Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

“ Onslow steered on, sitting upon the grating now, and holding the wheel one-handed by the lower spokes; and in the fat, hot stew of the stokehold below, Kettle and the donkeyman shoveled coal to the light of reeking slush-lamps and the tune of furnace-roar.
The steamer, in grip of the river-stream, swung round the bights and twistings, finding deep water everywhere, though often she could not make the turn quickly enough, and bruised with her forefoot the slimy mangrove-stems which marked the bank. ”

“ No, Captain Kettle, I’m going through with this matter, whether it succeeds or it fails; whether it is brought about without injury to a single human soul, or whether it costs the last pant of breath for every one in this ship. But I own to you I am nervous. The only things which we can be sure will happen, are the unexpected; and we can’t prepare for those; and the want of preparation may ruin us.”
“It’s a big gamble,” assented Kettle, “and I wish I could say, ‘May the Lord defend the right!’ But I can’t, and you can’t, and, least of all, Shelf can’t. ”

“ Shelf had, as usual, a concourse of men round her. She was a woman who deliberately cultivated the art of fascination, because it was essential to her ambition; and men are always willing to be dazzled and fascinated. They were laughing when Fairfax came up. She saw him from the corner of her eyes, but for the moment took no notice of him. She leaned forward and delivered another sentence to the men before her through the top feathers of her fan, which sent through them another thrill of merriment; and then shut the fan with a click and turned to Fairfax. ”

“ Indeed, when Kettle, coming down the ladder himself, thrust him furiously back with a black pistol muzzle, he retreated to the bridge-deck, as did those who were with him.
But the other men of that worthy crew had no mind to be tyrannized over any longer when the steamer was momentarily settling down under their feet, and drowning was an immediate question. By the funnel stays and by one another’s backs they swarmed on to the top of the fiddley, and thence gaining the boat platforms, set about cutting adrift the grimy awnings with their knives, and clearing away the tackles and falls. ”

“ A thought passed through Patrick Onslow’s mind, a thought of the drama to be played under shelter of those recesses within the next few days, and he frowned. He thrust the thought from him as an impertinence, and turned again to his novel. But he was destined just then to read no more from that dainty vignette of Stamboul. Through the grating of the fiddley above his head came a frightened shout; then a chorus; then a prolonged clattering, as iron tools were thrown on the floor-plates, and the boots of scared men smote the rungs of the ladders. ”

“ Theodore Shelf had reached the end of his tether, and, like a shrewd business man, he knew it. There is a certain mad excitement in standing on a high ledge of an iceberg when the steps which you have clambered up by have splintered away, and the hundred-foot cliffs above are threatening every instant to descend in crashing avalanche. You know you have to jump into the cold green waters below, or be crushed out of existence; and lingering to the very last second is not without its fierce pleasures. ”

“ Onslow, I like you all the better. It gives us something in common we can talk about without being ashamed. We can’t very well discuss the other matter which binds us together and respect ourselves at the same time.”
“Quite right. You and I, captain, are shouldered to common piracy by the force of circumstances; but I always kick myself when I think about it. There’s no glamour of romance about our intended villainy, or the way it’s being led up to.” ”

“ Windless swell and a burning sky. Ahead, broken palings of mop-headed tree-trunks growing straight across the sea; on one beam, scattered patches of white, where the surf crumbled over hidden coral reef; on the other, the bright blue water of the Mexican Gulf, with its yellow floating tangles of weed. A steamer lunging through the rollers at a small six knots.
On her decks was visible one man, and one alone, and he was on the upper bridge, with his fists on the spokes of the steam steering-wheel. ”

“ Every hand on the Port Edes’ deck had heard them distinctly, and disquiet arose under the belts of nine out of ten. The mates grew nervous and the men inattentive; and, from the bridge, Captain Kettle’s voice and whistle kept ringing out with biting clearness. As it was, only one man attempted to put the warning into practical effect. He was a miserable, half-clad wretch, a coal-trimmer by rating, already repentant of the spell of physical toil which he had signed on for. ”

“ For such work a leadsman is an absolute necessity; and on board the Port Edes a leadsman was an absolute impossibility. The remaining two of her manning were working as ten men to keep up any head of steam for her engines. And so Patrick Onslow took his soundings with eye and nostrils, as do some of the more ancient of the coaster folk; and instinct did not, upon the whole, serve him badly. Twice he scoured the steamer’s bottom plates over branching coral plants, which broke away with clattering jars, and let her through to deeper water ahead ”

“ Onslow was openly amused, and once broke out into a mocking laugh. He was never at any pains to conceal his contempt for Mr. Theodore Shelf; which was more honest than judicious on his part.
Kettle, on the other hand, wore the puckered face of a puzzled man. The combination of cant and criminality was not altogether new to him. Men of his profession are frequently apt to behave like fiends unbooted at sea, and then grovel in clamorous piety amongst the pews of some obscure meeting-house during all their stay ashore. It is a peculiar trait ”

“ A porpoise surged past them, coughing as he chased a shoal of mullet; and, overhead, a string of purple and yellow cranes screamed wearily as they flapped home to the Everglades after a day’s hard fishing on a growing reef.
“They’ve all got to make their living,” said Onslow.
“Who?” asked the girl.
“I was thinking of those animals in the water and in the air, and, by analogy, the rest of the animal [233] world. We all of us prey on something else, down to the ass who eats grass; or else we die.” ”

“ An angry growl went up from the white men at the taunt, and one of them, a whiskered quartermaster in a cardigan jacket, stepped out and spat into the circle of light. He looked round to catch the encouraging glances of his mates, and then lifted up his face towards the upper bridge. “See here, Captain Kettle, you’d better not try us too far. This isn’t a slave ship you’re commanding. It’s a common, low-down, British tramp; and the law looks after the deck-hands and all the rest of us.” ”

“ Shelf shrugged her shoulders in utter unbelief. “Your preaching tendencies cover you like a second skin, Theodore. It seems as if you never drop the conventicle and the pleasure of pointing a moral at one. Believe me, is isn’t a paying speculation, this cant of yours. At the most they would only give you a trumpery knighthood for it. But go your own way, and I’ll go mine. You shall be made in spite of yourself.” ”

“ But it’s hard for a man to speak soberly when he’s just had all his plans smashed to the smallest kind of fragments, and stamped upon by the only person in the world whose opinion he cares a rap about. Of course I know all this business was a theft, a piece of piracy pure and simple. But circumstances elbowed one into it, and I bowed my head to them. Circumstances—you, that is, and you entirely—now drag me out of it, and I’m going to bow again, and say ‘Kismet.’ Only I wonder what will become of the money. I swear Shelf shan’t have the whole half million and the steamer too. ”

“ Mr. Shelf strolled out into the main cabin, threw his cigar into the alley-way, and sat up to the table. The captain and the second mate were mealing with him, and, by the faces of them, they felt out of their element before the epicurean menu which the Cunarder’s cook had sent up in place of the usual hash and tea. But Shelf took the lead, and called for champagne to drink bon voyage, and unwrapped himself into a glittering host, and had them at their entire ease in less time than it takes to eat a curried egg. There was no holding the man. ”

“ Onslow gave a quick smile to himself, as though he understood something; then mounted a look of concern on his face, and, getting up from his chair, crossed to port and strode up to the break of the bridge-deck. The captain, coming out of [90] the chart-house, joined him. From the door of the alley-way beneath them rushed a crowd of frightened men—trimmers and stokers, stripped to the waist, engineers in dungaree—all the human contents of the lowest hold. ”

“ The sloop ran down her jib topsail, and as the iron hanks screamed along the stay a negro trotted nimbly out along the flat bowsprit top to secure the sail in its gaskets. The wind was dropping with the sun, and because the current raced manfully down the bight where the stranded steamer was lying, the sloop made but a fathom or so to the good by every board across the river. The one-eyed man danced a barefoot tattoo of fury on [200] the floorboards of the cockpit at this slowness; and his loose-limbed partner, who still sprawled on the cabin-roof, chuckled with easy amusement. ”

“ The place was tenanted [201] by no living thing larger than flies and cockroaches. He drew back half scared by the eeriness of it, and then beckoning his mates, headed them down the companion ladder, treading like a stage conspirator. At the foot, two doors opened, one into the alley-way which was empty, the other into the main cabin, on the floor of which Kettle had been deposited by the donkeyman. But in the culminating spasm of his cramp, the little captain had rolled away out of sight under the table, and so to all appearance this place was deserted also. ”

“ Knot by knot, the brine of the Mexican Gulf was being left behind, and the noises of the woods and odors of the trees and the swamps were closing in upon them. The swell fanning out from the steamer’s wake wetted the alligators in their basking-places behind the saw-grass; and the reek from her smoke-stacks scared the stilt-legged waterfowl afish in the shallows. She coasted round a bayou of black water, walled in by stern ranks of cypress-trees; she cut across [151] another with graceful-leaved palmetto-scrub on either hand, and ragged cabbage-palms sprouting out from above. ”

“ Once there was a slight lull in the blast of the gale, and the driven-out waters of the shore began to return, and swirled knee-high about the two who were taking refuge at the foot of the pile.
“Come,” said Onslow, taking the girl by the hand, “we must run for it.” And he led the way beachwards, blundering through piled up mounds of wreckage, whilst the stinging spindrift swirled around their heads and bit them upon the face like whips. ”

“ I’m not grumbling at the berth, only when a man’s on a racket of this kind, it’s a bit hard on him to have a wife and kids he’s fool enough to be fond of. It’s an ugly amusement, lying to them like a play actor, when you know it’s ten chances to one you’ll never see English mud again. That’s the way it cuts, though I suppose you’ll think it all a sailor’s grumble. Perhaps you aren’t a married man?”
“No; I’m not.”
“But you’ve got people who care for you?”
Onslow gave the ghost of a smile, and then laughed. ”

“ Oh, as to honor, don’t you make any blessed error about that, sir. I’m a poor man with a family, and a wife that works, Mr. Onslow, and honor’s a luxury beyond my means. It was just my cantankerousness that prevented me [271] being a rich man this minute. If the crew hadn’t been so uppish that night in the gut of the Florida channel, so help me, neither steamer nor gold would have got as far as this. And if it had come to a scramble, then you can bet I’m the man to have grabbed the pig’s share. But that chance is gone and done with, and so we’ll let it pass for the present. ”

“ Shelf’s name is as good as a banknote in the City this day, and, for everybody’s sake, I trust that I have wronged him foully, and that it may always continue so. But, Amy dear, I have a heavy foreboding on me that in less than half a year’s time there will be a mob of wretched people shooting themselves or going to the workhouse because he has ruined them, and they haven’t the pluck or the thews left to commence life afresh. ”

“ Shelf, “should feel lonely beyond belief if I didn’t know that there were people who hated and feared me. It gives one the sense of power, and that means confidence; and a woman with confidence gets on. It is only your harmless fool who is popular all round, and a person whom everybody in their innermost hearts despise, whatever they may say of him aloud. You must shake this mood off, Hamilton. Begin now. Go up to the Latchford woman, and be impertinent to her. Say the floor’s so bad you can’t dance on it, or the supper’s poisoned you, or that there’s a woman here who picks pockets. ”

“ It’ll be every Jack for himself when the scare comes, and Davy Jones take the steamer, and the others. Oh, they’ll run like a warren of rabbits. The brutes!”
Kettle broke off abruptly, and stared moodily over the Gulf Stream. A flying-fish got out of [93] the blue water and ran across the ripples like a silver rat. A school of porpoises snorted leisurely up from astern, and passed the steamer as though she had been at anchor. And the tangles of the gulf-weed floated past like reefs of tawny coral.
“Do you ever read poetry?” the skipper suddenly asked.
Onslow slewed round his head and stared. ”