Chapter Seven.A Haunted Ship.A week later, Captain Snaggs, after drinking heavily during the evening, was seized with a fit of delirium similar to the one he had that night when he frightened me so terribly, for he rushed out of the cuddy, screaming that ‘thet durned nigger Sam’ was after him again.He made my flesh creep; and I wouldn’t have gone afterwards into the stern of the ship at night, without a light, for a good deal, nor would any of the fo’c’s’le hands either, excepting, perhaps, Tom Bullover. I am certain Hiram Bangs would have been even more reluctant than myself to have ventured within the presumptive quarters of the ghost.But, it was when we were off Cape Horn itself, though, that we encountered our greatest peril.TheDenver Cityhad got down well below the latitude of the stormy headland that is to mariners like the ‘Hill Difficulty’ mentioned in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ carrying with her up to then the light, favourable breezes we had encountered after leaving the south-east trades which had previously wafted her so well on her way; when, all at once, without hardly a warning, the sea began to grow choppy and sullen, and the air thick and heavy. The sky, too, which had been for days and days nearly cloudless, became overcast all round, heavy masses of vapour piling themselves upwards from the horizon towards the zenith, to the southward and westward, gradually enveloping ship and ocean alike in a mantle of mist.“Cape Horn weather,” observed Tom Bullover meaningly, as he squinted to windward; “we’ll have a taste of it presently!”“Aye, bo,” said Hiram, from the door of the galley opposite, where the carpenter was holding on to the weather rigging; “I wonder what the skipper’s about, keepin’ all thet hamper aloft an’ a gale like thet a-comin’! I reckon he’d better look smart, or we’ll be caught nappin’, hey?”Captain Snaggs, however, was also on the look-out; and, almost ere Hiram had finished his sentence, he shouted out for all hands to take in sail.“’Way aloft thaar!” he cried; “lay out on the yards, men, an’ close reef the tops’ls. We’re going to hev a blow!”And we did have a blow.The men were just ready to haul in the weather earring of the mizzen-topsail, the last they were handing, the fore and main having been already made snug, when a storm of wind and hail and snow struck us which in a few minutes coated the deck and rigging and every portion of the upper works of the ship with thick ice. At the same time, the sea, rolling in enormous waves, broke over our counter, throwing sheets of water aboard, which seemed to freeze in the air before it fell.I was standing on the poop, lending a hand at the mizzen halliards with the rest of the ‘idlers’—as those who are not regular sailors are called, although I was fast trying to become a real salt under the apt tuition of Hiram Bangs and the carpenter—when this fierce blast came.Goodness gracious! It pinned us all down to the deck, as if we were skittle-pegs, making our faces smart again with the bitter downpour.Next, followed a short lull, during which the reef tackle was hauled out and the halliards manned, the yard being swayed up again; and then, those aloft were able to come down and find a more comfortable shelter below than the rigging afforded.But, now, occurred a curious circumstance.As the hands who had been up on the mizzen-yard reefing the topsail stepped from the ratlines on to the deck of the poop before getting down to the waist below, one of the men, Jim Chowder, the same who had said that he had heard Sam Jedfoot’s voice in the ship since he had been lost overboard, whispered to me as he passed:—“Listen!” he said.That was all—“Listen!”The wind had suddenly died away for a moment, although the sea was like an ocean of mountains lumbering over each other; and as I ‘listened’, as Jim the sailor had told me, I heard a musical sound that I instantly recognised. It was that of the negro cook’s banjo, and Sam’s voice, too, most unmistakably, singing the same old air I knew so well:“Oh, down in Alabama, ’fore I wer sot free.”The instrument seemed to give out a double twang at this point, as if all the strings were twitched at once, and I noticed that Captain Snaggs, who stood near me, turned as white as a sheet.“Thunder!” he exclaimed, his eyes almost starting out of his head. “The Lord hev mercy on us! What air thet?”As if in answer to his question, the same wild, ghostly melody was repeated, the sound seeming to hover in the air and yet to come from underneath the deck under our feet, the tune swelling in intensity as we all listened, so that every man on board must have heard it as well as the captain and myself.And then, just as the last bar was struck with another resounding twang, a fiercer blast than the first caught the ship on her port quarter, and she heeled over to starboard until her deck was almost upright, while at the same time a terrible wave washed over us fore and aft, sweeping everything movable overboard.I held on to the weather rigging like ‘grim Death,’ amidst a mass of seething foam, that flowed over the poop as if it were the open sea, with the roar of rushing waters around me and the whistling and shrieking of the wind as it tore through the shrouds and howled and wailed, sweeping onward away to leeward.The spirit of the storm seemed to have broken loose; its black cloud-wings covering the heavens and fanning up the waves into fury, and then hurling them at theDenver City, which, poor, stricken thing, quailed before the onslaught of the cruel blast and remorseless rolling billows which followed each other in swift succession. These bore her down, and down, and down, until she was almost on her beam-ends, labouring heavily and groaning and creaking in every timber, and looking as if she were going to capsize every instant.Not a man on board but thought his last hour had come.The noise of the raging elements, however, in this mad commotion at once drowned the sound of the weird, mysterious music that had previously filled the air, affecting us all so strangely, especially Captain Snaggs, who seemed to be stricken by a spell as long as the sad strain echoed in our ears. But, the moment that we ceased to hear the phantom chaunt, the skipper recovered himself, his sailor instincts getting the better of his superstitious fears and sudden fright.Fortunately, he had clutched hold of the poop rail as the fierce gust caught the vessel, or, otherwise, he would have been carried over the side, and be struggling for dear life half a mile, at least, astern, where the hen-coops and casks that had been washed overboard were now bobbing about, as they sank slowly out of sight on the crest of the wave that had cleared our decks.A thorough seaman, in spite of his malevolent disposition and bullying manner, which, I suppose, he could not help, he knew at once what was best to be done under the circumstances—what, indeed, was the only thing that would save the ship, and which, if it could be done, had to be done quickly.Still grasping the rail with one hand, he made a motion with the other to Jan Steenbock to put the helm up, for the second-mate, being on the poop, had immediately jumped to the wheel to the assistance of the man there, who had as much as he could do single-handed to keep down the spokes, the ship steering wildly in such a heavy, tumbling sea as was boiling around us. The captain the next moment clambered to the mizzen-topsail sheets and halliards, and let them go by the run, an example that was instantly followed by those on the deck below, Tom Bullover, who was in charge there, anticipating the skipper’s intention, although he could not catch the order he bawled out at the same time that he lifted his hand to warn the helmsman—the terrible din kept up by the waves and wind alike preventing a word from reaching any one standing a yard beyond Captain Snaggs, had he spoken through a speaking trumpet and been possessed of lungs of brass!At first, it looked as if these measures had been adopted too late, the vessel lay so helplessly over on her side; but, in a little while, although it seemed a century to us, with our lives trembling in the balance, during the interval of a brief lull she slowly righted again. Then, paying off from the wind, she plunged onward, pitching and rolling and careering before the gale as it listed, yawing to port and starboard and staggering along; throwing tons of water over her fo’c’s’le as she dived and then taking in whole seas over her quarter as she rolled on, the following waves overtaking her—just like a high mettled steed that had thrown its rider and was rejoicing in its temporary freedom.The canvas aloft was ballooning out, and the ropes slatting and cracking, with blocks banging against the spars, all making a regular pandemonium of noise, in conjunction with the hoarse shriek of the sou’-wester and the clashing of the billows when they broke, buffeting theDenver Cityas if they would smash in her topsides at every blow!Mr Flinders, the first-mate, who had got his arm hurt shortly before the first blast struck us and had gone below to have it bound up by the steward, now crawled up the companion and approached the skipper, shouting something in his ear that, of course, I could not catch.Captain Snaggs, however, apparently understood what he said, and approved of his suggestion, for he nodded in answer; and, thereupon, the first-mate, working his way down again through the cabin on to the deck below, the poop ladder being unsafe with his injured arm, spoke to the men, who were holding on as well as they could in a group by the mainmast bitts, and they began to bestir themselves.Something was evidently going to be done to relieve the ship of all the loose top hamper flying about aloft, which threatened every moment to drag the masts out of her, for everything was swaying to and fro, and the topsails jerking terribly as they swelled out, the clews fouling the reef points as the wind threw them up, and all getting mixed in irretrievable confusion from the continual slatting of the canvas—for the whole of the running gear, having been let go, was now dangling about in all directions and knotting itself up in the standing rigging, round which the wind whipped the ropes, lashing them into a series of bowlines and half-hitches that it would have puzzled a fisherman to unbend.When the storm had burst so suddenly on us, the ship had been braced up on the port tack, beating to windward as well as she could, to weather Cape Horn; but now, of course, we were running right before the gale, retracing at headlong speed every knot we had previously gained on our true course.A few hours at this rate, as anyone with half an eye could see—even if everything stood the strain, which was very questionable—would place us on the chart pretty well where we were the day before; and, then, we should have all our work to do over again, without having a cable’s length to boast of to the good so far as our onward progress was concerned into the Pacific Ocean—most aptly named by the Spaniards, from the marked contrast its placid bosom offered, no doubt, to the rough sea these early voyagers met with on this side of the Land of Fire and of the Stormy Cape.But still, although we were scudding with everything flying aloft, the leebraces had not yet been let go, all that I have taken so long to describe having occurred, so to speak, within the compass of a minute. These, up to now, had remained fast, just as when we were close-hauled on the port tack the moment before; for, it was as much as our few hands could do at first to cast off the sheets and halliards, without minding the braces, especially as the ropes had got jammed at the bitts with the loose gear washing about the deck. However—‘better late than never’—they were now quickly let go, and the braces on the weather side being manned, the yards were squared. It was a job of some difficulty, although accomplished at length, the ship showing herself all the better for the operation by running easier and not staggering and yawing so much as she raced along.This was the first step.The next was to stop the uproar aloft, and create a little order amidst the chaos that there reigned, which was a much harder and far more ticklish task, it being perilous in the extreme, and almost useless, for any of the hands to venture up the rigging; for the wind was blowing with such terrific force that they could not have possibly lain out on the yards, even if they succeeded in reaching the futtock shrouds.It was no good shouting to the men.As I said before, they could not hear a word spoken, had it been bawled in the loudest tone; so, Mr Flinders managed to explain his purpose by signs, or some other means that I could not at the moment guess, for Tom Bullover and the rest of the crew at once commenced hauling on the maintopsail sheets.The effect of this was almost instantaneous.Puckering up into a bag where, as I mentioned, the clew had fouled the reef points, the sail burst ‘bang’ out of the boltropes with a noise like thunder; and, then, carried forwards by the gale, it floated away ahead, fortunately just clearing the foretopmast, which might have been broken by the extra strain—the fluttering mass of canvas finally disappearing, like a white kite, in the distance in the water ahead of the ship.Getting rid of this sail was even a greater relief to the over-driven vessel than squaring the yards had been, a consequence which the first-mate and carpenter had fully anticipated when the sheets were manned; so, a similar procedure was adopted with the fore-topsail, and a like happy result followed, the ship still driving on before the wind, very nearly at as great a rate as she had done before, although under bare poles almost.But she now steered more easily, not taking in such a lot of water aboard when she rolled, while the spars ceased to sway about, and it looked as if we should save them, which had seemed impossible a short time previously, from the ugly way in which the shrouds tightened, and the after-stays sung, as if they were stretched to the last limit, showing that the slightest increase of the strain on them would snap them like pack-thread.The mizzen-topsail was by this time our only rag left remaining, and the captain, evidently wishing to save this, so as to use it by-and-by when the gale lulled, to help in bringing the vessel round again to the wind, started off by himself hauling on the buntlines and clewlines, being quickly aided by Jan Steenbock and little me—we being all the ‘hands’ on the poop except the helmsman, whom the second-mate was able at last to leave for a minute or so unassisted, from the fact of the ship having become more tractable since she had lost all that lot of loose top hamper flapping about aloft.The three of us took ‘a long pull and a strong pull, and a pull all together,’ according to the old sailor phrase, I tugging my best with the others; and, possibly the ounce or two of ‘beef’ I was able to put into the rope so far assisted as just to turn the scale. At all events, we ultimately succeeded in clewing up the topsail pretty fairly; although, of course, it could not be properly stowed until some of the hands were able to get up on the yard and snug it comfortably by passing the sea-gaskets.So far, everything had been accomplished satisfactorily, and the ship was running free before the gale at the rate of ten or twelve knots, or more, without a stitch of canvas set beyond the bunt of the mizzen-topsail, which bagged and bulged out a bit still, in spite of our efforts to clew it up tight.But, now, a new danger arose.We were bowling along before the wind, it is true; but, the heavy rolling sea that had been worked up in a brief space of time was travelling at a much faster rate, and there was every fear that one of the monster billows which each moment curled up threateningly in our wake would hurl itself on board, thus pooping the vessel and rendering her altogether unmanageable, if not a hopeless wreck—such a mass of water as the big waves carried in their frowning crests being more than sufficient to swamp us instanter, and, mayhap, bury the poorDenver Citydeep in the depths below at one fell blow.Captain Snaggs saw this sooner than any one; and, although all his previous orders had been carried out in dumb show, from our now having the wind with us to waft his voice forward, he once more managed to make himself heard.“Ahoy!” he shouted, putting his hands on either side of his mouth, to carry the words well clear of his goatee beard, which was blown all over his face. “On deck, thaar!”Tom Bullover raised his right fist, to show that he caught the hail; but it was impossible for him to answer back in the very teeth of the gale.“We must try an’ lay her to,” continued the skipper. “Hev ye got a tarpaulin, or airy sort o’ rag ye ken stick in the fore-riggin’?” Tom nodded his head, understanding what the captain meant in a jiffey; and, with the help of two or three others, a piece of fearnought, that lay in the bottom of the long-boat, was quickly bundled out on the deck and dragged forwards, the men bending on a rope’s-end to a cringle worked in one corner of the stuff, so as to hoist it up by.“Over to port! Over to port!” roared the skipper, seeing them making for the lee side of the ship. “I’m goin’ to try an’ bring her to on thet tack, d’ye haar?”Another nod from the carpenter showed that he heard and appreciated the command, he and the group with him by great exertions tricing up the piece of fearnought into the fore-shrouds on the side indicated, spreading the cloth out and lashing it outside the rigging.“Now, men,” cried Captain Snaggs, “some o’ ye aft hyar! Look sharp an’ man the cro’jack braces.”“Dat vas goot,” I heard Mr Jan Steenbock say behind me, his voice coming right into my ear; “dat vas ze very tings!”The skipper heard him, too.“I guess ye’re worth yer salt, an’ knows what’s what!” he screamed back, with his face shoved into that of the second-mate, so that he should catch the words. “Stand by to cast off the clewlines agen, an’ slack out the weather sheet, if we wants it!”“Aye, aye!” roared Jan Steenbock, in answer, jumping to the belaying pins, to cast off the ropes as ordered. “I vas dere!”And so was I, too, following his example, ready to bear a hand when the necessity arose.“Send another hand or two hyar aft, to the wheel!” now yelled out the captain, on seeing that Tom Bullover had marshalled the watch on the deck below at the crossjack braces, ready to ease off on the weather side, and haul in gradually to leeward—so that the yard should not be jerked round suddenly, and risk carrying away the mizzen-top mast and all its hamper with the shock; and, finally, with a motion of his arm, which those at the wheel readily understood, he ordered the helm to be put down.It was a critical moment.The ship seemed a trifle stubborn, and would not obey the rudder, lying sluggishly in the trough of the sea for a while, but the tail end of a big wave then catching her on the quarter, she slewed round a bit; and, the crossjack yard being braced up sharply in the nick of time, she swung with her head to the wind, breasting the billows full butt the next instant, instead of drifting on at their will as before.Jan Steenbock at once let go the clewlines; and the sheets of the mizzen-topsail, which had already been close-reefed, being hauled home, and the piece of fearnought in the fore-rigging acting as well as a sail there would have done, the vessel was brought to lay-to at last, riding safely enough, considering the heavy sea that was running, and thus showing herself a staunch boat under very trying circumstances.“We’ve seen the worst of it now,” shouted the skipper, trying to rub his hands together, in token of his satisfaction, but having to leave off and grasp the poop rail to steady himself again from the ship pitching so much, as she met the big waves tumbling in on her bows, and rose to them buoyantly. “The gale is moderating so the watch ken pipe down, I guess, an’ all hands splice the mainbrace!”The men couldn’t hear him clearly, but the gesture which he made, of lifting his fist to his mouth, was sufficiently explanatory to all; and, when he presently dived down the companion and appeared at the cabin door under the break of the poop, with the steward behind him, holding a bottle of rum in one hand and a pannikin in the other, the men who had so gallantly exerted themselves were to be seen standing by, ready to receive the customary grog always served out on each occasions, fresh hands being sent up to relieve those at the wheel, so that these should not lose the advantage of the skipper’s generosity—which was somewhat unexpected from one of his temper!Later on, there was a glorious sunset, the black clouds all clearing away, and the heavens glowing with red and gold, as the orb of day sank below the horizon.This showed that we were going to have the chance of a finer spell than we had been having; and, the wind soon afterwards shifting to the westward, the foretop-mast-staysail was hoisted, followed shortly by the reefed-foresail and main-trysail, the skipper setting all the fore and aft sail he could to make up for the loss of our topsails, which, it may be remembered, were blown away.The ship was then brought round on the starboard tack, and put on her proper course again, for us to make another attempt to weather Cape Horn.By the time all this was done it was quite dark, and getting on close to ‘six bells’ in the second dog-watch, the sun sinking to rest early in those latitudes; so, as none of the men had got their tea yet, or thought of it, for that matter, although they’d had nothing since their dinner at midday, Hiram Bangs, calling me to follow him, started for the galley, to see about the coppers.We found, however, that the seas we had taken aboard had washed the fire out and made a regular wreck of the place, everything being turned topsy-turvy and mixed up into a sort of “hurrah’s nest.”Indeed, the only wonder was, that the galley itself had not been carried incontinently over the side, when the ship had canted over on her beam-ends; and, it would have been, no doubt, but for its being so securely lashed down to the ringbolts in the deck—a precaution which had saved it when everything else had been swept to leeward.At all events, there it was still, but in a pretty pickle; and Hiram and I had a hard job to light up the fire again under the coppers, all the wood and coal that had not been fetched away by the sea being, of course, wet and soddened by the water.“I guess,” said Hiram, after one or two failures to get the fuel to ignite, in spite of his pouring a lot of oil on it, so as to neutralise the effect of the damp, “I’ll burn thet durned old kiver of my chest ez got busted t’other day in the fo’c’s’le; fur it ain’t no airthly good, ez I sees, fur to kip pryin’ folk from priggin’ airy o’ my duds they fancies!”With this, Hiram started off for the fo’c’s’le, taking one of the ship’s lanterns with him, to see what he was about.He returned a minute or two after, looking quite scared.“Say, Cholly,” he exclaimed—addressing me as all the rest in the fo’c’s’le always styled me, following the mode, in which poor Sam Jedfoot had pronounced my name, instead of calling me “Charley,” properly, all darkeys having a happy facility for abbreviation, as I quite forgot to mention before—“Say, Cholly, guess I’ll kinder make yer haar riz! What d’yer reckon hez happened, b’y, hey?”“What, Hiram?” replied I, negligently, not paying any particular attention to his words, having started to work at once, chopping up the box cover, which he had thrown down on the deck at my feet. “What has happened, Hiram—whatever is the matter now?”“Thar’s matter enuff, I reckon, younker,” said he solemnly, in his deep, impressive tones. “Guess this air shep’s sperrit-haunted, thet’s all, my b’y, an’ the whole bilin’ of us coons aboard air all doomed men!”
A week later, Captain Snaggs, after drinking heavily during the evening, was seized with a fit of delirium similar to the one he had that night when he frightened me so terribly, for he rushed out of the cuddy, screaming that ‘thet durned nigger Sam’ was after him again.
He made my flesh creep; and I wouldn’t have gone afterwards into the stern of the ship at night, without a light, for a good deal, nor would any of the fo’c’s’le hands either, excepting, perhaps, Tom Bullover. I am certain Hiram Bangs would have been even more reluctant than myself to have ventured within the presumptive quarters of the ghost.
But, it was when we were off Cape Horn itself, though, that we encountered our greatest peril.
TheDenver Cityhad got down well below the latitude of the stormy headland that is to mariners like the ‘Hill Difficulty’ mentioned in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ carrying with her up to then the light, favourable breezes we had encountered after leaving the south-east trades which had previously wafted her so well on her way; when, all at once, without hardly a warning, the sea began to grow choppy and sullen, and the air thick and heavy. The sky, too, which had been for days and days nearly cloudless, became overcast all round, heavy masses of vapour piling themselves upwards from the horizon towards the zenith, to the southward and westward, gradually enveloping ship and ocean alike in a mantle of mist.
“Cape Horn weather,” observed Tom Bullover meaningly, as he squinted to windward; “we’ll have a taste of it presently!”
“Aye, bo,” said Hiram, from the door of the galley opposite, where the carpenter was holding on to the weather rigging; “I wonder what the skipper’s about, keepin’ all thet hamper aloft an’ a gale like thet a-comin’! I reckon he’d better look smart, or we’ll be caught nappin’, hey?”
Captain Snaggs, however, was also on the look-out; and, almost ere Hiram had finished his sentence, he shouted out for all hands to take in sail.
“’Way aloft thaar!” he cried; “lay out on the yards, men, an’ close reef the tops’ls. We’re going to hev a blow!”
And we did have a blow.
The men were just ready to haul in the weather earring of the mizzen-topsail, the last they were handing, the fore and main having been already made snug, when a storm of wind and hail and snow struck us which in a few minutes coated the deck and rigging and every portion of the upper works of the ship with thick ice. At the same time, the sea, rolling in enormous waves, broke over our counter, throwing sheets of water aboard, which seemed to freeze in the air before it fell.
I was standing on the poop, lending a hand at the mizzen halliards with the rest of the ‘idlers’—as those who are not regular sailors are called, although I was fast trying to become a real salt under the apt tuition of Hiram Bangs and the carpenter—when this fierce blast came.
Goodness gracious! It pinned us all down to the deck, as if we were skittle-pegs, making our faces smart again with the bitter downpour.
Next, followed a short lull, during which the reef tackle was hauled out and the halliards manned, the yard being swayed up again; and then, those aloft were able to come down and find a more comfortable shelter below than the rigging afforded.
But, now, occurred a curious circumstance.
As the hands who had been up on the mizzen-yard reefing the topsail stepped from the ratlines on to the deck of the poop before getting down to the waist below, one of the men, Jim Chowder, the same who had said that he had heard Sam Jedfoot’s voice in the ship since he had been lost overboard, whispered to me as he passed:—
“Listen!” he said.
That was all—
“Listen!”
The wind had suddenly died away for a moment, although the sea was like an ocean of mountains lumbering over each other; and as I ‘listened’, as Jim the sailor had told me, I heard a musical sound that I instantly recognised. It was that of the negro cook’s banjo, and Sam’s voice, too, most unmistakably, singing the same old air I knew so well:
“Oh, down in Alabama, ’fore I wer sot free.”
“Oh, down in Alabama, ’fore I wer sot free.”
The instrument seemed to give out a double twang at this point, as if all the strings were twitched at once, and I noticed that Captain Snaggs, who stood near me, turned as white as a sheet.
“Thunder!” he exclaimed, his eyes almost starting out of his head. “The Lord hev mercy on us! What air thet?”
As if in answer to his question, the same wild, ghostly melody was repeated, the sound seeming to hover in the air and yet to come from underneath the deck under our feet, the tune swelling in intensity as we all listened, so that every man on board must have heard it as well as the captain and myself.
And then, just as the last bar was struck with another resounding twang, a fiercer blast than the first caught the ship on her port quarter, and she heeled over to starboard until her deck was almost upright, while at the same time a terrible wave washed over us fore and aft, sweeping everything movable overboard.
I held on to the weather rigging like ‘grim Death,’ amidst a mass of seething foam, that flowed over the poop as if it were the open sea, with the roar of rushing waters around me and the whistling and shrieking of the wind as it tore through the shrouds and howled and wailed, sweeping onward away to leeward.
The spirit of the storm seemed to have broken loose; its black cloud-wings covering the heavens and fanning up the waves into fury, and then hurling them at theDenver City, which, poor, stricken thing, quailed before the onslaught of the cruel blast and remorseless rolling billows which followed each other in swift succession. These bore her down, and down, and down, until she was almost on her beam-ends, labouring heavily and groaning and creaking in every timber, and looking as if she were going to capsize every instant.
Not a man on board but thought his last hour had come.
The noise of the raging elements, however, in this mad commotion at once drowned the sound of the weird, mysterious music that had previously filled the air, affecting us all so strangely, especially Captain Snaggs, who seemed to be stricken by a spell as long as the sad strain echoed in our ears. But, the moment that we ceased to hear the phantom chaunt, the skipper recovered himself, his sailor instincts getting the better of his superstitious fears and sudden fright.
Fortunately, he had clutched hold of the poop rail as the fierce gust caught the vessel, or, otherwise, he would have been carried over the side, and be struggling for dear life half a mile, at least, astern, where the hen-coops and casks that had been washed overboard were now bobbing about, as they sank slowly out of sight on the crest of the wave that had cleared our decks.
A thorough seaman, in spite of his malevolent disposition and bullying manner, which, I suppose, he could not help, he knew at once what was best to be done under the circumstances—what, indeed, was the only thing that would save the ship, and which, if it could be done, had to be done quickly.
Still grasping the rail with one hand, he made a motion with the other to Jan Steenbock to put the helm up, for the second-mate, being on the poop, had immediately jumped to the wheel to the assistance of the man there, who had as much as he could do single-handed to keep down the spokes, the ship steering wildly in such a heavy, tumbling sea as was boiling around us. The captain the next moment clambered to the mizzen-topsail sheets and halliards, and let them go by the run, an example that was instantly followed by those on the deck below, Tom Bullover, who was in charge there, anticipating the skipper’s intention, although he could not catch the order he bawled out at the same time that he lifted his hand to warn the helmsman—the terrible din kept up by the waves and wind alike preventing a word from reaching any one standing a yard beyond Captain Snaggs, had he spoken through a speaking trumpet and been possessed of lungs of brass!
At first, it looked as if these measures had been adopted too late, the vessel lay so helplessly over on her side; but, in a little while, although it seemed a century to us, with our lives trembling in the balance, during the interval of a brief lull she slowly righted again. Then, paying off from the wind, she plunged onward, pitching and rolling and careering before the gale as it listed, yawing to port and starboard and staggering along; throwing tons of water over her fo’c’s’le as she dived and then taking in whole seas over her quarter as she rolled on, the following waves overtaking her—just like a high mettled steed that had thrown its rider and was rejoicing in its temporary freedom.
The canvas aloft was ballooning out, and the ropes slatting and cracking, with blocks banging against the spars, all making a regular pandemonium of noise, in conjunction with the hoarse shriek of the sou’-wester and the clashing of the billows when they broke, buffeting theDenver Cityas if they would smash in her topsides at every blow!
Mr Flinders, the first-mate, who had got his arm hurt shortly before the first blast struck us and had gone below to have it bound up by the steward, now crawled up the companion and approached the skipper, shouting something in his ear that, of course, I could not catch.
Captain Snaggs, however, apparently understood what he said, and approved of his suggestion, for he nodded in answer; and, thereupon, the first-mate, working his way down again through the cabin on to the deck below, the poop ladder being unsafe with his injured arm, spoke to the men, who were holding on as well as they could in a group by the mainmast bitts, and they began to bestir themselves.
Something was evidently going to be done to relieve the ship of all the loose top hamper flying about aloft, which threatened every moment to drag the masts out of her, for everything was swaying to and fro, and the topsails jerking terribly as they swelled out, the clews fouling the reef points as the wind threw them up, and all getting mixed in irretrievable confusion from the continual slatting of the canvas—for the whole of the running gear, having been let go, was now dangling about in all directions and knotting itself up in the standing rigging, round which the wind whipped the ropes, lashing them into a series of bowlines and half-hitches that it would have puzzled a fisherman to unbend.
When the storm had burst so suddenly on us, the ship had been braced up on the port tack, beating to windward as well as she could, to weather Cape Horn; but now, of course, we were running right before the gale, retracing at headlong speed every knot we had previously gained on our true course.
A few hours at this rate, as anyone with half an eye could see—even if everything stood the strain, which was very questionable—would place us on the chart pretty well where we were the day before; and, then, we should have all our work to do over again, without having a cable’s length to boast of to the good so far as our onward progress was concerned into the Pacific Ocean—most aptly named by the Spaniards, from the marked contrast its placid bosom offered, no doubt, to the rough sea these early voyagers met with on this side of the Land of Fire and of the Stormy Cape.
But still, although we were scudding with everything flying aloft, the leebraces had not yet been let go, all that I have taken so long to describe having occurred, so to speak, within the compass of a minute. These, up to now, had remained fast, just as when we were close-hauled on the port tack the moment before; for, it was as much as our few hands could do at first to cast off the sheets and halliards, without minding the braces, especially as the ropes had got jammed at the bitts with the loose gear washing about the deck. However—‘better late than never’—they were now quickly let go, and the braces on the weather side being manned, the yards were squared. It was a job of some difficulty, although accomplished at length, the ship showing herself all the better for the operation by running easier and not staggering and yawing so much as she raced along.
This was the first step.
The next was to stop the uproar aloft, and create a little order amidst the chaos that there reigned, which was a much harder and far more ticklish task, it being perilous in the extreme, and almost useless, for any of the hands to venture up the rigging; for the wind was blowing with such terrific force that they could not have possibly lain out on the yards, even if they succeeded in reaching the futtock shrouds.
It was no good shouting to the men.
As I said before, they could not hear a word spoken, had it been bawled in the loudest tone; so, Mr Flinders managed to explain his purpose by signs, or some other means that I could not at the moment guess, for Tom Bullover and the rest of the crew at once commenced hauling on the maintopsail sheets.
The effect of this was almost instantaneous.
Puckering up into a bag where, as I mentioned, the clew had fouled the reef points, the sail burst ‘bang’ out of the boltropes with a noise like thunder; and, then, carried forwards by the gale, it floated away ahead, fortunately just clearing the foretopmast, which might have been broken by the extra strain—the fluttering mass of canvas finally disappearing, like a white kite, in the distance in the water ahead of the ship.
Getting rid of this sail was even a greater relief to the over-driven vessel than squaring the yards had been, a consequence which the first-mate and carpenter had fully anticipated when the sheets were manned; so, a similar procedure was adopted with the fore-topsail, and a like happy result followed, the ship still driving on before the wind, very nearly at as great a rate as she had done before, although under bare poles almost.
But she now steered more easily, not taking in such a lot of water aboard when she rolled, while the spars ceased to sway about, and it looked as if we should save them, which had seemed impossible a short time previously, from the ugly way in which the shrouds tightened, and the after-stays sung, as if they were stretched to the last limit, showing that the slightest increase of the strain on them would snap them like pack-thread.
The mizzen-topsail was by this time our only rag left remaining, and the captain, evidently wishing to save this, so as to use it by-and-by when the gale lulled, to help in bringing the vessel round again to the wind, started off by himself hauling on the buntlines and clewlines, being quickly aided by Jan Steenbock and little me—we being all the ‘hands’ on the poop except the helmsman, whom the second-mate was able at last to leave for a minute or so unassisted, from the fact of the ship having become more tractable since she had lost all that lot of loose top hamper flapping about aloft.
The three of us took ‘a long pull and a strong pull, and a pull all together,’ according to the old sailor phrase, I tugging my best with the others; and, possibly the ounce or two of ‘beef’ I was able to put into the rope so far assisted as just to turn the scale. At all events, we ultimately succeeded in clewing up the topsail pretty fairly; although, of course, it could not be properly stowed until some of the hands were able to get up on the yard and snug it comfortably by passing the sea-gaskets.
So far, everything had been accomplished satisfactorily, and the ship was running free before the gale at the rate of ten or twelve knots, or more, without a stitch of canvas set beyond the bunt of the mizzen-topsail, which bagged and bulged out a bit still, in spite of our efforts to clew it up tight.
But, now, a new danger arose.
We were bowling along before the wind, it is true; but, the heavy rolling sea that had been worked up in a brief space of time was travelling at a much faster rate, and there was every fear that one of the monster billows which each moment curled up threateningly in our wake would hurl itself on board, thus pooping the vessel and rendering her altogether unmanageable, if not a hopeless wreck—such a mass of water as the big waves carried in their frowning crests being more than sufficient to swamp us instanter, and, mayhap, bury the poorDenver Citydeep in the depths below at one fell blow.
Captain Snaggs saw this sooner than any one; and, although all his previous orders had been carried out in dumb show, from our now having the wind with us to waft his voice forward, he once more managed to make himself heard.
“Ahoy!” he shouted, putting his hands on either side of his mouth, to carry the words well clear of his goatee beard, which was blown all over his face. “On deck, thaar!”
Tom Bullover raised his right fist, to show that he caught the hail; but it was impossible for him to answer back in the very teeth of the gale.
“We must try an’ lay her to,” continued the skipper. “Hev ye got a tarpaulin, or airy sort o’ rag ye ken stick in the fore-riggin’?” Tom nodded his head, understanding what the captain meant in a jiffey; and, with the help of two or three others, a piece of fearnought, that lay in the bottom of the long-boat, was quickly bundled out on the deck and dragged forwards, the men bending on a rope’s-end to a cringle worked in one corner of the stuff, so as to hoist it up by.
“Over to port! Over to port!” roared the skipper, seeing them making for the lee side of the ship. “I’m goin’ to try an’ bring her to on thet tack, d’ye haar?”
Another nod from the carpenter showed that he heard and appreciated the command, he and the group with him by great exertions tricing up the piece of fearnought into the fore-shrouds on the side indicated, spreading the cloth out and lashing it outside the rigging.
“Now, men,” cried Captain Snaggs, “some o’ ye aft hyar! Look sharp an’ man the cro’jack braces.”
“Dat vas goot,” I heard Mr Jan Steenbock say behind me, his voice coming right into my ear; “dat vas ze very tings!”
The skipper heard him, too.
“I guess ye’re worth yer salt, an’ knows what’s what!” he screamed back, with his face shoved into that of the second-mate, so that he should catch the words. “Stand by to cast off the clewlines agen, an’ slack out the weather sheet, if we wants it!”
“Aye, aye!” roared Jan Steenbock, in answer, jumping to the belaying pins, to cast off the ropes as ordered. “I vas dere!”
And so was I, too, following his example, ready to bear a hand when the necessity arose.
“Send another hand or two hyar aft, to the wheel!” now yelled out the captain, on seeing that Tom Bullover had marshalled the watch on the deck below at the crossjack braces, ready to ease off on the weather side, and haul in gradually to leeward—so that the yard should not be jerked round suddenly, and risk carrying away the mizzen-top mast and all its hamper with the shock; and, finally, with a motion of his arm, which those at the wheel readily understood, he ordered the helm to be put down.
It was a critical moment.
The ship seemed a trifle stubborn, and would not obey the rudder, lying sluggishly in the trough of the sea for a while, but the tail end of a big wave then catching her on the quarter, she slewed round a bit; and, the crossjack yard being braced up sharply in the nick of time, she swung with her head to the wind, breasting the billows full butt the next instant, instead of drifting on at their will as before.
Jan Steenbock at once let go the clewlines; and the sheets of the mizzen-topsail, which had already been close-reefed, being hauled home, and the piece of fearnought in the fore-rigging acting as well as a sail there would have done, the vessel was brought to lay-to at last, riding safely enough, considering the heavy sea that was running, and thus showing herself a staunch boat under very trying circumstances.
“We’ve seen the worst of it now,” shouted the skipper, trying to rub his hands together, in token of his satisfaction, but having to leave off and grasp the poop rail to steady himself again from the ship pitching so much, as she met the big waves tumbling in on her bows, and rose to them buoyantly. “The gale is moderating so the watch ken pipe down, I guess, an’ all hands splice the mainbrace!”
The men couldn’t hear him clearly, but the gesture which he made, of lifting his fist to his mouth, was sufficiently explanatory to all; and, when he presently dived down the companion and appeared at the cabin door under the break of the poop, with the steward behind him, holding a bottle of rum in one hand and a pannikin in the other, the men who had so gallantly exerted themselves were to be seen standing by, ready to receive the customary grog always served out on each occasions, fresh hands being sent up to relieve those at the wheel, so that these should not lose the advantage of the skipper’s generosity—which was somewhat unexpected from one of his temper!
Later on, there was a glorious sunset, the black clouds all clearing away, and the heavens glowing with red and gold, as the orb of day sank below the horizon.
This showed that we were going to have the chance of a finer spell than we had been having; and, the wind soon afterwards shifting to the westward, the foretop-mast-staysail was hoisted, followed shortly by the reefed-foresail and main-trysail, the skipper setting all the fore and aft sail he could to make up for the loss of our topsails, which, it may be remembered, were blown away.
The ship was then brought round on the starboard tack, and put on her proper course again, for us to make another attempt to weather Cape Horn.
By the time all this was done it was quite dark, and getting on close to ‘six bells’ in the second dog-watch, the sun sinking to rest early in those latitudes; so, as none of the men had got their tea yet, or thought of it, for that matter, although they’d had nothing since their dinner at midday, Hiram Bangs, calling me to follow him, started for the galley, to see about the coppers.
We found, however, that the seas we had taken aboard had washed the fire out and made a regular wreck of the place, everything being turned topsy-turvy and mixed up into a sort of “hurrah’s nest.”
Indeed, the only wonder was, that the galley itself had not been carried incontinently over the side, when the ship had canted over on her beam-ends; and, it would have been, no doubt, but for its being so securely lashed down to the ringbolts in the deck—a precaution which had saved it when everything else had been swept to leeward.
At all events, there it was still, but in a pretty pickle; and Hiram and I had a hard job to light up the fire again under the coppers, all the wood and coal that had not been fetched away by the sea being, of course, wet and soddened by the water.
“I guess,” said Hiram, after one or two failures to get the fuel to ignite, in spite of his pouring a lot of oil on it, so as to neutralise the effect of the damp, “I’ll burn thet durned old kiver of my chest ez got busted t’other day in the fo’c’s’le; fur it ain’t no airthly good, ez I sees, fur to kip pryin’ folk from priggin’ airy o’ my duds they fancies!”
With this, Hiram started off for the fo’c’s’le, taking one of the ship’s lanterns with him, to see what he was about.
He returned a minute or two after, looking quite scared.
“Say, Cholly,” he exclaimed—addressing me as all the rest in the fo’c’s’le always styled me, following the mode, in which poor Sam Jedfoot had pronounced my name, instead of calling me “Charley,” properly, all darkeys having a happy facility for abbreviation, as I quite forgot to mention before—“Say, Cholly, guess I’ll kinder make yer haar riz! What d’yer reckon hez happened, b’y, hey?”
“What, Hiram?” replied I, negligently, not paying any particular attention to his words, having started to work at once, chopping up the box cover, which he had thrown down on the deck at my feet. “What has happened, Hiram—whatever is the matter now?”
“Thar’s matter enuff, I reckon, younker,” said he solemnly, in his deep, impressive tones. “Guess this air shep’s sperrit-haunted, thet’s all, my b’y, an’ the whole bilin’ of us coons aboard air all doomed men!”
Chapter Eight.Mad Drunk!“Good gracious, Hiram!” I exclaimed, dropping the wood and rising to my feet, greatly alarmed at his mysterious manner of speaking, as well as by the change in his voice and demeanour. “What d’you mean by talking like that?”Instead of answering my question directly, however, he asked another.“D’yer rec’leck, Cholly, thet air banjo belongin’ to Sam Jedfoot ez I bought when the poor darkey’s traps wer’ sold at auction in the fo’c’s’le the day arter he wer lost overboard?”“Ye–es,” I stammered breathlessly, as the remembrance came back to me all at once of the strange chaunt we had heard in the air around, just before the storm had burst over us in all its fury; our subsequent bustling about having banished its recollection for the moment, “Wha—wha—what about Sam’s banjo, Hiram?”“It’s clean gone, skedaddled right away, b’y, that’s all!” he replied, in the same impressive way in which he had first spoken. “When I bought the durned thin’, I stowed it atop o’ my chest thaar, in the fo’c’s’le; an’ thaar it wer ez right ez a five-cent piece up to this very mornin’, ez I wer overhaulin’ my duds, to see if I could rig up another pair o’ pants, an’ seed it. But, b’y, it ain’t thaar now, I reckon!”“Perhaps some one took it out, and forgot to put it back when the gale burst over us,” I suggested, more to reassure myself than because I believed it, for I felt horribly frightened at the thoughts that rapidly surged up in me. “You—you remember, Hiram, we heard the sound of some one playing it just before?”“D’yer think, b’y, airy of the hands w’u’d hev ben foolin’ round with thet blessid banjo, an’ the ship a’most took aback an’ on her beam-ends?” he retorted indignantly. “No, Cholly, thet wer no mortal fingers ez we heerd a-playin’ thet thaar banjo!”“And you—you—think—?”“It wer Sam Jedfoot’s ghost; nary a doubt on it,” he said solemnly, finishing my uncompleted sentence; “thet air, if sperrits walk agen on the airth an’ sea, arter the folk’s ownin’ them is dead an’ drownded!”I shivered at his words; while, as if to further endorse Hiram’s opinion, the steward, Morris Jones, just then came forward from the cabin to look after the captain’s dinner, although he did not seem in a hurry about it, as usual—a fortunate circumstance, as the fire in the galley under Hiram’s expert manipulation was only now at last beginning to burn up.“There’s summut wrong ’bout this barquey,” observed the Welshman, opening the conversation in a wonderfully civil way for him, and addressing Hiram, who did not like the man, hardly ever exchanging a word with him if he could help it. “I larfed at that b’y Cholly for saying he seed that nigger cook agen in the cabin arter he went overboard, time the skipper had that row with the fool and shot him; but sperrit or wot it was, I believe the b’y’s right, for I’ve seed it, too!”“Jehosophat!” exclaimed Hiram; “this air gettin’ darned streenge an’ cur’ous. Whar did ye see the sperrit, mister?”“Not a minute or so agone,” replied the steward, whose face I could see, by the light of the ship’s lantern in the galley, as well as from the gleams of the now brightly burning fire, looked awe-stricken, as if he had actually seen what he attested. “It was a’most dark, and I was coming out of my pantry when I seed it. Aye, I did, all black, and shiny, and wet, as if he were jist come out o’ the water. I swear it were the nigger cook, or I’m a Dutchman!”The two men looked fixedly at each other, without uttering another word for a minute or more, I staring at them both in dread expectancy of what they would next say, fancying each instant something more wonderful still would happen. At last, Hiram broke the silence, which had become well-nigh unbearable from a sort of nervous tension, that made me feel creepy and shivery all over.“I tolled yer jest now, Cholly,” said the Yankee sailor in his ‘Down-East’ drawl, which became all the more emphasised from his slow and solemn mode o’ speaking below his breath—“thet this air shep wer doomed, an’ I sez it now agen, since the stooard hyar hez seed the same ez we all hev seed afore. Thaar’s no denying b’ys, ez how poor Sam’s ghostess walks abroad this hyar ship, an’ thet means sunthin’, or it don’t! I specs thet air darkey’s sperrit ain’t comf’able like, an’ ye ken bet y’r bottom dollar he won’t rest quiet till he feels slick; fur ye sees ez how the poor cuss didn’t come by his death rightful like, in lawful fashion.”“Aye, and I’ve heard tell that folks as been murdered ’ll haunt the place where they’ve been put away onlawfully,” chimed in Morris Jones. “Not as I’ve ever believed in sperrits and ghostesses till now; but, seein’ is believin’, an’ I can’t go agen my own eyesight. I’d take my davy ’twere Sam Jedfoot I seed jest now; and though I’m no coward, mates, I don’t mind saying I’m mortal feared o’ going nigh the cuddy agen!”“Never ye fear, old hoss,” replied Hiram encouragingly; albeit, at any other time he would have laughed at the steward’s declaration that he was ‘no coward,’ when he was well known to be the most arrant one in the ship. “It ain’t ye thet the ghost air arter, ye bet. It’s the skipper. Ye remember ez how he promised us all he’d call in at the nearest port an’ hev all the circumferences overhauled, ez he sed?”“Aye,” responded the Welshman, “that he did. He took his solemn davy, afore the second-mate, an’ Tom Bullover, an’ the lot o’ you, on the maindeck, that time he shot the cook. I heard him from under the break o’ the poop, where I were standin’.”“Yes, I seed ye keepin’ well to looard!” said Hiram drily. “But, ez I wer a sayin’, the skipper agrees to call in at the fust port we fetches, an’ we’ve b’en close in to Bahia, when we near ran ashore, an’ Rio an’ Buenos Ayres; an’ he’s never put into no port yet!”“No, nor doesn’t mean to, neither,” chorussed the steward. “I hear him, t’other day, a jokin’ with that brute of a fust-mate about it; an’ both was a sniggerin’: an’ he says as he’ll see you all to old Nick afore he stops anywhere afore he gets to ’Frisco!”“I reckon, then, sunthin’ bad ’ll come of it,” said Hiram, shaking his head gravely, “Thet nigger’s sperrit don’t haunt this ship fur nothin’, an’ we ain’t see the wuss yet, ye bet! Soon arter Cholly hyar seed Sam’s ghost, ye remembers, we hed thet fire aboard in the forepeak?”“Aye,” agreed Morris Jones; “an’ the next time—”“Wer the banjo we heered a-playin’, afore we were caught in thet buster of a gale, an’ the ship wer a’most capsized on her beam-ends,” continued the American, full of his theme. “An’ now, I guess—”“What?” cried I eagerly, anxiously drinking in every word, deeply impressed with the conversation. “What do you think will happen?”“’Ructions, thet’s all, b’y,” replied Hiram, hitching up the waistband of his overalls coolly, in the most matter-of-fact way, as if he were only mentioning an ordinary circumstances. “Thet is, if the skipper don’t touch at Callao or Valparaiso. Fur my part, sonny, I guess this hyar ship air doomed, ez I sed afore, an’ I don’t spec, for one, as ever she’ll reach ’Frisco this v’yage; an’ so thinks old Chips, Tom Bullover, thet is, too.”“Hullo!” exclaimed the carpenter at that moment, poking his head within the galley door, and making me and the Welshman jump with fright, thinking he was Sam’s ghost again. “Who’s hailing me? What’s the row?—anything up?”“No, bo,” said Hiram. “I wer only tellin’ the stooard hyar an’ Cholly ez how yo agreed with me ez this wer a durned onlocky craft, an’ bound to meet with misfortun’ arter all thet’s come an’ gone aboord.”“That’s so,” acquiesced Tom; though he did not look much alarmed at the prospect. “The ‘old man,’ though, seems turnin’ round into a better sort—treating us all to grog and sich like.”“He’d kinder ought to,” growled the other, as he stirred the tea in the coppers, which were just boiling by now; and he then proceeded to tell Tom about the mysterious disappearance of the banjo, and the fact of Morris Jones having seen the apparition again in the cabin aft, winding up with the query—“An’ what d’ye think o’ thet now, Chips?”“Think?” echoed Tom Bullover, laughing; “why, that you’re kicking up a dust about nothing, my hearty! Missed the banjo out of y’r chest, eh—where are y’r eyes, bo? There it are, hanging right over y’r heads in the galley, on the same cleat where poor Sam Jedfoot left it afore he met his fate! Why, where are y’r peepers—old stick in the mud, hey?”As he said this, Tom Bullover reached up his hand overhead by the door of the galley, above the spot where he was standing, and as our eyes followed his motions we all could see now Sam’s banjo hanging on the cleat where it always used to be when the negro cook occupied the caboose, the instrument swinging to and fro as Tom touched it.“Wa-all, I’m jiggered!” cried Hiram, taking up the lantern that he had placed on the deck when he returned from the fo’c’s’le and flashing it on the suspended object, to make assurance doubly sure. “Thaar it air, sure enuff; an’ all I ken say is, I’m jiggered! It jest licks creation, thet it dew!”“Lor’ bless you, mate! you could ha’ seed it afore if you’d only used your eyes,” replied Tom to this exordium, laughing again; “but, let’s stow all such flummery now about ghostesses an’ sich like, for it’s all moonshine when you looks into the matter; an’ you, an’ Charley, an’ the stooard here, have been all busy rigging up ‘duppies,’ as poor Sam used to call ’em, out o’ your heads, when we poor beggars forrud are dyin’ for our tea. Ain’t it ready yet?”“Aye, bo, in a brace o’ shakes,” said Hiram, rousing himself and polling up the fire. “I dessay I’m a doggoned fool to be skeart like thet, but I’d hev taken my davy I put the durned thing in my chest a month ago—I would so; an’ then the stooard comed in with his yarn on top o’ what Cholly sed o’ seein’ Sam’s ghost t’other day, an’—an’ I’m a durned fool; thet’s all I sez!”“You’re none the worse for that, bo,” observed Tom, with a grin at the American’s rather shamefaced apology foe his superstitious fears; and Hiram presently joined in the laugh against himself, as he busied himself in stirring the coppers and tasting the tea, to see whether it was all right yet. I, also, began to feel more comfortable in my mind; while a little colour crept into Morris Jones’ pale face, which had become as white as a sheet before Tom’s advent on the scene, the steward looking as if he were going to faint from fright.It is wonderful what an effect the courage of one man has in restoring the confidence of others under such circumstances!Bustling about the galley, ladling out the contents of the coppers as the men came up one by one with their pannikins for their tea, I quickly forgot my scare of a minute or so agone. So, too, apparently, did the steward, who commenced preparing the captain’s dinner, as soon as the fire had burnt up and he could get space enough to use his frying-pan; while, as for Hiram, he was singing away in fine style at his work, dishing up some lobscouse for the men’s supper, in friendly rivalry of Morris Jones, whom he could ‘give points to’ and easily beat in the cooking line, none of us troubling ourselves any longer with any recollection of poor Sam Jedfoot or his ghost.The gale continued to ease down, and the heavy, rolling sea gradually subsided as night sped on; but, the wind veering round in the middle watch more to the northwards of west, we had to come about on the port tack, steering west-nor’-west, more in towards the Cape. We had plenty of sea room to do this, though, from the good offing we had previously made, being at least five or six degrees well to the southward of the stormy headland at our last reckoning, before the gale came on.All next day the men were busy getting up a couple of old topsails out of the forepeak and patching them up to take the place of those that had been blown away; and these when got up were close-reefed beforehand, prior to being set, as the wind was freshening again and the weather looked squally.At the beginning of the second dog-watch the same afternoon, just when we had got everything snug aloft, it came on to blow again, although not quite so fiercely as the previous evening; and it was a case of clew up and furl with all the lighter canvas, the ship being kept under close-reefed topsails and storm staysails, heading out again to sea on the starboard tack.Thus it continued all that night, squalls of rain and hail, with snow and sleet at intervals for variety sake, sweeping over us, and the ship having her decks washed frequently fore and aft by the heavy Southern Ocean rollers. The next morning, though, it lightened again, and we had a brief spell of fine weather until noon, when we had another buster of it. This occurred just as Captain Snaggs was getting ready to take the sun, and sent the first-mate down in the cabin to look at the chronometer, and ‘stand by’ in order to note the time when he sung out ‘Stop!’ so as to calculate our proper longitude.The skipper could not get his observation of the sun, however, for the sky, which a moment before had been bright and clear, clouded over again in an instant; and the next minute we were all on board battling again with another specimen of “Cape Horn weather,” too busy to think even where we might be or what latitude or longitude we had fetched. We might, indeed, have been anywhere, for the heavens were black as night, though it was midday, and sky and sea met each other in one vast turmoil, so that it was impossible to see half a cable’s length off the ship!So it went on for four days, the gale blowing for short periods in angry gusts and then easing down for the space of a watch perhaps, the squalls alternating with spells of fine weather; until, on the fifth morning, we sailed into a comparatively calm sea, running free, with a full sheet on the starboard tack, before a bright, cheery nor’-westerly breeze.At noon, when the skipper was able at last to take the sun for the first time for six days, he found, on working out our reckoning, that we were in latitude 58 degrees 5 minutes South, and longitude 82 degrees 10 minutes West. In other words, we were considerably to the westwards of the Horn, and fairly on the bosom of the placid Pacific, as indeed its smooth waters already testified.“Hooray, b’ys; we’ve doubled the durned Cape at last, I guess!” shouted out Captain Snaggs from the break of the poop, whither he had rushed up from below as soon as he had finished his calculation on the log slate, dancing about the deck with excitement; and, then he banged his fist down on the brass rail with a thump that almost doubled it in two, while his wiry billy-goat beard bristled out and wagged to and fro. “Brace up yer yards sharp, an’ keep them bowlin’s taut! Lay her ez near due north ez she’ll fetch, an’ we’ll fix her on a bee-line fur ’Frisco. An’, say, Flinders!”“Aye, aye, sir!”“Send up y’r to’gallants an’ r’yals, ez soon ez ye ken; an’ let her rip!”“Aye, aye, sir!”“An’, main deck, below thaar!”“Aye, aye, sir!” shouted back Jan Steenbock, who was on duty here, and was already seeing about getting abaft the upper spars for spreading more sail, having overheard his order to the first-mate—“I vas here, sir!”“Call all hands to liquor up, sirree. It ain’t every day, I reckon, we gits round the Horn!”A wild cheer burst from the men, who had clustered in the waist in response to this summons; and the good news of getting round the Cape and having a double allowance of grog proving too much for the majority, the rest of the day was spent in a sort of a grand jollification, the skipper and first-mate ‘carrying on’ in the cabin, while the crew made themselves merry in the fo’c’s’le, whither an extra bottle or two of rum had been smuggled, having been got out of the steward by the expeditive of a little ‘palm oil’ and wheedling in about equal proportions.I think I may say, without exaggeration, that, with the exception of Jan Steenbock, the second-mate, who showed himself a regular steady fellow all through the voyage, Tom Bullover, and lastly, though by no means least, myself, there was not a single sober man on board the ship that evening, all being more or less under the influence of liquor, from the steward Morris Jones—who, mean Welshman that he was, seemed never loth to drink at any one else’s expense—up to Captain Snaggs, who, from being ‘jolly’ at ‘eight bells,’ became still more excited from renewed applications of rum by midnight; until, at length, early in the middle watch, he rushed out on deck from the cuddy absolutely mad drunk.He was in a state of wild delirium, and his revolver, ready cocked, was in his hand.“Snakes an’ alligators!” he yelled out, levelling the weapon at the mainmast, which he mistook for a figure in the half-light of morning, which was just then beginning to break. “I’ve got ye at last, ye durned nigger. Take thet, an’ thet!”Quick as lightning one report followed another, the bullets coming whistling by the galley where I was standing.Jan Steenbock, who was on the poop, hearing the crack of a revolver, called out something; whereupon Captain Snaggs turned round and aimed his next shot at him, although, fortunately, it missed the second-mate, on account of Jan dodging behind the companion hatchway just in the nick of time.The captain then made a bound at the poop ladder, and rushed up the steps swearing awfully; and, first firing at the man at the wheel, whose arm the bullet penetrated, as soon as he gained the poop, he dived down the companion in pursuit of Jan Steenbock, who had disappeared below the booby hatch.For the next five minutes or more, the ship was in a state of the wildest confusion, the skipper chasing everyone he could see, and all trying to get out of his way, as he dashed after them in his frenzy, rushing, in a sort of desperate game of ‘catch who catch can,’ from the cabin out on to the maindeck, and then up the poop ladder and down the companion into the cuddy again, the second-mate, the steward, and first-mate alike being assailed in turn, and each flying for life before the frantic madman. At last, just as the captain emerged from the cabin for the third time, in hot haste after the steward, the other two having succeeded in concealing themselves, Morris Jones stumbled against a coil of rope by the mainmast bitts, and, his toe at the same time catching in a ring bolt, he sprawled his length on the deck.“Good Lord!” cried the unfortunate steward, panting out the words with his failing breath. “I’m a dead man! I’m a dead man!”“By thunder, ye air, ye durned black nigger! Ye air, ez sure ez snakes!” screamed the skipper, in his delirious rage, mistaking the Welshman, as he had the others as well, for poor Sam, the recollection of whom seemed strangely to haunt him the moment the rum got possession of his senses. “I’ve swan I’d shoot ye; so, hyar goes, me joker; y’r last hour hez come, ye bet!”With these words he pointed his revolver down at Morris Jones, as he lay rolling on the deck at his feet, and fired.
“Good gracious, Hiram!” I exclaimed, dropping the wood and rising to my feet, greatly alarmed at his mysterious manner of speaking, as well as by the change in his voice and demeanour. “What d’you mean by talking like that?”
Instead of answering my question directly, however, he asked another.
“D’yer rec’leck, Cholly, thet air banjo belongin’ to Sam Jedfoot ez I bought when the poor darkey’s traps wer’ sold at auction in the fo’c’s’le the day arter he wer lost overboard?”
“Ye–es,” I stammered breathlessly, as the remembrance came back to me all at once of the strange chaunt we had heard in the air around, just before the storm had burst over us in all its fury; our subsequent bustling about having banished its recollection for the moment, “Wha—wha—what about Sam’s banjo, Hiram?”
“It’s clean gone, skedaddled right away, b’y, that’s all!” he replied, in the same impressive way in which he had first spoken. “When I bought the durned thin’, I stowed it atop o’ my chest thaar, in the fo’c’s’le; an’ thaar it wer ez right ez a five-cent piece up to this very mornin’, ez I wer overhaulin’ my duds, to see if I could rig up another pair o’ pants, an’ seed it. But, b’y, it ain’t thaar now, I reckon!”
“Perhaps some one took it out, and forgot to put it back when the gale burst over us,” I suggested, more to reassure myself than because I believed it, for I felt horribly frightened at the thoughts that rapidly surged up in me. “You—you remember, Hiram, we heard the sound of some one playing it just before?”
“D’yer think, b’y, airy of the hands w’u’d hev ben foolin’ round with thet blessid banjo, an’ the ship a’most took aback an’ on her beam-ends?” he retorted indignantly. “No, Cholly, thet wer no mortal fingers ez we heerd a-playin’ thet thaar banjo!”
“And you—you—think—?”
“It wer Sam Jedfoot’s ghost; nary a doubt on it,” he said solemnly, finishing my uncompleted sentence; “thet air, if sperrits walk agen on the airth an’ sea, arter the folk’s ownin’ them is dead an’ drownded!”
I shivered at his words; while, as if to further endorse Hiram’s opinion, the steward, Morris Jones, just then came forward from the cabin to look after the captain’s dinner, although he did not seem in a hurry about it, as usual—a fortunate circumstance, as the fire in the galley under Hiram’s expert manipulation was only now at last beginning to burn up.
“There’s summut wrong ’bout this barquey,” observed the Welshman, opening the conversation in a wonderfully civil way for him, and addressing Hiram, who did not like the man, hardly ever exchanging a word with him if he could help it. “I larfed at that b’y Cholly for saying he seed that nigger cook agen in the cabin arter he went overboard, time the skipper had that row with the fool and shot him; but sperrit or wot it was, I believe the b’y’s right, for I’ve seed it, too!”
“Jehosophat!” exclaimed Hiram; “this air gettin’ darned streenge an’ cur’ous. Whar did ye see the sperrit, mister?”
“Not a minute or so agone,” replied the steward, whose face I could see, by the light of the ship’s lantern in the galley, as well as from the gleams of the now brightly burning fire, looked awe-stricken, as if he had actually seen what he attested. “It was a’most dark, and I was coming out of my pantry when I seed it. Aye, I did, all black, and shiny, and wet, as if he were jist come out o’ the water. I swear it were the nigger cook, or I’m a Dutchman!”
The two men looked fixedly at each other, without uttering another word for a minute or more, I staring at them both in dread expectancy of what they would next say, fancying each instant something more wonderful still would happen. At last, Hiram broke the silence, which had become well-nigh unbearable from a sort of nervous tension, that made me feel creepy and shivery all over.
“I tolled yer jest now, Cholly,” said the Yankee sailor in his ‘Down-East’ drawl, which became all the more emphasised from his slow and solemn mode o’ speaking below his breath—“thet this air shep wer doomed, an’ I sez it now agen, since the stooard hyar hez seed the same ez we all hev seed afore. Thaar’s no denying b’ys, ez how poor Sam’s ghostess walks abroad this hyar ship, an’ thet means sunthin’, or it don’t! I specs thet air darkey’s sperrit ain’t comf’able like, an’ ye ken bet y’r bottom dollar he won’t rest quiet till he feels slick; fur ye sees ez how the poor cuss didn’t come by his death rightful like, in lawful fashion.”
“Aye, and I’ve heard tell that folks as been murdered ’ll haunt the place where they’ve been put away onlawfully,” chimed in Morris Jones. “Not as I’ve ever believed in sperrits and ghostesses till now; but, seein’ is believin’, an’ I can’t go agen my own eyesight. I’d take my davy ’twere Sam Jedfoot I seed jest now; and though I’m no coward, mates, I don’t mind saying I’m mortal feared o’ going nigh the cuddy agen!”
“Never ye fear, old hoss,” replied Hiram encouragingly; albeit, at any other time he would have laughed at the steward’s declaration that he was ‘no coward,’ when he was well known to be the most arrant one in the ship. “It ain’t ye thet the ghost air arter, ye bet. It’s the skipper. Ye remember ez how he promised us all he’d call in at the nearest port an’ hev all the circumferences overhauled, ez he sed?”
“Aye,” responded the Welshman, “that he did. He took his solemn davy, afore the second-mate, an’ Tom Bullover, an’ the lot o’ you, on the maindeck, that time he shot the cook. I heard him from under the break o’ the poop, where I were standin’.”
“Yes, I seed ye keepin’ well to looard!” said Hiram drily. “But, ez I wer a sayin’, the skipper agrees to call in at the fust port we fetches, an’ we’ve b’en close in to Bahia, when we near ran ashore, an’ Rio an’ Buenos Ayres; an’ he’s never put into no port yet!”
“No, nor doesn’t mean to, neither,” chorussed the steward. “I hear him, t’other day, a jokin’ with that brute of a fust-mate about it; an’ both was a sniggerin’: an’ he says as he’ll see you all to old Nick afore he stops anywhere afore he gets to ’Frisco!”
“I reckon, then, sunthin’ bad ’ll come of it,” said Hiram, shaking his head gravely, “Thet nigger’s sperrit don’t haunt this ship fur nothin’, an’ we ain’t see the wuss yet, ye bet! Soon arter Cholly hyar seed Sam’s ghost, ye remembers, we hed thet fire aboard in the forepeak?”
“Aye,” agreed Morris Jones; “an’ the next time—”
“Wer the banjo we heered a-playin’, afore we were caught in thet buster of a gale, an’ the ship wer a’most capsized on her beam-ends,” continued the American, full of his theme. “An’ now, I guess—”
“What?” cried I eagerly, anxiously drinking in every word, deeply impressed with the conversation. “What do you think will happen?”
“’Ructions, thet’s all, b’y,” replied Hiram, hitching up the waistband of his overalls coolly, in the most matter-of-fact way, as if he were only mentioning an ordinary circumstances. “Thet is, if the skipper don’t touch at Callao or Valparaiso. Fur my part, sonny, I guess this hyar ship air doomed, ez I sed afore, an’ I don’t spec, for one, as ever she’ll reach ’Frisco this v’yage; an’ so thinks old Chips, Tom Bullover, thet is, too.”
“Hullo!” exclaimed the carpenter at that moment, poking his head within the galley door, and making me and the Welshman jump with fright, thinking he was Sam’s ghost again. “Who’s hailing me? What’s the row?—anything up?”
“No, bo,” said Hiram. “I wer only tellin’ the stooard hyar an’ Cholly ez how yo agreed with me ez this wer a durned onlocky craft, an’ bound to meet with misfortun’ arter all thet’s come an’ gone aboord.”
“That’s so,” acquiesced Tom; though he did not look much alarmed at the prospect. “The ‘old man,’ though, seems turnin’ round into a better sort—treating us all to grog and sich like.”
“He’d kinder ought to,” growled the other, as he stirred the tea in the coppers, which were just boiling by now; and he then proceeded to tell Tom about the mysterious disappearance of the banjo, and the fact of Morris Jones having seen the apparition again in the cabin aft, winding up with the query—“An’ what d’ye think o’ thet now, Chips?”
“Think?” echoed Tom Bullover, laughing; “why, that you’re kicking up a dust about nothing, my hearty! Missed the banjo out of y’r chest, eh—where are y’r eyes, bo? There it are, hanging right over y’r heads in the galley, on the same cleat where poor Sam Jedfoot left it afore he met his fate! Why, where are y’r peepers—old stick in the mud, hey?”
As he said this, Tom Bullover reached up his hand overhead by the door of the galley, above the spot where he was standing, and as our eyes followed his motions we all could see now Sam’s banjo hanging on the cleat where it always used to be when the negro cook occupied the caboose, the instrument swinging to and fro as Tom touched it.
“Wa-all, I’m jiggered!” cried Hiram, taking up the lantern that he had placed on the deck when he returned from the fo’c’s’le and flashing it on the suspended object, to make assurance doubly sure. “Thaar it air, sure enuff; an’ all I ken say is, I’m jiggered! It jest licks creation, thet it dew!”
“Lor’ bless you, mate! you could ha’ seed it afore if you’d only used your eyes,” replied Tom to this exordium, laughing again; “but, let’s stow all such flummery now about ghostesses an’ sich like, for it’s all moonshine when you looks into the matter; an’ you, an’ Charley, an’ the stooard here, have been all busy rigging up ‘duppies,’ as poor Sam used to call ’em, out o’ your heads, when we poor beggars forrud are dyin’ for our tea. Ain’t it ready yet?”
“Aye, bo, in a brace o’ shakes,” said Hiram, rousing himself and polling up the fire. “I dessay I’m a doggoned fool to be skeart like thet, but I’d hev taken my davy I put the durned thing in my chest a month ago—I would so; an’ then the stooard comed in with his yarn on top o’ what Cholly sed o’ seein’ Sam’s ghost t’other day, an’—an’ I’m a durned fool; thet’s all I sez!”
“You’re none the worse for that, bo,” observed Tom, with a grin at the American’s rather shamefaced apology foe his superstitious fears; and Hiram presently joined in the laugh against himself, as he busied himself in stirring the coppers and tasting the tea, to see whether it was all right yet. I, also, began to feel more comfortable in my mind; while a little colour crept into Morris Jones’ pale face, which had become as white as a sheet before Tom’s advent on the scene, the steward looking as if he were going to faint from fright.
It is wonderful what an effect the courage of one man has in restoring the confidence of others under such circumstances!
Bustling about the galley, ladling out the contents of the coppers as the men came up one by one with their pannikins for their tea, I quickly forgot my scare of a minute or so agone. So, too, apparently, did the steward, who commenced preparing the captain’s dinner, as soon as the fire had burnt up and he could get space enough to use his frying-pan; while, as for Hiram, he was singing away in fine style at his work, dishing up some lobscouse for the men’s supper, in friendly rivalry of Morris Jones, whom he could ‘give points to’ and easily beat in the cooking line, none of us troubling ourselves any longer with any recollection of poor Sam Jedfoot or his ghost.
The gale continued to ease down, and the heavy, rolling sea gradually subsided as night sped on; but, the wind veering round in the middle watch more to the northwards of west, we had to come about on the port tack, steering west-nor’-west, more in towards the Cape. We had plenty of sea room to do this, though, from the good offing we had previously made, being at least five or six degrees well to the southward of the stormy headland at our last reckoning, before the gale came on.
All next day the men were busy getting up a couple of old topsails out of the forepeak and patching them up to take the place of those that had been blown away; and these when got up were close-reefed beforehand, prior to being set, as the wind was freshening again and the weather looked squally.
At the beginning of the second dog-watch the same afternoon, just when we had got everything snug aloft, it came on to blow again, although not quite so fiercely as the previous evening; and it was a case of clew up and furl with all the lighter canvas, the ship being kept under close-reefed topsails and storm staysails, heading out again to sea on the starboard tack.
Thus it continued all that night, squalls of rain and hail, with snow and sleet at intervals for variety sake, sweeping over us, and the ship having her decks washed frequently fore and aft by the heavy Southern Ocean rollers. The next morning, though, it lightened again, and we had a brief spell of fine weather until noon, when we had another buster of it. This occurred just as Captain Snaggs was getting ready to take the sun, and sent the first-mate down in the cabin to look at the chronometer, and ‘stand by’ in order to note the time when he sung out ‘Stop!’ so as to calculate our proper longitude.
The skipper could not get his observation of the sun, however, for the sky, which a moment before had been bright and clear, clouded over again in an instant; and the next minute we were all on board battling again with another specimen of “Cape Horn weather,” too busy to think even where we might be or what latitude or longitude we had fetched. We might, indeed, have been anywhere, for the heavens were black as night, though it was midday, and sky and sea met each other in one vast turmoil, so that it was impossible to see half a cable’s length off the ship!
So it went on for four days, the gale blowing for short periods in angry gusts and then easing down for the space of a watch perhaps, the squalls alternating with spells of fine weather; until, on the fifth morning, we sailed into a comparatively calm sea, running free, with a full sheet on the starboard tack, before a bright, cheery nor’-westerly breeze.
At noon, when the skipper was able at last to take the sun for the first time for six days, he found, on working out our reckoning, that we were in latitude 58 degrees 5 minutes South, and longitude 82 degrees 10 minutes West. In other words, we were considerably to the westwards of the Horn, and fairly on the bosom of the placid Pacific, as indeed its smooth waters already testified.
“Hooray, b’ys; we’ve doubled the durned Cape at last, I guess!” shouted out Captain Snaggs from the break of the poop, whither he had rushed up from below as soon as he had finished his calculation on the log slate, dancing about the deck with excitement; and, then he banged his fist down on the brass rail with a thump that almost doubled it in two, while his wiry billy-goat beard bristled out and wagged to and fro. “Brace up yer yards sharp, an’ keep them bowlin’s taut! Lay her ez near due north ez she’ll fetch, an’ we’ll fix her on a bee-line fur ’Frisco. An’, say, Flinders!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“Send up y’r to’gallants an’ r’yals, ez soon ez ye ken; an’ let her rip!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
“An’, main deck, below thaar!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” shouted back Jan Steenbock, who was on duty here, and was already seeing about getting abaft the upper spars for spreading more sail, having overheard his order to the first-mate—“I vas here, sir!”
“Call all hands to liquor up, sirree. It ain’t every day, I reckon, we gits round the Horn!”
A wild cheer burst from the men, who had clustered in the waist in response to this summons; and the good news of getting round the Cape and having a double allowance of grog proving too much for the majority, the rest of the day was spent in a sort of a grand jollification, the skipper and first-mate ‘carrying on’ in the cabin, while the crew made themselves merry in the fo’c’s’le, whither an extra bottle or two of rum had been smuggled, having been got out of the steward by the expeditive of a little ‘palm oil’ and wheedling in about equal proportions.
I think I may say, without exaggeration, that, with the exception of Jan Steenbock, the second-mate, who showed himself a regular steady fellow all through the voyage, Tom Bullover, and lastly, though by no means least, myself, there was not a single sober man on board the ship that evening, all being more or less under the influence of liquor, from the steward Morris Jones—who, mean Welshman that he was, seemed never loth to drink at any one else’s expense—up to Captain Snaggs, who, from being ‘jolly’ at ‘eight bells,’ became still more excited from renewed applications of rum by midnight; until, at length, early in the middle watch, he rushed out on deck from the cuddy absolutely mad drunk.
He was in a state of wild delirium, and his revolver, ready cocked, was in his hand.
“Snakes an’ alligators!” he yelled out, levelling the weapon at the mainmast, which he mistook for a figure in the half-light of morning, which was just then beginning to break. “I’ve got ye at last, ye durned nigger. Take thet, an’ thet!”
Quick as lightning one report followed another, the bullets coming whistling by the galley where I was standing.
Jan Steenbock, who was on the poop, hearing the crack of a revolver, called out something; whereupon Captain Snaggs turned round and aimed his next shot at him, although, fortunately, it missed the second-mate, on account of Jan dodging behind the companion hatchway just in the nick of time.
The captain then made a bound at the poop ladder, and rushed up the steps swearing awfully; and, first firing at the man at the wheel, whose arm the bullet penetrated, as soon as he gained the poop, he dived down the companion in pursuit of Jan Steenbock, who had disappeared below the booby hatch.
For the next five minutes or more, the ship was in a state of the wildest confusion, the skipper chasing everyone he could see, and all trying to get out of his way, as he dashed after them in his frenzy, rushing, in a sort of desperate game of ‘catch who catch can,’ from the cabin out on to the maindeck, and then up the poop ladder and down the companion into the cuddy again, the second-mate, the steward, and first-mate alike being assailed in turn, and each flying for life before the frantic madman. At last, just as the captain emerged from the cabin for the third time, in hot haste after the steward, the other two having succeeded in concealing themselves, Morris Jones stumbled against a coil of rope by the mainmast bitts, and, his toe at the same time catching in a ring bolt, he sprawled his length on the deck.
“Good Lord!” cried the unfortunate steward, panting out the words with his failing breath. “I’m a dead man! I’m a dead man!”
“By thunder, ye air, ye durned black nigger! Ye air, ez sure ez snakes!” screamed the skipper, in his delirious rage, mistaking the Welshman, as he had the others as well, for poor Sam, the recollection of whom seemed strangely to haunt him the moment the rum got possession of his senses. “I’ve swan I’d shoot ye; so, hyar goes, me joker; y’r last hour hez come, ye bet!”
With these words he pointed his revolver down at Morris Jones, as he lay rolling on the deck at his feet, and fired.
Chapter Nine.Wrecked!Although they had not been called yet, for it was only ‘six bells,’ the watch below had been roused out by the commotion and wild cries and yells that rang about the deck. Every man Jack had tumbled up from below, and they were all grouped about the fo’c’s’le, hiding behind the galley like myself, and watching the weird scene going on aft, which, but for the maniacal rage of the captain and his murderous fury, would have been almost comical in its main incidents.It was a regular steeplechase: the frenzied man hunted those he was after in and out of the cabin, and up the poop ladder, and down the companion stairs, in turn, to begin again anew the same strange game, that was amusing enough save to those personally concerned!One of the hands, though, had his wits at work besides watching what was going on; and this was Tom Bullover, my friend the carpenter.He recollected what the steward had said on a former occasion of the captain having had a fit of the horrors from excessive drinking; and, although it was too late now to take away the skipper’s revolver before he could effect any mischief with it, there was still time to prevent his doing any further harm.So, Tom, with a coil of rope over his arm, stealthily made his way aft, and just as Captain Snaggs aimed at the prostrate body of the steward the carpenter threw a running bowline he had made in the rope round the captain’s shoulders, jerking him backwards at the very moment he fired the revolver. This caused the bullet to be diverted from its aim, for it passed through the bulwarks, instead of perforating Morris Jones’ somewhat corpulent person.The next instant, two or three more of the men going to Tom’s assistance, Captain Snaggs was dragged down on the deck, raging and foaming at the mouth; when, binding him securely hand and foot, they lifted him up and carried him into his cabin, where they strapped him down in his cot, powerless to do any more injury to himself or anyone else, until his delirium should be over.As for the steward, he fainted dead away from fright; and it required a good deal of shaking and rubbing on the part of Tom Bullover and Jan Steenbock to bring him back to life again—the latter now coming out of the cabin, holding a slip noose similar to that used by the carpenter in snaring the skipper with, and evidently intended for the same purpose, although a trifle too late to be of service then.Captain Snaggs himself recovered his consciousness about noon the same day, but did not have the slightest recollection of his mad orgy, the only actual sufferers from which were Morris Jones, who really had been more frightened than hurt, and the helmsman, Jim Chowder, who, in lieu of having his arm broken, as he had at first cried out, had only a slight bullet graze through the fleshy part of it; so, considering the skipper fired off no less than five shots out of the six which his revolver contained, it was a wonder more were not grievously wounded, if not killed, when he ran a-muck like that!When Hiram Bangs and I met in the galley, shortly after the row was over, we both compared notes, the American saying that he’d been roused up from sleep, not by the noise of the shooting or rampaging about the deck, but by the sound of Sam’s voice singing in the hold, and he knew at once that some mischief was going to happen, “ez it allers did when he heerd the durned ghostess afore!”I declare he made me feel more alarmed by this remark than all that had previously occurred, and I had to raise my eyes to assure myself that Sam’s banjo was yet hanging in its accustomed place over the door of the galley, before I could go on with my task of getting the men’s early coffee ready, to serve out as soon as the watch was changed, ‘eight bells’ having been struck shortly before.Tom Bullover, though, when presently he lounged up forward, and I told him what Hiram said, only laughed.“It’s all stuff and nonsense, Charley,” he chuckled out; “you an’ Hiram ’ll be the death of me some day, with your yarns o’ ghostesses an’ such like. The skipper didn’t see no sperrit as you thinks when he got mad this mornin’; it’s all that cussed rum he took because he got round Cape Horn. Guess, as our mate here says, the rum ‘got round’ him!”Hiram laughed, too, at this.“Heave ahead an’ carry on, old hoss,” he said; “I reckon ye won’t riz my dander, fur what I tells Cholly I knows for true, an’ nuthin’ ’ll turn me agen it. Why, Tom, when I wer down Chicopee way—”“Avast there, mate, an’ give us some coffee,” cried Tom, interrupting him at this point, and some others of the crew coming up at the moment, the conversation was not renewed, which I was not sorry for, Hiram’s talk about ghosts not being very cheerful.During the day, as I’ve said, Captain Snaggs got better, and came on deck again, looking like himself, but very pale. His face, however, seemed to have become wonderfully thinner in such a short space of time, so thin indeed that he appeared to be all nose and beard, the two meeting each other in the middle, like a pair of nut-crackers!He was much quieter, too, for he did not swear a bit, as he would have done before, at the man at the wheel, who, startled by his coming softly up the companion without previous notice, when he fancied he was lying in his cot, let the ship fall off so that she almost broached-to, in such a way as almost to carry her spars by the board!No, he did not utter a single harsh word.“Steady thaar!” was all he called out; “kip her full an’ by, an’ steer ez naar north ez ye ken!”This was about the beginning of July, and we had from then bright weather, with westerly and nor’-west winds all the way up the Pacific, past the island of Juan Fernandez, which we saw like a haze of green in the distance.After this, making to cross the Equator for the second time—our first time being in the Atlantic Doldrums—somewhere between the meridians 100 degrees to 102 degrees, we proceeded on steadily northward, picking up the south-east trade-winds in about latitude 20 degrees South, when nearly opposite Arica on the chart, although, of course, out of sight of land, being more than a couple of hundred leagues away from the nearest part of the coast.In about twenty days’ time we got near the Equator, when we met with variable winds and calms, while a strong indraught sucked us out of our course into the Bay of Panama.The temperature just then grew very hot, and the captain, taking to drinking again, soon recovered his spirits and his temper, which had latterly grown so smooth and equable that we hardly knew him for the same man.In a short space, however, the rum fully restored him to his old quarrelsome self, and he and the first-mate, Mr Flinders, had an awful row one night, when the skipper threatened to send the mate forward and promote Jan Steenbock in his place. Captain Snaggs had never forgiven him for the cowardice and want of sailorly instinct he displayed at the time of the alarm of fire in the forepeak; and the fact also of Mr Flinders having lain for two days drunk in his bunk after their jollification on rounding Cape Horn, did not tend to impress the skipper any the more strongly in his favour.I remember the evening well.It was on the 28th July.We were becalmed, I recollect; but, in spite of this, a strong set of tide, or some unknown current, was carrying us, in a west-nor’-west direction, away out of the Bay of Panama, at the mouth of which we had been rolling and roasting in the broiling tropical sun for a couple of days, without apparently advancing an inch on our way northwards towards San Francisco, our destination, which we were now comparatively near, so to speak, but still separated by a broad belt of latitude of between eighteen hundred and two thousand miles—a goodish stretch of water!I also remember well that Captain Snaggs roared so loudly to the mate and the mate back to him during their altercation in the cuddy that we on deck could hear every word they said; for, the night was hot and close, with never a breath of wind stirring, and the air had that oppressive and sulphurous feel which it always has when there is thunder about or some great atmospherical change impending.The skipper and Mr Flinders were arguing about the ship’s course, the former declaring it to be right, and the latter as vehemently to be altogether wrong.The mate, so opposite were their opinions, said that if we sailed on much longer in the same direction towards which the ship had been heading before being becalmed, she would be landed high and dry ashore at Guayaquil; while the skipper, as strongly, protested that we were already considerably to the northward of the Galapagos Islands.“Ye’re a durned fule, an’ a thunderin’ pig-headed fule ez well,” we heard the captain say to the other, as he came up the companion, roaring back behind him; “but, jest to show ye how thunderin’ big a fule ye air, I’ll jest let ye hev y’r own way—though, mind ye, if the ship comes to grief, ye’ll hev to bear all the muss.”“I don’t mind thet, nary a red cent,” boasted the other in his sneering way. “Guess I’ve a big enuff pile to hum, out Chicago way, to buy up ship an’ cargy ez well!”“Guess ye shall hev y’r way, bo!” then yelled out the skipper, calling at the same time to the helmsman to ease the helm off, as well as to the watch to brace round the yards; and the light land breeze, just then coming off from shore, made theDenver Cityhead off at right angles to her previous course, the wash of water swishing pleasantly past her bows, as her sails bellied out for a brief spell.But, not for long.Within the next half-hour or so the heavens, which had previously been bright with myriads of stars overhead, became obscured with a thick darkness, while the slight land breeze slowly died away.Then, a hoarse, rumbling sound was heard under the sea, and the ship was violently heaved up and down in a sort of quick, violent rocking motion, unlike any thing I had ever felt, even in the heaviest storm.“An airthquake, I guess,” said Captain Snaggs, nonchalantly; “thet is, if thaar’s sich a thing ez an airthquake at sea!”He sniggered over this joke; but, just then, I heard the same strange, weird music, like Sam’s banjo, played gently in the distance, similarly to what we heard before the burst of the storm off Cape Horn.“Lord, save us!” cried the captain, in hoarse accents of terror. “Thaar it air agen!”Even as he spoke, however, the ship seemed to be lifted aloft on a huge rolling wave, that came up astern of us without breaking; and, then, after being carried forwards with wonderful swiftness, she was hurled bodily on the shore of some unknown land near, whose outlines we could not distinguish through the impenetrable darkness that now surrounded us like a veil.We knew we were ashore, however, for we could feel a harsh, grating noise under the vessel’s keel.Still, beyond and above this noise, I seemed yet to hear the wild, sad chaunt that haunted us.There was a light hung in the galley, and I looked in again to see if the negro’s banjo was in its accustomed place, so as to judge whether the sound was due to my imagination or not.Holding up the lantern, I flashed its light across the roof of the galley.I could hardly believe my eyes.Sam’s banjo was no longer there!
Although they had not been called yet, for it was only ‘six bells,’ the watch below had been roused out by the commotion and wild cries and yells that rang about the deck. Every man Jack had tumbled up from below, and they were all grouped about the fo’c’s’le, hiding behind the galley like myself, and watching the weird scene going on aft, which, but for the maniacal rage of the captain and his murderous fury, would have been almost comical in its main incidents.
It was a regular steeplechase: the frenzied man hunted those he was after in and out of the cabin, and up the poop ladder, and down the companion stairs, in turn, to begin again anew the same strange game, that was amusing enough save to those personally concerned!
One of the hands, though, had his wits at work besides watching what was going on; and this was Tom Bullover, my friend the carpenter.
He recollected what the steward had said on a former occasion of the captain having had a fit of the horrors from excessive drinking; and, although it was too late now to take away the skipper’s revolver before he could effect any mischief with it, there was still time to prevent his doing any further harm.
So, Tom, with a coil of rope over his arm, stealthily made his way aft, and just as Captain Snaggs aimed at the prostrate body of the steward the carpenter threw a running bowline he had made in the rope round the captain’s shoulders, jerking him backwards at the very moment he fired the revolver. This caused the bullet to be diverted from its aim, for it passed through the bulwarks, instead of perforating Morris Jones’ somewhat corpulent person.
The next instant, two or three more of the men going to Tom’s assistance, Captain Snaggs was dragged down on the deck, raging and foaming at the mouth; when, binding him securely hand and foot, they lifted him up and carried him into his cabin, where they strapped him down in his cot, powerless to do any more injury to himself or anyone else, until his delirium should be over.
As for the steward, he fainted dead away from fright; and it required a good deal of shaking and rubbing on the part of Tom Bullover and Jan Steenbock to bring him back to life again—the latter now coming out of the cabin, holding a slip noose similar to that used by the carpenter in snaring the skipper with, and evidently intended for the same purpose, although a trifle too late to be of service then.
Captain Snaggs himself recovered his consciousness about noon the same day, but did not have the slightest recollection of his mad orgy, the only actual sufferers from which were Morris Jones, who really had been more frightened than hurt, and the helmsman, Jim Chowder, who, in lieu of having his arm broken, as he had at first cried out, had only a slight bullet graze through the fleshy part of it; so, considering the skipper fired off no less than five shots out of the six which his revolver contained, it was a wonder more were not grievously wounded, if not killed, when he ran a-muck like that!
When Hiram Bangs and I met in the galley, shortly after the row was over, we both compared notes, the American saying that he’d been roused up from sleep, not by the noise of the shooting or rampaging about the deck, but by the sound of Sam’s voice singing in the hold, and he knew at once that some mischief was going to happen, “ez it allers did when he heerd the durned ghostess afore!”
I declare he made me feel more alarmed by this remark than all that had previously occurred, and I had to raise my eyes to assure myself that Sam’s banjo was yet hanging in its accustomed place over the door of the galley, before I could go on with my task of getting the men’s early coffee ready, to serve out as soon as the watch was changed, ‘eight bells’ having been struck shortly before.
Tom Bullover, though, when presently he lounged up forward, and I told him what Hiram said, only laughed.
“It’s all stuff and nonsense, Charley,” he chuckled out; “you an’ Hiram ’ll be the death of me some day, with your yarns o’ ghostesses an’ such like. The skipper didn’t see no sperrit as you thinks when he got mad this mornin’; it’s all that cussed rum he took because he got round Cape Horn. Guess, as our mate here says, the rum ‘got round’ him!”
Hiram laughed, too, at this.
“Heave ahead an’ carry on, old hoss,” he said; “I reckon ye won’t riz my dander, fur what I tells Cholly I knows for true, an’ nuthin’ ’ll turn me agen it. Why, Tom, when I wer down Chicopee way—”
“Avast there, mate, an’ give us some coffee,” cried Tom, interrupting him at this point, and some others of the crew coming up at the moment, the conversation was not renewed, which I was not sorry for, Hiram’s talk about ghosts not being very cheerful.
During the day, as I’ve said, Captain Snaggs got better, and came on deck again, looking like himself, but very pale. His face, however, seemed to have become wonderfully thinner in such a short space of time, so thin indeed that he appeared to be all nose and beard, the two meeting each other in the middle, like a pair of nut-crackers!
He was much quieter, too, for he did not swear a bit, as he would have done before, at the man at the wheel, who, startled by his coming softly up the companion without previous notice, when he fancied he was lying in his cot, let the ship fall off so that she almost broached-to, in such a way as almost to carry her spars by the board!
No, he did not utter a single harsh word.
“Steady thaar!” was all he called out; “kip her full an’ by, an’ steer ez naar north ez ye ken!”
This was about the beginning of July, and we had from then bright weather, with westerly and nor’-west winds all the way up the Pacific, past the island of Juan Fernandez, which we saw like a haze of green in the distance.
After this, making to cross the Equator for the second time—our first time being in the Atlantic Doldrums—somewhere between the meridians 100 degrees to 102 degrees, we proceeded on steadily northward, picking up the south-east trade-winds in about latitude 20 degrees South, when nearly opposite Arica on the chart, although, of course, out of sight of land, being more than a couple of hundred leagues away from the nearest part of the coast.
In about twenty days’ time we got near the Equator, when we met with variable winds and calms, while a strong indraught sucked us out of our course into the Bay of Panama.
The temperature just then grew very hot, and the captain, taking to drinking again, soon recovered his spirits and his temper, which had latterly grown so smooth and equable that we hardly knew him for the same man.
In a short space, however, the rum fully restored him to his old quarrelsome self, and he and the first-mate, Mr Flinders, had an awful row one night, when the skipper threatened to send the mate forward and promote Jan Steenbock in his place. Captain Snaggs had never forgiven him for the cowardice and want of sailorly instinct he displayed at the time of the alarm of fire in the forepeak; and the fact also of Mr Flinders having lain for two days drunk in his bunk after their jollification on rounding Cape Horn, did not tend to impress the skipper any the more strongly in his favour.
I remember the evening well.
It was on the 28th July.
We were becalmed, I recollect; but, in spite of this, a strong set of tide, or some unknown current, was carrying us, in a west-nor’-west direction, away out of the Bay of Panama, at the mouth of which we had been rolling and roasting in the broiling tropical sun for a couple of days, without apparently advancing an inch on our way northwards towards San Francisco, our destination, which we were now comparatively near, so to speak, but still separated by a broad belt of latitude of between eighteen hundred and two thousand miles—a goodish stretch of water!
I also remember well that Captain Snaggs roared so loudly to the mate and the mate back to him during their altercation in the cuddy that we on deck could hear every word they said; for, the night was hot and close, with never a breath of wind stirring, and the air had that oppressive and sulphurous feel which it always has when there is thunder about or some great atmospherical change impending.
The skipper and Mr Flinders were arguing about the ship’s course, the former declaring it to be right, and the latter as vehemently to be altogether wrong.
The mate, so opposite were their opinions, said that if we sailed on much longer in the same direction towards which the ship had been heading before being becalmed, she would be landed high and dry ashore at Guayaquil; while the skipper, as strongly, protested that we were already considerably to the northward of the Galapagos Islands.
“Ye’re a durned fule, an’ a thunderin’ pig-headed fule ez well,” we heard the captain say to the other, as he came up the companion, roaring back behind him; “but, jest to show ye how thunderin’ big a fule ye air, I’ll jest let ye hev y’r own way—though, mind ye, if the ship comes to grief, ye’ll hev to bear all the muss.”
“I don’t mind thet, nary a red cent,” boasted the other in his sneering way. “Guess I’ve a big enuff pile to hum, out Chicago way, to buy up ship an’ cargy ez well!”
“Guess ye shall hev y’r way, bo!” then yelled out the skipper, calling at the same time to the helmsman to ease the helm off, as well as to the watch to brace round the yards; and the light land breeze, just then coming off from shore, made theDenver Cityhead off at right angles to her previous course, the wash of water swishing pleasantly past her bows, as her sails bellied out for a brief spell.
But, not for long.
Within the next half-hour or so the heavens, which had previously been bright with myriads of stars overhead, became obscured with a thick darkness, while the slight land breeze slowly died away.
Then, a hoarse, rumbling sound was heard under the sea, and the ship was violently heaved up and down in a sort of quick, violent rocking motion, unlike any thing I had ever felt, even in the heaviest storm.
“An airthquake, I guess,” said Captain Snaggs, nonchalantly; “thet is, if thaar’s sich a thing ez an airthquake at sea!”
He sniggered over this joke; but, just then, I heard the same strange, weird music, like Sam’s banjo, played gently in the distance, similarly to what we heard before the burst of the storm off Cape Horn.
“Lord, save us!” cried the captain, in hoarse accents of terror. “Thaar it air agen!”
Even as he spoke, however, the ship seemed to be lifted aloft on a huge rolling wave, that came up astern of us without breaking; and, then, after being carried forwards with wonderful swiftness, she was hurled bodily on the shore of some unknown land near, whose outlines we could not distinguish through the impenetrable darkness that now surrounded us like a veil.
We knew we were ashore, however, for we could feel a harsh, grating noise under the vessel’s keel.
Still, beyond and above this noise, I seemed yet to hear the wild, sad chaunt that haunted us.
There was a light hung in the galley, and I looked in again to see if the negro’s banjo was in its accustomed place, so as to judge whether the sound was due to my imagination or not.
Holding up the lantern, I flashed its light across the roof of the galley.
I could hardly believe my eyes.
Sam’s banjo was no longer there!