List, Ye Landsmen! A Romance of Incident

by William Clark Russell

The hope of the voyage was realized. Underfoot lay half a million of dollars, and six thousand pounds of it were to be mine! Is it wonderful that my spirits should have sang, that heart and brain should have danced? But with this noble fulfillment of the half-hearted hope of many weeks was mixed the romance of the presence of a handsome Spanish woman in the ship. One thought of her as coming on board with the dollars—as the princess of the island pining for civilization and shipping herself and the treasure of her little dominion for the life and delights of a great and populous city of the Old World. She it was, I think, that set my brain a-waltzing, if it were the dollars which made my heart gallop and my spirit shout within me.

I tell you it was an odd, intoxicating mixture of the picturesque, the heroic, the romantic for a plain young sailor man like me to put his lips to and drain down. To be sure the influence of the Spanish lady upon me was no more than the influence of bright eyes, of white teeth, of a fine person, of a head of magnificent hair. And what sort of influence would that be, pray? Why, heart alive! Oh! what but a mingling of light with thought, an aroma to haunt all fancy of other things, giving a sparkle to the commonplace, putting foam and sweetness into cups of flatness. Do you who are reading this know how deep, know by the experience of months of weevils, corned horse, and the curses of constipated sailors, how deep is the deep monotony of life on shipboard? If the depth of this monotony be known to you, then will you understand why it should be that the presence, yea, the presence merely of a handsome woman, her glances, the flash of her white teeth, the eloquent hinting by movement and posture at a hidden shape of beauty, should mingle a few threads of gold with the coarse gray, brine-drenched worsted of the sailor’s daily life—of such a daily life as mine; should touch with luster his mechanic habits and trains of thought as the wake of his ship in the night of the tropic ocean is beautified with the fiery seeds and radiant foam-bells of the sea glow.

And now I have intelligently and poetically explained why it was that I walked out some time of the remainder of my watch on deck, with my blood in a dance and my spirits singing clearly. But as I paced I grew grave under the shadow of a fancy—not yet to call it fear. Suppose the crew should rise and seize the brig? This was a notion that was fixedly present to Greaves during the outward passage, because he had known when I doubted, that the half million of dollars were in the ship in the cave, and upon that conviction he could base acute realization of what might happen when the money was transhipped. I, on the other hand, had never seriously considered the possibility of piracy. The money must be in the brig before I could solemnly compass all the responsibility its possession implied. But the money was now on board, and six thousand pounds of it were mine, and my spirits fell as I paced the quarter-deck looking around the wide gloom and saying to myself: “Suppose this treasure of half a million of dollars should presently start the men into a determination to seize the brig! There were but two of us—Greaves and I—at our end of the ship. Could we count upon Jimmy? At the other end was now an addition of two Spaniards—cut-throats at heart for all one knew—with knives as thirsty for blood as an English sailor’s throat for rum.”

Why should I have thought thus? Nothing whatever had happened to put fancies of this sort into my head. Was it not the being able to understand that thirty thousand of the thousands in the lazarette were to be mine that set me reflecting with a sudden dark anxiety, when the question arose: Suppose the crew should rise and take the brig?

The needy traveler, serene and gay,
Walks the wild heath, and sings his toil away.
Does envy seize thee? Crush the unbraiding joy,
Increase his riches, and his peace destroy:
New fears in dire vicissitude invade,
The rustling brake alarms, and quivering shade;
Nor light nor darkness brings his pain relief,
One shows the plunder, and one hides the thief.

There was comfort, however, if not safety in this consideration: not a man forward, from Bol down to Jimmy, had any knowledge of navigation. What, then, would they be able to do with the brig if they seized her? They might spread a chart of the world and say: “Here we are now, and there is America, and there are the East Indies, and down there is New Holland, and up there is China, and if we steadily head in one direction, no matter at what point of the compass the bowsprit looks, we are bound to run something down, whether it be a continent or one of the poles.”

Well, that is how sailors might talk in a book designed for the young. Before the seamen forward rose and seized this brig, that was now a very valuable bottom, as cargoes then went, they would ask of one another: “What are we going to do with the ship when we have her? Where are we going to carry her, and, having hit on a spot, how are we going to navigate her there?” This I chose to think, and, indeed, I had no doubt of it, and I drew comfort from the conclusion; but all the same, my spirits, having sunk, remained low throughout the rest of my watch.

I was uneasy. I caught myself arresting my steps when my walk carried me toward the gangway, whenever I heard the sound of a man’s voice. O God, to think of what a hell of passions this tiny speck of brig was capable of holding! To think of the large and bloody tragedy this minim of the building yards could find a theater for! Never had I so utterly felt human insignificance at sea as I did this night, when I looked over the rail and searched the smoky void of the horizon for the smudge of the island, till, for the relief of my sight, I watched a star.

“I’ll tell you what it is, William Fielding,” said I to myself, “your blood is over-heated, your spirits are over-excited. By this picking up to-day of a fortune—a noble fortune to you, my boy—of six thousand pounds, and by the sudden and novel companionship of a dark and splendid lady, the pulses of your body have been set a-hammering too fast. They must sleep, or excitement will make you sick.”

Eight bells were struck. Bol came along, and I went below to see if the captain was awake. He addressed me on my entering his cabin. I reported the little there was to tell. He said that the pain in his side was easier; that he could move without the anguish of the afternoon.