by Neil Munro
CHAPTER X
THE STRUGGLE IN THE CABIN, AND AN EERIE SOUND OF RUNNING WATER
The place stank with bilge and the odour of an ill-trimmed lamp smokingfrom a beam; the fragments of the skipper's supper were on the table,with a broken quadrant; rats scurried and squealed in the bulkheads,and one stared at me from an open locker, where lay a rum-bottle,while beetles and slaters travelled along the timbers. But thesethings compelled my attention less than the skylights that were maskedinternally by pieces of canvas nailed roughly on them. They were notso earlier in the evening; it must have been done after I had gone tosleep, and what could be the object? That puzzled me extremely, for itmust have been the same hand that had extinguished all the deck and mastlights, and though black was my crime darkness was unnecessary to mybetrayal.
I waited with a heart like lead.
I heard the boats swung up on the davits, the squeak of the falls, thetread of the seamen, the voice of Risk in an unusually low tone. In thebows in a little I heard the windlass click and the chains rasp in thehawse-holes; we were lifting the anchor.
For a moment hope possessed me. If we were weighing anchor then myarrest was not imminent at least; but that consolation lasted brieflywhen I thought of the numerous alternatives to imprisonment inBlackness.
We were under weigh again; there was a heel to port, and a more rapidplop of the waters along the carvel planks. And then Risk and his matecame down.
I have seldom seen a man more dashed than the skipper when he saw mesitting waiting on him, clothed and silent. His face grew livid; roundhe turned to Murchison and hurried him with oaths to come and clap eyeson this sea-clerk. I looked for the officer behind them, but they werealone, and at that I thought more cheerfully I might have been mistakenabout the night's curious proceedings.
"Anything wrang?" said Risk, affecting nonchalance now that his spate ofoaths was by, and he pulled the rum out of the locker and helped himselfand his mate to a swingeing caulker.
"Oh, nothing at all," said I, "at least nothing that I know of, CaptainRisk. And are we--are we--at Halifax already?"
"What do you mean?" said he. And then he looked at me closely, put outthe hand unoccupied by his glass and ran an insolent dirty finger overmy new-clipped mole. "Greig, Greig," said he, "Greig to a hair! I wouldhave the wee shears to that again, for its growin'."
"You're a very noticing man," said I, striking down his hand no waygently, and remembering that he had seen my scissors when I emerged fromthe Borrowstouness close after my own barbering.
"I'm all that," he replied, with a laugh, and all the time Murchison,the mate, sat mopping his greasy face with a rag, as one after hardwork, and looked on us with wonder at what we meant. "I'm all that,"he replied, "the hair aff the mole and the horse-hair on your creasedbreeches wad hae tauld ony ane that ye had ridden in a hurry and clippedin a fricht o' discovery."
"Oh, oh!" I cried, "and that's what goes to the makin' o' a Mahoun!"
"Jist that," said he, throwing himself on a seat with an easyindifference meant to conceal his vanity. "Jist observation and a knacko' puttin' twa and twa thegether. Did ye think the skipper o' the _SevenSisters_ was fleein' over Scotland at the tail o' your horse?"
"The Greig mole's weel kent, surely," said I, astonished and chagrined."I jalouse it's notorious through my Uncle Andy?"
Risk laughed at that. "Oh, ay!" said he, "when Andy Greig girned at yeit was ill to miss seein' his mole. Man, ye might as well wear your nameon the front o' your hat as gae aboot wi' a mole like that--and--andthat pair o' shoes."
The blood ran to my face at this further revelation of his astuteness.It seemed, then, I carried my identity head and foot, and it was nowonder a halfeyed man like Risk should so easily discover me. I lookeddown at my feet, and sure enough, when I thought of it now, it wouldhave been a stupid man who, having seen these kenspeckle shoes once,would ever forget them.
"My uncle seems to have given me good introductions," said I. "Theystruck mysel' as rather dandy for a ship," broke in the mate, at lastcoming on something he could understand.
"And did _you_ know Andy Greig, too?" said I. "Andy Greig," he replied."Not me!"
"Then, by God, ye hinna sailed muckle aboot the warld!" said theskipper. "I hae seen thae shoes in the four quarters and aye in a goodcompanionship."
"They appear yet to retain that virtue," said I, unable to resist theirony. "And, by the way, Captain Risk, now that we have discussed theshoes and my mole, what have we been waiting for at Blackness?"
His face grew black with annoyance.
"What's that to you?" he cried.
"Oh, I don't know," I answered indifferently. "I thought that now ye hadgot the best part o' your passage money ye might hae been thinking to dosomething for your country again. They tell me it's a jail in there,and it might suggest itself to you as providing a good opportunity forgetting rid of a very indifferent purser."
It is one thing I can remember to the man's credit that this innuendoof treachery seemed to make him frantic. He dashed the rum-glass athis feet and struck at me with a fist like a jigot of mutton, and I hadbarely time to step back and counter. He threw himself at me as he hadbeen a cat; I closed and flung my arms about him with a wrestler's grip,and bent him back upon the table edge, where I might have broken hisspine but for Murchison's interference. The mate called loudly forassistance; footsteps pounded on the cuddy-stair, and down came Horn.Between them they drew us apart, and while Murchison clung to hiscaptain, and plied him into quietness with a fresh glass of grog, Hornthrust me not unkindly out into the night, and with no unwillingness onmy part.
[Illustration 091]
It was the hour of dawn, and the haar was gone.
There was something in that chill grey monotone of sky and sea thatfilled me with a very passion of melancholy. The wind had risen, and thebillows ran frothing from the east; enormous clouds hung over the landbehind us, so that it seemed to roll with smoke from the eternal fires.Out from that reeking pit of my remorse--that lost Scotland where nowperhaps there still lay lying among the rushes, with the pees-weep's cryabove it, the thing from which I flew, our ship went fast, blown uponthe frothy billows, like a ponderous bird, leaving a wake of hissingbubbling brine, flying, as it seemed, to a world of less imminentdanger, yet unalluring still.
I looked aloft at the straining spars; they seemed to prick the cloudsbetween the swelling sails; the ropes and shrouds stretched infinitelyinto a region very grey and chill. Oh, the pallor! oh, the cold andheartless spirit of the sea in that first dawning morn!
"It's like to be a good day," said Horn, breaking in upon my silence,and turning to him I saw his face exceeding hollow and wan. The watchlay forward, all but a lad who seemed half-dozing at the helm; Risk andhis mate had lapsed to silence in the cuddy.
"You're no frien', seemingly, o' the pair below!" said Horn again,whispering, and with a glance across his shoulder at the helm.
"It did not look as if I were, a minute or two ago," said I. "Yon's ascoundrel, and yet I did him an injustice when I thought he meant tosell me."
"I never sailed with a more cheat-the-widdy crew since I followed thesea," said Horn, "and whether it's the one way or the other, sold yeare."
"Eh?" said I, uncomprehending.
He looked again at the helm, and moved over to a water-breaker furtherforward, obviously meaning that I should follow. He drew a drink ofwater for himself, drank slowly, but seemed not to be much in the needfor it from the little he took, but he had got out of ear-shot of theman steering.
"You and me's the gulls this time, Mr. Greig," said he, whispering."This is a doomed ship."
"I thought as much from her rotten spars," I answered. "So long as shetakes me to Nova Scotia I care little what happens to her."
"It's a long way to Halifax," said he. "I wish I could be sure we werelikely even to have Land's End on our starboard before waur happens.Will ye step this way, Mr. Greig?" and he cautiously led the wayforward. There was a look-out humming a
stave of song somewhere in thebows, and two men stretched among the chains, otherwise that part of theship was all our own. We went down the fo'c'sle scuttle quietly, andI found myself among the carpenter's stores, in darkness, divided by abulkhead door from the quarters of the sleeping men. Rats were scurryingamong the timbers and squealing till Horn stamped lightly with his feetand secured stillness.
"Listen!" said he.
I could hear nothing but the heavy breathing of a seaman within, and thewash of water against the ship's sides.
"Well?" I queried, wondering.
"Put your lug here," said he, indicating a beam that was dimly revealedby the light from the lamp swinging in the fo'c'sle. I did so, and heardwater running as from a pipe somewhere in the bowels of the vessel.
"What's that?" I asked.
"That's all," said he and led me aft again.
The dawn by now had spread over half the heavens; behind us the mouth ofthe Firth gulped enormous clouds, and the fringe of Fife was as flatas a bannock; before us the sea spread chill, leaden, all unlovely. "Mysorrow!" says I, "if this is travelling, give me the high-roads and thehot noon."
Horn's face seemed more hollow and dark than ever in the wan morning. Iwaited his explanation. "I think ye said Halifax, Mr. Greig?" said he. "Isigned on, mysel', for the same port, but you and me's perhaps the onlyones on this ship that ever hoped to get there. God give me grace to getfoot on shore and Dan Risk will swing for this!"
Somebody sneezed behind us as Horn thus rashly expressed himself; weboth turned suddenly on the rail we had been leaning against, expectingthat this was the skipper, and though it was not Risk, it was one whoseblack visage and gleaming teeth and rolling eyes gave me momentarilysomething of a turn.
It was the cook Ferdinando. He had come up behind on his bare feet, andout upon the sea he gazed with that odd eerie look of the deaf and dumb,heedless of us, it seemed, as we had been dead portions of the ship'sfabric, seeing but the salt wave, the rim of rising sun, blood-red uponthe horizon, communing with an old familiar.
"A cauld momin', cook," said Horn, like one who tests a humbugpretending to be dumb, but Ferdinando heard him not.
"It might have been a man wi' all his faculties," said the seamanwhispering, "and it's time we werena seen thegether. I'll tell ye lateron."
With that we separated, he to some trivial duty of his office, I, witha mind all disturbed, back to my berth to lie awake, tossing andspeculating on the meaning of Horn's mystery.