CHAPTER XXIX.
I VALUE THE LADING.
The day had been so full of business, there had been so much to engagemy mind, that it was not until I was seated at supper in the oldcook-room in which I had passed so many melancholy hours, that I foundmyself able to take a calm survey of my situation, and to compare thevarious motions of my fortunes. I could scarcely indeed believe that Iwas not in a dream from which I should awake presently, and discovermyself still securely imprisoned in the ice, and all those passages ofthe powder-blasts, the liberation of the schooner, my lonely days in herafloat, my encounter with the whaler, as visionary and vanishing asthose dusky forms of vapour which had swarmed in giant-shape over mylittle open boat.
But even if confirmation had been wanting in the sable visage of BillyPitt, who sat near the furnace munching away with prodigious enjoymentof his food and bringing his can of hot spiced wine from his vastblubber lips with a mighty sigh of deep delight, I must have found it ineach hissing leap and roaring plunge of the old piratical bucket, sofull of the vitality of the wind-swollen canvas, so quick with all thelife-instincts of a vessel storming through the deep with buoyant keeland under full control. Oh, heaven! how different from the dull amblingof the morning, the sluggish pitching and rolling to the weak pulling ofthe spritsail!
Wilkinson and Cromwell kept the deck whilst Billy Pitt and I got oursupper, and I had some talk with my negro, who seemed to be a verysimple childish fellow, heartily in love with his stomach and very eagerto see England. He told me that he had heard it was a fine country, andhis wish to see it was one reason of his volunteering.
"Dey say," said he, "dat Lunnon's a very fine place, sah, bigger danPhiladelphy, and dat a man's skin don' tell agin him among de yallergals dere."
I laughed and said, that in my country people were judged rather by thecolour of their hearts than by the hue of their faces.
"But dollars count for something too, sah, I spects?" said he.
"Why, yes," said I, "with dollars enough you can make black white inEngland."
"Hum!" cried he, scratching his head. "I guess it 'ud take an almightyload of dollars to make me white, massa."
"Put money in your pocket and chink it," said I, "and your face'll befound white enough, I warrant."
"By golly!" cried he, "I'll do it den. S'elp me de Lord, massa, I'dchink twenty year for a white face. Dat comes ob bein' civilized.Tell'ee what dey dew, massa, dey makes you feel like a white man, butdey lets you keep black, blast 'em!"
I checked his excitement by telling him that in my country he would findthat the negro was a person held in very high esteem, that the women inparticular valued him for that very dinginess which the Americans founddistasteful, and told him that I could name several ladies of qualitywho had married their black servants.
He looked surprised, but not incredulous, and said in his peculiardialect that he had no doubt I spoke the truth, as he had always heardthat England was a fine country to live in. I then led him insensiblyfrom this topic to talk of the sea and his experiences, and found thathe had seen a very great deal, having been freed when young, and keepingto the ocean ever since in many different sorts of craft. Indeed, I wasas much pleased with him as with Wilkinson, but then I had foreseen asimplicity in both the negroes, and in expectation of finding thisquality, so useful to one in my strange position, I was overjoyed whenthey consented to help me sail the schooner to the Thames.
We went on deck to relieve Wilkinson and Cromwell. Billy Pitt took thetiller and I walked to either rail and stared into the darkness. It wasvery thick with occasional squalls of snow, which put a screaming as oftortured cats into the wind as they swung through it. The sea was high,but the schooner was making excellent weather of it, whilst she rolledand pitched through the troubled darkness at seven knots in the hour.'Twas noble useful sailing, yet a speed not to be relished in thesewaters amid so deep a shadow. Still the temptation to "hold on all," aswe say, was very great; every mile carried us by so much nearer to thetemperate parallels, and shortened to that extent the long, long passagethat lay before us.
I was pacing the deck briskly, for the wind was horribly keen, when Pittsuddenly called out, "I say, massa!"
"Hullo," I replied.
"Sah," he cried, "I smell ice!"
I knew that this was a capacity not uncommon among men who had voyagedmuch in the frosty regions of the deep, and instantly exclaimed, "Luff,then, luff! shake the way out of her!" sniffing as I spoke, butdetecting no added shrewdness in the air that was already freezinglycold. He put the helm down, and I called to the others below to come ondeck and flatten in the main sheet. They were up in a trice and tailedon with me, asking no questions, till we had the boom nearly amidships.
I was about to speak when Wilkinson cried out, "I smell ice." He sniffeda moment: "Yes, there's an island aboard. Anybody see it?"
"Ay, dere it am, sure enough!" cried Cromwell. "Dere--on de lee-bow--seeit, sah? See it, Billy?"
Yes, I saw it plain enough when I knew where to look for it. 'Twas justsuch another lump of faintness as had wrecked the _Laughing Mary_, amass of dull spectral light upon the throbbing blackness, and it layexactly in a line with the course we had been steering when Pitt firstcalled out, so that assuredly we had not shifted our helm a minute toosoon. We chopped and wallowed past it slowly, keeping a sharp look-outfor like apparitions in other quarters, and when it had disappeared, Imade up my mind to heave the schooner to and keep her in that posturetill daylight, unless the night cleared. So we got the mainsail down andstowed it, clewed up the topsail (which I lent a hand to roll up), andlet the vessel lie under a reefed foresail with her helm lashed. Theweather, however, must have ultimately compelled what the thickness hadrequired; for by ten o'clock it was blowing a hard gale, with a frequenthoariness of clouds of snow upon the blackness, the seas very high andfoaming, and the wind crying madly in the rigging.
I let some time go by, and then sounded the well and found no more waterthan the depth at which the pumps sucked. This did wonders in the way ofreassuring the men, who were rendered uneasy by the violent motions ofthe unwieldy vessel, and by the very harsh straining noises which roseout of the hold, which latter they would naturally attribute to thecraziness of the fabric, though the true cause of it lay in the numberof loose, movable bulkheads.
"It's amazin' to me that she holds together at all," cried Wilkinson,"so ancient she is!"
"She's only old," said I, "in the sound of the years she's been inexistence. The ice has kept her young. Would the hams and tongues we'reeating be taken to be half a century old? yet where could you buysweeter and better meat of the kind ashore? A ship's well is your onlyhonest reporter of her condition. Ours has vouched in a way that shouldkeep you easy."
"Arter de _Soosan Tucker_ dis is like bein' hung up to dry," exclaimedone of the negroes. "It war pump, pump dere and no mistake. I call dis awerry beautiful little sheep, massa; yes, s'elp me de Lord, dere'snuffin could persuade me she ain't what I says she am."
However, I was up and down a good deal during the night. But for thetreasure I should have been less anxious, I dare say. I had come sosuccessfully to this point that I was resolved, if my hopes were tomiscarry, the misfortune should not be owing to want of vigilance on mypart; and there happened an incident which inevitably tended to sharpenmy watchfulness, though I was perfectly conscious there was a million toone against its occurring a second time. I came on deck to relieveWilkinson, at midnight, after a half-hour's nodding doze by the furnacebelow. He went to his cabin; I stood under the lee of a cloth seized inthe weather main rigging. Pitt arrived, and I told him he could returnto the cook-house and stay there till I called him. The helm beinglashed, and the schooner doing very well, nothing wanted watching inparticular, yet I would not have the deck abandoned, and meant to keep alook-out, turn and turn about with Pitt, as Wilkinson and Cromwell had.The snow had ceased; but it was very dark and thick, the ocean a roaringshadow, palpitating upon the eyes in rolling folds of blackness, witht
he quick expiring flash of foam to windward. On a sudden, looking overthe weather quarter, methought I discerned a deeper shade in the nightthere than was elsewhere perceptible. It was like a great blot of inkupon the darkness. Even whilst I speculated, it drew out in the shape ofa ship running before the gale. She seemed to be heading directly forus. The roof of my mouth turned dry as desert-sand; my tongue and limbsrefused their office; I could neither cry nor stir, being indeedparalyzed by the terrible suddenness of that apparition and theimminence of our peril. It all happened whilst you could have toldthirty. The great black mass surged up with the water boiling about thebows; she brought a thunder along with her in her rigging and sails asshe soared to the crowns of the seas she was sweeping before. I couldnot tell what canvas she was under, but her speed was a full ten knots,and as I did not see her till she was close, she looked to come upon usas with a single bound. She passed us to windward within a stone'sthrow, and vanished like a dark cloud melting into the surroundingblackness. Not a gleam of light broke from her; you heard nothing butthe boiling at her bows and the thunderous pealing of the gale in hercanvas. A quarter turn of the wheel would have sent us to the bottom,and her, no doubt, on top of us. Whether she was the _Susan Tucker_, orsome other whaler, or a big South-Sea-man driven low and getting whateasting she could out of the gale, I know not. She was as complete amystery of the ocean night as any spectral fabric, and a heavier terrorto me than a phantasm worked by ghosts could have proved.
I knew such a thing could not happen again, yet when I called Pitt Italked to him about it as though we must certainly be run down if he didnot keep a sharp look-out, and when my watch below came round at fouro'clock, I was so agitated that I was up and down till daybreak, asthough my duty did not end till then.
The gale moderated at sunrise, and, though it was a gloomy, true CapeHorn morning, with dark driving clouds, the sea a dusky olive, veryhollow, and frequent small quick squalls of sleet which brought the windto us in sharp guns, yet as we could see where we were going, I got theschooner before it, heading her east-north-east, and under a reefedtopsail, mainsail, and staysail, the old bucket stormed through it withthe sputter and rage of a line-of-battle ship. There was a log-reel andline on deck, and I found a sand-glass in the chest in my cabin in whichI had met with the quadrants, perspective glass, and the like, and Ikept this log regularly going, marking a point of departure on the chartthe American captain had given me, which I afterwards found to be withintwo leagues and a half of the true position. But for three days theweather continued so heavy that there was nothing to be done in theshape of gratifying the men's expectations by overhauling what was leftof the cargo. Indeed, we had no leisure for such work; all our wakinghours had to be strictly dedicated to the schooner, and in keeping alook-out for ice. But the morning of the fourth day broke with a finesky and a brisk breeze from a little to the east of south, to which weshowed every cloth the schooner had to throw abroad, and being now bydead reckoning within a few leagues of the meridian of sixty degrees, Ishaped a course north by east by my compass, with the design of gettinga view of Staten Island that I might correct my calculations.
When we had made sail and got our breakfast, I told Wilkinson andCromwell (Pitt being at the tiller) that now was a good opportunity forinspecting the contents of the hold; and (not to be tedious in this partof my relation, however I may have sinned in this respect elsewhere) wecarried lanthorns below, and spent the better part of the forenoon intaking stock. From a copy of the memorandum I made on that occasion(still in my possession), we discovered that the Yankee captain had leftus the following: thirty casks of rum, twenty-eight hogsheads of claret,seventy-five casks of brandy, fifty of sherry, and eighteen cases ofbeer in bottles. In addition to this were the stores in the lazarette(besides a quantity of several kinds of wine in jars, &c.) elsewhereenumerated, besides all the ship's furniture, her guns, powder,small-arms, &c, as well as the ship herself. I took the men into the runand showed them the chests, opening the little one which I had stockedwith small-arms, and lifting the lids of two or three of the others.They were perfectly satisfied, fully believing all the chests to befilled with small-arms and nothing else, and so we came away andreturned to the cabin, where, to please them, I put down the value ofthe cargo at a venture, setting figures against each article, and makingout a total of two thousand six hundred and forty pounds. This of courseincluded the ship.
"How much'll dat be a man, massa?" asked Cromwell.
"Six hundred and sixty pounds," I answered.
The poor fellow was so transported that, after staring at me in silencewith the corners of his mouth stretched to his ears, he tossed up hishands, burst into a roar of laughter, and made several skips about thedeck.
"Of course," said I, addressing Wilkinson, "my figures may be ahead orshort of the truth. But if you are disposed to take the chance, I'lltell you what I'll do; I'll stand by my figures, accepting the risk ofthe value of the lading being less than what I say it is, and undertaketo give each man of you six hundred and sixty pounds for your share."
"Well, sir," said he, "I don't know that I ought to object. But a fewpounds is a matter of great consequence to me, and I reckon if thesehere goods and the wessel should turn out to be worth more than yeoffer, the loss 'ud go agin the grit, ay, if 'twere twenty dollars aman."
I laughed, and told him to let the matter rest, there was plenty of timebefore us; I should be willing to stand to my offer even if I lost byit, so heartily obliged was I to them for coming to my assistance. Andin this I spoke the truth, though, as you will understand who know myposition, I had to finesse. It went against my conscience to make outthat the chests were full of small-arms, but I should have been mad totell them the truth, and, perhaps, by the truth made devils of men whowere, and promised to remain, steady, temperate, honest fellows. I wasnot governed by the desire to keep all the treasure to myself; no, I vowto God I should have been glad to give them a moiety of it, had I notapprehended the very gravest consequences if I were candid with them.But this, surely, must be so plain that it is idle to go on insisting onit.
The fine weather, the golden issue that was to attend our successfulnavigation, the satisfactory behaviour of the schooner, put us into ahigh good-humour with one another; and when it came to my collecting allthe clothes in the after cabins and distributing them among the threemen, I thought Billy Pitt and Cromwell would have gone mad with delight.To the best of my recollection the apparel that had been left us by theAmerican captain (who, as you know, had cleared the forecastle of theclothes there) consisted of several coats of cut velvet, trimmed withgold and silver lace, some frocks of white drab with large platebuttons, brocade waistcoats of blue satin and green silk, crimson andother coloured cloth breeches, along with some cloaks, three-cornerhats, black and white stockings, a number of ruffled shirts, and otherarticles, of which I recollect the character, though my ignorance of thecostumes of that period prevents me from naming them.
Any one acquainted with the negro's delight in coloured clothes willhardly need to be told of the extravagant joy raised in the blackbreasts of Cromwell and Pitt by my distribution of this fine attire. Thelace, to be sure, was tarnished, and some of the colours faded, but allthe same the apparel furnished a brave show; and such was the aviditywith which the poor creatures snatched at the garments as I offered themfirst to one and then another, that I believe they would have beenperfectly satisfied with the clothes alone as payment for theirservices. I made this distribution on the quarter-deck, or little poop,rather, that all might be present: Wilkinson was at the tiller, andappeared highly delighted with the bundle allotted him, saying that hemight reckon upon a hearty welcome from his wife when she came to knowwhat was in his chest. The negroes were wild to clothe themselves atonce; I advised them to wait for the warm weather, but they were tooimpatient to put on their fine feathers to heed my advice. They ranbelow, and were gone half an hour, during which time I have no doubtthey put on all they had; and when at last they returned, theirappearance was
so exquisitely absurd that I laughed till I came near tosuffocating. Each negro had tied a silver laced hat on to his woollyhead; one wore a pair of crimson, the other a pair of black, velvetbreeches; over their cucumber shanks they had drawn white silkstockings, regardless of the cold; their feet were encased in buckledshoes, and their costumes were completed by scarlet and blue waistcoatswhich fell to their knees, and crimson and blue coats with immenseskirts. What struck me as most astonishing was their gravity. Theirself-complacency was prodigious; they eyed each other with dignifiedapprobation, and strutted with the air of provincial mayors and aldermennewly arrived from the presence of royalty.
"They're in keepin' with the schooner, any ways," said Wilkinson.
And so perhaps they were. The antique fabric needed the sparkle of thosecostumes on her deck to make her aspect fit in with the imaginations shebred. But, as I had anticipated, the cold proved too powerful for theirconceit, and they were presently glad to ship their more moderntrousers, though they clung obstinately to their waistcoats, and couldnot be persuaded to remove their hats on any account whatever.