Part 2
I ran on deck, but waited until Mr. Bonner had finished bawling out some orders to the men before addressing him. The moon was young, but bright, and she sheared scythe-like through the pouring shadows, and the light of her made a marvellous brilliant whiteness of the foam as it burst in masses from the plunge of the barque’s bows. When I gave the news to Mr. Bonner, he stared at me for some moments wildly and in silence, and then rushed below. I followed him as quick as he went, for I had often used the sea, and the giddiest dance of a deck-plank was all one with the solid earth to my accustomed feet. We entered the mate’s berth, and Mr. Bonner lighted the bracket lamp and stood looking at his shipmate, and by the aid of the flame he had kindled, and the bright light flowing in through the open door, I beheld a tragic and wonderful change in Mr. Stroud, though scarce ten minutes had passed since I was with him. His face was bloated, the features distorted, his eyes rolled continuously, and frequent heavy twitching shudders convulsed his body. But the most frightful part was the dusky hue of his skin, that was of a darker blue than I had observed in the captain.
He still had his senses, and repeated to the second mate what he had related to me. But he presently grew incoherent, then fell delirious, in about an hour’s time was speechless and lay racked with convulsions; of a horrid blue, the features shockingly convulsed, and the whites of the eyes alone showing as in the captain’s case.
He had called me at about nine o’clock, and he was a dead man at two in the morning, or four bells in the middle watch. Both the second mate and I were constantly in and out with the poor fellow; but we could do no good, only marvel, and murmur our astonishment and speculations. We put the captain’s steward, a young fellow, to watch him—this was an hour before his death—and at four bells the lad came out with a white face, and said to me, who sat at the table, depressed and awed and overwhelmed by this second ghastly and indeterminable visitation, that the chief mate was dead, had ceased to breathe, and was quickly turning black.
Mr. Bonner came into the cabin with the boatswain, and they went into the dead man’s berth and stayed there about a quarter of an hour. When they came out the boatswain looked at me hard. I recollect that that man’s name was Matthews. I asked some questions, but they had nothing to tell, except that the body had turned black.
“What manner of disease can it be that kills in this fashion?” said I. “If it’s the plague, we maybe all dead men in a week.”
“It’s no plague,” said the boatswain, in a voice that trembled with its own volume of sound.
“What is it?” I cried.
“Poison!” he shouted, and he dropped his clenched fist with the weight of a cannon-ball upon the table.
I looked at the second mate, who exclaimed, “The boatswain swears to the signs. He’s seen the like of that corpse in three English seamen who were poisoned up at Chusan.”
“Do you want to make out that both men have committed suicide?” I exclaimed.
“I want to make out that both men have been poisoned!” shouted the boatswain, in his voice of thunder.
There was a significance in the insolence of the fellow that confounded and alarmed me, and the meaning was deepened by the second mate allowing his companion to address me in this roaring, affronting way without reproof. I hoped that the man had been drinking, and that the second mate was too stupid with horror to heed his behaviour to me, and without giving either of them another word I walked to my cabin and lay down.
I have no space here to describe the wild and terrifying fancies which ran in my head. For some while I heard the boatswain and the second mate conversing, but the cabin bulkhead was stout, the straining and washing noises all about the helm heavy and continuous, and I caught not a syllable of what they said. At what hour I fell asleep I cannot tell; when I awoke my cabin was full of the sunshine that streamed in through the stern window. I dressed, and took hold of the handle of the door, and found myself a prisoner. Not doubting I was locked up in error, I shook the door, and beat upon it, and called out loudly to be released. After a few minutes the door was opened, and the second mate stood in the threshold. He exclaimed—
“Mr. West, it’s the wish of the men that you should be locked up. I’m no party to the job—but they’re resolved. I’ll tell you plainly what they think: they believe you’ve had a hand in the death of the captain and the chief mate—the bo’sun’s put that into their heads; I’m the only navigator left, and they’re afraid you’ll try your hand on me if you have your liberty. You’ll be regularly fed and properly seen to; but it’s the crew’s will that you stop here.”
With that, and without giving me time to utter a word, he closed and secured the door. I leaned against the bulkhead and sought to rally my wits, but I own that for a long while I was as one whose mind comes slowly to him after he has been knocked down insensible. I never for an instant supposed that the crew really believed me guilty of poisoning the captain and chief mate: I concluded that the men had mutinied, and arranged with Mr. Bonner to run away with the ship, and that I should remain locked up in my cabin until they had decided what to do with me.
By-and-by the door was opened, and the young steward put a tray containing some breakfast upon the cabin deck. He was but a mule of a boy, and I guessed that nothing but what might still further imperil me could come of my questioning him, so in silence I watched him put down the tray and depart. The meal thus sent to me was plentiful, and I drew some small heart out of the attention. Whilst I ate and drank, I heard sounds in the adjoining berth, and presently gathered that they were preparing the body of the chief mate for its last toss over the side. After a bit they went on deck with the corpse, and then all was still in the cabin. I knew by the light of the sun that the vessel was still heading on her course for England. It was a bright morning, with a wild windy sparkle in as much of the weather as I could see through the cabin window. The plunge of the ship’s stern brought the water in a roar of milky froth all about the counter close under me, and the frequent jar of rudder and jump of wheel assured me that the barque was travelling fast through the seas.
What, in God’s name, did the men mean by keeping me a prisoner? Did they think me a madman? Or that I, whose life together with theirs depended upon the safe navigation of the barque, would destroy those who alone could promise me security? And what had slain the two men? If poison, who had administered it? One man might have died by his own hand, but not both. And since both had perished from the same cause, self-murder was not to be thought of. What was it, then, that had killed them, visiting them in their sleep, and discolouring, bloating, convulsing, and destroying them in a few hours? Was it some deadly malady subtly lurking in the atmosphere of the after part of the vessel? If so, then I might be the next to be taken. Or was there some devilish murderer lying secretly hidden? Or was one of the crew the doer of these things? I seemed to smell disease and death, and yearned for the freedom of the deck, and for the sweetness of the wide, strong rush of wind.
The day passed. The second mate never visited me. The lad arrived with my meals, and when he came with my supper I asked him some questions, but obtained no more news than that the second mate had taken up his quarters in the adjoining berth as acting captain, and that the boatswain was keeping watch and watch with him.
I got but little rest that night. It blew hard, and the pitching of the vessel was unusually heavy. Then, again, I was profoundly agitated and in deep distress of mind; for, supposing the men in earnest, it was not only horrible to be thought capable of murder, there was the prospect of my being charged and of having to clear my character. Or, supposing the men’s suspicion or accusation a villainous pretext, how would they serve me? Would they send me adrift, or set me ashore to perish on some barren coast, or destroy me out of hand? You will remember that I am writing of an age when seafaring was not as it now is. The pirate and the slaver were still afloat doing a brisk business. There often went a desperate spirit in ships’ forecastles, and the maritime records of the time abound with tragic narratives of revolt, seizure, cruelty of a ferocious sort.
Another day and another night went by, and I was still locked up in my cabin, and, saving the punctual arrival of the lad with my meals, no man visited me.
Some time about eight o’clock on the morning of the third day of my confinement, I was looking through the cabin window at the space of grey and foaming sea and sallow flying sky which came and went in the square of the aperture with the lift and fall of the barque’s stern, when my cabin door was struck upon, and in a minute afterwards opened, and the boatswain appeared.
“Mr. West,” said he, after looking at me for a moment in silence with a face whose expression was made up of concern and fear and embarrassment, “I’ve come on my own part, and on the part of the men, sir, to ask your pardon for our treatment of you. We was mistook. And our fears made us too willing to believe that you had a hand in it. We dunno what it is now, but as Jesus is my God, Mr. West, the second mate he lies dead of the same thing in the next cabin!”
I went past him too stupefied to speak, and in a blind way sat down at the cabin table and leaned my head against my hand. Presently I looked up, and on lifting my eyes I caught sight of two or three sailors staring down with white faces through the skylight.
“You tell me that the second mate’s dead?” said I.
“Yes, sir, dead of poison, too, so help me God!” cried the boatswain.
“Who remains to navigate the ship?” I said.
“That’s it, sir!” he exclaimed, “unless you can do it?”
“Not I. There’s no man amongst you more ignorant. May I look at the body?”
He opened the door of the cabin in which the others had died, and there, in the bunk from which the bodies of Captain Joyce and Mr. Stroud had been removed, lay now the blackened corpse of the second mate. It was an awful sight and a passage of time horrible with the mystery which charged it. I felt no rage at the manner in which I had been used by that dead man there and the hurricane-lunged seaman alongside of me and the fellows forward; I could think of nothing but the mystery of the three men’s deaths, the lamentable plight we were all in through our wanting a navigator, with the chance, moreover, that it _was_ the plague, and not poison mysteriously given, that had killed the captain and mates, so that all the rest of us, as I have said, might be dead men in another week.
I returned to the cabin, and the boatswain joined me, and we stood beside the table conversing, anxiously watched by several men who had stationed themselves at the skylight.
“What we’ve got to do,” said I, “is to keep a bright look-out for ships, and borrow some one to steer us home from the first vessel that will lend us a navigator. We’re bound to fall in with something soon. Meanwhile, you’re a smart seaman yourself, Matthews, as well qualified as any one of them who have died to sail the ship, and there’s surely some intelligent sailor amongst the crew who would relieve you in taking charge of the deck. I’ll do all I can.”
“The question is, where’s the vessel now?” said the boatswain.
“Fetch me the log-book,” said I, “and see if you can find the chart they’ve been using to prick the courses off on. We should be able to find out where the ship was at noon yesterday. I can’t enter that cabin. The sight of the poor fellow makes me sick.”
He went to the berth and passed through the door, and might have left me about five minutes, evidently hunting for the chart, when he suddenly rushed out, roaring in his thunderous voice, “I’ve discovered it! I’ve discovered it!” and fled like a madman up the companion steps. I was startled almost to the very stopping of my heart by this sudden furious wild behaviour in him: then wondering what he meant by shouting “he had discovered it!” I walked to the cabin door, and the very first thing my eye lighted upon was a small snake, leisurely coiling its way from the head to the feet of the corpse. Its middle was about the thickness of a rifle-barrel, and it then tapered to something like whipcord to its tail. It was about two feet long, snow white, and speckled with black and red spots.
This, then, was the phantom death! Yonder venomous reptile it was, then, that, creeping out of some secret hiding-place, and visiting the unhappy men one after another, had stung them in their sleep, in the darkness of the cabin, and vanished before they had struck a light and realized indeed that something desperate had come to them!
Whilst I stood looking at the snake, whose horror seemed to gain fresh accentuation from the very beauty of its snow-white speckled skin and diamond-bright eyes, the boatswain, armed with a long handspike, and followed by a number of the crew, came headlong to the cabin. He thrust the end of the handspike under the belly of the creature, and hove it into the middle of the berth.
“Stand clear!” he roared, and with a blow or two smashed the reptile’s head into a pulp. “Open that cabin window,” said he. One of the men did so, and the boatswain with his boot scraped the mess of mashed snake on to the handspike and shook it overboard.
“I told you they was poisoned,” he cried, breathing deep; “and, oh my God, Mr. West—and I humbly ask your pardon again for having suspected ye—do you know, sir, whilst I was a-talking to you just now I was actually thinking of taking up my quarters in this here cabin this very night.”
Thus much: and now to end this singular experience in a sentence or two. Three days after the discovery of the snake we sighted and signalled a large English merchantman bound to London from the Rio de la Plata. Her chief officer came aboard, and we related our story. He asked to see the snake. We told him we had thrown it overboard. On my describing it, he informed me that he guessed it was the little poisonous reptile known in certain districts of South America as the Ibiboboko. He returned to his ship, and shortly afterwards the commander sent us his third officer, with instructions to keep in company as long as possible.
_BROKERS’ BAY._
Brokers’ Bay is situated on the West Coast of England. You may search the map for it in vain, and the reason why I call it by any other name than that it bears will, when you have read this story, be as clear as the mud in the water that brims to the base of Brokers’ cliffs. Brokers’ Bay is a fine, curving sweep of land. For how many centuries the sea has been sneakingly ebbing from it who can imagine? The time has been when the galleon and the carack strained at their hempen ground tackle at anchors six fathoms deep where the white windmill now stands within musket-shot of the Crown and Anchor, and where the church spire darts the gleam of its weathercock above the green thickness of a huddle of dwarf trees near the little vicarage.
About fifty years ago a company of enterprising souls took it into their heads to reclaim some of the land which the subtly and ceaselessly ebbing sea, rising and falling with moon-like regularity, yet receding ever, though noticeably only in spans of half-centuries, was leaving behind it. They armed themselves with the necessary legal powers, they subscribed all the capital they considered needful, and by processes of embanking, draining, manuring, and the like, they succeeded in raising wheat and grass, vegetables and flowers, where, since and long before the days of the painted Briton, shuddering in the November blast, or perspiring away his small clothes under the July sun, nothing had flourished but the dab and the crab.
Yet the speculation on the whole was a failure. It was a patriotic achievement in its way, and those concerned in it deserved well of the nation; for if it be a fine thing to bleed for one’s country, how much finer must it be to add to its dimensions, to enlarge its latitude and longitude, and extend the home-sovereignty of the monarch? Yet, though a pretty considerable village stood hard by the reclaimed land, houses did not increase. The builder, whose Christian name is Jerry, came down to Brokers’ Bay, and took a look around, and went home again, and did nothing. He was not to be decoyed, he said. Brokers’ Bay was not the right sort of place to start a town in, he thought. There was too much mud, Mr. Jerry considered. He calculated that when the water was out there was a full mile and three-quarters of slime. Oh yes, whilst the slime was still slimy it reflected the sky just the same as if it had been water, and it took a noble blood-red countenance of a hot sunset evening, when the sea was a pink gleaming streak just under the horizon, and it was very pleasing in that sort of way. But what were the doctors going to say about all that mud, and what opportunities would a waste of slush, extending one and three-quarter miles at ebb tide, provide the local historian with when he came to write a guide-book and invent Roman and Early English names for the immediate district, and deal with the salubriousness of the climate, and give an analysis of the drinking water? And what about the bathing? There was none. And what length of pier would be wanted if the seaward end of it was to be permanently water-washed?
The reclaimed ground was divided into lots for building; but nobody built. The soil continued to be cultivated, nevertheless. Two market-gardeners did very well out of it. A butcher rented thirty acres of the pasture land; the remainder was variously dealt with in small ways for growing purposes.
Now, that stretch of land had been reclaimed some fifteen years, when a certain master mariner, whom I will call Captain Carey, arrived at the adjacent village with the intention of taking a view of the Brokers’ Bay foreshore. News that good land was cheap hereabouts had reached him up at Blyth. He had unexpectedly come into a little fortune, had Captain Carey. For years he had followed the coasting trade, working his way out through the forescuttle into the captain’s cabin, and after thirty years of seafaring, rendered more and more uncomfortable by gloomy anticipations of the workhouse in his old age, he had been enriched by the will of an Australian aunt, the amount being something between £9000 and £10,000.
Captain Carey had sprung from a West Country stock; his wife was a West Country woman, and when they came into the Australian aunt’s legacy they determined to break up their little home at Blyth and settle somewhere on Western soil. So Captain Carey came to Brokers’ Bay, and with him travelled his giant son, a youth of prodigious muscle, but of weak intellect. A second Titan son was at this time at sea, working his way towards the quarter-deck aboard an East Indiaman.
Captain Carey’s survey of the Brokers’ foreshore determined him on purchasing a plot of land right amidships of the fine curve of reclaimed soil. He bought four acres at a very low figure indeed, and then ordered a small house to be built in the midst of his little estate. His wife and her niece joined him and the giant half-witted son at the adjacent village, and there the family dwelt at the sign of the Seven Bells whilst the house was building.
It was quickly put together, and was then gay with a green balcony, and it had motherly lubberly bay windows that made you think of a whaler’s boats dangling at cranes, and the entrance was embellished with a singular porch after the design of the retired master mariner, who had recollected seeing something of the sort at Lisbon when he had gone as a boy on a voyage to Portugal.
Captain Carey loved seclusion. Like most retired mariners, he hated to be overlooked. This fondness for privacy, which grows out of a habit of it, may be owing to there being no streets at sea, and no over-the-way. The master of a vessel lives in a cabin all alone by himself—the Crusoe of the after part of the ship. He measures his quarter-deck in lonely walks; no eyes glittering above the bulwark rail watch his movements; his behaviour as a man, his judgment as a seaman, but not his mode of life as a private individual, are criticized by his crew. Hence, when a man steps ashore after a long period of command at sea, he carries with him a strong love of privacy, and much resolution of retirement. A great number of little cottages by the ocean are occupied by solitary seamen, who pass their time in looking through a telescope at the horizon, in arguing with lonesome men of their own cloth, in smoking pipes at the Lugger Inn or at the sign of the Lord Nelson, and turning in at night and turning out in the morning.
To provide against being overlooked in case others should build hard by, Captain Carey walled his little estate of four acres with a regular bulkhead of a fence, handsomely spiked on top, and too tall even for his giant son to peer over on tiptoe. In a few months the house was built, papered, and in all ways completed; it was then furnished and the ground fenced. Captain Carey and his family now took possession of their new home. There was, first of all, Captain Carey, then Mrs. Carey, next the giant young Carey (who had been known up in Blyth by the name of Mother Carey’s chicken), and last, Mrs. Carey’s niece, a stout, active girl of twenty, who helped Mrs. Carey in cooking and looking after the house; for Carey, having been robbed, whilst absent on a coasting voyage, of a new coat, a soft hat, a meerschaum pipe, and a few other trifles by a maid-of-all-work, had sworn in hideous forecastle language never again to keep another servant.
This happy family of Careys were very well pleased with their new home. Old Carey was never weary of stepping out of doors to look at his house. He seemed to find something fresh to admire every time he cast his eyes over the little building. He and his son planted potatoes, onions, cabbages, and other homely vegetables, and dug out and cultivated a very considerable area of kitchen garden. They had not above three miles to walk to attend divine worship. There were several convenient shops in the adjacent village, not more than two miles and a half distant. There was no roadway to speak of to Carey’s house, but in a very few weeks the feet of the family and the tread of the tradespeople tramped out a thin path over the reclaimed land to the village roadway, where it fell with the sweep of the cliff to the level of the reclaimed soil. And the view, on the whole, from Carey’s windows was fairly picturesque and pleasing, even when the water was out and the scene was a sweeping flat of mud. Afar on the dark blue edge of the sea hovered the feather-white canvas of ships, easily resolved into denominationable fabrics by Carey’s powerful telescope. The western sun glowed in the briny ooze till the whole stretch of the stuff resembled a vast surface of molten gold. Here and there, confronting Carey’s house, stood some scores of fangs of rock, and when there was a flood-tide and a fresh in-shore gale the sea snapped and beat and burst upon the beach with as much uproar as though it were all fathomless ocean, instead of a dirty stretch of water with an eighteen-foot rise of tide, and foam so dark and thick with dirt that, after it had blown upon you and dried, it was as though you had ridden through some dozen miles of muddy lanes.