Turned Adrift Part 2

Bainbridge, with his peaked cap thrust aggressively to the back of his head, his bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned blue serge jacket opening to display his white s.h.i.+rt and flowing black silk necktie, and also, incidentally, a brace of revolvers, suggestively stuck in the broad elastic belt which girt his waist, and with a smile of insolent triumph upon his dark, saturnine, but otherwise rather good-looking face, stood alone at the break of the p.o.o.p, with both hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets and his white-canvas-shod feet planted wide apart, watchfully regarding the proceedings on the main deck beneath him; while the whole of the crew, with the exception of the cook and the five men who const.i.tuted our especial bodyguard, were drawn up athwart the deck and along the face of the p.o.o.p structure, each man armed with a rifle, and with a sheathed cutla.s.s girt about his waist. Captain Roberts and Mr Bligh stood together at the open lee gangway, through which and above the lee rail could be seen the tossing masts of the longboat.

As our little party approached him the skipper turned, and, after running his eye over us for a moment, said:

"Mr Temple, I shall be obliged to ask you, the carpenter, and Sails to go with Mr Johnson in the gig. The longboat is already pretty well crowded, considering that part of her complement consists of women and children. You will find that the gig already has four breakers of fresh water in her, which will serve for ballast, but you will have to provision her from the longboat, as Bainbridge absolutely refuses to give us so much as another biscuit. You will find Mr Johnson already in her. Just jump down and lend him a hand, if you please."

The gig, with her mast already stepped, was lying outside the longboat, with Mr Johnson in her, while Chips, in the longboat, was overhauling the stock of provisions in the latter and pa.s.sing a certain portion into the gig according to the second mate's instructions. It was a bit of a job to get to her across the crowded longboat, but I had just stepped into her and was about to address Johnson when I stopped short, for I heard Captain Roberts's voice raised in a final appeal to the men.

"My lads," he said in a loud, clear voice, "before I quit the s.h.i.+p I want to give you a last chance to undo the evil that you have this day done, and to avert from yourselves the punishment that most surely awaits you if you persist in following the path into which you have been beguiled by a plausible young scoundrel--"

"Meaning me, eh, Skipper?" jeered Bainbridge, with a harsh laugh, from the p.o.o.p above.

"Even now, men," continued the captain, ignoring Bainbridge's interruption, "at this last moment, it is not too late for you to withdraw from your unholy compact and return to your duty. You are not to blame for what has happened; you have simply been deceived and led astray by one who ought to have known better than to tempt you to a step which can only end in your destruction. I ask you to lay down those arms and place yourselves at my mercy; and I promise you, upon my honour as a seaman and a gentleman, that if you will do so not one of you except your ringleader shall ever hear another word about the matter--"

"Stop! Shut up! Not another word, as you value your life!" yelled Bainbridge, suddenly flying into a fury and whipping a revolver out of his belt. "So that is your little game, is it? You would bribe those men to betray me, to put me into your power! Very well! Now you jump down into that longboat at once; and if you dare to open your mouth again and speak another word of temptation to the men, I'll blow your head off," and he wound up with an oath.

But Captain Roberts was not to be deterred so easily from seizing the only opportunity that had thus far presented itself by which he might make an effort to regain the command of the s.h.i.+p and his ascendancy over her crew, nor was he at all the sort of man to be frightened from his duty by the flouris.h.i.+ng of a pistol before his eyes. It was his duty to nullify this mutiny if he could, and therefore he turned to the men again.

"Lads," he said, "bethink yourselves. What sort of a future is to be yours if you persist--?"

Crack! Bainbridge's pistol barked out from the p.o.o.p, and poor Captain Roberts reeled back, clutching his breast, from which the red blood was spouting, into the arms of Mr Bligh, who was standing close by him.

And Bainbridge, startled perhaps at what he had done--for the skipper had always behaved like a father to him--lost the last vestige of his self-control, and became in a moment the very personification of a raving, bloodthirsty maniac. Levelling his still smoking revolver at Bligh, he commanded the latter, with a very tornado of curses, instantly to place the body of the captain in the longboat and shove off from the s.h.i.+p's side forthwith, unless he wished to share the skipper's fate.

Still supporting the swooning body of the captain in his arms, Bligh allowed his gaze to search in turn the face of each of the armed men who now cl.u.s.tered round him, and seeing nothing to justify the hope that a further appeal would meet with the least success, replied:

"All right, my lad, I'm going--worse luck for you! Here, one of you,"-- to the crew--"just drop your shooting-iron for a minute, if you're not afraid of me, and lend me a hand to lower the skipper over the side, will ye?" Then, as one of the men mechanically obeyed, the mate murmured in his ear: "I'm sorry for you silly buckos, for this means the hang-man's noose for all hands of you. But there's time for you yet.

If you repent before we're out of sight, all you have to do is to bear up in chase of us and run the ensign up to the fore royal-mast-head. I shall know what that means, and you'll have no reason to regret it. Now then," aloud, as the two took the skipper's body between them, "handsomely does it. Below there, boatswain, just ease the captain down, and lay him in the main sheets where the doctor can get to work upon him."

Between them they somehow contrived to get the unfortunate skipper's body down the side and into the sternsheets of the longboat, where Dr Morrison at once proceeded to examine the wound; and the moment that this was done Mr Bligh scrambled down the side ladder, made his way aft among the women and children, who were huddled together, most of them sobbing quietly with their faces buried in their hands, seized the tiller, and, thrusting it hard-over, gave the word to shove off and make sail. The order was promptly obeyed, and five minutes later the longboat, with the gig towing astern, was running off to leeward, with both standing lugs and her jib set; while those of us who were watching the barque saw her head sheets trimmed aft and her mainyard swung as she slowly gathered way and stood to the nor'ard and eastward, close-hauled on the starboard tack.

We had been under way about ten minutes when Mr Bligh hailed Mr Johnson to haul up alongside; and when we had done so he said:

"Mr Johnson, now that Captain Roberts is so seriously hurt I shall want you to come into the longboat with me, because I am the only one at present capable of navigating her, and--you understand me, I'm sure.

Temple, you will have to take command of the gig, and do the best you can with her. That young scoundrel has not permitted any of us to bring our s.e.xtants with us; he has not even given us a chart, or so much as a boat compa.s.s, so we shall have to do the best we can without them. But I have been considering the situation, and have come to the conclusion that our best plan will be to make for Rio, which, according to my rough reckoning, bears about west and by no'th, true; distant, say, twelve hundred miles: and we shall have to shape our course for it, as nearly as we can, by the sun and stars. This plan has the advantage that by continuing to steer a westerly course we are bound to hit the South American coast somewhere, even if we should miss Rio; and we also stand a very good chance of falling in with and being picked up by something bound round the Horn. So much for that part of the business. Next, as we are a bit crowded here, and the boat is rather deeper than I like, you will have to take the boatswain in exchange for Mr Johnson; and--"

he paused and ran his eye speculatively over the crowd in the longboat.

Then, addressing them generally, he said, "I wonder whether one of you gentlemen would care to go in the gig with Mr Temple? As you can all see and feel for yourselves, we are rather uncomfortably crowded aboard here, and the boat would be all the safer if she were relieved of the weight of even one of you, while there is plenty of room in the gig, and she is just as safe as the longboat. I suppose I need not tell you that Temple is an excellent seaman and navigator, while the gig is the faster boat of the two and will probably arrive at least a couple of days ahead of us."

A pause of a few seconds' duration followed this appeal, and then a Mr Cunningham--who happened to be the only unattached male pa.s.senger among the party--arose and said:

"If you consider the change desirable I shall be very pleased to go in the gig; in fact, I am the only male pa.s.senger who has no 'enc.u.mbrance'

with him in the shape of wife or child, therefore it will make no difference at all to me which boat I happen to be in."

"That being the case, we will make the exchange at once, and then you, Temple, had better make sail and get over the ground as fast as you can," said Mr Bligh.

And therewith the gig was hauled up close alongside the longboat and the transfer at once effected, Mr Johnson turning over to the bigger boat while the boatswain and Mr Cunningham joined us in the gig. The transfer was not a lengthy process, for Bainbridge had not permitted any of us to bring away any of our belongings, and at that moment the richest of us had only what he or she happened to be wearing in the way of clothing. Then, as the chief mate cast off our painter and thrust the two boats apart, he said:

"Make sail, Temple, and crack on for all you are worth. And, as soon as you get in, report the mutiny, get the British Consul to send out a tug or something, with provisions and water, to look for us; and see that he reports the matter at once to the nearest naval station within reach, so that the men-o'-war may be dispatched to seek the _Zen.o.bia_, and get hold of her before she has time to do very much mischief. And don't forget that your course is west and by no'th--or, as near as may be, in the eye of the setting sun when he reaches the horizon. Goodbye, and a quick pa.s.sage to you!"

"Goodbye, sir," I returned; "and the same to you! I trust that the doctor will be able to put the captain on his feet again by the time that you get in. I will remember all your instructions, and lose not a moment in carrying them out directly we arrive. Goodbye, all! Hoist away, bos'n; and, Simpson, boom out the sheet with that boathook."

The sun was by this time within ten minutes of his setting, and glowed, a great, palpitating disk of incandescent red, through a thin veil of innumerable small, closely cl.u.s.tering clouds that stretched in gorgeous tints of gold, crimson, and purple against a background of very pale green, right athwart the horizon ahead, their colours being brilliantly reflected in the softly rippling, slowly moving undulations that came creeping up after us, heaving us gently up on their ample b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then sweeping on ahead of us straight toward the sinking luminary. The wind had just strength enough in it to keep the sheet of our single lug from sagging into the water, and the gig was sliding smoothly along, with the small sound of lapping, gurgling water under her, at the rate of about three knots in the hour, leaving behind her a thin, swirling wake of small bubbles and tiny whirlpools that vanished upon the breast of the next on-coming swell. The longboat, under fore and main standing lugs and a small jib, deeply loaded as she was, was doing a knot less than ourselves, and we soon pa.s.sed and slid ahead of her; while away down in the north-eastern board, broad on our starboard quarter, the topsails and upper canvas of the barque shone primrose-yellow above the ridges of the swell as she stood away from us, heading about nor'-north-east, close-hauled on the starboard tack.

There was every prospect that we were about to have a fine night, almost too fine, in fact, to suit us: for although light winds meant smooth water, which in its turn meant safety for deeply laden open boats, we had a long road before us and not too many provisions or too much water for our sustenance during our journey; and for my own part, if I could have had my choice, I would have preferred a little more wind, provided that it was fair--even although it involved a somewhat heavier sea--to help us on our way.

CHAPTER THREE.

WE START OUR VOYAGE IN THE GIG.

The first matter to which I gave consideration, after we were fairly under way, and had parted company with the longboat, was that of food and drink; and I began by taking stock roughly of what we had, and jotting down the items in my pocket-book. To begin with, we had four five-gallon breakers of fresh water--twenty gallons in all. Then we had two sacks of cabin bread, which, by a partial count, I estimated to contain about three hundred biscuits altogether. And in addition to these we had one dozen tins of ox tongue; six small tins of potted meats; four jars of marmalade and two of jam; two bottles of pickles; four bottles of lime juice; one bottle of brandy; and two bottles of rum. When I had jotted everything down I made a few calculations, and then I spoke.

"s.h.i.+pmates," I said,--"and I include you, Mr Cunningham, in the term, for this misfortune puts us all upon the same footing--you no doubt heard Mr Bligh say, a little while ago, that according to his reckoning we are somewhere about twelve hundred miles from Rio, which is our nearest port. That means a twelve days' voyage, with a fair wind all the time, blowing fresh enough to keep us going, hour after hour, at the rate of five knots. Now, those of us who have used the sea don't need to be told that such a favourable condition of affairs is so exceedingly unlikely that it is scarcely worth talking about. To begin with, we are making a bad start, for instead of doing our five knots we are doing little if anything more than half that, with every prospect of a flat calm within the next three or four hours. Therefore I think it will be wise of us to recognise, at the outset, that our voyage is a good deal more likely to take twenty days than it is to be accomplished in ten.

"Of course, in saying this I am regarding the matter from its most unfavourable point of view. I remember that we have had easterly winds without a break ever since we crossed the line, and it may be that the Trades are extending unusually far south just now, and that we are still on the southerly fringe of them. If this should prove to be the case we shall be all right, for by steering a west and by no'th course we shall be edging to the nor'ard and working our way back into the permanent trade winds. But, on the other hand, this easterly wind may not be the trade wind at all--and my own opinion is that it is not--in which case we may expect a westerly breeze--that is to say, a foul wind--at any moment; and I think we should only be acting with common prudence to take such a probability into consideration.

"Now, this brings me to the question of food and water. As you have seen, I have been taking stock of what we have, and making a few calculations, with the following result. First, with regard to the fresh water. We have just twenty gallons of it, or one hundred and sixty pints. If we could be certain of making our voyage in ten days that amount of water would afford sixteen pints per day to be equally divided between the five of us, which is a fraction over three pints per day per man, or, say, half a pint at each of three meals and another half-pint at three intervals between meals. Little enough, you will say. Very true; yet I think we must endeavour to do with less. We must try to be satisfied with four half-pints per day of twenty-four hours per man, by which means we shall be able to make our water last sixteen days, and in sixteen days many things may happen: we may end our voyage, if we have luck; or we may be picked up; or we may have rain enough to enable us to replenish our water supply. But since neither of these things may happen, we ought, in common prudence, to determine at the outset not to drink more than four half-pints per man per day; and I think we may be able to manage upon that without any very great hards.h.i.+p. What say you?"

"I think we can manage it, if we set our minds to do it," at once answered Mr Cunningham, and after a little further talk the boatswain, carpenter, and sailmaker also agreed to make the attempt. In the same way we arrived at a determination to be satisfied with four biscuits per day each, with a suitable proportion of tongue, potted meat, jam, and what not; and we also agreed upon the quant.i.ty of spirits which was to const.i.tute each man's daily allowance, Cunningham being of opinion that a very small allowance of stimulant would be almost a necessity, seeing that our food was to be so restricted in quant.i.ty. And then, having settled this important question, we piped to supper, each man receiving the exact quant.i.ty of food agreed upon; and when we had finished we were all of the one opinion, namely, that although our appet.i.tes were far from being satisfied, it would be quite possible for us to sustain life under such conditions for a fortnight or three weeks without serious deterioration of either health or strength.

By the time supper was over it had fallen dark, and we had lost sight of both the longboat and the barque. It was a magnificent night, the sky a deep indigo cloudless blue, studded with myriads of stars, the water perfectly smooth, save for the long, low undulations of the swell; and the only fault that I had to find with the weather was that there was too little wind, the breeze having died down until we were making scarcely two knots in the hour. Fortunately we had no difficulty in the matter of determining our course, for it happened that Mr Cunningham wore a small compa.s.s attached to his watch chain as a charm; and after I had made the necessary allowance for variation we soon managed, with the a.s.sistance of this miniature compa.s.s and a match, to pick upon a star low down on the horizon by which we could steer a fairly straight course for at least a couple of hours, at the expiration of which it would, of course, be easy to pick another.

Then we arranged the matter of watches. There were four of us in the boat who were sailors, and my first proposal was that each of us should take a watch of three hours; but Mr Cunningham would not hear of this.

He was, it appeared, a civil engineer by profession, but he had a natural love of the sea and all matters pertaining to sea life, and was quite an enthusiastic amateur yachtsman, with a sufficient knowledge of the way to handle a boat to justify me fully in entrusting him with temporary charge of the gig, at least in fine weather; and he insisted on taking his fair share of whatever work there might be to do. We therefore decided that he also should be allowed to stand a watch. I undertook to stand the first watch, from six o'clock to nine; and, this being arranged, the boatswain, carpenter, and sailmaker at once disposed themselves for sleep, two upon the thwarts and the third coiled up in the eyes of the boat, while Cunningham, who declared that he had no inclination for sleep, placed himself beside me in the sternsheets and began to chat in a low tone of voice, so that he might not disturb the others.

Naturally the subject uppermost in our minds was the mutiny, and we began to talk about it. I happened to express some surprise that Bainbridge had allowed the doctor to leave the s.h.i.+p, upon which Cunningham gave vent to a low chuckle of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"My dear chap," he said, "Bainbridge didn't dare to keep him. He fully intended to do so at first, and acquainted Morrison with the fact, but the doctor wouldn't have it at any price--swore that if he were not allowed to leave with the rest of us he would poison all hands within a week! After that, Bainbridge was only too glad to let him go."

We continued to chat for some time upon the subject, wondering what possible motive Bainbridge could have for proceeding to such an extreme as that of capturing the s.h.i.+p; by what means he had contrived to win the men over; and how he had managed to do it without exciting the slightest suspicion, and so on: and then Cunningham began to speak of himself. He was, it appeared, an orphan, twenty-eight years of age, without a single friend in the world who felt enough interest in him to care what might become of him. He had already explained, a little earlier in the evening, that he was by profession a civil engineer; and he now went on to tell me that, entirely without friends or influence as he was, he had found it so difficult to make headway in England that he had at last determined upon going out to Natal, in which colony, it being comparatively speaking a new country, he had hoped to find some scope for his professional knowledge. "But that," he added, "is all knocked on the head by that young villain, Bainbridge, who has not only prevented me from reaching Natal, but has actually turned me adrift in an open boat to fetch up who knows where, with only the clothes I stand in. And yet, not exactly that either," he corrected himself with a quiet chuckle of amus.e.m.e.nt; "for although my expensive surveying instruments and all my kit are on board the _Zen.o.bia_, I contrived to get at my trunks this morning and extract therefrom a bag containing one hundred and forty sovereigns, as well as my telescope and half a dozen sticks of tobacco, all of which I carefully secreted about my person and have with me now."

"Well," returned I, "if that is the case you may call yourself lucky, for you will find a hundred and forty British sovereigns exceedingly useful when we get ash.o.r.e; as for your telescope, it may prove of the utmost value to us before this trip is over. You are considerably better off than I am, for I was allowed to leave the s.h.i.+p with literally only the clothes that I am wearing. The remainder of my clothes, together with my s.e.xtant, nautical and other books, and some sixteen pounds odd in cash, are still in my berth aboard the barque, if that swab has not already seized them. But of course I am hoping to find a s.h.i.+p at Rio, aboard which I may be able to work my pa.s.sage home; and once back in London the owners are bound to find me another berth."

"But supposing there shouldn't happen to be a s.h.i.+p at Rio in which you can work your pa.s.sage home. What will you do in that case?" asked Cunningham.

"Oh," I said, "I should simply have to take the first berth I could find, irrespective of where the vessel might happen to be bound for!

Or, in the last resort, I can place myself in the hands of the British Consul, and be sent home as a s.h.i.+pwrecked seaman."

"I see," said Cunningham thoughtfully. "But," he resumed, after a moment's silence, "there is no need for you to adopt either of these courses, you know, old chap. My hundred and forty sovereigns will be quite sufficient to see us both comfortably home from Rio, and you can repay me whenever you happen to be able."

I very heartily thanked the young civil engineer for his exceedingly generous offer, but protested that I could not possibly accept it--that, in fact, there was not the least likelihood that things would turn out so badly in Rio as to compel me to avail myself of his generosity; but nothing would satisfy my companion short of a definite promise that I would accept his help should matters result awkwardly upon our arrival.

Eventually I very reluctantly yielded to his importunities and gave him the required promise, and thus began a sincere friends.h.i.+p between us that was only further strengthened by the long series of remarkable adventures that lay ahead of us both, although at that moment we little dreamed that anything out of the ordinary run of events was to befall either of us.

Toward the end of my watch the breeze evinced a slight tendency to freshen, and when at nine o'clock I handed over the charge of the boat to the boatswain, and Cunningham and I disposed ourselves to secure such sleep as might come to us, we were slipping along through the water at the rate of a good honest four knots in the hour.

As may be imagined, my sleep that night was of a somewhat intermittent character, for a boat's thwart is not the most comfortable bed in the world, and I was fully conscious of the responsibility that had been laid upon me to guide the gig, and the lives which had been entrusted to her, over the trackless ocean, without the aid of chart or nautical instruments of any kind save the toy compa.s.s attached to Cunningham's watch chain. I was well aware that my only hope of success lay in the keeping of the most accurate account possible of the boat's progress and direction, and, therefore, was up and looking about me at least half a dozen times during the night.

The fine weather continued all through the hours of darkness, and during the boatswain's and carpenter's watches the wind gradually freshened up, until by three o'clock, when Chips called the sailmaker to relieve him, the boat was buzzing merrily along at a speed of between six and seven knots; but after that the wind began to soften rapidly away again, until at length, when the sun swept into view above the eastern horizon, we scarcely had steerage way, and half an hour later it fell a flat calm.

We accordingly lowered the sail, and, this done, I directed Simpson, the sailmaker--who was the lightest of us, and therefore the least likely to capsize the boat--to s.h.i.+n up to the masthead and see if he could detect any sign of the longboat or the barque, and incidentally take a good look round the entire horizon upon the off-chance of there being a sail anywhere in sight; but he reported the horizon bare in every direction except in the eastern board, where he fancied he could occasionally detect a faint something that might possibly be the sails of the longboat, although he was by no means sure even as to that, opining that what he had seen, if indeed he had seen anything at all, might be the distant fin of a prowling shark.