CHAPTER XIV

CRABB

The atmosphere was still red with the sunset, though the luminary was below the horizon, and there was plenty of light to see by. An extraordinary shout went up from amongst the men at the sight of Crabb, as he leapt out of the hatch in the heart of the little cloud of smoke. Those who were on the side of the deck on to which he jumped recoiled with a positive roar of horror and fright, one or two of them capsizing and rolling over and over away from the hatch, as though they were in too great a hurry to escape to find time to get upon their legs.

I very well remember feeling the blood desert my cheek, whilst my heart seemed to come to a stand, and my breathing grow difficult at the apparition of the fellow. _Crabb!_ Why, I had _seen_ him lying dead in his bunk! I had heard of him as lying stitched up in a hammock on this very fore-hatch! I had beheld that same hammock flash overboard, and I had watched it lifting and frisking away astern! Who, then, was yonder hideous creature that had jumped in hobgoblin fashion out of the hold? Could he be the buried Crabb himself?

There is no lack of things to frighten people withal in this world; but I cannot conceive of any shock comparable to the instant consternation felt by a man who meets another of whose death he is profoundly assured, and whom he has been thinking of as a corpse, dead and buried, for any number of days gone by. The general horror, the prodigious universal amazement which held the mate and me and others amongst us speechless and motionless, as though we had been blasted and withered up by some electric bolt from heaven, scarcely endured a minute; yet by that handful of seconds was the picture of this amazing incident framed. I see Crabb now as he let fall his arm from his face when his fit of choking coughing ceased: and I recall the blind wild look of his distorted eyes, as he slowly turned his countenance round, as though the mild evening light was violently oppressive to his vision after the days of blackness passed in the hold. His repulsive countenance was dark with dirt and grime. I observed many scratches upon his arms, which were naked to the elbows, as though he were fresh from squeezing and boring through some ugly jagged intricacies of stowed commodities. His shirt hung in rags upon him; there were many rents in his loose trousers; and there was blood upon his exposed chest, from a wound seemingly made by the sharp head of a nail or some edge of iron-sheathed case.

‘Seize that man, bo’sun,’ suddenly roared Mr. Prance, leaping out of his benumbed condition of astonishment in a way to make one think of a bull sweeping out through a hedge: ‘handcuff him, and shut him up in your berth for the present. Get the head-pump rigged--the hose passed along. Jump for buckets, and stand by to pass them down.’

The powerful hand of the boatswain closed like a vice upon Crabb’s neck. I thought to see a struggle, but the ugly sailor seemed weak and dazed, and stepped passively to the boatswain’s berth into which my friend shot him, following and closing the door, to conceal, I suppose, the operation of manacling the man from the eyes of the half-stupefied Jacks.

Half-stupefied, I say: but the orders of the mate were like the flourish of some magic wand over each man. There was a headlong rush, though with something of discipline in the hurry of it too, at the chief officer’s command. Smoke was draining through the open hatch, floating up thinly and lazily, though it was a thing to make one hold one’s breath, not knowing but that the next vomit might prove a thicker, darker coil, with a lightning-like reddening of the base of it to the flicker of some deep down tongue of flame. Fire at sea! Ah, great God! Out of the mere thought of it will come the spirit of the fleetest runner into the laziest and most lifeless shanks.

The mate sprang on top of the cases stowed level with the lower edges of the hold with a cry for men to follow him. The interior was the fore-part of the ’tween decks, bulkheaded off some little distance before the mainmast, and filled with light, easily handled goods. The hatch conducting to the ship’s hold lay closed immediately under these few tons of freight in a line with the yawning square into which Mr. Prance had sprung. Where was the fire? If in the lower hold, then heaven help us! I glanced aft, and saw the captain hastily walking forward. The passengers had come together in a crowd, and were staring with pale faces from the head of the poop ladder. Old Keeling was perfectly cool. He asked no questions, made no fuss, simply came to the side of the hatch, saw Mr. Prance and a gang of men at work breaking out the cargo, and stood watching, never hindering the people’s labour by a question. His keen seawardly eye took in everything in a breath. One needed but to watch his face to see _that_. The placidity of the fine old fellow was a magnificent influence. In an incredibly short space of time, the captain meanwhile never once opening his lips, the head-pump was rigged, the hose trailed along and pointed ready, a number of seamen were standing in files with buckets ranged along all prepared for drawing water, and passing it to the hatchway with the swiftest expedition. I cannot express the wonderful encouragement the heart found in this silence alone. The captain trusted his chief mate, saw that he exactly knew what to do, and stood by as a spectator, with just one look of approval at his quiet, resolute, deep-breathing ranks of seamen awaiting orders.

Once he turned his purple face, and observing Mr. Johnson and Mr. Emmett and one or two others nervously edging their way forwards, he beckoned with a long forefinger to a boatswain’s mate and said in a low voice: ‘Drive those gentlemen aft on to the poop, and see that none of the passengers leaves it.’ He glanced at me once, but said nothing, possibly because he had found me looking on when he arrived.

All as tranquilly as though the job was no more than the mere breaking out of a few boxes of passengers’ luggage, the work of removing the cargo so as to get at the fire proceeded. The smoke continued to steal stealthily up. The contents of the cases I do not know, but they were light enough to be lifted easily. A number of them were got on deck. The mate and Mr. Cocker--who had arrived from his cabin shortly after the captain had come--headed the gang of workers, and rapidly disappeared in the lanes they opened.

‘Here it is!’ at last came a muffled shout.

Mr. Cocker coming out of a dark hole like a rat, with the perspiration streaming from him as though a bucket of oil had been capsized over his head, sang out for the hose to be overhauled and the pump to be worked.

‘Have you discovered the fire, sir?’ said the captain, calling down to him in such a collected voice as he would have used in requesting a passenger to take wine with him.

‘Yes, sir. It is a small affair. The hose will suffice, I think, sir.’

An instant after, the clanking of the plied pump was to be heard along with the sound of water steadily gushing, followed by a cloud of steam, which quickly vanished. A quarter of an hour later the mate came up black as a chimney-sweep. He touched his cap to the captain, and simply said: ‘the fire’s out, sir.’

‘What was it, Mr. Prance?’

‘A bale of blankets, sir.’

‘Can you guess how it originated?’

‘I expect that the man Crabb----’ began the mate.

The captain started and stared.

‘The man Crabb,’ continued Mr. Prance, ‘whom we imagined dead and buried, sir, has been skulking in the hold’--old Keeling frowned with amazement--‘and I have no doubt he fired the bale whilst lighting his pipe.’

‘Crabb in the hold!’ cried the skipper; ‘do you speak of the man whom we buried, sir?’

‘The same, sir,’ answered Mr. Prance.

Old Keeling gazed about him with a gaping face. ‘But he died, sir, and was buried,’ he exclaimed. ‘I read the funeral service over him, and saw, sir--Mr. Prance, I _saw_ with my own eyes the hammock fall from the grating after it had been tilted.’

The chief officer said something in reply which I did not catch, owing to the noise amongst the men who were yet in the hold and the talk of the sailors round about. He then walked to the boatswain’s berth followed by the captain, that old marline-spike’s eyes might bear witness to the assurance that the Crabb who had leapt up out of the fore-hatch in a smother of smoke was the same Crabb who had been solemnly interred over the ship’s side some weeks before.

Mr. Cocker came wriggling out of the hold and got on to the deck alongside of me to superintend the restowal of the broken-out goods.

‘Is the fire out?’ I asked.

‘Black out,’ he answered. ‘It was no fire, to speak truly of it, Mr. Dugdale. A top bale of blankets or some such stuff was smouldering in about the circle of a five-shilling piece--a little ring eating slowly inwards, but throwing out smoke enough to furnish forth a volcano for a stage-scene. A beastly smell! not to speak of some of the stuff down there being as blackening as a shoe-polisher’s brushes.’ Here he looked at the palms of his hands, which were only a little more grimy than his face.--‘But what’s this I hear about Crabb? Has the dead sailor come to life again?’

‘He’s yonder,’ said I, nodding towards the boatswain’s berth, which the captain and mate had entered, closing the door after them: ‘you’ll need to see to believe. Time was that when a man was dropped over a ship’s side with a cannon-ball at his feet he was as dead as if his brains were out. D’ye remember, Mr. Cocker, how that hammock went floating astern, as if there were less than a dead sailor in it, though something more than nothing? There’s been some devilish stealthy scheme here depend upon it. We may yet find out that the ship wasn’t scuttled because the ugly rogue hadn’t time to pierce through the lower hatch before he set the vessel on fire.’

‘But he was a dead man, sir; Hemmeridge saw him dead,’ cried Cocker, eyeing me with an inimitable air of astonishment.

‘Ay,’ said I, ‘dead as the bones of a mummy. But he’s _there_ all the same,’ I added pointing to the forecastle cabin, ‘as alive as you or I, and capable, I daresay, of kicking after a little.’

At this moment the mate put his head out of the boatswain’s berth and called to Mr. Cocker, on which I walked leisurely aft, with amazement in me growing, and scarcely capable of realising the truth of what I had seen.

The passengers were still crowding the fore-part of the poop, peering and eagerly talking, but in subdued voices, with Colonel Bannister moving angrily amongst them, and the boatswain’s mate sentinelling the foot of the ladder.

‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale,’ cried Mrs. Radcliffe, leaning over the rail and crying down her question with a pecking motion of her head; ‘is the fire out, do you know? Are we safe?’

‘The fire _is_ out, madam,’ I replied, lifting my hat; ‘and the ship is as safe this minute as ever she was in the Thames. Captain Keeling will, I have no doubt, be here very shortly to reassure you.’

Miss Temple, towering half a head above her aunt, looked down at me with an air of imperious questioning in her face. There was a hot scarlet blush all along the west, yet with power enough in its illumination to render each face of the crowd above quite distinguishable against the tender shadow stealing from the east into the air, and I could see an eagerness in the girl’s full, dark, glowing, and steadfast gaze to warrant me the honour of a conversation with her if I chose to ascend the ladder. But just then Hemmeridge came out of the cuddy on to the quarter-deck with the hint of a stagger in his walk. His eyes showed that he was only just awake, and his hair that he had run out of his cabin in a hurry.

‘I say, Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, ‘what’s been the matter, hey? Fire, is it? And the steward tells me that Crabb has come back. Has the man gone mad?’

‘There’s been a fire,’ said I, ‘and Crabb has come back.’

Here Cocker came along the deck.

‘Doctor, the captain wants you.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Come along; I’ll take you to him,’ said the second mate, running his eye over Hemmeridge’s figure with a half-look on at me full of meaning in it.

They walked forward, the doctor a trifle unsteady in his gait, I thought.

I went to my berth for some tobacco; I stayed a short time below, and when I returned, the last scar of sunset was gone. The west was a liquid violet darkness trembling with stars, and the ship was floating through the darkness of the night, which in these latitudes follows swiftly upon the heels of the departing day. Captain Keeling had come aft, and was standing in the midst of a crowd of passengers answering questions, and soothing the women, who were snapping inquiries in whole volleys, their voices threaded by tremors and shrill with nerves. Mr. Prance, who had found time to cleanse himself, was on deck in charge of the ship. All was hushed forwards. Against the stars twinkling over the line of the forecastle rail under the foot of the foresail, that slowly lifted and fell to the heave of the ship. I could distinguish the outlines of sailors moving here and there in twos and threes. A subdued hoarse prowling of voices came out of the block of darkness round about the galley and the long-boat, where were gathered a number of men, doubtlessly discoursing on the marvellous incident of the evening. The glittering brilliants in the sky winked like dewdrops along the black edge of the spars and at the extremity of the yard-arms; and spite of the voices of the people aft and of the mutterings forward, so deep was the ocean hush up aloft that again and again the sound of the delicate night-breeze, breathing lightly into the visionary spaces of the sails, would fall like a sigh upon the ear.

‘An exciting piece of work, Mr. Prance,’ said I, stepping to his side, ‘taking it from the start to the close.’

‘Why, yes,’ he answered. ‘The passengers will not be wanting in experiences to relate when they get ashore. Enough has happened yesterday and to-day, in the way of excitement, I mean, to last out an ordinary voyage, though it were as long as one of Captain Cook’s.’

‘What has Hemmeridge to say about this business of Crabb, do you know?’ I asked.

‘You will keep the news to yourself, if you please,’ he answered; ‘but I don’t mind telling _you_ that he’s under arrest--that is to say, he has to consider himself so.’

‘What for?’ I asked, greatly astonished.

‘Why, Mr. Dugdale,’ said he, slowly looking round, to make sure that the coast was clear, ‘you may easily guess that this business of the scoundrel Crabb--an old pirate, as I remember telling you, signifies a very deep-laid plot, an atrociously ingenious conspiracy.’

‘I supposed that at once,’ said I.

‘The fellow Crabb feigned to be dead,’ he continued. ‘A sham it must have been, otherwise he wouldn’t be in irons yonder. Now, are we to believe that Hemmeridge can’t distinguish between death and life? He reports the man dead to the captain. The fellow is stitched up; but, as we have since ascertained, a prepared hammock is substituted for the one that conceals his remains, and we bury maybe some clump of wood. This is the part Captain Keeling least likes, I think. He is a pious old gentleman, and his horror when’---- He checked himself with a cough, and a sound on top of it like a smothered laugh, as though he enjoyed some fancy in his mind, but durst not be too candid, since it was the captain he talked about.

‘It is assumed,’ said I, ‘that Hemmeridge represented Crabb as dead knowing him to be alive?’ He nodded. ‘What will have been the project?’ I continued, shaping out the truth as, bit by bit, it formed itself in my head. ‘Robbery, of course. Ay, Mr. Prance, that will have been it. Crabb is to be smuggled into the hold, the notion throughout the ship being that he is dead and overboard; and when in the hold’---- I stopped.

‘Well,’ said he with a shrug of his shoulders, ‘there’s the mail-room. What else? With a parcel of diamonds in it worth seventy thousand pounds, not to speak of money, jewelry, and other precious matters.’

‘By heavens! did any man ever hear the like of such a plot?’ cried I; ‘and Hemmeridge is suspected as a confederate?’

‘We shall see, we shall see,’ he answered.

‘Just tell me this, Mr. Prance,’ I exclaimed, thirsty with curiosity, ‘who are the others involved? Somebody must have shifted Crabb’s remains.’

‘The sailmaker is in irons,’ said he.

‘Yes! I might have sworn it! Why is it that the high Roman nose of that chap has haunted my recollection of the ghastly appearance Mr. Crabb presented at every recurrence of my mind to the loathsome picture?’

He slightly started, and I could see him eyeing me earnestly.

‘By the way,’ he exclaimed, ‘now that I think of it, Hemmeridge showed Crabb’s body to _you_, didn’t he?’

‘Certainly he did,’ I responded.

‘Well, it will give the doctor a chance,’ said he, as though thinking aloud; and so saying he made some steps in the direction of the captain, and I went down on the quarter-deck to blow a cloud and muse upon the matters he had filled my mind with.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME

_Spottiswoode & Co. Printers, New-street Square, London._

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.