"Now, to be frank with you, Mr Noakes, I have not come all the way from
Calcutta to Macao to be put off with such an answer as you have given
me," I said, looking him full in the face. "I have determined to learn
what has become of my friends; and if I find them I shall find the brig,
or learn what has become of her; and at all events I will take care that
you are not the loser."
"I see that you are a young man of sense," he remarked, looking up at me
with one eye. "What is it you want to know about the _Emu_? But I
guess, you smoke now?"
"No, I do not touch tobacco," I answered. "But I wish to know if a Mrs
Clayton, a little girl, and servant embarked on board her."
"I'd have sold you a chest of fine cheroots, if you did," he observed.
"Yes, those people embarked on board her; and what then?"
"I wish to know who was her commander; what sort of a man he was; and
what sort of a crew he had," I replied.
"Oh, well, then, her master was one Stephen Spinks. He wasn't a bad
seaman, seeing he was raised for the shore; but he had a first-rate hand
for a mate, an old salt, who knew a trick or two, I calculate; and had a
crew of five whites--Yankees, Britishers, and Portuguese--and ten
Lascars; so the brig wasn't badly manned at all events. She sailed for
a trading voyage, to touch wherever Spinks thought he could pick up a
cargo, or do a bit of barter. There never was a better hand at that
work than Spinks."
When Mr Noakes had got thus far, it seemed to have occurred to him that
it would be but civil to ask me to sit down; and by degrees he became
more communicative than I at first expected. From the information I
gained from him, and from other merchants of whom I made inquiries, I
learned that Captain Stephen Spinks was a very respectable man in
appearance and manner; and that Mrs Clayton, having met him, was
induced to take a passage in his brig, just on the point of sailing.
There were, however, some suspicious circumstances connected with the
history of his first mate: stories were told of ships, on board which he
served, being insured to large amounts and cast away; of his captain
being found dead in his cabin; of a ship having caught fire from an
inexplicable cause, and of bags of dollars unaccountably disappearing.
"I would not have allowed the fellow to have put foot on board any ship,
in which I was interested," said Mr Randall, a merchant to whom I had a
letter. "He was bad enough to corrupt a whole crew. Who knows what
sort of fellows he had with him? Captain Spinks might have been very
respectable, though not much of a seaman, and so may be Mr Noakes,
though I know little about him, except that he can drive a hard bargain,
and likes to get things done cheap. This made him engage that
suspicious fellow, Kidd, who was ready to sail without wages--Richard
Kidd was his name--an ominous one rather; and when I saw poor Mrs
Clayton and your little sister on board, I so disliked the looks of the
crew that I was much inclined to persuade her to wait for another ship."
This account gave a fresh colouring to the matter. If Kidd was the
character described, he might probably have run away with the _Emu_ for
the sake of the dollars on board, and have carried her into a Dutch or
Spanish settlement, where he could have sold her.
This also gave a wider range to the field of my search. Had she been
captured by pirates, I should have looked for my friends in their haunts
in the Sooloo Archipelago, and on the coast of Borneo; now I should have
to search from Java, among all the islands to the east, up to Luzon, in
the north. I was resolved to leave no spot unvisited; and the
circumstance of a brig like the _Emu_ having been seen to the west of
Borneo determined me on visiting the Dutch settlement first. I have not
attempted to describe my feelings all this time. I felt that I was
engaged in a sacred duty, and I was rather calm and braced up for the
work than in any way excited. I held my object, distant though it might
be, clearly in view, and nothing could turn me away from it. I do not
think I could have persevered as I did, had I been influenced by what is
called enthusiasm or excitement.