A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes [40]
Captain Jonsen had lashed the wheel, and came up, his face piteous with distress.
"Otto! Mein Schatz. . . !" he began, laying his great bear's-arm round the mate's neck. Without more ado they went below together, and a sailor came aft unbidden and took the wheel.
TEN MINUTES LATER the mate reappeared on deck for a moment, and sought out the children.
"What's the captain been saying to you?" he asked. "Flashed out at you about something, did he?"
He took their complex, uncomfortable silence for assent.
"Don't you take too much notice of what he says," he went on. "He flashes out like that sometimes; but a minute after he could eat himself, fair eat himself!"
The children stared at him in astonishment: what on earth was he trying to say?
But he seemed to think he had explained his mission fully: turned, and once more went below.
FOR HOURS A merry but rather tedious bubble-bubble, suggesting liquor, was heard ascending from the cabin skylight. As evening drew on, the breeze having dropped away almost to a calm, the steersman reported that both Jonsen and Otto were now fast asleep, their heads on each other's shoulders across the cabin table. As he had long forgotten what the course was, but had been simply steering by the wind, and there was now no wind to steer by, he (the steersman) concluded the wheel could get on very well without him.
The reconciliation of the captain and the mate deserved to be celebrated by all hands with a blind.
A rum-cask was broached: and the common sailors were soon as unconscious as their betters.
Altogether this was one of the unpleasantest days the children had spent in their lives.
When dawn came, every one was still pretty incapable, and the neglected vessel drooped uncertainly. Jonsen, still rather unsteady on his feet, his head aching and his mind Napoleonic but muddled, came on deck and looked about him. The sun had come up like a searchlight: but it was about all there was to be seen. No land was anywhere in sight, and the sea and sky seemed very uncertain as to the most becoming place to locate their mutual firmament. It was not till he had looked round and round a fair number of times that he perceived a vessel, up in what by all appearances must be sky, yet not very far distant.
For some little while he could not remember what it is a pirate captain does when he sees a sail; and he felt in no mood to overtax his brain by trying to. But after a time it came back unbidden--one gives chase.
"Give chase!" he ordered solemnly to the morning air: and then went below again and roused the mate, who roused the crew.
No one had the least idea where they were, or what kind of a craft this quarry might be: but such considerations were altogether too complicated for the moment. As the sun parted further from his reflection a breeze sprang up: so the sails were trimmed after a fashion, and chase was duly given.
In an hour or two, as the air grew clearer, it was plain their quarry was a merchant brig, not too heavily laden, and making a fair pace: a pace, indeed, which in their incompetently trimmed condition they were finding it pretty difficult to equal. Jonsen shuffled rapidly up and down the deck like a shuttle, passing his woof backwards and forwards through the real business of the ship. He was hugging himself with excitement, trying to evolve some crafty scheme of capture. The chase went on: but noon passed, the distance between the two vessels was barely, if at all, lessened. Jonsen, however, was much too optimistic to realize this.
It used to be a common device of pirates when in chase of a vessel to tow behind them a spare topmast, or some other bulky object. This would act as a drogue, or brake: and the pursued, seeing them with all sail set apparently doing their utmost, would under-estimate their powers of speed. Then when night fell the pirate would haul the spar on board, overtake the other vessel rapidly, and catch it unprepared.
There were several reasons why this device was unsuitable to the present occasion. First and most obviously,