"But they won't take excuses. You're across the line, and that's enough.
They'll take you. In you go, Siberia and the salt-mines. And as for
Uncle Sam, why, what's he to know about it? Never a word will get back
to the States. 'The _Mary Thomas_,' the papers will say, 'the
_Mary Thomas_ lost with all hands. Probably in a typhoon in the
Japanese seas.' That's what the papers will say, and people, too. In you
go, Siberia and the salt-mines. Dead to the world and kith and kin,
though you live fifty years."
In such manner John Lewis, commonly known as the "sea-lawyer," settled
the matter out of hand.
It was a serious moment in the forecastle of the _Mary Thomas_. No
sooner had the watch below begun to talk the trouble over, than the
watch on deck came down and joined them. As there was no wind, every
hand could be spared with the exception of the man at the wheel, and he
remained only for the sake of discipline. Even "Bub" Russell, the
cabin-boy, had crept forward to hear what was going on.
However, it was a serious moment, as the grave faces of the sailors bore
witness. For the three preceding months the _Mary Thomas_ sealing
schooner, had hunted the seal pack along the coast of Japan and north to
Bering Sea. Here, on the Asiatic side of the sea, they were forced to
give over the chase, or rather, to go no farther; for beyond, the
Russian cruisers patrolled forbidden ground, where the seals might breed
in peace.
A week before she had fallen into a heavy fog accompanied by calm. Since
then the fog-bank had not lifted, and the only wind had been light airs
and catspaws. This in itself was not so bad, for the sealing schooners
are never in a hurry so long as they are in the midst of the seals; but
the trouble lay in the fact that the current at this point bore heavily
to the north. Thus the _Mary Thomas_ had unwittingly drifted across
the line, and every hour she was penetrating, unwillingly, farther and
farther into the dangerous waters where the Russian bear kept guard.
How far she had drifted no man knew. The sun had not been visible
for a week, nor the stars, and the captain had been unable to take
observations in order to determine his position. At any moment a cruiser
might swoop down and hale the crew away to Siberia. The fate of other
poaching seal-hunters was too well known to the men of the _Mary
Thomas_, and there was cause for grave faces.
"Mine friends," spoke up a German boat-steerer, "it vas a pad piziness.
Shust as ve make a big catch, und all honest, somedings go wrong, und
der Russians nab us, dake our skins and our schooner, und send us mit
der anarchists to Siberia. Ach! a pretty pad piziness!"
"Yes, that's where it hurts," the sea lawyer went on. "Fifteen hundred
skins in the salt piles, and all honest, a big pay-day coming to every
man Jack of us, and then to be captured and lose it all! It'd be
different if we'd been poaching, but it's all honest work in open
water."
"But if we haven't done anything wrong, they can't do anything to us,
can they?" Bub queried.
"It strikes me as 'ow it ain't the proper thing for a boy o' your age
shovin' in when 'is elders is talkin'," protested an English sailor,
from over the edge of his bunk.
"Oh, that's all right, Jack," answered the sea-lawyer. "He's a perfect
right to. Ain't he just as liable to lose his wages as the rest of us?"
"Wouldn't give thruppence for them!" Jack sniffed back. He had been
planning to go home and see his family in Chelsea when he was paid off,
and he was now feeling rather blue over the highly possible loss, not
only of his pay, but of his liberty.
"How are they to know?" the sea-lawyer asked in answer to Bub's previous
question. "Here we are in forbidden water. How do they know but what we
came here of our own accord? Here we are, fifteen hundred skins in the
hold. How do they, know whether we got them in open water or in the
closed sea? Don't you see, Bub, the evidence is all against us. If you
caught a man with his pockets full of apples like those which grow on
your tree, and if you caught him in your tree besides, what'd you think
if he told you he couldn't help it, and had just been sort of blown
there, and that anyway those apples came from some other tree--what'd
you think, eh?"
Bub saw it clearly when put in that light, and shook his head
despondently.
"You'd rather be dead than go to Siberia," one of the boat-pullers said.
"They put you into the salt-mines and work you till you die. Never see
daylight again. Why, I've heard tell of one fellow that was chained to
his mate, and that mate died. And they were both chained together! And
if they send you to the quicksilver mines you get salivated. I'd rather
be hung than salivated."
"Wot's salivated?" Jack asked, suddenly sitting up in his bunk at the
hint of fresh misfortunes.
"Why, the quicksilver gets into your blood; I think that's the way. And
your gums all swell like you had the scurvy, only worse, and your teeth
get loose in your jaws. And big ulcers form, and then you die horrible.
The strongest man can't last long a-mining quicksilver."
"A pad piziness," the boat-steerer reiterated, dolorously, in the
silence which followed. "A pad piziness. I vish I was in Yokohama. Eh?
Vot vas dot?"
The vessel had suddenly heeled over. The decks were aslant. A tin
pannikin rolled down the inclined plane, rattling and banging. From
above came the slapping of canvas and the quivering rat-tat-tat of the
after leech of the loosely stretched foresail. Then the mate's voice
sang down the hatch, "All hands on deck and make sail!"
Never had such summons been answered with more enthusiasm. The calm had
broken. The wind had come which was to carry them south into safety.
With a wild cheer all sprang on deck. Working with mad haste, they flung
out topsails, flying jibs and stay-sails. As they worked, the fog-bank
lifted and the black vault of heaven, bespangled with the old familiar
stars, rushed into view. When all was ship-shape, the _Mary Thomas_
was lying gallantly over on her side to a beam wind and plunging ahead
due south.
"Steamer's lights ahead on the port bow, sir!" cried the lookout from
his station on the forecastle-head. There was excitement in the man's
voice.
The captain sent Bub below for his night-glasses. Everybody crowded to
the lee-rail to gaze at the suspicious stranger, which already began to
loom up vague and indistinct. In those unfrequented waters the chance
was one in a thousand that it could be anything else than a Russian
patrol. The captain was still anxiously gazing through the glasses, when
a flash of flame left the stranger's side, followed by the loud report
of a cannon. The worst fears were confirmed. It was a patrol, evidently
firing across the bows of the _Mary Thomas_ in order to make her
heave to.
"Hard down with your helm!" the captain commanded the steers-man, all
the life gone out of his voice. Then to the crew, "Back over the jib and
foresail! Run down the flying jib! Clew up the foretopsail! And aft here
and swing on to the main-sheet!"
The _Mary Thomas_ ran into the eye of the wind, lost headway, and
fell to courtesying gravely to the long seas rolling up from the west.
The cruiser steamed a little nearer and lowered a boat. The sealers
watched in heartbroken silence. They could see the white bulk of the
boat as it was slacked away to the water, and its crew sliding aboard.
They could hear the creaking of the davits and the commands of the
officers. Then the boat sprang away under the impulse of the oars, and
came toward them. The wind had been rising, and already the sea was too
rough to permit the frail craft to lie alongside the tossing schooner;
but watching their chance, and taking advantage of the boarding ropes
thrown to them, an officer and a couple of men clambered aboard.
The boat then sheered off into safety and lay to its oars, a young
midshipman, sitting in the stern and holding the yoke-lines, in charge.
The officer, whose uniform disclosed his rank as that of second
lieutenant in the Russian navy, went below with the captain of the
_Mary Thomas_ to look at the ship's papers. A few minutes later he
emerged, and upon his sailors removing the hatch-covers, passed down
into the hold with a lantern to inspect the salt piles. It was a goodly
heap which confronted him--fifteen hundred fresh skins, the season's
catch; and under the circumstances he could have had but one conclusion.
"I am very sorry," he said, in broken English to the sealing captain,
when he again came on deck, "but it is my duty, in the name of the tsar,
to seize your vessel as a poacher caught with fresh skins in the closed
sea. The penalty, as you may know, is confiscation and imprisonment."
The captain of the _Mary Thomas_ shrugged his shoulders in seeming
indifference, and turned away. Although they may restrain all outward
show, strong men, under unmerited misfortune, are sometimes very close
to tears. Just then the vision of his little California home, and of the
wife and two yellow-haired boys, was strong upon him, and there was a
strange, choking sensation in his throat, which made him afraid that if
he attempted to speak he would sob instead.
And also there was upon him the duty he owed his men. No weakness before
them, for he must be a tower of strength to sustain them in misfortune.
He had already explained to the second lieutenant, and knew the
hopelessness of the situation. As the sea-lawyer had said, the evidence
was all against him. So he turned aft, and fell to pacing up and down
the poop of the vessel over which he was no longer commander.
The Russian officer now took temporary charge. He ordered more of his
men aboard, and had all the canvas clewed up and furled snugly away.
While this was being done, the boat plied back and forth between the
two vessels, passing a heavy hawser, which was made fast to the great
towing-bitts on the schooner's forecastle-head. During all this work
the sealers stood about in sullen groups. It was madness to think of
resisting, with the guns of a man-of-war not a biscuit-toss away; but
they refused to lend a hand, preferring instead to maintain a gloomy
silence.
Having accomplished his task, the lieutenant ordered all but four of his
men back into the boat. Then the midshipman, a lad of sixteen, looking
strangely mature and dignified in his uniform and sword, came aboard to
take command of the captured sealer. Just as the lieutenant prepared to
depart, his eyes chanced to alight upon Bub. Without a word of warning,
he seized him by the arm and dropped him over the rail into the waiting
boat; and then, with a parting wave of his hand, he followed him.
It was only natural that Bub should be frightened at this unexpected
happening. All the terrible stories he had heard of the Russians served
to make him fear them, and now returned to his mind with double force.
To be captured by them was bad enough, but to be carried off by them,
away from his comrades, was a fate of which he had not dreamed.
"Be a good boy, Bub," the captain called to him, as the boat drew away
from the _Mary Thomas_'s side, "and tell the truth!"
"Aye, aye, sir!" he answered, bravely enough, by all outward appearance.
He felt a certain pride of race, and was ashamed to be a coward before
these strange enemies, these wild Russian bears.
"Und be politeful!" the German boat-steerer added, his rough voice
lifting across the water like a fog-horn.
Bub waved his hand in farewell, and his mates clustered along the
rail as they answered with a cheering shout. He found room in the
stern-sheets, where he fell to regarding the lieutenant. He didn't look
so wild or bearish, after all--very much like other men, Bub concluded,
and the sailors were much the same as all other man-of-war's men he had
ever known. Nevertheless, as his feet struck the steel deck of the
cruiser, he felt as if he had entered the portals of a prison.
For a few minutes he was left unheeded. The sailors hoisted the boat up,
and swung it in on the davits. Then great clouds of black smoke poured
out of the funnels, and they were under way--to Siberia, Bub could not
help but think. He saw the _Mary Thomas_ swing abruptly into line
as she took the pressure from the hawser, and her side-lights, red and
green, rose and fell as she was towed through the sea.
Bub's eyes dimmed at the melancholy sight, but--but just then the
lieutenant came to take him down to the commander, and he straightened
up and set his lips firmly, as if this were a very commonplace affair
and he were used to being sent to Siberia every day in the week. The
cabin in which the commander sat was like a palace compared to the
humble fittings of the _Mary Thomas_, and the commander himself, in
gold lace and dignity, was a most august personage, quite unlike the
simple man who navigated his schooner on the trail of the seal pack.
Bub now quickly learned why he had been brought aboard, and in the
prolonged questioning which followed, told nothing but the plain truth.
The truth was harmless; only a lie could have injured his cause. He did
not know much, except that they had been sealing far to the south in
open water, and that when the calm and fog came down upon them, being
close to the line, they had drifted across. Again and again he insisted
that they had not lowered a boat or shot a seal in the week they had
been drifting about in the forbidden sea; but the commander chose to
consider all that he said to be a tissue of falsehoods, and adopted a
bullying tone in an effort to frighten the boy. He threatened and
cajoled by turns, but failed in the slightest to shake Bub's statements,
and at last ordered him out of his presence.
By some oversight, Bub was not put in anybody's charge, and wandered up
on deck unobserved. Sometimes the sailors, in passing, bent curious
glances upon him, but otherwise he was left strictly alone. Nor could he
have attracted much attention, for he was small, the night dark, and the
watch on deck intent on its own business. Stumbling over the strange
decks, he made his way aft where he could look upon the side-lights of
the _Mary Thomas_, following steadily in the rear.
For a long while he watched, and then lay down in the darkness close to
where the hawser passed over the stern to the captured schooner. Once
an officer came up and examined the straining rope to see if it were
chafing, but Bub cowered away in the shadow undiscovered. This, however,
gave him an idea which concerned the lives and liberties of twenty-two
men, and which was to avert crushing sorrow from more than one happy
home many thousand miles away.
In the first place, he reasoned, the crew were all guiltless of any
crime, and yet were being carried relentlessly away to imprisonment in
Siberia--a living death, he had heard, and he believed it implicitly.
In the second place, he was a prisoner, hard and fast, with no chance
of escape. In the third, it was possible for the twenty-two men on the
_Mary Thomas_ to escape. The only thing which bound them was a
four-inch hawser. They dared not cut it at their end, for a watch was
sure to be maintained upon it by their Russian captors; but at this end,
ah! at his end----
Bub did not stop to reason further. Wriggling close to the hawser, he
opened his jack-knife and went to work, The blade was not very sharp,
and he sawed away, rope-yarn by rope-yarn, the awful picture of the
solitary Siberian exile he must endure growing clearer and more terrible
at every stroke. Such a fate was bad enough to undergo with one's
comrades, but to face it alone seemed frightful. And besides, the very
act he was performing was sure to bring greater punishment upon him.
In the midst of such somber thoughts, he heard footsteps approaching.
He wriggled away into the shadow. An officer stopped where he had been
working, half-stooped to examine the hawser, then changed his mind and
straightened up. For a few minutes he stood there, gazing at the lights
of the captured schooner, and then went forward again.
Now was the time! Bub crept back and went on sawing. Now two parts were
severed. Now three. But one remained. The tension upon this was so great
that it readily yielded. Splash! The freed end went overboard. He lay
quietly, his heart in his mouth, listening. No one on the cruiser but
himself had heard.
He saw the red and green lights of the _Mary Thomas_ grow dimmer
and dimmer. Then a faint hallo came over the water from the Russian
prize crew. Still nobody heard. The smoke continued to pour out of the
cruiser's funnels, and her propellers throbbed as mightily as ever.
What was happening on the _Mary Thomas_? Bub could only surmise;
but of one thing he was certain: his comrades would assert themselves
and overpower the four sailors and the midshipman. A few minutes later
he saw a small flash, and straining his ears heard the very faint report
of a pistol. Then, oh joy! both the red and green lights suddenly
disappeared. The _Mary Thomas_ was retaken!
Just as an officer came aft, Bub crept forward, and hid away in
one of the boats. Not an instant too soon. The alarm was given. Loud
voices rose in command. The cruiser altered her course. An electric
search-light began to throw its white rays across the sea, here, there,
everywhere; but in its flashing path no tossing schooner was revealed.
Bub went to sleep soon after that, nor did he wake till the gray of
dawn. The engines were pulsing monotonously, and the water, splashing
noisily, told him the decks were being washed down. One sweeping glance,
and he saw that they were alone on the expanse of ocean. The _Mary
Thomas_ had escaped. As he lifted his head, a roar of laughter went
up from the sailors. Even the officer, who ordered him taken below and
locked up, could not quite conceal the laughter in his eyes. Bub thought
often in the days of confinement which followed, that they were not very
angry with him for what he had done.
He was not far from right. There is a certain innate nobility deep down
in the hearts of all men, which forces them to admire a brave act, even
if it is performed by an enemy. The Russians were in nowise different
from other men. True, a boy had outwitted them; but they could not blame
him, and they were sore puzzled as to what to do with him. It would
never do to take a little mite like him in to represent all that
remained of the lost poacher.
So, two weeks later, a United States man-of-war, steaming out of the
Russian port of Vladivostok, was signaled by a Russian cruiser. A boat
passed between the two ships, and a small boy dropped over the rail upon
the deck of the American vessel. A week later he was put ashore at
Hakodate, and after some telegraphing, his fare was paid on the railroad
to Yokohama.
From the depot he hurried through the quaint Japanese streets to the
harbor, and hired a _sampan_ boatman to put him aboard a certain
vessel whose familiar rigging had quickly caught his eye. Her gaskets
were off, her sails unfurled; she was just starting back to the United
States. As he came closer, a crowd of sailors sprang upon the forecastle
head, and the windlass-bars rose and fell as the anchor was torn from
its muddy bottom.
"'Yankee ship come down the ribber!'" the sea-lawyer's voice rolled out
as he led the anchor song.
"'Pull, my bully boys, pull!'" roared back the old familiar chorus, the
men's bodies lifting and bending to the rhythm.
Bub Russell paid the boatman and stepped on deck. The anchor was
forgotten. A mighty cheer went up from the men, and almost before he
could catch his breath he was on the shoulders of the captain,
surrounded by his mates, and endeavoring to answer twenty questions to
the second.
The next day a schooner hove to off a Japanese fishing village, sent
ashore four sailors and a little midshipman, and sailed away. These men
did not talk English, but they had money and quickly made their way to
Yokohama. From that day the Japanese village folk never heard anything
more about them, and they are still a much-talked-of mystery. As the
Russian government never said anything about the incident, the United
States is still ignorant of the whereabouts of the lost poacher, nor has
she ever heard, officially, of the way in which some of her citizens
"shanghaied" five subjects of the tsar. Even nations have secrets
sometimes.