A STRANGE SAIL
It was a Friday morning. On going on deck before breakfast for a
pump-bath in the ship’s head, I found as queer a look of weather all
about as ever I had witnessed in my life. A troubled swell, but without
much height or power, was running from the westwards, and the Indiaman
rolled awkwardly upon it with much noise of beating canvas aloft and of
straining spars. The water was of a dull olive tint, with an appearance
of mud in it, as though some violent disturbance at bottom had lifted
the ooze cloudily to the surface. It was hard to tell whether the sky
was blue or slate, so thick, dusty, impervious was it, with here and
there a dim outline of cloud, and patches, so to speak, of a kind of
yellowish blue, where some belly of obscured vapour stooped lower than
the rest; whilst, the whole sea-circle round, there hovered an immense
grummet or ring of a dingy, sooty appearance, like to a line of smoke
left by the funnels of steamers, and hanging in a brown cloud, leagues
in length, in silent motionless weather on the rim of the waters of the
English Channel.
‘Hallo, Mr. Smallridge,’ said I, as I stepped over the rail out of the
head, addressing the boatswain, who was superintending the work of a
couple of hands slung over the bow, ‘what have we yonder?’ and I sent
my gaze at a sail I had now for the first time caught sight of that was
hovering down upon our port quarter some two or three miles distant.
‘A brig, sir, I believe,’ he answered; ‘she was in sight much about the
same place at daybreak. There’s been a little air of wind, but it’s
failing, I doubt.’
‘Making way for something to follow, I fancy?’ said I, casting a look
round the horizon.
‘Ay,’ he answered; ‘that muck’s a-drawing up, and there’ll be thunder
in it too, if my corns speaks right. Niver had no such aching in my
toes as this morning since last Toosday was two year, when we fell in
off the Hope with the ugliest thunderstorm that I can remember south
of the heequator. When my corns begins to squirm I always know that
thunder ain’t fur off.’
‘Well, thunder or no thunder,’ said I, ‘I hope there’s to come wind
enough in the wake of all this to blow us along. We shall be having to
call it sixty days to the Line, bo’sun, if we don’t mind our eye;’ and
giving him a friendly nod, I made my way to my cabin to finish dressing.
The gloomy appearance continued all the morning without the least
change. The wind fell dead; and a prodigious hush overhung the sea, a
stillness that grew absolutely overwhelming to the fancy, if you gave
your mind to it, and stood watching the heave of the swell running in
ugly green heaps without a sound. Noises were curiously distinct. The
voice of a man hailing the forecastle from the foretopmast cross-trees
sounded on the poop as though he had called from the maintop. A laugh
from near the wheel had a startlingly near note, though it came to you
along the whole length of the after-deck. The water brimming to the
channels alongside to the stoop of the hull sent the oddest hollowest
sobbing tone into the air, as though some monster were strangling
alongside. Halliards had been let go and sails clewed up and hauled
down, and the _Countess Ida_ lay with something of a naked look as she
wallowed with the clumsiness of a wide-beamed ship under topsails and
fore course; and all the rest of the square canvas, saving the royals
and mizzen topgallant-sail, which were furled, swinging in and out
festooned by the grip of the gear.
By noon the sail that I had noticed early that morning had neared us in
some insensible fashion till she hung something more than a mile away
off the quarter as before. I had several times examined her with the
telescope and was not a little impressed by her appearance. She was a
brig of about two hundred and sixty tons; a most beautiful and perfect
model, indeed, with a clipper lift of bow and a knife-like cutwater and
a long wonderfully graceful arching sweep of side rounding into the
very perfection of a run. Her copper came high, and was very clean,
as though she were fresh from port. Her masts were singularly lofty
for her size, both of them tapering away into skysail poles with yards
across; but she had furled all canvas down to her two topsails and
foresail, and lay rolling heavily, lifting her symmetrical fabric to
the height of the swell, when she would be hove out against the ugly
sulky background in such keen relief that her rigging glanced like
hairs as it came from the mastheads to the channels, with a white, odd,
almost ghastly stare in her canvas that was brilliant as cotton; then
down she would sink behind some sullen almost livid peak till she was
hidden to the reef-band of her fore-course.
Throughout the morning I had observed Captain Keeling somewhat
restlessly examining her; that is to say, he would send looks enough
at her through his binocular glass to suggest that he found something
unusual, perhaps disturbing, in her appearance. There were no sights to
be had, though the old fellow and his two mates stood about the deck,
sextants in hands, occasionally lifting their eyes to that part of the
sky where the sun was supposed to be. Observing Mr. Prance at the rail,
steadfastly observing the brig down upon the quarter, I went up to him.
‘Pray what do you find in that craft yonder, Mr. Prance, to interest
you? The skipper does not seem able to keep his glass off her.’
‘What do _you_ see, Mr. Dugdale?’ he answered, viewing me out of the
corners of his eyes without turning his head. ‘Come, you have been a
sailor. What is _your_ notion of her?’
‘She’s a beauty, anyway,’ I answered; ‘no builder’s yard ever turned
out anything sweeter in the shape of a hull--a trifle too lofty,
perhaps. For my part, I hate everything above royals. Give me short
mastheads, the royal-yard sitting close under the track, English
frigate-fashion’--I was proceeding.
‘No, no; I don’t mean that, Mr. Dugdale,’ he interrupted with a hint of
a seaman’s impatience at my criticism.
‘What, then?’ I asked.
‘Does she look honest, think you?’ said he.
‘Ha!’ cried I: ‘now I understand.’
‘Hush! not a word if you please,’ he exclaimed with a glance along the
poop; ‘the ladies must on no account be frightened, and it is but a
mere suspicion on Captain Keeling’s part at best. Yet he has had some
acquaintance with gentry of her kind, if, indeed, yonder chap be of the
denomination he conjectures.’
‘She must have been stealthily sneaking down upon us,’ I exclaimed,
‘to occupy her present position, otherwise she should be a league
distant out on the beam. But then such a hull as that must yield to
a catspaw that wouldn’t blow a feather out of the _Countess Ida’s_
mizzen-top. What has been seen to excite misgiving, Mr. Prance?’
‘Too many of a crew, sir,’ he answered; ‘the outline of a long-tom on
her forecastle, but ill-concealed by the raffle thrown over it. Six
guns of a side, Mr. Dugdale, though the closed ports hide their grins.’
‘She will not attempt anything with a big chap like us, surely.’
At that moment the captain called him, and he walked aft.
Presently, it sensibly darkened, as though to the passage of some
denser sheet of vapour crawling through the heart of the obscurity on
high. The sea turned of an oil-like smoothness, and ran in folds as
of liquid bottle-green glass out of the grimy shadow that was slowly
thickening all away round the ocean limit. The order was given to furl
the clewed-up sails and to reef the topsails. The boatswain’s pipe
summoned all hands to this work, and the ship for a while was full of
life and commotion. However, by this time the secret of old Keeling’s
uneasiness had in some way leaked out; in fact, the skipper could no
longer have kept the people in ignorance of his suspicions; for some
ten minutes or so before the tiffin bell rang, after the hands had come
down from aloft, the order was quietly sent along to see all clear
for action; and as I took my seat at table, being close to the cuddy
front, as my chair brought me with a clear view of the quarter-deck
through the open windows, I could observe the men preparing our little
show of carronades, removing the tompions, placing rams, sponges,
train-tackles, and the like at hand, and passing shot and chests of
small-arms through the main hatch.
Captain Keeling, stiff, and bolstered up as usual in his brass-buttoned
frock coat, his face of a deeper rubicund from some recent touch of
soap and towel, seated himself at the head of the table; but Prance
and the other mates remained on deck. One noticed a deal of uneasiness
amongst the ladies, saving Miss Temple whose haughty beautiful face
wore its ordinary impassive expression. There was no coquetry in the
startled eyes that Miss Hudson rolled around. Mrs. Bannister fanned
herself vehemently, and ate nothing. There were some of us males,
too, who looked as if we didn’t like it. Mr. Emmett was exceedingly
thoughtful; Mr. Fairthorne drank thirstily, and pulled incessantly
at his little sprouting moustache; Mr. Hodder watched old Keeling
continuously; and Mr. Riley made much of his eye-glass. Nothing to the
point was said for a little while; then the colonel rapped out:
‘I say, captain, have you any notion as to the nationality of that chap
whom your people are making ready to resist?’
‘No, sir,’ answered Keeling stiffly; ‘we gave her a sight of our ensign
this morning; but she showed no colours in return, and I am not a man
to keep my hat off to one who will not respond.’
‘Dot iss my vay,’ exclaimed Peter Hemskirk, bestowing a train of nods
on the skipper.
‘But, captain,’ said Mrs. Joliffe, a nervous gentle-faced middle-aged
lady, with soft white hair, ‘have you any good reason for supposing
that the ship may prove dangerous to us?’
‘Madam,’ responded Keeling with a bow, and you noticed the prevailing
condition amongst us by the general nervous inclining of ears towards
the old fellow to catch what he said, ‘there is reason to believe that
certain Spaniards of the island of Cuba have equipped two or three
smart vessels to act the part of marine highwaymen. The authorities
wink at the business, I am told. Their practice is to bring ships to
and board them, and plunder the best of what they may come across. Last
year, a West Indiaman named the _Jamaica Belle_ was overhauled by one
of these craft, who took specie amounting to twelve thousand pounds out
of her. I believe they are not cut-throats in the old piratic sense.’
‘Oh, don’t speak of cut-throats!’ cried Mrs. Hudson. ‘Will they dare to
attack us--the monsters!’
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Keeling, ‘pray, clearly understand: my
suspicions of the stranger may be ill-founded. Meanwhile, our business
is to put ourselves in a posture of defence, ready for whatever may
happen.’
‘Certainly,’ exclaimed the colonel very emphatically with a look round;
and then speaking with his eyes fixed upon Mr. Johnson; ‘I presume
we shall be able to count upon all our male friends here assembled to
assist your crew to the utmost of their powers, should the stranger
make any attempt upon this ship?’
‘We shall expect you to cover yourself with glory, colonel,’ said Mr.
Johnson, in a familiar sarcastic voice; ‘and I shall be happy to write
and print a full description of your behaviour, sir.’
‘I am quite willing to fight,’ exclaimed Mr. Fairthorne in an
effeminate voice. ‘I mean that I shall be glad to thoot; but I am no
thwordthman.’
‘Possengers hov no beesness to vight,’ exclaimed Mynheer Hemskirk,
enlarging his immense waistcoat by obtruding his chest; ‘dey gets in
der vay of dem as knows vot to do.’
Miss Temple bit her lip to conceal a smile.
‘That’s all very well,’ exclaimed Riley, talking at Miss Hudson; ‘but
suppose, Hemskirk, you should find some greasy Spaniard with earrings
and oily ringlets rifling your boxes, hauling out all the money you’ve
got, pocketing that fine silver-mounted meerschaum pipe of yours’----
‘I vould coot orff hiss head,’ answered the Dutchman, breathing hard.
‘Gentlemen, you are unnecessarily alarming the ladies,’ cried old
marline-spike from the head of the table.
‘I suppose there’s no lack of small-arms with you, captain?’ roared
the Colonel; ‘plenty for us here as well as for your men?’
‘I shall insist upon your not meddling, Edward, in whatever may
happen,’ cried his wife, giving him an emphatic nod over the edge of
her fan with her Roman nose.
‘I shall meddle, then, my dear,’ he shouted. ‘If it comes to those
rascals attacking us, I shall fight, as of course we all will,’ and
again he bent his little fiery eyes upon Mr. Johnson.
‘My note-book is ready, colonel,’ said Mr. Johnson pleasantly, with a
satirical grin at the peppery little soldier. ‘I’ll not lose sight of
you, sir.’
‘I believe you will then, sir,’ sneered the colonel, ‘unless Captain
Keeling takes the precaution to clap his hatches on to prevent anybody
skulking below from off the deck.’
‘Mere bluster is not going to help us,’ said Colledge, who disliked the
colonel; ‘no good in railing and storming like heroes in a blank-verse
performance for an hour at a time before falling to. If Captain Keeling
wants any assistance outside that of his crew, he may command me for
one.’
‘I wath never taught fenthing,’ said Mr. Fairthorne; ‘if I fight, it
mutht be with a muthket.’
‘If the ship should be captured, what’s to become of us?’ cried Mrs.
Hudson. ‘I’ve read the most barbarous histories about pirates. They
have no respect for sex or age; and it’s quite common, I’ve heard, for
every pirate to have twelve wives.’
Here Mrs. Trevor suddenly shrieked out for some one to bring her baby
to her, then went into hysterics, and was presently carried away in a
dead faint by the stewards, followed by her daughter, weeping bitterly.
Old Keeling whipped out an oath.
‘Now, gentlemen,’ he exclaimed, ‘you see what your conversation has
brought about. Ladies, I beg that you will not be uneasy. The stranger
will give us no trouble, I am persuaded;’ and rising with a look of
contempt, he bowed stiffly to Miss Temple and her aunt, and went on
deck.
I was too curious to observe what was going forward to linger in
the cuddy amid this idle rattle of tongues. Our ship having no
steerage-way, had slewed to the beat of the swell, and the brig was
now off the starboard bow, pretty much distant as she had been when
we went to lunch, but showing out with amazing clearness against the
sooty sky past her, upon which her topsails swung from side to side so
heavily that the lower yard-arms at times seemed to spear the water
lifting to them in hills. All over and beyond her lay a deep shadow of
thunder, a sky scowling to the zenith thick as though viewed through a
dust-storm, with a vision of the tufted cloud of the electric tempest
hovering here and there; but there was no lightning as yet, no echo of
distant grumbling; there was not a breath of air to cool the moistened
lip, and the noiseless heave of the swell was as though old ocean lay
breathing hard in a posture of dumb expectation.
Our crew hung about the decks in groups ready to spring to the first
command. Iron stanchions had been fitted into the line of the rails,
and boarding-nets triced up the length of the ship from just before the
fore-rigging to the poop rail. Aft was a small gang of seamen stationed
at each gun there, with all necessary machinery for the artillery at
hand. The captain, the chief mate, and Mr. Cocker stood abreast of
the wheel, looking at the brig with an occasional glance round the
sea at the weather. I stepped to the side to take another view of the
stranger, and I was noticing with admiration the toy-like beauty of her
as she soared with ruddy sheathing to the head of a swell, with now and
again a most delicate echo of the clapping and beating of her canvas
stealing to us through the dark, breathless atmosphere, when I was
accosted by some one at my elbow.
‘Do you think it possible, Mr. Dugdale, that if that vessel fired at
our ship she could hit us, so violently rolling as she is?’
I turned. It was Mrs. Radcliffe, and with her was Miss Temple. With the
exception of a ‘good morning’ or a ‘good night,’ I had never exchanged
a syllable with this lady in all the time she and I had been together
on shipboard. Her kind little face fluttered jerkily at me as she asked
the question in a manner to remind one of the movements of the head
of a hen. Miss Temple stood like a statue, swaying to the majestic
perpendicular of her figure upon the rolling deck without the least
visible effort to keep her balance, her dark and shining eyes fixed
upon the brig.
‘Her gunners,’ said I, ‘would need to be practised marksmen, I should
say, to hit us from such a tumbling platform as that yonder.’
‘Just my opinion, as I told you, Louise,’ she exclaimed.
‘If she were to begin to fire,’ exclaimed the girl, keeping her gaze
bent seawards, ‘she would be sure to hit us, though it were by chance.’
‘Very possibly,’ said I.
‘There will be some wind soon, I think, don’t you?’ said Mrs. Radcliffe.
‘I hope so,’ I answered.
‘In that case,’ said she, ‘we shall be able to sail away and escape,
shan’t we?’
‘She will chase us,’ exclaimed Miss Temple; ‘and as she sails faster
than we do, she will catch us!’
‘Now, is that likely?’ cried Mrs. Radcliffe, with a nervous toss of her
head at me.
‘Everything is possible at sea,’ said I, laughing; ‘but there is a
deal in our favour, Mrs. Radcliffe: first the weather, that as good
as disables that fellow at present anyway; then the coming on of the
night, with every prospect of losing the brig in the darkness.’
‘Would you advocate our running away from him?’ exclaimed Miss Temple,
looking at me with a fulness and firmness that was as embarrassing and
vexing in its way as an impertinent stare.
‘Oh, yes,’ said I; ‘certainly. We are a peaceful trader. It is our
business to arrive in India sound in body’----
‘I should consider,’ said she, gazing at me as if she would subdue me
into acquiescence in anything she chose to say by merely eyeing me
strenuously, ‘that Captain Keeling would be acting the part of a coward
if he ran away from that little vessel.’
‘Oh, Louise, how can you talk so!’ cried Mrs. Radcliffe, with a sort of
despairful toss of her hands.
‘I should like to see a fight between two ships,’ said the girl,
removing her overbearing eyes from my face to send them over the deck
amongst the groups of men. ‘Of course, if that vessel attacks us,
we ladies will be sent below to rend the cabin with our screams at
every broadside; but I, for one, am perfectly willing, if the captain
consents, to shoot at those people through a porthole.’
‘Oh, Louise, the whims which possess you are really dreadful!’ cried
Mrs. Radcliffe: ‘imagine, if you should even wound a man! it would
make you miserable for life; perhaps end in your becoming a Roman
Catholic and going into a convent. Think of that.’
Miss Temple looked at her aunt with a little curl of her lip.
‘I do not know,’ she exclaimed, ‘why it should be more dreadful in
a woman to defend her life than in a man. Nobody, I suppose, wishes
to hurt those people; but if they attempt to hurt us, why should we
women feel shocked at the notion of our helping the sailors to protect
the ship by any means in our power? I am like Mr. Fairthorne,’ she
continued, with a sarcastic glance at me; ‘I could not fight with a
sword, but I can certainly pull the trigger of a musket.’
‘It is really hardly lady-like, my dear,’ began Mrs. Radcliffe.
‘Nonsense, aunt! Lady-like! Is it more genteel to fall into hysterics
and swoon away, than to take aim at a wicked wretch who will have your
life if you don’t take his?’ and as she said this, she whipped a cotton
umbrella out of her aunt’s hand, and putting it to her shoulder, as
though it were a gun, levelled it at the brig.
Colledge, who was standing at a little distance away, talking to two
or three of the passengers, clapped his hands and laughed out. For
my part, I could not take my eyes off her, so fascinating were the
beauties of her fine form in that posture, her head drooped in the
attitude of the marksman, and her marble-like profile showing out clear
as a cutting in ivory against the soft shadowy mass of gloom of the sky
astern.
Mrs. Radcliffe again tossed her arms in a despairful gesture, with
a pecking, so to speak, of her face at the gangs of men on the
quarter-deck and waist; and then making a little flurried snatch at her
umbrella, she passed her arm through her niece’s, exclaiming: ‘Help me
to reach the cuddy, my dear. There’s a thunderstorm brewing, I’m sure,
and I’m afraid of lightning.’ She made me a little staggering curtsey,
and walked with Miss Temple to the companion, down which the pair of
them went, followed by Mr. Colledge, who I could hear complimenting
Miss Temple on her resolution to fight the enemy, if the stranger
should prove one.
A few minutes later Mr. Emmett and Mr. Johnson approached me, bumping
against each other like a brace of lighters in a seaway as they struck
out on the swaying deck with their staggering legs.
‘I say, Dugdale,’ cried the journalist, ‘shall you fight?’
‘Why, yes,’ I answered. ‘We shall all be expected to help the crew
certainly.’
‘I don’t see that!’ exclaimed Mr. Emmett, drawing his wide-awake down
to his nose and folding his arms with a tragic gesture upon his breast,
whilst he swung his figure from side to side on wide-stretched legs.
‘It’s all very fine to expect; but I agree with Johnson, whose argument
is, that we have paid our money to be transported in safety to Bombay;
and I cannot for the life of me see that the captain has any right to
look for cooperation at our hands, unless, indeed, he so contrives it
as to enable us to help him without imperilling our lives.’
‘But that fellow yonder may be full of ruffians, Emmett,’ said I; ‘and
if you do not help our sailors to defend the _Countess Ida_, they may
board us; and then they will cut your throat,’ I added, with a look at
his long neck, ‘which is no very agreeable sensation, I believe, and
an experience quite worth a pinch of heroism to evade.’
‘It’s a beastly business altogether,’ said he, wrinkling his nose as he
stared at the brig.
‘But why should they board us?’ exclaimed Mr. Johnson. ‘If they do, it
will be the captain’s fault. Why does he want to go on sticking _here_
for, as if, by George! we were a man-of-war with three decks bristling
with guns and crammed to suffocation with men?’
‘There is no wind,’ said I; ‘and without wind, Johnson, ships cannot
sail.’
‘Then why the confounded dickens don’t he lower all the boats,’ he
cried, ‘and fill them with sailors, and tug the ship out of sight of
that beast there?’
I laughed outright.
‘Well, I’m not in the habit of using strong language,’ said Mr.
Emmett, scowling at the brig; ‘but curse me if I’m going to fight. My
simple contention is, I’ve paid my money to be transported peacefully
to India; and,’ added he, with a glance aft at old Keeling, who was
staring up at the sky, as though to observe if there were any drift in
the vapour up there, ‘if he don’t fulfil his undertaking, I’ll sue him
or his owners for breach of contract.’
‘I’m no sailor,’ exclaimed Mr. Johnson, ‘but I may claim to have some
intelligence as a landsman, and my argument is,’ he cried, talking in a
loud voice, ‘that it is quite in Captain Keeling’s power to launch the
boats and drag the ship away from this spot. In an hour the brig would
be out of sight.’
At that instant there was a flash of lightning that made a crimson
dazzle of the dark heavens beyond the brig, where the sky sloped in a
horrible yellowish slate colour into the sooty thickness which circled
the horizon.
‘Ha!’ cried Mr. Emmett, ‘I don’t like lightning;’ and he abruptly
trundled down the poop ladder to the quarter-deck and disappeared.
‘Here’s a mess to be in!’ grumbled Johnson. ‘It’s all very well to
shoot or be shot at if you make butchery a profession. But to be maimed
or killed in some cheap affray--having to fight for people you don’t
care a hang about--obliged, for instance, to jeopardise your eyes,
your limbs, perhaps your very existence, for an old woman like Mrs.
Bannister, when the business is not in one’s line at all--’ He clenched
his fist, and fetching his thigh a whack with it, exclaimed: ‘Let
little hectoring Colonel Cock-a-doodle-doo cut as many throats as he
can come at--I am a man of peace. I have parted with a large sum to get
to India in comfort; and to expect me to help the sailors to fight is
as monstrous as to look to me to assist them in furling the sails and
scrubbing the decks.’
Thus speaking, he followed Mr. Emmett down on to the quarter-deck.