NORTH latitude 23.5, longitude east 113; the time March of this same
year; the wind southerly; the port Whampoa, in the Canton river. Ships
at anchor reared their tall masts here and there, and the broad stream
was enlivened and coloured by junks and boats of all sizes and vivid
hues, propelled on the screw principle by a great scull at the stern,
with projecting handles, for the crew to work; and at times a gorgeous
mandarin boat, with two great glaring eyes set in the bows, came flying,
rowed with forty paddles by an armed crew, whose shields hung on the
gunwale and flashed fire in the sunbeams: the mandarin, in conical and
buttoned hat, sitting on the top of his cabin calmly smoking Paradise,
_alias_ opium, while his gong boomed and his boat flew fourteen miles
an hour, and all things scuttled out of his celestial way. And there,
looking majestically down on all these water-ants, the huge _Agra,_
cynosure of so many loving eyes and loving hearts in England, lay at her
moorings; homeward bound.
Her tea not being yet on board, the ship's hull floated high as a
castle, and to the subtle, intellectual, doll-faced, bolus-eyed people
that sculled to and fro busy as bees, though looking forked mushrooms,
she sounded like a vast musical shell: for a lusty harmony of many
mellow voices vibrated in her great cavities, and made the air ring
cheerily around her. The vocalists were the Cyclops, to judge by the
tremendous thumps that kept clean time to their sturdy tune. Yet it was
but human labour, so heavy and so knowing, that it had called in music
to help. It was the third mate and his gang completing his floor to
receive the coming tea-chests. Yesterday he had stowed his dunnage, many
hundred bundles of light flexible canes from Sumatra and Malacca; on
these he had laid tons of rough saltpetre, in 200 lb. gunny-bags: and
was now mashing it to music, bags and all. His gang of fifteen, naked
to the waist, stood in line, with huge wooden beetles called commanders,
and lifted them high and brought them down on the nitre in cadence with
true nautical power and unison, singing as follows, with a ponderous
bump on the first note in each bar.
[music notation]
And so up to fifteen, when the stave was concluded with a shrill “Spell,
oh!” and the gang relieved, streaming with perspiration. When the
saltpetre was well mashed, they rolled ton water-butts on it, till the
floor was like a billiard table. A fleet of chop boats then began to
arrive, so many per day, with the tea-chests. Mr. Grey proceeded to lay
the first tier on his saltpetre floor, and then built the chests, tier
upon tier, beginning at the sides, and leaving in the middle a lane
somewhat narrower than a tea-chest Then he applied a screw jack to the
chests on both sides, and so enlarged his central aperture, and forced
the remaining tea-chests in; and behold the enormous cargo packed as
tight as ever shopkeeper packed a box--nineteen thousand eight hundred
and six chests, sixty half chests, fifty quarter chests.
While Mr. Grey was contemplating his work with singular satisfaction, a
small boat from Canton came alongside, and Mr. Tickell, midshipman, ran
up the side, skipped on the quarterdeck, saluted it first, and then the
first mate; and gave him a line from the captain, desiring him to take
the ship down to Second Bar--for her water--at the turn of the tide.
Two hours after receipt of this order the ship swung to the ebb.
Instantly Mr. Sharpe unmoored, and the _Agra_ began her famous voyage,
with her head at right angles to her course; for the wind being foul,
all Sharpe could do was to set his topsails, driver, and jib, and keep
her in the tide way, and clear of the numerous craft, by backing or
filling as the case required; which he did with considerable dexterity,
making the sails steer the helm for the nonce: he crossed the Bar at
sunset, and brought to with the best bower anchor in five fathoms and a
half. Here they began to take in their water, and on the fifth day
the six-oared gig was ordered up to Canton for the captain. The next
afternoon he passed the ship in her, going down the river to Lin-Tin,
to board the Chinese admiral for his chop, or permission to leave China.
All night the _Agra_ showed three lights at her mizen peak for him, and
kept a sharp look out. But he did not come: he was having a very
serious talk with the Chinese admiral; at daybreak, however, the gig
was reported in sight: Sharpe told one of the midshipmen to call the
boatswain and man the side. Soon the gig ran alongside; two of the
ship's boys jumped like monkeys over the bulwarks, lighting, one on the
main channels, the other on the midship port, and put the side ropes
assiduously in the captain's hands; he bestowed a slight paternal smile
on them, the first the imps had ever received from an officer, and
went lightly up the sides. The moment his foot touched the deck,
the boatswain gave a frightful shrill whistle; the men at the sides
uncovered; the captain saluted the quarter-deck, and all the officers
saluted him, which he returned, and stepping for a moment to the weather
side of his deck, gave the loud command, “All hands heave anchor.” He
then directed Mr. Sharpe to get what sail he could on the ship, the wind
being now westerly, and dived into his cabin.
The boatswain piped three shrill pipes, and “All hands up anchor,” was
thrice repeated forward, followed by private admonitions, “Rouse and
bitt!” “Show a leg!” &c., and up tumbled the crew with homeward bound
written on their tanned faces.
(Pipe.) “Up all hammocks.”
In ten minutes the ninety and odd hammocks were all stowed neatly in
the netting, and covered with a snowy hammock-cloth; and the hands were
active, unbitting the cable, shipping the capstan bars, &c.
“All ready below, sir,” cried a voice.
“Man the bars,” returned Mr. Sharpe from the quarter-deck. “Play up,
fifer. Heave away.”
Out broke the merry fife, with a rhythmical tune, and tramp, tramp,
tramp went a hundred and twenty feet round and round, and, with brawny
chests pressed tight against the capstan bars, sixty fine fellows walked
the ship up to her anchor, drowning the fife at intervals with their
sturdy song, as pat to their feet as an echo:--
Heave with a will, ye jolly boys,
Heave around:
We're off from Chainee, jolly boys,
Homeward bound.
“Short stay apeak, sir,” roars the boatswain from forward.
“Unship the bars. Way aloft. Loose sails. Let fall.”
The ship being now over her anchor, and the top-sails set, the capstan
bars were shipped again, the men all heaved with a will, the messenger
grinned, the anchor was torn out of China with a mighty heave, and then
ran up with a luff tackle and secured; the ship's head cast to port.
“Up with the jib--man the taupsle halliards--all hands make sail.” Round
she came slow and majestically; the sails filled, and the good ship bore
away for England.
She made the Bogue forts in three or four tacks, and there she had to
come to again for another chop, China being a place as hard to get into
as Heaven, and to get out of as--Chancery. At three P.M. she was at
Macao, and hove to four miles from the land to take in her passengers.
A gun was fired from the forecastle. No boats came off. Sharpe began to
fret; for the wind, though light, had now got to the N.W., and they were
wasting it. After a while the captain came on deck, and ordered all
the carronades to be scaled. The eight heavy reports bellowed the great
ship's impatience across the water and out pulled two boats with the
passengers. While they were coming, Dodd sent and ordered the gunner to
load the carronades with shot, and secure and apron them. The first boat
brought Colonel Kenealy, Mr. Fullalove, and a prodigious negro, who all
mounted by the side-ropes. But the whip was rigged for the next boat,
and the Honourable Mrs. Beresford and poodle hoisted on board, item her
white maid, item her black nurse, item her little boy and male Oriental
in charge thereof, the strangest compound of dignity and servility, and
of black and white, being clad in snowy cotton and japanned to the nine.
Mrs. Beresford was the wife of a member of council in India. She had
been to Macao for her boy's health, intending to return to Calcutta:
but meantime her husband was made a director, and went home: so she was
going to join him. A tall, handsome lady, with too curved a nose.
Like most aquiline women, she was born to domineer a bit; and, for the
last ten years, Orientals clinging at her knee and Europeans flattering
at her ear had nursed this quality high and spoiled her with all their
might. A similar process had been applied to her boy Frederick from
infancy; he was now nearly six. Arrogance and caprice shone so in both
their sallow faces, and spoke so in every gesture, that as they came
on board, Sharpe, a reader of passengers, whispered the second mate:
“Bayliss, we have shipped the devil.”
“And a cargo of his imps,” grunted Mr. Bayliss.
Mr. Fullalove was a Methodist parson--to the naked eye: grave, sober,
lean, lank-haired. But some men are hidden fires. Fullalove was one of
the extraordinary products of an extraordinary nation, the United States
of America. He was an engineer for one thing, and an inventive and
practical mechanician; held two patents of his own creating, which
yielded him a good income both at home and in Great Britain. Such
results are seldom achieved without deep study and seclusion; and,
accordingly, Joshua Fullalove, when the inventive fit was on, would be
buried deep as Archimedes for a twelvemonth, burning the midnight oil:
then, his active element predominating, the pale student would dash
into the forest or the prairie, with a rifle and an Indian, and come
out bronzed, and more or less be-panthered or be-buffaloed; thence
invariably to sea for a year or two. There, Anglo-Saxon to the backbone,
his romance had ever an eye to business; he was always after foreign
mechanical inventions--he was now importing a excellent one from
Japan--and ready to do lucrative feats of knowledge: thus he bought
a Turkish ship at the bottom of the Dardanelles for twelve hundred
dollars, raised her cargo (hardware), and sold it for six thousand
dollars; then weighed the empty ship, pumped her, repaired he; and
navigated her himself into Boston harbour, Massachusetts. On the way
he rescued, with his late drowned ship, a Swedish vessel, and received
salvage. He once fished eighty elephants' tusks out of a craft foundered
in the Firth of Forth, to the disgust of elder Anglo-Saxons looking
on from the shore. These unusual pursuits were varied by a singular
recreation: he played at elevating the African character to European
levels. With this view he had bought Vespasian for eighteen hundred
dollars; whereof anon. America is fertile in mixtures: what do we not
owe her? Sherry cobbler, gin sling, cocktail, mint julep, brandy smash,
sudden death, eye openers. Well, one day she outdid herself, and mixed
Fullalove: Quaker, Nimrod, Archimedes, Philanthropist, decorous Red
Rover, and What Not.
The passenger boats cast loose.
“All hands make sail.”
The boatswain piped, the light-heeled topsmen sped up the ratlines and
lay out the yards, while all on deck looked up as usual to see them
work. Out bellied sail after sail aloft; the ship came curtseying round
to the southward, spread her snowy pinions high and wide, and went like
a bird over the wrinkled sea--homeward bound.
It was an exhilarating start, and all faces were bright--but one. The
captain looked somewhat grave and thoughtful, and often scanned the
horizon with his glass; he gave polite but very short answers to his
friend Colonel Kenealy, who was firing nothings in his ear, and sent for
the gunner.
While that personage, a crusty old Niler called Monk, is cleaning
himself to go on the quarter-deck, peep we into captain Dodd's troubled
mind, and into the circumstances which connect him with the heart of
this story, despite the twelve thousand miles of water between him and
the lovers at Barkington.
It had always been his pride to lay by money for his wife and children,
and, under advice of an Indian friend, he had, during the last few
years, placed considerable sums, at intervals, in a great Calcutta
house, which gave eight per cent for deposits: swelled by fresh capital
and such high interest, the hoard grew fast. When his old ship, sore
battered off the Cape, was condemned by the company's agents at Canton,
he sailed to Calcutta, intending to return thence to England as a
passenger. But while he was at Calcutta, the greatest firm there
suspended payment carrying astonishment and dismay into a hundred
families. At such moments the press and the fireside ring for a little
while with the common-sense cry,* “Good interest means bad security.” As
for Dodd, who till then had revered all these great houses with nautical
or childlike confidence, a blind terror took the place of blind trust in
him; he felt guilty towards his children for risking their money (he had
got to believe it was theirs, not his), and vowed, if he could only get
hold of it once more, he would never trust a penny of it out of his own
hands again, except, perhaps, to the Bank of England. But should he ever
get it? It was a large sum. He went to Messrs. Anderson & Anderson, and
drew for his fourteen thousand pounds. To his dismay, but hardly to his
surprise, the clerks looked at one another, and sent the cheque into
some inner department. Dodd was kept waiting. His heart sank with him:
there was a hitch.
*The Duke of Wellington (the iron one) is the author of this
saying.
Meantime came a Government officer, and paid in an enormous sum in notes
and mercantile bills, principally the latter.
Presently Dodd was invited into the manager's room.
“Leaving the country, Captain Dodd?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You had better take some of your money in bills at sight on London.”
“I would rather have notes, sir,” faltered Dodd.
“Oh, bills by Oliveira upon Baring are just as good, even without our
endorsement. However, you can have half and half. Calcutta does but
little in English bank-notes, you know.”
They gave him his money. The bills were all manifestly good. But he
recognised one of them as having just been paid in by the civilian. He
found himself somehow safe in the street clutching the cash, with one
half of his great paternal heart on fire, and the other half freezing.
He had rescued his children's fortune, but he had seen destruction
graze it. The natural chill at being scraped by peril soon passed, the
triumphant glow remained. The next sentiment was precaution: he filled
with it to the brim; he went and bought a great broad pocket-book with
a key to it; though he was on dry land. He covered it with oiled silk
against the water; and sewed the whole thing to his flannel waistcoat,
and felt for it with his hand a hundred times a day: the fruit of his
own toil, his children's hoard, the rescued treasure he was to have the
joy of bringing home safe to the dear partner of all his joys.
Unexpectedly he was ordered out to Canton to sail the _Agra_ to the
Cape. Then a novel and strange feeling came over him like a cloud; that
feeling was, a sense of personal danger: not that the many perils of the
deep were new to him: he had faced them this five-and-twenty years: but
till now they were little present to his imagination: they used to come,
be encountered, be gone: but now, though absent, they darkened the way.
It was the pocket-book. The material treasure, the hard cash, which had
lately set him in a glow, seemed now to load his chest and hang heavy
round the neck of his heart. Sailors are more or less superstitious, and
men are creatures of habit, even in their courage. Now David had never
gone to sea with a lot of money on him before. As he was a stout-hearted
man, these vague forebodings would, perhaps, have cleared away with
the bustle, when the _Agra_ set her studding sails off Macao, but for a
piece of positive intelligence he had picked up at Lin-Tin. The Chinese
admiral had warned him of a pirate, a daring pirate, who had been lately
cruising in these waters: first heard of south the line, but had since
taken a Russian ship at the very mouth of the Canton river, murdered
the crew in sight of land, and sold the women for slaves, or worse. Dodd
asked for particulars: was he a Ladroner, a Malay, a Bornese? In what
latitude was he to be looked for? The admiral on this examined his
memoranda: by these it appeared little was known as yet about the
miscreant, except that he never cruised long on one ground; the crew was
a mixed one: the captain was believed to be a Portuguese, and to have a
consort commanded by his brother: but this was doubtful; at all events,
the pair had never been seen at work together.
The gunner arrived and saluted the quarter-deck; the captain on this
saluted him, and beckoned him to the weather side. On this the other
officers kept religiously to leeward.
“Mr. Monk,” said Dodd, “you will clean and prepare all the small arms
directly.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said the old Niler, with a gleam of satisfaction.
“How many of your deck-guns are serviceable?”
This simple question stirred up in one moment all the bile in the poor
old gentleman's nature.
“My deck-guns serviceable! how the ---- _can_ they when that son of a
sea-cook your third mate has been and lashed the water butts to their
breechings, and jammed his gear in between their nozzles, till they
can't breathe, poor things, far less bark. I wish _he_ was lashed
between the devil's hind-hocks with a red hot cable as tight as he has
jammed my guns.
“Be so good as not to swear, Mr. Monk,” said Dodd. “At your age sir, I
look to you to set an example to the petty officers.”
“Well, I won't swear no more, sir, d--d if I do!” He added very loudly,
and with a seeming access of ire, “And I ax your pardon, captain, and
the deck's.”
When a man has a deep anxiety, some human midge or mosquito buzzes
at him. It is a rule. To Dodd, heavy with responsibility, and a dark
misgiving he must not communicate, came delicately, and by degrees,
and with a semigenuflexion every three steps, one like a magpie; and,
putting his hands together, as our children do to approach the Almighty,
delivered himself thus, in modulated tones, and good Hindostanee. “The
Daughter of light, in whose beams I, Ramgolam, bask, glows with an
amicable desire to see the lord commander of the ship resembling a
mountain; and to make a communication.”
Taught by sad experience how weighty are the communications the
daughters of light pour into nautical commanders at sea, Dodd hailed
Mr. Tickell, a midshipman, and sent him down to the lady's cabin. Mr.
Tickell soon came back reddish, but grinning, to say that nothing less
than the captain would do.
Dodd sighed, and dismissed Monk with a promise to inspect the gun-deck
himself; then went down to Mrs. Beresford and found her indignant. Why
had he stopped the ship miles and miles from Macao, and given her the
trouble and annoyance of a voyage in that nasty little boat? Dodd opened
his great brown eyes, “Why, madam, it is shoal water off Macao; we dare
not come in.”
“No evasion, sir. What have I to do with your shoal water? It was
laziness, and want of consideration for a lady who has rented half your
ship.”
“Nothing of the kind, madam, I assure you.”
“Are you the person they call Gentleman Dodd?”
“Yes.”
“Then don't contradict a lady, or I shall take the liberty to dispute
your title.”
Dodd took no notice of this, and with a patience few nautical commanders
would have shown, endeavoured to make her see that he was obliged to
give Macao shoals a wide berth, or cast away the ship. She would not see
it. When Dodd saw she wanted, not an explanation, but a grievance, he
ceased to thwart her. “I am neglecting my duties to no purpose,” said
he, and left her without ceremony. This was a fresh offence; and, as he
went out, she declared open war. And she made it too from that hour: a
war of pins and needles.
Dodd went on the gun-deck and found that the defence of the ship had,
as usual in these peaceful days, been sacrificed to the cargo. Out of
twenty eighteen-pounders she carried on that deck, he cleared three, and
that with difficulty. To clear any more he must have sacrificed either
merchandise or water: and he was not the man to do either on the mere
chance of a danger so unusual as an encounter with a pirate. He was a
merchant captain, not a warrior.
Meantime the _Agra_ had already shown him great sailing qualities:
the log was hove at sundown and gave eleven knots; so that with a good
breeze abaft, few fore-and-aft rigged pirates could overhaul her. And
this wind carried her swiftly past one nest of them, at all events:
the Ladrone isles. At nine P.M., all the lights were ordered out. Mrs.
Beresford had brought a novel on board, and refused to comply; the
master-at-arms insisted; she threatened him with the vengeance of the
Company, the premier, and the nobility and gentry of the British realm.
The master-at-arms, finding he had no chance in argument, doused the
glim--pitiable resource of a weak disputant--then basely fled the
rhetorical consequences.
The northerly breeze died out, and light variable winds baffled the
ship. It was the 6th April ere she passed the Macclesfield Bank in
latitude 16. And now they sailed for many days out of sight of land.
Dodd's chest expanded: his main anxiety at this part of the voyage lay
in the state cabin; of all the perils of the sea, none shakes a sailor
like fire. He set a watch day and night on that spoiled child.
On the 1st May they passed the great Nantuna, and got among the Bornese
and Malay islands: at which the captain's glass began to sweep the
horizon again, and night and day at the dizzy foretop gallant mast-head
he perched an Eye.
They crossed the line in longitude 107, with a slight breeze, but soon
fell into the Doldrums. A dead calm, and nothing to do but kill time.
Dodd had put down Neptune: that old blackguard could no longer row out
on the ship's port side and board her on the starboard, pretending to
come from ocean's depths; and shave the novices with a rusty hoop and
dab a soapy brush in their mouths. But champagne popped, the sexes
flirted, and the sailors span fathomless yarns, and danced rattling
hornpipes, fiddled to by the grave Fullalove. “If there is a thing
I _can_ dew, it's fiddle,” said he. He and his friend, as he
systematically called Vespasian, taught the crew Yankee steps, and were
beloved. One honest saltatory British tar offered that Western pair
his grog for a week. Even Mrs. Beresford emerged, and walked the deck,
quenching her austere regards with a familiar smile on Colonel Kenealy,
her escort. This gallant good-natured soldier flattered her to the nine,
and, finding her sweeten with his treacle, tried to reconcile her to his
old friend Dodd. Straight she soured, and forbade the topic imperiously.
By this time the mates and midshipmen of the _Agra_ had fathomed their
captain. Mr. Tickell delivered the mind of the united midshipmen when
he proposed Dodd's health in their mess-room, “as a navigator, a
mathematician, a seaman, a gentleman, and a brick, with three times
three.”
Dodd never spoke to his officers like a ruffian, nor yet palavered them,
but he had a very pleasant way of conveying appreciation of an officer's
zeal, by a knowing nod with a kindly smile on the heels of it. As
for the men, they seldom came in contact with the captain of a
well-officered ship: this crew only knew him at first as a good-tempered
soul, who didn't bother about nothing. But one day, as they lay becalmed
south of the line, a jolly foretopman came on the quarter-deck with a
fid of soup, and saluting and scraping, first to the deck, then to the
captain, asked him if he would taste that.
“Yes, my man. Smoked!”
“Like ---- and blazes, your honour, axing your pardon, and the deck's.”
“Young gentleman,” said Dodd to Mr. Meredith, a midshipman, “be so good
as to send the cook aft.”
The cook came, and received, not an oath nor a threat but a
remonstrance, and a grim warning.
In the teeth of this he burnt the soup horribly the very next day.
The crew sent the lucky foretopman aft again. He made his scrape and
presented his fid. The captain tasted the soup, and sent Mr. Grey to bid
the boatswain's mate pipe the hands on deck and bring the cook aft.
“Quartermaster, unsling a fire-bucket and fill it from the men's kids:
Mr. Tickell, see the cook swallow his own mess. Bosen's mate, take
a bight of the flying jib sheet stand over him, and start him if he
dailies with it.” With this the captain went below, and the cook,
supping at the bucket delivered himself as follows: “Well, ye lubbers,
it is first--rate. _There's_ no burn in it. It goes down like oil. Curse
your ladylike stomachs; you ain't fit for a ship; why don't ye go
ashore and man a gingerbread coach and feed off French frogs and Italian
baccy-pipe stems? (Whack.) What the ---- is that for?”
_Boatswain's mate._ “Sup more, and jaw less.”
“Well, I am supping as fast as I can. (Whack, whack.) Bloody end to ye,
what are ye about? (Whack, whack, whack.) Oh, Joe, Lord bless you, I
_can't_ eat any more of it. (Whack.) I'll give you my grog for a week
only to let me fling the ---- stuff over the side. (Whack, whack,
whack.) Oh, good, kind, dear Mr. Tickell, do go down to the captain for
me.” (Whack, whack.)
“Avast!” cried the captain, reappearing; and the uplifted rope fell
harmless.
“Silence, fore and aft!”
(Pipe.)
“The cook has received a light punishment this time, for spoiling the
men's mess. My crew shall eat nothing I can't eat myself. My care
is heavier than theirs is; but not my work, nor my danger in time of
danger. Mind that, or you'll find I can be as severe as any master
afloat. Purser.”
“Sir.”
“Double the men's grog: they have been cheated of their meal.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“And stop the cook's and his mate's for a week.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“Bosen, pipe down.”
“Shipmates, listen to me,” said the foretopman. “This old _Agra_ is a
d----d com--for--table ship.”
The oracular sentence was hailed with a ringing cheer. Still, it is
unlucky the British seaman is so enamoured of theological terms; for he
constantly misapplies them.
After lying a week like a dead log on the calm but heaving waters, came
a few light puffs in the upper air and inflated the topsails only: the
ship crawled southward, the crew whistling for wind.
At last, one afternoon, it began to rain, and after the rain came a
gale from the eastward. The watchful skipper saw it purple the water
to windward, and ordered the topsails to be reefed and the lee ports
closed. This last order seemed an excess of precaution; but Dodd was not
yet thoroughly acquainted with his ship's qualities: and the hard cash
round his neck made him cautious. The lee ports were closed, all but
one, and that was lowered. Mr. Grey was working a problem in his cabin,
and wanted a little light and a little air, so he just drooped his port;
but, not to deviate from the spirit of his captain's instructions, he
fastened a tackle to it; that he might have mechanical force to close it
with should the ship lie over.
Down came the gale with a whoo, and made all crack. The ship lay over
pretty much, and the sea poured in at Mr. Grey's port. He applied his
purchase to close it. But though his tackle gave him the force of a
dozen hands, he might as well have tried to move a mountain; on the
contrary, the tremendous sea rushed in and burst the port wide open.
Grey, after a vain struggle with its might, shrieked for help; down
tumbled the nearest hands, and hauled on the tackle in vain. Destruction
was rushing on the ship, and on them first. But meantime the captain,
with a shrewd guess at the general nature of the danger he could not
see, had roared out, “Slack the main sheet.” The ship righted, and the
port came flying to, and terror-stricken men breathed hard, up to their
waists in water and floating boxes. Grey barred the unlucky port and
went aft, drenched in body, and wretched in mind, to report his own
fault. He found the captain looking grim as death. He told him, almost
crying, what he had done, and how he had miscalculated the power of the
water.
Dodd looked and saw his distress. “Let it be a lesson, sir,” said he,
sternly. “How many ships have been lost by this in fair weather, and not
a man saved to tell how the craft was fooled away?”
“Captain, bid me fling myself over the side, and I'll do it.”
“Hummph! I'm afraid I can't afford to lose a good officer for a fault
he--will--never--repeat”
It blew hard all night and till twelve the next day. The _Agra_ showed
her weak point: she rolled abominably. A dirty night came on. At eight
bells Mr. Grey, touched by Dodd's clemency and brimful of zeal, reported
a light in Mrs. Beresford's cabin. It had been put out as usual by the
master-at-arms; but the refractory one had relighted it.
“Go and take it away,” said Dodd.
Soon screams were heard from the cabin. “Oh, mercy! mercy! I will not be
drowned in the dark.”
Dodd, who had kept clear of her so long, went down and tried to reassure
her.
“Oh, the tempest! the tempest!” she cried. “AND TO BE DROWNED IN THE
DARK!”
“Tempest? It is blowing half a gale of wind; that is all.”
“Half a gale! Ah! that is the way you always talk to us ladies. Oh, pray
give me my light, and send me a clergyman.”
Dodd took pity, and let her have her light, with a midshipman to watch
it. He even made her a hypocritical promise that should there be one
grain of danger, he would lie to; but said he must not make a foul wind
of a fair one for a few lee lurches. The _Agra_ broke plenty of glass
and crockery though, with her fair wind and her lee lurches.
Wind down at noon next day, and a dead calm.
At two P. M. the weather cleared; the sun came out high in heaven's
centre; and a balmy breeze from the west.
At six twenty-five, the grand orb set calm and red, and the sea was
gorgeous with miles and miles of great ruby dimples: it was the first
glowing smile of southern latitude. The night stole on so soft, so
clear, so balmy, all were loth to chose their eyes on it: the passengers
lingered long on deck, watching the Great Bear dip, and the Southern
Cross rise, and overhead a whole heaven of glorious stars most of us
have never seen, and never shall see in this world. No belching smoke
obscured, no plunging paddles deafened; all was musical; the soft air
sighing among the sails; the phosphorescent water bubbling from the
ship's bows; the murmurs from little knots of men on deck subdued by the
great calm: home seemed near, all danger far; Peace ruled the sea, the
sky, the heart: the ship, making a track of white fire on the deep,
glided gently yet swiftly homeward, urged by snowy sails piled up like
alabaster towers against a violet sky, out of which looked a thousand
eyes of holy tranquil fire. So melted the sweet night away.
Now carmine streaks tinged the eastern sky at the water's edge; and that
water blushed; now the streaks turned orange, and the waves below them
sparkled. Thence splashes of living gold flew and settled on the ship's
white sails, the deck, and the faces; and with no more prologue, being
so near the line, up came majestically a huge, fiery, golden sun, and
set the sea flaming liquid topaz.
Instantly the look-out at the foretop-gallant-mast-head hailed the deck
below.
“STRANGE SAIL! RIGHT AHEAD!”
The strange sail was reported to Captain Dodd, then dressing in his
cabin. He came soon after on deck and hailed the lookout: “Which way is
she standing?”
“Can't say, sir. Can't see her move any.”
Dodd ordered the boatswain to pipe to breakfast; and taking his deck
glass went lightly up to the fore-top-gallant-mast crosstrees. Thence,
through the light haze of a glorious morning, he espied a long low
schooner, lateen-rigged, lying close under Point Leat, a small island
about nine miles distant on the weather bow, and nearly in the _Agra's_
course, then approaching the Straits of Gaspar, 4 latitude S.
“She is hove-to,” said Dodd very gravely.
At eight o'clock, the stranger lay about two miles to windward, and
still hove-to.
By this time all eyes were turned upon her, and half a dozen glasses.
Everybody, except the captain, delivered an opinion.
She was a Greek lying-to for water: she was a Malay coming north with
canes, and short of hands: she was a pirate watching the Straits.
The captain leaned silent and sombre with his arms on the bulwarks, and
watched the suspected craft.
Mr. Fullalove joined the group, and levelled a powerful glass, of his
own construction. His inspection was long and minute, and, while the
glass was at his eye, Sharpe asked him half in a whisper, could he make
out anything?
“Wal,” said he, “the varmint looks considerable snaky.” Then, without
removing his glass, he let drop a word at a time, as if the facts
were trickling into his telescope at the lens, and out at the sight
“One--two--four--seven, false ports.”
There was a momentary murmur among the officers all round. But British
sailors are undemonstrative: Colonel Kenealy, strolling the deck with
his cigar, saw they were watching another ship with maritime curiosity,
and making comments but he discerned no particular emotion nor anxiety
in what they said, nor in the grave low tones they said it in. Perhaps a
brother seaman would though.
The next observation that trickled out of Fullalove's tube
was this: “I judge there are too few hands on deck, and too
many--white--eyeballs--glittering at the portholes.”
“Confound it,” muttered Bayliss, uneasily; “how can you see that?”
Fullalove replied only by quietly handing his glass to Dodd. The captain
thus appealed to, glued his eye to the tube.
“Well, sir; see the false ports, and the white eyebrows?” asked Sharpe
ironically.
“I see this is the best glass I ever looked through,” said Dodd
doggedly, without interrupting his inspection.
“I think he is a Malay pirate,” said Mr. Grey.
Sharpe took him up very quickly, and indeed angrily: “Nonsense. And if
he is, he won't venture on a craft of this size.”
“Says the whale to the swordfish,” suggested Fullalove, with a little
guttural laugh.
The captain, with the American glass at his eye, turned half round to
the man at the wheel: “Starboard!”
“Starboard it is.”
“Steer south-south-east”
“Ay, ay, sir.” And the ship's course was thus altered two points.
This order lowered Dodd fifty per cent. in Mr. Sharpe's estimation.
He held his tongue as long as he could: but at last his surprise and
dissatisfaction burst out of him, “Won't that bring him out on us!”
“Very likely, sir,” replied Dodd.
“Begging your pardon, captain, would it not be wiser to keep our course,
and show the blackguard we don't fear him?”
“When we _do!_ Sharpe, he has made up his mind an hour ago whether to
lie still or bite; my changing my course two points won't change his
mind, but it may make him declare it; and _I_ must know what he does
intend before I run the ship into the narrows ahead.”
“Oh, I see,” said Sharpe, half convinced.
The alteration in the _Agra's_ course produced no movement on the part
of the mysterious schooner. She lay-to under the land still, and with
only a few hands on deck, while the _Agra_ edged away from her and
entered the Straits between Long Island and Point Leat, leaving the
schooner about two miles and a half distant to the N.W.
Ah! The stranger's deck swarms black with men.
His sham ports fell as if by magic, his gums grinned through the gaps
like black teeth; his huge foresail rose and filled, and out he came in
chase.
The breeze was a kiss from Heaven, the sky a vaulted sapphire, the sea a
million dimples of liquid, lucid gold.