Chapter Six.
The derelict Dutch barque.
Nothing further of any importance occurred until, having worked our way slowly up past the west and north-west coast of Australia, we found ourselves to the northward of the Ombay Passage, the entrance of which—or, rather, Savou Island, which may be said to lie in the fairway of the southern entrance—I hit off to a hair, much to my own secret gratification and the admiration of the boatswain and carpenter. Then one night, toward the end of the middle watch, the wind having fallen very light, the carpenter, whose watch it happened to be, came down below in a great state of perturbation to inform me that, although nothing could be seen, all hands had been terribly alarmed by the sound of a bell tolling at no great distance.
My first thought upon hearing this news was of a bell buoy marking the position of some dangerous rock or shoal toward which we might be drifting; but I quickly dismissed that idea, for bell buoys were much less numerous in those days than they are now. Moreover there was no mention of any such thing on the chart or in the directory. I therefore came to the conclusion that there must be some other cause for the sounds, and, without waiting to don any of my day clothing, went on deck to investigate.
Upon stepping out on deck the reason why nothing could be seen at once became apparent, for the night was as dark as a wolf’s mouth—so dark indeed, that, even after I had been up on the poop long enough for my eyes to become accustomed to the darkness, nothing was visible save the feeble light of the low-turned cabin lamps shining through the skylight, the faint glow of the binnacle lamps upon the helmsman’s face and hands and the upper part of the wheel, and the ghostly image of some twelve feet of the mainmast, part of the fife rail round it, and such portions of the running gear as were belayed to the pins therein, all glimmering uncertainly in as much of the cabin light as made its way out on deck, through the door by which I had emerged. Beyond these patches of dim illumination, and the coming and going of a spark on the forecastle, where one of the watch sucked meditatively at his pipe, all was opaque darkness, unrelieved by even the occasional glimpse of so much as a solitary star.
The night was as quiet as it was dark, for the wind, light all through the preceding twenty hours, had at length fallen away to nothing, and the ship was motionless, save for the slight heave of the swell which, stealing along through the blackness, would occasionally take her under the counter and give her a gentle lift that would cause all her spars to creak and her canvas to rustle with a pattering of reef-points, a jerk and rattle of hemp and chain sheets, and a faint click of cabin doors upon their hooks, the whole accompanied, perhaps, with a discordant bang of the wheel chains to the kick of the rudder as the black water swirled and gurgled round it. In the midst of it all there would come the clear, metallic clang of a bell—a single stroke, as though someone away out there in the offing were tolling for a funeral. It was a ship’s bell that was being struck, there could be no doubt about that; but why was it being tolled? That was the question that puzzled me, and, as I could clearly see, had excited the superstitious alarm of the carpenter and the hands forward. The sound was so clear and distinct that I felt convinced it must emanate from a craft at no very great distance, and Chips and I accordingly united our voices in a stentorian hail of “Ship ahoy!” repeating it at least half a dozen times. But no reply came to us out of the darkness, save the occasional “ting” of the bell; nor was any light shown to indicate the whereabouts of our mysterious neighbour. This being the case, and feeling satisfied that the stranger could do us no harm so long as she came no closer to us than she was, I instructed Chips to report the matter to the boatswain when the latter came on deck at eight bells, requesting him to keep a sharp lookout during the remaining hours of darkness, and to call me at daylight, and then went back to my cabin and turned in again.
I had scarcely closed my eyes, as it seemed to me, when I was awakened by Polson, who was shaking me by the shoulder as he reported:
“It’s just gone four bells, Mr Troubridge, and there’s daylight enough abroad to show us that the ringin’ that have been worryin’ us comes from a barque ’bout half a mile to the east’ard of us. Her mizenmast is over the side, and she looks as if she might have been afire; but I don’t see nobody aboard of her except the chap what’s hangin’ over the poop rail, and it’s him that seems to be tollin’ the bell.”
“All right, boatswain,” I replied, “I’ll be on deck directly, and take my bath as usual under the head-pump, after which we will have a good look at our neighbour.”
Springing out of my bunk, I passed through the main cabin out on deck, and so forward into the eyes of the ship, where one of the watch, having rigged the head-pump in readiness for washing decks, sluiced me for a couple of minutes with clear, cool, sparkling salt water. The refreshment from this exhilarating shower bath, after a night spent in a close sleeping-cabin, was indescribable; and having given myself a good towelling I returned aft to my cabin to dress for the day, taking a cursory glance at the strange barque as I went. As the boatswain had said, she was about half a mile distant from us, and her mizenmast was over the side, still fast to the hull by the rigging, which had not been cut away.
Half an hour later, having given the scrubbers time to get off the poop, I once more hied me on deck, this time taking the ship’s telescope with me; and now, seating myself upon a convenient hencoop, I proceeded to acquire as much knowledge of the stranger as was to be obtained with the aid of a reasonably good set of lenses. I saw that the vessel was a craft of probably a trifle over three hundred tons, her hull painted green, from her rail down to her zinc sheathing. She was lying in such a position that the Mercury was broad on her port bow, and my first glimpse of her showed that she carried a name upon her head-boards, which name, after a while, I made out to be Braave. She was, therefore, doubtless Dutch. For a little while after that I was unable to make out anything further about her, for she lay right in the wake of the newly risen sun, the dazzle of which obliterated all detail; but after the lapse of about a quarter of an hour the sun crept a trifle away to the south of her, while some slight movement on the part of both vessels helped me. Then, although her port side was still in shadow, a dark stain on the green paint beneath one of her scuppers attracted my attention, and set me wondering what it could possibly be; for there was a sinister suggestiveness about its appearance that I did not want to accept.
I could still see nobody about her decks, although the time was now long past when her crew ought to have been stirring, nor was there the faintest film of smoke issuing from her galley chimney. Yet it seemed that she could scarcely be abandoned, for she carried two boats at her davits, one on each quarter, while there were two more, bottom-up, on the gallows abaft the mainmast, and, unless I was greatly mistaken, I could make out the longboat stowed on top of the main hatch, with the jollyboat in her. But I could not be certain of this, for the vessel’s decks seemed to be lumbered up most unaccountably just in that part of her. As I was looking at her, she canted a bit, bringing her poop into clearer view, and then I was able to see that, as the boatswain had said, there appeared to be a solitary figure up there hanging over the rail in a most extraordinary posture close alongside the ship’s bell, which still most persistently tolled a single stroke at irregular intervals. Once, when the craft rolled toward us, I thought I caught a glimpse of what might possibly be a hole in her poop deck, just where the mizenmast had once been stepped. But these imperfect glimpses, which were all that I was just then able to get, were so full of suggestion that, as soon as the watch had finished washing the decks, the weather still being fine, with no sign of wind, I had the smallest of our quarter boats lowered, and, jumping into her with a couple of hands, pushed off for the stranger, determined to pay her a visit, and thus either confirm or banish certain suspicions that were beginning to arise within my mind.
Ten minutes sufficed us to cover the stretch of oil-smooth sea that lay between the Mercury and the Braave, when, passing beneath the stern of the latter in order to reach her starboard side, I again read her name, carved in four-inch letters upon her counter, with the word “Amsterdam”, her port of registry. Then, as we cleared her stern and ranged up alongside her starboard main chains, with her green side staring at us in the full blaze of the tropical sunlight, my eye was again caught by a dark, rusty-looking stain beneath one of her scuppers, similar to what I had already observed through the Mercury’s telescope. I recognised it for what it was, and what I had all along suspected, but had refused to acknowledge it to be—blood, dried blood, that had been shed so freely that it had poured out through the scupper-holes! The man who was pulling stroke, standing up in the boat and facing forward, fisherman-fashion, caught sight of the sinister stain almost as soon as I did, and exclaimed, as he laid in his oar with a clatter on the thwart:
“Jerusher! see that, sir? See that, Tom? Smother me if it ain’t blood! Now, what’s been happenin’ aboard this here ghastly hooker?”
“I am afraid I can make a pretty shrewd guess,” I answered; “but let us wait until we can get a glimpse of what is to be seen between her bulwarks. Make fast your painter round one of her deadeyes, and then follow me aboard.”
So saying, I sprang into her main chains, and from thence made my way inboard. The moment that my head rose above her rail a horrible odour, of which my nostrils had already caught a faint hint, smote me almost as something solid, and, looking down upon the main deck, the waist of her seemed to be full of dead bodies, their clothing smeared and splashed with blood, while that part of the deck whereon they lay was deeply dyed and crusted with the same deep, rusty stain. As I gazed, petrified with horror, the bell upon the poop once more clanged loudly; and, glancing upward, I saw that the figure which I had already observed lolling in so odd an attitude over the poop rail was that of a dead man, grasping in his right hand the short length of rope attached to the clapper of the bell. His attitude was such that, as the ship swung upon the swell, his body moved just sufficiently to cause the clapper to strike a single stroke.
For the first few seconds after I had found myself standing upon the ensanguined deck planks of that floating charnel house I had no eyes for anything, save the spectacle of her slaughtered crew, lying there at my feet in every conceivable attitude indicative of the unspeakable agony and terror that had distracted their last conscious moments. Then, as the two seamen who had accompanied me from the Mercury swung themselves in over the rail and came to my side, muttering ejaculations of horror and dismay at the ghastly spectacle that met their gaze, I pulled myself together with a wrench, and, mounting to the poop, began to take in the general details of the scene.
Standing, as I now was, at the head of the starboard poop ladder, I commanded a complete view of the vessel’s deck from stem to stern, and saw that my original estimate of her size was rather under than above the mark, her dimensions being those of a vessel of fully three hundred and fifty tons. From certain details of her build and equipment I set her down as being at least fifty years old; but she was still apparently quite sound as to hull, spars, and rigging, and had been evidently well taken care of. She mounted eight twelve-pounders upon her main deck, four in each battery, but they were all secured, and I could see nothing to suggest that she had recently fought an action with another ship. On the contrary, all the evidence was in favour of the assumption that her people had been taken completely by surprise—most probably during the night; that she had been boarded by pirates, Malays or Chinese, all hands ruthlessly massacred, and the ship then plundered and set on fire. These last assumptions were based upon the facts that her longboat—which from the deck of the Mercury had appeared to be stowed over the main hatch—had been shifted over to the port side of the deck, the hatches removed, and a quantity of her cargo broken out and hoisted up on deck, where it now lay, a confused jumble of merchandise and of torn bales and shattered packages, piled high on the starboard side of the hatchway. A yawning, fire-blackened cavity in the poop, where the mizenmast had stood, showed that she had been on fire in the cabin; but that the fire had somehow become extinguished before it had had time to get a firm hold upon the hull. The condition of the bodies of the murdered crew seemed to indicate that the tragedy must have occurred some time within the preceding forty-eight hours. Apparently she had been under all plain sail when the thing happened.
Descending again to the main deck, and calling upon the two seamen from the Mercury to follow me, I next entered the poop cabin, which I found to be arranged after the manner that was very usual at that time. Access to the main cabin was gained by a narrow passage some nine feet in length, on the port side of which, and next the ship’s side, was a stateroom which was easily identifiable as that belonging to the chief mate, while on the starboard side of the passage was the steward’s pantry. At the inner end of the passage was a doorway, the door being open and hooked back against the bulkhead; and passing through this doorway one found oneself in the main cabin, an apartment some thirty feet long, with three staterooms on each side of it. Abaft that again was the sail-room, well-stocked with bolts of canvas of varying degrees of coarseness and several sails, many of which seemed to be quite new, neatly rolled up into long bundles, stopped with spunyarn, and each labelled legibly with the description of the sail. Forward of the main cabin, on the starboard side, and separated by a stout bulkhead from the steward’s pantry, was the captain’s cabin, a fine, roomy, comfortable apartment, neatly and conveniently fitted up with a standing bed-place, having a capacious chest of drawers beneath it, a washstand at the foot of the berth, and a small flap table against the fore-and-aft bulkhead, at which the skipper could sit to write up his log or make his daily astronomical calculations. There were two entrances to this stateroom, one from the main cabin, and one directly from the main deck; and in the fore bulkhead there was a window through which, while still lying in his bunk, the skipper could see everything that was happening out on deck.
These observations occupied me nearly half an hour; but the moment that I entered the main cabin my nostrils were assailed by the smell of recently extinguished fire, and upon looking about me I finally came to the conclusion that the fire had not been intentional but the result of accident. The miscreants who had boarded the vessel had apparently been all over her in search of anything that might be worth carrying away, and, among other places, they had explored the lazarette, which lay beneath the cabin, a small hatchway just abaft the mizenmast giving access to it. This hatchway we found open, and the general appearance of the cabin seemed to indicate that the depredators had roused up a number of barrels and cases, and broken them open for the purpose of ascertaining what they contained. I conjectured that among the articles broached must have been a cask of spirits, which had been accidentally set on fire. The fire had burnt away a portion of the cabin deck, partially destroyed the cabin table, severely scorched and charred the paintwork generally, and had evidently burnt the lower part of the mizenmast, and the deck in which it was stepped, so completely away that the mast had gone over the side to the roll of the ship. Why it had not spread farther and entirely destroyed the ship I could not imagine. The plunderers had practically cleared the lazarette of its contents; the chronometer, the ship’s papers, and the captain’s charts and sextant were missing; but upon investigating the state of affairs out on deck it did not appear that they had taken very much, if any, of the ship’s cargo. But we could not find any weapons or ammunition of any kind; if, therefore, the ship had carried anything of the sort the pirates had cleared the whole of it out of her. After giving the craft a pretty thorough overhaul fore and aft, and making a number of notes of my most important discoveries, I eventually came to the conclusion that the vessel had been surprised and laid aboard during the night; that her crew had been mustered and secured, most likely with a guard over them; and that, after the pirates had taken all that they cared for out of the ship, they had brutally murdered all hands.
It now became a nice question with me what—if anything—I ought to do with this blood-stained derelict. Although she had lost her mizenmast, there was nothing to prevent her being navigated to a port; and had the circumstances been different, I should have called for volunteers and made an effort to induce a crew to undertake the navigation of her to, say, Batavia, with the idea of claiming salvage. But I had come to know by this time that no eloquence of mine, even though it were backed up by the prospect of a handsome sum of salvage money, would be powerful enough to wean the crew of the Mercury from their cherished idea of a life of ease and independence upon some fair tropic island, to say nothing of their fear of what would follow upon the discovery of their unlawful appropriation of the ship and cargo to their own use and service. I therefore very quickly, yet none the less unwillingly, abandoned that idea, and proceeded to consider the merits of the only alternatives left me, namely, those of destroying her, and of leaving her just as we had found her—excepting, of course, that in the latter case sentiment demanded the decent and reverential burial of her murdered crew. Considering the latter alternative first, if we left her drifting about the ocean, what was likely to happen? On the one hand she might be fallen in with by another ship and taken into a port; but on the other hand it was equally likely that she might become a death-trap to some other craft, athwart whose hawse she might drift on some black and stormy night, and whose bows would be stove in and destroyed by violent collision with her; or she might be swamped and founder in the next gale that she encountered. Taking all things into consideration, I at length came to the conclusion that the best thing to be done was to scuttle her, and so render it impossible for her to become a menace to other craft. Accordingly, summoning my two men, who were below exploring the forecastle and fore peak, I jumped into the gig and pulled back aboard the Mercury, where I arrived just as the steward was bringing the cabin breakfast aft.
As we sat at table, partaking of the meal, I related to Polson and Tudsbery all that I had seen and done aboard the Dutchman, and informed them of the decision at which I had arrived with regard to her, directing the carpenter to take a boat’s crew and his auger immediately after breakfast, go on board, and scuttle her by boring several holes through her bottom below the water line. Both men fully agreed with me that this was the right and proper thing to do; and at the conclusion of the meal Chips set about the making of his preparations. Somewhat to my surprise, however, when, a little later, he came aft with his tools, he was followed by four men, instead of the modest two with which I had contented myself, who preceded him down the side into the boat. When he reached the Braave, instead of being absent ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour at the utmost, which would have afforded him ample time to do all that was necessary, the whole five of them vanished from sight, and were not again seen until, after the lapse of a full hour or more, they once more showed themselves on the deck of the derelict, passing a quantity of things down her side into the boat. Finally, about half an hour later still, they returned to the Mercury, considerably the worse for drink, and with the boat loaded down to her gunwale with bolts of canvas, new sails, and other oddments that they had appropriated. Of course there was no actual harm in their bringing these things away from the Dutchman, because, had they left them on board, they must have gone to the bottom with her and thus have been wasted; but I felt that Chips might as well have paid me the compliment of first mentioning his intentions to me. I was even more annoyed that the carpenter, occupying as he did a position of authority—of however shadowy a character—had not only permitted the men to partake pretty freely of the drink which they had found, but had evidently not scrupled to partake of it with them. I came to the conclusion, however, that my remonstrance would be likely to be a good deal more effective if addressed to him later on, instead of at the moment when he was under the influence of the liquor. Therefore I said nothing to him beyond briefly enquiring how many holes he had bored in the ship, and where, and suggesting to him the advisability of retiring to his bunk to sleep for an hour or two, which advice he seemed more than half-inclined to resent, but ultimately followed, in a somewhat belligerent mood.