Presently, after one of his frequent halts, Mendouca turned and gave
orders to shorten sail. "Clew up and haul down fore and aft; stow
everything except the main-staysail; and see that you make a snug furl
of it, men!" he cried; adding, as he turned to me--
"We might as well be snugging down as doing nothing; and perhaps the
sight will put some life into the movements of those lazy rascals
yonder," pointing with his cigar as he spoke towards the boats.
"Possibly," I agreed. "And in any case it appears to me that the time
has fully arrived for the commencement of such preparations as you may
think fit to make for the coming blow, which, in my humble opinion, is
going to be rather sharp while it lasts."
"Yes; no doubt," Mendouca assented. "Curse those lazy hounds! Have
they no eyes in their heads to see what is brewing? If they don't wake
up, they will have the squall upon them before they reach the brig."
"In which case," said I, "you may say good-bye to the brig and to the
slaves in her; and may think yourself lucky if you are able to recover
your boats."
I do not know whether he heard me or not. I think it probable that he
did; but he made no reply, turning his back upon me, and keeping his
glances alternately roving between the boats and the sky, which latter
had by this time assumed a most sinister and threatening aspect, so much
so, indeed, that had I been in Mendouca's place I should have recalled
the boats without another moment's delay. But I could see that he had
set his heart upon securing possession of the brig, and was willing to
run a considerable amount of risk in the effort to do so.
At length, when the boats were, according to my estimation, a little
better than half-way to the brig, another flash of lightning, vivid and
blinding, blazed forth, this time from almost overhead, only the very
smallest perceptible interval of time elapsing between it and the
accompanying thunder-crash, which was so appallingly loud and startling
that for a moment I felt fairly deaf and stunned with it, and before I
had fairly recovered my dazed senses the rain came pelting down in drops
as large as crown-pieces. The rain lasted for only three or four
seconds, however, and then ceased again abruptly, while almost at the
same instant a brief scurry of wind swept past us, just lifting the
staysail--which was by this time the only sail remaining set on board
us--and causing it to flap feebly for a moment, when it was once more
calm again; but we could trace the puff a long distance to the westward
by its track along the oily surface of the water.
Mendouca turned to me with an oath. "When it comes, it will come to us
dead on end from the brig!" he exclaimed. "It is just like my cursed
luck! Do you think it is too late to recall the boats?"
"Yes," I answered decidedly. "They are now nearer the brig than they
are to us, and their best chance certainly is to keep on as they are
going."
Mendouca turned and bestowed upon the boats yet another long
scrutinising glance; and then said, with his eyes still fixed upon
them--
"I do not agree with you. I think they are quite as near to us as they
are to the brig; and if they keep on and the squall bursts before they
reach the brig, they will have to pull against it, and may perhaps not
fetch her after all, whereas if I recall them, and they are overtaken
before they reach us, they will have the wind all in their favour
instead of dead against them."
"That is very true," I assented. "It appears to me, however, that the
whole question hinges upon the point whether they are nearer to us or to
the brig; and in my opinion they are much nearer to the latter."
For fully another minute Mendouca continued to watch the boats; then he
suddenly exclaimed--
"I shall recall them. Clear away the bow gun there, and fire it with a
blank cartridge; and, Pedro, get out the recall signal, and stand by to
run it up to the main-truck at the flash of the gun."
The signal was made, the boom of the gun seeming to echo with a hollow,
long-drawn-out reverberation between sea and sky; and within a minute
the boats, with seeming reluctance, had turned and were pulling back to
the brigantine.
Meanwhile the heavens had continued to darken, until, by the time that
the boats had turned, the whole scene had become involved in a murky
twilight, through the gloom of which the brig, still with every stitch
of canvas set, could with difficulty be made out. Still, although it
seemed to me that the brooding squall might burst upon us at any moment,
the atmosphere maintained its ominous condition of stagnation until the
boats had reached within some four cables' lengths--or somewhat less
than half-a-mile--of us; when, as I was intently watching their
progress, I saw the sky suddenly break along the horizon just above
them, the clouds appearing as though rent violently apart for a length
of some ten or twelve degrees of arc, while the rent was filled with a
strong yet misty glare of coppery-yellow light, in the very centre of
which the brig stood out sharply-defined, and as black as a shape cut
out of silhouette paper.
"Here it comes, at last!" I exclaimed; and as the words passed my lips
I felt a spot of rain upon my face, and in another instant down it came,
a regular deluge, but only for about half a minute, when it ceased
abruptly, and, looking toward the brig, I saw a long line of white foam
sweeping down towards her.
"God help those poor, unhappy blacks!" I cried. "If that craft's spars
and rigging happen to be good she will turn the turtle with them, and
probably not one of them will escape!"
"It is a just punishment upon them for rising against the crew,"
exclaimed Mendouca savagely; "but if I had only succeeded in laying
hands upon them I would have inflicted a worse punishment upon them than
drowning. I would have--ah! look at that! Now the squall strikes her,
and over she goes. Taken flat aback, by heaven!"
It was as Mendouca had said; the brig when struck by the squall happened
to be lying head on to it, and her topmasts bent like reeds ere they
yielded to the pressure, and snapped short off by the caps. Then,
gathering stern-way, she paid off until she was nearly broadside on to
us, and we could see that her stern was becoming more and more depressed
as it was forced against the comparatively stubborn and unyielding
water, while her bow was raised proportionally high in the air. Foot by
foot, and second by second, her stern sank deeper and deeper into the
water until the latter was flush with her taffrail, and then, with the
aid of a telescope, I saw it go foaming and boiling in upon her deck,
driving the dense crowd of negroes forward foot by foot. By this time
her forefoot was raised clear out of the water, and, enveloped in mist
and spray though she was, I could see the bright, glassy glare of the
sky beyond and below it. For a second she remained thus; then her bow
rose still higher in the air, and, with a long sliding plunge, she
disappeared stern foremost.
"Gone to the bottom, every mother's _son of them_--as they richly
deserved!" exclaimed Mendouca, with a savage curse. "And if those
loafing vagabonds of mine don't bestir themselves they will follow in
double-quick time! What do you think, Dugdale? Shall we be able to
save them?"
I shook my head. "I would not give very much for their chance," I
replied. "It is a pity that you recalled them, I think. They would
have had time to reach the brig, and could at least have got her before
the wind, even had they no time to do more."
"Yes," he assented; "as it happened, they could. But how was a man to
know that the squall was going to hold off so long, and then burst at
the most unfortunate moment possible?"
All this, it must be understood, had happened in a very much shorter
time than it has taken to tell of it, and the squall had not reached as
far as the boats when the brig disappeared; while, as for us, we were
lying motionless in a still stagnant atmosphere, with our starboard
broadside presented fair to the approaching squall. But as the last
words left Mendouca's lips the squall swooped down upon the boats, and
in an instant they were lost sight of in a smother of mist and spray,
while the roar of the approaching squall, that had come to us at first
as a faint low murmur, grew deeper and hoarser, and more deadly menacing
in its overpowering volume of tone. Then the air suddenly grew damp,
with a distinct taste of salt in it; the roar increased to a deafening
bellow, and with a fierce, yelling shriek the squall burst upon us, and
the brigantine bowed beneath the stroke until her lee rail was buried,
and the water foamed in on deck from the cat-head to the main-rigging.
I thought for a moment that she, too, was going to turn turtle with us,
and I believe she would, had the staysail stood; but luckily at the very
moment when it seemed all up with us, the sheet parted with a report
that sounded even above the yell of the gale; there was a concussion as
though the ship had struck something solid, and with a single flap the
sail split in ribbons and blew clean out of the bolt-ropes. Meanwhile
Mendouca had sprung to the wheel and lent his strength to the efforts of
the helmsman to put it hard up, and, after hanging irresolute for a
moment, as _though undecided whether to capsize_ or not, the _Francesca_
gathered way, and in obedience to the helm gradually paid off until she
was dead before it, when she suddenly righted and began to scud like a
terrified thing. The boats were of course left far behind; and I made
up my mind that we should never see them again.
The squall was as sharp a thing of its kind as I had ever beheld, and it
was _fully_ three-quarters of an hour before it became possible to bring
the ship to the wind again, which Mendouca did the moment that he could
with safety. The wind continued quite fresh for another half-hour after
the squall had blown itself out, and then it dwindled away to a very
paltry breeze again, the clouds cleared away, the sun re-appeared and
shone with a heat that was almost overpowering, and the weather became
brilliantly fine again; much too fine, indeed, for Mendouca's purpose,
he being anxious to get back again as quickly as possible to the spot
where he had been obliged to abandon his boats, a lingering hope
possessing him that perchance they might have outlived the squall, and
that he might recover his men. I may perhaps be doing the man an
injustice in saying so much, but I firmly believe that this desire on
his part was prompted, not by any feeling of humanity or regard for the
men, but simply because the loss of so many out of his ship's company
would leave him very short-handed, and seriously embarrass him until he
could obtain others to fill their places; and I formed this opinion from
the fact that his many expressions of regret at being blown away from
his boats were every one of them coupled with a petulant repetition of
the remark that his hands would be completely tied should he fail to
recover their crews. So persistently did he hang upon this phase of the
mishap, that at length I ventured to ask him whether there were none of
them that he would be sorry to lose for their own sakes, apart from any
question of inconvenience; in reply to which he stated, with a brutal
laugh, that they were, one and all, a lazy set of worthless rascals, of
whom he should have rid himself in any case on his arrival in Havana.
However, be his motive what it might, he cracked on every stitch of
canvas that the brigantine would bear, as soon as the strength of the
squall had sufficiently abated to permit of his bringing her to the
wind, making sail from time to time as the wind further dwindled, until
he had her under everything that would draw, from the trucks down. To
add to his anxiety, it was about two bells in the first dog-watch before
he could bring the ship to the wind, and he feared, not without reason,
that it would be dark before he could work back near enough to the spot
at which we had left the boats, to see them again--always supposing, of
course, that they still floated. However, he did everything that a
seaman could do, sending a hand aloft to the royal-yard to keep a
look-out as soon as the ship had been got upon a wind, and making short
boards to windward--the first one of a quarter of an hour's duration,
and the others of half-an-hour each, so as to thoroughly cover the
ground previously passed over--as long as the daylight lasted. But
when, all too soon, the sun went down in a blaze of golden and crimson
and purple splendour, no sign of the boats had been seen; Mendouca,
therefore, worked out a calculation of the distance run by the
brigantine from the spot where the squall first struck her, subtracted
from it the distance that the boats would probably traverse in the same
time, and having worked up to this spot as nearly as he could calculate,
he hove-to for the night, with a bright lantern at his main-truck,
firing signal rockets at intervals of a quarter of an hour, and wearing
the ship round on the other tack every two hours. The night was
brilliantly star-lit, but without a moon, still there was light enough
upon the water to have revealed the boats at a distance of half-a-mile,
while the weather was so fine that a shout raised at twice that distance
to windward of the ship might have been heard on board her above the
soft sigh of the night wind, and the gentle lap of the water along the
bends; moreover, apart from the rockets fired, she might have been
plainly seen against the sky at a distance of fully three miles from the
boats, while her progress through the water was so slow that they could
have pulled alongside her without difficulty; when, therefore, midnight
arrived without any news of them, I gave them up for lost, and turned
in. Not so Mendouca, he would not give them up; moreover, he refused to
leave the deck--declaring that now he had lost his two mates he had
nobody on board that he could trust in charge--preferring to have a
mattress laid for him upon the skylight bench, where he snatched catnaps
between the intervals of wearing the ship round.
However, the matter was cleared up shortly after sunrise next morning,
when Mendouca again sent a hand aloft to look round, for the fellow had
only got as far as the foretop when he reported two objects that looked
like the boats, about five miles to leeward; adding, that if they _were_
the boats, they were capsized. The topsail was accordingly filled, and
the ship kept away, when, after about an hour's run, first one boat and
then the other was found, the first being capsized, while the second was
full of water and floating with the gunwale awash. One drowned seaman
was found under the capsized boat, but the rest were nowhere to be seen.
Both boats were easily secured, and found to be undamaged; and several
of the oars and loose bottom-boards were also recovered, being found
floating at no great distance from the boats. The drowned seaman, I may
as well mention, was not brought on board, but instead of this a boat
was sent away with a canvas bag containing three nine-pound shot, which
they secured to the poor wretch's ankles, and so sunk him.
Mendouca now, in no very amiable mood, resumed his course toward the
coast; and that same afternoon--having meanwhile been engaged apparently
in a tolerably successful effort to recover his temper--approached me
with a proposal that he should tell me the story of his life, to which I
of course cheerfully assented.
I will not inflict upon the reader the tale that he told me, because it
has no direct bearing upon this present history; suffice it to say, that
I now learned with some astonishment that he was a born Englishman, and
that, moreover, he had begun his career in the British navy, from
which--if his story were strictly true, as I afterwards had the
opportunity of learning was the case--he had been ousted by a quite
unusual piece of tyranny, and a most singular and deplorable miscarriage
of justice. It was the latter, I gathered, even more than the former,
that had soured him, and warped everything that was good out of his
character; for it appeared that he had a keen sense of justice, and a
very exalted idea of it; he had undoubtedly been most cruelly ill-used--
he had in fact been adjudged guilty of a crime that he had never
committed--and this appeared to have utterly ruined the character of a
man who might otherwise have been an ornament to the service, distorted
all his views of right and wrong, and filled him to the brim with a
wild, unreasoning, insatiable desire for vengeance.
This much for the man's story, which, however, I soon found had been
told me with a purpose; that purpose being nothing less than the
inducing of me to join him and take the place of his lost chief mate,
whereby--according to his showing--I might speedily become a rich man.
Had the proposal come before I had heard his story I should have
resented it as an insult, but the recital to which he had treated me,
and the sentiments expressed during its narration, convinced me that his
sense of honour had been so completely warped that he could see no
disgrace in the abandonment of a service and a country capable of
treating any other man--myself, for instance, as he carefully pointed
out--as he had been treated; I therefore contented myself with a simple
refusal, coupled with an assurance that such a step would be wholly
discordant with my sense of right and wrong, utterly irreconcilable, to
my conscience, and not at all in accord with my views. I had expected
him to be furiously angry at my refusal, but to my great surprise he was
not; on the contrary, he frankly admitted that he had been fully
prepared for a refusal--at first--but that he still believed my views
might alter upon more mature reflection.
"Meanwhile," said he, "you see how I am situated; I have lost both my
officers, and have no one on board but yourself in the least capable of
taking their places. I saved your life--or spared it, which comes to
the same thing--and I now ask you to make me the only return in your
power by assisting me in my difficulty."
"Before I give you any answer to that," said I, "I must ask you to
explicitly define and accurately set forth the nature of the assistance
that you desire me to render."
"Certainly," said Mendouca. "All that I ask of you at present is to
relieve me by taking charge of a watch, and assisting me to navigate the
ship. With regard to the latter, I consider myself capable of taking
the ship anywhere, and have as much confidence in myself as a man ought
to have; but `to err is human,' and it increases one's confidence, and
confers a feeling of security, to have some one to check one's
calculations. And as to the watch, unless you will consent to keep one
for me, I shall be compelled to keep the deck night and day. Now, it is
no great thing that I am asking of you _in return for your life_; will
you do it?"
"Give me half-an-hour to consider the matter, and you shall then have my
reply," said I.
"So be it," he answered. And then the matter ended, for the moment.
It was a question that I found it by no means easy to decide. Here was
I, an officer in the service of a country pledged to do its utmost to
suppress the abominable slave-traffic, actually invited to assist in the
navigation of a ship avowedly engaged not only in that traffic but--
according to the acknowledgment of her captain--also in, at least,
occasional acts of piracy! What was I to do? On the one hand, I was
fully determined to do nothing that could be construed into even the
semblance of tacit acquiescence in Mendouca's lawless vocation; while,
on the other, I undoubtedly owed my life to the man, and therefore
shrank from the idea of behaving in a manner that might appear churlish.
Moreover, it appeared to me that by rendering the trifling service
demanded of me, I should find myself in a position to very greatly
ameliorate in many ways the condition of the unhappy blacks down in the
dark, noisome hold. The end of it all was, therefore, that at the
expiration of the half-hour I had determined--perhaps weakly and
foolishly--to accede to Mendouca's request. I accordingly went to him
and said--
"Senor Mendouca, I have considered your request, and have decided to
accede to it upon certain conditions."
"Name them," answered Mendouca.
"They are these," said I. "First, that my services shall be strictly
confined to the keeping of a watch and the checking of your astronomical
observations. Secondly, that you undertake to perpetrate no act of
piracy while I am on board. And, thirdly, that you will allow me to
leave your ship upon the first occasion that we happen to encounter a
sail of a nationality friendly to Great Britain."
"Is that _all_?" demanded Mendouca. "By my faith, but you appear to
attach a somewhat high value to your services, senor midshipman! I
spared your life; yet that does not appear to be a sufficient reason why
you should afford me the small amount of help I require without hedging
your consent about with ridiculous and impossible restrictions! I am
surprised that, while you were about it, you did not also stipulate that
I should abandon the slave-trade while the ship is honoured by your
presence! I am obliged to you, Senor Dugdale, for your condescension in
giving your distinguished consideration at all to my request, but your
terms are too high; I can do better without your help than with it, if
it is to be bought at the price of such restraint as you demand."
And he turned his back upon me and walked over to the other side of the
deck.
Presently he turned and re-crossed the deck to my side, and remarked, in
English--
"Look here, Dugdale, don't be a fool! In coupling your consent to help
me with those restrictions, you doubtless suspected me of an intention
to involve you in some of those acts that you deem unlawful, and then to
renew my proposal that you should join me. Well, if you did you were
not so very far from the truth; I confess that I _do_ wish you to join
me. I have somehow taken a fancy to you, despite those old-fashioned
and absurd notions of yours about conscience, and duty, and the like.
Why, if you would only put them away from you it would be the making of
you, and you would be just the sort of fellow that I want; you are pluck
all through, and, once free from the trammels of the thing that you call
conscience, you would stick at nothing, and with you as my right hand I
should feel myself free to undertake deeds that I have only dared to
_dream_ of thus far, while, with our views brought into accord, we
should be as brothers to each other. I am ambitious, Dugdale, and I
tell you that if you will join me we _can_ and _will_ revive the glories
of the old buccaneering days and make ourselves feared and reverenced
all over the globe; we will be sea-kings, you and I. What need is there
for hesitation in the matter? Nay"--and he held up his hand as he saw
that I was about to speak--"do not inflict upon me those musty
platitudes about _conscience_ and _duty_ that I have heard so often in
the old days, and that have been made the excuse for so many acts of
gross tyranny and injustice that my gorge rises in loathing whenever I
hear them mentioned. What _is_ conscience? The inward monitor that
points out your duty to God and restrains--or tries to restrain--you
from doing wrong, you will perhaps say. Well, let us accept that as an
answer. I will then ask you another question. Do you really believe in
the existence of the Being you call God? No, I am sure you do not; you
cannot, my dear fellow, and remain consistent. For what is our
conception of God? or, rather, what is the picture of Him that our
ghostly advisers and teachers have drawn of Him? Are we not assured
that He is the personification and quintessence of Justice, and Love,
and Mercy? Very well. Then, if such a Being really exists, would the
tyranny, the injustice, the cruelty, and the suffering that have
afflicted poor humanity, from Adam down to ourselves, have been
permitted? Certainly not! Therefore I unhesitatingly say that He
cannot exist, and that the belief in Him is a mere idle, foolish
superstition, unworthy of entertainment by intelligent, reasonable, and
reasoning beings. And if there is no God, whence do we derive our
conception of duty? I tell you, Dugdale, there is no such thing as duty
save to one's self; the duty of protecting, and providing for, and
avenging one's self, as I am doing, and as you may do if you choose to
join me."
"Have you finished?" I asked, as he paused and looked eagerly into my
face. "Very well, then; I will answer in a few words, if facts were as
you so confidently state them to be, I might possibly be induced to cast
in my lot with yours; but, fortunately for humanity, they are not so,
and I must therefore most emphatically decline."
"Then I presume," said he, with a sneer, "you still believe in the
existence of God, and His power to work His will here on earth?"
"Certainly," I answered, without hesitation.
"Do you believe that He is more potent than I am!"
"I really must decline to answer so absurd a question," said I, and
turned away to leave him.
"Stop!" he thundered, his eyes suddenly blazing with demoniac fury.
"Answer me, yes or no, _if you are not afraid_! If your faith in Him is
as perfect as you would have me believe, answer me!"
I hesitated for a moment--I confess it with shame--for I felt convinced
that in the man's present mood a reply in the affirmative would
assuredly provoke him to some dreadful act in proof of the contrary; the
hesitation was but momentary, however, and, that moment past, I
replied--
"Yes; I believe Him to be omnipotent, both on earth and in heaven."
It was as I had expected--my reply had provoked him to murder; for as
the words left my lips he, for the second time, drew his pistol from his
belt, cocked it, and deliberately pressed the muzzle of the barrel to my
temple, exclaiming, as he did so--
"Very well. Then let us see whether He has the power to save you from
my bullet!"
And, glaring like a madman straight into my eyes, he held it there while
one might perhaps have slowly counted ten, and then pulled the trigger.
There was a sharp click and a little shower of sparks as the flint-lock
fell, and--that was all.
"Missed fire, by all the furies!" he exclaimed, dashing the weapon
violently to the deck, _where it instantly exploded_. "Well, you have
proved your faith, at all events, and have escaped with your life by the
mere accident of my pistol having missed fire, and there is an end of it
for the present. Here, take my hand; you are a plucky young dog and no
mistake, but you did wrong to provoke me; take my advice and don't do it
again, lest worse befall you."
"No," said I, "I will _not_ take your hand. You saved--or rather,
spared--my life once, it is true, but you have threatened it twice, and
it is no thanks to you that I am alive at this moment. We are now
quits, for this last act of yours has wiped out whatever obligation I
may have owed you for your former clemency. I will not take your hand;
and I warn you that I will leave your ship on the first opportunity that
presents itself."
And I turned away and left him.
Shortly afterwards Mendouca went below; and a few minutes after his
disappearance the steward came up to me and informed me that "supper"--
as the evening meal is called at sea--was ready.
"I shall not go below, steward," I said. "If Captain Mendouca will
allow you to do so, I should like you to bring me a cup of coffee and a
biscuit up here."
"Very well, senor," the man answered. "I will bring them."
He disappeared, but returned, after an interval of a minute or two, and
handed me a note scrawled on a small slip of paper. It was written in
English, and read as follows--
"You are the last fellow I should ever have suspected of so
contemptible a weakness as sulking. Come below, like a sensible lad;
I have that to say to you which I do not choose to say on deck in the
presence of the men.
"Mendouca."
"Oh!" thought I, "so he has returned to his right mind, has he? Very
well, I will go below and hear what he has to say; for it would
certainly be unpleasant to be in a ship for any length of time with the
captain of which one is not on speaking terms."
Accordingly I descended the companion, and as I entered the cabin
Mendouca rose from a sofa-locker upon which he had flung himself, and
again stretched forth his hand.
"I want you to forgive me, Dugdale," said he, with great earnestness.
"Nay, but you must; I will take no denial. I am not prone to feel
ashamed of anything that I do, but I frankly confess that I _am_ ashamed
of my behaviour to you this afternoon, and I ask your pardon for it. To
tell you the whole truth, I believe that there is a taint of madness in
my blood, for there have been occasions when I have felt myself
irresistibly impelled to actions for which I have afterwards been sorry,
and that of this afternoon was one of them."
I believed him; I really believed that, as he had said, there was a
touch of madness in his composition, and that he was not always fully
accountable for his actions. I therefore somewhat reluctantly accepted
his proffered hand and the reconciliation that went with it, and with a
suggestion that perhaps it would be as well henceforth to avoid
theological arguments, took my accustomed seat at the cabin table.
Later in the evening, while Mendouca was reading in his cabin, my friend
Pedro joined me on deck, and, with many expressions of poignant distress
at his father's behaviour to me, endeavoured to excuse it upon the plea
of irresponsibility already urged by Mendouca himself; the poor lad
assuring me that even he was not always safe from the consequences of
his father's violence. And during the half-hour's chat that ensued I
learnt enough to convince me that Mendouca was in very truth afflicted
with paroxysmal attacks of genuine, undoubted madness; and that, in my
future dealings with him, I should have to bear that exceedingly
alarming and disconcerting fact in mind.