SHORT STORY

 THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG

 BY

 W. CLARK RUSSELL

 AUTHOR OF "THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR, " "LIFE OF LORD NELSON, " ETC. , ETC. 

 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

 NEW YORK LONDON 27 West Twenty-third Street. 24 Bedford Street, Strand. 

 1895

 The Knickerbocker Press, New Rochelle, N. Y. 

 SHORT STORY

_Contents_. 

 PAGE

=The Honour of the Flag= 3

=Cornered=! 28

=A Midnight Visitor= 41

=Plums from a Sailor's Duff= 57

=The Strange Adventures of a South Seaman= 82

=The Adventures of Three Sailors= 110

=The Strange Tragedy of the "White Star=" 137

=The Ship Seen on the Ice= 163

THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG

 =_The Honour of the Flag_=. 

 A THAMES TRAGEDY. 

Manifold are the historic interests of the river Thames. There isscarcely a foot of its mud from London Bridge to Gravesend Reach thatis not as "consecrated" as that famous bit of soil which Dr. SamuelJohnson and Mr. Richard Savage knelt and kissed on stepping ashore atGreenwich. One of the historic interests, however, threatens to perishout of the annals. It does not indeed rise to such heroic proportionsas you find in the story of the Dutch invasion of the river, or in oldHackluyt's solemn narrative of the sailing of the expedition organisedby Bristol's noble worthy, Sebastian Cabot; but it is altogether toogood and stirring to merit erasure from the Thames's history books bythe neglect or ignorance of the historian. 

It is absolutely true: I pledge my word for that on the authority ofthe records of the Whitechapel County Court. 

In the year 1851 there dwelt on the banks of the river Thames aretired tailor, whom I will call John Sloper, out of regard to thefeelings of his posterity, if such there be. This man had for manyyears carried on a flourishing trade in the east end of London. Havinggot together as much money as he might suppose would supply his dailyneeds, he built himself a villa near the pleasant little town ofErith. His house overlooked the water; in front of it sloped aconsiderable piece of garden ground. 

Mr. Sloper showed good sense and good taste in building himself alittle home on the banks of the Thames. All day long he was able, ifhe pleased, to entertain himself with the sight of as stirring andstriking a marine picture as is anywhere to be witnessed. He couldhave built himself a house above bridges, where there is no lack ofelegance and river beauty of many sorts; but he chose to command aview of the Thames on its commercial side. 

In his day there was more life in the river than there is now. In ourage the great steamer thrusts past and is quickly gone; the tug runsthe sailing-ship to the docks or to her mooring buoys, and there is nolife in the fabric she drags. In Sloper's time steamers were few; thewater of the river teemed with sailing craft of every description;they tacked across from bank to bank as they staggered to theirdestination against the wind. 

Sloper, sitting at his open window on a fine day, would be able tocount twenty different types of rigs in almost as many minutes. Thathe took a keen interest in ships, however, I do not assert; that hecould have told you the difference between a brig and a schooner isbarely imaginable. The board on which Sloper had flourished was notshipboard, it had nothing to do with starboard or larboard; he was atailor, not a sailor, and the friends who ran down to see him were ofhis own sort and condition. 

Sloper was a widower; how many years he had lived with his wife Ican't say. She died one Easter Monday, and when Sloper took possessionof his new house near Erith he mounted some small cannon on his lawn, and these pieces of artillery he regularly fired every Easter Mondayin celebration of what he called the joyfullest anniversary of hislife. From which it is to be assumed that Sloper and his wife had notlived together very happily. But though the Whitechapel County Courtrecords have been searched and inquiries made in that part of Londonwhere Sloper's shop was situated, it has not been discovered that Mrs. Sloper's end was hastened by her husband's cruelty; that, in short, more happened between them than constant quarrels. Yet it must be saidthat Sloper behaved as though, in truth (as the old adage would putit), his little figure contained no more than the ninth part of asoul, when he mounted his guns and rudely and noisily triumphed overthe dead whom he perhaps might have been afraid of in life, andcoarsely emphasised with blasts of gunpowder his annual joy over hisrelease. 

Now in the east end of London, not above twenty minutes' walk fromSloper's old shop, there lived a sailor, named Joseph Westlake. Thisman had served when a boy under Collingwood, had smelt gunpowder atNavarino under Codrington, had been concerned in several dashingcutting-out jobs in the West Indies, and was altogether as hearty andworthy a specimen of an old English sailor of the vanished school asyou could ask to see. 

He had been shot in the leg; he carried a great scar over his brow; hewas as full of yarns as a piece of ancient ship's biscuit of weevils;he swore with more oaths than a Dutchman; sneered prodigiously atsteam; and held the meanest opinion of the then existing race ofseamen, who, he said, never could have won the old battles which hadbeen the making of this kingdom, whether under Howe's or gallantJervis's, or the lion-hearted Nelson's flag. 

The country had no further need of his services on his being paid offout of his last ship, and he was somewhat at a loss, until happeningto be in the neighbourhood of Wapping, and looking in upon an oldshipmate who kept a public house, he learnt that a lawyer had beenmaking inquiries for him. He called upon that lawyer, and wasastounded to hear that during his absence from England a fortune of£15, 000 had been left to him by an aunt in Australia. 

Joe Westlake on this took a little house in the Stepney district, andendeavoured to settle down as an east-end gent; but his efforts toride to a shore-going anchor were hopeless. His mind was alwaysroaming. He had followed the sea man and boy for hard upon fiftyyears, and the cry of his heart was still for water--water withoutrum!--water fresh or salt! it mattered not what sort of water it wasso long as it _was_--water. 

So as Joe Westlake found that he couldn't rest ashore he looked abouthim, and, after a while, fell in with and purchased a smart littlecutter, which he re-christened the _Tom Bowling_, out of admiration ofthe song which no sailor ever sang more sweetly than he. It wasperfectly consistent with his traditions as a man-of-wars man that, having bought his little ship, he should arm her. He equipped her withfour small carronades and a pivoted brass six-pounder on theforecastle. He then went to work to man her, but he did not veryeasily find a crew. Joe was fastidious in his ideas of seamen, andthough some whom he cast his eye upon came very near to his taste, itcost him a great deal of trouble to discover the particular set ofJacks he wanted. 

Three at last he found: Peter Plum, Bob Robins, and Tom Tuck. Joe wasadmiral; Plum, coming next, combined a number of grades. He wascaptain, first lieutenant, and boatswain. Robins was the ship'sworking company, and Tom Tuck cooked and was the all-round handy manof the _Tom Bowling_. 

It was Mr. Joe Westlake's intention to live on board his cutter; hefurnished his cabin plainly and comfortably, and laid in a plentifulstock of liquor and tobacco. As he was to cruise under his own flag, and was indeed an admiral on his own account, he conferred with hisfirst lieutenant, Peter Plum, on the question of a colour: whatdescription of flag should he fly at his masthead? They both startedwith the understanding that nothing under a fathom and a half inlength was worth hoisting. After much discussion it was agreed thatthe device should consist of a very small jack in the top corner, andin the middle a crown with a wooden leg under it--the timber toe beingin both Westlake's and Plum's opinion the most pregnant symbol ofBritannia's greatness that the imagination could devise. 

Within a few months of his landing from the frigate out of which hehad been paid, Mr. Joseph Westlake was again afloat, but now in asmart little vessel of his own. She had been newly sheathed withcopper, and when she heeled over from the breeze as she stretchedthrough the winding reaches of the river the metal shone like goldabove the wool-white line of foam through which the cutter washed, andlazy men in barges would turn their heads to admire her, andred-capped cooks in the cabooses of "ratching" colliers would step tothe rail to look, and sometimes a party of gay and gallant Cockneys, male and female, taking their pleasure in a wherry, would salute thepassing _Tom Bowling_ with a flourish of hands and pockethandkerchiefs. 

Never had old Joe been so happy in all his life. Of a night he'd bringup in some secure nook, and after having seen everything all safe, he'd go below with Peter Plum, and in the cosy interior of the littlecabin, whose atmosphere was rendered speedily fragrant with theperfume of rum punch, which Joe, whilst in the West Indies, had learntthe art of brewing to perfection, the two sailors would sit smokingtheir yards of pipe-clay whilst they discoursed on the past, oneincident recalling another, one briny recollection prompting an evensalter memory, until their eyes grew moist and their vision dim intheir balls of sight; whereupon they would turn in and make the littleship vocal with their noses. 

It happened, according to the usual methods of time, that an EasterMonday came round, which, as we know, was the joyful anniversary ofthe death of the wife of the retired tailor, Sloper, whose villa, called Labour's Retreat, stood upon the banks of the Thames nearErith. To fitly celebrate this happy day Mr. Sloper had invited threefriends to dine with him. It was in the year 1851, when the class ofsociety in which Mr. Sloper belonged was not so genteel in its habitsas it has since become; in other words, Sloper dined at two o'clock. Had he survived into this age he would not have dreamt of dining at anearlier hour than seven. 

His friends were of his own sex. Sloper did not like the ladies. Hisfriends' calling matters not. They did business in the east end ofLondon, and were all three thoroughly respectable tradesmen in a smallway, wanting, perhaps, in the muscle and depth of chest and hurricanelungs of Joe Westlake and Peter Plum, but all of them able to paytwenty shillings in the pound, to give good value for prompt cash, anddesirous not only of fresh patronage, but determined to a man to meritthe continuance of the same. 

When Sloper and his friends had dined, and the bottle had circleduntil, like quicksilver in the eye of a hurricane, the contents hadsunk out of sight, the party went on to the lawn to fire off the gunsthere in completion of the triumphant celebration of theever-memorable anniversary of Sloper's release. 

It was precisely at this hour that the _Tom Bowling_, with Plum at thehelm and Joe Westlake in full rig, marching up and down thequarter-deck, came leisurely rounding down Halfway Reach before apleasant northerly breeze of wind blowing over the flat, fat levels ofBarking. The _Tom Bowling_, opening Jenningtree Point, ported her helmand floated in all her pride of white canvas and radiant metal andfathom and a half of shining bunting at her masthead into Erith Reach. 

Just as she came abreast of Labour's Retreat a gun was fired; thewhite powder-smoke clouded the tailor's lawn; the thunder of theordnance smote the ear of Joe Westlake, who, dilating his nostrils anddirecting his eyes at Sloper's villa, bawled out: "Peter! that's meantfor us, my heart! Down hellum! slacken away fore and aft! pipe allhands for action!"

A second gun roared upon the lawn that sloped from the tailor's house;and almost as loud was the shout that Westlake delivered to all handsto look alive and bring the guns to bear. The Tom Bowling was throwninto the wind and brought to a stand abreast of Labour's Retreat; Plumtook a turn with the helm and went to help at the guns, and in a fewminutes the three of a crew, with Westlake continuously bawling outorders to bear a hand and load again, were actively engaged in firingblank at the enemy on the lawn. 

It might have been that Mr. Sloper and his friends were a littletipsy; it might have been that they were irritated by their _feu dejoie_ being interrupted and complicated, so to speak, by the cutter'sartillery; it is certain that they continued to load and dischargetheir guns as fast as they could sponge them out; whilst from theriver the cutter maintained a rapid fire at Labour's Retreat. In anevil moment, temper getting the better of Sloper's judgment, he loadedone of his pieces with stones, and the gun was so well aimed that onJoe Westlake looking aloft he beheld his beautiful flag of a fathomand a half in holes. 

For some moments the old man-of-wars man stood staring up at hiswounded flag, idle with wrath and astonishment. He then in a voice ofthunder shouted: "Plum--Robins--Tuck! D' ye see what that there firedlittle tailor's been and done? Why, junk me if he ha' n't shot ourcolour through! Boys, load with ball; d' ye hear? Suffocate me, but heshall have it back. Quick, my hearts, and go for him. "

With ocean alacrity some round shot were got up, a gun was firedpoint-blank at Labour's Retreat, and down came a chimney-stack, amidstthe cheers of the crew of the _Tom Bowling_. 

"Now, then, " roared old Joe, "over with our boat, lads, and board 'em!Tommy, stay you here and let go the anchor"; and in a very few minutesPlum and Robins were pulling Joe Westlake ashore. 

Sloper and his party saw them coming and manfully stood their ground. The three seamen, securing their boat, forced their way on to the lawnand marched up to the tailor and his friends. 

"What do you mean by firing at my cutter?" roared old Joe. 

"What do you mean by knocking down my chimneys?" cried the tailor, whowas exceedingly pale. 

"Who began it?" bawled Joe. "Who fired first? Who's bin and made holesin that there flag of mine? Why, that's the flag of a British sailor, you little withered thimble you; and durn ye, if you don't make meinstantly an humble apology and stump up with the cost of what ye'veinjured, I'll skin ye!" and he threw himself into a very menacingposture. 

At this point one of the tailor's friends slunk off. 

"My chimney-stack is worth more than your twopenny flag, " shriekedSloper, maddened even into some temporary emotion of courage by theinsults of the old man-of-warsman. 

"Say that again, will 'ee, " said Joe. "Just sneer at that there flagagain, will 'ee. "

The tailor was idiotic enough to repeat the affront, on which, and asthough a perfect understanding as to what was to be done subsistedamong the three sailors, old Joe, Plum, and Robins fell upon Sloper, and, lifting him up in their arms, ran with him to the boat, intowhich they flung him, paying not the least heed whatever to his criesfor help and for mercy, and instantly headed for the cutter, leavingthe tailor's friends white as milk and speechless with alarm near thecannon upon the lawn. 

When the boat reached the cutter, Plum jumped aboard and receivedlittle Sloper from the hands of old Joe, making no more of the burthenthan had the tailor been a parcel, say, of a coat and waistcoat, or apair of trousers. Old Joe then actively got over the rail. He liftedthe little main-hatch, and Mr. Sloper was dropped into the spacebelow, where the darkness was so great that he could not see, andwhere there was nothing to sit upon but Thames ballast. 

"In boat, up anchor, and away with us!" said Joe Westlake. 

The breeze was fresh, the cutter was always an excellent sailer, andin a very short space of time she was running down Long Reach withErith and its adjacent shores out of sight, past the round of landwhere Dartford creek is to be found. Joe Westlake then called acouncil. Robins was at the tiller; Plum and Tuck came aft, and thefour debated at the helm. 

"I've heerd, " said old Joe, "of this tailor afore. His name's Sloper. I've never larnt why he mounted them guns, or where the little rootinghog got his pluck from to fire 'em. But there can be no shadder of adoubt, mates, that his object in firing to-day was to insult thatthere flag. "

He pointed with an immensely square forefinger to the masthead. 

"Ne'er a shadder, " said Plum. 

"For why, " continued old Joe, "did the smothered rag of a chap waitfor us to come right abreast afore firing?"

"Ah! that's it, ye see, " exclaimed Bob Robins. "There ye've hit it, Mr. Westlake. "

"The little faggot's game, " old Joe went on, "is as clear as mud in awineglass. He fires with blank cartridge; like as he'd say 'What'll_you_ do?' What did he want? That we should retarn his civility withgrape? Of course; that if it should come to a difficulty he'd have thelaw on his side. Not being able to aggravate us into shotting ourguns, what must he turn to and do but load with stone--and look atthat flag! Riddled, mates. I'll not speak of it as spiled, though aprettier and a better bit of bunting was never mastheaded. Spiledain't the word: disgraced it is. "

"Degraded, " said Plum, in a deep voice. 

"Ay, and degraded, " cried old Joe, with a surly, dangerous nod. "Thatthere little tailor has degraded the honour of our flag. What's to bedone to him?"

After a pause, Plum said: "Bring him up and sit in examination on him. Try him fairly, and convict him. "

They opened the hatch and pulled little Sloper off the Thames ballastinto daylight. He was exceedingly white, and trembled violently, andcut, indeed, a very pitiful figure as he stood on the quarter-deck ofthe _Tom Bowling_, surveyed by her owner and crew. He was a short manand spare, and Tom Tuck grinned as he looked at him. 

"I suppose you're aweer, " said old Joe, "that in shooting at my flagand wounding her you've degraded the honour of it? Are you aweer ofthat?"

"You came in my way; I was shooting for my hentertainment, " answeredMr. Sloper. 

"You're a retired tailor, ain't ye?" said Joe. 

Sloper sulkily answered "Yes. "

"Have ye any acquaintance with the laws which are made and purwidedfor British seamen when it happens that their flag's degraded by thehaction of a retired tailor?" said old Joe. 

Mr. Sloper, instead of answering, cast a languishing eye at the riverbanks, which were fast sliding past, and requested to be set ashore. 

"It don't answer his purpose to speak to the pint, " said Plum. 

"Listen, now, " said old Joe, shaking his forefinger close into theface of little Sloper. "When a retired tailor degrades the honour of aseaman's flag by a shooting at it and a riddling of it, the law 'asmade and purwided sets forth this: that the insulted sailor shallcollect his crew and in the presence of all hands pass sentence aftergiving an impartial hearing to what the culprit may have to say in hisdefence. Now, you durned little powder-burner, speak up, and own whatmade you do it, and then I'll pass judgment. "

"What's your game? What d' yer mean to do with me? Where are youcarryin' me to?" cried the owner of Labour's Retreat. "None of yernonsense, you know. This is what's called kidnappin'. It'shindictable. You may find yourself in a very unpleasant predicamentover this business, I can tell yer. You profess to know who I am. D'yer want to know what I'm worth? Yer'd better put me ashore, I say, and stop this nonsense. I don't mind a joke, but this is carrying alark too far. Why, " he shrieked, "here we are a-drawing on toNorthfleet! Yer 'd better let me go. " And so he went on. 

Old Joe and the others listened to him with stern faces; in fact, theyreceived his protests and threats as his defence. When he had made anend Joe Westlake spoke thus:

"Sloper--I dunno your Christian name and I won't demean myself byasking of it, --four of your countrymen--and sorry they are that youshould be a countrymen of their'n--have patiently listened to whatye've had to say. And all that ye've said amounts to nothen at all. The haccusation made against ye is one of the very gravest as can bebrought agin a retired tailor. You're charged with degrading thehonour of my flag, and ye 've been found guilty, and my sentence isthat after a sufficient time's been granted you for prayer andmeditation, ye be brought up to the place of hexecution, aboard thishere cutter the _Tom Bowling_, and hanged by the neck till you'redead. "

"Murder!" screamed Sloper, and here (so he afterwards swore in court)the unhappy little tailor fell down upon his knees and begged JoeWestlake to grant him his life. 

"Clap him under hatches, " exclaimed the old man-of-warsman, and Plumand another, lifting the hatch cover, popped Mr. Sloper down among theballast again. 

By this time the afternoon had very considerably advanced, the windhad dropped, and it was already dark when the _Tom Bowling_ let go heranchor off Gravesend. The cabin lamp was lighted, and old Joe and Plumsat down to a hearty meal, after which they smoked their pipes anddipped a ladle into a silver bowl of rum punch of Westlake's ownbrewing. 

"D' ye mean, captain, " said Plum, "that the little chap in the holdshall have any supper?"

"Well, Peter, " answered old Joe, "I've bin a-turning of it over in mymind, and spite of his 'rageous conduct I dunno, after all, that itwould be right to let him lie all night without a bite of something. Call Bob. "

This man, whose surname was Robins, arrived. Joe told him to get alantern and cut a plate of beef and bread and mix a small mug of rumand water. 

"Ye can tell the little chap, Bob, " said old Joe, speaking with oneeye shut, "that we're only a-feeding of him up so as to get moresatisfaction out of his hexecution to-morrow morning. You can say thatsailoring is a rather monotonous life, and that if he'll die game weshall all feel obliged for the hentertainment he'll afford us. "

Whether Bob Robins communicated this speech to Sloper I cannot say. Itis certain, however, that he took the lantern and the tailor's supperinto the hold and stood over the little man whilst he ate and drank. When the retired tailor had finished his repast he asked Robins if hewas to be kept locked up in that black hole all night without anythingto lie on but shingle. 

"What did you fire at us for?" said Bob. 

"I never fired at you. I was firing for my own diversion, " answeredMr. Sloper. 

"D' ye load with stones for your divarsion, as ye call it?" said Bob. 

"There was no stones when you came along, " cried the tailor. "Why didyou aggrevate me by firing in return?"

"What did you want to fire at all for?" said Bob, almost pitying thetrembling little creature as he showed by the lantern light in thecutter's small black hold. 

"I was celebrating a hanniversary, " answered Mr. Sloper, whomaltreated his _h's_ as badly as old Westlake. 

"And what sort of a hanniversary calls for gun firing?" said Bob, holding up the lantern to the tailor's face. 

"It was the hanniversary of my wife's death, " said Mr. Sloper, "and aday of rejoicing with me and my friends. "

Bob, who himself was a married man, loving his wife and two littlegirls with the warm affection of the genuine sailor's heart, lookedfor some moments speechless with disgust at the white shadowycountenance of Mr. Sloper, and without deigning another word, rosethrough the hatch, which he carefully secured, and then went aft toold Joe and Plum to report what had passed. 

"Smite me, " cried the old man-of-warsman, after listening to Bob; "butif this was furrin parts instead of Lunnon river, poisoned if Iwouldn't yard-arm the little faggot in rale earnest. What! make ajoyful hanniversary of his wife's death, and fire off guns that thewhole blooming country may know what a little beast it is. Sit yedown, Bob, there's a glass--help yourself. This is what we mean todo, " and he forthwith related his scheme for the morning to Robins andPlum. 

They smoked hard and roared out in great peals of laughter. Thebulkheads of a little ship such as the _Tom Bowling_ are not, as maybe supposed, of very formidable scantling; there is no doubt thatSloper in the hold heard these wild shouts of laughter which themuffling of the bulkhead and his own terrors would render awful to him, and we may be sure that as he lay in the blackness harkening to thosehorrid notes of merriment, he feared and perspired exceedingly. 

Somewhere at about eight o'clock next morning the _Tom Bowling_ wasgot under way, and when all hands had breakfasted, Joe Westlake tookthe tiller, and Plum, Robins, and Tuck went to work to construct themachinery for the retired tailor's execution. They filled a big tubwith water and covered it loosely with a tarpaulin. Close against thistub they placed a three-legged stool; alongside this stool upon thedeck was a tar-bucket with a tar-brush sticking up in it; they alsoprocured and placed beside this tar-bucket a piece of rough iron hoop. At the time that these preparations were completed the cutter wasrunning through the Warp, which is some little distance past the NoreLight. The river had widened into the aspect of an ocean, and over thebows of the craft the water stretched boundless and blue as thehorizon of the Pacific. 

They opened the hatch and brought the tailor on deck. Needless to say, he had not slept a wink all night. Who, accustomed to a feather-bed, could snatch even ten minutes' sleep when his couch is Thames ballast?Sloper's eyes were bloodshot, and his countenance haggard. He lookedinconceivably grimy and forlorn, and Bob Robins felt sorry for thelittle creature till he recollected on a sudden the man's reason forletting off his cannons. Tuck took the helm, and old Joe with a solemncountenance and slow gait rolled forward to where the apparatus wasstationed. 

"Now, you see your fate, " he exclaimed, lifting up his eyes as thoughhe beheld a rope with a noose dangling from the masthead, "and sinceno good can come of cautioning a corpse, why then, sorry I am thatthere are n't a company of people arter your kind assembled aboardthis craft to witness the hexecution of my sentence upon ye. Lastnight I heard that the reason of your firing off your guns were tocelebrate the hanniversary of your wife's death. I dunno, I'm sure, whether such a practice wouldn't be considered as more criminal andworthy of a fearfuller punishment than even the shooting at a man'sflag and degrading the honour of it. But to say more 'ud only bea-wasting of breath. My lads, do your duty. "

Robins, with powerful arms, grasped the tailor, who shrieked murderand struggled hard. His struggles were as the throes and convulsionsof a mouse in the teeth of a cat. He was dumped down on thethree-legged stool. In an instant Plum lathered his jaws with thetar-brush, and picking up the piece of broken iron hoop scraped littleSloper's cheeks till the lather was as much blood as tar. Then, liftinghis leg, he tilted the stool and Mr. Sloper fell backwards on to thetarpaulin, which, yielding to his weight, soused him into the waterThey left him to kick and splash awhile, then pulled him out and ranhim forward into the head, where they secured him to the windlass tillthe sun should have somewhat dried him. 

But long before the sun had had time to comfort the shivering littlecreature Herne Bay had hove into sight. The helm was shifted, and thecutter ran close into the land, where they hove her to whilst Plum andRobins got the boat over. 

Mr. Sloper was then dropped over the side into the boat, which pulledashore, landed him, and returned; and a few minutes later the cutterwas standing for the mouth of the river, leaving the tailor on theHerne Bay beach, forty miles from home without a farthing in hispocket. 

This is the historic incident of the Thames which I desire to rescuefrom the oblivion that has overtaken many greater matters. Mr. Sloper, on his return to Labour's Retreat, and when he was somewhat recoveredin nerves and health, sued Joe Westlake in the Whitechapel CountyCourt, in action of tort, laying his damages at the moderate sum offifty pounds. Mr. G. E. Williams, for the defendant, contended that theplaintiff deserved the treatment which he had brought on himself, andthe Judge, after hearing the evidence, said that although theplaintiff, Sloper, had acted most improperly in loading his guns, thedefendant, Westlake, had retaliated too severely, but, under thecircumstances, he should award only five pounds' damages, withoutcosts. 

 _Cornered_!

"I don't see no signs of the tug, do you, Tom?" said the old skipper, John Bunk, rolling up to me from the companion hatchway. He was freshfrom the cabin, and was rather tipsy, with a fixed stare and a statelymanner, though his legs would have framed the lower part of an egg. His hat was tall, and brushed the wrong way. He wore a thick shawlround his neck and was wrapped up in a long monkey-jacket, albeit wewere in the dog-days. In a word, Bunk was a skipper of a type that isfast perishing off our home waters. 

"No, " said I, "there's no sign of the tug. "

"Then bloomed, " said he, "if I don't work her up myself. Who's afraid?I know the ropes. Get amidships in the fair-way and keep all on, andthere y' are. And mubbe the tug'll pick us up as we go. "

"It's all one to Tom, " said I. 

Our brig was the _Venus_, of Rye, a stump topgallantmast coaster, eighty years old. We were in a big bight of the coast, heading for ariver which flows past a well known town, whither we were bound. Thebed of that river went in a vein through about three miles of mud, till it sheared into the land, and flowed into a proper-looking riverwith banks of its own. At flood the water covered the mud, but theriver was buoyed, and when once you had the land on either hand andthe bay of mud astern, the pilotage to the town was no more than amatter of bracing the yards about till you floated into one long reachwhose extremity was painted by the red wharf you moored alongside of. 

We were six of a ship's company. John Bunk was skipper, I, Tom Fish, was the mate, the others were Bill Martin, Jack Stevens, a man namedRooney, and a boy called William. On board craft of this sort there isvery little discipline, and the sailor's talk to the captain as thoughhe lived in the forecastle. 

"John, " sings out Bill Martin, casting his eyes over the greasy yellowsurface of the water streaming shorewards, "are ye going to try for itwithout the tug?"

"Ay, " answered old Bunk. 

"And quite right, tew. No good a-messing about here all day, " saysJack Stevens at the tiller. 

The land was flat and treeless oneither hand the river, but it rose, about a couple of miles off, curving into a front of glaring chalk, with a small well known townsparkling in the distance like a handful of frost in a white split. The horizon astern was broken by the moving bodies of many ships infull sail, and the sky low down was hung with the smoke of vanishedsteamers as though the stuff was cobwebs black with dust. 

The stream was the turn of the flood. Old Bunk went forward into thebows, and the brig flapped forwards creaking like a basket on thesmall roll of the shallow water. We overhung her rails, and watchedfor ourselves. John Bunk, trying to look dignified with the drink inhim, stared stately ahead; sometimes singing out to the helmsman toport, and then to starboard, and so we washed on, fairly hitting theriver's mouth, and stemming safely for a mile, till the flat coast waswithin an easy scull of our jolly-boat, and you saw the spire of achurch, and a few red roofs amidst a huddle of trees on the right, atthat time two miles distant. 

Just then the _Venus_ took the mud; she grounded just as a huge fatsow knuckles quietly ere stretching herself. 

"All aback forrard!" sings out Bill Martin, with a loud silly laugh. 

We were a brig of a hundred and eighty tons, and there was nothing tobe done with poling; nor was kedging going to help us at this thefirst quarter of ebb. 

"Tom, " says John Bunk, coming aft and speaking cheerfully, "there's nocall to make any worrit over this shining job. The tug's bound to becoming along afore sundown, anyhow. See that village there?" says he, pointing. "My brother lives in that village, at a public house of hisown, called the 'Eight Bells, ' and seeing as we're hard and fast, Ishall take the boys on a visit to him and leave you and William tolook arter the brig. "

"Suppose the tug should come along?" said I. 

"She could do nothing with us till the flood floats us, " said he; "Ishall let go the anchor for security and go ashore. "

He talked like a reckless old fool, but was tipsy, and in no temper toreason with. The situation of the brig was safe enough as far as oceanand weather went; nothing could hurt her as she lay mud-cradled on herfat bilge. We clewed up and let the canvas hang by its rigging, andthen dropped the anchor; after which old Bunk and the others cleanedthemselves up and got the boat over, and went away in her, singingsongs, leaving me and William to look after the brig. 

It was ten o'clock in the morning, a very fine hot day. I went intothe cabin for a smoke, and after lounging an hour or so below whilstthe boy boiled a piece of beef for our dinner, I stepped on deck, andfound that the sea was already half-way out of the bay with twentylines of foaming ripples purring not a quarter of a mile off, and thechannel of the river was already plain, coming out from the land, andthrough the dry mud like a lane of water till it met the wash of theyellow brine and melted into it. The brig lay with an uncomfortablelist to starboard. When the mud should come a-dry it would be an easyjump from her decks to it. 

At half-past twelve William came below with my dinner, and I told thelad to out with his knife and eat with me. We munched together, takingit easy. There was nothing to be done on deck, no sign of the tug, nouse we could put her to, even if she should heave into sight, and thetime hung heavy. After dinner I lay upon a locker smoking, and Williamsat at the table with a pipe in his mouth. 

Presently I thought I heard a noise of something moving in ascratching sort of way on deck. I listened and then heard nothing. Alittle later, happening to be looking at William, I heard the samenoise, and that moment I fancied a kind of shadow passed over theglass of the grimy little cabin skylight. 

I said to William: "Step on deck, my lad, and see if anybody's comeaboard. "

He went up, and was not gone a minute when I heard him screamshockingly. The shriek was full of terror and agony, and froze myblood. I rushed on deck and saw the figure of William under the paw ofa large yellow tiger! I stared madly, as though my senses were allgone wrong and reporting a nightmare. But the big beast, turning itshead, spied me, swept the planks with its tail, crouched in cat-likeway, and was coming for me. 

With a roar of terror I sprang for the main rigging, and in a fewbreathless moments was safe in the top. 

It was all sheer mud now to the very forefoot of the brig; but thehalf of her lay afloat in the stream of the river. I saw the marks ofthe beast's paws pitting the shiny surface of ooze and sand; the trailcame in a straight line from the land to the right of the villagewhere Bunk's brother lived to the starboard bow of the brig. The beasthad sprung easily aboard. We were not in India, nor in Africa, nor inany country where such huge yellow horrors as that flourished;therefore, on recovering my wits and my breath whilst I looked downover the rim of the top, I guessed that the tiger had broken loosefrom some show or menagerie, and had made for this desolate waste ofsand to escape the hunt that was doubtless in loud cry after him. ButI could not get any comfort into me out of the reflection that we hadstranded on English instead of African or South American mud; down ondeck, now crouching close beside the boy without, however, offering totouch the motionless figure, was a massive savage beast, apparently aman-eater; and it was all the same to me whether it had sprung aboardoff the banks of an Indian river, or trotted across this breast ofEnglish slime out of a showman's cage. 

The boy lay as though dead, and I turned sick, fearing to see thecreature eat him. I was going to call, thinking he would answer me, then reflected if he was not dead my voice might cause him to move, and bring the tiger upon him, and so I lay silent in the top, nowstaring down, then glaring round upon the scene of mud and at thedistant blue crescent of sea for the help that was nowhere visible. 

Presently the tiger got up, and, passing over the body of the lad, stepped with its supple gait into the bows. I took my chance ofshouting to William, but the lad never stirred. Again and again Iyelled down at him, and I saw the splendid, horrible beast in the bowsgazing at me, and still the lad remained lifeless. He was upon hisface, with his arms out, as though his hands were nailed to the deck. I looked for blood, but saw none. 

The most awful time that ever passed in my life now went along. Thetiger roamed the deck silently, smelling at everything, once shovingits huge head into the companion-way, and I prayed with all my heartit would go below, that I might skim to the hatch and secure it. Itdrew its head out, and going to the boy stopped and smelt him. Thevery blood in me was curdled, for I made sure the beast was about toeat the lad. Sometimes I broke out into the noisiest roarings andscreaming my pipes could set up in the hope of driving the bruteoverboard. 

Between five and six o'clock in the evening the tide had made so as tocover the mud, and I saw the brig's boat approaching. Those who pulledflourished their oars drunkenly. The boat came to a stand when withineasy hailing distance, as though old Bunk was taking a view of me as Isat in the top, and was wondering what I did there. 

I roared out: "For God's sake mind how you come aboard! There's been ablooming tiger in this brig since noon!"

"A what?" yelled Bunk, and the seamen pulled a little closer in. 

It was still broad flaming daylight, and the sun hung like a hugeblood-red target over the crimson sea. 

"A what?" shrieked Bunk. 

"A tiger! A blooming tiger!" I bellowed, pointing to the brute thatlay crouched on the forecastle hidden from the boat's crew. 

"Drunk again, Tom? or is it sun-stroke this time?" sung out old Bunk, standing up in the boat and lurching to the rocking of her. 

"It's killed William!" I yelled. 

When I said this the beast, attracted by the noise of voices over theside, got up and looked over the bulwark rail at the men, and old Bunkinstantly saw it. He stared for a minute or two as though he had beenblasted by a stroke of lightning. The other three fellows then saw thebeast, and if there was any drink in their heads the fumes of it flewout at that sight, and left them sober men. Their postures were fullof wild surprise and terror whilst they gazed. Old Bunk roared:

"Has he killed the boy, d'yer say?"

"He lies there dead, " cried I, pointing. "He hasn't moved since Ifirst saw him. "

"Has he been eating of him?"

"No!"

"We must go ashore for help, " sung out Jack Stevens. 

"For God's sake don't leave me up here!" I cried. 

"Tom, " shouted Bunk, "there's only wan thing to dew; there's an oldgun in my cabin, and yer'll find a powder-flask and ball in thelocker. We must keep that tiger a-watching of us over the bow, whilstyou run below and shut the hatch. By lifting the lid you'll be able toshoot him through the skylight. Come you down now as far as you durstwhilst we fixes the attention of the brute upon ourselves. "

I at once dropped into the rigging, where I stretched and played mylegs a bit. They were as stiff as hand-spikes after that long spell inthe maintop. I descended as low down as the sheer-pole, breathlesslywatching. They pulled the boat under the bow, and Bill Martin withlifted oar made as though spearing at the brute's head. It opened itshuge mouth and showed its immense claws upon the rail; old Bunk hissedand snapped at it, then roared out to me:

"Now's your time, Tom, " whilst I heard Jack Stevens sing out:

"Back astarn! The fired cat's going to jump. "

With the nimbleness of terror I dropped to the deck and passed like ashadow to the hatch, unnoticed by the beast. In a moment I closed thecompanion doors, then entering Bunk's cabin found the gun andammunition. I loaded the piece, and, getting on to the cabin table, put my head into the skylight, and bawled out to let the others knowthat I was going to shoot. My voice attracted the tiger; it turned, and with swaying tail came with velvet tread, crouching in a springingposture. I levelled the gun, steadying the barrel, and, taking a cool, deliberate aim--for I was safe!--fired, and the instant I had fired, without pausing to see what had happened, I loaded again; but before Icould present the piece for a second shot the beast, who was now onthis side the boy, lurched and fell. 

I fired a second ball into it, and then a third and a fourth, and nowshouting to let the men know the brute was wounded and dying, I ran ondeck, and putting the muzzle of the gun to the creature's glazing eye, fired, and this did its business, for just one spasm ran through it, and then the terrible, muscular bulk lay motionless. 

The men came scrambling aboard. We turned the boy over, and took himbelow. Shortly afterwards the tug hove in sight, and we let the beastlie whilst we got our anchor and manoeuvred with the tow-rope. I amsorry to say the boy was dead. On our arrival a doctor came and lookedat him, and a crowd tumbled aboard to view the beast. There was not ascratch on the lad; the tiger had never touched him; the doctor saidhe had died of syncope caused by fright. 

The owner of the tiger threatened old Bunk with the law, and asked fora hundred guineas. Bunk started William's mother upon him forcompensation for the loss of her boy, and shortly afterwards theshowman went broke. 

 _A Midnight Visitor_. 

"There are more terrors at sea than shipwreck and fire, more frightsand horrors, mateys, than famine, blindness, and cholera, " said theold seaman with a slow motion of his eyes round upon the littlecompany of sailors. "I remember a line of poetry--'a thing of beautyis a joy for ever. ' Can any man here tell me who wrote that? Well, Isuppose it is a joy so long as it remains a beauty, but d'ye see it'sgot to remain, and that's the job. 

"Yet, mates, if there is a thing of beauty that should be a joy toevery heart, it is a full-rigged ship, clothed in white, asleep in thelight of the moon, on a pale and silent breast of ocean that waves insplendour under the planet over the flying jib-boom end. Have I gotsuch a ship as that in my mind? Ay. And was it a sheet calm but ne'era moon? Ay, again. There was ne'er a moon that night. The ship rosefaint and hushed to the stars. It was one bell in the morning watch. Scarce air enough moved to give life to the topmost canvas; as theship bowed upon the light swell the sails swung in and swung out witha rushing sound of many wings up in the gloom. Yet the vessel hadsteerage way in that hour. Shall I tell you why? Because I know!

"And ere that full-rigged ship alone in the middle of the Indian Oceancame to a dead halt, life sinking in her with the failing of the windin a sort of dying shudder from royal to course, this was how herdecks showed: a man was at the wheel, the chief mate leaned againstthe rail in the thickness made by the mizzen rigging, and with foldedarms seemed to doze in the shadow; a 'young gentleman, ' as they usedto call the 'brass-bounders, ' loafed sleepily near the main shroudswhere the break of the poop came. That youngster watched the starstrembling between the squares of the starboard rigging. He was new tothe sea, and emotion and sentiment were still sweet--they were notsalt in him. He was the son of a gentleman--he had a clever eye forwhat was picturesque and romantic, for what was tender and affectingin all he beheld, whether by day or night, whether he looked aloft orwhether upon the mighty breast of brine--he should have done well: heoughter ha' done well. "

The grey-haired respectable seaman closed his eyes in a silence filledwith significance, and after a short smoke thus proceeded:

"Some of the watch on deck sprawled about in the shadow out of sight, curled up, asleep; only one figure was upright forward. 'Twas theshape of the man on the look-out. For all the world he postured likethe mate aft, as though he copied the officer for a life or death bet:head sunk, arms folded--the forecastle break brought that raised deckwell aft, and the look-out had the shadow of the starboardfore-rigging upon him. 

"This man thus standing, by no means asleep, yet with his head sunkand no doubt his eyes closed, was suddenly struck on the side of theface by something hairy, damp, and cold. He sprang into the air asthough he had been shot through the heart. O heavens! What was it? Anaked figure, shaggy as Peter Sarrano, wild with hair, furious with agrin, terrible with the red gleams the starlight flung upon his littleeyes. The sailor shrieked like a midnight cat and fell in a heap downupon the deck in a fit. 

"The ship was in commotion in an instant. Such a yell as that wasworse than the smell of fire. 

"'What's the matter?' bawled the mate from the break of the poop. 

"A number of shadowy shapes swarmed up the forecastle ladder. Meanwhile the watch below, aroused by the yell of the look-out man, suspecting imminent deadly danger in the peculiar noise, were leapingin twos and threes up through the forescuttle, growling and swearingand grumbling, and asking of one another in those deephurricane-chested whispers which will make a stagnant midnightatmosphere tingle, what the blooming blazes that noise was, and whatwas up. 

"'What's the matter?' roared the mate. 

"'Here's Kennedy in a fit, sir, ' sung out a voice. 

"'Is that all?' said the mate, and he went forward to look at the man. 

"'It's a fit certainly, ' said he. 'Give him air, lads. Get a drink ofcold water into his mouth. It's epilepsy. '

"'Or weevils, ' said a deep voice. 

"The joker was not to be discerned; the mate therefore took no notice. Some one brought a pannikin of cold water, and after a little the mancame to, by which time the watch below had returned to their hammocks, and the forecastle was comparatively clear. 

"When the mate was told the man had his senses and was sitting up, hewent forward again and questioned him. He was sitting on the foot of acathead, and was too weak to rise when the mate stood before him. 

"'What is this you're rambling about?' said the officer. 'Aren't youquite well yet?'

"'S' 'elp me then, it slapped me fair over the chops, like flickingyer with the wet sleeve of a jacket. He rose four foot when Iswounded. He might ha' been more an' he might ha' been less. Darknessput him out, only that I recollect, ' said the man, turning up his paleface to the stars, 'taking notice of a couple of eyes like red lightsfloating in water and a grin of teeth wide as the keys of a pianey. '

"'He's mad, ' thought the mate, who stepped nevertheless into the bowsand looked over. Nothing was to be seen. He surveyed the ocean by thelight of the stars, and glanced along the deck and up aloft, then toldthe look-out man to go below and turn in, and went aft, reckoning thething an epileptic's nightmare. 

"'It soaks into their livers ashore, ' thought he, as he leisurelymounted the poop ladder, 'and when they get upon the ocean and intohot weather it works out in slaps over the head and hairy sea-beastsfour feet high. Ha! ha! ha!' and he laughed drowsily as he walked tothe wheel. 

"Just then a catspaw blew. It was so faint that it scarcely chilledthe moistened forefinger of the officer. It had to be reckoned withnevertheless; it was an air of wind anyhow, and some one sung out thatthe ship was aback forward, on which the mate went to the break of thepoop, and yelled to the seamen to trim sail. Something went wrong inswinging the yards on the fore. 

"'Jump aloft, a hand, and clear it. '

"A seaman went up the rigging, his shadowy shape vanished in the gloomthat blackened like a thunder-cloud upon the foretop; he showed againwhen he got into the topmast rigging, with his figure small, andclear-cut against the stars. 

"Suddenly, when midway the rigging he yelled at the top of his voice. His cry was more dismal and heartshaking than even that with which theman Kennedy had terrified the ship; he caught hold of a backstay, andsank to the bulwark rail, as though handsomely lowered away in abowline. 

"'By Cott!' he roared, flinging down his cap, whilst those who peeredclose saw that he trembled violently, 'der toyfel is on boardt disship. I have seen her mit mine eyes. If I hov not seen her den I was anightmare und she was mad. Look up dar. '

"He obtained no answer. The seamen attending the indication of theDutchman were to a man gazing aloft with hanging chins; for on high upin the cross-trees, a visible bulk of shadow, there sat, squatted, hung--what? A man? No angel from heaven surely? A demon then withfolded wings like those of a bat resting in his flight from the hallsof fire to some star of Satan? Mateys, if you think this language toopoetical, I'll translate my thought into fok'sle speech. But I'drather leave the job to others, " said the grey-haired respectableseaman; "I've forgotten the profanities of the sea-parlour. I have notused a bad word for thirty year. "

Some interruption by laughter attended this flight. The grey-hairedsailor looked round him with his slow critical motion of eye, andcontinued:

"'What's wrong aloft forrad there?' bawled the mate, and now he sungout with energy and decision, for the figure of the captain wasalongside of him. 

"'There's something aloft that looks like a man, ' howled a seaman, oneof the upstaring crowd about the Dutchman. 'Come forrad, sir. You'llsee him. '

"The mate and the captain went forward and looked up. 

"'It's a man, ' exclaimed the captain. 'Aloft there! What are you doingskylarking up in those cross-trees? Come down!' he cried, angrily. 

"'You sick-hearts, what d'ye see to stare at, or seeing, why don't yougo for it?' thundered the mate, after a pause, during which the figureon high had made no answer or motion, and as he spoke the words theofficer bounded on to the bulwarks, and ran up the fore-shrouds. 

"He travelled with heroic speed till he got as high as the foretop. There he stood at gaze; presently, after you might have counted fifty, putting his foot into the topmast rigging he began to crawl, withfrequent breathless stops; his passage up those shrouds had the dyinguncertainty of the tread of a blue-bottle when it climbs a sheet ofglass in October. 

"On a sudden he came down into the top very fast. There he stoodstaring aloft as though fascinated or electrified, then putting hisfoot over the top he got into the fore-shrouds, and trotted down ondeck, all very quick. The captain stood near the main hatch, lookingup. The mate approached him, and, in a whisper of awe and terror, exclaimed, whilst his eyes sought the shadow up in the foretopmastcross-trees, 'I believe the Dutchman's right, sir, and that we've beenboarded by the devil himself. '

"'What are you talking about?'

"'I never saw the like of such a thing, ' said the mate, in shakingtones. 

"'Is it a man?' said the captain, staring up with amazement, while theseamen came hustling close in a sneaking way to listen, and theDutchman drew close to the mate. 

"'It has the looks of a man, ' said the mate; 'yet it sha'n't be murderif you kill him. '

"'She vos no man, sir. I vos close. I vent closer don you. I oxpect, sir, ' said the Dutchman, 'she's an imp. Strange dot I did not see himtill I was upon her. '

"The captain went swiftly to his cabin for a binocular glass. Thelenses helped him to determine the motionless shadow in thecross-trees, and he clearly distinguished an apparently large humanshape, but in what fashion, or whether or not habited, it wasimpossible to see. How had he come into the ship? The captain went onto the poop and searched the silent sea with the glass with some fancyof finding a boat within reach of his vision. Nothing was to be seenbut the glass-smooth face of the deep, with here and there the lightof a large trembling star draining into it. The catspaw had died out, and it mattered nothing whether they braced the fore-yards round ornot. 

"It got wind in the forecastle that something wild, unearthly, hellish, was aloft, and the watch below turned out, too restless tosleep, and all through those hours of darkness the sailors walked thedecks in groups, again and again staring up at the foretopmastcross-trees, where the mysterious bulk of blackness sate, squatted, orhung motionless, like some brooding fiend, or incarnation of ill-luck, sinking by force of meditation its curses not loud, but deep, into thebottom of the very hold itself. 

"'Why don't the captain let me shoot him?' said the second mate atfour o'clock. 'I cannot miss that mark; my rifle will bring him toyour feet at the cost of a single shot. '

"'No, ' said the chief mate, 'I've talked of trying what shooting willdo. The captain means to wait for sunlight. But how did it get onboard?' said he, sinking his voice in awe. 'There's no land forhundreds of leagues. Is it some sort of human sea-monster, some mermanwhose looks blind you with their ugliness, which this ship's beendoomed to discover, and perhaps carry home?'

"It was not long before day whitened the east. In those climates themorning is a quick revelation, and hardly had the dawn broke when seaand sky were lighted up. And then, and even then, what was it? Thereit sat up in the cross-trees, a hairy, sulky bulk of man or beast, black, and the creature looked hard down whilst all hands were staringhard up. 

"Seized if it isn't a gorilla!" said the mate. 

"'No. ' said the captain, letting fall his binocular, 'look foryourself. Yet, it's not a man, either. ' He burst into a laugh asthough for relief. 'It's a huge, hairy baboon, one of the biggest Iever saw in my life. He'll be as fierce as a mutinous crew, and strongas a frigate's complement. What's to be done with him?'

"'How in Egypt did he come on board?' said the mate, viewing the beastthrough the glass. 

"'By that, maybe, sir, ' exclaimed the second mate, pointing to someobject floating flat and yellow, faint and far out upon the starboardquarter. 

"The captain levelled the ship's telescope. 'A large raft!' heexclaimed, after some minutes of silent examination. 'Take a boat andexamine it. '

"A quarter-boat was lowered, and the second mate and four men pulledaway for the raft in the distance. It was a very large raft, manifestly launched by some country wallah in the last throes: acomplicate huge grating, or floating platform, of immensely thickbamboos and spare spars, secured by turns of Manilla or coir rope. Itwas clean swept; not a rag was to be seen. Whether the sufferers hadbeen taken off, leaving the baboon behind them, whether they had died, and the wash of the ocean had slipped their bodies overboard, thebaboon holding on to the raft, who was to tell? 'At sea, ' said LordNelson, 'nothing is impossible and nothing improbable. '

"The raft had floated to the bows of the ship in the silent midnight, and the baboon sprang aboard and aloft. 

"The creature on high was a clear picture in the bright sunshine. Itmade many dreadful grimaces, by the exhibition of its teeth, and whenthe boat drew alongside it moved and stood up, and showed a greattail, then hung with one fist, looking down. It next descended withthe velocity of wind into the foretop. 

"The captain said: 'The beast don't seem faint, but I guess he'sthirsty, and he may fall mad, come down, and bite some of us. So, 'says he to the chief officer, 'send a hand aloft with a bucket offresh water for the poor brute and a pocketful of ship's bread. If wecan civilise him, so much the better. '

"But it never came to it, " said the grey-haired respectable seaman. "The creature fled to the cross-trees nimble as light when he saw acouple of seamen mounting to the top, then descended, and ate anddrank ravenously when they had come down, which feeding murdered him, and ruined the captain's hopes of carrying the fellow to London andselling him at a large price to the Zoölogical Gardens. For he refusedto come on deck. He bared his teeth, and his eyes shone with themalice of hell if the men attempted to approach him. It was impossibleto let him rest aloft throughout the night to command the ship, so tospeak; for he might sink to the deck stealthy as the shadow of a cloudblown by the wind, and he was strong enough and big enough to tear asleeping man's throat out. 

"'He must be shot, ' said the captain, and he told the second mate tofetch his rifle. 

"The second mate, that he might make sure of his aim, went aloft intothe foretop. The beast was then sitting on the topgallant yard. He hadbeen in command of the fabric of the fore all day. Had it come on toblow so as to oblige the captain to shorten sail, the deuce a seamandurst have gone aloft to stow the canvas. The second mate, standing inthe top, was in the act of lifting his rifle, when the monster, running on all fours out to the dizzy topgallant yard-arm, stood erecta breathless instant, poised--in human posture--a marvellous pictureof the man-beast against the liquid blue, then sprang into the air. 

"'Come down, ' roared the captain to the second mate, 'and shoot himthrough the head, for God's sake!'

"As the beast rose with a wild grin after having been so long out ofsight through the frightful height he had jumped from, you'd havethought he'd have risen with a burst skin, the captain bawled out, 'Blessed if he's not making for his raft. '

"The baboon, with a fixed expression, and with eyes askew upon theship as he drove past, swimming very finely with long easy flourishesof his arms and dexterous thrusts of his legs, whilst the end of histail stood up astern of him as though it was some comical little manthere steering, --the baboon, I say, was undoubtedly and with amazingsagacity making straight for the raft, having taken its bearings whenaloft; but at the moment the second mate knelt to level his piece, meaning to murder the poor brute out of pure mercy, the thing uttered, oh, my God! what a horrible cry! and vanished, and a quantity of bloodrose and dyed a bright patch upon the calm blue. No more was seen ofthe baboon, but a little later the black scythe-like fins of threesharks showed in the spot where he had disappeared. "

 _Plums from a Sailor's Duff. _

It has been commonly expected of sailors in all ages that they shouldencounter nothing upon the ocean but hair-breadth escapes. The theoryis that the mariner but half discharges his duties when hisexperiences are limited to his work as a seaman. That he may be fullyand perfectly accomplished vocationally he must know what it is tohave been cast away, to have barely come off with his life out of aship on fire, to have been overboard on many occasions in heavy seas, to have chewed pieces of lead in open boats to assuage his thirst--tohave encountered, in short, most of the stock horrors of the oceaniccalling. Considering, however, that the sailor goes to sea holding hislife in his hands, I cannot but think that his mere occupation isperilous enough to satisfy the romantic demands of the shore-goingdreamer. It is feigned that the sea-faring life is not one jot moredangerous than most of the laborious callings followed ashore. Let noman credit this. The sailor never springs aloft, never slides out to ayard-arm, never gives battle to the thunderous canvas, scarcelyperforms a duty, indeed, that does not contain a distinct menace tohis life. That the calling has less of danger in it in these days thanit formerly held I will not undertake to determine. If in former timesships put to sea destitute of the scientific equipment whichcharacterises the fabrics of this age, the mariner supplied thedeficiencies of the shipyard by caution and patience. He was never ina hurry. He waited with a resigned countenance upon the will of thewind. He plied his lead and log-line with indefatigable diligence. There was no prompt despatch in his day, no headlong thundering, through weather as thick as mud in a wineglass, to reach his port. Wehave diminished many of the risks he ran through imperfect appliances, but, on the other hand, we have raised a plentiful stock of our own, so that the balance between then and now shows pretty level. 

My sea-faring experiences covered about eight years, and they hit atraditional period of immense moment--I mean the gradualtransformation of the marine fabric from wood into iron. I was alwaysafloat in wood, however, and never knew what it was to have an ironplate between me and the yearning wash of the brine outside until Iwent on a voyage to Natal and back in a big ocean steamer that all daylong throbbed to the maddened heart in her engine room, like someblack and gleaming leviathan rendered hysterical by the lances ofwhalers feeling for its life, and all night stormed through the darkocean shadow like a body of fire, faster than a gale of wind could inmy time have driven the swiftest clipper keel that furrowed bluewater. 

What hair-breadth escapes did I meet with? I have been asked. Was Iever marooned? Ever cast away, as Jack says, on the top crust of ahalf-penny loaf? Ever overboard among sharks? Ever gazing madly roundthe horizon, the sole occupant of a frizzling boat, in search of aship where I might obtain water to cool my blue and frothing lips?Well, my duff is not a very considerable one, and the few plums in itI fear are almost wide enough apart to be out of hail of one another. However a sample or two will suffice to enable me to keep my word andto write something at all events autobiographic. 

So let us start off Cape Horn on a July day in the year of grace 1859. The ship was a fine old Australian liner, a vessel of hard upon 1400tons, a burden that in those days constituted a large craft. She wascommanded by one Captain Neatby, something of a favourite I believe inthe passenger trade--a careful old man with bow-legs and a fierygrog-blossom of a nose. He wore a tall chimney-pot hat in all weathers, and was reckoned a very careful man because he always furled his foreand mizzen royals in the first dog-watch every night. We were a longway south; I cannot remember the exact latitude, but I know it wasdrawing close upon sixty degrees. There was a talk in the midshipmen'sberth amongst us that the captain was trying his hand at the greatCircle course, but none of us knew much about it down in that gloomy, 'tween-decks, slush-flavoured cavern in which we youngsters lived. Iwas fourteen years old, homeward bound on my first voyage; a littlebit of a midshipman, burnt dry by Pacific suns, with a mortal hatredand terror of the wild, inexpressibly bitter cold of the roaringice-loaded parallels in whose Antarctic twilight our noble ship wasplunging and rolling now under a fragment of maintopsail, now under areefed foresail and double-reefed foretopsail, chased by the shriekingwestern gale that flew like volleys of scissors and thumbscrews overour taffrail, and by seas, whose glittering, flickering peaks onelooked up at from the neighbourhood of the wheel as at the brows oftall and beetling cliffs. The gale was white with snow, and dark withthe blinding fall of it too, when I came on deck at noon. I was in thechief mate's, or port watch, as it is called. The ship was runningunder a double-reefed topsail--in those days we carried singlesails, --reefed foresail, close-reefed foretopsail, and maintopmaststaysail. The snow made a London fog of the atmosphere; forward of thegalley the ship was out of sight at times when it came thundering downout of the blackness aft, white as any smother of spume. She pitchedwith the majesty of a line-of-battle ship, as she launched herself inlong floating rushes from gleaming pinnacle to seething valley with aheavy, melancholy sobbing of water all about her decks, and hernarrow, distended band of maintopsail hovering overhead black as araven's pinion in the flying hoariness. We were washing through it attwelve or thirteen knots an hour, though the ship was as stiff as amadman in a strait-jacket, with the compressed wool in her hold andloaded down to her main-chain bolts besides. By two bells (oneo'clock) forward of the break of the poop the decks were deserted, though now and again, amidst some swiftly passing flaw in the storm ofsnow, you might just discern the gleaming shapes of two men on thelook-out on the forecastle, with the glimpse of a figure in theforetop, also on the watch for anything that might be ahead. Thecaptain in his tall hat was stumping the deck to and fro close againstthe wheel, cased in a long pilot coat, under the skirts of which hislegs, as he slewed round, showed like the lower limb of the letter O. Through the closed skylight windows I could get a sort of watery viewof the cuddy passengers--as they were then called--reading, playing atchess, playing the piano, below. There were some scores of steerageand 'tween-deck passengers, deeper yet in the bowels of the ship, buthidden out of sight by the closed hatches. 

I know not why it should have been, but I was the only midshipman onthe poop, though the ship carried twelve of us, six to a watch. Theother five were doubtless loafing about under cover somewhere. I stoodclose beside the chief mate to windward, holding to the brass railthat ran athwart the break of the poop. This officer was a Scotchman, a man named Thompson, and I suppose no better seaman ever trod aship's deck. He was talking to me about getting home, asking mewhether I would rather be off Cape Horn in a snow-storm or makingready to sit down with my brothers and sisters at my father's table toa jolly good dinner of fish and roast beef and pudding, when all on asudden he stopped in what he was saying, and fell a-sniffingviolently. 

"I smell ice, " said he, with a glance aft at the captain. 

"Smell ice!" thought I, with a half look at him, for I believed he wasjoking. For my part, it was all ice to me--one dense, yellingatmosphere of snow; every flake barbed, and the cold of a bitternessbeyond words. He fell a-sniffing again, quickly and vehemently, andstepped to the side, sending a thirsty look into the white blindnessahead, whilst I heard him mutter, "There 's ice close aboard, there 'sice close aboard!" As he spoke the words, there arose a loud andfearful cry from the forecastle. 

"Ice right ahead, sir!"

"Ice right ahead, sir!" repeated the chief mate, whipping round uponthe captain. 

"I see it, sir! I see it, sir!" roared the skipper. "Hard astarboard, men! Hard a starboard for your lives! Over with it!"

The two fellows at the helm sent the spokes flying like thedriving-wheel of a locomotive; the long ship, upborne at the instantby a huge Pacific sea, paid off like a creature of instinct, sweepingslowly but surely to port just in time. For right on the starboard bowof us there leapt out into proportions terrible and magnificent, withina musket shot of our rail, an iceberg that looked as big as St. Paul'sCathedral, with stormy roaring of the gale in its ravines and valleys, and the white smoke of the snow revolving about its pinnacles andspires like volumes of steam, and a volcanic noise of mighty seasbursting against its base and recoiling from the adamant of itscrystalline sides in acres of foam. We were heading for it at the rateof thirteen miles an hour as neatly as you point the end of a threadinto the eye of a needle. In a few minutes we should have been intoit, crumbled against it, dissolved upon the white waters about it, andhave met a nameless end. Boy as I was, and bitter as was the day, Iremember feeling a stir in my hair as I stood watching with open mouththe passage of the mountainous mass close alongside into the pale voidastern, whilst the ship trembled again to the blows and thumps of vastblocks of floating ice. 

"Ice right ahead, sir!" came the cry again, nor could we clear thejumble of bergs until the dusk had settled down, when we hove-to forthe night. No one was hurt, but I suppose no closer shave of the kindever happened to a ship before. 

Again, and this time once more off Cape Horn. It was my third voyage;I was still a midshipman, and in the second mate's watch. I came ondeck at midnight and found the ship hove-to, breasting what in thisage of steamboats, and, for the matter of that, perhaps in any otherage, might be termed a terrific sea. She was making good weather ofit--that is to say, she kept her decks dry, but she was diving androlling most hideously, with such swift headlong shearing of her sparsthrough the gale that the noises up in the blackness aloft were asthough the spirits of the inmates of a thousand lunatic asylums hadbeen suddenly enlarged from their bodies and sent yelling into limbo. The wind blew with an unendurable edge in the sting and bite of it. The second mate and I, each with a rope girdling his waist to swingby, stood muffled up to our noses under the lee of a square of canvasseized to the mizzen shrouds. Presently he roared into my ear, "Sortof a night for a pannikin of coffee, eh, Mr. Russell?" "Ay, ay, sir, "I replied, and with that, liberating myself from the rope, I clawed myway along the line of the hencoops--the decks sometimes sloping almostup and down to the heavy weather _scends_ of the huge blackbillows, --and descended into the midshipmen's berth. It was not thefirst time I had made a cup of coffee for myself and the second mate inthe middle watch during cold weather. An old nurse who had lived in myfamily for years had given me an apparatus consisting of a spirit-lampand a funnel-shaped contrivance of block tin, along with several poundsof very good coffee, and with this I used to keep the second mate andmyself supplied with the real luxury of a hot and aromatic drinkduring wet and frosty watches. The midshipmen's berth was a narrowroom down in the 'tween decks, bulkheaded off from the sides, fittedwith a double row of bunks, one on top of another, the lower bedsbeing about a foot above the deck. There were five midshipmen allturned in and fast asleep. The others, who were on watch, wereclustered under the break of the poop for the shelter there. A lonelyone-eyed sort of slush lamp, with sputtering wick and stinking flame, swung wearily from a blackened beam, rendering the darkness but littlemore than visible. I slung my little cooking apparatus near to it, filled the lamp with spirits of wine, put water and coffee into thefunnel, and then set fire to the arrangement. I stood close under it, wrapped from head to foot in gleaming oilskins--looking a very bloatedlittle shape, I don't doubt, from the quantity of clothing I woreunder the waterproofs, --waiting for the water to boil. The seas roaredin thunder high above the scuttles to the wild and sickening dippingof the ship's side into the trough. The humming of the gale piercedthrough the decks with the sound of a crowd of bands of music in thedistance, all playing together and each one a different tune. Themidshipmen snored, and coats and smallclothes hanging from the bunkstanchions wearily swung sprawling out and in, like bodies danglingfrom gallows in a gale of wind. 

All in a moment a sea of unusual weight and fury took the ship andhove her down to the height as you would have thought, of hertopgallant rail; the headlong movement sent me sliding to leeward; theforethatch of my sou'wester struck the spirit-lamp; down it poured, ina line of fire upon the deck, where it surged to and fro in a sheet offlame, with the movements of the ship. I was so horribly frightened asto be almost paralysed by the sight of that flickering stretch ofyellowish light, sparkling and leaping as it swept under the lowerbunks and came racing back again to the bulkhead with the windwardincline. I fell to stamping upon it in my sea-boots, little fool thatI was, hoping in that way to extinguish it. A purple-faced midshipmanoccupied one of the lower bunks, and his long nose lay over the edgeof it. He opened his eyes, and after looking sleepily for a moment ortwo at the coating of pale fire rushing from under his bed, he snuffeda bit, and muttering, "Doocid nice smell; burnt brandy, ain't it?" heturned over and went to sleep again with his face the other way. 

I was in an agony of consternation, and yet afraid of calling for helplest I should be very roughly manhandled for my carelessness. Therewas a deal of "raffle" under the bunks--sea-boots, little bundles ofclothing, and I know not what else; but thanks to Cape Horn everythingwas happily as damp as water itself. There was therefore nothing tokindle, nor was there any aperture through which the burning spiritcould run below into the hold; so by degrees the flaming stuffconsumed itself, and in about ten minutes' time the planks were blackagain. I went on deck and reported what had happened to the secondmate. All he said was "My God!" and instantly ran below to satisfyhimself that there was no further danger. I can never recall thatlittle passage of my life without a shudder. There were a hundred andninety-five souls of us aboard, and had I managed to set the ship onfire that night the doom of every living creature would have beenassured, seeing that no boat could have lived an instant in such a seaas was then running. 

In a very different climate from that of Cape Horn I came very near tomeeting with an extremely ugly end. It was a little business entirelyout of the routine of the ordinary ocean dangers, but the memory of itsends a thrill through me to this hour, though it is much past twentyyears ago since it happened. I was making my second voyage aboard asmall full-rigged ship that had been hired by the Government for theconveyance of troops to the East Indies. I was the only midshipman;the other youngsters consisted of five apprentices. We occupied adeck-house a little forward of the main-hatch. This house was dividedby a fore and aft bulkhead; the apprentices lived in the portcompartment, the third and fourth mates and myself slung our hammockson the starboard side. The third mate was a man of good family, agedabout twenty-one, a young Hercules in strength, with heavy under-jawsand the low, peculiar brow of the prize-fighter. He had been amidshipman in Smith's service, and was a good and active sailor, verynimble aloft and expert in his work about the ship, but of a sullen, morose disposition, and a heavy drinker whenever the opportunity toget drink presented itself. I think he was regarded by all hands as alittle touched, but I was too young to remark in him any odditieswhich might strike an older observer. He was given to deliveringhimself of certain dark, wild fancies. I remember he once told me thatif he owed a man a grudge he would not scruple to plant himselfalongside of him on a yard on a black night and kick the foot-ropefrom under him when his hands were busy, and so let him go overboard. But this sort of talk I would put down to mere boasting, and indeed Ithought nothing of it. 

We were in the Indian Ocean, and one evening I sat at supper (as tea, the last meal on board ship, is always called) along with this man andthe fourth mate. We fell into some sort of nautical argument, and inthe heat of the discussion I said something that caused the third mateto look at me fixedly for a little while, whilst he muttered under hisbreath, in a kind of half-stifled way, as though his teeth were set. Idid not catch the words, but I am quite certain from the fourth mate'smanner, that he had heard them, and that he knew what was in theother's mind. I say this because I recollect that very shortlyafterwards the fellow rose and walked out on deck with an air abouthim as if he was willing to give the third mate a chance of beingalone with me. It was a mean trick, but then he was a cowardly rogue, and when I afterwards heard that he had been dismissed from theservice he had formerly entered for robbing his shipmates of money andtobacco and the humble trifles which sailors carry about with them intheir sea-chests I was wicked enough, recalling how he had walked outof that deck-house, leaving me, a little boy, alone with a strong, brutal, crazy third mate, to hope that he might yet prove guilty oflarger sins still, for I could not but regard him as a creature thatdeserved to be hanged. The instant this man stepped through the doorthe third mate jumped up and closed it. It travelled in grooves, andhe whipped it to with a temper which caused the whole structure toecho again to the blow. 

"Now, you young--" he exclaimed, turning his bulldog face, white withrage, upon me, yet speaking in a cold voice that was more terrifyingto listen to than if he had roared out, "I have you and I mean topunish you, " and with that he unclasped his heavy belt, and thenclasped it again so as to make a double thong of the leather, andgrasped me by the collar. 

What my feelings were I am unable to state at this distance of time. Ibelieve I was more astonished than frightened. I could not imaginethat this huge creature was in earnest in offering to beat me for whatI had said, and yet I was sensible too of an unnatural fire in hiseyes--a glow that put an expression of savage exultation into them;and this look of his somehow held me motionless and speechless. Hehalf raised his arm, but a sudden irresolution possessed him, asthough my passivity was a check upon his intentions. 

"No, no, " he exclaimed, after a little, "I'll manage better thanthis"; and still grasping me by the collar of my jacket he dropped hisbelt and ran me to the fore end of the compartment, threw me on myback, and knelt upon me. Within reach of his arm, kneeling as he was, were three shelves on which we kept such crockery and cutlery as weowned, along with our slender stores of sugar and flour and the coldremains of previous repasts. He felt for a knife; I could hear theblades rattle as his fingers groped past his curved wrist for one ofthem, and then flourishing the black-handled weapon in front of myeyes he exclaimed, "Now I'm going to murder you. " I lay stock-still; Inever uttered a word; I scarcely breathed indeed. Again, I say that Ido not know that I was terrified. My condition was one ofsemi-stupefaction, I think, with just enough of sense left in me tocomprehend that if I uttered the least cry or struggled, no matter howfaintly, I should transform him into a wild beast. Nothing but mylying corpse-like under the pressure of his knee saved me, I amcertain. My gaze was fixed upon his face, and I see him now staring atme with his little eyes on fire, and the knife poised ready to plunge. This posture maybe he retained for two or three minutes; it ran intolong hours to me. Then on a sudden he threw the knife away backwardsover his shoulder, rose and went to the door, where he stood a littlestaring at me intently. I continued to lie motionless. He opened thedoor and passed out, on which I sprang to my feet and fled as nimblyas my legs would carry me to the poop, where I found the chief mate. He was a little Welshman of the name of Thomas, a brother of ApThomas, the celebrated harpist, and if he be still alive and theselines should meet his eyes, let him be pleased to know that my memoryholds him in cordial respect as the kindest officer and the smartestseaman I ever had the fortune to be shipmates with. To him I relatedwhat had happened. 

"O--ho, " cried he, "attempted murder, hey? Our friend must be taughtthat we don't allow this sort of thing to happen aboard _us_. "

He gave certain orders and shortly afterwards the third mate wasseized and locked up in a spare cabin just under the break of thepoop. Two powerful seamen were told off to keep him company. How muchthe unfortunate man needed this sort of control I could not haveimagined but for my hearing that he was locked up and my going to thecabin window that looked on to the quarter deck to take a peep at himif he was visible. He saw me and bounded to the window, bringing hisleg-of-mutton fist against it with a blow that crashed the whole plateof glass into splinters. His face was purple, his eyes half out oftheir sockets. There was froth upon his lips, with such a generaldistortion of features that it would be impossible to figure a morehorrible illustration of madness than his countenance. I bolted as ifthe devil had been after me, catching just a glimpse of the powerfulcreature wrestling in the grasp of the two seamen who were dragginghim backwards into the gloom of the cabin. Such an escape as this Iregard as distinctly more eventful, if not more romantic, than fallingoverboard and being rescued when almost spent, or being picked upafter a fortnight's exposure in an open boat. My most sleep-murderingnightmares nearly always include the phantom form of that burly, crazed third mate kneeling upon my motionless little figure andfeeling for a knife on one of the shelves just over my head. 

Another little plum out of my plain sailor's pudding. This time myship was an East Indian trader that whilst lying at Calcutta waschartered by the Government to convey troops to the North of China. Itwas in 1860. Difficulties had arisen, and John Chinaman was to beattacked. We proceeded to Hong Kong with the headquarters of the 60thRifles on board, and thence to the Gulf of Peche-li, which I shouldsay submitted one of the finest spectacles in the world, with itscongregations of transports and English and French and Yankee ships ofwar. It was an old-world scene which the sponge of time hasobliterated for ever, and I behold again in memory those two noblefrigates, the _Impérieuse_ and the _Chesapeake_, straining tightly attheir cables, with smoke-stacks too modest in proportions to impair tothe critical nautical eye the tack and sheet suggestions of thegraceful, exquisitely symmetrical fabric of spars and yards andrigging soaring triumphantly aloft to where the long whip or pennantat the main flickered like a delicate line of fire against the hardcold blue of the Asiatic sky. 

We lay for many months in that bay, and were obliged repeatedly tosend ashore for fresh meat, vegetables, and the like. On one occasionI recollect going with the mate in the long-boat some distance up theriver Peiho, a rushing, turbid stream at the mouth of which theChinese had fixed a very _chevaux-de-frise_ of spikes, upon which theyhad fondly hoped our men-of-war would impale themselves, forgettingthat the depth of water scarcely permitted the approach of a shallowgunboat. We were returning to the ship with a fair wind, and on top ofthe fierce rush of the river, when our helmsman run us plump againstone of Johnny's huge impalers. The shock of the blow threw the mateinto an immense basket of fresh eggs. He fell with a squelch past allpower of forgetting, and lay wriggling in a very quagmire of yolk andwhite and fragments of shells. We pulled him out blind and streamingwith eggs. His aspect was so preposterously absurd that the helmsman, rendered almost imbecile by laughter, let the boat drive into a secondpile, when, as I live to write it, the mate, who was cleaning himselfnear to the basket, was thrown a second time into the glutinous mess!I will not attempt to repeat the sea-blessings he bestowed upon thesteersman. Happily eggs were cheap, and a dollar might haverepresented a more considerable smash. Now it was two days followingthis that the captain sent the long-boat to procure some sheep andpoultry from a little village situated close to the shores of the bayon the north of the river. The second mate took charge, and I andanother midshipman and a couple of sailors went along with him. Welanded and left the boat in charge of a seaman, and strolled towardsthe village. The second mate was a wild, dissolute young fellow, who, before he quitted China, became the recipient of more than one rounddozen by order of the provost-marshal for looting. A little knot ofChinamen stood watching as we approached, whilst just beyond we caughtsight of a couple of women hobbling nimbly away out of reach of oursight, as though they walked on stilts. Sherman--for such was thesecond mate's name, --approaching the Chinamen, began with them inpigeon English. They did not understand. He exhibited a few dollars, and traced the outline of a sheep upon the ground, and, with manysurprising motions of his arms, sought to acquaint them with theobject of his visit. All to no purpose. "What's to be done?" saidSherman, looking at us. "There's nothing that resembles a sheephereabouts. " His eyes suddenly brightened as they lighted on a largeconcourse of cocks and hens pecking in tolerably close order at somefifty paces distant from us. "Boys, " he shouted, "as these chaps can'tbe made to understand, let's help ourselves. Each one seize what hecan get and make for the boat. Follow me. " He sprang with incredibleagility towards the fowls, and in a trice had a couple of themshrieking and fluttering in his grasp. In a breath theChinamen--thirty or forty strong--uttering a long, peculiar shout, armed themselves with pitchforks--at all events, a species of weaponthat to my young eyes resembled a pitchfork, --sticks, and stones, andgave chase. They tramped after us with the noise of an army in pursuit. We flew towards the boat, screaming to the fellow in charge to haul inand receive us. A stone struck me in the small of my back, and urgedme forwards faster than my legs were travelling. Down I should havetumbled on my nose, and in that posture have been straightwaymassacred, but for the timely grip of a sailor who was running by myside. "Hold up, my hearty!" he roared, hooking his fingers into theback of my collar and jerking me backwards. In a few moments we gainedthe boat, wading waist-high to come at her, and rolling like drunkenmen over her gunwale into her bottom. A volley of stones rattled aboutour ears, but we were safe. Had the Chinamen carried firearms, not oneof us but must have been shot down. 

I could relate a score or more of such experiences: of ugly collisionswith the police in Calcutta, of a narrow escape of being thrownoverboard by a dinghy-wallah of the river Hooghley, of a desperatefight in the slings of the mizzen-topgallant yard with an apprenticeof my own age, and the like; but the space at my disposal obliges meto conclude. Very little of the heroic enters the sailor's life. Therisks he runs, the adventures he encounters, have, as a rule, nothingof the romantic in them; they are mainly brought about by his ownfoolhardiness, by the proverbial carelessness that is utterlyirreconcilable with the stern obligations of vigilance, alertness, andforesight imposed upon him by the nature of his calling, by theimbecility of shipmates, and much too often by drink. Yet no matterwhat the cause of most of the perils he meets with, his experiences, Itake it, head the march of professional dangers. Small wonder thatfaith in the "sweet little cherub that sits up aloft" should stilllinger in the forecastle. For certainly were it not for the brightlook-out kept over him by some sort of maritime angel, the marinerwould rank foremost as amongst the most perishable of human products. 

 _The Strange Adventures of a South Seaman. _

On November 4th, 1830, a number of convicts were indicted at theAdmiralty Sessions of the Old Bailey for having on the 5th ofSeptember in the previous year piratically seized a brig called the_Cyprus_. A South Seaman was innocently and most involuntarily, asshall be discovered presently, involved in this tragic business, towhich he is able to add a narrative that is certainly not known to anyof the chroniclers of crime. But first as to the piratical seizure. 

The _Cyprus_, a colonial brig, had been chartered to convey a numberof convicts from Hobart Town to Macquarie Harbour, on the northerncoast of Tasmania, and Norfolk Island, distant about a week's sailfrom Sydney--in those days a penal settlement. There were thirty-twofelons in all. These men had been guilty of certain grave offences atHobart Town, and they had rendered themselves in consequence liable tonew punishment; they were tried before the Supreme Court of Judicaturethere, and sentenced to be transported to the place above mentioned. 

Only the very worst sort of prisoners were sent to Norfolk Island andMacquarie Harbour. The discipline at those penal settlements wasterrible; the labour that was exacted, heart-breaking. The characterof the punishment was well known, and every felon re-sentenced totransportation from the colonial convict settlements very wellunderstood the fate that was before him. 

The _Cyprus_ sailed from Hobart Town in August, 1829. In addition tothe thirty-two convicts, she carried a crew of eight men and a guardof twelve soldiers, under the command of Lieutenant Carew, who wasaccompanied by his wife and children. The prisoners, as was alwayscustomary in convict ships, were under the care of a medical man namedWilliams. 

Nothing of moment happened until the brig either brought up or washove-to in Research Bay, where Dr. Williams, Lieutenant Carew, themate of the vessel, a soldier, and a convict named Popjoy went ashoreon a fishing excursion. They had not been gone from the ship abovehalf-an-hour when they heard a noise of firearms. Instantly guessingthat the convicts had risen, they made a rush for the boat and pulledfor the brig. It was as they had feared: the felons had mastered theguard and seized the brig. They suffered no man to come on board savePopjoy, who, however, later on sprang overboard, and swam to thebeach. They then sent the crew, soldiers, and passengers ashore, butwithout provisions and the means of supporting life. Then, amongstthemselves, the prisoners lifted the anchor and trimmed sail, and thelittle brig slipped away out of Research Bay. 

The chroniclers state that the vessel was never afterward heard of, though some of the convicts were apprehended, separately, in variousparts of Sussex and Essex. The posthumous yarn of the mate of anEnglish whaler disproves this. He relates his extraordinary experiencethus:

"We had been fishing north of the Equator, and had filled up with alittle 'grease, ' as the Yankees term it, round about the GalapagosIslands, but business grew too slack for even a whaleman's patience. Eleven months out from Whitby, and, if my memory fails me not, lessthan a score of full barrels in our hold! So the Captain made up hismind to try south, and working our way across the Equator, we struckin amongst the Polynesian groups, raising the Southern Cross higherand higher, till we were somewhere about latitude 30 deg. , andlongitude 175 deg. E. 

"I came on deck to the relief at four o'clock one morning: the weatherwas quiet, a pleasant breeze blowing off the starboard beam; our shipwas barque-rigged, with short, topgallant masts--Cape Horn fashion;she was thrusting through it leisurely under topsails and amaintopgallantsail, and the whole Pacific heave so cradled her as shewent that she seemed to sleep as she sailed. 

"Day broke soon after five, and as the light brightened out I caughtsight of a gleam on the edge of the sea. It was as white with therisen sun upon it as an iceberg. I levelled the glass and made out thetopmast canvas of a small vessel. There was nothing to excite one inthe spectacle of a distant sail. The barque's work went on; the deckswere washed down, the look-out aloft hailed and nothing reported, andat seven bells the crew went to breakfast, at which hour we had risenthe distant sail with a rapidity that somewhat puzzled the captain andme. For, first of all, she was not so far off now but that we coulddistinguish the lay of her head. She looked to be going our way, butclearly she was stationary, for the _Swan_, which was the name of ourbarque, though as seaworthy an old tub as ever went to leeward on abowline, was absolutely without legs: nothing more sluggish was everafloat; for _her_ then to have overhauled anything that was actuallyunder way would have been marvellous. 

"'Something wrong out there, Grainger?' said the captain. 

"'Looks to me to be all in the wind with her, ' I answered. 

"'Make out any colour?' said the captain. 

"'Nothing as yet, ' said I. 

"'Shift your helm by a spoke or two, ' said he. 'Meanwhile, I'll go tobreakfast. '

"He was not long below. By the time he returned we had risen thedistant vessel to the line of her rail. I got some breakfast in thecabin; on passing again through the hatch I found the captain lookingat the sail through the telescope. 

"'She is a small brig, ' said he, 'and she has just sent the Englishcolours aloft with the jack down. She is all in the wind, as you said. Her people don't seem to know what to do with her. '

"She now lay plain enough to the naked sight; a small black brig ofabout a hundred and eighty tons, apparently in ballast as she floatedhigh on the water. She, like ourselves, carried short topgallantmasts, but the canvas she showed consisted of no more than topsails andcourses. I took the glass from the captain, and believed I could makeout the heads of two or three people showing above the bulwark railabaft the mainmast. 

"'What's their trouble going to prove?' said the captain. 

"'They're waiting for us, ' said I. 'They saw us, and put the helmdown, and got their little ship in irons instead of backing theirtopsail yard. No sailor-man there, I doubt. '

"'A small colonial trader, you'll find, ' said the captain, 'with acrew of four or five Kanakas. The captain's sick and the mate wasaccidentally left ashore at the last island. '

"It blew a four-knot breeze--four knots, I mean, for the _Swan_. Wrinkling the water under her bows, and smoothing into oil a cable'slength of wake astern of her, the whaler floated down to the littlebrig within hailing distance. We saw but two men, and one of them wasat the wheel. There was an odd look of confusion aloft, or rather letme describe it as a want of that sort of precision which a sailor'seye would seek for and instantly miss, even in the commonest oldsea-donkey of a collier. Nothing was rightly set for the lack ofhauling taut. Running gear was slackly belayed, and swung with therolling of the little brig like Irish pennants. The craft was clean atthe bottom, but uncoppered. She was a round-bowed contrivance, with aspring aft which gave a kind of mulish, kick-up look to the run ofher. 

"One of the two visible men, a broad-chested, thick-set fellow, in ablack coat and a wide, white straw hat, got upon the bulwark, andstood holding on by a backstay, watching our approach, but he did notoffer to hail. I thought this queer; it struck me that he hesitated tohail us, as though wanting the language of the sea in this business ofspeaking. 

"'Brig ahoy!' shouted the captain. 

"'Hallo!' answered the man. 

"'What is wrong with you?'

"'We are short-handed, sir, and in great distress, ' was the answer. 

"'What is your ship, and where are you from, and where are you boundto?'

"When these questions were put the man looked round to the fellow whostood at the brig's little wheel. It was certain he was not a sailor, and it was possible he sought for counsel from the helmsman, who wasprobably a forecastle hand. He turned his face again our way in aminute, and shouted out in a powerful voice:

"'We are the brig _Cyprus_, of Sydney, New South Wales, bound to theCape of Good Hope, and very much out of our reckoning, I dare say, through the distress we're in. '

"The captain and I exchanged looks. 

"'Heading as you go, ' the captain sang out, 'you're bound on a truecourse for the Antarctic Circle, and, anyway, it's a long stretch forAgulhas by way of Cape Horn out of these seas. How can we serve you?'"

'Will you send one of your officers in a boat?' came back the replyvery promptly, 'that he may put us in the way of steering a course forthe Cape of Good Hope? He'll then guess our plight, and if you'll lendus a hand or two we shall be greatly obliged. We can't send a boatourselves--we're too few. '

"'He's no sailor-man, that fellow, ' said the captain, 'and he ha'n'tgot the colonial brogue, either. I seem to smell Whitechapel in thatchap's speech. Is he a passenger? Why don't he say so? Looks like aplay-actor, or a priest. But take a boat, Grainger, and row over andsee what you can make of the mess they're in. There's something rathermore than out-of-the-way in that job, if I'm not mistaken. '

"A boat was lowered; I entered it, and was rowed across to the brig bythree men. No attempt was made to throw us the end of a line, or inany way to help us. The bowman got hold of a chain plate, and Iscrambled into the main-chains and so got over the rail, bidding themen shove off and lie clear of the brig, whose rolling was somewhatheavy, owing to her floating like an egg-shell upon the long Pacificheave. 

"I glanced along the vessel's decks forward, and saw not a soul. Iobserved a little caboose, the chimney of which was smoking as thoughcoal had within the past few minutes been thrown into the furnace. Isaw but one boat; she stood chocked and lashed abaft the caboose--aclumsy, broad-beamed long-boat, capable of stowing perhaps fifteen ortwenty men at a pinch. I also took notice of a pair of davits on thestarboard side, past the main rigging; they were empty. 

"I stepped up to the heavily-built man who had answered the captain'squestions. He received me with a grotesque bow, pinching the brim ofhis wide straw hat as he bobbed his head. I did not like his looks. Hehad as hanging a face as ever a malefactor carried. His features wereheavy and coarse, his brow low and protruding, his eyes small, black, and restless, and his mouth of the bulldog cast. 

"'We're much obliged to you for this visit, ' he said. 'Might I askyour name, sir?'

"'My name is Grainger--Mr. James Grainger, ' I answered, scarcelywondering at the irregularity of such a question on such an occasion, perceiving clearly now that the fellow was no sailor. 

"'What might be your position in that ship, Mr. Grainger?' said theman. 

"'I'm mate of her, ' said I. 

"'Then I suppose you're capable of carrying a ship from place to placeby the art of navigation?' he exclaimed. 

"'Why, I hope so!' cried I. 'But what is it you want?' and here Ilooked at the man who was standing at the helm, grasping the spokes ina manner that assured me he was not used to that sort of work; and Iwas somewhat struck to observe that in some respects he was not unlikethe fellow who was addressing me--that is to say, he had quite ashanging a face as his companion, though he wanted the other's breadthand squareness, and ruffian-like set of figure; but his forehead waslow, and his eyes black and restless, and he was close-cropped, withsome days' growth of beard, as was the case with the other. He wasdressed in a bottle-green spencer and trousers of a military cut, andwore one of those caps which in the days I am writing of were thefashion amongst masters and mates. 

"'If you don't mind stepping into the cabin, ' said the man with whom Iwas conversing, 'I'll show you a chart, and ask you to pencil out acourse for us; and with your leave, sir, I'll tell you over a glass ofwine exactly how it's come about that we're too few to carry the brigto her destination unless your captain will kindly help us. '

"'Are you two the only people aboard?' said I. 

"'The only people, ' he answered. 

"Anywhere else, under any other conditions, I might have suspected atreacherous intention in two men with such hanging countenances asthis lonely brace owned; but what could I imagine to be afraid ofaboard a brig holding two persons only, with the whaler's boat andthree men within a few strokes of the oar, and the old barque, _Swan_, full of livelies, many of them deadly in the art of casting theharpoon, within easy hail?

"The man who invited me below stepped into the companion-way; Ifollowed and descended the short flight of steps. The instant I hadgained the bottom of the ladder I knew by the sudden shadow which cameinto the light that the companion hatch had been closed; this musthave been done by the fellow who was standing at the wheel. It waswisely contrived. Assuredly had the way been open, I should haverushed upon deck and sprung overboard: because after descending thesteps I beheld five or six men standing in a sort of waiting andlistening posture under the skylight. Instantly my left arm wasgripped by the man who had asked me to step below, while anotherfellow, equally powerful, and equally ruffianly in appearance, graspedme by the right arm. 

"'Now, ' said the first man, 'if you make the least bit of noise orgive us any trouble, we'll cut your throat. We don't intend to do youany harm, but we want your services, and you'll have to do what werequire without any fuss. If not, you're a dead man. '

"So saying, they threw open the door of a berth, ran me into it, shutthe door, and shot the lock. I had been so completely taken bysurprise that I was in a manner stunned. I stood in the middle of thecabin just where the fellows had let go of me, staring around, breathing short and fierce, my mind almost a blank. But I quicklyrallied my wits. I understood I had been kidnapped; by what sort ofpeople I could not imagine, but beyond question because I understoodnavigation, as I had told the man. I listened, but heard no noise ofvoices, nor movements of people in the cabin. Through the planks, overhead, however, came the sound of a rapid tread of feet, accompanied by the thud of coils of rope flung hastily down. The cabinporthole was a middling-sized, circular window. I saw the whaler in itas in a frame. I unscrewed the port, but with no intention to cry out, never doubting for a moment from the looks of the men that they wouldsilence me in some bloody fashion as had been threatened. 

"Just as I pulled the port open a voice overhead sang out: 'Get backto your ship, you three men; your mate has consented to stop with usas we're in want of a navigator. '

"'Let him tell us that himself, ' said one of my men; 'let him show up. What ha' ye done with him?'

"'Be off, ' roared one of the people, in a savage, hurricane note. 

"There was a little pause as of astonishment on the part of the boat'screw--I could not see them, the boat lay too far astern, --but after abit I heard the splash of oars, the boat swept into the sphere of theporthole, and I beheld her making for the barque. 

"I was now sensible, however, not only by observing the whaler torecede, but by hearing the streaming and rippling of broken watersalong the bends, that the people of the brig had in some fashiontrimmed sail and filled upon the vessel. We were under way. The barqueslided out of the compass of the porthole, but now I heard hercaptain's voice coming across the space of water, clear and strong:

"'Brig ahoy! What do you mean by keeping my mate?'

"To this no answer was returned. Again the captain hailed the brig;but owing to the shift in the postures of the two vessels, and to myhaving nothing but a circular hole to hear through, I could only dimlyand imperfectly catch what was shouted. The cries from the whaler grewmore and more threadlike. Indeed, I knew the brig must be a very poorsailer if she did not speedily leave the _Swan_ far astern. 

"And now, as I conjectured from the noise of the tread of feet and thehum of voices, the brig on a sudden seemed full of men; not the eightor ten whom I had beheld with my own eyes, but a big ship's company. And the sight of the crowd, I reckoned, as I stood hearkening at theopen porthole--amazed, confounded, in the utmost distress of mind--wasprobably the reason why the captain of the _Swan_ had not thoughtproper to send boats to rescue me. Be this as it will I wasthunderstruck by the discovery--the discovery of my hearing, and of mycapacity as a sailor of interpreting shipboard sounds--that thislittle brig, which I had supposed tenanted by two men only, had hiddena whole freight of human souls somewhere away in the execution of thisdiabolical stratagem. What was this vessel? Who were the people onboard her? What use did they design to put me to? And when I hadserved them, what was to be my fate?

"Quite three hours passed, during which I was left unvisited. Sometimes I heard men talking in the cabin; over my head there went aregular swing of heavy feet, a pendulum tread, as of half-a-score ofburly ruffians marching abreast, and keeping a look-out all together. The door of my berth was opened at last, and the villain who hadseduced me into the brig stepped in. 

"'I was sorry, ' said he, 'to be obliged to use threats. Threats aren'tin our way. We mean no mischief. Quite the contrary; we count upon youhandsomely serving us. Come into the cabin, sir, that I may make youknown to my mates. '

"His manner was as civil as a fellow with his looks could possiblycontrive, and an ugly smile sat upon his face whilst he addressed me, and I observed that he held his great straw hat in his hand, as thoughto show respect. 

"About twenty men were assembled in the cabin. I came to a dead standon the threshold of the door of the berth, so astounded was I by thesight of all those fellows. I ran my eye swiftly over them; they werevariously dressed--some in the attire of seamen, some in such clothesas gentlemen of that period wore, a few in a puzzling sort of militaryundress. They all had cropped heads, and many were grim with a fewdays' growth of beard and moustache. They had the felon's look, andthere was somehow a suggestion of escaped prisoners in their generalbearing. A dark suspicion rushed upon me with the velocity of thought, as I stood on the threshold of the door of the berth for the space ofa few heart-beats, gazing at the mob. 

"The cabin was a plain, old-fashioned interior. A stout, wide tablesecured to stanchions ran amidships. Overhead was a skylight. Therewere a few chairs on either hand the table, and down the cabin on bothsides went a length of lockers. Some of the men were smoking. A fewsat upon the table with their arms folded; others lounged upon thelockers, and in chairs. They stared like one man at me, whilst I stoodlooking at them. 

"'Is he a navigator, Swallow?' said one of them--a wiry, dark-facedman, who held his head hung, and looked at you by lifting his eyes. 

"'Ay, mate of the whaler--James Grainger by name, ' answered the fellowwho had opened the door of my berth. 'Salute him, bullies. He's thecharley-pitcher for to handle this butter-box. '

"The voices of the men swelled into a roar of welcomes of as manysorts as there were speakers. One of them came round the table andshook me by the hand. 

"'My name's Alexander Stevenson, ' said he; 'come and sit you downhere. '

"All very civilly he conducted me to a chair at the head of the table. And now, happening to glance upwards, I spied seven or eight facespeering down at me through the skylight. 

"'Swallow, do the jawing, will 'ee?' said the man who called himselfStevenson. 

"'Why, yes, ' answered Swallow, posting himself at the top of thetable, and addressing me through the double ranks of men on eitherside. 'This is how it stands with us, Mr. Grainger--clear as mud in awineglass; and we're sorry it should have come to it, for your sake. But do your duty by us faithfully, and we'll take care you sha'n'tsuffer. We're thirty-one convicts in all. We were thirty-two, butMilkliver Poppy took a header, and went for the land and thelickspittle; if he lives he'll get his liberty for a reward. We werebound from Hobart to Norfolk Island. You'll have heard of thatsettlement?'

"I said 'Yes, ' and an odd guttural laugh broke from some of the men. 

"'Well, mister, ' continued the man Swallow, 'Norfolk Island was adestination that didn't accord with our views. And what more d' yewant me to say? Here we are, and we want our liberty, and we mean toget it without any risk, and you're the man to help us. '

"'What do you want me to do?' said I, speaking boldly, and lookingabout me steadily, for now I perceived exactly how it was with thebrig, and the worst had been explained and the whole mystery solvedwhen Swallow told me they were convicts; and likewise I had plenty oftime to screw my nerves up. 

"Several men spoke at once on my asking the above question. Stevensonroared out: 'Let Swallow man the jaw tackle, boys. One at a time, oryou'll addle the gent. '

"'This is what we want you to do, ' said Swallow. 'There are scores ofislands in these seas, and we want you to carry us to them; heaving-tooff them one after another that we may pick and choose, some goingashore here, and some there, for our game is to scatter. That's clear, I hope. '

"'I understand you, ' said I. "

"Swallow seemed at a loss. Stevenson then said: 'But we shall wantnothing that's got a white settlement on it; nothing that's likely tohave a pennant flying near. We've got no fixed notions. We leave it toyou to raise the islands, and it'll be for us to select and take ourchance. '

"'There'll be charts aboard, I suppose?' said I. 

"Instantly one of them stepped into a cabin and returned with a bagfull of charts. I turned them out upon the table and promptly cameacross charts of the North and South Pacific oceans. These charts gaveme from the Philippines to Cape St. Lucas, and from the EasternAustralian coast to away as far as 120 deg. W. Longitude. The men didnot utter a word whilst I looked; I could hear their deep breathing, mingled with the noise of a hard sucking of pipes. One of them wholooked through the skylight called down. Swallow silenced him with agesture of his fist. 

"'Have you got what's wanted here, Mr. Grainger?' said Stevenson. 

"'All that I shall want is here, ' I answered. 

"'A low growl of applause ran through the men. 

"'Will you be able to light upon the islands that'll prove suitablefor us men to live on without risk until the opportunity comes in theshape of vessels for us to get away?' said Swallow. 

"'I'll do my best for you, ' said I. 'I see your wants, and you maytrust me, providing I may trust you. What's to become of me whenyou're out of the brig? That's it!'

"'You'll stay on board and do what you like with the vessel, ' answeredSwallow. 'She'll be yours to have and hold. Make what you call asalvage job of it, and your pickings, mister, 'ull be out and awaybeyond the value of what we've been obliged to make you leave behindyou. '

"'Ain't that fair?' said a man. 

"'Is my life safe?' said I. 

"'Ay, ' cried the Swallow, with a great oath, striking the table aheavy blow with his clenched fist. 'Understand this and comfortyourself. There's been no blood shed in this job, and there'll benone, so help me God--you permitting, mister. '

"When this was said, a fellow, whom I afterwards heard called by thename of Jim Davies, asked if I was willing to take an oath that Iwould be honest. I said, 'Yes. ' He stood up and dictated an oath fullof blasphemy, shocking with imprecations, and grossly illiterate. Theeyes of the crowd fastened upon me, and some of the ruffians watchedme in a scowling way with faces dark with suspicion, till I repeatedthe horrid language of the man Davies, and swore, after which thegreater bulk of them went on deck. 

"Swallow put some beef and biscuit on the table and a bottle of rum, and bade me fall to. He told me to understand that I was captain ofthe ship; that I was at liberty to appoint officers under me; andthat, though none of the convicts had been seafaring men, they hadlearnt how the ropes led and how to furl canvas, and would obey anyorders for the common good which I might deliver. I ate and drank, being determined to put the best face I could on this extraordinarybusiness, and asked for the captain's cabin, that I might find outwhat nautical instruments the brig carried. Swallow, Stevenson, and aconvict named William Watts conducted me to a berth right aft on thestarboard side. They told me it had been occupied by the captain, andshould be mine. Here I found all I needed in the shape of navigatinginstruments, and went on deck with Swallow and the others. 

"I could see nothing of the _Swan_; she was out of sight from theelevation of the brig's bulwarks. All the convicts were on deck, andthe brig looked full of men. Those who had been above whilst I was inthe cabin with the others, approached and stared at me, but notinsolently--merely with curiosity. They seemed a vile lot, one andall. With some of them every other word was an oath; their talk wasalmost gibberish to my ears with thieves' slang. I wondered to findnot one of them dressed in felon's garb; but on reflection I concludedthat they had plundered the crew and the people who had had charge ofthem and of the _Cyprus_, and had forced all those they drove out ofthe brig to change clothes before quitting the vessel. 

"However, it was my immediate policy to prove my sincerity. I valuedmy life, and I had but to look at the men to reckon that it would notbe worth a rushlight if they suspected I was not doing my best to findthem a safe asylum among the islands in the Pacific. Accordingly, Ifetched one of the charts, placed it upon the skylight, where thosewho gathered about me could see it, and laid off a course for theTonga Islands; telling the men as I pointed to the group upon thechart that if no island thereabouts satisfied them, we could head forthe Fijis or cruise about the Friendly or Navigator groups, workingour way as far as the Low Archipelago, betwixt which and the firstisland we sighted we ought certainly to fall in with the sort ofhiding-place they wanted. My words raised a grin of satisfaction inevery face within reach of my voice. 

"I stepped to the helm and headed the brig on a northerly course, andstood awhile looking at the compass to satisfy myself that the convictwho grasped the spokes understood what to do with the wheel. Hemanaged fairly well. I then asked Swallow to serve as my chief mate, and Stevenson to act as second, and calling the rest of the felonstogether, I divided them into two watches. My next step was to crowdthe little brig with all the canvas she could spread, and set everystitch of it properly. Thus passed the first day. 

"I have no time to enter minutely into what happened till we made asmall point of land in the neighbourhood of the Friendly Islands. There was abundance of provisions on board, plenty of fresh water, anda stock of spirits intended for the commandant and soldiers atMacquarie Harbour and Norfolk Island; but though the convicts freelyused whatever they found in the brig's hold, never once was there aninstance of drunkenness amongst them. I guessed them all to be asdesperate a set of miscreants as were ever transported for crime uponcrime from a convict establishment; yet they used me very well. Savingtheir villainous speech, their behaviour was fairly decorous. Theysprang to my bidding, sir'd me as though they had been seamen and Itheir captain, and, indeed, by their behaviour so reassured me that mydread of being butchered vanished, and I carried on the brig asassured of my personal safety--providing I dealt by them honestly--asthough I had been on board the old _Swan_. 

"We sighted several vessels, but, as you may suppose, we had nothingto say to them. Off the first island we came across I hove the brigto; the convicts got the long-boat out, and a dozen of them wentashore to examine and report. Five returned; the remainder had chosento stay. We made three of the islands; the natives of two of them werethreatening, and frightened the convicts back to the brig; the thirdproved uninhabited--a very gem of an island was this, --and herefifteen convicts went ashore, and thrice the boat went between theisland and the brig with provisions and necessaries for theirmaintenance. 

"But it gave me a fortnight of anxious hunting to discover suchanother island as the remaining convicts considered suitable. This atlast we fell in with midway betwixt the Union group and the Marquesas;and here the rest of the felons went ashore, after almost emptying thebrig's hold of provisions and the like. They kept the long-boat, andleft me alone in the brig. Some of them shook hands with me as theywent over the side, and thanked me for having served them so honestly. 

"It was in the evening when I was left alone. The sun was settingbehind the island, off which a gentle breeze was blowing. My firstbusiness was to run the ensign aloft, jack down. I then trimmed sailas best I could with my single pair of hands, and, putting the helmamidships, let the brig blow away south-west, designing to make forone of the Navigator Islands, where I might hope to fall in withassistance, either from the shore or from a vessel. But, shortly aftermidnight the brig, sailing quietly, grounded upon a coral shoal, fellover on to her bilge, and lay quiet. I was without a boat, and coulddo nothing but wait for daylight, and pray for a sight of some passingvessel. All next day passed, and nothing showed the wide horizonround; but about nine o'clock that night, the moon shining clearly, Ispied a sail down in the south. She drew closer, and proved a littleschooner. I hailed her with a desperate voice, and to my joy wasanswered, and in less than ten minutes she sent a boat and took meaboard. "

The South Seaman's narrative ends abruptly here, but it is known thathe was conveyed to Honolulu, at which place, strangely enough, the_Swan_ touched after he had been ashore about a week. He at once wenton board, related his strange experiences to his captain, andproceeded on his whaling career with the easy indifference of a sailoraccustomed to tragic surprises. 

The brig _Cyprus_ went to pieces on the shoal on which she hadgrounded. It is on record that of the convicts retaken on their returnto England, two were hanged--namely, Watts and Davies; two others, Beveridge and Stevenson, were transported for life to Norfolk Island;and Swallow was sent back to Macquarie Harbour. 

 _The Adventures of Three Sailors. _

TOLD BY DANIEL SMALL, ONLYMATE. 

Our vessel was a little brig, named the _Hindoo Merchant_, and wesailed on a day in March in the year of our Lord 1857, fromTrincomalee bound to Calcutta. The captain, myself, and three sailorswere Europeans; the rest of the ship's company, natives. Though wewere "flying light" as the term is--that is to say, though there waslittle more in the ship's hold than ballast, and though she hadtolerably nimble heels, for what one might term a _country-wallah_--yetthe little ship was so bothered with head winds and light airs, and long days of stagnation, that we had been several weeks afloatbefore we managed to crawl to the Norrad of the Andaman parallels, which yet left a long stretch of waters before us. If this remainderof the ocean was not to be traversed more fleetly than the space wehad already measured, then it was certain we should be running shortof water many a long while before the Sandheads came within thecompass of our horizon, and to provide against the most horriblesituation that the crew of a ship can find themselves placed in, wekept a bright look-out for vessels, and within four days managed tospeak two; but they had no water to spare, and we pushed on. 

But within three days of our speaking the second of the two vessels wesighted a third, a large barque, who at once backed her topsail to oursignals, and hailed us to know what we wanted. My captain, Mr. RogerBlow, stood up in the mizzen-rigging and asked for water. They askedhow much we needed; Captain Blow responded that whatever they couldspare would be a god-send. On this they sung out: "Send a boat with acask and you shall have what we can afford to part with. " Captain Blowthen told me to put an eighteen-gallon cask in the port-quarter boat, and go away to the barque with it. "They'll not fill it, " said he, "but a half'll be better than a quarter, and a quarter'll be goodenough; for we stand to pick up more as we go along. "

I had called to two of the English sailors, named Mike Jackson andThomas Fallows, to get into the boat, when the cask had been placed inher; and when I had entered her the darkeys lowered us; we unhookedand shoved off. There was a pleasant breeze of wind blowing; it blewhot, as though it came straight from the inside of an oven, the doorof which had been suddenly opened; the sky had the sort of glazeddimness of the human eye in fever; but right overhead it was of acopperish dazzle where the roasting orb of the sun was. I could notsee a speck of cloud anywhere, which rendered what followed the moreamazing to my mind for the suddenness of it. 

The two vessels at the first of their speaking had been tolerablyclose together, but some time had been spent in routing up the caskand getting it into the boat, and setting ourselves afloat, so that atthe moment of our shoving off--spite of the topsail of each vesselbeing to the mast--the space had widened between them, till I daresayit covered pretty nearly a mile. The wind was at west-nor'-west, andthe barque bore on the lee quarter of the _Hindoo Merchant_. The greatheat put a languor into the arms of our two seamen, and the oars roseand fell slowly and weakly. Jackson said to me: "I hope, " said he, "they 'll be able to spare us a bite of ship's bread. Our 'n is nobetter than sawdust, and if it wasn't for the worms in it, " said he, "blast me if there 'd be any nutriment in it at all. Them Cingaleseought to ha' moored their island off the Chinese coast. They 'd havegrown rich with teaching the Johnnies more tricks than they 're masterof, at plundering sailors. "

"The _Hindoo Merchant's_ bread isn't up to much, Fallows, " said I, "but this is no atmosphere to talk of bread in. What 's aboard willcarry us to the Hooghley. It is water we have to fix our minds on. "

We drew alongside of the tall barque, and the master, after lookingover the rail, asked me to step aboard and drink a glass with him inhis cabin, "for, " says he, "this is no part of the ocean to be thirstyin, " and he then gave directions for the cask to be got out of theboat, and a drink of rum and water to be handed down to the twoseamen. 

I stepped into the cabin and the captain put a bottle of brandy andsome cold water on the table. He asked me several questions about thebrig, and how long we were out, and where we were from, and the like, and one thing leading to another, he happened to mention the town hewas born in, which was my native place too--Ashford, in the county ofKent, --and here was now a topic to set us yarning, for I knew some ofhis friends and he knew some of mine; and the talk seemed to do him somuch good, whilst it was so agreeable to me, that neither of us seemedin a hurry to end it. This is the only excuse I can offer forlingering on the barque longer than, as circumstances proved, I oughtto have done. 

At last I got up and said I must be off, and I thanked him most kindlyfor the obliging reception of me, and for his goodness in supplyingthe brig with water, and I gave him Captain Blow's compliments, anddesired to know if we could accommodate him in any way in return. Heanswered "Nothing, nothing, " stepping through the hatch as he said it, and an instant after he set up his throat in a cry. 

"You 'll have to bear a hand aboard, " says he, with a face ofastonishment; "look yonder! 'T is rolling down upon your brig likesmoke. " He pointed to the vessel, and a little way past her I spied along line of white vapour no higher than Dover cliff as it looked, butas dense as those rocks of chalk too. The sun made steam of it, but ifalready it was putting a likeness of its own blankness into the skyover it, which seemed to be dying out, as the vapour came along, asthe light perishes in a looking-glass upon which you breathe. I ran tothe side and saw my boat under the gang-way and the two men in her. The cask was in the stern of the boat. The master of the barque criedout to me: "Will you not stay till that smother clears? You may loseyour brig in it. " I replied: "No, sir, thank you. I will take mychance. It is more likely I should lose her by remaining here, " andwith a flourish of the hand I dropped over the side and entered theboat. "Now, " cried I, "pull like the devil, men. "

They threw their oars over and fell to rowing fiercely; but the barquewas not five cables' length astern of us when the first of the whitecliff of vapour smote the _Hindoo Merchant, _ and she vanished in itlike a star in a cloud. There was a fresh breeze of wind behind thatline of sweeping thickness, and in places, at the base of the mass ofblankness, it would dart out in swift racings of shadow that made onethink of the feelers of some gigantic marine spider, probing under itscobweb as though feeling its way along. In a few minutes the clouddrove down over us with a loud whistling of wind, and the water closeto the boat's side ran in short, small seas, every head of it hissing;but to within the range of a biscuit toss all was flying, glisteningobscurity, with occasional bursts of denser thicknesses which almosthid one end of the boat from the other. It was about six o'clock inthe afternoon, and there might be yet another hour of sunshine. 

"'Vast rowing!" says I presently, "you may keep the oars over, butthere's no good in pulling, short of keeping her head to wind. This istoo thick to last. "

"Ain't so sure of that, " says Fallows, taking a slow look round at thesmother, "I 've been in these here seas for two days running inweather arter this pattern. "

"Pity we didn't stay aboard the barque, " says Jackson. 

"A plague on your pities!" I cried. "I know my duty, I believe. Suppose we _had_ stayed aboard the barque, we stood to be separatedfrom the brig in this breeze and muckiness, and was her skipperby-and-bye going to sail in search of the _Hindoo Merchant_?"

"A gun!" cries Fallows. 

"That'll be the brig, " says I, catching the dull thud of the explosionof a nine-pounder which the _Hindoo Merchant_ carried on herquarter-deck. 

"Seems to me as though it sounded from yonder, " says Jackson, lookingaway over the starboard beam of the boat. 

"What have ye there, men?" says I, nodding at a bundle of canvas underthe amidship thwart. 

"Ship's bread, " answered Jackson, with a note of sulkiness in hisvoice. "It was hove to us on my asking for a bite. She was a liberalbarque. The cask's more 'n three-quarters full. "

We hung upon our oars listening and waiting. There was a second gunten minutes after the first had been fired, and that was the last weheard. The report was thin and distant, but whether ahead or astern Icould not have guessed by harkening. I kept up my own and endeavouredto inspirit the hearts of the others by saying that this fog which hadcome down in a moment would end in a moment, that it was all clear skyabove with plenty of moonlight for us in the night if it should happenthat the sun went down upon us thus, that Captain Blow was not goingto lose us and his boat and the cask of fresh water if it was inmortal seamanship to hold a vessel in one situation; but the fellowswere not to be cheered, their spirits sank and their faces grew longeras the complexion of the fog told us that the sun was sinking fast, and I own that when it came at last to his setting, and no break inthe flying vapour, and a blackness as of ink stealing into it out ofthe swift tropic dusk, I myself felt horribly dejected, greatlyfearing that we had lost the brig for good. 

Just before the last of the twilight faded out of the smoke thatshrouded us, we lashed both oars together and, attaching them to theboat's painter, threw them overboard and rode to them. Our thirst wasnow extreme, and to appease it--being without a dipper to drop intothe cask--we sank a handkerchief through the bung-hole and wrung itout in the half of a cocoa-nut shell that was in the boat as a baler, and by this means procured a drink, each man. Grateful to God indeedwas I that we had fresh water with us. I beat the cask, and gatheredby the sound that it was more than half full. Heaven was bountiful tooin providing us with biscuit. It had been the luckiest of thoughts onJackson's part, though he had desired nothing more than to obtain arelish for his own rations of buffalo hump aboard. 

I never remember the like of the pitch darkness of that night. Therewas a moon, pretty nearly a full one if I recollect aright; but hadshe been shining over the other side of the world it would have beenall the same. Her delicate silver beam could not pierce the vapour, and never once did I behold the least glistening of her radianceanywhere. There was a constant noise of wind in the dense thickness, and an incessant seething and crackling of waters running nimbly, sothat though we would from time to time bend our ears in the hope ofcatching the rushing and pouring noise of the sea divided by a ship'sstem, we never could hear more than the whistling of the breeze andthe lapping of the hurrying little surges. There was a deal of fire inthe water, and it came and went in sheets like the reflection oflightning, insomuch that we might have believed ourselves in the heartof an electric storm; but happily the wind never gathered so muchweight as to raise a troublesome sea, and though the boat tumbledfriskily she kept dry, and there was nothing in her movements torender me uneasy. 

I told the two fellows to lie down in the bottom of the boat, and Ikept watch till I reckoned it was drawing on to about one o'clock inthe morning. Twice or thrice during that long and wretched vigil thereseemed a promise of the weather clearing, and I gazed with theyearning of the shipwrecked; but regularly it thickened and blackeneddown upon us again in blasts like the belchings of a three-decker'sbroadside. It was a very watery vapour, and I was early wet to theskin. 

At about one o'clock, as I calculated, I awoke Jackson, and bade himkeep an eager look-out and not to spare his ear in putting it againstthe night, "for, " says I, "there's nothing to be done with the eyes;it's all for the hearing at such a time as this, mate, and what youcan't watch for you must listen for; and wake me up to any sound youmay hear, that our three throats may hail together. O God, " says I, "if it would but thin and show the brig within reach of our shouts!"With that I lay down and was soon fast asleep, being worn out withexcitement and grief, and when I awoke it was daylight, for there'sbut little dawn off the Andamans; the sun in those seas leaps on tothe horizon from the night as it were, and flashes it into day in abreath. 

It was still thick and troubled weather, but clear to about two milesfrom the side of the boat. There was very little wind, and a longswell of the colour of lead was running from the southward. The vapourhad broken up and lay in masses round about us--long, white twistedfolds of it, like powder smoke after a great battle; and to the top ofthose heaps of thickness the sky sloped in a sort of grey shadow, witha little pencilling here and there of some small livid ring of mist, which looked stirless as though what air there was blew low. There wasnothing in sight; we strained our gaze into every quarter but I sawthere was nothing to be seen. This smote me to the heart. I had beenin my time in several situations of peril at sea, but had never yetexperienced the horrors of an open boat amidst a vast waste of waters, such as was this Bay of Bengal with the Andaman Islands some hundredsof miles distant, and a near menace of roasting heat when the widegrey stretch of cloud should have passed away and laid bare the sun'seye of fire. We gazed with melancholy faces one at another. 

"What's to be done?" says Fallows, bringing his bloodshot eyes fromthe sea to my face; "if we had a sail to set we might have a chance. "

"There are two oars, " said I, "for a mast and a yard, and our shirtsmust furnish a sail. "

"But how are we to head?" says Jackson. 

"Right afore the wind, I suppose, " says I; "there'll be no ratchingwith the rags we're going to hoist. Right afore the wind, " I says;"and we must trust to God to keep us in view till something heaves insight--which is pretty well bound to happen I suppose when there comessome wind along. "

I opened the canvas parcel, and found a matter of thirty biscuits; allvery sweet, good bread. We took each of us a piece, and followed onwith a drink, and then went to work to get our oars in. We all threewore shirts, and we stripped them off our backs and cut them to lieopen. I had a little circular cushion of stout pins in my pocket, suchas a sailor might carry, and with them we brought the squares of theshirts together, and seized the corners to one of the oars by yarnsout of an end of painter we cut off, then stepped the other oar, andsecured it with another piece of the painter; and now we had a sort ofsail, the mere sight of which, even, was a small satisfaction to us, since the shirts being white they must needs make a good mark upon thewater, something not to be missed, unless wilfully, by a passingvessel. 

The morning passed away, and a little after twelve o'clock the waterin the south was darkened by the brushing of a wind, which drove thehovering masses of vapour before it; and presently they had totallydisappeared, leaving a sky with rents and yawns of blue in places, anda clear glass-like circle of horizon, upon which, however, there wasnothing to be seen. The boat moved slowly before the wind, which blewhot as a desert breeze; I steered, and Jackson and Fallows sat nearme, one or the other from time to time getting on to a thwart to takea view of the ocean, under the sharp of his hand. 

In this fashion passed the afternoon. The night came with a deal offire in the water, and a very clear moon floating in lagoons of velvetsoftness betwixt the clouds. The weather continued quiet; the longswell made a pleasant cradle of the boat, and the night-wind beingfull of dew, breathed refreshingly upon our hot cheeks; whilst ourears were soothed by the rippling noise of the running waters whichseemed to cool the senses, as the breeze did the body. 

It was almost a dead calm, however, at daybreak next morning. Theatmosphere was close and heavy, and there was a strange strong smellof seaweed, rising off the ocean, which caused me to look narrowlyabout, with some dim dream of perceiving land, though I should haveknown there was no land for leagues and leagues. 

Whilst we were munching a biscuit, I observed an appearance of steamlifting off the water, at a distance of about half-a-mile on thestarboard side of the boat. The vapour came out of the water in theshape of corkscrews, spirally working, and they melted at a height ofperhaps ten or fifteen feet. I counted five of these singularemissions. Jackson said that they were fragments of mist, and we mightlook out for such another thickness as had lost us the brig. Fallowssaid: "No; that's no mist, mate; that is as good steam as ever blewout of a kettle. Are there places where the water boils in this hereocean?"

As he said these words, an extraordinary thrill passed through theboat, followed by a sound that seemed more like an intellectualsensation than a real noise. What to compare it to I don't know; itwas as though it had thundered under the sea. An instant later, upfrom the part of the water where the corkscrew appearances were, rosea prodigious body of steam. It soared without a sound from the deep;it was balloon-shaped but of mountainous proportions. 

"A sea-quake!" roared Jackson. "Stand by for the rollers!"

But no sea followed. I could witness no commotion whatever in thewater; the light, long swell flowed placidly into the base of the massof whiteness, and there was nothing besides visible on the breast ofthe sea, save the delicate wrinkling of the weak draught of air. Veryquickly the vapour thinned as steam does, and as it melted off thesurface, it disclosed to our astonished gaze what at first sightseemed to me the fabric of a great ship, but after viewing it for amoment or two, I distinctly made out the form of an old-fashioned hullwith the half of much such another hull as she, alongside, bothapparently locked together about the bows; and they seemed to besupported by some huge gleaming black platform; but what it was wecould not tell. 

The three of us drew a deep breath as we surveyed the floatingobjects. The steam was gone; there they lay plain and bare; it was asthough the wand of a magician had touched the white mass andtransformed it into the objects we gazed at. 

"Down with the sail, " says I, "there's something yonder worth lookingat. "

We got the oars over, and pulled in the direction of the fabrics. Aswe approached I could scarce credit the evidence of my own sight. Theform of one of the vessels was perfect. She was of an antique build, and belonged to a period that I reckoned was full eighty years deadand gone. The other--the half of her I should say--showed a muchbluffer bow, and had been a vessel of some burthen. But the wonder wasthe object on which they rested. This was no more nor less than thebody of a great dead whale!

We first needed to lose something of our amazement ere we couldreasonably speculate upon what we saw; then how this had happened grewplain to our minds. The two craft, God knows how many long yearsbefore, had been in action and foundered in conflict. The smallervessel--I mean the one that lay whole before us--might have been aprivateersman; she had something of a piratical sheer forward, therewere no signs of a mast aboard either of them, one had grappled theother to board her I dare say, and they had both gone to the bottomlinked. The vessel of which only half remained may have broken herback in settling, and, by-and-bye, the after part of her drifted away, leaving the dead bows still gripped by the dead enemy alongside. Buthow came the whale there? Well, we three men reasoned it thus, and Idon't doubt we were right. At the moment of the sea-quake the whalewas stemming steadily towards the two wrecks resting on the bottom. They were lifted by the explosion, which at the same time killed thewhale; but the impetus of the vast form slided it to under the liftedkeels, where it came to a stand. A dead whale floats, as we know. Thiswhale being dead was bound to rise, and the buoyancy of the immensemass brought the two craft up with it, and there they were, poised bythe gleaming surface of the whale, which was depressed by theirweight, so that no portion of the head, tail, or fluke was visible. 

"It's them vessels being connected, " says Jackson, "as keeps themafloat. If what holds them together forrard was to part they'd slideoff that there slipperiness and sink. "

We rowed close, the three of us greatly marvelling, as you maysuppose, for never had the like of such an incident as this happenedat sea within the knowledge of ever a one of us, and Fallows alone wasa man of five and forty, who had been using the ocean for thirty-threeyears. It was as scaring as the rising of a corpse out of thedepths--as scaring as if that corpse turned to and spoke when his headshowed, --to see those two vessels lying in the daylight after eighty, aye, and perhaps a hundred years of the green silence hundreds offathoms deep, locked in the same posture in which they had gone down, making you almost fancy that you could hear the thunder of their guns, witness the flashing of cutlasses, and the rush of the boarders to thebulwarks amidst a hurricane note of huzzaing and shrieks of thewounded. 

They were both of them handsomely crusted with shells, not of thebarnacle sort, but such as you would pick up anywhere in Ceylon or theAndaman, some of them finely coloured, many of them white as milk, ofa thousand different patterns; and there was not one of them but whatwas beautiful. 

"Let's board her, " says Jackson. 

"Ah, but if that whale be alive!" says Fallows. 

"No fear of that, " said I; "if he was alive there'd be some stir inhim. The whale's not the danger; it's the lashing, which may part atany moment. It should be in a fair way of rottenness after so manyyears of salt water, and if it goes the vessels go. "

"I'm for boarding her all the same, " says Jackson. 

But first of all we pulled round to betwixt the bows of the craft tosee what it was that connected them, and we found that they were heldtogether by something stronger than an old grapnel. The bluff of thebows came together like walls cemented by sand and shell, and it waseasy by a mere glance to perceive that they would hold together whilstthe sea continued tranquil. Betwixt their heels was a hollow which theround of the whale nicely filled, and there they all three lay, veryslowly and solemnly rolling upon the swell in as deep a silence asever they had risen from. 

We hung upon our oars speculating awhile, and then fell to talkingourselves into extravagant notions. Fallows said that if she had beena privateer she might have money in her, or some purchase anyway worthcoming at. I was not for ridiculing the fancy, and Jackson gazed atthe craft with a yearning eye. 

"Let's get aboard, " says he. 

"Very well, " says I, and we agreed that Fallows should keep in theboat ready to pick us up, if the hulk should go down suddenly underus. We easily got aboard. From the gunwale of our boat we could placeour hands upon the level of the deck, where the bulwarks were gone, and the shells were like steps to our feet. There was nothing much tobe seen, however; the decks were coated with shells as the sides were, and they went flush from the taffrail to the eyes with never a break, everything being clean gone, saving the line of the hatches whichshowed in slightly raised squares, under the crust of shells that layeverywhere like armour. 

"Lord!" cried Jackson; "what would I give for a chopper or pick-axe tosmash open that there hatch, so as to get inside of her. "

"Inside of her?" says I; "why she'll be full of water!"

"That's to be proved, Mr. Small, " says he. 

We walked forward into the bows, and clearly made out the shape of agrapnel thick with shells, with its claws upon the bulwark rail of thehalf-ship alongside, and there was a line stretched between, belayedto what might have been a kevel on a stanchion of the craft we werein. This rope was as lovely as a piece of fancy work, with tinyshells; but on my touching it, to see if it was taut, it parted as ifit had been formed of smoke, and each end fell with a little rattleagainst the side as though it had been a child's string of beads. 

We were gaping about us, almost forgetting our distressed situation, in contemplation of these astonishing objects which had risen likeghosts from the mysterious heart of the deep, when we heard Fallowscalling, and on our running to the side to learn what he wanted, wesaw him standing up in the boat, pointing like a madman into thesouthward. It was the white canvas of a vessel, clearer to us than tohim, who was lower by some feet. The air was still a weak draught, butthe sail was rising with a nimbleness that made us know she wasbringing a breeze of wind along with her, and in half-an-hour's timeshe had risen to the black line of her bulwarks rail, disclosing thefabric of what was apparently a brig or barque, heading almost dead onher end for us. 

Jackson and I at once tumbled into the boat, but we were careful tokeep her close to the two craft, and the amazing platform they floatedon, for they furnished out a show that was not to be missed aboard theapproaching vessel, whereas the boat must make little more than aspeck though but half-a-mile distant. 

The breeze the vessel was bringing along with her was all about uspresently with a threat of weight in it. We stepped an oar, with theshirts atop, and they blew out bravely and made a good signal. 

"Why, see, Mr. Small!" cries Jackson, on a sudden, "ain't she the_Hindoo Merchant_?"

I stood awhile, and then joyfully exclaimed, "Ay, 't is the old hookerherself, thanks be to God!"

I knew her by her short fore-topgallantmast, by her chequered band, and by other signs clear to a sailor's eye, and the three of us sentup a shout of delight, for it was like stumbling upon one's very home, as it were, after having been all night lost amidst the blackness andsnow of the country where one's house stands. 

She came along handsomely, with foam to the hawsepipe, thanks to thefreshening breeze, and her main royal and topgallantsail clewing up asshe approached, for our signal had been seen; then drove closealongside with her topsail aback and in a few minutes we were aboard, shaking hands with Captain Blow, and all others who extended a fist tous, and spinning our yarn in response to the eager questions put. 

"But what have you there, Mr. Small?" said Captain Blow, staring atthe two craft and the whale. I explained. "Well, " cries he, "call me amissionary if ever I saw such a sight as that afore! Have ye boardedthe vessel?" pointing to the one that was whole. 

"Yes, " said I, "but there's nothing but shells to look at. "

"Hatches open?" says he. 

"No, " says I, "they are as securely cemented with shells as if thestuff had been laid on with a trowel. "

Jackson, Fallows, the boatswain, and a few of the darkeys stood near, eagerly catching what we said. 

"A wonderful sight truly!" said Captain Blow, surveying the objectwith a face almost distorted with astonishment and admiration. "Howmany years will they have been asleep under water, think ye, Mr. Small?"

"All a hundred, sir, " said I. 

"Ay, " says he, "I've seen many prints of old ships, and I'll allowthat it's all a hundred, as you say, since she and the likes of shewas afloat. Why, " cries he with a sort of a nervous laugh as if halfashamed of what he was about to say, "who's to tell but that there maybe a chest or two of treasure stowed away down in her lazerette?"

"That very idea occurred to me, sir, " says I. 

"By your pardon, capt'n, " here interrupted Jackson, knuckling hisforehead, "but that may be a question not hard to settle if ye'll sendme aboard with a few tools. "

The captain looked as if he had had a mind to entertain the idea, thensent a glance to windward. 

"She'll be full of water, " said I. 

"Ay, " said the captain, turning to Jackson, "how then?"

"We can but lift a hatch and look out for ourselves, sir, " answeredthe man. 

"Right, " says the captain; "but you'll have to bear a hand. Get thatcask on board. Any water in it?" says he. 

"Yes, sir, " says I. 

"Thank God for the same then, " says he. 

But whilst they were manoeuvring with the cask the breeze freshened ina sudden squall, and all in a minute, as it seemed, a sort of sloppysea was set a-running. The captain looked anxious, yet still seemedwilling that the boat should go to the wreck. I sent some Lascarsaloft to furl the loose canvas, and whilst this was doing, the windfreshened yet in another long-drawn blast that swept in a shriekbetwixt our masts. 

"There's nothing to be done!" sung out the skipper; "get that boatunder the fall, Jackson; we must hoist her up. "

The darkeys lay aft to the tackles, and Jackson climbed over the railwith a countenance sour and mutinous with disappointment. He hadscarcely sprung on to the deck, when we heard a loud crash like thereport of a small piece of ordnance, and, looking towards the hulks, Iwas just in time to see them sliding off the back of the whale, one oneither side of the greasy, black surface. They vanished in a breath, and the dead carcass, relieved of their weight, seemed to spring, asthough it were alive, some ten or twelve feet out of the seething andsimmering surface which had been frothed up by the descent of thevessels; the next moment it turned over and gave us a view of itswhole length--a sixty to seventy-foot whale, if the carcass was aninch, with here and there the black scythe-like dorsal fin of a sharksailing round it. 

Jackson hooked a quid out of his mouth and sent it overboard. His faceof mutiny left him, and was replaced by an expression of gratitude. Five minutes later the old _Hindoo Merchant_ was thrusting through itwith her nose heading for the river Hooghley, and the darkeys tying asingle reef in the foretopsail. 

 _The Strange Tragedy of the "White Star_. "

It is proper I should state at once that the names I give in thisextraordinary experience are fictitious; the date of the tale iseasily within the memory of the middle-aged. 

The large, well-known Australian liner _White Star_ lay off thewool-sheds in Sydney harbour slowly filling up with wool; I say slowly, for the oxen were languid up-country, and the stuff came in as Fox issaid to have written his history--"drop by drop. " We were, however, advertised to sail in a fortnight from the day I open this story on, and there was no doubt of our getting away by then. 

I, who was chief officer of the vessel, was pacing the poop under theawning, when I saw a lady and gentleman approaching the vessel. Theyspoke to the mate of a French barque which lay just ahead of us, and Iconcluded that their business was with that ship, till I saw theFrenchman, with a flourish of his hat, motion towards the _WhiteStar_, whereupon they advanced and stepped on board. 

I went on to the quarter-deck to receive them. The gentleman had theair of a military man: short, erect as a royal mast, with plenty ofwhiskers and moustache, though he wore his chin cropped. His companionwas a very fine young woman of about six and twenty years; above theaverage height, faultlessly shaped, so far as a rude seafaring eye isprivileged to judge of such matters; her complexion was pale, inclinedto sallow, but most delicate, of a transparency of flesh that showedthe blood eloquent in her cheek, coming and going with every mood thatpossessed her. She wore a little fall of veil, but she raised it whenher companion handed her over the side in order to look round andaloft at the fabric of spar and shroud towering on high, with itscentral bunting of house flag pulling in ripples of gold and blue fromthe royalmast head; and so I had a good sight of her face, andparticularly of her eyes. 

I never remember the like of such eyes in a woman. To describe them asneither large nor small, the pupils of the liquid dusk of theIndian's, the eyelashes long enough to cast a silken shadow oftenderness upon the whole expression of her face when the lidsdropped--to say all this is to convey nothing; simply because theirexpression formed the wonder, strangeness, and beauty of them, andthere is no virtue in ink, at all events in my ink, to communicate it. I do not exaggerate when I assure you that the surprise of the beautyof her eyes when they came to mine and rested upon me, steadfast intheir stare as a picture, was a sort of shock in its way, comparablein a physical sense to one's unexpected handling of something slightlyelectric. For the rest, her hair was very black and abundant, and ofthat sort of deadness of hue which you find among the people of Asia. I cannot describe her dress. Enough if I say that she was in mourning, but with a large admixture of white, for those were the hot weeks inSydney. 

"Is the captain on board?" inquired the gentleman. 

"He is not, sir. "

"When do you expect him?"

"Every minute. "

"May we stop here?"

"Certainly. Will you walk into the cuddy or on to the poop?"

"Oh, we'll keep in the open, we'll keep in the open, " cried thegentleman, with the impetuosity of a man rendered irritable by theheat. "You'll have had enough of the cuddy, Miss Le Grand, long beforeyou reach the old country. "

She smiled. I liked her face then. It was a fine, glad, good-humouredsmile, and humanised her wonderful eyes just as though you clothed aghost in flesh, making the spectre natural and commonplace. 

As we ascended the poop ladder, the gentleman asked me who I was, quite courteously, though his whole manner was marked by a quality ofmilitary abruptness. When he understood I was chief officer heexclaimed:

"Then Miss Le Grand permit me to introduce Mr. Tyler to you. MissGeorgina Le Grand is going home in your ship. She will be alone. Wehave placed her in the care of the captain. "

"Perhaps, " said Miss Le Grand with another of her fine smiles, "Iought to introduce you, Mr. Tyler, to my uncle, Colonel Atkinson. "

Again I pulled off my cap, and the colonel laughed as he lifted hiswide straw hat. I guessed he laughed at a certain naïvete in thegirl's way of introducing us. 

The colonel was disposed to chat. Out of England Englishmen areamongst the most talkative of the human race. Likely enough he wantedto interest me in Miss Le Grand because of my situation on board. Achief mate is a considerable figure. If any mishap incapacitates themaster, the chief mate takes charge. We walked the poop, the three ofus, in the violet shadow cast by the awning; the colonel constantlydirected his eyes along the quay to observe if the captain was coming. During this stroll to and fro the white planks I got theseparticulars, partly from the direct assertions of the colonel, partlyfrom the occasional remarks of the girl. 

Colonel Atkinson had married her father's sister. Her father had beenan officer in the army, and had sailed from England with the thenGovernor of New South Wales. After he had been in Sydney a few monthshe sent for his daughter, whom he had left behind him with a maternalaunt, her mother having died some years before. She reached Sydney tofind her father dead. His Excellency was very kind to her, and shefound very many sympathetic friends, but her home was in England, andto it she was returning in the _White Star_, under the care of themaster, Captain Edward Griffiths, after a stay of nearly five monthsin Sydney with her uncle, Colonel Atkinson. 

Half an hour passed before the captain arrived. When he stepped onboard I lifted my cap and left the poop, and the captain and theothers went into the cuddy. 

Our day of departure came round, and not a little rejoiced was I whenthe tug had fairly got hold of us, and we were floating over thesheet-calm surface of Sydney Bay, past some of the loveliest bits ofscenery the world has to offer, on our road to the mighty ocean beyondthe grim portals of Sydney Heads. We were a fairly crowded ship, whatwith Jacks and passengers. The steerage and 'tween-decks were full upwith people going home; in the cuddy some of the cabins remainedunlet. We mustered in all, I think, about twelve gentlemen and ladypassengers, one of whom, needless to say, was Miss Georgina Le Grand. 

I had been busy on the forecastle when she came aboard, but heardafterwards from Robson, the second mate, that the Governor's wife, with Colonel Atkinson, and certain nobs out of Government House haddriven down to the ship to say good-bye to the girl. She was alone. Iwondered she had not a maid, but I afterwards heard from a brightlittle lady on board, a Mrs. Burney, one of the wickedest flirts thatever with a flash of dark glance drew a sigh from a man, that thewoman Miss Le Grand had engaged to accompany her as maid to Europe hadomitted to put in an appearance at the last moment, in perfectconformity with the manners and habits of the domestic servants of theAustralian colonies of those days, and the young lady having no timeto procure another maid had shipped alone. 

At dinner on that first day of our departure, when the ship was at seaand I was stumping the deck in charge, I observed, in glancing throughthe skylight, that the captain had put Miss Le Grand upon the right ofhis chair, at the head of the table, a little before the fluted andemblazoned shaft of mizzenmast. I don't think above five sat down todinner; a long heave of swell had sickened the hunger out of most ofthem. But it was a glorious evening, and the red sunshine, flashingfair upon the wide open skylights, dazzled out as brilliant andhospitable a picture of cabin equipment as the sight could wish. 

I had a full view of Miss Le Grand, and occasionally paused to look ather, so standing as to be unobserved. Now that I saw her with her hatoff I found something very peculiar and fascinating in her beauty. Hereyes seemed to fill her face, subduing every lineament to the fullspiritual light and meaning in them, till her countenance looked sheerintellect, the very quality and spirit of mind itself. This effect, Ithink, was largely achieved by the uncommon hue of her skin. Itaccentuated colour, casting a deeper dye into the blackness of herhair, sharpening the fires in her eyes, painting her lips with a morefiery tinge of carnation through which, when she smiled, her whiteteeth shone like light itself. 

I noticed even on this first day, during my cautious occasional peeps, that the captain was particularly attentive to the young lady; inwhich, indeed, I should have found nothing significant--for she had ina special degree been committed to his trust--but for the circumstanceof his being a bachelor. Even then, early and fresh as the time wasfor thinking of such things, I guessed when I looked at the girl thatthe hardy mariner alongside of her would not keep his heart whole aweek, if indeed, for the matter of that, he was not already head overears. He was a good-looking man in his way; not everybody's type ofmanly beauty, perhaps, but certain of admiration from those who relisha strong sea flavour and the colour of many years and countlessleagues of ocean in looks, speech, and deportment. He was aboutthirty-five, the heartiest laugher that ever strained a rib inmerriment, a genial, kindly man, with a keen, seawardly blue eye, weather-coloured face, short whiskers, and rising in his socks to nearsix feet. I believe he was of Welsh blood. This was my first voyagewith him. The rigorous discipline of the quarter-deck had held usapart, and all that I could have told of him I have here written. 

For some time after we left Sydney nothing whatever noteworthyhappened. One quiet evening I came on deck at eight o'clock to takecharge of the ship till midnight. We were still in the temperateparallels, the weather of a true Pacific sweetness, and, by day, theocean a dark blue rolling breast of water, feathering on every roundof swell in sea-flashes, out of which would sparkle the flying-fish tosail down the bright mild wind for a space, then vanish in some browof brine with the flight of a silver arrow. 

This night the moon was dark, the weather somewhat thick, the starspale over the trucks, and hidden in the obscurity a little way downthe dusky slope of firmament. Windsails were wriggling fore and aftlike huge white snakes, gaping for the tops and writhing out of thehatches. The flush of sunset was dying when I came on deck. I saw thecaptain slowly pacing the weather side of the poop with Miss Le Grand. He seemed earnest in his talk and gestures. Enough western light stilllived to enable me to see faces, and I observed that Mrs. Burney, standing to leeward of a skylight talking with a gentleman, wouldglance at the couple with a satirical smile whenever they came abreastof her. 

But soon the night came down in darkness upon the deep; the wind blewdamp out of the dusk in a long moan over the rail, heeling the shipyet by a couple of degrees; the captain sang out for the fore andmizzen-royals to be clewed up and furled, and shortly afterwards wentbelow, first handing Miss Le Grand down the companion-way. 

I guessed the game was up with the worthy man: he had met his fate andtaken to it with the meekness of a sheep. He might do worse, Ithought, as I started on a solitary stroll, so far as looks areconcerned; but what of her nature--her character? It was puzzling tothink of what sort of spirit it was that looked out of her wonderfuleyes; and she was not a kind of a girl that a man would care to leaveashore; so much beauty, full of a subtle endevilment of some sort, asit seemed to me, must needs demand the constant sentinelling of ahusband's presence. That was how it struck me. 

By eleven o'clock all was hushed throughout the ship: lights out, thecaptain turned in, nothing stirring forward save the flitting shape ofthe look-out under the yawn of the pale square of fore-course. It wasblowing a pleasant breeze of wind, and lost in thought I leaned overthe rail at the weather fore-end of the poop watching the coldsea-glow shining in the dark water as the foam spat past, sheeting awayastern in a furrow like moonlight. I will swear I did not doze; that Inever was guilty of whilst on duty in all the years I was at sea; butI don't doubt that I was sunk deep in thought, insomuch that myreverie may have possessed a temporary power of abstraction ascomplete as slumber itself. 

I was startled into violent wakefulness by a cannonade of canvasaloft, and found the ship in the wind. I looked aft; the wheel wasdeserted--at least I believed so, till on rushing to it, meanwhileshouting to the watch on deck, I spied the figure of the helmsman onhis face close beside the binnacle. 

I thought he was dead. The watch to my shouts came tumbling to thebraces, and in a few minutes the captain made his appearance. The shipwas got to her course afresh, by which time the man who had beensteering was so far recovered as to be able to sit on the gratingabaft the wheel and relate what had happened. 

He was a Dane, and spoke with a strong foreign accent, beyond my artto reproduce. He said he had been looking away to leeward, believinghe saw a light out upon the horizon, when on turning his head hebeheld a ghost at his side. 

"A what?" said the captain. 

"A ghost, sir, so help me--" and here the little Dane indulged in somevery violent language, all designed to convince us that he spoke thetruth. 

"What was it like?" asked the captain. 

"It was dressed in white and stood looking at me. I tried to run andcould not, but fell, and maybe fainted. "

"The durned idiot slept, " said the captain to me, "and dreamt, anddropped on his nut. "

"Had I dropped on my nut, should not have woke up then?" cried theDane, in a passion of candour. 

"Go forward and turn in, " said the captain. "The doctor shall see youand report to me. "

When the man was gone the captain asked me if I had seen anythinglikely to produce the impression of a ghost on an ignorant, credulousman's mind? I answered no, wondering that he should ask such aquestion. 

"How long was the man in a fit, d'ye think?" said he, "that is, beforeyou found out that the wheel was deserted?"

"Three or four minutes. "

He looked into the binnacle, took a turn about the decks, and, withoutsaying anything more about the ghost, went below. 

The doctor next day reported that the Dane was perfectly well, and ofsound mind, and that he stuck with many imprecations to his story. Hedescribed the ghost as a figure in white that looked at him withsparkling eyes, and yet blindly. He was unable to describe thefeatures. Fright, no doubt, stood in the way of perception. He couldnot imagine where the thing had come from. He was, as he had said, gazing at what looked like a spark or star to leeward, when turninghis head he found the Shape close beside him. 

The captain and the doctor talked the thing over in my presence, andwe decided to consider it a delusion on the part of the Dane, aphantom of his imagination, mainly because the man swooned after hesaw the thing, letting go the wheel so that the ship came up into thewind, and it was impossible to conceive that a substantial objectcould have vanished in the time that elapsed between the man fallingdown and the flap of sails which had called my attention to theabandoned helm. 

However, nothing was said about the matter aft: the sailors adoptedthe doctor's opinion, some viewing the thing as a "Dutchman's" dodgeto get a "night in. "

A few days later brought us intocold weather: this was followed by the ice and conflicts of the Horn. We drove too far south, and for a week every afternoon we hove-tounder a close-reefed maintopsail for fear of the ice throughout thelong hours of Antarctic blackness. We were in no temper to think ofghosts, and yet though no one had delivered the news authoritatively, it had come by this wild bleak time to be known that Captain Griffithsand Miss Le Grand were engaged. Mrs. Burney told me so one day in thecuddy, and with a wicked flash of her dark eye wondered that peoplecould think of making love with icebergs close at hand. 

It was no business of mine, and seemingly I gave the matter no heed, though I could find leisure and curiosity sometimes for an askantglance at the captain and his beauty when they were at table or whenthe weather permitted the lady to come on deck, and their behaviourleft me in very little doubt that he was deeply in love with her; butwhether she was equally enamoured of him I could not guess. 

We beat clear of the latitude of roaring gales blind with snow, andmountainous ice-islands like cities of alabaster in ruins, and seasridging in thunder and foam to the height of our mizzentop, andheading north blew under wide wings of studding sails towards the sun, every day sinking some southern stars out of sight, and every nightlifting above the sea-line some gem of the heavens dear to northerneyes. 

I went below at eight bells on a Friday morning when we were twomonths "out" from Sydney, as I very well remember. The ship had thencaught the first of the south-east trade-wind. All was well when Ileft the deck. I was awakened by a hand violently shaking my shoulder. I sprang up and found Robson, the second mate, standing beside mybunk. He was pale as the ghost the Dane had described. 

"There's been murder done, sir, " he cried. "The captain's killed. "

I stared at him like a fool, and echoed mechanically and dully:"Murder done! Captain killed!" Then collecting my wits I tumbled intomy clothes and rushed to the captain's cabin, where I found the doctorand the third mate examining poor Griffith's body. It washalf-past-six o'clock in the morning, and the daylight strong, but noneof the passengers were moving. The captain had been stabbed to theheart. The doctor said he had been killed by a single thrust. The bodywas clothed in white drill trousers and a white linen shirt, which wasslightly stained with blood where the knife had pierced it. 

Who had done this thing? It was horrible, unprovoked murder!throughout the ship the captain had been the most popular man onboard. The forecastle liking for him was as strong as sentiment of anysort can find expression in that part of a vessel. There had neverbeen a murmur. Indeed I had never sailed with a better crew. Not a manhad deserted us at Sydney and of the hands on board at least half hadsailed with the captain before. 

We carefully searched the cabin, but there was nothing whatever totell us that robbery had been committed. However, a ghastly, shockingmurder had been perpetrated; the man on whose skill and judgment haddepended the safety of the ship and the many lives within her had beenfoully done to death in his sleep by some mysterious hand, and wedetermined at once upon a course. 

First, I sent for some of the best and most trustworthy seamen amongstthe crew, and bringing them into the captain's cabin, showed them thebody. I then, in my capacity as commander of the vessel, authorisedthem to act as a sort of detectives or policemen, and to search everypart of the ship and all the berths in the steerage and 'tween-decksfor any clue to the doer of the deed. It was arranged that the cabinsof the first-class passengers should be thoroughly overhauled by thesecond and third mates. 

All this brought us to the hour when the passengers arose, and theship was presently alive. The news swept from lip to lip magically; inall parts of the ship I saw men and women talking, with their facespale with consternation and horror. I had not the courage to break thenews to Miss Le Grand, and asked the doctor, a quiet, gentlemanly man, to speak to her. I was on the poop looking after the ship when thedoctor came from the young lady's berth. 

"How did she receive the news?" said I. 

"I wish it may not break her heart, " said he, gravely. "She was turnedinto stone. Her stare of grief was dreadful--not the greatest actresscould imagine such a look. There'll be no comforting her this side ofEngland. "

"Doctor, could he have done it himself?"

"Oh, heaven, no, sir!" and he explained, by recalling the posture ofthe body and the situation of the hands, not to mention the absence ofthe weapon, why it was impossible the captain should have killedhimself. 

I don't know how it came about; but whilst I paced the deck waitingfor the reports of the mates and the seamen and the passengers whowere helping me in the search, it entered my head to mix up with thismurder the spectre, or ghost, that had frightened the Dane at thewheel into a fit, along with the memory of a sort of quarrel which Iguessed had happened between Captain Griffiths and Miss Le Grand. Itwas a mere muddle of fancies at best, and yet they took a hold of myimagination. I think it was about a week before this murder that I hadobserved the coolness of what you might call a lovers' quarrel betwixtthe captain and his young lady, and without taking any further noticeof it I quietly set the cause down to Mrs. Burney, who, as athorough-paced flirt, with fine languishing black eyes, and a saucytongue, had often done her best to engage the skipper in one of thoselittle asides which are as brimstone and the undying worm to the jealousof either sex. The lovers had made it up soon after, and for two orthree days previously had been as thick and lover-like as sweet-heartsought to be. 

But what had the ghost that had affrighted the Dane to do with thismurder? And how were Mrs. Burney's blandishments, and the short-livedquarrel betwixt the lovers to be associated with it? Nevertheless, these matters ran in my head as I walked the deck on the morning ofthat crime, and I thought and thought, scarce knowing, however, inwhat direction imagination was heading. 

The two mates, the seamen, and the passengers arrived with theirreports. They had nothing to tell. The steward and the stewardess hadsearched with the two mates in the saloon or cuddy. Every cabin hadbeen ransacked, with the willing consent of its occupants. Theforecastle, and 'tween-decks, and steerage, and lazarette had beenminutely overhauled. Every accessible part of the bowels of the shiphad been visited; to no purpose. No stowaway of any sort, no rag ofevidence, or weapon to supply a clue was discovered. 

That afternoon we buried the body and I took command of the ship. 

I saw nothing of Miss Le Grand for two days. She kept her cabin, andwas seen only by the stewardess, who waited upon her. At theexpiration of that time I received a message, and went at once to herberth. I never could have figured so striking a change in a fine womanfull of beauty in so short a time, as I now beheld. The fire had diedout of her eyes, and still there lurked something weird in the veryspiritlessness, and dull and vacant sadness of her gaze. Her cheekswere hollow. Under each eye rested a shadow as though it was cast by agreen leaf. 

Her first words were: "Cannot you find out who did it?"

"No, madam. We have tried hard; harder for the captain's sake than hadhe been another, for the responsibility that rests upon the master ofan ocean-going vessel makes him an object of mighty significance, believe me, to us sailors. "

"But the person who killed him must be in the ship, " she cried, in avoice that wanted much of its old clear music. 

"One should suppose so; and he is undoubtedly on board the ship; butwe can't find him. "

"Did he commit suicide?"

"No. Everybody is accounted for. "

"What motive, " she exclaimed, with a sudden burst of desperatepassionate grief, that wrung her like a fit from head to foot, "couldany one have for killing Captain Griffiths! He was the gentlest, thekindest--oh, my heart! my heart!" and, hiding her face, she rockedherself in her misery. 

I tried my rough, seafaring best to soothe her. Certainly, until thismoment I never could have supposed her love for the poor man was sogreat. 

The fear bred of this mysterious assassination lay in a dark and heavyshadow upon the ship. None of us, passengers or sailors, turned in ofa night but with a fear of the secret bloody hand that had slain thecaptain making its presence tragically known once more before themorning. 

It happened one midnight, when we were something north of the equator, in the calms and stinging heat of the inter-tropic latitudes, that, having come on deck to relieve the second mate, and take charge of theship till four o'clock, I felt thirsty, and returned to the cuddy fora drink of water. Of the three lamps only one was alight, and burntvery dimly. There was no moonlight, but a plenty of starshine, whichshowered in a very rippling of spangled silver through the yawningcasements of the skylights. 

Just as I returned the tumbler to the rack whence I had removed it, the door of Miss Le Grand's cabin was opened, and the girl steppedforth. She was arrayed in white; probably she was attired in herbed-clothes. She seemed to see me at once, for she emerged directlyopposite; and I thought she would speak, or hastily retire. But, afterappearing to stare for a little while, she came to the table andleaned upon it with her left hand, sighing several times in the mostheart-broken manner; and now I saw by the help of the dim lamplightthat her right hand grasped a knife--the gleam of the blade caught myeye in a breath!

"Good gracious!" I cried to myself, instantly, "the woman's asleep!This, then, is the ghost that frightened the Dane. And this, too, wasthe hand that murdered the captain!"

I stood motionless watching her. Presently, taking her hand off thetable, she turned her face aft, and with a wonderfully subtle, stealthy, sneaking gait, reminding one strangely of the folding motionof the snake, she made for the captain's cabin. 

Now, that cabin, ever since Griffith's death, I had occupied, and youmay guess the sensations with which I followed the armed and murderoussleep-walker as she glided to what I must call my berth, andnoiselessly opened the door of it. The moment she was in the cabin hermotions grew amazingly swift. She stepped to the side of the bunk Iwas in the habit of using, and lifting the knife plunged it once, deepand hard--then came away, so nimbly that it was with difficulty I maderoom for her in the doorway to pass. I heard her breathe hard and fastas she swept by, and I stood in the doorway of my cabin watching hertill her figure disappeared in her own berth. 

So, then, the mystery was at an end. Poor Captain Griffith's murderesswas his adored sweetheart! She had killed him in her sleep, and knewit not. In the blindness of slumber she had repeated the enormoustragedy, as sinless nevertheless as the angel who looked down andbeheld her and pitied her!

I went on deck and sent for the doctor, to whom I communicated what Ihad seen, and he at once repaired to Miss Le Grand's berth accompaniedby the stewardess, and found her peacefully resting in her bunk. Noknife was to be seen. However, next morning, the young lady being thenon deck, veiled as she always now went, and sitting in a retired partof the poop, the second mate, the doctor, and the stewardess againthoroughly searched Miss Le Grand's berth, and they found in a hollowin the ship's side, a sort of scupper in fact for the porthole, acarving knife, rusted with old stains of blood. It had belonged to theship, and it was a knife the steward had missed on the day the captainwas killed. 

Since the whole ghastly tragedy was a matter of somnambulism, allpoints of it were easily fitted by the doctor, who quickly understoodthat the knife had been taken by the poor girl in her sleep just as ithad been murderously used. What horrible demon governed her in herslumber, who shall tell? For my part I put it down to Mrs. Burney anda secret feeling of jealousy which had operated in the poor soul whensense was suspended in her by slumber. 

We tried to keep the thing secret, taking care to lock Miss Le Grandup every night without explaining our motive; but the passengers gotwind of the truth and shrunk from her with horror. It came, in fact, to their waiting upon me in a body and insisting upon my immuring herin the steerage in company with one of the 'tween-deck's passengers, afemale who had offered her services as a nurse for hire. This actionled to the poor girl herself finding out what had happened. God knowswho told her or how she managed to discover it; but 't is certain shegot to learn it was her hand that in sleep had killed her lover, andshe went mad the selfsame day of her understanding what she had done. 

Nor did she ever recover her mind. She was landed mad, and sent atonce to an asylum, where she died, God rest her poor soul! exactly ayear after the murder, passing away, in fact, at the very hour thedeed was done, as I afterwards heard. 

 _The Ship Seen on the Ice_. 

In the middle of April, in the year 1855, the three-masted schooner_Lightning_ sailed from the Mersey for Boston with a small generalcargo of English manufactured goods. She was commanded by a man namedThomas Funnel. The mate, Salamon Sweers, was of Dutch extraction, andhis broad-beamed face was as Dutch to the eye as was the sound of hisname to the ear. Yet he spoke English with as good an accent as everone could hear in the mouth of an Englishman; and, indeed, I paySalamon Sweers no compliment by saying this, for he employed his _h's_correctly, and the grammar of his sentences was fairly good, albeitsalt: and how many Englishmen are there who correctly employ theletter _h_, and whose grammar is fairly good, salt or no salt?

We carried four forecastle hands and three apprentices. There wasCharles Petersen, a Swede, who had once been "fancy man" in a toyshop; there was David Burton, who had been a hairdresser and provedunfortunate as a gold-digger in Australia; there was James Lussoni, anItalian, who claimed to be a descendant of the old Genoese merchants;and there was John Jones, a runaway man-of-warsman, pretty nearly wornout, and subject to apoplexy. 

Four sailors and three apprentices make seven men, a cook and a boyare nine, and a mate and a captain make eleven; and eleven of a crewwere we, all told, men and boy, aboard the three-masted schooner_Lightning_ when we sailed away one April morning out of the riverMersey, bound to Boston, North America. 

My name was then as it still is--for during the many years I have usedthe sea, never had I occasion to ship with a "purser's name"--my name, I say, is David Kerry, and in that year of God 1855 I was a strappingyoung fellow, seventeen years old, making a second voyage with CaptainFunnel, having been bound apprentice to that most excellent butlong-departed mariner by my parents, who, finding me resolved to go tosea had determined that my probation should be thorough: no half-laughsand pursers' grins would satisfy them; my arm was to plunge deep intothe tar bucket straight away; and certainly there was no man thenhailing from the port of Liverpool better able to qualify a young chapfor the profession of the sea--but a young chap, mind you, who likedhis calling, who _meant_ to be a man and not a "sojer" in it--thanCaptain Funnel of the schooner _Lightning_. 

The four sailors slept in a bit of a forecastle forward; we threeapprentices slung our hammocks in a bulkheaded part of the run orsteerage, a gloomy hole, the obscurity of which was defined ratherthan illuminated by the dim twilight sifting down aslant from thehatch. Here we stowed our chests, and here we took our meals, and herewe slept and smoked and yarned in our watch below. I very wellremember my two fellow apprentices. One was named Corbin, and theother Halsted. They were both of them smart, honest, bright lads, coming well equipped and well educated from respectable homes, in lovewith the calling of the sea, and resolved in time not only to commandships, but to own them. 

Well, nothing in any way noteworthy happened for many days. Though theschooner was called the _Lightning_, she was by no means a clipper. She was built on lines which were fashionable forty years before, whenthe shipwright held that a ship's stability must be risked if she wasone inch longer than five times her beam. She was an old vessel, butdry as a stale cheese; wallowed rather than rolled, yet was stiff;would sit upright with erect spars, like the cocked ears of a horse, in breezes which bowed passing vessels down to their wash-streaks. Herround bows bruised the sea, and when it entered her head to take toher heels, she would wash through it like a "gallied whale, " allsmothered to the hawse-pipes, and a big round polished hump of brineon either quarter. 

We ambled, and wallowed, and blew, and in divers fashions drove alongtill we were deep in the heart of the North Atlantic. It was then amorning that brought the first of May within a biscuit-toss of ourreckoning of time: a very cold morning, the sea flat, green, andgreasy, with a streaking of white about it, as though it were aflooring of marble; there was wind but no lift in the water; andSalamon Sweers, in whose watch I was, said to me, when the day brokeand showed us the look of the ocean:

"Blowed, " said he, "if a man mightn't swear that we were under the leeof a range of high land. "

It was very cold, the wind about north-west, the sky a pale grey, withpatches of weak hazy blue in it here and there; and here and thereagain lay some darker shadow of cloud curled clean as though painted. There was nothing in sight saving the topmost cloths of a littlebarque heading eastwards away down to leeward. Quiet as the morningwas, not once during the passage had I found the temperature so cold. I was glad when the job of washing down was over, and not a littlegrateful for the hook-pot of steam tea which I took from the galley tomy quarters in the steerage. 

I breakfasted in true ocean fashion, off ship's biscuit, a piece ofpork, the remains of yesterday's dinner, and a potful of black liquorcalled tea, sweetened by molasses and thickened with sodden leaves andfragments of twigs; and then, cutting a pipeful of tobacco from astick of cavendish, I climbed into my hammock, and lay there smokingand trying to read in Norie's _Epitome_ until my pipe went out, onwhich I fell asleep. 

I was awakened by young Halsted, whose hand was upon the edge of myhammock. 

"Not time to turn out yet, I hope?" I exclaimed. "I don't feel to havebeen below ten minutes. "

"There's the finest sight to see on deck, " said he, "that you'relikely to turn up this side of Boston. Tumble up and have a look ifonly for five minutes"; and without another word he hastened up theladder. 

I dropped out of my hammock, pulled on my boots and monkey-jacket, andwent on deck, noting the hour by the cabin clock to be twenty minutesbefore eleven. The captain stood at the mizzen-rigging with atelescope at his eye, and beside him stood Mr. Sweers, likewiseholding a glass, and both men pointed their telescopes towards the seaon the lee bow, where--never having before beheld an iceberg--Iperceived what I imagined to be an island covered with snow. 

An iceberg it was--not a very large one. It was about five milesdistant; it had a ragged sky line which made it resemble a piece ofcliff gone adrift--such a fragment of cliff as, let me say, a quarterof a mile of the chalk of the South Foreland would make, if you canimagine a mass of the stuff detaching itself from under the verdure atthe top and floating off jagged and precipitous. There was nothing tobe seen but that iceberg. No others. The sea ran smooth as oil, and ofa hard green, piebald foam lines as in the earlier morning, with but alight swell out of the west, which came lifting stealthily to the sideof the schooner. There was a small breeze; the sky had a somewhatgloomy look; the schooner was at this hour crawling along at the rateof about four and a half knots. 

I said to Halsted: "There was nothing in sight when I went below ateight bells. Where's that berg come from?"

"From behind the horizon, " he answered. "The breeze freshened soonafter you left the deck, and only slackened a little while since. "

"What can they see to keep them staring so hard?" said I, referring tothe captain and Mr. Sweers, who kept their glasses steadily levelledat the iceberg. 

"They've made out a ship upon the ice, " he answered; "a ship high anddry upon a slope of foreshore. I believe I can see her now--the gleamof the snow is confusing; there's a black spot at the base almostamidships of the berg. "

I had a good sight in those days. I peered awhile and made out theobject, but with the naked eye I could never have distinguished it asa ship at that distance. 

"She's a barque, " I heard Mr. Sweers say. 

"I see that, " said the captain. 

"She's got a pretty strong list, " continued the mate, talking with theglass at his eye; "her topgallantmasts are struck, but her topmastsare standing. "

"I tell you what it is, " said the captain, after a pause, likewisespeaking whilst he gazed through his telescope, "that ship's come downsomewhere from out of the North Pole. She never could have struck theice and gone ashore as we see her there. She's been locked up; thenthe piece she's on broke away and made sail to the south. I've fallenin with bergs with live polar bears on them in my time. "

"What is she--a whaler?" said Mr. Sweers. "She's got a lumbersome lookabout the bulwarks, as though she wasn't short of cranes; but I can'tmake out any boats, and there's no appearance of life aboard her. "

"Let her go off a point, " said the captain to the fellow at the wheel. "Mr. Sweers, she'll be worth looking at, " he continued, slowlydirecting his gaze round the sea-line, as though considering theweather. 'You've heard of Sir John Franklin?'

"Have I heard?" said the mate, with a Dutch shrug. 

"It's the duty of every English sailor, " said the captain, "to keephis weather eye lifting whenever he smells ice north of the equator;for who's to tell what relics of the Franklin expedition he may notlight on? And how are we to know, " continued he, again directing hisglass at the berg, "that yonder vessel may not have taken part in thatexpedition?"

"There's a reward going, " said Mr. Sweers, "for the man who candiscover anything about Sir John Franklin and his party. "

The captain grinned and quickly grew grave. 

We drew slowly towards the iceberg, at which I gazed with some degreeof disappointment; for, never before having beheld ice in a great masslike the heap that was yonder, I had expected to see somethingadmirable and magnificent, an island of glass, full of fierysparklings and ruby and emerald beams, a shape of crystal cut by thehand of King Frost into a hundred inimitable devices. Instead ofwhich, the island of ice, on which lay the hull of the ship, was of adead, unpolished whiteness, abrupt at the extremities, about a hundredand twenty feet tall at its loftiest point, not more picturesque thana rock covered with snow, and interesting only to my mind because ofthe distance it had measured, and because of the fancies it raised inone of the white, silent, and stirless principalities from which ithad floated into these parts. 

"Get the jolly-boat over, Mr. Sweers, " said the captain, "and take ahand with you, and go and have a look at that craft there; and if youcan board her, do so, and bring away her log-book, if you come acrossit. The newspapers sha'n't say that I fell in with such an object asthat and passed on without taking any notice. "

I caught Mr. Sweers' eye. "You'll do, " said he, and in a few minuteshe and I were pulling away in the direction of the ice, I in the bowand he aft, rowing fisherman fashion, face forward. The schooner hadbacked her yards on the fore when she was within a mile of the berg, and we had not far to row. Our four arms made the fat littlejolly-boat buzz over the wrinkled surface of the green, cold water. The wreck--if a wreck she could be called--lay with her decks slopingseawards upon an inclined shelf or beach of ice, with a mass ofrugged, abrupt stuff behind her, and vast coagulated lumps heaped likea Stonehenge at her bows and at her stern. When we approached thebeach, as I may term it, Salamon Sweers said:

"I'll tell you what: I am not going to board that craft alone, Kerry. Who's to tell what's inside of her? She may have been lying twentyyears, for all we know, frozen up where it's always day or alwaysnight--where everything's out of the order of nature, in fact; and ratme if I'm going to be the first man to enter her cabin. "

"I'm along with you, " said I. 

"So you are, David, " said he, "and we'll overhaul her together, andthe best way to secure the boat'll be to drag her high and dry"; andas he said this, the stem of the boat touched the ice, and we both ofus jumped out, and, catching hold of her by the gunwale, walked her upthe slope by some five times her own length, where she lay as snug asthough chocked aboard her own mother, the schooner. 

Sweers and I stood, first of all, to take a view of the barque--for abarque she was: her topgallantmasts down, but her topsail and loweryards across, sails bent, all gear rove, and everything right so faras we could see, saving that her flying jib-boom was gone. There wasno need to look long at her to know that she hadn't been one ofFranklin's ships. Her name and the place she hailed from were on herstern: the _President_, New Bedford. And now it was easy to see thatshe was a Yankee whaler. Her sides bristled with cranes or davits forboats, but every boat was gone. The tackles were overhauled, and theblocks of two of them lay upon the ice. She was a stout, massive, round-bowed structure, to all appearances as sound as on the day whenshe was launched. She was coppered; not a sheet of metal was off, nota rent anywhere visible through the length and breadth of the dingygreen surface of it. 

We first of all walked round her, not knowing but that on the otherside, concealed from the landing-place by the interposition of thehull, some remains of her people might be lying; but there was nothingin that way to see. We united our voices in a loud "Hallo!" and therocks re-echoed us; but all was still, frozen, lifeless. 

"Let's get aboard, " said Mr. Sweers, gazing, nevertheless, up at theship's side with a flat face of reluctance and doubt. 

I grasped a boat's fall and went up hand over hand, and Sweersfollowed me. The angle of the deck was considerable, but owing to theflat bilge of the whaler's bottom, not greater than the inclination ofthe deck of a ship under a heavy press of canvas. It was possible towalk. We put our legs over the rail and came to a stand, and took aview of the decks of the ship. Nothing, saving the boats, seemed to bemissing. Every detail of deck furniture was as complete as though theship were ready for getting under way, with a full hold, for a finalstart home. Caboose, scuttle-butts, harness-cask, wheel, binnacle, companion-cover, skylight, winch, pumps, capstan--nothing was wanting;nothing but boats and men. 

"Is it possible that all hands can be below?" said Sweers, straininghis ear. 

I looked aloft and about me, wondering that the body of the vessel andher masts and rigging should not be sheathed with ice; but if ever thestructure had been glazed in her time, when she lay hard and fast farto the north of Spitzbergen, for all one could tell, nothing was nowfrozen; there was not so much as an icicle anywhere visible about her. The decks were dry, and on my kicking a coil of rope that was near myfeet the stuff did not crackle, as one could have expected, as thoughfrosted to the core. 

"The vessel seems to have been thawed through, " said I, "and I expectthat this berg is only a fragment of the mass that broke adrift withher. "

"Likely enough, " said Sweers. "Hark! what is that?"

"What do you hear?" I exclaimed. 

"Why, _that_!" cried he, pointing to a shallow fissure in the icyrocks which towered above the ship: and down the fissure I spied acascade of water falling like smoke, with a harsh, hissing noise, which I had mistaken for the seething of the sea. I ran my eye overthe face of the heights and witnessed many similar falls of water. 

"There'll not be much of this iceberg left soon, " said I, "if thedrift is to the southward. "

"What d'ye think, --that the drift's northerly?" exclaimed Sweers. "I'll tell you what it is; it's these icebergs drifting in masses downsouth into the Atlantic which cause the sudden spells of cold weatheryou get in England during seasons when it ought to be hot. "

As he said this he walked to the companion-hatch, the cover of whichwas closed, and the door shut. The cover yielded to a thrust of hishand. He then pulled open the doors and put his head in, and I heardhim spit. 

"There's foul air here, " said he; "but where a match will burn a mancan breathe, I've learnt. "

He struck a match, and descended two or three steps of the ladder, andthen called out to me to follow. The air was not foul, but it wasclose, and there was a dampish smell upon it, and it was charged witha fishy odour like that of decaying spawn and dead marine vegetation. Light fell through the companion-way, and a sort of blurred dimnessdrained through the grimy skylight. 

We thoroughly overhauled this interior, spending some time in lookingabout us, for Sweers' fear of beholding something affrighting vanishedwhen he found himself in a plain ship's cabin, with nothing moreterrible to behold than the ship's furniture of a whaleman'sliving-room of near half a century old. There were threesleeping-berths, and these we explored, but met with nothing that inany way hinted at the story of the ship. It was impossible to tell, indeed, which had been the captain's cabin. All three berths werefilled alike with lockers, hammocks, wash-stands, and so forth; andtwo of them were lighted by dirty little scuttles in the ship's side;but the third lay athwartships, and all the light that it receivedcame from the cabin through its open door. 

I don't know how long we were occupied in hunting these cabins for anysort of papers which would enable Captain Funnel to make out the storyof the barque. We were too eager and curious and interested to heedthe passage of time. There were harpoons and muskets racked in thestate cabin, some wearing apparel in the berths, a few books onnautical subjects, but without the owners' names in them, and therewas a bundle of what proved to be bear's skins stowed away in thecorner of the berth that was without a scuttle. A door led to a coupleof bulkheaded compartments in the fore part of the state cabin, andSweers was in the act of advancing to it when he cried out:

"By the tunder of heaven, what is dot?" losing his customary hold ofthe English tongue in the excitement of the moment. 

"The ice is melting and discharging in Niagara Falls upon the whaler'sdeck!" I cried, after listening a moment to the noise of a downpourthat rang through the cabin in a hollow thunder. 

We rushed on deck. A furious squall was blowing, but the air wasbecalmed where the vessel lay by the high cliffs of ice, and the rainof the squall fell almost up and down in a very sheet of water, intermingled with hailstones as big as the eggs of a thrush. The wholescene of the ocean was a swirling, revolving smother, as though thesky was full of steam, and the screech of the wind, as it fled off theedge of the dead white heights which sheltered us, pierced the earlike the whistlings of a thousand locomotives. 

There was nothing to be seen of the schooner: but _that_ was triflingfor the moment compared to this: _there was nothing to be seen of theboat_! The furious discharge of the squall would increase her weightby half filling her with water; the slashing wet of the rain wouldalso render the icy slope up which we had hauled her as slippery as asheet for skaters; a single shock or blast of wind might suffice tostart her. Be this as it will, she had launched herself--she was gone!We strained our sight, but no faintest blotch of shadow could wedistinguish amid the white water rushing smoothly off from the base ofthe berg, and streaming into the pallid shadow of the squall where yousaw the sea clear of the ice beginning to work with true Atlanticspite. 

"Crate Cott!" cried Sweers, "what's to be done? There was noappearance of a squall when we landed here. It drove up abaft thisberg, and it may have been hidden from the schooner herself by theice. "

We crouched in the companion-way for shelter, not doubting that thesquall would speedily pass, and that the schooner, which we naturallysupposed lay close to the berg hove-to, would, the instant the weathercleared, send a boat to take us off. But the squall, instead ofabating, gradually rose into half a gale of wind--a wet dark gale thatshrouded the sea with flying spume and rain to within a musket-shot ofthe iceberg, whilst the sky was no more than a weeping, pouring shadowcoming and going as it were with a lightening and darkening of it bymasses of headlong torn vapour. Some of the ragged pinnacles of thecliffs of ice seemed to pierce that wild dark, flying sky of storm asit swept before the gale close down over our heads. 

We could not bring our minds to realise that we were to be left aboardthis ice-stranded whaler all night, and perhaps all next day, and forheaven alone knows how much longer for the matter of that; and it wasnot until the darkness of the evening had drawn down, coming alongearly with the howling gloom of the storm-shrouded ocean, without somuch as a rusty tinge of hectic to tell us where the West lay, that weabandoned our idle task of staring at the sea, and made up our mindsto go through with the night as best we could. 

And first of all we entered the galley, and by the aid of such dimlight as still lived we contrived to catch sight of a tin lamp with aspout to it dangling over the coppers. There was a wick in the spout, but one might swear that the lamp hadn't been used for months andmonths. 

"We must have a light anyhow, " said Sweers, "and if this _President_be a whaler, there should be no lack of oil aboard. "

After groping awhile in some shelves stocked with black-handled knivesand forks, tin dishes, pannikins, and the like, I put my hand upon astump of candle-end. This we lighted, Sweers luckily having a box oflucifers in his pocket, and with the aid of the candle-flame, wediscovered in the corner of the galley a lime-juice jar half-full ofoil. With this we trimmed the lamp, and then stepped on deck to gropeour way to the cabin, meaning to light the lamp down there, for nounsheltered flame would have lived an instant in the fierce draughtswhich rushed and eddied about the decks. 

We stayed a moment to look seawards, but all was black night outthere, touched in places with a sudden flash of foam. The voice of thegale was awful with the warring noise of the waters, and with therestless thunder of seas smiting the ice on the weather side, and withthe wild and often terrific crackling sounds which arose out of theheart of the solid mass of the berg itself, as though earthquakes inendless processions were trembling through it, and as though, at anymoment, the whole vast bulk would be rent into a thousand crystalsplinters. Sweers was silent until we had gained the cabin and lightedthe lamp. He then looked at me with an ashen face, and groaned. 

"This gale's going to blow the schooner away, " said he. "We're lostmen, David. I'd give my right eye to be aboard the _Lightning_. D'yeunderstand the trick of these blooming icebergs? They wash awayunderneath, grow topheavy, and then over goes the show. And to thinkof the jolly-boat making off, as if two sailormen like you and mecouldn't have provided for _that_!"

He groaned again, and then seated himself, and appeared whollydeprived of energy and spirit. 

However, now that I was below, under shelter, out of the noise of theweather, and therefore able to collect my thoughts, I began to feelvery hungry and thirsty; in fact, neither Sweers nor I had tasted foodsince breakfast at eight o'clock that morning. A lamp hung aslant fromthe cabin ceiling. It was a small lamp of brass, glazed. I unhookedit, and brought it to the light, but it was without a wick, and therewas no oil in it, and to save time I stuck the lighted candle in thelamp, and leaving the other lamp burning to enable Sweers to rummagealso, I passed through the door that was in the forepart of the cabin;and here I found three berths, one of which was furnished as a pantry, whilst the other two were sleeping-places, with bunks in them, and Iobserved also a sheaf or two of harpoons, together with spades andimplements used in dealing with the whale after the monster has beenkilled and towed alongside. 

The atmosphere was horribly close and fishy in this place, reeking ofoil, yet cold as ice, as though the ship lay drowned a thousandfathoms deep. I called to Sweers to bring his lamp, for my candle gaveso poor a light I could scarce see by it; and in the berth that lookedto have been used as a pantry we found half a barrel of pork, a bag ofship's biscuit, and a quantity of Indian meal, beans, and rice, acanister of coffee, and a few jars of pickles. But we could findnothing to drink. 

I was now exceedingly thirsty; so I took a pannikin--a number ofvessels of the sort were on the shelf in the pantry--and carried itwith the lamp on deck. I had taken notice during the day of four orfive buckets in a row abaft the mainmast, and, approaching them, Iheld the light close, and found each bucket full. I tasted the water;it was rain and without the least flavour of salt: and, after drinkingheartily, I filled the pannikin afresh and carried it down to Sweers. 

There was a spiritlessness in this man that surprised me. I had notthought to find the faculties of Salamon Sweers so quickly benumbed bywhat was indeed a wild and dangerous confrontment, yet not soformidable and hopeless as to weaken the nerves of a seaman. I yearnedfor a bottle of rum, for any sort of strong waters indeed, guessingthat a dram would help us both; and after I had made a meal off someraw pork and molasses spread upon the ship's biscuit, which was mouldyand astir with weevils, I took my lantern and again went on deck, andmade my way to the galley where the oil jar stood, and here in adrawer I found what now I most needed, but what before I hadoverlooked; I mean a parcel; of braided lamp wicks. I trimmed the lampand got a brilliant light. The glass protected the flame from the rushof the wind about the deck. I guessed there would be nothing worthfinding in the barque's forecastle, and not doubting that there was alazarette in which would be stored such ship provisions as the crewhad left behind them, I returned to the cabin, looked for thelazarette hatch, and found it under the table. 

Well, to cut this part of the story short, Sweers and I dropped intothe lazarette, and after spending an hour or two in examining what wemet with, we discovered enough provisions, along with some casks ofrum and bottled beer, to last a ship's company of twenty men a wholesix months. This was Sweers' reckoning. We carried some of the bottledbeer into the cabin, and having pipes and tobacco with us in ourpockets, we filled and smoked, and sat listening to the wet stormingdown the decks overhead, and to the roaring of the wind on high, andto the crackling noises of the ice. 

That first night with us on board the whaler was a fearful time. Sometimes we dozed as we sat confronting each other on the lockers, but again and again would we start up and go on deck, but only to lookinto the blindness of the night, and only to hearken to the appallingnoises of the weather and the ice. When day broke there was nothing insight. It was blowing strong, a high sea was running, and the oceanlay shrouded as though with vapour. 

During the course of the morning we entered the forepeak, where wefound a quantity of coal. This enabled us to light the galley fire, tocook a piece of pork, and to boil some coffee. Towards noon Sweersproposed to inspect the hold, and to see what was inside the ship. Accordingly we opened the main hatch and found the vessel loaded withcasks, some of which we examined and found them full of oil. 

"By tunder!" cried Sweers; "if we could only carry this vessel homethere'd be a fortune for both of us, David. Shall I tell you what thissort of oil's worth? Well, it's worth about thirty pounds a ton. Andhow much d'ye think there's aboard? Not less than a hundred ton, if Idon't see double. There's no man can teach me the capacity of a cask, and there are casks below varying from forty-two to two hundred andseventy-five gallons, with no lack of whalebone stored dry somewhere, I don't doubt, if those casks would let us look for it. "

But this was no better than idle and ironical chatter in the mouths ofmen so hideously situated as we were. For my part I had no thought ofsaving the ship; indeed, I had scarce any hope of saving my own life. We found an American ensign in a small flag-locker that was lashednear the wheel, and we sent it half-mast high, with the starsinverted. Then we searched for fresh water, and found three iron tanksnearly full in the after-hold. The water stunk with keeping, as thoughit had grown rank in the bilge, but after it had stood a little whileexposed to air it became sweet enough to use. There was no fear thenof our perishing from hunger and thirst whilst the whaler kepttogether. Our main and imminent danger lay in the sudden dissolutionof the ice, or in the capsizal of the berg. It was our unhappy fortunethat, numerous as were the cranes overhanging the whaler's side, weshould not have found a boat left in one of them. Our only chance layin a raft; but both Sweers and I, as sailors, shrank from the thoughtof such a means of escape. We might well guess that a raft would butprolong our lives in the midst of so wide a sea, by a few days, andperhaps by a few hours only, after subjecting us to every agony ofdespair and of expectation, and torturing us with God alone would knowwhat privations. 

We thoroughly overhauled the forecastle of the vessel, but foundnothing of interest. There were a few seamen's chests, some odds andends of wearing apparel, and here and there a blanket in a bunk; butthe crew in clearing out appeared to have carried off most of theireffects with them. Of course we could only conjecture what they haddone and how they had managed; but it was to be guessed that all theboats being gone the sailors had taken advantage of a split in the iceto get away from their hard and fast ship, employing all their boatsthat they might carry with them a plentiful store of water andprovisions. 

I should but weary you to dwell day by day upon the passage of timethat Sweers and I passed upon this ship that we had seen upon the ice. We kept an eager look-out for craft, crawling to the mastheads so asto obtain a view over the blocks of ice which lay in masses at thestem and stern of the whaler. But though we often caught sight of adistant sail, nothing ever approached us close enough to observe oursignal. Once, indeed, a large steamer passed within a couple of milesof the iceberg, and we watched her with devouring eyes, foreverimagining that she was slowing down and about to stop, until shevanished out of our sight past the north end of the berg. Yet, we hadno other hope of rescue than that of being taken off by a passingship. 

I never recollect meeting at sea with such a variety of weather as weencountered. There would be clear sunshine and bright blue skies for aday, followed by dark and bellowing nights of storm. Then would comeperiods of thick fogs, followed by squalls, variable winds, and so on. We guessed, however, that our trend was steadily southwards, by thesteady cascading of the ice, by the frequent falls of large blocks, and by the increasing noises of sudden, tremendous disruptions, loudand heart-subduing as thundershocks heard close to. 

"If we aren't taken off, " said Sweers to me one day, "there's justthis one chance for us. The ice is bound to melt. All these bergs, asI reckon, disappear somewhere to the nor'ard of the verge of the GulfStream. Well, now the Lord may be good to us, and it may happen thatthis berg'll melt away and leave the whaler afloat; and float she mustif she isn't crushed by the ice. Let her leak like a sieve--there'soil enough in her to keep her standing upright as though she were aline-of-battle ship. "

Well, we had been a little more than a fortnight upon this ship hardand fast upon the ice. Many a vessel had we sighted, but never a oneof them, saving the steamer I have mentioned, had approached withineyeshot of our distress signal. Yet our health was good, and ourspirits tolerably easy; we had fared well, there was no lack of foodand drink, and we were beginning to feel some confidence in theiceberg--by which I mean to say that the rapid thawing of its upperparts, where all the weight was, filled us with the hope that the masswouldn't capsize as we had feared; that it would hold together so asto keep the ship on end as she now was until we were rescued, or, failing our being rescued, that it would dissolve in such a way as toleave the whaler afloat. 

It was somewhere about the end of a fortnight, as I have said. My bedwas a cabin locker, on which I had placed a mattress and a bear-skin. Both Sweers and I turned in of a night, unless it was clear weather;though if I awoke I'd sometimes steal on deck to take a peep, fornothing could come of our keeping a look-out if it was blowing hard, and if it was black and thick. 

This night it was a bit muddy and dark, with a moderate breeze out ofthe south-west, as far as we could guess at the bearings of the wind. I was awakened from a deep slumber by an extraordinary convulsion inthe ship. I was half-stupefied with sleep, and can therefore butimperfectly recall my sensations and the character of what I may termthe throes and spasms of the vessel. I was thrown from the locker andlay for some moments incapable of rising by the shock of the fall. Butone thing my senses, even when they were scarce yet awake, took noteof, and that was a prodigious roaring noise, similar in effect to whatmight be produced by a cannon-ball rolling along a hollow woodenfloor, only that the noise was thousands of times greater than evercould have been produced by a cannon-ball. The lamp was out, and thecabin in pitch blackness. I heard Sweers from some corner of thecabin, bawling out my name; but before I could answer, and even whilstI was staggering to my feet, a second convulsion threw me down again;the next instant there was a sensation as of the vessel being hove upinto the air, attended by an extraordinary grinding noise, thatthrilled through every beam of her; next, in the space of a few beatsof the heart, she plunged into the sea, raising such a boiling androaring of waters, as, spite of the sounds being dulled to our ears byour being in the cabin, persuaded us that the vessel was foundering. 

But even whilst I thus thought, holding my breath and waiting for thedeath that was to come with the pouring of the water down the opencompanion-way, I felt the ship right; she lifted buoyant under foot, and I sprang to the steps which conducted on deck, with Sweers--as Imight know by his voice--close at my heels, roaring out, "By tunder, we're adrift and afloat!"

The stars were shining, there was a red moon low in the west, theweather had cleared, and a quiet wind was blowing. At the distance ofsome hundred yards from the ship stood a few pallid masses--theremains of the berg. It was just possible to make out that the waterin the neighbourhood of those dim heaps was covered with fragments ofice. How the liberation of the ship had come about neither Sweers norI did then pause to consider. We were sailors, and our first businesswas to act as sailors, and as quickly as might be we loosed andhoisted the jib and foretopmast staysail, so that the vessel mightblow away from the neighbourhood of the dangerous remains of her jailof ice. We then sounded the well, and, finding no water, went to workto loose the foresail and foretopsail, which canvas we made shift toset with the aid of the capstan. I then lighted the binnacle lampwhilst Sweers held the wheel; and having sounded the well afresh, tomake sure of the hull, we headed away to the eastwards, the wind beingabout W. S. W. 

Before the dawn broke we had run the ice out of sight. Sweers and Imanaged, as I have no doubt, to arrive at the theory of the liberationof the ship by comparing our sensations and experiences. There can beno question that the berg had split in twain almost amidships. Thiswas the cause of the tremendous noise of thunder which I heard. Thesplitting of the ice had hoisted the shelf or beach on which thebarque lay, and occasioned that sensation of flying into the air whichI had noticed. But the lifting of the beach of ice had also violentlyand sharply sloped it, and the barque, freeing herself, had fled downit broadside on, taking the water with a mighty souse and crash, thenrising buoyant, and lifting and falling upon the seas as we had bothof us felt her do. 

And now to bring this queer yarn to a close, for I have no space todwell upon our thankfulness and our proceedings until we obtained thehelp we stood in need of. We managed to handle the barque withoutassistance for three days, then fell in with an American ship bound toLiverpool, who lent us three of her men, and within three weeks of thedate of our release from the iceberg we were in soundings in the Chopsof the Channel, and a few days later had safely brought the barque toan anchor in the river Thames. 

The adventure yielded Sweers and I a thousand pounds apiece as salvagemoney, but we were kept waiting a long time before receiving our justreward. It was necessary to communicate with the owners of the barquein America, and then the lawyers got hold of the job, and I grew soweary of interviews, so vexed and sickened by needless correspondence, that I should have been thankful to have taken two hundred pounds formy share merely to have made an end. 

It seems that the _President_ had been abandoned two years and fivemonths by her crew before the _Lightning_ sighted her on the ice. Herpeople had stuck to her for eight months, then made off in a body withthe boats, carrying their captain and mates along with them. Theyregarded the situation of their ship as hopeless, and indeed, as itturned out, they were not very wrong, so far as their notions ofreasonable detention went; for they never could have liberated thevessel by their own efforts; they must have waited, as we had, for theice to free her; and this would have signified to them an imprisonmentof two years and a half over and above the eight months they hadalready spent in her whilst ice-bound. 

Sweers gave up the sea, started in business, and died, about ten yearssince, a fairly well-to-do man. And shall I tell you what I did withmy thousand pounds? ... But my story has already run to greater lengththan I had intended when sitting down to write it. 

THE END. 

THE INCOGNITO LIBRARY. 

A series of small books by representative writers, whose names willfor the present not be given. 

In this series will be included the authorized American editions ofthe future issues of Mr. Unwin's "=Pseudonym Library=", whichhas won for itself a noteworthy prestige. 

 32mo, limp cloth, each 50 cents. 

I. =The Shen's Pigtail=, and Other Cues of Anglo-China Life, by Mr. M----. 

II. =The Hon. Stanbury and Others=, by Two. 

III. =Lesser's Daughter=, by Mrs. Andrew Dean. 

IV. =A Husband of No Importance=, by "Rita. "

V. =Helen=, by Oswald Valentine. 

VI. =A Gender in Satin=, by "Rita. "

VII. =Every Day's News, by C. E. Francis. 

These will be followed by volumes by other well-known authors.