Читать книгу The Tragedy of Ida Noble - William Clark Russell - Страница 5

Table of Contents

The two foreigners, as I might suppose them to be—the two gentlemen who had talked to me and viewed me in the cabin before I went to the captain's berth—these men were pacing the sand-colored planks of the quarter-deck arm in arm, cigars in their mouths, as I emerged; but, on seeing me, they came to a halt. One was a truly noble-looking fellow, rising a full inch taller than six feet, and of a magnificently proportioned shape. This was the man who had addressed me in good English, but with a foreign accent. He was, besides, an exceedingly handsome person, his complexion very dark, his eyes of the dead blackness of the Indian's, but soft and glowing; he wore a large heavy mustache, black as ink, and curling to his ears; his teeth were strong, large, and of an ivory whiteness. Plain sailor-man as I was, used to the commonplace character and countenance of the mariner, I was without any art in the deciphering of the mind by gazing at the lineaments of the human face. To me this person offered himself as a noble, handsome man, of imposing presence, of a beauty even stately; but when I think of him now in the light of that larger knowledge of human nature which years have taught me, when I recall his face, I say, I am conscious of having missed something in the expression of it which must have helped me to a tolerably accurate perception of the real character of this schooner's errand, when the "motive" of her voyage was explained to me.

His companion was a short man, a true Spaniard in his looks; his large hooked nose, his searching, restless, brilliant black eyes, his mustaches and short black beard might well have qualified him to sit for a picture of Cervantes, according to such prints of that great author as I have seen. They were both well dressed—too well dressed, indeed. They wore overcoats richly furred, velvet coats beneath, splendid waistcoats, and so forth. The fingers of the shorter man sparkled with precious stones. There was a stout gold chain round his neck, and a costly brooch in his cravat. They both fastened a penetrating gaze upon me for some moments, and exchanged a few sentences in Spanish before addressing me.

"The gentleman's name is Portlack—Mr. Portlack, Don Christoval," said Captain Dopping: "he was second mate of a bark named the Ocean Ranger. He was hocussed, as the Pikeys (gypsies) say, by an American captain. He'll tell you the story, sir."

"How do you feel?" said Don Christoval.

"Perfectly recovered, I thank you," said I.

"I am glad. We were not too soon. I believe that another twenty-four hours of your desperate situation must have killed you," said this tall Don, delivering his words slowly, and looking very stately, and speaking in English so correctly that I wondered at his foreign accent.

"Vot ees secon' mate?" inquired the shorter man, pronouncing the words with difficulty.

"Why, you might call it second lieutenant, Don Lazarillo," replied Captain Dopping.

"It is a position of trust; it is a position of distinction on board ship?" exclaimed Don Christoval.

"Oh yes," said Captain Dopping.

"Do you know navigation?" asked the tall Don.

"I hold a master's certificate," I replied, smiling.

"Explain," said Don Lazarillo sharply, as though his mind were under some constant strain of unhealthy anxiety.

"I do not speak a word of Spanish," said I, turning to Captain Dopping.

"No need for it," said he, in his harsh accents. "A master's certificate, Don Christoval, enables the holder of it to take charge of a ship, and in order to take charge of a ship a man is supposed to know everything that concerns the profession of the sea."

"Explain," cried Don Lazarillo with impatience.

His tall companion translated; on which the other, nodding vehemently, stroked his mustaches while he again surveyed me from head to foot, letting his eyes, full of fire, settle with the most searching look that can be imagined upon my face. I caught Don Christoval exchanging a glance with Captain Dopping. There was a brief pause while the tall Don lighted his cigar. He then said, with a smile:

"You have lost your ship, sir?"

"I have, I am sorry to say."

"What will you do, sir?"

"It is for you to dispose of me. I should be glad to make myself useful to you until you transfer me or land me."

"But then—but then?"

"Then I must endeavor to obtain another berth," said I.

"Explain," cried Don Lazarillo.

Don Christoval spoke to him in Spanish.

"You are a gentleman by birth?" said the tall Don.

"My father was a clergyman," I answered.

"Yes, sir, that is very good. Your speech tells me you are genteel. To speak English well you must be genteel. Education will enable you to speak English grammatically, but it will not help you to pronounce it properly. For example, a man vulgarly born, who is educated too, will omit his h's, and he will neglect his g's. He will say nothin', and he will say 'ouse instead of house. Yes, I know it—I know it," said he, smiling. "Well, you shall tell me now all about your adventure."

This I did. He occasionally stopped me while he interpreted to his companion, who listened to him with eager attention, while he would also strain his ears with his eyes sternly fixed upon my face when I spoke. When I had made an end, Don Christoval drew Captain Dopping to him by a backward motion of his head, and, after addressing him in low tones, he took Don Lazarillo's arm, and the pair of them fell to patrolling the deck.

"We shall sling a hammock for you under the main hatch," said Captain Dopping, walking up to me. "Sorry we can't accommodate you aft. There's scarce room for a rat in my corner, let alone two men."

"Any part of the schooner will serve to sling a hammock in for me," said I.

"You will take your meals with me in the cabin," said he. "I eat when the two gentlemen have done."

"Where does your mate live?" said I.

"I have no mate," he answered. "We were in a hurry, and could not find a man."

He eyed me somewhat oddly as he spoke, as though to mark the effect of his words.

"But is there no one to help you to keep a look-out?"

"Ay! a seaman," he answered, carelessly. "But now that you're aboard we will be able to relieve him from that duty."

"Whatever you put me to," said I, "you will find me as willing at it as gratitude can make a man."

He roughly nodded, and asked me what part of England I came from. I answered that I was born near Guildford.

"I hail from Deal," said he. "Do you know Deal?"

"Well," I answered; and spoke of some people whom I had visited there; gave him the names of the streets, and of a number of boatmen I had conversed with during my stay at the salt and shingly place. This softened him. It was marvelous to observe how the magic of memory, the tenderness of recollected association humanized the coarse, harsh, bold, and staring looks of this scarlet-haired man.

"But," said I, "you have not yet told me where this schooner is bound to."

"You will hear all about it," he answered, with his usual air returning to him.

I was not a little astonished by this answer. Had the schooner sailed on some piratic expedition? Was there some colossal undertaking of smuggling in contemplation? But though piracy, to be sure, still flourished, it was hardly to be thought of in relation with those northern seas toward which the schooner was heading; while as for smuggling, if the four seamen whom I counted at work about the vessel's deck comprised—with the fifth man, who was at her helm—the whole of the crew, there was nothing in any theory of a contraband adventure to solve the problem submitted by Captain Dopping's reticence.

He left me abruptly, and walked forward and addressed one of the men, apparently speaking of the job the fellow was upon. I listened for that note of bullying, for that tone of habitual brutal temper, which I should have expected to hear in him when he accosted the seamen, and was surprised to find that he spoke as a comrade rather than as a captain; with something even of careless familiarity in his manner as he addressed the man.

I had now an opportunity for the first time since I came on deck to inspect the schooner. It was easy to see that she had never been built as a yacht; her appearance, indeed, suggested that in her day she had been employed as a slaver. She was old, but very powerfully constructed, and seemingly still as fine a sea-boat as was at that time to be encountered on the ocean. Her bulwarks were high and immensely thick; the fore-part of her had a rise, or "spring" as it is called, which gave a look of domination and defiance to her round bows which at the forefoot narrowed into a stem of knife-like sharpness. She was very loftily rigged and expanded an enormous breadth of mainsail. I had never before seen so long a gaff, and the boom when amidships forked far out over the stern. Her decks were very clean but grayish with brine and years of hard usage. I noticed that she carried a small boat hanging in davits on the starboard side, and a large boat abaft the little caboose or kitchen that stood like a sentry-box forward. This boat, indeed, resembled a man-of-war's cutter—such a long and heavy fabric as one would certainly not think of looking for on board a craft of the size of La Casandra. It was my sailor's eye that carried my mind to this detail. No man but a sailor, and perhaps a suspicious sailor as I then was, standing as I did upon the deck of a vessel whose destination was still a secret to me, would have noticed that boat.

The five of a crew were all of them Englishmen, strong, hearty fellows. I inspected them curiously, but could find nothing in them that did not suggest the plain, average, honest merchant sailor. They were well clothed for men of their class, habited in the jackets, round hats and wide trousers of the Jacks of my period, and I took notice that though their captain stood near them they worked as though without sense of his presence, occasionally calling a remark one to another, and laughing, but not noisily, as if what discipline there was on board the schooner existed largely in the crew's choice of behavior. These and other points I remarked, but nothing that I saw helped me to any sort of conclusion as to the destination of the little ship or the motive of the cruise. All that I could collect was that here was a schooner bearing a Spanish name and owned or hired by one or both of those Spaniards, who continued to pace the quarter-deck arm-in-arm, but manned, so far as I could see, by a company of five Englishmen and a negro lad, and commanded by an English skipper.

I walked a little way forward, the better to observe the vessel's rig at the fore, and on my approaching the galley, a fellow put his head out of it—making a sixth man now visible. He kept his head out to stare at me. Many ugly men have I met in my time, but never so hideous a creature as that. His nationality I could not imagine, though it was not long before I learned that he was a Spaniard. His coal-black hair fell in a shower of greasy snake-like ringlets upon his back and shoulders. One eye was whitened by a cataract or some large pearly blotch, and the other seemed to me to possess as malevolent an expression as could possibly deform a pupil unnaturally large, and still further disfigured by a very net-work of blood-red lines. His nose appeared to have been leveled flat with his face at the bridge by a blow, leaving the lower portion of it standing straight out in the shape of the thick end of a small broken carrot. His lips of leather, his complexion of chocolate, his three or four yellow fangs, his mat of close cropped whiskers, coarse as horse-hair, his apparel of blue shirt open at the neck and revealing a little gilt or gold crucifix, a pair of tarry leather trousers, carpet slippers, and the remains of an old Scotch cap that lay rather than sat upon his hair; all these points combined in producing one of the most extraordinary figures that had ever crossed my path—a path, I may say, that in my time had carried me into many wild scenes, and to the contemplation of many strange surprising sights.

While this prodigy of ugliness and I were staring at each other, the captain came across the deck to me.

"What do you think of this schooner?" he said.

"She is a very good schooner. She is old—perhaps thirty years old. I believe she has carried slaves in her time."

"I know it," he replied, with a strong nod, to which his furiously red hair seemed to impart a character of hot temper.

"I have seen," said I, "handsomer men than yonder beauty who is staring at me from the galley door."

"Ay. He is good enough to shut up in a box and to carry about as a show. He is cook and steward. His name is Juan de Mariana. He cooks well, and is or has been a domestic in Don Lazarillo's establishment."

"How many go to your crew?" said I, questioning him with an air of indifference now that I found he was disposed to be communicative.

"Eight."

"The number includes you and the cook and the nigger lad?"

He nodded, and looked at me suddenly, as though about to deliver something on the top of his mind, then checked himself, and pulling out his watch, exclaimed: "I understand you are willing to serve as mate of this vessel."

"I am willing to do anything. Do not I owe my life to you all?"

"Well," said he, "that may be settled now. It is Don Christoval's wish. As to pay, him and me will go into that matter with you by and by."

I opened my eyes at the sound of the word pay, but made no remark. It was a grateful sound, as you will suppose, to a man who had as good as lost everything save what he stood up in, and who, when he got ashore, might find it very hard to obtain another berth. The two Spanish gentlemen had left the deck. Captain Dopping said: "Step aft with me," and we walked as far as the cabin skylight, where facing about the captain called out, "Trapp, South, Butler, Scott, lay aft, my lads. I have a word to say to you." He then turned to the fellow who stood at the helm and exclaimed, "Tubb, you'll be listening."

The seamen quitted their several employments and came to the quarter-deck. The Spanish cook stepped out of the galley to hearken, and a moment later the ebony face of the negro showed in the square of the forecastle hatch. The sailors looked as though they pretty well guessed what was coming.

"Lads," said Captain Dopping, placing his hand upon my arm, "this here is Mr. James Portlack. He was second mate of the bark, Ocean Ranger, a ship I know."

"And I know her, too," said one of the men.

"Mr. Portlack," continued Captain Dopping, "holds a master's certificate, which is more than I do, and he tops me by that. But I'm your captain, and your captain I remain. Mr. Portlack consents to act as the mate of the Casandra. Is this agreeable to you, lads?"

"Ay, ay; agreeable enough," was the general answer.

"Well, then, Butler, you're displaced, d'ye see? No call for you to relieve me any longer."

"And a good job too," said the man, a heavy, sturdy, powerfully built fellow with small, honest, glittering blue eyes, and immense bushy whiskers; "there was nothin' said about my taking charge of the deck in the agreement."

"Well, you're out of it," exclaimed Captain Dopping, "and the ship's company's stronger by a hand, which is as it should be. D'ye hear me, cook?"

"Yash, yash, I hear all right, capitan," answered the swarthy creature from the door of his galley, contorting his countenance into the aspect of a horrid face beheld by one in a high fever, in his struggle to articulate in English.

"That'll do, my lads," said the captain.

The men leisurely rounded and went forward again. There was nothing unusual in this proceeding. It was customary, it may still be customary at sea, to invite the decision of the crew before electing a man to fill a vacant post as first or second mate. All that I found singular lay in the behavior of the men. There was something in their bearing I find it impossible to convey—a suggestion of resolution struggling with reluctance, or it might be that they gave me the impression of fellows who had entered upon an undertaking without wholly understanding its nature or without fully believing in the sincerity of its promoters. But be their manner what it might, its effect upon me was to greatly sharpen my curiosity as to the object of this schooner's voyage from Cadiz to the north as she was now heading.

I said to Captain Dopping, "I will take charge at once if you wish to go below."

"Very well," said he, "I will relieve you at four bells, and that will give you the first watch to stand," by which he meant the watch from eight o'clock till midnight.

"But I do not know your destination," said I. "How is the schooner to be steered?"

"As she goes," said he with a significant nod, angry with the scarlet flash of hair and whisker which accompanied it.

"Right," said I, and fell to pacing the deck, while he disappeared down the companion-way.

Athirst as I was for information, I was determined that my curiosity should not be suspected. Be the errand of this little ship what it might, I was always my own master, able to say "No" to any proposals I should object to, though taking care to give due effect by willingness in all honest directions to the gratitude excited in me by my deliverance. I would find the fellow at the helm watching me with an expression on his weather-darkened face that was the same as saying he was willing to tell all he knew, but I took no notice of him, contenting myself with merely observing the vessel's course and seeing that she was kept to it. The voices of the two Spaniards and Captain Dopping rose through the little skylight, one of which lay open. They spoke in English, and occasionally I heard my name pronounced with now and then a sharp hissing "Explain" from Don Lazarillo, but I did not catch, nor did I endeavor to catch, any syllables of a kind to furnish me with a sense of their discourse.

All this afternoon the weather continued rich, glowing, summer-like. One seemed to taste the aromas of the land in the eastern gushing of the blue and sparkling breeze. The three white spires of a tall ship glided like stars along the western rim, but though we were in the great ocean high-way nothing else showed during the remainder of the hours of light. Beyond a little feeling of stiffness and of aching in my joints I was sensible of no bad results of my night-long bitter and perilous exposure in the jolly-boat of the Ocean Ranger. I had, indeed, been too long seasoned by the sea to suffer grievously from an experience of this sort. Night after night off the black and howling Horn, off the stormy headland of Agulhas, amid mountainous seas, in frosty hurricanes whose biting breath was sharpened yet by hills and islands of ice glancing dimly through the snow-thickened darkness, I had kept the deck, I had helped to stow the canvas aloft, I had toiled at the pumps, waist-high in water, my hair crackling with ice, my hands without feeling. No! I was too seasoned to suffer severely from the after-effects of exposure in an open boat throughout an August night in the Portuguese parallels.

At five o'clock, when I glanced through the skylight, I spied the negro lad named Tom laying the cloth in the little cabin. Occasionally a whiff of cooking, strong with onions or garlic, would come blowing aft in some back-draught out of the canvas. I judged that the crew were well fed by observing one of them step out of the galley and enter the forecastle, bearing a smoking round of boiled beef and a quantity of potatoes in their skins; then by seeing another follow him with pots of coffee or tea, two or three loaves of bread, and other articles of food which I could not distinguish. Fare so substantial and bountiful seemed to my fancy a very unusual entertainment for a forecastle tea or "supper," as the last meal at sea is commonly called.

I found myself watching everything that passed before me with growing curiosity. The hideous cook Mariana, followed by the negro boy bearing dishes, came aft with the cabin dinner, and presently, when I peeped again through the skylight as I trudged the deck in the pendulum walk of the look-out at sea, I perceived the two Spaniards at table. The several dyes of wines in decanters blended with the brilliance of silver—or of what resembled silver—and other decorative details of flowers and fruit, and the square of the skylight framed a picturesquely festal scene. It was possible to peep without being observed. The Spaniards talked incessantly; their speech rose in a melodious hum; for to pronounce Spanish is, to my ear, to utter music. But the majestic dialect was as Greek to me. Don Lazarillo gesticulated with vehemence, and I never glanced at the skylight without observing him in the act of draining his glass. Don Christoval was less demonstrative. He was slow and stately in his movements, and when he flourished his arm or clasped his hands, or leaned back in his chair to revolve the point of his mustache with long, large, but most shapely fingers, he made one think of some fine actor in an opera scene.

It was six o'clock by the time they had dined, and at this hour the seamen taking the privilege of the "dog watch"—but, indeed, it was all privilege from morning to night in that schooner—were pacing the deck forward, four of them, every man smoking his pipe—the fifth man being at the tiller. I might now make sure that there went but five seamen to this ship's company. The ugly cook leaned in the door of his galley puffing at a cigarette. The sun was low, his light crimson; his fan-shaped wake streamed in scarlet glory under him to the very shadow of the schooner, and the little fabric, slightly leaning from the soft and pleasant breeze, floated through the rose-colored atmosphere, her sails of the tincture of delicate cloth of gold, her bright masts veined with fire, her shrouds as she gently rolled catching the western light until they burned out upon the eye as though of polished brass.

The two Spaniards arrived on deck, each with an immensely long cigar in his mouth. Don Christoval addressed me pleasantly in his excellent English. He asked me with an air of grand courtesy if I now felt perfectly well, inquired the speed of the schooner, my opinion of her, my experiences of the Bay of Biscay in this month of August, and inquired if I was acquainted with the coast of England, and especially with that part comprised between St. Bees Head and Morecambe Bay. His friend eagerly listened, keeping his fiery eyes fastened upon my face, and whenever I had occasion to say more than "yes" or "no," he would call upon Don Christoval to interpret.

Shortly after the tall Don had ceased his questions—and I found no expression in his handsome face and in the steady gaze of his glowing impassioned eyes to hint to me whether my replies satisfied him or not—Captain Dopping came up out of the cabin.

"Now, Mr. Portlack," said he, in his harsh, intemperate voice, yet intending nothing but civility, as I could judge, "get you to your supper, sir; eat hearty, and you can make as free with the liquor as your common sense thinks prudent."

I was hungry, having tasted no food since the meal of beef and biscuit which had been set before me when I was first brought on board; nevertheless I entered the cabin and took my place with some diffidence. I felt a sort of embarrassment in eating alone and helping myself—perhaps because of the shore-going appearance of the interior; it was like making free in a gentleman's dining-room, the host being absent. Tom, the nigger boy, waited upon me. He gave me a dish of excellent soup, and I fared sumptuously on spiced beef, some sort of dried fish that was excellent eating, potatoes, beans, fruit, and the like. The fruit was fresh enough to make me understand that the vessel was but recently from port. There were several kinds of wines in decanters upon the table; but two glasses of sherry sufficed me, though two such glasses of sherry I had never before drank. It might be that I was no judge, but to my palate the flavor of that amber-colored wine was exquisite.

The negro boy stood near waiting and watching me intently in the intervals of his business. Had the skylight been closed I should have put some questions to him, but the regular passage of the shadows of the two Spaniards upon the glass of the skylight as they walked the deck, warned me to be very wary. The change, not indeed from an open boat, but from the decks and the cabin of the Ocean Ranger to this interior, with its pictures, mirrors, its handsomely equipped and most hospitable table, was great indeed, and as I looked about me I found it difficult to realize the experience I was passing through. I could now tell by the weight of the fork and spoon which I handled that the plate which glittered upon the white damask cloth was solid silver. There could be no doubt whatever that the furniture of a drawing-room or of a boudoir had gone to the equipment of this cabin. Nothing seemed to fit, nothing had that air of oceanic fixity which you look for in sea-going decorations. But a quality of tawdriness stole into the general appearance through contrast of the gilt, the looking glasses, the pictures, the velvet, with the plain, worn sides of the vessel, the rude cabin beams, and the gray and even grimy ceiling or upper deck. I asked the negro boy if he spoke English.

"Yes, massa," said he, "I speak English, nuffin else, tank de Lord."

"Were you shipped at Cadiz?"

"Yes sah."

"I suppose they found you cruising about on the look-out for a job."

He showed his teeth and smiled broadly and blandly, in silence upturning his dusky eyes to the skylight. It was no business of mine to question him, but I thought it as likely as not that he had run from some American vessel, for it was hard to imagine that a lad who was undoubtedly a Yankee negro, and who I might fully believe was without a word of Spanish, would be idling in Cadiz.

I was about to go on deck when the boy said to me, "Do yah know where yaw've to sleep?"

"In the 'tween decks I understood," said I.

"I'll show yah, massa, I'll show yah. Dis is de road to your bedroom, sah," and, somewhat to my surprise, he went to a little door at the foremost end of the cabin, opened it, and conducted me into a part of the schooner that was almost immediately under the main-hatch. The main-hatch was a very wide square, and the cover of it was formed of three pieces, one portion of which was lifted so that light and air penetrated; the sun was still above the horizon, and I could see plainly. A hammock had been swung in a corner on the starboard side; it was to be my bed, and there was no other article of furniture; but then I was a sailor, very well able to dispense with all conveniences, requiring nothing but a bucket of fresh brine to supply the absence of a wash-stand. There was a quantity of rope, some bolts of canvas, and other matters of that kind stowed away down here. The space, however, was no more than a good sized cabin, owing to the after bulk-head coming well forward and the forecastle bulk-head standing well aft.

Having taken a brief survey of my quarters, heaving as I did so a melancholy sigh of regret over the new sea-chest, the quantity of wearing apparel, the nautical instruments, books and old home memorials which the Ocean Ranger had sailed away with, and which it was as likely as not I should never hear of again, I re-entered the cabin and mounted the short flight of companion steps. Captain Dopping was walking with the two Spaniards. I went a little way forward to leeward, and leaned upon the rail, looking at the sea. The breeze was soft and pleasant, warm with the long day of sunshine, and the schooner was sliding in buoyant launchings over the round brows of the wide heave of the swell which in the far dim east swayed in folds of soft deep violet to the tender magical coloring of the shadow of the coming night that had paused in the heavens there. Four of the seamen were sitting in the schooner's head, watching with amused hairy countenances the face of the cook Mariana, who grotesquely gesticulated and contorted his form in his efforts to address them in English. On a sudden Captain Dopping crossed the deck, holding a handsome cigar case filled.

"Don Christoval wants to know if you smoke?" said he.

I took a cigar and lighted it at the stump which Captain Dopping was smoking, and perceiving that Don Christoval observed me, I raised my hat, and made him a low bow, which he returned with the majesty of a grandee. The captain resumed his place at the side of the two Spaniards, and I smoked my cigar alone, with wonder fast increasing upon me as I looked at the cigar, and then reflected upon the entertainment I was fresh from, and recollected how Captain Dopping had pronounced the word pay. What did it all mean? What mystery was signified, what proposals presently to come were indicated by this handsome, this hospitable reception of a distressed seaman—a mere second mate as I was or had been, rendered destitute by disaster—one of a crowd of obscure persons without pretensions of any kind or sort? Surely, had I been a nobleman, a man in the highest degree important and influential, this treatment could scarcely have been more liberal and considerate.

I had nearly smoked out the exceedingly fine cigar when Captain Dopping, in his rasping voice, cried out to one of the men—I believe it was to the man George South—to step aft and take charge of the deck for a bit. I turned my head, and found that the two Spaniards had gone below. Captain Dopping beckoned to me, but the gesture was not wanting in respect. He was but a Deal longshore man, though superior to the ordinary run of those fellows, and was impressed or, at all events, influenced by my holding a master's certificate and, let me say it without vanity, for it is a thing to concern me but little after all these years, by my speech, manners, and appearance.

"You are wanted in the cabin," said he, and he led the way below.