List, Ye Landsmen! A Romance of Incident

CHAPTER VI.

I VIEW THE BRIG.

Presently it fell dark; but hardly had the last of the red, wet light faded off the scuttle when the youth Jim re-entered the berth and lighted the coffee-pot-shaped lamp, and as he went out Captain Greaves came in.

He asked me how I felt. I told him that I was almost well, that I hoped to be quite well by the morning, in which case I would beg him to transfer me to the first homeward bound craft that passed, though she should be no bigger than a ship’s longboat. He viewed me, I thought, somewhat strangely, smiled slightly, was silent long enough to render silence somewhat significant, and then said: “A beast of a frigate showing no colors has kept me anxious this afternoon. We have run her hull down, but she has only just thought proper to shift her helm. Possibly an Englishman who took us for a Yankee.” Saying this he pulled off his fur cap and exhibited a fine head with a quantity of thick, black hair curling upon it; he next produced and filled a pipe of tobacco and, removing his pea-coat, he lighted his pipe at the lamp and seated himself on the locker in the attitude of a seaman who intends to enjoy a yarn and a smoke.

I was strong enough to hold my head over the edge of the hammock; thus we kept each other in view.

“D’ye feel able to talk, Mr. Fielding?” said Greaves.

“Very able, indeed,” I answered. “Your madeira has made a new man of me.”

“How happened it,” said he, “that you should be washing about on the oar of a man-of-war’s boat off Ramsgate, the other morning, when we fell in with you?”

I begged him to put a pinch of tobacco into the bowl of my pipe and to hold the lamp to me, and when I had lighted my pipe and he had resumed his seat I began my story; and I told him everything that had befallen me from the time of my arrival in the Downs in the ship Royal Brunswicker down to the hour when I found myself afloat on an oar, heading a straight course east by north with the stream of the tide. He listened with earnest attention, smoking very hard at some parts of my narrative, and emitting several dense clouds, which almost obscured him when I told him how the lightning had liberated the corpse and how, as it might seem, the fiery hand of God himself had delivered the body of the malefactor to the weeping, praying mother.

“It was an evil moment for me when I fell in with that gibbet,” said I. “I had not the heart to leave the wretched mother, though my first instinct on catching sight of her was to run for my life. But I thank God for my wonderful preservation; I thank Him first and you next, Captain Greaves.”

“No more of that. We’re quits.”

“It is clear that you keep a bright lookout aboard this brig.”

“Had your life depended upon the eyes of my men, the perishable part of you would have been by this time concocted into cod and crab. I’ll introduce you to the individual to whom you owe your life.”

He opened the door of the cabin and putting a silver whistle to his lips blew, and in a moment a fine retriever bounded in.

“Galloon, Mr. Fielding; Mr. Fielding, Galloon.”

The dog wagged his tail and looked up at me.

“Did he go overboard after me?” said I.

“You shall hear. It was break of day, the water quiet, the brig under all plain sail, the speed some five knots. I was walking the quarter-deck, and there was a man on the forecastle keeping a lookout. Suddenly that chap Galloon there”—here the “chap” wagged his tail and looked up at me again as though perfectly sensible that we were talking about him—“sprang on to the taffrail and barked loudly. I ran aft and looked over, but not having a dog’s eye saw nothing. ‘What is it, Galloon?’ said I. He barked again, and then with a short but most piercing and lamentable howl he sprang overboard. I love that dog as I love the light of day, Mr. Fielding, much better than I love dollars, and better than I love many ladies with whom I am acquainted. The brig was brought to the wind, a boat lowered, and the people found Galloon with his teeth in the jacket of a man who was laying over an oar.”

“The noble fellow!” said I, looking down at the dog.

Greaves picked him up and put his head over the edge of the hammock, and I kissed the creature’s nose, receiving in return a caressing lick of the tongue that swept my face.

“Why do you call him Galloon?” said I.

“I have been dreaming of galleons all my life,” he answered.

He relighted his pipe and resumed his seat, and the dog lay at his feet, gazing up at me.

“I took the liberty,” said I, “of asking the youth called Jimmy to tell me what port this brig was bound to. He answered that he did not know.”

“He does not know,” said Captain Greaves. “No man on board the Black Watch, saving myself, knows where we are bound to.”

“I recollect reading in that newspaper paragraph I have spoken of that the brig is owned by a merchant of Amsterdam. I recollect this the better because it led me to ask my uncle, Captain Round, whether a British letter of marque would be issued to a foreigner despite his sending his ship a-privateering under English colors.”

“We are not a letter of marque. It is perfectly true that this brig is owned by an Amsterdam merchant. His name is, Bartholomew Tulp, and he is my stepfather.”

I asked no more questions. I would not seem curious, though there was something in Captain Greaves’ reserve, and something in the enigmatic character of this ocean errand, which made me very thirsty to hear all that he might be willing to tell. Never had I heard of a ship manned by a crew who knew not whither they were going. I speak of the merchant service. As to the Royal Navy, the obligation of sealed orders must always exist; but when a man enters as a sailor aboard a merchantman, the first and most natural inquiry he wishes his captain to answer is, “Where are you bound to?”

Greaves sat watching me, as did his dog. The captain smoked, with a countenance of abstraction and an air of deep musing, whilst he lightly stroked his dog’s back with his foot.

“My mate is a devil of a fool!” he exclaimed, breaking the silence that had lasted some minutes. “He is a Dutchman, and his name is Van Laar. He speaks English very well, but he is no sailor. The wind headed us after leaving Amsterdam, and, having my doubts of Van Laar, I told him to put the brig about, and she missed stays in his hands. Worse—when she was in irons, he did not know what to do with her. I abominate the rogue who misses stays; but can villainy in a sailor go much further than not knowing what to do when a ship has missed stays?”

“I have met,” said I, “with some fine seamen among Dutchmen.”

“Van Laar is not one of them,” he answered. “Van Laar is no more to be trusted with a ship than he is with a bottle of hollands. He does not scruple to own that he hates the English, and I do not like to sail in company with a man who hates my countrymen. I took him on Mynheer Tulp’s recommendation. I was opposed to shipping a Dutchman in the capacity of mate, but I could not very well object to a man as a Dutchman,” said he, laughing, “to Mynheer Tulp.”

“Does the mate know where the brig is bound to?” I inquired.

“No.”

“How very extraordinary!”

He looked at me gravely; his face then relaxed. Finding his pipe out, he arose, put on his coat and cap, and said:

“I will leave you for the night. What do you fancy for your supper—what, I mean, that you, as a sailor, will suppose my brig’s larder can supply?”

I answered that a basin of broth with a glass of brandy-and-water would make me an abundant supper.

“But before you leave me,” said I, “will you tell me where my clothes are? I must hope to be transhipped to-morrow, and to step ashore with nothing on but a blanket——”

“Your clothes have been dried and are in the cabin,” said he. “When Jimmy brings your supper ask him for your clothes. And now good-night, and pleasant dreams to you, Mr. Fielding, when it shall please you to fall asleep.”

The dog sprang through the door, and I lay with my eyes fixed upon the flame of the lamp, diverting myself with inventing schemes of a voyage, one of which should fit this expedition of the Black Watch.

Early next morning I awoke after a sound, refreshing night of rest, and, dropping out of my hammock, found that I was pretty nigh as hearty as ever I had been in my life. Greatly rejoiced by this discovery, I attired myself in my clothes, which had been thoroughly dried. A razor, a brush, and one or two other conveniences were in the cabin. I was struck by Greaves’ kindness. I seemed to find in it something more than an expression of charitable attention and grateful memory. Now being dressed, and now testing myself on my legs, and finding all ship-shape aboard, from the loftiest flying pennant of hair down to the soles of my shoes, I opened the door of the berth and stood awhile looking in upon the cabin. It was a small snug sea-interior, well lighted, and breezy just now with the cordial gushing of wind down the companion-hatch. A table and a few seats comprised the furniture; those things, and a lamp, and a stand of small-arms, and some cutlasses.

While I viewed this interior I heard Greaves’ voice in a cabin on the starboard side forward.

“Not coffee, but cocoa!” on which another voice, which I recognized as the lad Jimmy’s, shouted out, to the accompaniment of the howling of a dog:

“Not coffee, but cocoa!”

“Again,” said the voice of Captain Greaves.

“Not coffee, but cocoa,” yelled the lad, and again the dog delivered a long howl.

“For the third time, if you please.”

“Not coffee, but cocoa!” shrieked the lad, and the accompanying howl of the dog rose to the key in which the boy pitched his voice, as though in excessive sympathy with the shouter.

A door forward was then opened, and the youth Jimmy came out. He stopped on seeing me, and cried out, “’Ere’s Mr. Fielding,” and then went on deck. Galloon bounded up to me, and while I caressed him Greaves, with his shirt sleeves turned up, and holding a hair-brush, looked out of his door, saw me, approached, and shook me heartily by the hand. I answered a few kind questions, and asked if there was anything in sight from the deck.

“Yes,” said he, “but nothing to be of any use to you. You can feel the heave. It blows fresh.”

“It is a very buoyant heave,” said I; “I should imagine you are at sea with a swept hold.”

He continued to brush his hair.

“Excuse me, is your lad Jimmy an idiot?”

“Not at all. Perhaps I know why you ask. You heard me and Galloon giving him a lesson just now. Jimmy Vinten is no idiot, but he wants a faculty, and Galloon and I are endeavoring to create it. He cannot distinguish dishes. He will put a bit of beef on the table and call it pudding. He’ll knock on my door and sing out, ‘The pork’s sarved,’ when he means pease soup. His memory is remarkable in other ways. Wait a minute, and we’ll go on deck together.”

I sat upon a locker to talk to Galloon, to kiss the beast’s cold snout, and with his paw in my hand, while his tail swayed like the naked mast of an oysterman in a quick sea, I thanked him with many loving words for having saved my life. His eye languished up at me. Oh! if ever there was an expression of serene and heartfelt satisfaction in the eye of a dog that for some noble action is being thanked with caresses, it shone in Galloon’s eyes while he seemed to listen to me. After a few minutes Greaves joined me, equipped in his pea coat, fur cap, and top boots—a massive privateering figure of a man, handsome, determined of gaze, yet with something of softness in his looks, and intimations of gentleness in the motions of his lips and in his occasional smile. He led the way up the companion steps, and I stood upon the deck of the brig looking about me.

Seasoned as I was to the life which the ocean puts into the shipwright’s plank, I should not have suspected, from the motion of the vessel only, that so considerable a sea was running. The wind was two or three points abaft the beam; it was blowing half a gale—a clear gale. The clouds were flying in bales and rags of wool toward the pouring southern verge of the ocean; the dark blue brine, sparkling with the flying eastern sunshine, swelled in hills to the brig’s counter, and the foam swept in sheets backward from each rushing head. The brig was under whole topsails and a topgallant sail, but abreast, to leeward, was another brig heading north, stripped to a single band of main topsail and a double-reefed forecourse—ay, Jack, the square foresail and mainsail in my time carried two and sometimes three reefs—and the beat of the head seas obscured her in frequent snowstorms as she struggled wildly aslant amid the dark blue billows. We were roaring through the water at ten or eleven knots. To every stoop of the bows the foam rose boiling above the catheads, with a mighty, thunderous bursting away of the parted seas on either hand. Ships in those times made a great noise when they went through the water. They were all bow and beam, and anything that was over took the form of stern, immensely square, and as clamorous when in motion as any other part of the ship. The Black Watch would be laughed at as a cask in these days, but as vessels then went she was a clipper. Her lines were tolerably fine at the entry; then her bulk rolled whale-like aft, with the copper showing two feet above the water-line, and then she narrowed into a clipper run to the deadwood and the sternpost. Her sheer forward gave her a bold bow. I watched her for a few minutes as she rolled over the seas—and I was sensible that Captain Greaves’ eye was upon me as I watched—and I thought her a very smart, handsome, powerful vessel, the sort of ship a freebooter would instantly fall in love with, and furiously determine to possess himself of, yea, though a pennant shook at her masthead.

She was armed on the forecastle with a long brass eighteen-pounder, pivoted; on the main deck with four nine-pound carronades, two of a side; and aft with a second long brass eighteen-pounder, likewise pivoted. She carried three boats—one stowed in another abaft the caboose, and a big boat chocked and lashed abreast of the other two boats. Her decks were very white; the brass pieces flashed, and there was a sparkle of glass over the cabin, and a frosty brilliancy of brine all about her planks as you see in white sand with sunshine upon it. Her sails soared square with a great hoist of topsail, and the cloths might have been stitched for a man-of-war, so perfect was the sit and spread of the heads, the fit of the clews to the yardarms.

I took notice of the men; half the crew were on deck cleaning paint-work, coiling down, differently occupied. They were big, burly fellows for the most part, variously attired, and as I watched, one of them, a vast, square, carrotty man, called out to another in a deep, roaring voice; I did not know Dutch, but what that man said sounded very much like Dutch, and the other man answered him in the same tongue.

And now, having looked at the sea, and at the brig, and at such of the crew as were visible forward, I directed my eyes at the figure of an individual who was walking to and fro in the gangway. He was the mate, Van Laar; as burly as the burliest of the figures forward, his eyes small, black, and fierce, his face a mass of flesh, in the midst of which was set an aquiline nose, whose outline in profile was hidden by the swell of the cheek as you lose sight of the line of a ship’s sail past some knoll of brine. He had not the least appearance of a sailor: was not even dressed as a sailor; looked as though he had just arrived out of the country in a cart to buy or sell eggs and butter in Amsterdam market.

I observed that his behavior grew uneasy while I gazed about me, Greaves at my side receiving from me from moment to moment with a countenance of complacency some morsel of appreciative criticism. That Dutch mate, Van Laar, I say grew uneasy. He darted glances of suspicion at me. I never would have supposed that any human eyes set in so much fat should have possessed the monkey-like nimbleness of that man’s. At the same time I noticed that he seemed to pull himself together after the captain had stepped on deck. He shook the laziness out of his step, directed frequent looks aloft, eyed the men as though to make sure there was no skulking, and in several ways discovered a little life. But his heart was not in it; his business was not here.

The captain and I paced the deck. Even as we started to walk, the boatswain, one of the burliest of the Dutchmen, piped the hands to breakfast. The silver notes rang cheerily through the little ship and wonderfully heightened to the fancy the airy, saucy, free-born look of the timber witch as she thundered along with foam to her figure-head; her white pinions beat time to the organ melodies of the ocean wind; smoke hospitably blew from the chimney of her little caboose; Dutch and English sailors entered and departed from that sea kitchen, carrying cans of steaming tea with them into their forecastle; there was a pleasant noise of the chuckling of hens; the sun shone brightly among the wool-white clouds; splendid was the spacious scene of sea rolling in sparkling deeply-blue heights, and every surge, as it ran, magnificently draped itself in a flashing veil of froth.

“I like your little ship, Captain Greaves,” said I.

“I have been watching you, and I see that you like her,” he answered.

“You carry two formidable pieces in those brass guns.”

“We may pick up something worth defending.”

He then asked me how long I had been at sea, and put many questions which at the time of his asking them struck me as entirely conversational: that is to say, he led me to talk about myself, and the impression produced was that we chatted as a couple of men would who talked to kill time; but, afterward, in thinking of this conversation, I found that it had been adroitly, but absolutely inquisitional—on his part. In fact, I not only related the simple story of my career; I acquainted him with other matters, such as my attainments as a navigator, my ignorance as a linguist, my qualifications as a seaman—and all, forsooth, as though, instead of killing the time till breakfast with idle chat, I was very earnestly submitting my claims to him for some post aboard his brig.

While we walked and talked I remarked that he kept the Dutch mate in the corner of his eye, but he never addressed him. Once he found the brig half a point, perhaps more than half a point, off her course. He spoke strongly and sternly to the man at the helm, but never a word did he say to Van Laar, whom to be sure he should have reprimanded for not conning the brig. I thought this silence very significant.

Presently the lad Jimmy—I called him a lad; his age was about seventeen—this lad came out of the caboose with the cabin breakfast. His knock-kneed legs seemed to have been created for the carriage of a tray full of crockery and eatables along a sharply heaving deck. Galloon trotted out of the caboose at the youth’s heels, and they descended into the cabin together. Presently Jimmy arrived to announce breakfast, and with him was Galloon.

“What is there for breakfast?” inquired Captain Greaves.

“There’s sausage and ’am and tea,” answered the lad.

“Nothing of the sort,” said Greaves. “There is no sausage aboard this ship, and I ordered neither ‘’am,’ as you call it, nor tea. Say eggs and bacon and coffee.”

The lad put himself in the position of a soldier at attention.

“Say eggs and bacon and coffee,” he shouted; and the dog howled in company with the youth.

“Again, if you please.”

“Say eggs and bacon and coffee,” roared the lad; and the dog increased its volume of howl as though to encourage the youth to support this trial.

“A third time, if you please.”

The dog began before the lad and howled horribly while Jimmy yelled, “Say eggs and bacon and coffee.”

The four of us then entered the cabin, where I found an excellent breakfast prepared. Galloon sat upon a chair opposite me, and he was waited upon by Jimmy as the captain and I were.

“You are treating me very hospitably, Captain Greaves,” said I.

“I am happy to have found a companion,” he answered. “After Van Laar”—he stopped with a look at the skylight—“Dern Mynheer Tulp, though he is my step-father and the one merchant adventurer in this undertaking. How sullen and obstinate is the Dutch intellect! Yet who but Dutchmen could have reclaimed a bog from the sea, dried it, settled it, and flourished on it?”

“I hope this weather will soon moderate,” said I. “I am anxious to get to England.”

“Of course you are. And so shall I be anxious presently.”

“Where do you touch, captain?”

“Nowhere. An empty ship has plenty of stowage room, and there are provisions enough aboard to last such a crew as my people number as long a time as would make two or three of Anson’s voyages.”

“Ah!” thought I with a short laugh, with the velocity of thought founding a fancy of his errand upon his mention of the name of Anson, and upon my recollection of his saying that he had been all his life dreaming of galleons.

“What amuses you?” said he.

“Galloon there,” said I, laughing again and looking at the dog.

CHAPTER VII.

A STRANGE STORY.

“I shall cease to call you mister. What need is there for formality between two men who have saved each other’s life?”

“No need whatever.”

“Fielding,” said he, looking and speaking very gravely, “you have greatly occupied my thoughts since you returned to consciousness yesterday, and since I discovered that you were not a half-hanged pirate or smuggler, but a gentleman and an English sailor after my own heart. I mean to tell you a very curious story, and when I have told you that story I intend to make a proposal to you. You shall hear what errand this brig is bound on. You shall learn to what part of the world I am carrying her, and I believe you will say that you have never heard of a more romantic nor of a more promising undertaking.”

He opened the door of his berth and looked out. Van Laar was seated at the table, eating his breakfast. Greaves closed the door and seated himself on his bed.

“Last year,” said he, “I was in command of a small vessel named the Hero. It matters not how it happened that I came to be at the Philippines. There I took in a small lading for Guayaquil. When about sixty leagues to the south’ard of the Galapagos Islands we made land, and hove into view an island of which no mention was made in any of the charts of those seas which I possessed. There was nothing in that. There is much land yet to be discovered in that ocean. I have no faith in any of the charts of the Western American seaboard, and trust to nothing but a good lookout. We hove this island into view, and I steered for it with a leadsman in the chains on either hand. I hoped to be of some humble service to the navigator by obtaining the correct bearings of the island; but I had no mind to delay my voyage by sounding, saving only for the security of my own ship.

“We sighted the island soon after sunrise, and at noon were abreast of it. It was a very remarkable heap of rock, much after the pattern of the Galapagos, gloomy with black lava, and the land consisted of masses of broken lava, compacted into cliffs and small conical hills, that reminded me somewhat of the Island of Ascension. I examined it very carefully with a telescope and beheld trees and vegetation in one place, but no signs of human life—no signs of any sort of life, if it were not for a number of turtle or tortoises crawling upon the beach and looking like ladybirds in the distance. But, as we slowly drew past the island, we opened a sort of natural harbor formed by two long lines of reef, one of them incurving as though it was a pier and the handiwork of man. The front of cliff that overlooked this natural harbor was very lofty, and in the middle of it was a tremendous fissure—a colossal cave—the shape of the mouth like the sides of a roughly-drawn letter A. Inside this cave ’twas as dark as evening; yet I seemed with my glass to obscurely behold something within. I looked and looked, and then handed the telescope to the mate, who said there was something inside the cave. It resembled to his fancy the scaffolding of a building, but what it exactly was neither of us could make out.

“The weather was very quiet; the breeze off the island, as its bearings then were at this time of sighting the cave, and the water within the natural harbor was as sheet-calm as polished steel. I said to the mate:

“‘We must find time to examine what is inside that cave. Call away four hands and get the boat over. Keep a bright lookout as you approach. There is nothing living that is visible outside, but who knows what may be astir within the darkness of that tremendous yawn? At the first hint of danger pull like the devil for the ship, and I will take care to cover your retreat.’

“To tell you the truth, Fielding, the sight of that extraordinary cave and the obscure thing within it, along with the natural harbor, as I call it, had put a notion into my head fit, to be sure, to be laughed at only; but the notion was in my head, and it governed me. It was this: suppose that huge cave, I thought to myself, should prove to be a secret dock used by picaroons for repairing their vessels or for concealing their ships under certain conditions of hot search? Because, you see, it was a cave vast enough to comfortably berth a number of small craft, and their people would keep a lookout; and who under the skies would suspect a piratic settlement in a heap of cinders?—So I, as a good, easy, ambling merchantman—a type of scores—come sliding close in to have a look, and then out spring the sea wolves from their lair, storming down upon their quarry to the impulse of sweeps three times as long as that oar upon which Galloon saw you floating.”

He paused to draw breath. I smiled at his high-flown language.

“Do you find anything absurd in the notion that entered my head?” said he.

“Nothing absurd whatever. You sight a big cave. There is something inside which you can’t make out. Why should not that cave be a pirates’ lair of the fine old, but almost extinct, type, capable of vomiting cut-throats at an instant’s notice, just as any volcanic cone of your island might heave up smoke and redden a league or so of land to the beach with lava?”

“Good. Fill your pipe. There is plenty of tobacco in this brig. I brought my ship to the wind and stopped her without touching a brace, that I might have her under instant command, and the boat, with my mate and four men, pulled to the island. While she was on the road we put ourselves into a posture of defense. I watched the boat approach the entrance to the lines of reef. She hung on her oars, warily advanced, halted, and again advanced; and then I lost sight of her. She was a long while gone—a long while to my impatience. She was gone in all about half an hour; and I was in the act of ordering one of the men to fire a musket as a signal of recall, when she appeared in that part of the natural harbor that was visible from the deck. The mate came over the side; his face was purple with heat and all a-twitch with astonishment.

“‘The most wonderful thing, sir!’ he cried.

“‘What is it?’ said I.

“‘There’s a ship of seven hundred tons at the very least, hard and fast in that big hole, everything standing but the topgallant masts, which look to me as if they’d been crushed away by the roof of the cave. Her jib boom is gone and the end of her bowsprit is about three fathoms distant inside from the entrance.’

“‘Anybody aboard?’ I asked.

“‘I heard and saw nothing, sir,’ said he.

“‘Did you sing out?’

“‘I sang out loudly. I hailed her five times. All hands of us hailed, and nothing but our own voices answered us.’

“‘How the deuce comes a ship of seven hundred tons burthen to be lying in that hole?’ said I.

“My mate was a Yorkshireman. His head fell on one side and he answered me not.

“‘Are her anchors down?’ I asked.

“‘Her anchors have been let go,’ he answered. ‘The starboard cable appears to have parted inboard. I saw nothing of it in the hawse-pipe. There are a few feet of her larboard cable hanging up and down.’

“‘Swing your topsail,’ said I. ‘She will lie quiet. There is nothing to be afraid of upon that island.’

“I then got into the boat, and my men pulled me to the mouth of the piers of reef.

“I was greatly impressed by the appearance of these reefs on approaching them. They looked like admirably wrought breakwaters, which had fallen into decay but were still extraordinarily strong, very rugged, imposing, and serviceable. The width of the entrance was about five hundred feet. The water was smooth as glass, clear as crystal, and when I looked over the side I could see here and there the cloudy sheen of the bottom, whether coral or not I do not know—I should say not. And now, right in front of me, was the great face of gloomy-looking cliff, and in the center the mighty rift, shaped like that,” said he, bringing the points of his two forefingers together and then separating his hands to the extent of the width of his two thumbs. “No doubt the wonderful cave was a volcanic rupture. The height of the entrance was, I reckoned, about two hundred feet, and the breadth of it at its base about fifty. It stood at the third of a mile from the mouth of the natural harbor. I could see but little of the ship until I was close to, so gloomy was the interior; but as the men rowed, features of the extraordinarily housed craft stole out, and presently we were lying upon our oars and I was viewing her, the whole picture clear to my gaze as an oil painting set in the frame of the cavern entrance.

“She was a lump of a vessel painted yellow, with a snake-like curl of cutwater at the head of the stem, and a great deal of gilt work about her headboards and figurehead. I knew her for a Spaniard the instant I had her fair. She had heavy channels and a wide spread of lower rigging. Her yards were across, but pointed as though she had ridden to a gale, and the canvas was clumsily furled as if rolled up hurriedly and in a time of confusion. But I need not tease you with a minute description of her,” said he. “It was easy to guess how it happened that she was in this amazing situation. Perfectly clear it was to me that she had sighted this island at night, or in dirty weather, when the land was too close aboard for a shift of the helm to send her clear. Once in the harbor her commander, in the teeth of a dead inshore wind, could not get out. What, then, was to be done? Here was a place of shelter in which he might ride until a shift of wind permitted him to proceed on his voyage. So, as I make the story run to my own satisfaction, he let go his anchor; but scarcely was this done when it came on to blow, the canvas was hastily furled to save the strain, but she dragged nevertheless. A second anchor was let go, and still she dragged—and why? Because, as a cast of the lead would have told the Spanish captain, the ground was as hard as rock and as smooth as marble, and there was nothing for the anchors to grip. Dragging with her head to sea and her stern at the cliff’s huge front, the ship floats foot by foot toward the cave, threading it with mathematical precision. The roof of the cave slants rearward, and as she drifts into the big hole her royal-mastheads graze and take the roof; the masts are crushed away at the crosstrees, otherwise all is well with the ship. She strands gently, and is steadied by her topmast heads pressing against the roof. Thus is she held in a vise of her own manufacture, and so she lies snug as live callipee and callipash in their top and bottom armor. That must be the solution, Fielding.”

“Did the water shoal rapidly in the cave?” said I.

“Yes; the ship lies cradled to her midship section; forward she may be afloat. But there she lies hard and fast for all that, motionless as the mass of rock in whose heart she sleeps.”

“You boarded her, I suppose?”

“Certainly I boarded her,” continued Greaves. “It is by no means so dusky inside the cave as it appeared to be when viewed from the outside. I left a hand to attend the boat and took three men aboard. I believe I should not have had the spirit to enter that ship alone. By Isten! but she did show very ghastly in that gloom—very ghastly and cold and silent, with the appalling silence of entombment. No noise—I mean that faint, thunderous noise of distant surf—no noise of breakers penetrated. Well, to be sure, by listening you might now and again catch a drowning, bubbling, gasping sound, stealthily washing through the black water in the cave along the sides of the ship; but I tell you that I found the stillness inside that cave heart-shaking. I went right aft and looked over the stern, and there it was like gazing into a tunnel. How far did the cavern extend abaft? There would be one and an easy way of finding that out—by rowing into the blackness and burning a flare in the boat. This I thought I would do if I could make time.

“The ship was a broad, handsome vessel, her scantling that of a second-rate; she mounted a few carronades and swivels: clearly a merchantman, and, as I supposed, a plate-ship. She had a large roundhouse, and steered by a very beautifully and curiously wrought wheel, situated a little forward of the entrance to the roundhouse. It did not occur to me that she might be a rich ship until I looked into the roundhouse; then I found myself in a marine palace in its way. Enough of that. The sight of the furniture determined me upon attempting a brief search of her hold. The impulse was idle curiosity—I should have believed it so anyway. I had not a fancy in my head of any sort beyond a swift glance of curiosity at what might be under hatches. Yet, somehow, before I had fairly made up my mind to look into the hold, a singular hope, a singular resolution had formed, flushing me from head to foot as though I had drained a bottle of wine. ‘Look if that lamp be trimmed,’ said I to a man, pointing to one of a row of small, wonderfully handsome brass lamps, hanging from the upper deck of the roundhouse. No, it was not trimmed. The rest of them were untrimmed. We searched about for oil, for wicks, for candles, for anything that would show a light. Then said I to two of the men, ‘Jump into the boat and fetch me a lantern and candle. Tell the mate that I am stopping to overhaul this ship for her papers, to get her story.’

“While the boat was gone I walked about the decks of the vessel, hardly knowing what I might stumble on in the shape of human remains, but there was nothing in that way. The boats were gone, the people had long ago cleared out. Small blame to them. Good thunder!” cried he, shuddering or counterfeiting a shudder; “who would willingly pass a night in such a cave as that? The boat came alongside with the lantern. We then lifted the hatches, and I went below. Life there was here, a hideous sort of life, too. Lean rats bigger than kittens, living skeletons horrible with famine. They shrieked, they squeaked, they fled in big shadows. There was not much cargo in the main hold, but cargo there was. I will tell you exactly the contents of the main hold of La Perfecta Casada,” he exclaimed, coming out of his bed, opening a drawer, and taking out a small book clasped by an elastic band. He read aloud.

“Five thousand serons of cocoa—”

“A minute,” said I. “Do I understand you to mean that you counted five thousand serons of cocoa while you looked into the hold of that ship, the hour being about two o’clock—I have been following you critically—and your own ship hove to close in with the land?”

“Patience,” said he; “it is a reasonable objection, but as a rule I do not like to be interrupted when I am telling a story. Five thousand serons of cocoa—” he repeated.

“Pray,” said I, forgetting that he did not like to be interrupted, “what is a seron?”

“A seron is a crate.”

“Well, sir?”

“Sixty arobes of alpaca wool——”

“What is an arobe?”

“An arobe is twenty-five pounds.” He continued to read: “One thousand quintals of tin at one hundred pounds per quintal; four casks of tortoiseshell, eight thousand hides in the hair, four thousand tanned hides, and a quantity of cedar planks.”

He now looked at me as though he expected me to speak. I addressed him as follows: “What I am listening to is a very interesting story. It is an adventure, and I love adventures. It is said that the charm of the sailor’s life lies in its being made up of adventures. That is a lie. Men pass many years at sea and meet with no adventures worth speaking of. A sailors life is a very mechanical, monotonous routine.”

“What do you think of the cargo of La Perfecta Casada?”

“La Perfecta Casada is the name of the ship in the cave?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“It is a very good cargo so far as it goes, but there is very little of it.”

“There is enough,” said he, with a gesture of his hand. “I should be very pleased to be able to pay the value of that cargo into my banking account.”

I made no remark, and he proceeded: “When I had taken a peep into the main hold I caused the after hatch under the roundhouse to be raised, and here I found a number of cases. They were stowed one on top of another, with pieces of timber betwixt them and the ship’s lining—an awkward looking job of stevedoring, but good enough, no doubt, to satisfy a Spanish sailor. I left my men above, and descended alone into this part of the hold, and stood looking for a short time around me, roughly calculating the number of these cases, the contents of which I could not be perfectly sure of, though one of two things I knew those contents must consist of. I called up through the hatch to the men to hunt about the ship and find me a chopper or saw, and presently one of them handed me down an ax. I put down the lantern, and letting fly at the first of the cases, with much trouble split open a part of the lid. I would not satisfy myself that all those cases were full until I had split the lids of five as tests or samples of the lot. Then finding that those five cases were full, I concluded that the rest were full. To make sure, however, I beat upon many of them, and the sound returned satisfied me that the cases were heavily full.”

“Of what?” said I.

“My men,” he continued, taking no notice of my interruption, “were, no doubt, considerably astonished to observe me hacking at the cargo with a heavy ax, as though I had fallen mad, and splintering and smashing up what I saw through sheer lunatic wantonness. I did not care what they thought so long as they did not form correct conclusions. I regained the deck, and bid the fellows put the hatches on while I explored the cabins for the ship’s papers. There was a number of cabins under the roundhouse, and in one of them, which had, undoubtedly, been occupied by the captain, I found a stout tin box, locked; but I had a bunch of keys in my pocket, and, strangely enough, the key of a tin box in which I kept my own papers on board the Hero fitted this box. I opened it, and seeing at once that the contents were the ship’s papers, I put them into my pocket and called to my men to bring the boat alongside. But I had not yet completed my explorations. I threw the ax into the boat, entered her, and pulled into the harbor to look at the weather and to see where the Hero was. The Hero lay at the distance of a mile, hove-to. The weather was wonderfully fine and calm. We pulled into the cave again to the bows of the ship, and cut off a short length of the hemp cable that was hanging up and down from the hawse-pipe, having parted at about two feet above the edge of the water. The cable was perfectly dry. We unlaid the strands and worked them up into torches and set fire to three of them—that is to say, I and two of the men held aloft these blazing torches, while the other two pulled us slowly into the cave past the ship. There was not much to see after all. The cavern ended abruptly at about a hundred yards astern of the ship. The roof sloped, as I had supposed, almost to the wash of the water, it and the walls working into the shape of a wedge. I had thought to see some fine formations—stalactites, natural columns, extraordinary incrustations, and so forth. There was nothing of the sort. The cave was as like the tunneling of a coal mine as anything I can think of to compare it with; but how gigantic, to comfortably house a vessel of at least seven hundred tons, finding room for her aloft to the height of her topmast head! It was more like a nightmare than a reality, to look from the black extremity of the cave toward the entrance, and see there the dim green of the day—for the light showed in a faint green—with the upright fabric of the ship black as ink against that veil of green faintness. The water brimmed with a gleam as of black oil to the black walls. One of my men said:

“‘Suppose it was to come on to blow hard, dead inshore how would it fare with that ship, sir?’

“‘What could happen to hurt her?’ I answered. ‘Never could a great sea run within the barriers of reefs, and no swell to stir the ship can come out of that sheltered space of water, and keep its weight inside.’

“In truth, I talked to satisfy myself, and satisfied I was. Not the worst hurricane that sweeps those seas can stir or imperil that vessel as she lies. She is as safe as a live toad in a rock, and will perish only from decay.”

“But do her people mean to leave her there?” said I.

“We may assume so,” he answered, “seeing that she was encaved, as far as I can reckon from the dates of her papers, in or about the month of August, 1810.”

CHAPTER VIII.

A STARTLING PROPOSAL.

As yet I failed to see the object of his voyage. Could it be that that object was to warp the Spanish ship out of the cave and navigate her home? I might have supposed this to be his intention had his brig been full of men; but Greaves’ crew were below the brig’s complement as the average ran in those days of teeming ’tween-decks and crowded forecastles, and they were much too few to do anything with a ship of seven hundred tons ashore in a cave; unless, indeed, Greaves meant to ship a number of hands when on the Western American seaboard.

He returned after an absence of a quarter of an hour.

“I have stripped her of the main topgallant sail,” said he; “Yan Bol has the watch. I will tell you what I like about Yan Bol—he has the throat of a cannon; he does not shout, he explodes. He sends an order like a twenty-four-pound ball slinging aloft. The wind of his cry might beat down a sheep.”

“Van Laar enjoys his food,” said I.

“Van Laar is a gorging baboon,” he exclaimed; “but he shall not long be a gorging baboon in my cabin or even on board my ship.”

He resumed his seat in his bed, and, pulling from his pocket the little book from which he had read the particulars of the cargo in the main hold of La Perfecta Casada, he fastened his eyes upon a page of it, mused a while, and proceeded thus:

“We left the Spanish ship, pulled clear of the reef, and got aboard the Hero. I called my mate to me, told him that the island was uncharted, and that it behoved us to clearly ascertain its situation in order to correctly report its whereabouts. Together we went to work to determine its position; our calculations fairly tallied, and I was satisfied. I then ordered sail to be trimmed, and we proceeded on our voyage. When the ship had fairly started afresh I went into my cabin and examined the papers I had brought off the Casada. Those papers were, of course, written in Spanish. Though I speak Spanish very imperfectly, almost unintelligibly, I can make tolerable headway, with the help of a dictionary, when I read it. I possessed an English-Spanish dictionary, and I sat down to translate the Casada’s papers. Then it was that I discovered there were five thousand serons of cocoa among the cargo. I did not count those serons when I was on board.”

“I understand.”

“The particulars I have here,” said he, slapping the book, “were in the manifest; but there was more than cocoa and wool and tin in that ship—very much more. The cases in the after-hold were full of silver—I had hoped for gold when I sang out to my men to seek an ax; but silver it proved to be, and the papers I examined in my cabin told me that those cases contained in all five hundred and fifty thousand milled Spanish dollars of the value, in our money, of four shillings and ninepence apiece, though I am willing to reduce that quotation and call the sum, in English money, ninety-eight thousand pounds.”

I opened my eyes wide. “Ha!” said I, “now I think you need tell me no more. This brig is going to fetch the money.”

“That is the object of the voyage.”

“Your men as yet don’t know where they are bound to?”

“Not as yet. I do not intend that they shall know for some time. I want to see what sort of men they are going to prove. They shipped on the understanding that I sailed under secret orders from the brig’s owner, and that those orders would not be revealed until we had crossed the equator.”

“Van Laar knows nothing, then?”

“No more than the lad Jimmy. If he did—but the cormorant shan’t know.”

“Ninety-eight thousand pounds!” quoth I, opening my eyes again.

“There are several fortunes in ninety-eight thousand pounds,” said he, smiling.

“You spoke of a gentleman named Tulp.”

“Bartholomew Tulp, my step-father. I will finish my story. I had plenty of time for reflection, for my voyage home was long. I made up my mind to get those dollars. I was satisfied that the money would remain as safely for years, ay, for centuries if you like, where it lay as if it had been snugged away in some secret part of the solid island itself. There was, indeed, the risk of others sighting the island, landing, discovering the ship, exploring, and then looting her. That risk remains the single element of speculation in this adventure. But what, commercially, is not speculative in the Change Alley meaning of the term? You buy Consols at seventy; next day the city is pale with news which sinks the funds to fifty. Spanish dollars to the value of ninety-eight thousand pounds lie in the hold of a ship encaved in an island south of the Galapagos. Is fortune going to suffer them to stay there till we arrive? I say ‘yes.’ You, as a seafaring man, will say ‘yes.’ You know that vessels sighting that island will, seeing that it is not down on the charts, or else most incorrectly noted—for no land where that island is do I find marked upon the Pacific charts which I have consulted—I say you will know that vessels sighting that island will give it a wide berth for fear of the soundings. You will suppose that if a vessel should find herself unexpectedly close in with that land her people will see nothing in a mountainous mass of cinder to court them ashore. You will hold that even supposing a thousand ships should pass the island within the date of my proceeding on my voyage from it in the Hero and the date of my arrival off the island in this brig Black Watch, there are ninety-nine chances against every one of those thousand ships so opening the land as to catch a sight of the vessel in the cave. The cave itself looks at a distance like a vast shadow or smudge upon the front of the cliff. You must enter the natural harbor, and pull close to the mouth of the cavern, to behold the ship. Yes, it is true that the telescope will at a distance resolve the darkness of the cave into a something that is indeterminable, but that is more than mere shadow. But that this may be done a ship must be in the exact situation the Hero was in when I happened to point the glass at the cave, and I say there are ninety-nine chances against any one of a thousand ships being in the exact situation. The money in the Casada’s hold is there now, has been there since 1810, and but for me, might be there until the ship falls to pieces with decay. What do you say?”

“Those waters are but little navigated,” said I. “All the chances you name are against a vessel sighting your Casada as she lies in her shell according to your description. I am of your opinion. The money is there and will remain there. The mere circumstances of those dollars having been a secret of the island for four years is warrant enough to satisfy any man that the island will continue to keep what is now your secret.”

He looked extremely gratified, and continued:

“How was I to proceed in the adventure that I was determined to embark on? I am a sailor, which means, of course, that I am a poor man.”

“Just so,” said I.

“My mother has been dead eight years. Of late I had seen and heard but little of my step-father. I was aware, however, that he was doing a very good trade as a merchant in Amsterdam. It occurred to me to propose the adventure to him, and when I had finished my business with the Hero in the Thames I went across to Amsterdam, with the Casada’s papers in my bag, and passed a week with Mynheer Bartholomew Tulp. I needed a week, and a week of seven long days, to bring the old man into my way of thinking. Tulp has Jewish blood in him, and the blood of the Jew is as thick as glue. A Tulp, four generations ago, married a Jewess. The descendants have ever since been marrying Christians, but it will take many generations to extinguish in the Tulps the Mosaic beak, the Aaronic eye, the Solomon leer, the Abrahamic wariness which entered into the Tulps, four generations ago, with honest Rachael Sweers. First Tulp wanted to know how I proposed to get the money. By hiring a small vessel and sailing to the island. How much was he to have? He must make his own terms. How much would I expect? I was in his hands. Supposing, when the money was on board, the crew rose and cut my throat? That was a peril of the sea. He could protect his outlay by insurance, the cost of which he was welcome to deduct from my share of the dollars should I bring the spoil home in safety.

“He was so full of objections that on the morning of the sixth day of my stay at his house I flung from him in a rage. ‘I know what you want,’ I told him: ‘you want the silver and you don’t want to pay for it. I will see you——’ and I damned him in the names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is a little man: he arose from a velvet armchair, and following me on tiptoe as I was leaving the room, he put his hand upon my shoulder and said in a soft voice, ‘Michael, how much?’ To cut this long yarn short, he commissioned me to seek a vessel, and when I had found the sort of ship I wanted I was to enter into a calculation of the cost of the adventure and let him know the amount I should need within as few guilders as possible. That is the story.”

“It is a very remarkable story. I am flattered by your confiding this secret to me.”

“It was necessary,” he answered.

I did not see that, but I let the remark pass. “Where did you meet with this brig?”

“She is owned by a friend of mine who lives at Shadwell. I was thinking all the way home of the Black Watch as the ship for my purpose, and strangely enough, among the vessels lying near me in the Pool when I brought up was this brig. In London I shipped the English sailors we have on board and sailed for Amsterdam at the request of Tulp, who desired to victual and equip the ship himself. He put Van Laar upon me, on some friend’s recommendation, and the remainder of the hands—much too few, but the spirit of Rebecca Sweers sweats like a demon in Tulp when there is a stiver to be saved—I shipped at Amsterdam.”

“But will not this be strictly what the longshoremen would term a salvage job?”

“I do not intend that it shall be a salvage job. What? Deliver up the dollars to the Dutch or British Government and be put off with an award that would scarce do more than pay wages?”

“You mean to run the stuff?”

He nodded. “There is time enough to talk over that,” said he; “and yet perhaps it’s right I should tell you that Tulp and I have arranged for the running of the dollars so that we shall forfeit not one farthing.”

“Well, I heartily wish you joy of your discovery,” said I. “This voyage will be your last, no doubt, if the dollars are still where you saw them.”

I looked at a little clock that was ticking over a table; it was a quarter after eleven. I then looked at the small scuttle or window which swung with regular oscillations out of the flash of the flying foam into the light of the blowing morning. I then looked at Galloon, and wondered quietly within myself how long it would take me to get home; for the speeding of the brig was continuous; the heave of the sea that rushed her forward was full of the weight of a sort of weather that my experience assured me was not going to fail us on a sudden. When, then, was I going to get home? and while I kept my eyes fastened upon Galloon, I mused with the velocity of thought upon my uncle Captain Round; upon my adventure with the press-gang; upon the Royal Brunswicker, and her arrival in the Thames; upon my little property in the cabin I had occupied aboard her, and on the wages which Captain Spalding owed me.

Greaves glanced at the clock at which I had looked. He then said, “Will you be interested to know how Mynheer Tulp proposes to divide the money?”

I begged him to acquaint me with Tulp’s proposal.

“There are five hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” said Greaves. “Of this money the ship takes half. For ship read Tulp; Tulp’s share, therefore, is two hundred and seventy thousand dollars or fifty-five thousand pounds.”

“These are big figures,” said I. “They slide glibly from the tongue. I suppose a man could behold another fellow’s fifty-five thousand pounds without feeling faint; but call a poor sailor into a room and show him fifty-five thousand pounds in gold and tell him it is his, and I believe you would find a large dose of rum the next thing to be done with him.”

“The ship gets half,” continued Greaves. “I as commander get two-thirds of the remainder.”

“How much is that?”

“Thirty-six thousand pounds.”

I whistled low and long.

“The mate,” proceeded he, “not Van Laar, but the mate—” he paused and looked at me with an expression of significant attention; “the mate gets one-third of the remainder—thirty thousand five hundred and fifty-six dollars, or six thousand one hundred and eleven pounds.” He read these figures from his little book.

“A good haul for the mate,” said I.

“The balance of sixty-one odd thousand dollars,” he went on, “goes to the men according to their rating. This they will receive over and above their wages, which average from three to six pounds a month.”

“I think Mr. Tulp’s division into shares very fair,” said I.

“Now,” said he, “why do I tell you all this? Why am I revealing to you what not a living soul on board knows or even suspects?”

I regarded him in silence.

“Cannot you anticipate the proposal I intend to make? Will you take Van Laar’s place on board my brig, and act as my mate?”

I started from my chair. Not for an instant had I suspected that his motive in telling me his story was to enable him to make this offer. I started with so much vehemence that Galloon growled, stirred, and elevated his ears.

“It is a magnificent proposal,” said I. “It is an offer of six thousand pounds.”

“More,” he interrupted. “Your wages will be ten pounds a month.”

“I do not like the idea,” said I after a pause, “of taking Van Laar’s place.”

“From him, do you mean?”

“From him, of course. The post is another thing.”

“It is I,” said he, “not you, who take it from him. Now, pray, distinctly understand this, Fielding, that, whether you accept or not, Van Laar will shortly cease to be my mate. If you refuse then Yan Bol comes aft, and Laar either takes his place or goes home in the first ship we meet.”

He spoke with a hard face and some severity of voice. It was quite clear that his mind was resolved, so far as Van Laar’s relations with the brig was concerned.

“It is a fine offer,” said I. “You will give me time to think it over, I hope?”

“What time do you require?”

I again looked at the little clock.

“I shall be able to see my way in a few hours, I hope.”

“That is not sailor fashion,” said he, stepping to a quadrant case and taking the instrument up out of it. “A sailor jumps; he never deliberates.”

“I have no clothes save what I am wearing,” said I.

“We are well stocked with slops,” he exclaimed. “Dutch-made, to be sure, but they are good togs.”

“I am without nautical instruments,” said I, looking at the quadrant which he held.

“I have three of these,” he answered, “and one is at your service.”

I rose and took a turn, full of thought, wishing to say “Yes” but wishing to consider, too.

“Even were Van Laar,” said he, “as good and trustworthy a seaman as ever stepped a deck, I would rather have a fellow-countryman for a mate than a Dutchman, though the Dutchman were the better man. In this case it is wholly the other way about. Here are you, fresh from a long voyage, with the experiences of the sea green upon you. You are young; you are English. I owe you my life; and what a debt is that! Together we can make this voyage not only a rich but a jolly jaunt. On the other hand, is Van Laar—no, plague on him, he is not on the other hand, he is out of it. Well, I must now go on deck to take sights. Let me have your answer soon.”

He extended his hand, received mine, pressed it cordially, and quitted the cabin.

I followed with Galloon, and, entering the stateroom, paced the deck of it and turned Greaves’ proposal over. While I paced, Van Laar, with a quadrant in his hand, came out of a cabin abreast of the captain’s. He stared me full and insolently in the face, and said in a tone of irony:

“Vell, how vhas it mit you? Do you feel like going home now?”

“The sun will have crossed his meridian if you don’t hurry up,” said I.

“Vot der doyvel vhas der sun to you, sir?”

I turned my back upon him and continued to pace the deck, not choosing that he should fasten a quarrel upon me—as yet, at all events.

His insolence, however, helped me in my reflections by extinguishing him as a condition to be borne in mind. I had been influenced by compunction; now I had none. I watched the fat beast climb the companion ladder, and after him, and then over the side into the seething water to lie drowned forever, went all compunction. How could Greaves work with such a man? How could he live in a ship with such a man? So, opening the door of my mind, I kicked Mate Van Laar headlong out of my contemplation, and resolution did not then seem very hard to form.

I sat down, and said to Galloon:

“What shall I do?”

Galloon stood upon his hind legs, and, resting his fore feet upon my knees, looked up at me with eyes which beamed with cordial invitation and affectionate solicitude.

“What shall I do, Galloon?” said I. “Six thousand pounds is a large sum of money for a man of my degree. Can I doubt that the dollars are in the ship inside the cave? If Tulp is to be convinced, I should. There was the Spanish manifest; there were the cases beheld by Greaves’ own eyes. Why should Greaves invent this yarn? I will stake my life, Galloon, upon its being true. Six thousand pounds! And d’ye know, my noble dog, that there is more money in six thousand pounds than your master’s reckoning of the Spanish dollar swells the amount to? In Jamaica the Spanish dollar passes for six-and-eightpence; in parts of North America for eight shillings; and in the Windward Islands for nine shillings;” and then I told Galloon what I should do when I received the six thousand pounds: how I would buy me a little house at Deal and a boat, live like a gentleman on the interest of what was left, and spend the time merrily in fishing and sailing.

The dog listened with attention. At times I seemed to catch a slight inclination of the head, as though he nodded approvingly. I counted upon my fingers all the advantages, which must attend my acceptance of Greaves’ offer. First, the post of mate at ten pounds a month, with a voyage before me of at least twelve months; then my association with a man whose company was exceedingly agreeable to me, between whom and me there must always be such a bond of sympathy as nothing but the prodigious and pathetic services we had done each other could establish; then the possibility—nay, the more than possibility, of my receiving six thousand pounds as my dividend of the adventure. These and the like considerations I summed up. What was the per contra? The forfeiture of a few weeks of holiday ashore! Spalding’s debt to me stood good, and would be paid whenever I turned up to receive the money. My being seized by the press-gang, the boat being stove, and my being picked up insensible and carried away into the ocean—all this was no fault of mine. Therefore Spalding would pay me the money.

“Galloon, I will accept,” said I, and jumped up; and the dog fell to cutting capers about me, springing here and there, like a dog in front of a trotting horse, and barking joyously.