Chapter Four.
Frightened to Death!
“That’s murder—murder in cold blood!”
The voice uttering this exclamation, which I at once recognised as that of Tom Bullover, the carpenter, came from amidst a mass of the men, who, attracted by the noise of the row, had gathered from forward, and were clustered together—as I could see sideways from my position there, spread-eagled in the rigging. They were standing by the long-boat, just abaft of poor Sam Jedfoot’s now tenantless galley, and immediately under the bellying folds of the mainsail, that rustled and swelled out over their heads, tugging at the boltropes and rattling the clew-garnet blocks, as it was jerked by the wind, which ever and anon blew with eddying gusts as it veered and shifted.
“Who’s the mutinous rascal thet spoke then?” cried Captain Snaggs, wheeling round on the instant, quick as lightning, and cocking his revolver with another ominous click, as he faced the group, aiming at the nearest man to him. “Jest ye give me another word of yer jaw, an’ I’ll sarve ye the same as I sarved thet durned nigger—I will so, by thunder!”
A hoarse murmur, partly of rage and partly expressive of fear, arose from the crew as they shuffled uneasily about the deck, one trying to get behind another; but neither Tom Bullover nor anyone else stepped out to answer the captain, who, seeing that he had cowed them, lowered his awkward looking weapon.
“Ye’re a pack of durned skallywags, with nary a one the pluck of a skunk in the lot!” he exclaimed contemptuously, in his snarling Yankee voice; but, just then, the head sails flapping, from the helmsman letting the ship nearly broach to, forgetting to attend to his duties in his eagerness to hear all that was going on, the captain’s wrath was directed towards those aft, and he wheeled round and swore at the second-mate, who was on the poop, leaning over the rail, bawling out louder than before:—“What the infernal dickens are ye about thaar, Mister Steenbock? Snakes an’ alligators! why, ye’ll have us all aback in another minute! Ease her off, ease her off gently; an’ hev thet lubber at the wheel relieved; d’ye haar? Ha ain’t worth a cuss! Get a man thet ken steer in his place. Jerusalem! Up with the helm at once!”
Fortunately, the jib only gybed, while the fore-topsail slatted a bit against the mast; and all the other sails remaining full and drawing, a slight shift of the helm sufficed to put the ship on her proper course. Still, the captain, now his blood was up, could not afford to lose such a good opportunity both for rating the second-mate for his carelessness in conning the ship and not making the helmsman keep her steady on her course, and also in giving a little extra work to the hands who had dared to murmur at his fearful vengeance on the cook for drugging his food. So he made them bustle about the deck in style, slacking off the lee braces and hauling upon these on the weather side, until we had brought the wind almost over the stern, with the yards pretty nearly square. We were now running before it, rolling from port to starboard and back again from starboard to port, almost gunwales under, with the sail we had on us now, for it was blowing a good ten-knot breeze from the nor’-nor’-west, the breeze having shifted again since sunset, right astern, instead of being dead ahead, as previously, of our proper tract for the open sea.
When Captain Snaggs had seen everything braced round, and the boom-sheet of the spanker likewise eased off, he turned to where I was still lashed up against the main shrouds, in dread expectancy every moment of his renewing the thrashing he had commenced, and which poor Sam’s plucky intervention on my behalf had for the time interrupted.
“Well, ye young cuss!” said the skipper, who had been giving all his orders from the lower deck, which he had not left since he had rolled out from the cuddy under the poop in the paroxysm of passion and pain that led to such a dread catastrophe—all that had happened, although it takes a long time to describe, having occurred within a very brief interval of his first outburst on me. “What hev ye got to say for y’rself thet I shouldn’t give ye a thunderin’ hidin’, sich ez I hanker arter, hey? I’m jiggered, too, if I don’t, ye young whelp! Fur I guess ye wer kinder in truck with thet durned nigger when he tried to pizen me an’ Mister Flinders. I’ll skin ye alive, though ye aren’t bigger nor a spritsail sheet knot, my joker, fur ye hevn’t got half enuff yet, I reckon!”
So saying, he picked up the rope’s-end that he had dropped when he took out his revolver, and was evidently about to lay it on my poor trembling back again, when another groan came from the men forward, who still hung about the windlass bitts, instead of going below after squaring the yards. Tom Bullover’s voice, I could hear, again taking the lead, as they advanced in a body aft, in a much more demonstrative manner than previously.
“Stow that now, and leave the boy alone,” I heard him say. “You’ve wallopped him already; and there’s been enough murder done in the ship!”
Captain Snaggs let fall the cat he had taken in his hand to thrash me with, and once more pulled out from his pocket the revolver; but, in the half-light that lingered now after the sunset glow had faded out of the sky, I noticed, as I screwed my neck round, looking to see what he was doing, that his hand trembled. The next moment he dropped the revolver on the deck as he had done the rope’s-end.
“Who’s talkin’ of murder? Thet’s an ugly word,” he stammered out, evidently frightened at the result of his rage against poor Sam, and the way in which the crew regarded it. “I—I only shot thet nigger because he pizened me an’ the first-mate.”
“You should have put hims in ze irons,” interposed the second-mate, Jan Steenbock, speaking in his deep, solemn tones from the poop above. “Ze mans vas murdert in ze cold blood!”
I could see Captain Snaggs shiver—all his coarse, bullying manner and braggadocio deserting him, as Jan Steenbock’s accents rang through the ship, like those of an accusing judge; the index finger of the second-mate’s right hand pointing at him, as he leant over the poop rail, like the finger of Fate!
“I did not mean to shoot the coon like to kill him, I only meant to kinder frighten the life out of him, thet’s all,” he began, in an exculpatory tone, regaining his usual confidence as he proceeded. “The durned cuss brought it on hisself, I reckon; fur, if he hedn’t climb’d into the riggin’ he wouldn’t hev dropped overboard!”
“But, you vas shoot him ze first,” said Jan Steenbock, in reply to this, the men on the other side of the captain giving a murmuring assent to the accusation, “you vas shoot him ze first!”
“Aye, thet’s so; but I didn’t mean fur to hit him, only to skear him. Guess I don’t think I did, fur the ship rolled as I fired, an’ the bullet must hev gone over his woolly head, an’ he let go from sheer frit!”
“Dat might be,” answered the second-mate, whom the men left to do all the talking; “but ze—”
“Besides,” continued the captain, interrupting him, and seeing he had gained a point, “the darkey pizened my grub. He sea he put jalap in it. Ye heerd him say so y’rselves, didn’t ye?”
“Aye, aye,” chorussed the group of men in front of him, with true sailor’s justice, “we did. We heard him say so.”
“Well, then,” argued Captain Snaggs, triumphantly, “ye knows what a delicate matter it is fur to meddle with a chap’s grub; ye wouldn’t like it y’rselves?”
“No,” came from the men unanimously, “we wouldn’t.”
“All right, then; I see ye’re with me,” said the skipper, wagging his beard about as he lay down the law. “I confess I didn’t like it. The nigger sed he hocussed our grub; but seeing ez how I an’ the first-mate wer took so bad, I believed he’d pizened us, an’ it rizzed my dander, an’ so I went fur him.”
“Aye, aye,” sang out the men, as if endorsing this free and rather one-sided version of the affair, Hiram Bangs the captain’s countryman, chiming in with a “Right you air, boss!”
“But you need not have shoot hims,” insisted Jan Steenbock, perceiving that the skipper was getting the men to take a more lenient view of the transaction than he did. “Ze mans not go avays. You could put hims in ze irons!”
“So I could, me joker; though I can’t see ez how it’s yer place to top the officer over me, Mister Steenbock,” retorted the skipper, with some of his old heat. “Ye’ve hed yer say, an’ the men hev hed their’n; an’ now I’ll hev mine, I reckon! The nigger wer in fault in the fust place, an’ I’m sorry I wer tew hard on him; but, now he’s gone overboard, thaar’s nuthin’ more to be done, fur all the talkin’ in the world won’t bring him back agen! I’ll tell ye what I’ll do, though.”
“What?” shouted out Tom Bullover. “What will you do?”
Captain Snaggs recognised his voice now, in spite of its being nearly dark, and he uttered an expressive sort of snorting grunt.
“Ha! ye’re the coon, are ye, thet cried murder, hey?” I heard him mutter under his breath menacingly; and then, speaking out louder he said, that all could hear, “I tell ye what I’ll do: I am willin’ to go ashore at the first available port we ken stop at an’ lay the whole of the circumstances before the British or American consul, an’ take the consequences—fur you all ken give evidence against me if ye like! I can’t say fairer nor thet men, can I?”
“No, cap,” they chorussed, as if perfectly satisfied with this promise, “nothing can be fairer nor that!”
“All right; thet ’ll do, the watch, then.”
“But, thet b’y thaar?” called out Hiram Bangs, as they were all shuffling forward again, now that the palaver was over and the subject thoroughly discussed, as they thought, in all its bearings; “yer won’t leather him no more? The little cuss warn’t to blame; the nigger said so, hisself!”
“No, I won’t thrash him agen, since he’s a friend o’ yer’s,” replied the skipper, jocularly, evidently glad that the affair was now hushed up. “Ye ken cut him down if ye like, an’ take him forrud with ye.”
“Right ye air, cap, so we will,” said Hiram, producing his clasp knife in a jiffey and severing the lashings that bound me to the rigging, “Come along, Cholly; an’ we’ll warm ye up in the fo’c’s’le arter yer warmin’ up aft from the skipper!”
The hands responded with a laugh to this witticism, apparently forgetting all about the terrible scene that had so lately taken place, as they escorted me in triumph towards the fore part of the ship; while the captain went up on the poop and relieved Jan Steenbock, speaking to him very surlily, and telling him to go down into the cabin and see what had become of the first-mate, Mr Flinders, and if he was any better, and fit to come on duty. As for himself, he had now quite recovered from the effects of whatever the unfortunate cook had put into the stew he had eaten, and which had alarmed him with the fear of being poisoned.
I, however, could not so readily put the fearful scene I had been such an unwilling witness of so quickly out of my remembrance; and, as I went forward with the kind-hearted but thoughtless fellows who had saved me from a further thrashing, I felt quite sick with horror. A dread weight, as of something more horrible still, that was about to happen, filled my mind.
Nor did the conversation I heard in the fo’c’s’le tend to soothe my startled nerves and make me feel more comfortable.
The men’s tea was still in the coppers, poor Sam having made up a great fire in the galley before going off on his last journey, and this was now served out piping hot all round, the men helping themselves, for no one had yet been elected to fill the darkey’s vacant place. No one, indeed, seemed anxious to remain longer than could be helped within the precincts of the cook’s domain, each man hurrying out again from the old caboose as quickly as he filled his pannikin from the bubbling coppers with the decoction of sloe leaves, molasses and water, which, when duly boiled together does duty with sailor-folk for tea!
Then—sitting round the fo’c’s’le, some on the edge of the hatch-coaming, some dangling their legs over the windlass bitts, and others bringing themselves to an anchor on a coil of the bower hawser, that had not been stowed away properly below, but remained lumbering the deck—all began to yarn about the events of the day. Their talk gradually veered round to a superstitious turn on the second dog-watch drawing to a close; and, as the shades of night deepened over our heads, so that I could hardly now distinguish a face in the gloom, the voices of the men sank down imperceptibly to a mere whisper, thus making what they said sound more weird and mysterious, all in keeping with the scene and its surroundings.
Of course, Sam formed the principal subject of their theme; and, after speaking of what a capital cook and good chum he was, ‘fur a darkey,’ as Hiram Bangs put it, having some scruples on the subject of colour, from being an American, Tom Bullover alluded to the negro’s skill at the banjo.
“Aye, bo, he could give us a toon when he liked, fur he wer mighty powerful a-fingerin’ them strings. He made the durned thing a’most speak, I reckon,” observed Hiram Bangs; adding reflectively,—“An’ the curiousest thing about him wer thet he wer the only nigger I ever come athwart of ez warn’t afeard of sperrits.”
“Sperrits, Hiram?” interposed one of the other hands; “what does you mean?—ghostesses?”
“Aye. Sam sed as how his father, a darkey too, in course, wer a fetish man; an’ I rec’l’ects when I wer to hum, down Chicopee way, ther’ wer an ole nigger thaar thet usest to say thet same, an’ the ole cuss wud go of a night into the graveyard, which wer more’n nary a white man would ha’ done, ye bet!”
“You wouldn’t catch me at it,” agreed another sailor, giving himself a shake, that sent a cold shiver through me in sympathy. “I’d face any danger in daylight that a Christian ain’t afeard on; but, as for huntin’ for ghostesses in a churchyard of a dark night, not for me!”
“Aye, nor me,” put in another. “I shouldn’t like old Sammy to come back and haunt the galley, as I’ve heard tell me. By jingo! I wouldn’t like to go into it now that it’s dark, arter the way the poor beggar got shot an’ drownded—leastways, not without a light, or a lantern, or somethin’ or t’other; for, they sez of folks that come by any onnateral sort o’ death, that their sperrits can’t rest quiet, and that then they goes back to where they was murdered, and you ken see ’em wanderin’ around twixt midnight an’ mornin’, though they wanishes agen at the first streak of daylight.”
“I’ve heerd tell the same,” chimed in Hiram Bangs, in a sepulchral voice, that made my heart go down to my toes; “but Sam, he usest to say, sez he, ez how none o’ them sperrits could never touch he, cos he hed a charm agen ’em ’cause of his father bein’ jest in the ring, an’ one of the same sorter cusses—his ‘fadder’ he called him, poor old darkey! Sam told me now, only last night ez never was, how he’d of’en in Jamaiky talked with ghostesses, thet would come an’ tote round his plantation! He sed, sez he, ez how he’d got a spell to call ’em by whenever he liked; thet’s what he told me, by thunder!”
“Aye, bo,” said Tom Bullover; “and, before poor Sam went aft this very evening, I heard him tell this younker, Charlie Hills, how thet he weren’t afraid of that brute of a bullying skipper, and if he came by any harm he’d haunt him—didn’t he, Charlie?”
“Ye–es,” I replied, trembling, feeling horribly frightened now with all their queer talk, coming after what I had gone through before; “but, I didn’t hear him say anything of haunting the ship. I’m awfully sorry for him, Tom; but I hope he won’t come back again, as Hiram Bangs says.”
“He will, ye bet yer bottom dollar on thet, Cholly, if he ain’t made comfable down below in Davy Jones’ locker, whar the poor old cuss air now,” said the American sailor in his deep voice, increasing my superstitious fears by the very way in which he spoke. “Guess I wouldn’t mind shakin’ fins with the nigger agen if he’d come aboard in daylight, but I’m durned if I’d like to see him hyar ’fore mornin’! I’d feel kinder skeart if I did, b’y, I reckon.”
I had no time to reply; for, the captain’s voice hailing us from the poop at the moment made us all jump—I, for one, believing that it was Sam Jedfoot already come back to life, or his ghost!
The next instant, however, I was reassured by a hoarse chuckle passing round amongst the men; while Hiram Bangs called out, “I’m jiggered, messmates, if it ain’t the old man up on deck agen!”
Like him, I then caught the sound of Captain Snaggs’ nasal twang, although he spoke rather thickly, as if he had been drinking again.
“Fo’c’s’le, ahoy!” he shouted; “wake up thaar an’ show a leg! Let one of the hands strike eight bells, an’ come aft, all ye starbow-lines, to take the first watch.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” answered Tom Bullover, leading the way towards the skipper; while Hiram Bangs seized hold of the rope attached to the clapper of the bell, hanging under the break of the fo’c’s’le, and struck the hour, then following in Tom’s footsteps with a “Here I am, sonny, arter ye!”
I did not remain behind, you may be sure, not caring to stop in the vicinity of Sam’s galley after all that talk about him. Besides this, I felt tired out, and my bunk being on a locker outside the steward’s pantry, and just within the door leading into the cuddy under the poop, I was anxious to sneak in there without being seen again by the captain, so as to have a lie down, or ‘turn in’—if it can be called turning in, with all my clothes on, ready to turn out at a minute’s notice!
I managed to get inside, luckily unperceived by the skipper’s eagle eye and was furthermore assured of a quiet ‘caulk’ by hearing him sing out presently to the steward to bring him up some grog, as he was going to remain on deck till the middle watch. I knew from this that I would be undisturbed by his coming below for a good four hours’ spell at least; and I soon sank off to sleep, the last thing that I heard being the tramping about on deck of the men when Captain Snaggs roared out some order about making more sail, and the sluicing of the water washing from side to side, as the Denver City rolled and pitched, staggering along under a cloud of canvas, with everything set now, right before the wind.
The next thing I heard was a heavy crash of glass, and I woke up just in time to catch the tail end of a combing wave, that dashed in through one of the stern ports, washing the cabin fore and aft. The ship had evidently been pooped by a heavy following sea, that travelled through the water faster than she did before the stiff northward breeze, although we were carrying on, too, at a good rate, as I’ve said.
Aroused by this, I scrambled to my feet, and recognised Captain Snaggs’ voice coming down the companion way; but I did not fear his seeing me, as the swinging lamp over the cuddy table had been put out, and all was in darkness below, save when a sudden bright gleam from the moon, which had risen since I had sought my bunk, shot down through the skylight as the ship rolled over to port—making it all the darker again as she listed to starboard, for her next roll the reverse way necessarily shut out the moonlight again.
Captain Snaggs, I could hear, was not only very drunk, but, as usual, in a very bad temper, as he stumbled about the foot of the companion way in the water that washed about the cabin door.
“Durn thet fool of a Flinders—hic!” he exclaimed, steadying himself before making a plunge towards his berth, which was on the left, as I knew from the sound of his voice in the distance. “I t–t–t–old him them ports would git stove in, an’—an’—order’d him to fix the deadlights; but the durned fool ain’t done nary a thing, an’ there ye air, streenger, thaar ye air!”
He then staggered a bit and flopped about the water; and then, all at once, as I listened, he gave vent to a queer gurgling cry of horror, that seemed to freeze my blood.
“Jerusalem!” he exclaimed, gasping as if choking for breath. “Thaar! thaar!”
A gleam shone down from the moon at the moment through the skylight; and, wonderful to relate, I saw the captain’s outstretched hand pointing to—
Something!
It was standing by the cabin door leading out on to the maindeck.
The Something was the figure of poor Sam Jedfoot, apparently all dripping wet, as if he had just emerged from his grave in the sea.
His face, turned towards me, looked quite white in the moonlight, as it became visible for a second and then instantaneously disappeared, melting back again, into darkness as the moon withdrew her light, obscured by the angle of the vessel’s side, as the ship made another roll in the contrary direction.
I was almost paralysed with fear, being too much frightened to utter a sound; and there I remained spellbound, staring still towards the spot where I had seen the apparition—half-sitting, half-standing on the locker, having drawn up my feet, so as to be out of the rush of the water as it washed to and fro on the floor.
As for Captain Snaggs, the sight of his victim seemed to affect him even more—at least, so I fancied, from his frenzied cry; for, of course, I could no longer see him.
“Save me! save me!” he called out, in almost as despairing and terror-stricken a tone as that of poor Sam, when he was shot and fell into the sea; and then I heard a heavy splash, as if the captain had tumbled down on his face in the pool slushing about the deck. “Save me! Take him away! The darned nigger hez got me at last!”