CHAPTER VI.

WHAT THE DOCTOR OVERHEARD IN THE FORECASTLE BUNKS.

The love he bore Rose, the love that she permitted him to bear, and which she so fully reciprocated, together with the regard and esteem he had for the grave, gentle Ethel, and good, easy Mr. Basset, increased the anxiety with which the young Scotch surgeon beheld the growing discontent of the crew.

On deck, he more than once had heard them conferring in most unpleasant terms about the disappearance of the third mate, and, in reply to some remark of Sharkey's, Zuares Barradas said, with a cunning twinkle in his eyes:

"_Bueno! paso a paso va lejos._"

"Wot the devil does that mean, shipmate? Avast with your Spanish. Carn't you speak the queen's English?"

"Well, it means that 'step by step goes far'. Manfredi is gone; a little spell and we shall have it all our own way," replied the Spanish American, as he hitched up his trousers and slunk forward.

"These rascals are decidedly up to something--or whence all this skulking about, this whispering in gangs, and knife-sharpening," said Heriot to the captain.

"The grindstone has never been idle all day," observed Mr. Quail, who was looking, as the captain remarked, "rather white about the gills, in consequence."

After a long conference in the cabin, Dr. Heriot offered, there being no moon about the middle of the first night-watch, to creep forward to the forecastle bunk, where, in defiance of orders, the crew now kept a light burning after sundown, and endeavour to overhear their conversation. The duty of acting eavesdropper was not a pleasant, but, in this instance, a most necessary one.

The first night Heriot attempted this, he failed to get forward unseen; but on the second, as the atmosphere, though very cloudy, was fine, and the ship under easy sail was going large, that is, with the wind abaft the beam, which careened her slightly to port, Heriot, armed with a sharp bowie-knife, concealed in his breast, so as to be ready for any emergency (for if discovered by the watch he might be sent overboard after poor Manfredi) crept forward on the leeside, keeping his head close under the bulwarks, and in the shadow.

The men of the watch were all grouped to windward, smoking with their backs against the long-boat, and the steersman could see little else than the lights that glared in the binnacles, and the ship's canvas, that towered aloft between him and the sky.

Through the two yolks of dense, thick glass that admitted light to the forecastle bunks, in which the seamen had their chests and berths, he could see nothing, save that they had, as usual with them, in defiance of the captain's order, a lamp or lantern, the light of which glared as from two bull's-eyes upon the forehatchway, the foot of the foremast, the gallows-bitts abaft it, the scuttle-butt, and so forth.

These two lines of light had the effect of rendering the rest of the deck dark, thus favouring the purpose of Heriot, who reached unseen the forecastle, and crept along it, until he found himself close to the coaming of the scuttle, or small square hatchway, which gave access thereto, and from whence there ascended into the pure saline atmosphere of the midnight sea a combination of odours that were neither of Araby nor of Ind; for more than a dozen of dirty, tarry, unwashed, and uncombed specimens of those seamen usually denominated "coloured," the most ruffianly of their class, such, as may be seen lounging and loafing about the quays and grog-shops of Liverpool and Birkenhead, were all seated closely round a chest, which was lashed by ringbolts to the deck, and formed the table, whereon they had recently supped on scalding-hot "scouse" from a greasy wooden kid; and the fumes of this savoury mess yet mingled with the tar with which their clothes were saturated, and the coarse tobacco in which they were all indulging freely, by means of pipes, quids, and cigarettes.

A ship's lantern, in which a candle sputtered, shed a wavering light through the perforated tin upon the black hair, massive frontal bones, and square jaw of Pedro Barradas, and on his coarse, leather-like ears, in which a pair of silver rings were glittering; on the dark olive face of his brother, Zuares, a villain of a more pleasing type, only because he was younger and handsomer; on the cruel, sardonic visage, the keen eyes, hooked nose, and enormous chin, and tangled elf-locks of Bill Badger, the long-legged and ungainly Yankee; on the huge head and giant hands of the odious Sharkey, who sat with his cheeks wedged between his hands, his elbows planted on the chest, and his eyes that, from under the bloody bandage encircling his temples, glared at each speaker alternately; and on all the rest of the ill-selected crew--fell the lantern's dim uncertain ray, bringing some forward into light, and leaving others almost in shadow.

Though quite sober, for as yet they had no means for procuring alcohol, they generally all spoke at once, and were engaged in an angry dispute, which, however, they were still cautious enough to conduct with suppressed voices.

Pedro Barradas grasped in his left hand an old dice-box, which was served round with spunyarn, and two suspicious-looking dice were rattled in it from time to time.

At the moment that Heriot peeped in, it would seem as if our Spanish acquaintance suddenly lost his temper. His black eyes filled with fire, his swarthy cheek grew livid and pale, he showed all his sharp white teeth like a dog about to bite, and striking his drawn knife into the lid of the chest, round which they were all grouped, and with a force of action that made them all shrink back, he uttered a tremendous oath, and said, in a low, hoarse voice:

"It is agreed, then, that we take the ship, and make all the people aft walk the plank. Am I to understand this?"

"Yes, yes," from all hands was the reply; "and all must walk the plank to leeward."

"Except the women," suggested the Canadian seaman, named Bolter.

"In course we shall keep them!" said Badger, laying a long and dirty finger on one side of his hawk nose, and closing an eye wickedly; "and take very partik'lar care o' the darlings, too."

"We take the ship," resumed Pedro Barradas, speaking good English, and with an air of authority; "and then we shall run her on her own account."

"How?" asked one.

"In the slaving or piccarooning line, or anything else that comes to hand."

"But where to?" asked the Canadian, who seemed a man of doubts.

"Anywheres, darn your nutmeg of a head!" growled the Yankee; "anywheres, arter we has had a jolly spree ashore."

"On what shore, mate?"

"On the coast ov Africy, in course; but not afore, mate--not afore, I calc'late."

"Come, now, I likes this," observed Sharkey, putting in his voice; "if water and wittles runs short, we may overhaul an Ingeeman, homeward-bound, or an Australian liner----"

"With sojers aboard, mayhap," said Bolter; "so what will you dew then?"

"Hail or signal for a boat, to be sure, and sink it to leeward with a cold shot through its ribs. Shout that it has been swamped under the counter, and to send another, and another, and so knock 'em all on the head. Then run her aboard, take all out of her--the women, too, if any--then scuttle or burn her."

"A game you won't play long athout being overhauled by some cussed man-o'-war," said the Canadian. "I tell you, mates, the good old piratical times have been put out o' fashion long since. Even the slaving business is knocked up by them blazing smoke-jacks and gun-boats of the African squadron. The sea ain't wot it was, mates, when old Kidd sailed the _Vulture_ down the Channel with a skull and marrow-bones flying at his foremasthead."

"Hooray! I'll ship with you, Barradas," cried another. "Grog for the drinking, a grab at these gals, and the pick o' the good things in the passengers' trunks and cabin-lockers."

"And till that time comes," added Sharkey, "we'll work Tom Cox's traverse with old Phillips--that we shall. Precious little work he'll get out of me."

"But I don't like usin' the knife or plank if they could be done athout, mates," said the Canadian ponderingly.

"The Reverend Mr. Ben Bolter, a Methody parson, 'll offer up a blessin' over the empty mess-kids," sneered the Yankee.

"_Par todos santos_," growled Pedro Barradas, giving the Canadian a glance of profound scorn, while Zuares uttered a shrill and ferocious laugh.

"I say, cooky," said Sharkey, in a way which he supposed to be very jocular, "as Ben Bolter don't like the stickin' business, couldn't you put summut tasty into the mess-kid o' the cabbin passingers, and pison the whole bilin' o' them? I have known o' such things being done afore now, mates, and many other things, too, that never appeared in the ship's log. Have you any Calabar beans aboard?"

"Yaas," replied the cook, with a regular negro grin, for he was a black Virginian, named Quaco; "dere's a bagful in de hold. Why?"

"I have known of a handful, put in a copper of peasoup, doing for a whole ship's crew afore now."

"When?"

"In the Gulf of Florida once, and again among the Coral Islands, in the Pacific. Aye, aye, mates, I have seen some rum sprees in my time."

"And you are likely to see more," added the Yankee, "ere this cussed old craft gets her anchors over the bows, and her ground-tackle rove. Ha, ha! But as for the pison, you darned fool, wot of old Basset's gals? We wants 'em partik'lar, you know. So avast with your Calabar beans. I guess, mate, you're up a tree, rayther."

Sharkey was abashed into silence.

"And that Scotch doctor," said a gaunt, unhealthy-looking seaman, named Cribbit, who had not yet spoken, and who so frequently required Heriot's medical aid that he had imbibed half the contents of his medicine-chest, "must he, too, walk the plank?"

"In course he must," drawled Bill Badger, stuffing an enormous quid in the inmost recesses of his capacious mouth.

"No, no, _demonio_, no!" said the elder Barradas; "we must keep him alive so long as we want him. We can't physic ourselves, _companeros_, especially if fever comes aboard, which it is likely to do if we hug the land."

"But in physicking us he might poison the whole blessed gang," suggested the Canadian.

"No fear of that. We'll have him chained to the mainmast, and if a man dies in his hands, then _el senor doctor de medicena_ shall be tipped overboard after the others."

"Thank you, my Spanish _patrone_," thought Heriot, who had listened to all this with blood that alternately boiled and curdled; "a pleasant little medical practice you are likely to find me here!"

"Mayhap that fellow, Hawkshaw, would join us?" suggested the Canadian again.

"He, the white-livered Perro!" exclaimed Pedro, "I long to have my Albacete knife between his ribs. I'll teach him to play off quarter-deck airs with me, the God-abandoned Piccaro! Well, is it agreed that, instead of letting old Phillips haul up for Table Bay, we keep the ship off the land whether he will or will not take her before we are abreast of La Tierra de Natal; hug the coast of Africa after; have a run through the Mozambique Channel, and then stand right across the Indian Sea for whatever we may overhaul?"

A unanimous clapping of very hard and very dirty hands responded heartily to this programme.

"Now, Pedro, the _dados_ (dice)," said Zuares, impatiently.

"Yes, mates, the dice!" added the Yankee, setting his chin, which was like a shoemaker's knife, upon his knees, and clasping his hands over his ankles, so that he squatted on his hams like a huge baboon. "Hooray! the old _Herminey_ has been trimmed by the starn since she saw Dungeness Light; but we'll trim her by the head arter we doubles the Cape--eh, mates? So now to draw lots for them two pretty creeturs, as I calculate is just agoin' to bed about this blessed time. Think o' that, mates! I'm a thorough-bred Yankee--half bull, half shark, with an uncommon cross of the snake; so I'm blowed if I can wait almost till we leave Table Bay astarn and bear up towards Natal. But rattle away, Pedro, my boy!--Captain Pedro that is to be, I reckon."

The blood of the young Scotchman grew cold as he listened, longing for a brace of loaded revolvers, that he might shoot down the whole band; but the talkative Yankee began his nasal drawling again.

"How I'd like to have one of 'em under a big palm-tree in some snug diggin' on the Africy coast, or in a wigwam on the Mozambique, thatched with leaves, no topsails to reef o' nights, and nothin' to do all day, but keep on admiring her, and swigging the grog old Phillips has aboard, or blowing a whiff of 'baccy--eh, mates? Jeerusalem! that's summut like life, I calculate!"

"_Morte de Dios!_" swore Pedro Barradas, with a very dark look; "haul in your slack, and be hanged to you! There are other things than the two girls worth casting lots for!"

"Is there really, now?" drawled Badger. I was looking into the senoras' cabin the other night, and saw them going to bed. I saw lovely necks and shoulders, and all that; but I saw more, I can tell you, _companeros_."

"Smite my timbers!" "Shiver my tawpsails!" "Darn my eyes!" "Oh, Jeerusalem!" And "What did you see?" asked several all at once.

"A splendid jewel-case," replied the Spaniard, while an avaricious gleam sparkled in his dark eyes; "a box with diamond rings for the ears and fingers; carbuncles, turquoises, and topazes, in bracelets and necklets, all glittering on the trays of blue and crimson velvet. So he who loses the girls should have a chance----"

"Of grabbing the jewels," interrupted Badger; "in course he should--in course!"

"Jewels or not," said Zuares Barradas, laughing, while he rolled up a fresh cigarito, "I'll teach one senora, at least, that it is no longer here _mira y no totas_, as they say in Minorca."

"Which means, in your cussed lingo?" asked Bolter.

"_Look_ at me, but _touch_ me not!" replied the young Spaniard, with a grin.

"I'm rayther pertik'lar," observed Mr. Badger, "and I might do neither one nor t'other, if I wor in Minorky."

"Ay, mate; but if you saw the Minorca girls in their robazillas of white lace or silk, pinned under their pretty dimpled chins, and falling over their shoulders, to be lifted at times by the wind, only as if to show the low bodice and rounded bosom beneath--_hombre_."

"Here is a sentimental young villain, with an eye for the picturesque!" thought Heriot.

"Now, then, the dados," said Pedro, rattling the dice-box. "I throw myself first."

"_Maladetto_, Pedro!" interrupted Zuares. "Content yourself with rum and plunder; you are too old and crank for either of these girls to be pleased with you."

"_Vaya usted al Satanos!_" responded his affectionate elder brother. "The girls, at all events, are not too young for me to be pleased with them. I am not more than forty, you son of a burnt castano."

"Take the old nurse, Pedro--you'll have her a free gift, gratis, all for nothin', and Badger's blessing into the bargain. If one o' these gals falls to me," continued the talkative Yankee, "I reckon I must get shaved by the doctor, and be fixed anew; have my 'air swabbed down with some o' the cook's slush, and a hextra pull up o' my shirt collar--eh, mates?"

Amid the ferocious laughter which these and similar remarks drew forth, and while the dice-box rattled on the sea-chest lid Dr. Heriot withdrew, and crept aft, just as he had done forward, by keeping close under the lee bulwarks.

Reaching the companion-way unseen, he slipped downstairs, with a burning brain and aching heart--a heart sick and sore with apprehension for others rather than for himself; and now, with his ear tingling with countless coarse oaths, obscenities, and foul jokes, which, of course, have been omitted in our relation of the remarkable discussion he had overheard, he sought at once the cabin of Captain Phillips, to communicate the dreadful game that was on the _tapis_ in the forecastle of the ill-fated _Hermione_.