Chapter Three.
An unpleasant surprise.
The revelation came upon me, with the stunning effect of a thunder-clap, on the day upon which we made the island of Saint Paul. The weather during the whole of the preceding day had been brilliantly fine, with a light air of wind that, breathing out from the south-east at daybreak, had gradually hauled round until by noon it had settled at south; so that when I took my meridian altitude of the sun for the determination of our latitude, the Mercury was heading straight for the spot where my calculations declared the island to be, with all plain sail set to her royals, and with the weather bracer slightly checked.
Upon working out my meridian altitude I found the ship’s latitude to be 38 degrees 43 minutes south and we were steering true east; consequently if my calculations were accurate, we were at that moment on the exact parallel of Saint Paul, which—also according to my calculations—then lay in line with our jibboom, eighty miles distant. This result was confirmed by a further observation of the sun taken in the course of the afternoon watch; and a very simple calculation then informed me that, if I had made no mistake, and there occurred no change in the direction or strength of the wind, the island ought to be sighted, directly ahead, fourteen miles distant, at dawn of the next day. This anticipation I communicated, in my anxiety, to Polson and Tudsbery, the former of whom remarked:
“Well, Mr Troubridge, we shan’t have very long to wait afore we’re able to prove the haccuracy of your calculations; but let me tell ye this, sir—if you’re able to hit off that there bit of a hiland anywhere near as close as you hopes to, a’ter all the box-haulin’ about, breakin’ off, heavin’-to, and driftin’ to leeward that we’ve had these here last few days—well, all I can say is that you’re a good enough navigator to take a ship anywhere, ay, if ’twas round the world and back.”
“Y–e–es,” said I, flattered a bit off my balance by the fulsome character of the compliment, “there will not be much fault to find, I fancy, after the traverse that we have been working. By the way, Polson, have you ever sighted Saint Paul? I never have, although this is my fifth trip in these seas.”
“Well, no, sir; I can’t say as I have,” answered the boatswain. “But,” he continued, peering through the skylight at the cabin clock, “it’s eight bells. I’ll call Chips. I fancies I heard him say that he ’ad sighted it once or twice. I’ll ask him when he comes on deck.”
So saying, Polson walked to the bell, where it hung mounted on the rail that guarded the fore end of the poop, struck “eight bells” upon it, and then descended to call the carpenter, with whom he presently returned to the poop.
“Yes, Mr Troubridge,” continued the boatswain, as he preceded the carpenter up the weather poop ladder, “Chips, here, says he’ve sighted the hiland twice in his time; but only at a distance.”
“Ah!” said I. “Do you think you would recognise it again, Tudsbery?”
“Oh, yes, sir; no fear of that,” answered the carpenter confidently. “It’s a peculiar-lookin’ spot, not to be very easily mistook. I remembers that when we last sighted it I heard the mate say to the skipper that it looked pretty much like a dead whale floatin’ high out o’ the water; and he was right; it did. Oh yes, I’ll reckernize it again fast enough, if I claps my eyes upon it, never fear.”
“Well,” said I, “I expect it to heave in sight to-morrow at dawn, under the jibboom-end, some fourteen or fifteen miles distant, if the wind and weather last as they are now—which I believe will be the case, since the barometer remains steady. It is your morning watch, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir; my eight hours out to-night,” answered Chips.
“Then,” said I, turning to the boatswain, “when you call the carpenter to-morrow morning, at the end of the middle watch, please give me a call also; for, never yet having sighted the island, I should like to be on deck when it heaves into view, and get a good look at it.”
“All right, sir,” answered Polson; “I’ll rouse ye out, never fear.”
The weather held fine all through that night, with the breeze light but steady at south; when, having been duly called by the boatswain at four o’clock the next morning, I turned out and went on deck, the ship, with her spars almost upright, was sliding very gently along over a sea so smooth that her mastheads seemed scarcely to sway at all among the brilliant stars that thickly jewelled the deep indigo vault overhead. The silence of night lay heavy upon the breast of the placid deep, and seemed to be emphasised rather than broken by the faint sigh of the breeze through the maze of spars and rigging that towered aloft, the soft seething and plash of water along the bends, the light creak or cheep of some parral or sheave up in the velvet darkness, and the occasional clank of the tiller chains as the watchful helmsman, with his eye upon some star peering past the weather leach of the main-royal, found it necessary to give the ship a spoke of the wheel one way or the other. The watch had stowed themselves away somewhere about the fore deck, doubtless taking a quiet catnap somewhere out of reach of the heavy dew, and were not to be seen; but the figure of the lookout on the topgallant forecastle could be just made out, momentarily eclipsing first one low-lying star and then another, as he paced monotonously to and fro athwartships to keep himself awake.
As I stood there at the head of the weather poop ladder, abstractedly watching this man’s movements, it suddenly struck me that there was one point upon the horizon, straight ahead, where the night gloom seemed to be the merest trifle deeper and more opaque than elsewhere, and I wondered whether it might perchance be the loom of the island, the highest point of which being, according to the chart, eight hundred and twenty feet above the sea level, should now be visible above the horizon if it were only daylight—and my reckoning happened to be correct. I fetched the ship’s night-glass and took a good look through it at this spot, but at first could make nothing certain of it. However, while I still looked, a bright star suddenly swam into view above the spot, and my heart gave a great leap, and a heavy sigh escaped me; for I knew, from the sweep of the horizon and the height of other stars about it in the immediate neighbourhood, that the celestial body which had so suddenly sprung into the field of the telescope must have just risen above the topmost ridge of something solid blotting out a small space of sky in that quarter; and the something solid could only be the island of Saint Paul.
“The island is in sight, Tudsbery, as straight ahead as it is possible for a man to aim for it!” I exclaimed exultantly; for my feeling of relief from doubt and anxiety, and the swift conviction that I might henceforward confidently rely upon myself, were so great that I felt impelled to give audible expression to my satisfaction.
“You don’t say so, Mr Troubridge!” exclaimed the carpenter, coming to my side. “Whereabouts do she lie, sir?”
“Come and stand where I am, and I will show you,” answered I. “There, now, do you see that bright star, low down in the sky, just over the spot where the cathead passes out through the bulwarks?”
“Certainly, sir; I see it quite plainly,” answered the carpenter.
“Then look immediately beneath it, and you will see the loom of the land,” said I. “You can make it out more clearly with the naked eye than through the telescope. D’ye see it?”
“Well,” exclaimed Chips doubtfully, “now that you comes to mention it, I admit that the gloom away down there do look a bit thicker than it do anywheres else; but I should never ha’ noticed it if you hadn’t drawed my attention to it. And, even now, I don’t know as I should care to swear as to it bein’ land.”
“No,” said I; “and neither should I, if I did not know it to be there. But wait until the day breaks, and you will see that I am right.”
“I don’t doubt it, sir; I don’t doubt it at all,” answered Chips soothingly; “but it’s a wonder to me how you’ve been able to find your way to it; for it’s only a little bit of a rock after all—a hextinc’ volcano, I’ve heard some people say. How far d’ye reckon we are off from it, now, Mr Troubridge?”
“Probably about seventeen or eighteen miles,” said I.
“Ah!” observed Chips. “Then we ought to be abreast of it soon a’ter breakfast.” And therewith he fell into a reverie.
It was about an hour later that, preceded by a slight chilling of the air, the first faint pallor of dawn came filtering through the velvet darkness ahead, stealing imperceptibly higher and higher into the eastern sky, and causing the stars thereaway to dwindle and grow dim until, one after another, they vanished in the cold, colourless light that now stretched along the horizon beneath our jibboom-end, spreading right and left, even as one stood and watched it. Then a faint flush of palest primrose stole into the pallor, against which the horizon line ran black as ebony, with here and there a suspicion of a gleam coming and going between it and the ship, as the growing light fell upon the gently heaving swell. A moment later a great shaft of white light shot perpendicularly from the horizon far ahead toward the zenith, where the indigo was swiftly paling to purest ultramarine, the primrose hue became more pronounced, and there, in the very midst of it, where the colour was strongest, rose a hummock of softest, most delicate and ethereal amethyst, clean-cut as a cameo, and shaped—as the carpenter had said—like the back of a gigantic whale, with three well-marked protuberances growing out of it, while others showed just clear of the water, toward what might be supposed to be the tail end.
“There you are, Chips,” I exclaimed in a fever of exultation; “there is the island—”
“Land ho! straight ahead,” shouted the lookout at this moment, as he faced aft, pointing with his right hand over the bows.
“Ay, ay, Jimmy, my hearty, we sees it, plain enough,” answered the carpenter. Then he turned to me and continued:
“Yes, sir; there it is, as you says. Ay, and it’s Saint Paul, too; ne’er a doubt of it. I reckernizes them there hummicks a-stickin’ up out of the back of it. And I reckon that it’s just about fourteen mile away—which brings your calcilations right to a hapigraphy. Well, well, hedication’s a most wonderful thing, and no mistake. The bosun and I might ha’ searched for that there rock till all was blue, and never ha’ found it; but you comes along and gets aboard of us eight hunderd mile away, and—says you—‘we’ll sight Saint Paul as we runs down our eastin’’; and, although we’ve been headin’ all round the compass since then, there’s the hiland, right enough, and just where you said it would be, ay, to the very hinch.”
I was vastly tickled at the man’s enthusiastic admiration of my little twopenny-halfpenny feat of navigation, and—secretly—very proud of it myself; but, of course, in reality it was an exceedingly commonplace exploit, which any other navigator worthy of being so-called could have accomplished without the slightest difficulty, the only essentials to success being good instruments, clear skies, and correct arithmetic, all of which I fortunately possessed. But I was nevertheless highly elated at my success, chiefly, I think, because, it being my first independent attempt to navigate a ship, I had demonstrated to myself my ability to do so.
The day now grew fast in the east; the primrose hue softened away, right and left, into a tint of warm grey with a faint suggestion of rose in it; the stars had all vanished save one solitary gem that hung low in the western sky like a silver lamp; the zenith was a rich, pure ultramarine, that was fast spreading toward the western horizon and chasing the last lingering shadow of night before it. Great spokes of radiant light were darting aloft from behind the island and touching into gold a few small, scattered flakes of fleecy cloud that floated high over our mastheads. Then, all in a moment, the small, faintly-gleaming bit of land ahead became transformed, as it might be with a magician’s wand, into a block of deepest, richest purple, bristling with rays of burning gold, a throbbing rim of molten gold swept into view from behind it, and in an instant it vanished amid a blinding blaze of sunlight that flashed across the ocean toward us, transfiguring its erstwhile surface of ebony into a tremble of turquoise and gold, outlining every spar and sail and rope in the ship with thin, golden wires, and causing every bit of glass and polished metal-work to blaze and scintillate with golden fire. The watch appeared, yawning and stretching as they emerged from their hiding places, blinking like owls as they stared over the bows endeavouring to pick out from the dazzle ahead the shape of land that the lookout was pointing to; and the carpenter emerged from his reverie to shout:
“Rig the head-pump there, for’ard, and lay along with your buckets and brushes!”
At two bells in the forenoon watch, when I mounted the poop after breakfast, we were square abreast and within a mile of the island, I having instructed the boatswain to pass as close to it as was prudent; for I had heard of shipwrecked people having found refuge there and on the neighbouring island of Amsterdam, and was desirous to see whether perchance there might be anyone there at the moment. But there was no one to be seen, at which I was not surprised, for our approach had been slow, affording ample opportunity to anyone on the island to observe it and make his presence known; yet no signal or sign of any kind indicating human occupation had been descried. True, as we drew nearer, a faint wreath of smoke here and there was occasionally seen; but our telescopes showed us that these issued from the soil itself, and not from fires kindled by human agency, being, no doubt, the result of volcanic action; also there were a few goats dotted about, browsing in groups of two or three; and their perfect placidity of demeanour was convincing evidence of the absence of man on the island. Having satisfied ourselves of the non-existence of human beings upon Saint Paul, I gave the order to bear away for Amsterdam, which lies due north and fifty miles distant from the smaller island, intending to subject it also to a similar inquisition. Five minutes later we were running off square before the flagging breeze, with the elusive, filmy shadow which was as much as we could see of the island at that distance, and under the existing atmospheric conditions hovering on the horizon over our figurehead.
I had just completed the making of a sketch of, and the jotting down of a few notes concerning, Saint Paul, which I thought might possibly be useful to me some time later on in life, when, somewhat to my surprise, the man Wilde, of whom I have already spoken, came up on to the poop and informed me that he had somewhat to say to me if I could spare the time to listen to him. Imagining that he might have some fresh complaint to make regarding the food supplied to the emigrants, I closed my notebook, returned it to my pocket, and requested him to say on.
“Thank you!” he said. “The fact is, Mr Troubridge, that I come to you this morning as the representative and spokesman of all on board this ship, crew as well as passengers; and it will perhaps simplify matters a great deal if I tell you at the outset that we are all absolutely of one mind regarding the matter which I have been deputed to lay before you.”
“I understand,” said I. “Pray proceed, Mr Wilde,” for the man had paused, as though to afford me an opportunity to speak.
He bowed slightly in acknowledgment of my permission to continue, and resumed:
“When Polson, the boatswain of this ship, boarded the Salamis, he informed your captain that the Mercury was bound from Liverpool to Sydney, New South Wales, and in a sense the statement was true, inasmuch as that when the ship sailed from Liverpool her captain had instructions to navigate her to Australia. But since then many things have happened, as you are aware. One very important happening, however, of which as yet you know nothing, is this: After most carefully weighing every point, for and against, we have arrived, with absolute unanimity, at the determination that, instead of continuing our voyage to Australia, we will proceed to the Pacific Ocean, where, on some suitable island—for which we will search until we find it—we will establish ourselves as a little community, to be governed upon the simple, old-fashioned, patriarchal system of perfect equality. And my object in explaining this scheme of ours to you is to request that you will have the goodness to change the course of the ship accordingly.”
This extraordinary statement, with its concluding request, was made in so perfectly calm and matter-of-fact a manner, and in a tone of such absolute finality, that for a space of several seconds I was rendered literally speechless with amazement. The colossal impudence and audacity of the proposal took my breath away. But I soon collected my scattered faculties, and forthwith proceeded vigorously to remonstrate with the visionary enthusiast who, I instantly recognised, must be the originator of the scheme.
“Sit down, Mr Wilde,” said I, seating myself upon a hencoop, and signing to him to place himself beside me. “You have sprung upon me a matter that is not to be dealt with and dismissed in a breath; indeed, it involves so many momentous questions that I scarcely know where to begin. But, by way of a starter, let me ask you whether you are aware that you have no right whatever to make use of this ship for such a purpose as that which you have outlined to me? The contract of the owners was to convey you to Sydney, and land you there, and you can claim no more from them. In the next place—”
“Pardon me for interrupting you,” broke in my companion with an indulgent smile and uplifted, protesting hand; “but I believe I know and could repeat to you every one of the somewhat musty arguments which are crowding each other upon the tip of your tongue; and it will perhaps save time—and possibly a certain amount of unpleasant friction—if I inform you at once—as indeed I have hinted to you already—that we have given them all our most careful and exhaustive consideration, and have quite settled among ourselves that none of them is anything like weighty enough to divert us from our purpose. We know, for example, that the appropriation of this ship and her cargo, in the carrying out of our plans, will involve a certain amount of hardship and loss to the owners; but no revolutionary scheme of any sort, great or small, was ever yet carried into effect without inflicting loss and hardship upon somebody. It would pass the wit of man to devise one that did not, and we are therefore prepared to regard that phase of the question with perfect complacency.”
“I wonder whether you understand that what you contemplate is called piracy, and is punishable with death?” said I.
“Of course we do, my dear young friend,” answered Wilde with a smile. “But perhaps I ought to have explained to you that the very root and foundation of our plan is to escape from man-made laws, which are compounded of tyranny and injustice of the grossest kind, and to revert to the old, simple, patriarchal, family idea—the idea of holding all things in common, of abolishing individualism and inequality of every description, and of submitting only to such simple laws as are manifestly for the benefit and advantage of all. Besides, who will there be to punish us for our so-called act of piracy?”
“You may rest assured,” said I, “that there is no spot on this globe so remote, so hidden away, that a British cruiser will not find it sooner or later; and when she happens to visit your island—if ever you reach it—her captain will insist upon an explanation of how you come to be there, and, in short, of having your whole story told to him. And then, Mr Wilde, the days of the originator of this mad scheme will be numbered.”
“My dear boy,” said Wilde, laying his hand soothingly upon my arm, “‘the originator of this mad scheme’, as you are pleased to put it, is more than willing to take his chance of such a happening as you suggest; so we need not discuss that point any farther, but may pass on to the next. The question now is: Will you, or will you not, help us to find the sort of island that we have in mind? No, no,”—as he saw that I was about to refuse hotly—“do not decide in the negative too hurriedly; take time to consider the matter, because it is a rather important one, both to you and to us. It is important to us, because, if you should decide in the negative, it will put us to all the trouble and inconvenience of finding another navigator; and it is important to you, because, if you should refuse, it will mean that, being opposed to us, you must be got rid of, for we will have no enemies, secret or open, among us; and I think that the best way to get rid of you, and at the same time to guard against the possibility of your doing us a bad turn in the future, will be to tie your hands and heels together, attach a good heavy weight to your neck, and drop you overboard sometime in the small hours when all the women and children are asleep, and cannot be shocked or distressed at the sight.
“You see, we have considered this matter so thoroughly, and have so completely made up our minds what we intend to do, that we cannot dream of allowing the qualms of conscience of a mere lad like yourself to stand in our way. If you had not been an expert navigator it would have been a different affair altogether. We should have said nothing to you, but should have put you ashore on one of these islands, had we chanced to find them, or have exchanged you with some ship for a better navigator; but you have proved your ability, and now you must either throw in your lot with us, or—accept the alternative. Think it over, my dear boy, and let me know your decision when you have fully made up your mind. You will be able to do this all the more easily since, as ‘the originator of this mad scheme’, and the accepted leader of all on board, it is my intention to take up my quarters in the cabin for the remainder of our voyage.”
So saying, Wilde rose and, bestowing upon me a friendly smile, made his way down the poop ladder to the main deck; and a few minutes later I saw the stewards helping him to transfer his belongings from the steerage to the cabin.