“YO-HEAVE-YO!”
It was pitch dark in the cabin, but although under a cloudy sky there
was light enough to discern objects on deck or alongside. As Smoke-Jack
observed, stealing aft with bare feet, and in a louder whisper than was
prudent, “A good pair of eyes might see as far as a man could heave a
bull by the tail.” George had determined to give the crew a lesson, once
for all, in the matter of discipline, and felt well pleased to make
example of the new-comers, who must be supposed as yet ignorant of his
system.
So he sat in the dark, pistol in hand, at the stern window, which was
open, and watched like the hunter for his prey.
He heard the three Jacks creeping along the deck overhead, he heard low
whispers and a smothered laugh, followed by a few brief expostulations
as to priority of disembarkation, the language far less polite than the
intention; lastly, he heard the tackle by which his boat was made fast
running gently over its blocks.
Then he cocked his pistol without noise, and laughed to himself.
Gradually the cabin window was obscured. A dark object passed smoothly
down, and revealed in its progress a human figure indistinctly visible
above its black horizontal mass, which was indeed the slow-descending
boat, containing no less a personage than the adventurous Slap-Jack; also
two lines of tackle were dimly visible supporting that boat’s head. A
turn of the body, as he covered them steadily with his pistol, enabled
the Captain to bring these two lines into one.
Hand and eye were equally true. He was sure of his mark before he pulled
the trigger. With a flash that lighted up the cabin, and an explosion
that filled it with smoke, the bullet cut clean through the “falls,”
or ropes, supporting the boat’s head, bringing her perpendicularly on
end, and shooting every article she contained—planks, bottom-boards,
stretchers, oars, boat-hook, an empty hen-coop, and the astonished
occupant—plump into seven fathom of water.
Nor was the consternation created by this alarming capsize confined to
the unfortunate Slap-Jack. His comrades, lowering away industriously from
the taffrail, started back in the utmost bewilderment, the anchor-watch
rushed aft, persuaded a mutiny had broken out, and in grievous indecision
whether to take the skipper’s part or assist in cutting his throat. The
crew tumbled up the hatchway, and blundered about the deck, asking each
other absurd questions, and offering wild suggestions, if anything were
really amiss, as to breaking open the spirit-room. Nay, the harbour-guard
himself awoke from his nap, emerged from his sentry-box, took a turn on
the quay, hailing loudly, and receiving no answer, was satisfied he had
been dreaming, so swore and turned in again.
Captain George reloaded his pistol, and sang out lustily, “Man overboard!
Show a light on the deck there, and heave a rope over the side. Bear a
hand to haul him in, the lubber! I don’t much think he’ll want to try
that game in a hurry again!”
Meanwhile, hapless Slap-Jack was incapacitated for the present from that,
or indeed any other game involving physical effort. A plank, falling with
him out of the boat, had struck him on the head and stunned him; seventy
fathom of water would have floated him no better than seven, and with the
first plunge he went down like a stone. Captain George had intended to
give him a fright and a ducking; but now, while he stretched his body out
of the cabin window, peering over the gloomy water and listening eagerly
for the snort and gasp of a swimmer who never came up, he wished with all
his heart that his hand had been less steady on the pistol.
Fortunately, however, Beaudésir, after he had fulfilled the Captain’s
orders by personating him at the hold, remained studiously on watch. It
was a peculiarity of this man that his faculties seemed always on the
stretch, as is often to be observed with those over whom some constant
dread impends, or who suffer from the tortures of remorse. At the moment
he heard the shot, he sprang to the side, threw off hat and cloak, as if
anticipating danger, and kept his eyes eagerly fixed on the water, ready,
if need be, for a pounce. The tide was still flowing, the brigantine’s
head lay to seaward, where all was dark, and fortunately the little light
on the ruffled surface was towards the shore. Slap-Jack’s inanimate form
was carried inwards by the flood, and crossed the moorings of that huge
red buoy which Eugène remembered gazing on listlessly in the morning.
Either the contact with its rope woke an instinctive consciousness in the
drowning man, or some swirl of the water below brought his body to the
surface, but for a few seconds Slap-Jack’s form became dimly visible,
heaving like a wisp of seaweed on a wave. In those few seconds Eugène
dashed overboard, cleaving the water to reach him with the long springing
strokes of a powerful swimmer.
A drowning man is not to be saved but at the imminent risk of his life
who goes in for the rescue, and this gallant feat indeed can only be
accomplished by a thorough proficient in the art; so on the present
occasion it was well that Beaudésir felt as much at home in the water as
on dry land.
How the crew cheered the Frenchman while he was hauled on board with his
dripping burden; how the two Jacks who had remained in the brigantine,
and were now thoroughly sobered, vowed eternal gratitude to the landsman
who had dived for their messmate; how the harbour-guard was once more
disturbed by the cheering, and cheered lustily in reply; how Captain
George clapped his comrade on the shoulder while he took him below to
change his wet garments, and vowed he was fit to be King of France,
adding, with a meaning smile, “If ever I go to school again, I’ll ask
them to give me a berth at Avranches in Normandy!”—all this it is
unnecessary to relate; but if the Captain gained the respect of the crew
by the promptitude with which he resented an attempt at insubordination,
the gallant self-devotion of his friend, clerk, supercargo,
cabin-passenger, or whatever he was, won their affection and good-will
for the rest of the voyage.
This was especially apparent about sunrise, when Captain George beat to
quarters and paraded his whole crew on deck, preparatory to weighing
anchor and standing out down Channel with a fair wind and a following
tide. He calculated that the King’s ship, even if on watch, must be
still some distance from land, and he had such implicit confidence in
the sailing qualities of his brigantine that if he could only get a fair
start he feared a chase from no craft that swam.
Owing to his early education and the experiences of his boyhood,
notwithstanding his late career in the service of King Louis, he was a
seaman at heart. In nothing more so than a tendency to idealise the craft
he commanded as if it were a living creature, endowed with feelings and
even reason. For him ‘The Bashful Maid,’ with her exquisite trim, her
raking masts, her graceful spars, her long fluttering pennon, and her
elaborately-carved figure-head, representing a brazen-faced beauty baring
her breast boastfully to the breeze, was less a triumph of design and
carpentering, of beams, and blocks, and yarn, and varnish, and tar, than
a metaphorical mistress, to be cajoled, commanded, humoured, trusted,
above all, admired. He spoke of her as possessing affections, caprices,
impulses, and self-will. When she answered her helm steadily, and made
good weather of it, in a stiff breeze and a heavy sea, she was “behaving
admirably”—“she liked the job”—“a man had only to trust her, and give her
a new coat of paint now and then, she’d never fail him—not she!” While,
on the other hand, she might dive and plunge, and dip her boltsprit in
the brine, shipping seas that swept her decks fore and aft, and she was
“only a trifle saucy, the beauty! Carried a weather-helm like the rest of
her sex, and must be humoured a bit, till she came round!”
As was the skipper, so were the crew. All these different natures, men
of various nations, dispositions, and characters, were equally childlike
in their infatuation about ‘The Bashful Maid.’ The densest of them had
imagination enough to invest her with a thousand romantic qualities; even
the negro would have furiously resented a word in her disparagement—nay,
the three newly-shipped Jacks themselves, men of weighty authority
in such matters, caught the infection, and were ready to swear by the
brigantine, while it was yet so dark they could scarcely see whether she
was a three-masted merchantman or a King’s cutter.
But when the breeze freshened towards sunrise, and the tide was once
more on the turn, the regard thus freely accorded to their ship was
largely shared by their new shipmate. Beaudésir, passing forward in the
grey light of morning, truth to tell moved only by the restlessness of
a man not yet accustomed to perpetual motion, accompanied by the odours
of bilge-water and tar, was greeted with admiring glances and kind
words from all alike. Dutchman, Swede, Spaniard, vied with each other
in expressions of good-will. Slap-Jack was still below, swaddled in
blankets, but his two comrades had tumbled up with the first streaks of
dawn, and were loud in their praises, Bottle-Jack vowing Captain Kidd
would have made him first-lieutenant on the spot for such a feat, and
Smoke-Jack, with more sincerity than politeness, declaring “he couldn’t
have believed it of a Frenchman!” Nay, the very negro, showing all his
teeth as if he longed to eat him, embarked on an elaborate oration in
his honour, couched partly in his native language as spoken on the
Gold Coast, partly in a dialect he believed to be English, obscured by
metaphor, though sublime doubtless in conception, and prematurely cut
short by the shrill whistle of the boatswain, warning all hands without
delay to their quarters.
It was an enlivening sight, possessing considerable attractions for
such a temperament as Beaudésir’s. The clear gap of morning low down on
the horizon was widening and spreading every moment over the sky; the
breeze, cold and bracing, not yet tempered by the coming sun, freshened
sensibly off shore, driving out to sea a grand procession of dark rolling
clouds, moving steadily and continuously westward before the day. The
lighthouse off the harbour showed like a column of chalk against the dull
background of this embankment, vanishing so imperceptibly into light;
while to landward, far beyond the low level line of coast, a faint quiver
of purple already mingled with the dim grey outline of the smooth and
swelling downs.
In harbour, human life had not yet woke up, but the white sea-birds
were soaring and dipping, and wheeling joyously on the wing. The breeze
whistled through the tackle, the waves leaped and lashed merrily against
her sides, and the crew of the brigantine took their places, clean, well
dressed, brown-faced, and bare-footed, on her deck. While the boatswain,
who from sheer habit cast an eye continually aloft, observed her truck
catch the first gleams of the morning sun, Captain George, carefully
attired, issued from his cabin with a telescope under his arm, and made
his first and last oration to the crew.
“My lads!” said he, “I’ve beat to quarters, this fine morning, before
I get my anchor up, because I want to say a few words to you, and the
sooner we understand each other the better! You’ve heard I’m a soldier.
So I am! That’s right enough; but, mark, you! I dipped my hand in the
tar-bucket before I was old enough to carry a sword; so don’t you ever
think to come over me with skulking, for I’ve seen that game played out
before. Mind you, I don’t believe I’ve got a skulker on board; if I have,
let him step forward and show himself. Over the side he goes, and I sail
without him! Now, my lads, I know _my_ duty and I know _yours_. I’ll
take care both are done. I’ll have no grumbling and no quarrelling. If
any man has a complaint to make, let him come to me, and out with it.
A quarrelsome chap with his messmates is generally a shy cock when you
put him down to fight. I’ll have man-of-war’s discipline aboard. You all
know what that is, and those that don’t like it must lump it. Last night
there were three of you tried to take French leave and to steal my boat;
I stopped that game with a little friend I keep in my belt. Look ye, my
sons, next bout I’ll cover the _man_ instead of the tackle! I know who
they are, well enough, but I mean to forget as soon as ever the anchor’s
up. I’ll have a clean bill of health to take out into blue water. Now,
my lads, attend to me! We’ve a long cruise before us, but we’ve a craft
well-provisioned, well-found, and, I heartily believe, well-manned.
Whatever prizes we take, whatever profit we make on the cargo, from
skipper to ship’s boy, every one shall have his share according to the
articles hung up in my cabin. We _may_ have to fight, and we may _not_;
it’s the last job you’re likely to shirk; but mind this—_one_ skipper’s
enough for _one_ ship. I’ll have no _lawyer_ sail with _me_, and no
opinions ‘whether or no’ before the mast. If you think of disobeying
orders, just remember it’s a short walk from my berth to the powder-room,
and the clink of a flint will square all accounts between captain and
crew. If I’m not to be skipper, nobody else shall, and what I say I mean.
Lastly, no man is to get drunk except in port. And now, my lads, here’s a
fair wind, and a following tide! Before we get the fiddle up for a ‘Stamp
and go, cheerily ho!’ we’ll give three cheers for ‘The Bashful Maid,’ and
then shake out every rag of canvas and make a good run while the breeze
holds!”
The men cheered with a will. The Captain’s notions of sea-oratory were
founded on a knowledge of his audience, and answered his purpose better
than the most finished style of rhetoric. As the shouting died out, a
strong voice was heard, demanding “one cheer more for the skipper.” It
was given enthusiastically—Slap-Jack, who had sneaked on deck with his
head bandaged, having taken this sailor-like method of showing he bore no
malice for a ducking, and was indeed only desirous that his late prank
should be overlooked. Nevertheless, in the hurry and confusion of getting
the anchor up, he contrived to place himself at Beaudésir’s side and to
grasp him cordially by the hand.
“You _be_ a good chap,” said this honest seaman, with a touch of feeling
that he hid under an affectation of exceeding roughness; “as good a chap
as ever broke a biscuit! Look ye, mate; my name’s Slap-Jack; so long as I
can show my number, when anything’s up, you sings out ‘Slap-Jack!’ and if
I don’t answer ‘Slap-Jack _it is_!’ why―”
The imprecation with which this peculiar acknowledgment concluded did
not render it one whit more intelligible to Beaudésir, who gathered
enough, however, from the speaker’s vehemence to feel that he had made at
least one stanch friend among the crew. By the time he had realised this
consoling fact, the brigantine’s head, released from the restraint of
her cable, swung round to leeward, her strong new sails filled steadily
with the breeze, and while the ripple gurgled louder and louder round
her bows, already tossing and plunging through the increasing swell,
the quay, the lighthouse, the long low spit of land, the town, the
downs themselves seemed to glide quietly away; and Beaudésir, despite
the beauty of the scene and the excitement of his position, became
uncomfortably conscious of a strange desire to retire into a corner, lay
himself down at full length, and die, if need be, unobserved.
A waft of savoury odours from the cook’s galley, where the men’s
breakfasts were prepared, did nothing towards allaying this untimely
despondency, and after a short struggle he yielded, as people always do
yield in such cases, and staggering into the cabin, pillowed his head on
a couch, and gave himself over to despair.
Ere he raised it again ‘The Bashful Maid,’ making an excellent run down
Channel in a south-westerly course, was already a dozen leagues out at
sea.