CHAPTER XXXIIA TRAGEDY
How long it was before I fell asleep I cannot say. The humming of the wake racing away close outside was noisy; the light cargo in the steerage creaked and strained, and the thump of the rudder was frequent, and sometimes startling. I was aroused by a continuous knocking on the bulkhead. It was pitch-dark, despite a small sliding dance of stars in the porthole glass. I thought the knocking was upon my door, and cried out, ‘What is it?’ It did not cease; and gathering by this time that it proceeded from the bulkhead that divided the cabins, I jumped out of my bunk and beat upon the boards to let Miss Temple know I heard her.
I called; but though I caught her voice, I could not distinguish her utterance. I had turned in partially clothed, and groping my way to the door, stepped forth and knockedupon her cabin. The handle was touched and I was sensible that the girl’s door was ajar.
‘Are you there, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘Yes. What is the matter?’
‘Did not you hear a pistol-shot?’
‘No,’ I cried.
‘I am certain a firearm has been discharged,’ she exclaimed.
‘Stay a bit,’ said I. ‘I will see if anything is wrong, and let you know.’
After some groping, I succeeded in lighting the candle in my lantern; and then slipping on my shoes, I made for the hatch ladder, which I was able to see by leaving my cabin door open. I entered the cuddy and listened. The lamp had been extinguished; but a sort of spectral illumination of stars and white water came sifting through the skylight and the port-holes and the little windows in the cuddy front, and I was able to determine the outline of objects. All was right in this interior, so far as I could tell. I listened; but not so much as a footfall sounded upon the upper deck, not a note of human voice or movement of men forward. The barque was sweeping through the seas bravely, and theatmosphere of the cuddy was vibratory with the resonant cries of the wind up aloft.
I made for the cuddy door and looked out; nothing stirred on the quarter-deck that ran pallid into the impenetrable shadow past the waist. I returned to the companion steps, which I mounted, and stood in the hatch a moment or two. There was nobody on the poop saving the man at the helm. I stepped over to him and said, ‘Where’s the captain?’
‘He’s gone below,’ he answered; ‘he told me he wouldn’t be long.’
‘When did he leave the deck?’
‘Seven or eight minutes ago, belike.’
‘Did you hear a noise just now that resembled a pistol-shot?’ I inquired.
‘No, sir,’ he answered. ‘But who’s to hear anything atop of this here shindy of wind and water?’
‘That’s true,’ I exclaimed. ‘I doubt if the noise will have meant more than a fall of something below. It is the lady who heard the sound, and I’ve just stepped up to see what it might mean. It’s to be hoped the captain won’t linger. This is not a breeze in which to leave a ship in charge of her helmsman only.’
And indeed the little craft wanted too much watching on the part of the fellow to suffer him to talk or to permit of my calling off his attention from his duty. I resolved to wait, that there might be some sort of lookout kept whilst the captain stayed below. The breeze had freshened, I thought, since I left the deck; there was a dim windy look, moreover, all away out to starboard; and the barque close hauled was making the wind to come as hard again as it was blowing, in fact, through her thrusting, plunging, nimble manner of looking up into it. The mainsail is too much for her, thought I; it should be furled. There is a staysail or two too many, also; and that top-gallant sail will have to come in anon, if the look of the sky out yonder means what it threatens.
Five minutes passed, but the captain did not make his appearance. The sound that Miss Temple had heard was beginning to work an ugly fancy in my mind. I stepped aft to the wheel.
‘Did the captain tell you why he was going below?’
‘No, sir,’ was the answer. ‘He’d been standing for about a quarter of an hour stockstill; then he comes soddenly in a sort o’ run to the binnacle, takes a look at the card, and says: “Keep her as she goes; nothing off: see to it! I shan’t be long.” That was all.’
At that instant the wind breezed up in a gust that came in a long howl over the weather rail, and the little vessel bowed down to it till the smother alongside looked to be up to the covering-board.
‘No use waiting for the captain,’ said I, made irritable by anxiety; ‘we shall have the masts out of her if we don’t mind our eye;’ and running forward, I shouted at the top of my voice: ‘Lay aft and haul up the mainsail!’
In a moment the watch came tumbling out of the darkness forward. Their manner of rushing gave me to know that they had been standing by for the order to shorten sail, and were wondering why it had not been delivered sooner.
‘Furl it, lads,’ I shouted, ‘when you’ve hauled it up; but first get your maintopgallant staysail hauled down. I must find out what has become of the captain.’
Without losing another moment, I ran into the cuddy and knocked upon the door ofthe captain’s cabin. No answer was returned. I knocked again, thundering with my fist; then tried the handle, and found the door locked. ‘Good God!’ thought I, ‘the man has shot himself.Thatwill be the meaning of the sound Miss Temple heard.’ As I turned for a moment, utterly at a loss how to act, the girl rose through the hatch close to where I stood. She held in her hand the lantern I had left alight in my berth.
‘What has happened?’ she cried.
‘I have no notion as yet,’ I responded; ‘but I fear the captain has shot himself. Let me take that lantern from you.’
I swiftly hitched it by its laniard to a hook in a stanchion, noticing as I did so that she had completely dressed herself.
‘Remain here for the present, will you?’ I went on. ‘I must go on deck—there is no one to give orders to the men.’
I ran up the steps, and perceived the shadowy shapes of the seamen ascending the shrouds to lay out upon the main yard.
‘Who is that there?’ I called, observing a dark figure standing near the main hatch.
‘Me—Wilkins, sir.’
‘Jump forward, Wilkins,’ I shouted, ‘andcall Mr. Lush. Tell him I want him aft—that I’m afraid something serious has happened; in fact, rout up all hands. We shall be having to reef down shortly.’
The fellow sped forwards. It had been no passing gust that had bowed the barque down, but a real increase in the weight of wind; and by this time, knowing fairly well how the gear led, I let go the maintopgallant halliards, and then ran aft to the mizzen topmast staysail halliards, and was dragging with my single pair of hands upon the downhaul, when the carpenter came up to me, followed by the rest of the watch below.
‘What’s gone wrong?’ he said.
‘I believe the captain has shot himself. His cabin door is locked, and we have yet to discover that he has committed suicide. The wind freshens, the ship wants watching, and there is nobody to see to her. Will you take charge? I’ll wait for you in the cabin.’
What expression a light cast upon his countenance might have shown my news produced in it I know not; there was a pause in him, as of sulky astonishment, but he said nothing. He mounted the poop ladder; and I entered the cuddy, catching the sound as Idid so of the men on the main yard chorusing as they triced up the bunt of the sail, along with a sudden roar from the carpenter to clew up the main-topgallant-sail and furl it. The candle end burning in the lantern made but a wretched light, as you will suppose. Close beside it, in such radiance as it emitted, stood Miss Temple, white as stone, and her eyes wide and luminous with alarm.
‘Is the vessel in danger?’ she asked.
‘Oh dear, no,’ I replied; ‘the breeze has freshened considerably, and the men are shortening sail. But this light is truly abominable. We shall require to be able to see clearly presently.’ And with that I took out the candle and lighted the cabin lamp with it.
‘I have been every moment expecting to see that door open, andhisfigure creep out!’ said Miss Temple, pointing with a shudder, and without looking, towards the captain’s berth. ‘Do you believe he has shot himself?’
‘Not a doubt of it. Why should his door be locked? I should know he has destroyed himself without being able to make a guess at his method of doing so, but for your saying that you heard the report of a pistol.’
‘I assuredly heard it, Mr. Dugdale. I was awake. I have not slept since I lay down. The sound was like the crack of a whip over my head.’
Just then the carpenter roared out some fresh orders. The barque, relieved of her mainsail and topgallant-sail, had recovered from her perilous heel, and was thrashing through it with what seemed a stubborn erectness of spar after the recent wild slope of her masts. The sea was rising, and the vessel was beginning to pitch with some spite in the chopping and smiting shear of her clipper bows, from which the surge recoiled in thunder, washing aft in boiling spume with a sound like the fall of the hail and rain of an electric storm. I could tell without needing to look that Mr. Lush’s latest order concerned the reefing of the foretopsail. At all events, he had his little ship well in hand, and the whole of the vessel’s small crew were on deck to run about to his directions, and there was some comfort to be got out of knowing this.
To satisfy a small doubt that had arisen, I stepped once again over to the captain’s cabin and hammered loud and long upon thedoor, shouting out his name, and then trying the handle; but to no purpose.
‘For what new horrors are we reserved?’ cried Miss Temple. ‘Shall we ever escape with our lives? How much has been compressed within the last few days: the dead body on the wreck—the drowning of the poor lieutenant—the loss, perhaps, of Mr. Colledge and the sailors in the man-of-war’s boat—and now this!’ she cried, bringing her hands to her face with a sudden convulsive, tearless sob; then looking at me she said: ‘If Captain Braine has killed himself, what is to follow?’
‘Rio,’ I answered. ‘I shall carry the ship there straight. Thank God for such knowledge of navigation as I possess! I trust the captain may not have killed himself; but if he has done so, it will make for our good. He was a madman, and it was impossible from hour to hour to be sure of his intentions.’
‘But, Mr. Dugdale, there will be no head to the ship if the captain be dead. Who, then, is to control the crew—this crew of convicts and mutineers and—and?’——
‘It was a madman who drew that picture,’ said I. ‘I suspect he is as correct in his description of his crew as in his description ofhis treasure. The men are without a navigator; they can do nothing without me. If they are true Jacks, they are already sick of the voyage, and will be glad to have a port under their lee, with the promise of a jaunt ashore and fresh articles to sign on another ship’s capstan.’
We continued talking thus; presently I heard the seamen chorusing at the foretopsail halliards, and later on the carpenter Lush entered the cabin by the cuddy door.
‘She’ll be snug at this,’ he exclaimed in his gruff voice; ‘there’s no more weight of wind, and the whole main-topsail won’t be too much for her if it don’t freshen yet. What’s this about the capt’n, sir?’
As he spoke, I observed the glimmering faces of the crew, the whole body of them, saving the fellow at the wheel, crowding to take a peep through the cuddy windows and doorway. I saw Miss Temple glance with terror towards them; but there was nothing more natural than that the fellows should desire to obtain all news of an event that concerned them so closely as the suicide of their captain. I repeated what little I knew to the carpenter, who at once stalked tothe captain’s door and tried the handle for himself, shaking it viciously.
‘I suppose it’ll have to be broke open?’ he exclaimed, looking round.
‘Certainly,’ I answered, ‘and the sooner the better. This suspense is intolerable.’
‘I’ll go forrards and get some tools,’ he said.
He returned after a few minutes, and two seamen accompanied him, one of them being Joe Wetherly. The others, heedless of all custom, in their devouring curiosity came shouldering one another into the cuddy, thrusting inch by inch to the centre of it, where they stood staring—a wild and rugged group, indeed, in that light; hairy breasts, naked, weather-darkened nervous arms liberally scored with blue devices, bare feet, gleaming eyes, sheath-knives on their hips—I could scarcely wonder that Miss Temple shrank from them, and clung to my side with her hand in my arm! They did not need the character the captain had given them to make her do that!
Lush forced the door of the berth; it flew open to a heavy blow, and I advanced to take a view of the interior, Miss Temple letting goof my arm with an exclamation, rather choosing to remain alone near the sailors than take a peep at the horror her imagination bodied forth. A small bracket lamp was burning brightly. In the centre of the deck of the cabin lay the body of Captain Braine. He was on his breast, his arms were outstretched, one leg was crooked, as though broken under the other. A pistol of a pattern somewhat similar to the one I had discovered in Mr. Chicken’s locker lay beside his right hand. These details we immediately witnessed; but we had to look a little before we could distinguish the great stain of blood upon the square of drugget under the cheek of the poor creature, and showing in a black line from a hole on a level with his eye.
‘He has shot himself, as you said,’ exclaimed the carpenter in a hoarse note, and backing half a pace to the right.
‘Turn him over, Bill,’ said Wetherly to the other sailor.
‘Not me! Handle him yourself, Joe.’
Wetherly fell upon a knee, and got the corpse on its back. After my experience with the body on the wreck, I should have deemed myself equal to any sort of ghastlysight-seeing; but that dead captain’s face was more than I could bear, and I was forced to look away and to keep my gaze averted, to rally my nerves from the shock the spectacle had given them.
The crew had come shoving right to the very cabin door, and stood in a crowd, staring open-mouthed with a sort of groaning of exclamations breaking out from amongst them.
‘A bad job this, sir,’ said Wetherly, looking round to me.
‘He’ll be stone-dead, I suppose?’ said the carpenter.
‘O God, yes!’ I exclaimed.
The carpenter seemed to wait, as if he expected me to give directions.
‘Better get the body into the bunk, Mr. Lush,’ said I, ‘and cover it up for to-night.’
‘Ay, hide it as soon as ye will, Joe,’ exclaimed the carpenter; and as he said these words, I observed that he rolled his eyes with an expression in them of keen and thirsty scrutiny over the cabin.
Wetherly and the other man who had entered with him lifted the body, placed it in the bunk, and threw a blanket over it. Wethen quitted the cabin, leaving the lamp burning, though, I fancy, nobody noticed that but myself; and the carpenter put a little wedge of wood under the door to keep it shut. The sailors slowly walked away out on to the quarter-deck, casting inquisitive glances around them, and at Miss Temple, as they withdrew. The carpenter came to a stand at the table, and turning his surly face upon me, exclaimed in his deep-sea, bad-tempered voice: ‘What’s to be done now?’
‘There’s nothing for it,’ I answered, ‘but to make for the nearest port, and Rio will be that.’
‘Ay; but that ain’t the question just at present,’ he exclaimed. ‘What I mean is, what’s the discipline agoing to be?’
‘Why, of course,’ I exclaimed, ‘I must render all the assistance I possibly can. If the crew consent, I shall be happy to keep watch and watch with you. In any case, I’ll navigate the ship. Very fortunately, I can do so.’
‘It’ll be a matter for the crew,’ said he, talking with his eyes upon the deck and speaking after a pause. ‘To-morrow morning will be time enough to settle what’s to bedone. I kep’ a lookout from eight to twelve to-night; and if you’ll stand this here middle watch, I’ll be a relieving of ye at four; and arter breakfast, giving you time to get some sleep, I’ll call the crew aft, and we’ll see what they’ve got to say, now there ain’t neither mate nor capt’n left.’
‘But you are the mate; the acting second mate,’ I cried, sensible of an indefinable misgiving that grew rapidly into an emotion of cold and heart-sickening consternation.
‘I tell yeno, sir!’ he shouted; ‘I’m no second mate. I signed on as ship’s carpenter, and I’ve told ye so. Since Mr. Chicken died, I’ve been treated by that man there’—he pointed with a square forefinger to the cabin door—‘worse than any mongrel dog that e’er a blunderbuss was brought to bear on.Mea second mate?’ He struck his breast in a sort of frenzy with his clenched fist and grinned in my face.
‘Very well,’ said I, forcing a note of composure into my voice; ‘it is a mere detail of routine, which we can settle to-morrow, as you say.’
‘All right,’ he exclaimed; and pulling his skin cap down over his head, he trudged on his rounded legs out of the cuddy.
‘I must go on deck, Miss Temple,’ said I.
She was eyeing me, as though bereft of speech, when I addressed her.
‘I will accompany you,’ she exclaimed.
‘No! It is out of the question.’
‘Why?’ she cried imperiously, with the irritability of dismay and dread in her manner.
‘I shall be on deck till four. Such a spell of exposure it will be needless for you to undergo. You are perfectly safe in your cabin.’
‘Howdareyou ask me to return to that horrible lonely part of the ship?’ she cried, with wrath and alarm brilliant in her eyes.
‘Then take some rest upon that locker there.’
‘You ask me to remain herealonewith the dead body close to in that cabin?’
‘Miss Temple,’ said I firmly, ‘if you decline to return to your cabin, you will at least oblige me by staying in this cuddy. I have no time to reason with you. You must obey me, if you please. Give me your hand.’ She extended it, and I conducted her to the sofa locker, on which I gently but resolutely compelled her to seat herself. ‘You can rest here with perfect safety,’ I went on. ‘I amastonished that a woman of your spirit should find anything to render you uneasy, in the face of the real difficulties which confront us, in the neighbourhood of a harmless corpse. I can command a view of you and of this interior through that skylight. But you must not come on deck.’
She watched me in a motionless posture with an air of haughty resentment upon her lips, to which a kind of awe in her gaze gave the lie. I left her, and had my foot upon the companion steps, when a thought occurred to me. Going to the door of the captain’s berth, I withdrew the wedge, and entered and picked up the pistol that lay upon the deck. It was a heavy single-barrelled concern, but a firearm all the same, and I thrust it into my breast. I perceived no materials for loading it; but I had what was necessary in that way below; and now I was possessed, as I did not doubt, of the only two pistols in the ship.
I extinguished the lamp, wedged the door afresh, and responding to Miss Temple’s appealing stare with a smile, I went on deck. The night was a clear dusk, with a great plenty of shining stars, over which many small clouds were driving swiftly; and the windstill continued to blow strong, though it had not gained in force since sail had last been shortened, and the sea was now running steadily on the bow in regular heaps of dark waters melting at their heads, so that the motion of the barque, by being rhythmic, was comparatively easy. I gained the weather deck; and after a peep at the compass and a glance at the indistinguishable face of the figure at the wheel, I started off on the traditionary pendulum walk of the sea-watch, to and fro, to and fro, from the wheel to the break of the poop, constantly directing looks to windward or up aloft, and frequently at Miss Temple, as she showed, seated as I had left her, visible to me through the glass of the skylight. It was out of the question that she should pace the deck with me throughout that long watch. The pouring wind came with an edge of cold damp that made itself felt after a brief term of exposure to it. Then, again, it was not to be thought of that the sailors should find the lady on deck throughout this night watch, as though we were both in mortal fear, and kept together to hearten each other. Now that it had come to there being no head to the ship, it was of vital importance that MissTemple should remain as private as possible, but little seen by the men. I had clear ideas as to the extraordinary situation in which we were placed; and as I glanced at her through the skylight window, I made up my mind to subdue her to my views, to conquer the insolence of her spirit, even should it come to my having to act in a manner that might be deemed brutal, never to humour her by giving her reasons, but to peremptorily insist in such a fashion as to make her perceive that whilst we were thus together, I was her master, and she must instantly acquiesce in my decisions; for unless this was to be managed, her temper, her want of tact, her pettish character as that of a person whose nature had been injured by admiration and indulgence, might end in the destruction of us both.
What a midnight watch was that! I was sick at heart, and miserable with misgiving. My distrust of the carpenter, a feeling that had all along possessed me, was strong even to a conviction that he was equal to the acting of a hellish part, and that being free, and at the head, so to speak, of a gang of men, of whom one only—I mean Wetherly—seemed worthy of confidence, he might be presentlyhatching some plot of deadly menace to Miss Temple and me. I asked myself what form could such a plot take? I knew not: I could but forebode: I could only keep before me the circumstance of a little ship afloat on a wide sea without captain or mates, full to the hatches with commodities of value, a handsome fabric of herself, virtually in the possession of an irresponsible body of men, into whose keeping she had come through the merest effect of fortune, without the least stroke of rascality on their part. I say I had only to consider this, and then to think of the character of the crew as it had been represented to me by Captain Braine, to forebode some action on their part that might extinguish my project of reaching Rio—with so much to follow that I durst not give my mind to speculating upon it.
Shocking as had been the suddenness and the unexpectedness of the captain’s suicide, the thing sat lightly as a horror upon my imagination, so profoundly agitated was I by the indeterminable fears that had been raised in me by the few words the carpenter had let fall. I could not be sure; but it seemed to me, by the haze of light which hung about the forecastle hatch, called the forescuttle, andby an occasional stirring of shadows amidst it, as though to the movements of the men below, or to figures coming on deck and descending again, that all hands were awake forward. There should have been nothing to particularly disturb me in this suspicion, for enough lay in the captain’s death to account for the men keeping awake and talking; still, the belief that the sailors were conversing in their gloomy little sea parlour, with Lush’s growling tongue sulkily active amongst them, greatly increased my uneasiness.
I continued to pace the deck, keeping a close eye upon the ship, with watchful regard also of the compass, for every hour of this sailing was bringing us by so many miles nearer to the South American seaboard. Shortly before two o’clock, on looking through the skylight, I observed Miss Temple lying back upon the cushion of the locker in a sound sleep. Her hat was upon her knees, her cheek was pillowed upon her arm; thus she rested in sideways posture. Whilst I stood looking at her, as at a picture of a beautiful sleeping woman framed in the square of the skylight, and touched with the soft illumination of the oil-lamp swinging hard by her couch, a man struck four bells on theforecastle, and a minute or two later the dark figure of a seaman came along to leeward to relieve the wheel. I waited a little, and then stepped to the binnacle under pretence of inspecting the card.
‘Are the watch below up forward?’ said I.
‘All hands are awake,’ he answered, and I recognised him by his voice, though I could not discern his features. He was a young sailor named Forrest, a fellow I had often taken notice of for the elastic suppleness of his body, the peculiar swing of his walk, an amazing agility aloft, and an air of mutinous impudence in his manner of going about any job he might be put to.
‘I suppose they have been talking about the captain’s death?’ said I.
‘They’ve been talking of a many things,’ he responded with a sort of chuckle in his voice, as though he had been drinking.
‘Is Mr. Lush among them?’
‘Oh, ay.’
‘Well, keep your luff,’ said I; ‘she’s a couple of points off her course as it is.’
‘Her course for where?’ said the man.
‘For Rio,’ I answered.
He made no answer, and I resumed my pacing of the planks.