_In Which I Relate My History and Stand Up to a Bully_
A fine introduction to my readers! That is the way I look at it. It
does seem to me, looking back upon the last few years of my life,
that my impetuosity has forever been getting me into unpleasant
predicaments. Perhaps if I wasn’t such a husky fellow for my age,
and had not learned to use my fists to defend myself, I should not
have “butted in,” as Thankful Polk said, and so laid myself open to
a beating at the hands of Bob Promise, the bully of the Gullwing’s
fo’castle.
A quarrel with my cousin, Paul Downes, on a certain September evening
more than a year and a half before, had resulted in a serious change in
my life and in a series of adventures which no sensible fellow could
ever have desired. For all those months I had been separated from my
home, and from my mother who was a widow and needed me, and at this
particular time when I had come aboard the Gullwing, my principal wish
and hope was to get back to my home, and that as quickly as possible.
That the reader may better understand my situation I must briefly
recount my history up to this hour.
Something more than fifteen years previous my father, Dr. Webb, of
Bolderhead, Massachusetts, while fishing from a dory off shore was lost
overboard and his body was never recovered. This tragedy occurred three
weeks after the death of my maternal grandfather, Mr. Darringford, who
had objected to my mother’s marriage to Dr. Webb, and who had left his
large estate in trust for my mother and myself, but so tied up that we
could never benefit by a penny of it unless we separated from Dr. Webb,
or in case of my father’s death. Dr. Webb had never been a money-making
man--not even a successful man as the world looks upon success--and he
was in financial difficulties at the time of his fatal fishing trip.
Considering these circumstances, ill-natured gossip said that Dr. Webb
had committed suicide. I was but two years old at the time and before I
had grown to the years of understanding, this story had been smothered
by time; I never should have heard the story I believe had it not been
for my cousin, Paul Downes.
Mr. Chester Downes had married my mother’s older sister, and that
match had pleased Mr. Darringford little better than the marriage of
his younger daughter. But Aunt Alice had died previous to grandfather’s
own decease, so Mr. Downes and Paul had received but a very small part
of the Darringford estate. I know now that Chester Downes had attached
himself like a leech to my weak and easily influenced mother, and
had it not been for Lawyer Hounsditch, who was co-trustee with her,
my uncle would long since have completely controlled my own and my
mother’s property.
Chester Downes and his son, who was only a few mouths older than
myself, had done their best to alienate my mother from me as I grew
older; but the quarrel between Paul and myself, mentioned above, had
brought matters to a crisis, and I believed that I had gotten the
Downeses out of the house for good and all. Fearing that Paul would try
to “get square” with me by harming my sloop, the Wavecrest, I slept
aboard that craft to guard her. At the beginning of the September gale
Paul sneaked out of the sloop in the night, nailed me into the cabin,
and cut her moorings. I was blown out to sea and was rescued by the
whaling bark, Scarboro, just beginning a three-years’ voyage to the
South Seas.
I was enabled to send home letters by a mail-boat, but was forced to
remain with the Scarboro until she reached Buenos Ayres. The story
of an old boatsteerer, Tom Anderly by name, had revived in my mind
the mystery of my poor father’s disappearance. Tom had been one of
the crew of a coasting schooner which had rescued a man swimming in
the sea on a foggy day off Bolderhead Neck, at the time--as near as
I could figure--when my father was reported drowned. This man had
called himself Carver and had left the coasting vessel at New York
after having borrowed two dollars from Tom. Years afterward a letter
had reached Tom from this Carver, enclosing the borrowed money, and
postmarked Santiago, Chile. The details of the boatsteerer’s story made
me believe that the man Carver was Dr. Webb, who had deserted my mother
and myself for the obvious reason that, as long as he remained with us,
we could not benefit from grandfather’s estate.
While ashore at Buenos Ayres I was accosted by a queer old Yankee named
Adoniram Tugg, master and owner of the schooner Sea Spell, but whose
principal business was the netting of wild animals for animal dealers.
He called me “Professor Vose,” not having seen my face, and explained
that my voice and build were exactly like a partner of his whom he
knew by that name. The character of this Professor Vose, as described
by Captain Tugg, as well as other details, led me to believe that he
was the same man whom the boatsteerer aboard the Scarboro had known as
Jim Carver, and the possibility of the man being my father took hold of
my imagination so strongly that I shipped on the Sea Spell for Tugg’s
headquarters, located some miles up a river emptying into the Straits
of Magellan.
But when we reached the animal catcher’s headquarters we found
the shacks and cages destroyed and it was Tugg’s belief that his
partner--the mysterious man I had come so far to see--had been killed
by the natives. Making my way to Punta Arenas, to take a steamship for
home, feeling that my impulsiveness had delayed my return to my mother
unnecessarily, I fell in again with the Scarboro.
To my surprise I found aboard of her, under the name of “Bodfish,” my
cousin, Paul Downes. Fearing punishment for cutting my sloop adrift,
when his crime became known, Paul had run away from home and had worked
his way as far as Buenos Ayres on a Bayne Line Steamship. There Captain
Rogers of the whaling bark had found him in a crimp’s place and had
bailed him out and taken him aboard the Scarboro. Paul didn’t like
his job, and demanded that I pay his fare home on the steamship, but
I believed that a few months’ experience with the whalers would do my
cousin no harm, and should have refused his demand even had I had money
enough for both our fares. The details of these adventures are related
in full in the first volume of this series, entitled, “Swept Out to
Sea; or, Clint Webb Among the Whalers.”
Because I refused to aid Paul he threatened again to “get square,” and
he certainly made good his threat. I was to remain but two nights at
Punta Arenas and had already paid my passage as far as Buenos Ayres
on the Dundee Castle; but Paul got in with some men from the sealing
steamer, Gypsey Girl, and they shanghaied me aboard, together with a
lad from Georgia, Thankful Polk by name, who had tried to help me. Our
adventures with the sealers, and our finding of the whaleship Firebrand
frozen in the ice and deserted by her crew after her cargo of oil was
complete, is related in number two of the series, entitled, “The Frozen
Ship; or, Clint Webb Among the Sealers.”
During those adventures I learned that Adoniram Tugg’s partner,
Professor Vose, escaped death at the hands of the Patagonians, had
joined forces with the animal catcher again, and in the Sea Spell they
likewise had sought and found the frozen ship and her valuable cargo.
Professor Vose boarded the abandoned ship and remained by her when the
Sea Spell lost most of her spars and top-hamper and Tugg was obliged to
beat into port to be refitted. Meanwhile, from the deck of the Gypsey
Girl, I saw the vast field of ice and bergs in which the Firebrand was
frozen break up in a gale; was horrified by the overwhelming of the
frozen ship, and had the evidence of my own eyes that, whether the
mysterious man in whom I was so greatly interested was merely Vose,
Jim Carver, or my own father, he had sunk with the Firebrand under the
avalanche of ice.
Later the captain of the Gypsey Girl, a Russ named Sergius, and
Thankful Polk and I were lost from the sealing steamer and are picked
up by the Scarboro which was on her way to Valpariso to refit after the
gales she had suffered on the South Pacific whaling grounds. Captain
Rogers, knowing my exceeding anxiety to return home, got a chance for
Thank and I to work our passage on the Gullwing, which was just setting
sail from Valpariso as the Scarboro arrived at that port.
And here we were on the deck of the handsome schooner, homeward
bound; but before I had been here half an hour, it seemed, my ill-luck
had followed me. I was enmeshed in a quarrel with the bully of the
fo’castle, and could look forward to suffering a most finished
trouncing when the sails were all set, the deck cleared, and the
captain’s watch was piped below.
“I’ve got a good mind to give one of the mates warning,” muttered
Thank, in my ear, as the bully went grumbling away at some call to
duty by the dapper little second mate, whom I already judged to be Mr.
Barney.
“Don’t you dare!” I admonished. “That’s no way to start. We’d have all
the men down on us, then. And we don’t know how many weeks we may have
to sail with them aboard of this windjammer.”
When they began to clear up the litter made by the work of getting
under weigh, Thank and I saw where we could lend a hand, and we
did so. We learned, by talking with the men, that the Gullwing was
short-handed, and that is why Captain Bowditch, shrewd old Down East
skipper as he was, had so willingly given two rugged boys, with some
knowledge of seamanship, their passage home. Two men had deserted
at Honolulu, and another had to be taken ashore to the hospital at
Valpariso.
The ship, we learned, was well found, and the men gave the officers a
good name. Most of the crew had been with her more than this one trip.
She was owned by the Baltimore firm of Barney, Blakesley & Knight, and
her run had been out from her home port, touching at Buenos Ayres, at
Valpariso and thence on to Honolulu and from there to Manila. On her
return voyage she made Honolulu again, Valpariso, and now hoped to not
drop her anchor until she reached the Virginia Capes.
It was the captain’s watch that was short and we were turned
over to Mr. Barney, the smart young second mate. He was a natty,
five-foot-nothing man, whom, if he had voted once, that was as much as
he’d ever done! But the men jumped when he spoke to them, and he had a
blue eye that went right through you and Thank declared--made the links
of your vertebrae loosen.
Meanwhile the Gullwing began to travel. Unless one has stood upon
the deck of a great sailing ship, and looked up into the sky full of
sails that spread above her, it is hard to realize how fast such a
craft can travel through the sea under a fair wind. Many a seaworthy
steamship would have been glad to make the speed that the Gullwing did
right then, with but a fairly cheerful breeze. She made a long tack
to seaward and then a short leg back, and in that time the Valpariso
roadstead was below the horizon and the outline of the Chilean coast
was but a faint, gray haze from the deck.
We went below, leaving the mate’s watch to finish the job. “Now for
it,” I thought, for Bully Bob had kept his eye on me most of the
time, and he crowded down the stairs behind me when I entered the
well-lighted and clean fo’castle of the four-stick schooner. I expected
he might try to take me foul; for I knew what sort of fighters these
deep-sea ruffians were. As a whole the crew of the schooner seemed much
above the average; but I believed Bob Promise needed a good thrashing
and I wished with all my heart that I were able to give it to him.
But if I could keep him off--make him fight with his fists alone--I
believed I at least might put up so good a fight that the other men
would interfere when they considered Bob had given me my lesson. I
hated the thought of being knocked down and stamped on, or kicked about
the fo’castle floor. I had seen two of the men fight aboard the Gypsey
Girl and a more brutal exhibition I never hope to witness.
So I kept my eye on Bob, as he watched me, and drew off my coat and
tightened my belt the moment I got below.
“Getting ready for that beating are you?” he demanded, with an evil
smile.
“I hope you won’t insist,” I said. “But if I’ve got to take it, I
suppose I must. All I have to say, is, that I hope you other men will
see fair play.”
“You can lay to that, younker,” declared the big fellow who had held
the wheel. He was an old man, but as powerful as a gorilla. “Give ’em
room, boys, and don’t interfere.”
Scarcely had he spoken when the bully made for me. His intention was,
quite evidently, to catch me around the waist, pinion my arms, and
throw me. But I determined to be caught by no such wrestler’s trick.
The ship was sailing on an even keel and I was light of foot. Just
before the bully reached me I stepped aside and drove my right fist
with all my might into his neck as he passed me.
Goodness! but he went down with a crash. Big as he was I had fairly
lifted him from his feet. The men roared with delight, and slapped
their thighs and each other’s backs. I could see that they were
going to enjoy this set-to if I lasted any length of time against my
antagonist.
“Hold on!” I cried, before Bob Promise had managed to pick himself
up, and believing that my first blow had won me the sympathy of the
majority. “This man has all the advantage of weight and age over me. If
he’ll stand up and fight clean with his fists, I’ll do my best to meet
him. But I won’t stand for rough work, or clinches. He’ll best me in a
minute, wrestling.”
“The boy speaks true,” declared the hairy man. “And I tell you what,
mates. It ain’t clear in my mind what the fight’s about, or who’s in
the wrong. But the lad shall have his way. If you try to grab him, or
use your feet, Bob, I’ll pull you off him with my own two hands and
break you in two! Mark that, now.”
“Hurrah!” cried the irrepressible Thank. “Go to it, Sharp! I believe
you can win out.”