The Sea-Story Megapack: 30 Classic Nautical Works

by Jack Williamson

  The girl approached the man at the wheel.

  “I saw you fall, Mr. Owen,” she said in a trembling voice, “and I could not help screaming. Were you hurt much?”

  “No, Miss Folsom,” he answered in a low though not a steady tone; “but I was sadly disappointed.”

  “I confess I was nervous—very nervous—when you went aloft,” she said; “and I cleared away the life-buoy. Then, when you fell, it slipped out of my hand and went overboard. Mr. Adams scolded me. Wasn’t it ridiculous?” There were tears and laughter in the speech.

  “Not at all,” he said gravely; “it saved my life—for which I thank you.”

  “How—why—”

  “Who in Sam Hill’s been casting off these gripe-lashings?” growled the voice of the mate behind the dinghy.

  The girl tittered hysterically, and stepped beside Owen at the wheel, where she patted the moving spokes, pretending to assist him in steering.

  “Miss Freda,” said the officer, sternly, as he came around the corner of the house, “I must ask you plainly to let things alone; and another thing, please don’t talk to the man at the wheel.”

  “Will you please mind your own business?” she almost screamed; and then, crying and laughing together: “If you paid as much attention to your work as you do to—to—me, men wouldn’t fall from aloft on account of rotten foot-ropes.”

  The abashed officer went forward, grumbling about “discipline” and “women aboard ship.” When he was well out of sight in the darkness, the girl turned suddenly, passed both arms around Owen’s neck, exerted a very slight pressure, patted him playfully on the shoulder as she withdrew them, and sped down the companionway.

  He steered a wild course during that trick, and well deserved the profane criticism which he received from the mate.

  NEEDS MUST WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES, by Morgan Robertson

  Hogged at bow and stern, her deck sloped at the ends like a truck’s platform, while a slight twist in the old hull canted the foremast to port and the mizzen to starboard. It would be hard to know when she was on an even keel. The uneven planking, inboard and out, was scarred like a chopping-block, possibly from a former and intimate acquaintance with the coal trade. Aloft were dingy gray spars, slack hemp rigging, untarred for years, and tan-colored sails, mended with patch upon patch of lighter-hued canvas that seemed about to fall apart from their own weight. She was English-built, bark-rigged, bluff in the bow, square in the stern, unpainted and leaky—on the whole as unkempt and disreputable-looking a craft as ever flew the black flag; and with the clank of the pumps marking time to the wailing squeak of the tiller-ropes, she wallowed through the waves like a log in an eddying tideway.

  Even the black flag at the gaff-end wore a makeshift, slovenly air. It was a square section of the bark’s foreroyal, painted black around the skull-and-cross-bones design, which had been left the original hue of the canvas. The port-holes were equally slovenly in appearance, being cut through between stanchions with axes instead of saws; and the bulwarks were further disfigured by extra holes smashed through at the stanchions to take the lashings of the gun-breechings. But the guns were bright and cared for, as were the uniforms of the crew; for they had been lately transhipped. Far from home, with a general cargo, this ancient trader had been taken in a fog by Captain Swarth and his men an hour before their own well-found vessel had sunk alongside—which gave them just time to hoist over guns and ammunition. When the fog shifted, the pursuing English war-brig that had riddled the pirate saw nothing but the peaceful old tub ahead, and went on into the fog, looking for the other.

  “Any port in a storm, Angel,” remarked Captain Swarth, as he flashed his keen eyes over the rickety fabric aloft; “but we’ll find a better one soon. How do the boys stand the pumping?”

  Mr. Angel Todd, first mate and quartermaster, filled a black pipe before answering. Then, between the first and second deep puffs, he said: “Growlin’—dammum.”

  “At the work?”

  “Yep, and the grub. And they say the ’tween-deck and forecastle smells o’ bedbugs and bilge-water, and they want their grog. ‘An ungodly witness scorneth judgment: and the mouth of the wicked devoureth iniquity.’” Mr. Todd had been educated for the pulpit; but, going out as a missionary, he had fallen into ungodly ways and taken to the sea, where he was more successful. Many of his old phrasings clung to him.

  “Well,” drawled the captain, “men get fastidious and high-toned in this business—can’t blame them—but we’ve got to make the coast, and if we don’t pick up something on the way, we must careen and stop the leak. Then they’ll have something to growl about.”

  “S’pose the brig follows us in?”

  “Hope she will,” said Captain Swarth, with a pleasant smile and a lightening of his eyes—“hope she will, and give me a chance. Her majestic widowship owes me a brig, and that’s a fine one.”

  Mr. Todd had never been known to smile, but at this speech he lifted one eyebrow and turned his saturnine face full at his superior, inquiry written upon every line of it. Captain Swarth was musing, however, and said no more; so the mate, knowing better than to attempt probing his mind, swung his long figure down the poop-ladder, and went forward to harass the men—which, in their opinion, was all he was good for.

  According to his mood, Mr. Todd’s speech was choicest English or the cosmopolitan, technical slang of the sea, mingled with wonderful profanity. But one habit of his early days he never dropped: he wore, in the hottest weather, and in storm and battle, the black frock and choker of the clerical profession. Standing now with one foot on the fore-hatch, waving his long arms and objurgating the scowling men at the pumps, he might easily have seemed, to any one beyond the reach of his language, to be a clergyman exhorting them. Captain Swarth watched him with an amused look on his sunburnt face, and muttered: “Good man, every inch of him, but he can’t handle men.” Then he called him aft.

  “Angel,” he said, “we made a mistake in cutting the ports; we can’t catch anything afloat that sees them, so we’ll have to pass for a peaceable craft until we can drift close enough to board something. I think the brig’ll be back this way, too. Get out some old tarpaulins and cover up the ports. Paint them, if you can, the color of the sides, and you might coil some lines over the rail, as though to dry. Then you can break out cargo and strike the guns down the main-hatch.”

  Three days later, with Cape St. Roque a black line to the westward, a round shot across her bows brought the old vessel—minus the black emblem now, and outwardly respectable—up to the wind, with maintopsail aback, while Captain Swarth and a dozen of his men—equally respectable in the nondescript rig of the merchant sailor—watched the approach of an English brig of war. Mr. Todd and the rest of the crew were below hatches with the guns.

  The brig came down the wind like a graceful bird—a splendid craft, black, shiny, and shipshape, five guns to a side, brass-bound officers on her quarter-deck, blue-jackets darting about her white deck and up aloft, a homeward-bound pennant trailing from her main-truck, and at her gaff-end a British ensign as large as her mainroyal. Captain Swarth lazily hoisted the English flag to the bark’s gaff, and, as the brig rounded to on his weather beam, he pointed to it; but his dark eyes sparkled enviously as he viewed the craft whose government’s protection he appealed to.

  “Bark ahoy!” came a voice through a trumpet. “What bark is that?”

  Captain Swarth swung himself into the mizzen-rigging and answered through his hands with an excellent cockney accent: “Tryde Wind o’ Lunnon, Cappen Quirk, fifty-one dyes out fro’ Liverpool, bound to Callao, gen’ral cargo.”

  “You were not heading for the Horn.”

  “Hi’m a-leakin’ badly. Hi’m a-goin’ to myke the coast to careen. D’ye happen to know a good place?”

  An officer left the group and returned with what Captain Swarth knew was a chart, which a few of them studied, while their captain hailed again:

  “See anything more of that pirate brig the
other day?”

  “What! A pirate? Be ’e a pirate?” answered Captain Swarth, in agitated tones. “Be that you a-chasin’ of ’im? Nao, hi seed nothink of ’im arter the fog shut ’im out.”

  The captain conferred with his officers a moment, then called:

  “We are going in to careen ourselves. That fellow struck us on the water-line. We are homeward bound, and Rio’s too far to run back. Follow us in; but if you lose sight of us, it’s a small bay, latitude nine fifty-one forty south, rocks to the north, lowland to the south, good water at the entrance, and a fine beach. Look out for the brig. It’s Swarth and his gang. Good morning.”

  “Aye, that hi will. Thank ye. Good marnin’.”

  In three hours the brig was a speck under the rising land ahead; in another, she was out of sight; but before this Captain Swarth and his crew had held a long conference, which resulted in sail being shortened, though the man at the wheel was given a straight course to the bay described by the English captain.

  Late on the following afternoon the old bark blundered into this bay—a rippling sheet of water, bag-shaped, and bordered on all sides by a sandy beach. Stretching up to the mountainous country was a luxurious forest of palm, laurel, and cactus, bound and intertwined by almost impassable undergrowth, and about half-way from the entrance to the end of the bay was the English brig, moored and slightly careened on the inshore beach. Captain Swarth’s seamanly eye noted certain appearances of the tackles that held her down, which told him that the work was done and she was being slacked upright. “Just in time,” he muttered.

  They brought the bark to anchor near the beach, about a half-mile from the brig, furled the canvas, and ran out an anchor astern, with the cable over the taffrail. Heaving on this, they brought the vessel parallel with the shore. So far, good. Guns and cargo lightered ashore, more anchors seaward to keep her off the beach, masthead tackles to the trees to heave her down, and preventer rigging and braces to assist the masts, would have been next in order, but they proceeded no further toward careening. Instead, they lowered the two crazy boats, provisioned and armed them on the in-shore side of the bark, made certain other preparations—and waited.

  On the deck of the English brig things were moving. A gang of blue-jackets, under the first lieutenant, were heaving in the cable; another gang, under the boatswain, were sending down and stowing away the heavy tackles and careening-gear, tailing out halyards and sheets and coiling down the light-running rigging, while topmen aloft loosed the canvas to bunt-gaskets, ready to drop it at the call from the deck.

  The second lieutenant, overseeing this latter, paced the port quarter-deck and answered remarks from Captain Bunce, who paced the sacred starboard side (the brig being at anchor) and occasionally turned his glass on the dilapidated craft down the beach.

  “Seems to me, Mr. Shack,” he said across the deck, “that an owner who would send that bark around the Horn, and the master who would take her, ought to be sequestered and cared for, either in an asylum or in jail.”

  “Yes, sir, I think so too,” answered the second lieutenant, looking aloft. “Might be an insurance job. Clear away that bunt-gasket on the royal-yard,” he added in a roar.

  Captain Bunce—round, rosy, with brilliant mutton-chop whiskers—muttered: “Insurance—wrecked intentionally—no, not here where we are; wouldn’t court investigation by her Majesty’s officers.” He rolled forward, then aft, and looked again through the glass.

  “Very large crew—very large,” he said; “very curious, Mr. Shack.”

  A hail from the forecastle, announcing that the anchor was short, prevented Mr. Shack’s answering. Captain Bunce waved a deprecatory hand to the first lieutenant, who came aft at once, while Mr. Shack descended to the waist, and the boatswain ascended the forecastle steps to attend to the anchor. The first lieutenant now had charge of the brig, and from the quarter-deck gave his orders to the crew, while Captain Bunce busied himself with his glass and his thoughts.

  Fore-and-aft sail was set and head-sheets trimmed down to port, square sails were dropped, sheeted home, and hoisted, foreyards braced to port, the anchor tripped and fished, and the brig paid off from the land-breeze, and, with foreyards swung, steadied down to a course for the entrance.

  “Mr. Duncan,” said the captain, “there are fully forty men on that bark’s deck, all dressed alike—all in red shirts and knitted caps—and all dancing around like madmen. Look!” He handed the glass to the first lieutenant, who brought it to bear.

  “Strange,” said the officer, after a short scrutiny; “there were only a few showing when we spoke her outside. It looks as though they were all drunk.”

  As they drew near, sounds of singing—uproarious discord—reached them, and soon they could see with the naked eye that the men on the bark were wrestling, dancing, and running about.

  “Quarters, sir?” inquired Mr. Duncan. “Shall we bring to alongside?”

  “Well—no—not yet,” said the captain, hesitatingly; “it’s all right—possibly; yet it is strange. Wait a little.”

  They waited, and had sailed down almost abreast of the gray old craft, noticing, as they drew near, an appreciable diminution of the uproar, when a flag arose from the stern of the bark, a dusky flag that straightened out directly toward them, so that it was difficult to make out.

  But they soon understood. As they reached a point squarely abreast of the bark, five points of flame burst from her innocent gray sides, five clouds of smoke ascended, and five round shot, coming with the thunder of the guns, hurtled through their rigging. Then they saw the design of the flag, a white skull and cross-bones, and noted another, a black flag too, but pennant-shaped, and showing in rudely painted letters the single word “Swarth,” sailing up to the forepeak.

  “Thunder and lightning!” roared Captain Bunce. “Quarters, Mr. Duncan, quarters, and in with the kites. Give it to them. Put about first.”

  A youngster of the crew had sprung below and immediately emerged with a drum which, without definite instruction, he hammered vigorously; but before he had begun, men were clearing away guns and manning flying-jib downhaul and royal clue-lines. Others sprang to stations, anticipating all that the sharp voice of the first lieutenant could order. Around came the brig on the other tack and sailed back, receiving another broadside through her rigging and answering with her starboard guns. Then for a time the din was deafening. The brig backed her main-yards and sent broadside after broadside into the hull of the old craft. But it was not until the eighth had gone that Captain Bunce noticed through the smoke that the pirates were not firing. The smoke from the burning canvas port-coverings had deluded him. He ordered a cessation. Fully forty solid shot had torn through that old hull near the water-line, and not a man could now be seen on her deck.

  “Out with the boats, Mr. Duncan,” he said; “they’re drunk or crazy, but they’re the men we want. Capture them.”

  “Suppose they run, sir—suppose they take to their boats and get into the woods—shall we follow?”

  “No, not past the beach—not into an ambush.”

  The four boat-loads of men which put off from the brig found nothing but a deserted deck on the sinking bark and two empty boats hauled up on the beach. The pirates were in the woods, undoubtedly, having kept the bark between themselves and the brig as they pulled ashore. While the blue-jackets clustered around the bows of their boats and watched nervously the line of forest up the beach, from which bullets might come at any time, the two lieutenants conferred for a few moments, and had decided to put back, when a rattling chorus of pistol reports sounded from the depths of the woods. It died away; then was heard a crashing of bush and branch, and out upon the sands sprang a figure—a long, weird figure in black frock of clerical cut. Into their midst it sped with mighty bounds, and sinking down, lifted a glad face to the heavens with the groaning utterance: “O God, I thank thee. Protect me, gentlemen—protect me from those wicked men.”

  “What is it? Who are you?” asked Mr. Duncan. �
�Were they shooting at you?”

  “Yes, at me, who never harmed a fly. They would have killed me. My name is Todd. Oh, such suffering! But you will protect me? You are English officers. You are not pirates and murderers.”

  “But what has happened? Do you live around here?”

  It took some time for Mr. Todd to quiet down sufficiently to tell his story coherently. He was an humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord. He had gleaned among the poorest of the native population in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro until his health suffered, and had taken passage home in a passenger-ship, which, ten days out, was captured by a pirate brig. And the pirate crew had murdered every soul on board but himself, and only spared his life, as he thought, for the purpose of amusement; for they had compelled him to dance—he, a minister of the gospel—and had made him drink under torture, and recite ribald poetry, and swear, and wash their clothes. All sorts of indignities had been heaped upon him, but he had remembered the injunction of the Master; he had invariably turned the other cheek when smitten, and had prayed for their souls. He told of the flight from the English war-brig, of the taking of the old bark in the fog and the sinking of the pirate craft, of the transfer of guns and treasure to the bark, and the interview at sea with the English brig, in which Captain Swarth had deceived the other, and of Captain Swarth’s reckless confidence in himself, which had induced him to follow the brig in and careen in the same bay. He wound up his tale with a lurid description of the drunken debauch following the anchoring of the bark—during which he had trembled for his life—of the insane firing on the brig as she passed, and the tumbling into the boats when the brig returned the fire, of the flight into the woods, the fighting among themselves, and his escape under fire.