The Island Treasure Part 8

"I went down just afore my watch was up to look up a spare old tops'l we stowed away there, me and Hiram, the week afore last, to see whether it wouldn't do in place o' that main to'gallant we carried away yesterday,"

replied Tom, rather sheepishly; "an' I s'pose I fell asleep, for it was only the water you kept a-pouring down as woke me up, an' I was most drownded afore I could reach the ladder an' catch hold of the coamin' of the hatch to climb up."

"An' sarve ye right, too, if we hed drownded ye, by thunder!" roared Captain Snaggs, thoroughly incensed, "ye durned addle-headed lubber! I guess ye hed a lantern with ye, hey?"

"Yes," confessed the delinquent; "in course I took a light down to see what I was a-doin' of."

"'In course'!" repeated the captain, in savage mimicry of Tom's way of speaking; "an' yer durned lantern got upsot, or kicked over, or sunthin', an' so, I guess ye sot fire to the sails, hey?"

"No, sir, there's nothing hurt to mention," replied Tom, more coolly; "it was only some old rags and greasy waste that the cook shoved down there that caught, which were the reason it made such a big smoke."

The skipper snorted indignantly at this explanation; and then, craning his long neck over the hatchway, he sniffed about, as if trying to detect some special smell.

"'Big smoke,' hey!" he cried, as he stood upright again, and shook his fist in Tom's face. "I guess theft's jest the ticket, ye thunderin'

liar! Ye've been shamming Abraham in yer watch, an' sneaked down thaar to hev a pipe on the sly, when ye should hev bin mindin' yer dooty, thet's what's the matter, sirree; but, I'll make ye pay for it, ye skulkin' rascallion. I'll stop ye a month's wages fur the damage done to the ship--if not by the fire, by the water we've hove in to put it out, an' ye ken tote it up, if ye like, yerself!"

Captain Snaggs then ordered the second-mate to go down and see if all danger were really over, and nothing left smouldering, not trusting to Tom's a.s.surance to that effect; and, presently, when Jan Steenbock came up again with a satisfactory report, the skipper, who was now shivering with the wet and exposure in such a light and airy costume, returned back to his cabin to finish his sleep in peace--not, however, without giving a rating to Mr Flinders, for his behaviour, which he said was as bad as that of the carpenter.

The starboard watch were then told that they might go below, though it was getting on for midnight, when they would have to turn out again, and keep the deck till the morning.

I don't know how it was, but, from that night, everything went wrong with the ship.

The very next afternoon, a tremendous thunderstorm broke over us, and a nasty blue, zigzagging streak of lightning struck our mizzen-royal mast, splintering the spar and sending the tye-block down on the p.o.o.p, nearly killing the second-mate.

If it had been Mr Flinders it wouldn't have mattered so much, but Jan Steenbock was a decent fellow and a good seaman, being much liked by all hands, barring the skipper, who, of course, disliked him because he took the men's part and let them have easy times of it in his watch.

This was the beginning of a fourteen days' spell we had of rolling about in the sweltering calms of the Doldrums; and then, when we at last managed to drift cross the Line, we had another fortnight's stagnation before we met the south-east trades, only a couple of degrees or so below the Equator.

By this time, every man on board was heartily sick of the ship and tired of his company, for the captain was continually grumbling with the mates and hazing the crew, and the hands as constantly falling out among themselves. Only my two friends, Tom Bullover and Hiram, the Yankee sailor, really remained chummy or contented out of the whole lot. The rest seemed thoroughly dissatisfied, complaining of their grub and everything.

Some of them declared, too, that the vessel was unlucky and under a curse, saying that they heard strange noises at night in the hold, though I did not think much of this, Tom and Hiram between them having nearly succeeded in chaffing me out of my belief in having seen Sam Jedfoot's ghost.

On getting a fair wind again, the ship, which had lost almost a lunar month through bad weather and calms and no weather at all, began to travel once more southward, steering almost west-sou'-west on the port tack; but as we reached down the South American coast-line towards Cape Horn, we nearly came to grief on the Abralhos, the _Denver City_ just escaping laying her bones there by the 'skin of her teeth,' to use Tom Bullover's expression to me next morning, as I was serving out the coffee--the peril having been met in the middle watch, when I was asleep, and knew nothing about it until it was over and we were sailing on serenely once more.

Then, again, off the mouth of the La Plata, when nearly opposite Buenos Ayres, although, of course, some five hundred miles or more from the land, we suddenly encountered a terrific 'pampero,' as the storms of that region are styled; and, if Captain Snaggs hadn't smelt this coming in time, we should have been dismasted and probably gone to the bottom with all hands.

As it was, we only managed to furl the upper sails and clew up the courses before the wind caught us, heeling the vessel over almost broadside on to the sea; and then everything had to be let go by the run, the ship scudding away right before the gale, as if towed by wild horses, with the sheets and halliards and everything flying--for, at first, the hail that accompanied the wind beat down on us so fearfully that no one was able to face it and go aloft.

That night, one of the hands who came up to the galley to light his pipe, and who had previously spoken of the noises he had noticed, as he said, about the deck during the still hours of the early morning, when all sounds seem so much louder than in the daytime, both aboard ship and ash.o.r.e, declared that during the height of the pampero he had heard Sam Jedfoot's voice distinctly singing that old negro ballad of which he used to be so fond when in life, chaunting it almost regularly every evening on the fo'c's'le to the accompaniment of his banjo:--

"Oh, down in Alabama, 'fore I wer sot free, I lubbed a p'ooty yaller gal, an' fought dat she lubbed me!"

Of course, Hiram Bangs and Tom Bullover, who were smoking inside the galley at the time, laughed at the man for his folly; but he persisted in his statement, and went away at last quite huffed because they would not believe him.

This was not the end of it all, however, as events will show.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

A HAUNTED SHIP.

A week later, Captain Snaggs, after drinking heavily during the evening, was seized with a fit of delirium similar to the one he had that night when he frightened me so terribly, for he rushed out of the cuddy, screaming that 'thet durned n.i.g.g.e.r Sam' was after him again.

He made my flesh creep; and I wouldn't have gone afterwards into the stern of the ship at night, without a light, for a good deal, nor would any of the fo'c's'le hands either, excepting, perhaps, Tom Bullover. I am certain Hiram Bangs would have been even more reluctant than myself to have ventured within the presumptive quarters of the ghost.

But, it was when we were off Cape Horn itself, though, that we encountered our greatest peril.

The _Denver City_ had got down well below the lat.i.tude of the stormy headland that is to mariners like the 'Hill Difficulty' mentioned in the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' carrying with her up to then the light, favourable breezes we had encountered after leaving the south-east trades which had previously wafted her so well on her way; when, all at once, without hardly a warning, the sea began to grow choppy and sullen, and the air thick and heavy. The sky, too, which had been for days and days nearly cloudless, became overcast all round, heavy ma.s.ses of vapour piling themselves upwards from the horizon towards the zenith, to the southward and westward, gradually enveloping ship and ocean alike in a mantle of mist.

"Cape Horn weather," observed Tom Bullover meaningly, as he squinted to windward; "we'll have a taste of it presently!"

"Aye, bo," said Hiram, from the door of the galley opposite, where the carpenter was holding on to the weather rigging; "I wonder what the skipper's about, keepin' all thet hamper aloft an' a gale like thet a-comin'! I reckon he'd better look smart, or we'll be caught nappin', hey?"

Captain Snaggs, however, was also on the look-out; and, almost ere Hiram had finished his sentence, he shouted out for all hands to take in sail.

"'Way aloft thaar!" he cried; "lay out on the yards, men, an' close reef the tops'ls. We're going to hev a blow!"

And we did have a blow.

The men were just ready to haul in the weather earring of the mizzen-topsail, the last they were handing, the fore and main having been already made snug, when a storm of wind and hail and snow struck us which in a few minutes coated the deck and rigging and every portion of the upper works of the ship with thick ice. At the same time, the sea, rolling in enormous waves, broke over our counter, throwing sheets of water aboard, which seemed to freeze in the air before it fell.

I was standing on the p.o.o.p, lending a hand at the mizzen halliards with the rest of the 'idlers'--as those who are not regular sailors are called, although I was fast trying to become a real salt under the apt tuition of Hiram Bangs and the carpenter--when this fierce blast came.

Goodness gracious! It pinned us all down to the deck, as if we were skittle-pegs, making our faces smart again with the bitter downpour.

Next, followed a short lull, during which the reef tackle was hauled out and the halliards manned, the yard being swayed up again; and then, those aloft were able to come down and find a more comfortable shelter below than the rigging afforded.

But, now, occurred a curious circ.u.mstance.

As the hands who had been up on the mizzen-yard reefing the topsail stepped from the ratlines on to the deck of the p.o.o.p before getting down to the waist below, one of the men, Jim Chowder, the same who had said that he had heard Sam Jedfoot's voice in the ship since he had been lost overboard, whispered to me as he pa.s.sed:--

"Listen!" he said.

That was all--

"Listen!"

The wind had suddenly died away for a moment, although the sea was like an ocean of mountains lumbering over each other; and as I 'listened', as Jim the sailor had told me, I heard a musical sound that I instantly recognised. It was that of the negro cook's banjo, and Sam's voice, too, most unmistakably, singing the same old air I knew so well:

"Oh, down in Alabama, 'fore I wer sot free."

The instrument seemed to give out a double tw.a.n.g at this point, as if all the strings were twitched at once, and I noticed that Captain Snaggs, who stood near me, turned as white as a sheet.

"Thunder!" he exclaimed, his eyes almost starting out of his head. "The Lord hev mercy on us! What air thet?"

As if in answer to his question, the same wild, ghostly melody was repeated, the sound seeming to hover in the air and yet to come from underneath the deck under our feet, the tune swelling in intensity as we all listened, so that every man on board must have heard it as well as the captain and myself.

And then, just as the last bar was struck with another resounding tw.a.n.g, a fiercer blast than the first caught the ship on her port quarter, and she heeled over to starboard until her deck was almost upright, while at the same time a terrible wave washed over us fore and aft, sweeping everything movable overboard.