In the Sargasso Sea - Thomas A. Janvier (top books to read txt) 📗

he was a

ship-master and was about to sail for the West African coast I had

paid him my fifty dollars—and had taken by way of receipt for it no

more than a clinking of our glasses and a shake of his hand. I said

just now that I was only twenty-three years old, and more or less of a

promiscuously green young fool. I suppose that I might as well have

left that out. There are some things that tell themselves.

 

For three or four blocks, as I drove along, I was in such a rage with

myself that I could not think clearly. Then I began to cool a little,

and to hope that I had gone off the handle too suddenly and too far.

After all, there were some chances in my favor the other way. Captain

Chilton, I remembered, had told me that he was about to sail for West

Coast ports before I asked him for a passage; and had mentioned, also,

whereabouts on the anchorage the Golden Hind was lying. Had he made

these statements after he knew what I wanted there would have been

some reason for doubting them; but being made on general principles,

without knowledge of what I was after, it seemed to me that they very

well might be true. And if they were true, why then there was no great

cause for my sudden fit of alarm. However, I was so rattled by my

fright, and still so uncertain as to how things were coming out for

me, that the thought of waiting until the next afternoon to know

certainly whether I had or had not been cheated was more than I could

bear. The only way that I could see to settle the matter was to go

right away down to the anchorage, and so satisfy myself that the

Golden Hind was a real brig and really was lying there; and it

occurred to me that I might kill two birds with one stone, and also

have a reason to give for a visit which otherwise might seem

unreasonable, if I were to take down my luggage and put it aboard that

very afternoon.

II

HOW I BOARDED THE BRIG GOLDEN HIND

 

Having come to this conclusion, I acted on it. I kept the cab at the

door while I finished my packing with a rush, and then piled my

luggage on it and in it—and what with my two trunks, and my kit of

fine tools, and all my bundles, this made tight stowing—and then away

I went down-town again as fast as the man could drive with such

a load.

 

We got to the Battery in a little more than an hour, and there I

transshipped my cargo to a pair-oared boat and started away for the

anchorage. The boatmen comforted me a good deal at the outset by

saying that they thought they knew just where the Golden Hind was

lying, as they were pretty sure they had seen her only that morning

while going down the harbor with another fare; and before we were much

more than past Bedloe’s Island—having pulled well over to get out of

the channel and the danger of being run down by one of the swarm of

passing craft—they made my mind quite easy by actually pointing her

out to me. But almost in the same moment I was startled again by one

of them saying to me: “I don’t believe you’ve much time to spare,

captain. There’s a lighter just shoved off from her, and she’s gettin’

her tops’ls loose. I guess she means to slide out on this tide. That

tug seems to be headin’ for her now.”

 

The men laid to their oars at this, and it was a good thing—or a bad

thing, some people might think—that they did; for had we lost five

minutes on our pull down from the Battery I never should have got

aboard of the Golden Hind at all. As it was, the anchor was a-peak,

and the lines of the tug made fast, by the time that we rounded under

her counter; and the decks were so full of the bustle of starting that

it was only a chance that anybody heard our hail. But somebody did

hear it, and a man—it was the mate, as I found out afterwards—came

to the side.

 

“Hold on, captain,” one of the boatmen sang out, “here’s your

passenger!”

 

“Go to hell!” the mate answered, and turned inboard again.

 

But just then I caught sight of Captain Chilton, coming aft to stand

by the wheel, and called out to him by name. He turned in a hurry—and

with a look of being scared, I fancied—but it seemed to me a good

half-minute before he answered me. In this time the men had shoved the

boat alongside and had made fast to the main-chains; and just then

the tug began to puff and snort, and the towline lifted, and the brig

slowly began to gather way. I could not understand what they were up

to; but the boatmen, who were quick fellows, took the matter into

their own hands, and began to pass in my boxes over the gunwale—the

brig lying very low in the water—as we moved along. This brought the

mate to the side again, with a rattle of curses and orders to stand

off. And then Captain Chilton came along himself—having finished

whatever he had been doing in the way of thinking—and gave matters a

more reasonable turn.

 

“It’s all right, George,” he said to the mate. “This gentleman is a

friend of mine who’s going out with us” (the mate gave him a queer

look at that), “and he’s got here just in time.” And then he turned to

me and added: “I’d given you up, Mr. Stetworth, and that’s a

fact—concluding that the man I sent to your lodgings hadn’t found

you. We had to sail this afternoon, you see, all in a hurry; and the

only thing I could do was to rush a man after you to bring you down.

He seems to have overhauled you in time, even if it was a close

call—so all’s well.”

 

While he was talking the boatmen were passing aboard my boxes and

bundles, while the brig went ahead slowly; and when they all were

shipped, and I had paid the men, he gave me his hand in a friendly way

and helped me up the side. What to make of it all I could not tell.

Captain Luke told a straight enough story, and the fact that his

messenger had not got to me before I started did not prove that he

lied. Moreover, he went on to say that if I had not got down to the

brig he had meant to leave my fifty dollars with the palm-oil people

at Loango, and that sounded square enough too. At any rate, if he were

lying to me I had no way of proving it against him, and he was

entitled to the benefit of the doubt; and so, when he had finished

explaining matters—which was short work, as he had the brig to look

after—I did not see my way to refusing his suggestion that we should

call it all right and shake hands.

 

For the next three hours or so—until we were clear of the Hook and

had sea-room and the tug had cast us off—I was left to my own

devices: except that a couple of men were detailed to carry to my

stateroom what I needed there, while the rest of my boxes were stowed

below. Indeed, nobody had time to spare me a single word—the captain

standing by the wheel in charge of the brig, and the two mates having

their hands full in driving forward the work of finishing the lading,

so that the hatches might be on and things in some sort of order

before the crew should be needed to make sail.

 

The decks everywhere were littered with the stuff put aboard from the

lighter that left the brig just before I reached her, and the huddle

and confusion showed that the transfer must have been made in a

tearing hurry. Many of the boxes gave no hint of what was inside of

them; but a good deal of the stuff—as the pigs of lead and cans of

powder, the many five-gallon kegs of spirits, the boxes of fixed

ammunition, the cases of arms, and so on—evidently was regular West

Coast “trade.” And all of it was jumbled together just as it had been

tumbled aboard.

 

I was surprised by our starting with the brig in such a mess—until it

occurred to me that the captain had no choice in the matter if he

wanted to save the tide. Very likely the tide did enter into his

calculations; but I was led to believe a little later—and all the

more because of his scared look when I hailed him from the boat—that

he had run into some tangle on shore that made him want to get away in

a hurry before the law-officers should bring him up with a round turn.

 

What put this notion into my head was a matter that occurred when we

were down almost to the Hook, and its conclusion came when we were

fairly outside and the tug had cast us off; otherwise my boxes and I

assuredly would have gone back on the tug to New York—and I with a

flea in my ear, as the saying is, stinging me to more prudence in my

dealings with chance-met mariners and their offers of cheap passages

on strange craft.

 

When we were nearly across the lower bay, the nose of a steamer

showed in the Narrows; and as she swung out from the land I saw that

she flew the revenue flag. Captain Luke, standing aft by the wheel, no

doubt made her out before I did; for all of a sudden he let drive a

volley of curses at the mates to hurry their stowing below of the

stuff with which our decks were cluttered. At first I did not

associate the appearance of the cutter with this outbreak; but as she

came rattling down the bay in our wake I could not but notice his

uneasiness as he kept turning to look at her and then turning forward

again to swear at the slowness of the men. But she was a long way

astern at first, and by the time that she got close up to us we were

fairly outside the Hook and the tug had cast us off—which made a

delay in the stowing, as the men had to be called away from it to set

enough sail to give us steerage way.

 

Captain Luke barely gave them time to make fast the sheets before he

hurried them back to the hatch again; and by that time the cutter had

so walked up to us that we had her close aboard. I could see that he

fully expected her to hail us; and I could see also that there seemed

to be a feeling of uneasiness among the crew, though they went on

briskly with their work of getting what remained of the boxes and

barrels below. And then, being close under our stern, the cutter

quietly shifted her helm to clear us—and so slid past us, without

hailing and with scarcely a look at us, and stood on out to sea.

 

That the captain and all hands so manifestly should dread being

overhauled by a government vessel greatly increased my vague doubts as

to the kind of company that I had got into; and at the very moment

that the cutter passed us these doubts were so nearly resolved into