The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea
Page 42
“Fetch out one of yon hot sash weights,” I said; and the Third Mate went off at a jump an’ brought one on the galley shovel. All glowin’ red, it was. He shoved it in the gun muzzle and rammed it down hard on the wet oakum.
“Stan’ clear, all of you!” I said, an’ started to light the torch the Mate, as was dead at my feet, had just made.
As I spoke, I saw the flash of the gun aboard the whaler, an’ then there was a big splash where the shot had struck the calm sea; about ten fathoms away, an’ the same instant, it seemed, the shot came right in over the rail and killed James, an A.B., an’ cut the wire in my hand as clean as a pair of shears, then ripped a hole in the starboard bulwark behind me and bashed its way out into the sea.
I wiped my face an’ picked up the cut torch again, an’ lit it with the Mate’s matches; then I took one last look along the pipes, an’ saw they pointed clear over the whaler.
“God A’mighty,” I said, out loud, “send this where it should go!” An’ with just these words I put the burnin’ oakum to the touchhole.
There came a flare up in my face, nearly, an’ a mighty great flash, an’ a bang that made me deaf for an hour after; an’ all the decks was full of a mighty great cloud of smoke.
I jumped over the dead Mate, an’ ran aft, to be clear of the smoke, for I needed to see where that shot went to.
But I never knew where that shot struck, nor no other man aboard us; only there was a terrible blaze that went up hundreds of feet from the whaler, an’ a bang that I could hear, though I was near deaf at the time, as you know; an’ there was nothing then to see for a bit but a great bank of smoke right down low on the sea.
No, I’ve never reckoned to be religious, but that made me feel rummy; for, as I watched, there was great splashes here and great splashes there about the sea, an’ I knew, after a moment, as it was bits of yon devil ship, comin’ down from a sky that was too sick to let ’em bide up there. An’ when the smoke rolled away a bit, there was nothin’ under it, nothin’ but a blank, naked sea.
An’ that’s not all; for when I come round to look at the gun I’d made, the whole of the forrard end of it was split, an’ I knew it would never throw a shot again; nor any gun on this earth ever shoot the equal of the one shot it did shoot. I guess there must have been a mint of explosive aboard yon whaler.
Yes, I repaired that steam pipe, for I’d only to fill in the space with melted lead between the steam pipe and the outer pipe I’d fitted round the elbow, to make a downright solid steam-tight joint. What’s more, I had steam up before evening, an’ I run there engines myself, as well as navigated the ship, for the Second Engineer ain’t fit at this minute to do more than lie an’ count how many beans makes seven.
Yes, I’ve laid the whole business before the authorities. Oh, aye! We’ve made our sworn statement before the authorities, but it don’t prove nothing, ’cept that; as they put it, “there’s been a case of modern piracy.” I did my damndest to tell ’em it wasn’t just “a case of modern piracy.” I told ’em piracy ’d never properly stopped. Things ’d changed, an’ piracy with ’em, same as burglars had changed, but they hadn’t gone off the earth; an’ if the land robbers hadn’t died out, with all law an’ order against ’em, did they suppose, to goodness, as sea robbery had stopped, right out there, away from law and order? I told ’em it never would stop till they put a gun or two into every seagoing ship, so as sailors can protect theirselves.
But, bless you, they said they was much interested in my views on the subject, but they must persist in regarding the regrettable affair as nothing more than an isolated incident. They said the seas was too crowded and well patrolled nowadays for that sort of thing to occur even once without the perpetrators being discovered in the act. Lord! Heard any man ever the like of such blather!
I told ’em about other things I’d come across myself, and they was much interested, unofficially, as you might say; but they couldn’t move the matter without I brought sufficient evidence to support each statement I made, They said I should have reported each affair at the time, an’ brought my crew forward as witnesses. I told ’em I’d never have taken the trouble to make this statement, let alone the others, if I’d not felt there was evidence all round to make ’em get a move on ’em. I said I was darned if I ever came near ’em again; not if I was witness to the sinkin’ of a liner by one of them Bad Business lot. When I said that, the chairman said he must call me to order. My language was improper. Improper! Fancy botherin’ about a trifle of language, an’ lettin’ slide all that same language meant! It just sickened me, an’ I said: “Be damned to you for a pack of silly old wimmen. I pray God the whole b’ilin’ of you’ll be copped by one of them in the Bad Business, an’ sunk out in mid-ocean. I reckon you’d wish’ then as you’d fixed it up for all ships as go to sea to carry some kind of weapon of defense. An’ I guess you’ll learn then as the sea ain’t quite the highly peaceful, well-patrolled, an’ crowded artificial bloomin’ lake as you seem to think it. Good day, gentlemen!”
An’ out I comes, with them paralysed at my plain speakin’.
We Two and Bully Dunkan
I
Don’t go, Miles,” I said. “Better lose your pay-day. It seems he’s got it in for you, and a common sailorman can do nothing against the after-guard.”
“I’m going back, John,” he told me. “I swore he’d not haze me out of the ship, and he shan’t. He’s belted the rest of the crew half silly, and they’ve bunked, without drawing a penny. Some of the poor devils even left their sea-chests. I expect he thinks I’m going to do the same; but he’s mightily mistaken.”
This was in ’Frisco. I had just run up against Miles, who had a badly swollen face, and an ugly scar over his right eyebrow.
“What is it?” I’d asked him. “Been a trip with a Yankee Skipper?”
“Just that, John,” he answered me. “Bully Dunkan!”
“Goo’ Lor’!” I said. “Were you drunk when you signed on?”
For no free, sober white-man ever sails with Bully Dunkan, not unless it’s that or the hard and stony beach. That is just what it had been with poor old Miles; and he’d had a Number One rough time of it; for once, when he explained that he misliked the application of the Mate’s heavy sea-boot to his rear anatomy, the Mate had promptly knocked him down, having first slipped a big brass knuckle-duster on his fist, to emphasise his accompanying and entirely unprintable remarks. This accounted for the scar over my old shipmate’s eye.
The swollen face had been acquired at a later date; to be exact, about a week before the ship reached ’Frisco. It was what I might describe as the lingering physical memory of an efficiently dislocated jaw. The dislocation had been the personal and vigourous handiwork of Bully Dunkan himself. It appears that Miles, one afternoon, so far forgot his early training as to withhold the other cheek, during one of the Mate’s attentive moods. In fact, I understand that Miles actually hit the man (Hogge by name and nature) so hearty a wallop with his fist, that he floored him on the main-deck. The next thing that poor Miles knew was, as he put it, stars. Old Bully Dunkan had come up behind him, wearing felt slippers, and hit him solidly with his fist, on the side of the jaw.
Bully Dunkan weighed two hundred pounds, in his stockings, and his title isn’t a fancy one. So when Miles came round, in about ten minutes, and found the Bo’sun and Chips, the carpenter, trying to heave his jaw back into place, he wasn’t surprised; but, as he told me, it hurt a lot; which I could believe, by the look of the swelling!
“Well,” I told him, “you’re a fool, if you try to make the trip back to Boston in her. He’ll have it in pretty savage for you.”
Miles, however, is a pig-headed brute, when he’s fixed on anything; so when he just shook his head, I told him I would sacrifice my bones on the altar of friendship, and sign on for the return trip with him, just to look after him a bit!
“John,” he said, in his solemn, earnest kind of way, “you’re a friend to tie to. And I’ll not
try to persuade you not to come—not until you’ve heard the rest of what I’ve got to tell you:—
“When we were coming up from Sydney, through the Islands, the Old Man and the Mate went ashore one night in the boat. I was one of the boat’s crew, and a chap, called Sandy Meg, was the other.
“We were told to stay by the boat, and lie just off the shore a bit. I thought it was a rummy business; and ugly too; for both the Skipper and the Mate had guns. They were loading them in the boat, while we were pulling ashore.
“Well, they’d been ashore about an hour, I should think, when Sandy Meg nudged me to listen. I heard what he meant, then; for there was a faint, far-off screaming, seeming about a mile or more away; and then there were several shots. I could swear to that.
“ ‘What do you make of it, Sandy?’ I asked him; but he shook his head, and wouldn’t answer. Poor devil; they had fairly beaten the bit of spirit out of him. Not that he was ever very wise.
“About half an hour later, I heard someone running, up among the trees; and then I saw the Mate and the Captain coming down to the bench at a run, and singing out to us to bring the boat ashore, smart.
“They fairly raced down the sands, and I could see they were carrying a packet between them; pretty heavy it seemed, and done up in some of that native matting. They hove this down into the bottom of the boat; and I swear it sounded like coin, packed tight. Then they shoved her out and scrambled in, yelling to us to give way, which we did, with the two of them double-banking the oars, and driving her out stern-first.
“We’d got out about three hundred yards, when a man came out of the woods, and ran down the shore, a white man, by the look of him in the moonlight; but, of course, that’s half guessing. He knelt down near the edge of the water, and then there was a flash, and something knocked splinters off the port gunnel of the boat, and there was the bang of one of these old Martinis. I recognised the sound!
“By the time he’d loaded and fired twice more, we were too far away to get hurt. He never touched the boat, after that first shot. I saw several other men on the shore; but I suppose they can’t have had anything to shoot with.
“Then we were heading away for the ship—she looked like a ghost out on the sea; too far away for the people ashore to recognise anything about her.
“Next day, when I was sent up to lace on the boat-cover, I saw something in the bottom, that made me stare. When I’d reached for it, I found it was a twenty-dollar gold piece. You’ll remember the package they dumped into the bottom of the boat! Now what do you make of all that?”
“Ugly!” I said.
“Well,” he told me, “that’s one more reason why I’m going home to Boston in her. I’ve to get square for these” (he touched the scar and his jaw) “and I reckon the best way to get square with hogs of that kind, is to touch them right on their dollar-marks. Now, are you strong to come, as ever?”
“Stronger,” I told him. “Only I guess we’ll go heeled. There’s sure to be some excitement coming to us this trip. Tell me, where is the lazarette trap—in the pantry, or in the big cabin?”
“Neither,” said Miles. “Bully Dunkan sits on the grub hatch, as they say! The hatch of the lazarette is in his own cabin, and opens up under his table. It’s no good thinking of that, John. And there’s no getting in through the lazarette bulkshead, from the hold. She’s stowed up with cargo, solid to the deck-beams. I’ve thought of all that. I’ve thought of things for hours at a time; but I can’t see how to do it!”
“He drinks pretty heavily, doesn’t he?” I asked.
“No,” said Miles, “not for him, you know. I’ve never seen him stupid with it yet. And he sleeps so light, that we always have to go to the wheel on the port side of the poop. His cabin is on the starboard side, and he comes up raging, if anyone walks over his head.”
“Do you happen to know what kind of irons they carry?” I asked.
“Yes,” he told me. “They ironed Billy Duckworth. He went for the two of them, with an iron belaying-pin, after they had both been kicking him. They laid him out stiff; and ironed him down in the lazarette. Kept him there three days on water. He told me they’ve got big iron rings, let into the deck of the lazarette, and a chain and padlock. The way they fixed him up, was by handcuffing his two hands together, and then passing the chain over the handcuffs and through one of the rings in the deck, and padlocking him there, like a wild beast.”
“Um!” I said; “and of course the lazarette’s kept locked?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t see it matters anyway. It’s not the lazarette that’s going to be any use to us.”
“Perhaps not,” I said. “It certainly sounds a tough proposition. Let’s go and have a drink.”
II
Bully Dunkan signed me on, in a joyous mood, for him! But I had to ape to be half drunk, or he’d have smelled several kinds of a rat; for free, American white-men don’t offer to go promiscuously to sea with him; unless they’re either not sober, or they’re on the rocks; and I wasn’t ragged enough for that yarn to tally-up with appearances.
The ship was a wooden barque of about 500 tons, and Bully Dunkan carried no Second Mate; for the Bo’sun used to stand his watch for him, Marine Law Regulations or not!
The only two of the old crew who had not been run out of the ship, were Miles, and Sandy Meg, the rather soft-witted man who had been in the boat that night with Miles. I found that he had been made acting Steward, as the last man had been run out with the others. I daresay the arrangement suited Bully Dunkan very well; for he never raised Meg’s wages, and as acting Steward he remained.
By good fortune, Miles and I were both picked in the same watch—the Mate’s. Two days out at sea, there started the usual kind of Bully Dunkanism. One of the men, a big “Dutchman,” in a foolish moment, imagined that his two hundred and fifty pounds of brawn and simplicity were the equivalent of Bully Dunkan’s two hundred pounds of brawn and hell-fire. As a result, when Dunkan kicked the big Dutchman, the man turned on the Skipper, and held an enormous bony fist under his nose, just through that brief length of time that it took Bully Dunkan to realise the amazing fact.
“Shmell that!” said the huge Dutchman, in his sublime innocence.
Apparently there was something displeasing to the Skipper in the odour of the big Dutchman’s homely fist; for he never said a word; but the crack he hit the Dutchman was heard by the watch below in the fo’cas’le.
There was no need for the Bully to accentuate his protest further; but being Bully Dunkan, he—well, he just Dunkanised, and jumped on the big man with his sea-boots, until I was almost angry enough to have interfered.
After all was over, however, the Dutchman was not really badly hurt. His ribs were like the ribs of a horse, and his spirit was like the spirit of a milch cow; and he was a first class sailorman. I have frequently seen them built on these lines, which are much approved by Skippers of the “Yankee Skipper” type.
I had a word with Miles, after this bit of bother.
“See here, Miles,” I said, “if that unpleasant person aft, or his pet Hogge try that sort of game again on you, or attempt liberties with this particular American citizen who’s talking to you, why then, my friend, we’ve both got to stick to each other, several degrees closer than the proverbial brother. And if one of us gets a taste of the irons, the other has got to go through it with him. Sumga? So keep those tools and oddments we got in ’Frisco, handy in your pockets, savvy?”
“Yes, John,” said Miles, in his sober way. “I think I follow what’s in your mind.”
And at that I left it.
The next day, in the morning watch, I had an adventure with the Mate. Perhaps I ought to admit that the adventure was less of his seeking than mine; but, I thought perhaps certain plans I had in my head, might as well pass into action, early as late. And, in short, I sought trouble with both hands; so waste no pity on me; but give me what a Frenchman I once knew, called the liniment of your understanding.
I pretended an entire innocence of anything unorthodox; but all the same, I slackened the bite I had on my pipe; for I was too far from a dentist, just at the moment.
The next thing I knew, the Mate (a hefty brute he was too), had made one jump for me. He gripped the pipe and tore it out of my mouth, with a violence that might have left a serious gap, had I not been prepared.
I turned slowly, and looked at him, as mildly as I could. He held the pipe in his fist, by the bowl; and seemed to be a little too full for words.
“Ah!” I said, “was it you who just removed my pipe?”
“Of all—” he began; and became incoherent….
“You shore got some nerve, you have!” was what he finally managed to reduce it to. This is, of course, a strictly expurgated quote.
“You ought really to be a little more careful,” I explained. “I don’t mind you borrowing my pipe; indeed I’ll make you a gift of it; for I never care to smoke after other people; but you should really be a little more careful. You might have loosened one or more of my incisors, and dentists do make such awful charges.”
“Say!” he shouted, and caught hold of his own throat, in a very ecstasy of deep feeling. “Say!” he shouted again. “Say!…”
He yelled it this time; and if I had never heard despair before, I should recognise it in future.