"Oh, please, sir," I cried out; as well as the pressure of his hands on my throat would permit, "I don"t know. I don"t know anything."
"Cuss ye, b"y. Ye dew know; an", if chokin" won"t get it out of ye, we"ll try what larrupin" will do!"
So saying, he ordered a couple of the hands standing by to seize me up to the weather rigging; and taking hold of a thick piece of rope, which he had brought with him out of the cabin, he proceeded to deliver blows about my back and shoulders that made me howl again, the strokes seeming to tear the flesh from my bones.
"Won"t ye tell, hey?" he exclaimed between each stroke of the improvised cat, which lashed as well, I can answer, as if it had nine tails; "won"t ye tell, hey?"
At the third stroke, however, he himself fell upon the deck, putting his hands to his stomach and rolling about doubled up almost in two in his agony; although, when the paroxysm of pain had ceased for the moment, he got up on his feet once more and began lashing away at me again.
But, my deliverer was at hand.
Just as he raised his arm to deliver a fourth stripe across my back, and I shrank back in expectation of it, I heard Sam Jedfoot"s voice,--
""Top dat, ma.s.sa cap?" he called out. "What fur yer lick dat b"y fur?"
"Oh, it"s ye, is it?" roared the skipper, turning on him with a snarl.
"I wer comin" fur ye presently, ye durned cuss! But, ez ye air hyar, why, ye scoundrel, what did ye make thet b"y do to the dinner? Me an"
the mate is both pizened."
"De b"y didn"t do nuffin, an" yer ain"t pizened, nor Ma.s.s" Flinders, neider," said Sam calmly, interrupting the captain before he could scream out another word; "I"se dun it alone. I"se put jalap in the fowl a puppose!"
"Ye did, did ye!" yelled the captain fiercely; and there was a savage vindictiveness in his voice that I had not noticed previously, as he turned round to address the second-mate and a number of the men, who had gathered round at the noise made by the altercation, those that had turned in turning out, and even the look-out coming from off the fo"c"s"le away aft to see what was going on. "Men, ye"ve heard this tarnation villain confess thet he"s tried to pizen Mr Flinders an"
myself. Now ye"ll see me punish him!"
With these words, which he spoke quite calmly, without a trace of pa.s.sion, he drew out a revolver from the pocket of his jacket, c.o.c.king it with a click that struck a cold chill to my heart, and made me shudder more convulsively than even the brute"s lashes had done the moment before.
"Bress de Lor"! don" shoot me, cap"n!" cried poor Sam, edging away from the fatal weapon, as Captain Snaggs raised it; "don"t shoot, fo" de Lor"s sake!"
"I"m going to kill ye like a dog!" rejoined the other, taking aim; but Sam, quick as lightning darted into the weather rigging, making his way forward along the channels, the captain jumping after him and repeating,--"It"s no use. Ye won"t escape me, I tell ye, darkey; ye won"t escape me! I"ll kill ye ez dead ez a dog! Like a dog, d"ye haar?"
As he uttered the last words a second time, as if the repet.i.tion of the phrase pleased his cruel ear, there was another "click," followed by a bright flash and a sharp report; and then, uttering a wild, despairing cry, which was echoed by the men standing around, poor Sam dropped into the sea alongside, his body splashing up the water right inboard into my face as it fell!
CHAPTER FOUR.
FRIGHTENED TO DEATH!
"That"s murder--murder in cold blood!"
The voice uttering this exclamation, which I at once recognised as that of Tom Bullover, the carpenter, came from amidst a ma.s.s of the men, who, attracted by the noise of the row, had gathered from forward, and were cl.u.s.tered together--as I could see sideways from my position there, spread-eagled in the rigging. They were standing by the long-boat, just abaft of poor Sam Jedfoot"s now tenantless galley, and immediately under the bellying folds of the mainsail, that rustled and swelled out over their heads, tugging at the boltropes and rattling the clew-garnet blocks, as it was jerked by the wind, which ever and anon blew with eddying gusts as it veered and shifted.
"Who"s the mutinous rascal thet spoke then?" cried Captain Snaggs, wheeling round on the instant, quick as lightning, and c.o.c.king his revolver with another ominous click, as he faced the group, aiming at the nearest man to him. "Jest ye give me another word of yer jaw, an"
I"ll sarve ye the same as I sarved thet durned n.i.g.g.e.r--I will so, by thunder!"
A hoa.r.s.e murmur, partly of rage and partly expressive of fear, arose from the crew as they shuffled uneasily about the deck, one trying to get behind another; but neither Tom Bullover nor anyone else stepped out to answer the captain, who, seeing that he had cowed them, lowered his awkward looking weapon.
"Ye"re a pack of durned skallywags, with nary a one the pluck of a skunk in the lot!" he exclaimed contemptuously, in his snarling Yankee voice; but, just then, the head sails flapping, from the helmsman letting the ship nearly broach to, forgetting to attend to his duties in his eagerness to hear all that was going on, the captain"s wrath was directed towards those aft, and he wheeled round and swore at the second-mate, who was on the p.o.o.p, leaning over the rail, bawling out louder than before:--"What the infernal d.i.c.kens are ye about thaar, Mister Steenbock? Snakes an" alligators! why, ye"ll have us all aback in another minute! Ease her off, ease her off gently; an" hev thet lubber at the wheel relieved; d"ye haar? Ha ain"t worth a cuss! Get a man thet ken steer in his place. Jerusalem! Up with the helm at once!"
Fortunately, the jib only gybed, while the fore-topsail slatted a bit against the mast; and all the other sails remaining full and drawing, a slight shift of the helm sufficed to put the ship on her proper course.
Still, the captain, now his blood was up, could not afford to lose such a good opportunity both for rating the second-mate for his carelessness in conning the ship and not making the helmsman keep her steady on her course, and also in giving a little extra work to the hands who had dared to murmur at his fearful vengeance on the cook for drugging his food. So he made them bustle about the deck in style, slacking off the lee braces and hauling upon these on the weather side, until we had brought the wind almost over the stern, with the yards pretty nearly square. We were now running before it, rolling from port to starboard and back again from starboard to port, almost gunwales under, with the sail we had on us now, for it was blowing a good ten-knot breeze from the nor"-nor"-west, the breeze having shifted again since sunset, right astern, instead of being dead ahead, as previously, of our proper tract for the open sea.
When Captain Snaggs had seen everything braced round, and the boom-sheet of the spanker likewise eased off, he turned to where I was still lashed up against the main shrouds, in dread expectancy every moment of his renewing the thrashing he had commenced, and which poor Sam"s plucky intervention on my behalf had for the time interrupted.
"Well, ye young cuss!" said the skipper, who had been giving all his orders from the lower deck, which he had not left since he had rolled out from the cuddy under the p.o.o.p in the paroxysm of pa.s.sion and pain that led to such a dread catastrophe--all that had happened, although it takes a long time to describe, having occurred within a very brief interval of his first outburst on me. "What hev ye got to say for y"rself thet I shouldn"t give ye a thunderin" hidin", sich ez I hanker arter, hey? I"m jiggered, too, if I don"t, ye young whelp! Fur I guess ye wer kinder in truck with thet durned n.i.g.g.e.r when he tried to pizen me an" Mister Flinders. I"ll skin ye alive, though ye aren"t bigger nor a spritsail sheet knot, my joker, fur ye hevn"t got half enuff yet, I reckon!"
So saying, he picked up the rope"s-end that he had dropped when he took out his revolver, and was evidently about to lay it on my poor trembling back again, when another groan came from the men forward, who still hung about the windla.s.s bitts, instead of going below after squaring the yards. Tom Bullover"s voice, I could hear, again taking the lead, as they advanced in a body aft, in a much more demonstrative manner than previously.
"Stow that now, and leave the boy alone," I heard him say. "You"ve wallopped him already; and there"s been enough murder done in the ship!"
Captain Snaggs let fall the cat he had taken in his hand to thrash me with, and once more pulled out from his pocket the revolver; but, in the half-light that lingered now after the sunset glow had faded out of the sky, I noticed, as I screwed my neck round, looking to see what he was doing, that his hand trembled. The next moment he dropped the revolver on the deck as he had done the rope"s-end.
"Who"s talkin" of murder? Thet"s an ugly word," he stammered out, evidently frightened at the result of his rage against poor Sam, and the way in which the crew regarded it. "I--I only shot thet n.i.g.g.e.r because he pizened me an" the first-mate."
"You should have put hims in ze irons," interposed the second-mate, Jan Steenbock, speaking in his deep, solemn tones from the p.o.o.p above. "Ze mans vas murdert in ze cold blood!"
I could see Captain Snaggs shiver--all his coa.r.s.e, bullying manner and braggadocio deserting him, as Jan Steenbock"s accents rang through the ship, like those of an accusing judge; the index finger of the second-mate"s right hand pointing at him, as he leant over the p.o.o.p rail, like the finger of Fate!
"I did not mean to shoot the c.o.o.n like to kill him, I only meant to kinder frighten the life out of him, thet"s all," he began, in an exculpatory tone, regaining his usual confidence as he proceeded. "The durned cuss brought it on hisself, I reckon; fur, if he hedn"t climb"d into the riggin" he wouldn"t hev dropped overboard!"
"But, you vas shoot him ze first," said Jan Steenbock, in reply to this, the men on the other side of the captain giving a murmuring a.s.sent to the accusation, "you vas shoot him ze first!"
"Aye, thet"s so; but I didn"t mean fur to hit him, only to skear him.
Guess I don"t think I did, fur the ship rolled as I fired, an" the bullet must hev gone over his woolly head, an" he let go from sheer frit!"
"Dat might be," answered the second-mate, whom the men left to do all the talking; "but ze--"
"Besides," continued the captain, interrupting him, and seeing he had gained a point, "the darkey pizened my grub. He sea he put jalap in it.
Ye heerd him say so y"rselves, didn"t ye?"
"Aye, aye," chorussed the group of men in front of him, with true sailor"s justice, "we did. We heard him say so."
"Well, then," argued Captain Snaggs, triumphantly, "ye knows what a delicate matter it is fur to meddle with a chap"s grub; ye wouldn"t like it y"rselves?"
"No," came from the men unanimously, "we wouldn"t."
"All right, then; I see ye"re with me," said the skipper, wagging his beard about as he lay down the law. "I confess I didn"t like it. The n.i.g.g.e.r sed he hocussed our grub; but seeing ez how I an" the first-mate wer took so bad, I believed he"d pizened us, an" it rizzed my dander, an" so I went fur him."
"Aye, aye," sang out the men, as if endorsing this free and rather one-sided version of the affair, Hiram Bangs the captain"s countryman, chiming in with a "Right you air, boss!"
"But you need not have shoot hims," insisted Jan Steenbock, perceiving that the skipper was getting the men to take a more lenient view of the transaction than he did. "Ze mans not go avays. You could put hims in ze irons!"
"So I could, me joker; though I can"t see ez how it"s yer place to top the officer over me, Mister Steenbock," retorted the skipper, with some of his old heat. "Ye"ve hed yer say, an" the men hev hed their"n; an"
now I"ll hev mine, I reckon! The n.i.g.g.e.r wer in fault in the fust place, an" I"m sorry I wer tew hard on him; but, now he"s gone overboard, thaar"s nuthin" more to be done, fur all the talkin" in the world won"t bring him back agen! I"ll tell ye what I"ll do, though."
"What?" shouted out Tom Bullover. "What will you do?"
Captain Snaggs recognised his voice now, in spite of its being nearly dark, and he uttered an expressive sort of snorting grunt.