A Master of Fortune Part 21

Their leader made his proposal at once. "All right-a, Captain, I see how you want. We take charge now, and take-a you into Ferrol without you being at more trouble."

"Nothing of the kind," said Kettle. "I'm just wanting the loan of two or three hands to give my fellows a spell or two at that pump. We're a bit short-handed, that's all. But otherwise we're quite comfortable. I'll pay A.B.'s wages on Liverpool scale, and that's a lot more than you Dagos give amongst yourselves, and if the men work well I'll throw in a dash besides for 'bacca money.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE PICKED UP THE MAN AND SENT HIM AFTER THE KNIFE.]

"Ta-ta-ta," said the Portuguese, with a wave of his yellow fist. "It cannot be done, and I will not lend you men. It shall do as I say; we take-a you into Ferroll. Do not fear-a, captain; you shall have money for finding sheep; you shall have some of our salvage."

Dayton-Philipps, who was standing near, and knew the little sailor's views, looked for an outbreak. But Kettle held himself in, and still spoke to the man civilly.

"That's good English you talk," he said. "Do all your crowd understand the language?"

"No," said the fellow, readily enough, "that man does not, nor does him, nor him."

"Right--oh!" said Kettle. "Then, as those three man can't kick up a bobbery at the other end, they've just got to stay here and help work this vessel home. And as for the rest of you filthy, stinking, scale-covered cousins of apes, over the side you go before you're put.

Thought you were going to steal my lawful salvage, did you, you crawling, yellow-faced--ah!"

The hot-tempered Portuguese was not a man to stand this tirade (as Kettle antic.i.p.ated) unmoved. His fingers made a vengeful s.n.a.t.c.h toward the knife in his belt, but Kettle was ready for this, and caught it first and flung it overboard. Then with a clever heave he picked up the man and sent him after the knife.

He tripped up one of the Portuguese who couldn't speak English, dragged him to the cabin companion, and toppled him down the ladder.

Dayton-Philipps (surprised at himself for abetting such lawlessness) captured a second in like fashion, and the English fireman and coal-trimmer picked up the third and dropped him down an open hatchway on to the grain in the hold beneath.

But there were six of the fishermen left upon the deck, and these did not look upon the proceedings unmoved. They had been slow to act at first, but when the initial surprise was over, they were blazing with rage and eager to do murder. The Italian and the Sierra Leone n.i.g.g.e.r ran out of their way on to the forecastle head, and they came on, vainglorious in numbers, and armed with their deadly knives. But the two English roughs, the English gentleman, and the little English sailor, were all of them men well accustomed to take care of their own skins; the belaying pins out of the pinrail seemed to come by instinct into their hands, and not one of them got so much as a scratch.

It was all the affair of a minute. It does not do to let these little impromptu scrimmages simmer over long. In fact, the whole affair was decided in the first rush. The quartette of English went in, despising the "Dagos," and quite intending to clear them off the ship. The invaders were driven overboard by sheer weight of blows and prestige, and the victors leaned on the bulwark puffing and gasping, and watched them swim away to their boat through the clear water below.

"Ruddy Dagos," said the roughs.

"Set of blooming pirates," said Kettle.

But Dayton-Philipps seemed to view the situation from a different point.

"I'm rather thinking we are the pirates. How about those three we've got on board? This sort of press-gang work isn't quite approved of nowadays, is it, Skipper?"

"They no speakee English," said Kettle drily. "You might have heard me ask that, sir, before I started to talk to that skipper to make him begin the show. And he did begin it, and that's the great point. If ever you've been in a police court, you'll always find the magistrate ask, 'Who began this trouble?' And when he finds out, that's the man he logs.

No, those fishermen won't kick up a bobbery when they get back to happy Portugal again; and as for our own crowd here on board, they ain't likely to talk when they get ash.o.r.e, and have money due to them."

"Well, I suppose there's reason in that, though I should have my doubts about the stonemason. He comes from Sierra Leone, remember, and they're great on the rights of man there."

"Quite so," said Kettle. "I'll see the stonemason gets packed off to sea again in a stokehold before he has a chance of stirring up the mud ash.o.r.e. When the black man gets too pampered, he has to be brought low again with a rush, just to make him understand his place."

"I see," said Dayton-Phillips, and then he laughed.

"There's something that tickles you, sir?"

"I was thinking, Skipper, that for a man who believes he's being put in the way of a soft thing by direct guidance from on high, you're using up a tremendous lot of energy to make sure the Almighty's wishes don't miscarry. But still I don't understand much about these matters myself.

And at present it occurs to me that I ought to be doing a spell at those infernal pumps, instead of chattering here."

The three captive Portuguese were brought up on deck and were quickly induced by the ordinary persuasive methods of the merchant service officer to forego their sulkiness and turn-to diligently at what work was required of them. But even with this help the heavy ship was still considerably undermanned, and the incessant labor at the pumps fell wearily on all hands. The Bay, true to its fickle nature, changed on them again. The sunshine was swamped by a driving gray mist of rain; the gla.s.s started on a steady fall; and before dark, Kettle snugged her down to single topsails, himself laying out on the foot-ropes with the Portuguese, as no others of his crew could manage to scramble aloft with so heavy a sea running.

The night worsened as it went on; the wind piled up steadily in violence; and the sea rose till the sodden vessel rode it with a very babel of shrieks, and groans, and complaining sounds. Toward morning, a terrific squall powdered up against them and hove her down, and a dull rumbling was heard in her bowels to let them know that once more her cargo had shifted.

For the moment, even Kettle thought that this time she was gone for good. She lost her way, and lay down like a log in the water, and the racing seas roared over her as though she had been a half-tide rock. By a miracle no one was washed overboard. But her people hung here and there to eyebolts and ropes, mere nerveless wisps of humanity, incapable under those teeming cataracts of waves to lift so much as a finger to help themselves.

Then to the impact of a heavier gasp of the squall, the topgallant masts went, and the small loss of of top-weight seemed momentarily to ease her. Kettle seized upon the moment. He left the trimmer and one of the Portuguese at the wheel, and handed himself along the streaming decks and kicked and cuffed the rest of his crew into activity. He gave his orders, and the ship wore slowly round before the wind, and began to pay away on the other tack.

Great hills of sea deluged her in the process, and her people worked like mermen, half of their time submerged. But by degrees, as the vast rollers. .h.i.t and shook her with their ponderous impact, she came upright again, and after a little while shook the grain level in her holds, and a.s.sumed her normal, angle of heel.

Dayton-Philipps struggled up and, hit Kettle on the shoulder. "How's that, umpire?" he bawled. "My faith, you are a clever, sailor."

Captain Kettle touched his hat. "G.o.d bore a hand there, sir," he shouted through the wind. "If I'd tried to straighten her up like that without outside help, every man here would have been fish-chop this minute."

Even Dayton-Philipps, sceptical though he might be, began to think there was "something in it" as the voyage went on. To begin with, the leak stopped. They did not know how it had happened, and they did not very much care. Kettle had his theories. Anyway it stopped. To go on with, although they were buffeted with every kind of evil weather, all their mischances were speedily rectified. In a heavy sea, all their unstable cargo surged about as though it had been liquid, but it always shifted back again before she quite capsized. The mizzen-mast went bodily overboard in one black rain-squall because they were too short-handed to get sail off it in time, but they found that the vessel sailed almost as well as a brig, and was much easier for a weak crew to manage.

All hands got covered with salt-water boils. All hands, with the exception of Kettle--who remained, as usual, neat--grew gaunt, bearded, dirty, and unkempt. They were grimed with sea-salt, they were flayed with violent suns; but by dint of hard schooling they were becoming handy sailormen, all of them, and even the negro stonemason learned to obey an order without first thinking over its justice till he earned a premonitory hiding.

In the throat of the English Channel a blundering steamship did her best to run them down, and actually rasped sides with the sailing-vessel as she tore past into the night; but n.o.body made an attempt to jump for safety on to her decks, n.o.body even took the trouble to swear at her with any thing like heartfelt profanity.

"It's a blooming Flying Dutchman we're on," said the coal-trimmer who acted as mate. "There's no killing the old beast. Only hope she gets us ash.o.r.e somehow, and doesn't stay fooling about at sea forever just to get into risks. I want to get off her. She's too blooming lucky to be quite wholesome somehow."

Kettle had intended to make a Channel port, but a gale hustled him north round Land's End, "and you see," he said to Dayton-Philipps, "what I get for not being sufficiently trustful. The old girl's papers are made out to Cardiff, and here we are pushed round into the Bristol Channel. By James! look, there's a tug making up to us. Thing like that makes you feel homey, doesn't it, sir?"

The little spattering tug wheeled up within hail, tossing like a cork on the brown waves of the estuary, and the skipper in the green pulpit between the paddle-boxes waved a hand cheerily.

"Seem to have found some dirty weather, Captain," he bawled. "Want a pull into Cardiff or Newport?"

"Cardiff. What price?"

"Say 100."

"I wasn't asking to buy the tug. You're putting a pretty fancy figure on her for that new lick of paint you've got on your rails."

"I'll take 80."

"Oh, I can sail her in myself if you're going to be funny. She's as handy as a pilot-boat, brig rigged like this, and my crew know her fine.

I'll give you 20 into Cardiff, and you're to dock me for that."

"Twenty wicked people. Now look here, Captain, you don't look very prosperous with that vessel of yours, and will probably have the sack from owners for mishandling her when you get ash.o.r.e, and I don't want to embitter your remaining years in the workus, so I'll pull you in for fifty quid."

"20, old bottle nose."

"Come now, Captain, thirty. I'm not here for sport. I've got to make my living."

"My man," said Kettle, "I'll meet you and make it 25, and I'll see you in Aden before I give a penny more. You can take that, or sheer off."

"Throw us your blooming rope," said the tug skipper.

"There, sir," said Kettle _sotto voce_ to Dayton-Philipps, "you see the marvellousness of it? G.o.d has stood by me to the very end. I've saved at least 10 over that towage, and, by James! I've seen times when a ship mauled about like this would have been bled for four times the amount before a tug would pluck her in."

"Then we are out of the wood now?"