"Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea Part 20

When he could speak he answered: "I'm all right, sir." And catching the royal foot-rope dangling from the end of the yard above him, he brought it to its place, pa.s.sed the seizing, and finished furling the royal.

But it was a long job; his movements were uncertain, for every nerve in his body was jumping in its own inharmonious key.

"What's the matter wi' you up there?" demanded the mate when he reached the deck; and a yellow-clad figure drew near to listen.

"It was nothing, sir; I forgot about the foot-rope."

"You're a bigger lunkhead than I thought. Go forrard."

He went, and when he came aft at four bells to take his trick at the wheel, the girl was still on deck, standing near the companionway, facing forward. The mate stood at the other side of the binnacle, looking at her, with one elbow resting on the house. There was just light enough from the cabin skylight for Owen to see the expression which came over his face as he watched the graceful figure balancing to the heave of the s.h.i.+p. It took on the same evil look which he had seen in his fall, while there was no mistaking the thought behind the gleam in his eyes. The mate looked up,--into Owen's face,--and saw something there which he must have understood; for he dropped his glance to the compa.s.s, snarled out, "Keep her on the course," and stepped into the lee alleyway, where the dinghy, lashed upside down on the house, hid him from view.

The girl approached the man at the wheel.

"I saw you fall, Mr. Owen," she said in a trembling voice, "and I could not help screaming. Were you hurt much?"

"No, Miss Folsom," he answered in a low though not a steady tone; "but I was sadly disappointed."

"I confess I was nervous--very nervous--when you went aloft," she said; "and I cleared away the life-buoy. Then, when you fell, it slipped out of my hand and went overboard. Mr. Adams scolded me. Wasn't it ridiculous?" There were tears and laughter in the speech.

"Not at all," he said gravely; "it saved my life--for which I thank you."

"How--why----"

"Who in Sam Hill's been casting off these gripe-las.h.i.+ngs?" growled the voice of the mate behind the dinghy.

The girl t.i.ttered hysterically, and stepped beside Owen at the wheel, where she patted the moving spokes, pretending to a.s.sist him in steering.

"Miss Freda," said the officer, sternly, as he came around the corner of the house, "I must ask you plainly to let things alone; and another thing, please don't talk to the man at the wheel."

"Will you please mind your own business?" she almost screamed; and then, crying and laughing together: "If you paid as much attention to your work as you do to--to--me, men wouldn't fall from aloft on account of rotten foot-ropes."

The abashed officer went forward, grumbling about "discipline" and "women aboard s.h.i.+p." When he was well out of sight in the darkness, the girl turned suddenly, pa.s.sed both arms around Owen's neck, exerted a very slight pressure, patted him playfully on the shoulder as she withdrew them, and sped down the companionway.

He steered a wild course during that trick, and well deserved the profane criticism which he received from the mate.

NEEDS MUST WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES

Hogged at bow and stern, her deck sloped at the ends like a truck's platform, while a slight twist in the old hull canted the foremast to port and the mizzen to starboard. It would be hard to know when she was on an even keel. The uneven planking, inboard and out, was scarred like a chopping-block, possibly from a former and intimate acquaintance with the coal trade. Aloft were dingy gray spars, slack hemp rigging, untarred for years, and tan-colored sails, mended with patch upon patch of lighter-hued canvas that seemed about to fall apart from their own weight. She was English-built, bark-rigged, bluff in the bow, square in the stern, unpainted and leaky--on the whole as unkempt and disreputable-looking a craft as ever flew the black flag; and with the clank of the pumps marking time to the wailing squeak of the tiller-ropes, she wallowed through the waves like a log in an eddying tideway.

Even the black flag at the gaff-end wore a makes.h.i.+ft, slovenly air. It was a square section of the bark's foreroyal, painted black around the skull-and-cross-bones design, which had been left the original hue of the canvas. The port-holes were equally slovenly in appearance, being cut through between stanchions with axes instead of saws; and the bulwarks were further disfigured by extra holes smashed through at the stanchions to take the las.h.i.+ngs of the gun-breechings. But the guns were bright and cared for, as were the uniforms of the crew; for they had been lately trans.h.i.+pped. Far from home, with a general cargo, this ancient trader had been taken in a fog by Captain Swarth and his men an hour before their own well-found vessel had sunk alongside--which gave them just time to hoist over guns and ammunition. When the fog s.h.i.+fted, the pursuing English war-brig that had riddled the pirate saw nothing but the peaceful old tub ahead, and went on into the fog, looking for the other.

"Any port in a storm, Angel," remarked Captain Swarth, as he flashed his keen eyes over the rickety fabric aloft; "but we'll find a better one soon. How do the boys stand the pumping?"

Mr. Angel Todd, first mate and quartermaster, filled a black pipe before answering. Then, between the first and second deep puffs, he said: "Growlin'--dammum."

"At the work?"

"Yep, and the grub. And they say the 'tween-deck and forecastle smells o' bedbugs and bilge-water, and they want their grog. 'An unG.o.dly witness scorneth judgment: and the mouth of the wicked devoureth iniquity.'" Mr. Todd had been educated for the pulpit; but, going out as a missionary, he had fallen into unG.o.dly ways and taken to the sea, where he was more successful. Many of his old phrasings clung to him.

"Well," drawled the captain, "men get fastidious and high-toned in this business,--can't blame them,--but we've got to make the coast, and if we don't pick up something on the way, we must careen and stop the leak. Then they'll have something to growl about."

"S'pose the brig follows us in?"

"Hope she will," said Captain Swarth, with a pleasant smile and a lightening of his eyes--"hope she will, and give me a chance. Her majestic widows.h.i.+p owes me a brig, and that's a fine one."

Mr. Todd had never been known to smile, but at this speech he lifted one eyebrow and turned his saturnine face full at his superior, inquiry written upon every line of it. Captain Swarth was musing, however, and said no more; so the mate, knowing better than to attempt probing his mind, swung his long figure down the p.o.o.p-ladder, and went forward to hara.s.s the men--which, in their opinion, was all he was good for.

According to his mood, Mr. Todd's speech was choicest English or the cosmopolitan, technical slang of the sea, mingled with wonderful profanity. But one habit of his early days he never dropped: he wore, in the hottest weather, and in storm and battle, the black frock and choker of the clerical profession. Standing now with one foot on the fore-hatch, waving his long arms and objurgating the scowling men at the pumps, he might easily have seemed, to any one beyond the reach of his language, to be a clergyman exhorting them. Captain Swarth watched him with an amused look on his sunburnt face, and muttered: "Good man, every inch of him, but he can't handle men." Then he called him aft.

"Angel," he said, "we made a mistake in cutting the ports; we can't catch anything afloat that sees them, so we'll have to pa.s.s for a peaceable craft until we can drift close enough to board something. I think the brig'll be back this way, too. Get out some old tarpaulins and cover up the ports. Paint them, if you can, the color of the sides, and you might coil some lines over the rail, as though to dry. Then you can break out cargo and strike the guns down the main-hatch."

Three days later, with Cape St. Roque a black line to the westward, a round shot across her bows brought the old vessel--minus the black emblem now, and outwardly respectable--up to the wind, with maintopsail aback, while Captain Swarth and a dozen of his men--equally respectable in the nondescript rig of the merchant sailor--watched the approach of an English brig of war. Mr. Todd and the rest of the crew were below hatches with the guns.

The brig came down the wind like a graceful bird--a splendid craft, black, s.h.i.+ny, and s.h.i.+pshape, five guns to a side, bra.s.s-bound officers on her quarter-deck, blue-jackets darting about her white deck and up aloft, a homeward-bound pennant trailing from her main-truck, and at her gaff-end a British ensign as large as her mainroyal. Captain Swarth lazily hoisted the English flag to the bark's gaff, and, as the brig rounded to on his weather beam, he pointed to it; but his dark eyes sparkled enviously as he viewed the craft whose government's protection he appealed to.

"Bark ahoy!" came a voice through a trumpet. "What bark is that?"

Captain Swarth swung himself into the mizzen-rigging and answered through his hands with an excellent c.o.c.kney accent: "_Tryde Wind_ o' Lunnon, Cappen Quirk, fifty-one dyes out fro' Liverpool, bound to Callao, gen'ral cargo."

"You were not heading for the Horn."

"Hi'm a-leakin' badly. Hi'm a-goin' to myke the coast to careen. D'ye happen to know a good place?"

An officer left the group and returned with what Captain Swarth knew was a chart, which a few of them studied, while their captain hailed again:

"See anything more of that pirate brig the other day?"

"What! a pirate? Be 'e a pirate?" answered Captain Swarth, in agitated tones. "Be that you a-chasin' of 'im? Nao, hi seed nothink of 'im arter the fog shut 'im out."

The captain conferred with his officers a moment, then called:

"We are going in to careen ourselves. That fellow struck us on the water-line. We are homeward bound, and Rio's too far to run back.

Follow us in; but if you lose sight of us, it's a small bay, lat.i.tude nine fifty-one forty south, rocks to the north, lowland to the south, good water at the entrance, and a fine beach. Look out for the brig.

It's Swarth and his gang. Good morning."

"Aye, that hi will. Thank ye. Good marnin'."

In three hours the brig was a speck under the rising land ahead; in another, she was out of sight; but before this Captain Swarth and his crew had held a long conference, which resulted in sail being shortened, though the man at the wheel was given a straight course to the bay described by the English captain.

Late on the following afternoon the old bark blundered into this bay--a rippling sheet of water, bag-shaped, and bordered on all sides by a sandy beach. Stretching up to the mountainous country was a luxurious forest of palm, laurel, and cactus, bound and intertwined by almost impa.s.sable undergrowth, and about half-way from the entrance to the end of the bay was the English brig, moored and slightly careened on the insh.o.r.e beach. Captain Swarth's seamanly eye noted certain appearances of the tackles that held her down, which told him that the work was done and she was being slacked upright. "Just in time," he muttered.

They brought the bark to anchor near the beach, about a half-mile from the brig, furled the canvas, and ran out an anchor astern, with the cable over the taffrail. Heaving on this, they brought the vessel parallel with the sh.o.r.e. So far, good. Guns and cargo lightered ash.o.r.e, more anchors seaward to keep her off the beach, masthead tackles to the trees to heave her down, and preventer rigging and braces to a.s.sist the masts, would have been next in order, but they proceeded no further toward careening. Instead, they lowered the two crazy boats, provisioned and armed them on the in-sh.o.r.e side of the bark, made certain other preparations--and waited.

On the deck of the English brig things were moving. A gang of blue-jackets, under the first lieutenant, were heaving in the cable; another gang, under the boatswain, were sending down and stowing away the heavy tackles and careening-gear, tailing out halyards and sheets and coiling down the light-running rigging, while topmen aloft loosed the canvas to bunt-gaskets, ready to drop it at the call from the deck.