Mrs. Cliff's Yacht

by Frank R. Stockton

"I'll go and hail my skipper," said Shirley, "if you'll let me have a speaking-trumpet."

"No," said the other, "I don't want you to do that. I don't mind tellin' you that I don't trust you. I've got very heavy responsibility on me, and I don't know who you are no more than if you was a porpoise come a-bouncin' up out of the sea. I don't want you and your skipper holdin' no conversation with each other until I've got this matter settled to my satisfaction, and then I can put you on board your vessel, and go ahead on my course, or I can turn back, just whichever I make up my mind to do. But until I make up my mind, I don't want no reports made from this vessel to any other, and no matter what you say when you are hailin', how do I know what you mean, and what sort of signals you've agreed on between you?"

Shirley was obliged to accept the situation, and when Burke had ceased to hail, he was allowed to go on deck. Then, after waving his hat to the yacht,—which was now at a considerable distance, although within easy range of a glass,—Shirley lighted his pipe, and walked up and down the deck. He saw a good many things to interest him; but he spoke to no one, and endeavored to assume the demeanor of one who was much interested in his own affairs, and very little in what was going on about him.

But Shirley noticed a great many things which made a deep impression upon him. The crew seemed to be composed of men not very well disciplined, but exceedingly talkative, and although Shirley did not understand French, he was now pretty sure that all the conversation he heard was in that tongue. Then, again, the men did not appear to be very well acquainted with the vessel—they frequently seemed to be looking for things, the position of which they should have known. He could not understand how men who had sailed on a vessel from Southampton should show such a spirit of inquiry in regard to the internal arrangements of the steamer. A boatswain, who was giving the orders to a number of men, seemed more as if he were instructing a class in the nautical management of a vessel than in giving the ordinary everyday orders which might be expected on such a voyage as this. Once he saw the Captain come on deck with a book in his hand, apparently a log-book, and he showed it to one of the mates. These two stood turning over the leaves of the book as if they had never seen it before, and wanted to find something which they supposed to be in it.

It was not long after this that Shirley said to himself that he could not understand how such a vessel, with such a cargo, could have been sent out from Southampton in charge of such a captain and such a crew as this. And then, almost immediately, the idea came to him in a flash that perhaps this was not the crew with which the Dunkery Beacon had sailed! Now he seemed to see the whole state of affairs as if it had been printed on paper. The Dunkery Beacon had been captured by one of the pirates, probably not long after she got outside the Caribbees, and that instead of trying to take the treasure on board their own vessel, the scoundrels had rid the Dunkery of her captain and crew, and had taken possession of the steamer and everything in it. This would explain her course when she was first sighted from the yacht. She was not going at all to Rio Janeiro—she was on her way across the Atlantic.

Now everything that he had seen, and everything that he had heard, confirmed this new belief. Of course the pirate Captain did not wish to lay to when he was first hailed, and he probably did so at last simply because he found he need not be afraid of the yacht, and that he could not rid himself of her unless he stopped to see what she wanted. Of course this fellow would not have him go back to the yacht and make a report. Of course this crew did not understand how things were placed and stored on board the vessel, for they themselves had been on board of her but a very short time. The Captain spoke English, but he was not an Englishman.

Shirley saw plainer and plainer every second that the Dunkery Beacon had been captured by pirates; that probably not a man of her former crew was on board, and that he was here a prisoner in the hands of these wretches—cut-throats for all he knew, and yet he did not reproach himself for having run into such a trap. He had done the proper thing, in a proper, orderly, and seamanlike way. He had had the most unexpected bad luck, but he did not in the least see any reason to blame himself.

He saw, however, a great deal of reason to fear for himself, especially as the evening drew on. That black-headed villain of a Captain did not want him on board, and while he might not care to toss him into the sea in view of a vessel which was fast enough to follow him wherever he might go, there was no reason why he should not do what he pleased, if, under cover of the night, he got away from that vessel.

The fact that he was allowed to go where he pleased, and see what he pleased, gave much uneasiness to Shirley. It looked to him as if they did not care what he might say, hear, or see, for the reason that it was not intended that he should have an opportunity of making reports of any sort. Shirley had his supper to himself, and the Captain showed him a bunk. "They can't do much talkin' to you," he said. "I had to sail ahead of time, and couldn't ship many Englishmen."

"You liar," thought Shirley, "you didn't ship any!"