With Cochrane the Dauntless Part 4

The chief looked doubtful; but when Stephen added a crimson silk handkerchief he closed with the bargain at once. He would indeed have given them for the looking-gla.s.ses alone if Stephen had held out for them, for he regarded the chronometers with a certain sense of dread; they were to him mysteries, having made, when first brought ash.o.r.e, a ticking noise, and were generally considered to be in some way alive. They were, therefore, left out in the air for some days, and it was then found that they were, as supposed, dead. None of the other natives would have given them house-room; but the chief, who was less superst.i.tious than the majority of the tribe, had brought them into his hut, although he had not had sufficient courage to break them up for the sake of the bra.s.s.

Having disposed of these the chief opened the lid of the chest. He took out some clothes and held them up, but Stephen shook his head decidedly.

Then he brought out a gold watch and a heavy bag; he untied the latter, and handed it to Stephen for inspection. The lad had difficulty in repressing an exclamation, for it was full of guineas, but put it down and placed the watch beside it, a.s.sumed an air of indifference, and then made up another pile of about equal value to the first, but threw in a couple of dozen bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. The chief nodded, and Stephen slipped the bag and watch into his coat pocket. While this transaction had been going on, Jim had carried the boxes containing the chronometers and quadrants to his comrades.

"Anything more, sir?" he asked, as he appeared at the door of the hut.

"Nothing more to carry, Jim, as far as I am concerned; but there is a good pea-jacket and some togs in that chest. I have no doubt that it belonged to the captain of the ship; they have cut off all the b.u.t.tons. I will buy them for you."

The coat and trousers, and half a dozen shirts were, to Jim's great delight, purchased for him. Stephen then examined the whole contents of the chest, thinking that some papers might be found that would give a clue to the name of the ship that it had belonged to, but nothing of the sort was discovered. However, he bought the whole of the clothes, and, calling in the sailors one by one, divided them among them, and then went back and joined the captain.

"I have been doing some trading, captain," he whispered to him. "It is white plunder; and I have no doubt that a ship has been surprised and her crew ma.s.sacred somewhere near here. I have bought the chronometers and quadrants, and they have certainly not been in the water; also the contents of a sea-chest, which I divided among the men. There were no papers of any kind, but from the appearance of the chronometers, I should say that they cannot have been here long."

The captain nodded.

"We will talk it over when we get on board, Steve. We will be off at once, for these fellows are beginning to get drunk with this beastly liquor of theirs, and it is best that we should get out of the place before there is any excuse for a quarrel."

A few minutes later they took their seats in the boat and rowed off to the ship.

CHAPTER III.

A CYCLONE.

As soon as they arrived on board, Captain Pinder examined the chronometers and p.r.o.nounced them to be excellent ones.

"I would not wind them up until it is Greenwich time as they now stand, and would then compare them with our own."

"Of course, sir," Stephen said, "I have bought these not for myself but for the ship."

"Not at all, Steve; you have traded as you have a right to do, and the ship has nothing to do with it. At the same time I don't know whether you will be able to keep or sell them. I must give notice on our return home that such things have been found here under circ.u.mstances that leave no doubt that the crew of the ship to which they belonged have been ma.s.sacred, and the ship herself burned. No doubt owners of vessels that have been missing will call at the office to inspect the chronometers. I do not say that anyone would have a legal right to them; they have been absolutely lost and gone out of their possession, and you have bought them in the way of fair trade."

"If they wish to have them back again, sir, of course I will give them up."

"Well, at any rate, if you did so, lad, you would get a reward proportionate to their value. However, they may never be claimed. Owners whose ships are missing, and who have received the insurance money, are not likely to trouble themselves further in the matter."

"This is not all I have, sir," Stephen went on. "I also got this gold watch and this bag of money. I suppose the chest belonged to the captain, and that he carried this gold with him for the purchase of stores."

"You are a lucky fellow, Steve. Come down into my cabin and we will count the money. Two hundred guineas," he went on, when they had finished; "well, that is about the best bit of trade that I have seen done; you had better hand this over to me to keep."

"Oh, I don't mean it to be kept, sir," Stephen said; "it would not be fair at all. I would not think of it. It is like prize-money, and ought to be divided in the same way. I don't mind keeping the gold watch just now, but if we find out the name of the ship when we get back to England, I should wish to send it to the widow of the captain, and the money too, if it belonged to him."

"There is no chance whatever of that, lad. No captain would be fool enough to bring out a lot of gold like that on his own account. It was certainly ship's money that he would hold for making advances to the crew; as for the purchase of stores, he would pay for them by bills on the owner. But still, you are no doubt right about the watch, and the poor fellow's widow would, doubtless, be glad to have it; as to the gold, I will take charge of it for the present. We will talk the matter over again later on; there is no occasion to come to any decision about it. At present it is entirely yours. I don't think that you have any right to give up a sum of money like this without, at any rate, very careful consideration. It is a sum that, divided up into shares, would give but a very small amount to each on board, while it might be of the most material service to you some day or other. But please oblige me by saying nothing whatever about it at present. Whatever decision is arrived at in matters of this sort, somebody is sure to feel aggrieved, and it is astonishing what little things upset a crew, especially on a voyage of this kind, where there is no such controlling influence over the men's minds as that exercised by touching at ports where there are authorities to whom, in case of necessity, the captain can appeal."

"Very well, sir, I will, of course, do as you wish. Shall I say anything about the watch?"

"Yes; there is no objection to your doing that, especially as that must be mentioned in any inquiries we may make as to any ship being missing, and there is no need for any secrecy about it. I shall also mention the money to the officers; they will appreciate the offer that you have made, and agree with me, I am sure, that it will be better that nothing should be said to the crew."

That evening the first mate said to Stephen: "The captain has been telling us about that bag of money you got hold of, Steve, and we all think that your offer to treat it as if it were prize-money is a very kind one, but we agree with him that it would be a mistake. In the first place, the money wouldn't go far. In any matter of that sort the ship, that is to say the owners, take a large share to begin with, the officers take some shares, and the men's shares would not come to a pound a head. A pound a head would only suffice for them to have a drunken spree on sh.o.r.e, but they are just as well without that, and, as the captain says, it is astonishing what little things upset sailors' minds. They might take it into their head that as you got two hundred pounds in that hut there might be a lot more, and they would be wanting to land and to turn the village upside down, and there would be bloodshed and all sorts of trouble. The old saying, 'Least said, soonest mended', comes in here strongly. We have, so far, got on very well with the natives this voyage, and I hope that we shall continue to do so to the end. I quite allow that we should all of us be glad to give a sharp lesson to that village ash.o.r.e. They have been plundering, and I have no doubt murdering, the crew of some ship. Still, we have no evidence of that, and we can't attack the village on mere supposition. They have been friendly enough with us, partly because we have been here before, and the captain gets on well with them, but more because they are perfectly well aware that we are always on guard, and that there is no chance whatever of their catching us asleep. In nine cases out of ten it is the carelessness and over-confidence of sailors that tempt the natives to take advantage of it; they would never have shown you these things if they had had any idea of attacking us."

Next morning the operation of filling up the water-tanks was completed, and at noon the orders were given to weigh anchor. Steve saw how rightly the captain had foreseen what was likely to happen, for no sooner was the order given than two of the men came aft as a deputation from the crew.

"What is it, lads?" he asked.

"Well, captain, the boat's crew that went ash.o.r.e yesterday came off with a lot of togs that must, in course, have been taken from some seaman's chest. Now, it seems to us as that chest could not have been there by fair means, and that, like enough, they had been murdering and looting some vessel here; and, for aught we know, the place may be full of plunder of some sort or another, and that, may be, there are twenty or thirty other seamen's chests there, and other goods. It seems to us, sir, that these chaps ought to be punished, and that we should try to get as much of the plunder they have got hidden as we can; therefore, the crew beg that you will sanction our going ash.o.r.e and tackling them."

"No, lads, I can't sanction that," the captain said. "It is true that Mr.

Embleton was offered by one of their chiefs some chronometers and the contents of a sea-chest. He bought the chronometers, and he also bought the contents of the chest and divided them among the men who went ash.o.r.e.

The chief made signs to him that these things had been saved from a ship that had been wrecked, and it is possible that it may be so. It may not have been wrecked on this island, and those things may have been the share of one of the canoes from here that a.s.sisted in looting her; at any rate, we have no proof that the vessel was boarded and captured. If it had been done here, I think we should have seen more signs of it among the natives who have come out to the ship or on sh.o.r.e. There would have been more trade goods about-handkerchiefs, and beads, and so on, and they would not have been anxious to trade with us. At any rate, there are no grounds for attacking a village that has, during the last three or four days, traded peacefully with us, as they have done on several different occasions when I have put in here. Even if there were no other reason, I should refuse to allow them to be attacked, because the news of the affair would spread from island to island, and next time we were in these seas we should do no trade, and should certainly be attacked if we gave them a chance. Of course I shall report the circ.u.mstances connected with the discovery of this chest at Calcutta, and endeavour to find out what ship has been lately missing; beyond that we can do nothing in the matter. We are traders; if we are attacked we do our best to beat off the a.s.sailants, but it would be altogether beyond our business to attack sea-side villages because we find that they are in the possession of ships' goods, for were we to do so we should soon put an end to all trade in these islands. Go back and tell your comrades this, and then muster at once and heave the cable short."

The orders were obeyed, but it was evident that there was a lack of the usual briskness and willingness. However, before the ship had been many hours on her way, matters settled down and the work went on as usual.

"You see, lad," the first officer said to Stephen as the sails were sheeted home, and the _Tiger_ glided away from her anchorage, "the captain was quite right, and if it had been known on the ship that you had got that money, there would have been a good deal more trouble than there was.

It would have been no good to tell them that, no doubt, it was the ship's money. Sailors are like children; they would have argued that if you could obtain two hundred pounds from one hut, they would each be likely to get as much in a general loot of the village. You see, giving them those togs you bought was enough to stir them up, and things would not have pa.s.sed off so pleasantly had they known about the money.

"I do not say that there would have been a mutiny, or anything of that sort, because the great majority of them have sailed for years under the skipper; still, there would have been great discontent and grumbling, and if there happened to be among the new hands one or two sea-lawyers, they might have worked upon the men, and caused a great deal of trouble."

"I see that, sir," Steve said.

"Well, there is no harm done, lad, and you will see that in a day or two the matter will have been forgotten. But it is a lesson that you may profit by; it is always best to avoid anything that, even remotely, is likely to set sailors talking together. All crews are not as trustworthy as the _Tiger's_, and you would be astonished what mischief two or three cunning plausible rascals can do among a crew, if they have got ever so small a grievance to work upon."

A week later the ship was pa.s.sing along the coast of a small island when Joyce, the eldest apprentice, who was examining the sh.o.r.e through a gla.s.s, said to the second officer:

"There is a wreck of some sort, sir, in among those black rocks."

"So there is," the mate said, shading his eyes with his hand. "I see it plainly enough now that you call my attention to it."

He went aft and reported it to the captain, who came out and examined it carefully with his gla.s.s.

"It is a wreck certainly, and not the work of the natives this time," he said. "She has been blown on sh.o.r.e and left almost high and dry; her spars are all gone, the bulwarks are swept away, and though I cannot see the line of her broadside, I fancy that she has broken in two. Anyhow, as we have hardly steerage way, we shall lose no time by sending to find out what ship she is. Mr. Towel, you might as well lower the gig. Take six men; let them all take muskets and pistols with them. As Mr. Joyce was the first to make her out he may as well go with you. If you see no signs of natives, you can land and ascertain whether she has been plundered. It may be that she has not been discovered yet by the natives. If you see any of them about, content yourself with getting the ship's name and port from her stern."

The boat was lowered.

"You may go too, Steve," he added as Stephen was looking down into the boat. "It is Mr. Archer's turn; but as he had got a touch of fever this morning, he is better sitting under the shade of that sail than in an open boat."

"Thank you very much, sir," Stephen said, and, running below, shoved his pistols into his pocket.

"You have got water in the boat?" the captain asked the mate just as Steve returned on deck.

"The keg is about half-full, sir," he said as one of the sailors lifted and shook it.

"Hand them another down from the long-boat," the captain said, turning to one of the men; "it is better always to make sure. Mr. Towel," he went on, leaning over the side, "one is never sure of the weather for an hour, and I don't altogether like the colour of the sky now. But if there are no signs of change aloft, and you see the natives have not been near the place, give a look round beyond the rocks for anything that might show whether some of the crew got ash.o.r.e-fires made, or anything of that sort.

Should you see signs, we will fire a gun or two when you return, and lay off for a few hours to give them a chance of coming down to the beach."

"Ay, ay, sir," the mate said, "I will take a look round for them; but from the way she has been thrown up I should doubt whether there is the slightest chance of anyone having got ash.o.r.e."