"If you wanted to hit him you should have done it with your hand. But perhaps he would have been too much for you without a weapon," suggested the consul suavely.
"Not he," retorted Noyes incautiously.
Mr. Johnson looked at them both, and shrugged his shoulders.
"I believe he would lick you in a fair fight," he said with a slight sniff, and Noyes exploded.
"I could pound him to almighty smash in two minutes," he roared.
And the crowd began to see fun "sticking out a foot." They edged up closer and lost their shamefaced look.
"He could knock hell out of you," said one of them from behind, and the consul said:
"Hush, hush!"
Then he turned to Hans.
"Could he lick you, my man?"
"Not mooch," said Hans defiantly, and a subdued cheer rose from the men behind.
"Do you hear that, Mr. Noyes?" asked the consul. "Oh yes, you hear it. Well, it's all highly irregular, of course, but you understand you did wrong to hit him with a telescope, or with anything for the matter of that, and as the ship seems to have been anything but a comfortable one, I suggest that you apologise to this man at any rate, and pay him off."
"Ya, ya," said Hans, who at any rate understood the last three words.
"I apologise?" gasped Noyes. "By God, I'll lick him first and do that after! Apologise!"
"Either that, or I shall back him up in proceeding against you. Unless you would like to settle it with him now in my courtyard, with a couple of pairs of boxing gloves," said Mr. Johnson persuasively, and the crowd behind hummed applause.
"Lick him," said Bragg, "and lick him good."
He was not anxious for the job himself, but was as eager to see the scrap as the consul. It is so seldom that an officer gets a chance of seeing a real fight, and besides, he did not love Noyes at all.
And inside of two minutes the inner court saw the skipper of theState of Oregonand the man from Abo stripped to their waists and singlets.
"Pick your own seconds," said the consul gleefully, "and I'll be referee and timekeeper."
He forgot there was such a thing as the Foreign Office; but he did not forget some of the habits and customs of Western America.
"There's to be no biting, or gouging or kicking," he said, "and when a man goes down he'll have ten seconds to get up in."
The next moment Noyes sailed in. He was not a bad fighter; he could hit hard at any rate, and sometimes stopped a blow. His previous acquaintance with Hans's head led him to go for his body, and that was perhaps a little in his favour, for the Finn was all abroad all the time. At first Hans hit so slowly that when he first got there Noyes was gone, but he gradually got a little quicker. When I was eleven stone weight I used sometimes to box with a man who weighed seventeen. In the first round I used to hit him when and where I pleased; in the second I had to look out; in the third he used to get there once and finish me for the day. Like Hans, he grew quicker as he grew warmer, and yet Hans never touched the skipper at all in the first round. He was knocked all over the place, and to any outsider it looked a thousand to one on Authority. But the odd thing was that Hans's ribs seemed as hard as his head, and his wind was invulnerable. Twice he went down, but he rose quick enough, and when time was called no one puffed but the skipper.
In the second round they clinched, and when the consul called on them to break away Hans fairly threw Noyes from him.
"He'll lick him yet," said Johnson, and now Noyes had to defend himself. Any one of Hans's blows would have killed a cow if it had fairly landed. The skipper, half in despair, hit at his opponent's head, and got there. He stopped Hans, but was jarred to the shoulder. When he recovered he landed, and Hans went down to rise again like a fives ball on a hard court, and though Noyes jabbed him again and again straight in the face, he never left any mark or blood behind him. And every blow of the Finn's came nearer, quicker, more fiercely. Time was called in time to save the captain.
"I believe he'll do me," said Noyes.
"I believe it, too," said Bragg. It was not an encouraging remark to get from one's second, and Noyes felt hurt. While he was sitting on Bragg's knee Hans was walking round feeling his arms and talking.
"Ya, ya, I lick him goot," he said. "I lick him goot."
And now he was warm and like a flail. Both arms were equally good; he went at his man round arm, and missed him ten times by a mere shave. In the middle of the round Noyes, who knew he was going, worked his glove off in a close rally, and before the consul could intervene he struck Hans full in the face with his bare fist. It was a timed blow that ought to have stopped a rhinoceros, and Hans threw his head up, as the consul jumped in.
"Nein, nein," cried Hans, "take de oder off. I fight him so. I fight goot now."
And so he did, for though the glove was put on again, there was no sign of his having been hit, and Noyes's right hand was useless. A left-hander finished it, and Noyes went off his feet. When he came to he was tired and weary and found himself in the hospital with a bandaged jaw.
"I tellyouthere's always suthin' queer about a Finn," said the crowd. "It took brass to draw blood from him, now didn't it?"
And the man from Abo was paid off.
"I fights goot that day," he said, when he got his money, and the consul, who is now a magistrate at home, says there wasn't a bruise on him.
There are ships with good and evil reputations, independent of the men who own or sail them. Some, it would seem, had their keels laid on a lucky day, others were assuredly—
Built i' th' eclipse and rigged with curses dark.
Many have furrowed all the seas of ocean and have lost no lives, and have cost neither owner nor underwriters money. But some there are (and those who follow the sea will know them) which have never achieved a single passage without being nearly cast away, without killing or maiming men. For such a ship the very shoals themselves decrease in depth through the unlucky set of some abnormal tide: for them the 'trades' spring up far south and die in premature calm ten degrees from the Line. They are well built and highly classed, and yet spring leaks. Derelicts lie in wait for them: they are chased through every sea by cyclones and tornadoes. In them the luck of lucky men is finally of no avail: seamen fall from aloft in calms; the gear gives without notice; stores rot in spite of care. They break the heart of all who have to do with them: in them blood is suddenly spilt: in them strong men waste and die.
Such a ship was thePandora, and, as she lay off Sandridge, at anchor in Hobson's Bay, there was not a sailorman in Australia who would have shipped in her from choice.
"I've heerd the skipper of one ship I was in talk about the nature of vessels," said Jack Marchmont, as he sat with his mate on the end of the pier, "andheallowed that ships was like men, launched with nat'ral dispositions. He talked a lot of scientific guff about deviation, and what he said was as ships had this or that deviation all according how their heads was p'inted on the stocks. If she p'inted sou-west, she played quite a different game with the compass to what she would have done if she had laid nor'-east. And I believe him. ThePandoramust have p'inted straight for hell, Joe."
"She is a bad 'un, I own," said his mate, "but it ain't a matter of ch'ice. Ships is few, and men is plenty, and it's a case of 'John, get up and let Jack sit down' with you and me. If she was a wuss ship than she is, and a wetter (though this ain't a wetter), and if she killed as many as the plague, I ain't goin' to work Tom Cox's traverse ashore any more. And there ain't nobeerin the scuttle-butt neither, and Bailey looks at us as black as black. I'm goin' to ship," and Joe Rennet rose.
"I ain't got a farden to jingle of a tombstone," he said.
"Mark me," said Jack gloomily, "you'll never have no tombstone if we ships in thePandora. 'Tain't her way to run any man's relatives intothatexpense."
But Joe shrugged his shoulders.
"Mebbe this trip'll break her luck; and you've got to ship along. 'Cause why? We've on'y one chest atween the two of us. Cheer up, old son. Why, I'd ship in theLeander, and they say she killed and drownded seventy men in five years. Blow me, I've got to the p'int that I'd ship in a blooming diving-bell!"
And three days later the two men, with twelve others who were just as deep in debt to the boarding-house keepers, signed on for thePandora, bound for London. They went on board that very night. The mates kept a keen eye on them: they knew the ship's reputation and more than once men who had come on board at night had disappeared by the morning. The first few hours in any ship, as in any other kind of work, are the most trying, and the first sight of a damp and empty foc'sle is for ever discouraging. For all thePandora'scrowd from London had "skipped" in Melbourne.
"And right they was," said more than one of the new crowd, "for one of them was killed, and two was drowned, and another will walk lame for the rest of his life."
But when the sun came up over the low brown hills to the eastward, and the daylight danced upon the landlocked waters of the great bay, they turned to with more cheerful hearts. The summer had spent two of its golden months, but the sky was clear, and a warm north wind blew. The ship was clean, and yet not too clean. It did not suggest the interminable intolerable labour of an American ship, all brass and bright-work. And as the new crew hove up the anchor they found the windlass was no heart-breaker.
"Give it her, boys," said the mate, and they slapped the brakes up and down with a will.
"I reckon the crowd aft are pretty decent," said Joe, as he jumped up aloft to loosen the fore-topsail. "Oh, I dessay she ain't 'arf bad."
And as the crew allowed, there was little to complain of about the way thePandorawas found.
"She ain't like our last ship," was Joe's comment. "Every time she 'it a sea out o' the common she'd shake shearpoles off of 'er, as a dog shakes water."
But Jack Marchmont was not consoled.
"I ain't denyin' that the owners and the old man do their best," he said, "but if they rove silk gear and bent silk sails, they'd not alter the nature of her. I'll feel safe when I grinds gravel under my heels, and not till then."
They told each other dolorous tales of the ship when they ate, and in the second dog-watch, which was all their own. And yet the wind was fair and put them through Bass's Strait, and well to the south and east, day by day.
"It's too good to last," said Jack.
Aft much the same feeling existed, though no one knew it for'ard. Yet Captain Rayner was a melancholy man, and seemed very soft to those whom luck had ever sent to sea with American ship-masters. He had sailed three voyages in thePandoraand had read the burial service every passage. Once he had read it to the devouring sea as a grave, when five men had gone at once from the foc'sle head; but he never spoke of the ship and her ways, even if he always came on deck with the air of a man who expects bad news. Though he never knew it, his look at last got upon the men's nerves. But their nerve was shaken from the first; superstition had hold of them. They called him 'Jonah.'
"It's a black look out with such a skipper," said some, and though the evil history of thePandoraran far back beyond Rayner's time, they attributed her present ill-luck to him.
The mind of the seaman is a limited mind. He is a child, a creature of arrested development. The infinite sameness of the sea, its dull and at times appalling lack of interest, do not move him to growth. The romance of it is for those who know it not, or for those who pass beyond the borders of its great roads of travel. For the merchant seaman the ocean is a method of toil; only disaster or the fear of it gives it savour. And the work is the same for ever. They dwell on little things, are easily pleased, easily hurt. In such minds grows superstition, in such panic fears flourish if they are not held in a strong hand. Though both the mates were good men, they were young, and Rayner was weak.
The very fairness of the weather, though fair weather is common enough off the Horn in summer, got on the crew's minds, when they came in sight of the Diego Ramirez Islands and presently hauled up for the north.
"None of us ever passed these 'ere Daggarammarines in weather like this," they said, as they shook their heads. "Why, it might be a mill-pond!"
And when, three days later, a change of weather sent a south-west gale howling after them, they shook their heads again.
"Ah, she's goin' to get it now. This'll make up for it. Who's goin' first?"
They found out now what thePandoracould do to make their lives unhappy. She was both weatherly and fast, but her lines for'ard were such that she never rose to any sea she struck till green water poured over the top-gallant foc'sle two feet deep. She shipped one sea at midnight that ripped off the scuttle-hatch and poured solid water into the foc'sle that washed the men out of the lower bunks. The hatch went overboard, and it was morning before any one dared go on the foc'sle head to spike planks down in place of it. All night long a cataract poured down on them, and water spurted in through the plugged hawse pipes. Soon there was not a dry blanket in their den; steam rose from the wet-packed sleepers. It was 'all hands' at four bells in the middle watch, and they went on deck to shorten sail. Not a man wore oilskins; they had nothing to keep from getting wet. Even Joe, who was the most cheerful man for'ard, fell to growling.
"Call this a ship?" he said. "She's scared of the top of the sea and wants to dive so's to get out o' the wet. Stow the foresail, is it? I reckon the old man is goin' to heave her to while he can. He can't have much heart to do it with a fair wind."
And perhaps Rayner had little heart. But if he had little, the mate was cheery enough. He bellowed loudly, and the men jumped.
"Now then, haul taut the lifts," he roared. "That'll do. Weather clew-garner! Ease off the sheet a bit!"
They slacked away the tack and hauled up the weather-gear.
"Now then, lee-gear, and jump aloft and furl it."
The night was black and the wind heavy in increasing squalls. Even with the foresail hanging in the gear, and bellying out in great white bladders, she still cut the seas like a knife, and scooped the seas in over her head. Blankets and bags washed out on deck, for there was no door to the men's quarters, only a heavy canvas screen from the break of the foc'sle. And from aloft dull foam gleamed as thePandoradrove the seas asunder. The men sprang into the weather-rigging with the second mate leading. As he came to the futtock shrouds, he laid hold of the foremost shroud with his right hand, and jumped for the band of the yard-truss. His foot slipped and his hand-hold gave. He snatched with a yell at the top-gallant sheet leading through the top, but was too late to grasp and hold it.
"By God, thePandora'sluck," said the men in the rigging as they heard him reach the deck. And when the foresail was stowed and they went down they heard the man was dead. They found thePandoramade heavy weather still, when she was brought to the wind, and she only lay to decently when she was stripped to the goose-winged main-topsail. The men went into their wet and devastated den in gloomy silence.
"'Ere's a bloomin' pretty general average," said Joe, as he found his chest, which was also his chum's, staved in by the impact of an iron-bound one which had fetched away from its lashings. But no one growled, and no one answered him. The young second "greaser" had been liked by them. They sat and smoked in gloomy silence, and only half of the watch below turned into the driest bunks. They thought that thePandorahad begun, and though she lay to easily enough, few slept. They were afraid of their ship; she was unlucky, accursed, an evil personality. About her was the odour of death.
"Case was a good boy," they said, "and would have been a fine officer by-and-by. Well, our turn next."
Every time thePandorabowed a wave the hawse-holes still spurted; the foc'sle deck ran wet and glimmered darkly in the feeble light from the stinking lanterns swinging on both port and starboard sides. The air was saturated with moisture, rank sweat ran down the beams, dripping blankets swayed from the edges of unoccupied bunks; the men were damp, subdued, unhappy. Now, as the ship lay to, the wind no longer swept into the foc'sle under the flapping screen by the windlass, but still eddies of swift cold air shook it, and the men shivered under their oilskins, that they wore now for warmth.
"I wish I'd never seed her," said Jack Marchmont, and Joe did not answer his mate. Not ten words were spoken till the wheel and look-out were relieved at four o'clock. Both were idle jobs, for the night was still as dark as death, and the wheel with a grummet over its spokes looked after itself.
"Oh, it's all solid comfort, this is," said Jack. "I wonder whose wet clothes will be for sale next?"
They buried the second mate in the grey waste of sea before they put thePandorabefore the moderating gale. The mate read the burial service, for Captain Rayner stayed below. The steward told the men in a whisper that he was ill.
"He's all broke up," he said, "I seed him cryin' like a child. And no wonder; this is a wicked ship. I wish I'd left her in Melbourne."
And some of the men frowned. They did not like to hear him call thePandorawicked. For the ship was, in its way, alive; it was possessed. They wished to propitiate it; superstition had them by the throat.
But they were easier when the body was committed to the deep. And the mate assumed a more cheerful air when he had carried the Prayer Book into his berth and came on deck again. They put the ship before the wind and loosed the foresail. But though the wind had taken off, the sea was very heavy, and thePandorawallowed riotously. She took in seas over both rails. Thrice that day she filled the main-deck, and but for the life-lines rigged right from the foc'sle to the poop many men would have been washed overboard. As she ran with the wind on the port quarter, she sometimes dived as if she would never come up. The galley fire was out, and could not be lighted; the men drank water and ate biscuit.
"Hogs, dogs, and sailors," they said. Every time the vessel dived they held their breath.
The mate had a hard time, for Rayner was incapable of work, and she carried no apprentices. Forward there was no one capable of an officer's work; there was no broken skipper whom drink had destroyed, no young fellow with a second mate's "ticket." So Mr. Gamgee practically slept on deck in snatches till he slept almost as he stood under the weather-cloth in the mizzen rigging. He prayed for moderate weather, for a sight of the sun. But though the gale was less, it still blew hard, and the sky was black and the racing scud low, and the sun was not seen by day or a star by night. On the third day Gamgee staggered as he walked.
"If the old man can't come on deck soon I'll have to cave in," he thought. He shook his fist at the ship. "I wish I'd never seen her. She's a man-killer."
That night when the starboard watch was called at twelve the wind took off suddenly, and thePandorapounded in the wallow of the sea like a bull-buffalo in a bog. She shipped seas over both rails; the racing waves astern came and slapped their crests at the man at the wheel; she scooped up the sea forward every stagger she made. She had been running under the reefed foresail and the fore and main topsails close reefed. Now they shook the reefs out. Gamgee was alert and alive, but his nerves half-betrayed him. He jumped from the poop to the main-deck, and back again. He wanted to be mate and second mate and skipper too. And as the fresh canvas took hold of her, she slapped at the rising sea, dived into it, and as the wind bellowed almost as keen as ever, the man at the wheel lost his nerve, gave her too much helm, snatched at her, gave her too much again, and almost broached her to. And then the mate was again on the main-deck.
Some one heard him say "O God!" as the Atlantic fell on board; but no one ever heard him say anything again.
The water filled her from rail to rail. She shuddered, and then lifted slowly, and as she ran once more before the wind and rolled, she poured out the sea on either side. The main-deck ports were burst outward, the gear floated in inextricable tangles, a four-hundred-gallon tank, lashed under the poop ladders, broke from its lashings and took charge of the deck. In the black darkness and the imminent danger men cried out. Some cried to their mates and were answered, some were not answered. With the mate three other men had gone.
And then she cleared herself once more, and the men came together under the break of the poop. Joe asked for Jack Marchmont; but Jack had saved any one from the expense of a tombstone.
"And I over-persuaded 'im to ship in her. Oh, she's a bloody ship."
Then one man said:
"Where's Mr. Gamgee?"
Joe ran up to the poop.
"Mr. Gamgee! sir!"
"He ain't here," said the man at the wheel. "Oh, Joe, what is it?"
"'Twas your doin'," cried Joe. "There's two gone, and Jack with 'em, and Mr. Gamgee!"
And the man at the wheel fell all ashake. His face was ashy in the feeble glimmer of the binnacle light.
"Come and take her, Joe," he implored. "Oh, the swine she is. I'm in a tremble, Joe. She's too much for me."
And tragedy heaped itself on tragedy. The steward came on deck, and heard that the mate was gone. He lost his head and ran in to the captain crying; he was ludicrous, horrible, speechless. And Rayner sat up in his bunk, and fell back without knowing what had happened. He never knew, for though the steward shook him feebly, his failing heart had failed, and brandy never brought him to. The steward ran on deck blubbering.
"I believe the captain's dead," he sobbed.
And the two boldest of the men took off their caps and went into the cabin humbly. A greater than their commander was there. They stood in silence, fiddling with their caps, and stared at the quiet white face upon its pillow.
"Oh yes, he's dead," they whispered. They backed out respectfully; they were stunned, and were adrift; they were all masterless men; authority had been removed; they faced the unknown with dread. They saw now that they had rested on others' knowledge. What did they know of the sea after all?
They gathered on the poop.
"What?" said Joe, who was at the wheel. "Him gone too. And we——"
They all understood. They were in peculiar isolation, in danger. And what would be said if they saved themselves and the ship?
"'Twill look as if we'd mutinied," said Joe. But he had a touch of natural authority in him. "As soon as it gets light we'll write out a true account of it and sign it, all of us. And we'll make for the nearest port."
They were all quiet men, Englishmen and Dutchmen, and there was no more drink in the ship than that in the medicine chest. The steward drank what remained of it. And in the morning all the remainder of the crew met on the poop. At first they had a certain natural reluctance to use that portion of the ship, but if they did not meet there the steersman could not take his share in the talk. But Joe did most of the talking.
"I reckon the nearest port is Buenos Ayres," he said. "This mornin' I took the liberty of lookin' at the chart, and there ain't nothin' 'andier as is common talk with sailormen. If we stand north we'll about 'it it off; or any ways, we'll 'it on the track of steamers makin' for it, and we might get the lend of a hofficer to take us in. What do you say, mates?"
Some nodded, some shrugged their shoulders, and some said, "Buenos Ayres? Oh yes, that'll do as well as another."
"And I've took the liberty," said Joe solemnly, "of borrowin' the log-book from down below, and I've wrote out a plain account of all this 'ere, as I said last night. For it's best put down, and it's ships' law as everythin' serious should be wrote out in the log-book, and nowheres else. Shall I read it?"
And he read out what he had written:—
"Three days back, as told in the log, Mr. Case, the second mate, fell from the foreyard as we was goin' to take in the foresail, and was killed. He was buried accordin' the next day, while we was 'ove to. And last night in the middle watch, as all 'ands was makin' sail, the wind 'avin' fallen light sudden and the sea bein' very 'eavy, we shipped an 'eavy sea over the port rail as washed Mr. Gamjy overboard with Jack Marchmont, A.B., Andrew Anderson, A.B., and Thomas Griggs, boy. And the captain bein' ill, as the log says, died sudden on 'earing it, and is now lyin' dead in 'is cabin. Whereas, there bein' no officer in the ship, all 'ands assembled as aforesaid, declares this is the truth, the 'ole truth, and nothin' but the truth, so 'elp us Gawd. And we intends makin' for bonus airs, or monty Vidyo."
And one by one the crew signed this simple statement, as it was held down on the top of the signal locker by its author. Those who could not write—and there were three who could not—made their marks when Joe signed for them.
"Whatever 'appens to this blasted 'ooker, we must keep 'old of this log," said Joe. "For supposin' any hother disaster befell us, as seems likely enough, and we took to the boats, it would look very bad for us, without a single officer."
It was a cold and unhappy day for them as they drove to the north-east, still under short canvas. But the weather broke a little, and they set the topgallant-sails at last.
"So long as we don't pile her up on the Falklands we should do," said the one other man on board beside Joe who seemed capable of taking responsibility. He was from Newcastle, and was, of course, known as Geordie. Naturally enough he and Joe divided the watches between them, and the remainder of the crowd sheltered their uneasy minds under their strength.
"I suppose if we bring her in we might get something extra," said Geordie, the day they buried the captain.
But Joe took him by the arm and led him for'ard from the wheel, at which a patient Swede stood.
"Geordie, old man, do you want to bring her in?" he asked.
"Why, yes, I suppose so," said Geordie. He stared at Joe. "What do you mean?"
Joe broke out strangely and struck his fist upon the rail.
"I want to see 'er sink," he said savagely. "I want to see 'er go where she's put so many good men. What right 'as we to save 'er to do more 'arm? It ain't alone as she's drownded my chum or the others, but she 'as a black record that ain't finished unless we finish it. She's strong, and will go on killin' for twenty years, Geordie. She'll make money for them as doesn't care, but what of the likes of us?"
He was greatly moved.
"She's caulked with men's lives, and painted with their blood!" he cried passionately. "I'd rather she sunk with me than sailed the seas any more."
And Geordie fidgeted uneasily
"That's true, mate, but——"
"Aye," said Joe, "I know. If we scuttled 'er 'twould look bad, and it's bad enough as it is; but 'tis a good deed, if we done it, and it should be done, and I'll tell you 'ow to do it."
He leant upon the rail and spoke earnestly, in a low voice.
"It won't do, I own, to scuttle 'er at sea, not even if we let on she leaked and logged it day by day. But if we sunk 'er in the Plate or in the bay at Monte Video, 'twould do right enough, and I've a plan for that. I made it out in the morning watch. 'Tis as easy as eatin', and easier a deal than eatin' ship's biscuit. Down below in the lazareet I'll bore 'oles in her, three or four, and plug 'em on the inside, about a foot below the water-line. And I'll over the side and plug 'em outside, then I'll draw the inside plugs. D'ye see?"
And Geordie saw.
"You needn't know it. I can do it my lone," said Joe. "And do it I will. If we gets off 'er safe she shan't kill no more. When we're out of her—and none of us will stay, as you know—she'll lie at anchor waitin' for a new crowd, and I'll come out to her in a boat and sink the murderin' old 'ooker right there."
"There'll be a ship-keeper on her," said Geordie.
"As like as not 'e'll on'y be a Spaniard," replied Joe simply. "And even if not——"
Even if not, one more was but one.
The next day the weather moderated, and thePandora, being then, as they reckoned, well clear of the Falklands, stood due north for Cape Corrientes with the wind almost on the port beam. That night Joe went down into the lazaret with an auger, and bored three holes in her weather side.
"Good stuff and sound," he said, as he sweated over his task. "She might 'ave floated for hever."
When he drew out his auger he found that the sea raced past the hole and sometimes flipped water into it.
"On a level keel she'll have 'em about two foot under," he said. He plugged that hole and bored two others. When he had plugged these, he went on deck again. There was not a soul awake on her but Geordie and the man at the wheel. She was going now very sweetly, and making ten knots: they were running into fair weather. But she lay over far enough to make it easy for Joe to go over the side, while Geordie slacked him down from a pin in the rail.
"It's done," said Joe, as he came on board. "She'll kill no more."
It seemed to him that he was doing a good deed, for thePandorawas cruel.
And a week later, though they had sighted no land, the colour of the water had changed curiously, and looked a little reddish. When they drew some on board it was evidently not so salt as the sea, and they knew they were in the flood of the mighty Plate. The airs were now light and westerly; they hauled their wind and stood for the north-west. But still the man on the look-out on the main-royal-yard saw no land. In the afternoon they sighted the smoke of a steamer heading about west by south on their starboard beam. They laid their main-topsail to the mast and hoisted the Jack, union down.
That night they were at anchor off Monte Video, and in the morning they told their story to the British Consul. But one and all refused at any price and at all costs to go on board of thePandoraagain. Joe spoke for all of them.
"We'll go to gaol sooner, sir," he said, as he stepped in front of his mates, twiddling his cap nervously, "though we wishes to say so respectfully, sir. She's a man-killer, and it's better a sight to be in the jug, or on the beach, than to be drownded. She's killed my own mate, and more than 'im. And so far back as hany of us ever 'eard of 'er, she's been at the same job. If you please, sir, we'd rather go to gaol."
They slept that night ashore, but not in gaol, and next day the owners cabled from England for a new crew to be shipped in her at any price. But no price could induce men to go in her. And on the third night she sank at her moorings in fifteen fathoms of water, and carried her ship-keeper to the bottom.
"I told you she'd kill another man yet," said Geordie.
But Joe shook his head.
"I done what was right. And after all, 'e was on'y a Spaniard, as I said."