before the captain. The twelve sailors shuffled about uneasily as they
stood against the cabin bulkhead, while Enoch Moss sat at the head of
the table with his charts and instruments before him. On one side stood
the condemned man, who was to be tried again, so that the skipper’s oath
to maroon him would be more than a sudden condemnation. It would have
the backing of twelve honest sailors in case of further developments.
That the twelve honest sailors would agree with the captain was evident
by the respectful attitude in which they stood, and the uneasy and
fearful glances they cast at him across the cabin table. O’Toole stood
in the cabin door, and behind him, looking over his shoulder, stood
Moll.
Enoch Moss looked up at the man before him and spoke in his deep, hoarse
voice.
“You have fought four times since you’ve been aboard,” said he; “the
last time you broke out your irons and nearly killed Davis, and I
promised to maroon you. I’ll do it before night.” Then he turned to the
men. “We have tried to keep this fellow in irons and he breaks out. He
has cut three of you. Do you agree with me that it is best to put him
ashore before further trouble, or not?”
“Yes, sir, put him on the beach,” came a hoarse answer from the men that
made O’Toole smile.
“Got anything to say before you go?” asked the skipper.
The poor fellow looked across to the door in the bulkhead. His eyes met
those of Moll, and he gazed longingly at her a moment while a look of
peculiar tenderness spread over his coarse, fierce face. Then he looked
at a seam in the cabin floor for an instant and appeared to be thinking.
“Well, speak up,” growled Enoch Moss.
“Yo no hablo Americano. Yo no understand. No, I say nothin’; yes, I say
thank you.” And he looked the skipper squarely in the face.
“You can take him forward,” said Enoch Moss.
As they filed out again into the cold and wet, Moll watched them, and
after they had gone the skipper called her.
“Do you know Gonzales or Davis?” said he.
“Never saw either of them before they came aboard this ship,” she
answered in a steady voice.
The captain looked long and searchingly at the woman before him. She met
his gaze fairly for the space of a minute; then her lip trembled
slightly.
“That will do. You may go,” said he, and his voice had a peculiar
sadness that few people had ever heard.
O’Toole’s step sounded on the deck overhead, and, as the stewardess went
forward into the main cabin, the mate’s voice sounded down the
companion-way. “It’s hauled to the north’ard, sir. Shall I let her come
as high as sou’-sou’west, sir?”
Enoch Moss sat silent at the table. He was thinking of a Spanish crest
he had seen tattooed on the white arm of the stewardess. It belonged to
her “family,” she had told him, and was tattooed there when she was a
child of sixteen.
“Yes, let her head up to the southwest, and call me when we get in close
enough to lower a boat,” he replied.
Before dark they were as close in as they dared to go, much closer than
one skipper out of ten would take his ship, even in calm weather. Then a
boat was lowered and Gonzales was put into it with enough to eat to last
him a month. Garnett and two sailors jumped in, and all was ready.
The skipper stood at the break of the poop, and beside him stood
O’Toole.
“Ye better not cast th’ raskil adrift till ye get ashore,” said the
mate, “for by th’ faith av th’ howly saints, ’twill be himself that will
be for coming aboard an’ laving ye to hunt a route from th’ Cape.”
“Trust me to see the pirit landed safely,” replied Garnett. “I’ve
handled _men_ before.”
A female head appeared at the door of the forward cabin just beneath the
skipper’s feet. He looked down at it unnoticed for a moment. Then he
spoke in a low voice, moving away from O’Toole, so he could not hear,--
“Would you like to go with him?”
Moll started as if shot. Then she looked up at the captain with a face
pale and drawn into a ghastly smile. She gave a hard laugh, and walked
out on the main-deck and looked at the boat as the oars fell across. The
condemned man looked up, and his eyes met hers, but she rested her arms
on the bulwarks and gazed steadily at him over the top-gallant-rail
until he went slowly out of sight.
Two hours later Garnett and the men returned with the empty boat.
The ship was headed away to the southwest, and the struggle to turn the
corner began with one man less in the port-watch.
In the dog-watch Garnett met O’Toole on the main-deck.
“We landed him right enough,” he said, “for we just put him ashore, and
then only cast off his hands, so we could get into the boat afore he
could walk. But what seemed almighty queer was his asking me to give the
skipper’s stewardess that ring. Do you suppose they was ever married or
knowed each other afore?”
“I don’t suppose nothin’, Garnett; but you better give her the ring.
Davis is a good enough man, but one man don’t try to kill another, so
strong, for nothin.’ Better give her the ring--and you want to git that
chafing-gear on the fore-royal-backstay a little higher up; it’s cuttin’
through against the yard.”
The following night at two bells the wind began to come in puffs, and in
less than half an hour afterwards it was snorting away in true Cape Horn
style.
It was Garnett’s watch on deck at midnight, and as he came on the poop
he saw there was to be some discomfort. Each rope of the standing and
running rigging, shroud and backstay, downhaul and clew-line, was piping
away with a lively note, and the deep, smothered, booming roar overhead
told how the ship stood to it and that the canvas was holding. The three
lower storm-topsails and the main spencer were all the sails set, and
for a while the ship stood up to it in good shape. At ten minutes past
three in the morning she shipped a sea that smothered her. With a rush
and thundering shock a hundred tons of water washed over her. The ship
was knocked off into the trough of the sea, and hove down on her beam
ends. The water poured down her hatch openings in immense volumes; the
main-hatch, being a “booby,” was smashed; and all hands were called to
save ship.
O’Toole and his watch managed to get the mizzen-trysail on her while
Garnett got the clew of the foretop-sail on the yard without bursting
it. Then the vessel gradually headed up again to the enormous sea.
The ship sagged off to leeward all the next day and was driven far below
the latitude of the Cape; then, as she gradually cleared the storm belt,
the wind slacked and top-gallant-sails were put on her to drive her back
again.
Five times did she get to the westward of the Cape, only to be driven
back again by gales of peculiar violence. She lost three sets of
topsails, two staysails, a mizzen-trysail, besides a dozen or more
pieces of lighter canvas, before the first day of August.
Part of this day she was in company with the large ship Shenandoah, but
as the wind was light she drew away, for in that high rolling sea it is
very dangerous for one ship to get close to another, as a sudden calm
might bring them in contact, which would prove fatal to one or both.
The night was bitter cold. The canvas rolled on the yards was as hard as
iron, and that which was set was as stiff to handle as sheet tin. Old
Dan, the quartermaster, and Sadg Bilkidg, the African sailor, were at
the wheel; the quartermaster swathed in a scarf and muffled up to the
chin, with his long, hooked nose sticking forward, looked as watchful
as--and not unlike--the great albatross that soared silently in the
wake.
A giant sea began rolling in from the southwest and the wind followed
suddenly. The foretop-sail went out of the bolt-ropes, and, as the ship
was to the westward of Tierra del Fuego and the wind blowing her almost
dead on it, she was hove-to with great difficulty. After a terrible
night the wind hauled a little. Not much, but enough to throw her head a
couple of points and let the sea come over her.
A huge mass of water fell on deck and washed a man, named Johnson,
overboard. He was one of Davis’s friends, and had been cut by Gonzales.
He remained within ten fathoms of the plunging ship for fully five
minutes, but nothing could be done for him.
Three days passed before the gale eased and swung to the southward, and
the high land of Tierra del Fuego was then in plain sight under the lee.
The man Davis was dead, and he was dropped overboard as soon as the gale
slacked enough to permit walking on the main-deck. Sail was made, in
spite of the heavy sea, and the ship headed away to the northward, at
last, with a crew almost dead from exposure. Everything was put on
forward, starting at a reefed foresail, until finally on the second day
she was tearing along under a maintop-gallant-sail.
The well was then sounded, and it was found she was making water so fast
that the pumps could just keep her afloat. Six days after this she came
logging into Valparaiso with her decks almost awash. A tug came
alongside and relieved a crew of men who looked more like a set of
swollen corpses than anything else. Men with arms blue and puffed to
bursting from the steady work at the pump-brakes, their jaws set and
faces seamed and lined with the strain, dropped where they stood beside
the welling pump-lead upon the deck.
They had weathered the Cape and saved the ship with her cargo of
railroad iron, for they had stood to it, and steam took the place of
brawn just as the water began lapping around the hatch combings. O’Toole
approached Garnett as they started to turn in for a rest after the
fracas.
“There’s a curse aboard us, Garnett. Come here!” said the mate. He led
the way into the cabin, and pointed to the open door of the stewardess’s
room.
“It’s a good thing to be a woman,” growled Garnett. “Just think of a man
being able to turn in and sleep peaceful-like that way, hey? Stave me,
but I’d like to turn in for a week and sleep like that,” and he looked
at the quiet form in the bunk.
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t a good thing to be a woman,” said O’Toole,
quietly. “Faith, it may be a good thing to be woman, but as for me, I’ll
take me place as a man, an’ no begrudgin’. Moll is dead, man,--been dead
for two days gone. The owld man ain’t said nothin’, for he wanted to
bring her ashore, dacent an’ quiet like. She bruk into th’
medicin’-chist off th’ Straits.”
Garnett removed his cap, and wiped the dent in the top of his bald head.
“Ye don’t say!” he said, slowly. Then he was silent a moment while they
both looked into the room. Garnett put up his handkerchief and rubbed
his head again.
“It was so, then, hey?” he said. “An’ Davis was the man what broke ’em
up. Too bad, too bad!”
“By th’ look av th’ matter, it must ha’ been. Yes, ’pon me whurd, for a
fact, it must ha’ been.”
The captain’s step sounded in the after-cabin, and the mates went
forward to their bunks.
_THE BLACK CREW OF COOPER’S HOLE_
To the southward of Cape Horn, a hundred leagues distant across the
Antarctic Ocean, lie the South Orkneys. Sailors seldom see these strange
islands more than once. Those who do see them are not always glad of it
afterwards, for they usually have done so with storm topsails straining
away at the clews and the deep roar of a hurricane making chaos of sound
on the ship’s deck. Then those on watch have seen the drift break away
to leeward for a few moments, and there, rising like some huge, dark
monster from the wild southern ocean, the iron-hard cliffs appear to
warn the Cape Horner that his time has come. If they are a lucky crew
and go clear, they may live to tell of those black rocks rising to meet
the leaden sky. If they are too close to wear ship and make a slant for
it, then there is certain to be an overdue vessel at some port, and they
go to join the crews of missing ships. The South Orkney ledges tell no
tales, for a ship striking upon them with the lift of the Cape Horn sea
will grind up like a grain of coffee in a mill.
In the largest of these grim rocks is a gigantic cleft with walls rising
a sheer hundred fathoms on either side. The cleft is only a few fathoms
across, and lets into the rocky wall until suddenly it opens again into
a large, quiet, land-locked harbor. This is the Great Hole of the
Orkneys. On all sides of this extinct volcanic crater rise the walls,
showing marks of eruptions in past ages, and a lead-line dropped at any
point in the water of the hole will show no bottom at a hundred fathoms.
Since the days of Drake and Frobisher the hole has been visited at long
intervals, but it is safe to say that not more than six white men have
visited it since Cook’s Antarctic voyage. To get in and out of the
passage safely requires a knowledge of the currents of the locality, and
the heavy sea that bursts into a churning caldron of roaring white
smother on each side of the entrance would make the most daring sailor
hesitate before sending even a whale-boat through those grinding ledges
into the dark passage beyond.
To the eastward of the Horn, all along the coast of Tierra del Fuego,
the fur seals are plentiful. At the Falklands many men of the colony
hunt them for their pelts. The schooners formerly used in this trade
were small vessels, ranging from sixty to a hundred tons, and the crews
were usually a mixture of English and native.
After working along the southern shore of Tierra del Fuego they often
went as far north as the forty-fifth parallel. They then used to
rendezvous at the coaling station in the Straits of Magellan, sell out
their catch, and afterwards, with enough supplies to carry them home,
they would clear for the Falklands or the West Coast.
A rough, savage lot were these sealing crews, but they were well
equipped with rifles of the best make and unlimited numbers of
cartridges. Sometimes they carried a whale-gun forward and took chances
with it at the great fin-backs for a few tons of bone. These cannon
threw a heavy exploding harpoon which both killed and secured the whale
if struck in a vital part.
The largest schooner of the Falkland fleet, the Lord Hawke, was lying
off the coaling station, one day, sending ashore her pelts for shipment
to Liverpool. Her skipper, John Nelson, was keeping tally of the load
upon a piece of board with the bullet end of a long rifle cartridge. Two
other vessels were anchored in the channel, already discharged, and
their crews were either getting ready to put to sea or lounging about
the station. John Nelson suddenly looked up from his tally and saw a
strange figure standing outlined against the sky upon a jagged spur of
rock about half a mile distant on the other side of the Strait. The
natives to the southward of the Strait are very fierce and dangerous, so
Nelson swore at a sailor passing a hide and bade him “avast.” Then he
took up his glass and examined the figure closely.
It appeared to be that of a white man clothed in skins, carrying either
a staff or gun, upon which he leaned.
“There are no men from the schooner ashore over there; hey, Watkins?”
said Nelson.
“Naw,” said his mate, looking at the solitary figure. “It’s one of those
cannibals from the s’uth’ard.”
“Pass me a rifle,” said the skipper.
The mate did so, and Nelson slipped in the cartridge he had been using
for a pencil.
“Now stand by and see the critter jump,” said he, and his crew of six
Fuegians stopped shifting hides and waited.
John Nelson was an Englishman of steady nerves, but he rested his rifle
carefully against the topmost backstay and drew the sights fine upon the
man on the rock.
It was a useless act of brutality, but John Nelson was a fierce butcher,
and the killing of countless seals had hardened him. A man who kills a
helpless seal when the poor creature raises its eyes with an imploring
half-human appeal for mercy will develop into a vicious butcher if he
does it often.
The picture on the schooner’s deck was not very pleasant. Nelson, with
his hard, bronzed face pressed to the rifle-stock, and his gleaming eye
looking along the sights at the object four hundred fathoms distant. It
was a long shot, but the cold gray twilight of the Antarctic spring-time
made the mark loom strangely distinct against the lowering evening sky.
There was a sharp report and all hands looked at the figure. Nelson
lowered his rifle and peered through the spurt of smoke. The man on the
rock gave a spring to one side, then he waved his hand at the schooner
and disappeared.
“Bloody good shot, that,” said John Nelson, handing Watkins the rifle.
“That’s one for the crew of the Golden Arrow. I guess that fellow won’t
care so much about eating sailors as he did when those poor devils went
ashore to the s’uth’ard last year.”
“Think you hit him, for sure?” asked the mate.
“Didn’t you see him jump?”
“Oh, yes,” said Watkins. “Here, Sam, go ahead with the skins. Take that
pelt--damn!” As he spoke the faint crack of a rifle sounded and Nelson
saw his mate clutch his leg.
“Nipped you, by thunder! Now where in the name of Davy Jones did that
fellow get a gun? Blow me, but things are coming to a pretty pass when a
vessel can’t unload in this blooming Strait without somebody getting
shot. I’d lay ten to one it was that Dago the Silver Sea marooned last
year.”
Watkins was not badly hurt, however, and after the cut in his leg was
tied up he sat about the deck and cursed at the way the British
government allowed its stations to be open to the attacks of savages.
The station was not well fortified, but the few men there had had little
trouble, and the block-house of wood and stone was found to be
sufficient shelter. There was little for the natives to steal save coal,
so they were left alone. When a few straggling Fuegians crossed the
Strait, as they sometimes did, they were peaceful enough, and only
traded in skins and rum. Fire-arms they never used and did not care for.
After the last boat-load of hides was sent ashore from the Hawke, the
crew went below and began to trim the vessel’s stores for getting under
way. They would start for the Falklands at daylight.
It was late when the lookout was set and all hands off watch had turned
in.
Nelson and his mate, Watkins, were sleeping in the cabin to starboard
while the harpooner and a half-breed hunter occupied the port bunks. The
fire burned low in the small stove and the cabin was dark.
About three in the morning several canoes shot out from the southern
shore of the Strait and headed rapidly towards the Lord Hawke. It was
getting light in the east and the man on the lookout could make out the
grim monument of Admiral Drake’s, where that truculent commander had
once swung off a mutineer into eternity. The man on the lookout struck
off six bells and then went below to get a pipe of tobacco.
When he came on deck, five minutes later, he was astonished to meet
twenty gigantic Patagonians clad in skins, who were being led towards
the hatchway by a dark-faced, heavy built Spaniard.
“_Hace bien tiempo quel a manana_,” observed the leader, nodding and
smiling pleasantly.
“What the----”
But before he could finish, a savage struck him a blow on the head with
a club, and that ended his interest in things of this world. He was
quickly knifed and dropped overboard. Then the Spaniard led the way aft.
Nelson and his comrades awoke to find a couple of black giants bending
over each of them. Before they could offer any resistance the knives
and clubs of the black crew had put an end to any possible discussion.
There was an outcry, but even the skipper’s single fierce yell was not
heard by the men on the other vessels. The leader grasped Nelson by the
throat while four natives held his arms and legs.
“You shot at me yesterday,” said the Spaniard.
“I didn’t know you were a white man. Who are you?” gasped Nelson, in a
strangling whisper.
“Gretto Gonzales.”
“The man whose wife was stewardess on the Silver Sea--you were marooned
for killing the man who ran off with her?”
“How you hear?”
“Saw it in last year’s newspaper--let go of my throat---- Ah!”
It was all over, and the crew of the sealing schooner were dropped
overboard. The men at the station were astonished to find the Lord Hawke
standing out to sea so early in the morning without settling for the
trade at the company’s store. A few weeks later the crews of the other
Falkland schooners were more astonished to find that the Lord Hawke had
not returned to the islands. At the end of two months John Nelson and
his crew were given up for lost, for the Hawke was seen no more in the
sealing fleet. Gretto Gonzales, the Spaniard, held her head straight for
the South Orkneys and ran her through the entrance of the Great Hole.
Once safe inside, he built huts of stone for his stores, and then stood
to sea again to meet the Cape Horn fleet.
As he had by some means--previous to the taking of the Hawke--heard of
the death of Davis from the wounds he had given him in the fight on the
Silver Sea, he was afraid to set foot in one of the Strait stations.
Captain Enoch Moss had marooned him two years ago for his savage conduct
aboard his ship, and since then he had become a chief among the fierce
eastern natives. These savages were large and active, and unlike the
hopeless Fuegians of Smith’s Channel. His life, like theirs, was wild
and restless, but it was unbearable for its monotony, so he had picked
his crew and determined on this wild plan of piracy. His thoughts also
appear to have been often with his wife, whom he believed to be alive,
for many of his actions point that this was his chief motive in holding
up the vessels of the Cape Horn fleet.
The first vessel he sighted was the Norwegian bark Erik, and he boarded
her in his whale-boat during a calm. She was reported as missing.
The next vessel was the large ship James Burk, of San Francisco. He
fought her, and followed her for nearly ten days, and finally took her
abreast of the Ramirez after having shot half her crew from his own
deck. She was also added to the list of missing ships and no one in the
civilized world was the wiser.
For over a year and a half Gonzales held up vessels of all kinds, and
not a soul escaped to tell a tale. How many ships, still overdue, were
taken by him no one will ever know, but it is safe to say they were
many. His storehouses at the Orkneys were filled with enough material to
supply a colony.
After taking enough supplies to last him for years, Gonzales ceased to
attack vessels. This was proved in the case of the Sentinel, whose
skipper reported a fast, black sealing schooner, without a name, manned
by a crew of Patagonians, having spoken him in south latitude 50°, west
longitude 96° 35’. The skipper of the sealing vessel came aboard and
asked the captain of the Sentinel to sell him Remington 45-90 cartridges
for sealing. After this he asked to see all the passengers, and insisted
on talking for some time to the stewardess. Then he left in his boat,
calling out a farewell in Spanish.
The English ship Porpoise, a few months later, reported the same strange
sealer off Juan Fernandez. He came aboard with a dozen of his giant
crew, and asked for rifle cartridges. He also held a long conversation
about the different vessels in the Cape Horn trade, and asked many
questions in regard to their skippers and after guards.
“I haf a wife; she runs away on ship,--I look for her,” said he to the
captain of the Porpoise.
“Hope you will find her,” said the Englishman, with a sneering grin and
a glance at the Spaniard’s strange dress.
“You seem amused,” said Gonzales.
“I am,” replied the skipper, laughing.
“Then see I don’t kill you,” said Gonzales, and he left without another
word.
The sealing schooner was within fifty fathoms of the ship, and after
Gonzales went back aboard the captain watched him. As he looked, he saw
the Spaniard raise a gun to his shoulder and the smoke spurt forth. At
the same instant a bullet tore its way through the taffrail, within an
inch of his waist.
“Sink him, if his wife hasn’t driven him mad,” cried the captain, as he
dived below.
Five other vessels reported meeting this strange sealer before the year
was out, and each told of a somewhat similar experience in regard to the
stranger’s inquiries. As sealers seldom speak deep-water ships, this was
thought strange, and when Enoch Moss, of the Yankee clipper Silver Sea,
read the latest account at Havre, he called his first mate, Mr. O’Toole,
into the after cabin.
“Have you read the _Marine Journal_?” said he, looking up at the big
red-headed Irishman.
“No, sir; how is it now?”
“Read that, and tell me what you make of it.”
O’Toole looked hard at the page for some moments, and then replied,--
“’Pon me whurd, for a fact, it’s him, Gonzales, th’ very man we marooned
off th’ Cape for knifin’ Davis. Now, what in th’ name av th’ saints is
he doin’ aboard a sealer with a native crew? He don’t know poor Moll is
dead, for sure, but he’s heard av th’ man he knifed.”
“Maybe he will visit us to the s’uth’ard,” said Enoch Moss.
“In that case, ’twill be as well to have a few rifles aboard, for a
fact. Shall I see to it?”
“Yes; we clear to-morrow at noon.”
And O’Toole went forward.
At the main-hatch he met Garnett, the second mate, and he asked,--
“D’ye mind Gonzales? Th’ same as ye put off on th’ rocks av Hermite
Isle?”
“The Dago who killed Davis for his wife’s sake?”
“Th’ same.”