MAKES PLAIN THE DEEPEST VILLAINY OF RISK AND SETS ME ON A FRENCHMAN
When I come to write these affairs down after the lapse of years, I find
my memory but poorly retains the details of that terrific period between
the cry of Risk and the moment when Horn and I, abandoned on the doomed
vessel, watched the evening fall upon the long Kirkcaldy boat, her mast
stepped, but her sails down, hovering near us for the guarantee of our
eternal silence regarding the crime the men on her were there and then
committing. There is a space--it must have been brief, but I lived a
lifetime in it--whose impressions rest with me, blurred, but with the
general hue of agony. I can see the sun again sailing overhead in the
arching sky of blue; the enormous ocean, cruel, cold, spread out to the
line of the horizon; the flapping sails and drumming reef-points, the
streaming halliards and clew-garnets, the spray buffeting upon our hull
and spitting in our faces like an enemy; I hear the tumult of the seamen
hurrying vulgarly to save their wretched lives, the gluck of waters
in the bowels of the ship, the thud of cargo loose and drifting under
decks.
But I see and hear it all as in a dream or play, and myself someway
standing only a spectator.
It seemed that Risk and his men put all their dependence on the
long-boat out of Kirkcaldy. She was partly decked at the bows like a
Ballantrae herring-skiff, beamy and commodious. They clustered round her
like ants; swung her out, and over she went, and the whole hellish
plot lay revealed in the fact that she was all found with equipment and
provisions.
Horn and I made an effort to assist at her preparation; we were shoved
aside with frantic curses; we were beaten back by her oars when we
sought to enter her, and when she pushed off from the side of the _Seven
Sisters_, Dan Risk was so much the monster that he could jeer at our
perplexity. He sat at the tiller of her without a hat, his long hair,
that was turning lyart, blown by the wind about his black and mocking
eyes.
“Head her for Halifax, Horn,” said he, “and ye'll get there by-and-by.”
“Did I ever do ye any harm, skipper?” cried the poor seaman, standing on
the gunwale, hanging to the shrouds, and his aspect hungry for life.
“Ye never got the chance, Port Glesca,” cried back Risk, hugging the
tiller of the Kirkcaldy boat under his arm. “I'll gie ye a guess--
Come-a-riddle, come-a-riddle, come-a-rote-tote-tote--
Oh to bleezes! I canna put a rhyme till't, but this is the sense o't--a
darkie's never deaf and dumb till he's deid. Eh! Antonio, ye rascal!”
He looked forward as he spoke and exchanged a villainous laugh with the
cook, his instrument, who had overheard us and betrayed.
“Ye would mak' me swing for it, would ye, John Horn, when ye get ashore?
That's what I would expect frae a keelie oot o' Clyde.”
It is hard to credit that man could be so vile as this, but of such
stuff was Daniel Risk. He was a fiend in the glory of his revenge upon
the seaman who had threatened him with the gallows; uplifted like a
madman's, his face, that was naturally sallow, burned lamp-red at his
high cheek-bones, his hale eye gloated, his free hand flourished as
in an exultation. His mate sat silent beside him on the stern-thwart,
clearing the sheets: the crew, who had out the sweeps to keep the boat's
bows in the wind, made an effort to laugh at his jocosities, but clearly
longed to be away from this tragedy. And all the time, I think, I stood
beside the weather bulwark, surrendered to the certainty of a speedy
death, with the lines of a ballad coming back again and again to my
mind:
An' he shall lie in fathoms deep,
The star-fish ower his een shall creep.
An' an auld grey wife shall sit an' weep
In the hall o' Monaltrie.
I thrust that ungodly rhyme from me each time that it arose, but in
spite of me at last it kept time to the lap of a wave of encroaching sea
that beat about my feet.
My silence--my seeming indifference--would seem to have touched the
heart that could not be affected by the entreaties of the seaman Horn.
At least Risk ceased his taunts at last, and cast a more friendly eye on
me.
“I'm saying, Greig,” he cried, “noo that I think o't, your Uncle Andy
was no bad hand at makin' a story. Ye've an ill tongue, but I'll thole
that--astern, lads, and tak' the purser aboard.”
The seamen set the boat about willingly enough, and she crept in to pick
me off the doomed ship.
At that my senses cleared like hill-well water. It was for but a
second--praise God! my instincts joyed in my reprieve; my hand never
released the cleat by which I steadied myself. I looked at Horn still
upon the lower shrouds and saw hope upon his countenance.
“Of course this man comes with me, Captain Risk?” said I.
“Not if he offered a thousand pounds,” cried Risk, “in ye come!” and
Murchison clawed at the shrouds with a boat-hook. Horn made to jump
among them and, with an oath, the mate thrust at him with the hook as
with a spear, striking him under the chin. He fell back upon the deck,
bleeding profusely and half insensible.
“You are a foul dog!” I cried to his assailant. “And I'll settle with
you for that!”
“Jump, ye fool, ye, jump!” cried Risk impatient.
“Let us look oot for oorselves, that's whit I say,” cried Murchison
angry at my threat, and prepared cheerfully to see me perish. “What
for should we risk oor necks with either o' them?” and he pushed off
slightly with his boat-hook.
The skipper turned, struck down the hook, and snarled upon him. “Shut
up, Murchison!” he cried. “I'm still the captain, if ye please, and I
ken as much about the clerk here as will keep his gab shut on any trifle
we hae dune.”
I looked upon the clean sea, and then at that huddle of scoundrels in
the Kirkcaldy boat, and then upon the seaman Horn coming back again to
the full consciousness of his impending fate. He gazed upon me with eyes
alarmed and pitiful, and at that I formed my resolution.
“I stick by Horn,” said I. “If he gets too, I'll go; if not I'll bide
and be drowned with an honest man.”
“Bide and be damned then! Ye've had your chance,” shouted Risk, letting
his boat fall off. “It's time we werena here.” And the halliards of his
main-sail were running in the blocks as soon as he said it. The boat
swept away rapidly, but not before I gave him a final touch of my irony.
From my pocket I took out my purse and threw it upon his lap.
“There's the ither twa, Risk,” I cried; “it's no' like the thing at all
to murder a harmless lad for less than what ye bargained for.”
He bawled back some reply I could not hear, and I turned about, to see
Horn making for the small boat on the starboard chocks. I followed with
a hope again wakened, only to share his lamentation when he found
that two of her planks had been wantonly sprung from their clinkers,
rendering her utterly useless. The two other boats were in a similar
condition; Risk and his confederates had been determined that no chance
should be left of our escape from the _Seven Sisters_.
It was late in the afternoon. The wind had softened somewhat; in the
west there were rising billowy clouds of silver and red, and half a mile
away the Kirkcaldy boat, impatient doubtless for the end of us, that
final assurance of safety, plied to windward with only her foresail set.
We had gone below in a despairing mind on the chance that the leakage
might be checked, but the holes were under water in the after peak, and
in other parts we could not come near. An inch-and-a-half auger, and a
large bung-borer, a gouge and chisel in the captain's private locker,
told us how the crime had been committed whereof we were the victims.
We had come on deck again, the pair of us, without the vaguest notion
of what was next to do, and--speaking for myself--convinced that nothing
could avert our hurrying fate. Horn told me later that he proposed full
half a score of plans for at least a prolongation of our time, but that
I paid no heed to them. That may be, for I know the ballad stanza went
in my head like a dirge, as I sat on a hatch with the last few days of
my history rolling out before my eyes. The dusk began to fall like a
veil, the wind declined still further. Horn feverishly hammered and
caulked at the largest of the boats, now and then throwing the tools
from him as in momentary realisations of the hopelessness of his toil
that finally left him in despair.
“It's no use, Mr. Greig,” he cried then, “they did the job ower weel,”
and he shook his fist at the Kirkcaldy boat. He checked the gesture
suddenly and gave an astonished cry.
“They're gone, Greig,” said he, now frantic. “They're gone. O God!
they're gone! I was sure they couldna hae the heart to leave us at the
last,” and as he spoke I chanced to look astern, and behold! a ship with
all her canvas full was swiftly bearing down the wind upon us. We had
been so intent upon our fate that we had never seen her!
I clambered up the shrouds of the main-mast, and cried upon the coming
vessel with some mad notion that she might fancy the _Seven Sisters_
derelict. But indeed that was not necessary. In a little she went round
into the wind, a long-boat filled with men came towards us, and twenty
minutes later we were on the deck of the _Roi Rouge_.