JIM BEDDOES’ YARN.
I was just about took flat aback when it was borne in upon me what
had happened; but I must set about spinning my yarn in a ship-shape
fashion, I s’pose, or shore-going folks won’t get a grip of my meanin’,
so to speak. Well, gentlemen all, and ladies too, I hope—for, bless
you! I know well enough, through having chicks of my own, that sisters
reads their brothers’ books when they can get a hold of ’em—you all of
you know, through having read Mr. Darcy’s yarn, that he, the gunner,
and my messmate, Ned Burton—as fine a chap as ever ran aloft or took
his trick at the helm, though that’s neither here nor there—went off
together to reconnoitre the enemy’s position. I may say they went off
in fine sperrits, and with the intention of returning in half an hour
or so, barring accidents. Why the whole lot of us couldn’t have marched
straight ahead, attacked the thieving swabs that were in the valley
and given ’em hokey-pokey, beats me, I can tell you! Show me my enemy,
and let me go for him without any palavering or beating about the bush,
that’s what I say. No amount of warrant-officers—boatswains, gunners,
or carpenters—would make me change my mind about that, not if I lived
to the age of Methusalem! There’s no knowing what prize-money may do
for a fellow, and if ever I retires into private life, I reckon I’ll
have a British man-o’-war going into action for a crest and “Wire in”
for the motto. Two words is enough for me so long as they mean a lot.
I ain’t much of a hand with a pen, it strikes me; for I’m drifting off
with the tide goodness knows where, and it’s likely enough I shall
broach-to altogether in a jiffy.
Come, pull yourself together, man, and show the young laddies and
lasses that your brain-box ain’t exactly a _wacuum_, so to speak—a
figurehead like them senseless things a-stuck about in Portsmouth
dockyard.
When the gunner went off with his two pals, he pertickly says to me,
“Stand easy a bit, Beddoes, if you please”—he was always a very perlite
cove was old Triggs; beg pardon, _Mr._ Triggs, I should say—“stand
easy, Beddoes,” he says, “or sit about, but don’t for the life o’
you forget to have four men a-doing sentry-go all the time.” He was
a cautious man, you see, the gunner. He took stock of everything,
and that was just the ruination of him in this case. I take it the
Admiralty would give him the sack _if they could find him_, but there
ain’t much chance of that now, worse luck!
I’m main sorry for Mr. Darcy, who was a smart young midshipman, and
always had a good word for us blue-jackets; and as for Ned, well, we
was like brothers, and there’s no need to say more.
I posted the sentries right enough, and made them load their rifles
with ball-cartridge. “The first thieving swab of an ugly nigger you
sees within twenty yards of this bivouac, put a bullet through him,”
says I; and I meant it too, mind you, for I’ve been mixed up in this
sort of warfare before, and don’t stand upon ceremony. I’d stake
my grog for the rest of the commission that the old gunner was too
blooming wary, and not quick enough with his shooting-irons; and you
may take my word for it, that’s how he got nobbled so easily. Ceremony
may be all very well for ambassadors or consuls, and fellows of that
kidney; but for fighting men it’s sheer rot, and a reg’lar waste of
time. I’ve seen it proved over and over again, though I don’t want to
be boastful.
We lit up our pipes, and smoked away like chimneys for a time, for we
was a bit tired after all the marching we had had over broken ground
and the scrimmage with the cavalry fellows. Likewise we took a good
pull at our water-bottles, for the heat was tremenjous, and our duds
were that wet with the perspiration you’d a thought we’d been wading
through a river. We yarned away, too, about the ups and downs of
campaigning life and so forth, but didn’t talk much above a whisper,
for we didn’t know what artful eavesdroppers there might be about; and
as I says to my mates, “If pitchers have ears, why shouldn’t the trees,
to say nothing of the jack-toads what’s crawling on ’em, as you may see
for yourselves with half an eye?”
When half an hour or so had passed, as I thought, I hauls out my ticker
to see how many bells had struck, and found it was pretty nearly an
hour since the gunner and the others had started. “Here’s a rum go,” I
says to my mates; “’tain’t ship-shape that they’re not back within the
hour, and it strikes me we ought to go and look for ’em, for they may
be in a quandary of some sort.” With that we knocks the ashes out of
our pipes, and listens with all our ears; but not a blessed sound could
we hear of any kind, barring the screams of monkeys and the screeching
of parrots. The sentries had heard nothing suspicious, but had seen the
smoke rising up from the valley till within the last half-hour, when it
had suddenly stopped. They had not heard any human voices for a good
long spell. Some o’ my mates was for getting under way, and starting
at once to search for the party, and some was for obeying orders and
remaining hove-to where we were.
Well, it was a bit of a fix for me, for I’d never been in command of a
shore-going party afore; though you’ll understand that through being
captain of the fore-top, and likewise of a gun at the after main-deck
quarters, I wasn’t all at sea as to giving orders and the like. After
turning the matter over in my mind for a spell, says I to my mates,
“Look here, my bully boys, it isn’t quite plain sailing for us; but I
tell you what we’ll do”—and I drew my ticker out agin—“we’ll give ’em
another quarter of an hour, and if they haven’t hove in sight by that
time, by thunder we’ll go in search of ’em! You see, mates, they may
have broached-to, or run on a reef, and through no fault o’ theirn be
prevented from hoisting signals of distress or firing minute-guns.
Some of you will say that a seaman’s dooty is to obey orders, and
that’s right enough, mates; but I reckon there are other dooties too
that can’t be chucked away into the scuppers, as it were. One must larn
where to draw the line. Do you suppose we’d have hammered them Danes—as
plucky chaps as ever stepped in shoe-leather, I’ve been told—if Nelson
hadn’t clapped his glass to his blind eye at Copenhagen, and swore till
he was black in the face that he couldn’t see the admiral’s signal to
haul out of the battle? In course we wouldn’t. That’s a case in point,
as them blooming lawyers say.”
I began to run short of breath here, for I’m no more good at
speechifying than I am at writing; and as I was mighty dry, and there
was no grog to the fore, I took a good long swill at my water-bottle.
But, mind you, my way of putting things brought every mother’s son to
my side in the argyment, and that’s what I’d been working up to. As I
said a spell ago, my motto is “Wire in,” and I sticks to it through
thick and thin; but then I likes my mates to be all of the same mind,
and game to back me up and carry it through.
Well, it was agreed unanimous. “Carry on, Jim,” said one of my
topmates; “give ’em fifteen minutes more by that old turnip o’ yourn,
and then if they haven’t turned up, it’s up anchor and shape a
departure course in the wake of Ned and his ‘cheap and chippy chopper.’”
I didn’t like my ticker, which had been my grandfather’s and my
father’s before me, spoken of in this disreverent sort of way, I can
tell you; but I was so pleased at the men all agreeing to see me
through that I took no notice at the time.
I didn’t show it, of course, but I was really alarmed when the
fifteen minutes had gone by and there was no sign of Mr. Triggs and
his companions. If the gunner had been a reg’lar fire-eater, or fond
of rash adventures, I could have understood his absence; but that an
out-and-out cautious and extra-politeful bloke like him should have got
too far from his supports, and perhaps into a serious quandary—well,
you’ll agree that it wasn’t altogether ship-shape.
It didn’t take us long to get under way, I can assure you; and you may
bet your bottom dollar we kept our loaded rifles to the fore and our
cutlasses handy. It was as easy as A B C to follow the marks of Ned’s
“chippy chopper,” for the trees were blazed in reg’lar Red Indian
fashion—a spell between each. By-and-by, however, we came slick upon a
path leading down into the valley, and this took us aback a bit, and we
halted for a few moments to hold a confab. The blazing of the trees had
ceased—that was borne in upon me at once, and of course I twigged the
reason for it. It was decided to keep straight on down the hill; but
I directed my mates to advance with caution and make as little noise
as possible. I felt a sort of uncanny feeling creeping over me, as if
ghosts were about in the jungle; but I’m not an atom creepy about them
gentry as a rule, mind you. We saw nothing and heard nothing, and every
moment I got more and more alarmed. If only a musket-shot had rung out,
or I could have heard the old gunner singing out for help, my mind
would have been a good deal easier, for my dooty would have been as
plain as a boarding-pike, so to speak. It was the strange silence that
worrited me and kept my pulses going like the throb of the pinnace’s
steam-engines.
However, ’tis a long lane that has no turning, and at length we came
to a place where four paths met. This was more puzzling than ever,
especially as Ned hadn’t blazed any trees. We kept straight on, as we
judged by the overgrown state of the side-paths that they hadn’t been
used for some time. In about five minutes, as near as I can judge, we
came on a place where there was piles of rocks lying about all over
the shop, just for all the world as if there’d been a score or two
of earthquakes the day before. You might have knocked me down with a
feather—and I’m fourteen stone if I’m an ounce, mind you—when we got
about a cable’s length further on; for to my horror I saw the marks
of a scuffle upon the ground, and worse than all, I picked up a gilt
button that I felt sure had been wrenched off Mr. Darcy’s jacket. As
you may suppose, we all came to a dead halt and began examining the
ground closely. There had been a tremenjous struggle, that was evident
at the first glance, and there was no need for any prophet to tell _me_
what had happened. Our poor shipmates had been trapped in some way; and
it gave me quite a turn to think that their dead bodies might be lying
stiff and stark behind those very rocks that we were alongside of.
We thought we might venture to kick up a bobbery now, particularly as
we were a fairly strong body of armed men, and could give a pretty
good account of any enemy that ventured to interfere with us. You see
we just had a faint hope that Mr. Triggs and his companions might be
somewhere within earshot, and that our giving ’em a hail might back ’em
up a bit if they was prisoners. However, we heard not a sound of any
kind, friendly or otherwise. “Sarch the rocks, mates,” says I, trying
to speak stern, though, Lord love yer, I felt for all the world as if I
was agoin’ to choke.
We left two men to do sentry-go, and set to work to overhaul them rocks
and all the ground and underwood which was near ’em; but not a blessed
sign of anything could we find except the marks of feet, and in places
these were plentiful enough, but ’tis a most tremenjous difficult thing
to track any one in a forest where there’s always a lot of dead leaves
and such like muck about.
Well, I’d be afraid, and that’s the truth, to say how many hours we
spent over that there hopeless job of searching for our lost shipmates.
We scoured the forest in all directions, made our way into the valley
to look for the enemy’s camp, but found nothing but a burned-out fire;
and overhauled the surrounding cliffs—and there was a pretty few of
’em, mind you—in hopes of lighting upon some of the blooming caves we’d
heard so much talk about. It just _was_ talk, and nothing else—that
I’ll take my affidavy to. Where were those swabs o’ mutineers and the
confounded Creole niggers that we’d been sent after? and where was
their hidden cargo? Shiver my timbers, if I wouldn’t have slugged the
lot of ’em if I could have got the chance. I don’t like fallin’ out
with people as a rule, specially strangers; but when it comes to their
kidnappin’ your own shipmates, and p’raps cutting their throats, or
giving ’em foul play of some sort or another, why then my monkey gits
up, I can tell you, and I’d think it child’s play to corpse the lot of
’em if they came within reach of my cutlass.
When the sun began to go down, I knew well enough that we must knock
off and make tracks for the camping-ground that Mr. Thompson had spoken
of. The alarm must be given as quickly as possible, so that the whole
force might turn-to and join in the search; but then a fresh difficulty
came to the fore, for we’d lost our guide, and hadn’t the remotest idea
of the bearings of this here bivouac. However, I don’t want to make
a long yarn out of this part of the business, so I’ll only tell you
that we made a sternboard, so to speak, and found our way back with
uncommon difficulty to the rough cart-track we had quitted early in
the afternoon. Here, of course, we got on the spoor of the brigade,
and had no difficulty in tracking ’em to their camping-ground. ’Twas a
weary march, and we were footsore and a bit done up when we got there,
which was after dark; and we ran a narrow shave of being shot down by
our own sentries.
Well, naterally there was a tremenjous sensation amongst all hands
when they heard our terrible story. The gunnery lootenant was almost
beside himself, and vowed vengeance on them dastardly rebels when he
caught them. He wanted to set off at once, but on coming to think it
over calmly, he saw that ’twas wellnigh impossible till the morning.
In the first place, every mother’s son was tired out by the long
stretch they’d had in full marching order; and, secondly, it was that
dark—there being no moon—that it would have been wellnigh impossible to
find our way through the forest, to say nothing of the chances it would
give them thundering swabs of mutineers and niggers to go for us under
cover of the darkness. They couldn’t have drubbed us, of course, but
through their sarpentine cunning they might have harassed us like old
winky.
The orders was passed round therefore to start in the morning, at the
first break of dawn.
Through the adventures what follered it seemed to me as I ought to make
some alterations in this here gimcrack of a log; but when I consults
the gunnery orficer—“You just leave it as it is, Jim Beddoes,” says
he; “’tis more interestin’,” he says. Well, ’tis a new thing to me
that anything I should have written, being no scholard, should be
interestin’; but, there, I’ve had my say. The yarn is spun, such as
it is, and I can only say in conclusion, and with many apologies
for takin’ of the liberty, “My dooty to you, and wishing you all
good-luck.”