Unquestionably the negro had known that I was there. Never otherwise could he have ignored me so completely. I was certain too, that his cryptic remarks about Bill Hayden were intended for my ears, for he never acted without a reason, obscure, perhaps, and far-fetched, but always, according to his own queer notions, sufficient.
Sometimes it seemed as if he despised me; sometimes, as if he were concealing a warm, friendly regard for me.
An hour later, hearing the murmer of low voices, I discovered a little group of men by the mainmast; and moved by the curiosity that more than once had led me where I had no business to go, I silently approached.
"Ah," said one of the men, "so you're keeping a weather eye out for my good name, are you?" It was Captain Falk.
I was startled. It seemed as if the old African were standing at my shoulder, saying, "What did Ah told you, hey?" The cook had used almost those very words. Where, I wondered, had he got them? It was almost uncanny.
"No, sir," came the reply,—it was poor Bill Hayden's voice,—"no, sir, I didn't say that. I said—"
"Well, what did you say? Speak up!"
"Why, sir, it—well, it wasn't that, I know. I wouldn't never ha' said that. I—well, sir, it sounded something like that, I got to admit—I—I ain't so good at remembering, sir, as I might be."
The shadowy figures moved closer together.
"You'll admit, then, that it sounded like that?" There was the thud of a quick blow. "I'll show you. I don't care what you said, as long as that was what you meant. Take that! I'll show you."
"Oh!—I—that's just it, sir, don't hit me!—It may have sounded like that, but—Oh!—it never meant anything like that. I can't remember just how the words was put together—I ain't so good at remembering but—Oh!—"
The scene made me feel sick, it was so brutal; yet there was nothing that the rest of us could do to stop it.
Captain Falk was in command of the ship.
I heard a mild laugh that filled me with rage. "That's the way to make 'em take back their talk, captain. Give him a good one," said the mild voice. "He ain't the only one that 'll be better for a sound beating."
There was a scuffle of footsteps, then I heard Bill cry out, "Oh—oh!—oh!"
Suddenly a man broke from the group and fled along the deck.
"Come back here, you scoundrel!" the captain cried with vile oaths; "come back here, or I swear I'll seize you up and lash you to a bloody pulp."
The fugitive now stood in the bow, trembling, and faced those who were approaching him. "Don't," he cried piteously, "I didn't go to do nothing."
"Oh, no, not you!" said the mild voice, followed by a mild laugh. "He didn't do nothing, captain."
"Not he!" Captain Falk muttered. "I'll show him who's captain here."
There was no escape for the unfortunate man. They closed in on him and roughly dragged him from his retreat straight aft to the quarter-deck, and there I heard their brief discussion.
"Hadn't you better call up the men, captain?" asked the mild voice. "It'll do 'em good, I'll warrant you."
"No," the captain replied, hotly. "This is a personal affair. Strip him and seize him up."
I heard nothing more for a few minutes, but I could see them moving about, and presently I distinguished Bill's bare back and arms as they spread-eagled him to the rigging.
Then the rope whistled in the air and Bill moaned.
Unable to endure the sight, I was turning away, when some one coming from the cabin broke in upon the scene.
"Well," said Roger Hamlin, "what's all this about?"
Roger's calm voice and composed manner were so characteristic of him that for the moment I could almost imagine myself at home in Salem and merely passing him on the street.
"I'll have you know, sir," said Captain Falk, "that I'm master here."
"Evidently, sir."
"Then what do you mean, sir, by challenging me like that?"
"From what I have heard, I judge that the punishment is out of proportion to the offense, even if the steward's yarn was true."
"I'll have you know, that I'm the only man aboard this ship that has any judgment," Falk snarled.
"Judgment ?" Roger exclaimed; and the twist he gave the word was so funny that some one actually snickered.
"Yes, judgment !" Falk roared; and he turned on Roger with all the anger of his mean nature choking his voice. "I'll—I'll beat you, you young upstart, you! I'll beat you in that man's place," he cried, with a string of oaths.
"No," said Roger very coolly, "I think you won't."
"By heaven, I will!"
The two men faced each other like two cocks in the pit at the instant before the battle. There was a deathly silence on deck.
Such a scene, as I saw it there, if put on the stage in a theatre, would be a drama in itself without word or action. The sky was bright with stars; the land lay low and dark against the horizon; the sea whispered round the ship and sparkled with golden phosphorescence. Over our heads the masts towered to slender black shafts, which at that lofty height seemed far too frail to support the great network of rigging and spars and close-furled canvas. Dwarfed by the tall masts, by the distances of the sea, and by the vastness of the heavens, the small black figures stood silent on the quarter-deck. But one of those men was bound half-naked to the rigging, and two faced each other in attitudes that by outline alone, for we could discern the features of neither, revealed antagonism and defiance.
"No," said Roger once more, very coolly, "I think you won't."
As the captain lifted his rope to hit Bill again, Roger stepped forward.
The captain looked sharply at him; then with a shrug he said, "Oh, well, the fellow's had enough. Cut him down, cut him down."
So they unlashed Bill, and he came forward with his clothes in his arms and one long, raw welt across his back.
"Now, what did I say?" he whimpered. "What did I say to make 'em do like that?"
What had he said, indeed? Certainly nothing culpable. Some one had twisted his innocent remarks in such a way as to irritate the captain and had carried tales to the cabin. With decent officers such a thing never would have happened. Affairs had run a sad course since Captain Falk had read the burial service over Captain Whidden and Mr. Thomas, both of whom had been strict, fair, honorable gentlemen. There was a sober time in the forecastle that night, and none of us had much to say.
Next day we sent a boat ashore again, and got information that led us to sail along five miles farther, where there was a settlement from which we got a good supply of water and vegetables. This took another day, and on the morning of the day following we made sail once more and laid our course west of Lingga Island, which convinced us for a time that we really were about to bear away through Malacca Strait and on to Burma, at the very least.
I almost believed it myself, India seemed so near; and Blodgett, sleepy by day, wakeful by night, prowled about with an air of triumph. But in the forenoon watch Roger Hamlin came forward openly and told me certain things that were more momentous than any treasure-hunting trip to India that Blodgett ever dreamed of.
Captain Falk and Mr. Kipping—I suppose they must be given their titles now—watched him, and I could see that they didn't like it. They exchanged glances and stared after him suspiciously, even resentfully; but there was nothing that they could do or say. So he came on slowly and confidently, looking keenly from one man to another as he passed.
By this time the two parties on board were sharply divided, and from the attitude of the men as they met Roger's glance their partisanship was pretty plainly revealed. The two from Boston, who were, I was confident, on friendly and even familiar terms with Captain Falk and Mr. Kipping, gave him a half-concealed sneer. There was no doubt where their sympathies would lie, should Roger cross courses with our new master. The carpenter, working on a plank laid on deck, heard him coming, glanced up, and seeing who it was, continued at his labor without moving so much as a hair's breadth to let him by; the steward looked him in the eye brazenly and impersonally; and others of the crew, among them the strange Blodgett, treated him with a certain subtle rudeness, even contempt. Yet here and there a man was glad to see him coming and gave him a cordial nod, or a cheerful "Ay, ay, sir," in answer to whatever observation he let fall.
The cook alone, as I watched the scene with close interest, I could not understand. To a certain extent he seemed surly, to a certain extent, subservient. Perhaps he intended that we—and others—should be mystified.
One thing I now realized for the first time: although the crew was divided into two cliques, the understanding was much more complete on the side of Captain Falk. Among those who enjoyed the favor of our new officers there was, I felt sure, some secret agreement, perhaps even some definite organization. There seemed to be a unity of thought and manner that only a common purpose could explain, whereas the rest drifted as the wind blew.
"Ben," Roger said, coming to me where I sat on the forecastle, "I want to talk to you. Step over by the mast."
I followed him, though surprised.
"Here we can see on all sides," he said. "There are no hiding-places within earshot. Ben"—He hesitated as if to find the right words.
All were watching us now, the captain and the mate from the quarter-deck, the others from wherever they happened to be.
"I am loath to draw your sister's younger brother into danger," Roger began. His adjective was tactfully chosen. "I am almost equally reluctant to implicate you in what seems likely to confront us, because you are an old friend of mine and a good deal younger than I am. But when the time comes to go home, Ben, I'm sure we want to be able to look your sister and all the others squarely in the eyes, with our hands clean and our consciences clear—if we go home. How about it, Ben?"
I was too bewildered to answer, and in Roger's eyes something of his old twinkle appeared.
"Ultimately," he continued, grave once more and speaking still in enigmas, "we shall be vindicated in any case. But I fear that, before then, I, for one, shall have to clasp hands with mutiny, perhaps with piracy. How would you like that, Ben, with a thundering old fight against odds, a fight that likely enough will leave us to sleep forever on one of these green islands hereabouts?"
Still I did not understand.
Roger regarded me thoughtfully. "Tell me all that you know about our cargo."
"Why," said I, finding my tongue at last, "it's ginseng and woollen goods for Canton. That's all I know."
"Then you don't know that at this moment there is one hundred thousand dollars in gold in the hold of the Island Princess?"
"What?" I gasped.
"One hundred thousand dollars in gold."
I could not believe my ears. Certainly, so far as I was concerned, the secret had been well kept.
Then a new thought came to me, "Does Captain Falk know?" I asked.
"Yes," said Roger, "Captain Falk knows."
Roger Hamlin's words were to linger a long time in my ears, and so far as I then could see, there was little to say in reply. A hundred thousand dollars in gold had bought, soul and body, many a better man than Captain Falk. At that very moment Falk was watching us from the quarter-deck with an expression on his face that was partly an amused smile, partly a sneer. Weak and conceited though he was, he was master of that ship and crew in more ways than one.
But Roger had not finished. "Do you remember, Ben," he continued in a low voice, but otherwise unmindful of those about us, "that some half a dozen years ago, when Thomas Webster was sore put to it for enough money to square his debts and make a clean start, the brig Vesper, on which he had sent a venture, returned him a profit so unbelievably great that he was able to pay his creditors and buy from the Shattucks the old Eastern Empress, which he fitted out for the voyage to Sumatra that saved his fortunes?"
I remembered it vaguely—I had been only a small boy when it happened—and I listened with keenest interest. The Websters owned the Island Princess.
"Not a dozen people know all the story of that voyage. It's been a kind of family secret with the Websters. Perhaps they're ashamed to be so deeply indebted to a Chinese merchant. Well, it's a story I shouldn't tell under other conditions, but in the light of all that's come to pass, it's best you should hear the whole tale, Ben; and in some ways it's a fine tale, too. The Websters, as you probably know, had had bad luck, what with three wrecks and pirates in the West Indies. They were pretty much by the head in those days, and it was a dark outlook before them, when young Webster signed the Vesper's articles as first officer and went aboard, with all that the old man could scrape together for a venture, and with the future of his family hanging in the balance. At Whampoa young Webster went up to the Hong along with the others, and drove what bargains he could, and cleared a tidy little sum. But it was nowhere near enough to save the family. If only they could get the money to tide them over, they'd weather the gale. If not, they'd go on a lee shore. Certain men—you'd know their names, but such things are better forgotten—were waiting to attach the ships the Websters had on the ways, and if the ships were attached there would be nothing left for the Websters but stools in somebody's counting-house.
"As I've heard the story, young Webster was waiting by the river for his boat, with a face as long as you'd hope to see, when a Chinese who'd been watching him from a little distance came up and addressed him in such pidgin English as he could muster and asked after his father. Of course young Webster was taken by surprise, but he returned a civil answer, and the two fell to talking together. It seemed that, once upon a time, when the Chinese was involved, head and heels, with some rascally down-east Yankee, old man Webster had come to the rescue and had got him out of the scrape with his yellow hide whole and his moneybags untapped.
"The Chinaman seemed to suspect from the boy's long face that all was not as it should be, and he squeezed more or less of the truth out of the young fellow, had him up to the Hong again, gave him various gifts, and sent him back to America with five teak-wood chests. Just five ordinary teak-wood chests—but in those teak-wood chests, Ben, was the money that put the Websters on their feet again. The hundred thousand dollars below is for that Chinese merchant."
It was a strange tale, but stranger tales than that were told in the old town from which we had sailed.
"And Captain Falk—?" I began questioningly.
"Captain Falk was never thought of as a possible master of this ship."
"Will he try to steal the money?"
Roger raised his brows. "Steal it? Steal is a disagreeable word. He thinks he has a grievance because he was not given the chief mate's berth to begin with. He says, at all events, that he will not hand over any such sum to a yellow heathen. He thinks he can return it to the owners two-fold. Although he seldom reads his Bible, I believe he referred to the man who was given ten talents."
"But the owners' orders!" I exclaimed.
"The owners' orders in that respect were secret. They were issued to Captain Whidden and to me, and Captain Falk refuses to accept my version of them."
"And you?"
Roger smiled and looked me hard in the eye. "I am going to see that they are carried out," he said. "The Websters would be grievously disappointed if this commission were not discharged. Also—" his eyes twinkled in the old way—"I am not convinced that Captain Falk is in all respects an honest—no, let us not speak too harshly—let us say, a reliable man."
"So there'll be a fight," I mused.
"We'll see," Roger replied. "In any case, you know the story. Are you with me?"
After fifty years I can confess without shame that I was frightened when Roger asked me that question, for Roger and I were only two, and Falk, by hook or by crook, had won most of the others to his side. There was Bill Hayden, to be sure, on whom we could count; but he was a weak soul at best, and of the cook's loyalty to Roger and whatever cause he might espouse I now held grave doubts. Yet I managed to reply, "Yes, Roger, I am with you."
I thought of my sister when I said it, and of the white flutter of her handkerchief, which had waved so bravely from the old wharf when Roger and I sailed out of Salem harbor. After all, I was glad even then that I had answered as I did.
"I'll have more to say later," said Roger; "but if I stay here much longer now, Falk and Kipping will be breaking in upon us." And, turning, he coolly walked aft.
Falk and Kipping were still watching us with sneers, and not a few of the crew gave us hostile glances as we separated. But I looked after Roger with an affection and a confidence that I was too young fully to appreciate. I only realized that he was upright and fearless, and that I was ready to follow him anywhere.
More and more I was afraid of the influence that Captain Falk had established in the forecastle. More and more it seemed as if he actually had entered into some lawless conspiracy with the men. Certainly they grumbled less than before, and accepted greater discomforts with better grace; and although I found myself excluded from their councils without any apparent reason, I overheard occasional snatches of talk from which I gathered that they derived great satisfaction from their scheme, whatever it was. Even the cook would have none of me in the galley of an evening; and Roger in the cabin where no doubt he was fighting his own battles, was far away from the green hand in the forecastle. I was left to my own devices and to Bill Hayden.
To a great extent, I suppose, it counted against me that I was the son of a gentleman. But if I was left alone forward, so Roger, I learned now and then, was left alone aft.
Continually I puzzled over the complacency of the men. They would nod and smile and glance at me pityingly, even when I was getting my meat from the same kids and my tea from the same pot; and chance phrases, which I caught now and then, added to my uneasiness.
Once old Blodgett, prowling like a cat in the night, was telling how he was going to "take his money and buy a little place over Ipswich way. There's nice little places over Ipswich way where a man can settle snug as you please and buy him a wife and end his days in comfort. We'll go home by way of India, too, I'll warrant you, and take each of us our handful of round red rubies. Right's right, but right'll be left—mind what I tell you." Another time—on the same day, as I now recall it—I overheard the carpenter saying that he was going to build a brick house in Boston up on Temple Place. "And there'll be fan-lights over the door," he said, "their panels as thin as rose-leaves, and leaded glass in a fine pattern." The carpenter was a craftsman who aspired to be an artist.
But where did old Blodgett or the carpenter hope to get the money to indulge the tastes of a prosperous merchant? I suspected well enough the answer to that question, and I was not far wrong.
The cook remained inscrutable. I could not fathom the expressions of his black frowning face. Although Captain Falk of course had no direct communication with him openly, I learned through Bill Hayden that indirectly he treated him with tolerant and friendly patronage. It even did not surprise me greatly to be told that sometimes he secretly visited the galley after dark and actually hobnobbed with black Frank in his own quarters. It was almost incredible, to be sure; but so was much else in which Captain Falk was implicated, and I could see revealed now in the game that he was playing his desire to win and hold the men until they had served his ends, whatever those ends might be.
"Yass, sah," black Frank would growl absently as he passed me without a glance, "dis am de most appetizin' crew eveh Ah cooked foh. Dey's got no mo' bottom to dey innards dan a sponge has. Ah's a-cookin' mah head off to feed dat bunch of wuthless man-critters, a-a-a-a-h!" And he would stump to the galley with a brimming pail of water in each hand.
I came sadly to conclude that old Frank had found other friends more to his taste than the boy in the forecastle, and that Captain Falk, by trickery and favoritism, really was securing his grip on the crew. In all his petty manoeuvres and childish efforts to please the men and flatter them and make them think him a good officer to have over them, he had made up to this point only one or two false steps.
Working our way north by west to the Straits of Singapore, and thence on into the China Sea, where we expected to take advantage of the last weeks of the southwest monsoon, we left far astern the low, feverous shores of Sumatra. There were other games than a raid on India to be played for money, and the men thought less and less now of the rubies of Burma and the gold mohurs and rupees of Calcutta.
CHAPTER XIII
TROUBLE FORWARD
In the starboard watch, one fine day when there was neither land nor sail in sight, Davie Paine was overseeing the work on the rigging and badly botching it. The old fellow was a fair seaman himself, but for all his deep voice and big body, his best friend must have acknowledged that as an officer he was hopelessly incompetent. "Now unlay the strands so," he would say. "No, that ain't right. No, so! No, that ain't right either. Supposing you form the eye so. No, that ain't right either."
After a time we were smiling so broadly at his confused orders that we caught the captain's eye.
He came forward quickly—say what you would against Captain Falk as an officer, no one could deny that he knew his business—and instantly he took in the whole unfortunate situation. "Well, Mister Paine," he cried, sarcastically stressing the title, "are n't you man enough to unlay a bit of rope and make a Flemish eye?"
Old Davie flushed in hopeless embarrassment, and even the men who had been chuckling most openly were sorry for him. That the captain had reason to be dissatisfied with the second mate's work, we were ready enough to admit; but he should have called him aside and rebuked him privately. We all, I think, regarded such open interference as unnecessary and unkind.
"Why—y-yes, sir," Davie stammered.
"To make you a Flemish eye," Captain Falk continued in cold sarcasm, "you unlay the end of the rope and open up the yarns. Then you half-knot some half the inside yarns over that bit of wood you have there, and scrape the rest of them down over the others, and marl, parcel, and serve them together. That's the way you go to make a Flemish eye. Now then, Mister Paine, see that you get a smart job done here and keep your eyes open, you old lubber. I thought you shipped for able seaman. A fine picture of an able seaman you are, you doddering old fool!"
It is impossible to reproduce the meanness with which he gave his little lecture, or the patronizing air with which he walked away. Old Davie was quite taken aback by it and for a time he could not control his voice enough to speak. It was pitiful to see him drop all the pretensions of his office and, as if desiring only some friendly word, try to get back on the old familiar footing of the forecastle.
"I know I ain't no great shakes of a scholar," he managed to mutter at last, "and I ain't no great shakes of a second mate. But he made me second mate, he did, and he hadn't ought to shame me in front of all the men, now had he? It was him that gave me the berth. If he don't like me in it, now why don't he take it away from me? I didn't want to be second mate when he made me do it, and I can't read figures good nor nothing. Now why don't he send me forrard if he don't like the way I do things?"
The old man ran on in a pathetic monologue, for none of us felt exactly at liberty to put in our own oars, and he could find relief only in his incoherent talk. It had been a needless and unkind thing and the men almost unanimously disapproved of it. Why indeed should Captain Falk not send Davie back to the forecastle rather than make his life miserable aft? The captain was responsible only to himself for the appointment, and its tenure depended only on his own whims; but that, apparently, he had no intention of doing.
"'Tain't right," old Blodgett murmured, careful not to let Captain Falk see him talking. "He didn't ought to use a man like that."
"No, he didn't," Neddie Benson said in his squeaky voice, turning his face so that neither Davie nor Captain Falk should see the motion of his lips. "I didn't ought to ship for this voyage, either. The fortune teller—she was a lady, she was, a nice lady—she says, 'Neddie, there'll be a dark man and a light man and a store of trouble.' She kind of liked me, I think. But I up and come. I'm always reckless."
A ripple of low, mild laughter, which only Kipping could have uttered, drifted forward, and the men exchanged glances and looked furtively at old Davie.
The murmur of disapproval went from mouth to mouth, until for a time I dared hope that Captain Falk had quite destroyed the popularity that he had tried so hard to win. But, though Davie was grieved by the injustice and though the men were angry, they seemed soon to forget it in the excitement of that mysterious plot from which Roger and I were virtually the only ones excluded.
Nevertheless, like certain other very trivial happenings aboard the Island Princess, Captain Falk's unwarrantable insult to Davie Paine—it seems incongruous to call him "mister"—was to play its part later in events that as yet were only gathering way.
We had not seen much of Kipping for a time, and perhaps it was because he had kept so much to himself that to a certain extent we forgot his sly, tricky ways. His laugh, mild and insinuating, was enough to call them to mind, but we were to have a yet more disagreeable reminder.
All day Bill Hayden had complained of not feeling well and now he leaned against the deck-house, looking white and sick. Old Davie would never have troubled him, I am sure, but Kipping was built by quite another mould.
Unaware of what was brewing, I turned away, sorry for poor Bill, who seemed to be in much pain, and in response to a command from Kipping, I went aloft with an "Ay, ay sir," to loose the fore-royal. Having accomplished my errand, I was on my way down again, when I heard a sharp sound as of slapping.
Startled, I looked at the deck-house. I was aware at the same time that the men below me were looking in the same direction.
The sound of slapping was repeated; then I heard a mild, gentle voice saying, "Oh, he's sick, is he? Poor fellow! Ain't it hard to be sick away from home?" Slap—slap. "Well, I declare, what do you suppose we'd better do about it? Shan't we send for the doctor? Poor fellow!" Slap—slap. "Ah! ah! ah!" Kipping's voice hardened. "You blinking, bloody old fool. You would turn on me, would you? You would give me one, would you? You would sojer round the deck and say you're sick, would you? I 'll show you—take that—I'll show you!"
Now, as I sprang on deck and ran out where I could see what was going forward, I heard Bill's feeble reply. "Don't hit me, sir. I didn't go to do nothing. I'm sick. I've got a pain in my innards. I can't work—so help me, I can't work."
"Aha!" Again Kipping laughed mildly. "Aha! Can't work, eh? I'll teach you a lesson."
Bill staggered against the deck-house and clumsily fell, pressing his hands against his side and moaning.
"Hgh!" Kipping grunted. "Hgh!"
At that moment the day flashed upon my memory when I had sat on one side of that very corner while Kipping attempted to bully Bill on the other side of it—the day when Bill had turned on his tormentor. I now understood some of Kipping's veiled references, and a great contempt for the man who would use the power and security of his office to revenge himself on a fellow seaman who merely had stood up bravely for his rights swept over me. But what could I or the others do? Kipping now was mate, and to strike him would be open mutiny. Although thus far, in spite of the dislike with which he and Captain Falk regarded me, my good behavior and my family connections had protected me from abuse, I gladly would have forfeited such security to help Bill; but mutiny was quite another affair.
We all stood silent, while Kipping berated Bill with many oaths, though poor Bill was so white and miserable that it was almost more than we could endure. I, for one, thought of his little girl in Newburyport, and I remember that I hoped she might never know of what her loving, stupid old father was suffering.
Enraged to fury by nothing more or less than Bill's yielding to his attacks, Kipping turned suddenly and reached for the carpenter's mallet, which lay where Chips had been working nearby. With a round oath, he yelled, "I'll make you grovel and ask me to stop."
Kipping had moved quickly, but old Bill moved more quickly still. Springing to his feet like a flash, with a look of anguish on his face such as I hope I never shall see again, he warded off a blow of the mallet with his hand and, running to the side, scrambled clean over the bulwark into the sea.
We stood there like men in a waxwork for a good minute at the very least; and if you think a minute is not a long time, try it with your eyes shut. Kipping's angry snarl was frozen on his mean features,—it would have been ludicrous if the scene had not been so tragic,—and his outstretched hand still held the mallet at the end of the blow. The carpenter's mouth was open in amazement. Neddie Benson, the first to move or break the silence, had spread his hands as if he were about to clutch at a butterfly or a beetle; dropping them to his side, he gasped huskily, "She said there'd be a light man and a dark man—I—oh, Lord!"
It was the cook, as black as midnight and as inscrutable as a figurehead, who brought us to our senses. Silently observing all that had happened, he had stood by the galley, without lifting his hand or changing the expression of a single feature; but now, taking his pipe from his mouth, he roared, "Man ovehboa'd!" Then, snatching up the carpenter's bench with one hand and gathering his great body for the effort, he gave a heave of his shoulders and tossed the bench far out on the water.
As if waking from a dream, Mr. Kipping turned aft, smiling scornfully, and said with a deliberation that seemed to me criminal, "Put down the helm!"
So carelessly did he speak, that the man at the wheel did not hear him, and he was obliged to repeat the order a little more loudly. "Didn't you hear me? I say, put down the helm."
"Put down the helm, sir," came the reply; and the ship began to head up in the wind.
At this moment Captain Falk, having heard the cook's shout, appeared on deck, breathing hard, and took command. However little I liked Captain Falk, I must confess in justice to him that he did all any man could have done under the circumstances. While two or three hands cleared away a quarter-boat, we hauled up the mainsail, braced the after yards and raised the head sheets, so that the ship, with her main yards aback, drifted down in the general direction in which we thought Bill must be.
Not a man of us expected ever to see Bill again. He had flung himself overboard so suddenly, and so much time had elapsed, that there seemed to be no chance of his keeping himself afloat. I saw that the smile actually still hovered on Kipping's mean, mild mouth. But all at once the cook, near whom I was standing, grasped my arm and muttered almost inaudibly, "If dey was to look behine, dey'd get ahead, yass, sah."
Taking his hint, I looked astern and cried out loudly. Something was bobbing at the end of the log line. It was Bill clinging desperately.
When we got him on board, he was nearer dead than alive, and even the stiff drink that the captain poured between his blue lips did not really revive him. He moaned continually and now and then he cried out in pain. Occasionally, too, he tried to tell us about his little girl at Newburyport, and rambled on about how he had married late in life and had a good wife and a comfortable home, and before long, God willing, he would be back with them once more and would never sail the seas again. It was all so natural and homely that I didn't realize at the time that Bill was delirious; but when I helped the men carry him below, I was startled to find his face so hot, and presently it came over me that he did not recognize me.
Poor old stupid Bill! He meant so well, and he wished so well for all of us! It was hard that he should be the one who could not keep out of harm's way.
But there were other things to think of, more important even than the fate of Bill Hayden, and one of them was an extraordinary interview with the cook.
I heard laughter in the galley that night, and lingered near as long as I dared, with a boy's jealous desire to learn who was enjoying the cook's hospitality. By his voice I soon knew that it was the steward, and remembering how black Frank once was ready to deceive him for the sake of giving me a piece of pie, I was more disconsolate than ever. After a while I saw him leave, but I thought little of that. I still had two more hours to stand watch, so I paced along in the darkness, listening to the sound of the waves and watching the bright stars.
When presently I again passed the galley I thought I heard a suspicious sound there. Later I saw something move by the door. But neither time did I go nearer. I had no desire for further rebuffs from the old negro.
When I passed a third time, at a distance of only a foot or two, I was badly startled. A long black arm reached out from the apparently closed door; a black hand grasped me, lifted me bodily from the floor, and silently drew me into the galley, which was as dark as Egypt. I heard the cook close the door behind me and bolt it and cover the deadlight with a tin pan. What he was up to, I had not the remotest idea; but when he had barricaded and sealed every crack and cranny, he lighted a candle and set it on a saucer and glared at me ferociously.
"Mind you, boy," he said in a very low voice, "don't you think Ah'm any friend of yo's. No, sah. Don't you think Ah'm doing nothin' foh you. No, sah. 'Cause Ah ain't. No, sah. Ah'm gwine make a fo'tune dis yeh trip, Ah am. Yass, sah. Dis yeh nigger's gwine go home putty darn well off. Yass, sah. So don't you think dis yeh nigger's gwine do nothin' foh you. No, sah."
For a moment I was completely bewildered; then, as I recalled the darky's crafty and indirect ways, my confidence returned and I had the keenest curiosity to see what would be forthcoming.
"Boys, dey's a pest," he grumbled. "Dey didn't had ought to have boys aboa'd ship. No, sah. Cap'n Falk, he say so, too."
The negro was looking at me so intently that I searched his words for some hidden meaning; but I could find none.
"No, sah, boys am de mos' discombobulationest eveh was nohow. Yass, sah. Dey's been su'thin' happen aft. Yass, sah. Ah ain't gwine tell no boy, nohow. No, sah. 'Taint dis nigger would go tell a boy dat Mistah Hamlin he have a riot with Mistah Cap'n Falk, no sah. Ah ain't gwine tell no boy dat Mistah Hamlin, he say dat Mistah Cap'n Falk he ain't holdin' to de right co'se, no, sah; nor dat Mistah Cap'n Falk he bristle up like a guinea gander and he say, while he's swearin' most amazin', dat he know what co'se he's sailin', no, sah. Ah ain't gwine tell no boy dat Mistah Hamlin, he say he am supercargo, an' dat he reckon he got orders f'om de owners; and Mistah Cap'n Falk, he say he am cap'n and he cuss su'thin' awful 'bout dem orders; and Mistah Roger Hamlin he say Mistah Cap'n Falk his clock am a hour wrong and no wonder Mistah Kipping am writing in de log-book dat de ship am whar she ain't; and Mistah Kipping he swear dre'ful pious and he say by golly he am writer of dat log-book and he reckon he know what's what ain't. No, sah, Ah ain't gwine tell a boy dem things 'cause Ah tell stew'd Ah ain't, an' stew'd, him an' me is great friends, what's gwine make a fo'tune when Mistah Cap'n Falk git dat money!"
He said those last words in a whisper, and stared at me intently; in that same whisper, he repeated them, "When Mistah Cap'n Falk git dat money_!"
Then, in a strangely meditative way, as if an unfamiliar process of thought suddenly occupied all his attention, he muttered absently, letting his eyes fall, "Seem like Ah done see dat Kipping befo'; Ah jes' can't put mah finger on him." It was the second time that he had made such a remark in my hearing.
The candle guttered in the saucer that served for a candlestick, and its crazy, wavering light shone unsteadily on the black face of the cook, who continued to stare at me grimly and apparently in anger. A pan rattled as the ship rolled. Water splashed from a bucket. I watched the drops falling from the shelf. One—two—three—four—five—six—seven! Each with its pht, its little splash. They continued to drip interminably. I lost all count of them. And still the black face, motionless except for the wildly rolling eyes, stared at me across the galley stove.
CHAPTER XIV
BILL HAYDEN COMES TO THE END OF HIS VOYAGE
I was ejected from the galley as abruptly and strangely as I had been drawn into it. The candle went out at a breath from the great round lips; the big hand again closed on my shoulder and lifted me bodily from my chair. The door opened and shut, and there was I, dazed by my strange experience and bewildered by the story I had heard, outside on the identical spot from which I had been snatched ten minutes before.
In my ears the negro's parting message still sounded, "Dis nigger wouldn't tell a boy one word, no sah, not dis nigger. If he was to tell a boy jest one leetle word, dat boy, he might lay hisself out ready foh a fight. Yass, sah."
For a long time I puzzled over the whole extraordinary experience. It was so like a dream, that only the numbness of my arm where the negro's great fist had gripped it convinced me that the happenings of the night were real. But as I pondered, I found more and more significance in the cook's incoherent remarks, and became more and more convinced that their incoherence was entirely artful. Obviously, first of all, he was trying to pacify his conscience, which troubled him for breaking the promise of secrecy that he probably had given the steward, from whom he must have learned the things at which he had hinted. Also he had established for himself an alibi of a kind, if ever he should be accused of tattling about affairs in the cabin.
That Captain Falk had promised to divide the money among the crew, I long had suspected; consequently that part of the cook's revelations did not surprise me. But the picture he gave of affairs in the cabin, disconnected though it was, caused me grave concern. After all, what could Roger do to preserve the owners' property or to carry out their orders? Captain Falk had all the men on his side, except me and perhaps poor old Bill Hayden. Indeed, I feared for Roger's own safety if he had detected that rascally pair in falsifying the log; he then would be a dangerous man when we all went back to Salem together. I stopped as if struck: what assurance had I that we should go back to Salem together—or singly, for that matter? There was no assurance whatever, that all, or any one of us, would ever go back to Salem. If they wished to make way with Roger, and with me too, for that matter, the green tropical seas would keep the secret until the end of time.
I am not ashamed that I frankly was white with fear of what the future might bring. You can forgive in a boy weaknesses of which a man grown might have been guilty. But as I watched the phosphorescent sea and the stars from which I tried to read our course, I gradually overcame the terror that had seized me. I think that remembering my father and mother, and my sister, for whom I suspected that Roger cared more than I, perhaps, could fully realize, helped to compose me; and I am sure that the thought of the Roger I had known so long,—cool, bold, resourceful, with that twinkle in his steady eyes—did much to renew my courage. When eight bells struck and some one called down the hatch, "Larbowlines ahoy," and the dim figures of the new watch appeared on deck, and we of the old watch went below, I was fairly ready to face whatever the next hours might bring.
"Roger and I against them all," I thought, feeling very much a martyr, "unless," I mentally added, "Bill Hayden joins us." At that I actually laughed, so that Blodgett, prowling restlessly in the darkness, asked me crossly what was the matter. I should have been amazed and incredulous if anyone had told me that poor Bill Hayden was to play the deciding part in our affairs.
He lay now in his bunk, tossing restlessly and muttering once in a while to himself. When I went over and asked if there was anything that I could do for him, he raised himself on his elbow and stared at me more stupidly than ever. It seemed to come to him slowly who I was. After a while he made out my face by the light of the dim, swinging lantern, and thanked me, and said if I would be so good as to give him a drink of water—He never completed the sentence; but I brought him a drink carefully, and when he had finished it, he thanked me again and leaned wearily back.
His face seemed dark by the lantern-light, and I judged that it was still flushed. Muttering something about a "pain in his innards," he apparently went to sleep, and I climbed into my own bunk. The lantern swung more and more irregularly, and Bill tossed with ever-increasing uneasiness. When at last I dozed off, my own sleep was fitful, and shortly I woke with a start.
Others, too, had waked, and I heard questions flung back and forth:—
"Who was that yelled?"
"Did you hear that? Tell me, did you hear it?"
Some one spoke of ghosts,—none of us laughed,—and Neddie Benson whimpered something about the lady who told fortunes. "She said the light man and the dark man would make no end o' trouble," he cried; "and he—"
"Keep still," another voice exclaimed angrily. "It was Bill Hayden," the voice continued. "He hollered."
Getting out of my bunk, I crossed the forecastle. "Bill," I said, "are you all right?"
He started up wildly. "Don't hit me!" he cried. "That wasn't what I said— it—I don't remember just what I said, because I ain't good at remembering, but it wasn't that—don't-oh! oh!—I know it wasn't that."
Two of the men joined me, moving cautiously for the ship was pitching now in short, heavy seas.
"What's that he's saying?" one of them asked.
Before I could answer, Bill seemed suddenly to get control of himself. "Oh," he moaned. "I've got such a pain in my innards! I've got a rolling, howling old pain in my innards."
There was little that we could do, so we smoothed his blankets and went back to our own. The Island Princess was pitching more fiercely than ever now, and while I watched the lantern swing and toss before I went to sleep, I heard old Blodgett saying something about squalls and cross seas. There was not much rest for us that night. No sooner had I hauled the blankets to my chin and closed my eyes, than a shout came faintly down to us, "All-hands—on deck!"
Some one called, "Ay, ay," and we rolled out again wearily—all except Bill Hayden whose fitful tossing seemed to have settled at last into deep sleep.
Coming on deck, we found the ship scudding under close-reefed maintopsail and reefed foresail, with the wind on her larboard quarter. A heavy sea having blown up, all signs indicated that a bad night was before us; and just as we emerged from the hatch, she came about suddenly, which brought the wind on the starboard quarter and laid all aback.
In the darkness and rain and wind, we sprang to the ropes. Mr. Kipping was forward at his post on the forecastle and Captain Falk was on the quarter-deck. As the man at the wheel put the helm hard-a-starboard, we raised the fore tack and sheet, filled the foresail and shivered the mainsail, thus bringing the wind aft again, where we met her with the helm and trimmed the yards for her course. For the moment we were safe, but already it was blowing a gale, and shortly we lay to, close-reefed, under what sails we were carrying.
In a lull I heard Blodgett, who was pulling at the ropes by my side, say to a man just beyond him, "Ay, it's a good thing for us that Captain Falk got command. We'd never make our bloody fortunes under the old officers."
As the wind came again and drowned whatever else may have been said, I thought to myself that they never would have. Plainly, Captain Falk and Kipping had won over the simple-minded crew, which was ready to follow them with never a thought of the chance that that precious pair might run off with the spoils themselves and leave the others in the lurch.
But now Kipping's indescribably disagreeable voice, which we all by this time knew so well, asked, "Has anybody seen that sojering old lubber, Hayden?"
"Sick?" said the mild voice. "Sick is he? Supposing Blodgett, you go below and bring him on deck. He ain't sick, he's sojering."
"But, sir,—" Blodgett began.
"But what?" roared Kipping. His mildness changed to fierceness. "You go!" He snapped out the words, and Blodgett went.
Poor stupid old Bill!
When he appeared, Blodgett had him by the arm to help him.
"You sojering, bloody fool," Kipping cried; "do you think I'm so blind I can't see through such tricks as yours?"
A murmur of remonstrance came from the men, but Kipping paid no attention to it.
"You think, do you, that I ain't on to your slick tricks? Take that."
Bill never flinched.
"So!" Kipping muttered. "So! Bring him aft."
Though heavy seas had blown up, the squalls had subsided, and some of the men, for the moment unoccupied, trailed at a cautious distance after the luckless Bill. We could not hear what those on the quarterdeck said; but Blodgett, who stood beside me and stared into the darkness with eyes that I was convinced could see by night, cried suddenly, "He's fallen!"
Then Captain Falk called, "Come here, two or three of you, and take this man below."
Old Bill was moaning when we got there. "Sure," he groaned, "I've got a rolling—howling—old Barney's bull of a pain in my innards." But when we laid him in his bunk, he began to laugh queerly, and he seemed to pretend that he was talking to his little wee girl; for we heard him saying that her old father had come to her and that he was never going to leave her again.
To me—only a boy, you must remember—it was a horrible experience, even though I did not completely understand all that was happening; and to the others old Bill's rambling talk seemed to bring an unnamed terror.
All night he restlessly tossed, though he soon ceased his wild talking and slept lightly and fitfully. The men watching him were wakeful, too, and as I lay trying to sleep and trying not to see the swaying lantern and the fantastic shadows, I heard at intervals snatches of their low conversation.
"They hadn't ought to 'a' called him out. It warn't human. A sick man has got some rights," one of the men from Boston repeated interminably. He seemed unable to hold more than one idea at a time.
Then Blodgett would say, "Ay, it don't seem right. But we've all got to stand by the skipper. That's how we'll serve our ends best. It don't do to get too much excited."
I imagined that Blodgett's voice did not sound as if he were fully convinced of the doctrine he was preaching.
"Ay," the other would return, "but they hadn't ought to 'a' called him out. It warn't human. A sick man has got some rights, and he was allers quiet."
They talked on endlessly, while I tried in vain to sleep and while poor Bill tossed away, getting no good from the troubled slumber that the Lord sent him.
No sooner, it seemed to me, did I actually close my eyes than I woke and heard him moaning, "Water—a—drink—of—water."
The others by then had left him, so I got up and fetched water, and he muttered something more about the "pain in his innards." Then my watch was called and I went on deck with the rest.
For the most part it was a day of coarse weather. Now intermittent squalls from the southwest swept upon us with lightning and thunder, driving before them rain in solid sheets; now the ship danced in choppy waves, with barely enough wind to give her steerage-way and with a warm, gentle drizzle that wet us to the skin and penetrated into the forecastle, where blankets and clothing soon became soggy and uncomfortable. But the greater part of the time we lurched along in a gale of wind, with an occasional dash of rain, which we accepted as a compromise between those two worse alternatives, the cloudbursts that accompanied the squalls, and the enervating warm drizzle.
That Bill Hayden did not stand watch with the others, no one, apparently, noticed. The men were glad enough to forget him, I think, and the officers let his absence pass, except Davie Paine, who found opportunity to inquire of me secretly about him and sadly shook his gray head at the tidings I gave.
Below we could not forget him. I heard the larboard watch talking of it when they relieved us; and no sooner had we gone below in turn than Blodgett cried, "Look at old Bill! His face is all of a sweat."
He was up on his elbow when we came down, staring as if he had expected some one; and when he saw who it was, he kept his eyes on the hatch as if waiting for still another to come. Presently he fell back in his bunk. "Oh, I've got such a pain in my innards," he moaned.
By and by he began to talk again, but he seemed to have forgotten his pain completely, for he talked about doughnuts and duff, and Sundays ashore when he was a little shaver, and going to church, and about the tiny wee girl on the bank of the Merrimac who would be looking for her dad to come home, and lots of things that no one would have thought he knew. He seemed so natural now and so cheerful that I was much relieved about him, and I whispered to Blodgett that I thought Bill was better. But Blodgett shook his head so gravely that I was frightened in spite of my hopes, and we lay there, some of us awake, some asleep, while Bill rambled cheerily on and the lantern swung with the motion of the ship.
To-day I remember those watches below at that time in the voyage as a succession of short unrestful snatches of sleep broken by vivid pictures of the most trivial things—the swinging lantern, the distorted shadows the muttered comments of the men, Bill leaning on his elbow at the edge of his bunk and staring toward the hatch as if some one long expected were just about to come. I do not pretend to understand the reason, but in my experience it is the trifling unimportant things that after a time of stress or tragedy are most clearly remembered.
When next I woke I heard the bell—clang-clang, clang-clang, clang-clang, clang—faint and far off. Then I saw that Blodgett was sitting on the edge of his bunk, counting the strokes on his fingers. When he had finished he gravely shook his head and nodded toward Bill who was breathing harder now. "He's far gone," Blodgett whispered. "He ain't going to share in no split-up at Manila. He ain't going to put back again to India when we've got rid of the cargo. His time's come."
I didn't believe a word that Blodgett said then, but I sat beside him as still as the grave while the forecastle lantern nodded and swung as casually as if old Bill were not, for all we knew, dying. By and by we heard the bell again, and some one called from the hatch, "Eight bells! Roll out!"
The very monotony of our life—the watches below and on deck, each like every other, marked off by the faint clanging of the ship's bell—made Bill's sickness seem less dreadful. There is little to thrill a lad or even, after a time, to interest him, in the interminable routine of a long voyage.
When we came on deck Davie Paine looked us over and said, "Where's Bill?"
Blodgett shook his head. Even this simple motion had a sleepy quality that made me think of a cat.
"I'm afraid, sir," he replied, "that Bill has stood his last watch."
"So!" said old Davie, reflectively, in his deep voice, "so!—I was afraid of that." Ignorant though Davie was, and hopelessly incompetent as an officer, he had a certain kindly tolerance, increased, perhaps, by his own recent difficulties, that made him more approachable than any other man in the cabin. After a time he added, "I cal'ate I got to tell the captain." Davie's manner implied that he was taking us into his confidence.
"Yes," Neddie Benson muttered under his breath, "tell the captain! If it wasn't for Mr. Kipping and the captain, Bill would be as able a man this minute as any one of us here. It didn't do to abuse him. He ain't got the spirit to stand up under it."
Davie shuffled away without hearing what was said, and soon, instead of Captain Falk, Mr. Kipping appeared, bristling with anger.
"What's all this?" he snapped, with none of the mildness that he usually affected. "Who says Bill Hayden has stood his last watch? Is mutiny brewing? I'll have you know I'm mate here, legal and lawful, and what's more I'll show you I'm mate in a way that none of you won't forget if he thinks he can try any more of his sojering on me. I'll fix him. You go forward, Blodgett, and drag him out by the scalp-lock."
Blodgett walked off, keeping close to the bulwark, and five minutes later he was back again.
Mr. Kipping grew very red. "Well, my man," he said in a way that made my skin creep, "are you a party to this little mutiny?"
"N-no, sir," Blodgett stammered. "I—he-it ain't no use, he can't come."
The mate looked sternly at Blodgett, and I thought he was going to hit him; but instead, after a moment of hesitation, he started forward alone.
We scarcely believed our eyes.
By and by he came back again, but to us he said nothing. He went into the cabin, and when next we saw him Captain Falk was by his side.
"I don't like the looks of it," Kipping was saying, "I don't at all."
As the captain passed me he called, "Lathrop, go to the galley and get a bucket of hot water."
Running to the deck-house, I thrust my head into the galley and made known my want with so little ceremony that the cook was exasperated. Or so at least his manner intimated.
"You boy," he roared in a voice that easily carried to where the others stood and grinned at my discomfiture, "you boy, what foh you come promulgatin' in on me with 'gimme dis' and 'gimme dat' like Ah wahn't ol' enough to be yo' pa? Ain't you got no manners nohow? You vex me, yass, sah, you vex me. If we gotta have a boy on boa'd ship, why don' dey keep him out of de galley?"
Then with a change of voice that startled me, he demanded in an undertone that must have been inaudible a dozen feet away, "Have things broke? Is de fight on? Has de row started?"
Bewildered, I replied, "Why, no—it's only Bill Hayden."
Instantly he resumed his loud and abusive tone. "Well, if dey gwine send a boy heah foh wateh, wateh he's gotta have. Heah, you wuthless boy, git! Git out of heah!"
Filling a bucket with boiling water, he thrust it into my hand and shoved me half across the deck so roughly that I narrowly escaped scalding myself, then returned to his work, muttering imprecations on the whole race of boys. He was too much of a strategist for me.
When I took the bucket to the forecastle, I found the captain and Mr. Kipping looking at poor old Bill.
"Dip a cloth in the water," the captain said carelessly, "and pull his clothes off and lay the cloth on where it hurts."
I obeyed as well as I could, letting the cloth cool a bit first; and although Bill cried out sharply when it touched his skin, the heat eased him of pain, and by and by he opened his eyes for all the world as if he had been asleep and looked at Captain Falk and said in a scared voice, "In heaven's name, what's happened?"
The captain and Mr. Kipping laughed coldly. It seemed to me that they didn't care whether he lived or died.
Certainly the men of the larboard watch, who were lying in their bunks at the time, didn't like the way the two behaved. I caught the word "heartless" twice repeated.
"Well," said Captain Falk at last, "either he'll live or he'll not. How about it, Mr. Kipping?"
The mate laughed as if he had heard a good joke. "That's one of the truest things ever was said aboard a ship," he replied, in his slow, insincere way. "Yes, sir, it hits the nail on the head going up and coming down."
"Well, then, let's leave him to make up his mind."
So the two went aft together as if they had done a good day's work. But there was a buzz of disapproval in the forecastle when they had gone, and one of the men from Boston, of whom I hitherto had had a very poor opinion, actually got out of his blankets and came over to help me minister to poor Bill's needs.
"It ain't right," he said dipping the cloth in the hot water; "they never so much as gave him a dose of medicine. A man may be only a sailor, but he's worth a dose of medicine. There never come no good of denying poor Jack his pill when he's sick."
"Ay, heartless!" one of the others exclaimed. "I could tell things if I would."
That remark, I ask you to remember. The man who made it, the other of the two from Boston, had black hair and a black beard, and a nose that protruded in a big hook where he had broken it years before. It was easy to recognize his profile a long way off because of the peculiar shape of the nose. The remark itself is of little importance, of course; but a story is made up of things that seem to be of little importance, yet really are more significant by far than matters that for the moment are startling.
It was touching to see the solicitude of the men and the clumsy kindness of their efforts to help poor Bill when the captain and the mate had left him. They crowded up to his bunk and smoothed out his blankets and spoke to him more gently than I should have believed possible. So angry were they at the brutality of the two officers, that the coldest and hardest of them all gave the sick man a muttered word of sympathy or an awkward helping hand.
We worked over him, easing him as best we could, while the bell struck the half hours and the hours; and for a while he seemed more comfortable. In a moment of sanity he looked up at me with a sad smile and said, "I wish, lad, I surely wish I could do something for you." But long before the watch was over he once more began to talk about the tiny wee girl at Newburyport—"Cute she is as they make 'em," he reiterated weakly, "a-waiting for her dad to come home." And by and by he spoke of his wife, —"a good wife," he called her,—and then he made a little noise in his throat and lay for a long time without moving.
"He's dead," the man from Boston said at last; there was no sound in the forecastle except the rattle of the swinging lantern and the chug-chug of waves.
I was younger than the others and more sensitive, so I went on deck and leaned on the bulwark, looking at the ocean and seeing nothing.
