"Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea Part 3

Taken by surprise, the guests, resolute men though they were, obeyed the command. As each rose to his feet, he was first relieved of a bright revolver, which served to increase the moral front of the enemy, then led out to the b.o.o.by-hatch, on which lay a newly broached coil of hambro-line and pile of thole-pins from the boatswain's locker. Here he was searched again for jack-knife or bra.s.s knuckles, bound with the hambro-line, gagged with a thole-pin, and marched forward, past the prostrate first mate, who lay quiet in the scuppers, and the erect but agonized second mate, gagged and bound to the fife-rail, to the port forecastle, where he was locked in with the Chinese cook, who, similarly treated, had preceded. The mild-faced steward, weeping now, as much from professional disappointment as from stronger emotion, was questioned sternly, and allowed his freedom on his promise not to "sing out" or make trouble. Captain Benson was examined, his injury diagnosed as brain-concussion, from the glancing bullet, more or less serious, and dragged out to the scuppers, where he was bound beside his unconscious first officer. Then, leaving them to live or die as their subconsciousness determined, the sixteen mutineers sacrilegiously reentered the cabin and devoured the dinner. And the appet.i.tes they displayed--their healthy, hilarious enjoyment of the good things on the table--so affected the professional sense of the steward that he ceased his weeping, and even smiled as he waited on them.

When you have cursed, beaten, and kicked a slave for five months it is always advisable to watch him for a few seconds after you administer correction, to give him time to realize his condition. And when you have carried a revolver in the right-hand trousers pocket for five months it is advisable occasionally to inspect the cloth of the pocket to make sure that it is not wearing thin from the chafe of the muzzle.

Mr. Jackson had ignored the first rule of conduct, Mr. Becker the second. Mr. Jackson had kicked Sinful Peck once too often; but not knowing that it was once too often, had immediately turned his back, and received thereat the sharp corner of a bible on his b.u.mp of inhabitiveness, which b.u.mp responded in its function; for Mr. Jackson showed no immediate desire to move from the place where he fell. Beyond binding, he received no further attention from the men. Mr. Becker, on his way to the lazarette in the stern for a bucket of sand to a.s.sist in the holystoning, had reached the head of the p.o.o.p steps when this occurred; and turning at the sound of his superior's fall, had bounded to the main-deck without touching the steps, reaching for his pistol as he landed, only to pinion his fingers in a large hole in the pocket.

Wildly he struggled to reclaim his weapon, down his trouser leg, held firmly to his knee by the tight rubber boot; but he could not reach it.

His anxious face betrayed his predicament to the wakening men, and when he looked into Mr. Jackson's revolver, held by Sinful Peck, he submitted to being bound to the fife-rail and gagged with the end of the topgallant-sheet--a large rope, which just filled his mouth, and hurt. Then the firearm was recovered, and the descent upon the dinner-party quickly planned and carried out.

Have you ever seen a kennel of hunting-dogs released on a fine day after long confinement--how they bark and yelp, chasing one another, biting playfully, rolling and tumbling over and over in sheer joy and healthy appreciation of freedom? Without the vocal expression of emotion, the conduct of these men after that wine dinner was very similar to that of such emanc.i.p.ated dogs. They waltzed, boxed, wrestled, threw each other about the deck, turned handsprings and cartwheels,--those not too weak,--buffeted, kicked, and clubbed the suffering Mr. Becker, reviled and cursed the unconscious captain and chief officer, and when tired of this, as children and dogs of play, they turned to their captives for amus.e.m.e.nt. The second mate was taken from the fife-rail, with hands still bound, and led to the forecastle; the gags of all and the bonds of the cook were removed, and the forecastle dinner was brought from the galley. This they were invited to eat. There was a piece of salt beef, boiled a little longer than usual on account of the delay; it was black, brown, green, and iridescent in spots; it was slippery with ptomanes, filthy to the sight, stinking, and nauseating. There were potatoes, two years old, shriveled before boiling--hard and soggy, black, blue, and bitter after the process. And there was the usual "weevily hardtack" in the bread-barge.

Protest was useless. The unhappy captives surrounded that dinner on the forecastle floor (for there was neither table to sit at, nor chests, stools, or boxes to sit on, in the apartment), and, with hands behind their backs and disgust in their faces, masticated and swallowed the morsels which the Chinese cook put to their mouths, while their feelings were further outraged by the hilarity of the men at their backs, and their appet.i.tes occasionally jogged into activity by the impact on their heads of a tarry fist or pistol-b.u.t.t. At last a portly captain began vomiting, and this being contagious, the meal ended; for even the stomachs of the sailors, overcharged as they were with the rich food and wine of the cabin table, were affected by the spectacle.

There were cool heads in that crowd of mutineers--men who thought of consequences: p.o.o.p-deck Cahill, square-faced and resolute, but thoughtful of eye and refined of speech; Seldom Helward, who had shot the captain--a man whose fiery hair, arching eyebrows, Roman nose, and explosive language indicated the daredevil, but whose intelligent though humorous eye and corrugated forehead gave certain signs of repressive study and thought; and Bigpig Monahan, already described.

These three men went into session under the break of the p.o.o.p, and came to the conclusion that the consul who had jailed them for nothing would hang them for this; then, calling the rest to the conference as a committee of the whole, they outlined and put to vote a proposition to make sail and go to sea, leaving the fate of their captives for later consideration--which was adopted unanimously and with much profanity, the central thought of the latter being an intention to "make 'em finish the holystonin' for the fun they had laughin' at us." Then Bigpig Monahan sneaked below and induced the steward to toss through the store-room dead-light every bottle of wine and liquor which the s.h.i.+p contained. "For Seldom and p.o.o.p-deck," he said to him, "are the only men in the gang fit to pick up navigation and git this s.h.i.+p into port again; but if they git their fill of it, it's all day with you, steward."

Six second mates on six American s.h.i.+ps watched curiously, doubtingly, and at last anxiously, as sails were dropped and yards mastheaded on board the _Almena_, and as she paid off from the mooring-buoy before the land-breeze and showed them her stern, sent six dinghies, which gave up the pursuit in a few minutes and mustered around the buoy, where a wastefully slipped shot of anchor-chain gave additional evidence that all was not right. But by the time the matter was reported to the authorities ash.o.r.e, the _Almena_, having caught the newly arrived southerly wind off the Peruvian coast, was hull down on the western horizon.

Four days later, one of the _Almena's_ boats, containing twelve men with sore heads, disfigured faces, and clothing ruined by oily wood-pulp,--ruined particularly about the knees of their trousers,--came wearily into the roadstead from the open sea, past the s.h.i.+pping, and up to the landing at the custom-house docks. From here the twelve proceeded to the American consul and entered bitter complaint of inhuman treatment received at the hands of sixteen mutinous sailors on board the _Almena_--treatment so cruel that they had welcomed being turned adrift in an open boat; whereat, the consul, deploring the absence of man-of-war or steamer to send in pursuit, took their individual affidavits; and these he sent to San Francisco, from which point the account of the crime, described as piracy, spread to every newspaper in Christendom.

PART III

A Northeast gale off Hatteras: immense gray combers, five to the mile, charging sh.o.r.eward, occasionally breaking, again lifting their heads too high in the effort, truncated as by a knife, and the liquid apex shattered to spray; an expanse of leaden sky showing between the rain-squalls, across which heavy background rushed the darker scud and storm-clouds; a pa.s.senger-steamer rolling helplessly in the trough, and a square-rigged vessel, hove to on the port tack, two miles to windward of the steamer, and drifting south toward the storm-center. This is the picture that the sea-birds saw at daybreak on a September morning, and could the sea-birds have spoken they might have told that the square-rigged craft carried a navigator who had learned that a whirling fury of storm-center was less to be feared than the deadly Diamond Shoals--the outlying guard of Cape Hatteras toward which that steamer was drifting, broadside on.

Clad in yellow oilskins and sou'wester, he stood by the after-companionway, intently examining through a pair of gla.s.ses the wallowing steamer to leeward, barely distinguishable in the half-light and driving spindrift. On the main-deck a half-dozen men paced up and down, sheltered by the weather rail; forward, two others walked the deck by the side of the forward house, but never allowed their march to extend past the after-corner; and at the wheel stood a little man who sheltered a cheerful face under the lee of a big coat-collar, and occasionally peeped out at the navigator.

"p.o.o.p-deck," he shouted above the noise of the wind, "take the wheel till I fire up."

"Thought I was exempt from steering," growled the other, good-humoredly, as he placed the gla.s.ses inside the companionway.

"You're getting too fat and sa.s.sy; steer a little."

p.o.o.p-deck relieved the little man, who descended the cabin stairs, and returned in a few moments, smoking a short pipe. He took the wheel, and p.o.o.p-deck again examined the steamer with the gla.s.ses.

"There goes his ensign, union down," he exclaimed; "he's in trouble.

We'll show ours."

From a flag-locker inside the companionway he drew out the Stars and Stripes, which he ran up to the monkey-gaff. Then he looked again.

"Down goes his ensign; up goes the code pennant. He wants to signal.

Come up here, boys," called p.o.o.p-deck; "give me a hand."

As the six men climbed the steps, he pulled out the corresponding code signal from the locker, and ran it up on the other part of the halyards as the ensign fluttered down. "Go down, one of you," he said, "and get the signal-book and s.h.i.+pping-list. He'll show his number next. Get ours ready--R. L. F. T."

While a man sprang below for the books named, the others hooked together the signal-flags forming the s.h.i.+p's number, and p.o.o.p-deck resumed the gla.s.ses.

"Q. T. F. N.," he exclaimed. "Look it up."

The books had arrived, and while one lowered and hoisted again the code signal, which was also the answering pennant, the others pored over the s.h.i.+pping-list.

"Steamer _Aldebaran_ of New York," they said.

The pennant came down, and the s.h.i.+p's number went up to the gaff.

"H. V.," called p.o.o.p-deck, as he scanned two flags now flying from the steamer's truck. "What does that say?"

"Damaged rudder--cannot steer," they answered.

"Pull down the number and show the answering pennant again," said p.o.o.p-deck; "and let me see that signal-book." He turned the leaves, studied a page for a moment, then said: "Run up H. V. R. That says, 'What do you want?' and that's the nearest thing to it."

These flags took the place of the answering pennant at the gaff-end, and again p.o.o.p-deck watched through the gla.s.ses, noting first the showing of the steamer's answering pennant, then the letters K. R. N.

"What does K. R. N. say?" he asked.

They turned the leaves, and answered: "I can tow you."

"Tow us? We're all right; we don't want a tow. He's crazy. How can he tow us when he can't steer?" exclaimed three or four together.

"He wants to tow us so that he _can_ steer, you blasted fools," said p.o.o.p-deck. "He can keep head to sea and go where he likes with a big drag on his stern."

"That's so. Where's he bound--'you that has knowledge and eddication'?"

"Didn't say; but he's bound for the Diamond Shoals, and he'll fetch up in three hours, if we can't help him. He's close in."

"Tow-line's down the forepeak," said a man. "Couldn't get it up in an hour," said another. "Yes, we can," said a third. Then, all speaking at once, and each raising his voice to its limit, they argued excitedly: "Can't be done." "Coil it on the forecastle." "Yes, we can." "Too much sea." "Run down to wind'ard." "Line 'ud part, anyhow." "Float a barrel." "Shut up." "I tell you, we can." "Call the watch." "Seldom, yer daft." "Needn't get a boat over." "h.e.l.l ye can." "Call the boys."

"All hands with heavin'-lines." "Can't back a topsail in this." "Go lay down." "Soak yer head, Seldom." "Hush." "Shut up." "Nothing _you_ can't do." "Go to the devil." "I tell you, we can; do as I say, and we'll get a line to him, or get his."

The affirmative speaker, who had also uttered the last declaration, was Seldom Helward. "Put me in command," he yelled excitedly, "and do what I tell you, and we'll make fast to him."

"No captains here," growled one, while the rest eyed Seldom reprovingly.

"Well, there ought to be; you're all rattled, and don't know any more than to let thousands o' dollars slip past you. There's salvage down to looward."

"Salvage?"

"Yes, salvage. Big boat--full o' pa.s.sengers and valuable cargo--shoals to looward of him--can't steer. You poor fools, what ails you?"

"Foller Seldom," vociferated the little man at the wheel; "foller Seldom, and ye'll wear stripes."

"Dry up, Sinful. Call the watch. It's near seven bells, anyhow. Let's hear what the rest say. Strike the bell."

The uproarious howl with which sailors call the watch below was delivered down the cabin stairs, and soon eight other men came up, rubbing their eyes and grumbling at the premature wakening, while another man came out of the forecastle and joined the two pacing the forward deck. Seldom Helward's proposition was discussed noisily in joint session on the p.o.o.p, and finally accepted.

"We put you in charge, Seldom, against the rule," said Bigpig Monahan, sternly, "'cause we think you've some good scheme in your head; but if you haven't,--if you make a mess of things just to have a little fun bossin' us,--you'll hear from us. Go ahead, now. You're captain."