The Sea-Witch - Maturin Murray Ballou (books to read fiction .TXT) 📗

followed be explained? Suddenly the mizzen royal disappeared, followed by the top-gallant sail, topsail, and cross-jack courses, seeming to melt away under the eye like a misty veil, while, almost in a moment of time, there appeared a spanker, gaff topsail and gaff top-gallantsail in their place, while the vessel still held on her course.

A moment later, and the royal top-gallantsail, topsail and mainsail disappear from the main mast, upon which appears a regular fore and aft suit of canvass, consisting of mainsail, gaff topsail, and gaff top-gallantsail, reducing the vessel to a square rig forward, and a plain fore and aft rig aft. A few minutes more, and the foremast passed through the same metamorphose, leaving the “Sea Witch” a three-masted schooner, with fore and aft sails on every mast and every stay. All this had been accomplished with a celerity that showed the crew to be no strangers to the manouvres through which they had just passed, each man requiring to work with marked intelligence. Fifty well drilled men, thorough sea dogs, can turn a five hundred ton ship “inside out,” if the controlling mind understands his position on the quarterdeck.

“She wears that dress as though it suited her taste exactly, Mr. Faulkner,” said the captain, running his eye over the vessel, and glancing over the side to mark her headway.

“Any rig becomes the ‘Sea Witch,’” answered the officer, with evident pride.

“That is true,” returned the captain. “Luff, sir, luff a bit, so, well,” he continued to the man at the helm; “we will have all of her weatherly points that site will give.”

“The wind is rather more unsteady than it was an hour past,” said Mr. Faulkner.

“Rather puffy, and twice I thought it would haul right about, but here we have it still from the north’rd and east’rd,” replied the captain.

“Here it is again,” added the mate, as the wind hauled once more.

The immediate object of the change in the vessel’s rig, which we have described, was at once apparent, enabling the vessel to lie nearer the wind in her course, as well its giving her increased velocity by bringing more canvass to draw than a square rig could do when close hauled. But a shrewd observer would have been led to ask, what other reason, save that of disguise, could have been the actuating motive in thus giving to the “Sea Witch” a double character in her rig? For though temporary and somewhat important advantage could at times be thus gained, as we have seen, yet such an object alone would not have warranted the increased outlay that was necessarily incurred, to say nothing of the imperative necessity of a vessel’s being very strongly manned in order to enable her to thus change her entire aspect with any ordinary degree of celerity, and as had just been accomplished.

 

CHAPTER II.

CAPTAIN WILL RATLIN.

 

THE watch below, after completing the work which had summoned them for the time being on deck, tumbled helter-skelter down the fore hatch once more, and left on the deck of the “Sea Witch” about a dozen able seamen who formed the watch upon deck. A number of these were now gathered in a knot on the forecastle, and while they were sitting cross-legged, picking old rope, and preparing it in suitable form for caulking the ship’s seams, one of their number was spinning a yarn, the hero of which was evidently him who now filled the post of commander on board their vessel. The object of their remarks, meanwhile, stood once more quietly leaning over the monkey-rail on the weather side of the quarterdeck, quite unconscious that he was supplying a theme of entertainment to the forecastle.

There was an absent expression in his handsome face, a look as though his heart was far distant from the scene about him, and yet a habit of watchful caution seemed ever and anon to recall his senses, and his quick, keen glance would run over the craft from stem to stern with a searching and comprehensive power that showed him master of his profession, and worthy his trust. Trust?—what was the trust he held? Surely, no legitimate commerce could warrant the outfit of such a vessel as he controlled. A man-of-war could hardly have been more fully equipped with means of offence and defence. Amidship, beneath that long boat, was a long, heavy metalled gun that worked on a traverse, and which could command nearly every point of the compass, while the ship kept her course. Just inside the rise of the low quarterdeck—the cabin being entered from the deck by the descent of a couple of steps—there were ranged boarding pikes, muskets, cutlasses and pistols, ready for instant use. In shape they formed stars, hearts and diamonds, dangerous but fantastic ornaments.

The brightness of these arms, and the handy way in which they were arranged in the sockets made to receive them, showed at once that they were designed for use, while the various other fixtures of the cabin and docks plainly bespoke preparation for conflict. A strong and lofty boarding-netting being stowed, also, told of the readiness of the “Sea Witch” to repel boarders. That all these preparations had been made merely as ordinary precautions in a peaceful trade was by no means probable; and yet there they were, and there stood the bright-eyed, handsome and youthful commander upon the quarterdeck, but he did not look the desperado—such a term would have poorly accorded with his open and manly countenance, hie quiet and gentlemanly mien. A pirate would hardly have dared to lay the course he steered in these latitudes, where an English or French cruiser was very likely to cross his track.

“He handles a ship as prettily as ever a true blue did yet,” said one of the forecastle group, in replying to some remark of a comrade concerning the commander.

“That’s true,” answered another; “he seems to have a sort of natural way with him, as though he’d been born aboard and never seed the land at all; and as to that matter, there may be them on board who say as much of him.”

“That isn’t far from the truth,” answered Bill Marline, “seein’ he started so arly on the sea he can’t tell when he wasn’t there himself.”

“How was that matter, Bill?” asked one of his messmates. “They say you have kept the captain’s reckoning, man and boy, these fifteen years.”

“That have I, and never a truer heart floated than the man you see yonder leaning over the rail on the quarterdeck, where he belongs,” answered Bill Marline.

“How did you first fall in with him, Bill?—Tell us that,” said one of the crew.

“Well, do ye see, messmates, it must have been the matter of thirteen years ago, there or thereabouts, but I can’t exactly say, seeing’s I never have kept a log and can’t write; but must have been about that length of time, when I was a foremast hand on board the ‘Sea Lion,’ as fine an Indiaman as you would wish to see. We were lying in the Liverpool docks, with sails bent and cargo stowed, under sailing orders, when one afternoon there strolled alongside a boy rather ragged and dirty, but with such eyes and such a countenance as would make him a passport anywhere. Well, do ye see, we were lazing away time on board, and waiting the captain’s coming before we hauled out into the stream, and so we coaxed the lad aboard. He either didn’t know where he came from or wouldn’t tell, and when we proposed to take him to sea with us, he readily agreed, and sure enough he sailed in the ‘Sea Lion.’”

“Well, heave ahead, Bill,” said one of the group, as the narrator stopped to stove a fresh instalment of the Virginia weed in his larboard cheek.

“Heave ahead.”

“We hadn’t got fairly clear of the channel,” continued Bill Marline, “before the boy had become a general favorite all over the ship. We washed him up and bent on a new suit of toggery on him, with a reg’lar tarpaulin, and there was almost a fight whether the forecastle or the cabin should have him. At last it was left to the boy himself, and he chose to remain with us in the forecastle. The boy wasn’t sick an hour on the passage until after we left the Cape of Good Hope, when the flag halliards getting fouled, he was sent up to the peak to loosen it, and by some lurch of the ship was throw upon deck. Why it didn’t kill him was the wonder of all, but the boy was crazy for near a month from the blow on his head, which he got in falling, but he gradually got cured under our captain’s care.

“Well, do ye see, our captain was a regular whole-souled fellow, though he did sometimes work up a hand’s old iron pretty close for him, and so he took the boy into the cabin and gave him a berth alongside his own, and as he grew better took to teaching him the use of his instruments, and mathematics, and the like. The boy they said was wonderful ready, and learned like a book, and could take the sun and work up the ship’s course as well as the captain; but what was the funniest of all was that, after he got well, he didn’t know one of us, he had forgotten or even how he came on board the ship, the injury had put such a stopper on his brain that he had forgotten all that ever occurred before it. To my mind, howdsomever, it wasn’t much to forget, seeing he was little better than a baby, and hadn’t been to sea at all, and you know there aint anything worth knowing on shore, more’n one can overhaul in a day’s leave, more or less, within hail of the sea.”

“That’s true,” growled one or two of his messmates.

“Our ship was a first class freighter and passage vessel, and on the home voyage we had plenty of ladies. ‘Twas surprisin’ to see how natural like the boy took to ‘em, and how they all liked him. He was constantly learning something, and soon got so be could parley vou like a real frog-eating Frenchman. And then, as I said before, he took the sun and worked up the the ship’s reckoning like a commodore. Well, do ye se, messmates, we made a second and third voyage together in that ship, and when master Will Ratlin—for that was a name we give him when he first came on board, and he’s kept it ever since—was a matter of fourteen years, he was nearly as big as he is now, and acted as mate, and through I say it, who ought to know somewhat about those things, I never seed a better seaman of twice his years, always savin’ present company, messmates.”

“In course, Bill,” growled three or four of his messmates, heartily.

“Well, do ye see, messmates, we continued together in the same ship for the matter of five years, and then master Will and I shipped in another Indiaman, and we were in the ‘Birmingham’ for three years or more. One day we lay off the Cape on the home passage, and a half dozen of us got shore leave for a few hours, and I among the rest, and somehow I got rather more grog aboard than I could stow, and when I came off, the captain swore at me like a pirate, and after I got sober triced me up to the main rigging for a round dozen. When all hands were called to witness punishment, shiver my timbers, if master Will Ratlin, who was the first mate, didn’t walk boldly up to the captain, and say, blunt and honest:

“‘Captain