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Overdue
The Story of a Missing Ship
By Harry Collingwood
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Another very well-written book by Collingwood. As he was a naval
architect you can rely upon his descriptions of the deck and sails of a
vessel of the mid nineteenth century, the period of which he writes.
Our hero, the 17-year-old midshipman of the Salamis, is suddenly given
the job of going aboard and taking command of the Mercury, an emigrant
ship that they find drifting in mid-ocean, all her officers having died
in various accidents, and the illiterate bosun and the ship's carpenter
knowing full well that they had no idea how to navigate. He takes
charge and all appears to be going well, when-- But I will not spoil a
good story for you.
Full of events, and seamen's humour, this books makes a good audiobook,
and you will enjoy it.
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OVERDUE
THE STORY OF A MISSING SHIP
BY HARRY COLLINGWOOD
CHAPTER ONE.
THE "MERCURY" APPEARS.
This is a yarn of the days when the clipper sailing-ship was at the
zenith of her glory and renown; when she was the recognised medium for
the transport of passengers--ay, and, very frequently, of mails between
Great Britain and the Colonies; and when steamers were, comparatively
speaking, rare objects on the high seas. True, a few of the great
steamship lines, such as the Cunard and the Peninsular and Oriental,
were already in existence; but their fleets were only just beginning to
compete, and with but a very limited measure of success, against the
superb specimens of marine architecture owned by the Black Ball and
other famous lines of sailing clippers. For the Suez Canal had not yet
been dug, and--apart from the overland journeys to India--travellers
bound to the East were compelled to go south-about round the Cape of
Good Hope, whether they journeyed by steamer or by sailing-ship; and it
was no very uncommon thing for the latter to beat the former on the
passage to India, China, or Australia. Moreover, the marine steam
engine was, at that period, a very expensive piece of machinery to
operate, developing only a very moderate amount of power upon an
exceedingly heavy consumption of coal; hence it was only the nabobs who
could afford to indulge in the then costly luxury of ocean travel by
steam.
The occurrence which I regard as the starting-point of my extraordinary
yarn happened on the 27th day of October, in the year of grace 18--; the
_Salamis_--which was the ship in which it originated--being, at noon of
that day, in latitude 30 degrees south, and longitude 23 degrees west,
or thereabout; thirty days out from London, on a voyage to Melbourne.
The _Salamis_, I may explain, was a full-rigged clipper ship of 1497
tons register, classed 100 A 1; being one of the crack vessels of the
celebrated Gold Star Line, outward bound to Melbourne, as I have said,
with a full complement of saloon and steerage passengers, and a general
cargo that, while it filled her to the hatches, was so largely composed
of light merchandise that it only sank her in the water to her very
finest sailing trim; of which circumstance Captain Martin, her
commander, was taking the fullest possible advantage, by "carrying on"
day and night, in the hope of making a record passage. I, Philip
Troubridge, was one of her midshipman-apprentices, of whom she carried
six, and I was seventeen years of age on the day when the occurrence
happened which I have alluded to above, and which I will now relate.
The _Salamis_ carried three mates: chief, second, and third; and the
accident happened in the first watch, when Mr Moore, the second mate,
had charge of the deck. The wind was out from about nor'-nor'-west, and
had been blowing very fresh all day, notwithstanding which the ship was
under all three royals, and fore and main topgallant studdingsails, her
course being south-east. There was a heavy and steep sea following the
ship on her port quarter, which not only made her motions exceedingly
uneasy, but also caused her to yaw wildly from time to time, despite the
utmost efforts of two men at the wheel to keep her true to her course.
It was during one of these wild sheers that the main topgallant
studdingsail-boom snapped short off by the boom-iron; and there was
immediately a tremendous hullabaloo aloft of madly slatting canvas and
threshing boom, as the studdingsail flapped furiously in the freshening
breeze, momentarily threatening to spring the topgallant yard, if,
indeed, it did not whip the topgallant-mast out of the ship. Then
something fouled aloft, rendering it impossible to take in the sail;
and, the skipper being on deck and manifesting some impatience at what
he conceived to be the clumsiness of the men who had gone up on the
topsail yard, Mr Moore, the second mate, sprang into the main rigging
and went aloft to lend a hand. Just precisely what happened nobody ever
knew; one of the men aloft said that the broken boom, in its wild
threshing, struck the mate and knocked him off the yard; but, be that as
it may, one thing certain is, that the poor fellow suddenly went
whirling down, and, without a cry, fell into the boiling smother raised
by the bow wave, and was never seen again! I happened to be on the poop
at the moment, and, despite the darkness, saw the falling body of the
mate just as it flashed down into the water, and guessed what had
happened even before the thrilling cry of "Man overboard!" came pealing-
down from aloft. I therefore made a dash for one of the lifebuoys that
were stopped to the poop rail, cut it adrift, and hove it, as nearly as
I could guess, at the spot where the mate had disappeared, while one of
the men on the forecastle, anticipating the skipper's order, called all
hands to shorten sail. The whole ship was of course instantly in a
tremendous commotion, fore and aft. The rest of the studdingsails were
taken in as quickly as possible, the royals and topgallantsails were
clewed up, a reef was taken in the topsails, and the ship was brought to
the wind and worked back, as nearly as could be, to the spot where the
accident had happened, and a boat was lowered. Although the skipper had
displayed such nice judgment in determining the precise spot where the
search should begin, that the crew of the boat dispatched to search for
the mate actually found and recovered the lifebuoy that I had thrown, no
sign of the lost man was ever discovered. The assumption was that he
had been stunned by the blow that had knocked him overboard, and had
sunk at once. This occurrence cast a gloom over the ship for several
days; for poor Moore was probably the most popular man in the ship,
highly esteemed by the passengers, and as nearly beloved by the crew as
one of the afterguard can ever reasonably hope to be. The skipper, in
particular, took the loss of this very promising officer deeply to
heart, not only because of the esteem in which he held him, but also, I
fancy, because he was worried by the conviction that the accident was
very largely due to his own propensity to "carry on" rather too
recklessly.
On the ninth day after this unfortunate occurrence, and on our thirty-
ninth day out from London, we found ourselves in the longitude of the
Cape of Good Hope, and in latitude 37 degrees 20 minutes south, with a
whole gale of wind chasing us, which blew us into latitude 39 degrees
south, and longitude 60 degrees east before it left us, ten days later,
stark becalmed. The calm, however, lasted but a few hours, and was
succeeded by a light northerly breeze, under the impulse of which, with
all plain sail set, the _Salamis_ could barely log six knots to the
hour. This lasted all night, and all the next day; but before that day
had sped, the second incident occurred, that resulted in plumping me
into the adventure which is the subject of this yarn.
The heavy sea which had been kicked up by the gale subsided with
extraordinary rapidity, and when I went on duty at eight bells (eight
o'clock) on this particular morning the weather was everything that the
most fastidious person could possibly desire, saving that the sun struck
along the weather side of the deck--when he squinted at us past the
weather leach of the mainsail as the ship rolled gently to the heave of
the swell--with a fierceness that threatened a roasting hot day, what
time he should have worked his way a point or two farther round to the
nor'ard. The swell which lingered, to remind us of the recent breeze,
was subsiding fast, and the ocean presented one vast surface of long,
solemn-sweeping undulations of the deepest, purest sapphire, gently
ruffled by the breathing of the languid breeze, and ablaze in the wake
of the sun with a dazzle that brought tears to the eye that attempted to
gaze upon it. The ship's morning toilet had been completed, and the
decks, darkened by the sluicing to which they had been lavishly
subjected by the acting second mate and his watch, were drying fast and
recovering their sand-white colour in the process. The brasswork,
freshly scoured and polished, and the glass of the skylights, shot out a
thousand flashes of white fire, where the sun's rays searched out the
glittering surfaces as the ship rolled. The awning had already been
spread upon the poop, in readiness for the advent of those energetic
occupants of the cuddy who made a point of promenading for half an hour
in order to generate an appetite for breakfast; the running gear had all
been bowsed taut and neatly coiled down; and the canvas, from which the
dew had already evaporated, soared aloft toward the deep, rich azure of
the zenith in great, gleaming, milk-white cloths of so soft, so tender,
so ethereal an aspect, that one would scarcely have been surprised to
see the skysails dissolve in vapour and go drifting away to leeward upon
the languid breeze. The main deck was lively with the coming and going
of the steerage passengers as they went to the galley to fetch their
breakfast; and there must have been between twenty and thirty children
chasing each other fore and aft, and dodging round their elders in their
play, filling the rich, sweet, morning air with the music of their
voices. There was a soft, seething sound over the side as the ship slid
gently along, accompanied by a constant iridescent gleam and flash of
the tiny bubbles that slipped along the bends and vanished at last in
the smooth, oil-like wake with its tiny whirlpools; and at frequent
intervals a shoal of flying-fish would spark out from under the bows and
go skimming and glittering away to port or starboard, like a shower of
brand-new silver dollars hove broadcast by the hand of old Father
Neptune himself. The cuddy breakfast was fairly under way, and a great
clattering of cups and saucers, knives and forks, and the hum of lively
conversation, accompanied by sundry savoury odours, came floating up
through the open skylights, when the chief mate's eye happened to be
attracted toward a gasket, streaming loose like an Irish pennant from
the fore topgallant yard, and he sang out to one of the ordinary seamen
to jump aloft and put it right. The fellow made his way up the ratlines
with extreme deliberation--for, indeed, a journey aloft in such
scorching heat was no joke--made up the loose gasket, and was in the
very act of swinging himself off the yard when, happening to be watching
him, I saw him suddenly pause and stiffen into an attitude of attention
as, holding on to the jackstay with one hand, he flung the other up to
his forehead and peered ahead under the sharp of it. For a full minute
he stood thus; then, twisting his body until he faced aft, he hailed:
"On deck there!"
"Hillo!" answered the mate.
"There's a biggish ship away out yonder, sir," reported the man, "under
her three taups'ls and fore topmast staysail; and by the way that she
comes to and falls off again I'd say that she was hove-to."
"How far off is she?" demanded the mate.
"'Bout a dozen mile, I reckon, sir," answered the man.
"Um!" remarked the mate, as much to himself as to me, it seemed. "She
is probably a whaler on the lookout for `fish'. I believe they
sometimes meet with rare streaks of luck just about here. All right,"
he added, hailing the man aloft; "you can come down."
Shortly afterward we made out the stranger's upper spars from the deck;
and from the rapidity with which we raised them it soon became apparent
that, if she had really been hove-to when first seen, she had soon
filled away, and was now standing in our direction. By five bells she
was hull-up; and while the skipper and mate were standing together
eyeing her from the break of the poop--the latter with the ship's
telescope at his eye--I saw the ensign of the stranger float out over
her rail and go creeping up to her gaff-end.
"There goes her ensign, sir," I shouted to the mate, who responded by
remarking dryly:
"Yes; I see it." Then, turning to the skipper, he said:
"There's something wrong aboard that craft, sir; they've just hoisted
their ensign, jack downward!" This, it may be explained to the
uninitiated, is a signal of distress.
"The dickens they have!" exclaimed the skipper. "Just let me have a
look at her, Mr Bryce."
The mate handed over the telescope, and the skipper raised it to his
eye, adjusting the focus to his sight.
"Ay, you are quite right," he agreed, with his eye still peering through
the tube. "The jack's downward, right enough. Wonder what's wrong
aboard of her? her hull and spars seem to be all right, and I don't see
any water pouring from her scuppers, as there would be if she had sprung
a leak and the hands were working at the pumps. Well, we shall soon
know, I suppose. Let our own ensign be hoisted in acknowledgment, Mr
Bryce."
"Ay, ay, sir," answered the mate. "Troubridge,"--to me--"jump aft and
run our ensign up to the peak, will ye?"
I went aft to the flag locker, drew out the big ensign, bent it on to
the halyards, and ran it up to the gaff-end, where there was just wind
enough to blow it out and make it distinguishable for what it was.
The news that the stranger in sight was flying a signal of distress soon
spread among the passengers, and in a few minutes every telescope in the
cuddy was upon the poop and being eagerly focused upon the approaching
vessel, which had by this time revealed herself as a full-rigged ship of
some 800 tons measurement, of wholesome, motherly build, but certainly
not a whaler, as could be seen by the model of the boats which she
carried, and by the absence of certain characteristics which proclaim
the whaler, and are apparent almost from the moment when she heaves into
full view. There was, naturally, a vast amount of speculation, not only
on the part of the skipper and mate, but also among our passengers, as
to the precise character of her distress; but probably not one of us
came anywhere near guessing at its extraordinary nature.
Approaching each other, as the two vessels were, it did not take us very
long to close with the stranger; and as we drew near to her it became
apparent that her people were preparing to lower a boat. At the proper
moment, therefore, our mainyard was laid aback, the stranger followed
suit, and a minute or two later the two craft came to a stand abreast of
each other, the stranger about a hundred fathoms to windward of us, near
enough, indeed, for us to read with the unaided eye the name _Mercury_
upon her head-boards. Then one of her two port quarter boats was
lowered and hauled to the gangway, and with three men pulling, and one
in the stern-sheets grasping the yoke lines, she shoved off and pulled
away towards us, the mate hailing them to come to the lee gangway, where
a side ladder had been dropped over for their use. Her main deck was
crowded with people--men and women--all hanging over the rail and
staring at us with that idle curiosity which is so characteristic of the
uneducated classes. Mr Bryce at once unhesitatingly pronounced them to
be emigrants, an opinion which the skipper as unhesitatingly endorsed.
The men in the approaching boat were all forecastle hands, the one
steering having the appearance of being either the boatswain or the
carpenter of the ship, and this it was that gave me--and no doubt the
skipper and mate also--the first specific hint of what was actually
wrong aboard the stranger. Nothing, however, was said; and presently,
when the boat came rounding under our stern, Captain Martin and Mr
Bryce descended to the main deck and awaited our visitors at the
gangway, our own steerage passengers, who had crowded the lee rail to
see the strange boat come alongside, respectfully making way for them.
One only of the boat's crew--the man in the stern-sheets--ventured to
come on deck, the other three staring up at the heads peering down at
them from our rail, without saying a word in reply to the multitude of
questions that were fired into them, beyond remarking that "the bo'sun
will tell your skipper all about it."
The boatswain of the _Mercury_--for such the newcomer proved to be--
passed through our gangway, pulled off the knitted woollen cap which
decorated his head, and at once addressed himself to the skipper.
"Mornin', sir," he remarked. "My name's Polson--James Polson, and I'm
bo'sun of the _Mercury_, which ship you see hove-to yonder,"--with a
flourish of his hand in the direction of the vessel named.
"Yes?" said the skipper enquiringly, as the man paused, apparently
waiting to be questioned after this introduction of himself. "I see you
have a signal of distress flying. What's wrong with you?"
"Well, the fact is, sir, as we've lost our cap'n and both mates--"
answered the man, when the skipper struck in amazedly:
"Lost your captain and both mates! How in the name of Fortune did that
happen?"
"Well, sir, you see it was this way," was the reply. "When we'd been
out about a week--we're from Liverpool, bound to Sydney, New South
Wales, with a general cargo and two hundred emigrants--ninety-seven days
out--when we'd been out about a week, or thereabouts--I ain't certain to
a day or two, but it's all wrote down in the log--Cap'n Somers were
found dead in his bunk by the steward what took him in a cup o' coffee
every mornin' at six bells; and Mr Townsend--that were our chief mate--
he took command o' the ship. Then nothin' partic'lar happened until we
was well this side o' the Line, when one day, when all hands of us was
shortenin' sail to a heavy squall as had bust upon us, Jim Tarbutt, a
hordinary seaman, comin' down off the main tops'l yard by way o' the
backstays, lets go his hold and drops slap on top o' Mr Townsend, what
happened to be standin' underneath, and, instead of hurtin' of hisself,
broke t'other man's neck and killed him dead on the spot! Then,"
continued Polson, regardless of the ejaculations of astonishment and
commiseration evoked by the recital of this extraordinary accident,
"then Mr Masterman, what were origin'lly our second mate, he up and
took charge, and navigated us to somewheres about where we are now. But
four nights ago come last night--yes, that's right, it were four nights
ago--'bout three bells in the middle watch, while it were blowin' hard
from the west'ard and we were runnin' under single-reefed topsails, with
a very heavy sea chasin' of us, the night bein' dark and thick with
rain, somebody comes rushin' out of the poop cabin yellin' like mad,
and, afore anybody could stop him, sprang on to the lee rail, just the
fore side of the main riggin', and takes a header overboard!" More
exclamations of astonishment from the listeners, amid which Polson
triumphantly concluded his gruesome narrative by adding: "Of course we
couldn't do nothin', and so the poor feller were lost. And when Chips
and I comed to investigate we found that the unfortunit man were Mr
Masterman, he bein' the only one that was missin'!"
"Well!" ejaculated the skipper, addressing himself to Mr Moore, our
chief mate; "I've heard a good many queer yarns in my time, of maritime
accident and disaster, but this one tops the lot. The captain and both
mates lost in the same voyage, and, so far as the two last are
concerned, by such queer accidents too! Did you,"--turning to
Polson--"find anything in Mr--what's his name!--Masterman's cabin to
account for his extraordinary behaviour in rushing out on deck and
jumping overboard in the middle of the night?"
"No, sir," answered Polson with much simplicity. "He'd been drinkin' a
goodish bit, and there were a half-empty bottle of rum under his piller;
but--"
"A-ah!" ejaculated the skipper with a whole world of emphasis; "that may
account for a good deal. Well, what happened next?"
"Oh, nothin' else haven't happened, thank God!" exclaimed the boatswain
piously. "But ain't that what I've already told ye quite enough, sir?
What's made it so terrible awk'ard for all hands of us is that we're now
without a navigator, and have lost our reckonin'. So, after Chips and I
had confabulated a bit, we comed to the conclusion that, knowin' as we
was well in the track of ships bound to the east'ard, the best thing we
could do was to heave-to and wait until somethin' comed along that could
spare us somebody to navigate the ship for us to Sydney. Chips and I
are men enough to take care of her--to know when to make and when to
shorten sail--but we don't know nothin' about navigation, ye see, sir."
"Ay, I see," answered the skipper. "Well, I think you acted very
wisely, boatswain, in heaving-to; I don't know that you could have done
anything better, under the circumstances. But, as to sparing an officer
to navigate you--I have had the misfortune to lose one of my own mates
this voyage, and,"--here his eye happened to fall on me, and he
considered me attentively for several seconds, as though he felt he had
seen me before somewhere, and was trying to remember who I was. Then
his countenance lit up as an idea seemed to strike him, and he addressed
me briskly:
"What d'ye say, Troubridge? You've heard this man's yarn, and
understand the fix that they're in aboard the ship yonder. You are a
perfectly reliable navigator, and a very fair seaman; moreover, the
boatswain says that he and the carpenter are seamen enough to take care
of the ship, which I do not for a moment doubt. Do you feel inclined to
undertake the job of navigating the _Mercury_ from here to Sydney? It
ought to be a very good thing for you, you know. I have no doubt that
the owners--"
I did not wait for him to finish; I knew enough to understand perfectly
well what a splendid thing it would be for me, from a professional point
of view, if I should succeed in safely navigating such a ship as the
_Mercury_ to Sydney; and I had no shadow of doubt of my ability to do
so; I therefore cut in by eagerly expressing my readiness to undertake
the task.
"Then that is all right," remarked the skipper.
Turning to Polson, he said: "This young gentleman is Mr Philip
Troubridge, one of my midshipman-apprentices. He has been with me for a
matter of three years; and he is, as you just now heard me say, an
excellent navigator, and a very good seaman. I have not the least doubt
that he will serve your purpose quite as well as anyone else that you
are at all likely to pick up; and if you care to have him I shall be
pleased to spare him to you. But that is the best that I can do for
you; as I told you, a little while ago, I have lost one of my mates--"
"Say no more, sir; say no more," interrupted Polson. "Your
recommendation's quite sufficient to satisfy me that Mr--er--
Troubridge'll do very well; an' since he's willin' to come with us we'll
have him most gratefully, sir, and with many thanks to you for sparin'
of him to us."
"Very well, then; that is settled," exclaimed the skipper briskly.
Then, turning to me, he said:
"Cut away at once, Troubridge, and get your chest over the side as
quickly as possible. If you are smart you may get aboard your new ship
in time to take an observation at noon and check your own reckoning by
ours." Then, as I rushed off to the after-house, where we apprentices
were berthed, he turned to Polson and proceeded to question him further
relative to the extraordinary series of fatalities that had occurred on
board the _Mercury_.
CHAPTER TWO.
THE SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS.
It took me less than ten minutes to bundle my traps into the waiting
boat alongside; and then, having already said goodbye to my shipmates in
the apprentices' berth, I stepped up to the skipper and chief mate to
say the same, and to thank the former for giving me this splendid
chance. He was very kind in bidding me farewell; told me I had given
him every satisfaction while I had been with him; gave me a few words of
caution and advice; and wound up by saying:
"The boatswain, here, tells me that the chronometer aboard the _Mercury_
has unfortunately been allowed to run down; when, therefore, you get
aboard, and have taken your meridian altitude, you had better wind the
chronometer and then set it to Greenwich time, which I will give you;
after which you should experience no difficulty in finding your way to
Sydney, to which port I wish you a prosperous and pleasant voyage. Of
course I quite reckon upon arriving two or three weeks ahead of you; but
unless you have an exceptionally protracted passage you ought to arrive
in good time to return home with us. Unless, therefore, the _Mercury's_
agent in Sydney wishes you to return to England in the ship, you had
better make your way to Melbourne as soon as you have settled up, and go
back with us."
I thanked him for the kindly send-off that he was giving me, and then,
after a final shake of the hand, followed Polson down the side, seated
myself in the stern-sheets, and--the boatswain pulling stroke while the
other three oarsmen shifted one thwart forward--shoved off, the crew and
passengers of the _Salamis_ giving me a little cheer to speed me on my
way. The cheer was at once vociferously responded to by the people
crowding the _Mercury's_ rail. No doubt they were greatly relieved at
the thought that there was to be no more aimless drifting about the
ocean for them, but that at last they were to find themselves again
heading intelligently toward their port of destination.
By the time that I had arrived alongside the _Mercury_ and mounted to
her deck it was getting so close toward noon, that I had only barely
time enough to get my traps out of the boat before the moment arrived
when I must get to work with my sextant to secure the sun's meridian
altitude, from which to deduce the ship's latitude. Then there was an
even more important job to be done, namely, to start and set the
chronometer; therefore, as soon as I had secured my meridian altitude
and made it noon aboard the _Mercury_, we wore ship, and coming up
alongside the _Salamis_--that lay patiently waiting for us with her main
topsail aback--obtained the correct Greenwich time and set our
chronometer to it. This done, Captain Martin swung his mainyard and
made sail, and we followed suit as quickly as we could. Then I worked
out my observations, pricked off the ship's position on the chart, wrote
up the log, and took possession of the late captain's stateroom, by
which time dinner was on the cabin table, and I sat down to my first
meal on board the _Mercury_. The food, of course, was not quite so
luxurious as that served up on the cuddy tables aboard the _Salamis_,
but it was a long way better than what I had been accustomed to get in
the apprentices' berth, and I appreciated the change accordingly.
At the conclusion of the meal, at which Polson joined me, uninvited,
while the carpenter stumped the poop as officer of the watch, I went on
deck to have a good look at my first command; and, on the whole, was
very pleased with her. She was a big ship for her tonnage, having
evidently been constructed with an eye to ample cargo stowage rather
than speed; consequently she was inclined to be bluff in the bows and
full in the run; yet when I looked ahead and saw that the _Salamis_ had
only drawn ahead of us by about a mile during the half-hour or so that I
had been below, I was by no means dissatisfied. She was evidently an
elderly ship, for everything about her in the way of fittings and
equipment was old-fashioned; but she was as strong as oak and iron could
make her, her scantling being nearly twice as heavy as that of the
_Salamis_. Her bulwarks were almost as high and solid as those of a
frigate, and she was pierced to mount seven guns of a side, but no
longer carried any artillery on her decks excepting two brass six-
pounders for the purpose of signalling. She was very loftily and
solidly rigged, and it did not take me long to ascertain that she had
been most liberally maintained, much of her rigging, both standing and
running, being new, while her ground tackle was ponderous enough to hold
a ship of double her size. "Not much chance," thought I, "of this old
barkie dragging her anchors home and driving ashore in anything short of
a hurricane!" She carried a full poop, the break of which came so far
forward that there was scarcely room to pass comfortably between the
foot of the poop ladders and the combing of the after hatch. The poop
cabin was a very spacious affair, extending, for the greater part of its
length, to the full width of the ship, and it was most comfortably
fitted up, although, as might be expected, it lacked the luxurious
finish of the _Salamis'_ cuddy. It looked as though it might at one
time have been fitted with staterooms on either side for the
accommodation of saloon passengers; but, if so, they had all been
removed, save two at the fore and two at the after end of the cabin.
And even these were now unoccupied, the boatswain and carpenter
occupying the staterooms at the fore end of the structure, in which the
chief and second mate had originally been berthed.
The captain's cabin was abaft the saloon, in the extreme after end of
the ship, and was an unusually commodious and airy apartment, extending
the entire width of the ship, and splendidly lighted and ventilated by a
whole range of large stern windows. There was a fine, roomy, standing
bed-place on the starboard side, with a splendid chest of drawers under
it; a washstand and dressing-table at the foot of it; a large and well-
stocked bookcase on the port side; a chart rack occupied the whole of
the fore bulkhead; the floor or deck of the cabin was covered with a
handsome Turkey carpet; and a mahogany table, big enough to accommodate
a large chart, stood in the middle of the apartment. This was where I
was to sleep, and to spend in privacy as much of my waking time as I
chose. "Truly," thought I, "this is an agreeable change from my cramped
quarters aboard the _Salamis_!"
Having completed the establishment of myself in this luxurious cabin, by
turning out my chest and hanging up such of my clothes as I was likely
to want immediately, and so on, I went on deck again, where the
carpenter, who told me that his name was Tudsbery--"Josiah Tudsbery,
your honour, sir,"--was on duty, and requested him to conduct me below
to the emigrants' quarters, which, I found, occupied the whole of the
'tween-decks. Here again the liberality of the ship's owners became
manifest, for the whole fitting up of the place was vastly superior to
what was at that time considered good enough accommodation for
emigrants; the married quarters consisting of a number of quite
comfortable and roomy cabins; while the spaces allotted to the
accommodation of the single men and women ensured to their occupants
such complete privacy as was deemed quite unnecessary in those days. I
found that it was the duty of the emigrants to keep their own quarters
clean, and this seemed to have been somewhat neglected of late. I
therefore gave orders that all hands should at once turn-to and give the
'tween-decks a thorough cleansing, in readiness for another inspection
by myself at eight bells in the afternoon watch.
The emigrants aboard the _Mercury_ numbered two hundred all told; namely
thirty-three married couples, twenty-eight unmarried women, forty-two
unmarried men, and sixty-four children, of whom one--a sweet, good-
tempered baby girl--had been born during the voyage. They, the
emigrants, seemed to be a very mixed lot, ranging from clod-hopping,
agricultural labourers, whose intelligence seemed insufficient to enable
them to appreciate the wonder of a flying-fish or the beauty of a
golden, crimson, and purple sunset, to individuals of so refined and
intellectual an appearance and so polished a behaviour, that the fact of
their being 'tween-deck passengers seemed nothing short of a grotesque
incongruity.
When I went below again, at eight bells, to inspect the emigrants'
quarters, I found them sweet, clean, and altogether very much more
wholesome than they had been upon the occasion of my first visit, and I
expressed my gratification at the change, hinting pretty strongly that I
should expect the place to be maintained in that condition for the
remainder of the voyage; at which remark one of the occupants--a pale,
delicate-looking girl--exclaimed:
"Oh, sir, I only hope that you will insist upon that! Some of the
people here--especially the men--are shockingly lazy, and would never do
a hand's turn of work if they were not made to."
"I am much obliged to you for the hint," said I. "I will find out the
identity of those especially lazy ones, and see if I cannot imbue them
with a good wholesome hatred of idleness before we arrive in the land,
where those who won't work must starve."
By sunset that night the _Salamis_ had slid so far ahead of us that only
the heads of her courses were visible above the horizon; and with
nightfall we saw the last of her that we were destined to see during
that voyage.
I suppose it was only natural that I, a lad of barely seventeen years of
age, should be full of business, and importance, and anxiety, for a few
hours at least, upon finding myself thus unexpectedly placed in a
position of such tremendous responsibility as was involved in the
navigation, and therefore, to a large extent, the safety of this fine,
wholesome old ship with her two hundred passengers, her crew of thirty,
and her valuable cargo. At all events, that was the condition of mind
in which I found myself as I paced the spacious poop, hour after hour,
sometimes accompanied by Polson, sometimes conversing with Tudsbery, and
occasionally alone. As I walked, my glances travelled, with the
regularity of clockwork, first to windward, then ahead, then aloft, and
finally--as I reached the binnacle--into the compass bowl; then away out
to windward again, and so on, _ad infinitum_, until I was fairly bone-
weary, and had completely walked off all my anxiety--to say nothing of
my importance--and had convinced myself that I really might venture to
leave the ship for a few hours to the care of the boatswain and the
carpenter.
I have mentioned that, when bidding me farewell prior to my change over
from the _Salamis_ to the _Mercury_, Captain Martin was kind enough to
give me a word or two of caution and advice; and one of the bits of
advice which he most forcibly impressed upon me was that I should make a
point of sighting either Saint Paul or Amsterdam island on my way to the
eastward, and thus verify my reckoning. I recognised this as being a
counsel of wisdom, and determined to shape a course that would enable me
to sight both, they being only about fifty miles apart, and both
standing high. I therefore very carefully laid off the compass course
upon the chart, and found it to be south-east by east three-quarters
east, the distance being eight hundred and forty miles; and this course
I gave to the helmsman as soon as I had pricked it off and very
carefully verified it, while he passed it on to his relief, and so on.
But when I turned out at six bells the next morning I found, to my
disgust, that the wind had drawn round from the eastward and broken us
some four points off our course; while, to add to my vexation, the
boatswain and the carpenter--both of them illiterate men--had entered up
the log slate in such an extraordinary manner that, so far as the dead
reckoning was concerned, the information was not of the slightest use to
me. Fortunately for my peace of mind the atmosphere was clear, and I
was able to get sights during the forenoon which gave me the ship's
longitude; while, a little later on, a meridian altitude of the sun
fixed our latitude for us. Then, for nearly thirty hours, we found
ourselves enveloped in one of the densest fogs I ever experienced, with
light, baffling variable winds that made of our wake a continual zigzag,
winding up with three days of thoroughly foul weather--a whole gale of
wind from the north-east--during the greater part of which we lay hove-
to under close-reefed fore and main topsails, with our head to the
south-east. Then the weather cleared and moderated; the wind gradually
worked round, first to east, and then to south-east; and at length I
found the ship laying up, close-hauled under all plain sail, for the
spot where, according to my reckoning, Saint Paul ought to be. I was
now especially anxious to make that island, for the weather of the past
three or four days had been of such a character as to baffle the most
experienced of navigators, and I confess that I was beginning to feel
rather more than a trifle nervous. The island, however, hove into view
at the precise moment and in the precise quarter that it ought to do if
my reckoning happened to be correct; and this test and verification of
the accuracy of my working served to completely re-establish my
confidence in myself, so that, from that time onward, I never
experienced the least anxiety. I felt that so long as I could get
tolerably regular sights of the sun, moon, or stars I was not at all
likely to go wrong.
But before the island of Saint Paul had climbed up over the horizon that
stretched athwart our bows, I had become aware of a certain matter that,
while it struck me as being somewhat peculiar, seemed to bear no further
significance for me.
One of the first persons among the emigrant passengers aboard the
_Mercury_ to attract my attention was a tall, thin, long-haired, sickly-
looking man, of about thirty years of age, clad in a suit of rusty
black, whose appearance and manner generally suggested to me the idea
that he must be by profession a schoolmaster. There was a certain air
of exaggerated earnestness of demeanour about him, and a wildness of
expression in his flashing coal-black eyes, that caused me to set him
down as being somewhat crack-brained. His name, I soon ascertained, was
Algernon Marcus Wilde, and he was among the first of the emigrants to
speak to me. He came to me, on the morning after I joined the ship,
with a complaint as to the quality and quantity of the food served out
to the occupants of the 'tween-decks; and I was as much struck by the
correctness of his speech, as by the excessive indignation which he
infused into his manner, when stating the nature of his alleged
grievance. I pointed out to him the fact that, whatever the quality of
the food might be, I was certainly not responsible for it, nor, in the
event of its proving to be unsuitable, could I remedy the matter away
out there in mid-ocean; but I promised to investigate the affair, and to
do what might be possible to remove the grievance, should I find such to
exist--of which I had my doubts after my brief but highly satisfactory
experience of the viands served up in the cabin.
I accordingly requested the steward to produce the dietary list which
formed the basis of the agreement between the owners and the emigrants;
and, upon going through it, was certainly unable to find any just cause
for complaint, so far as quantity was concerned. The question of
quality was of course a different matter; but here again, when, a day or
two later, I unexpectedly examined the food as it was being served out
at the galley, I was quite unable to discover any legitimate cause for
complaint. On the contrary, the food, although plain, was as good as it
was possible to obtain in those times aboard a ship that had been at sea
a hundred days; and it was excellently prepared. When I sent for Wilde,
and asked him to state specifically what he found wrong with the food
that I had just examined, all he could say was that it was not so good
or so varied in character as that which he had seen from time to time
carried aft for use in the cabin; and that in his opinion no distinction
whatever ought to be made in the treatment of persons occupying
different parts of the ship; also that he considered I ought to give
instructions for the emigrants to be fed henceforth from the stores
provided for cabin use; nor would he be satisfied, although I pointed
out that he was getting the food that the owners had undertaken to
provide him with in exchange for his passage money. Of course to
attempt to argue with so unreasonable an individual was obviously
absurd, and I therefore dismissed him and thought nothing more about his
complaints.
This, however, was not the matter of which I have spoken as gradually
obtruding itself upon my attention, although, had I only been able to
guess it, the two were not unconnected. What I noticed, almost from the
first moment of boarding the _Mercury_, without attaching any particular
importance to it, was that this man Wilde and a few of the other male
emigrants were in the habit of spending practically the whole of the
second dogwatch--which, in fine weather at all events, is usually a
period of idleness and recreation for a ship's crew--on the forecastle-
head, smoking and chatting animatedly with the forecastle hands; while
at other times the ex-schoolmaster--as Wilde actually proved to be--
seemed eternally engaged in earnest discussion with his fellow
emigrants. I often wondered idly what the man could possibly find to
talk about so incessantly; but usually found a sufficiently satisfactory
explanation in the reflection that, being a man of education, he would
naturally take pleasure in extracting the ideas of others, and also
probably in correcting them according to his own notions. He was
evidently very fond of talking; and I frequently amused myself by
watching the impassioned earnestness and the eloquent gestures with
which he would hold forth upon the subject--whatever it might be--that
happened to be under discussion. I soon found that Polson and Tudsbery,
the boatswain and carpenter of the ship, apparently found more pleasure
in spending the second dogwatch on the forecastle with their shipmates
and the emigrants than they did in promenading the poop with me; but
this was not surprising, for not only were they both very illiterate
men, but it quickly became apparent that they and I had scarcely a
single interest or idea in common, and we were consequently often hard
put to it to find a topic of congenial conversation; indeed, in the
course of a few days, without the slightest ill-feeling on either side,
our communications became almost exclusively restricted to matters
connected with the business of the ship.
Looking back, from the summit of a matured experience, as I now can,
upon that first fortnight aboard the _Mercury_, I often feel astonished
that I never, for a single instant, caught the faintest premonition of
what was looming ahead; for I can recall plenty of hints and
suggestions, had I only been keen-sighted enough to observe them and
smart enough to read their significance; but I believe the fact to be
that at that time I had no room in my mind for any other thought than
that of the navigation of the ship. It is true that for more than a
year it had been part of my daily duty, as a midshipman-apprentice
qualifying for the position of officer, to take observations of the
various heavenly bodies simultaneously with those of Captain Martin and
the mates, to work them out independently, and to submit my calculations
to the skipper--who examined and returned them with such written
comments as he deemed called for--with the result that I had long since
become proficient in the science of navigation. But this was a very
different thing. If on board the _Salamis_ I had chanced to make a
mistake, the worst that could have happened would have been a sharp
rebuke from the skipper for my carelessness, and an equally sharp
injunction to be more careful in future; whereas now, aboard the
_Mercury_, if I happened to make a miscalculation, there was nobody to
correct it; and although subsequent observations might reveal the error,
and no actual harm arise from its committal so long as the ship was in
mid-ocean, a comparatively trivial mistake committed when the ship
happened to be in the vicinity of rocks, or shoals, or approaching land,
might easily make all the difference between perfect safety and her
total loss, together with that of all hands. Hence, during those early
days, when the sense of grave responsibility lay heavy upon my young
shoulders, I could think of nothing but more or less abstruse
astronomical problems.
CHAPTER THREE.
AN UNPLEASANT SURPRISE.
The revelation came upon me, with the stunning effect of a thunder-clap,
on the day upon which we made the island of Saint Paul. The weather
during the whole of the preceding day had been brilliantly fine, with a
light air of wind that, breathing out from the south-east at daybreak,
had gradually hauled round until by noon it had settled at south; so
that when I took my meridian altitude of the sun for the determination
of our latitude, the _Mercury_ was heading straight for the spot where
my calculations declared the island to be, with all plain sail set to
her royals, and with the weather bracer slightly checked.
Upon working out my meridian altitude I found the ship's latitude to be
38 degrees 43 minutes south and we were steering true east; consequently
if my calculations were accurate, we were at that moment on the exact
parallel of Saint Paul, which--also according to my calculations--then
lay in line with our jibboom, eighty miles distant. This result was
confirmed by a further observation of the sun taken in the course of the
afternoon watch; and a very simple calculation then informed me that, if
I had made no mistake, and there occurred no change in the direction or
strength of the wind, the island ought to be sighted, directly ahead,
fourteen miles distant, at dawn of the next day. This anticipation I
communicated, in my anxiety, to Polson and Tudsbery, the former of whom
remarked:
"Well, Mr Troubridge, we shan't have very long to wait afore we're able
to prove the haccuracy of your calculations; but let me tell ye this,
sir--if you're able to hit off that there bit of a hiland anywhere near
as close as you hopes to, a'ter all the box-haulin' about, breakin' off,
heavin'-to, and driftin' to leeward that we've had these here last few
days--well, all I can say is that you're a good enough navigator to take
a ship anywhere, ay, if 'twas round the world and back."
"Y-e-es," said I, flattered a bit off my balance by the fulsome
character of the compliment, "there will not be much fault to find, I
fancy, after the traverse that we have been working. By the way,
Polson, have you ever sighted Saint Paul? I never have, although this
is my fifth trip in these seas."
"Well, no, sir; I can't say as I have," answered the boatswain. "But,"
he continued, peering through the skylight at the cabin clock, "it's
eight bells. I'll call Chips. I fancies I heard him say that he 'ad
sighted it once or twice. I'll ask him when he comes on deck."
So saying, Polson walked to the bell, where it hung mounted on the rail
that guarded the fore end of the poop, struck "eight bells" upon it, and
then descended to call the carpenter, with whom he presently returned to
the poop.
"Yes, Mr Troubridge," continued the boatswain, as he preceded the
carpenter up the weather poop ladder, "Chips, here, says he've sighted
the hiland twice in his time; but only at a distance."
"Ah!" said I. "Do you think you would recognise it again, Tudsbery?"
"Oh, yes, sir; no fear of that," answered the carpenter confidently.
"It's a peculiar-lookin' spot, not to be very easily mistook. I
remembers that when we last sighted it I heard the mate say to the
skipper that it looked pretty much like a dead whale floatin' high out
o' the water; and he was right; it did. Oh yes, I'll reckernize it
again fast enough, if I claps my eyes upon it, never fear."
"Well," said I, "I expect it to heave in sight to-morrow at dawn, under
the jibboom-end, some fourteen or fifteen miles distant, if the wind and
weather last as they are now--which I believe will be the case, since
the barometer remains steady. It is your morning watch, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir; my eight hours out to-night," answered Chips.
"Then," said I, turning to the boatswain, "when you call the carpenter
to-morrow morning, at the end of the middle watch, please give me a call
also; for, never yet having sighted the island, I should like to be on
deck when it heaves into view, and get a good look at it."
"All right, sir," answered Polson; "I'll rouse ye out, never fear."
The weather held fine all through that night, with the breeze light but
steady at south; when, having been duly called by the boatswain at four
o'clock the next morning, I turned out and went on deck, the ship, with
her spars almost upright, was sliding very gently along over a sea so
smooth that her mastheads seemed scarcely to sway at all among the
brilliant stars that thickly jewelled the deep indigo vault overhead.
The silence of night lay heavy upon the breast of the placid deep, and
seemed to be emphasised rather than broken by the faint sigh of the
breeze through the maze of spars and rigging that towered aloft, the
soft seething and plash of water along the bends, the light creak or
cheep of some parral or sheave up in the velvet darkness, and the
occasional clank of the tiller chains as the watchful helmsman, with his
eye upon some star peering past the weather leach of the main-royal,
found it necessary to give the ship a spoke of the wheel one way or the
other. The watch had stowed themselves away somewhere about the fore
deck, doubtless taking a quiet catnap somewhere out of reach of the
heavy dew, and were not to be seen; but the figure of the lookout on the
topgallant forecastle could be just made out, momentarily eclipsing
first one low-lying star and then another, as he paced monotonously to
and fro athwartships to keep himself awake.
As I stood there at the head of the weather poop ladder, abstractedly
watching this man's movements, it suddenly struck me that there was one
point upon the horizon, straight ahead, where the night gloom seemed to
be the merest trifle deeper and more opaque than elsewhere, and I
wondered whether it might perchance be the loom of the island, the
highest point of which being, according to the chart, eight hundred and
twenty feet above the sea level, should now be visible above the horizon
if it were only daylight--and my reckoning happened to be correct. I
fetched the ship's night-glass and took a good look through it at this
spot, but at first could make nothing certain of it. However, while I
still looked, a bright star suddenly swam into view above the spot, and
my heart gave a great leap, and a heavy sigh escaped me; for I knew,
from the sweep of the horizon and the height of other stars about it in
the immediate neighbourhood, that the celestial body which had so
suddenly sprung into the field of the telescope must have just risen
above the topmost ridge of something solid blotting out a small space of
sky in that quarter; and the something solid could only be the island of
Saint Paul.
"The island is in sight, Tudsbery, as straight ahead as it is possible
for a man to aim for it!" I exclaimed exultantly; for my feeling of
relief from doubt and anxiety, and the swift conviction that I might
henceforward confidently rely upon myself, were so great that I felt
impelled to give audible expression to my satisfaction.
"You don't say so, Mr Troubridge!" exclaimed the carpenter, coming to
my side. "Whereabouts do she lie, sir?"
"Come and stand where I am, and I will show you," answered I. "There,
now, do you see that bright star, low down in the sky, just over the
spot where the cathead passes out through the bulwarks?"
"Certainly, sir; I see it quite plainly," answered the carpenter.
"Then look immediately beneath it, and you will see the loom of the
land," said I. "You can make it out more clearly with the naked eye
than through the telescope. D'ye see it?"
"Well," exclaimed Chips doubtfully, "now that you comes to mention it, I
admit that the gloom away down there do look a bit thicker than it do
anywheres else; but I should never ha' noticed it if you hadn't drawed
my attention to it. And, even now, I don't know as I should care to
swear as to it bein' land."
"No," said I; "and neither should I, if I did not know it to be there.
But wait until the day breaks, and you will see that I am right."
"I don't doubt it, sir; I don't doubt it at all," answered Chips
soothingly; "but it's a wonder to me how you've been able to find your
way to it; for it's only a little bit of a rock after all--a hextinc'
volcano, I've heard some people say. How far d'ye reckon we are off
from it, now, Mr Troubridge?"
"Probably about seventeen or eighteen miles," said I.
"Ah!" observed Chips. "Then we ought to be abreast of it soon a'ter
breakfast." And therewith he fell into a reverie.
It was about an hour later that, preceded by a slight chilling of the
air, the first faint pallor of dawn came filtering through the velvet
darkness ahead, stealing imperceptibly higher and higher into the
eastern sky, and causing the stars thereaway to dwindle and grow dim
until, one after another, they vanished in the cold, colourless light
that now stretched along the horizon beneath our jibboom-end, spreading
right and left, even as one stood and watched it. Then a faint flush of
palest primrose stole into the pallor, against which the horizon line
ran black as ebony, with here and there a suspicion of a gleam coming
and going between it and the ship, as the growing light fell upon the
gently heaving swell. A moment later a great shaft of white light shot
perpendicularly from the horizon far ahead toward the zenith, where the
indigo was swiftly paling to purest ultramarine, the primrose hue became
more pronounced, and there, in the very midst of it, where the colour
was strongest, rose a hummock of softest, most delicate and ethereal
amethyst, clean-cut as a cameo, and shaped--as the carpenter had said--
like the back of a gigantic whale, with three well-marked protuberances
growing out of it, while others showed just clear of the water, toward
what might be supposed to be the tail end.
"There you are, Chips," I exclaimed in a fever of exultation; "there is
the island--"
"Land ho! straight ahead," shouted the lookout at this moment, as he
faced aft, pointing with his right hand over the bows.
"Ay, ay, Jimmy, my hearty, we sees it, plain enough," answered the
carpenter. Then he turned to me and continued:
"Yes, sir; there it is, as you says. Ay, and it's Saint Paul, too;
ne'er a doubt of it. I reckernizes them there hummicks a-stickin' up
out of the back of it. And I reckon that it's just about fourteen mile
away--which brings your calcilations right to a hapigraphy. Well, well,
hedication's a most wonderful thing, and no mistake. The bosun and I
might ha' searched for that there rock till all was blue, and never ha'
found it; but you comes along and gets aboard of us eight hunderd mile
away, and--says you--`we'll sight Saint Paul as we runs down our
eastin''; and, although we've been headin' all round the compass since
then, there's the hiland, right enough, and just where you said it would
be, ay, to the very hinch."
I was vastly tickled at the man's enthusiastic admiration of my little
twopenny-halfpenny feat of navigation, and--secretly--very proud of it
myself; but, of course, in reality it was an exceedingly commonplace
exploit, which any other navigator worthy of being so-called could have
accomplished without the slightest difficulty, the only essentials to
success being good instruments, clear skies, and correct arithmetic, all
of which I fortunately possessed. But I was nevertheless highly elated
at my success, chiefly, I think, because, it being my first independent
attempt to navigate a ship, I had demonstrated to myself my ability to
do so.
The day now grew fast in the east; the primrose hue softened away, right
and left, into a tint of warm grey with a faint suggestion of rose in
it; the stars had all vanished save one solitary gem that hung low in
the western sky like a silver lamp; the zenith was a rich, pure
ultramarine, that was fast spreading toward the western horizon and
chasing the last lingering shadow of night before it. Great spokes of
radiant light were darting aloft from behind the island and touching
into gold a few small, scattered flakes of fleecy cloud that floated
high over our mastheads. Then, all in a moment, the small, faintly-
gleaming bit of land ahead became transformed, as it might be with a
magician's wand, into a block of deepest, richest purple, bristling with
rays of burning gold, a throbbing rim of molten gold swept into view
from behind it, and in an instant it vanished amid a blinding blaze of
sunlight that flashed across the ocean toward us, transfiguring its
erstwhile surface of ebony into a tremble of turquoise and gold,
outlining every spar and sail and rope in the ship with thin, golden
wires, and causing every bit of glass and polished metal-work to blaze
and scintillate with golden fire. The watch appeared, yawning and
stretching as they emerged from their hiding places, blinking like owls
as they stared over the bows endeavouring to pick out from the dazzle
ahead the shape of land that the lookout was pointing to; and the
carpenter emerged from his reverie to shout:
"Rig the head-pump there, for'ard, and lay along with your buckets and
brushes!"
At two bells in the forenoon watch, when I mounted the poop after
breakfast, we were square abreast and within a mile of the island, I
having instructed the boatswain to pass as close to it as was prudent;
for I had heard of shipwrecked people having found refuge there and on
the neighbouring island of Amsterdam, and was desirous to see whether
perchance there might be anyone there at the moment. But there was no
one to be seen, at which I was not surprised, for our approach had been
slow, affording ample opportunity to anyone on the island to observe it
and make his presence known; yet no signal or sign of any kind
indicating human occupation had been descried. True, as we drew nearer,
a faint wreath of smoke here and there was occasionally seen; but our
telescopes showed us that these issued from the soil itself, and not
from fires kindled by human agency, being, no doubt, the result of
volcanic action; also there were a few goats dotted about, browsing in
groups of two or three; and their perfect placidity of demeanour was
convincing evidence of the absence of man on the island. Having
satisfied ourselves of the non-existence of human beings upon Saint
Paul, I gave the order to bear away for Amsterdam, which lies due north
and fifty miles distant from the smaller island, intending to subject it
also to a similar inquisition. Five minutes later we were running off
square before the flagging breeze, with the elusive, filmy shadow which
was as much as we could see of the island at that distance, and under
the existing atmospheric conditions hovering on the horizon over our
figurehead.
I had just completed the making of a sketch of, and the jotting down of
a few notes concerning, Saint Paul, which I thought might possibly be
useful to me some time later on in life, when, somewhat to my surprise,
the man Wilde, of whom I have already spoken, came up on to the poop and
informed me that he had somewhat to say to me if I could spare the time
to listen to him. Imagining that he might have some fresh complaint to
make regarding the food supplied to the emigrants, I closed my notebook,
returned it to my pocket, and requested him to say on.
"Thank you!" he said. "The fact is, Mr Troubridge, that I come to you
this morning as the representative and spokesman of all on board this
ship, crew as well as passengers; and it will perhaps simplify matters a
great deal if I tell you at the outset that we are all absolutely of one
mind regarding the matter which I have been deputed to lay before you."
"I understand," said I. "Pray proceed, Mr Wilde," for the man had
paused, as though to afford me an opportunity to speak.
He bowed slightly in acknowledgment of my permission to continue, and
resumed:
"When Polson, the boatswain of this ship, boarded the _Salamis_, he
informed your captain that the _Mercury_ was bound from Liverpool to
Sydney, New South Wales, and in a sense the statement was true, inasmuch
as that when the ship sailed from Liverpool her captain had instructions
to navigate her to Australia. But since then many things have happened,
as you are aware. One very important happening, however, of which as
yet you know nothing, is this: After most carefully weighing every
point, for and against, we have arrived, with absolute unanimity, at the
determination that, instead of continuing our voyage to Australia, we
will proceed to the Pacific Ocean, where, on some suitable island--for
which we will search until we find it--we will establish ourselves as a
little community, to be governed upon the simple, old-fashioned,
patriarchal system of perfect equality. And my object in explaining
this scheme of ours to you is to request that you will have the goodness
to change the course of the ship accordingly."
This extraordinary statement, with its concluding request, was made in
so perfectly calm and matter-of-fact a manner, and in a tone of such
absolute finality, that for a space of several seconds I was rendered
literally speechless with amazement. The colossal impudence and
audacity of the proposal took my breath away. But I soon collected my
scattered faculties, and forthwith proceeded vigorously to remonstrate
with the visionary enthusiast who, I instantly recognised, must be the
originator of the scheme.
"Sit down, Mr Wilde," said I, seating myself upon a hencoop, and
signing to him to place himself beside me. "You have sprung upon me a
matter that is not to be dealt with and dismissed in a breath; indeed,
it involves so many momentous questions that I scarcely know where to
begin. But, by way of a starter, let me ask you whether you are aware
that you have no right whatever to make use of this ship for such a
purpose as that which you have outlined to me? The contract of the
owners was to convey you to Sydney, and land you there, and you can
claim no more from them. In the next place--"
"Pardon me for interrupting you," broke in my companion with an
indulgent smile and uplifted, protesting hand; "but I believe I know and
could repeat to you every one of the somewhat musty arguments which are
crowding each other upon the tip of your tongue; and it will perhaps
save time--and possibly a certain amount of unpleasant friction--if I
inform you at once--as indeed I have hinted to you already--that we have
given them all our most careful and exhaustive consideration, and have
quite settled among ourselves that none of them is anything like weighty
enough to divert us from our purpose. We know, for example, that the
appropriation of this ship and her cargo, in the carrying out of our
plans, will involve a certain amount of hardship and loss to the owners;
but no revolutionary scheme of any sort, great or small, was ever yet
carried into effect without inflicting loss and hardship upon somebody.
It would pass the wit of man to devise one that did not, and we are
therefore prepared to regard that phase of the question with perfect
complacency."
"I wonder whether you understand that what you contemplate is called
piracy, and is punishable with death?" said I.
"Of course we do, my dear young friend," answered Wilde with a smile.
"But perhaps I ought to have explained to you that the very root and
foundation of our plan is to escape from man-made laws, which are
compounded of tyranny and injustice of the grossest kind, and to revert
to the old, simple, patriarchal, family idea--the idea of holding all
things in common, of abolishing individualism and inequality of every
description, and of submitting only to such simple laws as are
manifestly for the benefit and advantage of all. Besides, who will
there be to punish us for our so-called act of piracy?"
"You may rest assured," said I, "that there is no spot on this globe so
remote, so hidden away, that a British cruiser will not find it sooner
or later; and when she happens to visit your island--if ever you reach
it--her captain will insist upon an explanation of how you come to be
there, and, in short, of having your whole story told to him. And then,
Mr Wilde, the days of the originator of this mad scheme will be
numbered."
"My dear boy," said Wilde, laying his hand soothingly upon my arm, "`the
originator of this mad scheme', as you are pleased to put it, is more
than willing to take his chance of such a happening as you suggest; so
we need not discuss that point any farther, but may pass on to the next.
The question now is: Will you, or will you not, help us to find the
sort of island that we have in mind? No, no,"--as he saw that I was
about to refuse hotly--"do not decide in the negative too hurriedly;
take time to consider the matter, because it is a rather important one,
both to you and to us. It is important to us, because, if you should
decide in the negative, it will put us to all the trouble and
inconvenience of finding another navigator; and it is important to you,
because, if you should refuse, it will mean that, being opposed to us,
you must be got rid of, for we will have no enemies, secret or open,
among us; and I think that the best way to get rid of you, and at the
same time to guard against the possibility of your doing us a bad turn
in the future, will be to tie your hands and heels together, attach a
good heavy weight to your neck, and drop you overboard sometime in the
small hours when all the women and children are asleep, and cannot be
shocked or distressed at the sight.
"You see, we have considered this matter so thoroughly, and have so
completely made up our minds what we intend to do, that we cannot dream
of allowing the qualms of conscience of a mere lad like yourself to
stand in our way. If you had not been an expert navigator it would have
been a different affair altogether. We should have said nothing to you,
but should have put you ashore on one of these islands, had we chanced
to find them, or have exchanged you with some ship for a better
navigator; but you have proved your ability, and now you must either
throw in your lot with us, or--accept the alternative. Think it over,
my dear boy, and let me know your decision when you have fully made up
your mind. You will be able to do this all the more easily since, as
`the originator of this mad scheme', and the accepted leader of all on
board, it is my intention to take up my quarters in the cabin for the
remainder of our voyage."
So saying, Wilde rose and, bestowing upon me a friendly smile, made his
way down the poop ladder to the main deck; and a few minutes later I saw
the stewards helping him to transfer his belongings from the steerage to
the cabin.
CHAPTER FOUR.
WILDE EXPLAINS.
The boatswain, whose watch it now was, and who had been making a
pretence of superintending some job on the forecastle while Wilde was
talking to me, presently slouched along the deck and came up on to the
poop. Arrived at the head of the weather poop ladder, he paused and,
facing forward, appeared to be regarding the set of the canvas
attentively. Then, with a very sheepish air, he joined me and took the
seat which Wilde had not long vacated. I saw that the fellow was dying
of curiosity to learn what had passed between the ex-schoolmaster and
myself, but was determined not to help him by opening the conversation;
the result being a long--and apparently on the part of the boatswain an
embarrassing pause. However, at length he broke ground by remarking
with a conciliating smile:
"So I sees you've been havin' a yarn with Mr Wilde, eh, Mr Troubridge?
Have he told ye, sir, of the plan that we've made up among us for
startin' a new country?"
"He has told me--to my intense astonishment--that I have become
shipmates with a round hundred or so of consummate idiots--leaving the
women and children out of the question," I answered sharply.
"A-ah!" returned the boatswain, with a sorrowful shake of the head. "I
felt, somehow, as you wouldn't see the thing as we sees it. All the
same, sir, I hopes--yes, I most fervently hopes--as he've been able to
persuade ye to jine in with us."
"He tells me that if I refuse to do so I am to be lashed up, neck and
heels, and hove overboard with a sinker attached to my neck some fine
night when the women and children are all below. Do you approve of that
arrangement, Polson?" I demanded.
"Well--no--I can't say as I do; not altogether," answered the boatswain,
fidgeting uneasily where he sat. "But I hopes it won't come to that,
Mr Troubridge. I don't hold with forcin' anybody to do what they don't
want to do; but I don't see as it'd do you no very serious harm for to
agree to navigate this here ship to the spot where we wants her took to;
and that's all as you're to be asked to do."
"And if I should choose to refuse, I suppose you would stand by and see
me drowned, if indeed you did not lend a hand to lash me up?" I asked,
infusing all the sarcasm I could into the question.
"No, no, Mr Troubridge!" exclaimed Polson, justly indignant that I
should bring such a monstrous charge against him. "I wouldn't lift a
finger to hurt ye, sir--I shouldn't have no need to, for there's lots o'
chaps among them emigrants ready enough to do any mortal thing that Mr
Wilde tells 'em to. I should just go below and have nothin' to do with
the job."
"By which simple means you would secure the acquittal of the thing you
call your conscience against the charge of murdering me!" I ejaculated
scornfully. "Do you know, Polson, that the man who consents to a murder
is every whit as guilty as he who actually does the deed?"
"Well, I dunno," answered Polson; "I don't see how that can be, Mr
Troubridge. If another man chooses to murder ye, what's that got to do
wi' me? Besides, what can we do? All hands of us has already signed a
paper agreein' to obey Mr Wilde's orders."
"Tut!" I exclaimed impatiently. "Do you seriously wish me to believe,
Polson, that you are such an utter fool that you are unable to
discriminate between right and wrong? With one breath you give me to
understand that you would have no conscientious objection to permitting
a man to murder me; and with the next you intimate that having, as I
understand it, blindly pledged yourself to obey all Wilde's orders--
whatever their nature may be--your conscience will not permit you to
break your pledge! Let me tell you, man, that such a pledge as that is
in nowise binding, and the law will hold you blameless if you choose to
break it."
"Ay--yes--the law!" retorted the boatswain, spitting over the rail, the
more strongly to mark his contempt of that system which was once tersely
denounced as being "a hass". "I don't take no account of the law, Mr
Troubridge. Mr Wilde have showed us that the law ain't justice. It
have been made by rich men to grind down the poor, and keep 'em down;
and there ain't goin' to be no law in this here new country what we're
goin' to make. Everybody's goin' to be just as good as everybody else,
and is goin' to do just what he jolly well likes."
"Just so!" I said. "I have heard that yarn before, and if I knew of a
country where such a state of things existed I would take precious good
care to steer clear of it. Can't you picture to yourself the joy of
living in a place where, if a stronger man than you happened to take a
fancy to your clothes, or your house, or anything else that belonged to
you, he could compel you to give them up, and nobody would interfere to
say him nay. That is the kind of thing that is to be expected in a
country where there are no laws, and where everybody is at liberty to do
`just what he jolly well likes'. I am astonished to hear you talking
such utter tomfoolery; I set you down as having more common sense!"
The poor man stared at me in silence, agape with perplexity.
"Well, I'll be jiggered!" he exclaimed at last, thumping the hencoop
with his fist in his bewilderment; "what's a man to do? Here's that
chap Wilde--a man of eddication, mind ye, Mr Troubridge--comes along
and spins us a yarn of how we poor sailormen are ill-treated and kep'
down, overworked and underpaid by rich owners; and of how the law won't
do nothin' for us; and he shows us a plan how we can live in peace and
happiness and enj'yment all the rest of our lives; and then you turns up
and knocks the whole bag o' tricks into a cocked hat! Which of ye is
right? If you're right, I stays as I am all my life, a poor, miserable
shellback, endin' my days by sellin' matches in the streets, when I'm
too old and too stiff wi' the rheumatics to go to sea any longer. That
bein' the case, I'll give Mr Wilde's plan a trial for a spell; right or
wrong."
"Very well," said I, "go your own way, if you will; but you will most
certainly regret it some day when it is too late to retrace your steps.
And let me tell you this, Polson, you are attributing your position and
its accompanying hardships to the wrong cause altogether. The true
state of the case is that you are an ignorant and unintelligent man
through lack of education. Did you ever go to school?"
"No, never, Mr Troubridge," answered my companion. "What little I
knows I larned myself. My father, who was supposed to be a wharfinger,
was too fond of the drink ever to be able to hold a job, the consekence
bein' that my poor mother had to keep things goin' by takin' in washin';
and, since there was seven of us young 'uns, it took her all her time to
find us in grub and clo'es. She hadn't no money to spare for
eddication. Consekence was I didn't have none. And when I was 'bout
'leven year old things got to such a pitch at home that I cut and run,
goin' to sea as cabin-boy in a Geordie to start with, and gradually
workin' my way up to bein' a bosun, as I am now."
"Ah!" said I. "Well, you have done a good deal better, Polson, than
many others in like circumstances. But--and this is my point--if your
father, instead of stupefying his brains with drink, had been a sober,
steady, hard-working man, and had done his duty by you to the extent of
sending you to school, you would have gained a vast amount of valuable
knowledge. You would have cultivated your intellect; you would have
learned to discriminate between right and wrong; you would have been
able to reason, and to perceive that certain causes invariably produce
certain effects. You would have discovered that knowledge is power, and
that the more knowledge a man possesses the higher he is able to rise in
the world. Instead of stopping at being a boatswain, you would have
risen to be, first a mate, and then a master--and possibly an owner some
day, as other men have done. Now, put that in your pipe and smoke it!"
And I jumped up and went below to fetch my sextant up on deck; for by
this time it was drawing well on toward noon.
As the day wore on, the wind fell lighter, until by sunset the ship
scarcely had steerage-way; consequently it was not until the next
morning that we found ourselves off the island of Amsterdam, past which
we drifted so slowly that, had there been anyone on the island, they
would have had ample time to make their presence known. But we saw no
one, nor anything in the least resembling a signal. After skirting the
western side of the island to its northern extremity, I gave the order
to bring the ship to the wind, and gave the officer of the watch a
compass course of east-south-east for Cape Otway. I was not going to
yield to Wilde at the first demand; and not at all, if I could possibly
help it; although my talk with the boatswain was of anything but an
encouraging character. There was still the carpenter, however; and I
thought I would sound him as to his views on this visionary scheme of
Wilde's, the very first step toward the realisation of which involved an
act of piracy. But when I came to talk to him I soon found that he was
even worse to deal with than the boatswain; for although perhaps not
quite so ignorant as the latter, he was still ignorant enough to be
convinced by the specious arguments of the Socialist, to readily accept
the doctrine of perfect equality between all men, and--like most of
those whose labour is of an arduous character, and whose life is one of
almost constant hardship and privation--to be dazzled by the alluring
prospect of being able to live out the rest of his days on an island
where--according to Wilde--Nature would do all the work, and man would
only need to stretch forth his hand to gather in her bounties.
I will do Wilde the justice to say that he manifested no impatience
while awaiting the announcement of my decision relative to the proposal
which he had made to me; on the contrary, when I met him at the cabin
table at meal-times he was very chatty and friendly, with a certain
subtle suggestion of patronage in his tone, however, that rather went
against the grain with me; but he asked me no questions until I had set
the course for Cape Otway, and the island of Amsterdam was melting into
the haze astern of us. Then, being on the poop at the moment when I
gave the course to the helmsman, and hearing its direction, he came up
to me and said:
"Are you aiming for any point in particular in directing the helmsman to
steer east-south-east, Mr Troubridge?"
"Yes," said I. "If the wind will permit us to steer that course long
enough it will eventually bring us within sight of Cape Otway."
"Cape Otway!" he repeated. "Um! the name seems not altogether
unfamiliar to me, and as a man who has been for some years a
schoolmaster I suppose I ought to be able to say, offhand, exactly where
it is. But my memory upon such matters is a trifle weak, I am afraid.
Perhaps you will kindly tell me where Cape Otway is?"
"Cape Otway lies some sixty miles--more or less--south-west of Port
Philip Heads," said I, "and, excepting Wilson Promontory, is the most
southerly headland of Australia."
"Of course, of course," he exclaimed with a little air of vexation.
"Dear me! how marvellously easy it seems to forget such details. I am
afraid our system of education does not attach nearly as much importance
as it ought to the study of geography. Ah, well; what matters it? I
have done with such trifles, I hope, for the remainder of my days. Does
Cape Otway happen to be on our road to the Pacific, Mr Troubridge?"
"Yes," I said; "that is to say, if one elects to go south-about. But
the Pacific is a big sheet of water, and there are two or three ways of
getting to it from here. All depends, of course, upon the particular
part of the Pacific to which one is bound."
"Yes, of course," agreed Wilde. Then he turned suddenly, and, looking
me keenly in the face, remarked: "Really, you know, Troubridge, you
impress me very favourably--very favourably indeed! I shall be
profoundly sorry if we are obliged to part with you, for you seem to me
to be a lad of considerably more than average intelligence. That remark
of yours touching `the particular part of the Pacific to which one is
bound'--by the way, have you a tolerably intimate knowledge of the
Pacific?"
"No," said I; "I know nothing whatever of it except the part which lies
between Australia and Cape Horn."
"Which, I take it, comprises a very small portion of the whole?"
questioned he.
"A very small portion indeed," I agreed.
"Ah!" he commented. "Can you tell me whether there happens to be a map
of the Pacific on board this ship?"
"It is quite possible," I said. "She is pretty well-stocked with
charts; and, now that you come to mention it, I believe there is a chart
of the Pacific in the rack."
"Let us go down and ascertain, shall we?" said he. And, placing his
hand within my arm, he gently but firmly led me off the poop. It may,
of course, have been pure imagination on my part, but his manner seemed
to say as distinctly as words--"Don't mistake my politeness and
geniality for weakness. I believe in putting things pleasantly, but
when I make a suggestion I intend it to be accepted as a command."
We descended together to the captain's cabin--which I now occupied--and
he entered it with me, laughingly explaining that he was sure I would
excuse the liberty he was taking in doing so, and at once fell to
examining the labels of the charts in the rack.
"Ah! here we are," he exclaimed, laying his hand upon a roll labelled
"Pacific Ocean". "Let us take it into the main cabin and study it
together."
He laid it out flat upon the cabin table and placed four weights at the
corners to hold them down. Then he bent over the sheet and studied it
with extraordinary interest.
"So this is what you call a chart, is it?" he exclaimed. "I see that it
varies very materially from an ordinary map, in that it gives a great
deal of information about the sea, and not much about the land, beyond
its outline." And he began his study of it by asking the meaning of
certain mysterious lines and markings upon it. Then he asked a number
of questions respecting the various small islands dotted about, more or
less in patches, upon it, to answer which I had to hunt for a Pacific
Directory, which I fortunately found in the bookcase; and finally, after
we had thus been engaged for an hour or more, he said:
"It is perfectly clear to me that it would be idle for us to determine,
at this distance, in what particular part of the Pacific we will search
for our future home. That search must be conducted methodically; and
after studying this chart very carefully, I have come to the conclusion
that our best course will be to begin our search here,"--indicating with
his finger a point about midway between the north-western extremity of
New Guinea and the Pelew Islands--"and work our way in an easterly
direction."
"Have you read those notes?" I asked, drawing his attention to certain
notes on the chart explaining that: "the Caroline, Marshall, and Solomon
groups are almost entirely unknown, and are believed to have many
dangers in their neighbourhood not marked upon the charts; navigators
are therefore cautioned to exercise the most extreme vigilance when
approaching or sailing among them."
"Certainly I have, my boy," he answered; "and it is to them that my
choice of that part of the ocean is chiefly due. Those islands, you
see, are `almost entirely unknown'; which means that if we can find one
among them of a suitable character for our new settlement, we are not
likely to be disturbed by the intrusion of curious and inquisitive
visitors. Therefore, kindly take measures to navigate the ship to the
spot that I have indicated."
It was on the tip of my tongue flatly to refuse to have anything
whatever to do with him or his scheme, and to defy him to do his worst,
when the germ of an idea came floating into my mind, and I said instead:
"Do you leave the choice of route to me? Because, if so, I shall
certainly go south-about past Australia, as being much the safer route."
"Safer, possibly, but not nearly so direct," replied Wilde. "Therefore,
since we are all anxious to begin our new life as early as possible, let
us take the shorter and more direct route, past the north-west of
Australia, and through the Banda Sea and Molucca Passage."
"That route positively bristles with dangers, as you might see if you
understood a chart," I exclaimed, in tones of exasperation.
"I do not doubt your word for a moment, my dear boy," answered Wilde
soothingly. "But we shall bear in mind the warning of the chart; we
shall exercise `the most extreme vigilance' in the midst of those
dangers; and I have not the slightest doubt that everything will be all
right. And now, to change the subject, have you made a choice between
the two alternatives that I submitted to you yesterday?"
"You mean the alternative of joining you or of being drowned?" I asked
with vindictive emphasis.
"Precisely," he answered with a smile of the utmost suavity. "And,
understand me, youngster," he continued, with a sudden change to
sternness in his manner, that disconcerted me a great deal more than I
should have cared for him to know, "if you decide to join us you must do
so wholeheartedly, and with no mental reservations. Those who are not
with us must inevitably be against us; and the issues at stake with us
are of far too grave a character to allow of our running any risk from
secret enemies. No mercy will be shown to traitors, I assure you; so do
not permit your mind to dwell upon any plan in which submission that is
to be only apparent has a place."
"You do not leave me very much choice," I remarked. "If I refuse to
throw in my lot with you, you drown me; and if I accept your
alternative, and should be unlucky enough to incur the suspicion that I
am not acting honestly with you, what happens?"
"We hang you," answered Wilde tersely.
"I see," I said. "The choice you offer me appears to lie between the
certainty of drowning and the risk of hanging. I am by no means certain
that it would not wiser on my part to choose the former, and get it over
and done with at once. But I will think it over and let you know."
"Yes, pray do so," returned Wilde, in the same exasperating tone of
suavity. "And, before we dismiss the subject," he continued, "let me
give you a word of genuinely friendly advice. Get rid of that idiotic
idea of choosing the alternative of being drowned, and getting it over
and done with as soon as possible; because so long as you allow your
imagination to dwell upon it, it will simply warp your judgment and
prevent you from arriving at a sound, sensible conclusion. No young man
possessing a sound mind in a sound body--as you appear to do--
deliberately chooses death, and the annihilation which follows it,
rather than the long years of ease, happiness, and comfort which will be
yours if you join us; so why should you, eh?"
"I will think it over, and let you know as soon as I have arrived at a
decision," I repeated. "But don't you make any mistake about the
annihilation that comes after death. That is the atheist's notion; but,
if you are reckoning upon anything of that kind, to save you from
punishment for your misdeeds in this present life, you are going to be
badly undeceived; make no mistake about that."
"My boy," he said, laying his hand upon my shoulder, "if you possess any
religious convictions, retain them by all means, and much good may they
do you; but do not try to convert me. No scruples of what they term a
religious character will ever be permitted to deter me from taking any
steps, that may appear necessary to further and ensure the success of my
schemes."
"Such, for instance, as committing murder," I retorted. "All right.
But let me tell you that the hint--or threat, call it which you like--
will not influence me a hairbreadth, one way or the other."
"Very well, my dear boy," he returned; "be it so. At least we
thoroughly understand each other, don't we? And--don't be a fool!"
With which parting shot he left me, and, proceeding to the main deck,
entered into conversation with some of the emigrants who were leaning
over the bulwarks, idly watching the water as the ship drove slowly
through it.
"Don't be a fool!" It was excellent advice, although given by a man
whose folly I regarded as stupendous, and I determined to follow it.
Then I proceeded to reason out the matter with myself, for it was
evident that I should very soon have to come to a decision; and it
appeared to me that there was nothing to be gained by delay. In the
first place, I was compelled inwardly to admit that, intensely as I
disliked Wilde, and stupendous as I considered his folly, there was
sound sense in his suggestion that I should abandon the idea of throwing
away my life. But when it came to his insisting that, if I decided to
afford him that help, I must do so with no mental reservations, that was
altogether a different affair. He was compelling me to do something to
which I very strongly objected, leaving me no choice between that and
death; and since he had no scruples about employing all the power he
possessed to thus constrain me, I felt that I, too, must throw my
scruples overboard in my endeavour to defeat him. He had the power to
compel me to help him; and, that being the case, it seemed to me that it
would be sound policy on my part to afford that help with as good a
grace as I could muster; but, so far as "mental reservations" were
concerned, I resolved that if I could find means to make known what had
happened to the _Mercury_, and thus bring a British man-o'-war out to
rescue the ship and cargo from the scoundrel who was so determinedly
bent upon stealing them to carry out his own mad, visionary scheme, I
would do so, and risk the consequences.
CHAPTER FIVE.
A CONDITIONAL SURRENDER.
I had just definitely arrived at the above conclusion when the boatswain
joined me.
"I see Mr Wilde have been havin' another yarn with ye, Mr Troubridge,"
he remarked, as he seated himself at my side.
"Yes," I answered shortly.
"And is there any chance of his bein' able to persuade ye to give us the
help we wants?" he enquired in conciliatory tones.
"There might be, perhaps, if all hands of you were willing to agree to
my terms," I answered, stubbornly determined to drive the best bargain
possible.
"Ah!" he exclaimed with an air of satisfaction; "that sounds better;
yes, a good deal better, it do. You say what them terms of yours be,
Mr Troubridge, and I dare say I could very soon give ye a hidea whether
we'd be willin' to agree to 'em. You won't find us noways unreasonable,
sir, I promise ye, because we wants your help badly, and there's no use
in pretendin' that we don't. You've proved yourself to be a hefficient
navigator, and me and Chips has quite made up our minds that we might go
farther and fare a precious sight worse in the way of findin' somebody
to take your place. Besides, we don't want no murder if we can anyways
help it, and I know that all hands in the fo'c's'le'd be willin' to
agree to a'most anything in reason to dodge that sort of thing."
"Do you really mean that, Polson?" I demanded. "Because, if so, it is
a very great pity that you did not frankly say so when this matter was
first broached. Besides, although you sailors may be inclined to listen
to reason, you must remember that you cannot answer for Wilde and the
rest of the emigrants--"
"Oh, but I think we can, Mr Troubridge!" interrupted the boatswain.
"Ye see, sir, it's this way," he continued. "We sailormen are the
masters of the sittyation, as the sayin' is. Wilde and his lot can't do
nothin' without our help; they can't navigate the ship, and they can't
handle her; there ain't one of 'em knows enough to be able so much as
clew up a r'yal, or take in the flyin' jib; so if they wants to carry
out their plan, they'll have to agree to the same as what we does, d'ye
see? And we're willin' to agree to anything reasonable as you may want
to propose."
This sudden complaisance on the part of the boatswain put a very
different complexion upon the whole affair, and was infinitely better
than I had dared to hope. With the entire crew at my back I ought to
have no difficulty in keeping Wilde and his lot in their proper places;
and--well, the sea has many surprises for those who follow it, and who
could know what might happen? But it was no part of my policy to betray
to this man the extreme satisfaction which his words had given me, and
thus, perhaps, subtly suggest to him the idea that he had displayed more
flexibility than was actually necessary to secure my co-operation. I
therefore said:
"Well, whichever way the affair goes, I am at least glad to hear you say
that the ship's crew are willing to agree to any reasonable proposition
that I may make; but that still remains to be seen. You and I may
differ in our ideas as to what is reasonable, you know."
"Ay, of course we may; but I don't think it's at all likely as we shall,
sir," answered the boatswain. "You state your conditions, Mr
Troubridge, and I'll soon tell ye whether they seems reasonable or not."
"Very well," said I, "I will. If I understand the ins and outs of this
affair, Wilde has persuaded all hands aboard this ship, seamen and
emigrants alike, to seek out some suitable island, whereon you can try
the experiment of living the ideal life of the Socialist. You are, one
and all, absolutely determined to give this fantastic experiment a
trial; and you desire me to help you to the extent of finding the island
for you. Is that it?"
"That's it, sir; yes, that's it; you've got it hit off to a
happigraphy," agreed the boatswain.
"Then listen to the conditions upon which I am willing to do what you
require of me," said I. "The sort of island that you people desire is
only to be found--if found at all--in an ocean that is at present
comparatively unknown, and is full of dangers in the shape of rocks,
shoals, and islands, the position of which is doubtful, as shown by the
charts, while there are doubtless many others that have never yet been
sighted, and which a ship, bound upon such an errand as ours, is liable
to blunder up against at any hour of the day or night. To navigate
successfully a ship among such dangers as these it is imperative that
there should be one person--and one only--as the supreme head, to whom
all the rest shall render the most implicit, unquestioning obedience;
and I demand to be that one, with you and the carpenter as first and
second mates. I must command the ship, and nobody must presume to
interfere with or dictate to me in any way. Secondly, the crew must
undertake to observe and maintain strict discipline, both among
themselves and also among the emigrants if need be. And, thirdly, I
decline--nay, I absolutely refuse--to acknowledge Wilde's authority. He
may be your king, or president, or whatever he chooses to call himself,
as soon as your island is found and all hands are ashore; but until
then--so far, at least, as I am concerned--he is only a passenger. Now,
those are the terms upon which I am willing to undertake the service you
require of me; and you may take them or leave them, just as you please."
"They seems reasonable enough, I won't deny it," admitted Polson, "and I
dare say as everybody'll be willin' enough to agree to 'em, all except
Wilde, I mean. I know he won't like the hidea of not bein' allowed to
hinterfere until we arrives at the hiland. Can't ye make that there
part a trifle easier, Mr Troubridge?"
"No," said I resolutely, "on no account whatever; on the contrary, that
is the proviso upon which I shall insist most strongly. Wilde may be an
excellent schoolmaster, for aught I know to the contrary, but he is
neither a seaman nor a navigator; and I will never consent to his being
allowed to interfere, either directly or indirectly, with matters of
which he possesses no knowledge. You cannot have two captains to one
ship, you know. If he is to be captain you will have no need of me; but
if I am to be captain I will not allow anyone--and least of all a
landsman--to interfere with me."
"Ay, ay, Mr Troubridge, yes, I can see now as you are quite right,"
agreed the boatswain. "It wouldn't never do to have him hinterferin'
and givin' horders about things he don't understand. If he was allowed
to do it there's others as would soon want to do the same, and then we
should soon all be in a pretty mess. D'ye mind writin' them conditions
of yours down upon a sheet of paper, so as I can read 'em out to all
hands, sir? And if they agree to 'em I'll get 'em to sign the paper and
then I'll hand it back to you."
"Very well," said I; "that arrangement will do excellently. And, see
here, Polson, if all you seamen are willing to sign, I don't care a
brass button whether the emigrants do or not. If you men for'ard are
all agreed that those conditions of mine are just and reasonable, we
need not trouble ourselves as to what the emigrants think of them,
because, you know, they can't take the ship from us, however
dissatisfied they may be."
"No, no, in course they can't, Mr Troubridge," agreed the boatswain,
grinning appreciatively, as though the helplessness of the emigrants was
a fact that had not hitherto occurred to him.
We had now thrashed the matter out, and I had succeeded in bringing
Polson into a far more pliant frame of mind than I had ever dared to
hope for. I therefore determined to clinch the matter at once, by
putting my demands into black-and-white, and securing the signatures of
the crew to them before the boatswain, who was evidently a man of
influence among them, should find time to alter his view of the affair.
I consequently sprang to my feet and, bidding my companion await my
return, descended to my own cabin, and, carefully wording the document,
drew up a form of agreement between myself on the one part and the crew
and passengers of the _Mercury_ on the other. Then, returning with it
to the poop, I placed the paper in Polson's hand, after reading it over
to him, and requested him to obtain first the signatures of the crew to
it, beginning with himself and the carpenter, and then those of the
emigrants; afterwards returning the document to me. It cost him nearly
three hours strenuous work to secure the signatures of the entire crew
and the emigrants to the agreement; for in the first place he found the
occupants of the forecastle, one and all, very unwilling--as is the case
with most illiterate people--to pledge themselves by attaching their
signatures or marks to my memorandum, although it was read over and
explained to them at least half a dozen times, so that they thoroughly
understood the nature of it, and verbally expressed themselves as fully
approving of each of the conditions.
At length, however, by dint of much persuasion the boatswain secured the
signature or mark of every occupant of the forecastle, after which he
entered the 'tween-decks and, summoning the whole of the emigrants to
meet him, fully explained the situation to them, read over the
agreement, and then, laying the document upon the table, demanded their
signatures to it. But here, again, he encountered a quite unexpected
amount of opposition, Wilde stepping forward and not only refusing to
attach his own signature to the paper, but also forbidding any of the
other emigrants to do so. Polson argued, pleaded, and cajoled, but all
in vain. Nothing that he could say appeared to have the slightest
effect upon his audience, although several declared their perfect
readiness to sign if their leader would but accord his permission. It
was not until at length, with his patience completely exhausted, he
suddenly determined upon the adoption of what, to him, seemed a
thoroughly desperate expedient, that he achieved even a partial success.
Dashing the paper down with vehemence upon the table, he exclaimed
wrathfully:
"Now, listen to me, the lot of ye. Chips and me and all hands in the
fo'c's'le has signed this here doccyment because, havin' thought it all
over, we're agreed that Mr Troubridge is quite right in demandin' what
he do. Mr Wilde there objects to it because he ain't allowed to
interfere with and dictate to Mr Troubridge, and none of you won't sign
because Mr Wilde won't let ye. Now, I'll give ye all ten minutes
longer to make up your minds, and if you haven't signed by that time we
sailormen won't have no more truck with ye, but'll go to Mr Troubridge
and tell 'im he can take the ship to Sydney, where she's bound to."
This announcement, coming quite unexpectedly, fell like a bombshell
among Polson's audience, who had dwelt upon the idea of life in an
island where perpetual summer reigns, and where Nature offers many of
her choicest gifts almost unsolicited, until it had taken such complete
possession of them that it had come to represent to them the one
desirable thing in the whole world, to lose which would be to lose
everything. In a perfect passion of consternation they turned upon
Wilde and not only claimed their right to sign, but also insisted that
he should conform to Polson's demand and be the first among them to
affix his signature. Subjected to such pressure as this there was of
course but one thing for him to do; and he did it; but the next moment
he dashed up on deck, sprang up the poop ladder, and, approaching me,
shook his clenched fist in my face as he exclaimed, almost foaming at
the mouth:
"You young scoundrel! I have signed that precious document of yours
because that fool Polson left me no option. But wait until we arrive at
the island and my power begins, and then I'll make you--"
"Hold your tongue, sir, and go down off this poop!" I exclaimed,
springing to my feet in a rage, for the fellow at the helm was grinning
broadly at the scene. "And if you dare to come up here again without
being sent for I'll kick you down on to the main deck, and then have you
put in irons. Ay, and I'll do so now if you dare to answer me. Be off
with you now, quick!"
I never in all my life saw a man so completely taken aback as was this
crazy schoolmaster when I tackled him. Amazement, incredulity, wounded
vanity, indignation, and bodily fear seemed all to be struggling
together to assert themselves in his countenance and to find articulate
expression upon his tongue; but fear was the strongest of them all--the
fear that he might be actually subjected to the unspeakable indignity of
personal violence. And when, as I uttered the final words, I advanced a
step toward him, as though about to carry out my threat, he suddenly
turned tail and slunk off like a whipped cur.
Some time later, when Polson, having at length accomplished his mission,
brought me the signed agreement--which of course I knew was, as a
binding document, not worth the paper upon which it was written,
although I still hoped that it might be to some extent effective--I
related to him the little incident that had occurred between Wilde and
myself; at which he expressed some concern, although he fully agreed
with me that the schoolmaster--at all events while aboard ship and at
sea--must be held as amenable to discipline as anyone else, and that it
would never do to give him the least bit more liberty than we were
prepared to accord to every one of the other emigrants. Having secured
which admission from the boatswain, I sent there and then for the
steward and ordered him at once to bundle Wilde's belongings out of the
cabin back to the 'tween-decks.
During the second dogwatch, that same evening, Wilde sought out the
boatswain and carpenter, and complained to them of what he termed my
tyrannical conduct, which, he represented to his two listeners, was of
so grossly humiliating a character that it was calculated very seriously
to detract from his influence with his followers. So serious a
grievance did he make of it that at length Polson and Tudsbery
approached me with something in the nature of a remonstrance,
accompanied by a mildly offered suggestion that I should concede
something to enable Wilde to preserve his dignity. Probably I should
have been wiser to have accepted and acted upon this suggestion; but I
had got the idea into my head that the matter had resolved itself into a
struggle for supremacy between Wilde and myself, and I obstinately
refused to yield a hairbreadth, thereby exciting the permanent hostility
not only of Wilde himself, but also--as I afterward found--of several of
his followers. The boatswain and carpenter were at first disposed to
regard me as unnecessarily firm, but this feeling soon yielded to one of
quiet gratification that they had, as leader, one who, young as he was,
would not submit to dictation from anybody. And I feel convinced that
whatever I may have lost in popularity I more than regained in the shape
of power and authority, thereby averting--as I soon had reason to
believe--many a serious dispute and quarrel between the widely
conflicting elements that were confined so closely together in the ship.
The terms upon which I was to command the _Mercury_ having at length
been arranged upon as satisfactory a basis as I could reasonably expect,
I now found time to give consideration to my plans for the future. As
my hope that the wild scheme of the conspirators might be frustrated,
and the ship and her cargo restored to their lawful owners, rested
almost entirely upon the possibility that we might fall in with a
British man-o'-war, the first question to which I devoted my attention
was that of the route which I should choose by which to reach the
Pacific. There were two alternative routes open to me; one--and that,
perhaps, rather the safer of the two from the navigator's point of
view--to the south and east of Australia, then northward between the
Solomon and Admiralty groups to the waters wherein our search for a sort
of earthly Paradise was to be prosecuted; and the rather shorter but
more dangerous route up the western coast of Australia, then through the
Ombay Passage into the Banda Sea, and thence, through the Boeroe Strait,
into the Molucca or the Gillolo Passage, the successful negotiation of
either of which would bring us to the spot where our search was to
commence. If the question of ease and safety of navigation had alone
been concerned, I should have unhesitatingly chosen the former; but when
I came to weigh the comparative chances of falling in with a British
man-o'-war, it did not take me long to make up my mind that the closer I
could hug the Philippines, and the longer I could remain in their
neighbourhood, the more likely should I be to encounter something
belonging to the China station, and I accordingly settled upon the
second alternative. This choice had the further advantage that, being
the shorter of the two routes, it gratified all hands, none of whom was
intelligent enough to understand and appreciate the question of the
comparative dangers of the two routes, or to consider that, by adopting
the one which met with their approval, the risk of encountering a man-
o'-war--and thus having all their plans knocked on the head--was very
greatly increased. Naturally, I did not enlighten them.
It was the season of the north-east monsoon in the Indian Ocean, and a
careful study of the chart and directory made it clear to me that the
proper course to pursue was to run down our easting until 100 degrees
east longitude should be reached, and then, still availing ourselves to
the utmost of such westerly wind as might be met with, haul gradually up
to the northward in the West Australian current, which has a northerly
set. Accordingly, I kept the ship's bowsprit pointing steadily to the
eastward, despite the violent remonstrances which Wilde addressed to the
boatswain and the carpenter--he had never spoken to me since I had
ordered him off the poop and turned him out of the cabin. For the first
few days I was rather afraid that I was going to have a little trouble
with these two men, for whenever Wilde complained to them that I was
unnecessarily prolonging the voyage by steering east instead of north-
east--which, according to his crude notions, I ought to have done--they
came to me, reiterating the man's complaints, and evincing so much
curiosity and suspicion that it was perfectly evident they did not trust
me. But I quickly arrived at the conviction that, let my relations with
Wilde be what they might, it was absolutely necessary that I should
possess the full confidence of the boatswain and the carpenter--and,
through them, of the whole crew. I therefore took considerable pains to
make them clearly understand my reasons for acting as I did, after which
I had no further trouble with them.
I very soon had reason to congratulate myself upon the adoption of this
policy; for while my relations with the crew daily grew more
satisfactory--so that had it not been for the ridiculous hopes of a life
of perfect liberty, equality, and immunity from hard work with which
Wilde had addled their brains, I might easily have won their consent to
take the ship to her legitimate destination--Wilde was devoting his
entire energies to the task of stirring up and fomenting a spirit of
lawlessness and insubordination among his fellow emigrants, chiefly--as
it seemed to me--with the object of causing me as much annoyance and
trouble as possible.
At length, however, matters came to such a pass that I perceived it
would be absolutely necessary for me to seize the first opportunity that
offered to assert myself and put an end to a state of affairs that was
fast becoming utterly unendurable; and that opportunity was not long in
coming.
It arose in this wise. There was among the passengers a girl named
Grace Hartley, about twenty-three years of age, of considerable personal
attractions, well-educated, and of a very gentle and amiable
disposition. She had been a governess in England, and had been engaged
by an agent to proceed to Australia to take a similar position in a
family out there; and it was, perhaps, the indifferent treatment which
she had received at the hands of her former employers that had caused
her tacitly to accept the alternative which Wilde's scheme offered her.
Be that as it may, she had apparently raised no protest when the scheme
was first mooted, nor subsequently. What sort of life she was really
looking forward to upon the island for which we were about to search I
do not believe that even she herself could have explained. Probably her
philosophy might have been expressed in the phrase: "Sufficient unto the
day is the evil thereof". She soon discovered, however, that the future
would not permit itself to be shelved in this offhand fashion; there
were certain problems that persisted in thrusting themselves upon her
notice with increasing frequency, and one of them was--marriage! The
idea of creating a Utopia necessarily included that of establishing the
home life and domestic happiness. There were two men in particular who
forced her to give som |
