CHAPTER VII.

FIRE!

'Well, and if this here ain't been a right-down sort of proper cajolin'

job tew! Strike me bald, Mr. Tregarthen, if the hexecution of this here

trepanning ain't vurth a gold medal, let alone the planning of it!'

shouted Jacob.

I rose from my knees with my hand upon my heart, breathing short. The

reaction from the intense mental strain of the preceding twenty minutes

ran a feeling of swooning through my brain, but the fresh air and sense

of safety speedily rallied me. Helga stood at the wheel, steering the

barque. I flourished my arm to her, and she kissed her hand to me. Close

against the securely covered hatch stood the two boatmen, and at either

man's feet lay a heavy belaying-pin, which, as I knew by what had been

preconcerted, had been gripped by their powerful fists ready for the

first black head that might have followed me as I emerged.

'Never should ha' believed you could have compassed it!' exclaimed

Abraham. 'Never could ha' supposed that such artful chaps as them

darkies was so easy to be took in! A hay wan piece of acting, Mr.

Tregarthen! No theayter show that e'er I've heard of or sat at ever came

up to it!'

All was silent below. I had thought, on the hatch being thrust to, that

the imprisoned devils would have fallen to beating and bawling. Not a

sound! Were they accepting their fate with the resignation of the

Mussulman? The scantling of the hatch-cover that secured them was of

unusual thickness. When opened, the foremost lid slid back on top of the

other, and when closed, as it now was, it was held fast to the coaming

by a strong iron-hinged bar fitting to a staple in which lay a padlock.

The after-lid was kept down by an iron batten, so that, once secured,

the hatch-cover was in all respects as impenetrable from above or below

as the deck itself. Nor were we under any apprehension that the immured

men could find other means of escaping. The bulkhead of the forecastle

was a massive wall of wood. There was, indeed, a little hatch right

forward, by which the forepeak might be entered, but this forepeak was

also stoutly bulkheaded, with the cargo in the hold coming hard against

the division; and though the men should contrive to break through into

the hold, the secured after-hatches would still as effectually bar the

deck to them as though every mother's son lay helplessly manacled in the

bottom of the ship.

'Now,' said I, 'the poor wretches must not suppose we mean to starve

them. Murderers though they be, Heaven knows one can't but pity them,

seeing what the wrong was that drove them into crime. Hush, that I may

catch their answer!'

I stepped over to the forecastle chimney, which, as I have already told

you, pierced the planks close against the opening under the top-gallant

deck. It stood as high as a man; my mouth was on a level with the

orifice, and the zigzag funnel provided as excellent a speaking-tube as

though designed for that and no other purpose.

'Below, there!' I cried through it, and thrice did I utter this summons

before I received a response.

'What you wantchee?' floated up a reply--thin, reed-like, unreal, a tone

not to be distinguished.

'I am hailing to let you know that we shall keep you liberally supplied

with food and fresh water,' I shouted. 'Plenty of fresh air will blow

down to you through this chimney. Take notice: you are securely

imprisoned. There is no possibility of your escaping. At the same time,

if you make the least effort to release yourselves we will leave you to

starve below and to perish miserably with thirst.'

'What do you mean to do with us?' was the faint cry that followed my

speech.

'That is our business,' I roared back. 'Keep you quiet, and you shall be

well used!'

I waited for the voice to speak again, but all remained hushed, and I

came away very well satisfied to know that Nakier, at all events, would

understand my language and translate it to the others.

This plot had been so carefully prepared that we knew exactly what to

do. Our first business was to shift the barque's helm and trim sail for

the Canaries--the land that lay nearest to us--where, at Santa Cruz, we

might count upon getting all the help we required. We briefly arranged

that Jacob should keep watch at the hatch. At the first sound of

disturbance below he was to call us. There was small need for such

sentinelling, yet our fears seemed to find it necessary, at the outset

at all events, for they were eleven to three, and we could not forget

_that_, securely imprisoned as we knew them to be.

I went aft with Abraham. My brave little Helga, on my approach, let go

the wheel, and extended her hands. My love for her, that had been held

silent in my heart by the troubles, the worries, the anxieties, the

perils which had been pressing heavily upon us for many days, now leapt

in me, a full and abounding emotion, and, taking her in my arms, I held

her to me, and kissed her once, and yet again. Abraham, grasping a spoke

of the wheel, swung off from it, giving us, with 'longshore modesty, his

back, as he gazed steadfastly over the stern. She struggled for a

moment, and was then quiet, trying to hide her blushing face against my

shoulder.

'It must have come to this,' I whispered, 'sooner or later; and what is

soonest is always best, my love, in such matters. You are mine by right

of the poor old _Anine_; you are mine, Helga, by right of your father's

commands to me.'

I kissed her again, released her, and she went to the rail and overhung

it for a few minutes, while I waited, watching her.

'Now, dear heart,' said I, 'let us get the ship round, and you shall

tell us what course to steer for Santa Cruz.'

From this moment we were too busy for a long while to think of

sentiment. The barque was under all plain sail, and we were but three

men to get the yards braced round. The wind was a very light breeze, the

sea smooth and delicately crisped, the sky a pure azure, unblurred

anywhere by so much as a feather-tip of cloud. Helga, still wearing a

rosy face, but with the very spirit of happiness and hope radiant in her

eyes--and no better sign of how it was with her heart could I have asked

of her--fetched the chart, and, having determined the course, took the

wheel from Abraham, and the three of us went to work with the braces.

We sprang about in red-hot haste, since none of us liked the notion of

leaving the hatch unwatched for even a few minutes. But two pairs of

hands only could not have dealt without tedious toil with those yards.

According to Captain Bunting's reckoning, we had been in the latitude of

Madeira on Tuesday the 31st of October, but, spite of our having been

hove to during the fierce weather of November the 1st and 2nd, we had

driven heavily to the southward, so that now on this afternoon of

Friday, November 3rd, we computed our distance from the Canaries to be

some hundred miles: I can but speak as my memory serves me, but these

figures I believe fairly represent the distance. The light wind softly

humming in our rigging out of the north-east would not suffer the barque

to lie her course for the islands by a point or two, but this was a

matter of little moment. We might surely count from one hour to another

now on heaving some sort of sail into sight, and in expectation of this

we took the English ensign out of the locker and bent it on to the peak

halliards with the jack down ready for hoisting when the moment

arrived. Not that we expected that any merchantman we might fall in with

would greatly help us. It was hardly to be supposed that a shipmaster

would consent to receive a mutinous, murderous crew of eleven coloured

men into his vessel. The utmost we could hope from a ship homeward bound

like ourselves was the loan of a couple of men to assist us in

navigating the barque to Funchal.

Indeed, the sense of our necessity in this way grew very strong in me

after we had come to a pause in our labour of bracing the yards up, and

were standing near the forecastle hatch pale with heat and wet with

perspiration, and panting heavily: I say I grew mighty sensible of the

slenderness of our little crew of three men and a girl--who, to be sure,

in her boy's clothes would have been the nimblest of us all aloft, but

who could do no service in that way in her woman's dress--when I sent my

gaze up at the quiet breasts of sail softly swelling one upon another,

and rising spire-like, and thought of how it must be with us should

heavy weather set in, such a gale as we might be able to show no more

than a close-reefed topsail to, unless the whole fabric of masts and

canvas was to go overboard.

I said to Abraham: 'Don't you think we could safely trust a couple of

those poor devils below--Punmeamootty, for example, and that tawny

fellow, Mow Lauree? We're terribly short-handed.'

'Ay,' he answered, 'short-handed we are, as you say, sir; but trust e'er

a one of 'em, arter the trick they've been sarved! Lord love 'ee! the

first thing them two men 'ud do whensoever our backs should be tarned

for a moment 'ud be to lift that hatch there. And then stand by!'

''Soides,' exclaimed Jacob, 'this ere's to be a salwage job, and, as

poor old Tommy 'ud ha' said, we don't want to make no more shares than

the diwisions what's already represented.'

I was not to have been influenced by Jacob's talk about shares; but

Abraham's remark was to the point; it convinced me, and I dropped the

subject, making up my mind to this--that, if the wind should freshen,

there was nothing for it but to shorten sail as best we could, and leave

what we could not deal with to blow away.

When our work of trimming yards was ended, I told Jacob to boil a

quantity of salt beef for the fellows below, that they might have

rations to last them several days. We found a breaker stowed away in the

long-boat, and this we filled with fresh water from the scuttle-butt,

ready to hand through the hatch. I was very earnest in this work. It was

easily imagined that the interior in which the men lay imprisoned would

be desperately hot, with no more air to get to them than such as sulkily

sank out of the listless breeze through the zigzag chimney, and with the

planks of the deck above their heads like the top of an oven with the

day-long pouring of the sun. And, miscreants as they were, villains as I

have no doubt they would have ultimately proved themselves to us, I

could not endure to think of them as athirst, and also tormented with

fears that we intended to leave them to perish of that most horrible

form of suffering.

Yet it would not do to make separate parcels of the provisions we

intended for them. We must open the hatch at our peril while we lowered

the food; and this was to be done once, and once only.

It was past five by the time that all was ready. Twice had we heard a

sound of knocking in the hatchway; but I guessed that it signified a

demand for water, and dared take no notice of it until we were prepared.

The three of us--Helga being at the wheel--armed ourselves with a heavy

iron belaying-pin apiece, and, stationing the boatmen at the hatch, I

put my face against the mouth of the funnel and hailed the men through

it. I was instantly answered:

'Yaas, yaas, sah! In the name of Allah, water!'

It was such another thin, reed-like voice as had before sounded, yet not

the same. This time it might have been Nakier who spoke.

'We are going to give you water and food now!' I shouted. 'We will open

the hatch; but only one man must show himself to receive the things. If

more than one of you shows himself we will close the hatch instantly,

and you will get no water. Do you understand me?'

'Yaas, yaas,' responded the voice, sounding in my ear as though it were

half a mile distant. 'We swear by Allah only one man he show hisself.'

'Let that man be Punmeamootty!' I bawled.

I then returned to the hatch. Jacob, putting the belaying-pin into his

coat pocket, stood abaft ready to rush the lid of the hatch to at a cry

from me, while Abraham, on the left, hung, with poised weapon, prepared

for the first hint of a scramble up from below. I remember the look in

his face: it was as though he were already fighting for his life. I

slipped the padlock, withdrew the bar, and pushed the cover back some

three or four inches. The glare on the deck blinded me when I peered

down: the interior seemed as black as midnight to my eyes.

'Are you there, Punmeamootty?' I cried.

I heard a faint 'Yaas,' pronounced in a subdued, terrified tone.

'Come up till your hands show,' cried I, for I feared that he might have

his knife drawn and would stab me if I put my arms down.

His hands, with extended fingers, rose through the mere slice of opening

like those of a drowning man above water, and then I could see the

glimmer of his eyes as he looked up.

'Are the rest of you well away?'

'Allee standing back! Allee standing back!' he exclaimed piteously.

On this I pulled the hatch open a little wider, Abraham bending over it

with the belaying-pin lifted; and, the interstice being now wide enough,

I fell to work as quickly as possible to hand down the provisions. These

consisted of three or four bags of ship's biscuit and a number of large

pieces of boiled salt horse. But the water-cask, or breaker rather, gave

me some trouble. What its capacity was I do not know. It was too heavy

for me to deal with single-handed. I called Jacob, and together we slung

it in a couple of bights of rope, and, rolling it over the coaming,

lowered away. It effectually blocked the hatch while it hung in it, and

Punmeamootty had to back away to receive it.

This done, I threw down a few pannikins, not knowing but that they might

be without a drinking-vessel in the forecastle, then closed the hatch,

catching a loud cry from below as I did so; but I dared not pause to ask

what it was, and a moment later the cover was securely bolted, with

Jacob sitting upon it, leisurely pulling out his pipe, and Abraham and

I walking aft.

Some time later than this, bringing the hour to about six o'clock, Helga

and I were eating some supper--I give the black tea, the biscuit, and

beef of this meal the name they carry at sea--one or the other of us

holding the wheel that Abraham might obtain some sleep in the cabin,

when the man Jacob, who was trudging a little space of the deck forward,

suddenly called to me. I left the wheel in Helga's hands, and made my

way to the boatman.

'Oi fear them chaps is a-suffocating below,' said he; 'they're

a-knocking desperate hard against the hatch, and their voices has been

a-pouring through that there chimney as though their language wor smoke.

Hark! and ye'll hear 'em.'

The sound of beating was distinct. I went to the mouth of the funnel,

and heard a noise of wailing.

'What is it?' I cried. 'What is wrong with you below?'

'Oh, give us air, sah! give us air!' was the response. 'Some men die; no

man he live long downee here.'

God knows to whom that weak, sick voice belonged. It struck a horror

into me.

'We must give them air, Jacob,' I cried, 'or they're all dead men. What

is to be done?'

'There's nowt for it but to open the hatch,' he answered.

'Yes,' cried I; 'we can lay bare a little space of the hatchway--enough

to freely ventilate the forecastle. But how to contrive that they shall

not slip the cover far enough back to enable them to get out?'

He thought a moment, then, with the promptitude that is part of the

education of the seafaring life, he cried, 'I have it!'

Next moment he was speeding aft. I saw him spring into the starboard

quarter-boat with an energy that proved his heart an honest and humane

one, and in a trice he was coming forward holding a couple of boat

stretchers--that is to say, pieces of wood which are placed in the

bottom of a boat for the oarsman to strain his legs against.

'These'll fit, I allow,' cried he, 'and save half an hour of sawing and

cutting and planing.'

He placed them parallel upon the after-lid, and their foremost

extremities suffered the lid which travelled to be opened to a width

that gave plenty of scope for air, but through which it would have been

impossible for the slenderest human figure to squeeze. Between us we

bound these stretchers so that there was no possibility of their

shifting, and then I tried the sliding cover, and found it as hard-set

as though wholly closed and padlocked.

'How is it now with you?' I cried, through this interstice.

The reply came in the form of a near chorus of murmurs, which gave me to

know that all the poor wretches had drawn together under the hatch to

breathe. I desired to be satisfied that there was air enough for them,

and called again, 'How is it with you now, men?'

This time I could distinctly recognise the melodious voice of Nakier:

'It is allee right now. Oh, how sweet is dis breeving! Why you wantchee

keep us here?'

He was proceeding, but I cut him short; the liberation of the wretched

creatures was not to be entertained for an instant, and it could merely

grieve my heart to the quick, without staggering my resolution, to

listen to the protests and appeals of them as they stood directly under

the hatch in that small, black, oppressive hole of a forecastle.

After this all remained quiet among them. I was happy to believe that

they were free from suffering; but, though I knew the hatch to be secure

as though it was shut tight and the hinged bar bolted, yet it was

impossible not to feel uneasy at the thought of its lying even a little

way open. Of all the nights that Helga and I had as yet passed, this one

of Friday, November the 3rd, was the fullest of anxiety, the most

horribly trying. The wind held very light; the darkness was richly

burthened with stars, there was much fire in the sea too, and the moon,

that was drawing on to her half, rode in brilliance over the dark world

of waters which mirrored her light in a wedge of rippling silver that

seemed to sink a hundred miles deep. We dared not leave the hatch

unwatched a minute, and our little company of four we divided into

watches, thus: one man to sentinel the Malays, two resting, the fourth

at the wheel. But there was to be no rest for me, nor could Helga

sleep, and for the greater space of the night we kept the deck together.

Yet there were times when anxiety would yield to a quiet, pure emotion

of happiness, when I had my little sweetheart's hand under my arm, and

when by the clear light of the moon I gazed upon her face and thought of

her as my own, as my first love, to be my wife presently, as I might

hope--a gift of sweetness and of gentleness and of heroism, as it might

well seem to me, from old Ocean himself. That she loved me fondly I did

truly believe and, indeed, know. It might be that the memory of her

father's words to me had directed, and now consecrated, her affection.

She loved me, too, as one who had adventured his life to save hers, who

had suffered grievously in that attempt--as one, moreover, whom

bereavement, whom distress, privation, all that we had endured, in

short, had rendered intimate to her heart as a friend, and, as it might

be, now that her father was gone and she was a girl destitute of means,

her only friend. All had happened since October the 21st: it was now the

3rd of November. A little less than a fortnight had sufficed for the

holding of this wild, adventurous, tragical, yet sweet passage of our

lives. But how much may happen in fourteen days! Seeds sown in the

spirit have time to shoot, to bud, and to blossom--ay, and often to

wither--in a shorter compass of time. Was my dear mother living? Oh! I

might hope that, seeing that, if ever Captain Bunting's message about me

had been delivered, she would before this be knowing that I was safe, or

alive, at least. What would she think of Helga? What of me, coming back

with a sweetheart, and eager for marriage?--coming back with a young

girl of whom I could tell her no more than this: that she was brave and

good and gentle; an heroic daughter; all that was lovely and fair in

girlhood meeting in her Danish and English blood.

The morning broke. All through the night there had been silence in the

forecastle; but daylight showed how the extreme vigilance of those long

hours had worked in my face, as I might tell by no other mirror than

Helga's eyes, whose gaze was full of concern as we viewed each other by

the spreading light of the dawn. There was the dim gleam of a ship's

canvas right abreast of us to starboard, and that was all to be seen

the whole horizon round.

After we had got breakfast, the three of us went forward and received

the empty breaker from the fellows below, contriving on our removing the

stretchers so to pose ourselves as to be ready to beat down the first of

them if a rush should be attempted, and instantly close the hatch. The

breaker came empty to our hands. We filled and lowered it as on the

previous evening, then left the hatch a little open as before; and now,

so far as the provisioning of the fellows was concerned, our work for

the day was ended, seeing that they had beef and biscuit enough to last

them for several days. They made no complaint as to the heat or want of

air; but after we had lowered the little cask, and were fixing the

stretchers, several of them shouted out to know what we meant to do with

them, and I heard Nakier vowing that if we released them they would be

honest, that they had sworn by the Koran and would go to hell if they

deceived us; but we went on securing the hatch with deaf ears, and then

Jacob and I went aft, leaving Abraham to watch.

The sun was hanging about two hours and a half high over the western

sea-line that afternoon, when the light air that had been little more

than a crawling wind all day freshened into a pleasant breeze with

weight enough slightly to incline the broad-beamed barque. This pleasant

warm blowing was a refreshment to every sense: it poured cool upon our

heated faces; it raised a brook-like murmur, a sound as of some shallow

fretting stream on either hand the vessel; and, above all, it soothed us

with a sense and reality of motion, for to it the barque broke the

smooth waters bravely, and the wake of her, polished and iridescent as

oil, went away astern to the scope of two or three cables. A few

wool-white clouds floated along the slowly darkening blue like puffs of

steam from the funnel of a newly started locomotive; but they had not

the look of the trade cloud, Helga said. She had taken sights at noon,

had worked out the vessel's reckoning, and had made me see that it would

not need very many hours of sailing to heave the high land of Teneriffe

into sight over the bow, if only wind enough would hold to give the old

bucket that floated under us headway.

I was holding the wheel at this hour I am speaking of, and Helga was

abreast of me, leaning against the rail, sending her soft blue glances

round the sea as she talked. Abraham, with a pipe in his mouth, his arms

folded, and his head depressed, was slowly marching up and down beside

the forecastle hatch. Jacob lay sound asleep upon a locker in the cuddy

within easy reach of a shout down the companionway or through the

skylight.

On a sudden my attention was taken from what Helga was saying, and I

found myself staring at the mainmast, which was what is called at sea a

'bright' mast--that is to say, unpainted, so that the slowly crimsoning

sun found a reflection in it, and the western splendour lay in a line of

pinkish radiance upon the surface of the wood. This line, along with a

portion of the spar, to the height, perhaps, of eighteen or twenty feet,

seemed to be slowly revolving, as though, in fact, it were part of a

gigantic corkscrew, quietly turned from the depth of the hold. At first

I believed it might be the heat of the atmosphere. Helga observing that

I stared, looked too, and instantly cried out:

'The vessel is on fire!'

'Why, yes!' I exclaimed; 'that bluish haze is smoke!'

I had scarcely pronounced these words when Abraham, with his face turned

our way, came to a dead halt, peered, and then roared out:

'Mr. Tregarthen, there's smoke a-filtering up out of the main hatch!'

'Take this wheel!' said I to Helga; then, in a bound, I gained the

skylight, into which I roared with all my lungs for Jacob to come on

deck. As I ran forward I saw smoke thinly rising in bluish wreaths and

eddies round about the sides of the main-hatch, and from under the

mast-coat at the foot of the mainmast.

'They're a-shouting like demons in the fok'sle, sir,' cried Abraham,

throwing his pipe overboard in his excitement.

'They have set fire to the ship!' I cried. 'Does smoke rise from the

fok'sle?'

'Yes! ye may see it now!--ye may see it now!' he bawled.

In the moment or two's pause that followed I heard the half-muffled

shouts of the dark-skinned crew, with one or two clearer voices, as

though a couple of the fellows had got their mouths close against the

narrow opening in the hatch. I rushed forward from abreast of the

mainmast, where I had come to a stand.

'What is wrong?' I cried. 'Where is this smoke coming from?'

A voice answered--it was Nakier's--but his dark skin blended with the

gloom out of which he spoke, and I could not see him.

'Some man hab taken de fok'sle lamp into de forepeak, and hab by

haccident set fire to de cargo by putting de lamp troo a hole in de

bulkhead. For your God's sake let we out or we burn!'

'Is this a trick?' cried I to Abraham.

'Test it, sir!--test it by opening the main hatch!' he shouted.

Jacob had by this time joined us. In a few moments we had removed the

battens and torn off the tarpaulin, but at the first rise of the

after-hatch cover that we laid our hands upon up belched a volume of

smoke, with so much more following that each man of us started back to

catch his breath. Now could be plainly heard a noise of shrieking

forward.

'My God! men, what shall we do?' I cried, almost paralyzed by this

sudden confrontment of the direst peril that can befall humanity at sea,

but rendered in our case inexpressibly more horrible yet, to my mind, by

the existence of the pent-up wretches whom I felt, even in that moment

of stupefying consternation, we dared not liberate while we remained on

board.

'What's to be done?' cried Jacob, whose wits seemed less abroad than

Abraham's. 'Ask yourself the question. The wessel's on fire, and we must

leave if we ain't to be burnt.'

'What! leave the Malays to perish?' I exclaimed.

'Let's smother this smoke down first, anyways,' cried Abraham; and he

and his mate put the hatch on.

'Helga,' I shouted, 'drop the wheel! Come to us here! The ship is on

fire!'

She came running along the poop.

'See this!' cried Abraham extending his arms, which trembled with the

hurry and agitation of his mind; 'if them fellows forward are not to be

burnt--and oh, my Gord! listen to them a-singing out!--we must

provision a quarter-boat and get away, and, afore casting off, one of us

must pull them stretchers off that the men may get out. Who's to be that

last man? _I_ will!'

'No, ye can't swim, Abey! That must be moy job,' shouted Jacob.

'I can lay hold of a buoy, an' jump overboard.'

'It'll be moy job, I tell ye!' passionately cried Jacob.

'Oh, hark to those poor creatures!' exclaimed Helga.

'Quick!' cried I. 'Abraham has told us what to do. There would be no

need for this horrible haste but for those imprisoned men! Hear them!

Hear them!'

It was a wild and dreadful chorus of lamentation, mingled with such

wailings as might rise in the stillness following a scene of battle. The

noise was scarcely human. It seemed to proceed from famished or wounded

jackals and hyenas. But to liberate them--every man armed as he was with

a sheath-knife deadly as a creese in those dingy fists--every man

infuriate--it was not to be dreamt of!

As swiftly as we could ply our legs and arms, we victualled the

starboard quarter-boat. Provisions were to our hands; we threw them in

plentifully--remains of cooked meat, biscuit, cheese, and the like; we

took from each boat the breaker that belonged to her, filled them both

with water, and stowed them. The sail belonging to the boat lay snugged

in a yellow waterproof cover along the mast; there were oars in her--all

other furniture, indeed, that properly belonged to her--rowlocks,

rudder, yoke; and the boatmen, old hands at such work as this, nimbly

but carefully saw that the plug was in its place.

All the time that we worked there was rising out of the forecastle hatch

the dreadful noise of lamentation, of cries, of entreaties. It was a

sound to goad us into red-hot haste, and we laboured as though we were

eight instead of four.

'Now, Mr. Tregarthen,' cried Abraham, 'if we ain't to be pursued by them

savages on our liberating of 'em, we must cut them there falls.' And he

pointed to the tackles which suspended the other boat at the port

davits.

'Do so!' said I.

He sprang on to the rail, and passed his knife through the ends of the

falls. This effectually put an end to all chance of the fellows chasing

us in _that_ boat.

'There'll be plenty o' time for them to get the long-boat out,' shouted

Abraham, running across the deck to us. 'They're seamen, and there's

Nakier to tell 'em what to do.'

'Rot 'em for firing the ship!' cried Jacob. 'I don't believe she _is_ on

fire. They've made a smoke to scare us out of her!'

'Is everything ready?' I exclaimed.

'Hugh!' cried Helga, clasping her hands, 'I have forgotten my little

parcel--the picture and the Bible!'

She was about to fetch them.

'I can be quicker than you,' I cried, and, rushing to the hatch, jumped

down it, gained the cabin she had occupied in Captain Bunting's time,

and snatched up the little parcel that lay in the bunk. There was no

smoke down here. I sniffed shrewdly, but could catch not the least

savour of burning. 'It is the fore part of the ship that is on fire,' I

thought. As I ran to regain the hatch, it somehow entered my mind to

recollect that while looking for a lead-pencil in the chief mate's

berth, on the previous day, I had found a small bag of sovereigns and

shillings, the unhappy man's savings--all, perhaps, that he possessed in

the world--the noble fruits of Heaven knows how many years of hard

suffering and bitter labour! I was without a halfpenny in my pocket, and

entered the cabin to take this money, which I might hope to be able to

repay to some next-of-kin of the poor fellow, should I ever get to hear

of such a person, and which in any case would be more serviceable in my

pocket than at the bottom of the sea, whither it was now tending. Having

secured the money, which would be very useful to Helga and me, should we

live to reach a port, I hastened on to the poop, heart-sickened by the

dull noise of the ceaseless crying forward.

'Now,' said I, 'let us lower away, in the name of mercy, if only to free

those wretches, half of whom may be already suffocated.'

Helga and I got into the boat, and Abraham and his mate smartly

slackened away the tackles. In a few moments we were water-borne, with

the blocks released--for there was little left for me to learn in those

days of the handling and management of a boat--and myself standing in

the bow, holding on by the end of the painter, which I had passed

through a mizzen-channel plate. Abraham came down hand over hand by one

of the tackles, and dropped into the boat, instantly falling to work to

step the mast and clear away the sail.

'Below there!' roared Jacob; 'look out for these duds!' and down came

first his boots, then his cap, then his coat, and then his waistcoat.

'I'll jump overboard from this 'ere quarter!' he bawled. 'Stand by to

pick me up!'

The released helm had suffered the barque to come up into the wind, and

she lay aback with a very slow leewardly trend. The breeze held the

water briskly rippling, but the plain of the ocean was wonderfully

smooth, with a faint, scarce noticeable swell lightly breathing in it.

'Mr. Tregarthen,' exclaimed Abraham, 'you'll pull a stouter oar than

Miss Nielsen. Supposin' the lady stands by that there painter?'

'Right!' I exclaimed, and on the girl entering the bows Abraham and I

seized an oar apiece in readiness for Jacob's leap.

We lay close alongside, so that nothing was visible save the length of

the ship's black side and her overhanging yardarms, and the thick lines

of her shrouds rising to the lower mastheads. It was a breathless time.

I had no fear for Jacob; I guessed that the imprisoned wretches would be

too dazed by the glaring sunshine and by the fresh air and by their

deliverance from the stifling, smoke-thickened gloom of the forecastle

to catch him even should they pursue him ere he jumped. Nevertheless,

those moments of waiting, of expectation, of suspense, strung the nerves

to the tension of fiddle-strings, and sensation was sharpened into

anguish.

Not more than three minutes elapsed--yet it seemed an hour. Then in a

hoarse roar right over our heads sounded a shout:

'Look out, now!'

'Let go!' shrieked Abraham.

Helga dropped the line that held the boat.

'Back astarn, now!'

The fellow poled the boat off, while I put my whole strength into the

oar I gripped. I caught a glimpse of Jacob poising and stooping with his

arms outstretched and his finger-ends together; his body whizzed through

the air, his arms and head striking the water as clean as a knife; then

uprose his purple face at a distance of three boat's lengths. A thrust

of the oar brought us alongside of him, and, while I grabbed him by the

neck to help him inboard, Abraham was hoisting the sail, with Helga at

the yoke-lines, quietly waiting for the sheet to be hauled aft.

'Bravely done, Jacob!' cried I. 'There's a bottle of brandy in the

stern-sheets. Take a pull at it! The sun will speedily dry you.'

'Where's the Malays?' exclaimed Abraham.

'Didn't stop to see,' answered Jacob. 'I chucked the stretchers off and

sung down "Ye can come up," and then bolted.'

'There's Nakier!' cried Helga.

'And there's Punmeamootty!' I called.

I was astounded by observing the figures of these two fellows quietly

gazing at us from the forecastle. Almost immediately after they had

appeared others joined them, and before our boat had fairly got way

upon her I counted the whole eleven of them. They stood in a body with

Nakier in the thick of them surveying us as coolly as though their ship

were at anchor, and all were well, and we were objects of curiosity

merely.

'Why, what's the matter with 'em?' cried Abraham. 'Are they waiting for

us to sing out to tell 'em what to do?'

He had scarcely spoken the words when a loud shout of laughter broke

from the dingy little mob, accompanied by much ironical flourishing of

hands, while Nakier, springing on to the rail, pulled his hat off and

repeatedly bowed to us. We were too much astounded to do more than gape

at them. A minute later Nakier sprang back again on to the forecastle

and piped out some orders in his melodious voice, in which, assuredly,

the most attentive ear could have detected nothing of the weakness that

I had noticed in his cries to us through the half-closed hatch.

Instantly the men distributed themselves, one of them running to the

wheel; and while we continued to gaze, mute with amazement, the

foretopsail-yard was swung, the barque's head slowly fell off, the

yards were then again braced up, and, behold! the little vessel, with

her head at about south, was softly breaking the waters, with the

after-yards swinging as they were squared by the braces to the

north-east wind.

There was small need to go on staring and gaping for any length of time

to discover that we were the victims of an out-and-away shrewder,

cleverer, subtler stratagem than we had practised upon those dark-skins.

I could not perceive any smoke rising from the forecastle. The fellows

had been much too clever to accept the risk of suffocation as a

condition of their escape. Abraham had assured me that the bulkhead

which divided the forepeak from the main hold was as strong as any

timber wall could well be; but there was either some damage, some rent,

some imperfection in the bulkhead, which provided access to the hold, or

the crew, jobbing with Asiatic patience at the plank with their sharp

knives, had penetrated it, having had all last night and all this day to

do the work in.

A very little thing will make a very great deal of smoke. The burning

of a small blanket might suffice to fill the hold of a much bigger ship

than that barque with a smell of fire strong enough and rolls of vapour

dense enough to fill her crew with consternation and drive them to the

boats. While the fellows kept the hatch of the forepeak closed the smoke

could hardly filter through into the forecastle. I can but conjecture

how they managed; but the triumphant evidence of their cleverness lay

clear to our gaze in the spectacle of the barque slowly drawing away

into the morning blue of the south and west.

When the two boatmen saw how it was, I thought they would have jumped

overboard in their passion. Abraham, as usual, flung his cap into the

bottom of the boat and roared at the receding figure of the ship as

though she were hard by, and the men aboard attentively listening to

him. Jacob, soaking wet, his black hair plastered upon his brow, and his

face as purple now with temper as it had before been when he rose half

strangled out of the water, chimed in, and together they shouted.

Then turning upon me, Abraham bawled out that he would follow them.

'This here's a fast boat,' he vociferated. 'Here be oars to help her

canvas. Think them coloured scaramouches is agoing to rob me of my

salwage? Is it to be _all_ bad luck?--fust the _Airly Marn_, and now,'

cried he, wildly pointing at the barque, 'a job that might ha' been

worth three or four hundred pound a man? And to be tricked by such

creatures! to be made to feel sorry by their howling and wailing! to

watch 'em a-sailing away with what's properly moine and Jacob's, and

yourn! Whoy, there's money enough for a fust-class marriage and the

loife of a gentleman afterwards, in a single share of the salwage that

them beasts has robbed us of!'

And so he went on; and when he paused for breath Jacob fell a-shouting

in a like strain.

Meanwhile Helga, at the helm with a composed face, was making the boat

hug the wind, and the little fabric, bowed down by the spread of lug

till the line of her gunwale was within a hand's-breadth of the water,

was buzzing along at a speed that was fast dwindling the heap of square

canvas astern into a toy-like space of white. At last Abraham and his

mate fell silent; they seated themselves, looking with dogged faces

over their folded arms at the diminishing barque.

For my part, long before the two honest fellows had made an end of their

temper I had ceased to think of the Malays and the trick they had put

upon us. Here we were now in a little open boat--three men and a

girl--in the heart of a spacious field of sea, with nothing in sight,

and no land nearer to us than the Great Canary, which lay many leagues

distant, and for which the north-east wind would not suffer us to head

on a direct course. Here was a situation heavy and significant enough to

fill the mind, and leave no room for other thoughts. And yet I do not

know that I was in the least degree apprehensive. The having the

barque's forecastle filled with a crew of fellows whose first business

would have been to slaughter us three men on their breaking out had

weighed intolerably upon my spirits. It was a dreadful danger, a

horrible obligation now passed, and my heart felt comparatively light,

forlorn and perilous as our situation still was. Then, again, I found a

sort of support in the experiences I had passed through on the raft and

in the lugger. The mind is always sensible of a shock on leaving the

secure high deck of a ship, and looking abroad upon the vast, pitiless

breast of old Ocean from the low elevation of a boat's side. I have

heard of this sort of transition paralyzing the stoutest-hearted of a

shipwrecked crew; for in no other situation does death seem to come

nearer to one, floating close alongside, as it were, and chilling the

hottest air of the tropics to the taste and quality of a frosty blast;

and in no other situation does human helplessness find a like

accentuation, so illimitable are the reaches of the materialized

eternity upon which the tiny structure rests, the very stars by night

looking wan and faintly glittering, as though the foundered gaze had

rendered their familiar and noted distances measureless compared to

their height from a ship's deck or from solid earth.

But, as I have it in my mind to say, our experiences on the raft and the

open lugger were so recent that it was impossible to feel all this

vastness and nearness of the deep and the unutterable solitude of our

tiny speck of fabric in the midst of it, as though one came fresh from

days of bulwarked heights and broad white decks to the situation. Helga

surrendered the helm to Abraham, and the boat blew nimbly along over

that summer stretch of sea; Abraham steering with a mortified face;

Jacob leaning upon the weather gunwale with his chin upon his arms,

sullenly gazing into vacancy; and Helga and I a little way forward,

talking in a low voice over the past. What new adventure was this we had

entered upon? Should we come off with our lives, after all? The tigress

ocean had shown herself in many moods since I had found myself within

reach of her claws. She was slumbering now. The dusky lid of night was

closing upon the huge open trembling blue eye. Should we have escaped

her before she roused in wrath?

The sun was now low upon the horizon, and the sky was a flashing scarlet

to the zenith, and of a violet dimness eastward, where a streak or two

of delicate cloud caught the western glory, and lay like some bits of

chiselling in bronze in those tender depths.

'There ain't nothing in sight,' said Jacob, resuming his seat after a

long look round; 'we shall have to go through the night.'

'Well, I've been out in worse weather than this,' exclaimed Abraham.

'Pity the breeze doesn't draw more north or south,' said I. 'The boat

sails finely. A straight course for Teneriffe would soon be giving us a

sight of the Peak.'

'Ye and the lady'll ha' seen enough, I allow, by this toime to make ye

both want to get home,' said Abraham. 'Is there e'er a seafaring man who

could tell of such a procession of smothering jobs all atreading on

each other's heels? Fust, the loss of the _Hayneen_' [meaning the

_Anine_], 'then the raft, then the foundering of the _Airly Marn_, then

the feeding of Mussulmen with pork, then the skipper--as was a proper

gentleman, tew--afalling in love, and afterwards being murdered; then

that there fire, and now this here boat--and all for what? Not a

blooming penny to come out of the whole boiling!' And his temper giving

way, down went his cap again, and he jumped to his feet with a thirsty

look astern; but fortunately by this time the barque was out of sight,

otherwise there is no doubt we should have been regaled with another

half-hour of 'longshore lamentation and invective.

The breeze held steady, and the boat swept through it as though she

were in tow of a steamer. The sun sank, the western hectic perished, and

over our heads was spread the high night of hovering silver with much

meteoric dust sailing amid the luminaries; and in the south-east stood

the moon, in whose light the fabric of the boat and her canvas looked as

though formed of ivory. We had brought a bull's-eye lamp with us, and

this we lighted that we might tell how to steer by a small compass which

Abraham had taken from the Captain's cabin. We made as fair a meal as

our little stock of provisions would yield, sitting in the moonshine

eating and talking, dwelling much upon the incidents of the day,

especially on the subtlety of the Malays, with occasional speculation on

what yet lay before us; and again and again one after another of us

would rise to see if there was anything in sight in the pale hazy

blending of the ocean-rim with the sky, which the moon as it soared

flooded with her light.

To recount the passage of those hours would be merely to retrace our

steps in this narrative. It was a tedious course of dozing, of watching,

of whispering. At times I would start with the conviction that it was a

ship's light my eyes had fastened upon out in the silvery obscure; but

never did it prove more than a star or some phosphorescent sparkling in

the eye itself, as often happens in a gaze that is much strained and

long vigilant.

It was some time before five o'clock in the morning that I was startled

from what was more a trance of weariness than of restful slumber, by a

shout.

'Here's something coming at last!' cried the hoarse voice of Abraham.

The moon was gone, but the starlight made the dark very clear and fine,

and no sooner had I directed my eyes astern than I spied a steamer's

lights. The triangle of red, green, and white seemed directly in our

wake, and so light was the breeze, and so still the surface of the

ocean, that the pulsing of the engines, with the respiratory splashing

of the water from the exhaust-pipe, penetrated the ear as distinctly as

the tick of a watch held close.

'Flash the bull's-eye, Jacob,' shouted Abraham, 'or she'll be a-cutting

of us down.'

The fellow sprang into the stern-sheets and flourished the light.

'Now sing out altogether, when I count three,' cried Abraham again.

'Ship ahoy!--to make one word of it. Now then!--wan, tew, _three_!' We

united our voices in a hurricane yell of 'Ship ahoy!'

'Again!'

Once more we delivered the shout with such a note in it as could only

come from lungs made tempestuous by fear and desire of preservation. Six

or seven times did we thus hail that approaching lump of shadow, defined

by its triangle of sparks, and in the intervals of our cries Jacob

vehemently flourished the bull's-eye lamp.

Suddenly the green light disappeared.

'Ha! She sees us!' exclaimed Abraham.

The sound of pulsing ceased, and then, with a swiftness due to the

atmospheric illusion of the gloom, but that, nevertheless, seemed

incredible in a vessel whose engines had stopped, the great mass of

shadow came shaping and forming itself out within her own length of us

into the aspect of a large brig-rigged steamer, dark as the tomb along

the length of her hull, but with a stream of lamplight touching her

bridge, from which came a clear strong hail:

'Boat ahoy! What is wrong with you?'

'We're adrift, and want ye to pick us up!' roared Abraham. 'Stand by to

give us the end of a line!'

Within five minutes the boat, with sail down and mast unstepped, was

alongside the motionless steamer, and ten minutes later she was veering

astern and the four of us, with such few articles as we had to hand up,

safe aboard, the engines champing, the bow-wave seething, and the

commander of the vessel asking us for our story.