List, Ye Landsmen! A Romance of Incident

by William Clark Russell

The dollars were, I knew, stowed away down in the lazarette. This queer name is given to a part of a ship’s after-hold. It is a compartment or division, and commonly used for the stowage of stores and provisions. The hatch that conducted to this place was in the cabin. I entered the cabin—a sort of deckhouse—and paused, holding my lantern high, and gazing about me. I observed a row of cushioned seats or lockers, three or four round scuttles on either hand, with dim oil paintings let into or framed to the panels between; lamps which, when lighted, might shine like the starry crescents of the poet, and two square tables, one at each end. The hatch was open. I descended and passed through a ’tweendecks, black as ink. The lantern light gleamed along a corridor, and revealed a short row of berths to starboard and larboard. And now, passing through the hatch in this deck, I stood in the lazarette. The floor was shallow; there were numerous stanchions, and the white cases, which contained the dollars, were stowed between those uprights. I approached a range of cases and found the top one split open. I squeezed my hand through and felt the dollars, packed in large rolls. They were as rough to the touch of the finger, with their milled edges, as any big surface of file, and cold as frost. There looked to be a great number of cases. I do not suppose that Greaves had attempted to count them. He abided by the declaration of the manifest, and since it was certain the cases had not been meddled with, no doubt the number and value were as the manifest set forth.

I halted inactively here for, perhaps, a minute, while, with lantern upheld, I ran my eye over the cases. The silence was horrible—no dimmest sob of water penetrated, no distant squeak of rat afforded relief to the ear. But here were the dollars! They were now to be secured, got into the boat, and conveyed to the brig. I called to the men, and they came below with the battens and hammer and nails. We had four lanterns burning, and there was plenty of light. In a few minutes this dead vault of hold was ringing to the blows of the hammers. I overhauled the cases and saw that every split lid was carefully repaired before ever I dreamt of suffering a box of the metal to be lifted. The men spoke not one word, unless it were an “ay, ay, sir,” in response to a call from me. They chewed and spat with excitement, hammered and toiled with eagerness, and often did they roll their eyes over the cases, but they held their tongues. When the last of the boxes was repaired, slings were procured, a tackle rigged, and I, standing in the lazarette, tallied a quantity of the cases on deck, some of them large, and holding, as I should have reckoned by the weight, not less than three thousand to five thousand dollars apiece. I then followed the men, the gangway was cleared, and the chests lowered by tackles into the boat, where they were received and trimmed by three of the crew.

We pulled out of the harbor, deep, but not perilously deep, with silver, and when we rounded the reef I spied the brig at a distance of about a quarter of a mile away from the spot where we had left her. They had wore her and got her head round on the other tack, and clapped her aback afresh. There was a fellow stationed on the fore royal yard; I see him in my mind’s eye, as mere a pigmy as ever Gulliver handled, as he sat jockeying the yard in the slings, one hand on the tie, his legs dangling, and the loose white trousers trembling, and a hand to his brow as he sent his gaze into the remote ocean distance. The sun made a blaze of the white canvas, and their reflection trembled in sheets of quicksilver, deep in the clear cerulean beneath the shadow of the vessel’s side.

The Black Watch looked but a little ship after the lumping fabric in the cave. Yes, she looked but a little ship for the hundreds of leagues of ocean she had measured, since the hour when I was lifted over her rail nearly dead of Channel water. But small as she was, she sat in beauty upon the sea; the long passage had not roughened her, her sides showed like the hide of some freshly curried mare of Arabia. She rolled lightly, sparkles leapt from her, the colors about her deepened, paled and deepened again, and fingers of shadow swept through the blaze of her canvas.

As we approached I saw Greaves sitting in the chair in which I had left him; he sat under a short awning. There was a tray upon the skylight, and bottles and glasses, and I guessed he was eating his dinner. I looked for the lady, but saw nothing of her. Galloon watched our approach, seated like a monkey upon the rail with half a fathom of red tongue out. Bol and the others and the two Spaniards were congregated in the gangway. The big Dutchman waited until the boat drew close, he then roared in a voice that could have been heard on the other side of the island, “Hurrah, my ladts! Tree sheers for Capt’n Greaves.” And when the men had cheered, he roared out again, “Und three sheers more for der dollars!”

By the time this unwarrantable uproar—but it was scarce worth correcting, seeing the occasion of it—had ceased we were alongside, and I sprang on deck. “How have you got on, Mr. Fielding?” called Greaves from his chair, without attempting to rise.

“Very well, sir.”

“How many cases?”

I gave him the number.

“Get them aboard at once,” he exclaimed, “and leave them on the quarter-deck till all are shipped. See those cases aboard, and then step aft.”