Bahama Bill, Mate of the Wrecking Sloop Sea-Horse

by T. Jenkins Hains

The day wore on without incident, until the captain came aboard, a bit the worse for liquor and with the news that the owner had left for St. Augustine, leaving orders for the yacht to follow.

It was quiet, and the schooner rode at anchor in a bay of pond-like smoothness. The men lounged about the decks or gazed over the side at the bottom, which could be seen through the clear water. They would stand out at sunrise, but the captain told no one of this intention, and those ashore expected her to be a fixture of a week or more. The sun went down in a bank to the westward and the semi-tropical night came dark and quiet upon the sea.

Through the deepening gloom, a shadow came stealing around the wooded point of Cape Florida. With her mainsail well off to the gentle southerly breeze, the wrecking-sloop Sea-Horse slipped noiselessly through the water, swinging around the channel buoy and standing like a black phantom for the mouth of the Miami. She came without a sound, not even a ripple gurgling from her forefoot; and not a ray of light showed either from her rigging or from her cabin-house. At the wheel, a figure stood silent in the night, a slight turn of the spokes now and then being the only movement to show that the image was that of a man steering. Strung along the deck-house and rail lay six other human forms, but they were as quiet as though made of wood. Not even the glow of a pipe relieved the silent gloom. The wrecker drew near the yacht. The man at the wheel leaned slightly forward over the spokes and peered long and searchingly at her from under the main-boom. Then she drifted past, and as she did so eight bells struck, sounding clear and musical from the forecastle. In the glare from her anchor-light, a giant form showed upon the yacht's forecastle-head—the black second mate, who was taking a look at the anchor-cable before settling himself for a smoke. The wrecker passed and disappeared around the point, and the second mate of the Caliban stretched himself along the heel of the bowsprit and watched the distant loom of the keys whence the low, murmuring snore of the surf sounded. Two bells struck and aroused him for a moment. The man on lookout asked permission to go below for a bit of tobacco, and then after he had watched his figure vanish down the hatchway, the mate turned toward the shore where the lights sparkled over the bay.

A slight rippling sound attracted his attention, and he looked over the side. It sounded like a large fish of some kind making its way clumsily along near the surface. The black water flared in places, and a continuous flashing of phosphorus shone along the cheek of the bow when the tide was shoved aside. Something dark showed at a little distance, but it passed astern and the rippling sound died away. Haskins, who was half-fish from habit and as watchful as a shark, went to the taffrail and leaned over. The water seemed like ink in the gloom, but he scanned it steadily and patiently. Nothing showed upon the dark surface, and he smoked for half an hour, until his usually alert senses began to wander. He was getting sleepy. Then the rippling sound began again on the offshore side. He remained quiet and listened. This time the rippling sounded like a fish going against the current, and the glare of the disturbed water showed now and again as the body approached. Suddenly it seemed as if the creature passed under the yacht's bottom. The rippling died away, and the second mate stepped to the side to see if it would rise again. Nothing showed in the blackness under her counter, but from down there came a peculiar scraping sound. It continued, and he peered over to see the cause. The raking stopped instantly. He remained quiet and it began again, a peculiar scraping as though something were scratching against the vessel's bilge.

Suddenly a sound of heavy breathing came from the water. Haskins started, drew himself down upon the rail and listened intently. Yes, he recognized it now, distinctly. It was the breathing of a man.

While he lay upon the rail listening, he was thinking rapidly. There were few men who would swim out in the bay at night, and there was none who would swim out there without some sinister object. He thought of the dockmaster and his talk of revenge, but he knew the dockmaster was not a diver. There could be only one or two men on the Florida Reefs for wrecking, and these men were among the crew of the Sea-Horse, the sloop in which he had been mate for the past season. Then he remembered a phantom-like shadow which had drifted past in the earlier hours of the evening, and he was satisfied he knew his man. It was the captain of the wrecking-sloop, and his object was plain to the diver. It was an old game, a game he had indulged in many times himself in the days gone by. He knew the long, desperate swims through the dangerous waters of West Indian and Florida reefs; the fierce struggle alongside to hold the body silent in a tideway while with hook and bar the wrecker worked at the oakum in the seams just a strake or two below the water-line; then the inrushing flood and settling ship, and daylight finding a panic-stricken captain and mutinous and half-dead crew with swollen arms and aching backs from a night's hopeless work at the pump-brakes. He could picture the approaching wrecking-sloop, with her apparently amazed crew and the vulture-like descent upon the soon-abandoned vessel whose only damage was really the working out of several pounds of oakum from seams which were manifestly improperly calked. Then the investigation and salvage, for even when the marks showed plain of either bar or hook, there was never the slightest evidence against the wrecker.

Bahama Bill knew the game well, and he smiled a little as he listened. Then he took off his cap with the gold braid and laid it upon the deck, and leaned far out over the side. Suddenly, through the darkness, he made out a face looking up at him from the water. There was nothing said. He recognized the captain of the Sea-Horse, and he knew him to be a man who seldom wasted words. There was only the long, hard scrutiny, the study of man's mind by man; each trying to fathom the other's thought, for the sudden resolve which always comes quickly to men of action.

While they gazed, a sudden noise from aft attracted attention. It was the surly mutterings of the drunken yacht-captain, who had come on deck for a breath of air. The sight of him annoyed the second mate. It caused a revulsion of feeling within him he could not understand. The responsibility of his position became apparent for the first time. Among his kind the rigid law of superiority and control had always obtained while afloat. Ashore it was different. There restraint was cast to the winds, and he had often been one of the wildest and most dangerous men in the seamen's resorts between Key West and Panama. Here the sight of the drunken captain made him quiet and thoughtful. Whatever relations he had intended should exist between himself and the wrecker, it was now plain to him that he was an officer holding a responsible position. It came to him suddenly at the sight of the incapable commander. He would maintain his dignity and responsibility.

This feeling was upon him before he was half aware of it, and he turned again to the man overside.

"Get away quick," he said, in a low tone.