“Certainly!” the captain said, and he spoke jovially, as though doing us a favor. “That’s what makes us sure you’re Englishmen; but whether you’re Englishmen or runaway Americans, here’s your chance! War’ll follow the embargo, and this is the cruiser that’ll put the Yankees in their places.”
He looked at us hard and sharp. We stood silent before him. God knows there was no fitting answer to be made to what he had said; and besides that, the captain of a British man-of-war is a harder and more dangerous taskmaster than any king and therefore no man with whom to argue.
“I have a word for you before you enter on your duties in this king’s cruiser,” he growled. “Play the man and keep out of trouble, and there’ll be prize money coming to you and shore leave aplenty. Go to playing the fool with your fists or your mouth, and you’ll get the cat at the gratings. As for this talk about being Americans, belay it, or I’ll lay you a course for a haven that’ll rot the skin off your bones. That’s the tidy stone prison up among the Dartmoor snows that we built for those who try to trip us in our little wars!” He glowered at us from under his beetling, mouse-like brows; then nodded to his lieutenant. “Take ’em forward, Mr. Doyle.”
VII
WHEN I had heard from the captain of the corvette, Sir Mungo Bullard-Jones, that I was a tricky Yankee, and from Lieutenant Drake Doyle that I was full of Yankee tricks, and from the bos’n that he was sick of seeing bloody Yankees brought aboard a decent ship, knowing he would have to set a watch to keep the tricky rats from stealing the copper sheathing from the corvette’s bottom; and when these fine Britishers had played us the foulest trick that had ever been done me, and lashed the both of us like black slaves or baulky horses into the bargain, and set us to carrying slops and tarring ropes and messing with rabbit-toothed, twist-brained beasts out of the filthy cellars of the world’s filthiest cities—Dublin and Liverpool. . . When all these things had happened, I said to myself that while I had so far had no training in trickiness, it was never too late to begin; and since they expected trickiness, I’d give them as much of it as I could rake and scrape together, and see them all in hell if ever I could.
Yet I also determined that never, while I remained on the corvette, would I show anything but a smiling and contented face to any Englishman, whether officer or sailor; for I knew that if I could trick them into thinking me harmless and not worth watching, all subsequent trickeries would be easier of accomplishment.
I was at home on a brig, whether full-rigged or jackass: consequently I was equally easy on a schooner or a barkentine or a ship. As to a cruiser such as the one into which we had been pressed, I could have sailed her with no trouble, for she was ship-rigged; but when it came to fitting in with her crew of some sixscore men, I was in a state of befuddlement for days, what with gun stations and bevies of half-baked midshipmen to issue senseless orders, and a half-dozen numbers to answer to, and captains of a score of different parts of the craft, and droves of marines to keep an eye on the movements of the seamen, and food that nobody on the Neutrality would have fed to Pinky for fear of poisoning him, and all the rules and regulations and officials and divisions and subdivisions that are necessary to keep an unwieldy body of men, most of them worthless, from turning a vessel into a madhouse in time of stress.
I made out after a fashion, and so escaped further rope-endings, largely through the help of a Wiscasset seaman in the next mess to mine, John Cromwell, a cat-footed man not overly tall, but quick and powerful. He walked with his stomach pushed a little forward, so that he looked fattish; but he was not, and his upper arm, where it joined his shoulder, was near as wide as his thigh. He came to me on the pretense of showing me how to ticket a bag of food for dropping into the great mess kettles called the coppers. The first thing he said was “Where you from?” I told him Arundel and he nodded his head, eyeing me covertly.
“I watched you come aboard. Captain, wa’n’t you?”
“I suppose you might say so, but they say not,” I told him.
“There’s talk in the tops,” he said, speaking from the side of his mouth, “that a captain wouldn’t never have been took if we wasn’t close to a war with—” He left the sentence unfinished, canting his head quickly in a half circle that seemed to include the entire British navy.
He narrowed his mouth still more. “There’s eleven Yankees on this ship, all of ’em pressed. Three of ’em’s waisters and don’t count. Two of ’em’s boys. One works for the master at arms, and he’d tattle on himself in his sleep, so to hell with him. There’s the three of you, and me, and ’Lisha Lord.”
“Who’s ’Lisha Lord?” I asked.
Cromwell snorted as though I had asked who Bonaparte might be. “ ’Lisha Lord’s captain of the maintop,” he said. “He comes from Bath. There ain’t anywheres he ain’t been. He can shoot the ear off a horsefly with a musket or a long twenty-four. He knows all there is to know about this corvette.”
“Why don’t you let him tell you about the war, if he knows so much?” I asked, though satisfied Cromwell would do me no harm.
“You York County folks always was suspicious of us Down-Easters,” he said angrily. “ ’Lisha Lord wants to know what there is in this war talk, and I want to know too. How long you think we’d stay on this damned weevil box in case of—in case of—” He canted his head again and worked a shoulder under his shirt. I suspected he, like many another American, must have had his back made into hash by a British nine-tailed cat.
“You’re right,” I said. “There was a three months’ embargo put on, starting the fourth of April.”
“And on the fourth of July we fight?” he asked.
“Looks so,” I said.
“Well I declare!” he drawled; and with that he hurried away, light as a fox to the roll of the ship.
As a result of this, Cromwell passed the word to me at noon the next day to go into the maintop. It was a fine big top with rope railings, and when I came over the edge I found two men in it, one a tall man with black whiskers whose sheen gave them the look of having been rubbed with an oily rag. At sight of me, the man with the glossy whiskers rounded suddenly on the other. “Look at that breast backstay!” he growled. “Look at the way she’s chafed! Any-body’d think this was a Portygee fisherman instead of a king’s cruiser! Spratt, you hop down to the first luff and tell him I say to get somebody up here to serve that backstay with leather.” The other immediately lowered himself through the lubber hole.
The whiskered man, I saw, must be ’Lisha Lord. Turning his attention to me, he went on growling. “My good gravy! I don’t know what the world’s coming to when they put boys in command of merchantmen! Had either of your mates been weaned, by any chance?”
“Both of ’em,” I said, “and on good New England rum, what’s more! Maybe you can tell me whether there’s any talk of discontinuing the use of old women in the maintops of British sloops-of-war?”
He sniffed and peered down through the lubber hole; then sat at the edge of the top, his legs doubled under him and his glossy beard pointing between his knees at the slender canted deck far below, on which seamen moved as slow and maggot-like as sheep in a meadow seen from a mountain side.
“If I’m any judge,” he said, “you’re madder’n I was when they pressed me, and I was pretty gol-blamed mad.”
I saw no reason to answer. When he twisted his head over his shoulder and looked at my face, he seemed to need no reply. “Yes,” he continued, “me and John cal’late to cut loose from this durned old scow.”
“How did you figure on leaving her?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “we figured you’d figure out a way; and we figured on hauling our wind when you do.”
He leaned backward to peer through the lubber hole once more.
“You figure we’d have trouble getting off?” I asked.
He laughed shortly. “Brother,” he said, “you ain’t had dealings with these dirty sea soldiers on a British ship! Some folks think they have ’em aboard
to fight; but what they have ’em for is to put a bullet between our shoulders if we make a move to slip our moorings. You can lay to it Jonah wouldn’t have got out of the whale so easy if he’d swallered a few lobster-backs.”
“Seems to me you and Cromwell could have left the ship long before this if you’d wanted to,” I told him, wishing to be sure of him.
He laughed again. “Listen,” he said. “The British never pay off except in home ports for fear the crews of their whole damned navy’d desert; and I’ll bet you they would, too. They always hold back six months’ pay and prize money for the same reason. They got a way of turning men over from ship to ship so you stay away from England for about three years—ten, sometimes—and then get back with a sheaf of pay notes fit to choke a swordfish! Then they got a lot of lunatics running their pay section, and you couldn’t get your notes cashed if you spent all your shore leave in the paymaster’s office. If you want money, you sell your notes to the Jews. They allow you six shillings to the pound.”
“That’s less than thirty cents on the dollar,” I protested.
“Yes, by gravy!” ’Lisha Lord returned, “and that’s why some of us New Englanders kept hanging on. Well, we’re ready to quit now. I’ve got more than seventeen hundred dollars in pay and prize money coming to me, but I’ll quit any minute.”
“Well, there’s this about it,” I said: “I know Tucker and I know Bickford, and they’ll do as I tell ’em; but you might find me too young to take orders from.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he assured me. “I take orders from some of these half-grown midshipmen, don’t I?”
“All right,” I said, “only I’m no midshipman.”
’Lisha Lord nodded. “You’re the old man.”
“See if you can find out where we’re bound,” I told him, “and contrive for Tucker and Bickford to get to know something about long guns.”
“Hell,” he said, “I can show ’em all there is to a long gun in half an hour, and we’re bound for the Banks to chase Frenchies away from our fishing fleet. After that we’ll make Halifax.” He gave me a quick push. “Down you go—lee side: here comes the bos’n.”
* * *
Lord and Cromwell, being old hands and used to English ways, were one thing; but Jeddy, who found a new grievance wherever he turned, was another thing altogether. He couldn’t keep his feelings from his face when he spoke with me, but looked so murderous that any officer would have been justified in clapping him in the Black Hole on general principles.
“Wipe that look off your face!” I told him when he caught me alone one day. “Keep smiling if you don’t want to get us all shipped to England for the next ten years!”
He grinned a horrible, blood-curdling grin, worse than the malevolent stare it replaced. “Dried peas!” he whispered. “Nothing but dried peas and pork for mess twice in a week! You know what pea soup does to me, Richard! I’m blown up like a bladder!”
He seemed to ooze profanity.
“Forget these things,” I told him. “They’re nothing.”
“Oh, are they!” he snarled. “How about having to hang over a yard and take in sail when you’re blown up like a bladder? I’d rather teach the rule of three to all the idiot children in Arundel than fold myself over a yard when I’m like that!”
“Look pleasant!” I told him.
He contorted his face in a ghastly simper. “If that’s nothing,” he persisted, “how about having to sling my hammock between two jailbirds so filthy I’m afraid of being poisoned, just sleeping beside ’em. You know what they do? They call me a damned Yankee! And I can’t answer ’em, because it’s the simple truth.”
“Look here,” I said to him as fiercely as I could say it in a whisper, “shut up! Wait! This won’t last forever!”
“It’ll be forever for me if they give me any more pea soup!” he growled. There were times, indeed, when I feared that Jeddy, unable to express his bitter rancor against the British, would die of an apoplexy.
* * *
We cruised for a week off the Banks, handing out medicine and rum to English fishermen; and though we wallowed through a gurry of fog and rain for a great part of the time, there was not enough of a grog allowance, so that we were half sick, all of us, and as full of coughs and whoops as a ledge full of seals.
Our red-faced captain was given, according to the crew, to a heavy consumption of port wine, and I think his liver or his stomach was affected by his anger and by days of inaction; for he was touchy while we lay in the fog. He watched the men continually, and had them flogged whenever he saw one of them so much as looking cross-eyed. He caught Jeddy at some sort of facial contortion one sticky, shivery afternoon. At once he began to bellow that Jeddy had malingered at the polishing of the monkey tail on a carronade; and the next second he ordered him to the after gangway for a catting.
I wanted to go below when they peeled off Jeddy’s shirt, lashed his wrists to the hammock nettings over his head and made his feet fast to a hatch grating; but I dared not move, not even to shut my eyes, not only because the English require a flogging to be witnessed by all hands, so to teach them a lesson, but because I knew the captain would see me, which might have proved unpleasant, since he was aching to serve everyone the same way if he could find an excuse.
While Jeddy stood there, waiting, his eyes flicked over us who were watching in the waist and caught at mine for a second. Then he faced to the front with a small pale smile. When the bos’n’s mate swung the cat against him, his head snapped a little and his eyelids flickered: the skin on his back jerked up as though drawn by halyards and then slipped slowly down; but in spite of the red wales that grew and grew across his muscles and crawled into the deep groove over his backbone, his lips were still curved upward, as though he faintly contemplated a pleasure yet to come. To me that smile meant more than all his profanity and scowling, and I thought to myself there were squalls ahead for any Englishman Jeddy might later encounter.
When, after his flogging, I came across him in the rigging or at the coppers, he said nothing, but he smiled that same pale smile; and his eyes looked red, like those of a weasel making up his mind to go down after a rabbit.
It was late in May when we raised the high hill of Halifax in Nova Scotia and stood into long, narrow Chebucto Bay, as fine a harbor as there is in the world, but the dreariest looking place I know, with one exception.
I knew, as we went through the western channel into the harbor, that this was where we must escape from the Gorgon if ever we hoped to escape at all; and while I racked my brains for a means by which the five of us could leave the ship, I caught sight of a brig that seemed familiar. As we came abeam of her, I saw a nick in the edge of the smoke pipe that stuck from the galley; and there came into my mind, suddenly, how I had stood on the end of the dock in Portland and thrown the half of a brick at just such a brig with just such a nick in the edge of her smoke pipe.
She was the Riddle, captained by Eh Bagley; and I felt, somehow, she was manna sent from heaven, though I could not see at the moment how it would nourish us.
I knew, however, that Eli Bagley, famous in every Maine seaport for being meaner than all get-out, would be aching to pay me for the black eye I had given him in Portland and, even without that score to settle, was not a man to help a distressed fellow counbyman at the price of any risk to himself.
Nevertheless, I looked hard at the little Riddle and began to think about her even harder.
VIII
THE officers of the Gorgon watched us like hawks in Halifax harbor; for it was plain to them that every American aboard would cut and run if he had the chance. Therefore no American was given shore leave. Wherever we moved, from bowsprit to taffrail, there was always a marine with his eyes fixed upon us; and I, eager to devise a method of escape that would harm no one but myself if it failed, was near desperate before my plans at last were made.
There was a constant passing of bumboats between the shore and the Gorgon at all horns of the da
y and night, and a great hurroaring and screaming on the part of drunken seamen and their equally drunken women; for women come aboard British men-of-war when they are in port, do what they please, and stay as long as a seaman has a shilling to spend on them.
Always there were traders somewhere about the decks, dealing in trinkets and food, and illicitly in rum; and through the night drunken sailors were perpetually returning, some of them carried, and some still able to sing unmelodiously and fight each other.
With all these things in mind I had ’Lisha Lord get me two bottles of brandy, a long knife, a curved marlinspike, and a ball of spun yam. At sundown on our second day in Halifax harbor, I gave out instructions and stations to Lord, so that he could pass them on to Jeddy and Cromwell and Tommy Bickford.
The noisiest and busiest time on the Gorgon’s decks during the preceding evening had been at nine o’clock; and immediately after that hour on the night of our attempt, Jeddy Tucker came reeling around the deck, seemingly as full as a tick. He had a bottle of brandy stuck in the waistband of his trousers; and almost at once he laid hold of a girl, whipped out the bottle, and went to hullooing about everybody being shipmates together. At this the seaman on whose knee the girl had been sitting began to roar and bellow, but Jeddy took her by the arm and ran forward with her, the outraged seaman pelting after him.
They stopped by the starboard sheet anchor. Here Jeddy, dodging behind the girl as if for protection, worried the cork from the bottle and offered it to the willing Nova Scotia damsel. The seaman seized it, and he and Jeddy wrestled together, the girl pinched between them. Some of the brandy spilled upon her from the bottle. She squealed, and the sentry in the bow walked over to look at the trouble. Having been waiting for this, I moved forward, slid over the bulwarks by the larboard sheet anchor, went down the cable until I could go no farther, kicked off my shoes and dropped feet first into the water.
The Lively Lady Page 7