The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" Part 14

"Very well, Joe," said I; "have your own way, if you like. I'll not spare you if you do anything to vex me; only remember, my good fellow, that whatever I may say will only be said to humour you."

"That's all right, sir; and thank ye kindly. There's just one thing more I'd like to say, sir, and then we'd better stop talkin'. It's just this. Don't you try to have any talk with me on the quiet like. You leave everything to me, sir, and as soon as I've found out anything I'll make a chance to let you know, somehow."

And so this remarkable conversation ended. Could there possibly be anything in Joe's idea? The men seemed to be perfectly comfortable and contented; they appeared to desire nothing in the way of food or accommodation, beyond what they already possessed; they had not grumbled or made any complaint; what could they be plotting to obtain? I asked myself this question over and over again, and could find no answer to it; notwithstanding which, Joe's communication made me feel exceedingly uneasy and anxious; so much so that, when I turned in, I found it quite impossible to get to sleep.

It may be readily imagined that when next I had an opportunity to observe the men I watched them, individually and collectively, most closely; yet, beyond the trivial circ.u.mstance that conversation always ceased if I happened to approach, I could detect nothing in the men's demeanour to lend the slightest colour to Joe's supposition. True, two or three of them--the Frenchman, the Portuguese, and the German, for instance--now impressed me as being scarcely so civil in their behaviour as they had been when they first joined the ship; but that, after all, might be only my fancy; and, if it were not, one hardly looks for such good behaviour from foreigners as one is wont to receive from Englishmen.

As for Joe Martin, he began his operations bright and early on the morning following his conversation with me. He was now the ship's carpenter, and in that capacity he had received orders on the previous day to fit a new set of stern-sheets in the port quarter-boat. This job he began the first thing in the morning, swinging her inboard and lowering her to the deck for his greater convenience during the progress of the work. This simple matter he managed so clumsily that he contrived to bilge the boat, necessitating the renewal of three timbers and a plank. I was on deck at the time of the accident, and, forgetting for the moment his scheme to provoke a seeming quarrel with me, I cautioned him about the awkward, lubberly way in which he was proceeding, and recommended him to get more help. He replied, in an offhand, careless way, that he was quite man enough to _do such_ a job as that without anybody's help; and, as he spoke, down came the boat with a crash, and the damage was done. The whole thing seemed such a piece of pig-headed stupidity that I was thoroughly exasperated with the fellow, and gave him a good sound rating; much, apparently, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the other men. Joe said nothing by way of excuse--indeed, any attempt to excuse himself would have been so wholly out of place as only to have increased his offence--but he slouched away forward, muttering to himself, and I noticed him stop and say a word or two to a couple of men who were at work upon the forecastle. _Then_ I remembered his proposal, and bethought me that this might be his way of carrying out his plan; if so, I could not help admiring his ingenuity, albeit still decidedly annoyed with him for the powerful realism with which he was playing his little comedy.

The boat lay as she had fallen for fully an hour; meanwhile Joe had vanished. This cool behaviour on his part nettled me still more; and at length I directed the boatswain to pa.s.s the word for Joe to come aft.

Upon which Joe made his appearance, obviously from the forecastle, wearing that sulky, sullen look that always exasperated me more thoroughly than anything else, whenever I met with it in a man (I am afraid I am rather a short-tempered individual at times); and I gave him such a wigging as four hours earlier I would not have believed possible; ordering him not to waste any more time, but to set to work at once to repair the damage occasioned by his clumsiness. Whether or no Joe began to guess from my manner that he had gone a trifle too far, I know not; but he at once went to work as I had ordered him, and worked, moreover, with such a will that by eight bells in the afternoon watch the damage was repaired and the boat as good as ever she was, save for a lick of paint over the new work. This want Joe now proceeded, with a great show of zeal, to supply, procuring a pot of paint and a brush, with which he came bustling aft. Now, if there is one thing upon which I pride myself more than another, it is the scrupulous cleanliness of my decks; conceive, therefore, if you can, the extremity of my disgust and annoyance when I saw Joe catch the naked toes of his right foot in the corner of a hen-coop, and, in his agony, drop the pot of paint upon my beautifully clean p.o.o.p, of course spilling the whole contents. It is true that, forgetting his pain the next moment, he dropped upon his knees and contrived, by scooping up the spilled paint in the palms of his hands, to replace a considerable proportion of it in the pot; but after he had done his best with canvas and turpentine a horrible unsightly blotch still remained to mar the hitherto immaculate purity of the planks, and it is therefore not to be wondered at if I again administered a sound and hearty rating to the culprit, this time in the presence and hearing of all hands. It was all the more vexatious to me that, instead of expressing any contrition for his carelessness, Joe persistently maintained the surly demeanour he had exhibited more or less throughout the day.

My anger, however, was short-lived, and by the time that I had had an hour or two for reflection I could not help feeling that I had been decidedly harsh and severe with the fellow for what was practically his first offence; moreover, he had always. .h.i.therto behaved so exceedingly well, and had proved himself such a splendid workman, that he had become a great favourite with me. When, therefore, during dinner, Sir Edgar made some half-jesting remark about Joe's misdeeds, I was far more disposed to make excuses for the man than to maintain a semblance of that annoyance I had so conspicuously exhibited during the day: nevertheless, I deemed it politic to do the latter, particularly while the steward was about; as I felt that, if the rest of the men were indeed traitors, the steward was probably the same, and would, in any case, be pretty certain to repeat in the forecastle whatever might be said in the cabin as to Joe's misdemeanours.

It was Joe's trick at the wheel that night for the first half of the first watch; but, as the pa.s.sengers were about the deck during the whole time, I made no attempt to enter into confidential communication with him, and I had no other opportunity that night. On the following day his misdeeds were not quite so egregious, but he still contrived to behave like a man who considered himself aggrieved; and when his trick at the wheel came round again, during the first half of the afternoon watch, he steered so carelessly, and ran the ship off her course so abominably, that I had at last to send him away from the wheel, and summon another man in his place; taking the fullest advantage, at the same time, of the opportunity thus afforded to give him another good rating, hot and heavy, as I felt that he intended I should.

His turn to "grind water" came round again at the latter half of the middle watch, and when he came aft at four bells to relieve the wheel I took care to be at hand with a reminder of his shortcomings during the previous afternoon, and the stern expression of a hope that he would give me no further cause to complain of him. And, not content with that, I took up a position near him with an air that was intended to convey to the retiring helmsman my determination to keep a strict eye upon Master Joe's conduct during the remainder of the watch.

Joe waited a minute or two, to allow the other man to get fairly out of hearing forward, and then remarked--

"I'm afraid, sir, I rather overdone the thing yesterday, a-stavin' in the gig, and then capsizin' the paint. If I did, I hope you'll forgive me, sir, and remember as I done it for the best."

"Overdid it? Did it for the best?" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Why, confound you, man, do you mean to tell me that you did those things _intentionally_?"

"Of course I did, sir," answered Joe, in much lower tones than my own, obviously with the intention of putting me on my guard. "You see, sir, them chaps for'ard are pretty cute; they're too old birds to be caught with chaff; and I knew that if I was to get on the blind side of 'em, it'd have to be by means of throwin' you into a genuine, downright pa.s.sion with me. Besides, if you'll excuse me for sayin' of it, Captain Saint Leger, you ain't much of a hactor, sir; you're altogether too fair, and straightfor'ard, and aboveboard to be able to deceive, or fight on equal terms with a lot of sharp, sly, underhand, sneakin'

beggars like them in the fo'c's'le. So says I to myself, 'Joe,' says I, 'if _you_ wants that crowd to believe as you're out of the skipper's favour, and are ready to join 'em in any mischief they may be hatchin', you've got to do somethin' to make the cap'n real downright savage with yer.' And that's why I done it, sir. I'm boun' to allow that the capsizin' of that there paint was perhaps a-comin' of it a _leetle_ too strong; but--"

"Oh, that's all right, Joe," I interrupted. "There is no doubt about the fact that you succeeded in making me genuinely angry with you; the important question now is, has it had the effect that you antic.i.p.ated?

Have the other men shown any disposition to take you into their confidence and make you a partic.i.p.ator in the plot or whatever it is that you suppose them to be hatching?"

"Well, no, sir, not exactly," Joe admitted. "But I'm in hopes that they will afore long, if this here unpleasantness between me and you goes on.

At present, you see, they don't know but what it may be a temp'ry thing as'll soon blow over; but if they finds that you've got a sort of spite again' me, and are always down upon me and drivin' me to desperation, as you may say, they'll be pretty certain to have a try to get me over on their side. You see, sir, I'm about as strong as e'er a man aboard here, and if them chaps are up to mischief they'll nat'rally prefer to have me with 'em instead of again' 'em."

"Undoubtedly they will," I agreed. "But, Joe, you have not yet told me exactly what it is that you suspect. If they were dissatisfied with their food, or their treatment, or their accommodation, would they not come aft and make a complaint, and endeavour to get the matter rectified in that way? But they never have done so; and indeed I cannot imagine what they have to be dissatisfied with: their food is all of the very best description it was possible to obtain; the forecastle is as roomy and comfortable a place as you will meet with in any ship of this size; and, as to work, I do not think they have much to complain of on that score."

"No, sir, no; it ain't nothing of that sort," a.s.serted Joe. "It's my belief, sir, as they've somehow got wind of _the treasure_, and that it's that they're after."

"The treasure?" I exclaimed in blank astonishment. "What treasure?"

"Why, the treasure as you expects to find on this here island as we're bound for. Lor' bless you, sir," continued Joe, noting the consternation that his unexpected communication had occasioned me, "we all knowed about it in the fo'c's'le--the old hands, I mean--afore the ship arrived in Sydney Harbour. It was the steward as brought the news for'ard to us one night. He was a curious chap, he was, as inquisitive as a monkey; he always wanted to know the ins and outs of everything that was goin' on, and he'd noticed you porin' and puzzlin' over a paper with a lot of figures wrote on it, and a drorin' in the middle; and he used to come for'ard and tell us that you'd been havin' another try to find out what them figures meant. And one night--it was when we was gettin' well on toward Sydney--he comes for'ard in great excitement, and he says, says he, 'I'm blowed if the skipper haven't been and found out at last the meanin' of that paper that he's been puzzlin' over durin'

the whole of this blessed voyage; and what do you suppose it is?' says he.

"Well, in course we said we didn't know; and some of us said we didn't care either, seein' that it wasn't any business of ours.

"'Oh, ain't it?' says he. 'P'r'aps you won't say it ain't no business of yours when you know what it is,' he says.

"'Well,' says one of the men--it were Bill Longman--'if you thinks as it concerns us, why don't you up and tell us what it is, instead of hangin'

in the wind like a ship in irons?' says he.

"So then the steward he tells us as how, that mornin' whilst you was all at breakfast in the saloon, he'd heard you tellin' about a dream you'd had the night before; and how you started up in the middle of the meal and rushed off to your state-room, and stayed there a goodish while, and then went up on deck and told Sir Edgar as you'd discovered the meanin'

of the paper, which was all about how to find a treasure that was buried on a desert island somewhere; and that you intended to go on to Sydney and discharge your cargo, and then take in ballast and sail for the Pacific to find this here island and get the treasure.

"Of course when he'd finished tellin' us about it there was a great palaver about buried treasure, and pretty nigh every man in the fo'c's'le pretended to have heard of a similar case; and we all agreed as you was a lucky man, and we hoped as how you'd find the island, and the treasure too. And by-and-by, after there had been a good deal of talk of that sort, Bill Longman up and says, 'But, George,' he says to the steward, 'you haven't told us yet how this here affair concarns us?'

"'Oh, well,' says George, with a curious kind of a laugh, 'if you don't _see_ as how it concarns us, why of course there ain't no more to be said.' And that was all we could get out of the steward that night.

"But a night or two afterwards, Master George brings up the subject again by sayin' that he don't suppose it's likely as you'll offer to share this here treasure with all hands, supposin' that you find it.

And then he goes on to say that, for his part, he don't see as the treasure is yours any more than it's anybody else's, and that, in his opinion, if it's ever found, all hands ought to share and share alike.

And some of the chaps seemed to think he was right, and others they didn't, and Bill up and says--

"'Look here, George,' he says, 'supposin' when we gets ash.o.r.e at Sydney you was to find a bag of sovereigns in the street, would you share 'em with us?'

"George said that 'd be a different thing altogether from findin' a treasure on a desert island; and we all had a long argyment about it, and couldn't agree; and, after that, the steward talked a good deal more about all sharin' alike in the treasure, and that if we was all of one mind it could be done, and a lot more stuff of the same kind. But we all laughed at him; and then came the arrival of the ship in Sydney, and George bein' paid off, and after that I heard nothin' more about the treasure."

"And what makes you imagine that the new men have got hold of the story?" I asked.

"Well, sir," said Joe, "it's just one or two little things I've overheard said. The first thing as ever made me suspect that there was somethin' up was the mention of the word 'treasure.' Cookie is the man as seems to know most about it--he's everlastin'ly talkin' about it--and I fancy he must have fallen in with the steward somewheres ash.o.r.e and heard the whole story from him."

"And what has the cook to say about it?" I inquired.

"Ah, that's just what I wants to find out," answered Joe. "They won't say anything to me about it, but just sits whisperin' with their heads together away for'ard in the far end of the fo'c's'le, and I notices as it's always the cook as has most to say. He and Rogers seems to be the leadin' spirits in the job, whatever it is."

"So your little scheme of yesterday has borne no fruit, thus far?" I suggested.

"Well, not much," said Joe. "But then, I don't expect 'em to take me into their secrets right off the reel, the first time that I misbehave myself. But I believe they'll have a try to get me in with 'em before they tries to carry out their plans. Last night, when I was sittin' on my chest, grumblin' and growlin' at the way I'd been treated durin' the day,"--here Joe laughed softly as the peculiar humour of the situation seemed to present itself to him--"the cook wanted to know whether I wouldn't rather be a rich man than have to go to sea for the rest of my days; but Rogers stopped him with a look, and said, 'Now, doctor, you leave Joe alone, and don't go puttin' no nonsensical notions into his head. You leave him to me; perhaps I may have somethin' to say to him myself by-and-by, and I don't want n.o.body to interfere at all in this here matter.' And that's how the thing stands at present."

"Very well," said I. "You have told me enough to satisfy me that your conjectures are by no means as groundless as I supposed them to be, and you must do your best, Joe, to find out what you can. But you will have to be _very_ careful what you are about: it is clear enough that, if they meditate treachery of any kind, they are not yet at all disposed to trust you; and if they at all contemplate the possibility of winning you over to join them, they will set all manner of traps for you, and test you in every conceivable way before making up their minds to trust you."

"Yes," a.s.sented Joe, "I expects they will. But I'm all ready for 'em, whenever they likes; I've got my course all marked out, clear and straight; and, if Rogers or any of the others comes soundin' me, they'll be surprised to find what a downright bad character I am, and how ready I am to take a hand in any mischief that's brewin'."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT.

This secret conversation between Joe and myself--secret by reason of the intense darkness of the night, and by the precautions I had deemed it expedient to take, at an early stage of the conversation, to conceal my precise whereabouts from any prying eyes among the starboard watch--at first produced within me a feeling of the keenest uneasiness and anxiety. For Joe's revelation as to the discovery by the late steward of my secret relating to the concealed treasure furnished me with what had previously been lacking, namely, _a motive_ for that secret plotting of the existence of which Joe was so firmly convinced. The story to which I had that night listened left no room for doubt in my mind that my own want of caution and the late steward's inquisitive propensities had placed within the knowledge of the latter the two important facts that I possessed the secret of a concealed treasure, and that it was my intention, on leaving Sydney, to proceed in search of it. Moreover, it was clear enough that the fellow had no sooner acquired this knowledge than he concocted a plan for the eventual acquisition of the treasure, and made some effort to secure the a.s.sistance of the crew in the carrying out of this plan, whatever it might happen to have been.

Failing in this, might he not, out of sheer malice, have communicated the secret to some one else--our present cook, for instance--and instigated the man to take some such steps as himself had contemplated?

Such a proceeding would at once account satisfactorily for the curious fact that I had succeeded in obtaining a crew when no other shipmaster within the port could do so. The only weak element of such a supposition consisted in my inability to reconcile myself to the belief that such a man as our late steward would ever, under any provocation, be weak enough to part with a secret that might, even under the most unlikely combination of circ.u.mstances and in the most distant future, possibly be of some advantage to himself. Yet this man, Martin, whose life I had saved, and who had impressed me as being a thoroughly honest, straightforward, trustworthy fellow, roundly a.s.serted that something of a secret and mysterious character was going on among the newly shipped men--something from which he, on account of his a.s.sumed integrity, had been quietly yet consistently excluded; and he had heard the word "treasure" mentioned by these presumable conspirators. Then I argued with myself that, after all, when one came to reflect upon it, the exclusive ways of these ex-gold-miners and the mere mention of the word "treasure" seemed rather slender threads from which to weave so portentous a suspicion as that which Joe's communication had suggested.

For aught that I knew, the late steward's discourses upon the subject of the treasure might have been of such a character as to suggest to the minds of his hearers an absurdly exaggerated idea of its value, leaving upon honest Joe's mind the impression that it must be fabulously rich, and altogether the kind of thing to obtain possession of which men would hesitate at no crime, however monstrous. And, having had experience of one attempt to gain possession of it by means of treachery, was it not natural that the simple fellow, discovering, or believing that he had discovered, something in the nature of a secret understanding among his shipmates, should at once leap to the conclusion that it was nothing less than a second attempt upon the treasure that was being planned? As to the cook's inquiry whether Joe would not rather be a rich man than be obliged to follow the sea for the remainder of his life, I thought nothing of that; sailors--like everybody else--are possessed of a rooted conviction that wealth is the panacea of all evils. By the time that I had reached this point in my mental argument it was eight bells, and, Forbes coming on deck to relieve me, I went to my cabin more than half convinced that Joe had, after all, discovered a mare's nest; and having thus argued myself into a more comfortable frame of mind, I lay down and slept soundly until I was called by the steward at my usual hour of rising.

I will do Joe the justice to say that, having settled in his mind the part that he would play in the drama that he believed was evolving itself on board the barque, he thenceforth played it to the life, and with a skill so consummate as to deceive the most suspicious. He a.s.sumed the role of a man who, if let alone, would be willing enough to do his duty honestly, and to the best of his ability, but who could not and would not tolerate the smallest measure of injustice. And he gave himself all the airs of an aggrieved person--of one who has been harshly treated for a trivial fault; his whole manner was the very impersonation of sullen resentment, and the careless, slovenly way in which he performed his duties was a constant source of provocation to me, even though I knew--or thought I knew--that it was all a.s.sumed. So exasperating was he that sometimes I even doubted whether his behaviour really was a.s.sumption--whether, after all, I had not been deceived in the man; whether it was not rather his former good behaviour that was a.s.sumed, while his present delinquencies were the result of an outbreak of irrepressible evil in him. There were even times when I asked myself whether he might not be a ringleader in the very plot he professed to be so anxious to discover, and whether his anxiety to enlighten me might not be a.s.sumed for the purpose of blinding and misleading me the more effectually. Never in all my life had I witnessed so thorough and radical a change in any one as seemed to have come over Joe Martin. But a quiet word or two with him, or a glance into his honest eyes when no one was near enough at hand to read their expression, always sufficed to rea.s.sure me as to his absolute fidelity. Since it was possible for him to make me doubt him, despite the many evidences he had afforded me of his honesty, it is not to be wondered at that Sir Edgar and Lady Emily were completely deceived by him; and often did they, in the comparative privacy of the saloon, deplore Joe's lamentable fall from his original virtuous condition. On such occasions I always a.s.sumed a tone of righteous indignation and severity, giving as free vent as possible to the very real annoyance that the fellow's pranks frequently occasioned me; inwardly resolving at the same time that, if he emerged with unblemished reputation from the perplexingly contradictory _role_ he was then enacting, I would do him the most lavish justice when the proper time arrived.

The number of men we now had on board the barque, and the const.i.tution of the watches, were such that one of Joe's "tricks" at the wheel always occurred from two to four o'clock on every alternate morning; and these were the only opportunities when it was possible for us to exchange confidences with any degree of safety from the possibility of discovery.

Consequently, after having had a chat with Joe, I always had to wait forty-eight hours before I could learn what discoveries--if any--he had made in the interim. After the last-recorded long chat that we had had together, two such opportunities had pa.s.sed without the occurrence of anything in the forecastle of a sufficiently definite character to furnish Joe with matter for a report; though he insisted that the frequent brief, hurried consultations, and the increased caution of the conspirators, convinced him that something very momentous must be impending. Such a statement naturally reawakened all my anxiety; which was not lessened by the fact that we now had a moon, in her second quarter, affording a sufficient amount of light to render our confidential communications at night almost impossible without detection; while, to add to my embarra.s.sment, I expected to sight the island within the next forty hours.

I thought the time had now arrived when I ought to take the mate into my confidence, and I did so during the progress of the following afternoon watch; taking care that our conversation should be as brief as possible, and that it should be conducted out of earshot of all eavesdroppers. As I had antic.i.p.ated, Forbes seemed very much disposed to make light of the matter, and to regard it as a hallucination of Joe's; protesting that, so far from having observed any symptoms of revolt or insubordination, he had been simply astonished at such orderly behaviour on the part of men who had lived the comparatively lawless life of diggers on a new gold-field. In short, we were both thoroughly puzzled. But we eventually agreed that, under the circ.u.mstances, it would be prudent to keep our eyes open, and to adopt precisely such precautionary measures as we should resort to if we were expecting the men to break into open mutiny. I also undertook to find or make an opportunity to instruct Joe that, in the event of his making any fresh discoveries, he was at once to acquaint the mate with them, if he experienced any difficulty in communicating with me.

On that same evening, during the first watch, when--the ladies having retired as usual about four bells--Sir Edgar joined me, according to custom, to smoke a final cigar and indulge in a desultory chat before retiring to his own cabin for the night, I availed myself of the opportunity to explain the situation to him also; first cautioning him not to exhibit any astonishment or other emotion that might excite the suspicions of the helmsman, who would doubtless have his eyes upon us.