Chapter V: Part III (3)

"So am I. Brace up. We'll get used to it. Get a couple of hands aft and heave the log. We take our departure from Kittredge Point, Barbados Island, at six o'clock this morning of the 10th October. We'll keep a Geordie's log-book--with a jack-knife and a stick."

They hove the log for him. It was marked for a now useless 28-second sand-glass, which Captain Swarth replaced by a spare chronometer, held to his ear in the companionway. It ticked even seconds, and when twenty-eight of them had passed he called, "Stop." The markings on the line that had slipped through the mate's fingers indicated an eight-knot speed.

"Seven, allowing for wild steering," said the captain when he had stowed away his chronometer and returned to the deck. "Angel, we know we're going about sou'east by east, seven knots. There's practically no variation o' the compass in these seas, and that course'll take us clear of Cape St. Roque. Just as fast as the men can stand it at the wheel, we'll pile on canvas and get all we can out o' this good wind. If it takes us into the southeast trades, well and good. We can feel our way across on the trade-wind--unless we hit something, of course. You see, it blows almost out of the east on this side, and 'll haul more to the sou'east and south'ard as we get over. By the wind first, then we'll square away as we need to. We'll know the smell o' the trades--nothing like it on earth--and the smell o' the Gold Coast, Ivory Coast, Slave Coast, and the Kameruns. And I'll lay odds we can feel the heat o' the sun in the east and west enough to make a fair guess at the course. But it won't come to that. Some of us 'll be able to see pretty soon."

It was wild talk, but the demoralized mate needed encouraging. He answered with a steadier voice: "Lucky we got in grub and water yesterday."

"Right you are, Angel. Now, in case this holds on to us, why, we'll find some of our friends over in the Bight, and they'll know by our rig that something's wrong. Flanders is somewhere on the track,--you know he went back to the nigger business,--and Chink put a slave-deck in his hold down Rio way last spring. And old man Slack--I did him a service when I crippled the corvette that was after him, and he's grateful. Hope we'll meet him. I'd rather meet Chink than Flanders in the dark, and I'd trust a Javanese trader before either. If either of them come aboard we'll be ready to use their eyes for our benefit, not let 'em use ours for theirs. Flanders once said he liked the looks of this brig."

"S'pose we run foul of a bulldog?"

"We'll have to chance it. This coast's full o' them, too. Great guns, man! Would you drift around and do nothing? Anywhere east of due south there's no land nearer than Cape Orange, and that's three hundred and fifty miles from here. Beginning to-morrow noon, we'll take deep-sea soundings until we strike the trade-wind."

The negro cook felt his way through the preparing of meals and served them on time. The watches were set, and sail was put on the brig as fast as the men became accustomed to the new way of steering, those relieved always imparting what they had learned to their successors. Before nightfall on that first day they were scudding under foresail, topsail and topgallantsail and maintopsail, with the spanker furled as useless, and the jib adding its aid to the foretopmast-staysail in keeping the brig before the quartering seas which occasionally climbed aboard. The bowsprit light was rigged nightly; they hove the log every two hours; and Captain Swarth made scratches and notches on the sliding-hood of the companionway, while careful to wind his chronometer daily.

But, in spite of the cheer of his indomitable courage and confidence, his men, with the exception of a few, dropped into a querulous, whining discontent. Mr. Todd, spurred by his responsibility, gradually came around to something like his old arbitrary self. Yank Tate, the carpenter, maintained through it all a patient faith in the captain, and, in so far as his influence could be felt, acted as a foil to the irascible, fault-finding Tom Plate, the forecastle lawyer, the man who had been at the lead-line at Barbados. But the rest of them were dazed and nerveless, too shaken in brain and body to consider seriously Tom's proposition to toss the afterguard overboard and beach the brig on the South American coast, where they could get fresh liver of shark, goat, sheep, or bullock, which even a "nigger" knew was the only cure for moon-blindness.

They had not yet recovered from the unaccustomed debauch; their clouded brains seemed too large for their skulls, and their eyeballs ached in their sockets, while they groped tremblingly from rope to rope at the behest of the captain or mate.

So Tom marked himself for future attention by insolent and disapproving comments on the orders of his superiors, and a habit of moving swiftly to another part of the deck directly he had spoken, which prevented the blind and angry captain from finding him in the crowd.

Dim as must have been the light of day through the pelting rain and storm-cloud, it caused increased pain in their eyes, and they bound them with their neckerchiefs, applying meanwhile such remedies as forecastle lore could suggest. The captain derided these remedies, but frankly confessed his ignorance of anything but time as a means of cure. And so they existed and suffered through a three days' damp gale and a fourth day's dead calm, when the brig rolled scuppers under with all sail set, ready for the next breeze. It came, cool, dry, and faint at first, then brisker--the unmistakable trade-wind. They boxed the brig about and braced sharp on the starboard tack, steering again by the feel of the wind and the rattling of shaking leeches aloft. The removal of bandages to ascertain the sun's position by sense of light or increase of pain brought agonized howls from the experimenters, and this deterred the rest. Not even by its warmth could they locate it. It was overhead at noon and useless as a guide. In the early morning and late afternoon, when it might have indicated east and west, its warmth was overcome by the coolness of the breeze. So they steered on blindly, close-hauled on the starboard tack, nearly as straight a course as though they were whole men.

They took occasional deep-sea soundings with the brig shaking in the wind, but found no bottom, and at the end of fifteen days a longer heave to the ground-swell was evidence to Captain Swarth's mind that he was passing Cape St. Roque, and the soundings were discontinued.

"No use bothering about St. Paul Rocks or the Rocas, Angel," said he. "They rise out o' the deep sea, and if we're to hit, soundings won't warn us in time. I take it we'll pass between them and well north of Ascension." So he checked in the yards a little and brought the wind more abeam.

One day Yank Tate appeared at the captain's elbow, and suggested, in a low voice, that he examine the treasure-chests in the 'tween-deck. "I was down stowing away some oakum," he said, "an' I was sure I heard the lid close; but nobody answered me, an' I couldn't feel anybody."

Captain Swarth descended to his cabin and found his keys missing; then he and the carpenter visited the chests. They were locked tight, and as heavy as ever.

"Some one has the keys, Yank, and has very likely raided the diamonds. We can't do anything but wait. He can't get away. Keep still about it."

The air became cooler as they sailed on; and judging that the trade-wind was blowing more from the south than he had allowed for, the captain brought the wind squarely abeam, and the brig sailed faster. Still, it was too cool for the latitude, and it puzzled him, until a man came aft and groaned that he had lifted his bandage to bathe his eyes, and had unmistakably seen the sun four points off the port quarter; but his eyes were worse now, and he could not do it again.

"Four points off!" exclaimed Swarth. "Four o'clock in the afternoon. That's just about where the sun ought to be heading due east, and far enough south o' the line to bring this cool weather. We're not far from Ascension. Never knew the sou'east trade to act like this before. Must ha' been blowing out o' the sou'west half the time."

A week later they were hove to on the port tack under double-reefed topsails, with a cold gale of wind screaming through the rigging and cold green seas boarding their weather bow. It was the first break in the friendly trade-wind, and Swarth confessed to himself--though not to his men--that he was out of his reckoning; but one thing he was sure of--that this was a cyclone with a dangerous center.

The brig labored heavily during the lulls as the seas rose, and when the squalls came, flattening them to a level, she would lie down like a tired animal, while the aeolian song aloft prevented orders being heard unless shouted near by. Captain Swarth went below and smashed the glass of an aneroid barometer (newly invented and lately acquired from an outward-bound Englishman), in which he had not much confidence, but which might tell him roughly of the air-density. Feeling of the indicator, and judging by the angle it made with the center,--marked by a ring at the top,--he found a measurement which startled him. Setting the adjustable hand over the indicator for future reference, he returned to the deck, ill at ease, and ordered the topsails goose-winged. By the time the drenched and despairing blind men had accomplished this, a further lowering of the barometer induced him to furl topsails and foretopmast-staysail, and allow the brig to ride under a storm-spanker. Then the increasing wind required that this also should be taken in, and its place filled by a tarpaulin lashed to the weather main-rigging.

"Angel," said the captain, shouting into the mate's ear, "there's only one thing to account for this. We're on the right tack for the Southern Ocean; but the storm-center is overtaking us faster than we can drift away from it. We must scud out of its way."

So they took in the tarpaulin and set the foretopmast-staysail again, and, with the best two helmsmen at the wheel, they sped before the tempest for four hours, during which there was no increase of the wind and no change in the barometer; it still remained at its lowest reading.

"Keep the wind as much on the port quarter as you dare," ordered Swarth. "We're simply sailing around the center, and perhaps in with the vortex."

They obeyed him as they could, and in a few hours more there was less fury in the blast and a slight rise in the barometer.

"I was right," said the captain. "The center will pass us now. We're out of its way."

They brought the brig around amid a crashing of seas over the port rail, and stowing the staysail, pinned her again on the port tack with the tarpaulin. But a few hours of it brought an increase of wind and a fall of the barometer.

"What in d--nation does it mean, Angel?" cried the captain, desperately. "By all laws of storms we ought to drift away from the center."

The mate could not tell; but a voice out of the night, barely distinguishable above the shrieking wind, answered him.

"You--all-fired--fool--don't--you--know--any--more--than--to--heave--to --in--the--Gulf--Stream?"

Then there was the faintest disturbance in the sounds of the sea, indicating the rushing by of a large craft.

"What!" roared Swarth. "The Gulf Stream? I've lost my reckoning. Where am I? Ship ahoy! Where am I?"

There was no answer, and he stumbled down to the main-deck among his men, followed by the mate.

"Draw a bucket of water, one of you," he ordered.

This was done, and he immersed his hand. The water was warm.

"Gulf-Stream," he yelled frantically, "Gulf Stream--how in h----l did we get up here? We ought to be down near St. Helena. Angel, come here. Let's think. We sailed by the wind on the southeast trade for--no, we didn't. It was the northeast trade. We caught the northeast trade, and we've circled all over the Western Ocean."

"You're a bully full-rigged navigator, you are," came the sneering, rasping voice of Tom Plate from the crowd. "Why didn't you drop your hook at Barbados, and give us a chance for our eyes?"

The captain lunged toward him on the reeling deck; but Tom moved on.

"Your time is coming, Tom Plate," he shouted insanely; then he climbed to the poop, and when he had studied the situation awhile, called his bewildered mate up to him.

"We were blown out of the north entrance o' the bay, Angel, instead of the south, as we thought. I was fooled by the soundings. At this time o' the year Barbados is about on the thermal equator--half-way between the trades. This is a West India cyclone, and we're somewhere around Hatteras. No wonder the port tack drifted us into the center. Storms revolve against the sun north o' the line, and with the sun south of it. Oh, I'm the two ends and the bight of a d--d fool! Wear ship!" he added in a thundering roar.

They put the brig on the starboard tack, and took hourly soundings with the deep-sea lead. As they hauled it in for the fourth time, the men called that the water was cold; and on the next sounding the lead reached bottom at ninety fathoms.

"We're inside the Stream and the hundred-fathom curve, Angel. The barometer's rising now. The storm-center's leaving us, and we're drifting ashore," said the captain. "I know pretty well where I am. These storms follow an invariable track, and I judge the center is to the east of us, moving north. That's why we didn't run into it when we thought we were dodging it. We'll square away with the wind on the starboard quarter now, and if we pick up the Stream and the glass don't rise, I'll be satisfied to turn in. I'm about fagged out."

"It's too much for me, Bill," answered Mr. Todd, wearily. "I can navigate; but this ain't navigation. This is blindman's-buff."

But he set the head-sail for his captain, and again the brig fled before the wind. Only once did they round to for soundings, and this time found no bottom; so they squared away, and when, a few hours later, the seas came aboard warm, Swarth was confident enough of his position to allow his mind to dwell on pettier details of his business.

It was nearly breakfast-time now, and the men would soon be eating. With his pistols in his coat pockets he stationed himself beside the scuttle of the fore-hatch,--the entrance to the forecastle,--and waited long and patiently, listening to occasional comments on his folly and bad seamanship which ascended from below, until the harsh voice of Tom Plate on the stairs indicated his coming up. He reached toward Tom with one hand, holding a cocked pistol with the other; but Tom slid easily out of his wavering grasp and fled along the deck. He followed his footsteps until he lost them, and picked up instead the angry plaint of the negro cook in the galley amidships.

"I do' know who you are, but you want to git right out o' my galley, now. You heah me? I'se had enough o' dis comin' inter my galley. Gwan, now! Is you de man dat's all time stealin' my coffee? I'll gib you coffee, you trash! Take dat!"

Captain Swarth reached the galley door in time to receive on the left side of his face a generous share of a pot of scalding coffee. It brought an involuntary shriek of agony from him; then he clung to the galley-lashings and spoke his mind. Still in torment, he felt his way through the galley; but the cook and the intruder had escaped by the other door and made no sound.

All that day and the night following he chose to lie in his darkened state-room, with his face bandaged in oily cloths, while Yank Tate stood his watch. In the morning he removed the bandages and took in the sight of his state-room fittings: the bulkhead, his desk, chronometer, cutlass, and clothing hanging on the hooks. It was a joyous sight, and he shouted in gladness. He could not see with his right eye and but dimly with his left, but a scrutiny of his face in a mirror disclosed deep lines that had not been there, distorted eyelids, and the left side where the coffee had scalded puffed to a large, angry blister. He tied up his face, leaving his left eye free, and went on deck.

The wind had moderated, but on all sides was a wild gray waste of heaving, white-crested combers, before which the brig was still scudding under the staysail. Three miles off on the port bow was a large, square-bowed, square-yarded ship, hove to and heading away from them, which might be a frigate or a subsidized Englishman with painted ports; but in either case she could not be investigated now. He looked at the compass. The brig was heading about southeast, and his judgment was confirmed. Two haggard-faced men with bandaged eyes were grinding the wheel to starboard and port, and keeping the brig's yaws within two points each way--good work for blind men. Angel Todd stood near, his chin resting in his hand and his elbow on the companionway. Forward the watch sat about in coils of rope and sheltered nooks or walked the deck unsteadily, and a glance aloft showed the captain his rigging hanging in bights and yards pointed every way. She was unkempt as a wreck. The same glance apprised him of an English ensign, union down, tattered and frayed to half its size, at the end of the standing spanker-gaff, with the halyards made fast high on the royal-backstay, above the reach of bungling blind fingers. Tom Plate was coming aft with none of the hesitancy of the blind, and squinting aloft at the damaged distress-signal. He secured another ensign--American--from the flag-locker in the booby-hatch, mounted the rail, and hoisted it, union down, in place of the other. Then he dropped to the deck and looked into the glaring left eye and pepper-box pistol of Captain Swarth, who had descended on him.

"Hands up, Tom Plate, over your head--quick, or I'll blow your brains out!"

White in the face and open-mouthed, Tom obeyed.

"Mr. Todd," called the captain, "come down here--port main-rigging."

The mate came quickly, as he always did when he heard the prefix to his name. It was used only in emergencies.

"What soundings did you get at the lead when we were blowing out?" asked the captain. "What water did you have when you sang out 'a quarter six' and 'a quarter less six'?"

"N-n-one, capt'n. There warn't any bottom. I jess wanted to get you to drop the other anchor and hold her off the reef."

"Got him tight, cappen?" asked the mate. "Shall I help you hold 'im?"

"I've got my sight back. I've got Tom Plate under my gun. How long have you been flying signals of distress, Tom Plate?"

"Ever since I could see, capt'n," answered the trembling sailor.

"How long is that?"

"Second day out, sir."

"What's your idea in keeping still about it? What could you gain by being taken aboard a man-of-war?"

"I didn't want to have all the work piled on me jess 'cause I could see, capt'n. I never thought anybody could ever see again. I slept partly under No. 2 gun that night, and didn't get it so bad."

"You sneaked into my room, got my keys, and raided the treasure-chests. You know what the rules say about that? Death without trial."

"No, I didn't, capt'n; I didn't."

"Search him, Mr. Todd."

The search brought to light a tobacco-pouch in which were about fifty unset diamonds and a few well-jeweled solid-gold ornaments, which the captain pocketed.

"Not much of a haul, considering what you left behind," he said calmly. "I suppose you only took what you could safely hide and swim with."

"I only took my share, sir; I did no harm; I didn't want to be driftin' round wi' blind men. How'd I know anybody could ever see any more?"

"Sad mistake, Tom. All we wanted, it seems, was a good scalding with hot coffee." He mused a few moments, then continued: "There must be some medical virtue in hot coffee which the doctors haven't learned, and--well--Tom, you've earned your finish."

"You won't do it, capt'n; you can't do it. The men won't have it; they're with me," stuttered the man.

"Possibly they are. I heard you all growling down the hatch yesterday morning. You're a pack of small-minded curs. I'll get another crew. Mr. Todd," he said to the listening mate, "steward told me he was out of coffee, so we'll break a bag out o' the lazarette. It's a heavy lift--two hundred pounds and over--'bout the weight of a man; so we'll hoist it up. Let Tom, here, rig a whip to the spanker-gaff. He can see."

"Aye, aye, sir," answered the mate. "Get a single block and a strap and a gant-line out o' the bo's'n's locker, Tom."

"Is it all right, capt'n?" asked Tom, lowering his hands with a deep sigh of relief. "I did what seemed right, you know."

"Rig that whip," said Swarth, turning his back and ascending the poop.

Tom secured the gear, and climbing aloft and out the gaff, fastened the block directly over the lazarette-hatch, just forward of the binnacle. Then he overhauled the rope until it reached the deck, and descended.

"Come up here on the poop," called the captain; and he came.

"Shall I go down and hook on, sir?" he asked zealously.

"Make a hangman's noose in the end of the rope," said Swarth.

"Eh--what--a runnin' bowline--a timber-hitch? No, no," he yelled, as he read the captain's face. "You can't do it. The men----"

"Make a hangman's knot in the end of the rope," thundered the captain, his pistol at Tom's ear.

With a face like that of a death's-head he tied the knot.

"Pass it round your neck and draw it tight."

Hoarse, inarticulate screams burst from the throat of the man, ended by a blow on the side of his face by the captain's iron-hard fist. He fell, and lay quiet, while Swarth himself adjusted the noose and bound the hands with his own handkerchief. The men at the wheel strained their necks this way and that, with tense waves of conflicting expressions flitting across their weary faces, and the men forward, aroused by the screams, stood about in anxious expectancy until they heard Swarth's roar: "Lay aft here, the watch!"

They came, feeling their way along by rail and hatch.

"Clap on to that gant-line at the main fife-rail, and lift this bag of coffee out o' the lazarette," sang out the captain.

They found the loose rope, tautened it, hooked the bight into an open sheave in the stanchion, and listlessly walked forward with it. When they had hoisted the unconscious Tom to the gaff, Swarth ordered: "Belay, coil up the fall, and go forrard."

They obeyed, listlessly as ever, with no wondering voice raised to inquire why they had not lowered the coffee they had hoisted.

Captain Swarth looked at the square-rigged ship, now on the port quarter--an ill-defined blur to his imperfect vision. "Fine chance we'd have had," he muttered, "if that happened to be a bulldog. Angel," he said, as the mate drew near, "hot coffee is good for moon-blindness, taken externally, as a blistering agent--a counter-irritant. We have no fly-blisters in the medicine-chest, but smoking-hot grease must be just as good, if not better than either. Have the cook heat up a potful, and you get me out a nice small paint-brush."

Forty-eight hours later, when the last wakening vision among the twenty men had taken cognizance of the grisly object aloft, the gaff was guyed outboard, the rope cut at the fife-rail, and the body of Tom Plate dropped, feet first, to the sea.

Then when Captain Swarth's eyes permitted he took an observation or two, and, after a short lecture to his crew on the danger of sleeping in tropic moonlight, shaped his course for Barbados Island, to take up the burden of his battle with fate where the blindness had forced him to lay it down; to scheme and to plan, to dare and to do, to war and to destroy, against the inevitable coming of the time when fate should prove the stronger--when he would lose in a game where one must always win or die.

SALVAGE

She had a large crew, abnormally large hawse-pipes, and a bad reputation--the last attribute born of the first. Registered as the _Rosebud_, this innocent name was painted on her stern and on her sixteen dories; but she was known among the fishing-fleet as the _Ishmaelite_, and the name fitted her. Secretive and unfriendly, she fished alone, avoided company, answered few hails, and, seldom filling her hold, disposed of her catch as her needs required, in out-of-the-way ports, often as far south as Charleston. And she usually left behind her such bitter memories of her visit as placed the last port at the bottom of her list of markets.

No ship-chandler or provision-dealer ever showed her receipted bills, and not a few of them openly averred that certain burglaries of their goods had plausible connection with her presence in port. Be this as it may, the fact stood that farmers on the coast who saw her high bow and unmistakable hawse-pipes when she ran in for bait invariably double-locked their barns and chicken-coops, and turned loose all tied dogs when night descended, often to find both dogs and chickens gone in the morning.

Once, too, three small schooners had come home with empty holds, and complained of the appearance, while anchored in the fog, of a flotilla of dories manned by masked men, who overpowered and locked all hands in cabin or forecastle, and then removed the cargoes of fish to their own craft, hidden in the fog. Shortly after this, the _Ishmaelite_ disposed of a large catch in Baltimore, and the piracy was believed of her, but never proved.

Her luck at finding things was remarkable. Drifting dories, spars, oars, and trawl-tubs sought her unsavory company, as though impelled by the inanimate perversity which had sent them drifting. They were sold in port, or returned to their owners, when paid for. In the early part of her career she had towed a whistling buoy into Boston and claimed salvage of the government, showing her logbook to prove that she had picked it up far at sea. The salvage was paid; but, as her reputation spread, there were those who declared that she herself had sent the buoy adrift.

As poets and sailors believe that ships have souls, it may be that she gloried in her shame, like other fallen creatures; for her large, slanting oval hawse-pipes and boot-top stripe gave a fine, Oriental sneer to her face-like bow, and there was slur and insult to respectable craft in the lazy dignity with which she would swash through the fleet on the port tack, compelling vessels on the starboard tack to give up their right of way or be rammed; for she was a large craft, and there was menace in her solid, one-piece jib-boom, thick as an ordinary mainmast. An outward-bound coasting-schooner, resenting this lawlessness on one occasion, attempted to assert her rights, and being on the lawful starboard tack, bore steadily down on the _Ishmaelite_,--who budged not a quarter-point,--and, losing heart at the last moment, luffed up, all shaking, in just the position to allow the ring of her port anchor to catch on the bill of the _Ishmaelite's_ starboard anchor. As her own ring-stopper and shank-painter were weak, the patent windlass unlocked, and the end of the cable not secured in the chain-locker, the _Ishmaelite_ walked calmly away with the anchor and a hundred fathoms of chain, which, at the next port, she sold as legitimate spoil of the sea.

As her reputation increased, so did the hatred of men, while the number of ports on the coast which she could safely enter became painfully small. To avoid conflict with local authority, she had hurried to sea without clearing at the custom-house from Boston, Bangor, Portland, and Gloucester. She had carried local authority in the persons of distressed United States marshals to sea with her from three other ports, and landed it on some outlying point before the next meal-hour. With her blunt jib-boom she had prodded a hole in the side of a lighthouse supply-boat, and sailed away without answering questions. The government was taking cognizance, and her description was written on the fly-leaves of several revenue cutters' log-books, while Sunday newspapers in the large cities began a series of special articles about the mysterious schooner-rigged pirate of the fishing-fleet.

The future looked dark for her, and when the time came that she was chased away from Plymouth harbor--which she had entered for provisions--by a police launch, it seemed that the end was at hand; for she had done no wrong in Plymouth, and the police boat was evidently acting on general principles and instructions, which were vital enough to extend the pursuit to the three-mile limit. Her trips had become necessarily longer, and there was but two weeks' supply of food in the lazarette. The New England coast was an enemy's country, but in the crowded harbor of New York was a chance to lie unobserved at anchor long enough to secure the stores she needed, which only a large city can supply. So Cape Cod was doubled on the way to New York; but the brisk offshore wind, which had helped her in escaping the police boat, developed to a gale that blew her to sea, and increased in force as the hours passed by.

Hard-headed, reckless fellows were these men who owned the _Rosebud_ and ran her on shares and under laws of their own making. Had they been of larger, broader minds, with no change of ethics they would have acquired a larger, faster craft with guns, hoisted the black flag, and sailed southward to more fruitful fields. Being what they were,--fishermen gone wrong,--they labored within their limitations and gleaned upon known ground.

They were eighteen in number, and they typified the maritime nations of the world. Americans predominated, of course, but English, French, German, Portuguese, Scandinavian, and Russian were among them. The cook was a West India negro, and the captain--or their nearest approach to a captain--a Portland Yankee. Both were large men, and held their positions by reason of special knowledge and a certain magnetic mastery of soul which dominated the others against their rules; for in this social democracy captains and bosses were forbidden. The cook was an expert in the galley and a thorough seaman; the other as able a seaman, and a navigator past the criticism of the rest.

His navigation had its limits, however, and this gale defined them. He could find his latitude by meridian observation, and his longitude by morning sights and chronometer time; his dead-reckoning was trustworthy, and he possessed a fair working conception of the set and force of the Atlantic currents and the heave of the sea in a blow. But his studies had not given him more than a rudimentary knowledge of meteorology and the laws of storms. A gale was a gale to him, and he knew that it would usually change its direction as a clock's hands will in moving over the dial; and if, by chance, it should back around to its former point, he prepared for heavier trouble, with no reference to the fluctuations of the barometer, which instrument to him was merely a weather-glass--about as valuable as a rheumatic big toe.

So, in the case we are considering, not knowing that he was caught by the southern fringe of a St. Lawrence valley storm, with its center of low barometer to the northwest and coming toward him, he hove to on the port tack to avoid Cape Cod, and drifted to sea, shortening sail as the wind increased, until, with nothing set but a small storm-mainsail, he found himself in the sudden calm of the storm-center, which had overtaken him. Here, in a tumultuous cross-sea, fifty miles off the shore, deceived by the light, shifty airs and the patches of blue sky showing between the rushing clouds, he made all sail and headed west, only to have the masts whipped out as the whistling fury of wind on the opposite side of the vortex caught and jibed the canvas.

It was manifestly a judgment of a displeased Providence; and, glad that the hull was still tight, they cut away the wreck and rode out the gale,--now blowing out of the north,--hanging to the tangle of spar and cordage which had once been the foremast and its gear. It made a fairly good sea-anchor, with the forestay--strong as any chain--for a cable, and she lay snug under the haphazard breakwater and benefited by the protection, as the seas must first break their heads over the wreckage before reaching her. The mainmast was far away, with all that pertained to it; but the solid, hard-pine jib-boom was still intact, and not one of the sixteen dories piled spoon-fashion in the four nests had been injured when the spars went by the board. So they were content to smoke, sleep, and kill time as they could, until the gale and sea should moderate, and they could rig a jury-foremast of the wreck.

But before they could begin,--while there was still wind enough to curl the head of an occasional sea into foam,--a speck which had been showing on the shortened horizon to windward, when the schooner lifted out of the hollows, took form and identity--a two-masted steamer, with English colors, union down, at the gaff. High out of water, her broadside drift was faster than that of the dismasted craft riding to her wreckage, and in a few hours she was dangerously near, directly ahead, rolling heavily in the trough of the sea. They could see shreds of canvas hanging from masts and gaffs.

"Wunner what's wrong wid her," said the cook, as he relinquished the glasses to the next man. "Amos," he called to another, "you've been in the ingine-room, you say. Is her ingine bus' down?"

"Dunno," answered Amos. "Steam's all right; see the jet comin' out o' the stack? There! she's turnin' over--kickin' ahead. 'Bout time if she wants to clear us. She's signalin'. What's that say, Elisha?"

The ensign was fluttering down, and a string of small flags going aloft on the other part of the signal-halyards, while the steamer, heading west, pushed ahead about a length under the impulse of her propeller. Elisha, the navigator, went below, and returned with a couple of books, which he consulted.

"Her number," he said. "She's the _Afghan Prince_ o' London." As the schooner carried no signal-flags, he waved his sou'wester in answer, and the flags came down, to be replaced by others.

"Rudder carried away," he read, and then looked with the glasses. "Rudder seems all right; must mean his steerin'-gear. Why don't they rig up suthin', or a drag over the stern?"

"Don't know enough," said an expatriated Englishman of the crew. "She's one o' them bloomin', undermanned tramps, run by apprentices an' Thames watermen. They're drivin' sailors an' sailin'-ships off the sea blarst 'em!"

"Martin," said Elisha to the cook, "what's the matter with our bein' a drag for her?"

"Dead easy, if we kin git his line an' he knows how to rig a bridle."

"We can show him, if it comes to it. What ye say, boys? If we steer her into port we're entitled to salvage. She's helpless; we're not, for we've got a jury-rig under the bows. Hello! what's he sayin' now?" Other flags had gone aloft on the steamer, which asked for the longitude. Then followed others which said that the chronometer was broken.

"Better 'n ever!" exclaimed Elisha, excitedly. "Can't navigate. Our chronometer's all right; we never needed it, an' don't now, but it's a big help in a salvage claim. What ye say? Can't we get our hemp cable to him with a dory?"

Why not? They were fishermen, accustomed to dory work. A short confab settled this point; a dory was thrown over, and Elisha and Amos pulled to the steamer, which was now abreast, near enough for the name which Elisha had read to be seen plainly on the stern, but not near enough for the men shouting from her taffrail to make themselves heard on the schooner. Elisha and Amos, in the dory, conferred with these men and then returned.

"Badly rattled," they reported. "Tiller-ropes parted, an' not a man aboard can put a long splice in a wire rope, an' o' course we said we couldn't. They'll take our line, an' we're to chalk up the position an' the course to New York. Clear case o' salvage. We furnish everything, an' sacrifice our jury-material to aid 'em."

"What'll be our chance in court, I'm thinkin'," said one, doubtfully. "Hadn't we better keep out o' the courts? It's been takin' most of our time lately."

"What's the matter wi' ye?" yelled Elisha. "We owe a few hundreds, an' mebbe a fine or two; an' there's anywhere from one to two hundred thousand--hull an' cargo--that we save. We'll get no less than a third, mebbe more. Go lay down, Bill."

Bill subsided. They knotted four or five dory rodings together, coiled the long length of rope in the dory, unbent the end of their water-laid cable from the anchor, and waited until the wallowing steamer had drifted far enough to leeward to come within the steering-arc of a craft with no canvas; then they cut away the wreck, crowded forward, all hands spreading coats to the breeze, and when the schooner had paid off, steered her down with the wind on the quarter until almost near enough to hail the steamer, where they rounded to, safe in the knowledge that she could not drift as fast as the other.

Away went the dory, paying out on the roding, the end of which was fastened to the disconnected cable, and when it had reached the steamer, a heaving-line was thrown, by which the roding was hauled aboard. Then the dory returned, while the steamer's men hauled the cable to their stern. The bridle, two heavy ropes leading from the after-winch out the opposite quarter-chocks to the end of the cable, was quickly rigged by the steamer's crew.

With a warning toot of the whistle, she went ahead, and the long tow-line swept the sea-tops, tautened, strained, and creaked on the windlass-bitts, and settled down to its work, while the schooner, dropping into her wake, was dragged westward at a ten-knot rate.

"This is bully," said Elisha, gleefully. "Now I'll chalk out the position an' give her the course--magnetic, to make sure."

He did so, and they held up in full view of the steamer's bridge a large blackboard showing in six-inch letters the formula: "Lat. 41-20. Lon. 69-10. Mag. Co. W. half S."

A toot of the whistle thanked them, and they watched the steamer, which had been heading a little to the south of this course, painfully swing her head up to it by hanging the schooner to the starboard leg of the bridle; but she did not stop at west-half-south, and when she pointed unmistakably as high as northwest, still dragging her tow by the starboard bridle, a light broke on them.

"She's goin' on her way with us," said Elisha. "No, no; she can't. She's bound for London," he added. "Halifax, mebbe."

They waved their hats to port, and shouted in chorus at the steamer. They were answered by caps flourished to starboard from the bridge, and outstretched arms which pointed across the Atlantic Ocean, while the course changed slowly to north, then faster as wind and sea bore on the other bow, until the steamer steadied and remained at east-by-north.

"The rhumb course to the Channel," groaned Elisha, wildly. "The nerve of it! An' I'm supposed to give the longitude every noon. Why, dammit, boys, they'll claim they rescued us, an' like as not the English courts'll allow them salvage on our little tub."

"Let go the tow-line! Let 'em go to h----l!" they shouted angrily, and some started forward, but were stopped by the cook. His eyes gleamed in his black face, and his voice was a little higher pitched than usual; otherwise he was the steadiest man there.

"We'll hang right on to our bran-new cable, men," he said. "It's ours, not theirs. 'Course we kin turn her adrif' ag'in, an' be wuss off, too; we can't find de foremast now. But dat ain't de bes' way. John," he called to the Englishman of the crew, "how many men do you' country tramp steamers carry?"

John computed mentally, then muttered: "Two mates, six ash-cats,[1] two flunkies, two quartermasters, watchman, deck-hands--oh, 'bout sixteen or seventeen, Martin."

[1] Ash-cats: engineers and firemen.

"Boys, le' 's man de win'lass. We'll heave in on our cable, an' if we kin git close enough to climb aboard, we'll reason it out wid dat English cappen, who can't fin' his way roun' alone widout stealin' little fishin'-schooners."

"Right!" they yelled. "Man the windlass. We'll show the lime-juice thief who's doin' this."

"Amos," said Martin to the ex-engineer, "you try an' 'member all you forgot 'bout ingines in case anything happens to de crew o' dat steamer; an', Elisha, you want to keep good track o' where we go, so's you kin find you' way back."

"I'll get the chronometer on deck now. I can take sights alone."

They took the cable to the windlass-barrel and began to heave. It was hard work,--equal to heaving an anchor against a strong head wind and ten-knot tideway,--and only half the crew could find room on the windlass-brakes; so, while the first shift labored and swore and encouraged one another, the rest watched the approach of a small tug towing a couple of scows, which seemed to have arisen out of the sea ahead of them. When the steamer was nearly upon her, she let go her tow-line and ranged up alongside, while a man leaning out of the pilot-house gesticulated to the steamer's bridge and finally shook his fist. Then the tug dropped back abreast of the schooner. She was a dingy little boat, the biggest and brightest of her fittings being the name-board on her pilot-house, which spelled in large gilt letters the appellation _J. C. Hawks_.

"Say," yelled her captain from his door, "I'm blown out wi' my barges, short o' grub an' water. Can you gi' me some? That lime-juice sucker ahead won't."

"Can you tow us to New York?" asked Elisha, who had brought up the chronometer and placed it on the house, ready to take morning sights for his longitude if the sun should appear.

"No; not unless I sacrifice the barges an' lose my contract wi' the city. They're garbage-scows, an' I haven't power enough to hook on to another. Just got coal enough to get in."

"An' what do you call this--a garbage-scow?" answered Elisha, ill-naturedly. "We've got no grub or water to spare. We've got troubles of our own."

"Dammit, man, we're thirsty here. Give us a breaker o' water. Throw it overboard; I'll get it."

"No; told you we have none to spare; an' we're bein' yanked out to sea."

"Well, gi' me a bottleful; that won't hurt you."

"No; sheer off. Git out o' this. We're not in the Samaritan business."

A forceful malediction came from the tug captain, and a whirling monkey-wrench from the hand of the engineer, who had listened from the engine-room door. It struck Elisha's chronometer and knocked it off the house, box and all, into the sea. He answered the profanity in kind, and sent an iron belaying-pin at the engineer; but it only dented the tug's rail, and with these compliments the two craft separated, the tug steaming back to her scows.

"That lessens our chance just so much," growled Elisha, as he joined the rest. "Now we can't do all we agreed to."

"Keep dead-reckonin', 'Lisha," said Martin; "dat's good 'nough for us; an', say, can't you take sights by a watch--jess for a bluff, to show in de log-book?"

"Might; 't wouldn't be reliable. Good enough, though, for log-book testimony. That's what I'll do."

Inch by inch they gathered in their cable and coiled it down, unmoved by the protesting toots of the steamer's whistle. When half of it lay on the deck, the steamer slowed down, while her crew worked at their end of the rope; then she went ahead, the schooner dropped back to nearly the original distance, and they saw a long stretch of new Manila hawser leading out from the bridle and knotted to their cable. They cursed and shook their fists, but pumped manfully on the windlass, and by nightfall had brought the knot over their bows by means of a "messenger," and were heaving on the new hawser.

"Weakens our case just that much more," growled Elisha. "We were to furnish the tow-line."

"Heave away, my boys!" said Martin. "Dey's only so many ropes aboard her, an' when we get 'em all we've got dat boat an' dem men."

So they warped their craft across the Western Ocean. Knot after knot, hawser after hawser, came over the bows and cumbered the deck.

They would have passed them over the stern as fast as they came in, were they not salvors with litigation ahead; for their hands must be clean when they entered their claim, and to this end Elisha chalked out the longitude daily at noon and showed it to the steamer, always receiving a thankful acknowledgment on the whistle. He secured the figures by his dead-reckoning; but the carefully kept log-book also showed longitude by chronometer sights, taken when the sun shone, with his old quadrant and older watch, and corrected to bring a result plausibly near to that of the reckoning by log and compass. But the log-book contained no reference to the loss of the chronometer. That was to happen at the last.

On stormy days, when the sea rose, they dared not shorten their tow-line, and the steamer-folk made sure that it was long enough to eliminate the risk of its parting. So these days were passed in idleness and profanity; and when the sea went down they would go to work, hoping that the last tow-line was in their hands. But it was not until the steamer had given them three Manila and two steel hawsers, four weak--too weak--mooring-chains, and a couple of old and frayed warping-lines, that the coming up to the bow of an anchor-chain of six-inch link told them that the end was near, that the steamer had exhausted her supply of tow-lines, and that her presumably sane skipper would not give them his last means of anchoring--the other chain.

They were right. Either for this reason or because of the proximity to English bottom, the steamer ceased her coyness, and her crew watched from the taffrail, while those implacable, purposeful men behind crept up to them. It was slow, laborious work; for the small windlass would not grip the heavy links of the chain, and they must needs climb out a few fathoms, making fast messengers to heave on, while the idle half of them gathered in the slackened links by hand.

On a calm, still night they finally unshipped the windlass-brakes and looked up at the round, black stern of the steamer not fifty feet ahead. They were surrounded by lights of outgoing and incoming craft, and they knew by soundings taken that day, when the steamer had slowed down for the same purpose, that they were within the hundred-fathom curve, close to the mouth of the Channel, but not within the three-mile limit. Rejoicing at the latter fact, they armed themselves to a man with belaying-pins from their still intact pin-rails, and climbed out on the cable, the whole eighteen of them, man following man, in close climbing order.

"Now, look here," said a portly man with a gilt-bound cap to the leader of the line, as he threw a leg over the taffrail, "what's the meaning, may I ask, of this unreasonable conduct?"

"You may ask, of course," said the man,--it was Elisha,--"but we'd like to ask something, too" (he was sparring for time until more should arrive); "we'd like to ask why you drag us across the Atlantic Ocean against our will?"

Another man climbed aboard, and said:

"Yes; we 'gree to steer you into New York. You's adrif' in de trough of de sea, an' you got no chronometer, an' you can't navigate, an' we come 'long--under command, mind you--an' give you our tow-line, an' tell you de road to port. Wha' you mean by dis?"

"Tut, tut, my colored friend!" answered the man of gilt. "You were dismasted and helpless, and I gave you a tow. It was on the high seas, and I chose the port, as I had the right."

Another climbed on board.

"We were not helpless," rejoined Elisha. "We had a good jury-rig under the bows, and we let it go to assist you. Are you the skipper here?"

"I am."

Martin's big fist smote him heavily in the face, and the blow was followed by the crash of Elisha's belaying-pin on his head. The captain fell, and for a while lay quiet. There were four big, strong men over the rail now, and others coming. Opposing them were a second mate, an engineer, a fireman, coal-passer, watchman, steward, and cook--easy victims to these big-limbed fishermen. The rest of the crew were on duty below decks or at the steering-winch. It was a short, sharp battle; a few pistols exploded, but no one was hurt, and the firearms were captured and their owners well hammered with belaying-pins; then, binding all victims as they overcame them, the whole party raided the steering-winch and engine-room, and the piracy was complete.

But from their standpoint it was not piracy--it was resistance to piracy; and when Amos, the ex-engineer, had stopped the engines and banked the fires, they announced to the captives bound to the rail that, with all due respect for the law, national and international, they would take that distressed steamboat into New York and deliver her to the authorities, with a claim for salvage. The bargain had been made on the American coast, and their log-book not only attested this, but the well-doing of their part of the contract.

When the infuriated English captain, now recovered, had exhausted his stock of adjectives and epithets, he informed them (and he was backed by his steward and engineer) that there was neither food nor coal for the run to New York; to which Elisha replied that, if so, the foolish and destructive waste would be properly entered in the log-book, and might form the basis of a charge of barratry by the underwriters, if it turned out that any underwriters had taken a risk on a craft with such an "all-fired lunatic" for a skipper as this. But they would go back; they might be forced to burn some of the woodwork fittings (her decks were of iron) for fuel, and as for food, though their own supply of groceries was about exhausted, there were several cubic yards of salt codfish in the schooner's hold, and this they would eat: they were used to it themselves, and science had declared that it was good brain-food--good for feeble-minded Englishmen who couldn't splice wire nor take care of a chronometer.

Before starting back they made some preliminary and precautionary preparations. While Martin inventoried the stores and Amos the coal-supply, the others towed the schooner alongside and moored her. Then they shackled the schooner's end of the chain cable around the inner barrel of the windlass and riveted the key of the shackle. They transhipped their clothing and what was left of the provisions. They also took the log-book and charts, compass, empty outer chronometer-case,--which Elisha handled tenderly and officiously by its strap in full view of the captives,--windlass-brakes, tool-chest, deck-tools, axes, handspikes, heavers, boat-hooks, belaying-pins, and everything in the shape of weapon or missile by which disgruntled Englishmen could do harm to the schooner or their rescuers.

Then they passed the rescued ones down to the schooner, and Martin told them where they would find the iron kettle for boiling codfish, with the additional information that with skill and ingenuity they could make fish-balls in the same kettle.