CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
HOW MENDOUCA REPLENISHED HIS "CARGO."
I could see that Mendouca was pretty thoroughly ashamed of himself, fordespite his utmost efforts, there was a perceptible shrinking andembarrassment of manner apparent in him during the progress of the meal.Nevertheless, he exerted himself manfully to obliterate the exceedinglydisagreeable impression that he knew had been made upon me by his lateconduct; and it was evident that he was sincerely desirous ofre-establishing friendly relations between us, whether from any selfishmotive or not I cannot of course say, but I think not--I believe hispride was hurt at his late lamentable exhibition of weakness, and he waschiefly anxious to recover his own self-respect. Whatever his motivemay have been, his demeanour was a perfect blending of politeness andcordiality that won upon me in spite of myself; and before the meal wasover I had determined to render him the small amount of assistance thathe had asked of me, reserving to myself the right to withdraw it at anymoment that I might deem fit. He seemed sincerely grateful for myoffer, and accepted it frankly and cordially with the reservation that Ihad attached to it; and having accompanied me on deck and turned thehands up, he informed them that I had offered to temporarily perform theduties of chief mate, and that they were to obey my orders as implicitlyas they would those from his own lips; after which, as I had offered totake charge until midnight, he said that he was tired and would try toget a little sleep, and so retired below to his own cabin.
The breeze continued easterly, and very moderate, frequently droppingalmost calm, on which occasion we were almost invariably treated todeluges of rain, with occasional thunder and lightning. Our progress tothe eastward was therefore slow, and for three whole days and nightsnothing occurred to break the monotony of the voyage. On the morning ofthe fourth day, however, when I went on deck just before eight bells--ithaving been my eight hours in, that night--I found the brigantine oncemore before the wind, with a slashing breeze blowing after her, and shewith every rag of canvas packed upon her that could be induced to draw.But, to my exceeding surprise, we were heading to the _westward_, and,hull-down about ten miles distant, was another craft dead ahead of us,also carrying a press of canvas.
I turned to Mendouca for an explanation; and in answer to my look ofinquiry he said--
"Yes, I want to overtake that brig, if I can. I am ashamed to say thatamong us we let her slip past in the darkness of the early part of thelast watch, and so I missed the opportunity of speaking her. But Ibelieve I know her; and if my surmise as to her identity proves correct,I think I shall have no difficulty in persuading her skipper to transferhis cargo to me, and so save me the trouble and risk of returning to thecoast for one--a risk which was every day growing greater as we drewnearer to the ground haunted by your lynx-eyed cruisers, to fall in withone of which just now, with those niggers down in the hold, would meanour inevitable condemnation, as I need scarcely tell you."
"Quite so," I assented. "But should you fail to overtake yonder craft,you will lose a good deal of ground, will you not?"
"Oh, we shall overhaul her, if she be the brig I believe her to be, andI have very little doubt upon that point," answered Mendouca. "She is asmart craft, I admit, but the _Francesca_ can beat her upon any point ofsailing, and in any breeze that blows; and, that being the case, thedistance that we may have to run to leeward before getting alongside heris a matter of indifference to me, since it will be so much of ourvoyage accomplished."
"Have you gained anything on her since you bore up in chase?" I asked.
"About a couple of miles, I should think. But then the wind has beenlight with us until within the last hour. If this breeze holds I expectto be alongside her about four bells in the afternoon watch."
"By which time we shall have run close upon seventy miles to leeward," Iremarked.
"Nearer eighty," observed Mendouca. "We are going close upon thirteennow. But, as I said before, that does not trouble me in the least,since we shall be that much nearer Cuba."
This was serious news to me, for Cuba was about the last place that Idesired to visit, at least on board the _Francesca_, for I foresaw thatif once we got over there the difficulty of effecting my escape from theaccursed craft would be very greatly increased; indeed, I had quitereckoned upon her being fallen in with and captured by one of ourcruisers, either while standing in for a fresh cargo of slaves, or whencoming out again with them on board, to which chance alone could I lookwith any reason for the prospect of deliverance from my presentembarrassing and disagreeable situation. True, there was just apossibility of our being picked up by one of the West Indian squadron;but I had not much hope of that, our vessels on that station beingmostly slow, deep-draught craft, altogether unsuited for the pursuit andcapture of the swift, light-draught slavers, who, unless caught atadvantage in open water, could laugh us to scorn by the simple expedientof taking short cuts across shoals, or seeking refuge among the shallowlagoons that abound among the islands, and are especially plentiful andspacious along the northern coast of Cuba. However, there was no use inworrying over a state of things that I had no power to mend; I thereforeassumed charge of the deck, and allowed matters to take their course--since I needs must.
The breeze continued to freshen as the sun increased his distance abovethe horizon, and we went bowling along at a most exhilarating pace,overhauling the brig ahead, slowly but surely; and when at one o'clockthe steward summoned me to the cabin to dinner, a space of barely twomiles separated the two craft. She had just hoisted Portuguese colours,of which, however, Mendouca took no notice, somewhat to my surprise,since he reiterated the statement that she was the craft he had believedher to be, and that the captain of her and he were old friends. It wasmy afternoon watch below; so when I rose from the dinner-table I said--
"Captain Mendouca, I have no wish to identify myself in any way with thetransaction you are about to negotiate; you must excuse me therefore if,it being my watch below, I retire to my cabin."
"Very well, Dugdale," he answered, quite good-humouredly, "I can managethe business perfectly well without you; if therefore _yourconscience_"--with just the faintest suggestion of a sneer--"will notpermit you to take an active part in it, you are quite welcome to staybelow until the affair is at an end, when I will call you."
I even thought that he spoke with an air of relief, as though mywithdrawal had smoothed away a difficulty. About an hour later I wasawakened from a nap by the sound of hailing in a language which I didnot understand, but which, from its decided resemblance to Spanish, Iconcluded to be Portuguese. I could not hear what passed, nor did Iattempt to do so, being of opinion that the less prominently I was mixedup with the affair, and the less I knew about it, the better. Thehailing soon ceased, and then the brigantine was hove-to, as I couldtell by the difference in her movements. I had the curiosity to risefrom my bunk and take a peep through the scuttle at the sea, but it wasbare as far as my eye could reach; so, as my state-room was to windwardas the _Francesca_ then lay, I came to the conclusion that the brig washove-to to leeward of us. The moment that our topsail was backed Iheard the creaking of davit blocks, and the other sounds of a boat beinglowered; and a few minutes later I heard the roll of the oars in therowlocks as she was pulled away from the ship. Then the hatches weretaken off fore and aft, and in about half-an-hour from the time of ourhaving hove-to I became aware that the first boat-load of slaves hadarrived alongside and were being driven down into the hold. The boatsnow began to arrive in rapid succession, and there was a good deal ofbustle and confusion on deck, which lasted until close upon sunset, andin the midst of it I laid down and went to sleep again, for want ofsomething better to do. When I awoke the dusk was thick upon the glassof my scuttle, the steward was lighting the lamp in the main cabin, andI could feel that we were once more under way again; concluding,therefore, that the exchange had been completed, I rolled out of my bunkand, slipping my feet into my shoes, left my state-room and went ondeck, where I found Mendouca in jubilant spirits, but ratherd
isconcerted, I thought, at my appearance.
"Hillo!" he exclaimed in English, "where the deuce did you come from,and how long have you been on deck?"
"I came from my state-room, and have but this moment emerged from thecompanion. Why do you ask?" said I.
"Because," he answered, "to tell you the truth you startled me, makingyour appearance in that quiet manner. I thought you were going to staybelow until I called you?"
"It was _you_ who said that, not I," answered I. "And, to tell you thetruth, I felt tired of being below, and so--finding that you were underway again--came on deck."
The brig was about five miles astern, and, as far as I could see in thefast-gathering darkness, still hove-to, which struck me as being sopeculiar that I made some remark to that effect.
"Oh no; nothing strange about it at all," answered Mendouca carelessly."Her people are getting their supper, probably, and are too lazy tostart tack or sheet until they have finished their meal. Bless you, youhave no idea what lazy rascals the Portuguese are; their laziness isabsolutely phenomenal; they are positively too lazy to live long, and somost of them die early. More over, I expect her skipper is still belowporing over his charts and trying to make up what he is pleased to callhis mind what spot to steer for in order to get another cargo."
"Very possibly," I assented, with a laugh. "By the way, it is curious,but I could almost fancy her deeper in the water than she was; does itnot strike you so?"
"Deeper in the water?" he exclaimed sharply. "No, I cannot say that itdoes; and even were such a thing possible, it would need an uncommonlysharp eye to discern it in such a light as this. She may be, however,for that rascal Jose wrung enough good Spanish dollars out of me, forhis rubbish, to sink her to her waterways. But come, here is thesteward, so I suppose supper is ready, and if so we may as well go belowand get it, for I must plead guilty to being most ravenously hungry."
Notwithstanding which statement I could not avoid noticing that he toyeda great deal with his food and ate very little; which was not to bewondered at under the circumstances, for I afterwards learned that whileI was below in my berth, suspecting nothing worse than the purchase andtransfer of a cargo of slaves from one ship to another, a most atrociousand cold-blooded act of piracy had been committed, and that, too, underthe shadow and disguise of the British flag; Mendouca having coollyhoisted British colours the moment that I left the deck, and, in theguise of a British cruiser, compelled the Portuguese brig to heave-toand disgorge her cargo; after which he had confined the crew below,bound hand and foot, and had scuttled their ship, leaving them to perishin her when she went down! But of this I had not the faintest suspicionuntil the tale was told me some time afterwards by one of the_Francesca's_ own crew.
With the setting of the sun the wind evinced a very decided tendency todrop, growing steadily lighter all through the first watch, until whenMendouca relieved me at midnight the ship was moving at a rate of barelyfive knots, although she was carrying studding-sails on both sides; andwhen I went on deck again at four o'clock next morning it was a flatcalm, and the ship was lying motionless upon the water, with her headswung round to the south-east; the swell, too, had gone down, and therewas every appearance of the calm lasting for several hours at least.The appearance of the sun, as he rose, also confirmed this impression,the sky being--for a wonder in that latitude--perfectly cloudless, andof a clear, pure, soft, crystalline blue, into which the great luminaryleapt in dazzling splendour, palpitating with breathless heat thatpromised to soon become almost unendurable. It was my custom to indulgein a saltwater bath every morning in the ship's head, one of the menplaying the hose upon me for a quarter of an hour or so, and never didthat bath seem a greater luxury to me than on this particular morning,for the heat came with the sun, and I envied the fish their ability toescape it by sinking deep into the cool, blue, crystalline depths;indeed I should most probably have been tempted to imitate them as faras possible by plunging overboard and swimming twice or thrice round theship, had I not happened to have noticed a large shark under hercounter, when, to test the clearness of the water, I happened to leanover the taffrail to look at the rudder and stern-post. Even the mendawdled over the job of washing decks that morning, using a much greaterquantity of water than usual, and placing themselves where there was achance to get the hose played upon their bare feet and legs. And if itwas hot on deck, what must it have been down in the crowded hold? Itwas Mendouca's habit to have the gratings put on the hatchways andsecured every night--when the weather would permit of the use of theminstead of the solid hatches--in order to prevent anything in the shapeof a rising on the part of the negroes; and all night long a thin,pungent vapour had been rising through them, telling an eloquent tale ofthe frightful closeness and heat of the atmosphere down there, while atfrequent intervals could be heard the sound of a restless stirring onthe part of the living cargo, accompanied by a long-drawn, gasping sigh,as if for breath. There was usually a good deal of carelessness andremissness manifested by the men in the removal of the gratings in themorning. I have frequently gone on deck at seven bells--when it was myeight hours in--and found them still on, although it was well understoodthat they were to be taken off at four bells. I was always veryparticular, when it was my morning watch on deck, to have the gratingsremoved prompt to time; on this particular morning, however, I did notwait until four bells, but took it upon myself to have the hatchesthrown open as soon as there was daylight enough to enable us to see,clearly, and I am sure that the poor wretches below were grateful foreven so small a measure of relief.
As the day advanced the heat grew intolerable, and the consequentsuffering of the blacks more intense. It is the custom on boardslavers, I believe--at least it was so on board the _Francesca_--to feedthe slaves twice a day, the food consisting of a fairly liberal quantityof boiled rice, farina, or calavance beans--these latter being used onaccount of their great fattening powers, whereby the slaves aremaintained in a tolerably good condition of body--with a pint of waterat each meal. Mendouca made it a rule to vary the diet of the slaves asmuch as possible on these three articles, one or the other of which wasgiven every third day, he having found that the poor wretches thusthrived better, and took their food with more enjoyment than when fedduring the entire voyage upon one kind of food only; and whenever theweather was sufficiently moderate to permit of it, he always hadone-half of the slaves on deck for an airing during the time that theother half were being fed below, thus allowing room for the men whodispensed the food and water to move about, and also for the slaves touse their hands in the process of feeding; and on the particular morningof which I am now writing it was unspeakably moving and pathetic tonote, as I did, the feverish eagerness and longing with which theunhappy creatures waited and watched for the arrival of the moment whenthey might come on deck and breathe for a few brief minutes the pureand--to them--cool and refreshing outer atmosphere. My heart ached withpity for them, and I determined that I would utilise my presence onboard this accursed ship by doing everything in my power to ameliorateas far as possible the condition of the unfortunates that wereimprisoned within her. And I made up my mind to begin on that verymorning, if, when Mendouca made his appearance, he seemed to be in atemper amenable to persuasion.
When he came on deck, however, the conditions appeared anything butpromising, for he was in a frightfully bad humour at the calm, cursingthe weather, his own ill-luck, and everything else that he could thinkof to execrate. I allowed him to give unrestrained vent to hisill-humour for some minutes, and when at length he had calmed downsomewhat I said--
"And yet it appears to me that this calm, about which you arecomplaining so bitterly, may be made excellent use of, if you will, tobenefit and increase the value of your property."
"Indeed? in what way, pray?" he demanded.
"Well," said I, "there is no sail trimming to be done in this weather,and it would be downright cruelty to send the men aloft to work aboutthe rigging in this blazing heat; why not therefore spread an
awningaft, here, and set the entire watch to work, beneath its shade, to patchup such of your canvas as needs repairing? And while they are engagedupon that job I will see--if you approve of the plan--whether I cannotget the negroes to take a bath in batches in a studding-sail rigged onthe fore-deck, and thus rid themselves of some of the filth that is fastaccumulating on their bodies; it will do them more good and tend more tokeep them in health than a double allowance of food for the remainder ofthe voyage. And when they have done that they can be divided into twogangs, one on deck to draw and pass water, and the other below, with allthe scrubbing-brushes and swabs that can be mustered, to give theslave-deck a thorough cleansing. That is what I should do, were they myproperty."
"Well," he said musingly, "I dare say it would do the rascals a lot ofgood, and would certainly make the ship sweeter--I'll be bound that shecould be scented a mile away in her present condition. But who is toundertake the supervision of such work? Not _I_, I tell you, frankly;and I believe the hands would refuse, to a man, were I to attempt to setthem to such work."
"If they will rig me a studding-sail, or an old fore-course for'ard, Iwill do the rest--or _try_ to do it," said I.
"Will you?" exclaimed Mendouca, in surprise. "Then I am sure you may,and I heartily wish you joy of the job."
"Very well, then, I will set about it the first thing after breakfast,"said I.
And I did. I got the poor wretches forward in batches of thirty,induced them to stand in the basin-like hollow of the sail, and then sethalf-a-dozen of their number pumping and drawing water, and playing upontheir fellows with the hose, or sluicing buckets of water over them, andthe exquisite enjoyment, the unspeakable luxury of that bath, as thecool, sparkling liquid dashed upon the filth and sweat-begrimed bodies,was a sight to see! Enjoyed it? Why they revelled in it, so that itwas with difficulty that I could get them out; the stony look ofhopeless, utter despair faded temporarily out of their eyes, and some ofthem actually _laughed_! It was by no means a pleasant or a savoury jobthat I had undertaken, but witnessing the keen enjoyment that I had thusbestowed made it the most delightful that I had ever been engaged in.It occupied me the whole morning to pass the entire cargo through thebath and secure the thorough cleansing of their persons, and the wholeof the afternoon to get the slave-deck properly cleansed and purified;but when the sun set that evening the ship was once more sweet andwholesome, while the slaves had--taking one with another--been on deckand actively exercised for about half a day instead of about twentyminutes morning and evening. As I had said, it did them more good thandouble rations for the entire voyage. Even Mendouca was fain toacknowledge that the day, instead of being wasted, had been well spent.
We had been hoping all day that with sunset a breeze would spring upfrom _somewhere_--I think nobody was very particular as to the quarterfrom which it should come, so long as it came at all--but our hopes weredoomed to disappointment; the sun went down in a perfectly clear sky,and there was no sign whatever of wind from any quarter. The sameweather conditions prevailed all through the night; and when the sunrose next morning there was still not the slightest sign of wind, whilethe glass exhibited a slight tendency to rise. Under thesecircumstances I thought I would endeavour to secure a repetition of theproceedings of the previous day, and so well pleased was Mendouca withthe improved appearance of the blacks when, as usual, half of them cameon deck at breakfast-time, that he readily gave his consent; andaccordingly the poor creatures were again treated to the luxury of thebath, while the slave-deck received another thorough scrubbing tocleanse it from the filth accumulated during the night. And thus thenegroes were enabled to pass a second day in pure air, to the greatimprovement of their health and spirits; indeed, the ecstatic delightwith which they lingered over their bath, and the cheerfulness withwhich they afterwards worked at their task of drawing water andscrubbing, chattering almost gaily together all the time, were, to me,most eloquent testimony as to the miseries that they had previouslyendured, cooped up, tightly wedged together, _day and night_, in theclose and noisome hold.
I must not omit to mention a very curious phenomenon of which I hadoften heard, but had never before beheld until this day. It is knownamong sailors as the phenomenon of "the ripples." I was on theforecastle superintending the bathing operations when it first made itsappearance, the sky being at the time clear and cloudless, with the sunblazing in its midst like a huge ball of living flame, while the waterwas so oil-smooth and glassy that it was quite impossible to distinguishthe horizon, or to determine where the sea ended and the sky began. Itwas hotter than I had ever felt it before; dressed only in a thin shirtand the thinnest of white trousers, the perspiration was gushing sofreely from every pore of my body that my light and airy garments weresaturated with it, while the atmosphere was so stagnant that it seemedimpossible to inhale a sufficiency of air for breathing purposes. Underthese trying conditions we were, of course, all anxiously watching for abreeze; and it was with a feeling of exquisite delight that, happeningto look abroad toward the north, I saw the horizon strongly marked witha line of delicate blue, indicating, as I believed, the approach of athrice-welcome breeze. In the exuberance of my delight I shouted toMendouca, who was reclining in a hammock aft slung from the main-boom,and, of course, under the shelter of the awning--
"Hurrah! here comes a breeze at last, although I do not know where ithas sprung from, for there is not a cloud to be seen."
Mendouca sprang up in his hammock at this news, and looked in thedirection to which I was pointing; then sank back again, disgustedly.
"Pshaw, that is no breeze--worse luck!" he cried. "That is only `theripples.'"
"The ripples?" I ejaculated. "Surely not. It has every appearance ofa genuine breeze!"
Mendouca, however, was too intensely disgusted to reply. Meanwhile, thestreak of blue, stretching right athwart the horizon, was advancingrapidly, bearing straight down upon the brigantine, and soon it becamepossible to see the tiny wavelets sparkling in the dazzling sunlight,and to detect a soft, musical, liquid-tinkling sound, such as one mayhear when the tide is rising on a flat, sandy beach on a calm summer'sday. But by this time I had made the disappointing discovery that theblue line was merely a belt of rippling water about a quarter of a milewide, with a perfectly calm, glassy surface beyond it, and, as there wasno advance-guard of cat's-paws, such as may usually be seen playing onthe surface of the water as forerunners of an approaching breeze, I wasreluctantly compelled to acknowledge to myself that Mendouca was right.And so it proved; for although the line--or rather belt--of ripplingwater not only advanced right up to the ship, giving forth a mostpleasant and refreshing liquid sound as it came, and lapping musicallyagainst the brigantine's sides for a few minutes when it reached her,but also passed on and traversed the entire visible surface of theocean, finally disappearing beyond the southern horizon, the wholephenomenon was absolutely unaccompanied by the slightest perceptiblemovement of the air. This curious disturbance of the ocean's surfacewas twice repeated on that same day.
The long, hot, breathless, and wearisome day at length drew to an end,and still there was no sign of wind; the night passed; another daydawned; and still we lay, like the craft in Coleridge's _AncientMariner_, "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean." That daytoo waxed and waned without the sign of so much as a cat's-paw to reviveour drooping hopes; and although during the succeeding night we werevisited by a terrific thunderstorm, accompanied by a perfect deluge ofrain, during which a few evanescent puffs intermittently filled oursails, and moved us perhaps a mile nearer Cuba, when day again dawnedthere was a further recurrence of the same staring, cloudless sky ofdazzling blue, the same blazing sun, the same breathless atmosphere, andthe same oil-smooth sea. And as these days of calm and stagnationsucceeded each other with relentless persistency, I kept up the customof bathing the negroes and thoroughly cleansing the slave-deck, until atlength the poor creatures actually grew fat and merry, so that Mendouca,despite his fast-growing impatience and irritab
ility at the continuedcalm, was obliged to admit that he had never seen a cargo of "blackivory" in such promising condition before. This, however, was not all;for while superintending these bathing and scrubbing operations I talkedcheerfully and pleasantly to the fellows, giving them such names as Tom,Bob, Joe, Snowball, and so on, to which they readily answered, insteadof abusing them and ordering them about with brutal oaths and obscenity,as was the habit of the crew; and although the poor wretches understoodnot a word of what was spoken to them either by the crew or by myself,yet they readily enough distinguished the difference of manner, and notonly so, but they seemed to possess the faculty of interpreting one'smeaning from the tones of one's voice, so that they quickly grew tounderstand what I wanted them to do, and did it cheerfully and withalacrity. In this manner, with persistent calm recurring day after day,we passed no less than the almost incredible time of over three weekswithout moving as many miles from the spot where the wind had desertedus, Mendouca's temper growing steadily worse every day, until at lengthhe became absolutely unbearable, and I spoke to him as little aspossible. And the climax was reached when one day the steward, who hadbeen sent down into the hold to overhaul the stores, came on deck with aface as long as the main-bowline, and reported that there was only foodand water enough in the ship to last ten days longer.
The Pirate Slaver: A Story of the West African Coast Page 13