MUTINY
By dawn the _Hawk_ was churning her way at full speed towards the Java
Sea and a destination unknown to any one but the Captain. It was too
early to judge of the qualities of the ship, but those of the crew were
already becoming manifest. Indeed, it looked as if the prophecies of the
mate and the engineer were likely to be fulfilled sooner than even they
expected. The men did not work with a will; worse still, they didn't
even grumble. They maintained a solid, stolid, sullen silence that had
the same effect on the nerves as a black and threatening cloud on a
still day. They quarrelled amongst themselves, but for the officers they
only had lowering glances and threats muttered below the breath. One
would imagine that they had all been shanghaied or shipped under false
pretences. Besides the boatswain, his mate and a couple of
quartermasters, there were very few white men amongst them, and between
these and the rest of the crew a state of hostility already existed.
When the boatswain's mate put his head inside the forecastle door to
call the morning watch no one swore at him, and that was a very bad sign
indeed.
"Now then, my sons, and you know the sons I mean! Show a leg, show a
leg, show a leg!" he called.
Nobody threw a boot at him, nobody consigned him to the nether regions,
nobody told him what his mother had been. The men tumbled out of their
bunks with surly, glowering faces and with scarcely a word spoken.
"Rouse out! Rouse out! You hang-dog, half-caste, loafing swine!" roared
the boatswain's mate, hoping that he might thus goad them into
cheerfulness and induce a homely feeling.
He failed, however, and though one man made a tentative movement with
his hand in the direction of a sheath-knife at his hip, nothing came of
it.
The matter was reported to Mr. Dykes, who shook his head gloomily.
"You ought, by rights, to be half-dead by now," he said, looking
resentfully at the boatswain's mate.
The latter evidently felt his position and tried to look apologetic.
"Can't even get an honest curse out of 'em," he said. "They've had three
feeds already, and the cook says not one's threatened to kill 'im. He
don't like it because, of course, he feels something's wrong. 'Tain't
natural that men should just fetch their grub and go away without
telling the cook just what they think of 'im. I've never see'd anything
like it before."
"Something's going to bust, and pretty soon," remarked the mate. "An'
it'll be a gaudy shindy when it does."
Later on he reported the state of affairs to Calamity, who merely
smiled.
"The men are doing their work, aren't they?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well?"
"The fact is, sir, things ain't settlin' down as they ought to. The ship
feels like a theatre when the boys are loosenin' their guns before the
curtain goes down. I've been in the foc'sle and there ain't so much as a
photo nor a picture-postcard nailed up. There's nothing homely about it,
sir, like you'd expect to see; no cussin' nor rowin' nor anything
cheerful."
"Probably the men will be more cheerful later on, Mr. Dykes," answered
the Captain. "They are new to the ship, remember."
The mate went away in deep dudgeon. So this was the notorious Captain
Calamity; the man whose name, he had been told, was sufficient to cow
the most disorderly ruffians that ever trod a ship's decks. Here he was,
with a crew who were on the very verge of mutiny, making excuses for
them and talking like some mission-boat skipper with the parson at his
elbow. It was disgusting.
That evening he confided his opinions to McPhulach, in the latter's
cabin.
"I reckon we've got this old man tabbed wrong," he said. "He ain't no
bucko skipper as they talks about; a crowd of Sunday School sailors is
about his mark. When I told him the men were only waitin' a good
opportunity to slit all our throats, he jest coo'd like a suckin' dove.
'Remember they're new to the ship,' says he, as soft as some old
school-marm."
"Aye, but he's a quare mon till ye ken him," remarked the engineer
thoughtfully.
"Queer! He'll let us all be dumped into the ditch before he raises a
finger."
"I wouldna go sa far as tae say that. Yon's a michty strange mon, I'm
telling ye, and the lead-line hasna been made that can fathom him."
Mr. Dykes gave a contemptuous grunt, and, as he walked away, opined that
the skipper and the chief engineer were a pair, and about as fit to
control men as their grandmothers would have been.
As he had anticipated, matters were not long in coming to a head. At the
machine-gun drill and rifle exercise, which occupied several hours each
day, the men grew increasingly slack. On the fourth day out it was as
much as he could do to get the men to obey orders, and if ever a crew
showed signs of mutiny it was the crew of the _Hawk_. But, early in the
morning of the following day, an incident occurred which, if it served
to distract everybody's attention for a little while, had the ultimate
effect of bringing about the long-threatened crisis.
The grey mist of dawn still lay upon the waters, when the sound of
firing was heard, apparently coming from the eastward. The _Hawk's_
course was changed slightly and an hour later those on the bridge were
able to make out, with the aid of glasses, a small German gunboat
"holding up" a French liner.
"Guess we could sink that little steam can as easy as swallowin' a
cocktail," remarked the mate. "Say, Cap'n, do we butt in here?"
Instead of answering, Calamity stepped up to the engine-room telegraph
and rang down "Stop!" By this time the Germans could be seen conveying
things from the liner to their own vessel, and, somehow or other, the
rumour spread among the _Hawk's_ crew that they were bullion cases.
Presently the liner was allowed to proceed on her way, and the German
steamed off in a north-easterly direction. Then Calamity rang down,
"Full speed!" to the engine-room and turned to the mate.
"Follow that packet," he said, indicating the German, "but don't
overhaul her."
"Then we're goin' to let that square-head breeze away?" asked Mr. Dykes
in a tone of acute disappointment. "Durned if this lay-out don't get me
stuck," he went on. "We could have froze on to them bars ourselves."
His opinion of Captain Calamity had touched zero by now, and he hardly
troubled to conceal his contempt. He, like the remainder of the _Hawk's_
company, knew that she was engaged on a privateering expedition, and was
eager to "taste blood." And it must be admitted that Calamity had
induced many of the men to ship with him by holding out promises of fat
bonuses, with, perhaps, the opportunity of a little plundering thrown
in. Now, when chance had thrown what appeared to be a rich prize under
their very noses, the skipper was calmly letting it slip through his
fingers.
It was pretty obvious that the mate's resentment was shared by the crew.
For the last half-hour they had lined the bulwarks, watching the Germans
transfer their plunder from the liner. Every man-Jack of them felt
certain that, in the course of a very short time, that same plunder
would find its way on board the _Hawk_ with material benefit to
themselves. When, however, it was seen that the Captain had no intention
of carrying out their notion, scowling faces were turned towards the
bridge, and there were angry mutterings. Soon the muttering grew louder,
and at last one of the men, a huge serang, stepped out of the crowd, and
shook his fist at Calamity, who was watching from the bridge.
Then, urged on by the others, he demanded that the ship should be put
back to Singapore and the men discharged with a month's wages. They did
not like, he said, being on a ship without knowing what port she was
bound for. They did not like the officers, and, more than anything
else, they did not like the Captain. The spokesman wound up his
peroration in broken English by hinting that, unless the _Hawk_ was put
about at once, the crew would take charge of her.
All this while Calamity had stood leaning on the bridge-rail, listening
to the serang with an expression of quiet, almost anxious, attention.
The mate, watching him out of the corner of his eyes, saw no sign of
that terrible berserker rage with which he had so often heard the
Captain credited. In fact, a member of Parliament could not have
listened to a deputation of constituents with more polite attention.
"I reckon if we don't do what they want they'll hand out some trouble,"
said the mate. "Them that ain't got one knife ready at their hips has
got two."
Calamity made no answer, but a peculiar pallor had overspread his face.
He turned away from the bridge-rail, and, without any sign of haste,
descended the companion-ladder and stepped calmly into the midst of the
snarling rabble.
"What are you doing on deck?" he asked the serang quietly. "Your place
is in the stokehold."
The man started to make an impudent reply, but before he had uttered two
words the Captain had snatched him off his feet as easily as if he had
been a child and flung him bodily into the crowd of astonished men,
knocking several of them over. Then, as the serang landed against a
steam-winch with a terrible crash, Calamity snatched up a capstan bar
and dashed into the crowd.
Then the mate, standing on the bridge, witnessed such a spectacle as he
had never seen before and devoutly hoped he would never see again.
Swinging the heavy iron bar above his head as though it were a flail,
the Captain smashed left and right among the men, hitting them how and
where he could--on the head, body, limbs--no matter where so long as he
hit them. Two or three drew their knives and made a desperate rush at
him, but there was no getting through the swinging circle of iron. In
two minutes the forward deck bore a horrible resemblance to a shambles,
for it was littered with injured men and blood was trickling down the
white planks into the scuppers. Groans, shrieks, and curses resounded on
all sides; the men scurried for shelter in every direction like rats,
and two or three, reaching the forecastle, locked themselves in. But a
couple of blows from the iron bar smashed the door to splinters and then
cries rang out again and with them the sound of the terrible weapon as
it crashed against a bulkhead or smashed a bunk to splinters. One man
managed to escape out of the forecastle and was running for his life
towards the poop when Calamity, his face distorted with demoniac fury,
flung the bar at him. It caught the man on the back of the head and he
pitched forward on the deck, where he lay weltering in his own blood.
Then, without so much as a glance at the fearful havoc he had wrought,
the Captain returned to the bridge.
"What were you saying before I left, Mr. Dykes?" he inquired calmly.
"Er--I was saying that it looked as if the wind would change round to
the nor' west before long, sir," answered the mate in a subdued and
extremely respectful tone.