Meester Fielding, dis vhas a bondt. All handts agree. Suppose dere vhas fifteen ton silver—vell, two tons vhas yours if you sail der brick true und does her duty by oos ash we does by him. Dot being right ve all makes our marks and sines her names ash oonder. If you goes wrong dis bondt vhas tore-sop, und vot vhas las’ wrote stans for noting. Dere vhas no more paper.
Meester Fielding, dis vhas a bondt. All handts agree. Suppose dere vhas fifteen ton silver—vell, two tons vhas yours if you sail der brick true und does her duty by oos ash we does by him. Dot being right ve all makes our marks and sines her names ash oonder. If you goes wrong dis bondt vhas tore-sop, und vot vhas las’ wrote stans for noting. Dere vhas no more paper.
Then followed the crosses and names of the men, as in the Round Robin. I burst into a laugh. Heartsick as I was, this stroke of farce, happening in the great tragic occasion of that time, proved too much for me. I put the paper in my pocket.
“At what do you laugh?” said the lady Aurora.
“At a piece of Dutch humor,” said I, laughing again.
She looked eagerly, and wished to know if the crew had done anything to please me—anything to lighten my anxiety.
“They have given me two tons of silver,” said I with a sneer, pointing down that she might understand me.
She shrugged her shoulders, and asked no more questions about the crew’s bond. I reckoned she saw in my face as much as she was interested to hear. I observed her fine eyes fixed upon the stand of muskets and cutlasses and watched her; not speculating on her thoughts, merely observing her face. I beheld no marks of anxiety in her handsome features, of such passions of uneasiness and continued distress as you would look for in a woman situated as she was. The glass in poor Greaves’ cabin had assured me that what had befallen us had not sweetened or colored my own visage. I was growing long of face; yellowing daily, and my eyes had sunk. This Spanish girl, on the other hand, was still bright and spirited with all the health she had regained aboard us. I watched her while she looked at the weapons; she turned her face slowly upon mine, and our eyes met.
“Why,” she exclaimed—and now began one of those brief conversations which I am forced to put into plain English for reasons I have given you—“why, Señor Fielding, do not you lock away those swords and firearms?”
“Why should I lock them away?”
“The crew may take them.”
“What then?” said I, “we should be no worse off. I am alone: forward are ten stout, determined men; armed or unarmed, ’tis all one.”
“There are two,” said she.
“Yes, Jimmy is a strong lad, and might be useful, and I dare say he is on our side at heart, but he is wanting,” said I, touching my head. “I dare not trust him.”
She smiled and said, “I did not mean the youth. I am the other.”
I asked her to explain. She rose and seated herself beside me. The skylight was partially covered with tarpaulin, and what was visible of the glass was blank as mist with wet. The brig was full of noises. She was rolling and pitching very heavily, and the thunder of seas bursting back in heavy hills of foam from her weather side trembled like discharges of cannon through the length of her. Nevertheless the señorita came and sat by my side, and put her lips close to my ear, though had she shrieked her ideas from the extreme end of the cabin, or even up through the hatch, nobody on deck would have heard her.
Her manner was tragic and mysterious. It was not put on. The thoughts in her bred the air, and she had the face and figure for a very curious high dramatic expression of emotion of any sort.
“Why,” said she, speaking so close that I felt the heat of her face, “do not we kill the men who are robbing you and carrying me away?”
“All of them?” said I.
“Not Jimmy, and not my two countrymen. Look! suppose I bring Antonio here and tell him that he and Jorge are in danger of their lives, and that they must fight with us and kill the crew. There are you, me, my two countrymen: there is Jimmy,” she held up her fingers. “Five to ten, and everything is ready,” said she, pointing to the muskets.
“I would not trust your two countrymen. They are cowards. I would not risk such a business for your sake. Failure would mean my being killed: thatmustbe; and how would the men whomwedid not kill deal with you?”
“All could be killed,” said she. “I myself will kill in this cabin that great Jean Bol, as you talk to him. I will creep behind and stab him. Send for Galen; I will kill him too; then Teach. Three then aregastados![expended!] For the rest——” She shrugged her shoulders and leaned back to observe the impression produced upon me by her talk.
“Madam,” said I, looking at her eyes, which were all on fire, and her cheeks, which were colored, hot with the devilish fancies which worked in her, “your spirit is fine, but somewhat too deadly for one of my cautious character.”
“I wish for release,” she cried, with a great sigh, and her eyes suddenly clouded; “I wish for my mother and for home. I thought the English were brave,vaya!Your men will kill you if you do not kill them. Are you afraid to kill them? Ave Maria! Good men die in thousands every day.”
She began to tremble, and rose as if to pace the cabin; the motion of the brig was too heavy to permit that. I took her hand to steady her—it had turned from the heat of fever to the coldness of marble. “Just so!” thought I; “aren’t you one of those delicate assassins who prog and faint? Who’d stick friend Yan, then swoon, and leave me to deal with what would follow his roars?”
“We’ll burn no powder just yet,” said I, “and we’ll keep our poniards in our breasts. Amsterdam Island is a long way off; many things may happen.”
“Pu! Quita, allá!” she exclaimed, with pale lips and dull eyes, and trembling, and then rising with a murmur of anger and a manner of haughty contempt she went to her berth.
When she was gone there ran in my head a strange fancy of Defoe concerning a beautiful demon lady. You may read of it in that author’s “History of the Devil,” which is, I think, the best biography of the landlord of the Black Divan that ever was written. I could not but vastly admire the spirit of the woman in offering to shoot down the ten men; but I thought there was something damnable and fiendish in her proposing to make a shambles of the cabin by sticking Bol and the others she had named, while I talked to them. A demon spoke through her Spanish bloodthere! And yet her fine eyes and fine figure were in my memory of her counsel, and found a sort of fascination for what should have affected me as quite abominable.
I sat a bit, coldly considering her ideas. True it was that I could have killed Bol cheerfully; but to slaughter the whole ten of them, even if their assassination was to be contrived! Bol, to be sure, had threatened to send me adrift: he may have meant no more than a threat; my life was not immediately in danger; my knowledge as a navigator warranted me the good usage of the scoundrels till the coast of New Holland arose, and ’twixt this andthatthere lay some months: the men had dealt respectfully with the girl—left her indeed to me, as though they counted her a part of my share. No! I could not consent to shoot them down; I could not consent tolet her ladyship knife the ringleaders while I conversed with them—one at a time.
I went to the stand and took out a musket to judge the quality and age of the lot: it was a Dutch musket, long, clumsy, and murderous. I took down a cutlass and tried the blade—all this mechanically: my mind was rambling. I scarce knew what I was about; I bent the blade and the steel snapped and the point of it sprang with the twang of a Jew’s harp through the air. Some of Tulp’s purchases! thought I, then replaced the broken half of the blade in its scabbard, and hung up the cutlass in its place.
This trifle begot a new scorn of Tulp in me. The rogue would even cheat himself, thought I. He would ship cannons that burst and blades that shiver to save a guilder or two, and risk the lives of us men and his dollars by the ton for some lean-paring of saving that would scarce put an onion to a man’s bread and cheese. What do I care for Tulp, thought I? What is his brig to me now that poor Greaves is gone? Had Greaves owned relations among whom he wished his money distributed the thing would wear a different face; but as it stands, Tulp and the brig being nothing to me, why should I not throw in my chance with the crew, elbow Bol out of his leadership by sheer enthusiasm, sincerity, knowledge of the ocean roads? The fellows groped in their black ignorance after some scheme, and brought up this muddy project of Amsterdam Island with Sydney beyond. Could not I devise something much better thanthatfor them, something safe and quick—compared at least withtheirprogramme: something they should hearken to and eagerly adopt when they saw me and knew me and felt me to be in earnest?
Yan Bol came up when I put my head out of the hatch.
“Vhas dot bondt all right?” he roared that his voice might carry above the shouting in the rigging and the fierce hissing of the sea.
I nodded.
“Two ton. Only tink. Dere vhas much skylarking in two ton of silver. How many dollars shall go to her?” said he.
“Dollars enough for me,” I shouted, and passed on to the compass and took a look at the brig and around me. I hated the villain; I hated his roaring voice, and his English; besides, speech soon grew difficult, even to physical pain, on that clamorous deck.
It was not much later on, however, that the crew gave mecause to think twice before throwing in my lot with them. By this time we had stretched far across the Atlantic; the month of April was drawing to an end. Much heavy weather had we encountered, but it had been of a prosperous sort, rushing us onward with hooting rigging, and reeling bands of canvas, with such a spin of the log-reel that many a time and oft three and sometimes four men were required at the great scope of line to walk it in.
On the day of the little business I am going to tell you about I went on deck and found a very fine morning. The blue sky sank crisp with mother-of-pearl-like cloud to the pale edge of the sea. The sun, that was risen about half-an-hour, shone white as silver in the east, whence blew a pleasant breeze of wind, dead on end for us, however, so that our yards lay fore and aft and the little brig under every stitch of plain sail looked away from her course.
I saw Bol to leeward gazing at the sea off the lee bow. I never addressed that man now unless there was something particular to say, and after having satisfied myself with a quarter-deck stare around and aloft, I began to walk. Bol turned his head and perceived me. He approached, and pointing his finger at the sea on the lee bow, said:
“Do you see dot ship?”
I looked and spied a sail hidden to me until this by the brig’s canvas.
“How is she standing?”
“Our vays.”
She was about five miles distant. Bol had been using the glass. It lay upon the skylight. I examined the sail, and found her a small topsail schooner. With the naked eyes, by the look of her, as she floated out there in the frosty whiteness of sunshine, I had guessed her twice as big as we. She was coming along leisurely. The wind was off her quarter, and a light wind for fore-and-aft canvas.
“Vhat vhas she, tink you, Mr. Fielding?”
“Don’t you know a ship by her rig?”
“I mean, vhat vhas her peesiness? Vhas she some leedle man-of-war?”
“Perhaps a trader, bound across the Atlantic.”
He went forward as far as the gangway and beckoned. Wirtz, who stood on the forecastle, called out the name of Galen, and then walked aft to Bol, along with Friend and Street. Galen came out of the caboose eating. His jaws worked with some mouthful he had crammed betwixt his teeth. There was butlittle discipline in all this, you will say. There was none whatever. There had been very little discipline on board theBlack Watchsince illness had forced poor Greaves to give up and hand the command over to me. Was the fault mine? The long and short of it was, the men had never recognized me as mate in the room of Jacob Van Laar. They had worked for the safety of the ship and because of Yan Bol. I was an interloper. They had made me feel it, times beyond counting, in their sailors’ way; and now, though nominally captain, I was no more nor less than pilot, with authority only in the direction of the general safety.
All this I very much understood as I walked the deck, appearing not to heed the group of men in the gangway, and wondering what matter they were settling among them. Presently Bol came aft, took the telescope to the men, and one after another of them leveled it at the little sail off the bow. I never caught what they said, though my steps sometimes brought me pretty close.
They turned their faces my way sometimes. Street went over to the boat that lay stowed in the longboat amidships, looked into her, and returned to the others. I then thought to myself, “Are they going to signal that craft and put me aboard her?” I went into a violent passion over the suspicion, and came to a stand at the bulwarks, nearly opposite the spot where they were grouped, and stared, I have no doubt, with a very black face. Indeed, my conjecture had put me into such a rage that I heeded not, by a snap of the finger, what they might think. I tried to cool myself by reflecting that they could not do without me; but the mere notion that they meant to turn me out of the brig, and make off with Madam Aurora and the fifteen tons of silver, taking their chance of what might follow, worked like a madness in me.
They stood together, I dare say, about ten minutes talking. In this time the sail had grown, and was visibly a topsail schooner, low in the water, of a clean, black, slaver-like run. The sun flashed in flame from her wet sides, and I thought at first she was firing at us. Meehan, I think it was, sung out:
“Better see all ready, mates!” and went to the boat, he and others.
Bol alone stayed, looking at the schooner. He then came to me.
“Mr. Fielding, I shall vant to command for a leedle vhile. Me himself vhas skipper till our peesiness vhas done.”
“What do you mean to do?” said I.
“To shtop dot leedle hooker. I shall vant to hail her. Of course, Mr. Fielding, you vhas der captain all der same; but you hov a soft heart, and so I vhas der skipper in dis shob.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“It vhas like opening your eyes in a minute. You vhas not to interfere, dot vhas all.”
He went to the flag-locker, took out the English ensign, and ran it aloft, union down, at the trysail gaff-end.
“Back der main topsail, some hands!” he bawled. All hands were on deck. Hals came out of the caboose to look on or to help. Some of the men laid the canvas on the main a-back, and others unshipped the little gangway preparatory to launching the boat, smack-fashion, through it; and among those who hove the little boat out of the bigger one, and ran her to the side, were the two Spaniards. Meanwhile, the schooner had hoisted English colors. They blew out from her main topmast head. The telescope gave me the character of the bunting. To the naked eye it waved and trembled like a red light against the pearly crust which covered the sky that way.
I guessed by her showing her color that she was going to halt when she came abreast. What did my crew mean to do? What scheme had the beggars suddenly hit on and were going about with an unanimity that held them all as quiet as the backed topsail aloft?
It was about now that Miss Aurora came on deck. She looked up at the sails of the brig, at the flag flying at our trysail gaff-end, at the approaching schooner, the open gangway, the boat lying in it, the men hanging about the little fabric.
“Holy Mother!” cried she, and in a step or two she was at my side. “What is it? What is wrong? What is happening?”
Bol, who stood with others near the boat, hearing her turned. The huge man approached and was calling out before I could answer the girl.
“Mr. Fielding, der lady must go below.”
“Must!”
“Yaw, by Cott! I vhas skipper for dis leedle while. You vhas not to be seen, marm. Dot vhas so I play no bart mit you on deck.”
He came to the companion way, and with a face full of blood and temper, pointed down the ladder, exclaiming in his deepestthunder, “Quick, if you please. Doan’ be afraid. It vhas all right. No von vhas hurt over dis shob.”
“Go,” said I, “do as he bids you. See how those fellows are watching us.”
She obeyed me with an extraordinary look; the expression of a naturally fierce spirit contending with womanly terror; I’d think of it afterward always as if the girl had had two souls—one of flame, a gift of fighting blood older than the Moors perhaps; the other just a woman’s.
“My ladts,” bawled Bol to the men, “keep yourselves out of sight. Aft some of you, und standt by to swing der topsail yard. Manage dot your heads vhas not seen.”
Those who came aft and those who stayed forward crouched under the bulwark: the two Spaniards hid with the others. Observing this, Bol called to Antonio:
“Oop you stand, you and Jorge. You vhas der crew.”
They stood up, looking at the Dutchman wonderingly, with a half grin that was pathetic. I began to smell a rat, as they say. The schooner came sliding along, and when she was within ear-shot her topsail was swung and she halted to leeward of us. Her crew gazed at us from their forecastle, and three men stood on her quarter-deck. She was pierced for a few guns, but her ports were closed, and I saw no pieces of any sort upon her decks, though the easy, long-drawn roll of her gave us a good sight of the white planks, with the great main hatch and a tiny smoking caboose, and a fellow in a red shirt at the end of the long tiller. She was a sweet little picture, a far prettier model than the brig, handsomely gilt at the bow and quarter. “Lord!” thought I, “if I could but make those men yonder know what sort of stuff we carried down aft and the piratic trick those crouching scoundrels and that vast heap of flesh called Bol are playing me!” Yet, suppose the crew should permit me to shout out the yarn, would yonder chaps board us? We were nearly as numerous—our livelies would be fighting for treasure dear to them as their own ruddy drops; and look at our little grin of carronades and those long, shining engines on the forecastle and aft!
Bol got on to a gun. One of the men on the schooner’s quarter-deck hailed.
“Ho, der brick ahoy! Vhat sheep vhas dot?”
It was the hail of a Dutch voice! I burst into a laugh—I must have laughed out at that Dutch hail had I been standing with a noose round my neck under a yardarm. Yan Bol stoodidly straining and gaping a moment or two when he heard those Dutch tones. He then sent his deep voice across the water in a roar:
“She vhas derBlack Vatchof London to New Holland.”
“Vat vhas wrong mit you?” shouted the Dutchman in the schooner.
“Ve vhas a seek ship und in great distress. I vill sendt a boat to you, ash I vhas veak und cannot cry out.”
He floundered off the carronade on to the deck, and rolling over to the gangway, called to the two Spaniards, who stood there:
“Ofer mit dis boat. Quick now, and row aboardt dot schooner, und ask him to take you home. Der rest,” he shouted with a look fore and aft, “keeps hid till I give der signal.”
The bustle of the burly fellow was so heavy and eager, so much of elbow, knee, and thrust went to the launching of that boat, that the two miserable Spaniards were swept into the job as a man is hurried along by a crowd. They scarce knew what they were to do even while they were doing it; and then in a minute it was done, the boat alongside, and Bol bundling both the Spaniards into her through the open gangway.
“In you shoomps! Dot vhas der vhay! Quick! If dot schooner vhas missed your life vhas not vorth der shirt on your pack. Oop mit dem oars, Antonio, und shove off. Avays you goes, mit our respects und vill der captain restore you to your friendts!”
I went to the side. On seeing me Antonio who, with an oar in his hand, stood up in the boat looking along the line of the brig’s rail with a wild, pale face, cried out in his incommunicable English:
“Señor Fielding, do not let Mr. Bol go away until he sees that the schooner will receive us. We have but these oars” he cried passionately, “no water, no provisions.”
“Pull for her—she’ll take you,” I cried.
“Roundt mit der topsail,” thundered Bol.
The seamen sprang to the braces, and in a very few moments had filled on the brig’s canvas. The vessel sat light on the water and quickly felt the impulse of her sails. The boat containing Antonio and Jorge slipped astern; the two wretches were not eventhenrowing; but the moment the brig got way one of them—it was Jorge, I think—yelled out like a woman; they threw their oars out and hysterically splashed the little tub of a boat toward the schooner.
There was no sea to hurt them. The swell ran firm and wide, rippling only to the brushing of the wind. I dreaded lest the schooner, on beholding our sudden show of men, should suspect—what with our visible brass pieces and the suggestive sheer of our hull—a piratic device, and make off. If that happened the Spaniards were lost; Bol certainly would not return to pick them up. The mere fancy of our leaving them out in this vast sea to horribly perish worked in me like ice in the blood, and as I watched I was all the while thinking, “What shall I do to save them if yonder schooner fills in a fright?”
But the schooner did not fill; that her people were amazed by our behavior I could not question, but they did not offer to run away. Possibly they thought we were executing some maneuver, and would shift our helm presently for the boat we had dispatched to them.
The Spaniards splashed along in their passion and fury of distress. Their boat was already a toy; they themselves dolls. They got alongside the schooner, and, seizing the glass, I watched them scramble over the rail, and continued to watch. They went up to the three men on the quarter-deck, and both fell to violently gesticulating and pointing at us. I could no longer tell which was which; one of them shook his fist at us, the other motioned with violent dramatic gestures toward the hold of the schooner. I might swear he was telling the men about the dollars, and furiously motioned that we might guess,ifwe watched him through the glass, what he was talking about.
Bol hauled the ensign down, and called to a man to roll it up.
“Vhas dot a neat little shob, Mr. Fielding?” said he, coming and standing beside me.
“Would not the schooner have taken the men without all this neatness?” I answered.
“Maybe and maybe not. Ve vhas not going to reesk it.”
“You have lost the boat. Why did you require the lady to leave the deck?”
“She vhas soft-hearted, und dis shob vhas to be neat und quiet. Look!” he roared suddenly; “dere swings der topsails. Down coomes der flag. Gif me der glass, Mr. Fielding.” He put his eye to the tube, and in a moment bawled, “Der boat drops astern; she vhas empty.”
He pitched the glass on to the skylight and uttered an extraordinary roar of laughter.
Half an hour later the schooner was no more than a shaft of white light down in the west, with Yan Bol singing out orders to trim the sails of the brig and head for the boat, whose bearings had been taken, that we might recover her.
Neveronce in all this while, and my story is covering many days, was I visited by the palest shadow of a scheme of release. And why? Because theschatz—the treasure—the dollars and I were one. All plans of escape provided that I left my dollars behind me. But I wanted my money. I had lived in a golden dream. The abandonment of the treasure was an unendurable consideration. I believe I could have faced death on board that brig with something of coolness. The contemplation of it would not have been frightful; the calling of the sea hardens the sensibilities and accustoms the soul to more things than the wonders of the Lord; but I could not consider with coolness the idea of the men possessing themselves of the fifteen tons of silver, burying the half-million dollars in the Island of Amsterdam, then perhaps being unable to find out where they had hidden the money, or hindered by who knows what of the unforeseen from ever getting to the island again.
I say I fell half mad whenever my head ran on that forecastle device. The thought of it regularly threw me into a fever. I have walked my cabin for a whole glass or watch at a time, as bad a murderer as any man can well be in heart only, killing the crew in imagination over and over.
Yet not the leanest vision of a scheme offered itself. Suppose I had attempted to recapture the brig by slaughtering the men after the manner proposed by Miss Aurora; by her stabbing them in the cabin while I engaged their attention, and then by her and me shooting the others; suppose this wild, ridiculous, horrid proposal practicable—all the crew being hove over the side—what was I to do with the brig, I, whose assistants would be a woman and a tall, clumsy, idiotic lad? Navigate her to the nearest port? Ay, but that was just what I durst not do if I wished to keep my dollars. Greaves had been strong on this point; he’d touch nowhere—rather reduce all hands to quarter allowance than touch, lest by entering orhovering off a port he’d court a visit that should carry him every dollar ashore.
Well, then, since I dared not convey the brig to a port, was I to wash about the sea with Miss Aurora and Jimmy for my crew, until I fell in with a ship willing to put me two or three men aboard? Yes, that sounds nicely; but what would be the risks before we fell in with a ship willing to assist? Many days, many weeks might pass before we sighted a sail, for I am writing of the year 1815, when the ocean we were afloat on ran for countless leagues bare to the sky, nearly all the traffic steering northward, Mozambique way.
But what was the good of this sort of speculation? The crew were alive; I was one to ten; I was without an idea; and every day was diminishing something of the meridians betwixt us and the Island of New Amsterdam.
I did not in this time give Miss Aurora a lesson in English. I do not remember that she asked me to give her a lesson. We had many long earnest conversations about our situation, by which she profited, for I spoke mainly in my own tongue. She did not favor me with another song, she nevermore asked for the fiddle, nor did it once occur to me to request her to oblige me with a recital in the rich and beautiful tongue of her nation. Yet she was now speaking English very fairly well. She was seldom at a loss, and conversation was easy without signs, nods, or gesticulations, saving an occasional shrug of her shoulders, the naturally impassioned action of her hands when she talked eagerly and hotly, and the many expressions of face which accompanied her speech.
She did not again offer to assassinate Bol and the others; she had read in my face what I thought of that proposal, and her fiery and scornful flinging from me because I would not consent was a flare of temper that was out before we next met. On one occasion, however, we quarreled rather warmly, and I was sulky with her afterward for some days. She told me that I thought more of my dollars than of her life. I colored up and answered that that was not true; I valued her life, and would restore her to her friends if I could; but I also valued my dollars. I had worked hard for them, and was not to be robbed by the blackguards forward of a considerable fortune.
“You think only of your dollars,” said she; “you do not scheme, because your dollars are in the way of every idea. Is this how an English cavalier should treat a poor, unhappy,shipwrecked lady? Señor Fielding, I should be first with you; nothing should occupy your attention but the resolution to release me from this horrid situation and the dangers which lie before us;” and then she towered with her figure, and swelled her breast and flashed her eyes at me.
There was more of truth in her words than I relished to hear from her lips, and it was this perhaps that angered me. I begged her to advise; she shrugged her shoulders, and with an arch sneer which rather improved than deformed her beauty, said that if I were a Spanish sailor I would be ashamed to ask counsel of a woman.
“If I were a Spanish sailor I would be ashamed of myself,” I said.
“Why do you not scheme to release us?”
“Scheme to release us? Shall I blow up the brig? That will make an end.”
“It would not be the Señorita Aurora, but the Cavalier Fielding and his Spanish dollars which would hinder that,” said she.
“If, by jumping overboard and swimming, I could put you in the way of reaching Madrid, I’d do so,” said I; “but it’s a long swim hereabouts to anywhere.”
“You would not jump overboard and leave your dollars,” said she. “If you were the gallant and respectable gentleman I have long supposed you, you would think of nothing but my deliverance. Why am I to be carried away to the extreme ends of the world? What is to become of me when your odious Hollanders and Englishmen have wrecked this brig?” and here she sank upon the table and sobbed.
“What am I to do?” I cried, not greatly moved by her tears; indeed, I was too angry with her to be affected by her sobs. I had used her very kindly; I had never failed in such rough sea courtesy as my profession permitted me the poor art of; I did not like her sneers at my love for my dollars; and I less liked the pinch or two of tart truth that acidulated her language. “What am I to do?” I cried. “Bol will not tranship you. He’ll speak no more vessels now the two Spaniards are gone. I can’t sneak you away in a boat. Let any land but that of Amsterdam Island heave into view and the sailors will slit my throat. Why do you lie sobbing upon that table, madam? Pray, hold up your head and listen to me. What was your scheme, pray? A hideous one, indeed; and one that would not profit us either. It would fail, were we devils enough to attempt it: and thenGod help you and me! Many are the saints, but none would then be powerful enough to serve you.”
She raised her head. The fire in her eyes was by no means dimmed by her tears. Her sobbing and posture had reddened her cheeks.
“The navigation of this brig is in your hands. Wreck her!” she exclaimed.
“And be drowned?”
“Wreck her in such a way that we shall not be drowned.”
“Come, you shall not teach me my business. If I am not a Spanish sailor, I’ll not take counsel of a woman either.”
She snapped her fingers at me, and showed her teeth in an angry smile; turned, and I thought was going to her berth. Instead, she stopped and looked at me over her shoulder, made a step, and her whole manner changed. Her demeanor was, all of a sudden, a sort of wild tenderness. Why do I call itthat? Because it suggested—the memory of it still suggests—the moment’s sportiveness of a tigress with its young. Her eyes softened: her face grew sweet with a look of pleading; she put herself into a posture of entreaty, her hands out-stretched and figure a little stooped. Acting, or no acting, it was as good as good can be. You would have said she loved me had you watched her eyes. The contrast between the rascally snap of the finger and this pose of appeal was sharp and strong; but how mean that stage for so rich a performance—the lifting, uncarpeted deck of a little, plain, ship’s cabin, with its austere furniture of table and lockers, and a skylight bleared with the grayness of the day without?
“Señor Fielding, letmebe first with you.”
Another reference to the dollars! It vexed me greatly, and saying, “It always has been so,” I gave her a cool bow and went on deck.
We had quarreled before, but lightly, for the most part, and were friends again in an hour. This quarrel, however, ran into two or three days. She would not leave me alone. Did I mean to scheme for our salvation? Was she to be first with me? Was I ashamed of myself to be devoured by avarice? What was the good of dollars to a dying man? and was I not a dying man if I did not rescue her and myself from the crew of the brig? I don’t say she used all the words I put into her mouth. No; she was not so fluentthenas all that; but I understood her very easily—rather too easily—when she sneered at me for thinking more of my dollars than of her.
Finding, however, that I continued resolutely sulky, answering her shortly, passing through the cabin instead of sitting with her as before and talking, she grew alarmed, felt that she had said too much, and made her peace. She made her peace by coming to my cabin. I was looking at a chart of the Southern Ocean when somebody knocked. My lady entered.
“Ave Maria! What will you think of me for coming to you thus and here? But my heart is too full of remorse for patience. Blessed Virgin! How long is half an hour when one is impatient! And I have been waiting for half an hour outside in the cabin. I have angered you, and I am sorry. You have been good to me, and you are my friend. And how do I show my gratitude? Forgive me, señor;” and with that she put out her hand.
It was very true that Yan Bol had declared the men would speak no ship until the silver was out of the brig. And in my opinion they were right. As we made for the Island of New Amsterdam we increased the chance of falling in with war-ships and privateers. For Amsterdam Island is in the Indian Ocean, at the southern limit of those waters, it is true, and in those times many vagabond vessels were to be found in the Indian Ocean on the lookout for the big rich ships, the tea waggons and spice and silk carriers bound to and from China and the Indies.
But it so happened that after we had lost sight of the little schooner which had taken the two Spaniards aboard, we met with no other sail—none, I mean, within reach of the bunting or speaking trumpet. At long intervals a tip of white showed in some blue recess of that sea, infinitely remote, pale as a little light that lives and dies and lives again while you look. Never before had the measurelessness of the ocean affected me as now. The spirits of vastness and loneliness which came shaping themselves to the imagination out of those month-wide breasts and secret solitudes of brine grew overwhelming to the mind—to my mind I should say; and often of a night when the deck was quiet and the sea black and the stars were shining, I’d feel the oppression of a mighty presence—of something huge and near.
And then consider the doses of salt water I had swallowed and was yet swallowing! I was fresh from very many months of the sea when I was picked up off an oar in the Channel and swept outward again into the world where the salt spits like a wildcat, and where the sound of the wind is not as its noise ashore;and I was still at sea with months of water before me in any case if I was not put an end to.
So, even had the crew been willing to speak a ship that the lady Aurora might be transferred, no opportunity to do so came along; nothing hove in sight but a star of sail in the liquid distance, andthisonly at long, long intervals.
I’ll not tell you of the weather we fell in with between Cape Horn and the distant island we were steering for; what do you care about the weather and the weather of so long ago as Waterloo year? Otherwise I could fill you several pages with pictures of hard gales, in one of which the brig lay for a wild, terrifying time with her lee rail under, her hull scarce to be seen for the smother that filled her decks, and I could please you with pictures of soft calms in which our stem tranquilly broke the cold gray water that reflected on either hand of the vessel the silver sheen of her overhanging wings; and I could give you pictures of merry breezes that swept us onward fast as the melting head of the blue surge itself ran. Enough!
One afternoon I sat upon the edge of the skylight frame with my arms folded and my eyes fixed upon the sea. The sun was warm, the breeze brisk. A pleasanter day had not shone upon us for a fortnight past. My lady Aurora seated on a cabin chair at a little distance from me was intent on an English book, one of the new volumes which had belonged to Greaves. Her posture was very easy and reposeful; her dark eyes wandered slowly down the printed page; often she was puzzled by the meaning of a word and frowned at it; you would have supposed her a person without a single cause for anxiety, a lady who was sailing to her home, which might now not be very far off.
Yan Bol was in charge. He had been standing for some considerable time beside the wheel, occasionally exchanging a sentence in guttural Dutch with Wirtz, who held the spokes. At last he came along the deck and stood in front of me.
“Vhat might hov been der situation of der brick at noon, Mr. Fielding?” he inquired.
I gave him the ship’s place.
“Dot vhas close!” he said.
“It was,” I answered.
“Donnerwetter!” he thundered, “der island vhas aboardt!” and he looked ahead at the sea as though he expected to behold the Island of New Amsterdam.
The lady Aurora, leaving the book opened upon her lap, raised her eyes and listened.
“How close vhas der island, Mr. Fielding?”
“Roughly, sixty leagues.”
“Den, she vhas here to-morrow?”
“That is as the wind wills,” said I.
He went forward by twenty or thirty paces, and putting his hand to the side of his mouth—not that his voice should carry the better, but to qualify the liberty he was taking by making an “aside” of it, so to speak, to the eye—he called to Galen, Meehan, and two others who were on forecastle:
“Poys, she vhas here to-morrow. Der distance vhas sixty leagues at dinner-time.”
Galen accepted the news with a heavy Dutch flourish of his hand. Yan Bol returned to me. In the minute or two of his going forward I had been thinking, and with the swiftness of thought had concluded to ask him certain questions.
“Do you mean to bury the silver?”
“Dot vhas der scheme.”
“You will need to dig wide and deep if your pit is to contain all those cases.”
“Yaw, dot vhas so.”
“What are you going to dig your pit with?”
“Dere vhas two shovels in der fore-peak. Whateffer else vhas useful ve takes mit us.”
“Do you object to my asking you these questions?”
“Nine, nine, Mr. Fielding,” he answered, “you vhas von of us, ve hope. Two tons of der silver vhas yours. Vhas it not right you should know vhat vhas to become of her?”
“Then, since in all probability we shall be off the island some time to-morrow, I’d be glad to hear now how you mean to go to work. I have asked no questions before. I had expected that you would come to me with your arrangements, and for advice.”
“Vhat advice vhas vanted? A man vhas green dot requires to be learnt how to make a hole in der earth, und put his money into it, und cover it oop.”
“You will need to make a very big pit.”
“Yaw, she vhas a wide und deep pit dot ve dig.”
“How long d’ye reckon that it will take you to dig that pit with such tools as you have?”
“Dere vhas no reckoning. Ve gets ashore und falls ter verk.”
The lady Aurora closed her book, arose, brought her chair close to the skylight, and reseated herself. Bol looked at her, then fastened his eyes upon me.
“Am I to be left in charge of the brig?”
“You vhas, Mr. Fielding.”
“What of a crew do you mean to allow me? It may come on to blow hard while you are on shore.”
“Dere vhas crew enough,” said he, with a queer expression in his eyes.
“How many?” I demanded sternly.
“Dere vhas four, und dere vhas der ladt, Jim. Dot vhas men enough for der braces,” said he, looking up at the sails.
“Four men and the boy,” said I aloud and musingly; “well, I daresay I shall be able to manage with four men and the boy.”
“Dere vhas yourself to gount.”
“Oh, I do not forget myself. Do you take charge of the landing and burial of the money?”
“Yaw, me himself. I likes to know vhere she lies.”
“You will pull around the island and reconnoiter first, I suppose, before you land?”
“Vhat vhas dot?”
“Before landing the silver you will take care to make sure there is nobody upon the island?That’swhat I mean. Risk your own share, if you like, but my two tons must lie till I fetch them.”
“She vhas an uninhabited island mitout house or foodt. Dot vhas certain sure. But we foorst takes a look, Mr. Fielding. Oh, yaw, by Cott, we foorst takes a look.”
“You have come a thundering long way to hide this money.” He nodded. “And there’s the devil’s own trouble to be taken afterward. First the voyage from here to Sydney; then the trusting of Teach’s friend, Max Lampton, with this big, rich secret; then supposingthatto prove all right, the return to Amsterdam Island—this fine brig, meanwhile, having been cast away—in some crazy little schooner, with the risks of a trip to New Holland in a bottom that may drop out under the weight of fifteen tons of silver.”
“Ve vhas not all dom’d fools,” said he, with a slow smile; “dere vhas no grazy bottoms mit us. Dis brig vhas fine, yaw,” said he, with a leisurely look round the deck, “but she must go.”
“It’s the maddest scheme that even sailors ever lighted upon,” said I, “but let’s have the rest of it. Having dug your pit you come back for the cargo?”
“Yaw.”
“It may take you a day to dig your pit.”
“And b’raps two,” said he.
“You will load about four tons a journey.”
“Call her five,” said he.
Here I observed that Galen, Teach, and one or two others having observed the big Dutchman and me close and earnest, yet very audible in this talk, had approached with sneaking steps to within earshot, where they feigned to occupy themselves, one in coiling down a rope, another in dipping for a drink out of the scuttle-butt, and so on. This decided me to drop the subject.
I walked to a corner of the deck called the starboard quarter, and folding my arms leaned against the bulwarks. A dim and faint idea had come to me in those few instants of time when Yan Bol went forward and called out to his mates on the forecastle with his immense, hairy, square hand beside his mouth, and this idea had slightly brightened while I questioned him. It was an idea that would be quite glorious if successful; otherwise it would be a forlorn and beggarly idea, a treacherous, cut-throat idea, exactly fit to play my heavy stake of silver and the Spanish maid into the hands of the men, and to secure me the quickest exit that could be contrived by the knife or the yardarm.
Madam Aurora watched me. I wish you were a man, thought I. Are you a person to fail one in a supremely critical hour? You offered to stick three men in the back; have you the courage to stick one man face to face?
I regarded her steadfastly, reflecting. I better remember her on that particular afternoon than at any former time. Would you like to know how she was dressed? I will tell you exactly. She wore a seaman’s plain cloth jacket, fitted by her own hands to her figure; it sat well and was tight and comfortable for those latitudes. She wore the dress she had been clad in when we took her off the island; she had turned it, or in some fashion rearranged it, and it was no longer the hideous garment I had thought it. She wore a cloth cap; it sat like a turban upon her thick, black hair, and laugh now, if you will! she wore a pair of sailor’s shoes, whence you will guess that what grace oflittlenessshe had, lay in those hands of hers I have admired so often. Not at all.Her foot was perfectly proportioned to her hand. She had small, delicately-shaped, highly-arched, and altogether lovely feet. The shoes she wore I had found in the second of the slop-chests; they were embellished with buckles; the Dutch shopman probably stowed them away by mistake; they might have been designed for some dandy lad of a Batavian quarter-deck; they weresmall, and small theymusthave been, for they fitted Aurora.
This is the picture of her as she sat, intently regarded by me, who lay against the rail with folded arms, deeply considering. Teach and the others had sneaked forward again. Bol stumped the weather gangway. He was usually respectful enough, whenever I came on deck, to carry his vast carcass to a humbler part of the brig than I occupied. Miss Aurora rose and walked up to me.
“What are you thinking about?” said she, speaking in her own way, a way I have not yet attempted to write, and shall not here give. “Do I look ill, that you stare at me?”
“I am thinking.”
“I am not blind. I might suppose I saw mischief in your face, if I thought you capable of mischief.”
A pair of slow but shrewd Dutch eyes, and a pair of big but attentive Dutch ears overtopped the spokes of the wheel. I made her glance at Wirtz by myself looking at him. She understood the meaning in my face, and returned to her chair. I crossed the deck, and passing my arm round a lee backstay, gazed at the horizon ahead, thinking with all my might.
I remained on deck about half an hour, and then went below. I took a book out of the shelf in my berth, and seated myself at the cabin table, as far removed as possible from the skylight, but not out of sight of one who should peer through the glass; the size of the cabin did not admit of such concealment. After the lapse of a few minutes I was joined by Miss Aurora, who pulled off her cap and placed herself beside me.
There could be nothing suspicious in our sitting close together. Many a time had we sat very close together indeed, at that cabin table, under the skylight, when I was teaching her to speak the English language, and wondering whether, underothercircumstances, I should discover myself to be rather in love with this fine young Spanish woman; and many a time had the men looked down and observed us, and grinned, I have no doubt, and uttered such remarks, one to another, as the very low level of their forecastle intelligence would suggest.
“What has caused you to stare at me, Señor Fielding?”
“I have wished to satisfy myself that you are to be trusted.”
“Ave Maria!Trusted! Do not wrap up your meaning. I dislike people who wrap up their meaning.”
“Could you kill a man?”
“For my honor and for my liberty, yes,” she replied after a short silence, rearing herself in her swelling way, and flashing one of her wicked looks at me.
“Would you faint when you had killed him?”
Her manner instantly changed. She slightly shrugged her shoulders and answered, “A little thing has made me faint. At Acapulco I slept at a friend’s house. I awoke, and by the moonlight saw a mouse upon my bed, after which I remember no more. But nothing heroic, nothing exalted in horror, would make me faint, I think. I could look upon a man slain by me for my liberty or for my honor without swooning.” This was, in effect, her answer to my question.
“Have you ever killed a man?” said I.
“No,” she answered hotly; “but when he is ready for me I shall be ready for him;” and, unbuttoning the breast of her coat, she thrust her hand into the pocket of her gown and pulled out a poniard or stiletto. It was a blue, gleaming blade, about seven or eight inches long, sheathed in bright metal, with a little ivory hilt that sparkled with some sort of embellishment of gem or ore. In all the time we had been associated she had never once given me to know that she went armed; but I afterward discovered she was a young woman who knew how to keep a secret.
“Hide that thing!” I cried with a glance at the skylight.
She pocketed it, giving me a fiery nod. “Never,” said she, “have you asked me whether I was afraid to be alone with Jorge and Antonio on the island.Vaya!Do your English ladies secrete knives about them? It is a wise custom. But you wish to find out if I am to be trusted, if I can kill a man for my liberty or for my honor. Try me,” she cried, snapping her fingers as she waved her hand close to my face.
“I have a scheme,” said I, “for getting away with the treasure and the brig and you.”
“The treasure first,” she exclaimed, smiling till her face looked to be lighted up with her white teeth. “You will have to be quick. Is not to-morrow the day of your Amsterdam Island?”
“Ask the wind that question,” I answered.
“What is your scheme?”
“It is a magnificent scheme providing it succeeds. If it does not succeed better had we never been born. Shall we desperately attempt it?”
“Qué es eso—what is it? what is it?” she cried; and then a passion of excitement seized her, and her hands trembled.
“I will tell you the scheme in a minute. It depends not upon me and you only. I shall require the help of the lad, Jimmy. Is he to be trusted?”
“Your scheme—your scheme!”
“Is he to be trusted?” I continued, feigning to read aloud from the book that was before me, for I had thought I heard a man stop in his walk overhead. “My scheme is not to be thought of unless this youth will help us. You are a very observant lady. I have often seen you look attentively at Jimmy.”
“Vaya!If I have looked at him it was without thought, and because I had nothing else to do. What a face to gaze at attentively!”
“Do you think he is to be trusted?”
“You continue to ask me that question,” she exclaimed, petulantly twisting her prayer-ring as though hotly engaged in the aves. “First tell me your scheme, and then I will give you my opinion on Jimmy’s trustworthiness.”
On this, feigning to read aloud to her while I talked, that anyone above might suppose we were at our old game of playing at school, I communicated my scheme to her. A scheme it was: a distinct idea and project of deliverance; but several conditions, partly of chance, partly of contrivance, must attend its success. She listened eagerly, never removing her eyes from me, and once she was so well pleased that she clapped her hands and fell back with a loud laugh. This was not a behavior to object to. No man, warily observing us, would guess our talk, the significance of this long and intimate cabin consultation, from the hard laughter of the señorita, and the merry noise of the clapping of her hands. In truth I never could have imagined such spirit in a woman. She had clapped her hands at the one feature whose disclosure would have turned another woman faint, she being to act in it. It was this stroke of our projected business that had made the cabin ring with her laughter.
“How long will the work occupy?” said I.
“It matters not,” she answered. “I will take no rest until I have finished it.”
“You will not, however, begin until I have talked with Jimmy? If I see reason to distrust him, we must think of another plan.”
“Promise him plenty of dollars if he is faithful,” said she, “and threaten him with death if he fails you.”
We continued for some time longer to talk over my scheme. I then walked to the stand of arms, and looked, with much irresolution in my mind, at the muskets and the cutlasses, and at several pistols hanging near. My instincts cautioned me to disturb nothing.
“No,” said I, wheeling round to the lady; “those weapons must remain as they are. The magazine is down there,” said I, pointing to a part of the deck that formed the ceiling of a small compartment just forward of the lazarette. “It is entered by that hatch, and, therefore, if the men require ammunition—and it is likely as not they’ll go ashore armed—they must pass through this cabin to get at the magazine. Nothing must be disturbed.”
At this point the lad arrived to prepare our supper. Miss Aurora walked to her berth. I sat upon a locker and watched the youth, as he went round the table furnishing it for the meal. I have elsewhere described him. Since the date to which that description belongs he appeared to have grown somewhat; he had broadened; his face had gathered from the dye of the weather something of the manly look of the sailor; but that was all. It was still a stupid, insipid, grinning face. He breathed hard, and put down the knives and forks and plates with the characteristic energy of a weak-minded youth who is always very much in earnest. He was more than usually in earnest now, because I watched him. I took the altitude of his head, and guessed him taller than I, who was a pretty big chap, too. I took a view of his hands. Methought they fell not far short of Yan Bol’s in magnitude. They were not fat, like the hands of Yan Bol; on the contrary, they were bony and rugged with muscle and veins. They were hands to hold on with—to hit hard with.
Presently, reflection in me became a torment; nay, without straining words, I may say that it rose into anguish. Should I put my life and the life of the girl into the hands of that youth, who was little more than an idiot? I waited until he had prepared the table for supper. I could then endure the agony of irresolution no longer, and I rose and walked to my berth, bidding him follow me. When he was entered I shut the door.He stared at me, slightly grinning, but his look had a little of wonder and fear in it.
“Jimmy,” said I, “you’re often in the forecastle, aren’t you? You follow the talk of the men, I guess. Where do you sling your hammock?”
“In the eyes, master.”
“You hear the men talk. Do you understand ’em?”
“Why, ay,” he answered, staring at me without a wink from the full, knock-kneed, muscular stature of him; for he stood before me as a soldier—as he used to stand before Greaves when he received a lesson on the difference of dishes.
“What’s going to happen to this brig?”
“Why, master, they’re going to unload the silver and hide it in Amsterdam Island; and then we’re a-going to sail away for the coast of New Holland, where you’re to wreck us; and then we comes back for the money.”
“After?”
“Dunno what’s going to happen after.”
“What’s to be your share of the dollars?”
“There’s been nary word said about my share, master.”
“D’ye know why?”
“’Cos they don’t mean to give me none.”
“That’s so. There’s ne’er a dollar meant for you, Jimmy. Don’t you think that’s hard?”
“I’m a poor lad, master. What comes, comes to the likes of me. When the captain died I lost my friend;” and grasping his fingers he cracked his joints one after another, yielding first on one leg and then on the other, as though he was about to break into a main-deck double shuffle.
“Did Captain Greaves ever promise you a share?”
“No, master.”
“But you have a claim, and he was not the man to have overlooked it. D’ye remember Galloon?”
“Remember him, master? Remember Galloon?” said he, lowering his voice.
“Galloon was an honest dog. Had he been able to speak, his advice to you would always have been ‘Jimmy, be honest.’”
He looked somewhat wild and scared, as though he imagined I was going to charge him with a wrong.
“It’ll be a wicked act to cast this fine brig away, don’t you think? Galloon wouldn’t have loved ye for helping in such a job.”
“It’ll be no job of mine, master.”
“Both Galloon and Captain Greaves,” said I, “would have wished you to be on the right side, no matter whose side it might happen to be. Are you on the right side or the wrong side? Are you on the side where home lies, where a share of the dollars lies, where safety lies; or are you on the side where New Holland lies, where there are no dollars for you, where there’s no home for you, and where you may be finding a gibbet as one who helped to cast a ship away?—if the men don’t first chuck you overboard as being in the road.”
He continued to listen with increasing eagerness and agitation, cracking his joints again and again, while he advanced his head, setting his mouth in the form of a half-arrested yawn. When I had ceased he nodded repeatedly, maintaining silence, with a face that seemed to mark him too full for utterance. He, then, in stammering and choking voice, exclaimed, while a grotesque smile touched his countenance into a dim intelligence, even as the eastern obscurity is tinctured by the lunar dawn:
“Master, I sees yer meaning. I aint on the side where the gibbet is. I would sail round the world with you, master.”
Twenty minutes later he followed me out of my berth, and went on deck to fetch the cabin supper from the galley.
“Are you satisfied?” said the lady Aurora, who was seated at the table.
“Perfectly,” I answered.
I hadhoped to make the Island of Amsterdam next day; had the wind prospered we should have sighted it according to my reckoning; but in the morning watch, a little after daybreak, the breeze fell, shifted, and came on to blow ahead in hard rain squalls.
Yan Bol aroused me. I was sleeping soundly. I had been busy throughout the long night—busy after a manner of secrecy that had rendered my toil not less exhausting to my mind than to my body. Throughout the night I had been occupied with the boy Jimmy in paying furtive visits to the magazine, and with the help of the lad I had stowed away in a cabin locker a few round shot, cartridges for the long gun aft, some canister, pistols which I had loaded, and to whose primings I had carefully looked, a few brace of handcuffs, and some bilboes or legirons, such as Greaves had obliged Mr. Van Laar to sit in.
This work had run into hours, because I had to await opportunities to carry it on—the changes of the watch, men’s movements above—and throughout it was the same as though a musket had been leveled at my head, so frightful was the peril, so deadly the consequences of detection. For besides the risk of my movements aft exciting attention, there was the chance of Jimmy being missed forward. Luckily he was what is termed at sea “an idler,” and an idler at sea has “all night in.” No man can tell by merely looking at a hammock whether it is occupied or not, and I counted upon such of the men as might give the lad a thought believing that he lay buried in his canvas bag in the eyes of the brig.
Yan Bol aroused me. I went on deck and found a sallow, roaring, wet morning. The brig was heading points off her course, bursting in smoke through the headlong leap of the surge, with the topsail yards on the caps, reef tackles hauled out, a number of men rolling up the mainsail, and two on the main and two on the fore struggling with the wet, bladder-like topgallant sails.
I was bitterly vexed. Postponement might mean frustration. My scheme was ready for instant execution; my heart was hot as a madman’s tohaveat the project and accomplish it; and now I might be obliged to wait a month and perhaps as long again as a month! For here was just the sort of wind to blow us half-way back the distance we had already measured; and I could do nothing until the brig was off Amsterdam Island, the weather quiet, the main topsail to the mast, and Bol and the longboat ashore.
There was nothing, however, to be done beyond heaving the brig to under a rag of main staysail, and letting her lie with no more way than she would get from the hurl of the seas and the gale up aloft.
And yet, in one sense, this foul weather was as fortunate a thing as could have happened; I’ll tell you why. I had taken care to persuade Yan Bol that I had turned over the crew’s scheme of burying the money, had thought better of it, was, indeed, now thinking well of it as, on the whole, the easiest way to secure the treasure for a method of distribution to be afterward considered; but I had never flattered myself that he believed me fully sincere. In fact, I had shown too much amazement at the start, reasoned against the imbecile project toovehemently afterward. But now, when this change of weather came, my disappointment was so great, my mortification so keen, that even Yan Bol, with his slow eyes, and heavy, dull, ruminant intellect could not look me in the face and mistake.
We stood together while the men rolled the canvas up, their hoarse cries, as they triced up the bunts, going down the gale like the yells of gulls. The rain swept us in horizontal lines; the water smoked the length of the brig as though her metal sheathing were red hot; the Dutchman’s cap of fur clung to his big head like a huge, over-ripe fig. The mist of the sudden gale boiled round the sea line, and we labored in the commotion of our horizon, whose semi-diameter could have been measured by a twenty-four pounder.
“Holy Sacrament!” roared Yan Bol in Dutch. “Dis vhas der vindt to make anchells of men!” and he shook his immense fist at the windward ocean, and thundered out, “Nimin dich der Teufel, as der Schermans say!”
“Han’t I had enough of this?” I shouted, sweeping my hand round the dirty, freckled green of the seas, which were beginning to heap themselves with true oceanic weight out of the granite shadow of the wet. “I’d had months of it when I was picked up off the oar, and I’ve had months of it since, and months of it remain.” And I bawled to him that we wanted no more hindrances from the weather, that it was time the dollars were buried, that it was time, indeed, we were thrashing the brig to that part of the Australian coast where we should agree to wreck her. “I want my money,” I cried. “I want to settle down ashore.”
“Vhere vhas ve bound to now?”
“Dead west and all the way back again.”
“Vy zyn al verdom’d! Vere vhas der island?”
“Somewhere close. The brig must be kept thus while it blows on end. I may have overshot the mark, and the island may be leeward of us now—so keep your weather eye lifting.”
Together we stormed at the disappointment awhile in this fashion, I more hotly than he, and with more sincerity, perhaps, for I was maddened by the weather. The brig was reduced, as I have said, to a fragment of staysail, but she was light, and blew to leeward like a cask. I threw the log-ship over the weather quarter, and the line stood out to windward like the warp of a fisherman’s trawl. For three days and three nights it continued to blow, and we to drift. The flying sky blackened low down over the sea, and the surges came out like cliffs from the windward shadow. I obtained no sights, and knew not our situation. I never could at any time have been cocksure of the position of the brig; the mariner, in those times, went to sea but poorly equipped with nautical instruments. His Hadley’s quadrant was indeed an improvement upon the cross-staff of his forefathers, and he had a chronometer or watch which those who went before him were not so fortunate as to possess; not because watches of exquisite workmanship were not to be procured, but because nobody had thought of Greenwich time. But the sailor of 1815 was nevertheless not equipped as the sailor of to-day is. Charts were misleading; the ocean current worked its own sweet will with a man; consequently, I am not ashamed to own that I never could have been cocksure of the brig in reference to land, and more particularly to such a speck of land as Amsterdam Island makes, as you shall observe by casting your eye on the chart. The fear that the vast lump of rock might be to leeward in the thickness kept me terribly anxious. I was hour after hour on deck. My anxiety went infinitely deeper than the possible adjacency of the island; but the crew believed that I was only worried for the safety of the brig; and this, as I had reason to know, raised me high in their opinion.
So that, as I say, the foul weather blew for a useful purpose; but, by delaying me, it involved risks. Jimmy had my secret; he was exactly acquainted with my scheme. Suppose the half-witted fellow should babble; nay, suppose he should talk in his sleep! When I had explained my project to him I believed that the brig would be off the island next day. It was wonderful that my hair should have retained its color; that the machinery of my brain should have worked with its established nimbleness.That, I say, was wonderful, considering the bitter anxieties of the navigation, the fear of Jimmy involuntarily or unconsciously betraying me, the conviction that I was a dead man if that happened, and that the lady Aurora would be barbarously used through rage and the spirit of revenge and brutal wantonness.
Fine weather came at last. It was the fifth day of our westerly drift. The sea flattened and opened, the sky cleared, the wind fell dead, and then, over the green rounds of the swell, there blew a draught of air from the northwest. The sun shone brightly before noon. I got a good observation, and calculated our distance at about two hundred miles from the island. All sail was heaped upon the brig, every studdingsail boom run out, everything that would draw mast-headed; and, at four o’clock of that afternoon, the little ship was sweeping through it at twelve knots, roaring to the drag of a huge lower studding sail, every tack and sheet, every backstay and halliard taut as a harp-string and shrill with the song of the wind; with all hands standing by watching for something to blow away, and ready to shorten sail, should the yawning hurl of the fabric grow too fierce for spars and spokes.
You know the month; the date I forget. The day, I recollect, was a Friday. It had been a very dark night, blowing fresh down to about the hour of eleven, during which time we had given the brig all her legs, forcing her to her best with large reefless breasts of canvas. Not a star showed all through the night. An eager lookout was kept for the Island of New Amsterdam, which, I guessed, should be visible, were there daylight to disclose it.
It is a lofty mass of land, rising amidships to an altitude of near three thousand feet; and a frequent heave of the log had assured me that already, in these hours of darkness, we were within its horizon. I swept the sea line. It was all black, smoky gloom. No deeper dye than that of the universal shadow of the night was visible. Toward midnight the wind slackened. We rolled on a deep-breasted heave of swell, which, I reckoned, would be raising a mighty smother of yeast at those points and bases of iron terraces which confronted this long lift of ocean. The swollen sails dropped; the brig flapped along like a homeward-bound crow at sunset. Amid intervals of silence I strained my ears, but not the most distant noise of breakers did I catch.