John C. Hutcheson

“ I can not only see the ship distinctly, but also right down on to her deck!”
“Nonsense, boy; you’d better go below!” said the first mate brusquely, while Spokeshave sniggered and whispered something to the lamp-trimmer and man at the wheel that made them both laugh out right. “There’s something wrong with you to-night, Haldane, for you seem quite off your chump, so you’d better go below and sleep it off. There’s no ship near us, I tell you! What you imagined to be a sailing vessel is that dark cloud there, coming up from the leeward, which is fast shutting out the horizon from view. ”

“ But between slavery and unbridled liberty there is, Señor Applegarth, a wide margin; and though I do not look upon a nigger in the abstract as either a brute beast or a human chattel, still I do not consider him quite fit to govern himself, nor do I regard him in the light of my brother, sir, nor even as my equal in any way!”
The skipper laughed.
“‘What’s bred in the bone,’ colonel—you know the rest!” said he. “Your old experience in the Southern States prejudices you against the race.”
“Pardon me,” rejoined Colonel Vereker warmly, “I don’t dislike them at all. ”

“ The surface fog, or mist, which had lately obscured the view, rising from the water immediately after the last gleams of the sunset had disappeared from the western sky, had now cleared away, giving place to the pale spectral light of night, an occasional star twinkling here and there in the dark vault overhead, like a sign-post in the immensity of space, making the wild billowy waste, through which we tore with all the power of wind and steam, seem all the wilder from contrast. ”

“ As the noble ship glided away through the still tempestuous sea against a strong headwind, a thing of beauty and of might—such a contrast to us lying there, almost at the mercy of the seas—I could not help thinking of the wondrous power of mind over matter displayed in our grand ocean steamers, and what a responsibility rests upon their engineers! ”

“ A couple of strokes, combined with the forward impetus of my leap overboard, took me up to the little craft, and in a jiffey I had grasped the gunwale aft and clambered within her, securing the end of the line I had round one of the thwarts at once, amid the ringing cheers of the skipper and my shipmates in the old barquey, who proceeded to haul us up alongside without further delay, tugging away at the tar rope I had hitched on, yo-heave-hoing and hurrahing in one and the same breath right lustily! ”

“ I replied. “They’ve got the life left in them and that’s all, I’m afraid!”
“Neither dead, then?”
“No, sir.”
“Bravo! ‘whilst there’s life there’s hope,’” cried the skipper in a cheery tone. “Are they quite helpless, do you think, Haldane—I mean quite unable to climb up the side?”
“Quite unable, sir,” I answered. “One’s unconscious, and I don’t think the other could move an inch if he tried!”
“Then we must haul ’em up,” said Captain Applegarth, turning to Masters, who had popped his head over the bulwarks and was now looking down into the boat, like the rest of the hands on board. ”

“ Ah, he was a very different sort of fellow to little Spokeshave, being a nice, jolly, good-natured chap, chubby and brown-bearded, and liked by every one from the skipper down to the cabin boy. He was a bit obstinate, though, was Mr Fosset; and “as pigheaded as a Scotch barber,” as Captain Applegarth would say sometimes when he was arguing with him, for the first mate would always stick to his own opinion, no matter if he were right or wrong, nothing said on the other side ever convincing him to the contrary and making him change his mind. ”

“ Our poor old barquey then rolled so much that the skipper thought the wire hawser attached to the spars had parted and that we were at the very mercy of the tempest. So certain, indeed, was he, that he yelled out for all hands to make sail, with the idea of trying one last desperate venture and beard the winds with our puny canvas.
Fortunately, however, there was no need for us to essay this futile expedient, breaking the force of the billows as they reared up in their colossal grandeur to annihilate us and keeping us steadily facing their attack ”

“ Then if word were wanted to spur us on, the skipper gave that word with a vengeance!
“By George! my lads, we’re in time yet to save the child and our other white comrades!” he cried out loudly, at the same time jumping into the mizzen rigging, where he hung on the shrouds with one hand, while in the other he held a cutlass which he had hastily clutched up, whirling it round his lionlike old grey head. “See, men, they’ve retreated to the cabin below, where they’re fighting for their lives to the last. Tumble up, my lads, and save them, like the British sailors that you are! ”

“ For before he could get so far, giving a fierce growl, the dog at once sprang up at him, his fangs meeting in the Haytian’s throat, whereupon the latter, toppling backwards over the poop-rail, fell into the waist below, with the dog hanging on to him; and I noticed presently that both were dead, the brave animal who had come so opportunely to the rescue of the colonel, his master, being stabbed to the heart by a knife which the negro still held in his lifeless hand, while his own neck had been torn to pieces by the dog whom death could not force to relinquish his grip! ”

“ Oh, my little Elsie, my darling little girl!”
“Cheer up, colonel, cheer up,” whispered the skipper, coming in from the state room on the starboard side of the saloon, whither he had gone to hunt up some special cigars while Garry O’Neil was accomplishing his surgical operation. “We’re going ahead as fast as steam and a good ship can carry us, and we’ll rescue your child, I’ll wager, before nightfall. Have a smoke now, my friend; and while you’re trying one of the Havanah’s, which never paid duty and are none the worse for that, you can tell us how it all happened from the beginning to the end. ”

“ This, of course, at once changed the current of my thoughts; and so, without troubling my head any further about “Conky,” I sang out as eagerly as before to the first mate, all the more anxious now to prove that I had been right in the first instance, “There she is, Mr Fosset, there she is!”
“Where on earth are you squinting now, boy?” said he, a bit huffy at not making her out and apparently inclined to Spokeshave’s opinion that I had not really seen her at all. “Where away?”
“There, sir, away to leeward,” cried I, almost jumping over the bridge rail in my excitement. ”

“ There was no “racing” of the screw now, for Neptune was in one of his quiet moods and there were no big rollers to surmount, or deep wave valleys to descend into; consequently the old barquey had no excuse for giving way to any gambolling propensities in the water of pitching and tossing, steaming away on an even keel and using every inch of power of her engines, with not an ounce to waste in the way of mis-spent force! ”

“ It was, however, but a vain task for these mad myrmidons of Neptune to attempt, strive as recklessly as they might in their wrath, for the good ship spurned them with her forefoot and the star-crowned maiden bowed mockingly to them from her perch above the bobstay, laughing in her glee as she rode over them triumphantly and sailed along onward ”

“ How little do the thousands of passengers who yearly go to and fro across the Atlantic know, or, indeed, care to know, that their comfort and the rate at which they travel through the water—they who talk so glibly of making the passage in such and such a time, be the sea smooth or rough, and the wind fine or contrary—that all this depends on the unceasing vigilance of the officers in charge of the vessel in which they voyage! ”

“ The vessel in sight was the very identical ship I had seen three nights before, flying the same signal of distress; and here she was now, sailing, as then, four points off our weather bows and eight before the wind, which was, as I’ve already said, blowing a light breeze from the southward and westward.
What new calamity did this second appearance of the “ghost-ship,” as the old boatswain called her, portend to all of us? ”

“ Mr Spokeshave? Mr Spokeshave?”
No answer came this time, however, from my friend, Master “Conky,” though he had been ready enough just now with his aggravating “quite so.”
“I think, sir,” said I, “Mr Spokeshave has gone below to his tea.”
“Very likely,” replied the skipper drily; “he’s precious fond of his breadbasket, that young gentleman. I don’t think he’ll ever starve where there’s any grub knocking about. Fancy a fellow, calling himself a man, thinking of his belly at such a moment! Go, Haldane, and call him up again and tell him I want him.” ”

“ After seeing the last tribute of respect paid to the colonel’s remains, the gallant fellow being buried close to the posada where he had met with his untimely end, and a cross which I carved myself placed above his lonely grave, sheltered by a noble palm that stood erect, as he had done when living, a monument of nature’s handiwork, I resumed my journey to Caracas, in order to carry out my lost friend’s last directions. ”

“ Not so Garry O’Neil, though.
The Irishman’s face flamed with rage and anger. “Kill them, sor!” cried he, springing to his feet from the chair in which he had been seated alongside the colonel, whose injured limb he had been carefully attending to again all the while, his reddish beard and moustache bristling, and his steel-blue eyes flashing out veritable sparks, it seemed of fire. “Faith, killin’s too good for ’em, sure, the haythen miscreants! I’d boil ’em alive, sor, or roast ’em in the stoke-hold, begorrah, if I had me own way with ’em. ”

“ There are many things thus to be learnt, I have found out from experience, which, although seemingly unimportant in themselves, frequently turn out afterwards to be of very great use to us, sometimes, indeed, almost unexpectedly so!”
“Aye, aye, colonel. My opinion, sir, right down to the ground,” said the skipper, looking towards me. “Just you put that in your pipe, Dick Haldane, and smoke it!”
“Yes, young sir,” added Colonel Vereker, emphasising this piece of advice. “That rule of life has stood me in good stead on more than one occasion, both on land and on shipboard. ”

“ Another savage yell almost confirmed the thought. “Heavens!” exclaimed Colonel Vereker, rendered almost frantic with grief and excitement, and noticing the appalling evidences of the Haytians’ triumph, while we stared aghast at each other. “My poor darling child, and those brave fellows I left behind, where are they all; where are they? For God’s sake find them! Alas! alas! those black devils have murdered them all.” ”

“ The skipper laughed as he went down again to get the rockets and blue lights which were kept in a spare cabin aft for safety.
“He’s a rum chap, that little beggar,” he observed to Mr Fosset, who had been forward to set the look-out men on the forecastle and had returned to the bridge. “I think if you told him he was the laziest loafer that ever ate lobscouse, he couldn’t help saying ‘Quite so!’”
“You’re about right, sir. I think, though, he can’t help it; he’s got so used to the phrase,” replied the other, joining in the skipper’s laugh. ”

“ No; you mistake my meaning greatly if you think that, Señor Applegarth. Black, white or yellow, the colour makes no difference to me, providing the individual I may have to deal with be a man in the true sense of the word! In the old days, before our war, I had a good deal to do with niggers, for my father and his father before him owned a large plantation in Louisiana, and long before President Lincoln issued his proclamation of emancipation every hand on our estate was a free man; so, you see, sir, I do not advocate slavery at all events. ”

“ I believe, too, that the colonel, as you call him, is only an impostor and that the skipper is going on just such a wild-goose chase after this ship of his, which he says was captured by pirates, as he did that Friday hunting your Flying Dutchman! wasting our time with your idiotic story. Pirates and niggers, indeed! Why, this chap, I’ll bet, is a nigger himself, and more of a pirate than any one we’ll come across if we steam from here to the North Pole. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Dick Haldane; you and your confounded ‘ghost-ship’ together! ”

“ During the long time the first mate and I had been down below in the stoke-hold, the skipper had lowered the upper yards and housed her top-masts, getting her also under snugger canvas, the fore and mizzen topsails being set “scandalised,” as we call it aboard ship, that is, with the heads of the sails hauled up, and their sheets flattened taut as boards, so as to expose as little surface as possible to the wind, only just sufficient to keep the vessel with her head to sea, like a stag at bay. ”

“ I replied to this hail of the skipper. “She’s about three miles off, I think, sir.”
“All right,” he shouted back to me. “Port your helm, there!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” repeated Parrell. “Port, sir, it is.”
“We’re rising her fast now, sir,” I called out after a short interval. “There’s a man in the boat; yes, a man, sir. I can see him quite plainly now, and I’m sure I’m not mistaken!”
“Are you quite sure, my lad?”
“Quite sure, sir. And he’s alive, too, I’m certain. Yes, sir; he moved then distinctly. I could see him plainly. Why, the boat is so near now that you ought to see it from the deck.” ”

“ My poor servant did not answer, but that black fiend, the pseudo ‘marquis’ advanced from the forepart of the deck, sheltering himself, you may be sure, from my aim in the rear of the windlass bitts, which were in a line between us.
“‘You will have to call louder,’ he cried with a mocking laugh like that of a hyena, and full of devilish glee. ‘I assure you, much louder, my friend, before that spy slave of yours will ever be able to answer you again!’
“Heavens! I feared the worst then. Poor Cato! ”

“ There’s summit a-brewin’ up over there, or I’m a Dutchman!”
“What’s that, bo’sun?” cried the skipper, coming up on the bridge at the moment to look for the chart of the North Atlantic, which he had left in the wheel-house the night before, and overheard the old growler’s remark. “Got the Flying Dutchman on the brain again?”
“No, sir, I weren’t talking o’ that,” replied Masters. “I was a-saying to Master Haldane that it were precious misty and thick to win’ard and I feared thunder over there.”
“Thunder! thunder your grandmother!” cried the skipper testily. ”

“ Up with you, men, and lay out on the yard!”
The hands who had stopped half-way up the fore-rigging, spell-bound at the sight of the mirage, now bestirred themselves, shaking off their superstitious fears; old Masters, in the presence of something to be done, also working, and soon the sail was furled, the bunt stowed, and the gaskets passed.
“It’s no use our keeping on any longer after that ship of yours, Haldane,” observed the skipper, turning to me when the men had all come in from the topsail yard and scrambled down on deck again after making everything snug aloft. ”

“ They can’t stand all this driving and racing, with the propeller blades half out of water every second revolution of the shaft. No engines could stand it, with such a heavy sea on and the ship rolling and pitching all the time like a merry-go-round at Barnet Fair. The governor is no good; and, though Grummet or Links have their grip on the throttle valve all the while to check the steam, and I’ve every stoker and oiler on duty, the bearings are getting that heated that I’m afraid of the shaft breaking at any moment. Full speed, sir? ”

“ I say, Fosset?”
“Aye, aye, sir! Want me?”
“Yes,” replied the skipper. “Mr Stokes is shorthanded below and says the bilge-pumps are choked. Can you spare him a man or two to help clear the suctions? I daresay there’s a lot of stray dunnage washing about under the stoke-hold plates. You might go down and bear a hand yourself, as I won’t leave the bridge.”
“Certainly, sir; I’ll go at once with Mr Stokes and take some of the starboard watch with me. It’s close on seven bells and they’d soon have to turn out, anyway, to relieve the men now on deck.” ”