THE DERELICT
"Her cargo'll have shifted," said the third mate, "and when she got that
list her people will have felt frightened and left her."
"She's a scary look to her, with her yard-arms spiking every other sea,"
said Captain Image, "and her decks like the side of a house. I shouldn't
care to navigate a craft that preferred to lie down on her beam
ends myself."
"Take this glass, sir, and you'll see the lee quarter-boat davit-tackles
are overhauled. That means they got at least one boat in the water. To
my mind she's derelict."
"Yard-arm tackles rigged and overhauled, too," said Captain Image.
"She'll have carried a big boat on the top of that house amidships, and
that's gone, too. Well, I hope her crew have got to dry land somewhere,
or been picked up, poor beggars. Nasty things, those old wind-jammers,
Mr. Strake. Give me steam."
"But there's a pile of money in her still," said the third mate,
following up his own thoughts. "She's an iron ship, and she'll be two
thousand tons, good. Likely enough in the 'Frisco grain trade. Seems to
me a new ship, too; anyway, she's got those humbugging patent tops'ls."
"And you're thinking she'd be a nice plum if we could pluck her in
anywhere?" said Image, reading what was in his mind.
"Well, me lad, I know that as well as you, and no one would be
pleaseder to pocket £300. But the old _M'poso's_ a mailboat, and because
she's got about a quarter of a hundredweight of badly spelt letters on
board, she can't do that sort of salvage work if there's no life-saving
thrown in as an extra reason. Besides, we're behind time as it is, with
smelling round for so much cargo, and though I shall draw my two and
a-half per cent, on that, I shall have it all to pay away again, and
more to boot, in fines for being late. No, I tell you it isn't all sheer
profit and delight in being skipper on one of those West African coast
boats. And there's another thing: the Chief was telling me only this
morning that they've figured it very close on the coal. We only have
what'll take us to Liverpool ourselves, without trying to pull a yawing,
heavy, towing thing like that on behind us."
Strake drummed at the white rail of the bridge. He was a very young man,
and he was very keen on getting the chance of distinguishing himself;
and here, on the warm, windless swells abeam, the chance seemed to sit
beckoning him. "I've been thinking, sir, if you can lend me half a dozen
men, I could take her in somewhere myself."
"I'm as likely to lend you half a dozen angels. Look at the deck hands;
look at the sickly trip this has been. We've had to put some of them on
double tricks at the wheel already, and as for getting any painting
done, or having the ship cleaned up a bit, why, I can see we shall go
into Liverpool as dirty as a Geordie collier. Besides, Mr. Strake, I
believe I've told you once or twice already that you're not much use
yourself, but anyway you're the best that's left, and I'm having to
stand watch and watch with you as it is. If the mate gets out of his
bed between here and home, it'll be to go over the side, and the second
mate's nearly as bad with that nasty blackwater fever only just off him;
and there you are. Mr. Strake, if you have a penn'oth of brains stowed
away anywhere, I wish to whiskers you'd show 'em sometimes."
"Old man's mad at losing a nice lump of salvage," thought Strake.
"Natural, I guess." So he said quietly: "Ay, ay, sir," and walked away
to the other end of the bridge.
Captain Image followed him half-way, but stopped irresolutely with his
hand on the engine-room telegraph. On the fore main deck below him his
old friend, Captain Owen Kettle, was leaning on the rail, staring
wistfully at the derelict.
"Poor beggar," Image mused, "'tisn't hard to guess what he's thinking
about. I wonder if I could fix it for him to take her home. It might set
him on his legs again, and he's come low enough, Lord knows. If I hadn't
given him a room in the first-class for old times' sake, he'd have had
to go home, after his trouble on the West Coast, as a distressed seaman,
and touch his cap to me when I passed. I've not done badly by him, but I
shall have to pay for that room in the first-class out of my own pocket,
and if he was to take that old wind-jammer in somewhere, he'd fork out,
and very like give me a dash besides.
"Yes, I will say that about Kettle; he's honest as a barkeeper, and
generous besides. He's a steamer sailor, of course, and has been most of
these years, and how he'll do the white wings business again, Lord only
knows. Forget he hasn't got engines till it's too late, and then drown
himself probably. However, that's his palaver. Where we're going to
scratch him up a crew from's the thing that bothers me. Well, we'll
see." He leaned down over the bridge rail, and called.
Kettle looked up.
"Here a minute, Captain."
Poor Kettle's eye lit, and he came up the ladders with a boy's
quickness.
Image nodded toward the deserted vessel. "Fine full-rigger, hasn't she
been? What do you make her out for?"
"'Frisco grain ship. Stuff in bulk. And it's shifted."
"Looks that way. Have you forgotten all your 'mainsail haul' and the
square-rig gymnastics?"
"I'm hard enough pushed now to remember even the theory-sums they taught
at navigation school if I thought they would serve me."
"I know. And I'm as sorry for you, Captain, as I can hold. But you see,
it's this: I'm short of sailormen; I've barely enough to steer and keep
the decks clean; anyway I've none to spare."
"I don't ask for fancy goods," said Kettle eagerly. "Give me anything
with hands on it--apes, niggers, stokers, what you like, and I'll soon
teach them their dancing steps."
Captain Image pulled at his moustache. "The trouble of it is, we are
short everywhere. It's been a sickly voyage, this. I couldn't let you
have more than two out of the stokehold, and even if we take those, the
old Chief will be fit to eat me. You could do nothing with that big
vessel with only two beside yourself."
"Let me go round and see. I believe I can rake up enough hands somehow."
"Well, you must be quick about it," said Image. "I've wasted more than
enough time already. I can only give you five minutes, Captain. Oh, by
the way, there's a nigger stowaway from Sarry Leone you can take if you
like. He's a stonemason or some such foolishness, and I don't mind
having him drowned. If you hammer him enough, probably he'll learn how
to put some weight on a brace."
"That stonemason's just the man I can use," said Kettle. "Get him for
me. I'll never forget your kindness over this, Captain, and you may
depend upon me to do the square thing by you if I get her home."
Captain Kettle ran off down the bridge and was quickly out of sight, and
hard at his quest for volunteers. Captain Image waited a minute, and he
turned to his third mate. "Now, me lad," he said, "I know you're
disappointed; but with the other mates sick like they are, it's just
impossible for me to let you go. If I did, the Company would sack me,
and the dirty Board of Trade would probably take away my ticket. So you
may as well do the kind, and help poor old Cappie Kettle. You see what
he's come down to, through no fault of his own. You're young, and you're
full to the coamings with confidence. I'm older, and I know that luck
may very well get up and hit me, and I'll be wanting a helping hand
myself. It's a rotten, undependable trade, this sailoring. You might
just call the carpenter, and get the cover off that smaller lifeboat."
"You think he'll get a crew, then, sir, and not our deckhands?"
"Him? He'll get some things with legs and arms to them, if he has to
whittle 'em out of kindling-wood. It's not that that'll stop Cappie
Kettle now, me lad."
The third mate went off, sent for the carpenter, and started to get a
lifeboat cleared and ready for launching. Captain Image fell to
anxiously pacing the upper bridge, and presently Kettle came back
to him.
"Well, Captain," he said, "I got a fine crew to volunteer, if you can
see your way to let me have them. There's a fireman and a trimmer, both
English; there's a third-class passenger--a Dago of some sort, I think
he is, that was a ganger on the Congo railway--and there's Mr.
Dayton-Philipps; and if you send me along your nigger stonemason,
that'll make a good, strong ship's company."
"Dayton-Philipps!" said Image. "Why, he's an officer in the English
Army, and he's been in command of Haussa troops on the Gold Coast, and
he's been some sort of a Resident, or political thing up in one of those
nigger towns at the back there. What's he want to go for?"
"Said he'd come for the fun of the thing."
Captain Image gave a grim laugh. "Well, I think he'll find all the fun
he's any use for before he's ashore again. Extraordinary thing some
people can't see they're well off when they've got a job ashore. Now,
Mr. Strake, hurry with that boat and get her lowered away. You're to
take charge and bring her back; and mind, you're not to leave the
captain here and his gang aboard if the vessel's too badly wrecked to
be safe."
He turned to Kettle. "Excuse my giving that last order, old man, but I
know how keen you are, and I'm not going to let you go off to try and
navigate a sieve. You're far too good a man to be drowned uselessly."
The word was "Hurry," now that the final decision had been given, and
the davit tackles squeaked out as the lifeboat jerked down toward the
water. She rode there at the end of her painter, and the three rowers
and the third mate fended her off, while Kettle's crew of nondescripts
scrambled unhandily down to take their places. The negro stowaway
refused stubbornly to leave the steamer, and so was lowered
ignominiously in a bowline, and then, as he still objected loudly that
he came from Sa' Leone, and was a free British subject, some one crammed
a bucket over his head, amidst the uproarious laughter of the onlookers.
Captain Kettle swung himself down the swaying Jacob's ladder, and the
boat's painter was cast off; and under three oars she moved slowly off
over the hot sun-kissed swells. Advice and farewells boomed like a
thunderstorm from the steamer, and an animated frieze of faces and
figures and waving headgear decorated her rail.
Ahead of them, the quiet ship shouldered clumsily over the rollers, now
gushing down till she dipped her martingale, now swooping up again,
sending whole cataracts of water swirling along her waist.
The men in the boat regarded her with curious eyes as they drew nearer.
Even the three rowers turned their heads, and were called to order
therefor by the mate at the tiller. A red ensign was seized jack
downward in her main rigging, the highest note of the sailorman's agony
of distress. On its wooden case, in her starboard fore-rigging, a
dioptric lens sent out the faint green glow of a lamp's light into
the sunshine.
The third mate drew attention to this last "Lot of oil in that lamp," he
said, "or it means they haven't deserted her very long. To my mind, it
must have been in yesterday's breeze her cargo shifted, and scared her
people into leaving her."
"We shall see," said Kettle, still staring intently ahead.
The boat was run up cannily alongside, and Kettle jumped into the main
chains and clambered on board over the bulwarks. "Now, pass up my crew,
Mr. Strake," said he.
"I'm coming myself next, if you don't mind," said the third mate, and
did so. "Must obey the old man's orders," he explained, as they stood
together on the sloping decks. "You heard yourself what he
said, Captain."
"Well, Mr. Mate," said Kettle grimly, "I hope you'll decide she's
seaworthy, because, whatever view you take of it, as I've got this far,
here I'm going to stay."
The mate frowned. He was a young man; he was here in authority, and he
had a great notion of making his authority felt. Captain Kettle was to
him merely a down-on-his-luck free-passage nobody, and as the mate was
large and lusty he did not anticipate trouble. So he remarked rather
crabbedly that he was going to obey his orders, and went aft along the
slanting deck.
It was clear that the vessel had been swept--badly swept. Ropes-ends
streamed here and there and overboard in every direction, and everything
movable had been carried away eternally by the sea. A goodly part of the
starboard bulwarks had vanished, and the swells gushed in and out as
they chose. But the hatch tarpaulins and companions were still in place;
and though it was clear from the list (which was so great that they
could not walk without holding on) that her cargo was badly shifted,
there was no evidence so far that she was otherwise than sound.
The third mate led the way on to the poop, opened the companion doors
and slide, and went below. Kettle followed. There was a cabin with state
rooms off it, littered, but dry. Strake went down on his knees beneath
the table, searching for something. "Lazaret hatch ought to be down
here," he explained. "I want to see in there. Ah, it is."
He got his fingers in the ring and pulled it back. Then he whistled.
"Half-full of water," he said. "I thought so from the way she floated.
It's up to the beams down here. Likely enough she'll have started a
plate somewhere. 'Fraid it's no go for you, Captain. Why, if a breeze
was to come on, half the side of her might drop out, and she'd go down
like a stone."
Now to Kettle's honor be it said (seeing what he had in his mind) he did
not tackle the man as he knelt there peering into the lazaret. Instead
he waited till he stood up again, and then made his statement coldly and
deliberately.
"This ship's not too dangerous for me, and I choose to judge. And if
she'll do for me, she's good enough for the crew I've got in your boat.
Now I want them on deck, and at work without any more palaver."
"Do you, by God!" said the mate, and then the pair of them closed
without any further preliminaries. They were both of them well used to
quick rough-and-tumbles, and they both of them knew that the man who
gets the first grip in these wrestles usually wins, and instinctively
each tried to act on that knowledge.
But if the third mate had bulk and strength, Kettle had science and
abundant wiriness; and though the pair of them lost their footing on the
sloping cabin floor at the first embrace, and wriggled over and under
like a pair of eels, Captain Kettle got a thumb artistically fixed in
the bigger man's windpipe, and held it there doggedly. The mate, growing
more and more purple, hit out with savage force, but Kettle dodged the
bull-like blows like the boxer he was, and the mate's efforts
gradually relaxed.
But at this point they were interrupted. "That wobbly boat was making me
sea-sick," said a voice, "so I came on board here. Hullo, you fellows!"
Kettle looked up. "Mr. Philipps," he said, "I wish you'd go and get the
rest of our crew on deck out of the boat."
"But what are you two doing down there?"
"We disagreed over a question of judgment. He said this ship isn't safe,
and I shouldn't have the chance to take her home. I say there's nothing
wrong with her that can't be remedied, and home I'm going to take her,
anyway. It might be the one chance in my life, sir, of getting a balance
at the bank, and I'm not going to miss it."
"Ho!" said Dayton-Philipps.
"If you don't like to come, you needn't," said Kettle. "But I'm going to
have the stonemason and the Dago, and those two coal-heavers. Perhaps
you'd better go back. It will be wet, hard work here; no way the sort of
job to suit a soldier."
Dayton-Philipps flushed slightly, and then he laughed. "I suppose that's
intended to be nasty," he said. "Well, Captain, I shall have to prove to
you that we soldiers are equal to a bit of manual labor sometimes. By
the way, I don't want to interfere in a personal matter, but I'd take it
as a favor if you wouldn't kill Strake quite. I rather like him."
"Anything to oblige," said Kettle, and took his thumb out of the third
mate's windpipe. "And now, sir, as you've so to speak signed on for duty
here, away with you on deck and get those four other beauties up out of
the boat."
Dayton-Philipps touched his hat and grinned. "Ay, ay, sir," he said, and
went back up the companion.
Shortly afterward he came to report the men on board, and Kettle
addressed his late opponent. "Now, look here, young man, I don't want to
have more trouble on deck before the hands. Have you had enough?"
"For the present, yes," said the third mate huskily. "But I hope we'll
meet again some other day to have a bit of further talk."
"I am sure I shall be quite ready. No man ever accused me of refusing a
scrap. But, me lad, just take one tip from me: don't you go and make
Captain Image anxious by saying this ship isn't seaworthy, or he'll
begin to ask questions, and he may get you to tell more than you're
proud about."
"You can go and get drowned your own way. As far as I am concerned, no
one will guess it's coming off till they see it in the papers."
"Thanks," said Kettle. "I knew you'd be nice about it."
The third mate went down to his boat, and the three rowers took her
across to the _M'poso_, where she was hauled up to davits again. The
steamer's siren boomed out farewells, as she got under way again, and
Kettle with his own hands unbent the reversed ensign from the ship's
main rigging, and ran it up to the peak and dipped it three times
in salute.
He breathed more freely now. One chance and a host of unknown dangers
lay ahead of him. But the dangers he disregarded. Dangers were nothing
new to him. It was the chance which lured him on. Chances so seldom came
in his way, that he intended to make this one into a certainty if the
efforts of desperation could do it.
Alone of all the six men on the derelict, Captain Kettle had knowledge
of the seaman's craft; but, for the present, thews and not seamanship
were required. The vessel lay in pathetic helplessness on her side,
liable to capsize in the first squall which came along, and their first
effort must be to get her in proper trim whilst the calm continued. They
knocked out the wedges with their heels, and got the tarpaulins off the
main hatch; they pulled away the hatch covers, and saw beneath them
smooth slopes of yellow grain.
As though they were an invitation to work, shovels were made fast along
the coamings of the hatch. The six men took these, and with shouts
dropped down upon the grain. And then began a period of Homeric toil.
The fireman and the coal-trimmer set the pace, and with a fine contempt
for the unhandiness of amateurs did not fail to give a display of their
utmost. Kettle and Dayton-Philipps gamely kept level with them. The
Italian ganger turned out to have his pride also, and did not lag, and
only the free-born British subject from Sierra Leone endeavored to shirk
his due proportion of the toil.
But high-minded theories as to the rights of man were regarded here as
little as threats to lay information before a justice of the peace; and
under the sledge-hammer arguments of shovel blows from whoever happened
to be next to him, the unfortunate colored gentleman descended to the
grade of nigger again (which he had repeatedly sworn never to do), and
toiled and sweated equally with his betters.
The heat under the decks was stifling, and dust rose from the wheat in
choking volumes, but the pace of the circling shovels was never allowed
to slacken. They worked there stripped to trousers, and they understood,
one and all, that they were working for their lives. A breeze had sprung
up almost as soon as the _M'poso_ had steamed away, and hourly it was
freshening: the barometer in the cabin was registering a steady fall;
the sky was banking up with heavy clouds.
Kettle had handled sheets and braces and hove the vessel to so as to
steady her as they worked, but she still labored heavily in the sea, and
beneath them they could hear the leaden swish of water in the floor of
the hold beneath. Their labor was having its effect, and by
infinitesimal gradations they were counteracting the list and getting
the ship upright; but the wind was worsening, and it seemed to them also
that the water was getting deeper under their feet, and that the vessel
rode more sluggishly.
So far the well had not been sounded. It is no use getting alarming
statistics to discourage one's self unnecessarily. But after night had
fallen, and it was impossible to see to work in the gloomy hold any
longer without lamps, Captain Kettle took the sounding-rod and found
eight feet.
He mentioned this when he took down the lanterns into the hold, but he
did not think it necessary to add that as the sounding had been taken
with the well on the slant it was therefore considerably under the
truth. Still he sent Dayton-Philipps and the trimmer on deck to take a
spell at the pumps, and himself resumed his shovel-work alongside
the others.
Straight away on through the night the six men stuck to their savage
toil, the blood from their blistered hands reddening the shafts of the
shovels. Every now and again one or another of them, choked with the
dust, went to get a draft of lukewarm water from the scuttlebutt. But no
one stayed over long on these excursions. The breeze had blown up into a
gale. The night overhead-was starless and moonless, but every minute the
black heaven was split by spurts of lightning, which showed the
laboring, dishevelled ship set among great mountains of breaking seas.
The sight would have been bad from a well-manned, powerful steamboat;
from the deck of the derelict it approached the terrific. With the seas
constantly crashing on board of her, to have left the hatches open would
have been, in her semi-waterlogged condition, to court swamping, and
after midnight these were battened down, and the men with the shovels
worked among the frightened, squeaking rats in the closed-in box of the
hold. There were four on board the ship during that terrible night who
openly owned to being cowed, and freely bewailed their insanity in ever
being lured away from the _M'poso_. Dayton-Philipps had sufficient
self-control to keep his feelings, whatever they were, unstated; but
Kettle faced all difficulties with indomitable courage and a
smiling face.
"I believe," said Dayton-Philipps to him once when they were taking a
spell together at the clanking pumps, "you really glory in finding
yourself in this beastly mess."
"I have got to earn out the salvage of this ship somehow," Kettle
shouted back to him through the windy darkness, "and I don't much care
what work comes between now and when I handle the check."
"You've got a fine confidence. I'm not grumbling, mind, but it seems
very unlikely we shall be still afloat to-morrow morning."
"We shall pull through, I tell you."
"Well," said Dayton-Philipps, "I suppose you are a man that's always met
with success. I'm not. I've got blundering bad luck all along, and if
there's a hole available, I get into it."
Captain Kettle laughed aloud into the storm. "Me!" he cried. "Me in
luck! There's not been a man more bashed and kicked by luck between here
and twenty years back. I suppose God thought it good for me, and He's
kept me down to my bearings in bad luck ever since I first got my
captain's ticket. But He's not cruel, Mr. Philipps, and He doesn't push
a man beyond the end of his patience. My time's come at last. He's given
me something to make up for all the weary waiting. He's sent me this
derelict, and He only expects me to do my human best, and then He'll let
me get her safely home."
"Good Heavens, Skipper, what are you talking about? Have you seen
visions or something?"
"I'm a man, Mr. Philipps, that's always said my prayers regular all
through life. I've asked for things, big things, many of them, and I'll
not deny they've been mostly denied me. I seemed to know they'd be
denied. But in the last week or so there's been a change. I've asked on,
just as earnestly as I knew how, and I seemed to hear Him answer. It was
hardly a voice, and yet it was like a voice; it appeared to come out of
millions of miles of distance; and I heard it say: 'Captain, I do not
forget the sparrows, and I have not forgotten you. I have tried you long
enough. Presently you shall meet with your reward.'"
Dayton-Philipps stared. Was the man going mad?
"And that's what it is, sir, that makes me sure I shall bring this
vessel into some port safely and pocket the salvage."
"Look here, Skipper," said Dayton-Philipps, "you are just fagged to
death, and I'm the same. We've been working till our hands are raw as
butcher's meat, and we're clean tired out, and we must go below and get
a bit of sleep. If the ship swims, so much the better; if she sinks, we
can't help it; anyway, we're both of us too beat to work any more. I
shall be 'seeing things' myself next."
"Mr. Philipps," said the little sailor gravely, "I know you don't mean
anything wrong, so I take no offence. But I'm a man convinced; I've
heard the message I told you with my own understanding; and it isn't
likely anything you can say will persuade me out of it. I can see you
are tired out, as you say, so go you below and get a spell of sleep. But
as for me, I've got another twenty hours' wakefulness in me yet, if
needs be. This chance has mercifully been sent in my way, as I've said,
but naturally it's expected of me that I do my human utmost as well to
see it through."
"If you stay on at this heart-breaking work, so do I," said
Dayton-Philipps, and toiled gamely on at the pump. There he was still
when day broke, sawing up and down like an automaton. But before the sun
rose, utter weariness had done its work. His bleeding fingers loosed
themselves from the break, his knees failed beneath him, and he fell in
an unconscious stupor of sleep on to the wet planking of the deck. For
half an hour more Kettle struggled on at the pump, doing double work;
but even his flesh and blood had its breaking strain; and at last he
could work no more.
He leaned dizzily up against the pump for a minute or so, and then with
an effort he pulled his still unconscious companion away and laid him on
the dry floor of a deck-house. There was a pannikin of cold stewed tea
slung from a hook in there, and half a sea biscuit on one of the bunks.
He ate and drank greedily, and then went out again along the streaming
decks to work, so far as his single pair of hands could accomplish such
a thing, at getting the huge derelict once more in sailing trim.
The shovels meanwhile had been doing their work, and although the list
was not entirely gone, the vessel at times (when a sea buttressed her
up) floated almost upright. The gale was still blowing, but it had
veered to the southward, and on the afternoon of that day Kettle called
all hands on deck and got her under way again, and found to his joy that
the coal-trimmer had some elementary notion of taking a wheel.
"I rate you as Mate," he said in his gratitude, "and you'll draw salvage
pay according to your rank. I was going to make Mr. Philipps my
officer, but--"
"Don't apologize," said Dayton-Philipps. "I don't know the name of one
string from another, and I'm quite conscious of my deficiency. But just
watch me put in another spell at those infernal pumps."
The list was of less account now, and the vessel was once more under
command of her canvas. It was the leak which gave them most cause for
anxiety. Likely enough it was caused by the mere wrenching away of a
couple of rivets. But the steady inpour of water through the holes would
soon have made the ship grow unmanageable and founder if it was not
constantly attended to. Where the leak was they had not a notion.
Probably it was deep down under the cargo of grain, and quite
unget-at-able; but anyway it demanded a constant service at the pumps to
keep it in check, and this the bone-weary crew were but feebly competent
to give. They were running up into the latitude of the Bay, too, and
might reasonably expect that "Biscay weather" would not take much from
the violence of the existing gale.
However, the dreaded Bay, fickle as usual, saw fit to receive them at
first with a smiling face. The gale eased to a plain smiling wind; the
sullen black clouds dissolved away into fleckless blue, and a sun came
out which peeled their arms and faces as they worked. During the
afternoon they rose the brown sails of a Portuguese fishing schooner,
and Kettle headed toward her.
Let his crew be as willing as they would, there was no doubt that this
murderous work at the pumps could not be kept up for a voyage to
England. If he could not get further reinforcements, he would have to
take the ship into the nearest foreign port to barely save her from
sinking. And then where would be his sighed-for salvage? Wofully
thinned, he thought, or more probably whisked away altogether. Captain
Kettle had a vast distrust for the shore foreigner over questions of law
proceedings and money matters. So he made for the schooner, hove his own
vessel to, and signalled that he wished to speak.
A boat was slopped into the water from the schooner's deck, and ten
swarthy, ragged Portuguese fishermen crammed into her. A couple pushed
at the oars, and they made their way perilously over the deep hill and
dale of ocean with that easy familiarity which none but deep-sea
fishermen can attain. They worked up alongside, caught a rope which was
thrown them, and nimbly climbed over on to the decks.
Two or three of them had a working knowledge of English; their captain
spoke it with fluent inaccuracy; and before any of them had gone aft to
Kettle, who stood at the wheel, they heard the whole story of the ship
being found derelict, and (very naturally) were anxious enough by some
means or another to finger a share of the salvage. Even a ragged
Portuguese _baccalhao_ maker can have his ambitions for prosperity like
other people.
Their leader made his proposal at once. "All right-a, Captain, I see how
you want. We take charge now, and take-a you into Ferrol without you
being at more trouble."
"Nothing of the kind," said Kettle. "I'm just wanting the loan of two or
three hands to give my fellows a spell or two at that pump. We're a bit
short-handed, that's all. But otherwise we're quite comfortable. I'll
pay A.B.'s wages on Liverpool scale, and that's a lot more than you
Dagos give amongst yourselves, and if the men work well I'll throw in a
dash besides for 'bacca money.'"
[Illustration: HE PICKED UP THE MAN AND SENT HIM AFTER THE KNIFE.]
"Ta-ta-ta," said the Portuguese, with a wave of his yellow fist. "It
cannot be done, and I will not lend you men. It shall do as I say; we
take-a you into Ferroll. Do not fear-a, captain; you shall have money
for finding sheep; you shall have some of our salvage."
Dayton-Philipps, who was standing near, and knew the little sailor's
views, looked for an outbreak. But Kettle held himself in, and still
spoke to the man civilly.
"That's good English you talk," he said. "Do all your crowd understand
the language?"
"No," said the fellow, readily enough, "that man does not, nor does him,
nor him."
"Right--oh!" said Kettle. "Then, as those three man can't kick up a
bobbery at the other end, they've just got to stay here and help work
this vessel home. And as for the rest of you filthy, stinking,
scale-covered cousins of apes, over the side you go before you're put.
Thought you were going to steal my lawful salvage, did you, you
crawling, yellow-faced--ah!"
The hot-tempered Portuguese was not a man to stand this tirade (as
Kettle anticipated) unmoved. His fingers made a vengeful snatch toward
the knife in his belt, but Kettle was ready for this, and caught it
first and flung it overboard. Then with a clever heave he picked up the
man and sent him after the knife.
He tripped up one of the Portuguese who couldn't speak English, dragged
him to the cabin companion, and toppled him down the ladder.
Dayton-Philipps (surprised at himself for abetting such lawlessness)
captured a second in like fashion, and the English fireman and
coal-trimmer picked up the third and dropped him down an open hatchway
on to the grain in the hold beneath.
But there were six of the fishermen left upon the deck, and these did
not look upon the proceedings unmoved. They had been slow to act at
first, but when the initial surprise was over, they were blazing with
rage and eager to do murder. The Italian and the Sierra Leone nigger ran
out of their way on to the forecastle head, and they came on,
vainglorious in numbers, and armed with their deadly knives. But the two
English roughs, the English gentleman, and the little English sailor,
were all of them men well accustomed to take care of their own skins;
the belaying pins out of the pinrail seemed to come by instinct into
their hands, and not one of them got so much as a scratch.
It was all the affair of a minute. It does not do to let these little
impromptu scrimmages simmer over long. In fact, the whole affair was
decided in the first rush. The quartette of English went in, despising
the "Dagos," and quite intending to clear them off the ship. The
invaders were driven overboard by sheer weight of blows and prestige,
and the victors leaned on the bulwark puffing and gasping, and watched
them swim away to their boat through the clear water below.
"Ruddy Dagos," said the roughs.
"Set of blooming pirates," said Kettle.
But Dayton-Philipps seemed to view the situation from a different point.
"I'm rather thinking we are the pirates. How about those three we've got
on board? This sort of press-gang work isn't quite approved of nowadays,
is it, Skipper?"
"They no speakee English," said Kettle drily. "You might have heard me
ask that, sir, before I started to talk to that skipper to make him
begin the show. And he did begin it, and that's the great point. If ever
you've been in a police court, you'll always find the magistrate ask,
'Who began this trouble?' And when he finds out, that's the man he logs.
No, those fishermen won't kick up a bobbery when they get back to happy
Portugal again; and as for our own crowd here on board, they ain't
likely to talk when they get ashore, and have money due to them."
"Well, I suppose there's reason in that, though I should have my doubts
about the stonemason. He comes from Sierra Leone, remember, and they're
great on the rights of man there."
"Quite so," said Kettle. "I'll see the stonemason gets packed off to sea
again in a stokehold before he has a chance of stirring up the mud
ashore. When the black man gets too pampered, he has to be brought low
again with a rush, just to make him understand his place."
"I see," said Dayton-Phillips, and then he laughed.
"There's something that tickles you, sir?"
"I was thinking, Skipper, that for a man who believes he's being put in
the way of a soft thing by direct guidance from on high, you're using up
a tremendous lot of energy to make sure the Almighty's wishes don't
miscarry. But still I don't understand much about these matters myself.
And at present it occurs to me that I ought to be doing a spell at those
infernal pumps, instead of chattering here."
The three captive Portuguese were brought up on deck and were quickly
induced by the ordinary persuasive methods of the merchant service
officer to forego their sulkiness and turn-to diligently at what work
was required of them. But even with this help the heavy ship was still
considerably undermanned, and the incessant labor at the pumps fell
wearily on all hands. The Bay, true to its fickle nature, changed on
them again. The sunshine was swamped by a driving gray mist of rain; the
glass started on a steady fall; and before dark, Kettle snugged her down
to single topsails, himself laying out on the foot-ropes with the
Portuguese, as no others of his crew could manage to scramble aloft with
so heavy a sea running.
The night worsened as it went on; the wind piled up steadily in
violence; and the sea rose till the sodden vessel rode it with a very
babel of shrieks, and groans, and complaining sounds. Toward morning, a
terrific squall powdered up against them and hove her down, and a dull
rumbling was heard in her bowels to let them know that once more her
cargo had shifted.
For the moment, even Kettle thought that this time she was gone for
good. She lost her way, and lay down like a log in the water, and the
racing seas roared over her as though she had been a half-tide rock. By
a miracle no one was washed overboard. But her people hung here and
there to eyebolts and ropes, mere nerveless wisps of humanity, incapable
under those teeming cataracts of waves to lift so much as a finger to
help themselves.
Then to the impact of a heavier gasp of the squall, the topgallant masts
went, and the small loss of of top-weight seemed momentarily to ease
her. Kettle seized upon the moment. He left the trimmer and one of the
Portuguese at the wheel, and handed himself along the streaming decks
and kicked and cuffed the rest of his crew into activity. He gave his
orders, and the ship wore slowly round before the wind, and began to pay
away on the other tack.
Great hills of sea deluged her in the process, and her people worked
like mermen, half of their time submerged. But by degrees, as the vast
rollers hit and shook her with their ponderous impact, she came upright
again, and after a little while shook the grain level in her holds, and
assumed her normal, angle of heel.
Dayton-Philipps struggled up and, hit Kettle on the shoulder. "How's
that, umpire?" he bawled. "My faith, you are a clever, sailor."
Captain Kettle touched his hat. "God bore a hand there, sir," he shouted
through the wind. "If I'd tried to straighten her up like that without
outside help, every man here would have been fish-chop this minute."
Even Dayton-Philipps, sceptical though he might be, began to think there
was "something in it" as the voyage went on. To begin with, the leak
stopped. They did not know how it had happened, and they did not very
much care. Kettle had his theories. Anyway it stopped. To go on with,
although they were buffeted with every kind of evil weather, all their
mischances were speedily rectified. In a heavy sea, all their unstable
cargo surged about as though it had been liquid, but it always shifted
back again before she quite capsized. The mizzen-mast went bodily
overboard in one black rain-squall because they were too short-handed to
get sail off it in time, but they found that the vessel sailed almost as
well as a brig, and was much easier for a weak crew to manage.
All hands got covered with salt-water boils. All hands, with the
exception of Kettle--who remained, as usual, neat--grew gaunt, bearded,
dirty, and unkempt. They were grimed with sea-salt, they were flayed
with violent suns; but by dint of hard schooling they were becoming
handy sailormen, all of them, and even the negro stonemason learned to
obey an order without first thinking over its justice till he earned a
premonitory hiding.
In the throat of the English Channel a blundering steamship did her best
to run them down, and actually rasped sides with the sailing-vessel as
she tore past into the night; but nobody made an attempt to jump for
safety on to her decks, nobody even took the trouble to swear at her
with any thing like heartfelt profanity.
"It's a blooming Flying Dutchman we're on," said the coal-trimmer who
acted as mate. "There's no killing the old beast. Only hope she gets us
ashore somehow, and doesn't stay fooling about at sea forever just to
get into risks. I want to get off her. She's too blooming lucky to be
quite wholesome somehow."
Kettle had intended to make a Channel port, but a gale hustled him north
round Land's End, "and you see," he said to Dayton-Philipps, "what I get
for not being sufficiently trustful. The old girl's papers are made out
to Cardiff, and here we are pushed round into the Bristol Channel. By
James! look, there's a tug making up to us. Thing like that makes you
feel homey, doesn't it, sir?"
The little spattering tug wheeled up within hail, tossing like a cork on
the brown waves of the estuary, and the skipper in the green pulpit
between the paddle-boxes waved a hand cheerily.
"Seem to have found some dirty weather, Captain," he bawled. "Want a
pull into Cardiff or Newport?"
"Cardiff. What price?"
"Say £100."
"I wasn't asking to buy the tug. You're putting a pretty fancy figure on
her for that new lick of paint you've got on your rails."
"I'll take £80."
"Oh, I can sail her in myself if you're going to be funny. She's as
handy as a pilot-boat, brig rigged like this, and my crew know her fine.
I'll give you £20 into Cardiff, and you're to dock me for that."
"Twenty wicked people. Now look here, Captain, you don't look very
prosperous with that vessel of yours, and will probably have the sack
from owners for mishandling her when you get ashore, and I don't want to
embitter your remaining years in the workus, so I'll pull you in for
fifty quid."
"£20, old bottle nose."
"Come now, Captain, thirty. I'm not here for sport. I've got to make my
living."
"My man," said Kettle, "I'll meet you and make it £25, and I'll see you
in Aden before I give a penny more. You can take that, or sheer off."
"Throw us your blooming rope," said the tug skipper.
"There, sir," said Kettle _sotto voce_ to Dayton-Philipps, "you see the
marvellousness of it? God has stood by me to the very end. I've saved at
least £10 over that towage, and, by James! I've seen times when a ship
mauled about like this would have been bled for four times the amount
before a tug would pluck her in."
"Then we are out of the wood now?"
"We'll get the canvas off her, and then you can go below and shave. You
can sleep in a shore bed this night, if you choose, sir, and to-morrow
we'll see about fingering the salvage. There'll be no trouble there now;
we shall just have to ask for a check and Lloyds will pay it, and then
you and the hands will take your share, and I--by James! Mr. Philipps, I
shall be a rich man over this business. I shouldn't be a bit surprised
but what I finger a snug £500 as my share. Oh, sir, Heaven's been very
good to me over this, and I know it, and I'm grateful. My wife will be
grateful too. I wish you could come to our chapel some day and see her."
"You deserve your luck, Captain, if ever a man did in this world, and,
by Jove! we'll celebrate it. We've been living on pig's food for long
enough. We'll find the best hotel in Cardiff, and we'll get the best
dinner the _chef_ there can produce. I want you to be my guest at that."
"I must ask you to excuse me," said Kettle. "I've received a good deal
just lately, and I'm thankful, and I want to say so. If you don't mind,
I'd rather say it alone."
"I understand, Skipper. You're a heap better man than I am, and if you
don't mind, I'd like to shake hands with you. Thanks. We may not meet
again, but I shall never forget you and what we've seen on this
murderous old wreck of a ship. Hullo, there's Cardiff not twenty minutes
ahead. Well, I must go below and clean up after you've docked her."