Chapter Twenty One.The Spanish Captain’s Story.When I went up on deck that morning I could hardly believe my eyes, on seeing that the storm and all its wild surroundings had miraculously disappeared; for, the sun was shining brightly on a blue sea that seemed to ripple with laughter and the good old ship was speeding along under all plain sail, looking none the worse for the buffeting she had experienced only a few hours before!“Rather a change from yesterday, ain’t it, youngster?” observed Mr Gilham, who was officer of the watch, addressing me kindly, noticing the expression of astonishment on my face as I glanced up aloft and then over the side. “Things look a little more ship-shape than they were then.”“Yes, sir,” I replied. “But what a fearful gale it was!”“Pooh, nonsense, Vernon!” cried he, with a laugh. “Don’t overlay your yarns like that. We’ve certainly had a bit of a blow, but I’ve seen it much worse crossing the bay!”Of course, I could not contradict him; and, I may here mention that on narrating the circumstance to Dad on my return home some time afterwards, he said that he had never known a sailor acknowledge anything unusual about a storm at the immediate moment of its occurrence, or even shortly afterwards.All those with whom he had ever been brought in contact, Dad told me, might possibly allow that the wind was “freshening,” perhaps, or “blowing stiffly,” or “inclined to be rough”; but, a gale or a hurricane they would never admit, in spite of the fact of its “blowing great guns and small-arms!”Should anyone, Dad also said, incautiously hazard some definite opinion on the state of the weather, any seaman thus spoken to would invariably recall a previous occasion within his own experience when it was really bad enough to speak about—it being the rule with all true sons of the sea to minimise danger and laugh at the perils they have escaped, instead of making mountains out of molehills in the manner natural to most landsmen!Besides thus upsetting my ideas as to the terrible ordeal we had gone through, concerning which, however, I held to my own view in spite of his protest to be contrary, although, of course, I did not tell him so, Mr Gilham informed me that we had suffered no serious damage beyond the injury to the topsail yard.This, he said, too, was much less than Mr Cleete, the carpenter, had made out, that worthy being one of the sort of men who always take a despondent view of everything.The spar, however, was sent down and replaced by a spare yard which we carried; and everything was all right aloft now.We had lost something in another way, though; for, when Mr Quadrant took the sun at noon, with all of us youngsters standing round him with our sextants, like a parcel of chickens gathered about an old hen, which indeed the master greatly resembled with his shock head of hair and fussy manner, the ship was found to be in latitude 44 degrees 5 minutes north and longitude 7 degrees 50 minutes west.She had been driven to the south-east by the gale, aided by the drift of the current setting in to the Bay of Biscay.This was more than two hundred miles out of our proper track, and far too much to the eastward to be able to weather the northern extremity of the Spanish coast, which would soon be perilously near to us, running as we then were to the sou’-sou’-west.Fortunately for us, though, the wind had now veered to the southward; and, as we were sailing on the port tack, by giving the ship a good deal of weather helm and bracing round the yards, we were able to bear up to the westward out of the ill-omened bay, steering west by south until we were in longitude 11 degrees 10 minutes west and well clear of Cape Finisterre, when we hauled our wind and shaped a course direct for Madeira.This, however, was not until next day; and, I recollect, after we luffed up again and bore to the southward, a lot of talk went on in the gunroom at dinner-time about the probability of our stopping or not at that beautiful island, the gem of the Atlantic.“I say, Jack Vernon,” sang out Larkyns to me, across the table, “I suppose you know why it is called Madeira?”“No,” I replied. “Why?”“Well,” he began, “it is rather a romantic story—”“Then, I shouldn’t think it can be much in your line,” interrupted Mr Stormcock, who somehow or other was always down upon any chap for ever starting a yarn. “You tell very practical ones; only, instead of the term ‘story’ I would use a shorter and more expressive word.”“Say ‘lie’ if you like; I know you mean it,” rejoined Larkyns, in no way put out by the rude insinuation and continuing his narrative quite composedly. “But, you’re wrong in this case, old Stormy, for ‘faix it’s no lie I’m telling you now,’ as the doctor’s Irish marine would say. It’s the plain, unadulterated truth. I had the tale from a Portuguese monk at Funchal.”“Funchal,” put in Mr Fortescue Jones, the assistant-paymaster, caressing his whiskers as usual and cocking his eye as if he were going to catch Larkyns tripping. “When were you there?”“In theMajestic, when I was a cadet,” promptly returned the mid, taking up the cudgels at once. “It was in the same year you were tried by court-martial for breaking your leave!”This was a “settler” for poor Mr Jones.“Go on, Larkyns,” I said, at this point, to change the conversation and cover the paymaster’s confusion as he bent his head over his plate. “I want to hear that yarn of yours about Madeira.”“All right, Johnny,” he replied in his chaffy way; “only, you don’t pronounce the name right, my son. It should be called ‘My-deary,’ not ‘Madeir-ah.’ Hang it all, Stormcock, stow that!”“Don’t apologise,” said the master’s mate, who just at that instant had thrown a biscuit at Larkyns, causing the violent interjection which he interpolated in his story. “I thought I would supply the proper accentuation for you, that’s all.”“If you don’t look out and leave me alone, I will pretty soon accentuate your nose, Stormy,” retorted the other, all good humour again, as he always was; for he took a joke, even of the most practical sort, as freely as he perpetrated one. “Yes, Johnny Vernon, it should be called ‘My-deary,’ and I’ll tell you why. The island, so the monk told me, owes its origin, or rather discovery, to two lovers who fled thither in the year fourteen hundred and something. One of these lovyers, my young friend, was a Scotchman named Robert Matchim, and the other was a Miss Anna D’Arfet, a young lady residing at Lisbon, whose parents objected to Robert and refused to match her with Matchim.”Mr Stormcock pitched another biscuit immediately at Larkyns, crying out at the same time—“That’s for your bad pun!”The wag, however, dodged it and proceeded with his yarn.“Being a Scotchman, although poor, as few of the nation are,” proceeded he, aiming this retaliatory shot at the master’s mate, who, he knew, hailed from the North and hadn’t a spare bawbee to bless himself with, “our friend, Robert Matchim, being as brave as he was bold, would not be done by a pitiful Portuguese laird. So, he pawned the title-deeds of his ancestral estates in Skye, where I forgot to mention he lived when at home; and, chartering a caravel, which happened luckily to be lying at anchor off the port at the time, smuggled his sweetheart on board and sailed away—with the intention of eloping to France, where her stern paryent would, he thought, be unable to follow him for certain political reasons.”“Very good so far,” interposed Mr Stormcock again at this point, in an ironical tone. “Pray go on; it is most interesting!”“Glad you like it,” said Larkyns, coolly, without turning a hair. “Well, then, to finish the story. Very unfortunately for these fond lovyers, a storm arose, like that bit of breeze we had t’other day. This blew them out of their course and they lost their reckoning, landing at this very island, of which we are speaking instead of at some French port as they expected. The spot they pitched on was called Machico Bay on the eastern side; and there they lived happy ever after, having the additional satisfaction after departing this life of being both buried in one grave. Their last resting-place was seen by a party of Spaniards who subsequently re-discovered the island; when these sentimental mariners, noting the names of the aforesaid lovyers on their joint tombstone, and the account there detailed of their strange adventures, very romantically and devoutly erected a chapel to their memory. This chapel exists to this very day and can be seen by you, Stormy, or any other unbeliever in the truthfulness of my yarn! It is for this reason, my worthy Johnny, that I insist that the island shall be properly styled ‘My-deary’; for, as Robert loved Anna, he would naturally have addressed her as ‘My-deary.’ Do you twig, young ’un, eh?”“Oh, yes,” I answered with a snigger, “I think, though, it’s rather far-fetched.”“So it is,” said he. “It came from Madeira; and that’s some six hundred miles, more or less, from where we now are.”At that moment, Corporal Macan appeared at the door of the gunroom and walked up to where I was sitting.“If you plaize, sor,” he said, pulling his forelock, “the docthor would loike to say yez in the sick bay.”“Indeed, Macan,” I cried. “Do you know what he wants me for?”“The jintleman we tuk off the wrack’s rekivered his sinses, an’ none ov us, sure, can under-constubble his furrin lingo barrin’ yersilf, sor. So, the docther wants ye fur to say what he’s jabberin’ about.”“All right,” said I, bolting as quickly as I could a piece of “plum duff” which Dobbs had just brought me. “Tell the doctor I’m coming.”“By jingo, talk of the devil!” observed Larkyns, bursting into a laugh as Macan turned to go away. “Why, I was only just talking of that blessed Irish marine a minute ago, and here he has come on the scene in person, with his rum brogue.”“Hush!” I said. “He’ll hear you.”“No matter if he does,” rejoined Larkyns. “I suppose he knows he has got the Cork brogue strong enough to hang a cat-block from. Besides, he won’t mind what I say.”“Faix, that’s thrue for yez, sor,” muttered the corporal, who caught this remark as he was going out of the gunroom door, his ears being as sharp as those of a fox. “Begorrah, it’s moighty little onyone ivver does mind what ye says at all, at all!”With which doubtful compliment, capable of a double construction, Corporal Macan marched on in front of me, holding his head very erect and with a broad grin on his face, as if conscious of carrying off the honours of the war, towards Dr Nettleby’s sanctum on the main deck.Here, on entering, I noticed the Spaniard sitting up in one of the doctor’s easy chairs.He was near an open port, looking very different to what he was the last time I had seen him, a healthy colour being now in his face; although this was still very much drawn and careworn, but his black hair and beard were tidily arranged, much improving his personal appearance.He raised his eyes as I came into the cabin, and smiled faintly, seeming to recognise me somehow or other, though he was certainly off his head on board the wreck and could not have remembered what took place there.“He, señor muchaco—so, young gentleman,” said he, on my approaching nearer to him. “Ta hablas Española—you speak my language then?”“Si, señor—yes, sir,” I replied. “Un poco—a very little!”His face instantly brightened, and he poured out a flood of Spanish which I could hardly follow, he spoke so quickly; although, I could gather that he wanted to know where he was and how he had been rescued, inquiring as well what had become of the rest who were in the ship with him.The doctor, to whom I tried to translate what he said, cautioned me to be very careful what I told him in reply; for, the man, he said, was still in a critical state and any sudden shock would retard his recovery.I was, therefore, very guarded in my answers to his questions, letting out all he wished to learn only little by little, as he drew it from me by his interrogations.He expressed the most fervent gratitude on my narrating how we had boarded his water-logged vessel and the difficulty Mr Jellaby had in releasing him from his dangerous position; and, he bowed his thanks to Doctor Nettleby, addressing him as “Señor Medico—Mr Doctor,” for his kind care of him.But, when I came to describe what the lieutenant and I had seen in the cabin, his manner changed at once; his eyes rolling with fury and his thin, nervous hands clenching in impotent rage and despair, and he tried to stand up, raising himself out of the chair.“Ay la povera señora—oh, the poor lady!” he cried out, his eyes now filling and his mouth working with emotion, which he vainly tried to suppress as I told him of the poor dead lady and the little baby floating about on the floor, both of them murdered—”É la péquiña niña—and the little child, too!”On my telling him next, in answer to another question, about the fine-looking fellow with the revolver in his hand, his feelings could no longer be suppressed.“Mi hermano! Oh, my brother!” he exclaimed, bursting into tears. “Muerto! muerto! dead, dead!”Doctor Nettleby and I turned away, it being painful in the extreme to see a grown man such as he crying like a child; for his breast was heaving and his shoulders shaking with the sobs he endeavoured to conceal, and he hid his face in his hands as he leant back again in the chair.After a bit, on his becoming more composed again, the doctor gave him a stimulant, which quieted his nerves.Just then the captain came in, followed by Lieutenant Jellaby, to make inquiries, the doctor having reported his patient convalescent.“El capitano—this is the Captain,” said I, to attract his attention to the new arrivals as they advanced up to his chair. “El capitano del nostro buque—the captain of our ship!”I also pointed out in like fashion Mr Jellaby, saying that he was the officer who had effected his rescue; and the Spaniard bowed silently to both.Captain Farmer, however, did not need any introduction from me, for he spoke the other’s language fluently, being a most accomplished linguist; so, he and the poor fellow were soon on the best of terms, the survivor from the wreck proceeding presently to tell the succinct history of the ill-fated vessel.This we had all been longing to hear; and Captain Farmer now translated it word for word for the benefit of the doctor and Mr Jellaby, who, as I have already said, did not understand the original Spanish in which it was rendered.The Spaniard said that his name was Don Ferdinando Olivarez and that he had been the captain and part owner of the barque, which was bound from Cadiz to Havana with a cargo of the wines of Xeres. She had on board, besides, a large quantity of specie, which the Spanish Government were sending out for the payment of the troops in Cuba.“Your ship was namedLa Bella Catarina, señor,” said I, at this point, as he had not mentioned this fact, though I don’t think Captain Farmer approved of my interruption, for he gave me a look which made me shut up at once, “was she not sir?”“Yes, young gentleman,” he replied. “She was so-called after my poor sister-in-law, the murdered lady whose body you saw in the cabin which proved her tomb—Ay que hermosa esta—oh, how beautiful she was! She was the wife of my only brother, Don Pedro Olivarez, who died in defending her. Thus his corpse you also beheld. Oh, my friends, he was the noblest, best and bravest brother in the world. He had, alas, a joint share with me in that accursed vessel.”He was overcome with emotion again when he had got so far; and Dr Nettleby, fearing the narration was too much for him in his present weak state, wanted him to leave off his story until he felt better.But after resting a minute or two and taking another sip of the cordial the doctor handed him, the Spaniard insisted on going on with the painful recital.His brother, he said, had charge of the specie sent out in their ship; and, as his wife had been recommended change of air, he determined to take her with him on the voyage to Cuba, thinking the trip out and home would do her good, as well as the poor little baby, who had been only born two months to the very day on which they sailed from Cadiz.All went well with them until they were near the Azores, or Western Islands, where the ship sprang a leak and met with such baffling winds that she was driven back to the eastward, close in to the Portuguese coast; when the crew, who were tired out with keeping to the pumps, managed to broach the cargo and madden themselves with the liquor they found below.“What happened next?” asked Captain Farmer, on his pausing here to take breath and put the cordial to his lips. “I suppose they got drunk on the sherry, my friend?”“Ah, yes, los maladettos—the cursed devils!” replied the Spanish captain, his eyes flashing with anger. “If the brutes had only got drunk, neither my brother nor I would have minded it much, although they might have done so at our expense, it being our wine which they wasted, the brutes!”He then went on to state that the men became so violent and insubordinate, that when his brother and himself battened down the hatches to prevent their broaching any more of the casks, they broke into open mutiny.The mate was the ringleader of the conspiracy.It was this rascal, he said, who informed the crew that they had specie aboard, which the mutineers now demanded should be given up to them and they be allowed to leave the ship in one of her boats, the mate telling them that the vessel was almost in sight of Vigo—a fact which he, the captain, had only disclosed to him in confidence that very day within an hour or so of the outbreak, so that the mutiny appeared to be a planned thing.“Well,” said Captain Farmer, “what did you do then?”“We refused their insolent demand, of course,” he answered, “in spite of the mate and another scoundrel drawing their knives and making for us. My brother knocked down Gomez at once, and the sailor I kicked into the scuppers; the two of us then retreated to the cabin, where we kept them at bay for the whole of that night and all the following day, as we had with us all the firearms in the ship, and it was out of their power to dislodge us.”“And how was it then you did not succeed in getting the upper hand of them in the end, instead of the affair turning out as it did?”In reply to this question from our captain, the Spaniard’s emotion again overcame him.“Ay, it was all my fault, and I of all men am the most miserable!” he cried. “Yo, I it was who caused the death of those I loved best!”“Carramba, Señor Capitano,” said Captain Farmer, trying to soothe him. “You do yourself an injustice. I can’t see where you were to blame!”“Ah, but I do,” he answered doggedly, as if he had made up his mind on the point and no argument would persuade him to the contrary. “I ought to have recollected that there was no water or provisions in the cabin, the steward, who had joined the mutineers, keeping these always in the fore part of the ship; and, there was the poor señora, who had her little baby to nurse, suffering from hunger and thirst, as we could see, my brother and I, although she never uttered a word of complaint!”“Poor, brave lady,” observed the captain. “She deserved a better fate!”“Si, si, yes, yes,” said the other, “She did not complain—no, never; but, how could we stand by and see her suffer? My brother Pedro, when it came on to nightfall on the close of the second day of our blockade in the cabin, said that he would adventure out in search of food and water, the mutineers then having drunk themselves to sleep. I, however, pointed out that he had a wife and child dependent on his life, while I had no claims on mine and insisted on my right to take the risk, the more especially from my being the master of the ship. Still, he would not give in; and, ultimately, we cast the dice to decide the matter and I won the cast.”“You then left the cabin?”“Yes, señor. My brother barricaded the door behind me and kept watch with his revolver, while I crept forwards stealthily. I reached the steward’s pantry in the deckhouse amidships, without being seen and secured some polenta and a baraca of water; when, as I was creeping aft again and close to the poop, that villain of a mate caught hold of my arm, pointing a stiletto in my face at the same time, and threatening to stab me if I uttered a cry. But, before I could open my mouth, he shoved a gag in it and then proceeded to drag me to the side of the ship, lashing me to the spot whence your two officers released me some three days afterwards, if my calculation is correct.”“Good heavens!” exclaimed the captain. “What agony you must have suffered tied up like that, and without anything to eat or drink, I suppose, all the while?”“Nothing, not a bite or drop, passed my lips from the time of the night of the mutiny until your brave officers and men, Señor Capitano, so nobly came to my assistance.”“You must then have been quite five days without sustenance,” said Captain Farmer, astonished at his endurance. “I wonder you lived through it, with all that exposure to the weather, too!”“Ah, it was nothing. I did not think of myself,” replied the other. “I was in torture for my brother and his poor wife and little child, for, as soon as I was gagged and bound, I saw Gomez and six of the villains all draw their knives and start towards the poop; and, presently, I heard the shriek of a woman’s voice which I recognised as my sister’s, the señora, and then four pistol-shots in rapid succession, after which I don’t know what happened for a time. I must have lost my senses or fainted.”“And then?”“When I came to myself again,” continued the Spanish captain, as we all listened breathlessly to his narrative, “it was near morning and the light of the coming dawn beginning to show in the eastern sky; so, hearing a lot of talking and quarrelling going on, I looked towards the forecastle, whence the sound seemed to proceed.”“Well,” said Captain Farmer, who was as interested apparently as I was, “what did you see?”“I saw a lot of the crew sitting round a tub of brandy, some of which we had shipped along with the wine as part of our cargo, although it had escaped their observation at first, being stowed low down, under the casks of the sherry. However, they had discovered it now, and had evidently been having an orgie, all of them being more than half drunk. They were swearing and fighting, playing cards by the dim light of one of the ship’s lanterns, which was stuck up on the deck beside them. I noticed, too, that a heap of gold was piled up on top of an empty brandy tub, standing to the right of the man dealing the cards, which showed that they had managed to break open the treasure chest containing the government specie; and, I was in an agony of apprehension about my brother’s fate, not to speak of his wife and child, when, with a wild shout, one of the villains threw down his cards and clutched at the pile of gold, scrambling up on his feet at the same time and making for the side of the ship where I was lashed against the bulwarks. It was that scoundrel Gomez.”“The mate, eh?”“Yes, Señor Capitano. He had a revolver, I saw, in his hand, which he must have got from the cabin after murdering my brother. This thought flashed through my mind instantly, and as it did so, the wretch advanced nearer to the break of the forecastle and fired at me, calling out at the same time, ‘Carramba, I’ve settled your dog of a brother and now I am going to finish you off!’ The good God, however, defeated his purpose, for the bullet did not penetrate my brain as he intended. No, strange to say, it shot away the knot of the rope’s-end that was passed across my mouth to gag me, relieving me at once from considerable pain.”“Did he not fire again?”“No,” replied the Spaniard, his countenance lighting up with a sort of ferocious joy that made me think for the moment he had gone suddenly mad at the recollection of his past sufferings. “Before the villain could aim a second shot in my direction, the most wonderful thing happened that, I believe, could ever have occurred. Yes, Señor Capitano, I declare to you, it was the most wonderful thing, now that I recall it again in speaking to you, that I have ever heard of in all my life. Ay, so wonderful and providential, that it would seem incredible to me were I not certain by this very occurrence, which has brought it home to me, that there is a Power above which watches over us and preserves us from danger, no matter how imminent that danger may be, and when the help of man is of no avail; a Power, too, that as frequently punishes the wicked in the very act of their wickedness, as happened in this case.”At that moment, the sentry who always stood on guard without the door of the sick bay entered the cabin, and saluting Captain Farmer, said the first lieutenant wished to speak to him; whereupon the captain, apologising for having to absent himself at such a critical point, at once withdrew, saying that he would not be long away.
When I went up on deck that morning I could hardly believe my eyes, on seeing that the storm and all its wild surroundings had miraculously disappeared; for, the sun was shining brightly on a blue sea that seemed to ripple with laughter and the good old ship was speeding along under all plain sail, looking none the worse for the buffeting she had experienced only a few hours before!
“Rather a change from yesterday, ain’t it, youngster?” observed Mr Gilham, who was officer of the watch, addressing me kindly, noticing the expression of astonishment on my face as I glanced up aloft and then over the side. “Things look a little more ship-shape than they were then.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “But what a fearful gale it was!”
“Pooh, nonsense, Vernon!” cried he, with a laugh. “Don’t overlay your yarns like that. We’ve certainly had a bit of a blow, but I’ve seen it much worse crossing the bay!”
Of course, I could not contradict him; and, I may here mention that on narrating the circumstance to Dad on my return home some time afterwards, he said that he had never known a sailor acknowledge anything unusual about a storm at the immediate moment of its occurrence, or even shortly afterwards.
All those with whom he had ever been brought in contact, Dad told me, might possibly allow that the wind was “freshening,” perhaps, or “blowing stiffly,” or “inclined to be rough”; but, a gale or a hurricane they would never admit, in spite of the fact of its “blowing great guns and small-arms!”
Should anyone, Dad also said, incautiously hazard some definite opinion on the state of the weather, any seaman thus spoken to would invariably recall a previous occasion within his own experience when it was really bad enough to speak about—it being the rule with all true sons of the sea to minimise danger and laugh at the perils they have escaped, instead of making mountains out of molehills in the manner natural to most landsmen!
Besides thus upsetting my ideas as to the terrible ordeal we had gone through, concerning which, however, I held to my own view in spite of his protest to be contrary, although, of course, I did not tell him so, Mr Gilham informed me that we had suffered no serious damage beyond the injury to the topsail yard.
This, he said, too, was much less than Mr Cleete, the carpenter, had made out, that worthy being one of the sort of men who always take a despondent view of everything.
The spar, however, was sent down and replaced by a spare yard which we carried; and everything was all right aloft now.
We had lost something in another way, though; for, when Mr Quadrant took the sun at noon, with all of us youngsters standing round him with our sextants, like a parcel of chickens gathered about an old hen, which indeed the master greatly resembled with his shock head of hair and fussy manner, the ship was found to be in latitude 44 degrees 5 minutes north and longitude 7 degrees 50 minutes west.
She had been driven to the south-east by the gale, aided by the drift of the current setting in to the Bay of Biscay.
This was more than two hundred miles out of our proper track, and far too much to the eastward to be able to weather the northern extremity of the Spanish coast, which would soon be perilously near to us, running as we then were to the sou’-sou’-west.
Fortunately for us, though, the wind had now veered to the southward; and, as we were sailing on the port tack, by giving the ship a good deal of weather helm and bracing round the yards, we were able to bear up to the westward out of the ill-omened bay, steering west by south until we were in longitude 11 degrees 10 minutes west and well clear of Cape Finisterre, when we hauled our wind and shaped a course direct for Madeira.
This, however, was not until next day; and, I recollect, after we luffed up again and bore to the southward, a lot of talk went on in the gunroom at dinner-time about the probability of our stopping or not at that beautiful island, the gem of the Atlantic.
“I say, Jack Vernon,” sang out Larkyns to me, across the table, “I suppose you know why it is called Madeira?”
“No,” I replied. “Why?”
“Well,” he began, “it is rather a romantic story—”
“Then, I shouldn’t think it can be much in your line,” interrupted Mr Stormcock, who somehow or other was always down upon any chap for ever starting a yarn. “You tell very practical ones; only, instead of the term ‘story’ I would use a shorter and more expressive word.”
“Say ‘lie’ if you like; I know you mean it,” rejoined Larkyns, in no way put out by the rude insinuation and continuing his narrative quite composedly. “But, you’re wrong in this case, old Stormy, for ‘faix it’s no lie I’m telling you now,’ as the doctor’s Irish marine would say. It’s the plain, unadulterated truth. I had the tale from a Portuguese monk at Funchal.”
“Funchal,” put in Mr Fortescue Jones, the assistant-paymaster, caressing his whiskers as usual and cocking his eye as if he were going to catch Larkyns tripping. “When were you there?”
“In theMajestic, when I was a cadet,” promptly returned the mid, taking up the cudgels at once. “It was in the same year you were tried by court-martial for breaking your leave!”
This was a “settler” for poor Mr Jones.
“Go on, Larkyns,” I said, at this point, to change the conversation and cover the paymaster’s confusion as he bent his head over his plate. “I want to hear that yarn of yours about Madeira.”
“All right, Johnny,” he replied in his chaffy way; “only, you don’t pronounce the name right, my son. It should be called ‘My-deary,’ not ‘Madeir-ah.’ Hang it all, Stormcock, stow that!”
“Don’t apologise,” said the master’s mate, who just at that instant had thrown a biscuit at Larkyns, causing the violent interjection which he interpolated in his story. “I thought I would supply the proper accentuation for you, that’s all.”
“If you don’t look out and leave me alone, I will pretty soon accentuate your nose, Stormy,” retorted the other, all good humour again, as he always was; for he took a joke, even of the most practical sort, as freely as he perpetrated one. “Yes, Johnny Vernon, it should be called ‘My-deary,’ and I’ll tell you why. The island, so the monk told me, owes its origin, or rather discovery, to two lovers who fled thither in the year fourteen hundred and something. One of these lovyers, my young friend, was a Scotchman named Robert Matchim, and the other was a Miss Anna D’Arfet, a young lady residing at Lisbon, whose parents objected to Robert and refused to match her with Matchim.”
Mr Stormcock pitched another biscuit immediately at Larkyns, crying out at the same time—
“That’s for your bad pun!”
The wag, however, dodged it and proceeded with his yarn.
“Being a Scotchman, although poor, as few of the nation are,” proceeded he, aiming this retaliatory shot at the master’s mate, who, he knew, hailed from the North and hadn’t a spare bawbee to bless himself with, “our friend, Robert Matchim, being as brave as he was bold, would not be done by a pitiful Portuguese laird. So, he pawned the title-deeds of his ancestral estates in Skye, where I forgot to mention he lived when at home; and, chartering a caravel, which happened luckily to be lying at anchor off the port at the time, smuggled his sweetheart on board and sailed away—with the intention of eloping to France, where her stern paryent would, he thought, be unable to follow him for certain political reasons.”
“Very good so far,” interposed Mr Stormcock again at this point, in an ironical tone. “Pray go on; it is most interesting!”
“Glad you like it,” said Larkyns, coolly, without turning a hair. “Well, then, to finish the story. Very unfortunately for these fond lovyers, a storm arose, like that bit of breeze we had t’other day. This blew them out of their course and they lost their reckoning, landing at this very island, of which we are speaking instead of at some French port as they expected. The spot they pitched on was called Machico Bay on the eastern side; and there they lived happy ever after, having the additional satisfaction after departing this life of being both buried in one grave. Their last resting-place was seen by a party of Spaniards who subsequently re-discovered the island; when these sentimental mariners, noting the names of the aforesaid lovyers on their joint tombstone, and the account there detailed of their strange adventures, very romantically and devoutly erected a chapel to their memory. This chapel exists to this very day and can be seen by you, Stormy, or any other unbeliever in the truthfulness of my yarn! It is for this reason, my worthy Johnny, that I insist that the island shall be properly styled ‘My-deary’; for, as Robert loved Anna, he would naturally have addressed her as ‘My-deary.’ Do you twig, young ’un, eh?”
“Oh, yes,” I answered with a snigger, “I think, though, it’s rather far-fetched.”
“So it is,” said he. “It came from Madeira; and that’s some six hundred miles, more or less, from where we now are.”
At that moment, Corporal Macan appeared at the door of the gunroom and walked up to where I was sitting.
“If you plaize, sor,” he said, pulling his forelock, “the docthor would loike to say yez in the sick bay.”
“Indeed, Macan,” I cried. “Do you know what he wants me for?”
“The jintleman we tuk off the wrack’s rekivered his sinses, an’ none ov us, sure, can under-constubble his furrin lingo barrin’ yersilf, sor. So, the docther wants ye fur to say what he’s jabberin’ about.”
“All right,” said I, bolting as quickly as I could a piece of “plum duff” which Dobbs had just brought me. “Tell the doctor I’m coming.”
“By jingo, talk of the devil!” observed Larkyns, bursting into a laugh as Macan turned to go away. “Why, I was only just talking of that blessed Irish marine a minute ago, and here he has come on the scene in person, with his rum brogue.”
“Hush!” I said. “He’ll hear you.”
“No matter if he does,” rejoined Larkyns. “I suppose he knows he has got the Cork brogue strong enough to hang a cat-block from. Besides, he won’t mind what I say.”
“Faix, that’s thrue for yez, sor,” muttered the corporal, who caught this remark as he was going out of the gunroom door, his ears being as sharp as those of a fox. “Begorrah, it’s moighty little onyone ivver does mind what ye says at all, at all!”
With which doubtful compliment, capable of a double construction, Corporal Macan marched on in front of me, holding his head very erect and with a broad grin on his face, as if conscious of carrying off the honours of the war, towards Dr Nettleby’s sanctum on the main deck.
Here, on entering, I noticed the Spaniard sitting up in one of the doctor’s easy chairs.
He was near an open port, looking very different to what he was the last time I had seen him, a healthy colour being now in his face; although this was still very much drawn and careworn, but his black hair and beard were tidily arranged, much improving his personal appearance.
He raised his eyes as I came into the cabin, and smiled faintly, seeming to recognise me somehow or other, though he was certainly off his head on board the wreck and could not have remembered what took place there.
“He, señor muchaco—so, young gentleman,” said he, on my approaching nearer to him. “Ta hablas Española—you speak my language then?”
“Si, señor—yes, sir,” I replied. “Un poco—a very little!”
His face instantly brightened, and he poured out a flood of Spanish which I could hardly follow, he spoke so quickly; although, I could gather that he wanted to know where he was and how he had been rescued, inquiring as well what had become of the rest who were in the ship with him.
The doctor, to whom I tried to translate what he said, cautioned me to be very careful what I told him in reply; for, the man, he said, was still in a critical state and any sudden shock would retard his recovery.
I was, therefore, very guarded in my answers to his questions, letting out all he wished to learn only little by little, as he drew it from me by his interrogations.
He expressed the most fervent gratitude on my narrating how we had boarded his water-logged vessel and the difficulty Mr Jellaby had in releasing him from his dangerous position; and, he bowed his thanks to Doctor Nettleby, addressing him as “Señor Medico—Mr Doctor,” for his kind care of him.
But, when I came to describe what the lieutenant and I had seen in the cabin, his manner changed at once; his eyes rolling with fury and his thin, nervous hands clenching in impotent rage and despair, and he tried to stand up, raising himself out of the chair.
“Ay la povera señora—oh, the poor lady!” he cried out, his eyes now filling and his mouth working with emotion, which he vainly tried to suppress as I told him of the poor dead lady and the little baby floating about on the floor, both of them murdered—”É la péquiña niña—and the little child, too!”
On my telling him next, in answer to another question, about the fine-looking fellow with the revolver in his hand, his feelings could no longer be suppressed.
“Mi hermano! Oh, my brother!” he exclaimed, bursting into tears. “Muerto! muerto! dead, dead!”
Doctor Nettleby and I turned away, it being painful in the extreme to see a grown man such as he crying like a child; for his breast was heaving and his shoulders shaking with the sobs he endeavoured to conceal, and he hid his face in his hands as he leant back again in the chair.
After a bit, on his becoming more composed again, the doctor gave him a stimulant, which quieted his nerves.
Just then the captain came in, followed by Lieutenant Jellaby, to make inquiries, the doctor having reported his patient convalescent.
“El capitano—this is the Captain,” said I, to attract his attention to the new arrivals as they advanced up to his chair. “El capitano del nostro buque—the captain of our ship!”
I also pointed out in like fashion Mr Jellaby, saying that he was the officer who had effected his rescue; and the Spaniard bowed silently to both.
Captain Farmer, however, did not need any introduction from me, for he spoke the other’s language fluently, being a most accomplished linguist; so, he and the poor fellow were soon on the best of terms, the survivor from the wreck proceeding presently to tell the succinct history of the ill-fated vessel.
This we had all been longing to hear; and Captain Farmer now translated it word for word for the benefit of the doctor and Mr Jellaby, who, as I have already said, did not understand the original Spanish in which it was rendered.
The Spaniard said that his name was Don Ferdinando Olivarez and that he had been the captain and part owner of the barque, which was bound from Cadiz to Havana with a cargo of the wines of Xeres. She had on board, besides, a large quantity of specie, which the Spanish Government were sending out for the payment of the troops in Cuba.
“Your ship was namedLa Bella Catarina, señor,” said I, at this point, as he had not mentioned this fact, though I don’t think Captain Farmer approved of my interruption, for he gave me a look which made me shut up at once, “was she not sir?”
“Yes, young gentleman,” he replied. “She was so-called after my poor sister-in-law, the murdered lady whose body you saw in the cabin which proved her tomb—Ay que hermosa esta—oh, how beautiful she was! She was the wife of my only brother, Don Pedro Olivarez, who died in defending her. Thus his corpse you also beheld. Oh, my friends, he was the noblest, best and bravest brother in the world. He had, alas, a joint share with me in that accursed vessel.”
He was overcome with emotion again when he had got so far; and Dr Nettleby, fearing the narration was too much for him in his present weak state, wanted him to leave off his story until he felt better.
But after resting a minute or two and taking another sip of the cordial the doctor handed him, the Spaniard insisted on going on with the painful recital.
His brother, he said, had charge of the specie sent out in their ship; and, as his wife had been recommended change of air, he determined to take her with him on the voyage to Cuba, thinking the trip out and home would do her good, as well as the poor little baby, who had been only born two months to the very day on which they sailed from Cadiz.
All went well with them until they were near the Azores, or Western Islands, where the ship sprang a leak and met with such baffling winds that she was driven back to the eastward, close in to the Portuguese coast; when the crew, who were tired out with keeping to the pumps, managed to broach the cargo and madden themselves with the liquor they found below.
“What happened next?” asked Captain Farmer, on his pausing here to take breath and put the cordial to his lips. “I suppose they got drunk on the sherry, my friend?”
“Ah, yes, los maladettos—the cursed devils!” replied the Spanish captain, his eyes flashing with anger. “If the brutes had only got drunk, neither my brother nor I would have minded it much, although they might have done so at our expense, it being our wine which they wasted, the brutes!”
He then went on to state that the men became so violent and insubordinate, that when his brother and himself battened down the hatches to prevent their broaching any more of the casks, they broke into open mutiny.
The mate was the ringleader of the conspiracy.
It was this rascal, he said, who informed the crew that they had specie aboard, which the mutineers now demanded should be given up to them and they be allowed to leave the ship in one of her boats, the mate telling them that the vessel was almost in sight of Vigo—a fact which he, the captain, had only disclosed to him in confidence that very day within an hour or so of the outbreak, so that the mutiny appeared to be a planned thing.
“Well,” said Captain Farmer, “what did you do then?”
“We refused their insolent demand, of course,” he answered, “in spite of the mate and another scoundrel drawing their knives and making for us. My brother knocked down Gomez at once, and the sailor I kicked into the scuppers; the two of us then retreated to the cabin, where we kept them at bay for the whole of that night and all the following day, as we had with us all the firearms in the ship, and it was out of their power to dislodge us.”
“And how was it then you did not succeed in getting the upper hand of them in the end, instead of the affair turning out as it did?”
In reply to this question from our captain, the Spaniard’s emotion again overcame him.
“Ay, it was all my fault, and I of all men am the most miserable!” he cried. “Yo, I it was who caused the death of those I loved best!”
“Carramba, Señor Capitano,” said Captain Farmer, trying to soothe him. “You do yourself an injustice. I can’t see where you were to blame!”
“Ah, but I do,” he answered doggedly, as if he had made up his mind on the point and no argument would persuade him to the contrary. “I ought to have recollected that there was no water or provisions in the cabin, the steward, who had joined the mutineers, keeping these always in the fore part of the ship; and, there was the poor señora, who had her little baby to nurse, suffering from hunger and thirst, as we could see, my brother and I, although she never uttered a word of complaint!”
“Poor, brave lady,” observed the captain. “She deserved a better fate!”
“Si, si, yes, yes,” said the other, “She did not complain—no, never; but, how could we stand by and see her suffer? My brother Pedro, when it came on to nightfall on the close of the second day of our blockade in the cabin, said that he would adventure out in search of food and water, the mutineers then having drunk themselves to sleep. I, however, pointed out that he had a wife and child dependent on his life, while I had no claims on mine and insisted on my right to take the risk, the more especially from my being the master of the ship. Still, he would not give in; and, ultimately, we cast the dice to decide the matter and I won the cast.”
“You then left the cabin?”
“Yes, señor. My brother barricaded the door behind me and kept watch with his revolver, while I crept forwards stealthily. I reached the steward’s pantry in the deckhouse amidships, without being seen and secured some polenta and a baraca of water; when, as I was creeping aft again and close to the poop, that villain of a mate caught hold of my arm, pointing a stiletto in my face at the same time, and threatening to stab me if I uttered a cry. But, before I could open my mouth, he shoved a gag in it and then proceeded to drag me to the side of the ship, lashing me to the spot whence your two officers released me some three days afterwards, if my calculation is correct.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed the captain. “What agony you must have suffered tied up like that, and without anything to eat or drink, I suppose, all the while?”
“Nothing, not a bite or drop, passed my lips from the time of the night of the mutiny until your brave officers and men, Señor Capitano, so nobly came to my assistance.”
“You must then have been quite five days without sustenance,” said Captain Farmer, astonished at his endurance. “I wonder you lived through it, with all that exposure to the weather, too!”
“Ah, it was nothing. I did not think of myself,” replied the other. “I was in torture for my brother and his poor wife and little child, for, as soon as I was gagged and bound, I saw Gomez and six of the villains all draw their knives and start towards the poop; and, presently, I heard the shriek of a woman’s voice which I recognised as my sister’s, the señora, and then four pistol-shots in rapid succession, after which I don’t know what happened for a time. I must have lost my senses or fainted.”
“And then?”
“When I came to myself again,” continued the Spanish captain, as we all listened breathlessly to his narrative, “it was near morning and the light of the coming dawn beginning to show in the eastern sky; so, hearing a lot of talking and quarrelling going on, I looked towards the forecastle, whence the sound seemed to proceed.”
“Well,” said Captain Farmer, who was as interested apparently as I was, “what did you see?”
“I saw a lot of the crew sitting round a tub of brandy, some of which we had shipped along with the wine as part of our cargo, although it had escaped their observation at first, being stowed low down, under the casks of the sherry. However, they had discovered it now, and had evidently been having an orgie, all of them being more than half drunk. They were swearing and fighting, playing cards by the dim light of one of the ship’s lanterns, which was stuck up on the deck beside them. I noticed, too, that a heap of gold was piled up on top of an empty brandy tub, standing to the right of the man dealing the cards, which showed that they had managed to break open the treasure chest containing the government specie; and, I was in an agony of apprehension about my brother’s fate, not to speak of his wife and child, when, with a wild shout, one of the villains threw down his cards and clutched at the pile of gold, scrambling up on his feet at the same time and making for the side of the ship where I was lashed against the bulwarks. It was that scoundrel Gomez.”
“The mate, eh?”
“Yes, Señor Capitano. He had a revolver, I saw, in his hand, which he must have got from the cabin after murdering my brother. This thought flashed through my mind instantly, and as it did so, the wretch advanced nearer to the break of the forecastle and fired at me, calling out at the same time, ‘Carramba, I’ve settled your dog of a brother and now I am going to finish you off!’ The good God, however, defeated his purpose, for the bullet did not penetrate my brain as he intended. No, strange to say, it shot away the knot of the rope’s-end that was passed across my mouth to gag me, relieving me at once from considerable pain.”
“Did he not fire again?”
“No,” replied the Spaniard, his countenance lighting up with a sort of ferocious joy that made me think for the moment he had gone suddenly mad at the recollection of his past sufferings. “Before the villain could aim a second shot in my direction, the most wonderful thing happened that, I believe, could ever have occurred. Yes, Señor Capitano, I declare to you, it was the most wonderful thing, now that I recall it again in speaking to you, that I have ever heard of in all my life. Ay, so wonderful and providential, that it would seem incredible to me were I not certain by this very occurrence, which has brought it home to me, that there is a Power above which watches over us and preserves us from danger, no matter how imminent that danger may be, and when the help of man is of no avail; a Power, too, that as frequently punishes the wicked in the very act of their wickedness, as happened in this case.”
At that moment, the sentry who always stood on guard without the door of the sick bay entered the cabin, and saluting Captain Farmer, said the first lieutenant wished to speak to him; whereupon the captain, apologising for having to absent himself at such a critical point, at once withdrew, saying that he would not be long away.
Chapter Twenty Two.“A Dios!”“I can quite believe you, señor,” said Captain Farmer on his return after a very brief interval, resuming the thread of the discourse as if no interruption had occurred. “Pray continue your story. I am dying to know what happened to checkmate that scoundrel of a mate as he was going to take another shot at you, thus defeating the design of the murdering ruffian.”“Without doubt, Señor Capitano, I will tell you,” replied the Spaniard, drawing a long breath as he recommenced his yarn. “As the villain Gomez cocked and raised the revolver again—for I could see him plainly from the light of the ship’s lantern flashing on the barrel—Dios! I perceived under the sheet of the foresail, which was flapping loosely about, for we were becalmed and the vessel was drifting aimlessly as she pleased, the mutineers taking no heed of anything but their accursed drink—I perceived, I say, a steamer approaching, end on and going apparently at full speed. I could have shouted out to warn the men on the forecastle, for the gag had been miraculously removed from my mouth, as I have told you, only a minute or so. But, Carramba, I would not have lifted my voice to have saved them, had I possessed a hundred mouths; for, I thought of my brother and his wife and child, and I exulted at their coming fate—Dios! My heart was throbbing with joy.”“How awful,” said Captain Farmer, on the Spaniard’s voice failing him at the terrible recollection of his experiences; “but, I can sympathise with you.”“Es Verdad, it was awful—so awful, that my heart was nigh bursting and my brain seemed on fire,” replied the other in a calmer tone. “However, I had not long to wait, the whole thing, from the first moment I observed the steamer to the collision, lasting barely a second of time, although to me it was an eternity; for, as I saw the steamer, and heard the sound of her paddle-wheels, even as the villain Gomez aimed at me, the prow of the avenging vessel—which I regarded then, as now, as an instrument in the hand of God—came crashing into the bows of our ship, cutting through her hull and deck, and crumpling up the forecastle, señor, as if it had been a paper bag.”“And the mutineers?”“Carramba!” cried the Spaniard, whose vindictiveness I thought appalling; only, of course, one had to make allowances for what he had suffered and the crimes the men of whom he spoke had committed. “They were all mangled and crushed in a moment, in the midst of their game of monte, as they were fighting and quarrelling over the stakes. The villain Gomez had his skull cracked like an eggshell by the foremast coming down on top of him, as it went by the board with all its yards and gear. The maintopmast, then fell also leavingLa Bella Catarinathe wreck you saw, Señor Lieutenant, and you, young gentleman, before she foundered.”He bowed to Mr Jellaby, as well as to myself, on saying this, as if to emphasise his description.“Did not the steamer stop?”“No, Señor Capitano,” replied he in answer to this question of Captain Farmer’s. “Everybody must have been asleep aboard, I think, just before it happened, and they had no lookout man on the watch; although as it was in the early grey of the morning, and we had no lights except that lantern on the forecastle, which could not have been seen at any distance, and was, of course, extinguished in the general smash-up afterwards, it was perhaps not to be wondered that they ran us down. The collision, though, appeared to wake them up, for I saw a dark figure on the paddle-box nearest to me as the steamer swung herself clear of us and forged ahead again. She had a good deal of way on, and by the time she stopped her engines she was some distance away and lost to sight in the darkness, there being a slight surface fog on the water; so, hearing nothing and seeing nothing of us, her people must have come to the conclusion that we had gone to the bottom, and so put her on her course again.”“Why,” inquired the captain, “did not those wretched scoundrels cry out when the steamer came on them like that?”“How could they? It was all done in a moment, as I have told you. One instant the devils were there, gambling and drinking and swearing amongst themselves, and the next, cr–r–r–ash, and they were gone to their patron saint below!”“And then you were alone?”“Yes, so far as I knew; but I was not quite certain yet that the scoundrel Gomez had not lied merely to sport with my misery, and that, perhaps, my poor brother might be still alive. However as the hours wore on without him ever making his appearance, and the crash of the collision would have well-nigh wakened the dead, I gave up hope, beginning to wonder then, as the sun rose up and the sea became illumined with light, whether some passing vessel might not sight the wreck and bear down to rescue me. By-and-by, though, on morning melting into day, and, later on, the afternoon waning on the approach of theshades of night, without ever a distant sail coming in sight to banish my despair, this hope, too, fled.”“You saw nothing, then?”“Nothing but the seagulls, which swooped down over my head to see whether I were alive or dead; and it was fortunate my hands were free, or else they would have pecked out my eyes. Nothing but these and the boundless waste of the ocean, whose waters lapped the sides of the ship, which kept afloat, much to my surprise. Her buoyant cargo supported her, although her hold was full up to the main deck, and the sea washing in and out of her forwards; and, there was I, tied up there in the rigging like a dog, listening to the melancholy sound of the breaking waves. I was, you must recollect, utterly unable to help myself, for my arms were pinioned like my legs, although my hands were loose and I could move them about: but, otherwise, I was powerless and could not stir from the place where I was lashed, the ropes binding me being just secured beyond my reach by that villain Gomez, so as to make my agony all the greater.”“It must have been fearful,” said Captain Farmer. “I wonder your brain did not give way.”“Thanks be to God, no! My reason was preserved throughout this terrible ordeal for some wise purpose or other; though, I must say, I prayed for death to release me from my sufferings, a maddening thirst now consuming me, to add to the torture that was preying on my mind,” replied the other, shuddering at the recollection. “At last, the wind began to blow more strongly and the sea to get up. This lessened my pangs of thirst; but, the waves, constantly breaking over the side, almost drowned me, so one evil took the place of another, and this was all the benefit I reaped from the change. It must have been the following day, I think, for I became so numbed with the cold and exposure, the circulation of my blood being arrested by my cramped position, that I took no heed how the time went, when a ship at length hove in sight, and my heart began to beat again with renewed hope, in spite of my despairing thoughts and misery. Oh, heavens! The ship came nearer and nearer, so that I could see she was a vessel of war belonging to the French nation, and my torturing hope became a certainty. But, would you believe it, señor, when she had closed the wreck so that I could see the gun-ports on her upper deck, she luffed up and bore away again, hoisting her tricolour flag, which I shall always loathe the sight of now, as if in mockery of my condition. Fancy, deserting a shipwrecked man like that!”“The commander of this very ship stopped us to say he had sighted the wreck of your vessel; but, unhappily, he was unable to lay-to to send a boat aboard,” explained Captain Farmer, to excuse the French captain’s conduct. “If he had not done this, perhaps we would never have come across you and been able to take you off, which I am heartily glad we were fortunate enough to succeed in doing!”“Gracias, señor,” rejoined the Spaniard, stretching out his hand, which our captain gripped in cordial interchange of friendship, “butyoudid not tell another ship to go to my rescue,you came yourself! The English are always brave and generous!”“By Jove, he’s right about that French ship,” observed Mr Jellaby to me, aside, when the captain had translated this remark of the Spaniard, leaving out, however, his personal compliment to himself and our nation. “It was a scurvy trick to sail off like that, without examining the wreck. But it’s just like those Johnny Crapauds, youngster. They’re deuced good fair-weather friends but never stand by a fellow in distress!”“I have not much more to tell you,” went on the Spaniard after those little reciprocities between him and the captain. “It was one morning that the French vessel abandoned me and the next that yours came to my help. Dios, I could not believe I was in my senses when I heard the voices of your officers! I thought I was in a state of delirium and that the sight of your ship, especially after the disappointment of the preceding day, was only a mirage of my imagination, like the Fata Morgana!”“But, you hailed us, sir,” I said here, on the captain motioning me to come forward. “Why, you answered me when I spoke to you, sir!”“I may have done so, my dear young gentleman,” he replied with a faint smile, patting me on the head in an affectionate sort of way, as if he were caressing a pet poodle, so at least Mr Jellaby said afterwards to the other fellows; “but, I have no recollection of it, I assure you. Still, I must say that your voice seemed familiar to me just now, when you first came into the cabin here and addressed me. It seemed to me a voice that I had heard in a dream.”He then proceeded to compliment me on my Spanish, saying, in true hidalgo fashion, that I spoke it better than himself, which, as Mr Jellaby remarked, had to be taken “with a good deal of side on!”Don Ferdinando Olivarez, to give him his rightful name, concluded his narrative by asking Captain Farmer to land him at Madeira, where he had friends who would supply all his needs, giving him the means to return home to Cadiz, to which port, he said, he must go back for business reasons; besides having to report the loss of his ship, though, as he added with a sigh, he no longer had a “home” there, now that his poor brother was dead, for he was the last of his race!Of course, the captain promised to comply with his request, explaining that, although he had not intended stopping at the island, we would in any case have passed pretty close to it in our passage to the Cape; and that he would be only too glad to call in and put our passenger ashore, regretting, however, that he should have to lose the pleasure of his company so soon.Dr Nettleby at this point interrupted any further exchange of civilities between the captain and the Spaniard, who was profuse in his thanks, declaring that his patient required rest, or he would not be able to go ashore either at Madeira or any other place on this planet.The stern medico, who had been very much interested in Don Ferdinando’s story, or he would never have permitted so much talking, then bundled us all incontinently out of the sick bay, Captain Farmer included.Four days later we arrived off Funchal, passing, at the eastern extremity of the island, Machico Bay, where the lovers mentioned by Larkyns landed and lived and died, according to the legend. This, the Spanish captain said was quite true, for he had seen the grave himself and the little church erected to their memory, a statement that quite delighted our friend Larkyns, as he was able to throw it in the teeth of Mr Stormcock as soon as he heard it, in refutation of the base calumny of the latter in asserting that he had invented the yarn he told us at mess.I was very sorry when Don Ferdinando left the ship, for his misfortunes and the fact of my having been in the boat that rescued him, made him seem like an old friend whom I had known for years, although we had only been such a short time acquainted.He was very kind, too, in noticing me; and, before he was rowed ashore in the captain’s gig, he presented me with a real gold medallion with the image and superscription stamped thereon of Saint Nicholas, the protector of all sailors. The Spanish captain told me that this had originally belonged to the great navigator, Christopher Columbus, of whom he was a distant descendant, and that it had been in his family for generations. He had always worn it, he said, next his heart as a preservative against shipwreck, and he fervently believed it was owing to his having it on him that he had been so miraculously saved when everyone else who had been on boardLa Bella Catarinawith him had perished.His now giving it to me was the most practical proof of his friendship he could offer, as he valued it beyond anything he possessed, and I only took it for fear of hurting his feelings, for I did not like to deprive him of it. He was, in truth, a noble fellow, and showed that his gratitude did not merely lie in mere empty words and idle compliments.No, “out of sight out of mind” was not his guiding maxim, like it is of some people whom we all have met in the course of our lives; for, even after he had uttered his farewell as he rowed away from the ship in the captain’s gig, wishing us with a graceful wave of the hand “A Dios!” he did not forget us, sending back by the coxswain a splendid present of flowers and fruit and vegetables, almost loading the gig, indeed, for the acceptance of the wardroom and gunroom messes. He forwarded, as well, a case of valuable wine of some special vintage for Captain Farmer’s own table.No one in fact who had done him a kindness when on board passed out of his remembrance, apparently, on his leaving; for, to the doctor he sent a diamond ring, to Lieutenant Jellaby a lady’s fan, which, judging by what he had heard of his partiality for the fair sex, I suppose he thought would please him most; and to Corporal Macan and Bill Bates, who had been especially prominent at his rescue, a box of cigars each, while he also sent to the captain a handsome sum of money for him to distribute amongst the crew as he thought best.
“I can quite believe you, señor,” said Captain Farmer on his return after a very brief interval, resuming the thread of the discourse as if no interruption had occurred. “Pray continue your story. I am dying to know what happened to checkmate that scoundrel of a mate as he was going to take another shot at you, thus defeating the design of the murdering ruffian.”
“Without doubt, Señor Capitano, I will tell you,” replied the Spaniard, drawing a long breath as he recommenced his yarn. “As the villain Gomez cocked and raised the revolver again—for I could see him plainly from the light of the ship’s lantern flashing on the barrel—Dios! I perceived under the sheet of the foresail, which was flapping loosely about, for we were becalmed and the vessel was drifting aimlessly as she pleased, the mutineers taking no heed of anything but their accursed drink—I perceived, I say, a steamer approaching, end on and going apparently at full speed. I could have shouted out to warn the men on the forecastle, for the gag had been miraculously removed from my mouth, as I have told you, only a minute or so. But, Carramba, I would not have lifted my voice to have saved them, had I possessed a hundred mouths; for, I thought of my brother and his wife and child, and I exulted at their coming fate—Dios! My heart was throbbing with joy.”
“How awful,” said Captain Farmer, on the Spaniard’s voice failing him at the terrible recollection of his experiences; “but, I can sympathise with you.”
“Es Verdad, it was awful—so awful, that my heart was nigh bursting and my brain seemed on fire,” replied the other in a calmer tone. “However, I had not long to wait, the whole thing, from the first moment I observed the steamer to the collision, lasting barely a second of time, although to me it was an eternity; for, as I saw the steamer, and heard the sound of her paddle-wheels, even as the villain Gomez aimed at me, the prow of the avenging vessel—which I regarded then, as now, as an instrument in the hand of God—came crashing into the bows of our ship, cutting through her hull and deck, and crumpling up the forecastle, señor, as if it had been a paper bag.”
“And the mutineers?”
“Carramba!” cried the Spaniard, whose vindictiveness I thought appalling; only, of course, one had to make allowances for what he had suffered and the crimes the men of whom he spoke had committed. “They were all mangled and crushed in a moment, in the midst of their game of monte, as they were fighting and quarrelling over the stakes. The villain Gomez had his skull cracked like an eggshell by the foremast coming down on top of him, as it went by the board with all its yards and gear. The maintopmast, then fell also leavingLa Bella Catarinathe wreck you saw, Señor Lieutenant, and you, young gentleman, before she foundered.”
He bowed to Mr Jellaby, as well as to myself, on saying this, as if to emphasise his description.
“Did not the steamer stop?”
“No, Señor Capitano,” replied he in answer to this question of Captain Farmer’s. “Everybody must have been asleep aboard, I think, just before it happened, and they had no lookout man on the watch; although as it was in the early grey of the morning, and we had no lights except that lantern on the forecastle, which could not have been seen at any distance, and was, of course, extinguished in the general smash-up afterwards, it was perhaps not to be wondered that they ran us down. The collision, though, appeared to wake them up, for I saw a dark figure on the paddle-box nearest to me as the steamer swung herself clear of us and forged ahead again. She had a good deal of way on, and by the time she stopped her engines she was some distance away and lost to sight in the darkness, there being a slight surface fog on the water; so, hearing nothing and seeing nothing of us, her people must have come to the conclusion that we had gone to the bottom, and so put her on her course again.”
“Why,” inquired the captain, “did not those wretched scoundrels cry out when the steamer came on them like that?”
“How could they? It was all done in a moment, as I have told you. One instant the devils were there, gambling and drinking and swearing amongst themselves, and the next, cr–r–r–ash, and they were gone to their patron saint below!”
“And then you were alone?”
“Yes, so far as I knew; but I was not quite certain yet that the scoundrel Gomez had not lied merely to sport with my misery, and that, perhaps, my poor brother might be still alive. However as the hours wore on without him ever making his appearance, and the crash of the collision would have well-nigh wakened the dead, I gave up hope, beginning to wonder then, as the sun rose up and the sea became illumined with light, whether some passing vessel might not sight the wreck and bear down to rescue me. By-and-by, though, on morning melting into day, and, later on, the afternoon waning on the approach of theshades of night, without ever a distant sail coming in sight to banish my despair, this hope, too, fled.”
“You saw nothing, then?”
“Nothing but the seagulls, which swooped down over my head to see whether I were alive or dead; and it was fortunate my hands were free, or else they would have pecked out my eyes. Nothing but these and the boundless waste of the ocean, whose waters lapped the sides of the ship, which kept afloat, much to my surprise. Her buoyant cargo supported her, although her hold was full up to the main deck, and the sea washing in and out of her forwards; and, there was I, tied up there in the rigging like a dog, listening to the melancholy sound of the breaking waves. I was, you must recollect, utterly unable to help myself, for my arms were pinioned like my legs, although my hands were loose and I could move them about: but, otherwise, I was powerless and could not stir from the place where I was lashed, the ropes binding me being just secured beyond my reach by that villain Gomez, so as to make my agony all the greater.”
“It must have been fearful,” said Captain Farmer. “I wonder your brain did not give way.”
“Thanks be to God, no! My reason was preserved throughout this terrible ordeal for some wise purpose or other; though, I must say, I prayed for death to release me from my sufferings, a maddening thirst now consuming me, to add to the torture that was preying on my mind,” replied the other, shuddering at the recollection. “At last, the wind began to blow more strongly and the sea to get up. This lessened my pangs of thirst; but, the waves, constantly breaking over the side, almost drowned me, so one evil took the place of another, and this was all the benefit I reaped from the change. It must have been the following day, I think, for I became so numbed with the cold and exposure, the circulation of my blood being arrested by my cramped position, that I took no heed how the time went, when a ship at length hove in sight, and my heart began to beat again with renewed hope, in spite of my despairing thoughts and misery. Oh, heavens! The ship came nearer and nearer, so that I could see she was a vessel of war belonging to the French nation, and my torturing hope became a certainty. But, would you believe it, señor, when she had closed the wreck so that I could see the gun-ports on her upper deck, she luffed up and bore away again, hoisting her tricolour flag, which I shall always loathe the sight of now, as if in mockery of my condition. Fancy, deserting a shipwrecked man like that!”
“The commander of this very ship stopped us to say he had sighted the wreck of your vessel; but, unhappily, he was unable to lay-to to send a boat aboard,” explained Captain Farmer, to excuse the French captain’s conduct. “If he had not done this, perhaps we would never have come across you and been able to take you off, which I am heartily glad we were fortunate enough to succeed in doing!”
“Gracias, señor,” rejoined the Spaniard, stretching out his hand, which our captain gripped in cordial interchange of friendship, “butyoudid not tell another ship to go to my rescue,you came yourself! The English are always brave and generous!”
“By Jove, he’s right about that French ship,” observed Mr Jellaby to me, aside, when the captain had translated this remark of the Spaniard, leaving out, however, his personal compliment to himself and our nation. “It was a scurvy trick to sail off like that, without examining the wreck. But it’s just like those Johnny Crapauds, youngster. They’re deuced good fair-weather friends but never stand by a fellow in distress!”
“I have not much more to tell you,” went on the Spaniard after those little reciprocities between him and the captain. “It was one morning that the French vessel abandoned me and the next that yours came to my help. Dios, I could not believe I was in my senses when I heard the voices of your officers! I thought I was in a state of delirium and that the sight of your ship, especially after the disappointment of the preceding day, was only a mirage of my imagination, like the Fata Morgana!”
“But, you hailed us, sir,” I said here, on the captain motioning me to come forward. “Why, you answered me when I spoke to you, sir!”
“I may have done so, my dear young gentleman,” he replied with a faint smile, patting me on the head in an affectionate sort of way, as if he were caressing a pet poodle, so at least Mr Jellaby said afterwards to the other fellows; “but, I have no recollection of it, I assure you. Still, I must say that your voice seemed familiar to me just now, when you first came into the cabin here and addressed me. It seemed to me a voice that I had heard in a dream.”
He then proceeded to compliment me on my Spanish, saying, in true hidalgo fashion, that I spoke it better than himself, which, as Mr Jellaby remarked, had to be taken “with a good deal of side on!”
Don Ferdinando Olivarez, to give him his rightful name, concluded his narrative by asking Captain Farmer to land him at Madeira, where he had friends who would supply all his needs, giving him the means to return home to Cadiz, to which port, he said, he must go back for business reasons; besides having to report the loss of his ship, though, as he added with a sigh, he no longer had a “home” there, now that his poor brother was dead, for he was the last of his race!
Of course, the captain promised to comply with his request, explaining that, although he had not intended stopping at the island, we would in any case have passed pretty close to it in our passage to the Cape; and that he would be only too glad to call in and put our passenger ashore, regretting, however, that he should have to lose the pleasure of his company so soon.
Dr Nettleby at this point interrupted any further exchange of civilities between the captain and the Spaniard, who was profuse in his thanks, declaring that his patient required rest, or he would not be able to go ashore either at Madeira or any other place on this planet.
The stern medico, who had been very much interested in Don Ferdinando’s story, or he would never have permitted so much talking, then bundled us all incontinently out of the sick bay, Captain Farmer included.
Four days later we arrived off Funchal, passing, at the eastern extremity of the island, Machico Bay, where the lovers mentioned by Larkyns landed and lived and died, according to the legend. This, the Spanish captain said was quite true, for he had seen the grave himself and the little church erected to their memory, a statement that quite delighted our friend Larkyns, as he was able to throw it in the teeth of Mr Stormcock as soon as he heard it, in refutation of the base calumny of the latter in asserting that he had invented the yarn he told us at mess.
I was very sorry when Don Ferdinando left the ship, for his misfortunes and the fact of my having been in the boat that rescued him, made him seem like an old friend whom I had known for years, although we had only been such a short time acquainted.
He was very kind, too, in noticing me; and, before he was rowed ashore in the captain’s gig, he presented me with a real gold medallion with the image and superscription stamped thereon of Saint Nicholas, the protector of all sailors. The Spanish captain told me that this had originally belonged to the great navigator, Christopher Columbus, of whom he was a distant descendant, and that it had been in his family for generations. He had always worn it, he said, next his heart as a preservative against shipwreck, and he fervently believed it was owing to his having it on him that he had been so miraculously saved when everyone else who had been on boardLa Bella Catarinawith him had perished.
His now giving it to me was the most practical proof of his friendship he could offer, as he valued it beyond anything he possessed, and I only took it for fear of hurting his feelings, for I did not like to deprive him of it. He was, in truth, a noble fellow, and showed that his gratitude did not merely lie in mere empty words and idle compliments.
No, “out of sight out of mind” was not his guiding maxim, like it is of some people whom we all have met in the course of our lives; for, even after he had uttered his farewell as he rowed away from the ship in the captain’s gig, wishing us with a graceful wave of the hand “A Dios!” he did not forget us, sending back by the coxswain a splendid present of flowers and fruit and vegetables, almost loading the gig, indeed, for the acceptance of the wardroom and gunroom messes. He forwarded, as well, a case of valuable wine of some special vintage for Captain Farmer’s own table.
No one in fact who had done him a kindness when on board passed out of his remembrance, apparently, on his leaving; for, to the doctor he sent a diamond ring, to Lieutenant Jellaby a lady’s fan, which, judging by what he had heard of his partiality for the fair sex, I suppose he thought would please him most; and to Corporal Macan and Bill Bates, who had been especially prominent at his rescue, a box of cigars each, while he also sent to the captain a handsome sum of money for him to distribute amongst the crew as he thought best.
Chapter Twenty Three.“Cape Smoke!”We only stopped at Madeira long enough to get a few purser’s stores to add to the supply with which the generosity of Don Ferdinando had already provided us. We also took in some water, for two of our tanks below had been “started” during our bucketting about in the bay, and Captain Farmer feared we might run short when we reached the warm latitudes; as, in the event of our falling across the usual calms prevalent in the neighbourhood of the Equator, we might be rolling about a week or two, roasting, in the Doldrums!But, luckily, we were blessed with favouring winds and made a good passage, picking up the North-East Trades shortly after we said “good-bye” to Funchal, with its pretty white villas nestling on the hillside amid a background of greenery; and then, meeting with strong westerly breezes instead of calms, on getting further south into the Tropics, we crossed the Line on Christmas Day, when all the good people at home, I thought at the time, would be shivering with cold and saying, as they snuggled up to the fire, gazing perhaps on a snow-covered landscape without, “What seasonable weather we are having!” while we were sweltering in the heat under a copper sky, with the thermometer up to 98 degrees in the shade of the awnings!From the Equator, we had a splendid run to the Cape, taking altogether exactly sixty-five days clear for our passage from England.During this interval I and my brother cadets had to attend “school” every morning from half-past 9 o’clock to 11:30 in the captain’s outer cabin under the poop, where the chaplain, who also filled the post of naval instructor, officiated as schoolmaster-in-chief, teaching us mathematics and the theory of navigation, as well as seeing that we kept up our logs, which Captain Farmer himself inspected once a week, to make certain that the chaplain, on his part, attended to his duty.We got on very well with the Reverend Mr Smythe, who had all his longshore starchiness knocked out of him by his long bout of sea-sickness, the poor man having been confined to his bunk and completely prostrate with the fell malady from the hour that we weighed anchor at Plymouth until we “brought up” at Madeira. I should not, perhaps, have made use of this term, as it savours of tautology, the unfortunate chaplain having been industriously occupied in doing little else save “bringing up” all the time; especially when we were pitching and rolling in the Bay of Biscay!Every day, too, at a quarter of an hour before noon, we had to muster on the poop, where, under the tutelage of the master, Mr Quadrant, we watched for the dip of the sun; and, as soon as the master reported that it was twelve o’clock to the captain, who told him “to make it so,” and Eight Bells was struck on the ship’s bell forwards, we would adjourn to the gunroom below.There we all worked out the reckoning, showing our respective calculations or “fudgings” as the case might be, to Mr Quadrant; when if these “passed muster,” we entered the result in our log-books, along with other observations and facts connected with the daily routine of the ship and her progress towards her destination.To ascertain this, in addition to taking the sun at noon and noting the attitude of certain stars at night, the log was hove every hour; and each of us learnt in turn to fix the pin in the “dead man,” as the log-ship is styled—the triangular piece of wood, with a long line attached, by which the speed of the ship is ascertained.The first piece of this cord is termed the “stray line,” and is generally of the same length as the ship, so as to allow for the eddy and wash of the wake astern; and, at the end of this stray line, a piece of bunting is inserted in the coil, from which a length of forty-seven feet three inches is measured off and a disc of leather put on the line to mark the termination of the first knot, or nautical mile. Two knots are put at the end of another length of forty-seven feet three inches; three knots at a third, and so on, until as much of the line has been thus measured and marked off at equal distances as will test the utmost sailing capacity of the ship—a single knot being placed midway, also, between each of these divisions, to denote the half knots.Two sand-glasses are used in connection with the log-line, as the old quartermaster, who was our instructor in this branch of our nautical education, explained, the one called “the long glass,” which runs out in twenty-eight seconds, while the other is a fourteen-second glass, which is generally adopted at sea when the ship is going over five knots with a fair wind.The first mentioned is only used in light breezes; and, as Bob Ricketts showed us by careful manipulation, reeling off bights of the line and keeping the slack loosely in his hands, the thing to be particular about is to heave the log-ship over the side clear of the ship, and see the glass turned as soon as the bunting mark is reached, denoting that all the “waste” has run out.Then, whatever mark you can distinguish on the line nearest to your hand at the expiration of the allotted twenty-eight or fourteen seconds, when the man holding the glass sings out “Stop!” as the last grain of sand empties itself out of the bulb, that will be the speed of the ship.The division of knots on the log-line bear the same proportion to a mile, as the twenty-eight or fourteen seconds of the glass does to an hour of time; so, if the four-knot mark be to hand, and the “long” glass be used, she is going four knots, or nautical miles, per hour. It will be eight knots if the “short glass” be the standard of measurement; the time the line has taken being only half the former, and the number of the knots having to be doubled to keep the proportion between the length of line and the space of time equal.It did not take me long to master what the old quartermaster had to teach me on this point; but some of the other cadets were awfully stupid at first, I must say, particularly that brute Andrews, in spite of his bumptiousness and conceit.He gave old Ricketts a lot of trouble before he remembered to put in the pin prior to pitching the log-ship overboard; though without this it could not float upright, and was as good as useless to gauge our speed.The ass could not be made to understand this, and omitted putting in the pin time after time so persistently, that Ricketts had to tell the commander that he “could make nothing out of him.”In addition to these details of ’boardship life, we were also instructed in practical seamanship by one of the boatswain’s mates.He was an old hand who had been at sea so long that he seemed to smell of salt water and tar; while his face was like a piece of pickled beef covered with a quantity of hair that resembled spunyarn more than anything else, being as stiff and wiry as an untwisted rope.Old Oakum, however, was a thorough sailor, every inch of him, and he taught me much more than I had learned on board theIllustrious, not only in “knotting and splicing” and other things.Under this worthy’s guidance I practised the “goose step” of going aloft, as it might be described by a drill sergeant, the mizzenmast being placed at our disposal every fine afternoon, and it was pretty nearly good weather all the time of our passage southwards, to learn the art of reefing and furling sails and to send down or cross upper yards; so that we became in the end almost as expert as our tutor, the old salt one day telling Tommy Mills and myself that we took in a royal “as good and better as any two able seamen could a done it, blow me!”It was not “all work and no play,” either, for we had plenty of fun and skylarking down in the gunroom; making the oldsters there, like Mr Stormcock and the assistant-paymaster, Mr Fortescue Jones, frequently wish they, or rather that we, had never been born to come to sea to torment them.The very duty of the ship itself was an endless source of occupation and amusement to us, the commander keeping the men “at it” continually from sunrise to sunset, until he had so licked us all into shape that we were the smartest ship’s company afloat, I think; for the discipline was such that the oldCandaharmight have been four years in commission instead of the brief three months that had elapsed from our hoisting the pen’ant to our casting anchor in Simon’s Bay, a port to the eastward of the “Stormy Cape,” where our men-of-war usually moor.Here, we remained for ten days to refit, setting up our lower rigging, which had got very slack through the heat of the Tropics, and taking in fresh provisions and water, besides all of us having a run ashore to shake the reefs out of our legs.All the men, too, were allowed leave by watches each day of our stay, and few took advantage of the licence to misbehave themselves although temptation enough was thrown in their way by the hospitable inhabitants.Amongst these few, I am sorry to say, Corporal Macan distinguished himself, falling a victim to his “ould complaint,” by coming aboard on the second day after our arrival in a state of glorious intoxication, despite his solemn promise to Dr Nettleby, through whom the commander had given him permission to land, that he “wouldn’t touch a dhrop ov the craythur, not if Ould Nick axed him.”Larkyns, who was in charge of the launch, in which the culprit was brought back helpless to the ship in the afternoon, noticing his condition when he tried to go up the side, ordered him to report himself to the sergeant of marines; but, Mr Macan, who was valiant in his cups, waxed indignant at this and flatly refused to obey the command, saying that he would not mind going before the commander, or the first lieutenant, or even meeting the doctor himself, though he was loth to see him for the moment with his broken promise staring him in the face; but as for going and reporting himself to the sergeant he should not, no, not he.“An’ is it to rayport mesilf to that omahdaun ye’re afther axin me, sor?” he said scornfully, tossing his head and leering out of his little pig eyes in the most comical way. “Faix, I’d rayther not, wid your favour, sor. I wouldn’t demane mesilf by spakin’ to the loikes ov Sarjent Linstock, sor!”The upshot was that poor Macan was put under arrest and confined in the cells that night; and when brought before the captain the next day for insubordination and drunkenness, as he had no excuse to offer he was disrated, losing his rank of corporal, with all its perquisites and privileges!On the doctor taxing him with breaking his pledged word, however, in an after interview that worthy had with the delinquent, he vehemently protested his innocence of that charge at all events.“I tould yez, sor, I wouldn’t touch a dhrop ov the craythur, maynin’ whisky, sure,” he said, with a miserable attempt at a grin; for he felt very much humiliated at losing his stripes, Macan sober being quite a different man to Macan drunk. “An’ faix I niver bruk me wurrud at all, at all, I’ll swear, sor.”“How can you have the face to deny it, man?” cried the doctor, angrily. “Why, I saw the state you were in myself when you came aboard the other night!”“That mebbe, sor,” replied the undaunted Irishman, with a little of his old bravado; “but it warn’t the ould complaint, I till ye, sor.”“What was it, then, that made you drunk, you rascal?” rejoined the doctor, with a twinkle in his eye, knowing his man, “for, drunk you were—ay, as drunk as Chloe?”“Faix, sor,” said Macan, noting instantly the doctor’s change of mood, and grinning all over his face in consequence, “it wor the Cape shmoke that did it. Sure, it obfusticated me, sor, entirely!”
We only stopped at Madeira long enough to get a few purser’s stores to add to the supply with which the generosity of Don Ferdinando had already provided us. We also took in some water, for two of our tanks below had been “started” during our bucketting about in the bay, and Captain Farmer feared we might run short when we reached the warm latitudes; as, in the event of our falling across the usual calms prevalent in the neighbourhood of the Equator, we might be rolling about a week or two, roasting, in the Doldrums!
But, luckily, we were blessed with favouring winds and made a good passage, picking up the North-East Trades shortly after we said “good-bye” to Funchal, with its pretty white villas nestling on the hillside amid a background of greenery; and then, meeting with strong westerly breezes instead of calms, on getting further south into the Tropics, we crossed the Line on Christmas Day, when all the good people at home, I thought at the time, would be shivering with cold and saying, as they snuggled up to the fire, gazing perhaps on a snow-covered landscape without, “What seasonable weather we are having!” while we were sweltering in the heat under a copper sky, with the thermometer up to 98 degrees in the shade of the awnings!
From the Equator, we had a splendid run to the Cape, taking altogether exactly sixty-five days clear for our passage from England.
During this interval I and my brother cadets had to attend “school” every morning from half-past 9 o’clock to 11:30 in the captain’s outer cabin under the poop, where the chaplain, who also filled the post of naval instructor, officiated as schoolmaster-in-chief, teaching us mathematics and the theory of navigation, as well as seeing that we kept up our logs, which Captain Farmer himself inspected once a week, to make certain that the chaplain, on his part, attended to his duty.
We got on very well with the Reverend Mr Smythe, who had all his longshore starchiness knocked out of him by his long bout of sea-sickness, the poor man having been confined to his bunk and completely prostrate with the fell malady from the hour that we weighed anchor at Plymouth until we “brought up” at Madeira. I should not, perhaps, have made use of this term, as it savours of tautology, the unfortunate chaplain having been industriously occupied in doing little else save “bringing up” all the time; especially when we were pitching and rolling in the Bay of Biscay!
Every day, too, at a quarter of an hour before noon, we had to muster on the poop, where, under the tutelage of the master, Mr Quadrant, we watched for the dip of the sun; and, as soon as the master reported that it was twelve o’clock to the captain, who told him “to make it so,” and Eight Bells was struck on the ship’s bell forwards, we would adjourn to the gunroom below.
There we all worked out the reckoning, showing our respective calculations or “fudgings” as the case might be, to Mr Quadrant; when if these “passed muster,” we entered the result in our log-books, along with other observations and facts connected with the daily routine of the ship and her progress towards her destination.
To ascertain this, in addition to taking the sun at noon and noting the attitude of certain stars at night, the log was hove every hour; and each of us learnt in turn to fix the pin in the “dead man,” as the log-ship is styled—the triangular piece of wood, with a long line attached, by which the speed of the ship is ascertained.
The first piece of this cord is termed the “stray line,” and is generally of the same length as the ship, so as to allow for the eddy and wash of the wake astern; and, at the end of this stray line, a piece of bunting is inserted in the coil, from which a length of forty-seven feet three inches is measured off and a disc of leather put on the line to mark the termination of the first knot, or nautical mile. Two knots are put at the end of another length of forty-seven feet three inches; three knots at a third, and so on, until as much of the line has been thus measured and marked off at equal distances as will test the utmost sailing capacity of the ship—a single knot being placed midway, also, between each of these divisions, to denote the half knots.
Two sand-glasses are used in connection with the log-line, as the old quartermaster, who was our instructor in this branch of our nautical education, explained, the one called “the long glass,” which runs out in twenty-eight seconds, while the other is a fourteen-second glass, which is generally adopted at sea when the ship is going over five knots with a fair wind.
The first mentioned is only used in light breezes; and, as Bob Ricketts showed us by careful manipulation, reeling off bights of the line and keeping the slack loosely in his hands, the thing to be particular about is to heave the log-ship over the side clear of the ship, and see the glass turned as soon as the bunting mark is reached, denoting that all the “waste” has run out.
Then, whatever mark you can distinguish on the line nearest to your hand at the expiration of the allotted twenty-eight or fourteen seconds, when the man holding the glass sings out “Stop!” as the last grain of sand empties itself out of the bulb, that will be the speed of the ship.
The division of knots on the log-line bear the same proportion to a mile, as the twenty-eight or fourteen seconds of the glass does to an hour of time; so, if the four-knot mark be to hand, and the “long” glass be used, she is going four knots, or nautical miles, per hour. It will be eight knots if the “short glass” be the standard of measurement; the time the line has taken being only half the former, and the number of the knots having to be doubled to keep the proportion between the length of line and the space of time equal.
It did not take me long to master what the old quartermaster had to teach me on this point; but some of the other cadets were awfully stupid at first, I must say, particularly that brute Andrews, in spite of his bumptiousness and conceit.
He gave old Ricketts a lot of trouble before he remembered to put in the pin prior to pitching the log-ship overboard; though without this it could not float upright, and was as good as useless to gauge our speed.
The ass could not be made to understand this, and omitted putting in the pin time after time so persistently, that Ricketts had to tell the commander that he “could make nothing out of him.”
In addition to these details of ’boardship life, we were also instructed in practical seamanship by one of the boatswain’s mates.
He was an old hand who had been at sea so long that he seemed to smell of salt water and tar; while his face was like a piece of pickled beef covered with a quantity of hair that resembled spunyarn more than anything else, being as stiff and wiry as an untwisted rope.
Old Oakum, however, was a thorough sailor, every inch of him, and he taught me much more than I had learned on board theIllustrious, not only in “knotting and splicing” and other things.
Under this worthy’s guidance I practised the “goose step” of going aloft, as it might be described by a drill sergeant, the mizzenmast being placed at our disposal every fine afternoon, and it was pretty nearly good weather all the time of our passage southwards, to learn the art of reefing and furling sails and to send down or cross upper yards; so that we became in the end almost as expert as our tutor, the old salt one day telling Tommy Mills and myself that we took in a royal “as good and better as any two able seamen could a done it, blow me!”
It was not “all work and no play,” either, for we had plenty of fun and skylarking down in the gunroom; making the oldsters there, like Mr Stormcock and the assistant-paymaster, Mr Fortescue Jones, frequently wish they, or rather that we, had never been born to come to sea to torment them.
The very duty of the ship itself was an endless source of occupation and amusement to us, the commander keeping the men “at it” continually from sunrise to sunset, until he had so licked us all into shape that we were the smartest ship’s company afloat, I think; for the discipline was such that the oldCandaharmight have been four years in commission instead of the brief three months that had elapsed from our hoisting the pen’ant to our casting anchor in Simon’s Bay, a port to the eastward of the “Stormy Cape,” where our men-of-war usually moor.
Here, we remained for ten days to refit, setting up our lower rigging, which had got very slack through the heat of the Tropics, and taking in fresh provisions and water, besides all of us having a run ashore to shake the reefs out of our legs.
All the men, too, were allowed leave by watches each day of our stay, and few took advantage of the licence to misbehave themselves although temptation enough was thrown in their way by the hospitable inhabitants.
Amongst these few, I am sorry to say, Corporal Macan distinguished himself, falling a victim to his “ould complaint,” by coming aboard on the second day after our arrival in a state of glorious intoxication, despite his solemn promise to Dr Nettleby, through whom the commander had given him permission to land, that he “wouldn’t touch a dhrop ov the craythur, not if Ould Nick axed him.”
Larkyns, who was in charge of the launch, in which the culprit was brought back helpless to the ship in the afternoon, noticing his condition when he tried to go up the side, ordered him to report himself to the sergeant of marines; but, Mr Macan, who was valiant in his cups, waxed indignant at this and flatly refused to obey the command, saying that he would not mind going before the commander, or the first lieutenant, or even meeting the doctor himself, though he was loth to see him for the moment with his broken promise staring him in the face; but as for going and reporting himself to the sergeant he should not, no, not he.
“An’ is it to rayport mesilf to that omahdaun ye’re afther axin me, sor?” he said scornfully, tossing his head and leering out of his little pig eyes in the most comical way. “Faix, I’d rayther not, wid your favour, sor. I wouldn’t demane mesilf by spakin’ to the loikes ov Sarjent Linstock, sor!”
The upshot was that poor Macan was put under arrest and confined in the cells that night; and when brought before the captain the next day for insubordination and drunkenness, as he had no excuse to offer he was disrated, losing his rank of corporal, with all its perquisites and privileges!
On the doctor taxing him with breaking his pledged word, however, in an after interview that worthy had with the delinquent, he vehemently protested his innocence of that charge at all events.
“I tould yez, sor, I wouldn’t touch a dhrop ov the craythur, maynin’ whisky, sure,” he said, with a miserable attempt at a grin; for he felt very much humiliated at losing his stripes, Macan sober being quite a different man to Macan drunk. “An’ faix I niver bruk me wurrud at all, at all, I’ll swear, sor.”
“How can you have the face to deny it, man?” cried the doctor, angrily. “Why, I saw the state you were in myself when you came aboard the other night!”
“That mebbe, sor,” replied the undaunted Irishman, with a little of his old bravado; “but it warn’t the ould complaint, I till ye, sor.”
“What was it, then, that made you drunk, you rascal?” rejoined the doctor, with a twinkle in his eye, knowing his man, “for, drunk you were—ay, as drunk as Chloe?”
“Faix, sor,” said Macan, noting instantly the doctor’s change of mood, and grinning all over his face in consequence, “it wor the Cape shmoke that did it. Sure, it obfusticated me, sor, entirely!”