The Island Treasure.
by John Conroy Hutcheson.
CHAPTER ONE.
OFF THE TUSKAR LIGHT.
"All hands take in sail!"
"Stand by y"r tops"l halliards!"
"Let go!"
Sharply shouted out in quick succession came these orders from Captain Snaggs, the hoa.r.s.e words of command ringing through the ship fore and aft, and making even the ringbolts in the deck jingle--albeit they were uttered in a sort of drawling voice, that had a strong nasal tw.a.n.g, as if the skipper made as much use of his nose as of his mouth in speaking.
This impression his thin and, now, tightly compressed lips tended to confirm; while his hard, angular features and long, pointed, sallow face, closely shaven, saving as to the projecting chin, which a sandy-coloured billy-goat beard made project all the more, gave him the appearance of a man who had a will of his own, aye, and a temper of his own, too, should anyone attempt to smooth him down the wrong way, or, in sea parlance, "run foul of his hawse!"
Captain Snaggs did not look particularly amiable at the present moment.
Standing by the break of the p.o.o.p, with his lean, lanky body half bent over the rail, he was keeping one eye out to windward, whence he had just caught sight in time of the coming squall, looking down below the while at the hands in the waist jumping briskly to their stations and casting off the halliards with a will, almost before the last echo of his shout "let go!" had ceased to roar in their ears; and yet the captain"s gaze seemed to gleam beyond these, over their heads and away forwards, to where Jan Steenbock, the second-mate, a dark-haired Dane, was engaged rousing out the port watch, banging away at the fo"c"s"le hatchway and likewise shouting, in feeble imitation of the skipper"s roar,--
"All ha-ands, ahoy! Doomble oop, my mans, and take in ze sail! Doomble oop!"
But the men, who had only been relieved a short time before by the starboard watch, and had gone below for their dinner when "eight bells"
were struck, seemed rather loth at turning out again so soon for duty, the more especially as their caterer had just brought from the cook"s galley the mess kid, full of some savoury compound, the appetising odour of which filled the air, and, being wafted upwards from below, made even the swarthy second-mate feel hungry, as he peered down the hatchway and called out to the laggards to come on deck.
"It vas goot, ja," murmured Jan Steenbock to himself, wiping his watering mouth with the back of his jacket sleeve and sniffing up a prolonged sniff of the odorous stew. "It vas goot, ja, and hart to leaf ze groob; but ze sheeps cannot wait, my mans; zo doomble oop dere!
Doomble oop!"
Captain Snaggs, however, his watchful weather eye and quick intelligence taking in everything at a glance, liked the second-mate"s slowness of speech and action as little as he relished the men"s evident reluctance at hurrying up again on deck; for, although barely a second or two had elapsed from his first order to the crew, he grew as angry as if it had been a "month of Sundays," his sallow face flushing with red streaks and his sandy billy-goat beard bristling like wire, every hair on end, just as a cat"s tail swells at the sight of a strange dog in its immediate vicinity when it puts up its back.
"Avast thaar, ye durned fule!" he screamed in his pa.s.sion, dancing about the p.o.o.p and bringing his fist down with a resounding thump on the bra.s.s rail, as if the inanimate material represented for the nonce the back of the mate, whom he longed to belabour. "Guess one"d think ye wer coaxin"
a lot o" wummen folk to come to a prayer-meetin"! Why don"t ye go down in the fo"c"s"le an" drive "em up, if they won"t come on deck when they"re hailed? Below thaar, d"ye haar?--all hands reef tops"ls!"
This shout, which the captain yelled out in a voice of thunder, finally fetched the dawdlers on deck, first one and then another crawling up the hatchway with lingering feet, in that half-hearted, dilatory, aggravating way that sailors--and some sh.o.r.e people, too for that matter--know well how to put on when setting to a task that runs against their grain and which they do not relish; though they can be spry enough, and with ten times the smartness of any landsmen, when cheerfully disposed for the work they have in hand, or in the face of some real emergency or imminent peril, forgetting then their past grievances, and buckling to the job right manfully, in true "sh.e.l.lback"
fashion, as if many-handed, like Briareus, with every hand a dozen fingers on it, and each finger a hook!
So it could be seen now.
The _Denver City_, a ship-rigged vessel of about thirteen hundred tons burthen, bound from Liverpool to San Francisco with a general cargo, had been two days out from the Mersey, battling against bad weather all the way from the start, with a foul wind, that shifted from the west to south-west and back again to the west, dead in her teeth, as she essayed to shape her course down Saint George"s Channel to the Atlantic.
First, beating to the westward with the ebb tide, so as to give Great Orme"s Head a wide berth, and then making a short board south when she had cleared Anglesey; what with the currents and the thick fog, accompanied with driving rain, that she met on nearing the Welsh coast, she nearly came to grief on the Skerries, the water shoaling rapidly on the lead being hove, shortly before the bright fixed light showing above the red on the Platters rocks loomed close in on the starboard bow.
This made it a case of "bout ship at once, Captain Snaggs thenceforth hugging the Irish side of the channel way and keeping it well on board on the port tack; and so on this second morning after leaving Liverpool, the ship was some six miles south of the Tuskar Light, with a forty-fathom bottom under her and the wind still to the southward and westward, right ahead of her true course, but shifting and veering from one point to another, and with a sudden sharp squall coming every now and then, by way of a change, to increase the labour of the men, already pretty well worn out by forty-eight hours tacking to and fro in the captain"s endeavours to beat to windward in the face of the foul weather.
As the _Denver City_, too, reached the more open seaway, the water got rougher, a northern stream setting up the Irish Sea from Scilly meeting the incoming tide round Carnsore Point, and causing a nasty chopping sea; which, save in the sullen green hollows of the waves, was dead and lead-coloured as far as the eye could reach--as leaden, indeed, as the heavy grey sky overhead, where some fleecy floating clouds of lighter wrack, rapidly drifting across the darker background that lined the horizon all round, made the latter of a deeper tone by contrast, besides acting as the _avant courier_ of a fresh squall--the wind just then tearing and shrieking through the rigging in short angry gusts and then sighing as it wailed away to leeward, like the spirit of some lost mariner chaunting the requiem of those drowned in the remorseless deep!
When the port watch had gone below at "eight bells," as mentioned before, to have their dinner, the weather had looked a little brighter, a small patch of blue sky, not quite as big as the Dutchman"s proverbial pair of breeches, showing right overhead at the zenith as the ship"s bell struck the midday hour, giving a slight promise of better things to come; and so, as Captain Snaggs had been trying to "carry on" all he could from the time the vessel left the Mersey, working the hands to death, as they imagined, unnecessarily in tacking and beating about in his attempt to make a fair wind out of a foul one, instead of waiting more sensibly for a more favourable breeze, such as might reasonably be expected in another day or two at most--judging by those signs sailors know so well, as do farmers, but which are inexplainable according to any natural meteorological laws--the hands now thought, on being so suddenly summoned again on deck, and forced to leave their untasted meal just as they were in the very act, so to speak, of putting it into their mouths, and with its tantalising taste and smell vexing them all the more, that the "old man" only roused them out again from sheer malice and devilry, to make another fresh tack or short board, with the object of "hazing" or driving them, as only slaves and sailors can be driven in these days by a brutal captain and hard taskmaster!
This it was that made them loth to leave their snug and warm fo"c"s"le, filled as it was with the grateful odour of the appetising lobscouse which Sam Jedfoot, the negro cook, a great favourite with the crew by reason of his careful attention to their creature comforts, had so thoughtfully compounded for them; and thus it was that they crawled up the hatchway from below so laggardly, in response to the second-mate"s pleading order and Captain Snaggs second stentorian hail, as if they were ascending a mountain, and each man had a couple of half-hundred weights tied to his legs, so as to make his movements the slower.
"Hoo-ry oop, mans!" cried the second-mate, in his queer foreign lingo.
"Hoo-ry oop, or you vill have ze skipper after yous! He vas look as if he vas comin" down ze p.o.o.p ladder joost now!"
"Durn the skipper! He ain"t got no more feelin" in his old carkiss than a Rock Island clam!" muttered the leading man of the disturbed watch, as he stepped out over the coaming of the hatchway on to the deck, as leisurely as if he were executing a step in the sword dance; but, the next moment, as his eye took in the position of the ship and the scene around, the wind catching him at the moment, and almost knocking him backwards down the hatchway, as it met him full b.u.t.t, he made a dash for the weather rigging, shouting out to his companions behind, who were coming up out of the fo"c"s"le just as slowly as he had done: "Look alive, mates! Ther"s a reg"lar screamer blowin" up, an" no mistake.
We"ll be took aback, if we don"t get in our rags in time. Look smart; an" let"s show the skipper how spry we ken be when we chooses!"
The captain, or "skipper", soon supplemented this advice by another of his roaring commands, yelled out at a pitch of voice that defied alike the shriek of the wind, and the noise of the sea, and the slatting of the huge topsails as they bellied out into balloons one moment and then flapped back again with a bang against the swaying masts, that quivered again and again with the shock, as if the next blow would knock them out of the ship.
"Forrud there! Away aloft, ye lazy skunks!" cried Captain Snaggs, when he saw the watch at last turn out, gripping the bra.s.s p.o.o.p rail in front of him with both hands, so as to steady himself and prevent his taking a header into the waist below, as he seemed to be on the point of doing every minute, in his excitement. "Lay out, thaar, on the yards, ye skulking lubbers! Lay out, thaar, d"ye hear? Thaar"s no time to lose!
Sharp"s the word an" quick the motion!"
The starboard watch, which had been waiting for the others, at once rounded the weather braces, so as to take the wind out of the sails as the men raced aloft, each anxious now to be first out on the yard; and, the reef tackle being hauled out, the spilling lines were clutched hold of, and the heavy folds of the canvas gathered up, the men at the yard-arms seeing to the earring being clear and ready for pa.s.sing, with the hands facing to leeward, so as to lighten the sail and a.s.sist the weather earring being hauled out, as they held the reef-line, and again facing to windward and lightening the sail there in the same fashion, so as to haul out the lee-earring before the signal was given by those out at the end of the yard-arms to "toggle away!"
It was risky work, especially as the ship was rather shorthanded, to attempt reefing the three topsails all at once, but the job was at last accomplished to the captain"s apparent satisfaction, for he sang out for them to come down from aloft; when, the topsail halliards being brought to the capstan, the yards were bowsed again, the slack of the ropes coiled down, and everything made comfortable.
Captain Snaggs, however, had not done with them yet.
"Clew up an" furl the mainsail!"
"Man the jib down-haul!"
"Brail up the spanker!"
He shouted out these several orders as quickly as he could bawl them, the creaking of the cordage and rattling of the clew-garnet blocks forming a fitting accompaniment to his tw.a.n.gy voice; while the plaintive "Yo--ho--hoy--e! Yo--ho--hai--e!" of the men, as they hauled upon the clewlines and leech and buntlines of the heavy main course, chimed in musically with the wash of the waves as they broke over the bows, dashing high over the yard-arms in a cataract of spray, and wetting to the skin those out on the fo"c"s"le furling the jib--these having the benefit also of a second bath below the surface as well, when the ship dived under as they got on to the footrope of the jib-boom, plunging them into the water up to their middles and more.
"I guess, we"re going to hev it rougher yet," said the captain presently, when the second-mate came aft, after seeing all snug forward, to ask whether he might now dismiss the port watch to their long delayed dinner. "Thet thaar squall wer a buster, but thaar"s worse comin", to my reck"nin". We"d best take another reef in them topsails an" hev one in the foresail, too."
"Verra goot, sir!" replied Jan Steenbock, the mate, respectfully, as he made his way forward again to where the men were waiting, anxious to go below to their lobscouse--cold, alas! by now. "Verra goot!"
Captain Snaggs smiled contemptuously after him, and then broke into a laugh, which was shared in by the first-mate, an American like himself, but one of a stouter and coa.r.s.er stamp and build, albeit he boasted of a more romantic sort of name--Jefferson Flinders, to wit. This worthy now sn.i.g.g.e.ring in sympathy, as he came up the after companion and took his place by the captain"s side, having been roused out before his time by the commotion on deck.
"A rum c.o.o.n thet, sir," said he to the captain, in response to his laugh. "He"ll be the death of me some day, I reckon, with thet durned "verra goot!" of his"n, you bet, sir!"
"We"ve a rum lot o" hands altogither aboard, Flinders--chaps ez thinks they hev only come to sea to eat an" enj"y themselves, an" don"t want to work fur thaar grub; but, I guess I"ll haze" "em, Flinders, I"ll haze"
"em!" snapped out Captain Snaggs, in reply, his wiry billy-goat beard bristling again as he yelled out in a louder tone,--"Forrud thaar!
Mister Steenbock; what air ye about, man--didn"t I tell ye I want another reef taken in them topsails? Away aloft with ye agen; lay out thaar, an" look spry about it!"
The halliards were therefore again let go, and the same performance gone through as before, with the addition of the men having to go up on the fore yard after they had finished with the topsails, and take a reef as well in the foresail--another piece of touch work.
As the ship was then found not to steer so well close-hauled, without any headsail, on account of the jib being lowered down, the foretopmost staysail was hoisted in its place and the bunt of the spanker loosened, to show a sort of "goose-wing" aft,--this little additional fore and aft sail now giving her just the steadying power she wanted for her helm, and enabling her to lie a bit closer to the wind.
"Thet will do, the port watch!" cried Captain Snaggs at length, and the men were scampering back to the fo"c"s"le in high glee, glad of being released at last, when, as if he"d only been playing with them--as a cat plays with a mouse--he arrested their rush below with another shout,--
"Belay thaar! All hands "bout ship!"
"Ha! ha!" sn.i.g.g.e.red Jefferson Flinders, the first-mate, behind him, enjoying the joke amazingly; "guess ye had "em thaar, cap. Them c.o.o.ns "ll catch a weasel asleep, I reckon, when they try working a traverse on a man of the grit of yourn!"
"Bully for ye," echoed the captain, grinning and showing his yellow teeth, while his pointed beard wagged out. "Say, Flinders, I"ll fix "em!"