The Ghost Ship/Chapter Twenty Seven.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
“You’d better stick to us,” said the skipper to Colonel Vereker, who talked of taking the next Cunard steamer, which was advertised to leave on the morrow, as the Star of the North was being berthed in our company’s dock on the East River. “I’m only going to stop here long enough to discharge our cargo and ship a fresh one; which is all ready and waiting for us; and then, sir, we’ll ‘make tracks,’ as our friends the Yankees say, right away over the ‘herring-pond’ to Liverpool as fast as steam and sail can carry the old barquey. Better stick to us, colonel, and see the voyage out.”
“All right, Señor Applegarth,” replied the colonel, who could not drop his Spanish phraseology all at once, though otherwise gradually returning to his and our own native tongue and becoming less of a foreigner in every way, “I will return with you.”
Both were as good as their word, he and little Elsie coming home with us, and the skipper making the passage from Sandy Hook to the Mersey in eight days from land to land, the fastest run we had ever yet achieved across the Atlantic, whether outward or homeward-bound.
But, quick as we were, the Saint Pierre managed to reach Liverpool before we did, the pilot who boarded us off the Skerries bringing the news that she had gone up the river a tide ahead of us.
This piece of intelligence was confirmed beyond question by Garry O’Neil coming off in the company’s tug that sheered alongside as we dropped anchor in the stream later on, midway between the Prince’s landing-stage and the Birkenhead shore, the manager of our line being anxious to compliment the skipper on his successful rescue of the French ship, the percentage on whose valuable cargo for bringing her safely to port, and thus saving all loss to the underwriters, would more than repay any damage done for the detention of our vessel when engaged on the errand of mercy and justice that took her off her course.
In addition likewise to the thanks of the company and the underwriters, the skipper was also presented with a handsome gold chronometer watch by the committee of Lloyds, besides participating in the amount awarded by the charterers of the Saint Pierre for the salvage of the ship, though in this latter apportionment it was only fair to mention that we all shared, officers and crew alike, I for my part coming into the sudden possession of such a tidy little sum of ready money that I felt myself a comparative millionaire.
When talking with Garry, whom it is almost needless to say all hands were glad to see again, the men cheering him lustily as he crossed the gangway from the tug, he told us that though otherwise they had had a fairly pleasant voyage after parting company with us off the Azores, the Boissons gave him a good deal of trouble.
Madame, he said, worried his life out by “making eyes” at him when he went below at meal-times, while on deck he was never safe for a moment from her embarrassing attentions unless, in desperation, as he was often forced to do, he went aloft to get out of her way.
“Faith, an’ sure, that warn’t the worst of it nayther,” complained Garry in his humorous way. “Though the vain, silly ould crayture bate Banagher for flirtin’—an’, indade, bates ivviry other of her sex, God bless ’em, that I’ve ivver clapt eyes on yet—that quare little Frenchy chap, her husband, he, the little sparrow, must neades git jallous, an’ makes out it’s all my fault, an’, belave me, a nice toime I had o’ it altogether. At last I said to him, afther havin’ been more than usual exasperated by him, ‘If you want to foight me, begorrah, ye can begin as soon as you loike,’ at the same toime showin’ him me fists.”
“Ah, non, non, mon Dieu, non, note yat vay!” sez he, joompin’ away from me whin he caught soight o’ me fists. “I was mean ze duel and ze rapiere.”
“Not me, faith,” sez I. “If it’s duellin’ ye want you’ll have to go to another shop, Monsieur Parleyvoo, for it ain’t in my line. Allow me to till ye too, Monsieur Boisson, that if ye dare to hint at sich a thing ag’in whilst I’m in command of this ship, the ounly satisfaction ye’ll ivver have out of me in the rap-here way will be a rap on the h’id wid this shtick of moine here, you recollict, joist to thry the stringth of y’r craynium, begorrah! Faith, that sittled the matther, the little beggar turnin’ as pale as a codfish and goin’ below at onst, lookin’ very dejecthed an’ crestfallin. He nivver s’id another word afther that to me as long as he remained aboard, nor did Madame trouble me very much more wid her attenshions. On the contrary, bedad, from the day this happened till yestherday, whin she wor set ashore at the landing-stage yonder, she’d look moighty saur at me if we chanced to mate on deck—aye, faith, as saur as a babby that’s been weaned on butthermilk.”
“Why,” inquired the skipper, when we had both a good laugh at Garry and his account of the Boisson episode, “have they left, then, the ship for good?”
“Faith, yis, sor, bag an’ baggage, the blissid pair of ’em, an’ moighty pleased I wor to say the backs of ’em!”
“But how about the trial of those black devils, those pirates, then; won’t they be required as witnesses against the murderers?”
“No, sor,” replied Garry. “The polis officers that came aboard whin we got into dock sid they didn’t want monsieur nor madame neither, as they didn’t know a ha’porth of the jambolle, worse luck, they bein’ below all the toime. The magistrates think the two French sailors, who’re goin’ on foine by the same token, and the colonel, all of whom were on deck an’ saw everything that went on, would be sufficient witnisses aga’n the Haytian scoundrels.”
“Oh!” said the skipper, “have these men been brought up before the magistrates?”
“Aye, yestherday afthernoon, sor, an’ they’ve been raymanded, whativer that may mane—it ought to have been rayprimanded, I’m thinkin’, an’ a cat-o’-nine-tails, if they had their desarts - till next Tuesday! The magisthrates belayvin’ the ould Star of the North wid you, cap’en, wid the colonel aboard, to give ividence ag’st the mutineers, that they wouldn’t be in from New York afore then, not knowin’ what the ould barquey could do in the way of stayming as you an’ I do, sor, an’ that she’d arrive, faith, to-day!”
All happened as Garry O’Neil informed us, the Haytians and mutineer blacks of the Saint Pierre’s crew being brought up again before the magistrates the week following our arrival home, when, after hearing the additional evidence against them given by Colonel Vereker and the skipper, the six black and mahogany-coloured rascals were committed for trial at the next assizes, which we were told would not be held for another month, on the charge of “piracy and murder on the high seas.”
The colonel took advantage of the interval that would necessarily have to elapse before his presence would again be required in court to escort Miss Elsie to Paris, and place her under the care of the sisters at the convent at Neuilly, where, I think I told you before, he said her mother had been brought up and educated; while the skipper and others of us belonging to the Star of the North, being compelled to remain within handy reach of the authorities, in case our presence at the trial might be required, the opportunity was seized to lay the old barquey up in dry dock and give her a thorough overhaul within and without, though the engines, as proved by our rapid passage here, were none the worse for our breakdown in mid-Atlantic, thanks to the skill and exertions of poor Stoddart and the rest of old Mr Stokes’ staff.
Most of us in this way got a short holiday while awaiting the assizes, which I spent with my mother and sister, taking home with me the money I had been awarded as my share of the Saint Pierre’s salvage, which had made me fancy myself a temporary Croesus.
Alas, though, the sum, large though it was for a young fellow to find unexpectedly in his pocket, went but a very short step in satisfying the rapacious wolf I found at my mother’s door when I reached the little cottage, where she lived with my sister Janet, in one of the suburbs of Liverpool.
A bubble company, whose directors had all been selected for their religious bias rather than their business qualifications, burst at one fell coup, almost in the very hour of my return home, dissipating into thin air, as the Latin poet has it, all the savings of a lifetime which my mother had invested in the swindle—the provision left behind by my father, when he died, for her use, and the subsequent benefit of my sister and myself. The devout rogue who had “managed” the concern to his own worldly interest and that of his fellow religionists, carried on the same, so they said, in a pious and eminently “Christian way,” no doubt, respected alike in the eyes of God and men, according to the loudly-voiced tenets of the particular sect to which he and his co-directors mostly belonged; but he managed, all the same, to carry off to a remote and friendly land outside the pale of international law and where dividends need no longer be paid to clamorous creditors, a considerable amount of portable property of a valuable nature, amongst which, probably, was our inheritance, my mother’s capital!
Under these circumstances it behoved me to consider how I could best aid my poor mother and sister, then left suddenly destitute through no fault of their own.
Fortunately, I had the means ready at hand.
In our constant association on board the Star of the North after his rescue from the drifting boat, in which he greatly exaggerated the help I was able to render him, Colonel Vereker was kind enough to notice me much more than my subordinate position on board would have seemed to warrant; and in a conversation we had together during the voyage home from New York, after asking me what my prospects were, he made me an offer to accompany him back to Venezuela on his return, promising me, should I accept, a good salary to start with, and a fair chance of ultimately making my fortune.
Loving the sea and my profession, however, with all a sailor’s love, besides being attached to my old ship and her officers, I felt no inclination then to give up what I had learnt to look upon as my legitimate calling, and turn landsman; so, although I had the highest admiration for the colonel, coupled with more than a liking for his young daughter, between whom and myself there seemed such a mysterious sympathy on the evening of my sighting the Saint Pierre, when the captain declared we were some hundreds of miles apart, I reluctantly and, so it seemed to me, ungraciously, declined his proposal, telling him I preferred “sticking” to the skipper and the old barquey!
But the colonel very kindly would not take my refusal at first as final; and, when setting out for Paris to take Elsie to her convent school, she taking leave of me with many tears and assurances that under any circumstances she would always remain mio amiquito (my little friend) pledging herself, too, to be, if allowed at the school, a constant correspondent if I would write to her sometimes to let her know where I was. Well, the kind, good-hearted man, taking, as he said, a deep interest in my welfare for Elsie’s sake as well as for my own, assured me that he would keep his generous offer open until the period arrived for his ultimate departure for South America, on the termination of the trial of the Haytian pirates and their mutineer accomplices.
So, recollecting all this, in my hour of need, I naturally turned to the colonel and told him of my trouble on his return to Liverpool for the assizes, at which, by the way, the black scoundrels and their allies were sentenced to five years’ penal servitude, the judge regretting his inability to impose a heavier punishment from the fact of proof being wanted of the active participation of the prisoners in the atrociously cruel murder of Cato and the other diabolical work perpetrated on board the ill-fated ship.
We were all glad when this matter, with the examination and sickening details that it entailed, was finally settled, and we were at liberty to go where we liked.
Colonel Vereker more than justified my confidence in him.
“Heavens! my boy, you must and shall be as my son,” he said, wringing my hand in a grip that I knew would be faithful unto death. “Come with me and I will make a man of you, and a rich one, too, Dick Haldane!”
“But how shall I manage about my mother and sister, sir?” said I hesitatingly. “How shall I manage about them during my absence?”
“You can make over your salary to them, for you will not want anything while at Caracas, as you will live with me as my private secretary,” he replied, with another hearty shake of my hand. “The money shall be paid to your mother regularly by my agent here, so that you need have no fears on that score as to her support. But I do not want you to decide such an important change in your life without proper consideration, and the advice of your friends, my boy. Go and consult Señor Applegarth, who I know is an old friend of yours as well as being your captain; and then, if he and your other friends advise your acceptance of my offer, and your mother and sister are willing to part with you—why then, Dick, you may consider the matter settled, and you, some day, will be very thankful you accepted my offer.”
The skipper did not hesitate for one moment in giving his opinion, though, like most of my mess-mates, he was good enough to say how sorry he would be to part with me, and how he would miss me.
“Go by all means, my lad,” said he. “By George! it’s a chance that doesn’t come twice in a fellow’s lifetime, and you may consider your fortune as good as made!”
Mr Fosset and Garry O’Neil were equally enthusiastic.
“Faith, now, sor!” observed the latter, with a comical air of assured deference at my future dignified position, as he imagined it would be, “I hope ye’ll remember ye’r humble ould fri’nd Garry whim ye’re Prisidint of the Venezuelan Raypublic, mid a lot of yaller divvles for lackeys, an’ so many dollars that ye won’t know what to do wid ’em. Begorrah, it’s wishin’ I am, I stood in ye’r shoes, alannah, an’ I wouldn’t care for to call the Pope me ouncle, God bless him!”
Spokeshave, though, sneered at my success in gaining so good a friend as the colonel; but owing to the accident to the top of his nose, which being still bandaged, or rather court-plastered up, and not tending to add to his beauty, he was not able to turn it up and sniff in his former irritating way that always exasperated me so much.
As for old Masters, his face became the picture of woe when I informed him I was leaving the ship and the company’s service.
“You mark my words, Master Haldane,” said he in his most sepulchral manner, “many a one afore you has throwed up the sea, and what good has it done ’em? No good! Them that goes to sea oughter stick to the sea, that’s what I says; and if they throws it up, though I hopes you won’t, they allus live to repent it. I be truly sorry you be goin’, and ah, Master Haldane, I sed as how summet ’ud come of our seein’ that there blessed ghost-ship!”
“And so something has happened, bo’sun, and a precious lot too, my hearty!” said I, jokingly, as I stood on the gangway preparatory to going over the side. “But never mind that now, old shipmate! Good-bye to you, men, and thank you all for your kindness to me from the time I first sailed with you as a youngster.”
I really believe I could see a tear in the old bo’sun’s eye as he wished me farewell with the rest of them, the crew manning the rigging to give me a hearty cheer and “send off” that could be heard across the Mersey.
Thus it was that I took leave of the old barquey, and, my mother’s consent having been obtained before I finally settled with the colonel, no further arrangements had to be perfected beyond obtaining and preparing my kit, and a hasty run to the cottage to pay a last visit to my old mother and sister Janet, and wish them farewell for a few years, when I looked forward to returning to England and finding them both well and happy, and in more comfortable and prosperous circumstances.
That same afternoon Colonel Vereker and I started off by train from Liverpool for Southampton, at which latter port we embarked in the outward bound West India mail steamer, sailing for Colon, en route to Venezuela.