“For how could you know, Mr Carter,” he said, “that the boats were not full of pirates? Less unlikely things than that have happened, let me tell you; and when you come to know this coast as well as I know it, you will be rather more chary of receiving a couple of boats’ crews professing to be distressed seamen.”
“Oh,” said I, “as to that, Mr Carter took pretty good care to satisfy himself as to our bona fides before permitting us to come alongside! At all events he made sure that we were British, and I think there are very few Britons who take kindly to piracy.”
“Perhaps not, sir, perhaps not; at least I hope that, for the credit of our countrymen, you are right,” answered the skipper. “At the same time there are many foreigners who speak English well enough to answer a hail, and I want to impress upon Mr Carter the fact that it was his duty to call me, under the peculiar circumstances, and to allow me to decide as to the advisability of admitting two boat-loads of strangers aboard my ship. Please don’t do it again, sir.”
Whereupon poor Carter promised to be more circumspect in future, and slunk away with very much the aspect and manner of a beaten dog. I felt very sorry for the man, for, even admitting that the skipper was right—as he certainly was—I thought it would have been in very much better taste if he had taken an opportunity to point out to his subordinate, in private, the imprudence of which he had been guilty, instead of administering a reprimand in the presence of a stranger. Apart from that it appeared to me that there was not very much wrong with the man, and the question arose in my mind whether, despite the protest that Carter had thought it necessary to address to me, he might not be to some extent prejudiced against his skipper. And this feeling was somewhat strengthened when, as, in compliance with Captain Williams’s request, I gave him an account of our recent adventures, he informed me that the ship carried a doctor, and at once sent a messenger to that functionary, informing him that some wounded men had been taken on board during the night, and requesting him to give them his best attention forthwith.
As the skipper and I stood talking together, the passengers, who had learned from the stewards that we had been picked up during the night, came hurrying up on deck, one after another, full of curiosity to see the individuals who had joined the ship under such interesting circumstances; and I was duly introduced to them. To take them in what appeared to be the recognised order of their social importance, they were, first, General Sir Thomas Baker, his wife, Lady Hetty Baker, and his rather elderly daughter, Phoebe, returning to India from furlough; Mrs Euphemia Jennings, the young wife of an important official, who had just left her only boy—a lad of five years of age—with friends in England, for his health’s sake, and with her a niece of her husband—a Miss Flora Duncan, a most lovely girl of about sixteen. Then came Mr and Mrs Richard Morton, people of some means, who were going to India to try their fortune at indigo planting, under the auspices of a friend and former schoolfellow of the husband, and who had sent home glowing accounts of the great things that might be done in that way by a man of energy with a reasonable amount of capital; and with them went their three children, Frank, Mary, and Susie, aged respectively eleven, eight, and six years. And finally, there were Messrs Fielder, Acutt, Boyne, Pearson, and Taylor—five young men ranging from seventeen to twenty-one years of age, who were going out to take up appointments in the Company’s service. All these people were very kind and nice to me, but I could not help being secretly amused at the fiery energy with which the general denounced what he characterised as “the criminal carelessness” of Captain Bentinck in turning me adrift in an unarmed schooner with a crew of only fourteen hands.
“By Jove, sir, I call it little short of murder,” he shouted. “The idea of asking you—ay, and expecting you—to take a fully-loaded slaver into port with only fourteen men to back you up, and no guns! The man ought to be ashamed of himself! But it is just like you navy fellows; you are constantly asking one another to do things which seem impossible!”
“Yes, sir,” I said demurely, “and not infrequently we do them.”
“Do them!” he exploded. “Yes, I will do you the credit to admit that you never know when you are beaten; and that, I suppose, is why the blue-jackets so often succeed in performing the apparently impossible. But that in no way weakens my contention that your captain was guilty of a piece of most culpable negligence in sending you away without furnishing you with a battery of guns with which to defend yourself and your ship!”
Fortunately, at this moment the breakfast bell rang, and, the general and his wife leading the way, we all trooped into the saloon and seated ourselves at the elegantly furnished and bountifully provided breakfast tables.
During the progress of the meal I of course had a further opportunity to observe the behaviour of the skipper, and when I rose from the table I was obliged to confess to myself that I was puzzled, for I had been quite unable to arrive at any distinct impression of the character of the man. For while, on the one hand, his manner to me was cordial, with the somewhat rough and unpolished geniality of a man of a coarse and violent temperament striving to conquer his natural disposition and render himself agreeable, I could find no fault with the arrangements he proposed to make for my own comfort and that of my men. And his expressions of sympathy with us in our misfortunes were everything that could be wished for; but, somehow, they did not ring true. Thus, when in the course of the conversation—which, as was very natural under the circumstances, rather persistently dwelt upon my little party and our adventures—Captain Williams chose to express his gratification at having fallen in with us and rescued us from a distinctly perilous situation, while his words were as kind and sympathetic as could have been desired, the expression of his countenance seemed to say, almost as plainly as words could speak: “I devoutly wish that you had all gone to the bottom, rather than come aboard my ship!” And I continually found myself mentally asking the question: “Which am I to believe—this man’s words, or the expression of his eyes? Is he sincere in what he says, and is he the unfortunate possessor of an expression that habitually gives the lie to his words; or is he, for some sinister purpose of his own, endeavouring to produce a false impression upon us all?” It was quite impossible to find a satisfactory reply to these questions, yet I found a certain amount of guidance in the manner of the passengers toward him; I noticed that every one of them, with the exception of the general, seemed to quail beneath his gaze, and shrink from him. As for the general, despite his somewhat boisterous manner, he was a gentleman, a soldier, and evidently a man who knew not what fear was, and it appeared to me that he was distinctly distrustful of Captain Williams.