Midnight Webs

by George Manville Fenn

This last seemed the most likely way; for going afloat in an open boat, with the chance of being picked up, is queer work, and the sort of thing that, when a man has tried once, he is well satisfied not to try again. So being, as it were, head man, I settled that we’d seize the ship; and after talking it over, the first chance I had, with Sam and Bill Smith, they quite agreed, thinking about salvage, you see; and then I began to reckon up the stuff I’d got to work with.

To begin with, there was Mr Ward, who was as good as two; so I put him down in my own mind two.

Then, going on with my best men, there was Sam, who was also good for two, if he was only put in the right way.

Then Bill Smith, who hadn’t quite got his strength again; so I put him at one and a half.

Next came Tomtit, who was right enough, no doubt, in his way; only being so long and wankle, ((Lincolnshire dialect), weak, sickly) I couldn’t help thinking he’d be like a knife I used to have—out and out bit of stuff, but weak in the spring; and just when you were going to use it for something particular, it would shut up, or else double backwards. That’s just what I expected Tomtit would do—double up somewhere; so I dursn’t only put him down at half a one.

Then there was the fat passenger who cried. He showed fight a bit in the scrimmage; but I hadn’t much faith in him; there was too much water in him for strength; so I dursn’t put him down neither for more than half. While as for Mr Bell, poor chap, and his sister, they were worse than noughts, being like in one’s way. So you see that altogether I had to depend on two and two was four, and one and a half was five and a half, and a half made six; and another half, which I put to balance the two noughts to the bad, making, all told, what I reckoned as six, and myself thrown into the bargain.

And now came the question: How was we good men and true to get the better of seventeen of they? I turned it over all sorts of ways. Once I thought I’d get the doctor to poison the lot, only it seemed so un-English like, even if the others were mutineers and pirates, while most likely they wouldn’t have taken the poison if we’d wanted them to. Poison ’em with rum, so that they couldn’t move, might be managed, perhaps, with some of ’em, if the stuff was laid in their way; and that might answer, if a better plan couldn’t be thought of. To go right at them without a stratagem would have been, of course, madness, though Sam Brown was for that when I talked to him, saying, thinking wasn’t no use, and all we had to do was to get first fire at ’em twice, and shoot twelve, when we could polish off the other five easy. Now, that sounded all very nice; but I was afraid it wouldn’t work; so I gave it up, and asked Bill Smith his opinion; but he said he hadn’t none.

I’d have given something to have had a long palaver with Mr Ward; for I think we might have knocked up something between us that would have kep’ out water; but a talk with him being out of the question, I had to think it out myself; and all I could come at was, that the best thing would be to leave a bottle or two of rum where the watch could find it; and then, if we could shut down the hatches on the others, we might do some good. That seemed the simplest dodge I could get hold of; for it looked to me as if the more one tried to work out something fresh, the more one couldn’t.

I watched my chance, and wrote out all my plan, and started it to Mr Ward; and this time, I contrived, when no one was looking, to drop my letter down the skylight, telling him that he was to send me an answer by the bird, writ big, so as I shouldn’t make no mistakes in the reading of it. Next morning, as soon as I was on deck, I found that I was too late; for Van and a couple of the chaps were hunting the linnet about; while, as it flitted from side to side of the deck, you could see a bit of white paper tied under its wing, and it must have been that as set them on after it.

I knew well enough that if the bird was caught, it would be all over with my scheme, and p’r’aps with me; so I went at it with the others, trying to catch the little thing, contriving, though, to frighten it all I could, so that it flew up into the rigging; and being nearest at the time, I followed it out on to the main-yard.