Picked up at Sea / The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek

by John C. Hutcheson

The corsair had been led to think that the merchant ship was freighted with a valuable cargo of silk and tobacco, the bulk of which he could have readily transferred to the felucca, as they were handy of shipment; consequently, when he found out that the vessel was only half-loaded with wine and fruit, which would require considerable storage room, and be then almost valueless in the only markets he could command, his rage knew no bounds. Added to this, Captain Harding, acting under a sense of duty to his owners, had concealed the fact of his possessing a considerable sum of money on board in drafts on bankers at Smyrna; while the pirate chief, supposing that he did have money, looked to find it in specie, and was correspondingly disappointed a second time. And thus it was that he was sorry at having spared the lives of the Englishmen after the fray had occurred; although he regretted that he had planned the capture of the ship at all, and placed himself and his companions in peril for a prize that was uncommonly like the king of Siam’s present of a white elephant to one he meant to ruin; for it was useless to him, and he could not destroy the vessel or abandon it where she was, in the regular waterway of communication between the cities of the East, for fear of her being discovered, and he and his band of desperadoes pursued before they had ensured their safety by flight. He wished now to get rid of the ship, and secure whatever of her cargo he could carry away—for his men must have some booty to repay their trouble and risk; but he must seek some out-of-the-way spot first, where he might unload her, and then, as he told his prisoners, burn her—and them, too, as far as he cared—to destroy all traces of his handiwork and the possibility of detection. Had he not thought it worth his while, he would certainly never have attacked the vessel.

To tell the truth, the corsair was in a quandary; so, when the smoke of the man-of-war steamer had melted into the air, he summoned Captain Harding and the rest on deck again, and having their gags removed, interrogated them once more.

“You say, captain,” said he, knitting his brows and looking the skipper straight in the eyes, to see whether he was telling the truth, “that you have no money, beyond the few piastres and two or three English sovereigns I saw in your desk in the after cabin?”

The honest seaman could not tell a lie even to an enemy and a robber as this man was—at least, not unblushingly; so, unlike his usual way, he could not face his questioner, but gazed down on the planking of the deck as he spoke.

“No—that is, yes,” replied the captain hesitatingly: it was very different to his round, bluff way of bringing out his sentences with an honest straightforwardness.

“You had better be careful,” said the other in a threatening manner. “It is strange that you should be bound to Smyrna for more cargo, and not have the wherewithal to purchase it with! Have you got any more money or not? Reflect, it is the last time I shall ask you the question.”

Mr Tompkins stood by unbound, while his fellow-prisoners had their hands bound behind their backs, and their legs likewise tied. He thought it a mark of the higher consideration in which he was held, whereas the corsair considered he wasn’t worth the trouble of binding, being one who would not have the pluck to help himself or his fellows. Unbound he was, however; and, anxious to ingratiate himself further with those in power, the mate up and spoke, heedless of Captain Harding’s angry exclamation to hold his tongue, and the boys’ cries of “Shame!”

“The captain forgets,” Mr Tompkins said, addressing himself to the corsair. “He might not have hard cash, but he has a draft, I know, on a firm at Smyrna.”

“Oh-ho!” exclaimed the pirate chief, a gleam of triumphant satisfaction passing over his face for an instant, and then vanishing as he again confronted the captain sternly.

“I thought an Englishman’s word was his bond through the world,” he said in a scornful tone, which made the captain redden as his conscience accused him of having told an untruth, or at all events, of having been guilty of an evasion.