Читать книгу The Wreck of the Nancy Bell; Or, Cast Away on Kerguelen Land - John C. Hutcheson - Страница 8

When the “party of observation” under the leadership of the captain arrived at the foot of the companion way, nothing very alarming was presented to their notices as there were no signs of disturbance to be seen in the steward’s pantry, which was close to hand on their right; although, judging by the crashing sounds they had heard when on deck, one and all would have almost sworn that a “free fight” had taken place in that sanctum, causing its complement of crockeryware to come to irretrievable grief.

Nor was anything wrong to be perceived, at first sight, on entering within the cuddy.

On the contrary, everything there seemed in due order. The doors of the cabins on either side, as well as those of the state-rooms at the further end of the saloon, were closed in their ordinary way—with the exception of one, which was opened for an instant, to allow of a night-capped head, evidently of female ownership, peering forth for a momentary peep round, and then immediately slammed to again; and, the long table, which ran fore and aft the vessel the entire length of the apartment from the foot of the mizzen mast, was neatly spread over with a snow-white cloth, on which knives and forks were laid equi-distantly with trim regularity, as well as other prandial paraphernalia, in preparation for breakfast; while to complete the category, the swinging trays above, that oscillated to and fro as the ship gave an occasional lurch and roll to port or starboard, betrayed no lack of their proper quota of wine-glasses, decanters, and tumblers. No, there was no trace of any disorder here, nothing to account for that noise of a struggle and of breakages below that had preceded the sudden uprush of the steward to the poop. What could possibly have caused all that clatter and commotion?

Evidently so thinking, the captain, mate, and passenger looked at each other in a bewildered fashion, as if each were endeavouring to solve some knotty conundrum, and had ultimately come to the conclusion to “give it up!”

They had not long to wait, however, for an explanation to the mystery.

All at once, a deep, sepulchral groan came from abaft the mizzenmast, as if some one was being smothered in the hold below; and, almost at the same instant, there echoed from the adjacent cabin—that whence the night-capped head before mentioned had popped out—a shrill scream, as of a female in distress, succeeded by the exclamation, “Gracious goodness, help us and save us! We shall all be murdered in our beds!”

“Be jabers,” ejaculated the mate, following up the captain, who had immediately rushed aft to the spot whence the groan had proceeded; “sure and that’s the Meejor’s swate voice! I’d know it onywheres, aven in the Bog of Allen!”

On the captain reaching the end of the cuddy table, which had, of course, interfered with his view, the crash of crockery which they had heard, and which had been hitherto inexplicable, became at once clear; for, there on the floor of the deck was the débris of a pile of plates and scattered fragments of cups and saucers which had been suddenly dropped by the steward in his fright and were smashed to atoms; while, in the centre of the scene of devastation, was the dungeon-like cavity of the after-hatchway, the cover of which had been shifted from its coamings by the man, in order for him to get up some of the cabin provisions from the hold, whose gloomy depths were only faintly illumined by the feeble rays of a lantern, which as it lay on its side rolling on the deck, participated in the general upset.

Captain Dinks promptly took up the lantern, holding it over the open hatchway; and, as he did so, a second groan came from below, more hollow and sepulchral than before.

“Who’s there?” shouted the captain down the hatchway.

There was no reply, save a fainter moan, apparently further away in the distance, followed by a sort of gurgling sound, and then the fall of some heavy object was heard in the hold.

“Who’s there below?” repeated the captain, endeavouring to pierce the cimmerian darkness by waving the lighted lantern about and holding it as far down the hatchway as his arm could reach. “Speak or I’ll fire!”

This was an empty threat of the skipper’s, as he held no weapon in his hand save the lantern; but it had the necessary effect all the same.

“It’s only me, massa,” said a thick guttural voice from below; “only me,” repeated the voice pleadingly. “Goramighty, massa, don’t shoot!”

“And who’s me?” interrogated the captain sternly, as the mate and the passenger looked at each other inquiringly, a smile creeping over Mr. Meldrum’s face, while the Irishman screwed up his left eye into a palpable wink.

“Me, Snowball, sah—a ’spectable collud genleman from Jamaikey, massa,” replied the voice in the hold.

“And what the dickens are you doing aboard my ship?” asked Captain Dinks in an angry tone; but the others could see that he was half-laughing as he spoke.

“Me want passage, sah, back home. Very bad peoples, sah, in Plymouth; tieve all poah niggah’s money and make him drunk. Snowball starbing; so um see lubly fine ship goin’ way and get aboard in shore boat wid um last shillun: eb’ryting scramble and jumble when come on deck; so Snowball go get in cabin, and den down in hold, where he see steward stow um grub, and lie quiet till ship sail. When hold open, he try get out, but can’t; box fall on um foot, and Snowball holler wid pain; steward tink um de Debbel and knock down tings. Snowball done no harm; um bery bad wid um leg!”

“Sure, an’ it’s an impedent schoundrel he is, the spalpeen!” said the mate. “Of all the cheeky stowaways I ever came across, he bates the lot entirely. Shall I rouse him up with a rope’s end, cap’en?”

“No, wait a bit, McCarthy,” said the captain; “we’ll try a little persuasion first. Here, ‘Snowball,’ or whatever else you call yourself, just sling your hook out of that, and come up here. I fancy I shall be able to accommodate you with something, besides a free passage at my owner’s expense!”

“Can’t, massa,” replied the stowaway, after making a movement, as they could hear, below, succeeded by a suppressed cry of pain; “um leg jammed ’tween box and cask: Snowball feel bery bad—tink leg go squash: can’t move um nohow.”

“Be jabers!” exclaimed the good-natured Irishman, “sure an’ the poor baste’s hurt, and, by your lave, cap’en, I’ll go down and say what’s the matther.”

“Do,” said Captain Dinks; but ere he could get out the word, the mate, taking his consent for granted, had caught hold of the hatchway coamings with his powerful hands and swung himself down on to the lower deck; reaching up afterwards for the lantern, which the captain handed him, and then disappearing from view as he dived amongst the heterogeneous mass of boxes and casks, and bales of goods, mingled with articles of all sorts, with which the place was crammed.

After a moment’s absence, he came back beneath the hatchway.

“Plaze, git a blanket or two out of one of the cabins, cap’en, to hoist him up,” said he; “the unlucky beggar sames to be injured badly, and I think his ribs are stove in, besides a heavy box having fallen on his leg. He hasn’t got such a chape passage this toime as he expected; for he has been more’n half suffocated in the flour hogshead where he first stowed himself away; and, begorrah, to look at him now, with his black face all whitened, like a duchess powthered for a ball, and his woolly hid, and the blood all over him, as if he had been basted wid a shillelagh at Donnybrook Fair, why, his own mother wouldn’t know him. It’s small blame to that fool of a steward to be afther taking him for somethin’ onnatural, sure!”

While the mate had been giving this explanation of the stowaway’s condition Captain Dinks had not been idle.

With an agility of which none would have thought him capable, looking at his thick-set and rather stout figure, he had rushed in a second to his own cabin, which was near aft; and, dragging out a couple of railway rugs and a coil of rope had pitched them below to the Irishman, concluding his operations by jumping down alongside him, to aid in releasing the injured man from his perilous position—telling the passenger as he quitted him to “sing out” for assistance.

“Steward!” shouted Mr. Meldrum up the companion, in obedience to the captain’s injunction; but never a bit did that worthy stir in response, nor did the ringing of a hand-bell, which the passenger saw in one of the swing-trays above the cuddy table expedite the recalcitrant functionary’s movements, albeit it brought others to Mr. Meldrum’s aid.

“What is the matter, papa dear?” said a tall, graceful, nice-looking girl, of some eighteen summers, as she emerged from the state-room on the starboard side of the saloon and came towards Mr. Meldrum. “Florry and I heard a heavy crash which woke us up, and then a cry of alarm, and a rush of feet along the deck which frightened us, for we could not tell what had happened. I dressed as fast as I could, but I wouldn’t have come out if I had not heard your voice. As for poor Florry, she says she won’t get up, and is now hiding her head under the clothes, as she thinks there’s a mutiny going on or something dreadful!” and the girl laughed merrily as she spoke, disclosing the while a set of pearly teeth that were beautifully regular, and coral lips that would have put a rosebud to the blush; but, when she came up beside her father, who looked very young to be her parent, for he barely seemed forty years of age, she placed her hand on his arm in a caressing way, looking up into his face with a more serious expression, as if she had merely assumed the laugh to disguise a fear that she really felt.

“Oh, there’s nothing very dreadful happening, Kate,” replied Mr. Meldrum; “only a stowaway in the hold whom the steward took for a ghost, to the serious detriment of the breakfast things which you heard being smashed; so, pray go back to your cabin, my dear, and soothe ‘poor Florry’s’ alarms. We are just getting our unexpected guest up from his temporary quarters under the saloon, and I’ll call you when the coast is clear.” This he said that she might not be shocked at the sight of the wounded man; and he felt far more comfortable when she had retired into her state-room and shut the door of communication that opened from it into the cuddy.

His comfort, however, was not of very long duration.

“I’d like to know what all this terrible hullabaloo is about?” exclaimed a gaunt and elderly female with sharp features and a saffron-hued complexion, coming out from the cabin on the opposite side of the deck, where she had previously appeared for an instant when in déshabille, as her night-capped head had evidenced. “It is positively scandalous, disturbing first-class passengers like this in the middle of the night and frightening them out of their wits!”

“My dear madam,” said Mr. Meldrum blandly; “why, it is just on the stroke of eight o’clock, and we’ll be soon having breakfast.”

“Don’t ‘my dear madam’ me, sir,” returned the lady indignantly; “my name is Mrs. Major Negus, and I insist on being treated with proper respect. Where is the captain of the vessel, sir?”

“Down there,” said Mr. Meldrum laconically, pointing to the open hatchway.

“And why is he not at his post, looking after the welfare of his passengers?” demanded the lady sternly, with the voice of a merciless judge.

“Really I think you had better ask him,” replied Mr. Meldrum laughing; “it strikes me he is now looking after the welfare of one of his passengers, unexpected though the sable gentleman may be!”

What Mrs. Major Negus might have rejoined to this, cannot unfortunately be told, for at that moment, just as she had drawn herself up to her full height of some five feet ten inches, or thereabouts, and appeared prepared to demolish Mr. Meldrum for his temerity in laughing at her—in laughing at her, forsooth; the wife of the deputy assistant comptroller-general of Waikatoo, New Zealand—the captain called out to him to bear a hand to raise the wounded darkey from out of his self-selected prison. Mr. Adams, the second mate, turning out of his cabin at the same time to take his watch, the two managed to raise “Snowball”—the captain and the Irishman easing the burden by lifting him from below. As for the grand Mrs. Major Negus, she had to content herself with looking on with an undisguised contempt at the whole proceeding, wondering all the while that they should dare to introduce a negro into the saloon in that manner without having first asked her permission!

Help generally comes when it is not specially wanted; so, by the time the stowaway had been lifted and placed on a berth in one of the vacant cabins, having his wounds, which were somewhat serious, seen to and bound up, some others of the passengers appeared on the scene.

Notably amongst these was Mr. Zachariah Lathrope, of Providence, Rhode Island, an American gentleman of a particularly inquisitive nature, but who, professing some knowledge of medical craft, was really of some use in this instance, as there was no regular ship surgeon on board; and, secondly, young Master Negus, a “born imp of mischief,” whose acquaintance will be further improved as the voyage proceeds; while, Llewellyn, the steward, summoned courage at last to descend the companion, in company with his wife the stewardess, who had been forward to the cook’s galley in search of some early tea for the lady passengers. Seeing her husband on the poop she had brought him below, being, as Mr. McCarthy observed, “twice the man” that her presumptive “lord and master” could possibly have been supposed, even by his warmest admirer.

The mystery being thus satisfactorily explained, and the stowaway made comfortable for the while in a much more sumptuous lodging than he ever expected—Captain Dinks waiting to call him to account until he should have recovered from his injuries—the debris of broken crockeryware was cleared away, and the saloon party piped to breakfast, throughout which meal, it need hardly be added, Llewellyn got chaffed immeasurably anent his supernatural visitor, never having a moment’s peace about his discovery of the “ghost in the cabin” and subsequent terrific fight therewith.

And, all this while, the ship was tacking every now and then to make the most out of the wind, which was shifting from the west to the south, and veering occasionally from the east to the north; rising as it shifted and blowing with an ever-increasing force, till the vessel was running under reefed topsails and foresail, with her spanker half brailed up, her spread of canvas having been reduced by degrees, in preparation for the threatening gale that seemed coming from the south-west, that is, if the appearances of the sea and sky were to be trusted.