CHAPTER XXVII

THE BRIG’S LONGBOAT

I was awakened by a knocking at the door. The little cabin was bright with sunshine, that was flashing off sea and sky upon the thick glass of the scuttle. ‘Hallo!’ I cried, ‘who is that?’ The voice of the young fellow Wilkins responded:

‘Capt’n Braine’s compliments, sir, and he’d be glad to know if there’s anything you or the lady wants which it’s in his power to supply ye with?’

I got out of the bunk and opened the door.

‘Captain Braine is very kind,’ said I to the veal-faced youth, who stood staring at me with faint eyes under his white lashes and brows. ‘What time is it, Wilkins?’

‘Half-past eight, sir,’ he answered.

I knocked upon the bulkhead. ‘Are you awake, Miss Temple?’

‘Oh yes,’ she answered, her voice sounding weak through the partition.

‘Captain Braine wishes to know if you are in want of anything it is in his power to let you have?’

‘There are many things I want,’ she exclaimed; ‘but they are not to be had, I fear. I am afraid I shall have to use that comb. I can do nothing with my hair, Mr. Dugdale.’

‘All right, Wilkins,’ said I; ‘we shall be on deck in a few minutes.’ He went away.

I found the comb that had belonged to Mr. Chicken on a shelf, and knocked on Miss Temple’s door. She opened it, and an arm of snow, of faultless shape, was projected to receive the comb. ‘Thank you,’ said she, whipping the door to, and I entered my cabin, calling out that I would wait for her there till she was ready.

Happily, in respect of toilet conveniences we were not wholly destitute. The water in my can was indeed salt, but I contrived to get some show of lather out of the fragment of marine soap which I found inside of the tin dish that served me as a wash-basin. I was without Miss Temple’s scrupulosity, and found old Chicken’s hairbrush good enough to flourish. There was a little parcel of razors, too, on the shelf where the comb had been, and with one of them I made shift to scrape my cheeks into some sort of smoothness, wholly by dint of feeling, for Miss Temple had Chicken’s glass, and there was nothing in my cabin to reflect my countenance. By the time this little business was ended, and I had carefully concealed the pistol and powder-flask, Miss Temple was ready. She knocked on my door, and I stepped out.

I could see her but very imperfectly in the dim light of that steerage, yet it seemed to me that there was more vivacity in her eyes, more life in her carriage and air, than I had witnessed in her on the yesterday. She told me that she had slept soundly, and that her mattress was as comfortable as her bed aboard the _Countess Ida_.

‘I am heartily glad to hear that,’ said I. ‘You found the marine soap tough, I fear?’

‘It cannot be good for the complexion, I should think,’ said she with a slight smile.

‘How shocking,’ I exclaimed, as we moved to the hatch, ‘would such a situation as yours be to a young lady who is dependent for her beauty on cosmetics and powder! How would Miss Hudson manage if she were here, I wonder?’

‘Is there anything in sight, do you know, Mr. Dugdale? That is a more important subject to me than complexions.’

‘I did not ask; but we will find out.’

It was a brilliant morning, a wide blue, blinding flash of day, as it seemed to my eyes after the gloom below. The sea was all on fire under the sun, and the wind held it trembling gloriously. A hot and sparkling breeze in the same old quarter gushed freshly into the wide expanded wings of the _Lady Blanche_, whose swift pace over the smooth plain of ocean seemed a sort of miracle of sailing to me when I contrasted it with the rate of going of the _Countess Ida_. The flying-fish in scores sparkled out from the barque’s white sides. The foam came along her sheathing like a roll of cotton-wool to her wake. The ocean line ran round in a firm edge with an opalescent clarification of the extreme rim that gave the far-off confines a look of crystal.

But I had not stood longer than a minute gazing around me when I spied a gleam of canvas about a point on our weather-bow. I saw it under the curve of the fore-course that lay plain in sight under the lifted clew of the mainsail.

‘A sail, Miss Temple.’

‘Where?’ she cried, with her manner full of fever on the instant. I pointed. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, bringing her hands together, ‘if it should be the Indiaman!’

But the captain was walking aft, and it was time to salute him.

‘Good morning, sir,’ I said as I approached him with Miss Temple at my side. ‘We have paused a moment to admire this very beautiful morning. I perceive a sail right ahead, captain.’

It was a part of his destiny, I suppose, that he should stare hard at those who accosted him before answering. He carried his unwinking dead black eye from my companion to me, and then stepped out of the shell of his mood of meditation as a bird might be hatched.

‘Hope you slept pretty comfortably?’

‘Yes; I passed a good night; and I am happy to know that Miss Temple rested well.’

‘Which way is that ship going?’ cried the girl, whose cheeks were flushed with impatience.

‘She is not a ship, mem,’ he answered; ‘she is seemingly a big boat that’s blowing along the same road as ourselves under a lug.’

The telescope lay on the skylight, and I pointed it. Sure enough, the sail was no ship, as I had first imagined, though the white square hovering upon the horizon exactly resembled the canvas of a large craft slowly climbing up the sea. I could readily distinguish a boat, apparently a ship’s longboat, running before the wind under a lugsail; but she was as yet too distant to enable me to make out the figures of people aboard, considerable as were the magnifying powers of the glass I levelled at her.

‘Only a boat?’ cried Miss Temple, in accents of keen disappointment.

‘What will a craft of that sort be doing in the middle of this wide sea?’ said I.

‘She may have gone adrift, as you did,’ answered Captain Braine.

‘Is it imaginable that she should be the corvette’s cutter?’ cried Miss Temple, straining her fine eyes, impassioned with conflicting emotion, at the object ahead.

‘Oh, no,’ said I. ‘First of all, the cutter had no sail; next, yonder boat is three or four times bigger than she was; and then, even if she had a sail, I question if she could have run all this distance in the time from the spot she started from.’

I noticed whilst I spoke that Captain Braine watched me with a singular expression, and that his face slightly changed as to an emotion of relief when I had concluded my answer.

‘The lady,’ said he, ‘is speaking of the man-of-war cutter that rowed ye aboard the wreck, and lost ye there?’

‘Yes,’ said I.

‘How many of a crew?’ he asked.

‘Six men and a lieutenant; but the officer was drowned.’

He took the telescope from me, and brought it to bear upon the little sail over the bow, and kept it levelled for some moments. He then put the glass down and said: ‘Have you had any breakfast?’

‘Not yet,’ I answered.

He called through the skylight to Wilkins, and told him to put some biscuit and tea and cold meat upon the table. ‘I have made my meal,’ said he, contriving one of his extraordinary bows as he addressed Miss Temple; ‘and so, I hope, mem, you’ll excuse my presence below. Eat hearty, both of ye, I beg. There’s no call to stint yourselves, and I’m sorry I can’t put anything more tempting afore ye, as Jack says.’

We at once descended, both of us being anxious to get the meal, such as it might be, over.

‘Why is he repeatedly saying, “as Jack says?”’ asked Miss Temple.

‘Ah!’ I exclaimed,‘and why does he stare so? Yet, on my word, he seems an exceedingly good-natured fellow. I assure you we might have fallen into worse hands. No man could make a homeward-bound ship to rise up out of the sea or signal our whereabouts to the _Countess Ida_ when she is leagues and leagues out of sight; but another captain might not have shown half the friendly concern this poor eccentric creature exhibits in our comfort.’

She agreed with me, but quickly dropped the subject as something distasteful, and spoke of her disappointment, and of the strangeness of meeting a small boat in the middle of such an ocean as we were sailing through. By some trick above my comprehension, she had contrived to smooth out her dress, insomuch that a deal of its castaway aspect had left it. She had also manœuvred in some fashion with the feather in her hat; and I told her, as she sat opposite me, that she looked as fresh as though she had just left her cabin in the Indiaman.

‘Youth must always triumph,’ I said, ‘if it be but fairly treated. Sleep has made your former self dominant again: but I will reserve all my compliments until I am able to pull my hat off to you ashore and say good-bye.’

She shot a glance at me under her long fringes, but held her peace.

The tea was so vile that I called to Wilkins, who stood on the quarter-deck, to procure us some coffee if there were any aboard; and in a few minutes he returned with a sailor’s hook-pot full of it from the galley. This Miss Temple seemed able to sip without a face of aversion. It vexed me to see her imperilling her delicate white teeth with the hard fare that was sheer forecastle stuff, and bad at that; but it was not for me to give orders, nor was I willing to protract our sitting by inquiring if there was other food aboard. Besides, every hour in such weather as this might provide us with the opportunity we hungered for, to escape into some homeward-bound ship with a cabin capable of affording endurable entertainment.

We rose from the table, and regained the deck. The moment my head showed above the companion-way, the captain called to me hastily. There was a look of disorder in his countenance that immediately excited my wonder; there was the alacrity of fear in his manner; he could address me now without a prolonged stare and his usual tardy emergence of mind.

‘Please, take this glass,’ said he, thrusting the telescope into my hand; ‘and look at that there boat, and tell me what you think.’

The smooth, swift sliding of the _Lady Blanche_ over the level surface of sea that was running in fire and foam lines to the brushing of the merry breeze and the sparkling of the soaring sun, had closed us rapidly with the boat ahead since Miss Temple and I left the deck. The little fabric was now scarcely more than a mile on the bow, and the captain’s glass, when I put it to my eye, brought her as close to me as if she were no further off than our forecastle. She was a large, carvel-built longboat; one of those round-bowed, broad-beamed structures which in the olden days used to stand in chocks betwixt a ship’s foremast and galley, with often another boat stored inside of her, unless she was used to keep sheep or other live-stock in. She was deep in the water, and as much of her hull as was visible was of a dingy sallow white. She showed a broad square of dark old lug, before which she was running with some show of nimbleness. She seemed to be crowded with men, and even whilst I stood looking at her through the glass, I counted no less than twenty-seven persons. They were all looking our way, and though it was scarcely possible to define individual faces amid such a yellow huddle of countenances, I could yet manage to determine a prevailing piratic expression of the true sort, suggested not so much by the vagueness of swarthy cheek and shaggy brow as by the singularity of the fellows’ apparel--the flapping sombrero, the red sash, the blue shirt, with other details--which but very faintly corresponded indeed with one’s notion of the coarse homely attire of the merchant sailor.

Captain Braine’s eyes were fixed upon me as I turned to him. ‘What do you think of her, sir?’ said he.

‘I don’t like the look of those fellows at all,’ I answered. ‘I would not mind making a bet that they are a portion of the crew of the privateering brig from whose hull you rescued us yesterday morning.’

‘Just the idea that occurred to me,’ he cried. He levelled the glass again. ‘A boatful of rascals, sir. Armed to the teeth, I daresay, and on the lookout for some such a vessel as mine to seize and get away back to their own waters in. And yet, it is awful, too, to think that the creatures may be in want of water. What’s to be done? I can’t allow them to board: and I’m not going to heave to, to give ’em a chance of doing so.’

‘We’re overhauling them fast,’ said I. ‘Best plan perhaps, captain, will be to hail them as we slide past and ascertain their wants, if we can understand their lingo; and if they need water, there’s nothing to be done but to send some adrift for them to pick up. But for God’s sake, sir, don’t let them come aboard. They look as devilish a lot of cut-throats as ever I saw; and besides the safety of our lives and of the ship, we have this lady to consider.’

Captain Braine listened to me with his eyes fixed upon the boat.

‘She can’t hook on at this,’ said he, as if thinking aloud; ‘we should tow her under water at such a pace. By heavens,’ he shouted, with a wild look coming into his face, ‘if she attempts to sheer alongside, I’ll give her the stem!’ and springing with the agility of a monkey upon the rail, he grasped a backstay, and stood in a posture for hailing the boat as we swept past.

Forward, the seamen had quitted the jobs they were upon, and were staring open-mouthed from the forecastle rail. I picked up the glass again to look at the crowd, and every face in the lens was now as distinct as Miss Temple’s who stood beside me. An uglier, more ferocious-looking set of men never stepped the deck of a picaroon. I had not the least doubt whatever that they were a portion of the crew of the brig. Indeed, I seemed to have some recollection of the boat, for I remembered, whilst examining the brig from the poop of the Indiaman, that I had been struck by the unusual size of her longboat, and that the colour of her was the sallow pea-soup tint of the fabric yonder. There were several chocolate-coloured faces amongst the little crowd; here and there, a coal-black countenance with a frequent glitter of earrings and gleam of greasy ringlets. Many of them eyed us over the low gunwale under the sharp of their hands; one stood erect on the thwart through which the mast was stepped, clasping the spar with his arm, and apparently waiting to hail us. The steersman watched us continuously, and now and again the boat’s head would slightly fall off to a sneaking movement of the helm, as though to some notion of edging down upon us without attracting our observation. But the barque’s keen stem was ripping through the water as the jaws of a pair of shears drive through a length of sailcloth. I had no fear of the boat hooking on; she would have to manœuvre under our bows to do that, and it needed but a little twirl of the spokes of our wheel to drive her into staves and to send her people bobbing and drowning into our wake.

‘Boat ahoy!’ shouted the captain with such delivery of voice as I should have thought impossible in so narrow shouldered a man.

‘Yash! yash!’ vociferated the fellow who clasped the mast, frantically brandishing his arms. ‘Ve are sheepwreck--you veel take us--ve starve!’

The captain looked and hardly seemed to know what to say.

‘How long have you been adrift?’ he bawled.

The fellow, who wore a red nightcap, shook it till the tassel danced to the violent gestures of his head. He evidently did not understand the question. ‘Take us!’ he shrieked;--‘ve starve!’

The boat was now on the bow, within pistol-shot from the forecastle rail.

‘Mind your helm, Captain Braine,’ I suddenly shouted, ‘or she’ll be aboard you!’ for my young and, in those days, keen eyes had marked the action of the fellow who steered the boat, and even as I bawled out, the head of the little fabric swept round with a fellow in the bows flourishing a boathook, to which was attached a length of line, and others standing by ready to help him when he should have hooked on.

‘Steady as she goes!’ cried Captain Braine.

‘Oh Mr. Dugdale,’ shrieked Miss Temple, ‘they will get on board of us!’

The boat’s head drove sheering alongside into our bow just forward of the fore-chain plates. I saw the fellow erect in her head fork out his boathook to catch hold.

‘Let go!’ roared a voice forward. The figure of Joe Wetherly overhung the rail, poising either an iron marline-spike or a belaying-pin, or some short bar of metal; this I saw. Then he hurled it at the moment that the boathook had caught a plate. The missile struck the man full on the head; he fell like a statue in the bottom of the boat, and the boat herself ground past us as the barque, to the impulse of her great overhanging squares of studdingsail, swept onwards at some seven or eight knots in the hour.

They were so crowded as to be in one another’s road. I saw a dozen grimy paws extended to catch hold of the main-chain plates as the boat came bruising and groaning and washing past; but the iron bars were swept like smoke out of the wretches’ frantic grip. Never shall I forget the picture the little fabric offered in the swift glimpse I caught of her as she glided past. The crowd, in their desperate efforts to catch hold of the sweeping projections in the barque’s side, squirmed and surged and rose and fell like rags of meat stirred up in a boiling stewpot. Their cries, their yells, their Spanish oaths, the brandishings of their arms, the fury expressed in their malignant faces, the sudden uprootal and crash of their one mast and sail by the fouling of it with our mainbrace, all combine into a memory which is not to be expressed in words. I caught sight of a number of breakers in the bottom of the boat along with some bags, and was instinctively assured that they were lacking in neither food nor water. As the boat sped under the rail on which Captain Braine was standing, the fellow who had been at her helm, a brawny mulatto in a wide straw-hat, loose red shirt, and naked feet, suddenly whipped a pistol out of his breast, took aim at the skipper, and fired; and then, in a breath or two, the craft was astern, tumbling in the seething white of our wake, lessening into a toy even as you looked, with half of her people getting the wreck of mast and rail inboard, and the rest of them furiously gesticulating at us.

Captain Braine stood on the rail watching them with an air of musing that was incredibly odd in the face of the wild excitement of the moment.

‘Are you hurt?’ I cried.

He turned slowly to survey me, then very leisurely dismounted from his perch, meanwhile continuing to gaze at me.

‘No,’ said he, after an interval during which I ran my eyes over him with anxiety, thinking to see blood or to behold him suddenly fall; ‘it’s all right. This is the fourth time I’ve been shot at in my life; and be my end what it will, it is certain I am not to perish by another man’s bullet. Rogues all, ha!’ he continued, directing his dead black vision at the boat astern; ‘they would have carried the little _Blanche_, and slit our throats. Just the sort of ship, sir, for the likes of their trade: the heels of a racehorse and the sober look of the honest marchantman. Slit our throats; all saving _yours_, mem, I expect; but only to reserve ye for something worse than death to you, if your noble looks don’t belie your taste.’

‘They never could have held on with that boathook,’ said I, struck more by the man’s manner than his speech, strange as it was. ‘I suppose they hoped to cling long enough to chuck a few of their beauties aboard us. Well, Miss Temple, let us trust that we have now seen the very last of that confounded privateer brig and the gallant, good-looking chaps who stocked her.’

‘When is all this going to end?’ said she.

‘Every man of them,’ exclaimed the captain, ‘will have had a firearm in his breast.’

‘No doubt,’ I answered; ‘the vessel must have been handsomely furnished in that way to judge by what we found remaining in the cabin of the wreck.’

‘Were they starving, d’ye think?’ he exclaimed with a sudden troubled manner, as he looked at the speck in our wake.

‘I should say not,’ said I; ‘there were breakers in the bottom of the boat, and parcels resembling bread bags aft.’

‘Thirst is a fearful thing at sea, sir,’ said he, slowly: ‘it’s worse than hunger. Hunger, whilst it remains appetite, is agreeable; but the first sensation of thirst is a torture. I have known ’em both--I have known ’em both,’ he added, with a melancholy shake of his head and a profound sigh; then bringing his unwinking stare to bear upon me, he exclaimed: ‘Supposing that shot had taken effect, the _Lady Blanche_ would now be without a master; and if you wasn’t on board, she’d be without a navigator. Less than two sea-going heads to every ship _won’t_ do. I felt that truth when Chicken went, and I’m feeling of it every time I catch sight of that there man Lush.’ Miss Temple and I exchanged glances. ‘Well,’ said he, with one of his mirthless grins, ‘I don’t expect those privateersmen’ll trouble us any more;’ and in his abrupt way he walked to the compass, and stood there looking alternately from it to the canvas.