CHAPTER XII. BRAVE CAPTAIN BARLOW
Very early the next morning, at about half-past four, a little before sunrise, I woke up with a start, wondering where I was. Looking through my little scuttle port, I could see the flashing of bright waves, which sometimes dowsed my window with a shower of drops. The ship was apparently making about three knots an hour, under all her sails. Directly I woke, I turned out of my bunk to do what I had to do. After dressing, I took my sail-making tools from my housewife. I had resolved to cut the letters from their hiding-place so that I might make them up into tiny rolls, small enough to hide in my pistol cartridges. Very carefully I cut the threads which bound the leather flaps of the satchel together. I worked standing up, with the satchel in my bunk. I could hardly have been seen from any point. In a few moments the letters were in my hands. They were small sheets of paper, each about four inches square. They were nine in number, all different. They were covered with a neat cipher very different from the not very neat, not quite formed hand of the Duke himself. What the cipher was, I did not know. It was one of the many figure ciphers then in use. I learned long afterwards that the figures which frequently occurred in them stood for King James II. Such as they were, those cipher letters made a good deal of difference to many thousands of people then living contentedly at home.
As soon as I had removed them, I rolled them up very carefully into pistol cartridges from which I drew the charges. I was just going to throw away the powder, when I thought, “No, I'll put the powder back. It'll make the fraud more difficult to detect.” So I put the powder back with great care. Then I searched my mind for something with which to seal up the cartridge wads over the powder. I could think of nothing at all, till I remembered the tar-seams at my feet. I dug up a fragment of tar-seam from the dark corners of the cabin under my bunk. Then I lit my lamp with my little pocket tinder-box, so that I could heat the tar as I needed it. It took me a long time to finish the cartridges properly; but I flatter myself that I made neat jobs of them. I was trained to neat habits by my father. The Oulton seamen had given me a taste for doing clever neat work, such as plaits or pointing, so that I was not such a bungler at delicate handicraft as most boys of my age. I even took the trouble to hide the tar marks on my wads by smearing wetted gunpowder all over them. When I had hidden all the letters, I wrote out a few pencilled notes upon leaves neatly cut from my pocket-book. I wrote a varying arrangement of ciphers on each leaf, in the neatest hand I could command. I always made neat figures; but as I had not touched a pen for nearly a month, I was out of practice. Still, I did very creditably. I am quite sure that my neat ciphers gave the usurper James a very trying week of continual study. I daresay the whole privy council puzzled over those notes of mine. I felt very pleased with them when they were done.
I had not much more than a half-hour left to me when I finished writing them out. The ship's bells told me that it was seven o'clock. Cabin breakfast, as I knew very well, would be at eight. I could expect to be called at half past seven. I put the two flaps of the satchel evenly together, removing all traces of the thread used in the earlier sewing. Then I very trimly sewed the two flaps with my sail-needle, using all my strength to make secure stitches. I used some brown soap in the wash-stand as thread wax, to make the sewing more easy. “There,” I thought, “no one will suspect that this was sewn by a boy.” When I had finished, I thought of dirtying the twine to make the work look old; but I decided to let well alone. I might so easily betray my hand by trying to do too much. The slight trace of the soap made the work look old enough. But I took very great care to remove all traces of my work in the cabin. The little scraps of thread which I had cut out of the satchel I ate, as I could see no safer means of getting rid of them. I cannot say that they disagreed with me, though they were not very easy to get down. My palm, being a common sea-implement, not likely to seem strange in a ship's cabin, I hid in a locker below my bunk. My sail-needles I thrust at first into the linings of the pockets of my tarred sea-coat. On second thoughts, I drove them into the mattress of my bunk. My hank of twine I dropped on deck later, when I went out to breakfast. Having covered all traces of my morning's work, I washed with a light heart. When some one came to my cabin-door to call me, I cried out that I would be out in a minute.
When the breakfast bell rang, I walked aft to the great cabin, with my satchel over my shoulder. The captain asked me how I had slept; so I said that I had slept like a top, until a few minutes before I was called.
“That's the way with you young fellows,” he said. “When you come to be my age you won't be able to do that.” Presently, as we were sitting down to breakfast, he began his attack upon the satchel. “You still got your satchel, I see,” he said. “Do you carry it about with you always? Or are you pretending to be a military man with a knapsack?”
I looked a little uncomfortable at this; but not from the reason which flashed through his mind. I said that I liked carrying it about, as it served instead of a side coat-pocket, which was perfectly true.
“By the way,” he said; “you must let me take that beloved satchel after breakfast, so that I can get the strap sewn up for you.”
It came into my mind to look blank at this. I stammered as I said that I didn't mind the straps being cut, because there was a wire heart to the leather which would hold till we got to England, when I could put on a new strap for myself.
“Oh, nonsense,” he said, serving out some of the cold bacon from the dish in front of him. “Nonsense. What would your uncle say if you landed slovenly like that? Besides, now you're at sea you're a sailor. Sailors don't wear things like that at meals any more than they wear their hats.”