I VALUE THE LADING.
The day had been so full of business, there had been so much to engage
my mind, that it was not until I was seated at supper in the old
cook-room in which I had passed so many melancholy hours, that I found
myself able to take a calm survey of my situation, and to compare the
various motions of my fortunes. I could scarcely indeed believe that I
was not in a dream from which I should awake presently, and discover
myself still securely imprisoned in the ice, and all those passages of
the powder-blasts, the liberation of the schooner, my lonely days in her
afloat, my encounter with the whaler, as visionary and vanishing as
those dusky forms of vapour which had swarmed in giant-shape over my
little open boat.
But even if confirmation had been wanting in the sable visage of Billy
Pitt, who sat near the furnace munching away with prodigious enjoyment
of his food and bringing his can of hot spiced wine from his vast
blubber lips with a mighty sigh of deep delight, I must have found it in
each hissing leap and roaring plunge of the old piratical bucket, so
full of the vitality of the wind-swollen canvas, so quick with all the
life-instincts of a vessel storming through the deep with buoyant keel
and under full control. Oh, heaven! how different from the dull ambling
of the morning, the sluggish pitching and rolling to the weak pulling of
the spritsail!
Wilkinson and Cromwell kept the deck whilst Billy Pitt and I got our
supper, and I had some talk with my negro, who seemed to be a very
simple childish fellow, heartily in love with his stomach and very eager
to see England. He told me that he had heard it was a fine country, and
his wish to see it was one reason of his volunteering.
"Dey say," said he, "dat Lunnon's a very fine place, sah, bigger dan
Philadelphy, and dat a man's skin don' tell agin him among de yaller
gals dere."
I laughed and said, that in my country people were judged rather by the
colour of their hearts than by the hue of their faces.
"But dollars count for something too, sah, I spects?" said he.
"Why, yes," said I, "with dollars enough you can make black white in
England."
"Hum!" cried he, scratching his head. "I guess it 'ud take an almighty
load of dollars to make me white, massa."
"Put money in your pocket and chink it," said I, "and your face'll be
found white enough, I warrant."
"By golly!" cried he, "I'll do it den. S'elp me de Lord, massa, I'd
chink twenty year for a white face. Dat comes ob bein' civilized.
Tell'ee what dey dew, massa, dey makes you feel like a white man, but
dey lets you keep black, blast 'em!"
I checked his excitement by telling him that in my country he would find
that the negro was a person held in very high esteem, that the women in
particular valued him for that very dinginess which the Americans found
distasteful, and told him that I could name several ladies of quality
who had married their black servants.
He looked surprised, but not incredulous, and said in his peculiar
dialect that he had no doubt I spoke the truth, as he had always heard
that England was a fine country to live in. I then led him insensibly
from this topic to talk of the sea and his experiences, and found that
he had seen a very great deal, having been freed when young, and keeping
to the ocean ever since in many different sorts of craft. Indeed, I was
as much pleased with him as with Wilkinson, but then I had foreseen a
simplicity in both the negroes, and in expectation of finding this
quality, so useful to one in my strange position, I was overjoyed when
they consented to help me sail the schooner to the Thames.
We went on deck to relieve Wilkinson and Cromwell. Billy Pitt took the
tiller and I walked to either rail and stared into the darkness. It was
very thick with occasional squalls of snow, which put a screaming as of
tortured cats into the wind as they swung through it. The sea was high,
but the schooner was making excellent weather of it, whilst she rolled
and pitched through the troubled darkness at seven knots in the hour.
'Twas noble useful sailing, yet a speed not to be relished in these
waters amid so deep a shadow. Still the temptation to "hold on all," as
we say, was very great; every mile carried us by so much nearer to the
temperate parallels, and shortened to that extent the long, long passage
that lay before us.
I was pacing the deck briskly, for the wind was horribly keen, when Pitt
suddenly called out, "I say, massa!"
"Hullo," I replied.
"Sah," he cried, "I smell ice!"
I knew that this was a capacity not uncommon among men who had voyaged
much in the frosty regions of the deep, and instantly exclaimed, "Luff,
then, luff! shake the way out of her!" sniffing as I spoke, but
detecting no added shrewdness in the air that was already freezingly
cold. He put the helm down, and I called to the others below to come on
deck and flatten in the main sheet. They were up in a trice and tailed
on with me, asking no questions, till we had the boom nearly amidships.
I was about to speak when Wilkinson cried out, "I smell ice." He sniffed
a moment: "Yes, there's an island aboard. Anybody see it?"
"Ay, dere it am, sure enough!" cried Cromwell. "Dere--on de lee-bow--see
it, sah? See it, Billy?"
Yes, I saw it plain enough when I knew where to look for it. 'Twas just
such another lump of faintness as had wrecked the _Laughing Mary_, a
mass of dull spectral light upon the throbbing blackness, and it lay
exactly in a line with the course we had been steering when Pitt first
called out, so that assuredly we had not shifted our helm a minute too
soon. We chopped and wallowed past it slowly, keeping a sharp look-out
for like apparitions in other quarters, and when it had disappeared, I
made up my mind to heave the schooner to and keep her in that posture
till daylight, unless the night cleared. So we got the mainsail down and
stowed it, clewed up the topsail (which I lent a hand to roll up), and
let the vessel lie under a reefed foresail with her helm lashed. The
weather, however, must have ultimately compelled what the thickness had
required; for by ten o'clock it was blowing a hard gale, with a frequent
hoariness of clouds of snow upon the blackness, the seas very high and
foaming, and the wind crying madly in the rigging.
I let some time go by, and then sounded the well and found no more water
than the depth at which the pumps sucked. This did wonders in the way of
reassuring the men, who were rendered uneasy by the violent motions of
the unwieldy vessel, and by the very harsh straining noises which rose
out of the hold, which latter they would naturally attribute to the
craziness of the fabric, though the true cause of it lay in the number
of loose, movable bulkheads.
"It's amazin' to me that she holds together at all," cried Wilkinson,
"so ancient she is!"
"She's only old," said I, "in the sound of the years she's been in
existence. The ice has kept her young. Would the hams and tongues we're
eating be taken to be half a century old? yet where could you buy
sweeter and better meat of the kind ashore? A ship's well is your only
honest reporter of her condition. Ours has vouched in a way that should
keep you easy."
"Arter de _Soosan Tucker_ dis is like bein' hung up to dry," exclaimed
one of the negroes. "It war pump, pump dere and no mistake. I call dis a
werry beautiful little sheep, massa; yes, s'elp me de Lord, dere's
nuffin could persuade me she ain't what I says she am."
However, I was up and down a good deal during the night. But for the
treasure I should have been less anxious, I dare say. I had come so
successfully to this point that I was resolved, if my hopes were to
miscarry, the misfortune should not be owing to want of vigilance on my
part; and there happened an incident which inevitably tended to sharpen
my watchfulness, though I was perfectly conscious there was a million to
one against its occurring a second time. I came on deck to relieve
Wilkinson, at midnight, after a half-hour's nodding doze by the furnace
below. He went to his cabin; I stood under the lee of a cloth seized in
the weather main rigging. Pitt arrived, and I told him he could return
to the cook-house and stay there till I called him. The helm being
lashed, and the schooner doing very well, nothing wanted watching in
particular, yet I would not have the deck abandoned, and meant to keep a
look-out, turn and turn about with Pitt, as Wilkinson and Cromwell had.
The snow had ceased; but it was very dark and thick, the ocean a roaring
shadow, palpitating upon the eyes in rolling folds of blackness, with
the quick expiring flash of foam to windward. On a sudden, looking over
the weather quarter, methought I discerned a deeper shade in the night
there than was elsewhere perceptible. It was like a great blot of ink
upon the darkness. Even whilst I speculated, it drew out in the shape of
a ship running before the gale. She seemed to be heading directly for
us. The roof of my mouth turned dry as desert-sand; my tongue and limbs
refused their office; I could neither cry nor stir, being indeed
paralyzed by the terrible suddenness of that apparition and the
imminence of our peril. It all happened whilst you could have told
thirty. The great black mass surged up with the water boiling about the
bows; she brought a thunder along with her in her rigging and sails as
she soared to the crowns of the seas she was sweeping before. I could
not tell what canvas she was under, but her speed was a full ten knots,
and as I did not see her till she was close, she looked to come upon us
as with a single bound. She passed us to windward within a stone's
throw, and vanished like a dark cloud melting into the surrounding
blackness. Not a gleam of light broke from her; you heard nothing but
the boiling at her bows and the thunderous pealing of the gale in her
canvas. A quarter turn of the wheel would have sent us to the bottom,
and her, no doubt, on top of us. Whether she was the _Susan Tucker_, or
some other whaler, or a big South-Sea-man driven low and getting what
easting she could out of the gale, I know not. She was as complete a
mystery of the ocean night as any spectral fabric, and a heavier terror
to me than a phantasm worked by ghosts could have proved.
I knew such a thing could not happen again, yet when I called Pitt I
talked to him about it as though we must certainly be run down if he did
not keep a sharp look-out, and when my watch below came round at four
o'clock, I was so agitated that I was up and down till daybreak, as
though my duty did not end till then.
The gale moderated at sunrise, and, though it was a gloomy, true Cape
Horn morning, with dark driving clouds, the sea a dusky olive, very
hollow, and frequent small quick squalls of sleet which brought the wind
to us in sharp guns, yet as we could see where we were going, I got the
schooner before it, heading her east-north-east, and under a reefed
topsail, mainsail, and staysail, the old bucket stormed through it with
the sputter and rage of a line-of-battle ship. There was a log-reel and
line on deck, and I found a sand-glass in the chest in my cabin in which
I had met with the quadrants, perspective glass, and the like, and I
kept this log regularly going, marking a point of departure on the chart
the American captain had given me, which I afterwards found to be within
two leagues and a half of the true position. But for three days the
weather continued so heavy that there was nothing to be done in the
shape of gratifying the men's expectations by overhauling what was left
of the cargo. Indeed, we had no leisure for such work; all our waking
hours had to be strictly dedicated to the schooner, and in keeping a
look-out for ice. But the morning of the fourth day broke with a fine
sky and a brisk breeze from a little to the east of south, to which we
showed every cloth the schooner had to throw abroad, and being now by
dead reckoning within a few leagues of the meridian of sixty degrees, I
shaped a course north by east by my compass, with the design of getting
a view of Staten Island that I might correct my calculations.
When we had made sail and got our breakfast, I told Wilkinson and
Cromwell (Pitt being at the tiller) that now was a good opportunity for
inspecting the contents of the hold; and (not to be tedious in this part
of my relation, however I may have sinned in this respect elsewhere) we
carried lanthorns below, and spent the better part of the forenoon in
taking stock. From a copy of the memorandum I made on that occasion
(still in my possession), we discovered that the Yankee captain had left
us the following: thirty casks of rum, twenty-eight hogsheads of claret,
seventy-five casks of brandy, fifty of sherry, and eighteen cases of
beer in bottles. In addition to this were the stores in the lazarette
(besides a quantity of several kinds of wine in jars, &c.) elsewhere
enumerated, besides all the ship's furniture, her guns, powder,
small-arms, &c, as well as the ship herself. I took the men into the run
and showed them the chests, opening the little one which I had stocked
with small-arms, and lifting the lids of two or three of the others.
They were perfectly satisfied, fully believing all the chests to be
filled with small-arms and nothing else, and so we came away and
returned to the cabin, where, to please them, I put down the value of
the cargo at a venture, setting figures against each article, and making
out a total of two thousand six hundred and forty pounds. This of course
included the ship.
"How much'll dat be a man, massa?" asked Cromwell.
"Six hundred and sixty pounds," I answered.
The poor fellow was so transported that, after staring at me in silence
with the corners of his mouth stretched to his ears, he tossed up his
hands, burst into a roar of laughter, and made several skips about the
deck.
"Of course," said I, addressing Wilkinson, "my figures may be ahead or
short of the truth. But if you are disposed to take the chance, I'll
tell you what I'll do; I'll stand by my figures, accepting the risk of
the value of the lading being less than what I say it is, and undertake
to give each man of you six hundred and sixty pounds for your share."
"Well, sir," said he, "I don't know that I ought to object. But a few
pounds is a matter of great consequence to me, and I reckon if these
here goods and the wessel should turn out to be worth more than ye
offer, the loss 'ud go agin the grit, ay, if 'twere twenty dollars a
man."
I laughed, and told him to let the matter rest, there was plenty of time
before us; I should be willing to stand to my offer even if I lost by
it, so heartily obliged was I to them for coming to my assistance. And
in this I spoke the truth, though, as you will understand who know my
position, I had to finesse. It went against my conscience to make out
that the chests were full of small-arms, but I should have been mad to
tell them the truth, and, perhaps, by the truth made devils of men who
were, and promised to remain, steady, temperate, honest fellows. I was
not governed by the desire to keep all the treasure to myself; no, I vow
to God I should have been glad to give them a moiety of it, had I not
apprehended the very gravest consequences if I were candid with them.
But this, surely, must be so plain that it is idle to go on insisting on
it.
The fine weather, the golden issue that was to attend our successful
navigation, the satisfactory behaviour of the schooner, put us into a
high good-humour with one another; and when it came to my collecting all
the clothes in the after cabins and distributing them among the three
men, I thought Billy Pitt and Cromwell would have gone mad with delight.
To the best of my recollection the apparel that had been left us by the
American captain (who, as you know, had cleared the forecastle of the
clothes there) consisted of several coats of cut velvet, trimmed with
gold and silver lace, some frocks of white drab with large plate
buttons, brocade waistcoats of blue satin and green silk, crimson and
other coloured cloth breeches, along with some cloaks, three-corner
hats, black and white stockings, a number of ruffled shirts, and other
articles, of which I recollect the character, though my ignorance of the
costumes of that period prevents me from naming them.
Any one acquainted with the negro's delight in coloured clothes will
hardly need to be told of the extravagant joy raised in the black
breasts of Cromwell and Pitt by my distribution of this fine attire. The
lace, to be sure, was tarnished, and some of the colours faded, but all
the same the apparel furnished a brave show; and such was the avidity
with which the poor creatures snatched at the garments as I offered them
first to one and then another, that I believe they would have been
perfectly satisfied with the clothes alone as payment for their
services. I made this distribution on the quarter-deck, or little poop,
rather, that all might be present: Wilkinson was at the tiller, and
appeared highly delighted with the bundle allotted him, saying that he
might reckon upon a hearty welcome from his wife when she came to know
what was in his chest. The negroes were wild to clothe themselves at
once; I advised them to wait for the warm weather, but they were too
impatient to put on their fine feathers to heed my advice. They ran
below, and were gone half an hour, during which time I have no doubt
they put on all they had; and when at last they returned, their
appearance was so exquisitely absurd that I laughed till I came near to
suffocating. Each negro had tied a silver laced hat on to his woolly
head; one wore a pair of crimson, the other a pair of black, velvet
breeches; over their cucumber shanks they had drawn white silk
stockings, regardless of the cold; their feet were encased in buckled
shoes, and their costumes were completed by scarlet and blue waistcoats
which fell to their knees, and crimson and blue coats with immense
skirts. What struck me as most astonishing was their gravity. Their
self-complacency was prodigious; they eyed each other with dignified
approbation, and strutted with the air of provincial mayors and aldermen
newly arrived from the presence of royalty.
"They're in keepin' with the schooner, any ways," said Wilkinson.
And so perhaps they were. The antique fabric needed the sparkle of those
costumes on her deck to make her aspect fit in with the imaginations she
bred. But, as I had anticipated, the cold proved too powerful for their
conceit, and they were presently glad to ship their more modern
trousers, though they clung obstinately to their waistcoats, and could
not be persuaded to remove their hats on any account whatever.