Captain Jat’s treatment of the lad was curious in many ways. He had him sleep in a little cabin aback the Mate’s where through the open door he could see the boy in his bunk. When he ran out of toddy, he would heave his pewter mug at the lad’s head as he lay asleep, and roar to him to turn-out and brew him fresh and stronger; but this trick of the Captain’s was no trouble to Pibby; for he rigged a dummy oakum-head to that end of his bunk which showed through the open doorway and slept then the other way about.
And so with this little that I have told you may know something of the life aft in the cabin of the little barque Gallat, which vessel belonged stick-and-keel, to Captain Jat; and some pretty rum doings there were aboard of her, first and last, as you may now have chance to judge.
At times, another side of Captain Jat would break out, and he would spend the whole of a watch having a gorgeous pistol-shooting match against Pibby; and a wonderful good shot the boy was, both by natural eye, and by the training he had this way. In the end, the boy became a better shot than Captain Jat himself, who was an extraordinarily fine marksman; though somewhat unequal. Yet for all that Pibby beat him time after time, this peculiar man showed no annoyance, but persisted in the matches, as if his primary intention were to make the boy an expert with the weapon; and indeed, I have little doubt but that this was his real desire.
Now, although Pibby Tawles had tremendously confused and vague ideas as to what strangeness of mystery was concerned with the island, yet he knew perfectly that it was no chance that had brought them that way; for all the Captain’s talks over his toddy had gone to show that the true aim of the voyage was to bring up near the island for some purpose that the lad could only guess at in a mystified way, owing to the muddling fashion in which Captain Jat had run his yarns one into another; treasure, women, monsters, and odd times a queer habit of muttering to himself about his little priestess—his little priestess! And once he had broken out into a kind of hazy ramble about the Ud, rolling his eyes at the boy strangely and gesticulating so impressively with his pewter mug that he managed to spread his toddy in an unprejudiced manner over Pibby, the table and the floor generally.
Therefore, having, as I have said, a sure knowledge that the island they approached was the real goal of the voyages, though there was an honest enough cargo below hatches, you may imagine something of Pibby’s blank astonishment when Captain Jat allowed the barque to sail quietly past, touching neither brace, sheet nor tack; so that, by the morning was full come, the island lay upon the weather quarter, and presently far away astern.
Yet, as they had gone past, the lad had studied it very eagerly, and had seen in the light of the coming day that it was wooded almost everywhere, even close down to the shores, with a long, bold reef of stark rock running out in a great sweep upon the South side, so that it was plain a boat could be landed there very safely and easily under its lee. The island, Pibby had noticed, rose towards the centre, into a low, seemingly flat-topped hill, with the forests of great trees very heavy on its slopes.
All the morning the Gallat stood to the Southward, until they had sunk the island below the horizon. They hove-to then, and drifted until near evening, when they filled once more on her, and stood back to the Northward. By four bells that night they sighted the island, looking like a doleful smudge in the darkness away to the Northeast.
Presently, the barque was put in irons, and orders given to lower the dingy. When she was in the water, Captain Jat flipped Pibby on the ear, and growled to him to jump down into the boat. The boy climbed over, and Captain Jat followed, after having first directed the Second Mate, whose watch it was, to reach out into the open, and run in again about midnight.
The Captain took the after oar, and rowed standing up, with his face to the bows, whilst Pibby, the boy, took the bow oar and rowed sitting down.
“Easy with that oar, boy!” said Captain Jat presently, after he had pulled awhile. “Put your shirt round it.” And this, Pibby had to do, and row naked to the waist, whilst his shirt muffled the sound of his oar between the thole-pins. But, after all, the night was pretty warm.
Meanwhile, the Captain had pulled off his own coat and ripped out one of the sleeves, which he reeved onto his oar, and so made it silent as the lad’s. And this was the way, almost as quietly as a shadow boat in the darkness, they came in presently under the shelter of the great barrier reef, and very soon then to the uncomfortable silence of the shore under the dark trees that came down so near to the sea.
Here, before Captain Jat landed, he bid the boy lay on his oar, whilst he listened. But they could hear nothing, except the far dull booming of the sea upon the exposed beach beyond the great reef—the solemn noise of the sea coming very hushed and distant to them, and blending with the dree little sounds that came out of the near forest, as the night airs went wandering on into its gloom.
“Keep her afloat till I come, boy,” said Captain Jat, as he stepped ashore. He walked a few paces up the beach, settling a brace of great double-barrelled pistols in his belt. Then he turned sharply and came back:—
“Not a sound, boy, or you’re as good as dead,” he said grimly, in a low tone. “Not a sound, so what you hears! Keep off there in the shadow of the reef. You’ll hear me squark like a catched molley-hawk, when I come. Keep your eyes wide open, boy!” And with that, he slewed round on his heel, and went up pretty quick across the sand into the darkness of the black trees.
Pibby Tawles, the boy, stood in the bows of the boat, and stared after him, listening to the vague sounds of his passage growing ever distant and more distant, but odd-whiles sounding out clear through the dark forests, as some dried kippin snapped under his weight. Then, as Captain Jat went farther and farther, the silence of the island fell again about Pibby, save for the odd whispering of the leaves in the little airs that came off the sea, and the constant solemn booming of the ocean on the far breach that lay exposed upon the outward arc of the great reef.
And so, listening there, and full of the mystery of all the vague and muddled tales that Captain Jat had maundered through so often, over the toddy, is it any matter for surprise that the lad, Pibby, grew suddenly frightened of the loneliness and the silence, and began to think there were pale ovals, among the dark tree-trunks, that peered at him?
He thrust his hand down, inside his trousers, and eased a small double-barrelled pistol out of a canvas pocket he had stitched in there with a palm and needle, and sail-twine for thread. The feel of the small weapon gave him a degree of comfort, and abruptly he remembered that Captain Jat had told him to keep the boat off in the shadow of the reef. He jumped out over the bows, holding the pistol in his right hand, and found to his dismay that the boat was aground. He put his bare shoulder to her stern, and hove madly awhile, sweating; for he felt that Captain Jat was quite capable of knifing him on his return, if he found the boat hard ashore. With a determination, vague but dogged, to protect himself with his pistol if necessary, he made one vast, final effort, and the boat slid afloat.
He jumped in over the bows, ran aft and put his pistol on the stern thwart; then with the boat-hook he pushed out, and so came in a minute under the gloom of the reef, which rose up just there into a chaos of great rocks, weed-hidden at their bases. He thrust the boat-hook into a mass of weed, and anchored the boat temporarily.
Then, with a sudden shiver, he remembered his shirt, and, having freed it, he covered his damp back.
Pibby Tawles had been sitting quietly in the boat for, maybe, half an hour, when he heard something that made him lean forward on the thwart and listen tensely. There was something moving, in among the great rocks and boulders where the reef thrust into the shore; and the sounds were exceedingly curious:— Slither! Slither! click-click, and then a loud squelch and a great splashing, as if some huge thing scrambling over the rocks, had slipped and fallen into one of the pools left by the sea.
There was a little time of silence, and then again came the sharp, click, click, followed by a loud grating noise over the
rocks. The noise frightened the boy extraordinarily, and he freed the boat-hook silently from the weed, and began nervously to punt the boat out farther from the shore; but keeping very carefully in the gloom that the shadow of the reef cast.
He held the boat again, some dozen fathoms farther out, and waited. He could hear the strange noises continuing, oddly broken by pauses of profound quiet; then again the slithering and clicking sounds. Abruptly, there was a loud crash—a huge boulder had been moved bodily and sent rolling down from the higher parts of the reef to the shore. The boulder was a big one; for Pibby could see it vaguely through the darkness, where it had bounded out into the soft sand. He thought vividly and horridly of Captain Jat’s muddled yarns of grim things, and he began again silently to push the boat farther out.
Even as he loosed the hook of the boat-hook out from the weed, there came a tremendous scrambling noise among the rocks inshore, and something moved out silently onto the vague white sand of the beach. It passed over a darker patch of pebbles, and the lad heard the rounded stones grinding against each other, as if under a vast weight. The pistol seemed only a foolish toy in his hand, and he got down suddenly onto the bottom-boards of the boat and lay flat.
A long while seemed to pass, during which he heard further sounds that told him the thing was moving along the beach. He kept very still, and presently there was only silence of the quiet sea and the island about him again, with the seas booming far and hollowly on the unprotected shore beyond the reef, and the faint stirrings of the forest trees whispering oddly to him across the quiet strip of sea that held the boat off the sand.
He sat up, cautiously, and found that the boat still rose and fell on the gentle heaves of the sea close in under the gloom of the reef. He took the boat-hook and anchored her again, and all the time his gaze searched the vauge shore; but he saw nothing and heard nothing, and gradually he grew easier.
A long time passed, whilst he sat, pistol in hand, watching and listening. Everything remained quiet, and slowly he began to nod, drowsing and waking through the minutes, so that he could not be said to be either awake or asleep. And then, in a moment, he was wide awake, for there was a sound breaking the utter stillness. He sat up, gripping his pistol, and stared nervously; and as he stared, the sound came again, a far, faint inhuman howling away up through the dark forests of to the North of him. He stood up in the boat, and, abruptly, a great way off in the night, there came the sound of a shot, and once more the howling, only that now there was a strange screaming as well. There was another shot, and one single, shrill scream that came to him far and attenuated out of the night air; and then, for the best part of an hour, an absolute silence.
Suddenly, far off among the trees, Pibby saw a faint gleam of light, moving here and there, and growing bigger as the minutes passed. Presently, he saw that there were four of these gleams, and then six, and all moving and dancing about strangely; but no sound; at least, not for a time.
All at once, he heard the snapping of a twig, apparently a long way off in the wood, the sound echoing strangely in the quietness. And then, very abrupt and dreadful, the inhuman howling began again, mingled with a wild screaming, seeming to be but a few hundred paces deep in the woods. To the boy, it seemed as though something that was half a woman and half something else, howled and shrieked there among the trees; and he chilled with a very literal fright.
The six lights danced and blended and again separated, and all the time the abominable howling and screaming continued through the grim woods. Then, very sharp and sudden, the noise of one Captain Jat’s double-barrelled pistols:— bang! bang! And, almost immediately, Captain Jat’s voice shouting, at some distance, to bring the boat in, to bring the boat in.
The lad freed the boat-hook, and started the dingy in to the shore, and as he did so, he heard the crashing of Captain Jat’s footsteps through the rotten wood and leaves; and it was plain to him that the Captain had started to make an undisguised run for the boat.
As Pibby thrust the boat inshore, he realised a number of things:— The Captain was being followed, and those lights and the strange howling had something to do with whatever followed him. The nose of the boat grounded, and Pibby picked up his weapon, and ran forrard and stood on the fore thwart, waiting.
The strange lights came nearer, moving swiftly among the trees; and suddenly the lad saw something that was plainly monstrous. He had a clear view up a long vista of dark trees, which the lights had made visible, and he saw the figure of a man, black and immensely tall against the light, running and staggering down towards the beach. He knew it was Captain Jat. The dancing lights, beyond, entered the vista, and came dancing and flaring down through the wood; and abruptly the boy got a clear view of the things that carried them. The lights were great torches, and were carried by a number of wild looking women who were nearly naked, with great manes of hair all loose and wild about them.
But the monstrous and horrid thing that caught the boy’s eye was something he saw as the women came nearer, running. They had faces so flat as to be almost featureless. At first, if he thought at all, he supposed that they were wearing some kind of mask; but as they ran, the nearest woman opened her mouth and howled, the same disgusting sound that he had heard earlier that night. As she howled, she brandished both the hand that held the torch, and the other hand, above her head. But she had no hands; her arms ended in enormous claws, like the claws of a great crab. The other women began to howl, and to wave their torches and arms as they ran, and Pibby saw that some of them were like the foremost woman. He stared, with the wide-eyed acceptance of youth of the horrific and monstrous.
Captain Jat came blundering and reeling out of the wood. He stubbed his foot against something, and fell headlong onto the sand, and those extraordinary and brutish things close astern of him. Pibby saw suddenly that three of the women had knives, enormous knives, and somehow the sight of the knives made him feel better—it was more human. In the same moment, he loosed off his right barrel and immediately his left, and with each shot there fell a woman, screaming, their torches flying along the sand, and throwing up great sparks. Captain Jat staggered up, and came on at a heavy run to the boat. He reached it, and fell all his great length in over the bows.
“Put off, boy!” he gasped. “Put off!” And even as he spoke, the boat was away from the shore with the push that he had given it as he came aboard. He scrambled to his feet, seized an oar, and thrust down hard, so that the water boiled under the stern, with the way that he gave the boat. In a moment, they had the oars between the tholes, and were backing the boat madly out into the darkness of the sea; so that in a few minutes they were a good way off the shore, and the quiet and hush of the water about them.
But there danced on the beach, at the edge of the sea, those monstrous-faced and monstrous-armed women, and howled at them across the sea, and a dreadful enough noise to hear. They waved their great torches, and jigged crazily, so that the light splashed redly across the swells; and all the time as they danced, their black manes flew about them, and always they howled.
“Pull, boy!” said Captain Jat, still very hoarse with breathlessness. “Pull, Boy!” But indeed, the lad was pulling fit to break his youthful back. There passed a further time of labour and gasping silence, and presently they were out in the open water, where the quiet swells moved big and free under them in the darkness, and the reef lay between them and the shore. But they could still see the mad dancing of the lights at the edge of the sea.
Awhile later, Captain Jat eased, and they put the boat round, after which he lay on his oar, and the boy the same, for he could scarcely breathe. The lights were gone now from the shore, and there was no sound, except the far hollow noise of the breaking seas upon the exposed beaches of the island, to the Eastward.
Now, never a word of thanks said Captain Jat for the way the boy had saved him with the pistol; but presently he pulled his oar in across the boat, and lit his pipe, after which he hove the plug of his tobacco at the lad. That was hi
s way.
“Boy,” he said, after smoking a little, “I’m wondering if they knew I was whistlin’ to her.”
“Who, Sir?” asked Pibby.
But Captain Jat made no answer to this. After smoking a long time, he said suddenly:— “Them was the Ud-women, boy… Devil-women…. Priestesses of the Ud, that’s Devil in their talk. I was here a matter of four years gone for water, and I found out somethin’ then, boy, about them an’ their pearl-fishin’ an’ devil-worshipping, an’ how they’ve kep’ it quiet from all the world. I found one of the priestesses alone one time, a little woman an’ pretty, not like them!” (He jerked his thumb shorewards.) “I was a week lyin’ off here, an’ there mightn’t have been anyone on the island, the way they kep’ hid, boy; not till I found the little priestess down near by the spring. I knew her lingo, a bit, and we got talking. I saw her all that week, every night, secret like. She liked me. I liked her. I had her aboard once, an’ she told me a heap. When I put her ashore, I took the Mate with me, Jeremiah Stimple, he was, an’ we went prospecting for them pearls I’d learned about; but she’d never told me proper about the Ud an’ the Ud-women. She’d never say much that way. That’s how we got into trouble. We’d near got to the top of the hill, an’ then come some of them devil-women. I was all cut about, an’ I guess they likely sacrificed the Mate. I never saw him again.
“There must be hundreds of them devil-women ashore there in them forests. But I always meant to come back, boy. I’ve seen the pearls this very night. They’re down in the bottom of the crater that’s inside of yon hill in the middle of the island, all strung round a great carved post; an’ I’m going to get ’em too, boy. You sh’d see the pearls them hag-women was dressed with. You mustn’t be feared of their claws, boy. They’m only cast off claw-shells, or somethin’ of that sort. Mind you, the little priestess, she said some of ’em was real—growed that way; but I can’t think it, scarcely. But you never know what you may find in them sorts of places. What their pet Devil is, I don’t know….”
Boats of the Glen Carrig and Other Nautical Adventures Page 51
