CHAPTER XXI
A STRANGE RESCUE
Reluctantly, but of necessity, we return to theGrampusgetting under weigh from her snug anchorage among the Cosmoledo reefs, and as smart as cleanliness and a complete equipment can make her, emerging once more upon her proper domain, the sea. Her ruler sat in awful state upon the top of the little house aft, Priscilla by his side in a deck chair made for her by the carpenter. She gazed with listless eyes upon the wonderful panorama spread out before her, not daring to appear interested lest her terrible husband should see in that some excuse for ordering her below again. Full well she knew that it was only because he feared that she would have another serious attack of illness that he allowed her this sweet privilege of breathing the fresh air of heaven; a privilege she had enjoyed all her stay ashore, and the deprivation of which while on board had certainly led up to her illness. But in pursuance of her resolve to endure unto the uttermost, she would have died rather than ask any consideration at his hands, while taking with calm thankfulness such crumbs as he chose to fling her contemptuously.
The late invalids, still pale from their recent close struggle with death, were doing their best to ‘keep their ends up’ with the Portuguese portion of the crew, who—trained fine, hard as nails, and with that elevating sense of superiority which counts for so much in human conflict—were, while working harmoniouslyside by side with the white men, continually letting the latter see in what estimation they were held. And no sooner was the ship clear of the reefs, and watches set, than the white men were confronted with another degradation. All sailors know that there are certain berths in the worst of forecastles which are considered better than any others for who can explain what sea-reasons. These berths are usually occupied by the best men in the ship obviously, and especially on a whaling voyage. Now, when the watch that was released went below, its members, who were of the now despised race, were confronted with a state of things which had never before occurred to them. They were ordered to shift and give up their bunks to better men. For a few moments it looked as if there would be a great fight. All the fighting blood of the Anglo-Saxon surged up, but the odds were far too heavy: no anger could blind men to that, nor any courage persuade them to hurl themselves headlong upon the knives and pistols borne by the black Dagoes and ostentatiously displayed by them. Therefore the white men accepted the inevitable and shifted, amid the chuckling jeers of their triumphant watchmates, and another step in Captain Da Silva’s carefully calculated revenge had been attained.
It may perhaps be thought from the way in which I have insisted upon this sad tyranny of black over white that I have a serious bias against the black man. That is not true. I love him generally as a man, and because I do I am not blind to his limitations, and I say emphatically that he is not so constituted that it is safe to trust him with therule over white men. He may retaliate with the opposite proposition, which I do not care to defend for one moment. By all means let Black rule Black, but do not ever let Black rule White, or you will see Hayti reproduced wherever the shameful law is put in operation, and what it means let my friend Hesketh Pritchard tell you. Moreover, these rulers of theGrampuswere not negroes. I should no more wish to be ruled by negroes than by a laughing bevy of children out of the nursery, ready at any moment to become cruel apes tearing in pieces their toys. But I might be able to keep my masters amused, should such be my sad fate, and so escape disintegration. If, however, my negro masters had been bred in and in with Portuguese or Spaniards, I ought to seek death at once. When to the cold cruelty of the Latin is added the irresponsibility of the negro, the blend should never be allowed to exercise its power over men of Teutonic breed. Wherever it has done so, the records of such rule are not for general reading lest readers go mad with horror.
Aft the conditions were altered also. In every whaleship there is a space (on the port side generally) abaft the main hatch, and of course below deck, where the harpooners and petty officers are berthed. The first, second, and third mates have their berths allotted to them in the main cabin, offshoots from it of a grim and fearful stuffiness, but possessing a peculiar desirability because of their contiguity to the dwelling-place of the lord of all. Now Captain Da Silva calmly intimated to his officers that he contemplated considerable changes in the housing accommodation aft. He told them that he hadordered the carpenter to knock up three extra berths in the ‘half-deck,’ as the harpooners’ berth is called, and as soon as that was done, why, they (the officers) would have to clear out, as he needed all the space aft for his own accommodation. The insult was gross, palpable. Indeed, it was hardly veiled, especially remembering the expression of face and the tone of voice accompanying it. But Mr. Court and his brother officer did not forget what they owed to themselves. They were under no misapprehension as to why this line of conduct was being pursued by the skipper, and although both of them felt that the time might arrive when further endurance would be impossible, even at the cost of death for rebellion, that time was not yet. So apparently not noticing the triumphant glitter in the skipper’s eyes, or the exultant ring in his voice, they acquiesced, serenely to all outward seeming, but with hearts on fire, and by so doing riveted another link in the heavy chains they were wearing. When does it become a sacred duty to rebel? Who shall say? But one thing seems clear: that there does come a time when, for the sake of others, it is imperative that one man (or it may be woman) stand up and face the tyrant. He may, probably will, die, but how can man die better? And no such death is in vain. However, this high strain may seem unsuited to the present sordid recital—only a little ship’s company being tyrannised over by one devil, and enduring doggedly all that he chooses to load them with.
Once clear of the islands the ship’s course wasmade N.E., and under easy sail theGrampusbore away across the smiling Indian Ocean. All went well. Apparently it could not do otherwise where Captain Da Silva was. He never seemed to make a mistake. And when he suddenly came on deck one beautiful afternoon and interrupted the busy tide of work that never slacked off night or day by calling all hands to make all possible sail, and altered the ship’s course to due east, no one wondered. They obeyed briskly enough to a casual observer, but in the heart of every white man what weariness of life! For two whole days theGrampusfled to the east as fast as her braced-up condition would allow, the look-outs never once relaxing their careful watch around. No one discussed the movement—the time for that had gone. Every white man in the foc’s’le knew that should he speak one word capable of being construed into something the skipper might be interested in, it would, before many minutes had elapsed, be repeated with such fantastic additions as the carrier of it was capable of making, into the Captain’s greedy ear, with results the most unpleasant to the original utterer of the remark.
As suddenly as the course had been altered and all sails set so was another change made. Everything was furled but the fore and main lower topsails, the ship was brought to the wind on the starboard tack, and lay lazily wallowing in the gentle swell coming up from the south-east. And then, to the surprise of no one on board (for by this time all hands, including his own particular friends, if friends they could be called, believed him to be in league with the devil), there appeared as if from the bosom of the deep an enormous multitude of small whales. Like sperm-whalesarrested in their growth, and only about twice the size of ‘black-fish.’ That is to say, each of them would not be more than three to five tons in weight. It was early morning when they were sighted, and immediately the whole ship was the scene of most violent activity. All sorts of alterations were made, notably the passing out of the boats of the big line-tubs, and only leaving the small hundred-fathom ones behind. Extra harpoons, too, were placed in each boat, and before they left the ship all hands were called aft and thus harangued by the skipper: ‘Looky here,’ said he, ‘these ain’t sperm-whales, an’ I doan’ want no foolin’ with ’em. Get fast t’ one or two, an’ then as th’ others come roun’ lance ’em, an’ leave ’em. T’ the fust man ’at kills over ten, I’ll give fifty dollars in gold. Naow mind, I’m tellin’ ye. Don’t waste line ’n’ irons on these fish: ef y’ du thar’ll be big trouble with me ’fore the day’s over.’ There was no response but a sort of guttural murmur, succeeded by the quick splashes as the boats took the water and sped away under the utmost pressure of the oars to where the sea was all a foam by reason of the gambollings of that great and joyous company of ‘kogia.’
Just as the skipper had forecasted, no sooner had a boat got fast to one of these quaint, short-headed creatures than she became the centre of a curious crowd of his unfortunate fellows, apparently bent upon sharing his fate, and for that purpose thrusting one another aside in their efforts to get as near as possible to the boat. Every man was armed with a lance, and directed to use it with all his might upon the whale nearest him. What an awful scene of slaying ensued, to be sure! The sea became literallyencumbered with dead. The men who had felt that life was not worth living took new hold upon life in their fierce desire of killing, and forgot for the time all their woes. It seemed as if this great slaughter must be prolonged indefinitely, but suddenly, like a trumpet blast, the voice of the skipper rang out: ‘’Vast killin’! All but th’ mate and second mate’s boats, pull for th’ ship’s quick ’s th’ devil ’ll let ye. Hurry, naow.’ And they did hurry. The ship, having been kept close at hand, required no great amount of manipulation to bring her into the midst of the stricken field, and presently the amazing sight was to be seen of the great carcasses one after another, as she (the ship) came alongside them, rising into the air, a chain sling having been whipped round their tails and a tackle hooked to it by means of which the whole body was hoisted on deck. By five in the afternoon thirty of those huge masses encumbered the deck of theGrampus, and she presented an even more gruesome sight than she did when her decks were full of the spoils of the last great catch of sperm-whales.
Now the skipper was in his element. No anxiety about the overside business, everything on deck and snug, although the ship did tumble about most dangerously from the great top weight. All hands were armed with spades, and driven like slaves to use them. But N.B.: no two white men were allowed to work together, lest they might, in desperation, consider the time opportune for making a dash for freedom. No; Captain Da Silva saw to that. He had such a head for detail! All that night and all the next day, without a minute for rest, except just sufficient to swallow the indispensable food, thefuel to keep these human engines performing their allotted motions, the men laboured in silence for the most part, save when the stern commands of the skipper broke the stillness. Doggedly, desperately all hands toiled on, every plunge of a great carcass denuded of spoil over the starboard covering-board punctuating, as it were, the progress being made. And if the decks had been foul before when the last great catch of sperm-whales was made, it was trebly so now. Then, there was little besides the all-prevailing grease, except an occasional block of flesh still left adhering to the blubber: now, all the nameless foulnesses inseparable from cutting up such huge bodies in tropical heat on deck were present in full volume, and—— But this is not a subject to be pursued.
Wonderful to relate, the health of the recent invalids held out against this tremendous strain upon it, and as soon as the last carcass plunged overboard blubber watches were set, and it looked as though relief had come. But not yet. Some attempt must be made to remove a portion at least of the accumulated filth from the deck, and so for nearly half of their first watch below the almost fainting men toiled with water-buckets and brooms to that end. And as they did so they noticed, in half-dazed, unappreciative fashion, how frequently the skipper mounted his little deck aft and gazed earnestly at the lee quadrant of the horizon. This happened so often that at last long dormant curiosity was aroused also, and they looked earnestly in that direction too. ‘Thank God,’ all thought, ‘it isn’t whales he’s looking at.’ No, it was not: it was an awful-looking Himalaya of blackest cloud, violet edged, that reared its mighty headpersistently in that quarter, but did not seem to rise any higher than half-way to the zenith. No one on board knew with what consummate skill and attention, in spite of the many matters claiming his oversight, this wonderful man was manœuvring his ship out of the path of what he knew to be a devastating cyclone. He needed no sympathy, no help in his calculations; in fact, he took a secret but colossal pride in standing alone. And reckoning to a nicety, but with a dangerously narrow margin, he kept his crew going to clear away their last great catch, at the same time making all preparations to meet what he knew would soon be there—the frightful swell raised by the hurricane and extending for thousands of miles on either side of its track.
When it came all was ready for it. Double lashings on everything, the tiers of casks below all carefully chocked and tom’d off to beams above, preventer backstays on masts, &c. And as the great green hills of water reaching from horizon to horizon came sweeping onward, tossing the noble ship from summit to valley and back again as if she were just a ball in the hands of gleeful children, the crew cast wistful glances at their saturnine tyrant, wondering, ‘How did he know this was coming? What kinder manishe, anyhow?’ Well, had the answer been forthcoming it would have been just this: That Captain Da Silva was one of those men of native genius who first of all absorb knowledge as a sponge does water, whose capacity for courage is as great as their capacity for mercy or consideration is small, whose frames are more like automata constructed of steel wire and rubber than sinews and flesh, and who,given the opportunity, could juggle the globe in their hands as a conjurer does his properties, and would do so, but for the wisdom of God, who has ordained that such men shall never go too far. If this sounds like fantastic eulogy as applied to the obscure master of a whaleship, I do not feel at all inclined to argue the point: it is for each one to study out for him or herself and see whether the theory be reasonable or no.
The decks were quite clear, three-fourths of the blubber had been boiled out and the resultant oil run below, when a very strange thing happened. The weather was beautifully fine, the air serene, and a little breeze wafted theGrampusat a gentle rate over the sunlit sea. Captain Da Silva, fully contented with himself, was lolling in his wife’s chair abaft the wheel smoking a peculiarly rank, oily, and foul-smelling cigar, one of a large quantity which, just suiting his taste, he had bought at Brava. I think it may safely be said that he was just then in the full enjoyment ofdolce far niente, that peculiarly delightful frame of mind and body conjoined of which ‘sweet doing nothing’ seems so poor a description—when into the midst of it came Priscilla. Lest it should be thought that I have neglected her of late, I feel bound to say that she had been leading a sort of comatose existence, in this busy little cosmos but not of it, alive but hardly conscious of her surroundings. What could I have said of her but that she awoke, ate a little, lived alone through the day, and slept again? If perfect life be, as Herbert Spencer says, perfect correspondence with a perfect environment, then was Priscilla only just dwelling on the fringes of life, and might truly besaid to be nine-tenths dead. Her placid demeanour and speechless endurance of all things as they came had become so regular an experience with her husband that it was with something very like alarm that he saw her standing before him on deck and heard her sweet, low voice saying distinctly, ‘May I speak to you, Ramon?’ With a gasp of surprise he rose to his feet and, stepping to the wheel, said to the shrinking helmsman: ‘Git t’ ’ell forrard outa this,’ and the man was gone. Then, turning his lowering eye upon Priscilla, yet not without a certain noticeable twitching of his facial muscles, he muttered, ‘Wall, what is it naow? Spit it eout.’ She answered timidly, but as if she must speak: ‘Ramon, please forgive me, but I know there’s a boat with some dying men in it over there.’ And she pointed to the north. ‘It’s a whaleboat, and there’s six men, all alive, but going fast. Will you try and save them?’ He burst into a very storm of curses upon her for daring to interfere with the working of his ship and for her unmentionable folly in supposing that he, of all men in the world, would be likely to take any notice of such a baby-tale as that. But even as he raved and hissed his foul language at his wife, she could see that in his fierce eyes there was a latent look of awe—that he was only trying by noise and bluster to persuade himself that he was asserting his power in the surest way. Priscilla appeared to be entirely deaf to his awful words. And when, breathless, he paused, she resumed quietly, ‘You will find the boat before evening if you alter the course now, but I am afraid some of the men are already dying.’ And with that she turned and wentaway, leaving her husband like a man just about to have an epileptic fit. However, he managed to restrain himself, and presently his voice was heard roaring for the man whom he had sent from the wheel. Having given up the wheel, he took a few short, undecided turns about the quarter-deck, and then, like one acting upon some entirely irresistible impulse, he growled to the helmsman, ‘Keep her away!’ ‘Keep her away, sir,’ replied the man, immediately putting the helm up. As she swung off the wind the skipper shouted, ‘Square the mainyard!’ and as the watch flew to the braces and trimmed sail he steadied the course at north, which brought the wind a little on the starboard quarter and made the speed about four knots.
This being done he went below as if, disgusted beyond measure at having to do such a thing, he must needs use more opprobrious language to his wife for thus in some mysterious way imposing her will upon his. But when he saw her sitting in their little cabin looking with preternaturally bright eyes into vacancy as if she were seeing something with other than mortal vision, he could say nothing to her at all, but with a muttered curse upon himself for this unheard-of folly he fled on deck, not daring to look behind him. As if he must do something, he slung his binoculars about his neck and mounted to the fore crow’s-nest, from which the occupant had to depart suddenly upon the skipper’s appearance. He searched the horizon with most jealous care, but nothing could be seen, nothing but sea and sky and an occasional bird. So after half an hour up there he descended again and solaced his excited feelingsby harrying the men, who, as usual, were kept at work upon perfectly needless jobs as if their very lives depended upon getting the work done in record time. And so congenial did he find this occupation that he had almost forgotten why, contrary to his own plans, he was running his ship almost dead before the wind up the middle of the Indian Ocean instead of getting away across to the Straits of Sunda as he had intended, when ‘What’s that?’ shouted the mate. ‘Somethin’ right ahead, sir; looks like dead whale ’r a boat ’r a big log.’ Ah! Trembling in every limb, Captain Da Silva snatched his glasses and sprang aloft. Panting with his speed he reached the crow’s-nest. He did not need to ask where the object was. It stood up with remarkable distinctness against that wide, clear blue, a little ungainly black patch. He focussed his glasses upon it and stared through the double tubes so earnestly that his eyeballs burnt in their sockets. A cold shudder, in that tropical day, possessed him, ran through him, and made the hair of his flesh stand up. It was a boat and nothing else. What manner of woman could his wife be, and was it safe for him to treat her as he had been doing? Superstitious fears seized upon him, for ever it will be found that gross cruelty and superstition go hand in hand, and at that moment he registered a mental vow that in future there should be a great change in his treatment of Priscilla. Indeed, he blamed himself bitterly for having allowed himself to behave to her as he had done. But he took refuge in the mental coward’s lying plea by muttering, ‘How was I to know?’
Go down from aloft he dared not. Slow, exasperatingly slow, as his ship’s progress was, he felt that he must remain at his lofty perch until the last moment, when he would go himself and see what this strange business meant. It was a weary business, for under such circumstances a ship’s progress seems to be so deliberate, one’s impatience is so futile and yet so impossible to avoid showing, that it tries men more than any words can say. It was nearly sunset when at last the waif was near enough for a boat to be lowered for the purpose of bringing her alongside. Long before that time arrived Captain Da Silva had devoured every detail of her—had seen that to all appearance the six men in her were dead, that she was a whaleboat, but, of course, could not read her name, since it was not the practice for whaleboats to carry the name of their ship painted on them, as is done in the merchant service. The same haughty disregard of any other person’s curiosity is usually shown in the Navy, where scarcely any of the smaller boats give the ship’s name—you can read it on the men’s caps if you want to know it.
Leaping into the boat he had ordered to be lowered, the skipper gave the order to ‘give way’ in such a tone that the men fairly lifted the boat through the water. None of them dared to steal a glance at him; if they had they would have marvelled. He was in a piteous state of nervous excitement. He felt as if his wife’s eyes were penetrating through the massive sides of the ship, that she was cognisant of his very thoughts; and the idea made great beads of cold sweat stand out upon his swarthy skin. He fought with his fears as a man fights with death, nowdevising strange punishments for Priscilla for having thus obtained a strange power of frightening him, and now vowing to himself that he would devote the rest of his time with her to making amends for his previous treatment of her. Not that he was conscious of having done anything he should not do—men of that class seldom are—but because she did not seem to be happy under the discipline which he felt was his prerogative to mete out to all under his command. And then they reached the boat.
Are those bundles of rags and bones men? By night the dews and by day the pitiless sun have alternately soaked and scorched them. They have endured such agonies as men do not care to think of. The boat herself is so bleached with sun and dew and wind that it seems wonderful she still holds together. And there is a faint smell as of death. Round to windward, quick. Look closely. Is there any life at all? Yes, there is a slight movement. A bight of tow-line is flung on board and secured to the bow thwart, a curt order is given, and the waif is being towed to the ship. Arriving alongside, she is hoisted level with the rail so that the hapless ones may be lifted out, as they are, so gently, so tenderly, by those rude, much-persecuted men, while the skipper looks on loweringly. One is dead. He is a little Italian apparently so reduced by his sufferings that he looks more like an Egyptian mummy uncased than anything else. But in all the rest there is some spark of life, notably in one big-framed—alas, every bone is awfully visible, and his eyes are away in the back of his head somewhere at the bottom of two long tunnels—fair-haired man, whose broken lips part andwhose blackened tongue tries pitifully to frame a word.
The skipper goes away and leaves willing, eager hands to attend mercifully upon these castaways. He has said no word forbidding anything to be done, and so the group around the bodies give such aid as they know how, while the rest of the crew trim yards again for Anjer. And by the time she is settled upon her old course and the Captain has carelessly strolled forward again, he is humbly informed that five of the men he has rescued are not only still alive, but likely to go on living.