Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  “God, if there was another ship!” cried Carthew of a sudden.

  Wicks started and looked aloft with the trick of all seamen, and shuddered as he saw the hanging figure on the royal yard.

  “If I went aloft, I’d fall,” he said simply. “I’m done up.”

  It was Amalu who volunteered, climbed to the very truck, swept the fading horizon, and announced nothing within sight.

  “No odds,” said Wicks. “We can’t sleep ...”

  “Sleep!” echoed Carthew; and it seemed as if the whole of Shakespeare’s Macbeth thundered at the gallop through his mind.

  “Well, then, we can’t sit and chitter here,” said Wicks, “till we’ve cleaned ship; and I can’t turn to till I’ve had gin, and the gin’s in the cabin, and who’s to fetch it?”

  “I will,” said Carthew, “if any one has matches.”

  Amalu passed him a box, and he went aft and down the companion and into the cabin, stumbling upon bodies. Then he struck a match, and his looks fell upon two living eyes.

  “Well?” asked Mac, for it was he who still survived in that shambles of a cabin.

  “It’s done; they’re all dead,” answered Carthew.

  “Christ!” said the Irishman, and fainted.

  The gin was found in the dead captain’s cabin; it was brought on deck, and all hands had a dram, and attacked their farther task. The night was come, the moon would not be up for hours; a lamp was set on the main hatch to light Amalu as he washed down decks; and the galley lantern was taken to guide the others in their graveyard business. Holdorsen, Hemstead, Trent, and Goddedaal were first disposed of, the last still breathing as he went over the side; Wallen followed; and then Wicks, steadied by the gin, went aloft with a boathook and succeeded in dislodging Hardy. The Chinaman was their last task; he seemed to be light-headed, talked aloud in his unknown language as they brought him up, and it was only with the splash of his sinking body that the gibberish ceased. Brown, by common consent, was left alone. Flesh and blood could go no further.

  All this time they had been drinking undiluted gin like water; three bottles stood broached in different quarters; and none passed without a gulp. Tommy collapsed against the mainmast; Wicks fell on his face on the poop ladder and moved no more; Amalu had vanished unobserved. Carthew was the last afoot: he stood swaying at the break of the poop, and the lantern, which he still carried, swung with his movement. His head hummed; it swarmed with broken thoughts; memory of that day’s abominations flared up and died down within him like the light of a lamp in a strong draught. And then he had a drunkard’s inspiration.

  “There must be no more of this,” he thought, and stumbled once more below.

  The absence of Holdorsen’s body brought him to a stand. He stood and stared at the empty floor, and then remembered and smiled. From the captain’s room he took the open case with one dozen and three bottles of gin, put the lantern inside, and walked precariously forth. Mac was once more conscious, his eyes haggard, his face drawn with pain and flushed with fever; and Carthew remembered he had never been seen to, had lain there helpless, and was so to lie all night, injured, perhaps dying. But it was now too late; reason had now fled from that silent ship. If Carthew could get on deck again, it was as much as he could hope; and casting on the unfortunate a glance of pity, the tragic drunkard shouldered his way up the companion, dropped the case overboard, and fell in the scuppers helpless.

  CHAPTER XXV. A BAD BARGAIN.

  With the first colour in the east, Carthew awoke and sat up. A while he gazed at the scroll of the morning bank and the spars and hanging canvas of the brig, like a man who wakes in a strange bed, with a child’s simplicity of wonder. He wondered above all what ailed him, what he had lost, what disfavour had been done him, which he knew he should resent, yet had forgotten. And then, like a river bursting through a dam, the truth rolled on him its instantaneous volume: his memory teemed with speech and pictures that he should never again forget; and he sprang to his feet, stood a moment hand to brow, and began to walk violently to and fro by the companion. As he walked, he wrung his hands. “God — God — God,” he kept saying, with no thought of prayer, uttering a mere voice of agony.

  The time may have been long or short, it was perhaps minutes, perhaps only seconds, ere he awoke to find himself observed, and saw the captain sitting up and watching him over the break of the poop, a strange blindness as of fever in his eyes, a haggard knot of corrugations on his brow. Cain saw himself in a mirror. For a flash they looked upon each other, and then glanced guiltily aside; and Carthew fled from the eye of his accomplice, and stood leaning on the taffrail.

  An hour went by, while the day came brighter, and the sun rose and drank up the clouds: an hour of silence in the ship, an hour of agony beyond narration for the sufferers. Brown’s gabbling prayers, the cries of the sailors in the rigging, strains of the dead Hemstead’s minstrelsy, ran together in Carthew’s mind, with sickening iteration. He neither acquitted nor condemned himself: he did not think, he suffered. In the bright water into which he stared, the pictures changed and were repeated: the baresark rage of Goddedaal; the blood-red light of the sunset into which they had run forth; the face of the babbling Chinaman as they cast him over; the face of the captain, seen a moment since, as he awoke from drunkenness into remorse. And time passed, and the sun swam higher, and his torment was not abated.

  Then were fulfilled many sayings, and the weakest of these condemned brought relief and healing to the others. Amalu the drudge awoke (like the rest) to sickness of body and distress of mind; but the habit of obedience ruled in that simple spirit, and appalled to be so late, he went direct into the galley, kindled the fire, and began to get breakfast. At the rattle of dishes, the snapping of the fire, and the thin smoke that went up straight into the air, the spell was lifted. The condemned felt once more the good dry land of habit under foot; they touched again the familiar guide-ropes of sanity; they were restored to a sense of the blessed revolution and return of all things earthly. The captain drew a bucket of water and began to bathe. Tommy sat up, watched him awhile, and slowly followed his example; and Carthew, remembering his last thoughts of the night before, hastened to the cabin.

  Mac was awake; perhaps had not slept. Over his head Goddedaal’s canary twittered shrilly from its cage.

  “How are you?” asked Carthew.

  “Me arrum’s broke,” returned Mac; “but I can stand that. It’s this place I can’t abide. I was coming on deck anyway.”

  “Stay where you are, though,” said Carthew. “It’s deadly hot above, and there’s no wind. I’ll wash out this — —” and he paused, seeking a word and not finding one for the grisly foulness of the cabin.

  “Faith, I’ll be obliged to ye, then,” replied the Irishman. He spoke mild and meek, like a sick child with its mother. There was now no violence in the violent man; and as Carthew fetched a bucket and swab and the steward’s sponge, and began to cleanse the field of battle, he alternately watched him or shut his eyes and sighed like a man near fainting. “I have to ask all your pardons,” he began again presently, “and the more shame to me as I got ye into trouble and couldn’t do nothing when it came. Ye saved me life, sir; ye’re a clane shot.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t talk of it!” cried Carthew. “It can’t be talked of; you don’t know what it was. It was nothing down here; they fought. On deck — O, my God!” And Carthew, with the bloody sponge pressed to his face, struggled a moment with hysteria.

  “Kape cool, Mr. Cart’ew. It’s done now,” said Mac; “and ye may bless God ye’re not in pain and helpless in the bargain.”

  There was no more said by one or other, and the cabin was pretty well cleansed when a stroke on the ship’s bell summoned Carthew to breakfast. Tommy had been busy in the meanwhile; he had hauled the whaleboat close aboard, and already lowered into it a small keg of beef that he found ready broached beside the galley door; it was plain he had but the one idea — to escape.

  “We have a sh
ipful of stores to draw upon,” he said. “Well, what are we staying for? Let’s get off at once for Hawaii. I’ve begun preparing already.”

  “Mac has his arm broken,” observed Carthew; “how would he stand the voyage?”

  “A broken arm?” repeated the captain. “That all? I’ll set it after breakfast. I thought he was dead like the rest. That madman hit out like — —” and there, at the evocation of the battle, his voice ceased and the talk died with it.

  After breakfast, the three white men went down into the cabin.

  “I’ve come to set your arm,” said the captain.

  “I beg your pardon, captain,” replied Mac; “but the firrst thing ye got to do is to get this ship to sea. We’ll talk of me arrum after that.”

  “O, there’s no such blooming hurry,” returned Wicks.

  “When the next ship sails in, ye’ll tell me stories!” retorted Mac.

  “But there’s nothing so unlikely in the world,” objected Carthew.

  “Don’t be deceivin’ yourself,” said Mac. “If ye want a ship, divil a one’ll look near ye in six year; but if ye don’t, ye may take my word for ut, we’ll have a squadron layin’ here.”

  “That’s what I say,” cried Tommy; “that’s what I call sense! Let’s stock that whaleboat and be off.”

  “And what will Captain Wicks be thinking of the whaleboat?” asked the Irishman.

  “I don’t think of it at all,” said Wicks. “We’ve a smart-looking brig under foot; that’s all the whaleboat I want.”

  “Excuse me!” cried Tommy. “That’s childish talk. You’ve got a brig, to be sure, and what use is she? You daren’t go anywhere in her. What port are you to sail for?”

  “For the port of Davy Jones’s Locker, my son,” replied the captain. “This brig’s going to be lost at sea. I’ll tell you where, too, and that’s about forty miles to windward of Kauai. We’re going to stay by her till she’s down; and once the masts are under, she’s the Flying Scud no more, and we never heard of such a brig; and it’s the crew of the schooner Currency Lass that comes ashore in the boat, and takes the first chance to Sydney.”

  “Captain dear, that’s the first Christian word I’ve heard of ut!” cried Mac. “And now, just let me arrum be, jewel, and get the brig outside.”

  “I’m as anxious as yourself, Mac,” returned Wicks; “but there’s not wind enough to swear by. So let’s see your arm, and no more talk.”

  The arm was set and splinted; the body of Brown fetched from the forepeak, where it lay still and cold, and committed to the waters of the lagoon; and the washing of the cabin rudely finished. All these were done ere midday; and it was past three when the first cat’s-paw ruffled the lagoon, and the wind came in a dry squall, which presently sobered to a steady breeze.

  The interval was passed by all in feverish impatience, and by one of the party in secret and extreme concern of mind. Captain Wicks was a fore-and-aft sailor; he could take a schooner through a Scotch reel, felt her mouth and divined her temper like a rider with a horse; she, on her side, recognising her master and following his wishes like a dog. But by a not very unusual train of circumstance, the man’s dexterity was partial and circumscribed. On a schooner’s deck he was Rembrandt or (at the least) Mr. Whistler; on board a brig he was Pierre Grassou. Again and again in the course of the morning, he had reasoned out his policy and rehearsed his orders; and ever with the same depression and weariness. It was guess-work; it was chance; the ship might behave as he expected, and might not; suppose she failed him, he stood there helpless, beggared of all the proved resources of experience. Had not all hands been so weary, had he not feared to communicate his own misgivings, he could have towed her out. But these reasons sufficed, and the most he could do was to take all possible precautions. Accordingly he had Carthew aft, explained what was to be done with anxious patience, and visited along with him the various sheets and braces.

  “I hope I’ll remember,” said Carthew. “It seems awfully muddled.”

  “It’s the rottenest kind of rig,” the captain admitted: “all blooming pocket handkerchiefs! And not one sailor-man on deck! Ah, if she’d only been a brigantine, now! But it’s lucky the passage is so plain; there’s no manoeuvring to mention. We get under way before the wind, and run right so till we begin to get foul of the island; then we haul our wind and lie as near south-east as may be till we’re on that line; ‘bout ship there and stand straight out on the port tack. Catch the idea?”

  “Yes, I see the idea,” replied Carthew, rather dismally, and the two incompetents studied for a long time in silence the complicated gear above their heads.

  But the time came when these rehearsals must be put in practice. The sails were lowered, and all hands heaved the anchor short. The whaleboat was then cut adrift, the upper topsails and the spanker set, the yards braced up, and the spanker sheet hauled out to starboard.

  “Heave away on your anchor, Mr. Carthew.”

  “Anchor’s gone, sir.”

  “Set jibs.”

  It was done, and the brig still hung enchanted. Wicks, his head full of a schooner’s mainsail, turned his mind to the spanker. First he hauled in the sheet, and then he hauled it out, with no result.

  “Brail the damned thing up!” he bawled at last, with a red face. “There ain’t no sense in it.”

  It was the last stroke of bewilderment for the poor captain, that he had no sooner brailed up the spanker than the vessel came before the wind. The laws of nature seemed to him to be suspended; he was like a man in a world of pantomime tricks; the cause of any result, and the probable result of any action, equally concealed from him. He was the more careful not to shake the nerve of his amateur assistants. He stood there with a face like a torch; but he gave his orders with aplomb; and indeed, now the ship was under weigh, supposed his difficulties over.

  The lower topsails and courses were then set, and the brig began to walk the water like a thing of life, her forefoot discoursing music, the birds flying and crying over her spars. Bit by bit the passage began to open and the blue sea to show between the flanking breakers on the reef; bit by bit, on the starboard bow, the low land of the islet began to heave closer aboard. The yards were braced up, the spanker sheet hauled aft again; the brig was close hauled, lay down to her work like a thing in earnest, and had soon drawn near to the point of advantage, where she might stay and lie out of the lagoon in a single tack.

  Wicks took the wheel himself, swelling with success. He kept the brig full to give her heels, and began to bark his orders: “Ready about. Helm’s a-lee. Tacks and sheets. Mainsail haul.” And then the fatal words: “That’ll do your mainsail; jump forrard and haul round your foreyards.”

  To stay a square-rigged ship is an affair of knowledge and swift sight; and a man used to the succinct evolutions of a schooner will always tend to be too hasty with a brig. It was so now. The order came too soon; the topsails set flat aback; the ship was in irons. Even yet, had the helm been reversed, they might have saved her. But to think of a stern-board at all, far more to think of profiting by one, were foreign to the schooner-sailor’s mind. Wicks made haste instead to wear ship, a manoeuvre for which room was wanting, and the Flying Scud took ground on a bank of sand and coral about twenty minutes before five.

  Wicks was no hand with a square-rigger, and he had shown it. But he was a sailor and a born captain of men for all homely purposes, where intellect is not required and an eye in a man’s head and a heart under his jacket will suffice. Before the others had time to understand the misfortune, he was bawling fresh orders, and had the sails clewed up, and took soundings round the ship.

  “She lies lovely,” he remarked, and ordered out a boat with the starboard anchor.

  “Here! steady!” cried Tommy. “You ain’t going to turn us to, to warp her off?”

  “I am though,” replied Wicks.

  “I won’t set a hand to such tomfoolery for one,” replied Tommy. “I’m dead beat.” He went and sat down doggedly on the main ha
tch. “You got us on; get us off again,” he added.

  Carthew and Wicks turned to each other.

  “Perhaps you don’t know how tired we are,” said Carthew.

  “The tide’s flowing!” cried the captain. “You wouldn’t have me miss a rising tide?”

  “O, gammon! there’s tides to-morrow!” retorted Tommy.

  “And I’ll tell you what,” added Carthew, “the breeze is failing fast, and the sun will soon be down. We may get into all kinds of fresh mess in the dark and with nothing but light airs.”

  “I don’t deny it,” answered Wicks, and stood awhile as if in thought. “But what I can’t make out,” he began again, with agitation, “what I can’t make out is what you’re made of! To stay in this place is beyond me. There’s the bloody sun going down — and to stay here is beyond me!”

  The others looked upon him with horrified surprise. This fall of their chief pillar — this irrational passion in the practical man, suddenly barred out of his true sphere, the sphere of action — shocked and daunted them. But it gave to another and unseen hearer the chance for which he had been waiting. Mac, on the striking of the brig, had crawled up the companion, and he now showed himself and spoke up.

  “Captain Wicks,” said he, “it’s me that brought this trouble on the lot of ye. I’m sorry for ut, I ask all your pardons, and if there’s any one can say ‘I forgive ye,’ it’ll make my soul the lighter.”

  Wicks stared upon the man in amaze; then his self-control returned to him. “We’re all in glass houses here,” he said; “we ain’t going to turn to and throw stones. I forgive you, sure enough; and much good may it do you!”

  The others spoke to the same purpose.

  “I thank ye for ut, and ’tis done like gentlemen,” said Mac. “But there’s another thing I have upon my mind. I hope we’re all Prodestan’s here?”