“Beg pardon, sir,” he said to Mr. Jermyn. “I won't keep you waiting long. This cask's about as heavy as nitre.”
“What 'a' you got in that cask, Dick?” said the boatswain, who kept a tally at the gangway.
“Nitre or bullets, I guess,” said Dick, struggling to get the cask on to the gang plank. “It's as heavy as it knows how.”
“Give Dick a hand there,” the boatswain ordered. A seaman who was standing somewhere behind me came forward, jogging my elbow as he passed. In a minute or two they had the cask aboard.
“It's red lead,” said the boatswain, examining the marks upon it. “Sling it down into the 'tweendecks.”
After this little diversion, I was free to go down the gangway with Mr. Jermyn. The captain received us in the cabin. He seemed to know my “uncle Blick,” as he called him, very well indeed. I somehow didn't like the looks of the man; he had a bluff air; but it seemed to sit ill upon him. He reminded me of the sort of farmer who stands well with his parson or squire, while he tyrannizes over his labourers with all the calculating cowardly cruelty of the mean mind. I did not take to Captain Barlow, for all his affected joviality.
However, the ship was sailing. They showed me the little trim cabin which was to be mine for the voyage. Mr. Jermyn ran ashore up the gangway, after shaking me by the hand. He called to me over his shoulder to remember him very kindly to my uncle. A moment later, as the hawsers were cast off, the little crowd on the wharf called out “Three cheers for the Gara barquentine,” which the Gara's crew acknowledged with three cheers for Pierhead, in the sailor fashion. We were moving slowly under the influence of the oared boats ahead of us, when a seaman at the forward capstan began to sing the solo part of an old capstan chanty. The men broke in upon him with the chorus, which rang out, in its sweet clearness, making echoes in the city. I ran to the capstan to heave with them, so that I, too, might sing. I was at the capstan there, heaving round with the best of them, until we were standing out to sea, beyond the last of the fairway lights, with our sails trimmed to the strong northerly wind. After that, being tired with so many crowded excitements, which had given me a life's adventures since supper-time, I went below to my bunk, to turn in.
I took off my satchel, intending to tie it round my neck after I had undressed. Some inequality in the strap against my fingers made me hold it to the cabin lamp to examine it more closely. To my horror, I saw that the strap had been nearly cut through in five places. If it had not been of double leather with an inner lining of flexible wire, any one of those cuts would have cut the thong clean in two. Then a brisk twitch would have left the satchel at the cutter's mercy. It gave me a lively sense of the craft of our enemies, to see those cuts in the leather. I had felt nothing. I had suspected nothing. Only once, for that instant on the wharf, when we stopped to let Dick get his barrel aboard, had they had a chance to come about me. Yet in that instant of time they had suspected that that satchel contained letters. They had made their bold attempt to make away with it. They had slashed this leather in five places with a knife as sharp as a razor. But had it been on the wharf, that this was done? I began to wonder if it could have been on the wharf. Might it not have been done when I was at the capstan, heaving round on the bar? I thought not. I must have noticed a seaman doing such a thing. It would have been impossible for any one to have cut the strap there; for the capstan was always revolving. The man next to me on the bar never took his hands from the lever, of that I was certain. The men on the bar behind me could not have reached me. Even if they had reached me the mate must have noticed it. I knew that sailors were often clever thieves; but I did not believe that they could have been so clever under the mate's eye. If it had not been done at the capstan it could not have been done since I came aboard; for there had been no other opportunity. I was quite convinced, after a moment's thought, that it had been done on the wharf before I came aboard. Then I wondered if it had been done by common shore thieves, or “nickers,” who are always present in our big seaport towns, ready to steal whenever they get a chance. But I was rather against this possibility; for my mind just then was much too full of Aurelia's party. I saw their hands in it. It would have needed very strong evidence to convince me that they were not at the bottom of this last attack, as they had doubtless been in the attack under the inn balcony.
Thinking of their cunning with some dismay, I went to my door to secure it. I was in my stockinged feet at the moment, as I had kicked my boots off on coming into the cabin. My step, therefore, must have been noiseless. Opening the door smartly, half-conscious of some slight noise on the far side, I almost ran into Captain Barlow, who was standing without. He showed a momentary confusion, I thought, at seeing me thus suddenly. It was a bad sign. To me, in my excited nervous state, it was a very bad sign. It convinced me that he had been standing there, trying to spy upon me through the keyhole, with what purpose I could guess only too well. His face changed to a jovial grin in an instant; but I felt that he was searching my face narrowly for some sign of suspicion.
“I was just coming in to see if you wanted anything,” he said.