For this he has his reasons. And for all good ones. Before leaving port he had discovered the incapacity of the crew, so hastily scraped together. A bad lot, he could see at first sight—rough, ribald, and drunken. In all there are eleven of them, the second mate included; the last, as already stated, a Spaniard, by name Padilla. There are three others of the same race—Spaniards, or Spanish-Americans—Gil Gomez, José Hernandez, and Jacinto Velarde; two Englishmen, Jack Striker and Bill Davis; a Frenchman, by name La Crosse; a Dutchman, and a Dane; the remaining two being men whose nationality is difficult to determine, and scarce known to themselves—such as may be met on almost every ship that sails the sea.
The chief officer of the Condor, accustomed to a man-o’-war, with its rigid discipline, is already disgusted with what is going on aboard the merchantman. He was so before leaving San Francisco, having also some anxiety about the navigation of the vessel. With a crew so incapable, he anticipated difficulty, if not danger. But now that he is out upon the open ocean, he is sure of the first, and keenly apprehensive of the last. For, in less than a single day’s sailing, he has discovered that the sailors, besides counting short, are otherwise untrustworthy. Several of them are not sailors at all, but “longshore” men; one or two mere “land-lubbers,” who never laid hand upon a ship’s rope before clutching those of the Condor. With such, what chance will there be for working the ship in a storm? But there is a danger he dreads far more than the mismanagement of ropes and sails—insubordination. Even thus early, it has shown itself among the men, and may at any moment break out into open mutiny. All the more likely from the character of Captain Lantanas, with which he has become well acquainted.
The Chilian skipper is an easy-going man, given to reading books of natural history, and collecting curiosities—as evinced by his brace of Bornean apes, and other specimens picked up during his trading trip to the Indian Archipelago. A man in every way amiable, but just on this account the most unfitted to control a crew, such as that he has shipped for the voyage to Valparaiso.
Absorbed in his studies, he takes little notice of them, leaving them in the hands, and to the control, of his piloto, Harry Blew.
But the ex-man-o’-war’s man, though a typical British sailor, is not one of the happy-go-lucky kind. He has been entrusted with something more than the navigation of the Chilian ship—with the charge of two fair ladies in her cabin; and although these have not shown themselves on deck, he knows they are safe, and well waited on by the black cook; who is also steward, and who, under his rough sable skin, has a kindly, gentle heart.
It is when thinking of his cabin passengers, that the Condor’s first officer feels apprehensive, and then not from the incapacity of her sailors, but their bold, indeed almost insolent, behaviour. Their having shown something of this at first might have been excusable, or at all events, capable of explanation. They had not yet sobered down. Fresh from the streets of San Francisco, so lawless and licentious, it could not be expected. But most of them have been now some days aboard—no drink allowed them save the regular ration, with plenty of everything else. Kind treatment from captain and mate, and still they appear scowling and discontented, as if the slightest slur—an angry word, even a look—would make mutiny among them.
What can it mean? What do the men want?
A score of times has Harry Blew thus interrogated himself, without receiving satisfactory answer. It is to obtain this, he is now gliding silently about the decks, and here and there concealing himself in shadow, with the hope of overhearing some speech that will give him explanation of the conspiracy—if conspiracy it be.
And in this hope he is not deceived or disappointed, but successful beyond his most sanguine expectations. For he at length obtains a clue, not only to the insubordination of the sailors, but all else that has been puzzling him.
And a strange problem it is, its solution appalling.