Chapter Fourteen.An Appeal For Aid.“Aye, that’s the better way of looking at it,” chimed in the skipper, raising his arm at the same time from his station at the end of the bridge, where he was conning the ship. He then called out sharply, to enforce the signal.“Luff up, you lubber, luff!”“Luff it is, sir,” rejoined the helmsman, rapidly turning round the spokes of the little steam steering wheel. “It’s hard over now, sir.”“Steady there,” next sang out the captain. “Steady, my man!”“Aye, aye, sir,” repeated the parrot-like Tom Parrell, bringing the helm amidships again. “Steady it is!”“By George, we’re nearing the boat fast!” cried the skipper after another short pause, during which we had been going ahead full speed, with a quick “thump-thump, thump-thump” of the propeller and the water foaming past our bows. “Starboard, Parrell! Starboard a bit now!”“Aye, aye, sir,” came again the helmsman’s answering cry from the wheel-house. “Starboard it is, sir!”“Keep her so. A trifle more off. Steady!”“Steady it is, sir!”“Now down with it, Parrell!” sang out the skipper, bringing his hand instanter on the handle of the engine-room gong, which he sounded twice, directing those in charge below to reduce speed, while he hailed old Masters on the fo’c’s’le. “Hi, bo’sun! Look-out there forrad with your rope’s end to heave to the poor fellows! We’re just coming alongside the boat.”“Aye, aye, sir!” replied Masters promptly, keeping one eye on the skipper on the bridge and the other directed to the little craft we were approaching, and now close to our port bow. “We’re all ready forrad, sir. Mind you don’t run her down, sir. She’s nearly under our forefoot.”“All right, bo’sun,” returned the skipper. “Port, Parrell!”“Port it is, sir,” repeated Tom Parrell. “Two points off.”“Steady, man, steady,” continued the skipper, holding his hand up again. “Boat ahoy! Stand by. We’re going to throw you a rope!”At the same instant Captain Applegarth sounded the engine-room gong again, bringing theStar of the Northto a dead stop as we steamed up to the boat slanting-wise, the steamer having just sufficient way on her when the screw shaft ceased revolving, to glide gently up to the very spot where the little floating waif was gently bobbing up and down on the wave right ahead of us, and barely half a dozen yards away, drifting, at the will of the wind, without any guidance from its occupants, who seemingly were unaware of our approach.“Boat ahoy!” shouted the skipper once more, raising his voice to a louder key. “Look-out, there!”The men in the bows of the boat still remained in the same attitude, as if unconscious or dead; but the other in the stern-sheets appeared to hear the skipper’s hail, for he half-turned his head and uttered a feeble sort of noise and made a feeble motion with one of his hands.“Now’s your time, bo’sun!” cried Captain Applegarth. “Heave that line, sharp!”“Aye, aye, sir,” roared out Masters in his gruff tones. “Stand by, below there!”With that the coil of half-inch rope which he held looped on his arm made a circling whirl through the air, the end falling right across the gunwales of the boat, close to the after thwart, where sat the second of the castaways, who eagerly stretched out his hand to clutch at it.But, unfortunately, he failed to grasp it, and the exertion evidently being too much for him, for he tumbled forward on his face at the bottom of the boat, while the rope slipped over the side into the water, coming back home to us alongside the old barquey on the next send of the sea, the heavy roll of our ship when she brought up broadside-on, as well as the weight of the line saturated with water, fetching it in to us all the sooner.“Poor fellows; they can’t help themselves!” cried the skipper, who had watched the boatswain’s throw and its unsatisfactory result with the deepest interest. “Bear a hand there, some one forrad, and have another try to reach them. The boat’s drifting past, and we’ll have to go astern to board her in another minute, if you don’t look sharp!”Having climbed into the fore-rigging, however, so as to have a good look at the boat and its occupants as we neared them, I was quite as quick as the skipper to notice what had happened, having, indeed, foreseen the contingency before it occurred.So, ere Masters or any of the other men could stir a hand, having made up my mind what to do, I had seized hold of part of the slack of the line that remained inboard and, plunging into the sea, swam towards the boat.A couple of strokes, combined with the forward impetus of my leap overboard, took me up to the little craft, and in a jiffey I had grasped the gunwale aft and clambered within her, securing the end of the line I had round one of the thwarts at once, amid the ringing cheers of the skipper and my shipmates in the old barquey, who proceeded to haul us up alongside without further delay, tugging away at the tar rope I had hitched on, yo-heave-hoing and hurrahing in one and the same breath right lustily!So smart were they, so instantaneous had been the action of the moment during the episode, that we were close in to the ship’s side and under her conning, immediately below the port end of the bridge, where the skipper stood leaning over the rail and surveying operations, before I had time actually to look round so as to have a nearer view of the unfortunate men whom we had so providentially rescued.When I did though, one glance was enough.I was horror stricken at the sight that met my eyes.The man whom I had observed when we were yet some distance off to be lying huddled up in the bows motionless, as if dying or already dead, I now saw had received a horrible wound on the top of his head that had very nearly smashed in the skull, besides almost severing one of his ears which was hanging from the cheek bone, attached by a mere scrap of skin, the bottom boards of the boat near him being stained with blood that had flowed from the cut, and his hair likewise matted together with gore. Oh, it was horrible to see! He was not dead, however, as I had thought, but only in a state of stupor, breathing heavily and making a strange stertorous sound as if snoring.His fellow-sufferer aft, who did not appear to have suffered so much as his comrade, had seemingly swooned from exhaustion or exposure; as, on my putting my arm round him and lifting up his bent head, the man opened his eyes and murmured something faintly in some foreign lingo—Spanish, I think it was; at any rate a language I did not understand.But I was unable to notice anything beyond these details, which I grasped in that one hurried glance; for as I was in the act of raising up the poor chap in the stern-sheets, the skipper hailed me from the bridge above.“Below there!” he sang out. “How are the poor fellows? Are they alive, Haldane?”“They are in a bad way, sir,” I replied. “They’ve got the life left in them and that’s all, I’m afraid!”“Neither dead, then?”“No, sir.”“Bravo! ‘whilst there’s life there’s hope,’” cried the skipper in a cheery tone. “Are they quite helpless, do you think, Haldane—I mean quite unable to climb up the side?”“Quite unable, sir,” I answered. “One’s unconscious, and I don’t think the other could move an inch if he tried!”“Then we must haul ’em up,” said Captain Applegarth, turning to Masters, who had popped his head over the bulwarks and was now looking down into the boat, like the rest of the hands on board. “I say, bo’sun, can’t you rig up a chair or something that we can lower down for the poor fellows?”“Aye, aye, sir,” responded old Masters, drawing in his head from the bulwarks and disappearing from my view as I looked upwards from the stern-sheets, where I was still holding up the slowly-recovering man. “I’ll rig up a whip from the foreyard and we can let down a hammock for ’em, tricing up one at a time.”“Stay, cap’en,” cried Mr Fosset as the boatswain went bustling off, I suppose, though of course from my position I could not see him, to carry out this plan of his. “The davits here amidship are all right, as well as the tackle of our cutter that had got washed away in the gale. Wouldn’t it be easier to let down the falls, sir, and run up the boat all standing with the poor fellows in her as they are?”“By George, the very thing, Fosset!” exclaimed the skipper, accepting the suggestion with alacrity. “It will save the poor fellows a lot of jolting, and be all the easier for us, as you say. Besides, the little craft will come in handy for us, as we’re rather short of boats just now!”“Short of boats, sir!” repeated the first mate ironically as he set to work at once, with the help of a couple of the hands who jumped to his side to assist him the moment he spoke, casting off the lashings of the davits so as to rig them outwards, letting go at the same time the hooks of the fall blocks and overhauling the running gear. “Why, sir, we haven’t even the dinghy left intact after that clean sweep we had from the wave that pooped us!”“Oh, aye, I know that well enough,” said the skipper drily. “But, look alive now, Fosset, with that tackle, and don’t be a month of Sundays over the job! Send down two of the cutter’s crew to overrun the falls and drop down into the boat. They can help Haldane in holding up that poor chap astern and also bear a hand in hoisting up.”“All right, sir; we’re just ready,” shouted back the first mate as he gave the word to let go. “Lower away there with the slack of those falls. Easy, my man, gently does it!”In another instant down came the fall blocks, with one of the hands hanging on to each, the men alighting “gingerly” on the thwarts of the boat in the bow and stern of the little craft, which became immersed almost up to the gunwales with the additional weight.This was only for a moment, for the next minute Mr Fosset gave the signal to “hoist away,” the falls having been hooked on beneath the thwarts in a jiffey, and up we all went in mid air, “between the devil and the deep sea,” as we say afloat sometimes!“Bravo!” cried the skipper when we reached the level of the gangway and were all able to step out on to the deck. “That’s very handsomely done, my lads! Now let us see about lifting the poor fellows out. That chap there in the bows seems in a very bad way! You’d better carry him into the cuddy at once and let Mr O’Neil look after him.”“Indade, I will, sor,” said our doctor-mate, who was standing near by with a spirit flask in one hand and a medicine glass in the other, ready to give immediate succour to the rescued men. “Carry the poor beggar along an’ I’ll be afther ye in a minnit; for this other misfortunate gossoon here looks as if he wouldn’t be the worst for a dhrop of good brandy, an’ faith, I’ll say to him fourst, avic!”So saying the Irishman poured some of the contents of the spirit flask into the glass, which he held to the lips of the man. Mr Fosset and I were supporting him in our arms against the side of the boat, whence we had just removed him.The poor fellow’s strength returned to him almost as soon as he had sipped a drop or two of the brandy, and, starting away from the first mate and myself, as if no longer needing our aid, he stood erect on the deck.“Mil gracias, amigos,” he said, with a polite inclination of his head, in apology like for shaking himself free from us. “Estoy major!”Captain Applegarth stepped up to him.“I am sorry I can’t speak Spanish, sir, though I understand you to say you’re better. We’re Englishmen all on board this ship, sir, and I’m glad we’ve been able to pick you up.”The eyes of the man glistened and a pleased expression stole over his face.“What! You are English! he exclaimed excitedly. But—but I’m an American! Only I’ve been so long in Venezuela amongst Spaniards that I sometimes forget my own language.”Our skipper was equally delighted.“By George!” he said. “I was sure you were no blessed foreigner, in spite of your lingo, sir! Welcome on boardthe Star of the North.”The stranger looked round and his manner changed at once, and he pointed towards our funnels anxiously and their escaping steam.“A steam vessel, eh!”“Yes, sir,” said the skipper. “I command her, sir. Cap’en Applegarth, at your service!”“The deuce! I was forgetting. We passed you last night, I remember now! and you’re the captain?”“Aye!” replied the skipper, not quite making out what the other was driving at. “I’m captain of this ship!”“Merciful Heavens!” cried the rescued man, falling on his knees on the deck and bursting into a passion of sobs. “Thanks be to God! Yes, thanks be to God! You will save her, captain. You will save her?”The skipper thought the evident suffering he had gone through had turned his brain.“Save who?” he asked, adding in a kinder tone: “Of course, we’ll do anything and everything we can for you, but I must know my bearings first, my friend.”The man was on his feet at once.“I am not mad, captain, as you appear to think. I can see from your manner you think so,” he said. “I want you to save my Elsie, my only child, my little daughter, whom those villains, those black devils, are carrying off!”“Your only child, your daughter—black devils,” echoed Captain Applegarth, astonished at the poor man’s speech and at his wild and agonised look. “What do you mean, sir?”“Heavens! We’re losing time while those scoundrels are getting away with the ship!” exclaimed the other frantically and walking to and fro in a most excited state. “Fire up the engines, pile on the coals and steam like the devil! and go in chase of her, my good captain, you will? For Heaven’s sake, captain, for the love of God, start at once in chase of her!”“In chase of whom?” asked Captain Applegarth, still believing him to be out of his mind. “In chase of whom?”The man uttered a heart-rending cry, in which anger, grief and piteous appeal were alike blended.“In chase of a band of black miscreants who have committed murder and piracy on the high seas!” he ejaculated in broken accents. “The blood of a number of white men massacred by treacherous negroes calls for vengeance, the safety of a young girl and the lives of your brother sailors still on board the ship calls to you for help and rescue! Great Heaven! Will you stand idly by and not render the aid you can? Think, captain, a little girl like your own daughter—my Elsie, my little one! Yes, and white men, your brothers, and sailors, too, like yourselves, at the mercy of a gang of black ruffians! Sir, will you help them or not?”
“Aye, that’s the better way of looking at it,” chimed in the skipper, raising his arm at the same time from his station at the end of the bridge, where he was conning the ship. He then called out sharply, to enforce the signal.
“Luff up, you lubber, luff!”
“Luff it is, sir,” rejoined the helmsman, rapidly turning round the spokes of the little steam steering wheel. “It’s hard over now, sir.”
“Steady there,” next sang out the captain. “Steady, my man!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” repeated the parrot-like Tom Parrell, bringing the helm amidships again. “Steady it is!”
“By George, we’re nearing the boat fast!” cried the skipper after another short pause, during which we had been going ahead full speed, with a quick “thump-thump, thump-thump” of the propeller and the water foaming past our bows. “Starboard, Parrell! Starboard a bit now!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” came again the helmsman’s answering cry from the wheel-house. “Starboard it is, sir!”
“Keep her so. A trifle more off. Steady!”
“Steady it is, sir!”
“Now down with it, Parrell!” sang out the skipper, bringing his hand instanter on the handle of the engine-room gong, which he sounded twice, directing those in charge below to reduce speed, while he hailed old Masters on the fo’c’s’le. “Hi, bo’sun! Look-out there forrad with your rope’s end to heave to the poor fellows! We’re just coming alongside the boat.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” replied Masters promptly, keeping one eye on the skipper on the bridge and the other directed to the little craft we were approaching, and now close to our port bow. “We’re all ready forrad, sir. Mind you don’t run her down, sir. She’s nearly under our forefoot.”
“All right, bo’sun,” returned the skipper. “Port, Parrell!”
“Port it is, sir,” repeated Tom Parrell. “Two points off.”
“Steady, man, steady,” continued the skipper, holding his hand up again. “Boat ahoy! Stand by. We’re going to throw you a rope!”
At the same instant Captain Applegarth sounded the engine-room gong again, bringing theStar of the Northto a dead stop as we steamed up to the boat slanting-wise, the steamer having just sufficient way on her when the screw shaft ceased revolving, to glide gently up to the very spot where the little floating waif was gently bobbing up and down on the wave right ahead of us, and barely half a dozen yards away, drifting, at the will of the wind, without any guidance from its occupants, who seemingly were unaware of our approach.
“Boat ahoy!” shouted the skipper once more, raising his voice to a louder key. “Look-out, there!”
The men in the bows of the boat still remained in the same attitude, as if unconscious or dead; but the other in the stern-sheets appeared to hear the skipper’s hail, for he half-turned his head and uttered a feeble sort of noise and made a feeble motion with one of his hands.
“Now’s your time, bo’sun!” cried Captain Applegarth. “Heave that line, sharp!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” roared out Masters in his gruff tones. “Stand by, below there!”
With that the coil of half-inch rope which he held looped on his arm made a circling whirl through the air, the end falling right across the gunwales of the boat, close to the after thwart, where sat the second of the castaways, who eagerly stretched out his hand to clutch at it.
But, unfortunately, he failed to grasp it, and the exertion evidently being too much for him, for he tumbled forward on his face at the bottom of the boat, while the rope slipped over the side into the water, coming back home to us alongside the old barquey on the next send of the sea, the heavy roll of our ship when she brought up broadside-on, as well as the weight of the line saturated with water, fetching it in to us all the sooner.
“Poor fellows; they can’t help themselves!” cried the skipper, who had watched the boatswain’s throw and its unsatisfactory result with the deepest interest. “Bear a hand there, some one forrad, and have another try to reach them. The boat’s drifting past, and we’ll have to go astern to board her in another minute, if you don’t look sharp!”
Having climbed into the fore-rigging, however, so as to have a good look at the boat and its occupants as we neared them, I was quite as quick as the skipper to notice what had happened, having, indeed, foreseen the contingency before it occurred.
So, ere Masters or any of the other men could stir a hand, having made up my mind what to do, I had seized hold of part of the slack of the line that remained inboard and, plunging into the sea, swam towards the boat.
A couple of strokes, combined with the forward impetus of my leap overboard, took me up to the little craft, and in a jiffey I had grasped the gunwale aft and clambered within her, securing the end of the line I had round one of the thwarts at once, amid the ringing cheers of the skipper and my shipmates in the old barquey, who proceeded to haul us up alongside without further delay, tugging away at the tar rope I had hitched on, yo-heave-hoing and hurrahing in one and the same breath right lustily!
So smart were they, so instantaneous had been the action of the moment during the episode, that we were close in to the ship’s side and under her conning, immediately below the port end of the bridge, where the skipper stood leaning over the rail and surveying operations, before I had time actually to look round so as to have a nearer view of the unfortunate men whom we had so providentially rescued.
When I did though, one glance was enough.
I was horror stricken at the sight that met my eyes.
The man whom I had observed when we were yet some distance off to be lying huddled up in the bows motionless, as if dying or already dead, I now saw had received a horrible wound on the top of his head that had very nearly smashed in the skull, besides almost severing one of his ears which was hanging from the cheek bone, attached by a mere scrap of skin, the bottom boards of the boat near him being stained with blood that had flowed from the cut, and his hair likewise matted together with gore. Oh, it was horrible to see! He was not dead, however, as I had thought, but only in a state of stupor, breathing heavily and making a strange stertorous sound as if snoring.
His fellow-sufferer aft, who did not appear to have suffered so much as his comrade, had seemingly swooned from exhaustion or exposure; as, on my putting my arm round him and lifting up his bent head, the man opened his eyes and murmured something faintly in some foreign lingo—Spanish, I think it was; at any rate a language I did not understand.
But I was unable to notice anything beyond these details, which I grasped in that one hurried glance; for as I was in the act of raising up the poor chap in the stern-sheets, the skipper hailed me from the bridge above.
“Below there!” he sang out. “How are the poor fellows? Are they alive, Haldane?”
“They are in a bad way, sir,” I replied. “They’ve got the life left in them and that’s all, I’m afraid!”
“Neither dead, then?”
“No, sir.”
“Bravo! ‘whilst there’s life there’s hope,’” cried the skipper in a cheery tone. “Are they quite helpless, do you think, Haldane—I mean quite unable to climb up the side?”
“Quite unable, sir,” I answered. “One’s unconscious, and I don’t think the other could move an inch if he tried!”
“Then we must haul ’em up,” said Captain Applegarth, turning to Masters, who had popped his head over the bulwarks and was now looking down into the boat, like the rest of the hands on board. “I say, bo’sun, can’t you rig up a chair or something that we can lower down for the poor fellows?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” responded old Masters, drawing in his head from the bulwarks and disappearing from my view as I looked upwards from the stern-sheets, where I was still holding up the slowly-recovering man. “I’ll rig up a whip from the foreyard and we can let down a hammock for ’em, tricing up one at a time.”
“Stay, cap’en,” cried Mr Fosset as the boatswain went bustling off, I suppose, though of course from my position I could not see him, to carry out this plan of his. “The davits here amidship are all right, as well as the tackle of our cutter that had got washed away in the gale. Wouldn’t it be easier to let down the falls, sir, and run up the boat all standing with the poor fellows in her as they are?”
“By George, the very thing, Fosset!” exclaimed the skipper, accepting the suggestion with alacrity. “It will save the poor fellows a lot of jolting, and be all the easier for us, as you say. Besides, the little craft will come in handy for us, as we’re rather short of boats just now!”
“Short of boats, sir!” repeated the first mate ironically as he set to work at once, with the help of a couple of the hands who jumped to his side to assist him the moment he spoke, casting off the lashings of the davits so as to rig them outwards, letting go at the same time the hooks of the fall blocks and overhauling the running gear. “Why, sir, we haven’t even the dinghy left intact after that clean sweep we had from the wave that pooped us!”
“Oh, aye, I know that well enough,” said the skipper drily. “But, look alive now, Fosset, with that tackle, and don’t be a month of Sundays over the job! Send down two of the cutter’s crew to overrun the falls and drop down into the boat. They can help Haldane in holding up that poor chap astern and also bear a hand in hoisting up.”
“All right, sir; we’re just ready,” shouted back the first mate as he gave the word to let go. “Lower away there with the slack of those falls. Easy, my man, gently does it!”
In another instant down came the fall blocks, with one of the hands hanging on to each, the men alighting “gingerly” on the thwarts of the boat in the bow and stern of the little craft, which became immersed almost up to the gunwales with the additional weight.
This was only for a moment, for the next minute Mr Fosset gave the signal to “hoist away,” the falls having been hooked on beneath the thwarts in a jiffey, and up we all went in mid air, “between the devil and the deep sea,” as we say afloat sometimes!
“Bravo!” cried the skipper when we reached the level of the gangway and were all able to step out on to the deck. “That’s very handsomely done, my lads! Now let us see about lifting the poor fellows out. That chap there in the bows seems in a very bad way! You’d better carry him into the cuddy at once and let Mr O’Neil look after him.”
“Indade, I will, sor,” said our doctor-mate, who was standing near by with a spirit flask in one hand and a medicine glass in the other, ready to give immediate succour to the rescued men. “Carry the poor beggar along an’ I’ll be afther ye in a minnit; for this other misfortunate gossoon here looks as if he wouldn’t be the worst for a dhrop of good brandy, an’ faith, I’ll say to him fourst, avic!”
So saying the Irishman poured some of the contents of the spirit flask into the glass, which he held to the lips of the man. Mr Fosset and I were supporting him in our arms against the side of the boat, whence we had just removed him.
The poor fellow’s strength returned to him almost as soon as he had sipped a drop or two of the brandy, and, starting away from the first mate and myself, as if no longer needing our aid, he stood erect on the deck.
“Mil gracias, amigos,” he said, with a polite inclination of his head, in apology like for shaking himself free from us. “Estoy major!”
Captain Applegarth stepped up to him.
“I am sorry I can’t speak Spanish, sir, though I understand you to say you’re better. We’re Englishmen all on board this ship, sir, and I’m glad we’ve been able to pick you up.”
The eyes of the man glistened and a pleased expression stole over his face.
“What! You are English! he exclaimed excitedly. But—but I’m an American! Only I’ve been so long in Venezuela amongst Spaniards that I sometimes forget my own language.”
Our skipper was equally delighted.
“By George!” he said. “I was sure you were no blessed foreigner, in spite of your lingo, sir! Welcome on boardthe Star of the North.”
The stranger looked round and his manner changed at once, and he pointed towards our funnels anxiously and their escaping steam.
“A steam vessel, eh!”
“Yes, sir,” said the skipper. “I command her, sir. Cap’en Applegarth, at your service!”
“The deuce! I was forgetting. We passed you last night, I remember now! and you’re the captain?”
“Aye!” replied the skipper, not quite making out what the other was driving at. “I’m captain of this ship!”
“Merciful Heavens!” cried the rescued man, falling on his knees on the deck and bursting into a passion of sobs. “Thanks be to God! Yes, thanks be to God! You will save her, captain. You will save her?”
The skipper thought the evident suffering he had gone through had turned his brain.
“Save who?” he asked, adding in a kinder tone: “Of course, we’ll do anything and everything we can for you, but I must know my bearings first, my friend.”
The man was on his feet at once.
“I am not mad, captain, as you appear to think. I can see from your manner you think so,” he said. “I want you to save my Elsie, my only child, my little daughter, whom those villains, those black devils, are carrying off!”
“Your only child, your daughter—black devils,” echoed Captain Applegarth, astonished at the poor man’s speech and at his wild and agonised look. “What do you mean, sir?”
“Heavens! We’re losing time while those scoundrels are getting away with the ship!” exclaimed the other frantically and walking to and fro in a most excited state. “Fire up the engines, pile on the coals and steam like the devil! and go in chase of her, my good captain, you will? For Heaven’s sake, captain, for the love of God, start at once in chase of her!”
“In chase of whom?” asked Captain Applegarth, still believing him to be out of his mind. “In chase of whom?”
The man uttered a heart-rending cry, in which anger, grief and piteous appeal were alike blended.
“In chase of a band of black miscreants who have committed murder and piracy on the high seas!” he ejaculated in broken accents. “The blood of a number of white men massacred by treacherous negroes calls for vengeance, the safety of a young girl and the lives of your brother sailors still on board the ship calls to you for help and rescue! Great Heaven! Will you stand idly by and not render the aid you can? Think, captain, a little girl like your own daughter—my Elsie, my little one! Yes, and white men, your brothers, and sailors, too, like yourselves, at the mercy of a gang of black ruffians! Sir, will you help them or not?”
Chapter Fifteen.We start in Chase of the Ship.The effect of this appeal was electrical, not only on the skipper, but on all of us standing by.“Great heavens, man!” cried the captain, staring at the other in wild astonishment. “What do you mean? I cannot understand you, sir. Your ship, you say—”“My words are plain enough, captain,” said the stranger, interrupting the skipper. “Our ship, theSaint Pierre, is in the possession of a gang of Haytian negroes who rose on us while we were on the high seas and murdered most of the officers and the crew. They then threw poor Captain Alphonse, who commanded her, overboard, after they had half killed him, and the rest of the unfortunate sailors and passengers, amongst them my little daughter, are now at the mercy of the black devils!”“My God!” exclaimed the skipper, confounded by this lucid statement. “And you, sir?”“I am an American!” said the other with a proud air, drawing himself up to his full height of six feet and more and with his eyes flashing, while a red flush mounted to his cheeks, which had formerly been deadly pale. “I’m a white man, captain, and it’s not likely I would stand by and see people of my own colour butchered! Of course, sir, I went to the poor captain’s assistance, but then the murderers served me almost as badly as they did him, chucking me overboard after him.”“I beg your pardon, sir, I’m sure, for appearing to doubt your story,” cried the skipper, stretching forward his hand, which the other eagerly grasped. “The fact is, sir, I thought at first your sufferings had set your head wrong; but now I need hardly say I believe thoroughly every word you’ve told us, and you may rely on my aid and that of every man aboard here to help you and yours. There’s my hand on it, sir, and my word you’ll find as good as my bond, so sure as my name is Jack Applegarth!”“And mine, captain, is Vereker, Colonel Vereker, at your service,” returned the other, reciprocating the skipper’s cordiality as he looked him straight in the face, holding his hand the while in a firm grip. He let go the skipper’s fist, however, the next moment and a puzzled expression came into his eyes as he glanced round occasionally, apparently in search of some one or other. “Heavens! Where’s my unfortunate comrade who was in the boat with me—poor Captain Alphonse? Alas, I had forgotten him!”“We have not forgotten him, though, colonel,” said the skipper smiling. “He has been carried below to the saloon on the maindeck, where my second mate, Mr O’Neil, who is a qualified surgeon, is now attending to his injuries. He has been terribly mauled, poor fellow; we could see that!”“Aye, terribly!” repeated the other with a shudder, as if the recollection of all he and his fellow-sufferers had gone through suddenly came back to him at the moment. “But, great Heavens! captain, we’re losing time and that accursed ship with those scoundrels and our remaining comrades, and with my darling child on board, is speeding away while we’re talking here. You will, will you not, Señor Applegarth, go in pursuit of her, my friend?”“By George I will, colonel; I will at once—immediately—if you’ll tell me her bearings,” cried the skipper excitedly. “When was it this terrible affair happened? When did you leave the ship, and where?”“The revolt of the blacks, or mutiny, I should call it, captain, broke out four days ago, on last Friday, indeed, sir,” said the American promptly in his deep musical voice, and whose foreign accent obliterated all trace of the unmelodious Yankee twang. “But we kept the rascals at bay until last night, soon after sundown, when they made an ugly rush and overpowered us. Captain Alphonse had just sighted your vessel in the distance and was burning a blue light over the stern to attract your attention, so as to get assistance at the time this happened.”“Was yours a large, full-rigged ship?”“Yes, sir, theSaint Pierreis of good size and had all her sails set,” replied the other to the skipper’s question. “We were running before the wind with our helm lashed amidship, as it had been since the previous Friday, for we were all too busy defending our lives to think of attending to the ship.”“Steering about nor’-east, I suppose?”“Confound it, captain!” said the colonel impatiently. “We were drifting, I tell you, sir, at the mercy of the elements, and heaven only knows how we were going! Fortunately, the weather was pretty fair, save the very day the mutiny broke out, when it blew heavily and our canvas got split to pieces as there was no one to go aloft and take it in. Otherwise we must have gone to the bottom!”“By George!” exclaimed the skipper, turning round to old Masters and myself, who were still standing by with the hands who had come aft to haul up the boat. “Then my bo’sun here, and this young officer were right when they declared they saw a large full-rigged ship to the westward of us, though I only noticed the light of your flare-up. You were too far off for me to make you out.”“Ojala!” ejaculated the American, reverting again to the familiar Spanish tongue in his emotion. “Would to God, captain, youhadseen us!”“It would have been useless if I had, my friend,” said the skipper soothingly. “We couldn’t move to come to your assistance if every soul on board had seen you and known your peril, sir; for our engines were broken-down and we were not able to get up steam again until late this afternoon, when we ran down to pick you up!”“But, sir,” hastily whispered the colonel, suppressing a sob of emotion, “you can and will steam now?”“Why ask?” replied the skipper. “The moment we know where to go in search of your ship, that very moment we’ll start and try to overhaul her. You say you quitted her last night?”“Quitted her? We werethrownoverboard, sir, by the black devils!”Captain Applegarth in reply said calmly, “Yes, yes, of course,” accepting the correction and trying by his manner to soothe the infuriated man. “But what time was that?”“I can’t say the exact hour,” replied the American, whose vexed tone showed that the captain’s methodical mode of setting to work did not quite harmonise with the excited state of his feelings. “I think, however, it must have been nearly seven o’clock, as well, sir, as I can remember.”Then I chimed in. “Ah!” I exclaimed quickly, “that was just thevery timethat Masters and I heard the shooting in the distance to win’ard, and it was six bells in the second dog watch!”“So it were, Master Haldane; so it were,” agreed the old boatswain, looking from me to the skipper and then at Colonel Vereker. “Well, I’m blowed! and I’m glad, then, for that there ghost-ship wor a rael ship arter all said and done. Now who was right, I’d like to know?”“Of course it was a real ship, you old dotard!” said the skipper gruffly and looking angrily at him. “Of course it was,” he added, while our new acquaintance looked at us, unable, naturally, to understand the mystical allusion; but Captain Applegarth soon turned his roving thoughts into another direction by asking him a second question. “How long did you keep in sight of your vessel after leaving her, colonel, do you think?”“She was in full view of us at sunrise this morning,” replied the American. “The boat in which we were adrift kept near her all night as there was very little wind, if any. A slight breeze sprang up shortly after the sun rose and she then steadily increased her distance from us as the day wore on, finally disappearing from my gaze about noon, and taking with her my little darling, my pet, my Elsie.”The poor fellow broke down again at this point throwing up his hands passionately and burying his face in them, his whole frame convulsed with sobs, though not a man present thought his emotion a thing to be ashamed of, all of us being deeply interested in his narrative and as anxious as himself for the skipper to start off in pursuit of the black mutineers and pirates.We were not long kept in suspense, the colonel’s last words and violent burst of emotion apparently touching our “old man’s” feelings deeply, and hastening his decision.“Cheer up, sir, cheer up,” said he to the other, whose shoulders still shook with his deep hysterical sobs. “And we’ll find your little girl yet for you all right, and restore her to you, and we’ll settle matters too, with those scoundrels, I promise. Now tell me how far off do you think the ship must have drifted from us by now, Mr Fosset.”“Between twenty and thirty miles, sir,” replied the first mate. “She was lighter than us, and of course she had the advantage of what wind there has been, though, thank goodness, that has been little enough!”“Away to the nor’-east, I suppose?”“Aye, aye, sir,” said Mr Fosset. “The breeze, what there was, has been from the sou’-east and the current trends in the same direction.”“Then if we steer east-nor’-east we ought to pick her up soon?”“Not a doubt of it, sir. We have four good hours of daylight left yet!”“Precisely my opinion,” cried the skipper. “Mr Stokes, will the engines stand full speed now, do you think?”“Oh, yes, sir,” replied the old chief, who with the rest of us was all agog to be after the strange ship again, now that he had heard the colonel’s explanation of her true character, “if you’ll send some one below to tell Stoddart what you want. I would go myself, but I’m rather shaky in getting down the hatchway as yet. I twisted my arm just now when I went down.”“That’s all right. Stoddart, I am sure, will excuse you,” said the skipper kindly, and turning to me he added: “You, Haldane, run down and tell Stoddart we want all the steam we can get. He won’t spare the engines, I know, when he knows the circumstances of the case, and you will explain matters!”So saying, the skipper started off forwards in the direction of the bridge, while I dived down the engine-room hatchway, reaching the machinery-flat just as the “old man” sounded the gong to put on full speed ahead, the telegraph working quick as if he were in a great hurry!Ere I could tell my story Stoddart sent an answering blast up the steam pipe to let the skipper know his signal was being attended to; and then, pulling back the lever of the throttle valve, the piston began to go up and down, the cylinder oscillated from side to side and the crank shaft revolved at first slowly, but presently faster and faster until we were now going to the utmost of our pace.All this while I was yarning away, though I had to shout to the top of my voice in order to overcome the noise of the machinery, as I described all that had occurred.I did not speak to unheeding ears.“By Jove, Haldane!” cried Stoddart, who was a man of action if ever there was one. “The cylinder is all right again and will bear any pressure now, and I tell you what it is, the old barquey shall steam along in pursuit of those demons faster than she ever went in her life since she was launched and engined!”“I am with you there, old fellow,” said Grummet, our third engineer, hastening towards the stoke-hold. “I’ll go down and see the firemen and stir them up and put some more oilers to work in the screw well, to lubricate the shaft so as to prevent the bearings from overheating.”“That’s your sort, my hearty,” said Stoddart. “So you can return on deck, Haldane, and tell the skipper and Mr Stokes that everything shall be done down here by us to overhaul your ‘ghost-ship.’”He laughed as he uttered this little piece of chaff at my expense, the story being now the common property of everybody on board, and I laughed, too, as I ran up the hatchway with my clothes nearly dry again, even drying in the short space of time I had been in the hot atmosphere below, although, goodness knows, they had been wet enough when I had gone down, having had no time or opportunity to shift them after my dip overboard when taking the line to the drifting boat.On reaching the main deck I met Spokeshave.He was coming out from the saloon, and from his puffy face and corpulent appearance generally, he looked as if he had been making a haul on the steward’s pantry, although he had not long had his dinner and it was a good way off tea time.“Hullo!” he cried out on seeing me. “I say, that chap O’Neil is having a fine go of it playing at doctoring. He has got a lot of ugly long knives and saws laid out on the cuddy table and I think he’s going to cut off the chap’s leg!”“Which chap do you mean?” I asked; “not the colonel?”“Aye,” said he. “The chap with the moustache and long hair, like Hamlet, you know!”“My good chap,” said I, “you seem to know a good deal about other chaps, or think you do, but I never heard before of Hamlet having a moustache like a life-guardsman! Irving doesn’t wear one when he takes the part, if I recollect right, my joker. You think yourself mighty knowing!”“Quite so,” replied Master Spokeshave, using his favourite phrase as usual. “But you don’t call Irving Shakespeare, Haldane, do ye?”“I don’t know anything of the matter, old boy. I am not so well informed as you are concerning the dramatic world, Spokeshave. I know you’re a regular authority or ‘toffer,’ if you like, on the subject. Don’t you think, however, you’re a bit hard on poor Irving, who, I’ve no doubt, would take a word of advice from you if you spoke kindly to him and without that cruel sarcasm which you’re apt to use?”The little beggar actually sniggered over this, being of the opinion that I was paying a just tribute to his histrionic acumen and judgement in things theatrical, on which he prided himself on account of his having appeared once behind the footlights in a theatre in Liverpool, as a “super,” I believe, and in a part where he had nothing to say!“Quite so, Haldane; quite so,” chuckled Spokeshave, as pleased as Punch at the imaginary compliment. “I dobelieve I could teach Irving a thing or two if I had the mind to!”“Yes, you donkey, if youhadthe mind to,” said I witheringly, by giving an emphasis he did not mean to his own words. “‘Very like a whale,’ as our old friend Polonius says in the play, the realHamlet, I mean, my boy, not your version of it. ‘Very like a whale,’ indeed!”“I’m sure, Mr Haldane,” he answered loftily, cocking his long nose in the air with a supercilious sniff, “I don’t know what ye mean.”“And I’ve no time to waste telling you now,” returned I.At that moment we emerged on the open deck from under the back of the poop, where we had been losing our time and talking nonsense; and, looking towards the bridge forward, I saw Colonel Vereker, the very person about whom we had been speaking, standing by the side of the skipper.“O, Lor’, Spokeshave, what a crammer!” I cried. “You said not a moment ago that Garry O’Neil was about to cut off the colonel’s leg, while there he is standing there, all right!”“I didn’t say he had cut it off yet,” he retorted; “I said he was going to cut it off. O’Neil told me so himself.”“Then,” said I, “instead of cutting off the poor colonel’s leg, he was only ‘pulling your leg,’ my joker!”The cross-grained little beggar, however, did not seem to quite understand the term I employed thus in joke, though it was used at sea to express the fact of “taking a rise” out of any one, and a common enough saying.“I’m not the only fellow who tells crammers,” he grimly muttered. “How about that yarn of yours of the blessed ‘ghost-ship’ you saw the other night, I’d like to know. I believe, too, that the colonel, as you call him, is only an impostor and that the skipper is going on just such a wild-goose chase after this ship of his, which he says was captured by pirates, as he did that Friday hunting yourFlying Dutchman! wasting our time with your idiotic story. Pirates and niggers, indeed! Why, this chap, I’ll bet, is a nigger himself, and more of a pirate than any one we’ll come across if we steam from here to the North Pole. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Dick Haldane; you and your confounded ‘ghost-ship’ together! Such utter humbug and nonsense, and thinking you take people in with such yarns in these days!”
The effect of this appeal was electrical, not only on the skipper, but on all of us standing by.
“Great heavens, man!” cried the captain, staring at the other in wild astonishment. “What do you mean? I cannot understand you, sir. Your ship, you say—”
“My words are plain enough, captain,” said the stranger, interrupting the skipper. “Our ship, theSaint Pierre, is in the possession of a gang of Haytian negroes who rose on us while we were on the high seas and murdered most of the officers and the crew. They then threw poor Captain Alphonse, who commanded her, overboard, after they had half killed him, and the rest of the unfortunate sailors and passengers, amongst them my little daughter, are now at the mercy of the black devils!”
“My God!” exclaimed the skipper, confounded by this lucid statement. “And you, sir?”
“I am an American!” said the other with a proud air, drawing himself up to his full height of six feet and more and with his eyes flashing, while a red flush mounted to his cheeks, which had formerly been deadly pale. “I’m a white man, captain, and it’s not likely I would stand by and see people of my own colour butchered! Of course, sir, I went to the poor captain’s assistance, but then the murderers served me almost as badly as they did him, chucking me overboard after him.”
“I beg your pardon, sir, I’m sure, for appearing to doubt your story,” cried the skipper, stretching forward his hand, which the other eagerly grasped. “The fact is, sir, I thought at first your sufferings had set your head wrong; but now I need hardly say I believe thoroughly every word you’ve told us, and you may rely on my aid and that of every man aboard here to help you and yours. There’s my hand on it, sir, and my word you’ll find as good as my bond, so sure as my name is Jack Applegarth!”
“And mine, captain, is Vereker, Colonel Vereker, at your service,” returned the other, reciprocating the skipper’s cordiality as he looked him straight in the face, holding his hand the while in a firm grip. He let go the skipper’s fist, however, the next moment and a puzzled expression came into his eyes as he glanced round occasionally, apparently in search of some one or other. “Heavens! Where’s my unfortunate comrade who was in the boat with me—poor Captain Alphonse? Alas, I had forgotten him!”
“We have not forgotten him, though, colonel,” said the skipper smiling. “He has been carried below to the saloon on the maindeck, where my second mate, Mr O’Neil, who is a qualified surgeon, is now attending to his injuries. He has been terribly mauled, poor fellow; we could see that!”
“Aye, terribly!” repeated the other with a shudder, as if the recollection of all he and his fellow-sufferers had gone through suddenly came back to him at the moment. “But, great Heavens! captain, we’re losing time and that accursed ship with those scoundrels and our remaining comrades, and with my darling child on board, is speeding away while we’re talking here. You will, will you not, Señor Applegarth, go in pursuit of her, my friend?”
“By George I will, colonel; I will at once—immediately—if you’ll tell me her bearings,” cried the skipper excitedly. “When was it this terrible affair happened? When did you leave the ship, and where?”
“The revolt of the blacks, or mutiny, I should call it, captain, broke out four days ago, on last Friday, indeed, sir,” said the American promptly in his deep musical voice, and whose foreign accent obliterated all trace of the unmelodious Yankee twang. “But we kept the rascals at bay until last night, soon after sundown, when they made an ugly rush and overpowered us. Captain Alphonse had just sighted your vessel in the distance and was burning a blue light over the stern to attract your attention, so as to get assistance at the time this happened.”
“Was yours a large, full-rigged ship?”
“Yes, sir, theSaint Pierreis of good size and had all her sails set,” replied the other to the skipper’s question. “We were running before the wind with our helm lashed amidship, as it had been since the previous Friday, for we were all too busy defending our lives to think of attending to the ship.”
“Steering about nor’-east, I suppose?”
“Confound it, captain!” said the colonel impatiently. “We were drifting, I tell you, sir, at the mercy of the elements, and heaven only knows how we were going! Fortunately, the weather was pretty fair, save the very day the mutiny broke out, when it blew heavily and our canvas got split to pieces as there was no one to go aloft and take it in. Otherwise we must have gone to the bottom!”
“By George!” exclaimed the skipper, turning round to old Masters and myself, who were still standing by with the hands who had come aft to haul up the boat. “Then my bo’sun here, and this young officer were right when they declared they saw a large full-rigged ship to the westward of us, though I only noticed the light of your flare-up. You were too far off for me to make you out.”
“Ojala!” ejaculated the American, reverting again to the familiar Spanish tongue in his emotion. “Would to God, captain, youhadseen us!”
“It would have been useless if I had, my friend,” said the skipper soothingly. “We couldn’t move to come to your assistance if every soul on board had seen you and known your peril, sir; for our engines were broken-down and we were not able to get up steam again until late this afternoon, when we ran down to pick you up!”
“But, sir,” hastily whispered the colonel, suppressing a sob of emotion, “you can and will steam now?”
“Why ask?” replied the skipper. “The moment we know where to go in search of your ship, that very moment we’ll start and try to overhaul her. You say you quitted her last night?”
“Quitted her? We werethrownoverboard, sir, by the black devils!”
Captain Applegarth in reply said calmly, “Yes, yes, of course,” accepting the correction and trying by his manner to soothe the infuriated man. “But what time was that?”
“I can’t say the exact hour,” replied the American, whose vexed tone showed that the captain’s methodical mode of setting to work did not quite harmonise with the excited state of his feelings. “I think, however, it must have been nearly seven o’clock, as well, sir, as I can remember.”
Then I chimed in. “Ah!” I exclaimed quickly, “that was just thevery timethat Masters and I heard the shooting in the distance to win’ard, and it was six bells in the second dog watch!”
“So it were, Master Haldane; so it were,” agreed the old boatswain, looking from me to the skipper and then at Colonel Vereker. “Well, I’m blowed! and I’m glad, then, for that there ghost-ship wor a rael ship arter all said and done. Now who was right, I’d like to know?”
“Of course it was a real ship, you old dotard!” said the skipper gruffly and looking angrily at him. “Of course it was,” he added, while our new acquaintance looked at us, unable, naturally, to understand the mystical allusion; but Captain Applegarth soon turned his roving thoughts into another direction by asking him a second question. “How long did you keep in sight of your vessel after leaving her, colonel, do you think?”
“She was in full view of us at sunrise this morning,” replied the American. “The boat in which we were adrift kept near her all night as there was very little wind, if any. A slight breeze sprang up shortly after the sun rose and she then steadily increased her distance from us as the day wore on, finally disappearing from my gaze about noon, and taking with her my little darling, my pet, my Elsie.”
The poor fellow broke down again at this point throwing up his hands passionately and burying his face in them, his whole frame convulsed with sobs, though not a man present thought his emotion a thing to be ashamed of, all of us being deeply interested in his narrative and as anxious as himself for the skipper to start off in pursuit of the black mutineers and pirates.
We were not long kept in suspense, the colonel’s last words and violent burst of emotion apparently touching our “old man’s” feelings deeply, and hastening his decision.
“Cheer up, sir, cheer up,” said he to the other, whose shoulders still shook with his deep hysterical sobs. “And we’ll find your little girl yet for you all right, and restore her to you, and we’ll settle matters too, with those scoundrels, I promise. Now tell me how far off do you think the ship must have drifted from us by now, Mr Fosset.”
“Between twenty and thirty miles, sir,” replied the first mate. “She was lighter than us, and of course she had the advantage of what wind there has been, though, thank goodness, that has been little enough!”
“Away to the nor’-east, I suppose?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Mr Fosset. “The breeze, what there was, has been from the sou’-east and the current trends in the same direction.”
“Then if we steer east-nor’-east we ought to pick her up soon?”
“Not a doubt of it, sir. We have four good hours of daylight left yet!”
“Precisely my opinion,” cried the skipper. “Mr Stokes, will the engines stand full speed now, do you think?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” replied the old chief, who with the rest of us was all agog to be after the strange ship again, now that he had heard the colonel’s explanation of her true character, “if you’ll send some one below to tell Stoddart what you want. I would go myself, but I’m rather shaky in getting down the hatchway as yet. I twisted my arm just now when I went down.”
“That’s all right. Stoddart, I am sure, will excuse you,” said the skipper kindly, and turning to me he added: “You, Haldane, run down and tell Stoddart we want all the steam we can get. He won’t spare the engines, I know, when he knows the circumstances of the case, and you will explain matters!”
So saying, the skipper started off forwards in the direction of the bridge, while I dived down the engine-room hatchway, reaching the machinery-flat just as the “old man” sounded the gong to put on full speed ahead, the telegraph working quick as if he were in a great hurry!
Ere I could tell my story Stoddart sent an answering blast up the steam pipe to let the skipper know his signal was being attended to; and then, pulling back the lever of the throttle valve, the piston began to go up and down, the cylinder oscillated from side to side and the crank shaft revolved at first slowly, but presently faster and faster until we were now going to the utmost of our pace.
All this while I was yarning away, though I had to shout to the top of my voice in order to overcome the noise of the machinery, as I described all that had occurred.
I did not speak to unheeding ears.
“By Jove, Haldane!” cried Stoddart, who was a man of action if ever there was one. “The cylinder is all right again and will bear any pressure now, and I tell you what it is, the old barquey shall steam along in pursuit of those demons faster than she ever went in her life since she was launched and engined!”
“I am with you there, old fellow,” said Grummet, our third engineer, hastening towards the stoke-hold. “I’ll go down and see the firemen and stir them up and put some more oilers to work in the screw well, to lubricate the shaft so as to prevent the bearings from overheating.”
“That’s your sort, my hearty,” said Stoddart. “So you can return on deck, Haldane, and tell the skipper and Mr Stokes that everything shall be done down here by us to overhaul your ‘ghost-ship.’”
He laughed as he uttered this little piece of chaff at my expense, the story being now the common property of everybody on board, and I laughed, too, as I ran up the hatchway with my clothes nearly dry again, even drying in the short space of time I had been in the hot atmosphere below, although, goodness knows, they had been wet enough when I had gone down, having had no time or opportunity to shift them after my dip overboard when taking the line to the drifting boat.
On reaching the main deck I met Spokeshave.
He was coming out from the saloon, and from his puffy face and corpulent appearance generally, he looked as if he had been making a haul on the steward’s pantry, although he had not long had his dinner and it was a good way off tea time.
“Hullo!” he cried out on seeing me. “I say, that chap O’Neil is having a fine go of it playing at doctoring. He has got a lot of ugly long knives and saws laid out on the cuddy table and I think he’s going to cut off the chap’s leg!”
“Which chap do you mean?” I asked; “not the colonel?”
“Aye,” said he. “The chap with the moustache and long hair, like Hamlet, you know!”
“My good chap,” said I, “you seem to know a good deal about other chaps, or think you do, but I never heard before of Hamlet having a moustache like a life-guardsman! Irving doesn’t wear one when he takes the part, if I recollect right, my joker. You think yourself mighty knowing!”
“Quite so,” replied Master Spokeshave, using his favourite phrase as usual. “But you don’t call Irving Shakespeare, Haldane, do ye?”
“I don’t know anything of the matter, old boy. I am not so well informed as you are concerning the dramatic world, Spokeshave. I know you’re a regular authority or ‘toffer,’ if you like, on the subject. Don’t you think, however, you’re a bit hard on poor Irving, who, I’ve no doubt, would take a word of advice from you if you spoke kindly to him and without that cruel sarcasm which you’re apt to use?”
The little beggar actually sniggered over this, being of the opinion that I was paying a just tribute to his histrionic acumen and judgement in things theatrical, on which he prided himself on account of his having appeared once behind the footlights in a theatre in Liverpool, as a “super,” I believe, and in a part where he had nothing to say!
“Quite so, Haldane; quite so,” chuckled Spokeshave, as pleased as Punch at the imaginary compliment. “I dobelieve I could teach Irving a thing or two if I had the mind to!”
“Yes, you donkey, if youhadthe mind to,” said I witheringly, by giving an emphasis he did not mean to his own words. “‘Very like a whale,’ as our old friend Polonius says in the play, the realHamlet, I mean, my boy, not your version of it. ‘Very like a whale,’ indeed!”
“I’m sure, Mr Haldane,” he answered loftily, cocking his long nose in the air with a supercilious sniff, “I don’t know what ye mean.”
“And I’ve no time to waste telling you now,” returned I.
At that moment we emerged on the open deck from under the back of the poop, where we had been losing our time and talking nonsense; and, looking towards the bridge forward, I saw Colonel Vereker, the very person about whom we had been speaking, standing by the side of the skipper.
“O, Lor’, Spokeshave, what a crammer!” I cried. “You said not a moment ago that Garry O’Neil was about to cut off the colonel’s leg, while there he is standing there, all right!”
“I didn’t say he had cut it off yet,” he retorted; “I said he was going to cut it off. O’Neil told me so himself.”
“Then,” said I, “instead of cutting off the poor colonel’s leg, he was only ‘pulling your leg,’ my joker!”
The cross-grained little beggar, however, did not seem to quite understand the term I employed thus in joke, though it was used at sea to express the fact of “taking a rise” out of any one, and a common enough saying.
“I’m not the only fellow who tells crammers,” he grimly muttered. “How about that yarn of yours of the blessed ‘ghost-ship’ you saw the other night, I’d like to know. I believe, too, that the colonel, as you call him, is only an impostor and that the skipper is going on just such a wild-goose chase after this ship of his, which he says was captured by pirates, as he did that Friday hunting yourFlying Dutchman! wasting our time with your idiotic story. Pirates and niggers, indeed! Why, this chap, I’ll bet, is a nigger himself, and more of a pirate than any one we’ll come across if we steam from here to the North Pole. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Dick Haldane; you and your confounded ‘ghost-ship’ together! Such utter humbug and nonsense, and thinking you take people in with such yarns in these days!”
Chapter Sixteen.Full Speed Ahead.I was so indignant at what the spiteful little brute said that I incontinently turned on my heel and left him without another word, going forwards towards the bridge to give the skipper Stoddart’s message.Here, the sight of Colonel Vereker’s grand figure—one that would be remarkable anywhere, towering above the rail and almost herculean in its massive proportions, coupled with the sad look in his noble face, and which reminded me somehow or other of one of the pictures of the old Cavaliers of the Stuart days, made me resent the more the baseless imputation of his being an imposter.The idea of such a thing being possible could only have occurred to an ignoble mind like that of Spokeshave; for one single glance at the distinguished-looking gentleman’s speaking countenance, with its finely-chiselled features and lofty open brow, would have satisfied any unprejudiced person that his was a nature incompatible with deceit and meanness, even in the most remote degree.“Well, young Haldane!” exclaimed old Mr Stokes, whom I found with Captain Applegarth and the colonel when I reached the wheel-house.“What do those smart chaps of mine down below say, hey, my boy?”His face beamed as he spoke and he looked as if he would have liked to have rubbed his hands together in his old way when he felt particularly jolly, but unfortunately his crippled arm, which was still in a sling, prevented that!“Oh, that’s all right, sir,” I replied in an equally cheery tone, the old chief’s genial address making me forget at once my anger at Spokeshave’s contemptible nonsense. “Mr Stoddart directed me to tell the cap’en that he may go on ahead as usual, as he likes, for everything has been made taut and secure below and there need be no fear of another mishap. He says he intends driving the engines as they were never driven before, and he has put every fireman and oiler in the stoke-hold on the job.”“Bravo!” cried the skipper, sounding the gong again and yelling down the voice-tube that led below like one possessed. “Fire up, below there, and let her rip!”“Dear, dear,” panted Mr Stokes, whose fears for his engines, which he regarded with the affection which a young mother might bestow on her first baby, began to overcome his interest in the chase after the black pirates. “I hope you and Stoddart, between you, won’t be rash, cap’en. I hope—I do hope you won’t!”“Nonsense, Stokes, you old croker; just you shut up!” said the skipper. “Keep her steady, east-nor’-east, helmsman! Now, my dear colonel, at last we really are after those infernal rascals in earnest; and, sir, between you and me and the binnacle, we’ll be up to them before long before nightfall, I’ll wager!”“I hope to heaven we will, Señor Applegarth,” replied the other sadly, but eagerly. “But, alas! the ocean is wide, and we may miss the ship. I cannot bear to think of it!”“Oh, but we won’t miss her!” said the skipper confidently, and he was the last man to give up hope. “Take my davy for that, sir. She must be within a radius of from twenty to thirty miles of our present bearings on the chart, somewhere here away to the eastwards, sir; and if we make a long leg to leeward and then bear up to the north’ard and west’ard again, we’ll overhaul her—I’m sure of it—yes, sure of it, in no time. Look, colonel, look how we’re going now. By George, ain’t that a bow wave for you, sir, and just see our wake astern!”The old barquey was certainly steaming ahead at a great rate, the sea coming up before her in a high ridge that nearly topped the fo’c’s’le, and welling under her counter on either hand in undulating furrows that spread out beneath her stern in the form of a broad arrow, widening their distance apart as she moved onward, while the space between was frosted as if with silver by the white foam churned up by the ever-whirling propeller blades, beating the water with their rhythmical iteration, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump!There was no “racing” of the screw now, for Neptune was in one of his quiet moods and there were no big rollers to surmount, or deep wave valleys to descend into; consequently the old barquey had no excuse for giving way to any gambolling propensities in the water of pitching and tossing, steaming away on an even keel and using every inch of power of her engines, with not an ounce to waste in the way of mis-spent force!And so on we went, tearing through the water, a blue sky overhead unflecked by a single cloud, a blue sea around that sparkled in sunshine and reflected harmonies of azure and gold, save where the bright fresh western breeze rippled its surface with laughing wavelets that chuckled as they splashed the spray into each other’s faces, or where we passed a stray scrap of gulf-weed with its long yellow filaments spread out like fingers vainly clutching at the wavelets as if imploring them to be still, or where again the dense black smoke from our funnels made a canopy in the sky athwart our track, obscuring the shimmering surface of the deep with a grim path of shadow that checked the mirth of the lisping young wavelets and even awed the sunshine when it came in closer contact anon, as the wind waved it this way and that at its will.“Hi, bo’sun!” shouted out the skipper presently, after carrying on like this for a goodish spell, the deck working beneath our feet and theStar of the Northseeming to be flying through water and air alike by a series of leaps and bounds, quivering down to her very kelson with the sustained motion and the ever-driving impulse of her masterful engines spurring her onward. “How is she going now, eh?”Old Masters was away aft on the poop hauling in the patent log, which had been hove over the side on our beginning the run, and the next minute, as soon as he was able to look at the index of the instrument, he answered the skipper’s question.“Sixteen knots, sir!” he sang out, and then we could hear the old sea dog add his customary comment, whether of approval or discontent, “Well, I’m blowed!”“By George, colonel!” cried Captain Applegarth to our melancholy-looking guest at his side. “We’re going sixteen knots, sir; just think of that! I didn’t believe the dear old barquey had it in her!”“It is a good, wonderful speed, captain,” replied the other, who, I noticed, was looking even more exhausted now than when we removed him from the boat. “Remember, though, sir, theSaint Pierreis sailing on all this time before the wind, as she was this morning and must be miles ahead of us!”“Aye, I know she’s going; or at least, I suppose so, and I’ve made every allowance for that in my calculation of her whereabouts,” returned our skipper, in nowise daunted by the colonel’s argument. “But if she had every rag set that she could carry, she couldn’t go more than three or four knots at the most, in this light breeze; and for every foot she covers we’re going five!”“That is true,” said the American, with a very weary and absent look on his face. “But—but I’m afraid we may be too late after all! I—I’m—God protect—my—my—”“The fact is, my dear sir,” cried the skipper abruptly, interrupting him as the other hesitated in his speech, turning a deadly white and clutching at the bridge rail in front of him, as if to save himself from falling or fainting. “You’re completely worn out and your nerves shaken! Why, you can’t have had much, if any, sleep the last three or four days—not since that rumpus broke out aboard your ship, eh?”“Heavens!” ejaculated the other. “I don’t think I have closed my eyes, señor, since Friday, excepting when I was drifting in the boat, part of which time I must have been senseless; for though I recollect seeing your vessel and trying to signal her by holding up a piece of the bottom planking of the boat, as we hadn’t oar or sail in her, I have no remembrance of seeing your vessel steaming up to help us, or of this brave young gentleman here jumping into the water and swimming to our assistance, as you tell me, captain, that he gallantly did. Believe me, sir, I shall never forget you, and I shall be ever and eternally grateful to you for that noble act of yours!”He half-turned and bowed to me politely as he said this, but I was too much confused by his exaggerated estimate of what I had done to say anything at the moment in reply. And, after all, it was only a very simple thing to do, to swim with a line to a boat; any other fellow could have done the same, and would have done it under the same circumstances.The skipper, however, spoke for me.“Come, come, sir,” he said. “Haldane only did his duty, like the brave lad he is; and I’m sure you only make him uncomfortable by your thanks. I want you, colonel, to go below and have a little rest and some refreshment. Besides, I promised Mr O’Neil to send you down to have your wounded leg dressed and seen to more than half an hour ago, when he came up on deck after attending to that other poor chap, and yet here you are still, talking and exciting yourself. How is your leg now, colonel? Easier?”“Confound it! No, no!” replied the other, with a writhe of torture as he changed his position so as to relieve the strain on the wounded limb, which I had quite forgotten about, the brave follow having stoically repressed all indication of pain while urging on the pursuit of the black mutineers. “It’s hurting me like the devil! But, sir, I cannot rest or leave the deck till we come up to that accursed ship and save my poor child, my little darling—if we be not too late, too late!”“This is nonsense, sir,” said the skipper bluntly, and rather angrily, I thought, and he continued:“The ship, we know, must be a goodish bit ahead of us still, and we can’t possibly overhaul her for an hour or more at the earliest. So come, cheer up, and come along with me and have your leg attended to at once. I insist, colonel; come.”“But,” persisted Colonel Vereker, evidently trying to make out the time in arguing, and loth to leave the scene of action, though apparently ready to drop now from sheer pain and exhaustion combined, “Who will—who will—”“My first officer here, Mr Fosset, will remain on the bridge during our absence below,” interposed Captain Applegarth, anticipating his last, unuttered objection. “He’s quite competent to take charge, and I’m sure will let us know the moment the ship comes in sight, if she appears before we return on deck.”“Aye, that I will, sir,” cried out Mr Fosset. “I’ll keep a sharp look-out, and I’ll hail you, sir, sharp enough, as soon as she heaves in sight on the horizon.”“There!” exclaimed the skipper in an exultant tone, taking hold of the colonel’s reluctant arm and placing it within his own, so as to lead him away and to give him the benefit of his support down the bridge-ladder. “Won’t that satisfy you now, sir, and you see you’ll lose nothing by going below for a spell? Come, come, my good friend, have the leg seen to and eat something, for you must require it. Why, colonel, unless you keep up your strength and spur yourself up a bit you won’t be able to tackle those black scoundrels when we get up to the ship and catch them and it comes to a fight, as I expect it will. So come along, my hearty; rouse yourself and come!”This concluding remark of the old skipper affected more than all his previous persuasion, the colonel at once allowing himself to be helped down the laddering without further demur, and so along the gangway on the upper deck, towards the lower entrance to the saloon under the beak of the poop, I lending the aid of my shoulder for the crippled man to lean on as he limped painfully onward, having to pause at almost every step, his wounded leg dragging now so much, now that excitement no longer sustained his flagging frame; the skipper gave aid too, his arm propping him up on the other side.
I was so indignant at what the spiteful little brute said that I incontinently turned on my heel and left him without another word, going forwards towards the bridge to give the skipper Stoddart’s message.
Here, the sight of Colonel Vereker’s grand figure—one that would be remarkable anywhere, towering above the rail and almost herculean in its massive proportions, coupled with the sad look in his noble face, and which reminded me somehow or other of one of the pictures of the old Cavaliers of the Stuart days, made me resent the more the baseless imputation of his being an imposter.
The idea of such a thing being possible could only have occurred to an ignoble mind like that of Spokeshave; for one single glance at the distinguished-looking gentleman’s speaking countenance, with its finely-chiselled features and lofty open brow, would have satisfied any unprejudiced person that his was a nature incompatible with deceit and meanness, even in the most remote degree.
“Well, young Haldane!” exclaimed old Mr Stokes, whom I found with Captain Applegarth and the colonel when I reached the wheel-house.
“What do those smart chaps of mine down below say, hey, my boy?”
His face beamed as he spoke and he looked as if he would have liked to have rubbed his hands together in his old way when he felt particularly jolly, but unfortunately his crippled arm, which was still in a sling, prevented that!
“Oh, that’s all right, sir,” I replied in an equally cheery tone, the old chief’s genial address making me forget at once my anger at Spokeshave’s contemptible nonsense. “Mr Stoddart directed me to tell the cap’en that he may go on ahead as usual, as he likes, for everything has been made taut and secure below and there need be no fear of another mishap. He says he intends driving the engines as they were never driven before, and he has put every fireman and oiler in the stoke-hold on the job.”
“Bravo!” cried the skipper, sounding the gong again and yelling down the voice-tube that led below like one possessed. “Fire up, below there, and let her rip!”
“Dear, dear,” panted Mr Stokes, whose fears for his engines, which he regarded with the affection which a young mother might bestow on her first baby, began to overcome his interest in the chase after the black pirates. “I hope you and Stoddart, between you, won’t be rash, cap’en. I hope—I do hope you won’t!”
“Nonsense, Stokes, you old croker; just you shut up!” said the skipper. “Keep her steady, east-nor’-east, helmsman! Now, my dear colonel, at last we really are after those infernal rascals in earnest; and, sir, between you and me and the binnacle, we’ll be up to them before long before nightfall, I’ll wager!”
“I hope to heaven we will, Señor Applegarth,” replied the other sadly, but eagerly. “But, alas! the ocean is wide, and we may miss the ship. I cannot bear to think of it!”
“Oh, but we won’t miss her!” said the skipper confidently, and he was the last man to give up hope. “Take my davy for that, sir. She must be within a radius of from twenty to thirty miles of our present bearings on the chart, somewhere here away to the eastwards, sir; and if we make a long leg to leeward and then bear up to the north’ard and west’ard again, we’ll overhaul her—I’m sure of it—yes, sure of it, in no time. Look, colonel, look how we’re going now. By George, ain’t that a bow wave for you, sir, and just see our wake astern!”
The old barquey was certainly steaming ahead at a great rate, the sea coming up before her in a high ridge that nearly topped the fo’c’s’le, and welling under her counter on either hand in undulating furrows that spread out beneath her stern in the form of a broad arrow, widening their distance apart as she moved onward, while the space between was frosted as if with silver by the white foam churned up by the ever-whirling propeller blades, beating the water with their rhythmical iteration, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump!
There was no “racing” of the screw now, for Neptune was in one of his quiet moods and there were no big rollers to surmount, or deep wave valleys to descend into; consequently the old barquey had no excuse for giving way to any gambolling propensities in the water of pitching and tossing, steaming away on an even keel and using every inch of power of her engines, with not an ounce to waste in the way of mis-spent force!
And so on we went, tearing through the water, a blue sky overhead unflecked by a single cloud, a blue sea around that sparkled in sunshine and reflected harmonies of azure and gold, save where the bright fresh western breeze rippled its surface with laughing wavelets that chuckled as they splashed the spray into each other’s faces, or where we passed a stray scrap of gulf-weed with its long yellow filaments spread out like fingers vainly clutching at the wavelets as if imploring them to be still, or where again the dense black smoke from our funnels made a canopy in the sky athwart our track, obscuring the shimmering surface of the deep with a grim path of shadow that checked the mirth of the lisping young wavelets and even awed the sunshine when it came in closer contact anon, as the wind waved it this way and that at its will.
“Hi, bo’sun!” shouted out the skipper presently, after carrying on like this for a goodish spell, the deck working beneath our feet and theStar of the Northseeming to be flying through water and air alike by a series of leaps and bounds, quivering down to her very kelson with the sustained motion and the ever-driving impulse of her masterful engines spurring her onward. “How is she going now, eh?”
Old Masters was away aft on the poop hauling in the patent log, which had been hove over the side on our beginning the run, and the next minute, as soon as he was able to look at the index of the instrument, he answered the skipper’s question.
“Sixteen knots, sir!” he sang out, and then we could hear the old sea dog add his customary comment, whether of approval or discontent, “Well, I’m blowed!”
“By George, colonel!” cried Captain Applegarth to our melancholy-looking guest at his side. “We’re going sixteen knots, sir; just think of that! I didn’t believe the dear old barquey had it in her!”
“It is a good, wonderful speed, captain,” replied the other, who, I noticed, was looking even more exhausted now than when we removed him from the boat. “Remember, though, sir, theSaint Pierreis sailing on all this time before the wind, as she was this morning and must be miles ahead of us!”
“Aye, I know she’s going; or at least, I suppose so, and I’ve made every allowance for that in my calculation of her whereabouts,” returned our skipper, in nowise daunted by the colonel’s argument. “But if she had every rag set that she could carry, she couldn’t go more than three or four knots at the most, in this light breeze; and for every foot she covers we’re going five!”
“That is true,” said the American, with a very weary and absent look on his face. “But—but I’m afraid we may be too late after all! I—I’m—God protect—my—my—”
“The fact is, my dear sir,” cried the skipper abruptly, interrupting him as the other hesitated in his speech, turning a deadly white and clutching at the bridge rail in front of him, as if to save himself from falling or fainting. “You’re completely worn out and your nerves shaken! Why, you can’t have had much, if any, sleep the last three or four days—not since that rumpus broke out aboard your ship, eh?”
“Heavens!” ejaculated the other. “I don’t think I have closed my eyes, señor, since Friday, excepting when I was drifting in the boat, part of which time I must have been senseless; for though I recollect seeing your vessel and trying to signal her by holding up a piece of the bottom planking of the boat, as we hadn’t oar or sail in her, I have no remembrance of seeing your vessel steaming up to help us, or of this brave young gentleman here jumping into the water and swimming to our assistance, as you tell me, captain, that he gallantly did. Believe me, sir, I shall never forget you, and I shall be ever and eternally grateful to you for that noble act of yours!”
He half-turned and bowed to me politely as he said this, but I was too much confused by his exaggerated estimate of what I had done to say anything at the moment in reply. And, after all, it was only a very simple thing to do, to swim with a line to a boat; any other fellow could have done the same, and would have done it under the same circumstances.
The skipper, however, spoke for me.
“Come, come, sir,” he said. “Haldane only did his duty, like the brave lad he is; and I’m sure you only make him uncomfortable by your thanks. I want you, colonel, to go below and have a little rest and some refreshment. Besides, I promised Mr O’Neil to send you down to have your wounded leg dressed and seen to more than half an hour ago, when he came up on deck after attending to that other poor chap, and yet here you are still, talking and exciting yourself. How is your leg now, colonel? Easier?”
“Confound it! No, no!” replied the other, with a writhe of torture as he changed his position so as to relieve the strain on the wounded limb, which I had quite forgotten about, the brave follow having stoically repressed all indication of pain while urging on the pursuit of the black mutineers. “It’s hurting me like the devil! But, sir, I cannot rest or leave the deck till we come up to that accursed ship and save my poor child, my little darling—if we be not too late, too late!”
“This is nonsense, sir,” said the skipper bluntly, and rather angrily, I thought, and he continued:
“The ship, we know, must be a goodish bit ahead of us still, and we can’t possibly overhaul her for an hour or more at the earliest. So come, cheer up, and come along with me and have your leg attended to at once. I insist, colonel; come.”
“But,” persisted Colonel Vereker, evidently trying to make out the time in arguing, and loth to leave the scene of action, though apparently ready to drop now from sheer pain and exhaustion combined, “Who will—who will—”
“My first officer here, Mr Fosset, will remain on the bridge during our absence below,” interposed Captain Applegarth, anticipating his last, unuttered objection. “He’s quite competent to take charge, and I’m sure will let us know the moment the ship comes in sight, if she appears before we return on deck.”
“Aye, that I will, sir,” cried out Mr Fosset. “I’ll keep a sharp look-out, and I’ll hail you, sir, sharp enough, as soon as she heaves in sight on the horizon.”
“There!” exclaimed the skipper in an exultant tone, taking hold of the colonel’s reluctant arm and placing it within his own, so as to lead him away and to give him the benefit of his support down the bridge-ladder. “Won’t that satisfy you now, sir, and you see you’ll lose nothing by going below for a spell? Come, come, my good friend, have the leg seen to and eat something, for you must require it. Why, colonel, unless you keep up your strength and spur yourself up a bit you won’t be able to tackle those black scoundrels when we get up to the ship and catch them and it comes to a fight, as I expect it will. So come along, my hearty; rouse yourself and come!”
This concluding remark of the old skipper affected more than all his previous persuasion, the colonel at once allowing himself to be helped down the laddering without further demur, and so along the gangway on the upper deck, towards the lower entrance to the saloon under the beak of the poop, I lending the aid of my shoulder for the crippled man to lean on as he limped painfully onward, having to pause at almost every step, his wounded leg dragging now so much, now that excitement no longer sustained his flagging frame; the skipper gave aid too, his arm propping him up on the other side.
Chapter Seventeen.Doctor and Patient.“Faith, it’s moighty glad I am, sor, to say you at last!” cried Garry O’Neil, starting up from his seat at the cuddy table, on our ultimately reaching the saloon, where the Irish mate was having a rather late lunch with Mr Stokes, who had preceded us below. “I was jist comin’ after ye ag’in, colonel, whin I had snatched a bit mouthful to kape the divvil out of me stomach, sure. I want to inspict that game leg o’ yours, sor, now that I’ve sittled your poor f’ind’s h’id. Begorrah, colonel, somebody gave him a tidy rap on the skull whin they were about it!”“It was done with a hand-spike,” explained the other, groaning with pain as we assisted him to a seat at the further end of the table, where the skipper’s armchair was drawn out for him to fix him up more comfortably. “One of those treacherous niggers came behind his back and dealt him a terrific blow that landed on the side of his head partly, nearly cutting his ear off!”“Aye, I saw that, sor, of course,” put in Garry, pouring out some brandy into a tumbler which he proceeded to fill up with water—“aqua pura,” he called it. “I’ve shtrapped it on ag’in now, and it looks as nate as ninepins. But jist dhrink this, colonel, dear. It’ll warrm the cockles of your heart, sure, an’ put frish loife into you!”The American took a sip first at the glass proffered him, and then drained off the contents with a deep sigh of satisfaction.“Ah!” he exclaimed, “I feel a little better. But how is poor Captain Alphonse now?”“Bedad, he’s gitting on illegantly,” replied Garry, sniffing at a soup plate containing some steaming compound which Weston, the steward, had just brought in, and directing that worthy to place it in front of our poor invalid guest. “There was a nasty paice of bone sphlinter sticking in the crayture’s brainpan; but, first, I trepanned him an’ raymoved the impiddimint, an’ the poor chap’s now slayping as swately as a babby, slayping in the cap’en’s cot over yonder! But come, colonel, I want ye to take some of this pay soup here afore I set to work carving ye about. Begorrah, it’s foine stuff, an’ll set ye up a bit to roights!”“Thank you a thousand times,” returned he, taking a mouthful or two of the soup which Weston had placed before him, eating very sparingly at first like one who had been deprived of food for some time. “I’m not afraid of your handling me, sir. I have undergone too many operations for that!”“Faith, colonel,” cried the Irishman, laughing in his usual good-tempered racy manner, “you’d best spake well of the craft or I’ll be afther payin’ you out, sure, alannah, whin I get your leg in me grip! Jist you stow some more o’ that illigint soup inside your belt, sor, before I start on the job, an’ while ye’re aitin’ I’ll tell you how I once sarved out an old woman whom I was called in to docther, whin I was at ould Trinity, larnin’ the profession, in faith!”“That’s right, O’Neil,” said the skipper, seeing his motive in trying to set our sad guest at his ease and to try and distract his thoughts from the awful anxiety and grief under which he was labouring. “Have I heard the yarn before, eh?”“Faith, not that I know of, cap’en,” returned the doctorpro temin his free and easy manner. “Begorrah, the joke’s too much ag’inst meself, sor, for me to be afther tillin’ the story too often!”“Never mind that; it will make it all the more interesting to us,” said the skipper with a knowing wink to Mr Stokes, both of them knowing Garry’s old stories only too well, but at such a time as this they would have listened to anything if it would only serve to distract the poor colonel’s thoughts for a few minutes, and they chuckled in recollection of the many jokes against himself that Garry had perpetrated. “Fire away with your yarn.”“Bedad, then, here goes,” began O’Neil with a grin. “Ye must know, colonel, if you will have it, that I was only a ‘sucking sawbones,’ so to spake, at the toime. Faith, I was a medical studint in my first year, having barely mastered the bones.”“The bones!” interrupted the skipper. “What the deuce do you mean, man?”“Sure, the inthroductory study of anatomy, sor,” explained Garry rather grandiloquently, going on with his yarn. “Well, one foine day whin I an’ another fellow who’d kept the same terms as mesilf were walking the hospital, wonderin’ whin we’d be able to pass the college, sure the hall porter comes into the ward we were in an’ axes if we knew where Professor Lancett, the house surgeon, was to be found, as he was wanted at once.“‘Faix,’ says Terence Mahony, my chum, the other medical studint who was with me. ‘He’s gone to say the Lord Lieutenant, who’s been struck down with the maysles, an’ the divvle only knows whin he’ll get back from the castle, sure! What’s the matter, O’Dowd? Who wants ould Lancett at this outlandish toime of day?’“The hall porter took Mahony’s chaff, faith, in all sober sayriousness. ‘It’s moighty sorry I am,’ says he; ‘Master Lancett’s gone to the castle, though proud I am for ould Trinity’s sake, sayin’ as how the Lord Lieutenant has for to send to us, sure, bekase them murtheren’ ’sassa docthers that he brought from over the say with him from Inkland ain’t a patch on our chaps! But, faix, sor, a poor woman as the professor knows is took moighty bad in her inside, some of her neighbours says, an’ wants help at onst!’“‘Who is it, O’Dowd?’ I asks. ‘Do you know where she lives?’“‘Mistress Flannagan’s her name,’ says the porter. ‘She’s Mistress Lancett’s ould la’ndress, sor; a cantankerous ould woman, too, an’ wid the divvle of a temper! She lives jist out of Dame Strate, sure, in Abbey Lane. Any one’ll till ye the place, sure!’“‘What say you to goin’ to say the poor crayture?’ says I to Terence Mahony. ‘We’ll lave word where we’re gone, an’ I’m sure Mr Lancett will be plaised to hear we’re looking afther the ould lady!’“‘Begorrah, that he will, sor,’ agreed O’Dowd, the porter. ‘It’s moighty kind of you two young gintlemen going for to say her, an’ I’ll make a p’int of lettin’ the docther know whin he comes back from the Lord Liftinnint!’“‘All right, O’Dowd,’ says I. ‘Mind you till the professor, an’ he can thin follow us up on his return to the college—that is, if he loikes!’“With that off the two of us wint on our errind of mercy, though it was lucky I lift that message with O’Dowd, as ye’ll larn prisintly!“It didn’t take us long to find the house where the sick woman was, for as we turned into the strate, a dirty ould hag, smoking a short pipe, came up to us with a smirk on her ugly phiz.“‘God save Ireland!’ says she, addressing Terence. ‘Be yez the docther jintlemen from the hospital, avic?’“‘Faix, we’re that,’ says my companion; ‘the pair of us!’“‘Thin come along,’ says she. ‘Mistress Flannagan is dyin’ to say you, sure. The soight of yez is good for sore eyes!’“‘Begorrah!’ says Terence, ‘I wouldn’t have come at all at all if she hadn’t been dyin’, the poor crayture! Where is she?’“‘In the corner there,’ returns the old hag, removing her dirty little black dhudeen of a pipe for a minnit from between her teeth, in order to spake the bether. ‘She’s a-sottin’ in that cheir there, as she hav’ been since the mornin’, widout sayin’ a worrd to mortial saol afther she tould us to sind for the docther. May the divvle fly away with me, but Peggy Flannagan can be obstinate in foith, whin she likes!’“Terence Mahony and I then poked our noses into the corner of the room, the old hag stirrin’ the turf fire on the hearth to give us a bit of loight; an’ then we saw the ould crayture, who looked as broad as she was long, sittin’ in a big armchere, an’ starin’ at us with large, open eyes. But though she was breythin’ hard loike a grampus, she didn’t spake nothin’!“‘What’s the mather, my good woman?’ says Mahony, going up to her an’ spaking kindly to the poor crayture. ‘Let me feel your pulse.’“He caught hold of her hand, which hung down the side of the chere and fumbled at the wrist for some toime, the ould woman starin’ an’ sayin’ nothin’ at all at all!“‘Faith, Garry O’Neil, I can’t foind any pulse on her at all at all. She must be di’d, worse luck!’“‘Och, you omahdaun; can’t ye say her eyes open?’ says I. ‘Git out o’ the way an’ let me thry!’“Begorrah, though, I couldn’t fale any pulse at all aythar.“‘She’s in a faint, I think,’ says Terence, pretendin’ for to know all about it. ‘We had jist sich a case in hospital t’other day. It’s oine of suspended animation.’“‘Blatheration, Terence,’ I cried at hearing this. ‘You’ll be a case of suspended animation yoursilf by-and-bye.’“‘Faith, how’s that?’ says he. ‘What do you mean?’“‘Why, whin you’re hung, me bhoy! for your ignorance of your profession. Sure, one can say with half an eye the poor crayture is sufferin’ from lumbago or peritonitas on the craynium, faith!’“As we were arguin’ the p’int, the ould hag who had introduced us brought our discussion to an end jist as Terence made up his mind that the case was cholera or elephantiasis or something else equally ridiculous!“‘Bad cess to the obstinate cantankerous ould crayture,’ cried she, catching the poor sick woman by the scruff of the neck an’ shakin’ her violently backwards an’ forrads, afther which she banged the poor thing violently on the sate of the chere. ‘Will ye now spake to their honours, or will ye not? Won’t ye now? She be that stubborn!’ said she, turnin’ to us; ‘did ye ivver see anythin’ loike it afore?’“Mahony then tould her to put out her tongue, but the divvle a bit of her tongue saw we! Nor would she say a worrd as to her ailment, to give us a clue, though I believe on me oath, colonel, we mintioned ivery complaint known in the Pharmacopaia, Terence even axin’ civilly if she had chilblames in the throat, for it was the depth of winter at the toime, to prevent her talkin’!“But our coaxin’ was all in vain, loike the ould hag’s shaking!“Faith, not a worrd moved our patient. She was that in all conscience, sure.“‘Begorrah, I’ll sind a bucket of could wather over her an’ say if that’ll tach her manners!’ said the ould hag, who tould us her own name was Biddy Flynne, on our giving her an odd sixthpence for a dhrop of drink. ‘It’s a shame to bring yez honours out for nothin’!’“She was jist going to do what she had threatened, sure enough whin, providentially, in walked the professor from the college.“He’d been listenin’ outside the door, I believe, all the toime Terence an’ mesilf were talkin’ an’ arguin’ about the ould dame’s complaint, puzzlin’ our brains to find out what was the mather with her, for the baste of a man had a broad grin on his face, loike that you say on a mealy petaty whin the jacket pales off of it, whin he toorned round to us afther examinin’ poor Mistress Flannagan, now all a heap on her chere.“‘Faith, I must complimint you, jintlemin, on the profound skill an’ knowledge you have shown in your profession,’ says he. ‘I don’t think I ivver heard a more ignorant or illeterate diagnosis of a case since I’ve been professor at Trinity College!’“He was a moighty polite man was Professor Lancett. Terence an’ I both agrayed on his sayin’ this, an’ thought our fortunes were made an’ we’d git our diplomas at once, without any examination, sure!“But his nixt remark purty soon took the consate out of both of us.“‘It’s lucky for you two dunder-headed ignoramases!’ he went on to say in a nasty sneerin’ way the baste had with him whin he was angry and was any way put out. ‘Preshous lucky for you, Misther Terence Mahony, an’ you, too, Garry O’Neil, that I chanced to come afther you, thinkin’ ye’d be up to some mischief, or else ye’d have put your foot in it with a vengeance an’ murthered between you this poor, harmless ould woman lying here. I am ashamed and disgusted with you!’“He thin prosayded to till what the poor crayture was sufferin’ from, an’ what d’ye think her complaint was, colonel? Jist give a guess, now, jist to oblige me, sure.”“Great Scot!” cried the American, smiling at O’Neil’s naïve manner and the happy and roguish expression on his face, our guest’s appearance having been much improved by the food of which he had partaken as well as the stimulant, which had put some little colour into his pale cheeks. “I’m sure I can’t guess. But what was it, sir, for you have excited my curiosity?”
“Faith, it’s moighty glad I am, sor, to say you at last!” cried Garry O’Neil, starting up from his seat at the cuddy table, on our ultimately reaching the saloon, where the Irish mate was having a rather late lunch with Mr Stokes, who had preceded us below. “I was jist comin’ after ye ag’in, colonel, whin I had snatched a bit mouthful to kape the divvil out of me stomach, sure. I want to inspict that game leg o’ yours, sor, now that I’ve sittled your poor f’ind’s h’id. Begorrah, colonel, somebody gave him a tidy rap on the skull whin they were about it!”
“It was done with a hand-spike,” explained the other, groaning with pain as we assisted him to a seat at the further end of the table, where the skipper’s armchair was drawn out for him to fix him up more comfortably. “One of those treacherous niggers came behind his back and dealt him a terrific blow that landed on the side of his head partly, nearly cutting his ear off!”
“Aye, I saw that, sor, of course,” put in Garry, pouring out some brandy into a tumbler which he proceeded to fill up with water—“aqua pura,” he called it. “I’ve shtrapped it on ag’in now, and it looks as nate as ninepins. But jist dhrink this, colonel, dear. It’ll warrm the cockles of your heart, sure, an’ put frish loife into you!”
The American took a sip first at the glass proffered him, and then drained off the contents with a deep sigh of satisfaction.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, “I feel a little better. But how is poor Captain Alphonse now?”
“Bedad, he’s gitting on illegantly,” replied Garry, sniffing at a soup plate containing some steaming compound which Weston, the steward, had just brought in, and directing that worthy to place it in front of our poor invalid guest. “There was a nasty paice of bone sphlinter sticking in the crayture’s brainpan; but, first, I trepanned him an’ raymoved the impiddimint, an’ the poor chap’s now slayping as swately as a babby, slayping in the cap’en’s cot over yonder! But come, colonel, I want ye to take some of this pay soup here afore I set to work carving ye about. Begorrah, it’s foine stuff, an’ll set ye up a bit to roights!”
“Thank you a thousand times,” returned he, taking a mouthful or two of the soup which Weston had placed before him, eating very sparingly at first like one who had been deprived of food for some time. “I’m not afraid of your handling me, sir. I have undergone too many operations for that!”
“Faith, colonel,” cried the Irishman, laughing in his usual good-tempered racy manner, “you’d best spake well of the craft or I’ll be afther payin’ you out, sure, alannah, whin I get your leg in me grip! Jist you stow some more o’ that illigint soup inside your belt, sor, before I start on the job, an’ while ye’re aitin’ I’ll tell you how I once sarved out an old woman whom I was called in to docther, whin I was at ould Trinity, larnin’ the profession, in faith!”
“That’s right, O’Neil,” said the skipper, seeing his motive in trying to set our sad guest at his ease and to try and distract his thoughts from the awful anxiety and grief under which he was labouring. “Have I heard the yarn before, eh?”
“Faith, not that I know of, cap’en,” returned the doctorpro temin his free and easy manner. “Begorrah, the joke’s too much ag’inst meself, sor, for me to be afther tillin’ the story too often!”
“Never mind that; it will make it all the more interesting to us,” said the skipper with a knowing wink to Mr Stokes, both of them knowing Garry’s old stories only too well, but at such a time as this they would have listened to anything if it would only serve to distract the poor colonel’s thoughts for a few minutes, and they chuckled in recollection of the many jokes against himself that Garry had perpetrated. “Fire away with your yarn.”
“Bedad, then, here goes,” began O’Neil with a grin. “Ye must know, colonel, if you will have it, that I was only a ‘sucking sawbones,’ so to spake, at the toime. Faith, I was a medical studint in my first year, having barely mastered the bones.”
“The bones!” interrupted the skipper. “What the deuce do you mean, man?”
“Sure, the inthroductory study of anatomy, sor,” explained Garry rather grandiloquently, going on with his yarn. “Well, one foine day whin I an’ another fellow who’d kept the same terms as mesilf were walking the hospital, wonderin’ whin we’d be able to pass the college, sure the hall porter comes into the ward we were in an’ axes if we knew where Professor Lancett, the house surgeon, was to be found, as he was wanted at once.
“‘Faix,’ says Terence Mahony, my chum, the other medical studint who was with me. ‘He’s gone to say the Lord Lieutenant, who’s been struck down with the maysles, an’ the divvle only knows whin he’ll get back from the castle, sure! What’s the matter, O’Dowd? Who wants ould Lancett at this outlandish toime of day?’
“The hall porter took Mahony’s chaff, faith, in all sober sayriousness. ‘It’s moighty sorry I am,’ says he; ‘Master Lancett’s gone to the castle, though proud I am for ould Trinity’s sake, sayin’ as how the Lord Lieutenant has for to send to us, sure, bekase them murtheren’ ’sassa docthers that he brought from over the say with him from Inkland ain’t a patch on our chaps! But, faix, sor, a poor woman as the professor knows is took moighty bad in her inside, some of her neighbours says, an’ wants help at onst!’
“‘Who is it, O’Dowd?’ I asks. ‘Do you know where she lives?’
“‘Mistress Flannagan’s her name,’ says the porter. ‘She’s Mistress Lancett’s ould la’ndress, sor; a cantankerous ould woman, too, an’ wid the divvle of a temper! She lives jist out of Dame Strate, sure, in Abbey Lane. Any one’ll till ye the place, sure!’
“‘What say you to goin’ to say the poor crayture?’ says I to Terence Mahony. ‘We’ll lave word where we’re gone, an’ I’m sure Mr Lancett will be plaised to hear we’re looking afther the ould lady!’
“‘Begorrah, that he will, sor,’ agreed O’Dowd, the porter. ‘It’s moighty kind of you two young gintlemen going for to say her, an’ I’ll make a p’int of lettin’ the docther know whin he comes back from the Lord Liftinnint!’
“‘All right, O’Dowd,’ says I. ‘Mind you till the professor, an’ he can thin follow us up on his return to the college—that is, if he loikes!’
“With that off the two of us wint on our errind of mercy, though it was lucky I lift that message with O’Dowd, as ye’ll larn prisintly!
“It didn’t take us long to find the house where the sick woman was, for as we turned into the strate, a dirty ould hag, smoking a short pipe, came up to us with a smirk on her ugly phiz.
“‘God save Ireland!’ says she, addressing Terence. ‘Be yez the docther jintlemen from the hospital, avic?’
“‘Faix, we’re that,’ says my companion; ‘the pair of us!’
“‘Thin come along,’ says she. ‘Mistress Flannagan is dyin’ to say you, sure. The soight of yez is good for sore eyes!’
“‘Begorrah!’ says Terence, ‘I wouldn’t have come at all at all if she hadn’t been dyin’, the poor crayture! Where is she?’
“‘In the corner there,’ returns the old hag, removing her dirty little black dhudeen of a pipe for a minnit from between her teeth, in order to spake the bether. ‘She’s a-sottin’ in that cheir there, as she hav’ been since the mornin’, widout sayin’ a worrd to mortial saol afther she tould us to sind for the docther. May the divvle fly away with me, but Peggy Flannagan can be obstinate in foith, whin she likes!’
“Terence Mahony and I then poked our noses into the corner of the room, the old hag stirrin’ the turf fire on the hearth to give us a bit of loight; an’ then we saw the ould crayture, who looked as broad as she was long, sittin’ in a big armchere, an’ starin’ at us with large, open eyes. But though she was breythin’ hard loike a grampus, she didn’t spake nothin’!
“‘What’s the mather, my good woman?’ says Mahony, going up to her an’ spaking kindly to the poor crayture. ‘Let me feel your pulse.’
“He caught hold of her hand, which hung down the side of the chere and fumbled at the wrist for some toime, the ould woman starin’ an’ sayin’ nothin’ at all at all!
“‘Faith, Garry O’Neil, I can’t foind any pulse on her at all at all. She must be di’d, worse luck!’
“‘Och, you omahdaun; can’t ye say her eyes open?’ says I. ‘Git out o’ the way an’ let me thry!’
“Begorrah, though, I couldn’t fale any pulse at all aythar.
“‘She’s in a faint, I think,’ says Terence, pretendin’ for to know all about it. ‘We had jist sich a case in hospital t’other day. It’s oine of suspended animation.’
“‘Blatheration, Terence,’ I cried at hearing this. ‘You’ll be a case of suspended animation yoursilf by-and-bye.’
“‘Faith, how’s that?’ says he. ‘What do you mean?’
“‘Why, whin you’re hung, me bhoy! for your ignorance of your profession. Sure, one can say with half an eye the poor crayture is sufferin’ from lumbago or peritonitas on the craynium, faith!’
“As we were arguin’ the p’int, the ould hag who had introduced us brought our discussion to an end jist as Terence made up his mind that the case was cholera or elephantiasis or something else equally ridiculous!
“‘Bad cess to the obstinate cantankerous ould crayture,’ cried she, catching the poor sick woman by the scruff of the neck an’ shakin’ her violently backwards an’ forrads, afther which she banged the poor thing violently on the sate of the chere. ‘Will ye now spake to their honours, or will ye not? Won’t ye now? She be that stubborn!’ said she, turnin’ to us; ‘did ye ivver see anythin’ loike it afore?’
“Mahony then tould her to put out her tongue, but the divvle a bit of her tongue saw we! Nor would she say a worrd as to her ailment, to give us a clue, though I believe on me oath, colonel, we mintioned ivery complaint known in the Pharmacopaia, Terence even axin’ civilly if she had chilblames in the throat, for it was the depth of winter at the toime, to prevent her talkin’!
“But our coaxin’ was all in vain, loike the ould hag’s shaking!
“Faith, not a worrd moved our patient. She was that in all conscience, sure.
“‘Begorrah, I’ll sind a bucket of could wather over her an’ say if that’ll tach her manners!’ said the ould hag, who tould us her own name was Biddy Flynne, on our giving her an odd sixthpence for a dhrop of drink. ‘It’s a shame to bring yez honours out for nothin’!’
“She was jist going to do what she had threatened, sure enough whin, providentially, in walked the professor from the college.
“He’d been listenin’ outside the door, I believe, all the toime Terence an’ mesilf were talkin’ an’ arguin’ about the ould dame’s complaint, puzzlin’ our brains to find out what was the mather with her, for the baste of a man had a broad grin on his face, loike that you say on a mealy petaty whin the jacket pales off of it, whin he toorned round to us afther examinin’ poor Mistress Flannagan, now all a heap on her chere.
“‘Faith, I must complimint you, jintlemin, on the profound skill an’ knowledge you have shown in your profession,’ says he. ‘I don’t think I ivver heard a more ignorant or illeterate diagnosis of a case since I’ve been professor at Trinity College!’
“He was a moighty polite man was Professor Lancett. Terence an’ I both agrayed on his sayin’ this, an’ thought our fortunes were made an’ we’d git our diplomas at once, without any examination, sure!
“But his nixt remark purty soon took the consate out of both of us.
“‘It’s lucky for you two dunder-headed ignoramases!’ he went on to say in a nasty sneerin’ way the baste had with him whin he was angry and was any way put out. ‘Preshous lucky for you, Misther Terence Mahony, an’ you, too, Garry O’Neil, that I chanced to come afther you, thinkin’ ye’d be up to some mischief, or else ye’d have put your foot in it with a vengeance an’ murthered between you this poor, harmless ould woman lying here. I am ashamed and disgusted with you!’
“He thin prosayded to till what the poor crayture was sufferin’ from, an’ what d’ye think her complaint was, colonel? Jist give a guess, now, jist to oblige me, sure.”
“Great Scot!” cried the American, smiling at O’Neil’s naïve manner and the happy and roguish expression on his face, our guest’s appearance having been much improved by the food of which he had partaken as well as the stimulant, which had put some little colour into his pale cheeks. “I’m sure I can’t guess. But what was it, sir, for you have excited my curiosity?”