JACK AND HIS UNCLE
JACK, following the attorney’s advice, had made up his mind to ask his uncle for the money that very night, but when he came face to face with doing it, it was very hard. They were sitting together over their poor frugal supper, and the old miser’s utter unconsciousness of what Jack had it on his mind to say made the saying of it very hard. At last he suddenly spoke. “Uncle Hezekiah,” said he.
The old man looked up sharply, almost as though startled at the sound of Jack’s voice. He did not say anything, but he sat looking at Jack as though inviting him to continue.
“Uncle Hezekiah,” said Jack again. He did not know in just what words to frame what he had to say. Then he continued: “I want to—to talk to you about a matter of business.”
“Hey!” said the old man, “business! business! What d’ ye mean—what d’ye mean by business?”
“Why,” said Jack, “I want some money to buy something. I went to see Master Burton to-day, and he told me I had best come to you and ask you for it.” Gradually Jack was becoming bolder as he became accustomed to the sound of his own voice. “Dan Williamson hath a boat for sale,” he continued. “He wants eighteen pound for it, and if I had twenty pound it would be just enough to fit her up as I would like to have her. I went and talked to Master Burton, and he told me I had best come to you and ask you for the money.”
The old man stared blankly at Jack, his lean jaw hanging gaping with speechless surprise. “Why! why! what’s all this?” he said, finding his voice at last. “Twenty pound! Why, I do believe you’re gone clean clear crazy. Twenty pound! What’s Roger Burton got to do with my giving you twenty pound, I’d like to know? You’ll not get a farden, and that’s the long and the short of it. Master Burton, indeed! What business is it of his, I’d like to know?” He sat looking at Jack for a little while, and then he slowly resumed his interrupted supper again.
Jack sat leaning back in his chair, with his hands in his breeches’ pockets, looking across the table at his uncle. His heart was swelling with a feeling of very choking and bitter disappointment and anger. It seemed to him that he had not expected much, but now that his uncle had denied him, his disappointment was very bitter. He watched his uncle as the old man continued eating in silence. “Very well,” said he at last, “then I know what I’ll do. I’ll go back to Master Burton again. He told me what to do, and that if you said me nay I was to go back to him again. He says that Sir Henry Ballister has been writing to him about me, asking how you treated me and what you did for me, and he told me if you would not give me what I asked for, I was to go back to him, and he’d write to Sir Henry and tell him all about it, and that he’d see if something couldn’t be done on my account.”
Old Hezekiah looked up again. “Sir Henry Ballister?” said he. “What’s he been writing to Roger Burton about, I should like to know! What’s he got to do with it? He’s not your guardeen, is he? I’m your guardeen, and the guardeen of your money as well. As for Sir Henry Ballister, why, he’s got no more to do with you than the man in the moon.” Then he went on eating again, and again Jack sat watching him in silence. In a little while Hezekiah finished his supper, chasing the fatty gravy around and around his plate with the point of his knife. Then he laid down his knife and fork, pushed away his plate, and arose from the table.
“Very well,” said Jack, breaking the silence, “we’ll see about all this business. I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to write to Sir Henry Ballister myself, and tell him about the way I’m treated by you. You never give me a farthing to spend, and as for being your own flesh and blood—why, I might as well be a dog in this house as to be your own kin. You keep all my money and use it as your own, and yet you don’t speak six words to me in a month.” Jack was dimly surprised at his own boldness in speaking. Now that he had made a beginning, it seemed very easy to say his say and to speak out all that lay on his mind. “I’m not going to be treated like a dog by you or by anybody,” he said.
“Yes, I do speak to you, too,” said Hezekiah, stopping at the door. “What d’ ye want me to say to you, anyhow?” he added. “Don’t I give you all you want to eat and drink, and never charge you a farden for it? What more d’ye want than that? You’re the most ungratefulest nevy that ever lived, so you are, to talk to me that way.”
Then he went out of the door, and along the dark passageway, and Jack heard him enter the office, and shut the door behind him. Then he began eating his supper again. He felt very bitter and very angry against the old man.
So he sat eating for a long time in lonely silence, broken only by the sound of Deborah clattering now and then among the pots and pans in the kitchen beyond. Suddenly he heard the office door open again, and the sound of his uncle’s steps coming back along the passage. He reached the door, and Jack heard his fingers fumbling for the latch in the darkness, and then the sharp click as it was raised. Then the door opened, and the old man came in. He stood for a moment, and then came straight across to the table where Jack sat. He stood leaning with both hands upon the table. Jack did not know exactly what to expect. He drew himself back, for the first thought that came into his mind was that the old man was going to attack him personally. “Lookee, Jacky,” said old Hezekiah, at last, “I’ve been thinking of that there twenty pound you was speaking of. Well, Jacky, you shall have that twenty pound, you shall.”
“What d’ye mean, Uncle Hezekiah?” said Jack.
“Why,” said Hezekiah, “I mean what I said. You shall have that twenty pound, Jacky. I’ve been thinking about it, and what you said, and I’m going to give you what you want. I can’t give it to you just now, for twenty pound is a deal of money, and I haven’t that much to give you straight away. But I’ll give it to you after a while, I will, Jacky. I’ll give it to you—let me see—I’ll give it to you on Monday next. Will that be time enough?”
“Why, yes, it will,” said Jack, “if you really mean what you say.”
“Aye,” said the old man, “I mean it sure enough; but don’t you say anything more to Roger Burton, will ye? Just you come to me when you want anything, and don’t you go to him. I mean to be a good, kind uncle to you, Jacky, I do,” and he reached out a lean, tremulous hand, and pawed at Jack, who drew instinctively away from his approach. “I do, Jacky, I do,” said the old man, almost whining in his effort to be affectionate. “But don’t you be writing to Sir Henry Ballister about me, will you, Jacky?”
“I won’t write to him if you’ll treat me decently,” said Jack.
“Aye, aye,” said the old man, “I mean to do that, Jacky, I do. Only don’t you be talking any more to Lawyer Burton. I’ll give you that twenty pound. I’ll give it to you on—on Monday next, I will.”
Then he turned and went away again. Jack sat looking after him. He felt very uncomfortable. He could not understand why the old man had yielded so suddenly. He did not believe at all that he had yielded, or that he would give him what he asked for. He felt sure, in spite of his uncle’s words, that he had been put off with a barren promise that would never bear fruit.
CAPTAIN BUTTS
ON the evening of the next day a number of boys were gathered at the end of the wharf in front of Hezekiah Tipton’s warehouses. They were throwing stones into the water. Jack went out along the wharf to where they were. They were all of them boys younger than himself.
“Well, if that’s all the better you can throw,” said Jack, “to be sure you can’t throw well. Just you watch me hit yon anchor-buoy out there with this pebble.”
A brig had come into the harbor during the day, and now lay at anchor some distance off from the shore. The sails were half reefed and hung limp from the yards. The men were washing down the decks, and from the shore you could see them busy about the decks, and every now and then a gush of dirty water as it ran through the scupper-holes. A boat was just about putting off from the brig. Presently some one climbed down over the side of the vessel and into the boat, and then it was pushed off. Jack stopped throwing stones and stood looking. The boat came rowing straight toward the wharf where he and the other boys stood. It pulled in around the back of a sloop that lay fast to the end of the wharf, and was hidden from sight. Jack jumped down from the wharf to the deck of the sloop, and went across to see who was in the boat. It had come in under the side of the sloop, and two of the men were holding it to its place, grasping the chains. They looked up at Jack and the other boys as they came to the rail of the sloop and looked down at them. There were two men in the stern of the boat. One was just about to climb aboard the sloop, the other sat still. He who still sat in his place had a knit cap pulled down half over his ears. He held a pipe in his mouth and he had gold ear-rings in his ears. The other, who was about to climb aboard the sloop, was plainly the captain of the brig. He was short and thick-set. He wore a rough sea coat with great flapped pockets and brass buttons. One of the pockets bulged out with a short pistol, the brass butt of which stuck out from under the flap. He wore canvas petticoat-breeches strapped to his waist by a broad leather belt with a big flat brass buckle. His face and as much of the short bull-neck as Jack could see were tanned red-brown like russet leather, and his cheeks and chin were covered with an unshaven beard of two or three days’ growth. He stood up in the boat, with his hand resting on the rail of the sloop.
“Do you know where Master Hezekiah Tipton lives?” he asked in a hoarse, rattling voice.
“Why, yes, I do,” said Jack. “This is his wharf, and I’m his nephew.”
“Well, then,” said the man, “I wish you’d show me to him.”
As Jack accompanied the other up the stony street to his uncle’s house, he turned to look at his companion every now and then.
“Where do you hail from, captain?” said he.
“I hail from the land where every man minds his own business,” said the other in his rattling voice. “Where do you hail from, my hearty?”
Jack did not know just what to reply at first. “Oh, well,” he said, “if you don’t choose to give me a civil answer, why, then you needn’t.”
After that they walked in silence till they reached the house. Jack looked into the office, but Hezekiah was not there. “If you’ll come into the parlor,” said he, “I’ll go and tell him you’re here, only I don’t know who you are, to be sure.” He opened the door of the room as he spoke, and showed the captain into the darkened parlor. It always smelled damp and musty and unused, and the fireplace had a cold, dark look as though no comforting fire had ever burned there.
“Tell Master Tipton ’tis Captain Butts of the Arundel wants to see him,” said the stranger, laying aside his hat with its tarnished gilt lace and wiping his partly bald head with the corner of his red neckerchief. All the time he was looking strangely about him at his unfamiliar surroundings.
There was the sound of a knife and fork rattling against a plate in the distance, and Jack, following the sound, went along the passage to the room beyond, where he knew Hezekiah was sitting at supper.
“There’s a man in the parlor,” said Jack, “would like to see you. He says his name’s Captain Butts of the Arundel.”
Hezekiah was looking at Jack as he spoke. He laid down his knife and fork immediately, and pushed back his chair and arose. Jack followed him back to the parlor. He stood outside of the door, looking in. The stranger arose as Master Tipton came in, holding out to the old America merchant a big, brown, hairy hand with a hard, horny-looking palm.
“How d’ye do, Master Tipton?” said he in his rattling voice. “I be mightily glad to see you.”
“Well, then, Master Captain Butts,” said Hezekiah, giving him a limp, reluctant hand, “I be mightily glad to see you, too,—more glad than you are to see me, like enough, for I’ve been looking for you these three days past, and wondering where was the Arundel. There be them nineteen servants down at the ‘Duck and Doe’ that should have been took away yesterday morning. Their lodging at the inn is a matter of ten pence a day each. Now, who do you think’s to pay for that there?”
“Well, well, Master,” said the other, “‘tweren’t no fault of mine that I weren’t here yesterday. Wind and tide be to blame, so whatever ye lose ye may just charge up ag’in’ them. We can’t sail without wind, can we? and we can’t sail ag’in’ the tide, can we? As for the men, why, the sooner I get my clearance papers and the men aboard the better ’twill suit me. The tide turns at eight o’clock, and if the wind comes up, as ’tis like to do, why, I’ll drop out and away with the turn o’ the water.”
Master Hezekiah looked around. Jack was still standing in the doorway. “You go in and get your supper, Jacky,” said he, and then he got up and closed the door, and Jack went back into the supper-room.
All the time that Jack sat at his meal old Deborah scolded him ceaselessly for being so late.
“’Tis always so,” said she, her voice growing shriller and shriller. “You be always late, and think of nobody but your own self.”
“No, I’m not always late, neither,” said Jack; “I wasn’t late to breakfast, or to supper either, yesterday.”
“But you didn’t come home to dinner at all,” said old Deborah, “and I kept it for you, and I kept it for you, and the ’taties all like wax in the oven, and not fit to eat.”
“I didn’t want any dinner,” said Jack. “I had something to eat down at the wharf.”
“Well,” said old Deborah, “you might just as well have been late as not to come at all, for I kept a-waiting and a-waiting for you till it was all dried up and wasted—aye, all wasted, and it what many a pore body ’u’d’a’ been glad enough to ’a’ had, too.”
In the interval of her scolding Jack could occasionally hear the distant rumbling of Captain Butts’s voice in the office.
It grew darker and darker in the twilight gloom of the kitchen, until Jack could hardly see the food upon his plate.
“I wish you’d bring a candle, Deborah,” said he, “I can’t see to find the way to my own mouth.”
“A candle!” said Deborah; “if you’d come to your supper in time you’d not need a candle to see. Now you may just go without.”
“Very well,” said Jack, “I don’t care, for I’m done.”
“Then, if you’re done, you may go down to the pump and fetch back some water.”
Jack took the pail and went off with it. He was gone a long time, and the night was fairly settled when he came stumbling back into the kitchen, slopping the water upon the steps and the floor.
“Why,” said Deborah, “I thought you was never coming. Your uncle’s asking for you. He’s over in the office now, and he wants to see you there.”
“Very well,” said Jack, “if I’d known that, may be I’d hurried and may be I wouldn’t.”
In the office he found Captain Butts seated at the tall desk, with a bottle of Hezekiah’s old Jamaica rum before him. They had been looking over some papers, and the Captain had evidently been helping himself very freely to the rum. He smelt strong of the liquor. He was leaning over the desk, his chin resting upon his fists. He looked up at Jack with his keen gray eyes from under his bushy eyebrows. “Is this the boy?” said he. Hezekiah, who sat opposite to his visitor, nodded without speaking.
“Come hither, my hearty,” said Captain Butts, beckoning to Jack. Jack came forward slowly. “And so ye’re a hard one to manage, be ye? By blood! if I had ye aboard the Arundel for a few days, I’d manage ye.”
“Who says I’m hard to manage?” demanded Jack, indignantly.
“That does your good uncle,” said the Captain. As he spoke he reached out suddenly, and catching Jack by the arm held him tight, feeling up and down the length of his arm. “Ye be well put together, my hearty,” said he; “ye’d make a valuable servant in the tobacco-fields,” and he winked tipsily as he spoke. “Now, being as ye’re so hard to manage, how’d you like it if you was to take a cruise to the Americas with old Benny Butts?”
Jack could smell the rum heavy upon the captain’s breath, and he saw that he was a little tipsy. He jerked his arm away from the other’s grasp.
“I am well enough off here as I am, thank you, Master Captain,” said he, “and I don’t choose to go to the Americas at all.”
The Captain burst out laughing. He fetched a thump upon the desk before him that made the bottle of rum and the tumbler hop and jingle. “Harkee to that, now!” said he, “he don’t choose to go to the Americas,” and he gave another roar of laughter.
Master Hezekiah sat looking on at the two, resting his forehead upon his lean fingers, his hand shading his eyes from the light of the candle. Suddenly he cut into the talk. “Come, come, Captain Butts!” said he tartly, “let there be an end to this! Sure you forget what you’re saying. Come hither,” said he to Jack. Jack came around to him, and the old man lifted the lid of the desk and brought out a bundle of papers and a little bag of money. He counted out a few coins, which he made into a little pile. Then he untied the tape and chose a paper from among the others. Jack stood watching him. “Here be a list of the America servants down at the Golden Fish,” said Hezekiah, “and this”—here he chinked the money between his fingers as he gave it to Jack—“is fifteen shillings ten-pence. I want you to do something for me, Jacky. I want you to go down to the Golden Fish and pay Landlord Evans his account, and then give this release to Dockray, who hath the America men in charge. After that I want you to take them down to the wharf and deliver them over to Captain Butts, and get his receipt. D’ye understand?”
“Why, yes, I do,” said Jack; “but why do you want me to do this when the crimp can serve you so much better than I?” He could not understand why his uncle, who had never before made any demands upon him should suddenly prefer such a request as this.
“Why,” said Hezekiah, “you ask me for money t’other day, didn’t ye? Well, then, if you want money you must begin to do something for to earn it. What I want you to do now is to take these servants down and deliver them over to Captain Butts.”
“Oh, well,” said Jack, “I’m willing enough, but I don’t see why you should choose me to do it. What am I to do with them? Tell me again.”
“You’re to take them down to the wharf, d’ye understand? Then Captain Butts will give you a receipt for ‘em. Then you’ll have nothing more to do with the business.”
“Very well,” said Jack; “methinks I understand. And now if the Captain is ready to go, why, I am, too.”
As he and Captain Butts walked together down the street in the darkness, Jack said again: “I don’t see why he wants me to take his servants down to the wharf. He never asked such a thing of me before.”
Captain Butts, for reply, burst out laughing, and fetched him a clap on the shoulder that jarred him through and through. “Well, I do suppose you’ll find out some day why he sends you on his errands,” he said.
KIDNAPPED
AT THE END of the court the two parted, the Captain going on down to the wharf and Jack up to the Golden Fish. He found the crimp and gave him Hezekiah’s release, and then the redemptioners immediately began to make themselves ready. There was something pitiful in the meagerness of their preparation. One or two of them had nondescript bundles tied up in handkerchiefs, and one had a pair of stockings wrapped up in a piece of dirty paper. Beyond this they had nothing at all to take with them to the new world to which they were bound. But they seemed to borrow very little trouble on that score. They were very restless and turbulent at the near prospect of sailing. They had somehow contrived to obtain some liquor, and two or three of them were more than half drunk.
The crimp brought them out into the court of the inn and arranged them in some sort of order, two by two, by the dim light of the lantern. They jostled and pushed one another, and leered in the lantern light at Jack as he stood looking at them helplessly. “I’ll never be able to take them down to the wharf by myself,” said he.
“Oh, you’ll be able to take us,” said a big, bull-necked fellow; “a baby’d lead us wherever he chose for to go,” and then they all laughed.
“Well, I don’t know,” said the crimp, shaking his head as he looked them over; “like enough I’d better go with you as far as the wharf. I don’t know why he should have sent you to take ‘em, anyhow. Lookee!” said he to the huddled line of servants, in a suddenly-changed voice; “I won’t have none of your tricks, d’ye understand? D’ye see this?” and he fetched a bludgeon out of his pocket and showed it to them. “The first man as tries any of his tricks, I knocks him on the head, d’ye understand?”
“Why, master,” said one of the men, “you wouldn’t hurt us, would you? We be your lambs.”
“Never you mind,” said the crimp, shaking his head. “Don’t you go trying any of your tricks on me. Come along now, march!”
“Hurrah for the Golden Fish and Johnny Waddels!” cried out one of the men.
The others gave a broken and confused cheer as they marched away out of the court, the crimp walking beside the first couple, and Jack coming after to keep a lookout upon them. They marched along for a while, first down one street and then another until they had come to the water-front. The wind was blowing chilly. The bull-necked fellow had begun to sing. They walked along for some little distance and then crossed the street. Here the storehouses stood dark and deserted as they passed by them. At last they came to the wharf, across which the night wind swept without shelter.
“Well,” said the crimp, “I’ll leave you here. ’Tis no use my going any further.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “I can manage them very well now by myself, I suppose.”
“I’ll just wait under the lee of the shed here,” said the crimp, “till I see you’re all right.”
“Very well,” said Jack. “Come along,” said he to the men as they stood shivering in their thin, ragged clothes. The bull-necked fellow had ceased his discordant singing. At Jack’s bidding they now marched out along the wharf. There were lights out in the darkness at the end of the wharf, where the sloop lay black and shapeless in the night. When Jack came to where the light was he found two dark figures standing waiting for him on the wharf. One of them was Captain Butts, the other was the man in the knit cap, who now carried a lantern hanging over his arm. There were two or three men, two of them also with lanterns, standing on the deck of the sloop. Jack knew that the boat that had brought the Captain off from the brig was lying in the darkness beyond, for he could hear the sound of voices, and then the sound of the rattle of an oar.
Captain Butts had twisted his handkerchief well up about his throat. “Well,” said he, “I thought you was never coming.”
“I came as soon as I could,” said Jack.
“Just bring the men out to the boat, across the sloop here,” said the Captain; and at Jack’s bidding the men, one after another, jumped down from the wharf to the deck of the sloop below. Jack followed them, and the Captain and the man with the lantern followed him. “Where’s your list?” said the Captain, and then, as Jack gave it to him: “Hold the lantern here, Dyce. That’s it.” He held the list to the dull light, referring to it as he counted the shivering transports who stood in line. “Sixteen—seventeen—eighteen—nineteen—nineteen all told. That’s right. Now, then, look alive, my hearties, and get aboard as quick as you can!”
Jack stood with his hands in his pockets and his back to the chill night breeze. The wharf and the sloop, deserted in the night, seemed a singularly dark and lonely background to the dimly moving figures. The water, driven by the wind, splashed and dashed noisily around the end of the wharf. One by one the redemptioners clambered clumsily over the rail of the sloop and down into the boat alongside, stumbling over the thwarts in the darkness and settling themselves amid the growling and swearing of the sailors. “Are you all right?” asked the Captain.
“All right, sir,” said Dyce.
Suddenly the Captain turned sharply toward Jack. “Now, then,” said he, “you get aboard too!” Jack gaped at him. “You get aboard too!” said Captain Butts again.
“What do you mean?” said Jack.
“I mean that you’re going aboard too,” said the Captain, and as he spoke he reached out and caught Jack by the collar. “That’s why you were sent here,” said he, “and that’s what I’m bound to do. I’m bound to take you to the Americas with me.”
Then Jack saw it all in a flash. He stood for one stunned instant, and then he began struggling fiercely to loosen himself from the Captain’s grasp upon his collar. The next instant he felt himself jerked violently backward and he heard the Captain’s voice saying: “You get into the boat down there! You’ll do as I tell you, if you know what’s good for you!”
Jack twisted and struggled desperately and frantically, but still the Captain held him in a grip like a vise. “Let me go!” gasped Jack. “Let me go!”
“Into the boat, I tell ye!” he heard the Captain’s voice growling in his ear, and at the same time he found himself flung forward violently toward the rail of the sloop. The boats and the dark waters were just below. He saw dimly, his sight blurred with the fury of his struggles, the dark figures of the men in the boat below. He flung out his feet against the rail, bracing himself against the Captain’s hold; at the same time he clutched hold of the stays. “Here, Dyce, loose his hand there,” said the Captain’s voice, panting with his struggles. “The young villain! What d’ye mean, anyhow?”
The man with the knit cap sprang forward at the Captain’s bidding, and, still holding the lantern, began to pluck Jack’s fingers loose from the stays. Then suddenly Jack screamed out, “Help!—Help!—Help!” three times, and at the same time he kicked backward violently against the Captain’s shins.
“You will, will you!” wheezed the Captain. As he spoke he jerked Jack violently backward. Jack had just time to see a whirling flash in the light of the lantern. Then there came a deafening, blinding crash. Ten thousand sparkling stars flew whirling around and around him. He felt a hot stream shoot down across his face, and he knew that it was blood. There was another crash, this time duller and more distant, then a humming that droned away into stillness—then nothing.
“By blood! Captain,” said Dyce, “I believe you’ve killed the boy.”
The Captain thrust the pistol with which he had struck Jack back again into his pocket. “The young villain!” he said, panting with his late efforts. “He’ll kick me, will he? And he’d’a’ had the town down on us if I hadn’t shut his noise.” He lowered down upon Jack’s figure lying deathly still and in a dark heap on the deck. Dyce bent over the senseless form, holding the lantern to the face. Jack’s eyes were upturned. His legs and body twitched; his head was streaming with blood and his face was bloody. Captain Butts stooped over him. “Oh! he’s all right,” said he roughly; “he’ll come to by and by; he’s only stunned a trifle. Get him aboard and be quick about it! There’s somebody coming along the wharf now. Here; here’s his hat. Catch it there.”
“‘HE’LL COME TO BY AND BY; HE’S ONLY STUNNED A TRIFLE,’ SAID THE CAPTAIN.”
ABOARD THE ARUNDEL
FOR a long while Jack was very light-headed and sick. He did not seem to have any strength. It seemed to him that several days passed while he lay in his berth, now partly waking, now partly sleeping. When he was partly awake his mind seemed to wander, and he could not separate the things he now saw from the things he had seen before. Both seemed grotesque and distorted. It seemed to him that his father was nearly always with him. He had a line of Greek to construe, but he could never get the words correctly. He kept trying and trying to get the words in their proper order, but always, when he would get the line nearly correct, it would fall to pieces, and he would have to begin all over again. He felt that his father was very angry with him, and that he was driving him on to complete the line, and he felt that if he could only finish the task he would have rest and be well again. But there were three words that never would fit rightly into the line, and he never could make them fit into it. With these several fancyings there commingled the actual things about him. His father seemed to him to be waiting and waiting for him to complete his task; but at the same time he saw the sloping deck of the vessel and the berths upon the other side, and could feel the brig rising and falling and rolling upon the sea. There was ever present in his ears the sound of creaking and groaning and rattling and sliding, and there were men talking together and smoking their pipes, the pungent smell of the tobacco helping to make him feel very sick. If he could only fit these words together into the line, then his father would go away, and he would be well and could go up on deck. Oh, how his head ached! He wished he could get away from these words that would not fit into the sentence.
Then the night would come, and he would be partly asleep. Sometimes he would lie half dreaming for an hour or more, and in the darkness the things of his fancy were very real.
Very soon after he had been brought aboard he had a dim, distorted vision of Dyce, the mate, coming with a lantern to where he lay, bringing somebody along with him. It seemed to him that the two men had leaned over him talking about him while a number of other people had stood near. The man who had come with the mate must have been Sim Tucker, a thin, little man, with a long, lean chin, who was a barber-leech. Jack had felt some one trim his hair, and then do something that had hurt him very much. It seemed to be a grotesque nightmare that the barber-leech had sewed up his head. Afterward a bandage was tied around his head, and then he felt more comfortable.
Jack knew very well that it had all been a dream, and he was always surprised to wake up and find the bandage around his head.
Now and then Sim Tucker would come and speak to him. “How d’ye feel now?” he would maybe say.
“Why,” said Jack, “I would be all well if my father would only go away. But I can’t construe that sentence.”
“You can’t what!”
“I can’t get those Greek words right, and my father won’t go away.”
“Why, your father says they’re all right.”
“Does he?”
“Aye.”
“But there are those four words. They won’t fit.”
“Why, yes, they fit all right. Don’t you see?” Then it seemed to Jack that they did fit into the sentence, and for a little while he was more easy in his mind.
After a while he began to get better, and his head got clearer. Then one day he was so well that he was able to crawl up to the deck. He had not eaten anything at all and was very weak. He climbed up the companion-way and stood with his head just above the scuttle. He looked aft almost along the level of the deck. In the distance was the rise of the poop-deck, with a man at the wheel just under the over-hang. The first mate, Dyce, still wearing his knit cap pulled down half over his ears, was walking up and down the poop-deck, smoking. With the rise and fall of the vessel, Jack could catch every now and then a glimpse of the wide, troubled ocean, moving and heaving with ceaselessly restless, crawling waves, cut keenly and blackly at the sharp rim of the horizon against the gray sky. Every now and then there was a great rush of air from the vast hollow sails overhead, that swept back and forth, back and forth across the wide, windy sky. The sailors looked at him as he stood there with the bandage wrapped around his head. He began to feel very sick and dizzy with the motion of the vessel, and presently he crept down below, back to his berth again.
“Be you feeling better?” said one of the men, coming to him.
“Yes, I think I am,” said Jack, “only it makes me sick and faint-like to stand up.”
“Well, you’ve been pretty sick,” said the man, “and that’s the sacred truth. I thought the Captain had killed you for sure when I saw him hit you that second crack with the pistol. I thought he’d smashed your head in.”
Several of the other men had gathered about his berth and stood looking down at him. Jack wished they would go away. He lay quite still, with his eyes shut, and by and by they did leave him.
He felt very lonely and deserted. A great lump rose in his throat when he thought of all that had happened to him. “I have not a friend in the world,” he said to himself, and then the hot tears forced themselves out from under his eyelids.
When next he opened his eyes he saw that Sim Tucker was standing over him. “How d’ye feel now?” said the barber-leech.
“Oh, I feel better,” said Jack irritably. “I wish you’d go away and let me alone.”
“Let me look at your head,” said the leecher. He unwound the bandage deftly with his long, lean fingers. “Aye,” said he, “ye’re getting along well now. To-morrow I’ll take out them stitches. He must have hit ye with the cock of the pistol to make a great, big, nasty cut like that.”
ACROSS THE OCEAN
THE next morning Jack was up on deck again for a while, feeling very much better and stronger than the day before. In the afternoon Mr. Dyce came down into the steerage and told him that the Captain wanted to see him.
Jack, although he was now out of his bunk, was still very weak, and not yet accustomed to the rolling heave and pitch of the vessel at sea. He followed the mate along the deck in the direction of the round-house, balancing himself upon the slanting, unsteady plane, now and then catching at the rail or at the shrouds or stays to steady himself. Everything was still very fresh and new to him, so that, even though his mind was heavy with leaden apprehension concerning the coming interview with Captain Butts—the thought which weighed down his spirit with dull imaginings—even though his mind was full of this, the freshness and newness of everything was yet strong in his consciousness—the tumultuous noise of the sea, the sun shining bright and clear, the salt wind blowing strong and cold. Every now and then a cresting wave would flash out a vivid whitecap in the sunlight against the profound green of the limitless ocean; the sky was full of clouds, and purpling shadows dappled the wide stretch of ever-moving waters. The brig, plowing its way aslant to leeward, plunged every now and then with a thunderous clap of white foam into the oncoming wave, and the broad shadows of sail and rigging swept back across the sunlit deck with the backward and forward sweep of the masts against the sky high overhead. Of all these things Jack was strongly conscious as he walked along the deck, wondering, with that dull and heavy apprehension, what Captain Butts was going to say to him.
Two men on the poop-deck were heaving the log, one of them keeping tally with a slate; a third, with a red bandana handkerchief knotted about his head, stood gripping the wheel, holding the yawing vessel steadily to its course. The man with the slate looked at Jack as he came along the deck, clinging to the rail for support.
Captain Butts was waiting in the round-house, leaning with elbows upon the table. A bottle of rum and a half-emptied tumbler stood on the table at his elbow, and the cabin was full of the strong, pungent odor of the liquor. A chart, blackened and dirty as with long use, lay spread out on the table. Part way across it stretched a black line which the Captain had drawn—probably the supposed course of the vessel—for Captain Butts sailed by dead reckoning. He looked up from under his brows as Jack entered, frowning until his partly bald forehead swelled with knotted veins, but he did not immediately say anything. Jack had come forward and stood at the end of the table. The mate, who lingered close to the door, had taken out his pipe and was filling it with tobacco. Jack did not know how pale and thin he was, how sick he looked; he was conscious only of the weakness that seemed not only to make him unsteady upon his legs, but to unnerve him of all strength of spirit. As he stood there now, facing the Captain, he felt an hysterical choking in his throat, and he swallowed and swallowed upon the hard, dry lump that seemed to be there.
“Well, my hearty,” said the Captain, breaking the silence at last with his hoarse, rattling voice, “well, my hearty, you got your dose that time, or else I’m mistook. By Blood!” he continued with sudden savageness, “I’ll teach you to play with Benny Butts, I will, and to kick at his shins. By Blood! When you’re dealing with me, you’re not dealing with your poor old uncle as ye can bully and blatherskite as you please. By Blood! I’ll break your back if you go trying any of your airs with me, I will.” And as his anger rose with his own words, he opened his eyes wide and glared upon his victim. Jack did not dare to reply. He stood looking down, holding tight to the edge of the table and striving to balance himself to the lurching of the ship.
“Your uncle told me all about you, he did,” said Captain Butts, beginning again; “how you threatened him with the law and tried to make mischief atwixt him and your t’other folks. He told me how you stole his money away from him for to—”
“I never stole a farthing in my life,” said Jack hoarsely.
“D’ye give me back talk?” roared the Captain, smiting his palm upon the table. “By Blood! if ye answer me any of your back talk, I’ll clap ye in irons as quick as look at ye. I say ye did steal money from your uncle.” Again he glared at Jack as though defying him to reply, and Jack, conscious of his utter powerlessness, did not venture to answer. “I say ye did steal money from your uncle,” repeated the Captain, “and that again and again. He might have sent ye to jail had he been so minded, and maybe he would ha’ done so only for the shame o’ the thing. Now I tell ye what you’re going to do. You ‘re going to the Americas to be put to work under a master who’ll keep you out o’ mischief for five years. That’s what you’re going to do. After you’ve served out your five years in the Americas under a master, why, then, maybe, you’ll know how to behave yourself arter you get back home again.”
The brig gave a sudden heaving lurch that sent the bottle and glass sliding across the table. The Captain caught them with a quick sweep of his hand, while Jack, losing his balance, partly fell, partly sat abruptly down upon the seat beside him. He was up again almost instantly and stood once more holding by the side of the table.
“Now, you listen to what I say. You behave yourself decent while you’re aboard this here brig, and you’ll be treated decent, but you go a makin’ any trouble for me, and by Blood! I’ll clap you in irons, I will, and I’ll lay ye down in the hold, and there ye’ll stay till we drop anchor in Yorktown. D’ye hear that?”
Jack nodded his head.
“Well, then, if ye hear me, why don’t ye answer me?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jack.
“Very well, then, you go and remember what I’ve said.”
Jack, so dismissed, went out of the round-house and into the wide, bright sunlight again. Nor was it until he had returned half way back across the slanting deck that anything like a full realization of his fate came upon him. Then suddenly it did seize upon him, gripping him almost like a physical pang. He stopped short and caught at the foremast stays under that sudden grip of despair, and bent leaning over the rail of the ship. Then, in an instant the sky and the ocean blurred together and were lost in the blinding flood, and hot tears went raining down his face in streams. He stood there for a long time facing the ocean and crying. No one knew what he was doing, and he was as much alone as though he stood all by himself in the midst of the empty universe, instead of aboard a brig with footsteps passing around him and the grumbling growl of men’s voices as they talked together sounding in his ears.
It had seemed to Jack at that time, when he stood there crying out into the face of the sea and the sky, as though life had no hope and no joy, and as though he never could be happy again. It was not so, however, and it never is so. We grow used to every sorrow and trouble that comes to us. Even by the next day he had begun to grow accustomed to the thought of his fate. He awoke to an immediate consciousness of it, and all day it stood there, a big, looming background to the passing events of his life, while he helped the other redemptioners wash down the decks, pattering about in the wet with his bare feet in the slushing slop of water; all the while he stood leaning over the rail, dumbly joying in the consciousness of the sweep and rush of wind and water—looking out astern of the vessel at the wake that spread away behind, over which hovered and dipped and skimmed the little black Mother Carey’s chickens. In all the things of his life it was thus present with him, but he did not again suffer a despair so poignant and so bitter as had struck him down that time he had stood there crying out toward the sky and the ocean with his back to the ship’s company. So it is that time so quickly wears away the sharp edges of trouble, until it grows so dull and blunted that it no longer hurts.
The crew had come somehow to know something of Jack’s history. The first day he was out on deck after a spell of stormy weather into which the Arundel sailed, Tom Roberts, the carpenter, asked him if he had not an uncle as was a lord. “He’s a baronet,” said Jack, and Roberts said he knowed he was summat of the kind. The same day, as Jack was standing in line with the others waiting for his dinner to be served out to him, the carpenter passed close to him with a wink. “You come over along o’ we,” he said, “and you shall have a taste o’ grog with your victuals,” and Jack, after a hesitating moment, had, with a feeling of gratification and pleasure, followed him over to the forecastle scuttle, where a part of the crew sat eating in the sunshine that shone aslant under the foresail. After that he nearly always messed with the crew, and by the end of the voyage it had become a regularly established thing for him to do so.
Some of the crew had either lived in the Colonies, or had sailed from one to the other in coasting vessels, and Jack learned much about his future home from them. Roberts himself had lived for two years as ship-carpenter in Boston, in the province of Massachusetts, and one of the men, named Dred—Christian Dred—had lived for a while in North Carolina with Blackbeard, the famous pirate. He had been one of the pirate’s men, and had sailed with the renowned freebooter in his famous ship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge.
During the voyage Jack became better acquainted with Dred than with any one aboard the Arundel, and before they had reached Virginia the two had become very intimate. Dred was a silent, taciturn man, speaking but rarely to any one and saying what he had to say in as few words as possible. But he seemed pleased with Jack’s friendship. He questioned Jack much as to his former life, and in return told a good deal about himself. He said he had left Blackbeard the year before and had surrendered upon the King’s Proclamation of Pardon. He always carried his pardon about with him rolled up in oil-skin and hung about his neck by a bit of string, and he showed it to Jack one day, unrolling the oil-skin very carefully and gingerly, and then rolling it up again with just as particular care as he had opened it. He told Jack that after he had surrendered to the Pardon, Blackbeard and others of the pirates had also surrendered. He said that Blackbeard was now living on a farm down at Bath Town, in North Carolina, and had married a fine young “gell” of sixteen or thereabouts. He once told Jack that he had begun his “h—cruising,” as he called it, when he had sailed from New York in a “Red Sea Trader” in ‘95, and that ever since then he had “smelled brimstone.”
(The Red Sea Traders, it may be explained, were those who carried supplies of stores, chiefly of rum and gunpowder, to the pirates who then so infested the west coast of Africa, exchanging their commodities for plunder captured by those freebooters.)
Dred told Jack that he was only eighteen years old when he had sailed in the Red Sea trade. “Not much older than you be now,” he added.
Once, when Dred was overhauling his gunny-bag, he brought out a string of a dozen or so jingling coins hung on a bit of silver wire. He held the trinket out at arm’s length. “D’ye see this here string o’ money?” said he; “I gave that to a Spanish gell once down in Port Royal, Jamaicy, and what’s more, I took it off of her neck again arter she had died of yellow fever, and no one else’ld go nigh her.”
Jack grew to like Dred very heartily. He did not think of him as being a red-handed and wicked pirate. It did not seem to him that his new friend was, after all, very different from other men—excepting that he had had very wonderful adventures happen to him.
And yet Dred was indeed a red-handed pirate.
It was toward the latter part of the voyage that he told Jack the story of the taking of the English ship that Blackbeard afterward used as the flag-ship of his pirate fleet, and which became so famous under the name of the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Dred’s was almost the most important part in that tragedy. He told the story almost naïvely, and did not at all seem to appreciate the significance of what he had done.
They—the pirates—had, he said, been cruising in the West Indies. Then they sailed northward until they came to Charleston. (Here he told incidentally how they had blockaded the town for over a week, stopping and searching all incoming and outgoing vessels, and how they had even gone up boldly into the town in search of a chest of medicine.) After they had left Charleston, they had, he said, cruised away off shore with two sloops and a bark which they had taken. They “made no purchase,” as he phrased it, until one morning they sighted a sail, which proved to be an armed ship of some six or seven hundred tons burden, bound apparently for the Chesapeake Capes.
When they had come to within hailing distance of the vessel they ordered her to heave to. But she would not, and there was some exchange of shots before she would finally surrender. The ship had only one passenger aboard, a young Virginia gentleman, Mr. Edward Parker, who had been to college in England and who was now returning home, having finished his education. Dred said that the supercargo, on being threatened by Blackbeard, told the pirates that the young gentleman had in his charge a valuable chest of money and of goldsmiths’ bills of exchange. On hearing this Blackbeard and two or three of the pirates ran aft to the cabin, only to find that the young gentleman had locked himself in and refused to come out.
After some parleying the pirates tried to break in the door, but it was braced from within, and the young gentleman at once began firing at them through the panels. Two of the pirates were shot. “One on ‘em,” said Dred, “was Abraham Dolling, and he was shot that bad through the neck that we had to hale him off by the legs, and he died a little bit after just at the bottom of the poop ladder.”
His own part in the tragedy that followed Dred told somewhat thus:
“Seein’ as how we was makin’ nothing of it at all by the way we was doing, I climbs up on the poop-deck, thinking maybe to get a sight of my young gentleman through the sky-light. But no; he had blocked up the sky-light with mattresses from the captain’s berth. So then I went across the poop-deck to the stern falls. The boat had been shot away from the lee davit by our fire, and the lines hung loose from the falls over the stern. I lashed two on ‘em together and let myself down from the davits with one hand, holding my pistol with t’ other. I eased myself to one side until I was low enough, and then I peeped in at the stern window. There I could see my young gentleman off beyond in the captain’s cabin standing close by the door, and I can see him now as plain as I can see this here hand o’ mine. He had pulled a couple of sea chists to the door, and he had a plank from the captain’s berth set agin ‘em and propped agin the braces of the table. He was in his shirt sleeves, and he had a pistol in each hand. The captain o’ the ship was a’ talkin’ to him from t’ other side of the door, telling him he’d better gin up and surrender the money, and I could hear my young gentleman swearing by all that was holy that he would never gin up the money. He had his head turned to one side, and he didn’t see me, so I crawled in through the window. But I’d no more ‘n set foot on deck than all on a sudden he wheels around like a flash, and afore I knowed what he was at—Bang!—he fires his pistol fair for my head. I felt the wind of the ball and it smashed into a chiny closet just behind me. Then, seeing he had missed me, he ups with t’ other pistol and arter that ’twas either him or me. So I let fly, and down he went all of a heap acrost the chist afore the door.”
“Was he dead?” asked Jack.
“I think he were,” said Dred. “Leastways he was dead afore we could get him out of the cabin.”
Dred told this story to Jack one afternoon as they were sitting together up under the lee-forecastle rail, and then he showed him the pardon in the oiskin bag hung around his neck.
In the intimacy between the two Jack talked much to Dred about his own prospects, and his new friend advised him to submit to his fate with patience. “Arter all,” he said, “five year be n’t so werry long—not nigh as long as death. And then you’ll see a deal o’ the world, and arter that you goes back home agin, an’ there ye be,” and the illogical words brought a good deal of comfort to Jack.