THE subsiding sea was now a liquid Paradise: its great pellucid braes
and hillocks shone with the sparkle and the hues of all the jewels in an
emperor's crown. Imagine--after three days of inky sea, and pitchy sky,
and Death's deep jaws snapping and barely missing--ten thousand great
slopes of emerald, aquamarine, amethyst and topaz, liquid, alive, and
dancing jocundly beneath a gorgeous sun: and you will have a faint
idea of what met the eyes and hearts of the rescued looking out of that
battered, jagged ship, upon ocean smiling back to smiling Heaven.
Yet one man felt no buoyancy, nor gush of joy. He leaned against a
fragment of the broken bulwark, confused between the sweetness of life
preserved and the bitterness of treasure lost--his wife's and children's
treasured treasure; benumbed at heart, and almost weary of the existence
he had battled for so stoutly. He looked so moody, and answered so
grimly and unlike himself, that they all held aloof from him; heavy
heart among so many joyful ones, he was in true solitude; the body in a
crowd, the soul alone. And he was sore as well as heavy; for of all
the lubberly acts he had ever known, the way he had lost his dear ones'
fortune seemed to him the worst.
A voice sounded in his ear: “Poor thing! she has s foundered.”
It was Fullalove scanning the horizon with his famous glass.
“Foundered? Who?” said Dodd; though he did not care much who sank, who
swam. Then he remembered the vessel, whose flashing guns had shed a
human ray on the unearthly horror of the black hurricane. He looked all
round.
Blank.
Ay, she had perished with all hands. The sea had swallowed her, and
spared him--ungrateful.
This turned his mind sharply. Suppose the _Agra_ had gone down, the
money would be lost as now, and his life into the bargain--a life dearer
to all at home than millions of gold: he prayed inwardly to Heaven for
gratitude and goodness to feel its mercy. This softened him a little;
and his heart swelled so, he wished he was a woman to cry over his
children's loss for an hour, and then shake all off and go through his
duty somehow; for now he was paralysed, and all seemed ended. Next,
nautical superstition fastened on him. That pocket-book of his was
Jonah: it had to go or else the ship; the moment it did go, the storm
had broken as by magic.
Now Superstition is generally stronger than rational Religion, whether
they lie apart or together in one mind; and this superstitious notion
did something toward steeling the poor man. “Come,” said he to himself
“my loss has saved all these poor souls on board this ship. So be it!
Heaven's will be done! I must bustle, or else go mad.”
He turned to and worked like a horse: and with his own hands helped
the men to rig parallel ropes--a substitute for bulwarks--till the
perspiration ran down him.
Bayliss now reported the well nearly dry, and Dodd was about to bear up
and make sail again, when one of the ship-boys, a little fellow with a
bright eye and a chin like a monkey's, came up to him and said--
“Please, captain!” Then glared with awe at what he had done, and broke
down.
“Well, my little man?” said Dodd gently.
Thus encouraged, the boy gave a great gulp, and burst in in a brogue,
“Och your arnr, sure there's no rudder on her at all barrin the tiller.”
“What d'ye mean?”
“Don't murder me, your arnr, and I'll tell ye. It's meself looked over
the starrn just now; and I seen there was no rudder at all at all.
Mille diaoul, sis I; ye old bitch, I'll tell his arur what y'are after,
slipping your rudder like my granny's list shoe, I will.”
Dodd ran to the helm and looked down; the brat was right: the blows
which had so endangered the ship, had broken the rudder, and the sea had
washed away more than half of it. The sight and the reflection made him
faintish for a moment. Death passing so very close to a man sickens him
_afterwards,_ unless he has the luck to be brainless.
“What is your name, urchin?”
“Ned Murphy, sir.”
“Very well, Murphy, then you are a fine little fellow, and have wiped
all our eyes in the ship: run and send the carpenter aft.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
The carpenter came. Like most artisans, he was clever in a groove: take
him out of that, and lo! a mule, a pig, an owl. He was not only unable
to invent, but so stiffly disinclined: a makeshift rudder was clean
out of his way; and, as his whole struggle was to get away from
every suggestion Dodd made back to groove aforesaid, the thing looked
hopeless. Then Fullalove, who had stood by grinning, offered to make
a bunkum rudder, provided the carpenter and mates were put under his
orders. “But” said he, “I must bargain they shall be disrated if they
attempt to reason.”
“That is no more than fair,” said Dodd. The Yankee inventor demanded a
spare maincap, and cut away one end of the square piece, so as to make
it fit the stem-post: through the circle of the cap he introduced a
spare mizen topmast: to this he seized a length of junk, another to
that, another to that, and so on: to the outside junk he seized a spare
maintop-gallant mast, and this conglomerate being now nearly as broad as
a rudder, he planked over all. The sea by this time was calm; he got the
machine over the stern, and had the square end of the cap bolted to the
stern-post. He had already fixed four spans of nine-inch hawser to the
sides of the makeshift, two fastened to tackles, which led into the
gunroom ports, and were housed taut--these kept the lower part of the
makeshift close to the stern post--and two, to which guys were now fixed
and led through the aftermost ports on to the quarter-deck, where luff-
tackles were attached to them, by means of which the makeshift was to be
worked as a rudder.
Some sail was now got on the ship, and she was found to steer very well.
Dodd tried her on every tack, and at last ordered Sharpe to make all
sail and head for the Cape.
This electrified the first mate. The breeze was very faint but
southerly, and the Mauritius under their lee. They could make it in a
night and there refit, and ship a new rudder. He suggested the danger of
sailing sixteen hundred miles steered by a gimcrack; and implored Dodd
to put into port.
Dodd answered with a roughness and a certain wildness never seen in him
before: “Danger, sir! There will be no more foul weather this voyage;
Jonah is overboard.” Sharpe stared an inquiry. “I tell you we shan't
lower our topgallants once from this to the Cape: Jonah is overboard:”
and he slapped his forehead in despair; then, stamping impatiently with
his foot, told Sharpe his duty was to obey orders, not discuss them.
“Certainly, sir,” said Sharpe sullenly, and went out of the cabin
with serious thoughts of communicating to the other mates an alarming
suspicion about Dodd, that now, for the first time, crossed his mind.
But long habit of discipline prevailed, and he made all sail on the
ship, and bore away for the Cape with a heavy heart. The sea was like
a mill-pond, but in that he saw only its well-known treachery, to lead
them on to this unparalleled act of madness: each sail he hoisted seemed
one more agent of Destruction rising at his own suicidal command.
Towards evening it became nearly dead calm. The sea heaved a little,
but was waveless, glassy, and the colour of a rose, incredibly brave and
delicate.
The look-out reported pieces of wreck to windward. As the ship was
making so little way, Dodd beat up towards them: he feared it was a
British ship that had foundered in the storm, and thought it his duty to
ascertain and carry the sad news home. In two tacks they got near
enough to see with their glasses that the fragments belonged, not to a
stranger, but to the _Agra_ herself. There was one of her waterbutts,
and a broken mast with some rigging: and as more wreck was descried
coming in at a little distance, Dodd kept the ship close to the wind
to inspect it: on drifting near, it proved to be several pieces of the
bulwark, and a mahogany table out of the cuddy This sort of flotsam
was not worth delaying the ship to pick it up; so Dodd made sail again,
steering now south-east.
He had sailed about half a mile when the look-out hailed the deck again.
“A man in the water!”
“Whereabouts?”
“A short league on the weather quarter.”
“Oh, we can't beat to windward for _him,_” said Sharpe; “he is dead long
ago.”
“Holds his head very high for a corpse,” said the look-out.
“I'll soon know,” cried Dodd. “Lower the gig; I'll go myself.”
The gig was lowered, and six swift rowers pulled him to windward, while
the ship kept on her course.
It is most unusual for a captain to leave the ship at sea on such petty
errands: but Dodd half hoped the man might be alive; and he was so
unhappy; and, like his daughter, who probably derived the trait from
him, grasped instinctively at a chance of doing kindness to some poor
fellow alive or dead. That would soothe his own sore, good heart.
When they had pulled about two miles, the sun was sinking into the
horizon. “Give way, men,” said Dodd, “or we shall not be able to see
him.” The men bent to their oars and made the boat fly.
Presently the coxswain caught sight of an object bobbing on the water
abeam.
“Why, that must be it,” said he: “the lubber! to take it for a man's
head. Why, it is nothing but a thundering old bladder, speckled white.”
“What?” cried Dodd, and fell a-trembling. “Steer for it! Give way!”
“Ay, ay, sir!”
They soon came alongside the bladder, and the coxswain grabbed it.
“Hallo! here's something lashed to it: a bottle!”
“Give it me!” gasped Dodd in a voice choked with agitation. “Give it
me! Back to the ship! Fly! fly! Cut her off, or she'll give us the slip
_now._”
He never spoke a word more, but sat in a stupor of joyful wonder.
They soon caught the ship; he got into his cabin, he scarce knew how:
broke the bottle to atoms, and found the indomitable Cash uninjured.
With trembling hands he restored it to its old place in his bosom, and
sewed it tighter than ever.
Until he felt it there once more, he could hardly realise a stroke of
good fortune that seemed miraculous--though, in reality, it was less
strange than the way he had lost it;* but now, laid bodily on his heart,
it set his bosom on fire. Oh, the bright eye, the bounding pulse, the
buoyant foot, the reckless joy! He slapped Sharpe on the back a little
vulgarly for him:--
“Jonah is on board again, old fellow: look out for squalls.”
*The _Agra_, being much larger than the bottle, had drifted
faster to leeward in the storm.
He uttered this foreboding in a tone of triumph, and with a gay elastic
recklessness, which harmonised so well with his makeshift rudder, that
Sharpe groaned aloud, and wished himself under any captain in the world
but this, and in any other ship. He looked round to make sure he was
not watched, and then tapped his forehead significantly. This somewhat
relieved him, and he did his duty smartly for a man going to the bottom
with his eyes open.
But ill luck is not to be bespoken any more than good: the _Agra's_
seemed to have blown itself out; the wind veered to the south-west, and
breathed steadily in that quarter for ten days. The topgallant sails
were never lowered nor shifted day nor night all that time, and not a
single danger occurred between this and the Cape, except to a monkey,
which I fear I must relate, on account of its remoter consequences. One
fine afternoon, everybody was on deck amusing themselves as they could:
Mrs. Beresford, to wit, was being flattered under the Poop awning by
Kenealy. The feud between her and Dodd continued, but under a false
impression. The lady had one advantage over the gentler specimens of her
sex; she was never deterred from a kind action by want of pluck, as they
are. Pluck? Aquilina was brimful of it. When she found Dodd was wounded,
she cast her wrongs to the wind, and offered to go and nurse him. Her
message came at an unlucky moment, and by an unlucky messenger: the
surgeon said hastily, “I can't have him bothered.” The stupid servant
reported, “He can't be worried;” and Mrs. Beresford, thinking Dodd had
a hand in this answer, was bitterly mortified; and with some reason. She
would have forgiven him, though, if he had died; but, as he lived,
she thought she had a right to detest him, and did; and showed her
sentiments like a lady, by never speaking to him, nor looking at him,
but ignoring him with frigid magnificence on his own quarter-deck.
Now, among the crew of this ship was a favourite goat, good-tempered,
affectionate, and playful; but a single vice counterbalanced all his
virtues: he took a drop. A year or two ago some light-hearted tempter
taught him to sip grog; he took to it kindly, and was now arrived at
such a pitch that at grog-time he used to butt his way in among the
sailors, and get close to the canteen; and, by arrangement, an allowance
was always served out to him. On imbibing it, he passed with quadrupedal
rapidity through three stages, the absurd, the choleric, the sleepy; and
was never his own goat again until he awoke from the latter. Now Master
Fred Beresford encountered him in the second stage of inebriety, and,
being a rough playfellow, tapped his nose with a battledore. Instantly
Billy butted at him; mischievous Fred screamed and jumped on the
bulwarks. Pot-angry Billy went at him there; whereupon the young
gentleman, with all eldrich screech, and a comparative estimate of
perils that smacked of inexperience, fled into the sea, at the very
moment when his anxious mother was rushing to save him. She uttered
a scream of agony, and would actually have followed him, but was held
back, uttering shriek after shriek, that pierced every heart within
hearing.
But Dodd saw the boy go overboard, and vaulted over the bulwark near the
helm, roared in the very air, “Heave the ship to!” and went splash
into the water about ten yards from the place. He was soon followed by
Vespasian, and a boat was lowered as quickly as possible. Dodd caught
sight of a broad straw hat on the top of a wave, swam lustily to it, and
found Freddy inside: it was tied under his chin, and would have floated
Goliath. Dodd turned to the ship, saw the poor mother with white face
and arms outstretched as if she would fly at them, and held the urchin
up high to her with a joyful “hurrah.” The ship seemed alive and to
hurrah in return with giant voice: the boat soon picked them up, and
Dodd came up the side with Freddy in his arms, and placed him in his
mother's with honest pride and deep parental sympathy.
Guess how she scolded and caressed her child all in a breath, and sobbed
over him! For this no human pen has ever told, nor ever will. All I can
just manage to convey is that, after she had all but eaten the little
torment, she suddenly dropped him, and made a great maternal rush at
Dodd. She flung her arms round him, and kissed him eagerly, almost
fiercely: then, carried away wild by mighty Nature, she patted him
all over in the strangest way, and kissed his waistcoat, his arms, his
hands, and rained tears of joy and gratitude on them.
Dodd was quite overpowered. “No! no!” said he. “Don't now, pray, don't!
There! there! I know, my dear, I know; I'm a father.” And he was very
near whimpering himself; but recovered the man and the commander, and
said, soothingly, “There! there!” and he handed her tenderly down to her
cabin.
All this time he had actually forgotten the packet. But now a horrible
fear came on him. He hurried to his own cabin and examined it. A
little salt water had oozed through the bullet-hole and discoloured the
leather; but that was all.
He breathed again.
“Thank Heaven I forgot all about it!” said he: “it would have made a cur
of me.”
Lady Beresford's petty irritation against Dodd melted at once--before
so great a thing: she longed to make friends with him; but for once felt
timid. It struck her now all of a sudden that she had been misbehaving.
However, she caught Dodd alone on the deck, and said to him softly, “I
want so to end our quarrel.”
“Our quarrel, madam!” said he; “why, I know of none: oh, about the light
eh? Well, you see the master of a ship is obliged to be a tyrant in some
things.”
“I make no complaint,” said the lady hastily, and hung her head. “All I
ask you is to forgive one who has behaved like a fool, without even the
excuse of being one; and--will you give me your hand, sir?”
“Ay, and with all my heart,” said Dodd warmly, enclosing the soft little
hand in his honest grasp.
And with no more ado these two highflyers ended one of those little
misunderstandings petty spirits nurse into a feud.
The ship being in port at the Cape, and two hundred hammers tapping at
her, Dodd went ashore in search of Captain Robarts, and made the _Agra_
over to him in the friendliest way, adding warmly that he had found
every reason to be satisfied with the officers and the crew. To his
surprise, Captain Robarts received all this ungraciously. “You ought
to have remained on board, sir, and made me over the command on the
quarter-deck.” Dodd replied politely that it would have been more
formal. “Suppose I return immediately, and man the side for you: and
then you board her, say, in half-an-hour?”
“I shall come when I like,” replied Robarts crustily.
“And when will you like to come?” inquired Dodd, with imperturbable
good-humour.
“Now, this moment: and I'll trouble you to come along with me.”
“Certainly, sir.”
They got a boat and went out to the ship: on coming alongside, Dodd
thought to meet his wishes by going first and receiving him. But the
jealous, cross-grained fellow, shoved roughly before him and led the way
up the ship's side. Sharpe and the rest saluted him: he did not return
the salute, but said hoarsely, “Turn the hands up to muster.”
When they were all aft, he noticed one or two with their caps on. “Hats
off and be ---- to you!” cried he. “Do you know where you are? Do you
know who you are looking at? If not, I'll show you. I'm here to restore
discipline to this ship: so mind how you run athwart my hawse: don't you
play with the bull, my men; or you'll find his horns ---- sharp. Pipe
down! Now, you, sir, bring me the log-book.”
He ran his eye over it, and closed it contemptuously: “Pirates, and
hurricanes! _I_ never fell in with pirates nor hurricanes: I have heard
of a breeze, and a gale, but I never knew a seaman worth his salt say
'hurricane.' Get another log-book, Mr. Sharpe; put down that it begins
this day at noon; and enter that Captain Robarts came on deck, found the
ship in a miserable condition, took the command, mustered the officers
and men, and stopped the ship's company's grog for a week for receiving
him with hats on.”
Even Sharpe, that walking Obedience, was taken aback. “Stop--the ship's
company's--grog--for a week, sir?”
“Yes, sir, for a week; and if you fling my orders back in my face
instead of clapping on sail to execute them, I'll have you towed ashore
on a grating. Your name is Sharpe; well my name is Dammedsharpe, and so
you'll find.”
In short, the new captain came down on the ship like a blight.
He was especially hard on Dodd: nothing that commander had done was
right, nor, had he done the contrary, would that have been right: he was
disgracefully behind time; and he ought to have put in to the Isle of
France, which would have retarded him: his rope bulwarks were lubberly:
his rudder a disgrace to navigation: he, Robarts, was not so green as to
believe that any master had really sailed sixteen hundred miles with it,
and if he had, more shame for him. Briefly, a marine criticaster.
All this was spoken _at_ Dodd--a thing no male does unless he is an
awful snob--and grieved him, it was so unjust. He withdrew wounded
to the little cabin he was entitled to as a passenger, and hugged his
treasure for comfort. He patted the pocket-book, and said to it, “Never
_you_ mind! The greater Tartar he is, the less likely to sink you or run
you on a lee shore.”
With all his love of discipline, Robarts was not so fond of the ship as
Dodd.
While his repairs were going on he was generally ashore, and by this
means missed a visit. Commodore Collier, one of the smartest sailors
afloat, espied the Yankee makeshift from the quarter-deck of his vessel,
the _Salamanca,_ fifty guns. In ten minutes he was under the _Agra's_
stern inspecting it; then came on board, and was received in form by
Sharpe and the other officers. “Are you the master of this ship, sir?”
he asked.
“No, commodore. I am the first mate: the captain is ashore.”
“I am sorry for it. I want to talk about his rudder.”
“Oh, _he_ had nothing to do with that,” replied Sharpe, eagerly: “that
was our dear old captain: he is on board. Young gentleman! ask Captain
Dodd to oblige me by coming on deck! Hy! and Mr. Fullalove too.”
“Young gentleman?” inquired Collier. “What the devil officer is that?”
“That is a name we give the middies; I don't know why.”
“Nor I neither; ha! ha!”
Dodd and Fullalove came on deck, and Commodore Collier bestowed the
highest compliments on the “makeshift.” Dodd begged him to transfer them
to the real inventor, and introduced Fullalove.
“Ay,” said Collier, “I know you Yankees are very handy. I lost my
rudder at sea once, and had to ship a makeshift; but it was a cursed
complicated thing, not a patch upon yours, Mr. Fullalove. Yours is
ingenious and _simple._ Ship has been in action, I see: pray how was
that, if I may be so bold?”
“Pirates, commodore,” said Sharpe. “We fell in with a brace of
Portuguese devils, lateen-rigged, and carrying ten guns apiece, in the
Straits of Gaspar: fought 'em from noon till sundown, riddled one, and
ran down the other, and sunk her in a moment. That was all your doing,
Captain: so don't try to shift it on other people; for we won't stand
it.”
“If he denies it, I won't believe him,” said Collier, “for he has got it
in his eye. Gentlemen, will you do me the honour to dine with me to-day
on board the flag-ship?”
Dodd and Fullalove accepted. Sharpe declined, with regret, on the score
of duty. And as the cocked hat went down the side, after saluting
him politely, he could not help thinking to himself what a difference
between a real captain, who had something to be proud of, and his own
unlicked cub of a skipper with the manners of a pilot-boat. He told
Robarts the next day: Robarts said nothing, but his face seemed to turn
greenish, and it embittered his hatred of Dodd the inoffensive.
It is droll, and sad, but true, that Christendom is full of men in
a hurry to hate. And a fruitful cause is jealousy. The schoolmen, or
rather certain of the schoolmen--for nothing is much shallower than
to speak of all those disputants as one school--defined woman, “a
featherless biped vehemently addicted to jealousy.” Whether she is more
featherless than the male can be decided at a trifling expense of time,
money, and reason: you have but to go to court. But as for envy and
jealousy, I think it is pure, unobservant, antique Cant which has fixed
them on the female character distinctively. As a molehill to a mountain
is women's jealousy to men's. Agatha may have a host of virtues and
graces, and yet her female acquaintance will not hate her, provided she
has the moderation to abstain from being downright pretty. She may sing
like an angel, paint like an angel, talk, write, nurse the sick, all
like an angel, and not rouse the devil in her fair sisters, so long as
she does not dress like an angel. But the minds of men being much larger
than women's, yet very little greater, they hang jealousy on a thousand
pegs. Where there was no peg, I have seen them do with a pin.
Captain Robarts took a pin, ran it into his own heart, and hung that
sordid passion on it.
He would get rid of all the Doddites before he sailed. He insulted Mr.
Tickell, so that he left the service and entered a mercantile house
ashore: he made several of the best men desert, and the ship went to
sea short of hands. This threw heavier work on the crew, and led to many
punishments and a steady current of abuse. Sharpe became a mere
machine, always obeying, never speaking: Grey was put under arrest for
remonstrating against ungentlemanly language; and Bayliss, being at
bottom of the same breed as Robarts, fell into his humour, and helped
hector the petty officers and men. The crew, depressed and irritated,
went through their duties pully-hauly-wise. There was no song under the
forecastle in the first watch, and often no grog on the mess table at
one bell. Dodd never came on the quarter-deck without being reminded he
was only a passenger, and the ship was now under naval discipline.
_“I_ was reared in the royal navy, sir,” would Robarts say, “second
lieutenant aboard the _Atalanta:_ that is the school, sir, that is the
only school that breeds seamen.” Dodd bore scores of similar taunts as
a Newfoundland puts up with a terrier in office: he seldom replied, and,
when he did, in a few quiet dignified words that gave no handle.
Robarts, who bore the name of a lucky captain, had fair weather all the
way to St. Helena.
The guard-ship at this island was the _Salamanca._ She had left the
Cape a week before the _Agra._ Captain Robarts, with his characteristic
good-breeding, went to anchor in-shore of Her Majesty's ship: the wind
failed at a critical moment, and a foul became inevitable. Collier was
on his quarter-deck, and saw what would happen long before Robarts did;
he gave the needful orders, and it was beautiful to see how in half
a minute the frigate's guns were run in, her ports lowered, her yards
toppled on end, and a spring carried out and hauled on.
The _Agra_ struck abreast her own forechains on the _Salamanca's_
quarter.
(Pipe.) “Boarders away. Tomahawks! cut everything that holds!” was heard
from the frigate's quarter-deck. Rush came a boarding party on to the
merchant ship and hacked away without mercy all her lower rigging that
held on to the frigate, signal halyards and all; others boomed her
off with capstan bars, &c., and in two minutes the ships were clear. A
lieutenant and boat's crew came for Robarts, and ordered him on board
the _Salamanca,_ and, to make sure of his coming, took him back with
them. He found Commodore Collier standing stiff as a ramrod on his
quarter-deck. “Are you the master of the _Agra?_” (His quick eye had
recognised her in a moment.)
“I am, sir.”
“Then she was commanded by a seaman, and is now commanded by a lubber.
Don't apply for your papers this week; for you won't get them. Good
morning. Take him away.”
They returned Robarts to his ship, and a suppressed grin on a score of
faces showed him the clear commanding tones of the commodore had
reached his own deck. He soothed himself by stopping the men's grog and
mast-heading three midshipmen that same afternoon.
The night before he weighed anchor this disciplinarian was drinking very
late in a low public-house. There was not much moon, and the officer
in charge of the ship did not see the gig coming till it was nearly
alongside: then all was done in a flurry.
“Hy! man the side! Lanterns there! Jump, you boys, or you'll catch
pepper.”
The boys did jump, and little Murphy, not knowing the surgeon had
ordered the ports to be drooped, bounded over the bulwarks like an
antelope, lighted on the midship port, which stood at this angle /, and
glanced off into the ocean, lantern foremost: he made his little hole
in the water within a yard of' Captain Robarts. That Dignity, though
splashed, took no notice of so small an incident as a gone ship-boy: and
if Murphy had been wise and stayed with Nep. all had been well. But the
poor urchin inadvertently came up again, and without the lantern. One of
the gig's crew grabbed him by the hair, and prolonged his existence by
an inconsiderate impulse.
“Where is the other lantern?” was Robarts' first word on reaching the
deck: as if he didn't know.
“Gone overboard, sir, with the boy Murphy.”
“Stand forward, you, sir,” growled Robarts.
Murphy stood forward, dripping and shivering with cold and fear.
“What d'ye mean by going overboard with the ship's lantern?”
“Och, your arnr, sure some unasy divil drooped the port; and the lantern
and me we had no foothold at all at all, and the lantern went into the
say, bad luck to ut; and I went afther to try and save ut--for your
arnr.”
“Belay all that!” said Robarts; “do you think you can blarney me,
you young monkey? Here, Bosen's mate, take a rope's-end and start
him!--Again!--Warm him well!--That's right.”
As soon as the poor child's shrieks subsided into sobs, the
disciplinarian gave him Explanation for Ointment: “I can't have the
Company's stores expended this way.”
The force of discipline could no farther go than to flog zeal for
falling overboard: so, to avoid anticlimax in that port, Robarts weighed
anchor at daybreak; and there was a southwesterly breeze waiting for
this favourite of fortune, and carried him past the Azores. Off Ushant
it was westerly, and veered to the nor'-west just before they sighted
the Land's End: never was such a charming passage from the Cape. The
sailor who had the luck to sight Old England first nailed his
starboard shoe to the mainmast for contributions; and all hearts beat
joyfully--none more than David Dodd's. His eye devoured the beloved
shore: he hugged the treasure his own ill luck had jeopardised--but
Robarts had sailed it safe into British waters--and forgave the man his
ill manners for his good luck.
Robarts steered in for the Lizard; but, when abreast the Point, kept
well out again, and opened the Channel and looked out for a pilot
One was soon seen working out towards him, and the _Agra_ brought
to. The pilot descended from his lugger into his little boat, rowed
alongside, and came on deck; a rough, tanned sailor, clad in flushing,
and in build and manner might have passed for Robarts' twin brother.
“Now then, you, sir, what will you take this ship up to the Downs for?”
“Thirty pounds.”
Roberts told him roughly he would not get thirty pounds out of' _him._
“Thyse and no higher, my Bo,” answered the pilot sturdily: he had been
splicing the main brace, and would have answered an admiral.
Robarts swore at him lustily: Pilot discharged a volley in return
with admirable promptitude. Robarts retorted, the other rough
customer rejoined, and soon all Billingsgate thundered on the _Agra's_
quarter-deck. Finding, to his infinite disgust, his visitor as great a
blackguard as himself, and not to be outsworn, Robarts ordered him to
quit the ship on pain of being man-handled over the side.
“Oh, that's it, is it?” growled the other: “here's fill and be off
then.” He prudently bottled the rest of his rage till he got safe into
his boat, then shook his fist at the _Agra_, and cursed her captain
sky-high. “You see the fair wind, but you don't see the Channel fret
a-coming, ye greedy gander. Downs! You'll never see them: you have saved
your ---- money, and lost your ---- ship, ye ---- lubber.”
Robarts hurled back a sugar-plum or two of the same and then ordered
Bayliss to clap on all sail, and keep a mid-channel course through the
night.
At four bells in the middle watch, Sharpe, in charge of the ship, tapped
at Robarts' door. “Blowing hard, sir, and the weather getting thickish.”
“Wind fair still?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then call me if it blows any harder,” grunted Robarts.
In two hours more, tap, tap, came Bayliss, in charge. “If we don't take
sail in, they'll take themselves out.”
“Furl to-gallen'sels, and call me if it gets any worse.”
In another hour Bayliss was at him again. “Blowing a gale, sir, and a
Channel fog on.”
“Reef taupsles, and call me if it gets any worse.”
At daybreak Dodd was on deck, and found the ship flying through a fog
so thick that her forecastle was quite invisible from the poop, and even
her foremast loomed indistinct and looked distant. “You'll be foul of
something or other, Sharpe,” said he.
“What is that to you?” inquired a loud rough voice behind him. “I don't
allow passengers to handle my ship.”
“Then do pray handle her yourself; captain! Is this weather to go
tearing happy-go-lucky up the Channel?”
“I mean to sail her without your advice, sir; and, being a seaman, I
shall get all I can out of a fair wind.”
“That is right Captain Robarts, if you had but the British Channel all
to yourself.”
“Perhaps you will leave me my deck all to myself.”
“I should be delighted: but my anxiety will not let me.” With this Dodd
retired a few steps, and kept a keen look-out.
At noon a lusty voice cried “Land on the weather beam!”
All eyes were turned that way and saw nothing.
Land in sight was reported to Captain Robarts.
Now that worthy was in reality getting secretly anxious: so he ran on
deck crying, “Who saw it?”
“Captain Dodd, sir.”
“Ugh! Nobody else?”
Dodd came forward, and, with a respectful air, told him that, being on
the look-out, he had seen the coast of the Isle of Wight in a momentary
lift of the haze.
“Isle of Fiddlestick!” was the polite reply; “Isle of Wight is eighty
miles astern by now.”
Dodd answered firmly that he was well acquainted with every outline in
the Channel, and that the land he had seen was St. Katherine's Point
Robarts deigned no reply, but had the log heaved: it showed the vessel
to be running twelve knots an hour. He then went to his cabin and
consulted his chart; and, having worked his problem, came hastily on
deck, and went from rashness to wonderful caution. “Turn the hands out,
and heave the ship to!”
The manoeuvre was executed gradually and ably, and scarce a bucketful of
water shipped. “Furl taupsles and set the main trysail! There, Mr. Dodd,
so much for you and your Isle of Wight. The land you saw was Dungeness,
and _you_ would have run on into the North Sea, I'll be bound.”
When a man, habitually calm, turns anxious, he becomes more irritable;
and the mixture of timidity and rashness he saw in Robarts made Dodd
very anxious.
He replied angrily, “At all events, I should not make a foul wind out
of a fair one by heaving to; and if I did, I would heave to on the right
tack.”
At this sudden facer--one, too, from a patient man--Robarts staggered a
moment. He recovered, and with an oath ordered Dodd to go below, or he
would have him chucked into the hold.
“Come, don't be an ass, Robarts,” said Dodd contemptuously.
Then, lowering his voice to a whisper, “Don't you know the men only want
such an order as that to chuck you into the sea?”
Robarts trembled. “Oh, if you mean to head a mutiny----”
“Heaven forbid, sir! But I won't leave the deck in dirty weather like
this till the captain knows where he is.”
Towards sunset it got clearer, and they drifted past a revenue cutter,
who was lying to with her head to the northward. She hoisted no end of
signals, but they understood none of them, and her captain gesticulated
wildly on her deck.
“What is that Fantoccio dancing at?” inquired Captain Robarts brutally.
“To see a first-class ship drift to leeward in a narrow sea with a fair
wind,” said Dodd bitterly.
At night it blew hard, and the sea ran high and irregular. The ship
began to be uneasy, and Robarts very properly ordered the top-gallant
and royal yards to be sent down on deck. Dodd would have had them down
twelve hours ago. The mate gave the order: no one moved. The mate went
forward angry. He came back pale. The men refused to go aloft: they
would not risk their lives for Captain Robarts.
The officers all assembled and went forward: they promised and
threatened; but all in vain. The crew stood sullen together, as if to
back one another, and put forward a spokesman to say that “there was
not one of them the captain hadn't started, and stopped his grog a dozen
times: he had made the ship hell to them; and now her masts and yards
and hull might go there along with her skipper, for them.”
Robarts received this tidings in sullen silence. “Don't tell that Dodd,
whatever you do,” said he. “They will come round now they have had their
growl: they are too near home to shy away their pay.”
Robarts had not sufficient insight into character to know that Dodd
would instantly have sided with him against a mutiny.
But at this juncture the ex-captain of the _Agra_ was down in the cabin
with his fellow-passengers, preparing a general remonstrance: he had a
chart before him, and a pair of compasses in his hand.
“St. Katherine's Point lay about eight miles to windward at noon; and we
have been drifting south and east this twelve hours, through lying to on
the starboard tack; and besides, the ship has been conned as slovenly
as she is sailed. I've seen her allowed to break off a dozen times, and
gather more leeway. Ah! here is Captain Robarts. Captain, you saw the
rate we passed the revenue cutter. That vessel was nearly stationary; so
what we passed her at was our own rate of drifting, and our least rate.
Putting all this together, we can't be many miles from the French coast,
and, unless we look sharp and beat to windward, I pronounce the ship in
danger.”
A horselaugh greeted this conclusion.
“We are nearer Yarmouth sands than France, I promise you, and nothing
under our lee nearer than Rotterdam.”
A loud cry from the deck above, “A LIGHT ON THE LEE BOW!”
“There!” cried Robarts with an oath: “foul of _her_ next! through me
listening to your nonsense.” He ran upon deck, and shouted through his
trumpet, “All hands wear ship!”
The crew, who had heard the previous cry, obeyed orders in the presence
of an immediate danger; and perhaps their growl had really relieved
their ill-humour. Robarts with delight saw them come tumbling up, and
gave his orders lustily: “Brail up the trysel! up with the helm! in with
the weather main brace! square the after yards!”
The ship's bow turned from the wind, and, as soon as she got way on her,
Robarts ran below again, and entered the cabin triumphant.
“That is all right: and now, Captain Dodd, a word with you. You will
either retire at once to your cabin, or will cease to breed disaffection
in my crew, and groundless alarm in my passengers, by instilling your
own childish, ignorant fears. The ship has been underlogged a hundred
miles, sir; and but for my caution in lying to for clear weather we
should be groping among the Fern Isl----”
CRASH!
An unheard-of shock threw the speaker and all the rest in a mass on
the floor, smashed every lamp, put out every light; and, with a fierce
grating noise, the ship was hard and fast on the French coast, with her
stern to the sea.
One awful moment of silence; then, amidst shrieks of agony, the sea
struck her like a rolling rock, solid to crush, liquid to drown, and
the comb of a wave smashed the cabin windows and rushed in among them as
they floundered on the floor, and wetted and chilled them to the marrow.
A voice in the dark cried, “O God! we are dead men.”