Pete and the Mutiny
The _Titania_ remained at Gib. for thirty-six hours, refilling her
fuel-tanks, provisioning, and making good slight damage done during
the gale.
At six in the morning, having received her clearance papers, the
yacht weighed, and was soon bowling along with the strong current
that sets perpetually eastward into the almost tideless
Mediterranean.
Villiers, now officer in charge of the starboard watch, was pacing
the deck with Harborough. For the present there was little to do. The
_Titania_ lay close hauled on the port tack; she had plenty of
sea-room, and there were no hidden shoals to worry about. Fontayne
was taking his trick at the wheel, and the rest of the duty watch,
having scrubbed decks and "flemished down", were standing easy.
"She shows a clean pair of heels," remarked Villiers, watching the
vessel's wake. "I should imagine we're doing a good eight knots."
"Yes," agreed Harborough. "But we won't stand here gazing aft. It's a
little antipathy of mine. Why, I don't know. You read in books of
people standing aft and watching the phosphorescent swirl of the
propellers and all that sort of thing. Sentimental! I prefer to look
for'ard and see what's ahead. There's precious little fun in taking
life retrospectively. It's anticipation--call it hope if you
like--that is the lodestone of life!"
"I wonder if you'll be of the same mind when you near the end of your
journey," remarked Villiers.
"That I can't say," replied Harborough. "But, candidly speaking,
would you care to go through the last five years again?"
"I had some good times," said Jack reflectively. "Perhaps I was
lucky."
"Supposing you'd been a Tommy in the trenches?" prompted Harborough.
"Ah, that's a proposition," rejoined Villiers gravely. "I don't think
I'd care for the idea. In fact, I feel certain I wouldn't. And I know
dozens of fellows who've been and come back, and they are all of the
same opinion--that it was a physical and mental hell. But if they had
to start all over again, they'd do it."
"As a matter of patriotic duty," added Harborough. "We're a weird
nation--slow to adapt ourselves to changing conditions, blunderers in
war and blunderers in peace, and yet, somehow, we come out on top in
the end. The Old Country's in a pretty rotten state just now, I
admit, but in another twelvemonth or so things will begin to shape
themselves. Eh! what's that?"
O'Loghlin, lightly clad, perspiring freely and reeking with oil, had
come up from the motor-room and stood before his chief.
"We've a stowaway, sir," he reported.
Harborough knitted his heavy brows.
"Bring him along," he ordered.
The stowaway came quietly. He followed O'Loghlin like a lamb--a tall,
powerfully-built negro, on whose ebony features was a smile of
beatific contentment, in conjunction with a wide-open mouth that
displayed a double row of glistening ivories extending almost from
ear to ear.
Harborough looked straight at him and said nothing. O'Loghlin,
standing behind the black, afterwards maintained that the skipper was
looking through the nigger. In less than fifteen seconds the smile
had vanished and the stowaway was on the verge of tears.
"What are you doing here?" demanded the skipper of the _Titania_.
"I jus' come aboard, sah."
"For what reason?"
"Me tink dis packet is bound for 'Merica. I jus' want to go dere,"
and again a broad smile stole over the nigger's face. "Me British
born," he continued proudly. "From Hole Town, Barbadoes, which am in
British West Indies; but I specks you know dat bit, sah."
"And so you thrust your unwelcome carcass on board this yacht,"
rejoined Harborough. "Do you know where we are bound for?"
The nigger shook his head.
"Don't much, sah," he replied. "Me work berry hard to please you."
"You'll jolly well have to," declared Harborough grimly. "There's no
room for idlers on this craft. Can you cook?"
"Yes, sah, me berry good cook," assented the black, and immediately
he broke into a loud roar of laughter until he had to hold his sides
as the tears streamed down his face.
The laugh was distinctly infectious. There was something so
boisterously gusty in the merriment that every one of the _Titania's_
crew on deck began smiling in varying degrees of intensity.
"What about your cooking?" inquired Harborough, whose face was
puckered in a multitude of crinkles.
"Me cook aboard de _Lucy M. Partington_, three-masted schooner from
N'Orleans to Naples," explained the black. "Me cook berry well all de
time. One day de fellah played a prank, an' put Epsom-salts in the
sugar canister. I made Spotted Dick for de Ole Man--pardon, sah, de
Captain, I mean--an' dere you are."
Another tornado of laughter followed.
"And what happened then?" prompted Harborough.
"Ole Man kick me out at Gib.," replied the nigger soberly. "Big
gum-boots, too," he added, with painful reminiscence.
"Well, carry on in the galley," ordered the skipper of the _Titania_.
"None of your Epsom-salt touches here, remember, or you'll find my
boot heavier than the _Lucy M. Partington's_ Old Man's. What's your
name?"
"Pete, sah; Pete Johnson."
Harborough waved dismissal. Pete, pulling his woolly forelock,
pattered away towards the fore-hatch.
"They didn't have a nigger on board the _Zug_, I suppose?" inquired
Harborough.
"No," replied Villiers. "This fellow seems quite above board."
"He may be a blessing in disguise," commented the baronet. "I don't
envy the fellows who volunteered for the galley when we get down the
Red Sea, and they'll be jolly glad to get out of it."
An hour later Villiers went below and inspected the galley.
Pete had quickly made himself at home. Arrayed in white-canvas jumper
and trousers he presented a decidedly better appearance than he had
done in the ragged dungarees. He had not been lacking in energy, for
the pots and pans were burnished brighter than they had been since
they left the ship-chandler's establishment in far-off Southampton.
He greeted Jack with one of his expansive grins.
"Quite shipshape now, Massa Villers," he exclaimed.
"You're making quite a fine show, Sambo," replied Villiers.
The black's smile vanished and he pouted his lip.
"I would hab you know, Massa Villers," he exclaimed, with studied
dignity, "dat my name is Pete, not Sambo. Sambo Yankee niggah; me
British born."
"Right-o, Pete, I'll remember," replied Villiers; and the black
resumed his customary smile.
"I wonder how he got hold of my name," thought Jack.
It was O'Loghlin who solved that little mystery. O'Loghlin had
discovered the stowaway hidden behind the main fuel-tank that was
fitted athwartships just abaft the main hold. Pete would not have
been surprised had the engineer officer dragged him out by his woolly
hair and booted him in addition. That was the sort of thing he was
used to aboard the _Lucy M. Partington_, but nothing of the kind
happened, and Pete felt grateful. He described in detail how he
contrived to get on board without being "spotted" by any of the watch
on deck. After he had been rated ship's cook the nigger asked
O'Loghlin to tell him the names of every man on board, and, with a
retentive memory that many West Indian negroes possess, Pete "had
them all off pat".
Throughout the greater part of the day the wind held, but towards the
end of the first dog watch it fell a flat calm with considerable
haze. Away to the south'ard the African coast, although only five
miles distant, was lost to view. Night was approaching, so in order
to keep clear of the unlighted coast the _Titania's_ course was
altered a full point, and the motors were started to give her
steerage-way.
"We'll have the canvas stowed," decided Harborough; "one never knows
what's behind the mist. The glass is a bit jumpy, I notice."
Accordingly the sails were lowered and stowed, and throughout the
night the _Titania_ held on under power, riding over the long, sullen
ground-swell that was a sign of a gale raging not so many miles off.
The sea was highly phosphorescent, and, although from crest to crest
the rollers measured a full hundred yards, not a catspaw ruffled the
undulating surface.
Morning came and with it no change in the weather. A couple of miles
on the port bow was a large three-masted schooner with her canvas
slatting violently as she wallowed in the long swell. From her mizen
truck was displayed a two-flag signal.
"Stand by with the code-book," cautioned Beverley, who was in charge
of the deck.
He levelled his binoculars at the vessel. There was no need for the
code-book. Every seaman knows the significance of the letters
YF--Mutiny.
"On deck both watches," shouted Beverley. "Close up with the
answering pennant."
The order was obeyed in double-quick time, the watch below turning
out in a state of attire that could not by any stretch of the
imagination be termed uniform. Harborough, stopping only to don
oilskin coat and sea-boots over his pyjamas, came on deck.
"Serve out the arms, Mr. Beverley," he said, "and hoist a signal
saying we are sending a boat. Mr. Villiers, will you take half a
dozen armed men and proceed to yonder vessel?"
Almost as soon as the signal flags GTM--"I am sending a boat"--were
toggled and hoisted, the _Titania's_ whaler was swung outboard ready
for lowering, and under power the yacht rapidly bore down upon the
mutinous schooner.
"Golly!" exclaimed Pete, who, in the midst of preparing breakfast,
had answered to the hail for all hands on deck. "Dat's the ole _Lucy
M. Partington_."
Before the _Titania_ had entirely lost way the whaler's rounded
bilges hit the water with a resounding smack. The lower blocks of the
falls were disengaged, and the bowman adroitly fended off.
"Give way, lads!" ordered Villiers.
Fifty steady strokes sufficed to lay the boat alongside the
schooner's port quarter, from which a rope-ladder had been dropped by
her now considerably-relieved skipper.
Leaving one hand in the whaler, Villiers and the rest of the boat's
crew swarmed up the side and gained the _Lucy M. Partington's_ poop.
The mutiny was over. The rebellious hands had been overawed by the
sight of the approaching armed boat's crew.
The Old Man, a typical New Englander, with a goatee beard and huge
leather sea-boots (Villiers found himself wondering how the skipper
could wear heavy foot-gear on a hot day like that), left his
strategical position, to wit, a round house abaft the mizen, and was
bellowing incoherencies at a knot of sullen seamen clustered under
the break of the raised fo'c'sle. With him were the two mates and
three apprentices, who looked now as if they were enjoying the scene,
and a couple of grizzled, bald-headed seamen.
"What's all this fuss about, skipper?" inquired Villiers genially.
"Tarnation blue snakes take the pizonous reptiles," bellowed the Old
Man. "That's the durned skunk I want to get at; that skulking Finn."
He pointed to a gigantic man standing behind, but towering head and
shoulders above the cosmopolitan crowd of malcontents.
"We've had just about enuff of your tarnation tricks, Cap'n Abe,"
shouted one of the mutineers. "Nary a square meal since you hiked our
cook over the side."
"Guess I didn't boot the nigger jus' for nuthin'," explained Captain
Abe to his rescuers. "The nigger tried to pizen me."
"There ain't as good a cook on board, an' there won't be,"
vociferated the mutineer. "Pete could cook, and there ain't no sayin'
to the contrary, I guess."
So that was the trouble. In putting Pete ashore at Gib. the skipper
of the _Lucy M. Partington_ had laid up a rod in pickle for himself.
No doubt the Old Man honestly thought that the nigger had
deliberately put Epsom-salt into his pudding; but he had made a
mistake in not taking the trouble to investigate Pete's story. And
since the cook was a cook, the crew soon found out to their cost what
it means to have badly-prepared meals.
Matters came quickly to a head. One of the men approached the
skipper, holding in his hands a saucepan of watery potatoes in which
floated hard balls that were supposed to be dumplings, and asked him
whether he considered this sort of food good enough for human beings.
Captain Abe replied by booting the saucepan from the fellow's hands
and throwing most of its contents into the grumbler's face. That
started what soon developed into a serious affray, and how far
matters would have gone remained questionable. The appearance of the
_Titania_, which the mutineers mistook for a Government patrol-boat
(of which some were yet employed on mine-sweeping work in the
Mediterranean), rather took the wind out of their sails.
Villiers called the Yankee skipper aside.
"Look here," he said, "I don't quite know what you want me to do."
"Put the varmints into irons, I guess," suggested Captain Abe.
"Then who'll work the ship?" asked Jack. "There is bad weather
coming, judging by the glass and the look of things. Short-handed,
you'll be in a jolly tight corner. Those fellows have a grievance,
although they were in the wrong to kick up a shindy. I can't lend you
any hands, so what are you going to do?"
"Dashed if I know," admitted Captain Abe, in perplexity. "Say, what
would you?"
"You've been at sea a jolly sight longer than I have, I should say,"
continued Villiers. "So it seems like teaching my grandmother to tell
you how to handle men. Meet them half-way. If you've a grievance and
they have one, there's always the Consular Courts to appeal to.
That's better than jumping round the deck with sheath-knives and
revolvers."
"Guess you're about right," considered Captain Abe. "Just you sound
'em for me, young man. For my part, I'm willin'."
Villiers went for'ard. In five minutes he had "talked over" the crew.
They, too, were willing to carry on as before, on the understanding
that a competent cook was shipped at the next port they touched.
Jack, proud of his moral victory, shook hands with the Yankee skipper
and the two mates, and returned to the _Titania_.
"It's all right, now, sir," he reported. "They're carrying on."
At that moment the _Titania_, forging slowly ahead, was passing under
the stern and within half a cable's length of the becalmed _Lucy M.
Partington_.
The latter's skipper caught sight of Pete sitting contentedly on the
cat-head. His eyes opened in utter amazement.
"Pete!" he hailed. "Come you back!"
The nigger shook his woolly head.
"You kick me out, Cap'n Abe!" he reminded him.
"Fifty dollars, Pete, if you swim for it," almost implored the
Yankee, finding as he thought an easy solution to the present
difficulty.
Pete's head shook until his teeth almost rattled in his capacious
jaws.
"Dere's no leather sea-boots with nails in 'em on dis vessel," he
replied. "Only indy-rubber. 'Specks I know where dis nigger am
comf'ble."
Then, using an expression that he had picked up from his new
acquaintances on the _Titania_, he added: "Cheerio, you deah,
priceless ole thing!"