I slowly shook my head. She sighed again and looked very downcast; but I was wanted on deck and could sit at table no longer, and so I left her.
Allthis while the crew went on quietly with the work of the ship, giving me no trouble nor occasioning me further anxiety than such as arose from my fear of how it might prove with us should the captain die. This will I say of Bol: a better boatswain never trod the decks of a vessel. I carried by nature a critical eye, and while Greaves lay ill my vigilance was redoubled; but not once had I cause to find fault with Yan Bol’s part in the duties of the brig.
We wanted, indeed, the freshening of the paint pot, but in all other respects we were as smart a little ship, as we blew toward the Horn, as though we had quitted the Thames but a week before. Our brass guns sparkled, our decks were yacht-like with holy-stoning, our rigging might have been newly set up by riggers of the king. Every detail of the furniture aloft was carefully seen to, from the eyes of the royal rigging to the lanyards of the channel dead-eyes.
The men feared Bol; his vast bulk of beef and the granite lumps which swelled in muscle to the movement of his arms made him the match for any two of them. The delivery of his lungs was the cannon’s roar. I have seen a stout fellow stagger as though to a blow—sway in the recoil of a man who is hit hard, on Yan Bol thrusting his huge mouth into the fellow’s face and exploding in passion an order betwixt his eyes. But though the crew feared him they also liked him; he acted as second mate, indeed, but throughout with reluctance; was their shipmate and forecastle associate first of all, the man who ate out of their kids and drank out of their scuttle butt, who slung his hammock in their bedroom, showed them what to do and often how to do it, occasionally went aloft with them, yarned and smoked with them. So much for Yan Bol.
Greaves had a just and considerable admiration for him, the fullest confidence in him as a sailor, and counted him the best boatswain he had ever heard of; and I agreed with him. Going, however, rather farther, for I had distrusted the man from the beginning, and my distrust of him was now deeper than ever it had been, and I would have given half my share of the money in the lazarette had we been blown away from the island when he was ashore and forced to proceed without him.
The two Spaniards were bad sailors, lazy and reckless. Bol could do nothing with them. They skulked when there was business to be done aloft, were not to be trusted at the wheel, and it came at last to our putting them to help the cook and do the dirty work of the ship when they were not at sail-making—for, to be sure, they were smart hands with their palms and needles. There were no more fights, no more assertions by Antonio and his mate Jorge of their claims to a share. In talking to me one day about them Bol said it was the wish of the crew to turn them out of the brig at the first chance.
“The captain won’t hear of it,” said I.
The Dutchman asked why.
“Because,” said I, “the Spaniards know that there is treasure on board. They also know it is Spanish treasure and how got by us. Suppose you tranship them; they arrive at a port and state what they know. The news that we have salved the treasure reaches the ears of the owner of it, who thereupon makes application for restitution. Our business is to keep clear of difficulties.”
“Yaw, dot do I see. But hark you, Mr. Fielding, ve keep der Spaniards und ve arrive home, und der Spaniards go ashore, und den? I ox, und den? Vill dey not shpeak all der same as dey vould shpoke in von of der own ports down here?”
“I have considered that; so, too, has Captain Greaves. There is a remedy, but it does not lie in transferring them in these seas.”
He shrugged his shoulders and the subject dropped.
But the long and short of Greaves’s policy in this particular matter was; get the money home in safety first, bring off the treasure clear of the fifty sea risks and perils of the age—the gale, the shoal, the leak, the pirate, the enemy’s ships of the State. It will be time enough to trouble yourself with what the Spaniards and others of the crew may whisper ashore when the money has been landed, divided, exchanged into gold of the realm, with plenty of leisure for a disappearance that might run into time should the news of the salving of the treasure of theCasadaever reach the ears of the owners of the silver.
We carried good strong winds to the southward. The days grew shorter, there was an edge in the weather let the breeze blow whence it would; the swell of the sea was long and dark. We bent strong canvas for rounding the Horn, and in other ways prepared for a conflict which in those days had a significance that has departed from that wrestle. The seamen put on warm clothes; there was never a need now for the small awning aft; the sun shone white, as though the dazzle of his disk was the reflection of his beam on snow. I say his light was white and often cold when we had yet to swim many hundreds of miles to fetch the parallel of the Horn.
In all the weeks we occupied in measuring our way from the island ere rounding the headland for the Atlantic we fell in with but one ship. It was our good luck, and there was nothing surprising in it either. In this present year of my writingmy story it may be your chance to sail over a thousand leagues of Pacific water and meet with nothing. It was a lonelier ocean in my time than it is now. Northward, on the equatorial parallel, there was, indeed, some life, but southward the great liquid highway that now every year foams to the shearing stems of half a thousand stately ships, was, in the year of theBlack Watch, scarce less barren as a breast of sea than when it was swept for the galleon by the perspective glasses of Dampier and Woodes Rogers.
We fell in with a little ship and spoke her, and the speaking her proved one of the most memorable of all the incidents in this strange expedition, as you shall presently learn if you choose to proceed.
Greaves was on this day very weak; he had risen to breakfast, sat like the specter of death at table, his sunken, leaden, black eyes wandering from me to Miss Aurora with the seeking gaze of one who strives to collect his wits; then, rising with a little convulsion of his figure, he leaned with his hand upon the table and said, in a small voice, looking downward and slightly smiling:
“I must return to my bunk. It isn’t the machinery that’s wrong; the spring has slackened and wants setting up afresh.”
I took him by the arm and helped him to his cabin and stood looking on, waiting to be of service, while Jimmy pulled off his coat and shoes. I believed he would speak seriously of his illness, for I guessed that if he felt as bad as he looked he would count himself a dying man. But he had not one word to say about his sensations or condition. When he was in bed I stood beside him, and he lay with his eyes wide open, viewing me steadfastly in silence. Presently he said:
“Why do you stand there? It’s all right with me. Get back to your breakfast and finish it, Fielding. Whose lookout is it?”
“Mine, sir.”
“Why do you stand there?”
“I wish to see if I can be of use to you,” said I, making a step toward the door.
“I am truly obliged. Jimmy does all I need. I want you to think of nothing but the brig. I shall be quite well—I feel it, I am sure of it—before we have climbed far up the Atlantic. By Isten, Fielding, but it warms me to the very heart of my soul to reflect that you are in charge—you and not Van Laar. Van Laar it might have been, with Michael Greaveshelpless in his cabin, and the Horn coming aboard. Lord, Lord, wonderful are Thy ways!” said he, turning up his eyes. “Now get ye to your breakfast. The machinery is all right, I tell you; the spring’s fallen slack, the old clock loses, but the tick’s steady, Fielding, the tick’s steady, my lad, and a few days will make the time right with me; so get on to your breakfast.”
I re-entered the cabin and seated myself.
“The captain is bad,” said the lady Aurora.
I answered with a sorrowful nod. She clasped her hands and looked at me across the table anxiously, and said:
“He die.”
“Qué hacer?” (What is to be done?) I answered, for by this time I had picked up a number of phrases from her.
She slightly shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, and, pointing upward, exclaimed in Spanish:
“It is as God wills.”
Then, again fixing her fine eyes, full of fire and feeling, upon me, she, by nods and gestures, contrived to make me understand this question:
“Suppose the captain dies, how is the brig to get to England?”
I smiled and pointed to myself, and made her gather that, while I was on board, the brig was pretty sure, in some fashion or other, to head on a true course for England.
We continued to exchange our meaning in this fashion while I finished breakfast. Conversation between us was scarcely now the hard labor it formerly was. She had a number of words in my tongue and I some in hers; then, by being much together—or, as I would rather put it, having by this time held many conversations in our fashion of discoursing—we had got to distinguish shades of signification which had been wasted before in one another’s gaze and gestures. Her looks were eloquence itself. Even now was I able to collect her mind when she talked to me with her face only; when she would talk to me, I say, for five minutes at a time merely with the expression of her face, never opening her lips. Her eyes were charged with the language of light and passions. She could look grief, dismay, concern, horror, pity, all other emotions, indeed, with an incomparable skill, force, and beauty of mute delivery.
I went on deck, and stepped to the side, as was my custom, to peer ahead. Bol, who stood near the skylight, called out:
“A sail!”
He pointed over the starboard bow, and looking that way, I spied the delicate white gleam of a ship’s canvas. It was what we should call a fine, hard day, the atmosphere strong and tonical, cold, but without harshness or rawness. The breeze was fresh off the larboard beam, and swept with a rushing noise betwixt our masts—the breath of the young giant whose dam was the snow-darkened Antarctic hurricane. The surge was a long, steady sweep of sea, tall and wide, of the deepest blue I had ever beheld. The brig, with her yards braced well forward, the bowlines triced out, and every cloth that would draw pulling white as milk in the white sunshine from stay and yard and gaff and boom, was sweeping through the water with the speed of smoke down the wind. Magnificently buoyant was the vessel’s motion. The yeast of her wake seethed to her counter as she courtesyed. Large birds were flying over the track of snow astern.
“What is that craft going to prove, Bol?” said I, taking up the glass.
“Dot vhas not long to findt out,” he answered.
In those times our telescopes were not as yours are now. I leveled the long and heavy tube, but it resolved me no more of the ship ahead than this—that a ship she was.
“Shall ve shift our hellum und edge avay?” said Bol.
“I will let you know,” said I, walking aft.
I waited a bit, looked at the sail again, and found we were picking her up as though she were at anchor. By this time, also, most of her fabric having lifted above the sea-line, I was able to tell that she was square-rigged, like ourselves, but that, unlike theBlack Watch, she had short topgallant masts; whence, as you will suppose, I set her down at once as a trader. This and our overhauling her so rapidly—which means, suppose her an enemy, then she had no more chance of getting alongside of us than a land crab a scudding rabbit—determined me to hold on as we were.
You see I was in charge of the brig, and could do as I chose. Yet was it right that I should report the sail to Greaves, and I called to Yan Bol, who stood in the waist, and bade him keep a lookout for a few minutes while I went below. Jimmy came out of the captain’s berth as I entered the cabin. The lad held open the door, and I passed in.
“I have come to report a sail right ahead, sir.”
He turned his eyes upon me with such a look as youmay behold in the gaze of an old man straining after memory.
“A sail?” he exclaimed.
“Yes, sir.”
“Ay, ay.”
He smiled strangely, fetched a long, trembling breath, and said:
“Suppose she should prove a galleon? We are rich enough, Fielding. Leave her alone—leave her alone.”
“She is no galleon. She is a small trader, I reckon, and will be abreast of us and astern while we’re talking about her.”
“We have as much as we need,” said he. “Don’t imperil what you’ve got, man. D’ye know, Fielding, I fear my sight’s beginning to fail me. Jimmy gave me the Bible just now. The type’s big and it came and went in a dissolving way like a wriggle of worms in water. I would to God there was a priest aboard. I want to ask some questions.”
He closed his eyes, and with them closed repeated, “I want to ask some questions.”
I waited, supposing he would look at me. He kept his eyes shut; so, bidding Jimmy, who stood in the door, to have a care of his master, and to keep within reach of his hail, I returned to the deck very heavy in my spirits; for the departure of this man did then seem to me a question of hours instead of days, nay weeks, as I had lately thought, so ill did he look, so darkly and miserably did his manner and speech accentuate the menace of his face.
It was not very long before I made out the vessel ahead to be a whaler. I knewthatby her heavy davits, crowd of boats and square, sawed-off look when she cocked her stern at us. I showed Dutch colors, scarce doubting as yet but that the stranger would prove a Yankee, for in those days, as now, many American vessels fished in those waters, pursuing their gigantic game into seas where the British flag was rarely flown—that is, over anything in search of grease. But the Dutch flag had not been blowing three minutes from our gaff end when up floated the red flag of England to the mizzen mast head of the stranger.
She was a little ship; to describe her exactly she was ship-rigged on the fore and main, while on her schooner mizzen mast she carried a cross jack and topsail yard. She lifted, ragged with weeds, to the heads of the seas, and washed along, heavily rolling and pitching, and blowing white water off herbows, whalelike. I shifted the helm to close her for the sake of the sight of a strange face, for the sound of a strange human voice. She was abreast of us some time before noon and there lay before us, foaming and plunging, as quaint a picture as the ocean at that time had to offer, liberally furnished as her breast was with picturesque structures. She was as broad as she was long, of a greasy rusty black, and when the sea knocked her over she threw up her round of bottom till you watched for the keel; and the long grass streamed away from her as she rolled like hair from the head of a plunging mermaid. Many faces surveyed us from over her rail. Her sails fitted her ill, and were dark with use. After every roll and plunge the water poured like a mountain torrent out of her head-boards and channels; but I had read her name as we approached—her name and the name of the town she hailed from. She was theVirginia Creeperof Whitby.
Whitby! I had never visited that town, but I knew it in fancy through the famous Cook’s association with the place almost as well as I knew in reality the little towns of Deal and Sandwich. It was just one of those magical English words to sweep the mind and the imaginations of the mind clean out of the countless leagues of the Pacific into the narrow miles of one’s own home waters, there to behold again with a dreamer’s gaze the milk-white coasts of the south, the chocolate coasts of the north, the red sail of the smack plunging to the North Sea, the brown sail of the barge creeping close inshore, the projection of black and tarry timber pier, with its cluster of bright-hued wherries, the length of sparkling white sand, the shingly incline, the careened boat, the figure of its owner worked upon it with a tar brush.
We foamed along together broadside to broadside, within musket shot, and I hailed the whaler and was answered.
The man who responded stood in the mizzen rigging. He wore a round glazed hat, a shawl about his throat, a monkey coat to his knees. He sang out to know what ship I was, and I answered that we were theBlack Watch, of London, chartered by a merchant of Amsterdam, and that the captain and mate, and most of the crew were Englishmen. We were bound to London, I roared to him, omitting to answer his question where we were from. Then, in answer, he shouted that he was theVirginia Creeperof and from Whitby, ten months out, had met with shocking bad luck, and was bound out of these seas for the South Atlantic. All the whales hadgone east. Sorry we were in such a hurry. He would have been glad to come aboard for a yarn, and for what news from home we had to give him. Were we still fighting the Yankees? A Yankee privateer had spoke him in the South Atlantic, and the captain of the vessel sent a mate aboard him with a box of cigars, and this message—that the whaler was a ship he never meddled with, no matter under what color he found her; that he honored a calling that had given his own nation her finest race of seamen; and when he sailed away he dipped to theVirginia Creeperas to a friend. All this I was able to hear. The man, who spoke as a Quaker, delivered his words with a strong, slightly nasal voice, and his words came clean as the sound of a bell through the washing hiss of the water and the roar aloft.
I found time to shout back that our captain was dangerously ill, and to ask the master of the whaler, as I supposed the man to be, if he knew aught of physic—of the treatment of injuries. He shook his head vehemently, crying “No!” thrice, as though he would instantly kill any hope the sight of him had excited inthatway; and, indeed, what should a sailor know of physic and the treatment of such a sickness as was fast killing Greaves? I asked the question to ease my conscience and to satisfy the crew, who were listening. I figured him coming aboard and stifling a groan when he saw Greaves, vexing the poor, languishing man with useless questions put to mark his sympathy, and then coming out of the berth to tell me it was a bad case.
We sped onward. The voice would no longer carry, and the whaler veered astern almost into our wake, with a wild slap of her foresail, as she plunged a heavy courtesy of farewell at us.
My notes of what befell me in this memorable year of Waterloo gives much to my memory, but not everything; and I am unable to recollect the exact situation of the brig when we fell in with theVirginia Creeperwestward of the Horn. I am sure, however, that we were something to the southward of the island of Juan Fernandez, somewhere about the latitude of Valdivia. This I supposed from remembrance of the climate. But be it as it may, it was now, on this date of our speaking the Whitby whaler, that I confidently supposed my poor friend Greaves would not live to see the end of the week. I have told you so; but guess my surprise when, on coming on deck at four o’clock that same afternoon, I found him seated on achair, wrapped in a warm cloak. Yan Bol walked to and fro near him. They had been talking. I had heard the Dutchman’s deep voice as I stepped through the hatch. But if Greaves had looked a dying man in his berth, he showed, to be sure, ghastly sick by the light of the day. I had seen much of him below, yet I started when my eyes went to his face now, as though, down to this moment, I had not observed the dreadful change that had happened in him. Galloon lay at his feet. The poor man smiled faintly on seeing me, and said in a weak voice:
“Did not I tell you I should be better presently? The machinery’s sound, and, when that’s so, nature is your one artist to make it the right time of day with ye.”
I conversed a little with him. Yan Bol stood by. I told him about the whaler. He motioned with a trembling white hand, and said he had heard all about it from Yan Bol. Presently he wandered somewhat in his speech, and rose falteringly, sending a sort of blind, groping look round the decks; but he was too feeble to hold his body erect, and the swing of the brig, as she reeled to a sea, flung him roughly back upon his chair.
“Let me take you below,” said I.
He looked at me as though he did not know me and talked to himself. I motioned to Bol with my head, and we each took an arm, and tenderly—and I say that there was a tenderness in Yan Bol’s handling of the poor fellow that gave me such an opinion of his heart as helped me for a little while like a fresh spirit in that time of my distress, anxiety, and fear—very tenderly I say, we partly carried, partly supported, the captain into the cabin, whence he went, leaning on Jimmy, to his berth, looking behind him somewhat wildly at us who stood watching him, and talking without any sense that I could collect.
“Mr. Fielding,” said Yan Bol as we regained the deck, “der captain vhas a deadt man.”
“I wondered to find him out of his berth.”
“He vhas von minute talking like ash you or me, und der next he vhas grazy mit fancies. I likes to know how dot vhas mit der brain. Von minute he oxes me questions about der vhaler, as you might; der next he looks at me und say, ‘Vhas your name Yan Bol?’ ‘It vhas,’ I answered. ‘Vhat vhas der natural figure of der Toyfell?’ he oxes. ‘Dot vhas a question for der minister,’ says I. ‘Last night’ he says, ‘dere vhas afull moon, und I saw a reflection like she might be a bat’s upon der brightness of der moon. Dot reflection sailed slowly across. I ox you,’ says he, ‘vhas dot der reflection of der Toyfell—dot, you must know, is Brince of der vinds?’ I keeps mine own counsel, und valks a leedle, und pretends dot der brig vants looking after; und vhen I comes back he oxes me anoder question dot vhas no longer grazy, but like ash you might ox. Now, how vhas dot, Mr. Fielding?”
“I am as ignorant as you,” said I; “but his end is at hand. He will not long talk sensibly or crazily. God help him and bless us all! It is a heavy blow to befall this little brig—‘tis a heavier blow to befall the poor gentleman who has shown us how to fill our pockets with dollars; whose own share would make him a happy and prosperous man for life.”
“Dot vhas so,” said Bol; and our conversation ended.
Seeing that Greaves’ mind was loosened, I no longer expected him to realize the near approach of death. I ceased, therefore, to be surprised that he did not speak to me about his condition. Sometimes I would ask myself whether it was not my duty, as his friend, to touch upon the subject of his state at some favorable moment when his faculties were strong enough for coherent discourse. He was dying. He must soon die. He could not live to round the Horn. How would he wish the money he had earned by this venture to be disposed of? Thirty thousand pounds was a large fortune. I knew that he was fatherless and motherless, but no more of him did I know than that. I had never heard him speak of his relations; indeed, throughout he had been silent on the subject of his parentage and beginnings, though he had never wanted in candor when he talked of his first going to sea, his struggles and failures and sufferings in the vocation.
But as often as I thought it proper to speak to him, so often did I shrink from what was, perhaps, an obligation. No; I could not find it in me to tell him that he was a dying man.
The weather grew colder, and we met with some hard gales out of the southeast, which knocked us away fifty leagues to the westward out of our course. It was Cape Horn weather, though we were not up with that headland yet. The dark green seas rolled fierce and high; the sky hung low and sallow and fled in scud. We stormed our way along under reefed canvas, showing all that we durst, and making good average way, seeing that the gale was off the bow and the seas like cliffs for the little brig to burst through.
Anxiety lay very heavy upon me all this time. I had confidence in Yan Bol’s seamanship, but I had more faith in myself; and I was up and down in my watch below to look after the brig, till, when the twenty-four hours had come round, I would find I had not passed two of them in sleep.
The cold found the lady Aurora without warm apparel. The dress she had been shipwrecked in was of some gay, glossy stuff, plentiful in skirt, and as warm as a cobweb. What was to be done? It was not to be borne that she should sit shivering in the cabin for the want of apparel that would enable her to look abroad whenever she had a mind to pass through the hatch; so, after turning the matter over in my mind, one morning, soon after our meeting with the whaler, I ordered Jimmy and another to bring the slop chest into the cabin. It was a great box, and one of two. Both were of Tulp’s providing. The old chap guessed he saw his way to making money out of the sailors by putting cheap clothes aboard for sale, and it was likely enough he would find his little venture in this way answerable to his expectations when we got home, for already one of the chests was emptied of two-thirds of its contents, the sailors (I being one of them) having purchased at an advance of about eighty per cent. upon what would be rated ashore as a very high selling price.
Well, one of the slop chests was brought up and put in the cabin. I had tried to make Miss Aurora understand what I meant—to no purpose. Now, lifting the lid of the chest, she standing by me and looking down upon the queer collection of sailors’ clothing, I pulled out a monkey coat, big enough for the sheathing of even Yan Bol’s bolster-like figure, and, holding it up, went to work to make myself intelligible. I put the coat on her. I then touched it here and there to signify that, by shaping a waist, and cutting in at the dip of the back, by shortening the sleeves and fixing the velvet collar to suit her throat, she might make a very good figure of a jacket for herself out of the coat. I then took a cap from the chest, and I placed it upon her head, advising, as best I could by signs and words, that she should stitch flaps to it to shelter her ears, with strings to keep the thing on her head in wind. I went further still, being resolved that the lady should go warmly clad round the Horn, and, calling to Jimmy, bade him bring me up a bale of spare blankets. I heartily longed for a Spanish dictionary, that I might give her the wordpetticoatout of it. However, she caught my drift after a little, on my selecting one of the finest of the blankets and putting it about her and holding it to her waist. She nodded and laughed.
I witnessed no embarrassment, and, in honest truth, there was no cause for embarrassment. Yet I do not suppose that an English girl—at least, that many English girls—would have made this little business of suggesting apparel, and hinting at clothing which a man is not supposed to know anything at all about until he is married, so pleasant and easy as did this Spanish maiden.
Well, her ladyship was now supplied with materials for warm clothing, and that same afternoon she went to work on the coat. Hard work it was. She wanted shears for such cloth as that, and managed with difficulty with a sailor’s knife fresh from the grindstone; yet, by next afternoon, having worked all that day and all next morning, she had given something of the shape of her own figure to the coat. She put it on for me to look at. It wrapped her bravely; and when, with white teeth showing, she placed the cap on her head, her beauty—and beauty dark, speaking, impressive I must call it—took a quality of brightness, a piquancy that comes to beauty from male attire; in her case wanting when ordinarily dressed, of such gravity and dignity was her bearing, of such a natural, womanly loftiness were the whole figure and looks of her.
Aftera troublesome spell of stormy weather there happened a fine afternoon, and when the evening drew around the shadow was richer in stars than any tropic night I ever beheld. The wind was light; the ocean breathed in a long swell from the north; the atmosphere was frosty, but sweet and comfortably endurable.
We had sent down our royal yards, yet to-night was a night for royals and studding sails—a night to be made the most of. The ocean was off guard, asleep, and easily might we have stolen past the slumbering sentinel, clothed from truck to waterway in the tall, wide wings we had expanded in the north.
But the old villain was not to be trusted; twas but a snort and a stir with him down here,thena hideous black cloud flying at your ship, and hail and wind to which the stoutest must give his back.
So this evening we flapped slowly onward under topgallant sails and courses, and the long naked poles of the royal masts made a wreck of the fabric to the eye up aloft as they swung the dim buttons of their trucks under the stars.
It was seven o’clock. I had an hour to smoke my pipe in before my watch came round. I stood on the brig’s quarter, leaning upon the bulwark rail. The sea ran in thick, noiseless folds like black grease, and I hung smoking and hearkening to a queer respiration out upon the water—the noise of the blowing of grampuses sunk in the blackness. Presently my name was pronounced. I turned, and by the light in the companion way beheld the figure of the boy Jimmy.
“What is it?”
“The captain wants to see you, master.”
I knocked the fire out of my pipe.
“What is wrong?” said I, in a voice of awe, for even as the lad had called, my thoughts were busy with the dying man, and my heart heavy with sadness.
“The captain’s very bad to-night, master.”
This was the third day Greaves had kept his berth without attempting or expressing a wish to leave it. During these days he had been more than usually rambling and incoherent, insomuch that my visits had been brief because there was nothing to be said. I had looked in upon him merely to satisfy myself on his condition. I knew not how I should find him now, and sat me down on a chest beside his bunk. Galloon lay on the deck. The lamp gave a strong light; Greaves saw me and I him very plain. There was an intelligence in his looks that had been wanting—his countenance was knitted into its old expression of mind, as though by an effort of the faculties.
“D’ye know, Fielding, I fear that I am very ill?” said he in a weak voice.
“You do not feel worse, I hope?” said I.
“I don’t like my sensations. I don’t understand them. It has crossed my mind that I am dying.”
“Ill you are and have been, captain; yet less ill to-night, it seems to me, than you were yesterday. God preserve you! What can I do? Here we are, out upon the wild sea, nothing but Spanish ports to make for; but say the word and I’ll head the brig for the port you shall name. We must forfeit our dollars, but your life stands first.”
“It is too late,” he said.
“For God’s sake don’t say that! Ought I to have sought help on the coast?”
“It is too late,” he repeated, and sank into a silence that lasted a minute or two.
“Have you believed that I am dying?” said he.
“I have believed you ill—sometimes very ill.”
“It will be hard to die here, all this way from home. The launch over the side makes a deep burial. I buried a man hereabouts last voyage, and—— How deep is it? Has he touched the bottom yet?—with a twenty-four pound shot at his heels too.”
“Don’t think of such things.”
“I am not afraid to die, but I wish there was a priest aboard—someone to help me to steady my thoughts. I believe in all that should make a man a good Christian. What’s the time?”
“A little after eight, sir.”
“What noise of hissing is that?”
“Grampuses have been blowing out to larboard; some may have come alongside.”
“Ay, me!” he cried. “There is the hand of the devil in this snatching away of my lifenow, when the days show brightly, and my head is full of plans of goodness. How about the money, Fielding?”
“What money, sir?”
“Mine, mine,” he exclaimed with irritation. “Yours you’ll keep and welcome, and don’t let the spending of it damn ye. Mine, I say. What’s to become of it? If I die, what’s to become of my money? Must it go to Tulp? By Isten, no, then!” he exclaimed, with a rather crazy laugh.
“Have you no relations?”
“Tulp’s no relation.”
“Have you no relation whatever?”
“None, I tell ye.”
“Few men can say that,” said I doubtingly.
“Fielding, I am dying, and I will leave my money to God.”
He spoke faintly, his appearance was very alarming; his eyes moved slowly and strangely.
“Tell me your wishes? If I live they shall be carried out.”
He repeated in a low voice that he would leave his money to God.
“In what form can this be done?” said I, fearing that his mind was giving way again.
“I will leave my money to the Church,” he answered.
“What Church?”
He made no answer.
“What Church, Captain?” I repeated, bending my face to his.
“Rome,” he answered.
“In what religion did your mother die?” said I.
His eyes ceased to wander, he gazed at me steadfastly; but as he was silent, I again asked him in what faith his mother had died.
“She was a Protestant,” he answered; “she belonged to the Church of England.”
“Leave your money to the Church in whose faith your mother sleeps. Should not a mother’s faith be the holiest of all to a child? Captain, there is no better faith than was your mother’s.”
“Who talks to me of my mother?” said he. “She married Bartholomew Tulp. Well, she was a very good woman. She has gone to God. She was poor—she married for a home, and to help me, as I have often since believed. I will leave my money to her memory. What time is it?”
I again told him the time.
“How is the weather?”
“A fine, quiet night.”
“There is water in that can; give me a drink.”
When he had drunk he asked me to lift the dog, that he might pat his head. He feebly, with a pale, thin hand, touched the ears of the poor beast; and as he did so, I thought of that time when I lay in a hammock, trembling and helpless, with a weakness as of death, and when he had lifted Galloon that I might kiss the dog that had saved my life.
“Who has the watch?”
“Bol, sir.”
“Will you write for me, Fielding?”
“Anything will I do for you.”
I seated myself at the little table that was near his bunk. It was furnished with ink and quills. I opened a drawer and found paper, and waited for him to speak.
“Tulp shall not have my money,” said he; “the old rogue is rich, and he has a noble share in what is below. Too much—too much. And yet it was his venture. Let me be reasonable. He shall not have one dollar of my money, by God! If I die, and the money goes home, he will take it. I would see him damned before he touched a dollar of my money. Hasn’t he enough?”
“More than enough.”
“I will leave the money to the memory of my mother. The thought comforts me. I was her only child—I left her very young; I was not to her as I should have been. Write, Fielding.”
He dictated, but ramblingly, with so much of incoherence, indeed, breaking off to talk to himself, to ask the time, to whisper some sea adventure, which he would go half through with and then drop, that, even if my memory carried what he said, it would be mere silliness in the reading. However, his wish was to dictate a will, which was to be embodied in a very few sentences. So when he had made an end and lay still, I wrote as follows:
‘BrigBlack Watch, at sea. February the 24th, 1815. This is the last will and testament of me, Michael Greaves, master of the above brig—at the time of signing this in full command of my senses. I hereby bequeath all the money I have in the world to the Church of England, in memory of my mother; and I desire that the money I thus bequeath may be devoted to a memorial that shall forever perpetuate the love I bear to the memory of my mother, whose soul is with God.’
‘BrigBlack Watch, at sea. February the 24th, 1815. This is the last will and testament of me, Michael Greaves, master of the above brig—at the time of signing this in full command of my senses. I hereby bequeath all the money I have in the world to the Church of England, in memory of my mother; and I desire that the money I thus bequeath may be devoted to a memorial that shall forever perpetuate the love I bear to the memory of my mother, whose soul is with God.’
It was the best form of will I could devise, knowing little of such matters; but since it was his wish that the money should be dedicated to God, most reasonable was it that I, as an Englishman, should wish to see it bequeathed to the Church of my own and of his country. And I was the warmer in this desire in that the money was Spanish; by which I mean that nothing could be more proper than that the dollars of the most bigoted people in all creation, in religious matters, should go to the support of the purest, the most liberal, the very noblest of all churches. Bear ye in mind, it was the year 1815; when our esteem of the foreigner and his faith was not as it is.
“What have you written?” said he.
I read aloud.
“It will do,” he exclaimed; “read it again.” I did so.
“Will not thirty thousand pounds build a church?” said he.
“It will build a ship,” said I. “I know nothing of the cost of building a church.”
“Write down that I want a church built,” said he.
This I did.
“Write down,” said he, “that I leave one thousand pounds to you, for having saved my life.”
I hesitated and looked at him, and then said, “My dear friend, I thank you, but you have put enough in my way.”
“Write it down, write it down,” he cried. I wrote as he dictated. “Now,” said he, “can I sign?” and he lifted his hand as though feeling for strength to control a pen.
I opened the door and called to Jimmy, who was putting wine and biscuit on the table. I asked the lad if he could write. He answered, “No.” I put a pen into Greaves’ hand, and he scratched his signature under the three clauses I had written down. His vision was dim, and he saw with difficulty when it came to his writing, but on my directing the point of the pen in his hand to the paper he wrote with some vigor. I bade Jimmy take notice of what I was about to read, and when I had read I signed my name, and the lad made his mark, which I witnessed.
All this was very innocent. I was a sailor, with no more knowledge of the law than a ship’s figurehead, and little dreamed that I was rendering my interest in poor Greaves’ will worthless by attesting it. But, as things turned out, it mattered nothing, as you shall read.
Jimmy went into the cabin to wait on the lady.
“Will you, or shall I keep this will?” said I.
“You,” he answered. “I give you Galloon,” said he after a pause, and now speaking with the faintness I had observed in him when I first arrived. “You’ll love him, Fielding.”
I put my cheek to the dog’s face. “I am glad to have your wishes,” said I. “Should you be taken before we get home I shall know what to do, if I outlive you.” He feebly smiled.
“Oh, but the risks of the sea are many—weknow that. A man goes with his life in one hand. You are far from dead yet. It is I who may be the dying man.”
“I wish there was a priest on board to settle my doubts,” said he, scarcely above a whisper, and now his eyes began to look strangely again.
“What are your doubts?”
“Is there a hell, Fielding?”
“Not for sailors, captain.”
He steadied his eyes, and smiled with an odd parting of his lips, that was like the first of a gape.
“Not for sailors, sir,” said I. “Hell is here for them. There can’t be two hells for the same man.”
“I’d like to think that,” said he. “I am afraid of going to hell. I’ve been afraid of dying ever since they put the notion of the devil into my head. I told ye just now I wasn’t afraid of death. Nor am I, when I forget the devil. I forgot him then.Now he’s back again. Give me some water and open the scuttle—it’s grown blasted hot, hasn’t it?”
He sat up on a sudden, and immediately afterward sank back. Again I gave him to drink, and opened the scuttle as he desired.
He now rambled. Some of his imaginations were wild and striking. They even struck an awe into me, though perhaps much of their impressiveness lay in their falling from dying lips. His poor head ran on religion—and sometimes he was to be saved, and sometimes he was to be damned; and then he would forget, and babble about what he meant to do when he got home; how so much of his money would go in giving clothes and food to the poor, and how he’d collect many kinds of animals and use them well, fearing them, for who was to tell what souls of men they contained; and there might be a human sorrow in the bleat of a goat, and a man’s passion in the silence of a suffering horse.
I cannot tell you what he talked about. It matters not. Yet one strange thing that happened this evening let me note. It was this: he had sunk into silence, and I was about to quit his cabin for the deck. He had been talking very wildly, and sometimes, to my young, green, superstitious mind, almost terrifyingly; then had fallen still all in a moment, his eyes closed, his lips shut. I stooped to look at him, then turned to go, as I have said. My hand was on the door, when I heard his voice:
“Fielding, will ye sing?”
I went back wondering, and asked him what he said.
“Will ye sing?” he exclaimed.
I supposed this a part of his sad, dying nonsense, yet, to humor him, answered:
“I will sing for you, captain.”
“Sing me ‘Tom Bowling,’”said he.
I sat down, and Galloon laid his head on my knee. My voice was broken, but I strove to put a cheerfulness into it, and sang the opening verse of “Tom Bowling.” He lay quiet while I sang. When I came to the end of the verse, he looked at me and, when I paused, believing he had had enough, he sang the closing lines in a feeble voice: