Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (221 page)

“Glory!” said he, “this ship’s rotten.”

“I believe you, my boy,” said Captain Wicks.

The next day the sailor was observed with his nose aloft.

“Don’t you get looking at these sticks,” the captain said, “or you’ll have a fit and fall overboard.”

Mac turned towards the speaker with rather a wild eye. “Why, I see what looks like a patch of dry rot up yonder, that I bet I could stick my fist into,” said he.

“Looks as if a fellow could stick his head into it, don’t it?” returned Wicks. “But there’s no good prying into things that can’t be mended.”

“I think I was a Currency Ass to come on board of her!” reflected Mac.

“Well, I never said she was seaworthy,” replied the captain: “I only said she could show her blooming heels to anything afloat. And besides, I don’t know that it’s dry rot; I kind of sometimes hope it isn’t. Here; turn to and heave the log; that’ll cheer you up.”

“Well, there’s no denying it, you’re a holy captain,” said Mac.

And from that day on, he made but the one reference to the ship’s condition; and that was whenever Tommy drew upon his cellar. “Here’s to the junk trade!” he would say, as he held out his can of sherry.

“Why do you always say that?” asked Tommy.

“I had an uncle in the business,” replied Mac, and launched at once into a yarn, in which an incredible number of the characters were “laid out as nice as you would want to see,” and the oaths made up about two-fifths of every conversation.

Only once he gave them a taste of his violence; he talked of it, indeed, often; “I’m rather a voilent man,” he would say, not without pride; but this was the only specimen. Of a sudden, he turned on Hemstead in the ship’s waist, knocked him against the foresail boom, then knocked him under it, and had set him up and knocked him down once more, before any one had drawn a breath.

“Here! Belay that!” roared Wicks, leaping to his feet. “I won’t have none of this.”

Mac turned to the captain with ready civility. “I only want to learn him manners,” said he. “He took and called me Irishman.”

“Did he?” said Wicks. “O, that’s a different story! What made you do it, you tomfool? You ain’t big enough to call any man that.”

“I didn’t call him it,” spluttered Hemstead, through his blood and tears. “I only mentioned-like he was.”

“Well, let’s have no more of it,” said Wicks.

“But you ARE Irish, ain’t you?” Carthew asked of his new shipmate shortly after.

“I may be,” replied Mac, “but I’ll allow no Sydney duck to call me so. No,” he added, with a sudden heated countenance, “nor any Britisher that walks! Why, look here,” he went on, “you’re a young swell, aren’t you? Suppose I called you that! ‘I’ll show you,’ you would say, and turn to and take it out of me straight.”

On the 28th of January, when in lat. 27 degrees 20’ N., long. 177 degrees W., the wind chopped suddenly into the west, not very strong, but puffy and with flaws of rain. The captain, eager for easting, made a fair wind of it and guyed the booms out wing and wing. It was Tommy’s trick at the wheel, and as it was within half an hour of the relief (seven thirty in the morning), the captain judged it not worth while to change him.

The puffs were heavy but short; there was nothing to be called a squall, no danger to the ship, and scarce more than usual to the doubtful spars. All hands were on deck in their oilskins, expecting breakfast; the galley smoked, the ship smelt of coffee, all were in good humour to be speeding eastward a full nine; when the rotten foresail tore suddenly between two cloths and then split to either hand. It was for all the world as though some archangel with a huge sword had slashed it with the figure of a cross; all hands ran to secure the slatting canvas; and in the sudden uproar and alert, Tommy Hadden lost his head. Many of his days have been passed since then in explaining how the thing happened; of these explanations it will be sufficient to say that they were all different and none satisfactory; and the gross fact remains that the main boom gybed, carried away the tackle, broke the mainmast some three feet above the deck and whipped it overboard. For near a minute the suspected foremast gallantly resisted; then followed its companion; and by the time the wreck was cleared, of the whole beautiful fabric that enabled them to skim the seas, two ragged stumps remained.

In these vast and solitary waters, to be dismasted is perhaps the worst calamity. Let the ship turn turtle and go down, and at least the pang is over. But men chained on a hulk may pass months scanning the empty sea line and counting the steps of death’s invisible approach. There is no help but in the boats, and what a help is that! There heaved the Currency Lass, for instance, a wingless lump, and the nearest human coast (that of Kauai in the Sandwiches) lay about a thousand miles to south and east of her. Over the way there, to men contemplating that passage in an open boat, all kinds of misery, and the fear of death and of madness, brooded.

A serious company sat down to breakfast; but the captain helped his neighbours with a smile.

“Now, boys,” he said, after a pull at the hot coffee, “we’re done with this Currency Lass, and no mistake. One good job: we made her pay while she lasted, and she paid first rate; and if we were to try our hand again, we can try in style. Another good job: we have a fine, stiff, roomy boat, and you know who you have to thank for that. We’ve got six lives to save, and a pot of money; and the point is, where are we to take ‘em?”

“It’s all two thousand miles to the nearest of the Sandwiches, I fancy,” observed Mac.

“No, not so bad as that,” returned the captain. “But it’s bad enough: rather better’n a thousand.”

“I know a man who once did twelve hundred in a boat,” said Mac, “and he had all he wanted. He fetched ashore in the Marquesas, and never set a foot on anything floating from that day to this. He said he would rather put a pistol to his head and knock his brains out.”

“Ay, ay!” said Wicks. “Well I remember a boat’s crew that made this very island of Kauai, and from just about where we lie, or a bit further. When they got up with the land, they were clean crazy. There was an iron-bound coast and an Old Bob Ridley of a surf on. The natives hailed ‘em from fishing-boats, and sung out it couldn’t be done at the money. Much they cared! there was the land, that was all they knew; and they turned to and drove the boat slap ashore in the thick of it, and was all drowned but one. No; boat trips are my eye,” concluded the captain, gloomily.

The tone was surprising in a man of his indomitable temper. “Come, Captain,” said Carthew, “you have something else up your sleeve; out with it!”

“It’s a fact,” admitted Wicks. “You see there’s a raft of little bally reefs about here, kind of chicken-pox on the chart. Well, I looked ‘em all up, and there’s one — Midway or Brooks they call it, not forty mile from our assigned position — that I got news of. It turns out it’s a coaling station of the Pacific Mail,” he said, simply.

“Well, and I know it ain’t no such a thing,” said Mac. “I been quartermaster in that line myself.”

“All right,” returned Wicks. “There’s the book. Read what Hoyt says — read it aloud and let the others hear.”

Hoyt’s falsehood (as readers know) was explicit; incredulity was impossible, and the news itself delightful beyond hope. Each saw in his mind’s eye the boat draw in to a trim island with a wharf, coal-sheds, gardens, the Stars and Stripes and the white cottage of the keeper; saw themselves idle a few weeks in tolerable quarters, and then step on board the China mail, romantic waifs, and yet with pocketsful of money, calling for champagne, and waited on by troops of stewards. Breakfast, that had begun so dully, ended amid sober jubilation, and all hands turned immediately to prepare the boat.

Now that all spars were gone, it was no easy job to get her launched. Some of the necessary cargo was first stowed on board; the specie, in particular, being packed in a strong chest and secured with lashings to the afterthwart in case of a capsize. Then a piece of the bulwark was razed to the level of the deck, and the boat swung thwart-ship, made fast with a slack line to either stump, and successfully run out. For a voyage of forty miles to hospitable quarters, not much food or water was required; but they took both in superfluity. Amalu and Mac, both ingrained sailor-men, had chests which were the headquarters of their lives; two more chests with handbags, oilskins, and blankets supplied the others; Hadden, amid general applause, added the last case of the brown sherry; the captain brought the log, instruments, and chronometer; nor did Hemstead forget the banjo or a pinned handkerchief of Butaritari shells.

It was about three P.M. when they pushed off, and (the wind being still westerly) fell to the oars. “Well, we’ve got the guts out of YOU!” was the captain’s nodded farewell to the hulk of the Currency Lass, which presently shrank and faded in the sea. A little after a calm succeeded, with much rain; and the first meal was eaten, and the watch below lay down to their uneasy slumber on the bilge under a roaring shower-bath. The twenty-ninth dawned overhead from out of ragged clouds; there is no moment when a boat at sea appears so trenchantly black and so conspicuously little; and the crew looked about them at the sky and water with a thrill of loneliness and fear. With sunrise the trade set in, lusty and true to the point; sail was made; the boat flew; and by about four in the afternoon, they were well up with the closed part of the reef, and the captain standing on the thwart, and holding by the mast, was studying the island through the binoculars.

“Well, and where’s your station?” cried Mac.

“I don’t someway pick it up,” replied the captain.

“No, nor never will!” retorted Mac, with a clang of despair and triumph in his tones.

The truth was soon plain to all. No buoys, no beacons, no lights, no coal, no station; the castaways pulled through a lagoon and landed on an isle, where was no mark of man but wreckwood, and no sound but of the sea. For the seafowl that harboured and lived there at the epoch of my visit were then scattered into the uttermost parts of the ocean, and had left no traces of their sojourn besides dropped feathers and addled eggs. It was to this they had been sent, for this they had stooped all night over the dripping oars, hourly moving further from relief. The boat, for as small as it was, was yet eloquent of the hands of men, a thing alone indeed upon the sea but yet in itself all human; and the isle, for which they had exchanged it, was ingloriously savage, a place of distress, solitude, and hunger unrelieved. There was a strong glare and shadow of the evening over all; in which they sat or lay, not speaking, careless even to eat, men swindled out of life and riches by a lying book. In the great good nature of the whole party, no word of reproach had been addressed to Hadden, the author of these disasters. But the new blow was less magnanimously borne, and many angry glances rested on the captain.

Yet it was himself who roused them from their lethargy. Grudgingly they obeyed, drew the boat beyond tidemark, and followed him to the top of the miserable islet, whence a view was commanded of the whole wheel of the horizon, then part darkened under the coming night, part dyed with the hues of the sunset and populous with the sunset clouds. Here the camp was pitched and a tent run up with the oars, sails, and mast. And here Amalu, at no man’s bidding, from the mere instinct of habitual service, built a fire and cooked a meal. Night was come, and the stars and the silver sickle of new moon beamed overhead, before the meal was ready. The cold sea shone about them, and the fire glowed in their faces, as they ate. Tommy had opened his case, and the brown sherry went the round; but it was long before they came to conversation.

“Well, is it to be Kauai after all?” asked Mac suddenly.

“This is bad enough for me,” said Tommy. “Let’s stick it out where we are.”

“Well, I can tell ye one thing,” said Mac, “if ye care to hear it. When I was in the China mail, we once made this island. It’s in the course from Honolulu.”

“Deuce it is!” cried Carthew. “That settles it, then. Let’s stay. We must keep good fires going; and there’s plenty wreck.”

“Lashings of wreck!” said the Irishman. “There’s nothing here but wreck and coffin boards.”

“But we’ll have to make a proper blyze,” objected Hemstead. “You can’t see a fire like this, not any wye awye, I mean.”

“Can’t you?” said Carthew. “Look round.”

They did, and saw the hollow of the night, the bare, bright face of the sea, and the stars regarding them; and the voices died in their bosoms at the spectacle. In that huge isolation, it seemed they must be visible from China on the one hand and California on the other.

“My God, it’s dreary!” whispered Hemstead.

“Dreary?” cried Mac, and fell suddenly silent.

“It’s better than a boat, anyway,” said Hadden. “I’ve had my bellyful of boat.”

“What kills me is that specie!” the captain broke out. “Think of all that riches, — four thousand in gold, bad silver, and short bills — all found money, too! — and no more use than that much dung!”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Tommy. “I don’t like it being in the boat — I don’t care to have it so far away.”

“Why, who’s to take it?” cried Mac, with a guffaw of evil laughter.

But this was not at all the feeling of the partners, who rose, clambered down the isle, brought back the inestimable treasure-chest slung upon two oars, and set it conspicuous in the shining of the fire.

“There’s my beauty!” cried Wicks, viewing it with a cocked head. “That’s better than a bonfire. What! we have a chest here, and bills for close upon two thousand pounds; there’s no show to that, — it would go in your vest-pocket, — but the rest! upwards of forty pounds avoirdupois of coined gold, and close on two hundredweight of Chile silver! What! ain’t that good enough to fetch a fleet? Do you mean to say that won’t affect a ship’s compass? Do you mean to tell me that the lookout won’t turn to and SMELL it?” he cried.

Mac, who had no part nor lot in the bills, the forty pounds of gold, or the two hundredweight of silver, heard this with impatience, and fell into a bitter, choking laughter. “You’ll see!” he said harshly. “You’ll be glad to feed them bills into the fire before you’re through with ut!” And he turned, passed by himself out of the ring of the firelight, and stood gazing seaward.