“I’m blimed—!” Williams began, with a sort of excited expectation. And then he stopped as abruptly as he had begun. For, in a moment, the sail had thrashed right over the after side of the yard, apparently knocking Tom clean from off the foot-rope.
“My God!” I shouted out loud. “He’s gone!”
For an instant there was a blur over my eyes, and Williams was singing out something that I could not catch. Then, just as quickly, it went, and I could see again, clearly.
Williams was pointing, and I saw something black, swinging below the yard. Williams called out something fresh, and made a run for the fore rigging. I caught the last part —
“—ther garskit.”
Straightway, I knew that Tom had managed to grab the gasket as he fell, and I bolted after Williams to give him a hand in getting the youngster into safety.
Down on deck, I caught the sound of running feet, and then the Second Mate’s voice. He was asking what the devil was up; but I did not trouble to answer him then. I wanted all my breath to help me aloft. I knew very well that some of the gaskets were little better than old shakins; and, unless Tom got hold of something on the t’gallant yard below him, he might come down with a run any moment. I reached the top, and lifted myself over it in quick time. Williams was some distance above me. In less than half a minute, I reached the t’gallant yard. Williams had gone up on to the royal. I slid out on to the t’gallant foot-rope until I was just below Tom; then I sung out to him to let himself down to me, and I would catch him. He made no answer, and I saw that he was hanging in a curiously limp fashion, and by one hand.
Williams’s voice came down to me from the royal yard. He was singing out to me to go up and give him a hand to pull Tom up on to the yard. When I reached him, he told me that the gasket had hitched itself round the lad’s wrist. I bent beside the yard, and peered down. It was as Williams had said, and I realised how near a thing it had been. Strangely enough, even at that moment, the thought came to me how little wind there was. I remembered the wild way in which the sail had lashed at the boy.
All this time, I was busily working, unreeving the port buntline. I took the end, made a running bowline with it round the gasket, and let the loop slide down over the boy’s head and shoulders. Then I took a strain on it and tightened it under his arms. A minute later we had him safely on the yard between us. In the uncertain moonlight, I could just make out the mark of a great lump on his forehead, where the foot of the sail must have caught him when it knocked him over.
As we stood there a moment, taking our breath, I caught the sound of the Second Mate’s voice close beneath us. Williams glanced down; then he looked up at me and gave a short, grunting laugh.
“Crikey!” he said.
“What’s up?” I asked, quickly.
He jerked his head backwards and downwards. I screwed round a bit, holding the jackstay with one hand, and steadying the insensible Ordinary with the other. In this way I could look below. At first, I could see nothing. Then the Second Mate’s voice came up to me again.
“Who the hell are you? What are you doing?”
I saw him now. He was standing at the foot of the weather t’gallant rigging, his face was turned upwards, peering round the after side of the mast. It showed to me only as a blurred, pale-coloured oval in the moonlight.
He repeated his question.
“It’s Williams and I, Sir,” I said. “Tom, here, has had an accident.”
I stopped. He began to come up higher towards us. From the rigging to leeward there came suddenly a buzz of men talking.
The Second Mate reached us.
“Well, what’s up, anyway?” he inquired, suspiciously. “What’s happened?”
He had bent forward, and was peering at Tom. I started to explain; but he cut me short with:
“Is he dead?”
“No, Sir,” I said. “I don’t think so; but the poor beggar’s had a bad fall. He was hanging by the gasket when we got to him. The sail knocked him off the yard.”
“What?” he said, sharply.
“The wind caught the sail, and it lashed back over the yard —”
“What wind?” he interrupted. “There’s no wind, scarcely.” He shifted his weight on to the other foot. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what I say, Sir. The wind brought the foot of the sail over the top of the yard and knocked Tom clean off the foot-rope. Williams and I both saw it happen.”
“But there’s no wind to do such a thing; you’re talking nonsense!”
It seemed to me that there was as much of bewilderment as anything else in his voice; yet I could tell that he was suspicious—though, of what, I doubted whether he himself could have told.
He glanced at Williams, and seemed about to say something. Then, seeming to change his mind, he turned, and sung out to one of the men who had followed him aloft, to go down and pass out a coil of new, three-inch manilla, and a tailblock.
“Smartly now!” he concluded.
“Aye, aye, Sir,” said the man, and went down swiftly.
The Second Mate turned to me.
“When you’ve got Tom below, I shall want a better explanation of all this, than the one you’ve given me. It won’t wash.”
“Very well, Sir,” I answered. “But you won’t get any other.”
“What do you mean?” he shouted at me. “I’ll let you know I’ll have no impertinence from you or any one else.”
“I don’t mean any impertinence, Sir—I mean that it’s the only explanation there is to give.”
“I tell you it won’t wash!” he repeated. “There’s something too damned funny about it all. I shall have to report the matter to the Captain. I can’t tell him that yarn —” He broke off abruptly.
“It’s not the only damned funny thing that’s happened aboard this old hooker,” I answered. “You ought to know that, Sir.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, quickly.
“Well, Sir,” I said, “to be straight, what about that chap you sent us hunting after up the main the other night? That was a funny enough affair, wasn’t it? This one isn’t half so funny.”
“That will do, Jessop!” he said, angrily. “I won’t have any back talk.” Yet there was something about his tone that told me I had got one in on my own. He seemed all at once less able to appear confident that I was telling him a fairy tale.
After that, for perhaps half a minute, he said nothing. I guessed he was doing some hard thinking. When he spoke again it was on the matter of getting the Ordinary down on deck.
“One of you’ll have to go down the lee side and steady him down,” he concluded.
He turned and looked downwards.
“Are you bringing that gantline?” he sang out.
“Yes, Sir,” I heard one of the men answer.
A moment later, I saw the man’s head appear over the top. He had the tail-block slung round his neck, and the end of the gantline over his shoulder.
Very soon we had the gantline rigged, and Tom down on deck. Then we took him into the fo’cas’le and put him in his bunk. The Second Mate had sent for some brandy, and now he started to dose him well with it. At the same time a couple of the men chafed his hands and feet. In a little, he began to show signs of coming round. Presently, after a sudden fit of coughing, he opened his eyes, with a surprised, bewildered stare. Then he caught at the edge of his bunk-board, and sat up, giddily. One of the men steadied him, while the Second Mate stood back, and eyed him, critically. The boy rocked as he sat, and put up his hand to his head.
“Here,” said the Second Mate, “take another drink.”
Tom caught his breath and choked a little; then he spoke.
“By gum!” he said, “my head does ache.”
He put up his hand, again, and felt at the lump on his forehead. Then he bent forward and stared round at the men grouped about his bunk.
“What’s up?” he inquired, in a confused sort of way, and seeming as if he could not see us clearly.
“What’s up?” he asked again.
“That’s just what I want to know!” said the Second Mate, speaking for the first time with some sternness.
“I ain’t been snoozin’ while there’s been a job on?” Tom inquired, anxiously.
He looked round at the men appealingly.
“It’s knocked ’im dotty, strikes me,” said one of the men, audibly.
“No,” I said, answering Tom’s question, “you’ve had —”
“Shut that, Jessop!” said the Second Mate, quickly, interrupting me. “I want to hear what the boy’s got to say for himself.”
He turned again to Tom.
“You were up at the fore royal,” he prompted.
“I carn’t say I was, Sir,” said Tom, doubtfully. I could see that he had not gripped the Second Mate’s meaning.
“But you were!” said the Second, with some impatience. “It was blowing adrift, and I sent you up to shove a gasket round it.”
“Blowin’ adrift, Sir?” said Tom, dully.
“Yes! blowing adrift. Don’t I speak plainly?”
The dullness went from Tom’s face, suddenly.
“So it was, Sir,” he said, his memory returning. “The bloomin’ sail got chock full of wind. It caught me bang in the face.”
He paused a moment.
“I believe —” he began, and then stopped once more.
“Go on!” said the Second Mate. “Spit it out!”
“I don’t know, Sir,” Tom said. “I don’t understand —”
He hesitated again.
“That’s all I can remember,” he muttered, and put his hand up to the bruise on his forehead, as though trying to remember something.
In the momentary silence that succeeded, I caught the voice of Stubbins.
“There hain’t hardly no wind,” he was saying, in a puzzled tone.
There was a low murmur of assent from the surrounding men.
The Second Mate said nothing, and I glanced at him, curiously. Was he beginning to see, I wondered, how useless it was to try to find any sensible explanation of the affair? Had he begun at last to couple it with that peculiar business of the man up the main? I am inclined now to think that this was so; for, after staring a few moments at Tom, in a doubtful sort of way, he went out of the fo’cas’le, saying that he would inquire further into the matter in the morning. Yet, when the morning came, he did no such thing. As for his reporting the affair to the Skipper, I much doubt it. Even did he, it must have been in a very casual way; for we heard nothing more about it; though, of course, we talked it over pretty thoroughly among ourselves.
With regard to the Second Mate, even now I am rather puzzled by his attitude to us aloft. Sometimes I have thought that he must have suspected us of trying to play off some trick on him—perhaps, at the time, he still half suspected one of us of being in some way connected with the other business. Or, again, he may have been trying to fight against the conviction that was being forced upon him, that there was really something impossible and beastly about the old packet. Of course, these are only suppositions.
And then, close upon this, there were further developments.
V
The End of Williams
As i have said, there was a lot of talk, among the crowd of us forward, about Tom’s strange accident. None of the men knew that Williams and I had seen it happen. Stubbins gave it as his opinion that Tom had been sleepy, and missed the foot-rope. Tom, of course, would not have this by any means. Yet, he had no one to appeal to; for, at that time, he was just as ignorant as the rest, that we had seen the sail flap up over the yard.
Stubbins insisted that it stood to reason it couldn’t be the wind. There wasn’t any, he said; and the rest of the men agreed with him.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t know about all that. I’m a bit inclined to think Tom’s yarn is the truth.”
“How do you make that hout?” Stubbins asked, unbelievingly. “There haint nothin’ like enough wind.”
“What about the place on his forehead?” I inquired, in turn. “How are you going to explain that?”
“I ’spect he knocked himself there when he slipped,” he answered.
“Likely ’nuff,” agreed old Jaskett, who was sitting smoking on a chest near by.
“Well, you’re both a damn long way out of it!” Tom chipped in, pretty warm. “I wasn’t asleep; an’ the sail did bloomin’ well hit me.”
“Don’t you be impertinent, young feller,” said Jaskett.
I joined in again.
“There’s another thing, Stubbins,” I said. “The gasket Tom was hanging by, was on the after side of the yard. That looks as if the sail might have flapped it over? If there were wind enough to do the one, it seems to me that it might have done the other.”
“Do you mean that it was hunder ther yard, or hover ther top?” he asked.
“Over the top, of course. What’s more, the foot of the sail was hanging over the after part of the yard, in a bight.”
Stubbins was plainly surprised at that, and before he was ready with his next objection, Plummer spoke.
“’oo saw it?” he asked.
“I saw it!” I said, a bit sharply. “So did Williams; so—for that matter—did the Second Mate.”
Plummer relapsed into silence; and smoked; and Stubbins broke out afresh.
“I reckon Tom must have had a hold of the foot and the gasket, and pulled ’em hover the yard when he tumbled.”
“No!” interrupted Tom. “The gasket was under the sail. I couldn’t even see it. An’ I hadn’t time to get hold of the foot of the sail, before it up and caught me smack in the face.”
“’Ow did yer get ’old er ther gasket, when yer fell, then?” asked Plummer.
“He didn’t get hold of it,” I answered for Tom. “It had taken a turn round his wrist, and that’s how we found him hanging.”
“Do you mean to say as ’e ’adn’t got ’old of ther garsket?,” Quoin inquired, pausing in the lighting of his pipe.
“Of course, I do,” I said. “A chap doesn’t go hanging on to a rope when he’s jolly well been knocked senseless.”
“Ye’re richt,” assented Jock. “Ye’re quite richt there, Jessop.”
Quoin concluded the lighting of his pipe.
“I dunno,” he said.
I went on, without noticing him.
“Anyway, when Williams and I found him, he was hanging by the gasket, and it had a couple of turns round his wrist. And besides that, as I said before, the foot of the sail was hanging over the after side of the yard, and Tom’s weight on the gasket was holding it there.”
“It’s damned queer,” said Stubbins, in a puzzled voice. “There don’t seem to be no way of gettin’ a proper hexplanation to it.”
I glanced at Williams, to suggest that I should tell all that we had seen; but he shook his head, and, after a moment’s thought, it seemed to me that there was nothing to be gained by so doing. We had no very clear idea of the thing that had happened, and our half facts and guesses would only have tended to make the matter appear more grotesque and unlikely. The only thing to be done was to wait and watch. If we could only get hold of something tangible, then we might hope to tell all that we knew, without being made into laughing-stocks.
I came out from my think, abruptly.
Stubbins was speaking again. He was arguing the matter with one of the other men.
“You see, with there bein’ no wind, scarcely, ther thing’s himpossible, an’ yet —”
The other man interrupted with some remark I did not catch.
“No,” I heard Stubbins say. “I’m hout of my reckonin’. I don’t savvy it one bit. It’s too much like a damned fairy tale.”
“Look at his wrist!” I said.
Tom held out his right hand and arm for inspection. It was considerably swollen where the rope had been round it.
“Yes,” admitted Stubbins. “That’s right enough; but it don’t tell you nothin’.”
I made no reply. As Stubbins said, it told you “nothin’.” And there I let it drop. Yet, I have told you this, as showing how the matter was regarded in the fo’cas’le. Still, it did not occupy our minds very long; for, as I have said, there were further developments.
The three following nights passed quietly; and then, on the fourth, all those curious signs and hints culminated suddenly in something extraordinarily grim. Yet, everything had been so subtle and intangible, and, indeed, so was the affair itself, that only those who had actually come in touch with the invading fear, seemed really capable of comprehending the terror of the thing. The men, for the most part, began to say the ship was unlucky, and, of course, as usual! there was some talk of there being a Jonah in the ship. Still, I cannot say that none of the men realised there was anything horrible and frightening in it all; for I am sure that some did, a little; and I think Stubbins was certainly one of them; though I feel certain that he did not, at that time, you know, grasp a quarter of the real significance that underlay the several queer matters that had disturbed our nights. He seemed to fail, somehow, to grasp the element of personal danger that, to me, was already plain. He lacked sufficient imagination, I suppose, to piece the things together—to trace the natural sequence of the events, and their development. Yet I must not forget, of course, that he had no knowledge of those two first incidents. If he had, perhaps he might have stood where I did. As it was, he had not seemed to reach out at all, you know, not even in the matter of Tom and the fore royal. Now, however, after the thing I am about to tell you, he seemed to see a little way into the darkness, and realise possibilities.
I remember the fourth night, well. It was a clear, star-lit, moonless sort of night: at least, I think there was no moon; or, at any rate, the moon could have been little more than a thin crescent, for it was near the dark time.
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 334