Part 3

“You can bring the fellow aft, Mr. Garnett,” said he. “And twelve men of your watch can have a say in the matter before I put him ashore.”

Garnett left the poop and went forward and told his watch what was wanted, and they in turn told the man, Gretto Gonzales, whom they held tightly bound for further orders.

“Eet iz no fair! Yo no hablo Engleeze!” cried the ruffian, who began to understand his position.

“Colorado maduro, florifino perfecto,” replied Garnett, gravely, remembering what Spanish he had read on the covers of various cigar-boxes. “If you don’t savey English, I’m all solid with your bloomin’ Spanish. So bear a hand, bullies, and bring the convict aft.”

His victim, a mortally wounded man lying in a bunk, and two others badly cut in the onslaughts Gonzales had begun the first day at sea, smiled hopefully. Davis, the principal object of his attacks, cursed him quietly, although his lungs had been pierced twice by the Spaniard’s knife. The two other men, Americans, who had taken his part in the affrays and suffered in consequence, also swore heartily, and sarcastically wished Gonzales a pleasant sojourn on the Tierra del Fuego.

Although the ship carried no passengers, Enoch Moss had thought fit to provide a stewardess. This woman was well known to many deep-water skippers, and at one time had possessed extreme beauty. Her early history no one knew, but since she had taken to the sea she had endeavored to make up for this deficiency by creating enough for several women.

Plump and rosy she was still, and much thought of by all with whom she sailed. Many a poor sailor had reason to thank Moll, as she was called, for the tidbits she brought forward from the cabin mess, for often a few meals of good food did much to save a man from the horrible scurvy which for years has been the curse of the deep-water fleet.

Whatever faults the woman had, she also had good qualities in abundance.

It was a strange scene there in the cabin when Gonzales was brought before the captain. The twelve sailors shuffled about uneasily as they stood against the cabin bulkhead, while Enoch Moss sat at the head of the table with his charts and instruments before him. On one side stood the condemned man, who was to be tried again, so that the skipper’s oath to maroon him would be more than a sudden condemnation. It would have the backing of twelve honest sailors in case of further developments. That the twelve honest sailors would agree with the captain was evident by the respectful attitude in which they stood, and the uneasy and fearful glances they cast at him across the cabin table. O’Toole stood in the cabin door, and behind him, looking over his shoulder, stood Moll.

Enoch Moss looked up at the man before him and spoke in his deep, hoarse voice.

“You have fought four times since you’ve been aboard,” said he; “the last time you broke out your irons and nearly killed Davis, and I promised to maroon you. I’ll do it before night.” Then he turned to the men. “We have tried to keep this fellow in irons and he breaks out. He has cut three of you. Do you agree with me that it is best to put him ashore before further trouble, or not?”

“Yes, sir, put him on the beach,” came a hoarse answer from the men that made O’Toole smile.

“Got anything to say before you go?” asked the skipper.

The poor fellow looked across to the door in the bulkhead. His eyes met those of Moll, and he gazed longingly at her a moment while a look of peculiar tenderness spread over his coarse, fierce face. Then he looked at a seam in the cabin floor for an instant and appeared to be thinking.

“Well, speak up,” growled Enoch Moss.

“Yo no hablo Americano. Yo no understand. No, I say nothin’; yes, I say thank you.” And he looked the skipper squarely in the face.

“You can take him forward,” said Enoch Moss.

As they filed out again into the cold and wet, Moll watched them, and after they had gone the skipper called her.

“Do you know Gonzales or Davis?” said he.

“Never saw either of them before they came aboard this ship,” she answered in a steady voice.

The captain looked long and searchingly at the woman before him. She met his gaze fairly for the space of a minute; then her lip trembled slightly.

“That will do. You may go,” said he, and his voice had a peculiar sadness that few people had ever heard.

O’Toole’s step sounded on the deck overhead, and, as the stewardess went forward into the main cabin, the mate’s voice sounded down the companion-way. “It’s hauled to the north’ard, sir. Shall I let her come as high as sou’-sou’west, sir?”

Enoch Moss sat silent at the table. He was thinking of a Spanish crest he had seen tattooed on the white arm of the stewardess. It belonged to her “family,” she had told him, and was tattooed there when she was a child of sixteen.

“Yes, let her head up to the southwest, and call me when we get in close enough to lower a boat,” he replied.

Before dark they were as close in as they dared to go, much closer than one skipper out of ten would take his ship, even in calm weather. Then a boat was lowered and Gonzales was put into it with enough to eat to last him a month. Garnett and two sailors jumped in, and all was ready.

The skipper stood at the break of the poop, and beside him stood O’Toole.

“Ye better not cast th’ raskil adrift till ye get ashore,” said the mate, “for by th’ faith av th’ howly saints, ’twill be himself that will be for coming aboard an’ laving ye to hunt a route from th’ Cape.”

“Trust me to see the pirit landed safely,” replied Garnett. “I’ve handled _men_ before.”

A female head appeared at the door of the forward cabin just beneath the skipper’s feet. He looked down at it unnoticed for a moment. Then he spoke in a low voice, moving away from O’Toole, so he could not hear,--

“Would you like to go with him?”

Moll started as if shot. Then she looked up at the captain with a face pale and drawn into a ghastly smile. She gave a hard laugh, and walked out on the main-deck and looked at the boat as the oars fell across. The condemned man looked up, and his eyes met hers, but she rested her arms on the bulwarks and gazed steadily at him over the top-gallant-rail until he went slowly out of sight.

Two hours later Garnett and the men returned with the empty boat.

The ship was headed away to the southwest, and the struggle to turn the corner began with one man less in the port-watch.

In the dog-watch Garnett met O’Toole on the main-deck.

“We landed him right enough,” he said, “for we just put him ashore, and then only cast off his hands, so we could get into the boat afore he could walk. But what seemed almighty queer was his asking me to give the skipper’s stewardess that ring. Do you suppose they was ever married or knowed each other afore?”

“I don’t suppose nothin’, Garnett; but you better give her the ring. Davis is a good enough man, but one man don’t try to kill another, so strong, for nothin.’ Better give her the ring--and you want to git that chafing-gear on the fore-royal-backstay a little higher up; it’s cuttin’ through against the yard.”

The following night at two bells the wind began to come in puffs, and in less than half an hour afterwards it was snorting away in true Cape Horn style.

It was Garnett’s watch on deck at midnight, and as he came on the poop he saw there was to be some discomfort. Each rope of the standing and running rigging, shroud and backstay, downhaul and clew-line, was piping away with a lively note, and the deep, smothered, booming roar overhead told how the ship stood to it and that the canvas was holding. The three lower storm-topsails and the main spencer were all the sails set, and for a while the ship stood up to it in good shape. At ten minutes past three in the morning she shipped a sea that smothered her. With a rush and thundering shock a hundred tons of water washed over her. The ship was knocked off into the trough of the sea, and hove down on her beam ends. The water poured down her hatch openings in immense volumes; the main-hatch, being a “booby,” was smashed; and all hands were called to save ship.

O’Toole and his watch managed to get the mizzen-trysail on her while Garnett got the clew of the foretop-sail on the yard without bursting it. Then the vessel gradually headed up again to the enormous sea.

The ship sagged off to leeward all the next day and was driven far below the latitude of the Cape; then, as she gradually cleared the storm belt, the wind slacked and top-gallant-sails were put on her to drive her back again.

Five times did she get to the westward of the Cape, only to be driven back again by gales of peculiar violence. She lost three sets of topsails, two staysails, a mizzen-trysail, besides a dozen or more pieces of lighter canvas, before the first day of August.

Part of this day she was in company with the large ship Shenandoah, but as the wind was light she drew away, for in that high rolling sea it is very dangerous for one ship to get close to another, as a sudden calm might bring them in contact, which would prove fatal to one or both.

The night was bitter cold. The canvas rolled on the yards was as hard as iron, and that which was set was as stiff to handle as sheet tin. Old Dan, the quartermaster, and Sadg Bilkidg, the African sailor, were at the wheel; the quartermaster swathed in a scarf and muffled up to the chin, with his long, hooked nose sticking forward, looked as watchful as--and not unlike--the great albatross that soared silently in the wake.

A giant sea began rolling in from the southwest and the wind followed suddenly. The foretop-sail went out of the bolt-ropes, and, as the ship was to the westward of Tierra del Fuego and the wind blowing her almost dead on it, she was hove-to with great difficulty. After a terrible night the wind hauled a little. Not much, but enough to throw her head a couple of points and let the sea come over her.

A huge mass of water fell on deck and washed a man, named Johnson, overboard. He was one of Davis’s friends, and had been cut by Gonzales. He remained within ten fathoms of the plunging ship for fully five minutes, but nothing could be done for him.

Three days passed before the gale eased and swung to the southward, and the high land of Tierra del Fuego was then in plain sight under the lee.

The man Davis was dead, and he was dropped overboard as soon as the gale slacked enough to permit walking on the main-deck. Sail was made, in spite of the heavy sea, and the ship headed away to the northward, at last, with a crew almost dead from exposure. Everything was put on forward, starting at a reefed foresail, until finally on the second day she was tearing along under a maintop-gallant-sail.

The well was then sounded, and it was found she was making water so fast that the pumps could just keep her afloat. Six days after this she came logging into Valparaiso with her decks almost awash. A tug came alongside and relieved a crew of men who looked more like a set of swollen corpses than anything else. Men with arms blue and puffed to bursting from the steady work at the pump-brakes, their jaws set and faces seamed and lined with the strain, dropped where they stood beside the welling pump-lead upon the deck.

They had weathered the Cape and saved the ship with her cargo of railroad iron, for they had stood to it, and steam took the place of brawn just as the water began lapping around the hatch combings. O’Toole approached Garnett as they started to turn in for a rest after the fracas.

“There’s a curse aboard us, Garnett. Come here!” said the mate. He led the way into the cabin, and pointed to the open door of the stewardess’s room.

“It’s a good thing to be a woman,” growled Garnett. “Just think of a man being able to turn in and sleep peaceful-like that way, hey? Stave me, but I’d like to turn in for a week and sleep like that,” and he looked at the quiet form in the bunk.

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t a good thing to be a woman,” said O’Toole, quietly. “Faith, it may be a good thing to be woman, but as for me, I’ll take me place as a man, an’ no begrudgin’. Moll is dead, man,--been dead for two days gone. The owld man ain’t said nothin’, for he wanted to bring her ashore, dacent an’ quiet like. She bruk into th’ medicin’-chist off th’ Straits.”

Garnett removed his cap, and wiped the dent in the top of his bald head.

“Ye don’t say!” he said, slowly. Then he was silent a moment while they both looked into the room. Garnett put up his handkerchief and rubbed his head again.

“It was so, then, hey?” he said. “An’ Davis was the man what broke ’em up. Too bad, too bad!”

“By th’ look av th’ matter, it must ha’ been. Yes, ’pon me whurd, for a fact, it must ha’ been.”

The captain’s step sounded in the after-cabin, and the mates went forward to their bunks.

_THE BLACK CREW OF COOPER’S HOLE_

To the southward of Cape Horn, a hundred leagues distant across the Antarctic Ocean, lie the South Orkneys. Sailors seldom see these strange islands more than once. Those who do see them are not always glad of it afterwards, for they usually have done so with storm topsails straining away at the clews and the deep roar of a hurricane making chaos of sound on the ship’s deck. Then those on watch have seen the drift break away to leeward for a few moments, and there, rising like some huge, dark monster from the wild southern ocean, the iron-hard cliffs appear to warn the Cape Horner that his time has come. If they are a lucky crew and go clear, they may live to tell of those black rocks rising to meet the leaden sky. If they are too close to wear ship and make a slant for it, then there is certain to be an overdue vessel at some port, and they go to join the crews of missing ships. The South Orkney ledges tell no tales, for a ship striking upon them with the lift of the Cape Horn sea will grind up like a grain of coffee in a mill.

In the largest of these grim rocks is a gigantic cleft with walls rising a sheer hundred fathoms on either side. The cleft is only a few fathoms across, and lets into the rocky wall until suddenly it opens again into a large, quiet, land-locked harbor. This is the Great Hole of the Orkneys. On all sides of this extinct volcanic crater rise the walls, showing marks of eruptions in past ages, and a lead-line dropped at any point in the water of the hole will show no bottom at a hundred fathoms.

Since the days of Drake and Frobisher the hole has been visited at long intervals, but it is safe to say that not more than six white men have visited it since Cook’s Antarctic voyage. To get in and out of the passage safely requires a knowledge of the currents of the locality, and the heavy sea that bursts into a churning caldron of roaring white smother on each side of the entrance would make the most daring sailor hesitate before sending even a whale-boat through those grinding ledges into the dark passage beyond.

To the eastward of the Horn, all along the coast of Tierra del Fuego, the fur seals are plentiful. At the Falklands many men of the colony hunt them for their pelts. The schooners formerly used in this trade were small vessels, ranging from sixty to a hundred tons, and the crews were usually a mixture of English and native.

After working along the southern shore of Tierra del Fuego they often went as far north as the forty-fifth parallel. They then used to rendezvous at the coaling station in the Straits of Magellan, sell out their catch, and afterwards, with enough supplies to carry them home, they would clear for the Falklands or the West Coast.

A rough, savage lot were these sealing crews, but they were well equipped with rifles of the best make and unlimited numbers of cartridges. Sometimes they carried a whale-gun forward and took chances with it at the great fin-backs for a few tons of bone. These cannon threw a heavy exploding harpoon which both killed and secured the whale if struck in a vital part.

The largest schooner of the Falkland fleet, the Lord Hawke, was lying off the coaling station, one day, sending ashore her pelts for shipment to Liverpool. Her skipper, John Nelson, was keeping tally of the load upon a piece of board with the bullet end of a long rifle cartridge. Two other vessels were anchored in the channel, already discharged, and their crews were either getting ready to put to sea or lounging about the station. John Nelson suddenly looked up from his tally and saw a strange figure standing outlined against the sky upon a jagged spur of rock about half a mile distant on the other side of the Strait. The natives to the southward of the Strait are very fierce and dangerous, so Nelson swore at a sailor passing a hide and bade him “avast.” Then he took up his glass and examined the figure closely.

It appeared to be that of a white man clothed in skins, carrying either a staff or gun, upon which he leaned.

“There are no men from the schooner ashore over there; hey, Watkins?” said Nelson.

“Naw,” said his mate, looking at the solitary figure. “It’s one of those cannibals from the s’uth’ard.”

“Pass me a rifle,” said the skipper.

The mate did so, and Nelson slipped in the cartridge he had been using for a pencil.

“Now stand by and see the critter jump,” said he, and his crew of six Fuegians stopped shifting hides and waited.

John Nelson was an Englishman of steady nerves, but he rested his rifle carefully against the topmost backstay and drew the sights fine upon the man on the rock.

It was a useless act of brutality, but John Nelson was a fierce butcher, and the killing of countless seals had hardened him. A man who kills a helpless seal when the poor creature raises its eyes with an imploring half-human appeal for mercy will develop into a vicious butcher if he does it often.

The picture on the schooner’s deck was not very pleasant. Nelson, with his hard, bronzed face pressed to the rifle-stock, and his gleaming eye looking along the sights at the object four hundred fathoms distant. It was a long shot, but the cold gray twilight of the Antarctic spring-time made the mark loom strangely distinct against the lowering evening sky.

There was a sharp report and all hands looked at the figure. Nelson lowered his rifle and peered through the spurt of smoke. The man on the rock gave a spring to one side, then he waved his hand at the schooner and disappeared.

“Bloody good shot, that,” said John Nelson, handing Watkins the rifle. “That’s one for the crew of the Golden Arrow. I guess that fellow won’t care so much about eating sailors as he did when those poor devils went ashore to the s’uth’ard last year.”

“Think you hit him, for sure?” asked the mate.

“Didn’t you see him jump?”

“Oh, yes,” said Watkins. “Here, Sam, go ahead with the skins. Take that pelt--damn!” As he spoke the faint crack of a rifle sounded and Nelson saw his mate clutch his leg.

“Nipped you, by thunder! Now where in the name of Davy Jones did that fellow get a gun? Blow me, but things are coming to a pretty pass when a vessel can’t unload in this blooming Strait without somebody getting shot. I’d lay ten to one it was that Dago the Silver Sea marooned last year.”

Watkins was not badly hurt, however, and after the cut in his leg was tied up he sat about the deck and cursed at the way the British government allowed its stations to be open to the attacks of savages. The station was not well fortified, but the few men there had had little trouble, and the block-house of wood and stone was found to be sufficient shelter. There was little for the natives to steal save coal, so they were left alone. When a few straggling Fuegians crossed the Strait, as they sometimes did, they were peaceful enough, and only traded in skins and rum. Fire-arms they never used and did not care for.

After the last boat-load of hides was sent ashore from the Hawke, the crew went below and began to trim the vessel’s stores for getting under way. They would start for the Falklands at daylight.

It was late when the lookout was set and all hands off watch had turned in.

Nelson and his mate, Watkins, were sleeping in the cabin to starboard while the harpooner and a half-breed hunter occupied the port bunks. The fire burned low in the small stove and the cabin was dark.

About three in the morning several canoes shot out from the southern shore of the Strait and headed rapidly towards the Lord Hawke. It was getting light in the east and the man on the lookout could make out the grim monument of Admiral Drake’s, where that truculent commander had once swung off a mutineer into eternity. The man on the lookout struck off six bells and then went below to get a pipe of tobacco.

When he came on deck, five minutes later, he was astonished to meet twenty gigantic Patagonians clad in skins, who were being led towards the hatchway by a dark-faced, heavy built Spaniard.

“_Hace bien tiempo quel a manana_,” observed the leader, nodding and smiling pleasantly.

“What the----”

But before he could finish, a savage struck him a blow on the head with a club, and that ended his interest in things of this world. He was quickly knifed and dropped overboard. Then the Spaniard led the way aft. Nelson and his comrades awoke to find a couple of black giants bending over each of them. Before they could offer any resistance the knives and clubs of the black crew had put an end to any possible discussion. There was an outcry, but even the skipper’s single fierce yell was not heard by the men on the other vessels. The leader grasped Nelson by the throat while four natives held his arms and legs.

“You shot at me yesterday,” said the Spaniard.

“I didn’t know you were a white man. Who are you?” gasped Nelson, in a strangling whisper.

“Gretto Gonzales.”

“The man whose wife was stewardess on the Silver Sea--you were marooned for killing the man who ran off with her?”

“How you hear?”

“Saw it in last year’s newspaper--let go of my throat---- Ah!”

It was all over, and the crew of the sealing schooner were dropped overboard. The men at the station were astonished to find the Lord Hawke standing out to sea so early in the morning without settling for the trade at the company’s store. A few weeks later the crews of the other Falkland schooners were more astonished to find that the Lord Hawke had not returned to the islands. At the end of two months John Nelson and his crew were given up for lost, for the Hawke was seen no more in the sealing fleet. Gretto Gonzales, the Spaniard, held her head straight for the South Orkneys and ran her through the entrance of the Great Hole. Once safe inside, he built huts of stone for his stores, and then stood to sea again to meet the Cape Horn fleet.

As he had by some means--previous to the taking of the Hawke--heard of the death of Davis from the wounds he had given him in the fight on the Silver Sea, he was afraid to set foot in one of the Strait stations. Captain Enoch Moss had marooned him two years ago for his savage conduct aboard his ship, and since then he had become a chief among the fierce eastern natives. These savages were large and active, and unlike the hopeless Fuegians of Smith’s Channel. His life, like theirs, was wild and restless, but it was unbearable for its monotony, so he had picked his crew and determined on this wild plan of piracy. His thoughts also appear to have been often with his wife, whom he believed to be alive, for many of his actions point that this was his chief motive in holding up the vessels of the Cape Horn fleet.

The first vessel he sighted was the Norwegian bark Erik, and he boarded her in his whale-boat during a calm. She was reported as missing.

The next vessel was the large ship James Burk, of San Francisco. He fought her, and followed her for nearly ten days, and finally took her abreast of the Ramirez after having shot half her crew from his own deck. She was also added to the list of missing ships and no one in the civilized world was the wiser.