Mr. Baker came back to the ship about a couple of hours after the marooned men had come aboard. He had spent more than an hour in going to and fro, looking for Smith’s body, but had seen no sign of it, and had concluded that it had sunk at once. That seemed strange, for the lungs must have been full of air, but nobody gave it a second thought unless some of the most disaffected of the crew did; none of them, in all probability, gave so much as a first thought to the fact. I do not really doubt that Smith was dead, and that his body was swaying about in the ooze at the bottom of the sea, unless the sharks got it first. But I remember that soon after I got home, I saw an account—merely an item of a few lines in a shipping paper—of a man’s having been taken off Amsterdam Island, and the description of the man might have been the description of Smith. He had forgotten who he was and how he got there, and he had been badly hurt, but he had managed to live alone for two years on the island. However, whether that was Smith or not, he passed out of our lives when he dropped from the yard.
Captain Coffin was in the cabin with Captain Nelson when Mr. Baker’s boat’s crew came over the side. Mr. Baker showed no surprise when he heard of it, but Starbuck did. He immediately sought out the two men who had come aboard with Captain Coffin, and I suppose he got their story. I was not free, as I was wanted to wait upon the two captains; but that was no disadvantage, for I got the story as Captain Coffin told it to Captain Nelson. They sat at the cabin table, leaning back in their chairs at their ease, with a pitcher of hot rum and water between them. I remember the pitcher exactly. It was a rather small white crockery pitcher, with a bluish tinge, such as they used to serve water in at country hotels, only smaller. They sat there quietly, and the hot rum and water steamed gently between them; and Captain Coffin had his fingers clasped loosely about his glass, but he drank little, and that in little sips. Between times he either gazed contentedly out of the cabin window, saying nothing, or he spoke briefly of his experiences in the Battles or on Amsterdam. His utterances were never long at any one time, but always punctuated by a sip and a long look out of the window. Captain Nelson said nothing at all. I stuck around rather more closely than was necessary.
It was the old story of mutiny, but in this case for no reason whatever except that the mutineers saw a good chance of taking the vessel. The ringleaders must have laid their plans before the Battles sailed, Captain Coffin thought, and have enlisted some of the crew in the scheme. Possibly Wallet knew about it also. They met the Clearchus at every opportunity, until Wallet went aboard of the Battles, where he was at the time when Captain Coffin told the story, so far as he knew; but he had turned out to be such a pusillanimous cuss that he had not been able to maintain himself in the position first given him. The bothering of the Clearchus was but incidental; but the crew got so much fun out of their sport with us—or Drew did, which was more to the point—that they could not resist the temptation to try it whenever they had the chance.
Sam Drew was the leader in the mutiny. At the name Captain Nelson grunted, and said that he knew Sam Drew, and had never known any good of him. Captain Coffin nodded, and went on with the story. It had all happened before they got to Fayal. Drew was a boatsteerer. One morning, as Captain Coffin came on deck, six men fell upon him at once, pinioning his hands, his arms and his legs, and throttling him. They must have rehearsed their parts pretty thoroughly, for each man seized some particular member, and clung to it; he was seized around the knees, as in a tackle at football—football had hardly developed the tackle at that time—and thrown to the deck, while the sixth man choked him. Captain Coffin is a tough customer to attack, and the men knew it. With two men on each arm, and choked by another, while the man who had tackled him took a turn about his ankles with the slack of the main sheet, he still put up a stiff fight, and almost got the two men on his right arm overboard. The odds were too great, however. He was soon bound hand and foot, tied to a stanchion, gasping for breath.
He had been aware of a struggle going on forward. He now saw Mr. Mayhew, his first mate, beheaded by a single stroke of a spade, and Jim Carter, the second mate, badly wounded by a lance. The third mate was not to be seen, but he was soon brought up from below. Then Drew called a council of a few of his cronies—a Council of State, perhaps—and spoke briefly to them. Captain Coffin could not hear what he said to them, but he heard plainly what he said afterward.
“Over with him, men,” he said, indicating the body of poor Mayhew.
The body was unceremoniously pitched into the sea, and the head after it. Then the men hesitated.
“Over with him!” said Drew impatiently. “You know what happens to the man who refuses to obey orders.”
The men laid hold of the wounded Carter and began dragging him to the rail. He was too badly wounded to resist, but Captain Coffin struggled and roared at them. The men hesitated again, but Drew smiled.
“Never mind him,” he said. “He can’t do anything. I ’m in command of this vessel now. Over with him!”