The men were a long while below. I stepped softly to the companion
hatch, and bent my ear down it that I might know if they had made their
way through the ’tween decks bulkhead into the cabin. The chink of money
was very distinct, but that was all. Presently, however, I heard them
talking in low voices, but their tongue was Hebrew to me, and I went
back to my chair, looking yet again around the sea-line. I think they
had been at least an hour below when they arrived on deck, emerging
through the main hatch. They had walked forward without taking any
notice of me, and disappeared through the fore-scuttle, whence, after a
while, they arose bearing amongst them several tarpaulins which they
had come across. I took it that there was a carpenter’s chest down
there, for the yellow boatswain flourished a hammer in one hand, and a
box of what proved to be roundheaded nails in the other. They carefully
secured the hatch with a couple of these tarpaulins, then came to the
quarter-deck, and similarly roofed the skylight and the companion hatch,
saving that they left free a corner flap to admit of our passage up and
down.
“Dis is sailor vork,” said the boatswain giving me a nod, whilst his
face shone like a yellow sou’-wester in a squall of wet with the sweat
that flooded his repulsive visage. “Dat vataire keep out now, sah.”
“It is well done,” said I, softening my voice to disguise the emotion of
disgust and aversion which possessed me at sight of the ugly,
treacherous, askant sort of stare he fastened upon me whilst he spoke.
“Have you breakfasted?”
He came close to me before answer-ing; the other two meanwhile
remaining at the hatch and looking towards me.
“Ay,” he then said, “dere ish plenty biscuit, plenty vataire, plenty
beef,” indicating with a grimy thumb a portion of the hold that lay
under the cabin floor. “Dere ish plenty gold too,” he added in a hoarse,
theatrical sort of whisper, with a sudden gleam in his little horrible
eyes which to my fancy was so much like the blue flash off some keen and
polished blade of poniard as anything I can figure to liken it to.
“Yes,” said I carelessly, “plenty, I believe. But I must break my own
fast now. We shall need fresh water before the day’s out, and, praised
be the saints, there is plenty of it, you say.”
With that I went to the hatch, turned the flap of the tarpaulin and
descended, eyed narrowly by the two fellows who stood beside it, and as
I gained the interior I heard them say something to the boatswain, who
responded with an off-hand sort of _ya, ya!_ as though he would quiet a
misgiving in them. I made a hurried meal off some wine, biscuit and
cheese, and noticing as I passed on my way to the cabin again that the
door of the berth in which the chest of gold stood was shut, I tried the
handle and found it locked. The key was withdrawn. Smothering a curse
upon the hour that had brought these creatures to the wreck, I lighted a
cigar (of which I had a leather case half-full in my pocket), more for
the easy look of it than for any need I felt for tobacco just then, and
went in a lounge to the shelter of my umbrella. The boatswain was
examining the telescope when I arrived. He instantly put it down on
perceiving me and went forward to where his mates were. They peered
first over one side, pointing and talking, and arguing with amazing
volubility and with astonishing contortions; they then crossed to the
other side, and looked over and fell into the same kind of hot, eager
talk and gesticulations. It was easy to guess that they spoke about the
spars which floated, held by their gear, against the wreck. After a bit
they came to an agreement, disappeared in the forecastle and returned
with tackles and coils of rope. One of them went over the side, and
after a while there they were hauling upon purchases and slowly bringing
the spar out of water, the boatswain talking and bawling with furious
energy the whole while. I went forward to help them, and the yellow
ruffian nodded when I seized hold of the rope they were pulling at, and
cried with a hoarse roar of laughter, “Yash, yash. Ve make a mast, ve
make a yart, and ve put up sail, and ve steer to our own countree and be
reech men.”
Dagos as they were, they had some trick of seamanship amongst them.
There was stump enough left of the foremast to secure the heel of a spar
to, and by four o’clock that afternoon, with a break of but a single
half-hour for a meal and a smoke (they had found plenty of pipes and
tobacco in the seamen’s chests between decks), they had rigged up and
stayed a jury-mast and crossed it with a yard manufactured from a boom
of the wreckage to larboard; which, light as the breeze was, yet
furnished them with spread of sail enough to give the sheer-hulk
steerage way.
I had lent them a hand and done my landsman’s best, and had gone aft to
rest myself and to sweep the sea with the telescope for the hundredth
time that day. The three men were below getting some supper. The hull
was stirring through the water at a snail’s pace to a weak, hot wind
blowing right over her taffrail out of the southeast. The helm was
amidships, and her short length of oil-smooth wake showed her going
straight without steering. I could distinctly hear the men conversing in
the cabin. I reckoned because they knew their lingo was unintelligible
to me that they talked out. There was a fiery eagerness in the tones
they sometimes delivered themselves in, but earnestly as I listened I
could catch no meaning but that of their imprecations, which readily
enough took my ear owing to a certain resemblance between them and
Spanish and Italian oaths. A short interval of silence followed. All
three then came on deck, one of them carrying a jar and another a canvas
bag. I instantly observed that every man of them had girded a cutlass to
his side. They seemed to avoid my gaze as they walked to the pin to
which the line that connected the boat was belayed, and hauled her
alongside. I threw away my cigar and stood up. The first idea that
occurred to me was, they were going to victual the boat, sway the chest
of gold into her and sail away from me; and I cannot express with what
devotion I prayed to my Maker that this might prove so. I looked from
one to the other of them. Once I caught a sidelong glance from the
boatswain; otherwise they went to this business as though I were not
present, talking in rough, hurried whispers, with an occasional
exclamation from the yellow ruffian, that was like saying, “Make haste!”
When the boat was alongside one of them dropped into her, and received
the jar and bag from the other. He then returned, and the moment he was
inboards the boatswain, rounding upon me, drew his cutlass and pointed
to the boat.
“Be pleashed to get in and go away!” he exclaimed.
“Go away!” I echoed, too much thunderstruck by the villain’s order to
feel or witness the horror of the fate designed for me. “What have I
done that you should----?”
He interrupted me with a roar. “Go quick!” he cried, lifting his weapon
as though to strike, “or I kill you!”
The hands of the others groped at the hilts of their cutlasses; all
three eyed me now, and there was murder in every man’s look. Without a
word I stepped to the side, and sprang into the boat. One of them threw
the line off the pin into the sea. “Hoise your sail and steer that way,
or we shoot!” bellowed the yellow ruffian, waving his cutlass towards
the sea astern. God knows there were small arms enough in the cabin to
enable them to fulfil _that_ threat. I grasped the halliards, mastheaded
the little lug, and throwing an oar over the stern, sculled the boat’s
head round, and in a minute was slipping away from the hull, at the
stern of which the three men stood watching me, the blade in the
boatswain’s hand shining to the sun like a wand of fire as he continued
to point with it into the southeast.