“Do,” said I. “There’s nothing that I should like better!”
Clearing his throat with a faint sort of apologetic cough, and staring apparently round the corner with his sound, or rather unshaded eye, he began without any further hesitation.
“The cap’en p’raps was in the wrong at first, as I said afore, sir. You see, some men are born to authority, and some isn’t, and Captain Jarvis was one of those that aren’t. I don’t wish to speak ill of a man, when he’s dead and gone to his account, and not here to answer for himself; but I must say, if I speak the truth, that it was all through Cap’en Jarvis’ fault the Gulnare came to grief and all on board murdered each other; and what weren’t murdered were swept off the ship and drowned in the storm that came on afterwards, when everybody was seeking each other’s blood, and so met their doom in that way—all, that is, barrin’ little Peter and me, who only lived through the scrimmage and the gale to tell the story of the others’ fate. The cap’en had a bad temper and didn’t know how to keep it under; that was at the bottom of it all; and yet, a nicer man, when the devil hadn’t got the upper hand of him, and a handsomer chap—he was better looking than me, sir,” said the mate in an earnest way, as if his statement was so incredible that he hardly expected it to be believed—“yes, a nicer and a handsomer chap you never clapped eyes on in a day’s run than Cap’en Jarvis! He stood a trifle taller than me, and had a jolly bearded face with merry blue eyes; but with all that and his good-humoured manner when everything was up to the nines and all plain sailing, he had old Nick’s temper and could show it when he liked! We left Mobile short-handed; and when you leave port to cross the Atlantic short-handed at this time of the year, I guess, mister, you’ve got your work cut out for you, you have! There was only the cap’en; myself, first mate; the second officer, boatswain, and ten hands all told, includin’ idlers, to navigate a ship of over eight hundred tons from Mobile to Liverpool in the very worst time of the year! A bad lookout when you come to consider it fairly as I have; and when you have a cap’en as is continually working the men to death and a-swearin’ and a-drivin’ at them, and they undermanned too, why it stands to reason that harm will come: you’re bound to have a muss, you bet, before the voyage is through!
“We’d hardly cleared the Gulf of Florida when the weather got bad, with a foul wind and a heavy sea; and we were driven past Cape Hatteras before we could make a bit of easting in our longitude. You never saw such a rough time of it as we had. The watch below had no sooner turned in than they had to be called up again to reef topsails or make sail, for there were too few hands to be of much use without both watches worked together, and so the men had to do double tides, as it were, with neither time to eat nor sleep comfortably. To add to their hardships, they were constantly in wet clothes, as it poured with rain the whole time; besides which, the ship was so heavily laden that we were continually taking in seas over the bows as she laboured, the water washing aft of course, and drenching them who might have escaped the rain to the skin, so that not a soul aboard had a dry rag on. You can imagine, sir, how the men stomached this, particularly when there was the skipper swearing at ’em all the time, and saying that they were lazy lubbers and not worth their salt, when they were trying hard to do their best, as I must give them the credit of! I spoke to the cap’en, but it was of no use—not a bit; you might just as well have expected a capstan bar to hear reason!
“‘Mr Marling,’ says he, in the still way he always spoke when he was real angry. ‘Mr Marling, I’m captain of my own ship, and always intend to be so as long as I can draw my breath: I’ll thank you to mind your own business!’
“What could I say after that? Nothing; and so I said nothing more, although I could almost foresee what was coming, step by step!
“This dirty weather had been going on for about a fortnight, or thereabouts; the wind heading us every now and then and veering back again to the southward and westwards, accompanied by squalls of hail and rain following each other with lightning rapidly; so that no sooner had one cleared off than another was on to us, and we had to clear up everything and let the ship drive before the gale as she pleased, for it was of no use trying to make a fair wind out of a foul one any longer. As well as we could make out our reckoning, with the aid of some lunar observations Captain Jarvis booked the night before, for we were unable to see the sun long enough for our purpose, we were about some three or four hundred miles to the west of Bermuda, when, just as the clouds were breaking up blue-black against the sky, and the barometer told us in its plain language that it was coming on to blow harder, and that we would have worse weather than we had yet had, all the hands, as if with one accord, struck work—with the exception of the man at the wheel, who stuck to his post! There was no mistake about it: the watch on deck refused point-blank to go aloft when the skipper ordered them, for about the fourth time in the hour, I should think it was, to take in sail; while the watch below, in spite of the boatswain’s hammering away at the fore-hatch and the capen’s swearing, declared that they wouldn’t rouse up, not even if the ship was sinking, and if they were shouted at any more they would sarve him out. It was a mutiny, there’s no denying; a regular crisis, if ever there was one; and just what I expected, seeing as how things were going ever since we left Mobile, not three weeks before.”
“Captain Jarvis,” he resumed after a brief pause, “no sooner heard the men refuse to come on deck than he went below. Not to where they were in the fore-hatch—he knew a thing or two better than that—but to his cabin, and in a minute he comes up again with a revolver in each of his fists.
“‘Now,’ says he in a firm, hard, but quiet voice, not loud—he always spoke particularly quiet when he was angry, as I’ve told you; and he was angry now, if ever a man was! ‘Now, you skulkers,’ he says, addressing first the hands on deck—‘Aloft every man-jack of you! I’ll shoot the last man that’s up the shrouds!’ They were up in the rigging pretty smart, you bet, at that, when he had a revolver levelled dead at their heads. ‘See that you stow that main-topsail in a brace of shakes! And you lubbers below, wake up there!’ he exclaimed over the fore-hatch, firing a shot down below as he spoke. ‘Wake up there and on deck; or, I’ll riddle every mother’s son of you before I count ten. You, Black Harry, I know you’ve set this pretty little scheme going! Up with you, or by the Lord Harry, your namesake, I’ll put a bullet through your carcass!’
“With that the watch below, knowing with whom they had to deal, thought it best to give in; and up they came, Black Harry at their head, as sullen as a lot of schoolboys going up to be flogged, who had just thought they had barred out the master.