LUKE’S SUGGESTION.
I’ve no faith in your old wives’ tales. Not I. But the luck was
against us. Everything went wrong from the first. And there’s no
getting away from the fact that we sailed on a Friday.
The weather in the Bay was filthy. Our engines went wrong in the Red
Sea. We lay up at Aden for a week. There was a bill as long as my arm
to pay. Then when we got out into the open the weather began again.
Never had such a run! It was touch and go for our lives. One night,
half-way between Ceylon and Sumatra, I thought it was the end. We had
more than another touch off the Philippines. By the time we reached
Yokohama we were a wreck--nothing less.
The ship ought to have been overhauled before we started. But the
owners wouldn’t see it. They insisted that a patch here, and a coat of
paint there, would meet the case. But it didn’t. Not by a deal. As we
soon found. At Aden, after all, the engines had only been tinkered.
They went wrong again before we had been three days out. The weather
we had would have tried the best work that ever came out of an
engineer’s shop. Those nailed together pieces of rusty scrap iron
worried the lives right out of us. If we had gone to the bottom they
would have been to blame.
We were late at Yokohama. A lot. The agents didn’t like it, nor the
consignees either. There were words. After all I’d gone through I
wasn’t in a mood to take a jacketing for what wasn’t any fault of
mine. So I let them see. The result was that there were all round
ructions. I admit that, under severe provocation, I did go farther
than I intended. And I did not mean to knock old Lawrence down. But it
was only by the mercy of God I had brought the ship into port at all.
And it was hard lines to meet nothing but black looks, and words,
because I hadn’t performed the impossible.
Lawrence resented my knocking him down. David Lawrence was our agent;
a close-fisted, cantankerous Scotchman. I own I ought to have kept my
hands off him. But when he started bullyragging me on my own deck,
before the crew, as if I was something lower than a cabin boy, when I
had had about enough of it, which wasn’t long, I let fly, and over he
went.
I was sorry directly afterwards. And when he gave me to understand
that not a ha’porth of stuff should come aboard that boat while I was
in command, I swallowed the bile and started to apologise. Not much
good came of that. As soon as my nose was inside his office he began
rubbing me the wrong way. The end of it was that I nearly knocked him
down again. And should have quite if his clerks hadn’t kept me off
him. After that I knew the game was up. I knew that nothing worth
having would come my way at Yokohama. I got drunk for the first time
in my life. The ship was eating her head off for port dues. I slipped
her moorings and ran out to sea.
What I was to do I had not the faintest notion. I was perfectly well
aware that I might as well sink her where she was as to take her back
as good as empty. If I didn’t lose my certificate it would be no
further use to me, because that would be the last command that I
should ever have. I took her to Hong Kong on the off chance of picking
something up. But, as I had half expected, news of _The Flying Scud_
had travelled ahead. There was nothing but the cold shoulder waiting
for me all along the line. I did get a few odds and ends, but nothing
worth speaking of, and I cleared out of Hong Kong for the same reason
I had cleared out of Yokohama.
Yet, though I should scarcely have thought it possible, there was
worse to follow.
The men, like their captain, were in a bad temper. Which was not to be
wondered at. They were pretty near to mutiny. If they got all the way
I should be landed indeed. Not that I minded. I was beyond that. I
slept with one loaded revolver under my head, and another in my hand.
Possibly a bit of a scrimmage would have had the same effect on me as
a little blood-letting. I should have been the better for it
afterwards.
I confess I did not know where I was going. I crawled along the
Chinese coast with some dim idea of gaining time. Given time I might
be able to form some sort of reasonable plan. One thing was sure, I
had no intention of going home to be ruined. If that was to be the way
of it, I could be ruined just as well where I was. Better perhaps. I
sneaked through the Hainan Strait. A day or two after we ran out of
water.
Just where we were I am not prepared to say. That’s the truth. No
lies! The coast was strange to me. I know the China Seas perhaps as
well as a good many men, but I had never been in the Gulf of Tongkin
before. I will say this, we were not a thousand miles from Lienchow.
We were still hugging the coast when they told me the stores were out.
I ordered them to take her in as close as she could be got. A little
delay more or less didn’t matter a snap of the fingers to me. I had
got as far that. Considering we weren’t over-coaled it was pretty far.
It was a lovely evening, a Friday as it happened--I must have been
born on a Friday! In about a couple of hours the sun would be setting,
so, if we were quick, there would be time to get something aboard
before the night was on us. And quick would have to be the word,
because, in the forecastle they had reached pretty nearly their last
biscuit.
I am not excusing myself. I own I could not have managed worse if I
had tried. I knew all along the stores were running short. I had
refused to refit at Hong Kong out of pure cussedness. What I said was
that if the lubbers wouldn’t ship their cargo, I wouldn’t buy their
stores. And I didn’t. I meant to take in fresh supplies when we had a
chance. We had not had a chance as yet. But now that we had come down
to nothing it was clear that we must get something, if it was only
enough to take us along for a day or two.
Fortunately the sea was calm, the anchorage good. We were able to run
close in. Directly a boat was lowered the men started off as if they
were rowing for grub-stakes. Which they were.
So far as I could see the country thereabouts was uninhabited. If that
was the case, it was a poor look out for us. But as it was a shelving
shore, with trees crowning the crest as far as the eye could reach, it
was possible that both houses and people might be close at hand though
hidden from sight. Which, if I wished to avoid further trouble, was a
state of things devoutly to be desired.
I saw the boat reach land, men get out of it, climb the slope,
disappear from view. And then, for more than three mortal hours, I saw
no more of them. It was pretty tedious waiting. Every man-jack on
board kept a keen look-out. Discipline was not so good as it might
have been--for reasons. There was no conspicuous attempt, as the
minutes crept slowly by, to conceal the apparently general impression
that it was a case of bunk; that those sailor men had thought it
better to throw in their lot with the natives of those parts, rather
than to continue the voyage with me. At the bottom of my boots I felt
that if such was the fact it was not for me to say that they were
fools.
However, it proved not to be the fact. Sometime after darkness had
fallen, just as I was concluding that it would perhaps be as well to
send a second boat in search of the first, and take command of it
myself, boat No. 1 returned. It was greeted with language which might
be described as hearty. They had had some luck, brought something in
the victual line. Without any reference to my authority a raid was
made on what they had brought. I said nothing, not caring what they
did. If they wanted to keep themselves alive, what did it matter to
me?
The boat had been in command of a man named Luke. At Yokohama I had
had a few words with the first mate, and sent him packing. At Hong
Kong there was a difference of opinion with the second, he went after
the first. As the third fancied himself ill, and thought he’d try the
hospital ashore for a change, it looked as if we were going to be
under officered. There was a handy man aboard who called himself Luke.
Just Luke. I didn’t know much about him, what I did know I didn’t
altogether like. But, as I say, he was a handy man. One of those chaps
who can drive an engine or trim a sail. He knew something about
navigation. Said he had a mate’s certificate, but I never saw it, and
never had any reason to believe anything he said. Anyhow, being in a
bit of a hole I took his word for it, and first mate he was appointed.
Some little time after he’d come aboard I was sitting in my cabin,
feeling, as usual, like murder or suicide, when there was a tapping at
the door. It was Luke.
“Beggin’ pardon, captin, but can I have a word with you?”
“Have two.”
He had three--and more. He stood, looking at me in the furtive,
sneaking way he always had, twiddling his cap with his fingers like a
forecastle hand.
“Excuse me, captain, but I don’t fancy as how you’ve been overmuch in
luck this trip.”
“My dear Mr. Luke, whatever can have caused you to imagine a thing
like that?”
“Well--it’s pretty obvious, ain’t it?”
He grinned. I could have broken his head.
“Is it for the purpose of imparting that information that I am
indebted to the pleasure of your presence here?”
“Well no; it ain’t.” He scraped his jaw with his hand, as if to feel
if it wanted shaving, which it did. “The fact is, I shouldn’t be
surprised if you chanced upon a bit of luck still, if you liked.”
“If I liked! You’re a man of humour.”
“It’s this way.” He hesitated, as if doubtful as to the advisability
of telling me which way it was. “It all depends upon whether you’d
care to run a trifle of risk.”
“After what I’ve gone through it’d have to be a pretty big trifle of
risk which would prevent me snatching a chestnut out of the fire.”
“That’s what I thought.”
He cleared his throat.
“Get on, man, get on!”
“It’s this way.”
“You’ve said it’s this way, but you haven’t said which way.”
“There’s a--we’ll say party, as wants a passage to England, bad.”
“Where is this party?”
“Over there.”
He nodded his head in the direction of the shore.
“Who is this party?”
“That’s where it is; he’s a Joss.”
“A Joss? What do you mean? What are you grinning at? Don’t try to play
any of your damfool jokes with me, I’m not taking any.”
“It’s no joke, captain; it’s dead earnest. The party is a Joss, and
that’s where it is.”
“What do you mean by a Joss?”
“It seems that a Joss is a sort of a kind of a god of the country, as
it were.”
Luke’s grin became more cavernous.
“Are you suggesting that we should raid a temple; is that what you’re
after?”
“Well, no, not quite that. This party, although a Joss, is an
Englishman.”
“An Englishman!”
“Yes, an Englishman; and having had enough of being a Joss he wants to
get back to his native land, ‘England, home and beauty,’ and that kind
of thing, and he’s willing to pay high for getting there.”
“Where’s the risk?”
“Well, it seems that the people in these parts think a good deal of
him, and they don’t care to have their gods and such-like cut their
lucky whenever they think they will. Besides, he wouldn’t want to come
empty-handed.”
“How do you mean?”
Luke glanced round, as if searching for unseen listeners. His voice
sank.
“I didn’t manage to get more than half-a-dozen words, as it might be,
with the party in question----”
“How did you manage to get those?”
The dear man’s face assumed a crafty look.
“Well, it was a kind of accident, as it were; but that is neither here
nor there. From what I’m told there’s a slap-up temple on the other
side of the hill, what’s crammed with the offerings of the faithful.
This here party’s been a good time in the neighbourhood, and through
their thinking a lot of him, as I’ve said, they’ve brought him heaps
and heaps of presents. It’s them he wants to take away with him.”
“If they’re his who’s to say him no?”
“Well, there’s a lot of other coves about the temple, and they won’t
allow they are his. Anyhow, they’d raise hell-and-Tommy if they knew
he thought of taking them to England.”
“I see. As I supposed at first, it’s a big steal you’re after.”
“It’s hardly fair to call it that, captain. The things are his. It’s
only those other blokes’ cussed greediness.”
“It is that way sometimes. One man says things are his which other
people claim; then, poor beggar, he gets locked up because they are so
grasping. What is he disposed to pay for taking him and his
belongings?”
“Just whatever you choose to ask.”
In Luke’s eyes, as they met mine, there was a peculiar meaning.
“Then he’ll find his passage an expensive one.”
“I don’t think you’ll find there’ll be any trouble about that. You get
him and his safe to England, and I shouldn’t be surprised but what
you’d find, captain, that you’d made a good voyage after all. The only
thing is, there’s no time to be lost. He’s in a hurry. He’s not so
young as he was, and he’s about as sick of this neighbourhood as he
can be.”
“He can come aboard at once if he likes.”
“Well, that would be sharp work, wouldn’t it? But I don’t know that it
can be done quite so quick as that. You see, there’s a good deal of
stuff, and it’s got to be got away, and without any fuss. But I tell
you what, captain, he would like to have a word with you, if so be as
you wouldn’t mind.”
“Where is he? Did you bring him with you in the boat?”
“No, I didn’t do that. He ain’t a party as can go where, when, and how
he likes. There’s eyes upon him all the time, and there’s other
things. But I do know where he’s to be found, and I did go so far as
to say that if so be you was willin’ I’d bring you straight back to
him right away, and then you might talk things over; I did make so
bold as to go as far as that.”
“Do you wish me to understand that he’s waiting for me now?”
“Well, that’s about the size of it.”
“I’ll come.”
I went.