I SCHEME.
Never once in all this while, and my story is covering many days, was I
visited by the palest shadow of a scheme of release. And why? Because
the _schatz_--the treasure--the dollars and I were one. All plans of
escape provided that I left my dollars behind me. But I wanted my money.
I had lived in a golden dream. The abandonment of the treasure was an
unendurable consideration. I believe I could have faced death on board
that brig with something of coolness. The contemplation of it would not
have been frightful; the calling of the sea hardens the sensibilities
and accustoms the soul to more things than the wonders of the Lord; but
I could not consider with coolness the idea of the men possessing
themselves of the fifteen tons of silver, burying the half-million
dollars in the Island of Amsterdam, then perhaps being unable to find
out where they had hidden the money, or hindered by who knows what of
the unforeseen from ever getting to the island again.
I say I fell half mad whenever my head ran on that forecastle device.
The thought of it regularly threw me into a fever. I have walked my
cabin for a whole glass or watch at a time, as bad a murderer as any man
can well be in heart only, killing the crew in imagination over and
over.
Yet not the leanest vision of a scheme offered itself. Suppose I had
attempted to recapture the brig by slaughtering the men after the manner
proposed by Miss Aurora; by her stabbing them in the cabin while I
engaged their attention, and then by her and me shooting the others;
suppose this wild, ridiculous, horrid proposal practicable--all the crew
being hove over the side--what was I to do with the brig, I, whose
assistants would be a woman and a tall, clumsy, idiotic lad? Navigate
her to the nearest port? Ay, but that was just what I durst not do if I
wished to keep my dollars. Greaves had been strong on this point; he’d
touch nowhere--rather reduce all hands to quarter allowance than touch,
lest by entering or hovering off a port he’d court a visit that should
carry him every dollar ashore.
Well, then, since I dared not convey the brig to a port, was I to wash
about the sea with Miss Aurora and Jimmy for my crew, until I fell in
with a ship willing to put me two or three men aboard? Yes, that sounds
nicely; but what would be the risks before we fell in with a ship
willing to assist? Many days, many weeks might pass before we sighted a
sail, for I am writing of the year 1815, when the ocean we were afloat
on ran for countless leagues bare to the sky, nearly all the traffic
steering northward, Mozambique way.
But what was the good of this sort of speculation? The crew were alive;
I was one to ten; I was without an idea; and every day was diminishing
something of the meridians betwixt us and the Island of New Amsterdam.
I did not in this time give Miss Aurora a lesson in English. I do not
remember that she asked me to give her a lesson. We had many long
earnest conversations about our situation, by which she profited, for I
spoke mainly in my own tongue. She did not favor me with another song,
she nevermore asked for the fiddle, nor did it once occur to me to
request her to oblige me with a recital in the rich and beautiful tongue
of her nation. Yet she was now speaking English very fairly well. She
was seldom at a loss, and conversation was easy without signs, nods, or
gesticulations, saving an occasional shrug of her shoulders, the
naturally impassioned action of her hands when she talked eagerly and
hotly, and the many expressions of face which accompanied her speech.
She did not again offer to assassinate Bol and the others; she had read
in my face what I thought of that proposal, and her fiery and scornful
flinging from me because I would not consent was a flare of temper that
was out before we next met. On one occasion, however, we quarreled
rather warmly, and I was sulky with her afterward for some days. She
told me that I thought more of my dollars than of her life. I colored up
and answered that that was not true; I valued her life, and would
restore her to her friends if I could; but I also valued my dollars. I
had worked hard for them, and was not to be robbed by the blackguards
forward of a considerable fortune.
“You think only of your dollars,” said she; “you do not scheme, because
your dollars are in the way of every idea. Is this how an English
cavalier should treat a poor, unhappy, shipwrecked lady? Señor
Fielding, I should be first with you; nothing should occupy your
attention but the resolution to release me from this horrid situation
and the dangers which lie before us;” and then she towered with her
figure, and swelled her breast and flashed her eyes at me.
There was more of truth in her words than I relished to hear from her
lips, and it was this perhaps that angered me. I begged her to advise;
she shrugged her shoulders, and with an arch sneer which rather improved
than deformed her beauty, said that if I were a Spanish sailor I would
be ashamed to ask counsel of a woman.
“If I were a Spanish sailor I would be ashamed of myself,” I said.
“Why do you not scheme to release us?”
“Scheme to release us? Shall I blow up the brig? That will make an end.”
“It would not be the Señorita Aurora, but the Cavalier Fielding and his
Spanish dollars which would hinder that,” said she.
“If, by jumping overboard and swimming, I could put you in the way of
reaching Madrid, I’d do so,” said I; “but it’s a long swim hereabouts to
anywhere.”
“You would not jump overboard and leave your dollars,” said she. “If you
were the gallant and respectable gentleman I have long supposed you, you
would think of nothing but my deliverance. Why am I to be carried away
to the extreme ends of the world? What is to become of me when your
odious Hollanders and Englishmen have wrecked this brig?” and here she
sank upon the table and sobbed.
“What am I to do?” I cried, not greatly moved by her tears; indeed, I
was too angry with her to be affected by her sobs. I had used her very
kindly; I had never failed in such rough sea courtesy as my profession
permitted me the poor art of; I did not like her sneers at my love for
my dollars; and I less liked the pinch or two of tart truth that
acidulated her language. “What am I to do?” I cried. “Bol will not
tranship you. He’ll speak no more vessels now the two Spaniards are
gone. I can’t sneak you away in a boat. Let any land but that of
Amsterdam Island heave into view and the sailors will slit my throat.
Why do you lie sobbing upon that table, madam? Pray, hold up your head
and listen to me. What was your scheme, pray? A hideous one, indeed; and
one that would not profit us either. It would fail, were we devils
enough to attempt it: and then God help you and me! Many are the
saints, but none would then be powerful enough to serve you.”
She raised her head. The fire in her eyes was by no means dimmed by her
tears. Her sobbing and posture had reddened her cheeks.
“The navigation of this brig is in your hands. Wreck her!” she
exclaimed.
“And be drowned?”
“Wreck her in such a way that we shall not be drowned.”
“Come, you shall not teach me my business. If I am not a Spanish sailor,
I’ll not take counsel of a woman either.”
She snapped her fingers at me, and showed her teeth in an angry smile;
turned, and I thought was going to her berth. Instead, she stopped and
looked at me over her shoulder, made a step, and her whole manner
changed. Her demeanor was, all of a sudden, a sort of wild tenderness.
Why do I call it _that_? Because it suggested--the memory of it still
suggests--the moment’s sportiveness of a tigress with its young. Her
eyes softened: her face grew sweet with a look of pleading; she put
herself into a posture of entreaty, her hands out-stretched and figure a
little stooped. Acting, or no acting, it was as good as good can be. You
would have said she loved me had you watched her eyes. The contrast
between the rascally snap of the finger and this pose of appeal was
sharp and strong; but how mean that stage for so rich a performance--the
lifting, uncarpeted deck of a little, plain, ship’s cabin, with its
austere furniture of table and lockers, and a skylight bleared with the
grayness of the day without?
“Señor Fielding, let _me_ be first with you.”
Another reference to the dollars! It vexed me greatly, and saying, “It
always has been so,” I gave her a cool bow and went on deck.
We had quarreled before, but lightly, for the most part, and were
friends again in an hour. This quarrel, however, ran into two or three
days. She would not leave me alone. Did I mean to scheme for our
salvation? Was she to be first with me? Was I ashamed of myself to be
devoured by avarice? What was the good of dollars to a dying man? and
was I not a dying man if I did not rescue her and myself from the crew
of the brig? I don’t say she used all the words I put into her mouth.
No; she was not so fluent _then_ as all that; but I understood her very
easily--rather too easily--when she sneered at me for thinking more of
my dollars than of her.
Finding, however, that I continued resolutely sulky, answering her
shortly, passing through the cabin instead of sitting with her as before
and talking, she grew alarmed, felt that she had said too much, and made
her peace. She made her peace by coming to my cabin. I was looking at a
chart of the Southern Ocean when somebody knocked. My lady entered.
“Ave Maria! What will you think of me for coming to you thus and here?
But my heart is too full of remorse for patience. Blessed Virgin! How
long is half an hour when one is impatient! And I have been waiting for
half an hour outside in the cabin. I have angered you, and I am sorry.
You have been good to me, and you are my friend. And how do I show my
gratitude? Forgive me, señor;” and with that she put out her hand.
It was very true that Yan Bol had declared the men would speak no ship
until the silver was out of the brig. And in my opinion they were right.
As we made for the Island of New Amsterdam we increased the chance of
falling in with war-ships and privateers. For Amsterdam Island is in the
Indian Ocean, at the southern limit of those waters, it is true, and in
those times many vagabond vessels were to be found in the Indian Ocean
on the lookout for the big rich ships, the tea waggons and spice and
silk carriers bound to and from China and the Indies.
But it so happened that after we had lost sight of the little schooner
which had taken the two Spaniards aboard, we met with no other
sail--none, I mean, within reach of the bunting or speaking trumpet. At
long intervals a tip of white showed in some blue recess of that sea,
infinitely remote, pale as a little light that lives and dies and lives
again while you look. Never before had the measurelessness of the ocean
affected me as now. The spirits of vastness and loneliness which came
shaping themselves to the imagination out of those month-wide breasts
and secret solitudes of brine grew overwhelming to the mind--to my mind
I should say; and often of a night when the deck was quiet and the sea
black and the stars were shining, I’d feel the oppression of a mighty
presence--of something huge and near.
And then consider the doses of salt water I had swallowed and was yet
swallowing! I was fresh from very many months of the sea when I was
picked up off an oar in the Channel and swept outward again into the
world where the salt spits like a wildcat, and where the sound of the
wind is not as its noise ashore; and I was still at sea with months of
water before me in any case if I was not put an end to.
So, even had the crew been willing to speak a ship that the lady Aurora
might be transferred, no opportunity to do so came along; nothing hove
in sight but a star of sail in the liquid distance, and _this_ only at
long, long intervals.
I’ll not tell you of the weather we fell in with between Cape Horn and
the distant island we were steering for; what do you care about the
weather and the weather of so long ago as Waterloo year? Otherwise I
could fill you several pages with pictures of hard gales, in one of
which the brig lay for a wild, terrifying time with her lee rail under,
her hull scarce to be seen for the smother that filled her decks, and I
could please you with pictures of soft calms in which our stem
tranquilly broke the cold gray water that reflected on either hand of
the vessel the silver sheen of her overhanging wings; and I could give
you pictures of merry breezes that swept us onward fast as the melting
head of the blue surge itself ran. Enough!
One afternoon I sat upon the edge of the skylight frame with my arms
folded and my eyes fixed upon the sea. The sun was warm, the breeze
brisk. A pleasanter day had not shone upon us for a fortnight past. My
lady Aurora seated on a cabin chair at a little distance from me was
intent on an English book, one of the new volumes which had belonged to
Greaves. Her posture was very easy and reposeful; her dark eyes wandered
slowly down the printed page; often she was puzzled by the meaning of a
word and frowned at it; you would have supposed her a person without a
single cause for anxiety, a lady who was sailing to her home, which
might now not be very far off.
Yan Bol was in charge. He had been standing for some considerable time
beside the wheel, occasionally exchanging a sentence in guttural Dutch
with Wirtz, who held the spokes. At last he came along the deck and
stood in front of me.
“Vhat might hov been der situation of der brick at noon, Mr. Fielding?”
he inquired.
I gave him the ship’s place.
“Dot vhas close!” he said.
“It was,” I answered.
“Donnerwetter!” he thundered, “der island vhas aboardt!” and he looked
ahead at the sea as though he expected to behold the Island of New
Amsterdam.
The lady Aurora, leaving the book opened upon her lap, raised her eyes
and listened.
“How close vhas der island, Mr. Fielding?”
“Roughly, sixty leagues.”
“Den, she vhas here to-morrow?”
“That is as the wind wills,” said I.
He went forward by twenty or thirty paces, and putting his hand to the
side of his mouth--not that his voice should carry the better, but to
qualify the liberty he was taking by making an “aside” of it, so to
speak, to the eye--he called to Galen, Meehan, and two others who were
on forecastle:
“Poys, she vhas here to-morrow. Der distance vhas sixty leagues at
dinner-time.”
Galen accepted the news with a heavy Dutch flourish of his hand. Yan Bol
returned to me. In the minute or two of his going forward I had been
thinking, and with the swiftness of thought had concluded to ask him
certain questions.
“Do you mean to bury the silver?”
“Dot vhas der scheme.”
“You will need to dig wide and deep if your pit is to contain all those
cases.”
“Yaw, dot vhas so.”
“What are you going to dig your pit with?”
“Dere vhas two shovels in der fore-peak. Whateffer else vhas useful ve
takes mit us.”
“Do you object to my asking you these questions?”
“Nine, nine, Mr. Fielding,” he answered, “you vhas von of us, ve hope.
Two tons of der silver vhas yours. Vhas it not right you should know
vhat vhas to become of her?”
“Then, since in all probability we shall be off the island some time
to-morrow, I’d be glad to hear now how you mean to go to work. I have
asked no questions before. I had expected that you would come to me with
your arrangements, and for advice.”
“Vhat advice vhas vanted? A man vhas green dot requires to be learnt how
to make a hole in der earth, und put his money into it, und cover it
oop.”
“You will need to make a very big pit.”
“Yaw, she vhas a wide und deep pit dot ve dig.”
“How long d’ye reckon that it will take you to dig that pit with such
tools as you have?”
“Dere vhas no reckoning. Ve gets ashore und falls ter verk.”
The lady Aurora closed her book, arose, brought her chair close to the
skylight, and reseated herself. Bol looked at her, then fastened his
eyes upon me.
“Am I to be left in charge of the brig?”
“You vhas, Mr. Fielding.”
“What of a crew do you mean to allow me? It may come on to blow hard
while you are on shore.”
“Dere vhas crew enough,” said he, with a queer expression in his eyes.
“How many?” I demanded sternly.
“Dere vhas four, und dere vhas der ladt, Jim. Dot vhas men enough for
der braces,” said he, looking up at the sails.
“Four men and the boy,” said I aloud and musingly; “well, I daresay I
shall be able to manage with four men and the boy.”
“Dere vhas yourself to gount.”
“Oh, I do not forget myself. Do you take charge of the landing and
burial of the money?”
“Yaw, me himself. I likes to know vhere she lies.”
“You will pull around the island and reconnoiter first, I suppose,
before you land?”
“Vhat vhas dot?”
“Before landing the silver you will take care to make sure there is
nobody upon the island? _That’s_ what I mean. Risk your own share, if
you like, but my two tons must lie till I fetch them.”
“She vhas an uninhabited island mitout house or foodt. Dot vhas certain
sure. But we foorst takes a look, Mr. Fielding. Oh, yaw, by Cott, we
foorst takes a look.”
“You have come a thundering long way to hide this money.” He nodded.
“And there’s the devil’s own trouble to be taken afterward. First the
voyage from here to Sydney; then the trusting of Teach’s friend, Max
Lampton, with this big, rich secret; then supposing _that_ to prove all
right, the return to Amsterdam Island--this fine brig, meanwhile, having
been cast away--in some crazy little schooner, with the risks of a trip
to New Holland in a bottom that may drop out under the weight of fifteen
tons of silver.”
“Ve vhas not all dom’d fools,” said he, with a slow smile; “dere vhas no
grazy bottoms mit us. Dis brig vhas fine, yaw,” said he, with a
leisurely look round the deck, “but she must go.”
“It’s the maddest scheme that even sailors ever lighted upon,” said I,
“but let’s have the rest of it. Having dug your pit you come back for
the cargo?”
“Yaw.”
“It may take you a day to dig your pit.”
“And b’raps two,” said he.
“You will load about four tons a journey.”
“Call her five,” said he.
Here I observed that Galen, Teach, and one or two others having observed
the big Dutchman and me close and earnest, yet very audible in this
talk, had approached with sneaking steps to within earshot, where they
feigned to occupy themselves, one in coiling down a rope, another in
dipping for a drink out of the scuttle-butt, and so on. This decided me
to drop the subject.
I walked to a corner of the deck called the starboard quarter, and
folding my arms leaned against the bulwarks. A dim and faint idea had
come to me in those few instants of time when Yan Bol went forward and
called out to his mates on the forecastle with his immense, hairy,
square hand beside his mouth, and this idea had slightly brightened
while I questioned him. It was an idea that would be quite glorious if
successful; otherwise it would be a forlorn and beggarly idea, a
treacherous, cut-throat idea, exactly fit to play my heavy stake of
silver and the Spanish maid into the hands of the men, and to secure me
the quickest exit that could be contrived by the knife or the yardarm.
Madam Aurora watched me. I wish you were a man, thought I. Are you a
person to fail one in a supremely critical hour? You offered to stick
three men in the back; have you the courage to stick one man face to
face?
I regarded her steadfastly, reflecting. I better remember her on that
particular afternoon than at any former time. Would you like to know how
she was dressed? I will tell you exactly. She wore a seaman’s plain
cloth jacket, fitted by her own hands to her figure; it sat well and was
tight and comfortable for those latitudes. She wore the dress she had
been clad in when we took her off the island; she had turned it, or in
some fashion rearranged it, and it was no longer the hideous garment I
had thought it. She wore a cloth cap; it sat like a turban upon her
thick, black hair, and laugh now, if you will! she wore a pair of
sailor’s shoes, whence you will guess that what grace of _littleness_
she had, lay in those hands of hers I have admired so often. Not at
all. Her foot was perfectly proportioned to her hand. She had small,
delicately-shaped, highly-arched, and altogether lovely feet. The shoes
she wore I had found in the second of the slop-chests; they were
embellished with buckles; the Dutch shopman probably stowed them away by
mistake; they might have been designed for some dandy lad of a Batavian
quarter-deck; they were _small_, and small they _must_ have been, for
they fitted Aurora.
This is the picture of her as she sat, intently regarded by me, who lay
against the rail with folded arms, deeply considering. Teach and the
others had sneaked forward again. Bol stumped the weather gangway. He
was usually respectful enough, whenever I came on deck, to carry his
vast carcass to a humbler part of the brig than I occupied. Miss Aurora
rose and walked up to me.
“What are you thinking about?” said she, speaking in her own way, a way
I have not yet attempted to write, and shall not here give. “Do I look
ill, that you stare at me?”
“I am thinking.”
“I am not blind. I might suppose I saw mischief in your face, if I
thought you capable of mischief.”
A pair of slow but shrewd Dutch eyes, and a pair of big but attentive
Dutch ears overtopped the spokes of the wheel. I made her glance at
Wirtz by myself looking at him. She understood the meaning in my face,
and returned to her chair. I crossed the deck, and passing my arm round
a lee backstay, gazed at the horizon ahead, thinking with all my might.
I remained on deck about half an hour, and then went below. I took a
book out of the shelf in my berth, and seated myself at the cabin table,
as far removed as possible from the skylight, but not out of sight of
one who should peer through the glass; the size of the cabin did not
admit of such concealment. After the lapse of a few minutes I was joined
by Miss Aurora, who pulled off her cap and placed herself beside me.
There could be nothing suspicious in our sitting close together. Many a
time had we sat very close together indeed, at that cabin table, under
the skylight, when I was teaching her to speak the English language, and
wondering whether, under _other_ circumstances, I should discover myself
to be rather in love with this fine young Spanish woman; and many a time
had the men looked down and observed us, and grinned, I have no doubt,
and uttered such remarks, one to another, as the very low level of their
forecastle intelligence would suggest.
“What has caused you to stare at me, Señor Fielding?”
“I have wished to satisfy myself that you are to be trusted.”
“_Ave Maria!_ Trusted! Do not wrap up your meaning. I dislike people who
wrap up their meaning.”
“Could you kill a man?”
“For my honor and for my liberty, yes,” she replied after a short
silence, rearing herself in her swelling way, and flashing one of her
wicked looks at me.
“Would you faint when you had killed him?”
Her manner instantly changed. She slightly shrugged her shoulders and
answered, “A little thing has made me faint. At Acapulco I slept at a
friend’s house. I awoke, and by the moonlight saw a mouse upon my bed,
after which I remember no more. But nothing heroic, nothing exalted in
horror, would make me faint, I think. I could look upon a man slain by
me for my liberty or for my honor without swooning.” This was, in
effect, her answer to my question.
“Have you ever killed a man?” said I.
“No,” she answered hotly; “but when he is ready for me I shall be ready
for him;” and, unbuttoning the breast of her coat, she thrust her hand
into the pocket of her gown and pulled out a poniard or stiletto. It was
a blue, gleaming blade, about seven or eight inches long, sheathed in
bright metal, with a little ivory hilt that sparkled with some sort of
embellishment of gem or ore. In all the time we had been associated she
had never once given me to know that she went armed; but I afterward
discovered she was a young woman who knew how to keep a secret.
“Hide that thing!” I cried with a glance at the skylight.
She pocketed it, giving me a fiery nod. “Never,” said she, “have you
asked me whether I was afraid to be alone with Jorge and Antonio on the
island. _Vaya!_ Do your English ladies secrete knives about them? It is
a wise custom. But you wish to find out if I am to be trusted, if I can
kill a man for my liberty or for my honor. Try me,” she cried, snapping
her fingers as she waved her hand close to my face.
“I have a scheme,” said I, “for getting away with the treasure and the
brig and you.”
“The treasure first,” she exclaimed, smiling till her face looked to be
lighted up with her white teeth. “You will have to be quick. Is not
to-morrow the day of your Amsterdam Island?”
“Ask the wind that question,” I answered.
“What is your scheme?”
“It is a magnificent scheme providing it succeeds. If it does not
succeed better had we never been born. Shall we desperately attempt it?”
“_Qué es eso_--what is it? what is it?” she cried; and then a passion of
excitement seized her, and her hands trembled.
“I will tell you the scheme in a minute. It depends not upon me and you
only. I shall require the help of the lad, Jimmy. Is he to be trusted?”
“Your scheme--your scheme!”
“Is he to be trusted?” I continued, feigning to read aloud from the book
that was before me, for I had thought I heard a man stop in his walk
overhead. “My scheme is not to be thought of unless this youth will help
us. You are a very observant lady. I have often seen you look
attentively at Jimmy.”
“_Vaya!_ If I have looked at him it was without thought, and because I
had nothing else to do. What a face to gaze at attentively!”
“Do you think he is to be trusted?”
“You continue to ask me that question,” she exclaimed, petulantly
twisting her prayer-ring as though hotly engaged in the aves. “First
tell me your scheme, and then I will give you my opinion on Jimmy’s
trustworthiness.”
On this, feigning to read aloud to her while I talked, that anyone above
might suppose we were at our old game of playing at school, I
communicated my scheme to her. A scheme it was: a distinct idea and
project of deliverance; but several conditions, partly of chance, partly
of contrivance, must attend its success. She listened eagerly, never
removing her eyes from me, and once she was so well pleased that she
clapped her hands and fell back with a loud laugh. This was not a
behavior to object to. No man, warily observing us, would guess our
talk, the significance of this long and intimate cabin consultation,
from the hard laughter of the señorita, and the merry noise of the
clapping of her hands. In truth I never could have imagined such spirit
in a woman. She had clapped her hands at the one feature whose
disclosure would have turned another woman faint, she being to act in
it. It was this stroke of our projected business that had made the cabin
ring with her laughter.
“How long will the work occupy?” said I.
“It matters not,” she answered. “I will take no rest until I have
finished it.”
“You will not, however, begin until I have talked with Jimmy? If I see
reason to distrust him, we must think of another plan.”
“Promise him plenty of dollars if he is faithful,” said she, “and
threaten him with death if he fails you.”
We continued for some time longer to talk over my scheme. I then walked
to the stand of arms, and looked, with much irresolution in my mind, at
the muskets and the cutlasses, and at several pistols hanging near. My
instincts cautioned me to disturb nothing.
“No,” said I, wheeling round to the lady; “those weapons must remain as
they are. The magazine is down there,” said I, pointing to a part of the
deck that formed the ceiling of a small compartment just forward of the
lazarette. “It is entered by that hatch, and, therefore, if the men
require ammunition--and it is likely as not they’ll go ashore
armed--they must pass through this cabin to get at the magazine. Nothing
must be disturbed.”
At this point the lad arrived to prepare our supper. Miss Aurora walked
to her berth. I sat upon a locker and watched the youth, as he went
round the table furnishing it for the meal. I have elsewhere described
him. Since the date to which that description belongs he appeared to
have grown somewhat; he had broadened; his face had gathered from the
dye of the weather something of the manly look of the sailor; but that
was all. It was still a stupid, insipid, grinning face. He breathed
hard, and put down the knives and forks and plates with the
characteristic energy of a weak-minded youth who is always very much in
earnest. He was more than usually in earnest now, because I watched him.
I took the altitude of his head, and guessed him taller than I, who was
a pretty big chap, too. I took a view of his hands. Methought they fell
not far short of Yan Bol’s in magnitude. They were not fat, like the
hands of Yan Bol; on the contrary, they were bony and rugged with muscle
and veins. They were hands to hold on with--to hit hard with.
Presently, reflection in me became a torment; nay, without straining
words, I may say that it rose into anguish. Should I put my life and the
life of the girl into the hands of that youth, who was little more than
an idiot? I waited until he had prepared the table for supper. I could
then endure the agony of irresolution no longer, and I rose and walked
to my berth, bidding him follow me. When he was entered I shut the
door. He stared at me, slightly grinning, but his look had a little of
wonder and fear in it.
“Jimmy,” said I, “you’re often in the forecastle, aren’t you? You follow
the talk of the men, I guess. Where do you sling your hammock?”
“In the eyes, master.”
“You hear the men talk. Do you understand ’em?”
“Why, ay,” he answered, staring at me without a wink from the full,
knock-kneed, muscular stature of him; for he stood before me as a
soldier--as he used to stand before Greaves when he received a lesson on
the difference of dishes.
“What’s going to happen to this brig?”
“Why, master, they’re going to unload the silver and hide it in
Amsterdam Island; and then we’re a-going to sail away for the coast of
New Holland, where you’re to wreck us; and then we comes back for the
money.”
“After?”
“Dunno what’s going to happen after.”
“What’s to be your share of the dollars?”
“There’s been nary word said about my share, master.”
“D’ye know why?”
“‘Cos they don’t mean to give me none.”
“That’s so. There’s ne’er a dollar meant for you, Jimmy. Don’t you think
that’s hard?”
“I’m a poor lad, master. What comes, comes to the likes of me. When the
captain died I lost my friend;” and grasping his fingers he cracked his
joints one after another, yielding first on one leg and then on the
other, as though he was about to break into a main-deck double shuffle.
“Did Captain Greaves ever promise you a share?”
“No, master.”
“But you have a claim, and he was not the man to have overlooked it.
D’ye remember Galloon?”
“Remember him, master? Remember Galloon?” said he, lowering his voice.
“Galloon was an honest dog. Had he been able to speak, his advice to you
would always have been ‘Jimmy, be honest.’”
He looked somewhat wild and scared, as though he imagined I was going to
charge him with a wrong.
“It’ll be a wicked act to cast this fine brig away, don’t you think?
Galloon wouldn’t have loved ye for helping in such a job.”
“It’ll be no job of mine, master.”
“Both Galloon and Captain Greaves,” said I, “would have wished you to be
on the right side, no matter whose side it might happen to be. Are you
on the right side or the wrong side? Are you on the side where home
lies, where a share of the dollars lies, where safety lies; or are you
on the side where New Holland lies, where there are no dollars for you,
where there’s no home for you, and where you may be finding a gibbet as
one who helped to cast a ship away?--if the men don’t first chuck you
overboard as being in the road.”
He continued to listen with increasing eagerness and agitation, cracking
his joints again and again, while he advanced his head, setting his
mouth in the form of a half-arrested yawn. When I had ceased he nodded
repeatedly, maintaining silence, with a face that seemed to mark him too
full for utterance. He, then, in stammering and choking voice,
exclaimed, while a grotesque smile touched his countenance into a dim
intelligence, even as the eastern obscurity is tinctured by the lunar
dawn:
“Master, I sees yer meaning. I aint on the side where the gibbet is. I
would sail round the world with you, master.”
Twenty minutes later he followed me out of my berth, and went on deck to
fetch the cabin supper from the galley.
“Are you satisfied?” said the lady Aurora, who was seated at the table.
“Perfectly,” I answered.