Hard Cash Part 24

This simple question stirred up in one moment all the bile in the poor old gentleman's nature.

"My deck-guns serviceable! how the ---- _can_ they when that son of a sea-cook your third mate has been and lashed the water b.u.t.ts to their breechings, and jammed his gear in between their nozzles, till they can't breathe, poor things, far less bark. I wish _he_ was lashed between the devil's hind-hocks with a red hot cable as tight as he has jammed my guns.

"Be so good as not to swear, Mr. Monk," said Dodd. "At your age sir, I look to you to set an example to the petty officers."

"Well, I won't swear no more, sir, d--d if I do!" He added very loudly, and with a seeming access of ire, "And I ax your pardon, captain, and the deck's."

When a man has a deep anxiety, some human midge or mosquito buzzes at him. It is a rule. To Dodd, heavy with responsibility, and a dark misgiving he must not communicate, came delicately, and by degrees, and with a semigenuflexion every three steps, one like a magpie; and, putting his hands together, as our children do to approach the Almighty, delivered himself thus, in modulated tones, and good Hindostanee. "The Daughter of light, in whose beams I, Ramgolam, bask, glows with an amicable desire to see the lord commander of the ship resembling a mountain; and to make a communication."

Taught by sad experience how weighty are the communications the daughters of light pour into nautical commanders at sea, Dodd hailed Mr. Tickell, a midshipman, and sent him down to the lady's cabin. Mr.

Tickell soon came back reddish, but grinning, to say that nothing less than the captain would do.

Dodd sighed, and dismissed Monk with a promise to inspect the gun-deck himself; then went down to Mrs. Beresford and found her indignant. Why had he stopped the ship miles and miles from Macao, and given her the trouble and annoyance of a voyage in that nasty little boat? Dodd opened his great brown eyes, "Why, madam, it is shoal water off Macao; we dare not come in."

"No evasion, sir. What have I to do with your shoal water? It was laziness, and want of consideration for a lady who has rented half your ship."

"Nothing of the kind, madam, I a.s.sure you."

"Are you the person they call Gentleman Dodd?"

"Yes."

"Then don't contradict a lady, or I shall take the liberty to dispute your t.i.tle."

Dodd took no notice of this, and with a patience few nautical commanders would have shown, endeavoured to make her see that he was obliged to give Macao shoals a wide berth, or cast away the ship. She would not see it. When Dodd saw she wanted, not an explanation, but a grievance, he ceased to thwart her. "I am neglecting my duties to no purpose," said he, and left her without ceremony. This was a fresh offence; and, as he went out, she declared open war. And she made it too from that hour: a war of pins and needles.

Dodd went on the gun-deck and found that the defence of the ship had, as usual in these peaceful days, been sacrificed to the cargo. Out of twenty eighteen-pounders she carried on that deck, he cleared three, and that with difficulty. To clear any more he must have sacrificed either merchandise or water: and he was not the man to do either on the mere chance of a danger so unusual as an encounter with a pirate. He was a merchant captain, not a warrior.

Meantime the _Agra_ had already shown him great sailing qualities: the log was hove at sundown and gave eleven knots; so that with a good breeze abaft, few fore-and-aft rigged pirates could overhaul her. And this wind carried her swiftly past one nest of them, at all events: the Ladrone isles. At nine P.M., all the lights were ordered out. Mrs.

Beresford had brought a novel on board, and refused to comply; the master-at-arms insisted; she threatened him with the vengeance of the Company, the premier, and the n.o.bility and gentry of the British realm.

The master-at-arms, finding he had no chance in argument, doused the glim--pitiable resource of a weak disputant--then basely fled the rhetorical consequences.

The northerly breeze died out, and light variable winds baffled the ship. It was the 6th April ere she pa.s.sed the Macclesfield Bank in lat.i.tude 16. And now they sailed for many days out of sight of land.

Dodd's chest expanded: his main anxiety at this part of the voyage lay in the state cabin; of all the perils of the sea, none shakes a sailor like fire. He set a watch day and night on that spoiled child.

On the 1st May they pa.s.sed the great Nantuna, and got among the Bornese and Malay islands: at which the captain's gla.s.s began to sweep the horizon again, and night and day at the dizzy foretop gallant mast-head he perched an Eye.

They crossed the line in longitude 107, with a slight breeze, but soon fell into the Doldrums. A dead calm, and nothing to do but kill time.

Dodd had put down Neptune: that old blackguard could no longer row out on the ship's port side and board her on the starboard, pretending to come from ocean's depths; and shave the novices with a rusty hoop and dab a soapy brush in their mouths. But champagne popped, the s.e.xes flirted, and the sailors span fathomless yarns, and danced rattling hornpipes, fiddled to by the grave Fullalove. "If there is a thing I _can_ dew, it's fiddle," said he. He and his friend, as he systematically called Vespasian, taught the crew Yankee steps, and were beloved. One honest saltatory British tar offered that Western pair his grog for a week. Even Mrs. Beresford emerged, and walked the deck, quenching her austere regards with a familiar smile on Colonel Kenealy, her escort. This gallant good-natured soldier flattered her to the nine, and, finding her sweeten with his treacle, tried to reconcile her to his old friend Dodd. Straight she soured, and forbade the topic imperiously.

By this time the mates and midshipmen of the _Agra_ had fathomed their captain. Mr. Tickell delivered the mind of the united midshipmen when he proposed Dodd's health in their mess-room, "as a navigator, a mathematician, a seaman, a gentleman, and a brick, with three times three."

Dodd never spoke to his officers like a ruffian, nor yet palavered them, but he had a very pleasant way of conveying appreciation of an officer's zeal, by a knowing nod with a kindly smile on the heels of it. As for the men, they seldom came in contact with the captain of a well-officered ship: this crew only knew him at first as a good-tempered soul, who didn't bother about nothing. But one day, as they lay becalmed south of the line, a jolly foretopman came on the quarter-deck with a fid of soup, and saluting and sc.r.a.ping, first to the deck, then to the captain, asked him if he would taste that.

"Yes, my man. Smoked!"

"Like ---- and blazes, your honour, axing your pardon, and the deck's."

"Young gentleman," said Dodd to Mr. Meredith, a midshipman, "be so good as to send the cook aft."

The cook came, and received, not an oath nor a threat but a remonstrance, and a grim warning.

In the teeth of this he burnt the soup horribly the very next day.

The crew sent the lucky foretopman aft again. He made his sc.r.a.pe and presented his fid. The captain tasted the soup, and sent Mr. Grey to bid the boatswain's mate pipe the hands on deck and bring the cook aft.

"Quartermaster, unsling a fire-bucket and fill it from the men's kids: Mr. Tickell, see the cook swallow his own mess. Bosen's mate, take a bight of the flying jib sheet stand over him, and start him if he dailies with it." With this the captain went below, and the cook, supping at the bucket delivered himself as follows: "Well, ye lubbers, it is first--rate. _There's_ no burn in it. It goes down like oil. Curse your ladylike stomachs; you ain't fit for a ship; why don't ye go ash.o.r.e and man a gingerbread coach and feed off French frogs and Italian baccy-pipe stems? (Whack.) What the ---- is that for?"

_Boatswain's mate._ "Sup more, and jaw less."

"Well, I am supping as fast as I can. (Whack, whack.) b.l.o.o.d.y end to ye, what are ye about? (Whack, whack, whack.) Oh, Joe, Lord bless you, I _can't_ eat any more of it. (Whack.) I'll give you my grog for a week only to let me fling the ---- stuff over the side. (Whack, whack, whack.) Oh, good, kind, dear Mr. Tickell, do go down to the captain for me." (Whack, whack.)

"Avast!" cried the captain, reappearing; and the uplifted rope fell harmless.

"Silence, fore and aft!"

(Pipe.)

"The cook has received a light punishment this time, for spoiling the men's mess. My crew shall eat nothing I can't eat myself. My care is heavier than theirs is; but not my work, nor my danger in time of danger. Mind that, or you'll find I can be as severe as any master afloat. Purser."

"Sir."

"Double the men's grog: they have been cheated of their meal."

"Ay, ay, sir."

"And stop the cook's and his mate's for a week."

"Ay, ay, sir."

"Bosen, pipe down."

"Shipmates, listen to me," said the foretopman. "This old _Agra_ is a d----d com--for--table ship."

The oracular sentence was hailed with a ringing cheer. Still, it is unlucky the British seaman is so enamoured of theological terms; for he constantly misapplies them.

After lying a week like a dead log on the calm but heaving waters, came a few light puffs in the upper air and inflated the topsails only: the ship crawled southward, the crew whistling for wind.

At last, one afternoon, it began to rain, and after the rain came a gale from the eastward. The watchful skipper saw it purple the water to windward, and ordered the topsails to be reefed and the lee ports closed. This last order seemed an excess of precaution; but Dodd was not yet thoroughly acquainted with his ship's qualities: and the hard cash round his neck made him cautious. The lee ports were closed, all but one, and that was lowered. Mr. Grey was working a problem in his cabin, and wanted a little light and a little air, so he just drooped his port; but, not to deviate from the spirit of his captain's instructions, he fastened a tackle to it; that he might have mechanical force to close it with should the ship lie over.

Down came the gale with a whoo, and made all crack. The ship lay over pretty much, and the sea poured in at Mr. Grey's port. He applied his purchase to close it. But though his tackle gave him the force of a dozen hands, he might as well have tried to move a mountain; on the contrary, the tremendous sea rushed in and burst the port wide open.

Grey, after a vain struggle with its might, shrieked for help; down tumbled the nearest hands, and hauled on the tackle in vain. Destruction was rushing on the ship, and on them first. But meantime the captain, with a shrewd guess at the general nature of the danger he could not see, had roared out, "Slack the main sheet." The ship righted, and the port came flying to, and terror-stricken men breathed hard, up to their waists in water and floating boxes. Grey barred the unlucky port and went aft, drenched in body, and wretched in mind, to report his own fault. He found the captain looking grim as death. He told him, almost crying, what he had done, and how he had miscalculated the power of the water.

Dodd looked and saw his distress. "Let it be a lesson, sir," said he, sternly. "How many ships have been lost by this in fair weather, and not a man saved to tell how the craft was fooled away?"

"Captain, bid me fling myself over the side, and I'll do it."