The Sea Wolves/Chapter 7
Day broke slowly, with a low mount of black cloud over the sea and but scant abatement of the wind, which began to blow again from the fuller west. Torrents of cooling rain now poured upon the decks of the Semiramis and were sport for the hurricane, which tossed them hither and thither in blinding sheets. All over the angry waste of water the loud contest of the thundering rollers was to be heard and seen, booming out with the dull roar of rushing cataracts, or spurting high in silvery cascades where the greater waves were checked. The darkness of night was scarcely worse than the gloom of the new dawn—a gloom of lowering black vapour and raging sea, of the mournful wailing of the wind and suggested desolation.
When the light, such as it was, gave clearer outline to the worn face of the Atlantic, those upon the bridge of the yacht looked down upon a strange scene. There were but two ships on the sea with them; and of these one was the cruiser, which plunged through the swelling tempest a couple of miles away on their starboard quarter; the other was a full-rigged ship, now running under a storm-jib and reefed topsails toward the Irish coast. For the rest, there was nothing but the restless flash of white water, the swirl of giant billows, the crash of breaking rollers, the hemisphere of gathering cloud.
With such an environment the customary spirit of Burke's crew was altogether lacking. For the most part, the men lay huddled together just abaft the fore hatch, and had eyes for nothing but the pursuing cruiser, which seemed to hold the yacht so easily, yet could gain nothing upon her. They had even ceased to ask the question: "Shall we be took?" but remained inert and hopeless as the chase went on and the situation remained unchanged. Nor did those upon the bridge speak, but took it as men at war with chance but to whom chance is no taskmaster. This tension was almost insupportable for some hours, while the yacht plunged onward at a terrible pace, and thrilled and quivered as a woman who has received a blow. It might have endured to the end had not the cook, one-legged Joe, to whom all things were but meat for the pot, come up from the galley and begun, after his usual habit, to stump the deck, and call the hands to breakfast, as a muezzin calls to prayer in the cities of the Prophet. Joe was a half-caste, and his jerky step upon the fo'castle was the surest signal to merriment forward under placid circumstances; but on that morning of the fourth day it was little welcome, and for some time, at any rate, it met with curt response.
"Be gor!" cried the man, as he hopped up and down, his fine balance disregarding the vigour of the lurches—"be gor! if this don't beat cold rum! A sight of gemmelen what hab forgotten eight bells; and all for a bit of a ship that Joe wouldn't go for to jump over, sahs—not for to jump over!"
He stopped his antics before the Scotchman, Johnson, who was holding fast to the shrouds of the short foremast and surveying him with withering contempt.
"Man," said he to the cook, "ye're ower blithesome for the time of day, I'm thinking. Have ye no stomach for yon?"
"Sah," replied Joe, "you warm the innar man, sah; you gib 'em plenty stomach by-and-by; you gib 'em what young gemmelen call hot-pot and slops, sah—Joe know; he smell war, sah, while him a long way off!"
With this he fell to hopping up and down again on that ill-made steel leg, which served him at once as a means of ambulation, and, as the crew declared, in place of a cooking-spoon when the need was. For the matter of that, he bawled so lustily and with such effect that a few men presently turned down to breakfast, and Burke followed their example, leading Kenner and the others with him.
It was not the hour when men might think of food; but the skipper knew that long and arduous labour was before them all; and, for himself, he showed as good an appetite as a roisterer at a village fair, and washed down great hunks of meat with frequent potations from a bottle of Hollands.
"That's the stuff ez'll warm you best for a picnic such ez this is," said he, as he pushed the bottle to the others. "None o' your slops and fizzing pison fer me. Prince, nor yet coffee neither; I guess Rome wasn't took on that sort, en we ain't a-going to git this yere yallow cargo ashore on it no more'n they could—give me spirit!"
"You appear to be helping yourself," said Messenger, upon whom the excitement of the moment had no power for impression; "I don't see where we come in, any way. The fact is that all you fellows want to deaden your wits with that stuff at the very moment you have most need of them. I shall take coffee, if there's any to be got."
"Wal," interposed Kenner, "so should I if it wasn't an occasion. But if this don't beat a birthday fête, I never knew one. Blarm me! but I can think on liquor."
He consoled himself with the conclusion, and fell to work to prove it, holding a glass in one hand and food in the other, since the yacht rolled so terribly that the swinging lamp above the table threatened to strike the skylight at every lurch. In reality his craving for strong drink was the outcome of the raging anxiety—nay, even fear—which consumed him, and, indeed, all of them but the Prince, who made as good a breakfast as a hunting squire, and did not cease a gentle irony and banter through the whole of the meal.
"Burke," said he, in one of the intervals, "I want to know what you're going to do if we can't show that ship yonder a clean pair of heels before night."
"What em I going to do ? " asked Burke. "Wal, that's a fair question, and I'll give you a fair reply—I dun know!"
"Perhaps you can tell us, Kenner?" said Messenger, turning to the American. "You think on liquor, you know."
"That's so," replied Kenner; "but I ain't full up yet. I guess I can tell you one thing, though, my boy: if this hulk don't show a couple of knots more in the next two hours it's nothing stronger than skilly that most of us will be lapping, and that only for a spell."
Hal Fisher, who listened to the conversation eagerly, looked up at the words, and asked—
"What does he mean, Prince?"
"Means ez he'll have to dance the polker with no par-ket floorin' under him," replied Burke, who took up the conversation.
"And he means also," said Messenger quietly, "that this skipper of ours is a bigger fool than his bulk gives you any idea of."
"What's that?" cried Burke, bringing his huge fist upon the table with Gargantuan strength. "You're going to take that back, I reckon, en quick!"
Messenger leaned against the cushions of his seat, one of his hands resting upon a case of ingots, and just showed his white teeth in the suggestion of a leer. But Burke was fuddled with the liquor and quarrelsome, and he half rose from the table and asked, with a hiccough—
"Who commands aboard this ship?"
"Sober men," replied Messenger quietly.
"I'm asking you for a plain word, en no roundabout! Do I command ye, or do I not?"
"You may command who the deuce you like," answered Messenger testily; "but if you say two words to me, I'll pitch you off your own bridge!"
The threat was mildly said, but the slim man who spoke looked so well able to answer for his words that the great skipper sank back upon his seat with a senseless smile and turned the conversation.
"Go on!" said he. "I always knew ye for a ornery one, and if any one says as there's harm in ye, I give him the lie, the straight lie. The question is: What do yer want? I've done all ez I ken do, I reckon. Ken you do more? Will you tell me that?"
But no one answered him, and the Prince began to speak to Kenner.
"Kenner," said he, "every cock on his own dunghill, and every skipper on his own bridge so long as he's got the wits of a mule. The situation is as clear to me as that coffee-pot there. The ship we're running from is trying to drive us to the mouth of the Channel, and if she does so, the 'In Memoriam' notices will be up for all of us inside a month. Personally, I've no love for assisting at funerals, and I've less hankering to be the chief actor in one. Yet it's quite clear to me that, since they've got the legs of us, we must either find the open ocean, or leave the thing now, like a lot of old women trooping out of an excursion train. You told me that you could show heels to any thing swimming; but you can't, and that's the weak spot in the whole of it"
"Stay a bit! " cried Kenner; "you're not at a political garden-party, and I don't foller. I said this yacht could do twenty-two knots in a free sea; and so she can—I'll go my last dime on it!"
"That may be," replied Messenger; "but whatever she can do, the other is up to it. You've got eyes, and you can see as well as I can."
Burke looked up suddenly at the words, and chimed in—
"She's doin' twenty-two knots now, if that '11 help you !"
"Possibly," replied Messenger; "but I'm not interested. What I want to learn is the exact time and place when you mean to shoot for the open."
"Wal, if it's shooting you're after, you'll get plenty of that directly you put across her bows!" said Kenner expressively; and the skipper gave a great guffaw at his words, as a drunken man will ever laugh at a hand's breadth of pleasantry.
But the laugh was still upon his lips when the roar of a gun echoed over the sea, and the three mien sprang to their feet together.
"They've begun it already!" said Burke; and in a moment he shook off the grip of the drink and bounded up the companion. Thither the others followed him, to see a cloud of smoke enveloping the pursuing cruiser, and their own men lying about the deck in a depth of fear and craven sullenness which surpassed any thing they had yet been guilty of.