Chapter Six.
Stranded!
What were Williams’s ultimate intentions toward me I found it quite impossible to guess, for, beyond the fact that he kept me carefully locked up in the cabin that he had assigned to me, I suffered no further violence at his hands, a steward bringing me an ample supply of food when the meal hours came round. I tried to ascertain from this fellow how my men were faring in the forecastle; but my attempt to question him caused him so much distress and terror that, at his earnest request, I forebore to press my enquiries. And as soon as the man had taken away the empty plates and dishes that had contained my dinner, I stretched myself out on the very inviting-looking bed that had been made up in the bunk, and, being exceedingly tired, soon fell asleep. I slept all night, and did not awake until the steward entered next morning with my breakfast.
I rather expected that, after a night’s calm consideration of his exploit, Williams would have come to the conclusion that discretion was the better part of valour, and would have taken some steps toward the patching up of a truce; but he did not, and I spent the whole of that day also locked up in the cabin, and seeing no soul but the steward who brought my meals to me.
It was somewhat late that night when I turned in, as I had slept well all through the previous night and did not feel tired; and even when I had bestowed myself for the night I did not get to sleep for some time, for I felt that we must by this time be drawing close in to the coast; and supposing we should fall in with a man-o’-war, how was I to communicate with her if this man was going to keep me cooped up down below? True, I might succeed in attracting the attention of those on board such a ship by waving my handkerchief out of my cabin port if we happened to pass her closely enough for such a signal to be seen, and if she happened also to be on the starboard side, which was the side on which my berth was situated; but I was very strongly of opinion that, after what had happened, Williams would take especial care to give an exceedingly wide berth to any men-o’-war that he might happen to sight.
At length, however, I fell into a somewhat restless sleep, from which I was awakened some time later by sounds of confusion on deck—the shouting of orders, the trampling of feet, the violent casting of ropes upon the deck, the flapping of loose canvas in the wind, the creaking of yards, and the various other sounds that usually follow upon the happening of anything amiss on board a ship; and at the same time I became conscious of something unusual in the “feel” of the ship. For a moment I was puzzled to decide what it was; but by the time that I had jumped out of my berth and was broad awake I knew what had happened. The ship was ashore! Yet she must have taken the ground very easily, for I had been conscious of no shock; and even as I stood there I was unable to detect the least motion of the hull. She was as firmly fixed, apparently, and as steady, as though she had been lying in a dry dock.
I went to the side and put my face to the open porthole. I saw that the night was clear, and that the sky overhead was brilliant with stars; and by twisting myself in such a way as to get a raking view forward I fancied I could see in the distance something having the appearance of a low, tree-clad shore. I also heard the heavy thunder of distant surf; but alongside the ship the water was quite still and silent, save for a soft, seething sound as of water gently swelling and receding upon a sheltered beach.
I seated myself upon the sofa locker, and strove to recall mentally the features of the several rivers that we had visited, but could fit none of them to the dimly-seen surroundings that were visible from the port out of which I had looked. The one thing which was certain was that we were in perfectly smooth water, and the entire absence of shock with which the ship had taken the ground was an indication that she was certainly in no immediate danger; but beyond that the situation was puzzling in the extreme. The snug and sheltered position of the ship pointed strongly to the assumption that we had blundered into some river in the darkness; yet when I again looked out through the port the little that I was able to see was suggestive of beach rather than river, and that we were not very far from a beach was evidenced by the loud, unbroken roar of the surf. Then there was the puzzling question: How did we get where we were? What were the look-outs doing? What was everybody doing that no one saw the land or heard the roar of the surf in time to avoid running the ship ashore?
As I continued to stare abstractedly out through the port it struck me that the various objects within sight were growing more clearly visible, and presently I felt convinced that the dawn was approaching. And at the same moment I became aware that a broad dark shadow that lay some fifty yards from the ship’s starboard side, and which had been puzzling me greatly, was a sandbank of very considerable extent, so considerable, indeed, that, for the moment, I could not make out where it terminated. Meanwhile the hubbub on deck gradually ceased, and I surmised that the canvas had been taken in.
The transition from the first pallor of dawn to full daylight is very rapid in those low latitudes, and within ten minutes of the first faint heralding of day a level shaft of sunlight shot athwart the scene, which became in a moment transfigured, and all that had before been vague and illusory stood frankly revealed to the eye. The sandbank now showed as an isolated patch about two hundred yards wide and perhaps half a mile long, with what looked like a by-wash channel of about one hundred yards wide flowing between it and the mainland, the latter being a sandy beach backed by sand dunes clothed with a rank creeper-like vegetation, and a few stunted tree tops showing behind them. As the ship then lay with her head pointing toward the south-east, I was able, with some effort, to get a glimpse of a mile or two of the shore; and now that daylight had come I could see the surf breaking heavily all along it, and also upon the seaward side of the sandbank upon which we appeared to have grounded.
Feeling quite reassured as to the safety of the ship, I sat down on the sofa locker and endeavoured, by recalling the courses steered and the distances run since we had been picked up, to identify the particular spot on the coast where we now were. But it was no use; my memory of the charts was not clear enough, and I had to give up the task. But I felt convinced that we were somewhere in the Gulf of Guinea.
As I sat there on the locker, thinking matters over, and wondering what would be the outcome of this adventure, I became so absorbed in my own thoughts that I gradually lost all consciousness of my surroundings, and was only brought back to myself by the sounds of a sudden commotion on deck, loud outcries—in which I thought I recognised the voice of the skipper,—a great and violent stamping of feet, and finally an irregular popping of pistols, followed by a sudden subsidence of the disturbance. This, in turn, was followed by sounds of excitement in the cabins on either side of the one which I occupied, and in the distance I could hear the general shouting at the top of his voice. I gathered that the passengers were only now beginning to realise that something was wrong with the ship, and were turning out and dressing hastily. A few minutes later I heard the sounds of cabin doors being flung open, and hurried footsteps went speeding past my cabin toward the companion way which led up to the main-deck. Then the general’s voice breezed up again, from the saloon above, in tones of angry remonstrance, followed by a tremendous amount of excited talk, amid which I thought I once or twice caught the sounds of women’s sobs. It was evident that something very much out of the common had happened, and I came to the conclusion that it was high time for me to be at large again and taking a hand in the proceedings; I therefore whipped out my pocketknife, and without further ado proceeded to withdraw the screws that fastened the lock to the door. Five minutes later I found myself in the main saloon, and the centre of an excited and somewhat terrified group of passengers.
“Ah!” exclaimed the general, as I made my appearance. “Now, perhaps, we shall get at something practical. Here is young Grenvile, who, being a navy man, may be supposed to know how to deal with an awkward situation. Here is a pretty kettle of fish, sir,” he continued, turning to me. “The ship is ashore! The captain has blown his brains out—so they say! And, last but not least, the crew, headed by the boatswain, has mutinied against the authority of Mr Carter—whom they have thrust in here among us—and absolutely refuse to listen to reason in any shape or form! Now I ask you, as an officer in his Most Gracious Majesty’s navy, what is to be done, sir; what are the proper steps to be taken to extricate ourselves from this infernal predicament?”
“The first thing, general,” said I, “is to let me hear Carter’s story, which will probably give me a fairly accurate idea of the precise situation of affairs. Where is he?”
“Here I am, Mr Grenvile,” replied the man himself, edging his way toward me through the crowd.
“Now,” said I, “please tell us precisely what you know about this very extraordinary affair.”
“Well, sir,” was the answer, “I really don’t know so very much about it, when all’s told; but I’m not very greatly surprised. The way that things have been going aboard this ship, ever since poor Cap’n Matthews died, has been enough to prepare a man for anything, mutiny included. I had the middle watch last night, and, as you know—or perhaps you don’t know—it was very overcast and dark all through the watch, so it’s not very surprisin’ that I saw nothing of the land, even if it was in sight—which I doubt, seein’ that it’s low—and Cap’n Williams, who ought to have known that we was drawin’ in close upon the coast, never gave me any warning of the ship’s position, or said anything about keepin’ an extra good look-out, or anything of that sort. Consequently, when the bo’s’un relieved me at four o’clock this mornin’, I didn’t pass on any particular caution to him. As a matter of fact I hadn’t a notion that we were anywhere near the land! Consequently, when the commotion of haulin’ down and clewin’ up awoke me, and when, upon rushin’ out on deck to see what was the matter, I found that the ship was ashore, I was regularly flabbergasted! But I hadn’t much time for surprise, or anything else either, for the skipper was on deck and in charge; and I must confess that the cool way in which he took everything made me think that he wasn’t nearly so surprised at what had happened as by rights he ought to have been.
“Well, we hauled down, clewed up, and furled everything, by which time the daylight had come, and we were able to get a view of our whereabouts. So far as I could make out we seemed to have blundered slap into the mouth of some river, and to have grounded on the inner side of a big sandbank that had formed right athwart it at a distance of about a quarter of a mile to seaward of the general trend of the shore line. We couldn’t have managed better if we’d picked the berth for ourselves; for we’re lyin’ in perfectly smooth water, completely sheltered from the run of the surf; and nothin’ short of a stiff on-shore gale would be at all likely to hurt us.
“The skipper said something about lightening the ship, and ordered the bo’s’un to clear away the boats and see all ready for hoistin’ ’em out, and directed me to go down into the fore-peak and rouse out all the hawsers I could find down there, and send ’em up on deck. I was busy upon this job, with half a dozen hands to help me, when suddenly we heard a terrific rumpus on deck, and the sounds of pistol firing; and when I jumped up on deck to see what all the row was about, there was that villain Tonkin, with a pistol still smokin’ in his hand, talkin’ to the men and tellin’ ’em that as the ship was ashore, and the cap’n gone, all hands were free to please themselves as to whether they’d stick to the hooker or not, and that, for his part, he meant to have a spell ashore for a day or two before decidin’ what next to do.
“Just at that point I interrupted him by askin’ what he meant by sayin’ that the cap’n was ‘gone’; to which he replied that the skipper had shot himself and then jumped overboard—which I don’t believe, Mr Grenvile, not for a moment, for if I’m not very greatly mistaken I saw the scoundrel wink at the men as he told me the yarn. And he added that, that bein’ the case, every man aboard was his own master, and free to do as he pleased; and if I had anything to say against that, I’d better say it then.
“And I did say it; I told him and all hands that, as to everybody now bein’ his own master, that was all nonsense; for if the skipper was indeed dead—and it would be my business to find out just exactly how he died—the command of the ship devolved upon me, and I intended to take all the necessary steps to get her afloat again and to carry her to her destination. I thought that that would settle it; but it didn’t, by a long chalk, for Tonkin turned to the men and says:—
“‘Look here, shipmates all, I for one have had quite enough choppin’ and changin’ about of skippers in this hooker,’ he says; ‘and,’ says he, ‘so far as I’m concerned I don’t want no more. I’ve nothin’ to say again’ Carter there, but I’m not goin’ to acknowledge him as skipper of this packet, and I don’t fancy as how any of you will, either. Of course,’ he says, ‘if there’s any of you as is anxious to have him for skipper, and wants to go heavin’ out cargo and runnin’ away kedges, and what not, under his orders, instead of goin’ ashore with me into them woods, huntin’ for fruit, he’s quite at liberty to do so, I won’t say him nay; but you may as well make up your minds now as any other time whether you’ll stick to him or to me; so now what d’ye say, shipmates—who’s for Carter, and who’s for Tonkin?’
“And I’ll be shot, Mr Grenvile, if every mother’s son of ’em didn’t declare, right off, without hesitatin’, for him! Whereupon he ordered me in here, and told me not to dare to show my nose out on deck again until I had his permission, or he’d have me hove over the rail. And I was to tell the passengers that they might go up on the poop if they liked; but that if e’er a one of ’em put his foot on the main-deck he’d be hove overboard without any palaver. Now, what d’ye think of that, sir, for a mess?”
“Have any of them been drinking, think you?” asked I.
“Well, yes, sir, I think they have,” answered Carter. “That is to say, I think that most of ’em have been pretty well primed—just enough, you know, to make ’em reckless. But there was none of ’em what you’d call drunk; not by a long way.”
“And were any of my men among them?” I asked.
“Oh no!” was the answer. “Your men—but I forgot—you don’t know what’s happened to them. The whole lot of ’em, sound and sick alike, are locked up in the steerage—Simpson, Martin, and Beardmore bein’ in irons.”
“And what about the steerage passengers?” I asked. “Where are they?”
“Why,” answered Carter, “there are only five of them, all told. Two of them—Hales and Cruickshank—both of whom are thoroughly bad characters—have chummed in with Tonkin and his lot; while Jenkins, with his wife and daughter, are in their own cabins in the steerage. Mrs Jenkins and her daughter, Patsy, have been busy acting as nurses to your wounded men, under Dr Burgess’s instructions, ever since you came aboard us, and they are doing very well.”
“That is good news,” said I, “and I will see that the two women are properly rewarded for their trouble. Now let us see how we stand. How many do the mutineers muster, all told?”
“Twenty-five, or twenty-seven if we count in Hales and Cruickshank,” answered Carter.
“And how many do we muster on our side?” said I. “Let me just reckon up. First of all, there are nine of my men and myself, that makes ten. Then there is yourself, Mr Carter—eleven. What about the stewards?”
“Oh, they are all right, and so is the cook. They’ll all do their work as usual,” answered Carter.
“Ay, no doubt,” answered I; “but what about their fighting qualities, if we should be obliged to resort to forcible measures with the mutineers?”
“Ah,” said Carter, “if it comes to fighting, that’s another matter! The stewards are youngsters, with the exception of Briggs, the head steward, and would stand a pretty poor chance if it came to a fight with the forecastle hands. But Briggs—well, he’s in the pantry, perhaps we’d better call him and hear what he has to say for himself.”
The head steward was a man of about thirty-five, well-built, and fairly powerful; and upon being questioned he professed himself willing to place himself unreservedly under my orders, and also to ascertain to what extent we might rely upon his subordinates. That brought our fighting force up to an even dozen, to which were speedily added the general and Messrs Morton, Fielder, Acutt, Boyne, Pearson, and Taylor, all of whom professed to be eager for a scrimmage, although, in the case of the last-mentioned five, I had a suspicion that much of their courage had its origin in a desire to appear to advantage before Miss Duncan. However, that brought us up to nineteen—not counting the three under-stewards—against twenty-seven mutineers.
The next question was as to weapons. The mutineers were each of them possessed of at least a knife, while it was known that Tonkin and some six or seven others had one or more pistols, and it was also speedily ascertained that they had secured all the pikes and tomahawks belonging to the ship. Moreover, there were such formidable makeshift weapons as capstan-bars, marline-spikes, belaying-pins, and other instruments accessible to them at a moment’s notice. If, therefore, it should come to a hand-to-hand fight, our antagonists were likely to prove rather formidable.
On our own side, on the other hand, I possessed a brace of pistols, with five cartridges, and my sword. My men also had had their cutlasses and pistols, together with a certain quantity of ammunition; but these were not to be reckoned upon, for I considered it almost certain that, after putting my three men in irons, Tonkin would take the precaution to secure the arms and ammunition belonging to all of them. Then the general also had his sword and pistols, while each of the other men possessed at least a sporting gun—and, in the case of three of them, pistols as well,—but unfortunately all these were down in the after-hold among their baggage, and could not be got at so long as Tonkin and his gang were in possession of the deck. Thus the only weapons actually available for our party were my own, and it needed but a moment’s consideration to show that ours was a case wherein strategy rather than force must be employed.
“Well, then, gentlemen,” said I, when we had all become agreed upon this point, “it appears to me that the situation resolves itself thus: The mutineers have expressed their determination to go ashore, and until they have done so we can do nothing beyond holding ourselves ready for action at a moment’s notice. And meanwhile we must all wear an air of the utmost nonchalance and unconcern; for if we were to manifest any symptoms of excitement or interest in their movements, there are, no doubt, some among them who would be astute enough to observe it, and thereupon to become suspicious. Let them leave the ship, as many as may please to go—and the more the better; and as soon as they are fairly out of sight I will release my men, and we will then set to work to get your firearms up out of the hold, and take such further steps as may be necessary to subdue the mutineers upon their return, and bring them once more under control. Probably we shall only find it necessary to get Tonkin into our hands to break the neck of the revolt and bring the rest of the men to reason. And now I think it would be a very good plan if a few of you were to go up on the poop and take a quiet saunter before breakfast, just to let the men see that you do not stand in any fear of them, and at the same time you can take a good look round, with the object of reporting to me what you see. As for myself, I shall keep below for the present. There is nothing to be gained by reminding Tonkin of my presence in the ship, and if he were to see that I was at large and among you again, he might so far modify his arrangements as to make matters even more difficult for us than they are at present.”
“Quite right,” approved the general. “I agree with every word that our young friend here has said. He appears to have got a very good grip of the situation, and his views accord with my own exactly. We shall doubtless be obliged to come to fisticuffs with those scoundrels forward before we can hope to extricate ourselves from this very awkward situation. But it would be the height of folly to precipitate a fight before we are fully prepared. And now, gentlemen, I am going up on the poop. Come with me who will; but I think that, for the present at least, the ladies had better remain below.”
And thereupon he and the five young griffins made their way up on deck at short intervals, while Mr Morton and I did our best to comfort and encourage the weaker members of the party. Not that they needed very much encouragement—I will say that for them,—for, with the exception of poor little Mrs Morton, who was very much more anxious and frightened on behalf of her children than on her own account, the ladies showed a very great deal more courage than I had looked for from them; while, as for Mrs Jennings and Miss Duncan, they very promptly came forward to say that if there was any way in which they could possibly render assistance I was not to hesitate to make use of them.
While we were all still talking together in the saloon, Briggs, the chief steward, entered in a state of great indignation, and, addressing himself to Carter, informed him that the men demanded fried ham and various other dainties from the cabin stores for breakfast, and upon his venturing to remonstrate with them had darkly hinted that unless he produced the required provisions at once, together with several bottles of rum, it would be the worse for him.
“What do you say, Mr Grenvile?” demanded Carter, appealing to me. “Shall we let them have what they ask for?”
“Certainly,” I said, “seeing that at present we are not in a position to refuse them and make good our refusal. Let them have whatever they ask for, but be as sparing as you possibly can with the grog; we do not want them to have enough to make them quarrelsome, or to render them unfit to go ashore.”
“It goes mightily against the grain with me to serve out those good cabin stores to such a pack of drunken loafers as them, sir,” remonstrated Briggs.
“Never mind,” said I. “We are in their hands at present, and cannot very well help ourselves. You shall have your revenge later, when we have got the rascals safe below in irons.”
So they had what some of them inelegantly described as “a good blow-out” that morning in the forecastle, while we were having our own breakfast in the cabin; and, so far as drink was concerned, Tonkin was wise enough to see to it that, in view of their projected trip ashore, no man had more liquor than he could conveniently carry.
And while we sat at breakfast the gentlemen who had been on deck gave us the result of such observations as they had been able to make from the poop, which, after all, did not amount to much, the only conclusion at which they had arrived being that we were ashore on the inner edge of a sandbank which had formed athwart the mouth of a river, the extent of which could not be seen from the ship in consequence of the fact that there were two points of land, one overlapping the other, which hid everything beyond them. These two points, the general added, were thickly overgrown with mangroves, and the land immediately behind was low and densely wooded, coconut trees and palms being apparently very plentiful, while a few miles inland the ground rose into low hills, from the midst of which a single mountain towered into the air to a height of some five or six thousand feet.
We were still dawdling over breakfast when we heard sounds of movement out on deck, and presently Briggs, who had been instructed to reconnoitre from the pantry window, which commanded a view of the main-deck, sent word by one of the under-stewards that some of the mutineers were getting tackles up on the fore and main yard-arms, while others were employed in clearing out the longboat, which was stowed on the main hatch; and a few minutes later the cook came aft with the intelligence that he had received imperative orders to kill and roast a dozen fowls for the men to take ashore with them, and also to make up a good-sized parcel of cabin bread, butter, pots of jam, pickles, and a dozen bottles of rum, in order that they might not find themselves short of creature comforts during their absence from the ship. This seemed to point to the fact that they intended to undertake their projected excursion in the longboat instead of taking the two gigs—a much greater piece of luck than I had dared to hope for,—and also suggested an intention on their part to make a fairly long day of it. I did not hesitate to instruct Briggs to see to it that their supply of grog should on this occasion be a liberal one, for the longer they remained out of the ship, the more time we should have in which to make our preparation.
The weather was intensely hot, and the mutineers manifested no inclination to exert themselves unduly. It was consequently almost eleven o’clock in the forenoon ere the longboat was in the water alongside, and another quarter of an hour was spent over the making of the final preparations; but at length they tumbled down over the side, one after another, with a good deal of rough horseplay, and a considerable amount of wrangling, and pushed off. The general and three or four of the other passengers were on the poop, smoking under the awning—which they had been obliged to spread for themselves,—and observing the movements of the men under the cover of a pretence of reading; and when the longboat had disappeared the general came down to apprise me of that fact, and also of another, namely, that the steerage passengers Hales and Cruickshank, and two seamen, armed to the teeth with pistols and cutlasses—the latter at least, in all probability, taken from my men—had been left behind for the obvious purpose of taking care of the ship and keeping us in order during the absence of the others.