"I'm real glad to be able to call you 'Captain,' my lad," said Kettle, and Murray, in delight at his new promotion, wrung his old commander's hand again. "You've slaved hard enough as mate," Kettle went on, "though that's only what a man's got to do at sea nowadays if he wants promotion, and it'll probably amuse you to see Grain, who steps into your shoes, doing the work of four deck hands and an extra boatswain as well as his own. Grain was inclined to stoutness--he'll soon be thin again. As for you, you've sweated and slaved so much that your clothes hang on like you a slop-chest shirt on a stanchion just now. But you'll fill 'em out nicely by the time you get back to England again. Shouldn't wonder but what you turn out to be a regular fat man one of these days, my lad."
Murray stood back and looked humorously over Captain Kettle. The pair of them liked one another well, but the ties of discipline had kept them icily apart up to now. Murray's promotion put them on equal footing of grade now, and they were inclined to make the most of it for the short time they had together. "Running theParakeetdoesn't seem to have made you very plump, Skipper."
"Constitutional, I guess," said Kettle. "I don't believe the food's grown that'd make me carry flesh. I'm one of those men that was sent into the world with a whole shipload of bad luck to work through before I came across any of the soft things."
"If you ask me," said Murray, cheerfully, "you haven't much to grumble at now. Here am I kicking you out of the command of theParakeet, to be sure. And why? Because whilst you've been her old man you've made her pay about half what she originally cost per annum, and as out of that the firm's saved enough to build a new and bigger ship, they're naturally going to give her to you to scare up more fat dividends. Lord," said Murray, hitting his knee, "the chaps on board here will be calling me the 'old man' behind my back now."
"You'll get used to hearing the title," said Kettle grimly, "before you make your pile. You'll get married, I suppose, on the strength of the promotion? I saw a girl's photo nailed up in your room."
The new captain nodded. "Got engaged when I passed for my master's ticket. Arranged to be hitched so soon as I found a ship."
Kettle sighed drearily. "I was that way, my lad. I was married, and a kid had come before I was thirty. Not that I ever regretted it; by James! no. But for long enough I was never able to provide for the missus in the way I'd like, and I can tell you it was terrible gall to me to know that our set at the chapel looked down on her because she could only keep a poor home. Yes, my lad, you'll have a lot to go through."
"Well," said Murray, "I've got this promotion, and I'm not going to worry about dismals. I suppose you go straight home by mail from Aden here?"
"Hullo, haven't they told you?"
"My letter was only the dry, formal announcement that you were promoted to the new ship, and I was to take over theParakeet."
"They don't waste their typewriter in the office. I suppose they thought I'd hand on my letter if I saw fit. Read through that," said Kettle, and handed across his news. This is how it ran:--
BIRD, BIRD & CO.,Ship and Insurance Brokers,Agents to the BirdTransport Company.Managers of theBird Steam Company.
759, Euston Street,LIVERPOOL,21st March, 1896.
Swan375 tons.Captain R. Evans.Sparrow461 tons.Captain James Evans.s.s.Starling880 tons.Captain Enoch Shaw.s.s.Parakeet2,100 tons.Captain Murray.s.s. Building3,500 tons.Captain O. Kettle.s.s. Building3,500 tons.Captain ...s.s. Building4,000 tons.Captain ...The superb vessels of the Bird Line!"
Dear Captain Kettle,--Having noted from your cables and reports youare making a good thing for us out of trampingthe "Parakeet," we have pleasure in transferringyou to our new boat, which is now building on theClyde. She will be 3,500 tons, and we may takeout passenger certificate, she being constructed onthat specification. Your pay will be £21 (twenty-onepound) per month, with 2-1/2 per cent. commissionas before. But for the present, till this newboat is finished, we want you to give over commandof the "Parakeet" to Murray, and take on anew job. Our Mr. Alexander Bird has recently boughtthe wreck of the s.s. "Grecian," and we are sendingout a steamer with divers and full equipment to getthe salvage. We wish you to go on board this vesselto watch over our interests. We give you fullcontrol, and have notified Captain Tazzuchi, atpresent in command, to this effect.
Yours truly,p.p. Bird, Bird and Co.(Isaac Bird.)To Captain O. Kettle,s.s. "Parakeet," Bird Line, Aden.
"I see they have clapped me down on the bill heading for theParakeetalready," said Murray, "and you're shifted along in print for the new ship. Birds are getting on. But I've big doubts about three new boats all at one bite. One they might manage on a mortgage. But three? I don't think it. Old Ikey's too cautious."
"Messrs. Bird are your owners and mine," said Kettle significantly.
"Oh!" said the newly-made captain, "I'm not one of your old-fashioned sort that thinks an owner a little tin god."
"My view is," said Kettle, "that your owner pays you, and so is entitled to your respect so long as he is your owner. Besides that, whilst you are drawing pay, you're expected to carry out orders, whatever they may be, without question. But I don't think we'll talk any more about this, my lad. You're one of the newer school, I know, and you've got such a big notion of your own rights that we're not likely to agree. Besides, you've got to check my accounts and see I've left it all for you ship-shape, and I've to pull my bits of things together into a portmanteau. See you again before I go away, and we'll have a drop of whisky together to wish theParakeet'snew 'old man' a pile of luck."
At the edge of the harbor, Aden baked under the sun, but Kettle was not the man to filch his employer's time for unnecessary strolls ashore. The salvage steamer rolled at her anchor at the opposite side of the harbor, and Kettle and two portmanteaux were transhipped direct in one of theParakeet'sboats.
He was received on board by an affable Italian, who introduced himself as Captain Tazzuchi. The man spoke perfect English, and was hospitality personified. The little salvage steamer was barely 300 tons burden, and her accommodation was limited, but Tazzuchi put the best room in the ship at his guest's disposal, and said that anything that could act for his comfort should be done forthwith.
"Y'know, Captain," said Tazzuchi, "this is what you call a 'Dago' ship, and we serve out country wine as a regular ration. But I thought perhaps you'd like your own home ways best, and so I've ordered the ship's chandler ashore to send off a case of Scotch, and another of Chicago beef. Oh yes, and I sent also for some London pickles. I know how you English like your pickles."
In fact, all that a man could do in the way of outward attention Tazzuchi did, but somehow or other Captain Kettle got a suspicion of him from the very first moment of their meeting. Perhaps it was to some extent because the British mariner has always an instinctive and special distrust for the Latin nations; perhaps it was because the civility was a little unexpected and over-effusive. Putting himself in the Italian's place, Kettle certainly would not have gone out of his way to be pleasant to a foreigner who was sent practically to supersede him in a command.
But perhaps a second letter which he had received, giving him a more intimate list of the duties required, had something to do with this hostile feeling. It was from the same hand which had written the firm's formal letter, but it was couched in quite a different vein. Isaac Bird was evidently scared for his very commercial existence, and he thrust out his arms to Kettle on paper as his only savior. It seemed that Alexander Bird, the younger brother, had been running a little wild of late.
The wreck of theGrecianhad been put up for auction; Alexander strolled into the room by accident, and bought at an exorbitant figure. He came and announced his purchase to Isaac, declaring it as an instance of his fine business instincts. Isaac set it down to whisky, and recriminations followed. Alexander in a huff said he would go out and overlook the salvage operations in person. Isaac opined that the firm might scrape to windward of bankruptcy by that means, and advised Alexander to take remarkable pains about keeping sober. But forthwith Alexander, still in his cups, "and at a music hall, too, a place he knows 'Isaac's' religious connection holds in profound horror," gets to brawling, and is next discovered in hospital with a broken thigh.
"I have found Alexander's department of the business very tangled," wrote Isaac, "when I began to go into his books the first day he was laid up, and the thought of this new complication drove me near crazy. Salvage is out of our line; Alexander should never have touched it. But there it is; money paid, and I've had to borrow; and engaging that Italian firm for the job was the best thing I could manage. What English firms wanted was out of all reason. I don't wonder at Lloyds selling wrecks for anything they will fetch. A pittance in cash is better than getting into the hands of these sharks" (sharks was heavily underscored). "And what guarantee have I that the firm will pocket even that pittance? How do I know that I shall see even the money outpaid again, let alone reasonable interest? None."
There were several words erased here, and the writer went on with what was evidently considered a dramatic finish. "'But stay,' I say to myself, 'you have Kettle. He is down in the Red Sea now, doing well. You had all along intended to promote him. Do it now, and set him to overlook this Italian salvage firm whilst the new boat is building. He is the one to see that Isaac Bird's foot doth not fall, for Captain O. Kettle is a godly man also.'"
The letter was shut off conventionally enough with the statement that the writer was Captain Kettle's truly, and ended in a post-scriptum tag to the effect that the envoy should still draw his two and a-half per cent. on net results. The actual figures had evidently not been conceded without a mental wrench, as the erasion beneath them showed, but there they stood in definite ink, and Kettle was not inclined to cavil at the process which deduced them.
However, although in his recent prosperity Kettle had assumed a hatred for risks, and bred a strong dislike for all those commercial adventures which lay beyond the ordinary rut and routine of trade, he took up his duties on the salvage steamer with a stout heart and cheerful estimate for the future. Ahead of him he had pleasant dreams of the big boat that was "building," and the increased monthly pay in store; and for the present, well, here was an owner's command, and of course that settled him firmly in the berth. He had been too long an obedient slave to shipowners of every grade to have the least fancy for disputing the imperial will of Bird, Bird and Co.
Murray tooted his cheerful farewells on theParakeet'ssiren as the little Italian salvage boat steamed out of the baking airs of Aden harbor, and ensigns were dipped with due formality. Tazzuchi was all hospitality. He invited Kettle to damage his palate with a black Italian "Virginia" cigar with a straw up the middle; he uncorked a bottle of the Scotch whisky with his own hand, splashed away the first wineglassful to get rid of the fusel oil, and put it ready for reference when his guest should feel athirst; and he produced a couple of American pirated editions of English novels to give even intellect its dainty feast.
Kettle accepted it all with a dry civility. He had every expectation of upsetting this man's plans of robbery later on, and very possibly of coming into personal contact with him. But the ties of bread and salt did not disturb him. Though it was Tazzuchi who presented the Virginias and the novels, he took it for granted that Messrs. Bird, Bird and Co. had paid for them, and he was not averse to accepting a little luxury from the firm. The economical Isaac had cut down the commissariat on theParakeettill a man had to be half-starved before he could stomach a meal.
The salvage steamer had a South of Europe leisureliness in her movements. Her utmost pace was nine knots, but, as eight was more economical for coal consumption, it was at that speed she moved. The wreck of theGrecianwas out of the usual steam lane. She had, it appeared, got off her course in a fog, had run foul of a half-ebb reef which holed her in two compartments, and then been steered for the shore in the wild attempt to beach her before she sank. She had ceased floating, however, with some suddenness, and when the critical moment came not all of her people managed to scrape off with their lives in the boats. Those that stayed behind were incontinently drowned; those that got away found themselves in a gale (to which the fog gave place), and had so much trouble to keep afloat that they had no time left to make accurate determination of where their vessel sank; and when they were picked up could only give her whereabouts vaguely. However, they stated that theGrecian'smast-trucks remained above the water surface, and by these she could be found; and this fact was brought out strongly by the auctioneer who sold the wreck, and had due influence on the enterprising Alexander. "Masts!" said Alexander, who daily saw them bristling from a dock, "don't tell me you can miss masts anywhere."
But, as it chanced, it was only by a fluke that the salvage steamer stumbled across the wreck at all. She wandered for several days among an intensely dangerous archipelago, and many times over had narrow escapes from piling up her bones on one or other of those reefs with which the Red Sea in that quarter abounds. Tazzuchi navigated her in an ecstasy of nervousness, and Kettle (who regarded himself as a passenger for the time being) kept a private store of food and water-bottles handy, and saw that one of the quarter-boats was ready for hurried lowering. But nowhere did they see those mast-trucks. They did not sight so much as a scrap of floating wreckage.
There seemed, however, a good many dhow coasters dodging about in and among the reefs, and from these Kettle presently drew a deduction.
"Look here," he said to Tazzuchi one morning, "what price those gentry ashore having found the wreck already? I guess they aren't out here taking week-end trippers for sixpenny yachting cruises."
"No," said Tazzuchi, "and they aren't fishing; you can see that."
"Well, I give you the tip for what it's worth," said Kettle; and that afternoon the steamer was run up alongside a dhow, which tried desperately to escape. Her captain was dragged on board, and at that juncture Captain Kettle took upon himself to go below. He knew what would probably take place, and, though he disapproved of such methods strongly, he felt he could not interfere. He was in Bird, Bird and Co.'s employ, and what was being done would forward the firm's interest.
But presently came a noise of bellowing from the deck above, and then that was followed by shrill screams as the upper gamut of agony was reached. Kettle was prepared for rough handling, but at information gained by absolute torture he drew the line. It was clear that these cruel beggars of Italians were going too far.
"By James!" he muttered to himself, "owners or no owners, I can't stand this," and started hurriedly to go back to the deck. But before he reached the head of the companion-way the cries of pain ceased, and so he stood where he was on the stair, and waited. The engines rumbled, and the steamer once more gathered way. A clamor of barbaric voices reached him, which gradually died into quietude. It was clear they were leaving the dhow behind.
Captain Kettle drew a long breath. They would stick at little, these Dagos, in getting the salvage of theGrecian, and it seemed preposterous to suppose that once they gripped the specie in their own ringers they would ever give it up for the paltry pay which had been offered by Bird, Bird and Co. Their own poverty was aching. He saw it whenever he looked about the patched little steamer. He felt it whenever he sat down to one of their painfully frugal meals.
Still, though no man knew more bitterly than Kettle himself from past experience what poverty meant, and how it cut, the poverty of these Italians was no concern of his just then. They were paid servants of the owners exactly as he was, and it was his duty to see that they earned their hire. He took it that he was one against the whole ship's company, but the odds did not daunt him. On the contrary, something of his old fighting spirit, which had been of late hustled into the background by snug commercial prosperity, came back to him. And besides, he had always at his call that exquisite pride of race which has so many times given victory to the Anglo-Saxon over the Latin, when all reasonable balances should have made it go the other way.
By a sort of instinct he buttoned up his trim white drill coat, and stepped out on deck. There would be no scuffle yet awhile. With the specie that would make the temptation still snugly stored on the sea-floor, the dirty, untidy Italians were still all affability. Indeed, as soon as he appeared, Tazzuchi himself stepped down off the upper bridge to give him the news.
"How do you think those crafty imps have managed it?" he cried, with a gesture. "Why they dived down and cut off her masts below water level. The funnel was out of sight already. They just thought they were going to have the skimming of that wreck themselves. No wonder we couldn't pick her up."
"Cute beggars," said Kettle.
"I've bagged a pilot. If he takes us there straight, he gets backsheesh. If he doesn't, he eats more stick. I think," said Captain Tazzuchi, with a wide smile, "that he'll take us there the quickest road."
"Shouldn't wonder," said Kettle. "But don't be surprised if his friends come round and make things ugly. When those Red Sea niggers get their fingers in a wreck, they think's it's their wreck."
"Let them come. We were ready for this sort of entertainment when we sailed, and there are plenty of rifles and cartridges in the cabin. If there is any trouble, we shall shoot; and if we begin that game, we shall just imagine they are Abyssinians, and shoot to kill. The Italians have a big bill to pay with those jokers, anyway." He tapped Kettle on the shoulder. "And look at those two brass signal guns, Captain. If we break up some firebars for shot, they'll smash the side of any dhow in the Red Sea."
Under the black captive's guidance, the salvage steamer soon put a term to her search. For two more hours she threaded her way among surf which broke over unseen reefs, and swung round the capes of a rocky archipelago, and then the pilot gave his word and the engines were stopped and a rusty cable roared out till an anchor got its hold of the ground. A boat was lowered with air-pump already stepped amidships, and the boat's crew with eager hands assisted the diver to make his toilet.
"You chaps seem keen enough," said Kettle, as he watched the trail of air bubbles which showed the man's progress on the sea floor below.
"They have each got a stake in the venture."
"I bet they have," was Kettle's grim comment to himself.
The kidnapped skipper of the dhow, it seemed, had done his pilotage with a fine accuracy. The salvage steamer had been anchored in a good position, and between them two divers in two boats found theGrecian'swreck in half an hour. Indeed, they had made their first descent practically within hand-touch of her, but the water was full of a milky clay and very opaque, and sight below the surface was consequently limited.
They came up to the air for a quarter of an hour's spell and made their announcement, and then the copper helmets were clapped into place again, and once more like a pair of uncouth sea monsters they slowly and clumsily faded away into the depths. A gabble of excited Italian kept pace to the turning of the air-pumps, and of that language Kettle knew barely a score of words. Practically these people might have weaved any kind of plot noisily and under his very nose without his being any the wiser, and this possibility did little to quell his suspicions.
But still Tazzuchi was all outward frankness. "It's as well we brought out this little steamboat just to skim the wreck and survey her," he said. "If they'd waited to fit out a big salvage expedition, to raise her straight off, I reckon there wouldn't have been much left but iron plates and coal bunkers. These Red Sea niggers are pretty useful at looting, once they start. The beggars can dive pretty nearly as well and as long in their naked skins as their betters can in a proper diving suit."
Each time the divers came up from the opaque white water they brought more reports. Binnacles, whistle, wheels, and all movable deck fittings were gone already. The chart-house had been looted down to the bare boards. Hatches were off, both forward and aft, and already the cargo had begun to diminish. The black men of the district had been making good use of their time; and as the probabilities were that they would return in force to glean from this store which they considered legally theirs, it was advisable to collect as much as possible into the salvage steamer before any disturbances began.
News came from the cool mysterious water to the baking region of air above, almost at the second hour of the search, that theGreciancould never be refloated. In addition to the holes already made in two of her compartments, she had settled on a sharp jag of rock, which had pierced her in a third place aft. But at the same time this one piece of rock was the only solid spot in the neighborhood. All the rest of the sea floor was paved with pulpy white clay, and in this the unfortunate wreck had settled till already it was flush with her lower decks. There were evidences, too, that the ooze was creeping higher every day, so that all that remained was to strip her as quickly as might be before she was swallowed up for always.
Tazzuchi asked Captain Kettle for his opinion that night in the chart-house. "I'm to be guided by you, of course," he said, "but my idea is that we should go for the specie first thing, and let everything slide till that's snugly on board here. Birds gave £5,400 for the wreck, and there's £8,000 in cash down there in a room they built specially for it over the shaft-tunnel. If we can grab that, it will pay our expenses and commission and all the other actual outlay, and Birds will be out of the wood. Afterward, if we can weigh any more of the cargo, well, that will be all clear profit."
"Yes," thought Kettle, "you want those gold boxes in your hands, you blessed Dago, and then you'll begin to play your monkey tricks. I wonder if you think you're going to jam a knife into me by way of making things snug and safe?" But aloud he expressed agreement to Captain Tazzuchi's plan.
He felt that this was diplomacy, and though the diplomatic art was new and strange to him, he told himself that it was the correct weapon to use under the circumstances. He had risen out of his old grade of hole-and-corner shipmaster, where it had been his province to carry things through by rough blows and violent words. He was a Captain in a regular line--the Bird line--now, and (with a trifle of a sigh) he remembered that wild fights and scrimmages were beneath the dignity of his position.
Accordingly, as soon as dawn gave a waking light, the boats were put out again, and the divers were given orders to let the further survey of the vessel rest, and put all their efforts into getting the specie boxes on to the end of the salvage steamer's winch chain. They were quickly helmed and sent below, and presently an increased cloudiness in the water told him that they were actively at work. A lot of dhows were showing here and there amongst the reefs, obviously watching them, and Tazzuchi was beginning to get nervous.
"We're in for trouble, I'm afraid," he said to Kettle. "That rock on which she's settled astern has made a hole in her you could drive a cart through. I suppose it was a tight-fitting hole at first, but as she settled more and moved about, it's got enlarged same as the hole in a tin of beef does when you begin to waggle it with the can-opener."
"Well?"
"Didn't you hear the report they've just sung off from the boats? Oh, I forgot, you don't understand Italian. Well, the news is that the rock's acted as a can-opener to such fine effect that it's split a hole in the bottom of the strong room, and those gold boxes have toppled through."
"And buried themselves in the slime?"
"That's it. And Lord knows how many feet they've sunk. It's dreadful stuff to dig amongst--slides in on you as soon as you start to dig, and levels up. They'll have to brattice as they work. It'll be a big job."
All that day Kettle watched the sea with an anxious eye. In the two boats men ground at the air-pumps under the aching sunlight. From below the mud came up in white billows, which danced, and swirled, and eddied as the air bubbles from the divers' exhaust valves stirred it. And out beyond, in and among the reefs, and along the distant shore, which swung and shimmered in the heat haze, hungry dhows prowled like carrion birds temporarily driven away from a prey.
Tazzuchi and the chief engineer busied themselves in binding together fragments of fire-bars with iron wire. The Italian shipmaster had a great notion of the damage his signal-guns could do against a dhow, if they were provided with orthodox solid shot. As a point of fact they never came into action. As soon as the second night came down, and the darkness became fairly fixed in hue, there began to crackle out of the distance a desultory rifle fire from every quarter of the compass. It was not very heavy--at the outside there were not a score of weapons firing, and it could not be called accurate since not one bullet in twenty so much as hit the steamer; but it was annoying for all that, and as the marksmen and their vessels were completely swallowed up by the blackness of the night, it was impossible to repay their compliments in kind.
Morning showed the damage of one port window smashed, two panes gone from the engine-room skylight, and the air-pump in one of the boats alongside with a plunger neatly cut into two pieces. But there was a spare air-pump in store, and after dawn came, work went on as usual. The dhows came no nearer, neither did they go much further away. They pottered about just beyond rifle shot, and their numbers were slightly increased. Tazzuchi, full of enthusiasm for his artillery, tried a carefully aimed shot at one of the largest. But the explosion was quite outdone in noise by the cackle of laughter which followed it. So slow was the flight of the missile that the eye could trace it. So short was its journey, and so curved its trajectory, that it came very near to hitting one of the boats of the divers, and the men working there cried out in derision that they would catch cold by being wetted by the spray.
"Well," thought Kettle, "these are pretty cool hands for Dagos, anyway. I'm going to have a fine tough time of it when my part of the scuffle comes."
That night he had a still further taste of their quality. So soon as darkness fell, the dhows closed in again and recommenced their sniping. They kept under weigh, and so it did little enough good to aim back at the flashes. But Tazzuchi, with half a dozen keen spirits, got down into one of the boats with their rifles and knives, and a drum of paraffin, and pulled away silently into the blackness.
There was silence for quite half an hour, and the suspense on the anchored steamer was vivid enough to have shaken trained men. Yet these Italian artificers and merchant seamen seemed to take it as coolly as though such sorties were an everyday occurrence. But at the end of that time there was a splutter of shots, a few faint squeals, and then a bonfire lighted up away in the darkness.
The blaze grew rapidly, and showed in its heart the outline of a dhow with human figures on it. With promptness every man on the steamer emptied his rifle at the mark, and continued the fusillade till the dhow was deserted. They had all done their spell of military service, and they chose to decide that these snipers were Abyssinians, and did their best toward squaring the national accounts.
Tazzuchi and his friends returned in the boat, safe and jubilant, and for the rest of that night the little salvage steamer was left in quietude. With the next daybreak the divers and their attendants once more applied themselves to labor. Kettle, as he watched, was amazed to see the energy they put into it. Certainly they seemed keen enough to get the specie weighed, and on board. Whatever piratical plans they had got made up were evidently for afterward.
But when day after day passed, and still none of the treasure was brought to the surface, he began to modify this original opinion. Tazzuchi--translating the divers' reports--said that the cause of the delay was the softness of the sea-floor. The heavy chests had sunk deep into the ooze, and directly a spadeful of the horrible slime was dug away, more slid in to fill the gap. Of course this might be true; but there was only Tazzuchi's word for it. The sea was too consistently opaque to give one a chance of seeing down from above the surface.
Now as suspicion had got so deep a hold on Captain Kettle's mind, he began to cudgel his brain for some new method by which the Italians could serve their purpose. He put himself supposititiously in Tazzuchi's place, and made piratical theories by the score. Most of them he had to dismiss after examination as impracticable, others he eliminated by natural selection; and finally one stood out as practicable beyond all the rest.
For one thing it did not want many participants; only the actual divers and Tazzuchi himself. For another, it would not brand the whole gang of them as criminals and pirates, but (properly managed) would make them rich without any advertised stigma or stain. In simple words, the method was this: the gold boxes must be removed from their original site, and hidden elsewhere under the water close at hand. The friendly slime would bury them snugly out of sight. The old report of "un-get-at-able" would be adhered to, and finally the steamer would give up further salvage operations as hopeless (after fishing up some useless cargo out of the holds as a conscience salve) and steam away to port. There Tazzuchi and his friends would either desert or get themselves dismissed, charter a small vessel of their own, and go back for the plunder; and with £8,000 in clear hard cash to divide, live prosperously (from an Italian standpoint) ever afterward.
Kettle felt an unimaginative man's complacency in ferreting out such a dramatic scheme, and began to think next upon the somewhat important detail of how to get proofs before he commenced to frustrate it. Chance seemed to make Tazzuchi play into his hand. The air-pump which had been damaged by the rifle bullet had been mended by the steamer's engineers, and as there were two or three spare diving dresses on the ship, Captain Tazzuchi expressed his intention of making a descent in person to inspect progress.
"I didn't do it before, because I didn't want to make the men break time, but I can go down now without interrupting their work. Will you come off in the boat with me, Captain, and hand my lifeline?"
"I'll borrow one of those spare dresses and share the pump with you," said Kettle.
Tazzuchi was visibly startled. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that the pump will give air for two, and I'm coming down with you."
"But you know nothing about diving, and you might have an accident, and I should be responsible."
"Oh, I'll risk that! You must nursery-maid me a bit."
Tazzuchi lowered his voice. "To tell the truth, I'm going to pay a surprise visit. I want to make sure those chaps below are doing the square thing. If they aren't, and I catch them, there'll be a row, and they'll use their knives."
"H'm!" said Kettle, "I've got no use for your local weapon as a general thing. I find a gun handiest. But at a pinch like this I'll borrow a knife of you, and if it comes to any one cutting my air-tube you'll find I can use it pretty mischievously."
"I wish you wouldn't insist upon this," said Tazzuchi persuasively.
"I'm going to, anyway."
"I'm going down merely because it's my duty."
"That's the very same reason that's taking me, Captain. I must ask you not to make any more objections. I'm a man that never changes his mind, once it's made up."
Whereupon Tazzuchi shrugged his shoulders, and gave way.
"Now," thought Kettle to himself, "that man's made up his mind to kill me if he gets the glimmer of a chance, and, as I'm not going to get wiped out this journey, he'll do with a lot of watching."
It has been the present writer's business at one time and another to point out that Captain Owen Kettle is a man of iron nerve; but I cannot call to mind any instance where his indomitable courage was more severely tried than in this voluntary descent in the diving dress. The world beneath the waters was strange and dangerous to him; his companion was a man against whom he held the blackest suspicion; the men at the pump (whose language he did not understand) might any moment cut off his supply, and leave him to drown like a puppy under a bucket. The circumstances combined were enough to daunt a Bayard.
But Kettle felt that the men in the boat, who helped to adjust his stiff rubber dress, were regarding him with more than ordinary curiosity, and, for his own pride's sake, he preserved an unruffled face. He even tried a rude jest in their own tongue before they made fast the helmet on his head, and the cackle of their laughter was the last sound he heard before the metal dome closed the audible world away from him.
They hung the weights over his chest and back, and Tazzuchi signed to him to descend. Kettle hitched round the sheath-knife to the front of his belt, and signed with politeness, "After you."
Tazzuchi did not argue the matter. He lifted his clumsy lead-soled feet over the side of the boat, got on the ladder, and climbed down out of sight. Kettle followed. The chill of the water crept up and closed over his head; the steady throb-throb of the air-pump beat against his skull; and a little shiver took him in one small spot between the shoulder blades, because he knew that it was there that an Italian, if he can manage it, always plants a knife in his enemy.
He reached the end of the ladder and slid down a rope. He felt curiously corky and insecure, but still when he reached the bottom he sank up to his knees in impalpable mud. He could foggily see Tazzuchi a few paces away waiting for him, and he went up to him at once. If the men in the boat, acting on orders, cut his air-tube, he wanted to be in a position to cut Captain Tazzuchi's also with promptness.
However, everything went peacefully just then. The Italian set off down a track in the slime, and Kettle waded laboriously after him. It was terrible work making a passage through that white glutinous ooze, but they came to the wreck directly, and, working round her rusty flank, stood beside a great shallow pit, where two weird-looking gray sea-monsters showed in dim outline through the dense fog of the water.
Sound does not carry down there in that quiet world, and the two new-comers stood for long enough before the two workers observed them. But one chanced to look up and see them watching and jogged the other with his spade, and then both frantically beckoned the visitors to come down into the pit. Tazzuchi led, and Kettle followed, wallowing down the slopes of slime, and there at the bottom, in the dim, milky light, one of the professional divers slipped a shovel into his hand and thrust it downward, till it jarred against something solid underfoot.
It was clear they had come upon the gold boxes, and they wished to impress upon the visitors, in underwater dumb show, that the find had only been made that very minute. It was a strange enough performance. Half-seen hands snapped red fingers in triumph. Ponderously booted feet did a dance of ecstasy in three feet of gluey mud. And meanwhile, Kettle, with a hand on the haft of his knife, edged away from this uncanny demonstration, lest some one should slit his air-tube before he could prevent it.
He had seen what he wanted; he had no reason to wait longer; and besides, being a novice at diving, his lungs were half burst already in the effort to get breath, and his head was singing like a tea-urn. The gold boxes were there, and if they were not brought to the surface, and carried honestly to Suez, the matter would have to be fought out above in God's open air, and not in that horrible choking quagmire of slime and cruel water. And so, still guarding himself cannily, he got back again to the boat, and almost had it in him to shake hands with the men who eased him of that intolerable helmet.
Now far be it from me to raise even a suspicion that Captain Owen Kettle resented the fact that he had been robbed of a scuffle when the little salvage steamer actually did bring up in Suez harbor with the specie honestly locked in one of her staterooms. But that he was violently angry he admits himself without qualification. He says he kicked himself for being such a bad judge of men.
TheParakeetwas in when they arrived, rebunkering for the run home, and Murray came off as fast as a crew could drive his boat to inquire the news.
He saw Tazzuchi on the deck and accosted him with a vigorous handshake, and a "Hullo, Fizz-hookey, old man, how goes it? Who'd have thought of seeing you here? Howdy, Captain Kettle. Had good fishing?"
"Do you know Captain Tazzuchi?"
"Somewhat. Why, we were both boys on theConwaytogether."
"You're making some mistake. Captain Tazzuchi is an Italian."
"Oh, am I?" said Tazzuchi. "Not much of the Dago about me except the name."
"Well, you never told me that before."
"You never asked me, that I know of. I speak about enough of the lingo to carry on duty with, and I serve on an Italian ship because I couldn't get a skipper's billet on anything else. But I'm as English as either of you, and as English as Birds--or more English than Birds, seeing that they come from somewhere near Jerusalem. Great Scot, Captain Kettle, can't you tell a Dago yet for sure? Where have you been all your days?"
Murray laughed. "Well, come across and discuss it in theParakeet. I've got a case of champagne on board to wet my new ticket."
"Stay half a minute," said Tazzuchi, "we'll just get those boxes of gold down into your boat, Murray, and ferry them across. I sha'n't be sorry to have them out of my responsibility. They're too big a temptation to leave handy for the crew there is on board here."
"Phew!" said Kettle, "it's hot here in Suez. Great James! to think of the way I've been sweating about this blame' ship without a scrap of need of it. Here, hurry up with the lucre-boxes. I want to get across to the oldParakeetand wash the taste of a lot of things out of my mouth."
"He isn't the 'dear deceased' yet by a very long chalk," said Captain Kettle.
"If he was," retorted Lupton with a dry smile, "my immediate interest in him would cease, and the Company would shrug its shoulders, and pay, and look pleasant. In the mean while he's, shall we say, 'the dear insured,' and a premium paying asset that the Company's told me off to keep an eye on."
"Do much business in your particular line?" "Why yes, recently a good deal. It's got to be quite a fashionable industry of late to pick up some foolish young gentleman with expectations, insure his life for a big pile, knock him quietly on the head, and then come back home in a neat black suit to pocket the proceeds."
"Does this Mr.--" Kettle referred to the passenger list--"Hamilton's the rogue's name, isn't it?"
"No, he's the flat. Cranze is the--er--his friend who stands to draw the stamps."
"Does Mr. Hamilton know you?"
"Never seen me in his life."
"Does this thief Cranze?"
"Same."
"Then, sir, I'll tell you what's your ticket," said Kettle, who had got an eye to business. "Take a passage with me out to the Gulf and back, and keep an eye on the young gentleman yourself. You'll find it a bit cold in the Western Ocean at first, but once we get well in the Gulf Stream, and down toward New Orleans, I tell you you'll just enjoy life. It'll be a nice trip for you, and I'm sure I'll do my best to make things comfortable for you."
"I'm sure you would, Captain, but it can't be done at the price."
Kettle looked thoughtfully at the passenger list. "I could promise you a room to yourself. We're not very full up this run. In fact, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Cranze are the only two names I've got down so far, and I may as well tell you we're not likely to have others. You see Birds are a very good line, but they lay themselves out more for cargo than passengers."
"So our local agent in Liverpool found out for us already, and that's mostly why I'm here. Don't you see, Captain, if the pair of them had started off to go tripping round the Mexican Gulf in one of the regular passenger boats, there would have been nothing suspicious about that. But when they book berths by you, why then it begins to look fishy at once."
Kettle turned on his companion with a sudden viciousness. "By James!" he snapped, "you better take care of your-words, or there'll be a man in this smoke-room with a broken jaw. I allow no one to sling slights at either me or my ship. No, nor at the firm either that owns both of us. You needn't look round at the young lady behind the bar. She can't hear what we're saying across in this corner, and if even she could she's quite welcome to know how I think about the matter. By James, do you think you can speak to me as if I was a common railway director? I can tell you that, as Captain of a passenger boat, I've a very different social position."
"My dear sir," said Lupton soothingly, "to insult you was the last thing in my mind. I quite know you've got a fine ship, and a new ship, and a ship to be congratulated on. I've seen her. In fact I was on board and all over her only this morning. But what I meant to point out was (although I seem to have put it clumsily) that Messrs. Bird have chosen to schedule you for the lesser frequented Gulf ports, finding, as you hint, that cargo pays them better than passengers."
"Well?"
"And naturally therefore anything that was done on theFlamingowould not have the same fierce light of publicity on it that would get on--say--one of the Royal Mail boats. You see they bustle about between busy ports crammed with passengers who are just at their wits' end for something to do. You know what a pack of passengers are. Give them a topic like this: Young man with expectations suddenly knocked overboard, nobody knows by whom; 'nother young man on boat drawing a heavy insurance from him; and they aren't long in putting two and two together."
"You seem to think it requires a pretty poor brain to run a steam-packet," said Kettle contemptuously. "How long would I be before I had that joker in irons?"
"If he did it as openly as I have said, you'd arrest him at once. But you must remember Cranze will have been thinking out his game for perhaps a year beforehand, till he can see absolutely no flaw in it, till he thinks, in fact, there's not the vaguest chance of being dropped on. If anything happens to Hamilton, his dear friend Cranze will be the last man to be suspected of it. And mark you, he's a clever chap. It isn't your clumsy, ignorant knave who turns insurance robber--and incidentally murderer."
"Still, I don't see how he'd be better off on my ship than he would be on the bigger passenger packets."
"Just because you won't have a crowd of passengers. Captain, a ship's like a woman; any breath of scandal damages her reputation,-whether it's true and deserved or not. And a ship-captain's like a woman's husband; he'll put up with a lot to keep any trace of scandal away from her."
"That's the holy truth."
"A skipper on one of the bigger passenger lines would be just as keen as you could be not to have his ship mixed up with anything discreditable. But passengers are an impious lot. They are just bursting for want of a job, most of them; they revel in anything like an accident to break the monotony; and if they can spot a bit of foul play--or say they helped to spot it--why, there they are, supplied with one good solid never-stale yarn for all the rest of their natural lives. So you see they've every inducement to do a lot of ferreting that a ship's officers (with other work on hand) would not dream about."
Captain Kettle pulled thoughtfully at his neat red pointed beard. "You're putting the thing in a new light, sir, and I thank you for what you've said. I see my course plain before me. So soon as we have dropped the pilot, I shall go straight to this Mr. Cranze, and tell him that from information received I hear he's going to put Mr. Hamilton over the side. And then I shall say: 'Into irons you go, my man, so soon as ever Hamilton's missing.'"
Lupton laughed rather angrily. "And what would be the result of that, do you think?"
"Cranze will get mad. He'll probably talk a good deal, and that I shall allow within limits. But he'll not hit me. I'm not the kind of a man that other people see fit to raise their hands to."
"You don't look it. But, my good sir, don't you see that if you speak out like that, you'll probably scare the beggar off his game altogether?"
"And why not? Do you think my ship's a blessed detective novel that's to be run just for your amusement?"
Lupton tapped the table slowly with his fingers. "Now look here, Captain," he said, "there's a chance here of our putting a stop to a murderous game that's been going on too long, by catching a rogue red-handed. It's to our interest to get a conviction and make an example. It's to your interest to keep your ship free from a fuss."
"All the way."
"Quite so. My Company's prepared to buy your interest up."
"You must put it plainer than that."
"I'll put it as definitely as you like. I'll give you £20 to keep your eye on these men, and say nothing about what I've told you, but just watch. If you catch Cranze so clearly trying it on that the Courts give a conviction, the Company will pay you £200."
"It's a lot of money."
"My Company will find it a lot cheaper than paying out £20,000, and that's what Hamilton's insured for."
"Phew! I didn't know we were dealing with such big figures. Well, Mr. Cranze has got his inducements to murder the man, anyway."
"I told you that from the first. Now, Captain, are you going to take my check for that preliminary £20?"
"Hand it over," said Kettle. "I see no objections. And you may as well give me a bit of a letter about the balance."
"I'll do both," said Lupton, and took out his stylograph, and called a waiter to bring him hotel writing paper.
Now Captain Owen Kettle, once he had taken up this piece of employment, entered into it with a kind of chastened joy. The Life Insurance Company's agent had rather sneered at ship-captains as a class (so he considered), and though the man did his best to be outwardly civil, it was plain that he considered a mob of passengers the intellectual superiors of any master mariner. So Kettle intended to prove himself the "complete detective" out of sheeresprit de corps.
As he had surmised, Messrs. Hamilton and Cranze remained theFlamingo'sonly two passengers, and so he considered he might devote full attention to them without being remarkable. If he had been a steward making sure of his tips he could not have been more solicitous for their welfare; and to say he watched them like a cat is putting the thing feebly. Any man with an uneasy conscience must have grasped from the very first that the plot had been guessed at, and that this awkward little skipper, with his oppressive civilities, was merely waiting his chance to act as Nemesis.
But either Mr. Cranze had an easy mind, and Lupton had unjustly maligned him, or he was a fellow of the most brazen assurance. He refused to take the least vestige of a warning. He came on board with a dozen cases of champagne and four of liqueur brandy as a part of his personal luggage, and his first question to every official he came across was how much he would have to pay per bottle for corkage.
As he made these inquiries from a donkey-man, two deck hands, three mates, a trimmer, the third engineer, two stewards, and Captain Kettle himself, the answers he received were various, and some of them were profane. He seemed to take a delight in advertising his chronic drunkenness, and between-whiles he made a silly show of the fact that he carried a loaded revolver in his hip pocket. "Lots fellows do't now," he explained. "Never know who-you-may-meet. S' a mos' useful habit."
Now Captain Kettle, in his inmost heart, considered that Cranze was nerving himself up with drink to the committal of his horrid deed, and so he took a very natural precaution. Before they had dropped the Irish coast he had managed to borrow the revolver, unbeknown to its owner, and carefully extracted the powder from the cartridges, replacing the bullets for the sake of appearances. And as it happened, the chief engineer, who was a married man as well as a humorist, though working independently of his skipper, carried the matter still further. He, too, got hold of the weapon, and brazed up the breech-block immovably, so that it could not be surreptitiously reloaded. He said that his wife had instructed him to take no chances, and that meanwhile, as a fool's pendant, the revolver was as good as ever it had been.
The revolver became the joke of the ship. Cranze kept up a steady soak on king's peg--putting in a good three fingers of the liqueur brandy before filling up the tumbler with champagne--and was naturally inclined to be argumentative. Any one of the ship's company who happened to be near him with a little time to spare would get up a discussion on any matter that came to his mind, work things gently to a climax, and then contradict Cranze flatly. Upon which, out would come the revolver, and down would go the humorist on his knees, pitifully begging for pardon and life, to the vast amusement of the onlookers.
Pratt, the chief engineer, was the inventor of this game, but he openly renounced all patent rights. He said that everybody on board ought to take the stage in turn--he himself was quite content to retire on his early laurels. So all hands took pains to contradict Cranze and to cower with a fine show of dramatic fright before his spiked revolver.
All theFlamingo'scompany except one man, that is. Frivolity of this sort in no way suited the appetite of Captain Owen Kettle. He talked with Cranze with a certain dry cordiality. And at times he contradicted him. In fact the little sailor contradicted most passengers if he talked to them for long. He was a man with strong opinions, and he regarded tolerance as mere weakness. Moreover, Cranze's chronic soaking nauseated him. But at the same time, if his civility was scant, Cranze never lugged out the foolish weapon in his presence. There was a something in the shipmaster's eye which daunted him. The utmost height to which his resentment could reach with Captain Kettle was a folding of the arms and a scowl which was intended to be majestic, but which was frequently spoiled by a hiccough.
In pleasant contrast to this weak, contemptible knave was the man Hamilton, his dupe and prospective victim. For him Kettle formed a liking at once, though for the first days of the voyage it was little enough he saw of his actual presence. Hamilton was a bad sailor and a lover of warmth, and as the Western Ocean was just then in one of its cold and noisy moods, this passenger went shudderingly out of the cabin when meals came on, and returned shudderingly from the cold on deck as soon they were over.
But when theFlamingobegan to make her southing, and the yellow tangles of weed floating in emerald waves bore evidence that they were steaming against the warm current of the Gulf Stream, then Hamilton came into view. He found a spot on the top of the fiddley under the lee of a tank where a chair could stand, and sat there in the glow of sun and boilers, and basked complacently.
He was a shy, nervous little man, and though Kettle had usually a fine contempt for all weakness, somehow his heart went out to this retiring passenger almost at first sight. Myself, I am inclined to think it was because he knew him to be hunted, knew him to be the object of a murderous conspiracy, and loathed most thoroughly the vulgar rogue who was his treacherous enemy. But Captain Kettle scouts the idea that he was stirred by any such feeble, womanish motives. Kettle was a poet himself, and with the kinship of species he felt the poetic fire glowing out from the person of this Mr. Hamilton. At least, so he says; and if he has deceived himself on the matter, which, from an outsider's point of view, seems likely, I am sure the error is quite unconscious. The little sailor may have his faults, as the index of these pages has shown; but untruthfulness has never been set down to his tally, and I am not going to accuse him of it now.
Still, it is a sure thing that talk on the subject of verse making did not come at once. Kettle was immensely sensitive about his accomplishment, and had writhed under brutal scoffs and polished ridicule at his poetry more times than he cared to count. With passengers especially he kept it scrupulously in the background, even as he did his talent for making sweet music on the accordion.
But somehow he and Hamilton, after a few days' acquaintance, seemed to glide into the subject imperceptibly. Mutual confidences followed in the course of nature. It seemed that Hamilton too, like Kettle, was a devotee of the stiller forms of verse.
"You see, Skipper," he said, "I've been a pretty bad lot, and I've made things hum most of my time, and so I suppose I get my hankerings after restfulness as the natural result of contrast."
"Same here, sir. Ashore I can respect myself, and in our chapel circle, though I say it myself, you'll find few more respected men. But at sea I shouldn't like to tell you what I've done; I shouldn't like to tell any one. If a saint has to come down and skipper the brutes we have to ship as sailormen nowadays, he'd wear out his halo flinging it at them. And when matters have been worst, and I've been bashing the hands about, or doing things to carry out an owner's order that I'd blush even to think of ashore, why then, sir, gentle verse, to tunes I know, seems to bubble up inside me like springs in a barren land."
"Well, I don't know about that," said Hamilton doubtfully, "but when I get thoroughly sick of myself, and wish I was dead, I sometimes stave off putting a shot through my silly head by getting a pencil and paper, and shifting my thoughts out of the beastly world I know, into--well, it's hard to explain. But I get sort of notions, don't you see, and they seem to run best in verse. I write 'em when the fit's on me, and I burn 'em when the fit's through; and you'll hardly think it, but I never told a living soul I ever did such a thing till I told you this minute. My set--I mean, I couldn't bear to be laughed at. But you seem to be a fellow that's been in much the same sort of box yourself."
"I don't know quite that. At any rate, I've never thought of shooting myself."
"Oh, I didn't mean to suggest we were alike at all in detail. I was only thinking we had both seen rough times. Lord forbid that any man should ever be half the fool that I have been." He sighed heavily.--"However, sufficient for the day. Look out over yonder; there's a bit of color for you."
A shoal of flying-fish got up out of the warm, shining water and ran away over the ripples like so many silver rats; yellow tangles of Gulf-weed swam in close squadron on the emerald sea; and on the western horizon screw-pile lighthouses stood up out of the water, marking the nearness of the low-lying Floridan beaches, and reminding one of mysterious Everglades beyond.
"A man, they tell me," said Hamilton, "can go into that country at the back there, and be a hermit, and live honestly on his own fish and fruit. I believe I'd like that life. I could go there, and be decent, and perhaps in time I should forget things."
"Don't you try it. The mosquitoes are shocking."
"There are worse devils than mosquitoes. Now I should have thought there was something about those Everglades that would have appealed to you, Skipper?"
"There isn't, and I've been there. You want a shot-gun in Florida to shoot callers with, not eatables. I've written verse there, and good verse, but it was the same old tale, sir, that brought it up to my fingers' ends. I'd been having trouble just then--yes, bad trouble. No, Mr. Hamilton, you go home, sir, to England and find a country place, and get on a farm, and watch the corn growing, and hear the birds sing, and get hold of the smells of the fields, and the colors of the trees, and then you'll enjoy life and turn out poetry you can be proud of."
"Doesn't appeal to me. You see you look upon the country with a countryman's eye."
"Me," said Kettle. "I'm seaport and sea bred and brought up, and all I know of fields and a farm is what I've seen from a railway-carriage window. No, I've had to work too hard for my living, and for a living for Mrs. Kettle and the youngsters, to have any time for that sort of enjoyment; but a man can't help knowing what he wants, sir, can he? And that's what I'm aiming at, and it's for that I'm scratching together every sixpence of money I can lay hands on."
But here a sudden outcry below broke in upon their talk. "That's Mr. Cranze," said Kettle. "He'll be going too far in one of his tantrums one of these days."
"I'm piously hoping the drunken brute will tumble overboard," Hamilton muttered; "it would save a lot of trouble for everybody. Eh, well," he said, "I suppose I'd better go and look after him," and got up and went below.
Captain Kettle sat where he was, musing. He had no fear that Cranze, the ship's butt and drunkard, would murder his man in broad, staring daylight, especially as, judging from the sounds, others of the ship's company were at present baiting him. But he did not see his way to earning that extra £200, which he would very much like to have fingered. To let this vulgar, drunken ruffian commit some overt act against Hamilton's life, without doing him actual damage, seemed an impossibility. He had taken far to great a fancy for Hamilton to allow him to be hurt. He was beginning to be mystified by the whole thing. The case was by no means so simple and straightforward as it had looked when Lupton put it to him in the hotel smoking-room ashore.
Had Cranze been any other passenger, he would have stopped his drunken riotings by taking away the drink, and by giving strict orders that the man was to be supplied with no further intoxicants. But Cranze sober might be dangerous, while Cranze tipsy was merely a figure of ridicule; so he submitted, very much against his grain, to having his ship made into a bear-garden, and anxiously awaited developments.
TheFlamingocleared the south of Florida, sighted the high land of Cuba, and stood across through the Yucatan channel to commence her peddling business in Honduras, and at some twenty ports she came to an anchor six miles off shore, and hooted with her siren till lighters came off through the surf and the shallows.
Machinery they sent ashore at these little-known stations, coal, powder, dress-goods, and pianos, receiving in return a varied assortment of hides, mahogany, dyewoods, and some parcels of ore. There was a small ferrying business done also between neighboring ports in unclean native passengers, who harbored on the foredeck, and complained of want of deference from the crew.
Hamilton appeared to extract some melancholy pleasure from it all, and Cranze remained unvaryingly drunk. Cranze passed insults to casual strangers who came on board and did not know his little ways, and the casual strangers (after the custom of their happy country) tried to knife him, but were always knocked over in the nick of time, by some member of theFlamingo'screw. Hamilton said there was a special providence which looks after drunkards of Cranze's type, and declined to interfere; and Cranze said he refused to be chided by a qualified teetotaller, and mixed himself further king's pegs.
Messrs. Bird, Bird and Co., being of an economical turn of mind, did not fall into the error of overmanning their ships, and so as one of the mates chose to be knocked over by six months' old malarial fever, Captain Kettle had practically to do a mate's duty as well as his own. A mate in the mercantile marine is officially an officer and some fraction of a gentleman, but on tramp steamers and liners where cargo is of more account than passengers--even when they dine at half-past six, instead of at midday--a mate has to perform manual labors rather harder than that accomplished by any three regular deck hands.
I do not intend to imply that Kettle actually drove a winch, or acted as stevedore below, or sweated over bales as they swung up through a hatch, but he did work as gangway man, and serve at the tally desk, and oversee generally while the crew worked cargo; and his watch over the passengers was at this period of necessity relaxed. He tried hard to interest Hamilton in the mysteries of hold stowage, in order to keep him under his immediate eye. But Hamilton bluntly confessed to loathing anything that was at all useful, and so he perforce had to be left to pick his own position under the awnings, there to doze, and smoke cigarettes, and scribble on paper as the moods so seized him.
It was off one of the ports in the peninsula of Yucatan, toward the Bay of Campeachy, that Cranze chose to fall overboard. The name of the place was announced by some one when they brought up, and Cranze asked where it was. Kettle marked it off with a leg of the dividers on the chart. "Yucatan," said Cranze, "that's the ruined cities shop, isn't it?"--He shaded his unsteady eyes, and looked out at a clump of squalid huts just showing on the beach beyond some three miles of tumbling surf. "Gum! here's a ruined city all hot and waiting. Home of the ancient Aztecs, and colony of the Atlanteans, and all that. Skipper, I shall go ashore, and enlarge my mind."
"You can go if you like," said Kettle, "but remember, I steam away from here as soon as ever I get the cargo out of her, and I wait for no man. And mind not to get us upset in the surf going there. The water round here swarms with sharks, and I shouldn't like any of them to get indigestion."
"Seem trying to make yourself jolly ob--bub--jectiable's morning," grumbled Cranze, and invited Hamilton to accompany him on shore forthwith. "Let's go and see the girls. Ruined cities should have ruined girls and ruined pubs to give us some ruined amusement. We been on this steamer too long, an' we want variety. V'riety's charming. Come along and see ruined v'riety."
Hamilton shrugged his shoulders. "Drunk as usual, are you? You silly owl, whatever ruined cities there may be, are a good fifty miles in the bush."
"'S all you know about it. I can see handsome majestic ruin over there on the beach, an' I'm going to see it 'out further delay. 'S a duty I owe to myself to enlarge the mind by studying the great monuments of the past."
"If you go ashore, you'll be marooned as safe as houses, and Lord knows when the next steamer will call. The place reeks of fever, and as your present state of health is distinctly rocky, you'll catch it, and be dead and out of the way inside a week easily. Look here, don't be an ass."
"Look here yourself. Are you a competent medicated practitioner?"
"Oh, go and get sober."
"Answer me. Are you competent medicated practitioner?"
"No, I'm not."
"Very well then. Don't you presume t'lecture me on state of my health. No reply, please. I don' wan' to be encumbered with your further acquaintance. I wish you a go' morning."
Hamilton looked at Captain Kettle under his brows. "Will you advise me," he said, "what I ought to do."
"I should say it would be healthier for you to let him have his own way."
"Thanks," said Hamilton, and turned away. "I'll act on that advice."
Now the next few movements of Mr. Cranze are wrapped in a certain degree of mystery. He worried a very busy third mate, and got tripped on the hard deck for his pains; he was ejected forcibly from the engineers' mess-room, where it was supposed he had designs on the whisky; and he was rescued by the carpenter from an irate half-breed Mosquito Indian, who seemed to have reasons for desiring his blood there and then on the spot. But how else he passed the time, and as to how he got over the side and into the water, there is no evidence to show.
There were theories that he had been put there by violence as a just act of retribution; there was an idea that he was trying to get into a lighter which lay alongside for a cast ashore, but saw two lighters, and got into the one which didn't exist; and there were other theories also, but they were mostly frivolous. But the very undoubted fact remained that he was there in the water, that there was an ugly sea running, that he couldn't swim, and that the place bristled with sharks.
A couple of lifebuoys, one after the other, hit him accurately on the head, and the lighter cast off, and backed down to try and pick him up. He did not bring his head on to the surface again, but stuck up an occasional hand, and grasped with it frantically. And, meanwhile, there was great industry among the black triangular dorsal fins that advertised the movements of the sharks which owned them underneath the surface. Nobody on board theFlamingohad any particular love for Cranze, but all hands crowded to the rail and shivered and felt sick at the thought of seeing him gobbled up.
Then out of the middle of these spectators jumped the mild, delicate Hamilton, with a volley of bad language at his own foolishness, and lit on a nice sleek wave-crest, feet first in an explosion of spray. Away scurried the converging sharks' fins, and down shot Hamilton out of sight.
What followed came quickly. Kettle, with a tremendous flying leap, landed somehow on the deck of the lighter, with bones unbroken. He cast a bowline on to the end of the main sheet, and, watching his chance, hove the bight of it cleverly into Hamilton's grasp, and as Hamilton had come up with Cranze frenziedly clutching him round the neck, Kettle was able to draw his catch toward the lighter's side without further delay.
By this time the men who had gone below for that purpose had returned with a good supply of coal, and a heavy fusillade of the black lumps kept the sharks at a distance, at any rate for the moment. Kettle heaved in smartly, and eager hands gripped the pair as they swirled up alongside, and there they were on the lighter's deck, spitting, dripping, and gasping. But here came an unexpected developement. As soon as he had got back his wind, the mild Hamilton turned on his fellow passenger like a very fury, hitting, kicking, swearing, and almost gnashing with his teeth; and Cranze, stricken to a sudden soberness by his ducking, collected himself after the first surprise, and returned the blows with a murderous interest.