Chapter V: Aboard the Brig

I woke with a ray of sunshine streaming across my face through the thick, greenish glass of a deadlight and an odd feeling of contentment. Mice were cheeping in the paneling at my elbow; the timbers and planking of the hull were groaning and snorting; there was a soothing swissh-ssh of divided waters; and the brig herself was swaying easily in a following sea.

Corlaer was sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion, and I was at pains not to disturb him as I slipped to the floor, opened the door and entered the main cabin. This was deserted save for the boy Darby, who was curled up on the seat under the stern windows, peering out at the brig’s creamy wake. He heard the door close after me and swiveled round at once, landing lightly on his feet as if he had been to sea for years.

“Och, Master Bob,” says he, “I thought ye’d never wake up. Ah, it’s the grand, grand day. And do ye smell the brine in the air? It makes the toes of your two feet dance, whether ye will or no--troth, it does.”

’Twas impossible to nourish resentment against the boy for his betrayal of us. He was as naturally lawless and unmoral as a young wolf, but I could not resist a jeer at his recent transformation.

“And how does it seem to be a pirate, Darby?”

“Oh, fine! Sure, I always knew I wasn’t intended for a bond-boy to run errands and carry bales. Ah, it’s the grand life, Master Bob! They tell me himself--” he jerked his thumb toward the door of a stateroom opposite that in which Peter and I were berthed--“is own uncle to ye, and some day, if ye choose, ye can be as great as him. Faith, and I know what my choice would be!”

“Is it your idea that pirates never work?” I inquired.

His face fell a trifle.

“Och, there’s work everywhere ye go, bad ’cess to it! It’s, ‘Darby, lend a hand here!’ Or, ‘Darby, catch hold o’ this rope!’ Or, ‘Darby, fetch me a pannikin o’ rum!’ Darby this and Darby that the night long.”

His face lightened again.

“But I’m to have my own cutlass and two pistols for my belt, and they say I’m good luck.”

“Good luck? How’s that?”

“Sure, it’s my hair, I think. Flint--him that this crew sail with by usual--he has a liking for a red-headed lad. Such as meself brings him luck, so they swear, and Long John----”

“Who?”

“Long John--Master Silver, to be sure--him with the one leg we talked to by the shore yesterday--he says I’ll go far with Flint.”

I had to laugh at my own bemusement at the picture Darby’s remark called up. Yesterday morning at this hour I had been laboring industriously in the counting-room in Pearl Street. And how much had happened since then! I harked back to my setting-forth for the Bristol packet, the casual conversation with the one-legged mariner--how skilfully he had pumped me and annexed Darby to his plot!--the encounter with the Irish maid----

With this I curbed my recollections. Thought of Moira O’Donnell was unpleasant, for I could not rid my mind of the suspicion that she must be bound up in some way in the schemes her father worked at in coöperation with my great-uncle.

But there! I found relief in this reflection. Certes, her father could be no worse than my relative; and here was I, innocent of any art or part in Murray’s devious ploys, yet tossed into the grip of their mechanism as ruthlessly as if my life depended upon his success. And perhaps it did. What more natural, then, than that she was equally innocent? Aye, from the conversation betwixt the two conspirators I had overheard the night before it appeared that she was innocent, probably in greater ignorance of her father’s plans than I, else how explain O’Donnell’s concern upon discovering the character of the men with whom she was to be thrown in contact?

And this aroused a further recollection. What was it the lass had said as we parted?

“Here our paths diverge.”

She would not have said that had she known all, for there had been no necessity for the lie. Doubt not, she was in entire ignorance of the black evil these two plotted! I was glad with a great burst of exultation which must have shown itself in my face, for Darby exclaimed:

“There was a good fairy flicked a wing over you, Master Bob! Glory, but ye had the happy thought. Will ye throw in with us and be a pirate chief? Troth, there’d be no better.”

“Not I, Darby; but I will have a bite to eat, if such there be aboard a pirate craft.”

“Lashin’s of everything in nature,” rejoined Darby briskly. “Sit to the table yon, and I’ll fetch it from the galley.”

The table was set and ready, not with coarse crockery and steel forks, knives and spoons, but with dainty china, heavy silverware and fine napery, too. I commented on this when Darby returned, balancing smoking dishes and a jug of hot chocolate upon a tray.

“’Tis the way himself--” his thumb indicated the starboard stateroom door--“will live. The best of everything he’ll have, and on his own ship nigger slaves to serve him, and they in liveries like grand gentlemen have. Whisht!”

His voice sank to a whisper.

“He’s a terrible unchancy fellow, yon, Master Bob. Not for all the gold onzas Long John do be always talkin’ of would I ha’ _him_ for uncle! No, no! I’ll sail with Flint, rather. The eye to him--and the soft voice and quiet ways! And him as swift to cut your throat or walk ye down the plank as Flint; aye, and swifter! I ha’ the creepies on my back whiles I look at him.

“Flint, now, he’s main different, Long John says. He’ll swig rum wi’ any man, and if he wants your life ye’ll be in no doubt of that same; and he curses better’n Bill Bones.”

“You seem to have experienced no trouble in becoming intimate with your new companions, Darby,” I remarked.

“It’s me head does it,” returned Darby, unabashed. “As I told ye, it brings good luck.”

“Not to me,” I retorted with a grin.

“And don’t ye be too sure,” he flashed. “We’ll maybe sail a long ways together; and I’m your friend, Master Bob, for ye were never one to let me be put upon in the counting-room.”

“Humph,” said I. “That is to be seen. Where is ‘himself,’ as you call him?”

“Asleep in his berth. Troth, he was up until dawn conning the brig through the harbor shoals.”

“Are we outside?”

“Sure, we’re by and beyond what they call Sandy Hook. There’s only the wide ocean in front.”

“I’m for the deck then,” I answered. “Keep an ear on Master Corlaer, Darby. If he craves food fetch him some of this chocolate.”

“Leave him to me,” said Darby confidently. “He’s another I like fine. Wasn’t it him brought me the Injun scalp and the knife wi’ blood on it? Oh, ye must both turn pirate! We’d make a grand crew, just the three of us.”

The companionway was empty, and I met nobody until I had climbed to the deck. The brig was running free before a smart nor’west breeze, and there was just enough of a sea to toss an occasional shower of spray over the bows. The wind was booming in the hollow of the sails, and the cordage sang like a great harp. Sea-birds were circling the mast-tops and skimming the waves with occasional raucous cries. And over all the sun cast a warm, golden radiance that held a magic spell.

I understood now the contentment with which I had wakened, although indeed ’twas passing strange that I so readily adapted myself to the sea and its ways, seeing that all my life I had never been beyond the waters of the inner harbor. Yet ’tis the fact I had no discomfort or misgiving and even acquired instinctively the sailor’s tricks of standing and walking, as was commented upon by no less an authority than John Silver.

The deck was deserted for’ard. One man was lashed in the main cross-trees, sweeping the entire circuit of the horizon with a spyglass. Aft there were only Silver and another fellow at the wheel. The one-legged man waved to me with his crutch from his seat on the cabin skylight.

“Come and talk with Long John, Master Ormerod,” he called. “Where did ye find them sea-legs o’ yourn? You walk like a blasted admiral, no less.”

“I found them below,” I answered, for the life of me unable to resist the scoundrel’s ingratiating manner. “Where are the rest of your company?”

He laughed and winked at the man at the wheel, an awful-looking creature, so heavy of shoulder as to appear deformed, with a green shade over deeply sunken eyes that were all pitted around with tiny blue scars.

“Ha, ha! Our young gentleman says to himself, says he: ‘Only two on deck, one on ’em wi’ a single leg, t’other all but blind. And here’s me as is young and sturdy.’ A clean field, says you, Master Ormerod; but you’re failin’ to reckon on John’s crutch, which same can be a very nasty weapon at need; and if Pew’s eyes don’t see far he can shoot by ear as well as most o’ us by sight.”

I shook my head.

“Rascals as thorough as you, Silver, would never leave an opportunity like that. ’Tis true I have had no sea-service, but I have fought with the savages upon our northern frontier.

“I’ll not move until I see a clear path before me.”

He laughed uproariously at this.

“Now that ’ere’s a good joke on me! Might ha’ knowed you wasn’t as open as your face. You’ll learn fast, you will, Master Ormerod. I’ll lay four spade-guineas to that. Bear over just a p’int, Ezra, matey. Aye, so!”

“Is that foretops’l drawin’ full, John?” asked the man with the green eye-shade in a voice that was singularly soft.

Silver squinted aloft.

“She’ll do,” he decided.

“Would you mind telling me how a blind man can steer?” I inquired.

The man with the green eye-shade chuckled in a way to chill your blood, so sardonic, so overpoweringly evil was the caliber of the mirth it suggested.

“A poor, blind man has to earn his bread and ’backy somehow, young sir,” he answered unctuously.

“Don’t go to makin’ up your mind Pew can’t see everything, Master Ormerod,” said Silver, shifting his crutch. “I’d hate to have him decide to take a shot at me. Steer? Well now, what’s needed in steerin’? A strong arm, says you, and you says true. Also and likewise, an ear for canvas. Lastly and leastwise, an eye for the course.

“Any man can read a compass, young gentleman; but not every sailorman can feel how his ship takes the wind and meet his rudder quick when she wants meetin’. Pew can. Give him some one like me to play eyes for him, and he’ll steer as straight a course as a packet-boat wi’ a bonus on the voyage.”

“Are there many cripples in your crew?” I asked curiously.

“Cripples?” repeated Silver. “It all depends on what you might mean. There’s cripples and cripples. Me and Pew now, we got ours in the same broadside. ’Twas a Injyman wi’ a fighting master, and she stood to us, board and board.”

He slapped the stump of his thigh.

“An eighteen-pounder did that. _Whoof_! Off she went. Pew, he was rammin’ home a charge and leaned out through the port and caught the flash of a carronade. ’Tain’t good for the eyes, nowise; but as I was a-sayin’, don’t you ever go for to believe Pew can’t see. He’s surprizin’, he is.

“But we was talkin’ of cripples. Yes, there’s cripples and cripples. Some on ’em ye pays their screw----”

“Their what?” I interrupted.

“Their screw, the what d’ye call it--insurance money. So much we get from the prize money extry for the hurt. Pew, he got a thousand pounds, which same he blowed in three nights in St. Pierre. D’ye mind, Ezra? I got eight hundred pounds for my leg--and fair enough, if you asks me.

“And that eight hundred pounds I’ll gamble you ha’ stowed away in a safe hole, John,” said Pew with a gentleness which gave the words a peculiarly sinister significance.

Silver nodded almost complacently.

“What I gets, I keeps. I’m none o’ your free spenders, rich today, poor tomorrow. Some day I’ll be retirin’ from piratin’, and then I’ll aim to ride in my own coach and sit in Parleyment.”

“You’ll have to sail your own ship first, John,” said Pew, and the remark was fraught with implications that made me turn cold at the pit of my stomach.

It was as if you could see the trail of bloodshed and suffering Silver would blaze to possess that ship and to exploit her to advantage.

“And why not?” returned Silver vigorously. “We’ll name no names, Ezra, but captains can’t live for ever. Some is aged and some soaks theirselves in rum. You never know! You never know!”

“There’s Bill Bones, as has ideas on the subjeck,” remarked Pew.

And he contrived to make me feel the horror of a long-drawn-out feud and rivalry.

“Yes, there’s Bill,” ruminated Silver. “Flint’s mate, is Bill. Flint’s best pal, is Bill. Flint’s confeydantey, some says, is Bill. Well, well! But we was talkin’ o’ cripples and how a blind man can steer, which is a long way off from Bill, who isn’t neither crippled nor blind, and maybe has hopes, so he has, when he remembers that.”

Pew laughed so coldly, with such demoniac inhumanity, that I experienced a sudden fellow-feeling for Master Bones, distasteful as I had found him--also, a pronounced desire to change the subject. The bare proximity to such whole-souled, heartless cruelty was unpleasant.

“Do you commonly indulge in exploits like yesterday’s, Silver?” I asked.

He cocked his head on one side.

“Exploits? Yesterday? Meanin’ the disposition of yourself? We-ell, no, sir; not reg’larly, I’d say, Ezra.”

“Not by a capful o’ onzas,” agreed Pew.

“I’m no man for makin’ trouble,” continued Silver, “but there’s them as might say the captain was a mite rash.”

“Why don’t you call him by his name?”

Silver gave me an odd look.

“There’s some names as is better off unmentioned in conversation,” he said. “We’ll call him the captain, wi’ your kind leave and permission, sir.”

“Call him what you please,” I answered; “but I should think it was insanity for men with your reputations to venture into New York. Why, the second mate of that Bristol packet had seen Captain Murray, and would have known him.”

“Ah!” said Silver, grinning. “But he didn’t see the captain, which is more to the point, my master; nor he wouldn’t have had the chance to see him in any case. ’Cause why? ’Cause the captain come ashore most careful in the dusk wi’ his cloak around his face and three stout hearties to fend off inquisitive strangers.”

“But the rest of you----”

“Now, Master Ormerod, what honest sailorman a-tremblin’ for his life is goin’ to remember faces out o’ a crew o’ pirates he sees on a shot-up deck? All he thinks of, says you, is a lot of villains as has likely slaughtered his mess-mates and looted his ship, and quite right. Why, I’ve been stood treat in Kingston by a skipper I’d stripped two months past--but that was afore I lost my leg, which bein’ in other seas ain’t as yet a mark of identification on me in these parts.”

“And did you take this ship designedly to carry you into New York?”

“You might say truthfully she was the best fitted for it of several,” he acknowledged. “Blow my other stick off if she was good for anything else.”

“Not forty pounds in her,” mumbled Pew, twiddling the wheel-spokes.

“Her crew----”

Silver raised his eyebrows and gave me a slow wink.

“Poor unfortunates! ’Twas one time we couldn’t take chances.”

Pew’s chuckle trickled icily from under the eye-shade which cast a green blur over his whole lower face.

“I suppose there is a hell for such as you,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

“Some says there is and some says there isn’t,” answered Silver reasonably. “No use to worry, says I.”

I was so wrought up that I think I must have come to blows with them but for a fortunate diversion. Bones and several other men emerged from the fo’csle hatch, yawning and stretching their arms, evidently having just arisen from sleep. At the same moment Peter Corlaer climbed from the cabin companionway, lurched for a moment, on his feet and then staggered precariously toward the bulwarks. I started for’ard to aid him, and Bones ran aft with a loud yell.

“Don’t ye spoil my decks, ye fat cow!” he shouted.

Poor Peter, regardless of both of us, seized a stay and clung to it abjectly, quite helpless. Bones reached him first and gave him a shove which sent him plunging into the scuppers head first.

“Get up,” snarled Bones, and dealt him a vicious kick with a heavy sea-boot.

Peter groaned, and I caught Bones by the arm.

“---- you for a coward!” I shouted. “Captain Murray bade you use us gently. Is this how you obey?”

He snatched free of me and yanked out a knife.

“Obey, ye lousy lubber!” he howled. “I’m Flint’s mate, and I’ll show ye who can say obey to me. Get back there or I’ll cut your heart out and eat it afore ye.”

I looked about me for a weapon, anxious to give him a lesson; but there was not a sign of anything handy, and I backed away cautiously from the menace of his knife. He had been drinking through the night on top of liberal potations during the previous day, and the effect was to render him quite insensible to any rule now that his passions were aroused. Silver shouted to him to let us be, as did one or two others; but his only answer was a string of the curses in which he was so proficient, and he continued to circle after me.

For myself I was not greatly frightened, for, as it chanced, knife-fighting was an art in which I was somewhat expert, thanks to instruction from my father’s Indian friends; but I was concerned lest the scoundrel make a dart at Peter and slay the Dutchman as he lay inert. Judge of my amazement then when Peter swayed to his feet, holding on to the bulwarks to pull himself erect. His face was white, but he abandoned his support without hesitation and advanced, crooked-legged, across the deck toward us.

“I take him, Bob,” he said.

I jumped between him and Bones in time to stop the pirate’s rush, dodging a knife-thrust by the width of my coat-sleeve.

“Keep away, Peter,” I panted. “I can handle him. You can’t. You’ll----”

“I take him,” repeated Corlaer.

He reached out his hand, grasped my shoulder and spun me from his path as easily as if I had been a child. And I did not attempt to return to his side, for I had felt the strength in his arm and knew that I had no cause to question his ability to take care of himself against any man, however armed.

Bones stared at him for a moment with a mixture of rage and surprize.

“D’ye want your ---- throat cut?” he sneered. “Here, turn your head and I’ll take an ear instead. There’s naught in slaying a cow like you.”

Peter said nothing, simply stood there before him weaponless, arms slightly bent, legs crooked at the knees. The Dutchman’s little eyes, almost buried from sight in his face, glittered with a steely menace.

“Let him be, Bill,” called Silver again--was I wrong in fancying his tone unduly officious, provocative?

“I’m ---- if I do,” rasped Bones. “If he wants it, he’ll get it.”

He sprang at Peter with knife upraised, aiming to slash his throat; but Peter moved with lightning speed to counter him. One immense arm, thick as a tree-bough, shot out and imprisoned the wrist of the knife-hand; a twist, and the knife pinged on the deck. The other arm captured a thigh, and Bones was reared above Peter’s head.

Peter gave him a preliminary shake as if to prove to him how completely he was in his power and started to walk back to the lee bulwark. Bones shrieked like the lost soul he was, certain that Peter intended to cast him into the sea; but half-way across the deck Peter came to a loose halyard. He lowered Bones carelessly, tucked him under one arm and proceeded to reeve a landsman’s slip-noose. We all watched him with utter fascination, and it is an indication of the pirates’ code in such affairs that none of them intervened. But Peter was not to hang Master Bones.

“Your object is no doubt praiseworthy, Peter,” remarked my great-uncle from the cabin companionway behind us, “but I fear I must request you to let the man go. He is of some value to a friend of mine.”

Peter regarded Murray curiously.

“He knifes Robert and me--_ja_,” answered the Dutchman.

“He will not do it again,” Murray assured him. “Master Bones!”

Peter regretfully unhitched the noose from Bones’ neck and administered a shove which sent him reeling across the deck, to carom into the butt of the mizzenmast, recoiling with the loss of a broken tooth and ending up in a battered heap at Murray’s feet. My great-uncle regarded the fellow with obvious displeasure.

“Stand up, Master Bones,” he said.

Bones stumbled to his feet, bleeding from several cuts and scratches. He was very plainly frightened at what lay ahead of him.

“Master Bones,” resumed my great-uncle, “you are for the present under my command, and I happen to have somewhat old-fashioned theories as regards discipline and the carrying out of orders. You have recently disobeyed an order of mine.”

“Sure, I didn’t----”

“Master Bones,” my uncle went on without raising his voice, “did you ever know a man named Fotherill--Jack, I believe, was the given name?”

Bones nodded, unable to speak.

“And what did I order done to him, Master Bones?”

Bones moistened his lips.

“Keel-hauled, he was.”

“Correct,” agreed my great-uncle. “Keel-hauled. A most expressive phrase, Robert,” he added to me. “Technically, I should explain, it involves drawing a man under the keel of a vessel. It has--shall we say?--unpleasant consequences.”

He turned to Bones.

“No man disobeys an order of mine more than once, Master Bones. That is all. You may go for’ard.”

The man started to slouch off, wiping the blood from his cheek with his coat sleeve; but Peter stepped in front of him.

The Dutchman took an oaken belaying-pin from the rack around the mizzenmast, held it out toward Bones and the others and calmly broke it in two with his bare hands and tossed the fragments overside.

“Admirable!” exclaimed my great-uncle. “What words could hope to express so much as that gesture? And it intrigues me to note that Corlaer has a distinct taste for the dramatic. I trust that you are recovering from the seasickness, friend Peter?”

“I get well, _ja_,” answered Peter.

“Then perhaps you will come below and join me at breakfast?”

Peter looked unhappy--he loved his food, did Peter.

“_Neen_,” he said simply. “If I eat, I get sick.”

“You have my sympathy,” replied my great-uncle with unfailing courtesy. “I advise a modest diet for a day or two, with an occasional dram of liquor to warm the stomach, and then I prophesy you will become as good a sailor as any of us. You, Robert, I perceive to have made yourself instantly at home upon the strange element. That is excellent. You shall yet prove a credit to me. Do you feel sufficiently stimulated by your new experiences to partake of a second meal so early in the day?”

“I have just been hearing what became of the lawful crew of this vessel,” I answered. “It left me no appetite for food.”

“Regrettable,” he returned sadly. “Life is a hard business, Robert, as you have yet to learn. Mercy is as often as not a mistaken policy, a vice as much as a virtue. Silver, has the lookout sighted any vessel?”

“Not a sail since we cleared Sandy Hook, sir,” the one-legged man answered briskly.

“Very good. Keep on this course and call me at once should a sail show in any quarter.” And he descended with proper dignity to his breakfast.