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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Honour of the Flag, by W. Clark Russell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Honour of the Flag
+
+Author: W. Clark Russell
+
+Release Date: November 23, 2006 [EBook #19899]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Don Perry and the Online Distributed
+Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             SHORT STORY
+
+
+                            THE HONOUR OF
+                              THE FLAG
+
+
+                                 BY
+
+                          W. CLARK RUSSELL
+
+
+                AUTHOR OF "THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR,"
+                  "LIFE OF LORD NELSON," ETC., ETC.
+
+
+
+                         G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
+
+               NEW YORK                     LONDON
+       27 West Twenty-third Street.  24 Bedford Street, Strand.
+
+                                1895
+
+            The Knickerbocker Press, New Rochelle, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+                             SHORT STORY
+
+
+
+
+_Contents_.
+
+                                             PAGE
+
+=The Honour of the Flag=                       3
+
+=Cornered=!                                   28
+
+=A Midnight Visitor=                          41
+
+=Plums from a Sailor's Duff=                  57
+
+=The Strange Adventures of a South Seaman=    82
+
+=The Adventures of Three Sailors=            110
+
+=The Strange Tragedy of the "White Star="    137
+
+=The Ship Seen on the Ice=                   163
+
+
+
+THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG
+
+
+
+
+                      =_The Honour of the Flag_=.
+
+                           A THAMES TRAGEDY.
+
+
+Manifold are the historic interests of the river Thames. There is
+scarcely a foot of its mud from London Bridge to Gravesend Reach that
+is not as "consecrated" as that famous bit of soil which Dr. Samuel
+Johnson and Mr. Richard Savage knelt and kissed on stepping ashore at
+Greenwich. One of the historic interests, however, threatens to perish
+out of the annals. It does not indeed rise to such heroic proportions
+as you find in the story of the Dutch invasion of the river, or in old
+Hackluyt's solemn narrative of the sailing of the expedition organised
+by Bristol's noble worthy, Sebastian Cabot; but it is altogether too
+good and stirring to merit erasure from the Thames's history books by
+the neglect or ignorance of the historian.
+
+It is absolutely true: I pledge my word for that on the authority of
+the records of the Whitechapel County Court.
+
+In the year 1851 there dwelt on the banks of the river Thames a
+retired tailor, whom I will call John Sloper, out of regard to the
+feelings of his posterity, if such there be. This man had for many
+years carried on a flourishing trade in the east end of London. Having
+got together as much money as he might suppose would supply his daily
+needs, he built himself a villa near the pleasant little town of
+Erith. His house overlooked the water; in front of it sloped a
+considerable piece of garden ground.
+
+Mr. Sloper showed good sense and good taste in building himself a
+little home on the banks of the Thames. All day long he was able, if
+he pleased, to entertain himself with the sight of as stirring and
+striking a marine picture as is anywhere to be witnessed. He could
+have built himself a house above bridges, where there is no lack of
+elegance and river beauty of many sorts; but he chose to command a
+view of the Thames on its commercial side.
+
+In his day there was more life in the river than there is now. In our
+age the great steamer thrusts past and is quickly gone; the tug runs
+the sailing-ship to the docks or to her mooring buoys, and there is no
+life in the fabric she drags. In Sloper's time steamers were few; the
+water of the river teemed with sailing craft of every description;
+they tacked across from bank to bank as they staggered to their
+destination against the wind.
+
+Sloper, sitting at his open window on a fine day, would be able to
+count twenty different types of rigs in almost as many minutes. That
+he took a keen interest in ships, however, I do not assert; that he
+could have told you the difference between a brig and a schooner is
+barely imaginable. The board on which Sloper had flourished was not
+shipboard, it had nothing to do with starboard or larboard; he was a
+tailor, not a sailor, and the friends who ran down to see him were of
+his own sort and condition.
+
+Sloper was a widower; how many years he had lived with his wife I
+can't say. She died one Easter Monday, and when Sloper took possession
+of his new house near Erith he mounted some small cannon on his lawn,
+and these pieces of artillery he regularly fired every Easter Monday
+in celebration of what he called the joyfullest anniversary of his
+life. From which it is to be assumed that Sloper and his wife had not
+lived together very happily. But though the Whitechapel County Court
+records have been searched and inquiries made in that part of London
+where Sloper's shop was situated, it has not been discovered that Mrs.
+Sloper's end was hastened by her husband's cruelty; that, in short,
+more happened between them than constant quarrels. Yet it must be said
+that Sloper behaved as though, in truth (as the old adage would put
+it), his little figure contained no more than the ninth part of a
+soul, when he mounted his guns and rudely and noisily triumphed over
+the dead whom he perhaps might have been afraid of in life, and
+coarsely emphasised with blasts of gunpowder his annual joy over his
+release.
+
+Now in the east end of London, not above twenty minutes' walk from
+Sloper's old shop, there lived a sailor, named Joseph Westlake. This
+man had served when a boy under Collingwood, had smelt gunpowder at
+Navarino under Codrington, had been concerned in several dashing
+cutting-out jobs in the West Indies, and was altogether as hearty and
+worthy a specimen of an old English sailor of the vanished school as
+you could ask to see.
+
+He had been shot in the leg; he carried a great scar over his brow; he
+was as full of yarns as a piece of ancient ship's biscuit of weevils;
+he swore with more oaths than a Dutchman; sneered prodigiously at
+steam; and held the meanest opinion of the then existing race of
+seamen, who, he said, never could have won the old battles which had
+been the making of this kingdom, whether under Howe's or gallant
+Jervis's, or the lion-hearted Nelson's flag.
+
+The country had no further need of his services on his being paid off
+out of his last ship, and he was somewhat at a loss, until happening
+to be in the neighbourhood of Wapping, and looking in upon an old
+shipmate who kept a public house, he learnt that a lawyer had been
+making inquiries for him. He called upon that lawyer, and was
+astounded to hear that during his absence from England a fortune of
+£15,000 had been left to him by an aunt in Australia.
+
+Joe Westlake on this took a little house in the Stepney district, and
+endeavoured to settle down as an east-end gent; but his efforts to
+ride to a shore-going anchor were hopeless. His mind was always
+roaming. He had followed the sea man and boy for hard upon fifty
+years, and the cry of his heart was still for water--water without
+rum!--water fresh or salt! it mattered not what sort of water it was
+so long as it _was_--water.
+
+So as Joe Westlake found that he couldn't rest ashore he looked about
+him, and, after a while, fell in with and purchased a smart little
+cutter, which he re-christened the _Tom Bowling_, out of admiration of
+the song which no sailor ever sang more sweetly than he. It was
+perfectly consistent with his traditions as a man-of-wars man that,
+having bought his little ship, he should arm her. He equipped her with
+four small carronades and a pivoted brass six-pounder on the
+forecastle. He then went to work to man her, but he did not very
+easily find a crew. Joe was fastidious in his ideas of seamen, and
+though some whom he cast his eye upon came very near to his taste, it
+cost him a great deal of trouble to discover the particular set of
+Jacks he wanted.
+
+Three at last he found: Peter Plum, Bob Robins, and Tom Tuck. Joe was
+admiral; Plum, coming next, combined a number of grades. He was
+captain, first lieutenant, and boatswain. Robins was the ship's
+working company, and Tom Tuck cooked and was the all-round handy man
+of the _Tom Bowling_.
+
+It was Mr. Joe Westlake's intention to live on board his cutter; he
+furnished his cabin plainly and comfortably, and laid in a plentiful
+stock of liquor and tobacco. As he was to cruise under his own flag,
+and was indeed an admiral on his own account, he conferred with his
+first lieutenant, Peter Plum, on the question of a colour: what
+description of flag should he fly at his masthead? They both started
+with the understanding that nothing under a fathom and a half in
+length was worth hoisting. After much discussion it was agreed that
+the device should consist of a very small jack in the top corner, and
+in the middle a crown with a wooden leg under it--the timber toe being
+in both Westlake's and Plum's opinion the most pregnant symbol of
+Britannia's greatness that the imagination could devise.
+
+Within a few months of his landing from the frigate out of which he
+had been paid, Mr. Joseph Westlake was again afloat, but now in a
+smart little vessel of his own. She had been newly sheathed with
+copper, and when she heeled over from the breeze as she stretched
+through the winding reaches of the river the metal shone like gold
+above the wool-white line of foam through which the cutter washed, and
+lazy men in barges would turn their heads to admire her, and
+red-capped cooks in the cabooses of "ratching" colliers would step to
+the rail to look, and sometimes a party of gay and gallant Cockneys,
+male and female, taking their pleasure in a wherry, would salute the
+passing _Tom Bowling_ with a flourish of hands and pocket
+handkerchiefs.
+
+Never had old Joe been so happy in all his life. Of a night he'd bring
+up in some secure nook, and after having seen everything all safe,
+he'd go below with Peter Plum, and in the cosy interior of the little
+cabin, whose atmosphere was rendered speedily fragrant with the
+perfume of rum punch, which Joe, whilst in the West Indies, had learnt
+the art of brewing to perfection, the two sailors would sit smoking
+their yards of pipe-clay whilst they discoursed on the past, one
+incident recalling another, one briny recollection prompting an even
+salter memory, until their eyes grew moist and their vision dim in
+their balls of sight; whereupon they would turn in and make the little
+ship vocal with their noses.
+
+It happened, according to the usual methods of time, that an Easter
+Monday came round, which, as we know, was the joyful anniversary of
+the death of the wife of the retired tailor, Sloper, whose villa,
+called Labour's Retreat, stood upon the banks of the Thames near
+Erith. To fitly celebrate this happy day Mr. Sloper had invited three
+friends to dine with him. It was in the year 1851, when the class of
+society in which Mr. Sloper belonged was not so genteel in its habits
+as it has since become; in other words, Sloper dined at two o'clock.
+Had he survived into this age he would not have dreamt of dining at an
+earlier hour than seven.
+
+His friends were of his own sex. Sloper did not like the ladies. His
+friends' calling matters not. They did business in the east end of
+London, and were all three thoroughly respectable tradesmen in a small
+way, wanting, perhaps, in the muscle and depth of chest and hurricane
+lungs of Joe Westlake and Peter Plum, but all of them able to pay
+twenty shillings in the pound, to give good value for prompt cash, and
+desirous not only of fresh patronage, but determined to a man to merit
+the continuance of the same.
+
+When Sloper and his friends had dined, and the bottle had circled
+until, like quicksilver in the eye of a hurricane, the contents had
+sunk out of sight, the party went on to the lawn to fire off the guns
+there in completion of the triumphant celebration of the
+ever-memorable anniversary of Sloper's release.
+
+It was precisely at this hour that the _Tom Bowling_, with Plum at the
+helm and Joe Westlake in full rig, marching up and down the
+quarter-deck, came leisurely rounding down Halfway Reach before a
+pleasant northerly breeze of wind blowing over the flat, fat levels of
+Barking. The _Tom Bowling_, opening Jenningtree Point, ported her helm
+and floated in all her pride of white canvas and radiant metal and
+fathom and a half of shining bunting at her masthead into Erith Reach.
+
+Just as she came abreast of Labour's Retreat a gun was fired; the
+white powder-smoke clouded the tailor's lawn; the thunder of the
+ordnance smote the ear of Joe Westlake, who, dilating his nostrils and
+directing his eyes at Sloper's villa, bawled out: "Peter! that's meant
+for us, my heart! Down hellum! slacken away fore and aft! pipe all
+hands for action!"
+
+A second gun roared upon the lawn that sloped from the tailor's house;
+and almost as loud was the shout that Westlake delivered to all hands
+to look alive and bring the guns to bear. The Tom Bowling was thrown
+into the wind and brought to a stand abreast of Labour's Retreat; Plum
+took a turn with the helm and went to help at the guns, and in a few
+minutes the three of a crew, with Westlake continuously bawling out
+orders to bear a hand and load again, were actively engaged in firing
+blank at the enemy on the lawn.
+
+It might have been that Mr. Sloper and his friends were a little
+tipsy; it might have been that they were irritated by their _feu de
+joie_ being interrupted and complicated, so to speak, by the cutter's
+artillery; it is certain that they continued to load and discharge
+their guns as fast as they could sponge them out; whilst from the
+river the cutter maintained a rapid fire at Labour's Retreat. In an
+evil moment, temper getting the better of Sloper's judgment, he loaded
+one of his pieces with stones, and the gun was so well aimed that on
+Joe Westlake looking aloft he beheld his beautiful flag of a fathom
+and a half in holes.
+
+For some moments the old man-of-wars man stood staring up at his
+wounded flag, idle with wrath and astonishment. He then in a voice of
+thunder shouted: "Plum--Robins--Tuck! D' ye see what that there fired
+little tailor's been and done? Why, junk me if he ha' n't shot our
+colour through! Boys, load with ball; d' ye hear? Suffocate me, but he
+shall have it back. Quick, my hearts, and go for him."
+
+With ocean alacrity some round shot were got up, a gun was fired
+point-blank at Labour's Retreat, and down came a chimney-stack, amidst
+the cheers of the crew of the _Tom Bowling_.
+
+"Now, then," roared old Joe, "over with our boat, lads, and board 'em!
+Tommy, stay you here and let go the anchor"; and in a very few minutes
+Plum and Robins were pulling Joe Westlake ashore.
+
+Sloper and his party saw them coming and manfully stood their ground.
+The three seamen, securing their boat, forced their way on to the lawn
+and marched up to the tailor and his friends.
+
+"What do you mean by firing at my cutter?" roared old Joe.
+
+"What do you mean by knocking down my chimneys?" cried the tailor, who
+was exceedingly pale.
+
+"Who began it?" bawled Joe. "Who fired first? Who's bin and made holes
+in that there flag of mine? Why, that's the flag of a British sailor,
+you little withered thimble you; and durn ye, if you don't make me
+instantly an humble apology and stump up with the cost of what ye've
+injured, I'll skin ye!" and he threw himself into a very menacing
+posture.
+
+At this point one of the tailor's friends slunk off.
+
+"My chimney-stack is worth more than your twopenny flag," shrieked
+Sloper, maddened even into some temporary emotion of courage by the
+insults of the old man-of-warsman.
+
+"Say that again, will 'ee," said Joe. "Just sneer at that there flag
+again, will 'ee."
+
+The tailor was idiotic enough to repeat the affront, on which, and as
+though a perfect understanding as to what was to be done subsisted
+among the three sailors, old Joe, Plum, and Robins fell upon Sloper,
+and, lifting him up in their arms, ran with him to the boat, into
+which they flung him, paying not the least heed whatever to his cries
+for help and for mercy, and instantly headed for the cutter, leaving
+the tailor's friends white as milk and speechless with alarm near the
+cannon upon the lawn.
+
+When the boat reached the cutter, Plum jumped aboard and received
+little Sloper from the hands of old Joe, making no more of the burthen
+than had the tailor been a parcel, say, of a coat and waistcoat, or a
+pair of trousers. Old Joe then actively got over the rail. He lifted
+the little main-hatch, and Mr. Sloper was dropped into the space
+below, where the darkness was so great that he could not see, and
+where there was nothing to sit upon but Thames ballast.
+
+"In boat, up anchor, and away with us!" said Joe Westlake.
+
+The breeze was fresh, the cutter was always an excellent sailer, and
+in a very short space of time she was running down Long Reach with
+Erith and its adjacent shores out of sight, past the round of land
+where Dartford creek is to be found. Joe Westlake then called a
+council. Robins was at the tiller; Plum and Tuck came aft, and the
+four debated at the helm.
+
+"I've heerd," said old Joe, "of this tailor afore. His name's Sloper.
+I've never larnt why he mounted them guns, or where the little rooting
+hog got his pluck from to fire 'em. But there can be no shadder of a
+doubt, mates, that his object in firing to-day was to insult that
+there flag."
+
+He pointed with an immensely square forefinger to the masthead.
+
+"Ne'er a shadder," said Plum.
+
+"For why," continued old Joe, "did the smothered rag of a chap wait
+for us to come right abreast afore firing?"
+
+"Ah! that's it, ye see," exclaimed Bob Robins. "There ye've hit it,
+Mr. Westlake."
+
+"The little faggot's game," old Joe went on, "is as clear as mud in a
+wineglass. He fires with blank cartridge; like as he'd say 'What'll
+_you_ do?' What did he want? That we should retarn his civility with
+grape? Of course; that if it should come to a difficulty he'd have the
+law on his side. Not being able to aggravate us into shotting our
+guns, what must he turn to and do but load with stone--and look at
+that flag! Riddled, mates. I'll not speak of it as spiled, though a
+prettier and a better bit of bunting was never mastheaded. Spiled
+ain't the word: disgraced it is."
+
+"Degraded," said Plum, in a deep voice.
+
+"Ay, and degraded," cried old Joe, with a surly, dangerous nod. "That
+there little tailor has degraded the honour of our flag. What's to be
+done to him?"
+
+After a pause, Plum said: "Bring him up and sit in examination on him.
+Try him fairly, and convict him."
+
+They opened the hatch and pulled little Sloper off the Thames ballast
+into daylight. He was exceedingly white, and trembled violently, and
+cut, indeed, a very pitiful figure as he stood on the quarter-deck of
+the _Tom Bowling_, surveyed by her owner and crew. He was a short man
+and spare, and Tom Tuck grinned as he looked at him.
+
+"I suppose you're aweer," said old Joe, "that in shooting at my flag
+and wounding her you've degraded the honour of it? Are you aweer of
+that?"
+
+"You came in my way; I was shooting for my hentertainment," answered
+Mr. Sloper.
+
+"You're a retired tailor, ain't ye?" said Joe.
+
+Sloper sulkily answered "Yes."
+
+"Have ye any acquaintance with the laws which are made and purwided
+for British seamen when it happens that their flag's degraded by the
+haction of a retired tailor?" said old Joe.
+
+Mr. Sloper, instead of answering, cast a languishing eye at the river
+banks, which were fast sliding past, and requested to be set ashore.
+
+"It don't answer his purpose to speak to the pint," said Plum.
+
+"Listen, now," said old Joe, shaking his forefinger close into the
+face of little Sloper. "When a retired tailor degrades the honour of a
+seaman's flag by a shooting at it and a riddling of it, the law 'as
+made and purwided sets forth this: that the insulted sailor shall
+collect his crew and in the presence of all hands pass sentence after
+giving an impartial hearing to what the culprit may have to say in his
+defence. Now, you durned little powder-burner, speak up, and own what
+made you do it, and then I'll pass judgment."
+
+"What's your game? What d' yer mean to do with me? Where are you
+carryin' me to?" cried the owner of Labour's Retreat. "None of yer
+nonsense, you know. This is what's called kidnappin'. It's
+hindictable. You may find yourself in a very unpleasant predicament
+over this business, I can tell yer. You profess to know who I am.
+D'yer want to know what I'm worth? Yer'd better put me ashore, I say,
+and stop this nonsense. I don't mind a joke, but this is carrying a
+lark too far. Why," he shrieked, "here we are a-drawing on to
+Northfleet! Yer 'd better let me go." And so he went on.
+
+Old Joe and the others listened to him with stern faces; in fact, they
+received his protests and threats as his defence. When he had made an
+end Joe Westlake spoke thus:
+
+"Sloper--I dunno your Christian name and I won't demean myself by
+asking of it,--four of your countrymen--and sorry they are that you
+should be a countrymen of their'n--have patiently listened to what
+ye've had to say. And all that ye've said amounts to nothen at all.
+The haccusation made against ye is one of the very gravest as can be
+brought agin a retired tailor. You're charged with degrading the
+honour of my flag, and ye 've been found guilty, and my sentence is
+that after a sufficient time's been granted you for prayer and
+meditation, ye be brought up to the place of hexecution, aboard this
+here cutter the _Tom Bowling_, and hanged by the neck till you're
+dead."
+
+"Murder!" screamed Sloper, and here (so he afterwards swore in court)
+the unhappy little tailor fell down upon his knees and begged Joe
+Westlake to grant him his life.
+
+"Clap him under hatches," exclaimed the old man-of-warsman, and Plum
+and another, lifting the hatch cover, popped Mr. Sloper down among the
+ballast again.
+
+By this time the afternoon had very considerably advanced, the wind
+had dropped, and it was already dark when the _Tom Bowling_ let go her
+anchor off Gravesend. The cabin lamp was lighted, and old Joe and Plum
+sat down to a hearty meal, after which they smoked their pipes and
+dipped a ladle into a silver bowl of rum punch of Westlake's own
+brewing.
+
+"D' ye mean, captain," said Plum, "that the little chap in the hold
+shall have any supper?"
+
+"Well, Peter," answered old Joe, "I've bin a-turning of it over in my
+mind, and spite of his 'rageous conduct I dunno, after all, that it
+would be right to let him lie all night without a bite of something.
+Call Bob."
+
+This man, whose surname was Robins, arrived. Joe told him to get a
+lantern and cut a plate of beef and bread and mix a small mug of rum
+and water.
+
+"Ye can tell the little chap, Bob," said old Joe, speaking with one
+eye shut, "that we're only a-feeding of him up so as to get more
+satisfaction out of his hexecution to-morrow morning. You can say that
+sailoring is a rather monotonous life, and that if he'll die game we
+shall all feel obliged for the hentertainment he'll afford us."
+
+Whether Bob Robins communicated this speech to Sloper I cannot say. It
+is certain, however, that he took the lantern and the tailor's supper
+into the hold and stood over the little man whilst he ate and drank.
+When the retired tailor had finished his repast he asked Robins if he
+was to be kept locked up in that black hole all night without anything
+to lie on but shingle.
+
+"What did you fire at us for?" said Bob.
+
+"I never fired at you. I was firing for my own diversion," answered
+Mr. Sloper.
+
+"D' ye load with stones for your divarsion, as ye call it?" said Bob.
+
+"There was no stones when you came along," cried the tailor. "Why did
+you aggrevate me by firing in return?"
+
+"What did you want to fire at all for?" said Bob, almost pitying the
+trembling little creature as he showed by the lantern light in the
+cutter's small black hold.
+
+"I was celebrating a hanniversary," answered Mr. Sloper, who
+maltreated his _h's_ as badly as old Westlake.
+
+"And what sort of a hanniversary calls for gun firing?" said Bob,
+holding up the lantern to the tailor's face.
+
+"It was the hanniversary of my wife's death," said Mr. Sloper, "and a
+day of rejoicing with me and my friends."
+
+Bob, who himself was a married man, loving his wife and two little
+girls with the warm affection of the genuine sailor's heart, looked
+for some moments speechless with disgust at the white shadowy
+countenance of Mr. Sloper, and without deigning another word, rose
+through the hatch, which he carefully secured, and then went aft to
+old Joe and Plum to report what had passed.
+
+"Smite me," cried the old man-of-warsman, after listening to Bob; "but
+if this was furrin parts instead of Lunnon river, poisoned if I
+wouldn't yard-arm the little faggot in rale earnest. What! make a
+joyful hanniversary of his wife's death, and fire off guns that the
+whole blooming country may know what a little beast it is. Sit ye
+down, Bob, there's a glass--help yourself. This is what we mean to
+do," and he forthwith related his scheme for the morning to Robins and
+Plum.
+
+They smoked hard and roared out in great peals of laughter. The
+bulkheads of a little ship such as the _Tom Bowling_ are not, as may
+be supposed, of very formidable scantling; there is no doubt that
+Sloper in the hold heard these wild shouts of laughter which the
+muffling of the bulkhead and his own terrors would render awful to him,
+and we may be sure that as he lay in the blackness harkening to those
+horrid notes of merriment, he feared and perspired exceedingly.
+
+Somewhere at about eight o'clock next morning the _Tom Bowling_ was
+got under way, and when all hands had breakfasted, Joe Westlake took
+the tiller, and Plum, Robins, and Tuck went to work to construct the
+machinery for the retired tailor's execution. They filled a big tub
+with water and covered it loosely with a tarpaulin. Close against this
+tub they placed a three-legged stool; alongside this stool upon the
+deck was a tar-bucket with a tar-brush sticking up in it; they also
+procured and placed beside this tar-bucket a piece of rough iron hoop.
+At the time that these preparations were completed the cutter was
+running through the Warp, which is some little distance past the Nore
+Light. The river had widened into the aspect of an ocean, and over the
+bows of the craft the water stretched boundless and blue as the
+horizon of the Pacific.
+
+They opened the hatch and brought the tailor on deck. Needless to say,
+he had not slept a wink all night. Who, accustomed to a feather-bed,
+could snatch even ten minutes' sleep when his couch is Thames ballast?
+Sloper's eyes were bloodshot, and his countenance haggard. He looked
+inconceivably grimy and forlorn, and Bob Robins felt sorry for the
+little creature till he recollected on a sudden the man's reason for
+letting off his cannons. Tuck took the helm, and old Joe with a solemn
+countenance and slow gait rolled forward to where the apparatus was
+stationed.
+
+"Now, you see your fate," he exclaimed, lifting up his eyes as though
+he beheld a rope with a noose dangling from the masthead, "and since
+no good can come of cautioning a corpse, why then, sorry I am that
+there are n't a company of people arter your kind assembled aboard
+this craft to witness the hexecution of my sentence upon ye. Last
+night I heard that the reason of your firing off your guns were to
+celebrate the hanniversary of your wife's death. I dunno, I'm sure,
+whether such a practice wouldn't be considered as more criminal and
+worthy of a fearfuller punishment than even the shooting at a man's
+flag and degrading the honour of it. But to say more 'ud only be
+a-wasting of breath. My lads, do your duty."
+
+Robins, with powerful arms, grasped the tailor, who shrieked murder
+and struggled hard. His struggles were as the throes and convulsions
+of a mouse in the teeth of a cat. He was dumped down on the
+three-legged stool. In an instant Plum lathered his jaws with the
+tar-brush, and picking up the piece of broken iron hoop scraped little
+Sloper's cheeks till the lather was as much blood as tar. Then, lifting
+his leg, he tilted the stool and Mr. Sloper fell backwards on to the
+tarpaulin, which, yielding to his weight, soused him into the water
+They left him to kick and splash awhile, then pulled him out and ran
+him forward into the head, where they secured him to the windlass till
+the sun should have somewhat dried him.
+
+But long before the sun had had time to comfort the shivering little
+creature Herne Bay had hove into sight. The helm was shifted, and the
+cutter ran close into the land, where they hove her to whilst Plum and
+Robins got the boat over.
+
+Mr. Sloper was then dropped over the side into the boat, which pulled
+ashore, landed him, and returned; and a few minutes later the cutter
+was standing for the mouth of the river, leaving the tailor on the
+Herne Bay beach, forty miles from home without a farthing in his
+pocket.
+
+This is the historic incident of the Thames which I desire to rescue
+from the oblivion that has overtaken many greater matters. Mr. Sloper,
+on his return to Labour's Retreat, and when he was somewhat recovered
+in nerves and health, sued Joe Westlake in the Whitechapel County
+Court, in action of tort, laying his damages at the moderate sum of
+fifty pounds. Mr. G.E. Williams, for the defendant, contended that the
+plaintiff deserved the treatment which he had brought on himself, and
+the Judge, after hearing the evidence, said that although the
+plaintiff, Sloper, had acted most improperly in loading his guns, the
+defendant, Westlake, had retaliated too severely, but, under the
+circumstances, he should award only five pounds' damages, without
+costs.
+
+
+
+
+                             _Cornered_!
+
+
+"I don't see no signs of the tug, do you, Tom?" said the old skipper,
+John Bunk, rolling up to me from the companion hatchway. He was fresh
+from the cabin, and was rather tipsy, with a fixed stare and a stately
+manner, though his legs would have framed the lower part of an egg.
+His hat was tall, and brushed the wrong way. He wore a thick shawl
+round his neck and was wrapped up in a long monkey-jacket, albeit we
+were in the dog-days. In a word, Bunk was a skipper of a type that is
+fast perishing off our home waters.
+
+"No," said I, "there's no sign of the tug."
+
+"Then bloomed," said he, "if I don't work her up myself. Who's afraid?
+I know the ropes. Get amidships in the fair-way and keep all on, and
+there y' are. And mubbe the tug'll pick us up as we go."
+
+"It's all one to Tom," said I.
+
+Our brig was the _Venus_, of Rye, a stump topgallantmast coaster,
+eighty years old. We were in a big bight of the coast, heading for a
+river which flows past a well known town, whither we were bound. The
+bed of that river went in a vein through about three miles of mud,
+till it sheared into the land, and flowed into a proper-looking river
+with banks of its own. At flood the water covered the mud, but the
+river was buoyed, and when once you had the land on either hand and
+the bay of mud astern, the pilotage to the town was no more than a
+matter of bracing the yards about till you floated into one long reach
+whose extremity was painted by the red wharf you moored alongside of.
+
+We were six of a ship's company. John Bunk was skipper, I, Tom Fish,
+was the mate, the others were Bill Martin, Jack Stevens, a man named
+Rooney, and a boy called William. On board craft of this sort there is
+very little discipline, and the sailor's talk to the captain as though
+he lived in the forecastle.
+
+"John," sings out Bill Martin, casting his eyes over the greasy yellow
+surface of the water streaming shorewards, "are ye going to try for it
+without the tug?"
+
+"Ay," answered old Bunk.
+
+"And quite right, tew. No good a-messing about here all day," says
+Jack Stevens at the tiller.
+
+The land was flat and treeless on
+either hand the river, but it rose, about a couple of miles off,
+curving into a front of glaring chalk, with a small well known town
+sparkling in the distance like a handful of frost in a white split.
+The horizon astern was broken by the moving bodies of many ships in
+full sail, and the sky low down was hung with the smoke of vanished
+steamers as though the stuff was cobwebs black with dust.
+
+The stream was the turn of the flood. Old Bunk went forward into the
+bows, and the brig flapped forwards creaking like a basket on the
+small roll of the shallow water. We overhung her rails, and watched
+for ourselves. John Bunk, trying to look dignified with the drink in
+him, stared stately ahead; sometimes singing out to the helmsman to
+port, and then to starboard, and so we washed on, fairly hitting the
+river's mouth, and stemming safely for a mile, till the flat coast was
+within an easy scull of our jolly-boat, and you saw the spire of a
+church, and a few red roofs amidst a huddle of trees on the right, at
+that time two miles distant.
+
+Just then the _Venus_ took the mud; she grounded just as a huge fat
+sow knuckles quietly ere stretching herself.
+
+"All aback forrard!" sings out Bill Martin, with a loud silly laugh.
+
+We were a brig of a hundred and eighty tons, and there was nothing to
+be done with poling; nor was kedging going to help us at this the
+first quarter of ebb.
+
+"Tom," says John Bunk, coming aft and speaking cheerfully, "there's no
+call to make any worrit over this shining job. The tug's bound to be
+coming along afore sundown, anyhow. See that village there?" says he,
+pointing. "My brother lives in that village, at a public house of his
+own, called the 'Eight Bells,' and seeing as we're hard and fast, I
+shall take the boys on a visit to him and leave you and William to
+look arter the brig."
+
+"Suppose the tug should come along?" said I.
+
+"She could do nothing with us till the flood floats us," said he; "I
+shall let go the anchor for security and go ashore."
+
+He talked like a reckless old fool, but was tipsy, and in no temper to
+reason with. The situation of the brig was safe enough as far as ocean
+and weather went; nothing could hurt her as she lay mud-cradled on her
+fat bilge. We clewed up and let the canvas hang by its rigging, and
+then dropped the anchor; after which old Bunk and the others cleaned
+themselves up and got the boat over, and went away in her, singing
+songs, leaving me and William to look after the brig.
+
+It was ten o'clock in the morning, a very fine hot day. I went into
+the cabin for a smoke, and after lounging an hour or so below whilst
+the boy boiled a piece of beef for our dinner, I stepped on deck, and
+found that the sea was already half-way out of the bay with twenty
+lines of foaming ripples purring not a quarter of a mile off, and the
+channel of the river was already plain, coming out from the land, and
+through the dry mud like a lane of water till it met the wash of the
+yellow brine and melted into it. The brig lay with an uncomfortable
+list to starboard. When the mud should come a-dry it would be an easy
+jump from her decks to it.
+
+At half-past twelve William came below with my dinner, and I told the
+lad to out with his knife and eat with me. We munched together, taking
+it easy. There was nothing to be done on deck, no sign of the tug, no
+use we could put her to, even if she should heave into sight, and the
+time hung heavy. After dinner I lay upon a locker smoking, and William
+sat at the table with a pipe in his mouth.
+
+Presently I thought I heard a noise of something moving in a
+scratching sort of way on deck. I listened and then heard nothing. A
+little later, happening to be looking at William, I heard the same
+noise, and that moment I fancied a kind of shadow passed over the
+glass of the grimy little cabin skylight.
+
+I said to William: "Step on deck, my lad, and see if anybody's come
+aboard."
+
+He went up, and was not gone a minute when I heard him scream
+shockingly. The shriek was full of terror and agony, and froze my
+blood. I rushed on deck and saw the figure of William under the paw of
+a large yellow tiger! I stared madly, as though my senses were all
+gone wrong and reporting a nightmare. But the big beast, turning its
+head, spied me, swept the planks with its tail, crouched in cat-like
+way, and was coming for me.
+
+With a roar of terror I sprang for the main rigging, and in a few
+breathless moments was safe in the top.
+
+It was all sheer mud now to the very forefoot of the brig; but the
+half of her lay afloat in the stream of the river. I saw the marks of
+the beast's paws pitting the shiny surface of ooze and sand; the trail
+came in a straight line from the land to the right of the village
+where Bunk's brother lived to the starboard bow of the brig. The beast
+had sprung easily aboard. We were not in India, nor in Africa, nor in
+any country where such huge yellow horrors as that flourished;
+therefore, on recovering my wits and my breath whilst I looked down
+over the rim of the top, I guessed that the tiger had broken loose
+from some show or menagerie, and had made for this desolate waste of
+sand to escape the hunt that was doubtless in loud cry after him. But
+I could not get any comfort into me out of the reflection that we had
+stranded on English instead of African or South American mud; down on
+deck, now crouching close beside the boy without, however, offering to
+touch the motionless figure, was a massive savage beast, apparently a
+man-eater; and it was all the same to me whether it had sprung aboard
+off the banks of an Indian river, or trotted across this breast of
+English slime out of a showman's cage.
+
+The boy lay as though dead, and I turned sick, fearing to see the
+creature eat him. I was going to call, thinking he would answer me,
+then reflected if he was not dead my voice might cause him to move,
+and bring the tiger upon him, and so I lay silent in the top, now
+staring down, then glaring round upon the scene of mud and at the
+distant blue crescent of sea for the help that was nowhere visible.
+
+Presently the tiger got up, and, passing over the body of the lad,
+stepped with its supple gait into the bows. I took my chance of
+shouting to William, but the lad never stirred. Again and again I
+yelled down at him, and I saw the splendid, horrible beast in the bows
+gazing at me, and still the lad remained lifeless. He was upon his
+face, with his arms out, as though his hands were nailed to the deck.
+I looked for blood, but saw none.
+
+The most awful time that ever passed in my life now went along. The
+tiger roamed the deck silently, smelling at everything, once shoving
+its huge head into the companion-way, and I prayed with all my heart
+it would go below, that I might skim to the hatch and secure it. It
+drew its head out, and going to the boy stopped and smelt him. The
+very blood in me was curdled, for I made sure the beast was about to
+eat the lad. Sometimes I broke out into the noisiest roarings and
+screaming my pipes could set up in the hope of driving the brute
+overboard.
+
+Between five and six o'clock in the evening the tide had made so as to
+cover the mud, and I saw the brig's boat approaching. Those who pulled
+flourished their oars drunkenly. The boat came to a stand when within
+easy hailing distance, as though old Bunk was taking a view of me as I
+sat in the top, and was wondering what I did there.
+
+I roared out: "For God's sake mind how you come aboard! There's been a
+blooming tiger in this brig since noon!"
+
+"A what?" yelled Bunk, and the seamen pulled a little closer in.
+
+It was still broad flaming daylight, and the sun hung like a huge
+blood-red target over the crimson sea.
+
+"A what?" shrieked Bunk.
+
+"A tiger! A blooming tiger!" I bellowed, pointing to the brute that
+lay crouched on the forecastle hidden from the boat's crew.
+
+"Drunk again, Tom? or is it sun-stroke this time?" sung out old Bunk,
+standing up in the boat and lurching to the rocking of her.
+
+"It's killed William!" I yelled.
+
+When I said this the beast, attracted by the noise of voices over the
+side, got up and looked over the bulwark rail at the men, and old Bunk
+instantly saw it. He stared for a minute or two as though he had been
+blasted by a stroke of lightning. The other three fellows then saw the
+beast, and if there was any drink in their heads the fumes of it flew
+out at that sight, and left them sober men. Their postures were full
+of wild surprise and terror whilst they gazed. Old Bunk roared:
+
+"Has he killed the boy, d'yer say?"
+
+"He lies there dead," cried I, pointing. "He hasn't moved since I
+first saw him."
+
+"Has he been eating of him?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"We must go ashore for help," sung out Jack Stevens.
+
+"For God's sake don't leave me up here!" I cried.
+
+"Tom," shouted Bunk, "there's only wan thing to dew; there's an old
+gun in my cabin, and yer'll find a powder-flask and ball in the
+locker. We must keep that tiger a-watching of us over the bow, whilst
+you run below and shut the hatch. By lifting the lid you'll be able to
+shoot him through the skylight. Come you down now as far as you durst
+whilst we fixes the attention of the brute upon ourselves."
+
+I at once dropped into the rigging, where I stretched and played my
+legs a bit. They were as stiff as hand-spikes after that long spell in
+the maintop. I descended as low down as the sheer-pole, breathlessly
+watching. They pulled the boat under the bow, and Bill Martin with
+lifted oar made as though spearing at the brute's head. It opened its
+huge mouth and showed its immense claws upon the rail; old Bunk hissed
+and snapped at it, then roared out to me:
+
+"Now's your time, Tom," whilst I heard Jack Stevens sing out:
+
+"Back astarn! The fired cat's going to jump."
+
+With the nimbleness of terror I dropped to the deck and passed like a
+shadow to the hatch, unnoticed by the beast. In a moment I closed the
+companion doors, then entering Bunk's cabin found the gun and
+ammunition. I loaded the piece, and, getting on to the cabin table,
+put my head into the skylight, and bawled out to let the others know
+that I was going to shoot. My voice attracted the tiger; it turned,
+and with swaying tail came with velvet tread, crouching in a springing
+posture. I levelled the gun, steadying the barrel, and, taking a cool,
+deliberate aim--for I was safe!--fired, and the instant I had fired,
+without pausing to see what had happened, I loaded again; but before I
+could present the piece for a second shot the beast, who was now on
+this side the boy, lurched and fell.
+
+I fired a second ball into it, and then a third and a fourth, and now
+shouting to let the men know the brute was wounded and dying, I ran on
+deck, and putting the muzzle of the gun to the creature's glazing eye,
+fired, and this did its business, for just one spasm ran through it,
+and then the terrible, muscular bulk lay motionless.
+
+The men came scrambling aboard. We turned the boy over, and took him
+below. Shortly afterwards the tug hove in sight, and we let the beast
+lie whilst we got our anchor and manoeuvred with the tow-rope. I am
+sorry to say the boy was dead. On our arrival a doctor came and looked
+at him, and a crowd tumbled aboard to view the beast. There was not a
+scratch on the lad; the tiger had never touched him; the doctor said
+he had died of syncope caused by fright.
+
+The owner of the tiger threatened old Bunk with the law, and asked for
+a hundred guineas. Bunk started William's mother upon him for
+compensation for the loss of her boy, and shortly afterwards the
+showman went broke.
+
+
+
+
+                           _A Midnight Visitor_.
+
+
+"There are more terrors at sea than shipwreck and fire, more frights
+and horrors, mateys, than famine, blindness, and cholera," said the
+old seaman with a slow motion of his eyes round upon the little
+company of sailors. "I remember a line of poetry--'a thing of beauty
+is a joy for ever.' Can any man here tell me who wrote that? Well, I
+suppose it is a joy so long as it remains a beauty, but d'ye see it's
+got to remain, and that's the job.
+
+"Yet, mates, if there is a thing of beauty that should be a joy to
+every heart, it is a full-rigged ship, clothed in white, asleep in the
+light of the moon, on a pale and silent breast of ocean that waves in
+splendour under the planet over the flying jib-boom end. Have I got
+such a ship as that in my mind? Ay. And was it a sheet calm but ne'er
+a moon? Ay, again. There was ne'er a moon that night. The ship rose
+faint and hushed to the stars. It was one bell in the morning watch.
+Scarce air enough moved to give life to the topmost canvas; as the
+ship bowed upon the light swell the sails swung in and swung out with
+a rushing sound of many wings up in the gloom. Yet the vessel had
+steerage way in that hour. Shall I tell you why? Because I know!
+
+"And ere that full-rigged ship alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean
+came to a dead halt, life sinking in her with the failing of the wind
+in a sort of dying shudder from royal to course, this was how her
+decks showed: a man was at the wheel, the chief mate leaned against
+the rail in the thickness made by the mizzen rigging, and with folded
+arms seemed to doze in the shadow; a 'young gentleman,' as they used
+to call the 'brass-bounders,' loafed sleepily near the main shrouds
+where the break of the poop came. That youngster watched the stars
+trembling between the squares of the starboard rigging. He was new to
+the sea, and emotion and sentiment were still sweet--they were not
+salt in him. He was the son of a gentleman--he had a clever eye for
+what was picturesque and romantic, for what was tender and affecting
+in all he beheld, whether by day or night, whether he looked aloft or
+whether upon the mighty breast of brine--he should have done well: he
+oughter ha' done well."
+
+The grey-haired respectable seaman closed his eyes in a silence filled
+with significance, and after a short smoke thus proceeded:
+
+"Some of the watch on deck sprawled about in the shadow out of sight,
+curled up, asleep; only one figure was upright forward. 'Twas the
+shape of the man on the look-out. For all the world he postured like
+the mate aft, as though he copied the officer for a life or death bet:
+head sunk, arms folded--the forecastle break brought that raised deck
+well aft, and the look-out had the shadow of the starboard
+fore-rigging upon him.
+
+"This man thus standing, by no means asleep, yet with his head sunk
+and no doubt his eyes closed, was suddenly struck on the side of the
+face by something hairy, damp, and cold. He sprang into the air as
+though he had been shot through the heart. O heavens! What was it? A
+naked figure, shaggy as Peter Sarrano, wild with hair, furious with a
+grin, terrible with the red gleams the starlight flung upon his little
+eyes. The sailor shrieked like a midnight cat and fell in a heap down
+upon the deck in a fit.
+
+"The ship was in commotion in an instant. Such a yell as that was
+worse than the smell of fire.
+
+"'What's the matter?' bawled the mate from the break of the poop.
+
+"A number of shadowy shapes swarmed up the forecastle ladder.
+Meanwhile the watch below, aroused by the yell of the look-out man,
+suspecting imminent deadly danger in the peculiar noise, were leaping
+in twos and threes up through the forescuttle, growling and swearing
+and grumbling, and asking of one another in those deep
+hurricane-chested whispers which will make a stagnant midnight
+atmosphere tingle, what the blooming blazes that noise was, and what
+was up.
+
+"'What's the matter?' roared the mate.
+
+"'Here's Kennedy in a fit, sir,' sung out a voice.
+
+"'Is that all?' said the mate, and he went forward to look at the man.
+
+"'It's a fit certainly,' said he. 'Give him air, lads. Get a drink of
+cold water into his mouth. It's epilepsy.'
+
+"'Or weevils,' said a deep voice.
+
+"The joker was not to be discerned; the mate therefore took no notice.
+Some one brought a pannikin of cold water, and after a little the man
+came to, by which time the watch below had returned to their hammocks,
+and the forecastle was comparatively clear.
+
+"When the mate was told the man had his senses and was sitting up, he
+went forward again and questioned him. He was sitting on the foot of a
+cathead, and was too weak to rise when the mate stood before him.
+
+"'What is this you're rambling about?' said the officer. 'Aren't you
+quite well yet?'
+
+"'S' 'elp me then, it slapped me fair over the chops, like flicking
+yer with the wet sleeve of a jacket. He rose four foot when I
+swounded. He might ha' been more an' he might ha' been less. Darkness
+put him out, only that I recollect,' said the man, turning up his pale
+face to the stars, 'taking notice of a couple of eyes like red lights
+floating in water and a grin of teeth wide as the keys of a pianey.'
+
+"'He's mad,' thought the mate, who stepped nevertheless into the bows
+and looked over. Nothing was to be seen. He surveyed the ocean by the
+light of the stars, and glanced along the deck and up aloft, then told
+the look-out man to go below and turn in, and went aft, reckoning the
+thing an epileptic's nightmare.
+
+"'It soaks into their livers ashore,' thought he, as he leisurely
+mounted the poop ladder, 'and when they get upon the ocean and into
+hot weather it works out in slaps over the head and hairy sea-beasts
+four feet high. Ha! ha! ha!' and he laughed drowsily as he walked to
+the wheel.
+
+"Just then a catspaw blew. It was so faint that it scarcely chilled
+the moistened forefinger of the officer. It had to be reckoned with
+nevertheless; it was an air of wind anyhow, and some one sung out that
+the ship was aback forward, on which the mate went to the break of the
+poop, and yelled to the seamen to trim sail. Something went wrong in
+swinging the yards on the fore.
+
+"'Jump aloft, a hand, and clear it.'
+
+"A seaman went up the rigging, his shadowy shape vanished in the gloom
+that blackened like a thunder-cloud upon the foretop; he showed again
+when he got into the topmast rigging, with his figure small, and
+clear-cut against the stars.
+
+"Suddenly, when midway the rigging he yelled at the top of his voice.
+His cry was more dismal and heartshaking than even that with which the
+man Kennedy had terrified the ship; he caught hold of a backstay, and
+sank to the bulwark rail, as though handsomely lowered away in a
+bowline.
+
+"'By Cott!' he roared, flinging down his cap, whilst those who peered
+close saw that he trembled violently, 'der toyfel is on boardt dis
+ship. I have seen her mit mine eyes. If I hov not seen her den I was a
+nightmare und she was mad. Look up dar.'
+
+"He obtained no answer. The seamen attending the indication of the
+Dutchman were to a man gazing aloft with hanging chins; for on high up
+in the cross-trees, a visible bulk of shadow, there sat, squatted,
+hung--what? A man? No angel from heaven surely? A demon then with
+folded wings like those of a bat resting in his flight from the halls
+of fire to some star of Satan? Mateys, if you think this language too
+poetical, I'll translate my thought into fok'sle speech. But I'd
+rather leave the job to others," said the grey-haired respectable
+seaman; "I've forgotten the profanities of the sea-parlour. I have not
+used a bad word for thirty year."
+
+Some interruption by laughter attended this flight. The grey-haired
+sailor looked round him with his slow critical motion of eye, and
+continued:
+
+"'What's wrong aloft forrad there?' bawled the mate, and now he sung
+out with energy and decision, for the figure of the captain was
+alongside of him.
+
+"'There's something aloft that looks like a man,' howled a seaman, one
+of the upstaring crowd about the Dutchman. 'Come forrad, sir. You'll
+see him.'
+
+"The mate and the captain went forward and looked up.
+
+"'It's a man,' exclaimed the captain. 'Aloft there! What are you doing
+skylarking up in those cross-trees? Come down!' he cried, angrily.
+
+"'You sick-hearts, what d'ye see to stare at, or seeing, why don't you
+go for it?' thundered the mate, after a pause, during which the figure
+on high had made no answer or motion, and as he spoke the words the
+officer bounded on to the bulwarks, and ran up the fore-shrouds.
+
+"He travelled with heroic speed till he got as high as the foretop.
+There he stood at gaze; presently, after you might have counted fifty,
+putting his foot into the topmast rigging he began to crawl, with
+frequent breathless stops; his passage up those shrouds had the dying
+uncertainty of the tread of a blue-bottle when it climbs a sheet of
+glass in October.
+
+"On a sudden he came down into the top very fast. There he stood
+staring aloft as though fascinated or electrified, then putting his
+foot over the top he got into the fore-shrouds, and trotted down on
+deck, all very quick. The captain stood near the main hatch, looking
+up. The mate approached him, and, in a whisper of awe and terror,
+exclaimed, whilst his eyes sought the shadow up in the foretopmast
+cross-trees, 'I believe the Dutchman's right, sir, and that we've been
+boarded by the devil himself.'
+
+"'What are you talking about?'
+
+"'I never saw the like of such a thing,' said the mate, in shaking
+tones.
+
+"'Is it a man?' said the captain, staring up with amazement, while the
+seamen came hustling close in a sneaking way to listen, and the
+Dutchman drew close to the mate.
+
+"'It has the looks of a man,' said the mate; 'yet it sha'n't be murder
+if you kill him.'
+
+"'She vos no man, sir. I vos close. I vent closer don you. I oxpect,
+sir,' said the Dutchman, 'she's an imp. Strange dot I did not see him
+till I was upon her.'
+
+"The captain went swiftly to his cabin for a binocular glass. The
+lenses helped him to determine the motionless shadow in the
+cross-trees, and he clearly distinguished an apparently large human
+shape, but in what fashion, or whether or not habited, it was
+impossible to see. How had he come into the ship? The captain went on
+to the poop and searched the silent sea with the glass with some fancy
+of finding a boat within reach of his vision. Nothing was to be seen
+but the glass-smooth face of the deep, with here and there the light
+of a large trembling star draining into it. The catspaw had died out,
+and it mattered nothing whether they braced the fore-yards round or
+not.
+
+"It got wind in the forecastle that something wild, unearthly,
+hellish, was aloft, and the watch below turned out, too restless to
+sleep, and all through those hours of darkness the sailors walked the
+decks in groups, again and again staring up at the foretopmast
+cross-trees, where the mysterious bulk of blackness sate, squatted, or
+hung motionless, like some brooding fiend, or incarnation of ill-luck,
+sinking by force of meditation its curses not loud, but deep, into the
+bottom of the very hold itself.
+
+"'Why don't the captain let me shoot him?' said the second mate at
+four o'clock. 'I cannot miss that mark; my rifle will bring him to
+your feet at the cost of a single shot.'
+
+"'No,' said the chief mate, 'I've talked of trying what shooting will
+do. The captain means to wait for sunlight. But how did it get on
+board?' said he, sinking his voice in awe. 'There's no land for
+hundreds of leagues. Is it some sort of human sea-monster, some merman
+whose looks blind you with their ugliness, which this ship's been
+doomed to discover, and perhaps carry home?'
+
+"It was not long before day whitened the east. In those climates the
+morning is a quick revelation, and hardly had the dawn broke when sea
+and sky were lighted up. And then, and even then, what was it? There
+it sat up in the cross-trees, a hairy, sulky bulk of man or beast,
+black, and the creature looked hard down whilst all hands were staring
+hard up.
+
+"Seized if it isn't a gorilla!" said the mate.
+
+"'No.' said the captain, letting fall his binocular, 'look for
+yourself. Yet, it's not a man, either.' He burst into a laugh as
+though for relief. 'It's a huge, hairy baboon, one of the biggest I
+ever saw in my life. He'll be as fierce as a mutinous crew, and strong
+as a frigate's complement. What's to be done with him?'
+
+"'How in Egypt did he come on board?' said the mate, viewing the beast
+through the glass.
+
+"'By that, maybe, sir,' exclaimed the second mate, pointing to some
+object floating flat and yellow, faint and far out upon the starboard
+quarter.
+
+"The captain levelled the ship's telescope. 'A large raft!' he
+exclaimed, after some minutes of silent examination. 'Take a boat and
+examine it.'
+
+"A quarter-boat was lowered, and the second mate and four men pulled
+away for the raft in the distance. It was a very large raft,
+manifestly launched by some country wallah in the last throes: a
+complicate huge grating, or floating platform, of immensely thick
+bamboos and spare spars, secured by turns of Manilla or coir rope. It
+was clean swept; not a rag was to be seen. Whether the sufferers had
+been taken off, leaving the baboon behind them, whether they had died,
+and the wash of the ocean had slipped their bodies overboard, the
+baboon holding on to the raft, who was to tell? 'At sea,' said Lord
+Nelson, 'nothing is impossible and nothing improbable.'
+
+"The raft had floated to the bows of the ship in the silent midnight,
+and the baboon sprang aboard and aloft.
+
+"The creature on high was a clear picture in the bright sunshine. It
+made many dreadful grimaces, by the exhibition of its teeth, and when
+the boat drew alongside it moved and stood up, and showed a great
+tail, then hung with one fist, looking down. It next descended with
+the velocity of wind into the foretop.
+
+"The captain said: 'The beast don't seem faint, but I guess he's
+thirsty, and he may fall mad, come down, and bite some of us. So,'
+says he to the chief officer, 'send a hand aloft with a bucket of
+fresh water for the poor brute and a pocketful of ship's bread. If we
+can civilise him, so much the better.'
+
+"But it never came to it," said the grey-haired respectable seaman.
+"The creature fled to the cross-trees nimble as light when he saw a
+couple of seamen mounting to the top, then descended, and ate and
+drank ravenously when they had come down, which feeding murdered him,
+and ruined the captain's hopes of carrying the fellow to London and
+selling him at a large price to the Zoölogical Gardens. For he refused
+to come on deck. He bared his teeth, and his eyes shone with the
+malice of hell if the men attempted to approach him. It was impossible
+to let him rest aloft throughout the night to command the ship, so to
+speak; for he might sink to the deck stealthy as the shadow of a cloud
+blown by the wind, and he was strong enough and big enough to tear a
+sleeping man's throat out.
+
+"'He must be shot,' said the captain, and he told the second mate to
+fetch his rifle.
+
+"The second mate, that he might make sure of his aim, went aloft into
+the foretop. The beast was then sitting on the topgallant yard. He had
+been in command of the fabric of the fore all day. Had it come on to
+blow so as to oblige the captain to shorten sail, the deuce a seaman
+durst have gone aloft to stow the canvas. The second mate, standing in
+the top, was in the act of lifting his rifle, when the monster,
+running on all fours out to the dizzy topgallant yard-arm, stood erect
+a breathless instant, poised--in human posture--a marvellous picture
+of the man-beast against the liquid blue, then sprang into the air.
+
+"'Come down,' roared the captain to the second mate, 'and shoot him
+through the head, for God's sake!'
+
+"As the beast rose with a wild grin after having been so long out of
+sight through the frightful height he had jumped from, you'd have
+thought he'd have risen with a burst skin, the captain bawled out,
+'Blessed if he's not making for his raft.'
+
+"The baboon, with a fixed expression, and with eyes askew upon the
+ship as he drove past, swimming very finely with long easy flourishes
+of his arms and dexterous thrusts of his legs, whilst the end of his
+tail stood up astern of him as though it was some comical little man
+there steering,--the baboon, I say, was undoubtedly and with amazing
+sagacity making straight for the raft, having taken its bearings when
+aloft; but at the moment the second mate knelt to level his piece,
+meaning to murder the poor brute out of pure mercy, the thing uttered,
+oh, my God! what a horrible cry! and vanished, and a quantity of blood
+rose and dyed a bright patch upon the calm blue. No more was seen of
+the baboon, but a little later the black scythe-like fins of three
+sharks showed in the spot where he had disappeared."
+
+
+
+
+                     _Plums from a Sailor's Duff._
+
+
+It has been commonly expected of sailors in all ages that they should
+encounter nothing upon the ocean but hair-breadth escapes. The theory
+is that the mariner but half discharges his duties when his
+experiences are limited to his work as a seaman. That he may be fully
+and perfectly accomplished vocationally he must know what it is to
+have been cast away, to have barely come off with his life out of a
+ship on fire, to have been overboard on many occasions in heavy seas,
+to have chewed pieces of lead in open boats to assuage his thirst--to
+have encountered, in short, most of the stock horrors of the oceanic
+calling. Considering, however, that the sailor goes to sea holding his
+life in his hands, I cannot but think that his mere occupation is
+perilous enough to satisfy the romantic demands of the shore-going
+dreamer. It is feigned that the sea-faring life is not one jot more
+dangerous than most of the laborious callings followed ashore. Let no
+man credit this. The sailor never springs aloft, never slides out to a
+yard-arm, never gives battle to the thunderous canvas, scarcely
+performs a duty, indeed, that does not contain a distinct menace to
+his life. That the calling has less of danger in it in these days than
+it formerly held I will not undertake to determine. If in former times
+ships put to sea destitute of the scientific equipment which
+characterises the fabrics of this age, the mariner supplied the
+deficiencies of the shipyard by caution and patience. He was never in
+a hurry. He waited with a resigned countenance upon the will of the
+wind. He plied his lead and log-line with indefatigable diligence.
+There was no prompt despatch in his day, no headlong thundering,
+through weather as thick as mud in a wineglass, to reach his port. We
+have diminished many of the risks he ran through imperfect appliances,
+but, on the other hand, we have raised a plentiful stock of our own,
+so that the balance between then and now shows pretty level.
+
+My sea-faring experiences covered about eight years, and they hit a
+traditional period of immense moment--I mean the gradual
+transformation of the marine fabric from wood into iron. I was always
+afloat in wood, however, and never knew what it was to have an iron
+plate between me and the yearning wash of the brine outside until I
+went on a voyage to Natal and back in a big ocean steamer that all day
+long throbbed to the maddened heart in her engine room, like some
+black and gleaming leviathan rendered hysterical by the lances of
+whalers feeling for its life, and all night stormed through the dark
+ocean shadow like a body of fire, faster than a gale of wind could in
+my time have driven the swiftest clipper keel that furrowed blue
+water.
+
+What hair-breadth escapes did I meet with? I have been asked. Was I
+ever marooned? Ever cast away, as Jack says, on the top crust of a
+half-penny loaf? Ever overboard among sharks? Ever gazing madly round
+the horizon, the sole occupant of a frizzling boat, in search of a
+ship where I might obtain water to cool my blue and frothing lips?
+Well, my duff is not a very considerable one, and the few plums in it
+I fear are almost wide enough apart to be out of hail of one another.
+However a sample or two will suffice to enable me to keep my word and
+to write something at all events autobiographic.
+
+So let us start off Cape Horn on a July day in the year of grace 1859.
+The ship was a fine old Australian liner, a vessel of hard upon 1400
+tons, a burden that in those days constituted a large craft. She was
+commanded by one Captain Neatby, something of a favourite I believe in
+the passenger trade--a careful old man with bow-legs and a fiery
+grog-blossom of a nose. He wore a tall chimney-pot hat in all weathers,
+and was reckoned a very careful man because he always furled his fore
+and mizzen royals in the first dog-watch every night. We were a long
+way south; I cannot remember the exact latitude, but I know it was
+drawing close upon sixty degrees. There was a talk in the midshipmen's
+berth amongst us that the captain was trying his hand at the great
+Circle course, but none of us knew much about it down in that gloomy,
+'tween-decks, slush-flavoured cavern in which we youngsters lived. I
+was fourteen years old, homeward bound on my first voyage; a little
+bit of a midshipman, burnt dry by Pacific suns, with a mortal hatred
+and terror of the wild, inexpressibly bitter cold of the roaring
+ice-loaded parallels in whose Antarctic twilight our noble ship was
+plunging and rolling now under a fragment of maintopsail, now under a
+reefed foresail and double-reefed foretopsail, chased by the shrieking
+western gale that flew like volleys of scissors and thumbscrews over
+our taffrail, and by seas, whose glittering, flickering peaks one
+looked up at from the neighbourhood of the wheel as at the brows of
+tall and beetling cliffs. The gale was white with snow, and dark with
+the blinding fall of it too, when I came on deck at noon. I was in the
+chief mate's, or port watch, as it is called. The ship was running
+under a double-reefed topsail--in those days we carried single
+sails,--reefed foresail, close-reefed foretopsail, and maintopmast
+staysail. The snow made a London fog of the atmosphere; forward of the
+galley the ship was out of sight at times when it came thundering down
+out of the blackness aft, white as any smother of spume. She pitched
+with the majesty of a line-of-battle ship, as she launched herself in
+long floating rushes from gleaming pinnacle to seething valley with a
+heavy, melancholy sobbing of water all about her decks, and her
+narrow, distended band of maintopsail hovering overhead black as a
+raven's pinion in the flying hoariness. We were washing through it at
+twelve or thirteen knots an hour, though the ship was as stiff as a
+madman in a strait-jacket, with the compressed wool in her hold and
+loaded down to her main-chain bolts besides. By two bells (one
+o'clock) forward of the break of the poop the decks were deserted,
+though now and again, amidst some swiftly passing flaw in the storm of
+snow, you might just discern the gleaming shapes of two men on the
+look-out on the forecastle, with the glimpse of a figure in the
+foretop, also on the watch for anything that might be ahead. The
+captain in his tall hat was stumping the deck to and fro close against
+the wheel, cased in a long pilot coat, under the skirts of which his
+legs, as he slewed round, showed like the lower limb of the letter O.
+Through the closed skylight windows I could get a sort of watery view
+of the cuddy passengers--as they were then called--reading, playing at
+chess, playing the piano, below. There were some scores of steerage
+and 'tween-deck passengers, deeper yet in the bowels of the ship, but
+hidden out of sight by the closed hatches.
+
+I know not why it should have been, but I was the only midshipman on
+the poop, though the ship carried twelve of us, six to a watch. The
+other five were doubtless loafing about under cover somewhere. I stood
+close beside the chief mate to windward, holding to the brass rail
+that ran athwart the break of the poop. This officer was a Scotchman,
+a man named Thompson, and I suppose no better seaman ever trod a
+ship's deck. He was talking to me about getting home, asking me
+whether I would rather be off Cape Horn in a snow-storm or making
+ready to sit down with my brothers and sisters at my father's table to
+a jolly good dinner of fish and roast beef and pudding, when all on a
+sudden he stopped in what he was saying, and fell a-sniffing
+violently.
+
+"I smell ice," said he, with a glance aft at the captain.
+
+"Smell ice!" thought I, with a half look at him, for I believed he was
+joking. For my part, it was all ice to me--one dense, yelling
+atmosphere of snow; every flake barbed, and the cold of a bitterness
+beyond words. He fell a-sniffing again, quickly and vehemently, and
+stepped to the side, sending a thirsty look into the white blindness
+ahead, whilst I heard him mutter, "There 's ice close aboard, there 's
+ice close aboard!" As he spoke the words, there arose a loud and
+fearful cry from the forecastle.
+
+"Ice right ahead, sir!"
+
+"Ice right ahead, sir!" repeated the chief mate, whipping round upon
+the captain.
+
+"I see it, sir! I see it, sir!" roared the skipper. "Hard a
+starboard, men! Hard a starboard for your lives! Over with it!"
+
+The two fellows at the helm sent the spokes flying like the
+driving-wheel of a locomotive; the long ship, upborne at the instant
+by a huge Pacific sea, paid off like a creature of instinct, sweeping
+slowly but surely to port just in time. For right on the starboard bow
+of us there leapt out into proportions terrible and magnificent, within
+a musket shot of our rail, an iceberg that looked as big as St. Paul's
+Cathedral, with stormy roaring of the gale in its ravines and valleys,
+and the white smoke of the snow revolving about its pinnacles and
+spires like volumes of steam, and a volcanic noise of mighty seas
+bursting against its base and recoiling from the adamant of its
+crystalline sides in acres of foam. We were heading for it at the rate
+of thirteen miles an hour as neatly as you point the end of a thread
+into the eye of a needle. In a few minutes we should have been into
+it, crumbled against it, dissolved upon the white waters about it, and
+have met a nameless end. Boy as I was, and bitter as was the day, I
+remember feeling a stir in my hair as I stood watching with open mouth
+the passage of the mountainous mass close alongside into the pale void
+astern, whilst the ship trembled again to the blows and thumps of vast
+blocks of floating ice.
+
+"Ice right ahead, sir!" came the cry again, nor could we clear the
+jumble of bergs until the dusk had settled down, when we hove-to for
+the night. No one was hurt, but I suppose no closer shave of the kind
+ever happened to a ship before.
+
+Again, and this time once more off Cape Horn. It was my third voyage;
+I was still a midshipman, and in the second mate's watch. I came on
+deck at midnight and found the ship hove-to, breasting what in this
+age of steamboats, and, for the matter of that, perhaps in any other
+age, might be termed a terrific sea. She was making good weather of
+it--that is to say, she kept her decks dry, but she was diving and
+rolling most hideously, with such swift headlong shearing of her spars
+through the gale that the noises up in the blackness aloft were as
+though the spirits of the inmates of a thousand lunatic asylums had
+been suddenly enlarged from their bodies and sent yelling into limbo.
+The wind blew with an unendurable edge in the sting and bite of it.
+The second mate and I, each with a rope girdling his waist to swing
+by, stood muffled up to our noses under the lee of a square of canvas
+seized to the mizzen shrouds. Presently he roared into my ear, "Sort
+of a night for a pannikin of coffee, eh, Mr. Russell?" "Ay, ay, sir,"
+I replied, and with that, liberating myself from the rope, I clawed my
+way along the line of the hencoops--the decks sometimes sloping almost
+up and down to the heavy weather _scends_ of the huge black
+billows,--and descended into the midshipmen's berth. It was not the
+first time I had made a cup of coffee for myself and the second mate in
+the middle watch during cold weather. An old nurse who had lived in my
+family for years had given me an apparatus consisting of a spirit-lamp
+and a funnel-shaped contrivance of block tin, along with several pounds
+of very good coffee, and with this I used to keep the second mate and
+myself supplied with the real luxury of a hot and aromatic drink
+during wet and frosty watches. The midshipmen's berth was a narrow
+room down in the 'tween decks, bulkheaded off from the sides, fitted
+with a double row of bunks, one on top of another, the lower beds
+being about a foot above the deck. There were five midshipmen all
+turned in and fast asleep. The others, who were on watch, were
+clustered under the break of the poop for the shelter there. A lonely
+one-eyed sort of slush lamp, with sputtering wick and stinking flame,
+swung wearily from a blackened beam, rendering the darkness but little
+more than visible. I slung my little cooking apparatus near to it,
+filled the lamp with spirits of wine, put water and coffee into the
+funnel, and then set fire to the arrangement. I stood close under it,
+wrapped from head to foot in gleaming oilskins--looking a very bloated
+little shape, I don't doubt, from the quantity of clothing I wore
+under the waterproofs,--waiting for the water to boil. The seas roared
+in thunder high above the scuttles to the wild and sickening dipping
+of the ship's side into the trough. The humming of the gale pierced
+through the decks with the sound of a crowd of bands of music in the
+distance, all playing together and each one a different tune. The
+midshipmen snored, and coats and smallclothes hanging from the bunk
+stanchions wearily swung sprawling out and in, like bodies dangling
+from gallows in a gale of wind.
+
+All in a moment a sea of unusual weight and fury took the ship and
+hove her down to the height as you would have thought, of her
+topgallant rail; the headlong movement sent me sliding to leeward; the
+forethatch of my sou'wester struck the spirit-lamp; down it poured, in
+a line of fire upon the deck, where it surged to and fro in a sheet of
+flame, with the movements of the ship. I was so horribly frightened as
+to be almost paralysed by the sight of that flickering stretch of
+yellowish light, sparkling and leaping as it swept under the lower
+bunks and came racing back again to the bulkhead with the windward
+incline. I fell to stamping upon it in my sea-boots, little fool that
+I was, hoping in that way to extinguish it. A purple-faced midshipman
+occupied one of the lower bunks, and his long nose lay over the edge
+of it. He opened his eyes, and after looking sleepily for a moment or
+two at the coating of pale fire rushing from under his bed, he snuffed
+a bit, and muttering, "Doocid nice smell; burnt brandy, ain't it?" he
+turned over and went to sleep again with his face the other way.
+
+I was in an agony of consternation, and yet afraid of calling for help
+lest I should be very roughly manhandled for my carelessness. There
+was a deal of "raffle" under the bunks--sea-boots, little bundles of
+clothing, and I know not what else; but thanks to Cape Horn everything
+was happily as damp as water itself. There was therefore nothing to
+kindle, nor was there any aperture through which the burning spirit
+could run below into the hold; so by degrees the flaming stuff
+consumed itself, and in about ten minutes' time the planks were black
+again. I went on deck and reported what had happened to the second
+mate. All he said was "My God!" and instantly ran below to satisfy
+himself that there was no further danger. I can never recall that
+little passage of my life without a shudder. There were a hundred and
+ninety-five souls of us aboard, and had I managed to set the ship on
+fire that night the doom of every living creature would have been
+assured, seeing that no boat could have lived an instant in such a sea
+as was then running.
+
+In a very different climate from that of Cape Horn I came very near to
+meeting with an extremely ugly end. It was a little business entirely
+out of the routine of the ordinary ocean dangers, but the memory of it
+sends a thrill through me to this hour, though it is much past twenty
+years ago since it happened. I was making my second voyage aboard a
+small full-rigged ship that had been hired by the Government for the
+conveyance of troops to the East Indies. I was the only midshipman;
+the other youngsters consisted of five apprentices. We occupied a
+deck-house a little forward of the main-hatch. This house was divided
+by a fore and aft bulkhead; the apprentices lived in the port
+compartment, the third and fourth mates and myself slung our hammocks
+on the starboard side. The third mate was a man of good family, aged
+about twenty-one, a young Hercules in strength, with heavy under-jaws
+and the low, peculiar brow of the prize-fighter. He had been a
+midshipman in Smith's service, and was a good and active sailor, very
+nimble aloft and expert in his work about the ship, but of a sullen,
+morose disposition, and a heavy drinker whenever the opportunity to
+get drink presented itself. I think he was regarded by all hands as a
+little touched, but I was too young to remark in him any oddities
+which might strike an older observer. He was given to delivering
+himself of certain dark, wild fancies. I remember he once told me that
+if he owed a man a grudge he would not scruple to plant himself
+alongside of him on a yard on a black night and kick the foot-rope
+from under him when his hands were busy, and so let him go overboard.
+But this sort of talk I would put down to mere boasting, and indeed I
+thought nothing of it.
+
+We were in the Indian Ocean, and one evening I sat at supper (as tea,
+the last meal on board ship, is always called) along with this man and
+the fourth mate. We fell into some sort of nautical argument, and in
+the heat of the discussion I said something that caused the third mate
+to look at me fixedly for a little while, whilst he muttered under his
+breath, in a kind of half-stifled way, as though his teeth were set. I
+did not catch the words, but I am quite certain from the fourth mate's
+manner, that he had heard them, and that he knew what was in the
+other's mind. I say this because I recollect that very shortly
+afterwards the fellow rose and walked out on deck with an air about
+him as if he was willing to give the third mate a chance of being
+alone with me. It was a mean trick, but then he was a cowardly rogue,
+and when I afterwards heard that he had been dismissed from the
+service he had formerly entered for robbing his shipmates of money and
+tobacco and the humble trifles which sailors carry about with them in
+their sea-chests I was wicked enough, recalling how he had walked out
+of that deck-house, leaving me, a little boy, alone with a strong,
+brutal, crazy third mate, to hope that he might yet prove guilty of
+larger sins still, for I could not but regard him as a creature that
+deserved to be hanged. The instant this man stepped through the door
+the third mate jumped up and closed it. It travelled in grooves, and
+he whipped it to with a temper which caused the whole structure to
+echo again to the blow.
+
+"Now, you young--" he exclaimed, turning his bulldog face, white with
+rage, upon me, yet speaking in a cold voice that was more terrifying
+to listen to than if he had roared out, "I have you and I mean to
+punish you," and with that he unclasped his heavy belt, and then
+clasped it again so as to make a double thong of the leather, and
+grasped me by the collar.
+
+What my feelings were I am unable to state at this distance of time. I
+believe I was more astonished than frightened. I could not imagine
+that this huge creature was in earnest in offering to beat me for what
+I had said, and yet I was sensible too of an unnatural fire in his
+eyes--a glow that put an expression of savage exultation into them;
+and this look of his somehow held me motionless and speechless. He
+half raised his arm, but a sudden irresolution possessed him, as
+though my passivity was a check upon his intentions.
+
+"No, no," he exclaimed, after a little, "I'll manage better than
+this"; and still grasping me by the collar of my jacket he dropped his
+belt and ran me to the fore end of the compartment, threw me on my
+back, and knelt upon me. Within reach of his arm, kneeling as he was,
+were three shelves on which we kept such crockery and cutlery as we
+owned, along with our slender stores of sugar and flour and the cold
+remains of previous repasts. He felt for a knife; I could hear the
+blades rattle as his fingers groped past his curved wrist for one of
+them, and then flourishing the black-handled weapon in front of my
+eyes he exclaimed, "Now I'm going to murder you." I lay stock-still; I
+never uttered a word; I scarcely breathed indeed. Again, I say that I
+do not know that I was terrified. My condition was one of
+semi-stupefaction, I think, with just enough of sense left in me to
+comprehend that if I uttered the least cry or struggled, no matter how
+faintly, I should transform him into a wild beast. Nothing but my
+lying corpse-like under the pressure of his knee saved me, I am
+certain. My gaze was fixed upon his face, and I see him now staring at
+me with his little eyes on fire, and the knife poised ready to plunge.
+This posture maybe he retained for two or three minutes; it ran into
+long hours to me. Then on a sudden he threw the knife away backwards
+over his shoulder, rose and went to the door, where he stood a little
+staring at me intently. I continued to lie motionless. He opened the
+door and passed out, on which I sprang to my feet and fled as nimbly
+as my legs would carry me to the poop, where I found the chief mate.
+He was a little Welshman of the name of Thomas, a brother of Ap
+Thomas, the celebrated harpist, and if he be still alive and these
+lines should meet his eyes, let him be pleased to know that my memory
+holds him in cordial respect as the kindest officer and the smartest
+seaman I ever had the fortune to be shipmates with. To him I related
+what had happened.
+
+"O--ho," cried he, "attempted murder, hey? Our friend must be taught
+that we don't allow this sort of thing to happen aboard _us_."
+
+He gave certain orders and shortly afterwards the third mate was
+seized and locked up in a spare cabin just under the break of the
+poop. Two powerful seamen were told off to keep him company. How much
+the unfortunate man needed this sort of control I could not have
+imagined but for my hearing that he was locked up and my going to the
+cabin window that looked on to the quarter deck to take a peep at him
+if he was visible. He saw me and bounded to the window, bringing his
+leg-of-mutton fist against it with a blow that crashed the whole plate
+of glass into splinters. His face was purple, his eyes half out of
+their sockets. There was froth upon his lips, with such a general
+distortion of features that it would be impossible to figure a more
+horrible illustration of madness than his countenance. I bolted as if
+the devil had been after me, catching just a glimpse of the powerful
+creature wrestling in the grasp of the two seamen who were dragging
+him backwards into the gloom of the cabin. Such an escape as this I
+regard as distinctly more eventful, if not more romantic, than falling
+overboard and being rescued when almost spent, or being picked up
+after a fortnight's exposure in an open boat. My most sleep-murdering
+nightmares nearly always include the phantom form of that burly,
+crazed third mate kneeling upon my motionless little figure and
+feeling for a knife on one of the shelves just over my head.
+
+Another little plum out of my plain sailor's pudding. This time my
+ship was an East Indian trader that whilst lying at Calcutta was
+chartered by the Government to convey troops to the North of China. It
+was in 1860. Difficulties had arisen, and John Chinaman was to be
+attacked. We proceeded to Hong Kong with the headquarters of the 60th
+Rifles on board, and thence to the Gulf of Peche-li, which I should
+say submitted one of the finest spectacles in the world, with its
+congregations of transports and English and French and Yankee ships of
+war. It was an old-world scene which the sponge of time has
+obliterated for ever, and I behold again in memory those two noble
+frigates, the _Impérieuse_ and the _Chesapeake_, straining tightly at
+their cables, with smoke-stacks too modest in proportions to impair to
+the critical nautical eye the tack and sheet suggestions of the
+graceful, exquisitely symmetrical fabric of spars and yards and
+rigging soaring triumphantly aloft to where the long whip or pennant
+at the main flickered like a delicate line of fire against the hard
+cold blue of the Asiatic sky.
+
+We lay for many months in that bay, and were obliged repeatedly to
+send ashore for fresh meat, vegetables, and the like. On one occasion
+I recollect going with the mate in the long-boat some distance up the
+river Peiho, a rushing, turbid stream at the mouth of which the
+Chinese had fixed a very _chevaux-de-frise_ of spikes, upon which they
+had fondly hoped our men-of-war would impale themselves, forgetting
+that the depth of water scarcely permitted the approach of a shallow
+gunboat. We were returning to the ship with a fair wind, and on top of
+the fierce rush of the river, when our helmsman run us plump against
+one of Johnny's huge impalers. The shock of the blow threw the mate
+into an immense basket of fresh eggs. He fell with a squelch past all
+power of forgetting, and lay wriggling in a very quagmire of yolk and
+white and fragments of shells. We pulled him out blind and streaming
+with eggs. His aspect was so preposterously absurd that the helmsman,
+rendered almost imbecile by laughter, let the boat drive into a second
+pile, when, as I live to write it, the mate, who was cleaning himself
+near to the basket, was thrown a second time into the glutinous mess!
+I will not attempt to repeat the sea-blessings he bestowed upon the
+steersman. Happily eggs were cheap, and a dollar might have
+represented a more considerable smash. Now it was two days following
+this that the captain sent the long-boat to procure some sheep and
+poultry from a little village situated close to the shores of the bay
+on the north of the river. The second mate took charge, and I and
+another midshipman and a couple of sailors went along with him. We
+landed and left the boat in charge of a seaman, and strolled towards
+the village. The second mate was a wild, dissolute young fellow, who,
+before he quitted China, became the recipient of more than one round
+dozen by order of the provost-marshal for looting. A little knot of
+Chinamen stood watching as we approached, whilst just beyond we caught
+sight of a couple of women hobbling nimbly away out of reach of our
+sight, as though they walked on stilts. Sherman--for such was the
+second mate's name,--approaching the Chinamen, began with them in
+pigeon English. They did not understand. He exhibited a few dollars,
+and traced the outline of a sheep upon the ground, and, with many
+surprising motions of his arms, sought to acquaint them with the
+object of his visit. All to no purpose. "What's to be done?" said
+Sherman, looking at us. "There's nothing that resembles a sheep
+hereabouts." His eyes suddenly brightened as they lighted on a large
+concourse of cocks and hens pecking in tolerably close order at some
+fifty paces distant from us. "Boys," he shouted, "as these chaps can't
+be made to understand, let's help ourselves. Each one seize what he
+can get and make for the boat. Follow me." He sprang with incredible
+agility towards the fowls, and in a trice had a couple of them
+shrieking and fluttering in his grasp. In a breath the
+Chinamen--thirty or forty strong--uttering a long, peculiar shout,
+armed themselves with pitchforks--at all events, a species of weapon
+that to my young eyes resembled a pitchfork,--sticks, and stones, and
+gave chase. They tramped after us with the noise of an army in pursuit.
+We flew towards the boat, screaming to the fellow in charge to haul in
+and receive us. A stone struck me in the small of my back, and urged
+me forwards faster than my legs were travelling. Down I should have
+tumbled on my nose, and in that posture have been straightway
+massacred, but for the timely grip of a sailor who was running by my
+side. "Hold up, my hearty!" he roared, hooking his fingers into the
+back of my collar and jerking me backwards. In a few moments we gained
+the boat, wading waist-high to come at her, and rolling like drunken
+men over her gunwale into her bottom. A volley of stones rattled about
+our ears, but we were safe. Had the Chinamen carried firearms, not one
+of us but must have been shot down.
+
+I could relate a score or more of such experiences: of ugly collisions
+with the police in Calcutta, of a narrow escape of being thrown
+overboard by a dinghy-wallah of the river Hooghley, of a desperate
+fight in the slings of the mizzen-topgallant yard with an apprentice
+of my own age, and the like; but the space at my disposal obliges me
+to conclude. Very little of the heroic enters the sailor's life. The
+risks he runs, the adventures he encounters, have, as a rule, nothing
+of the romantic in them; they are mainly brought about by his own
+foolhardiness, by the proverbial carelessness that is utterly
+irreconcilable with the stern obligations of vigilance, alertness, and
+foresight imposed upon him by the nature of his calling, by the
+imbecility of shipmates, and much too often by drink. Yet no matter
+what the cause of most of the perils he meets with, his experiences, I
+take it, head the march of professional dangers. Small wonder that
+faith in the "sweet little cherub that sits up aloft" should still
+linger in the forecastle. For certainly were it not for the bright
+look-out kept over him by some sort of maritime angel, the mariner
+would rank foremost as amongst the most perishable of human products.
+
+
+
+
+                        _The Strange Adventures
+                           of a South Seaman._
+
+
+On November 4th, 1830, a number of convicts were indicted at the
+Admiralty Sessions of the Old Bailey for having on the 5th of
+September in the previous year piratically seized a brig called the
+_Cyprus_. A South Seaman was innocently and most involuntarily, as
+shall be discovered presently, involved in this tragic business, to
+which he is able to add a narrative that is certainly not known to any
+of the chroniclers of crime. But first as to the piratical seizure.
+
+The _Cyprus_, a colonial brig, had been chartered to convey a number
+of convicts from Hobart Town to Macquarie Harbour, on the northern
+coast of Tasmania, and Norfolk Island, distant about a week's sail
+from Sydney--in those days a penal settlement. There were thirty-two
+felons in all. These men had been guilty of certain grave offences at
+Hobart Town, and they had rendered themselves in consequence liable to
+new punishment; they were tried before the Supreme Court of Judicature
+there, and sentenced to be transported to the place above mentioned.
+
+Only the very worst sort of prisoners were sent to Norfolk Island and
+Macquarie Harbour. The discipline at those penal settlements was
+terrible; the labour that was exacted, heart-breaking. The character
+of the punishment was well known, and every felon re-sentenced to
+transportation from the colonial convict settlements very well
+understood the fate that was before him.
+
+The _Cyprus_ sailed from Hobart Town in August, 1829. In addition to
+the thirty-two convicts, she carried a crew of eight men and a guard
+of twelve soldiers, under the command of Lieutenant Carew, who was
+accompanied by his wife and children. The prisoners, as was always
+customary in convict ships, were under the care of a medical man named
+Williams.
+
+Nothing of moment happened until the brig either brought up or was
+hove-to in Research Bay, where Dr. Williams, Lieutenant Carew, the
+mate of the vessel, a soldier, and a convict named Popjoy went ashore
+on a fishing excursion. They had not been gone from the ship above
+half-an-hour when they heard a noise of firearms. Instantly guessing
+that the convicts had risen, they made a rush for the boat and pulled
+for the brig. It was as they had feared: the felons had mastered the
+guard and seized the brig. They suffered no man to come on board save
+Popjoy, who, however, later on sprang overboard, and swam to the
+beach. They then sent the crew, soldiers, and passengers ashore, but
+without provisions and the means of supporting life. Then, amongst
+themselves, the prisoners lifted the anchor and trimmed sail, and the
+little brig slipped away out of Research Bay.
+
+The chroniclers state that the vessel was never afterward heard of,
+though some of the convicts were apprehended, separately, in various
+parts of Sussex and Essex. The posthumous yarn of the mate of an
+English whaler disproves this. He relates his extraordinary experience
+thus:
+
+"We had been fishing north of the Equator, and had filled up with a
+little 'grease,' as the Yankees term it, round about the Galapagos
+Islands, but business grew too slack for even a whaleman's patience.
+Eleven months out from Whitby, and, if my memory fails me not, less
+than a score of full barrels in our hold! So the Captain made up his
+mind to try south, and working our way across the Equator, we struck
+in amongst the Polynesian groups, raising the Southern Cross higher
+and higher, till we were somewhere about latitude 30 deg., and
+longitude 175 deg. E.
+
+"I came on deck to the relief at four o'clock one morning: the weather
+was quiet, a pleasant breeze blowing off the starboard beam; our ship
+was barque-rigged, with short, topgallant masts--Cape Horn fashion;
+she was thrusting through it leisurely under topsails and a
+maintopgallantsail, and the whole Pacific heave so cradled her as she
+went that she seemed to sleep as she sailed.
+
+"Day broke soon after five, and as the light brightened out I caught
+sight of a gleam on the edge of the sea. It was as white with the
+risen sun upon it as an iceberg. I levelled the glass and made out the
+topmast canvas of a small vessel. There was nothing to excite one in
+the spectacle of a distant sail. The barque's work went on; the decks
+were washed down, the look-out aloft hailed and nothing reported, and
+at seven bells the crew went to breakfast, at which hour we had risen
+the distant sail with a rapidity that somewhat puzzled the captain and
+me. For, first of all, she was not so far off now but that we could
+distinguish the lay of her head. She looked to be going our way, but
+clearly she was stationary, for the _Swan_, which was the name of our
+barque, though as seaworthy an old tub as ever went to leeward on a
+bowline, was absolutely without legs: nothing more sluggish was ever
+afloat; for _her_ then to have overhauled anything that was actually
+under way would have been marvellous.
+
+"'Something wrong out there, Grainger?' said the captain.
+
+"'Looks to me to be all in the wind with her,' I answered.
+
+"'Make out any colour?' said the captain.
+
+"'Nothing as yet,' said I.
+
+"'Shift your helm by a spoke or two,' said he. 'Meanwhile, I'll go to
+breakfast.'
+
+"He was not long below. By the time he returned we had risen the
+distant vessel to the line of her rail. I got some breakfast in the
+cabin; on passing again through the hatch I found the captain looking
+at the sail through the telescope.
+
+"'She is a small brig,' said he, 'and she has just sent the English
+colours aloft with the jack down. She is all in the wind, as you said.
+Her people don't seem to know what to do with her.'
+
+"She now lay plain enough to the naked sight; a small black brig of
+about a hundred and eighty tons, apparently in ballast as she floated
+high on the water. She, like ourselves, carried short topgallantmasts,
+but the canvas she showed consisted of no more than topsails and
+courses. I took the glass from the captain, and believed I could make
+out the heads of two or three people showing above the bulwark rail
+abaft the mainmast.
+
+"'What's their trouble going to prove?' said the captain.
+
+"'They're waiting for us,' said I. 'They saw us, and put the helm
+down, and got their little ship in irons instead of backing their
+topsail yard. No sailor-man there, I doubt.'
+
+"'A small colonial trader, you'll find,' said the captain, 'with a
+crew of four or five Kanakas. The captain's sick and the mate was
+accidentally left ashore at the last island.'
+
+"It blew a four-knot breeze--four knots, I mean, for the _Swan_.
+Wrinkling the water under her bows, and smoothing into oil a cable's
+length of wake astern of her, the whaler floated down to the little
+brig within hailing distance. We saw but two men, and one of them was
+at the wheel. There was an odd look of confusion aloft, or rather let
+me describe it as a want of that sort of precision which a sailor's
+eye would seek for and instantly miss, even in the commonest old
+sea-donkey of a collier. Nothing was rightly set for the lack of
+hauling taut. Running gear was slackly belayed, and swung with the
+rolling of the little brig like Irish pennants. The craft was clean at
+the bottom, but uncoppered. She was a round-bowed contrivance, with a
+spring aft which gave a kind of mulish, kick-up look to the run of
+her.
+
+"One of the two visible men, a broad-chested, thick-set fellow, in a
+black coat and a wide, white straw hat, got upon the bulwark, and
+stood holding on by a backstay, watching our approach, but he did not
+offer to hail. I thought this queer; it struck me that he hesitated to
+hail us, as though wanting the language of the sea in this business of
+speaking.
+
+"'Brig ahoy!' shouted the captain.
+
+"'Hallo!' answered the man.
+
+"'What is wrong with you?'
+
+"'We are short-handed, sir, and in great distress,' was the answer.
+
+"'What is your ship, and where are you from, and where are you bound
+to?'
+
+"When these questions were put the man looked round to the fellow who
+stood at the brig's little wheel. It was certain he was not a sailor,
+and it was possible he sought for counsel from the helmsman, who was
+probably a forecastle hand. He turned his face again our way in a
+minute, and shouted out in a powerful voice:
+
+"'We are the brig _Cyprus_, of Sydney, New South Wales, bound to the
+Cape of Good Hope, and very much out of our reckoning, I dare say,
+through the distress we're in.'
+
+"The captain and I exchanged looks.
+
+"'Heading as you go,' the captain sang out, 'you're bound on a true
+course for the Antarctic Circle, and, anyway, it's a long stretch for
+Agulhas by way of Cape Horn out of these seas. How can we serve you?'"
+
+'Will you send one of your officers in a boat?' came back the reply
+very promptly, 'that he may put us in the way of steering a course for
+the Cape of Good Hope? He'll then guess our plight, and if you'll lend
+us a hand or two we shall be greatly obliged. We can't send a boat
+ourselves--we're too few.'
+
+"'He's no sailor-man, that fellow,' said the captain, 'and he ha'n't
+got the colonial brogue, either. I seem to smell Whitechapel in that
+chap's speech. Is he a passenger? Why don't he say so? Looks like a
+play-actor, or a priest. But take a boat, Grainger, and row over and
+see what you can make of the mess they're in. There's something rather
+more than out-of-the-way in that job, if I'm not mistaken.'
+
+"A boat was lowered; I entered it, and was rowed across to the brig by
+three men. No attempt was made to throw us the end of a line, or in
+any way to help us. The bowman got hold of a chain plate, and I
+scrambled into the main-chains and so got over the rail, bidding the
+men shove off and lie clear of the brig, whose rolling was somewhat
+heavy, owing to her floating like an egg-shell upon the long Pacific
+heave.
+
+"I glanced along the vessel's decks forward, and saw not a soul. I
+observed a little caboose, the chimney of which was smoking as though
+coal had within the past few minutes been thrown into the furnace. I
+saw but one boat; she stood chocked and lashed abaft the caboose--a
+clumsy, broad-beamed long-boat, capable of stowing perhaps fifteen or
+twenty men at a pinch. I also took notice of a pair of davits on the
+starboard side, past the main rigging; they were empty.
+
+"I stepped up to the heavily-built man who had answered the captain's
+questions. He received me with a grotesque bow, pinching the brim of
+his wide straw hat as he bobbed his head. I did not like his looks. He
+had as hanging a face as ever a malefactor carried. His features were
+heavy and coarse, his brow low and protruding, his eyes small, black,
+and restless, and his mouth of the bulldog cast.
+
+"'We're much obliged to you for this visit,' he said. 'Might I ask
+your name, sir?'
+
+"'My name is Grainger--Mr. James Grainger,' I answered, scarcely
+wondering at the irregularity of such a question on such an occasion,
+perceiving clearly now that the fellow was no sailor.
+
+"'What might be your position in that ship, Mr. Grainger?' said the
+man.
+
+"'I'm mate of her,' said I.
+
+"'Then I suppose you're capable of carrying a ship from place to place
+by the art of navigation?' he exclaimed.
+
+"'Why, I hope so!' cried I. 'But what is it you want?' and here I
+looked at the man who was standing at the helm, grasping the spokes in
+a manner that assured me he was not used to that sort of work; and I
+was somewhat struck to observe that in some respects he was not unlike
+the fellow who was addressing me--that is to say, he had quite as
+hanging a face as his companion, though he wanted the other's breadth
+and squareness, and ruffian-like set of figure; but his forehead was
+low, and his eyes black and restless, and he was close-cropped, with
+some days' growth of beard, as was the case with the other. He was
+dressed in a bottle-green spencer and trousers of a military cut, and
+wore one of those caps which in the days I am writing of were the
+fashion amongst masters and mates.
+
+"'If you don't mind stepping into the cabin,' said the man with whom I
+was conversing, 'I'll show you a chart, and ask you to pencil out a
+course for us; and with your leave, sir, I'll tell you over a glass of
+wine exactly how it's come about that we're too few to carry the brig
+to her destination unless your captain will kindly help us.'
+
+"'Are you two the only people aboard?' said I.
+
+"'The only people,' he answered.
+
+"Anywhere else, under any other conditions, I might have suspected a
+treacherous intention in two men with such hanging countenances as
+this lonely brace owned; but what could I imagine to be afraid of
+aboard a brig holding two persons only, with the whaler's boat and
+three men within a few strokes of the oar, and the old barque, _Swan_,
+full of livelies, many of them deadly in the art of casting the
+harpoon, within easy hail?
+
+"The man who invited me below stepped into the companion-way; I
+followed and descended the short flight of steps. The instant I had
+gained the bottom of the ladder I knew by the sudden shadow which came
+into the light that the companion hatch had been closed; this must
+have been done by the fellow who was standing at the wheel. It was
+wisely contrived. Assuredly had the way been open, I should have
+rushed upon deck and sprung overboard: because after descending the
+steps I beheld five or six men standing in a sort of waiting and
+listening posture under the skylight. Instantly my left arm was
+gripped by the man who had asked me to step below, while another
+fellow, equally powerful, and equally ruffianly in appearance, grasped
+me by the right arm.
+
+"'Now,' said the first man, 'if you make the least bit of noise or
+give us any trouble, we'll cut your throat. We don't intend to do you
+any harm, but we want your services, and you'll have to do what we
+require without any fuss. If not, you're a dead man.'
+
+"So saying, they threw open the door of a berth, ran me into it, shut
+the door, and shot the lock. I had been so completely taken by
+surprise that I was in a manner stunned. I stood in the middle of the
+cabin just where the fellows had let go of me, staring around,
+breathing short and fierce, my mind almost a blank. But I quickly
+rallied my wits. I understood I had been kidnapped; by what sort of
+people I could not imagine, but beyond question because I understood
+navigation, as I had told the man. I listened, but heard no noise of
+voices, nor movements of people in the cabin. Through the planks,
+overhead, however, came the sound of a rapid tread of feet,
+accompanied by the thud of coils of rope flung hastily down. The cabin
+porthole was a middling-sized, circular window. I saw the whaler in it
+as in a frame. I unscrewed the port, but with no intention to cry out,
+never doubting for a moment from the looks of the men that they would
+silence me in some bloody fashion as had been threatened.
+
+"Just as I pulled the port open a voice overhead sang out: 'Get back
+to your ship, you three men; your mate has consented to stop with us
+as we're in want of a navigator.'
+
+"'Let him tell us that himself,' said one of my men; 'let him show up.
+What ha' ye done with him?'
+
+"'Be off,' roared one of the people, in a savage, hurricane note.
+
+"There was a little pause as of astonishment on the part of the boat's
+crew--I could not see them, the boat lay too far astern,--but after a
+bit I heard the splash of oars, the boat swept into the sphere of the
+porthole, and I beheld her making for the barque.
+
+"I was now sensible, however, not only by observing the whaler to
+recede, but by hearing the streaming and rippling of broken waters
+along the bends, that the people of the brig had in some fashion
+trimmed sail and filled upon the vessel. We were under way. The barque
+slided out of the compass of the porthole, but now I heard her
+captain's voice coming across the space of water, clear and strong:
+
+"'Brig ahoy! What do you mean by keeping my mate?'
+
+"To this no answer was returned. Again the captain hailed the brig;
+but owing to the shift in the postures of the two vessels, and to my
+having nothing but a circular hole to hear through, I could only dimly
+and imperfectly catch what was shouted. The cries from the whaler grew
+more and more threadlike. Indeed, I knew the brig must be a very poor
+sailer if she did not speedily leave the _Swan_ far astern.
+
+"And now, as I conjectured from the noise of the tread of feet and the
+hum of voices, the brig on a sudden seemed full of men; not the eight
+or ten whom I had beheld with my own eyes, but a big ship's company.
+And the sight of the crowd, I reckoned, as I stood hearkening at the
+open porthole--amazed, confounded, in the utmost distress of mind--was
+probably the reason why the captain of the _Swan_ had not thought
+proper to send boats to rescue me. Be this as it will I was
+thunderstruck by the discovery--the discovery of my hearing, and of my
+capacity as a sailor of interpreting shipboard sounds--that this
+little brig, which I had supposed tenanted by two men only, had hidden
+a whole freight of human souls somewhere away in the execution of this
+diabolical stratagem. What was this vessel? Who were the people on
+board her? What use did they design to put me to? And when I had
+served them, what was to be my fate?
+
+"Quite three hours passed, during which I was left unvisited.
+Sometimes I heard men talking in the cabin; over my head there went a
+regular swing of heavy feet, a pendulum tread, as of half-a-score of
+burly ruffians marching abreast, and keeping a look-out all together.
+The door of my berth was opened at last, and the villain who had
+seduced me into the brig stepped in.
+
+"'I was sorry,' said he, 'to be obliged to use threats. Threats aren't
+in our way. We mean no mischief. Quite the contrary; we count upon you
+handsomely serving us. Come into the cabin, sir, that I may make you
+known to my mates.'
+
+"His manner was as civil as a fellow with his looks could possibly
+contrive, and an ugly smile sat upon his face whilst he addressed me,
+and I observed that he held his great straw hat in his hand, as though
+to show respect.
+
+"About twenty men were assembled in the cabin. I came to a dead stand
+on the threshold of the door of the berth, so astounded was I by the
+sight of all those fellows. I ran my eye swiftly over them; they were
+variously dressed--some in the attire of seamen, some in such clothes
+as gentlemen of that period wore, a few in a puzzling sort of military
+undress. They all had cropped heads, and many were grim with a few
+days' growth of beard and moustache. They had the felon's look, and
+there was somehow a suggestion of escaped prisoners in their general
+bearing. A dark suspicion rushed upon me with the velocity of thought,
+as I stood on the threshold of the door of the berth for the space of
+a few heart-beats, gazing at the mob.
+
+"The cabin was a plain, old-fashioned interior. A stout, wide table
+secured to stanchions ran amidships. Overhead was a skylight. There
+were a few chairs on either hand the table, and down the cabin on both
+sides went a length of lockers. Some of the men were smoking. A few
+sat upon the table with their arms folded; others lounged upon the
+lockers, and in chairs. They stared like one man at me, whilst I stood
+looking at them.
+
+"'Is he a navigator, Swallow?' said one of them--a wiry, dark-faced
+man, who held his head hung, and looked at you by lifting his eyes.
+
+"'Ay, mate of the whaler--James Grainger by name,' answered the fellow
+who had opened the door of my berth. 'Salute him, bullies. He's the
+charley-pitcher for to handle this butter-box.'
+
+"The voices of the men swelled into a roar of welcomes of as many
+sorts as there were speakers. One of them came round the table and
+shook me by the hand.
+
+"'My name's Alexander Stevenson,' said he; 'come and sit you down
+here.'
+
+"All very civilly he conducted me to a chair at the head of the table.
+And now, happening to glance upwards, I spied seven or eight faces
+peering down at me through the skylight.
+
+"'Swallow, do the jawing, will 'ee?' said the man who called himself
+Stevenson.
+
+"'Why, yes,' answered Swallow, posting himself at the top of the
+table, and addressing me through the double ranks of men on either
+side. 'This is how it stands with us, Mr. Grainger--clear as mud in a
+wineglass; and we're sorry it should have come to it, for your sake.
+But do your duty by us faithfully, and we'll take care you sha'n't
+suffer. We're thirty-one convicts in all. We were thirty-two, but
+Milkliver Poppy took a header, and went for the land and the
+lickspittle; if he lives he'll get his liberty for a reward. We were
+bound from Hobart to Norfolk Island. You'll have heard of that
+settlement?'
+
+"I said 'Yes,' and an odd guttural laugh broke from some of the men.
+
+"'Well, mister,' continued the man Swallow, 'Norfolk Island was a
+destination that didn't accord with our views. And what more d' ye
+want me to say? Here we are, and we want our liberty, and we mean to
+get it without any risk, and you're the man to help us.'
+
+"'What do you want me to do?' said I, speaking boldly, and looking
+about me steadily, for now I perceived exactly how it was with the
+brig, and the worst had been explained and the whole mystery solved
+when Swallow told me they were convicts; and likewise I had plenty of
+time to screw my nerves up.
+
+"Several men spoke at once on my asking the above question. Stevenson
+roared out: 'Let Swallow man the jaw tackle, boys. One at a time, or
+you'll addle the gent.'
+
+"'This is what we want you to do,' said Swallow. 'There are scores of
+islands in these seas, and we want you to carry us to them; heaving-to
+off them one after another that we may pick and choose, some going
+ashore here, and some there, for our game is to scatter. That's clear,
+I hope.'
+
+"'I understand you,' said I."
+
+"Swallow seemed at a loss. Stevenson then said: 'But we shall want
+nothing that's got a white settlement on it; nothing that's likely to
+have a pennant flying near. We've got no fixed notions. We leave it to
+you to raise the islands, and it'll be for us to select and take our
+chance.'
+
+"'There'll be charts aboard, I suppose?' said I.
+
+"Instantly one of them stepped into a cabin and returned with a bag
+full of charts. I turned them out upon the table and promptly came
+across charts of the North and South Pacific oceans. These charts gave
+me from the Philippines to Cape St. Lucas, and from the Eastern
+Australian coast to away as far as 120 deg. W. longitude. The men did
+not utter a word whilst I looked; I could hear their deep breathing,
+mingled with the noise of a hard sucking of pipes. One of them who
+looked through the skylight called down. Swallow silenced him with a
+gesture of his fist.
+
+"'Have you got what's wanted here, Mr. Grainger?' said Stevenson.
+
+"'All that I shall want is here,' I answered.
+
+"'A low growl of applause ran through the men.
+
+"'Will you be able to light upon the islands that'll prove suitable
+for us men to live on without risk until the opportunity comes in the
+shape of vessels for us to get away?' said Swallow.
+
+"'I'll do my best for you,' said I. 'I see your wants, and you may
+trust me, providing I may trust you. What's to become of me when
+you're out of the brig? That's it!'
+
+"'You'll stay on board and do what you like with the vessel,' answered
+Swallow. 'She'll be yours to have and hold. Make what you call a
+salvage job of it, and your pickings, mister, 'ull be out and away
+beyond the value of what we've been obliged to make you leave behind
+you.'
+
+"'Ain't that fair?' said a man.
+
+"'Is my life safe?' said I.
+
+"'Ay,' cried the Swallow, with a great oath, striking the table a
+heavy blow with his clenched fist. 'Understand this and comfort
+yourself. There's been no blood shed in this job, and there'll be
+none, so help me God--you permitting, mister.'
+
+"When this was said, a fellow, whom I afterwards heard called by the
+name of Jim Davies, asked if I was willing to take an oath that I
+would be honest. I said, 'Yes.' He stood up and dictated an oath full
+of blasphemy, shocking with imprecations, and grossly illiterate. The
+eyes of the crowd fastened upon me, and some of the ruffians watched
+me in a scowling way with faces dark with suspicion, till I repeated
+the horrid language of the man Davies, and swore, after which the
+greater bulk of them went on deck.
+
+"Swallow put some beef and biscuit on the table and a bottle of rum,
+and bade me fall to. He told me to understand that I was captain of
+the ship; that I was at liberty to appoint officers under me; and
+that, though none of the convicts had been seafaring men, they had
+learnt how the ropes led and how to furl canvas, and would obey any
+orders for the common good which I might deliver. I ate and drank,
+being determined to put the best face I could on this extraordinary
+business, and asked for the captain's cabin, that I might find out
+what nautical instruments the brig carried. Swallow, Stevenson, and a
+convict named William Watts conducted me to a berth right aft on the
+starboard side. They told me it had been occupied by the captain, and
+should be mine. Here I found all I needed in the shape of navigating
+instruments, and went on deck with Swallow and the others.
+
+"I could see nothing of the _Swan_; she was out of sight from the
+elevation of the brig's bulwarks. All the convicts were on deck, and
+the brig looked full of men. Those who had been above whilst I was in
+the cabin with the others, approached and stared at me, but not
+insolently--merely with curiosity. They seemed a vile lot, one and
+all. With some of them every other word was an oath; their talk was
+almost gibberish to my ears with thieves' slang. I wondered to find
+not one of them dressed in felon's garb; but on reflection I concluded
+that they had plundered the crew and the people who had had charge of
+them and of the _Cyprus_, and had forced all those they drove out of
+the brig to change clothes before quitting the vessel.
+
+"However, it was my immediate policy to prove my sincerity. I valued
+my life, and I had but to look at the men to reckon that it would not
+be worth a rushlight if they suspected I was not doing my best to find
+them a safe asylum among the islands in the Pacific. Accordingly, I
+fetched one of the charts, placed it upon the skylight, where those
+who gathered about me could see it, and laid off a course for the
+Tonga Islands; telling the men as I pointed to the group upon the
+chart that if no island thereabouts satisfied them, we could head for
+the Fijis or cruise about the Friendly or Navigator groups, working
+our way as far as the Low Archipelago, betwixt which and the first
+island we sighted we ought certainly to fall in with the sort of
+hiding-place they wanted. My words raised a grin of satisfaction in
+every face within reach of my voice.
+
+"I stepped to the helm and headed the brig on a northerly course, and
+stood awhile looking at the compass to satisfy myself that the convict
+who grasped the spokes understood what to do with the wheel. He
+managed fairly well. I then asked Swallow to serve as my chief mate,
+and Stevenson to act as second, and calling the rest of the felons
+together, I divided them into two watches. My next step was to crowd
+the little brig with all the canvas she could spread, and set every
+stitch of it properly. Thus passed the first day.
+
+"I have no time to enter minutely into what happened till we made a
+small point of land in the neighbourhood of the Friendly Islands.
+There was abundance of provisions on board, plenty of fresh water, and
+a stock of spirits intended for the commandant and soldiers at
+Macquarie Harbour and Norfolk Island; but though the convicts freely
+used whatever they found in the brig's hold, never once was there an
+instance of drunkenness amongst them. I guessed them all to be as
+desperate a set of miscreants as were ever transported for crime upon
+crime from a convict establishment; yet they used me very well. Saving
+their villainous speech, their behaviour was fairly decorous. They
+sprang to my bidding, sir'd me as though they had been seamen and I
+their captain, and, indeed, by their behaviour so reassured me that my
+dread of being butchered vanished, and I carried on the brig as
+assured of my personal safety--providing I dealt by them honestly--as
+though I had been on board the old _Swan_.
+
+"We sighted several vessels, but, as you may suppose, we had nothing
+to say to them. Off the first island we came across I hove the brig
+to; the convicts got the long-boat out, and a dozen of them went
+ashore to examine and report. Five returned; the remainder had chosen
+to stay. We made three of the islands; the natives of two of them were
+threatening, and frightened the convicts back to the brig; the third
+proved uninhabited--a very gem of an island was this,--and here
+fifteen convicts went ashore, and thrice the boat went between the
+island and the brig with provisions and necessaries for their
+maintenance.
+
+"But it gave me a fortnight of anxious hunting to discover such
+another island as the remaining convicts considered suitable. This at
+last we fell in with midway betwixt the Union group and the Marquesas;
+and here the rest of the felons went ashore, after almost emptying the
+brig's hold of provisions and the like. They kept the long-boat, and
+left me alone in the brig. Some of them shook hands with me as they
+went over the side, and thanked me for having served them so honestly.
+
+"It was in the evening when I was left alone. The sun was setting
+behind the island, off which a gentle breeze was blowing. My first
+business was to run the ensign aloft, jack down. I then trimmed sail
+as best I could with my single pair of hands, and, putting the helm
+amidships, let the brig blow away south-west, designing to make for
+one of the Navigator Islands, where I might hope to fall in with
+assistance, either from the shore or from a vessel. But, shortly after
+midnight the brig, sailing quietly, grounded upon a coral shoal, fell
+over on to her bilge, and lay quiet. I was without a boat, and could
+do nothing but wait for daylight, and pray for a sight of some passing
+vessel. All next day passed, and nothing showed the wide horizon
+round; but about nine o'clock that night, the moon shining clearly, I
+spied a sail down in the south. She drew closer, and proved a little
+schooner. I hailed her with a desperate voice, and to my joy was
+answered, and in less than ten minutes she sent a boat and took me
+aboard."
+
+The South Seaman's narrative ends abruptly here, but it is known that
+he was conveyed to Honolulu, at which place, strangely enough, the
+_Swan_ touched after he had been ashore about a week. He at once went
+on board, related his strange experiences to his captain, and
+proceeded on his whaling career with the easy indifference of a sailor
+accustomed to tragic surprises.
+
+The brig _Cyprus_ went to pieces on the shoal on which she had
+grounded. It is on record that of the convicts retaken on their return
+to England, two were hanged--namely, Watts and Davies; two others,
+Beveridge and Stevenson, were transported for life to Norfolk Island;
+and Swallow was sent back to Macquarie Harbour.
+
+
+
+
+                           _The Adventures of
+                              Three Sailors._
+
+
+TOLD BY DANIEL SMALL, ONLY
+MATE.
+
+Our vessel was a little brig, named the _Hindoo Merchant_, and we
+sailed on a day in March in the year of our Lord 1857, from
+Trincomalee bound to Calcutta. The captain, myself, and three sailors
+were Europeans; the rest of the ship's company, natives. Though we
+were "flying light" as the term is--that is to say, though there was
+little more in the ship's hold than ballast, and though she had
+tolerably nimble heels, for what one might term a _country-wallah_--yet
+the little ship was so bothered with head winds and light airs,
+and long days of stagnation, that we had been several weeks afloat
+before we managed to crawl to the Norrad of the Andaman parallels,
+which yet left a long stretch of waters before us. If this remainder
+of the ocean was not to be traversed more fleetly than the space we
+had already measured, then it was certain we should be running short
+of water many a long while before the Sandheads came within the
+compass of our horizon, and to provide against the most horrible
+situation that the crew of a ship can find themselves placed in, we
+kept a bright look-out for vessels, and within four days managed to
+speak two; but they had no water to spare, and we pushed on.
+
+But within three days of our speaking the second of the two vessels we
+sighted a third, a large barque, who at once backed her topsail to our
+signals, and hailed us to know what we wanted. My captain, Mr. Roger
+Blow, stood up in the mizzen-rigging and asked for water. They asked
+how much we needed; Captain Blow responded that whatever they could
+spare would be a god-send. On this they sung out: "Send a boat with a
+cask and you shall have what we can afford to part with." Captain Blow
+then told me to put an eighteen-gallon cask in the port-quarter boat,
+and go away to the barque with it. "They'll not fill it," said he,
+"but a half'll be better than a quarter, and a quarter'll be good
+enough; for we stand to pick up more as we go along."
+
+I had called to two of the English sailors, named Mike Jackson and
+Thomas Fallows, to get into the boat, when the cask had been placed in
+her; and when I had entered her the darkeys lowered us; we unhooked
+and shoved off. There was a pleasant breeze of wind blowing; it blew
+hot, as though it came straight from the inside of an oven, the door
+of which had been suddenly opened; the sky had the sort of glazed
+dimness of the human eye in fever; but right overhead it was of a
+copperish dazzle where the roasting orb of the sun was. I could not
+see a speck of cloud anywhere, which rendered what followed the more
+amazing to my mind for the suddenness of it.
+
+The two vessels at the first of their speaking had been tolerably
+close together, but some time had been spent in routing up the cask
+and getting it into the boat, and setting ourselves afloat, so that at
+the moment of our shoving off--spite of the topsail of each vessel
+being to the mast--the space had widened between them, till I daresay
+it covered pretty nearly a mile. The wind was at west-nor'-west, and
+the barque bore on the lee quarter of the _Hindoo Merchant_. The great
+heat put a languor into the arms of our two seamen, and the oars rose
+and fell slowly and weakly. Jackson said to me: "I hope," said he,
+"they 'll be able to spare us a bite of ship's bread. Our 'n is no
+better than sawdust, and if it wasn't for the worms in it," said he,
+"blast me if there 'd be any nutriment in it at all. Them Cingalese
+ought to ha' moored their island off the Chinese coast. They 'd have
+grown rich with teaching the Johnnies more tricks than they 're master
+of, at plundering sailors."
+
+"The _Hindoo Merchant's_ bread isn't up to much, Fallows," said I,
+"but this is no atmosphere to talk of bread in. What 's aboard will
+carry us to the Hooghley. It is water we have to fix our minds on."
+
+We drew alongside of the tall barque, and the master, after looking
+over the rail, asked me to step aboard and drink a glass with him in
+his cabin, "for," says he, "this is no part of the ocean to be thirsty
+in," and he then gave directions for the cask to be got out of the
+boat, and a drink of rum and water to be handed down to the two
+seamen.
+
+I stepped into the cabin and the captain put a bottle of brandy and
+some cold water on the table. He asked me several questions about the
+brig, and how long we were out, and where we were from, and the like,
+and one thing leading to another, he happened to mention the town he
+was born in, which was my native place too--Ashford, in the county of
+Kent,--and here was now a topic to set us yarning, for I knew some of
+his friends and he knew some of mine; and the talk seemed to do him so
+much good, whilst it was so agreeable to me, that neither of us seemed
+in a hurry to end it. This is the only excuse I can offer for
+lingering on the barque longer than, as circumstances proved, I ought
+to have done.
+
+At last I got up and said I must be off, and I thanked him most kindly
+for the obliging reception of me, and for his goodness in supplying
+the brig with water, and I gave him Captain Blow's compliments, and
+desired to know if we could accommodate him in any way in return. He
+answered "Nothing, nothing," stepping through the hatch as he said it,
+and an instant after he set up his throat in a cry.
+
+"You 'll have to bear a hand aboard," says he, with a face of
+astonishment; "look yonder! 'T is rolling down upon your brig like
+smoke." He pointed to the vessel, and a little way past her I spied a
+long line of white vapour no higher than Dover cliff as it looked, but
+as dense as those rocks of chalk too. The sun made steam of it, but if
+already it was putting a likeness of its own blankness into the sky
+over it, which seemed to be dying out, as the vapour came along, as
+the light perishes in a looking-glass upon which you breathe. I ran to
+the side and saw my boat under the gang-way and the two men in her.
+The cask was in the stern of the boat. The master of the barque cried
+out to me: "Will you not stay till that smother clears? You may lose
+your brig in it." I replied: "No, sir, thank you. I will take my
+chance. It is more likely I should lose her by remaining here," and
+with a flourish of the hand I dropped over the side and entered the
+boat. "Now," cried I, "pull like the devil, men."
+
+They threw their oars over and fell to rowing fiercely; but the barque
+was not five cables' length astern of us when the first of the white
+cliff of vapour smote the _Hindoo Merchant,_ and she vanished in it
+like a star in a cloud. There was a fresh breeze of wind behind that
+line of sweeping thickness, and in places, at the base of the mass of
+blankness, it would dart out in swift racings of shadow that made one
+think of the feelers of some gigantic marine spider, probing under its
+cobweb as though feeling its way along. In a few minutes the cloud
+drove down over us with a loud whistling of wind, and the water close
+to the boat's side ran in short, small seas, every head of it hissing;
+but to within the range of a biscuit toss all was flying, glistening
+obscurity, with occasional bursts of denser thicknesses which almost
+hid one end of the boat from the other. It was about six o'clock in
+the afternoon, and there might be yet another hour of sunshine.
+
+"'Vast rowing!" says I presently, "you may keep the oars over, but
+there's no good in pulling, short of keeping her head to wind. This is
+too thick to last."
+
+"Ain't so sure of that," says Fallows, taking a slow look round at the
+smother, "I 've been in these here seas for two days running in
+weather arter this pattern."
+
+"Pity we didn't stay aboard the barque," says Jackson.
+
+"A plague on your pities!" I cried. "I know my duty, I believe.
+Suppose we _had_ stayed aboard the barque, we stood to be separated
+from the brig in this breeze and muckiness, and was her skipper
+by-and-bye going to sail in search of the _Hindoo Merchant_?"
+
+"A gun!" cries Fallows.
+
+"That'll be the brig," says I, catching the dull thud of the explosion
+of a nine-pounder which the _Hindoo Merchant_ carried on her
+quarter-deck.
+
+"Seems to me as though it sounded from yonder," says Jackson, looking
+away over the starboard beam of the boat.
+
+"What have ye there, men?" says I, nodding at a bundle of canvas under
+the amidship thwart.
+
+"Ship's bread," answered Jackson, with a note of sulkiness in his
+voice. "It was hove to us on my asking for a bite. She was a liberal
+barque. The cask's more 'n three-quarters full."
+
+We hung upon our oars listening and waiting. There was a second gun
+ten minutes after the first had been fired, and that was the last we
+heard. The report was thin and distant, but whether ahead or astern I
+could not have guessed by harkening. I kept up my own and endeavoured
+to inspirit the hearts of the others by saying that this fog which had
+come down in a moment would end in a moment, that it was all clear sky
+above with plenty of moonlight for us in the night if it should happen
+that the sun went down upon us thus, that Captain Blow was not going
+to lose us and his boat and the cask of fresh water if it was in
+mortal seamanship to hold a vessel in one situation; but the fellows
+were not to be cheered, their spirits sank and their faces grew longer
+as the complexion of the fog told us that the sun was sinking fast,
+and I own that when it came at last to his setting, and no break in
+the flying vapour, and a blackness as of ink stealing into it out of
+the swift tropic dusk, I myself felt horribly dejected, greatly
+fearing that we had lost the brig for good.
+
+Just before the last of the twilight faded out of the smoke that
+shrouded us, we lashed both oars together and, attaching them to the
+boat's painter, threw them overboard and rode to them. Our thirst was
+now extreme, and to appease it--being without a dipper to drop into
+the cask--we sank a handkerchief through the bung-hole and wrung it
+out in the half of a cocoa-nut shell that was in the boat as a baler,
+and by this means procured a drink, each man. Grateful to God indeed
+was I that we had fresh water with us. I beat the cask, and gathered
+by the sound that it was more than half full. Heaven was bountiful too
+in providing us with biscuit. It had been the luckiest of thoughts on
+Jackson's part, though he had desired nothing more than to obtain a
+relish for his own rations of buffalo hump aboard.
+
+I never remember the like of the pitch darkness of that night. There
+was a moon, pretty nearly a full one if I recollect aright; but had
+she been shining over the other side of the world it would have been
+all the same. Her delicate silver beam could not pierce the vapour,
+and never once did I behold the least glistening of her radiance
+anywhere. There was a constant noise of wind in the dense thickness,
+and an incessant seething and crackling of waters running nimbly, so
+that though we would from time to time bend our ears in the hope of
+catching the rushing and pouring noise of the sea divided by a ship's
+stem, we never could hear more than the whistling of the breeze and
+the lapping of the hurrying little surges. There was a deal of fire in
+the water, and it came and went in sheets like the reflection of
+lightning, insomuch that we might have believed ourselves in the heart
+of an electric storm; but happily the wind never gathered so much
+weight as to raise a troublesome sea, and though the boat tumbled
+friskily she kept dry, and there was nothing in her movements to
+render me uneasy.
+
+I told the two fellows to lie down in the bottom of the boat, and I
+kept watch till I reckoned it was drawing on to about one o'clock in
+the morning. Twice or thrice during that long and wretched vigil there
+seemed a promise of the weather clearing, and I gazed with the
+yearning of the shipwrecked; but regularly it thickened and blackened
+down upon us again in blasts like the belchings of a three-decker's
+broadside. It was a very watery vapour, and I was early wet to the
+skin.
+
+At about one o'clock, as I calculated, I awoke Jackson, and bade him
+keep an eager look-out and not to spare his ear in putting it against
+the night, "for," says I, "there's nothing to be done with the eyes;
+it's all for the hearing at such a time as this, mate, and what you
+can't watch for you must listen for; and wake me up to any sound you
+may hear, that our three throats may hail together. O God," says I,
+"if it would but thin and show the brig within reach of our shouts!"
+With that I lay down and was soon fast asleep, being worn out with
+excitement and grief, and when I awoke it was daylight, for there's
+but little dawn off the Andamans; the sun in those seas leaps on to
+the horizon from the night as it were, and flashes it into day in a
+breath.
+
+It was still thick and troubled weather, but clear to about two miles
+from the side of the boat. There was very little wind, and a long
+swell of the colour of lead was running from the southward. The vapour
+had broken up and lay in masses round about us--long, white twisted
+folds of it, like powder smoke after a great battle; and to the top of
+those heaps of thickness the sky sloped in a sort of grey shadow, with
+a little pencilling here and there of some small livid ring of mist,
+which looked stirless as though what air there was blew low. There was
+nothing in sight; we strained our gaze into every quarter but I saw
+there was nothing to be seen. This smote me to the heart. I had been
+in my time in several situations of peril at sea, but had never yet
+experienced the horrors of an open boat amidst a vast waste of waters,
+such as was this Bay of Bengal with the Andaman Islands some hundreds
+of miles distant, and a near menace of roasting heat when the wide
+grey stretch of cloud should have passed away and laid bare the sun's
+eye of fire. We gazed with melancholy faces one at another.
+
+"What's to be done?" says Fallows, bringing his bloodshot eyes from
+the sea to my face; "if we had a sail to set we might have a chance."
+
+"There are two oars," said I, "for a mast and a yard, and our shirts
+must furnish a sail."
+
+"But how are we to head?" says Jackson.
+
+"Right afore the wind, I suppose," says I; "there'll be no ratching
+with the rags we're going to hoist. Right afore the wind," I says;
+"and we must trust to God to keep us in view till something heaves in
+sight--which is pretty well bound to happen I suppose when there comes
+some wind along."
+
+I opened the canvas parcel, and found a matter of thirty biscuits; all
+very sweet, good bread. We took each of us a piece, and followed on
+with a drink, and then went to work to get our oars in. We all three
+wore shirts, and we stripped them off our backs and cut them to lie
+open. I had a little circular cushion of stout pins in my pocket, such
+as a sailor might carry, and with them we brought the squares of the
+shirts together, and seized the corners to one of the oars by yarns
+out of an end of painter we cut off, then stepped the other oar, and
+secured it with another piece of the painter; and now we had a sort of
+sail, the mere sight of which, even, was a small satisfaction to us,
+since the shirts being white they must needs make a good mark upon the
+water, something not to be missed, unless wilfully, by a passing
+vessel.
+
+The morning passed away, and a little after twelve o'clock the water
+in the south was darkened by the brushing of a wind, which drove the
+hovering masses of vapour before it; and presently they had totally
+disappeared, leaving a sky with rents and yawns of blue in places, and
+a clear glass-like circle of horizon, upon which, however, there was
+nothing to be seen. The boat moved slowly before the wind, which blew
+hot as a desert breeze; I steered, and Jackson and Fallows sat near
+me, one or the other from time to time getting on to a thwart to take
+a view of the ocean, under the sharp of his hand.
+
+In this fashion passed the afternoon. The night came with a deal of
+fire in the water, and a very clear moon floating in lagoons of velvet
+softness betwixt the clouds. The weather continued quiet; the long
+swell made a pleasant cradle of the boat, and the night-wind being
+full of dew, breathed refreshingly upon our hot cheeks; whilst our
+ears were soothed by the rippling noise of the running waters which
+seemed to cool the senses, as the breeze did the body.
+
+It was almost a dead calm, however, at daybreak next morning. The
+atmosphere was close and heavy, and there was a strange strong smell
+of seaweed, rising off the ocean, which caused me to look narrowly
+about, with some dim dream of perceiving land, though I should have
+known there was no land for leagues and leagues.
+
+Whilst we were munching a biscuit, I observed an appearance of steam
+lifting off the water, at a distance of about half-a-mile on the
+starboard side of the boat. The vapour came out of the water in the
+shape of corkscrews, spirally working, and they melted at a height of
+perhaps ten or fifteen feet. I counted five of these singular
+emissions. Jackson said that they were fragments of mist, and we might
+look out for such another thickness as had lost us the brig. Fallows
+said: "No; that's no mist, mate; that is as good steam as ever blew
+out of a kettle. Are there places where the water boils in this here
+ocean?"
+
+As he said these words, an extraordinary thrill passed through the
+boat, followed by a sound that seemed more like an intellectual
+sensation than a real noise. What to compare it to I don't know; it
+was as though it had thundered under the sea. An instant later, up
+from the part of the water where the corkscrew appearances were, rose
+a prodigious body of steam. It soared without a sound from the deep;
+it was balloon-shaped but of mountainous proportions.
+
+"A sea-quake!" roared Jackson. "Stand by for the rollers!"
+
+But no sea followed. I could witness no commotion whatever in the
+water; the light, long swell flowed placidly into the base of the mass
+of whiteness, and there was nothing besides visible on the breast of
+the sea, save the delicate wrinkling of the weak draught of air. Very
+quickly the vapour thinned as steam does, and as it melted off the
+surface, it disclosed to our astonished gaze what at first sight
+seemed to me the fabric of a great ship, but after viewing it for a
+moment or two, I distinctly made out the form of an old-fashioned hull
+with the half of much such another hull as she, alongside, both
+apparently locked together about the bows; and they seemed to be
+supported by some huge gleaming black platform; but what it was we
+could not tell.
+
+The three of us drew a deep breath as we surveyed the floating
+objects. The steam was gone; there they lay plain and bare; it was as
+though the wand of a magician had touched the white mass and
+transformed it into the objects we gazed at.
+
+"Down with the sail," says I, "there's something yonder worth looking
+at."
+
+We got the oars over, and pulled in the direction of the fabrics. As
+we approached I could scarce credit the evidence of my own sight. The
+form of one of the vessels was perfect. She was of an antique build,
+and belonged to a period that I reckoned was full eighty years dead
+and gone. The other--the half of her I should say--showed a much
+bluffer bow, and had been a vessel of some burthen. But the wonder was
+the object on which they rested. This was no more nor less than the
+body of a great dead whale!
+
+We first needed to lose something of our amazement ere we could
+reasonably speculate upon what we saw; then how this had happened grew
+plain to our minds. The two craft, God knows how many long years
+before, had been in action and foundered in conflict. The smaller
+vessel--I mean the one that lay whole before us--might have been a
+privateersman; she had something of a piratical sheer forward, there
+were no signs of a mast aboard either of them, one had grappled the
+other to board her I dare say, and they had both gone to the bottom
+linked. The vessel of which only half remained may have broken her
+back in settling, and, by-and-bye, the after part of her drifted away,
+leaving the dead bows still gripped by the dead enemy alongside. But
+how came the whale there? Well, we three men reasoned it thus, and I
+don't doubt we were right. At the moment of the sea-quake the whale
+was stemming steadily towards the two wrecks resting on the bottom.
+They were lifted by the explosion, which at the same time killed the
+whale; but the impetus of the vast form slided it to under the lifted
+keels, where it came to a stand. A dead whale floats, as we know. This
+whale being dead was bound to rise, and the buoyancy of the immense
+mass brought the two craft up with it, and there they were, poised by
+the gleaming surface of the whale, which was depressed by their
+weight, so that no portion of the head, tail, or fluke was visible.
+
+"It's them vessels being connected," says Jackson, "as keeps them
+afloat. If what holds them together forrard was to part they'd slide
+off that there slipperiness and sink."
+
+We rowed close, the three of us greatly marvelling, as you may
+suppose, for never had the like of such an incident as this happened
+at sea within the knowledge of ever a one of us, and Fallows alone was
+a man of five and forty, who had been using the ocean for thirty-three
+years. It was as scaring as the rising of a corpse out of the
+depths--as scaring as if that corpse turned to and spoke when his head
+showed,--to see those two vessels lying in the daylight after eighty,
+aye, and perhaps a hundred years of the green silence hundreds of
+fathoms deep, locked in the same posture in which they had gone down,
+making you almost fancy that you could hear the thunder of their guns,
+witness the flashing of cutlasses, and the rush of the boarders to the
+bulwarks amidst a hurricane note of huzzaing and shrieks of the
+wounded.
+
+They were both of them handsomely crusted with shells, not of the
+barnacle sort, but such as you would pick up anywhere in Ceylon or the
+Andaman, some of them finely coloured, many of them white as milk, of
+a thousand different patterns; and there was not one of them but what
+was beautiful.
+
+"Let's board her," says Jackson.
+
+"Ah, but if that whale be alive!" says Fallows.
+
+"No fear of that," said I; "if he was alive there'd be some stir in
+him. The whale's not the danger; it's the lashing, which may part at
+any moment. It should be in a fair way of rottenness after so many
+years of salt water, and if it goes the vessels go."
+
+"I'm for boarding her all the same," says Jackson.
+
+But first of all we pulled round to betwixt the bows of the craft to
+see what it was that connected them, and we found that they were held
+together by something stronger than an old grapnel. The bluff of the
+bows came together like walls cemented by sand and shell, and it was
+easy by a mere glance to perceive that they would hold together whilst
+the sea continued tranquil. Betwixt their heels was a hollow which the
+round of the whale nicely filled, and there they all three lay, very
+slowly and solemnly rolling upon the swell in as deep a silence as
+ever they had risen from.
+
+We hung upon our oars speculating awhile, and then fell to talking
+ourselves into extravagant notions. Fallows said that if she had been
+a privateer she might have money in her, or some purchase anyway worth
+coming at. I was not for ridiculing the fancy, and Jackson gazed at
+the craft with a yearning eye.
+
+"Let's get aboard," says he.
+
+"Very well," says I, and we agreed that Fallows should keep in the
+boat ready to pick us up, if the hulk should go down suddenly under
+us. We easily got aboard. From the gunwale of our boat we could place
+our hands upon the level of the deck, where the bulwarks were gone,
+and the shells were like steps to our feet. There was nothing much to
+be seen, however; the decks were coated with shells as the sides were,
+and they went flush from the taffrail to the eyes with never a break,
+everything being clean gone, saving the line of the hatches which
+showed in slightly raised squares, under the crust of shells that lay
+everywhere like armour.
+
+"Lord!" cried Jackson; "what would I give for a chopper or pick-axe to
+smash open that there hatch, so as to get inside of her."
+
+"Inside of her?" says I; "why she'll be full of water!"
+
+"That's to be proved, Mr. Small," says he.
+
+We walked forward into the bows, and clearly made out the shape of a
+grapnel thick with shells, with its claws upon the bulwark rail of the
+half-ship alongside, and there was a line stretched between, belayed
+to what might have been a kevel on a stanchion of the craft we were
+in. This rope was as lovely as a piece of fancy work, with tiny
+shells; but on my touching it, to see if it was taut, it parted as if
+it had been formed of smoke, and each end fell with a little rattle
+against the side as though it had been a child's string of beads.
+
+We were gaping about us, almost forgetting our distressed situation,
+in contemplation of these astonishing objects which had risen like
+ghosts from the mysterious heart of the deep, when we heard Fallows
+calling, and on our running to the side to learn what he wanted, we
+saw him standing up in the boat, pointing like a madman into the
+southward. It was the white canvas of a vessel, clearer to us than to
+him, who was lower by some feet. The air was still a weak draught, but
+the sail was rising with a nimbleness that made us know she was
+bringing a breeze of wind along with her, and in half-an-hour's time
+she had risen to the black line of her bulwarks rail, disclosing the
+fabric of what was apparently a brig or barque, heading almost dead on
+her end for us.
+
+Jackson and I at once tumbled into the boat, but we were careful to
+keep her close to the two craft, and the amazing platform they floated
+on, for they furnished out a show that was not to be missed aboard the
+approaching vessel, whereas the boat must make little more than a
+speck though but half-a-mile distant.
+
+The breeze the vessel was bringing along with her was all about us
+presently with a threat of weight in it. We stepped an oar, with the
+shirts atop, and they blew out bravely and made a good signal.
+
+"Why, see, Mr. Small!" cries Jackson, on a sudden, "ain't she the
+_Hindoo Merchant_?"
+
+I stood awhile, and then joyfully exclaimed, "Ay, 't is the old hooker
+herself, thanks be to God!"
+
+I knew her by her short fore-topgallantmast, by her chequered band,
+and by other signs clear to a sailor's eye, and the three of us sent
+up a shout of delight, for it was like stumbling upon one's very home,
+as it were, after having been all night lost amidst the blackness and
+snow of the country where one's house stands.
+
+She came along handsomely, with foam to the hawsepipe, thanks to the
+freshening breeze, and her main royal and topgallantsail clewing up as
+she approached, for our signal had been seen; then drove close
+alongside with her topsail aback and in a few minutes we were aboard,
+shaking hands with Captain Blow, and all others who extended a fist to
+us, and spinning our yarn in response to the eager questions put.
+
+"But what have you there, Mr. Small?" said Captain Blow, staring at
+the two craft and the whale. I explained. "Well," cries he, "call me a
+missionary if ever I saw such a sight as that afore! Have ye boarded
+the vessel?" pointing to the one that was whole.
+
+"Yes," said I, "but there's nothing but shells to look at."
+
+"Hatches open?" says he.
+
+"No," says I, "they are as securely cemented with shells as if the
+stuff had been laid on with a trowel."
+
+Jackson, Fallows, the boatswain, and a few of the darkeys stood near,
+eagerly catching what we said.
+
+"A wonderful sight truly!" said Captain Blow, surveying the object
+with a face almost distorted with astonishment and admiration. "How
+many years will they have been asleep under water, think ye, Mr.
+Small?"
+
+"All a hundred, sir," said I.
+
+"Ay," says he, "I've seen many prints of old ships, and I'll allow
+that it's all a hundred, as you say, since she and the likes of she
+was afloat. Why," cries he with a sort of a nervous laugh as if half
+ashamed of what he was about to say, "who's to tell but that there may
+be a chest or two of treasure stowed away down in her lazerette?"
+
+"That very idea occurred to me, sir," says I.
+
+"By your pardon, capt'n," here interrupted Jackson, knuckling his
+forehead, "but that may be a question not hard to settle if ye'll send
+me aboard with a few tools."
+
+The captain looked as if he had had a mind to entertain the idea, then
+sent a glance to windward.
+
+"She'll be full of water," said I.
+
+"Ay," said the captain, turning to Jackson, "how then?"
+
+"We can but lift a hatch and look out for ourselves, sir," answered
+the man.
+
+"Right," says the captain; "but you'll have to bear a hand. Get that
+cask on board. Any water in it?" says he.
+
+"Yes, sir," says I.
+
+"Thank God for the same then," says he.
+
+But whilst they were manoeuvring with the cask the breeze freshened in
+a sudden squall, and all in a minute, as it seemed, a sort of sloppy
+sea was set a-running. The captain looked anxious, yet still seemed
+willing that the boat should go to the wreck. I sent some Lascars
+aloft to furl the loose canvas, and whilst this was doing, the wind
+freshened yet in another long-drawn blast that swept in a shriek
+betwixt our masts.
+
+"There's nothing to be done!" sung out the skipper; "get that boat
+under the fall, Jackson; we must hoist her up."
+
+The darkeys lay aft to the tackles, and Jackson climbed over the rail
+with a countenance sour and mutinous with disappointment. He had
+scarcely sprung on to the deck, when we heard a loud crash like the
+report of a small piece of ordnance, and, looking towards the hulks, I
+was just in time to see them sliding off the back of the whale, one on
+either side of the greasy, black surface. They vanished in a breath,
+and the dead carcass, relieved of their weight, seemed to spring, as
+though it were alive, some ten or twelve feet out of the seething and
+simmering surface which had been frothed up by the descent of the
+vessels; the next moment it turned over and gave us a view of its
+whole length--a sixty to seventy-foot whale, if the carcass was an
+inch, with here and there the black scythe-like dorsal fin of a shark
+sailing round it.
+
+Jackson hooked a quid out of his mouth and sent it overboard. His face
+of mutiny left him, and was replaced by an expression of gratitude.
+Five minutes later the old _Hindoo Merchant_ was thrusting through it
+with her nose heading for the river Hooghley, and the darkeys tying a
+single reef in the foretopsail.
+
+
+
+
+                         _The Strange Tragedy
+                         of the "White Star_."
+
+
+It is proper I should state at once that the names I give in this
+extraordinary experience are fictitious; the date of the tale is
+easily within the memory of the middle-aged.
+
+The large, well-known Australian liner _White Star_ lay off the
+wool-sheds in Sydney harbour slowly filling up with wool; I say slowly,
+for the oxen were languid up-country, and the stuff came in as Fox is
+said to have written his history--"drop by drop." We were, however,
+advertised to sail in a fortnight from the day I open this story on,
+and there was no doubt of our getting away by then.
+
+I, who was chief officer of the vessel, was pacing the poop under the
+awning, when I saw a lady and gentleman approaching the vessel. They
+spoke to the mate of a French barque which lay just ahead of us, and I
+concluded that their business was with that ship, till I saw the
+Frenchman, with a flourish of his hat, motion towards the _White
+Star_, whereupon they advanced and stepped on board.
+
+I went on to the quarter-deck to receive them. The gentleman had the
+air of a military man: short, erect as a royal mast, with plenty of
+whiskers and moustache, though he wore his chin cropped. His companion
+was a very fine young woman of about six and twenty years; above the
+average height, faultlessly shaped, so far as a rude seafaring eye is
+privileged to judge of such matters; her complexion was pale, inclined
+to sallow, but most delicate, of a transparency of flesh that showed
+the blood eloquent in her cheek, coming and going with every mood that
+possessed her. She wore a little fall of veil, but she raised it when
+her companion handed her over the side in order to look round and
+aloft at the fabric of spar and shroud towering on high, with its
+central bunting of house flag pulling in ripples of gold and blue from
+the royalmast head; and so I had a good sight of her face, and
+particularly of her eyes.
+
+I never remember the like of such eyes in a woman. To describe them as
+neither large nor small, the pupils of the liquid dusk of the
+Indian's, the eyelashes long enough to cast a silken shadow of
+tenderness upon the whole expression of her face when the lids
+dropped--to say all this is to convey nothing; simply because their
+expression formed the wonder, strangeness, and beauty of them, and
+there is no virtue in ink, at all events in my ink, to communicate it.
+I do not exaggerate when I assure you that the surprise of the beauty
+of her eyes when they came to mine and rested upon me, steadfast in
+their stare as a picture, was a sort of shock in its way, comparable
+in a physical sense to one's unexpected handling of something slightly
+electric. For the rest, her hair was very black and abundant, and of
+that sort of deadness of hue which you find among the people of Asia.
+I cannot describe her dress. Enough if I say that she was in mourning,
+but with a large admixture of white, for those were the hot weeks in
+Sydney.
+
+"Is the captain on board?" inquired the gentleman.
+
+"He is not, sir."
+
+"When do you expect him?"
+
+"Every minute."
+
+"May we stop here?"
+
+"Certainly. Will you walk into the cuddy or on to the poop?"
+
+"Oh, we'll keep in the open, we'll keep in the open," cried the
+gentleman, with the impetuosity of a man rendered irritable by the
+heat. "You'll have had enough of the cuddy, Miss Le Grand, long before
+you reach the old country."
+
+She smiled. I liked her face then. It was a fine, glad, good-humoured
+smile, and humanised her wonderful eyes just as though you clothed a
+ghost in flesh, making the spectre natural and commonplace.
+
+As we ascended the poop ladder, the gentleman asked me who I was,
+quite courteously, though his whole manner was marked by a quality of
+military abruptness. When he understood I was chief officer he
+exclaimed:
+
+"Then Miss Le Grand permit me to introduce Mr. Tyler to you. Miss
+Georgina Le Grand is going home in your ship. She will be alone. We
+have placed her in the care of the captain."
+
+"Perhaps," said Miss Le Grand with another of her fine smiles, "I
+ought to introduce you, Mr. Tyler, to my uncle, Colonel Atkinson."
+
+Again I pulled off my cap, and the colonel laughed as he lifted his
+wide straw hat. I guessed he laughed at a certain naïvete in the
+girl's way of introducing us.
+
+The colonel was disposed to chat. Out of England Englishmen are
+amongst the most talkative of the human race. Likely enough he wanted
+to interest me in Miss Le Grand because of my situation on board. A
+chief mate is a considerable figure. If any mishap incapacitates the
+master, the chief mate takes charge. We walked the poop, the three of
+us, in the violet shadow cast by the awning; the colonel constantly
+directed his eyes along the quay to observe if the captain was coming.
+During this stroll to and fro the white planks I got these
+particulars, partly from the direct assertions of the colonel, partly
+from the occasional remarks of the girl.
+
+Colonel Atkinson had married her father's sister. Her father had been
+an officer in the army, and had sailed from England with the then
+Governor of New South Wales. After he had been in Sydney a few months
+he sent for his daughter, whom he had left behind him with a maternal
+aunt, her mother having died some years before. She reached Sydney to
+find her father dead. His Excellency was very kind to her, and she
+found very many sympathetic friends, but her home was in England, and
+to it she was returning in the _White Star_, under the care of the
+master, Captain Edward Griffiths, after a stay of nearly five months
+in Sydney with her uncle, Colonel Atkinson.
+
+Half an hour passed before the captain arrived. When he stepped on
+board I lifted my cap and left the poop, and the captain and the
+others went into the cuddy.
+
+Our day of departure came round, and not a little rejoiced was I when
+the tug had fairly got hold of us, and we were floating over the
+sheet-calm surface of Sydney Bay, past some of the loveliest bits of
+scenery the world has to offer, on our road to the mighty ocean beyond
+the grim portals of Sydney Heads. We were a fairly crowded ship, what
+with Jacks and passengers. The steerage and 'tween-decks were full up
+with people going home; in the cuddy some of the cabins remained
+unlet. We mustered in all, I think, about twelve gentlemen and lady
+passengers, one of whom, needless to say, was Miss Georgina Le Grand.
+
+I had been busy on the forecastle when she came aboard, but heard
+afterwards from Robson, the second mate, that the Governor's wife,
+with Colonel Atkinson, and certain nobs out of Government House had
+driven down to the ship to say good-bye to the girl. She was alone. I
+wondered she had not a maid, but I afterwards heard from a bright
+little lady on board, a Mrs. Burney, one of the wickedest flirts that
+ever with a flash of dark glance drew a sigh from a man, that the
+woman Miss Le Grand had engaged to accompany her as maid to Europe had
+omitted to put in an appearance at the last moment, in perfect
+conformity with the manners and habits of the domestic servants of the
+Australian colonies of those days, and the young lady having no time
+to procure another maid had shipped alone.
+
+At dinner on that first day of our departure, when the ship was at sea
+and I was stumping the deck in charge, I observed, in glancing through
+the skylight, that the captain had put Miss Le Grand upon the right of
+his chair, at the head of the table, a little before the fluted and
+emblazoned shaft of mizzenmast. I don't think above five sat down to
+dinner; a long heave of swell had sickened the hunger out of most of
+them. But it was a glorious evening, and the red sunshine, flashing
+fair upon the wide open skylights, dazzled out as brilliant and
+hospitable a picture of cabin equipment as the sight could wish.
+
+I had a full view of Miss Le Grand, and occasionally paused to look at
+her, so standing as to be unobserved. Now that I saw her with her hat
+off I found something very peculiar and fascinating in her beauty. Her
+eyes seemed to fill her face, subduing every lineament to the full
+spiritual light and meaning in them, till her countenance looked sheer
+intellect, the very quality and spirit of mind itself. This effect, I
+think, was largely achieved by the uncommon hue of her skin. It
+accentuated colour, casting a deeper dye into the blackness of her
+hair, sharpening the fires in her eyes, painting her lips with a more
+fiery tinge of carnation through which, when she smiled, her white
+teeth shone like light itself.
+
+I noticed even on this first day, during my cautious occasional peeps,
+that the captain was particularly attentive to the young lady; in
+which, indeed, I should have found nothing significant--for she had in
+a special degree been committed to his trust--but for the circumstance
+of his being a bachelor. Even then, early and fresh as the time was
+for thinking of such things, I guessed when I looked at the girl that
+the hardy mariner alongside of her would not keep his heart whole a
+week, if indeed, for the matter of that, he was not already head over
+ears. He was a good-looking man in his way; not everybody's type of
+manly beauty, perhaps, but certain of admiration from those who relish
+a strong sea flavour and the colour of many years and countless
+leagues of ocean in looks, speech, and deportment. He was about
+thirty-five, the heartiest laugher that ever strained a rib in
+merriment, a genial, kindly man, with a keen, seawardly blue eye,
+weather-coloured face, short whiskers, and rising in his socks to near
+six feet. I believe he was of Welsh blood. This was my first voyage
+with him. The rigorous discipline of the quarter-deck had held us
+apart, and all that I could have told of him I have here written.
+
+For some time after we left Sydney nothing whatever noteworthy
+happened. One quiet evening I came on deck at eight o'clock to take
+charge of the ship till midnight. We were still in the temperate
+parallels, the weather of a true Pacific sweetness, and, by day, the
+ocean a dark blue rolling breast of water, feathering on every round
+of swell in sea-flashes, out of which would sparkle the flying-fish to
+sail down the bright mild wind for a space, then vanish in some brow
+of brine with the flight of a silver arrow.
+
+This night the moon was dark, the weather somewhat thick, the stars
+pale over the trucks, and hidden in the obscurity a little way down
+the dusky slope of firmament. Windsails were wriggling fore and aft
+like huge white snakes, gaping for the tops and writhing out of the
+hatches. The flush of sunset was dying when I came on deck. I saw the
+captain slowly pacing the weather side of the poop with Miss Le Grand.
+He seemed earnest in his talk and gestures. Enough western light still
+lived to enable me to see faces, and I observed that Mrs. Burney,
+standing to leeward of a skylight talking with a gentleman, would
+glance at the couple with a satirical smile whenever they came abreast
+of her.
+
+But soon the night came down in darkness upon the deep; the wind blew
+damp out of the dusk in a long moan over the rail, heeling the ship
+yet by a couple of degrees; the captain sang out for the fore and
+mizzen-royals to be clewed up and furled, and shortly afterwards went
+below, first handing Miss Le Grand down the companion-way.
+
+I guessed the game was up with the worthy man: he had met his fate and
+taken to it with the meekness of a sheep. He might do worse, I
+thought, as I started on a solitary stroll, so far as looks are
+concerned; but what of her nature--her character? It was puzzling to
+think of what sort of spirit it was that looked out of her wonderful
+eyes; and she was not a kind of a girl that a man would care to leave
+ashore; so much beauty, full of a subtle endevilment of some sort, as
+it seemed to me, must needs demand the constant sentinelling of a
+husband's presence. That was how it struck me.
+
+By eleven o'clock all was hushed throughout the ship: lights out, the
+captain turned in, nothing stirring forward save the flitting shape of
+the look-out under the yawn of the pale square of fore-course. It was
+blowing a pleasant breeze of wind, and lost in thought I leaned over
+the rail at the weather fore-end of the poop watching the cold
+sea-glow shining in the dark water as the foam spat past, sheeting away
+astern in a furrow like moonlight. I will swear I did not doze; that I
+never was guilty of whilst on duty in all the years I was at sea; but
+I don't doubt that I was sunk deep in thought, insomuch that my
+reverie may have possessed a temporary power of abstraction as
+complete as slumber itself.
+
+I was startled into violent wakefulness by a cannonade of canvas
+aloft, and found the ship in the wind. I looked aft; the wheel was
+deserted--at least I believed so, till on rushing to it, meanwhile
+shouting to the watch on deck, I spied the figure of the helmsman on
+his face close beside the binnacle.
+
+I thought he was dead. The watch to my shouts came tumbling to the
+braces, and in a few minutes the captain made his appearance. The ship
+was got to her course afresh, by which time the man who had been
+steering was so far recovered as to be able to sit on the grating
+abaft the wheel and relate what had happened.
+
+He was a Dane, and spoke with a strong foreign accent, beyond my art
+to reproduce. He said he had been looking away to leeward, believing
+he saw a light out upon the horizon, when on turning his head he
+beheld a ghost at his side.
+
+"A what?" said the captain.
+
+"A ghost, sir, so help me--" and here the little Dane indulged in some
+very violent language, all designed to convince us that he spoke the
+truth.
+
+"What was it like?" asked the captain.
+
+"It was dressed in white and stood looking at me. I tried to run and
+could not, but fell, and maybe fainted."
+
+"The durned idiot slept," said the captain to me, "and dreamt, and
+dropped on his nut."
+
+"Had I dropped on my nut, should not have woke up then?" cried the
+Dane, in a passion of candour.
+
+"Go forward and turn in," said the captain. "The doctor shall see you
+and report to me."
+
+When the man was gone the captain asked me if I had seen anything
+likely to produce the impression of a ghost on an ignorant, credulous
+man's mind? I answered no, wondering that he should ask such a
+question.
+
+"How long was the man in a fit, d'ye think?" said he, "that is, before
+you found out that the wheel was deserted?"
+
+"Three or four minutes."
+
+He looked into the binnacle, took a turn about the decks, and, without
+saying anything more about the ghost, went below.
+
+The doctor next day reported that the Dane was perfectly well, and of
+sound mind, and that he stuck with many imprecations to his story. He
+described the ghost as a figure in white that looked at him with
+sparkling eyes, and yet blindly. He was unable to describe the
+features. Fright, no doubt, stood in the way of perception. He could
+not imagine where the thing had come from. He was, as he had said,
+gazing at what looked like a spark or star to leeward, when turning
+his head he found the Shape close beside him.
+
+The captain and the doctor talked the thing over in my presence, and
+we decided to consider it a delusion on the part of the Dane, a
+phantom of his imagination, mainly because the man swooned after he
+saw the thing, letting go the wheel so that the ship came up into the
+wind, and it was impossible to conceive that a substantial object
+could have vanished in the time that elapsed between the man falling
+down and the flap of sails which had called my attention to the
+abandoned helm.
+
+However, nothing was said about the matter aft: the sailors adopted
+the doctor's opinion, some viewing the thing as a "Dutchman's" dodge
+to get a "night in."
+
+A few days later brought us into
+cold weather: this was followed by the ice and conflicts of the Horn.
+We drove too far south, and for a week every afternoon we hove-to
+under a close-reefed maintopsail for fear of the ice throughout the
+long hours of Antarctic blackness. We were in no temper to think of
+ghosts, and yet though no one had delivered the news authoritatively,
+it had come by this wild bleak time to be known that Captain Griffiths
+and Miss Le Grand were engaged. Mrs. Burney told me so one day in the
+cuddy, and with a wicked flash of her dark eye wondered that people
+could think of making love with icebergs close at hand.
+
+It was no business of mine, and seemingly I gave the matter no heed,
+though I could find leisure and curiosity sometimes for an askant
+glance at the captain and his beauty when they were at table or when
+the weather permitted the lady to come on deck, and their behaviour
+left me in very little doubt that he was deeply in love with her; but
+whether she was equally enamoured of him I could not guess.
+
+We beat clear of the latitude of roaring gales blind with snow, and
+mountainous ice-islands like cities of alabaster in ruins, and seas
+ridging in thunder and foam to the height of our mizzentop, and
+heading north blew under wide wings of studding sails towards the sun,
+every day sinking some southern stars out of sight, and every night
+lifting above the sea-line some gem of the heavens dear to northern
+eyes.
+
+I went below at eight bells on a Friday morning when we were two
+months "out" from Sydney, as I very well remember. The ship had then
+caught the first of the south-east trade-wind. All was well when I
+left the deck. I was awakened by a hand violently shaking my shoulder.
+I sprang up and found Robson, the second mate, standing beside my
+bunk. He was pale as the ghost the Dane had described.
+
+"There's been murder done, sir," he cried. "The captain's killed."
+
+I stared at him like a fool, and echoed mechanically and dully:
+"Murder done! Captain killed!" Then collecting my wits I tumbled into
+my clothes and rushed to the captain's cabin, where I found the doctor
+and the third mate examining poor Griffith's body. It was
+half-past-six o'clock in the morning, and the daylight strong, but none
+of the passengers were moving. The captain had been stabbed to the
+heart. The doctor said he had been killed by a single thrust. The body
+was clothed in white drill trousers and a white linen shirt, which was
+slightly stained with blood where the knife had pierced it.
+
+Who had done this thing? It was horrible, unprovoked murder!
+throughout the ship the captain had been the most popular man on
+board. The forecastle liking for him was as strong as sentiment of any
+sort can find expression in that part of a vessel. There had never
+been a murmur. Indeed I had never sailed with a better crew. Not a man
+had deserted us at Sydney and of the hands on board at least half had
+sailed with the captain before.
+
+We carefully searched the cabin, but there was nothing whatever to
+tell us that robbery had been committed. However, a ghastly, shocking
+murder had been perpetrated; the man on whose skill and judgment had
+depended the safety of the ship and the many lives within her had been
+foully done to death in his sleep by some mysterious hand, and we
+determined at once upon a course.
+
+First, I sent for some of the best and most trustworthy seamen amongst
+the crew, and bringing them into the captain's cabin, showed them the
+body. I then, in my capacity as commander of the vessel, authorised
+them to act as a sort of detectives or policemen, and to search every
+part of the ship and all the berths in the steerage and 'tween-decks
+for any clue to the doer of the deed. It was arranged that the cabins
+of the first-class passengers should be thoroughly overhauled by the
+second and third mates.
+
+All this brought us to the hour when the passengers arose, and the
+ship was presently alive. The news swept from lip to lip magically; in
+all parts of the ship I saw men and women talking, with their faces
+pale with consternation and horror. I had not the courage to break the
+news to Miss Le Grand, and asked the doctor, a quiet, gentlemanly man,
+to speak to her. I was on the poop looking after the ship when the
+doctor came from the young lady's berth.
+
+"How did she receive the news?" said I.
+
+"I wish it may not break her heart," said he, gravely. "She was turned
+into stone. Her stare of grief was dreadful--not the greatest actress
+could imagine such a look. There'll be no comforting her this side of
+England."
+
+"Doctor, could he have done it himself?"
+
+"Oh, heaven, no, sir!" and he explained, by recalling the posture of
+the body and the situation of the hands, not to mention the absence of
+the weapon, why it was impossible the captain should have killed
+himself.
+
+I don't know how it came about; but whilst I paced the deck waiting
+for the reports of the mates and the seamen and the passengers who
+were helping me in the search, it entered my head to mix up with this
+murder the spectre, or ghost, that had frightened the Dane at the
+wheel into a fit, along with the memory of a sort of quarrel which I
+guessed had happened between Captain Griffiths and Miss Le Grand. It
+was a mere muddle of fancies at best, and yet they took a hold of my
+imagination. I think it was about a week before this murder that I had
+observed the coolness of what you might call a lovers' quarrel betwixt
+the captain and his young lady, and without taking any further notice
+of it I quietly set the cause down to Mrs. Burney, who, as a
+thorough-paced flirt, with fine languishing black eyes, and a saucy
+tongue, had often done her best to engage the skipper in one of those
+little asides which are as brimstone and the undying worm to the jealous
+of either sex. The lovers had made it up soon after, and for two or
+three days previously had been as thick and lover-like as sweet-hearts
+ought to be.
+
+But what had the ghost that had affrighted the Dane to do with this
+murder? And how were Mrs. Burney's blandishments, and the short-lived
+quarrel betwixt the lovers to be associated with it? Nevertheless,
+these matters ran in my head as I walked the deck on the morning of
+that crime, and I thought and thought, scarce knowing, however, in
+what direction imagination was heading.
+
+The two mates, the seamen, and the passengers arrived with their
+reports. They had nothing to tell. The steward and the stewardess had
+searched with the two mates in the saloon or cuddy. Every cabin had
+been ransacked, with the willing consent of its occupants. The
+forecastle, and 'tween-decks, and steerage, and lazarette had been
+minutely overhauled. Every accessible part of the bowels of the ship
+had been visited; to no purpose. No stowaway of any sort, no rag of
+evidence, or weapon to supply a clue was discovered.
+
+That afternoon we buried the body and I took command of the ship.
+
+I saw nothing of Miss Le Grand for two days. She kept her cabin, and
+was seen only by the stewardess, who waited upon her. At the
+expiration of that time I received a message, and went at once to her
+berth. I never could have figured so striking a change in a fine woman
+full of beauty in so short a time, as I now beheld. The fire had died
+out of her eyes, and still there lurked something weird in the very
+spiritlessness, and dull and vacant sadness of her gaze. Her cheeks
+were hollow. Under each eye rested a shadow as though it was cast by a
+green leaf.
+
+Her first words were: "Cannot you find out who did it?"
+
+"No, madam. We have tried hard; harder for the captain's sake than had
+he been another, for the responsibility that rests upon the master of
+an ocean-going vessel makes him an object of mighty significance,
+believe me, to us sailors."
+
+"But the person who killed him must be in the ship," she cried, in a
+voice that wanted much of its old clear music.
+
+"One should suppose so; and he is undoubtedly on board the ship; but
+we can't find him."
+
+"Did he commit suicide?"
+
+"No. Everybody is accounted for."
+
+"What motive," she exclaimed, with a sudden burst of desperate
+passionate grief, that wrung her like a fit from head to foot, "could
+any one have for killing Captain Griffiths! He was the gentlest, the
+kindest--oh, my heart! my heart!" and, hiding her face, she rocked
+herself in her misery.
+
+I tried my rough, seafaring best to soothe her. Certainly, until this
+moment I never could have supposed her love for the poor man was so
+great.
+
+The fear bred of this mysterious assassination lay in a dark and heavy
+shadow upon the ship. None of us, passengers or sailors, turned in of
+a night but with a fear of the secret bloody hand that had slain the
+captain making its presence tragically known once more before the
+morning.
+
+It happened one midnight, when we were something north of the equator,
+in the calms and stinging heat of the inter-tropic latitudes, that,
+having come on deck to relieve the second mate, and take charge of the
+ship till four o'clock, I felt thirsty, and returned to the cuddy for
+a drink of water. Of the three lamps only one was alight, and burnt
+very dimly. There was no moonlight, but a plenty of starshine, which
+showered in a very rippling of spangled silver through the yawning
+casements of the skylights.
+
+Just as I returned the tumbler to the rack whence I had removed it,
+the door of Miss Le Grand's cabin was opened, and the girl stepped
+forth. She was arrayed in white; probably she was attired in her
+bed-clothes. She seemed to see me at once, for she emerged directly
+opposite; and I thought she would speak, or hastily retire. But, after
+appearing to stare for a little while, she came to the table and
+leaned upon it with her left hand, sighing several times in the most
+heart-broken manner; and now I saw by the help of the dim lamplight
+that her right hand grasped a knife--the gleam of the blade caught my
+eye in a breath!
+
+"Good gracious!" I cried to myself, instantly, "the woman's asleep!
+This, then, is the ghost that frightened the Dane. And this, too, was
+the hand that murdered the captain!"
+
+I stood motionless watching her. Presently, taking her hand off the
+table, she turned her face aft, and with a wonderfully subtle,
+stealthy, sneaking gait, reminding one strangely of the folding motion
+of the snake, she made for the captain's cabin.
+
+Now, that cabin, ever since Griffith's death, I had occupied, and you
+may guess the sensations with which I followed the armed and murderous
+sleep-walker as she glided to what I must call my berth, and
+noiselessly opened the door of it. The moment she was in the cabin her
+motions grew amazingly swift. She stepped to the side of the bunk I
+was in the habit of using, and lifting the knife plunged it once, deep
+and hard--then came away, so nimbly that it was with difficulty I made
+room for her in the doorway to pass. I heard her breathe hard and fast
+as she swept by, and I stood in the doorway of my cabin watching her
+till her figure disappeared in her own berth.
+
+So, then, the mystery was at an end. Poor Captain Griffith's murderess
+was his adored sweetheart! She had killed him in her sleep, and knew
+it not. In the blindness of slumber she had repeated the enormous
+tragedy, as sinless nevertheless as the angel who looked down and
+beheld her and pitied her!
+
+I went on deck and sent for the doctor, to whom I communicated what I
+had seen, and he at once repaired to Miss Le Grand's berth accompanied
+by the stewardess, and found her peacefully resting in her bunk. No
+knife was to be seen. However, next morning, the young lady being then
+on deck, veiled as she always now went, and sitting in a retired part
+of the poop, the second mate, the doctor, and the stewardess again
+thoroughly searched Miss Le Grand's berth, and they found in a hollow
+in the ship's side, a sort of scupper in fact for the porthole, a
+carving knife, rusted with old stains of blood. It had belonged to the
+ship, and it was a knife the steward had missed on the day the captain
+was killed.
+
+Since the whole ghastly tragedy was a matter of somnambulism, all
+points of it were easily fitted by the doctor, who quickly understood
+that the knife had been taken by the poor girl in her sleep just as it
+had been murderously used. What horrible demon governed her in her
+slumber, who shall tell? For my part I put it down to Mrs. Burney and
+a secret feeling of jealousy which had operated in the poor soul when
+sense was suspended in her by slumber.
+
+We tried to keep the thing secret, taking care to lock Miss Le Grand
+up every night without explaining our motive; but the passengers got
+wind of the truth and shrunk from her with horror. It came, in fact,
+to their waiting upon me in a body and insisting upon my immuring her
+in the steerage in company with one of the 'tween-deck's passengers, a
+female who had offered her services as a nurse for hire. This action
+led to the poor girl herself finding out what had happened. God knows
+who told her or how she managed to discover it; but 't is certain she
+got to learn it was her hand that in sleep had killed her lover, and
+she went mad the selfsame day of her understanding what she had done.
+
+Nor did she ever recover her mind. She was landed mad, and sent at
+once to an asylum, where she died, God rest her poor soul! exactly a
+year after the murder, passing away, in fact, at the very hour the
+deed was done, as I afterwards heard.
+
+
+
+
+                      _The Ship Seen on the Ice_.
+
+
+In the middle of April, in the year 1855, the three-masted schooner
+_Lightning_ sailed from the Mersey for Boston with a small general
+cargo of English manufactured goods. She was commanded by a man named
+Thomas Funnel. The mate, Salamon Sweers, was of Dutch extraction, and
+his broad-beamed face was as Dutch to the eye as was the sound of his
+name to the ear. Yet he spoke English with as good an accent as ever
+one could hear in the mouth of an Englishman; and, indeed, I pay
+Salamon Sweers no compliment by saying this, for he employed his _h's_
+correctly, and the grammar of his sentences was fairly good, albeit
+salt: and how many Englishmen are there who correctly employ the
+letter _h_, and whose grammar is fairly good, salt or no salt?
+
+We carried four forecastle hands and three apprentices. There was
+Charles Petersen, a Swede, who had once been "fancy man" in a toy
+shop; there was David Burton, who had been a hairdresser and proved
+unfortunate as a gold-digger in Australia; there was James Lussoni, an
+Italian, who claimed to be a descendant of the old Genoese merchants;
+and there was John Jones, a runaway man-of-warsman, pretty nearly worn
+out, and subject to apoplexy.
+
+Four sailors and three apprentices make seven men, a cook and a boy
+are nine, and a mate and a captain make eleven; and eleven of a crew
+were we, all told, men and boy, aboard the three-masted schooner
+_Lightning_ when we sailed away one April morning out of the river
+Mersey, bound to Boston, North America.
+
+My name was then as it still is--for during the many years I have used
+the sea, never had I occasion to ship with a "purser's name"--my name,
+I say, is David Kerry, and in that year of God 1855 I was a strapping
+young fellow, seventeen years old, making a second voyage with Captain
+Funnel, having been bound apprentice to that most excellent but
+long-departed mariner by my parents, who, finding me resolved to go to
+sea had determined that my probation should be thorough: no half-laughs
+and pursers' grins would satisfy them; my arm was to plunge deep into
+the tar bucket straight away; and certainly there was no man then
+hailing from the port of Liverpool better able to qualify a young chap
+for the profession of the sea--but a young chap, mind you, who liked
+his calling, who _meant_ to be a man and not a "sojer" in it--than
+Captain Funnel of the schooner _Lightning_.
+
+The four sailors slept in a bit of a forecastle forward; we three
+apprentices slung our hammocks in a bulkheaded part of the run or
+steerage, a gloomy hole, the obscurity of which was defined rather
+than illuminated by the dim twilight sifting down aslant from the
+hatch. Here we stowed our chests, and here we took our meals, and here
+we slept and smoked and yarned in our watch below. I very well
+remember my two fellow apprentices. One was named Corbin, and the
+other Halsted. They were both of them smart, honest, bright lads,
+coming well equipped and well educated from respectable homes, in love
+with the calling of the sea, and resolved in time not only to command
+ships, but to own them.
+
+Well, nothing in any way noteworthy happened for many days. Though the
+schooner was called the _Lightning_, she was by no means a clipper.
+She was built on lines which were fashionable forty years before, when
+the shipwright held that a ship's stability must be risked if she was
+one inch longer than five times her beam. She was an old vessel, but
+dry as a stale cheese; wallowed rather than rolled, yet was stiff;
+would sit upright with erect spars, like the cocked ears of a horse,
+in breezes which bowed passing vessels down to their wash-streaks. Her
+round bows bruised the sea, and when it entered her head to take to
+her heels, she would wash through it like a "gallied whale," all
+smothered to the hawse-pipes, and a big round polished hump of brine
+on either quarter.
+
+We ambled, and wallowed, and blew, and in divers fashions drove along
+till we were deep in the heart of the North Atlantic. It was then a
+morning that brought the first of May within a biscuit-toss of our
+reckoning of time: a very cold morning, the sea flat, green, and
+greasy, with a streaking of white about it, as though it were a
+flooring of marble; there was wind but no lift in the water; and
+Salamon Sweers, in whose watch I was, said to me, when the day broke
+and showed us the look of the ocean:
+
+"Blowed," said he, "if a man mightn't swear that we were under the lee
+of a range of high land."
+
+It was very cold, the wind about north-west, the sky a pale grey, with
+patches of weak hazy blue in it here and there; and here and there
+again lay some darker shadow of cloud curled clean as though painted.
+There was nothing in sight saving the topmost cloths of a little
+barque heading eastwards away down to leeward. Quiet as the morning
+was, not once during the passage had I found the temperature so cold.
+I was glad when the job of washing down was over, and not a little
+grateful for the hook-pot of steam tea which I took from the galley to
+my quarters in the steerage.
+
+I breakfasted in true ocean fashion, off ship's biscuit, a piece of
+pork, the remains of yesterday's dinner, and a potful of black liquor
+called tea, sweetened by molasses and thickened with sodden leaves and
+fragments of twigs; and then, cutting a pipeful of tobacco from a
+stick of cavendish, I climbed into my hammock, and lay there smoking
+and trying to read in Norie's _Epitome_ until my pipe went out, on
+which I fell asleep.
+
+I was awakened by young Halsted, whose hand was upon the edge of my
+hammock.
+
+"Not time to turn out yet, I hope?" I exclaimed. "I don't feel to have
+been below ten minutes."
+
+"There's the finest sight to see on deck," said he, "that you're
+likely to turn up this side of Boston. Tumble up and have a look if
+only for five minutes"; and without another word he hastened up the
+ladder.
+
+I dropped out of my hammock, pulled on my boots and monkey-jacket, and
+went on deck, noting the hour by the cabin clock to be twenty minutes
+before eleven. The captain stood at the mizzen-rigging with a
+telescope at his eye, and beside him stood Mr. Sweers, likewise
+holding a glass, and both men pointed their telescopes towards the sea
+on the lee bow, where--never having before beheld an iceberg--I
+perceived what I imagined to be an island covered with snow.
+
+An iceberg it was--not a very large one. It was about five miles
+distant; it had a ragged sky line which made it resemble a piece of
+cliff gone adrift--such a fragment of cliff as, let me say, a quarter
+of a mile of the chalk of the South Foreland would make, if you can
+imagine a mass of the stuff detaching itself from under the verdure at
+the top and floating off jagged and precipitous. There was nothing to
+be seen but that iceberg. No others. The sea ran smooth as oil, and of
+a hard green, piebald foam lines as in the earlier morning, with but a
+light swell out of the west, which came lifting stealthily to the side
+of the schooner. There was a small breeze; the sky had a somewhat
+gloomy look; the schooner was at this hour crawling along at the rate
+of about four and a half knots.
+
+I said to Halsted: "There was nothing in sight when I went below at
+eight bells. Where's that berg come from?"
+
+"From behind the horizon," he answered. "The breeze freshened soon
+after you left the deck, and only slackened a little while since."
+
+"What can they see to keep them staring so hard?" said I, referring to
+the captain and Mr. Sweers, who kept their glasses steadily levelled
+at the iceberg.
+
+"They've made out a ship upon the ice," he answered; "a ship high and
+dry upon a slope of foreshore. I believe I can see her now--the gleam
+of the snow is confusing; there's a black spot at the base almost
+amidships of the berg."
+
+I had a good sight in those days. I peered awhile and made out the
+object, but with the naked eye I could never have distinguished it as
+a ship at that distance.
+
+"She's a barque," I heard Mr. Sweers say.
+
+"I see that," said the captain.
+
+"She's got a pretty strong list," continued the mate, talking with the
+glass at his eye; "her topgallantmasts are struck, but her topmasts
+are standing."
+
+"I tell you what it is," said the captain, after a pause, likewise
+speaking whilst he gazed through his telescope, "that ship's come down
+somewhere from out of the North Pole. She never could have struck the
+ice and gone ashore as we see her there. She's been locked up; then
+the piece she's on broke away and made sail to the south. I've fallen
+in with bergs with live polar bears on them in my time."
+
+"What is she--a whaler?" said Mr. Sweers. "She's got a lumbersome look
+about the bulwarks, as though she wasn't short of cranes; but I can't
+make out any boats, and there's no appearance of life aboard her."
+
+"Let her go off a point," said the captain to the fellow at the wheel.
+"Mr. Sweers, she'll be worth looking at," he continued, slowly
+directing his gaze round the sea-line, as though considering the
+weather. 'You've heard of Sir John Franklin?'
+
+"Have I heard?" said the mate, with a Dutch shrug.
+
+"It's the duty of every English sailor," said the captain, "to keep
+his weather eye lifting whenever he smells ice north of the equator;
+for who's to tell what relics of the Franklin expedition he may not
+light on? And how are we to know," continued he, again directing his
+glass at the berg, "that yonder vessel may not have taken part in that
+expedition?"
+
+"There's a reward going," said Mr. Sweers, "for the man who can
+discover anything about Sir John Franklin and his party."
+
+The captain grinned and quickly grew grave.
+
+We drew slowly towards the iceberg, at which I gazed with some degree
+of disappointment; for, never before having beheld ice in a great mass
+like the heap that was yonder, I had expected to see something
+admirable and magnificent, an island of glass, full of fiery
+sparklings and ruby and emerald beams, a shape of crystal cut by the
+hand of King Frost into a hundred inimitable devices. Instead of
+which, the island of ice, on which lay the hull of the ship, was of a
+dead, unpolished whiteness, abrupt at the extremities, about a hundred
+and twenty feet tall at its loftiest point, not more picturesque than
+a rock covered with snow, and interesting only to my mind because of
+the distance it had measured, and because of the fancies it raised in
+one of the white, silent, and stirless principalities from which it
+had floated into these parts.
+
+"Get the jolly-boat over, Mr. Sweers," said the captain, "and take a
+hand with you, and go and have a look at that craft there; and if you
+can board her, do so, and bring away her log-book, if you come across
+it. The newspapers sha'n't say that I fell in with such an object as
+that and passed on without taking any notice."
+
+I caught Mr. Sweers' eye. "You'll do," said he, and in a few minutes
+he and I were pulling away in the direction of the ice, I in the bow
+and he aft, rowing fisherman fashion, face forward. The schooner had
+backed her yards on the fore when she was within a mile of the berg,
+and we had not far to row. Our four arms made the fat little
+jolly-boat buzz over the wrinkled surface of the green, cold water.
+The wreck--if a wreck she could be called--lay with her decks sloping
+seawards upon an inclined shelf or beach of ice, with a mass of
+rugged, abrupt stuff behind her, and vast coagulated lumps heaped like
+a Stonehenge at her bows and at her stern. When we approached the
+beach, as I may term it, Salamon Sweers said:
+
+"I'll tell you what: I am not going to board that craft alone, Kerry.
+Who's to tell what's inside of her? She may have been lying twenty
+years, for all we know, frozen up where it's always day or always
+night--where everything's out of the order of nature, in fact; and rat
+me if I'm going to be the first man to enter her cabin."
+
+"I'm along with you," said I.
+
+"So you are, David," said he, "and we'll overhaul her together, and
+the best way to secure the boat'll be to drag her high and dry"; and
+as he said this, the stem of the boat touched the ice, and we both of
+us jumped out, and, catching hold of her by the gunwale, walked her up
+the slope by some five times her own length, where she lay as snug as
+though chocked aboard her own mother, the schooner.
+
+Sweers and I stood, first of all, to take a view of the barque--for a
+barque she was: her topgallantmasts down, but her topsail and lower
+yards across, sails bent, all gear rove, and everything right so far
+as we could see, saving that her flying jib-boom was gone. There was
+no need to look long at her to know that she hadn't been one of
+Franklin's ships. Her name and the place she hailed from were on her
+stern: the _President_, New Bedford. And now it was easy to see that
+she was a Yankee whaler. Her sides bristled with cranes or davits for
+boats, but every boat was gone. The tackles were overhauled, and the
+blocks of two of them lay upon the ice. She was a stout, massive,
+round-bowed structure, to all appearances as sound as on the day when
+she was launched. She was coppered; not a sheet of metal was off, not
+a rent anywhere visible through the length and breadth of the dingy
+green surface of it.
+
+We first of all walked round her, not knowing but that on the other
+side, concealed from the landing-place by the interposition of the
+hull, some remains of her people might be lying; but there was nothing
+in that way to see. We united our voices in a loud "Hallo!" and the
+rocks re-echoed us; but all was still, frozen, lifeless.
+
+"Let's get aboard," said Mr. Sweers, gazing, nevertheless, up at the
+ship's side with a flat face of reluctance and doubt.
+
+I grasped a boat's fall and went up hand over hand, and Sweers
+followed me. The angle of the deck was considerable, but owing to the
+flat bilge of the whaler's bottom, not greater than the inclination of
+the deck of a ship under a heavy press of canvas. It was possible to
+walk. We put our legs over the rail and came to a stand, and took a
+view of the decks of the ship. Nothing, saving the boats, seemed to be
+missing. Every detail of deck furniture was as complete as though the
+ship were ready for getting under way, with a full hold, for a final
+start home. Caboose, scuttle-butts, harness-cask, wheel, binnacle,
+companion-cover, skylight, winch, pumps, capstan--nothing was wanting;
+nothing but boats and men.
+
+"Is it possible that all hands can be below?" said Sweers, straining
+his ear.
+
+I looked aloft and about me, wondering that the body of the vessel and
+her masts and rigging should not be sheathed with ice; but if ever the
+structure had been glazed in her time, when she lay hard and fast far
+to the north of Spitzbergen, for all one could tell, nothing was now
+frozen; there was not so much as an icicle anywhere visible about her.
+The decks were dry, and on my kicking a coil of rope that was near my
+feet the stuff did not crackle, as one could have expected, as though
+frosted to the core.
+
+"The vessel seems to have been thawed through," said I, "and I expect
+that this berg is only a fragment of the mass that broke adrift with
+her."
+
+"Likely enough," said Sweers. "Hark! what is that?"
+
+"What do you hear?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Why, _that_!" cried he, pointing to a shallow fissure in the icy
+rocks which towered above the ship: and down the fissure I spied a
+cascade of water falling like smoke, with a harsh, hissing noise,
+which I had mistaken for the seething of the sea. I ran my eye over
+the face of the heights and witnessed many similar falls of water.
+
+"There'll not be much of this iceberg left soon," said I, "if the
+drift is to the southward."
+
+"What d'ye think,--that the drift's northerly?" exclaimed Sweers.
+"I'll tell you what it is; it's these icebergs drifting in masses down
+south into the Atlantic which cause the sudden spells of cold weather
+you get in England during seasons when it ought to be hot."
+
+As he said this he walked to the companion-hatch, the cover of which
+was closed, and the door shut. The cover yielded to a thrust of his
+hand. He then pulled open the doors and put his head in, and I heard
+him spit.
+
+"There's foul air here," said he; "but where a match will burn a man
+can breathe, I've learnt."
+
+He struck a match, and descended two or three steps of the ladder, and
+then called out to me to follow. The air was not foul, but it was
+close, and there was a dampish smell upon it, and it was charged with
+a fishy odour like that of decaying spawn and dead marine vegetation.
+Light fell through the companion-way, and a sort of blurred dimness
+drained through the grimy skylight.
+
+We thoroughly overhauled this interior, spending some time in looking
+about us, for Sweers' fear of beholding something affrighting vanished
+when he found himself in a plain ship's cabin, with nothing more
+terrible to behold than the ship's furniture of a whaleman's
+living-room of near half a century old. There were three
+sleeping-berths, and these we explored, but met with nothing that in
+any way hinted at the story of the ship. It was impossible to tell,
+indeed, which had been the captain's cabin. All three berths were
+filled alike with lockers, hammocks, wash-stands, and so forth; and
+two of them were lighted by dirty little scuttles in the ship's side;
+but the third lay athwartships, and all the light that it received
+came from the cabin through its open door.
+
+I don't know how long we were occupied in hunting these cabins for any
+sort of papers which would enable Captain Funnel to make out the story
+of the barque. We were too eager and curious and interested to heed
+the passage of time. There were harpoons and muskets racked in the
+state cabin, some wearing apparel in the berths, a few books on
+nautical subjects, but without the owners' names in them, and there
+was a bundle of what proved to be bear's skins stowed away in the
+corner of the berth that was without a scuttle. A door led to a couple
+of bulkheaded compartments in the fore part of the state cabin, and
+Sweers was in the act of advancing to it when he cried out:
+
+"By the tunder of heaven, what is dot?" losing his customary hold of
+the English tongue in the excitement of the moment.
+
+"The ice is melting and discharging in Niagara Falls upon the whaler's
+deck!" I cried, after listening a moment to the noise of a downpour
+that rang through the cabin in a hollow thunder.
+
+We rushed on deck. A furious squall was blowing, but the air was
+becalmed where the vessel lay by the high cliffs of ice, and the rain
+of the squall fell almost up and down in a very sheet of water,
+intermingled with hailstones as big as the eggs of a thrush. The whole
+scene of the ocean was a swirling, revolving smother, as though the
+sky was full of steam, and the screech of the wind, as it fled off the
+edge of the dead white heights which sheltered us, pierced the ear
+like the whistlings of a thousand locomotives.
+
+There was nothing to be seen of the schooner: but _that_ was trifling
+for the moment compared to this: _there was nothing to be seen of the
+boat_! The furious discharge of the squall would increase her weight
+by half filling her with water; the slashing wet of the rain would
+also render the icy slope up which we had hauled her as slippery as a
+sheet for skaters; a single shock or blast of wind might suffice to
+start her. Be this as it will, she had launched herself--she was gone!
+We strained our sight, but no faintest blotch of shadow could we
+distinguish amid the white water rushing smoothly off from the base of
+the berg, and streaming into the pallid shadow of the squall where you
+saw the sea clear of the ice beginning to work with true Atlantic
+spite.
+
+"Crate Cott!" cried Sweers, "what's to be done? There was no
+appearance of a squall when we landed here. It drove up abaft this
+berg, and it may have been hidden from the schooner herself by the
+ice."
+
+We crouched in the companion-way for shelter, not doubting that the
+squall would speedily pass, and that the schooner, which we naturally
+supposed lay close to the berg hove-to, would, the instant the weather
+cleared, send a boat to take us off. But the squall, instead of
+abating, gradually rose into half a gale of wind--a wet dark gale that
+shrouded the sea with flying spume and rain to within a musket-shot of
+the iceberg, whilst the sky was no more than a weeping, pouring shadow
+coming and going as it were with a lightening and darkening of it by
+masses of headlong torn vapour. Some of the ragged pinnacles of the
+cliffs of ice seemed to pierce that wild dark, flying sky of storm as
+it swept before the gale close down over our heads.
+
+We could not bring our minds to realise that we were to be left aboard
+this ice-stranded whaler all night, and perhaps all next day, and for
+heaven alone knows how much longer for the matter of that; and it was
+not until the darkness of the evening had drawn down, coming along
+early with the howling gloom of the storm-shrouded ocean, without so
+much as a rusty tinge of hectic to tell us where the West lay, that we
+abandoned our idle task of staring at the sea, and made up our minds
+to go through with the night as best we could.
+
+And first of all we entered the galley, and by the aid of such dim
+light as still lived we contrived to catch sight of a tin lamp with a
+spout to it dangling over the coppers. There was a wick in the spout,
+but one might swear that the lamp hadn't been used for months and
+months.
+
+"We must have a light anyhow," said Sweers, "and if this _President_
+be a whaler, there should be no lack of oil aboard."
+
+After groping awhile in some shelves stocked with black-handled knives
+and forks, tin dishes, pannikins, and the like, I put my hand upon a
+stump of candle-end. This we lighted, Sweers luckily having a box of
+lucifers in his pocket, and with the aid of the candle-flame, we
+discovered in the corner of the galley a lime-juice jar half-full of
+oil. With this we trimmed the lamp, and then stepped on deck to grope
+our way to the cabin, meaning to light the lamp down there, for no
+unsheltered flame would have lived an instant in the fierce draughts
+which rushed and eddied about the decks.
+
+We stayed a moment to look seawards, but all was black night out
+there, touched in places with a sudden flash of foam. The voice of the
+gale was awful with the warring noise of the waters, and with the
+restless thunder of seas smiting the ice on the weather side, and with
+the wild and often terrific crackling sounds which arose out of the
+heart of the solid mass of the berg itself, as though earthquakes in
+endless processions were trembling through it, and as though, at any
+moment, the whole vast bulk would be rent into a thousand crystal
+splinters. Sweers was silent until we had gained the cabin and lighted
+the lamp. He then looked at me with an ashen face, and groaned.
+
+"This gale's going to blow the schooner away," said he. "We're lost
+men, David. I'd give my right eye to be aboard the _Lightning_. D'ye
+understand the trick of these blooming icebergs? They wash away
+underneath, grow topheavy, and then over goes the show. And to think
+of the jolly-boat making off, as if two sailormen like you and me
+couldn't have provided for _that_!"
+
+He groaned again, and then seated himself, and appeared wholly
+deprived of energy and spirit.
+
+However, now that I was below, under shelter, out of the noise of the
+weather, and therefore able to collect my thoughts, I began to feel
+very hungry and thirsty; in fact, neither Sweers nor I had tasted food
+since breakfast at eight o'clock that morning. A lamp hung aslant from
+the cabin ceiling. It was a small lamp of brass, glazed. I unhooked
+it, and brought it to the light, but it was without a wick, and there
+was no oil in it, and to save time I stuck the lighted candle in the
+lamp, and leaving the other lamp burning to enable Sweers to rummage
+also, I passed through the door that was in the forepart of the cabin;
+and here I found three berths, one of which was furnished as a pantry,
+whilst the other two were sleeping-places, with bunks in them, and I
+observed also a sheaf or two of harpoons, together with spades and
+implements used in dealing with the whale after the monster has been
+killed and towed alongside.
+
+The atmosphere was horribly close and fishy in this place, reeking of
+oil, yet cold as ice, as though the ship lay drowned a thousand
+fathoms deep. I called to Sweers to bring his lamp, for my candle gave
+so poor a light I could scarce see by it; and in the berth that looked
+to have been used as a pantry we found half a barrel of pork, a bag of
+ship's biscuit, and a quantity of Indian meal, beans, and rice, a
+canister of coffee, and a few jars of pickles. But we could find
+nothing to drink.
+
+I was now exceedingly thirsty; so I took a pannikin--a number of
+vessels of the sort were on the shelf in the pantry--and carried it
+with the lamp on deck. I had taken notice during the day of four or
+five buckets in a row abaft the mainmast, and, approaching them, I
+held the light close, and found each bucket full. I tasted the water;
+it was rain and without the least flavour of salt: and, after drinking
+heartily, I filled the pannikin afresh and carried it down to Sweers.
+
+There was a spiritlessness in this man that surprised me. I had not
+thought to find the faculties of Salamon Sweers so quickly benumbed by
+what was indeed a wild and dangerous confrontment, yet not so
+formidable and hopeless as to weaken the nerves of a seaman. I yearned
+for a bottle of rum, for any sort of strong waters indeed, guessing
+that a dram would help us both; and after I had made a meal off some
+raw pork and molasses spread upon the ship's biscuit, which was mouldy
+and astir with weevils, I took my lantern and again went on deck, and
+made my way to the galley where the oil jar stood, and here in a
+drawer I found what now I most needed, but what before I had
+overlooked; I mean a parcel; of braided lamp wicks. I trimmed the lamp
+and got a brilliant light. The glass protected the flame from the rush
+of the wind about the deck. I guessed there would be nothing worth
+finding in the barque's forecastle, and not doubting that there was a
+lazarette in which would be stored such ship provisions as the crew
+had left behind them, I returned to the cabin, looked for the
+lazarette hatch, and found it under the table.
+
+Well, to cut this part of the story short, Sweers and I dropped into
+the lazarette, and after spending an hour or two in examining what we
+met with, we discovered enough provisions, along with some casks of
+rum and bottled beer, to last a ship's company of twenty men a whole
+six months. This was Sweers' reckoning. We carried some of the bottled
+beer into the cabin, and having pipes and tobacco with us in our
+pockets, we filled and smoked, and sat listening to the wet storming
+down the decks overhead, and to the roaring of the wind on high, and
+to the crackling noises of the ice.
+
+That first night with us on board the whaler was a fearful time.
+Sometimes we dozed as we sat confronting each other on the lockers,
+but again and again would we start up and go on deck, but only to look
+into the blindness of the night, and only to hearken to the appalling
+noises of the weather and the ice. When day broke there was nothing in
+sight. It was blowing strong, a high sea was running, and the ocean
+lay shrouded as though with vapour.
+
+During the course of the morning we entered the forepeak, where we
+found a quantity of coal. This enabled us to light the galley fire, to
+cook a piece of pork, and to boil some coffee. Towards noon Sweers
+proposed to inspect the hold, and to see what was inside the ship.
+Accordingly we opened the main hatch and found the vessel loaded with
+casks, some of which we examined and found them full of oil.
+
+"By tunder!" cried Sweers; "if we could only carry this vessel home
+there'd be a fortune for both of us, David. Shall I tell you what this
+sort of oil's worth? Well, it's worth about thirty pounds a ton. And
+how much d'ye think there's aboard? Not less than a hundred ton, if I
+don't see double. There's no man can teach me the capacity of a cask,
+and there are casks below varying from forty-two to two hundred and
+seventy-five gallons, with no lack of whalebone stored dry somewhere,
+I don't doubt, if those casks would let us look for it."
+
+But this was no better than idle and ironical chatter in the mouths of
+men so hideously situated as we were. For my part I had no thought of
+saving the ship; indeed, I had scarce any hope of saving my own life.
+We found an American ensign in a small flag-locker that was lashed
+near the wheel, and we sent it half-mast high, with the stars
+inverted. Then we searched for fresh water, and found three iron tanks
+nearly full in the after-hold. The water stunk with keeping, as though
+it had grown rank in the bilge, but after it had stood a little while
+exposed to air it became sweet enough to use. There was no fear then
+of our perishing from hunger and thirst whilst the whaler kept
+together. Our main and imminent danger lay in the sudden dissolution
+of the ice, or in the capsizal of the berg. It was our unhappy fortune
+that, numerous as were the cranes overhanging the whaler's side, we
+should not have found a boat left in one of them. Our only chance lay
+in a raft; but both Sweers and I, as sailors, shrank from the thought
+of such a means of escape. We might well guess that a raft would but
+prolong our lives in the midst of so wide a sea, by a few days, and
+perhaps by a few hours only, after subjecting us to every agony of
+despair and of expectation, and torturing us with God alone would know
+what privations.
+
+We thoroughly overhauled the forecastle of the vessel, but found
+nothing of interest. There were a few seamen's chests, some odds and
+ends of wearing apparel, and here and there a blanket in a bunk; but
+the crew in clearing out appeared to have carried off most of their
+effects with them. Of course we could only conjecture what they had
+done and how they had managed; but it was to be guessed that all the
+boats being gone the sailors had taken advantage of a split in the ice
+to get away from their hard and fast ship, employing all their boats
+that they might carry with them a plentiful store of water and
+provisions.
+
+I should but weary you to dwell day by day upon the passage of time
+that Sweers and I passed upon this ship that we had seen upon the ice.
+We kept an eager look-out for craft, crawling to the mastheads so as
+to obtain a view over the blocks of ice which lay in masses at the
+stem and stern of the whaler. But though we often caught sight of a
+distant sail, nothing ever approached us close enough to observe our
+signal. Once, indeed, a large steamer passed within a couple of miles
+of the iceberg, and we watched her with devouring eyes, forever
+imagining that she was slowing down and about to stop, until she
+vanished out of our sight past the north end of the berg. Yet, we had
+no other hope of rescue than that of being taken off by a passing
+ship.
+
+I never recollect meeting at sea with such a variety of weather as we
+encountered. There would be clear sunshine and bright blue skies for a
+day, followed by dark and bellowing nights of storm. Then would come
+periods of thick fogs, followed by squalls, variable winds, and so on.
+We guessed, however, that our trend was steadily southwards, by the
+steady cascading of the ice, by the frequent falls of large blocks,
+and by the increasing noises of sudden, tremendous disruptions, loud
+and heart-subduing as thundershocks heard close to.
+
+"If we aren't taken off," said Sweers to me one day, "there's just
+this one chance for us. The ice is bound to melt. All these bergs, as
+I reckon, disappear somewhere to the nor'ard of the verge of the Gulf
+Stream. Well, now the Lord may be good to us, and it may happen that
+this berg'll melt away and leave the whaler afloat; and float she must
+if she isn't crushed by the ice. Let her leak like a sieve--there's
+oil enough in her to keep her standing upright as though she were a
+line-of-battle ship."
+
+Well, we had been a little more than a fortnight upon this ship hard
+and fast upon the ice. Many a vessel had we sighted, but never a one
+of them, saving the steamer I have mentioned, had approached within
+eyeshot of our distress signal. Yet our health was good, and our
+spirits tolerably easy; we had fared well, there was no lack of food
+and drink, and we were beginning to feel some confidence in the
+iceberg--by which I mean to say that the rapid thawing of its upper
+parts, where all the weight was, filled us with the hope that the mass
+wouldn't capsize as we had feared; that it would hold together so as
+to keep the ship on end as she now was until we were rescued, or,
+failing our being rescued, that it would dissolve in such a way as to
+leave the whaler afloat.
+
+It was somewhere about the end of a fortnight, as I have said. My bed
+was a cabin locker, on which I had placed a mattress and a bear-skin.
+Both Sweers and I turned in of a night, unless it was clear weather;
+though if I awoke I'd sometimes steal on deck to take a peep, for
+nothing could come of our keeping a look-out if it was blowing hard,
+and if it was black and thick.
+
+This night it was a bit muddy and dark, with a moderate breeze out of
+the south-west, as far as we could guess at the bearings of the wind.
+I was awakened from a deep slumber by an extraordinary convulsion in
+the ship. I was half-stupefied with sleep, and can therefore but
+imperfectly recall my sensations and the character of what I may term
+the throes and spasms of the vessel. I was thrown from the locker and
+lay for some moments incapable of rising by the shock of the fall. But
+one thing my senses, even when they were scarce yet awake, took note
+of, and that was a prodigious roaring noise, similar in effect to what
+might be produced by a cannon-ball rolling along a hollow wooden
+floor, only that the noise was thousands of times greater than ever
+could have been produced by a cannon-ball. The lamp was out, and the
+cabin in pitch blackness. I heard Sweers from some corner of the
+cabin, bawling out my name; but before I could answer, and even whilst
+I was staggering to my feet, a second convulsion threw me down again;
+the next instant there was a sensation as of the vessel being hove up
+into the air, attended by an extraordinary grinding noise, that
+thrilled through every beam of her; next, in the space of a few beats
+of the heart, she plunged into the sea, raising such a boiling and
+roaring of waters, as, spite of the sounds being dulled to our ears by
+our being in the cabin, persuaded us that the vessel was foundering.
+
+But even whilst I thus thought, holding my breath and waiting for the
+death that was to come with the pouring of the water down the open
+companion-way, I felt the ship right; she lifted buoyant under foot,
+and I sprang to the steps which conducted on deck, with Sweers--as I
+might know by his voice--close at my heels, roaring out, "By tunder,
+we're adrift and afloat!"
+
+The stars were shining, there was a red moon low in the west, the
+weather had cleared, and a quiet wind was blowing. At the distance of
+some hundred yards from the ship stood a few pallid masses--the
+remains of the berg. It was just possible to make out that the water
+in the neighbourhood of those dim heaps was covered with fragments of
+ice. How the liberation of the ship had come about neither Sweers nor
+I did then pause to consider. We were sailors, and our first business
+was to act as sailors, and as quickly as might be we loosed and
+hoisted the jib and foretopmast staysail, so that the vessel might
+blow away from the neighbourhood of the dangerous remains of her jail
+of ice. We then sounded the well, and, finding no water, went to work
+to loose the foresail and foretopsail, which canvas we made shift to
+set with the aid of the capstan. I then lighted the binnacle lamp
+whilst Sweers held the wheel; and having sounded the well afresh, to
+make sure of the hull, we headed away to the eastwards, the wind being
+about W.S.W.
+
+Before the dawn broke we had run the ice out of sight. Sweers and I
+managed, as I have no doubt, to arrive at the theory of the liberation
+of the ship by comparing our sensations and experiences. There can be
+no question that the berg had split in twain almost amidships. This
+was the cause of the tremendous noise of thunder which I heard. The
+splitting of the ice had hoisted the shelf or beach on which the
+barque lay, and occasioned that sensation of flying into the air which
+I had noticed. But the lifting of the beach of ice had also violently
+and sharply sloped it, and the barque, freeing herself, had fled down
+it broadside on, taking the water with a mighty souse and crash, then
+rising buoyant, and lifting and falling upon the seas as we had both
+of us felt her do.
+
+And now to bring this queer yarn to a close, for I have no space to
+dwell upon our thankfulness and our proceedings until we obtained the
+help we stood in need of. We managed to handle the barque without
+assistance for three days, then fell in with an American ship bound to
+Liverpool, who lent us three of her men, and within three weeks of the
+date of our release from the iceberg we were in soundings in the Chops
+of the Channel, and a few days later had safely brought the barque to
+an anchor in the river Thames.
+
+The adventure yielded Sweers and I a thousand pounds apiece as salvage
+money, but we were kept waiting a long time before receiving our just
+reward. It was necessary to communicate with the owners of the barque
+in America, and then the lawyers got hold of the job, and I grew so
+weary of interviews, so vexed and sickened by needless correspondence,
+that I should have been thankful to have taken two hundred pounds for
+my share merely to have made an end.
+
+It seems that the _President_ had been abandoned two years and five
+months by her crew before the _Lightning_ sighted her on the ice. Her
+people had stuck to her for eight months, then made off in a body with
+the boats, carrying their captain and mates along with them. They
+regarded the situation of their ship as hopeless, and indeed, as it
+turned out, they were not very wrong, so far as their notions of
+reasonable detention went; for they never could have liberated the
+vessel by their own efforts; they must have waited, as we had, for the
+ice to free her; and this would have signified to them an imprisonment
+of two years and a half over and above the eight months they had
+already spent in her whilst ice-bound.
+
+Sweers gave up the sea, started in business, and died, about ten years
+since, a fairly well-to-do man. And shall I tell you what I did with
+my thousand pounds? ... But my story has already run to greater length
+than I had intended when sitting down to write it.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+THE INCOGNITO LIBRARY.
+
+A series of small books by representative writers, whose names will
+for the present not be given.
+
+In this series will be included the authorized American editions of
+the future issues of Mr. Unwin's "=Pseudonym Library=", which
+has won for itself a noteworthy prestige.
+
+     32mo, limp cloth, each 50 cents.
+
+
+I.  =The Shen's Pigtail=, and Other Cues of
+        Anglo-China Life, by Mr. M----.
+
+II. =The Hon. Stanbury and Others=, by
+        Two.
+
+III.=Lesser's Daughter=, by Mrs. Andrew
+        Dean.
+
+IV. =A Husband of No Importance=, by
+        "Rita."
+
+V.  =Helen=, by Oswald Valentine.
+
+VI. =A Gender in Satin=, by "Rita."
+
+VII.=Every Day's News, by C.E. Francis.
+
+
+These will be followed by volumes by other well-known authors.
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Honour of the Flag, by W. Clark Russell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Honour of the Flag
+
+Author: W. Clark Russell
+
+Release Date: November 23, 2006 [EBook #19899]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Don Perry and the Online Distributed
+Proofreaders Europe at http://dp.rastko.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             SHORT STORY
+
+
+                            THE HONOUR OF
+                              THE FLAG
+
+
+                                 BY
+
+                          W. CLARK RUSSELL
+
+
+                AUTHOR OF "THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR,"
+                  "LIFE OF LORD NELSON," ETC., ETC.
+
+
+
+                         G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
+
+               NEW YORK                     LONDON
+       27 West Twenty-third Street.  24 Bedford Street, Strand.
+
+                                1895
+
+            The Knickerbocker Press, New Rochelle, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+                             SHORT STORY
+
+
+
+
+_Contents_.
+
+                                             PAGE
+
+=The Honour of the Flag=                       3
+
+=Cornered=!                                   28
+
+=A Midnight Visitor=                          41
+
+=Plums from a Sailor's Duff=                  57
+
+=The Strange Adventures of a South Seaman=    82
+
+=The Adventures of Three Sailors=            110
+
+=The Strange Tragedy of the "White Star="    137
+
+=The Ship Seen on the Ice=                   163
+
+
+
+THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG
+
+
+
+
+                      =_The Honour of the Flag_=.
+
+                           A THAMES TRAGEDY.
+
+
+Manifold are the historic interests of the river Thames. There is
+scarcely a foot of its mud from London Bridge to Gravesend Reach that
+is not as "consecrated" as that famous bit of soil which Dr. Samuel
+Johnson and Mr. Richard Savage knelt and kissed on stepping ashore at
+Greenwich. One of the historic interests, however, threatens to perish
+out of the annals. It does not indeed rise to such heroic proportions
+as you find in the story of the Dutch invasion of the river, or in old
+Hackluyt's solemn narrative of the sailing of the expedition organised
+by Bristol's noble worthy, Sebastian Cabot; but it is altogether too
+good and stirring to merit erasure from the Thames's history books by
+the neglect or ignorance of the historian.
+
+It is absolutely true: I pledge my word for that on the authority of
+the records of the Whitechapel County Court.
+
+In the year 1851 there dwelt on the banks of the river Thames a
+retired tailor, whom I will call John Sloper, out of regard to the
+feelings of his posterity, if such there be. This man had for many
+years carried on a flourishing trade in the east end of London. Having
+got together as much money as he might suppose would supply his daily
+needs, he built himself a villa near the pleasant little town of
+Erith. His house overlooked the water; in front of it sloped a
+considerable piece of garden ground.
+
+Mr. Sloper showed good sense and good taste in building himself a
+little home on the banks of the Thames. All day long he was able, if
+he pleased, to entertain himself with the sight of as stirring and
+striking a marine picture as is anywhere to be witnessed. He could
+have built himself a house above bridges, where there is no lack of
+elegance and river beauty of many sorts; but he chose to command a
+view of the Thames on its commercial side.
+
+In his day there was more life in the river than there is now. In our
+age the great steamer thrusts past and is quickly gone; the tug runs
+the sailing-ship to the docks or to her mooring buoys, and there is no
+life in the fabric she drags. In Sloper's time steamers were few; the
+water of the river teemed with sailing craft of every description;
+they tacked across from bank to bank as they staggered to their
+destination against the wind.
+
+Sloper, sitting at his open window on a fine day, would be able to
+count twenty different types of rigs in almost as many minutes. That
+he took a keen interest in ships, however, I do not assert; that he
+could have told you the difference between a brig and a schooner is
+barely imaginable. The board on which Sloper had flourished was not
+shipboard, it had nothing to do with starboard or larboard; he was a
+tailor, not a sailor, and the friends who ran down to see him were of
+his own sort and condition.
+
+Sloper was a widower; how many years he had lived with his wife I
+can't say. She died one Easter Monday, and when Sloper took possession
+of his new house near Erith he mounted some small cannon on his lawn,
+and these pieces of artillery he regularly fired every Easter Monday
+in celebration of what he called the joyfullest anniversary of his
+life. From which it is to be assumed that Sloper and his wife had not
+lived together very happily. But though the Whitechapel County Court
+records have been searched and inquiries made in that part of London
+where Sloper's shop was situated, it has not been discovered that Mrs.
+Sloper's end was hastened by her husband's cruelty; that, in short,
+more happened between them than constant quarrels. Yet it must be said
+that Sloper behaved as though, in truth (as the old adage would put
+it), his little figure contained no more than the ninth part of a
+soul, when he mounted his guns and rudely and noisily triumphed over
+the dead whom he perhaps might have been afraid of in life, and
+coarsely emphasised with blasts of gunpowder his annual joy over his
+release.
+
+Now in the east end of London, not above twenty minutes' walk from
+Sloper's old shop, there lived a sailor, named Joseph Westlake. This
+man had served when a boy under Collingwood, had smelt gunpowder at
+Navarino under Codrington, had been concerned in several dashing
+cutting-out jobs in the West Indies, and was altogether as hearty and
+worthy a specimen of an old English sailor of the vanished school as
+you could ask to see.
+
+He had been shot in the leg; he carried a great scar over his brow; he
+was as full of yarns as a piece of ancient ship's biscuit of weevils;
+he swore with more oaths than a Dutchman; sneered prodigiously at
+steam; and held the meanest opinion of the then existing race of
+seamen, who, he said, never could have won the old battles which had
+been the making of this kingdom, whether under Howe's or gallant
+Jervis's, or the lion-hearted Nelson's flag.
+
+The country had no further need of his services on his being paid off
+out of his last ship, and he was somewhat at a loss, until happening
+to be in the neighbourhood of Wapping, and looking in upon an old
+shipmate who kept a public house, he learnt that a lawyer had been
+making inquiries for him. He called upon that lawyer, and was
+astounded to hear that during his absence from England a fortune of
+L15,000 had been left to him by an aunt in Australia.
+
+Joe Westlake on this took a little house in the Stepney district, and
+endeavoured to settle down as an east-end gent; but his efforts to
+ride to a shore-going anchor were hopeless. His mind was always
+roaming. He had followed the sea man and boy for hard upon fifty
+years, and the cry of his heart was still for water--water without
+rum!--water fresh or salt! it mattered not what sort of water it was
+so long as it _was_--water.
+
+So as Joe Westlake found that he couldn't rest ashore he looked about
+him, and, after a while, fell in with and purchased a smart little
+cutter, which he re-christened the _Tom Bowling_, out of admiration of
+the song which no sailor ever sang more sweetly than he. It was
+perfectly consistent with his traditions as a man-of-wars man that,
+having bought his little ship, he should arm her. He equipped her with
+four small carronades and a pivoted brass six-pounder on the
+forecastle. He then went to work to man her, but he did not very
+easily find a crew. Joe was fastidious in his ideas of seamen, and
+though some whom he cast his eye upon came very near to his taste, it
+cost him a great deal of trouble to discover the particular set of
+Jacks he wanted.
+
+Three at last he found: Peter Plum, Bob Robins, and Tom Tuck. Joe was
+admiral; Plum, coming next, combined a number of grades. He was
+captain, first lieutenant, and boatswain. Robins was the ship's
+working company, and Tom Tuck cooked and was the all-round handy man
+of the _Tom Bowling_.
+
+It was Mr. Joe Westlake's intention to live on board his cutter; he
+furnished his cabin plainly and comfortably, and laid in a plentiful
+stock of liquor and tobacco. As he was to cruise under his own flag,
+and was indeed an admiral on his own account, he conferred with his
+first lieutenant, Peter Plum, on the question of a colour: what
+description of flag should he fly at his masthead? They both started
+with the understanding that nothing under a fathom and a half in
+length was worth hoisting. After much discussion it was agreed that
+the device should consist of a very small jack in the top corner, and
+in the middle a crown with a wooden leg under it--the timber toe being
+in both Westlake's and Plum's opinion the most pregnant symbol of
+Britannia's greatness that the imagination could devise.
+
+Within a few months of his landing from the frigate out of which he
+had been paid, Mr. Joseph Westlake was again afloat, but now in a
+smart little vessel of his own. She had been newly sheathed with
+copper, and when she heeled over from the breeze as she stretched
+through the winding reaches of the river the metal shone like gold
+above the wool-white line of foam through which the cutter washed, and
+lazy men in barges would turn their heads to admire her, and
+red-capped cooks in the cabooses of "ratching" colliers would step to
+the rail to look, and sometimes a party of gay and gallant Cockneys,
+male and female, taking their pleasure in a wherry, would salute the
+passing _Tom Bowling_ with a flourish of hands and pocket
+handkerchiefs.
+
+Never had old Joe been so happy in all his life. Of a night he'd bring
+up in some secure nook, and after having seen everything all safe,
+he'd go below with Peter Plum, and in the cosy interior of the little
+cabin, whose atmosphere was rendered speedily fragrant with the
+perfume of rum punch, which Joe, whilst in the West Indies, had learnt
+the art of brewing to perfection, the two sailors would sit smoking
+their yards of pipe-clay whilst they discoursed on the past, one
+incident recalling another, one briny recollection prompting an even
+salter memory, until their eyes grew moist and their vision dim in
+their balls of sight; whereupon they would turn in and make the little
+ship vocal with their noses.
+
+It happened, according to the usual methods of time, that an Easter
+Monday came round, which, as we know, was the joyful anniversary of
+the death of the wife of the retired tailor, Sloper, whose villa,
+called Labour's Retreat, stood upon the banks of the Thames near
+Erith. To fitly celebrate this happy day Mr. Sloper had invited three
+friends to dine with him. It was in the year 1851, when the class of
+society in which Mr. Sloper belonged was not so genteel in its habits
+as it has since become; in other words, Sloper dined at two o'clock.
+Had he survived into this age he would not have dreamt of dining at an
+earlier hour than seven.
+
+His friends were of his own sex. Sloper did not like the ladies. His
+friends' calling matters not. They did business in the east end of
+London, and were all three thoroughly respectable tradesmen in a small
+way, wanting, perhaps, in the muscle and depth of chest and hurricane
+lungs of Joe Westlake and Peter Plum, but all of them able to pay
+twenty shillings in the pound, to give good value for prompt cash, and
+desirous not only of fresh patronage, but determined to a man to merit
+the continuance of the same.
+
+When Sloper and his friends had dined, and the bottle had circled
+until, like quicksilver in the eye of a hurricane, the contents had
+sunk out of sight, the party went on to the lawn to fire off the guns
+there in completion of the triumphant celebration of the
+ever-memorable anniversary of Sloper's release.
+
+It was precisely at this hour that the _Tom Bowling_, with Plum at the
+helm and Joe Westlake in full rig, marching up and down the
+quarter-deck, came leisurely rounding down Halfway Reach before a
+pleasant northerly breeze of wind blowing over the flat, fat levels of
+Barking. The _Tom Bowling_, opening Jenningtree Point, ported her helm
+and floated in all her pride of white canvas and radiant metal and
+fathom and a half of shining bunting at her masthead into Erith Reach.
+
+Just as she came abreast of Labour's Retreat a gun was fired; the
+white powder-smoke clouded the tailor's lawn; the thunder of the
+ordnance smote the ear of Joe Westlake, who, dilating his nostrils and
+directing his eyes at Sloper's villa, bawled out: "Peter! that's meant
+for us, my heart! Down hellum! slacken away fore and aft! pipe all
+hands for action!"
+
+A second gun roared upon the lawn that sloped from the tailor's house;
+and almost as loud was the shout that Westlake delivered to all hands
+to look alive and bring the guns to bear. The Tom Bowling was thrown
+into the wind and brought to a stand abreast of Labour's Retreat; Plum
+took a turn with the helm and went to help at the guns, and in a few
+minutes the three of a crew, with Westlake continuously bawling out
+orders to bear a hand and load again, were actively engaged in firing
+blank at the enemy on the lawn.
+
+It might have been that Mr. Sloper and his friends were a little
+tipsy; it might have been that they were irritated by their _feu de
+joie_ being interrupted and complicated, so to speak, by the cutter's
+artillery; it is certain that they continued to load and discharge
+their guns as fast as they could sponge them out; whilst from the
+river the cutter maintained a rapid fire at Labour's Retreat. In an
+evil moment, temper getting the better of Sloper's judgment, he loaded
+one of his pieces with stones, and the gun was so well aimed that on
+Joe Westlake looking aloft he beheld his beautiful flag of a fathom
+and a half in holes.
+
+For some moments the old man-of-wars man stood staring up at his
+wounded flag, idle with wrath and astonishment. He then in a voice of
+thunder shouted: "Plum--Robins--Tuck! D' ye see what that there fired
+little tailor's been and done? Why, junk me if he ha' n't shot our
+colour through! Boys, load with ball; d' ye hear? Suffocate me, but he
+shall have it back. Quick, my hearts, and go for him."
+
+With ocean alacrity some round shot were got up, a gun was fired
+point-blank at Labour's Retreat, and down came a chimney-stack, amidst
+the cheers of the crew of the _Tom Bowling_.
+
+"Now, then," roared old Joe, "over with our boat, lads, and board 'em!
+Tommy, stay you here and let go the anchor"; and in a very few minutes
+Plum and Robins were pulling Joe Westlake ashore.
+
+Sloper and his party saw them coming and manfully stood their ground.
+The three seamen, securing their boat, forced their way on to the lawn
+and marched up to the tailor and his friends.
+
+"What do you mean by firing at my cutter?" roared old Joe.
+
+"What do you mean by knocking down my chimneys?" cried the tailor, who
+was exceedingly pale.
+
+"Who began it?" bawled Joe. "Who fired first? Who's bin and made holes
+in that there flag of mine? Why, that's the flag of a British sailor,
+you little withered thimble you; and durn ye, if you don't make me
+instantly an humble apology and stump up with the cost of what ye've
+injured, I'll skin ye!" and he threw himself into a very menacing
+posture.
+
+At this point one of the tailor's friends slunk off.
+
+"My chimney-stack is worth more than your twopenny flag," shrieked
+Sloper, maddened even into some temporary emotion of courage by the
+insults of the old man-of-warsman.
+
+"Say that again, will 'ee," said Joe. "Just sneer at that there flag
+again, will 'ee."
+
+The tailor was idiotic enough to repeat the affront, on which, and as
+though a perfect understanding as to what was to be done subsisted
+among the three sailors, old Joe, Plum, and Robins fell upon Sloper,
+and, lifting him up in their arms, ran with him to the boat, into
+which they flung him, paying not the least heed whatever to his cries
+for help and for mercy, and instantly headed for the cutter, leaving
+the tailor's friends white as milk and speechless with alarm near the
+cannon upon the lawn.
+
+When the boat reached the cutter, Plum jumped aboard and received
+little Sloper from the hands of old Joe, making no more of the burthen
+than had the tailor been a parcel, say, of a coat and waistcoat, or a
+pair of trousers. Old Joe then actively got over the rail. He lifted
+the little main-hatch, and Mr. Sloper was dropped into the space
+below, where the darkness was so great that he could not see, and
+where there was nothing to sit upon but Thames ballast.
+
+"In boat, up anchor, and away with us!" said Joe Westlake.
+
+The breeze was fresh, the cutter was always an excellent sailer, and
+in a very short space of time she was running down Long Reach with
+Erith and its adjacent shores out of sight, past the round of land
+where Dartford creek is to be found. Joe Westlake then called a
+council. Robins was at the tiller; Plum and Tuck came aft, and the
+four debated at the helm.
+
+"I've heerd," said old Joe, "of this tailor afore. His name's Sloper.
+I've never larnt why he mounted them guns, or where the little rooting
+hog got his pluck from to fire 'em. But there can be no shadder of a
+doubt, mates, that his object in firing to-day was to insult that
+there flag."
+
+He pointed with an immensely square forefinger to the masthead.
+
+"Ne'er a shadder," said Plum.
+
+"For why," continued old Joe, "did the smothered rag of a chap wait
+for us to come right abreast afore firing?"
+
+"Ah! that's it, ye see," exclaimed Bob Robins. "There ye've hit it,
+Mr. Westlake."
+
+"The little faggot's game," old Joe went on, "is as clear as mud in a
+wineglass. He fires with blank cartridge; like as he'd say 'What'll
+_you_ do?' What did he want? That we should retarn his civility with
+grape? Of course; that if it should come to a difficulty he'd have the
+law on his side. Not being able to aggravate us into shotting our
+guns, what must he turn to and do but load with stone--and look at
+that flag! Riddled, mates. I'll not speak of it as spiled, though a
+prettier and a better bit of bunting was never mastheaded. Spiled
+ain't the word: disgraced it is."
+
+"Degraded," said Plum, in a deep voice.
+
+"Ay, and degraded," cried old Joe, with a surly, dangerous nod. "That
+there little tailor has degraded the honour of our flag. What's to be
+done to him?"
+
+After a pause, Plum said: "Bring him up and sit in examination on him.
+Try him fairly, and convict him."
+
+They opened the hatch and pulled little Sloper off the Thames ballast
+into daylight. He was exceedingly white, and trembled violently, and
+cut, indeed, a very pitiful figure as he stood on the quarter-deck of
+the _Tom Bowling_, surveyed by her owner and crew. He was a short man
+and spare, and Tom Tuck grinned as he looked at him.
+
+"I suppose you're aweer," said old Joe, "that in shooting at my flag
+and wounding her you've degraded the honour of it? Are you aweer of
+that?"
+
+"You came in my way; I was shooting for my hentertainment," answered
+Mr. Sloper.
+
+"You're a retired tailor, ain't ye?" said Joe.
+
+Sloper sulkily answered "Yes."
+
+"Have ye any acquaintance with the laws which are made and purwided
+for British seamen when it happens that their flag's degraded by the
+haction of a retired tailor?" said old Joe.
+
+Mr. Sloper, instead of answering, cast a languishing eye at the river
+banks, which were fast sliding past, and requested to be set ashore.
+
+"It don't answer his purpose to speak to the pint," said Plum.
+
+"Listen, now," said old Joe, shaking his forefinger close into the
+face of little Sloper. "When a retired tailor degrades the honour of a
+seaman's flag by a shooting at it and a riddling of it, the law 'as
+made and purwided sets forth this: that the insulted sailor shall
+collect his crew and in the presence of all hands pass sentence after
+giving an impartial hearing to what the culprit may have to say in his
+defence. Now, you durned little powder-burner, speak up, and own what
+made you do it, and then I'll pass judgment."
+
+"What's your game? What d' yer mean to do with me? Where are you
+carryin' me to?" cried the owner of Labour's Retreat. "None of yer
+nonsense, you know. This is what's called kidnappin'. It's
+hindictable. You may find yourself in a very unpleasant predicament
+over this business, I can tell yer. You profess to know who I am.
+D'yer want to know what I'm worth? Yer'd better put me ashore, I say,
+and stop this nonsense. I don't mind a joke, but this is carrying a
+lark too far. Why," he shrieked, "here we are a-drawing on to
+Northfleet! Yer 'd better let me go." And so he went on.
+
+Old Joe and the others listened to him with stern faces; in fact, they
+received his protests and threats as his defence. When he had made an
+end Joe Westlake spoke thus:
+
+"Sloper--I dunno your Christian name and I won't demean myself by
+asking of it,--four of your countrymen--and sorry they are that you
+should be a countrymen of their'n--have patiently listened to what
+ye've had to say. And all that ye've said amounts to nothen at all.
+The haccusation made against ye is one of the very gravest as can be
+brought agin a retired tailor. You're charged with degrading the
+honour of my flag, and ye 've been found guilty, and my sentence is
+that after a sufficient time's been granted you for prayer and
+meditation, ye be brought up to the place of hexecution, aboard this
+here cutter the _Tom Bowling_, and hanged by the neck till you're
+dead."
+
+"Murder!" screamed Sloper, and here (so he afterwards swore in court)
+the unhappy little tailor fell down upon his knees and begged Joe
+Westlake to grant him his life.
+
+"Clap him under hatches," exclaimed the old man-of-warsman, and Plum
+and another, lifting the hatch cover, popped Mr. Sloper down among the
+ballast again.
+
+By this time the afternoon had very considerably advanced, the wind
+had dropped, and it was already dark when the _Tom Bowling_ let go her
+anchor off Gravesend. The cabin lamp was lighted, and old Joe and Plum
+sat down to a hearty meal, after which they smoked their pipes and
+dipped a ladle into a silver bowl of rum punch of Westlake's own
+brewing.
+
+"D' ye mean, captain," said Plum, "that the little chap in the hold
+shall have any supper?"
+
+"Well, Peter," answered old Joe, "I've bin a-turning of it over in my
+mind, and spite of his 'rageous conduct I dunno, after all, that it
+would be right to let him lie all night without a bite of something.
+Call Bob."
+
+This man, whose surname was Robins, arrived. Joe told him to get a
+lantern and cut a plate of beef and bread and mix a small mug of rum
+and water.
+
+"Ye can tell the little chap, Bob," said old Joe, speaking with one
+eye shut, "that we're only a-feeding of him up so as to get more
+satisfaction out of his hexecution to-morrow morning. You can say that
+sailoring is a rather monotonous life, and that if he'll die game we
+shall all feel obliged for the hentertainment he'll afford us."
+
+Whether Bob Robins communicated this speech to Sloper I cannot say. It
+is certain, however, that he took the lantern and the tailor's supper
+into the hold and stood over the little man whilst he ate and drank.
+When the retired tailor had finished his repast he asked Robins if he
+was to be kept locked up in that black hole all night without anything
+to lie on but shingle.
+
+"What did you fire at us for?" said Bob.
+
+"I never fired at you. I was firing for my own diversion," answered
+Mr. Sloper.
+
+"D' ye load with stones for your divarsion, as ye call it?" said Bob.
+
+"There was no stones when you came along," cried the tailor. "Why did
+you aggrevate me by firing in return?"
+
+"What did you want to fire at all for?" said Bob, almost pitying the
+trembling little creature as he showed by the lantern light in the
+cutter's small black hold.
+
+"I was celebrating a hanniversary," answered Mr. Sloper, who
+maltreated his _h's_ as badly as old Westlake.
+
+"And what sort of a hanniversary calls for gun firing?" said Bob,
+holding up the lantern to the tailor's face.
+
+"It was the hanniversary of my wife's death," said Mr. Sloper, "and a
+day of rejoicing with me and my friends."
+
+Bob, who himself was a married man, loving his wife and two little
+girls with the warm affection of the genuine sailor's heart, looked
+for some moments speechless with disgust at the white shadowy
+countenance of Mr. Sloper, and without deigning another word, rose
+through the hatch, which he carefully secured, and then went aft to
+old Joe and Plum to report what had passed.
+
+"Smite me," cried the old man-of-warsman, after listening to Bob; "but
+if this was furrin parts instead of Lunnon river, poisoned if I
+wouldn't yard-arm the little faggot in rale earnest. What! make a
+joyful hanniversary of his wife's death, and fire off guns that the
+whole blooming country may know what a little beast it is. Sit ye
+down, Bob, there's a glass--help yourself. This is what we mean to
+do," and he forthwith related his scheme for the morning to Robins and
+Plum.
+
+They smoked hard and roared out in great peals of laughter. The
+bulkheads of a little ship such as the _Tom Bowling_ are not, as may
+be supposed, of very formidable scantling; there is no doubt that
+Sloper in the hold heard these wild shouts of laughter which the
+muffling of the bulkhead and his own terrors would render awful to him,
+and we may be sure that as he lay in the blackness harkening to those
+horrid notes of merriment, he feared and perspired exceedingly.
+
+Somewhere at about eight o'clock next morning the _Tom Bowling_ was
+got under way, and when all hands had breakfasted, Joe Westlake took
+the tiller, and Plum, Robins, and Tuck went to work to construct the
+machinery for the retired tailor's execution. They filled a big tub
+with water and covered it loosely with a tarpaulin. Close against this
+tub they placed a three-legged stool; alongside this stool upon the
+deck was a tar-bucket with a tar-brush sticking up in it; they also
+procured and placed beside this tar-bucket a piece of rough iron hoop.
+At the time that these preparations were completed the cutter was
+running through the Warp, which is some little distance past the Nore
+Light. The river had widened into the aspect of an ocean, and over the
+bows of the craft the water stretched boundless and blue as the
+horizon of the Pacific.
+
+They opened the hatch and brought the tailor on deck. Needless to say,
+he had not slept a wink all night. Who, accustomed to a feather-bed,
+could snatch even ten minutes' sleep when his couch is Thames ballast?
+Sloper's eyes were bloodshot, and his countenance haggard. He looked
+inconceivably grimy and forlorn, and Bob Robins felt sorry for the
+little creature till he recollected on a sudden the man's reason for
+letting off his cannons. Tuck took the helm, and old Joe with a solemn
+countenance and slow gait rolled forward to where the apparatus was
+stationed.
+
+"Now, you see your fate," he exclaimed, lifting up his eyes as though
+he beheld a rope with a noose dangling from the masthead, "and since
+no good can come of cautioning a corpse, why then, sorry I am that
+there are n't a company of people arter your kind assembled aboard
+this craft to witness the hexecution of my sentence upon ye. Last
+night I heard that the reason of your firing off your guns were to
+celebrate the hanniversary of your wife's death. I dunno, I'm sure,
+whether such a practice wouldn't be considered as more criminal and
+worthy of a fearfuller punishment than even the shooting at a man's
+flag and degrading the honour of it. But to say more 'ud only be
+a-wasting of breath. My lads, do your duty."
+
+Robins, with powerful arms, grasped the tailor, who shrieked murder
+and struggled hard. His struggles were as the throes and convulsions
+of a mouse in the teeth of a cat. He was dumped down on the
+three-legged stool. In an instant Plum lathered his jaws with the
+tar-brush, and picking up the piece of broken iron hoop scraped little
+Sloper's cheeks till the lather was as much blood as tar. Then, lifting
+his leg, he tilted the stool and Mr. Sloper fell backwards on to the
+tarpaulin, which, yielding to his weight, soused him into the water
+They left him to kick and splash awhile, then pulled him out and ran
+him forward into the head, where they secured him to the windlass till
+the sun should have somewhat dried him.
+
+But long before the sun had had time to comfort the shivering little
+creature Herne Bay had hove into sight. The helm was shifted, and the
+cutter ran close into the land, where they hove her to whilst Plum and
+Robins got the boat over.
+
+Mr. Sloper was then dropped over the side into the boat, which pulled
+ashore, landed him, and returned; and a few minutes later the cutter
+was standing for the mouth of the river, leaving the tailor on the
+Herne Bay beach, forty miles from home without a farthing in his
+pocket.
+
+This is the historic incident of the Thames which I desire to rescue
+from the oblivion that has overtaken many greater matters. Mr. Sloper,
+on his return to Labour's Retreat, and when he was somewhat recovered
+in nerves and health, sued Joe Westlake in the Whitechapel County
+Court, in action of tort, laying his damages at the moderate sum of
+fifty pounds. Mr. G.E. Williams, for the defendant, contended that the
+plaintiff deserved the treatment which he had brought on himself, and
+the Judge, after hearing the evidence, said that although the
+plaintiff, Sloper, had acted most improperly in loading his guns, the
+defendant, Westlake, had retaliated too severely, but, under the
+circumstances, he should award only five pounds' damages, without
+costs.
+
+
+
+
+                             _Cornered_!
+
+
+"I don't see no signs of the tug, do you, Tom?" said the old skipper,
+John Bunk, rolling up to me from the companion hatchway. He was fresh
+from the cabin, and was rather tipsy, with a fixed stare and a stately
+manner, though his legs would have framed the lower part of an egg.
+His hat was tall, and brushed the wrong way. He wore a thick shawl
+round his neck and was wrapped up in a long monkey-jacket, albeit we
+were in the dog-days. In a word, Bunk was a skipper of a type that is
+fast perishing off our home waters.
+
+"No," said I, "there's no sign of the tug."
+
+"Then bloomed," said he, "if I don't work her up myself. Who's afraid?
+I know the ropes. Get amidships in the fair-way and keep all on, and
+there y' are. And mubbe the tug'll pick us up as we go."
+
+"It's all one to Tom," said I.
+
+Our brig was the _Venus_, of Rye, a stump topgallantmast coaster,
+eighty years old. We were in a big bight of the coast, heading for a
+river which flows past a well known town, whither we were bound. The
+bed of that river went in a vein through about three miles of mud,
+till it sheared into the land, and flowed into a proper-looking river
+with banks of its own. At flood the water covered the mud, but the
+river was buoyed, and when once you had the land on either hand and
+the bay of mud astern, the pilotage to the town was no more than a
+matter of bracing the yards about till you floated into one long reach
+whose extremity was painted by the red wharf you moored alongside of.
+
+We were six of a ship's company. John Bunk was skipper, I, Tom Fish,
+was the mate, the others were Bill Martin, Jack Stevens, a man named
+Rooney, and a boy called William. On board craft of this sort there is
+very little discipline, and the sailor's talk to the captain as though
+he lived in the forecastle.
+
+"John," sings out Bill Martin, casting his eyes over the greasy yellow
+surface of the water streaming shorewards, "are ye going to try for it
+without the tug?"
+
+"Ay," answered old Bunk.
+
+"And quite right, tew. No good a-messing about here all day," says
+Jack Stevens at the tiller.
+
+The land was flat and treeless on
+either hand the river, but it rose, about a couple of miles off,
+curving into a front of glaring chalk, with a small well known town
+sparkling in the distance like a handful of frost in a white split.
+The horizon astern was broken by the moving bodies of many ships in
+full sail, and the sky low down was hung with the smoke of vanished
+steamers as though the stuff was cobwebs black with dust.
+
+The stream was the turn of the flood. Old Bunk went forward into the
+bows, and the brig flapped forwards creaking like a basket on the
+small roll of the shallow water. We overhung her rails, and watched
+for ourselves. John Bunk, trying to look dignified with the drink in
+him, stared stately ahead; sometimes singing out to the helmsman to
+port, and then to starboard, and so we washed on, fairly hitting the
+river's mouth, and stemming safely for a mile, till the flat coast was
+within an easy scull of our jolly-boat, and you saw the spire of a
+church, and a few red roofs amidst a huddle of trees on the right, at
+that time two miles distant.
+
+Just then the _Venus_ took the mud; she grounded just as a huge fat
+sow knuckles quietly ere stretching herself.
+
+"All aback forrard!" sings out Bill Martin, with a loud silly laugh.
+
+We were a brig of a hundred and eighty tons, and there was nothing to
+be done with poling; nor was kedging going to help us at this the
+first quarter of ebb.
+
+"Tom," says John Bunk, coming aft and speaking cheerfully, "there's no
+call to make any worrit over this shining job. The tug's bound to be
+coming along afore sundown, anyhow. See that village there?" says he,
+pointing. "My brother lives in that village, at a public house of his
+own, called the 'Eight Bells,' and seeing as we're hard and fast, I
+shall take the boys on a visit to him and leave you and William to
+look arter the brig."
+
+"Suppose the tug should come along?" said I.
+
+"She could do nothing with us till the flood floats us," said he; "I
+shall let go the anchor for security and go ashore."
+
+He talked like a reckless old fool, but was tipsy, and in no temper to
+reason with. The situation of the brig was safe enough as far as ocean
+and weather went; nothing could hurt her as she lay mud-cradled on her
+fat bilge. We clewed up and let the canvas hang by its rigging, and
+then dropped the anchor; after which old Bunk and the others cleaned
+themselves up and got the boat over, and went away in her, singing
+songs, leaving me and William to look after the brig.
+
+It was ten o'clock in the morning, a very fine hot day. I went into
+the cabin for a smoke, and after lounging an hour or so below whilst
+the boy boiled a piece of beef for our dinner, I stepped on deck, and
+found that the sea was already half-way out of the bay with twenty
+lines of foaming ripples purring not a quarter of a mile off, and the
+channel of the river was already plain, coming out from the land, and
+through the dry mud like a lane of water till it met the wash of the
+yellow brine and melted into it. The brig lay with an uncomfortable
+list to starboard. When the mud should come a-dry it would be an easy
+jump from her decks to it.
+
+At half-past twelve William came below with my dinner, and I told the
+lad to out with his knife and eat with me. We munched together, taking
+it easy. There was nothing to be done on deck, no sign of the tug, no
+use we could put her to, even if she should heave into sight, and the
+time hung heavy. After dinner I lay upon a locker smoking, and William
+sat at the table with a pipe in his mouth.
+
+Presently I thought I heard a noise of something moving in a
+scratching sort of way on deck. I listened and then heard nothing. A
+little later, happening to be looking at William, I heard the same
+noise, and that moment I fancied a kind of shadow passed over the
+glass of the grimy little cabin skylight.
+
+I said to William: "Step on deck, my lad, and see if anybody's come
+aboard."
+
+He went up, and was not gone a minute when I heard him scream
+shockingly. The shriek was full of terror and agony, and froze my
+blood. I rushed on deck and saw the figure of William under the paw of
+a large yellow tiger! I stared madly, as though my senses were all
+gone wrong and reporting a nightmare. But the big beast, turning its
+head, spied me, swept the planks with its tail, crouched in cat-like
+way, and was coming for me.
+
+With a roar of terror I sprang for the main rigging, and in a few
+breathless moments was safe in the top.
+
+It was all sheer mud now to the very forefoot of the brig; but the
+half of her lay afloat in the stream of the river. I saw the marks of
+the beast's paws pitting the shiny surface of ooze and sand; the trail
+came in a straight line from the land to the right of the village
+where Bunk's brother lived to the starboard bow of the brig. The beast
+had sprung easily aboard. We were not in India, nor in Africa, nor in
+any country where such huge yellow horrors as that flourished;
+therefore, on recovering my wits and my breath whilst I looked down
+over the rim of the top, I guessed that the tiger had broken loose
+from some show or menagerie, and had made for this desolate waste of
+sand to escape the hunt that was doubtless in loud cry after him. But
+I could not get any comfort into me out of the reflection that we had
+stranded on English instead of African or South American mud; down on
+deck, now crouching close beside the boy without, however, offering to
+touch the motionless figure, was a massive savage beast, apparently a
+man-eater; and it was all the same to me whether it had sprung aboard
+off the banks of an Indian river, or trotted across this breast of
+English slime out of a showman's cage.
+
+The boy lay as though dead, and I turned sick, fearing to see the
+creature eat him. I was going to call, thinking he would answer me,
+then reflected if he was not dead my voice might cause him to move,
+and bring the tiger upon him, and so I lay silent in the top, now
+staring down, then glaring round upon the scene of mud and at the
+distant blue crescent of sea for the help that was nowhere visible.
+
+Presently the tiger got up, and, passing over the body of the lad,
+stepped with its supple gait into the bows. I took my chance of
+shouting to William, but the lad never stirred. Again and again I
+yelled down at him, and I saw the splendid, horrible beast in the bows
+gazing at me, and still the lad remained lifeless. He was upon his
+face, with his arms out, as though his hands were nailed to the deck.
+I looked for blood, but saw none.
+
+The most awful time that ever passed in my life now went along. The
+tiger roamed the deck silently, smelling at everything, once shoving
+its huge head into the companion-way, and I prayed with all my heart
+it would go below, that I might skim to the hatch and secure it. It
+drew its head out, and going to the boy stopped and smelt him. The
+very blood in me was curdled, for I made sure the beast was about to
+eat the lad. Sometimes I broke out into the noisiest roarings and
+screaming my pipes could set up in the hope of driving the brute
+overboard.
+
+Between five and six o'clock in the evening the tide had made so as to
+cover the mud, and I saw the brig's boat approaching. Those who pulled
+flourished their oars drunkenly. The boat came to a stand when within
+easy hailing distance, as though old Bunk was taking a view of me as I
+sat in the top, and was wondering what I did there.
+
+I roared out: "For God's sake mind how you come aboard! There's been a
+blooming tiger in this brig since noon!"
+
+"A what?" yelled Bunk, and the seamen pulled a little closer in.
+
+It was still broad flaming daylight, and the sun hung like a huge
+blood-red target over the crimson sea.
+
+"A what?" shrieked Bunk.
+
+"A tiger! A blooming tiger!" I bellowed, pointing to the brute that
+lay crouched on the forecastle hidden from the boat's crew.
+
+"Drunk again, Tom? or is it sun-stroke this time?" sung out old Bunk,
+standing up in the boat and lurching to the rocking of her.
+
+"It's killed William!" I yelled.
+
+When I said this the beast, attracted by the noise of voices over the
+side, got up and looked over the bulwark rail at the men, and old Bunk
+instantly saw it. He stared for a minute or two as though he had been
+blasted by a stroke of lightning. The other three fellows then saw the
+beast, and if there was any drink in their heads the fumes of it flew
+out at that sight, and left them sober men. Their postures were full
+of wild surprise and terror whilst they gazed. Old Bunk roared:
+
+"Has he killed the boy, d'yer say?"
+
+"He lies there dead," cried I, pointing. "He hasn't moved since I
+first saw him."
+
+"Has he been eating of him?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"We must go ashore for help," sung out Jack Stevens.
+
+"For God's sake don't leave me up here!" I cried.
+
+"Tom," shouted Bunk, "there's only wan thing to dew; there's an old
+gun in my cabin, and yer'll find a powder-flask and ball in the
+locker. We must keep that tiger a-watching of us over the bow, whilst
+you run below and shut the hatch. By lifting the lid you'll be able to
+shoot him through the skylight. Come you down now as far as you durst
+whilst we fixes the attention of the brute upon ourselves."
+
+I at once dropped into the rigging, where I stretched and played my
+legs a bit. They were as stiff as hand-spikes after that long spell in
+the maintop. I descended as low down as the sheer-pole, breathlessly
+watching. They pulled the boat under the bow, and Bill Martin with
+lifted oar made as though spearing at the brute's head. It opened its
+huge mouth and showed its immense claws upon the rail; old Bunk hissed
+and snapped at it, then roared out to me:
+
+"Now's your time, Tom," whilst I heard Jack Stevens sing out:
+
+"Back astarn! The fired cat's going to jump."
+
+With the nimbleness of terror I dropped to the deck and passed like a
+shadow to the hatch, unnoticed by the beast. In a moment I closed the
+companion doors, then entering Bunk's cabin found the gun and
+ammunition. I loaded the piece, and, getting on to the cabin table,
+put my head into the skylight, and bawled out to let the others know
+that I was going to shoot. My voice attracted the tiger; it turned,
+and with swaying tail came with velvet tread, crouching in a springing
+posture. I levelled the gun, steadying the barrel, and, taking a cool,
+deliberate aim--for I was safe!--fired, and the instant I had fired,
+without pausing to see what had happened, I loaded again; but before I
+could present the piece for a second shot the beast, who was now on
+this side the boy, lurched and fell.
+
+I fired a second ball into it, and then a third and a fourth, and now
+shouting to let the men know the brute was wounded and dying, I ran on
+deck, and putting the muzzle of the gun to the creature's glazing eye,
+fired, and this did its business, for just one spasm ran through it,
+and then the terrible, muscular bulk lay motionless.
+
+The men came scrambling aboard. We turned the boy over, and took him
+below. Shortly afterwards the tug hove in sight, and we let the beast
+lie whilst we got our anchor and manoeuvred with the tow-rope. I am
+sorry to say the boy was dead. On our arrival a doctor came and looked
+at him, and a crowd tumbled aboard to view the beast. There was not a
+scratch on the lad; the tiger had never touched him; the doctor said
+he had died of syncope caused by fright.
+
+The owner of the tiger threatened old Bunk with the law, and asked for
+a hundred guineas. Bunk started William's mother upon him for
+compensation for the loss of her boy, and shortly afterwards the
+showman went broke.
+
+
+
+
+                           _A Midnight Visitor_.
+
+
+"There are more terrors at sea than shipwreck and fire, more frights
+and horrors, mateys, than famine, blindness, and cholera," said the
+old seaman with a slow motion of his eyes round upon the little
+company of sailors. "I remember a line of poetry--'a thing of beauty
+is a joy for ever.' Can any man here tell me who wrote that? Well, I
+suppose it is a joy so long as it remains a beauty, but d'ye see it's
+got to remain, and that's the job.
+
+"Yet, mates, if there is a thing of beauty that should be a joy to
+every heart, it is a full-rigged ship, clothed in white, asleep in the
+light of the moon, on a pale and silent breast of ocean that waves in
+splendour under the planet over the flying jib-boom end. Have I got
+such a ship as that in my mind? Ay. And was it a sheet calm but ne'er
+a moon? Ay, again. There was ne'er a moon that night. The ship rose
+faint and hushed to the stars. It was one bell in the morning watch.
+Scarce air enough moved to give life to the topmost canvas; as the
+ship bowed upon the light swell the sails swung in and swung out with
+a rushing sound of many wings up in the gloom. Yet the vessel had
+steerage way in that hour. Shall I tell you why? Because I know!
+
+"And ere that full-rigged ship alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean
+came to a dead halt, life sinking in her with the failing of the wind
+in a sort of dying shudder from royal to course, this was how her
+decks showed: a man was at the wheel, the chief mate leaned against
+the rail in the thickness made by the mizzen rigging, and with folded
+arms seemed to doze in the shadow; a 'young gentleman,' as they used
+to call the 'brass-bounders,' loafed sleepily near the main shrouds
+where the break of the poop came. That youngster watched the stars
+trembling between the squares of the starboard rigging. He was new to
+the sea, and emotion and sentiment were still sweet--they were not
+salt in him. He was the son of a gentleman--he had a clever eye for
+what was picturesque and romantic, for what was tender and affecting
+in all he beheld, whether by day or night, whether he looked aloft or
+whether upon the mighty breast of brine--he should have done well: he
+oughter ha' done well."
+
+The grey-haired respectable seaman closed his eyes in a silence filled
+with significance, and after a short smoke thus proceeded:
+
+"Some of the watch on deck sprawled about in the shadow out of sight,
+curled up, asleep; only one figure was upright forward. 'Twas the
+shape of the man on the look-out. For all the world he postured like
+the mate aft, as though he copied the officer for a life or death bet:
+head sunk, arms folded--the forecastle break brought that raised deck
+well aft, and the look-out had the shadow of the starboard
+fore-rigging upon him.
+
+"This man thus standing, by no means asleep, yet with his head sunk
+and no doubt his eyes closed, was suddenly struck on the side of the
+face by something hairy, damp, and cold. He sprang into the air as
+though he had been shot through the heart. O heavens! What was it? A
+naked figure, shaggy as Peter Sarrano, wild with hair, furious with a
+grin, terrible with the red gleams the starlight flung upon his little
+eyes. The sailor shrieked like a midnight cat and fell in a heap down
+upon the deck in a fit.
+
+"The ship was in commotion in an instant. Such a yell as that was
+worse than the smell of fire.
+
+"'What's the matter?' bawled the mate from the break of the poop.
+
+"A number of shadowy shapes swarmed up the forecastle ladder.
+Meanwhile the watch below, aroused by the yell of the look-out man,
+suspecting imminent deadly danger in the peculiar noise, were leaping
+in twos and threes up through the forescuttle, growling and swearing
+and grumbling, and asking of one another in those deep
+hurricane-chested whispers which will make a stagnant midnight
+atmosphere tingle, what the blooming blazes that noise was, and what
+was up.
+
+"'What's the matter?' roared the mate.
+
+"'Here's Kennedy in a fit, sir,' sung out a voice.
+
+"'Is that all?' said the mate, and he went forward to look at the man.
+
+"'It's a fit certainly,' said he. 'Give him air, lads. Get a drink of
+cold water into his mouth. It's epilepsy.'
+
+"'Or weevils,' said a deep voice.
+
+"The joker was not to be discerned; the mate therefore took no notice.
+Some one brought a pannikin of cold water, and after a little the man
+came to, by which time the watch below had returned to their hammocks,
+and the forecastle was comparatively clear.
+
+"When the mate was told the man had his senses and was sitting up, he
+went forward again and questioned him. He was sitting on the foot of a
+cathead, and was too weak to rise when the mate stood before him.
+
+"'What is this you're rambling about?' said the officer. 'Aren't you
+quite well yet?'
+
+"'S' 'elp me then, it slapped me fair over the chops, like flicking
+yer with the wet sleeve of a jacket. He rose four foot when I
+swounded. He might ha' been more an' he might ha' been less. Darkness
+put him out, only that I recollect,' said the man, turning up his pale
+face to the stars, 'taking notice of a couple of eyes like red lights
+floating in water and a grin of teeth wide as the keys of a pianey.'
+
+"'He's mad,' thought the mate, who stepped nevertheless into the bows
+and looked over. Nothing was to be seen. He surveyed the ocean by the
+light of the stars, and glanced along the deck and up aloft, then told
+the look-out man to go below and turn in, and went aft, reckoning the
+thing an epileptic's nightmare.
+
+"'It soaks into their livers ashore,' thought he, as he leisurely
+mounted the poop ladder, 'and when they get upon the ocean and into
+hot weather it works out in slaps over the head and hairy sea-beasts
+four feet high. Ha! ha! ha!' and he laughed drowsily as he walked to
+the wheel.
+
+"Just then a catspaw blew. It was so faint that it scarcely chilled
+the moistened forefinger of the officer. It had to be reckoned with
+nevertheless; it was an air of wind anyhow, and some one sung out that
+the ship was aback forward, on which the mate went to the break of the
+poop, and yelled to the seamen to trim sail. Something went wrong in
+swinging the yards on the fore.
+
+"'Jump aloft, a hand, and clear it.'
+
+"A seaman went up the rigging, his shadowy shape vanished in the gloom
+that blackened like a thunder-cloud upon the foretop; he showed again
+when he got into the topmast rigging, with his figure small, and
+clear-cut against the stars.
+
+"Suddenly, when midway the rigging he yelled at the top of his voice.
+His cry was more dismal and heartshaking than even that with which the
+man Kennedy had terrified the ship; he caught hold of a backstay, and
+sank to the bulwark rail, as though handsomely lowered away in a
+bowline.
+
+"'By Cott!' he roared, flinging down his cap, whilst those who peered
+close saw that he trembled violently, 'der toyfel is on boardt dis
+ship. I have seen her mit mine eyes. If I hov not seen her den I was a
+nightmare und she was mad. Look up dar.'
+
+"He obtained no answer. The seamen attending the indication of the
+Dutchman were to a man gazing aloft with hanging chins; for on high up
+in the cross-trees, a visible bulk of shadow, there sat, squatted,
+hung--what? A man? No angel from heaven surely? A demon then with
+folded wings like those of a bat resting in his flight from the halls
+of fire to some star of Satan? Mateys, if you think this language too
+poetical, I'll translate my thought into fok'sle speech. But I'd
+rather leave the job to others," said the grey-haired respectable
+seaman; "I've forgotten the profanities of the sea-parlour. I have not
+used a bad word for thirty year."
+
+Some interruption by laughter attended this flight. The grey-haired
+sailor looked round him with his slow critical motion of eye, and
+continued:
+
+"'What's wrong aloft forrad there?' bawled the mate, and now he sung
+out with energy and decision, for the figure of the captain was
+alongside of him.
+
+"'There's something aloft that looks like a man,' howled a seaman, one
+of the upstaring crowd about the Dutchman. 'Come forrad, sir. You'll
+see him.'
+
+"The mate and the captain went forward and looked up.
+
+"'It's a man,' exclaimed the captain. 'Aloft there! What are you doing
+skylarking up in those cross-trees? Come down!' he cried, angrily.
+
+"'You sick-hearts, what d'ye see to stare at, or seeing, why don't you
+go for it?' thundered the mate, after a pause, during which the figure
+on high had made no answer or motion, and as he spoke the words the
+officer bounded on to the bulwarks, and ran up the fore-shrouds.
+
+"He travelled with heroic speed till he got as high as the foretop.
+There he stood at gaze; presently, after you might have counted fifty,
+putting his foot into the topmast rigging he began to crawl, with
+frequent breathless stops; his passage up those shrouds had the dying
+uncertainty of the tread of a blue-bottle when it climbs a sheet of
+glass in October.
+
+"On a sudden he came down into the top very fast. There he stood
+staring aloft as though fascinated or electrified, then putting his
+foot over the top he got into the fore-shrouds, and trotted down on
+deck, all very quick. The captain stood near the main hatch, looking
+up. The mate approached him, and, in a whisper of awe and terror,
+exclaimed, whilst his eyes sought the shadow up in the foretopmast
+cross-trees, 'I believe the Dutchman's right, sir, and that we've been
+boarded by the devil himself.'
+
+"'What are you talking about?'
+
+"'I never saw the like of such a thing,' said the mate, in shaking
+tones.
+
+"'Is it a man?' said the captain, staring up with amazement, while the
+seamen came hustling close in a sneaking way to listen, and the
+Dutchman drew close to the mate.
+
+"'It has the looks of a man,' said the mate; 'yet it sha'n't be murder
+if you kill him.'
+
+"'She vos no man, sir. I vos close. I vent closer don you. I oxpect,
+sir,' said the Dutchman, 'she's an imp. Strange dot I did not see him
+till I was upon her.'
+
+"The captain went swiftly to his cabin for a binocular glass. The
+lenses helped him to determine the motionless shadow in the
+cross-trees, and he clearly distinguished an apparently large human
+shape, but in what fashion, or whether or not habited, it was
+impossible to see. How had he come into the ship? The captain went on
+to the poop and searched the silent sea with the glass with some fancy
+of finding a boat within reach of his vision. Nothing was to be seen
+but the glass-smooth face of the deep, with here and there the light
+of a large trembling star draining into it. The catspaw had died out,
+and it mattered nothing whether they braced the fore-yards round or
+not.
+
+"It got wind in the forecastle that something wild, unearthly,
+hellish, was aloft, and the watch below turned out, too restless to
+sleep, and all through those hours of darkness the sailors walked the
+decks in groups, again and again staring up at the foretopmast
+cross-trees, where the mysterious bulk of blackness sate, squatted, or
+hung motionless, like some brooding fiend, or incarnation of ill-luck,
+sinking by force of meditation its curses not loud, but deep, into the
+bottom of the very hold itself.
+
+"'Why don't the captain let me shoot him?' said the second mate at
+four o'clock. 'I cannot miss that mark; my rifle will bring him to
+your feet at the cost of a single shot.'
+
+"'No,' said the chief mate, 'I've talked of trying what shooting will
+do. The captain means to wait for sunlight. But how did it get on
+board?' said he, sinking his voice in awe. 'There's no land for
+hundreds of leagues. Is it some sort of human sea-monster, some merman
+whose looks blind you with their ugliness, which this ship's been
+doomed to discover, and perhaps carry home?'
+
+"It was not long before day whitened the east. In those climates the
+morning is a quick revelation, and hardly had the dawn broke when sea
+and sky were lighted up. And then, and even then, what was it? There
+it sat up in the cross-trees, a hairy, sulky bulk of man or beast,
+black, and the creature looked hard down whilst all hands were staring
+hard up.
+
+"Seized if it isn't a gorilla!" said the mate.
+
+"'No.' said the captain, letting fall his binocular, 'look for
+yourself. Yet, it's not a man, either.' He burst into a laugh as
+though for relief. 'It's a huge, hairy baboon, one of the biggest I
+ever saw in my life. He'll be as fierce as a mutinous crew, and strong
+as a frigate's complement. What's to be done with him?'
+
+"'How in Egypt did he come on board?' said the mate, viewing the beast
+through the glass.
+
+"'By that, maybe, sir,' exclaimed the second mate, pointing to some
+object floating flat and yellow, faint and far out upon the starboard
+quarter.
+
+"The captain levelled the ship's telescope. 'A large raft!' he
+exclaimed, after some minutes of silent examination. 'Take a boat and
+examine it.'
+
+"A quarter-boat was lowered, and the second mate and four men pulled
+away for the raft in the distance. It was a very large raft,
+manifestly launched by some country wallah in the last throes: a
+complicate huge grating, or floating platform, of immensely thick
+bamboos and spare spars, secured by turns of Manilla or coir rope. It
+was clean swept; not a rag was to be seen. Whether the sufferers had
+been taken off, leaving the baboon behind them, whether they had died,
+and the wash of the ocean had slipped their bodies overboard, the
+baboon holding on to the raft, who was to tell? 'At sea,' said Lord
+Nelson, 'nothing is impossible and nothing improbable.'
+
+"The raft had floated to the bows of the ship in the silent midnight,
+and the baboon sprang aboard and aloft.
+
+"The creature on high was a clear picture in the bright sunshine. It
+made many dreadful grimaces, by the exhibition of its teeth, and when
+the boat drew alongside it moved and stood up, and showed a great
+tail, then hung with one fist, looking down. It next descended with
+the velocity of wind into the foretop.
+
+"The captain said: 'The beast don't seem faint, but I guess he's
+thirsty, and he may fall mad, come down, and bite some of us. So,'
+says he to the chief officer, 'send a hand aloft with a bucket of
+fresh water for the poor brute and a pocketful of ship's bread. If we
+can civilise him, so much the better.'
+
+"But it never came to it," said the grey-haired respectable seaman.
+"The creature fled to the cross-trees nimble as light when he saw a
+couple of seamen mounting to the top, then descended, and ate and
+drank ravenously when they had come down, which feeding murdered him,
+and ruined the captain's hopes of carrying the fellow to London and
+selling him at a large price to the Zooelogical Gardens. For he refused
+to come on deck. He bared his teeth, and his eyes shone with the
+malice of hell if the men attempted to approach him. It was impossible
+to let him rest aloft throughout the night to command the ship, so to
+speak; for he might sink to the deck stealthy as the shadow of a cloud
+blown by the wind, and he was strong enough and big enough to tear a
+sleeping man's throat out.
+
+"'He must be shot,' said the captain, and he told the second mate to
+fetch his rifle.
+
+"The second mate, that he might make sure of his aim, went aloft into
+the foretop. The beast was then sitting on the topgallant yard. He had
+been in command of the fabric of the fore all day. Had it come on to
+blow so as to oblige the captain to shorten sail, the deuce a seaman
+durst have gone aloft to stow the canvas. The second mate, standing in
+the top, was in the act of lifting his rifle, when the monster,
+running on all fours out to the dizzy topgallant yard-arm, stood erect
+a breathless instant, poised--in human posture--a marvellous picture
+of the man-beast against the liquid blue, then sprang into the air.
+
+"'Come down,' roared the captain to the second mate, 'and shoot him
+through the head, for God's sake!'
+
+"As the beast rose with a wild grin after having been so long out of
+sight through the frightful height he had jumped from, you'd have
+thought he'd have risen with a burst skin, the captain bawled out,
+'Blessed if he's not making for his raft.'
+
+"The baboon, with a fixed expression, and with eyes askew upon the
+ship as he drove past, swimming very finely with long easy flourishes
+of his arms and dexterous thrusts of his legs, whilst the end of his
+tail stood up astern of him as though it was some comical little man
+there steering,--the baboon, I say, was undoubtedly and with amazing
+sagacity making straight for the raft, having taken its bearings when
+aloft; but at the moment the second mate knelt to level his piece,
+meaning to murder the poor brute out of pure mercy, the thing uttered,
+oh, my God! what a horrible cry! and vanished, and a quantity of blood
+rose and dyed a bright patch upon the calm blue. No more was seen of
+the baboon, but a little later the black scythe-like fins of three
+sharks showed in the spot where he had disappeared."
+
+
+
+
+                     _Plums from a Sailor's Duff._
+
+
+It has been commonly expected of sailors in all ages that they should
+encounter nothing upon the ocean but hair-breadth escapes. The theory
+is that the mariner but half discharges his duties when his
+experiences are limited to his work as a seaman. That he may be fully
+and perfectly accomplished vocationally he must know what it is to
+have been cast away, to have barely come off with his life out of a
+ship on fire, to have been overboard on many occasions in heavy seas,
+to have chewed pieces of lead in open boats to assuage his thirst--to
+have encountered, in short, most of the stock horrors of the oceanic
+calling. Considering, however, that the sailor goes to sea holding his
+life in his hands, I cannot but think that his mere occupation is
+perilous enough to satisfy the romantic demands of the shore-going
+dreamer. It is feigned that the sea-faring life is not one jot more
+dangerous than most of the laborious callings followed ashore. Let no
+man credit this. The sailor never springs aloft, never slides out to a
+yard-arm, never gives battle to the thunderous canvas, scarcely
+performs a duty, indeed, that does not contain a distinct menace to
+his life. That the calling has less of danger in it in these days than
+it formerly held I will not undertake to determine. If in former times
+ships put to sea destitute of the scientific equipment which
+characterises the fabrics of this age, the mariner supplied the
+deficiencies of the shipyard by caution and patience. He was never in
+a hurry. He waited with a resigned countenance upon the will of the
+wind. He plied his lead and log-line with indefatigable diligence.
+There was no prompt despatch in his day, no headlong thundering,
+through weather as thick as mud in a wineglass, to reach his port. We
+have diminished many of the risks he ran through imperfect appliances,
+but, on the other hand, we have raised a plentiful stock of our own,
+so that the balance between then and now shows pretty level.
+
+My sea-faring experiences covered about eight years, and they hit a
+traditional period of immense moment--I mean the gradual
+transformation of the marine fabric from wood into iron. I was always
+afloat in wood, however, and never knew what it was to have an iron
+plate between me and the yearning wash of the brine outside until I
+went on a voyage to Natal and back in a big ocean steamer that all day
+long throbbed to the maddened heart in her engine room, like some
+black and gleaming leviathan rendered hysterical by the lances of
+whalers feeling for its life, and all night stormed through the dark
+ocean shadow like a body of fire, faster than a gale of wind could in
+my time have driven the swiftest clipper keel that furrowed blue
+water.
+
+What hair-breadth escapes did I meet with? I have been asked. Was I
+ever marooned? Ever cast away, as Jack says, on the top crust of a
+half-penny loaf? Ever overboard among sharks? Ever gazing madly round
+the horizon, the sole occupant of a frizzling boat, in search of a
+ship where I might obtain water to cool my blue and frothing lips?
+Well, my duff is not a very considerable one, and the few plums in it
+I fear are almost wide enough apart to be out of hail of one another.
+However a sample or two will suffice to enable me to keep my word and
+to write something at all events autobiographic.
+
+So let us start off Cape Horn on a July day in the year of grace 1859.
+The ship was a fine old Australian liner, a vessel of hard upon 1400
+tons, a burden that in those days constituted a large craft. She was
+commanded by one Captain Neatby, something of a favourite I believe in
+the passenger trade--a careful old man with bow-legs and a fiery
+grog-blossom of a nose. He wore a tall chimney-pot hat in all weathers,
+and was reckoned a very careful man because he always furled his fore
+and mizzen royals in the first dog-watch every night. We were a long
+way south; I cannot remember the exact latitude, but I know it was
+drawing close upon sixty degrees. There was a talk in the midshipmen's
+berth amongst us that the captain was trying his hand at the great
+Circle course, but none of us knew much about it down in that gloomy,
+'tween-decks, slush-flavoured cavern in which we youngsters lived. I
+was fourteen years old, homeward bound on my first voyage; a little
+bit of a midshipman, burnt dry by Pacific suns, with a mortal hatred
+and terror of the wild, inexpressibly bitter cold of the roaring
+ice-loaded parallels in whose Antarctic twilight our noble ship was
+plunging and rolling now under a fragment of maintopsail, now under a
+reefed foresail and double-reefed foretopsail, chased by the shrieking
+western gale that flew like volleys of scissors and thumbscrews over
+our taffrail, and by seas, whose glittering, flickering peaks one
+looked up at from the neighbourhood of the wheel as at the brows of
+tall and beetling cliffs. The gale was white with snow, and dark with
+the blinding fall of it too, when I came on deck at noon. I was in the
+chief mate's, or port watch, as it is called. The ship was running
+under a double-reefed topsail--in those days we carried single
+sails,--reefed foresail, close-reefed foretopsail, and maintopmast
+staysail. The snow made a London fog of the atmosphere; forward of the
+galley the ship was out of sight at times when it came thundering down
+out of the blackness aft, white as any smother of spume. She pitched
+with the majesty of a line-of-battle ship, as she launched herself in
+long floating rushes from gleaming pinnacle to seething valley with a
+heavy, melancholy sobbing of water all about her decks, and her
+narrow, distended band of maintopsail hovering overhead black as a
+raven's pinion in the flying hoariness. We were washing through it at
+twelve or thirteen knots an hour, though the ship was as stiff as a
+madman in a strait-jacket, with the compressed wool in her hold and
+loaded down to her main-chain bolts besides. By two bells (one
+o'clock) forward of the break of the poop the decks were deserted,
+though now and again, amidst some swiftly passing flaw in the storm of
+snow, you might just discern the gleaming shapes of two men on the
+look-out on the forecastle, with the glimpse of a figure in the
+foretop, also on the watch for anything that might be ahead. The
+captain in his tall hat was stumping the deck to and fro close against
+the wheel, cased in a long pilot coat, under the skirts of which his
+legs, as he slewed round, showed like the lower limb of the letter O.
+Through the closed skylight windows I could get a sort of watery view
+of the cuddy passengers--as they were then called--reading, playing at
+chess, playing the piano, below. There were some scores of steerage
+and 'tween-deck passengers, deeper yet in the bowels of the ship, but
+hidden out of sight by the closed hatches.
+
+I know not why it should have been, but I was the only midshipman on
+the poop, though the ship carried twelve of us, six to a watch. The
+other five were doubtless loafing about under cover somewhere. I stood
+close beside the chief mate to windward, holding to the brass rail
+that ran athwart the break of the poop. This officer was a Scotchman,
+a man named Thompson, and I suppose no better seaman ever trod a
+ship's deck. He was talking to me about getting home, asking me
+whether I would rather be off Cape Horn in a snow-storm or making
+ready to sit down with my brothers and sisters at my father's table to
+a jolly good dinner of fish and roast beef and pudding, when all on a
+sudden he stopped in what he was saying, and fell a-sniffing
+violently.
+
+"I smell ice," said he, with a glance aft at the captain.
+
+"Smell ice!" thought I, with a half look at him, for I believed he was
+joking. For my part, it was all ice to me--one dense, yelling
+atmosphere of snow; every flake barbed, and the cold of a bitterness
+beyond words. He fell a-sniffing again, quickly and vehemently, and
+stepped to the side, sending a thirsty look into the white blindness
+ahead, whilst I heard him mutter, "There 's ice close aboard, there 's
+ice close aboard!" As he spoke the words, there arose a loud and
+fearful cry from the forecastle.
+
+"Ice right ahead, sir!"
+
+"Ice right ahead, sir!" repeated the chief mate, whipping round upon
+the captain.
+
+"I see it, sir! I see it, sir!" roared the skipper. "Hard a
+starboard, men! Hard a starboard for your lives! Over with it!"
+
+The two fellows at the helm sent the spokes flying like the
+driving-wheel of a locomotive; the long ship, upborne at the instant
+by a huge Pacific sea, paid off like a creature of instinct, sweeping
+slowly but surely to port just in time. For right on the starboard bow
+of us there leapt out into proportions terrible and magnificent, within
+a musket shot of our rail, an iceberg that looked as big as St. Paul's
+Cathedral, with stormy roaring of the gale in its ravines and valleys,
+and the white smoke of the snow revolving about its pinnacles and
+spires like volumes of steam, and a volcanic noise of mighty seas
+bursting against its base and recoiling from the adamant of its
+crystalline sides in acres of foam. We were heading for it at the rate
+of thirteen miles an hour as neatly as you point the end of a thread
+into the eye of a needle. In a few minutes we should have been into
+it, crumbled against it, dissolved upon the white waters about it, and
+have met a nameless end. Boy as I was, and bitter as was the day, I
+remember feeling a stir in my hair as I stood watching with open mouth
+the passage of the mountainous mass close alongside into the pale void
+astern, whilst the ship trembled again to the blows and thumps of vast
+blocks of floating ice.
+
+"Ice right ahead, sir!" came the cry again, nor could we clear the
+jumble of bergs until the dusk had settled down, when we hove-to for
+the night. No one was hurt, but I suppose no closer shave of the kind
+ever happened to a ship before.
+
+Again, and this time once more off Cape Horn. It was my third voyage;
+I was still a midshipman, and in the second mate's watch. I came on
+deck at midnight and found the ship hove-to, breasting what in this
+age of steamboats, and, for the matter of that, perhaps in any other
+age, might be termed a terrific sea. She was making good weather of
+it--that is to say, she kept her decks dry, but she was diving and
+rolling most hideously, with such swift headlong shearing of her spars
+through the gale that the noises up in the blackness aloft were as
+though the spirits of the inmates of a thousand lunatic asylums had
+been suddenly enlarged from their bodies and sent yelling into limbo.
+The wind blew with an unendurable edge in the sting and bite of it.
+The second mate and I, each with a rope girdling his waist to swing
+by, stood muffled up to our noses under the lee of a square of canvas
+seized to the mizzen shrouds. Presently he roared into my ear, "Sort
+of a night for a pannikin of coffee, eh, Mr. Russell?" "Ay, ay, sir,"
+I replied, and with that, liberating myself from the rope, I clawed my
+way along the line of the hencoops--the decks sometimes sloping almost
+up and down to the heavy weather _scends_ of the huge black
+billows,--and descended into the midshipmen's berth. It was not the
+first time I had made a cup of coffee for myself and the second mate in
+the middle watch during cold weather. An old nurse who had lived in my
+family for years had given me an apparatus consisting of a spirit-lamp
+and a funnel-shaped contrivance of block tin, along with several pounds
+of very good coffee, and with this I used to keep the second mate and
+myself supplied with the real luxury of a hot and aromatic drink
+during wet and frosty watches. The midshipmen's berth was a narrow
+room down in the 'tween decks, bulkheaded off from the sides, fitted
+with a double row of bunks, one on top of another, the lower beds
+being about a foot above the deck. There were five midshipmen all
+turned in and fast asleep. The others, who were on watch, were
+clustered under the break of the poop for the shelter there. A lonely
+one-eyed sort of slush lamp, with sputtering wick and stinking flame,
+swung wearily from a blackened beam, rendering the darkness but little
+more than visible. I slung my little cooking apparatus near to it,
+filled the lamp with spirits of wine, put water and coffee into the
+funnel, and then set fire to the arrangement. I stood close under it,
+wrapped from head to foot in gleaming oilskins--looking a very bloated
+little shape, I don't doubt, from the quantity of clothing I wore
+under the waterproofs,--waiting for the water to boil. The seas roared
+in thunder high above the scuttles to the wild and sickening dipping
+of the ship's side into the trough. The humming of the gale pierced
+through the decks with the sound of a crowd of bands of music in the
+distance, all playing together and each one a different tune. The
+midshipmen snored, and coats and smallclothes hanging from the bunk
+stanchions wearily swung sprawling out and in, like bodies dangling
+from gallows in a gale of wind.
+
+All in a moment a sea of unusual weight and fury took the ship and
+hove her down to the height as you would have thought, of her
+topgallant rail; the headlong movement sent me sliding to leeward; the
+forethatch of my sou'wester struck the spirit-lamp; down it poured, in
+a line of fire upon the deck, where it surged to and fro in a sheet of
+flame, with the movements of the ship. I was so horribly frightened as
+to be almost paralysed by the sight of that flickering stretch of
+yellowish light, sparkling and leaping as it swept under the lower
+bunks and came racing back again to the bulkhead with the windward
+incline. I fell to stamping upon it in my sea-boots, little fool that
+I was, hoping in that way to extinguish it. A purple-faced midshipman
+occupied one of the lower bunks, and his long nose lay over the edge
+of it. He opened his eyes, and after looking sleepily for a moment or
+two at the coating of pale fire rushing from under his bed, he snuffed
+a bit, and muttering, "Doocid nice smell; burnt brandy, ain't it?" he
+turned over and went to sleep again with his face the other way.
+
+I was in an agony of consternation, and yet afraid of calling for help
+lest I should be very roughly manhandled for my carelessness. There
+was a deal of "raffle" under the bunks--sea-boots, little bundles of
+clothing, and I know not what else; but thanks to Cape Horn everything
+was happily as damp as water itself. There was therefore nothing to
+kindle, nor was there any aperture through which the burning spirit
+could run below into the hold; so by degrees the flaming stuff
+consumed itself, and in about ten minutes' time the planks were black
+again. I went on deck and reported what had happened to the second
+mate. All he said was "My God!" and instantly ran below to satisfy
+himself that there was no further danger. I can never recall that
+little passage of my life without a shudder. There were a hundred and
+ninety-five souls of us aboard, and had I managed to set the ship on
+fire that night the doom of every living creature would have been
+assured, seeing that no boat could have lived an instant in such a sea
+as was then running.
+
+In a very different climate from that of Cape Horn I came very near to
+meeting with an extremely ugly end. It was a little business entirely
+out of the routine of the ordinary ocean dangers, but the memory of it
+sends a thrill through me to this hour, though it is much past twenty
+years ago since it happened. I was making my second voyage aboard a
+small full-rigged ship that had been hired by the Government for the
+conveyance of troops to the East Indies. I was the only midshipman;
+the other youngsters consisted of five apprentices. We occupied a
+deck-house a little forward of the main-hatch. This house was divided
+by a fore and aft bulkhead; the apprentices lived in the port
+compartment, the third and fourth mates and myself slung our hammocks
+on the starboard side. The third mate was a man of good family, aged
+about twenty-one, a young Hercules in strength, with heavy under-jaws
+and the low, peculiar brow of the prize-fighter. He had been a
+midshipman in Smith's service, and was a good and active sailor, very
+nimble aloft and expert in his work about the ship, but of a sullen,
+morose disposition, and a heavy drinker whenever the opportunity to
+get drink presented itself. I think he was regarded by all hands as a
+little touched, but I was too young to remark in him any oddities
+which might strike an older observer. He was given to delivering
+himself of certain dark, wild fancies. I remember he once told me that
+if he owed a man a grudge he would not scruple to plant himself
+alongside of him on a yard on a black night and kick the foot-rope
+from under him when his hands were busy, and so let him go overboard.
+But this sort of talk I would put down to mere boasting, and indeed I
+thought nothing of it.
+
+We were in the Indian Ocean, and one evening I sat at supper (as tea,
+the last meal on board ship, is always called) along with this man and
+the fourth mate. We fell into some sort of nautical argument, and in
+the heat of the discussion I said something that caused the third mate
+to look at me fixedly for a little while, whilst he muttered under his
+breath, in a kind of half-stifled way, as though his teeth were set. I
+did not catch the words, but I am quite certain from the fourth mate's
+manner, that he had heard them, and that he knew what was in the
+other's mind. I say this because I recollect that very shortly
+afterwards the fellow rose and walked out on deck with an air about
+him as if he was willing to give the third mate a chance of being
+alone with me. It was a mean trick, but then he was a cowardly rogue,
+and when I afterwards heard that he had been dismissed from the
+service he had formerly entered for robbing his shipmates of money and
+tobacco and the humble trifles which sailors carry about with them in
+their sea-chests I was wicked enough, recalling how he had walked out
+of that deck-house, leaving me, a little boy, alone with a strong,
+brutal, crazy third mate, to hope that he might yet prove guilty of
+larger sins still, for I could not but regard him as a creature that
+deserved to be hanged. The instant this man stepped through the door
+the third mate jumped up and closed it. It travelled in grooves, and
+he whipped it to with a temper which caused the whole structure to
+echo again to the blow.
+
+"Now, you young--" he exclaimed, turning his bulldog face, white with
+rage, upon me, yet speaking in a cold voice that was more terrifying
+to listen to than if he had roared out, "I have you and I mean to
+punish you," and with that he unclasped his heavy belt, and then
+clasped it again so as to make a double thong of the leather, and
+grasped me by the collar.
+
+What my feelings were I am unable to state at this distance of time. I
+believe I was more astonished than frightened. I could not imagine
+that this huge creature was in earnest in offering to beat me for what
+I had said, and yet I was sensible too of an unnatural fire in his
+eyes--a glow that put an expression of savage exultation into them;
+and this look of his somehow held me motionless and speechless. He
+half raised his arm, but a sudden irresolution possessed him, as
+though my passivity was a check upon his intentions.
+
+"No, no," he exclaimed, after a little, "I'll manage better than
+this"; and still grasping me by the collar of my jacket he dropped his
+belt and ran me to the fore end of the compartment, threw me on my
+back, and knelt upon me. Within reach of his arm, kneeling as he was,
+were three shelves on which we kept such crockery and cutlery as we
+owned, along with our slender stores of sugar and flour and the cold
+remains of previous repasts. He felt for a knife; I could hear the
+blades rattle as his fingers groped past his curved wrist for one of
+them, and then flourishing the black-handled weapon in front of my
+eyes he exclaimed, "Now I'm going to murder you." I lay stock-still; I
+never uttered a word; I scarcely breathed indeed. Again, I say that I
+do not know that I was terrified. My condition was one of
+semi-stupefaction, I think, with just enough of sense left in me to
+comprehend that if I uttered the least cry or struggled, no matter how
+faintly, I should transform him into a wild beast. Nothing but my
+lying corpse-like under the pressure of his knee saved me, I am
+certain. My gaze was fixed upon his face, and I see him now staring at
+me with his little eyes on fire, and the knife poised ready to plunge.
+This posture maybe he retained for two or three minutes; it ran into
+long hours to me. Then on a sudden he threw the knife away backwards
+over his shoulder, rose and went to the door, where he stood a little
+staring at me intently. I continued to lie motionless. He opened the
+door and passed out, on which I sprang to my feet and fled as nimbly
+as my legs would carry me to the poop, where I found the chief mate.
+He was a little Welshman of the name of Thomas, a brother of Ap
+Thomas, the celebrated harpist, and if he be still alive and these
+lines should meet his eyes, let him be pleased to know that my memory
+holds him in cordial respect as the kindest officer and the smartest
+seaman I ever had the fortune to be shipmates with. To him I related
+what had happened.
+
+"O--ho," cried he, "attempted murder, hey? Our friend must be taught
+that we don't allow this sort of thing to happen aboard _us_."
+
+He gave certain orders and shortly afterwards the third mate was
+seized and locked up in a spare cabin just under the break of the
+poop. Two powerful seamen were told off to keep him company. How much
+the unfortunate man needed this sort of control I could not have
+imagined but for my hearing that he was locked up and my going to the
+cabin window that looked on to the quarter deck to take a peep at him
+if he was visible. He saw me and bounded to the window, bringing his
+leg-of-mutton fist against it with a blow that crashed the whole plate
+of glass into splinters. His face was purple, his eyes half out of
+their sockets. There was froth upon his lips, with such a general
+distortion of features that it would be impossible to figure a more
+horrible illustration of madness than his countenance. I bolted as if
+the devil had been after me, catching just a glimpse of the powerful
+creature wrestling in the grasp of the two seamen who were dragging
+him backwards into the gloom of the cabin. Such an escape as this I
+regard as distinctly more eventful, if not more romantic, than falling
+overboard and being rescued when almost spent, or being picked up
+after a fortnight's exposure in an open boat. My most sleep-murdering
+nightmares nearly always include the phantom form of that burly,
+crazed third mate kneeling upon my motionless little figure and
+feeling for a knife on one of the shelves just over my head.
+
+Another little plum out of my plain sailor's pudding. This time my
+ship was an East Indian trader that whilst lying at Calcutta was
+chartered by the Government to convey troops to the North of China. It
+was in 1860. Difficulties had arisen, and John Chinaman was to be
+attacked. We proceeded to Hong Kong with the headquarters of the 60th
+Rifles on board, and thence to the Gulf of Peche-li, which I should
+say submitted one of the finest spectacles in the world, with its
+congregations of transports and English and French and Yankee ships of
+war. It was an old-world scene which the sponge of time has
+obliterated for ever, and I behold again in memory those two noble
+frigates, the _Imperieuse_ and the _Chesapeake_, straining tightly at
+their cables, with smoke-stacks too modest in proportions to impair to
+the critical nautical eye the tack and sheet suggestions of the
+graceful, exquisitely symmetrical fabric of spars and yards and
+rigging soaring triumphantly aloft to where the long whip or pennant
+at the main flickered like a delicate line of fire against the hard
+cold blue of the Asiatic sky.
+
+We lay for many months in that bay, and were obliged repeatedly to
+send ashore for fresh meat, vegetables, and the like. On one occasion
+I recollect going with the mate in the long-boat some distance up the
+river Peiho, a rushing, turbid stream at the mouth of which the
+Chinese had fixed a very _chevaux-de-frise_ of spikes, upon which they
+had fondly hoped our men-of-war would impale themselves, forgetting
+that the depth of water scarcely permitted the approach of a shallow
+gunboat. We were returning to the ship with a fair wind, and on top of
+the fierce rush of the river, when our helmsman run us plump against
+one of Johnny's huge impalers. The shock of the blow threw the mate
+into an immense basket of fresh eggs. He fell with a squelch past all
+power of forgetting, and lay wriggling in a very quagmire of yolk and
+white and fragments of shells. We pulled him out blind and streaming
+with eggs. His aspect was so preposterously absurd that the helmsman,
+rendered almost imbecile by laughter, let the boat drive into a second
+pile, when, as I live to write it, the mate, who was cleaning himself
+near to the basket, was thrown a second time into the glutinous mess!
+I will not attempt to repeat the sea-blessings he bestowed upon the
+steersman. Happily eggs were cheap, and a dollar might have
+represented a more considerable smash. Now it was two days following
+this that the captain sent the long-boat to procure some sheep and
+poultry from a little village situated close to the shores of the bay
+on the north of the river. The second mate took charge, and I and
+another midshipman and a couple of sailors went along with him. We
+landed and left the boat in charge of a seaman, and strolled towards
+the village. The second mate was a wild, dissolute young fellow, who,
+before he quitted China, became the recipient of more than one round
+dozen by order of the provost-marshal for looting. A little knot of
+Chinamen stood watching as we approached, whilst just beyond we caught
+sight of a couple of women hobbling nimbly away out of reach of our
+sight, as though they walked on stilts. Sherman--for such was the
+second mate's name,--approaching the Chinamen, began with them in
+pigeon English. They did not understand. He exhibited a few dollars,
+and traced the outline of a sheep upon the ground, and, with many
+surprising motions of his arms, sought to acquaint them with the
+object of his visit. All to no purpose. "What's to be done?" said
+Sherman, looking at us. "There's nothing that resembles a sheep
+hereabouts." His eyes suddenly brightened as they lighted on a large
+concourse of cocks and hens pecking in tolerably close order at some
+fifty paces distant from us. "Boys," he shouted, "as these chaps can't
+be made to understand, let's help ourselves. Each one seize what he
+can get and make for the boat. Follow me." He sprang with incredible
+agility towards the fowls, and in a trice had a couple of them
+shrieking and fluttering in his grasp. In a breath the
+Chinamen--thirty or forty strong--uttering a long, peculiar shout,
+armed themselves with pitchforks--at all events, a species of weapon
+that to my young eyes resembled a pitchfork,--sticks, and stones, and
+gave chase. They tramped after us with the noise of an army in pursuit.
+We flew towards the boat, screaming to the fellow in charge to haul in
+and receive us. A stone struck me in the small of my back, and urged
+me forwards faster than my legs were travelling. Down I should have
+tumbled on my nose, and in that posture have been straightway
+massacred, but for the timely grip of a sailor who was running by my
+side. "Hold up, my hearty!" he roared, hooking his fingers into the
+back of my collar and jerking me backwards. In a few moments we gained
+the boat, wading waist-high to come at her, and rolling like drunken
+men over her gunwale into her bottom. A volley of stones rattled about
+our ears, but we were safe. Had the Chinamen carried firearms, not one
+of us but must have been shot down.
+
+I could relate a score or more of such experiences: of ugly collisions
+with the police in Calcutta, of a narrow escape of being thrown
+overboard by a dinghy-wallah of the river Hooghley, of a desperate
+fight in the slings of the mizzen-topgallant yard with an apprentice
+of my own age, and the like; but the space at my disposal obliges me
+to conclude. Very little of the heroic enters the sailor's life. The
+risks he runs, the adventures he encounters, have, as a rule, nothing
+of the romantic in them; they are mainly brought about by his own
+foolhardiness, by the proverbial carelessness that is utterly
+irreconcilable with the stern obligations of vigilance, alertness, and
+foresight imposed upon him by the nature of his calling, by the
+imbecility of shipmates, and much too often by drink. Yet no matter
+what the cause of most of the perils he meets with, his experiences, I
+take it, head the march of professional dangers. Small wonder that
+faith in the "sweet little cherub that sits up aloft" should still
+linger in the forecastle. For certainly were it not for the bright
+look-out kept over him by some sort of maritime angel, the mariner
+would rank foremost as amongst the most perishable of human products.
+
+
+
+
+                        _The Strange Adventures
+                           of a South Seaman._
+
+
+On November 4th, 1830, a number of convicts were indicted at the
+Admiralty Sessions of the Old Bailey for having on the 5th of
+September in the previous year piratically seized a brig called the
+_Cyprus_. A South Seaman was innocently and most involuntarily, as
+shall be discovered presently, involved in this tragic business, to
+which he is able to add a narrative that is certainly not known to any
+of the chroniclers of crime. But first as to the piratical seizure.
+
+The _Cyprus_, a colonial brig, had been chartered to convey a number
+of convicts from Hobart Town to Macquarie Harbour, on the northern
+coast of Tasmania, and Norfolk Island, distant about a week's sail
+from Sydney--in those days a penal settlement. There were thirty-two
+felons in all. These men had been guilty of certain grave offences at
+Hobart Town, and they had rendered themselves in consequence liable to
+new punishment; they were tried before the Supreme Court of Judicature
+there, and sentenced to be transported to the place above mentioned.
+
+Only the very worst sort of prisoners were sent to Norfolk Island and
+Macquarie Harbour. The discipline at those penal settlements was
+terrible; the labour that was exacted, heart-breaking. The character
+of the punishment was well known, and every felon re-sentenced to
+transportation from the colonial convict settlements very well
+understood the fate that was before him.
+
+The _Cyprus_ sailed from Hobart Town in August, 1829. In addition to
+the thirty-two convicts, she carried a crew of eight men and a guard
+of twelve soldiers, under the command of Lieutenant Carew, who was
+accompanied by his wife and children. The prisoners, as was always
+customary in convict ships, were under the care of a medical man named
+Williams.
+
+Nothing of moment happened until the brig either brought up or was
+hove-to in Research Bay, where Dr. Williams, Lieutenant Carew, the
+mate of the vessel, a soldier, and a convict named Popjoy went ashore
+on a fishing excursion. They had not been gone from the ship above
+half-an-hour when they heard a noise of firearms. Instantly guessing
+that the convicts had risen, they made a rush for the boat and pulled
+for the brig. It was as they had feared: the felons had mastered the
+guard and seized the brig. They suffered no man to come on board save
+Popjoy, who, however, later on sprang overboard, and swam to the
+beach. They then sent the crew, soldiers, and passengers ashore, but
+without provisions and the means of supporting life. Then, amongst
+themselves, the prisoners lifted the anchor and trimmed sail, and the
+little brig slipped away out of Research Bay.
+
+The chroniclers state that the vessel was never afterward heard of,
+though some of the convicts were apprehended, separately, in various
+parts of Sussex and Essex. The posthumous yarn of the mate of an
+English whaler disproves this. He relates his extraordinary experience
+thus:
+
+"We had been fishing north of the Equator, and had filled up with a
+little 'grease,' as the Yankees term it, round about the Galapagos
+Islands, but business grew too slack for even a whaleman's patience.
+Eleven months out from Whitby, and, if my memory fails me not, less
+than a score of full barrels in our hold! So the Captain made up his
+mind to try south, and working our way across the Equator, we struck
+in amongst the Polynesian groups, raising the Southern Cross higher
+and higher, till we were somewhere about latitude 30 deg., and
+longitude 175 deg. E.
+
+"I came on deck to the relief at four o'clock one morning: the weather
+was quiet, a pleasant breeze blowing off the starboard beam; our ship
+was barque-rigged, with short, topgallant masts--Cape Horn fashion;
+she was thrusting through it leisurely under topsails and a
+maintopgallantsail, and the whole Pacific heave so cradled her as she
+went that she seemed to sleep as she sailed.
+
+"Day broke soon after five, and as the light brightened out I caught
+sight of a gleam on the edge of the sea. It was as white with the
+risen sun upon it as an iceberg. I levelled the glass and made out the
+topmast canvas of a small vessel. There was nothing to excite one in
+the spectacle of a distant sail. The barque's work went on; the decks
+were washed down, the look-out aloft hailed and nothing reported, and
+at seven bells the crew went to breakfast, at which hour we had risen
+the distant sail with a rapidity that somewhat puzzled the captain and
+me. For, first of all, she was not so far off now but that we could
+distinguish the lay of her head. She looked to be going our way, but
+clearly she was stationary, for the _Swan_, which was the name of our
+barque, though as seaworthy an old tub as ever went to leeward on a
+bowline, was absolutely without legs: nothing more sluggish was ever
+afloat; for _her_ then to have overhauled anything that was actually
+under way would have been marvellous.
+
+"'Something wrong out there, Grainger?' said the captain.
+
+"'Looks to me to be all in the wind with her,' I answered.
+
+"'Make out any colour?' said the captain.
+
+"'Nothing as yet,' said I.
+
+"'Shift your helm by a spoke or two,' said he. 'Meanwhile, I'll go to
+breakfast.'
+
+"He was not long below. By the time he returned we had risen the
+distant vessel to the line of her rail. I got some breakfast in the
+cabin; on passing again through the hatch I found the captain looking
+at the sail through the telescope.
+
+"'She is a small brig,' said he, 'and she has just sent the English
+colours aloft with the jack down. She is all in the wind, as you said.
+Her people don't seem to know what to do with her.'
+
+"She now lay plain enough to the naked sight; a small black brig of
+about a hundred and eighty tons, apparently in ballast as she floated
+high on the water. She, like ourselves, carried short topgallantmasts,
+but the canvas she showed consisted of no more than topsails and
+courses. I took the glass from the captain, and believed I could make
+out the heads of two or three people showing above the bulwark rail
+abaft the mainmast.
+
+"'What's their trouble going to prove?' said the captain.
+
+"'They're waiting for us,' said I. 'They saw us, and put the helm
+down, and got their little ship in irons instead of backing their
+topsail yard. No sailor-man there, I doubt.'
+
+"'A small colonial trader, you'll find,' said the captain, 'with a
+crew of four or five Kanakas. The captain's sick and the mate was
+accidentally left ashore at the last island.'
+
+"It blew a four-knot breeze--four knots, I mean, for the _Swan_.
+Wrinkling the water under her bows, and smoothing into oil a cable's
+length of wake astern of her, the whaler floated down to the little
+brig within hailing distance. We saw but two men, and one of them was
+at the wheel. There was an odd look of confusion aloft, or rather let
+me describe it as a want of that sort of precision which a sailor's
+eye would seek for and instantly miss, even in the commonest old
+sea-donkey of a collier. Nothing was rightly set for the lack of
+hauling taut. Running gear was slackly belayed, and swung with the
+rolling of the little brig like Irish pennants. The craft was clean at
+the bottom, but uncoppered. She was a round-bowed contrivance, with a
+spring aft which gave a kind of mulish, kick-up look to the run of
+her.
+
+"One of the two visible men, a broad-chested, thick-set fellow, in a
+black coat and a wide, white straw hat, got upon the bulwark, and
+stood holding on by a backstay, watching our approach, but he did not
+offer to hail. I thought this queer; it struck me that he hesitated to
+hail us, as though wanting the language of the sea in this business of
+speaking.
+
+"'Brig ahoy!' shouted the captain.
+
+"'Hallo!' answered the man.
+
+"'What is wrong with you?'
+
+"'We are short-handed, sir, and in great distress,' was the answer.
+
+"'What is your ship, and where are you from, and where are you bound
+to?'
+
+"When these questions were put the man looked round to the fellow who
+stood at the brig's little wheel. It was certain he was not a sailor,
+and it was possible he sought for counsel from the helmsman, who was
+probably a forecastle hand. He turned his face again our way in a
+minute, and shouted out in a powerful voice:
+
+"'We are the brig _Cyprus_, of Sydney, New South Wales, bound to the
+Cape of Good Hope, and very much out of our reckoning, I dare say,
+through the distress we're in.'
+
+"The captain and I exchanged looks.
+
+"'Heading as you go,' the captain sang out, 'you're bound on a true
+course for the Antarctic Circle, and, anyway, it's a long stretch for
+Agulhas by way of Cape Horn out of these seas. How can we serve you?'"
+
+'Will you send one of your officers in a boat?' came back the reply
+very promptly, 'that he may put us in the way of steering a course for
+the Cape of Good Hope? He'll then guess our plight, and if you'll lend
+us a hand or two we shall be greatly obliged. We can't send a boat
+ourselves--we're too few.'
+
+"'He's no sailor-man, that fellow,' said the captain, 'and he ha'n't
+got the colonial brogue, either. I seem to smell Whitechapel in that
+chap's speech. Is he a passenger? Why don't he say so? Looks like a
+play-actor, or a priest. But take a boat, Grainger, and row over and
+see what you can make of the mess they're in. There's something rather
+more than out-of-the-way in that job, if I'm not mistaken.'
+
+"A boat was lowered; I entered it, and was rowed across to the brig by
+three men. No attempt was made to throw us the end of a line, or in
+any way to help us. The bowman got hold of a chain plate, and I
+scrambled into the main-chains and so got over the rail, bidding the
+men shove off and lie clear of the brig, whose rolling was somewhat
+heavy, owing to her floating like an egg-shell upon the long Pacific
+heave.
+
+"I glanced along the vessel's decks forward, and saw not a soul. I
+observed a little caboose, the chimney of which was smoking as though
+coal had within the past few minutes been thrown into the furnace. I
+saw but one boat; she stood chocked and lashed abaft the caboose--a
+clumsy, broad-beamed long-boat, capable of stowing perhaps fifteen or
+twenty men at a pinch. I also took notice of a pair of davits on the
+starboard side, past the main rigging; they were empty.
+
+"I stepped up to the heavily-built man who had answered the captain's
+questions. He received me with a grotesque bow, pinching the brim of
+his wide straw hat as he bobbed his head. I did not like his looks. He
+had as hanging a face as ever a malefactor carried. His features were
+heavy and coarse, his brow low and protruding, his eyes small, black,
+and restless, and his mouth of the bulldog cast.
+
+"'We're much obliged to you for this visit,' he said. 'Might I ask
+your name, sir?'
+
+"'My name is Grainger--Mr. James Grainger,' I answered, scarcely
+wondering at the irregularity of such a question on such an occasion,
+perceiving clearly now that the fellow was no sailor.
+
+"'What might be your position in that ship, Mr. Grainger?' said the
+man.
+
+"'I'm mate of her,' said I.
+
+"'Then I suppose you're capable of carrying a ship from place to place
+by the art of navigation?' he exclaimed.
+
+"'Why, I hope so!' cried I. 'But what is it you want?' and here I
+looked at the man who was standing at the helm, grasping the spokes in
+a manner that assured me he was not used to that sort of work; and I
+was somewhat struck to observe that in some respects he was not unlike
+the fellow who was addressing me--that is to say, he had quite as
+hanging a face as his companion, though he wanted the other's breadth
+and squareness, and ruffian-like set of figure; but his forehead was
+low, and his eyes black and restless, and he was close-cropped, with
+some days' growth of beard, as was the case with the other. He was
+dressed in a bottle-green spencer and trousers of a military cut, and
+wore one of those caps which in the days I am writing of were the
+fashion amongst masters and mates.
+
+"'If you don't mind stepping into the cabin,' said the man with whom I
+was conversing, 'I'll show you a chart, and ask you to pencil out a
+course for us; and with your leave, sir, I'll tell you over a glass of
+wine exactly how it's come about that we're too few to carry the brig
+to her destination unless your captain will kindly help us.'
+
+"'Are you two the only people aboard?' said I.
+
+"'The only people,' he answered.
+
+"Anywhere else, under any other conditions, I might have suspected a
+treacherous intention in two men with such hanging countenances as
+this lonely brace owned; but what could I imagine to be afraid of
+aboard a brig holding two persons only, with the whaler's boat and
+three men within a few strokes of the oar, and the old barque, _Swan_,
+full of livelies, many of them deadly in the art of casting the
+harpoon, within easy hail?
+
+"The man who invited me below stepped into the companion-way; I
+followed and descended the short flight of steps. The instant I had
+gained the bottom of the ladder I knew by the sudden shadow which came
+into the light that the companion hatch had been closed; this must
+have been done by the fellow who was standing at the wheel. It was
+wisely contrived. Assuredly had the way been open, I should have
+rushed upon deck and sprung overboard: because after descending the
+steps I beheld five or six men standing in a sort of waiting and
+listening posture under the skylight. Instantly my left arm was
+gripped by the man who had asked me to step below, while another
+fellow, equally powerful, and equally ruffianly in appearance, grasped
+me by the right arm.
+
+"'Now,' said the first man, 'if you make the least bit of noise or
+give us any trouble, we'll cut your throat. We don't intend to do you
+any harm, but we want your services, and you'll have to do what we
+require without any fuss. If not, you're a dead man.'
+
+"So saying, they threw open the door of a berth, ran me into it, shut
+the door, and shot the lock. I had been so completely taken by
+surprise that I was in a manner stunned. I stood in the middle of the
+cabin just where the fellows had let go of me, staring around,
+breathing short and fierce, my mind almost a blank. But I quickly
+rallied my wits. I understood I had been kidnapped; by what sort of
+people I could not imagine, but beyond question because I understood
+navigation, as I had told the man. I listened, but heard no noise of
+voices, nor movements of people in the cabin. Through the planks,
+overhead, however, came the sound of a rapid tread of feet,
+accompanied by the thud of coils of rope flung hastily down. The cabin
+porthole was a middling-sized, circular window. I saw the whaler in it
+as in a frame. I unscrewed the port, but with no intention to cry out,
+never doubting for a moment from the looks of the men that they would
+silence me in some bloody fashion as had been threatened.
+
+"Just as I pulled the port open a voice overhead sang out: 'Get back
+to your ship, you three men; your mate has consented to stop with us
+as we're in want of a navigator.'
+
+"'Let him tell us that himself,' said one of my men; 'let him show up.
+What ha' ye done with him?'
+
+"'Be off,' roared one of the people, in a savage, hurricane note.
+
+"There was a little pause as of astonishment on the part of the boat's
+crew--I could not see them, the boat lay too far astern,--but after a
+bit I heard the splash of oars, the boat swept into the sphere of the
+porthole, and I beheld her making for the barque.
+
+"I was now sensible, however, not only by observing the whaler to
+recede, but by hearing the streaming and rippling of broken waters
+along the bends, that the people of the brig had in some fashion
+trimmed sail and filled upon the vessel. We were under way. The barque
+slided out of the compass of the porthole, but now I heard her
+captain's voice coming across the space of water, clear and strong:
+
+"'Brig ahoy! What do you mean by keeping my mate?'
+
+"To this no answer was returned. Again the captain hailed the brig;
+but owing to the shift in the postures of the two vessels, and to my
+having nothing but a circular hole to hear through, I could only dimly
+and imperfectly catch what was shouted. The cries from the whaler grew
+more and more threadlike. Indeed, I knew the brig must be a very poor
+sailer if she did not speedily leave the _Swan_ far astern.
+
+"And now, as I conjectured from the noise of the tread of feet and the
+hum of voices, the brig on a sudden seemed full of men; not the eight
+or ten whom I had beheld with my own eyes, but a big ship's company.
+And the sight of the crowd, I reckoned, as I stood hearkening at the
+open porthole--amazed, confounded, in the utmost distress of mind--was
+probably the reason why the captain of the _Swan_ had not thought
+proper to send boats to rescue me. Be this as it will I was
+thunderstruck by the discovery--the discovery of my hearing, and of my
+capacity as a sailor of interpreting shipboard sounds--that this
+little brig, which I had supposed tenanted by two men only, had hidden
+a whole freight of human souls somewhere away in the execution of this
+diabolical stratagem. What was this vessel? Who were the people on
+board her? What use did they design to put me to? And when I had
+served them, what was to be my fate?
+
+"Quite three hours passed, during which I was left unvisited.
+Sometimes I heard men talking in the cabin; over my head there went a
+regular swing of heavy feet, a pendulum tread, as of half-a-score of
+burly ruffians marching abreast, and keeping a look-out all together.
+The door of my berth was opened at last, and the villain who had
+seduced me into the brig stepped in.
+
+"'I was sorry,' said he, 'to be obliged to use threats. Threats aren't
+in our way. We mean no mischief. Quite the contrary; we count upon you
+handsomely serving us. Come into the cabin, sir, that I may make you
+known to my mates.'
+
+"His manner was as civil as a fellow with his looks could possibly
+contrive, and an ugly smile sat upon his face whilst he addressed me,
+and I observed that he held his great straw hat in his hand, as though
+to show respect.
+
+"About twenty men were assembled in the cabin. I came to a dead stand
+on the threshold of the door of the berth, so astounded was I by the
+sight of all those fellows. I ran my eye swiftly over them; they were
+variously dressed--some in the attire of seamen, some in such clothes
+as gentlemen of that period wore, a few in a puzzling sort of military
+undress. They all had cropped heads, and many were grim with a few
+days' growth of beard and moustache. They had the felon's look, and
+there was somehow a suggestion of escaped prisoners in their general
+bearing. A dark suspicion rushed upon me with the velocity of thought,
+as I stood on the threshold of the door of the berth for the space of
+a few heart-beats, gazing at the mob.
+
+"The cabin was a plain, old-fashioned interior. A stout, wide table
+secured to stanchions ran amidships. Overhead was a skylight. There
+were a few chairs on either hand the table, and down the cabin on both
+sides went a length of lockers. Some of the men were smoking. A few
+sat upon the table with their arms folded; others lounged upon the
+lockers, and in chairs. They stared like one man at me, whilst I stood
+looking at them.
+
+"'Is he a navigator, Swallow?' said one of them--a wiry, dark-faced
+man, who held his head hung, and looked at you by lifting his eyes.
+
+"'Ay, mate of the whaler--James Grainger by name,' answered the fellow
+who had opened the door of my berth. 'Salute him, bullies. He's the
+charley-pitcher for to handle this butter-box.'
+
+"The voices of the men swelled into a roar of welcomes of as many
+sorts as there were speakers. One of them came round the table and
+shook me by the hand.
+
+"'My name's Alexander Stevenson,' said he; 'come and sit you down
+here.'
+
+"All very civilly he conducted me to a chair at the head of the table.
+And now, happening to glance upwards, I spied seven or eight faces
+peering down at me through the skylight.
+
+"'Swallow, do the jawing, will 'ee?' said the man who called himself
+Stevenson.
+
+"'Why, yes,' answered Swallow, posting himself at the top of the
+table, and addressing me through the double ranks of men on either
+side. 'This is how it stands with us, Mr. Grainger--clear as mud in a
+wineglass; and we're sorry it should have come to it, for your sake.
+But do your duty by us faithfully, and we'll take care you sha'n't
+suffer. We're thirty-one convicts in all. We were thirty-two, but
+Milkliver Poppy took a header, and went for the land and the
+lickspittle; if he lives he'll get his liberty for a reward. We were
+bound from Hobart to Norfolk Island. You'll have heard of that
+settlement?'
+
+"I said 'Yes,' and an odd guttural laugh broke from some of the men.
+
+"'Well, mister,' continued the man Swallow, 'Norfolk Island was a
+destination that didn't accord with our views. And what more d' ye
+want me to say? Here we are, and we want our liberty, and we mean to
+get it without any risk, and you're the man to help us.'
+
+"'What do you want me to do?' said I, speaking boldly, and looking
+about me steadily, for now I perceived exactly how it was with the
+brig, and the worst had been explained and the whole mystery solved
+when Swallow told me they were convicts; and likewise I had plenty of
+time to screw my nerves up.
+
+"Several men spoke at once on my asking the above question. Stevenson
+roared out: 'Let Swallow man the jaw tackle, boys. One at a time, or
+you'll addle the gent.'
+
+"'This is what we want you to do,' said Swallow. 'There are scores of
+islands in these seas, and we want you to carry us to them; heaving-to
+off them one after another that we may pick and choose, some going
+ashore here, and some there, for our game is to scatter. That's clear,
+I hope.'
+
+"'I understand you,' said I."
+
+"Swallow seemed at a loss. Stevenson then said: 'But we shall want
+nothing that's got a white settlement on it; nothing that's likely to
+have a pennant flying near. We've got no fixed notions. We leave it to
+you to raise the islands, and it'll be for us to select and take our
+chance.'
+
+"'There'll be charts aboard, I suppose?' said I.
+
+"Instantly one of them stepped into a cabin and returned with a bag
+full of charts. I turned them out upon the table and promptly came
+across charts of the North and South Pacific oceans. These charts gave
+me from the Philippines to Cape St. Lucas, and from the Eastern
+Australian coast to away as far as 120 deg. W. longitude. The men did
+not utter a word whilst I looked; I could hear their deep breathing,
+mingled with the noise of a hard sucking of pipes. One of them who
+looked through the skylight called down. Swallow silenced him with a
+gesture of his fist.
+
+"'Have you got what's wanted here, Mr. Grainger?' said Stevenson.
+
+"'All that I shall want is here,' I answered.
+
+"'A low growl of applause ran through the men.
+
+"'Will you be able to light upon the islands that'll prove suitable
+for us men to live on without risk until the opportunity comes in the
+shape of vessels for us to get away?' said Swallow.
+
+"'I'll do my best for you,' said I. 'I see your wants, and you may
+trust me, providing I may trust you. What's to become of me when
+you're out of the brig? That's it!'
+
+"'You'll stay on board and do what you like with the vessel,' answered
+Swallow. 'She'll be yours to have and hold. Make what you call a
+salvage job of it, and your pickings, mister, 'ull be out and away
+beyond the value of what we've been obliged to make you leave behind
+you.'
+
+"'Ain't that fair?' said a man.
+
+"'Is my life safe?' said I.
+
+"'Ay,' cried the Swallow, with a great oath, striking the table a
+heavy blow with his clenched fist. 'Understand this and comfort
+yourself. There's been no blood shed in this job, and there'll be
+none, so help me God--you permitting, mister.'
+
+"When this was said, a fellow, whom I afterwards heard called by the
+name of Jim Davies, asked if I was willing to take an oath that I
+would be honest. I said, 'Yes.' He stood up and dictated an oath full
+of blasphemy, shocking with imprecations, and grossly illiterate. The
+eyes of the crowd fastened upon me, and some of the ruffians watched
+me in a scowling way with faces dark with suspicion, till I repeated
+the horrid language of the man Davies, and swore, after which the
+greater bulk of them went on deck.
+
+"Swallow put some beef and biscuit on the table and a bottle of rum,
+and bade me fall to. He told me to understand that I was captain of
+the ship; that I was at liberty to appoint officers under me; and
+that, though none of the convicts had been seafaring men, they had
+learnt how the ropes led and how to furl canvas, and would obey any
+orders for the common good which I might deliver. I ate and drank,
+being determined to put the best face I could on this extraordinary
+business, and asked for the captain's cabin, that I might find out
+what nautical instruments the brig carried. Swallow, Stevenson, and a
+convict named William Watts conducted me to a berth right aft on the
+starboard side. They told me it had been occupied by the captain, and
+should be mine. Here I found all I needed in the shape of navigating
+instruments, and went on deck with Swallow and the others.
+
+"I could see nothing of the _Swan_; she was out of sight from the
+elevation of the brig's bulwarks. All the convicts were on deck, and
+the brig looked full of men. Those who had been above whilst I was in
+the cabin with the others, approached and stared at me, but not
+insolently--merely with curiosity. They seemed a vile lot, one and
+all. With some of them every other word was an oath; their talk was
+almost gibberish to my ears with thieves' slang. I wondered to find
+not one of them dressed in felon's garb; but on reflection I concluded
+that they had plundered the crew and the people who had had charge of
+them and of the _Cyprus_, and had forced all those they drove out of
+the brig to change clothes before quitting the vessel.
+
+"However, it was my immediate policy to prove my sincerity. I valued
+my life, and I had but to look at the men to reckon that it would not
+be worth a rushlight if they suspected I was not doing my best to find
+them a safe asylum among the islands in the Pacific. Accordingly, I
+fetched one of the charts, placed it upon the skylight, where those
+who gathered about me could see it, and laid off a course for the
+Tonga Islands; telling the men as I pointed to the group upon the
+chart that if no island thereabouts satisfied them, we could head for
+the Fijis or cruise about the Friendly or Navigator groups, working
+our way as far as the Low Archipelago, betwixt which and the first
+island we sighted we ought certainly to fall in with the sort of
+hiding-place they wanted. My words raised a grin of satisfaction in
+every face within reach of my voice.
+
+"I stepped to the helm and headed the brig on a northerly course, and
+stood awhile looking at the compass to satisfy myself that the convict
+who grasped the spokes understood what to do with the wheel. He
+managed fairly well. I then asked Swallow to serve as my chief mate,
+and Stevenson to act as second, and calling the rest of the felons
+together, I divided them into two watches. My next step was to crowd
+the little brig with all the canvas she could spread, and set every
+stitch of it properly. Thus passed the first day.
+
+"I have no time to enter minutely into what happened till we made a
+small point of land in the neighbourhood of the Friendly Islands.
+There was abundance of provisions on board, plenty of fresh water, and
+a stock of spirits intended for the commandant and soldiers at
+Macquarie Harbour and Norfolk Island; but though the convicts freely
+used whatever they found in the brig's hold, never once was there an
+instance of drunkenness amongst them. I guessed them all to be as
+desperate a set of miscreants as were ever transported for crime upon
+crime from a convict establishment; yet they used me very well. Saving
+their villainous speech, their behaviour was fairly decorous. They
+sprang to my bidding, sir'd me as though they had been seamen and I
+their captain, and, indeed, by their behaviour so reassured me that my
+dread of being butchered vanished, and I carried on the brig as
+assured of my personal safety--providing I dealt by them honestly--as
+though I had been on board the old _Swan_.
+
+"We sighted several vessels, but, as you may suppose, we had nothing
+to say to them. Off the first island we came across I hove the brig
+to; the convicts got the long-boat out, and a dozen of them went
+ashore to examine and report. Five returned; the remainder had chosen
+to stay. We made three of the islands; the natives of two of them were
+threatening, and frightened the convicts back to the brig; the third
+proved uninhabited--a very gem of an island was this,--and here
+fifteen convicts went ashore, and thrice the boat went between the
+island and the brig with provisions and necessaries for their
+maintenance.
+
+"But it gave me a fortnight of anxious hunting to discover such
+another island as the remaining convicts considered suitable. This at
+last we fell in with midway betwixt the Union group and the Marquesas;
+and here the rest of the felons went ashore, after almost emptying the
+brig's hold of provisions and the like. They kept the long-boat, and
+left me alone in the brig. Some of them shook hands with me as they
+went over the side, and thanked me for having served them so honestly.
+
+"It was in the evening when I was left alone. The sun was setting
+behind the island, off which a gentle breeze was blowing. My first
+business was to run the ensign aloft, jack down. I then trimmed sail
+as best I could with my single pair of hands, and, putting the helm
+amidships, let the brig blow away south-west, designing to make for
+one of the Navigator Islands, where I might hope to fall in with
+assistance, either from the shore or from a vessel. But, shortly after
+midnight the brig, sailing quietly, grounded upon a coral shoal, fell
+over on to her bilge, and lay quiet. I was without a boat, and could
+do nothing but wait for daylight, and pray for a sight of some passing
+vessel. All next day passed, and nothing showed the wide horizon
+round; but about nine o'clock that night, the moon shining clearly, I
+spied a sail down in the south. She drew closer, and proved a little
+schooner. I hailed her with a desperate voice, and to my joy was
+answered, and in less than ten minutes she sent a boat and took me
+aboard."
+
+The South Seaman's narrative ends abruptly here, but it is known that
+he was conveyed to Honolulu, at which place, strangely enough, the
+_Swan_ touched after he had been ashore about a week. He at once went
+on board, related his strange experiences to his captain, and
+proceeded on his whaling career with the easy indifference of a sailor
+accustomed to tragic surprises.
+
+The brig _Cyprus_ went to pieces on the shoal on which she had
+grounded. It is on record that of the convicts retaken on their return
+to England, two were hanged--namely, Watts and Davies; two others,
+Beveridge and Stevenson, were transported for life to Norfolk Island;
+and Swallow was sent back to Macquarie Harbour.
+
+
+
+
+                           _The Adventures of
+                              Three Sailors._
+
+
+TOLD BY DANIEL SMALL, ONLY
+MATE.
+
+Our vessel was a little brig, named the _Hindoo Merchant_, and we
+sailed on a day in March in the year of our Lord 1857, from
+Trincomalee bound to Calcutta. The captain, myself, and three sailors
+were Europeans; the rest of the ship's company, natives. Though we
+were "flying light" as the term is--that is to say, though there was
+little more in the ship's hold than ballast, and though she had
+tolerably nimble heels, for what one might term a _country-wallah_--yet
+the little ship was so bothered with head winds and light airs,
+and long days of stagnation, that we had been several weeks afloat
+before we managed to crawl to the Norrad of the Andaman parallels,
+which yet left a long stretch of waters before us. If this remainder
+of the ocean was not to be traversed more fleetly than the space we
+had already measured, then it was certain we should be running short
+of water many a long while before the Sandheads came within the
+compass of our horizon, and to provide against the most horrible
+situation that the crew of a ship can find themselves placed in, we
+kept a bright look-out for vessels, and within four days managed to
+speak two; but they had no water to spare, and we pushed on.
+
+But within three days of our speaking the second of the two vessels we
+sighted a third, a large barque, who at once backed her topsail to our
+signals, and hailed us to know what we wanted. My captain, Mr. Roger
+Blow, stood up in the mizzen-rigging and asked for water. They asked
+how much we needed; Captain Blow responded that whatever they could
+spare would be a god-send. On this they sung out: "Send a boat with a
+cask and you shall have what we can afford to part with." Captain Blow
+then told me to put an eighteen-gallon cask in the port-quarter boat,
+and go away to the barque with it. "They'll not fill it," said he,
+"but a half'll be better than a quarter, and a quarter'll be good
+enough; for we stand to pick up more as we go along."
+
+I had called to two of the English sailors, named Mike Jackson and
+Thomas Fallows, to get into the boat, when the cask had been placed in
+her; and when I had entered her the darkeys lowered us; we unhooked
+and shoved off. There was a pleasant breeze of wind blowing; it blew
+hot, as though it came straight from the inside of an oven, the door
+of which had been suddenly opened; the sky had the sort of glazed
+dimness of the human eye in fever; but right overhead it was of a
+copperish dazzle where the roasting orb of the sun was. I could not
+see a speck of cloud anywhere, which rendered what followed the more
+amazing to my mind for the suddenness of it.
+
+The two vessels at the first of their speaking had been tolerably
+close together, but some time had been spent in routing up the cask
+and getting it into the boat, and setting ourselves afloat, so that at
+the moment of our shoving off--spite of the topsail of each vessel
+being to the mast--the space had widened between them, till I daresay
+it covered pretty nearly a mile. The wind was at west-nor'-west, and
+the barque bore on the lee quarter of the _Hindoo Merchant_. The great
+heat put a languor into the arms of our two seamen, and the oars rose
+and fell slowly and weakly. Jackson said to me: "I hope," said he,
+"they 'll be able to spare us a bite of ship's bread. Our 'n is no
+better than sawdust, and if it wasn't for the worms in it," said he,
+"blast me if there 'd be any nutriment in it at all. Them Cingalese
+ought to ha' moored their island off the Chinese coast. They 'd have
+grown rich with teaching the Johnnies more tricks than they 're master
+of, at plundering sailors."
+
+"The _Hindoo Merchant's_ bread isn't up to much, Fallows," said I,
+"but this is no atmosphere to talk of bread in. What 's aboard will
+carry us to the Hooghley. It is water we have to fix our minds on."
+
+We drew alongside of the tall barque, and the master, after looking
+over the rail, asked me to step aboard and drink a glass with him in
+his cabin, "for," says he, "this is no part of the ocean to be thirsty
+in," and he then gave directions for the cask to be got out of the
+boat, and a drink of rum and water to be handed down to the two
+seamen.
+
+I stepped into the cabin and the captain put a bottle of brandy and
+some cold water on the table. He asked me several questions about the
+brig, and how long we were out, and where we were from, and the like,
+and one thing leading to another, he happened to mention the town he
+was born in, which was my native place too--Ashford, in the county of
+Kent,--and here was now a topic to set us yarning, for I knew some of
+his friends and he knew some of mine; and the talk seemed to do him so
+much good, whilst it was so agreeable to me, that neither of us seemed
+in a hurry to end it. This is the only excuse I can offer for
+lingering on the barque longer than, as circumstances proved, I ought
+to have done.
+
+At last I got up and said I must be off, and I thanked him most kindly
+for the obliging reception of me, and for his goodness in supplying
+the brig with water, and I gave him Captain Blow's compliments, and
+desired to know if we could accommodate him in any way in return. He
+answered "Nothing, nothing," stepping through the hatch as he said it,
+and an instant after he set up his throat in a cry.
+
+"You 'll have to bear a hand aboard," says he, with a face of
+astonishment; "look yonder! 'T is rolling down upon your brig like
+smoke." He pointed to the vessel, and a little way past her I spied a
+long line of white vapour no higher than Dover cliff as it looked, but
+as dense as those rocks of chalk too. The sun made steam of it, but if
+already it was putting a likeness of its own blankness into the sky
+over it, which seemed to be dying out, as the vapour came along, as
+the light perishes in a looking-glass upon which you breathe. I ran to
+the side and saw my boat under the gang-way and the two men in her.
+The cask was in the stern of the boat. The master of the barque cried
+out to me: "Will you not stay till that smother clears? You may lose
+your brig in it." I replied: "No, sir, thank you. I will take my
+chance. It is more likely I should lose her by remaining here," and
+with a flourish of the hand I dropped over the side and entered the
+boat. "Now," cried I, "pull like the devil, men."
+
+They threw their oars over and fell to rowing fiercely; but the barque
+was not five cables' length astern of us when the first of the white
+cliff of vapour smote the _Hindoo Merchant,_ and she vanished in it
+like a star in a cloud. There was a fresh breeze of wind behind that
+line of sweeping thickness, and in places, at the base of the mass of
+blankness, it would dart out in swift racings of shadow that made one
+think of the feelers of some gigantic marine spider, probing under its
+cobweb as though feeling its way along. In a few minutes the cloud
+drove down over us with a loud whistling of wind, and the water close
+to the boat's side ran in short, small seas, every head of it hissing;
+but to within the range of a biscuit toss all was flying, glistening
+obscurity, with occasional bursts of denser thicknesses which almost
+hid one end of the boat from the other. It was about six o'clock in
+the afternoon, and there might be yet another hour of sunshine.
+
+"'Vast rowing!" says I presently, "you may keep the oars over, but
+there's no good in pulling, short of keeping her head to wind. This is
+too thick to last."
+
+"Ain't so sure of that," says Fallows, taking a slow look round at the
+smother, "I 've been in these here seas for two days running in
+weather arter this pattern."
+
+"Pity we didn't stay aboard the barque," says Jackson.
+
+"A plague on your pities!" I cried. "I know my duty, I believe.
+Suppose we _had_ stayed aboard the barque, we stood to be separated
+from the brig in this breeze and muckiness, and was her skipper
+by-and-bye going to sail in search of the _Hindoo Merchant_?"
+
+"A gun!" cries Fallows.
+
+"That'll be the brig," says I, catching the dull thud of the explosion
+of a nine-pounder which the _Hindoo Merchant_ carried on her
+quarter-deck.
+
+"Seems to me as though it sounded from yonder," says Jackson, looking
+away over the starboard beam of the boat.
+
+"What have ye there, men?" says I, nodding at a bundle of canvas under
+the amidship thwart.
+
+"Ship's bread," answered Jackson, with a note of sulkiness in his
+voice. "It was hove to us on my asking for a bite. She was a liberal
+barque. The cask's more 'n three-quarters full."
+
+We hung upon our oars listening and waiting. There was a second gun
+ten minutes after the first had been fired, and that was the last we
+heard. The report was thin and distant, but whether ahead or astern I
+could not have guessed by harkening. I kept up my own and endeavoured
+to inspirit the hearts of the others by saying that this fog which had
+come down in a moment would end in a moment, that it was all clear sky
+above with plenty of moonlight for us in the night if it should happen
+that the sun went down upon us thus, that Captain Blow was not going
+to lose us and his boat and the cask of fresh water if it was in
+mortal seamanship to hold a vessel in one situation; but the fellows
+were not to be cheered, their spirits sank and their faces grew longer
+as the complexion of the fog told us that the sun was sinking fast,
+and I own that when it came at last to his setting, and no break in
+the flying vapour, and a blackness as of ink stealing into it out of
+the swift tropic dusk, I myself felt horribly dejected, greatly
+fearing that we had lost the brig for good.
+
+Just before the last of the twilight faded out of the smoke that
+shrouded us, we lashed both oars together and, attaching them to the
+boat's painter, threw them overboard and rode to them. Our thirst was
+now extreme, and to appease it--being without a dipper to drop into
+the cask--we sank a handkerchief through the bung-hole and wrung it
+out in the half of a cocoa-nut shell that was in the boat as a baler,
+and by this means procured a drink, each man. Grateful to God indeed
+was I that we had fresh water with us. I beat the cask, and gathered
+by the sound that it was more than half full. Heaven was bountiful too
+in providing us with biscuit. It had been the luckiest of thoughts on
+Jackson's part, though he had desired nothing more than to obtain a
+relish for his own rations of buffalo hump aboard.
+
+I never remember the like of the pitch darkness of that night. There
+was a moon, pretty nearly a full one if I recollect aright; but had
+she been shining over the other side of the world it would have been
+all the same. Her delicate silver beam could not pierce the vapour,
+and never once did I behold the least glistening of her radiance
+anywhere. There was a constant noise of wind in the dense thickness,
+and an incessant seething and crackling of waters running nimbly, so
+that though we would from time to time bend our ears in the hope of
+catching the rushing and pouring noise of the sea divided by a ship's
+stem, we never could hear more than the whistling of the breeze and
+the lapping of the hurrying little surges. There was a deal of fire in
+the water, and it came and went in sheets like the reflection of
+lightning, insomuch that we might have believed ourselves in the heart
+of an electric storm; but happily the wind never gathered so much
+weight as to raise a troublesome sea, and though the boat tumbled
+friskily she kept dry, and there was nothing in her movements to
+render me uneasy.
+
+I told the two fellows to lie down in the bottom of the boat, and I
+kept watch till I reckoned it was drawing on to about one o'clock in
+the morning. Twice or thrice during that long and wretched vigil there
+seemed a promise of the weather clearing, and I gazed with the
+yearning of the shipwrecked; but regularly it thickened and blackened
+down upon us again in blasts like the belchings of a three-decker's
+broadside. It was a very watery vapour, and I was early wet to the
+skin.
+
+At about one o'clock, as I calculated, I awoke Jackson, and bade him
+keep an eager look-out and not to spare his ear in putting it against
+the night, "for," says I, "there's nothing to be done with the eyes;
+it's all for the hearing at such a time as this, mate, and what you
+can't watch for you must listen for; and wake me up to any sound you
+may hear, that our three throats may hail together. O God," says I,
+"if it would but thin and show the brig within reach of our shouts!"
+With that I lay down and was soon fast asleep, being worn out with
+excitement and grief, and when I awoke it was daylight, for there's
+but little dawn off the Andamans; the sun in those seas leaps on to
+the horizon from the night as it were, and flashes it into day in a
+breath.
+
+It was still thick and troubled weather, but clear to about two miles
+from the side of the boat. There was very little wind, and a long
+swell of the colour of lead was running from the southward. The vapour
+had broken up and lay in masses round about us--long, white twisted
+folds of it, like powder smoke after a great battle; and to the top of
+those heaps of thickness the sky sloped in a sort of grey shadow, with
+a little pencilling here and there of some small livid ring of mist,
+which looked stirless as though what air there was blew low. There was
+nothing in sight; we strained our gaze into every quarter but I saw
+there was nothing to be seen. This smote me to the heart. I had been
+in my time in several situations of peril at sea, but had never yet
+experienced the horrors of an open boat amidst a vast waste of waters,
+such as was this Bay of Bengal with the Andaman Islands some hundreds
+of miles distant, and a near menace of roasting heat when the wide
+grey stretch of cloud should have passed away and laid bare the sun's
+eye of fire. We gazed with melancholy faces one at another.
+
+"What's to be done?" says Fallows, bringing his bloodshot eyes from
+the sea to my face; "if we had a sail to set we might have a chance."
+
+"There are two oars," said I, "for a mast and a yard, and our shirts
+must furnish a sail."
+
+"But how are we to head?" says Jackson.
+
+"Right afore the wind, I suppose," says I; "there'll be no ratching
+with the rags we're going to hoist. Right afore the wind," I says;
+"and we must trust to God to keep us in view till something heaves in
+sight--which is pretty well bound to happen I suppose when there comes
+some wind along."
+
+I opened the canvas parcel, and found a matter of thirty biscuits; all
+very sweet, good bread. We took each of us a piece, and followed on
+with a drink, and then went to work to get our oars in. We all three
+wore shirts, and we stripped them off our backs and cut them to lie
+open. I had a little circular cushion of stout pins in my pocket, such
+as a sailor might carry, and with them we brought the squares of the
+shirts together, and seized the corners to one of the oars by yarns
+out of an end of painter we cut off, then stepped the other oar, and
+secured it with another piece of the painter; and now we had a sort of
+sail, the mere sight of which, even, was a small satisfaction to us,
+since the shirts being white they must needs make a good mark upon the
+water, something not to be missed, unless wilfully, by a passing
+vessel.
+
+The morning passed away, and a little after twelve o'clock the water
+in the south was darkened by the brushing of a wind, which drove the
+hovering masses of vapour before it; and presently they had totally
+disappeared, leaving a sky with rents and yawns of blue in places, and
+a clear glass-like circle of horizon, upon which, however, there was
+nothing to be seen. The boat moved slowly before the wind, which blew
+hot as a desert breeze; I steered, and Jackson and Fallows sat near
+me, one or the other from time to time getting on to a thwart to take
+a view of the ocean, under the sharp of his hand.
+
+In this fashion passed the afternoon. The night came with a deal of
+fire in the water, and a very clear moon floating in lagoons of velvet
+softness betwixt the clouds. The weather continued quiet; the long
+swell made a pleasant cradle of the boat, and the night-wind being
+full of dew, breathed refreshingly upon our hot cheeks; whilst our
+ears were soothed by the rippling noise of the running waters which
+seemed to cool the senses, as the breeze did the body.
+
+It was almost a dead calm, however, at daybreak next morning. The
+atmosphere was close and heavy, and there was a strange strong smell
+of seaweed, rising off the ocean, which caused me to look narrowly
+about, with some dim dream of perceiving land, though I should have
+known there was no land for leagues and leagues.
+
+Whilst we were munching a biscuit, I observed an appearance of steam
+lifting off the water, at a distance of about half-a-mile on the
+starboard side of the boat. The vapour came out of the water in the
+shape of corkscrews, spirally working, and they melted at a height of
+perhaps ten or fifteen feet. I counted five of these singular
+emissions. Jackson said that they were fragments of mist, and we might
+look out for such another thickness as had lost us the brig. Fallows
+said: "No; that's no mist, mate; that is as good steam as ever blew
+out of a kettle. Are there places where the water boils in this here
+ocean?"
+
+As he said these words, an extraordinary thrill passed through the
+boat, followed by a sound that seemed more like an intellectual
+sensation than a real noise. What to compare it to I don't know; it
+was as though it had thundered under the sea. An instant later, up
+from the part of the water where the corkscrew appearances were, rose
+a prodigious body of steam. It soared without a sound from the deep;
+it was balloon-shaped but of mountainous proportions.
+
+"A sea-quake!" roared Jackson. "Stand by for the rollers!"
+
+But no sea followed. I could witness no commotion whatever in the
+water; the light, long swell flowed placidly into the base of the mass
+of whiteness, and there was nothing besides visible on the breast of
+the sea, save the delicate wrinkling of the weak draught of air. Very
+quickly the vapour thinned as steam does, and as it melted off the
+surface, it disclosed to our astonished gaze what at first sight
+seemed to me the fabric of a great ship, but after viewing it for a
+moment or two, I distinctly made out the form of an old-fashioned hull
+with the half of much such another hull as she, alongside, both
+apparently locked together about the bows; and they seemed to be
+supported by some huge gleaming black platform; but what it was we
+could not tell.
+
+The three of us drew a deep breath as we surveyed the floating
+objects. The steam was gone; there they lay plain and bare; it was as
+though the wand of a magician had touched the white mass and
+transformed it into the objects we gazed at.
+
+"Down with the sail," says I, "there's something yonder worth looking
+at."
+
+We got the oars over, and pulled in the direction of the fabrics. As
+we approached I could scarce credit the evidence of my own sight. The
+form of one of the vessels was perfect. She was of an antique build,
+and belonged to a period that I reckoned was full eighty years dead
+and gone. The other--the half of her I should say--showed a much
+bluffer bow, and had been a vessel of some burthen. But the wonder was
+the object on which they rested. This was no more nor less than the
+body of a great dead whale!
+
+We first needed to lose something of our amazement ere we could
+reasonably speculate upon what we saw; then how this had happened grew
+plain to our minds. The two craft, God knows how many long years
+before, had been in action and foundered in conflict. The smaller
+vessel--I mean the one that lay whole before us--might have been a
+privateersman; she had something of a piratical sheer forward, there
+were no signs of a mast aboard either of them, one had grappled the
+other to board her I dare say, and they had both gone to the bottom
+linked. The vessel of which only half remained may have broken her
+back in settling, and, by-and-bye, the after part of her drifted away,
+leaving the dead bows still gripped by the dead enemy alongside. But
+how came the whale there? Well, we three men reasoned it thus, and I
+don't doubt we were right. At the moment of the sea-quake the whale
+was stemming steadily towards the two wrecks resting on the bottom.
+They were lifted by the explosion, which at the same time killed the
+whale; but the impetus of the vast form slided it to under the lifted
+keels, where it came to a stand. A dead whale floats, as we know. This
+whale being dead was bound to rise, and the buoyancy of the immense
+mass brought the two craft up with it, and there they were, poised by
+the gleaming surface of the whale, which was depressed by their
+weight, so that no portion of the head, tail, or fluke was visible.
+
+"It's them vessels being connected," says Jackson, "as keeps them
+afloat. If what holds them together forrard was to part they'd slide
+off that there slipperiness and sink."
+
+We rowed close, the three of us greatly marvelling, as you may
+suppose, for never had the like of such an incident as this happened
+at sea within the knowledge of ever a one of us, and Fallows alone was
+a man of five and forty, who had been using the ocean for thirty-three
+years. It was as scaring as the rising of a corpse out of the
+depths--as scaring as if that corpse turned to and spoke when his head
+showed,--to see those two vessels lying in the daylight after eighty,
+aye, and perhaps a hundred years of the green silence hundreds of
+fathoms deep, locked in the same posture in which they had gone down,
+making you almost fancy that you could hear the thunder of their guns,
+witness the flashing of cutlasses, and the rush of the boarders to the
+bulwarks amidst a hurricane note of huzzaing and shrieks of the
+wounded.
+
+They were both of them handsomely crusted with shells, not of the
+barnacle sort, but such as you would pick up anywhere in Ceylon or the
+Andaman, some of them finely coloured, many of them white as milk, of
+a thousand different patterns; and there was not one of them but what
+was beautiful.
+
+"Let's board her," says Jackson.
+
+"Ah, but if that whale be alive!" says Fallows.
+
+"No fear of that," said I; "if he was alive there'd be some stir in
+him. The whale's not the danger; it's the lashing, which may part at
+any moment. It should be in a fair way of rottenness after so many
+years of salt water, and if it goes the vessels go."
+
+"I'm for boarding her all the same," says Jackson.
+
+But first of all we pulled round to betwixt the bows of the craft to
+see what it was that connected them, and we found that they were held
+together by something stronger than an old grapnel. The bluff of the
+bows came together like walls cemented by sand and shell, and it was
+easy by a mere glance to perceive that they would hold together whilst
+the sea continued tranquil. Betwixt their heels was a hollow which the
+round of the whale nicely filled, and there they all three lay, very
+slowly and solemnly rolling upon the swell in as deep a silence as
+ever they had risen from.
+
+We hung upon our oars speculating awhile, and then fell to talking
+ourselves into extravagant notions. Fallows said that if she had been
+a privateer she might have money in her, or some purchase anyway worth
+coming at. I was not for ridiculing the fancy, and Jackson gazed at
+the craft with a yearning eye.
+
+"Let's get aboard," says he.
+
+"Very well," says I, and we agreed that Fallows should keep in the
+boat ready to pick us up, if the hulk should go down suddenly under
+us. We easily got aboard. From the gunwale of our boat we could place
+our hands upon the level of the deck, where the bulwarks were gone,
+and the shells were like steps to our feet. There was nothing much to
+be seen, however; the decks were coated with shells as the sides were,
+and they went flush from the taffrail to the eyes with never a break,
+everything being clean gone, saving the line of the hatches which
+showed in slightly raised squares, under the crust of shells that lay
+everywhere like armour.
+
+"Lord!" cried Jackson; "what would I give for a chopper or pick-axe to
+smash open that there hatch, so as to get inside of her."
+
+"Inside of her?" says I; "why she'll be full of water!"
+
+"That's to be proved, Mr. Small," says he.
+
+We walked forward into the bows, and clearly made out the shape of a
+grapnel thick with shells, with its claws upon the bulwark rail of the
+half-ship alongside, and there was a line stretched between, belayed
+to what might have been a kevel on a stanchion of the craft we were
+in. This rope was as lovely as a piece of fancy work, with tiny
+shells; but on my touching it, to see if it was taut, it parted as if
+it had been formed of smoke, and each end fell with a little rattle
+against the side as though it had been a child's string of beads.
+
+We were gaping about us, almost forgetting our distressed situation,
+in contemplation of these astonishing objects which had risen like
+ghosts from the mysterious heart of the deep, when we heard Fallows
+calling, and on our running to the side to learn what he wanted, we
+saw him standing up in the boat, pointing like a madman into the
+southward. It was the white canvas of a vessel, clearer to us than to
+him, who was lower by some feet. The air was still a weak draught, but
+the sail was rising with a nimbleness that made us know she was
+bringing a breeze of wind along with her, and in half-an-hour's time
+she had risen to the black line of her bulwarks rail, disclosing the
+fabric of what was apparently a brig or barque, heading almost dead on
+her end for us.
+
+Jackson and I at once tumbled into the boat, but we were careful to
+keep her close to the two craft, and the amazing platform they floated
+on, for they furnished out a show that was not to be missed aboard the
+approaching vessel, whereas the boat must make little more than a
+speck though but half-a-mile distant.
+
+The breeze the vessel was bringing along with her was all about us
+presently with a threat of weight in it. We stepped an oar, with the
+shirts atop, and they blew out bravely and made a good signal.
+
+"Why, see, Mr. Small!" cries Jackson, on a sudden, "ain't she the
+_Hindoo Merchant_?"
+
+I stood awhile, and then joyfully exclaimed, "Ay, 't is the old hooker
+herself, thanks be to God!"
+
+I knew her by her short fore-topgallantmast, by her chequered band,
+and by other signs clear to a sailor's eye, and the three of us sent
+up a shout of delight, for it was like stumbling upon one's very home,
+as it were, after having been all night lost amidst the blackness and
+snow of the country where one's house stands.
+
+She came along handsomely, with foam to the hawsepipe, thanks to the
+freshening breeze, and her main royal and topgallantsail clewing up as
+she approached, for our signal had been seen; then drove close
+alongside with her topsail aback and in a few minutes we were aboard,
+shaking hands with Captain Blow, and all others who extended a fist to
+us, and spinning our yarn in response to the eager questions put.
+
+"But what have you there, Mr. Small?" said Captain Blow, staring at
+the two craft and the whale. I explained. "Well," cries he, "call me a
+missionary if ever I saw such a sight as that afore! Have ye boarded
+the vessel?" pointing to the one that was whole.
+
+"Yes," said I, "but there's nothing but shells to look at."
+
+"Hatches open?" says he.
+
+"No," says I, "they are as securely cemented with shells as if the
+stuff had been laid on with a trowel."
+
+Jackson, Fallows, the boatswain, and a few of the darkeys stood near,
+eagerly catching what we said.
+
+"A wonderful sight truly!" said Captain Blow, surveying the object
+with a face almost distorted with astonishment and admiration. "How
+many years will they have been asleep under water, think ye, Mr.
+Small?"
+
+"All a hundred, sir," said I.
+
+"Ay," says he, "I've seen many prints of old ships, and I'll allow
+that it's all a hundred, as you say, since she and the likes of she
+was afloat. Why," cries he with a sort of a nervous laugh as if half
+ashamed of what he was about to say, "who's to tell but that there may
+be a chest or two of treasure stowed away down in her lazerette?"
+
+"That very idea occurred to me, sir," says I.
+
+"By your pardon, capt'n," here interrupted Jackson, knuckling his
+forehead, "but that may be a question not hard to settle if ye'll send
+me aboard with a few tools."
+
+The captain looked as if he had had a mind to entertain the idea, then
+sent a glance to windward.
+
+"She'll be full of water," said I.
+
+"Ay," said the captain, turning to Jackson, "how then?"
+
+"We can but lift a hatch and look out for ourselves, sir," answered
+the man.
+
+"Right," says the captain; "but you'll have to bear a hand. Get that
+cask on board. Any water in it?" says he.
+
+"Yes, sir," says I.
+
+"Thank God for the same then," says he.
+
+But whilst they were manoeuvring with the cask the breeze freshened in
+a sudden squall, and all in a minute, as it seemed, a sort of sloppy
+sea was set a-running. The captain looked anxious, yet still seemed
+willing that the boat should go to the wreck. I sent some Lascars
+aloft to furl the loose canvas, and whilst this was doing, the wind
+freshened yet in another long-drawn blast that swept in a shriek
+betwixt our masts.
+
+"There's nothing to be done!" sung out the skipper; "get that boat
+under the fall, Jackson; we must hoist her up."
+
+The darkeys lay aft to the tackles, and Jackson climbed over the rail
+with a countenance sour and mutinous with disappointment. He had
+scarcely sprung on to the deck, when we heard a loud crash like the
+report of a small piece of ordnance, and, looking towards the hulks, I
+was just in time to see them sliding off the back of the whale, one on
+either side of the greasy, black surface. They vanished in a breath,
+and the dead carcass, relieved of their weight, seemed to spring, as
+though it were alive, some ten or twelve feet out of the seething and
+simmering surface which had been frothed up by the descent of the
+vessels; the next moment it turned over and gave us a view of its
+whole length--a sixty to seventy-foot whale, if the carcass was an
+inch, with here and there the black scythe-like dorsal fin of a shark
+sailing round it.
+
+Jackson hooked a quid out of his mouth and sent it overboard. His face
+of mutiny left him, and was replaced by an expression of gratitude.
+Five minutes later the old _Hindoo Merchant_ was thrusting through it
+with her nose heading for the river Hooghley, and the darkeys tying a
+single reef in the foretopsail.
+
+
+
+
+                         _The Strange Tragedy
+                         of the "White Star_."
+
+
+It is proper I should state at once that the names I give in this
+extraordinary experience are fictitious; the date of the tale is
+easily within the memory of the middle-aged.
+
+The large, well-known Australian liner _White Star_ lay off the
+wool-sheds in Sydney harbour slowly filling up with wool; I say slowly,
+for the oxen were languid up-country, and the stuff came in as Fox is
+said to have written his history--"drop by drop." We were, however,
+advertised to sail in a fortnight from the day I open this story on,
+and there was no doubt of our getting away by then.
+
+I, who was chief officer of the vessel, was pacing the poop under the
+awning, when I saw a lady and gentleman approaching the vessel. They
+spoke to the mate of a French barque which lay just ahead of us, and I
+concluded that their business was with that ship, till I saw the
+Frenchman, with a flourish of his hat, motion towards the _White
+Star_, whereupon they advanced and stepped on board.
+
+I went on to the quarter-deck to receive them. The gentleman had the
+air of a military man: short, erect as a royal mast, with plenty of
+whiskers and moustache, though he wore his chin cropped. His companion
+was a very fine young woman of about six and twenty years; above the
+average height, faultlessly shaped, so far as a rude seafaring eye is
+privileged to judge of such matters; her complexion was pale, inclined
+to sallow, but most delicate, of a transparency of flesh that showed
+the blood eloquent in her cheek, coming and going with every mood that
+possessed her. She wore a little fall of veil, but she raised it when
+her companion handed her over the side in order to look round and
+aloft at the fabric of spar and shroud towering on high, with its
+central bunting of house flag pulling in ripples of gold and blue from
+the royalmast head; and so I had a good sight of her face, and
+particularly of her eyes.
+
+I never remember the like of such eyes in a woman. To describe them as
+neither large nor small, the pupils of the liquid dusk of the
+Indian's, the eyelashes long enough to cast a silken shadow of
+tenderness upon the whole expression of her face when the lids
+dropped--to say all this is to convey nothing; simply because their
+expression formed the wonder, strangeness, and beauty of them, and
+there is no virtue in ink, at all events in my ink, to communicate it.
+I do not exaggerate when I assure you that the surprise of the beauty
+of her eyes when they came to mine and rested upon me, steadfast in
+their stare as a picture, was a sort of shock in its way, comparable
+in a physical sense to one's unexpected handling of something slightly
+electric. For the rest, her hair was very black and abundant, and of
+that sort of deadness of hue which you find among the people of Asia.
+I cannot describe her dress. Enough if I say that she was in mourning,
+but with a large admixture of white, for those were the hot weeks in
+Sydney.
+
+"Is the captain on board?" inquired the gentleman.
+
+"He is not, sir."
+
+"When do you expect him?"
+
+"Every minute."
+
+"May we stop here?"
+
+"Certainly. Will you walk into the cuddy or on to the poop?"
+
+"Oh, we'll keep in the open, we'll keep in the open," cried the
+gentleman, with the impetuosity of a man rendered irritable by the
+heat. "You'll have had enough of the cuddy, Miss Le Grand, long before
+you reach the old country."
+
+She smiled. I liked her face then. It was a fine, glad, good-humoured
+smile, and humanised her wonderful eyes just as though you clothed a
+ghost in flesh, making the spectre natural and commonplace.
+
+As we ascended the poop ladder, the gentleman asked me who I was,
+quite courteously, though his whole manner was marked by a quality of
+military abruptness. When he understood I was chief officer he
+exclaimed:
+
+"Then Miss Le Grand permit me to introduce Mr. Tyler to you. Miss
+Georgina Le Grand is going home in your ship. She will be alone. We
+have placed her in the care of the captain."
+
+"Perhaps," said Miss Le Grand with another of her fine smiles, "I
+ought to introduce you, Mr. Tyler, to my uncle, Colonel Atkinson."
+
+Again I pulled off my cap, and the colonel laughed as he lifted his
+wide straw hat. I guessed he laughed at a certain naivete in the
+girl's way of introducing us.
+
+The colonel was disposed to chat. Out of England Englishmen are
+amongst the most talkative of the human race. Likely enough he wanted
+to interest me in Miss Le Grand because of my situation on board. A
+chief mate is a considerable figure. If any mishap incapacitates the
+master, the chief mate takes charge. We walked the poop, the three of
+us, in the violet shadow cast by the awning; the colonel constantly
+directed his eyes along the quay to observe if the captain was coming.
+During this stroll to and fro the white planks I got these
+particulars, partly from the direct assertions of the colonel, partly
+from the occasional remarks of the girl.
+
+Colonel Atkinson had married her father's sister. Her father had been
+an officer in the army, and had sailed from England with the then
+Governor of New South Wales. After he had been in Sydney a few months
+he sent for his daughter, whom he had left behind him with a maternal
+aunt, her mother having died some years before. She reached Sydney to
+find her father dead. His Excellency was very kind to her, and she
+found very many sympathetic friends, but her home was in England, and
+to it she was returning in the _White Star_, under the care of the
+master, Captain Edward Griffiths, after a stay of nearly five months
+in Sydney with her uncle, Colonel Atkinson.
+
+Half an hour passed before the captain arrived. When he stepped on
+board I lifted my cap and left the poop, and the captain and the
+others went into the cuddy.
+
+Our day of departure came round, and not a little rejoiced was I when
+the tug had fairly got hold of us, and we were floating over the
+sheet-calm surface of Sydney Bay, past some of the loveliest bits of
+scenery the world has to offer, on our road to the mighty ocean beyond
+the grim portals of Sydney Heads. We were a fairly crowded ship, what
+with Jacks and passengers. The steerage and 'tween-decks were full up
+with people going home; in the cuddy some of the cabins remained
+unlet. We mustered in all, I think, about twelve gentlemen and lady
+passengers, one of whom, needless to say, was Miss Georgina Le Grand.
+
+I had been busy on the forecastle when she came aboard, but heard
+afterwards from Robson, the second mate, that the Governor's wife,
+with Colonel Atkinson, and certain nobs out of Government House had
+driven down to the ship to say good-bye to the girl. She was alone. I
+wondered she had not a maid, but I afterwards heard from a bright
+little lady on board, a Mrs. Burney, one of the wickedest flirts that
+ever with a flash of dark glance drew a sigh from a man, that the
+woman Miss Le Grand had engaged to accompany her as maid to Europe had
+omitted to put in an appearance at the last moment, in perfect
+conformity with the manners and habits of the domestic servants of the
+Australian colonies of those days, and the young lady having no time
+to procure another maid had shipped alone.
+
+At dinner on that first day of our departure, when the ship was at sea
+and I was stumping the deck in charge, I observed, in glancing through
+the skylight, that the captain had put Miss Le Grand upon the right of
+his chair, at the head of the table, a little before the fluted and
+emblazoned shaft of mizzenmast. I don't think above five sat down to
+dinner; a long heave of swell had sickened the hunger out of most of
+them. But it was a glorious evening, and the red sunshine, flashing
+fair upon the wide open skylights, dazzled out as brilliant and
+hospitable a picture of cabin equipment as the sight could wish.
+
+I had a full view of Miss Le Grand, and occasionally paused to look at
+her, so standing as to be unobserved. Now that I saw her with her hat
+off I found something very peculiar and fascinating in her beauty. Her
+eyes seemed to fill her face, subduing every lineament to the full
+spiritual light and meaning in them, till her countenance looked sheer
+intellect, the very quality and spirit of mind itself. This effect, I
+think, was largely achieved by the uncommon hue of her skin. It
+accentuated colour, casting a deeper dye into the blackness of her
+hair, sharpening the fires in her eyes, painting her lips with a more
+fiery tinge of carnation through which, when she smiled, her white
+teeth shone like light itself.
+
+I noticed even on this first day, during my cautious occasional peeps,
+that the captain was particularly attentive to the young lady; in
+which, indeed, I should have found nothing significant--for she had in
+a special degree been committed to his trust--but for the circumstance
+of his being a bachelor. Even then, early and fresh as the time was
+for thinking of such things, I guessed when I looked at the girl that
+the hardy mariner alongside of her would not keep his heart whole a
+week, if indeed, for the matter of that, he was not already head over
+ears. He was a good-looking man in his way; not everybody's type of
+manly beauty, perhaps, but certain of admiration from those who relish
+a strong sea flavour and the colour of many years and countless
+leagues of ocean in looks, speech, and deportment. He was about
+thirty-five, the heartiest laugher that ever strained a rib in
+merriment, a genial, kindly man, with a keen, seawardly blue eye,
+weather-coloured face, short whiskers, and rising in his socks to near
+six feet. I believe he was of Welsh blood. This was my first voyage
+with him. The rigorous discipline of the quarter-deck had held us
+apart, and all that I could have told of him I have here written.
+
+For some time after we left Sydney nothing whatever noteworthy
+happened. One quiet evening I came on deck at eight o'clock to take
+charge of the ship till midnight. We were still in the temperate
+parallels, the weather of a true Pacific sweetness, and, by day, the
+ocean a dark blue rolling breast of water, feathering on every round
+of swell in sea-flashes, out of which would sparkle the flying-fish to
+sail down the bright mild wind for a space, then vanish in some brow
+of brine with the flight of a silver arrow.
+
+This night the moon was dark, the weather somewhat thick, the stars
+pale over the trucks, and hidden in the obscurity a little way down
+the dusky slope of firmament. Windsails were wriggling fore and aft
+like huge white snakes, gaping for the tops and writhing out of the
+hatches. The flush of sunset was dying when I came on deck. I saw the
+captain slowly pacing the weather side of the poop with Miss Le Grand.
+He seemed earnest in his talk and gestures. Enough western light still
+lived to enable me to see faces, and I observed that Mrs. Burney,
+standing to leeward of a skylight talking with a gentleman, would
+glance at the couple with a satirical smile whenever they came abreast
+of her.
+
+But soon the night came down in darkness upon the deep; the wind blew
+damp out of the dusk in a long moan over the rail, heeling the ship
+yet by a couple of degrees; the captain sang out for the fore and
+mizzen-royals to be clewed up and furled, and shortly afterwards went
+below, first handing Miss Le Grand down the companion-way.
+
+I guessed the game was up with the worthy man: he had met his fate and
+taken to it with the meekness of a sheep. He might do worse, I
+thought, as I started on a solitary stroll, so far as looks are
+concerned; but what of her nature--her character? It was puzzling to
+think of what sort of spirit it was that looked out of her wonderful
+eyes; and she was not a kind of a girl that a man would care to leave
+ashore; so much beauty, full of a subtle endevilment of some sort, as
+it seemed to me, must needs demand the constant sentinelling of a
+husband's presence. That was how it struck me.
+
+By eleven o'clock all was hushed throughout the ship: lights out, the
+captain turned in, nothing stirring forward save the flitting shape of
+the look-out under the yawn of the pale square of fore-course. It was
+blowing a pleasant breeze of wind, and lost in thought I leaned over
+the rail at the weather fore-end of the poop watching the cold
+sea-glow shining in the dark water as the foam spat past, sheeting away
+astern in a furrow like moonlight. I will swear I did not doze; that I
+never was guilty of whilst on duty in all the years I was at sea; but
+I don't doubt that I was sunk deep in thought, insomuch that my
+reverie may have possessed a temporary power of abstraction as
+complete as slumber itself.
+
+I was startled into violent wakefulness by a cannonade of canvas
+aloft, and found the ship in the wind. I looked aft; the wheel was
+deserted--at least I believed so, till on rushing to it, meanwhile
+shouting to the watch on deck, I spied the figure of the helmsman on
+his face close beside the binnacle.
+
+I thought he was dead. The watch to my shouts came tumbling to the
+braces, and in a few minutes the captain made his appearance. The ship
+was got to her course afresh, by which time the man who had been
+steering was so far recovered as to be able to sit on the grating
+abaft the wheel and relate what had happened.
+
+He was a Dane, and spoke with a strong foreign accent, beyond my art
+to reproduce. He said he had been looking away to leeward, believing
+he saw a light out upon the horizon, when on turning his head he
+beheld a ghost at his side.
+
+"A what?" said the captain.
+
+"A ghost, sir, so help me--" and here the little Dane indulged in some
+very violent language, all designed to convince us that he spoke the
+truth.
+
+"What was it like?" asked the captain.
+
+"It was dressed in white and stood looking at me. I tried to run and
+could not, but fell, and maybe fainted."
+
+"The durned idiot slept," said the captain to me, "and dreamt, and
+dropped on his nut."
+
+"Had I dropped on my nut, should not have woke up then?" cried the
+Dane, in a passion of candour.
+
+"Go forward and turn in," said the captain. "The doctor shall see you
+and report to me."
+
+When the man was gone the captain asked me if I had seen anything
+likely to produce the impression of a ghost on an ignorant, credulous
+man's mind? I answered no, wondering that he should ask such a
+question.
+
+"How long was the man in a fit, d'ye think?" said he, "that is, before
+you found out that the wheel was deserted?"
+
+"Three or four minutes."
+
+He looked into the binnacle, took a turn about the decks, and, without
+saying anything more about the ghost, went below.
+
+The doctor next day reported that the Dane was perfectly well, and of
+sound mind, and that he stuck with many imprecations to his story. He
+described the ghost as a figure in white that looked at him with
+sparkling eyes, and yet blindly. He was unable to describe the
+features. Fright, no doubt, stood in the way of perception. He could
+not imagine where the thing had come from. He was, as he had said,
+gazing at what looked like a spark or star to leeward, when turning
+his head he found the Shape close beside him.
+
+The captain and the doctor talked the thing over in my presence, and
+we decided to consider it a delusion on the part of the Dane, a
+phantom of his imagination, mainly because the man swooned after he
+saw the thing, letting go the wheel so that the ship came up into the
+wind, and it was impossible to conceive that a substantial object
+could have vanished in the time that elapsed between the man falling
+down and the flap of sails which had called my attention to the
+abandoned helm.
+
+However, nothing was said about the matter aft: the sailors adopted
+the doctor's opinion, some viewing the thing as a "Dutchman's" dodge
+to get a "night in."
+
+A few days later brought us into
+cold weather: this was followed by the ice and conflicts of the Horn.
+We drove too far south, and for a week every afternoon we hove-to
+under a close-reefed maintopsail for fear of the ice throughout the
+long hours of Antarctic blackness. We were in no temper to think of
+ghosts, and yet though no one had delivered the news authoritatively,
+it had come by this wild bleak time to be known that Captain Griffiths
+and Miss Le Grand were engaged. Mrs. Burney told me so one day in the
+cuddy, and with a wicked flash of her dark eye wondered that people
+could think of making love with icebergs close at hand.
+
+It was no business of mine, and seemingly I gave the matter no heed,
+though I could find leisure and curiosity sometimes for an askant
+glance at the captain and his beauty when they were at table or when
+the weather permitted the lady to come on deck, and their behaviour
+left me in very little doubt that he was deeply in love with her; but
+whether she was equally enamoured of him I could not guess.
+
+We beat clear of the latitude of roaring gales blind with snow, and
+mountainous ice-islands like cities of alabaster in ruins, and seas
+ridging in thunder and foam to the height of our mizzentop, and
+heading north blew under wide wings of studding sails towards the sun,
+every day sinking some southern stars out of sight, and every night
+lifting above the sea-line some gem of the heavens dear to northern
+eyes.
+
+I went below at eight bells on a Friday morning when we were two
+months "out" from Sydney, as I very well remember. The ship had then
+caught the first of the south-east trade-wind. All was well when I
+left the deck. I was awakened by a hand violently shaking my shoulder.
+I sprang up and found Robson, the second mate, standing beside my
+bunk. He was pale as the ghost the Dane had described.
+
+"There's been murder done, sir," he cried. "The captain's killed."
+
+I stared at him like a fool, and echoed mechanically and dully:
+"Murder done! Captain killed!" Then collecting my wits I tumbled into
+my clothes and rushed to the captain's cabin, where I found the doctor
+and the third mate examining poor Griffith's body. It was
+half-past-six o'clock in the morning, and the daylight strong, but none
+of the passengers were moving. The captain had been stabbed to the
+heart. The doctor said he had been killed by a single thrust. The body
+was clothed in white drill trousers and a white linen shirt, which was
+slightly stained with blood where the knife had pierced it.
+
+Who had done this thing? It was horrible, unprovoked murder!
+throughout the ship the captain had been the most popular man on
+board. The forecastle liking for him was as strong as sentiment of any
+sort can find expression in that part of a vessel. There had never
+been a murmur. Indeed I had never sailed with a better crew. Not a man
+had deserted us at Sydney and of the hands on board at least half had
+sailed with the captain before.
+
+We carefully searched the cabin, but there was nothing whatever to
+tell us that robbery had been committed. However, a ghastly, shocking
+murder had been perpetrated; the man on whose skill and judgment had
+depended the safety of the ship and the many lives within her had been
+foully done to death in his sleep by some mysterious hand, and we
+determined at once upon a course.
+
+First, I sent for some of the best and most trustworthy seamen amongst
+the crew, and bringing them into the captain's cabin, showed them the
+body. I then, in my capacity as commander of the vessel, authorised
+them to act as a sort of detectives or policemen, and to search every
+part of the ship and all the berths in the steerage and 'tween-decks
+for any clue to the doer of the deed. It was arranged that the cabins
+of the first-class passengers should be thoroughly overhauled by the
+second and third mates.
+
+All this brought us to the hour when the passengers arose, and the
+ship was presently alive. The news swept from lip to lip magically; in
+all parts of the ship I saw men and women talking, with their faces
+pale with consternation and horror. I had not the courage to break the
+news to Miss Le Grand, and asked the doctor, a quiet, gentlemanly man,
+to speak to her. I was on the poop looking after the ship when the
+doctor came from the young lady's berth.
+
+"How did she receive the news?" said I.
+
+"I wish it may not break her heart," said he, gravely. "She was turned
+into stone. Her stare of grief was dreadful--not the greatest actress
+could imagine such a look. There'll be no comforting her this side of
+England."
+
+"Doctor, could he have done it himself?"
+
+"Oh, heaven, no, sir!" and he explained, by recalling the posture of
+the body and the situation of the hands, not to mention the absence of
+the weapon, why it was impossible the captain should have killed
+himself.
+
+I don't know how it came about; but whilst I paced the deck waiting
+for the reports of the mates and the seamen and the passengers who
+were helping me in the search, it entered my head to mix up with this
+murder the spectre, or ghost, that had frightened the Dane at the
+wheel into a fit, along with the memory of a sort of quarrel which I
+guessed had happened between Captain Griffiths and Miss Le Grand. It
+was a mere muddle of fancies at best, and yet they took a hold of my
+imagination. I think it was about a week before this murder that I had
+observed the coolness of what you might call a lovers' quarrel betwixt
+the captain and his young lady, and without taking any further notice
+of it I quietly set the cause down to Mrs. Burney, who, as a
+thorough-paced flirt, with fine languishing black eyes, and a saucy
+tongue, had often done her best to engage the skipper in one of those
+little asides which are as brimstone and the undying worm to the jealous
+of either sex. The lovers had made it up soon after, and for two or
+three days previously had been as thick and lover-like as sweet-hearts
+ought to be.
+
+But what had the ghost that had affrighted the Dane to do with this
+murder? And how were Mrs. Burney's blandishments, and the short-lived
+quarrel betwixt the lovers to be associated with it? Nevertheless,
+these matters ran in my head as I walked the deck on the morning of
+that crime, and I thought and thought, scarce knowing, however, in
+what direction imagination was heading.
+
+The two mates, the seamen, and the passengers arrived with their
+reports. They had nothing to tell. The steward and the stewardess had
+searched with the two mates in the saloon or cuddy. Every cabin had
+been ransacked, with the willing consent of its occupants. The
+forecastle, and 'tween-decks, and steerage, and lazarette had been
+minutely overhauled. Every accessible part of the bowels of the ship
+had been visited; to no purpose. No stowaway of any sort, no rag of
+evidence, or weapon to supply a clue was discovered.
+
+That afternoon we buried the body and I took command of the ship.
+
+I saw nothing of Miss Le Grand for two days. She kept her cabin, and
+was seen only by the stewardess, who waited upon her. At the
+expiration of that time I received a message, and went at once to her
+berth. I never could have figured so striking a change in a fine woman
+full of beauty in so short a time, as I now beheld. The fire had died
+out of her eyes, and still there lurked something weird in the very
+spiritlessness, and dull and vacant sadness of her gaze. Her cheeks
+were hollow. Under each eye rested a shadow as though it was cast by a
+green leaf.
+
+Her first words were: "Cannot you find out who did it?"
+
+"No, madam. We have tried hard; harder for the captain's sake than had
+he been another, for the responsibility that rests upon the master of
+an ocean-going vessel makes him an object of mighty significance,
+believe me, to us sailors."
+
+"But the person who killed him must be in the ship," she cried, in a
+voice that wanted much of its old clear music.
+
+"One should suppose so; and he is undoubtedly on board the ship; but
+we can't find him."
+
+"Did he commit suicide?"
+
+"No. Everybody is accounted for."
+
+"What motive," she exclaimed, with a sudden burst of desperate
+passionate grief, that wrung her like a fit from head to foot, "could
+any one have for killing Captain Griffiths! He was the gentlest, the
+kindest--oh, my heart! my heart!" and, hiding her face, she rocked
+herself in her misery.
+
+I tried my rough, seafaring best to soothe her. Certainly, until this
+moment I never could have supposed her love for the poor man was so
+great.
+
+The fear bred of this mysterious assassination lay in a dark and heavy
+shadow upon the ship. None of us, passengers or sailors, turned in of
+a night but with a fear of the secret bloody hand that had slain the
+captain making its presence tragically known once more before the
+morning.
+
+It happened one midnight, when we were something north of the equator,
+in the calms and stinging heat of the inter-tropic latitudes, that,
+having come on deck to relieve the second mate, and take charge of the
+ship till four o'clock, I felt thirsty, and returned to the cuddy for
+a drink of water. Of the three lamps only one was alight, and burnt
+very dimly. There was no moonlight, but a plenty of starshine, which
+showered in a very rippling of spangled silver through the yawning
+casements of the skylights.
+
+Just as I returned the tumbler to the rack whence I had removed it,
+the door of Miss Le Grand's cabin was opened, and the girl stepped
+forth. She was arrayed in white; probably she was attired in her
+bed-clothes. She seemed to see me at once, for she emerged directly
+opposite; and I thought she would speak, or hastily retire. But, after
+appearing to stare for a little while, she came to the table and
+leaned upon it with her left hand, sighing several times in the most
+heart-broken manner; and now I saw by the help of the dim lamplight
+that her right hand grasped a knife--the gleam of the blade caught my
+eye in a breath!
+
+"Good gracious!" I cried to myself, instantly, "the woman's asleep!
+This, then, is the ghost that frightened the Dane. And this, too, was
+the hand that murdered the captain!"
+
+I stood motionless watching her. Presently, taking her hand off the
+table, she turned her face aft, and with a wonderfully subtle,
+stealthy, sneaking gait, reminding one strangely of the folding motion
+of the snake, she made for the captain's cabin.
+
+Now, that cabin, ever since Griffith's death, I had occupied, and you
+may guess the sensations with which I followed the armed and murderous
+sleep-walker as she glided to what I must call my berth, and
+noiselessly opened the door of it. The moment she was in the cabin her
+motions grew amazingly swift. She stepped to the side of the bunk I
+was in the habit of using, and lifting the knife plunged it once, deep
+and hard--then came away, so nimbly that it was with difficulty I made
+room for her in the doorway to pass. I heard her breathe hard and fast
+as she swept by, and I stood in the doorway of my cabin watching her
+till her figure disappeared in her own berth.
+
+So, then, the mystery was at an end. Poor Captain Griffith's murderess
+was his adored sweetheart! She had killed him in her sleep, and knew
+it not. In the blindness of slumber she had repeated the enormous
+tragedy, as sinless nevertheless as the angel who looked down and
+beheld her and pitied her!
+
+I went on deck and sent for the doctor, to whom I communicated what I
+had seen, and he at once repaired to Miss Le Grand's berth accompanied
+by the stewardess, and found her peacefully resting in her bunk. No
+knife was to be seen. However, next morning, the young lady being then
+on deck, veiled as she always now went, and sitting in a retired part
+of the poop, the second mate, the doctor, and the stewardess again
+thoroughly searched Miss Le Grand's berth, and they found in a hollow
+in the ship's side, a sort of scupper in fact for the porthole, a
+carving knife, rusted with old stains of blood. It had belonged to the
+ship, and it was a knife the steward had missed on the day the captain
+was killed.
+
+Since the whole ghastly tragedy was a matter of somnambulism, all
+points of it were easily fitted by the doctor, who quickly understood
+that the knife had been taken by the poor girl in her sleep just as it
+had been murderously used. What horrible demon governed her in her
+slumber, who shall tell? For my part I put it down to Mrs. Burney and
+a secret feeling of jealousy which had operated in the poor soul when
+sense was suspended in her by slumber.
+
+We tried to keep the thing secret, taking care to lock Miss Le Grand
+up every night without explaining our motive; but the passengers got
+wind of the truth and shrunk from her with horror. It came, in fact,
+to their waiting upon me in a body and insisting upon my immuring her
+in the steerage in company with one of the 'tween-deck's passengers, a
+female who had offered her services as a nurse for hire. This action
+led to the poor girl herself finding out what had happened. God knows
+who told her or how she managed to discover it; but 't is certain she
+got to learn it was her hand that in sleep had killed her lover, and
+she went mad the selfsame day of her understanding what she had done.
+
+Nor did she ever recover her mind. She was landed mad, and sent at
+once to an asylum, where she died, God rest her poor soul! exactly a
+year after the murder, passing away, in fact, at the very hour the
+deed was done, as I afterwards heard.
+
+
+
+
+                      _The Ship Seen on the Ice_.
+
+
+In the middle of April, in the year 1855, the three-masted schooner
+_Lightning_ sailed from the Mersey for Boston with a small general
+cargo of English manufactured goods. She was commanded by a man named
+Thomas Funnel. The mate, Salamon Sweers, was of Dutch extraction, and
+his broad-beamed face was as Dutch to the eye as was the sound of his
+name to the ear. Yet he spoke English with as good an accent as ever
+one could hear in the mouth of an Englishman; and, indeed, I pay
+Salamon Sweers no compliment by saying this, for he employed his _h's_
+correctly, and the grammar of his sentences was fairly good, albeit
+salt: and how many Englishmen are there who correctly employ the
+letter _h_, and whose grammar is fairly good, salt or no salt?
+
+We carried four forecastle hands and three apprentices. There was
+Charles Petersen, a Swede, who had once been "fancy man" in a toy
+shop; there was David Burton, who had been a hairdresser and proved
+unfortunate as a gold-digger in Australia; there was James Lussoni, an
+Italian, who claimed to be a descendant of the old Genoese merchants;
+and there was John Jones, a runaway man-of-warsman, pretty nearly worn
+out, and subject to apoplexy.
+
+Four sailors and three apprentices make seven men, a cook and a boy
+are nine, and a mate and a captain make eleven; and eleven of a crew
+were we, all told, men and boy, aboard the three-masted schooner
+_Lightning_ when we sailed away one April morning out of the river
+Mersey, bound to Boston, North America.
+
+My name was then as it still is--for during the many years I have used
+the sea, never had I occasion to ship with a "purser's name"--my name,
+I say, is David Kerry, and in that year of God 1855 I was a strapping
+young fellow, seventeen years old, making a second voyage with Captain
+Funnel, having been bound apprentice to that most excellent but
+long-departed mariner by my parents, who, finding me resolved to go to
+sea had determined that my probation should be thorough: no half-laughs
+and pursers' grins would satisfy them; my arm was to plunge deep into
+the tar bucket straight away; and certainly there was no man then
+hailing from the port of Liverpool better able to qualify a young chap
+for the profession of the sea--but a young chap, mind you, who liked
+his calling, who _meant_ to be a man and not a "sojer" in it--than
+Captain Funnel of the schooner _Lightning_.
+
+The four sailors slept in a bit of a forecastle forward; we three
+apprentices slung our hammocks in a bulkheaded part of the run or
+steerage, a gloomy hole, the obscurity of which was defined rather
+than illuminated by the dim twilight sifting down aslant from the
+hatch. Here we stowed our chests, and here we took our meals, and here
+we slept and smoked and yarned in our watch below. I very well
+remember my two fellow apprentices. One was named Corbin, and the
+other Halsted. They were both of them smart, honest, bright lads,
+coming well equipped and well educated from respectable homes, in love
+with the calling of the sea, and resolved in time not only to command
+ships, but to own them.
+
+Well, nothing in any way noteworthy happened for many days. Though the
+schooner was called the _Lightning_, she was by no means a clipper.
+She was built on lines which were fashionable forty years before, when
+the shipwright held that a ship's stability must be risked if she was
+one inch longer than five times her beam. She was an old vessel, but
+dry as a stale cheese; wallowed rather than rolled, yet was stiff;
+would sit upright with erect spars, like the cocked ears of a horse,
+in breezes which bowed passing vessels down to their wash-streaks. Her
+round bows bruised the sea, and when it entered her head to take to
+her heels, she would wash through it like a "gallied whale," all
+smothered to the hawse-pipes, and a big round polished hump of brine
+on either quarter.
+
+We ambled, and wallowed, and blew, and in divers fashions drove along
+till we were deep in the heart of the North Atlantic. It was then a
+morning that brought the first of May within a biscuit-toss of our
+reckoning of time: a very cold morning, the sea flat, green, and
+greasy, with a streaking of white about it, as though it were a
+flooring of marble; there was wind but no lift in the water; and
+Salamon Sweers, in whose watch I was, said to me, when the day broke
+and showed us the look of the ocean:
+
+"Blowed," said he, "if a man mightn't swear that we were under the lee
+of a range of high land."
+
+It was very cold, the wind about north-west, the sky a pale grey, with
+patches of weak hazy blue in it here and there; and here and there
+again lay some darker shadow of cloud curled clean as though painted.
+There was nothing in sight saving the topmost cloths of a little
+barque heading eastwards away down to leeward. Quiet as the morning
+was, not once during the passage had I found the temperature so cold.
+I was glad when the job of washing down was over, and not a little
+grateful for the hook-pot of steam tea which I took from the galley to
+my quarters in the steerage.
+
+I breakfasted in true ocean fashion, off ship's biscuit, a piece of
+pork, the remains of yesterday's dinner, and a potful of black liquor
+called tea, sweetened by molasses and thickened with sodden leaves and
+fragments of twigs; and then, cutting a pipeful of tobacco from a
+stick of cavendish, I climbed into my hammock, and lay there smoking
+and trying to read in Norie's _Epitome_ until my pipe went out, on
+which I fell asleep.
+
+I was awakened by young Halsted, whose hand was upon the edge of my
+hammock.
+
+"Not time to turn out yet, I hope?" I exclaimed. "I don't feel to have
+been below ten minutes."
+
+"There's the finest sight to see on deck," said he, "that you're
+likely to turn up this side of Boston. Tumble up and have a look if
+only for five minutes"; and without another word he hastened up the
+ladder.
+
+I dropped out of my hammock, pulled on my boots and monkey-jacket, and
+went on deck, noting the hour by the cabin clock to be twenty minutes
+before eleven. The captain stood at the mizzen-rigging with a
+telescope at his eye, and beside him stood Mr. Sweers, likewise
+holding a glass, and both men pointed their telescopes towards the sea
+on the lee bow, where--never having before beheld an iceberg--I
+perceived what I imagined to be an island covered with snow.
+
+An iceberg it was--not a very large one. It was about five miles
+distant; it had a ragged sky line which made it resemble a piece of
+cliff gone adrift--such a fragment of cliff as, let me say, a quarter
+of a mile of the chalk of the South Foreland would make, if you can
+imagine a mass of the stuff detaching itself from under the verdure at
+the top and floating off jagged and precipitous. There was nothing to
+be seen but that iceberg. No others. The sea ran smooth as oil, and of
+a hard green, piebald foam lines as in the earlier morning, with but a
+light swell out of the west, which came lifting stealthily to the side
+of the schooner. There was a small breeze; the sky had a somewhat
+gloomy look; the schooner was at this hour crawling along at the rate
+of about four and a half knots.
+
+I said to Halsted: "There was nothing in sight when I went below at
+eight bells. Where's that berg come from?"
+
+"From behind the horizon," he answered. "The breeze freshened soon
+after you left the deck, and only slackened a little while since."
+
+"What can they see to keep them staring so hard?" said I, referring to
+the captain and Mr. Sweers, who kept their glasses steadily levelled
+at the iceberg.
+
+"They've made out a ship upon the ice," he answered; "a ship high and
+dry upon a slope of foreshore. I believe I can see her now--the gleam
+of the snow is confusing; there's a black spot at the base almost
+amidships of the berg."
+
+I had a good sight in those days. I peered awhile and made out the
+object, but with the naked eye I could never have distinguished it as
+a ship at that distance.
+
+"She's a barque," I heard Mr. Sweers say.
+
+"I see that," said the captain.
+
+"She's got a pretty strong list," continued the mate, talking with the
+glass at his eye; "her topgallantmasts are struck, but her topmasts
+are standing."
+
+"I tell you what it is," said the captain, after a pause, likewise
+speaking whilst he gazed through his telescope, "that ship's come down
+somewhere from out of the North Pole. She never could have struck the
+ice and gone ashore as we see her there. She's been locked up; then
+the piece she's on broke away and made sail to the south. I've fallen
+in with bergs with live polar bears on them in my time."
+
+"What is she--a whaler?" said Mr. Sweers. "She's got a lumbersome look
+about the bulwarks, as though she wasn't short of cranes; but I can't
+make out any boats, and there's no appearance of life aboard her."
+
+"Let her go off a point," said the captain to the fellow at the wheel.
+"Mr. Sweers, she'll be worth looking at," he continued, slowly
+directing his gaze round the sea-line, as though considering the
+weather. 'You've heard of Sir John Franklin?'
+
+"Have I heard?" said the mate, with a Dutch shrug.
+
+"It's the duty of every English sailor," said the captain, "to keep
+his weather eye lifting whenever he smells ice north of the equator;
+for who's to tell what relics of the Franklin expedition he may not
+light on? And how are we to know," continued he, again directing his
+glass at the berg, "that yonder vessel may not have taken part in that
+expedition?"
+
+"There's a reward going," said Mr. Sweers, "for the man who can
+discover anything about Sir John Franklin and his party."
+
+The captain grinned and quickly grew grave.
+
+We drew slowly towards the iceberg, at which I gazed with some degree
+of disappointment; for, never before having beheld ice in a great mass
+like the heap that was yonder, I had expected to see something
+admirable and magnificent, an island of glass, full of fiery
+sparklings and ruby and emerald beams, a shape of crystal cut by the
+hand of King Frost into a hundred inimitable devices. Instead of
+which, the island of ice, on which lay the hull of the ship, was of a
+dead, unpolished whiteness, abrupt at the extremities, about a hundred
+and twenty feet tall at its loftiest point, not more picturesque than
+a rock covered with snow, and interesting only to my mind because of
+the distance it had measured, and because of the fancies it raised in
+one of the white, silent, and stirless principalities from which it
+had floated into these parts.
+
+"Get the jolly-boat over, Mr. Sweers," said the captain, "and take a
+hand with you, and go and have a look at that craft there; and if you
+can board her, do so, and bring away her log-book, if you come across
+it. The newspapers sha'n't say that I fell in with such an object as
+that and passed on without taking any notice."
+
+I caught Mr. Sweers' eye. "You'll do," said he, and in a few minutes
+he and I were pulling away in the direction of the ice, I in the bow
+and he aft, rowing fisherman fashion, face forward. The schooner had
+backed her yards on the fore when she was within a mile of the berg,
+and we had not far to row. Our four arms made the fat little
+jolly-boat buzz over the wrinkled surface of the green, cold water.
+The wreck--if a wreck she could be called--lay with her decks sloping
+seawards upon an inclined shelf or beach of ice, with a mass of
+rugged, abrupt stuff behind her, and vast coagulated lumps heaped like
+a Stonehenge at her bows and at her stern. When we approached the
+beach, as I may term it, Salamon Sweers said:
+
+"I'll tell you what: I am not going to board that craft alone, Kerry.
+Who's to tell what's inside of her? She may have been lying twenty
+years, for all we know, frozen up where it's always day or always
+night--where everything's out of the order of nature, in fact; and rat
+me if I'm going to be the first man to enter her cabin."
+
+"I'm along with you," said I.
+
+"So you are, David," said he, "and we'll overhaul her together, and
+the best way to secure the boat'll be to drag her high and dry"; and
+as he said this, the stem of the boat touched the ice, and we both of
+us jumped out, and, catching hold of her by the gunwale, walked her up
+the slope by some five times her own length, where she lay as snug as
+though chocked aboard her own mother, the schooner.
+
+Sweers and I stood, first of all, to take a view of the barque--for a
+barque she was: her topgallantmasts down, but her topsail and lower
+yards across, sails bent, all gear rove, and everything right so far
+as we could see, saving that her flying jib-boom was gone. There was
+no need to look long at her to know that she hadn't been one of
+Franklin's ships. Her name and the place she hailed from were on her
+stern: the _President_, New Bedford. And now it was easy to see that
+she was a Yankee whaler. Her sides bristled with cranes or davits for
+boats, but every boat was gone. The tackles were overhauled, and the
+blocks of two of them lay upon the ice. She was a stout, massive,
+round-bowed structure, to all appearances as sound as on the day when
+she was launched. She was coppered; not a sheet of metal was off, not
+a rent anywhere visible through the length and breadth of the dingy
+green surface of it.
+
+We first of all walked round her, not knowing but that on the other
+side, concealed from the landing-place by the interposition of the
+hull, some remains of her people might be lying; but there was nothing
+in that way to see. We united our voices in a loud "Hallo!" and the
+rocks re-echoed us; but all was still, frozen, lifeless.
+
+"Let's get aboard," said Mr. Sweers, gazing, nevertheless, up at the
+ship's side with a flat face of reluctance and doubt.
+
+I grasped a boat's fall and went up hand over hand, and Sweers
+followed me. The angle of the deck was considerable, but owing to the
+flat bilge of the whaler's bottom, not greater than the inclination of
+the deck of a ship under a heavy press of canvas. It was possible to
+walk. We put our legs over the rail and came to a stand, and took a
+view of the decks of the ship. Nothing, saving the boats, seemed to be
+missing. Every detail of deck furniture was as complete as though the
+ship were ready for getting under way, with a full hold, for a final
+start home. Caboose, scuttle-butts, harness-cask, wheel, binnacle,
+companion-cover, skylight, winch, pumps, capstan--nothing was wanting;
+nothing but boats and men.
+
+"Is it possible that all hands can be below?" said Sweers, straining
+his ear.
+
+I looked aloft and about me, wondering that the body of the vessel and
+her masts and rigging should not be sheathed with ice; but if ever the
+structure had been glazed in her time, when she lay hard and fast far
+to the north of Spitzbergen, for all one could tell, nothing was now
+frozen; there was not so much as an icicle anywhere visible about her.
+The decks were dry, and on my kicking a coil of rope that was near my
+feet the stuff did not crackle, as one could have expected, as though
+frosted to the core.
+
+"The vessel seems to have been thawed through," said I, "and I expect
+that this berg is only a fragment of the mass that broke adrift with
+her."
+
+"Likely enough," said Sweers. "Hark! what is that?"
+
+"What do you hear?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Why, _that_!" cried he, pointing to a shallow fissure in the icy
+rocks which towered above the ship: and down the fissure I spied a
+cascade of water falling like smoke, with a harsh, hissing noise,
+which I had mistaken for the seething of the sea. I ran my eye over
+the face of the heights and witnessed many similar falls of water.
+
+"There'll not be much of this iceberg left soon," said I, "if the
+drift is to the southward."
+
+"What d'ye think,--that the drift's northerly?" exclaimed Sweers.
+"I'll tell you what it is; it's these icebergs drifting in masses down
+south into the Atlantic which cause the sudden spells of cold weather
+you get in England during seasons when it ought to be hot."
+
+As he said this he walked to the companion-hatch, the cover of which
+was closed, and the door shut. The cover yielded to a thrust of his
+hand. He then pulled open the doors and put his head in, and I heard
+him spit.
+
+"There's foul air here," said he; "but where a match will burn a man
+can breathe, I've learnt."
+
+He struck a match, and descended two or three steps of the ladder, and
+then called out to me to follow. The air was not foul, but it was
+close, and there was a dampish smell upon it, and it was charged with
+a fishy odour like that of decaying spawn and dead marine vegetation.
+Light fell through the companion-way, and a sort of blurred dimness
+drained through the grimy skylight.
+
+We thoroughly overhauled this interior, spending some time in looking
+about us, for Sweers' fear of beholding something affrighting vanished
+when he found himself in a plain ship's cabin, with nothing more
+terrible to behold than the ship's furniture of a whaleman's
+living-room of near half a century old. There were three
+sleeping-berths, and these we explored, but met with nothing that in
+any way hinted at the story of the ship. It was impossible to tell,
+indeed, which had been the captain's cabin. All three berths were
+filled alike with lockers, hammocks, wash-stands, and so forth; and
+two of them were lighted by dirty little scuttles in the ship's side;
+but the third lay athwartships, and all the light that it received
+came from the cabin through its open door.
+
+I don't know how long we were occupied in hunting these cabins for any
+sort of papers which would enable Captain Funnel to make out the story
+of the barque. We were too eager and curious and interested to heed
+the passage of time. There were harpoons and muskets racked in the
+state cabin, some wearing apparel in the berths, a few books on
+nautical subjects, but without the owners' names in them, and there
+was a bundle of what proved to be bear's skins stowed away in the
+corner of the berth that was without a scuttle. A door led to a couple
+of bulkheaded compartments in the fore part of the state cabin, and
+Sweers was in the act of advancing to it when he cried out:
+
+"By the tunder of heaven, what is dot?" losing his customary hold of
+the English tongue in the excitement of the moment.
+
+"The ice is melting and discharging in Niagara Falls upon the whaler's
+deck!" I cried, after listening a moment to the noise of a downpour
+that rang through the cabin in a hollow thunder.
+
+We rushed on deck. A furious squall was blowing, but the air was
+becalmed where the vessel lay by the high cliffs of ice, and the rain
+of the squall fell almost up and down in a very sheet of water,
+intermingled with hailstones as big as the eggs of a thrush. The whole
+scene of the ocean was a swirling, revolving smother, as though the
+sky was full of steam, and the screech of the wind, as it fled off the
+edge of the dead white heights which sheltered us, pierced the ear
+like the whistlings of a thousand locomotives.
+
+There was nothing to be seen of the schooner: but _that_ was trifling
+for the moment compared to this: _there was nothing to be seen of the
+boat_! The furious discharge of the squall would increase her weight
+by half filling her with water; the slashing wet of the rain would
+also render the icy slope up which we had hauled her as slippery as a
+sheet for skaters; a single shock or blast of wind might suffice to
+start her. Be this as it will, she had launched herself--she was gone!
+We strained our sight, but no faintest blotch of shadow could we
+distinguish amid the white water rushing smoothly off from the base of
+the berg, and streaming into the pallid shadow of the squall where you
+saw the sea clear of the ice beginning to work with true Atlantic
+spite.
+
+"Crate Cott!" cried Sweers, "what's to be done? There was no
+appearance of a squall when we landed here. It drove up abaft this
+berg, and it may have been hidden from the schooner herself by the
+ice."
+
+We crouched in the companion-way for shelter, not doubting that the
+squall would speedily pass, and that the schooner, which we naturally
+supposed lay close to the berg hove-to, would, the instant the weather
+cleared, send a boat to take us off. But the squall, instead of
+abating, gradually rose into half a gale of wind--a wet dark gale that
+shrouded the sea with flying spume and rain to within a musket-shot of
+the iceberg, whilst the sky was no more than a weeping, pouring shadow
+coming and going as it were with a lightening and darkening of it by
+masses of headlong torn vapour. Some of the ragged pinnacles of the
+cliffs of ice seemed to pierce that wild dark, flying sky of storm as
+it swept before the gale close down over our heads.
+
+We could not bring our minds to realise that we were to be left aboard
+this ice-stranded whaler all night, and perhaps all next day, and for
+heaven alone knows how much longer for the matter of that; and it was
+not until the darkness of the evening had drawn down, coming along
+early with the howling gloom of the storm-shrouded ocean, without so
+much as a rusty tinge of hectic to tell us where the West lay, that we
+abandoned our idle task of staring at the sea, and made up our minds
+to go through with the night as best we could.
+
+And first of all we entered the galley, and by the aid of such dim
+light as still lived we contrived to catch sight of a tin lamp with a
+spout to it dangling over the coppers. There was a wick in the spout,
+but one might swear that the lamp hadn't been used for months and
+months.
+
+"We must have a light anyhow," said Sweers, "and if this _President_
+be a whaler, there should be no lack of oil aboard."
+
+After groping awhile in some shelves stocked with black-handled knives
+and forks, tin dishes, pannikins, and the like, I put my hand upon a
+stump of candle-end. This we lighted, Sweers luckily having a box of
+lucifers in his pocket, and with the aid of the candle-flame, we
+discovered in the corner of the galley a lime-juice jar half-full of
+oil. With this we trimmed the lamp, and then stepped on deck to grope
+our way to the cabin, meaning to light the lamp down there, for no
+unsheltered flame would have lived an instant in the fierce draughts
+which rushed and eddied about the decks.
+
+We stayed a moment to look seawards, but all was black night out
+there, touched in places with a sudden flash of foam. The voice of the
+gale was awful with the warring noise of the waters, and with the
+restless thunder of seas smiting the ice on the weather side, and with
+the wild and often terrific crackling sounds which arose out of the
+heart of the solid mass of the berg itself, as though earthquakes in
+endless processions were trembling through it, and as though, at any
+moment, the whole vast bulk would be rent into a thousand crystal
+splinters. Sweers was silent until we had gained the cabin and lighted
+the lamp. He then looked at me with an ashen face, and groaned.
+
+"This gale's going to blow the schooner away," said he. "We're lost
+men, David. I'd give my right eye to be aboard the _Lightning_. D'ye
+understand the trick of these blooming icebergs? They wash away
+underneath, grow topheavy, and then over goes the show. And to think
+of the jolly-boat making off, as if two sailormen like you and me
+couldn't have provided for _that_!"
+
+He groaned again, and then seated himself, and appeared wholly
+deprived of energy and spirit.
+
+However, now that I was below, under shelter, out of the noise of the
+weather, and therefore able to collect my thoughts, I began to feel
+very hungry and thirsty; in fact, neither Sweers nor I had tasted food
+since breakfast at eight o'clock that morning. A lamp hung aslant from
+the cabin ceiling. It was a small lamp of brass, glazed. I unhooked
+it, and brought it to the light, but it was without a wick, and there
+was no oil in it, and to save time I stuck the lighted candle in the
+lamp, and leaving the other lamp burning to enable Sweers to rummage
+also, I passed through the door that was in the forepart of the cabin;
+and here I found three berths, one of which was furnished as a pantry,
+whilst the other two were sleeping-places, with bunks in them, and I
+observed also a sheaf or two of harpoons, together with spades and
+implements used in dealing with the whale after the monster has been
+killed and towed alongside.
+
+The atmosphere was horribly close and fishy in this place, reeking of
+oil, yet cold as ice, as though the ship lay drowned a thousand
+fathoms deep. I called to Sweers to bring his lamp, for my candle gave
+so poor a light I could scarce see by it; and in the berth that looked
+to have been used as a pantry we found half a barrel of pork, a bag of
+ship's biscuit, and a quantity of Indian meal, beans, and rice, a
+canister of coffee, and a few jars of pickles. But we could find
+nothing to drink.
+
+I was now exceedingly thirsty; so I took a pannikin--a number of
+vessels of the sort were on the shelf in the pantry--and carried it
+with the lamp on deck. I had taken notice during the day of four or
+five buckets in a row abaft the mainmast, and, approaching them, I
+held the light close, and found each bucket full. I tasted the water;
+it was rain and without the least flavour of salt: and, after drinking
+heartily, I filled the pannikin afresh and carried it down to Sweers.
+
+There was a spiritlessness in this man that surprised me. I had not
+thought to find the faculties of Salamon Sweers so quickly benumbed by
+what was indeed a wild and dangerous confrontment, yet not so
+formidable and hopeless as to weaken the nerves of a seaman. I yearned
+for a bottle of rum, for any sort of strong waters indeed, guessing
+that a dram would help us both; and after I had made a meal off some
+raw pork and molasses spread upon the ship's biscuit, which was mouldy
+and astir with weevils, I took my lantern and again went on deck, and
+made my way to the galley where the oil jar stood, and here in a
+drawer I found what now I most needed, but what before I had
+overlooked; I mean a parcel; of braided lamp wicks. I trimmed the lamp
+and got a brilliant light. The glass protected the flame from the rush
+of the wind about the deck. I guessed there would be nothing worth
+finding in the barque's forecastle, and not doubting that there was a
+lazarette in which would be stored such ship provisions as the crew
+had left behind them, I returned to the cabin, looked for the
+lazarette hatch, and found it under the table.
+
+Well, to cut this part of the story short, Sweers and I dropped into
+the lazarette, and after spending an hour or two in examining what we
+met with, we discovered enough provisions, along with some casks of
+rum and bottled beer, to last a ship's company of twenty men a whole
+six months. This was Sweers' reckoning. We carried some of the bottled
+beer into the cabin, and having pipes and tobacco with us in our
+pockets, we filled and smoked, and sat listening to the wet storming
+down the decks overhead, and to the roaring of the wind on high, and
+to the crackling noises of the ice.
+
+That first night with us on board the whaler was a fearful time.
+Sometimes we dozed as we sat confronting each other on the lockers,
+but again and again would we start up and go on deck, but only to look
+into the blindness of the night, and only to hearken to the appalling
+noises of the weather and the ice. When day broke there was nothing in
+sight. It was blowing strong, a high sea was running, and the ocean
+lay shrouded as though with vapour.
+
+During the course of the morning we entered the forepeak, where we
+found a quantity of coal. This enabled us to light the galley fire, to
+cook a piece of pork, and to boil some coffee. Towards noon Sweers
+proposed to inspect the hold, and to see what was inside the ship.
+Accordingly we opened the main hatch and found the vessel loaded with
+casks, some of which we examined and found them full of oil.
+
+"By tunder!" cried Sweers; "if we could only carry this vessel home
+there'd be a fortune for both of us, David. Shall I tell you what this
+sort of oil's worth? Well, it's worth about thirty pounds a ton. And
+how much d'ye think there's aboard? Not less than a hundred ton, if I
+don't see double. There's no man can teach me the capacity of a cask,
+and there are casks below varying from forty-two to two hundred and
+seventy-five gallons, with no lack of whalebone stored dry somewhere,
+I don't doubt, if those casks would let us look for it."
+
+But this was no better than idle and ironical chatter in the mouths of
+men so hideously situated as we were. For my part I had no thought of
+saving the ship; indeed, I had scarce any hope of saving my own life.
+We found an American ensign in a small flag-locker that was lashed
+near the wheel, and we sent it half-mast high, with the stars
+inverted. Then we searched for fresh water, and found three iron tanks
+nearly full in the after-hold. The water stunk with keeping, as though
+it had grown rank in the bilge, but after it had stood a little while
+exposed to air it became sweet enough to use. There was no fear then
+of our perishing from hunger and thirst whilst the whaler kept
+together. Our main and imminent danger lay in the sudden dissolution
+of the ice, or in the capsizal of the berg. It was our unhappy fortune
+that, numerous as were the cranes overhanging the whaler's side, we
+should not have found a boat left in one of them. Our only chance lay
+in a raft; but both Sweers and I, as sailors, shrank from the thought
+of such a means of escape. We might well guess that a raft would but
+prolong our lives in the midst of so wide a sea, by a few days, and
+perhaps by a few hours only, after subjecting us to every agony of
+despair and of expectation, and torturing us with God alone would know
+what privations.
+
+We thoroughly overhauled the forecastle of the vessel, but found
+nothing of interest. There were a few seamen's chests, some odds and
+ends of wearing apparel, and here and there a blanket in a bunk; but
+the crew in clearing out appeared to have carried off most of their
+effects with them. Of course we could only conjecture what they had
+done and how they had managed; but it was to be guessed that all the
+boats being gone the sailors had taken advantage of a split in the ice
+to get away from their hard and fast ship, employing all their boats
+that they might carry with them a plentiful store of water and
+provisions.
+
+I should but weary you to dwell day by day upon the passage of time
+that Sweers and I passed upon this ship that we had seen upon the ice.
+We kept an eager look-out for craft, crawling to the mastheads so as
+to obtain a view over the blocks of ice which lay in masses at the
+stem and stern of the whaler. But though we often caught sight of a
+distant sail, nothing ever approached us close enough to observe our
+signal. Once, indeed, a large steamer passed within a couple of miles
+of the iceberg, and we watched her with devouring eyes, forever
+imagining that she was slowing down and about to stop, until she
+vanished out of our sight past the north end of the berg. Yet, we had
+no other hope of rescue than that of being taken off by a passing
+ship.
+
+I never recollect meeting at sea with such a variety of weather as we
+encountered. There would be clear sunshine and bright blue skies for a
+day, followed by dark and bellowing nights of storm. Then would come
+periods of thick fogs, followed by squalls, variable winds, and so on.
+We guessed, however, that our trend was steadily southwards, by the
+steady cascading of the ice, by the frequent falls of large blocks,
+and by the increasing noises of sudden, tremendous disruptions, loud
+and heart-subduing as thundershocks heard close to.
+
+"If we aren't taken off," said Sweers to me one day, "there's just
+this one chance for us. The ice is bound to melt. All these bergs, as
+I reckon, disappear somewhere to the nor'ard of the verge of the Gulf
+Stream. Well, now the Lord may be good to us, and it may happen that
+this berg'll melt away and leave the whaler afloat; and float she must
+if she isn't crushed by the ice. Let her leak like a sieve--there's
+oil enough in her to keep her standing upright as though she were a
+line-of-battle ship."
+
+Well, we had been a little more than a fortnight upon this ship hard
+and fast upon the ice. Many a vessel had we sighted, but never a one
+of them, saving the steamer I have mentioned, had approached within
+eyeshot of our distress signal. Yet our health was good, and our
+spirits tolerably easy; we had fared well, there was no lack of food
+and drink, and we were beginning to feel some confidence in the
+iceberg--by which I mean to say that the rapid thawing of its upper
+parts, where all the weight was, filled us with the hope that the mass
+wouldn't capsize as we had feared; that it would hold together so as
+to keep the ship on end as she now was until we were rescued, or,
+failing our being rescued, that it would dissolve in such a way as to
+leave the whaler afloat.
+
+It was somewhere about the end of a fortnight, as I have said. My bed
+was a cabin locker, on which I had placed a mattress and a bear-skin.
+Both Sweers and I turned in of a night, unless it was clear weather;
+though if I awoke I'd sometimes steal on deck to take a peep, for
+nothing could come of our keeping a look-out if it was blowing hard,
+and if it was black and thick.
+
+This night it was a bit muddy and dark, with a moderate breeze out of
+the south-west, as far as we could guess at the bearings of the wind.
+I was awakened from a deep slumber by an extraordinary convulsion in
+the ship. I was half-stupefied with sleep, and can therefore but
+imperfectly recall my sensations and the character of what I may term
+the throes and spasms of the vessel. I was thrown from the locker and
+lay for some moments incapable of rising by the shock of the fall. But
+one thing my senses, even when they were scarce yet awake, took note
+of, and that was a prodigious roaring noise, similar in effect to what
+might be produced by a cannon-ball rolling along a hollow wooden
+floor, only that the noise was thousands of times greater than ever
+could have been produced by a cannon-ball. The lamp was out, and the
+cabin in pitch blackness. I heard Sweers from some corner of the
+cabin, bawling out my name; but before I could answer, and even whilst
+I was staggering to my feet, a second convulsion threw me down again;
+the next instant there was a sensation as of the vessel being hove up
+into the air, attended by an extraordinary grinding noise, that
+thrilled through every beam of her; next, in the space of a few beats
+of the heart, she plunged into the sea, raising such a boiling and
+roaring of waters, as, spite of the sounds being dulled to our ears by
+our being in the cabin, persuaded us that the vessel was foundering.
+
+But even whilst I thus thought, holding my breath and waiting for the
+death that was to come with the pouring of the water down the open
+companion-way, I felt the ship right; she lifted buoyant under foot,
+and I sprang to the steps which conducted on deck, with Sweers--as I
+might know by his voice--close at my heels, roaring out, "By tunder,
+we're adrift and afloat!"
+
+The stars were shining, there was a red moon low in the west, the
+weather had cleared, and a quiet wind was blowing. At the distance of
+some hundred yards from the ship stood a few pallid masses--the
+remains of the berg. It was just possible to make out that the water
+in the neighbourhood of those dim heaps was covered with fragments of
+ice. How the liberation of the ship had come about neither Sweers nor
+I did then pause to consider. We were sailors, and our first business
+was to act as sailors, and as quickly as might be we loosed and
+hoisted the jib and foretopmast staysail, so that the vessel might
+blow away from the neighbourhood of the dangerous remains of her jail
+of ice. We then sounded the well, and, finding no water, went to work
+to loose the foresail and foretopsail, which canvas we made shift to
+set with the aid of the capstan. I then lighted the binnacle lamp
+whilst Sweers held the wheel; and having sounded the well afresh, to
+make sure of the hull, we headed away to the eastwards, the wind being
+about W.S.W.
+
+Before the dawn broke we had run the ice out of sight. Sweers and I
+managed, as I have no doubt, to arrive at the theory of the liberation
+of the ship by comparing our sensations and experiences. There can be
+no question that the berg had split in twain almost amidships. This
+was the cause of the tremendous noise of thunder which I heard. The
+splitting of the ice had hoisted the shelf or beach on which the
+barque lay, and occasioned that sensation of flying into the air which
+I had noticed. But the lifting of the beach of ice had also violently
+and sharply sloped it, and the barque, freeing herself, had fled down
+it broadside on, taking the water with a mighty souse and crash, then
+rising buoyant, and lifting and falling upon the seas as we had both
+of us felt her do.
+
+And now to bring this queer yarn to a close, for I have no space to
+dwell upon our thankfulness and our proceedings until we obtained the
+help we stood in need of. We managed to handle the barque without
+assistance for three days, then fell in with an American ship bound to
+Liverpool, who lent us three of her men, and within three weeks of the
+date of our release from the iceberg we were in soundings in the Chops
+of the Channel, and a few days later had safely brought the barque to
+an anchor in the river Thames.
+
+The adventure yielded Sweers and I a thousand pounds apiece as salvage
+money, but we were kept waiting a long time before receiving our just
+reward. It was necessary to communicate with the owners of the barque
+in America, and then the lawyers got hold of the job, and I grew so
+weary of interviews, so vexed and sickened by needless correspondence,
+that I should have been thankful to have taken two hundred pounds for
+my share merely to have made an end.
+
+It seems that the _President_ had been abandoned two years and five
+months by her crew before the _Lightning_ sighted her on the ice. Her
+people had stuck to her for eight months, then made off in a body with
+the boats, carrying their captain and mates along with them. They
+regarded the situation of their ship as hopeless, and indeed, as it
+turned out, they were not very wrong, so far as their notions of
+reasonable detention went; for they never could have liberated the
+vessel by their own efforts; they must have waited, as we had, for the
+ice to free her; and this would have signified to them an imprisonment
+of two years and a half over and above the eight months they had
+already spent in her whilst ice-bound.
+
+Sweers gave up the sea, started in business, and died, about ten years
+since, a fairly well-to-do man. And shall I tell you what I did with
+my thousand pounds? ... But my story has already run to greater length
+than I had intended when sitting down to write it.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
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