Chapter Seven.

Chapter Seven.We pick up a shipwrecked crew.The night passed without incident of any sort; and when I awoke at dawn there was still no sign of wind, for which I was thankful; for, while I was naturally anxious to be making some progress, it was vitally necessary to get more sail upon the brig; and this little spell of calm weather happened most opportunely for my purpose.A bath, an early breakfast, and I went to work once more, the bending and setting, of the fore-topsail being my first job. I finished this about noon, and considered that I had done very well when at dusk I had added to my spread of canvas the standing jib and spanker.It was a whim of Miss Onslow’s that our midday meal should be tiffin; dinner being reserved until the work of the day was over, when—as the young lady sagely remarked—we could both spare time to do due justice to the meal. Thus it happened, upon the day in question, that it was quite dark when at length, having washed and polished myself up after the labours of the day, I took my place at the table in the brig’s little cabin. It was then still flat calm; but we had scarcely finished the meal when a little draught of air came down through the open skylight, cool and refreshing, and at the same moment the sound of a faint rustling of the canvas reached our ears. I at once sprang up on deck, and found that a light air from about east-south-east had sprung up, taking us aback and giving the brig sternway. The pressure of water upon the rudder had forced the helm hard down, however, causing the brig to box off; I had nothing to do, therefore, but to trim sail and steady the helm at the proper moment, when the vessel gathered headway and began to move quietly through the water on a southerly course, close-hauled on the larboard tack.I was now obliged to take the wheel; but it was not long before I made the discovery that, under the sail now set, the brig was practically steering herself, and by the time that I had been at the wheel half an hour I had contrived to hit off so accurately the exact amount of weather-helm required to keep the craft going “full-and-by,” that I was able to lash the wheel, and attend to other matters.And there was still plenty awaiting my attention. Among other immediate demands upon my energies there was the boat to be secured; thus far she had been hanging on astern by her painter, but she was far too valuable a possession to be any longer neglected; and now that a breeze had sprung up I determined to secure her forthwith and while it was still possible to do so. The brig carried a pair, of davits on each quarter, so I hauled the boat up on the starboard side, made her fast, slipped down into her and hooked on the tackles, and then, climbing inboard once more, hauled them both hand-taut. Then, going forward, I brought aft a snatch-block that I had previously been using, led the falls, one after the other, through this to the winch, and, with Miss Onslow hanging on to the rope to prevent it slipping on the barrel of the winch, managed to hoist the boat and secure her.The weather continued fine, and the wind light, all through the night, the ship’s speed being barely three knots; and once more I turned in on the wheel grating and slept soundly, the ship steering herself so perfectly that I found it quite unnecessary to interfere with the wheel; and when I awoke at sunrise she was still stealing along as steadily as ever.The sky looked so beautifully fine and clear when I went below to breakfast, in response to Miss Onslow’s summons, that it came upon me quite as a shock to discover—as I did by a casual glance—that the mercury was falling; not much, but just enough to indicate that the breeze was going to freshen. Now, I had no objection whatever to the wind freshening—within certain limits; up to the point, say, where the brig could just comfortably carry the canvas that was now set—I was in a hurry to arrive somewhere, and, within the limits above named, I should have heartily welcomed an increase of wind. But the mischief was that when once the strength of the wind began to increase, there was no knowing how far it might go; it might go on increasing to the strength of a whole gale, in which case it would become necessary for me to shorten sail, unless I chose to accept the alternative of letting my canvas blow away. And even in so small a vessel as the brig, to shorten sail was a serious matter, when there happened to be only one person to undertake the work; yet, if it came on to blow, it would have to be done, since it would never do to let the sails blow away, so long, that is to say, as they could be saved by hard work. There was, however, time enough to think about that; there was a still more serious matter demanding my attention, namely, the getting rid of the water in the hold. To this task, accordingly, I addressed myself immediately after breakfast, first taking the precaution to most carefully sound the well. The result of this preliminary operation was so far reassuring that I found a depth of just three feet six inches of water, the merest trifle more than the rod had showed forty-eight hours before, thus demonstrating that the hull was once more practically as tight as a bottle. Thus encouraged, I got to work at the pump, working steadily and systematically, exerting my strength to the best advantage, and sparing my hands as far as possible by enwrapping the handle first in canvas and then in a strip of a blanket taken from one of the forecastle bunks. It was terribly back-breaking work—this steady toil at the pumps, and when midday arrived and I knocked off to get a meridian altitude of the sun, wherefrom to compute our latitude, I was pretty well exhausted; but I had my reward in the discovery that I had reduced the depth of water in the hold by nearly eight inches—thus showing that, after all, the quantity of water was not nearly so formidable as it had at first seemed, existing indeed only in the more or less inconsiderable spaces not occupied by the cargo. After tiffin I again went to work, and toiled steadily on until sunset, by which time I had reduced the depth by a further six inches, at the same time fatiguing myself to the point of exhaustion.And all through this day of toil I had been maintaining a most anxious watch upon the weather, without detecting any disquieting sign whatever; it is true that the wind strengthened somewhat—sufficiently, in fact, to bring the brig’s speed up to close upon five knots, but this was the reverse of alarming, especially as the sky remained clear. But when at length we sat down to dinner that evening, I found that the mercury still manifested a disposition to sink. Apart, however, from this behaviour on the part of the barometer, every omen was so reassuring that when Miss Onslow bade me goodnight, and retired to her cabin, I unhesitatingly settled myself again upon the wheel grating for the night, and soon fell into the deep sleep of healthy fatigue.I was awakened some time during the night—I had no idea whatever of the hour—by the loud rustling of canvas; and upon starting to my feet I found that the wind had strengthened so considerably that the slight amount of weather-helm afforded by the lashed wheel had at length proved insufficient, with the result that the brig had shot into the wind, throwing both topsails aback and her fore and aft canvas a-shiver. Instinctively I sprang to the wheel and put it well over, just in time to pay the vessel off again; but it was fully half an hour before I had again hit off the exact position of the wheel with sufficient nicety to allow of its being again lashed, and the brig once more left to take care of herself.During this operation I had been anxiously scanning the sky, but beyond a few small: and scattered fleeces of cloud here and there, it remained as clear as it had been at sunset; and, having at length adjusted the wheel to my satisfaction, I came to the conclusion that I might safely leave matters as they were until the morning, and secure a little more rest while the opportunity remained to me. I therefore resumed my recumbent position upon the wheel grating, and was soon once more asleep.This time, however, I slept less soundly than before. The curious instinct of watchfulness even in slumber that is so quickly developed in sailors and others who are constantly exposed to danger was now fully aroused, and although I slept, my senses and faculties were so far on the alert that when, somewhat later, the wind suddenly breezed up in a spiteful squall, I heard the moan of it before it reached the brig, and was broad awake and on my feet in time to put the helm up and keep broad away before it. The wind came away strong enough to make me anxious for the topmasts for a few minutes; but as the yards were braced sharp up, while the brig was running away dead before it, the wind struck the sails very obliquely, and the spars were thus relieved of a great deal of the strain that would otherwise have come upon them.Of course there was no more sleep for me that night, for when at length the squall had blown itself out it left behind it a strong northerly breeze that very soon knocked up a sea, heavy enough to make me ardently wish for daylight and the opportunity to shorten sail.And when the dawn at length appeared, I grew more anxious than ever, for the new day showed as a long, ragged gash of fierce, copper-yellow light glaring through a gap in an otherwise unbroken expanse of dirty grey cloud, struck here and there with dashes of dull crimson colour. The air was unnaturally clear, the heads of the surges showing up against the wild yellow of the eastern horizon jet black, and as sharp and clean-cut as those that brimmed to the brig’s rail. The aspect of the sky meant wind in plenty, and before long; and I realised that unless I could contrive to shorten sail in double-quick time the task would pass beyond my power, and the canvas would have to remain set until it should blow away.At length Miss Onslow made her appearance on deck, bright, fresh, and rosy from her night’s sleep; and a cry of dismay broke from her lips as she took in the state of affairs at a single comprehensive glance.“Oh, Mr Conyers!” she exclaimed, “how long has it been like this? Are we in any danger?”“Only in so far that we stand to lose some of our sails, unless I can contrive to get them clewed up before it comes on to blow any harder,” answered I. “I have been waiting for you to come on deck and relieve me at the wheel,” I continued, “in order that I may get about the job at once.”“But why did you not call me?” she demanded, as she stepped up on the wheel grating beside me and took the spokes from my hands.“Oh,” said I, “it has not been bad enough to justify me in disturbing you, thus far; nevertheless I am very glad to have your help now, as I believe there is no time to lose. Kindly keep her as she now is, dead before the wind, and I will get about the work of shortening sail without further delay.”So saying, I hurried away forward, letting go the trysail outhaul and the main-topsail halliards on my way; passing next to the fore-topsail halliards, which I also let run. I then squared the yards, hauled in, brailed up and furled the trysail, and next took the reef-tackles, one after the other, to the winch, heaving them as taut as I could get them; after which I jumped aloft, passed the reef earrings, and tied the knittles. We were now tolerably safe—the brig being under close-reefed topsails—so I hove-to while we took breakfast, after which I hauled down and stowed the jib, got the brig away before the wind again, with Miss Onslow at the wheel, and resumed pumping operations.I toiled all through the day, reducing the amount of water in the hold to a depth of eighteen inches only, and then hove-to the brig on the port tack for the night, both of us being by this time so completely exhausted that rest was even more important to us than food, although I took care that we should not be obliged to go without the latter.About two hours after sunset the wind freshened up still more, and by midnight it was blowing so heavily, and so mountainous a sea was running, that I dared not any longer leave the brig to herself; it became necessary to constantly tend the helm, although the craft was hove-to; and in consequence I had no alternative but to pass the latter half of this night also at the wheel, exposed to a pelting rain that quickly drenched me to the skin. It was now blowing a whole gale from the northward; and so it continued for the next thirty hours, during nearly the whole of which time I remained at the wheel, wet, cold, and nearly crazy at the last for want of rest; indeed, but for the attention—almost amounting to devotion—of my companion I believe I should never have weathered that terrible time of fatigue and exposure. An end to it came at last, however; the gale broke, the wind softened down somewhat, and at length the sea went down sufficiently to permit of the wheel being once more lashed; when, leaving the brig in Miss Onslow’s charge, with strict injunctions that I was at once to be called in the event of a change for the worse in the weather, I went below, rolled into the mate’s bunk, and instantly lost all consciousness for the ensuing ten hours. It was somewhere about midnight when I awoke; yet when I turned out I found Miss Onslow still up, and not only so but with a hot and thoroughly appetising meal ready for me. We sat down and partook of it together; and when we had finished I went on deck, had a look round, found that the weather had greatly improved during my long sleep, and so turned in again until morning.When I next went on deck the weather had cleared, the wind had dwindled to a five-knot breeze—hauling out from the eastward again at the same time—and the sea had gone down to such an extent as to be scarcely perceptible; I therefore shook out my reefs, and once more made sail upon the ship—a task that kept me busy right up to noon. The weather being fine, I was able to secure a meridian altitude of the sun, and thus ascertain the latitude of the brig, with the resulting discovery that we were already to the southward of the Cape parallels. This was disconcerting in the extreme, the more so from the fact that the easterly wind was forcing us still farther to the southward; but there was no help for it, we could do nothing but keep all on as we were and hope for a shift of wind. The fact of our being so far to the southward accounted, too, for the circumstance that we were not falling in with any other vessels.Hitherto I had been so fully employed that I had found no time to search for the ship’s papers, or do more than ascertain the bare fact that she was of American nationality, that she was named theGovernor Smeaton, and that she hailed from Portland, Maine; but now that the weather had come fine once more, I determined to devote a few hours to the work of overhauling the vessel and discovering what I could about her. So I went to work and instituted a thoroughly systematic search, beginning in the skipper’s cabin—having of course first obtained Miss Onslow’s permission—and there, stowed carefully away in a lock-up desk—which, after some hesitation, I decided to break open—I found the ship’s papers intact, enclosed in a small tin case. And from these I learned, first, that her late master was named Josiah Hobson, and second, that she was bound on a trading voyage to the Pacific, with a cargo of “notions.” Then, in another drawer, also in the skipper’s cabin, carefully stowed away under some clothes, I found the log-book, and a chart of the Atlantic Ocean, with the brig’s course, up to a certain point, pricked off upon it; and from these two documents I learned that the brig had sailed, on such and such a date, from New York, with what, in the way of weather, progress, and so on, had befallen her, up to a date some five weeks later, whereon entries had been made in the log-book up to noon. The remarks respecting the weather at that hour gave no indication of any warning of the catastrophe that must have occurred only a few hours later. This last entry in the log-book enabled me to determine that the brig had been drifting about derelict for nearly three weeks when we two ocean waifs fell in with and took possession of her. The “notions” of which her cargo consisted seemed, according to the manifest, to comprise more or less of nearly everything that could possibly captivate a savage’s fancy; but in addition to these multitudinous articles there were—somewhere in the ship—a few bales of goods—mostly linen, fine muslins, silks, and ready-made clothing—consigned to a firm in Valparaiso, which I believed would be of the utmost value to Miss Onslow and myself, if I could but find them, and which, under the circumstances, I felt I could unhesitatingly appropriate to our use. I therefore determined that my next task should be to search for these bales; which, being composed of rather valuable goods, and destined moreover to be discharged at the brig’s first port of call, I thought would probably be found on top of the rest of the cargo and near to one of the hatches.The next day proved even finer than its predecessor, the wind holding in the same direction but of perhaps a shade less strength than on the day before, while the sea had gone down until the water was smooth as the surface of a pond excepting for the low swell that scarcely ever quite disappears in mid-ocean; it was an ideal day for taking off the hatches, and I therefore determined to commence my examination of the cargo at once, beginning with the main hatch. To knock out the wedges, remove the battens, and roll back the tarpaulin was not a difficult job, and when I had got thus far, the removal of a couple of the hatches was soon effected. Luck was with me that day, for no sooner had I got the hatches off than my eyes fell upon a bale bearing marks which, according to the testimony of the vessel’s manifest, showed it to be one of those of which I was in search. It was too large, and was too tightly wedged in among others to admit of my moving it unaided, but with the assistance of a strop on the mainstay, and the watch tackle, I soon broke it out and triumphantly landed it on deck. The manifest gave the contents as ready-made clothing—men’s and women’s; which was exactly what Miss Onslow at least needed more than anything else; so I opened it forthwith, and then called the young lady to overhaul the contents and select what she would, while I gave her a spell at the wheel. In ten minutes she came aft, with her arms full of neatly-folded white material, and disappeared below. Then she came on deck again, had a further search, and this time carried off a load of coloured fabric; after which she remained invisible for nearly three-quarters of an hour. Finally she reappeared clad in an entirely new rig-out from top to toe; and very sweet and charming she looked, although I regret being unable to inform my female readers of the details of her costume. Then I had my innings, and after a considerable amount of rummaging succeeded in finding a couple of suits of light tweed that I thought would fit me, together with a generous supply of underclothing. This done, and our more pressing needs in the matter of clothing met, I returned the despoiled bale to its place in the hatchway, replaced the hatches, and battened everything securely down once more. The remainder of the day I devoted to the task of pumping the ship dry.The two succeeding days were quite devoid of incident; the weather held fine, and the wind so light that the brig made barely three knots in the hour, on a taut bowline; there was nothing particular to do, for the small air of wind that continued to blow hung obstinately at east, and we were still driving slowly south, the vessel steering herself. Under these circumstances, as I was daily growing increasingly anxious to fall in with a sail of some sort that would take us off, and convey us to a civilised port, or even lend me a few hands to help in carrying the brig to Cape Town, I spent pretty nearly the whole of the day in the main-topmast crosstrees, from whence I could obtain the most extended view possible, and perhaps be thus able to intercept some craft that would otherwise slip past us unseen.On the third day after my raid upon the cargo I was aloft as usual—the hour being about ten a.m.,—while Miss Onslow was busy in and out of the galley. The ship was creeping along at a speed of about two and a half knots, when, slowly and carefully sweeping the horizon afresh with the telescope, after a rather long spell of meditation upon how this adventure was likely to end, a small, hazy-looking, ill-defined object swam into the field of the instrument. The object was about one point before the weather beam, and was so far away that the rarefaction of the air imparted to it a wavering indistinctness of aspect that rendered it quite unrecognisable. The fact, however, that it was visible at all in the slightly hazy atmosphere led me to estimate its distance from the brig as about ten miles, while, from its apparent size, it might be either a boat, a raft, or a piece of floating wreckage. But whatever it might be, I determined to examine it, since it would be nothing out of my way, and would merely involve the labour of getting the ship round upon the other tack; so I continued to watch it until it had drifted to a couple of points abaft the beam—which occurred just two and a half hours after I had first sighted it, thus confirming my estimate as to its distance—when I put the helm hard down, lashed it, and then tended the braces as the brig sluggishly came up into the wind and as sluggishly paid off on the starboard tack. When the brig was fairly round, and the helm steadied I found that the object bore a full point on the lee bow, and that we should probably fetch it with ease. It was now distant about ten and a half miles, so there was plenty of time for us to go below and get tiffin ere closing it.It was within about two hours of sunset when we at length came up with the object; but long ere then I had, with the assistance of the telescope, made it out to be a large boat, apparently a ship’s longboat, unrigged, and drifting idly before the wind. Yet her trim, sitting low, as she was, on the water, showed that she was not empty; and at length, when we were within some two miles of her, I suddenly observed a movement of some sort aboard her, and a couple of oars were laid out—with some difficulty, I thought. I was at the wheel when this occurred—for I had discovered, some time earlier in the afternoon, that although, with the wheel lashed, the brig could be made to steer herself fairly well upon a wind, she was just a trifle too erratic in her course to hit off and fetch such a comparatively small object as we were now aiming for, and consequently I had been steering all through the afternoon—but I at once called Miss Onslow to relieve me while I ran the ensign—the stars and stripes—up to the peak, as an encouragement to the occupants of the boat, and an intimation that they had been seen. It was tedious work, our snail-like closing with the boat, and it was rendered all the more so by the fact that those in her, after vainly attempting for some five minutes to use the oars, had given up the effort, and were once more invisible in the bottom of the boat, while the oars, left to take care of themselves, had gradually slid through the rowlocks and gone adrift. This simple circumstance, apparently so trivial, was to me very significant, pointing, as I considered it did, to a condition of such absolute exhaustion on the part of the strangers that even the loss of their oars had become a matter of indifference to them. Who could tell what eternities of suffering these men had endured ere being brought into this condition? It was quite likely that that lonely, drifting boat had been the scene of some ghastly tragedy! Who could tell what sight of horror might be passively awaiting us between the gunwales of the craft? I once more resigned the wheel to Miss Onslow’s hand, with strict injunctions to her not to leave it or attempt to get a peep at the interior of the boat, on any account, and then went forward to prepare a rope’s-end to drop into her as we drew up alongside. I conned the brig in such a manner as to bring the boat alongside under the lee fore chains, and then, when the proper moment had arrived, let go the weather main braces and swung the topsail aback.My intention was to have jumped into the boat with a rope’s-end, as she came alongside, taking a turn anywhere for the moment; but as, with main-topsail aback, we crept slowly down upon the poor, forlorn-looking waif, a gaunt, unkempt scarecrow suddenly upreared itself in the stern-sheets and, uttering queer, gibbering sounds the while, scrambled forward into the eyes of the boat, with movements that somehow were equally suggestive of the very opposite qualities of agility and exhaustion, and held out its lean, talon-like hands for the rope which I was waiting to heave. As we drifted alongside the boat I hove the rope’s-end; the man caught it, andcollapsing, rather than stooping, with it, he made it fast to the ring-bolt in the stem. Then, uprearing himself once more, stiffly, and as though fighting against a deadly lethargy, he made a staggering spring for the brig’s rail, missed it, and would have fallen headlong backward into the boat had I not caught him by the collar. Heavens! what a skeleton the man was! He was fully as tall as myself, and had all the appearance of having once been a big, brawny Hercules of a fellow, but so wasted was he now that, with scarcely an effort, I with one hand lifted him in over the bulwarks and deposited him on deck, where he again limply doubled up and sank in a heap, groaning. But he kept his eyes fixed upon my face and, stiffly opening his jaws, pointed to his black and shrivelled tongue; and I, at once recognising his condition, ran aft and, taking a tumbler from the pantry, quickly mixed about a wineglassful of weak brandy and water, with which I sped back to him. I shall never forget the horrible expression of mad, wolfish craving that leapt into the unfortunate creature’s bloodshot eyes as I approached and bent over him. He glared at the tumbler, and howled like a wild beast; then suddenly snatched at my hand as I held the liquid to his lips, and clung so tightly to me that before I could withdraw the tumbler he had drained it of every drop of its contents. Even then he would not release me, but continued to pull and suck at the empty tumbler for several seconds. At length, however, he let go, groaning “More, more!” This time I mixed a considerable quantity of weak grog in a jug, and took it on deck with me, remembering that there were others in the boat alongside who were also probably perishing of thirst. I administered a further small quantity of the mixture to my patient, and it was marvellous to see the effect of it upon him, his strength seemed to return to him as though by magic, and as he sat up on the deck he muttered, thickly:“More drink; more drink, for the love of God! I’d sell my soul for a tumbler of the stuff!”Powerful though the fellow’s adjuration was, I refused his request, considering that, after his evidently long abstention, it would do him more harm than good—perhaps kill him, even—to let him drink too freely at first; so, putting the jug and tumbler out of his sight and reach, I turned my attention to the longboat alongside. She was a fine, big, powerful boat, and evidently, from her appearance, had belonged to a large ship. Now that I had time to look at her attentively I saw that her masts and sails were in her, laid fore and aft the thwarts, together with six long oars, or sweeps; she bore, deeply cut in her transom, the words “Black PrinceLiverpool”; there were six water breakers in her bottom; and, huddled up in all sorts of attitudes eloquent of extremest suffering, there lay, stretched upon and doubled over the thwarts, and in the bottom of the boat, no less than fifteen men—whether living or dead it was difficult for the moment to say. At all events it was evident that there was no time to be lost, for if the men were not actually dead their lives were hanging by a thread; so, recovering possession of the jug of weak grog and the tumbler, I slid down into the boat and, taking them as they came, wetted the lips of each with a little of the liquid. Some of them were able to swallow it at once, while others had their teeth so tightly clenched that it was impossible to get their jaws apart; but eventually—not to dwell at unnecessary length upon a scene so fraught with lingering, long-drawn-out suffering—I contrived to restore every one of them to consciousness, and to get them aboard the brig, where I spent several hours in attending to them and, with Miss Onslow’s assistance, administering food and drink in small quantities until their strength had so far returned to them that there was no longer any danger of their perishing, when I got them below into the forecastle, and left them to rest undisturbed. The next day they were all so far recovered as to be able to move about and even to climb on deck out of the forecastle, unaided; and on the second day seven of them reported themselves fit for such light duty as taking a trick at the wheel, and so on. Among the first to recover were the cook and steward, who at once assumed their proper duties, much to my satisfaction; for necessary as it had hitherto been for me to avail myself of Miss Onslow’s assistance, it went sorely against the grain for me to see her day after day performing such mean duties as that of cooking, and it was a great relief to me when I was able to inform her that henceforward she would be relieved of such work.The unexpected acquisition of these sixteen men, constituting, as they did, a really strong crew for such a small craft as the brig, relieved me of a very heavy load of anxiety; for now I felt that, with a tight and seaworthy vessel under my feet, and a crew that would enable me to handle and take care of her in any weather, there was no reason whatever why my companion and I should not speedily reach Cape Town and the end of our troubles. There was but one thing remaining to occasion me any uneasiness, and that was the fact that the chronometer had run down and stopped during the time that the brig had been drifting about, derelict, and consequently I had no means of ascertaining my longitude—a most awkward predicament to be in, especially when approaching a coast. But, as though Fate were satisfied with what she had already inflicted upon us, and had now relented so completely as to be eager to hasten our deliverance, it happened that on the very day when my new crew reported themselves—as fit for duty, we fell in with a homeward-bound China clipper, from the skipper of whom I obtained our longitude, and was thus enabled to start the chronometer again. The information thus afforded me showed that we were within two hundred and forty miles of the South African capital, or little more than twenty-four hours’ run if the wind would but chop round and come fair for us.

The night passed without incident of any sort; and when I awoke at dawn there was still no sign of wind, for which I was thankful; for, while I was naturally anxious to be making some progress, it was vitally necessary to get more sail upon the brig; and this little spell of calm weather happened most opportunely for my purpose.

A bath, an early breakfast, and I went to work once more, the bending and setting, of the fore-topsail being my first job. I finished this about noon, and considered that I had done very well when at dusk I had added to my spread of canvas the standing jib and spanker.

It was a whim of Miss Onslow’s that our midday meal should be tiffin; dinner being reserved until the work of the day was over, when—as the young lady sagely remarked—we could both spare time to do due justice to the meal. Thus it happened, upon the day in question, that it was quite dark when at length, having washed and polished myself up after the labours of the day, I took my place at the table in the brig’s little cabin. It was then still flat calm; but we had scarcely finished the meal when a little draught of air came down through the open skylight, cool and refreshing, and at the same moment the sound of a faint rustling of the canvas reached our ears. I at once sprang up on deck, and found that a light air from about east-south-east had sprung up, taking us aback and giving the brig sternway. The pressure of water upon the rudder had forced the helm hard down, however, causing the brig to box off; I had nothing to do, therefore, but to trim sail and steady the helm at the proper moment, when the vessel gathered headway and began to move quietly through the water on a southerly course, close-hauled on the larboard tack.

I was now obliged to take the wheel; but it was not long before I made the discovery that, under the sail now set, the brig was practically steering herself, and by the time that I had been at the wheel half an hour I had contrived to hit off so accurately the exact amount of weather-helm required to keep the craft going “full-and-by,” that I was able to lash the wheel, and attend to other matters.

And there was still plenty awaiting my attention. Among other immediate demands upon my energies there was the boat to be secured; thus far she had been hanging on astern by her painter, but she was far too valuable a possession to be any longer neglected; and now that a breeze had sprung up I determined to secure her forthwith and while it was still possible to do so. The brig carried a pair, of davits on each quarter, so I hauled the boat up on the starboard side, made her fast, slipped down into her and hooked on the tackles, and then, climbing inboard once more, hauled them both hand-taut. Then, going forward, I brought aft a snatch-block that I had previously been using, led the falls, one after the other, through this to the winch, and, with Miss Onslow hanging on to the rope to prevent it slipping on the barrel of the winch, managed to hoist the boat and secure her.

The weather continued fine, and the wind light, all through the night, the ship’s speed being barely three knots; and once more I turned in on the wheel grating and slept soundly, the ship steering herself so perfectly that I found it quite unnecessary to interfere with the wheel; and when I awoke at sunrise she was still stealing along as steadily as ever.

The sky looked so beautifully fine and clear when I went below to breakfast, in response to Miss Onslow’s summons, that it came upon me quite as a shock to discover—as I did by a casual glance—that the mercury was falling; not much, but just enough to indicate that the breeze was going to freshen. Now, I had no objection whatever to the wind freshening—within certain limits; up to the point, say, where the brig could just comfortably carry the canvas that was now set—I was in a hurry to arrive somewhere, and, within the limits above named, I should have heartily welcomed an increase of wind. But the mischief was that when once the strength of the wind began to increase, there was no knowing how far it might go; it might go on increasing to the strength of a whole gale, in which case it would become necessary for me to shorten sail, unless I chose to accept the alternative of letting my canvas blow away. And even in so small a vessel as the brig, to shorten sail was a serious matter, when there happened to be only one person to undertake the work; yet, if it came on to blow, it would have to be done, since it would never do to let the sails blow away, so long, that is to say, as they could be saved by hard work. There was, however, time enough to think about that; there was a still more serious matter demanding my attention, namely, the getting rid of the water in the hold. To this task, accordingly, I addressed myself immediately after breakfast, first taking the precaution to most carefully sound the well. The result of this preliminary operation was so far reassuring that I found a depth of just three feet six inches of water, the merest trifle more than the rod had showed forty-eight hours before, thus demonstrating that the hull was once more practically as tight as a bottle. Thus encouraged, I got to work at the pump, working steadily and systematically, exerting my strength to the best advantage, and sparing my hands as far as possible by enwrapping the handle first in canvas and then in a strip of a blanket taken from one of the forecastle bunks. It was terribly back-breaking work—this steady toil at the pumps, and when midday arrived and I knocked off to get a meridian altitude of the sun, wherefrom to compute our latitude, I was pretty well exhausted; but I had my reward in the discovery that I had reduced the depth of water in the hold by nearly eight inches—thus showing that, after all, the quantity of water was not nearly so formidable as it had at first seemed, existing indeed only in the more or less inconsiderable spaces not occupied by the cargo. After tiffin I again went to work, and toiled steadily on until sunset, by which time I had reduced the depth by a further six inches, at the same time fatiguing myself to the point of exhaustion.

And all through this day of toil I had been maintaining a most anxious watch upon the weather, without detecting any disquieting sign whatever; it is true that the wind strengthened somewhat—sufficiently, in fact, to bring the brig’s speed up to close upon five knots, but this was the reverse of alarming, especially as the sky remained clear. But when at length we sat down to dinner that evening, I found that the mercury still manifested a disposition to sink. Apart, however, from this behaviour on the part of the barometer, every omen was so reassuring that when Miss Onslow bade me goodnight, and retired to her cabin, I unhesitatingly settled myself again upon the wheel grating for the night, and soon fell into the deep sleep of healthy fatigue.

I was awakened some time during the night—I had no idea whatever of the hour—by the loud rustling of canvas; and upon starting to my feet I found that the wind had strengthened so considerably that the slight amount of weather-helm afforded by the lashed wheel had at length proved insufficient, with the result that the brig had shot into the wind, throwing both topsails aback and her fore and aft canvas a-shiver. Instinctively I sprang to the wheel and put it well over, just in time to pay the vessel off again; but it was fully half an hour before I had again hit off the exact position of the wheel with sufficient nicety to allow of its being again lashed, and the brig once more left to take care of herself.

During this operation I had been anxiously scanning the sky, but beyond a few small: and scattered fleeces of cloud here and there, it remained as clear as it had been at sunset; and, having at length adjusted the wheel to my satisfaction, I came to the conclusion that I might safely leave matters as they were until the morning, and secure a little more rest while the opportunity remained to me. I therefore resumed my recumbent position upon the wheel grating, and was soon once more asleep.

This time, however, I slept less soundly than before. The curious instinct of watchfulness even in slumber that is so quickly developed in sailors and others who are constantly exposed to danger was now fully aroused, and although I slept, my senses and faculties were so far on the alert that when, somewhat later, the wind suddenly breezed up in a spiteful squall, I heard the moan of it before it reached the brig, and was broad awake and on my feet in time to put the helm up and keep broad away before it. The wind came away strong enough to make me anxious for the topmasts for a few minutes; but as the yards were braced sharp up, while the brig was running away dead before it, the wind struck the sails very obliquely, and the spars were thus relieved of a great deal of the strain that would otherwise have come upon them.

Of course there was no more sleep for me that night, for when at length the squall had blown itself out it left behind it a strong northerly breeze that very soon knocked up a sea, heavy enough to make me ardently wish for daylight and the opportunity to shorten sail.

And when the dawn at length appeared, I grew more anxious than ever, for the new day showed as a long, ragged gash of fierce, copper-yellow light glaring through a gap in an otherwise unbroken expanse of dirty grey cloud, struck here and there with dashes of dull crimson colour. The air was unnaturally clear, the heads of the surges showing up against the wild yellow of the eastern horizon jet black, and as sharp and clean-cut as those that brimmed to the brig’s rail. The aspect of the sky meant wind in plenty, and before long; and I realised that unless I could contrive to shorten sail in double-quick time the task would pass beyond my power, and the canvas would have to remain set until it should blow away.

At length Miss Onslow made her appearance on deck, bright, fresh, and rosy from her night’s sleep; and a cry of dismay broke from her lips as she took in the state of affairs at a single comprehensive glance.

“Oh, Mr Conyers!” she exclaimed, “how long has it been like this? Are we in any danger?”

“Only in so far that we stand to lose some of our sails, unless I can contrive to get them clewed up before it comes on to blow any harder,” answered I. “I have been waiting for you to come on deck and relieve me at the wheel,” I continued, “in order that I may get about the job at once.”

“But why did you not call me?” she demanded, as she stepped up on the wheel grating beside me and took the spokes from my hands.

“Oh,” said I, “it has not been bad enough to justify me in disturbing you, thus far; nevertheless I am very glad to have your help now, as I believe there is no time to lose. Kindly keep her as she now is, dead before the wind, and I will get about the work of shortening sail without further delay.”

So saying, I hurried away forward, letting go the trysail outhaul and the main-topsail halliards on my way; passing next to the fore-topsail halliards, which I also let run. I then squared the yards, hauled in, brailed up and furled the trysail, and next took the reef-tackles, one after the other, to the winch, heaving them as taut as I could get them; after which I jumped aloft, passed the reef earrings, and tied the knittles. We were now tolerably safe—the brig being under close-reefed topsails—so I hove-to while we took breakfast, after which I hauled down and stowed the jib, got the brig away before the wind again, with Miss Onslow at the wheel, and resumed pumping operations.

I toiled all through the day, reducing the amount of water in the hold to a depth of eighteen inches only, and then hove-to the brig on the port tack for the night, both of us being by this time so completely exhausted that rest was even more important to us than food, although I took care that we should not be obliged to go without the latter.

About two hours after sunset the wind freshened up still more, and by midnight it was blowing so heavily, and so mountainous a sea was running, that I dared not any longer leave the brig to herself; it became necessary to constantly tend the helm, although the craft was hove-to; and in consequence I had no alternative but to pass the latter half of this night also at the wheel, exposed to a pelting rain that quickly drenched me to the skin. It was now blowing a whole gale from the northward; and so it continued for the next thirty hours, during nearly the whole of which time I remained at the wheel, wet, cold, and nearly crazy at the last for want of rest; indeed, but for the attention—almost amounting to devotion—of my companion I believe I should never have weathered that terrible time of fatigue and exposure. An end to it came at last, however; the gale broke, the wind softened down somewhat, and at length the sea went down sufficiently to permit of the wheel being once more lashed; when, leaving the brig in Miss Onslow’s charge, with strict injunctions that I was at once to be called in the event of a change for the worse in the weather, I went below, rolled into the mate’s bunk, and instantly lost all consciousness for the ensuing ten hours. It was somewhere about midnight when I awoke; yet when I turned out I found Miss Onslow still up, and not only so but with a hot and thoroughly appetising meal ready for me. We sat down and partook of it together; and when we had finished I went on deck, had a look round, found that the weather had greatly improved during my long sleep, and so turned in again until morning.

When I next went on deck the weather had cleared, the wind had dwindled to a five-knot breeze—hauling out from the eastward again at the same time—and the sea had gone down to such an extent as to be scarcely perceptible; I therefore shook out my reefs, and once more made sail upon the ship—a task that kept me busy right up to noon. The weather being fine, I was able to secure a meridian altitude of the sun, and thus ascertain the latitude of the brig, with the resulting discovery that we were already to the southward of the Cape parallels. This was disconcerting in the extreme, the more so from the fact that the easterly wind was forcing us still farther to the southward; but there was no help for it, we could do nothing but keep all on as we were and hope for a shift of wind. The fact of our being so far to the southward accounted, too, for the circumstance that we were not falling in with any other vessels.

Hitherto I had been so fully employed that I had found no time to search for the ship’s papers, or do more than ascertain the bare fact that she was of American nationality, that she was named theGovernor Smeaton, and that she hailed from Portland, Maine; but now that the weather had come fine once more, I determined to devote a few hours to the work of overhauling the vessel and discovering what I could about her. So I went to work and instituted a thoroughly systematic search, beginning in the skipper’s cabin—having of course first obtained Miss Onslow’s permission—and there, stowed carefully away in a lock-up desk—which, after some hesitation, I decided to break open—I found the ship’s papers intact, enclosed in a small tin case. And from these I learned, first, that her late master was named Josiah Hobson, and second, that she was bound on a trading voyage to the Pacific, with a cargo of “notions.” Then, in another drawer, also in the skipper’s cabin, carefully stowed away under some clothes, I found the log-book, and a chart of the Atlantic Ocean, with the brig’s course, up to a certain point, pricked off upon it; and from these two documents I learned that the brig had sailed, on such and such a date, from New York, with what, in the way of weather, progress, and so on, had befallen her, up to a date some five weeks later, whereon entries had been made in the log-book up to noon. The remarks respecting the weather at that hour gave no indication of any warning of the catastrophe that must have occurred only a few hours later. This last entry in the log-book enabled me to determine that the brig had been drifting about derelict for nearly three weeks when we two ocean waifs fell in with and took possession of her. The “notions” of which her cargo consisted seemed, according to the manifest, to comprise more or less of nearly everything that could possibly captivate a savage’s fancy; but in addition to these multitudinous articles there were—somewhere in the ship—a few bales of goods—mostly linen, fine muslins, silks, and ready-made clothing—consigned to a firm in Valparaiso, which I believed would be of the utmost value to Miss Onslow and myself, if I could but find them, and which, under the circumstances, I felt I could unhesitatingly appropriate to our use. I therefore determined that my next task should be to search for these bales; which, being composed of rather valuable goods, and destined moreover to be discharged at the brig’s first port of call, I thought would probably be found on top of the rest of the cargo and near to one of the hatches.

The next day proved even finer than its predecessor, the wind holding in the same direction but of perhaps a shade less strength than on the day before, while the sea had gone down until the water was smooth as the surface of a pond excepting for the low swell that scarcely ever quite disappears in mid-ocean; it was an ideal day for taking off the hatches, and I therefore determined to commence my examination of the cargo at once, beginning with the main hatch. To knock out the wedges, remove the battens, and roll back the tarpaulin was not a difficult job, and when I had got thus far, the removal of a couple of the hatches was soon effected. Luck was with me that day, for no sooner had I got the hatches off than my eyes fell upon a bale bearing marks which, according to the testimony of the vessel’s manifest, showed it to be one of those of which I was in search. It was too large, and was too tightly wedged in among others to admit of my moving it unaided, but with the assistance of a strop on the mainstay, and the watch tackle, I soon broke it out and triumphantly landed it on deck. The manifest gave the contents as ready-made clothing—men’s and women’s; which was exactly what Miss Onslow at least needed more than anything else; so I opened it forthwith, and then called the young lady to overhaul the contents and select what she would, while I gave her a spell at the wheel. In ten minutes she came aft, with her arms full of neatly-folded white material, and disappeared below. Then she came on deck again, had a further search, and this time carried off a load of coloured fabric; after which she remained invisible for nearly three-quarters of an hour. Finally she reappeared clad in an entirely new rig-out from top to toe; and very sweet and charming she looked, although I regret being unable to inform my female readers of the details of her costume. Then I had my innings, and after a considerable amount of rummaging succeeded in finding a couple of suits of light tweed that I thought would fit me, together with a generous supply of underclothing. This done, and our more pressing needs in the matter of clothing met, I returned the despoiled bale to its place in the hatchway, replaced the hatches, and battened everything securely down once more. The remainder of the day I devoted to the task of pumping the ship dry.

The two succeeding days were quite devoid of incident; the weather held fine, and the wind so light that the brig made barely three knots in the hour, on a taut bowline; there was nothing particular to do, for the small air of wind that continued to blow hung obstinately at east, and we were still driving slowly south, the vessel steering herself. Under these circumstances, as I was daily growing increasingly anxious to fall in with a sail of some sort that would take us off, and convey us to a civilised port, or even lend me a few hands to help in carrying the brig to Cape Town, I spent pretty nearly the whole of the day in the main-topmast crosstrees, from whence I could obtain the most extended view possible, and perhaps be thus able to intercept some craft that would otherwise slip past us unseen.

On the third day after my raid upon the cargo I was aloft as usual—the hour being about ten a.m.,—while Miss Onslow was busy in and out of the galley. The ship was creeping along at a speed of about two and a half knots, when, slowly and carefully sweeping the horizon afresh with the telescope, after a rather long spell of meditation upon how this adventure was likely to end, a small, hazy-looking, ill-defined object swam into the field of the instrument. The object was about one point before the weather beam, and was so far away that the rarefaction of the air imparted to it a wavering indistinctness of aspect that rendered it quite unrecognisable. The fact, however, that it was visible at all in the slightly hazy atmosphere led me to estimate its distance from the brig as about ten miles, while, from its apparent size, it might be either a boat, a raft, or a piece of floating wreckage. But whatever it might be, I determined to examine it, since it would be nothing out of my way, and would merely involve the labour of getting the ship round upon the other tack; so I continued to watch it until it had drifted to a couple of points abaft the beam—which occurred just two and a half hours after I had first sighted it, thus confirming my estimate as to its distance—when I put the helm hard down, lashed it, and then tended the braces as the brig sluggishly came up into the wind and as sluggishly paid off on the starboard tack. When the brig was fairly round, and the helm steadied I found that the object bore a full point on the lee bow, and that we should probably fetch it with ease. It was now distant about ten and a half miles, so there was plenty of time for us to go below and get tiffin ere closing it.

It was within about two hours of sunset when we at length came up with the object; but long ere then I had, with the assistance of the telescope, made it out to be a large boat, apparently a ship’s longboat, unrigged, and drifting idly before the wind. Yet her trim, sitting low, as she was, on the water, showed that she was not empty; and at length, when we were within some two miles of her, I suddenly observed a movement of some sort aboard her, and a couple of oars were laid out—with some difficulty, I thought. I was at the wheel when this occurred—for I had discovered, some time earlier in the afternoon, that although, with the wheel lashed, the brig could be made to steer herself fairly well upon a wind, she was just a trifle too erratic in her course to hit off and fetch such a comparatively small object as we were now aiming for, and consequently I had been steering all through the afternoon—but I at once called Miss Onslow to relieve me while I ran the ensign—the stars and stripes—up to the peak, as an encouragement to the occupants of the boat, and an intimation that they had been seen. It was tedious work, our snail-like closing with the boat, and it was rendered all the more so by the fact that those in her, after vainly attempting for some five minutes to use the oars, had given up the effort, and were once more invisible in the bottom of the boat, while the oars, left to take care of themselves, had gradually slid through the rowlocks and gone adrift. This simple circumstance, apparently so trivial, was to me very significant, pointing, as I considered it did, to a condition of such absolute exhaustion on the part of the strangers that even the loss of their oars had become a matter of indifference to them. Who could tell what eternities of suffering these men had endured ere being brought into this condition? It was quite likely that that lonely, drifting boat had been the scene of some ghastly tragedy! Who could tell what sight of horror might be passively awaiting us between the gunwales of the craft? I once more resigned the wheel to Miss Onslow’s hand, with strict injunctions to her not to leave it or attempt to get a peep at the interior of the boat, on any account, and then went forward to prepare a rope’s-end to drop into her as we drew up alongside. I conned the brig in such a manner as to bring the boat alongside under the lee fore chains, and then, when the proper moment had arrived, let go the weather main braces and swung the topsail aback.

My intention was to have jumped into the boat with a rope’s-end, as she came alongside, taking a turn anywhere for the moment; but as, with main-topsail aback, we crept slowly down upon the poor, forlorn-looking waif, a gaunt, unkempt scarecrow suddenly upreared itself in the stern-sheets and, uttering queer, gibbering sounds the while, scrambled forward into the eyes of the boat, with movements that somehow were equally suggestive of the very opposite qualities of agility and exhaustion, and held out its lean, talon-like hands for the rope which I was waiting to heave. As we drifted alongside the boat I hove the rope’s-end; the man caught it, andcollapsing, rather than stooping, with it, he made it fast to the ring-bolt in the stem. Then, uprearing himself once more, stiffly, and as though fighting against a deadly lethargy, he made a staggering spring for the brig’s rail, missed it, and would have fallen headlong backward into the boat had I not caught him by the collar. Heavens! what a skeleton the man was! He was fully as tall as myself, and had all the appearance of having once been a big, brawny Hercules of a fellow, but so wasted was he now that, with scarcely an effort, I with one hand lifted him in over the bulwarks and deposited him on deck, where he again limply doubled up and sank in a heap, groaning. But he kept his eyes fixed upon my face and, stiffly opening his jaws, pointed to his black and shrivelled tongue; and I, at once recognising his condition, ran aft and, taking a tumbler from the pantry, quickly mixed about a wineglassful of weak brandy and water, with which I sped back to him. I shall never forget the horrible expression of mad, wolfish craving that leapt into the unfortunate creature’s bloodshot eyes as I approached and bent over him. He glared at the tumbler, and howled like a wild beast; then suddenly snatched at my hand as I held the liquid to his lips, and clung so tightly to me that before I could withdraw the tumbler he had drained it of every drop of its contents. Even then he would not release me, but continued to pull and suck at the empty tumbler for several seconds. At length, however, he let go, groaning “More, more!” This time I mixed a considerable quantity of weak grog in a jug, and took it on deck with me, remembering that there were others in the boat alongside who were also probably perishing of thirst. I administered a further small quantity of the mixture to my patient, and it was marvellous to see the effect of it upon him, his strength seemed to return to him as though by magic, and as he sat up on the deck he muttered, thickly:

“More drink; more drink, for the love of God! I’d sell my soul for a tumbler of the stuff!”

Powerful though the fellow’s adjuration was, I refused his request, considering that, after his evidently long abstention, it would do him more harm than good—perhaps kill him, even—to let him drink too freely at first; so, putting the jug and tumbler out of his sight and reach, I turned my attention to the longboat alongside. She was a fine, big, powerful boat, and evidently, from her appearance, had belonged to a large ship. Now that I had time to look at her attentively I saw that her masts and sails were in her, laid fore and aft the thwarts, together with six long oars, or sweeps; she bore, deeply cut in her transom, the words “Black PrinceLiverpool”; there were six water breakers in her bottom; and, huddled up in all sorts of attitudes eloquent of extremest suffering, there lay, stretched upon and doubled over the thwarts, and in the bottom of the boat, no less than fifteen men—whether living or dead it was difficult for the moment to say. At all events it was evident that there was no time to be lost, for if the men were not actually dead their lives were hanging by a thread; so, recovering possession of the jug of weak grog and the tumbler, I slid down into the boat and, taking them as they came, wetted the lips of each with a little of the liquid. Some of them were able to swallow it at once, while others had their teeth so tightly clenched that it was impossible to get their jaws apart; but eventually—not to dwell at unnecessary length upon a scene so fraught with lingering, long-drawn-out suffering—I contrived to restore every one of them to consciousness, and to get them aboard the brig, where I spent several hours in attending to them and, with Miss Onslow’s assistance, administering food and drink in small quantities until their strength had so far returned to them that there was no longer any danger of their perishing, when I got them below into the forecastle, and left them to rest undisturbed. The next day they were all so far recovered as to be able to move about and even to climb on deck out of the forecastle, unaided; and on the second day seven of them reported themselves fit for such light duty as taking a trick at the wheel, and so on. Among the first to recover were the cook and steward, who at once assumed their proper duties, much to my satisfaction; for necessary as it had hitherto been for me to avail myself of Miss Onslow’s assistance, it went sorely against the grain for me to see her day after day performing such mean duties as that of cooking, and it was a great relief to me when I was able to inform her that henceforward she would be relieved of such work.

The unexpected acquisition of these sixteen men, constituting, as they did, a really strong crew for such a small craft as the brig, relieved me of a very heavy load of anxiety; for now I felt that, with a tight and seaworthy vessel under my feet, and a crew that would enable me to handle and take care of her in any weather, there was no reason whatever why my companion and I should not speedily reach Cape Town and the end of our troubles. There was but one thing remaining to occasion me any uneasiness, and that was the fact that the chronometer had run down and stopped during the time that the brig had been drifting about, derelict, and consequently I had no means of ascertaining my longitude—a most awkward predicament to be in, especially when approaching a coast. But, as though Fate were satisfied with what she had already inflicted upon us, and had now relented so completely as to be eager to hasten our deliverance, it happened that on the very day when my new crew reported themselves—as fit for duty, we fell in with a homeward-bound China clipper, from the skipper of whom I obtained our longitude, and was thus enabled to start the chronometer again. The information thus afforded me showed that we were within two hundred and forty miles of the South African capital, or little more than twenty-four hours’ run if the wind would but chop round and come fair for us.

Chapter Eight.The crew take possession of the brig.The process of nursing the rescued men back to health and strength had afforded me an opportunity to learn their story, which, briefly, was to the effect that their ship, theBlack Prince, of Liverpool, had sailed from Melbourne for home on such a date, and that all had gone well with them until such another date, when the ship was discovered to be on fire in the fore hold. Every effort had then been made to subdue the flames, but ineffectually, the fire continuing to spread, until, some three hours after the discovery of the outbreak, the flames burst through the deck, when it became apparent that the ship was doomed, and the boats were ordered out. According to the narrative of the men the ship had been abandoned in a perfectly orderly manner, the passengers going away in the cutters and gigs, in charge of the captain and the three mates, while the remaining portion of the crew, for whom room could not be found in these boats, were told off to the longboat. They had remained by the ship until she burned to the water’s edge and sank, and then made sail in company, steering a north-west course. Then, on the fourth day, a westerly gale had sprung up, and the boats had become separated. This was supposed to have occurred about a fortnight before we had fallen in with them; but they admitted that they were by no means sure as to this period, for on the twelfth day after abandoning the ship their provisions had become exhausted and they had been subjected to all the horrors of starvation, during the latter portion of which they had lost all account of time.Having heard their story, it became necessary to tell them my own, which I did in considerable detail, winding up by informing them that, the brig having been found derelict, the salvage money upon her would amount to something very considerable, and that, while by right the whole of it might be claimed by Miss Onslow and myself, we would willingly divide it equally among all hands instead of offering them ordinary wages for their assistance in taking the vessel into port.I was rather disappointed to observe that this generous offer—as I considered it—evoked no show of enthusiasm or gratitude on the part of my crew; they accepted it quite as a matter of course, and as no more than their due, although they were fully aware that, between us, Miss Onslow and I had already taken care of and sailed the brig for several days, and—barring such an untoward circumstance as a heavy gale of wind—could no doubt have eventually taken her into Table Bay. I said nothing, however, knowing from past experience that forecastle Jack is not overmuch given to a feeling of gratitude—perhaps in too many cases the poor fellow has little or nothing to be grateful for—but proceeded with the business of the vessel by appointing Peter O’Gorman, late boatswain, and John Price, late carpenter, of theBlack Prince, to the positions of chief and second mate respectively. This done, the two men named at once picked the watches; the port watch assumed duty, the starboard watch went below, and everybody apparently settled forthwith into his proper place. While the ceremony of picking the watches was proceeding I availed myself of the opportunity thus afforded to take stock of our new associates as a whole, and, after making every allowance for the effects of the hardship and suffering that they had so recently passed through, I was compelled to confess to myself that they were by no means a prepossessing lot; they, one and all, O’Gorman and Price not excepted, wore that sullen, hang-dog, ruffianly expression of countenance that marks the very lowest class of British seamen, the scum and refuse of the vocation. Still, we had not far to go, and I consoled myself with the reflection that they would probably prove good enough to serve my purpose.On the following morning, immediately after breakfast, I secured a set of observations of the sun for my longitude, Miss Onslow noting the chronometer time for me; and immediately afterwards I descended to the cabin to work them out. While on deck, engaged with the sextant, I had noticed that my movements were being watched with extraordinary interest by the hands on deck, and when, upon my return to the cabin, I proceeded to make my calculations and afterwards prick off the brig’s position on the chart, I could not help observing that the steward—who was busying himself in and out of the pantry at the time—betrayed as keen an interest in my doings as any of the people on deck. Miss Onslow was also watching me; and when I had finished and was about to roll up the chart she asked me if I had found out the ship’s position, whereupon I pointed it out to her, at the same time casually mentioning the fact that we were still one hundred and eighty miles from Table Bay. As I said this, I saw the steward leave his pantry and go on deck. I thought nothing of it at the time, believing that he had done so in the ordinary course of his duty, but a little later on I had reason to believe that his errand was to inform his shipmates as to the position of the brig.Having put away the chart, and waited a few minutes for Miss Onslow—who had announced her intention of going on deck—we both made our way up the companion ladder, and took a few turns fore and aft the weather side of the deck, together, from the wheel grating to the wake of the main rigging. My companion was in high spirits at the favourable turn that seemed to have occurred in our affairs, and was chatting with me in animated tones as to what would be best to do upon our arrival in Cape Town, when O’Gorman, who had been forward among the crew, came slouching aft along the deck, in true shell-back fashion, and, with the rather abrupt salutation of “Morning misther; mornin’, miss,” unceremoniously joined us.“Well, O’Gorman, what is it?” said I, for I had met and spoken to him several times already on that same morning, and imagined that he now had some matter of ship’s business to discuss with me.“I see you takin’ a hobseirwashin just now,” he remarked.“Yes,” I answered, finding that he paused as though expecting me to reply.“D’ye mane to say, thin, that ye’re a navigator?” he demanded.“Certainly I am,” I answered, rather testily, my temper rising slightly at what I considered the boorish familiarity of his tone and manner, which I determined to at once check—“what of it, pray?”“Well, ye see, we didn’t know—you didn’t tell us yesterday—that you was a navigator,” he returned, leering curiously at me out of his eye corners.“Was there any particular reason why I should inform you that I happen to be a sailor?” I demanded, fast getting really angry at this impertinent inquisition into my qualifications.“Oh,” he retorted, “av coorse we all knew you was a sailor-man; we could see that widout anny tellin’. But a navigator too—bedad, that makes a mighty differ!”“In what way, pray?” demanded I. “Have you been drinking, this morning, O’Gorman?”“The divil a dhrop,” he returned. And then, before I could say another word, he abruptly turned and walked forward again, saying something to the men on deck as he went, who instantly dropped such work as they were engaged upon, and followed him below into the forecastle.I was astounded—fairly taken aback—at this extraordinary behaviour, an explanation of which I was determined to demand at once. With this view I turned to Miss Onslow, whose arm was linked in mine, and requested her to kindly excuse me for a moment.“No,” said she, “I will not. I know perfectly well what that glitter in your eye means: you are angry at that sailor’s impertinence, and mean to give him a well-deserved reprimand. But I would rather that you did nothing of the kind, please; the man knows no better; and I do not suppose he reallymeantto be rude at all. But I confess I do not like the expression of his face: there is a mixture of low cunning, obstinacy, and cruel brutality in it that renders his appearance dreadfully repulsive; so please oblige me by taking no notice whatever of his behaviour.”There was a certain subtle flattery in the apparent inconsequence of my companion’s last few words that made them peculiarly acceptable to me; but discipline is discipline, and must be maintained, at all hazards, even when a crew has been picked up in such irregular fashion as mine had been; and I was determined to at once impress upon this Irish ruffian the fact that I was skipper of the brig, and that I intended to exact from him the respect and deference of manner due to the position. So I said to my companion:“I have no doubt you are perfectly right in your estimate of the man’s intentions; but he was altogether too insolent of manner to please me, and he must be taught better; moreover, I wish to ascertain precisely what he meant by the remark that my being a navigator made ‘a mighty differ.’ So please allow me to go forward and put these little matters right. I shall not be gone longer than five minutes, at the utmost.”“I will not consent to your going, just now, even for fiveseconds,” answered Miss Onslow, with quiet determination. “You are just angry enough to use the first words that may rise to your lips, without pausing to consider whether they happen or not to be offensive, and I am sure that is not a safe temper in which to engage in an altercation with that man. He is insolent, insubordinate, and altogether a most dangerous man to deal with—one can tell that by merely glancing at his eyes—and I have a firm conviction that if you were perchance to offend him, he would without compunction stab you, or do you some other dreadful injury—perhaps kill you outright. Therefore,”—with a most ravishing smile, and a tightening of her grip upon my arm—“you will be pleased to consider yourself as my prisoner for the present.”“And a most willing prisoner, too—at any other time,” answered I, with an attempt to fall in with the playful mood in which she had spoken the last words, while yet my anger was rising, and my anxiety increasing, as I noted the continued absence of the men from the deck. “But at this moment,” I continued, “I have no option; that fellow O’Gorman must be brought to bookat once, or my authority will be gone for ever; and that would never do; the others would only too probably take their cue from him, and become insolent and insubordinate in their turn, and there is no knowing what excesses they might in that case commit!”My companion turned pale as she at length realised that it was something more that mere anger springing from my wounded dignity that was moving me; she gazed anxiously into my eyes for a moment, and then said:“Have you any weapons of any kind?”“None but these,” I answered, indicating by a glance my doubled fists; “and, in case of need, a belaying-pin snatched from the rail. But,” I added cheerfully, “there is no need for weapons in this case; I shall but have to firmly assert my authority, and the fellow will be brought to his bearings forthwith.”“I wish I could think so!” exclaimed Miss Onslow earnestly. “But, somehow, I cannot; I utterly distrust the man; it is not only his appearance but his behaviour also that is against him. He is a sailor, and, as such, must know perfectly well what respect is due to a captain; and I cannot think he was ever allowed to behave to his former captain as he just now behaved to you. I have a presentiment that he means mischief of some kind. And see, too, what influence he appears to possess over the rest of the men.”“Precisely,” I agreed. “You see you are coming rapidly round to my view of his conduct; and therefore I think you will agree with me as to the immediate necessity for me to assert myself.”“Yes,” she assented—“if you can do soeffectively. But you must not go among those men unarmed. They have their knives; but you have nothing. Let us go downstairs and see if we cannot find a pistol, or something, in one or the other of our cabins. I have never yet thoroughly searched my cabin, to see what it contains.”“I have searched mine,” said I, “and have found no weapon of any kind; but—ah, there is O’Gorman, now coming out of the forecastle—and the rest of the men following him. And, by Jove! they are coming aft! You are right, there is something in the wind. Kindly go below for a few minutes, until the discussion which I foresee has come to an end.”“No, indeed, I will not,” whispered my companion, as she strengthened her hold upon my arm; “I will remain here with you, whatever happens. They will never be such despicable cowards as to use violence in the presence of a woman.”There was no time to say more, for O’Gorman, with all hands excepting the man at the wheel behind him, was now within hearing distance of us. I looked him squarely in the eye, and at once braced myself for conflict; for there was a sullen, furtive, dogged expression in his gaze, as he vainly attempted to unflinchingly meet mine, that boded mischief, although of what precise nature I could not, for the life of me, guess.He so obviously had something to say, and was, moreover, so obviously the spokesman for all hands, that I waited for him to begin, determined to take my cue from him rather than, by speaking first, afford him the opportunity of taking his cue from me. He shifted his weight, uneasily, from leg to leg, two or three times, glanced uncomfortably from Miss Onslow’s face to mine, removed a large quid of tobacco from his cheek and carefully deposited it in his cap, and betrayed many other symptoms of extreme awkwardness and perturbation of mind for a full minute or more without discovering a way of saying what he had to say; andso uncouthly ridiculous an exhibition did he make of himself that presently I detected a tremor of repressed laughter in the pressure of my companion’s hand upon my arm, and a second or two later the young lady’s risibility so far mastered her that she felt constrained to bury her face in her pocket-handkerchief under pretence of being troubled with a sudden fit of coughing.O’Gorman, however, was not to be so easily deceived; he at once observed the convulsion and recognised it for what it was, and the circumstance that he had excited the mirth of a girl seemed to sting him into action, for he suddenly straightened himself up and, with a vindictive glare at Miss Onslow, exclaimed:“Ah! so ye’re laughin’ at me, eh? All right, my beauty; laugh away! Yell laugh the other side ov y’r purty face afore long!”“O’Gorman!” I exclaimed fiercely, advancing a step or two toward him and dragging Miss Onslow after me as she tenaciously clung to my arm. “What do you mean, sir? How dare you address yourself to this lady in such an insolent fashion? Take care what you are about, sir, or I may find it very necessary to teach you a lesson in good manners. What do you want? Why do you stand there staring at me like an idiot? If you have anything to say, please say it at once, and get about your duty.”“Oho, bedad, just listen to him!” exclaimed the fellow, now thoroughly aroused. “Get about me juty, is it? By the powers! but there’s others as’ll soon find that they’ll have to get about their juty, as well as me!”I was by this time brought to the end of my patience; I was in a boiling passion, and would have sprung upon the man there and then, had not Miss Onslow so strenuously resisted my efforts to release myself from her hold that I found it impossible to do so without the exercise of actual violence. At this moment one of the men behind O’Gorman interposed by muttering:—loud enough, however, for me to hear:“Don’t be a fool, Pete, man! Keep a civil tongue in your head, can’t you; you’ll make a mess of the whole business if you don’t mind your weather eye! What’s the good of bein’ oncivil to the gent, eh? That ain’t the way to work the traverse! Tell him what we wants, and let’s get the job over.”Thus adjured, O’Gorman pulled himself together and remarked, half—as it seemed—in response to the seaman, and half to me:“We wants a manny things. And the first ov thim is: How fur are we from Table Bay?”“Well,” answered I, “if it will afford you any satisfaction to know it, I have no objection to inform you that we are just one hundred and eighty miles from it.”“And how fur may we be from the Horn?” now demanded O’Gorman.“The Horn?” I exclaimed. “What has the Horn to do with us, or we with the Horn?”“Why, a precious sight more than you seem to think, mister,” retorted the man, with a swift recurrence to his former insolent, bullying manner. “The fact is,” he continued, without allowing me time to speak, “we’re bound round the Horn; we mean you to take us there; and we want to know how long it’ll be afore we get there.”“My good fellow,” said I, “you don’t know what you are talking about. We are bound to Table Bay, and to Table Bay we go, or I will know the reason why. You may go round the Horn, or to the devil, afterwards, and welcome, so far as I am concerned.”“Shtop a bit, and go aisy,” retorted O’Gorman; “it’s yoursilf that doesn’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I said we’re goin’ round the Horn, didn’t I? Very well; I repait it, we’re goin’ round the Horn—in this brig—and I’d like to know where’s the man that’ll purvent us.”“Ah! I think I now understand you,” said I, with an involuntary shudder of horror as the scoundrel’s meaning at last burst upon me, and I thought of the dainty, delicately-nurtured girl by my side; “we picked you up, and saved your lives; and now you are about to repay our kindness by turning pirates and taking the ship from us. Is that it?”“By the piper! ye couldn’t have guessed it thruer if ye’d been guessin’ all day,” answered O’Gorman coolly.“My lads,” exclaimed I, appealing to the group of seamen standing behind the Irishman, “is this true? Is it possible that you really contemplate repaying this lady and myself for what we have done for you, with such barbarous ingratitude?”The men shuffled uneasily, looked at one another, as though each hoped that his fellow would accept the invidious task of replying to my question; and presently Price, the carpenter, spoke:“Ay, sir; it is true. We are sorry if it is not to your liking, but we have very particular business in the Pacific, and there we must go. This is just our chance; we shall never have a better; and we should be fools if we did not take it, now that it has come in our way.”“Very well,” said I bitterly; “you are sixteen men, while I am one only; if you are absolutely resolved to perpetrate this act of monstrous ingratitude I cannot prevent you. But I positively refuse to help you in any way whatever—you have no power or means to compel me to do that—so the best plan will be for us to part; this lady and I will take the boat, with sufficient provisions and water to enable us to reach Table Bay, and you may find your way round the Horn as best you can.”O’Gorman simply laughed in my face.“Take the boat, is it?” he exclaimed, with a loud guffaw. “Oh no, misther; that won’t do at all at all. We shall want the boat for ourselves. And we shall want your help, too, to navigate the brig for us, and we mane to have it, begor’ra!”“I fail to see how you are going to compel me to do anything that I may resolvenotto do,” retorted I, putting a bold face upon the matter, yet momentarily realising more clearly how completely we were in their hands, and at their mercy.“You do?” exclaimed O’Gorman; “then wait till I tell ye. If ye don’t consint to do as we want ye to, we’ll just rig up a bit of a raft, and send ye adrift upon her—alone; d’ye understand me, misther—alone!”“No,” interposed Miss Onslow, “you shall do nothing of the kind, you cowardly wretches; where Mr Conyers goes, I go also, even if it should be overboard, withnoraft to float us.”“Oh no, my purty,” answered O’Gorman, with the leer of a satyr, “we’d take moighty good care you didn’t do that. If Misther Conyers won’t be obligin’, why, we’llhaveto sparehim, I s’pose; but we couldn’t do widout you, my dear; what’d we do—”I could bear no more. “Silence, you blackguard!” I shouted, while vainly striving to shake off Miss Onslow’s tenacious hold upon my arm, that I might get within striking reach of him—“silence! How dare you address a helpless, defenceless woman in that insulting manner? What do you expect to gain by it? Address yourself exclusively to me, if you please.”“Wid all me heart,” answered O’Gorman, in nowise offended by my abuse of him. “I simply spoke to the lady because she spoke first. And bedad, it’s glad I am she did, because it’s give me the opporchunity to show ye how we mane to convart ye to our views. Navigate the brig for us, and ye’ll nayther of ye have any cause to complain of bad tratement from anny of us: refuse, and away ye goes adhrift on a raft, while the lady ’ll stay and kape us company.”To say that I was mad with indignation at this ruffian’s gross behaviour but feebly expresses my mental condition; to such a state of fury was I stirred that but for the restraining hold of the fair girl upon my arm—from which she by no means suffered me to breakaway—I should most assuredly have “run amok” among the mutineers, and in all probability have been killed by them in self-defence; as it was, my anger and the bitterly humiliating conviction of my utter helplessness so nearly overcame me that I was seized with an attack of giddiness that caused everything upon which my eyes rested to become blurred and indistinct, and to whirl hither and thither in a most distracting fashion, while I seemed to lose the control of my tongue, so that when I essayed to speak I found it impossible to utter a single intelligible word; moreover, I must have been on the very verge of becoming unconscious, from the violence of my agitation, for I had precisely the same feeling that one experiences when dreaming—a sensation of vagueness and unreality as to what was transpiring, so that, when Miss Onslow spoke, her voice sounded faint and far away, and her words, although I heard them distinctly, conveyed no special significance to my comprehension.“Mr Conyers will acquaint you with his decision in due time, when he has had leisure for reflection,” said she, in those haughtily scornful tones of hers that I remembered so well. Then I felt and yielded to the pressure of her guiding hand, and presently found myself groping my way, with her assistance, down the companion ladder and into the cabin. She guided me to one of the sofa-lockers, upon which I mechanically seated myself; and then I saw her go to the swinging rack and pour out a good stiff modicum of brandy, which she brought and held to my lips. I swallowed the draught, and after a few seconds my senses returned to me, almost as though I were recovering from a swoon, Miss Onslow assisting my recovery by seating herself beside me and fanning me with her pocket-handkerchief, gazing anxiously in my face the while.“There, you are better now!” she exclaimed encouragingly, as she continued to regard me. “Oh, Mr Conyers,” she continued, “I am soverysorry to see you thus. But I am not surprised, after all the hardship, and anxiety, and hard work that you have been called upon to endure since the wreck of the unfortunateCity of Cawnpore. What you have so bravely borne has been more than sufficient to undermine the health of the strongest man; and now, when we hoped that a few hours more would bring us to the end of our troubles, comes the cruel shock and disappointment of these wretches’ base ingratitude to complete what hardship, anxiety, and suffering have begun. But cheer up; all is not yet lost, by any means; our deliverance is merely deferred until you shall have carried out the wishes of these men; therefore, since we have no alternative, let us accept the inevitable with a good grace—do what they require as speedily as may be, and so bring this unfortunate adventure to an end. And,” she continued, after a barely perceptible pause, “have no anxiety on my account; O’Gorman and his accomplices will not molest me if you will but conform to their wishes. And, if theyshould, I shall be prepared for them: ‘Fore-warned is fore-armed’!”You may imagine how deeply ashamed of myself and of my late weakness I felt as I listened to the heroic words of this delicately-nurtured girl, who had known nothing either of danger, privation, or hardship until this frightful experience of all three had come to her with the wreck of the ship which was to have conveyed her to her father’s arms. Yet terrible as her situation was, she uttered no word of repining, her courage was immeasurably superior to mine; her sympathy was all for me; there was no apprehension on her own behalf; and now, at the moment when a new and dreadful trouble had come upon the top of all that we had previously undergone, when our brightest hopes were dashed to the ground, it was she who found it needful to encourage me, instead of I having to comfort and encourage her!Nor would she permit me to suffer the humiliation of having proved less strong than herself; at the first word of apology and self-condemnation that I uttered she silenced me by laying the whole blame upon the anxiety and fatigue to which I had been of late exposed; and when at length she had salved the wound inflicted upon my self-esteem by my recent loss of self-control, she set about the task of coaxing me to yield with at least an apparent good grace to the demands of the men—seeing that we were completely in their power, and could do no otherwise—in order that we might secure such full measure of good treatment from them as they might be disposed to accord to us. And so convincingly did she argue that, despite my reluctance to acknowledge myself conquered, I at length gave in; being influenced chiefly thereto, not by Miss Onslow’s arguments, but by the galling conviction that in this way only could I hope to save her from the violence with which the scoundrels had almost openly threatened her in the event of my non-compliance.This matter settled, I went on deck, where I found the entire crew congregated about the binnacle, awaiting me. They watched my approach in silence—and, as I thought, with ill-concealed anxiety—until I was within two paces of the group, when I halted, regarding them steadfastly. By this time I had completely recovered the command of my temper, and my self-possession; and as I noted their anxious looks I began to realise that, after all, these fellows were by no means so independent of me that they would be likely to wantonly provoke me; and I resolved to bring that point well home to them, with the view of driving the most advantageous bargain possible.“Well, men,” said I, “I have considered your proposal;—and have come to the conclusion that I will accede to it—upon certain conditions which I will set forth in due course. But, first of all, I should like to know what you would have done supposing I had not happened to have been a navigator?”The rest of the men looked at O’Gorman, and he replied:“Oh, you’d just have had to join us, or have gone overboard.”“Yes,” said I. “And what then? How would you have managed without anyone to have navigated the ship for you?”“We should ha’ had to ha’ done the best we could,” replied Price nonchalantly.“To what part of the Pacific are you bound?” asked I.“To an oiland in latichood—” began O’Gorman.“To an island?” I interrupted. “And do you think you would ever have succeeded in finding that island without the assistance of a navigator? Do you think you would ever have reached the Pacific at all? By what means would you ascertain your whereabouts and avoid dangers?” I demanded.There was a long silence, which Price at length broke by replying:“Oh, we’d ha’ managed somehow.”“Yes,” said I, “you would have managed somehow—for a few days, or weeks, as the case might be; at the end of which time you would either have run your ship ashore, and lost her; or you would have found yourselves hopelessly out of your reckoning, with no knowledge of where you were, or how to steer in order to reach your destination.”Nobody attempted to reply to this, all hands evidently realising the truth of what I had said, and pondering upon it. At length, however, when the silence had grown embarrassing, O’Gorman broke it, by asking—in a much more civil tone than he had yet chosen to adopt with me:“Well, misther, allowin’ all this to be thrue, what of it?”“Nothing, except that before propounding the conditions upon which I am willing to agree to your proposal, I wished to make it perfectly clear to you all that you can do absolutely nothing without my help,” said I. “You have chosen to adopt a very domineering and offensive tone with me, under the evident impression that the young lady and myself are completely at your mercy. And so we are, I willingly admit, but not to the extent that you seem to suppose; because, if you will reflect for a moment, you will see that you dare not murder, or even ill-treat me, or the young lady. Here we are, in the South Atlantic, and not a man among you all possesses knowledge enough to take this brig from where she now floats to a port; hence you are as much at my mercy as I am at yours. You can do absolutely nothing without me. Therefore, if you require my assistance you must agree to my terms.”“Very well, sorr,” answered O’Gorman; “let’s hear what thim terms are.”“In the first place,” said I, “you will all treat the lady with the utmost respect, no one presuming to speak to her except in reply to any remark which she may be pleased to make.”“I shan’t agree to that,” shouted Price aggressively. “We’re all goin’ to be equal, here, now; and if I feel like speakin’ to the gal, I shall speak to her, and I’d like to know who’ll stop me.”“Oh, shut up, Chips, cawn’t ye!” exclaimed one of the other men—a Cockney, if his tongue did not belie him, “shut up, and stow that ‘equality’ yarn of yours. We’ve all heard that before, and I, for one, don’t believe in it; it’s all very well among a lot o’ sailor-men like ourselves, but you’ll never be the equal of the lidy—no, nor of the gent neither—not if you was to live to be as old as Mathusalem; so what good would it do you to talk to her? Why, she wouldn’tlookat an old tarry-breeches like you or me, much less talk to us! Garn! You go ahead, sir;we’lllook awfter Chips, and keep him in order; never fear!”“I hope you will, for your own sakes,” I retorted significantly, leaving them to interpret my meaning as they chose. “My next condition,” I continued, “is that the cabin and the staterooms are to be left to the exclusive use of the lady and myself, the steward only being allowed access to them.“My next condition is that no man shall have more than two gills of rum per day—half to be served out at midday, and the remainder at four bells of the first dog-watch. In the event of bad weather, or other especial circumstances, the allowance may be increased at my discretion, and by so much as I may consider necessary.“And my last condition is that when this business is concluded, the lady and I are to be allowed to take the boat, with a sufficient stock of provisions and water, and to quit the ship within sight of some suitable harbour, to be chosen by myself.”A dead silence followed this bold announcement on my part, which was at length broken by O’Gorman, who, looking round upon his motley crowd of followers, demanded:“Well, bhoys, you’ve heard what the gintleman says. Have anny of ye annything to say agin it?”“Yes; I have,” answered the irrepressible Price. “I don’t care a ropeyarn whether I’m allowed to speak to the gal or not; but I thinks that O’Gorman and me, seein’ that we’re to be the mates of this here hooker, ought to berth aft, and to take our meals in the cabin; and I’m for havin’ our rights.”“You will do neither the one nor the other, with my consent, Price, I assure you,” said I. “And unless my conditions are absolutely complied with I shall decline to help you in any way.”“Oh, you will, eh?” sneered Price. “You’d better not, though, because I dessay we could soon find a way to bring ye round to our way of thinkin’. We could stop your grub, for instance, and starve ye until you was willin’ to do what was wanted. And if that didn’t do, why there’s the—”“Stop!” I exclaimed fiercely, “I have had enough, and more than enough, of threats, my man, and will listen to them no further. Now, understand me, all of you. I have stated the conditions upon which I will meet your wishes, and I will not abate one jot of them. Agree to them or not, as you please. You have taken the ship from me, and now you may do as you will with her; but, make no mistake, I will only help you of my own free will; I would rather kill the young lady and myself with my own hand than submit to compulsion from a crowd of mutineers. Take your own time to decide;Iam in no hurry.”“Why, he defies us!” exclaimed Price, turning to his companions. “What d’ye say, boys, shall we give him a lesson? Shall us show him that we’re his masters?”“No, mate, we shan’t,” interposed the fellow who had spoken before; “and if you don’t stop your gab about ‘lessons’ and ‘masters’ I’ll see if I cawn’t stop it for you. What we want, mates, is to get to that island that O’Gorman has told us so much about; and here is a gent who can take us to it. What do we want more? Do we want to grub in the cabin? Ain’t the fo’k’sle good enough for us, who’ve lived in fo’k’sles all our lives? Very well, then, let’s agree to the gent’s terms, and have done with it. What d’ye s’y?”It soon appeared that the entire party were willing—Price, however, consenting under protest;—so I retired to the cabin and drew up the terms in writing, together with an acknowledgment on the part of the crew that they had taken the ship from me by force, and that I was acting as navigator under compulsion; and this the entire party more or less reluctantly signed—or affixed their mark to—Miss Onslow acting as witness to the signatures of the men. This done, with bitter chagrin and profound misgiving as to the issue of the adventure, I gave the order to wear ship, and we bore up on a course that pointed the brig’s jib-boom straight for the far-distant Cape of Storms.

The process of nursing the rescued men back to health and strength had afforded me an opportunity to learn their story, which, briefly, was to the effect that their ship, theBlack Prince, of Liverpool, had sailed from Melbourne for home on such a date, and that all had gone well with them until such another date, when the ship was discovered to be on fire in the fore hold. Every effort had then been made to subdue the flames, but ineffectually, the fire continuing to spread, until, some three hours after the discovery of the outbreak, the flames burst through the deck, when it became apparent that the ship was doomed, and the boats were ordered out. According to the narrative of the men the ship had been abandoned in a perfectly orderly manner, the passengers going away in the cutters and gigs, in charge of the captain and the three mates, while the remaining portion of the crew, for whom room could not be found in these boats, were told off to the longboat. They had remained by the ship until she burned to the water’s edge and sank, and then made sail in company, steering a north-west course. Then, on the fourth day, a westerly gale had sprung up, and the boats had become separated. This was supposed to have occurred about a fortnight before we had fallen in with them; but they admitted that they were by no means sure as to this period, for on the twelfth day after abandoning the ship their provisions had become exhausted and they had been subjected to all the horrors of starvation, during the latter portion of which they had lost all account of time.

Having heard their story, it became necessary to tell them my own, which I did in considerable detail, winding up by informing them that, the brig having been found derelict, the salvage money upon her would amount to something very considerable, and that, while by right the whole of it might be claimed by Miss Onslow and myself, we would willingly divide it equally among all hands instead of offering them ordinary wages for their assistance in taking the vessel into port.

I was rather disappointed to observe that this generous offer—as I considered it—evoked no show of enthusiasm or gratitude on the part of my crew; they accepted it quite as a matter of course, and as no more than their due, although they were fully aware that, between us, Miss Onslow and I had already taken care of and sailed the brig for several days, and—barring such an untoward circumstance as a heavy gale of wind—could no doubt have eventually taken her into Table Bay. I said nothing, however, knowing from past experience that forecastle Jack is not overmuch given to a feeling of gratitude—perhaps in too many cases the poor fellow has little or nothing to be grateful for—but proceeded with the business of the vessel by appointing Peter O’Gorman, late boatswain, and John Price, late carpenter, of theBlack Prince, to the positions of chief and second mate respectively. This done, the two men named at once picked the watches; the port watch assumed duty, the starboard watch went below, and everybody apparently settled forthwith into his proper place. While the ceremony of picking the watches was proceeding I availed myself of the opportunity thus afforded to take stock of our new associates as a whole, and, after making every allowance for the effects of the hardship and suffering that they had so recently passed through, I was compelled to confess to myself that they were by no means a prepossessing lot; they, one and all, O’Gorman and Price not excepted, wore that sullen, hang-dog, ruffianly expression of countenance that marks the very lowest class of British seamen, the scum and refuse of the vocation. Still, we had not far to go, and I consoled myself with the reflection that they would probably prove good enough to serve my purpose.

On the following morning, immediately after breakfast, I secured a set of observations of the sun for my longitude, Miss Onslow noting the chronometer time for me; and immediately afterwards I descended to the cabin to work them out. While on deck, engaged with the sextant, I had noticed that my movements were being watched with extraordinary interest by the hands on deck, and when, upon my return to the cabin, I proceeded to make my calculations and afterwards prick off the brig’s position on the chart, I could not help observing that the steward—who was busying himself in and out of the pantry at the time—betrayed as keen an interest in my doings as any of the people on deck. Miss Onslow was also watching me; and when I had finished and was about to roll up the chart she asked me if I had found out the ship’s position, whereupon I pointed it out to her, at the same time casually mentioning the fact that we were still one hundred and eighty miles from Table Bay. As I said this, I saw the steward leave his pantry and go on deck. I thought nothing of it at the time, believing that he had done so in the ordinary course of his duty, but a little later on I had reason to believe that his errand was to inform his shipmates as to the position of the brig.

Having put away the chart, and waited a few minutes for Miss Onslow—who had announced her intention of going on deck—we both made our way up the companion ladder, and took a few turns fore and aft the weather side of the deck, together, from the wheel grating to the wake of the main rigging. My companion was in high spirits at the favourable turn that seemed to have occurred in our affairs, and was chatting with me in animated tones as to what would be best to do upon our arrival in Cape Town, when O’Gorman, who had been forward among the crew, came slouching aft along the deck, in true shell-back fashion, and, with the rather abrupt salutation of “Morning misther; mornin’, miss,” unceremoniously joined us.

“Well, O’Gorman, what is it?” said I, for I had met and spoken to him several times already on that same morning, and imagined that he now had some matter of ship’s business to discuss with me.

“I see you takin’ a hobseirwashin just now,” he remarked.

“Yes,” I answered, finding that he paused as though expecting me to reply.

“D’ye mane to say, thin, that ye’re a navigator?” he demanded.

“Certainly I am,” I answered, rather testily, my temper rising slightly at what I considered the boorish familiarity of his tone and manner, which I determined to at once check—“what of it, pray?”

“Well, ye see, we didn’t know—you didn’t tell us yesterday—that you was a navigator,” he returned, leering curiously at me out of his eye corners.

“Was there any particular reason why I should inform you that I happen to be a sailor?” I demanded, fast getting really angry at this impertinent inquisition into my qualifications.

“Oh,” he retorted, “av coorse we all knew you was a sailor-man; we could see that widout anny tellin’. But a navigator too—bedad, that makes a mighty differ!”

“In what way, pray?” demanded I. “Have you been drinking, this morning, O’Gorman?”

“The divil a dhrop,” he returned. And then, before I could say another word, he abruptly turned and walked forward again, saying something to the men on deck as he went, who instantly dropped such work as they were engaged upon, and followed him below into the forecastle.

I was astounded—fairly taken aback—at this extraordinary behaviour, an explanation of which I was determined to demand at once. With this view I turned to Miss Onslow, whose arm was linked in mine, and requested her to kindly excuse me for a moment.

“No,” said she, “I will not. I know perfectly well what that glitter in your eye means: you are angry at that sailor’s impertinence, and mean to give him a well-deserved reprimand. But I would rather that you did nothing of the kind, please; the man knows no better; and I do not suppose he reallymeantto be rude at all. But I confess I do not like the expression of his face: there is a mixture of low cunning, obstinacy, and cruel brutality in it that renders his appearance dreadfully repulsive; so please oblige me by taking no notice whatever of his behaviour.”

There was a certain subtle flattery in the apparent inconsequence of my companion’s last few words that made them peculiarly acceptable to me; but discipline is discipline, and must be maintained, at all hazards, even when a crew has been picked up in such irregular fashion as mine had been; and I was determined to at once impress upon this Irish ruffian the fact that I was skipper of the brig, and that I intended to exact from him the respect and deference of manner due to the position. So I said to my companion:

“I have no doubt you are perfectly right in your estimate of the man’s intentions; but he was altogether too insolent of manner to please me, and he must be taught better; moreover, I wish to ascertain precisely what he meant by the remark that my being a navigator made ‘a mighty differ.’ So please allow me to go forward and put these little matters right. I shall not be gone longer than five minutes, at the utmost.”

“I will not consent to your going, just now, even for fiveseconds,” answered Miss Onslow, with quiet determination. “You are just angry enough to use the first words that may rise to your lips, without pausing to consider whether they happen or not to be offensive, and I am sure that is not a safe temper in which to engage in an altercation with that man. He is insolent, insubordinate, and altogether a most dangerous man to deal with—one can tell that by merely glancing at his eyes—and I have a firm conviction that if you were perchance to offend him, he would without compunction stab you, or do you some other dreadful injury—perhaps kill you outright. Therefore,”—with a most ravishing smile, and a tightening of her grip upon my arm—“you will be pleased to consider yourself as my prisoner for the present.”

“And a most willing prisoner, too—at any other time,” answered I, with an attempt to fall in with the playful mood in which she had spoken the last words, while yet my anger was rising, and my anxiety increasing, as I noted the continued absence of the men from the deck. “But at this moment,” I continued, “I have no option; that fellow O’Gorman must be brought to bookat once, or my authority will be gone for ever; and that would never do; the others would only too probably take their cue from him, and become insolent and insubordinate in their turn, and there is no knowing what excesses they might in that case commit!”

My companion turned pale as she at length realised that it was something more that mere anger springing from my wounded dignity that was moving me; she gazed anxiously into my eyes for a moment, and then said:

“Have you any weapons of any kind?”

“None but these,” I answered, indicating by a glance my doubled fists; “and, in case of need, a belaying-pin snatched from the rail. But,” I added cheerfully, “there is no need for weapons in this case; I shall but have to firmly assert my authority, and the fellow will be brought to his bearings forthwith.”

“I wish I could think so!” exclaimed Miss Onslow earnestly. “But, somehow, I cannot; I utterly distrust the man; it is not only his appearance but his behaviour also that is against him. He is a sailor, and, as such, must know perfectly well what respect is due to a captain; and I cannot think he was ever allowed to behave to his former captain as he just now behaved to you. I have a presentiment that he means mischief of some kind. And see, too, what influence he appears to possess over the rest of the men.”

“Precisely,” I agreed. “You see you are coming rapidly round to my view of his conduct; and therefore I think you will agree with me as to the immediate necessity for me to assert myself.”

“Yes,” she assented—“if you can do soeffectively. But you must not go among those men unarmed. They have their knives; but you have nothing. Let us go downstairs and see if we cannot find a pistol, or something, in one or the other of our cabins. I have never yet thoroughly searched my cabin, to see what it contains.”

“I have searched mine,” said I, “and have found no weapon of any kind; but—ah, there is O’Gorman, now coming out of the forecastle—and the rest of the men following him. And, by Jove! they are coming aft! You are right, there is something in the wind. Kindly go below for a few minutes, until the discussion which I foresee has come to an end.”

“No, indeed, I will not,” whispered my companion, as she strengthened her hold upon my arm; “I will remain here with you, whatever happens. They will never be such despicable cowards as to use violence in the presence of a woman.”

There was no time to say more, for O’Gorman, with all hands excepting the man at the wheel behind him, was now within hearing distance of us. I looked him squarely in the eye, and at once braced myself for conflict; for there was a sullen, furtive, dogged expression in his gaze, as he vainly attempted to unflinchingly meet mine, that boded mischief, although of what precise nature I could not, for the life of me, guess.

He so obviously had something to say, and was, moreover, so obviously the spokesman for all hands, that I waited for him to begin, determined to take my cue from him rather than, by speaking first, afford him the opportunity of taking his cue from me. He shifted his weight, uneasily, from leg to leg, two or three times, glanced uncomfortably from Miss Onslow’s face to mine, removed a large quid of tobacco from his cheek and carefully deposited it in his cap, and betrayed many other symptoms of extreme awkwardness and perturbation of mind for a full minute or more without discovering a way of saying what he had to say; andso uncouthly ridiculous an exhibition did he make of himself that presently I detected a tremor of repressed laughter in the pressure of my companion’s hand upon my arm, and a second or two later the young lady’s risibility so far mastered her that she felt constrained to bury her face in her pocket-handkerchief under pretence of being troubled with a sudden fit of coughing.

O’Gorman, however, was not to be so easily deceived; he at once observed the convulsion and recognised it for what it was, and the circumstance that he had excited the mirth of a girl seemed to sting him into action, for he suddenly straightened himself up and, with a vindictive glare at Miss Onslow, exclaimed:

“Ah! so ye’re laughin’ at me, eh? All right, my beauty; laugh away! Yell laugh the other side ov y’r purty face afore long!”

“O’Gorman!” I exclaimed fiercely, advancing a step or two toward him and dragging Miss Onslow after me as she tenaciously clung to my arm. “What do you mean, sir? How dare you address yourself to this lady in such an insolent fashion? Take care what you are about, sir, or I may find it very necessary to teach you a lesson in good manners. What do you want? Why do you stand there staring at me like an idiot? If you have anything to say, please say it at once, and get about your duty.”

“Oho, bedad, just listen to him!” exclaimed the fellow, now thoroughly aroused. “Get about me juty, is it? By the powers! but there’s others as’ll soon find that they’ll have to get about their juty, as well as me!”

I was by this time brought to the end of my patience; I was in a boiling passion, and would have sprung upon the man there and then, had not Miss Onslow so strenuously resisted my efforts to release myself from her hold that I found it impossible to do so without the exercise of actual violence. At this moment one of the men behind O’Gorman interposed by muttering:—loud enough, however, for me to hear:

“Don’t be a fool, Pete, man! Keep a civil tongue in your head, can’t you; you’ll make a mess of the whole business if you don’t mind your weather eye! What’s the good of bein’ oncivil to the gent, eh? That ain’t the way to work the traverse! Tell him what we wants, and let’s get the job over.”

Thus adjured, O’Gorman pulled himself together and remarked, half—as it seemed—in response to the seaman, and half to me:

“We wants a manny things. And the first ov thim is: How fur are we from Table Bay?”

“Well,” answered I, “if it will afford you any satisfaction to know it, I have no objection to inform you that we are just one hundred and eighty miles from it.”

“And how fur may we be from the Horn?” now demanded O’Gorman.

“The Horn?” I exclaimed. “What has the Horn to do with us, or we with the Horn?”

“Why, a precious sight more than you seem to think, mister,” retorted the man, with a swift recurrence to his former insolent, bullying manner. “The fact is,” he continued, without allowing me time to speak, “we’re bound round the Horn; we mean you to take us there; and we want to know how long it’ll be afore we get there.”

“My good fellow,” said I, “you don’t know what you are talking about. We are bound to Table Bay, and to Table Bay we go, or I will know the reason why. You may go round the Horn, or to the devil, afterwards, and welcome, so far as I am concerned.”

“Shtop a bit, and go aisy,” retorted O’Gorman; “it’s yoursilf that doesn’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I said we’re goin’ round the Horn, didn’t I? Very well; I repait it, we’re goin’ round the Horn—in this brig—and I’d like to know where’s the man that’ll purvent us.”

“Ah! I think I now understand you,” said I, with an involuntary shudder of horror as the scoundrel’s meaning at last burst upon me, and I thought of the dainty, delicately-nurtured girl by my side; “we picked you up, and saved your lives; and now you are about to repay our kindness by turning pirates and taking the ship from us. Is that it?”

“By the piper! ye couldn’t have guessed it thruer if ye’d been guessin’ all day,” answered O’Gorman coolly.

“My lads,” exclaimed I, appealing to the group of seamen standing behind the Irishman, “is this true? Is it possible that you really contemplate repaying this lady and myself for what we have done for you, with such barbarous ingratitude?”

The men shuffled uneasily, looked at one another, as though each hoped that his fellow would accept the invidious task of replying to my question; and presently Price, the carpenter, spoke:

“Ay, sir; it is true. We are sorry if it is not to your liking, but we have very particular business in the Pacific, and there we must go. This is just our chance; we shall never have a better; and we should be fools if we did not take it, now that it has come in our way.”

“Very well,” said I bitterly; “you are sixteen men, while I am one only; if you are absolutely resolved to perpetrate this act of monstrous ingratitude I cannot prevent you. But I positively refuse to help you in any way whatever—you have no power or means to compel me to do that—so the best plan will be for us to part; this lady and I will take the boat, with sufficient provisions and water to enable us to reach Table Bay, and you may find your way round the Horn as best you can.”

O’Gorman simply laughed in my face.

“Take the boat, is it?” he exclaimed, with a loud guffaw. “Oh no, misther; that won’t do at all at all. We shall want the boat for ourselves. And we shall want your help, too, to navigate the brig for us, and we mane to have it, begor’ra!”

“I fail to see how you are going to compel me to do anything that I may resolvenotto do,” retorted I, putting a bold face upon the matter, yet momentarily realising more clearly how completely we were in their hands, and at their mercy.

“You do?” exclaimed O’Gorman; “then wait till I tell ye. If ye don’t consint to do as we want ye to, we’ll just rig up a bit of a raft, and send ye adrift upon her—alone; d’ye understand me, misther—alone!”

“No,” interposed Miss Onslow, “you shall do nothing of the kind, you cowardly wretches; where Mr Conyers goes, I go also, even if it should be overboard, withnoraft to float us.”

“Oh no, my purty,” answered O’Gorman, with the leer of a satyr, “we’d take moighty good care you didn’t do that. If Misther Conyers won’t be obligin’, why, we’llhaveto sparehim, I s’pose; but we couldn’t do widout you, my dear; what’d we do—”

I could bear no more. “Silence, you blackguard!” I shouted, while vainly striving to shake off Miss Onslow’s tenacious hold upon my arm, that I might get within striking reach of him—“silence! How dare you address a helpless, defenceless woman in that insulting manner? What do you expect to gain by it? Address yourself exclusively to me, if you please.”

“Wid all me heart,” answered O’Gorman, in nowise offended by my abuse of him. “I simply spoke to the lady because she spoke first. And bedad, it’s glad I am she did, because it’s give me the opporchunity to show ye how we mane to convart ye to our views. Navigate the brig for us, and ye’ll nayther of ye have any cause to complain of bad tratement from anny of us: refuse, and away ye goes adhrift on a raft, while the lady ’ll stay and kape us company.”

To say that I was mad with indignation at this ruffian’s gross behaviour but feebly expresses my mental condition; to such a state of fury was I stirred that but for the restraining hold of the fair girl upon my arm—from which she by no means suffered me to breakaway—I should most assuredly have “run amok” among the mutineers, and in all probability have been killed by them in self-defence; as it was, my anger and the bitterly humiliating conviction of my utter helplessness so nearly overcame me that I was seized with an attack of giddiness that caused everything upon which my eyes rested to become blurred and indistinct, and to whirl hither and thither in a most distracting fashion, while I seemed to lose the control of my tongue, so that when I essayed to speak I found it impossible to utter a single intelligible word; moreover, I must have been on the very verge of becoming unconscious, from the violence of my agitation, for I had precisely the same feeling that one experiences when dreaming—a sensation of vagueness and unreality as to what was transpiring, so that, when Miss Onslow spoke, her voice sounded faint and far away, and her words, although I heard them distinctly, conveyed no special significance to my comprehension.

“Mr Conyers will acquaint you with his decision in due time, when he has had leisure for reflection,” said she, in those haughtily scornful tones of hers that I remembered so well. Then I felt and yielded to the pressure of her guiding hand, and presently found myself groping my way, with her assistance, down the companion ladder and into the cabin. She guided me to one of the sofa-lockers, upon which I mechanically seated myself; and then I saw her go to the swinging rack and pour out a good stiff modicum of brandy, which she brought and held to my lips. I swallowed the draught, and after a few seconds my senses returned to me, almost as though I were recovering from a swoon, Miss Onslow assisting my recovery by seating herself beside me and fanning me with her pocket-handkerchief, gazing anxiously in my face the while.

“There, you are better now!” she exclaimed encouragingly, as she continued to regard me. “Oh, Mr Conyers,” she continued, “I am soverysorry to see you thus. But I am not surprised, after all the hardship, and anxiety, and hard work that you have been called upon to endure since the wreck of the unfortunateCity of Cawnpore. What you have so bravely borne has been more than sufficient to undermine the health of the strongest man; and now, when we hoped that a few hours more would bring us to the end of our troubles, comes the cruel shock and disappointment of these wretches’ base ingratitude to complete what hardship, anxiety, and suffering have begun. But cheer up; all is not yet lost, by any means; our deliverance is merely deferred until you shall have carried out the wishes of these men; therefore, since we have no alternative, let us accept the inevitable with a good grace—do what they require as speedily as may be, and so bring this unfortunate adventure to an end. And,” she continued, after a barely perceptible pause, “have no anxiety on my account; O’Gorman and his accomplices will not molest me if you will but conform to their wishes. And, if theyshould, I shall be prepared for them: ‘Fore-warned is fore-armed’!”

You may imagine how deeply ashamed of myself and of my late weakness I felt as I listened to the heroic words of this delicately-nurtured girl, who had known nothing either of danger, privation, or hardship until this frightful experience of all three had come to her with the wreck of the ship which was to have conveyed her to her father’s arms. Yet terrible as her situation was, she uttered no word of repining, her courage was immeasurably superior to mine; her sympathy was all for me; there was no apprehension on her own behalf; and now, at the moment when a new and dreadful trouble had come upon the top of all that we had previously undergone, when our brightest hopes were dashed to the ground, it was she who found it needful to encourage me, instead of I having to comfort and encourage her!

Nor would she permit me to suffer the humiliation of having proved less strong than herself; at the first word of apology and self-condemnation that I uttered she silenced me by laying the whole blame upon the anxiety and fatigue to which I had been of late exposed; and when at length she had salved the wound inflicted upon my self-esteem by my recent loss of self-control, she set about the task of coaxing me to yield with at least an apparent good grace to the demands of the men—seeing that we were completely in their power, and could do no otherwise—in order that we might secure such full measure of good treatment from them as they might be disposed to accord to us. And so convincingly did she argue that, despite my reluctance to acknowledge myself conquered, I at length gave in; being influenced chiefly thereto, not by Miss Onslow’s arguments, but by the galling conviction that in this way only could I hope to save her from the violence with which the scoundrels had almost openly threatened her in the event of my non-compliance.

This matter settled, I went on deck, where I found the entire crew congregated about the binnacle, awaiting me. They watched my approach in silence—and, as I thought, with ill-concealed anxiety—until I was within two paces of the group, when I halted, regarding them steadfastly. By this time I had completely recovered the command of my temper, and my self-possession; and as I noted their anxious looks I began to realise that, after all, these fellows were by no means so independent of me that they would be likely to wantonly provoke me; and I resolved to bring that point well home to them, with the view of driving the most advantageous bargain possible.

“Well, men,” said I, “I have considered your proposal;—and have come to the conclusion that I will accede to it—upon certain conditions which I will set forth in due course. But, first of all, I should like to know what you would have done supposing I had not happened to have been a navigator?”

The rest of the men looked at O’Gorman, and he replied:

“Oh, you’d just have had to join us, or have gone overboard.”

“Yes,” said I. “And what then? How would you have managed without anyone to have navigated the ship for you?”

“We should ha’ had to ha’ done the best we could,” replied Price nonchalantly.

“To what part of the Pacific are you bound?” asked I.

“To an oiland in latichood—” began O’Gorman.

“To an island?” I interrupted. “And do you think you would ever have succeeded in finding that island without the assistance of a navigator? Do you think you would ever have reached the Pacific at all? By what means would you ascertain your whereabouts and avoid dangers?” I demanded.

There was a long silence, which Price at length broke by replying:

“Oh, we’d ha’ managed somehow.”

“Yes,” said I, “you would have managed somehow—for a few days, or weeks, as the case might be; at the end of which time you would either have run your ship ashore, and lost her; or you would have found yourselves hopelessly out of your reckoning, with no knowledge of where you were, or how to steer in order to reach your destination.”

Nobody attempted to reply to this, all hands evidently realising the truth of what I had said, and pondering upon it. At length, however, when the silence had grown embarrassing, O’Gorman broke it, by asking—in a much more civil tone than he had yet chosen to adopt with me:

“Well, misther, allowin’ all this to be thrue, what of it?”

“Nothing, except that before propounding the conditions upon which I am willing to agree to your proposal, I wished to make it perfectly clear to you all that you can do absolutely nothing without my help,” said I. “You have chosen to adopt a very domineering and offensive tone with me, under the evident impression that the young lady and myself are completely at your mercy. And so we are, I willingly admit, but not to the extent that you seem to suppose; because, if you will reflect for a moment, you will see that you dare not murder, or even ill-treat me, or the young lady. Here we are, in the South Atlantic, and not a man among you all possesses knowledge enough to take this brig from where she now floats to a port; hence you are as much at my mercy as I am at yours. You can do absolutely nothing without me. Therefore, if you require my assistance you must agree to my terms.”

“Very well, sorr,” answered O’Gorman; “let’s hear what thim terms are.”

“In the first place,” said I, “you will all treat the lady with the utmost respect, no one presuming to speak to her except in reply to any remark which she may be pleased to make.”

“I shan’t agree to that,” shouted Price aggressively. “We’re all goin’ to be equal, here, now; and if I feel like speakin’ to the gal, I shall speak to her, and I’d like to know who’ll stop me.”

“Oh, shut up, Chips, cawn’t ye!” exclaimed one of the other men—a Cockney, if his tongue did not belie him, “shut up, and stow that ‘equality’ yarn of yours. We’ve all heard that before, and I, for one, don’t believe in it; it’s all very well among a lot o’ sailor-men like ourselves, but you’ll never be the equal of the lidy—no, nor of the gent neither—not if you was to live to be as old as Mathusalem; so what good would it do you to talk to her? Why, she wouldn’tlookat an old tarry-breeches like you or me, much less talk to us! Garn! You go ahead, sir;we’lllook awfter Chips, and keep him in order; never fear!”

“I hope you will, for your own sakes,” I retorted significantly, leaving them to interpret my meaning as they chose. “My next condition,” I continued, “is that the cabin and the staterooms are to be left to the exclusive use of the lady and myself, the steward only being allowed access to them.

“My next condition is that no man shall have more than two gills of rum per day—half to be served out at midday, and the remainder at four bells of the first dog-watch. In the event of bad weather, or other especial circumstances, the allowance may be increased at my discretion, and by so much as I may consider necessary.

“And my last condition is that when this business is concluded, the lady and I are to be allowed to take the boat, with a sufficient stock of provisions and water, and to quit the ship within sight of some suitable harbour, to be chosen by myself.”

A dead silence followed this bold announcement on my part, which was at length broken by O’Gorman, who, looking round upon his motley crowd of followers, demanded:

“Well, bhoys, you’ve heard what the gintleman says. Have anny of ye annything to say agin it?”

“Yes; I have,” answered the irrepressible Price. “I don’t care a ropeyarn whether I’m allowed to speak to the gal or not; but I thinks that O’Gorman and me, seein’ that we’re to be the mates of this here hooker, ought to berth aft, and to take our meals in the cabin; and I’m for havin’ our rights.”

“You will do neither the one nor the other, with my consent, Price, I assure you,” said I. “And unless my conditions are absolutely complied with I shall decline to help you in any way.”

“Oh, you will, eh?” sneered Price. “You’d better not, though, because I dessay we could soon find a way to bring ye round to our way of thinkin’. We could stop your grub, for instance, and starve ye until you was willin’ to do what was wanted. And if that didn’t do, why there’s the—”

“Stop!” I exclaimed fiercely, “I have had enough, and more than enough, of threats, my man, and will listen to them no further. Now, understand me, all of you. I have stated the conditions upon which I will meet your wishes, and I will not abate one jot of them. Agree to them or not, as you please. You have taken the ship from me, and now you may do as you will with her; but, make no mistake, I will only help you of my own free will; I would rather kill the young lady and myself with my own hand than submit to compulsion from a crowd of mutineers. Take your own time to decide;Iam in no hurry.”

“Why, he defies us!” exclaimed Price, turning to his companions. “What d’ye say, boys, shall we give him a lesson? Shall us show him that we’re his masters?”

“No, mate, we shan’t,” interposed the fellow who had spoken before; “and if you don’t stop your gab about ‘lessons’ and ‘masters’ I’ll see if I cawn’t stop it for you. What we want, mates, is to get to that island that O’Gorman has told us so much about; and here is a gent who can take us to it. What do we want more? Do we want to grub in the cabin? Ain’t the fo’k’sle good enough for us, who’ve lived in fo’k’sles all our lives? Very well, then, let’s agree to the gent’s terms, and have done with it. What d’ye s’y?”

It soon appeared that the entire party were willing—Price, however, consenting under protest;—so I retired to the cabin and drew up the terms in writing, together with an acknowledgment on the part of the crew that they had taken the ship from me by force, and that I was acting as navigator under compulsion; and this the entire party more or less reluctantly signed—or affixed their mark to—Miss Onslow acting as witness to the signatures of the men. This done, with bitter chagrin and profound misgiving as to the issue of the adventure, I gave the order to wear ship, and we bore up on a course that pointed the brig’s jib-boom straight for the far-distant Cape of Storms.

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