The Mutineers Part 12

The cook alone, as I watched the scene with close interest, I could not understand. To a certain extent he seemed surly, to a certain extent, subservient. Perhaps he intended that we--and others--should be mystified.

One thing I now realized for the first time: although the crew was divided into two cliques, the understanding was much more complete on the side of Captain Falk. Among those who enjoyed the favor of our new officers there was, I felt sure, some secret agreement, perhaps even some definite organization. There seemed to be a unity of thought and manner that only a common purpose could explain, whereas the rest drifted as the wind blew.

"Ben," Roger said, coming to me where I sat on the forecastle, "I want to talk to you. Step over by the mast."

I followed him, though surprised.

"Here we can see on all sides," he said. "There are no hiding-places within earshot. Ben"--He hesitated as if to find the right words.

All were watching us now, the captain and the mate from the quarter-deck, the others from wherever they happened to be.

"I am loath to draw your sister's younger brother into danger," Roger began. His adjective was tactfully chosen. "I am almost equally reluctant to implicate you in what seems likely to confront us, because you are an old friend of mine and a good deal younger than I am. But when the time comes to go home, Ben, I'm sure we want to be able to look your sister and all the others squarely in the eyes, with our hands clean and our consciences clear--if we go home. How about it, Ben?"

I was too bewildered to answer, and in Roger's eyes something of his old twinkle appeared.

"Ultimately," he continued, grave once more and speaking still in enigmas, "we shall be vindicated in any case. But I fear that, before then, I, for one, shall have to clasp hands with mutiny, perhaps with piracy. How would you like that, Ben, with a thundering old fight against odds, a fight that likely enough will leave us to sleep forever on one of these green islands hereabouts?"

Still I did not understand.

Roger regarded me thoughtfully. "Tell me all that you know about our cargo."

"Why," said I, finding my tongue at last, "it's ginseng and woollen goods for Canton. That's all I know."

"Then you don't know that at this moment there is one hundred thousand dollars in gold in the hold of the Island Princess?"

"What?" I gasped.

"One hundred thousand dollars in gold."

I could not believe my ears. Certainly, so far as I was concerned, the secret had been well kept.

Then a new thought came to me, "Does Captain Falk know?" I asked.

"Yes," said Roger, "Captain Falk knows."

CHAPTER XII

A STRANGE TALE

Roger Hamlin's words were to linger a long time in my ears, and so far as I then could see, there was little to say in reply. A hundred thousand dollars in gold had bought, soul and body, many a better man than Captain Falk. At that very moment Falk was watching us from the quarter-deck with an expression on his face that was partly an amused smile, partly a sneer.

Weak and conceited though he was, he was master of that s.h.i.+p and crew in more ways than one.

But Roger had not finished. "Do you remember, Ben," he continued in a low voice, but otherwise unmindful of those about us, "that some half a dozen years ago, when Thomas Webster was sore put to it for enough money to square his debts and make a clean start, the brig Vesper, on which he had sent a venture, returned him a profit so unbelievably great that he was able to pay his creditors and buy from the Shattucks the old Eastern Empress, which he fitted out for the voyage to Sumatra that saved his fortunes?"

I remembered it vaguely--I had been only a small boy when it happened--and I listened with keenest interest. The Websters owned the Island Princess.

"Not a dozen people know all the story of that voyage. It's been a kind of family secret with the Websters. Perhaps they're ashamed to be so deeply indebted to a Chinese merchant. Well, it's a story I shouldn't tell under other conditions, but in the light of all that's come to pa.s.s, it's best you should hear the whole tale, Ben; and in some ways it's a fine tale, too. The Websters, as you probably know, had had bad luck, what with three wrecks and pirates in the West Indies. They were pretty much by the head in those days, and it was a dark outlook before them, when young Webster signed the Vesper's articles as first officer and went aboard, with all that the old man could sc.r.a.pe together for a venture, and with the future of his family hanging in the balance. At Whampoa young Webster went up to the Hong along with the others, and drove what bargains he could, and cleared a tidy little sum. But it was nowhere near enough to save the family. If only they could get the money to tide them over, they'd weather the gale. If not, they'd go on a lee sh.o.r.e. Certain men--you'd know their names, but such things are better forgotten--were waiting to attach the s.h.i.+ps the Websters had on the ways, and if the s.h.i.+ps were attached there would be nothing left for the Websters but stools in somebody's counting-house.

"As I've heard the story, young Webster was waiting by the river for his boat, with a face as long as you'd hope to see, when a Chinese who'd been watching him from a little distance came up and addressed him in such pidgin English as he could muster and asked after his father. Of course young Webster was taken by surprise, but he returned a civil answer, and the two fell to talking together. It seemed that, once upon a time, when the Chinese was involved, head and heels, with some rascally down-east Yankee, old man Webster had come to the rescue and had got him out of the sc.r.a.pe with his yellow hide whole and his moneybags untapped.

"The Chinaman seemed to suspect from the boy's long face that all was not as it should be, and he squeezed more or less of the truth out of the young fellow, had him up to the Hong again, gave him various gifts, and sent him back to America with five teak-wood chests. Just five ordinary teak-wood chests--but in those teak-wood chests, Ben, was the money that put the Websters on their feet again. The hundred thousand dollars below is for that Chinese merchant."

It was a strange tale, but stranger tales than that were told in the old town from which we had sailed.

"And Captain Falk--?" I began questioningly.

"Captain Falk was never thought of as a possible master of this s.h.i.+p."

"Will he try to steal the money?"

Roger raised his brows. "Steal it? Steal is a disagreeable word. He thinks he has a grievance because he was not given the chief mate's berth to begin with. He says, at all events, that he will not hand over any such sum to a yellow heathen. He thinks he can return it to the owners two-fold. Although he seldom reads his Bible, I believe he referred to the man who was given ten talents."

"But the owners' orders!" I exclaimed.

"The owners' orders in that respect were secret. They were issued to Captain Whidden and to me, and Captain Falk refuses to accept my version of them."

"And you?"

Roger smiled and looked me hard in the eye. "I am going to see that they are carried out," he said. "The Websters would be grievously disappointed if this commission were not discharged. Also--" his eyes twinkled in the old way--"I am not convinced that Captain Falk is in all respects an honest--no, let us not speak too harshly--let us say, a _reliable_ man."

"So there'll be a fight," I mused.

"We'll see," Roger replied. "In any case, you know the story. Are you with me?"

After fifty years I can confess without shame that I was frightened when Roger asked me that question, for Roger and I were only two, and Falk, by hook or by crook, had won most of the others to his side. There was Bill Hayden, to be sure, on whom we could count; but he was a weak soul at best, and of the cook's loyalty to Roger and whatever cause he might espouse I now held grave doubts. Yet I managed to reply, "Yes, Roger, I am with you."

I thought of my sister when I said it, and of the white flutter of her handkerchief, which had waved so bravely from the old wharf when Roger and I sailed out of Salem harbor. After all, I was glad even then that I had answered as I did.

"I'll have more to say later," said Roger; "but if I stay here much longer now, Falk and Kipping will be breaking in upon us." And, turning, he coolly walked aft.

Falk and Kipping were still watching us with sneers, and not a few of the crew gave us hostile glances as we separated. But I looked after Roger with an affection and a confidence that I was too young fully to appreciate. I only realized that he was upright and fearless, and that I was ready to follow him anywhere.

More and more I was afraid of the influence that Captain Falk had established in the forecastle. More and more it seemed as if he actually had entered into some lawless conspiracy with the men. Certainly they grumbled less than before, and accepted greater discomforts with better grace; and although I found myself excluded from their councils without any apparent reason, I overheard occasional s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk from which I gathered that they derived great satisfaction from their scheme, whatever it was. Even the cook would have none of me in the galley of an evening; and Roger in the cabin where no doubt he was fighting his own battles, was far away from the green hand in the forecastle. I was left to my own devices and to Bill Hayden.

To a great extent, I suppose, it counted against me that I was the son of a gentleman. But if I was left alone forward, so Roger, I learned now and then, was left alone aft.

Continually I puzzled over the complacency of the men. They would nod and smile and glance at me pityingly, even when I was getting my meat from the same kids and my tea from the same pot; and chance phrases, which I caught now and then, added to my uneasiness.

Once old Blodgett, prowling like a cat in the night, was telling how he was going to "take his money and buy a little place over Ipswich way. There's nice little places over Ipswich way where a man can settle snug as you please and buy him a wife and end his days in comfort. We'll go home by way of India, too, I'll warrant you, and take each of us our handful of round red rubies. Right's right, but right'll be left--mind what I tell you."

Another time--on the same day, as I now recall it--I overheard the carpenter saying that he was going to build a brick house in Boston up on Temple Place. "And there'll be fan-lights over the door," he said, "their panels as thin as rose-leaves, and leaded gla.s.s in a fine pattern." The carpenter was a craftsman who aspired to be an artist.

But where did old Blodgett or the carpenter hope to get the money to indulge the tastes of a prosperous merchant? I suspected well enough the answer to that question, and I was not far wrong.

The cook remained inscrutable. I could not fathom the expressions of his black frowning face. Although Captain Falk of course had no direct communication with him openly, I learned through Bill Hayden that indirectly he treated him with tolerant and friendly patronage. It even did not surprise me greatly to be told that sometimes he secretly visited the galley after dark and actually hobn.o.bbed with black Frank in his own quarters. It was almost incredible, to be sure; but so was much else in which Captain Falk was implicated, and I could see revealed now in the game that he was playing his desire to win and hold the men until they had served his ends, whatever those ends might be.