Captain Hook

“ We are to meet at Cagney's at eleven o'clock, where I shall await your return from the bank with a bigger haul, unless I'm greatly mistaken, than we ever made before."
A look of triumph overspread the face of Caleb Hook as those words, spoken in the voice of the stock-broker, fell upon his ear.
"Jerry!" he whispered, softly.
"Well, boss?"
"Run around to the Oak street station and tell Captain McGinty to send me five of his best men without an instant's delay. Quiet now! Not a particle of noise as you value your life." ”

“ His sheer physical power was second only to that of Captain Selover. One of his forearms ended in a steel hook. At the moment I could not understand this; could not see how a man so maimed could be useful aboard a ship. Later I wished we had more as handy. He knew a jam hitch which he caught over and under his hook quicker than most men can grasp a line with the naked hand. It would render one way, but held fast the other. He told me it was a cinch-hook hitch employed by mule packers in the mountains, and that he had used it on swamp-hooks in the lumber woods of Michigan. ”

“ These are all the facts I have been able to learn about Hook at Eton, and if you agree that once in his life, that night, he did all that such as he could do for his old school I seek to draw no other moral. Though surely the proud, if detestable, position he attained is another proof that the Etonian is a natural leader of men. Educationally, I gather from the log-book, his sympathies were with the classical rather than the modern side. In politics he was a Conservative. So far as I can learn there never was any woman in his life. His furrow had therefore to be a lonely one. ”

“ Thus he vanishes from the scene and all its doors close against him forever. Surely a more tortured revisit to Eton never disturbed her shades than that of the humble pirate. No one saw the Solitary depart, to resume his awful role. ”

“ He "came around," as he had said, and we made another voyage, uneventful until within a day's sail of Sandy Hook, when he met with an accident. It came of his never-failing consideration of his crew's comfort; he forebore calling the watch below to wear ship in a wind and sea which made it a hard task for the watch on deck; but, with myself at the wheel so that the sailor could help at the braces, and the captain assisting as well, the bark came around and the yards were swung. ”

“ A ship bound into New York one Sunday forenoon was sailing close hauled on the wind on the starboard tack about eighty miles dead to leeward from Sandy Hook. The mate reported to the Captain that he could hear the New York church bells. The captain doubting it, went on deck and heard them distinctly. Putting his ship into the wind, and thus shivering her light sails, he lost the sound, but putting her off again the bells continued to be heard. The sound of the bells reached the upper sails, and [Pg 340] was reflected to the deck. ”

“ Now in my opinion Hook was a good Etonian though not a great one, and it is my more or less passionate desire to persuade you of this—to have Hook, so to speak, set up for good—that brings me here this afternoon in spite of my better judgment.
To prove my case I have of late been trying to collect facts regarding Hook’s early days, and it must be admitted that he is an Old Boy about whom Eton has preserved few traditions. We should not even know that he had been an Etonian but for the statement “Eton and Balliol” in a work that is probably largely unreliable. ”

“ Even the iron claw hung inactive; as if knowing that it was no intrinsic part of what the attacking force wanted. Left so fearfully alone, any other man would have lain with his eyes shut where he fell: but the gigantic brain of Hook was still working, and under its guidance he crawled on his knees along the deck as far from the sound as he could go. The pirates respectfully cleared a passage for him, and it was only when he brought up against the bulwarks that he spoke. ”

“ Strange to think that there is one ghost he knows not of—the Eton ghost—a one-armed apparition, cadaverous and black-avised and wan, who is said to return to Eton to haunt it once every year—on the restless night before the match at Lord’s, and to sit on Hook’s wall, confidently yet not without tremors, awaiting a mirror he shall never see. ”

“ To the pirates it was a voice crying that all the boys lay slain in the cabin; and they were panic-stricken. Hook tried to hearten them, but like the dogs he had made them they showed him their fangs, and he knew that if he took his eyes off them now they would leap at him.
"Lads," he said, ready to cajole or strike as need be, but never quailing for an instant, "I've thought it out. There's a Jonah aboard."
"Ay," they snarled, "a man wi' a hook."
"No, lads, no, it's the girl. Never was luck on a pirate ship wi' a woman on board. We'll right the ship when she's gone." ”

“ All these details I observed later in corroboration, but I knew him first as Hook by his extraordinary note of noblesse oblige. I do not merely mean that Etonian was written all over him: there was something even more than that, as if (may I venture) he was two Etonians rolled by the magnanimous Gods into one. In a word, the handsomest man I have ever seen. Though, at the same time, perhaps slightly disgusting.”
“The moon,” Mr. Jasparin continues, “Paused for a moment (which it so often seems to me to do over Eton, as if awaiting some singular transaction) . ”

“ The society consists of the 30 or so leading person in the school, who are chosen entirely on account of their mental equipment. The Pops are the chief sight of Eton, and parade on great occasions in sock and spat, arms linked, six or eight abreast, and two yards in front of the Sun and Moon.
Legend (always untrustworthy) says that Hook’s election was a great surprise to the other members, who alone have the right of voting, and that James must have manipulated the ballot-box. But even if so, what ardour to excel, how indomitable is the particle, man. ”

“ No. Smothered in his divin'-dress, with a dumb fool at the other end of his life-line. We wuz to work on the Scotland, sunk in six fathoms of water off Sandy Hook. The president sent for me to come to the city, and I left Jim alone. That week we wuz workin' in her lower hold, Jim and me, I tendin' and Jim divin', and then I goin' below and he lookin' out after my air hose and line. Me bein' away that day, they put a duffer at the pump. Jim got his hose tangled up in a fluke of the anchor, they misunderstood his signals, and hauled taut when they should have eased away. ”

“ At its bark Hoak staggered to his knees, but was up again and charging forward with the impetus of a wounded rhinoceros. He had one deed to do before he died and would not be denied. The flying shovel narrowly missed the captain's head as he jumped for the boat, but the seaman with his lips parted over the snarl of clenched teeth fought his painful way to the davit, gripping a knife which he had brought in his belt. His eyes glowed with the strange light that madness lends and his muscles were tensed in the brief exaggerated strength of a supreme effort. ”

“ Never was a crew braver than ours; every man fought for dear life, but we were no match for the assailants. They were double our number and armed to the teeth. At length we were overpowered and bound. The vessel was no longer in our possession, and the company to which she belonged would have to suffer a great loss. It was not that of which we were thinking, however. Every man was in terrible dread as to what his own future would be.
The captain of the pirate ship was one of the most striking men I ever saw. ”

“ The ships at New York were ordered down to Sandy Hook, where the defence of the entrance was to be made. Clinton, who had been hard pressed by Washington throughout his march, arrived on the 30th of June—the day after Howe himself—on the heights of Navesink, on the seacoast, just south of Sandy Hook. During the previous winter the sea had made a breach between the heights and the Hook, converting the latter into an island. Across this inlet the Navy threw a bridge of boats, by which the army on the 5th of July passed to the Hook, and thence was conveyed to the city. ”

“ Seattle may deplore it in Campbell, as having become a dismal necessity; the biographer of Hook may lightly look upon the curse as the springhead of his perpetual wit. I will not continue the list,—it is frightfully long. Hook is but one of many men of rare intellect, large mental powers, with faculties designed and calculated to benefit mankind, who have sacrificed character, life, I had almost said soul, to habits which are wrongly and wickedly called pleasures,—the pleasures of the table. ”

“ Hook said courteously, "did any other gentlemen say mutiny?" Seizing a lantern and raising his claw with a menacing gesture, "I'll bring out that doodle-doo myself," he said, and sped into the cabin. "Five." How Slightly longed to say it. He wetted his lips to be ready, but Hook came staggering out, without his lantern. "Something blew out the light," he said a little unsteadily. "Something!" echoed Mullins. "What of Cecco?" demanded Noodler. "He's as dead as Jukes," said Hook shortly. ”

“ Battens, all Amber checked, 3 ship's lanterns alight. Arcs: prompt perch 1. Open dark Amber flooding back, O.P. perch open dark Amber flooding upper deck. Arc on tall steps at back of cabin to flood back cloth. Open dark Amber. Warning for slide. Plank ready. Call Hook.
In the strange light thus described we see what is happening on the deck of the Jolly Roger, which is flying the skull and crossbones and lies low in the water. There is no need to call Hook, for he is here already, and indeed there is not a pirate aboard who would dare to call him. ”

“ Wrecked and ruined, Hook had no resource but his literary talents, and it is to be deplored that he should have prostituted these to serve an ungentlemanly and dishonourable party in their onslaught upon an unfortunate woman. Whatever may be now thought of the queen of 'the greatest gentleman'—or roue—of Europe, those who hunted her down will never be pardoned, and Hook was one of those. We have cried out against an Austrian general for condemning a Hungarian lady to the lash, and we have seen, with delight, a mob chase him through the streets of London and threaten his very life. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1937, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 85 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”

“ Mullins and Alf Mason and many another ruffian long known and feared on the Spanish Main. In the midst of them, the blackest and largest in that dark setting, reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas. Hook, of whom it is said he was the only man that the Sea-Cook feared. He lay at his ease in a rough chariot drawn and propelled by his men, and instead of a right hand he had the iron hook with which ever and anon he encouraged them to increase their pace. As dogs this terrible man treated and addressed them, and as dogs they obeyed him. ”

“ He knows that this is his day, and that it is the decisive day of the voyage, for before the ship passes out by Sandy Hook his moral victory will be lost or won, with no appeal to Admiralty Boards or Courts of Justice. He knows, too, that a score of other mates and their captains are looking on with keen interest to see how he handles his crew, and their opinion is of far greater value to him than the decrees of Senates; so he intends to lay himself out and give them something worth looking at. ”

“ We were almost as helpless as mice in the paws of a cat, for so few men were sent away in each prize that we had scarcely strength to work them, much less to fight or make sail on an emergency. In this instance fortune favoured us. We made Sandy Hook on the 28th, and before evening were all safely moored alongside the wharf, among twenty-nine other vessels of various rigs captured by the Orpheus. ”

“ Paul’s: “Let the Canons once lay their heads together and the thing will be done;”—his pretty compliment to his friends, Mrs. Tighe and Mrs. Cuffe: “Ah! there you are: the cuff that every one would wear, the tie that no one would loose”—may be cited as perfect in their way.
Admiral Duncan’s address to the officers who came on board his ship for instructions, previous to the engagement with Admiral de Winter, was laconic and humorous: “Gentlemen, you see a severe Winter approaching; I have only to advise you to keep up a good fire.”
Theodore Hook plays thus on the same name:—
Here comes Mr. ”

“ The vessels composing this squadron meeting with weather unusually bad for the season, and being separated in different storms, arrived, after lingering through a tedious passage, in various degrees of distress, on different and remote parts of the American coast. Between the departure of D'Estaing from the Hook on the 23d of July, and the 30th of that month, four ships of sixty-four and fifty guns arrived at Sandy Hook. ”

“ The Perseus was an active ship, and Lieutenant Holloway remained in her one year. He was afterwards received by Commodore (the late Lord) Hotham, on board the Preston, of 50 guns, and was First Lieutenant of that ship in 1778, when attached to Earl Howe’s squadron in America, at the time M. d’Estaing anchored with a powerful fleet, having on board a large body of troops, off Shrewsbury inlet, about four miles from Sandy Hook, where his Lordship had moored his ships in the best order for defence, should the French Admiral attempt to force his passage over the bar [1] . ”