JACK AFLOAT
But Slap-Jack was not asleep; far from it. His narrow hiding-place
offered but little temptation to repose, and almost the first sentence
uttered by Hippolyte aroused the suspicions of a man accustomed to
anticipate, without fearing, danger, or, as he expressed it, “to look out
for squalls.”
He listened therefore intently the whole time, and although the
Coromantee’s jargon was often unintelligible, managed to gather quite
enough of its meaning to assure him that some gross outrage was in
preparation, of which a white lady and her daughter were to be the
victims. Now it is not only on the boards of a seaport theatre that the
British sailor vindicates his character for generous courage on behalf
of the conventional “female in distress.” The stage is, after all, a
representation, however extravagant, of real life, and the caricature
must not be exaggerated out of all likeness to its original. Coarse
in his language, rough in his bearing, reckless and riotous from the
very nature of his calling, there is yet in the thorough-going English
seaman a leavening of tenderness, simplicity, and self-sacrifice, which,
combined with his dauntless bravery, affords no ignoble type of manhood.
He is a child in his fancies, his credulity, his affections; a lion in
his defiance of peril and his sovereign contempt for pain.
With regard to women, whatever may be his practice, his creed is pure,
exalted, and utterly opposed to his own experience; while his instincts
prompt him on all occasions, and against any odds, to take part with the
weaker side. Compared with the landsman, he is always a little behind
the times in worldly knowledge, possessing the faults and virtues of
an earlier age. With both of these in some excess, his chivalry is
unimpeachable, and a sense of honour that would not disgrace the noblest
chapters of knighthood is to be found nerving the blue-streaked arms and
swelling the brawny chests that man the forecastle.
Slap-Jack knew enough of his late-discovered mother’s position to be
familiar with the name of the Marquise and the situation of Montmirail
West. As he was the only seaman belonging to ‘The Bashful Maid’ who
had been tempted beyond the precincts of the port, this knowledge was
shared by none of his shipmates. Captain George himself, postponing his
shore-going from hour to hour, while he had work in hand, little dreamed
he was within two leagues of Cerise. Beaudésir had never repeated his
visit to the town; and every other man in the brigantine was too much
occupied by duty or pleasure—meaning anchor-watch on board, alternated by
rum and fiddlers ashore—to think of extending his cruise a yard further
inland than the nearest drinking-house.
On Slap-Jack, therefore, devolved the task of rescuing the Marquise and
her daughter from the grasp of “that big black swab,” as the foretopman
mentally denominated him, whom he longed ardently to “pitch into” on the
spot. He understood the position. His mother’s sea-song was addressed to
no inattentive nor unwilling ears. He saw the difficulties and, indeed,
the dangers of his undertaking; but the latter he despised, while the
former he resolved to overcome; and he never lay out upon a yard to reef
topsails in the fiercest squall with a clearer brain or a stouter heart
than he now summoned to his aid on behalf of the ladies whom his mother
loved so well.
Creeping from his hiding-place, he listened anxiously to the retreating
footfall of the blacks, and even waited several minutes after it had
died away to assure himself the coast was clear. Discovery would have
been fatal; for armed though he was with a cutlass and pistols, thirteen
to one, as he sagely reflected, was long odds; and “if I should be
scuttled,” thought he, “before I can make signals, why, what’s to become
of the whole convoy?” Therefore he was very cautious and reflective.
He pondered, he calculated, he reckoned his time, he enumerated his
obstacles, he laid out his plans before he proceeded to action. His only
chance was to reach the brigantine without delay, and report the whole
matter to the skipper forthwith, who he was convinced would at once
furnish a boat’s crew to defend the ladies, and probably put himself at
their head.
Emerging from the hut, he observed to his consternation that it was
already dusk. There is but a short twilight in these low latitudes, where
the evening hour—sweetest of the whole twenty-four—is gone almost as soon
as it arrives—
“The sun’s rim dips,
The stars rush out,
At one stride comes the dark.”
And that dark, in the jungle of a West Indian island, is black as
midnight.
It was well for Slap-Jack that a seaman’s instinct had prompted him to
take his bearings before he came up the mountain. These, from time to
time, he corrected during his ascent, at the many places where he paused
for breath. He knew, therefore, the exact direction of the town and
harbour. Steering by the stars, he was under no apprehension of losing
his way, and could make for the brigantine where she lay. Tightening his
belt, then, he commenced the descent at a run, resolving to keep the path
as long as he could see it, and when it was lost in the bush at last, to
plunge boldly through till he reached the shore.
The misadventure he foresaw soon came to pass. A path which he could
hardly have followed by daylight, without Célandine to pilot him, soon
disappeared from beneath his feet in the deepening gloom. He had not left
the hut many minutes ere he was struggling, breast-high, amongst the
wild vines and other creepers that twined and festooned in a tangle of
vegetable network from tree to tree.
The scene was novel and picturesque, yet I am afraid he cursed and
swore a good deal, less impressed with its beauty than alive to its
inconveniences. Overhead, indeed, he caught a glimpse of the stars, by
which he guided his course through the interlacing boughs of the tall
forest trees, and underfoot, the steady lamp of the glow-worm, and the
sparks of a thousand wheeling fire-flies shed a light about his path; but
these advantages only served to point out the dangers and difficulties
of his progress. With their dubious help, every creeper thicker than
ordinary assumed the appearance of some glistening snake, swinging from
the branch in a grim repose that it was death to disturb; every rotten
stump leaning forward in its decay, draped with its garment of trailing
parasites, took the form of a watchful savage, poising his gigantic form
in act to strike; while a wild boar, disturbed from his lair between the
roots of an enormous gum-tree, to shamble off at a jog-trot, grumbling,
in search of thicker covert, with burning eye, gnashing tusks, and most
discordant grunt, swelled to the size of a rhinoceros. Slap-Jack’s
instincts prompted him to salute the monster with a shot from one of
the pistols that hung at his belt, but reflecting on the necessity
of caution, he refrained with difficulty, consoling himself by the
anticipation of several days’ leave ashore, and a regular shooting party
with his mates, in consideration of his services to-night.
Thus he struggled on, breathless, exhausted, indefatigable—now losing
himself altogether, till a more open space in the branches, through which
he could see the stars, assured him that he was in a right direction—now
obtaining a glimpse of some cane-piece, or other clearing, white in
the tender light of the young moon, which had already risen, and thus
satisfying himself that he was gradually emerging from the bush, and
consequently nearing the shore—now tripping over a fallen tree—now held
fast in a knot of creepers—now pierced to the bone by a prickly cactus,
torn, bleeding, tired, sore, and drenched with perspiration, but never
losing heart for a moment, nor deviating, notwithstanding his enforced
windings, one cable’s length from the direct way.
Thus at last he emerged on a clearing already trenched and hoed for
the reception of sugar-canes, and, to his infinite joy, beheld his own
shadow, black and distinct, in the trembling moonlight. The bush was now
behind him, the slope of the hill in his favour, and he could run down,
uninterrupted, towards the pale sea lying spread out like a sheet of
silver at his feet. He crossed a road here that he knew must lead him
into the town, but it would have taken him somewhat out of his course for
the brigantine, and he had resolved to lose no time, even for the chance
of obtaining a boat.
He made, therefore, direct for the shore, and in a few minutes he was
standing on a strip of sand, with the retiring tide plashing gratefully
on his ear, while his eyes were fixed on the tapering spars of ‘The
Bashful Maid,’ and the light glimmering in her foretop.
He stepped back a few paces to lay his arms and some of his garments
behind a rock, a little above high-water mark. There was small chance he
would ever find them again, but he belonged to a profession of which the
science is essentially precautionary, and the habit of foresight was a
second nature to Slap-Jack. In a few more seconds he was up to his knees,
his middle, his breast-bone, in the cooling waters, till a receding wave
lifted him off his feet, and he struck out boldly for the brigantine.
How delightful to his heated skin was the contact of the pure, fresh,
buoyant element! Notwithstanding his fatigue, his hurry, his anxiety, he
could have shouted aloud in joy and triumph, as he felt himself wafted
on those long, regular, and powerful strokes nearer and nearer to his
object. It was the exultation of human strength and skill and daring,
dominant over nature, unassisted by mechanical art.
Yet was there one frightful drawback, a contingency which had been
present to his mind from the very beginning, even while he was beating
laboriously through the jungle, but which he had never permitted himself
to realise, and on which it would now be maddening to dwell: Port Welcome
was infested with sharks! He forced himself to ignore the danger, and
swam gallantly on, till the wash and ripple of the tide upon the shore
was far behind him, and he heard only his own deep measured breathing,
and the monotonous plash of those springing, regulated strokes that
drove him steadily out to sea. He was already tired, and had turned on
his back more than once for relief, ere the hull of the brigantine rose
black and steep out of the water half a cable’s length ahead. He counted
that after fifty more strokes he would summon breath to hail the watch on
deck. He had scarce completed them ere a chill went curdling through his
veins from head to heel, and if ever Slap-Jack lost heart it was then.
The water surged beneath him, and lifted his whole body, like a wave,
though the surrounding surface was smooth as a mill-pond. One desperate
kick, that shot him two fathoms at a stroke, and his passing foot grazed
some slimy, scaly substance, while from the corner of his eye he caught
a glimpse the moment after of the back-fin of a shark. Then he hailed in
good earnest, swimming his wickedest the while, and ere the voracious
sea-scourge, or its consort, could turn over for a leisurely snap at him,
Slap-Jack was safe in the bight of a rope, and the anchor-watch, not a
little astonished, were hauling their exhausted shipmate over the side.
“Come on board, sir!” exclaimed the new arrival, scrambling breathless
to his feet, after tumbling head-foremost over the gunwale, and pulling
with ludicrous courtesy at his wet hair. “Come on board, sir. Hands
wanted immediate. Ax your honour’s pardon. So blown I can hardly speak.
First-class row among the niggers. Bobbery all over the island. Devil to
pay, and no pitch hot!”
Captain George was on deck, which perhaps accounted for the rapidity
of the foretopman’s rescue, and although justly affronted by so
unceremonious a return on the part of a liberty-man who had out-stayed
his leave, he saw at a glance that some great emergency was imminent, and
prepared to meet it with habitual coolness.
“Silence, you fool!” said he, pointing to a negro amongst the crew. “Lend
him a jacket, some of you. Come below at once to my cabin, and make your
report. You can be punished afterwards.”
Slap-Jack followed his commander nothing loth. The after-punishment,
as being postponed for twenty-four hours at least, was a matter of no
moment, but a visit to the Captain’s cabin entailed, according to the
_etiquette_ of the service, a measure of grog, mixed on certain liberal
principles, that from time immemorial have regulated the strength of that
complimentary refreshment.
In all such interviews it is customary for the skipper to produce his
spirit-case, a tumbler, and a jug of water. The visitor helps himself
from the former, and esteems it only good breeding that he should charge
his glass to the depth of three fingers with alcohol, filling it up with
the weaker fluid. When the thickness of a seaman’s fingers is considered,
and the breadth to which he can spread them out on such occasions, it
is easy to conceive how little space is left near the rim of the vessel
for that insipid element, every additional drop of which is considered
by competent judges to spoil the beverage. Slap-Jack mixed as liberally
as another. Ere his draught, however, was half-finished, or his report
nearly concluded, the Captain had turned the hands up, and ordered a boat
to be manned forthwith, leaving Beaudésir to command in his absence; but
true to his usual system, informing no one, not even the latter, of his
intentions, or his destination.