“Why, yes,” said I; “but being fore and aft, you know! It isn’t as if we’d got courses to hand and topsails to reef.”
“Ay, ay, dat’s de troof,” cried Billy Pitt. “I tort o’ dat. Fore an’ aft makes de difference. Don’t guess I should hab volunteer had she been a brig.”
“There are four of us,” said I. “You’re my chief mate, Wilkinson. Choose your watch.”
“I choose Cromwell,” said he; “he was in my watch aboard the whaler.”
“Very well,” I exclaimed; and this being settled, and both negroes declaring themselves good cooks, we arranged that they should alternately have the dressing of our victuals, that Wilkinson should have the cabin next mine, and the negroes the one in which the Frenchman had slept, one taking the other’s place as he was relieved.
I asked Wilkinson what he thought of the schooner. He answered that he was watching her.
“There’s nothing to find fault with yet,” said he; “she’s a whale at rolling, sartinly. I guess she walks, though. I reckon she’s had enough of the sea, like me, and’s got the scent o’ the land in her nose. I guess old Noah wasn’t far off when her lines was laid. Mebbe his sons had the building of her. There’s something scriptural in her cut. How old’s she, master?”
“Fifty years and more,” said I.
“Dere’s nuffin’ pertickler in dat,” cried Cromwell. “I knows a wessel dat am a hundred an’ four year old, s’elp me as I stand.”
“I don’t know how the whaler’s heading,” said I, “but this schooner’s a canoe if we aren’t dropping her!”
Indeed she was scarce visible astern, a mere windy flicker hovering upon the pale flashings of the foam. It might be perhaps that the whaler was making a more northerly course than we, and under very snug canvas, though ours was snug enough, too; but be this as it may, I was mighty pleased with the slipping qualities of the schooner. I never could have dreamt that so odd and ugly a figure of a ship would show such heels. But I think this: we are too prone to view the handiwork of our sires with contempt. I do not know but that their ships were as fast as ours. They made many good passages. They might have proved themselves fleeter navigators had they had the sextant and chronometer to help them along. Fifty years hence perhaps mankind will be laughing at our crudities; at us, by heaven, who flatter ourselves that the art of ship-building and navigation will never be carried higher than the pitch to which we have raised them!
Cromwell being at the tiller, I told Billy Pitt to go below and get supper, instructing him what to dress and how much to melt for a bowl, for as you know there was nothing but spirits and wine to season our repasts with. I saw Cromwell grin widely into the binnacle candle flame when he heard me talk of ham, tongue, sweetmeats, marmalade and the like for supper, together with a can of hot claret, and knowing sailor’s nature middling well, I did not doubt that the fare of the schooner would bring the three men more into love with the adventure than even the reward that was to follow it.
I had noticed that the bundles which had been sent from the whaler as belonging to the poor fellows were meagre enough and showed indeed like the end of a long voyage, and I detained Billy Pitt a minute whilst I told them that there was a handsome stock of clothes in the cabins, together with linen, boots, and other articles of that sort; that, though the coats, breeches, and waistcoats were of bright colour and old-fashioned, they would keep them as warm as if they had been cut by a tailor of today.
“These things,” said I, “you can wear at sea, keeping your own clothes ready to slip on should we be spoken or to wear when we arrive in England. Tomorrow they shall be divided among you, and they will become your property. The suit you saw me in today is all that I shall need.”
Both negroes burst into a most diverting laugh of joy on hearing this. Nothing delights a black man more than coloured apparel. They had seen the clothes in the forecastle and guessed the kind of garments I meant to present them with.
Whilst supper was getting, I walked the deck with Wilkinson, both of us keeping a bright look-out, for it was blowing fresh; the darkness lay thick about us, there might be ice near us, and the schooner was storming under her reefed mainsail, topsail, and staysail through the hollow seas, thundering with a great roaring seething noise into the trough, and lifting to the foaming slope with her masts wildly aslant. I talked to my companion very freely, being anxious to find out what kind of person he was, and I must say that there was something in his conversation that impressed me very favourably. He told me that he had a wife at New Bedford, that he was heartily sick of the sea, and that he hoped the money he would get by this adventure, added to his lay, would enable him to set up for himself ashore.
“Well,” said I, “we will see tomorrow what cargo Captain Tucker has left us. But that you may be under no misapprehension, Wilkinson, if we are fortunate enough to bring the ship safely to England, I will enter into a bond to pay you five hundred pounds sterling for your share one week after the date of our arrival.”
He answered that if he could get that sum he would be a made man for life. “But it’s too much to expect, sir,” says he.
I told him that he had no idea of the value of the cargo. The wines and spirits were of such a quality I would stake my interest in the schooner in their fetching a large sum of money.
“That’ll depend,” said he, “on how much the capt’n left us.”
“He helped himself freely,” I answered, “but we are well off too. You shall judge tomorrow. Then there’s the schooner—as she stands: besides a noble stock of stores of all kinds, sails, ropes, tools, ammunition and several chests of small arms. I tell you I will give you five hundred pounds for your share.”
His satisfaction was expressed by his silence.
“But,” continued I, “we must act with judgment. What we have we must keep. Are the negroes trustworthy men?”
“Yes, they are honest fellows. I wouldn’t have shipped with them else.”
“We shall not require much for ourselves,” said I, “and the rest we’ll batten down and keep snug. There’ll be some man[oe]uvring needed in order to come off clear with this booty when we arrive: but there’s plenty of time to think that over, and our business till then is to look after the ship and pray for luck to keep clear of anything hostile.”
And then we fell to other talk; in the course of which he told me he was an Englishman born, but having been pressed into a man-o-war, deserted her at Halifax and made several voyages in American ships. He was wrecked on the Peruvian coast and became a beachcomber, and then got a berth in a whaler. He married at New Bedford and sailed with Captain Tucker—this was his second whaling trip, he said, and he wanted no more. I told him I was glad to learn that he was a countryman of mine, but not surprised. His speech was well-larded with americanisms, “but,” said I, “the true twang is wanting, and,” added I, laughing, “I should know you for Hampshire for all your reckons and guesses if I had to eat you should I be mistaken.”
“The press-gang’s the best friend the Yankees has,” said he a little sheepishly. “Do any man suppose I hadn’t sooner hail from my native town Southampton than from New Bedford? Half the American foksles is made up of Yankees who’d prove hearts of oak if it wasn’t for the press.”
His candour gratified me as showing that he already looked upon me as a shipmate to be trusted, and, as I have said, this first chat with the man left me strongly disposed to consider myself fortunate in having him as an associate.
CHAPTER XXIX
I VALUE THE LADING
The day had been so full of business, there had been so much to engage my mind, that it was not until I was seated at supper in the old cook-room in which I had passed so many melancholy hours, that I found myself able to take a calm survey of my situation, and to compare the various motions of my fortunes. I could scarcely indeed believe that I was not in a dream from which I should awake presently, and discover myself still securely imprisoned in the ice, and all those passages of the powder-bl
asts, the liberation of the schooner, my lonely days in her afloat, my encounter with the whaler, as visionary and vanishing as those dusky forms of vapour which had swarmed in giant-shape over my little open boat.
But even if confirmation had been wanting in the sable visage of Billy Pitt, who sat near the furnace munching away with prodigious enjoyment of his food and bringing his can of hot spiced wine from his vast blubber lips with a mighty sigh of deep delight, I must have found it in each hissing leap and roaring plunge of the old piratical bucket, so full of the vitality of the wind-swollen canvas, so quick with all the life-instincts of a vessel storming through the deep with buoyant keel and under full control. Oh, heaven! how different from the dull ambling of the morning, the sluggish pitching and rolling to the weak pulling of the spritsail!
Wilkinson and Cromwell kept the deck whilst Billy Pitt and I got our supper, and I had some talk with my negro, who seemed to be a very simple childish fellow, heartily in love with his stomach and very eager to see England. He told me that he had heard it was a fine country, and his wish to see it was one reason of his volunteering.
“Dey say,” said he, “dat Lunnon’s a very fine place, sah, bigger dan Philadelphy, and dat a man’s skin don’ tell agin him among de yaller gals dere.”
I laughed and said, that in my country people were judged rather by the colour of their hearts than by the hue of their faces.
“But dollars count for something too, sah, I spects?” said he.
“Why, yes,” said I, “with dollars enough you can make black white in England.”
“Hum!” cried he, scratching his head. “I guess it ’ud take an almighty load of dollars to make me white, massa.”
“Put money in your pocket and chink it,” said I, “and your face’ll be found white enough, I warrant.”
“By golly!” cried he, “I’ll do it den. S’elp me de Lord, massa, I’d chink twenty year for a white face. Dat comes ob bein’ civilized. Tell’ee what dey dew, massa, dey makes you feel like a white man, but dey lets you keep black, blast ’em!”
I checked his excitement by telling him that in my country he would find that the negro was a person held in very high esteem, that the women in particular valued him for that very dinginess which the Americans found distasteful, and told him that I could name several ladies of quality who had married their black servants.
He looked surprised, but not incredulous, and said in his peculiar dialect that he had no doubt I spoke the truth, as he had always heard that England was a fine country to live in. I then led him insensibly from this topic to talk of the sea and his experiences, and found that he had seen a very great deal, having been freed when young, and keeping to the ocean ever since in many different sorts of craft. Indeed, I was as much pleased with him as with Wilkinson, but then I had foreseen a simplicity in both the negroes, and in expectation of finding this quality, so useful to one in my strange position, I was overjoyed when they consented to help me sail the schooner to the Thames.
We went on deck to relieve Wilkinson and Cromwell. Billy Pitt took the tiller and I walked to either rail and stared into the darkness. It was very thick with occasional squalls of snow, which put a screaming as of tortured cats into the wind as they swung through it. The sea was high, but the schooner was making excellent weather of it, whilst she rolled and pitched through the troubled darkness at seven knots in the hour. ’Twas noble useful sailing, yet a speed not to be relished in these waters amid so deep a shadow. Still the temptation to “hold on all,” as we say, was very great; every mile carried us by so much nearer to the temperate parallels, and shortened to that extent the long, long passage that lay before us.
I was pacing the deck briskly, for the wind was horribly keen, when Pitt suddenly called out, “I say, massa!”
“Hullo,” I replied.
“Sah,” he cried, “I smell ice!”
I knew that this was a capacity not uncommon among men who had voyaged much in the frosty regions of the deep, and instantly exclaimed, “Luff, then, luff! shake the way out of her!” sniffing as I spoke, but detecting no added shrewdness in the air that was already freezingly cold. He put the helm down, and I called to the others below to come on deck and flatten in the main sheet. They were up in a trice and tailed on with me, asking no questions, till we had the boom nearly amidships.
I was about to speak when Wilkinson cried out, “I smell ice.” He sniffed a moment: “Yes, there’s an island aboard. Anybody see it?”
“Ay, dere it am, sure enough!” cried Cromwell. “Dere—on de lee-bow—see it, sah? See it, Billy?”
Yes, I saw it plain enough when I knew where to look for it. ’Twas just such another lump of faintness as had wrecked the Laughing Mary, a mass of dull spectral light upon the throbbing blackness, and it lay exactly in a line with the course we had been steering when Pitt first called out, so that assuredly we had not shifted our helm a minute too soon. We chopped and wallowed past it slowly, keeping a sharp look-out for like apparitions in other quarters, and when it had disappeared, I made up my mind to heave the schooner to and keep her in that posture till daylight, unless the night cleared. So we got the mainsail down and stowed it, clewed up the topsail (which I lent a hand to roll up), and let the vessel lie under a reefed foresail with her helm lashed. The weather, however, must have ultimately compelled what the thickness had required; for by ten o’clock it was blowing a hard gale, with a frequent hoariness of clouds of snow upon the blackness, the seas very high and foaming, and the wind crying madly in the rigging.
I let some time go by, and then sounded the well and found no more water than the depth at which the pumps sucked. This did wonders in the way of reassuring the men, who were rendered uneasy by the violent motions of the unwieldy vessel, and by the very harsh straining noises which rose out of the hold, which latter they would naturally attribute to the craziness of the fabric, though the true cause of it lay in the number of loose, movable bulkheads.
“It’s amazin’ to me that she holds together at all,” cried Wilkinson, “so ancient she is!”
“She’s only old,” said I, “in the sound of the years she’s been in existence. The ice has kept her young. Would the hams and tongues we’re eating be taken to be half a century old? yet where could you buy sweeter and better meat of the kind ashore? A ship’s well is your only honest reporter of her condition. Ours has vouched in a way that should keep you easy.”
“Arter de Soosan Tucker dis is like bein’ hung up to dry,” exclaimed one of the negroes. “It war pump, pump dere and no mistake. I call dis a werry beautiful little sheep, massa; yes, s’elp me de Lord, dere’s nuffin could persuade me she ain’t what I says she am.”
However, I was up and down a good deal during the night. But for the treasure I should have been less anxious, I dare say. I had come so successfully to this point that I was resolved, if my hopes were to miscarry, the misfortune should not be owing to want of vigilance on my part; and there happened an incident which inevitably tended to sharpen my watchfulness, though I was perfectly conscious there was a million to one against its occurring a second time. I came on deck to relieve Wilkinson, at midnight, after a half-hour’s nodding doze by the furnace below. He went to his cabin; I stood under the lee of a cloth seized in the weather main rigging. Pitt arrived, and I told him he could return to the cook-house and stay there till I called him. The helm being lashed, and the schooner doing very well, nothing wanted watching in particular, yet I would not have the deck abandoned, and meant to keep a look-out, turn and turn about with Pitt, as Wilkinson and Cromwell had. The snow had ceased; but it was very dark and thick, the ocean a roaring shadow, palpitating upon the eyes in rolling folds of blackness, with the quick expiring flash of foam to windward. On a sudden, looking over the weather quarter, methought I discerned a deeper shade in the night there than was elsewhere perceptible. It was like a great blot of ink upon the darkness. Even whilst I speculated, it drew out in the shape of a ship running before the gale. She seeme
d to be heading directly for us. The roof of my mouth turned dry as desert-sand; my tongue and limbs refused their office; I could neither cry nor stir, being indeed paralyzed by the terrible suddenness of that apparition and the imminence of our peril. It all happened whilst you could have told thirty. The great black mass surged up with the water boiling about the bows; she brought a thunder along with her in her rigging and sails as she soared to the crowns of the seas she was sweeping before. I could not tell what canvas she was under, but her speed was a full ten knots, and as I did not see her till she was close, she looked to come upon us as with a single bound. She passed us to windward within a stone’s throw, and vanished like a dark cloud melting into the surrounding blackness. Not a gleam of light broke from her; you heard nothing but the boiling at her bows and the thunderous pealing of the gale in her canvas. A quarter turn of the wheel would have sent us to the bottom, and her, no doubt, on top of us. Whether she was the Susan Tucker, or some other whaler, or a big South-Sea-man driven low and getting what easting she could out of the gale, I know not. She was as complete a mystery of the ocean night as any spectral fabric, and a heavier terror to me than a phantasm worked by ghosts could have proved.
I knew such a thing could not happen again, yet when I called Pitt I talked to him about it as though we must certainly be run down if he did not keep a sharp look-out, and when my watch below came round at four o’clock, I was so agitated that I was up and down till daybreak, as though my duty did not end till then.
The gale moderated at sunrise, and, though it was a gloomy, true Cape Horn morning, with dark driving clouds, the sea a dusky olive, very hollow, and frequent small quick squalls of sleet which brought the wind to us in sharp guns, yet as we could see where we were going, I got the schooner before it, heading her east-north-east, and under a reefed topsail, mainsail, and staysail, the old bucket stormed through it with the sputter and rage of a line-of-battle ship. There was a log-reel and line on deck, and I found a sand-glass in the chest in my cabin in which I had met with the quadrants, perspective glass, and the like, and I kept this log regularly going, marking a point of departure on the chart the American captain had given me, which I afterwards found to be within two leagues and a half of the true position. But for three days the weather continued so heavy that there was nothing to be done in the shape of gratifying the men’s expectations by overhauling what was left of the cargo. Indeed, we had no leisure for such work; all our waking hours had to be strictly dedicated to the schooner, and in keeping a look-out for ice. But the morning of the fourth day broke with a fine sky and a brisk breeze from a little to the east of south, to which we showed every cloth the schooner had to throw abroad, and being now by dead reckoning within a few leagues of the meridian of sixty degrees, I shaped a course north by east by my compass, with the design of getting a view of Staten Island that I might correct my calculations.
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