A TRAGEDY
How long it was before I fell asleep I cannot say. The humming of the
wake racing away close outside was noisy; the light cargo in the
steerage creaked and strained, and the thump of the rudder was frequent,
and sometimes startling. I was aroused by a continuous knocking on the
bulkhead. It was pitch-dark, despite a small sliding dance of stars in
the porthole glass. I thought the knocking was upon my door, and cried
out, ‘What is it?’ It did not cease; and gathering by this time that it
proceeded from the bulkhead that divided the cabins, I jumped out of my
bunk and beat upon the boards to let Miss Temple know I heard her.
I called; but though I caught her voice, I could not distinguish her
utterance. I had turned in partially clothed, and groping my way to the
door, stepped forth and knocked upon her cabin. The handle was touched
and I was sensible that the girl’s door was ajar.
‘Are you there, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘Yes. What is the matter?’
‘Did not you hear a pistol-shot?’
‘No,’ I cried.
‘I am certain a firearm has been discharged,’ she exclaimed.
‘Stay a bit,’ said I. ‘I will see if anything is wrong, and let you
know.’
After some groping, I succeeded in lighting the candle in my lantern;
and then slipping on my shoes, I made for the hatch ladder, which I was
able to see by leaving my cabin door open. I entered the cuddy and
listened. The lamp had been extinguished; but a sort of spectral
illumination of stars and white water came sifting through the skylight
and the port-holes and the little windows in the cuddy front, and I was
able to determine the outline of objects. All was right in this
interior, so far as I could tell. I listened; but not so much as a
footfall sounded upon the upper deck, not a note of human voice or
movement of men forward. The barque was sweeping through the seas
bravely, and the atmosphere of the cuddy was vibratory with the resonant
cries of the wind up aloft.
I made for the cuddy door and looked out; nothing stirred on the
quarter-deck that ran pallid into the impenetrable shadow past the
waist. I returned to the companion steps, which I mounted, and stood in
the hatch a moment or two. There was nobody on the poop saving the man
at the helm. I stepped over to him and said, ‘Where’s the captain?’
‘He’s gone below,’ he answered; ‘he told me he wouldn’t be long.’
‘When did he leave the deck?’
‘Seven or eight minutes ago, belike.’
‘Did you hear a noise just now that resembled a pistol-shot?’ I
inquired.
‘No, sir,’ he answered. ‘But who’s to hear anything atop of this here
shindy of wind and water?’
‘That’s true,’ I exclaimed. ‘I doubt if the noise will have meant more
than a fall of something below. It is the lady who heard the sound, and
I’ve just stepped up to see what it might mean. It’s to be hoped the
captain won’t linger. This is not a breeze in which to leave a ship in
charge of her helmsman only.’
And indeed the little craft wanted too much watching on the part of the
fellow to suffer him to talk or to permit of my calling off his
attention from his duty. I resolved to wait, that there might be some
sort of lookout kept whilst the captain stayed below. The breeze had
freshened, I thought, since I left the deck; there was a dim windy look,
moreover, all away out to starboard; and the barque close hauled was
making the wind to come as hard again as it was blowing, in fact,
through her thrusting, plunging, nimble manner of looking up into it.
The mainsail is too much for her, thought I; it should be furled. There
is a staysail or two too many, also; and that top-gallant sail will have
to come in anon, if the look of the sky out yonder means what it
threatens.
Five minutes passed, but the captain did not make his appearance. The
sound that Miss Temple had heard was beginning to work an ugly fancy in
my mind. I stepped aft to the wheel.
‘Did the captain tell you why he was going below?’
‘No, sir,’ was the answer. ‘He’d been standing for about a quarter of an
hour stock still; then he comes soddenly in a sort o’ run to the
binnacle, takes a look at the card, and says: “Keep her as she goes;
nothing off: see to it! I shan’t be long.” That was all.’
At that instant the wind breezed up in a gust that came in a long howl
over the weather rail, and the little vessel bowed down to it till the
smother alongside looked to be up to the covering-board.
‘No use waiting for the captain,’ said I, made irritable by anxiety; ‘we
shall have the masts out of her if we don’t mind our eye;’ and running
forward, I shouted at the top of my voice: ‘Lay aft and haul up the
mainsail!’
In a moment the watch came tumbling out of the darkness forward. Their
manner of rushing gave me to know that they had been standing by for the
order to shorten sail, and were wondering why it had not been delivered
sooner.
‘Furl it, lads,’ I shouted, ‘when you’ve hauled it up; but first get
your maintopgallant staysail hauled down. I must find out what has
become of the captain.’
Without losing another moment, I ran into the cuddy and knocked upon the
door of the captain’s cabin. No answer was returned. I knocked again,
thundering with my fist; then tried the handle, and found the door
locked. ‘Good God!’ thought I, ‘the man has shot himself. _That_ will be
the meaning of the sound Miss Temple heard.’ As I turned for a moment,
utterly at a loss how to act, the girl rose through the hatch close to
where I stood. She held in her hand the lantern I had left alight in my
berth.
‘What has happened?’ she cried.
‘I have no notion as yet,’ I responded; ‘but I fear the captain has shot
himself. Let me take that lantern from you.’
I swiftly hitched it by its laniard to a hook in a stanchion, noticing
as I did so that she had completely dressed herself.
‘Remain here for the present, will you?’ I went on. ‘I must go on
deck—there is no one to give orders to the men.’
I ran up the steps, and perceived the shadowy shapes of the seamen
ascending the shrouds to lay out upon the main yard.
‘Who is that there?’ I called, observing a dark figure standing near the
main hatch.
‘Me—Wilkins, sir.’
‘Jump forward, Wilkins,’ I shouted, ‘and call Mr. Lush. Tell him I want
him aft—that I’m afraid something serious has happened; in fact, rout up
all hands. We shall be having to reef down shortly.’
The fellow sped forwards. It had been no passing gust that had bowed the
barque down, but a real increase in the weight of wind; and by this
time, knowing fairly well how the gear led, I let go the maintopgallant
halliards, and then ran aft to the mizzen topmast staysail halliards,
and was dragging with my single pair of hands upon the downhaul, when
the carpenter came up to me, followed by the rest of the watch below.
‘What’s gone wrong?’ he said.
‘I believe the captain has shot himself. His cabin door is locked, and
we have yet to discover that he has committed suicide. The wind
freshens, the ship wants watching, and there is nobody to see to her.
Will you take charge? I’ll wait for you in the cabin.’
What expression a light cast upon his countenance might have shown my
news produced in it I know not; there was a pause in him, as of sulky
astonishment, but he said nothing. He mounted the poop ladder; and I
entered the cuddy, catching the sound as I did so of the men on the main
yard chorusing as they triced up the bunt of the sail, along with a
sudden roar from the carpenter to clew up the main-topgallant-sail and
furl it. The candle end burning in the lantern made but a wretched
light, as you will suppose. Close beside it, in such radiance as it
emitted, stood Miss Temple, white as stone, and her eyes wide and
luminous with alarm.
‘Is the vessel in danger?’ she asked.
‘Oh dear, no,’ I replied; ‘the breeze has freshened considerably, and
the men are shortening sail. But this light is truly abominable. We
shall require to be able to see clearly presently.’ And with that I took
out the candle and lighted the cabin lamp with it.
‘I have been every moment expecting to see that door open, and _his_
figure creep out!’ said Miss Temple, pointing with a shudder, and
without looking, towards the captain’s berth. ‘Do you believe he has
shot himself?’
‘Not a doubt of it. Why should his door be locked? I should know he has
destroyed himself without being able to make a guess at his method of
doing so, but for your saying that you heard the report of a pistol.’
‘I assuredly heard it, Mr. Dugdale. I was awake. I have not slept since
I lay down. The sound was like the crack of a whip over my head.’
Just then the carpenter roared out some fresh orders. The barque,
relieved of her mainsail and topgallant-sail, had recovered from her
perilous heel, and was thrashing through it with what seemed a stubborn
erectness of spar after the recent wild slope of her masts. The sea was
rising, and the vessel was beginning to pitch with some spite in the
chopping and smiting shear of her clipper bows, from which the surge
recoiled in thunder, washing aft in boiling spume with a sound like the
fall of the hail and rain of an electric storm. I could tell without
needing to look that Mr. Lush’s latest order concerned the reefing of
the foretopsail. At all events, he had his little ship well in hand, and
the whole of the vessel’s small crew were on deck to run about to his
directions, and there was some comfort to be got out of knowing this.
To satisfy a small doubt that had arisen, I stepped once again over to
the captain’s cabin and hammered loud and long upon the door, shouting
out his name, and then trying the handle; but to no purpose.
‘For what new horrors are we reserved?’ cried Miss Temple. ‘Shall we
ever escape with our lives? How much has been compressed within the last
few days: the dead body on the wreck—the drowning of the poor
lieutenant—the loss, perhaps, of Mr. Colledge and the sailors in the
man-of-war’s boat—and now this!’ she cried, bringing her hands to her
face with a sudden convulsive, tearless sob; then looking at me she
said: ‘If Captain Braine has killed himself, what is to follow?’
‘Rio,’ I answered. ‘I shall carry the ship there straight. Thank God for
such knowledge of navigation as I possess! I trust the captain may not
have killed himself; but if he has done so, it will make for our good.
He was a madman, and it was impossible from hour to hour to be sure of
his intentions.’
‘But, Mr. Dugdale, there will be no head to the ship if the captain be
dead. Who, then, is to control the crew—this crew of convicts and
mutineers and—and?’——
‘It was a madman who drew that picture,’ said I. ‘I suspect he is as
correct in his description of his crew as in his description of his
treasure. The men are without a navigator; they can do nothing without
me. If they are true Jacks, they are already sick of the voyage, and
will be glad to have a port under their lee, with the promise of a jaunt
ashore and fresh articles to sign on another ship’s capstan.’
We continued talking thus; presently I heard the seamen chorusing at the
foretopsail halliards, and later on the carpenter Lush entered the cabin
by the cuddy door.
‘She’ll be snug at this,’ he exclaimed in his gruff voice; ‘there’s no
more weight of wind, and the whole main-topsail won’t be too much for
her if it don’t freshen yet. What’s this about the capt’n, sir?’
As he spoke, I observed the glimmering faces of the crew, the whole body
of them, saving the fellow at the wheel, crowding to take a peep through
the cuddy windows and doorway. I saw Miss Temple glance with terror
towards them; but there was nothing more natural than that the fellows
should desire to obtain all news of an event that concerned them so
closely as the suicide of their captain. I repeated what little I knew
to the carpenter, who at once stalked to the captain’s door and tried
the handle for himself, shaking it viciously.
‘I suppose it’ll have to be broke open?’ he exclaimed, looking round.
‘Certainly,’ I answered, ‘and the sooner the better. This suspense is
intolerable.’
‘I’ll go forrards and get some tools,’ he said.
He returned after a few minutes, and two seamen accompanied him, one of
them being Joe Wetherly. The others, heedless of all custom, in their
devouring curiosity came shouldering one another into the cuddy,
thrusting inch by inch to the centre of it, where they stood staring—a
wild and rugged group, indeed, in that light; hairy breasts, naked,
weather-darkened nervous arms liberally scored with blue devices, bare
feet, gleaming eyes, sheath-knives on their hips—I could scarcely wonder
that Miss Temple shrank from them, and clung to my side with her hand in
my arm! They did not need the character the captain had given them to
make her do that!
Lush forced the door of the berth; it flew open to a heavy blow, and I
advanced to take a view of the interior, Miss Temple letting go of my
arm with an exclamation, rather choosing to remain alone near the
sailors than take a peep at the horror her imagination bodied forth. A
small bracket lamp was burning brightly. In the centre of the deck of
the cabin lay the body of Captain Braine. He was on his breast, his arms
were outstretched, one leg was crooked, as though broken under the
other. A pistol of a pattern somewhat similar to the one I had
discovered in Mr. Chicken’s locker lay beside his right hand. These
details we immediately witnessed; but we had to look a little before we
could distinguish the great stain of blood upon the square of drugget
under the cheek of the poor creature, and showing in a black line from a
hole on a level with his eye.
‘He has shot himself, as you said,’ exclaimed the carpenter in a hoarse
note, and backing half a pace to the right.
‘Turn him over, Bill,’ said Wetherly to the other sailor.
‘Not me! Handle him yourself, Joe.’
Wetherly fell upon a knee, and got the corpse on its back. After my
experience with the body on the wreck, I should have deemed myself equal
to any sort of ghastly sight-seeing; but that dead captain’s face was
more than I could bear, and I was forced to look away and to keep my
gaze averted, to rally my nerves from the shock the spectacle had given
them.
The crew had come shoving right to the very cabin door, and stood in a
crowd, staring open-mouthed with a sort of groaning of exclamations
breaking out from amongst them.
‘A bad job this, sir,’ said Wetherly, looking round to me.
‘He’ll be stone-dead, I suppose?’ said the carpenter.
‘O God, yes!’ I exclaimed.
The carpenter seemed to wait, as if he expected me to give directions.
‘Better get the body into the bunk, Mr. Lush,’ said I, ‘and cover it up
for to-night.’
‘Ay, hide it as soon as ye will, Joe,’ exclaimed the carpenter; and as
he said these words, I observed that he rolled his eyes with an
expression in them of keen and thirsty scrutiny over the cabin.
Wetherly and the other man who had entered with him lifted the body,
placed it in the bunk, and threw a blanket over it. We then quitted the
cabin, leaving the lamp burning, though, I fancy, nobody noticed that
but myself; and the carpenter put a little wedge of wood under the door
to keep it shut. The sailors slowly walked away out on to the
quarter-deck, casting inquisitive glances around them, and at Miss
Temple, as they withdrew. The carpenter came to a stand at the table,
and turning his surly face upon me, exclaimed in his deep-sea,
bad-tempered voice: ‘What’s to be done now?’
‘There’s nothing for it,’ I answered, ‘but to make for the nearest port,
and Rio will be that.’
‘Ay; but that ain’t the question just at present,’ he exclaimed. ‘What I
mean is, what’s the discipline agoing to be?’
‘Why, of course,’ I exclaimed, ‘I must render all the assistance I
possibly can. If the crew consent, I shall be happy to keep watch and
watch with you. In any case, I’ll navigate the ship. Very fortunately, I
can do so.’
‘It’ll be a matter for the crew,’ said he, talking with his eyes upon
the deck and speaking after a pause. ‘To-morrow morning will be time
enough to settle what’s to be done. I kep’ a lookout from eight to
twelve to-night; and if you’ll stand this here middle watch, I’ll be a
relieving of ye at four; and arter breakfast, giving you time to get
some sleep, I’ll call the crew aft, and we’ll see what they’ve got to
say, now there ain’t neither mate nor capt’n left.’
‘But you are the mate; the acting second mate,’ I cried, sensible of an
indefinable misgiving that grew rapidly into an emotion of cold and
heart-sickening consternation.
‘I tell ye _no_, sir!’ he shouted; ‘I’m no second mate. I signed on as
ship’s carpenter, and I’ve told ye so. Since Mr. Chicken died, I’ve been
treated by that man there’—he pointed with a square forefinger to the
cabin door—‘worse than any mongrel dog that e’er a blunderbuss was
brought to bear on. _Me_ a second mate?’ He struck his breast in a sort
of frenzy with his clenched fist and grinned in my face.
‘Very well,’ said I, forcing a note of composure into my voice; ‘it is a
mere detail of routine, which we can settle to-morrow, as you say.’
‘All right,’ he exclaimed; and pulling his skin cap down over his head,
he trudged on his rounded legs out of the cuddy.
‘I must go on deck, Miss Temple,’ said I.
She was eyeing me, as though bereft of speech, when I addressed her.
‘I will accompany you,’ she exclaimed.
‘No! It is out of the question.’
‘Why?’ she cried imperiously, with the irritability of dismay and dread
in her manner.
‘I shall be on deck till four. Such a spell of exposure it will be
needless for you to undergo. You are perfectly safe in your cabin.’
‘How _dare_ you ask me to return to that horrible lonely part of the
ship?’ she cried, with wrath and alarm brilliant in her eyes.
‘Then take some rest upon that locker there.’
‘You ask me to remain here _alone_ with the dead body close to in that
cabin?’
‘Miss Temple,’ said I firmly, ‘if you decline to return to your cabin,
you will at least oblige me by staying in this cuddy. I have no time to
reason with you. You must obey me, if you please. Give me your hand.’
She extended it, and I conducted her to the sofa locker, on which I
gently but resolutely compelled her to seat herself. ‘You can rest here
with perfect safety,’ I went on. ‘I am astonished that a woman of your
spirit should find anything to render you uneasy, in the face of the
real difficulties which confront us, in the neighbourhood of a harmless
corpse. I can command a view of you and of this interior through that
skylight. But you must not come on deck.’
She watched me in a motionless posture with an air of haughty resentment
upon her lips, to which a kind of awe in her gaze gave the lie. I left
her, and had my foot upon the companion steps, when a thought occurred
to me. Going to the door of the captain’s berth, I withdrew the wedge,
and entered and picked up the pistol that lay upon the deck. It was a
heavy single-barrelled concern, but a firearm all the same, and I thrust
it into my breast. I perceived no materials for loading it; but I had
what was necessary in that way below; and now I was possessed, as I did
not doubt, of the only two pistols in the ship.
I extinguished the lamp, wedged the door afresh, and responding to Miss
Temple’s appealing stare with a smile, I went on deck. The night was a
clear dusk, with a great plenty of shining stars, over which many small
clouds were driving swiftly; and the wind still continued to blow
strong, though it had not gained in force since sail had last been
shortened, and the sea was now running steadily on the bow in regular
heaps of dark waters melting at their heads, so that the motion of the
barque, by being rhythmic, was comparatively easy. I gained the weather
deck; and after a peep at the compass and a glance at the
indistinguishable face of the figure at the wheel, I started off on the
traditionary pendulum walk of the sea-watch, to and fro, to and fro,
from the wheel to the break of the poop, constantly directing looks to
windward or up aloft, and frequently at Miss Temple, as she showed,
seated as I had left her, visible to me through the glass of the
skylight. It was out of the question that she should pace the deck with
me throughout that long watch. The pouring wind came with an edge of
cold damp that made itself felt after a brief term of exposure to it.
Then, again, it was not to be thought of that the sailors should find
the lady on deck throughout this night watch, as though we were both in
mortal fear, and kept together to hearten each other. Now that it had
come to there being no head to the ship, it was of vital importance that
Miss Temple should remain as private as possible, but little seen by the
men. I had clear ideas as to the extraordinary situation in which we
were placed; and as I glanced at her through the skylight window, I made
up my mind to subdue her to my views, to conquer the insolence of her
spirit, even should it come to my having to act in a manner that might
be deemed brutal, never to humour her by giving her reasons, but to
peremptorily insist in such a fashion as to make her perceive that
whilst we were thus together, I was her master, and she must instantly
acquiesce in my decisions; for unless this was to be managed, her
temper, her want of tact, her pettish character as that of a person
whose nature had been injured by admiration and indulgence, might end in
the destruction of us both.
What a midnight watch was that! I was sick at heart, and miserable with
misgiving. My distrust of the carpenter, a feeling that had all along
possessed me, was strong even to a conviction that he was equal to the
acting of a hellish part, and that being free, and at the head, so to
speak, of a gang of men, of whom one only—I mean Wetherly—seemed worthy
of confidence, he might be presently hatching some plot of deadly menace
to Miss Temple and me. I asked myself what form could such a plot take?
I knew not: I could but forebode: I could only keep before me the
circumstance of a little ship afloat on a wide sea without captain or
mates, full to the hatches with commodities of value, a handsome fabric
of herself, virtually in the possession of an irresponsible body of men,
into whose keeping she had come through the merest effect of fortune,
without the least stroke of rascality on their part. I say I had only to
consider this, and then to think of the character of the crew as it had
been represented to me by Captain Braine, to forebode some action on
their part that might extinguish my project of reaching Rio—with so much
to follow that I durst not give my mind to speculating upon it.
Shocking as had been the suddenness and the unexpectedness of the
captain’s suicide, the thing sat lightly as a horror upon my
imagination, so profoundly agitated was I by the indeterminable fears
that had been raised in me by the few words the carpenter had let fall.
I could not be sure; but it seemed to me, by the haze of light which
hung about the forecastle hatch, called the forescuttle, and by an
occasional stirring of shadows amidst it, as though to the movements of
the men below, or to figures coming on deck and descending again, that
all hands were awake forward. There should have been nothing to
particularly disturb me in this suspicion, for enough lay in the
captain’s death to account for the men keeping awake and talking; still,
the belief that the sailors were conversing in their gloomy little sea
parlour, with Lush’s growling tongue sulkily active amongst them,
greatly increased my uneasiness.
I continued to pace the deck, keeping a close eye upon the ship, with
watchful regard also of the compass, for every hour of this sailing was
bringing us by so many miles nearer to the South American seaboard.
Shortly before two o’clock, on looking through the skylight, I observed
Miss Temple lying back upon the cushion of the locker in a sound sleep.
Her hat was upon her knees, her cheek was pillowed upon her arm; thus
she rested in sideways posture. Whilst I stood looking at her, as at a
picture of a beautiful sleeping woman framed in the square of the
skylight, and touched with the soft illumination of the oil-lamp
swinging hard by her couch, a man struck four bells on the forecastle,
and a minute or two later the dark figure of a seaman came along to
leeward to relieve the wheel. I waited a little, and then stepped to the
binnacle under pretence of inspecting the card.
‘Are the watch below up forward?’ said I.
‘All hands are awake,’ he answered, and I recognised him by his voice,
though I could not discern his features. He was a young sailor named
Forrest, a fellow I had often taken notice of for the elastic suppleness
of his body, the peculiar swing of his walk, an amazing agility aloft,
and an air of mutinous impudence in his manner of going about any job he
might be put to.
‘I suppose they have been talking about the captain’s death?’ said I.
‘They’ve been talking of a many things,’ he responded with a sort of
chuckle in his voice, as though he had been drinking.
‘Is Mr. Lush among them?’
‘Oh, ay.’
‘Well, keep your luff,’ said I; ‘she’s a couple of points off her course
as it is.’
‘Her course for where?’ said the man.
‘For Rio,’ I answered.
He made no answer, and I resumed my pacing of the planks.