Chapter VII: The Sail with a Lozenge-Shaped Patch

It was not long before we got another warning even more ominous than the one from the captain of the Adventure. On Friday, July 28, in latitude 19 deg. 50' South, longitude 101 deg. 53' East,--the log of the voyage, kept beyond this point in Mr. Thomas's own hand, gives me the dates and figures to the very day for it still is preserved in the vaults of Hamlin, Lathrop & Company,--we sighted a bark to the south, and at the captain's orders wore ship to speak her. When she also came about, we served out pikes and muskets as a precaution against treachery, and Mr. Falk saw that our guns were shotted. But she proved to be in good faith, and in answer to our hail she declared herself the Adrienne of Liverpool, eight days from the Straits, homeward bound. Her master, it appeared, wished to compare notes on longitude, and a long, dull discussion followed; but in parting Captain Whidden asked if there was news of pirates or marauders.

"Yes," was the reply. "Much news and bad news." And the master of the Adrienne thereupon launched into a tale of piracy and treachery such, as I never had heard before. Leaning over the taffrail, his elbows out-thrust and his big hands folded, he roared the story at us in a great booming voice that at times seemed to drown the words in its own volume. Now, as the waves and the wind snatched it away, it grew momentarily fainter and clearer; now it came bellowing back again, loud, hoarse, and indistinct.

It was all about an Arab ship off Benkulen; Ladronesers and the havoc they had wrought among the American ships in the China Sea; a warning not to sail from Macao for Whampoa without a fleet of four or five sail; and again, about the depredations of the Malays. The grizzled old captain seemed to delight in repeating horrible yarns of the seas whence he came, whither we were going. He roared them after us until we had left him far astern; and at the last we heard him laughing long and hoarsely.

"What dat yeh man think we all am? He think we all gwine believe dat yeh? Hgh!" the cook growled.

But Neddie Benson dolefully shook his head.

Parting, the Adrienne and the Island Princess continued, each on her course, the one back round the Cape of Good Hope and north again to Liverpool, the other on into strange oceans beset with a thousand dangers.

We sailed now a sea of opalescent greens and purples that shimmered and changed with the changing lights. Strange shadows played across it, even when the sky was cloudless, and it rolled past the ship in great, regular swells, ruffled by favoring breezes and bright beneath the clear sun.

At daylight on August 3 we saw land about nine miles away, bearing from east by south to north, a long line of rugged hills, which appeared to be piled one above another, and which our last lunar observations indicated were in longitude 107 deg. 15' East; and we made out a single sail lying off the coast to the north.

The sail caught and held our attention--not that, so far as we then could see, that particular sail was at all remarkable: any sail, at that time and in that place, would have interested us unusually. Mindful of the warnings we had received, we paused in our work to watch it. Kipping, with a sly glance aft, left the winch with which he was occupied and leaned on the rail. Here and there the crew conversed cautiously, and on the quarter-deck a lively discussion, I could see, was in progress.

We were so intent on that distant spot of canvas which pricked the horizon, that a fierce squall, sweeping down upon us, almost took us aback.

The cry, "All hands on deck!" brought the sleeping watch from the bunks below, and the carpenter, steward, and sailmaker from the steerage. The foresail ripped from its bolt ropes with a deafening crack, and tore to ribbons in the gale. As the ship lay into the wind, I could hear the captain's voice louder than the very storm, "Meet her!--Meet her!--Ease her off!" But the reply of the man at the wheel was lost in the rush of wind and rain.

I had been well drilled long since in furling the royals, for on them the green hands were oftenest practised; and now, from his post on the forecastle, Mr. Thomas spied me as I slipped and fell half across the deck. I alone at that moment was not hard at work, and, in obedience to the captain's orders, during a lull that gave us a momentary respite, he sent me aloft.

It was quite a different thing from furling a royal in a light breeze. When I had got to the topgallant masthead, the yard was well down by the lifts and steadied by the braces, but the clews were not hauled chock up to the blocks. Leaning out precariously, I won Mr. Thomas's attention with greatest difficulty, and shrieked to have it done. This he did. Then, casting the yard-arm gaskets off from the tye and laying them across between the tye and the mast, I stretched out on the weather yard-arm and, getting hold of the weather leech, brought it in to the slings taut along the yard. Mind you, all this time I, only a boy, was working in a gale of wind and driven rain, and was clinging to a yard that was sweeping from side to side in lurching, unsteady flight far above the deck and the angry sea. Hauling the sail through the clew, and letting it fall in the bunt, I drew the weather clew a little abaft the yard, and held it with my knee while I brought in the lee leech in, the same manner. Then, making up my bunt and putting into it the slack of the clews, the leech and footrope and the body of the sail, I hauled it well up on the yard, smoothed the skin, brought it down abaft, and made fast the bunt-gasket round the mast. Passing the weather and lee yard-arm gaskets round the yard in turn, and hauling them taut and making them fast, I left all snug and trim.

From aft came faintly the clear command, "Full and by!" And promptly, for by this time the force of the squall was already spent, the answer of the man at the wheel, "Full and by, sir."

In this first moment of leisure I instinctively turned, as did virtually every man aboard ship, to look for the sail that had been reported to the north of us. But although we looked long and anxiously, we saw no sail, no trace of any floating craft. It had disappeared during the squall, utterly and completely. Only the wild dark sea and the wild succession of mountain piled on mountain met our searching eyes.

A sail there had been, beyond all question, where now there was none. Driven by the storm, it had vanished completely from our sight.

As well as we could judge by our lunar observations, the land was between Paga River and Stony Point, and when we had sailed along some forty miles, the shore, as it should be according to our reckoning, was less mountainous.

It was my first glimpse of the Sunda Islands, of which I had heard so much, and I well remember that I stood by the forward rigging watching the distant land from where it seemed on my right to rise from the sea, to where it seemed on my left to go down beyond the horizon into the sea again, and that I murmured to myself in a small, awed voice:--

"This is Java!"

The very name had magic in it. Already from those islands our Salem mariners had accumulated great wealth. Not yet are the old days forgotten, when Elias Hasket Derby's ships brought back fortunes from Batavia, and when Captain Carnes, by one voyage in Jonathan Peele's schooner Rajah to the northern coast of Sumatra for wild pepper, made a profit of seven hundred per cent of both the total cost of the schooner itself and the whole expense of the entire expedition. I who lived in the exhilarating atmosphere of those adventurous times was thrilled to the heart by my first sight of lands to which hundreds of Salem ships had sailed.

It really was Java, and night was falling on its shores. Far to the northeast some tiny object pricked above the skyline, and a point of light gleamed clearly, low against the blue heavens in which the stars had just begun to shine.

"A sail!" I cried.

Before the words had left my lips a deep voice aloft sonorously proclaimed:--

"Sa-a-ail ho!"

"Where away?" Mr. Thomas cried.

"Two points off the larboard bow, sir."

The little knot of officers on the quarter-deck already were intent on the tiny spot of almost invisible canvas, and we forward were crowding one another for a better sight of it. Then in the gathering darkness it faded and was gone. Could it have been the same that we had seen before?

There was much talk of the mysterious ship that night, and many strange theories were offered to account for it. Davie Paine, in his deep, rolling voice, sent shivers down our backs by his story of a ghost-ship manned by dead men with bony fingers and hollow eyes, which had sailed the seas in the days of his great-uncle, a stout old mariner who seemed from Davie's account to have been a hard drinker. Kipping was reminded of yarns about Malay pirates, which he told so quietly, so mildly, that they seemed by contrast thrice as terrible. Neddie Benson lugubriously recalled the prophecy of the charming fortune-teller and argued the worst of our mysterious stranger. "The lady said," he repeated, "that there'd be a dark man and a light man and no end o' trouble. She was a nice lady, too." But Neddie and his doleful fortune-teller as usual banished our gloom, and the forecastle reechoed with hoarse laughter, which grew louder and louder when Neddie once again narrated the lady's charms, and at last cried angrily that she was as plump as a nice young chicken.

"If you was to ask me," Bill Hayden murmured, "I'd say it was just a sail." But no one asked Bill Hayden, and with a few words about his "little wee girl at Newburyport," he buried himself in his old blankets and was soon asleep.

During the mid-watch that same night, the cook prowled the deck forward like a dog sneaking along the wharves. Silently, the whites of his eyes gleaming out of the darkness, he moved hither and thither, careful always to avoid the second mate's observation. As I watched him, I became more and more curious, for I could make nothing of his veering course. He went now to starboard, now to larboard, now to the forecastle, now to the steerage, always silently, always deliberately. After a while he came over and stood beside me.

"It ain't right," he whispered. "Ah tell you, boy, it ain't right."

"What's not right?" I asked.

"De goin's on aboa'd dis ship."

"What goings on?"

"Boy, Ah's been a long time to sea and Ah's cooked foh some bad crews in my time, yass, sah, but Ah's gwine tell you, boy, 'cause Ah done took a fancy to you, dis am de most iniquitous crew Ah eveh done cook salt hoss foh. Yass, sah."

"What do you mean?"

The negro ignored my question.

"Ah's gwine tell you, boy, dis yeh crew am bad 'nough, but when dah come a ha'nt boat a-sailin' oveh yondeh jest at dahk, boy, Ah wish Ah was back home whar Ah could somehow come to shoot a rabbit what got a lef' hind-foot. Yass, sah."

For a long time he silently paced up and down by the bulwark; but finally I saw him momentarily against the light of his dim lantern as he entered his own quarters.

Morning came with fine breezes and pleasant weather. At half-past four we saw Winerow Point bearing northwest by west. At seven o'clock we took in all studding-sails and staysails, and the fore and mizzen topgallant-sails. So another day passed and another night. An hour after midnight we took in the main topgallantsail, and lay by with our head to the south until six bells, when we wore ship, proceeding north again, and saw Java Head at nine o'clock to the minute.

We now faced Sunda Strait, the channel that separates Java from Sumatra and unites the Indian Ocean with the Java Sea. From the bow of our ship there stretched out on one hand and on the other, far beyond the horizon, Borneo, Celebes, Banka and Billiton; the Little Sunda Islands--Bali and Lombok, Simbawa, Flores and Timor; the China Sea, the Philippines, and farther and greater than them all, the mainland of Asia.

While we were still intent on Java Head there came once more the cry, "Sail ho!"

This time the sail was not to be mistaken. Captain Whidden trained on it the glass, which he shortly handed to Mr. Thomas. "See her go!" the men cried. It was true. She was running away from us easily. Now she was hull down. Now we could see only her topgallant-sails. Now she again had disappeared. But this time we had found, besides her general appearance and the cut of her sails, which no seaman could mistake, a mark by which any landsman must recognize her: on her fore-topsail there was a white lozenge-shaped patch.

At eleven o'clock in the morning, with Prince's Island bearing from north to west by south, we entered the Straits of Sunda. At noon we were due east of Prince's Island beach and had sighted the third Point of Java and the Isle of Cracato.

Fine breezes and a clear sky favored us, and the islands, green and blue according to their distance, were beautiful to see. Occasionally we had glimpses of little native craft, or descried villages sleeping amid the drowsy green of the cocoanut trees. It was a peaceful, beautiful world that met our eyes as the Island Princess stood through the Straits and up the east coast of Sumatra; the air was warm and pleasant, and the leaves of the tufted palms, lacily interwoven, were small in the distance like the fronds of ferns in our own land. But Captain Whidden and Mr. Thomas remained on deck and constantly searched the horizon with the glass; and the men worked uneasily, glancing up apprehensively every minute or two, and starting at slight sounds. There was reason to be apprehensive, we all knew.

On the evening of Friday, August 11, beyond possibility of doubt we sighted a ship; and that it was the same which we already had seen at least once, the lozenge-shaped patch on the foresail proved to the satisfaction of officers and men.