The ink with which this Round Robin was manufactured was pale, and might have been compounded of lampblack mixed with water. The handwriting was extraordinary—a Dutch scrawl, scarcely decipherable here and there. When I had read it through, and twisted the thing round so as to peruse the names, I burst into a laugh.

“It is Yan Bol’s dictation,” said Greaves, “and Wirtz took it down. Probably a whole book of ‘Paradise Lost’ gave Milton less trouble than this composition of the poor devils forward.”

“What shall you do, sir?” said I, putting the paper down on the table.

“Oh, the petition forces my hand. It is the whole ship’s company, you see, barring Jimmy, who delivered it. I will ask you to step on deck and tell Bol that I’ll communicate the business of the voyage to the men this afternoon at eight bells.” I was about to leave the berth. “I’ll frankly own, Fielding,” he exclaimed, “that I am influenced by you in this matter. If you were in my place you would no longer withhold the secret of this errand from the crew?”

“I would not. My argument is that this brig must, under any circumstances, be navigated by a ship’s company. A time must come when you will be obliged to trust your crew, and the present crew seem to me as likely and trustworthy a lot as a man must hope to meet with in the republic of the merchantman’s forecastle.”

“I lack decision,” he exclaimed, “and why? The stake is a huge one. Well, give Yan Bol my message, will you?”

I left him, fetched my cap, and went thoughtfully on deck. I had reckoned him, when we first met, a man of strong and energetic character—a person in the first degree qualified for the control of a ship bound on such a mission as this of gathering dollars from a hole in a rock. His indecision now was a disappointment, and it puzzled me. It did not please me that my views should influence him. I wished that he should stand bolt upright under his own burden. That my views would not have influenced him in any other direction than this, which concerned the trustworthiness of the men, I fully believed, and my opinion weighing with him in this matter increased my suspicion of the credibility of his story of the ship imprisoned in the cave; for I felt that, if he had no doubts at all that his ship with her cargo of dollars was as matter of fact a reality as the Black Watch herself, his method of approaching her would be based on iron-hard resolutions; whereas, if he had dreamt of the ship—if his hope and faith were those of a dream only—then might there, then would there, be an element of uncertainty in his views; and such an element of uncertainty I seemed to find in his first resolution not to impart the secret of the voyage to the men until the brig was south of the equator, and in his sudden determination now to communicate that secret at four o’clock this afternoon.

I gained the deck. Yan Bol stumped the planks. He was clad in heavy clothes, and his figure looked more than half its usual size. In fact, the further we drew south the more clothes did Yan Bol heap upon his back. His notion was that what was good to keep out the cold was good to keep out the heat. It was a Dutchman’s notion of apparel, like to the Frenchman’s idea of washing: “Why should I wash myself? I shall be dirty again.”

Yan Bol came to a stand when I rose through the hatch. He wore a fur cap with flaps, which the wind shook about his ears. I did not choose to be in a hurry, though he seemed to guess my mission, and eyed me out of the flat expanse of his face with a civil, or at least unconscious, frown of expectation. I looked up at the canvas; I gazed round upon the sea; I walked very deliberately to the binnacle, and stood for some moments with my eyes upon the compass-card, observing the behavior of the brig as she was swung along her course by the quartering seas. I then leisurely approached Bol.

“The captain,” said I, “has received the men’s Round Robin and has read it.”

“Mr. Fielding, I like to learn vhat he tinks of her as a Roundt Robin?” exclaimed Bol.

“Wouldn’t you first like to hear what his answer is?”

“Yaw, certainly. But she vhas a first-class Roundt Robin, and I likes to know vhat der captain says to him.”

“At four o’clock this afternoon you will pipe the crew aft, and the captain will then tell you all what errand this brig is bound on.”

“Vell, dot vhas as he should be,” he exclaimed. “Ve like to know by dis time vhere ve vhas boun’. Did you read dot Roundt Robin?”

“I did.”

“Vhas she goodt?”

“Good enough to make me laugh.”

“She vhas serious, by Cott, Mr. Fielding. Vere could her laughter be? Dot is vhat I like to hear now.”

“A Round Robin is not a thing to be criticised,” said I. “No man is supposed to have had a particular share in the manufacture of it. If you want me to praise this Round Robin I shall suppose you the author of it.”

“Dot vhas right, but still I ox,” said he, in his deep voice, slouching his cap to scratch his head, “vere could her laughter be?”

“You have the captain’s message,” said I, “and you will repeat it to the men.”

I then took another leisurely look round, and returned to my berth, my pipe, and my book.

At eight bells in the afternoon watch, the trade wind blowing freshly on the quarter, the sea running in dark blue heights with the frequent sparkle of silver flying fish at the coppered forefoot of the brig, and the sun sliding moist and warm and misty amid the breaks in the clouds southwest, Yan Bol, coming out of the caboose, where no doubt he had been smoking a pipe in company with the cook, who was a Dutchman, Hals by name, stood upon the forecastle, and putting his whistle to his lips blew a piercing summons, which, methought, found an echo in the very hollow of the distant little main royal itself, and then, opening his mouth, he delivered, in a voice of thunder, an order to all hands to lay aft.

The men were awaiting this command; they did not need to be urged aft. I had noticed the impatience with which they followed the chiming of the bell denoting the passage of time in ship fashion. On board the Black Watch we kept our little bell telling the hours and the half-hours as punctually as though we had been a ship-of-war.

The crew came swiftly and gathered abaft the mainmast, whence the quarter-deck went clear to the taffrail. Greaves had been on deck for above half-an-hour past, and I had been watching the ship since noon. No man can look so expectant as a sailor. He it is who above all men reaches to the highest possibilities of expression in the shape of expectation—that is to say, when at sea, when some weeks of shipboard are between him and the land he has left; when the full spirit of the monotony of the life possesses him, and when a very little thing becomes a very great thing merely because there is very little indeed of anything.

I had some difficulty to hold my countenance when I looked at the crew. They were going to hear a secret; it was a time of prodigious excitement, and every face was shaped by rough sensations and feelings. Greaves was smoking a long paper cigar; he flung what remained of it overboard, and with a glance behind him, as though calculating the distance of the man at the helm, that the fellow might hear what was said, he approached the sailors.

“I received the Round Robin, men,” said he, “and I read it. You want to know where this brig is bound to? I don’t blame ye. Mind,” he added, wagging his forefinger kindly at them, “I don’t blame ye. But you will remember, my lads, that when you agreed with me for the round voyage, whether at London or at Amsterdam, it was understood as a part of our compact that nothing was to be said about the destination of this brig until we were south of the equator.”

“Dot vhas right enough, sir,” said Yan Bol, “ve all say yaw to dot.”

“We are not south of the equator yet,” said Greaves.

“Dot vhas still very right,” returned Bol.

“Why should you expect me to break through my understanding with you?”

“Captain, it’s like this,” exclaimed one of the Englishmen, named Thomas Teach. “Had the secret of this here expedition remained yourn and yourn only, we should have been willing to wait for your own time to larn where we was going to. We’ve got nothing to say against Mr. Fielding—quite the contrairy; he’s a good mate, and I reckon as he finds us men that are under him willing and civil.”

“True,” said I loudly.

“But,” continued Teach, “Mr. Fielding wasn’t one of the original ship’s company. With all proper respect, sir, to him and to you, us men consider that since he knows where we’re a-going to, it’s but fair that we, as the original company, should likewise be told where we’re a-going to without waiting to receive the news till we cross the equator.”

He looked along the faces of his mates, and there was a general murmur of assent, Bol’s grunt deeply accentuating the forecastle note of acquiescence.

“Enough!” cried Greaves, “I am not here to reason with you, but to keep my promise. You want to know where this brig is bound to? Now attend, and you shall have the whole secret in the wag of a dog’s tail. D’ye know the Galapagos, any of you?”

“I’ve sighted them islands,” answered the seaman named Friend. The rest held their peace.

“Well,” continued Greaves, “south of the Galapagos there’s an island, and in that island there’s a cave, and in that cave there stands, grounded, with the heads of the topmasts hard pressed against the roof of the cave, a large full-rigged ship, and in the hold of that large full-rigged ship, there lies, stowed away, a number of cases filled with Spanish dollars. Those cases we are going to fetch, and that’s the brig’s errand.”

The four Dutch seamen gazed slowly at one another; the Englishmen’s glance had more of life, but it was easy to see that every man marveled greatly, each according to his powers of feeling astonished. I seemed to notice that one or two doubted their hearing, by their manner of gazing about them as though to make sure of their surroundings. After a pause Yan Bol said:

“She vhas roundt der Hoorn.”

“Where else, Yan?” exclaimed Friend.

“A ship in a cave!” cried William Galen; “dot vhas funny, captain.”

“Fire away with your remarks, and ask your questions,” said Greaves good-naturedly, and he plunged his hands in his pockets, and walked to and fro abreast of the men.

“Ship or no ship,” exclaimed Travers, “I allow that that there island’s to be our port—there and home a-constitooting the voyage?”

“That’s so,” said Greaves; “any more questions?”

“A ship in a cave! Dot vhas strange,” said Bol. “Suppose dot ship hov gone proke, und you findt der cave mit noting inside? Ve go home all der same?”

“All the same,” echoed Greaves.

“And if the vessel’s there, sir, and the dollars?” said a man named Call, in a thin voice.

“What do you want to know?” demanded Greaves.

The fellow, with some hesitation, brought out his question.

“Was the job going to bring more money than the wages that was to be took up?”

“When the divisions have been made,” replied Greaves, looking at Bol, “there will remain a trifle over sixty-one thousand dollars—about twelve hundred and twenty pounds—to be divided among the eleven of ye according to your ratings.”

Again the sailors gazed at one another with looks of astonishment, which, in several of them, quickly made way for broad grins.

“That’s a hundred pounds a man,” said Call, in his thin voice.

“The divisions will be according to your ratings, I told you,” exclaimed Greaves. “Bol would get more than the cabin boy. He would expect more.” Bol gave a short, massive nod. “You have now heard the nature of this voyage,” said Greaves, coming to a pause in his walk to and fro abreast of the men, “does any man among you find anything to object to in it? Is there any man among you,” he continued, after a considerable interval of silence, during which I had observed him regard the men steadfastly one after the other, “who feels disinclined to make the voyage round the Horn to the island and home again with a small cargo of silver money?”

“She vhas a voyage to suit me,” said Bol, “I likes der scheme.”

Several of the men made observations to the same effect.

“May we take it, sir,” said the small-voiced Call, “that we receive the wages we agreed for as well as this here hundred pound a man, to call it so?”

“You may take it,” said Greaves shortly.

“Beg pardon, cap’n,” said Hals, the cook, knuckling his forehead, and contriving a clumsy sea bow with a scrape of a spade-shaped foot, “how long might dot ship hov been in der cave?”

“How long? Since 1810.”

“Who see her, cap’n,” said Bol.

“I did.”

“And did you see der dollars?” said Hals, again knuckling his brow and again scraping his foot.

“Yes; but you now know the motive of the voyage, and there’s an end. If any man is not satisfied let him say so. We can make shift, no doubt, with fewer hands, and the fewer the crew the larger each man’s share. Note that. The fewer——” and he repeated the sentence. “I have agreements in my pockets for each of you, in which Heer Bartholomew Tulp, the charterer of this brig and the promoter of this expedition, agrees to divide the sum of sixty-one thousand dollars—supposing the ship to be still in the cave and the money to be still on board of her—in which Mr. Tulp, I say, agrees to divide sixty-one thousand dollars among the crew who return home in the ship, the proportions according to their ratings to be determined.” He put his hand upon his breast. “But, before I hand you these documents, I must know that you are satisfied with the intention of the voyage.”

“We are satisfied,” was the answer delivered by a number of voices, as though one man had spoken.

On this, without saying another word, he pulled out a little bundle of papers, and, glancing at each—all being inscribed with the respective names of the men—he handed one to Yan Bol, and a second to Friend, and a third to Meehan, and so on, until every man saving the fellow at the wheel had a paper.

“Give this to Street, Mr. Fielding,” said Greaves; and, taking the paper, I went to the wheel and gave it to the man who grasped the spokes.

The only two sailors who could read, Bol and Wirtz, opened the papers and looked at them. The others put theirs in their pockets.

“There is nothing more to be said,” exclaimed the captain; “but should any man feel dissatisfied—whether to-day, after you have talked over what I have told you, or later on, when you have had plenty of leisure to think—let him come to me. He shall have his wages down to date, and be transhipped or set ashore at the first opportunity; for the fewer we are the richer we are. You can now go forward.”

He turned and stepped aft, calling to me.

CHAPTER XIII.

A MIDNIGHT SCARE.

That having appointed me chief mate of the brig Black Watch, in the room of Jacob Van Laar, he agreed that the share in dollars—to wit, 30,556—that was to have been Van Laar’s had he proved himself a competent mate and remained in the ship, should be paid to me—that is to say, to William Fielding; and here he entered certain particulars stating my age, place of birth, my professional antecedents; and he likewise sketched very happily in words my face and appearance, “that Tulp,” said he, “shall not be able to pretend you are not the right man, and so wriggle out of what this document commits him to, in case I should not live to reach home.”

More went to this document than I need trouble you with. I watched him while he wrote. There was an expression of enthusiasm in his face, as though he found a sort of joy in writing freely about thousands of dollars. “Should it prove a dream,” thought I, stooping to caress Galloon, who lay at my feet, “what will the jolly Dutch and English hearts of this brig say when we arrive at the island—if such an island exists!—and find not only no ship, but not even a cave?” But the vision of Tulp came to the rescue again. A specter, formed mainly of a leering eye, a sleek and wary grin, and a velvet cap, seemed to gaze at me from behind Greaves; and I pocketed the document with a feeling that almost rose to conviction after I had read it, at my friend’s request, and thanked him very warmly for his kindness and for his friendly and particular interest in me.

We sat talking over what had passed between him and the crew.

“One point,” said he, “I believe I have scored: I have made them understand that the fewer they are the richer they will be. I hope this notion may not lead to some of them chucking the others overboard. They’ll all stick to the ship till the island is reached and the dollars are stowed. Afterward will be my anxious time. But the adventure must be gone through, and it remains also to be seen whether the brig is not to be navigated during the homeward run by fewer men than we now carry. The fewer the better. I should wish to see six men forward—no more—and three of us aft, for Jimmy is to be reckoned as a cabin hand, and, saving Bol and Wirtz, there’s not a man, in my humble opinion, whose spine that knock-kneed, shambling, slobbered Cockney lad—a creature you would set down as a funeral-and-wedding idiot merely—has not the strength to snap.”

Soon afterward we went to supper, for at sea the last meal is so called, and in the cabin we supped at half-past five; at six I relieved Yan Bol. The men seemed to be waiting for him to come off duty. They were smoking and talking round about their favorite haunt—the caboose. Some of them were so hairy and some of them so flat of countenance that it was impossible to gather what was in their minds from the looks of them. Bol went into the caboose, whence presently issued a quantity of tobacco smoke in a procession of puffs. I heard his voice rumbling; it was like the groaning of a distant tempest. I was too far aft to hear what he said, and there was likewise much noise of wind in the rigging, and a shrill lashing of brine alongside.

The sailors made a press at the caboose door, some in and some out, and those who were out stood in hearkening postures, their heads eagerly bent forward, the hand of the hindmost upon the shoulder of his fellow in front of him. Bol’s voice rumbled. It was clear he was reading aloud, so continuous was the rumbling, and presently I found that I had guessed right when I saw the outermost man hand his paper in through the caboose door. In short, every sailor wanted his document read aloud, two men only being able to read, and of these two Yan Bol was the more intelligible to the Englishmen.

Well, after this for some days I find nothing worth noting. A thing then happened, a trifling ocean incident some might deem it, but it left an odd strong impression upon me, and after all these years I can live through it again in memory as though now was the hour of its happening.

We had sailed out of the northeast trade wind, and had entered that zone of equatorial calms and baffling winds which is termed by sailors the doldrums. To this point we had made a fine run. Such another run down the South Atlantic must promise us a prompt arrival at the island, unless we should meet with the Dutchman Vanderdecken’s devil’s luck off the Horn. Neither Bol nor I spared the men, when our forefoot smote the greasy waters of the creeping and sneaking parallels. To every breath that tarnished the white surface of the sea we braced the yards, making nothing of running a studding sail aloft, though five minutes afterward the watch might be hauling it down with all aback forward and the brig going astern. By this sort of watchfulness, and by the willingness of the men, and by the slipperiness of our coppered bends, we sneaked our keel forward, every twenty-four hours showing what sometimes rose to a “run.”

It was in about one degree north, that down east at sunrise, in the heart of the dazzle there, we spied a sail, a topsail schooner, that as the morning advanced lifted toward us as though she were set our way by a current, for, often as I looked at her, I never could see that she shifted her helm to close us whenever a draught of air swept the shadows out of her canvas and held them steadily shining and gave her life for a while.

A serene cloudless day was that, the light azure of the sky whitening into a look of quicksilver where it sloped to the brim of the sea, and the sea floating thick and hushed and white, with a long and lazy heave that ran a drowsy shudder through our canvas. Greaves thought the schooner a man-of-war, something British stationed on the West African coast, well out in the Atlantic for a sniff of mid-ocean air, brought there by a chase, and now bound inward again, though subtly lifting toward us at present, attracted by the smartness of our rig, and inspired by a dream of slaves. But I did not think her a man-of-war, I did not believe her English. A Yankee I did not reckon her. In short, I seemed to know what she was not.

The morning wore away. At noon the schooner was showing to the height of her covering board, that is to say, she had risen her bulwarks above the line of the horizon, but the refraction was troublesome; she swam in the lenses of the telescope, she was blurred as though pierced with fragments of looking-glass along the risen black length of her, and sometimes I seemed to see gun-ports, and sometimes I believed them an illusion of the atmosphere.

“What do you think of her, Fielding?” said Greaves, while we stood at noon, quadrants in hand, taking the altitude of the sun.

“I don’t like her looks, sir,” I answered.

“Nor I. I believe now that she is a large Spanish schooner with hatches ready at a call to vomit cut-throats in scores. We’ll test her.”

A light breeze was then blowing off the starboard quarter. Our helm was shifted, the yards braced to the air of wind, and the brig was headed about west. We made eight bells, and grasped our quadrants, waiting and watching. For about ten minutes the schooner, that was now dead astern, held steadily on; her broad spaces of canvas then came rounding and fining down into a thin silver stroke, somewhat aslant. Greaves picked up the glass and leveled it at her.

“She is after us,” he exclaimed, “and, blank her, it won’t be dark for another seven hours!”

“She may yet prove an English man-of-war,” said I.

“I wish I could believe it now,” said he; “we must make a stern chase of it. Our heels are as smart as hers, I dare say, and this is good weather for dodging until the blackness comes, unless the beast should send boats, in which case there are thirteen of us; mostly Englishmen.”

He went below to work out the sights, leaving me to put our brig into a posture of defense, and to make the most of the weak catspaws which breathed and died. Ammunition was got up, the two long brass guns loaded with round shot, the carronades with grape to slap at the first boat that should come within range. In a very little while our decks presented a somewhat formidable appearance with chests of muskets and pistols loaded with ball and slugs, round and grape shot ready for handling, a cask full of cartridges, a sheaf of boarding-pikes, cutlasses at hand to snatch, and so on, and so on.

It is old-fashioned stuff to write about! yet your grandfathers managed very handsomely with it, somehow, old stuff as it is. It’s the city of Amsterdam that is shored up and held on end by piles; so does the constitution of this country rest on the boarding-pike. You clap a trident in the hand of your goddess of the farthing and the halfpenny. Why not a boarding-pike? That is Britannia’s own symbol. It was not with a trident that this invincible goddess charged into the channels, and swarmed over the bristling and castellated sides of her thrice-tiered thunderous enemies, and swept all opponents under hatches and battened them down there. It was the boarding-pike that did that work. But a weapon, the most victorious of all in the hands of the British tar, is doomed, I fear. Its fate is sealed. The giant Steam has laid it across his knee, and waits but to fetch a breath or two to break it in twain. Be it so. But laugh at me not as an old-fashioned proser when I say that it will be an evil day for England when the boarding-pike shall have been stowed away as a weapon that can be no longer serviceable in the hands of the British Jacks.

We ran the ensign aloft; the schooner took no notice. Some breathing of air down her way enabled her to slightly gain upon us. She sneaked her hull up the sea to the strake of her water line, but she was end on, and little was to be made of her. It then fell a sheet calm, and the stranger at that hour might have been about five miles astern of us. It was a little after four in the afternoon. The heat was fierce. The planks of the deck burnt like hot furnace-bricks through the soles of the shoes, the pitch bubbled between the seams, and in the steamy vapor that rose from the brig’s sides the lines of her bulwark rails snaked faking to her bows as though they were alive. The very heave of the sea fell dead; at long intervals only came a rounded slope sluggishly traveling to us, brimming to the sides of the brig, slightly swaying her, and making you think, as it rolled dark from t’other side of the vessel, of the sullen rising of some long, scaly, filthy monster out of the ooze to the greasy chocolate surface of a West African river.

“What is that?” suddenly exclaimed Greaves, who had been standing at my side looking at the schooner.

I pointed the glass.

“A boat, sir,” said I. “A minute—I shall be able to count her oars. Five of a side. She is a big boat and full of men.”

He took the telescope from me and leveled it in silence.

“She is a privateersman,” said he. “There’s nothing of the man-o’-war in the rise and fall of those blades; and if yonder oarsmen are not foreigners, my name is Bartholomew Tulp. Fielding, those scoundrels must not arrest this voyage, by Isten! There is nothing for them to plunder. They will cut our throats and fire the brig. Oh, blow, my sweet breeze! What sort of a gunner are you?”

“A bad gunner,” I answered.

“I’ll try ’em myself. I’ll try ’em with the first shot!” he cried, with his face full of blood and his eyes on fire. “There will be time to load and slap thrice at them before they’re alongside, and then——” He turned, and shouted orders to the men to arm themselves to repel boarders and to prepare for a bloody resistance. “Every man of ye will have to fight as though you were three!” he roared. “You will know what to expect if you let those beauties board you. Yan Bol——” and he shouted twenty further instructions, which left the men armed to the teeth, ready to leap to the first syllable of order that should be rendered necessary by the movements of the boat.

But at this moment I caught sight of a dim blue line on the white edge of the sea in the north. It was a breeze of wind, something more than a catspaw. The color was sweet and deep, and it spread fast; yet not so fast but that it was odds if the boat were not alongside before our sails should have felt the first of the wind.

Greaves sighted the long brass stern-piece, lovingly smote it, and then directed it on its pivot as though it were a telescope.

“Stand by to load again, men!” he cried to a couple of sailors who were at hand, and applied the match.

The explosion made a noble roar of thunder. The gun might have been a sixty-four pounder for that—nay, big as one of those infernal pieces which worried well-meaning Duckworth in the Dardanelles. The ball flew ricochetting for the boat, rhythmic feathers of water attending its flight, as though it chiseled chips of crystal out of the mirror it fled along. It missed the boat, but it fell close enough to flash a burst of white water that may have wetted some of the rogues; and, indeed, it was so finely aimed that our men roared out a cheer for the marksman.

That round shot achieved an unexpected result. The oars ceased to sparkle, the boat came to a stand; and this while our piece was loading afresh.

“Oh, ye saints, one and all, give it to me to smite ’em this time,” prayed Greaves through his teeth.

Wink went a gun in the bows of the boat; a puff like a cloud of tobacco smoke out of Yan Bol’s mouth rolled a little aside, and floated stationary and enlarging. The report came along like the single bark of a dog, but we saw nothing of the ball.

“Oh, come nearer—oh, come nearer!” groaned Greaves in his throat; and again he laid the piece, and again he applied the match, and a second volcanic burst of noise followed the fiery belch.

The final flash of water was astern of the boat this time; but Greaves’ second dose, leveled with amazing precision, considering the range, coming on top of the wind, the fresh, dark blue shadow of which would now be visible to the fellows astern, satisfied them. With mightily relieved hearts we beheld them pull the boat’s head round for the schooner, and, some minutes before they were got within the shadow of her side, the breeze was rounding our canvas, and the brig was wrinkling the water as she gathered way to the impulse aloft.

“Those gentry have not yet arrived at the Englishman’s notion of boarding,” said Greaves. “Your brass gun always speaks loudly. There was a note in the voice of this chap that deceived them. Their own schooner, probably, carried nothing so heavy.”

He slapped the breech of the brass piece, sent a contemptuous look at the schooner, and fell to pacing the deck.

The breeze slightly freshened and we drove along—considerably off our course, indeed, but that could not be helped: for the blue shadow of the wind was over the schooner; she was heeling to the small, hot gush of the draught; she had picked up her boat and was in pursuit of us. We waited awhile, and then, finding that she held her own—nay, that she was very slowly closing us, indeed—we put our helm up and squared away dead before it, leaving her to follow us as best she might with nothing more that would draw than a square topsail and topgallant sail and a big squaresail.

By sunset we had run her into an orange-colored star on the edge of the dark blue sea in the north; yet the cuss was still in chase, and, when the dusk came, we braced up on the larboard tack, with the hope of losing her, and steered southeast.

It was dark at eight o’clock, and a strange sort of darkness it was. All the wind was gone, and the sea gleamed like black oil smoking. The atmosphere had that smoky look; spiral folds of gloom seemed to stand up on the ocean, stretching tendrils of vapor athwart the stars and hiding most of them. ’Twas a mere atmospheric effect; yet all this blending of dyes, this thickening and thinning of the dusk, this heavy and stagnant intermingling of shadow around the sea produced the very effect of vapor. Sight was blinded at the distance of a pistol-shot, and the ocean lay as though suffocated under the burden of the hush of the night.

We kept all lights carefully screened, and the lookout was told to keep his ears open; but neither Greaves nor I felt uneasy. The schooner had been far astern when the evening fell, and our shift of helm, with a pretty considerable run into the southeast, could scarcely fail to throw her off the scent. But it is true, nevertheless, that vessels in stagnant weather have a human trick of turning up close together. I have been in a flat calm with a ship a long mile and a half distant from us, and in a few hours both vessels have had boats out towing, to keep the ships clear. Have vessels sexes? I believe so. It will not do to talk of the magnetic influence of wooden fabrics. Ships are sentient; the male ship with the nostrils of her hawse-pipes sniffs the female ship afar, and the twain, taking advantage of a breathless atmosphere, and of the helplessness of skippers—which there is no virtue in cursing to remedy—all imperceptibly float one to the other till, if permitted, they affectionately rub noses, then, lover-like, quarrel, snap jib booms, bring down topgallant masts, and behave in other ways humanly.

It was somewhere about ten o’clock that night that Greaves and I were seated on the skylight, smoking and talking, but all the while keeping an eye upon the deep shadow in whose heart the brig was sleeping, and listening for any sound upon the water. All hands were on deck. They lay about, dozing or mumbling in conversation; but they were in readiness, armed as when the boat had been approaching, and the carronades and two great guns were loaded and deck lanterns were alight below, hidden. The brig was prepared, nay, doubly prepared; for it was no man’s intention to let the boats of the schooner take us unawares. Our voyage and our lives were not to be brought to a hideous and untimely end by a scoundrel picaroon.

I had seen Yan Bol that afternoon before the dusk closed in, after looking at the schooner, advance his fearful fist and writhe it into an incomparable suggestion of throttling, with such an expression of countenance as was as heartening as the accession of a dozen picked men. And this little circumstance was I relating to Greaves as we sat together on the edge of the skylight, smoking.

“He is a heavy, terrible man,” said Greaves. “If the schooner’s people are Spanish, as I believe, I shall reckon Yan Bol good for ten of them, at least. The other Dutchmen would be good for four apiece, and the remainder may be left to our own countrymen of the jacket.”

“The Dutch fight well,” said I.

“Deucedly well,” he answered; “often have they proved our match. I would rather have fought the combined fleets at Trafalgar than De Winter’s ships. Duncan’s was a more difficult, and, therefore, a more splendid victory than our nation seems to have realized. But the truth is, little Horatio’s flaming sun filled the national sky at that time with its own blazing light, and all was sunk in the splendor, though there were other suns; oh, yes, there were other suns!”

“Hark!” I cried, “we are hailed.”

“Hailed?” he echoed in a whisper.

We listened. A figure came out of the darkness forward and said in a low voice, “There’s something hard by, hailing us.” Greaves and I went to either rail and searched the thick and silent darkness, over which hovered a faint star or two, pale and dying. I strained my ears. I could hear no sound of oars, not the least noise of any kind to tell that a vessel was near us. I looked for a sparkle of phosphorus, for any blue or white gleam of sea-glow, such as the stroke of an oar, whether muffled or not, will chip out of the water in those parts. The hail was repeated. It was the same hail I had before heard. It sounded like “Ship there!” and seemed to proceed out of the blackness over the larboard bow.

Galloon barked sharply and furiously.

“Silence, you scoundrel!” hissed Greaves at the dear old brute, and the dog instantly ceased to bark. “Do you see anything, Fielding?”

“Nothing, sir,” I answered, crossing the deck. “The cry seemed to me to come from off the water on the larboard bow, and if it is our friend of to-day or any other ship, she is there.”

He went forward and I lost his figure in the blackness.

All hands were now wide awake. The gloom was so deep betwixt the rails that nothing was to be seen of the men, but I gathered from their voices that they were moving briskly here and there to look over the side and to peer into the smoky gloom over the bows. I went right aft, and first from one quarter and then from the other of the brig I stared and hearkened, straining my vision against the blackness till my eyeballs ached, straining my hearing against the incommunicable hush upon the ocean until I felt deaf with the sound of the beat of the pulse in my ear. Oh, it was such a night of wonderful silence that, had the full moon been overhead, the imagination might have heard the low thunder of the orb as it wheeled through space.

Greaves arrived aft.

“Is that you, Fielding?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I can see nothing, and the sea is as silent as a graveyard o’ night. Is that hail some piratic trick? I tell you what: the words might have been English, but they were not delivered by an English throat. I shall make no answer. There is nothing to be done but to watch for fire in the water; should it show, to hail then, and to let fly if the answer is not to our liking.”

He called for Yan Bol. The Dutchman’s deep voice responded, but even while he approached us the hail was repeated.

“There again!” cried I.

“Was it in English?” said Greaves.

“It was ‘ship ahoy,’ sir, very plain indeed, but thin, more distant than before, I fancy, and still off the larboard bow.”

At this instant there was a great commotion forward; I heard laughter, the cackling of affrighted cocks and hens, followed by a shout in the voice of the boy Jimmy:

“Here’s the chap as has been a-hailing, master.”

A singular noise of the beating of wings approached us, and I discerned the figure of the boy Jimmy, as he stood before us grasping something.

“Shall I wring un’s neck, master?” he cried, with a note of idiotic mirth in his voice.

“What the devil is all this about?” shouted Greaves. “What have you there?”

“The big Chaney cock with the croup, master,” answered the boy.

I burst into a laugh, but a laugh that, perhaps, was not wanting in a little touch of hysteria, so poignant was the feeling of relief after the deep uneasiness of the last quarter of an hour. The men, heedless of the discipline of the vessel, had come pressing aft in the wake of the boy, and forward there continued a wild concert of cocks and hens cackling furiously.

“Fetch a lantern, one of you,” bawled Greaves; “curse that poultry! Who started them all? That row’s as bad as a flare if there’s anything near on the lookout for us.”

A lantern was brought and the glare of it disclosed the tall, muscular, knock-kneed form of the youth Jimmy, grasping by the neck a huge, long-legged, ostrich-shaped cock, of the kind known as Cochin China. The faces of the seamen crowding aft to hear and see showed past him in phantom countenances, contorted out of all resemblance to themselves by their grins and stare of expectation, and by the dim light that touched them, and by the deep darkness behind them.

“What have you got there?” cried Greaves.

“It’s the big cock, master. He’s croupy,” answered the lad in his imbecile voice, continuing to grasp the fowl so tightly by the neck that, croup or no croup, the thing hung silent, as though dead, save that now and again it would give an uneasy, sick, protesting flap of its wings. “He wasn’t well this afternoon no, master. I was passing the coop, when I heard him sing out, ‘Ship ahoy!’ and I stopped to listen, and he sung out, ‘Ship ahoy!’ again. He was standing on one leg and the skin of his eyes was half drawed down, and I speaks to the cook about him, who tells me to go and be d——d.”

“He gooms, captain, vhen I vhas busy mit der crew’s supper; I had shcalded myself. No vonder I spheaks short,” exclaimed the voice of the cook among the crowd behind the lad.

“Bear a hand with your yarn, Jimmy!” cried Greaves.

“Well, master, when I hears that we was hailed, I came out of the bows, where I was lying down, and I listened, and I hears nothing; but by and by the hail comes, and I says to myself, ‘Aint I heard that woice before?’ and I stands listening till it sounds again. ‘It’s old Chaney,’ says I, and steps aft to the hen-coop, knowing in what part he lodges, and here he is, master. Shall I wring un’s neck?”

“Cook,” exclaimed Greaves, “take that cock from Jimmy and put it back in its coop. Go forward, men, but keep your eyes lifting till this thickness slackens. That hail may have come from a cock with the croup, as the lad says, but all the same, be vigilant till we can use our eyes. There may be something damnably close aboard even while I’m talking.”

The men answered variously in their gruff voices, and the mob of them rolled forward and vanished in the deep obscurity. The lantern which had been brought on deck was again taken below, and all now being silent fore and aft, Greaves and I lay over the side, listening and straining our sight into the murkiness; but not a sound came off the sea. No sparkle anywhere showed the life of a lifted blade; no deeper dye of ink indicated the presence of anything betwixt us and the horizon.

For an hour Greaves and I patrolled the deck, talking over the cock with the croup, over false alarms at sea; taling about the preternatural hush and sepulchral repose of the night; and then we talked of the voyage, of the island, of the ship in the cave; and on such matters did we discourse. And while we were conversing—an hour having passed since the incident of the croupy cock—we heard afar the tinkling and musical, fountain-like rippling of water brushed by wind, and a few minutes later, a pleasant breeze was cooling our cheeks, steadying our canvas, and propelling the brig, whose wake, as it streamed from her, trailed like a riband of yellow fire, while the wire-like lines which broke from her bows shone, as though at white heat, with the beautiful glow of the sea. The wind polished the stars and cleansed the atmosphere till you could see to the gloomy line of the horizon. By midnight the moon was shining, the heavens were a deep blue, and Greaves had gone below, satisfied that the brig was the only object in sight within the whole visible compass of the deep.

Though it had been Yan Bol’s watch from twelve to eight, yet, while the captain and I remained aft, he had kept forward. Now that Greaves had gone below, and my watch would be coming round shortly, Yan Bol came along to the quarter-deck.

“She vhas an oneasy time, Mr. Fielding,” he exclaimed in his trembling, deep voice, that made one think of thunder heard in a vault.

“It was,” said I; “but the sea is clear, and there’s an end to the trouble.”

“We should hov fought, by Cott,” said he, “had der needt arose. Ve did not like dot dis voyage should be stopped by a bloydy pirate. It vhas strange, Mr. Fielding, dot der cock should cry out in English.”

“It sounded English,” said I.

“Oh, she vhas goodt English. I like,” said he, broadly grinning, “dot my English vhas always as goodt. She vhas an English cock, maype, though schipped at Amsterdam. Had she been Dutch she vouldt hov spoke my language.”

At this moment eight bells—midnight—were struck. I thought to see Yan Bol instantly trudge forward with the alacrity of a seaman whose watch below has come round, but he evinced a disposition to linger, as on a previous occasion.

“I likes to findt a ship in a cave full of dollars, Mr. Fielding,” said he.

“There is a very great deal that one would like,” said I.

“Sixty-von tousand dollar,” he continued, “vhas a goodt deal of money. Dot money us men vill take oop. Und how much vill she leave, I vonder?”

“Eh?” said I. “Yes, Bol, that will be a matter of counting, won’t it?”

“I like to know, Mr. Fielding, vy she vhas sixty-one tousand dollar? Vy not a leedle more or a leedle less, or much more, or some tousands less? Dot’ll mean,” he continued after a pause, during which I remained silent, “dot dere vhas a large share ofer und aboove der sixty-one tousand dollar; but how vhas us men’s share arrived at I like to know?”

“Why do you not ask the captain? Why do you ask me these questions? I am not the captain.”

“No, dot vhas very right. But you hov der captain’s confidence; und vy do I ox, Mr. Fielding? Because der captain’s yarn is vonderful——” He broke off, looking at me very earnestly.

“Do you distrust the story?” said I.

“Hov I said so, hov I said so, Mr. Fielding? But she vhas vonderful all der same.”

I was silent. He continued to look at me for some moments in a dull Dutch way, then, seeming to check some observation he was about to make, he exclaimed:

“Veil, der coast vhas clear. I feel like sleeping. Good-night, Mr. Fielding.”

CHAPTER XIV.

I SEND MY LETTER.

And yet I could not arrive at any conclusion to satisfy me. “Am I influenced almost unconsciously against him,” thought I, “by his Dutch airs and graces? Am I moved to an inward, secret dislike by a certain freedom of speech and accost, by a sort of familiarity I have noticed among Germans, and thought particularly detestable in Germans?” though I had heretofore found such Dutchmen as I had encountered too stodgy and stolid, too insipid and inexpressive, too torpid in mind and laborious in perception to be readily capable of vexing one by that kind of freedom and easiness of address and bearing which makes you thirsty to kick the beast whose burden it is. No, I could not trace my doubts of Yan Bol to my dislike of his behavior to me. Indeed, I could not trace any doubts at all. And yet I never thought of him quite comfortably. If Greaves’ dollar-ship was no vision of his slumbers, if Greaves’ chests of milled silver were veritably aboard La Perfecta Casada in the cave he had described, then we should be a rich brig when we set sail from the island; we should need an honest crew to carry us safely home. Was Yan Bol honest? If a doubt of him arose he was the one man of the whole ship’s company whom it would be Greaves’ policy to get rid of as soon as possible, because he was the one man of all our little ship’s company the most capable, should he take the trouble to exert himself, of obtaining an ascendancy over his mates, and of directing them for good or ill as he decided.

These being my thoughts I resolved to repeat to Greaves the questions which Bol had put to me touching the money in the island ship. He listened to me anxiously and attentively.

“I hope that man will not go wrong,” said he, when I had concluded; “I like him.”

“He is a good man in the forecastle-sense of the word,” I answered.

“I like him,” he repeated. “He controls his mates; he is the sort of man to keep them straight if he chooses, and I am almost resolved to make him choose, by promising him a handsomer share than his bond states—not at the expense of the crew, no; but by drawing on my own and the ship’s share. Tulp must do what I want when I plan for the interests of all.”

“That is a hammer to drive the nail home,” said I, “for this has to be considered, captain; your cases of dollars will be handed over the side. The men are not fools; they will count them and roughly calculate the value of every case. As we sail home there will be much talk forward. The amount of money on board will, of course, be exaggerated. Bol will say, ‘I am second mate and boatswain, and my share is to come out of sixty-one thousand dollars, eleven sharing. How much does the Englishman get, the stranger that did not sail with us from Amsterdam, who is merely a shipwrecked man, and not one of us?’ He will wish to know how much, and he may breed trouble if he does not learn how much. On the other hand, if he gets the truth and compares it with his share——”

“All this has been in my head. I will confirm him in such honesty as he has by a written undertaking to pay him more dollars.” He added, after thinking a little while, “I wish he had not asked you those questions. But the fellow may doubt my story. All hands may doubt it.” He gazed at me significantly for a moment, and continued: “He might have hoped to get you to tell him something that he could repeat to the others, and that would hearten ’em. Should he question you again, encourage him to talk.”

“Very good, sir.”

“You are not to know the value of the freight of dollars.”

“I will know nothing when I converse with him.”

“But I shall want you to persuade him that my yarn is true,” said he with a faint smile, but with a gleam in his eyes which neutralized that weak expression of good humor.

The relations between the master and the mate—between the captain and the lieutenant—instantly made themselves felt by me. I looked him in the face awaiting instruction.

“You will be able to convince him that my yarn is true,” said he.

“He has all the reasons which I have for believing it.”

“Do you believe it?”

“Why, yes! Mynheer Tulp’s promotion of this voyage is all the proof that one wants.”

He cast his eyes upon the deck, and a light smile twitched his lips. When he next spoke it was to ask me some question that had no relation to the subject we had been conversing upon.

After this I created opportunities for Yan Bol to question me. I lingered when he came on deck to relieve me. I sought to coax him into asking about the ship in the cavern, by loitering in his company instead of at once going below, and by speaking of the voyage, of the Galapagos Islands, of the uncharted island to which we were bound; but his mind appeared to have suddenly and completely turned round; what was before an eager, was now a blank countenance; indeed, he would look at me suspiciously when I talked of the voyage and the dollar-ship as though I had a stratagem in my head which must oblige him to mind his eye. Thereupon I ceased to trouble myself to attempt to convince Yan Bol that the captain’s story was true, and that our errand was as real as a silver dollar itself is; and it was as well, perhaps, that this Dutchman found me no occasion to tax my wits by the invention of proofs for what I could by no means prove to myself. I did not like Greaves’ looks when he talked of his dollar-ship; I did not understand his half-smiles at such times; I was puzzled by the dreamy expression of his eye, and by the light that had kindled in his gaze when he asked me, with an unspoken doubt behind his words, to convince Yan Bol that his story was true, in order that the crew might be satisfied.

It was a few days after my chat with him about the Dutch boatswain’s questions that he asked me if I had succeeded in satisfying the fellow that there was a vessel, with a lazarette full of dollars, locked up in an island off the Western American coast? I told him that the man had bouted ship and was on the other tack now; that he shifted his helm when I approached him, exhibited no further curiosity, but, on the contrary, shrunk from the subject as though it vexed him. He made, or seemed to make, little of this. But that same evening, when I was sitting at supper with him, he said:

“Yan Bol will go to the devil for me now. I walked with him for an hour this afternoon, while you were below. He was frank. I like him none the less for being frank. He is a bit jealous of you. Mind ye, he said not one word against you, Fielding, not a syllable—though at the first syllable I should have brought him up, all standing. But the spirit of jealousy was strong in his remarks; it smelt in his words like a dram in a man’s breath. ’Tis natural. You are an Englishman—he is a darned Dutchman. You came aboard through the cabin window, and his countryman, Van Laar, goes out as you walk in. But a plague upon forecastle passions! He was frank, as I have said, and told me that he had some doubts of the truth of my story, and that the rest of the men had not yet made up their minds about it. ‘And what the deuce,’ said I, ‘is it to you or to the men whether my story be true or false? You were engaged for the voyage. It was a question of wages with you, and your wages will be paid.’ ‘Dot vhas right,’ said this Dutchman. But I talked of the Casada, nevertheless, described her in the cave, gave him, in short, the story of my discovery that it might go the rounds forward; and then I told him that I had made up my mind to increase his share of the booty; his share of the sixty-one thousand dollars, I said, was to be according to his rating, which was the highest next yours; but I added that if he chose to work with a will and aid me and you to the utmost to carry this brig in safety to the Downs, I would give him a written undertaking to pay him a percentage on the whole value of the property, which sum would be over and above what he would receive in money as wages and as his share in the sixty-one thousand dollars.”

“What did he say to that, sir?”

“He smiled, he thanked me, he let fall several Dutch words, swore that I was the finest captain that he had ever sailed under, and that his earnings out of this voyage would set him up for life in his native town. He was a fairly trustworthy fellow before. He is as honest now as is to be reasonably expected of human flesh. I am satisfied; and you need give yourself no further trouble, Fielding, to convince him that my story is true.”

Well, thought I, this, no doubt, is as it should be, though it seemed to me that Greaves was making too much of Yan Bol, too much of his own anxieties, indeed, sinking the skipper in the adventurer, and a little heedless of Nelson’s axiom that at sea much must be left to chance. If, thought I, he is cocksure that his ship and her dollars are where he says he beheld them, then how can it matter to him one jot whether his crew believe in his story or not? But conjecture and speculations of this sort were to no purpose. In a few weeks the problem would be solved; either the money would be aboard, or we should have found the ship broken up and everything gone out of her to the bottom—to such bottom as she rested upon, twenty or thirty feet, maybe, but as unsearchable to us, without diving equipment, as the floor of the mid-Atlantic; or we should have discovered that there was no ship and no island, and that ours had been the expedition of a dream. And still no matter, I would think. There are wages to be pocketed in the end, and I can only be worse off then by being so many months older than I was when I was fished up out of the Channel by the people of the brig.

The letter I had written to my uncle Captain Round, when I agreed to sail in the Black Watch in the room of Van Laar, I had not yet been able to send. I forgot all about that letter when I went aboard Tarbrick’s ship to arrange for the reception of the Dutch mate, and I had not witnessed in the little Rebecca, with her two of a crew, a very likely opportunity for communicating with Uncle Joe. But when we were somewhere about six degrees south we fell in with a large snow homeward bound. She was from round the Horn and proceeding direct to the Thames. I had several selfish as well as respectable and honorable motives for desiring to send the news of my being alive to my uncle, not to mention the pleasure it would give him and my aunt and cousin to learn that I was alive; I was down in his will for what you might call a trifle, but such a trifle as would prove very acceptable to me should it come to my having to continue the sea life for a living. There were other reasons why I desired that my uncle should know that I was alive, and let the one I have given suffice.

Our meeting with that snow was rendered memorable by a phenomenal caprice of wind. It was blowing a light breeze off our starboard bow; the hour was about two, the sky was like a sheet of pale blue silver, here and there shaded with curls and plumes and streamers of high-floating yellow-colored cloud. There was wind enough to keep the ocean trembling, but at intervals, and at fairly regular intervals, there ran north and south a number of glassy swathes, oil-calm paths from the remotest of the northern airy reaches to the most distant of the recesses of the south. It was my watch below when we sighted the sail; I had dined. It was soul-consumingly hot in the cabin, and I came on deck to smoke a pipe and lounge amid the brine-sweet draughts of air, and in the pleasant shadows cast upon the white and glaring planks by the quietly breathing sails. Greaves was below. Presently Yan Bol, who was in charge of the brig, approached me. I had watched him staring at the approaching vessel through the ship’s telescope, his vast chest rising and falling under his extended arms, which, clothed as he went—in pilot cloth, though the sun made him no shadow—looked as big as the thighs of an ordinary man. He approached me and said:

“Mr. Fielding, didt you belief in impossibilities?”

“No, Bol, I don’t; do you?”

“By de tunder of Cott, den, I shall for effermore after dis, onless, indeedt, I hov lost der eyes I schipped mit at Amsterdam.”

“What’s the matter?” said I.

“Coom dis vay, Mr. Fielding, und you see for yourself.”

He crossed the deck. I followed him. He put the telescope into my hands and leveled a square fat forefinger at the sail that was now at no great distance. I viewed the vessel through the glass, but saw nothing remarkable. She was a motherly tub of a ship, with big topsails and short topgallant masts, and a cask-like roll in the sway of her whole fabric as the silver blue undulations took her.

“Well, what is there to see?”

“Tunder of God?” cried he in Dutch. “Lok, Mr. Fielding, how her yards vhas braced.”

And now, indeed, I beheld what Jack might fairly call a miraculous sight. The wind, as I have said, was off our starboard bow, and we were, therefore, braced up on what is termed the starboard tack; but the stranger that was coming along was also braced up on the starboard tack, showing that she, like ourselves, had the wind on her starboard bow. For what did our two postures signify? This—that the wind with us was directly west-southwest, while the wind with the stranger was directly east-northeast. Here, then, were two vessels within a couple of miles of each other, so heading that one would pass the other within a biscuit-toss; here, I say, were two vessels steering in exactly opposite directions, but each braced up on the same tack, and each with the wind off the same bow!

“May der toyfell seize me if I like him!” exclaimed Bol, looking aloft at our canvas and then around the sea.

The sailors at work about the deck stared aloft and then at the approaching ship. They bit hard upon the tobacco in their cheeks. One of the Dutchmen called to an English seaman in the fore rigging:

“Dis vhas der ocean of Kingdom Coom. Der anchells vhas not far off vhen efery schip hov a vindt for himself.”

The English sailor, with an uneasy motion of his body, swang off the rigging to spit clear into the sea.

“Arter this, mate,” he called down to the Dutchman, “I shall give up drinking water when I gets ashore.”

I looked into the cabin skylight, and, seeing Greaves at the table, begged him to step on deck and behold a strange sight. By this time both vessels had hoisted their ensigns, and each flag blew in an opposite direction.

“I have heard of this sort of thing,” said Greaves, “but never before saw it. Lord, now, if every ship could have a wind of her own, as we and yonder craft have! There would be no weather gauge then—no complicated dodging for advantageous positions. Ha! Look at that now. She has taken our wind!”

The sails of the approaching vessel fell and trembled. A minute later, the yards were slowly swung, and the canvas shone like white satin as it swelled to the same breeze that was breathing off our bow.

“I should be glad to send my letter home by that ship,” said I.

“It may be managed,” he exclaimed, “and without bothering to back yards or lower a boat. Get your letter.”

I ran to my berth and returned with the letter, which Greaves posted for me on the passing ship in the following manner:

He sent me to procure a piece of canvas, a small number of musket balls, some twine, and an end of ratlin stuff. He put the balls and my letter into the canvas, and, with the twine, bound the cloth into a small, heavy parcel, to which he secured the end of the piece of ratlin stuff; then, giving directions to the man at the helm to starboard, so as to close the stranger, he sprung upon the rail and waited for the two vessels to draw together.

“Oh, the snow ahoy!” he shouted.

“Hallo!” responded a man who stood on the quarter of the vessel.

“Where are you bound to?”

“London.”

“Will you take a letter for me?”

The man motioned assent and looked aloft, as though about to order his topsail to be backed. “I will chuck the letter aboard,” said Greaves, swinging the parcel by its line, that the man might guess what he intended to do. “Stand by to receive it!”

Again the fellow, who was, probably the captain, motioned; and then, waiting until the two craft were abreast, Greaves, with a dexterous swing of his arm, sent the parcel flying through the air. It fell on the deck of the passing vessel just abaft her mainmast. The fellow who had answered Greaves’ hail, running forward, picked it up, and held it high in his hand that we might see he had it. After this there was no opportunity for further communication; for scarce were the two vessels abreast when they were on each other’s quarter, rapidly sliding a widening interval betwixt their sterns.

The snow was the Lady Godiva. I read her name under her counter. But her being bound to London, now that my letter was aboard, was information enough about her to answer my turn.

From this date down to the period of our arrival off the west coast of South America my clear recollection of every particular of this voyage yields me little that is good enough to record. Incidents so far had not been lacking, but south of the equator our sea life grew as dull as ever the vocation can be at its dullest. Heavens! how incommunicably tedious is the mechanic round of shipboard days! Wonderful to me is it that sailors in those times, when a single passage kept them afloat for months, remained human. And less than human some of them were, I am bound to say. Think of their lodging—a small, black hole in the bows of the ship, dimly lighted by a lamp fed with slush skimmed from the coppers in the galley, no fire in bitter weather, no air in hot; every straining timber sweating brine into the dark interior, till the floor in a headsea was a-wash; till every blanket was like a newly wrung out swab; till there was not a dry rag in the hole of a living room to enable the poor devils to shift themselves withal. Think of their food—salted meat, out of which they could have sawn and chiseled blocks for reeving gear to hoist their sails with; biscuit that crawled on the innumerable legs of vermin, alive but unintelligent, for it came not to your whistle nor did it elude your grasp; tea from which the thirstiest of the fiery-eyed rats in the fore peak are known to have recoiled with lamentable squeaks and dying shrieks of disappointment. Think of their labor—the scrubbing, the tarring, the greasing, the furling and reefing and stitching, the kicks, the blows, the curses which accompanied the toil. Think of their pleasures—an inch of sooty pipe to suck, an ancient story to nod over, a song at long intervals.

Alas, poor Jack! What is it that carries thee to sea in the first instance? The love of freedom? Hie thee to the nearest jail; there is more freedom in it; better food, kinder words. The desire to see the world? What dost see unless thou runnest from thy ship? for in harbor all day long thou art sweating in the hold and stamping round and round to the music of the pawls; and when the night comes and thou goest ashore, if thou hast a shot in thy locker thou gettest drunk, and with whirling brains and blistered lips art thrust rather than conveyed to thy toil in the morning by the constable whom thy skipper hath sent in search of thee. And so much, therefore, Jack, dost thou see of foreign parts. But whatever may have been the cause that sent thee to sea, my lad, this will I affirm; that when once thou art afloat, there is nothing clothed in flesh, with an immortal spirit to be saved or damned, more deserving of pity.

But though we were a dull, we were a comfortable little ship. I never heard of any falling out among the crew. They worked well together. The common hope of the dollar that lay on t’other side the Horn was strong in them. It kept them well meaning. It was clear they all had full confidence in the captain’s yarn, and their spirits danced with anticipation of the money they would jingle when they got home—the money in wages and share per man. This I used to think.

They made much of their dog watches when the weather was fine. One of the Dutchmen played on the flute; one of the Englishmen had a fiddle. The fellows would save their noon-tide grog for a dog watch, and make merry. Yan Bol sang as a bull roars, but his singing was vastly enjoyed. Never did any mariner better dance the sailor’s hornpipe than the English sailor, Thomas Teach. He went through it grim and unsmiling, but his postures were full of that sort of elegance which is the gift of old ocean to such men as Teach. It is old ocean alone that can animate the limbs with the careless beauty of motion that Teach’s arms and legs displayed when he danced the hornpipe.