Читать книгу Seven Frozen Sailors - Fenn George Manville - Страница 2

You see, I haven’t the trick of putting it together, or else, I dare say, I could spin you no end of a yarn out of many a queer thing I’ve come across, and many a queer thing that’s happened to me up and down.

Well, yes, I’ve been wrecked three times, and I’ve been aboard when a fire’s broken out, and I’ve seen some fighting – close work some of it, and precious hot; and I was once among savages, and there was one that was a kind of a princess among ’em – But there, that’s no story, and might happen to any man.

If I were Atlantic Jones now, I could tell you a story worth listening to. Atlantic Jones was made of just the kind of stuff they make heroes out of for story books. He was a rum ’un was J. If I could spin a yarn about anything, it ought to be about him, now. I only wish I could.

Why was he called Atlantic? I can’t rightly say. I don’t think he was christened so. I think it was a name he took himself. It was to pass off the Jones, which was not particularly imposing without the first part for the trade he belonged to. He was a play-actor.

I don’t think he had ever done any very great things at it before I met with him; anyhow, he was rather down on his luck just then, and shabby – well, anything nearer rags, and yet making believe to have an air of gentility about it, I never came across. I don’t remember ever having a boot-heel brought so directly under my observation which was so wonderfully trodden down on one side. In a moment of confidence, too, he showed me a hole in the right boot-sole that he had worn benefit cards over, on the inside – some of the unsold ones remaining from his last ticket night.

I was confoundedly hard up myself about that time, having just come ashore from a trip in one of those coffin-ships, as they call them now. “Run” they wanted to make out, but it wasn’t much of a run, either. The craft was so rotten, there were hardly two planks sticking properly together, and the last man had scarcely got his last leg into the boat, when the whole ricketty rabbit-hutch went down, and only as many bubbles as you could fill a soup-plate with stayed a-top to mark the whereabouts. But the owners wanted to press the charge, and for a while I wanted to lie close, and that’s why I came to London, which is a big bag, as it were, where one pea’s like another when they’re well shaken up in it.

You’ll say it was rather like those birds who, when they hear the sportsman coming, dive their heads into the sand, and leave the other three-quarters of them in full view to be shot at, thinking no one else can see it, because they don’t happen to be able to see it themselves. You’ll say it was like one of them, for me, a sailor, wanting to keep dark from the police, to go skulking about in waterside taverns and coffee-houses Wapping and Rotherhithe way; well, perhaps it was.

It was at a coffee-house in Wapping I met Atlantic Jones, and he scared me a bit the first time I met him. It wasn’t a pretty kind of coffee-house, not one of those you read about in that rare old book, the Spectator, where the fops, and dandies, and bloods, “most did congregate,” where they “quaffed” and “toasted” in the good old style, which, by the way, must have been somewhat of an expensive old style, and, thank goodness, even some of us third or fourth-raters, nowadays, can spend an odd half-hour or so from time to time very much as the biggest nobs would spend it, though we have but a few silver pieces in our pocket.

To the good old style of coffee-house my fine gentleman, with the brocaded coat-tails, dainty lace ruffles, and big, powdered periwig, would be borne, smoothly (with an occasional jolt or two that went for nothing) in a sedan chair; and on his arrival there, if it were night-time, would call for his wine, his long pipe, his newspaper, and his wax-candles, and sit solemnly enjoying himself, while humbler folks blinked in the dim obscurity surrounding him, for most likely it was not everybody frequenting the place who could afford to be thus illuminated.

No; this was one of the most ordinary, common, and objectionable kind of coffee-shops, where the most frequent order was for “half a pint and slices;” where the half-pint was something thick and slab, which analytical research might have proved to be artfully compounded of parched peas and chicory, with a slight flavouring of burnt treacle; while the slices were good old, solemn, stale bread, with an oleaginous superficial surface, applied by a skilled hand, spreading over broader surfaces than scarcely would have seemed credible; so that regular customers, when they wanted to have their joke, would pick up a a slice, and turn it about, and hold it up to the light and put a penny in their right eye, making believe they had got an eye-glass there, and say, “Look here, guv’nor! which side is it? I’m only a arskin’ fear it should fall on my Sunday go-to-meeting suit, and grease it.”

Rashers of quite unbelievable rancidness, and “nice eggs,” in boiling which poultry, in its early promise, was not unfrequently made an untimely end of, were the chief articles of consumption. The newspapers and periodicals – which, somehow, always appeared to be a week old – were marked by innumerable rings, where the customers had stood their coffee-cups upon them, and there were thousands of brisk and lively flies forever buzzing round about the customers’ heads and settling on their noses; and thousands more of sleepy flies, stationary on the walls and ceiling, and thickly studding the show rasher in the window; and thousands and thousands more dead flies, lying about everywhere, and turning up as little surprises in the milk jug and the coffee-grounds, on the butter, or under the bacon, when you turned it over.

Not in the eggs, by-the-bye. You were pretty safe from them there – the embryo chick was the worst thing that could happen to you.

Not altogether a nice kind of place to pass one’s evenings in, you are thinking. Well, no; but it was uncommonly quiet and snug, and uncommonly cheap, which was rather a point with me. I was, in truth, so hard up that night that I had stood outside the window a good twenty minutes, balancing my last coin – a fourpenny-bit – in my hand, and tossing up, mentally, to decide whether I should spend it in a bed or a supper. I decided on the latter, and entered the coffee-house, where I hoped, after I had eaten, to be able to sleep away an hour or two in peace, if I could get a snug corner to myself.

Several other people, however, seemed to have gone there with something of the same idea, and snored up and down, with their heads comfortably pillowed among the dirty plates and tea-things, while others carried on low, muttered conversations, and one woman was telling an interminable tale, breaking off now and then to whimper.

There was one empty box, in a darkish corner, and I made for that, and ordered my meal – thanking my stars that I had been so lucky as to find such a good place. But I was not left long in undisputed possession of it.

While I was disposing of the very first mouthful the shop-door opened, and a blue-cheeked, anxious-looking man peeped in, as though he were frightened – or, perhaps, ashamed – and glanced eagerly round. Then, as it seemed, finding nothing of a very alarming character, he came a step further in, and stopped again, to have another look, and his eyes fell upon me, and he stared very hard indeed, and came straight to my box, and sat down opposite to me.

I can’t say this made me feel particularly comfortable, for, you see, for some days past I had spent the greater part of my time slipping stealthily round corners, and dodging up and down the sneakiest courts and alleys I could come across, with an idea that every lamp-post was a policeman in disguise that had got his eye on me.

I can’t say I felt much more comfortable at this stranger’s behaviour, when he had taken his seat and ordered a cup of coffee and a round of toast, in a low, confidential tone of voice, just, as it struck me, as a detective might have done who had the coffee-shop keeper in his pay. Then he pulled a very mysterious little brown paper-covered book from his pocket, consisting of some twenty pieces of manuscript, and he attentively read in it, and then fixed his eyes upon the ceiling and mumbled.

Said I to myself, “Perhaps this is some poor parson chap, learning up his sermon for next Sunday.”

But then this was only Monday night; it could hardly be that.

Presently, too, I noticed that he was secretly taking stock of me round the side of the book. What, after all, if the written sheets of paper contained a minute description of myself and the other runaways who were “wanted?”

He now certainly seemed to be making a comparison between me and something he was reading – summing me up, as it were – and I felt precious uncomfortable, I can tell you.

All at once he spoke.

“It’s a chilly evening, sir.”

“Yes,” I said.

“A sailor, I think?”

There was no good denying that. A sailor looks like a sailor, and nothing else.

“Yes,” I said, slowly.

“A fine profession, sir!” said he; “a noble profession. Shiver my timbers!”

Now, you know, we don’t shiver our timbers in reality; and if we did, we shouldn’t shiver them in the tone of voice the blue-cheeked man shivered his, and I couldn’t resist a broad grin, though I still felt uncomfortable.

“I’ve no objection, I’m sure,” said I, “if you have none.”

He was silent for a while, and seemed to be thinking it over, then went on reading and mumbling. Evidently he was a detective. I had met one before once, dressed as a countryman, and talking Brummagem Yorkshire. A detective wanting to get into conversation with a sailor was just likely, I fancied, to start with an out-of-the-way thing like “shiver my timbers.” I made my mind up I wouldn’t be pumped very dry.

“Been about the world a good deal, sir, I suppose?” he said, returning to the charge after a brief pause. “Been wrecked, I dare say – often?”

“Pretty often – often enough.”

“Have you, now?” he said, laying down his book, and leaning back, to have a good look at me as he drew a long breath. “A-h!”

I went on with my meal, putting the best face I could on it, and pretending not to notice him; but it was not very easy to do this naturally, and at last I dropped my bread and butter, and fixed him, in my turn.

“You ought to know me in time,” said I.

“I should be proud to!” he answered, readily. “I should take it as a favour if you’d allow me to make your acquaintance – to become friendly with you!”

“Well,” said I, still with the detective idea strong on me, “you see, I like to know whom it is I’m making friends with. What port do you hail from, pray?”

The strange man made a plunge at me, and shook my hand heartily, shaking also the slice of bread and butter I was holding in it.

“Did you take me for a seafaring man?” he asked, in a joyful voice. “You really don’t mean that? That’s capital!”

“Well,” said I, “aren’t you?”

“No,” he answered, in great excitement; “of course not. I’m going to be very shortly, if I’ve any luck, but I’ve not taken to the line yet. See here, sir, that’s who I am.”

And, so saying, he produced a large illustrated play-bill from his pocket, such as you may find stuck about the walls at the East-end, or on the Surrey side, and on which I read, “The Death Struggle. Enormous success!” in large letters.

“Oh!” I said; “that’s you, is it?”

I thought he was, probably, rather cracked.

But he tapped his finger-end emphatically upon one particular spot, and indicated half a line of very small type, and stooping my head so as to bring my eyes down close to it I made out, “Count Randolph, a gambler and a roué, Mr Jones.”

When I had read it, he appeared to look at me, expecting that I should say something appropriate, or, at any rate, look awe-stricken. But it was very funny to look at this long-faced, hungry-looking fellow, pitching into his buttered toast, and associate him with the wickedness set down to his account, so “Bless me!” was as much as I could possibly manage.

“Yes, it is,” said he; “but that’s nothing. It’s a dirty shame of them to put a fellow in that type, and leave his initial out, too! But that’s all jealousy, you know. That’s Barkins, that is! It’s Barkins’s house, and Barkins’s bill, and, hang it! it’s all Barkins’s!”

On referring a second time to the picture-bill, there, sure enough, I found the name of Barkins flourishing in all sorts of type and in all manner of places.

“Ah!” cried Mr Jones, finishing his coffee with one gulp, “it won’t always be so, that’s one comfort! I’ve a chance here, sir, – one of a thousand; and you’ll see then whether I’m equal to it or not!”

“I’m sure you will be,” I replied, not exactly knowing what else to say. “You find your business rather hard work sometimes, don’t you? and the pay sometimes a little doubtful?” I added, after a pause.

“I wish it was only a little,” Mr Jones replied, with a woeful grin; “but I get along, somehow – I keep alive, somehow; and it won’t always be so – not when I get my chance, you know!”

I really thought I ought to say something now, so I asked when he expected the chance, and what it was.

“Ah, that’s it!” said he. “Do you know you could be a good deal of service to me, if you’d the time?”

“I’ve more time than money, worse luck!” I said. “I should be glad to earn a trifle anyhow, and should be much obliged if you could point out the how; but as to being of service to you, I’d gladly be that for nothing.”

You see, I had taken a good look at Mr Jones’s ragged edges and glazed elbows by this time, and had come to the conclusion that, even gambler and roué as he was, he must have had about as much as he could do to look after himself.

I was mistaken. Mr Jones had influence, though he might be short of cash.

“If you’re really hard up,” he said, “I can put you onto a kind of job – if you like it. They are doing ‘The Battle of Blenheim’ at our place. It’ll be eighteenpence a night. You’ll have to double the armies, and be shot down at the end of every act. But it’s all easy enough.”

I thought this would suit me very well for the time, and most likely shooting down wasn’t permanently injurious to the system any more than being a gambler and a roué; so I thanked him very much.

“But how can I help you in return?” I asked.

“Well, it’s to that chance I spoke of,” he said, confidentially. “Look here – I’ve an engagement for a tour down to the Midland counties. The pay isn’t very wonderful, to start with; but I’m to have more if we do good business, you know; and I’ve stipulated that we do a nautical drama, and I play Jack Brine– that’s the sailor hero, you know – myself.”

“What makes you want to play a sailor? I suppose you’ve done it before, and made a hit?”

“Well – no; I can’t say I’ve ever tried it. But nautical pieces used to be a tremendous go once, and are so still down in some parts of the country, and – There! I’ve got it in me, I’m certain – I feel it here!”

And he tapped the breast of a dilapidated sham sealskin waistcoat as he spoke, and knit his brows with determination.

“But you haven’t told me yet how I can be of service to you,” said I.

“Well,” he said, “look here! This is one of the acts of the piece I’m going to do. I’ve done it myself – faked it up, you know, pulling in the best bits from one or two others; but that’s nothing – and it’ll go immense! It’s cram-full of business, and the situations are tremendous!”

“It ought to go, if that’s the case.”

“It’s a certainty, dear boy! It can’t help it! But there’s just one thing about it, do you know, that makes me uncomfortable, and that’s where you can help me.”

“And that is – ”

“You see, I’m not a nautical man myself. It was very odd of you to take me for one right off! Of course, I can put it on pretty well when I like; but if you want the real honest truth, I never even saw the sea in all my life – never been nearer to it than Rosherville; and as I don’t happen to be personally acquainted with any nautical men, the fact is I’m not quite certain there is not a screw loose up and down in the words. Of course I’m all right in the shiver my timbers and douse my pig-tails parts; but it’s when you get reefing your jib-boom and hugging the shore with your lee-scupper that you don’t feel altogether as if you’d got your sea-legs on. Look here, I’d like to go through the thing with you quietly, and you can tell me where it isn’t quite right.”

I gladly agreed to render him all the assistance in my power. I thought if there was very much more of the same style he had been quoting there ought to have been a shipwreck or two up and down in that piece of his, and that I should be something like a Captain Boyton’s swimming-dress to this poor struggling author over head and ears in a tempestuous ocean of his own manufacture.

I met him by appointment, therefore, next day at the stage-door of the theatre where he was acting, and where he had promised to procure me an opening as extra or supernumerary. He got me on easily enough, and my duties, though they made me precious hot, did not require very much genius. I was on my mettle, and wanted to reflect as much credit as possible upon my new friend for the introduction, so I fought away and took forlorn hopes like one o’clock; and the prompter was good enough to say that I evidently had something in me, and would do better presently, if I stuck to it.

After a night or two they found I was an active kind of fellow, and had the full use of my arms and legs, so they introduced a bit of rope climbing on my account, and worked in another bit specially, where I was shot down from among the rigging, with a round of applause every night.

In the daytime, Mr Jones and I talked the nautical drama, and I set his “lee-scuppers” right for him, and got him to make things generally a little bit more like the right thing.

At the end of a fortnight, however, I was able to get at my friends, and through them to stop the mouths of the angry coffin-ship owners; and so I had no more occasion to fight shy of the seaports, and resolved to go to sea again.

If it had not been for that, Mr Jones would have tried to get me into the company he was just then joining, and I should have figured in one or two small parts in the great drama.

However, instead of that, I bid him good-by, and thanked him, and wished him every success, and went my way, leaving him to go his.

I only went for a short cruise round the coast of Spain, but I met with the pleasantest mates – bar present company, of course – I ever remember sailing with. We all of us got to be like brothers before the ship touched land again in England, and as another vessel was in want of hands, and about to sail in two or three days for the China Sea, I and five others agreed to stick together and join. I took two days just to drop down and see my friends, and the next day we met together and had a bit of a spree, agreeing to spend our last night at the play. I had told my messmates about Jones, and how I had been on the stage myself, so they looked up to me as rather an authority, as you may suppose, and passing me over the play-bill the waiter had brought us, asked if I knew anything of the piece they were playing.

Know anything, indeed!

Ha! ha! That was not bad.

Why, it was Jones’s piece, and Atlantic Jones, in great letters, was to appear in his great character of Jack Brine, the Bo’s’en of the Bay of Biscay.

Of course we went. We were there for that matter a good hour before there was any absolute necessity, and stood waiting at the doors. There weren’t many other people waiting there, by the way. There was one small boy, if I remember right. Not another soul; and at first we weren’t quite sure we had not mistaken the night. However, that was not so. The doors did open a few minutes late, and then we made a rush in all at once, paying a shilling and sixpence each all round for seats in the dress circle.

After we’d been there some little time, and the small boy had been the same time in the last seat in the pit, from which he stared up at us with his eyes and mouth wide open, we caught sight of some one peeping in a frightened kind of way round the curtain. It was Jones, and we all gave him a cheer to encourage him, and let him know we had rallied round.

He didn’t seem encouraged, but ran away again; and the money-taker, having plenty of spare time on his hands, as it seemed, came and told us to keep steady if we wanted to stop where we were.

My mates were, some of them, inclined to run rusty at the advice, for we’d done no more than make things look a bit cheerful under rather depressing circumstances, only we would not have a row with him, for Jones’s sake. After a while, one or two more people dropped in, up and down, and we were, maybe, thirty in all, when the curtain went up at last, and business began in earnest.

I’ve spent a good many roughish nights, and suffered a tidy lot in ’em, but I wouldn’t engage under a trifle for another such night as that was. I pitied poor Jones from the bottom of my heart.

You see, he was a well-meaning kind of fellow, but there wasn’t a great deal of him, and he hadn’t all the voice he might have had: and when he sang out as loud as he could, but rather squeaky, “Avast there, you land-lubbers, or I’ll let daylight into you!” someone said, “Don’t hurt ’em, sir; they mightn’t like it!”

About the end of the second act he began to show signs of being dead beat, and I sent him round a pot of stout to help him on, for I regularly felt for him. We applauded all we could, too. The pit ceiling was a sufferer that night, so I don’t deceive you; but it was no good. No one else applauded a bit. Some of them hissed. Indeed, if it had not been for my mates being my mates, and sticking to me and Jones, as in duty bound, I believe they’d have hissed, too. As it was, when the act-drop fell, and we all went out for a liquor, they weren’t over-anxious to come back again, only they did, of course.

The last act was very cruel. I think the stout had got into Jones’s head, and into his legs, too; for he was all over the stage, and, we fancied, half his time, didn’t know what he was up to. Then came the great situation, where he was to board the pirate schooner single-handed, and rescue his lady-love – and, in the name of everything that is awfully dreadful, what do you think happened to Jones then?

It might have been something wrong in the scenery, or it might have been something wrong with Jones, but he appeared on the upper deck of the pirate boat, and was going to jump down on the lower deck, flourishing a cutlass, when he somehow slipped, and caught behind.

I shall never forget it. He caught somehow by the trousers, and hung there, dangling like an old coat on a peg. Then he tore himself loose with a great wrench, while every one in the house was screaming with laughter, and rushed off the stage.

We took poor Jones away that night, and we liquored him up a lot, and he wept as he told us what he had gone through, and somehow we couldn’t, laugh much as we listened to him.

I don’t know how it happened. I think he said he would go on board with us, and have a final glass, and he was to come back in a boat that had taken some goods on board from the shore. I don’t know how it was, I say; but six hours after we had got fairly out to sea, some one found a pair of legs sticking out from behind something, and at the end of these legs were Jones’s head and body.

When we had shaken him out of a dead sleep, he asked to be put on shore at once, and talked wildly of bringing an action against the skipper. But the skipper put it to Jones in a jocular kind of way, that the general practice was to keel-haul stowaways, when you felt inclined to treat them kindly, or heave them overboard with a shot tied to their heels, if you didn’t; so Jones calmed down after a while, and made up his mind to go to China with us quietly, and make no more fuss about it.

I don’t think a man on board wanted to act unkindly to poor Jones; and, ’pon my soul, I’d not have sat by quietly and seen it. But Jones tempted Providence, as it were, and was the unluckiest beggar alive.

To begin with, I never knew a man so sea-sick that it didn’t kill right off. I never knew a man with more unreliable legs on him; so that there was no saying where he’d be to a dozen yards or so when he once started. And he fell overboard twice. So all this made him rather a laughingstock among the regular hands. But he was so good-natured, and stood the chaff so good-humouredly, that we got all of us to take a mighty fancy to his company.

Poking fun upon one subject only he did not take to kindly, and that was the famous Jack Brine impersonation, which we presently found out, very much to our surprise, he looked upon as little short of perfection.

“I don’t regret this affair altogether,” said he, one day. “You see, all I want is actual experience of the perils of the ocean.”

Before long he had them, too.

The reason why we had been required to join in such a hurry was that several of the foreign sailors had run at the last moment, and there was a great difficulty in obtaining any Englishmen willing to sail with them. With the exception of the skipper, we six sailors, and Atlantic Jones, the rest were all Lascars – savage, sneaking, bloodthirsty wretches, that there was no trusting a moment out of your sight. I had never before made a voyage with that kind of company, and, if I can help it, never will again. However, we felt no particular uneasiness about them. Any one of us, we simply consoled ourselves by reflecting, could quite easily thrash half a dozen of the foreign beggars in a fair fight. The worst of it was, though, when the fight did come, it was not a fair one.

I began by telling you that I was a bad storyteller; I must finish by telling you so again. And after all, what story have I left to tell, which would not be to you, sailors like myself, a thrice-told tale? It came about, in the usual way, with a night surprise. I woke up with a man’s hand tightening on my throat, with a gleaming knife before my eyes. Then – thud! thud! – it came down on me, through the thick blankets I had twisted round me. Lucky for me they were so thick!

This was all I saw; then the light was knocked out, and I heard the black wretch’s naked feet pattering on the steps, as he went up swiftly to the deck above, then a deep groan from the bunk of one of my old messmates – it was one called Adams.

I was horribly cut about, and bleeding fast; but I managed to creep out, and feel through the darkness. I came, just within a few feet, upon a man’s body, stretched out, lying on its face. Though it was dark as pitch, I had no need to touch it twice to know that it was a dead body. Then I got to Adams, and called him by name.

He answered faintly, “Yes!”

I asked him where the crew were, and whether he knew what had happened.

They were all killed, he thought, and the Lascars had got the vessel in their hands.

We were doubtless supposed to be murdered, too. It must have all been done very quickly. Adams had heard no sound from the deck above, and I had heard none.

The crippled condition in which we were, and the darkness, rendered us almost entirely helpless; but I managed somehow – partly on my feet, partly on my hands and knees – to crawl up the ladder. The hatchway was closed above me. We were prisoners.

I could from this place make out that a wild debauch was going on on the after-deck, and I heard one of the scoundrels shrieking out a song, in a wild, discordant voice. They had broken open the stores, and were getting mad drunk with rum.

I crawled back to tell the news, and to think what could be done.

Adams was almost fainting from loss of blood. For myself, I was scarcely good for anything – not for a struggle, that was certain. I might defend myself for a time. I would try, anyhow. I could only die.

All at once we heard the hatchway opening stealthily.

“Whist!” said Jones’s voice. “Who’s alive down there?”

“Two!” I answered. “Adams and I – Tom Watson. We are both badly wounded.”

“Thank heaven you are not dead!” he said. “You can save yourselves, if you’ve strength enough to lower yourselves into a boat. I’ve got it down into the water. Will you try?”

We went at once, and gained the deck. Only one of the villains was on the watch forward. We could see the dark figures of the rest sprawling about in the semi-darkness far aft, and we went down on our hands and knees, and crawled in the shadow to the side. But just as we reached it, the moon came out from behind a cloud, and the man fired, and shouted loudly.

Adams went down, and we two only were left.

“Save yourself! Jump!” cried Jones. “I’ll keep ’em back! Avast there, you black-hearted swabs, or I’ll chop you to pieces!” And as five of them, the soberest of the lot, came rushing on us in a body, he laid about him right and left with a large cutlass, much heavier than I should have believed he could use, and the beggars rolled over, slashed and mangled beneath his strokes.

I never before or since have seen a man fight like Atlantic Jones did then. Stripped to the waist, his long hair flying in the wind, his hands red with blood, his body bespattered, too, he looked more like a fiend than a human being, much less a very bad play-actor; but all the while he fought he never once ceased yelling out the silly gibberish he thought was sailors’ talk.