The Mutineers Part 30

Instead of going toward the island, they rowed out into the ocean. We could not understand it. Surely they would not try to cross the China Sea in an open boat! Were they so afraid of the natives?

Still we could hear Kipping, faintly now, bawling wrath and blasphemy. We could see Captain Falk shaking his fist at us, and very clearly we could hear his faint voice calling, "I'll sack that s.h.i.+p, so help me! We'll see then what's become of the money."

Where in heaven's name could they be going? Suddenly the answer came to us.

Beyond them in the farthest offing were the tiny sails of the almost becalmed junk. They were rowing toward it. Eight mariners from a Christian land!

In that broad expanse of land and sea and sky, the only moving object was the boat bearing Captain Falk and his men, which minute after minute labored across the gently tossing sea.

Already the monsoon was weakening. The winds were variable, and for the time being scarce a breath of air was stirring.

From the masthead we watched the boat grow smaller and smaller until it seemed no bigger than the point of a pin. The men were rowing with short, slow strokes. They may have gone eight or ten miles before darkness closed in upon them and blotted them out, and they must have got very near to the junk.

The moon, rising soon after sunset, flooded the world with a pale light that made the sea s.h.i.+ne like silver and made the island appear like a dark, low shadow. But of the boat and the junk it revealed nothing.

The cook and Blodgett and I were talking idly on the fore hatch when faintly, but so distinctly that we could not mistake it, we heard far off the report of a gun.

"Listen!" cried Blodgett.

It came again and then again.

The cook laid his hand on my shoulder. "Boy," he gasped out, "don' you heah dat yeh screechin'?"

"No," said I.

"Listen!"

We sat for a long time silent, and presently we heard one more very distant gunshot.

Neither Blodgett nor I had heard anything else, but the cook insisted that he had heard clearly the sound of some one far off shrieking and wailing in the night. "Ah heah dat yeh noise, ya.s.s, sah. Ah ain't got none of dem yamalgamations what heahs what ain't."

He was so big and black and primitive, and his great ears spread so far out from his head, that he reminded me of some wild beast. Certainly he had a wild beast's keen ears.

But now Blodgett raised his hand. "Here's wind," he said.

And wind it was, a fresh breeze that seemed to gather up the waning strength of the light airs that had been playing at hide and seek with our ropes and canvas.

At daybreak, cutting the cable and abandoning the working bower, we got under way on the remainder of our voyage to China, bearing in a generally northwesterly course to avoid the dangerous waters lying directly between us and the port of our destination.

As we hauled at halyard and sheet and brace, and sprang quickly about at Roger's bidding, I found no leisure to watch the dawn, nor did I think of aught save the duties of the moment, which in some ways was a blessed relief; but I presently became aware that David Paine, who seemed able to work without thought, had stopped and was staring intently across the heavy seas that went rolling past us. Then, suddenly, he cried in his deep voice, "Sail ho!"

Hazily, in the silver light that intervened between moonset and sunrise, we saw a junk with high p.o.o.p and swinging batten sails bearing across our course. She took the seas clumsily, her sails banging as she pitched, and we gathered at the rail to watch her pa.s.s.

"See there, men!" old Blodgett cried.

He pointed his finger at the strange vessel. We drew closer and stared incredulously.

On the p.o.o.p of the junk, beside the c.u.mbersome rudder windla.s.s, leaning nonchalantly against the great carved rail, were Captain Nathan Falk and Chief Mate Kipping. That the slow craft could not cross our bows, they saw as well as we. Indeed, I question if they cared a farthing whether they sighted us that day or not. But they and their men, who gathered forward to stare sullenly as we drew near, shook fists and once more shouted curses. I could see them distinctly, Falk and Kipping and the carpenter and the steward and the sail-maker and the rest--angry, familiar faces.

When we had swept by them, running before the wind, some one called after us in a small, far-off voice, "We'll see you yet in Sunda Strait."

There was a commotion on the deck of the junk and Blodgett declared that Falk had hit a man.

Were they changing their time for some reason that they did not want us to suspect? _Did they really wish to cut us off on our return?_

Speculating about the fate of the yellow mariners who once had manned those clumsy sails, and about what scenes of b.l.o.o.d.y cruelty there must have been when those eight mad desperadoes attacked the ancient Chinese vessel, we sailed away and left them in their pirated junk. But I imagined, even when the old junk was hull down beyond the horizon, that I could hear an angry voice calling after us.

CHAPTER XXVII

WE REACH WHAMPOA, BUT NOT THE END OF OUR TROUBLES

We were only seven men to work that s.h.i.+p, and after all these years I marvel at our temerity. Time and again the cry "All hands" would come down the hatch and summon the three of us from below to make sail, or reef, or furl, or man the braces. Weary and almost blind with sleep, we would stagger on deck and pull and haul, or would swarm aloft and strive to cope with the sails. The cook, and even Roger, served tricks at the wheel, turn and turn about with the rest of us; and for three terrible weeks we forced ourselves to the sheets and halyards, day and night, when we scarcely could hold our eyes open or bend our stiffened fingers.

A Divine Providence must have watched over us during the voyage and have preserved us from danger; for though at that season bad storms are by no means unknown, the weather remained settled and fine. With clear water under our keel we pa.s.sed shoal and reef and low-lying island. Now we saw a Tonquinese trader running before the wind, a curious craft, with one mast and a single sail bent to a yard at the head and stiffened by bamboo sprits running from luff to leech; now a dingy nondescript junk; now in the offing a fleet of proas, which caused us grave concern. But in all our pa.s.sage only one event was really worth noting.

When we were safely beyond London Reefs and the Fiery Cross, we laid our course north by east to pa.s.s west of Macclesfield Bank. All was going as well as we had dared expect, so willing was every man of our little company, except possibly the man from Boston, whom I suspected of a tendency to s.h.i.+rk, when late one evening the cook came aft with a very long face.

"Well," said Roger, his eyes a-twinkle. "What's wrong in the galley, doctor?"

"Ya.s.s, sah, ya.s.s, sah! S'pose, sah, you don't' know dah's almost no mo'

wateh foh to drink, sah."

"What's that you say?"

"Ya.s.s, sah, ya.s.s, sah, we done share up with dat yeh Kipping and dah ain't no mo' to speak of at all, sah."

It was true. The casks below decks were empty. In the casks already broken out there was enough for short rations to last until we made port, so our predicament as yet was by no means desperate; but we remembered the laughter of Falk and his men, and we were convinced that they knew the trick they played when they persuaded us to divide the s.h.i.+p's bread and water. By what mishap or mismanagement the supply of food had fallen short--there had been abundant opportunity for either--we were never to learn; but concerning the water-supply and Falk's duplicity, we were very soon enlightened.

"Our friend from Boston," Roger said slowly, when the cook had gone, "seems to have played us double. We'll have him below, Ben, and give him a chance to explain."

I liked the fellow less than ever when he came into the cabin. He had a certain triumphant air that consorted ill with his trick of evading one's eyes. He came nervously, I thought; but to my surprise Roger's caustic accusal seemed rather to put him at ease than to disconcert him further.

"And so," Roger concluded, after stating the case in no mincing terms, "you knew us to be short of water, yet you deliberately neglected to warn us."

"Didn't I try to speak, sir? Didn't you cut me off, sir?"

Roger looked at him gravely. Although the fellow flinched, he was telling the truth. In justice we had to admit that Roger had given him no hearing.

"Ay, and that skinny old money-chaser tried to throttle me," he continued.

"Falk lay off that island only because we needed water. Ay, we all knew we needed it--Falk and all of us. But them murderin' natives was after our heart's blood whenever we goes ash.o.r.e, just because Chips and Kipping drills a few bullet-holes in some of 'em. I knew what Falk was after when he asks you for water, sir. The scuttleb.u.t.ts with water in 'em was on deck handy, and most of them below was empty where you wa'n't likely to trouble 'em for a while yet. He see how't would work out. Wasn't I going to tell you, even though he killed me for it, until you cut me off and that 'un choked me? It helps take the soreness--it--I tried to tell you, sir."

In petty spite, the fellow had committed himself, along with the rest of us, to privation at the very least. Yet he had a defense of a kind, contemptible though it was, and Roger let him go.

It was a weary voyage; but all things have an end, and in ten days we had left Helen Shoal astern. Now we saw many junks and small native craft, which we viewed with uncomfortable suspicion, for though our cannon were double-charged and though loaded muskets were stacked around the mizzenmast, we were very, very few to stand off an attack by those yellow demons who swarmed the Eastern seas in the time of my boyhood and who, for all I know, swarm them still.

There came at last a day when we went aloft and saw with red eyes that ached for sleep hills above the horizon and a s.h.i.+p in the offing with all sails set. A splendid sight she was, for our own flag flew from the ensign halyards, and less than three weeks before, any man of us would have given his right hand to see that s.h.i.+p and that flag within hail; but now it was the sight of land that thrilled us to the heart. Hungry, thirsty, worn out with fatigue, we joyously stared at those low, distant hills.