The Mutineers Part 7

"At least," I thought, "he can't come below now."

The steward, when I appeared, raised his eyebrows and almost dropped his tray; then he paused in the door, inconspicuously, as if to linger. But Captain Whidden glanced round and dismissed him by a sharp nod, and I found myself alone in the cabin with the captain, Mr. Thomas, and Roger Hamlin.

"I understand there's news forward, Lathrop," said Captain Whidden.

Roger looked at me with that humorous, exasperating twinkle of his eyes,--I thought of my sister and of how she had looked when she learned that he was to sail for Canton,--and Mr. Thomas folded his arms and leaned back in his chair.

"Yes, sir," I replied, "although it seems pretty unimportant to be worth much as news."

"Tell us about it."

To all that I had gathered from Bill Hayden I added what I had learned by my own observations, and it seemed to interest them, although for my own part I doubted whether it was of much account.

"Has any one approached you directly about these things?" Captain Whidden asked when I was through.

"No, sir."

"Have you heard any one say just what this little group is trying to accomplish, or just when it is going to act?"

"No, sir."

"Do you, Lathrop, know anything about the cargo of the Island Princess? Or anything about the terms under which it is carried?"

"Only in a general way, sir, that it is made up of ginseng and woolen goods shipped to Canton."

Captain Whidden looked at me very sharply indeed. "You are positive that that is all you know?"

"Yes, sir--except, in a general way, that the cargo is uncommonly important."

The three men exchanged glances, and Roger Hamlin nodded as if to corroborate my reply.

"Lathrop," Captain Whidden began again, "I want you to say nothing about this interview after you leave the cabin. It is more important that you hold your peace than you may ever realize--than, I trust, you ever _will_ realize. I am going to ask you to give me your word of honor to that effect."

It seemed to me then that I saw Captain Whidden in a new light. We of the younger generation had inclined to belittle him because he continued to follow the sea at an age when more successful men had established their counting-houses or had retired from active business altogether. But twice his mercantile adventures had proved unfortunate, and now, though nearly sixty years old and worth a very comfortable fortune, he refused to leave again for a less familiar occupation the profession by which he had ama.s.sed his competence. I noticed that his hair was gray on his temples, and that his weathered face revealed a certain stern sadness. I felt as if suddenly, in spite of my minor importance on board his ship, I had come closer to the straightforward gentleman, the true Joseph Whidden, than in all the years that I had known him, almost intimately, it had seemed at the time, in my father's house.

"I promise, sir," I said.

He took up a pencil and with the point tapped a piece of paper.

"Tell me who of all the men forward absolutely are not influenced by this man Kipping."

"The cook," I returned, "and Bill Hayden, and, I think, Neddie Benson.

Probably there are a number of others, but only of those three am I absolutely sure."

"That's what I want--the men you are absolutely sure of. Hm! The cook, useful but not particularly quick-witted. Hayden, a harmless, negative body. Benson, a gloomy soul if ever there was one. It might be better but--" He looked at Mr. Thomas and smiled. "That is all, Lathrop; you may go now. Just one moment more, though: be cautious, keep your eyes and ears open, and if anything else comes up, communicate with Mr. Hamlin or,--" he hesitated, but finally said it,--"or directly with me."

As I went up on deck, I again pa.s.sed Mr. Falk and again he pretended not to see me. But although he seemed to be intent on the rolling seas to windward, I was very confident that, when I had left the quarter-deck, he turned and looked after me as earnestly as if he hoped to read in my step and carriage everything that had occurred in the cabin.

CHAPTER VII

THE SAIL WITH A LOZENGE-SHAPED PATCH

It was not long before we got another warning even more ominous than the one from the captain of the Adventure. On Friday, July 28, in lat.i.tude 19 50' South, longitude 101 53' East,--the log of the voyage, kept beyond this point in Mr. Thomas's own hand, gives me the dates and figures to the very day for it still is preserved in the vaults of Hamlin, Lathrop & Company,--we sighted a bark to the south, and at the captain's orders wore ship to speak her. When she also came about, we served out pikes and muskets as a precaution against treachery, and Mr. Falk saw that our guns were shotted. But she proved to be in good faith, and in answer to our hail she declared herself the Adrienne of Liverpool, eight days from the Straits, homeward bound. Her master, it appeared, wished to compare notes on longitude, and a long, dull discussion followed; but in parting Captain Whidden asked if there was news of pirates or marauders.

"Yes," was the reply. "Much news and bad news." And the master of the Adrienne thereupon launched into a tale of piracy and treachery such, as I never had heard before. Leaning over the taffrail, his elbows out-thrust and his big hands folded, he roared the story at us in a great booming voice that at times seemed to drown the words in its own volume. Now, as the waves and the wind s.n.a.t.c.hed it away, it grew momentarily fainter and clearer; now it came bellowing back again, loud, hoa.r.s.e, and indistinct.

It was all about an Arab ship off Benkulen; Ladronesers and the havoc they had wrought among the American ships in the China Sea; a warning not to sail from Macao for Whampoa without a fleet of four or five sail; and again, about the depredations of the Malays. The grizzled old captain seemed to delight in repeating horrible yarns of the seas whence he came, whither we were going. He roared them after us until we had left him far astern; and at the last we heard him laughing long and hoa.r.s.ely.

"What dat yeh man think we all am? He think we all gwine believe dat yeh?

Hgh!" the cook growled.

But Neddie Benson dolefully shook his head.

Parting, the Adrienne and the Island Princess continued, each on her course, the one back round the Cape of Good Hope and north again to Liverpool, the other on into strange oceans beset with a thousand dangers.

We sailed now a sea of opalescent greens and purples that shimmered and changed with the changing lights. Strange shadows played across it, even when the sky was cloudless, and it rolled past the ship in great, regular swells, ruffled by favoring breezes and bright beneath the clear sun.

At daylight on August 3 we saw land about nine miles away, bearing from east by south to north, a long line of rugged hills, which appeared to be piled one above another, and which our last lunar observations indicated were in longitude 107 15' East; and we made out a single sail lying off the coast to the north.

The sail caught and held our attention--not that, so far as we then could see, that particular sail was at all remarkable: any sail, at that time and in that place, would have interested us unusually. Mindful of the warnings we had received, we paused in our work to watch it. Kipping, with a sly glance aft, left the winch with which he was occupied and leaned on the rail. Here and there the crew conversed cautiously, and on the quarter-deck a lively discussion, I could see, was in progress.

We were so intent on that distant spot of canvas which p.r.i.c.ked the horizon, that a fierce squall, sweeping down upon us, almost took us aback.

The cry, "All hands on deck!" brought the sleeping watch from the bunks below, and the carpenter, steward, and sailmaker from the steerage. The foresail ripped from its bolt ropes with a deafening crack, and tore to ribbons in the gale. As the ship lay into the wind, I could hear the captain's voice louder than the very storm, "Meet her!--Meet her!--Ease her off!" But the reply of the man at the wheel was lost in the rush of wind and rain.

I had been well drilled long since in furling the royals, for on them the green hands were oftenest practised; and now, from his post on the forecastle, Mr. Thomas spied me as I slipped and fell half across the deck.

I alone at that moment was not hard at work, and, in obedience to the captain's orders, during a lull that gave us a momentary respite, he sent me aloft.

It was quite a different thing from furling a royal in a light breeze. When I had got to the topgallant masthead, the yard was well down by the lifts and steadied by the braces, but the clews were not hauled chock up to the blocks. Leaning out precariously, I won Mr. Thomas's attention with greatest difficulty, and shrieked to have it done. This he did. Then, casting the yard-arm gaskets off from the tye and laying them across between the tye and the mast, I stretched out on the weather yard-arm and, getting hold of the weather leech, brought it in to the slings taut along the yard. Mind you, all this time I, only a boy, was working in a gale of wind and driven rain, and was clinging to a yard that was sweeping from side to side in lurching, unsteady flight far above the deck and the angry sea. Hauling the sail through the clew, and letting it fall in the bunt, I drew the weather clew a little abaft the yard, and held it with my knee while I brought in the lee leech in, the same manner. Then, making up my bunt and putting into it the slack of the clews, the leech and footrope and the body of the sail, I hauled it well up on the yard, smoothed the skin, brought it down abaft, and made fast the bunt-gasket round the mast.

Pa.s.sing the weather and lee yard-arm gaskets round the yard in turn, and hauling them taut and making them fast, I left all snug and trim.

From aft came faintly the clear command, "Full and by!" And promptly, for by this time the force of the squall was already spent, the answer of the man at the wheel, "Full and by, sir."

In this first moment of leisure I instinctively turned, as did virtually every man aboard ship, to look for the sail that had been reported to the north of us. But although we looked long and anxiously, we saw no sail, no trace of any floating craft. It had disappeared during the squall, utterly and completely. Only the wild dark sea and the wild succession of mountain piled on mountain met our searching eyes.

A sail there had been, beyond all question, where now there was none.

Driven by the storm, it had vanished completely from our sight.

As well as we could judge by our lunar observations, the land was between Paga River and Stony Point, and when we had sailed along some forty miles, the sh.o.r.e, as it should be according to our reckoning, was less mountainous.

It was my first glimpse of the Sunda Islands, of which I had heard so much, and I well remember that I stood by the forward rigging watching the distant land from where it seemed on my right to rise from the sea, to where it seemed on my left to go down beyond the horizon into the sea again, and that I murmured to myself in a small, awed voice:--

"This is Java!"

The very name had magic in it. Already from those islands our Salem mariners had acc.u.mulated great wealth. Not yet are the old days forgotten, when Elias Hasket Derby's ships brought back fortunes from Batavia, and when Captain Carnes, by one voyage in Jonathan Peele's schooner Rajah to the northern coast of Sumatra for wild pepper, made a profit of seven hundred per cent of both the total cost of the schooner itself and the whole expense of the entire expedition. I who lived in the exhilarating atmosphere of those adventurous times was thrilled to the heart by my first sight of lands to which hundreds of Salem ships had sailed.