A Master of Fortune Part 29

The new captain nodded. "Got engaged when I pa.s.sed for my master's ticket. Arranged to be hitched so soon as I found a ship."

Kettle sighed drearily. "I was that way, my lad. I was married, and a kid had come before I was thirty. Not that I ever regretted it; by James! no. But for long enough I was never able to provide for the missus in the way I'd like, and I can tell you it was terrible gall to me to know that our set at the chapel looked down on her because she could only keep a poor home. Yes, my lad, you'll have a lot to go through."

"Well," said Murray, "I've got this promotion, and I'm not going to worry about dismals. I suppose you go straight home by mail from Aden here?"

"Hullo, haven't they told you?"

"My letter was only the dry, formal announcement that you were promoted to the new ship, and I was to take over the _Parakeet_."

"They don't waste their typewriter in the office. I suppose they thought I'd hand on my letter if I saw fit. Read through that," said Kettle, and handed across his news. This is how it ran:--

BIRD, BIRD & CO., Ship and Insurance Brokers, Agents to the Bird Transport Company.

Managers of the Bird Steam Company.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

759, Euston Street, LIVERPOOL, 21st March, 1896.

_Swan_, 375 tons. Captain R. Evans.

_Sparrow_, 461 tons. Captain James Evans.

s.s. _Starling_, 880 tons. Captain Enoch Shaw.

s.s. _Parakeet_, 2,100 tons. Captain Murray.

s.s. Building, 3,500 tons. Captain O. Kettle.

s.s. Building, 3,500 tons. Captain ...

s.s. Building, 4,000 tons. Captain ...

"The superb vessels of the Bird Line!"

_Dear Captain Kettle,--

Having noted from your cables and reports you are making a good thing for us out of tramping the "Parakeet," we have pleasure in transferring you to our new boat, which is now building on the Clyde. She will be 3,500 tons, and we may take out pa.s.senger certificate, she being constructed on that specification. Your pay will be 21 (twenty-one pound) per month, with 2-1/2 per cent. commission as before. But for the present, till this new boat is finished, we want you to give over command of the "Parakeet" to Murray, and take on a new job. Our Mr. Alexander Bird has recently bought the wreck of the s.s. "Grecian," and we are sending out a steamer with divers and full equipment to get the salvage. We wish you to go on board this vessel to watch over our interests. We give you full control, and have notified Captain Tazzuchi, at present in command, to this effect_.

_Yours truly, p.p. Bird, Bird and Co. (Isaac Bird.)_

_To Captain O. Kettle, s.s. "Parakeet," Bird Line, Aden._

"I see they have clapped me down on the bill heading for the _Parakeet_ already," said Murray, "and you're shifted along in print for the new ship. Birds are getting on. But I've big doubts about three new boats all at one bite. One they might manage on a mortgage. But three? I don't think it. Old Ikey's too cautious."

"Messrs. Bird are your owners and mine," said Kettle significantly.

"Oh!" said the newly-made captain, "I'm not one of your old-fashioned sort that thinks an owner a little tin G.o.d."

"My view is," said Kettle, "that your owner pays you, and so is ent.i.tled to your respect so long as he is your owner. Besides that, whilst you are drawing pay, you're expected to carry out orders, whatever they may be, without question. But I don't think we'll talk any more about this, my lad. You're one of the newer school, I know, and you've got such a big notion of your own rights that we're not likely to agree. Besides, you've got to check my accounts and see I've left it all for you ship-shape, and I've to pull my bits of things together into a portmanteau. See you again before I go away, and we'll have a drop of whisky together to wish the _Parakeet's_ new 'old man' a pile of luck."

At the edge of the harbor, Aden baked under the sun, but Kettle was not the man to filch his employer's time for unnecessary strolls ash.o.r.e. The salvage steamer rolled at her anchor at the opposite side of the harbor, and Kettle and two portmanteaux were transhipped direct in one of the _Parakeet's_ boats.

He was received on board by an affable Italian, who introduced himself as Captain Tazzuchi. The man spoke perfect English, and was hospitality personified. The little salvage steamer was barely 300 tons burden, and her accommodation was limited, but Tazzuchi put the best room in the ship at his guest's disposal, and said that anything that could act for his comfort should be done forthwith.

"Y'know, Captain," said Tazzuchi, "this is what you call a 'Dago' ship, and we serve out country wine as a regular ration. But I thought perhaps you'd like your own home ways best, and so I've ordered the ship's chandler ash.o.r.e to send off a case of Scotch, and another of Chicago beef. Oh yes, and I sent also for some London pickles. I know how you English like your pickles."

In fact, all that a man could do in the way of outward attention Tazzuchi did, but somehow or other Captain Kettle got a suspicion of him from the very first moment of their meeting. Perhaps it was to some extent because the British mariner has always an instinctive and special distrust for the Latin nations; perhaps it was because the civility was a little unexpected and over-effusive. Putting himself in the Italian's place, Kettle certainly would not have gone out of his way to be pleasant to a foreigner who was sent practically to supersede him in a command.

But perhaps a second letter which he had received, giving him a more intimate list of the duties required, had something to do with this hostile feeling. It was from the same hand which had written the firm's formal letter, but it was couched in quite a different vein. Isaac Bird was evidently scared for his very commercial existence, and he thrust out his arms to Kettle on paper as his only savior. It seemed that Alexander Bird, the younger brother, had been running a little wild of late.

The wreck of the _Grecian_ had been put up for auction; Alexander strolled into the room by accident, and bought at an exorbitant figure.

He came and announced his purchase to Isaac, declaring it as an instance of his fine business instincts. Isaac set it down to whisky, and recriminations followed. Alexander in a huff said he would go out and overlook the salvage operations in person. Isaac opined that the firm might sc.r.a.pe to windward of bankruptcy by that means, and advised Alexander to take remarkable pains about keeping sober. But forthwith Alexander, still in his cups, "and at a music hall, too, a place he knows 'Isaac's' religious connection holds in profound horror," gets to brawling, and is next discovered in hospital with a broken thigh.

"_I have found Alexander's department of the business very tangled_,"

wrote Isaac, "_when I began to go into his books the first day he was laid up, and the thought of this new complication drove me near crazy.

Salvage is out of our line; Alexander should never have touched it. But there it is; money paid, and I've had to borrow; and engaging that Italian firm for the job was the best thing I could manage. What English firms wanted was out of all reason. I don't wonder at Lloyds selling wrecks for anything they will fetch. A pittance in cash is better than getting into the hands of these sharks_" (sharks was heavily underscored). "_And what guarantee have I that the firm will pocket even that pittance? How do I know that I shall see even the money outpaid again, let alone reasonable interest? None_."

There were several words erased here, and the writer went on with what was evidently considered a dramatic finish. "'_But stay,' I say to myself, 'you have Kettle. He is down in the Red Sea now, doing well. You had all along intended to promote him. Do it now, and set him to overlook this Italian salvage firm whilst the new boat is building. He is the one to see that Isaac Bird's foot doth not fall, for Captain O.

Kettle is a G.o.dly man also_.'"

The letter was shut off conventionally enough with the statement that the writer was Captain Kettle's truly, and ended in a post-scriptum tag to the effect that the envoy should still draw his two and a-half per cent. on net results. The actual figures had evidently not been conceded without a mental wrench, as the erasion beneath them showed, but there they stood in definite ink, and Kettle was not inclined to cavil at the process which deduced them.

However, although in his recent prosperity Kettle had a.s.sumed a hatred for risks, and bred a strong dislike for all those commercial adventures which lay beyond the ordinary rut and routine of trade, he took up his duties on the salvage steamer with a stout heart and cheerful estimate for the future. Ahead of him he had pleasant dreams of the big boat that was "building," and the increased monthly pay in store; and for the present, well, here was an owner's command, and of course that settled him firmly in the berth. He had been too long an obedient slave to shipowners of every grade to have the least fancy for disputing the imperial will of Bird, Bird and Co.

Murray tooted his cheerful farewells on the _Parakeet's_ siren as the little Italian salvage boat steamed out of the baking airs of Aden harbor, and ensigns were dipped with due formality. Tazzuchi was all hospitality. He invited Kettle to damage his palate with a black Italian "Virginia" cigar with a straw up the middle; he uncorked a bottle of the Scotch whisky with his own hand, splashed away the first winegla.s.sful to get rid of the fusel oil, and put it ready for reference when his guest should feel athirst; and he produced a couple of American pirated editions of English novels to give even intellect its dainty feast.

Kettle accepted it all with a dry civility. He had every expectation of upsetting this man's plans of robbery later on, and very possibly of coming into personal contact with him. But the ties of bread and salt did not disturb him. Though it was Tazzuchi who presented the Virginias and the novels, he took it for granted that Messrs. Bird, Bird and Co.

had paid for them, and he was not averse to accepting a little luxury from the firm. The economical Isaac had cut down the commissariat on the _Parakeet_ till a man had to be half-starved before he could stomach a meal.

The salvage steamer had a South of Europe leisureliness in her movements. Her utmost pace was nine knots, but, as eight was more economical for coal consumption, it was at that speed she moved. The wreck of the _Grecian_ was out of the usual steam lane. She had, it appeared, got off her course in a fog, had run foul of a half-ebb reef which holed her in two compartments, and then been steered for the sh.o.r.e in the wild attempt to beach her before she sank. She had ceased floating, however, with some suddenness, and when the critical moment came not all of her people managed to sc.r.a.pe off with their lives in the boats. Those that stayed behind were incontinently drowned; those that got away found themselves in a gale (to which the fog gave place), and had so much trouble to keep afloat that they had no time left to make accurate determination of where their vessel sank; and when they were picked up could only give her whereabouts vaguely. However, they stated that the _Grecian's_ mast-trucks remained above the water surface, and by these she could be found; and this fact was brought out strongly by the auctioneer who sold the wreck, and had due influence on the enterprising Alexander. "Masts!" said Alexander, who daily saw them bristling from a dock, "don't tell me you can miss masts anywhere."

But, as it chanced, it was only by a fluke that the salvage steamer stumbled across the wreck at all. She wandered for several days among an intensely dangerous archipelago, and many times over had narrow escapes from piling up her bones on one or other of those reefs with which the Red Sea in that quarter abounds. Tazzuchi navigated her in an ecstasy of nervousness, and Kettle (who regarded himself as a pa.s.senger for the time being) kept a private store of food and water-bottles handy, and saw that one of the quarter-boats was ready for hurried lowering. But nowhere did they see those mast-trucks. They did not sight so much as a sc.r.a.p of floating wreckage.

There seemed, however, a good many dhow coasters dodging about in and among the reefs, and from these Kettle presently drew a deduction.

"Look here," he said to Tazzuchi one morning, "what price those gentry ash.o.r.e having found the wreck already? I guess they aren't out here taking week-end trippers for sixpenny yachting cruises."

"No," said Tazzuchi, "and they aren't fishing; you can see that."

"Well, I give you the tip for what it's worth," said Kettle; and that afternoon the steamer was run up alongside a dhow, which tried desperately to escape. Her captain was dragged on board, and at that juncture Captain Kettle took upon himself to go below. He knew what would probably take place, and, though he disapproved of such methods strongly, he felt he could not interfere. He was in Bird, Bird and Co.'s employ, and what was being done would forward the firm's interest.

But presently came a noise of bellowing from the deck above, and then that was followed by shrill screams as the upper gamut of agony was reached. Kettle was prepared for rough handling, but at information gained by absolute torture he drew the line. It was clear that these cruel beggars of Italians were going too far.

"By James!" he muttered to himself, "owners or no owners, I can't stand this," and started hurriedly to go back to the deck. But before he reached the head of the companion-way the cries of pain ceased, and so he stood where he was on the stair, and waited. The engines rumbled, and the steamer once more gathered way. A clamor of barbaric voices reached him, which gradually died into quietude. It was clear they were leaving the dhow behind.

Captain Kettle drew a long breath. They would stick at little, these Dagos, in getting the salvage of the _Grecian_, and it seemed preposterous to suppose that once they gripped the specie in their own ringers they would ever give it up for the paltry pay which had been offered by Bird, Bird and Co. Their own poverty was aching. He saw it whenever he looked about the patched little steamer. He felt it whenever he sat down to one of their painfully frugal meals.

Still, though no man knew more bitterly than Kettle himself from past experience what poverty meant, and how it cut, the poverty of these Italians was no concern of his just then. They were paid servants of the owners exactly as he was, and it was his duty to see that they earned their hire. He took it that he was one against the whole ship's company, but the odds did not daunt him. On the contrary, something of his old fighting spirit, which had been of late hustled into the background by snug commercial prosperity, came back to him. And besides, he had always at his call that exquisite pride of race which has so many times given victory to the Anglo-Saxon over the Latin, when all reasonable balances should have made it go the other way.

By a sort of instinct he b.u.t.toned up his trim white drill coat, and stepped out on deck. There would be no scuffle yet awhile. With the specie that would make the temptation still snugly stored on the sea-floor, the dirty, untidy Italians were still all affability. Indeed, as soon as he appeared, Tazzuchi himself stepped down off the upper bridge to give him the news.

"How do you think those crafty imps have managed it?" he cried, with a gesture. "Why they dived down and cut off her masts below water level.

The funnel was out of sight already. They just thought they were going to have the skimming of that wreck themselves. No wonder we couldn't pick her up."

"Cute beggars," said Kettle.