Fitz the Filibuster Part 30

"Shout again," cried Poole; "all together,"--and another l.u.s.ty yell was given.

"There, 'tarn't no use, sir," said the boatswain, "if so be as I may speak."

"Speak? Of course! I am only too glad of your advice. What were you going to say?"

"Only this 'ere, sir--that it aren't no use to shout. I am wet and cold, and hollering like this is giving me a sore throat, and the rest of the lads too. There's d.i.c.k Boulter is as husky as my old uncle Tom's Cochin fowl. Here, I want to know why the skipper don't show a blue light."

"He dare not," said Poole hastily. "It would be showing the gunboat where the schooner is."

There was a sharp slap heard in the darkness, caused by the boatswain bringing his hand smartly down upon his st.u.r.dy thigh.

"Right you are, my lad. I never thought of that. I oughter, but it didn't come. 'Cause I was so wet, I suppose. Well, sir, what do you think?"

"Try, every one of you," said Poole, "whether you can make out a light.

The _Teal_ oughtn't to be very far away."

"Nay, sir, she oughtn't to be, but she is. Off sh.o.r.e here in these seas you get currents running you don't know where. We don't know, but I expect we are in one of them, and it's carrying us along n.o.body knows how fast; and like as not another current's carrying on the same game with the _Teal_."

"Well, we must row, and row hard," said Poole.

"But that may be making worse of it," put in Fitz, who had been listening and longing to speak.

"Well done," said the boatswain. "Spoke like a young man-o'-war officer! He's right, Mr Poole, sir. I am longing to take an oar so as to get warm and dry; but it's no use to try and make what's as bad as ever it can be, ever so much worse."

"That would puzzle you, Mr b.u.t.ters," said Fitz, laughing.

"Oh, I don't know, sir," said the boatswain seriously, and perfectly unconscious of the bull he had made. "We might, you know. What's to be done, Mr Poole?"

"I can only see one thing to be done," said the skipper's son, "and that seems so horrible and wanting in spirit."

"What's that?" said Fitz sharply.

"Wait for daylight."

"Oh!" cried Fitz impatiently. "Impossible! We can't do that."

"Well, I don't know, Mr Burnett, sir," growled the boatswain, gazing round. "Seems to me as if we must. Look here, you Bob Jackson," he almost roared now, as he turned sharply on the shivering foremast-man who had just been brought back to life, "what have you got to say for yourself for getting us all into such a mess as this? I always thought you were a bit of a swab, and now I knows it."

"Don't bully the poor fellow," cried Poole hotly. "It was an accident."

"Of course it was, sir," cried the boatswain, in an ill-used tone, as he drew off his jacket and began to wring it as tightly as he could; "and accidents, as I have heared say, will happen in the best-manned vessels.

One expects them, and has to put up with them when they comes; but people ought to have accidents at proper times and places, not just when we've escaped running ourselves down, and the Spanish gunboat's arter us. Now then, Bob, don't sit there hutched up like a wet monkey. Speak out like a man."

"I haven't got nothing to say, Mr b.u.t.ters, sir, only as I am very sorry, and much obliged to you for saving my life."

"Much obliged! Sorry! Wuss and wuss! Yah! Look at that now! Wuss and wuss. It never rains but it pours."

"What's the matter?" cried Fitz, for the boatswain had made a sudden dash with one hand as if striving to catch something that had eluded his grasp.

"Matter, sir? Why, I squeeged my bra.s.s 'bacca-box out of my jacket-pocket. It was chock-full, and it would go down like lead.

Here, I give up now. Give your orders, Mr Poole, and I'll row or do anything else, for I'm quite out of heart."

"Never mind your tobacco-box," said Fitz. "I'll give you a good new one the first time I get the chance."

"Thankye kindly, sir," replied the man, "but what's the good of that?

It aren't the box I mind. It's the 'bacca. Can you give me a mossel now?"

"I am sorry to say I can't," said Fitz.

"I've got plenty of that, Mr b.u.t.ters, sir," said his wet companion, dragging out a box with some difficulty, for his wet hand would hardly go into his tight breeches-pocket, and when he had forced it in, declined to come out.

"You've got plenty, Bob, my lad?" cried the boatswain. "Then you are a better man than I thought. There, I'll forgive you for going overboard.

It were an accident, I suppose.--Hah! That's better," he continued, opening his knife and helping himself to a quid, which completely altered the tone of his voice. "There you are, my lad; put that there box back, and take care on it, for who knows but what that may be all our water and biscuit and other stores as will have to last us till we get picked up again? Now, Mr Poole, sir, what's it to be? I am at your sarvice if you will give the word."

"I think we had better keep pulling gently, b.u.t.ters, and go by the stars westward towards the land. It will be far better, and the feeling that we are doing something will keep us all from losing heart."

"Right, my lad. Your father the skipper couldn't have spoken wiser words than them. Here, you Bob Jackson, get out of that jacket and shirt, and two of you lads hold the things over the side and one twist one way and t'other t'other, like the old women does with the sheets on washing-day. I am going to do just the same with mine. And then we two will do what bit of rowing's wanted till we gets quite dry. Say, Mr Fitz, sir, you couldn't get better advice than that, if you had been half-drowned, if you went to the best physic doctor in Liverpool."

Shortly after, steering by the stars, the boat was headed pretty well due west, and a couple of oars were kept dipping with a monotonous splash, raising up the golden water, which dripped in lambent globules from the blades. All above was one grand dome of light, but below and around it was as if a thick stratum of intense blackness floated on the surface of the sea.

So strangely dark this seemed that it impressed the boat's crew with a sense of dread that they could not master. It was a condensation of dread and despair, that knowledge of being alone in a frail craft at the mercy of the sea, without water or supplies of any kind, and off a coast which the currents might never let them reach, while at any hour a tempestuous wind might spring up and lash the sea into waves, in which it would be impossible for the boat to live.

"Don't sit silent like that, Burnett," whispered Poole. "Say something, there's a good fellow."

"Say? What can I say?" was whispered back. "Anything. Sing a song, or tell a story. I want to keep the lads in good heart. If we show the white feather they'll show it too."

"That's right enough," said Fitz gloomily; "but I don't feel as if I could do anything but think. I couldn't sing a song or tell a story to save my life."

"But you must. It _is_ to save your life."

"I tell you I can't," cried Fitz angrily.

"Then whistle."

The middy could not even whistle, but the suggestion and the manner in which it was said did have a good effect, for it made him laugh.

"Ah! That's better," cried Poole. "I say, b.u.t.ters, do you think if we had a fishing-line overboard we should catch anything?"

"Like enough, lad, if we had a good bait on. Fish is generally on the feed in the night, and there's no end of no-one-knows-whats off these 'Merican coasts. Might get hold of something big as would tow us right ash.o.r.e."

"Yes, or right out to sea," said Fitz.

"Ay, my lad; but we should have to chance that."

"But there's not likely to be a line in the locker," said Poole.

"And if there was," said Fitz, "you have no bait."