The Convict Ship, Volume 3 (of 3)

The islanders had brought some fresh meat on board; I fried a steak, also boiled some eggs, potatoes, and vegetables. Taking the Childe Harold first, and now this Old Stormy, we had been keeping the sea many weeks. Tom’s fare in the convict ship had been the prison’s, Will had fed upon forecastle food, Mr. Bates and I had done just a little better—he at the cabin table and I at the scrap basket. The island produce, then, must make us a delicious meal.

The island was about three hours astern of us, distant about ten or twelve miles, a pile of sapphire, and the sea was of the same beautiful hue. The sky in the north was frosted with snow-white cloud running in links like chains, with a little plumy shooting as of mares’ tails along the advanced brow of the delicately compacted stuff. The wind blew out of that quarter; it was a dead-on-end wind for us; but the brig, under topsails and foresail, looked well up; and now that Will had loosed the fore and main topgallant-sails, which had been sheeted home and the yards hoisted whilst I was in the galley, the little vessel was beginning to buzz over the wide blue heave of swell, and the wrinkles from her cutwater broke into thin lines of snow abreast of the gangways, as her nimble and metalled forefoot ate its way to windward.

I spied a white sail down in the south-west. She looked to be standing for the island. It was as likely as not we had been just in time to secure Messrs. Rotch and Nodder.

The discipline of the little ship had been settled by the hour I had done with my cooking. We were now four sailors and a girl who could make herself generally useful.

Whilst I was dishing the dinner, Will told me he had carried a pannikin of rum and some bread and meat into the forecastle. Nodder drained the pannikin, but refused the food. Will accosted him civilly, having received his cue from Tom. The brute, after drinking, sat up and asked how it was that Captain Butler was out of quod. ‘He was transported for fourteen years,’ he said. ‘He’s got eleven or twelve year to sarve yet. Who’s the smothered bloke that was down here a-calling of hisself Captain Butler?’ Will answered: ‘Rotch knows.’ ‘What’s been done to him?’ ‘He’s locked up just now,’ says Will. ‘Are they a-going to hang him?’ ‘If he don’t confess.’ On this Nodder lay back and turned his face to the brig’s side, and Will came away.

When we sat down to dinner, Collins being at the helm, Tom cut some beef and filled a tumbler half full of wine, and sent the meal by Mr. Bates to Rotch. Bates was some time in the cabin with the villain; indeed, his own dinner was cooling. Suddenly Tom jumped up, and, going to my berth, which he used when he worked out his sights, the navigating instruments and charts being there, fetched some writing-paper, pen and ink. Bates at that moment appeared at the end of the cabin; Tom called to him, ‘Oblige me by putting these things into Rotch’s berth.’

Bates did so, locked the door, sat down, and fell to his meal.

‘Did he speak?’ said Tom.

‘Yes,’ said the mate. ‘He has an evil eye. He’s aged ten years, too. He said: “Captain Butler talks of hanging me. Does he mean it?” “Yes,” said I; “but you know how to save your life.” “He hang me! That ’u’d be murder! Curse him! You’re a brother sailor. Would you stand by and allow it to be done?” “I’m no brother sailor of yours,” said I. “Right the man you’ve diabolically wronged by making a clean breast of your wickedness. If you don’t, there’s never a brother sailor aboard this brig that won’t pull all his beef into the rope that yardarms ye!” I thought he’d fling himself upon me. His face was as full of devilish malice as you could have squeezed out of all hands aboard the convict ship. I put down his grub and came away. He didn’t speak when I took in the paper and ink.’

The subject was changed, and the talk that followed mainly concerned the routine to be adopted.

When I had cleared the table I stepped out to look at the island, and saw no more than a large, faint shadow seventeen or eighteen miles away. The wind had veered a trifle, and we were making a better course for the northern climb, though where we were bound to I no more knew than how this wild, strange adventure was to end. I felt weary, and, entering the deck-house, sat down at the foremost end of the table close to Tom’s cabin-door. I leaned my cheek on my hand and gave myself up to thought. Strange as it may seem, I was sensible of a secret grievous disappointment that the island scheme was closed. I longed to be Tom’s wife. Had we arranged with Governor Glass to settle at Tristan, I might in a few weeks have been Tom’s bride. At this rate, when were we to be married? If my sweetheart waited for Rotch to speak, the villain might keep us sailing about for months; unless, indeed, Tom hanged him, which was less likely to happen as time cooled his blood and mine. And, certainly, to hang the man would be to murder him, as already I understood; though assuredly had Tom put the yardarm rope into my hand and bade me pull, I’d have dragged—on that or on any other day—with less compunction than I’d have squashed a spider.

Whilst I thus sat thinking over such matters as these, in stepped Will; he looked about and sat down. I heard a noise of feet overhead, and guessed that Tom and Bates walked the deck together. The sailor Collins steered; the sunset glowed like a sheet of burning gold upon the skylight.

‘Marian,’ said Will, ‘how long is this roaming to last?’

‘I wish I could tell you,’ I answered.

‘Butler’s one goading idea just now is revenge. But I want to get home—rig out afresh—sign for a new ship—and start again. This sort of thing is merely pickling one. It will qualify me as a lobscouser, I dare say, but I’m learning nothing useful, never have a quadrant in my hand, and get no jobs of seamanship to do.’

‘Tom told you he’ll steer the brig straight for England, and put you and Bates in the way of getting home. What more do you want? But for him you’d have been murdered by the convicts. Or you might be lying dead in an open boat along with Captain Sutherland and the others. But you’re safe, and Tom’s steering you home.’

I spoke hotly and raised my voice. He stammered; he had not before taken this view of his deliverance perhaps.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘but look here, Marian; granted that Butler sends Bates and me home; you stay behind, what’s to become of you?’

‘That’s my business.’

‘Not yours only. I’m closer to you than Butler till you’re married. I’ve a right to consider your safety, anyway. You’re here through my help; your convict ship adventure was of my bringing about. It’s my duty to see you safe out of the mess your romancing love has carried you into.’

An angry answer was on my lips when the door of the berth close beside me was opened, and Tom stepped out. I had not imagined he was there. Will changed colour. My sweetheart, with the pleasantest smile I had yet seen on his face, put his hand on the lad’s shoulder, and exclaimed:

‘I couldn’t help overhearing you, Johnstone. But I’m in time, I hope, to stop more from being said than you’d wish me to catch. I admire your devotion to your cousin and thank you for it. It is what I should expect of one with Marian’s blood in him. Step this way, that our friend in the after-cabin yonder may not hear me.’

He led us into the berth I slept in, and closed the door.

‘Johnstone,’ said he, ‘I’ll ask you a question or two. How do you know that I didn’t attempt to scuttle the Arab Chief?’

The lad looked startled, and answered: ‘I don’t know, yet I’ll swear you never made the attempt.’

‘You wish to think me innocent, but you can’t be sure?’

‘On the top of Collins’s story I am sure,’ said Will.

‘Chaw! What is that evidence? Mere hearsay; the talk of a scoundrel seaman perhaps against his captain, and it’s two to one still even at that. How is Bates to know I’m guiltless? How is Marian, except of her great love and noble devotion and faith in me, to hold me innocent of a charge on which an intelligent jury and a sagacious judge condemned me, imprisoned me, expatriated me? Now,’ said he, talking with perfect temper, ‘I’ve a right to prove myself an honest man to you all, haven’t I? The machinery of proof, by a marvellous ordering of Providence, happens to be on board; I’m a little at a loss how to handle it; advise me, Johnstone.’

I seated myself at this point, and he put his arm round my neck, with a light, sarcastic smile as he looked at the lad.

‘There’s nothing to be done but wring the truth out of the beast,’ said Will.

‘How? As you wring a swab! Advise me, Johnstone.’

My cousin coloured, looked down, and was silent.

‘My lad,’ said Tom, after a pause, ‘you cannot counsel me. Of course not. Neither can Bates. What’s the key, then, to fit this lock? Why, patience. And patience means that I must keep my brace of villains aboard this brig till they confess, or sicken and die, never parting with them till I’ve torn the jewel they’ve robbed me of out of their black hearts. If I send you home you’ll have nothing to complain of!’

‘No, sir. But Marian——’

‘Marian shall accompany you.’

‘Never!’ I cried, flinging his arm from my neck to look at him.

‘Marian,’ he said tenderly, ‘you will do what I wish when the time comes. No man could swiftly strike out of such an amazing business as this a full and satisfying plan. You’ll do what I wish, and help me by obeying.’

‘But you mean to hang Rotch, Captain Butler?’ said Will.

‘In time I may, Johnstone, even if I have to carry him to the South Seas to do it. But the villain’s span, you see, is not yet allotted, as far as I am concerned.’

‘Captain,’ said Will, ‘I’m sorry I interfered or spoke to Marian. You’re a man of honour; you’ll do what’s right by my cousin.’

Tom smiled at him.

‘You will never get me to leave you!’ said I, jumping up and grasping my sweetheart’s arm.

‘You’re tired, dear; the air is soft on deck, the evening is cloudless and beautiful. Wrap yourself up and I’ll carry a chair for you on to the deck-house roof.’

But matters were to come to a head more swiftly than ever I had dared dream. We had left Tristan five days behind us. In all this time the brig had gnawed her way to windward on a taut bowline, the breeze holding fresh and steady off the bow, the blue seas flowing in long, deep lines. Rotch throughout was waited upon by Mr. Bates. And first as to this man Rotch.

I frequently questioned the mate about him, and gathered this: He spoke little and ate poorly; he craved for drink as though he burnt with a perpetual thirst of fever; and Bates put plenty of fresh water into his cabin, and rum enough to poison him out of hand, if ever he should have a mind for what I would now call a Barney-Abram drench. Bates told us the fellow was growing very thin in the face and falling away in the body; already his clothes were fitting him ill. He was restless, and Bates seldom entered his cabin without finding him pacing the little square of deck. It was Tom’s wish that Bates should attend to the man; he was afraid to trust himself with him; and Will was young and green, and might by some well-meant whisper balk my sweetheart’s scheme to terrify the man into a confession of truth.

Once, when Bates went in with the prisoner’s dinner, Rotch, leaning against his bunk with his arms folded—so the mate described him—asked where they were sailing the brig to. Bates answered plainly, ‘To England.’ Rotch said: ‘What does the man Butler mean to do with me?’ Bates replied: ‘He means to keep you with him till you prove his innocence; time will be granted; if you then fail, he’ll hang you. He’s a man of his word; when you made a convict of him, you made a devil of him. He no longer holds human life in value. He’d shoot you through the head with as easy a heart as a felon brains a warder.’ ‘Suppose I do what he wants—what then?’ asked Rotch. ‘I don’t know,’ answered Bates. ‘Find out,’ said the man. (When this was put to Tom, he said: ‘Let him confess, let the document bear his signature and be properly witnessed, and I’ll hand him over to you, Bates—to you and to Will along with this brig and cargo—I’ll leave you in the Channel by the first Frenchman who’ll put me ashore in his country; what Miss Johnstone will do we’ll consider. First let the man confess.’) This was repeated to Rotch, who said to the mate: ‘What would you do with me?’ ‘Establish Captain Butler’s innocence,’ answers the mate. ‘The sooner you do it, the better you’ll be used.’ Rotch made no answer.

From this time, during the days I am now dealing with, he continued obstinately silent, a sullen, scowling figure of a man as Bates pictured him, losing flesh as though he fasted, asking for nothing but fresh water to mix his rum with; for nothing but that. The brig had a few books; the mate placed two or three in Rotch’s berth; they were never touched. Thus it was with Captain Samuel Rotch, whom I never once set eyes on after the day when he had been ordered into his berth and locked up by Tom. He was perfectly quiet; I’d sometimes fancy I heard a noise like a muttering, and I’d creep to his door to listen, hoping to hear him babble about Tom in a fit of delirium or out of the liquor which Bates told us he swallowed in quantities. But it was always imagination on my part; his berth was for ever as silent as a coffin.

As for Nodder—Mr. Bates waited upon that man for the reason that he waited upon Rotch. Tom distrusted his own temper, and was advised by me and Bates never to go into the forecastle. It was the mate’s own wish to attend upon Nodder; he told me he was gaining a sort of influence over the fellow, who was miserably ill and suffering fearfully from some internal trouble, and who, attempting once at Bates’s suggestion to quit his bunk and come on deck for fresh air, was in such agony when he stood that he fell down in a swoon, and Bates had to put his head through the scuttle and bawl to Will to help him pick the man up and put him into his bunk again.

I never can forget Mr. Bates’s kindness at this time. The tears stand in my eyes, and I find myself loving his memory as that of a dear friend when I recall his unwearied anxiety and efforts to get the truth from the two villains. He was a person of a religious cast of mind, and in that, I think, strange as it may seem, lay his influence over Nodder, who seemed fully sensible that he was a dying man, and found a sort of consolation in conversing with the mate. It luckily happened that there were one or two points of sympathy between them. For example, Bates’s mother had been a native of Nodder’s birthplace; he knew the seaport well, and mentioned names, street’s, shops, and the like, with which the man of course was well acquainted. Then the mate had sailed with a man who commanded a ship in which Nodder had made a voyage, and this man was the only person for whom Nodder had a good word.

This and much more the mate would tell Tom and me on his return from his forecastle visits. But all the while the villain answered no questions as to my sweetheart’s guilt or innocence. He was too wary to say a word about Rotch, though Bates directly challenged him on one occasion about that point in Collins’s statement, when during the drunken quarrel Nodder had asked the other what had become of the fifty pounds he had promised him.

‘Yet,’ said the mate to me, in the course of a long earnest talk, ‘I honestly believe, Miss Johnstone, the fellow will shell out before he dies. How long he’ll take in sinking I don’t know. His looks aren’t sweet and lively; I’ve known pleasanter minutes in my time than talking to that carroty head, bolstered up, flickering out to the slush lamp with a dirty old blanket drawn to its throat. Yet he’s now fallen into the trick of a wall-eyed look that makes me hopeful. I seem to see the truth rising like a whale coming up to blow, though before it touches the surface it settles again.’

‘How long do you give him to live?’ said I.

‘Why, a sea-dog of his cut,’ said he, ‘often holds on with such a grip as disappoints the most humane calculations. It isn’t so much dying as drying out. Nature kind of embalms him, as a Yankee would say. It’s salt and sun that does it. This chap might live to be sent ashore in the English Channel. Just the sort of a man he is to walk slowly, in shiny cloth and a face of tallow, out of a hospital, and sign articles a month afterwards for a warm voyage.’

Now, as well as I can remember, it was two days after this talk with Mr. Bates that I was in my berth mending my dress with a needle and thread from a sailor’s housewife that had been found in the forecastle. I don’t recollect that we had taken the south-east trade-wind; the yards were square, a fresh, merry, sparkling breeze blew over the quarter, and the brig floated fast before it, sitting very upright, with a slow, small, majestical curtseying motion in the length of her as she was underswept by the Atlantic swell that ran with the breeze.

Suddenly, someone knocked in an agitated manner upon my door; I cried: ‘Who’s there?’

The voice of Mr. Bates, not less indicative of excitement than his knuckles, cried: ‘I want paper and ink as quickly as possible, Miss Johnstone.’

Here in my berth, which had been the captain’s, was kept the brig’s small stock of writing materials. Somehow I guessed what the mate wanted paper and pen for. I whipped on my dress and opened the door. He took what he needed, just saying, ‘Nodder’s offered to confess!’ and hastened away. My heart at this news leapt up and half choked me with a sudden transport. It was drawing on to four o’clock in the afternoon; Tom was in his cabin resting. I put on my hat and went on to the deck and found Collins at the wheel. Will, who was in Tom’s watch, according to the disposition of our little company, was lying down.

Collins exclaimed: ‘If you’re seeking Mr. Bates, he’s in the forecastle.’ I paced up and down in what is called the gangway between the deck-house front and caboose, and still, as I turned my back on the fore part of the brig, I’d for ever be looking behind me toward the fore hatch, through which Mr. Bates must emerge. Saving that time that I waited for the decision of the jury in the Old Bailey, I had never suffered such agony of suspense. Was Nodder dictating to Mr. Bates at this instant? If so, what was he saying? Convicting himself and Rotch of as shocking a perjury as any in the criminal records, or declaring that the evidence he and the other had given was true? Would the sullen, drunken, dying animal dictate at all when Bates sat beside him ready to write? These were distracting thoughts, and I walked the deck like one distraught. I did not want to see Mr. Bates too soon; I dreaded his emergence, for that would signify the villain had fallen stubborn and mute, and yet my impatience was an anguish; again and again I’d stop in the cabin-doorway to look at the clock. Collins, who could see the time through the window, exclaimed: ‘It’s after four. Will Mr. Johnstone relieve me?’

‘Wait for Mr. Bates,’ said I; and I started off afresh on my gangway march.

At last, on a sudden, I saw Mr. Bates’s face in the hatch; he gravely motioned me to approach; when I had drawn near he said: ‘It’s all right; I have it down. It’s a complete acquittal. What a piece of villainy! Pray run aft now, put Captain Butler to the wheel, and bring Johnstone and Collins into the forecastle to hear what’s been written, to witness Nodder’s signature, and to sign their own names.’

I sped to the cabin and ran breathless into Tom’s berth. I put my hand upon his shoulder and shook him violently. He opened his eyes and instantly started up, collecting his wits with the nimble dexterity of one used to instant and urgent calls.

‘Nodder has confessed!’ I cried. ‘Bates has it down in writing; he wants Will and me and Collins in the forecastle as witnesses. Jump up and take the wheel whilst I call Will.’

Before the words were fairly off my lips he was out of his bunk, pulling on his coat. I rushed to Will’s cabin and dragged the dear boy half out of bed in my eagerness to awaken and get him forward quickly. His berth was next to Rotch’s; the bulkhead between was stout, but a voice exerted strongly was easily to be heard through the partition. I cried out in loud, clear tones that Nodder had confessed Tom’s innocence, that Mr. Bates had taken his statement down in writing, and that he (Will) was instantly required in the forecastle.

Tom was at the wheel. He had sent Collins forward. Will and I ran to the forecastle hatch and descended. I found myself in a small, gloomy, wooden cave; a lamp burning with a large, dim, smoky flame swayed at the end of a lanyard under a grimy central beam. Some bunks were built on either hand of this forecastle. The place contained a sea-chest or two left by the sailors, some remains of bedding, a few odds and ends of wearing apparel. Mr. Bates sat upon a chest under the lamp; a bunk-board he had used as a writing-desk stood before him. He held a sheet of foolscap paper.

In a bunk immediately abreast lay Nodder. I could not distinguish much of the man. An old blanket partially covered him. His arms, clothed in a sleeve-waistcoat, lay outside the blanket. His colour was sickly, dingy, hideous. His long red hair, like peelings and slicings of carrots, stood harsh and stiff about his brow and coiled wire-like upon the bolster. His wall-eye seemed to be fastened upon me; the other looked straight up. Collins stood near the mate, who, on our descending, exclaimed:

‘I’ll read this confession aloud, that Nodder may hear it’s all right. He’ll then sign, and we four’ll witness.’

Here Nodder turned his head and said: ‘Who’s that female?’

‘The lady Captain Butler’s to be married to,’ answered Mr. Bates.

‘Didn’t know there was e’er a woman aboard,’ said Nodder, speaking as though his throat was raw with drink. Nothing so harsh, rasping, sawlike, did I ever hear.

I got my disgust under and stepped close to the villain. ‘I hope you don’t suffer much?’ I said softly and kindly.

‘I do, then,’ he answered. ‘When there’s hell in the belly and hell in the heart, there’s bound to be suffering. It was all along of that Rotch. Toon up, Mr. Bates, and let’s get the gallus job over.’

I drew back. The having such a face as his near me made me feel sick. Then, again, the atmosphere of his bunk was charged with a smell of spirits, and reminded me of the fumes which rose through the Childe Harold’s skylights that night we left her.

Mr. Bates, standing up, read aloud, in a solemn and emphatic manner, as follows:—

Bates ceased to read.

‘Some one fill my pannikin,’ said Nodder. ‘Hearing that yarn over again’s taken it out of me.’

Bates pointed to a bottle; Will mixed a draught, and Nodder, sitting up, lifted the pannikin with both hands, trembling violently.

I had listened with a mad heart; recollection of what Tom had been made to suffer by that foul, drunken, hideous scoundrel rushed upon me. The villain had owned it was drink and not caring; he had done it for a promise of fifty pounds and the run of the rum casks and a mate’s berth at some hundred shillings a month! I could have torn the poisonous rat’s eyes out as he lay, and turned my back upon him to hide my face.

He threw the pannikin he had emptied on to the deck: and said: ‘Gi’ me hold of a pen whilst I’m setting up; it’ll be a bruisy queer scrawl. What music’s a-playing that these hands keep dancing?’ He looked at his fingers with a horrid grin.

Bates put the bunk-board on the fellow’s knees, and called to Will to hold the lamp close. My temper was under control again, and I looked at the man as he sat up in his bunk, fearing that even now he might cheat us by refusing to sign, though I supposed that, in any case, the confession made to Mr. Bates, and heard read aloud by us in Nodder’s presence, would be counted good evidence.

The man’s hand trembled so violently that twice or thrice he let fall the pen. ‘Hold my wrist,’ said he, with a vile oath. Helped by Mr. Bates, he scrawled his name; we then signed as witnesses, Bates leading, Collins ending with a cross; the date was added, the name of the brig, her situation at noon.

Nodder had fallen back, and lay watching us while we signed. As Mr. Bates handed me the written confession, the fellow in his raw, squawking voice exclaimed: ‘Mix me another pannikin, one of yer; then clear out. You’ve got what you want, ha’n’t you?’

I passed through the hatch quickly, fearful of the man’s language; Will accompanied me. I glanced at him in the bright western daylight; he looked shocked, almost stunned.

‘I always knew he was innocent,’ he exclaimed.

But I was mad to join Tom. I held up the paper as I ran towards the wheel, at which stood Tom’s fine commanding figure, solitary on the brig’s decks. He was pale, and the shadow of bitter expectation lay like a scowl or frown upon him.

‘Has he confessed?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

Will took the wheel, and I followed my sweetheart into the cabin. He put the paper upon the table, and bent his head to read the precious document. I watched his face with impassioned intentness. I thought he had read to the end of the writing when he lifted his head; he rubbed his eyes and pressed his temples betwixt his hands, bent his head to the paper again, and now I was very sure he had not read a quarter down.

Mr. Bates came along the deck and entered the cabin-door; I put my finger to my lips, and he halted close behind Tom, who seemed not to have heard him come. In this manner three or four minutes passed, neither Bates nor I speaking, and Tom appearing to read. My sweetheart then fetched a deep breath, and, looking round to me without seeing Bates, he said: ‘That such a man should have had it in his power to injure me so!’ I saw a mist in his eyes, and his breathing was laboured; then perceiving Bates he grasped him by both hands.

‘Dear friend,’ he cried, ‘it is a ruined, broken-hearted convict sailor who thanks you!’

‘No more of that, Butler, for my sake,’ answered the mate. ‘You are no convict, and your heart’s not broken. All’s well with us now, and I’ll be dancing at your wedding very soon.’

‘I was innocent! I was always innocent! I told you so!’ cried Tom.

‘Did I ever doubt it, Butler?’ exclaimed the mate. ‘And this lady’s marvellous devotion! Match me such perfect faith, such beautiful loyalty.’

Tom stretched out his arms, and in a moment I was locked to his heart.