Read Ebook: In the Sargasso Sea A Novel by Janvier Thomas A Thomas Allibone

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But in practical matters--knowledge of men and things, and of the many places about the world which he had seen, and of the management of a ship in all weathers--he was one of the best-informed men that ever I came across: being naturally of a hard-headed make, with great acuteness of observation, and with quick and sound reasoning powers. I found his talk always worth listening to; and I liked nothing better than to sit beside him, or to walk the deck with him, while we smoked our pipes together and he told me in his shrewd way about one queer thing and another which he had come upon in various parts of the world--for he had followed the sea from the time that he was a boy, and there did not seem to be a bit of coast country nor any part of all the oceans which he did not know well.

Unlike Bowers, he was very free in talking about the trade that he carried on in the brig upon the African coast, and quite astonished me by his showing of the profits that he made; and he generally ended his discourses on this head by laughingly contrasting the amount of money that even Bowers got every year--the mates being allowed an interest in the brig's earnings--with the salary that the palm-oil people were to pay to me. Indeed, he managed to make me quite discontented with my prospects, although I had thought them very good indeed when I first told him about them; and when he would say jokingly, as he very often did, that I had better drop the palm-oil people and take a berth on the brig instead, I would be half sorry that he was only in fun.

In a serious way, too, he told me that the Coast trade had got very unfairly a bad name that it did not deserve. At one time, he said, a great many hard characters had got into it, and their doings had given it a black reputation that still stuck to it. But in recent years, he explained, it had fallen into the hands of a better class of traders, and its tone had been greatly improved. As a rule, he declared, the West Coast traders were as decent men as would be found anywhere--not saints, perhaps, he said smilingly, but men who played a reasonably square game and who got big money mainly because they took big risks. When I asked him what sort of risks, he answered: "Oh, pretty much all sorts--sometimes your pocket and sometimes your neck," and added that to a man of spirit these risks made half the fun. And then he said that for a man who did not care for that sort of thing it was better to be contented with a safe place and low wages--and asked me how long I expected to stay at Loango, and if I had a better job ahead, when my work there was done.

At first he would shift the subject when I tried to make him talk about the slave traffic. But one day--it was toward the end of our second week out, and I was beginning to think from his constant turning to it that perhaps he really might mean to offer me a berth on the brig, and that his offer might be pretty well worth accepting--he all of a sudden spoke out freely and of his own accord. It was true, he said, that sometimes a few blacks were taken aboard by traders, when no other stuff offered for barter, and were carried up to Mogador and there sold for very high prices indeed--for there was a prejudice against the business, and the naval vessels on the Coast tried so persistently to stop it that the risk of capture was great and the profit from a successful venture correspondingly large. But the prejudice, he continued, was really not well-founded. Slavery, of course, was a very bad thing; but there were degrees of badness in it, and since it could not be broken up there was much to be said in favor of any course that would make it less cruel. The blacks who were the slaves of other blacks, or of Portuguese,--and it was only these that the traders bought--were exposed to such barbarous treatment that it was a charity to rescue them from it on almost any terms. Certainly it was for their good, as they had to be in bondage somewhere, to deliver them from such masters by carrying them away to Northern Africa: where the slavery was of so mild and paternal a sort that cruelty almost was unknown. And then he went on to tell me about the kindly relations which he himself had seen existing between slaves and their masters in those parts, both among Arabs and Moors.

This presentment of the case put so new a face on it that at first I could not get my bearings; which I am the less ashamed to own up to because, as I look at the matter now, I perceive how much trouble Captain Luke took to win me for his own purposes--he being a middle-aged man packed full of shrewd worldly wisdom, and I only a fresh young fool.

I confess that this avowal completely staggered me, and with a rush brought back all the fears by which I had been so rattled on the first day of our voyage. In a hazy way I perceived that the captain had been playing a part with me, and that the others had been playing parts too--for I could not hope that among men of that stripe such friendliness should be natural--and what with my surprise, and the fresh fright I was thrown into, I was struck fairly dumb.

But Captain Luke--likely enough deceived by his own hopes, as even shrewd men will be sometimes--either did not notice the fluster I was in, or thought to set matters all right with me in his own way; for when he found that I remained silent he took up the talk himself again, and went on to show in detail the profits of a single venture with a live cargo--and his figures were certainly big enough to fire the fancy of any man who was keen for money-getting and who was willing to get his money by rotten ways. And then, when he had finished with this part of the matter, he came out plumply with the offer to give me a mate's rating on board the brig if I would cast in my fortunes with his. Of the theory of seamanship, he said, I already knew more than he did himself; and so much more than either of his mates that he would feel entirely at ease--as he could not with them--in trusting the navigation of the brig in my hands. As to the practical part of the work, that was a matter that with my quickness I would pick up in no time; and my bigness and strength, he added, would come in mighty handily when there was trouble among the crew, as sometimes happened, and in keeping the blacks in order, and in the little fights that now and then were necessary with folks on shore. And then he came to the real kernel of the matter: which was that Bowers did not like his work and was not fit for it, and was threatening to leave the brig at the first port she made, and so a man who could be trusted was badly needed to take his place.

When he had finished with it all I was dumber than ever; for I was in a rage at him for making me such an offer, and at the same time saw pretty clearly that if I refused it as plumply as he made it we should come to such open enmity that I--being in his power completely--would be in danger of my skin. And so I was glad when he gave me a breathing spell, and the chance to think things over quietly, by telling me that he would not hurry me for answer and that I could take a day or two--or a week or two if I wanted it--in which to make up my mind.

I GIVE CAPTAIN LUKE MY ANSWER

For the rest of that day, and for the two days following, Captain Luke did not in any way refer to his offer; and as he showed himself more than ever friendly, and talked away to me in his usual entertaining fashion, my rage and fright began to go off a little--though at bottom, of course, there was no change in my opinions, nor any doubt as to my giving him a point-blank refusal when the issue should be squarely raised.

All this time the brig was bowling along down the trades; and on the third morning after I had the captain's offer--we being then close upon the thirty-fifth parallel of north latitude--Bowers called my attention to the gulf-weed floating about us, and told me that we were fairly on the outer edge of the Sargasso Sea. We should not get into any thicker part of it, he said, as we should bear up to clear it; and so we actually did, hauling away a good deal to the eastward when the brig's course was set that day at noon. But my interest in the matter had been so checked--all my thought being given to finding some way out of the pickle in which I found myself--that I paid little attention to the patches of yellow weed on the water around us or to the bits of wreckage that we saw now and then; and when Bowers, keeping on with his talk, fell to chaffing me about my desire to make a voyage of discovery into the thick part of this floating mystery I did not rise to his joking, nor did I make him much of a reply.

Indeed, I was in rather a low way that day; which was due in part to my not being able, for all my thinking, to see any sort of a clear course before me; and in part to the fact that the weather was thickening and that my spirits were dulled a good deal by what we call the heaviness of the air. All around the horizon steel-gray clouds were rising, and a soft sort of a haze hung about us and took the life out of the sunshine, and the wind fell away until there was almost nothing of it, and that little fitful--while with the dying out of it the sea began to stir slowly with a long oily swell. Far down to the southeast a line of smoke hung along the horizon, coming from the funnel of some steamer out of sight over the ocean's curve, and the heaviness of the atmosphere was shown by the way that this smoke held close to the surface of the sea.

That Captain Luke did not like the look of things was plain enough from his sharp glances about him and from his frequent examinations of the glass; and he seemed to be all the more bothered--his seaman's instinct that a storm was brewing being at odds with the barometer's prophecy--by the fact that the mercury showed a marked tendency to rise. Had he known as much of the scientific side of navigation as he knew of the practical side he could have reconciled the conduct of the barometer with his own convictions, and so would have been easier in his mind; for it is a fact that the mercury often rises suddenly on the front edge of a storm--that is to say, a little in advance of it--by reason of the air banking up there. But having only his rule-of-thumb knowledge to apply in the premises, the apparent scientific contradiction of his own practical notions as to what was going to happen confused him and made him irritable--the nerve-stirring state of the atmosphere no doubt having also a share in the matter--as was made plain by his sharp quick motions, and by the way in which on the smallest provocation he fell to swearing at the men. And so the day wore itself out to nightfall: with the steel-gray clouds lifting steadily from the horizon toward the zenith, and with the swell of the weed-spattered sea slowly rising, and with a doubting uneasiness among all of us that found its most marked expression in Captain Luke's increasingly savage mood.

Our supper was a glowering one. The captain had little to say, and that little of a sharp sort, while the mate only rumbled out a curse now and then at the boy who served us; and I myself was in a bitter bad humor as I thought how hard it was on me to be shut up at sea in such vile company, and how I had only myself to blame for getting into it--and found my case all the harder because of my nervous uneasiness due to the coming storm. As to the storm, there no longer could be doubt about it, for the barometer had got into line with Captain Luke's convictions and was falling fast.

When the supper was over the captain brought out his arrack-bottle and took off a full tumbler, which was more than double his usual allowance, and then pushed the liquor across to the mate and me. The mate also took a good pull at it, and I took a fair drink myself in the hope that it would quiet my nerves--but it had exactly the opposite effect and made me both excited and cross. And then we all came on deck together, and all in a rough humor, and Bowers went down into the cabin to have his supper by himself.

What happened in the next half-hour happened so quickly that I cannot give a very clear account of it. A part of it, no doubt, was due to mere chance and angry impulse; but not the whole of it, and I think not the worst of it--for the first thing that the captain did was to order the man who was steering to go forward and to tell the mate to take the wheel. That left just the three of us together at the stern of the brig--with Bowers below and so out of sight and hearing, and with all the crew completely cut off from us and put out of sight and hearing by the rise of the cabin above the deck.

Night had settled down on the ocean, but not darkness. Far off to the eastward the full moon was standing well above the horizon and was fighting her way upward through the clouds--now and then getting enough the better of them to send down a dash of brightness on the water, but for the most part making only a faint twilight through their gloom. The wind still was very light and fitful, but broken by strongish puffs which would heel the brig over a little and send her along sharply for half a mile or so before they died away; and the swell had so risen that we had a long sleepy roll. Up to windward I made out a ship's lights--that seemed to be coming down on us rapidly, from their steady brightening--and I concluded that this must be the steamer from which the smoke had come that I had seen trailing along the horizon through the afternoon; and I even fancied, the night being intensely still, that I could hear across the water the soft purring sound made by the steady churning of her wheel. Somehow it deepened the sullen anger that had hold of me to see so close by a ship having honest men aboard of her, and to know at the same time how hopelessly fast I was tied to the brig and her dirty crew. I don't mind saying that the tears came to my eyes, for I was both hurt by my sorrow and heavy with my dull rage.

We all three were silent for a matter of ten minutes or so, or it might even have been longer, and then Captain Luke faced around on me suddenly and asked: "Well, have you made up your mind?"

Had I been cooler I should have tried to fence a little, since my only resource--I being caught like a rat in a trap that way--was to try to gain time; but I was all in a quiver, just as I suppose he was, with the excitement of the situation and with the excitement of the thunderous night, and his short sharp question jostled out of my head what few wits I had there and made me throw away my only chance. And so I answered him, just as shortly and as sharply: "Yes, I have."

"Do you mean to join the brig?" he demanded.

"No, I don't," I answered, and stepped a little closer to him and looked him squarely in the eyes.

"I told you so," the mate broke in with his rumble; and I saw that he was whipping a light lashing on the wheel in a way that would hold it steady in case he wanted to let go.

"Better think a minute," said Captain Luke, speaking coolly enough, but still with an angry undertone in his voice. "I've made you a good offer, and I'm ready to stand by it. But if you won't take what I've offered you you'll take something else that you won't like, my fresh young man. In a friendly way, and for your information, I've told you a lot of things that I can't trust to the keeping of any living man who won't chip in with us and take our chances--the bad ones with the good ones--just as they happen to come along. You know too much, now, for me to part company from you while you have a wagging tongue in your head--and so my offer's still open to you. Only there's this about it: if you won't take it, overboard you go."

I had a little gleam of sense at that; for I knew that he spoke in dead earnest, and that the mate stood ready to back him, and that against the two of them I had not much show. And so I tried to play for time, saying: "Well, let me think it over a bit longer. You said there was no hurry and that I might have a week to consider in. I've had only three days, so far. Do you call that square?"

"Squareness be damned," rumbled the mate, and he gave a look aloft and another to windward--the breeze just then had fallen to a mere whisper--and took his hands off the wheel and stepped away from it so that he and the captain were close in front of me, side by side. I stood off from them a little, and got my back against the cabin--that I might be safe against an attack from behind--and I was so furiously angry that I forgot to be scared.

"Three days is as good as three years," Captain Luke jerked out. "What I want is an answer right now. Will you join the brig--yes or no?"

Somehow I remembered just then seeing our pig killed, when I was a boy--how he ran around the lot with the men after him, and got into a corner and tried to fight them, and was caught in spite of his poor little show of fighting, and was rolled over on his back and had his throat stuck. He was a nice pig, and I had felt sorry for him: thinking that he didn't deserve such treatment, his life having been a respectable one, and he never having done anybody any harm. It all came back to me in a flash, as I settled myself well against the cabin and answered: "No, I won't join you--and you and your brig may go to hell!"

All I remember after that was their rush together upon me, and my hitting out two or three times--getting in one smasher on the mate's jaw that was a comfort to me--and then something hard cracking me on the head, and so stunning me that I knew nothing at all of what happened until I found myself coming up to the surface of the sea, sputtering salt-water and partly tangled in a bunch of gulf-weed, and saw the brig heeling over and sliding fast away from me before a sudden strong draught of wind.

I TIE UP MY BROKEN HEAD, AND TRY TO ATTRACT ATTENTION

My head was tingling with pain, and so buzzy that I had no sense worth speaking of, but just kept myself afloat in an instinctive sort of way by paddling a little with my hands. And I could not see well for what I thought was water in my eyes--until I found that it was blood running down over my forehead from a gash in my scalp that went from the top of my right ear pretty nearly to my crown. Had the blow that made it struck fair it certainly would have finished me; but from the way that the scalp was cut loose the blow must have glanced.

The chill of the water freshened me and brought my senses back a little: for which I was not especially thankful at first, being in such pain and misery that to drown without knowing much about it seemed quite the best thing that I could hope for just then. Indeed, when I began to think again, though not very clearly, I had half a mind to drop my arms to my sides and so go under and have done with it--so despairing was I as I bobbed about on the swell among the patches of gulf-weed which littered the dark ocean, with the brig drawing away from me rapidly, and no chance of a rescue from her even had she been near at hand.

Whether I had or had not hurried the matter, under I certainly should have gone shortly--for the crack on my head and the loss of blood from it had taken most of my strength out of me, and even with my full strength I could not have kept afloat long--had not a break in the clouds let through a dash of moonlight that gave me another chance. It was only for a moment or two that the moonlight lasted, yet long enough for me to make out within a hundred feet of me a biggish piece of wreckage--which but for that flash I should not have noticed, or in the dimness would have taken only for a bunch of weed.

Near though it was, getting to it was almost more than I could manage; and when at last I did reach it I was so nearly used up that I barely had strength to throw my arms about it and one leg over it, and so hang fast for a good many minutes in a half-swoon of weakness and pain.

But the feel of something solid under me, and the certainty that for a little while at least I was safe from drowning, helped me to pull myself together; and before long some of my strength came back, and a little of my spirit with it, and I went about settling myself more securely on my poor sort of a raft. What I had hit upon, I found, was a good part of a ship's mast; with the yards still holding fast by it and steadying it, and all so clean-looking that it evidently had not been in the water long. The main-top, I saw, would give me a back to lean against and also a little shelter; and in that nook I would be still more secure because the futtock-shrouds made a sort of cage about it and gave me something to catch fast to should the swell of the sea roll me off. So I worked along the mast from where I first had caught hold of it until I got myself stowed away under the main-top: where I had my body fairly out of water, and a chance to rest easily by leaning against the upstanding woodwork, and a good grip with my legs to keep me firm. And it is true, though it don't sound so, that I was almost happy at finding myself so snug and safe there--as it seemed after having nothing under me but the sea.

And then I set myself--my head hurting me cruelly, and the flow of blood still bothering me--to see what I could do in the way of binding up my wound; and made a pretty good job of it, having a big silk handkerchief in my pocket that I folded into a smooth bandage and passed over my crown and under my chin--after first dowsing my head in the cold sea water, which set the cut to smarting like fury but helped to keep the blood from flowing after the bandage was made fast. At first, while I was paddling in the water and splashing my way along the mast and while the bandage was flapping about my ears, I had no chance to hear any noises save those little ones close to me which I was making myself. But when I had finished my rough surgery, and leaned back against the top to rest after it--and my heart was beginning to sink with the thought of how utterly desperate my case was, afloat there on the open ocean with a gale coming on--I heard in the deep silence a faint rythmic sound that I recognized instantly as the pulsing of a steamer's engine and the steady churning of her screw. This mere whisper in the darkness was a very little thing to hang a hope upon; but hope did return to me with the conviction that the sound came from the steamer of which I had seen the lights just before I was pitched overboard, and that I had a chance of her passing near enough to me to hear my hail.

I peered eagerly over the waters, trying to make out her lights again and so settle how she was heading; but I could see no lights, though with each passing minute the beating of the screw sounded louder to my straining ears. From that I concluded that she must be coming up behind me and was hid by the top from me; and so, slowly and painfully, I managed to get on my hands and knees on the mast, and then to raise myself until I stood erect and could see over the edge of the top as it rose like a little wall upright--and gave a weak shout of joy as I saw what I was looking for, the three bright points against the blackness, not more than a mile away. And I was all the more hopeful because her red and green lights showed full on each side of the white light on her foremast, and by that I knew that she was heading for me as straight as she could steer.

I gave another little shout--but fainter than the first, for my struggle to get to my feet, and then to hold myself erect as the swell rolled the mast about, made me weak and a little giddy; and I wanted to keep on shouting--but had the sense not to, that I might save my strength for the yells that I should have to give when the steamer got near enough to me for her people to hear my cries. So I stood silent--swaying with the roll of the mast, and with my head throbbing horribly because of my excitement and the strain of holding on there--while I watched her bearing down on me; and making her out so plainly as she got closer that it never occurred to me that I and my bit of mast would not be just as plain to her people as her great bulk was to me.

I don't suppose that she was within a quarter of a mile of me when I began my yelling; but I was too much worked up to wait longer, and the result of my hurry was to make my voice very hoarse and feeble by the time that she really was within hail. She came dashing along so straight for me that I suddenly got into a tremor of fear that she would run me down; and, indeed, she only cleared me by fifty feet or so--her huge black hull, dotted with the bright lights of her cabin ports, sliding past me so close that she seemed to tower right up over me--and I was near to being swamped, so violently was my mast tossed about by the rush and suck of the water from her big screw. And while she hung over me, and until she was gone past me and clear out of all hearing, I yelled and yelled!

At first I could not believe, so sure had I been of my rescue, that she had left me; and it was not until she was a good half mile away from me, with only the sound of her screw ripping the water, and a faint gleam of light from her after ports showing through the darkness, that I realized that she was gone--and then I grew so sick and dizzy that it is a wonder I did not lose my hold altogether and fall off into the sea. Somehow or another I managed to swing myself down and to seat myself upon the mast again, with my head fairly splitting and with my heart altogether gone: and so rested there, shutting my eyes to hide the sight of my hope vanishing, and as desolate as any man ever was.

Presently, in a dull way, I noticed that I no longer heard the swash of her screw, and rather wondered at her getting out of hearing so quickly; but for fear of still seeing her lights, and so having more pain from her, I still kept my eyes tight closed. And then, all of a sudden, I heard quite close by me a hail--and opened my eyes in a hurry to see a light not a hundred feet away from me, and to make out below it the loom of a boat moving slowly over the weed-strewn sea.

The shout that I gave saved me, but before it saved me I came near to being done for. Such a rush of blood went up into my broken head with the sudden burst of joy upon me that a dead faint came upon me and I fell off into the water; and that I was floating when the boat got to me was due to the mere chance that as I dropped away from the mast one of my arms slipped into the tangle of the futtock-shrouds. But I knew nothing about that, nor about anything else that happened, until we were half-way back to the steamer and I came to my senses a little; and very little for a good while longer--except that I was swung up a ship's side and there was a good deal of talking going on around me; and then that my clothes were taken off and I was lifted into a soft delightful berth; and then that somebody with gentle hands was binding up my broken crown.

When this job was finished--which hurt me a good deal, but did not rouse me much--I just fell back upon the soft pillow and went to sleep: with a blessed sense of rest and safety, as I felt the roll of a whole ship under me again after the short jerk of my mast, and knew that I was not back on the brig but aboard an honest steamer by hearing and by feeling the strong steady pulsing of her screw.

I ENCOUNTER A GOOD DOCTOR AND A VIOLENT GALE

I was roused from my sleep by the sharp motion of the vessel; but did not get very wide awake, for I felt donsie and there was a dull ringing in my head along with a great dull pain. I had sense enough, though, to perceive that the storm had come, about which Captain Luke and the barometer had been at odds; and to shake a little with a creepy terror as I thought of the short work it would have made with me had I waited for it on my mast. But I was too much hurt to feel anything very keenly, and so heavy that even with the quick short roll of the ship to rouse me I kept pretty much in a doze.

After a while the door of my state-room was opened a little and a man peeped in; and when he saw my open eyes looking at him he came in altogether, giving me a nod and a smile. He was a tall fellow in a blue uniform, with a face that I liked the looks of; and when he spoke to me I liked the sound of his voice.

"You must be after being own cousin to all the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and the dog too, my big young man," he said, holding fast to the upper berth to steady himself. "You've put in ten solid hours, so far, and you don't seem to be over wide awake yet. Faith, I'd be after backing you to sleep standing, like Father O'Rafferty's old dun cow!"

I did not feel up to answering him, but I managed to grin a little, and he went on: "I'm for thinking that I'd better let that broken head of yours alone till this fool of a ship is sitting still again--instead of trying to teach the porpoises such tricks of rolling and pitching as never entered into their poor brute minds. But you'll do without doctoring for the present, myself having last night sewed up all right and tight for you the bit of your scalp that had fetched away. How does it feel?"

"It hurts," was all that I could answer.

"But talking isn't now the best thing for you, and some more of the sleep that you're so fond of is--if only the tumbling of the ship will let you have it; so take this powder into that mouth of yours which you opened so wide when you were conversing with us as we went sailing past you, and then stop your present chattering and take all the sleep that you can hold."

With that he put a bitter powder into my mouth, and gave me a drink of water after it--raising me up with a wonderful deftness and gentleness that I might take it, and settling me back again on the pillow in just the way that I wanted to lie. "And now be off again to your friends the Ephesians," he said; "only remember that if you or they--or their dog either, poor beasty--wants anything, it's only needed to touch this electric bell. As to the doggy," he added, with his hand on the door-knob, "tell him to poke at the button with the tip of his foolish nose." And with that he opened the door and went away. All this light friendly talk was such a comfort to me--showing, as it did, along with the good care that I was getting, what kindly people I had fallen among--that in my weak state I cried a little because of my happy thankfulness; and then, my weakness and the powder acting together to lull me, in spite of the ship's sharp motion I went off again to sleep.

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