With the first colour in the east, Carthew awoke and sat up. A while he
gazed at the scroll of the morning bank and the spars and hanging canvas
of the brig, like a man who wakes in a strange bed, with a child's
simplicity of wonder. He wondered above all what ailed him, what he had
lost, what disfavour had been done him, which he knew he should resent,
yet had forgotten. And then, like a river bursting through a dam, the
truth rolled on him its instantaneous volume: his memory teemed with
speech and pictures that he should never again forget; and he sprang to
his feet, stood a moment hand to brow, and began to walk violently
to and fro by the companion. As he walked, he wrung his hands.
“God--God--God,” he kept saying, with no thought of prayer, uttering a
mere voice of agony.
The time may have been long or short, it was perhaps minutes, perhaps
only seconds, ere he awoke to find himself observed, and saw the captain
sitting up and watching him over the break of the poop, a strange
blindness as of fever in his eyes, a haggard knot of corrugations on his
brow. Cain saw himself in a mirror. For a flash they looked upon each
other, and then glanced guiltily aside; and Carthew fled from the eye of
his accomplice, and stood leaning on the taffrail.
An hour went by, while the day came brighter, and the sun rose and drank
up the clouds: an hour of silence in the ship, an hour of agony beyond
narration for the sufferers. Brown's gabbling prayers, the cries of the
sailors in the rigging, strains of the dead Hemstead's minstrelsy,
ran together in Carthew's mind, with sickening iteration. He neither
acquitted nor condemned himself: he did not think, he suffered. In
the bright water into which he stared, the pictures changed and were
repeated: the baresark rage of Goddedaal; the blood-red light of the
sunset into which they had run forth; the face of the babbling Chinaman
as they cast him over; the face of the captain, seen a moment since,
as he awoke from drunkenness into remorse. And time passed, and the sun
swam higher, and his torment was not abated.
Then were fulfilled many sayings, and the weakest of these condemned
brought relief and healing to the others. Amalu the drudge awoke (like
the rest) to sickness of body and distress of mind; but the habit of
obedience ruled in that simple spirit, and appalled to be so late,
he went direct into the galley, kindled the fire, and began to get
breakfast. At the rattle of dishes, the snapping of the fire, and the
thin smoke that went up straight into the air, the spell was lifted.
The condemned felt once more the good dry land of habit under foot; they
touched again the familiar guide-ropes of sanity; they were restored to
a sense of the blessed revolution and return of all things earthly. The
captain drew a bucket of water and began to bathe. Tommy sat up, watched
him awhile, and slowly followed his example; and Carthew, remembering
his last thoughts of the night before, hastened to the cabin.
Mac was awake; perhaps had not slept. Over his head Goddedaal's canary
twittered shrilly from its cage.
“How are you?” asked Carthew.
“Me arrum's broke,” returned Mac; “but I can stand that. It's this place
I can't abide. I was coming on deck anyway.”
“Stay where you are, though,” said Carthew. “It's deadly hot above, and
there's no wind. I'll wash out this----” and he paused, seeking a word
and not finding one for the grisly foulness of the cabin.
“Faith, I'll be obliged to ye, then,” replied the Irishman. He spoke
mild and meek, like a sick child with its mother. There was now no
violence in the violent man; and as Carthew fetched a bucket and swab
and the steward's sponge, and began to cleanse the field of battle,
he alternately watched him or shut his eyes and sighed like a man near
fainting. “I have to ask all your pardons,” he began again presently,
“and the more shame to me as I got ye into trouble and couldn't do
nothing when it came. Ye saved me life, sir; ye're a clane shot.”
“For God's sake, don't talk of it!” cried Carthew. “It can't be talked
of; you don't know what it was. It was nothing down here; they fought.
On deck--O, my God!” And Carthew, with the bloody sponge pressed to his
face, struggled a moment with hysteria.
“Kape cool, Mr. Cart'ew. It's done now,” said Mac; “and ye may bless God
ye're not in pain and helpless in the bargain.”
There was no more said by one or other, and the cabin was pretty well
cleansed when a stroke on the ship's bell summoned Carthew to breakfast.
Tommy had been busy in the meanwhile; he had hauled the whaleboat close
aboard, and already lowered into it a small keg of beef that he found
ready broached beside the galley door; it was plain he had but the one
idea--to escape.
“We have a shipful of stores to draw upon,” he said. “Well, what are
we staying for? Let's get off at once for Hawaii. I've begun preparing
already.”
“Mac has his arm broken,” observed Carthew; “how would he stand the
voyage?”
“A broken arm?” repeated the captain. “That all? I'll set it after
breakfast. I thought he was dead like the rest. That madman hit out
like----” and there, at the evocation of the battle, his voice ceased
and the talk died with it.
After breakfast, the three white men went down into the cabin.
“I've come to set your arm,” said the captain.
“I beg your pardon, captain,” replied Mac; “but the firrst thing ye got
to do is to get this ship to sea. We'll talk of me arrum after that.”
“O, there's no such blooming hurry,” returned Wicks.
“When the next ship sails in, ye'll tell me stories!” retorted Mac.
“But there's nothing so unlikely in the world,” objected Carthew.
“Don't be deceivin' yourself,” said Mac. “If ye want a ship, divil a
one'll look near ye in six year; but if ye don't, ye may take my word
for ut, we'll have a squadron layin' here.”
“That's what I say,” cried Tommy; “that's what I call sense! Let's stock
that whaleboat and be off.”
“And what will Captain Wicks be thinking of the whaleboat?” asked the
Irishman.
“I don't think of it at all,” said Wicks. “We've a smart-looking brig
under foot; that's all the whaleboat I want.”
“Excuse me!” cried Tommy. “That's childish talk. You've got a brig, to
be sure, and what use is she? You daren't go anywhere in her. What port
are you to sail for?”
“For the port of Davy Jones's Locker, my son,” replied the captain.
“This brig's going to be lost at sea. I'll tell you where, too, and
that's about forty miles to windward of Kauai. We're going to stay by
her till she's down; and once the masts are under, she's the Flying Scud
no more, and we never heard of such a brig; and it's the crew of the
schooner Currency Lass that comes ashore in the boat, and takes the
first chance to Sydney.”
“Captain dear, that's the first Christian word I've heard of ut!” cried
Mac. “And now, just let me arrum be, jewel, and get the brig outside.”
“I'm as anxious as yourself, Mac,” returned Wicks; “but there's not wind
enough to swear by. So let's see your arm, and no more talk.”
The arm was set and splinted; the body of Brown fetched from the
forepeak, where it lay still and cold, and committed to the waters of
the lagoon; and the washing of the cabin rudely finished. All these were
done ere midday; and it was past three when the first cat's-paw ruffled
the lagoon, and the wind came in a dry squall, which presently sobered
to a steady breeze.
The interval was passed by all in feverish impatience, and by one of
the party in secret and extreme concern of mind. Captain Wicks was a
fore-and-aft sailor; he could take a schooner through a Scotch reel,
felt her mouth and divined her temper like a rider with a horse; she,
on her side, recognising her master and following his wishes like a dog.
But by a not very unusual train of circumstance, the man's dexterity was
partial and circumscribed. On a schooner's deck he was Rembrandt or (at
the least) Mr. Whistler; on board a brig he was Pierre Grassou. Again
and again in the course of the morning, he had reasoned out his
policy and rehearsed his orders; and ever with the same depression and
weariness. It was guess-work; it was chance; the ship might behave as
he expected, and might not; suppose she failed him, he stood there
helpless, beggared of all the proved resources of experience. Had
not all hands been so weary, had he not feared to communicate his own
misgivings, he could have towed her out. But these reasons sufficed, and
the most he could do was to take all possible precautions. Accordingly
he had Carthew aft, explained what was to be done with anxious patience,
and visited along with him the various sheets and braces.
“I hope I'll remember,” said Carthew. “It seems awfully muddled.”
“It's the rottenest kind of rig,” the captain admitted: “all blooming
pocket handkerchiefs! And not one sailor-man on deck! Ah, if she'd only
been a brigantine, now! But it's lucky the passage is so plain; there's
no manoeuvring to mention. We get under way before the wind, and run
right so till we begin to get foul of the island; then we haul our wind
and lie as near south-east as may be till we're on that line; 'bout ship
there and stand straight out on the port tack. Catch the idea?”
“Yes, I see the idea,” replied Carthew, rather dismally, and the two
incompetents studied for a long time in silence the complicated gear
above their heads.
But the time came when these rehearsals must be put in practice. The
sails were lowered, and all hands heaved the anchor short. The whaleboat
was then cut adrift, the upper topsails and the spanker set, the yards
braced up, and the spanker sheet hauled out to starboard.
“Heave away on your anchor, Mr. Carthew.”
“Anchor's gone, sir.”
“Set jibs.”
It was done, and the brig still hung enchanted. Wicks, his head full of
a schooner's mainsail, turned his mind to the spanker. First he hauled
in the sheet, and then he hauled it out, with no result.
“Brail the damned thing up!” he bawled at last, with a red face. “There
ain't no sense in it.”
It was the last stroke of bewilderment for the poor captain, that he had
no sooner brailed up the spanker than the vessel came before the wind.
The laws of nature seemed to him to be suspended; he was like a man in
a world of pantomime tricks; the cause of any result, and the probable
result of any action, equally concealed from him. He was the more
careful not to shake the nerve of his amateur assistants. He stood
there with a face like a torch; but he gave his orders with aplomb; and
indeed, now the ship was under weigh, supposed his difficulties over.
The lower topsails and courses were then set, and the brig began to
walk the water like a thing of life, her forefoot discoursing music, the
birds flying and crying over her spars. Bit by bit the passage began to
open and the blue sea to show between the flanking breakers on the reef;
bit by bit, on the starboard bow, the low land of the islet began to
heave closer aboard. The yards were braced up, the spanker sheet hauled
aft again; the brig was close hauled, lay down to her work like a thing
in earnest, and had soon drawn near to the point of advantage, where she
might stay and lie out of the lagoon in a single tack.
Wicks took the wheel himself, swelling with success. He kept the brig
full to give her heels, and began to bark his orders: “Ready about.
Helm's a-lee. Tacks and sheets. Mainsail haul.” And then the fatal
words: “That'll do your mainsail; jump forrard and haul round your
foreyards.”
To stay a square-rigged ship is an affair of knowledge and swift sight;
and a man used to the succinct evolutions of a schooner will always tend
to be too hasty with a brig. It was so now. The order came too soon; the
topsails set flat aback; the ship was in irons. Even yet, had the helm
been reversed, they might have saved her. But to think of a stern-board
at all, far more to think of profiting by one, were foreign to the
schooner-sailor's mind. Wicks made haste instead to wear ship, a
manoeuvre for which room was wanting, and the Flying Scud took ground on
a bank of sand and coral about twenty minutes before five.
Wicks was no hand with a square-rigger, and he had shown it. But he
was a sailor and a born captain of men for all homely purposes, where
intellect is not required and an eye in a man's head and a heart under
his jacket will suffice. Before the others had time to understand the
misfortune, he was bawling fresh orders, and had the sails clewed up,
and took soundings round the ship.
“She lies lovely,” he remarked, and ordered out a boat with the
starboard anchor.
“Here! steady!” cried Tommy. “You ain't going to turn us to, to warp her
off?”
“I am though,” replied Wicks.
“I won't set a hand to such tomfoolery for one,” replied Tommy. “I'm
dead beat.” He went and sat down doggedly on the main hatch. “You got us
on; get us off again,” he added.
Carthew and Wicks turned to each other.
“Perhaps you don't know how tired we are,” said Carthew.
“The tide's flowing!” cried the captain. “You wouldn't have me miss a
rising tide?”
“O, gammon! there's tides to-morrow!” retorted Tommy.
“And I'll tell you what,” added Carthew, “the breeze is failing fast,
and the sun will soon be down. We may get into all kinds of fresh mess
in the dark and with nothing but light airs.”
“I don't deny it,” answered Wicks, and stood awhile as if in thought.
“But what I can't make out,” he began again, with agitation, “what I
can't make out is what you're made of! To stay in this place is beyond
me. There's the bloody sun going down--and to stay here is beyond me!”
The others looked upon him with horrified surprise. This fall of their
chief pillar--this irrational passion in the practical man, suddenly
barred out of his true sphere, the sphere of action--shocked and daunted
them. But it gave to another and unseen hearer the chance for which he
had been waiting. Mac, on the striking of the brig, had crawled up the
companion, and he now showed himself and spoke up.
“Captain Wicks,” said he, “it's me that brought this trouble on the lot
of ye. I'm sorry for ut, I ask all your pardons, and if there's any one
can say 'I forgive ye,' it'll make my soul the lighter.”
Wicks stared upon the man in amaze; then his self-control returned to
him. “We're all in glass houses here,” he said; “we ain't going to turn
to and throw stones. I forgive you, sure enough; and much good may it do
you!”
The others spoke to the same purpose.
“I thank ye for ut, and 'tis done like gentlemen,” said Mac. “But
there's another thing I have upon my mind. I hope we're all Prodestan's
here?”
It appeared they were; it seemed a small thing for the Protestant
religion to rejoice in!
“Well, that's as it should be,” continued Mac. “And why shouldn't we say
the Lord's Prayer? There can't be no hurt in ut.”
He had the same quiet, pleading, childlike way with him as in the
morning; and the others accepted his proposal, and knelt down without a
word.
“Knale if ye like!” said he. “I'll stand.” And he covered his eyes.
So the prayer was said to the accompaniment of the surf and seabirds,
and all rose refreshed and felt lightened of a load. Up to then, they
had cherished their guilty memories in private, or only referred to
them in the heat of a moment and fallen immediately silent. Now they had
faced their remorse in company, and the worst seemed over. Nor was it
only that. But the petition “Forgive us our trespasses,” falling in
so apposite after they had themselves forgiven the immediate author of
their miseries, sounded like an absolution.
Tea was taken on deck in the time of the sunset, and not long after the
five castaways--castaways once more--lay down to sleep.
Day dawned windless and hot. Their slumbers had been too profound to be
refreshing, and they woke listless, and sat up, and stared about them
with dull eyes. Only Wicks, smelling a hard day's work ahead, was more
alert. He went first to the well, sounded it once and then a second
time, and stood awhile with a grim look, so that all could see he was
dissatisfied. Then he shook himself, stripped to the buff, clambered on
the rail, drew himself up and raised his arms to plunge. The dive was
never taken. He stood instead transfixed, his eyes on the horizon.
“Hand up that glass,” he said.
In a trice they were all swarming aloft, the nude captain leading with
the glass.
On the northern horizon was a finger of grey smoke, straight in the
windless air like a point of admiration.
“What do you make it?” they asked of Wicks.
“She's truck down,” he replied; “no telling yet. By the way the smoke
builds, she must be heading right here.”
“What can she be?”
“She might be a China mail,” returned Wicks, “and she might be a
blooming man-of-war, come to look for castaways. Here! This ain't the
time to stand staring. On deck, boys!”
He was the first on deck, as he had been the first aloft, handed down
the ensign, bent it again to the signal halliards, and ran it up union
down.
“Now hear me,” he said, jumping into his trousers, “and everything I say
you grip on to. If that's a man-of-war, she'll be in a tearing hurry;
all these ships are what don't do nothing and have their expenses paid.
That's our chance; for we'll go with them, and they won't take the time
to look twice or to ask a question. I'm Captain Trent; Carthew, you're
Goddedaal; Tommy, you're Hardy; Mac's Brown; Amalu--Hold hard! we can't
make a Chinaman of him! Ah Wing must have deserted; Amalu stowed away;
and I turned him to as cook, and was never at the bother to sign him.
Catch the idea? Say your names.”
And that pale company recited their lesson earnestly.
“What were the names of the other two?” he asked. “Him Carthew shot in
the companion, and the one I caught in the jaw on the main top-gallant?”
“Holdorsen and Wallen,” said some one.
“Well, they're drowned,” continued Wicks; “drowned alongside trying to
lower a boat. We had a bit of a squall last night: that's how we
got ashore.” He ran and squinted at the compass. “Squall out of
nor'-nor'-west-half-west; blew hard; every one in a mess, falls jammed,
and Holdorsen and Wallen spilt overboard. See? Clear your blooming
heads!” He was in his jacket now, and spoke with a feverish impatience
and contention that rang like anger.
“But is it safe?” asked Tommy.
“Safe?” bellowed the captain. “We're standing on the drop, you
moon-calf! If that ship's bound for China (which she don't look to be),
we're lost as soon as we arrive; if she's bound the other way, she comes
from China, don't she? Well, if there's a man on board of her that ever
clapped eyes on Trent or any blooming hand out of this brig, we'll all
be in irons in two hours. Safe! no, it ain't safe; it's a beggarly last
chance to shave the gallows, and that's what it is.”
At this convincing picture, fear took hold on all.
“Hadn't we a hundred times better stay by the brig?” cried Carthew.
“They would give us a hand to float her off.”
“You'll make me waste this holy day in chattering!” cried Wicks. “Look
here, when I sounded the well this morning, there was two foot of water
there against eight inches last night. What's wrong? I don't know; might
be nothing; might be the worst kind of smash. And then, there we are in
for a thousand miles in an open boat, if that's your taste!”
“But it may be nothing, and anyway their carpenters are bound to help us
repair her,” argued Carthew.
“Moses Murphy!” cried the captain. “How did she strike? Bows on,
I believe. And she's down by the head now. If any carpenter comes
tinkering here, where'll he go first? Down in the forepeak, I suppose!
And then, how about all that blood among the chandlery? You would think
you were a lot of members of Parliament discussing Plimsoll; and you're
just a pack of murderers with the halter round your neck. Any other ass
got any time to waste? No? Thank God for that! Now, all hands! I'm going
below, and I leave you here on deck. You get the boat cover off that
boat; then you turn to and open the specie chest. There are five of us;
get five chests, and divide the specie equal among the five--put it
at the bottom--and go at it like tigers. Get blankets, or canvas, or
clothes, so it won't rattle. It'll make five pretty heavy chests, but we
can't help that. You, Carthew--dash me!--You, Mr. Goddedaal, come below.
We've our share before us.”
And he cast another glance at the smoke, and hurried below with Carthew
at his heels.
The logs were found in the main cabin behind the canary's cage; two of
them, one kept by Trent, one by Goddedaal. Wicks looked first at one,
then at the other, and his lip stuck out.
“Can you forge hand of write?” he asked.
“No,” said Carthew.
“There's luck for you--no more can I!” cried the captain. “Hullo! here's
worse yet, here's this Goddedaal up to date; he must have filled it in
before supper. See for yourself: 'Smoke observed.--Captain Kirkup and
five hands of the schooner Currency Lass.' Ah! this is better,” he
added, turning to the other log. “The old man ain't written anything for
a clear fortnight. We'll dispose of your log altogether, Mr. Goddedaal,
and stick to the old man's--to mine, I mean; only I ain't going to write
it up, for reasons of my own. You are. You're going to sit down right
here and fill it in the way I tell you.”
“How to explain the loss of mine?” asked Carthew.
“You never kept one,” replied the captain. “Gross neglect of duty.
You'll catch it.”
“And the change of writing?” resumed Carthew. “You began; why do you
stop and why do I come in? And you'll have to sign anyway.”
“O! I've met with an accident and can't write,” replied Wicks.
“An accident?” repeated Carthew. “It don't sound natural. What kind of
an accident?”
Wicks spread his hand face-up on the table, and drove a knife through
his palm.
“That kind of an accident,” said he. “There's a way to draw to windward
of most difficulties, if you've a head on your shoulders.” He began
to bind up his hand with a handkerchief, glancing the while over
Goddedaal's log. “Hullo!” he said, “this'll never do for us--this is an
impossible kind of a yarn. Here, to begin with, is this Captain Trent
trying some fancy course, leastways he's a thousand miles to south'ard
of the great circle. And here, it seems, he was close up with this
island on the sixth, sails all these days, and is close up with it again
by daylight on the eleventh.”
“Goddedaal said they had the deuce's luck,” said Carthew.
“Well, it don't look like real life--that's all I can say,” returned
Wicks.
“It's the way it was, though,” argued Carthew.
“So it is; and what the better are we for that, if it don't look so?”
cried the captain, sounding unwonted depths of art criticism. “Here! try
and see if you can't tie this bandage; I'm bleeding like a pig.”
As Carthew sought to adjust the handkerchief, his patient seemed sunk
in a deep muse, his eye veiled, his mouth partly open. The job was yet
scarce done, when he sprang to his feet.
“I have it,” he broke out, and ran on deck. “Here, boys!” he cried, “we
didn't come here on the eleventh; we came in here on the evening of the
sixth, and lay here ever since becalmed. As soon as you've done with
these chests,” he added, “you can turn to and roll out beef and water
breakers; it'll look more shipshape--like as if we were getting ready
for the boat voyage.”
And he was back again in a moment, cooking the new log. Goddedaal's was
then carefully destroyed, and a hunt began for the ship's papers. Of
all the agonies of that breathless morning, this was perhaps the most
poignant. Here and there the two men searched, cursing, cannoning
together, streaming with heat, freezing with terror. News was bawled
down to them that the ship was indeed a man-of-war, that she was close
up, that she was lowering a boat; and still they sought in vain. By what
accident they missed the iron box with the money and accounts, is hard
to fancy; but they did. And the vital documents were found at last in
the pocket of Trent's shore-going coat, where he had left them when last
he came on board.
Wicks smiled for the first time that morning. “None too soon,” said
he. “And now for it! Take these others for me; I'm afraid I'll get them
mixed if I keep both.”
“What are they?” Carthew asked.
“They're the Kirkup and Currency Lass papers,” he replied. “Pray God we
need 'em again!”
“Boat's inside the lagoon, sir,” hailed down Mac, who sat by the
skylight doing sentry while the others worked.
“Time we were on deck, then, Mr. Goddedaal,” said Wicks.
As they turned to leave the cabin, the canary burst into piercing song.
“My God!” cried Carthew, with a gulp, “we can't leave that wretched bird
to starve. It was poor Goddedaal's.”
“Bring the bally thing along!” cried the captain.
And they went on deck.
An ugly brute of a modern man-of-war lay just without the reef, now
quite inert, now giving a flap or two with her propeller. Nearer hand,
and just within, a big white boat came skimming to the stroke of many
oars, her ensign blowing at the stern.
“One word more,” said Wicks, after he had taken in the scene. “Mac,
you've been in China ports? All right; then you can speak for yourself.
The rest of you I kept on board all the time we were in Hongkong, hoping
you would desert; but you fooled me and stuck to the brig. That'll make
your lying come easier.”
The boat was now close at hand; a boy in the stern sheets was the
only officer, and a poor one plainly, for the men were talking as they
pulled.
“Thank God, they've only sent a kind of a middy!” ejaculated Wicks.
“Here you, Hardy, stand for'ard! I'll have no deck hands on my
quarter-deck,” he cried, and the reproof braced the whole crew like a
cold douche.
The boat came alongside with perfect neatness, and the boy officer
stepped on board, where he was respectfully greeted by Wicks.
“You the master of this ship?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Wicks. “Trent is my name, and this is the Flying Scud
of Hull.”
“You seem to have got into a mess,” said the officer.
“If you'll step aft with me here, I'll tell you all there is of it,”
said Wicks.
“Why, man, you're shaking!” cried the officer.
“So would you, perhaps, if you had been in the same berth,” returned
Wicks; and he told the whole story of the rotten water, the long calm,
the squall, the seamen drowned; glibly and hotly; talking, with his head
in the lion's mouth, like one pleading in the dock. I heard the same
tale from the same narrator in the saloon in San Francisco; and even
then his bearing filled me with suspicion. But the officer was no
observer.
“Well, the captain is in no end of a hurry,” said he; “but I was
instructed to give you all the assistance in my power, and signal back
for another boat if more hands were necessary. What can I do for you?”
“O, we won't keep you no time,” replied Wicks cheerily. “We're all
ready, bless you--men's chests, chronometer, papers and all.”
“Do you mean to leave her?” cried the officer. “She seems to me to lie
nicely; can't we get your ship off?”
“So we could, and no mistake; but how we're to keep her afloat's another
question. Her bows is stove in,” replied Wicks.
The officer coloured to the eyes. He was incompetent and knew he was;
thought he was already detected, and feared to expose himself again.
There was nothing further from his mind than that the captain should
deceive him; if the captain was pleased, why, so was he. “All right,” he
said. “Tell your men to get their chests aboard.”
“Mr. Goddedaal, turn the hands to to get the chests aboard,” said Wicks.
The four Currency Lasses had waited the while on tenter-hooks. This
welcome news broke upon them like the sun at midnight; and Hadden burst
into a storm of tears, sobbing aloud as he heaved upon the tackle. But
the work went none the less briskly forward; chests, men, and bundles
were got over the side with alacrity; the boat was shoved off; it moved
out of the long shadow of the Flying Scud, and its bows were pointed at
the passage.
So much, then, was accomplished. The sham wreck had passed muster; they
were clear of her, they were safe away; and the water widened between
them and her damning evidences. On the other hand, they were drawing
nearer to the ship of war, which might very well prove to be their
prison and a hangman's cart to bear them to the gallows--of which they
had not yet learned either whence she came or whither she was bound; and
the doubt weighed upon their heart like mountains.
It was Wicks who did the talking. The sound was small in Carthew's ears,
like the voices of men miles away, but the meaning of each word struck
home to him like a bullet. “What did you say your ship was?” inquired
Wicks.
“Tempest, don't you know?” returned the officer.
Don't you know? What could that mean? Perhaps nothing: perhaps that the
ships had met already. Wicks took his courage in both hands. “Where is
she bound?” he asked.
“O, we're just looking in at all these miserable islands here,” said the
officer. “Then we bear up for San Francisco.”
“O, yes, you're from China ways, like us?” pursued Wicks.
“Hong Kong,” said the officer, and spat over the side.
Hong Kong. Then the game was up; as soon as they set foot on board,
they would be seized; the wreck would be examined, the blood found, the
lagoon perhaps dredged, and the bodies of the dead would reappear to
testify. An impulse almost incontrollable bade Carthew rise from the
thwart, shriek out aloud, and leap overboard; it seemed so vain a thing
to dissemble longer, to dally with the inevitable, to spin out some
hundred seconds more of agonised suspense, with shame and death thus
visibly approaching. But the indomitable Wicks persevered. His face
was like a skull, his voice scarce recognisable; the dullest of men and
officers (it seemed) must have remarked that telltale countenance and
broken utterance. And still he persevered, bent upon certitude.
“Nice place, Hong Kong?” he said.
“I'm sure I don't know,” said the officer. “Only a day and a half there;
called for orders and came straight on here. Never heard of such a
beastly cruise.” And he went on describing and lamenting the untoward
fortunes of the Tempest.
But Wicks and Carthew heeded him no longer. They lay back on the gunnel,
breathing deep, sunk in a stupor of the body: the mind within still
nimbly and agreeably at work, measuring the past danger, exulting in the
present relief, numbering with ecstasy their ultimate chances of escape.
For the voyage in the man-of-war they were now safe; yet a few more days
of peril, activity, and presence of mind in San Francisco, and the
whole horrid tale was blotted out; and Wicks again became Kirkup, and
Goddedaal became Carthew--men beyond all shot of possible suspicion, men
who had never heard of the Flying Scud, who had never been in sight of
Midway Reef.
So they came alongside, under many craning heads of seamen and
projecting mouths of guns; so they climbed on board somnambulous, and
looked blindly about them at the tall spars, the white decks, and the
crowding ship's company, and heard men as from far away, and answered
them at random.
And then a hand fell softly on Carthew's shoulder.
“Why, Norrie, old chappie, where have you dropped from? All the world's
been looking for you. Don't you know you've come into your kingdom?”
He turned, beheld the face of his old schoolmate Sebright, and fell
unconscious at his feet.
The doctor was attending him, a while later, in Lieutenant Sebright's
cabin, when he came to himself. He opened his eyes, looked hard in the
strange face, and spoke with a kind of solemn vigour.
“Brown must go the same road,” he said; “now or never.” And then paused,
and his reason coming to him with more clearness, spoke again: “What was
I saying? Where am I? Who are you?”
“I am the doctor of the Tempest,” was the reply. “You are in Lieutenant
Sebright's berth, and you may dismiss all concern from your mind. Your
troubles are over, Mr. Carthew.”
“Why do you call me that?” he asked. “Ah, I remember--Sebright knew me!
O!” and he groaned and shook. “Send down Wicks to me; I must see Wicks
at once!” he cried, and seized the doctor's wrist with unconscious
violence.
“All right,” said the doctor. “Let's make a bargain. You swallow down
this draught, and I'll go and fetch Wicks.”
And he gave the wretched man an opiate that laid him out within ten
minutes and in all likelihood preserved his reason.
It was the doctor's next business to attend to Mac; and he found
occasion, while engaged upon his arm, to make the man repeat the names
of the rescued crew. It was now the turn of the captain, and there is
no doubt he was no longer the man that we have seen; sudden relief, the
sense of perfect safety, a square meal and a good glass of grog, had all
combined to relax his vigilance and depress his energy.
“When was this done?” asked the doctor, looking at the wound.
“More than a week ago,” replied Wicks, thinking singly of his log.
“Hey?” cried the doctor, and he raised his hand and looked the captain
in the eyes.
“I don't remember exactly,” faltered Wicks.
And at this remarkable falsehood, the suspicions of the doctor were at
once quadrupled.
“By the way, which of you is called Wicks?” he asked easily.
“What's that?” snapped the captain, falling white as paper.
“Wicks,” repeated the doctor; “which of you is he? that's surely a plain
question.”
Wicks stared upon his questioner in silence.
“Which is Brown, then?” pursued the doctor.
“What are you talking of? what do you mean by this?” cried Wicks,
snatching his half-bandaged hand away, so that the blood sprinkled in
the surgeon's face.
He did not trouble to remove it. Looking straight at his victim, he
pursued his questions. “Why must Brown go the same way?” he asked.
Wicks fell trembling on a locker. “Carthew's told you,” he cried.
“No,” replied the doctor, “he has not. But he and you between you have
set me thinking, and I think there's something wrong.”
“Give me some grog,” said Wicks. “I'd rather tell than have you find
out. I'm damned if it's half as bad as what any one would think.”
And with the help of a couple of strong grogs, the tragedy of the Flying
Scud was told for the first time.
It was a fortunate series of accidents that brought the story to the
doctor. He understood and pitied the position of these wretched men, and
came whole-heartedly to their assistance. He and Wicks and Carthew (so
soon as he was recovered) held a hundred councils and prepared a policy
for San Francisco. It was he who certified “Goddedaal” unfit to be moved
and smuggled Carthew ashore under cloud of night; it was he who kept
Wicks's wound open that he might sign with his left hand; he who took
all their Chile silver and (in the course of the first day) got it
converted for them into portable gold. He used his influence in the
wardroom to keep the tongues of the young officers in order, so that
Carthew's identification was kept out of the papers. And he rendered
another service yet more important. He had a friend in San Francisco,
a millionaire; to this man he privately presented Carthew as a young
gentleman come newly into a huge estate, but troubled with Jew debts
which he was trying to settle on the quiet. The millionaire came readily
to help; and it was with his money that the wrecker gang was to be
fought. What was his name, out of a thousand guesses? It was Douglas
Longhurst.
As long as the Currency Lasses could all disappear under fresh names,
it did not greatly matter if the brig were bought, or any small
discrepancies should be discovered in the wrecking. The identification
of one of their number had changed all that. The smallest scandal must
now direct attention to the movements of Norris. It would be asked how
he who had sailed in a schooner from Sydney, had turned up so shortly
after in a brig out of Hong Kong; and from one question to another all
his original shipmates were pretty sure to be involved. Hence arose
naturally the idea of preventing danger, profiting by Carthew's
new-found wealth, and buying the brig under an alias; and it was put in
hand with equal energy and caution. Carthew took lodgings alone under
a false name, picked up Bellairs at random, and commissioned him to buy
the wreck.
“What figure, if you please?” the lawyer asked.
“I want it bought,” replied Carthew. “I don't mind about the price.”
“Any price is no price,” said Bellairs. “Put a name upon it.”
“Call it ten thousand pounds then, if you like!” said Carthew.
In the meanwhile, the captain had to walk the streets, appear in the
consulate, be cross-examined by Lloyd's agent, be badgered about his
lost accounts, sign papers with his left hand, and repeat his lies to
every skipper in San Francisco: not knowing at what moment he might
run into the arms of some old friend who should hail him by the name of
Wicks, or some new enemy who should be in a position to deny him that
of Trent. And the latter incident did actually befall him, but was
transformed by his stout countenance into an element of strength. It was
in the consulate (of all untoward places) that he suddenly heard a big
voice inquiring for Captain Trent. He turned with the customary sinking
at his heart.
“YOU ain't Captain Trent!” said the stranger, falling back. “Why, what's
all this? They tell me you're passing off as Captain Trent--Captain
Jacob Trent--a man I knew since I was that high.”
“O, you're thinking of my uncle as had the bank in Cardiff,” replied
Wicks, with desperate aplomb.
“I declare I never knew he had a nevvy!” said the stranger.
“Well, you see he has!” says Wicks.
“And how is the old man?” asked the other.
“Fit as a fiddle,” answered Wicks, and was opportunely summoned by the
clerk.
This alert was the only one until the morning of the sale, when he
was once more alarmed by his interview with Jim; and it was with some
anxiety that he attended the sale, knowing only that Carthew was to
be represented, but neither who was to represent him nor what were the
instructions given. I suppose Captain Wicks is a good life. In spite of
his personal appearance and his own known uneasiness, I suppose he is
secure from apoplexy, or it must have struck him there and then, as he
looked on at the stages of that insane sale and saw the old brig and her
not very valuable cargo knocked down at last to a total stranger for ten
thousand pounds.
It had been agreed that he was to avoid Carthew, and above all Carthew's
lodging, so that no connexion might be traced between the crew and the
pseudonymous purchaser. But the hour for caution was gone by, and he
caught a tram and made all speed to Mission Street.
Carthew met him in the door.
“Come away, come away from here,” said Carthew; and when they were clear
of the house, “All's up!” he added.
“O, you've heard of the sale, then?” said Wicks.
“The sale!” cried Carthew. “I declare I had forgotten it.” And he told
of the voice in the telephone, and the maddening question: “Why did you
want to buy the Flying Scud?”
This circumstance, coming on the back of the monstrous improbabilities
of the sale, was enough to have shaken the reason of Immanuel Kant. The
earth seemed banded together to defeat them; the stones and the boys on
the street appeared to be in possession of their guilty secret. Flight
was their one thought. The treasure of the Currency Lass they packed in
waist-belts, expressed their chests to an imaginary address in British
Columbia, and left San Francisco the same afternoon, booked for Los
Angeles.
The next day they pursued their retreat by the Southern Pacific route,
which Carthew followed on his way to England; but the other three
branched off for Mexico.
EPILOGUE:
TO WILL H. LOW.
DEAR LOW: The other day (at Manihiki of all places) I had the pleasure
to meet Dodd. We sat some two hours in the neat, little, toy-like
church, set with pews after the manner of Europe, and inlaid with
mother-of-pearl in the style (I suppose) of the New Jerusalem. The
natives, who are decidedly the most attractive inhabitants of this
planet, crowded round us in the pew, and fawned upon and patted us; and
here it was I put my questions, and Dodd answered me.
I first carried him back to the night in Barbizon when Carthew told his
story, and asked him what was done about Bellairs. It seemed he had
put the matter to his friend at once, and that Carthew took it with an
inimitable lightness. “He's poor, and I'm rich,” he had said. “I can
afford to smile at him. I go somewhere else, that's all--somewhere
that's far away and dear to get to. Persia would be found to answer, I
fancy. No end of a place, Persia. Why not come with me?” And they had
left the next afternoon for Constantinople, on their way to Teheran.
Of the shyster, it is only known (by a newspaper paragraph) that he
returned somehow to San Francisco and died in the hospital.
“Now there's another point,” said I. “There you are off to Persia with
a millionaire, and rich yourself. How come you here in the South Seas,
running a trader?”
He said, with a smile, that I had not yet heard of Jim's last
bankruptcy. “I was about cleaned out once more,” he said; “and then it
was that Carthew had this schooner built, and put me in as supercargo.
It's his yacht and it's my trader; and as nearly all the expenses go to
the yacht, I do pretty well. As for Jim, he's right again: one of the
best businesses, they say, in the West, fruit, cereals, and real estate;
and he has a Tartar of a partner now--Nares, no less. Nares will keep
him straight, Nares has a big head. They have their country-places next
door at Saucelito, and I stayed with them time about, the last time I
was on the coast. Jim had a paper of his own--I think he has a notion
of being senator one of these days--and he wanted me to throw up the
schooner and come and write his editorials. He holds strong views on the
State Constitution, and so does Mamie.”
“And what became of the other three Currency Lasses after they left
Carthew?” I inquired.
“Well, it seems they had a huge spree in the city of Mexico,” said Dodd;
“and then Hadden and the Irishman took a turn at the gold fields in
Venezuela, and Wicks went on alone to Valparaiso. There's a Kirkup in
the Chilean navy to this day, I saw the name in the papers about the
Balmaceda war. Hadden soon wearied of the mines, and I met him the other
day in Sydney. The last news he had from Venezuela, Mac had been knocked
over in an attack on the gold train. So there's only the three of them
left, for Amalu scarcely counts. He lives on his own land in Maui, at
the side of Hale-a-ka-la, where he keeps Goddedaal's canary; and they
say he sticks to his dollars, which is a wonder in a Kanaka. He had
a considerable pile to start with, for not only Hemstead's share but
Carthew's was divided equally among the other four--Mac being counted.”
“What did that make for him altogether?” I could not help asking, for I
had been diverted by the number of calculations in his narrative.
“One hundred and twenty-eight pounds nineteen shillings and eleven pence
halfpenny,” he replied with composure. “That's leaving out what little
he won at Van John. It's something for a Kanaka, you know.”
And about that time we were at last obliged to yield to the
solicitations of our native admirers, and go to the pastor's house to
drink green cocoanuts. The ship I was in was sailing the same night, for
Dodd had been beforehand and got all the shell in the island; and though
he pressed me to desert and return with him to Auckland (whither he was
now bound to pick up Carthew) I was firm in my refusal.
The truth is, since I have been mixed up with Havens and Dodd in the
design to publish the latter's narrative, I seem to feel no want for
Carthew's society. Of course I am wholly modern in sentiment, and think
nothing more noble than to publish people's private affairs at so much a
line. They like it, and if they don't, they ought to. But a still small
voice keeps telling me they will not like it always, and perhaps not
always stand it. Memory besides supplies me with the face of a pressman
(in the sacred phrase) who proved altogether too modern for one of his
neighbours, and
Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
as it were, marshalling us our way. I am in no haste to
--nos proecedens--
be that man's successor. Carthew has a record as “a clane shot,” and for
some years Samoa will be good enough for me.
We agreed to separate, accordingly; but he took me on board in his own
boat with the hard-wood fittings, and entertained me on the way with
an account of his late visit to Butaritari, whither he had gone on
an errand for Carthew, to see how Topelius was getting along, and, if
necessary, to give him a helping hand. But Topelius was in great force,
and had patronised and--well--out-manoeuvred him.
“Carthew will be pleased,” said Dodd; “for there's no doubt they
oppressed the man abominably when they were in the Currency Lass. It's
diamond cut diamond now.”
This, I think, was the most of the news I got from my friend Loudon; and
I hope I was well inspired, and have put all the questions to which you
would be curious to hear an answer.
But there is one more that I daresay you are burning to put to myself;
and that is, what your own name is doing in this place, cropping up (as
it were uncalled-for) on the stern of our poor ship? If you were not
born in Arcadia, you linger in fancy on its margin; your thoughts are
busied with the flutes of antiquity, with daffodils, and the classic
poplar, and the footsteps of the nymphs, and the elegant and moving
aridity of ancient art. Why dedicate to you a tale of a caste
so modern;--full of details of our barbaric manners and unstable
morals;--full of the need and the lust of money, so that there is scarce
a page in which the dollars do not jingle;--full of the unrest and
movement of our century, so that the reader is hurried from place to
place and sea to sea, and the book is less a romance than a panorama--in
the end, as blood-bespattered as an epic?
Well, you are a man interested in all problems of art, even the most
vulgar; and it may amuse you to hear the genesis and growth of _The
Wrecker_. On board the schooner Equator, almost within sight of the
Johnstone Islands (if anybody knows where these are) and on a moonlit
night when it was a joy to be alive, the authors were amused with
several stories of the sale of wrecks. The subject tempted them; and
they sat apart in the alley-way to discuss its possibilities. “What a
tangle it would make,” suggested one, “if the wrong crew were aboard.
But how to get the wrong crew there?”--“I have it!” cried the other;
“the so-and-so affair!” For not so many months before, and not so many
hundred miles from where we were then sailing, a proposition almost
tantamount to that of Captain Trent had been made by a British skipper
to some British castaways.
Before we turned in, the scaffolding of the tale had been put together.
But the question of treatment was as usual more obscure. We had long
been at once attracted and repelled by that very modern form of the
police novel or mystery story, which consists in beginning your yarn
anywhere but at the beginning, and finishing it anywhere but at the
end; attracted by its peculiar interest when done, and the peculiar
difficulties that attend its execution; repelled by that appearance
of insincerity and shallowness of tone, which seems its inevitable
drawback. For the mind of the reader, always bent to pick up clews,
receives no impression of reality or life, rather of an airless,
elaborate mechanism; and the book remains enthralling, but
insignificant, like a game of chess, not a work of human art. It seemed
the cause might lie partly in the abrupt attack; and that if the tale
were gradually approached, some of the characters introduced (as it
were) beforehand, and the book started in the tone of a novel of manners
and experience briefly treated, this defect might be lessened and our
mystery seem to inhere in life. The tone of the age, its movement, the
mingling of races and classes in the dollar hunt, the fiery and not
quite unromantic struggle for existence with its changing trades and
scenery, and two types in particular, that of the American handy-man of
business and that of the Yankee merchant sailor--we agreed to dwell upon
at some length, and make the woof to our not very precious warp. Hence
Dodd's father, and Pinkerton, and Nares, and the Dromedary picnics, and
the railway work in New South Wales--the last an unsolicited testimonial
from the powers that be, for the tale was half written before I saw
Carthew's squad toil in the rainy cutting at South Clifton, or heard
from the engineer of his “young swell.” After we had invented at some
expense of time this method of approaching and fortifying our police
novel, it occurred to us it had been invented previously by some one
else, and was in fact--however painfully different the results may
seem--the method of Charles Dickens in his later work.
I see you staring. Here, you will say, is a prodigious quantity of
theory to our halfpenny worth of police novel; and withal not a shadow
of an answer to your question.
Well, some of us like theory. After so long a piece of practice, these
may be indulged for a few pages. And the answer is at hand. It was
plainly desirable, from every point of view of convenience and contrast,
that our hero and narrator should partly stand aside from those with
whom he mingles, and be but a pressed-man in the dollar hunt. Thus it
was that Loudon Dodd became a student of the plastic arts, and that our
globe-trotting story came to visit Paris and look in at Barbizon. And
thus it is, dear Low, that your name appears in the address of this
epilogue.
For sure, if any person can here appreciate and read between the lines,
it must be you--and one other, our friend. All the dominos will be
transparent to your better knowledge; the statuary contract will be to
you a piece of ancient history; and you will not have now heard for the
first time of the dangers of Roussillon. Dead leaves from the Bas Breau,
echoes from Lavenue's and the Rue Racine, memories of a common past, let
these be your bookmarkers as you read. And if you care for naught else
in the story, be a little pleased to breathe once more for a moment the
airs of our youth.
The End.