Master Rockafellar's Voyage

by William Clark Russell

I stayed about twenty minutes in the pantry, in which time I heard no kind of noise saving a dim creak now and again from the hold of the wreck. Extinguishing the candle I entered the cabin and stood debating with myself on the course I should follow. Water I must have: should I fill a jar and carry it stealthily to the boat and be off and take my chance of managing the business unheard? Yes, I would do that, and if I aroused the sleepers, why, seeing that I was willing to go they might not refuse me a supply of drink....

I was musing thus when there was the sound of a yawn on deck. At that moment I remembered the array of cutlasses that embellished the cabin ceiling. It was the noise the fellow made, the perception that one of the three at all events was awake with his mates somewhere at hand to swiftly alarm, which put the thought of those cutlasses into my head, or it is fifty to one if in the blackness of that interior I should have recollected them. I sprang upon the table and in a moment was gripping a blade. The very feel of it, the mere sense of being armed sent the blood rushing through my veins as though to some tonic of miraculous potency. “Now,” thought I, setting my teeth, “let the ruffians fall upon me if they will. If my life is to be taken it shall not be for the want of an English arm to defend it.”

I jumped on to the deck, went stealthily to the foot of the steps and listened. The man yawned again, and I heard the tread of his foot as he moved, whence I suspected him to be the yellow boatswain, the others being unshod, though to be sure there were shoes enough in the ’tween decks for them had they a mind to help themselves. As I sent a look up through the lifted corner of tarpaulin over the hatch I spied the delicate, illusive grey of daybreak in the air, and so speedy was the coming of the dawn that it lay broad with the sun close under the rim of the horizon ere I could form a resolution whilst listening to make sure that he who was on deck continued alone. Then hearing him yawn again and no sound of the others reaching my ears, I mounted the steps and gained the deck.

It was the Portuguese boatswain, as I had imagined. He was in the act of seating himself much in the same place where I had seen him sleeping when I boarded the vessel; but he instantly saw me as I arose, and remained motionless and rigid as though blasted by a flash of lightning. His jaw dropped, his hideous little eyes protruded bright with horror and fright from their sockets, and his yellow face changed into a sort of greenish tint like mottled soap or the countenance of a man in a fit. No doubt he supposed me a spectre, rising as I did in that way out of the cabin when the rogue would imagine me a hundred miles off, or floating a corpse in the water, and I dare say but for the paralysis of terror that had fixed his jaw some pious sentences would have dropped from him. For my part I hung in the wind undecided, at a loss to act. I sent a look over my shoulder to observe if the others were about, and the movement of my head seemed like the release of him from the constraint of my eye. He leapt into an erect posture and rushed to the side, saw the boat, uttered a cry for all the world resembling the rough, saw-like yell of the albatross stooping to some bait in the foaming eddies of a wake, in a bound came back to the binnacle, the body of which stood, though the compass, hood and glass were gone, and thrusting his hand into it pulled out a pistol which he levelled at me. The weapon flashed as I ran at him. Ere he had time to draw the cutlass which dangled at his hip, I had buried the blade, the large heavy hilt of which I grasped with both hands, deep in his neck, crushing clean through his right jaw; and even whilst he was in the act of falling I had lifted and brought the cutlass down upon him again, this time driving the edge of it so deep into his skull that the weight of him as he dropped dead dragged the weapon out of my hand, and it was a wrestle of some moments to free the blade.

I swept round fully prepared for the confrontment of the others, who, I took it, if they were sleeping below, would rush up on deck on hearing the report of the pistol. My head was full of blood; I felt on fire from my throat to my feet. God knows why or how it was, for I should have imagined of myself that the taking of a human life would palsy my muscles with the horror of the thing to the weakness of a woman’s arm; and yet in the instant of my rounding, prepared for, panting for a sight of the other two, I seemed conscious of the strength of a dozen men in me.

All was still. The sun had risen in splendour; the ocean was a running surface of glory under him, and the blue of the south had the dark tenderness of violet with the gushing into it of the hot and sparkling breeze which had sprung up in the north with the coming of the morn. Where were the others? My eyes reeled as they went from the corpse of the Portuguese to the pistol he had let drop. I picked it up; it was a rude weapon belonging to the armoury of La Mulette. I conjectured that the miscreant would not have thus armed himself without providing a stock of ammunition at hand, and on putting my arm into the binnacle stand I found, sure enough, a powder-horn and a parcel of pistol-bullets. I carefully loaded the weapon, narrowly seeing to the priming, all the while constantly glancing along the deck and listening. Then with the pistol in one hand and the cutlass in the other, I stepped below, furious and eager for a sight of the dead man’s mates.

The lifted tarpaulin let the morning sunshine fall fair into the cabin, and now I saw that which had before been invisible to me; I mean a great blood-stain upon the deck, with a spattering of blood-drops and spots of more hideous suggestion yet, round about. A thin trail of blood went from the large stain upon the floor along through the passage betwixt the berths, and so to the main hatch. Ha! thought I, this signifies murder! I found nothing in the cabins. The door of the berth in which the chest of gold stood, was locked, but on putting my whole weight against it with knee and shoulder it flew open. The contents of the place were as I had before taken notice of; and there were no signs here of either dead or living men. I regained the deck, and walking forward observed a thin line of blood going from the coamings of the main hatch to the side. It was the continuation and termination of the trail below, and most unmistakably denoted the passage of a bleeding body borne through the hatch and cast overboard. I walked further forward yet, and on the forecastle witnessed another wide stain of blood. It looked fresher than the other—nay, it was not yet dry, and the heat went out of my body, and ice cold shudders swept through my limbs as I turned my back upon it, sick, dizzy, and trembling.

Those horrible marks gave me the whole story as fully as though the dead brute aft had recited it to me at large ere I struck him down. He had murdered his mates one after the other to be alone with the gold. It had been murder cold and deliberate, I was sure. There were no signs of a struggle; there were no hints of any previous conflict in the person of the yellow Portuguese. It was as though he had crept behind the men one after another, and struck them down with a chopper. Indeed I was as sure of this as though I had witnessed the deed; and there was the chest of gold in the cabin to explain the reason of it. How he hoped to manage if he fell in with a ship (and I know not what other expectation of coming off with his life he could have formed) it is useless to conjecture. Some plausible tale no doubt he would have taken care to prepare, claiming the gold as his by law of treasure-trove.