It was mid-ocean, and no land was in sight. The glassily smooth surface
of the sea was not broken by the faintest ripple, but it rose and fell
slowly with the long, rhythmical swell of the Atlantic. Gentle now was
the massive heaving of the giant's bosom, showing that he was slumbering
only, and that the strong, fierce life was there, ready to be awakened
at any moment to its energy of cruel destruction.
Though the swell must have been of considerable height, yet so gentle
was the undulation that no motion whatever would have been perceptible
to one on the deck of a vessel, unless he had observed how the horizon
was withdrawn from his sight at regular intervals by the intervening
hills of water, as the vessel softly glided down the easy slopes into
the broad valleys between. The wind was quite still. The sky above was
clear and of a deeper blue than is known in northern climes; but on the
eastern horizon lay a long, low bank of very dark cloud, seeming almost
black in contrast to the elsewhere dazzling glare.
The sea, to one looking across it, would have appeared of a beautiful
indigo tint; but if one gazed straight down into the water, it seemed
opaque in the purple blackness of its profundity, as if the perpetual
night that reigned in the mysterious depths below were sending its
shadow upwards to the surface. Yet so perfectly translucent was that
ink-like water that any bright object, such as a plate, thrown into it
would remain distinctly visible as it slowly descended--yes, even till
it was so far down that it seemed no larger than a small coin.
The yacht _Petrel_ lay becalmed on the tropical sea. All her canvas had
been lowered, and she floated idly, while the fierce, vertical sun was
blistering the paint on her sides, and the melting pitch oozed from the
seams of her decks.
For thirteen days she had been drifting thus on a windless ocean, her
crew languid and irritable from the stifling heat, which it is
impossible to mitigate on a small craft, waiting for the breeze that
never came.
For thirteen days of unbearable calm, broken only by occasional brief
squalls, accompanied by torrential downpour of rain, and thunder and
lightning of appalling grandeur--squalls which raised the flagging hopes
of the men for a space, and to which they hastily hoisted their canvas,
that they might be carried out of this dismal tract of the ocean; but
after they had been driven on their way a mile or two only, the wind
would suddenly drop again, the dark clouds would clear away, and the sun
would blaze down fiercer than ever out of the implacable sky.
The _Petrel_ had reached the region of the equatorial calms, the sultry
Doldrums dreaded by the sailor, that broad belt of sluggish sea that
divides the tract of the north-east trade wind from that of the
south-east. Here the aerial currents neutralise each other and are at
rest--a desolate, rainy ocean that lies under an almost stagnant
atmosphere of steaming heat, where vessels have lain becalmed for
wearisome week after week; even, in many cases, until the supply of
fresh water had been exhausted and the men perished of thirst. And yet
to the northward and to the southward the fresh trade winds blow
perpetually in one direction, across vast stretches of ever-tossing
waves.
The voyage of the _Petrel_ had been a very prosperous one up to this
point. She had met with fair winds for the most part until she reached
the limits of the north-east trades, which, blowing right aft, had
carried her on her way at the rate of nearly two hundred miles a day.
Carew had sighted Madeira and the westernmost islands of the Cape Verde
archipelago; but as the yacht was well provided with provisions, he had
not called at any port. After having been a little over a month at sea,
he had entered the calm region about the equator, and here, as I have
said, scarcely any progress was made for a fortnight.
By this time the crew had settled down to the regular routine of
ship-life, and Carew was, on the whole, well satisfied with the men. The
savagery of the big Basque would occasionally assert itself, and he was
ever ready to pick a quarrel with his mates. The only one on board whom
El Toro respected and feared was Carew himself; for he felt that the
Englishman combined a physical courage, at least equal to his own, with
a superior education; and the man who possesses these two qualities can
always master a merely brute nature. El Toro did not conceal his
contempt for Baptiste, who excelled him in mental ability alone; and
again, he could not converse ten minutes with the little Galician
without an altercation arising; for the latter, who had all the pluck of
his big comrade, was fond of wagging his sharp tongue, and could not
refrain from malicious banter, despite the long sheath-knife which was
always so ready to the Basque's right hand.
Carew, who had quickly gauged the character of his companions, took El
Toro on his own watch, leaving El Chico to the French mate. Thus, as
watch and watch was observed in the regular ship fashion--that is, one
watch relieving the other every four hours--the cantankerous Basque had
but few opportunities of associating with the other men.
But during the fortnight of calm the discipline of the yacht had been
relaxed. As there was no need for it, the usual watches had not been
set; and, after they had completed the small amount of necessary work
each day, the men were allowed to employ the rest of the time much as
they liked. A prolonged calm on the line is trying even to the most
amiable tempers; so that it is not to be wondered at that, on one
occasion, El Toro, being modest as to his own powers of repartee,
preferred to reply to a chaffing remark of El Chico's with a practical
retort in the shape of a vicious stab, which might easily have
diminished the ship's company by one had not the quick-eyed little man,
leaping nimbly backwards, escaped with a slight scratch on his arm.
For this offence Carew, knowing his man and how best to punish him,
informed the Basque that a fine of a fortnight's pay had been entered
against his name in the log-book.
It was nearly midday, and the heat of the still, moist air was intense.
The French mate lay reclined under an awning on the after-deck, rolling
up cigarette after cigarette, and smoking them with half-shut eyes as he
dreamily meditated.
In the bows, under an awning extemporised out of an old sail, were
squatting the two Spaniards, playing at _monte_ with a very dirty pack
of cards. Now and then would be heard the sonorous oaths of the Basque,
as he savagely reviled his bad luck, or the triumphant chuckle of El
Chico, whom fortune was favouring. These two had been gambling almost
incessantly during the calm, for the money they were to receive from
Carew on their arrival at Buenos Ayres. The Galician had already
succeeded in winning El Toro's pay for many weeks in advance. Neither of
the men could read or write, but they kept a tally of their debts of
honour--over which there was much wrangling--by cutting notches on a
beam in the forecastle.
A few minutes before noon Carew came on deck, sextant in hand, and the
mate rose to his feet lazily. Carew's face was now bronzed by the
tropical sun, and was fuller than it had been two months back. The
haggard expression, the restless anxiety of his eye, had gone. He looked
like a man with the easiest of consciences.
He glanced at the two card-players forward. "Have you taken the
precaution I ordered?" he asked the mate.
"I have, captain; here they are," and Baptiste produced two formidable
knives from his pocket.
Since the incident I have mentioned, Carew had instituted a rule, to the
effect that the men should not play at cards or dice unless they had
previously delivered their weapons to one of the two officers.
El Chico overheard the mate's reply. "Ah, captain," he cried, "you'll
have to hand both knives over to me at the end of this game. I shall
have won everything El Toro possesses in the world if my luck holds as
it is doing now."
"_Caramba!_ it is too much; a plague on the cards!" cried the Basque
furiously, hurling the pack across the deck. "I'll have no more of them.
If I have no knife, I have these hands," and he opened them out with a
gesture of rage in front of the Galician. "I could circle your little
neck with these, and throttle you in half a minute, El Chico."
El Chico said nothing, but shrugged his shoulders with a provoking
coolness.
"El Toro, come aft," cried Carew, who had acquired enough Spanish to
give his orders in that tongue; "come aft, and set up that mizzen
rigging; it's as slack as possible."
The wild beast acknowledged its master and proceeded to obey his orders
in a surly fashion, even as Caliban might have reluctantly carried out
some behest of the superior intelligence that had enslaved him.
"This calm seems as if it would never end," said Carew to the mate. "It
looks black yonder. Another squall, I suppose. Just enough to entice us
to hoist our sails, and then to die away again."
"I don't see anything like the trade-wind sky about," said Baptiste, who
had sailed the tropical seas before.
Carew took his midday observation of the sun; then, lowering his
sextant, called out, "Make it eight bells, Baptiste," and went below to
work out his position.
He found that the _Petrel_ had only travelled five miles in the last
twenty-four hours. He was seventy miles north of the equator, and his
longitude by dead-reckoning (he had, as has been explained, no
chronometer on board) was about 30 deg. west, so that he was distant some
five hundred miles from Cape St. Roque, the most easterly point of the
New World.
Soon after noon the dark bank of cloud rose rapidly from the horizon and
overspread the whole heavens; the rain began to pour down as it only can
in these equatorial regions, and a fresh breeze from the south-east
cooled the heated atmosphere.
The sails were hoisted, and the yacht ran some two or three miles; then
the hopeless calm fell again, and there was not a cloud to be seen in
the blue vault above. The sails flapped to and fro with a loud noise as
the vessel rolled in the swell which the breeze had left behind it.
"Oh, this accursed calm!" cried Carew impatiently; "down with all your
canvas again."
The men obeyed, grumbling at their ill-luck, and then resumed their game
of _monte_.
In the afternoon the heat became more oppressive than ever, and it was
impossible to stay below; so all hands remained under the awnings on
deck.
The mate, after pondering for some while, said to Carew, "We shall run
short of water if this continues much longer."
"I have thought of that. We must serve out a smaller allowance."
"Buenos Ayres is a long way off yet, captain. Would it not be well to
put into some Brazilian port for water and vegetables? This heat is very
trying on a small vessel like this. We shall have illness on board if we
are not careful."
"I do not wish to break the voyage anywhere, unless it is absolutely
necessary," Carew replied.
"I know these countries," Baptiste continued; "and there is one very
good reason why you should call at some port on the way."
"What is it?"
"You have no bill of health with you. Now in Buenos Ayres the
authorities are very afraid of yellow fever, and if you arrive there
with no papers to show where you are from, they will take it for granted
that you have come from some infected port, and that you have probably
lost some hands on the voyage and wish to conceal it. They would,
therefore, put you in quarantine for who knows how long. They might,
under the suspicious circumstances, refuse even to give you pratique at
all, and send you off to sea again."
"How will calling at a Brazilian port remedy that?"
"Because in Brazil they are not afraid of yellow fever, as they always
have it there. At Rio they won't trouble you at all, and your consul
will give you a clean bill of health for Buenos Ayres. Then, being
satisfied that you have had no illness on board, the Buenos Ayres people
will grant you pratique after, let us say, a quarantine of four days,
even if yellow fever were raging at Rio."
"A queer plan to avoid quarantine for Yellow Jack by calling at the
headquarters of the fever!" said Carew; "but I see that you are right. I
will put into Rio."
After a pause the Frenchman said thoughtfully, "I shall be sorry to
leave this vessel, sir. I suppose you still think of selling her in the
River Plate. I should like to continue the cruise for another year."
"So should I, but I can't afford it. Yachting is an expensive
amusement."
"Oh, I don't know that. A cruise may be made to pay its way even in
these days, especially if one carries a warrant from the Admiralty of
one's country like you do. The authorities are always civil to one who
sails under the Government blue ensign, and never trouble him with the
tedious formalities the common merchantman is subjected to."
"I don't know what you mean," said Carew. "There is no money to be made
now by legitimate trade at sea. Besides, a yacht is not allowed to trade
at all."
"I said nothing about legitimate trade," said the Frenchman quietly, as
he rolled himself another cigarette.
The eyes of the two men met, and they understood each other.
The mate had never let drop so broad a hint before; but he knew that he
was safe in doing so. There had existed for some time a sort of
freemasonry of crime between himself and Carew. They had been thrown
altogether upon each other's society of late. Both were educated men,
and gentlemen by birth; both were shrewd readers of character; and it is
so far easier for the bad than for the good man to recognise a kindred
nature.
Carew did not exactly entertain a liking for his mate, but he found his
companionship far pleasanter than that of any other man could have been.
The Frenchman's tolerant way of looking at crime was peculiarly
gratifying to the ex-solicitor. It acted as a most soothing salve to his
conscience.
He liked to hear the man's cynical talk--the superficial philosophy with
which he defended crime as being the least hypocritical way of obeying
nature's law of the struggle for existence. The very presence of this
villain seemed to exert a strange, magnetic influence on Carew's pliable
soul, lulling it into a fool's paradise.
Such an affinity for evil between two men who are much together will
soon destroy any conscience that either of them may happen to possess.
So Carew, having become accustomed to an atmosphere of crime, no longer
shrank from the thought of it, and, with an amused smile, replied to the
mate's remark, "What piece of villainy are you going to suggest now,
Baptiste?"
"I don't think you ought to use that word villainy," protested the
Frenchman, with an air of comic indignation. "As a matter of fact, I was
not at that moment thinking of any one particular 'piece of villainy,'
but vaguely of a great number of feasible schemes I know of for
transferring the wickedly-earned riches of others into our own deserving
pockets."
"This is highly interesting," said Carew, in a bantering tone. "Explain
one of these notable schemes of yours, Baptiste."
But the Frenchman did not reply. He looked round the horizon with a
puzzled expression, and, putting his hand to his ear, appeared to be
listening intently.
"Hark, captain! What is that?" he cried.