Foul Play - Dion Boucicault (the best books to read txt) 📗

bodily into the ship and sink her, with every soul on board, to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

 

“I was stupefied; and my hairs stood on end, and my tongue clove to my jaws.”

Thus does one of Virgil’s characters describe the effect his mind produced upon his body in a terrible situation.

Mr. Hazel had always ridiculed that trite line as a pure exaggeration; but he altered his opinion after that eventful night.

When he first saw what Wylie was doing, obstupuit, he was merely benumbed; but, as his mind realized the fiendish nature of the act, and its tremendous consequences, his hair actually bristled, and for a few minutes at least he could not utter a word.

In that interval of stupor, matters took another turn. The auger went in up to the haft. Then Wylie caught up with his left hand a wooden plug he had got ready, jerked the auger away, caught up a hammer, and swiftly inserted the plug.

Rapid as he was, a single jet of water came squirting viciously in. But Wylie lost no time; he tapped the plug smartly with his hammer several times, and then, lifting a mallet with both hands, rained heavy blows on it that drove it in, and shook the ship’s side.

Then Hazel found his voice, and he uttered an ejaculation that made the mate look round; he glared at the man who was glaring at him, and, staggering backward, trod on the light, and all was darkness and dead silence.

All but the wash of the sea outside, and that louder than ever.

 

But a short interval sufficed to restore one of the parties to his natural self-possession.

“Lord, sir,” said Wylie, “how you startled me! You should not come upon a man at his work like that. We might have had an accident.”

“What were you doing?” said Hazel, in a voice that quavered in spite of him.

“Repairing the ship. Found a crack or two in her inner skin. There, let me get a light, and I’ll explain it to you, sir.”

He groped his way out, and invited Mr. Hazel into his cabin. There he struck a light, and, with great civility, tendered an explanation. The ship, he said, had labored a good deal in the last gale, and he had discovered one or two flaws in her, which were of no immediate importance; but experience had taught him that in calm weather a ship ought to be kept tight. “As they say ashore, a stitch in time saves nine.”

“But drilling holes in her is not the way,” said Hazel sternly.

The mate laughed. “Why, sir,” said he, “what other way is there? We cannot stop an irregular crack; we can frame nothing to fit it. The way is to get ready a plug measured a trifle larger than the aperture you are going to make; then drill a round hole and force in the plug. I know no other way than that; and I was a ship’s carpenter for ten years before I was a mate.”

This explanation, and the manner in which it was given, removed Mr. Hazel’s apprehensions for the time being. “It was very alarming,” said he; “but I suppose you know your business.”

“Nobody better, sir,” said Wylie. “Why, it is not one seaman in three that would trouble his head about a flaw in a ship’s inner skin; but I’m a man that looks ahead. Will you have a glass of grog, sir, now you are here? I keep that under my eye, too; between ourselves, if the skipper had as much in his cabin as I have here, that might be worse for us all than a crack or two in the ship’s inner skin.”

Mr. Hazel declined to drink grog at that time in the morning, but wished him good-night and left him with a better opinion of him than he had ever had till then.

Wylie, when he was gone, drew a tumbler of neat spirits, drank half, and carried the rest back to his work.

Yet Wylie was a very sober man in a general way. Rum was his tool; not his master.

When Hazel came to think of it all next day, he did not feel quite so easy as he had done. The inner skin! But, when Wylie withdrew his auger, the wafer had squirted in furiously. He felt it hard to believe that this keen jet of water could be caused by a small quantity that had found its way between the skin of the ship and her copper, or her top booting; it seemed rather to be due to the direct pressure of the liquid monster outside.

He went to the captain that afternoon, and first told him what he had seen, offering no solution. The captain, on that occasion, was in an amphibious state; neither wet nor dry; and his reply was altogether exceptional. He received the communication with pompous civility; then swore a great oath, and said he would put the mate in irons. “Confound the lubber! he will be through the ship’s bottom.”

“But, stop a moment,” said Mr. Hazel, “it is only fair you should also hear how he accounts for his proceeding.”

The captain listened attentively to the explanation, and altered his tone. “Oh, that is a different matter,” said he. “You need be under no alarm, sir; the thundering lubber knows what he is about, at that work. Why, he has been a ship’s carpenter all his life. Him a seaman! If anything ever happens to me, and Joe Wylie is set to navigate this ship, then you may say your prayers. He isn’t fit to sail a washtub across a duck-pond. But I’ll tell you what it is,” added this worthy, with more pomposity than neatness of articulation, “here’s a respeckable passenger brought me a report; do my duty to m’ employers, and—take a look at the well.”

He accordingly chalked a plumb-line, and went and sounded the well.

There were eight inches of water. Hudson told him that was no more than all ships contained from various causes: “In fact,” said he, “our pumps suck, and will not draw, at eight inches.” Then suddenly grasping Mr. Hazel’s hand, he said, in tearful accents, “Don’t you trouble your head about Joe Wylie, or any such scum. I’m skipper of the Proserpine, and a man that does his duty to ‘z employers. Mr. Hazel, sir, I’d come to my last anchor in that well this moment, if my duty to m’ employers required it. D— my eyes if I wouldn’t lie down there this minute, and never move to all eternity and a day after, if it was my duty to m’ employers!”

“No doubt,” said Hazel dryly. “But I think you can serve your employers better in other parts of the ship.” He then left him, with a piece of advice; “to keep his eye upon that Wylie.”

Mr. Hazel kept his own eye on Wylie so constantly, that at eleven o’clock P.M. he saw that worthy go into the captain’s cabin with a quart bottle of rum.

The coast was clear; the temptation great. These men then were still deceiving him with a feigned antagonism. He listened at the keyhole, not without some compunction; which, however, became less and less as fragments of the dialogue reached his ear.

For a long time the only speaker was Hudson, and his discourse ran upon his own exploits at sea. But suddenly Wylie’s voice broke in with an unmistakable tone of superiority. “Belay all that chat, and listen to me. It is time we settled something. I’ll hear what you have got to say; and then you’ll do what I say. Better keep your hands off the bottle a minute you have had enough for the present; this is business. I know you are good for jaw; but what are you game to do for the governor ‘s money? Anything?”

“More than you have ever seen or heard tell of, ye lubber,” replied the irritated skipper. “Who has ever served his employers like Hiram Hudson?”

“Keep that song for your quarter-deck,” retorted the mate, contemptuously. “No; on second thoughts, just tell me how you have served your employers, you old humbug. Give me chapter and verse to choose from. Come now, the Neptune?”

“Well, the Neptune; she caught fire a hundred leagues from land.”

“How came she to do that?”

“That is my business. Well, I put her head before the wind, and ran for the Azores; and I stuck to her, sir, till she was as black as a coal, and we couldn’t stand on deck, but kept hopping like parched peas; and fire belching out of her portholes forward. Then we took to the boats, and saved a few bales of silk by way of sample of her cargo, and got ashore; and she’d have come ashore too next tide and told tales, but somebody left a keg of gunpowder in the cabin, with a long fuse, and blew a hole in her old ribs, that the water came in, and down she went, hissing like ten thousand sarpints, and nobody the wiser.”

“Who lighted the fuse, I wonder?” said Wylie.

“Didn’t I tell ye it was ‘Somebody’?” said Hudson. “Hand me the stiff.” He replenished his glass, and, after taking a sip or two, asked Wylie if he had ever had the luck to be boarded by pirates.

“No,” said Wylie. “Have you?”

“Ay; and they rescued me from a watery grave, as the lubbers call it. Ye see, I was employed by Downes & Co., down at the Havanna, and cleared for Vera Cruz with some boxes of old worn-out printer’s type”

“To print psalm-books for the darkies, no doubt,” suggested Wylie.

“Insured as specie,” continued Hudson, ignoring the interruption. “Well, just at daybreak one morning, all of a sudden there was a rakish-looking craft on our weather-bow. Lets fly a nine-pounder across our forefoot, and was alongside before my men could tumble up from below. I got knocked into the sea by the boom and fell between the ships; and the pirate he got hold of me and poured hot grog down my throat to bring me to my senses.”

“That is not what you use it for in general,” said Wylie. “Civil sort of pirate, though.”

“Pirate be d—d. That was my consort rigged out with a black flag, and mounted with four nine-pounders on one side, and five dummies on the other. He blustered a bit, and swore, and took our type and our cabbages (I complained to Downes ashore about the vagabond taking the vegetables), and ordered us to leeward under all canvas, and we never saw him again—not till he had shaved off his mustaches, and called on Downes to condole and say the varmint had chased his ship fifty leagues out of her course; but he had got clear of him. Downes complimented me publicly. Says he, ‘This skipper boarded the pirate single-handed; only he jumped short, and fell between the two ships; and here he is by a miracle.’ Then he takes out his handkerchief, and flops his head on my shoulder. ‘His merciful preservation almost reconciles me to the loss of my gold,’ says the thundering crocodile. Cleared seventy thousand dollars, he did, out of the Manhattan Marine, and gave the pirate and me but two hundred pounds between us both.”

“The Rose?” said Wylie.

“What a hurry you are in! Pass the grog. Well, the Rose; she lay off Ushant. We canted her to wash the decks; lucky she had a careful commander; not like Kempenfelt, whose eye was in his pocket, and his fingers held the pen, so he went to the bottom, with Lord knows how many men. I noticed the squalls came very sudden; so I