“Come and judge for yourself, sir. There’s been too much drink. It’s been the ruin of us,” exclaimed Tarbrick.
On this Van Laar, putting his hands upon the laniards of the main rigging, got into the chains. We instantly shoved off and were at some lengths from him while he was still heavily clambering on to the deck.
“Blowed if his weight don’t make the little craft heel again,” exclaimed one of the men. “See what a list to larboard she’s took.”
I regained the Black Watch mightily rejoiced that the Dutchman was off my hands. So vast a mass of flesh had made the transferring of it a very formidable undertaking. He was an elephant of a man; it needed but an impassioned gambol or two on his part to capsize a boat three times larger than anything the Black Watch carried. Besides, Van Laar was not the sort of man that one would care to sacrifice one’s life for. As we pulled away I looked over my shoulder, and now the Dutchman had cleared the rail and was wiping his face, with Tarbrick in the act of approaching him. When he saw that I looked he shook his first and roared. His words fell short; his tones alone came along like the low of a cow. My men burst into a laugh, and a minute later we were alongside the Black Watch.
The moment the boat was hoisted we trimmed sail and were presently pushing through the quiet glide of the dark blue swell, and very soon the magic of distance was dealing with the poor little craft in our wake. The afternoon was advanced, the light in the heavens and upon the water was soft and red and still. In the south clouds were terraced upon the horizon, every towering layer of radiant vapor defined with an edging of gilt. There was wind enough to keep the water sparkling wherever the light smote it; our sails soared like breasts of yellow silk breathing without noise to the courtesying of the craft.
A rich ocean afternoon it was, and the beauty of it entered the little vessel which we were leaving astern of us even as a spirit might, vitalizing her with colors and with a radiance not her own, converting her into a gem-like detail for the embellishment of the wide, bare breast of sea. Greaves and I stood looking at her; but the instant I leveled the telescope the enchantment vanished, for then she showed as a crazy old brig once more, a cask in tow of her, her sails ill-set, and the bulky figure of Van Laar striding here and there, with many marks of agitation in his motions.
“The captain mad and blind in the cabin,” said Greaves; “five men sick in the forecastle and the others crushed in spirits, forecastle fare for cabin fare, and bad at that; the water draining into the hold; and the vessel fearfully to the southward of her destination. I do not envy Van Laar.”
However, long before we ran the little vessel out of sight, they had got her head pointed in a direction that was right for the British Channel, if not the Clyde. The breeze had freshened, she was leaning over, and the cask astern had been cut adrift.
CHAPTER XI.
THE “REBECCA.”
Now, when Van Laar was gone all hands of us seemed to settle down very comfortably to the rough, hard, simple discipline of the sea-life. The more I saw of Greaves, the more I saw of the brig, the better I liked both. Over and over again I congratulated myself upon my good fortune. I seemed to trace it all to that gibbet on the sand hills. I know not why. What more ghastly, what more hideously ominous, you might say, could the mind of man imagine than a gibbet and a dead felon hanging from it in irons, and a mother receiving the horrible burthen of the beam from the fire-bright hand of the storm, and nursing the fearful object as though it were once again the babe that she had suckled? What more hideously ominous than such things could man ask of Heaven to initiate his career with, to inaugurate a new departure with? But that gibbet it was which kept me waiting when by walking I must have missed the press-gang and, for all I can now tell, have safely got me aboard the Royal Brunswicker.