Apprehension--almost premonition--dropped heavily upon the skipper as
the day marched to a gray and windy evening. The complaining deputation
that had assaulted his quarter-deck in the early afternoon, the open
grumbling of old Paterson, and above all, no doubt, a something in the
demeanor of the men, which an experienced master might read like the
signs of the sky, foreboded the brewing of violence.
He and his mate were standing on the quarter-deck, where, in the dusk,
two or three men passed and repassed them on the business of the ship.
The mate himself felt the coming of a worse storm than that of wind and
wave, and when the captain, bracing himself sufficiently to confess his
fears and suggest that small arms should be gathered and placed in his
cabin “in case anything should happen”, his chief officer, glad to air
his secret anxiety, at once set about the business.
And the first thing he did was to call John Gow and order him to attend
to the cleaning of the ship’s muskets, pistols and cannon.
“Aye, aye, sir,” responded Gow, and slipped briskly forward.
Almost at the same time two of the men who had been fumbling with the
ropes on the quarter-deck sank down the companion ladder and met the
second mate in the forward gloom. The three spoke together closely,
with much tossing of indicative thumbs over their shoulders.
The arming of the captain’s cabin went but tardily; little delays such
as lost keys and so forth kept the thing at pause until eight o’clock,
the daily hour of divine worship, not to be foregone for anything
but an irresistible typhoon. In the “great cabin,” as it was called
to distinguish it from the lesser cabins of the mate, surgeon and
supercargo, one half of the crew met while the other half kept on deck
and worked the ship, thus taking turn and turn about at prayers. The
captain stood under the lantern which jerked and bobbed and anon struck
its metal guards sharply against the ceiling with the tumbling of the
ship; the pigtailed crowd knelt in a shadowy motley about him, the
jumping light threw the blackness off the polished oaken wainscoting,
or gleamed an instant on the captain’s graying beard, and again
suddenly and sharply picked out a hairy, tattooed arm bracing some
worshipper against his lurching chapel.
Against the cabin windows the seas slapped smartly and with a kind of
repetition as the movement of the ship turned one side and another
into the depths, the cabin door banged explosively with a quick
capriciousness of the wind; overhead, faintly, the cries of the
navigators could be heard; with it all, the reader pursued doggedly
the liturgy of that most sublime achievement of the English religious
genius, the book of Common Prayer.
Did he, as his square thumbs turned the pages, light for a moment with
chill dread upon the Burial Service?
The arrangement of the watches provided that those who attended the
service of prayer should go from there to their hammocks and rest until
it was time to relieve the next watch.
“Who fires first?”
A man fully dressed, but without his boots, gently punched one of the
bulging hammocks and whispered this strange question to the occupant
whose head bobbed up. If the man addressed knew who was to fire first,
he did not say so, for his only answer to the query was to roll deftly
out of his hammock and drop, with a scarcely audible pad of bare feet,
to the deck, tightening his belt about his waist and twisting his dirk
scabbard conveniently in front of him.
“Who fires first?”
From one hammock, selected from the swaying lines, to another the queer
question proceeded, always receiving the same reply,--tight lips and
a quick flop of feet on the deck. Six men had been asked in the gusty
darkness who was to fire first and now, cautiously fingering their way
along the deck works, and in single file, they crept toward the cabins
of the first mate, the doctor and the supercargo.
The passageway connecting these small cabins was heavy with the smell
of old tobacco, drugs, wine and wet clothing and lighted by one small
lantern above the entrance. Softly, softly--a hand gently thrust
against a swinging door--a foot across the threshold--and death was
laid quickly at the throats of the sleepers.
The mate, however, was a strong man. Clutching his gaping throat
convulsively with his two hands, he ran to the deck, only to meet a
conclusive volley of pistol balls.
The captain, hearing the uproar, came up in his slippered feet, calling
out for the cause of it all, to which the boatswain answered that he
thought a couple of men had fallen overboard. The captain rushed to the
side and gazed into the black waters, and immediately was seized by
two men, who struggled to hoist him over the bulwark. Desperately, the
victim fought in their grasp, but scarcely had he twisted himself once
about, ere, in back and front, the dirk sank into his flesh.
“As we eat, so shall we work,” grinned old Paterson, wiping his wet
blade on the poor remains.