“Good,” said Captain Bilge, rubbing his hands, “that will get rid of a
lot of them, and of course,” he added musingly, looking out of the
broad old-fashioned port-hole at the stern of the cabin, at the heaving
waves of the South Atlantic, “I am expecting pirates at any time, and
that will take out quite a few of them. However”—and here he pressed
the bell for a cabin-boy—“kindly ask Mr. Tompkins to step this way.”
“Tompkins,” said the Captain as the bosun’s mate entered, “be good
enough to stand on the locker and stick your head through the stern
port-hole, and tell me what you think of the weather.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the tar with a simplicity which caused us to
exchange a quiet smile.
Tompkins stood on the locker and put his head and shoulders out of the
port.
Taking a leg each we pushed him through. We heard him plump into the
sea.
“Tompkins was easy,” said Captain Bilge. “Excuse me as I enter his
death in the log.”
“Yes,” he continued presently, “it will be a great help if they mutiny.
I suppose they will, sooner or later. It’s customary to do so. But I
shall take no step to precipitate it until we have first fallen in with
pirates. I am expecting them in these latitudes at any time. Meantime,
Mr. Blowhard,” he said, rising, “if you can continue to drop overboard
one or two more each week, I shall feel extremely grateful.”
Three days later we rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered upon the
inky waters of the Indian Ocean. Our course lay now in zigzags and, the
weather being favourable, we sailed up and down at a furious rate over
a sea as calm as glass.
On the fourth day a pirate ship appeared. Reader, I do not know if you
have ever seen a pirate ship. The sight was one to appal the stoutest
heart. The entire ship was painted black, a black flag hung at the
masthead, the sails were black, and on the deck people dressed all in
black walked up and down arm-in-arm. The words “Pirate Ship” were
painted in white letters on the bow. At the sight of it our crew were
visibly cowed. It was a spectacle that would have cowed a dog.
The two ships were brought side by side. They were then lashed tightly
together with bag string and binder twine, and a gang plank laid
between them. In a moment the pirates swarmed upon our deck, rolling
their eyes, gnashing their teeth and filing their nails.
Then the fight began. It lasted two hours—with fifteen minutes off for
lunch. It was awful. The men grappled with one another, kicked one
another from behind, slapped one another across the face, and in many
cases completely lost their temper and tried to bite one another. I
noticed one gigantic fellow brandishing a knotted towel, and striking
right and left among our men, until Captain Bilge rushed at him and
struck him flat across the mouth with a banana skin.
At the end of two hours, by mutual consent, the fight was declared a
draw. The points standing at sixty-one and a half against sixty-two.
The ships were unlashed, and with three cheers from each crew, were
headed on their way.
“Now, then,” said the Captain to me aside, “let us see how many of the
crew are sufficiently exhausted to be thrown overboard.”
He went below. In a few minutes he re-appeared, his face deadly pale.
“Blowhard,” he said, “the ship is sinking. One of the pirates (sheer
accident, of course, I blame no one) has kicked a hole in the side. Let
us sound the well.”
We put our ear to the ship’s well. It sounded like water.
The men were put to the pumps and worked with the frenzied effort which
only those who have been drowned in a sinking ship can understand.
At six p.m. the well marked one half an inch of water, at nightfall
three-quarters of an inch, and at daybreak, after a night of
unremitting toil, seven-eighths of an inch.
By noon of the next day the water had risen to fifteen-sixteenths of an
inch, and on the next night the sounding showed thirty-one
thirty-seconds of an inch of water in the hold. The situation was
desperate. At this rate of increase few, if any, could tell where it
would rise to in a few days.
That night the Captain called me to his cabin. He had a book of
mathematical tables in front of him, and great sheets of vulgar
fractions littered the floor on all sides.
“The ship is bound to sink,” he said, “in fact, Blowhard, she is
sinking. I can prove it. It may be six months or it may take years, but
if she goes on like this, sink she must. There is nothing for it but to
abandon her.”
That night, in the dead of darkness, while the crew were busy at the
pumps, the Captain and I built a raft.
Unobserved we cut down the masts, chopped them into suitable lengths,
laid them crosswise in a pile and lashed them tightly together with
bootlaces.
Hastily we threw on board a couple of boxes of food and bottles of
drinking fluid, a sextant, a cronometer, a gas-meter, a bicycle pump
and a few other scientific instruments. Then taking advantage of a roll
in the motion of the ship, we launched the raft, lowered ourselves upon
a line, and under cover of the heavy dark of a tropical night, we
paddled away from the doomed vessel.
The break of day found us a tiny speck on the Indian Ocean. We looked
about as big as this (.).
In the morning, after dressing, and shaving as best we could, we opened
our box of food and drink.
Then came the awful horror of our situation.
One by one the Captain took from the box the square blue tins of canned
beef which it contained. We counted fifty-two in all. Anxiously and
with drawn faces we watched until the last can was lifted from the box.
A single thought was in our minds. When the end came the Captain stood
up on the raft with wild eyes staring at the sky.
“The can-opener!” he shrieked, “just Heaven, the can-opener.” He fell
prostrate.
Meantime, with trembling hands, I opened the box of bottles. It
contained lager beer bottles, each with a patent tin top. One by one I
took them out. There were fifty-two in all. As I withdrew the last one
and saw the empty box before me, I shroke out—“The thing! the thing!
oh, merciful Heaven! The thing you open them with!”