Chapter Ten.Abingdon Island.After the first grating, grinding shock of going ashore, the ship did not bump again; but, listing over to port, she settled down quietly, soon working a sort of cradle bed for herself in the sand at the spot where she stranded.This, at least, was our conclusion, from the absence of any subsequent motion or movement on board, the deck being as steady now as any platform on dry land, although rather downhill on one side, from the vessel heeling as she took the ground.However, it was all guess work, as we could see nothing, not even our own faces, save when brought immediately under the light of the galley lantern, around which all the hands forward were closely huddled together, like a drove of frightened sheep; for, the darkness could be almost felt, as it hung over the ill-fatedDenver City, a thick, impenetrable, black pall, that seemed ominous of evil and further disaster.This continued for nearly an hour; the men near me only speaking in hushed whispers, as if afraid of hearing their own voices.The fact of not being able to see any fresh peril or danger that might be impending over us, and so face it manfully, in the manner customary with sailor-folk with any grit in them, took away the last lingering remnant of courage even of the bravest amongst us; and I’m confident there was not a single foremast hand there of the lot grouped by the galley and under the break of the fo’c’s’le, not excepting either Tom Bullover or the American sailor, Hiram, plucky as both were in ordinary circumstances, but was as panic-stricken, could their inmost feelings be disclosed and the truth out-told, as myself—although I was too dazed with terror to think of this then.And so we remained, awaiting we knew not what, coming from we knew not where, in terrible uncertainty and dread expectancy.Anything might happen now, we thought, still more awful than what had already occurred; for the gloomy stillness and mysterious mantle of darkness that had descended on us increased our fears and suggested every weird possibility, until the prolonged suspense became well-nigh maddening.“I’m durned if I ken stand this much longer,” I heard Hiram whisper hoarsely, as if uttering his thoughts aloud, for he addressed no one in particular. “Guess I’ll jump overboard an’ drown myself, fur the devil’s in the shep, an’ thaar’s a cuss hangin’ over her!”A shuffling sound of feet moving on the deck followed, as if the poor, distraught fellow was about to carry his senseless and wicked design into execution; and then I caught the tones of Tom Bullover’s voice also coming out from amidst the surrounding gloom.“Hush, avast there!” cried the latter solemnly. “Is this a time for running in the face of your Maker, when in another minute or two we may all be mustered afore Him in eternity? Besides, bo, what’s the use o’ jumping overboard, when you couldn’t get drownded? for the ship’s hard and fast ashore!”Before Hiram could reply to this, or make any further movement, a shout rang out from the poop aft, where previously all had been as still as with us forwards, wrapped in the same impenetrable darkness and deathly silence.I recognised Jan Steenbock at once as the person hailing us.“Land, ho!” he exclaimed; “I sees him! It vas lighten oop, and I sees him on ze port bow!”As the second-mate spoke, there was a perceptible movement of the heavy, close atmosphere, which had hitherto been still and sultry, like what it generally is during a thunderstorm, or when some electrical disturbance is impending in the air. Then, the land breeze sprang up again, the wind, first coming in little puffs and subsequently settling down into a steady breeze off shore, and the heavy curtain of black vapour that had previously enveloped us began to drift away to leeward, enabling us after a bit to see the ship’s position and our surroundings—albeit all was yet wrapped in the semi-darkness of night, as it was close on eleven o’clock.The frowning outlines of a big mountain towered up above the vessel’s masts on our left or port bow, hazy and dark and grim, and on the starboard hand a jutting point of land, evidently a spur of the same cliff, projected past theDenver Citya long way astern, for we could distinguish the white wash of the sea on the sand at its base; while, right in front, nearly touching our bowsprit, was a mass of trees, whose dusky skeleton branches were waved to and fro by the tropical night breeze, making them appear as if alive, their mournful whishing as they swayed bearing out this impression.It seemed, at first glance, that the ship had been driven ashore into a small land-locked bay, no outlet being to be seen save the narrow opening between the cliffs astern through which she had been carried by the wave that stranded us—fortunately, without dashing us on the rocks on either hand.As we gazed around in startled wonder, striving to take in all the details of the strange scene, the misty, brooding vapour lifted still further, and a patch of sky cleared overhead. Through this opening the pale moon shone down, illuminating the landscape with her sickly green light; but she also threw such deep shadows that everything looked weird and unreal, the perspective being dwarfed here and magnified there to so great an extent that the ship’s masts appeared to touch the stars, while the men on the fo’c’s’le were transformed into giants, their forms being for the moment out of all proportion to their natural size, as they craned their necks over the head rail.Jan Steenbock’s voice from the poop at this juncture recalled my wandering and wondering imagination to the more prosaic and practical realities of our situation, which quickly put to flight the ghostly fancies that had previously crowded thick and fast on my mind.“Vo’c’s’le ahoy!” shouted the second-mate, his deep, manly tones at once putting fresh courage into all of us, and making the men pull themselves together and start up eager for action, abandoning all their craven fears. “How vas it mit yous vorvarts! Ze sheep, I zink, vas in ze deep vater astern.”“I’ll soon tell you, sir,” cried Tom Bullover in answer, jumping to the side in a jiffey, with a coil of the lead line, which he took from the main chains, where it was fastened. “I’ll heave the lead, and you shall have our soundings in a brace of shakes, sir!”With that he clambered into the rigging, preparatory to carrying out his intention; but he had no sooner got into the shrouds than he discovered his task was useless.“There’s no need to sound, sir,” he sang out; “the ship’s high and dry ashore up to the foremast, and there ain’t more than a foot or two of water aft of that, as far as I can see.”“Thunder!” roared out the skipper, who had in the meantime come up again on the poop from the cuddy, where he and the first-mate had no doubt been drowning their fright during the darkness with their favourite panacea, rum, leaving the entire control of the ship after she struck to Jan Steenbock. “Air thet so?”“I says what I sees,” replied Tom Bullover brusquely, he, like most of the hands, being pretty sick by now of the captain’s drunken ways, and pusillanimous behaviour in leaving the deck when the vessel and all on board were in such deadly peril; “and if you don’t believe me, why, you can look over the side and judge where the ship is for yerself!”Captain Snaggs made no retort; but, moving to the port bulwarks from the companion hatchway, where he had been standing, followed Tom’s suggestion of looking over the side, which indeed all of us, impelled by a similar curiosity, at once did.It was as my friend the carpenter had said.TheDenver Citywas for more than two-thirds of her length high and dry ashore on a sandy beach, that looked of a brownish yellow in the moonlight, with her forefoot resting between two hillocks covered with some sort of scrub. This prevented her from falling over broadside on, as she was shored up just as if she had been put into dry dock for caulking purposes; although, unfortunately, she was by no means in such a comfortable position, nor were we on board either, as if she had been in a shipbuilder’s yard, with more civilised surroundings than were to be found on a desert shore like this!Her bilge abaft under the mizzen-chains was just awash; and, the water, deepening from here, as the shore shelved somewhat abruptly, was about the depth of four fathoms or thereabouts by the rudder post, where the bottom could be seen, of soft, shining white sand, without a rock in sight—so far, at least, as we were able to notice in the pale greenish moonlight, by which we made our observations as well as we could, and with some little difficulty, too.“Guess we’re in a pretty tight fix,” said Captain Snaggs, after peering up and down alongside for some time, Tom Bullover in the interim taking the hand lead with him on to the poop and sounding over the taffrail at the deepest part. “We can’t do nuthin’, though, I reckon, till daylight, an’ ez we’re hard an’ fast, an’ not likely to float off, I’ll go below an’ turn in till then. Mister Steenbock, ye’d better pipe the hands down an’ do ditter, I guess, fur thaar’s no use, I ken see, in stoppin’ up hyar an’ doin’ nuthin’.”“Yous can go below; I vill keep ze vatch,” replied the second-mate, with ill-concealed contempt, as the skipper shuffled off down the companion way again, back to his orgy with the equally drunken Flinders, who had not once appeared on deck, after perilling the ship through his obstinacy in putting her on the course that had led to our being driven ashore.The very first shock of the earthquake, indeed, which we felt before the tidal wave caught us, had been sufficient to frighten him from the poop even before the darkness enveloped us and the final catastrophe came!As for Jan Steenbock, he remained walking up and down the deck as composedly as if the poorDenver Citywas still at sea, instead of being cooped up now, veritably, like a fish out of water, on dry land.He did not abandon his post, at any rate!After a while, though, he acted on the skipper’s cowardly advice so far as to tell the starboard watch to turn in, which none of the men were loth to do, for the moon was presently obscured by a thick black cloud, and a torrent of heavy tropical rain quickly descending made most of us seek shelter in the fo’c’s’le.Here I soon fell asleep, utterly wearied out, not only from standing about so long, having been on my legs ever since the early morning when I lit the galley fire, but also quite overcome with all the excitement I had gone through.I awoke with a start.The sun was shining brightly through the open scuttle of the fo’c’s’le and it was broad daylight.It was not this that had roused me, though; for, habituated as I now was to the ways of sailor-folk, it made little difference to me whether I slept by day or night so long as I had a favourable opportunity for a comfortable caulk. Indeed, my eyes might have been ‘scorched out,’ as the saying is, without awaking me.It was something else that aroused me,—an unaccustomed sound which I had not heard since I left home and ran away to sea.It was the cooing of doves in the distance.“Roo-coo-coo! Roo-coo-coo! Coo-coo! Roo-c–o–o!”I heard it as plainly as possible, just as the plaintive sound used to catch my ear from the wood at the back of the vicarage garden in the old times, when I loved to listen to the bird’s love call—those old times that seemed so far off in the perspective of the past, and yet were only two years at most agone!Why, I must be dreaming, I thought.But, no; there came the soft, sweet cooing of the doves again.“Roo-coo-coo! Roo-coo-coo! Coo-coo! Roo-c-o-o!”Thoroughly roused at last, I jumped out of the bunk I occupied next Hiram, who was still fast asleep, with a lot of the other sailors round him snoring in the fo’c’s’le; and rubbing my eyes with both knuckles, to further convince myself of being wide awake, I crawled out from the fore-hatchway on to the open deck.But, almost as soon as I stepped on my feet, I was startled, for all the starboard side, which was higher than the other, from the list the ship had to port, was covered, where the rain had not washed it away, with a thick deposit of brown, sandy loam, like snuff; while the scuppers aft, where everything had been washed by the deluge that had descended on the decks, were choked up with a muddy mass of the same stuff, forming a big heap over a foot high. I could see, too, that the snuffy dust had penetrated everywhere, hanging on the ropes, and in places where the rain had not wetted it, like powdery snow, although of a very different colour.Recollecting the earthquake of the previous evening, and all that I had heard and read of similar phenomena, I ascribed this brown, dusty deposit to some volcanic eruption in the near neighbourhood.This, I thought, likewise, was probably the cause, as well, of the unaccountable darkness that enveloped the ship at the time we experienced the shock; but, just then, I caught, a sight of the land over the lee bulwarks, and every other consideration was banished by this outlook on the strange scene amidst which we were so wonderfully placed.If our surroundings appeared curious by the spectral light of the moon last night, they seemed doubly so now.The glaring tropical sun was blazing already high up in the heavens, whose bright blue vault was unflecked by a scrap of cloud to temper the solar rays, while a brisk breeze, blowing in from the south-west, gave a feeling of freshness to the air and raised a little wave of surf, that broke on the beach with a rippling splash far astern; the cooing of the doves in the distance chiming in musically with the lisp of the surge’s lullaby.But, the land!It was stranger than any I had ever seen.The high mountain on our left, looked quite as lofty by day as it had done the night before, two thousand feet or more of it towering up into the sky.It was evidently the crater peak of an old extinct volcano; for, it was shaped like a hollow vase, with the side next the sea washed away by the south-west gales, which, as I subsequently learnt, blew during the rainy season in the vicinity of this equatorial region.At the base of the cliff was a mound of lava, interspersed with tufts of tufa and grass, that spread out to where the sloping, sandy beach met it; and this was laved further down by the transparent water of the little sheltered harbour formed by the outer edge of the peak and the other lower projecting cliff that extended out into the sea on the starboard side of the ship—the two making a semicircle and almost meeting by the lava mound at the base of the broken crater, there not being more than a couple of cables length between them.Most wonderful to me was the fact of the ship having been carried so providentially through such a narrow opening, without coming to grief on the Scylla on the one hand, or being dashed to pieces against the Charybdis on the other.More wonderful still, though, was the sight the shore presented, as I moved closer to the gangway, and, looking down over the bulwarks, inspected the foreground below.It was like a stray vista of some antediluvian world.Near the edge of the white sand—on which the ship was lying like a stranded whale, with her prow propped up between two dunes, or hillocks, that wore up to the level of her catheads—was a row of stunted trees without a leaf on them, only bare, skeleton branches; while on the other side of these was a wide expanse of barren brown earth, or lava, utterly destitute of any sign of vegetation.Then came a grove of huge cacti, whose fleshy, spiked branches had the look of so many wooden hands, or glove stretchers, set up on end; and beyond these again were the more naturally-wooded heights, leading up to the summit of the mountain peak.The trees, I noticed, grew more luxuriantly and freely here, appearing to be of much larger size, as they increased their distance from the sterile expanse of the lower plain; until, at the top of the ascent, they formed a regular green crest covering the upper edge of the crater and sloping side of the outstretching arm of cliff on our right, whose mantle of verdure and emerald tone contrasted pleasantly with the bright blue of the sky overhead and the equally blue sea below, the latter fringed with a line of white surf and coral sand along the curve of the shore.This outer aspect of the scene, however, was not all.Right under my eyes, waddling along the beach, and rearing themselves on their hind legs to feed on the leaves of the cactus, which they nibbled off in huge mouthfuls, were a lot of enormous tortoises, or land turtles, of the terrapin tribe, that were really the most hideous monsters I had ever seen in my life. Several large lizards also were crawling about on the lava and basking in the sun, and a number of insects and queer little birds of a kind I never heard of.All was strange; for, although I could still catch the cooing of the doves away in the woods in the distance, there was nothing familiar to my sight near.While I was reflecting on all these wonders, and puzzling my brains as to where we could possibly be, the second-mate, whom I had noticed still on the poop when I came out from the fo’c’s’le, as if he had remained up there on watch all night, came to my side and addressed me.“Everyzing’s sdrange, leedel boys, hey?”“Yes, sir,” said I. “I was wondering what part of the world we could be in.”“Ze Galapagos,” he replied laconically, answering my question off-hand, in his solemn fashion and deep voice. “It vas call’t ze Galapagos vrom ze Spanish vort dat mean ze big toordles, zame dat yous zee dere.”“Then Captain Snaggs was right after all, sir, about the ship’s course yesterday, when he said that Mr Flinders would run us ashore if it was altered?”“Yase, dat vas zo,” said Jan Steenbock. “Dat voorst-mate one big vool, and he vas loose ze sheep! Dis vas ze Abingdon Islants, leedel boys—one of ze Galapagos groups. I vas recollecks him. I vas here befores. It vas Abingdon Islants; and ze voorst-mate is von big vool!”As Jan Steenbock made this observation, a trifle louder than before, I could see the face of Mr Flinders, all livid with passion, as he came up the companion hatch behind the Dane.“Who’s thet durned cuss a-calling o’ me names? I guess, I’ll spifflicate him when I sees him!” he yelled out at the pitch of his voice; and then pretending to recognise Jan Steenbock for the first time as his detractor, he added, still more significantly, “Oh, it air you, me joker, air it?”
After the first grating, grinding shock of going ashore, the ship did not bump again; but, listing over to port, she settled down quietly, soon working a sort of cradle bed for herself in the sand at the spot where she stranded.
This, at least, was our conclusion, from the absence of any subsequent motion or movement on board, the deck being as steady now as any platform on dry land, although rather downhill on one side, from the vessel heeling as she took the ground.
However, it was all guess work, as we could see nothing, not even our own faces, save when brought immediately under the light of the galley lantern, around which all the hands forward were closely huddled together, like a drove of frightened sheep; for, the darkness could be almost felt, as it hung over the ill-fatedDenver City, a thick, impenetrable, black pall, that seemed ominous of evil and further disaster.
This continued for nearly an hour; the men near me only speaking in hushed whispers, as if afraid of hearing their own voices.
The fact of not being able to see any fresh peril or danger that might be impending over us, and so face it manfully, in the manner customary with sailor-folk with any grit in them, took away the last lingering remnant of courage even of the bravest amongst us; and I’m confident there was not a single foremast hand there of the lot grouped by the galley and under the break of the fo’c’s’le, not excepting either Tom Bullover or the American sailor, Hiram, plucky as both were in ordinary circumstances, but was as panic-stricken, could their inmost feelings be disclosed and the truth out-told, as myself—although I was too dazed with terror to think of this then.
And so we remained, awaiting we knew not what, coming from we knew not where, in terrible uncertainty and dread expectancy.
Anything might happen now, we thought, still more awful than what had already occurred; for the gloomy stillness and mysterious mantle of darkness that had descended on us increased our fears and suggested every weird possibility, until the prolonged suspense became well-nigh maddening.
“I’m durned if I ken stand this much longer,” I heard Hiram whisper hoarsely, as if uttering his thoughts aloud, for he addressed no one in particular. “Guess I’ll jump overboard an’ drown myself, fur the devil’s in the shep, an’ thaar’s a cuss hangin’ over her!”
A shuffling sound of feet moving on the deck followed, as if the poor, distraught fellow was about to carry his senseless and wicked design into execution; and then I caught the tones of Tom Bullover’s voice also coming out from amidst the surrounding gloom.
“Hush, avast there!” cried the latter solemnly. “Is this a time for running in the face of your Maker, when in another minute or two we may all be mustered afore Him in eternity? Besides, bo, what’s the use o’ jumping overboard, when you couldn’t get drownded? for the ship’s hard and fast ashore!”
Before Hiram could reply to this, or make any further movement, a shout rang out from the poop aft, where previously all had been as still as with us forwards, wrapped in the same impenetrable darkness and deathly silence.
I recognised Jan Steenbock at once as the person hailing us.
“Land, ho!” he exclaimed; “I sees him! It vas lighten oop, and I sees him on ze port bow!”
As the second-mate spoke, there was a perceptible movement of the heavy, close atmosphere, which had hitherto been still and sultry, like what it generally is during a thunderstorm, or when some electrical disturbance is impending in the air. Then, the land breeze sprang up again, the wind, first coming in little puffs and subsequently settling down into a steady breeze off shore, and the heavy curtain of black vapour that had previously enveloped us began to drift away to leeward, enabling us after a bit to see the ship’s position and our surroundings—albeit all was yet wrapped in the semi-darkness of night, as it was close on eleven o’clock.
The frowning outlines of a big mountain towered up above the vessel’s masts on our left or port bow, hazy and dark and grim, and on the starboard hand a jutting point of land, evidently a spur of the same cliff, projected past theDenver Citya long way astern, for we could distinguish the white wash of the sea on the sand at its base; while, right in front, nearly touching our bowsprit, was a mass of trees, whose dusky skeleton branches were waved to and fro by the tropical night breeze, making them appear as if alive, their mournful whishing as they swayed bearing out this impression.
It seemed, at first glance, that the ship had been driven ashore into a small land-locked bay, no outlet being to be seen save the narrow opening between the cliffs astern through which she had been carried by the wave that stranded us—fortunately, without dashing us on the rocks on either hand.
As we gazed around in startled wonder, striving to take in all the details of the strange scene, the misty, brooding vapour lifted still further, and a patch of sky cleared overhead. Through this opening the pale moon shone down, illuminating the landscape with her sickly green light; but she also threw such deep shadows that everything looked weird and unreal, the perspective being dwarfed here and magnified there to so great an extent that the ship’s masts appeared to touch the stars, while the men on the fo’c’s’le were transformed into giants, their forms being for the moment out of all proportion to their natural size, as they craned their necks over the head rail.
Jan Steenbock’s voice from the poop at this juncture recalled my wandering and wondering imagination to the more prosaic and practical realities of our situation, which quickly put to flight the ghostly fancies that had previously crowded thick and fast on my mind.
“Vo’c’s’le ahoy!” shouted the second-mate, his deep, manly tones at once putting fresh courage into all of us, and making the men pull themselves together and start up eager for action, abandoning all their craven fears. “How vas it mit yous vorvarts! Ze sheep, I zink, vas in ze deep vater astern.”
“I’ll soon tell you, sir,” cried Tom Bullover in answer, jumping to the side in a jiffey, with a coil of the lead line, which he took from the main chains, where it was fastened. “I’ll heave the lead, and you shall have our soundings in a brace of shakes, sir!”
With that he clambered into the rigging, preparatory to carrying out his intention; but he had no sooner got into the shrouds than he discovered his task was useless.
“There’s no need to sound, sir,” he sang out; “the ship’s high and dry ashore up to the foremast, and there ain’t more than a foot or two of water aft of that, as far as I can see.”
“Thunder!” roared out the skipper, who had in the meantime come up again on the poop from the cuddy, where he and the first-mate had no doubt been drowning their fright during the darkness with their favourite panacea, rum, leaving the entire control of the ship after she struck to Jan Steenbock. “Air thet so?”
“I says what I sees,” replied Tom Bullover brusquely, he, like most of the hands, being pretty sick by now of the captain’s drunken ways, and pusillanimous behaviour in leaving the deck when the vessel and all on board were in such deadly peril; “and if you don’t believe me, why, you can look over the side and judge where the ship is for yerself!”
Captain Snaggs made no retort; but, moving to the port bulwarks from the companion hatchway, where he had been standing, followed Tom’s suggestion of looking over the side, which indeed all of us, impelled by a similar curiosity, at once did.
It was as my friend the carpenter had said.
TheDenver Citywas for more than two-thirds of her length high and dry ashore on a sandy beach, that looked of a brownish yellow in the moonlight, with her forefoot resting between two hillocks covered with some sort of scrub. This prevented her from falling over broadside on, as she was shored up just as if she had been put into dry dock for caulking purposes; although, unfortunately, she was by no means in such a comfortable position, nor were we on board either, as if she had been in a shipbuilder’s yard, with more civilised surroundings than were to be found on a desert shore like this!
Her bilge abaft under the mizzen-chains was just awash; and, the water, deepening from here, as the shore shelved somewhat abruptly, was about the depth of four fathoms or thereabouts by the rudder post, where the bottom could be seen, of soft, shining white sand, without a rock in sight—so far, at least, as we were able to notice in the pale greenish moonlight, by which we made our observations as well as we could, and with some little difficulty, too.
“Guess we’re in a pretty tight fix,” said Captain Snaggs, after peering up and down alongside for some time, Tom Bullover in the interim taking the hand lead with him on to the poop and sounding over the taffrail at the deepest part. “We can’t do nuthin’, though, I reckon, till daylight, an’ ez we’re hard an’ fast, an’ not likely to float off, I’ll go below an’ turn in till then. Mister Steenbock, ye’d better pipe the hands down an’ do ditter, I guess, fur thaar’s no use, I ken see, in stoppin’ up hyar an’ doin’ nuthin’.”
“Yous can go below; I vill keep ze vatch,” replied the second-mate, with ill-concealed contempt, as the skipper shuffled off down the companion way again, back to his orgy with the equally drunken Flinders, who had not once appeared on deck, after perilling the ship through his obstinacy in putting her on the course that had led to our being driven ashore.
The very first shock of the earthquake, indeed, which we felt before the tidal wave caught us, had been sufficient to frighten him from the poop even before the darkness enveloped us and the final catastrophe came!
As for Jan Steenbock, he remained walking up and down the deck as composedly as if the poorDenver Citywas still at sea, instead of being cooped up now, veritably, like a fish out of water, on dry land.
He did not abandon his post, at any rate!
After a while, though, he acted on the skipper’s cowardly advice so far as to tell the starboard watch to turn in, which none of the men were loth to do, for the moon was presently obscured by a thick black cloud, and a torrent of heavy tropical rain quickly descending made most of us seek shelter in the fo’c’s’le.
Here I soon fell asleep, utterly wearied out, not only from standing about so long, having been on my legs ever since the early morning when I lit the galley fire, but also quite overcome with all the excitement I had gone through.
I awoke with a start.
The sun was shining brightly through the open scuttle of the fo’c’s’le and it was broad daylight.
It was not this that had roused me, though; for, habituated as I now was to the ways of sailor-folk, it made little difference to me whether I slept by day or night so long as I had a favourable opportunity for a comfortable caulk. Indeed, my eyes might have been ‘scorched out,’ as the saying is, without awaking me.
It was something else that aroused me,—an unaccustomed sound which I had not heard since I left home and ran away to sea.
It was the cooing of doves in the distance.
“Roo-coo-coo! Roo-coo-coo! Coo-coo! Roo-c–o–o!”
I heard it as plainly as possible, just as the plaintive sound used to catch my ear from the wood at the back of the vicarage garden in the old times, when I loved to listen to the bird’s love call—those old times that seemed so far off in the perspective of the past, and yet were only two years at most agone!
Why, I must be dreaming, I thought.
But, no; there came the soft, sweet cooing of the doves again.
“Roo-coo-coo! Roo-coo-coo! Coo-coo! Roo-c-o-o!”
Thoroughly roused at last, I jumped out of the bunk I occupied next Hiram, who was still fast asleep, with a lot of the other sailors round him snoring in the fo’c’s’le; and rubbing my eyes with both knuckles, to further convince myself of being wide awake, I crawled out from the fore-hatchway on to the open deck.
But, almost as soon as I stepped on my feet, I was startled, for all the starboard side, which was higher than the other, from the list the ship had to port, was covered, where the rain had not washed it away, with a thick deposit of brown, sandy loam, like snuff; while the scuppers aft, where everything had been washed by the deluge that had descended on the decks, were choked up with a muddy mass of the same stuff, forming a big heap over a foot high. I could see, too, that the snuffy dust had penetrated everywhere, hanging on the ropes, and in places where the rain had not wetted it, like powdery snow, although of a very different colour.
Recollecting the earthquake of the previous evening, and all that I had heard and read of similar phenomena, I ascribed this brown, dusty deposit to some volcanic eruption in the near neighbourhood.
This, I thought, likewise, was probably the cause, as well, of the unaccountable darkness that enveloped the ship at the time we experienced the shock; but, just then, I caught, a sight of the land over the lee bulwarks, and every other consideration was banished by this outlook on the strange scene amidst which we were so wonderfully placed.
If our surroundings appeared curious by the spectral light of the moon last night, they seemed doubly so now.
The glaring tropical sun was blazing already high up in the heavens, whose bright blue vault was unflecked by a scrap of cloud to temper the solar rays, while a brisk breeze, blowing in from the south-west, gave a feeling of freshness to the air and raised a little wave of surf, that broke on the beach with a rippling splash far astern; the cooing of the doves in the distance chiming in musically with the lisp of the surge’s lullaby.
But, the land!
It was stranger than any I had ever seen.
The high mountain on our left, looked quite as lofty by day as it had done the night before, two thousand feet or more of it towering up into the sky.
It was evidently the crater peak of an old extinct volcano; for, it was shaped like a hollow vase, with the side next the sea washed away by the south-west gales, which, as I subsequently learnt, blew during the rainy season in the vicinity of this equatorial region.
At the base of the cliff was a mound of lava, interspersed with tufts of tufa and grass, that spread out to where the sloping, sandy beach met it; and this was laved further down by the transparent water of the little sheltered harbour formed by the outer edge of the peak and the other lower projecting cliff that extended out into the sea on the starboard side of the ship—the two making a semicircle and almost meeting by the lava mound at the base of the broken crater, there not being more than a couple of cables length between them.
Most wonderful to me was the fact of the ship having been carried so providentially through such a narrow opening, without coming to grief on the Scylla on the one hand, or being dashed to pieces against the Charybdis on the other.
More wonderful still, though, was the sight the shore presented, as I moved closer to the gangway, and, looking down over the bulwarks, inspected the foreground below.
It was like a stray vista of some antediluvian world.
Near the edge of the white sand—on which the ship was lying like a stranded whale, with her prow propped up between two dunes, or hillocks, that wore up to the level of her catheads—was a row of stunted trees without a leaf on them, only bare, skeleton branches; while on the other side of these was a wide expanse of barren brown earth, or lava, utterly destitute of any sign of vegetation.
Then came a grove of huge cacti, whose fleshy, spiked branches had the look of so many wooden hands, or glove stretchers, set up on end; and beyond these again were the more naturally-wooded heights, leading up to the summit of the mountain peak.
The trees, I noticed, grew more luxuriantly and freely here, appearing to be of much larger size, as they increased their distance from the sterile expanse of the lower plain; until, at the top of the ascent, they formed a regular green crest covering the upper edge of the crater and sloping side of the outstretching arm of cliff on our right, whose mantle of verdure and emerald tone contrasted pleasantly with the bright blue of the sky overhead and the equally blue sea below, the latter fringed with a line of white surf and coral sand along the curve of the shore.
This outer aspect of the scene, however, was not all.
Right under my eyes, waddling along the beach, and rearing themselves on their hind legs to feed on the leaves of the cactus, which they nibbled off in huge mouthfuls, were a lot of enormous tortoises, or land turtles, of the terrapin tribe, that were really the most hideous monsters I had ever seen in my life. Several large lizards also were crawling about on the lava and basking in the sun, and a number of insects and queer little birds of a kind I never heard of.
All was strange; for, although I could still catch the cooing of the doves away in the woods in the distance, there was nothing familiar to my sight near.
While I was reflecting on all these wonders, and puzzling my brains as to where we could possibly be, the second-mate, whom I had noticed still on the poop when I came out from the fo’c’s’le, as if he had remained up there on watch all night, came to my side and addressed me.
“Everyzing’s sdrange, leedel boys, hey?”
“Yes, sir,” said I. “I was wondering what part of the world we could be in.”
“Ze Galapagos,” he replied laconically, answering my question off-hand, in his solemn fashion and deep voice. “It vas call’t ze Galapagos vrom ze Spanish vort dat mean ze big toordles, zame dat yous zee dere.”
“Then Captain Snaggs was right after all, sir, about the ship’s course yesterday, when he said that Mr Flinders would run us ashore if it was altered?”
“Yase, dat vas zo,” said Jan Steenbock. “Dat voorst-mate one big vool, and he vas loose ze sheep! Dis vas ze Abingdon Islants, leedel boys—one of ze Galapagos groups. I vas recollecks him. I vas here befores. It vas Abingdon Islants; and ze voorst-mate is von big vool!”
As Jan Steenbock made this observation, a trifle louder than before, I could see the face of Mr Flinders, all livid with passion, as he came up the companion hatch behind the Dane.
“Who’s thet durned cuss a-calling o’ me names? I guess, I’ll spifflicate him when I sees him!” he yelled out at the pitch of his voice; and then pretending to recognise Jan Steenbock for the first time as his detractor, he added, still more significantly, “Oh, it air you, me joker, air it?”
Chapter Eleven.Settling Matters.“Yase, it vas me,” said Jan Steenbock, at once turning round and confronting the other, not in the least discomposed by his sudden appearance, and speaking in his usual slow, deliberate way. “I zays to ze leedel boys here you’s von big vool, and zo you vas!”“Tarnation!” exclaimed Mr Flinders, stepping out on to the deck over the coaming of the booby hatch, and advancing in a threatening manner towards the Dane, who faced him still imperturbably. “Ye jest say thet agen, mister, an’ I’ll—”The second-mate did not wait for him to finish his sentence.“I zays you’s von big vool, the biggest vool of all ze vools I vas know,” he cried in his deep tones. Every word sounded distinctly and trenchantly, with a sort of sledge-hammer effect, that made the Yankee mate writhe again. “But, my vren’, you vas badder dan dat, vor you vas a droonken vool, and vas peril ze sheep and ze lifes of ze men aboord mit your voolness and ze rhum you vas trink below, mitout minting your duty. Oh, yase, you vas more bad dan one vool, Mister Vlinders; I vas vatch yous ze whole of ze voyage, and I spik vat I zink and vat I zees!”“Jee-rusalem, ye white-livered Dutchman!” screamed out the other, now white with rage, and with his eyes glaring like those of a tiger, as he threw out his arms and rushed at Jan Steenbock, “I’ll give ye goss fur ev’ry lyin’ word ye hev sed agen me, ye bet. I’m a raal Down-East alligator, I am, ye durned furrin reptyle! Ye’ll wish ye wer never rizzed or came athwart my hawse, my hearty, afore I’ve plugged ye out an’ done with ye, bo, I guess; for I’m a regular screamer from Chicago, I am, an’ I’ll wipe the side-walk with ye, I will!”This was ‘tall talk,’ as Hiram remarked, he and several others of the crew having turned out from their bunks by this time, roused by the altercation, all gathering together in the waist, full of interest and expectancy at witnessing such an unwonted treat as a free fight between their officers. But, the first-mate’s brave words, mouth them out as he did with great vehemence and force of expression, did not frighten the stalwart Dane, self-possessed and cool to the last, one whit.No, not a bit of it.Quietly putting himself into an easy position of defence, with his right arm guarding his face and body, Jan Steenbock, throwing out his left fist with a rapidity of movement quite unexpected in one of his slow, methodical demeanour, caught the blustering Yankee, as he advanced on him with hostile thoughts intent, full butt between the eyes, the blow being delivered straight from the shoulder and having sufficient momentum to have felled an ox.At all events, it was enough for Mr Flinders.Whack!It resounded through the ship; and, uttering a half-stifled cry, the mate measured his length along the deck, the back of his head knocking against the planks with a sound that seemed to be the echo of the blow that brought him low, though softer and more like a thud—tempered and toned down, no doubt, by the subduing effect of distance!This second assault on his thick skull, however, instead of stunning him, as might have been imagined, appeared to bring the mate back to consciousness, and roused him indeed to further action; for, scrambling up from his recumbent position, with his face showing unmistakable marks of the fray already, and his eyes not glaring quite so much, for they were beginning to close up, he got on his feet again, and squared up to Jan Steenbock, with his arms swinging round like those of a windmill.He might just as well have tried to batter down a stone wall, under the circumstances, as endeavour to break down the other’s guard by any such feeble attempt, although both were pretty well matched as to size and strength.Jan paid no attention to his roundabout and random onslaught, fending off his ill-directed blows easily enough with his right arm, which was well balanced, a little forward across his chest, protecting him from every effort of his enemy.He just played with him for a minute, during which the Yankee mate, frothing with fury and uttering all sorts of terrible threats, that were as powerless to hurt Jan as his pointless attack, danced round his watchful antagonist like a pea on a hot griddle; and then, the Dane, tired at length of the fun, advancing his left, delivered another terrific drive from the shoulder that tumbled Mr Flinders backwards under the hood of the booby hatch, where he nearly floored Captain Snaggs, on his way up from the cuddy—the skipper having been also aroused by the tumult, the scene of the battle being almost immediately over his swinging cot, and the concussion of the first-mate’s head against the deck having awakened him before his time, which naturally did not tend to improve his temper.“Hillo, ye durned Cape Cod sculpin!” he gasped out, Mr Flinders’ falling body having caught him full in the stomach and knocked all the wind out of him. “Thet’s a kinder pretty sorter way to come tumblin’ down the companion, like a mad bull in fly time! What’s all this infarnal muss about, hey?”So shouting, between his pauses to take breath, the skipper shoved the mate before him out of the hatchway, repeating his question again when both had emerged on the poop. “Now, what’s this infarnal muss about, hey?”Taken thus in front and rear Mr Flinders hardly knew what to say, especially as Jan Steenbock’s fist had landed on his mouth, loosening his teeth and making the blood flow, his countenance now presenting a pitiable spectacle, all battered and bleeding.“The—the—thet durned skallawag thaar hit me, sirree,” he stammered and stuttered, spitting out a mouthful of blood and a couple of his front teeth, which had been driven down his throat almost by Jan Steenbock’s powerful blow. “He—he tried to—to take my life. He did so, cap. But, I guess I’ll be even with him, by thunder!—I’ll soon rip my bowie inter him, an’ settle the coon; I will so, you bet!”Mr Flinders fumbled at his waistbelt as he spoke, trying to pull out the villainous-looking, dagger-hilted knife he always carried there, fixed in a sheath stuck inside the back of his trousers; but his rage and excitement making his hand tremble with nervous trepidation, Captain Snaggs was able to catch his arm in time and prevent his drawing the ugly weapon.“No ye don’t, mister; no ye don’t, by thunder! so long’s I’m boss hyar,” cried the skipper. “Ef ye fits aboord my shep, I reckon ye’ll hev to fit fair, or else reckon up with Ephraim O Snaggs; yes, so, mister, thet’s so. I’ll hev no knifing aboord my ship!”The captain appeared strangely forgetful of his own revolver practice in the case of poor Sam Jedfoot, and also of his having ran a-muck and nearly killed the helmsman and Morris Jones, the steward, thinking he was still in pursuit of the negro cook—which showed the murderous proclivities of his own mind, drunk or sober. However, all the same, he stopped the first-mate now from trying to use his knife; although the latter would probably have come off the worst if he had made another rush at Jan Steenbock, who stood on the defence, prepared for all emergencies.“No, ye don’t. Stow it, I tell ye, or I’ll throttle ye, by thunder!” said the skipper, shaking Mr Flinders in his wiry grasp like a terrier would a rat; while, turning to Jan, he asked: “An’ what hev ye ter say about this darned muss—I s’pose it’s six o’ one an’ half-dozen o’ t’other, hey?”“Misther Vlinders vas roosh to sthrike me, and I vas knock hims down,” said Jan Steenbock, in his laconic fashion. “He vas get oop and roosh at me vonce mores, and I vas knock hims down on ze deck again; and zen, you vas coom oop ze hatchway, and dat vas all.”“But, confound ye!” cried the other, putting in his spoke, “you called me a fule fust!”“So ye air a fule,” said Captain Snaggs, “an’ a tarnation fule, too, I reckon—the durndest fule I ever seed; fur the old barquey wouldn’t be lyin’ hyar whaar she is, I guess, but fur yer durned pigheadedness!”“Zo I vas zay,” interposed Jan Steenbock. “I das tell hims it vas all bekos he vas one troonken vool dat we ras wreck, zir.”“Ye never sed a truer word, mister,” replied the skipper, showing but little sympathy for Mr Flinders, whom he ordered to go below and wash his dirty face, now the ‘little unpleasantness’ between himself and his brother mate was over. “Still, hyar we air, I guess, an’ the best thing we ken do is ter try an’ get her off. Whaar d’yer reckon us to be, Mister Steenbock, hey?”“On ze Galapagos,” answered the second-mate modestly, in no ways puffed up by his victory over the other or this appeal to his opinion by Captain Snaggs, who, like a good many more people in the world, worshipped success, and was the first to turn his back on his own champion when defeated. “I zink ze sheep vas shtruck on Abingdon Island. I vas know ze place, cap’n; oh, yase, joost zo!”“Snakes an’ alligators, mister! Ye doan’t mean ter say ye hev been hyar afore, hey?”“Ja zo, cap’n,” replied Jan Steenbock, in his slow and matter-of-fact way, taking he other’s expression literally; “but dere vas no shnake, dat I vas zee, and no alligator. Dere vas nozings but ze terrapin tortoise and ze lizards on ze rocks! I vas here one, doo, dree zummers ago, mit a drading schgooner vrom Guayaquil after a cargo of ze orchilla weed, dat fetch goot price in Equador. I vas sure it vas Abingdon Islant vrom dat tall big peak of montane on ze port side dat vas cal’t Cape Chalmers; vor, we vas anchor’t to looard ven we vas hunting for ze weed orchilla and ze toordles.”“Oh, indeed,” said the skipper. “I’ll look at the chart an’ take the sun at noon, so to kalkerlate our bearin’s; but I guess ye’re not fur out, ez I telled thet dodrotted fule of a Flinders we’d be safe ter run foul o’ the cussed Galapagos if we kept thet course ez he steered! Howsomedever, let’s do sunthin’, an’ not stan’ idling hyar no longer. Forrad, thaar, ye lot o’ star-gazin’, fly-catchin’ lazy lubbers! make it eight bells an’ call the watch to sluice down decks! Ye doan’t think, me jokers, I’m goin’ to let ye strike work an’ break articles ’cause the shep’s aground, do ye? Not if I knows it, by thunder! Stir yer stumps an’ look smart, or some o’ ye’ll know the reason why!”This made Tom Bullover and the other hands bustle about on the fo’c’s’le, although buckets had to be lowered over the side aft to wash down the decks with, so as to clear away all the volcano dust that was still lying about, for the head-pump could not be used as usual on account of the forepart of the ship being high and dry.Meanwhile, Hiram and I busied ourselves in the galley, blowing up the fire and getting the coffee ready for breakfast, so that ere long things began to look better.The sun by this time was more than half-way up overhead, but as a steady south-west breeze was blowing in still from the sea right across our quarter, for the ship was lying on the sand with her bowsprit pointing north by west, the temperature was by no means so hot as might have been expected from the fact of our being so close to the Equator; and so, after our morning meal was over, the skipper had all hands piped to lighten the vessel, in order to prepare her for our going afloat again.Captain Snaggs took the precaution, however, of getting out anchors ahead and astern, so as to secure her in her present position, so that no sudden shift of wind or rise of the tide might jeopardise matters before everything was ready for heaving her off, the sheet and starboard bower being laid out in seven-fathom water, some fifty yards aft of the rudder post, in a direct line with the keel, so that there should be as little difficulty as possible in kedging her. These anchors were carried out to sea by a gang of men in the jolly-boat, which was let down amidships just where we were awash, by a whip and tackle rigged up between the main and crossjack yards for the purpose.By the time this was done, from the absence of any shadow cast by the sun, which was high over our mastheads, it was evidently close on to noon; so, the skipper brought his sextant and a big chart he had of the Pacific on deck, spreading the latter over the cuddy skylight, while he yelled out to the dilapidated Mr Flinders, who was repairing damages below, to watch the chronometer and mark the hour when he sang out.Captain Snaggs squinted through the eye-glass of his instrument for a bit with the sextant raised aloft, as if he were trying to stare old Sol out of countenance.“Stop!” he sang out in a voice of thunder. “Stop!”Then he took another observation, followed by a second stentorian shout of “Stop!”A pause ensued, and then he roared below to Mr Flinders, asking him what he made it, the feeble voice of the first-mate giving him in return the Greenwich time as certified by the chronometer; when after a longish calculation and measuring of distances on the chart, with a pair of compasses and the parallel ruler, Captain Snaggs gave his decision in an oracular manner, with much wagging of his goatee beard.“I guess yo’re about right this journey, Mister Steenbock,” he said, holding up the chart for the other’s inspection. “I kalkelate we’re jest in latitood 0 degrees 32 minutes north, an’ longitood 90 degrees 45 minutes west—pretty nigh hyar, ye see, whaar my finger is on this durned spec, due north’ard of the Galapagos group on the Equator. This chart o’ mine, though, don’t give no further perticklers, so I reckon it must be Abingdon Island, ez ye says, ez thet’s the furthest north, barrin’ Culpepper Island, which is marked hyar, I see, to the nor’-west, an’ must be more’n fifty leagues, I guess, away.”“Joost zo,” replied Jan Steenbock, mildly complacent at his triumph. “I vas zink zo, and I zays vat I zink!”The point being thus satisfactorily settled, the men had their dinner, which Hiram and I had cooked in the galley while the anchors were being got out and the skipper was taking his observation of the sun; and then, after seeing that everything was snug in the caboose, I was just about sneaking over the side to explore the strange island and inspect more closely the curious animals I had noticed, when Captain Snaggs saw me from the poop and put the stopper on my little excursion.“None o’ y’r skulking my loblolly b’y!” he shouted out. “Jest ye lay aloft an’ send down the mizzen-royal. This air no time fur skylarkin’ an’ jerymanderin’. We wants all hands at work.”With that, I had, instead of enjoying myself ashore as I had hoped, to mount up the rigging and help the starboard watch in unbending the sails, which, when they reached the deck, were rolled up by the other watch on duty below, and lowered to the beach over the side, where they were stowed in a heap on the sand above high-water mark.The lighter spars were next sent down, and then the upper and lower yards by the aid of strong purchases, all being similarly placed ashore, with the ropes coiled up as they were loosed from their blocks and fastenings aloft; so, by the time sunset came the ship was almost a sheer hulk, only her masts and standing rigging remaining.Poor old thing, she was utterly transformed, lying high and dry there, with all her top hamper gone, and shorn of all her fair proportions!I noticed this when I came down from aloft, theDenver Citylooking so queer from the deck, with her bare poles sticking up, like monuments erected to her past greatness; but, although I was tired enough with all the jobs I had been on, unreeling ropes, and knotting, and splicing, and hauling, till I hardly knew whether I stood on my head or my heels, I was not too tired to take advantage of the kind offer Hiram made me when I went into the galley to help get the men’s tea ready.“Ye ken skip, Cholly, an’ hev a lark ashore, ef ye hev a mind to,” said he; “I’ll look arter the coppers.”Didn’t I ‘skip,’ that’s all.I was down the sides in a brace of shakes, and soon wandering at my own sweet will about the beach, wondering at everything I saw—the lava bed above the sand, the tall, many-armed cactus plants, with their fleshy fingers and spikes at the ends, like long tenpenny nails, the giant tortoises, which hissed like snakes as they waddled out of my path—wondering, aye, wondering at everything!Hearing the cooing of doves again, as I had done in the morning, I followed the sound, and presently came to a small grove of trees on an incline above the flat lava expanse, to the right of the head of the little bay where the ship was stranded.Here grass and a species of fern were growing abundantly around a pool of water, fed from a tiny rivulet that trickled down from the cliff above; and I had no sooner got under the shelter of the leafy branches than I was surrounded by a flock of the pretty grey doves whose gentle cooing I had heard.They were so tame that they came hopping on my head and outstretched hand, and I was sorry I had not brought some biscuit in my pocket, so that I might feed them.It was so calm and still in the mossy glade that I threw myself down on the grass, remaining until it got nearly dark, when I thought it about time to return to the ship, though loth to leave the doves, who cooed a soft farewell after me, which I continued to hear long after I lost sight of them.I got back to the shore safely without further adventure, until I was close under the ship, when I had a fearful fright from a huge tortoise that I ran against, and which seemed to spit in my face, it hissed at me so viciously.It must have been four feet high at least, and what its circumference was goodness only knows, for I could have laid down on its back with ease, as it was as broad as a table.I did not attempt to do this, however, but scrambled up the ship’s side as quickly as I could, and made my way to the galley, in order to get my tea, which Hiram had promised to keep hot for me.Outside the galley, though, I met the American, who frightened me even more than the big tortoise had done the minute before.“Say, Cholly,” he cried, his voice trembling with terror, “thet ghost of the nigger cook air hauntin’ us still; I seed him thaar jest now, a-sottin’ in the corner of the caboose an’ a-playin’ on his banjo, ez true ez I’m a livin’ sinner!”
“Yase, it vas me,” said Jan Steenbock, at once turning round and confronting the other, not in the least discomposed by his sudden appearance, and speaking in his usual slow, deliberate way. “I zays to ze leedel boys here you’s von big vool, and zo you vas!”
“Tarnation!” exclaimed Mr Flinders, stepping out on to the deck over the coaming of the booby hatch, and advancing in a threatening manner towards the Dane, who faced him still imperturbably. “Ye jest say thet agen, mister, an’ I’ll—”
The second-mate did not wait for him to finish his sentence.
“I zays you’s von big vool, the biggest vool of all ze vools I vas know,” he cried in his deep tones. Every word sounded distinctly and trenchantly, with a sort of sledge-hammer effect, that made the Yankee mate writhe again. “But, my vren’, you vas badder dan dat, vor you vas a droonken vool, and vas peril ze sheep and ze lifes of ze men aboord mit your voolness and ze rhum you vas trink below, mitout minting your duty. Oh, yase, you vas more bad dan one vool, Mister Vlinders; I vas vatch yous ze whole of ze voyage, and I spik vat I zink and vat I zees!”
“Jee-rusalem, ye white-livered Dutchman!” screamed out the other, now white with rage, and with his eyes glaring like those of a tiger, as he threw out his arms and rushed at Jan Steenbock, “I’ll give ye goss fur ev’ry lyin’ word ye hev sed agen me, ye bet. I’m a raal Down-East alligator, I am, ye durned furrin reptyle! Ye’ll wish ye wer never rizzed or came athwart my hawse, my hearty, afore I’ve plugged ye out an’ done with ye, bo, I guess; for I’m a regular screamer from Chicago, I am, an’ I’ll wipe the side-walk with ye, I will!”
This was ‘tall talk,’ as Hiram remarked, he and several others of the crew having turned out from their bunks by this time, roused by the altercation, all gathering together in the waist, full of interest and expectancy at witnessing such an unwonted treat as a free fight between their officers. But, the first-mate’s brave words, mouth them out as he did with great vehemence and force of expression, did not frighten the stalwart Dane, self-possessed and cool to the last, one whit.
No, not a bit of it.
Quietly putting himself into an easy position of defence, with his right arm guarding his face and body, Jan Steenbock, throwing out his left fist with a rapidity of movement quite unexpected in one of his slow, methodical demeanour, caught the blustering Yankee, as he advanced on him with hostile thoughts intent, full butt between the eyes, the blow being delivered straight from the shoulder and having sufficient momentum to have felled an ox.
At all events, it was enough for Mr Flinders.
Whack!
It resounded through the ship; and, uttering a half-stifled cry, the mate measured his length along the deck, the back of his head knocking against the planks with a sound that seemed to be the echo of the blow that brought him low, though softer and more like a thud—tempered and toned down, no doubt, by the subduing effect of distance!
This second assault on his thick skull, however, instead of stunning him, as might have been imagined, appeared to bring the mate back to consciousness, and roused him indeed to further action; for, scrambling up from his recumbent position, with his face showing unmistakable marks of the fray already, and his eyes not glaring quite so much, for they were beginning to close up, he got on his feet again, and squared up to Jan Steenbock, with his arms swinging round like those of a windmill.
He might just as well have tried to batter down a stone wall, under the circumstances, as endeavour to break down the other’s guard by any such feeble attempt, although both were pretty well matched as to size and strength.
Jan paid no attention to his roundabout and random onslaught, fending off his ill-directed blows easily enough with his right arm, which was well balanced, a little forward across his chest, protecting him from every effort of his enemy.
He just played with him for a minute, during which the Yankee mate, frothing with fury and uttering all sorts of terrible threats, that were as powerless to hurt Jan as his pointless attack, danced round his watchful antagonist like a pea on a hot griddle; and then, the Dane, tired at length of the fun, advancing his left, delivered another terrific drive from the shoulder that tumbled Mr Flinders backwards under the hood of the booby hatch, where he nearly floored Captain Snaggs, on his way up from the cuddy—the skipper having been also aroused by the tumult, the scene of the battle being almost immediately over his swinging cot, and the concussion of the first-mate’s head against the deck having awakened him before his time, which naturally did not tend to improve his temper.
“Hillo, ye durned Cape Cod sculpin!” he gasped out, Mr Flinders’ falling body having caught him full in the stomach and knocked all the wind out of him. “Thet’s a kinder pretty sorter way to come tumblin’ down the companion, like a mad bull in fly time! What’s all this infarnal muss about, hey?”
So shouting, between his pauses to take breath, the skipper shoved the mate before him out of the hatchway, repeating his question again when both had emerged on the poop. “Now, what’s this infarnal muss about, hey?”
Taken thus in front and rear Mr Flinders hardly knew what to say, especially as Jan Steenbock’s fist had landed on his mouth, loosening his teeth and making the blood flow, his countenance now presenting a pitiable spectacle, all battered and bleeding.
“The—the—thet durned skallawag thaar hit me, sirree,” he stammered and stuttered, spitting out a mouthful of blood and a couple of his front teeth, which had been driven down his throat almost by Jan Steenbock’s powerful blow. “He—he tried to—to take my life. He did so, cap. But, I guess I’ll be even with him, by thunder!—I’ll soon rip my bowie inter him, an’ settle the coon; I will so, you bet!”
Mr Flinders fumbled at his waistbelt as he spoke, trying to pull out the villainous-looking, dagger-hilted knife he always carried there, fixed in a sheath stuck inside the back of his trousers; but his rage and excitement making his hand tremble with nervous trepidation, Captain Snaggs was able to catch his arm in time and prevent his drawing the ugly weapon.
“No ye don’t, mister; no ye don’t, by thunder! so long’s I’m boss hyar,” cried the skipper. “Ef ye fits aboord my shep, I reckon ye’ll hev to fit fair, or else reckon up with Ephraim O Snaggs; yes, so, mister, thet’s so. I’ll hev no knifing aboord my ship!”
The captain appeared strangely forgetful of his own revolver practice in the case of poor Sam Jedfoot, and also of his having ran a-muck and nearly killed the helmsman and Morris Jones, the steward, thinking he was still in pursuit of the negro cook—which showed the murderous proclivities of his own mind, drunk or sober. However, all the same, he stopped the first-mate now from trying to use his knife; although the latter would probably have come off the worst if he had made another rush at Jan Steenbock, who stood on the defence, prepared for all emergencies.
“No, ye don’t. Stow it, I tell ye, or I’ll throttle ye, by thunder!” said the skipper, shaking Mr Flinders in his wiry grasp like a terrier would a rat; while, turning to Jan, he asked: “An’ what hev ye ter say about this darned muss—I s’pose it’s six o’ one an’ half-dozen o’ t’other, hey?”
“Misther Vlinders vas roosh to sthrike me, and I vas knock hims down,” said Jan Steenbock, in his laconic fashion. “He vas get oop and roosh at me vonce mores, and I vas knock hims down on ze deck again; and zen, you vas coom oop ze hatchway, and dat vas all.”
“But, confound ye!” cried the other, putting in his spoke, “you called me a fule fust!”
“So ye air a fule,” said Captain Snaggs, “an’ a tarnation fule, too, I reckon—the durndest fule I ever seed; fur the old barquey wouldn’t be lyin’ hyar whaar she is, I guess, but fur yer durned pigheadedness!”
“Zo I vas zay,” interposed Jan Steenbock. “I das tell hims it vas all bekos he vas one troonken vool dat we ras wreck, zir.”
“Ye never sed a truer word, mister,” replied the skipper, showing but little sympathy for Mr Flinders, whom he ordered to go below and wash his dirty face, now the ‘little unpleasantness’ between himself and his brother mate was over. “Still, hyar we air, I guess, an’ the best thing we ken do is ter try an’ get her off. Whaar d’yer reckon us to be, Mister Steenbock, hey?”
“On ze Galapagos,” answered the second-mate modestly, in no ways puffed up by his victory over the other or this appeal to his opinion by Captain Snaggs, who, like a good many more people in the world, worshipped success, and was the first to turn his back on his own champion when defeated. “I zink ze sheep vas shtruck on Abingdon Island. I vas know ze place, cap’n; oh, yase, joost zo!”
“Snakes an’ alligators, mister! Ye doan’t mean ter say ye hev been hyar afore, hey?”
“Ja zo, cap’n,” replied Jan Steenbock, in his slow and matter-of-fact way, taking he other’s expression literally; “but dere vas no shnake, dat I vas zee, and no alligator. Dere vas nozings but ze terrapin tortoise and ze lizards on ze rocks! I vas here one, doo, dree zummers ago, mit a drading schgooner vrom Guayaquil after a cargo of ze orchilla weed, dat fetch goot price in Equador. I vas sure it vas Abingdon Islant vrom dat tall big peak of montane on ze port side dat vas cal’t Cape Chalmers; vor, we vas anchor’t to looard ven we vas hunting for ze weed orchilla and ze toordles.”
“Oh, indeed,” said the skipper. “I’ll look at the chart an’ take the sun at noon, so to kalkerlate our bearin’s; but I guess ye’re not fur out, ez I telled thet dodrotted fule of a Flinders we’d be safe ter run foul o’ the cussed Galapagos if we kept thet course ez he steered! Howsomedever, let’s do sunthin’, an’ not stan’ idling hyar no longer. Forrad, thaar, ye lot o’ star-gazin’, fly-catchin’ lazy lubbers! make it eight bells an’ call the watch to sluice down decks! Ye doan’t think, me jokers, I’m goin’ to let ye strike work an’ break articles ’cause the shep’s aground, do ye? Not if I knows it, by thunder! Stir yer stumps an’ look smart, or some o’ ye’ll know the reason why!”
This made Tom Bullover and the other hands bustle about on the fo’c’s’le, although buckets had to be lowered over the side aft to wash down the decks with, so as to clear away all the volcano dust that was still lying about, for the head-pump could not be used as usual on account of the forepart of the ship being high and dry.
Meanwhile, Hiram and I busied ourselves in the galley, blowing up the fire and getting the coffee ready for breakfast, so that ere long things began to look better.
The sun by this time was more than half-way up overhead, but as a steady south-west breeze was blowing in still from the sea right across our quarter, for the ship was lying on the sand with her bowsprit pointing north by west, the temperature was by no means so hot as might have been expected from the fact of our being so close to the Equator; and so, after our morning meal was over, the skipper had all hands piped to lighten the vessel, in order to prepare her for our going afloat again.
Captain Snaggs took the precaution, however, of getting out anchors ahead and astern, so as to secure her in her present position, so that no sudden shift of wind or rise of the tide might jeopardise matters before everything was ready for heaving her off, the sheet and starboard bower being laid out in seven-fathom water, some fifty yards aft of the rudder post, in a direct line with the keel, so that there should be as little difficulty as possible in kedging her. These anchors were carried out to sea by a gang of men in the jolly-boat, which was let down amidships just where we were awash, by a whip and tackle rigged up between the main and crossjack yards for the purpose.
By the time this was done, from the absence of any shadow cast by the sun, which was high over our mastheads, it was evidently close on to noon; so, the skipper brought his sextant and a big chart he had of the Pacific on deck, spreading the latter over the cuddy skylight, while he yelled out to the dilapidated Mr Flinders, who was repairing damages below, to watch the chronometer and mark the hour when he sang out.
Captain Snaggs squinted through the eye-glass of his instrument for a bit with the sextant raised aloft, as if he were trying to stare old Sol out of countenance.
“Stop!” he sang out in a voice of thunder. “Stop!”
Then he took another observation, followed by a second stentorian shout of “Stop!”
A pause ensued, and then he roared below to Mr Flinders, asking him what he made it, the feeble voice of the first-mate giving him in return the Greenwich time as certified by the chronometer; when after a longish calculation and measuring of distances on the chart, with a pair of compasses and the parallel ruler, Captain Snaggs gave his decision in an oracular manner, with much wagging of his goatee beard.
“I guess yo’re about right this journey, Mister Steenbock,” he said, holding up the chart for the other’s inspection. “I kalkelate we’re jest in latitood 0 degrees 32 minutes north, an’ longitood 90 degrees 45 minutes west—pretty nigh hyar, ye see, whaar my finger is on this durned spec, due north’ard of the Galapagos group on the Equator. This chart o’ mine, though, don’t give no further perticklers, so I reckon it must be Abingdon Island, ez ye says, ez thet’s the furthest north, barrin’ Culpepper Island, which is marked hyar, I see, to the nor’-west, an’ must be more’n fifty leagues, I guess, away.”
“Joost zo,” replied Jan Steenbock, mildly complacent at his triumph. “I vas zink zo, and I zays vat I zink!”
The point being thus satisfactorily settled, the men had their dinner, which Hiram and I had cooked in the galley while the anchors were being got out and the skipper was taking his observation of the sun; and then, after seeing that everything was snug in the caboose, I was just about sneaking over the side to explore the strange island and inspect more closely the curious animals I had noticed, when Captain Snaggs saw me from the poop and put the stopper on my little excursion.
“None o’ y’r skulking my loblolly b’y!” he shouted out. “Jest ye lay aloft an’ send down the mizzen-royal. This air no time fur skylarkin’ an’ jerymanderin’. We wants all hands at work.”
With that, I had, instead of enjoying myself ashore as I had hoped, to mount up the rigging and help the starboard watch in unbending the sails, which, when they reached the deck, were rolled up by the other watch on duty below, and lowered to the beach over the side, where they were stowed in a heap on the sand above high-water mark.
The lighter spars were next sent down, and then the upper and lower yards by the aid of strong purchases, all being similarly placed ashore, with the ropes coiled up as they were loosed from their blocks and fastenings aloft; so, by the time sunset came the ship was almost a sheer hulk, only her masts and standing rigging remaining.
Poor old thing, she was utterly transformed, lying high and dry there, with all her top hamper gone, and shorn of all her fair proportions!
I noticed this when I came down from aloft, theDenver Citylooking so queer from the deck, with her bare poles sticking up, like monuments erected to her past greatness; but, although I was tired enough with all the jobs I had been on, unreeling ropes, and knotting, and splicing, and hauling, till I hardly knew whether I stood on my head or my heels, I was not too tired to take advantage of the kind offer Hiram made me when I went into the galley to help get the men’s tea ready.
“Ye ken skip, Cholly, an’ hev a lark ashore, ef ye hev a mind to,” said he; “I’ll look arter the coppers.”
Didn’t I ‘skip,’ that’s all.
I was down the sides in a brace of shakes, and soon wandering at my own sweet will about the beach, wondering at everything I saw—the lava bed above the sand, the tall, many-armed cactus plants, with their fleshy fingers and spikes at the ends, like long tenpenny nails, the giant tortoises, which hissed like snakes as they waddled out of my path—wondering, aye, wondering at everything!
Hearing the cooing of doves again, as I had done in the morning, I followed the sound, and presently came to a small grove of trees on an incline above the flat lava expanse, to the right of the head of the little bay where the ship was stranded.
Here grass and a species of fern were growing abundantly around a pool of water, fed from a tiny rivulet that trickled down from the cliff above; and I had no sooner got under the shelter of the leafy branches than I was surrounded by a flock of the pretty grey doves whose gentle cooing I had heard.
They were so tame that they came hopping on my head and outstretched hand, and I was sorry I had not brought some biscuit in my pocket, so that I might feed them.
It was so calm and still in the mossy glade that I threw myself down on the grass, remaining until it got nearly dark, when I thought it about time to return to the ship, though loth to leave the doves, who cooed a soft farewell after me, which I continued to hear long after I lost sight of them.
I got back to the shore safely without further adventure, until I was close under the ship, when I had a fearful fright from a huge tortoise that I ran against, and which seemed to spit in my face, it hissed at me so viciously.
It must have been four feet high at least, and what its circumference was goodness only knows, for I could have laid down on its back with ease, as it was as broad as a table.
I did not attempt to do this, however, but scrambled up the ship’s side as quickly as I could, and made my way to the galley, in order to get my tea, which Hiram had promised to keep hot for me.
Outside the galley, though, I met the American, who frightened me even more than the big tortoise had done the minute before.
“Say, Cholly,” he cried, his voice trembling with terror, “thet ghost of the nigger cook air hauntin’ us still; I seed him thaar jest now, a-sottin’ in the corner of the caboose an’ a-playin’ on his banjo, ez true ez I’m a livin’ sinner!”
Chapter Twelve.The Golden Madonna.“My goodness! you don’t mean that, Hiram?” I exclaimed, seeing from his earnest manner that he was not trying to hoax me, but stating what he really believed to be a fact. “When was it that you saw the ghost?”“Jest on sundown, Cholly, arter the men hed thaar tea an’ cleared out, the whole bilin’ ov ’em, skipper an’ all, goin’ ashore, like ez ye did, sonny, afore ’em, to prospect the country an’ look at the big turtle an’ other streenge varmint. Thaar warn’t a soul left aboard but thet brute Flinders an’ myself; an’ he wer so basted by the lickin’ ez Jan Steenbock giv him thet he wer lyin’ down in the cabin an’ pizenin’ hisself with rum to mend matters. But, I wer thet dead beat, with shiftin’ gear an’ sendin’ down yards, thet I wer fit fur nuthin’ but ter lean over the gangway an’ smoke a pipe afore turnin’ in, fur I wer mighty tired out, I wer!”“You must have been, Hiram,” said I, “for, I’m sure I was, and am so still.”“Yes, I wer dead beat, an’ thaar I rested agen the gangway, smokin’ an’ lookin’ at the chaps that wer a-skylarkin’ with a big turtle they had capsized on ter his back, so ez he couldn’t make tracks; when all at oncest I thort o’ the galley fire a-goin’ out an’ yer tea, Cholly, ez I promist to keep bilin’, an’ so I made back fur the caboose. It wer then close on dark, an’ a sorter fog beginnin’ to spring from seaward afore the land breeze riz an’ blew it orf.”“And then,” I put in, on his pausing at this point, hanging on his words intently, “what happened then?”“Lord sakes! Cholly, it kinder makes the creeps come over me to tell you,” he replied, with a shudder, while his voice fell impressively. “I wer jest nigh the galley when I heerd a twang on the banjo, same ez poor old Sam used ter giv’ the durned thin’ afore he began a-playin’ on it—a sorter loudish twang, as if he gripped all the strings at oncet; an’ then, ther’ come a softer sort o’ toonfal ‘pink-a-pink-a-pong, pong,’ an’ I guess I heerd a wheezy cough, ez if the blessed old nigger wer clarin’ his throat fur to sing—I did, so!”“Goodness gracious, Hiram!” I ejaculated, breathless with expectation, “you must have been frightened!”“I wer so,” he replied—“I wer so skeart thet I didn’t know what ter dew; but, thinks I, let’s see if anythin’s thaar; an’ so I jest look’t round the corner o’ the galley through the half-door, an’, b’y, thaar I seed Sam a-sottin’, ez I sed, an’ a-playin’ his banjo ez nat’rel ez ever wer!”“But the banjo wasn’t there last night,” I interposed here. “I looked for it almost as soon as we heard the sound of it being played at the time of the earthquake, and I couldn’t see it hanging up over the door where Tom Bullover, you remember, pointed it out to us.”“Wa-all, all I ken say is thet I seed the ghostess with the durned thin’ thaar in his grip. I didn’t wait fur to see no more, I can tell ye, Cholly!”“What did you do?”“I jest made tracks for the fo’c’s’le, an’ turned inter my bunk, I wer so skeart, till the skipper an’ the rest o’ the hands came aboard ag’in, when I comed out an’ stood hyar a-waitin’ fur ye. I ain’t seed Tom Bullover yet; so ye’re the fust I hev told o’ the sperrit hauntin’ us agen, Cholly.”“Do you think it’s gone yet?” I asked; “perhaps it is still there.”“I dunno,” he replied. “P’raps ye’d best go fur to see. I’m jiggered if I will!”I hesitated at this challenge; it was more than I bargained for.“It’s all dark now,” I said, glancing towards the galley, from which no gleam came, as usual, across the deck, as was generally the case at night-time; “I suppose the fire has gone out?”“’S’pose it air,” answered Hiram; “guess it’s about time it wer, b’y, considerin’ I wer jest a-going fur to make it up when I seed Sam. I reckon, though, if ye hev a mind fur to look in, ye can get a lantern aft from the stooard. I seed him a-buzzin’ round the poop jest now, fur he hailed me ez he poked his long jib-boom of a nose up the companion; but, I didn’t take no notice o’ the cuss, fur I wer outer sorts like, feelin’ right down chawed up!”“All right,” said I, anxious to display my courage before Hiram, his fright somehow or other emboldening me. “I will get a lantern at once and go into the galley.”So saying, I went along the deck aft, passing into the cuddy by the door under the break of the poop, and there I found Morris Jones, the steward, in the pantry.He was putting a decanter and glass on a tray for the captain, who was sitting in the cabin, preparing for a jollification after his exertions of the day; for he had returned in high glee from his inspection of the ship’s position with Jan Steenbock, whom he took with him to explain the different points of land and the anchorage.Jan Steenbock was just leaving the skipper as I entered, refusing, as I surmised from the conversation, his pressing invitation to have a parting drink—a sign of great cordiality with him.“Wa-all, hev yer own way, but a drop o’ good rum hurts nary a one, ez I ken see,” I heard Captain Snaggs say. “Good-night, Mister Steenbock. I guess we’ll set to work in airnest ter-morrer, an’ see about gettin’ the cargy out to lighten her; an’ then, I reckon, mister, we’ll try y’r dodge o’ diggin’ a dock under her.”“Yase, dat vas goot,” said the Dane, in his deep voice, in answer. “We will dig oop the zand vrom her kil: an’ zen, she vill vloat, if dere vas no leaks an’ she vas not hoort her back by taking ze groond.”“Jest so,” replied the skipper; and Morris Jones having gone into the cabin with the glasses and water on his tray, I heard a gurgling sound, as if Captain Snaggs was pouring out some of his favourite liquor and gulping it down. “Ah, I feel right chunky arter thet, I guess! Yes, Mister Steenbock, we’ll float her right off; fur, I don’t think she’s started a plank in her; an’ if we shore her up properly we ken dig the sand from under her, ez ye sez, an’ then she’ll go off ez right ez a clam, when we brings a warp round the capstan from the ankers astern.”“Ja zo,” agreed Jan Steenbock. “We vill wait and zee.”“Guess not,” retorted the skipper. “We’ll dew better, we’ll work and try, me joker, an’ dew thet right away smart ter-morrer!”Captain Snaggs sniggered at this, as if he thought it a joke; and then, I could hear Jan Steenbock wish him good-night, leaving him to his rum and the companionship of Mr Flinders—who must have smelt the liquor, for I caught his voice muttering something about being ‘durned dry,’ but I did not listen any longer, looking out for the steward, who presently followed Jan Steenbock out of the cabin.“Well, younker, what d’ye want?” Morris Jones asked me, when he came up to where I was still standing alongside his pantry. “I didn’t have time to speak to ye afore. What is it?”“I want a lantern,” said I. “The galley fire’s gone out.”“All right, here you are, you can take this,” he replied, handing me one he had lit. “Any more ghostesses about forrud? That blessed nigger’s sperrit oughter go ashore, now we’ve come to this outlandish place, and leave us alone!”“You’d better not joke about it,” I said solemnly. “Hiram has seen something awful to-night.”“What d’ye mean?” he cried, turning white in a moment, as I could see by the light of the lantern, and all his braggadocio vanishing. “What d’ye mean?”“Only not to halloo too loud till you’re out of the wood,” said I, going off forwards. “Hiram has seen Sam’s ghost again, that’s all!”I felt all the more encouraged by this little passage of arms with the funky Welshman; so, I marched up to the galley door as brave as brass, holding out, though, the lantern in front of me, to light up the place, Hiram, ashamed of his own fears, coming up close behind, and looking in over my shoulder.Neither of us, though, saw any cause for alarm, for there was no one there; and I was inclined to believe that Hiram had fallen asleep and dreamt the yarn he told me, the more especially as there was a strong smell of tobacco about the place, as if some one had been there recently smoking.The American, however, was indignant at the bare suggestion of this.“What d’yer take me fur, Cholly,” he said. “I tell ye I seed him a-sottin’ down thaar in thet corner, an’ heerd the banjo ez plain ez if it wer a-playin’ now! Look at the fire, too; ain’t that streenge? It wer jest a-staggerin’ out when I comed hyar fur to put on some more wood to make it burn up, an’ thaar it air now, ez if some one hez jest been a-lightin’ on it!”It was as he said. The fire seemed to have been fresh lit, for there was even a piece of smouldering paper in the stoke hole.It was certainly most mysterious, if Hiram had not done it, which he angrily asserted he had not, quite annoyed at my doubting his word.While I was debating the point with him, Tom Bullover appeared at the door, with his usual cheerful grin.“Hullo!” cried he; “what’s the row between you two?”Thereupon Hiram and I both spoke at once, he telling his version of the story and I mine.“Well, don’t let such foolish nonsense make you ill friends,” said Tom, grinning. “I dare say you’re both right, if matters could only be explained—Hiram, in thinking he saw Sam’s ghost, and you, Charley, in believing he dreamt it all out of his head. As for the fire burning up, I can tell you all about that, for seeing it just at the last gasp, I stuck in a bit of paper and wood to light it, so as to be more cheerful. I likewise lit my own pipe arterwards, which fully accounts for what you fellows couldn’t understand.”“Thaar!” exclaimed Hiram triumphantly; “I tolled you so, Cholly.”“All right,” I retorted. “It’s just as I said, and there’s nothing mysterious about it.”Each of us remained of his own opinion, but Tom Bullover chaffed us out of all further argument, and we presently followed the example of the other hands, who were asleep snoring in the fo’c’s’le, and turned into our bunks; while Tom went aft to relieve Jan Steenbock as look-out, there being no necessity for all of the watch to be on deck, the ship being ashore, and safer even than if she had been at anchor.In the morning, I was roused up by the cooing doves again, and the very first man I met after turning out was Morris Jones, who looked seedy and tired out, as if he had been awake all night.“What’s the matter?” I asked him, as he came into the galley, where I was busy at my morning duty, getting the coppers filled for the men’s coffee, and poking up the fire, which still smouldered, for I had banked it, so as to keep it alight after I turned in. “Anything happened?”“You were right, Cholly, in tellin’ me not to holler till I was out of the wood last night,” he said solemnly. “I seed thet arterwards the same as Hiram!”“Saw what?”“The nigger’s ghost.”“Nonsense!” I cried, bursting out into a laugh, his face looked so woe-begone, while his body seemed shrunk, giving him the most dilapidated appearance. “You must have been taking some of the cap’en’s rum.”“None o’ your imperence, master Cholly,” said he, aiming a blow at my head, which I dexterously avoided. “I never touches none o’ the skipper’s ruin; I wouldn’t taste the nasty stuff now, after all I’ve seen it’s done. No, I tell you straight, b’y, I ain’t lying. I see Sam Jedfoot last night as ever was, jest soon arter you went away from the cuddy with the lantern.”“You did?”“Yes, I’ll take my davy on it. He comed right through the cabin, and walked past my pantry, stepping over the deck jest as if he was alive; and then I saw something like a flash o’ light’ing, and when I looked agen, being blinded at first, there he were a-floating in the air, going out o’ sight over the side.”“Did you go to see what had become of him?” I said jokingly, on hearing this. “Where did he make for when he got over the side?”“I didn’t look no more,” answered the steward, taking my inquiry in earnest. “I were too frightened.”“What did you do, then?”“I just stopped up there in my pantry all night, locking the door, so as to prevent no one from getting in. Aye, I kep’ two lights burning, to scare the ghost if he should come again; and theer I stop’t till daylight, when I heard you stirring, and comed here to speak to you, glad to see a human face agen, if only a beast of a b’y like you—far them sperrits do make a chap feel quar all over! Besides, too, the fear o’ seeing the blamed thing agen, I thought the skipper, who was drinking awful arter Jan Steenbock left, he and Flinders having a regular go in at the rum, might have another fit o’ the horrors, and bust out on me with his revolver. Lor, I ’ave ’ad a night on it, I can tell you!”“Poor fellow! wait and have a pan of coffee,” said I sympathisingly, pitying his condition and not minding his polite allusion to me as a ‘beast of a boy,’ which no doubt my manner provoked. “It will soon be ready.”“I will,” he replied, thoroughly beaten and speaking to me civilly for the first time. “Thank ye, kindly, Cholly!”By-and-by the crew turned out; and, after having their coffee, began again the same work they had been at the previous day of lightening the ship, Captain Snaggs superintending operations, and not looking a bit the worse for his drinking bout in which Morris Jones said he had spent the night with his kindred spirit, Mr Flinders.The scene on the beach all that day and the next was a busy one, all hands hard at it unloading theDenver City, preparatory to our trying to restore her to her native element, the sea—which latter rippled up along her dry timbers forward, as far as the mizzen-chains, the furthest point where she was aground, with a lisping sound, it seemed to me, as if wooing her to come back and float on its bosom again once more, as of yore!A great deal more had to be effected, however, before this could be accomplished, for a sort of dock, or trench, had to be dug out beneath the vessel’s keel, so as to bring the water beneath her and help to lift her off the sandbank where she was stranded; and this could not be done in a day, work we our hardest, despite the men taking shifts turn and turn about by watches at the task.Fortunately, while unloading the cargo, a lot of pickaxes were found amongst the miscellaneous assortment of ‘notions’ stowed in the main-hold; and these now came in handy, the hands learning to wield them just as if they had been born navvies, after a bit, under the experienced direction of Captain Snaggs, who said he had been a Californian miner during a spell he had ashore at one period of his life.On the third day of this labour, the dock was becoming perceptibly deep amidships and the water beginning to ooze through the sand; when, all at once, Tom Bullover, who was wielding a pick like the rest, struck the point of it against something which gave out a clear metallic ring.After a dig or two more, he excavated the object, which, preserved in the lava that lay beneath the sand and shells on the beach, was found to be an image of the Virgin, such as you see in Roman Catholic countries abroad. It was of a bright yellow colour and shining, as if just turned out of a jeweller’s shop.It was a golden Madonna!
“My goodness! you don’t mean that, Hiram?” I exclaimed, seeing from his earnest manner that he was not trying to hoax me, but stating what he really believed to be a fact. “When was it that you saw the ghost?”
“Jest on sundown, Cholly, arter the men hed thaar tea an’ cleared out, the whole bilin’ ov ’em, skipper an’ all, goin’ ashore, like ez ye did, sonny, afore ’em, to prospect the country an’ look at the big turtle an’ other streenge varmint. Thaar warn’t a soul left aboard but thet brute Flinders an’ myself; an’ he wer so basted by the lickin’ ez Jan Steenbock giv him thet he wer lyin’ down in the cabin an’ pizenin’ hisself with rum to mend matters. But, I wer thet dead beat, with shiftin’ gear an’ sendin’ down yards, thet I wer fit fur nuthin’ but ter lean over the gangway an’ smoke a pipe afore turnin’ in, fur I wer mighty tired out, I wer!”
“You must have been, Hiram,” said I, “for, I’m sure I was, and am so still.”
“Yes, I wer dead beat, an’ thaar I rested agen the gangway, smokin’ an’ lookin’ at the chaps that wer a-skylarkin’ with a big turtle they had capsized on ter his back, so ez he couldn’t make tracks; when all at oncest I thort o’ the galley fire a-goin’ out an’ yer tea, Cholly, ez I promist to keep bilin’, an’ so I made back fur the caboose. It wer then close on dark, an’ a sorter fog beginnin’ to spring from seaward afore the land breeze riz an’ blew it orf.”
“And then,” I put in, on his pausing at this point, hanging on his words intently, “what happened then?”
“Lord sakes! Cholly, it kinder makes the creeps come over me to tell you,” he replied, with a shudder, while his voice fell impressively. “I wer jest nigh the galley when I heerd a twang on the banjo, same ez poor old Sam used ter giv’ the durned thin’ afore he began a-playin’ on it—a sorter loudish twang, as if he gripped all the strings at oncet; an’ then, ther’ come a softer sort o’ toonfal ‘pink-a-pink-a-pong, pong,’ an’ I guess I heerd a wheezy cough, ez if the blessed old nigger wer clarin’ his throat fur to sing—I did, so!”
“Goodness gracious, Hiram!” I ejaculated, breathless with expectation, “you must have been frightened!”
“I wer so,” he replied—“I wer so skeart thet I didn’t know what ter dew; but, thinks I, let’s see if anythin’s thaar; an’ so I jest look’t round the corner o’ the galley through the half-door, an’, b’y, thaar I seed Sam a-sottin’, ez I sed, an’ a-playin’ his banjo ez nat’rel ez ever wer!”
“But the banjo wasn’t there last night,” I interposed here. “I looked for it almost as soon as we heard the sound of it being played at the time of the earthquake, and I couldn’t see it hanging up over the door where Tom Bullover, you remember, pointed it out to us.”
“Wa-all, all I ken say is thet I seed the ghostess with the durned thin’ thaar in his grip. I didn’t wait fur to see no more, I can tell ye, Cholly!”
“What did you do?”
“I jest made tracks for the fo’c’s’le, an’ turned inter my bunk, I wer so skeart, till the skipper an’ the rest o’ the hands came aboard ag’in, when I comed out an’ stood hyar a-waitin’ fur ye. I ain’t seed Tom Bullover yet; so ye’re the fust I hev told o’ the sperrit hauntin’ us agen, Cholly.”
“Do you think it’s gone yet?” I asked; “perhaps it is still there.”
“I dunno,” he replied. “P’raps ye’d best go fur to see. I’m jiggered if I will!”
I hesitated at this challenge; it was more than I bargained for.
“It’s all dark now,” I said, glancing towards the galley, from which no gleam came, as usual, across the deck, as was generally the case at night-time; “I suppose the fire has gone out?”
“’S’pose it air,” answered Hiram; “guess it’s about time it wer, b’y, considerin’ I wer jest a-going fur to make it up when I seed Sam. I reckon, though, if ye hev a mind fur to look in, ye can get a lantern aft from the stooard. I seed him a-buzzin’ round the poop jest now, fur he hailed me ez he poked his long jib-boom of a nose up the companion; but, I didn’t take no notice o’ the cuss, fur I wer outer sorts like, feelin’ right down chawed up!”
“All right,” said I, anxious to display my courage before Hiram, his fright somehow or other emboldening me. “I will get a lantern at once and go into the galley.”
So saying, I went along the deck aft, passing into the cuddy by the door under the break of the poop, and there I found Morris Jones, the steward, in the pantry.
He was putting a decanter and glass on a tray for the captain, who was sitting in the cabin, preparing for a jollification after his exertions of the day; for he had returned in high glee from his inspection of the ship’s position with Jan Steenbock, whom he took with him to explain the different points of land and the anchorage.
Jan Steenbock was just leaving the skipper as I entered, refusing, as I surmised from the conversation, his pressing invitation to have a parting drink—a sign of great cordiality with him.
“Wa-all, hev yer own way, but a drop o’ good rum hurts nary a one, ez I ken see,” I heard Captain Snaggs say. “Good-night, Mister Steenbock. I guess we’ll set to work in airnest ter-morrer, an’ see about gettin’ the cargy out to lighten her; an’ then, I reckon, mister, we’ll try y’r dodge o’ diggin’ a dock under her.”
“Yase, dat vas goot,” said the Dane, in his deep voice, in answer. “We will dig oop the zand vrom her kil: an’ zen, she vill vloat, if dere vas no leaks an’ she vas not hoort her back by taking ze groond.”
“Jest so,” replied the skipper; and Morris Jones having gone into the cabin with the glasses and water on his tray, I heard a gurgling sound, as if Captain Snaggs was pouring out some of his favourite liquor and gulping it down. “Ah, I feel right chunky arter thet, I guess! Yes, Mister Steenbock, we’ll float her right off; fur, I don’t think she’s started a plank in her; an’ if we shore her up properly we ken dig the sand from under her, ez ye sez, an’ then she’ll go off ez right ez a clam, when we brings a warp round the capstan from the ankers astern.”
“Ja zo,” agreed Jan Steenbock. “We vill wait and zee.”
“Guess not,” retorted the skipper. “We’ll dew better, we’ll work and try, me joker, an’ dew thet right away smart ter-morrer!”
Captain Snaggs sniggered at this, as if he thought it a joke; and then, I could hear Jan Steenbock wish him good-night, leaving him to his rum and the companionship of Mr Flinders—who must have smelt the liquor, for I caught his voice muttering something about being ‘durned dry,’ but I did not listen any longer, looking out for the steward, who presently followed Jan Steenbock out of the cabin.
“Well, younker, what d’ye want?” Morris Jones asked me, when he came up to where I was still standing alongside his pantry. “I didn’t have time to speak to ye afore. What is it?”
“I want a lantern,” said I. “The galley fire’s gone out.”
“All right, here you are, you can take this,” he replied, handing me one he had lit. “Any more ghostesses about forrud? That blessed nigger’s sperrit oughter go ashore, now we’ve come to this outlandish place, and leave us alone!”
“You’d better not joke about it,” I said solemnly. “Hiram has seen something awful to-night.”
“What d’ye mean?” he cried, turning white in a moment, as I could see by the light of the lantern, and all his braggadocio vanishing. “What d’ye mean?”
“Only not to halloo too loud till you’re out of the wood,” said I, going off forwards. “Hiram has seen Sam’s ghost again, that’s all!”
I felt all the more encouraged by this little passage of arms with the funky Welshman; so, I marched up to the galley door as brave as brass, holding out, though, the lantern in front of me, to light up the place, Hiram, ashamed of his own fears, coming up close behind, and looking in over my shoulder.
Neither of us, though, saw any cause for alarm, for there was no one there; and I was inclined to believe that Hiram had fallen asleep and dreamt the yarn he told me, the more especially as there was a strong smell of tobacco about the place, as if some one had been there recently smoking.
The American, however, was indignant at the bare suggestion of this.
“What d’yer take me fur, Cholly,” he said. “I tell ye I seed him a-sottin’ down thaar in thet corner, an’ heerd the banjo ez plain ez if it wer a-playin’ now! Look at the fire, too; ain’t that streenge? It wer jest a-staggerin’ out when I comed hyar fur to put on some more wood to make it burn up, an’ thaar it air now, ez if some one hez jest been a-lightin’ on it!”
It was as he said. The fire seemed to have been fresh lit, for there was even a piece of smouldering paper in the stoke hole.
It was certainly most mysterious, if Hiram had not done it, which he angrily asserted he had not, quite annoyed at my doubting his word.
While I was debating the point with him, Tom Bullover appeared at the door, with his usual cheerful grin.
“Hullo!” cried he; “what’s the row between you two?”
Thereupon Hiram and I both spoke at once, he telling his version of the story and I mine.
“Well, don’t let such foolish nonsense make you ill friends,” said Tom, grinning. “I dare say you’re both right, if matters could only be explained—Hiram, in thinking he saw Sam’s ghost, and you, Charley, in believing he dreamt it all out of his head. As for the fire burning up, I can tell you all about that, for seeing it just at the last gasp, I stuck in a bit of paper and wood to light it, so as to be more cheerful. I likewise lit my own pipe arterwards, which fully accounts for what you fellows couldn’t understand.”
“Thaar!” exclaimed Hiram triumphantly; “I tolled you so, Cholly.”
“All right,” I retorted. “It’s just as I said, and there’s nothing mysterious about it.”
Each of us remained of his own opinion, but Tom Bullover chaffed us out of all further argument, and we presently followed the example of the other hands, who were asleep snoring in the fo’c’s’le, and turned into our bunks; while Tom went aft to relieve Jan Steenbock as look-out, there being no necessity for all of the watch to be on deck, the ship being ashore, and safer even than if she had been at anchor.
In the morning, I was roused up by the cooing doves again, and the very first man I met after turning out was Morris Jones, who looked seedy and tired out, as if he had been awake all night.
“What’s the matter?” I asked him, as he came into the galley, where I was busy at my morning duty, getting the coppers filled for the men’s coffee, and poking up the fire, which still smouldered, for I had banked it, so as to keep it alight after I turned in. “Anything happened?”
“You were right, Cholly, in tellin’ me not to holler till I was out of the wood last night,” he said solemnly. “I seed thet arterwards the same as Hiram!”
“Saw what?”
“The nigger’s ghost.”
“Nonsense!” I cried, bursting out into a laugh, his face looked so woe-begone, while his body seemed shrunk, giving him the most dilapidated appearance. “You must have been taking some of the cap’en’s rum.”
“None o’ your imperence, master Cholly,” said he, aiming a blow at my head, which I dexterously avoided. “I never touches none o’ the skipper’s ruin; I wouldn’t taste the nasty stuff now, after all I’ve seen it’s done. No, I tell you straight, b’y, I ain’t lying. I see Sam Jedfoot last night as ever was, jest soon arter you went away from the cuddy with the lantern.”
“You did?”
“Yes, I’ll take my davy on it. He comed right through the cabin, and walked past my pantry, stepping over the deck jest as if he was alive; and then I saw something like a flash o’ light’ing, and when I looked agen, being blinded at first, there he were a-floating in the air, going out o’ sight over the side.”
“Did you go to see what had become of him?” I said jokingly, on hearing this. “Where did he make for when he got over the side?”
“I didn’t look no more,” answered the steward, taking my inquiry in earnest. “I were too frightened.”
“What did you do, then?”
“I just stopped up there in my pantry all night, locking the door, so as to prevent no one from getting in. Aye, I kep’ two lights burning, to scare the ghost if he should come again; and theer I stop’t till daylight, when I heard you stirring, and comed here to speak to you, glad to see a human face agen, if only a beast of a b’y like you—far them sperrits do make a chap feel quar all over! Besides, too, the fear o’ seeing the blamed thing agen, I thought the skipper, who was drinking awful arter Jan Steenbock left, he and Flinders having a regular go in at the rum, might have another fit o’ the horrors, and bust out on me with his revolver. Lor, I ’ave ’ad a night on it, I can tell you!”
“Poor fellow! wait and have a pan of coffee,” said I sympathisingly, pitying his condition and not minding his polite allusion to me as a ‘beast of a boy,’ which no doubt my manner provoked. “It will soon be ready.”
“I will,” he replied, thoroughly beaten and speaking to me civilly for the first time. “Thank ye, kindly, Cholly!”
By-and-by the crew turned out; and, after having their coffee, began again the same work they had been at the previous day of lightening the ship, Captain Snaggs superintending operations, and not looking a bit the worse for his drinking bout in which Morris Jones said he had spent the night with his kindred spirit, Mr Flinders.
The scene on the beach all that day and the next was a busy one, all hands hard at it unloading theDenver City, preparatory to our trying to restore her to her native element, the sea—which latter rippled up along her dry timbers forward, as far as the mizzen-chains, the furthest point where she was aground, with a lisping sound, it seemed to me, as if wooing her to come back and float on its bosom again once more, as of yore!
A great deal more had to be effected, however, before this could be accomplished, for a sort of dock, or trench, had to be dug out beneath the vessel’s keel, so as to bring the water beneath her and help to lift her off the sandbank where she was stranded; and this could not be done in a day, work we our hardest, despite the men taking shifts turn and turn about by watches at the task.
Fortunately, while unloading the cargo, a lot of pickaxes were found amongst the miscellaneous assortment of ‘notions’ stowed in the main-hold; and these now came in handy, the hands learning to wield them just as if they had been born navvies, after a bit, under the experienced direction of Captain Snaggs, who said he had been a Californian miner during a spell he had ashore at one period of his life.
On the third day of this labour, the dock was becoming perceptibly deep amidships and the water beginning to ooze through the sand; when, all at once, Tom Bullover, who was wielding a pick like the rest, struck the point of it against something which gave out a clear metallic ring.
After a dig or two more, he excavated the object, which, preserved in the lava that lay beneath the sand and shells on the beach, was found to be an image of the Virgin, such as you see in Roman Catholic countries abroad. It was of a bright yellow colour and shining, as if just turned out of a jeweller’s shop.
It was a golden Madonna!