She had a large crew, abnormally large hawse-pipes, and a bad reputation—the last attribute born of the first. Registered as the Rosebud, this innocent name was painted on her stern and on her sixteen dories; but she was known among the fishing-fleet as the Ishmaelite, and the name fitted her. Secretive and unfriendly, she fished alone, avoided company, answered few hails, and, seldom filling her hold, disposed of her catch as her needs required, in out-of-the-way ports, often as far south as Charleston. And she usually left behind her such bitter memories of her visit as placed the last port at the bottom of her list of markets.
No ship-chandler or provision-dealer ever showed her receipted bills, and not a few of them openly averred that certain burglaries of their goods had plausible connection with her presence in port. Be this as it may, the fact stood that farmers on the coast who saw her high bow and unmistakable hawse-pipes when she ran in for bait invariably double-locked their barns and chicken-coops, and turned loose all tied dogs when night descended, often to find both dogs and chickens gone in the morning.
Once, too, three small schooners had come home with empty holds, and complained of the appearance, while anchored in the fog, of a flotilla of dories manned by masked men, who overpowered and locked all hands in cabin or forecastle, and then removed the cargoes of fish to their own craft, hidden in the fog. Shortly after this, the Ishmaelite disposed of a large catch in Baltimore, and the piracy was believed of her, but never proved.
Her luck at finding things was remarkable. Drifting dories, spars, oars, and trawl-tubs sought her unsavory company, as though impelled by the inanimate perversity which had sent them drifting. They were sold in port, or returned to their owners, when paid for. In the early part of her career she had towed a whistling buoy into Boston and claimed salvage of the government, showing her logbook to prove that she had picked it up far at sea. The salvage was paid; but, as her reputation spread, there were those who declared that she herself had sent the buoy adrift.
As poets and sailors believe that ships have souls, it may be that she gloried in her shame, like other fallen creatures; for her large, slanting oval hawse-pipes and boot-top stripe gave a fine, Oriental sneer to her face-like bow, and there was slur and insult to respectable craft in the lazy dignity with which she would swash through the fleet on the port tack, compelling vessels on the starboard tack to give up their right of way or be rammed; for she was a large craft, and there was menace in her solid, one-piece jib-boom, thick as an ordinary mainmast. An outward-bound coasting-schooner, resenting this lawlessness on one occasion, attempted to assert her rights, and being on the lawful starboard tack, bore steadily down on the Ishmaelite,—who budged not a quarter-point,—and, losing heart at the last moment, luffed up, all shaking, in just the position to allow the ring of her port anchor to catch on the bill of the Ishmaelite's starboard anchor. As her own ring-stopper and shank-painter were weak, the patent windlass unlocked, and the end of the cable not secured in the chain-locker, the Ishmaelite walked calmly away with the anchor and a hundred fathoms of chain, which, at the next port, she sold as legitimate spoil of the sea.
As her reputation increased, so did the hatred of men, while the number of ports on the coast which she could safely enter became painfully small. To avoid conflict with local authority, she had hurried to sea without clearing at the custom-house from Boston, Bangor, Portland, and Gloucester. She had carried local authority in the persons of distressed United States marshals to sea with her from three other ports, and landed it on some outlying point before the next meal-hour. With her blunt jib-boom she had prodded a hole in the side of a lighthouse supply-boat, and sailed away without answering questions. The government was taking cognizance, and her description was written on the fly-leaves of several revenue cutters' log-books, while Sunday newspapers in the large cities began a series of special articles about the mysterious schooner-rigged pirate of the fishing-fleet.
The future looked dark for her, and when the time came that she was chased away from Plymouth harbor—which she had entered for provisions—by a police launch, it seemed that the end was at hand; for she had done no wrong in Plymouth, and the police boat was evidently acting on general principles and instructions, which were vital enough to extend the pursuit to the three-mile limit. Her trips had become necessarily longer, and there was but two weeks' supply of food in the lazarette. The New England coast was an enemy's country, but in the crowded harbor of New York was a chance to lie unobserved at anchor long enough to secure the stores she needed, which only a large city can supply. So Cape Cod was doubled on the way to New York; but the brisk offshore wind, which had helped her in escaping the police boat, developed to a gale that blew her to sea, and increased in force as the hours passed by.
Hard-headed, reckless fellows were these men who owned the Rosebud and ran her on shares and under laws of their own making. Had they been of larger, broader minds, with no change of ethics they would have acquired a larger, faster craft with guns, hoisted the black flag, and sailed southward to more fruitful fields. Being what they were,—fishermen gone wrong,—they labored within their limitations and gleaned upon known ground.
They were eighteen in number, and they typified the maritime nations of the world. Americans predominated, of course, but English, French, German, Portuguese, Scandinavian, and Russian were among them. The cook was a West India negro, and the captain—or their nearest approach to a captain—a Portland Yankee. Both were large men, and held their positions by reason of special knowledge and a certain magnetic mastery of soul which dominated the others against their rules; for in this social democracy captains and bosses were forbidden. The cook was an expert in the galley and a thorough seaman; the other as able a seaman, and a navigator past the criticism of the rest.
His navigation had its limits, however, and this gale defined them. He could find his latitude by meridian observation, and his longitude by morning sights and chronometer time; his dead-reckoning was trustworthy, and he possessed a fair working conception of the set and force of the Atlantic currents and the heave of the sea in a blow. But his studies had not given him more than a rudimentary knowledge of meteorology and the laws of storms. A gale was a gale to him, and he knew that it would usually change its direction as a clock's hands will in moving over the dial; and if, by chance, it should back around to its former point, he prepared for heavier trouble, with no reference to the fluctuations of the barometer, which instrument to him was merely a weather-glass—about as valuable as a rheumatic big toe.