Humphrey Bold Part 17

Down went the bucket with a clatter upon the stones, and Joe looked around as though scarce trusting his ears. Then seeing me he waddled across, seized my hand, and shook it with a hearty goodwill that was somewhat over vigorous for my enfeebled condition.

"Ods firkins, sir!" he cried, "my head spins like a whirligig. How dost come here among these heathen Frenchies, and all the way from Shrewsbury, too?"

Before I was halfway through my story, one of the soldiers ran up and ordered Joe to fill his bucket again and wash out the lower rooms.

"Ay, I'm a swab again, sure enough," says poor Joe, going off ruefully to his task.

He was soon back, and when he had heard me through my account of what had befallen me since I saw him last, he broke out into vehement denunciation of Cyrus Vetch and all the race of Cluddes.

Vetch himself happening to pa.s.s at that moment, wearing the hangdog look habitual to him since fate had made him a prisoner, Joe bursts out:

"Ay, you may well look ashamed of yourself, you villain! Where's that will, rogue? What have you done wi' 't?"

Vetch turned a shade paler, I thought. I had never said a word to him about the loss of my father's will, and had no intention of doing so, biding my time, and I was a little vexed that Joe in his impetuous espousal of my cause had let the fellow know of our suspicions. He halted a moment, then with a "What are you prating about, turnip head?" he turned on his heel and walked away.

Joe, in a great rage, was for springing after him, but I caught him by the arm and begged him to let the matter rest.

"s.n.a.t.c.h my bowlines!" he cried, in a tone reminding me of Captain Cawson; "he'd better 'ware of running across my course. If I come athwart his hawser I'll turn him keel upwards, I will."

I diverted the current of his anger by asking him how he had become a prisoner of the French.

"Why, in a deuced unlucky way," says he. "Captain Benbow--he's now rear admiral, but will always be captain to me--he had a mind to draw alongside that there place they call St. Malo, and cut out a frigate of Doggy Trang he believed to be there, and he sent me and some more by night to take the bearings of the harbor. We was in a skiff, and a gale came on and beat us about all night and split our sails and drove us ash.o.r.e in the very teeth of a crew o' Frenchies.

There was a tight little scrimmage, I promise you, but they were two to one, and grappled us close, and clapped a stopper on our cable, hang 'em. They chained us together, the dogs, and marched us into St. Malo with scarce a rag to our backs, and yesterday they sent me and some more here."

"And right glad I am they did, Joe. But surely Captain Benbow did not send you in charge of the party?"

"Well, no, if you put it so, he didn't. We was in command of Lieutenant Curtis."

"And is he here, too?"

"No. He happened to have a pocketful o' money, and so they let him sling his hammock in the town, where he could spend it. When it is gone, belike they will send him to join us."

"And let us hope that we'll be gone as soon as his money, Joe. I am mighty glad you are here; for if we put our heads together we can surely find some way of getting free."

"Bless your eyes, don't I wish we may. Maybe there's a fate in it, sir. Fate jined you and me when it made me set Vetch a-rolling in the barrel, and 'tis fate has jined us all three here. Ay, please G.o.d, sir, one day we'll slip our cables, clap on all canvas, and steer for the north, though how, whereby, and by what means we can do it beats Joe Punchard."

The companionship of Joe, at a time when I was weak from my sickness, mightily cheered me, and we spent much of each day together. Our longing to be free did but increase as the days pa.s.sed. The monotony of prison life fretted us, Joe perhaps less than me, for his life had been harder than mine, and as the days grew shorter, and the nipping cold of winter by degrees overtook us, we began to know what real wretchedness is. By day we could warm ourselves with exercise and active sports in the courtyard, but at night we shivered under our thin coverlets, and I found myself by and by wishing that my bedfellow Runnles had a little more flesh on his bones, for a lean man is no comfort in bed on a bitter night. Joe was not in my dormitory, or I should certainly have bedded with him.

Above everything else, I think, the wretched food made us unhappy.

If a man be but well fed he can endure much hardship and trouble, and I had never wanted in this respect. The prison food was bad, ill cooked, and meagre; and though Joe, for one, might have procured better if he had chosen to employ himself in his old trade of coopering, he refused to do so after making one barrel, the price of which, after the soldiers' commission had been deducted, was something less than a fourth of what it would have been in England.

"'Noint my block!" he cried, when the pitiful sum was placed in his hand. "Dost think a Shrewsbury man 'll be done out of his dues by a codger of a Frenchman what he don't vally no more than pork slush or a stinking dogfish? Split my binnacle if I be!"

And he flung the money at the amazed Frenchman, and kept his word to work at his old trade no more.

I think this st.u.r.diness of his raised him somewhat in the estimation of our jailers, and in spite of the opprobrious epithets he applied to them (which to be sure they did not understand) he was soon as popular with them as Vetch was the reverse. Joe was blessed with a great fund of good humor, which withstood all privation and restraint. He growled and groaned at being compelled to take his turn in scouring the floors and other menial tasks, but after emitting a stream of hot language, which ever appears to flow very freely from the lips of sailor men, he went his way with great cheerfulness. He joked with his fellow prisoners, and being of a loquacious turn, had many things to tell them of the doings of his hero, Captain Benbow.

Vetch, on the contrary, was what the Scriptures call a "continual dropping." He kept himself apart, sulking the livelong day, scarce ever speaking, and when he did speak using a tone which the Grand Turk might employ towards a beggar. It was true enough that the prisoners were inferior to him in quality, but, their lot and circ.u.mstances being the same, it was decidedly a mistake to make the others feel their inferiority, and, as I think, a mark of ill breeding to boot. His few words were sneers, and he had a contemptuous way of looking at a man that made one itch to thrash him. At length he was thrashed, and very smartly, by a man in our dormitory, and after that he was utterly ignored, by general consent. It happened in this wise.

One bleak day of mud and rain, when we were driven by the weather out of the courtyard into the lower rooms of the barracks, and were sitting in doleful dumps, at a loss how to pa.s.s the time, Joe Punchard cried out of a sudden:

"Come, souls, what's a spell of foul weather to men that have sailed the salt seas! Haul forward your stools, mates, and we'll have a concert and make all snug. I warrant some of you can troll a ditty, though ye be too modest to own it; and not being plagued wi'

modesty myself, I'll heave anchor first."

I knew, nothing of Joe's musical powers, and it was with no little surprise I discovered that he had an excellent voice of the pitch they call barytone. He began:

Of all the lives, I ever say, A pirate's be for I; Hap what hap may he's allus gay And drinks an' bungs his eye.

For his work he's never loath; An' a-pleasurin' he will go; Tho' sartin sure to be popt off, Yo ho, with the rum below.

At the conclusion of the stanza his audience broke into loud applause. And then, with a sheepish air that set me a-smiling, Joseph Runnles, my bedfellow, the little silent man of whom I have spoken, drew out of his pocket the parts of a flute, and putting them together, set it to his lips and accompanied Joe through the next stanza, picking up the tune with a facility that spoke well for his musical ear.

In Bristowe I left Poll ash.o.r.e, Well stored wi' togs and gold; An' off I goes to sea for more, A-piratin' so bold.

An' wounded in the arm I got, An' then a pretty blow; Comes home I finds Poll flowed away.

Yo ho, with the rum below.

"Adad, brother," cries Joe, clapping the little man on the shoulder, "why have you stowed away your n.o.ble talents so long under hatches? I've sailed the seas for many a year; east, west, north and south, as the saying is; Blacks, Indians, Moors, Morattos, and Sepoys; but smite my timbers, never such a man of music have I drawn alongside of before."

Runnles blushed like a girl, and said never a word, but blew the moisture out of his flute, ready for the next stanza.

An' when my precious leg was lopt.

Just for a bit of fun, I picks it up, on t'other hopt, An' rammed it in a gun.

"What's that for?" cries out Salem d.i.c.k.

"What for, my jumpin' beau?

Why, to give the lubbers one more kick!"

Yo ho with the rum below.

By this time the other men had got the hang of the song, and when Joe started the next stanza they joined in, trolling the tune (they knew not the words as yet) in voices high and low, rough and coa.r.s.e for the most part, and with more heartiness than melody. This happy thought of Joe's cured our dumps and put us all in a good temper, and for the rest of that morning we sat singing songs, and listening to the tootling of Runnles' flute, when the little man could be prevailed on to treat us to a solo.

"You be mighty bashful for a sailor man," said Joe at the end of the concert, "partickler as your name be Joe like mine, but we won't let 'ee hide your talents any more, split my braces if we will."

It was on the night of that day that Vetch got his thrashing. We had gone early to our dormitory because of the rain, and being unable to sleep for the cold, one of the men suggested that Runnles should give us a tune.

"'Tis comfortin' to the spirits," said the man, a big fellow known to us as the bosun: his name was Peter Wiggett.

Runnles, evidently gratified at this mark of appreciation, put his flute together and began to pipe the tune of Mr. Ackroyd's famous song of the fight in '92 when Admiral Russell beat the French.

This, to be sure, was rather inspiriting than soothing, and thus perhaps there was a shadow of excuse for Vetch when he called out from under his coverlet (he lay in the next bed):

"Cease that squealing, hang you, and let a man get to sleep."

"Belay there!" shouted the bosun.

"Pipe away, Runnles, and we'll love you, my hearty."

Runnles struck up again, but he had not gone far (it was to the line, "To meet the gallant Russell in combat on the deep") when the fluting suddenly ceased, and we heard a cry that was certainly a squeal. Vetch had got out of bed in the dark and, s.n.a.t.c.hing the flute from Runnles' hand, caught him by the throat. I sprang up from Runnles' side, but the bosun from the bed beyond was before me.

"Avast, you lubber!" he cries, flinging himself on Vetch; "I thought we should grapple one day: now I'll bring you up by the head, you swine."

And with that he took Vetch with the left hand, and belabored him with the right until the poor wretch fairly howled for mercy. Then he threw him on to his bed (with some damage, I fear, to Dilly, who shared it), and bade Runnles play up: but the little man was so much upset at the turn affairs had taken that he declared his lips were too dry to blow a note, and indeed it was several days before he could be prevailed on to flute again.