“I wish to know who was her commander; what sort of a man he was; and what sort of a crew he had,” I replied.
“Oh, well, then, her master was one Stephen Spinks. He wasn’t a bad seaman, seeing he was raised for the shore; but he had a first-rate hand for a mate, an old salt, who knew a trick or two, I calculate; and had a crew of five whites—Yankees, Britishers, and Portuguese—and ten Lascars; so the brig wasn’t badly manned at all events. She sailed for a trading voyage, to touch wherever Spinks thought he could pick up a cargo, or do a bit of barter. There never was a better hand at that work than Spinks.”
When Mr Noakes had got thus far, it seemed to have occurred to him that it would be but civil to ask me to sit down; and by degrees he became more communicative than I at first expected. From the information I gained from him, and from other merchants of whom I made inquiries, I learned that Captain Stephen Spinks was a very respectable man in appearance and manner; and that Mrs Clayton, having met him, was induced to take a passage in his brig, just on the point of sailing. There were, however, some suspicious circumstances connected with the history of his first mate: stories were told of ships, on board which he served, being insured to large amounts and cast away; of his captain being found dead in his cabin; of a ship having caught fire from an inexplicable cause, and of bags of dollars unaccountably disappearing.
“I would not have allowed the fellow to have put foot on board any ship in which I was interested,” said Mr Randall, a merchant to whom I had a letter. “He was bad enough to corrupt a whole crew. Who knows what sort of fellows he had with him? Captain Spinks might have been very respectable, though not much of a seaman, and so may be Mr Noakes, though I know little about him, except that he can drive a hard bargain, and likes to get things done cheap. This made him engage that suspicious fellow, Kidd, who was ready to sail without wages—Richard Kidd was his name—an ominous one rather; and when I saw poor Mrs Clayton and your little sister on board, I so disliked the looks of the crew that I was much inclined to persuade her to wait for another ship.”
This account gave a fresh colouring to the matter. If Kidd was the character described, he might probably have run away with the Emu for the sake of the dollars on board, and have carried her into a Dutch or Spanish settlement, where he could have sold her.
This also gave a wider range to the field of my search. Had she been captured by pirates, I should have looked for my friends in their haunts in the Sooloo Archipelago, and on the coast of Borneo; now I should have to search from Java, among all the islands to the east, up to Luzon, in the north. I was resolved to leave no spot unvisited; and the circumstance of a brig like the Emu having been seen to the west of Borneo determined me on visiting the Dutch settlement first. I have not attempted to describe my feelings all this time. I felt that I was engaged in a sacred duty, and I was rather calm and braced up for the work than in any way excited. I held my object, distant though it might be, clearly in view, and nothing could turn me away from it. I do not think I could have persevered as I did had I been influenced by what is called enthusiasm or excitement.
Chapter Ten.
Having resolved to undertake a work, the first point to be considered is how it is to be performed. I therefore immediately made every inquiry in my power, and found a Dutch brig sailing direct for Batavia. My intention, on arriving there, was to prosecute my inquiries for the Emu, and then to continue my voyage to the eastward, on board any craft I could find.