Chapter Eleven.
A Suspicious Sail.
The man hurried away joyously to do George’s bidding, hailing his comrades aloft to “knock off work and come shark-fishing, all you sea-dogs aloft there,” as soon as he had placed a sufficiently respectful distance between himself and his skipper. There is no sport or pastime in which sailors will engage more eagerly than in the attempt to capture a shark; they regard the creature as their worst and most relentless enemy, and never willingly let slip an opportunity to catch and destroy one, frequently venting their hatred upon the unfortunate fish, when caught, in the utmost refinement of cruelty. Accordingly, no sooner was Ned’s hail heard than, dropping incontinently whatever work they happened to be engaged on, the whole watch, Ritson included, hurried down on deck and aft to the taffrail, to take a share in the sport Ritson, by virtue of his superior rank, assumed the lead at once, and as a matter of course. Taking the hook with its swivel and chain attached, and a piece of fat pork, some three or four pounds in weight, from the now lively and wide-awake Ned, he called out for “a bit of stoutish line,” busying himself meanwhile in burying the hook cunningly in the bait, in order that the shark might not see it—for it is a well-established fact that these monsters, unless very hungry, are acute enough to refuse a bait if the hook is not well hidden. The line, in the shape of the gaff-topsail halliard-fall, hastily unrove for the occasion, was soon forthcoming, and the hook, being at last baited to the second mate’s satisfaction, bent on to the chain.
“Now stand clear,” commanded Ritson, as he prepared to pitch the bait overboard, “stand clear all of yer; and when I gives the word to ‘haul in,’ walk away for’ard with the line and bring his head out of water.”
A long steady pendulum-like swing or two of the bait followed, and then away it went out over the stern and into the water with a splash. Leicester who was leaning over the taffrail and watching the proceedings with the greatest interest, saw the great fish turn like a flash and rush to the spot where the bait had fallen, turning himself over on his side as he did so.
“Hurrah! He bites; he’s got it,” shouted one of the men eagerly. But he spoke rather too soon; Jack Shark was not to be caught quite so easily. Instead of opening his great jaws and swallowing the bait, hook and all, at a gulp, as was expected, he stopped dead in his rush, and began to poke the bait about suspiciously with the point of his shovel-shaped nose; and finally, with a contemptuous whisk of his tail, left it, and resumed his former position under the ship’s quarter.
Great was the disappointment of the younger hands at this failure.
“He ain’t hungry,” explained one.
“Ain’t he?” contemptuously retorted another. “Just you drop overboard and try him, bo’; why he’d take you—sou’wester, water-boots, and all—down that main-hatchway of his’n without winking, and then come back and axe for more. No, no; ’taint that, mates; he’s waiting for somebody, most likely for the poor chap as the skipper picked up this mornin’!”
“Come, stow all that rubbish!” exclaimed the second mate; “how do you expect we’re going to catch the brute if you all stand there palavering like so many fish-wives? It’s enough to frighten him away altogether. Clap a stopper on your jaw-tackles now, all of you; and give me a chance to play him a bit.”
The speaker thereupon, by sundry dexterous movements of the wrist, imparted a gentle wriggling motion to the line, which in its turn conveyed a corresponding motion to the bait, the latter being slowly drawn through the water at the same time. This was too much for the shark’s equanimity; and he made another dash at the bait, still refusing to swallow it however. The second mate then tried the virtue of a few quick jerks upon the bait, as though drawing it away from the creature, which had the effect of causing him to turn once more on his side, and make a snap at it, actually taking it into his mouth. Still he would neither swallow it nor close his jaws upon it, but unresistingly suffered it to be jerked out of his mouth again.
“We’ll have him yet, boys,” Ritson exclaimed. “Pay out the line to its bare end.”
This was done, the shark keeping close to the bait, turning it over and over with his nose, but persistently refusing to take it.
“Now walk away steadily for’ard with your line, and stand by for a surge,” was the next command.
Away went the men, dragging the line after them, and towing the bait through the water. The shark followed it closely up; and at last, just as the pork was being dragged out of the water altogether, he made a determined jump at it, swallowing it and the hook together; and the next moment the men were brought-up “all standing” by the tremendous strain on the line as the hook buried its barbed point in the creature’s body, while the water was lashed into foam and splashed clear in over the barque’s taffrail in the fish’s frantic efforts to free itself.
“Hurrah!” exclaimed Ritson. “Now you have him, lads. Hold on every inch of line, or he’ll break away from you yet. Bear a hand here, one of you. Take the spanker-sheet and throw a running-bowline round the line, so’s we can get it down over his fins. That’s your sort, Ned; don’t let him get it into his jaws. Cleverly done; haul taut. Now we have him safe. Lead the sheet for’ard, let all hands tail on to it, and we’ll run him up out of the water and in on deck.”
The bowline in the end of the sheet having been successfully passed over the fish’s shoulders and under his fins, the rope was laid along the deck, and the watch, leaving one by one the line to which the hook was attached, got hold of the sheet, and then with a joyous shout of “Stamp and go, boys; walk away with him,” they dragged the monster, still struggling furiously, up out of the water and in on deck over the taffrail.
For a moment the huge fish lay perfectly still, then he began to plunge about and lash right and left with his tail in a manner which caused the whole ship to resound with the terrific blows; rousing the watch below, and causing them to “tumble up” en masse to ascertain the nature of the disturbance.
“’Ware tail,” exclaimed the second mate warningly. “If any of you chaps catches a smack with it across your shins it’ll snap ’em like pipe-stems. Where’s the cook’s axe?”
The question was promptly answered by the appearance of cookie himself, his sable visage beaming and his eyeballs rolling with delight as he danced nimbly about the deck, dodging the strokes of that terrible tail, with his gleaming axe upraised in readiness to deal a blow at the first opportunity. At length there was a momentary pause in the tremendous struggles, a pause of which Snowball (all black cooks who go to sea seem to be dubbed “Snowball”) promptly availed himself. A quick flash of his axe-blade in the sun, a dull crunching thud, and the back-bone was severed at the junction of the tail with the body; a lightning-like stroke of his long keen knife followed, and the severed tail was flung quivering aside as a long thin jet of blood spouted out from the body, broadly staining the snow-white deck-planks.
But the shark had plenty of fight left in him still, as one of the men speedily discovered when, on thrusting a handspike into the great jaws, the strong, stout wooden bar was promptly bitten in two.
“Here, lay hold, two or three of you, and capsize him,” ordered Ritson; “we must make an end of the beast, or some of yer’ll get hurted yet, I can see. Now then,” as three of the men seized the shark by his enormous fins, “one, two, three, and over with him!”
With a cry of “Yo, heave he!” and a hearty drag the great fish was turned over on his back; and then Snowball, stepping forward once more, placed himself astride the creature and, with a quick, powerful stroke of his knife, slit open its belly, and so put an end to its sufferings. But so tenacious of life was it that even after the removal of the vital organs the heart was seen to be still expanding and contracting, which it continued to do for fully five minutes after being taken out of the fish. The head was next cut off and the back-bone removed for preservation as “curios,” after which the mutilated carcass was thrown overboard and the decks washed down.
Ritson did not wait for the completion of this operation, but, leaving its superintendence to Mr Bowen (who, like the rest of the watch below, had come on deck to see what was the cause of the unusual tumult), retired once more with the telescope to his former post in the main-topmast cross-trees, and resumed his scrutiny of the strange schooner.
George noticed this, and vaguely wondering what had so greatly excited his second mate’s curiosity, glanced in the direction to which the telescope was pointing, to find to his surprise that the upper half of the stranger’s topsail was visible from the deck.
“Why, Ritson,” he hailed, “the schooner must have a little air of wind, surely; she is nearing us perceptibly.”
Ritson, entirely contrary to nautical etiquette, made no reply to the skipper’s hail, but remained with his eye immovably glued to the tube for a full minute longer, when he gently closed the instrument and descended slowly to the deck.
Arrived there, he walked up to Captain Leicester, and first glancing cautiously round to make sure that no one was within ear-shot, murmured in a low voice—
“She’s heading as straight for us as she can steer, sir, with six sweeps out—three of a side. That means, sir, that her skipper wants so badly to get alongside of us, that he’s noways particular about the trouble he takes to bring him here.”
George gave a low involuntary whistle of astonishment.
“That is queer news indeed,” he remarked after a contemplative pause. “And you think then, Ritson, that the craft is a—”
“A rover, sir; neither more nor less,” answered the second mate. “She ain’t French, I’m certain; she ain’t got the look of it; besides, the Johnnies wouldn’t ventur so far as this in a craft of that size—why she ain’t more than about a hundred and twenty tons at the very outside. No; she’s a rover, that’s what she is; a craft with a low beamy hull painted all black, tremendous long spars, and canvas with just no end of a h’ist to it.”
“Give me the glass,” said George; “I’ll go as far as the cross-trees and take a look at her myself.”
The second mate handed over the telescope, and the skipper, proceeding aloft, soon saw quite enough to satisfy him that Ritson’s conjectures as to the character and intentions of the schooner were only too likely to prove correct.
Descending once more to the deck, he held a hurried consultation with his two officers, the result of which was a determination to fight to the last gasp, if the crew were only willing to stand by them. It would be necessary to ascertain their feeling upon the subject before anything could be done; so, it being then within a quarter of an hour of noon, George and the chief mate went below for their quadrants, took the sun’s meridian altitude, and, on the bell being struck to denote the hour of noon and the termination of the morning watch, Captain Leicester gave the word for all hands to muster aft.
“My lads,” said George, when the men were all standing before him in obedience to his summons, “I have called you here in order that I may communicate to you a very disagreeable piece of intelligence. Briefly, it is this. The strange schooner yonder is a very suspicious-looking craft; Mr Ritson and I, who have both carefully examined her through the glass, are quite of the same opinion about her, namely, that she is a pirate. She has all the look of one; and her conduct tends greatly to confirm us in our suspicions, for she has rigged out half a dozen sweeps and is sweeping as straight down for us as she can come. Now, lads, I want to know what you propose to do in the event of our suspicions proving correct. Will you allow her to come alongside and throw her bloodthirsty crew in on our deck to cut our throats as if we were so many sheep! Or will you fight for your lives, and take your chance of being able to beat her off?”
There was a few minutes of anxious consultation among the men; and then Ned stepped forward as spokesman of the party, and asked—
“What would you advise us to do, sir? What do you think of doin’ yourself, sir, if we may make so bold as to axe?”
“Mr Bowen, Mr Ritson, and I have resolved to fight as long as we can raise a hand in self-defence,” answered George; “and my advice to you is to do the same. Alone, we three men cannot hope to do much; but with your aid I certainly should not despair of beating off yonder schooner, even though she be full of men. And if the worst comes to the worst and we find that we must die, it will be far better to do so with swords in our hands, than to be slaughtered in cold blood.”
“Yes, yes; that’s true; none o’ that for me, thank’ee,” and sundry other exclamations of concurrence followed the conclusion of the skipper’s speech; then came another very brief consultation; and finally Ned once more stepped forward and said—
“We’ve agreed, sir, as you’re in the rights of it about the fightin’; and we’re quite ready to stand by yer—all hands of us—and do our best.”
“Very well,” said George. “Then we will lose no time in making ready for our defence. Mr Bowen, we will have up that brass long nine-pounder which is down below; I provided it for just such an emergency as this.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” answered the mate, in a cheery tone of voice which spoke volumes as to his confidence in their ability to beat off the pirate, if such the schooner should prove to be. Then, turning to the men, he continued—
“Now then, some of you, whip the tarpaulin off this after hatchway, and lift off the hatches. Mr Ritson, will you be good enough to rouse out a couple of fourfold tackles and get them made fast aloft? We shall require a chain strop also. That’s right, lads; off with those hatches; we’ll soon have the old barkie in fighting trim.”
Inspired by the mate’s cheery manner, the men worked with hearty good-will; and in less than an hour they had the long nine-pounder on deck, mounted on its carriage, its tackles hooked on, the gun loaded, cutlasses and pistols distributed, boarding-pikes cast loose, and everything ready for a stubborn resistance.
These preliminaries arranged, George and the chief mate made their way aloft as far as the main-top to watch the approach of the suspected schooner, which had by this time crept up to within about nine miles of the Aurora. She was still heading straight for the barque; and the telescope enabled them to see that her six sweeps were being vigorously plied; their long steady swing and the perfect time which was maintained in the working of them conclusively showing that they were being handled by a strong gang of men.
“Why, she must be full of men, or those long, heavy sweeps could never be kept going for so great a length of time,” remarked George to the mate. “We shall have to devote all our attention to those sweeps in the first instance, I can see. If we are only fortunate enough to knock away two or three of them, it will at least delay their approach; and if a breeze would only spring up, smart as that schooner looks, I should not despair of being able to show her a clean pair of heels.”
“Ay,” answered Bowen, “and we’re going to have a breeze by-and-by; just the way we wants it, too. I can make out the upper edge of a cloud-bank rising now above the horizon to the east’ard there; and if we can only keep yonder cut-throat crew at arm’s length until we get the wind, and if it’ll only come down upon us pretty fresh when it does come, I think, as you say, sir, we may give them handsomely the slip.”
With the view of getting a still clearer idea as to the possible advent of the desired breeze, Mr Bowen forthwith undertook a journey as far as the main-royal yard, upon which he comfortably established himself, with one arm round the royal-pole, whilst he carefully studied the aspect of the weather, and as carefully scrutinised the horizon to see whether there were any other craft in their immediate neighbourhood. No other sail excepting the schooner, however, was in sight in any direction; and having at length formed a tolerably clear opinion with regard to the weather, he descended again to the main-top, and remarked to George—
“That schooner must be coming up at the rate of about three knots, by the look of her.”
“Yes; about that,” answered George.
“And she’s about eight miles off now, I should say,” continued Bowen.
“Yes; about eight miles,” returned George, with his eye still peering through the telescope.
“Then,” remarked the mate, “it will take her a matter of some two hours and forty minutes, or thereabouts, to get alongside. And by that time, unless I am greatly mistaken, the first of the breeze will have reached us. I hope we shall get it before then; because in light winds I don’t doubt but what that craft could sail round and round us; but only let it come strong enough to oblige us to stow our royals, and I’ll bet my old hat that we can walk away from her. I’m afraid we sha’n’t scrape clear without finding out the weight of the shot she can pitch at us; but if our lads are only steady when the powder-burning begins, I sha’n’t feel noways very greatly concerned.”
With which summing up of the case Mr Bowen dropped into a sitting posture alongside his commander, and, letting his legs dangle down over the outer edge of the top, filled his pipe, and proceeded to regale himself with what he chose to term “two whiffs and a half.”