Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [69]
"You mean Mellen and White won't like it," the captain said. "They won't if you tell them not to, so don't tell 'em. A few days ago you were howling we shouldn't sail because of not having enough water: now you're screaming we oughtn't to make a run for Killybegs, where there's plenty of fine water to be had. Get on with those sails."
That was the beginning of an oft-renewed argument between Langman and Captain Deanan argument that came to one of its many heads when we did in fact round the northern tip of Scotland, slip through the narrow waters between the mainland and the Hebrides, swiftly skirt the north of Ireland and start down toward the Isle of Aran and Donegal Bay.
We were still short of Aran by a few miles when the lookout sighted two vessels in a bay near the tip of Aran. As soon as Langman heard the word, he went halfway up the mizzen ratlins to see for himself: then called down to Mellen and White.
"Privateers," he bawled. He came down the ratlins like a squirrel and ran to the quarter-deck. "Those are privateers," he told the captain. "All the men say so."
"What do the men know about it?" Captain Dean asked. "I know, and they probably don't, that Donegal Bay is full of British naval vessels and fishermen. This is no place for French privateers."
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"I say they're privateers," Langman said. "I can tell by the cut of their jibs."
A voice reached us from the waist. "He wants us to be captured."
"Hear that?" Langman demanded. "That's what they're all saying: you want to be captured by a privateer."
"That's the silliest thing I ever heard," Captain Dean said. "Why in God's name would I want to be captured by a Frenchman?"
"You wouldn't act the way you're actingyou wouldn't run towards two privateersunless you wanted to be taken."
"Look here," Captain Dean said. "This ship cost money, as you well know. So did the cordage we're carrying. We're within a few hours of a port where we'll take on another expensive cargo. I'd be the last one to run risks with this ship."
Langman was supercilious. "You insured the cordage, didn't you?"
"Of course I did," Captain Dean said. "Only a fool would fail to insure his cargo."
"Well," Langman persisted, "if you turned the ship over to a privateer, your brother Jasper'd get the insurance money, wouldn't he?"
"Certainly he would," Captain Dean said. "Also, all of us, including me and my brother Henry, would land in a French prison. If I thought I was in danger of being captured, I'd run the ship ashore."
Langman wouldn't stop worrying the subject. "If you did run her ashore, both you and your brother would get the money."
Captain Dean turned away from him and took the wheel
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from Harry Hallion. "Harry," he said, "go forward and tell the men we're running between Aran and the main, and that we'll neither abandon this ship nor let any Frenchman have her."
Hallion went forward and spoke to White and Mellen, the two bos'ns. At his words both Mellen and White burst into derisive laughter.
"This has gone far enough," Captain Dean said. "Take the wheel, Miles! Keep her steady as she goes."
He ran from the quarter-deck to the waist, stepping in front of Mellen and White, who stared sullenly at the deck.
"What are you damned fools preaching to these men?" Captain Dean demanded.
Mellen gave him a sullen answer. "We're not preaching anything. We just don't propose to be turned over to the damned French."
"Do you know what you're saying?" Captain Dean said. "You're implying I'm a traitor."
When neither Mellen nor White answered, Captain Dean's two big hands shot out, seized them by the collars of their jackets and banged their heads together so that the sound came clearly to us on the quarter-deck. "I'll have common sense on this ship, and not a lot of buccaneery blathering about things you don't understand! Such as privateers! Such as insurance!" He threw them to the deck between two of the guns.
He didn't like violence, he had told me, and