There were seven seamen and the captain and I made nine, and we pretty nearly filled the cook-room. ’Twas a scene to be handled by a Dutch brush. We were a shaggy company, in several kinds of rude attire, and the crimson light of the furnace, whose playing flames darted shadows through the steady light of the lanthorns, caused us to appear very wild. The mariners’ eyes gleamed redly as their glances rove round the place, and, had you come suddenly among us, I believe you would have thought this band of pale, fire-touched, hairy men, with the one ebon visage among them, rendered the vessel a vast deal more ghostly than ever she could have shown when sailing along with me alone on board.
They were a good deal puzzled when I told them of the mines I had made and sprung in the ice. They reckoned the notion fine, but could not conceive how I had, single-handed, broken out the powder-barrels, got them over the side, and fixed them.
“Why,” said I, “’twas slow, heavy work, of course; but a man who labours for his life will do marvellous things. It is like the jump of a hunted stag.”
“True for you,” says the captain. “A swim of two miles spends me in pleasurin’; but I’ve swum eight mile to save my life, and stranded fresh as a new-hooked cod. What’s your intentions, sir?”
“To sail the schooner home,” said I, “if I can get help. She’s too good to abandon. She’ll fetch money in England.”
“Ay, as a show.”
“Yes, and as a coalman. Rig her modernly, and carry your forecastle deck into the head, captain, and she’s a brave ship, fit for a Baltimore eye.”
He stroked down the hair upon his chin.
“Dip, captain, dip, my lads; there’s enough of this to drown ye in the hold,” said I, pointing to the bowl. “Come, this is a happy meeting for me; let it be a merry one. Captain, I drink to the Susan Tucker.”
“Sir, your servant. Here’s to your sweetheart, be she wife or maid. Bill, jump on deck and take a look round. See to the boat.”
One of the men went out.
“Captain,” said I, “you are a full ship?”
“That’s so.”
“Bound home?”
“Right away.”
“You have men enough and to spare. Lend me three of your hands to help me to the Thames, and I’ll repay you thus; there should be near a hundred tons of wine and brandy, of exquisite vintage, and choice with age beyond language in the hold. Take what you will of that freight; there’ll be ten times the value of your lay in your pickings, modest as you may prove. Help yourself to the clothes in the cabin and forecastle; they will turn to account. For the men you will spare, and who will volunteer to help me, this will be my undertaking: the ship and all that is in her to be sold on her arrival, and the proceeds equally divided. Shall we call it a thousand pounds apiece? Captain, she’s well found: her inventory would make a list as long as you; I’d name a bigger sum, but here she is, you shall overhaul her hold and judge for yourself.”
I watched him anxiously. No man spoke, but every eye was upon him. He sat pulling down the hair on his chin, then, jumping up on a sudden and extending his hand, he cried, “Shake! it’s a bargain, if the men’ll jine.”
“I’ll jine!” exclaimed a man.
There was a pause.
“And me,” said the negro.
I was glad of this, and looked earnestly at the others.
“Is she tight?” said a man.
“As a bottle,” said I.
They fell silent again.
“Joe Wilkinson and Washington Cromwell—them two jines,” said the captain. “Bullies, he wants a third. Don’t speak all together.”
The man named “Bill” at this moment returned to the cook-room, and reported all well above. My offer was repeated to him, but he shook his head.
“This is the Horn, mates,” said he. “There’s a deal o’ water ’tween this and the Thames. How do she sail?—no man knows.”
“I want none but willing men,” said I. “Americans make as good sailors as the English. What an English seaman can face any of you can. There is another negro in the boat. Will you let him step aboard, captain? He may join.”
A man was sent to take his place. Presently he arrived, and I gave him a cup of punch.
“’Splain the business to him, sir,” said the captain, filling his pannikin; “his name’s Billy Pitt.”
I did so; and when I told him that Washington Cromwell had offered, he instantly said, “All right, massa, I’ll be ob yah.”
This was exactly what I wanted, and had there been a third negro I’d have preferred him to the white man.
“But how are you going to navigate this craft home with three men?” said the man “Bill” to me.
“There’ll be four; we shall do. The fewer the more dollars, hey, Wilkinson?”
He grinned, and Cromwell broke into a ventral laugh.
They seemed very well satisfied, and so was I.
CHAPTER XXVIII
I STRIKE A BARGAIN WITH THE YANKEE
The captain put his cup down; the bowl was empty; I offered to brew another jorum, but he thanked me and said no, adding significantly that he would have no more here, by which he meant that he would brew for himself in his own ship anon. The drink had made him cheerful and good-natured. He recommended that we should go on deck and set about transhipping whilst the weather held, for he was an old hand in these seas and never trusted the sky longer than a quarter of an hour.
“This here list,” says he, “wants remedying and that’ll follow our easin’ of the hold.”
“Yes,” said I, “and I should be mighty thankful if some of your men would see all clear aloft for me, that we might start with running rigging that will travel, capstans that’ll revolve, and sails that’ll spread.”
“Oh, we’ll manage that for you,” said he. “Tru-ly, she’s been bad froze, very bad froze. Durned if ever I see a worse freeze.”
So saying he called to “Bill,” who seemed the principal man of the boat’s crew, and gave him some directions, and immediately afterwards all the men entered the boat and rowed away to the ship.
Whilst they were absent I carried the captain into the hold and left him to overhaul it. I told him that all the spirits, provisions, and the like were in the hold and lazarette, which was true enough, wanting to keep him out of the run, though, thanks to the precaution I had taken, I was in no fear even if he should penetrate so deep aft. Before he came out five-and-twenty stout fellows arrived in four boats from the ship, and when we went on deck, we found them going the rounds of the vessel, scraping the guns to get a view of them, peering down the companion, overhauling the forecastle-well, as I call the hollow beyond the forecastle, and staring aloft with their faces full of grinning wonder. The captain sang out to them and they all mustered aft.
“Now, lads,” said he, “there’s a big job before you—a big job for Cape Horn, I mean; and you’ll have to slip through it as if you was grease. When done there’ll be a carouse, and I’ll warrant ye all such a sup that the most romantic among ye’ll never cast another pining thought in the direction o’ your mother’s milk.”
Having delivered this preface, he divided the men into two gangs; one, under the boatswain, to attend to the rigging, clear the canvas of the ice, get the pumps and the capstans to work, and see all ready for getting sail on the schooner; the other, under the second mate, to get tackles aloft and break out the cargo, taking care to trim ship whilst so doing.
They fell to their several jobs with a will. ’Tis the habit of our countrymen to sneer at the Americans as sailors, affirming that if ever they win a battle at sea it is by the help of British renegades. But this I protest; after witnessing the smartness of those Yankee whalemen, I would sooner charge the English than the Americans with lubberliness came the nautical merits of the two nations ever before me to decide upon. They had the hatches open, tackles aloft, and men at work below whilst the mariners of other countries would have been standing looking on and “jawing” upon the course to be taken. Some o
verran the fabric aloft, clearing, cutting away, pounding, making the ice fly in storms; others sweated the capstans till they clanked; others fell to the pumps, working with hammers and kettles of boiling water. The wondrous old schooner was never busier, no, not in the heyday of her flag, when her guns were blazing and her people yelling.
I doubt whether even a man-of-war could have given this work the despatch the whaler furnished. She had eight boats and sixty men, and every boat was afloat and alongside us ready to carry what she could to the ship. I wished to help, but the captain would not let me do so; he kept me walking and talking, asking me scores of questions about the schooner, and all so shrewd that, without appearing reserved, I professed to know little. The great show of clothes puzzled him. He also asked if the crucifix in the cabin was silver. I said I believed it was, fetched it, and asked him to accept it, saying if he would give me the smallest of his boats for it I should be very much obliged.
“Oh, yes,” says he, “you can have a boat. The men would not sail with you without a boat;” and after weighing the crucifix without the least exhibition of veneration in his manner, he put it in his pocket, saying he knew a man who would give him a couple of hundred dollars for the thing on his telling him that the Pope had blessed it.
“Ay, but,” says I, “how do you know the Pope has blessed it?”
“Then I’ll bless it,” cried he; “why, am I a cold Johnny-cake that my blessing ain’t as good as another man’s?”
I was glad I had hidden the black flag; I mean, that I had stowed it away in the cabin of the Frenchman after he was dead. The Yankee needed but the sight to make his suspicions of the original character of theBoca del Dragon flame up; and you may suppose that I was exceedingly anxious he should not be sure that the schooner had been a pirate, lest he might have been tempted to scrutinize her rather more closely than would have been agreeable to me.
He asked me if I had met with any money in her: and I answered evasively that in searching the dead man on the rocks, I had discovered a few pieces in his pocket, but that I had left them, being much too melancholy and convinced of my approaching end to meddle with such a useless commodity. From time to time he would quit me to go to the hatch and sing down orders to the second mate in the hold. How many casks he meant to take I did not know; when he asked me how much I would give, I replied: “Leave me enough to keep me ballasted; that will satisfy me.”
The high swell demanded caution, but they managed wonderfully well. They never swung more than three casks into a boat, and with this cargo she would row away to the ship that lay hove-to close, and the men in her hoisted the casks aboard.
The wind remained light till half-past three; it then freshened a bit. Though all hands had knocked off at noon to get dinner—and a fine meal I gave them of ham, tongue, beef, biscuits, wine, and brandy—by half-past three they had eased the hold of ten boatloads of casks, besides clearing out the whole of the clothes from the forecastle along with as much of the bedding as we did not require; and I began to think that my Yankee intended to leave me a clean ship to carry home, though I durst not remonstrate. Yet was my turn handsomely served too. The pumps had been cleared and tried, and found to work well, and—which was glad news to me—the well found dry. The running rigging had been overhauled, and it travelled handsomely. The sails had been loosed and hoisted and lowered again, and the canvas found in good condition. The jibboom had been run out, and the stays set up. The stock of fresh water had been examined and found plentiful, and the casks in the head brought out and secured on the main deck. In short, the American boatswain had worked with the judgment and care of a master-rigger, of a great artist in ropes, booms, and sails, and the schooner was left to my hands as fit for any navigation as the whaler that rose and fell on our quarter.
But, as I have said, at half-past three in the afternoon, the breeze began to sit in dark curls upon the water, and there was evidence enough in the haziness in the west, and in the loom of the shoulders of vapour in the dark-blue obscure there, to warrant a sackful for this capful presently.
“I reckon,” says the captain to me, after looking into the west, “that we’d best knock off now. There’s snow and wind yonder, and we’d better see all snug while there’s time.”
He called to one of the men to tell the second mate to come up from below and get the hatches on, and bringing me to the rail, he pointed to a boat, and asked if that would do? I said yes, and thanked him heartily for the gift, which was handsome, I must say, the boat being a very good one, though, to be sure, he had got many times its value out of the schooner; and a party of men were forthwith told off to get the boat hoisted and stowed.
“Now, Mr. Rodney,” said the captain, standing in the gangway, “how can I serve you further?”
“Sir,” said I, “you are very obliging. Two things I stand sadly in need of: a chart of these waters and a chronometer.”
“I’ll send you a chart,” said he, “that’ll carry you as high as San Roque; but I’ve only got one chronometer, sir, and can’t spare him.”
“Well then,” said I, “if, when you get aboard, you’ll give me the time by your chronometer, I’ll set my watch by it; but I’ll thank you very much for the chart. The tracings below are as shapeless as the moon setting in a fog.”
“You shall have the chart,” said he, and then called to Wilkinson and the two negroes.
“Lads,” said he, “you’re quite content, I hope?”
They answered “Yes.”
“You’ve all three a claim upon me for the amount of what’s owing ye,” said he, “and when you turn up at New Bedford you shall have it—that’s square. I see fifteen hundred dollars a man on this job, if so be as ye don’t broach too thirstily as you go along. Mr. Rodney, Joe here’s a steady, ’spectable man, and’ll make you a good mate. Cromwell and Billy Pitt are black only in their hides; all else’s as good as white.”
He then shook me by the hand, and, calling a farewell to Wilkinson and the negroes, scrambled into the chains and dropped into his boat, very highly satisfied, I make no doubt, with the business he had done that day.
A boat’s crew were left behind to help us to make sail. But the weather looking somewhat wild in the west with the red light of the sun among the clouds there, and the dark heave of the swell running into a sickly crimson under the sun and then glowing out dusky again, I got them to treble-reef the mainsail and hoist it, and then thanking them, advised them to be off. Then, putting Cromwell to the tiller, I went forward with the others and set the topsail and forestaysail (the spritsail lying furled), which would be show enough of canvas till I saw what the weather was to be like. I kept the topsail aback, waiting for a boat to arrive with my chart, and in a few minutes the boat we had cheered returned with what I wanted.
Meanwhile they were shortening sail on the whaler, and though she was no beauty, yet, I tell you, I found her as picturesque as any ship I had ever beheld as she lay with her main-topgallant-sail clewed up, her topsail yards on the caps, and the heads of men knotting the reef-points showing black over the white cloths, her hull floating up out of the hollow and flinging a wet orange gleam to the west, a tumble of creamy foam about her to her rolling, shadows like the passage of phantom hands hurrying over her sails to the swaying of her masts, and the swelling sea darkling from her into the east.
I hollowed my hands, and, hailing the captain, who was on the quarter-deck, asked him for the time by his chronometer. He flourished his arm and disappeared and, presently returning, shouted to know if I was ready. I put the key in my watch and answered yes, and then he gave me the time. My watch, though antique, was a noble piece of mechanism, and I have little doubt, as trustworthy as his chronometer. But I was careful to let it lie snug in my hand. I did not want the negro at the tiller nor the others to see it. They would wonder that so fine a jewelled piece as this should be in the possession of the second mate of a little brig, and it was my business to manage that they never should have cause to wonder at anything
in that way.
The dusk of the evening came quick out of the east, and the wind freshened with a long cry in our rigging as if the eastern darkness was a foe it was rushing out of the west to meet. I brought the schooner north-north-east by my compass and watched her behaviour anxiously. The swell was on the quarter, and the wind and sea a trifle abaft the larboard beam; she leaned a little to the weight of her clothes, but was surprisingly stiff considering how light she was. Wilkinson and the negro came and stood by my side. The sea broke heavily from the weather bow, and the water roared white under the lee bends and spread astern in a broad wake of foam. The whaler did not brace his yards up till after we had started, and now hung a pale faint mass in the windy darkness on the quarter. A tincture of rusty red hovered like smoke coloured by the furnace that produces it, in the west, but the night had drawn down quick and dark; the washing noise of the water was sharp, the windpiercingly cold; each sweep of the schooner’s masts to windward was followed by a dull roaring of the blast rushing out of the hollows of the canvas, and she swung to the seas with wild yaws, but with regularity sufficient to prove the strict government of the helm.
But it was being at sea! homeward bound too! There was no wish of mine, engendered by my hideous loneliness on the ice, by my abhorred association with the Frenchman, that I could not refer to as, down to this moment, gratified. My heart bounded; my spirits could not have been higher had this ocean been the Thames, and yonder dark flowing hills of water the banks of Erith and the Gravesend shore.
I turned to the three men: “My lads,” said I, “you prove yourselves fine bold fellows by thus volunteering. Do not fear: if God guides us home—to my home, I mean—you shall find a handsome account in this business.”
“Six more chaps would have jined had th’ole man bin willin’,” said Wilkinson. “But best as it is, master, though she’s a trifle short-handed.”
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 285