The Castaways Part 9

"To an oiland in latichood--" began O'Gorman.

"To an island?" I interrupted. "And do you think you would ever have succeeded in finding that island without the a.s.sistance of a navigator?

Do you think you would ever have reached the Pacific at all? By what means would you ascertain your whereabouts and avoid dangers?" I demanded.

There was a long silence, which Price at length broke by replying:

"Oh, we'd ha' managed somehow."

"Yes," said I, "you would have managed somehow--for a few days, or weeks, as the case might be; at the end of which time you would either have run your ship ash.o.r.e, and lost her; or you would have found yourselves hopelessly out of your reckoning, with no knowledge of where you were, or how to steer in order to reach your destination."

n.o.body attempted to reply to this, all hands evidently realising the truth of what I had said, and pondering upon it. At length, however, when the silence had grown embarra.s.sing, O'Gorman broke it, by asking-- in a much more civil tone than he had yet chosen to adopt with me:

"Well, misther, allowin' all this to be thrue, what of it?"

"Nothing, except that before propounding the conditions upon which I am willing to agree to your proposal, I wished to make it perfectly clear to you all that you can do absolutely nothing without my help," said I.

"You have chosen to adopt a very domineering and offensive tone with me, under the evident impression that the young lady and myself are completely at your mercy. And so we are, I willingly admit, but not to the extent that you seem to suppose; because, if you will reflect for a moment, you will see that you dare not murder, or even ill-treat me, or the young lady. Here we are, in the South Atlantic, and not a man among you all possesses knowledge enough to take this brig from where she now floats to a port; hence you are as much at my mercy as I am at yours.

You can do absolutely nothing without me. Therefore, if you require my a.s.sistance you must agree to my terms."

"Very well, sorr," answered O'Gorman; "let's hear what thim terms are."

"In the first place," said I, "you will all treat the lady with the utmost respect, no one presuming to speak to her except in reply to any remark which she may be pleased to make."

"I shan't agree to that," shouted Price aggressively. "We're all goin'

to be equal, here, now; and if I feel like speakin' to the gal, I shall speak to her, and I'd like to know who'll stop me."

"Oh, shut up, Chips, cawn't ye!" exclaimed one of the other men--a c.o.c.kney, if his tongue did not belie him, "shut up, and stow that 'equality' yarn of yours. We've all heard that before, and I, for one, don't believe in it; it's all very well among a lot o' sailor-men like ourselves, but you'll never be the equal of the lidy--no, nor of the gent neither--not if you was to live to be as old as Mathusalem; so what good would it do you to talk to her? Why, she wouldn't _look_ at an old tarry-breeches like you or me, much less talk to us! Garn! You go ahead, sir; _we'll_ look awfter Chips, and keep him in order; never fear!"

"I hope you will, for your own sakes," I retorted significantly, leaving them to interpret my meaning as they chose. "My next condition," I continued, "is that the cabin and the staterooms are to be left to the exclusive use of the lady and myself, the steward only being allowed access to them.

"My next condition is that no man shall have more than two gills of rum per day--half to be served out at midday, and the remainder at four bells of the first dog-watch. In the event of bad weather, or other especial circ.u.mstances, the allowance may be increased at my discretion, and by so much as I may consider necessary.

"And my last condition is that when this business is concluded, the lady and I are to be allowed to take the boat, with a sufficient stock of provisions and water, and to quit the ship within sight of some suitable harbour, to be chosen by myself."

A dead silence followed this bold announcement on my part, which was at length broken by O'Gorman, who, looking round upon his motley crowd of followers, demanded:

"Well, bhoys, you've heard what the gintleman says. Have anny of ye annything to say agin it?"

"Yes; I have," answered the irrepressible Price. "I don't care a ropeyarn whether I'm allowed to speak to the gal or not; but I thinks that O'Gorman and me, seein' that we're to be the mates of this here hooker, ought to berth aft, and to take our meals in the cabin; and I'm for havin' our rights."

"You will do neither the one nor the other, with my consent, Price, I a.s.sure you," said I. "And unless my conditions are absolutely complied with I shall decline to help you in any way."

"Oh, you will, eh?" sneered Price. "You'd better not, though, because I dessay we could soon find a way to bring ye round to our way of thinkin'. We could stop your grub, for instance, and starve ye until you was willin' to do what was wanted. And if that didn't do, why there's the--"

"Stop!" I exclaimed fiercely, "I have had enough, and more than enough, of threats, my man, and will listen to them no further. Now, understand me, all of you. I have stated the conditions upon which I will meet your wishes, and I will not abate one jot of them. Agree to them or not, as you please. You have taken the ship from me, and now you may do as you will with her; but, make no mistake, I will only help you of my own free will; I would rather kill the young lady and myself with my own hand than submit to compulsion from a crowd of mutineers. Take your own time to decide; _I_ am in no hurry."

"Why, he defies us!" exclaimed Price, turning to his companions. "What d'ye say, boys, shall we give him a lesson? Shall us show him that we're his masters?"

"No, mate, we shan't," interposed the fellow who had spoken before; "and if you don't stop your gab about 'lessons' and 'masters' I'll see if I cawn't stop it for you. What we want, mates, is to get to that island that O'Gorman has told us so much about; and here is a gent who can take us to it. What do we want more? Do we want to grub in the cabin?

Ain't the fo'k'sle good enough for us, who've lived in fo'k'sles all our lives? Very well, then, let's agree to the gent's terms, and have done with it. What d'ye s'y?"

It soon appeared that the entire party were willing--Price, however, consenting under protest;--so I retired to the cabin and drew up the terms in writing, together with an acknowledgment on the part of the crew that they had taken the ship from me by force, and that I was acting as navigator under compulsion; and this the entire party more or less reluctantly signed--or affixed their mark to--Miss Onslow acting as witness to the signatures of the men. This done, with bitter chagrin and profound misgiving as to the issue of the adventure, I gave the order to wear ship, and we bore up on a course that pointed the brig's jib-boom straight for the far-distant Cape of Storms.

CHAPTER NINE.

WE SIGHT A STRANGE SAIL.

Having secured possession of the brig, and succeeded in coercing me to become their navigator to some island in the Pacific, the locality of which they had as yet kept secret, upon an errand the nature of which they had not seen fit to divulge to me, the crew at once went industriously to work, under O'Gorman, to put the vessel all ataunto once more, by routing out and sending aloft spare topgallant-masts and yards, bending new sails, overhauling and making good the rigging, and, in short, repairing all damage of every description; and with such goodwill did they work that in ten days from the date of their seizure of the brig everything had been done that it was possible to do, and, so far as the outward appearance of the craft was concerned, there was nothing to show that anything had ever been wrong with her.

Meanwhile, during the progress of this renovating process, the steward had made it his business to give the lazarette a thorough stock-taking overhaul, of the result of which I was kept ignorant. But I gathered that the examination was not altogether satisfactory; for when it was over, and the steward had made his report to O'Gorman, the latter came to me and anxiously demanded to know what our distance then was from the Horn. This was on the afternoon of the third day after the seizure of the brig, and upon carefully measuring off the distance from our position at noon on that day, I found that it amounted to three thousand seven hundred and some odd miles. The distance seemed to be a staggerer to the fellow, and when, in reply to a further question, I informed him that he might reckon upon the brig taking nearly or quite a month to cover it, he made no attempt to conceal his dismay. That something was radically wrong at once became apparent, for there were long conclaves in the forecastle, the object of which, presumably, was to determine how to meet the emergency. I shrewdly suspected that this emergency arose out of the unexpected discovery that the brig's stock of provisions, or water, or both, was insufficient to carry us to our destination; and I fervently hoped that my conjecture might prove correct, as in that case we should be compelled to touch somewhere to renew our stock; and I felt that if in such a case I failed to secure the arrest of the whole party for piracy I should richly deserve to remain their tool, exposed to the countless vacillating and dangerous humours of a gang of ruffians who had deliberately thrown off every restraint of law and order.

But, in speculating thus, I was reckoning without my hosts; I was crediting O'Gorman and his satellites with scruples that they did not possess. I had not yet fully gauged the villainy of which they were capable.

Thus far, ever since we had borne up for the Horn, we had been favoured with a fair wind, and plenty of it; but on the second day after the occurrence of the above events the wind began to fail us, and by sunset that night it had dwindled away until the brig had barely steerage-way, while the surface of the ocean presented that streaky, oily appearance that is usually the precursor of a flat calm. Meanwhile, during the afternoon, a sail had hove in sight in the north-western board, steering south-east; and when the sun went down in a clear haze of ruddy gold, the sails of the stranger, reddened by the last beams of the luminary, glowed against the clear opal tints of the north-western sky at a distance of some eight miles, broad on our starboard bow.

The stranger was a barque-rigged vessel of some three hundred and fifty tons or so: quite an ordinary, everyday-looking craft, with nothing whatever of an alarming character in her aspect; yet she had not long been in sight when it became quite apparent that O'Gorman and his crew were greatly exercised at her appearance; and I was at first disposed to imagine that their emotion arose from the circ.u.mstance of their being fully aware that, in seizing the brig, as they had done, they had committed an act of piracy, and that they now feared detection and its attendant unpleasant consequences. But by sunset I had found occasion to alter my opinion, for it had by then become evident that O'Gorman was manoeuvring, not to avoid but to close with the stranger in such a manner as to avoid arousing any suspicion as to his design!

No sooner did this intention of O'Gorman's become apparent than I began to ask myself what could be his motive for such a course; and the only satisfactory reply that I could find to such a question was that he wished to ascertain whether her skipper had any provisions to spare, and, if so, to endeavour to treat with him for their purchase--I had by this time seen enough of O'Gorman to recognise that he was quite acute enough to discern the advantage and safety which such a transaction would afford him over the alternative of being compelled to touch at some port, and I had little doubt that my surmise as to his intentions would prove correct. At all events, his determination to speak the barque was evident, and I began to cast about for some means whereby the encounter might be utilised to the advantage of Miss Onslow and myself.

There were two or three ways in which we might possibly be benefited by the incident, if only I could contrive to establish private communication with the skipper of the stranger. In the first place, if the barque happened to be British--of which, however, I had my doubts--I might make her skipper acquainted with all the circ.u.mstances relating to the brig's seizure, and appeal to him to compel the Irishman and his gang--by force, if necessary--to surrender Miss Onslow and myself. Or, if that should prove impossible, I might perhaps be able to secure Miss Onslow's transfer to the stranger, when--her safety having been a.s.sured--it would matter comparatively little what happened to myself.

Or--in the event of both these schemes failing--I might possibly succeed in privately arranging with the skipper to acquaint the authorities with our predicament and request them to take the necessary steps to effect our rescue.

One or another of these plans I might perhaps succeed in putting into effect, provided that the Irishman should prove careless and neglectful enough to permit of my communicating with the skipper of the barque.

But would he be so? I very much doubted it. Yet I could but try; and if, as I antic.i.p.ated, I should find it impossible to obtain private speech with the skipper of the barque, I might still be able to surrept.i.tiously convey to him a letter which would serve my purpose quite as well.

Meditating thus, I made my way below to the brig's snug little cabin, with the intention of forthwith inditing my epistle, and there I found Miss Onslow, seated upon one of the lockers, ostensibly engaged in reading, but with her beautiful eyes fixed upon the gently-swaying lamp that hung in the skylight, with a dreamy, absent look in them that showed her thoughts to be far away.

"Do you happen to know whether the steward is in his pantry, Miss.

Onslow?" I asked, with a glance in the direction of the apartment named, as I entered the cabin.

"No; he is not there; he went on deck nearly an hour ago," she replied.

"Do you want anything, Mr Conyers?"

"Nothing more at present than a few minutes' privacy and freedom from espionage," I answered. "Listen, Miss Onslow," I continued, "I have been engaged for the last two hours in quietly observing the manoeuvres of O'Gorman, and I have come to the conclusion that he intends to close with and speak the barque that has been in sight all the afternoon.

Now, such a proceeding may, or may not, be to our advantage. If I can succeed in effecting communication with her skipper, it may be possible for us to accomplish one of three things: First, we may, with the a.s.sistance of the barque's crew, be enabled to effect our escape from these people altogether. Or, if that should prove impracticable, we may possibly be enabled to secure _your_ transfer to the barque. Or, _if_ that attempt also should fail, we surely ought to be able, with the help of the barque's people, to communicate with the authorities ash.o.r.e, and claim from them rescue from our present precarious and exceedingly unpleasant situation."

"Y-e-es," my companion a.s.sented meditatively. Then, after a slight pause, she asked:

"Have you ever thought of what the end of this adventure is likely to be, so far as we two are concerned, supposing that we should fail to effect our escape from O'Gorman and his companions?"

"Certainly, the matter is never absent from my thoughts," I answered.

"We are bound--upon what I cannot help thinking a fool's errand--to some island in the Pacific, upon which O'Gorman and his party expect to find a certain treasure. This treasure they either will or will _not_ find; but in either case I antic.i.p.ate that, so far as _we_ are concerned, the adventure will end in our being landed somewhere at a sufficient distance from a town to permit of O'Gorman getting clear away with the brig before we should have time to give the alarm and secure his capture."

"That, of course, is a.s.suming that you carry out these men's wishes, without giving them any trouble," commented Miss Onslow. "But," she continued, "what, do you imagine, is likely to be the result--the effect upon us both--if you cause them trouble and anxiety by endeavouring to escape? They have made it perfectly evident to you that they _cannot_ dispense with your services. Do you really think it worth our while to irritate and provoke them by attempting to escape? True, they are exceedingly unpleasant people to be brought into such close and constant contact with, but there seems to be no great harm in them, provided that they are allowed to have their own way."

"Ah!" I exclaimed, "you evidently do not know of what a ship's crew may become capable when once they have committed so serious a crime as piracy--for that is what they have done in taking this brig from me. It is not what these men are, now, but what they may become in the future, of which I am thinking, especially so far as you are concerned. I recognise possibilities in the future that may make this brig the scene of hourly peril to you of a nature that I shudder to think of, and it is _your_ safety that I am concerned about; that a.s.sured, I could face the rest with equanimity."