CHAPTER XI.

THE “REBECCA.”

Now, when Van Laar was gone all hands of us seemed to settle down very comfortably to the rough, hard, simple discipline of the sea-life. The more I saw of Greaves, the more I saw of the brig, the better I liked both. Over and over again I congratulated myself upon my good fortune. I seemed to trace it all to that gibbet on the sand hills. I know not why. What more ghastly, what more hideously ominous, you might say, could the mind of man imagine than a gibbet and a dead felon hanging from it in irons, and a mother receiving the horrible burthen of the beam from the fire-bright hand of the storm, and nursing the fearful object as though it were once again the babe that she had suckled? What more hideously ominous than such things could man ask of Heaven to initiate his career with, to inaugurate a new departure with? But that gibbet it was which kept me waiting when by walking I must have missed the press-gang and, for all I can now tell, have safely got me aboard the _Royal Brunswicker_.

Be this as it will. I liked Greaves; I liked his little ship; I liked my position on board of her; and I could find no fault with the crew. The people of my watch ran about without murmurs. Yan Bol seemed to have the whole company well in hand. The spun-yarn winch was often a-going; we were a very clean ship; the complicated machinery aloft was carefully looked to; the long guns were kept bright. I had overhauled the slop-chest and taken what I wanted, and there lay, in a big sea-box which Greaves had somewhere fished out for me, as comfortable a stock of clothes as ever I could wish to sail out of port with.

I did not imagine, however, that the crew would long content themselves with what, while Greaves remained dumb, must be to them no more nor less than an aimless sailing over the breast of the ocean. Sailors do not love to be long at sea without making a voyage. Our crew might look at the compass and note that the course was a straight one for cutting the equator; but what imaginations were they to build up on the letters S.S.W.? We were not a king’s ship. There was no obligation of _passivity_. The sailors were merchant seamen, claiming all the old traditional rights of their calling; of exercising those rights, at all events, whenever convenient: the rights of grumbling, cursing, laying aft in a body and expostulating, holding forward in a body and turning deaf ears to the boatswain’s music. “Surely,” I would sometimes think, while I paced the deck, eyeing the fellows of my watch at work, “those men will not wait till we are south of the line to hear what the errand of this brig is!”

It came to pass that, a few days after we had got rid of Van Laar, I went on deck at midnight to take charge of the brig until four in the morning. The noble wind of the northeast trade was full in our canvas--a small, fresh, quartering gale--the sky lively with the sliding of stars amid the steam-tinctured heap of the trade-cloud swarming away southwest. Studding-sails were out and the brig hummed through it, shouldering the seas off both bows into snowstorms. The burly figure of Yan Bol stood to windward, abreast of the little skylight. He waited for me to relieve him, and, while he waited, he sang to himself in a deep voice, like the drumming of the wind as it flashed into the hollow of the trysail and fled to leeward in a hollow roar under the boom.

“Is that you, Bol?”

“Yaw, it vhas her himself,” he answered.

“This will do,” said I, stepping up to him.

“Yaw, dis vhas a nice little draught,” he replied.

I made a few quarter-deck inquiries relating to the business of the brig during his charge of the deck since eight o’clock, and was then going aft to look at the binnacle, but stayed on finding that he lingered.

“Do you know,” said he, “I vhas not very gladt to be second mate.”

“Why not?”

“Vell, I believe dot der men vouldt hov more respect for me if I vhas one of demselves.”

“But you are bo’sun, anyway, and your rating, therefore, is higher than that of the others.”

“Dot may be,” he replied, “but a bo’sun in der merchant service vhas no better dan vhat you call in your language a common sailor. He blows a whistle; dot, and a dollar or two more money, and dere you hov der difference.”

“Who else could be second mate?” said I. “As bo’sun of this vessel it would not please you to be ordered about by an able seaman.”

He was silent. It was too dark to see anything of the man save the shapeless lump of shadow which he made against the stars over the sea.

“Mr. Fielding,” said he, “can you tell me vhere dis brig vhas boun’ to?”

“I know where she is bound to,” I answered.

“Ho, _you_ know, sir!” he exclaimed, with a tone of surprise trembling through his deep voice; “Ve all tink dot she vhas der captain’s secret.”

“If you all did think that,” said I, “why do you ask me where the brig is bound to.”

“It vhas about time dot ve knew vhere ve vhas boun’ to,” said Bol. “Dis vhas a larsh verld. Dere vhas many places in him. Some of dose places I have visited and vish never to see again. Derefore I likes to know vhere ve vhas boun’ to.”

“It is for the captain, not for me, to tell you that,” said I.

“Vhen shall he speak?” said Bol.

“In good time, I warrant you.”

“I vhas villing to agree dot vhere we sailed to should be der captain’s secret for a leedle time; but now ve hov been somevhiles at sea, und still she vhas a secret, und I belief dot der men did not suppose dot she vouldt be a secret so long. Dere vhas no cargo. Nothing vhas consigned. Derefore, if ve vhas boun’ anywhere it vhas to a port to call for orders. Und after----”

“The captain will not keep the crew in ignorance much longer,” said I.

“But you can tell us, Mr. Fielding, vhere ve vhas boun’ to?”

“I know where we are bound to.”

“Dot vhas strange! You come on board as a shipwreckt man, vhich vhas quite right; und you take Heer Van Laar’s place, vhich vhas also quite right; and of all der crew, excepting der captain, you alone know vhere der brig vhas boun’ to! Mr. Fielding, oxcuse me, I mean no offense, but I say again dot vhas dom’d strange.”

There was jealousy here which I witnessed, understood, and, to a degree, sympathized with. Here was I, a stranger to the brig--a stranger, I mean, in the sense of not having formed one of her company when she sailed from Amsterdam; here was I, not only installed in the room of Van Laar, and, for all I knew, regarded by the crew as the cause of that man’s expulsion from the ship, but in possession of knowledge withheld from all hands. This might excite a feeling against me among the men, which would be unfortunate. The voyage had opened with so much promise that I had resolved to spare no effort to make a jolly jaunt of it to the uttermost end of the traverse, whether that end was to be called the Downs, or Amsterdam. Preserving my temper, and speaking in the kindliest voice I could command, I said to the big figure alongside of me:

“Yan Bol, I do not wonder you are surprised that I should know what is hidden from you. You are an officer of this ship as well as I.”

“Nine, nine!” he exclaimed in a voice as deep as a trombone.

“But why am I intrusted,” I continued, “with the secret of this voyage a little while before it is communicated to the crew? I will tell you. Captain Greaves wanted a mate in the room of Van Laar. It was not to be supposed that I would accept the offer of the post of mate unless I knew where I was bound to. Therefore, to secure my services, Captain Greaves explained the nature of this expedition. With the others of you it was different. You agreed to sail in this brig, and you were willing, when you agreed to sail, to be kept in ignorance of the brig’s destination. Had I been at Amsterdam when a crew was wanted for the _Black Watch_, and had I been invited to join her as able seaman, boatswain, chief mate, what you will, I should have answered: ‘Tell me first where you are bound to, for I will not join your ship until I know where she is going and what her business is?’”

“Vell, dot vhas right,” he exclaimed, half smothering a huge yawn. “I hov noting to say against dot. But you hov der ear of your captain. You vhas his countryman: you vhas old friendts, I hov heard. You vill make us men tankful to you if you vill ask him to let us know vhere ve vhas boun’ as conveniently soon as may pe.”

“I will speak to him as you wish,” said I.

He bade me good-night very civilly, and his great shape rolled forward and vanished in the blackness that lay upon the fore part of the brig.

I paced the deck, musing over this conversation. It seemed to me to justify Greaves’ resolution to withhold all knowledge of the ship’s errand from the men until their characters lay somewhat plain to his gaze; but on the other hand, I conceived that it would be a mistake to irritate them by keeping silence too long. They had a right to know where they were going. Then the provocation of silence might lead to murmurs and difficulties, and what would _that_ mean.

I was again on deck at eight o’clock in the morning. One of the most comfortless conditions of the sea-life is this ceaseless turning in and turning out. It is called watch and watch. The ladies will want to know what watch and watch means. Ladies, watch and watch means this: Snob is chief mate. He takes charge of the ship from midnight until four o’clock in the morning. Nob, who is the second mate, is then roused up, comes on deck, and looks after the ship until eight o’clock in the morning. At this hour Snob’s turn has come round. He arrives, and takes over the ship until noon. Another four hours brings the time to four o’clock, when the ordinary watch is split in halves, and each half, called a dog-watch, lasts two hours. This provides change and change about, so that Snob, who last night had charge from twelve to four, will to-night be in bed during those hours, weather permitting.

When I stepped on deck at eight o’clock I found a brilliant morning all about, but a softer sea, a lighter wind than I had left, a languider courtesying of the brig, even a dull flap at times forward when the cloths of the heavy forecourse hollowed into the stoop of the bows as a child’s cheek dimples when it sucks in its breath. The trade-wind was not taking off. Not at all. The heavens were gay with the flight of the trade-cloud, as gay as ever the sky could be made by a dance of sea-fowl on the wing; and while that vapor flew, one knew that the wind was constant. Only we had happened just now to have washed with foam rising in thunder to each cathead into a pause or interval of the inspiring commercial gale of the North Atlantic; the strong, glad rush of air which had hoarily veiled every deep blue hollow with white brine, torn flashing from each curling head, had sunk for a little into a tropic fanning, and the swell of the sea was small and each surge no more than a giant ripple, with scarce weight enough in its run to ridge into foam.

But, bless me, had a week of stark calm descended upon our heads we should still have done uncommonly well. Our average progress, since the day on which I had recovered consciousness on board the _Black Watch_, had come very near to steam as steam is in these days in which I am writing, though to what velocities the boiler may hereafter attain I am not here to predict.

Greaves stood abreast of the wheel. He was looking through a telescope at some object that lay about three points on the weather bow. He continued to gaze with a degree of steadfastness that rendered him insensible of my presence. I looked and seemed to see some small vessel upon the edge of the sea; but I could not be sure. She was above a league distant, and the morning light was confusing that way with the blending of the shadowy lift of the swell, the violet shadows of the clouds, and the hazy splendor of the early morning distances. My caressing and speaking to Galloon, who lay near his master, caused Greaves to bring his eye away from the glass.

“Good-morning, Fielding. The breeze has fallen slack. I am trying to make out the meaning of that little schooner down there;” and he pointed over the bow with his telescope. “Look for yourself.”

I leveled the glass, and beheld a schooner of about a hundred tons, rolling broadside to the sea, abandoned, or, if not abandoned, then helpless. Her jib boom was gone; so, too, was her fore topmast; otherwise she seemed sound enough, saving that for canvas she had nothing set but her gaff foresail, though, as I seemed to find, when I strained my gaze through the glass, her mainsail was not furled, but lay heaped upon the boom, as though the halliards had been let go and nothing more done.

“She’ll be worse off than the craft that Van Laar’s gone home in,” said I, returning the telescope to Greaves.

“Do you believe in dreams?” said he.

“No,” I answered.

“Do not be in too great a hurry with your ‘noes,’” he exclaimed. “I like a man to reflect when he is asked a question in metaphysics.”

“I know nothing about metaphysics,” said I, “and I do not believe in dreams.”

“I believe in the unseen,” said he, putting down the glass, and folding his arms and leaning back against the rail, as though settling himself down for a talk or an argument. “The materialist tells you not to put your faith in anything you can’t see, or handle, or smell, that you can’t bring some organ or function of sense to bear upon, in short. Throw yourself down upon your back, and look straight up into the sky. What do you see? Hey? But do you see it? Yes. Do you understand it? No. It is visible, and yet it is the unseen; for at what does a man look when he gazes straight up into the sky?”

“There are few things worth going mad for,” said I, “and two things I am resolved shall never send me to Bedlam.”

“What are they?”

“One of them’s that,” said I, pointing straight up.

“What do you make of yonder schooner,” said he.

I described such features as I had observed.

“She has a black hull, and a thin line of painted ports,” said he.

“She has.”

“She has lost her fore topmast and jib boom.”

“That’s so.”

“It is very extraordinary!” he exclaimed. “I dreamt last night, or in one of this morning watches, that I sighted that schooner. I saw her in my dream as I have been seeing her in that glass there. She was wrecked forward, she lay in the trough, she showed no canvas but her gaff foresail. There it all is!” he said, pointing; “and yet how quick you are with your ‘No’ when I asked if you believed in dreams!” He smiled and continued, “But my dream carried me further than I intend to go in these waking hours; for, in my dream, I launched a boat, where from I can’t tell ye, and went aboard that schooner. I looked about me, her decks were lifeless. I stepped below into her little cabin, and what d’ye think I saw? The figure of Death seated in an armchair at the table with a pack of cards in one skeleton hand. He pointed to a chair and began to deal. I awoke, and wasn’t sorry to wake. There lies the schooner. How very extraordinary! Is old Death below, waiting for a partner? You shall find out, Fielding. I’ll lay you aboard. By thunder, rather than go myself I would forfeit all the money I hope to take up at the end of this run.”

Many lies are told of us sailors by landsmen, but when they call us a superstitious clan they speak the truth. Superstitious, indeed, are sailors. I am talking of the Jacks of my time; I understand that the mariner is more enlightened in these days. I looked at the little schooner anxiously. I felt no reluctance to board her; but, though I had told Greaves that I did not believe in dreams, I discovered, nevertheless, that this dream had communicated a particular significance to the little craft. I had meant to talk to him about my chat with Yan Bol at midnight, and the subject went out of my head while I looked at the schooner and thought of Greaves’ dream.

“I will board her,” said I, “and enter her cabin.”

“Oh, yes,” said he, “I shall want you to do that. My dream was so vivid that I shall ask you to take notice of the fittings of that cabin for the sake of corroboration, and let me be first with you----”

He shut his eyes as one seeking strongly to realize his own imaginations, and said: “It is a square cabin with a square table directly under an oblong skylight. There is a chair at the head of the table. In that chair sat the skeleton, not answering to Milton’s magnificent fancy:

“What seemed his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

No, the thing was uncrowned. It was a skeleton, but it lived, and made as though it would deal the cards it held. Opposite is another chair; on either hand are lockers. There are sleeping berths at the foot of the companion ladder, and that’s all that I can remember,” said he, opening his eyes.

Jimmy announced breakfast. Yan Bol came aft to take charge while I went below. The burly Dutchman looked at me meaningly, and then I recollected my talk with him; but I resolved to say nothing to the captain this side my excursion to the schooner.

Before we sat down Jimmy received one of his lessons. There was a ham upon the table, and he called it a leg of mutton. I had long ago discovered that the boy was honestly wanting in the power to distinguish between articles of food. Sometimes I supposed he blundered on purpose to divert his master, who appeared to enjoy the concert that was part of the lesson, but I was now convinced that though he had the names of many varieties of meats, and even dishes, at his tongue’s end, he was utterly unable to correctly apply them. His confidence in his own indications was the extraordinary part of his misapplications. He spoke, for instance, of the ham as a leg of mutton as though quite sure; then to the first syllable of correction that fell from Greaves, and to a faint, uneasy groan which the dog always gave when Greaves spoke on these occasions--as though the noble beast knew that the boy had blundered and that the duet was inevitable--Jimmy stiffened himself into a soldier-like posture, nose in the air, hands up and down like a pump handle, and the dog looking at him ready to howl. The lesson ended, we sat down and fell to.

“Your teaching does not seem to make the lad see the difference between meats,” said I.

“I have hopes of him,” he answered, “and Galloon’s face is good on these occasions.”

He then talked of the schooner, of his dream, and his discourse ran in such a strain that I discovered that secretly he was not only of a serious and religious cast of mind, but superstitious beyond any man I had ever sailed with. Thought has the speed of the lightning stroke, and I remember as I sat listening to him, saying very little myself--for I had but the shallowest understanding of the subject he had got upon; I say that I remember thinking: Suppose this voyage should be the consequence of a dream? Suppose this Pacific quest for hard Spanish milled dollars should be an effect of superstitious fancy? Suppose the whole scheme should be as unsubstantial in fact as the actors in the revels in the ‘Tempest’? But the image of Mynheer Tulp swept as an inspiration of support into my mind. I had entertained myself by figuring that man. In thinking over this voyage I had depicted its promoter, and my fancy gave me the likeness of a little withered Dutchman in a velvet cap, with a nose of Hebraic proportions, a keen black eye, a wary, sarcastic smile, and a mind whose horizon was the circumference of a guilder. I seemed to see the little creature looking over Greaves’ shoulder at me as I mused upon my companion’s somewhat foggy talk, and I said unto myself, “Tulp believing, all’s well.”

When we went on deck the schooner was within musket shot. She had seemingly been in collision with another vessel, though her hull looked perfectly sound; nor did she sit upon the sea, nor rise with the slope of the swell, as if she had more water in her than was good for buoyancy. Nothing alive was visible aboard.

I know not a more forlorn object, the wide world over, than an abandoned vessel encountered deep in the heart of an ocean solitude. She sucks in the desolation of the sea and grows gray, lean, and haggard with the melancholy that sometimes raves and sometimes sleeps, but that forever dwells upon the bosom of the deep. There is no fancy in this. Many ways are there in which loneliness may be personified or illustrated: the widow weeping upon the tomb of her only child, a blind man in a crowd, a prostrate figure on some wide spread of midnight moor, over whose vague and distant edge a red eye of moon is glancing under a lid of black cloud. In many ways may loneliness be represented, but there is no expression of it that equals, to my mind, the abandoned ship. Is it because the movement of the sea communicates a fancy of life to the vessel? She looks to be sentient as she sways, to be sensible that she is the only object for leagues upon the prodigious liquid waste over which the boundless heavens are spread. Some unfurled canvas flaps; the wheel revolves, or the tiller shears through the air to the blows of the seas upon the rudder: there may be the ends of gear snaking overboard; they move, they writhe like serpents; they seem to _pour_ as though they were the life blood of the vessel draining from her heart. And terrible is the silence of the decks. It is not the silence of the empty house that was yesterday full and clamorous with merry voices. It is such a silence as you meet with nowhere else, deepened to the meditative mind by sounds which would vex and break in upon and destroy all other silence. Yes, to my mind the abandoned ship at sea is the most perfect expression of human and inanimate loneliness.

This I thought as I gazed at that little schooner. Greaves watched her with a look of uneasiness. He came to my side and said, in a low voice:

“Take a boat, will ye, Fielding, and explore that craft? She’s been abandoned for weeks; I am sure of that. You’ll find nothing alive, and if it wasn’t for that dream of mine last night I’d pass on. But I _must_ find out whether the cabin furniture is as I beheld it in my sleep.”

A boat was lowered; three men jumped in. I followed, and gained the side of the schooner. We pulled under her stern to see her name, and read in big white letters on the slope of her counter the word _Rebecca_. I fastened a superstitious eye upon the two little starboard portholes, which, as I might guess, illuminated her cabin. What was inside?

“Two of you,” said I to the men, “come aboard with me. You, Travers, remain in charge of the boat.”

The men who scrambled over the side were Friend and Meehan. We stood gazing and listening. The foresail occasionally flapped as the little vessel heaved to the swell, but the water washed along the bends noiseless as quicksilver. Saving the wreckage forward, I could see nothing wrong with the schooner. There were signs of confusion, as though she had been abandoned in a hurry: the sails had come down with a run, and lay unfurled; the decks were littered with ropes’ ends. But all deck fixtures were in their place; nay, there was even a small boat chocked under the starboard gangway forward, but the bigger boat, which such a craft as this would carry, was missing.

My eye went to the skylight, and I started. It was oblong. “What more of the dream remains to be verified?” thought I. The skylight was closed, the frames secured within, the glass filthy. I peered and peered to no purpose. On this I stepped to the companion, while the two seamen moved forward to look down the hatches in obedience to my orders; but I paused when I was in the companion way. I seemed to smell a damp odor as of a vault. “Good God!” thought I, “if there _should_ be anything horrible at the head of the table, with a pack of---- Chut! ye fool!” I said to myself, “say a prayer and shove on, and be hanged to you!” and down I went.

Well, there was no skeleton; there was nothing horrible to be seen. If the grim Feature had ever occupied the head of that table, he had found a companion; he had played his trump card: he had won of a surety, and he and his opponent were gone. But had I veritably beheld a living skeleton seated at the table and motioning as though it would deal, I could not have been more scared--no; let me say I could not have been more impressed than I was--by the sight of the furniture. of the cabin. It was precisely as Greaves had described it. It was the plainest sea interior in the world--nothing whatever worth looking at, nothing in it to detain the attention for an instant; yet it was all exactly as Greaves described it. I was revisited by the misgiving of an earlier hour. “The man is an extraordinary dreamer,” I said to myself. “He may be a little mad. A few people dream as this man has dreamt, and those few, I suspect, will be found somewhat mad at root. Has he dreamt of the ship in the island cave? Did he, that he might justify to _himself_ his faith in his extraordinary vision by sailing on this quest--did he _forge_ that manifest which, backed by his eloquent advocacy, no doubt, induced old Bartholomew Tulp to put his hand in his pocket?”

I stood thus thinking when I heard my name called.

“Hallo!” I exclaimed.

“There’s somebody alive forrad!” cried one of the men.

I ran on deck.

“What is it?”

“This way, sir,” shouted Meehan.

I followed the fellow to the forecastle--that is to say, to the hatch by which the forecastle was entered and quitted.

“There’s somebody knocking,” cried Friend.

“Thump back and sing out,” I cried.

The man did so, and we heard a faint voice, feeble as a sweep’s call-down from the height of a tall chimney.

“Don’t you see what has happened?” cried I. “Why, look! This vessel has been in collision--struck some vessel on end. Her bowsprit has been run in by the blow, and _the heel of it has closed the slide of the hatch over the people who are below here_!”

I thumped and sang out. A voice dimly responded. I thumped again, and roared at the top of my lungs:

“We’ll have you out of this, but you must wait a bit. Do you hear me?” and there was a note in the faint, inarticulate response that made me know I was heard.

I looked about, but my eye sought in vain for such machinery of tackles as I required to free the men below. I did not choose to waste time by hunting, and told Meehan to jump into the boat and pull, with Travers, over to the brig. By this time the two vessels had so closed to each other as to be within easy speaking distance. I hailed the _Black Watch_, and Greaves stood up and made answer.

“There are two men locked up in this schooner’s fok’sle, and the heel of the bowsprit----” and I explained how it happened that the hatch was closed and immovably secured. He flourished his arm. I then requested him to send me the necessary gear for clearing the hatch by running out the bowsprit; I likewise asked him for a couple more men. Again he flourished his arm. By this time the boat was alongside the brig.

“What have you found aft in the cabin?” shouted Greaves.

“Nothing but ordinary furniture,” I answered.

“I see,” he cried, “that the skylight is oblong. Is the table square?”

“It is, sir.”

“A chair at the head and foot?”

“Ay, sir, and lockers on either hand.”

His figure hardened into a posture of astonishment. He stood mute. I could readily imagine an expression of superstitious dismay on his face; or rather, let me say, that I _hoped_ this, for methought it would be ominous for our faith in those distant South Pacific dollars if he should accept the startling realization of this dream with the tranquillity of a man who dreams much, and who believes in his dreams, and whose actions are governed by them.

The boat returned with the additional assistance I required, and with the necessary gear for freeing the forecastle hatch. The business was somewhat tedious. It was a case of what sailors know as _jam_. It involved luff upon luff, much sweating and swearing, much hard straining and hoarse chorusing at the little forecastle capstan. At last we started the bowsprit, the heel ran clear of the hatch, and two of the men, grasping the hatch cover, swept it through its grooves.

The moment the hatch was open a figure rose up out of the darkness below; another followed at his heels. I looked for more, but there were but two, and those two stood blinking and rubbing their eyes, and turning their heads about as though their motions were produced by clockwork. One of them was the strangest looking man I had ever seen. Did you ever read the story of Peter Serrano? If so, then figure Serrano with his beard cropped, his hairy body clothed in a sleeved waistcoat and a pair of short pilot breeches, the hair of his head still long, and rings in his ears, the whole man still preserving a good deal of that oyster-like expression of face and sandy grittiness of complexion which Peter got from a long residence upon a shoal.

This man might have been Peter Serrano after he had been trimmed, washed, and cared for ashore. His eyes were small and fiery, the edges of the lids a raw red. He was about five feet tall, with the smallest feet that ever capered at the extremities of a sailor’s trousers. His companion was of the ordinary type of merchant seamen, red-haired, of a heavy cast of countenance; the complexion of this man was of the hue of sailors’ duff--which you must go to sea to understand, for there is no word in the English language to express the color of it. They had risen through the hatch with activity; as they stood they seemed fairly strong on their pins. But the light confounded them, and they continued to rub and to weep and to mechanically rotate their heads for some few minutes after I had begun to talk to them.

“Well, my lads,” said I, “this is a stroke of fortune for you. Talk of rats in a hole! How came ye into this mess? But, first, are ye English?”

“English both,” said the little man.

“How come ye to be locked up after this fashion?”

The little chap looked round at us with streaming eyes and said, in just the sort of harsh, salt, gritty voice that my imagination had fitted him with before he opened his lips--a voice that was extraordinary with its suggestion of sand, the seething of surf, and the spasmodic shriek of the gull: “Tell us the time, will yer?”

I looked at my watch and gave him the hour. He lugged out a great silver turnip from his breeches’ band; the dial plate of that watch was about the size of a shilling, and the back of it came nearly to the circumference of a saucer.

“What does he say?” he exclaimed, holding up the watch. “This here blaze is like striking of a man blind.”

“The time by your watch,” said I, looking at it, “is seven o’clock.”

“Is he right?” asked the little man eagerly.

“Not by nearly four hours,” said I.

“If he aint furder out it’s all one,” exclaimed the other sailor.

“Me and my mate,” said the little man, “has had a good many arguments about the time while we’ve been locked up below, but I think my tally’ll come out right.”

“How long have you been locked up below according to your tally?” said I.

“This here’s a Wednesday, aint it?” he inquired, once again straining the moisture out of his eyes with his knuckles, and blinking at me.

“No,” said I; “it’s Thursday.”

“Nearer than you, Bobby, anyway!” he cried. “Your tally brought it to Saturday.”

“How long have you been locked up, men?”

“Why,” he exclaimed, “if this here’s a Thursday”--his voice broke like that of a youth entering manhood, as he continued--“we’ve been locked up a fortnight when it shall ha’ gone nine o’clock.”

A murmur of pity and amazement escaped my men.

“And it happened like this,” continued the little fellow, beginning to walk swiftly in a small circle: “Me and Bobby was in the same watch. We had come below and turned in. We was waked by a crash, and I heerd the hatch cover closed. There went eight of us to a crew, but when I sings out only Bobby answers. The others who was below may have heard the capt’n or mate singing out on deck afore the collision. They was gone. Bobby and me tries to open the hatch. No fear! Eh, Bobby?” exclaimed the little fellow, who continued to walk very rapidly in a circle. “And how did it happen that that there hatch was closed? Why, I don’t know _now_. How did it happen?” he yelled.

I explained. The little fellow looked at the bowsprit heel, at the hatch, and then his mate, and exclaimed:

“Wrong again, Bobby! Bobby was for having it that the hatch had been closed ’spressly to drown us by one of the sailors as him and me hated, as him and me had fought with and licked times out o’ counting.”

I was about to ask the fellows how they had managed to breathe in their black hole of a forecastle during their fortnight’s imprisonment, when I caught sight of a stove funnel piercing the forecastle deck and rising a few feet above it. That funnel was all the answer my question needed. I inquired how they managed to obtain food and the little sore-eyed man answered that they had lifted the hatch of the forepeak and found oil for their lamps and water to drink, some barrels of bread and flour, and a piece or two of beef; for, luckily for them, the provisions in this schooner were stowed forward. There was coal in the forepeak. They lighted the forecastle stove and so dressed their victuals; but they were always forced to be in a hurry with their cooking, for the fire carried the fresh air up with it; and when they had raked the coals out they would sit with their heads close in to the stove to breathe the air as it gushed in again through the flue.

“Did you never try to break out?” said one of my men.

“Time arter time, mate. There was sights o’ trying, and you see what it’s comes to,” exclaimed the little fiery-eyed man, starting to walk in a circle again.

At this moment I was hailed by Greaves:

“How many men have you released?”

“Two, sir; there are no more.”

“Then bring them aboard, Mr. Fielding. I wish to proceed.”

“Get your clothes,” said I to the little man, “and come along.”

He stopped in his circling walk and looked at the fellow he called Bobby; then, as if influenced by the same thought, they both cast their eyes over the schooner, first staring up at the broken topmast, then at the bowsprit, then running their gaze over the decks.

“Have you sounded the well?” cried the little man to me.

“No, I have not,” I answered.

He flew to the pumps; his feet twinkled as he fled. I never witnessed such activity; it seemed impossible in a man who had been suffering from a fortnight of black hole. He pounced upon the sounding-rod, dropped the bar down the well, whipped it up, looked at it, uttered a gull-like cry, flung the iron down, and was with us in a jiffey.

“Bobby,” he exclaimed, “nut dust aint in it with her.”

“Don’t I know her for a corker?” responded Bobby. “Froth and pop when it blows, and a dead marine at heart.”

“Bobby, what d’ye think?” said the raw-eyed little man, questioning his mate as though the suggestion had been made.

The man looked round the sea, looked up aloft, and answered:

“Agreeable.”

“We’ll carry the schooner home, sir,” said the little fellow, addressing me.

“You two?”

“Say us four, sir. There’s a two-man power for each hand a-coming out of such a salvage job as this.”

I observed some of my men gaze about them thirstily and enviously and a little gloomily.

“Are you resolved?” said I, looking at the fellow, doubting my right to suffer them to embark on such an adventure after their long, weakening spell of imprisonment.

“It’s two blocks, aint it, Bobby?” said the little man.

“Ay,” answered Bobby, “nothing wanting but this: First, that this kind gentleman will help us to secure the bowsprit afore he takes away his men; and, next, that he gives the course to steer for the Henglish Channel.”

I was again hailed impatiently by Greaves, on which I got upon the rail and told him that the two men wished to carry their schooner home. Should I permit them to do it, considering----

“Certainly,” he shouted; “they’ll pick up help as they go along.”

I then called out that I would stay a little while longer, that I might secure the bowsprit and set them a course; and I then bade the little man with the fiery eyes go below and rummage the cabin that had been occupied by his captain for such charts as might be there. He was off like a hare, and returned in a few minutes with a small bag of charts, one of which represented the North Atlantic Ocean; and, while my people were busy with the bowsprit, I, with a pencil, marked upon the chart the track and courses for the red-eyed man and his mate to pursue. We then made sail on the schooner, shook hands with the two fellows, and entered the boat.

As I was about to drop over the side I overheard one of my men, in a grumbling voice, say:

“Is this here traverse of ourn going to consist of rummaging jobs, I wonder. Nothen but boarding so far, and what for?”

“Vere vhas ve boun’?” said another. “By Cott! boot I like to know by dis time vere ve vhas goin’.”