CHAPTER XXXVMY CAPTAINCY
I am arrived now at a passage of this singular adventure that will admit only of brief indications of certain features of it. To write down all the incidents of the time which followed could but run me into several volumes of very insipid matter. I own that when I look back upon this experience, it offers itself as something so amazing, something so beside the most astonishing romantic incidents of sea-life which my memory carries, that, though I was the chief actor in it, I often at this hour find myself pausing as in doubt of the actuality of the events I have related and have yet to narrate.
Sometimes I wonder whether I might not have brought this kidnapping business—for thus it may fairly be called so far as Miss Temple and I were concerned—to a speedy end by peremptory refusal to navigate theship to Captain Braine’s island. But I have only to close my eyes and recall the faces and recollect the behaviour of the men who formed that barque’s crew, to know better; I have only to repeople that now timeworn canvas with the countenances of those seamen, to witness afresh the looks and bearing of the carpenter, to recollect my defencelessness, the helplessness of my companion, whose life and whose more than life were absolutely dependent upon my judgment; to think of the wild greed raised in the men by their dream of thousands, their resolution to get the money, the sense of lawlessness that would increase upon them with the growing perception of their irresponsibility as a crew deprived of their officers by no crime of their own: I have only to recall all this along with my own thoughts and fears and bitter nerve-sapping anxieties, to understand that the course I adopted was the only practicable one open to me, and that what I did no other man situated as I then was but must have also done. But enough of this.
That afternoon, when the carpenter relieved me at four o’clock, I went below and superintended the preparation of the twocabins at the extremity of the cuddy for our reception. The berth adjoining the captain’s was a fresh, bright, airy little apartment, and every convenience that Braine’s cabin yielded was put into it for Miss Temple’s use. This change of apartment seemed to tranquillise her a bit. Such was her dislike and fear of our steerage quarters, that I believe she would have thought the deck-house of the wreck endurable compared to them. Instead of a little ‘tweendeck shrouded in gloom and lumbered with cargo, we had the whole breezy, sun-lit cuddy before us when we opened our doors. The berths were also well lighted, with something of taste in their equipment of panel, bulkhead mouldings, and the like. I was very careful to bring up Mr. Chicken’s pistol and ammunition, and when I was alone with Miss Temple, I said: ‘You are not afraid to handle a firearm, I think?’
‘Oh dear, no.’
‘You shot very well, I remember, with Mr. Colledge at a bottle. Who hit the bottle?’
‘I did.’
‘So I might have thought by your manner of aiming at it. Your figure showed nobly, Miss Temple, in your posture as markswoman.I remember the sparkle of your eyes as you glanced along the barrel. I should not have cared to be hated by you and in front of you at that moment.’
‘I wish I had the courage you feign I have,’ said she.
‘Well,’ I exclaimed, pulling the captain’s pistol out of my breast, ‘here is a friend that will do more than bark for you, if you should find yourself in want of such help as it can give. I have a double-barrelled concern of a like build in the next room, so that between us we are able to muster three muzzles; artillery enough to fit us to stand a siege, I can assure you, with the ammunition we possess.’
She took the clumsy weapon in her small delicate white hand and toyed with it, levelling and examining it, and so forth. I bade her mind, as it was loaded. She smiled, and going to her bunk, hid the pistol between the mattress and the bulkhead.
‘I shall certainly feel easier for having it,’ said she. ‘You will not always now be next door, Mr. Dugdale. You will be for four hours at a time on deck, when you keep your watch.’
‘Ay,’ said I; ‘but there is a skylight;and I’ll take care that the cabin lamp be kept burning; and I have a keen ear, too, that when I am away from you will not be blunted by my thoughts always being here.’
My own cabin I found comfortable enough. I was not so choice as to be above using what I found in it. The unhappy captain had left behind him sufficient clothes to provide me with several changes; and a couple of his coats fitted me very well—being made, I suppose, to allow for a sailor’s underclothing in cold weather—though I was much broader in the shoulders than he had been. I overhauled his papers, but found nothing of interest. What I met with I carefully put away in a drawer along with some money, and one or two objects of some small value, for I remembered that the unfortunate creature had left a widow behind him, who might be thankful for his poor effects, should the little ship ever live to carry his goods and his tragic story to a civilised place.
Wilkins waited upon us with punctuality and civility. He would ask me what I wished for breakfast and dinner and supper, bringing little suggestions from the cook as to sea-pies and ship-board hashes and currant dumplingsand other heavy dishes, for the due digestion of which a man needs to have bowels of brass and the triple rows of the shark’s fangs. Indeed, theLady Blanche’slarder was a poor one, and the genius of the first cook in the world must have come to a halt in the face of such a Mother Hubbard of a cupboard. Aft, there was little more to eat than the forecastle stores: salt beef and salt pork, peas, currants for duff days, biscuit, coffee and tea, and a few other items. However, the dead captain had laid in a good stock of bottled beer. There were also a few gallons of brandy and gin, both of them a very good spirit; and the forecastle stores, supplemented by cheese and hams and some tins of preserved stuff bearing the name of soup and bouilli—pronounced by sailors soup and bully, or soap and bullion—supplied us with dishes enough to enable us to support life and even health, helped out as they were by occasional little relishes from the cook, feeble attempts indeed, and briny to a degree, yet in their way welcome to people who were as good as beggars in food, and without choice.
Lush faithfully kept to his end of the ship. He never offered to enter the cabin except to my invitation, when perhaps Iwould have something in navigation to tell him about. He seemed anxious to keep us at a distance, and picked up the ship’s routine, when his watch came round, as I let it fall, with an air of morose reserve. I made several efforts with an assumption of cheerfulness and heartiness of manner to break through his sullenness, with the dream of finding something like a human being of sensibilities behind it, whom I should be able to influence into getting the crew to consent to speak a passing ship, that Miss Temple might be transferred to her; but he was like a hedgehog; his quills regularly rose to my least approach. He would watch me with a sulky, cursing expression in his eye, or view me with a sour, askant regard, and to my civillest speech respond in some ragged, scurvy sentence.
But I did not play an obliging part with him very long. Having come to the conclusion that he was a ruffian of immovable qualities, I recurred to my earlier behaviour, addressed him only to give him instructions in a peremptory manner, or to point out the ship’s place on the chart; so, as you will suppose, very little passed between us; yet myputting on the airs of a captain and treating him as the mere forecastle hand which he claimed to be, influenced his bearing, and rendered him even respectful.
Nevertheless, I knew that he and his mates never had their eyes off me, so to speak; that, having learnt the course to Cape Horn was so-and-so, the compass was watched with restless assiduity, every man as he was relieved at the wheel reporting the direction of the ship’s head to his companions forward, and how she had been steering during his trick; that my behaviour on deck was critically followed by eyes in the fore-part of the ship; that I could never give an order to trim sail during my watch but that it was duly reported to Lush, and weighed and considered by the crew in the frequent councils they held in the caboose. All this I was secretly informed of by Wetherly.
Yet I had nothing to complain of in the behaviour of the men. They sprang to my bidding, and their ‘Ay, ay, sirs,’ and responses to my orders had as lively and hearty a ring as anyone could hope to hear in the mouth of a crew. They sang out briskly when they pulled and hauled, with enjoyment of the sound oftheir own voices, and a marked willingness in their demeanour to contribute their utmost to the navigation of the vessel. This, indeed, was to be expected. It was rather a Jack’s jaunt now with them, than a voyage; they were sailing, as they believed, to an island full of gold; their fortunes were assured; they gazed into a future radiant with visions of dancing, drinking, marine jinks of all sorts; they knew that the fulfilment of their fine lookout must depend upon their willingness to work the ship now, so that everything they did they did without a growl; without the least hint of the mutinous disposition that would have shown strong and deadly in them, had their wishes been delayed or obstructed.
But outside the actual, essential routine of the ship, nothing was done. The decks were washed down at very long intervals only; there was no sail-making or repairing; the spunyarn winch was mute; the chafing gear was left to rot off as it would; the carpenter indeed saw to the rigging, took care that everything should be sound, for neither he nor his mates had a mind to lose a mast. But there was very little of sweeping or polishing, of swabbing or cleaning.
The rum was kept down in the steerage; every day Wilkins drew as much as sufficed to furnish the men with two glasses apiece. After drawing the stuff, he regularly presented himself with it to Lush or me, according as the one or the other of us was on deck, that it might be seen he had drawn the allowance only. The men seemed fully satisfied. There was never any demand for more grog than what was given to them, and I do not recall a single instance of intoxication: which I attributed to my determined and oft-repeated declaration that should there be any exhibition of drunkenness on board the barque, I would abandon my undertaking, and leave the carpenter to navigate her. Dread of the consequences of drink amongst a mob of such ungoverned men as those fellows, rendered me extraordinarily impressive and emphatic in this threat; and I knew that the carpenter was convinced in his own mind that I would prove as good as my word. Indeed, I had only to look at Miss Temple to shrink from the mere thought of drunkenness amongst the sailors. All other risks that might attend a drinking bout forward were as naught compared to the perilshewould stand in. Theleast insult offered her I should resent with the muzzle of my pistol: and if it ever came tothat, then God alone could foresee the character of the tragedy that must follow.
But, as I have said, they showed themselves satisfied with their two glasses a day. The sense of festivity never carried them further than an occasional dance on the forecastle head of a fine dog watch, when they would diversify their caper-cutting with songs and yarns—all as harmless as child’s play, so unsuggestive of the errand that we were upon, so dumb as indications of the smouldering fires which were to be blown into a blaze by want of judgment on my part, that any one viewing us from the deck of a ship close at hand would have supposed theLady Blanchethe very peacefullest of traders, worked by the happiest and most liberally paid of crews, and bound on a voyage that was scarcely more than one of pleasure from port to port.
I was as eager as any man aboard to make an end of the voyage—to arrive, at all events, in the South Sea, where, let the problem of the island prove what it might, we should have come to the end of our expectations,and be able to see our way to the near future, that might signify a return home for me and Miss Temple; and, consequently, I never spared the barque’s canvas, but, on the contrary, would hold on every rag to the very last, leaving the white clipper hull to sweep through it at the pace of a comet. The carpenter used the little ship in the same way, and between us both, our runs in the twenty-four hours would again and again rise to figures that might have been deemed almost miraculous in those days of round bows and kettle bottoms, of apple sides, and a beam but a third less than the length. To be sure, when I was at sea professionally, I was never in a position to give an order, nor were the midshipmen, of whom I was one, regarded as much better than inconvenient ornaments, though we were well grounded in navigation; yet this command that had been forced upon me caused me no uneasiness; I would find myself walking the weather side of the poop as though I had been master of a ship for years; I knew, or thought I knew, exactly what to do, and the men sprang to my orders, and the little ship could not have been managed better had shebeen handsomely officered by men grown grey in the profession, instead of commanded by a young fellow who had only passed two years at sea a long while earlier, whose chief mate was a surly and sinister old rascal, so illiterate as to be unable to read his own name when written by another, and as incapable of handling a sextant as of expressing himself in correct English.
It came into my head once that we might run short of fresh water before we should arrive at that spot on the chart where the captain’s gold was supposed to be buried, and I earnestly hoped that this might happen, since a threat of thirst must infallibly drive us for help to the first port we could manage to reach. I asked the carpenter if he knew what stock of water there was aboard. He said no, but promised to find out, and later in the day came to tell me that there were so many casks, making in all so many gallons—I cannot recollect the figures. To satisfy myself, I went into the hold with him, and discovered that he was right, and then entered into a calculation, which, to my secret mortification and disappointment, expressed a sufficient quantity of water aboard to last allhands of us at a liberal supply per diem for at least six months.
Now that I had assured myself as to the posture of the crew, and was profoundly satisfied in my own mind that their consuming eagerness to arrive at the island would guarantee a uniformly proper behaviour in them, unless they addressed themselves to the rum casks, or unless I gave them cause to turn upon me, I had no misgiving in suffering Miss Temple to be seen by them. She was therefore constantly with me on deck when my lookout came round, and all the hours I could spare from sleep I dedicated to her society; so that it would be impossible to imagine any young unmarried couple passing the time in an association more intimate and incessant. At the beginning of this run to the South Pacific she showed a spirit that afterwards temporarily failed her. It was two days after I had consented to navigate the vessel that I observed a certain air of determination in her, as though she had been earnestly contemplating our situation, and had formed her resolution to encounter what might come with courage and patience. Then, after awhile, her pluck seemed to fail her again; I would findher sitting motionless in the cabin with her eyes fixed on the deck, and an expression of misery in her face, as though her heart were broken. I could not induce her to eat; though, God knows, there was little or nothing to tempt her with. She could not sleep, she told me; and the glow faded out of her deep and beautiful eyes. Pale she always was, but now her face took a character of haggardness, which her whiteness, that was a loveliness in her when in health, accentuated to a degree that was presently shocking to me. When on deck, she would take my arm and walk listlessly, almost lifelessly, by my side, briefly replying to me in low tones, which trembled with excess of grief.
Secretly loving her as I did, though not as yet had a syllable, nay, as I believe, had a look of my passion escaped me, I began to dread the influence of her misery upon my behaviour to the men. She was a constant appeal to me, so to speak, to call the fellows aft, and tell them that the girl was pining her heart away, that she must be put ashore or conveyed aboard another ship this side Cape Horn, though it came to our backing our maintopsail to wait for one, or that I would throw upmy command of the vessel and refuse to sail her another mile. I say I lived in mortal fear of my being forced into this by sentiment and sympathy; for I was advised by every secret instinct, by every glance I levelled at the crew, by every look I directed at the carpenter, that the certain issue of such a resolution as that must involve my life!
I do not exaggerate in this; the nimbleness and sleekness of the crew were the qualities of the tiger; the ferocity of the wild beast was in them too, and for the girl’s sake I recoiled in terror from the mere fancy of arousing their passions. How they might serve me if I showed myself stubborn in proposals which they declined to accept, I could not foresee; they might send me adrift in a boat; they might more mercifully knock me over the head in the dark, and toss what their weapons left of me overboard. I was unalterably convinced, at all events, that if I ceased to be of use to them, then, as the possessor of the secret of the island, I should be made away with. But Miss Temple they would keep with them! Of that I had no shadow of a doubt either; and hence I say I was in terror lest the spectacle of her misery shouldimpel me to some act that, even whilst it was doing, my reason would pronounce madness.
I said everything I could imagine that I thought might reassure her, and one afternoon spent two hours in earnest talk with her. I told her that her grief was influencing me, and that it might come to my not being able to control myself in my relations with the crew; and I went on to point out what must follow if I suffered my sorrow for her to betray me into any other attitude towards the men than that I now wore. I had never been very candid in this way with her before, not choosing to excite her alarm and distress, and now I succeeded in thoroughly frightening her. It was enough that I should indicate the probability of her being left alone among the crew to fill her with horror. I need not give you the substance of my talk with her. So much remains to be told that I can only refer to it. But it achieved the end I had hoped to witness.
When next day came, I found some spirit in her voice and manner. Whilst we sat at breakfast alone, as we invariably were whether in the cuddy or on deck, she exclaimed, viewing me with an earnestness which there wasnothing in the faint smile that accompanied it to diminish:
‘I have taken your lecture to heart, Mr. Dugdale, and I mean to reform. I have shown myself a sad coward; but you shall have no further reason to complain of me for that. I am ashamed of myself. I wonder that I have confidence enough to look at you when I compare my behaviour with yours. You have thought only of me, and I have thought only of myself; and that is the difference between us.’
‘It puts a new pulse into my heart to hear you talk so,’ said I. ‘I want to conduct you home to your mother’s side out of this wild adventure, with the same beauty and health that you brought away from England with you. It grieved me to the soul to see you refusing food, to watch your face growing hollow, to hear of your sleepless nights, and to witness in your eyes the misery that was consuming you. Pray keep this steadfastly in mind—that every day shortens our run to the South Pacific, and that every day this horrible experience is lessened by twenty-four hours. Whether there be gold in the island or not, whether the island have existence ornot, the crew must still be dependent upon me to carry them to a port, and the port that is good for them will be good for us; for it will be strange if from it we are unable to proceed straight home. All along I have said it is but a question of patience and waiting, and God alone can tell how grateful I shall be to you if you will enable me to play the part that I knowmustbe played if our safety is to be worth a rushlight.’
From this time she showed herself a thoroughly resolved woman. She ceased to tease me with regrets, to distress me with inquiries which I could not answer, to imply by her silence or her sighs or looks of reproach that I had it in my power by some other sort of policy than what I was pursuing, to get her safely away out of the barque. With this new mind in her came a subtle but appreciable change in her manner towards me. Heretofore her behaviour had been uniformly haunted by some small flavour more or less defined of her treatment of me, and indeed of all others, saving Mr. Colledge, aboard the Indiaman. She had suggested, though perhaps without intending it, a sort of condescension in our quiet hours, with a dealof haughtiness and almost contemptuous command in moments when she was wrought up by alarm and despair. I now found a kind of yielding in her, a compliance, a complaisance that was almost tender, a subdued form of expression, no matter what the mood might be which our conversation happened to excite in her. At times I would observe her watching me with an expression of sweetness in her fine eyes, though these sudden discoveries never betrayed her into the least air of confusion or embarrassment upon which I might found a hope that I was slowly making my way to her heart.
However, I consoled myself by thinking that our situation hung in too black a shadow over her mind to enable her to guess at what might be going on in it. Besides, never a word had I let fall that she could construe into a revelation of my passion for her. Had I loved her a thousandfold more than I did, my honour must have held my emotions dumb. It was not only that my pride determined me to keep silent until I might have good reason to believe that my love would not be declined by this high and mighty young lady of theCountess Ida, with hiddenwonder at my impertinence in offering it; I also was sensible that I should be acting the meanest part in the world to let her guess my feelings—by my language, at least; my face I might not be always able to control—whilst she continued in this miserable condition, utterly dependent upon me for protection, and too helpless to avow any resentment, which she would be desperately quick to express and let me feel under other circumstances.
We should be entering the bitter climate of the Horn presently, and she was without warm apparel. Her dress, as you know, was the light tropical costume in which she had attired herself to visit the corvette. What was to be done?
‘You cannot face the weather of the Horn in that garb,’ said I on one occasion, lightly glancing at her dress, to which her noble and faultless figure communicated a grace that the wear and tear and soiling of the many days she had worn it could not rob it of. ‘Needs must, you know, when Old Nick drives. There is but one expedient; I hope you will not make a grimace at it.’
‘Tell it to me?’
‘There is a good, warm, long pilot coat in my cabin. I will borrow needles and thread, and you must go to work to make it fit you.’
She laughed with a slight blush. ‘I fear I shall not be able to manage it.’
‘Try. If you fail, fifty to one but that there is some man forward who will contrive it for you. Most sailors can sew and cut out after a fashion. But I would rather you should try your hand at it alone. If I employ a fellow forward he will have to come aft and measure you, and so on; all of which I don’t want.’
‘Nor I,’ she cried eagerly. ‘I will try the coat on now, Mr. Dugdale. I daresay I shall be able to fashion it into some sort of jacket,’ she added with another laugh that trembled with a sigh.
I procured the coat, and helped her to put it on. It had been built for an overcoat, and designed to wrap up more than the narrow shoulders for which it had been fashioned, and it buttoned easily over the girl’s swelling figure.
‘Come, we shan’t want a tailor after all,’said I, backing a step to admire her in this new, queer apparel.
‘It will keep me warm,’ said she, turning about to take a view of herself.
‘And now,’ said I, ‘for a hat. That elegant straw of yours will not do for Cape Horn.’
I overhauled the captain’s wardrobe, and unearthed three hats of different kinds—one of them a wideawake; another, a cap of some kind of skin, very good to keep a night-watch in in dirty weather; and the third, an old-fashioned tarpaulin glazed hat—the sire of the sou’-wester of our own times, though, to be sure, sou’-wester caps, as they were called, were in use at the beginning of the century. This example of head-gear I returned to the locker in which I had found it, but the other two Miss Temple thought she could make serviceable. She tried them on, stealing glances almost coquettish at me as she peered at herself in the looking-glass which I brought from her cabin.
There had been a time when nothing, I am persuaded, could have induced her to touch those hats. She would have shrunk from them with the aversion and disgust shehad exhibited at Captain Braine’s suggestions about the furnishing of her cabin in the steerage. Assuredly, old ocean was working a mighty change in her character. Life real, stern, uncompromising, was busy with her; and just as Byron says of his shipwrecked people, that the mothers of them would not have known their own sons, so was I assured of my shipmate Louise that if it pleased God we should escape from the perils of this adventure, she would emerge a changed woman in every characteristic that had been displeasing in her before.