CHAPTER XI

A STRANGE SAIL

It was a Friday morning. On going on deck before breakfast for a pump-bath in the ship’s head, I found as queer a look of weather all about as ever I had witnessed in my life. A troubled swell, but without much height or power, was running from the westwards, and the Indiaman rolled awkwardly upon it with much noise of beating canvas aloft and of straining spars. The water was of a dull olive tint, with an appearance of mud in it, as though some violent disturbance at bottom had lifted the ooze cloudily to the surface. It was hard to tell whether the sky was blue or slate, so thick, dusty, impervious was it, with here and there a dim outline of cloud, and patches, so to speak, of a kind of yellowish blue, where some belly of obscured vapour stooped lower than the rest; whilst, the whole sea-circle round, there hovered an immense grummet or ring of a dingy, sooty appearance, like to a line of smoke left by the funnels of steamers, and hanging in a brown cloud, leagues in length, in silent motionless weather on the rim of the waters of the English Channel.

‘Hallo, Mr. Smallridge,’ said I, as I stepped over the rail out of the head, addressing the boatswain, who was superintending the work of a couple of hands slung over the bow, ‘what have we yonder?’ and I sent my gaze at a sail I had now for the first time caught sight of that was hovering down upon our port quarter some two or three miles distant.

‘A brig, sir, I believe,’ he answered; ‘she was in sight much about the same place at daybreak. There’s been a little air of wind, but it’s failing, I doubt.’

‘Making way for something to follow, I fancy?’ said I, casting a look round the horizon.

‘Ay,’ he answered; ‘that muck’s a-drawing up, and there’ll be thunder in it too, if my corns speaks right. Niver had no such aching in my toes as this morning since last Toosday was two year, when we fell in off the Hope with the ugliest thunderstorm that I can remember south of the heequator. When my corns begins to squirm I always know that thunder ain’t fur off.’

‘Well, thunder or no thunder,’ said I, ‘I hope there’s to come wind enough in the wake of all this to blow us along. We shall be having to call it sixty days to the Line, bo’sun, if we don’t mind our eye;’ and giving him a friendly nod, I made my way to my cabin to finish dressing.

The gloomy appearance continued all the morning without the least change. The wind fell dead; and a prodigious hush overhung the sea, a stillness that grew absolutely overwhelming to the fancy, if you gave your mind to it, and stood watching the heave of the swell running in ugly green heaps without a sound. Noises were curiously distinct. The voice of a man hailing the forecastle from the foretopmast cross-trees sounded on the poop as though he had called from the maintop. A laugh from near the wheel had a startlingly near note, though it came to you along the whole length of the after-deck. The water brimming to the channels alongside to the stoop of the hull sent the oddest hollowest sobbing tone into the air, as though some monster were strangling alongside. Halliards had been let go and sails clewed up and hauled down, and the _Countess Ida_ lay with something of a naked look as she wallowed with the clumsiness of a wide-beamed ship under topsails and fore course; and all the rest of the square canvas, saving the royals and mizzen topgallant-sail, which were furled, swinging in and out festooned by the grip of the gear.

By noon the sail that I had noticed early that morning had neared us in some insensible fashion till she hung something more than a mile away off the quarter as before. I had several times examined her with the telescope and was not a little impressed by her appearance. She was a brig of about two hundred and sixty tons; a most beautiful and perfect model, indeed, with a clipper lift of bow and a knife-like cutwater and a long wonderfully graceful arching sweep of side rounding into the very perfection of a run. Her copper came high, and was very clean, as though she were fresh from port. Her masts were singularly lofty for her size, both of them tapering away into skysail poles with yards across; but she had furled all canvas down to her two topsails and foresail, and lay rolling heavily, lifting her symmetrical fabric to the height of the swell, when she would be hove out against the ugly sulky background in such keen relief that her rigging glanced like hairs as it came from the mastheads to the channels, with a white, odd, almost ghastly stare in her canvas that was brilliant as cotton; then down she would sink behind some sullen almost livid peak till she was hidden to the reef-band of her fore-course.

Throughout the morning I had observed Captain Keeling somewhat restlessly examining her; that is to say, he would send looks enough at her through his binocular glass to suggest that he found something unusual, perhaps disturbing, in her appearance. There were no sights to be had, though the old fellow and his two mates stood about the deck, sextants in hands, occasionally lifting their eyes to that part of the sky where the sun was supposed to be. Observing Mr. Prance at the rail, steadfastly observing the brig down upon the quarter, I went up to him.

‘Pray what do you find in that craft yonder, Mr. Prance, to interest you? The skipper does not seem able to keep his glass off her.’

‘What do _you_ see, Mr. Dugdale?’ he answered, viewing me out of the corners of his eyes without turning his head. ‘Come, you have been a sailor. What is _your_ notion of her?’

‘She’s a beauty, anyway,’ I answered; ‘no builder’s yard ever turned out anything sweeter in the shape of a hull--a trifle too lofty, perhaps. For my part, I hate everything above royals. Give me short mastheads, the royal-yard sitting close under the track, English frigate-fashion’--I was proceeding.

‘No, no; I don’t mean that, Mr. Dugdale,’ he interrupted with a hint of a seaman’s impatience at my criticism.

‘What, then?’ I asked.

‘Does she look honest, think you?’ said he.

‘Ha!’ cried I: ‘now I understand.’

‘Hush! not a word if you please,’ he exclaimed with a glance along the poop; ‘the ladies must on no account be frightened, and it is but a mere suspicion on Captain Keeling’s part at best. Yet he has had some acquaintance with gentry of her kind, if, indeed, yonder chap be of the denomination he conjectures.’

‘She must have been stealthily sneaking down upon us,’ I exclaimed, ‘to occupy her present position, otherwise she should be a league distant out on the beam. But then such a hull as that must yield to a catspaw that wouldn’t blow a feather out of the _Countess Ida’s_ mizzen-top. What has been seen to excite misgiving, Mr. Prance?’

‘Too many of a crew, sir,’ he answered; ‘the outline of a long-tom on her forecastle, but ill-concealed by the raffle thrown over it. Six guns of a side, Mr. Dugdale, though the closed ports hide their grins.’

‘She will not attempt anything with a big chap like us, surely.’

At that moment the captain called him, and he walked aft.

Presently, it sensibly darkened, as though to the passage of some denser sheet of vapour crawling through the heart of the obscurity on high. The sea turned of an oil-like smoothness, and ran in folds as of liquid bottle-green glass out of the grimy shadow that was slowly thickening all away round the ocean limit. The order was given to furl the clewed-up sails and to reef the topsails. The boatswain’s pipe summoned all hands to this work, and the ship for a while was full of life and commotion. However, by this time the secret of old Keeling’s uneasiness had in some way leaked out; in fact, the skipper could no longer have kept the people in ignorance of his suspicions; for some ten minutes or so before the tiffin bell rang, after the hands had come down from aloft, the order was quietly sent along to see all clear for action; and as I took my seat at table, being close to the cuddy front, as my chair brought me with a clear view of the quarter-deck through the open windows, I could observe the men preparing our little show of carronades, removing the tompions, placing rams, sponges, train-tackles, and the like at hand, and passing shot and chests of small-arms through the main hatch.

Captain Keeling, stiff, and bolstered up as usual in his brass-buttoned frock coat, his face of a deeper rubicund from some recent touch of soap and towel, seated himself at the head of the table; but Prance and the other mates remained on deck. One noticed a deal of uneasiness amongst the ladies, saving Miss Temple whose haughty beautiful face wore its ordinary impassive expression. There was no coquetry in the startled eyes that Miss Hudson rolled around. Mrs. Bannister fanned herself vehemently, and ate nothing. There were some of us males, too, who looked as if we didn’t like it. Mr. Emmett was exceedingly thoughtful; Mr. Fairthorne drank thirstily, and pulled incessantly at his little sprouting moustache; Mr. Hodder watched old Keeling continuously; and Mr. Riley made much of his eye-glass. Nothing to the point was said for a little while; then the colonel rapped out:

‘I say, captain, have you any notion as to the nationality of that chap whom your people are making ready to resist?’

‘No, sir,’ answered Keeling stiffly; ‘we gave her a sight of our ensign this morning; but she showed no colours in return, and I am not a man to keep my hat off to one who will not respond.’

‘Dot iss my vay,’ exclaimed Peter Hemskirk, bestowing a train of nods on the skipper.

‘But, captain,’ said Mrs. Joliffe, a nervous gentle-faced middle-aged lady, with soft white hair, ‘have you any good reason for supposing that the ship may prove dangerous to us?’

‘Madam,’ responded Keeling with a bow, and you noticed the prevailing condition amongst us by the general nervous inclining of ears towards the old fellow to catch what he said, ‘there is reason to believe that certain Spaniards of the island of Cuba have equipped two or three smart vessels to act the part of marine highwaymen. The authorities wink at the business, I am told. Their practice is to bring ships to and board them, and plunder the best of what they may come across. Last year, a West Indiaman named the _Jamaica Belle_ was overhauled by one of these craft, who took specie amounting to twelve thousand pounds out of her. I believe they are not cut-throats in the old piratic sense.’

‘Oh, don’t speak of cut-throats!’ cried Mrs. Hudson. ‘Will they dare to attack us--the monsters!’

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Keeling, ‘pray, clearly understand: my suspicions of the stranger may be ill-founded. Meanwhile, our business is to put ourselves in a posture of defence, ready for whatever may happen.’

‘Certainly,’ exclaimed the colonel very emphatically with a look round; and then speaking with his eyes fixed upon Mr. Johnson; ‘I presume we shall be able to count upon all our male friends here assembled to assist your crew to the utmost of their powers, should the stranger make any attempt upon this ship?’

‘We shall expect you to cover yourself with glory, colonel,’ said Mr. Johnson, in a familiar sarcastic voice; ‘and I shall be happy to write and print a full description of your behaviour, sir.’

‘I am quite willing to fight,’ exclaimed Mr. Fairthorne in an effeminate voice. ‘I mean that I shall be glad to thoot; but I am no thwordthman.’

‘Possengers hov no beesness to vight,’ exclaimed Mynheer Hemskirk, enlarging his immense waistcoat by obtruding his chest; ‘dey gets in der vay of dem as knows vot to do.’

Miss Temple bit her lip to conceal a smile.

‘That’s all very well,’ exclaimed Riley, talking at Miss Hudson; ‘but suppose, Hemskirk, you should find some greasy Spaniard with earrings and oily ringlets rifling your boxes, hauling out all the money you’ve got, pocketing that fine silver-mounted meerschaum pipe of yours’----

‘I vould coot orff hiss head,’ answered the Dutchman, breathing hard.

‘Gentlemen, you are unnecessarily alarming the ladies,’ cried old marline-spike from the head of the table.

‘I suppose there’s no lack of small-arms with you, captain?’ roared the Colonel; ‘plenty for us here as well as for your men?’

‘I shall insist upon your not meddling, Edward, in whatever may happen,’ cried his wife, giving him an emphatic nod over the edge of her fan with her Roman nose.

‘I shall meddle, then, my dear,’ he shouted. ‘If it comes to those rascals attacking us, I shall fight, as of course we all will,’ and again he bent his little fiery eyes upon Mr. Johnson.

‘My note-book is ready, colonel,’ said Mr. Johnson pleasantly, with a satirical grin at the peppery little soldier. ‘I’ll not lose sight of you, sir.’

‘I believe you will then, sir,’ sneered the colonel, ‘unless Captain Keeling takes the precaution to clap his hatches on to prevent anybody skulking below from off the deck.’

‘Mere bluster is not going to help us,’ said Colledge, who disliked the colonel; ‘no good in railing and storming like heroes in a blank-verse performance for an hour at a time before falling to. If Captain Keeling wants any assistance outside that of his crew, he may command me for one.’

‘I wath never taught fenthing,’ said Mr. Fairthorne; ‘if I fight, it mutht be with a muthket.’

‘If the ship should be captured, what’s to become of us?’ cried Mrs. Hudson. ‘I’ve read the most barbarous histories about pirates. They have no respect for sex or age; and it’s quite common, I’ve heard, for every pirate to have twelve wives.’

Here Mrs. Trevor suddenly shrieked out for some one to bring her baby to her, then went into hysterics, and was presently carried away in a dead faint by the stewards, followed by her daughter, weeping bitterly. Old Keeling whipped out an oath.

‘Now, gentlemen,’ he exclaimed, ‘you see what your conversation has brought about. Ladies, I beg that you will not be uneasy. The stranger will give us no trouble, I am persuaded;’ and rising with a look of contempt, he bowed stiffly to Miss Temple and her aunt, and went on deck.

I was too curious to observe what was going forward to linger in the cuddy amid this idle rattle of tongues. Our ship having no steerage-way, had slewed to the beat of the swell, and the brig was now off the starboard bow, pretty much distant as she had been when we went to lunch, but showing out with amazing clearness against the sooty sky past her, upon which her topsails swung from side to side so heavily that the lower yard-arms at times seemed to spear the water lifting to them in hills. All over and beyond her lay a deep shadow of thunder, a sky scowling to the zenith thick as though viewed through a dust-storm, with a vision of the tufted cloud of the electric tempest hovering here and there; but there was no lightning as yet, no echo of distant grumbling; there was not a breath of air to cool the moistened lip, and the noiseless heave of the swell was as though old ocean lay breathing hard in a posture of dumb expectation.

Our crew hung about the decks in groups ready to spring to the first command. Iron stanchions had been fitted into the line of the rails, and boarding-nets triced up the length of the ship from just before the fore-rigging to the poop rail. Aft was a small gang of seamen stationed at each gun there, with all necessary machinery for the artillery at hand. The captain, the chief mate, and Mr. Cocker stood abreast of the wheel, looking at the brig with an occasional glance round the sea at the weather. I stepped to the side to take another view of the stranger, and I was noticing with admiration the toy-like beauty of her as she soared with ruddy sheathing to the head of a swell, with now and again a most delicate echo of the clapping and beating of her canvas stealing to us through the dark, breathless atmosphere, when I was accosted by some one at my elbow.

‘Do you think it possible, Mr. Dugdale, that if that vessel fired at our ship she could hit us, so violently rolling as she is?’

I turned. It was Mrs. Radcliffe, and with her was Miss Temple. With the exception of a ‘good morning’ or a ‘good night,’ I had never exchanged a syllable with this lady in all the time she and I had been together on shipboard. Her kind little face fluttered jerkily at me as she asked the question in a manner to remind one of the movements of the head of a hen. Miss Temple stood like a statue, swaying to the majestic perpendicular of her figure upon the rolling deck without the least visible effort to keep her balance, her dark and shining eyes fixed upon the brig.

‘Her gunners,’ said I, ‘would need to be practised marksmen, I should say, to hit us from such a tumbling platform as that yonder.’

‘Just my opinion, as I told you, Louise,’ she exclaimed.

‘If she were to begin to fire,’ exclaimed the girl, keeping her gaze bent seawards, ‘she would be sure to hit us, though it were by chance.’

‘Very possibly,’ said I.

‘There will be some wind soon, I think, don’t you?’ said Mrs. Radcliffe.

‘I hope so,’ I answered.

‘In that case,’ said she, ‘we shall be able to sail away and escape, shan’t we?’

‘She will chase us,’ exclaimed Miss Temple; ‘and as she sails faster than we do, she will catch us!’

‘Now, is that likely?’ cried Mrs. Radcliffe, with a nervous toss of her head at me.

‘Everything is possible at sea,’ said I, laughing; ‘but there is a deal in our favour, Mrs. Radcliffe: first the weather, that as good as disables that fellow at present anyway; then the coming on of the night, with every prospect of losing the brig in the darkness.’

‘Would you advocate our running away from him?’ exclaimed Miss Temple, looking at me with a fulness and firmness that was as embarrassing and vexing in its way as an impertinent stare.

‘Oh, yes,’ said I; ‘certainly. We are a peaceful trader. It is our business to arrive in India sound in body’----

‘I should consider,’ said she, gazing at me as if she would subdue me into acquiescence in anything she chose to say by merely eyeing me strenuously, ‘that Captain Keeling would be acting the part of a coward if he ran away from that little vessel.’

‘Oh, Louise, how can you talk so!’ cried Mrs. Radcliffe, with a sort of despairful toss of her hands.

‘I should like to see a fight between two ships,’ said the girl, removing her overbearing eyes from my face to send them over the deck amongst the groups of men. ‘Of course, if that vessel attacks us, we ladies will be sent below to rend the cabin with our screams at every broadside; but I, for one, am perfectly willing, if the captain consents, to shoot at those people through a porthole.’

‘Oh, Louise, the whims which possess you are really dreadful!’ cried Mrs. Radcliffe: ‘imagine, if you should even wound a man! it would make you miserable for life; perhaps end in your becoming a Roman Catholic and going into a convent. Think of that.’

Miss Temple looked at her aunt with a little curl of her lip.

‘I do not know,’ she exclaimed, ‘why it should be more dreadful in a woman to defend her life than in a man. Nobody, I suppose, wishes to hurt those people; but if they attempt to hurt us, why should we women feel shocked at the notion of our helping the sailors to protect the ship by any means in our power? I am like Mr. Fairthorne,’ she continued, with a sarcastic glance at me; ‘I could not fight with a sword, but I can certainly pull the trigger of a musket.’

‘It is really hardly lady-like, my dear,’ began Mrs. Radcliffe.

‘Nonsense, aunt! Lady-like! Is it more genteel to fall into hysterics and swoon away, than to take aim at a wicked wretch who will have your life if you don’t take his?’ and as she said this, she whipped a cotton umbrella out of her aunt’s hand, and putting it to her shoulder, as though it were a gun, levelled it at the brig.

Colledge, who was standing at a little distance away, talking to two or three of the passengers, clapped his hands and laughed out. For my part, I could not take my eyes off her, so fascinating were the beauties of her fine form in that posture, her head drooped in the attitude of the marksman, and her marble-like profile showing out clear as a cutting in ivory against the soft shadowy mass of gloom of the sky astern.

Mrs. Radcliffe again tossed her arms in a despairful gesture, with a pecking, so to speak, of her face at the gangs of men on the quarter-deck and waist; and then making a little flurried snatch at her umbrella, she passed her arm through her niece’s, exclaiming: ‘Help me to reach the cuddy, my dear. There’s a thunderstorm brewing, I’m sure, and I’m afraid of lightning.’ She made me a little staggering curtsey, and walked with Miss Temple to the companion, down which the pair of them went, followed by Mr. Colledge, who I could hear complimenting Miss Temple on her resolution to fight the enemy, if the stranger should prove one.

A few minutes later Mr. Emmett and Mr. Johnson approached me, bumping against each other like a brace of lighters in a seaway as they struck out on the swaying deck with their staggering legs.

‘I say, Dugdale,’ cried the journalist, ‘shall you fight?’

‘Why, yes,’ I answered. ‘We shall all be expected to help the crew certainly.’

‘I don’t see that!’ exclaimed Mr. Emmett, drawing his wide-awake down to his nose and folding his arms with a tragic gesture upon his breast, whilst he swung his figure from side to side on wide-stretched legs. ‘It’s all very fine to expect; but I agree with Johnson, whose argument is, that we have paid our money to be transported in safety to Bombay; and I cannot for the life of me see that the captain has any right to look for cooperation at our hands, unless, indeed, he so contrives it as to enable us to help him without imperilling our lives.’

‘But that fellow yonder may be full of ruffians, Emmett,’ said I; ‘and if you do not help our sailors to defend the _Countess Ida_, they may board us; and then they will cut your throat,’ I added, with a look at his long neck, ‘which is no very agreeable sensation, I believe, and an experience quite worth a pinch of heroism to evade.’

‘It’s a beastly business altogether,’ said he, wrinkling his nose as he stared at the brig.

‘But why should they board us?’ exclaimed Mr. Johnson. ‘If they do, it will be the captain’s fault. Why does he want to go on sticking _here_ for, as if, by George! we were a man-of-war with three decks bristling with guns and crammed to suffocation with men?’

‘There is no wind,’ said I; ‘and without wind, Johnson, ships cannot sail.’

‘Then why the confounded dickens don’t he lower all the boats,’ he cried, ‘and fill them with sailors, and tug the ship out of sight of that beast there?’

I laughed outright.

‘Well, I’m not in the habit of using strong language,’ said Mr. Emmett, scowling at the brig; ‘but curse me if I’m going to fight. My simple contention is, I’ve paid my money to be transported peacefully to India; and,’ added he, with a glance aft at old Keeling, who was staring up at the sky, as though to observe if there were any drift in the vapour up there, ‘if he don’t fulfil his undertaking, I’ll sue him or his owners for breach of contract.’

‘I’m no sailor,’ exclaimed Mr. Johnson, ‘but I may claim to have some intelligence as a landsman, and my argument is,’ he cried, talking in a loud voice, ‘that it is quite in Captain Keeling’s power to launch the boats and drag the ship away from this spot. In an hour the brig would be out of sight.’

At that instant there was a flash of lightning that made a crimson dazzle of the dark heavens beyond the brig, where the sky sloped in a horrible yellowish slate colour into the sooty thickness which circled the horizon.

‘Ha!’ cried Mr. Emmett, ‘I don’t like lightning;’ and he abruptly trundled down the poop ladder to the quarter-deck and disappeared.

‘Here’s a mess to be in!’ grumbled Johnson. ‘It’s all very well to shoot or be shot at if you make butchery a profession. But to be maimed or killed in some cheap affray--having to fight for people you don’t care a hang about--obliged, for instance, to jeopardise your eyes, your limbs, perhaps your very existence, for an old woman like Mrs. Bannister, when the business is not in one’s line at all--’ He clenched his fist, and fetching his thigh a whack with it, exclaimed: ‘Let little hectoring Colonel Cock-a-doodle-doo cut as many throats as he can come at--I am a man of peace. I have parted with a large sum to get to India in comfort; and to expect me to help the sailors to fight is as monstrous as to look to me to assist them in furling the sails and scrubbing the decks.’

Thus speaking, he followed Mr. Emmett down on to the quarter-deck.