The Mutineers Part 26

I gladly followed him. He was as composed as if battle and death were all in the routine of a day at sea, and I was full of admiration for his coolness and courage.

The cabin was in complete disorder, but comparatively few things had been stolen. Apparently not many of the natives had found their way thither.

"Fortunately," Roger said, unlocking Captain Whidden's chest of which he had the key, "they've left the spare quadrant. We have instruments to navigate with, so, when all's said and done, I suppose we're lucky."

He closed the chest and locked it again; then he took from his pocket a second key. "Benny, my lad," he said, "let's have a look at that one hundred thousand dollars in gold."

Going into the captain's stateroom, we shut the door and knelt beside the iron safe. The key turned with difficulty.

"It needs oil," Roger muttered, as he worked over it. "It turns as hard as if some one has been tinkering with it." By using both hands he forced it round and opened the door.

The safe was empty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ]

VI

IN WHICH WE REACH THE PORT OF OUR DESTINATION

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XXIV

FALK PROPOSES A TRUCE

As we faced each other in amazed silence, we could hear the men working on deck and the sea rippling against the hull of the s.h.i.+p. I felt that strange sensation of mingled reality and unreality which comes sometimes in dreams, and I rather think that Roger felt it, too, for we turned simultaneously to look again into the iron safe. But again only its painted walls met our eyes.

The gold actually was gone.

Roger started up. "Now how did Falk manage that?" he cried. "I swear he hadn't time to open the safe. We took them absolutely by surprise--I could swear we did."

I suggested that he might have hidden it somewhere else.

"Not he," said Roger.

"Would Kipping steal from Captain Falk?"

"From Captain Falk!" Roger exclaimed. "If his mother were starving, he'd steal her last crust. How about the bunk?"

We took the bunk apart and ripped open the mattress. We sounded the woodwork above and below. With knives we slit the cus.h.i.+on of Captain Whidden's great arm-chair, and pulled out the curled hair that stuffed it.

We ransacked box, bag, cuddy, and stove; we forced our way into every corner of the cabin and the staterooms. But we found no trace of the lost money.

It seemed like sacrilege to disturb little things that once had belonged to that upright gentleman, Captain Joseph Whidden. His pipe, his memorandum-book, and his pearl-handled penknife recalled him to my mind as I had seen him so many times of old, sitting in my father's drawing-room, with his hands folded on his knee and his firm mouth bent in a whimsical smile. I thought of my parents, of my sister and Roger, of all the old far-away life of Salem; I must have stood dreaming thus a long time when my eyes fell on Nathan Falk's blue coat, which he had thrown carelessly on the cabin table and had left there, and with a burst of anger I came back to affairs of the moment.

"They've got it away, Benny," said Roger, soberly. "How or when I don't know, but there's no question that it's gone from the cabin. Come, let's clear away the disorder."

As well as we could we put back the numerous things we had thrown about, and such litter as we could not replace we swept up. But wisps of hair still lay on the tables and the chairs, and feathers floated in the air like thistle-down. We had little time for housewifery.

We found the others gathered round the galley, eating a hearty meal of salt beef, s.h.i.+p's bread, and coffee, at which we were right glad to join them.

Roger had a way with the men that kept them from taking liberties, yet that enabled him to mingle with them on terms far more familiar than those of a s.h.i.+p's officer. I watched him as he sat down by Davie Paine, and grinned at the cook, and asked Neddie Benson how his courage was and laughed heartily at Blodgett who had spilled a cup of coffee down his s.h.i.+rt-front--yet in such a way that Blodgett was pleased by his friendliness rather than offended by his amus.e.m.e.nt. I suppose it was what we call "personality."

Certainly Roger was a born leader. After our many difficulties we felt so jolly and so much at home,--all, that is, except the man from Boston, who sat apart from the rest and stared soberly across the long, slow seas,-- that our little party on deck was merrier by far than many a Salem merrymaking before or since.

I knew that Roger was deeply troubled by the loss of the money and I marveled at his self-control.

Presently I saw something moving off the eastern point of the island.

Thinking little of it, I watched it idly until suddenly it burst upon me that it was a s.h.i.+p's boat. With a start I woke from my dream and shouted, "Sail ho! Off the starboard bow!"

In an instant our men were on their feet, staring at the newcomer. In all the monotonous expanse of s.h.i.+ning, silent ocean only the boat and the island and the tiny sails of a junk which lay hull down miles away, were to be seen. But the boat, which now had rounded the point, was approaching steadily.

"Ben, lay below to the cabin and fetch up muskets, powder, and b.a.l.l.s,"

Roger cried sharply. "Lend a hand, Davie, and bring back all the pikes and cutla.s.ses you can carry. You, cook, clear away the stern-chasers and stand by to load them the minute the powder's up the companionway. Blodgett, you do the same by the long gun. You, Neddie, bear a hand with me to trice up the netting!"

Spilling food, cups, pans, and kids in confusion on the deck, we sprang to do as we were bid. In the sternsheets of the approaching boat we could make out at a distance the slim form of Captain Nathan Falk.

The rain had stopped long since, and the hot sun s.h.i.+ning from a cloudless sky was rapidly burning off the last vestige of the night mist as Captain Falk's boat came slowly toward us under a white flag. A ground-swell gave it a leisurely motion and the men approached so cautiously that their oars seemed scarcely more than to dip in and out of the water.

With double-charged cannon, with loaded muskets ready at hand, and with pikes and cutla.s.ses laid out on deck, one for each man, where we could s.n.a.t.c.h them up as soon as we had spent our first fire, we grinned from behind the nettings at our erstwhile s.h.i.+pmates. Tables had turned with a vengeance since we had rowed away from the s.h.i.+p so short a time before.

They now were a sad-looking lot of men, some of them with bandages on their limbs or round their heads, all of them disheveled, weary, and unkempt. But they approached with an air of dignity, which Falk tried to keep up by calling with a grand fling of his hand and his head, "Mr. Hamlin, we come to parley under a flag of truce."

I think we really were impressed for a moment. His face was pale, and he had a blood-stained rag tied round his forehead, so that he looked very much as if he were a wounded hero returning after a brave fight to arrange terms of an honorable peace. But the cook, who heartily disapproved of admitting the boat within gunshot, shattered any such illusion that we may have entertained.

"Mah golly!" he exclaimed in a voice audible to every man in both parties, "ef dey ain't done h'ist up cap'n's unde'-clothes foh a flag of truce!"

The remark came upon us so suddenly and we were all so keyed up that, although it seems flat enough to tell about it now, then it struck us as irresistibly funny and we laughed until tears started from our eyes. I heard Blodgett's cat-yowl of glee, Davie Paine's deep guffaw, Neddie Benson's shrill cackle of delight. But when, to clear my eyes, I wiped away my tears, the men in the other boat were glaring at us in glum and angry silence.

"Ah, it's funny is it?" said Falk, and his voice me think of the times when he had abused Bill Hayden. "Laugh, curse you, laugh! Well, that's all right. There's no law against laughing. I've got a proposition to put up to you. You've had your little fling and a costly one it's like to be. You've mutinied and unlawfully confined the master of the s.h.i.+p, and for that you're liable for a fine of one thousand dollars and five years in prison.

You've usurped the command of a vessel on the high seas unlawfully and by force, and for that you're liable to a fine of two thousand dollars and ten years in prison. Think about that, some o' you men that haven't a hundred dollars in the world. The law'll strip and break you. But if that ain't enough, we've got evidence to convict you in every court of the United States of America of being pirates, felons, and robbers, and the punishment for that is death. Think of that, you men."

Falk lowered his head until his red scarf, which he had knotted about his throat, made the ghastly pallor of his face seem even more chalky than it was, and thrust his chin forward and leveled at us the index finger of his right hand. The slowly rolling boat was so near us now that as we waited to see what he would say next we could see his hand tremble.

"Now, men," he continued, "you've had your little fling, and that's the price you'll have to pay the piper. I'll get you, never you fear. Ah, by the good Lord's help, I'll see you swinging from a frigate's yard-arm yet, unless"--he stopped and glared at us significantly--"unless you do like I'm going to tell you.

"You've had your fling and there's a bad day of reckoning coming to you, don't you forget it. But if you drop all this nonsense now, and go forward where you belong and work the s.h.i.+p like good seamen and swear on the Book to have no more mutinous talk, I'll forgive you everything and see that no one prosecutes you for all you've done so far. How about it? Nothing could be handsomer than that."

"Oh, you always was a smooth-tongued scoundrel" Blodgett, just behind me, murmured under his breath.

The men in the two parties looked at each other in silence for a moment, and if ever I had distrusted Captain Falk, I distrusted him four times more when I saw the mild, sleek smile on Kipping's face. It was rea.s.suring to see the gleam in black Frank's eyes as he fingered the edge of his cleaver.

I turned eagerly to Roger, upon whom we waited unanimously for a reply.

"Yes, that's very handsome of you," he said reflectively. "But how do we know you'll do all that you promise?"

Falk's white face momentarily lighted. I thought that for an instant his eyes shone like a tiger's. But he answered quietly, "Ain't my word good?"