Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 417, July, 1850
Still, after two or three days of the trade-wind, well out in the Indian Ocean, and not a spot to be seen, we had got so far up the Line as to make me sure we had overrun her. Accordingly the schooner was hauled sharp on a wind to cruise slowly down across what must be the Indiaman's track, judging as we could to a nicety, with a knowledge of the weather we had had. For my part I was so certain of sighting her soon, that I ordered the after-cabins to be set to rights, seeing a notion had taken hold of me of actually offering them to Sir Charles Hyde for the voyage to Calcutta – Fancy the thought! 'Twas too good to be likely; but Violet herself actually being in that little after-cabin and sleeping in it – the lively schooner heading away alone for India, and they and Westwood the sole passengers aboard – why, the idea of it was fit to drive me crazy with impatience.
Well, one fine night, after being on deck all day, and the whole night before, almost, I had turned in to my cot to sleep. From where I lay I could see the moonshine off the water through the stern-light in that after-cabin, by the half-open door. I felt the schooner going easily through the water, with a rise and fall from the heave of the long Line-swell; so close my eyes I couldn't, especially as the midshipman could be heard snoring on the other side like the very deuce. Accordingly I turned out into the after-cabin, and got hold of one of the Frenchman's volumes to read, when, lo and behold, I found it was neither more nor less than Greek, all I knew being the sight of it. Next I commenced overhauling the bundle of handwriting, which I took at first for a French log of the schooner's voyage, and sat down on the locker to have a spell at it. So much as I could make out, in spite of the queer outlandish turn the letters had, and the quirks of the unnatural sort of language, it was curious enough – a regular story, in fact, about his own life, the war, and Buonaparte himself. At another time I'd have given a good deal to go through with it at odd hours – and a strange affair I found it was some time afterwards; but meanwhile I had only seen at the beginning that his name was Le Compte Victor l'Allemand, Capitaine de la Marine Française, and made out at the end how there was some scheme of his beyond what I knew before, to be carried out in India, – when it struck me there was no one on the quarterdeck above. I listened for a minute through the stern-window, and thought I heard some one speaking over the schooner's lee-quarter, as she surged along; so slipping on a jacket and cap, I went on deck at once.
It was middle watch at the time; but as soon as I came up I saw all was quiet – Webb near the gangway talking to the old Lascar serang, and breaking the English wonderfully betwixt them; while the Lascars of the watch were sitting like tailors in a ring on the forecastle planks, each waiting for his turn of one cocoa-nut hookah, that kept hubble-bubbling away gravely under the smoker's nose, as he took a long suck at it, while the red cinder in the bowl lighted up his leathery Hindoo face and mustache like a firefly in the root of a banian, till he handed it, without even a wipe, to his neighbour. These fellows had begun to get much livelier as we made the tropics; and this same serang of theirs had put out his horns once or twice to Snelling lately, though he drew them in again the moment he saw me – a sulky old knotty-faced, yellow-eyed devil I thought him at any rate, while his dish-cloth of a turban, his long blue gown and red trousers, reminded you at sea in a gale of a dancing dervish. The day we spoke the Indiaman, in fact, I noticed there was something in the wind for a minute or two with him and his gang, which put it in my head at first to offer them to the captain for a couple of good English hands; and as I passed him and Webb this time, the serang stopped his talk, and sidled off.
However, a beautiful night it was, as ever eye looked upon even in the blue Indian Ocean: the heavens cloudless, the full round moon shining high off our weather-beam again, the stars drawn up into her bright light, as it were, trembling through the films of it like dew-drops in gossamer of a summer morning: you saw the sea meet the sky on every hand, without a speck on the clear line of horizon, through the squares of our ratlins and betwixt the schooner's two long fore-and-aft booms. A pretty strongish breeze we had, too, blowing from east to west with a sweep through the emptiness aloft, and a wrinkling ripple over the long gentle swells, as deep in the hue as if fresh dye came from the bottom, and crisping into a small sparkle of foam wherever they caught it full. Something pleasant, one couldn't say what, was in the air; and every sheet being hauled taut to hold wind, the slant gush of it before her beam drove her slipping ahead toward the quarter it came from, with a dip down and a saucy lift of her jibs again, as if she were half balanced amidships, but little noise about it. I took a squint aloft and an overhaul all round, and nothing was to be seen. The size of the sky through the moonlight looked awful, as it were, and the strength of the breeze seemed to send a heavenly blue deep into the western quarter, till you saw a star in it. The night was so lovely, in fact, it somehow made one think of one's mother, and old times, when you used to say your prayers. Still I couldn't see the mate of the watch on the weather quarterdeck, which surprised the more in Jones's case, since he was always ready for me when I came up; and, to tell the truth, I shouldn't have been sorry to catch him napping for once, only to show he was like men in common. I walked aft by the weather side of the large mainsail, accordingly, till I saw him leaning with his head over the lee-bulwark, and heard him again, as I thought, apparently speaking to some one down the schooner's side; upon which I stepped across. Jones's back was to me as I looked over too; but owing to what he was busy with, I suppose, and the wash of the water, which was louder there than inboard, while you heard the plash from her bows every time she forged, he evidently didn't hear me. You may fancy my wonder to find he was reading loud out to himself from the other of the Frenchman's volumes, which I had no doubt left in the dining-cabin – the book open in both hands – he giving it forth in long staves, with a break between – and regular Greek it was, too: you'd have thought he timed them to the plash alongside; and I must say, as every string of long-tailed words flowed together like one, in Jones's deep voice, and the swell rose once or twice with its foam-bells near his very hands, I almost fancied I made a meaning of them – each like a wave, as it were, sweeping to a crest, and breaking. The gusto the man showed in it you can't conceive; and, what was more, I had no doubt he understood the sense of it, for all of a sudden, after twenty staves or so of the kind, he stopped.8 "There!" said he, "there, old Homer – women, wine, and adventure – what could the devil ask more, blind old prater, with a sound in you like the sea? Ay, wash, wash, wash away, lying old blue-water, you cant wash it out – and wine – no, not the strongest rum in Cape Town – can wash you out!" With that Jones laid his head on his arms, with the book still in one hand, muttering to himself, and I listened in spite of me. "Still it rouses the old times in me!" said he. "Here comes this book across me, too. Ay, ay, and the Rector fancied, sitting teaching me Greek out of old wild Homer all week day – and – and his girl slipping out and in – 'twould do to don the cassock of a Sunday and preach out of the pulpit against the world, the devil, and the flesh – then warn me against the sea – ha!" The laugh that came from him at that moment was more like a dog than a human being; but on he went muttering "Women, wine, and adventure, said ye, old Greek, and a goddess too; still he was a good old man the Rector – no guile nor evil in him, with his books in the cases yonder, and the church-spire seen through the window over the garden, and his wife with – ah, the less of that. 'Twas in me, though, and all the blood – and in her dark eyes, too, Mary, though she was! Damnation!" he broke out again, after a bit, as if he'd been arguing it with something under the side, "I didn't take her the first time I came home – nor the second – but – but – ay, I came back! Oh that parting-stile, in sight of the sea – and that packet-ship – but oh God! that night, that night with the schooner forging ahead through the blue – blue – " And he stopped with a groan that shook him as he leant over. "Hellish, hellish by God!" he said, suddenly standing upright and looking straight aloft, with his bare head and face to the wide empty sky, and the moonlight tipping the hair on his forehead, from over the high shadow on the lee-side of the mainsail, where it glistened along the gaff. "She was pure to the last!" I heard him say, though I had walked to the other side of the boom; "ay, though I rot to perdition for it! – Down, old fiend!" as he lifted his one hand with the book, and drove it alongside, seemingly watching it settle away astern.
Now I had heard nothing from Jones that I couldn't have fancied before, and there was even a humour to my mind in the notion of clapping it all on old Homer, if Homer it was, and heaving him overboard with such a confoundedly complimentary burial-service. But some of the words that dropped from him shot through one's veins like icicles: and now there was something fearful in the sight of him standing straight again, with a look right into the heavens, as if he'd have searched them up and up – in that lovely night too, spread far and wide – the very rays of the moonlight sparkled down the weather side of the sail I was on, trembling on the leech-ropes and brails as they swayed, and into the hollows they made in the belly of the taut canvass: the long shining spot of it wavered and settled on the same two planks of the quarterdeck, beyond the shadow of the bulwark from the moon's eye, fast as the schooner moved through the water, and it was like a hand laid upon her, with the air and wind stretching between. Of a sudden I saw Jones wheel slowly round where he stood, like a man turned about by main strength, with his eyes fixed aloft, and his one arm raising from the shoulder till his forefinger pointed to something, as I thought, about the fore-to'gallant sail. His face was like ashes, his eye glaring, and I sprang across to him under the main-boom. "See!" said he, never turning his head, and the words hissed betwixt his teeth, "look at that!"
"For heaven's sake, what, Mr Jones?" said I. "Her – her," was his answer, "coming against the wind – dead fore-and-aft in the shade of the sails!" On the lee-sides of them the high boom-sails made a sort of a thin shadow against the moonshine off the other beam, which came glimpsing through between them out of a world of air to the south-east, with a double of it flickering alongside on the water as it heaved past to leeward; and whether it was fancy, or whether it was but the reflection aloft from below, I thought, as I followed Jones's finger, I saw something like the shape of a woman's dress floating close in with the bonnet of the foretopmast-staysail, from the dusk it made to the breast of the fore-topsail, and even across the gush of white light under the yard – long and straight, as it were, like a thing lifted dripping out of water, and going, as he said, right against the schooner's course. "Now in the foresail!" whispered Jones, his eye moving as on a pivot, and a thrill ran through me at the notion, for I made out one single moment what I thought a face against the sky at the gaff-end, white as death, shooting aft toward the mainsail, – though next instant I saw it was but a block silvered by the moon as the schooner lifted. "Now the mainsail!" said he huskily, "and now – now, by the heavens – rising – rising to the gaff-topsail – away! Oh Christ! Mary!"
He was leaning aft toward the width of the sky, with both hands clutched together before him, shuddering all over. For the first minute my own blood crept, I must say; but directly after I touched him on the shoulder. "This is strange, Mr Jones," said I, "what's the matter?" "Once in the Bermudas!" said he, still wildly, "once in the Pacific – and now! Does the sea give up its dead, though, think ye?" – "You've a strong fancy, Mr Jones, that's all," I said, sternly. "Fancy!" said he, though beginning to get the better of himself; "did ye ever fancy a face looking down – down at you in the utterest scorn – down sideways off the shoulder of the garment, as it sticks wet into every outline like life? All the time gliding on the other way, too, and the eyes like two stars a thousand miles away beyond, as kind as angels' – neither wind nor sea can stop it, till suddenly it rises to the very cope of heaven – still looking scornfully down at you! – No, sir, fancy it you couldn't!" The glance he gave me was somehow or other such as I couldn't altogether stomach from the fellow, and he was turning to the side when I said quietly, "No, nor Homer either, I daresay!" Jones started and made a step towards me. "You heard me a little ago!" rapped out he, eyeing me. "Yes," I said; "by Jove! who could help being curious to hear a sailor spout Greek as you were doing, Mr Jones?"
"The fact is, Mr Collins," answered he, changing his tone, "I was well brought up – the more shame to me for bringing myself to what you saw me. I had a sister drowned, too, on her passage to America one voyage, when I was mate of the ship myself. No wonder it keeps my nerves shaking sometimes, when I've had too long about shore." – "Well, well, Jones," said I, rather softening, "you've proved yourself a first-rate seaman, and I've got nothing to complain of – but I tell You fairly I had my doubts of you! So you'll remember you're under the Articles of War aboard here, sir," added I, "which as long as I have this schooner under hand, I'll be hanged if I don't carry out!" All at once the thought struck me a little inconveniently, of my carrying off Webb and his people, and I fancied Jones's quick eye wandered to the Lascars forward. "I know it, sir," said he, looking me steadily in the face; "and what's more, Mr Collins, at any rate I couldn't forget you picked me out, confounded low as I looked, to come aft here! 'Tis not every captain afloat that has such a good eye for a seaman, as I know!" "Oh well, no more about it," I said, walking forward on the weather side, and leaving him on the lee one as distinctly as Lord Frederick Bury could have done to myself in the frigate. Jones no doubt thought I didn't notice the slight wrinkle that gathered round his lee-eye when he gave me this touch of butter at the end; but I put it down for nothing more, gammon though it was.
It was near the end of the watch, the moon beginning to set, while it still wanted three hours of daybreak in those latitudes, when the look-out on the top-gallant-yard, who was stationed there in man-o'-war cruising fashion, reported a sail to windward. Just then the midshipman came on deck to his watch, wonderfully early for him indeed: and on my remarking it was probably the Indiaman at last, Jones himself went aloft with the night-glass to make her out. "Mr Snelling," said I, "see the hands on deck ready for going about." Next minute I saw him rousing up the rest of the Lascars, who slept watch and watch on the forecastle. Only five or six of the Hebe's men were up; and all of them, save the man at the wheel, ran aloft to rig out stunsail-booms to windward, as soon as the schooner was fairly on the starboard tack, standing to nor'-eastward. Suddenly I saw a scuffle between the midshipman, and the tindal,9 a stout dark-faced young Bengalee, with a jaunty scull-cap and frock, whom Snelling had probably helped along with a touch of a rope's end; and in a moment two or three more of them were upon him; while the reefer drew his dirk, and sung out to me, scarce before I was with him, the Lascars rolling into the lee-scuppers at two kicks of my foot. Webb and three of the men from Cape Town were hoisting a stunsail at the time, the smart man-o'-war'smen aloft singing out to them to bear a hand. What with the noise of the sail flapping, and its being betwixt my own men and the deck, they could know nothing of the matter; and the Lascars let go the halliards in a body, making a rush at Snelling and myself with everything they could pick up in the shape of a spar.
This would have been nothing, as in two or three minutes more the men would have been down, and the cocoa-faced rascals dodged every way from the handspike I got hold of; but I just caught a glimpse on one side of the sly old serang shoving on the fire-scuttle to keep down the watch below; and on the other, of Webb looking round him, evidently to see how matters stood. Two Dutchmen seized the first sailor that came down the rigging, by the legs, and I saw the affair must be finished at once, it had so much the look of a regular plot on Webb's part, if Jones wasn't concerned in it too. I made one spring upon my Cape Town gentleman, and took him by the throat with one hand, while I hit the biggest Dutchman full behind the ear, felling him to the deck; on which the man-o'-war's man grappled his watchmate, and Webb was struggling with me sufficiently to keep both my hands full, when I had a pleasant inkling of a Malay Lascar slipping toward my back with a bare kreese in his fist. I just looked over my shoulder at his black eyes twinkling devilishly before he sprang, when some one came sliding fair down from the fore-top-mast-head by a backstay, and pitched in a twinkling on top of his head – a thing enough to break the neck of a monument. Directly after, I saw Jones himself hitting right and left with his night-glass, from the moonlight to the shadow of the foresail, while Snelling tumbled over a Lascar at every slap, standing up in boxer style. By the time the rest of the men came down all was settled – the Dutchmen sulking against the bulwarks, and Webb gasping after I let him go. "Boatswain," said I to one of the sailors, "clap that man in irons below. Mr Snelling, see the watch called, sir." "I 'ad the law with me," said Webb gloomily. "You plotted it then, Mr Webb?" I said. "Didn't you carry us off illegally?" said he. "I only meant to recover the vessel – upon my honour, nothing more, sir; and if you're 'ard with me, you'll have to answer for it, I assure you!" Here he looked round to Jones in a strange way, as I fancied for a moment; but Jones turned on his heel with a sneer. "Why, Mr Webb," answered I, "you lost that tack by offering yourself in a watch, which makes the thing neither more nor less than mutiny – so take him below, do ye hear, bo'sun!" And down he went.
"Now, Mr Jones," said I, as soon as all hands were on deck, "you'll be so good as have half of these Lascars seized to the rigging here, one after the other, and see a good dozen given to each of their backs; then these two Dutchmen, each three dozen – then pipe down the watch, sir." Jones glanced at me, then at the fellows, then at me again. I thought he hung aback for an instant; but do it I was determined he should, for a reason I had; and I gave him back the look steady as stone. "Ay, ay, sir," said he at last, touching his hat. I walked aft to the capstan, and stood there till every mother's son of them had got his share, the Lascars wriggling and howling on the deck after it, and the Dutchmen twisting their backs as they walked off. 'Twas the first time I did that part of duty in command; and I felt, in the circumstances, I was in for carrying it out with a taut hand.
By this time the moon was setting, and in the dusk we lost sight of the sail to windward; but as we were heading well up to weather upon her, and going at least ten knots, I turned in below for a little, leaving the midshipman. Accordingly, it wasn't very long before Snelling called me in broad daylight. "She's a large ship, Mr Collins," said he, "standing under all sail on a wind. I hope to goodness, sir, it's that confounded Indiaman at last!" I hurried on deck, took the glass aloft, and soon made out the jury-foretop-mast shorter than the main, as the old captain mentioned. Accordingly it was with somewhat of a flutter in me I came down again, watching the schooner's trim below and aloft, to see if I couldn't take an hour or so off the time betwixt that and once more setting eyes on the Judge's daughter.