Cap Martin

“ The last prisoner to slip away is a wretched young Englishman in rags. In his hands, covered with blood and mud, he is carefully carrying his cap upside down. Arriving opposite the kitchen he stops in the light, and from the greasy pocket of his ragged trousers he draws out a handful of white sticky stuff which he puts into his headgear. Slowly in this manner he empties both his pockets. One can see his poor features, stamped with suffering, suddenly light up at the contemplation of the contents of his cap ”

“ And he did so, and he gave the Captain his revenge! But of all the passions, there is not one less profitable to indulge in. They played morning, noon, and night, through long days of sickening calm, through dreary nights of storm and hurricane, and they scarcely lifted their heads at the tidings that the Needles were in sight, nor even questioned the pilot for news of England, when he boarded them in the Downs. Martin had grown much older during that same voyage; his temper, too, usually imbued with the easy indolence of his father's nature, had grown impatient and fretful. ”

“ He saw the great boom above his head, and the vast expanse of the mainsail, a tremendous canvas, even though reefed. He saw the straining, board-like staysails. He heard the harsh scream of the wind aloft, the vibrant thrumming of tautened stays, the banging of a block, the crash of boarding seas. Grim sounds, and an outlook to daunt a young man whose maritime experience consisted of an occasional ferry-boat trip.
Martin was aghast. The ship was a chip in a maelstrom, lost, tossed about, sport of those monster waves. The ticklish game of "carrying on" was beyond Martin's present ken. ”

“ There are a great number of excellent people in this world who believe that “Thought,” like “Écarté,” is a game which requires two people to play. The Captain was one of these; nor was it within his comprehension to imagine how any one individual could suffice to raise the doubts he was called on to canvass or decide. “Who should he now have recourse to?” was his first question; and he had scarcely proposed it to himself when a soft low voice said, “What is puzzling Captain Martin?—can I be of any service to him?” He turned and saw Kate Henderson. ”

“ So the air is dense with tobacco smoke and the reek of beer and champagne. In one corner they are playing poker with their coats off. All the chairs are full of sprawling young men who stamp their feet to the time, and bang their fists down so that the bottles dance on the tables.
"God help Kaiser Bill."
Sky and sea are opal grey. Martin is [11] stretched on the deck in the bow of the boat with an unopened book beside him. He has never been so happy in his life. The future is nothing to him, the past is nothing to him. ”

“ Every day Martin grew more familiar with the sea, and loved it more, and it was his companion and playmate. He was bolder than the little restless sanderlings that ran and flitted before the advancing waves, and so never got their pretty white and grey plumage wet: often he would turn to meet the coming wave, and let it break round and rush past him, and then in a moment he would be standing knee-deep in the midst of a great sheet of dazzling white foam, until with a long hiss as it fled back, drawing the round pebbles with it, it would be gone, and he would laugh and shout with glee. ”

“ The second window overhead was suddenly alight, and a booming voice was cursing in the room. Martin rolled off the edge and fell into the boatswain's arms.
Then he was on his feet, running, by the boatswain's side. Just in front of him raced the hunchback, and a queer figure in man's clothes, whose long hair streamed behind. He heard men shouting.
They passed the corner and started across the Embarcadero toward the wharves. Far down the street a police whistle was blowing shrilly. Behind them, the Black Cruiser was spewing forth its brood. ”

“ The wherry was almost opposite to the Deptford stairs when a cry broke from the passenger’s lips. Martin glanced round, and saw a boat approaching swiftly. It contained a single man, pulling hard against the tide.
Martin’s passenger stood up, and shouted angrily a few words in a foreign tongue, which Martin could not understand. The man ceased rowing, and turned his head, and Martin recognised him as the foreign seaman whom he had seen a little while before asleep in the drifting craft. Next moment he swung his boat round and rowed rapidly towards the entrance of the repairing yard. ”

“ He was seen also by the men on the jetty. With cries of excitement they dashed back to the shore, and ran towards a boat that was drawn up on the mud.
Martin had ceased rowing; his interest in the Portugal ship was whetted anew, for surely those excitable men were foreigners from that vessel. Who was the fugitive?
As he rested on his oars he noticed that the swimmer had suddenly changed his course, and was coming with swift over-hand strokes straight for the boat. Meanwhile, the pursuers had hauled their boat off the mud, got afloat, and were now pulling hard in the same direction. ”

“ They needed a ship, and they took us. And there ye are! Sails dead, Little Billy dead, God knows 'ow many o' the crew gone, the lass at the whim o' Wild Bob Carew. Ow, what a bit o' blasted luck! Swiggle me stiff!"
The boatswain growled desperate oaths to himself. For a few moments he gave himself up to lurid and audible thought.
Martin, in as black a mood himself, kept his peace, but he, too, spent the time in thought, in gloomy surmising, in attempting to form some plan of action. "What to do—what to do!" The refrain sang in his troubled mind. They must act, and act quickly. ”

“ It was the hull of a large ship, hove on her beam-ends, her masts gone, the after-part already shattered and rent by the fierce seas which dashed furiously against her, threatening to sweep off the miserable wretches clinging to the bulwarks and stanchions. To form a communication with her was Captain Martin’s first object. As yet it was evident that no attempt of the sort had been made, most of the people who had collected being more eager apparently to secure the casks, chests, and other things thrown on shore than to assist their perishing fellow-creatures. ”

“ At last we came out in a fresh breadth of water, with marshes on either side and a far view of the sea, and there, heaving a little to the flowing tide, and with a sea-gull floating over her mizzen mast, lay Martin's ship.
She was a wooden schooner, once a Dundee whaler called the Mary but now re-christened the Scotia, and it would be silly to say how my eyes filled at sight of her, just because she had taken Martin down into the deep Antarctic and brought him safely back again.
"She's a beauty, isn't she?" said Martin. ”

“ Then he slowly fell backwards out upon the sea, and falling upon the sea caused so mighty a wave that it went high over the black rock and washed the face of the cliff, sweeping Martin back among the rocks.
When the great wave retired, and Martin, half-choked with water and half-dazed, struggled on to his feet, he saw that it was night, and a cloudy, black sky was above, and the black sea beneath him. He had not seen the light fade, and had perhaps fallen asleep and seen and talked with that old sea monster in a dream. ”

“ Of his adventures at sea Martin tells several remarkable incidents; but they are many of them connected with dreams, and if not wilful falsehoods, are most probably misrepresentations. Of such probably is what he relates as occurring whilst he was at Lisbon. He says that whilst in the Tagus the whole crew went on shore except himself, a young negro, and the captain's wife and daughter. The black, knowing the captain had a quantity of gold in his chest, proposed to Martin to murder the ladies, and take a boat and escape with it—to India, Martin says. ”

“ Nay, good wife, when thou hast thought it over, thou wilt see that far fouler shoals and straits lie up yonder, than in the free open sea that God Almighty made. Martin is a devout and godly man, who hath matins and evensong on board each day when the weather is not too foul, and looks well that there be no ill-doings in his ship; and if he have a berth for thy lad, it will be a better school for him than where two-thirds of the household are raging against one another, and the third ever striving to corrupt and outwit the rest. ”

“ From the period of the Spanish armament in 1790, to the commencement of hostilities against the French republic in 1793, he commanded the Porcupine, of 24 guns, on Channel service, and from that vessel removed to the Magicienne frigate, in which he proceeded to the West Indies, where he continued about two years.
Soon after his return to England Captain Martin was appointed to the Irresistible, of 74 guns, and was present in that ship at the defeat of the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent, Feb. 14, 1797 [2] , on which occasion she sustained a loss of 5 men killed and 14 wounded. ”

“ He tied up the boat and strolled along by the edge of the repairing dock. Only one vessel lay there, a three-master brig without her mainmast, and it flashed into Martin’s memory that the waterman had told him of a Portugal ship that had come in for repairs.
“Is that a Portugal vessel?” he asked a man who was lounging near by.
“Ay, Portugal she is,” was the reply. “Dismasted by a Frenchman in the Channel. She’s not so foreign-looking as some Portugal ships I’ve seen, but her crew—why, bless your life, they’re as pretty a set of cut-throats as you’ve ever set eyes on.” ”

“ I’ve fought with a cutlass, and I’ve knocked down a swabber with a marline-spike, but never in my born days have I hit a man with an oar; there’s something uncommon about that, and as a constable I took note of it.
“Foreign ways, to be sure. Them fellows in the boat must have been some of the crew of that Portugal ship.”
“Not the big-nosed man with the black beard,” said Martin. “I’m sure he was an Englishman.” ”

“ Martin knew an alternative in that purple morning. A gun—the shot—the quick flutter of his hand.
“No,” he whispered. “Too demure. Fruitful, but demure.”
Outside, the sun blended into trucks and the yapping noise of turning wheels. He dressed and went into the street, stopping at the nearest bar. And strangely, in all his tiredness and fear, arose the man as he had been—straight from the ocean, with clear eyes that had watched the sea so often, and with hand half-raised as though holding the helm of his ship. It was momentary; but the bartender stood looking at him quietly and with respect. ”

“ Still the ship lay as immovable as before, her masts and spars, her black rigging, her white sails and shining hull reflected on the glass-like surface; at the same time the stranger got closer and closer, and now her topsails appeared, next her courses.
“She’s a big craft, that; twice the size of the Good Hope, I opine,” observed Martin. “If she’s a friend, she may bring us news, but if she’s an enemy we shall have to up stick and run for it.”
“Not until we see how many teeth she carries,” said the captain, who overheard the remark. “Big as she is, the Good Hope may be able to tackle her.” ”

“ Martin did not speak. Had he, the spell would have been broken. But his reticence of love prolonged it. He was dazed and dizzy. He could not understand what was happening. It was too wonderful to be anything but a delirium. He conquered a mad desire to let go sheet and tiller and to clasp her in his arms. His intuition told him it was the wrong thing to do, and he was glad that sheet and tiller kept his hands occupied and fended off temptation. But he luffed the boat less delicately, spilling the wind shamelessly from the sail so as to prolong the tack to the north shore. ”

“ The men hailed him; he pulled in to the foot of the stairs, took on the impatient passengers, and rowed away again, towards the city.
The dusk was gathering, and Martin was about to rise and go home when he heard footsteps on the other side of him, and a voice say, angrily,
“The boat is not here!”
“I can’t wait,” said another voice, which Martin recognised at once as Mr. Slocum’s. Instinctively he drew farther back into the shadow of the post. “It would not be safe. You must hire a waterman.”
“There isn’t one to be seen,” said the first speaker. “There never is when you want one.” ”

“ On the 26th April, in the same year, the Irresistible, in company with the Emerald frigate, attacked two Spanish frigates which had anchored in Conil Bay, near Cape Trafalgar, and obliged them to surrender. They proved to be the Elena and Nimfa, of 36 guns and 320 men each. The former, after she had struck, cut her cable and ran ashore; Captain Martin, however, got her off, but so materially damaged that she could not be kept a-float, and was consequently destroyed. The enemy’s vessels were from the Havannah bound to Cadiz. They had about 50 men killed and wounded, the British only two. ”

“ The waterside was thronged with people clamouring for watermen, even throwing their goods into the water. When Martin pulled in to the nearest stairs he had to keep an oar’s length distant to prevent his boat from being overcrowded and swamped, and it was only after some argument and even altercation that he was able to take on board an old man and woman with all their little wealth tied up in huge bundles. ”

“ CHAPTER VI. MR. MERL'S DEPARTURE
Worthy reader, you are neither weak of purpose nor undecided in action; as little are you easily moved by soft influences, when aided by long eyelashes. But had you been so, it would have been no difficult effort for you to comprehend the state of mind in which Captain Martin repaired to his room to make preparation for his journey. There was a kind of half chivalry in his present purpose that nerved and supported him. It was like a knight-errant of old setting out to confront a peril at the behest of his lady-love ”