I have told you so; but guess my surprise when, on
coming on deck at four o’clock that same afternoon, I found him seated
on a chair, wrapped in a warm cloak. Yan Bol walked to and fro near
him. They had been talking. I had heard the Dutchman’s deep voice as I
stepped through the hatch. But if Greaves had looked a dying man in his
berth, he showed, to be sure, ghastly sick by the light of the day. I
had seen much of him below, yet I started when my eyes went to his face
now, as though, down to this moment, I had not observed the dreadful
change that had happened in him. Galloon lay at his feet. The poor man
smiled faintly on seeing me, and said in a weak voice:
“Did not I tell you I should be better presently? The machinery’s sound,
and, when that’s so, nature is your one artist to make it the right time
of day with ye.”
I conversed a little with him. Yan Bol stood by. I told him about the
whaler. He motioned with a trembling white hand, and said he had heard
all about it from Yan Bol. Presently he wandered somewhat in his speech,
and rose falteringly, sending a sort of blind, groping look round the
decks; but he was too feeble to hold his body erect, and the swing of
the brig, as she reeled to a sea, flung him roughly back upon his chair.
“Let me take you below,” said I.
He looked at me as though he did not know me and talked to himself. I
motioned to Bol with my head, and we each took an arm, and tenderly--and
I say that there was a tenderness in Yan Bol’s handling of the poor
fellow that gave me such an opinion of his heart as helped me for a
little while like a fresh spirit in that time of my distress, anxiety,
and fear--very tenderly I say, we partly carried, partly supported, the
captain into the cabin, whence he went, leaning on Jimmy, to his berth,
looking behind him somewhat wildly at us who stood watching him, and
talking without any sense that I could collect.
“Mr. Fielding,” said Yan Bol as we regained the deck, “der captain vhas
a deadt man.”
“I wondered to find him out of his berth.”
“He vhas von minute talking like ash you or me, und der next he vhas
grazy mit fancies. I likes to know how dot vhas mit der brain. Von
minute he oxes me questions about der vhaler, as you might; der next he
looks at me und say, ‘Vhas your name Yan Bol?’ ‘It vhas,’ I answered.
‘Vhat vhas der natural figure of der Toyfell?’ he oxes. ‘Dot vhas a
question for der minister,’ says I. ‘Last night’ he says, ‘dere vhas a
full moon, und I saw a reflection like she might be a bat’s upon der
brightness of der moon. Dot reflection sailed slowly across. I ox you,’
says he, ‘vhas dot der reflection of der Toyfell--dot, you must know, is
Brince of der vinds?’ I keeps mine own counsel, und valks a leedle, und
pretends dot der brig vants looking after; und vhen I comes back he oxes
me anoder question dot vhas no longer grazy, but like ash you might ox.
Now, how vhas dot, Mr. Fielding?”
“I am as ignorant as you,” said I; “but his end is at hand. He will not
long talk sensibly or crazily. God help him and bless us all! It is a
heavy blow to befall this little brig--‘tis a heavier blow to befall the
poor gentleman who has shown us how to fill our pockets with dollars;
whose own share would make him a happy and prosperous man for life.”
“Dot vhas so,” said Bol; and our conversation ended.
Seeing that Greaves’ mind was loosened, I no longer expected him to
realize the near approach of death. I ceased, therefore, to be surprised
that he did not speak to me about his condition. Sometimes I would ask
myself whether it was not my duty, as his friend, to touch upon the
subject of his state at some favorable moment when his faculties were
strong enough for coherent discourse. He was dying. He must soon die. He
could not live to round the Horn. How would he wish the money he had
earned by this venture to be disposed of? Thirty thousand pounds was a
large fortune. I knew that he was fatherless and motherless, but no more
of him did I know than that. I had never heard him speak of his
relations; indeed, throughout he had been silent on the subject of his
parentage and beginnings, though he had never wanted in candor when he
talked of his first going to sea, his struggles and failures and
sufferings in the vocation.
But as often as I thought it proper to speak to him, so often did I
shrink from what was, perhaps, an obligation. No; I could not find it in
me to tell him that he was a dying man.
The weather grew colder, and we met with some hard gales out of the
southeast, which knocked us away fifty leagues to the westward out of
our course. It was Cape Horn weather, though we were not up with that
headland yet. The dark green seas rolled fierce and high; the sky hung
low and sallow and fled in scud. We stormed our way along under reefed
canvas, showing all that we durst, and making good average way, seeing
that the gale was off the bow and the seas like cliffs for the little
brig to burst through.
Anxiety lay very heavy upon me all this time. I had confidence in Yan
Bol’s seamanship, but I had more faith in myself; and I was up and down
in my watch below to look after the brig, till, when the twenty-four
hours had come round, I would find I had not passed two of them in
sleep.
The cold found the lady Aurora without warm apparel. The dress she had
been shipwrecked in was of some gay, glossy stuff, plentiful in skirt,
and as warm as a cobweb. What was to be done? It was not to be borne
that she should sit shivering in the cabin for the want of apparel that
would enable her to look abroad whenever she had a mind to pass through
the hatch; so, after turning the matter over in my mind, one morning,
soon after our meeting with the whaler, I ordered Jimmy and another to
bring the slop chest into the cabin. It was a great box, and one of two.
Both were of Tulp’s providing. The old chap guessed he saw his way to
making money out of the sailors by putting cheap clothes aboard for
sale, and it was likely enough he would find his little venture in this
way answerable to his expectations when we got home, for already one of
the chests was emptied of two-thirds of its contents, the sailors (I
being one of them) having purchased at an advance of about eighty per
cent. upon what would be rated ashore as a very high selling price.
Well, one of the slop chests was brought up and put in the cabin. I had
tried to make Miss Aurora understand what I meant--to no purpose. Now,
lifting the lid of the chest, she standing by me and looking down upon
the queer collection of sailors’ clothing, I pulled out a monkey coat,
big enough for the sheathing of even Yan Bol’s bolster-like figure, and,
holding it up, went to work to make myself intelligible. I put the coat
on her. I then touched it here and there to signify that, by shaping a
waist, and cutting in at the dip of the back, by shortening the sleeves
and fixing the velvet collar to suit her throat, she might make a very
good figure of a jacket for herself out of the coat. I then took a cap
from the chest, and I placed it upon her head, advising, as best I could
by signs and words, that she should stitch flaps to it to shelter her
ears, with strings to keep the thing on her head in wind. I went further
still, being resolved that the lady should go warmly clad round the
Horn, and, calling to Jimmy, bade him bring me up a bale of spare
blankets. I heartily longed for a Spanish dictionary, that I might give
her the word _petticoat_ out of it. However, she caught my drift after a
little, on my selecting one of the finest of the blankets and putting
it about her and holding it to her waist. She nodded and laughed.
I witnessed no embarrassment, and, in honest truth, there was no cause
for embarrassment. Yet I do not suppose that an English girl--at least,
that many English girls--would have made this little business of
suggesting apparel, and hinting at clothing which a man is not supposed
to know anything at all about until he is married, so pleasant and easy
as did this Spanish maiden.
Well, her ladyship was now supplied with materials for warm clothing,
and that same afternoon she went to work on the coat. Hard work it was.
She wanted shears for such cloth as that, and managed with difficulty
with a sailor’s knife fresh from the grindstone; yet, by next afternoon,
having worked all that day and all next morning, she had given something
of the shape of her own figure to the coat. She put it on for me to look
at. It wrapped her bravely; and when, with white teeth showing, she
placed the cap on her head, her beauty--and beauty dark, speaking,
impressive I must call it--took a quality of brightness, a piquancy that
comes to beauty from male attire; in her case wanting when ordinarily
dressed, of such gravity and dignity was her bearing, of such a natural,
womanly loftiness were the whole figure and looks of her.