‘I expect the fool of a sailmaker forgot to weight the body,’ said he. ‘Unless,’ he added, with a little change in his voice, as if he meant what he said, whilst he did not wish me to suppose him in earnest, ‘the chap was too great a rascal when alive to sink now that he’s nothing but a body.’
‘I thought,’ I exclaimed, ‘that wicked sailors, like Falstaff, had an alacrity in sinking.’
‘I’ll tell you a fact, then, Mr. Dugdale,’ said he. ‘I was aboard a ship where we buried a man that had murdered a negro in Jamaica. He was a ruffian down to the heels of his yellow feet, sir, with a deal worse on his conscience, in our opinion, than even the blood of a darkey. It was a dead calm when we dropped him over the side with a twelve-pound shot at the clews of his hammock. Down he went; but up he came again, and lay wobbling under the main chains. The captain, not liking such a neighbour, ordered a boat over with a fresh weight for the corpse. It was another twelve-pound shot, and down it took him, as all hands expected. But scarce was the boat hoisted when the chief mate, who was looking over the rail, sings out quietly: “Here’s Joey again.” And there lay the hammock just under the mizzen chains. ’Twas lucky a breath of wind came along just then and sneaked the barque away, for had the calm lasted, the men would have sworn that the body had got hold of the ship and wouldn’t let her move. But as to our being ever able to sink it’—he shook his head, and pointing to the hammock that was now showing like a fleck of foam in the tail of our wake, he exclaimed: ‘It’s the same with Crabb. He’s of the sort that Old Davy will have nothing to do with.’
The boatswain’s pipe shrilled out again; the ceremony was over. The sailors stalked gravely towards the forecastle, the passengers distributed themselves about the poop.
‘Quite worth seeing, don’t you think?’ said Mr. Johnson, coming up to me in the manner of a man fresh from a stage performance that has pleased him. ‘Only let me be sure of my nautical details, and I believe I can see my way to a very pretty article, Mr. Dugdale.’
CHAPTER VIII
A STRANGE CARGO
We took the north-east trades on the Canary parallels; but they blew a very light breeze, occasionally failing us, indeed, with more than once a positive hint of a shift in the western sky, though no change happened. Captain Keeling declared that in all his time he never remembered the like of so faint a trade-wind. Indeed, it threatened us with a long passage to the equator, and again and again I would feel as vexed as if I had had command of the ship, and my reputation depended upon her progress, when I’d come on deck and find the long blue heave of the swell gushing to our port quarter, just freckled by the delicate soft wind, with scarce a ripple of weight enough to run into foam, the weather clew of the mainsail swinging in and out, and the big topsails, to the curtseying of the ship upon the swell, coming into the masts with short slaps, which made each sheet hum like a twanged harp-wire through its yard-arm sheave-hole. Very different was all this from my own experience of the trades when, for days and days, from twenty-seven degrees north down to within thirty leagues of the equator, it had been one long wild thunderous spell of sailing, foam to the hawse-pipes, every yard and studdingsail boom straining at its brace as a racer at its bridle, the white water to leeward flashing past in a dazzle, like foam from the sponsons of a paddle-steamer, and all day long a fine noise of wind roaring between the masts, and on high the wool-like clouds of the trades blowing, charged with prismatic hues, transversely across the line of our course.
Yet we managed to kill the time with some degree of entertainment to ourselves. Mr. Greenhew and Mr. Riley were head over ears in love with Miss Hudson, and were beginning to talk sarcasm at each other when there were people near to listen to their conversation. Mr. Fairthorne was paying very marked attention to Miss Mary Joliffe. Mynheer Peter Hemskirk seemed to find something agreeable in the company of Miss Helen Trevor, an exceedingly fat, blue-eyed girl, with a bunch of flaxen ringlets falling before each ear, and her hair behind dragged up to a tall comb that sat in an odd staring way upon her head. There was some sport in all this for quiet observation. Then there was always a rubber of whist to be had. Though Colonel Bannister was often in too peppery a humour to play, his aristocratic falcon-beaked wife was ever ready and eager to take a hand, and partners were never to be wanting when Mr. Adam or Mr. Saunders or Mr. Hodder was about.